4 Signs the World is NOT Ending
As a counter-balance to last week’s doom and gloom, in this week’s subscriber newsletter James outlines four signs that the world is not necessarily going to hell in a handbasket. And in the subscriber-only video, James sets the record straight on all those stories of “wacky Japan”…by showing you the real wacky Japan.
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This is a superb article, James. Thanks for penning it. Stay well, Gillian
Thanks for the subscriber video, hilarious pictures 🙂
To get back to more serious geopolitical and historical concerns, I feel compelled to share with you this matchbox I found in Korea: http://postimg.org/image/4ni953njr/
If it’s not enough to restore seriousness, I’ve a got whole collection of mugs, magnets, pin’s, t-shirts, lighters, stickers, smartphone cases, etc. from Thailand with Hitler’s effigy (very trendy there)!
There is another thing that I think highlights James points here. It’s the Change.org site. Now – I certainly don’t sign all of their petitions. But there have been some very worthwhile one, and they get many thousands of signatures, and Change.org keeps you informed of anything you’ve signed up to. I’ve been happily surprised by how many times a change has been brought about – and all because the pollies saw thousands of signatures in support and backed down. A major issue in Western Australia was that they were putting mentally compromised Aboriginal people in prison, simply because they didn’t know what else to do with them. Or more to the point, couldn’t be bothered doing something human and decent. After a fair bit of work, of which I was a small part, we have got several such people released into home care, and the government is bringing in changes to the system.
My point here is that a few people can make a huge difference; more, we ARE making differences; and finally, as James points out from Larkin Rose video, we in fact are not a few. We are many. We just have realise it.
James
I had it on good authority (a teenager) in the 80’s that the song Turning Japanese referred to the way one’s eyes turned into a squint at the moment of orgasm when masturbating. So…only very tangentially about Japan or the Japanese.
Gun control a bad thing???
Yes. Those perhaps not so savvy with weapons (and of course the mainstream media) tell us guns are the root of the problem for much of today’s violence, and must be taken away. But no different than technology, weapons are only a tool that can be used for good or evil. Taking that tool away from the people leaving only criminals and the government’s increasingly militarized and tyrannical mercenaries with guns has never ended well, and never will. Food for thought. –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaDzKzKT6nM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3HQopc0jog
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kL8pIqMU6c
Also just search up “police state” and the like here on this website.
James,
The first two links Clinton and Freedom act don’t seem to be working here.
Best,
Jason
Thanks for letting me know, Jason. The links have been corrected and should be working now.
The first link doesn’t work, the URL points to a local address :p
just saying
It’s kinda ironic, did Hillary get this from your site server censored?
…and was that a poke a Peter B for living mostly from his podcasts and interviews? I guess he has savings due to his long career on radio and tv but now has no revenue apart from his subscribers and manages hehe.
Nice video lol! Thanks!
Yes, it is interesting the way you presented it, but in reality, there is no mystery about two kinds of books: vertically written books open from the left (because they are read from right to left) and horizontally written books open from the right (because they are read from left to right).
just saying… 🙂
Looking forward to your next broadcast(s)!
Well I have a number of other good news pieces to add that may be of some significance. Most from one area of the newsworld that is never covered here for it’s normal lack of importance. Gaming
Let’s see if I can change that
#1 Keen Software House opens up the ENTIRE source code of “Space Engineers” for modders to use as well as a $100,000USD fund to support/incentivize those making total conversions.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/05/15/space-engineers-open-source/
http://blog.marekrosa.org/2015/05/space-engineers-full-source-code-access_40.html
The significance I see in this is that it will set the bar even higher for what is required for a developer to impress its audience. Independent games are already close to if not already surpassing those from AAA studios in general popularity, sales and whatnot and this is one of those things that could be the first hammerblow into the nail of the coffin that seals the fate of monolithic, inefficient, increasingly hated companies such as “Electronic Arts” AKA “EA Games”, practically the Monsanto of the gaming world.
But not only that, if other indie developers begin following Keen’s lead in order to be competitive the full source release paradigm could easily spread far beyond just the gaming industry. In many ways it already is, we already had open source vehicles and the like before this happened. But the coalescence of these various business moves could make the concept of propriatariness as we know it completely archaic and obsolete. Let’s not forget that gaming is a multi billion dollar industry. And an increasing ratio of those dollars are being made by indie’s. Minecraft anyone?
