Etcetera #9: The Keynes, rewilding, horological craftsmanship

Oh look, an article in my RSS reader about the place I live. This always goes well. It starts by aligning MK with Thatcherite neoliberalism, as opposed to the typical positioning of New Towns as post-war social democratic projects. The piece focuses on The Style Council’s ‘Come To Milton Keynes’, wherein Paul Weller takes inspiration from MK’s initial advertising campaign (the fact that a town had an advertising campaign at all created huge uproar at the time) in an effort to skewer perceived New Town artificiality and 1980s UK political trends. It’s not exactly his best work: more relevant as (sub)urban examination than musical triumph. I’ve become something of an armchair historian of my town over the past few years and I’d love to write something substantial about it if I can find a decent angle or narrative. Possibly the grid system of distributor roads as that pisses everyone off, from visitors to residents to Jane Jacobs (I imagine). Or maybe the abandoned monorail project (yes, really). I once wrote something on Tumblr about working class discrimination in the media reporting of my town (sadly lost to the ages) which led me to meet friend of the newsletter Paul Capewell, so it’s worth doing, right?

Following on from previous weeks, here are a couple more links about trees—this time, thankfully, bringing them back. WildCard, a group of campaigners, artists and ecologists, want to rewild 50% of the UK. They are starting with Britain’s largest landowners: The Windsors, the Church and the universities. But the choice of targets is also based on their supposed beliefs, values and responsibilities: “The Royals have stewardship over land and people. The Church provides moral, religious and spiritual guidance. Oxbridge is bringing up the next group of people who are probably going to rule the country, and are supposed to shape young people’s ideas of how things are supposed to work.” Good luck with that, lads!

The same subject, on a more practical note—how do you take a patch of earth littered with tree stumps, or even a grassy pasture or palm oil plantation, and turn it back into a thriving forest filled with its original species? One option is a planned reforestation. Another is to simply protect the area and let nature do its thing from the dormant seeds in the ground and dispersal via weather and animal life. This explains the options.

Lyz Lenz talks to Talia Lavin about the appalling online harassment they have both experienced. The resources list at the end will be useful, if not for you, then at some point for someone you know. Speaking as someone who is at the intersection of the 7D Venn diagram of people who are never, ever targeted by atrocious shit like this, we all need to do more to prevent it happening and to help whenever it does.

Hugely interesting for me as someone who has battled my entire professional career with CMS workflow and functionality, this introduces a bunch of new features and enhancements to ProPublica’s pages, both from an admin and end user POV. From this, it looks great.

Non-English Wikipedia language communities tend to be much more isolated, resulting in inherent bias on certain topics. This article starts with the whitewashing of war crimes on Japanese Wikipedia, the most visited edition after English. Some of these sorts of issues arise as a result of cultural differences—not every country or region has the same concept of ‘the public sphere’ as the West—while others are yet further examples of Wikipedia’s leadership failing its volunteers and readers.

I really loathe those colossal, ugly fighter pilot watches that some men wear. The ones with a thousand complications (never has a word been more apt). Give me an Easy Reader any day. This article explores the typefaces used in horological craftsmanship, a term I will now endeavour to use as often as possible.

I like this sort of thing. A history of food and culture from the perspective of a single item: the biscuit. Tales abound of empire, war, industrialisation and the entire concept of ‘lunch’.

A podcast episode that will likely only be of interest to Brits of around my age: Chris Scullion talks to Dominik Diamond, former host of 90s TV’s GamesMaster, about the upcoming book GamesMaster: An Oral History.