This feels like Argentina! We have information to go on! Chacarita 39!
You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts. Be sure to email entries tocontest@andrewsullivan.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book or two free gift subscriptions to the Dish. Have at it.
Rosie Schaap enjoys (NYT) aperitifs before dinner:
I’ve had the occasional aperitif by myself, but I think of this as an inherently social drink. The unwieldy word, which always seems one syllable too long, comes from the Latin aperire, “to open.” And that’s what it does: An aperitif puts people at ease and signals that an occasion has begun. It opens the proceedings in a way that’s elegant and faintly formal, but also congenial and serene. …
My first aperitif — and I doubt I’m alone here — was a Campari and soda, to which my reaction was much the same as my initial response to cilantro: I recoiled, and then wanted more. Now, when I have friends over for dinner in the summer, I usually start things off by muddling a basil leaf with a couple hits of citrus bitters in an old-fashioned glass; adding a handful of ice, about a half-ounce of Campari and two ounces of Lillet (blanc or, even better, rosé); and topping it off with club soda. I plonk a thick slice of grapefruit into the drink to be used as a stirrer (and then eaten, if one likes, and one usually does).
Schaap goes on to offer recipes for two aperitif cocktails, called Fort Julep and the Pink Angel.
Speed skater Blake Skjellerup took some time out of his busy schedule at the Gay Games in Cleveland to show off his new fiancé - stylist Saul Carrasco.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ war and genocide and bombs and death TGIF ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Amid the impending flurry of opinions, ideas, regrets, conclusions and arguments that you will greet today, it’s well worth eight minutes of our time simply to listen to what president Obama said last night about the US intervention in Kurdistan yesterday. Here’s what he obviously wants in descending order of importance: security for US personnel in Erbil; no genocide of the Yazidis; and a functional, multi-sectarian coalition government in Baghdad. The first two are achievable in the short term; the last is subject to the profound vicissitudes of the broken state of “Iraq”. Which is to say: we can see no long term clearly right now.
Like most decisions that come down to the president alone, this is a very, very tough one. The reasons to resist being pulled back into any conflict in Iraq are too obvious and manifold to state. But let me note one massive irony: one reason why ISIS appears to have made so much progress is because they are armed with American military equipment, abandoned by the Iraqi army. And the only reason ISIS exists at all in Iraq – and al Qaeda before them – is that the United States so thoroughly broke that country from 2003 on. So the proximate reasons for this American intervention are the unintended consequences of previous American interventions. You can see how global hegemony eventually provides endless reasons for its own perpetuation – and why some of us want to restrain and temper its ambitions.
Another obvious conclusion: the speech last night was very similar to the reasoning behind the ill-fated rescue of Misrata in the Libyan uprising. Again: an allegedly imminent slaughter of civilians. Again: the need to act expeditiously because of fast-moving events on the ground. And we saw how that intervention ended – in chaos and disorder that has only enabled more slaughter and unrest. If we thought Libya had persuaded Obama that he should not act when he can to save thousands of innocent civilians threatened by murderous religious fanatics, then we misjudged his moral core.
Do I reject that moral core? Of course not. I would not want even the toughest realist in the White House to be unmoved by a possibly imminent mass execution of civilians. And this is not merely a possible mass execution. It’s attempted genocide. That distinction matters to me, and should matter to America. ISIS has now slaughtered countless innocents, as has the government of Assad in Syria. But the possible genocidal attempt to wipe out the entire, ancient Yazidi population makes this more than yet another grotesque incident in someone else’s civil war. Non-interventionism meets its toughest test when it comes to atrocities like these.
Then there is the issue of the Kurds, a feisty, stateless people whose sanity stands in stark contrast to some of their neighbors. They too have endured genocidal attacks in the past – from Saddam Hussein. They have been staunch American allies for decades and critical to what’s left of any decent future in that part of the world. They are not active participants in the Sunni-Shiite Arab Iraq-Syria civil war. They have played a largely defensive game, with some opportunistic land grabs, while developing their own region in a manner Baghdad seems incapable of more broadly. If Erbil were to fall for lack of ammunition in the short term – because they are being targeted by US-made military equipment – then equalizing that imbalance in the short term seems to the least we can do.
