This is photographer Bela Borsodi's cover for VLP's album Terrain. It's a single image of very carefully positioned objects seen at a very specific angle. Below, see a revealing photo and "making of" video.
    
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Zackc43
Shared posts
24 Jun 22:47
Single photo looks like four
by David Pescovitz
J.w.dillow, Starflier and one other like this
24 Jun 10:01
HOWTO singlehandedly erase traffic jams by driving slow
by Cory Doctorow
Jeffrey sez, "A fascinating article about what causes traffic jams, and how to drive differently to help ease 'stop and go' traffic. It is interesting to see how basic human instincts (or maybe just the way we have been taught how to drive) can turn a crowded road into one that is jammed with stop and go traffic. It is probable that self-driving cars will eliminate many of these issues before many humans have time to learn these techniques. However, it is very encouraging to hear the author's anecdote about how he was able to singlehandedly erase a traffic jam in his own lane:"
On a day when I immediately started hitting the usual "waves" of stopped traffic, I decided to drive slow. Rather than repeatedly rushing ahead with everyone else, only to come to a halt, I decided to try to drive at the average speed of the traffic. I let a huge gap open up ahead of me, and timed things so I was arriving at the next "stop-wave" just as the last red brake lights were turning off ahead of me. It certainly felt weird to have that huge empty space ahead of me, but I knew I was driving no slower than anyone else. Sometimes I hit it just right and never had to touch the brakes at all, but sometimes I was too fast or slow. There were many "waves" that evening, and this gave me many opportunities to improve my skill as I drove along.
I kept this up for maybe half an hour while approaching the city. Finally I happened to glance at my rearview mirror. There was an interesting sight.
It was dusk, the headlights were on, and I was going down a long hill to the bridges. I had a view of miles of highway behind me. In the other lane I could see maybe five of the traffic stop-waves. But in the lane behind me, for miles, TOTALLY UNIFORM DISTRIBUTION. I hadn't realized it, but by driving at the average speed, my car had been "eating" traffic waves. Everyone ahead of me was caught in the stop/go cycle, while everyone behind me was forced to go at a nice smooth 35MPH or so.
The Physics Behind Traffic Jams 
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J.w.dillow, Laurakoontz and one other like this
21 Jun 13:50
Mic Check, Mic Check of the Day: ASL Interpreter Steals Wu-Tang's Bonnaroo Performance
At the last weekend's Bonnaroo Music Festive, the legendary hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan had their own ASL interpreter Holly show off some amazing dance moves while signing the lyrics to each song.
Note: this video (inevitably) contains some language.
Submitted by: Unknown (via YouTube)
21 Jun 13:07
Power on and off here. Was up to 200 kph winds last night! Much debris. Will resume normal blogging when I can *ekk* :-?
WELLINGTON HIT BY MASSIVE STORM - SLOTH REMAINS CALM...
by noreply@blogger.com (How to Carve Roast Unicorn)
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| Mr Sloth |
Power on and off here. Was up to 200 kph winds last night! Much debris. Will resume normal blogging when I can *ekk* :-?
20 Jun 14:16
N-Words, Plantation-Themed Weddings and More
by Josh Marshall
We've got the full transcript of Paula Deen's affinity for the N-word, plantation themed weddings and more. Here's our report.
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19 Jun 19:17
Ravens when they were kids
Before the big plays, contracts and headlines ... Look through childhood photos of current and former Ravens (and find out who that cute clown is above).
19 Jun 12:28
Chris Christie confesses he is a Dallas Cowboys fan
by NFL.com
New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who is running for re-election this year, made an interesting reveal Tuesday when asked about his favorite sports teams.
19 Jun 11:44
Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Bill Nye, Science Warrior
by Anne Laurie
Okay, it’s a little galling to realize that I have no fond memories of watching the Science Guy on TV because he’s the same age I am. I am informed, by the NYTimes, that a lot of you kids feel differently:
AMES, Iowa — As the car pulled into the parking lot of a Starbucks, William Sanford Nye unknotted his trademark bow tie and slipped it off…
Roughly two minutes later, before his drink was ready, he was recognized anyway. Two awed young women approached to ask if he was really Bill Nye the Science Guy. Like more than a dozen other college students who would approach him over the next several hours, they asked if they could take a picture with him. He smiled, took a proffered iPhone, scooched the students in and, in a practiced gesture, stretched out his arm to take a shot of the three of them that you just knew was totally going on Facebook.
Mr. Nye had come to talk to them, and a few thousand of their friends, at Iowa State University. If he were a politician, college students would be his base. Instead, he is something more: a figure from their early days in front of the family TV, a beloved teacher and, more and more these days, a warrior for science. They, in turn, are his fans, his students and his army.
They have gone from watching him explain magnetism and electricity to defending the scientific evidence for climate change, the age of the earth and other issues they have seen polemicized for religious, political and even economic reasons.
He takes on those who would demand that the public schools teach alternative theories of evolution and the origins of the earth — most famously, in a video clip from the site BigThink.com that has been viewed some five million times. In it, he flatly tells adult viewers that “if you want to deny evolution and live in your world — in your world that’s completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe — that’s fine. But don’t make your kids do it, because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future.” …
Adorable video at the link.
Apart from standing proudly with the Reality-Based Community, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
18 Jun 18:54
Ten Ways to Make a Dungeons & Dragons Movie Not Suck
On May 7th of this year, Warner Bros. announced that they had acquired the rights to make a new Dungeons & Dragons film. Initially, there were minor cheers throughout D&D fandom. Warner's claim hinted that they were going to make a feature film, and this was a significant step up from the past two made-for-TV films that had been broadcast on SyFy. It wasn't until people read deeper into the Deadline.com article that the collective groan of D&D fans could be heard across the multiverse.
The article was filled with conceptual landmines that set off the "it's going to suck" sensors of RPGers everywhere. Phrases like "the film will be produced by... producer Roy Lee and Courtney Solomon...[who] directed a 2000 Dungeons & Dragons feature," and "The studio...will use a script by Wrath Of The Titans and Red Riding Hood scribe...David Leslie Johnson. That script, Chainmail, was acquired last year as a free-standing project, based on an obscure game that was also hatched by D&D designer Gary Gygax before he and Dave Arneson launched D&D" were of particular concern. In the minds of many fans, any connection with Courtney Solomon automatically induces one to write the project off as a potential nightmare. Add to that the fact that the PR staff at Warner didn't know enough about the property to know that Chainmail is more than "an obscure game also hatched by" Gygax, it was the original combat system for D&D. The current combat system was referred to as the "optional system" in the original white box set.
