Can confirm: Unravel is indeed ridiculously adorable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYUwo-D59ws//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

too good to pass up

Originally shared by Yonatan Zunger

A clever little device: An “assassin’s teapot,” containing two chambers which can hold different liquids. Depending on where you put your fingers as you pour (to cover different holes, and thus create a vacuum which would hold one liquid or the other in place) you can cause either to come out. The perfect tool with which to serve yourself and your enemy.

Unless, of course, you don’t get that seal perfectly right. But to cope with such cases, it’s always wise to have been building up an immunity to the iocaine powder ahead of time anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkrgUT70Mbo//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

My son’s having a fit of Indiana Jones nostalgia, so we’ve been watching them in sequence – Last Crusade tonight.

…I’d never noticed the casual sexism before (yes I know it’s Boys’ Own adventure but does every female sidekick have to resist him then sleep with him? Does he have to say it’s a condition of letting them “tag along”?).

I also hadn’t noticed the film’s curious boundaries for historical verisimilitude. The Grail is in the Sultanate of Hatay – the Sultan (Alexei Sayle) decides to help the Nazis by loaning them troops and a tank – an “International” Mark VIII,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Mark_VIII

presumably left over from WW1, pressed into colonial service in French Syria and eventually sold as surplus to whoever was willing to pay… which is a lovely bit of eminently credible, implicit backstory for this slice of 1938, when the British and French were struggling to keep a slippery hold on their “Mandates.” Nazis, 1938, confrontation scene…. instead of a slate grey new Nazi tank representing the mechanistic power of the inhuman Reich, let’s give them an outdated Allied tank.

….so I saw the tank and thought about that… and then I thought “no but where is this Hatay, where the place names are Turkish but everyone wears the fez, which Ataturk has recently made illegal?”

Turns out Hatay was nominally independent for about 9 months in 1938-9, only it was a republic, not a sultanate (sorry Lex, I know how you love to play a despot) and it was only independent as a polite legal fiction until such time as Ataturk could properly annex it.

…..I find it really strange, this little bit of evidence of a concern for research. After Temple of Doom’s Tiki-Thuggee stylings, after casting Alexei goddamn Sayle… you put the Grail in an obscure, short-lived little statelet, emblematic of the disordered political situation on what was increasingly obviously the eve of war… and then you still heavily fictionalize it.

I would love to know how all that came about. If it’s just the madness of film-making or if there was some coherent idea being forwarded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatay_State//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

I miss France. From a cooking website – answer to the question “how big is a sachet of vanilla sugar?”

je viens d’appeler chez moi (pour vérifier, que je ne suis pas totalement dingue ;o) ) et mon monsieur m’a confirmé le poids tout en disant “woua la vache ils sont vachement gros tes sachets où tu les as trouvés?”

j’imagine que la vérité est entre ces deux réflexions

snake appreciation day!

Away with these smooth, boring snakes.

Check out the Hairy Bush Viper:

https://accordingtomuema.wordpress.com/2015/08/09/atheris-hispida///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Steven Flaeck on Alex’s post about Seeing Like a State – in order to make that argument about grain exports he has to know how disingenuous it is.

I’m out, post muted. Sorry, too busy to tend trolls today.

in my feed this morning: “that can’t be true, you’ll be saying agriculture is destructive to the environment next!”

ummm

scroll scroll

“That can’t be true, you’ll be saying racism is bad for whites next!”

errrrr

who wants to kick it up a notch? Anyone up for defending spills of mercury or plutonium?

Yet another Modest Proposal:

imagine for a moment that Freud was right after all and peace and harmony between two peoples is possible so long as there is a third people they can both take out their death urges on…

…couldn’t we use our awesome fake news technologies to invent a completely fictitious third people, spew all our hate at them, and not actually harm any real people?

I’m just hoping my GaryCon DMs are as crazy as my Flailsnails ones because once you’ve played a frog mountebank alchemist, it’s hard to go back to human fighter.

what’s better than a Martinez?

This Machine Annoys Geert Wilders

2oz barrel-aged Brokers gin

1/2 oz Cocchi Torino vermouth

2 dashes orange bitters

1/2 spoon Strega

Stir, up, twist.

