Weekly round-up and open thread, 21 January 2012

Here’s this week’s open thread for discussion and our regular round-up of some of the articles and blogs we’ve noticed over the last week or so, but not had time to post about.

If you have a link or comment that doesn’t fit anywhere else and would like to share it, feel free to drop it in the comments here.

TRIGGER WARNING: This post contains links to external websites and blogs, some of which have comment threads and other material which some people may find triggering. The links here are posted in good faith but, as The F-Word has no control over the content of external sites, readers are advised to use their discretion and approach them with due caution.

DON’T SHOOT THE MESSENGER CLAUSE: The inclusion of any link in this post should not be construed as agreement or disagreement with its content by anyone at The F-Word. Links are posted for information and/or discussion purposes only and do not reflect any form of “official TFW party line” on any subject because there is no “official TFW party line”.

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This week’s closing video is “Don’t Want To Know” by John Martyn from his seminal 1973 album Solid Air. There’s quite a nice early 1990s prog-house cover by Spill (Beth Orton & William Orbit) here, but I’ve gone with the original for no other reason than that it’s an ideal soundtrack to a(nother) sleepless night and an almost overwhelming sense of world-weariness:

Image attribution and description: The image at the head of this post is called Blinkenlights and was taken by Helen on her cellphone telephone. It’s a photo of a darkened computer room illuminated by the green and blue lights of active network connectivity devices.