Given that Chainmail also happens to be the name of a trademarked miniature skirmish game published by Wizards of the Coast (read: HASBRO) that had rules designed by Chris Pramas which had been released in the early 2000s, and that the past two D&D films were direct-to-TV affairs, it is not surprising that Hasbro almost immediately filed a legal complaint asking for an injunction preventing any development of a D&D film by Warner Brothers or by Sweet Pea Entertainment (Courtney Solomon's company).
Hasbro claims that Solomon's license with Hasbro for the D&D film and TV rights expired when Sweet Pea Entertainment paid Hasbro $20,000 in fees for the broadcast of Dungeons & Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness. It is quite certain that Solomon will file a counterclaim asserting his rights, and a mass melee will ensue in which all parties will attempt to use Vorpal Blades or maybe even Blackrazor to settle the issue. You can read the initial lawsuit at The Hollywood Reporter.
Continue reading "Ten Ways to Make a Dungeons & Dragons Movie Not Suck" >
18 Jun 12:10
The Coolest Flags in Human History
by Vincze Miklós
A flag embodies the hopes and aspirations of a country or state. It's more than just an emblem — it's a grand statement. So it's too bad so many flags are kind of boring. Here are some flags from throughout history (plus a few current ones) that bring some serious pizzazz.
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17 Jun 22:18
Scientists may have discovered how cancer spreads around the body
by George Dvorsky
Biologists at University College London say they now know why cancerous cells group together and spread to different parts of the body. And shockingly, it appears that the malignant cells are migrating by literally chasing healthy cells that are trying to get away.
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15 Jun 22:46
I’m thinking here about the different approaches to development represented by Games Workshop and whoever is running D&D. (Hasbro? Wizards?) I don’t actually know much about this in detail but I will give you my impressions.
And there shouldn’t be any art in there that does not do that. It’s not like you have to be fair to all the mediocre art that didn’t get in. You don’t have to be complete. It’s not an encyclopaedia or a dictionary, it’s just pretending to be one. It’s something else wearing the disguise of a reference book. A kidnapper dressed as a policeman. The book isn’t here to define all the fourteen varieties of ghost you can find. It’s here to make you feel like there is a ghost in the room, even more, it wants to turn you into someone who wants to make others feel that way. It’s a conductor for a kind of cultic behaviour.
Art in Games
by noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Stuart)
(I am so happy to be done writing monsters that I started thinking on the page about art and, like what usually happens when I think without an end in mind, I went on and maybe did not reach a conclusion.)
I have often wondered about the purpose of art in games. One of the first things I have usually thought is that the word ‘purpose’ was the wrong one to use.
A highly purposed piece of information is one created with a very particular intent. It locks into place like the necessary part of a machine or the action of a plan. Probably the lowest form of this in RPG’s (or at least the most spat upon) is placeholder or ‘filler’ art, designed to fill the formatting gap in an already poorly designed thing. Art created simply because there is an unexpected place for art to be. We tend to think of good art the other way round. First the Artist has a semi-magical idea about something they want to make, then they select tools and forms most appropriate to the idea, then they make the thing, then we arrange the space around the thing. The space comes last . Whether this is how things work in real art I do not know. I suspect you could start at any point in this process and work out to the rest. That is how I write anyway. As you can see from the rambling of this initially-simple paragraph.
(It only crosses my mind now that I think about it, but filler art, or the circumstances that bring it about is/are like graffiti and that filler art would probably be better if the people commissioning and creating it thought about it that way. They both begin with an unexpected space which has to be filled quickly rather than a grand idea which must be incarnated a particular way. Would ‘filler’ art be better if instead of giving artists a bunch of rules and guidance RPG companies simply told them to fill a particular space as vibrantly, rapidly and aggressively as possible in as short a space a time as possible, and, instead of keeping everything in accordance with the theme and aesthetic of the product, they were told to attack, subvert and re-write their own intent onto the space? What would that look like in a book? Inconsistent certainly, but vibrant and alive.)
ANYWAY
Let’s ignore everything I just said or inferred and assume that filler art is bad because it is ‘purposed’ and that it is the most bad kind of RPG art because it has the most purpose and is the most like a machine part.
So, to return to my original point, art in games that is good is often the art that has least ‘purpose’. Generally this means that the art is generative, it came in earlier in the planning process, perhaps it originated the planning process. It wasn’t made to fill a role, it created the context in which other decisions were made.
So, to return to my original point, art in games that is good is often the art that has least ‘purpose’. Generally this means that the art is generative, it came in earlier in the planning process, perhaps it originated the planning process. It wasn’t made to fill a role, it created the context in which other decisions were made.
I’m thinking here about the different approaches to development represented by Games Workshop and whoever is running D&D. (Hasbro? Wizards?) I don’t actually know much about this in detail but I will give you my impressions.
It looks to me that from the beginning Games Workshop brought in artists and based their games and ideas and products on art that people had already made. The process I imagine goes like this:-
GW Manager – “John, paint something.”
John Blanche- “What do you want me to paint.”
GW Manager- “Something big and intense that kind of goes ‘RAAWWGH’ with the dark future and maybe a fetish nun.”
John Blanche- “OK I did this.”
GW Manager- “What are those things?”
John Blanche- “They are floating skulls with wires.”
GW Manager- “But why?”
John Blanche- “because they are floating skulls”
GW Manager- “Then they shall be named ‘servo skulls’ and we will make models out of them.”
And that’s where servo-skulls came from, someone saw them in a painting.
Whereas I imagine the scene at D&D HQ more like this.
D&D Manager- “We need a picture of a Troll”
Artist- “What does a Troll look like?”
D&D Manager- “It looks exactly like this” (gives in-depth description)
Artist- “Ok how about this?”
D&D Manager- “More Trollish”
Artist- “How about now?”