Nonetheless, I remain troubled by this – as I think the president is as well.
The danger of getting sucked into the Iraqi vortex is great. What if air-strikes are not enough? What if ISIS manages to invade Kurdistan – or does unspeakable damage to the dam now under its control? We are talking about a Jihadist force born of a fanatical fusion of a depraved version of Islam with brutality and violence of unlimited scope. What we are now signaling, in other words, is that there are limits to what the United States will tolerate with respect to ISIS’ dominance and power projection. That means we could find ourselves forced to intervene again and again on these lines and for these reasons. Only the president’s fortitude and restraint – or willingness to retreat from the goals he has just set out – can save us. At that point, if the immediate need to save the Yazidis and Kurdistan is behind us, it is absolutely imperative that any further military action be authorized by the Congress. An expeditious act of executive authority is one thing. Another risk of war is something else entirely. And such a decision should not be a president’s anyway. It should be a decision by the American people, through their elected representatives.
My main fear of the intervention is that it might convey to Iraq’s terrible leadership that the US once again will do their hard work for them – and thereby relieve them of the task of constructing a new government, capable of rallying Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds to restrain ISIS. Perhaps the danger is now so great the dysfunction in Baghdad could break – and with indirect American support, a new and more widely legitimate Iraqi government can begin to roll back or at least cauterize the Jihadist onslaught. That’s the optimistic scenario.
But when has an optimistic scenario ever been borne out in Iraq? That is the question. As Barry Ritholtz put it today:
Each time I think I have finally put George W. Bush’s misadventures out of my mind, something comes about to remind us how utterly bereft of reason or intelligence the decision to invade Iraq was. It is likely to haunt the U.S. even longer than the disastrous Vietnam War.
Published in the September 2014 issue, available here now and on newsstands everywhere!
Saturday Morning, Bayou Gauche, Louisiana
An hour late to the photo shoot, the newly cut and beautiful actor Chris Pratt rushes into a small trailer to try on wool suits. It's 90 degrees on this dust patch in the middle of the bayou, forty-five minutes outside New Orleans on a tree-obscured turnoff of a narrow elevated road. Your driver misses a turn out here and it's thirty miles before you get a chance to turn around. Still, the thirty-five-year-old is apologizing as he goes to get dressed in suits that are mostly too small for the action-hero muscles he developed for Guardians of the Galaxy, hewed from the three hundred pounds of comedic-character-actor fat used to great effect on six seasons of Parks and Recreation. But he finds a pair of pants that zip up and takes his place in front of a white backdrop.
The sweating begins immediately and profoundly. A tiny Hungarian hairstylist attempts to cool him off with a tiny motorized fan, and a neighbor in a camo jacket and Duck Dynasty beard waves while urinating on the property line. Pratt has other concerns.
"What should I do with my hands?"
"Pretend you're Bond," says the photographer.
"Bond. Gary Bond. No relation to James. I own a family plumbing company."
"Great, Chris, perfect."
"The lens is a douche magnet. It just pulls it out of my face," he says.
Then he half-puckers his lips and makes perfect "Oh, these eyebrows?" eyebrows.
Everyone gets on the airboatsladies first, Pratt insistsand they take off. He uses his pant-busting quads to rock the two-thousand-pound boat up and down, spraying swamp at his people, the magazine's people, and Sid the airboat driver and part-owner of this parcel of land and water.
"That's a workout!" he says through teeth clenched around the cigar he produced from his pocket.
He removes the cigar and puts a grasshopper in his mouth.
The grasshopper jumps out and he puts the cigar in his mouth.
