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What's in the news?

Started by Beorning, September 21, 2014, 07:02:11 AM

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Aethereal

Quote from: Dashenka on May 20, 2015, 03:52:33 AMEvery government makes questionable decisions but you never hear anything about those decisions made in countries like Germany, the Netherlands or the UK.
The US' comes up often enough, as do some other countries. I tend to try and keep an eye on privacy/censorship laws and debates worldwide, at least. 

Cassandra LeMay

Quote from: Dashenka on May 20, 2015, 03:52:33 AM
Every government makes questionable decisions but you never hear anything about those decisions made in countries like Germany, the Netherlands or the UK.
Which is one reason this thread exists, to share news that may not quite make the (or all) international media.

So, some local news from Germany, even if not a political topic:

Yesterday 31,000 people in Hannover, state capital of Lower Saxony, were evacuated from their homes after the find of an unexploded 500pound American bomb from WWII.  This was the second-largest evacuation in our history caused by the discovery of an unexploded ordnance from the war. The bomb was disarmed safely on site, a construction area on the former grounds of a school in a densely populated area of the city.

It has been estimated that there are still about 100,00 pieces of unexploded ordnance (UXO) in Germany, ranging from artillery shells to bombs of more than a tonne (the largest ever was a British "Tallboy" bomb of a 12,000 lbs). On average about 5,500 UXOs are found in Germany every year, with most of them only making the local news. Once in a while someone is killed by an UXO here in Germany, but those cases are, thankfully, pretty rare.
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You can not value dreams according to the odds of their becoming true.
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Dice

#1027
Quote from: Dashenka on May 20, 2015, 03:52:33 AM
So have I.

Every government makes questionable decisions but you never hear anything about those decisions made in countries like Germany, the Netherlands or the UK.

*bows out*
I will admit knowing very little about the Netherlands, but the Brits and the Germans, if you don't know about issues they have caused in the last 25 years you don't read a whole lot.

Every government does things that are bad. The question is for others where you draw the line. Attacking a national and shooting down civy aircraft, that just happens to be a lone.

Also don't feel too left out, you should see the shit China is up to right now and that scares me far more that Russia. Granted, I live in this part of the world so I guess it should be something of interest to me.

Lastly, I am no fan of my own government either. Nationalism is the lowest form of self identity and a way to bind the lowest common denominator to a usable if not very intelligent mass. In Australia, too much of our national identity is based on a Myth that very few people know anything about in depth. (Anzac.) So I don't hate or attack governments because I am blind, stupid and can't see both sides of a story (see what I posted on the US a page or two ago) I do so because the actions taken by these nations I feel is something that should be condemned regardless of who did it. If the US shot down a civy Jet (Iran Air Flight 655) I would say they fucked up too.

Quote from: Warlock on May 20, 2015, 03:39:52 AM
Searching for ''Nigga House'' in Google Maps leads you to the White House. Last I heard, Google Maps had apologized but it still seems to be a valid search term.

Despite the racist nature, I must admit to chuckling when I first read the news. It's so wonderful in that reality distorted sense.
Holy shit, this actually works. Now half the lunch room thinks me a dick because I randomly burst out in full honest laugher.

gaggedLouise

#1028
Quote from: Warlock on May 20, 2015, 03:39:52 AM
Searching for ''Nigga House'' in Google Maps leads you to the White House. Last I heard, Google Maps had apologized but it still seems to be a valid search term.

Despite the racist nature, I must admit to chuckling when I first read the news. It's so wonderful in that reality distorted sense.

I sometimes can't help giggling when reading some of the outright rabid tea-party style readers' comments at thehill.com. As a news site it looks quite qualified to me (it specializes in Washington DC and Congress politics), but OMG the folks that flock to their comments spaces...! They are some bunch, most of them are way to the right of even Pat Robertson and Rick Perry, and many unabashedly, angrily racist.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Beorning

A really bizarre news bit: apparently, at Cannes film festival, some female guests weren't allowed to the gala, because they weren't wearing heels:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/19/us-filmfestival-cannes-heels-idUSKBN0O42HV20150519

Huh?

kylie

Quote from: Beorning on May 20, 2015, 10:01:32 AM
A really bizarre news bit: apparently, at Cannes film festival, some female guests weren't allowed to the gala, because they weren't wearing heels:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/19/us-filmfestival-cannes-heels-idUSKBN0O42HV20150519

Huh?