D&D Manager- “Yes. That is a Troll. That is the picture I told you to make”
I remember seeing pictures of the inside of Games Workshop and seeing that they had Blanche art everywhere and that the bar was a Dwarf Bar and thinking ‘yes of course, if you have a game company, that’s what you do, why make games at all if you can’t do that?’. And I think I recall seeing the inside of Wizards of the Coast on the internet and thinking ‘that looks like an office, the walls are bare, there are cubicles’, and I think I was vaguely passive-aggressively satisfied by this because of course Americans wouldn’t get it. They would think the point of having a games company was to make an efficient machine that churned out games.
(All of this may be bullshit. GW and Wizards are both corporations. Neither should be regarded as ‘nice’. A machine of capital and greed cannot be ‘nice’. However..)
However, it does seem that GW regards artists quite differently in its development process. They are brought in earlier, given more freedom and generally seem more organically integrated. At least from listening to GW interviews, it seems that people are feeding off each others ideas and images quite a lot.
I do think the standard of art in GW is higher than that in D&D, I think part of the reason for this is the way the companies are organised.
(Sound reasons to disagree with this include ‘it’s just your taste in art’, ‘GW lucked out by having some exceptional artists in from the beginning’ and ‘you don’t know enough about this to be commenting on it’ also ‘you are prejudiced against American cultural products because you are a thoughtless, smug little-englander and you have found a way to be chauvinist about fucking toys.’)
So I have given something a negative definition. Art is good when it is not ‘purposed’. That is very easy to do when you are being Mr Smug on a blog, but it is not so useful when you are actually trying to make a thing. When you move from being the consumer to the producer, negative descriptions are not enough. You must go towards, rather than away. This has lead me to think about what I want in art and what it should do.
The answer I have come up with is ‘Psychic Energy’. It’s not a metaphor. I mean ACTUAL PSYCHIC ENERGY THAT CAN PROJECT YOU INTO ANOTHER WORLD or at least with the desire to be in that world.
Some games are well-designed and bad and some games are fucking horrific train-wrecks of design and are still good. The difference is that some have psychic energy and some do not.
Some clusters of ideas, description and actions can fill you with the imminence of being in another world. I shit you not, the gun descriptions in Cyberpunk 2020 were actually transcendent artefacts. Because of course the nightmare future would be described through its guns. And through a long list of guns too. (And when I say ‘world’ I don’t just mean as in like the land and things there, but also the relations between people that might take place there.)
Because the game is not written down in front of you. It takes place between you and other people. And generally the game doesn’t need to inspire everyone playing to the same extent. Mainly it needs to jam a sliver of desire into the head of the DM. They will then actively seek out people to make the game happen. Very often games are forced into being by one person with a weird idea stuck in their head. So that’s what art has to do. Jam that idea into the brain.
It’s not like advertising. ‘Hey come to this world and have fun’. It’s more like otherness. Like a shard of something else poking through. That is what good RPG art should be. An incursion from, or relic of, some other place. Presenting itself so vibrantly and powerfully that it leaves puckers in the skin of reality that won’t heal. Like finding something in your drink that won’t dissolve, sliding around in the bottom of the glass. An idea rolling around in the back of your brain long after you picked it up. Something you can’t quite forget.
And there shouldn’t be any art in there that does not do that. It’s not like you have to be fair to all the mediocre art that didn’t get in. You don’t have to be complete. It’s not an encyclopaedia or a dictionary, it’s just pretending to be one. It’s something else wearing the disguise of a reference book. A kidnapper dressed as a policeman. The book isn’t here to define all the fourteen varieties of ghost you can find. It’s here to make you feel like there is a ghost in the room, even more, it wants to turn you into someone who wants to make others feel that way. It’s a conductor for a kind of cultic behaviour.
So that is my rule for art I suppose.
You will have your own list of games that have or do not have psychic energy. It’s actually easier to notice it’s presence when it doesn’t coincide with quality. That is to say, bad art or bad games with psychic energy let you see the energy more. You will notice this when you go to see a film and when you ask yourself if you liked it, you cannot deny it was good, but nothing happened inside you. Something can tick every box of things you think you like, it can be well made, with care, but when you leave the theatre there is nothing. And sometimes you cannot say it was anything other than bad, but it still had an effect on you inside.
(My most recent sense-memory of this is Star Trek Into Darkness. Whenever I watch the work of JJ Abrams and/or Damon Lidlehoff, I am eventually filled with a peculiar feeling of inner deadness. It’s opposite is probably Baz Lurmans The Great Gatsby. Which is a terrible terrible film. I literally had my head in my hands at multiple points because Baz Lurman has the subtlety and discretion of a caffeinated ten-year old. Yet. There was something there. It was, at least, not a pale shadow of endlessly digested ideas. It was a bit like being spoken to intently by an amusing idiot on the bus. They might be fucking stupid, and you are glad to be getting off the bus, but they are themselves entire. They have something inside them.)
15 Jun 20:25
"My Dad Was in a Band," blog archiving vintage bands and the Dads in them
by Xeni Jardin
Just in time for Father's Day: mydadwasinaband.com.
At Dangerous Minds, Richard Metzger explains the insane story that led to the blog's launch.
Was your dad in a band? Well, they're accepting submissions.
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Andreidignart and -1 others like this
15 Jun 15:17
What do Utah and Pakistan have in common? by @DavidOAtkins
by noreply@blogger.com (thereisnospoon)
What do Utah and Pakistan have in common?
by David Atkins
Pakistan and Utah have an interesting thing in common: porn and repression.
Pakistan, world volume leader in searches for gay porn:
Utah, porn consumption capital of America:
It's fascinating to learn just how much conservative fundamentalists have in common with one another.
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by David Atkins
Pakistan and Utah have an interesting thing in common: porn and repression.
Pakistan, world volume leader in searches for gay porn:
Among the least tolerant nations surveyed was Pakistan, where only 2 percent of those surveyed said society should accept homosexuality. That statistic might be unsurprising, considering that gay sex is illegal under the Pakistani penal code. But what is surprising is how those views compare to Pakistani search traffic around gay-porn related terms.
As of this writing, Pakistan is by volume the world leader for Google searches of the terms "shemale sex," "teen anal sex," and "man fucking man," according to Google Trends. Pakistan also ranks second in the world (after similarly gay-intolerant Kenya) for volume of searches for the search term "gay sex pics."