Once the airboat gets going, as it's speeding over a liquid wilderness through soupy air, through swarms of dragonflies and the occasional carpenter bee, past crickets and snakes and palmetto bugs and ancient oaks covered in Spanish moss, Pratt turns around to face Sid.
"Which part of the alligator should I grab if I see one?"
Sid is the only one who realizes he's not kidding.
"Behind the head, so he can't get at you with his teeth."
Pratt looks at me.
"But that would be good for the story, wouldn't it? If an alligator bit my hand?"
We get to an abandoned shack (contents: rusted shovel, bare mattress) andPratt fake-demands nine "ice-cold piss beers." He sings an elaborate mash-up of "Get Ready for This" and the America's Next Top Model theme music.
At a bar in the French Quarter a few hours from now, I'll find out he probably wrote that song years ago.
"I've always pretended to improv," he will admit.
Gary Bond?
"Sneaking in a joke like I've stumbled on it, coming up with good comebacks for things that haven't even happened "
The alligator?
"My whole life I've done that."
The fucking grasshopper?
The story continues! For even crazier shenanigans from Chris Pratt, subscribe to Esquire here. Or pick up the magazine at your local newsstand now!
When Guardians of the Galaxy was pitched to me, I said, "I don't think so." I just didn't picture myself getting the role. I didn't want to go and embarrass myself like I did when I auditioned for G.I. Joe a couple of years previously. I went in there, and halfway through I saw the director's eyes just glaze over. It made senseI was a little heavy and out of shape. I was not gonna play someone from G.I. Joe. I did not look like a G.I. Joe action figure come to life.
It's a thing when it becomes three peoples' job to mop sweat off of you. The hair person, the makeup person, an assistant. When their primary job becomes stopping you from sweating? But I sweat less now that I'm in better shape. When I was fat, it could be ice cold in a room and I would sweat.
It was getting to the point where I would wake up in the middle of the night and I wasn't breathing. A little bit of sleep apnea. My neck was pushing down on my throat, so my sleep felt like it was panicked all night.
I like clothes now. I have more energy. I sleep better. My sex drive is up. Blood's flowing. I'm less susceptible to impulse. I'm in a different mode. When I was way out of shape, the idea of using whitening strips on my teeth seemed terrible. I have to do that every day? I'll never do it. What you want is instant results when you're out of shape. You want your teeth whitened in 45 minutes with the use of lasers. But when you're in shape, you know it's the result of doing a little bit every day. Moments aren't just moments. A moment might be a week or a month. So instead of Boy, I'd love to eat this hamburger right now, I'm considering a little further into the future. I'm thinking, I eat that hamburger and that's 1,200 calories, and I'm gonna work out tomorrow and lose 800 calories. I may as well eat a salad here, still do that workout, and then I'm actually making progress.
You have to eat protein. You can't have hashbrowns, or burgers, or anything fried. You can't have carbs. You have to work out five times a week.
But I can do 40-inch box jumps now. Action-hero physical stuff. Jumping that high feels really good. You see a giant hillside, and you think, I wanna get up that. You see a building, you think, I could climb that. When you get in shape, the world around you becomes things you wanna jump on and climb up.
Follow Esquire Magazine on RSS and on Twitter at @Esquiremag.
A reader starts us off with an enviable recent vacation:
Sao Paulo, Brazil. Was just there for the World Cup, and the view seems exactly like it – perhaps the green areas are part of Jardins or Jardim Paulista, and the high rises and skyscrapers are coming up near Avenida Paulista on the right of the photo. The building in the right side, middleground of the photo with two white towers, capped by black pyramids are definitely in Berrini district, or Morumbi just adjacent. I’m positive I was able to see them, while in Berrini district. I could be wrong, but this feels so like Sao Paulo.