I prefer Zuidam, but I’ll take Bols before Wilders.

Paolo Greco

from We Need To Go Deeper

http://weneedtogodeeper.com/

Maritime archaeology is a salty business…

well now.

Turns out 2 oz barrel-aged gin works out great with 1/2oz Gran Classico, 2 dashes Angostura Bitters and 1/2 teaspoon absinthe.

…sweet, but interesting. Photo basically the same as the last post. Lime twist.

Finally! A clear explanation of the Beaufort wind force scale.

I’m told the snowstorm of the year is coming tonight – schools have already called tomorrow off, I’m getting emails from the electricity company…

…..it’s looking pretty quiet out there right now.

Too quiet._ It looks like _the calm before the storm.

Or maybe it just looks calm. I have no idea.

Originally shared by Richard G

On the left, Doug Ford’s preferred Martinez: 2 Carpano Italian Vermouth, I gin (Broker’s), 2 dashes Angostura bitters, 2 dashes maraschino, lime twist.

https://cold-glass.com/2012/09/11/searching-for-the-martini-the-martinez-cocktail/

It’s sweet but it’s a good drink. Nice to the end of the glass.

On the right, my variant: Whosetinezitanyway?

2 barrel-aged Broker’s (creator’s own barrel, aged 1 year)

3/4 Cocchi Torino Vermouth

2 dashes Angostura

2 dashes orange bitters

2 dashes Jerry Thomas (clove) bitters.

Stir, lime twist.

Woody, smoky, sweet, bitter, complicated. I will be drinking more of these.

Ben McKee are you related to Eric McKee, who conducted sea trials on norse boat replicas?

Jason Sholtis I may not be available tomorrow, will this do?

huh. Lots of interest in central Asia in my feed today, people going “yes, why does nobody game central Asia???”

Well, Paolo Greco may have something for you shortly…

And if you’re interested in fucked up post-Soviet central Asia with Carcosans and Tharks playing traditional roles to illustrate how fucked up it is I could start running Tartary again.

Maybe even as flailsnails.

https://lurkerablog.wordpress.com/manifesto///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Originally shared by Kristian Köhntopp

18 Century shipping mapped and animated. http://blog.koehntopp.info/index.php/1049-18th-century-shipping-mapped-and-animated/

weird fates of ships no. 274523: Columbus’s Santa Maria (quincentennial replica):

A replica, depicted as a nao, was commissioned by the city of Columbus, Ohio.[25] It was built by the Scarano Brothers Boat Building Company in Albany, New York, who later cut the ship in half and transported it by truck to the Scioto River. The replica cost about 1.2 million dollars.

…The ship was removed from its moorings in 2014, cut into 10 pieces, and stored in a lot south of the city, pending funding to do repairs and restorations. As of early 2016, the plans for restoration have stalled. Its parts can be seen via satellite view on Google Maps.

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.8162099,-83.0029944,71m/data=!3m1!1e3

WTAFF?

From Wikipedia

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.8162099,-83.0029944,71m/data=!3m1!1e3//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Matthew Adams recently asked me what architectural historians do, and it was a rare opportunity to talk about my own answer to the theoretical question “what is architecture?” Other architectural historians will have other answers.

Following Spiro Kostof, I reckon architecture encompasses all aspects of the arrangement of space for use – and, I would add, communication. So when someone stands on a chair to talk to a crowd, that’s architecture (and there’s a whole social architecture based around head height and respect and attention and so on). Making a clearing in a forest, setting a spear to show the direction of Mecca, placing the tools for driving around the driver – all architecture.

I’d also say that architecture is the arrangement of disparate elements for a common purpose – thus its use in “information architecture,” “software architecture” etc.

