Kester Brewin

Occasionally an article catches one’s eye that genuinely opens a raft of interesting new thoughts. That happened to the other day when I read this Guardian piece about a new area of Pirate Bay that offers templates for 3D printers to clone figures for Games Workshop’s Warhammer and Lord of the Rings table-top games. Up [...]

In the most high-profile action against the US Senate’s ‘Protect Intellectual Property’ Bill (PIPA) and the House of Representatives’ ‘Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Wikipedia has begun an English language black-out of its main site. As you’ll know if you read here often, I’m in the depths of a book-length piece on piracy. The aim [...]

If you’re reading this blog post, you are almost certainly doing so on a digital device made in China. And that means you’re almost certainly doing so on a device made in Shenzhen. Don’t know where Shenzhen is? Neither did I. It’s here: View Larger Map It’s a city bigger than New York or London, [...]

Some thoughts to share on sharing thoughts… “If you have an apple, and I have an apple, and we exchange apples, then you and I will still have one apple. But if you have an idea, and I have an idea, and we exchange ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” George Bernard [...]

I received a present the other day – a book through the post from an ex-colleague: ‘Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition.’ It’s a fascinating read. Admittedly, I was a little wary: there’s a long history of ‘actually, they were gay’ books which would have us believe that Jesus, St Paul, Shakespeare and even George Michael [...]

  “We fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that’s the end.” Hamlet, Act IV, Scene III In the previous post I tried to set out a distinction between death (which can remain beautiful – a frozen moment just beyond life) [...]

Listening to the radio this morning I was struck by the odd similarity between three of the major news items. Firstly, ubiquitously, there’s the economic crisis – which more and more seems to boil down to the fact that people – that’s you, me and them – got greedy. With the boss of Barclays now [...]

Seems to be an annual posting I know (see 2010‘s and 2009‘s!) but I’m really passionate about reclaiming Guy Fawkes night. Why? Partly because it’s very very English. This is not imported, it’s not some pagan festival that the Christians co-opted, and it’s not something that can be easily marketed and commodified by Supermarkets – [...]

One of the key questions that has been often asked about the ‘Occupy’ protests is ‘what are your proposed alternatives?’ This, I think, is often asked with a background attitude of ‘I really don’t think you have any alternatives, do you?’ The implication being, before you moan about how bad things are, make sure you [...]

Rather than remain online, I thought I’d flyer-up some of the ideas I’ve been working on and hand them out at the Occupy demo in London today, camped at St Paul’s. You can download the PDF here: Mutiny Or just read the text… In May 1724, in a small bookshop just a stone’s throw from [...]