Another:
This one was frustrating. It seemed simple but did not turn out to be (at least for me.) I kept wanting it to be Kuala Lumpur, but couldn’t make it fit. The language uses characters, so this should be somewhere in Asia. There is the tower in the background, which looks somewhat like the tower in Macau. It also looks a tiny bit like the one in Harbin, but this does not look like Harbin’s climate as I see some little palm trees down there. The tower also resembles Kyoto’s, but the rest of the city doesn’t. So I’m going with Macau. No clue which window, and no more time to put into this. Gah.
Another player is also wrong but more cheerful:
It’s Milan! I’ve never played before and I know that some clever Dishhead will produce coordinates, building, room, ambient temperature and a brief review of the grocery just around the corner, but for one fleeting moment I feel like I’m in this thing! Hope I’m not wrong for all the exuberance.
A veteran player of the contest shows off:
Just thought I would send a snap of my Dish t-shirt:
Read his winning entry here. And buy your own official Dish t-shirt or polo here. Back to the contest:
Mexico City, based only on the population density and pollution, plus that church center-right dwarfed by the high-rise apartment building.
Another nearly nails the right country:
This one turned out to be tougher than it looked at first. Everything is so new! It’s got to be one of China’s pop-up cities or a boom area near a more traditional one. Having been to Shanghai and Shenzhen, it looks a little like Shanghai and Shenzhen (but then again, what doesn’t). But it’s all a little subdued for China, and a little bit short on outdoor advertising. And maybe the roadways aren’t quite prominent enough.
Guessing Singapore. Google maps shows a bunch of different neighborhoods that look like they could be right, but as close as I can get is to guess somewhere in the Redhill/Bukit Merah neighborhood.
But most other players did correctly peg the People’s Republic:
The photo immediately says “China” – no where else has such a hodge-podge of skyscrapers. Problem is all the cities have the same hodge-podge. Looks more like a 2nd tier city, so will go for Chengdu.
The skyscrapers weren’t of much use, it seems:
I’m pretty sure we are in China for this week’s contest, given the amount of tall structures, architecture, and what my be Chinese script on some of the buildings. I also think it is likely not a large city given the absence of super-tall skyscrapers (though perhaps it is just the view). But otherwise, I am completely stumped. Despite many hours spent on various skyscraper related forums, Wikipedia, and Google Maps, I can’t narrow things down any further. I thought either the tall red roofed buildings or the white tower with a black core would be identifiable either through skyline images or the database at skyscraperpage.com, I’ve had no luck. So I’m guessing Changsha, China.
The key challenge this week was clearly China itself:
How can a city be so simultaneously huge and utterly unfamiliar at the same time? Almost certainly by being in China. The sign on the red peaked roof near the upper left of the photo seems to bear this out. There are some palm trees amongst the foliage in the foreground. Lots of smog. Still, none of the images I look at of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, etc., seem to match up. Surely this is one of the biggest cities in the world, right? I’m guessing Shenzhen, because why the hell not? Though it feels absurd to be guessing with such a wide view.
There was another difficulty zooming in on China as well:
At +/- 5,000 feet the Google Earth images are crisp. Somewhere around 2,500 feet the images get milky & grainy, plus the buildings also flip orientation making it very hard to make out any details. Then at around 1,000 feet you can’t zoom in any further. This is much higher up than practically anywhere else. Google must have had a very interesting conversation with the Chinese Government.
Another contestant:
I’m pretty sure I’m wrong, but at least it’s one for the heat map! Qingdao, China – Badaguan neighborhood.
Added:
Another reader nails down the city:
I have worked on this on and off for three days and I’m getting nowhere. Google is of no help to me.
There are highrises on the left with red mansard roofs, one of which seems to contain Chinese characters. This could be a Chinese city. Or it could just be a city with a Chinese company. At least now I know what Palladian windows are.
Evergreen coniferous trees – a northern climate?
On the left edge, halfway down, there’s a partial logo; the name is blurry, but if it’s the western alphabet, it looks like it ends in -here or -hare or -nere or -nare. I did a slew of Google image searches for the logo and came up empty.
