data – her divine shadow

My pinboard bookmarks for December 7th through December 16th

herdivineshadow — Sun, 16 Dec 2018 02:00:05 +0000

These are my links for December 7th through December 16th:

Home | Boost your Broadband –
tags: broadband
Price comparison – Ofcom – A good way to find out what deals are available is to check out the price comparison sites that have been accredited by Ofcom.
tags: broadband comparison
Quitting Facebook & Google: Why Exit Option Democracy is the Worst Kind of Democracy – Just how easy is it to opt out of corporate data collection? Are you just a luddite if you do choose to opt out? And what are the costs?
tags: facebook google datacollection dataretention data smartphone technology
Impact Profile – Help make the world a better place – Impact Profile provides a central destination for individuals wishing to measure and showcase their own social contribution and impact, thereby inspiring others to do the same – social media for social good.
tags: peace social socialgood community volunteering
BookButler – Book price comparison – Compare prices of books, textbooks, audio books, movies, music and games – Compare book prices at 51 popular online stores and marketplaces in real time to find the best deals in seconds
tags: books comparison shopping

My pinboard bookmarks for April 3rd through April 4th

herdivineshadow — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 16:00:18 +0000

These are my links for April 3rd through April 4th:

Robin Hood 2×05 part 3 – YouTube –
tags: 2×05 robinhood bbcrobinhood video
Sir Guy of Gisborne (BBC TV drama) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia –
tags: guyofgisborne robinhood bbcrobinhood wiki
Guy of Gisborne – Robin Hood Wiki –
tags: guyofgisborne wiki robinhood bbcrobinhood
No need to hack phones – we stitch ourselves up | Anna Blundy –
tags: journalism twitter dailymailshenanigans
[toread] [priv] Calving Diamonds – jane_potter – Thor (2011) [Archive of Our Own] – Already well into the war on Midgard, Laufey discovers that he's carrying a child… and that it could be no other's than Odin's. Laufey cannot simply rid himself of his soon-born, no matter that he will have to be on the battlefield while heavy with child. He will keep it, this child who makes him love more than a ruler can afford to, more than a jötunn should at all, and he will defeat Odin anyway, and he’ll do it with his—- their—- child by his side. (Ah, but he does not know that this is not how it will end.)
Ostensibly, this story is about mpreg… but really it's more of a story about pointless war and grey morality and unreliable narrators, culture clashes and miscommunications and misunderstandings, sex and gender and identity and the erasure of disempowered identities by dominant cultures. Oh, and Laufey being an awesome parent to not-born-yet!Loki. And all the heartbreaks.

Odin has not slain them. Laufey will not let Odin slay them with this slow death, this starvation of the soul that wears hollow caves in the bedrock of the jötunn heart.

He has brought his people thus far, and he will take them farther. He will give them little victories to make them live: tjalds rebuilt in spite of Odin's wrath, survival in the face of utter desolation… and a child of Odin's own blood snatched away, kept safe despite all odds and cradled in the hearts of the jötunn people until one day zie rises to tear the All-Father down. Until Laufey's fragile little wonder is everything Laufey was not, and more.

That will be one day. Right now it is fever-dreaming, desperate hope that Laufey holds aloft like a light to make himself believe it is worth struggling forward. Right now, all he truly wants is his babe held safe within the fortress of his great arms, which for all their strength are still only good enough to protect this one thing.

I was skeptical about this story at first because "why should I care about the frost giants?" but this story truly blew me away. The world building was fantastic and she expanded on the little hints that the movie and Norse mythology gives us about them but manages to not relegate the frost giants and Laufey to some savage "Other" but take them on their own turns. A beautiful exploration of another culture and way of life with the added bonus of epic FEELS. Definitely recommend.
tags: ***** Archive:AO3 Archive:MPREG.Big.Bang Author:jane_potter Fandom:Thor Char:Laufey Char:Odin Char:Loki Series:Sins.Of.The.Father Theme:Awesomeness Theme:BABIES! Theme:Character.Death Theme:FEELS Theme:Kids Theme:Kidnapping Theme:Mpreg Theme:oh.my.heart Theme:Oppression Theme:Pregnancy Theme:Pregnant!Sex Theme:World-Building Theme:Enemy.Empathy Tone:angsty Tone:Beautiful WC:16000 via:bookbindbound
[toread] Girls and coding: female peer pressure scares them off >> The Observer – Emma Mulqueeny:
In my opinion, Year 8 is too late. We need to start teaching digital literacy and coding as a part of the curriculum in Year 5, when most children's maths is strong enough. The curriculum has fostered a familiarity with computing and computers and the young minds are ready to start learning programming languages. Indeed primary school children are creative, excited and less likely to have developed associations, good or bad, with certain subjects.

tags: charlesarthur coding education via:guardiantech
[toread] Google Account Activity tells you all they know >> SlashGear –
This month Google is showing off their newest opt-in service known as Account Activity, a service capable of showing you everything the group knows about your signed-in activities. Google services of course work their way into several daily activities of people like you and I, and certainly knowing everywhere I logged in from as well as all the YouTube videos I’ve ever watched could be entertaining – but that’s not what the service is for, says Google. Account Activity is Google’s way of helping you “step back and take stock of what you’re doing online” in an analytical way.