     Hadley Freeman has a rather amusing (or is it agonizing, in a more characteristically British sense of the word I think?) column on this, too.  I particularly like this paragraph:

Quote
Frémaux knows he has room to wiggle here – you know, like a woman wiggles and wobbles atop her stilettos – because there is no actual written stipulation that women must walk around on stilts. Instead, the rubric states, with the usual vagueness, that women must be elegantly dressed with smart footwear. The Oscars are the same. And, speaking as one who has been reprimanded several times over the years by officials while covering the Academy Awards, I can testify that a world of Emily Post-like stipulations regarding etiquette resides within those fuzzy guidelines.

     

Beorning

I admit that I really have trouble wrapping my head around something like this happening. I mean... it's so patronizing! Shouldn't events like Cannes film festival or Oscars be a celebration of actors, directors etc.? Meanwhile, it seems that you can be a talented artist... and yet, when you arrive at the festival's gala, someone could tell you: "Nah nah nah! You're not appropriately dressed, lady! No place for you here!"

My mind boggles...

In other news, Witcher 3 premiered yesterday (I think). The game actually has made it into the news back here, being a (supposedly) internationally-awaited thing and all that...

Cassandra LeMay

Quote from: Beorning on May 20, 2015, 12:15:30 PM
In other news, Witcher 3 premiered yesterday (I think). The game actually has made it into the news back here, being a (supposedly) internationally-awaited thing and all that...
Well, the whole setting, characters, and all that being based on novels and short stories by a Polish author, the game better should make news in Poland.  ;D
ONs, OFFs, and writing samples | Oath of the Drake

You can not value dreams according to the odds of their becoming true.
(Sonia Sotomayor)

Beorning

Oh, of course... But it also makes news because the game is made by a Polish programming team and, supposedly, is all kinds of awesome.  :-)

If the game was bad, it wouldn't be making the news. I mean, years ago, there actually was a Witcher TV series, but everyone (including the creators) tries to forget it ever existed...  ;D

Deamonbane

Well, it was universally seen as, and I quote," One of the greatest RPGs of all time," so... yeah. :)
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Dice

It also had a hand in the "PC Master Race" meme.


Dice


Zakharra

  PETA is doing it again. It wants a British bar to change its name because the name is offensive to chickens. The bar's name? Ye Olde Fighting Cocks
http://www.independentsentinel.com/peta-wants-a-bar-to-change-its-name-so-as-not-to-insult-chickens/

Dashenka

Palmyra is lost to IS.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/20/us-mideast-crisis-syria-northeast-idUSKBN0O50PB20150520

Let's pray to our God, their God, the old ones and the new that they will not completely destroy it and that they will preserve it so that the rest of the world can marvel upon the wonders there.
Out here in the fields, I fight for my meals and I get my back into my living.

I don't need to fight to prove I'm right and I don't need to be forgiven.

Oniya

Quote from: Zakharra on May 20, 2015, 05:33:56 PM
  PETA is doing it again. It wants a British bar to change its name because the name is offensive to chickens. The bar's name? Ye Olde Fighting Cocks
http://www.independentsentinel.com/peta-wants-a-bar-to-change-its-name-so-as-not-to-insult-chickens/

They could always claim that they aren't talking about roosters...  >:)

(Of course, then some other group would get offended.  Better to stick with the chickens.)
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Aethereal

Quote from: Oniya on May 20, 2015, 09:12:53 PM
They could always claim that they aren't talking about roosters...  >:)
You know, I sometimes remark that I feel old because back when I was at school, cock meant a rooster (my first grade English textbook had a sketch of a rooster, with COCK written boldly under it in capital letters), pussy was a cat, and gay meant happy and joyous (as in "gay little pieces of writing").