So I would classify the following article as a work of architectural history – addressing the deliberate design of spaces and machines to communicate a whole series of power relationships and motivations. And I think it does a pretty good job of finding the social forms of the Rebellion and Empire in the opposed physical expressions of the X-Wing and TIE Fighter. I would just expand a couple of its points a little, considering only the ships as they first appeared, to try to get at the thought behind that first movie’s designs:

The Empire regards its pilots as expendable and interchangeable and it communicates this to them with the swarms of cheap, minimal ships it provides them – so far, so good. But the TIE fighter is also deliberately crippled for autonomous action and it communicates that visually (apart from our heroes’ commentary about its lack of hyperspace drive) with those big hexagonal panels, which prevent it from landing anywhere other than its specially designed cradle, back aboard the vessel it left from. The TIE fighter cannot be used to desert the Empire: on every mission its pilot must behave according to his master’s wishes, or his master can refuse him re-entry to the capital ship and then there’s nowhere for him to go (and probably not much time for him to contemplate his horrible fate). Possibly, in fact, the TIE fighter is crippled for individual action in a big battle environment by those panels: it has no side windows, it is specialized in facing forward – chasing rather than exploring the surroundings. We can infer that it’s designed to attack in formations directed by an admiral’s panoptic gaze – it does not need to know what is happening elsewhere, the larger picture, the fate of its wing-mates.

Finally, while the X-Wing’s design recalls WW2 fighters (it’s just about the same proportions as a P51 Mustang), the TIE looks most like a satellite with solar panels – that is, a remote-control space robot, sent into space to do its job with no plan for recovery, destined to wind slowly down.

…I expect someone here can tell me whether the Star Destroyer is really supposed to make you think of a trowel.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MawInstallation/comments/3ry9c2/combat_philosophies_and_starfighter_design_xwing///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Are you guys around Chicago at the end of March (27-30)? This is richardthinks from livejournal back in the early days of internet chat – 7 or 8 years ago I was planning to meet you for a drink but a snowstorm stopped my plans. Now it turns out I have a couple of days in the Loop between conferences, so I was wondering if you’re still interested.

No worries either way. If you want I could bring you a bottle of Ithaca pear wine, as a thank you for telling me about North Shore Gin.

Why I love Gene Ammarell:

“…on several occasions the navigator seemed to ignore his own accurate prediction that we would encounter strong tidal currents and set sail just after morning or evening prayer with only the educated hope that an offshore wind would carry us forth. When the winds did not cooperate, the captain’s usual response was one of surprise followed closely by expressions of frustration and, finally, resignation. At that point there was little to do but wait, knowing that the moon would soon cross the meridian and begin to descend… whence the current would change in our favour.”

Ammarell: Bugis Navigation, p.173

Raggi has caused me to spend something like $150 on books (not even his books) and I still haven’t written a single word of the actual text.

He is to blame. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

When I was a kid I thought Dickens’s names were just stupid, along with their tendency to say stuff like “I’ll eat my head!”

Now I appreciate some of them. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to enjoy Count Smorltork or Sir Clupkins Clogwog but there’s some gold in here:

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=englishunsllc

…the author is sadly remiss in overlooking Rowling’s use of Dickensian naming, though – Snape, the Dursleys and Weasleys and Malfoys – she’s generally a hair more subtle but no less suggestive (generally: Sirius Black and Dolores Umbridge both made me groan). In the other direction, George Lucas’s Count Dooku and Darth Sidious are object lessons in how it can go wrong.

Paging Erik Jensen just for Mr Plornishmaroontigoonter.

https://daily.jstor.org/charles-dickens-minor-characters/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=PublicDomainReview2017&utm_campaign=PublicDomainReview2017&cid=soc_j_jstordaily_PublicDomainReview2017//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Vigilens: a dished piece of glass that reveals people’s true intentions 90% of the time. Every time it is used, roll 1d20 in secret. On a 1 the lens becomes inconstant – from then on it only shows false results.

Looking at the annual themes, this kind of seems like a good idea overall.

Before you roll your eyes or go “nice fedora, MRA” consider: there’s only one way to actually move on from being the unmarked category.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markedness

https://newint.org/features/2003/09/01/theories-of-power/

Refusing to be observed, like refusing to ask for help – the insistence that there’s no problem here – is part of that “toxic masculinity” thing, no? Having a forum to talk about issues seems like it might help to start talking about issues. Like suicide

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide

and crime

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_crime

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Men’s_Day//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

So it turns out I’m doing the double feature this year – GaryCon followed immediately by Renaissance Society of America in Chicago, which feels a bit like eating dessert before my greens. Is anyone else along for the ride?