In its report, Pew noted that countries exhibiting the highest levels of gay tolerance are largely secular, whereas nations where religion is central to public life—such as Egypt, Nigeria, and Pakistan—tend to reject homosexuality. But in Pakistan, what's even more peculiar is that the highest number of hits for some of these terms, including "shemale sex," come not from Pakistan's cosmopolitan centers, but from Peshawar, a bastion of conservative Islam, lately known in the West as a counterterrorism frontline.
Utah, porn consumption capital of America:
Besides its political bent, Utah's per capita appetite for online pornography makes it the nation's run-away red-light state.While Utah may not be the top state in the U.S. for gay porn searches, Utah is one of only three states (along with Oklahoma and Delaware) where anal sex is among the top three search terms.
A study by a Harvard Business School professor shows that Utah outpaces the more conservative states -- which all tend to purchase more Internet porn than other states.
Online porn subscription rates are higher in states that enacted conservative legislation banning same-sex marriage or civil unions and where surveys show support for conservative positions on religion, gender roles and sexuality, according to an analysis published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives.
The Beehive State briefly experimented with a state-funded porn czar until 2003. The study examining online porn usage from 2006 to 2008 shows those efforts apparently failed.
It's fascinating to learn just how much conservative fundamentalists have in common with one another.
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14 Jun 20:23
We were talking about wargames...
Mandy: "In high school I knew this guy who had this whole room in the basement completely taken up by this huge warhammer table, I considered fucking him just so I could play."
Me: "That is the only time that sentence has ever been uttered in the entire history of time."
"Well, I didn't. He was old. My friend did, though, they were cousins."
"Oh, it just got dark. Why does it always have to get dark?"
"Well it was an accident, they..."
"THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT BETTER."
"...they were just really drunk and..."
"AAAH DARK"
Point is Mandy really likes Warhammer...
...but we knew that.
The Internet Isn't Real. Chocolate, Incest, And Miniatures With Broccoli On Them Are.
by noreply@blogger.com (Zak S)
Kirin Robinson wrote Old School Hack, a nifty, streamlined, award-winning free version of '80s D&D that, in addition to being played by real people, is also unaccountably popular among desperate lunatics who think that there are no good reasons to play actual '80s D&D.
Kirin also curated Women Fighters In Reasonable armor, a nifty tumblr of pictures of women in fighting gear that, in addition to being a great resource for real people, is also unaccountably popular among desperate lunatics who think that pictures of boobs and boob armor are where sexism comes from.
Every week he completely ruins his reputation by running Rappan Athuk at his house using Basic D&D and running it for us. And then we make fun of the desperate lunatics on the 110 home.
Here's Mandy's instagram feed for today's game...
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| Yes, I have mansplained Mandy that this outfit she drew is Not Reasonable. She stubbornly refuses to accept my incisive critique. |
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| The dwarf's name is Jam. He's the only person who hasn't died yet. |
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| P.S. That's a piece of broccoli |
Mandy: "In high school I knew this guy who had this whole room in the basement completely taken up by this huge warhammer table, I considered fucking him just so I could play."
Me: "That is the only time that sentence has ever been uttered in the entire history of time."
"Well, I didn't. He was old. My friend did, though, they were cousins."
"Oh, it just got dark. Why does it always have to get dark?"
"Well it was an accident, they..."
"THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT BETTER."
"...they were just really drunk and..."
"AAAH DARK"
Point is Mandy really likes Warhammer...
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14 Jun 20:05
The 16 Worst Coaches In Modern NFL History
by Dom Cosentino
We are living in the Golden Age of Terrible NFL Coaching. The NFL rulebook and offensive and defensive playbooks have become so complex in the 21st century that only a hobo savant like Bill Belichick can even come close to making every right decision over the course of an entire football game. And new coaches are under so much immediate pressure to win that they are given virtually no time to figure out HOW to be an NFL head coach. They are quickly dispatched and then—because fans hate it when teams hire a retread—are often replaced by someone with even less experience, someone who is even less likely to figure out how to manage timeouts before and after the two-minute warning.
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14 Jun 19:38
Weird Stats of the Day: Toddlers killed more Americans than terrorists did this year
Opposing Views brings some frightening (though obviously tongue-in-cheek) statistics about the future of America: more American lives have been claimed by gun fatalities involving American toddlers than terrorist attacks this year. In the past five months, a total of 11 people were killed by preschoolers with firearms compared to the four that perished in the Boston explosions -- the only terrorist attack to occur this year. We can only hope the NSA will ramp up surveillance on children less than 5 years of age in order to counter this threat to national security.
Submitted by: Unknown (via Opposing Views)
14 Jun 12:50
Lawsuit: "Happy Birthday" is not in copyright, and Warner owes the world hundreds of millions for improperly collected royalties
by Cory Doctorow
Copyright scholars have long been pretty certain that "Happy Birthday to You" is in the public domain, despite the fact that Warner/Chappell claims copyright on it and charges impressive licensing fees to use it in public performances. Those fees, however, are much lower than a copyright lawsuit would be, so everyone shrugs and pays them. Until now.
A documentary film company working on a movie about "Happy Birthday" has assembled a huge body of evidence showing that the song has been in the public domain since the 1920s, and is suing Warner to get them to return the hundreds of millions they've improperly charged in licensing since. This is gonna be great.
The full lawsuit, embedded below, goes through a detailed history of the song and any possible copyright claims around it. It covers the basic history of "Good Morning to You," but also notes that the "happy birthday" lyrics appeared by 1901 at the latest, citing a January 1901 edition of Inland Educator and Indiana School Journal which describes children singing a song called "happy birthday to you." They also point to a 1907 book that uses a similar structure for a song called "good-bye to you" which also notes that you can sing "happy birthday to you" using the same music. In 1911, the full "lyrics" to Happy Birthday to You were published, with a notation that it's "sung to the same tune as 'Good Morning.'" There's much more in the history basically showing that the eventual copyright that Warner/Chappell holds is almost entirely unrelated to the song Happy Birthday to You.
The detail in the filing is impressive, and I can't wait to see how Warner/Chappell replies. As the filing notes, there are a variety of copyright claims around the song, but all are invalid or expired, and the very, very narrow copyright that Warner/Chappell might hold is not on the song itself. In other words, Warner/Chappell is almost certainly guilty of massive copyfraud -- perhaps the most massive in history -- in claiming a copyright it clearly has no right to.
