The Null Device

2001/4/30

Some intrepid Linux hackers in the Netherlands have finally created a working implementation of RFC1149. That's right; RFC1149.

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"Baile funk", the ultra-violent musical gang warfare scene from the slums of Brazil, is now headed for the US, with funk band Bonde do Tigrao embarking on their Stateside tour.

"I'm going to show you that I'm a tiger/I'm going to put on the pressure/And then hammer, hammer, hammer," Bonde do Tigrao chant on their most popular song, a mixture of rap and pop.

You know, that sounds, like a Prodigy lyric...

(I wonder whether Dr. Dre or someone from Interscope is taking notes; once the mook thing runs out of steam, Brazilian-style funk may be the Next Big Thing.) (via Robot Wisdom)

baile funk brazil culture gangs hip-hop music rebellion violence 0

A New York woman planning to visit southern China booked into the luxurious White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou through their website; or so she thought. When she arrived there, they had no record of her booking. It turned out that rather than the Guangshou White Swan, she had booked into the White Swan boarding house in Yorkshire.

The website for the Guangzhou White Swan displays a picture of a towering white building, and states that it is set among beautiful banyan gardens on historical Shamian island overlooking the Pearl River. In contrast, the website for the White Swan in Yorkshire shows pictures of an old house, the Yorkshire countryside and a map of Britain. "It's quite a surprising mistake to make to be honest, because the website says things like how to get there from places like London, which may suggest to some people that it's not actually in Guangzhou," said Teters.

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So, dear reader, I hear you ask: how will Your Humble Weblogger be participating in tomorrow's Joint Anarchosocialist Tolchockfest? Will I be lining up outside the Stock Exchange before dawn to protest against the evils of capitalism, or helping to redecorate a McDonalds franchise? No, I'm most likely to be asleep at that time, and probably so until the police have beaten the crap out of everybody with blue hair or dreadlocks in the CBD. However, this weblog will be participating in the M1 festivities in its own way, by attempting to launch another video game meme into the ideosphere. Which one? Let's just say one reflecting the theme of the day.

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Disturbing possibility of the day: Was the Florida Courthouse Putsch, which got Bush elected engineered by the CIA? Someone at the Online Journal presents some frightening parallels between the Florida election and CIA-backed coups in Chile and Guatemala.

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An amusing (if somewhat naïve) article about the letter-number protest thing. Well, the McLibel people weren't Trotskyites but rather generic vegan feral types, Shell did give the Nigerian government helicopter gunships and tell it to kill a bunch of inconvenient activists and Nestlé do contribute to third-world deaths (both these things have been documented by people who aren't rabid anarchosocialist nutters), though the suggestions for new letter-number protests are not bad. I'd be sympathetic to D25, and I already participate in F14 (though only by digging out my Smiths records). (Also, I wonder if anybody in Nike's astroturf marketing department is paying attention to the S29 suggestion.)

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