…re the link below, I co-designed a video game in the 90s with a secret Templar cave under Scotland. Today I feel vaguely vindicated. I just hope it’s not full of dinosaurs and mutants.

Originally shared by Dave Younce

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/gallery/stunning-700-year-old-giant-9981913//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Horrible thought: what if you took the history of central Asia and transposed it to Europe as a fictional alternate history – Arabs become English, Persians French, Turks Russian, Kurds Norwegian… like really just a blatantly whitewashed novelization of Barthol’d’s Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion – would people read it then?

Horrible thought #2: what if you called it Game of Thrones?

So Eleanor Lutz’s new map of Venus is doing the rounds and it’s lovely, of course. But then, so’s the rest of her portfolio.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/35993499/Virus-Trading-Cards

Pictured, one of her Virus Trading Cards (click through for animated. Check out the rest of her medical and science visualization stuff).

Are they my illos? If so… you might want to hold off formatting a bit, since I’ve just spotted a massive book on a similar topic by someone else.

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/12185

Normalizing “grab ’em by the pussy”

TSA policy is changing – they’re going to do pat-downs in screened, “private” areas with the “front of the hand” (read “poking fingers”). Unless they actually mean cavity searches I don’t have any idea what difference they expect this to make except for sexual domination/humiliation.

From Consumerist: The agency is now proactively warning airport officials that people might find these new patdowns odd, notifying employees of “more rigorous” searches that “will be more thorough and may involve an officer making more intimate contact than before.”

Or as Cory Doctorow decodes it: TSA’s new “pat-downs” are so invasive, airports are pre-emptively warning cops to expect sexual assault claims.

…every time I hear about CBP excesses I am reminded of ibn Jubayr’s 12th century account of rough handling by customs officers on arrival at Alexandria, where the officials, knowing they could act with impunity, swiped what they wanted from travelers’ possessions and “thrust their hands into belts and robes” looking for concealed valuables.

The US. Gettin’ fucking medieval on your ass.

https://consumerist.com/2017/03/06/tsa-introducing-new-more-invasive-pat-down-method///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

stupid thought for a stupid day: the sole etymological origin for siren is Homer’s Odyssey, where it means “seductive singing bird-woman perched on deadly rocks.”

Therefore fire bird-woman, emergency dive bird-woman (for submarines) and (my favourite), air raid bird-woman.

Originally shared by Michael (JESTRO FTW)

Cindern Block tell Adesh! Disguised ditto are out in Pokemon Go.

Originally shared by Sandy J-T

News flash, Pokemon fans: I just caught a Ditto from an apparent Sentret. Yep, Ditto have now started to mimic Johto animals. Don’t turn your nose up at a lowbie, therefore, it might be a Ditto in disguise!

You’ll probably see this reposted a dozen times today because Yonatan Zunger’s reach is long and he often has interesting things to say.

If you ever write RPG material then it’s definitely worth your time – an analysis of how political and economic influences shape religions. I expect it’s of special interest to Jeff Rients as a companion piece for his Mormon game noodlings.

https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/ancient-israelite-cosmology-812dd7addba5#.uahwat70b//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

can you recommend any general synthesis paper on the performance characteristics of historical ships? Speed under different wind conditions and so on…

Or failing that, any sailing trials of specific vessels?

…I’m looking for something more up to date than Casson but even he would be useful as a starting point.

try me

Originally shared by Alex Scrivener

1 1/2 oz Rhum Barbancourt 8 Year

3/4 oz Blandy’s 5 Year Sercial Madeira

3/4 oz Benedictine

1 dash Bittermens Molé Bitters

Stir with ice, strain into a cocktail coupe, and garnish with a (button-shaped) orange twist.

http://cocktailvirgin.blogspot.com/2017/03/provocateur.html//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

GUISE I think I’ve got it!

Contemplating Lord Dampnut, I found myself wondering: why is he the King In Orange?

Well who else is the King in Orange?

William of Orange!

And since his name is obviously a code (so far I think The Donald is probably really “hel not dad”), that’s

Bill Cipher, the malevolent avatar of money.

Stay with me here, this is where it gets spooky. Cipher comes from Arabic zifr, meaning zero.