Lawsuit Filed To Prove Happy Birthday Is In The Public Domain; Demands Warner Pay Back Millions Of License Fees [Mike Masnick/Techdirt]
(Image: 53/365 - 02/22/11 - Happy Birthday, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from shardayyy's photostream) 
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Luke.stirling, Dantose and 2 others like this
13 Jun 21:02
This Is What Halfling Cities Are Like Now, Ok?
by noreply@blogger.com (Zak S)
(Google + threw this together in about half a day. Good job, weird community.)
Zak S:
Halfling city. Not The Shire but like a whole city (not a village) of, for, by, halflings. What's that like? Do they just run around stealing from each other? Is it Munchkinland? What's the deal?
HALFLING ROME
Jeremy Duncan:
Lots of parallels to Republican Rome-- you've got this tension where they really want to identify as simple no-nonsense homespun plainspoken gentleman farmers, but through conquest/trade they've had a taste of the luxury and sophistication of the otherplacians and they're not giving that up anytime soon and the halfling language is simple and pure and honest but it's not what you use for talking philosophy or poetry or art. Strong reactionary element that laments contemporary morals and calls for a return to the simple stark values of a semi-mythical past but goddammit the kids are plucking their foot-hair and writing parodies of time-honored pastoral poetry in Elvish.
Zak
So assuming they went through their Roman phase ages ago (copying elves, but being militaristic about it) and then keep going until they get all stylized like feudal Japan after it stopped copying China. What's that like?
Jeremy
You have a lot of agriculture-based rites and rituals and public offices that are purely symbolic and so ornate and stylized that they're almost unrecognizable as such. Clans and extended families are hugely important to the point where you are basically no-one if you're not part of one-- citizenship is dependent on being formally adopted by one of these.
VENN ARCHITECTURE
Anders Nordberg
Laid out in crop circles?
Zak
Laid out in Venn-Diagram terraces that map family relations So when families marry, their estates are redrawn to intersect and the newlyweds build a house on the overlap
Jeremy
They're assigned to it. There's a bureaucracy in charge of demarcating these things that is thoroughly riddled with corruption and under constant pressure of violence, blackmail, bribery, etc. from the families/individuals involved to draw things up in their favor. This is so common that halfling has a whole vocabulary to refer to it, but it's considered shameful to use such words or admit their existence in the presence of outsiders.
Zak
You can trace family relations by noticing styles in the architecture. Like iron railings with spheres at the corners means the Sockeye family is in there somewhere.
APPLES AND OWNING STUFF
Jeremy
Every piece of land, even if completely useless for building/agriculture/industry is owned by someone. There is no public land, strictly speaking. That park over there is owned by a consortium of families and those desiring to use it without harassment must negotiate a web of favors and petty shows of compliance and submission.
Zak
So if you want to go out for a stroll, you basically have to go visit everyone whose land you're strolling over (at minimum) and bring gifts. So if you want to just wander around on a summer day you leave the house with this hilarious pile of wine bottles, apples, chickens and distribute them to people (or kids they send to retrieve it) as you cross their property.
Jeremy
As this might cause you to lose face, there is the implicit understanding that such gifts, if not presented immediately, will be forthcoming -- perhaps dropped off with a client of the family after dark, or the person is tacitly agreeing to owe the family a favor at some unspecified time in the future.
Zak
You therefore propose to a girl by standing under her window for a week without giving her anything
And naturally your youthful roguish burglar-types are trained at circumventing the rules by dodging quickly from property to property via alleys, clotheslines, storm drains, etc.
Jeremy
What visitors take to be quaint, charming displays of courtesy and good manners are carefully nuanced coded messages that are only fully understood by other halflings. Human visitors have attended banquets at which accusations are thrown about, vengeance sworn, and 100-year feuds begun without being any the wiser.
Burglary is weirdly ritualized like Aztec Flower Wars.
CUSTOMS AND ENTERTAINMENTS
Jeremy
Halfling streets are tidy, orderly, and free of litter. There are no beggars in halfling cities as the clan provides for all of its members and disowned halflings are exiled on pain of death.
Also incredibly tidy and fastidious in appearance. A halfling with hair/clothes/etc. even slightly dishevelled or out of place is assumed to be in mourning.
Will go into freak out/paranoia mode if offered something for free. They experience culture shock bordering on nervous breakdowns when first arriving in human cities.
Luigi Castellani
What about gigantic rabbit dens? A la Watership down.
Jeff Rients
Social life revolves around tea time and croquet. Anything conflict that can't be resolved by forcing the participants to sit down to the elaborate tea rituals ends up in a high stakes croquet game.
Geek Ken
Gentlemen prefer smoking pipes and playing baduk* (not chess mind you, too constrictive and not imaginative enough). An occasional pint is also part of this afternoon ritual.
Ladies prefer gardening. While a bounty of vegetables is a staple in every halfling home, ladies prefer to engage in floral gardens of intricate patterns. The competition among them is immense. Nearly every year a story will circulate of a jealous rival taking some shears and a spade to a more skilled neighbor's garden in the middle of the night.
Such skill and efforts in these floral gardens are widely appreciated by many races. Tales are not uncommon of halfing women enticed by human nobles seeking their knowledge and abilities to foster similar gardens on their estates. Such women typically return after a year with a chest of gold in tow. As for the elves, few of them will freely admit their envy at the horticultural skills possessed by these smaller folk.
Tim M.
When a halfling goes on an "adventure", it's not a quest for gold and glory, or whatever, it's a stress test for the hearth and home (the familial society). However long it takes the society to absorb and redistribute property and belongings indicates how important (honorary/functional) that halfling was to the society as a whole.
Jeff Russell
Awesome stuff. But if we're riffing on a "decadent Rome" and "everything is owned" vibe, where are the slaves? Especially, the ancient Gnomish burial rites, where slaves fought for the honor of the deceased have become enormous public games. Human and dwarf fighters are prized for their ferocity and made to fight with caricatured interpretations of their "native arms". Occasionally, for special occasions (like election season) wealthy clans bring in more exotic creatures like ogres and giants or even flailsnails. Halflings attribute their fine gardens to the blood spilled.
HALFLING DUELS
Alex Chalk
Courtesy, civility, and hospitality are valued above all, especially by the elite. In a crowded space where reputations are made and broken and honours are insulted, it is not uncommon for a duel to break out.
Halflings duel not with swords, but with hearths.
