Wired’s Chris Kohler fighting with Nintendo’s Hiroshi Yamauchi. Winner decides the future of the Virtual Console.
Wired’s Chris Kohler fighting with Nintendo’s Hiroshi Yamauchi. Winner decides the future of the Virtual Console.
From shortformblog:
Today In Bad Ideas: Some guy named Brad Paisley recorded a song, with LL Cool J, talking about how hard it is to be a white man who just wants to wear the Confederate flag in peace. It’s called “Accidental Racist”, and you can find the (completely problematic) lyrics here. source
Here’s the thing that you just need to understand. The Confederate flag is a symbol of the Confederacy and what it stood for, not the traditions and values (like hospitality) of the South.
The Confederate flag was adopted only by the Confederacy. It doesn’t predate the Confederacy, and it stopped being used with the fall of the Confederacy. In fact, the flag was only rarely used in the Confederacy; it was the flag of the Army of Northern Virginia (Robert E. Lee’s army) and only later became associated with the entire confederacy. In fact, the “Confederate flag” you’re familiar with was never the official flag of the Confederacy.
The flag had a renaissance of sorts much later. Much later. The flag began appearing during WWII on units with Southern histories. The first use of the Confederate “stars and bars” on a Southern state flag was as early as 1894: no surprise, it was Mississippi. But that means that Mississippians didn’t mind revoking their heritage (the Magnolia flag, which was carried into battle during the Civil War by Mississippi regiments). Georgia’s controversial Confederate flag wasn’t introduced until 1956.
My problem with the “it’s part of our history” argument is two-fold: (1) The history of Southern states extends much further back than the Confederacy, so I’m left wondering why that pivotal (and controversial) moment has become identified as the historical juncture that should define what “the South” is about. (2) The history of the Confederacy was extremely brief: it lasted less than five years. (By contrast, the Third Reich lasted more than twice as long, giving the Nazi flag a stronger claim to historical tradition.)
So we’re left with an interesting historical juxtaposition. The Confederate flag was not widely used within the Confederacy, but is clearly identified with the Confederacy’s cause. And that flag had a boom in popularity starting in the 1950s. Coincidentally, the 1950s was the start of the modern US Civil Rights Movement. In other words, a symbol of the Confederacy (which will forever by identified with slavery) became popular in South at the same time as African-Americans began advocating for political and social equality.
Now you see why the Confederate flag is “controversial” (to say the least). It seems remarkable that people who want to defend their region’s rich cultural traditions and history (and they have many good reasons to do so, I should point out) have gravitated to a very particular symbol identified with racism. Attaching themselves to that symbol meant jettisoning historical state flags (where was the reverence for history then?) and doing so at the same time as Jim Crow and segregation was being challenged in the South.
Perhaps it’s because I’m just a “carpetbagger” (as I’m sure many of my students think), but I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone who—once confronted with the sheer historical narrative of that flag—would continue to embrace it. Waving a Confederate flag around is a clear sign that either (1) you don’t like black people very much, (2) you are in favor of violent overthrow of the US federal government, or (3) you really don’t care if people think you believe in the first two options or not.
EDIT: And please don’t even get me started on people in northern states that embrace the Confederate flag. When I see the “stars and bars” in Indiana, I know exactly what it means.
Just reading those lyrics makes my head hurt, I’m not even going to find out what it sounds like set to music. And fuck anyone who equates “do-rags” and “red flags”. One’s a fashion choice, the other is a symbol of oppression.
Source: shortformblog
Enough of you guys have sent this to us that at this point we would be remiss not to post it. Highlights include:
0:54-0:58: Brent Spiner jizzes in his pants
2:09: see above
2:23: ARE THEY GONNA KISS?
2:35: Deanna’s hair, no further comment necessary
2:38: why is Yar back onscreen and is she going to murder us
2:51: SKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANT
3:20: DAT HAIR
3:41: Yayyyyyy, soul glo guy!
3:45: A LADY Geordi?!
3:51: THAT IS LITERALLY A BANANA CLIP
4:05: THUMBS UP for that yellow houndstooth sweater
4:49: presh. So presh in those pleated khakis.
5:10: dignityyyyyy
5:22-5:27: best 5 seconds of all time
6:07: why are the hair and makeup guys, like, someone’s weird uncle
6:15: oh you.
Thank you Naomi, Chris, Andrea, Sarah, and everyone else who slung this our way.
In no particular order:
Clips like this tell me that even the greatest television shows were only a handful of terrible decisions away from becoming the worst television shows.
Source: sttngfashion
This story has been floating around for the last week. It hasn’t gotten much English press, but it’s been on Japanese TV a fair amount. A Nepalese man, Bishnu Dhamala, was beaten to death - on camera - right here in Osaka. The four attackers (two men and two women, all 21-22) have all been arrested. So far, they do not deny beating Dhamala but they do deny trying to kill him. What did they expect a bicycle to the head of a man on the ground would do, wake him up?
It’s a scary crime, no doubt. So far no motive for the attack has been made public, and the killers did not claim to know Dhamala prior to the incident. I hope the headlines keep coming. In the meantime, I still take comfort in knowing that Japan is a very safe place to live, but I am increasingly aware that certain neighborhoods in Osaka* are among the most dangerous parts of the country. I should make an effort to spend less time alone in the city as I was on Saturday night. Next time I’ll just take a nap in McDonald’s. It’s what the Japanese do.
*Note to family/friends back home: I do not live anywhere near these notorious neighborhoods
The competition this weekend has been tremendous. All of these matches are watchable even if you’re not a huge SF fan (though it helps). Thanks to Nick Rox for the links.
Apparently Ryu ga gotoku 3 (known as Yakuza 3 outside Japan) had an entire series of side-quests cut from the international version where Kiryu studied English. As seen in the above clip, a woman on the street gets him to buy increasingly expensive textbooks from which he learns one or two phrases. These phrases pay off immediately when, minutes later, he meets a white woman named Stacy. Not only does she seem to be falling in love with him, she gives him presents.
Each conversation they have gets more and more ridiculous/steamy, but in the end it proves to be a scam; the women just want to get him alone to extort a huge amount of money (250,000 yen, nearly $3 grand). In the clip, the player refuses which triggers a battle with three foreign punks. When Kiryu wins, he gets a complete refund of everything he previously paid. Stacy apologizes and gives Kiryu one last gift.
While I find this hilarious, it is a shame that the game relies so heavily on Japanese stereotypes of non-Japanese. Stacy is shown speaking English and Japanese, but her Japanese is written in katakana, suggesting that her speech is somehow “off.” This is typical in Japanese media where subtitles are commonplace - foreigners are often shown speaking katakana-Japanese no matter how normal their pronunciation might be.
There’s also the matter of Kiryu having to speak English in order to talk to Stacy even though she demonstrates a knowledge of Japanese from the start. Granted, in this case she is a con artist, but even when that’s not the case that’s exactly how Japanese people perceive non-Japanese. I’ve been living here for years and I still encounter people who feel they must address me English. Most of the time their English is really bad, making simple conversations labored affairs where I must interpret their every word into Japanese in order to understand.
For more on the connection between English study and the (actual) Yakuza, read this post on Kotaku from Brian Ashcraft.
Mario meets Grand Theft Auto in this surprisingly clever mash-up of iconic characters and graphic violence. It’s loaded with in-jokes too. Feels like I’ve been watching it non-stop for days.
