Interesting Links for 05-04-2022

[andrewducker]

1. Russian state-owned media reveal their horrific plans for Ukraine

(tags:Russia Ukraine genocide )

2. The EHRC are producing transphobic guidance that is explicitly against what the law states

(tags:LGBT transgender UK bigotry OhForFucksSake )

3. Seen from space, the world's longest conveyor belt is in Morocco (carrying phosphorus over 100km)

(tags:mining transport Morocco )

4. I assume it's deliberate that the old-school music here is vastly more varied and interesting than the modern ones?

(tags:music video animation )

5. Sisyphus: turtle edition

(tags:funny turtle video )

6. Over 80 LGBT and HIV organizations pull out of UK government's LGBT conference over transphobia and conversion therapy

(tags:LGBT UK transgender bigotry conservatives )

7. Backyard approaching lighting at Adelaide Airport

(tags:airport airplanes lighting )

8. How did the Victorians Become a Reference Point for Joyless Prudery?

(tags:history society UK sex )

9. Government's former ethics chief supplied karaoke machine for Downing Street party

(tags:ethics conservatives party Pandemic )

10. Europe's Biggest Lithium Mine Is Caught in a Political Maelstrom

(tags:mining batteries Europe politics )

11. New Amazon Worker Chat App Would Ban Words Like "Union", "Plantation", and..."Restroom"

(tags:Amazon work OhForFucksSake unions viaPatrickHadfield )

12. New picture shows highest resolution ever

(tags:sun photos space )

13. How Elden Ring Succeeds by Ignoring 20 Years of Open-World Design

(tags:design games )

14. People in non-industrial societies spend a lot of time doing nothing

(tags:society time )

Comments

[gingicat]

11. Hopefully they'll forget "collective" and "bargain."

[simont]

I wonder how many languages they've banned those words in.

[gingicat]

I can't get over how overtly abusive Amazon is. It's like the Homestead steel mill.

[rhythmaning]

The EHCR thread is fascinating. I can't help wondering what happens if the edifice is just ignored.

[zz]

"3. Seen from space, the world's longest conveyor belt is in MoroccoWestern Sahara (carrying phosphorus over 100km)"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Sahara
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bou_Craa

(linked site is moroccan, hence the "error")

[andrewducker]

Thank you!

[fub]

4: The things that are popular now are not necessarily the things that will be remembered as 'classics of the decade'. So much shit was put out, but through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, we remember only the good stuff. So I think that, no matter what decade you pick, the classics from back then will always be better/more diverse than the Top 40 of today.

[redbird]

LaGuardia Airport, in New York City, has some similar approach lighting, on city-owned land. The strip of land around those lights is <a href='https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/laguardia-landing-lights/history">"La Guardia Landing Lights Park."</a> (I noticed a couple of these while taking the bus to the airport.)

[poshmerchant]

Gen Z are quite good at routing around banned words on Tiktok. Sex worker is now accountant and to die or kill is to unalive. I expect the Amazon chat app can't keep up either

[andrewducker]

That's how 1337 started, for instance!

[ninetydegrees]

#13. Hm. We clearly haven't watched/played the same games.

Vague spoilers alert.

This article ignore how BoTW or another Ubisoft title (Fenyx Rising) (and probably other games as well) designed their open-world. ER isn't the first game to let you roam free about everywhere. Also, this has nothing to do with lack of direction/quests. There are many games which let the player figure out what they're supposed to do and how to do it and don't have open worlds. These are two totally different design/gameplay choices. The game also clearly has a "right" way of doing things, which you can clearly ignore, but you're not left without any directives at all, or explicitly invited to go as far as you want. The game makes it clear that some areas, while accessible, are clearly not meant for your level yet (you get the message pretty quickly when the enemies are clearly way more powerful than you and resource collecting only goes so far), and the map explicitly tells you where you can continue quests/storylines. You can also go right to the end and skip/miss entire areas because these don't matter in completing the main story (which BTW is mainly about saving the world, getting the girl, getting on the throne --wink wink, ridding the world of corruption --one could do a whole piece about the religious imagery/themes, cleansing, purification, decadence, and how this ties to human history..., yadda yadda, nothing really new here, unlike what the reviewer says; the endings are very predictable... although some are particularly tricky to accomplish).

ER does bring some new things to the table, or at least expand on things that have been done before and give them its own twist, but it's not revolutionary in a way some reviewers are saying it is, and I've found it overrated to some extent.

[autopope]

On the "Victorians = prudes" myth, I'd like to recommend Inventing the Victorians by Matthew Sweet; not only are most of our beliefs about them a 20th century fabrication, but they invented a surprising number of contemporary phenomena, from serial killers to hardcore pornography by way of theme parks, shopping malls, the movie industry, and amusement arcades. If anything it was the post-Victorian moderns who were the weirdly puritanical generation ...

[melchar]

LOL - I knew it would be that turtle video. Poor turtle.