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

[steepholm]

In the Jackson version, the caterpillar spends most of the franchise being chased by a white larva.

[alitheapipkin]

Ah Altered Carbon, a really good book except for the bit where they download the main character into a female body just so they can torture him in a way they couldn't a male body. I so wish his editor had made him change that (seriously people, male bodies have orifices too, really not necessary), I read it years ago and still cannot get past that 'really good BUT...'

[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

[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.

The Illegitimacy of Aragorn's Claim to the Throne

[cartesiandaemon]

I'm often annoyed by the way people sometimes write about fiction. I think the essay has a good critique of what happens in fantasy that's a bad model for the real world

RE: The Illegitimacy of Aragorn's Claim to the Throne

[andrewducker]

"But it's odd to me to call it out in an in-universe way"

Surely that's the only way to critique fantasy/sci-fi? You have to work with the rules laid out in the book, not the rules that "real life" works with, because it manifestly isn't real life.

And what the post-author is pointing out is inconsistency - "Gondor’s own laws and rulers even recognized how ridiculous Aragorn’s claim was" is pointing exactly that out.

I'm not convinced you actually read the article here, as your points are actually refuted in it:
everyone accepted Stewards as holding the throne for the king in waiting
"Arvedui, the last king of Arnor before he drowned in a shipwreck, once claimed the throne of Gondor, but the Council of Gondor rightly rejected him, saying the royal line of Gondor was descended from Anárion, not Isildur."

Aragorn's lineage gives him all sorts of special powers, both in nobility, and good judgement, and strength of will, and leadershipSee the whole paragraph starting "Even worse, Aragorn’s supposed suitability to rule is directly

[kalimac]

What's actually going on here is that cartesiandaemon knows Tolkien better than the author of the article does, despite only claiming to remember it vaguely.

everyone accepted Stewards as holding the throne for the king in waiting
Yes, in fact that's true, and the symbolism upholds it. Denethor holds court from the plain Stewards' chair below the empty throne, and says things like "The rule of Gondor is mine and no other man's, unless the king should come again." The question at issue in Arvedui's claim was whether the line of Isildur should be considered legitimate claimants to the throne of Meneldil. Arvedui argued that it should be, and "To this Gondor made no answer."

Aragorn's lineage gives him all sorts of special powers, both in nobility, and good judgement, and strength of will, and leadership
It did indeed. The whole paragraph about the corruption of the later rulers of Numenor ignores the fact that the entire house of Elendil - kings of Gondor, Aragorn, and all - are not descended from the later rulers of Numenor. They are in fact

[andrewducker]

All of which are good, well-evidenced critiques of the article. No problem there. (And my memory of the books from about 30 years ago are not great, so I'm perfectly happy to accept your superior knowledge here.)

But the original comment by Jack ignored the fact that the article had referenced them at all. Which I found odd.

[kalimac]

1) I'm from the USA, but I've never heard of our supposed culinary delicacy "ants on a stick." I have, however, in Chinese restaurants had "ants climbing up a tree," which is glass noodles with bits of ground meat.

2) I've only ever seen one of the tv shows in the "famous couples" bit, and evidently not enough of it to be able to make any sense of its parody.

3) On the other hand, I chortled at the Peter Jackson parody. Yes, that'd be just like him.

4) Star Wars release pushed back to December: Excellent example of the weird experience of being told that something you hadn't even known is not so.

5) Sad music: Really confusing, and probably confused. Says that music only sounds sad because you know the performer died young, that there's nothing inherently sad in the music. Then changes its mind and says there is. Then changes its mind halfway back again. Needs to read Deryck Cooke's The Language of Music, which actually analyzes the point

[andrewducker]

It's not so much a parody of what would actually happen to famous couples. More of the audience's expectations that they're about to get either some fluffy fanfic about how lovely those couple's lives would end up being, or a sarcastic look at how awful they really were. And instead what we get is a sci-fi short story that slowly intrudes into this expectation, taking us from there into an apocalyptic fightback against some kind of invaders.

I agree about Peter Jackson. I'm not actually sure how to feel about him any more. His sensibilities and mine clearly match up in some ways, and clearly so very not in others. Which I find more difficult than if he made movies that I just didn't like in the slightest.

[kalimac]

My problem is that the movies just don't appeal to me, at all. Whereas the books that inspired them are - as you can see from the way I natter on about them - my dearest literary loves in the world. The difference is so vertiginous that I simply can't understand people treating them as interchangeable manifestations of the same thing. Especially since, when I complain about the differences, the same people say "Of course they're different, you idiot: one's a movie and one's a book."

[andrewducker]

The thing is, there are lots of ways of translating a book into a film. And not all of them require you to insert an incompetent government official who largely gets laughs for slapstick and dressing up in women's clothing.

Or ridiculously long sequences in which your largely interchangeable main characters run along CGI corridors engaging in silly antics to kill CGI goblins in a manner that looks more like a computer game than anything else.

My standards, in this case, are undoubtedly not as high as yours. But still _really_.