He is the Zero Trump

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/90/RWS_Tarot_00_Fool.jpg/220px-RWS_Tarot_00_Fool.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDVeAj6qgGw//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

help! cannot stop tagging posts I like with “This is the future that liberals want.”

I think I’ll do the complete works of Moebius next.

Jason, Jeremy, Paolo

I have just had an offer of a (possibly professional) meeting in Chicago later in March, so then I would hang around in the city for a couple of days.

Are any of you relying on me driving back to Erie, PA, NY or whatever on the 27th?

SPEAK UP NOWWWW!!!!1!!

What’s happening on the return trip, guys?

it occurs to me that the cultural divide on display here is probably 95% rural/urban. People who never go to the city might never go there because:

1. they don’t want to go on public transport and rub shoulders with people they aren’t related to

2. they think the city is full of scary, different people

3. they think it’s for liberals

4. they (themselves or, more likely, their daughters) might get polluted.

If you ask “why don’t you ever go to the city?” you tend to get “it’s so big” or “it’s dirty” or “it’s dangerous” but I bet that big/dirty/dangerous trigger is this picture right here.

Originally shared by Gennifer Bone

Muslims and Trannies inTransit, oh my!

https://www.buzzfeed.com/juliareinstein/this-is-the-future-liberals-want?utm_term=.wtbrQPQrV#.kwZAEwEAO

https://www.buzzfeed.com/juliareinstein/this-is-the-future-liberals-want?utm_term=.wtbrQPQrV#.kwZAEwEAO//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

red/blue::

milk/plain (Lindor)

plain/milk (Cadbury and almost everyone else)

Labour/Conservative (UK)

Rep/Dem (US)

Charmander/Squirtle

corrections/edits

corruption/all ones (Bell DS1)

receding/approaching

g+/fb

I do not know why this thread suddenly showed up in my stream again but I am glad it did.

I miss Ian Johnson and Robert Hanz

Originally shared by Ian Johnson

Katanas should have better stats than Western swords.

Hi Gareth Skarka

I’m just starting to write a ships supplement for a retroclone and reading your (very smart and thoughtful) Corsair book – would you mind if I ask you a few questions about where it all came from?

Woozle Hypertwin I’d like to have a good long discussion with that person about how he decides which sources to trust, and how much to trust them

…if you actually do want to have that conversation, he’s Stuart Robertson – this guy:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/111524822183500809557

….I’m hoping this won’t alert him straightaway because I’d like you to be able to assess whether you want to talk to him before approaching him.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/111524822183500809557//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

the good kind of post-apocalypse

http://www.boredpanda.com/cement-factory-renovation-la-fabrica-ricardo-bofill/?_t=1&_f=featured//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Originally shared by Rod Mesa (Motorod)

Done… Not certain how true this is but I’m willing to call. The Senate Committee on Homeland Security is COUNTING CALLS before it decides whether to approve Steve Bannon’s appointment to the National Security Council. The number is: 202-224-4751.

No one will answer: just leave a message saying “Please reject Steve Bannon’s appointment to the NSC.” If the line goes dead call right back and it will answer. I just called… it took me less than a minute.

(Please cut and paste on your page.) Highlight this, copy and then paste into your page. via Michael Rosenberg

is woke the new shrove?

Jason Sholtis so we’re motoring through your town in the morning of March 22nd and picking you and Jeremy Duncan up, right? Where exactly???

Tagging Paolo Greco too because this bus stops for goats.

Also on the way back, what’re your plans? If nobody diverts me I’ll drive out Monday morning (27th), stop briefly at Chicago o’Hare to drop off people who are flying from there and then drive as long as I stay awake – optimally back home but possibly only halfway until I have to stop at a roach motel.

Where’s that game shop? Cincinatti?? That’s a fair deviation from Cleveland which we woulddrive through anyway. What’s the plan?????

Ok that’s enough question marks. Tell me your dreams o fellow bustrippers.

Originally shared by Winchell Chung

Maybe nobody wants to know this but Patrick Stuart’s RPG.net thread seems to be metastasizing into this and I suddenly realized my experience is not universal.

Around 2007 James Maliszewski, whom I had been following on livejournal, mentioned some other DnD blogs. Jeff Rients, Zak Smith… I started reading them, then reading people on their blogrolls. When Zak said “hey we can use G+ for constantcon gaming” I signed up.

