Interesting Links for 25-10-2022

[andrewducker]

1. Reminder that our new prime minister's "Eat Out To Help Out" programme subsidised the spread of COVID

(tags:death pandemic food Conservatives business )

2. Plastic recycling remains a myth

(tags:plastic recycling myths )

3. s l o w  r o a d s: Endless driving zen in your browser

(tags:driving game )

4. Just what is it that people mean when they use "Woke" as a pejorative?

(tags:language racism uk video )

5. The ships full of gas waiting off Europe's coast

(tags:gas europe uk trade )

Comments

[nancylebov]

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/open-thread-246/comment/9783101

I started a discussion of woke movies at ACX, a place that tends to conservatives, but mostly not lunacy.

It turned out that what they meant, as I understand it, is woke involves arbitrary changes to race and gender, especially in existing franchises, and lecturing about racism and sexism. They didn't consider "Everything Everywhere All at Once" to be woke, though I do. They didn't mind a black Nick Fury. Black Panther was reasonably well liked, though I got agreement that the Wankandans would plausibly have at least as much obligation to nearby Africans.

Ghostbusters 3 was especially detested.

[andrewducker]

It would be fascinating to know why Nick Fury is fine, but not Ghostbusters.

I suspect the answer is "Samuel L Jackson is really cool".

[nancylebov]

The issue with Ghostbusters 3 seems to be at least partly that it's much inferior to GB1. I'll grant that the dialogue isn't as clever (I watched 1 just before I watched 3) and arguably that the comedians' talents weren't given much of a chance. I still don't think it was that bad.

You may be right about Samuel Jackson.

Part of my bewilderment is that I think Everything Everywhere is woke in a sense that I don't think it would have been a mainstream success even ten years ago and it's evidence that people accept a lot more diversity than they used to. People didn't agree with me on that.

[andrewducker]

So there's clearly a difference between "Diverse" and "Somehow incorporates the idea of oppression and is either about it or a reaction to it".

[nancylebov]

I think that's a lot of it.

[dewline]

I suspect that similar decisions re: Samuel L. Jackson have long since been made re: Michelle Yeoh.

[calimac]

If by "Ghostbusters 3" you mean the one with the women, I thought it an only OK movie but vastly superior to the original. I liked the camaraderie among the women.

After seeing that I decided to watch the original again, which I hadn't seen since it was new. Almost the first thing that happens is that Bill Murray goes to Sigourney Weaver's apartment to diagnose her ghost problem, but spends his time hitting on her instead. I turned the movie off in disgust. Surely there's a word as pejorative as "woke" for this kind of crap.

[danieldwilliam]

Yeah, there seems not much consensus about what "woke" is, or even if you could meaningful define a woke movie happening there.

[danieldwilliam]

I do genuinely wonder if the way forward with plastics would be just to incinerate current plastics in a combined heat and power plant whist also starting to ban them and replace them with compostable alternatives or different types of plastics that can be broken back down to easy to use feedstocks.

[andrewducker]

That would be my feeling.

Although it would feel very odd to me, I would consider making all packaging standard and reusable if I was God Emperor.

[cmcmck]

There is is local crisp maker called 'two farmers'.

Their packets look like a standard crisp packet and feel like one but are 100% bio degradable/compostable so it is doable.

[andrewducker]

Excellent! More of this please!

[danieldwilliam]

I once worked for a public sector organisation with both a staff canteen and a public cafe. Over the course of the 5 years I was there (about7 years ago now) the cost of compostable cups and plates and so on came down to the point where they were just about affordable for a well off organisation with a clear mandate to lead public opinion.

The stuff worked fine.

My guess is that they will have continued to fall in price but I'm not sure if they will have reached cost parity yet.

[cmcmck]

It's interesting to note that these crisps are a little more expensive than some but they are high quality and people seem willing to pay the bit extra for the 'green' approach and the fact that it's a local, artisanal company.

Their wild mushroom ones are yummy!

[danieldwilliam]

You can hide the difference in cost (if there still is one) much more easily in a premium product.

[hilarita]

One does have to be a bit careful here, as some of these compostable plates etc. are made with cornstarch, which some people are allergic to. Obviously with a bit of careful labelling and a stash of alternatives, this can be worked round, and massively reduce the amount of non-recyclable waste.

[simont]

I feel as if "woke" used pejoratively is much the same kind of thing that the Sad Puppies described as – what was it again? – "tedious message fiction".

It means "anything in which the efforts to be inclusive and diverse are so heavy-handed as to distract me completely from the actual plot of the movie/book/whatever".

The problem is that some people are a lot more easily distracted than others!

[andrewducker]

I think part of the problem is that some of them now spend all of their time looking for the heavy-handed insertion, and have now sensitised themselves to the point where even the tiniest hint of a woman or a non-white person is enough to trigger them.