In a halfling duel, the insulted party ("defender") invites his opponent ("offender") to be his guest indefinitely. To decline to is considered an act of the utmost vulgarity, but to accept is to risk one's reputation -- and possibly more. The offender then lodges with the defender, and the defender is expected to be as gracious and welcoming a host as possible. Slight oversights, such as uncomfortable accommodations, a fireplace left cold, a meal served too late, grouchy servants, undusted seats, understocked larders etc. are unpardonable. The offender must also be a most excellent guest, providing his host with good company and stories, keeping clean, respecting the home, minding his please-and-thank-yous, helping bring the tea to the garden, and taking care never to insult his hosts.
There are a number of ways to end a duel:
1. A party dies. Note that for either party to take actions that would bring about the other's death is an unpardonable sleight, and so death must be due to natural causes (age, illness, etc.). Given that some duels have been known to last decades, this end is surprisingly common. The survivor maintains his honour.
2. One party admits that the other is an okay guy. This is basically a form of surrender and constitutes an admission that you were wrong to begin with. It is highly embarrassing and ruinous to one's reputation.
3. Both parties realize that they've forgotten why they're dueling. This is pretty much a draw, but happens from time to time.
4. One party is no longer able to fulfill their duties and admits defeat. Because hospitality and politeness take priority above all, it is unpardonable for either party to go to work, attend a funeral, or do anything but stay in and keep each other company for the duration of the duel. Duels that go on for too long are known to destroy families and households. If the defender can no longer afford to have his guest, or else if the offender must take leave on some urgent business, that person loses.
Zak
Halfling novels grow out of hearth duellists writing extensive detailed legal notes of the courtesies paid and not paid by their hosts. They read like Jane Austen on Adderall.
Jeff Russell
Resolved duels have even reignited in the form of literary one-upsmanship. The entire halfling newspaper industry is the city's longest running feud with the worst remembered reasons for starting.
METAL AND WHEELS
Kirk Stone
I always saw halflings as anti-city rurals. So if they've fallen to living in a city, I'd envision it as an industrial, sweatshop-filled nightmare. Little black-lungs and gin everywhere.
Gus L
Yeah I am kind of wondering about the resources for these densely urban, urbane and wealthy halfling. Where do they get food and teapots? Even in a shire like rural halfling space manufacture and large scale farming seem necessary. Since they aren't magic the labor must be performed by a huge underclass. Every goodnatured tea full of jammy biscut is at the expense of a dozen drudges or slaves.
In a city, where are these toilers? Farming in distant prison style thorps? In lightless warrens beneath the city?
Who keeps the workers down? Halfling taskmasters and grim pretorians? Brutal moronic halflings sports grown to the size of giants? Minotaur mercenaries?
Barry Blatt
Urbanisation either doesn't agree with halflings, or they take to it splendidly, depending on your point of view. When some bright spark got his watermill hooked up to a giant dough mixer, and the rival mill down the road got to mass producing pie crusts, halfling industrialisation and urbanisation was inevitable. Massive pie-mills are surrounded by back to back terraces and grotty tenements, music halls collide with gin palaces and sweetshops, vast amounts of food are carted into town by rail, yet still most of the populace go hungry and the rodents run scared.
The wealthy millowners have colossal bacon waistcoats and beef jerky corsets, dress mainly in a combination of liquorice and meringue and have to be lugged around by reinforced sedan chairs and juggernaut sized carriages made of gingerbread. Flat capped proles that dare to drool in their presence are taken up alleyways by blue uniformed rozzers (whose tall hats conceal a meat pie, for emergencies only you understand) where they are beaten senseless with truncheons made of a special black pudding that has iron filings instead of oatmeal in the recipe.
The only way to keep the grub flowing inwards is to make the rural hobbits dependent on mass produced ready meals, so home baking has been made illegal and hit squads led by huge snooted 'Cooksniffer Generals' roam the countryside. If they detect the aroma of fresh baked bread and meat pies they have the miscreants toasted (on a fork (and after extensive sampling of the evidence of course)).
As a result of all this processed food urban halflings have begun to mutate, becoming green skinned, diversely proportioned and liable to asexual fission. In fact they are now becoming goblins.
Daniel Dean
It's Deadwood.
Mak H
We mustn't let ourselves be fooled by Tolkien's hobbits. Though the Shire was a rural setting, the hobbits we got to know best were property-owning elites who epitomized bourgeois values. (Bourgeois literally, town- or city dweller.) Conservatism, civility, civic-mindedness, conformity, frugality -- these values would be right at home among the burghers of any free town of medieval Europe. So that's your model right there.
Jeff Rients
Medium sized visitors might not be able to see the ground, due to all the pipesmoke hovering at waste level.
Chris Tamm 107 PM
Kids book fatipuffs and thinifers - art of steampunk fatties with luxury and food everywhee, millitary trenches shaped for fat ppl with pillows and snacks etc - book has war of fat vs thin - labour saving machines, pillows and snacks everywhere.
MEDICIAN MACHINATIONS
Zak
While you'd think they'd be wiped out immediately by larger foes, a city built at half scale is actually a pretty formidable defense all by itself--every door is effectively a murder hole every window an arrow slit, every alley a crab trap.
Alex Chalk
Unlike most the cities of most races, where living high up is a luxury, halfling real estate is most expensive at the lowest levels. The poor have to huff and puff up and down stairs every day, while the well-off stay close to the ground. Only the richest can afford traditional hole-dwellings.
Zak
Well, naturally, since the higher-up people are the newlyweds, with homes built on top of the more established families lower down..
Alex
In order to preserve hillside real estate, buildings tend to get piled on top of hills. Cities end up looking like a bunch of mounds of buildings with grassy valleys in between. Each mound ends up functioning like its own little neighbourhood, with well-money leaders at the bottom.
(Alex attached a drawing which I can't get the link to work).
Tony Demetriou
Actually... higher levels have more significance than just wealth. Halflings are well known for their accuracy with thrown weapons & slings - so a higher window is a military advantage. Much like in Renaissance Italy, if two families have a rivalry, one will add an extra floor to their tower, to put them above their rivals, allowing them to shoot downwards. Their rivals (if they can afford to) will then increase the height of their building, and so it escalates.
During peaceful times, these higher floors are given to the newlyweds, should other rooms not be available, or to those of lower standing.
You can tell the neighbours that have had historical conflict from the teetering towers marking their borders.