In the midground, in front of some conifers, there are Western-looking buildings. One looks vaguely Dutch; is this a former Dutch colony in Asia? Or another city with a former Western presence like Shanghai? Or this is actually a Western city?
There are a bunch of short buildings with red roofs.
It looks vaguely like an ex-Soviet central Asian republic, one of the -stans. Or somewhere else in Asia. For all I know it could be western Canada. Or I could be completely wrong.
This seems like a place either you know or you don’t. But Shanghai has lots of 19th-century Western architecture, so I’m going with Shanghai.
Another reader:
Lots of newish and modern dense pack high rise residences. A few older ones with external air conditioner units predominant in Asia. Lots of red roofs and what looks like Chinese characters on the top of one building on the left side. I have never been there but Shanghai is the best I can do with so few distinctive features. Smog is probably obscuring more detail.
My father was a career Army officer and served with the Joint US Military Advisory Group, China in Shanghai during 1948 until being evacuated to Tokyo in January 1949 as the Chinese Nationalist Army was collapsing in the face of Mao’s communist forces.
Another:
Oh, man. The poor folks trying to triangulate the actual window from this week’s view. I’m guessing a lot of people will tease out Shanghai, as it apparently boasts the world’s largest skyline, but that could also make finding the few distinctive buildings in the frame truly difficult. I think I got lucky by tracking it down inside of an hour – some weeks just go like that, and I was owed some luck after last week.
The view overlooks Jiaotong University. Props to this week’s submitter who was clearly angling for a contest view by narrowly clipping the nearby Grand Gate towers, just out of frame to the left and somewhat of a giveaway.
Another thinks he’s got the hotel:
I think this week’s content will prove to be a challenge. There are Chinese characters on one of the buildings. So, this must be an urban area in China. But which one? My initial guess is that this is Shanghai. But we see none of the iconic Shanghai skyscrapers. Making things more difficult, Shanghai does not have StreetView. On top of that, Google’s aerial view of Shanghai of a bit offset from the underlying base map. After looking around the city for a while, I happened on a rooftop that matched the building in the lower center of the view.
This week’s view comes from the Hengshan Picardie Hotel in Shanghai, China. The view is looking west-southwest towards Jiaotong University. Here is the layout of the view:
And here is my guess for the window:
Nope. But our favorite (and only) GIF-making player nails it:
Found it by Google Mapping the top twenty universities in China. Shanghai Jiaotong University was number seven. In trying to find a good image of the building, I discovered Baidu, China’s google. Their 3D maps look like Sim City! I’ll guess the 20th floor for no reason at all.
A veteran contestant has another angle:
This week’s picture was taken in Shanghai, China, from the west side of the Jian Gong Jin Jiang Hotel, in the Xuhui district; as for the floor, let’s say the 28th (the floor under the penthouse). Here is the same view, from a different angle:
This one was tough but doable; ideally suited to rebuild a little self-confidence in your contestants after last week’s débâcle, isn’t it?
Debacle? They can’t all be easy! A VFYW team:
At first we thought … awe crap, a massive skyline with millions of tall buildings and some vaguely Chinese looking writing. There are over 100 cities in China with more than one million people! This is going to be impossible. But the buildings in the foreground had a vaguely university-esque feel. From there, some Google searching and the university (and then the hotel) were identified. However, unfortunately China is not included in the Google Street View database. So we learned about and tinkered with map.qq.com which, while being a good substitute for Google Maps, unfortunately is only in Chinese. Anyways, after some fumbling through the map we identified the best possible street view of the Jiangong Jinjiang Hotel Shanghai. Let’s say its the 23rd floor.
Chini had to take a deep breath this week:
I’ve been worried that we’d get one like this for a while. Normally when you narrow it down to a city finding the viewer’s location isn’t too much trouble. But with certain developing cities, like Sao Paulo for example, the sheer number of high-rises means that finding one specific building can take a lot of work. So when this one popped up I was really hoping that we were somewhere else in China; Wuhan, Tianjin, anywhere with a more modest skyline. But nope, we’re in the biggest one of them all.
