Random Rants LXXII - What is wrong with us?

[Valka D'Ur]

The ones mentioned in the book, a couple would be accessible, the others not so much. Torngat Mountains, Labrador upper peninsula. Sirmilik and Ujjusikalik, Nunavut, which is Arctic. Nahanni, Northwest Territories. They look like they could be beautiful. But they are in such remote locations that they're just not for the casual traveler. Some of the American parks in Alaska are like that as well. No, or very little, road access. You fly in, or you walk in. Either way, you're beyond the range where you might get help if you get into trouble.

I've seen pictures and documentaries about the Nahanni. It's definitely a beautiful place. It's also been the subject of a tug-of-war between loggers and environmentalists. The current PM is determined to protect it.

There's a crow on my street that keeps doing low fly-bys over people's heads. I assume it has a nest precariously close to human traffic, or maybe it's just overzealous.

Today, it decided to escalate the conflict and started attacking me. Not cool, crow. Not cool.

Obviously you have done something to offend the crow. It doesn't like you, and will have told other crows that you're not a cool person.

 

[Synobun]

Obviously you have done something to offend the crow. It doesn't like you, and will have told other crows that you're not a cool person.

Nah, it's been doing it to everyone. The other crows seem to be chilled out. For now.

Turns out this is a serious enough problem in Vancouver there's an interactive crow attack tracker.

http://giscourses.net/crowtrax/crowtrax.html

 

[Kyriakos]

Maybe it is a crow with a traumatic experience with humans, which decided to instigate a crow-human war.

 

[cardgame]

SCRAAAAAAAW! THE TIME OF REVOLUTION IS NOW! DOWN WITH THE MUD-MEN!

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Nah, it's been doing it to everyone. The other crows seem to be chilled out. For now.

Turns out this is a serious enough problem in Vancouver there's an interactive crow attack tracker.

http://giscourses.net/crowtrax/crowtrax.html

This is hilarious! Did you know that the TV series The Crow: Stairway to Heaven (based on the movie The Crow) was filmed in and around Vancouver in the late 1990s? Capilano Suspension Bridge and the surrounding park was the location for The Land of the Dead, where Eric Draven and Shelley Webster ended up after they were murdered. Shelley remained behind to wait for Eric, when he jumped off the bridge to get back to the Land of the Living to "set things right."

Unlike the movie, however, setting things right didn't mean killing the gang that murdered him. The TV series' theme was redemption. Marc Dacascos, who played Eric Draven, was a friend of Brandon Lee, who died on the movie set due to a malfunctioning prop gun.

Partway through the series another Crow character was added - Hannah Foster, who was murdered with her child, and came back for revenge (unlike Eric, Hannah didn't really get the redemption part).

So... if you're being stalked by a crow, hopefully that isn't a sign that you've done something evil or that you're about to become a victim...

 

[Zkribbler]

Wonder if a hand-held air horn would discourage it.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

We should pitch a FPS where the player character is an African Communist guerrilla fighting against white colonial rule in southern Africa.

I would genuinely be interested in this.

Somewhat politically incorrect, I would also be interested in games which depict traditionally bad guys as good guys.

Really, I'm just interested in something a bit more than "pew pew pew" narratives involving Russians, Muslims, or Nazis.

What about a game where the good guys are the not-so-good-guys?

Imagine an FPS where you're a UN peace trooper in Rwanda during the genocide. Your job is to literally do nothing at all, otherwise you lose and start over.

..Because that's totally outlandish, right?

 

[Narz]

Myself literally ranting (some raves but mostly ranting) while playing blitz chess.

 

[Takhisis]

What about a game where the good guys are the not-so-good-guys?

Imagine an FPS where you're a UN peace trooper in Rwanda during the genocide. Your job is to literally do nothing at all, otherwise you lose and start over.

..Because that's totally outlandish, right?

The same was done about the Gulag system, Nazi extermination camps for people classified as Jews, Gypsies, blacks, Slavs, the mentally handicapped, or Communist, among others, the Yugoslav wars, the Syrian war, the Yemen war, the ongoing catastrophe in Venezuela… it's basically what happens every time you play Civ and you see the AI's cities riots and the population suddenly drop.