Looks rather neat.
tags: google data via:guardiantech
[toread] No, Microsoft won’t add back the Start button >> Dividend.com –
A Nomura analyst commented, “Meeting Tami Reller, the head of marketing and CFO of the Windows and Windows Live Division at Microsoft. Microsoft will not be adding back the Start Button. They will add a tutorial to show keyboard/mouse users the new commands that they need to orient themselves with in the new OS. We have not seen the controversy on the touch (Metro) side, and this is where all the industry growth will come. Our next look at the product will be the Release Candidate (RC), which we have expected by June, followed by the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) in late July or August, and finally the release to General Availability (GA) in September or October.”

tags: microsoft windows8 via:guardiantech
[toread] TweetDeck taken offline following discovery of bug exposing Twitter accounts >> Digital Trends – Friday:
Twitter has taken TweetDeck offline after a user discovered he had access to hundreds of Twitter accounts when using the client in the usual way (ie. he didn't hack it). TweetDeck said it is looking into the issue.

tags: tweetdeck via:guardiantech
[toread] Why Groupon is poised for collapse >> VentureBeat – Why?
for starters, it’s not a coupon company nor a marketing company. At its core, Groupon’s U.S. business is a receivables factoring business, as I wrote last year. They give loans to small businesses at a very steep rate (the price of the discount plus Groupon’s commission). They get the money to fund these loans from credit card companies such as Chase Paymentech. Groupon is essentially a sub-prime lender that does zero risk assessment. And as word continues to spread about what a terrible deal running a Groupon is for many categories of businesses, the ones that will choose to run Groupons are the ones that are the most desperate. For U.S. based businesses, the only time I can definitely recommend running a Groupon is if it is otherwise going to go out of business.

Compelling.
tags: groupon business charlesarthur via:guardiantech
[toread] Groupon revisions expose risk as new model outpaces controls >> SF Chronicle – Following on from yesterday's link about a "sub-prime" lender:
The Chicago-based company reported a "material weakness" in financial controls on March 30 and said fourth-quarter sales were lower than previously stated because of higher refunds to merchants. That cut revenue in the period – Groupon's first as a public company – by $14.3 million to $492.2 million.

The announcement added to setbacks for Groupon, which has struggled to get its financial statements in order since filing for an initial public offering in June. The company abandoned an accounting method for operating income after a review by regulators and later restated 2010 results.

tags: groupon accounts via:guardiantech
[toread] SEC Probes Groupon >> WSJ.com – What's the deal, here?
tags: groupon SEC IPO joshhalliday via:guardiantech

My pinboard bookmarks for March 15th through March 21st

herdivineshadow — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 21:06:44 +0000

These are my links for March 15th through March 21st:

Stories of Arda – Author: Madeleine – Lord of the Rings Fan-Fiction Archive –
tags: lothiriel eomer lordoftherings tolkien fanfic
Universal Scrobbler –
tags: scrobbling last.fm
Listen: At SXSW, Bruce Springsteen On The Meaning Of Music : The Record : NPR –
tags: brucespringsteen music rock sxsw
The Mu | The Folding Plug –
tags: plug powersupply usb gadget
The Body Counter – By Tina Rosenberg | Foreign Policy – On March 13, 2002, in a courtroom in The Hague, something different happened. In the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, Patrick Ball, an American statistician, presented numbers to support the case that Milosevic had pursued a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing. "We find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that Yugoslav forces forced people from their homes, forced Albanian Kosovars from their homes, and killed people," Ball said.
tags: data statistics humanrights truthcommissions conflict

My pinboard bookmarks for February 15th through February 18th

herdivineshadow — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 22:00:05 +0000

These are my links for February 15th through February 18th:

[toread] Social Text: Periscope: Socialist Irrealism: an interview with China Miéville – Known for his radical fictive speculation, China Miéville is also fiercely engaged with radical politics–he stood for the House of Commons as candidate for the Socialist Alliance in the 2001 UK general election–and so is often asked about the relationship between his politics and his writing. He explains that he makes an important distinction between writing fiction to make political points and writing with a political perspective.
tags: china_mieville fiction politics
[toread] >>Nostalgia For Infinity – The Uncanny in China Miéville’s “New Weird”: An Examination of Perdido Street Station and The Scar (December 2003) – In the course of this essay we shall examine the Weird Fiction of China Miéville, considering it as Uncanny literature. We will also consider the advent of the “New Weird”, specifically in how this relates to the Uncanny.
tags: china_mieville shauncgreen uncanny newweird sciencefiction scifi fiction essay
What Size Am I? – Finding clothes that fit shouldn't be so hard. Add your measurements here to find out which high-street sizes are best for you.
tags: clothes clothing cool shopping fashion women
The Hobbit: Deciphering Dwarf Documents « Heirs of Durin – Having discovered the highest resolution images yet of Bilbo holding the contract which Thorin and Co. wrote (see end of post), I’ve spent more time than I’ll admit trying to work out what it says. You think Bilbo looks perplexed? I might have had better luck with the Dead Sea Scrolls. My findings are based on some visible evidence, and a whole lot of guesswork. Even so, the truly Hobbit/Dwarf-obsessed will be interested in what I’ve been able to discern, and perhaps will continue the study on their own.
tags: hobbit hobbitmovie dwarven bilbo bilbobaggins
[toread] What’s your perfect fitting top, skirt and dress on the highstreet? | News | guardian.co.uk – We all know that there's no such thing as a size 10. But I'm a computer programmer as well as a fashion fan, so I built a website to beat the sizing madness
tags: data statistics women clothes fashion retail