Interesting Links for 20-11-2021

[andrewducker]

What's life like with executive dysfunction?

(tags:behaviour mentalhealth comic organisation tidiness )

York council are making it impossible for people with disabilities to access the city centre

(tags:disability yorkshire OhForFucksSake )

Necromolds: When wargaming meets Playdoh!

(tags:gaming wargames sculpture )

Boris Johnson strips Transport for the North of powers after it criticises his rail plan

(tags:transport UK trains )

New Covid Drugs Are Here—and They Could Change the Pandemic

(tags:Pandemic medicine )

Games Workshop fights back against fascist hate symbols in the Warhammer 40K community

(tags:warhammer fascism )

The Ones Who Take the Train to Omelas (mostly for the pictures)

(tags:scifi short_story )

Pangea Aerospace successfully hot fire tests the first MethaLox aerospike engine in the world

(tags:space engineering )

Looks like I'll be skipping the Wheel of Time TV show

(tags:TV fantasy )

Comments

[cmcmck]

Don't know if you'd noticed this:

https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports

Worst figure on record since records began in the early nineties. :o(

[andrewducker]

Thank you. That's awful.

[dewline]

1. Yeah. More and more of this, the longer I'm without paying work.

3. This is unsurprising and anger-inducing.

5. Good!

[calimac]

Omelas; I chuckled at the introduction of "The Cold Equations" at the end, but only because we're not supposed to take this seriously. In the notes, the author describes "The Cold Equations" as a story for the guilty superior pleasure of watching the victim die. If it is, so is EVERY SINGLE TRAGEDY EVER WRITTEN. That's a perverse way of describing the catharsis you get from reading a tragedy. Are we supposed to feel smugly superior when Romeo & Juliet die because they got their communication wires crossed?

And I have yet to read a single commentary that's aware that the real point of "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is this: We - all of us enjoying life in Western Civ - already live in Omelas. We do.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, you can't actually walk away from it unless you go live in the woods and never see anyone.

[calimac]

Well, there are people known to do that at least in fiction (really good movie, btw). But the point isn't where those who walk away go - the author is deliberately vague about that, and if, as she says, "The Day Before the Revolution" is about one who walked away, it's clear that the walking away isn't intended to be literal - this is a metaphor, after all. No, the point is that we haven't walked away; we've struck that questionable bargain.

The Ones Who Take the Train to Omelas (mostly for the pictures)

[jack]

The pictures are OUTSTANDING.

I remember first reading "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" and thinking it was a fairly obvious message, but I keep recognising more and more readings of it, it's such an evocative touchstone for such tragic and true concepts, and I have to admit how outstandingly done it was.

Now I'm thinking "You simultaneously live in hundreds of Omelases and if you walk away from all of them you die. How many do you walk away from?"...

[ndrosen]

I’m American, but a British man whom I know through Georgist activism was vice chair of Transport for London under Red Ken, and the first man whom Boris Johnson fired when he became Lord Mayor.

[momentsmusicaux]

Don't write misleading headlines. '... for disabled people to access IN THEIR CARS'.
Lots of disabled people get around without cars, and lots of disabled people can't even use cars.

[momentsmusicaux]

I've just watched the first 10 minutes of WoT and actually it's not bad.

[andrewducker]

"Not bad" probably isn't enough to make it to the top of my watch list.

I'll keep an eye on what people are saying about it though

[momentsmusicaux]

Well I'm not sure how any show fares after 10 minutes. It was getting late and I went to bed!

So far I'd say, yes, visually it's good. I like the diversity of the cast, and I like that for Egwene they've not cast someone conventionally pretty.

Rand does seem a bit of a lummox, but it's true that in the books he's a bit more of a blank canvas than Mat and Perrin who are more fleshed out as characters right from the start.