This poses a particular problem for those that are rich, overcrowded, and need to extend. If they have good relations with their neighbours, adding another floor will almost certainly sour that relationship. Thus, the only option is to covertly arrange for their neighbour to create a situation demanding that they respond, allowing their response to be another floor on the building, before making peace again. Sometimes this is tacitly acknowledged, with two firm allies both insulting each other, building new floors, and making peace within the span of a week.*
Those rich enough to own a large amount of land don't have this problem, as they can build new levels to their central buildings without threatening their borders. (But those rich enough to hold that much land will often build on their edges, secure in the knowledge that they cannot be easily challenged.)
Due to all of this, the city has areas of high buildings, and other areas with only very low buildings. It's quite schizophrenic in that regard.
Poorer families that can't afford all the construction sometimes have low buildings with one or two tall towers.
Zak
*Or they just arrange a wedding.
Tony
Indeed. Weddings are great political tools.
Often, weddings are so useful, that assassinations are also needed to "free up" a family member for another wedding.
Tony
Most assassinations, of course, are conducted via poisoned food. Assassination knowing exactly what food to poison to get the target, and only the target, is recognized as an art.
It is also shameful to hire an assassin to kill a rival family member - a member of your household needs to be the one to do it.
Anyone caught poisoning food is likely to create a political uproar, both because it's obvious who is involved, since the assassin is a direct relative, but also because... well, despite the death sentence, a well-to-do hobbit is unlikely to actually get executed. Instead, political favours, bribes, and promises of alliances & weddings will be exchanged, until things are smoothed over. At great cost to the family that attempted the assassination.
Jeff Russell
The halfling legal code is extremely draconian and harsh in its charges, arrests, and sentences. But all halflings know the proper technicalities, lobbying, and bribes to diffuse almost all situations. Big people from far lands shout their protests as they're executed for minor crimes like littering, and their halfling executioners look on aghast that the poor fool won't just file the right complaint to have their sentences commuted.
Tony
Especially when, even if they don't file the right complaint, a simple gift would be enough to allow the halfling to accidentally misfile the charge, allowing the visitor to be set free. Often the halfling is so eager to help out the poor foreigner that they'd accept any triviality as the gift. And yet these foreigners either refuse to do even these simple, obvious steps to help themselves, or they are so insanely insulting that they call it a "bribe", forcing the socially-conscious halfling to have no choice but to refuse the "bribe" and prosecute the visitor.
It's very frustrating for the halflings, but how do you explain the problem to foreigners while still being polite? Remember, Jeremy pointed out that, while there is a whole vocabulary around this, it's shameful to explain, or even admit the existence of it, to outsiders.
Jeff Russell
Well, of course. Explaining it would imply that you thought the visitor was ignorant or unintelligent, which is just plain bad manners. Even worse than the embarrassment of well-meaning agents of the court forced to carry out unpleasant duties on hapless foreigners are those savvy halflings who make the necessary gifts and pull the necessary strings in order to gain the implicit (but definitely required) return favors of a new ally, only to see that ally say "thanks", offer some pittance of a gift (which must be accepted) and then try to go about his business! Such shunned halflings make extremely tenacious and vicious enemies.
Tony
But the worst thing about the situation is, should you be shunned in that way, your only recourse is to offer a duel. As Alex Chalk points out, the duel involves inviting the enemy to live as your guest indefinitely. The foreigner is often so ignorant that they then reject the duel!
So not only do they have a tenacious and vicious enemy, but they are under the mistaken impression that this enemy is actually an overly-helpful halfling who keeps pressuring them to accept gifts and hospitality.
... and then they eat something that just so happened to be poisoned, and die never knowing what they did wrong.
CURSES, RUDENESS, COUPS, AND FAT GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS
Tony
Cursed items - you would expect these to be a problem for halfling society, as a halfling cannot politely refuse a gift. But, due to this, the cursed item can then be re-gifted with equal ease. This means the items cycle through multiple hands so rapidly that their curses rarely have time to take effect. It is, of course, polite to warn someone that your gift is cursed. Strangely, it is not considered impolite to give a cursed item as a gift.
Foreigners, especially ones who have offended a halfling in the way +Jeff Russell just mentioned, often find themselves the "lucky" recipient of one of these gifts. Depending on how offended they are, Halflings sometimes "forget" to mention the curses.
Other times, the halfling gifts a foreigner with a cursed item, warns the foreigner that it's cursed, and then is aghast when the foreigner refuses their gift.
-
Halflings don't have a word meaning "rude" - the closest word they use is "exile" - to a city-dwelling halfling's mind, there is no conceivable way that someone can be impolite and still be part of society.
Rudeness, of course, does not get you exiled. The halflings just don't have any other way to express the concept.
-
There is a story of a coup, where one disgruntled family riled up mobs of halflings, marched on the government, and overthrew it. They then installed themselves as the new rulers of the city.
However, since travelling through other halfling's property obliges you to give them a gift, and so many halflings marched throughout the city during this coup, the new rulers were so beholden by obligation that, in repaying all these new debts, they ended up bankrupting their family, and had to sell off their newly-gained government offices.
Although there were some changes, most of the original officials got their positions back, and not much changed. There has never been another attempt at a coup. The halflings claim this just proves that their social structure is superior to the chaotic, violent, politically unstable societies of humans.
This event may or may not have actually happened. Although it is well documented in a number of historical records, the records don't agree on which family instigated it, or what year it happened.
-
Tax collectors don't exist. The entire government & civil services are all run by "volunteers" - and halflings go to a lot of trouble to gain political positions, often paying large amounts of money to buy their way in.
Due to the rampant bribery, Halflings in government positions unofficially make a significant profit. This means that the lower-level government positions are more eagerly sought out than the higher positions, because they afford more contact with the citizens, and therefore more bribes.
Higher government positions are used to help out the halfling clans or for playing politics, rather than for personal profit via bribes.
Although there are theoretically elections for each government office, no election has been held in living memory. In practice, positions are passed from the previous holder to their chosen successor. In the case of untimely death, government positions are distributed the same as other belongings.
Many halflings who hold government positions also hire bodyguards, as it is not uncommon for them to be blackmailed or physically assaulted. Not all halflings use bribes to coerce an official to swing things in their favour.