 

[Lexicus]

it's basically what happens every time you play Civ and you see the AI's cities riots and the population suddenly drop.

I mean I totally don't mercilessly crack the whip on my citizens in Civ IV...or raze idiotically-placed AI cities...I would never do any of that stuff

 

[Bootstoots]

I've been having problems wrenching myself from the internet - mostly this site and a few others. I've spent most of my waking hours doing unproductive things online for months now, because it's so much easier than doing something with my life.

I've finally resorted to installing a program to block my access to time-wasting sites for set periods of time. If you see me on this site in the next four hours, something went horribly wrong.

 

[JohannaK]

That is nice. My problem is with YouTube, but YouTube has nothing to do with my problem. If I had no Internet I would read, if I couldnt read I would write, etc.

 

[Takhisis]

Sounds as if this place was one where people with obsessive tendencies tend to gather.

 

[Bootstoots]

I've been having problems wrenching myself from the internet - mostly this site and a few others. I've spent most of my waking hours doing unproductive things online for months now, because it's so much easier than doing something with my life.

I've finally resorted to installing a program to block my access to time-wasting sites for set periods of time. If you see me on this site in the next four hours, something went horribly wrong.

'Twas a miserable failure. I just read for a little bit and then went on a Google voyage reading about astronomy. I'm supposed to be writing cover letters and sending them and my resume out to possible employers. Blegh.

In other news: Ants! More ants! Bigger ants! Eating my pizza again!

 

[Bootstoots]

Other random rant: normally you can see the Galilean satellites of Jupiter through ordinary binoculars. If they were on their own, they'd all be naked-eye objects, albeit fairly faint ones. I went out with binoculars and tried to see them, but the nearly-full Moon is so close to Jupiter in the sky right now that I can't see any of them through its glare! Stupid Moon.

 

[Kyriakos]

Other random rant: normally you can see the Galilean satellites of Jupiter through ordinary binoculars. If they were on their own, they'd all be naked-eye objects, albeit fairly faint ones. I went out with binoculars and tried to see them, but the nearly-full Moon is so close to Jupiter in the sky right now that I can't see any of them through its glare! Stupid Moon.

Maybe the dinosaur world was hugely more advanced than thought, and they once came upon this issue as well ^_^

 

[Bootstoots]

Maybe the dinosaur world was hugely more advanced than thought, and they once came upon this issue as well ^_^

The dinosaurs would have had that problem too because the Solar System would have been pretty much the same as it is now.

But the stars would have been completely different! We've traveled a significant fraction of the way around the galaxy since then.

Also, if these particular intelligent dinosaurs were around 66 million years ago, we should laugh at them for not funding their near-Earth asteroid tracking project enough.

 

[Takhisis]

I've been having problems wrenching myself from the internet

You're still doing it, 'stoots.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Other random rant: normally you can see the Galilean satellites of Jupiter through ordinary binoculars. If they were on their own, they'd all be naked-eye objects, albeit fairly faint ones. I went out with binoculars and tried to see them, but the nearly-full Moon is so close to Jupiter in the sky right now that I can't see any of them through its glare! Stupid Moon.

Give the Moon a break. Alan Bean just died.

 

[Kyriakos]

Re-reading Kafka's letters to Milena. He was, at the time, of the age i am now (39), but looked younger. Already diagnosed with tuberculosis of the lung.
I am not happy with the letters. There are a great many of them (roughly 250 pages; i am at page 80), and i am quite annoyed by the timeline (Kafka's second fiancee, Julie, and probably one of the few actually pretty women he was with, was pushed aside, in a kafkaesque manner, for (married) Milena - though tbf it is not at all likely she wouldn't if Milena wasn't there at all).

Some dialogue between Julie and Kafka:
Julie: I can't leave on my own, but if you send me away i will go. Are you sending me away?
Kafka: Yes.
Julie: But i still cannot leave, regardless.

Kafka would live for just three more years.