February 8, 2018
Dystopia for Sale
How a Commercialized Genre Lost its Teeth (Brady Gerber, Literary Hub).
“Don’t reinvent the wheel, just realign it.”
Why is Civilization 5 still more popular than Civilization 6? [PC Gamer] “It's hard to make a new strategy game that can compete with Civilization—even when that new strategy game is also Civilization. When Civilization 6 released on Steam in October 2016, it peaked at more than 160,000 concurrent players, quite a feat for any new game. But after the excitement of its first month, Civilization 6 has failed to surpass Civilization 5 in terms of regular players, according to Steamcharts. It’s gotten pretty close in recent weeks as expansion hype for Rise and Fall builds, but Civ 5 still holds the edge. Similarly, community members reported that Twitch viewership between the two games tended to favor Civ 5 prior to press and streamers receiving pre-release code for the expansion (though we were not able to independently verify this). Why is this? Why are 4X fans (at least on Steam) still sticking to the old warhorse rather than moving on to the new hotness? Is it discontent with changes made in the newer iteration? Is it the price difference? Was Civ 5 just that good?” [more inside]
How Delivery Apps May Put Your Favorite Restaurant Out of Business
“We know for a fact that as delivery increases, our profitability decreases,” she said. For each order that Mulberry & Vine sends out, between twenty and forty per cent of the revenue goes to third-party platforms and couriers...For a sense of why a thirty-per-cent delivery-service charge is so problematic, consider that in the restaurant world, notorious for its slim profit margins, an industry-standard budget apportions thirty per cent of revenue for the cost of ingredients, thirty per cent for the cost of labor, and the remainder for “everything else”—rent, utilities, insurance, supplies, credit-card fees, and profit. (slNewYorker)
Afterimage Requiem
Afterimage Requiem is a large-scale visual and sound installation by Kei Ito and Andrew Paul Keiper that probes the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and their intertwined family histories. The exhibition includes 108 human-scale photograms made using sunlight, light sensitive paper and Ito’s body evoking those lost in the bombing, and a 4-channel sound work that portrays the places and processes of the bomb’s production, and includes field recordings made at atomic heritage sites in New Mexico and Chicago. [more inside]
Prices slightly higher in the territories
In January, Statistics Canada (a.k.a. Statscan) began crowdsourcing cannabis pricing data from the currently-illegal-but-soonishly-to-be-legal Canadian market. Statscan has been asking Canadians: "Please help us improve our estimates by telling us what you paid for your latest purchase of cannabis" via an online survey. It now publishes that crowdsourced data on its Cannabis Stats Hub, along with other health, justice, pricing and economic data related to cannabis in Canada. For more discussion of the challenges inherent in collecting data on cannabis consumption, see: Experimental Estimates of Cannabis Consumption in Canada, 1960 to 2015 and A cannabis economic account - The framework.
drink mee pray without spilling or you will [pay] thre shilling
Puzzle jugs were intended as pub or dinner party games, in which you had to figure out how to drink out of one without pouring the alcohol all over. Michelle Erickson, ceramicist, shows how she made one while artist in residence at the V&A.
" Even a future legend needs a starter mountain, "
How New Zealand made Edmund Hillary, the man who conquered Everest, by Spencer Hall
There is another sign here: “POWERFUL CURRENTS: SWIMMING ALONE HERE IS DANGEROUS!!! DO NOT SWIM HERE ALONE!!!” And right past that sign, on the far, far edge of a city built on a ring of volcanoes, walks a lone morning swimmer in a bikini, toweling off and heading to the parking lot. It all seems very safe and also sort of not safe at all.
Jimmy Buffett does not live the Jimmy Buffett lifestyle (SLNYT)
TFW a Twitter bot solves a video game mystery
"Something pretty fun happened yesterday that I wanted to share with you all: a bot on Twitter accidentally provided the clue that finally solved a 28-year-old mystery about a DOS game that never shipped." [more inside]
By October of last year, the site hosted nearly 50 million pages of Amer
Aberdeen bar hosts Scotland’s first dementia-friendly discos
Anne Duncan, 63, came up with the idea because she loves to dance with her husband Bill, 69, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s seven years ago. She said: “We still thoroughly enjoy dancing. It transports Bill into a place where he was before his illness, so for us it is especially poignant. It is an enjoyable feeling when we dance – there is nothing to worry about in the whole world. It is amazing.”
Facebook: Killing Comedy?
What advice would you give to a comedian who starting up right now? I would say go to Palo Alto, go to One Hacker Way, walk into the front door of Facebook, and demand to know what the hell they’re doing. Someone told me that crazy people show up at Facebook every day because it ruined their lives, usually because of a personal reason, and I’m so close to being one of those crazy people. But instead of “Why did my wife leave me because of you?” it’s like, “Why did you destroy the internet comedy scene?”
The road to Lisbon
The most important public vote in 2018 is, of course, the Eurovision Song Contest in three months time. 43 countries will participate; ticketing is open. Nations are in the process of deciding their contestant and song; the UK has just chosen theirs, as have Malta, the Czech Republic and a few others. Sadly though, the dancing lobster has already been eliminated after their Swedish qualifier performance. Controversy over last year's contest continue to bubble, while the winner recovers from surgery. [more inside]
[S]tories that the superhero genre is just not designed to tell
Tegan O'Neil reviews issues #13-20 of Mike Grell’s Green Arrow series from 1989 - "But suddenly we see here, within the context of Green Arrow’s career, a larger dynamic at work. The guy who went to Woodstock and though the Freedom Riders were just the bee’s knees is suddenly really upset about street crime. [more inside]
The 14+ Blows
Map (with mop) vs Pickup Truck... play by play commentary by John Curley of KIRO radio (slyt)
"If we write women out of history, we never know the truth of things."
This is How a Woman is Erased From Her Job by A. N. Devers is the story of how The Paris Review's second ever editor, Brigid Hughes, was pushed out of her position and written out of the magazine's history. The Paris Review was recently embroiled in scandal after its latest male top editor was featured prominently on the Shitty Media Men spreadsheet and left the magazine. After her ouster Hughes went on to found and edit the excellent magazine A Public Space.
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