January 2023 gallery

Here are January 2023’s images—aides-mémoires, photos of interest, and miscellaneous items. I append to this gallery through the month.     Notes Rosa Clará image, added as I was archiving files from the third quarter of 2021. The Claudia Schiffer Rolling Stone cover came to mind recently—I believe it was commended in 1991 by the […]

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Spacing in French: figuring out how to punctuate professionally

With the French edition of Lucire KSA now out, we’ve been hard at work on the second issue. The first was typeset by our colleagues in Cairo (with the copy subbed by me), but this time it falls on us, and I had to do a lot of research on French composition.    There are […]

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The pathetic snowflakes of Big Tech

We all know what will happen. This is one of two fakes who have sent me a Facebook friend request this week. The first was given the all-clear despite having spam links; and no doubt this will be judged to be perfectly acceptable by Facebook. (In the meantime, a post from Lucire that featured the […]

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History of the 2010s: a look back at the decade that was

When I first wrote a satirical look back at the decade, which ran on this blog in December 2009 (on the old Blogger service, as I was helping a friend fight a six-month battle with Google to restore his blog), it was pretty easy to make up little fictions based on reality. This one, covering […]

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The return of borders?

Nadia has done it for ages, but I noticed Glamour did it for a while in 2018, and Wheels has stuck with it for its “new look”. What’s the deal with bordered covers?    I still prefer them bled, especially as I remember the difficulties of doing them back in the old days, and print […]

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A quick read from Prof Stephen Hawking in Wired UK

The late Prof Stephen Hawking’s interview with Condé Nast’s Wired UK is excellent, and a quick read. For those following me on the duopoly of Facebook and Google, here’s what the professor had to say: I worry about the control that big corporations have over information. The danger is we get into the situation that […]

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Has Facebook stopped forcing its “malware scanner” on to users after being busted by Wired?

  Since Louise Matsakis’s story on Facebook’s malware scanner came out in Wired, the number of hits to my pieces about my experience has dwindled.    This can mean one of two things: (a) Wired’s getting the hits, which I don’t mind, considering they are the only tech media who had the cojones to talk […]

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Wired’s Louise Matsakis did what no other journalist could: break the story on Facebook’s forced malware scans

With how widespread Facebook’s false malware accusations were—Facebook itself claims millions were “helped” by them in a three-month period—it was surprising how no one in the tech press covered the story. I never understood why not, since it was one of many misdeeds that made Facebook such a basket case of a website. You’d think […]

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Of course Facebook knew about stolen accounts, even back in 2014: I told them

Official White House photo by Pete Souza In Wired today: ‘Russian trolls stole US identities to hide in plain sight’. This included hacking to steal Social Security details, then create social media presences using real identities.    I could have told you about the fake Facebook presences in 2014. Hang on, I did. There was […]

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It’s full circle for style.com: back to its origins in fashion retail

Originally published in the online edition of Lucire, May 1, 2015   Top Earlier today, attempting to get into Style.com meant a virus warning—the only trace of this curiosity is in the web history. Above Style.com is back, with a note that it will be transforming into an e-tail site.   If there’s one constant […]

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