This week’s view comes from the Xujiahui neighborhood of Shanghai, China. The picture was taken on roughly the 23rd story of the Jian Gong Jin Jiang Hotel and looks almost due west along a heading of 267.03 degrees over the roofs of the former French Concession.
Only one player, a former winner, correctly guesses the right floor of the hotel:
This week’s photo comes from the Jin Jiang Hotel in Xuhui district of Shanghai, China, located at 691 Jianguo West Rd. I’ll guess the 27th floor. It took a while to find the hotel, but this picture displaying some of the distinctive skyscrapers in the contest photo greatly helped find the location.
In the photo, we are looking west over the Xuhui campus of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The university’s original library building and more recent centennial monument are visible in the middle of the contest picture. NBA great Yao Ming is currently enrolled at this prestigious university which boasts former leader Jiang Zemin as an alum. The university excels in technical fields and, allegedly, offers its expertise to assist the People Liberation’s Army spy on U.S. and other western companies.
For some reason, the discussion of the university’s involvement in cyber spying disappeared from its wikipedia page a couple of months after newspapers reported on the matter. It seems a user named Bwfrank removed the discussion from the page and abruptly stopped revising wikipedia pages. Prior to that, Bwfrank focused on editing the university’s page, articles on the Chinese and US space programs, and Japanese anime.
This week’s winner, though he doesn’t name the hotel, IDs the building and was one floor off with a long record of correct guesses without a win:
The occasional bits of writing viewable on the buildings appeared Chinese to my untrained eye, so that was where the search began. Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Beijing, Tianjin, even Hong Kong. After a lot of frustration I ended up looking around the Pacific Rim: Phnom Penh, Bangkok, Hanoi, Ho-Chi-Minh City, Manila, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta. At this point all I had really learned was that Southeast Asia has a crapload of tall buildings, and after a while they all start to look the same.
Fortunately my wife is more astute than I am and found a similar view from a hotel near Jiaotong University in Shanghai: the place I had searched first and long since given up on. The lack of Google Street View makes it hard to be precise, but this was taken from around the 26th floor of a building across the street from the Hengshan Picardie Hotel. It looks like an office building. The view is looking west-by-southwest over the university campus.
It seemed at first like it should be an easy one, but not being able to read Chinese was (unsurprisingly) a big handicap when searching. I’ll be curious to see how difficult other people found this.
Congrats! Details from the photo’s submitter:
The view is of French Concession West, Shanghai. Taken at 8am from room 82707 on the 27th floor of Jian Gong Jin Jiang Hotel.
I thought when I took this shot it would be a great VFYW contest: before seeing this view I don’t think I’d have even guessed the right continent, and I suspect there are plenty of people familiar with Shanghai who wouldn’t be able to place it either.
This was my first visit to Asia. I was a tourist in Shanghai for nine days, spending much of my time walking around and seeing the city up close. It’s a wonderful city and I can’t wait to go back. I live in New York, so being in a megacity wasn’t a novelty, and Shanghai’s culture and architecture are heavily European influenced, so I didn’t experience too much culture shock. What DID shock me, though, was the fact that I never once felt the slightest bit threatened, physically or materially (although I always take proper precautions against pickpocketing), even in the grittier parts of town. I don’t know if that’s peculiar to Shanghai or if it’s the same elsewhere in China, but I have never felt safer anywhere else in the world.
You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts. Be sure to email entries to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book or two free gift subscriptions to the Dish. Have at it.
Games, celebrities, and using your influence for good.
Normally I keep a very strict no-hatelinking policy on the internet. Life is too short, there is too much suffering, and a desire to foment hate and anger is exactly the reason people post terrible things on the internet in the first place.
