Interesting Links for 03-09-2017

[andrewducker]

Incredible Dragon Bench Carved Using A Chainsaw. (The pug one is awesome too)

(tags: dragons )

The Three Waves of Discworld novels

(tags: terrypratchett )

Ronald Reagan: Monster and Mass Murderer

(tags: history aids usa politics republicans economics )

The unique thing about people is that we can make whole new kinds of errors

(tags: fail brain psychology thought )

Why Jack Kirby is the most important figure in comics history

(tags: comics history )

Only 10% of Brits believe in psychics

I'd have assumed at least double that, so I'm pretty happy
(tags: fraud death GoodNews belief )

62% of marriages in Scotland last year were non religious

(tags: religion Scotland wedding GoodNews )

The 'slave block' in a town in Virginia: should it stay or should it go?

I'd say it should stay. It's not glorification, it's history, and a necessary reminder of the horrors inflicted on the slaves.
(tags: racism slavery history usa )

Explaining what was wrong with the Seventh Season of Game of Thrones. (Still enjoyed it myself, mind you)

(tags: gameofthrones )

Rogue private landlords given £2.5bn a year of public money

(tags: housing uk OhForFucksSake )

New earliest known gamebook/choose your own adventure—it was written by two women in 1930

(tags: games books history )

Yugoslavia had the oddest "sexy" computer magazine covers

(tags: sex computers Yugoslavia weird ViaDrCross )

Comments

66 unflattering things about Ronald Reagan

[andrewducker]

The firing of the air traffic controllers, winnable nuclear war, recallable nuclear missiles, trees that cause pollution, Elliott Abrams lying to Congress, ketchup as a vegetable, colluding with Guatemalan thugs, pardons for F.B.I. lawbreakers, voodoo economics, budget deficits, toasts to Ferdinand Marcos, public housing cutbacks, redbaiting the nuclear freeze movement, James Watt.

Getting cozy with Argentine fascist generals, tax credits for segregated schools, disinformation campaigns, "homeless by choice," Manuel Noriega, falling wages, the HUD scandal, air raids on Libya, "constructive engagement" with apartheid South Africa, United States Information Agency blacklists of liberal speakers, attacks on OSHA and workplace safety, the invasion of Grenada, assassination manuals, Nancy's astrologer.

Drug tests, lie detector tests, Fawn Hall, female appointees (8 percent), mining harbors, the S&L scandal, 239 dead U.S. troops in Beirut, Al Haig "in control," silence on AIDS, food-stamp reductions, Debategate, White House shredding, Jonas Savimbi, tax cuts for the rich, "mistakes were made."

Michael Deaver's conviction for influence peddling, Lyn Nofziger's conviction for influence peddling, Caspar Weinberger's five-count indictment, Ed Meese ("You don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime"), Donald Regan (women don't "understand throw-weights"), education cuts, massacres in El Salvador.

"The bombing begins in five minutes," $640 Pentagon toilet seats, African-American judicial appointees (1.9 percent), Reader's Digest, C.I.A.-sponsored car-bombing in Lebanon (more than eighty civilians killed), 200 officials accused of wrongdoing, William Casey, Iran/contra. "Facts are stupid things," three-by-five cards, the MX missile, Bitburg, S.D.I., Robert Bork, naps, Teflon.

http://www.alternet.org/story/18874/66_%28unflattering%29_things_about_ronald_reagan

Re: 66 unflattering things about Ronald Reagan

[amaebi]

YES! YES! YES!

[momentsmusicaux]

The Discworld second wave got a bit crap in the middle, too.

[theandrewhickey]

Yeah, I think in terms of quality Pratchett's work makes a sort of M shape. Starts a bit rough with the pre-Discworld novels and the early Rincewind ones, hits a peak in the early nineties, declines to a low with stuff like The Fifth Elephant, Carpe Jugulum, and The Last Continent (all of which have good stuff in them, but seem to be treading water a bit), hit a second peak in the early 2000s, and then slowly declined (though I think Raising Steam is the only truly bad book he wrote, there's a noticeable deterioration in the ones before it)

[momentsmusicaux]

I lost interest somewhere around Soul Music. The first dip was maybe Reaper Man, or Lords and Ladies. I'm not sure whether the nadir is Maskerade, Hogfather, or Carpe Jugulum.

There seemed to be a period of him padding out one plot with a largely unconnected second plot -- Reaper Man is one I'm thinking of, but I think Soul Music had that too IIRC.

Fifth Elephant picked up, and The Truth was a glorious return to form, if not the best so far.

[danieldwilliam]

I think I agree with the general thrust of the Guardian article on the slave auction block. It seems to be a genuine historical artifact and not a piece of post-hoc propaganda or commemeration.

But I think there's also a propaganda value in deciding which historical artifacts to preserve and which to allow to decay. I think I'd be uncomfortable with a narrative that ran - you in the South much feel awful about slavery and must be confronted every day by artifacts of your atrocity. We in the North may feel virtuous about our response to slavery and not be made to think about all the cotton we were buying to go in to our factories.

Bristol has a good museum, or part of a museum, on the links of the city to the slave trade. It's not a hugely anguished mea culpa but it's not trying to gloss over the fact that Bristol as a city and many Bristolians were actively involved in the slave trade and benefited from it and fitting that in to the history of a city over 2,000 years. I recommend it. I think it's in the M-Shed on the harbourside.

The museum about Portuguese exploration in Porto, not so good. One mention of slavery. A long list of things that the Portuguese traded around their empire included slaves. Glossed over the massive use of slave labour to extract metals and do agricultural heavy labour.