Interesting Links for 06-11-2013

[andrewducker]

• iPhone 6 could have sapphire screen as Apple opens plant
  (tags: apple screens iphone )
• Considerable gender, racial, sexuality differences in attitudes toward bisexuality
  (tags: society lgbt )
• India launches first mission to Mars
  (tags: mars india space )
• New Katy Perry album declared a bio-hazard by Australia
  (tags: music australia funny )
• Wartune

Comments

[erindubitably]

Wartune - Male Gamers Only

[andrewducker]

I clicked that. And then rapidly clicked off it again. I may take a look tonight, when I have some brain-bleach handy :->

[erindubitably]

I'm confused as to why - it's got fewer of the ads in than the article you linked to and is mainly humorous text.

[andrewducker]

I wouldn't have a page with _one_ of those ads open at work.

And the text looked like humorous fanfic, which I'm comfortable with, but is liable to get me some very odd looks from people here at work if they wander past my desk (which they do all the time, as it's a massive open-plan office).

[bart_calendar]

The reason that bisexuality doesn't get taken seriously is that if someone can get turned on by both pussy and dick the patriarchy assumes that person will eventually chose dick.

[andrewducker]

That's because dick is _awesome_.

And people are idiots.

Definitely one of those two.

[spacelem]

Also, those of us who prefer to settle down with just one person inevitably have to pick one. And if you are a guy who settles with a woman, that clearly means you're really straight and trying to get attention (or you're in denial, and it's actually a loveless relationship).

[danieldwilliam]

It’s quite cool that India have a Mars mission.

But also, they are still in receipt of international charity and aid.

Not sure I can reconcile the two of those.

Mind you, it’s a bit difficult to reconcile the fact that the UK has Mars missions and Trident and there are still three regular beggars on my route to work.

[andrewducker]

It's a difficult one. Aiming every bit of society's money at fixing the very worst problem, and not spending any money on other ones until that's fixed isn't an approach that's going to produce the best results.

On the other hand, it _is_ scandalous that we still have people living on the streets.

[danieldwilliam]

Just turning this over in my head a bit I think it’s a bit political

[ext_208701]

It's not that I don't care about the homeless, but as a company sponsor of two spaceflight organisations I happen to think that inspiring the next generation of kids build awesome things is really important.

For every kid that grow up to be an astronaut, tens of thousands of others make incremental improvements in engineering everything in everyday life. The reason those ten thousand do it, is because when they were small there was a possibility that if they were really lucky and worked really hard, they might get to walk on the moon.

Instead I run an ISP which is probably rather more useful to society. But if there was one thing that might motivate me to grow a million pound company into a multi-billion pound company, being able to buy a trip to the moon would be it.

[bohemiancoast]

I've only played one of the GTA games (the DS one) and it eventually got a bit too much for me. In general I do have great difficulty playing immoral characters in video games, even when the violence is dialled right down. My worst example was a sweet Wii game called Little King's Story, where {SPOILERS FOR AN OLD GAME} despite the cute theme, it's apparent from very early on that you are being manipulated by your vizier to invade the countries of people who have not in fact done anything wrong; I couldn't stomach it and had to stop.

This is also why I never attack anyone in Civ or similar unless they've attacked me first, a strategy which does make it harder to win.

[andrewducker]

I hit the same point with real life RPGs. I felt bad attacking Orcs...

[danieldwilliam]

I have learnt to enjoy the amorality although I find it hard in Civ to start a fight.

I've had to practise and I tend to find I need some apparantly legitimate causus belli.

[ggreig]

The best RPG I ever played in was a home-grown one called New Jerusalem, and the setup was a small German Protestant town in the 17th century, on the borders with Faerie, where a few godly men and women went out to smite the ungodly abominations in the wilderness (goblins, hobgoblins, giants and so on). Thing was, a lot of those "abominations", being less dogmatic than the townspeople, could be easy to develop a sympathy for. Of course admitting this in town would be a good way to get burnt at the stake. Cue interesting conflicts between a publicly professed "faith" and more modern morality, with different players finding very different balancing points between the two, and lots of hypocrisy and paranoia. The game ran for ten years (roughly 1980-90 - I played during the latter half) and spawned a collaborative fiction sequel.

[resonant]

That traffic stop story from New Mexico was horrifying.

It's so hard to prove a negative. Would they eventually have tried removing his internal organs to keep on searching?