This has led to the halfling phrase "bought the wrong job" - which is used much the same way as us humans would say "bit off more than he could chew" (Halflings would never use a phrase implying that overeating is bad.)
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13 Jun 15:19
The Racist Origins of a Racist Nickname
by Scott Lemieux
Pareene with some useful background about why the Washington D.C. football team has a vile racial slur for a nickname. It’s not an unbroken tradition, and it wasn’t a term that was considered racially neutral at the time:
This Washington football team was named by one of the most vehement racists in the history of American professional sports. When George Marshall bought the team in 1932, they were called the Boston Braves. He changed the name — to a slur, because he was a racist — and moved them to Washington. He made “Dixie” one of the team’s fight songs and refused to hire black players well into the 1960s. The NFL integrated in 1946 but Marshall’s team held out until the federal government actually forced them to field black players in 1963. The all-white Washington teams of the 1950s and 1960s were among the worst in the league, but segregation was more important to Marshall than winning football games. The NFL had actually already been racially integrated until black players were suddenly banned in 1933. Interviews with owners suggest that Marshall was responsible for the ban.
This is the man who named the team and white supremacy and racism obviously informed his every decision. In his will he insisted that his foundation not spend any money on “any purpose which supports or employs the principle of racial integration in any form.” It is extremely hard to believe that this man selected the name — specially changed the name from a less offensive term for American Indians to this term — to “honor” anyone, the usual argument used by the team’s modern defenders.
The current owner of the team, an incompetent lying corporate buffoon named Dan Snyder, is not as racist as George Marshall. (Few living people are.) He is merely dumb, vain, greedy and stubborn.
I also agree that media organizations — which generally have rules against using racial slurs — should refuse to use the name.
11 Jun 17:15
The Greatest Science Fiction-Themed Bars and Restaurants on Earth
by Vincze Miklós
Zackc43Giger Bar - I want to go to there.
You may never get to drink at the Cantina — but you can still visit some real-life watering holes that celebrate your favorite stories. We've already shown you science-fictional bars we'd like to visit and people whose homes are based on spaceships, but here are real joints that boast a TARDIS, AT-ATs or the Martian landscape.
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11 Jun 16:01
Have (Ahem) Digestion Problems When You Fly? Try Taking Bitters
by Cambria Bold
Ok, I'm going to be frank: there is really nothing quite so uncomfortable and embarrassing — for you and the people around you — as having digestion issues when you're on a plane. You can pop a Gas-X, but I hate those chalky, chewable tablets. This is why I was really intrigued to hear of another remedy: bitters!
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Bobsoe likes this
10 Jun 19:43
Austerity: the greatest bait-and-switch in history
by Cory Doctorow
Mark Blyth, a delightfully sweary Scottish economist, talks for about an hour to Googlers about the stupidity of austerity as a means of recovering from recession, describing it in colorful, easy-to-grasp language. This is brilliant, accessible and important economics:
Governments today in both Europe and the United States have succeeded in casting government spending as reckless wastefulness that has made the economy worse. In contrast, they have advanced a policy of draconian budget cuts--austerity--to solve the financial crisis. We are told that we have all lived beyond our means and now need to tighten our belts. This view conveniently forgets where all that debt came from. Not from an orgy of government spending, but as the direct result of bailing out, recapitalizing, and adding liquidity to the broken banking system. Through these actions private debt was rechristened as government debt while those responsible for generating it walked away scot free, placing the blame on the state, and the burden on the taxpayer.
That burden now takes the form of a global turn to austerity, the policy of reducing domestic wages and prices to restore competitiveness and balance the budget. The problem, according to political economist Mark Blyth, is that austerity is a very dangerous idea. First of all, it doesn't work. As the past four years and countless historical examples from the last 100 years show, while it makes sense for any one state to try and cut its way to growth, it simply cannot work when all states try it simultaneously: all we do is shrink the economy. In the worst case, austerity policies worsened the Great Depression and created the conditions for seizures of power by the forces responsible for the Second World War: the Nazis and the Japanese military establishment. As Blyth amply demonstrates, the arguments for austerity are tenuous and the evidence thin. Rather than expanding growth and opportunity, the repeated revival of this dead economic idea has almost always led to low growth along with increases in wealth and income inequality. Austerity demolishes the conventional wisdom, marshaling an army of facts to demand that we recognize austerity for what it is, and what it costs us.
Mark Blyth: Austerity - The History of a Dangerous Idea (via Memex 1.1) 
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J.w.dillow, joaocosta_pt and -1 others like this
07 Jun 22:36
KALQ is the new QWERTY
by Mark Frauenfelder
KALQ is a keyboard layout designed to replace QWERTY for thumb typing on a tablet. The creators of KALQ say that eight hour's use will train you to be able to enter text faster than you would be able to with a QWERTY layout. Android users can install it for free. Leo Kent of Humans Invent has more.
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07 Jun 11:57
Wright Thompson just wrote a piece for ESPN The Magazine about racism in soccer in Italy and around
by Greg Howard
Wright Thompson just wrote a piece for ESPN The Magazine about racism in soccer in Italy and around the world. If you're into soccer, or sports, or racism, or great writing, you should probably read it.
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06 Jun 19:58
SB Nation went deep on Montaous Walton, the phony baseball prospect who created an identity on the i
by Dom Cosentino
SB Nation went deep on Montaous Walton, the phony baseball prospect who created an identity on the internet, tricked the media, and secured an agent before finally getting arrested. Go read it. [SB Nation]
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06 Jun 16:47
At the first senate debate in Massachusetts, Bernstein's questions were on point. Gomez's answers might as well have been in Finnish.
Markey And Gomez Square Off
At the first senate debate in Massachusetts, Bernstein's questions were on point. Gomez's answers might as well have been in Finnish.|
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06 Jun 14:36
The Last Sports Stars of Video Games' Cartridge Era [Corrected]
by Owen Good on Kotaku, shared by Dom Cosentino to Deadspin
![The Last Sports Stars of Video Games' Cartridge Era [Corrected]](http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18pwxb3h8s0sfjpg/ku-xlarge.jpg)
Monday, Jason Kidd gave the NBA his retirement notice. He and Grant Hill were the only active players this year that appeared in NBA Jam: Tournament Edition from 1994. Like veterans of a long-ago war, day by day we are losing the athletes of video gaming's cartridge era. These are the last of them.
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