Interesting Links for 16-03-2015

[andrewducker]

• Russia's Putin reappears after 10-day absence
  (tags: Russia viaAlexTFish )
• This murder case is just _weird_
  (tags: murder WTF viaMyBrotherMike )
• Women on the Pill face increased risk of Crohn's disease
  (tags: hormones contraception health women )
• RBS - My Part In Its Downfall…
  (tags: banking rbs Scotland epicfail )
• 'Radical' business rates review

Comments

[philmophlegm]

Types of fan fiction:

1. Fiction that the author wouldn't admit to writing for fear of being arrested.

2. Fiction that the author wouldn't admit to writing for fear of ridicule.

3. Fiction that the author is proud of and is good enough to be published, whether commercial or not.

4. Fiction that the author is proud of but which is isn't remotely good enough to be published, or in fact read by other people.

From what I can see, category 1 is far more common than you might expect, category 4 is probably the most common and category 3 is very, very rare.

[andrewducker]

I wonder if there's a long tail effect - whether looking at any of the larger fanfiction sites would give a curve where very few pieces got a lot of attention/positive reviews and lots get almost no views/bad reviews. Or if it's a bell curve.

[chess]

Your problem there is that reviews calibrate to the level of the site - mediocre fanfiction on a site full of terrible fanfiction probably gets a larger share of the good reviews than on a site full of excellent fanfiction. Also popularity of setting and characters dwarfs any consideration of quality of fiction (although you could deal with that by picking some really popular areas and looking at fics within them).

[kalimac]

The RBS guy's comment about glittery new corporate headquarters reminds me of the corporate headquarters of Apple (and they're building a new one), Google, and Oracle (most glittery of them all - it's four or five gleaming glass towers in a park), all of which I drive by frequently.

[gonzo21]

If the neoliberal capitalist system is crumbling, then I would replace it with capitalism controlled by strong independent government oversight and regulation.

[andrewducker]

That would seem altogether more likely as a replacement than ripping/replacing.

[gonzo21]

I would even if need be disband some, or nationalise them, the worst behaving corporations.

I certainly wouldn't let them pass this TTIP bill, that's for damned sure.

[cmcmck]

So why DO some guys draw willies all over the place?

Especially ones drawn by someone with the artistic and intellectual capacity of a pickled gherkin (come to think of it, that's what they often end up looking like too). :o)

For all the title, the link doesn't give us any idea, but they've been doing it at least since classical Greek and Roman times.........

It's a puzzle, so it is!

[andrewducker]

I assume it's a mixture of transgression, the imagery being simple, and thinking about sex a lot.

[gonzo21]

You know there's a theory that says the earliest stone axes were carved to resemble phallic symbols, and this connection between the earliest tool that allowed us to start clearing land to start farming, kickstarting civilisation, and the penis, became strongly linked.

[rhythmaning]

The fact that you've tagged my post with "epicfail" amuses me no end!

(As does "the RBS guy"...!)

[andrewducker]

As fails go, they don't get much more epic than the RBS one. Taking most of the economy with it!