Interesting Links for 21-01-2016

[andrewducker]

• Sky will push all subscribers onto IPv6 network by summer 2016
  • ipv6 internet sky
• The ants on a stick puzzle
  • ants puzzle
• Whatever happened to television’s most famous couples? (No, really, you want to read this. All of it.)
  • tv scifi funny satire
• PETER JACKSON: 'THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR WILL HAVE TO BE 5 FILMS'
  • peterjackson funny movies
• Nature

Comments

[cartesiandaemon]

What bothered me about the "lowest difficult setting" essay is it seemed like, "you're playing on medium without realising it, but everyone else is playing on hard" would have the same meaning as "you're playing on easy" but have less resistance. Like, it seemed to me the important facts are (1) for some people, life is a lot harder than others and one mistake can be fatal (2) you may not have noticed this but it's true anyway. Which of those to imply is the "normal" level of difficulty is arbitrary, as the important facts are the same either way. Like, the essay claims to be aimed at straight white men, but it felt like it was letting the side down if it doesn't insult them enough.

Whereas to me, it seems like most lists of privilege, 20% are things nobody should have, but 80% are things everyone should have, so it makes more sense to say "you're playing on medium but other people didn't get that option" (which is shocking for most people who think in those terms, but not as insulting as "easy").

But I know when I've asked this before, most people have denied that they saw any difference between the two approaches, so maybe it's in my head only.

[newandrewhickey]

But "medium" doesn't work in the analogy. Straight black man, or straight white woman, or gay white man, for example, would all be medium difficulty. Hence the line "The player who plays on the “Gay Minority Female” setting? Hardcore."
So -- assuming for one moment that binary sexuality, race, and birth gender are the only axes of privilege we're talking about so things like disability, non-binary gender, trans status, non-binary sexualities and so on are to be ignored, which is obviously in itself hugely problematic, but probably necessary when dealing with Scalzi's intended audience -- straight white male *has* to be the easiest difficulty setting if you want to get across the idea of intersectionality, along with the idea of privilege. It can't just be medium.

[cartesiandaemon]

Hm. But I don't equate "easy" and "easiest". Some games have "easy" and "medium", other games have "medium" and "hard" (or not exactly, but it's common to have easy, medium, hard, very hard, impossible, and ultra-hardcore, medium isn't in the middle). And also, to me, "medium" suggests the level people should be playing at. "We need to help people up to your level" is a hard sell, but "we need to tear you down to their level" is a much much harder sell.