Interesting Links for 24-08-2016

[andrewducker]

Britain’s Hardest Workers: the most gobsmacking reality TV show to date (tags: work tv poverty ) What kind of game is No Man's Sky, and what kind of game is it not? Framing is everything.
(tags: games space ) The Rio Games Were An Unjustifiable Human Disaster, And So Are The Olympics (tags: olympics sport corruption inequality OhForFucksSake )

Comments

[bart_calendar]

How long before the torries make it illegal to fuck during the winter?

[gonzo21]

Your comment along with the comment below in unfortunately amusing juxtoposition just made me spit my tea out.

[bart_calendar]

Ha!

[cartesiandaemon]

*snork*

[sashajwolf]

Almost everything is better with dogs :-)

[mair_aw]

(Gender pay-gap) almost two-thirds (63%) of those earning £7 per hour or less are female.

I went back to look at the date on that article, because as far as I know the minimum wage is more than that.... apparently not for under-25s, though.

[danieldwilliam]

I am a bit surprised that the US is doing much in the way of offshore wind. I mean they're not. I'm surprised that anyone is looking at it commercially. I thought they had plenty of onshore wind in the empty Great Plains to be going at.

I wonder if the extra demand for turbines and towers and installation will help bring down the costs.

[andrewducker]

Good point. Considering the USA is almost designed for solar and onshore wind, why go for offshore, unless transport costs are ridiculous.

[octopoid_horror]

Presumably because due to US politics, some states with coastlines rather than plains are getting all up in this?

[danieldwilliam]

It might be political but it's still a bit strange.

It's probably already the case that unsubsidised solar PV and onshore wind in good locations for them in the USA are cost competitive with gas and coal.

So, if I were the federal government I'd have a hard time justifying putting any public funds in to offshore wind until all the onshore wind and solar PV was built (or the cost had come down.)

And I think it would be a difficult sell for state level public funding. If you're the legislature of a coastal state your message is basically spend tax revenue on buying expensive electricity or just buy cheaper electricity that someone else is producing anyway. I know which way I would vote.

Which is probably why there are currently one a handful of very small arrays.

So I'm a bit baffled by what's changed to make the offshore wind developers so bullish about the immediate future. Maybe they are just a bit over-excited because they can see that making offshore wind cost competitive might be possible at some point in the future.

[80hz]

Re. Kimonos: I've never really understood the cultural appropriation issue, even though I've read a bazillion articles like that one. Can someone explain it?

Re. Gender pay gap: I've never really understood this one either. All the illogic in the arguments against the pay gap makes me think people arguing about it really want something else they're not saying. But what?

[andrewducker]

I'll have a go at the cultural appropriation one

[80hz]

On the macro level, most cultures borrow from--and really, are changed by--other cultures. This cultural borrowing happens a lot, in all directions, all over the place. Think about the common foods people eat, clothes people wear, languages people speak, religions people follow, pets people keep, technologies people use, and so on. For any of these, it's easy to find something that came from somewhere else and was changed significantly along the way, lost its symbolism, gained totally different meanings and connotations, etc.

It's on the micro level--of a person seeing his cultural artifacts borrowed and distorted--where we start to hear complaints of cultural appropriation. So far, it's understandable: the person might think his cultural artifacts are being disrespected, and he feels disrespect reflected toward him as a result.

However, as I said above, most cultures are borrowing from each other. People who complain about cultural appropriation are typically themselves appropriators of other cultures

[naath]

I think you overestimate people's ability to reflect before typing...

Also I think some people are much much more attached to their culture being *theirs* than others, they don't want blending and sharing, especially of sacred ritual objects. Also it's kinda annoying when a thing that you wanted to signify your in-group goes viral and now everyone does it - it can no longer signal in-group-ness.

But it is very very silly when people who are *not part of a culture* decide to police that culture's boundaries, without prompting from people who *are*.