Interesting Links for 26-10-2015

[andrewducker]

• Things Not To Do In Bed
  • (tags: sex advice funny )
• The cost of replacing Trident is really £167bn, new figures suggest
  • (tags: nuclearweapons UK )
• I am now officially terrified of Mississippi
  • (tags: usa republicans poverty religion )
• I agree with this review of Crimson Peak (Good, pretty, could have been so much better)
  • (tags: review movies

Comments

[kalimac]

re Mississippi: oh, there are people like that all over the US. (And have been for a long time: "Keep government out of Medicare" [a government program] or "off Social Security" [another government program] were spotted on signs years ago.) And there's people like them elsewhere. In Britain, you call them UKIP

[andrewducker]

You should write up your list of Greatest SF films!

[kalimac]

In the course of explaining why Star Wars wasn't one of them, I once did.

We want plates

[fanf]

One of my favourite FFS/SMH Twitter accounts https://twitter.com/wewantplates

RE: We want plates

[andrewducker]

I love WeWantPlates.

[momentsmusicaux]

Ha! That Montpelier spin-off off Queensferry Street (name escapes me; not Tiger Lily but the other one) has exactly those serving sets for their lunches: wooden platter, with a little wire basket for the fries. I don't mind ramekins for things that justify them, but the basket just seems sort of silly. And I'm not keen on my food being on a piece of wood either.
That said, their lunch deal is pretty good (or was, last time we went there was pre-baby...).

EDIT: Indigo Yard.

[momentsmusicaux]

That story about the restaurant serving food on iPads turned out to be a spoof, didn't it?

[andrewducker]

I think so.

I really, really, hope so!

[momentsmusicaux]

You know, we say that now.
But then in 10 years' time plates that have an animated background or show you stocks info or kids' cartoons might be a totally normal thing.
And won't we feel stupid. Or smug. Delete as appropriate.

[momentsmusicaux]

The bit about 'undisclosed subsidies' from the king of Morocco makes it sound like this sort of scale of project would struggle to get off the ground in a democracy -- such as here, where we're still faffing about with renewables and political will crumbles every few years. It would be very ironic for civilization and humanity in general if, in hindsight, democracy turned out to be a very bad thing for fixing climate change, and despotism a good one. (China's handling of carbon emissions springs to mind too.)

[andrewducker]

Probably depends on the democracy. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country Germany has the most solar power in the world, and last I checked it was a democracy.

In fact, looking at the table on the right, at least 75% of the world's solar power is in democracies.

[ext_2864067]

I'm not sure why there's any problem with serving food on weird and interesting-shaped things.

Presentation's part of the meal, after all. It seems overly conservative to me to rule out anything sanitary and safe.

[andrewducker]

If it was something unusual, sure. Or that was better for serving food on. Or actually aesthetic.

But it's now got to the point where large quantities of people are serving things on not-plates, for no aesthetic reason, and despite it making it actively harder to eat it.

[ext_2864067]

Utility isn't everything, and the aesthetics are subjective.