But. I found Bustle’s list of 31 questions for Kim Kardashian to be very dismissive and problematic. I am sorry to call out the person who wrote this, she’s just trying to swim for shore in a content tsunami that rages terribly all around her. But having spent a lot of time playing this game, AND having worked in video games for a number of years, I know a little bit about how these projects work. I feel completely qualified to answer these questions.
1. Right off the bat we’re curious: did Kim even know what a video game was before this?
Yes. Kim knew what a video game was. Video games have existed for decades, and Kim strikes me as quite tech-savvy, so it seems incredibly likely that Kim encountered them at some point in her life.
2. Did she come up with the objectives herself or were they just cobbled together based on her life?
Most likely no, and partially. The studio pitched Kim the idea for the game, and she made a business agreement to license her image to them. They probably presented ideas for objectives and goals within the game for her to approve, and she probably had some suggestions for tweaks and additions. They valued and worked to honor her opinion, because the game wouldn’t be as successful without her support.
3. What is it like, being in a development meeting for something like this with Kim Kardashian?
You are very nervous. You want her to be happy. You have worked hard on this game and it’s important to you. You know there are inevitably going to be details that you get slightly wrong, you just hope you haven’t screwed them up in a way that will make it expensive for the development team to fix. But since Kim is a professional, it’s a very positive interaction at the meetings. She makes you feel good about what you’ve accomplished, and delivers criticism in a way that makes you feel like the product will be all the better for it. You try to find ways to deliver a game that will meet her expectations, within the constraints of time, money, and staff.
4. Does she just sit around and nod?
No. She speaks, and laughs, and smiles, and is gracious when someone brings her water or coffee. She is appreciative of your time, because you are not wasting her time.
5. Do her eyes just glaze over until the words “shopping,” “money,” and “hot” pop up?
No. Successful women are very good at active listening and interpersonal communication.
6. Why is it that these avatars look to be in permanent selfie-pose mode?
The avatars are often looking at their nails or have their eyes closed, so I’m not sure how you define selfie-pose. But the idea would be that the characters are fun to look at and take screenshots of, to share with your friends on social media.
7. Is that what it takes to become famous?
Like, picking lightning bolts up off the floor? I mean, probably not?
8. Seriously why are these avatars always winking and fluffing their hair?
The animators will create maybe 5-10 animations, for both male and female avatars, to give the screen some life and motion while you are tapping around on the level. The game would look much weirder and “feel” less fun, if the characters weren’t constantly moving in the background.
9. They have to fold clothes before they become famous: is that representative of Kim’s true struggle to make it to the top? (Sounds like a deep metaphor.)
A lot of people work in retail when they’re just starting out. There’s no shame in it. But it’s not a metaphor.
10. …Is this “game” supposed to be “fun”?
Yes. As a game, it is supposed to be entertaining for people who enjoy this type of game. Not for everyone, but hopefully for a significant number of people. If the game was not fun it would not be successful. It is a business endeavor, not an art project.
11. Or are we supposed to feel like clawing our eyes out by the end of it?
Gosh I hope not.
12. What does Kim Kardashian consider fun?
Who knows! Judging from her Instagram I would guess that she enjoys laying out, swimming, spending time with her family and friends, going to events or parties, that kind of thing.
13. Does Kanye West think this is the greatest video game of all time or THE GREATEST VIDEO GAME OF ALL TIME?
Who can say, but Kanye probably thinks there are things that are successful about it and things that can be improved. And he’s right.
14. I see there are blue lightning bolts: what the heck do those do?
They give you energy to perform tasks. The tasks help you level up your character.
15. And are those other things called KardashiKoins? (Because they should be.)
I’ve been calling them K-Stars but I don’t know what the official name is. Your suggestion is not bad though.
16. What do those do?
They’re one of the in-game currencies. K-Stars give you access to outfits for your character, decorations for your house, and they can also help you through difficulties in interpersonal relationships.
