Interesting Links for 25-05-2015

• Artist makes England's highest mountain one inch lower.
  • (tags: art mountains UK )
• Why Alistair Carmichael can't be recalled
  • (tags: libdem politics Scotland )
• People rate equally competent women worst than men, hand them lower bonuses
  • (tags: sexism work psychology money )
• The CPS are so under resourced, understaffed & over worked that the system is on the brink of total collapse
  • (tags: law politics UK crime )
• We Let IBM's Robot Chef Tell Us What to Cook for a Week
  • (tags: ibm ai food )
• How to make Piñata cookies!
  • (tags: food awesome )
• This Man Wants People to Stop Serving Food on Wooden Boards
  • (tags: food presentation design )
• Who fancies a bar that looks like a 1940s tube station?
  • (tags: design tube London alcohol viajohnbobshaun )
• Top police officer: Questions should be asked, if someone stops shopping at M&S or starts voicing criticism.
  • (tags: security_theatre terrorism WTF )
• How to name things: the hardest problem in programming
  • (tags: language writing programming names )
• Inside the Obsessive World of Artisanal Cocktail Ice
  • (tags: alcohol )
• Infection inflicts a persistent decrease in IQ: a danish study with 180,000 participants
  • (tags: iq intelligence disease )
• The woman who thought she was an egyptian priestess (and went on to be an excellent egyptologist)
  • (tags: egypt brain )
• Woman had rare condition that meant she saw human faces as dragons
  • (tags: faces dragons psychology )
• China's Ingenious Online Dating Scams Put Ours To Shame
  • (tags: China dating scam fraud )

Mad Max: Fury Road: Some Thoughts

I liked it. It was not the most amazing thing I'd ever seen, and I do think I'd have liked it a little more if I hadn't seen the trailer about six times, but I still thought it was solidly good.

The thing it reminded me of the most was an old-school series from the comic compendium 2000AD. It had that kind of simple storytelling, with decent-but-simple dialogue, violent-but-not-upsetting action, and plots that hint at a deeper world without stopping to infodump, along with gorgeous visual shots that frame both the action and the characters and tie the narrative together. The overall plot of ( really minor spoilers )

could have come from something like Slaine really easily.

I was completely unsurprised to discover that Brendan McCarthy was heavily involved.

I was intrigued by the discussions ahead of time about the purported feminism of the movie, and by various people's reactions to it. ( Minor spoilers, more for the shape of the plot than anything else. )

So I can understand why some people failed to spot that the film is feminist* purely in that it puts a bunch of women into a plot, working with men in order to improve their situation, but given the state of representation of women in movies just doing that is clearly enough to piss off a lot of deeply unpleasant people.

In any case - gorgeous, well written, fun, and basically two hours of car chases and explosions. Recommended.

*It's like failing to spot that Lord Of The Rings is pro-royalist. It's so ingrained in people, fantasy plot-wise, that The True King can fix things by accepting his role, that they fail to spot how barkingly odd that kind of thinking is in the real world. Very few people argue that what we _really_ need to do in order to bring happiness to the UK is for Charles to get a grip, grab the reigns of power, and apply his natural kingly instincts to our once bounteous land.