QuoteIt also had a hand in the "PC Master Race" meme.
Which is weird, since from what my fellows gamers have told me, Witcher II suffered quite a bit from your typical console nuisances (like auto-targeting, which they couldn't figure out how to turn off, and some missing settings).
       - I am in no particular side. I play on PC because I have rather powerful ones due to work, and I console controllers simply don't sit right with my hands.

gaggedLouise

Quote from: Dashenka on May 20, 2015, 05:37:13 PM
Palmyra is lost to IS.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/20/us-mideast-crisis-syria-northeast-idUSKBN0O50PB20150520

Let's pray to our God, their God, the old ones and the new that they will not completely destroy it and that they will preserve it so that the rest of the world can marvel upon the wonders there.

Totally agree, those guys are an abomination and their wish to wipe the slate of historical memory clean, sort of, is pure ideologized barbarism.

  *kneels and prays with Dasha*


Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

TheGlyphstone

Though based on previous sites they've overrun, their 'ideological barbarism' doesn't stop them from shamlessly looting everything they can carry off from said sites to sell on the black market. They smash and deface whatever is too heavy to steal simply to troll the rest of the world.

gaggedLouise

Yeah, they are the Orcs of contemporary middle eastern politics - I'm surprised I haven't seen that simile being used already.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Dashenka

I'm surprised nobody's doing anything about them to stop them, considering the less brutal 'invasion' of another country discussed earlier in this topic had the whole world on high alert and IS is allowed by that same whole world to run rampant through Syria and Iraq, murdering, looting and raping.

Am I the only one who finds that a bit... odd?
Out here in the fields, I fight for my meals and I get my back into my living.

I don't need to fight to prove I'm right and I don't need to be forgiven.

consortium11

Quote from: Shienvien on May 21, 2015, 12:09:04 AM
Which is weird, since from what my fellows gamers have told me, Witcher II suffered quite a bit from your typical console nuisances (like auto-targeting, which they couldn't figure out how to turn off, and some missing settings).

It was Witcher 1 that gave birth to the meme, largely from a first impressions review on the Escapist (by Zero Punctuation)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=320&v=P0dXtOVi2yo

(For the record, even taking into account the first impression nature of the video it's still a shockingly bad take on the game)

gaggedLouise

Quote from: Dashenka on May 21, 2015, 03:04:31 AM
I'm surprised nobody's doing anything about them to stop them, considering the less brutal 'invasion' of another country discussed earlier in this topic had the whole world on high alert and IS is allowed by that same whole world to run rampant through Syria and Iraq, murdering, looting and raping.

Am I the only one who finds that a bit... odd?

I agree I would very much like to see a UN or US-led ground effort to drive out IS and Assad (who is hardly less brutal, just in a different way). But for reasons of the history of the last ten years and the economic lows and woes, it's unlikely we'll get to see that kind of bold assault for a while yet. (In the end, the US may have to mount some kind of serious ground effort to get to grips with this, despite how hard that is to stomach for the home opinion)

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Cassandra LeMay

ISIS may act like trolls and orcs, but there is method to their madness. They just took Ramadi in Iraq, a strategicly far more significant event, as far as I can tell, but Ramadi will always be just a dot on a map to people in the West. Palmyra, on the other hand, will remain in memory as "that place where ISIS destroyed countless ancient artifacts". Keeping your victories on everyone's mind is a powerful propaganda tool, and the more the media tells this story, the more it sends to potential jihadists the message that ISIS can do whatever it wants - and can do especially the things the West abhores. Again, a powerful propaganda message. Destroying all those ancient relics and ruins makes logical sense for ISIS; it doesn't take an orc or troll to see value in those actions.
ONs, OFFs, and writing samples | Oath of the Drake

You can not value dreams according to the odds of their becoming true.
(Sonia Sotomayor)

Warlock

Continuing on the theme of Islam, although in very different variety. An Iman in America have declared himself to be homosexual, the first in the states to publicly do so. Islam being, on the whole, more opposed than even their christian counterpart against anything outside of the hetrosexual norm, I view this as a very welcome development and a step forward. Also very happy for him personally, denying such a fundamental part of your nature is never healthy and that he seems to fully accept it as a part of himself is fantastic.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/21/and-now-america-an-openly-gay-imam.html