Linked List: February 25, 2013

Monday, 25 February 2013

‘Do You Think You’re Going to Give This Part to Somebody Else? I’m Going to Blow You Motherfuckers Away.’ ★

Terrific retrospective on Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction by Mark Seal for Vanity Fair. (Via Steve Delahoyde at Coudal.)

Speaking of whiskies, Matthew Rowley has a good take on Maker’s Mark’s recent “we’re going to water down our bourbon / wait, wait, no we’re not” about-face.

Reinventing a Great Scotch Distillery ★

Kelefa Sanneh on the resurrection of the Bruichladdich whisky distillery on the Scottish island of Islay:

Scotland is the undisputed whisky capital of the world, producing nearly two-thirds of the global supply, and Islay is the highly disputed capital of Scottish whisky. The island has thirty-five hundred residents and eight working distilleries; there is surely no place that produces more great whisky per capita, and possibly no place that produces more great whisky, full stop. To rebuild Bruichladdich, Reynier recruited a native Ileach: Jim McEwan, a whisky celebrity who had spent his career at Bowmore, a venerable distillery that faces Bruichladdich from across a coastal inlet. Bowmore makes whisky that bears smoky traces of burning peat, which was once Islay’s main fuel source and is now the signature flavor of Islay whisky. The island’s best-known distillery is probably Laphroaig, whose flagship dram is pungently smoky and startlingly medicinal, with a flavor that is sometimes compared to TCP, a European antiseptic. In reasonable doses and proper circumstances, Laphroaig can be delicious, but its popularity is a mixed blessing for the industry, because whisky neophytes who try Laphroaig and hate it may never return.

Bruichladdich is nearly smoke-free, which is a big reason that Reynier fell for it.

It’s a great story and sounded like great whisky, so I had to try it. I was right — it’s damn good.

‘If You’re Going to Strike Early, You Must Strike Hard’ ★

Matt Drance on Sony’s vaporous PlayStation 4 announcement.

A Summer With Stanley Kubrick ★

Tim Deegan, who worked as Stanley Kubrick’s summer intern in 1968:

What was revelatory to me was not so much his meticulous process and attention to even the smallest details, but his absolute power. I was being paid by the studio to work for him as an auditor to uncover their deficiency and tell him.

Firefox 22 Will Block Third-Party Cookies by Default ★

Megan Geuss, reporting for Ars Technica:

Blocking third-party cookies would not be new or unheard of among browsers; Apple’s Safari already rejects cookies from third parties. In a blog post on Friday, Mayer called the Firefox patch “a slightly relaxed version of the Safari policy.” Chrome allows all cookies, and Internet Explorer blocks some third-party cookies, although not all.

For some reason I don’t expect Chrome to get on board with this.

(Ed Bott has a good story on this change, too, but I don’t understand his headline: “Firefox Raises the Online Privacy Bar With New Cookie Policy”. In what way has Mozilla “raised the bar” if they’re only now matching the default cookie privacy Safari users have enjoyed for 10 years?)

The Magazine: Now With Full-Article Sharing, Web Subscriptions ★

Marco Arment:

Since The Magazine had no ads, and people could only subscribe in the app, I figured there was no reason to show full article text on the site — it could only lose money and dilute the value of subscribing.

That was the biggest mistake I’ve made with The Magazine to date.

Strong ideas, loosely held. That’s the path to success.

Chromebooks and Battery Life ★

Good point from Alex Chitu at the (unaffiliated with Google) Google Operating System blog:

It’s not clear why the latest Chromebooks no longer have a great battery life, but the new batteries are obviously cheaper and lighter. Google’s Chromebook features page no longer mentions the word “battery”, even if this was one of the main selling points for the first Chromebooks.

This was posted before Google announced their own $1299 Chromebook Pixel hardware, but even that doesn’t fare well. Google claims “up to 5 hours of active use”; both the 13-inch MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro With Retina Display promise “Up to 7 hours wireless web”.

Battery life is one reason why I remain a deep skeptic of Chrome OS. Post-PC devices should get better battery life, not worse.

James Bond Lego Kit Concepts ★

Great concept work by Jeff Chapman. Next we need a Little Nelly kit from You Only Live Twice. (Thanks to Kevin Miller.)

‘Denied Permission for an Emergency Landing at Clavius’ ★

The newest episode of my podcast, The Talk Show, with special guest Jim Coudal. We discuss Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (and the new 70mm print we saw screened in Chicago last week), The Deck network and the state of online advertising, and the just-completed Webstock conference in Wellington, New Zealand.

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