And that’s how I started gaming again after a 15+ year hiatus, and how I’m here. I glanced at RPG.net and similar forums and was instantly put off by their formats, their content and their acrimony, in that order.

Overall I think G+ has been a good thing for the gaming circles I see, but I miss the days when we all communicated through blog posts.

Halfway through The Young Pope…

I don’t get it.

I mean, I can follow the plot OK but… where’s it going? What’s the point?

It makes me realise that I generally have a very tight set of expectations for TV drama and this doesn’t meet them.

I might be missing the joke because I don’t have any Catholic background.

OTOH the cinematography is drop-dead gorgeous. Every frame a masterpiece.

Originally shared by Tom McGrenery

The Golden Sea is a Dark Sun, Fury Road, Tatooine kind of game by that Grant Howitt.

http://imgur.com/gallery/JvSKC//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

So Arrival is the most epic bait and switch I’ve seen in years.

It presents like a movie about encountering aliens.

Outstandingly well done. Made me care about what I took to be a stock character even before I stopped thinking they were a stock character.

Why did you never use the Wilderness Survival Guide?

What was wrong with it?

Richard Schiff is my own personal Bill Murray.

I was reminded of this by his superb but brief appearance in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.* So I showed it to the kids and they said “my brain hurts.”

So then I told them about the Joint Strike Fighter.

*amazon prime

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

I learned from the Fall of Milo that Simon and Shuster had a book deal with him, which they’ve now canceled. I wondered what this book could be. I still don’t know – clearly it’s to do with his political speaking and I imagine it’s a collection of essays or similar, but I don’t know. AFAICT nobody does except the publisher and Milo’s literary agent.

So. Should Simon and Shuster withdraw from Milo’s book deal, having previously been OK with it?

…I can’t quite believe I’m asking this – having read a couple of his articles I hate what they contain and I think it’s disastrous that he forms such a visible part of the public debate in the US today. In general I agree with Joy Peskin’s indictment of his contribution to public discourse:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/soapbox/article/72695-why-the-milo-yiannopoulos-book-deal-tarnishes-the-publishing-industry.html

…in brief, I think there probably are always some assholes, and it’s probably better not to get them all riled up.

On the other hand, if you do pull the book, does that mean that you agree with its title – that Milo’s Dangerous? His agent makes the free speech argument:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/soapbox/article/72794-in-defense-of-milo-yiannopoulos-s-book.html

and it is disturbing that people should call for a book’s suppression or its publisher’s boycott without having read the book.

Before Breitbart fired him, I’d’ve said the censorship argument was simply inaccurate – nobody’s shutting him up – merely not publishing him… lots and lots of people aren’t published. One person wasn’t being published by S&S because Milo was. Now… I’m actually curious to know if the book expanded on the stuff that got him expelled from the Breitbart club. I want to know if he actually does have anything transgressive to say that isn’t mere hate speech.

ETA: I’m curious about 2 things, really –

1. did the publisher’s attitude to the content of the book change based on recent other things Milo said (or are they, as Scott Martin suggests, just seeing dwindling sales)?

2. is there a case for publishing the book elsewhere based on its content? Is anything being suppressed here? Does Milo actually have anything unique/original (even anything originally repgnant) to say? Does the agent have a point, that although he disagrees, like Voltaire he’s right on principle to stands for the right to say it (and get distribution and cash and royalties to boot)?

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/book-deals/article/72398-milo-yiannopolous-book-deal-with-s-s-generates-backlash.html//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Adam Thornton I’ve been thinking about the Garycon room and…. without going into too much personal detail, I’d like to make my space in the room available to be used by someone else who needs it. I had booked a room in another nearby hotel before I knew you’d got the suites right there in the con hotel and I was hanging onto the booking, wondering if I would be in better health by the time the con rolled around but…. I’m not. It’s nothing severe but trust me when I say it’s better I have my own bathroom and not make lots of other people share with me.

So. I’ll be there, I’m looking forward to participating in everything and staying late and so on, but I think I’d better stay in my own digs off site. I’m also happy to pay my share, just let me know – we’re awfully close to the date now and I have no intention of leaving you with expenses because I didn’t tell you earlier.