To give you one example of the mainstream competition to this type of movement. “Fable 3” had black dye listed as downloadable content. I think it was about $5USD. That’s right you would have to pay for the privilege of using the colour black on your digital clothing. Compare that to the very open community oriented development of great indie games like Rimworld, Maia, Starbound, Space Engineers, Kerbal Space Program and so on and so forth and the big names don’t stand much of a chance in the long run.
#2 The Star Trek Armada III Mod for Sins of a Solar Empire:Rebellion
http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-trek-armada-3
Although this one may seems like an odd addition hear me out first. This mod was created by and still being improved upon by a group of passionate people who wanted to make the Armada game they’ve always wanted to see. And they’ve done a better job, for free mind you, than I’ve personally seen from any paid company. The models are beautiful, far beyond the quality necessary for a strategy game. The AI is pumped up. The Borg are actually as scary as they were intended to be in the series. Every little detail is taken care of including things that only the most hardcore Trekkie would notice, such as how a Romulan Warbird’s death animation includes it’s explosion and debris getting sucked into a singularity because large Romulan ships are powered by artificial black holes.
What this modding team demonstrates is that passion will always produce better quality work than ration tokens (money) ever will. The quality of work that this group has put out is one of the main things I like to point at about why it’s so important to focus low on the food chain and outright ignore higher powers and anyone who isn’t expressly on “your side” if at all possible. Had this group waited for Paramount and Activision to make another Armada game that game would first and foremost likely never have happened and more importantly almost certainly not have been as good as this mod given the quality of the last two. They didn’t need many people, only ones who were driven to achieve the same things as themselves.
CaptainShack at XPgamers has done a number of plays and discussions with the mod developer throughout the mods development if you are interested. He even did the voice acting for one of the units.
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheXPGamers/videos
#3 Neople’s handling of the North American publishing of Dungeon Fighter Online.
I don’t really have a link for this one because it’s a little too big for that. It’s an endeavor that has spanned a few years for the company and many websites. I’d go to their Facebook page for a start though if you can stomach being on facebook for any amount of time.
Here’s the short version as I know it. Neople is a Korean company that develops a game called Dungeon Fighter Online. I believe it’s “Dungeon and Fighter” in Korea. The North American publisher for the game, Nexon, decided one day against all logic that the game wasn’t profitable and pulled the plug on what was a rather vibrant and quite active playerbase. Naturally many people were not happy about Nexon’s total lack of business sense. Awhile Later Neople itself decided to make an effort to publish the game in North America themselves. An endeavor they admitted they had no experience doing and weren’t even sure would work given the game was already cancelled once.
However despite their lack of experience Neople has done easily the best public relations I have ever seen. The sheer amount of community involvement they encouraged was stupendous. Standards like fanfiction contests were there for sure but walkthroughs of the offices talking to the random dudes that make the game exist were new. As well as the live office webcam they set up on Twitch.tv where you could seeand talk to (some of) them as they worked. The amount of direct community discussion and involvement from the company CEO, In Lee, is something I’ve never seen from a corporate head. I know I’m being pretty vague on the descriptions on why I think Neople did such a good job but the fact is it’s just too much and not all of it can be boiled down into specifics.
Sufficed to say when they launched their open beta the fact that they went to such lengths to humanize themselves and their employees made more difference than a billion top notch coders ever could. People were more than willing to be patient as they worked out issue after issue. People who traditionally would never buy cash shop items were almost chomping at the bit to be able to just to know that they were supporting Neople. The CEO even got concerned about the weight and health of one of his employees and set an initiative that the more weight they lose the more the community would be rewarded.
Neople’s methodology behind the handling of this endeavor is something that I think people should take close note of simply because of it’s sheer effectiveness. Although some could potentially argue that it is a very elaborate bit of emotional manipulation as all public relations and diplomacy ultimately are regardless of how good someone’s intentions may be it was still really, really effective. As an example, go to Neople’s facebook page and start reading the comments then go to EA Games’ facebook page and start reading the comments. I won’t need to point the difference out to you.
I actually have more good news things but I think I’m long out of characters for this comment so maybe next time.
Oh I do have a couple non facebook Neople story link:
http://www.gameskinny.com/i4gze/dfo-global-neoples-communication-is-second-to-none
https://www.reddit.com/r/DFO/comments/307jtt/a_message_from_mr_lee_ceo_of_neople_warning_feels/
And the facebook page just for extra:
https://www.facebook.com/dfoglobal?fref=photo