17. Is that like a BitCoin?
It is in no way like a Bitcoin.
18. Are they equally as or more useless than a BitCoin?
This is a legitimately good question. I don’t know enough about Bitcoin to answer it.
19. Does Kim Kardashian understand the negative effects of the lifestyle of superficiality and excess she’s promoting?
Kim Kardashian is promoting Kim Kardashian. The end.
20. Does she really think this is the best use of her time and image?
She used her time and image and attention to help create a game that million of people have played, and that millions of people love, and which in turn is generating millions of dollars in revenue. Some people write mean-spirited content on the internet for pennies, in order to make their rich male bosses even richer. We make decisions in life.
21. Oh wait she probably doesn’t care because money, does she?
Who on this planet doesn’t care about money.
22. If someone’s making money and free will is involved clearly there are no negative consequences, right?!
I do not understand this question.
23. But still, she’s essentially telling people to cultivate a self-obsessed attitude. Does she get that?
I’ve been playing the game for a month and I don’t feel like I was ever given the message that I should cultivate a self-obsessed attitude. Very honestly, the message of the game to me is: Handle your business. But when interacting with art and games we bring our own personal set of experiences to the table, which informs what we see in them.
24. Is perpetuating an image of women as material-object and fame-hungry obsessives really something she’s OK with?
You can play as a man in the game and all the activities and objectives are exactly the same.
25. Why is any of that fun?
There’s probably some scientific answer to this having to do with endorphins and neuro-chemicals, but explanations of the experience of fun and what it means evolutionarily are way beyond my pay grade.
26. How is any of that fun?
Oh this one’s easy. It’s fun because it’s silly. It’s ridiculous and the game is aware of its own ridiculousness. It’s there in every interaction, every objective. Also it’s fun to pick out clothes for your character. Also it’s very fun to see what your friends are doing in the game. I’ve probably added 30 new friends on GameCenter since starting the game, and its made a lot of my friendships outside the game more fun and interactive around this shared experience. The existence of this game has led to my having more and deeper relationships with many people I previously only vaguely knew online. My life is richer because of this game. This isn’t to say it would be fun for everyone (it wouldn’t!) but to miss out on that opportunity because of lofty ideals about free will and superficiality? Come on.
27. Isn’t, you know, actually accomplishing something more fun than this?
This is a false dichotomy. Playing a game doesn’t prevent you from accomplishing other things. This morning I did a 3-hour photoshoot and then I wrote this interview.
28. Does she understand the ramifications of her actions at all, ever?
I would suggest this game is proof that she does.
29. Wouldn’t she like to be better? Wouldn’t you, Kim?
I think everyone on some level is striving to be better. Emotionally, spiritually, as a writer and pop culture critic, whatever!
30. Wouldn’t you be happier if you actually stood for something worth believing in?
There’s no objective universal morality, and no one is strictly good or evil. People in Israel probably wish the people in Gaza stood for something worth believing in. Different people believe in different things. It is not for any one person to define what everyone else should believe in.
31. No? You’d rather get money and be married to Kanye West because fame is far more important than substance or using your influence for good?
Ha ha what? What are you even mad about here. If fame is less important than substance why did you publish this article? All I can tell you is that it’s very easy to hate everything, but life becomes much more enjoyable when you approach it with an open heart and mind. You don’t have to like everything and everyone, but let people love the small things they love. They mean you no harm.
vaguely Chinese looking writing. There are over 100 cities in China with more than one million people! This is going to be impossible. But the buildings in the foreground had a vaguely university-esque feel. From there, some Google searching and the university (and then the hotel) were identified. However, unfortunately China is not included in the Google Street View database. So we learned about and tinkered with map.qq.com which, while being a good substitute for Google Maps, unfortunately is only in Chinese. Anyways, after some fumbling through the map we identified the best possible street view of the Jiangong Jinjiang Hotel Shanghai. Let’s say its the 23rd floor.