Thanks and sorry!

just so good. The blanket.

Originally shared by Eduardo Ramirez

Hi Zak

If you’re too busy for this, fair enough – I’m asking you to do my homework for me and that’s presumptuous.

I haven’t followed the recent stuff around Vampire/RPGnet closely because I’ve been busy with my own shit and because, unless there’s some substantive set of allegations to chew into, I don’t think I can write much more than a general character-assessment piece of the kind I tend to discount as a reader.

Are there any newer accusations against you than those in the Tom Hatfield FailForward article from 2014? Is there any concrete piece of work that I could actually deconstruct, or is it just a load of tweets and forum messages saying “he’s bad” and “no he’s not” without any actual content? If there is something that makes claims and cites evidence then I’d be happy to give that some serious critique as I did with Hatfield’s piece, but I fear that if I just write another “I’m a straight white dude and I think Zak’s OK” post then that won’t help you and will just allow Andri et al to label me another sock puppet when I actually do have something evidence-based to say.

Originally shared by Brian Murphy

Piracy has not achieved its rightful place in the narrative of American history precisely because it was so familiar to the people of the English-speaking world of the seventeenth century. In the early days of the colonies, pirate attacks were considered a commonplace, inevitable feature of the maritime world, and noted only as entertaining asides.

https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2017/winter/feature/lot-what-known-about-pirates-not-true-and-lot-what-true-not-known//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Originally shared by Bryan Thao Worra

Some of the classic movie posters depicting Dracula in Thailand, as well as other vampiric creatures.

https://goo.gl/photos/EL45Qy45rVMBFNAz6//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Originally shared by Tore Nielsen

I gotta stop doing things.

Since I’ve been working on a central Asian stringpunk mecha game, it seems like I should check out this eastern European oilpunk mecha game (next week at the earliest).

I know I’m deep in the nerdoscape when the solo play mode gets a separate design credit. And the runtime of 115 minutes seems either remarkably precise or a bitter satire on the standard marketing of boardgames in the post-Catan era.

Also spotted: this version of Ticket to Ride seems unnecessarily cruel, given the steady, ruinous decline of British railway services over the past 30 years. Next up: Aeroflot Safety – a game for 2-8 children with no money.

resharing this not to marvel sorrowfully at malnutrition but to commend to everyone the writings of Jonathan Lamb. His Preserving the Self in the South Seas is as good a sourcebook on mad sea captains as you could hope to find.

Originally shared by Kam-Yung Soh

Incredible. Scurvy returns. “When doctors and patients realised that scurvy had reappeared, in separate outbreaks in Zimbabwe and Sydney recently, they were stunned. “I couldn’t believe it,” Penelope Jackson, one of the Sydney victims, recalled, “I thought, ‘Hang on a minute, scurvy hasn’t been around for centuries’.”

[…]

We forget about scurvy – deliberately perhaps. And we seem to forget as well just how simple it is to cure and prevent. As Jenny Gunton, the clinician at the Westmead Institute in Sydney, pointed out, scurvy is prevented if we don’t boil vegetables to a paste, and as for the cure: “It’s so easily treated with one vitamin tablet a day” or by fresh vegetables and fruit. When the rules for eating properly are neglected by a significant sector of the population, and their forgetfulness is allied with government cutbacks for social services, the outlook for outbreaks gets a lot grimmer.

The recent sieges in Aleppo and Mount Sinjar have doubtless been accompanied by unreported scorbutic outbreaks. Over the last few years there have been a steady trickle of stories of individual cases in Europe and the US – an eight-year-old in Wales died of cardiac arrest brought on by severe scurvy in 2011, and a toddler in Michigan who couldn’t walk and was successively tested for Guillain-Barré syndrome, osteomyelitis and cancer until physicians finally diagnosed scurvy.

But now that multiple cases are appearing in a single place, it suggests that either bad choices of diet are becoming more common, or that institutional food programmes are failing. Or that both are occurring simultaneously.

