Interesting Links for 30-04-2019

[andrewducker]

Simon Pegg & Nick Frost To Adapt 'Rivers of London'

(tags:tv books fantasy )

Court Case Conclusively Proves a Hash Brown is Not a Phone

I mean, not really, but it's a great headline
(tags:phones driving law )

Norway finds 'Russian spy whale' off Arctic Coast

(tags:russia spying whales )

Release of '13 Reasons Why' associated with 30% increase in youth suicide rates

(tags:suicide tv )

Arya Stark is left handed. Maisie Williams is not. She's just more badass than you thought. She made the choice to play Arya left handed when she was 12 and stuck with it for a decade

(tags:gameofthrones fighting acting impressive )

Blood test for chronic fatigue syndrome could speed diagnosis

(tags:ChronicFatigueSyndrome blood )

Corbynista left splits over Brexit referendum

(tags:UK europe labour politics )

Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me would be better if he'd read any of the Science Fiction he looks down on

(tags:scifi writing review )

Interesting piece about the latest Game Of Thrones episode

(tags:gameofthrones viaSwampers )

Gamers Blame Socialism for Making Women in Mortal Kombat 'Ugly'

(tags:beauty women games design OhForFucksSake )

Labour's process for dealing with racism accusations is shockingly awful

(tags:labour racism OhForFucksSake )

How do people see the different parties in terms of Brexit?

(tags:UK europe polls )

Why is Game of Thrones so dark? We asked the cinematographer

(tags:film tv gameofthrones )

Comments

[simont]

Arya Stark is left handed. Maisie Williams is not.

What's really weird is that I scrolled down, oh, five comments or so in that Twitter thread without encountering a single Princess Bride reference.

[andrewducker]

Not from the original writer, but scroll a bit into the responses from others and I hit several!

[naath]

I have to assume that, like me, Maise is largely ambidextrous when learning new skills; the twitter poster is clearly strongly right handed, but the strength of the preference is variable. (I can't always relearn old skills the other way, but I can learn new skills either way)

[wildeabandon]

Apparently not: "Eight years later, and I’m still paying for that mistake.” At first, she says, she kept up the lefthanded fighting for continuity’s sake (a true expert at her craft). “In the beginning, I just had to do a little sparring. Now, I’m doing entire fight sequences with the wrong hand, and I’m like, ‘Why did I ever think this was a good idea?’”

[naath]

oh, dedication. Maybe I can held the, er, inevitable plastic blade left handed and call it 'acting' rather than 'my right hand is fucked'

[ninetydegrees]

"Release of '13 Reasons Why' associated with 30% increase in youth suicide rates"

Putting fact A next to fact B and linking them together is not how you do science. We don't even know if any of them had actually seen the series, if they were being harassed, etc. There may or may not be a correlation between the two events and I agree that media need to be smarter about this but this article makes the research sound shoddy as heck.

If this is science then here's my research: one of my 9th grade students did a presentation on this book last year in class. None of the students who were present have killed themselves since then (some of them had seen the series too or knew about it) or attempted to do so (one of them has fallen into self-destructive behavior though but also didn't get help from his parents...). However, several of them did presentations on books dealing with harassment, which showed that this was an important issue and that we should talk about it openly. Which we do. We also actually act to prevent it, spot it, have the kids or their friends talk to an adult as soon as possible, alert the parents and the school nurse. What you can read about school bullying and adults' inaction in the US doesn't make it seem like this is a national priority over there. Also, while they're at it, could they research the influence of the portrayal of authority figures in I dunno... cop shows? And how about real-life authority figures?

[danieldwilliam]

I think a love triangle between an android, and two humans is pretty much the plot of Humans.


I do have some sympathy for the position that Alan Turing not dying might be the main reason why an alternate 1980's has androids. The AI seems to the hardest part to crack. There's not much point putting money in to reseaching how to make real looking blink patterns until you have an AI so good that it's the eyes that give away the nature of the creature.

[calimac]

"only 38% know that Change UK is anti-Brexit"

Well, that makes sense. "Change UK" sounds like the name of a pro-Brexit party. It's about change, and Brexit is change. It's got the flag-waving "UK" in it, the way that Brexiters paint themselves as patriotic flag-wavers.

[danieldwilliam]

Having such low policy recognition might actually end up helping them.

[danieldwilliam]

I wish I liked Maisie Williams more as an actor.

[andrewducker]

I quite liked her in Doctor Who.

[danieldwilliam]

Sadly I did not. That could be because I didn't much care for her character and it's difficult to judge the quality of acting on one character which you didn't much care for. Could be the writing, could be the directing, could be some choices that the actor made that didn't match my own tastes.

