George Orwell: Politics and the English Language

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. The will construct your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent — and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.

#literature

March 2014 has been the biggest month so far for articles with 103 but August 2014 is catching up with its 82 articles. I doubt if I’ll beat it though, there’s only four publishing days left. Quality though, not quantity.

This chart reminds me of a spider by the way… I love it when reports randomly produce something more than just graphs.

I have it set so each time I save an article, a copy is stored as a revision which is what the blue line represents. I still haven’t gotten around to building functionality to revert to an earlier save point but the data is there.

A dork’s work is never done.

#webdev #tcr

In an #email I read today…

In addition, per your email, these two files are provided, per your email.

If you’re ever feeling down, just pull out this picture of Tom Hanks on a swing.

#advancedsoul

Who does this?

#fail #devhell

Prince reveals he will release two new albums in September

After teasing yesterday that a “major announcement” was on its way, Prince has revealed details of not one, but two forthcoming albums.

The first, Plectrum Electrum, has been in the pipeline since the start of the year when the singer held a press conference at Lianna La Havas’ house and performed a series of guerilla-style surprise gigs in London.

Prince has now revealed that not only will Plectrum Electrum be out in September, but it will be released alongside another full-length album, Art Official Age - this one without the help of his band 3RDEYEGIRL.

The album will feature 13 songs, one of which, ‘Breakdown’, has already been revealed, and is available to pre-order already.

Both Plectrum Electrum and Art Official Age are set for release on 29 September. The full tracklist for Art Official Age is below.

I would totally rock that hairdo if I could.

#music #prince

Philip Seymour Hoffman: The Greatest Actor of His Generation

It’s not clear that there were roles Philip Seymour Hoffman could not do. He had so many lives within him—and more, undiscovered and unseen. Those are the lives, aside from his own, we’ve now lost. “For me, acting is torturous,” Hoffman told the New York Times in 2008, “and it’s torturous because you know it’s a beautiful thing. I was young once, and I said, That’s beautiful and I want that. Wanting it is easy, but trying to be great—well, that’s absolutely torturous.”

Love Liza is one of my favorites.

#movies #psh

An Occult History of the Television Set

However, as Birkeland fell deeper into an eventually fatal addiction to extreme levels of caffeine and a slow-acting hypnotic drug called Veronal, he became fixated on the weirdly impossible goal of exactly modeling the Northern Lights in miniature.

#tv

Well, I guess for compensation I’ll need to eat “vanilla ice cream sandwiched between chocolate chip cookies and rolled in mini chocolate chips.”

#photos #pumpkins

If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money.
—Abigail Van Buren

#protip