[…]

More work is being done now on conditions such as sepsis, chronic fatigue syndrome, and symptoms of diabetes. But this research pales in comparison with the rise in the consumption of sugar, especially by young people, and the enforcement of recent policies of austerity by western governments. Figures quoted in the Guardian at the same time as the Sydney outbreak revealed that diagnoses of malnutrition in Britain have increased by 44% in the five years to 2015. Ignorance about food among individuals and misguided state policies concerning diets of the young and the elderly: these are the nurseries of scurvy, and always have been.”

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/feb/16/black-bones-gangrene-hallucinations-weeping-return-scurvy//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

in case you thought the nutrition part of health class wasobvious/unnecessary

Originally shared by Kam-Yung Soh

Incredible. Scurvy returns. “When doctors and patients realised that scurvy had reappeared, in separate outbreaks in Zimbabwe and Sydney recently, they were stunned. “I couldn’t believe it,” Penelope Jackson, one of the Sydney victims, recalled, “I thought, ‘Hang on a minute, scurvy hasn’t been around for centuries’.”

[…]

We forget about scurvy – deliberately perhaps. And we seem to forget as well just how simple it is to cure and prevent. As Jenny Gunton, the clinician at the Westmead Institute in Sydney, pointed out, scurvy is prevented if we don’t boil vegetables to a paste, and as for the cure: “It’s so easily treated with one vitamin tablet a day” or by fresh vegetables and fruit. When the rules for eating properly are neglected by a significant sector of the population, and their forgetfulness is allied with government cutbacks for social services, the outlook for outbreaks gets a lot grimmer.

The recent sieges in Aleppo and Mount Sinjar have doubtless been accompanied by unreported scorbutic outbreaks. Over the last few years there have been a steady trickle of stories of individual cases in Europe and the US – an eight-year-old in Wales died of cardiac arrest brought on by severe scurvy in 2011, and a toddler in Michigan who couldn’t walk and was successively tested for Guillain-Barré syndrome, osteomyelitis and cancer until physicians finally diagnosed scurvy.

But now that multiple cases are appearing in a single place, it suggests that either bad choices of diet are becoming more common, or that institutional food programmes are failing. Or that both are occurring simultaneously.

[…]

More work is being done now on conditions such as sepsis, chronic fatigue syndrome, and symptoms of diabetes. But this research pales in comparison with the rise in the consumption of sugar, especially by young people, and the enforcement of recent policies of austerity by western governments. Figures quoted in the Guardian at the same time as the Sydney outbreak revealed that diagnoses of malnutrition in Britain have increased by 44% in the five years to 2015. Ignorance about food among individuals and misguided state policies concerning diets of the young and the elderly: these are the nurseries of scurvy, and always have been.”

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/feb/16/black-bones-gangrene-hallucinations-weeping-return-scurvy//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Originally shared by Jürgen Hubert

While it focuses mainly on the American and British situation during WWII, this gives a good overview of the wartime experience – both civilian and military.

Some key elements:

– War is hell – and if you are on the frontline long enough and survive, you will almost certainly turn insane to some degree.

– Soldiers needed ways of compensating with the pressure and insanities of war, and thus evolved a number of rather creative activities.

– There was a lot of propaganda and censorship in order to make the war more “palatable” for the home front – while it was admitted that there would be death, dismemberment was almost never shown or talked about. Likewise, most forms of literature or entertainment ceased to be subversive and focused on the “inherent goodness” of the Allies and their cause.

– The Western Allies never really came up with a good answer for “What are we fighting for?” that resonated with both the population and the soldiers, and thus largely limited themselves to vague or empty platitudes.

The verdict: I recommend it to anyone with an interest in warfare, military life, WWII, and sociology.

https://www.amazon.com/Wartime-Understanding-Behavior-Second-World/dp/0195065778///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Is “liberal” the new “bourgeois”?

Is Agrabah supposed to be a dismissive scoff at the Taj Mahal? Like Mughals shmughals? Fatehpshaw-Sikri?

Listening to Van Morrison for the first time in 20 years, I choose to interpret Into the Mystic as being very specifically about the Mystic river, Connecticut, rather than some woolly, general spiritualism.

When that foghorn blows/

I will be coming home

…down the lee side of Mason’s Island, out of Long Island Sound.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CEvsDuJYEnI//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Not the map I was looking for. Suddenly possessed by desire to run a hell campaign.