Interesting Links for 19-10-2015

[andrewducker]

• Nice Fire Phoenix Puppet
  • (tags: video fire puppets )
• Amazon sues1,114 fake reviewers
  • (tags: Amazon reviews fraud )
• Soldiers share fascinating (and frankly horrifying) stories about Afghanistan
  • (tags: afghanistan )
• There will be no second Scottish Independence referendum without a year of 60% support
  • (tags: Scotland independence referendum snp )
• MIT

Comments

[momentsmusicaux]

Also, both people wearing them makes it a distributed ledger!
(Except for the bit about who owes who, but you wouldn't take that on erroneously. Though I suppose one person could lose the white bracelet.)

[andrewducker]

I'm sure there are people out there working out how to incorporate a check-bit (or two) to ensure that there's no data loss :-)

[pashazade]

"Who in their right mind would want to visit Dubai?"

A question I've often asked myself. The answer, I think, is "people who really like luxury shopping and are fine with slavery."

[andrewducker]

That's pretty-much how I feel about it too.

[cartesiandaemon]

It's also the case I don't know how many human rights abuses happen at some point in the products I buy in this country -- I obviously want it to be low, but I haven't done enough research to know what to avoid a lot of the time. So I imagine going to Dubai would be worse, but I don't know that for sure.

[miramon]

I worked in Abu Dhabi for 6 months and we visited Dubai a couple of time to talk to suppliers and once just for tourism. We went to see the old part of Dubai (yes, it still exists) and it was quite nice. We also went to the mall and the Burj Khalifa, because after you've spent 6 months in Abu Dhabi you'll go and look at anything that isn't the same old stuff. Can't see why anyone would get on a plane to visit though, not unless you're really interested in mad architecture or on your way somewhere. Not too keen on the Emiratis' attitude to "guest workers" but when you're chucking unfeasible amounts of money in all directions, there's always going to be layer on layer of middlemen taking their cut and making sure that the people at the bottom get screwed. Most of the people in the middle aren't the Emiratis, they don't like anything that resembles work in my experience. Most of them have no real conception of what the effort of building a city in the middle of a barren waste actually entails - I spent part of my childhood in Abu Dhabi

[andrewducker]

Here's a pretty good piece on why housing is so hard:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34570348

Under new planning laws introduced by the Conservatives, local councils are required to "boost significantly the supply of housing" and must commission an independent Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) to work out how many homes are needed in their area

[bart_calendar]

It's interesting to me how Margaret Atwood has kept herself off these lists with her insistent arguments that her works are not science-fiction, even though they clearly are

[andrewducker]

I've seen her recommended before:
http://best-sci-fi-books.com/23-best-science-fiction-books-female-authors/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10614607/Best-sci-fi-and-fantasy-novels-of-all-time.html

And included in choosing other SF writers herself:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/may/14/science-fiction-authors-choice

And she has an entry in the encyclopedia of Science Fiction:
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/atwood_margaret

So it's not like she's ignored.

(She isn't to everyone's taste, of course.)

[bart_calendar]

Yeah, but she's weird too. She often bitches on Facebook and Twitter when she is included, which has to make people not want to include her.

[andrewducker]

True. If she was happier being included it'd probably happen more.

_I_ wouldn't want to piss her off by including her when she didn't want to be!

[gwendysmile]

I'm backing the looncup. Here we go, cyborg vagina!

[andrewducker]

I really hope it works well! More cyborg future please!