I wish I'd been delighted by her appearance in Doctor Who because she appears to be very, very popular with people who watch Game of Thrones and I feel that I might have missed something. It is always possible that the problem is me and them (see for example Stacey Dooley, but then, see also Stacey Dooley.)

[dewline]

Her performance as Ashildr was...interesting. I speak as one who's not part of GoT fandom, honestly. I was surprised to see her cast as Rahne "Wolfsbane" Sinclair in the Fox adaptation of the New Mutants series, and am disappointed that the Fox-Disney deal has ensured that this will be her one Marvel-inspired movie project.

[naath]

I'm sure it is atmospheric and realistic and shit; but 90% of the timeI had no clue what was going on; I had to search up a dead list, because almost anyone could have bit it where I couldn't see.

[andrewducker]

I was warned in advance, so I turned up the brightness 50% before we started. That worked really well.

[naath]

might try that for a rewatch; being on my phone sure didn't help

[jack]

I've tried this with other shows and it just looks "all grey" instead of "all black". Like, I can see what's going on a bit better, but not well. I don't know if I *still* don't know how to adjust the settings, or if my tv is bad, or if those shows screwed up but others didn't, or somehting else.

[doug]

This from the cinematographer in the article is telling: "A lot of the problem is that a lot of people don’t know how to tune their TVs properly"

Granting this for the sake of argument (and charitably changing 'tune' to 'calibrate the display settings of'), if you know this is the case, why make something that you know will come across badly?

I totally buy that there is a noble and important calling in making art that is right, art that is a full and proper expression of your artistic vision, rather than making a popular product that a mass audience can appreciate without special training. But I really don't think that one can reasonably argue that the eighth season of a TV series with record audiences is the former and not the latter.

[doug]

See also the BBC and 'Mumblegate', where there were some early suggestions - correctly dropped later - that the problem was the fault of people having poor-quality sound on their TVs.

[naath]

I will rewatch on our big TV, but I was watching on a phone; surely this is not an entirely unknown way of consuming media? Art should not only be for rich people with good TVs

(I am not great at seeing dark things anyway, but usually I manage to follow the dialogue, like a Radio Play, but tLN was almost entirely without dialogue; need audio description for the blind)

[skington]

If you're going to try to persuade people to revert their TV from the settings that make it look good in the showroom but shit in your living room, though, what better soapbox than the most important episode in the final season of a spectacularly-popular TV show, though?

I was reminded of a time that Conrad Hilton (of hotel chain fame) appeared on TV and was asked whether he had a message for the American people. He did: "Please put the shower curtain inside the tub!"

How do people see the different parties in terms of Brexit?

[doug]

I want to publicly salute the 3% who said that the Brexit party is against the policy they are named for. Possibly with the two fingers that they were intending to give the pollster.

Simon Pegg & Nick Frost To Adapt 'Rivers of London'

[jack]

Oh gosh! I imagined RoL being a bit less slapstick than that. But, you know, it is also a bit tongue in cheek, and Pegg's films have successfully captured a range of tones.

I don't know, but I guess I'm hopeful. The author seemed excited!

I've seen some "dream casting" posts. Although I have to say, I always imaged Peter as more "tries hard" than "smouldering". But then, I guess it would fit the plot if he looked smoulderingly hot even if he's a bit hapless sometimes.

Blood test for chronic fatigue syndrome could speed diagnosis

[jack]

Oh gosh, I think I saw this before, but couldn't believe they might have found one. I'm more impressed at it existing *at all* than a quick test.

I also wonder, how comprehensive: this feels like the sort of diagnosis where even if they make a better-understood medical condition, there'll be people who fit the "chronically fatigued" bucket who turn out to have something different, I hope they're not left out. But if it detects 'fatigue' maybe it's better than I hoped.

Corbynista left splits over Brexit referendum

[jack]

Whenever people say "corbynista" I never know if they mean "any labour left" or "dangerously cultishly obsessed labour left" or if they're saying those are synonymous.

I feel like labour left are not the most persecuted group in the world, but it's a bad habit people get into to regularly conflate "group X" and "group X, but bad". There's certainly cases where it's justified, where anyone associated with the idea is almost certainly toxic, and the idea of moderate supporters is just a smokescreen. But it seems like people do this all the time when it does more to muddy the message and demonise people indiscriminately then to help.

It's especially confusing here, where the message seems to be, "half of the people who are fanatically devoted to corbyn and blind to his flaws, object to his position on brexit and want labour to stop going along with him". I guess, if they're corbyn ex-fanatics that counts as a split, but it still seems a confusing way of putting it.