Quotulatiousness

March 6, 2024

You had me at “Cartchy tuns, exarserdray lollipops” and “a pasadise of sweet teats”

Filed under: Britain, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Charlie Stross checks in with a Willy Wonka-adjacent story from Glasgow that utterly failed to live up to the billing:

This is no longer in the current news cycle, but definitely needs to be filed under “stuff too insane for Charlie to make up”, or maybe “promising screwball comedy plot line to explore”, or even “perils of outsourcing creative media work to generative AI”.

So. Last weekend saw insane news-generating scenes in Glasgow around a public event aimed at children: Willy’s Chocolate Experience, a blatant attempt to cash in on Roald Dahl’s cautionary children’s tale, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Which is currently most prominently associated in the zeitgeist with a 2004 movie directed by Tim Burton, who probably needs no introduction, even to a cinematic illiterate like me. Although I gather a prequel movie (called, predictably, Wonka), came out in 2023.

(Because sooner or later the folks behind “House of Illuminati Ltd” will wise up and delete the website, here’s a handy link to how it looked on February 24th via archive.org.)

INDULGE IN A CHOCOLATE FANTASY LIKE NEVER BEFORE – CAPTURE THE ENCHANTMENT ™!

Tickets to Willys Chocolate Experience™ are on sale now!

The event was advertised with amazing, almost hallucinogenic, graphics that were clearly AI generated, and equally clearly not proofread because Stable Diffusion utterly sucks at writing English captions, as opposed to word salad offering enticements such as Catgacating • live performances • Cartchy tuns, exarserdray lollipops, a pasadise of sweet teats.* And tickets were on sale for a mere £35 per child!

Anyway, it hit the news (and not in a good way) and the event was terminated on day one after the police were called. Here’s The Guardian‘s coverage:

    The event publicity promised giant mushrooms, candy canes and chocolate fountains, along with special audio and visual effects, all narrated by dancing Oompa-Loompas — the tiny, orange men who power Wonka’s chocolate factory in the Roald Dahl book which inspired the prequel film.

    But instead, when eager families turned up to the address in Whiteinch, an industrial area of Glasgow, they discovered a sparsely decorated warehouse with a scattering of plastic props, a small bouncy castle and some backdrops pinned against the walls.

Anyway, since the near-riot and hasty shutdown of the event, things have … recomplicated? I think that’s the diplomatic way to phrase it.

Ted Gioia on escaping from the trap of Dopamine Culture

Filed under: Health, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Following up on this hot issue, Ted Gioia has some suggestions to get out of the habit:

My dopamine culture essay is still stirring up lots of discussion. And people have their own stories to share.

For example:

And also:

The same thing is happening everywhere — at concerts, at museums, at work, at church, while driving, or even at a funeral.

But it’s even worse when people don’t even try to multitask, instead abandoning essential life tasks—because of the compulsion to scroll.

I’ve now heard from

  • People who scroll instead of sleeping
  • People who scroll instead of engaging in physical activity
  • People who scroll instead of finding a life partner, or connecting with flesh-and-blood people
  • People who scroll instead of gaining skills, finding a job, and pursuing a vocation
  • Etc.

I originally focused on the impact on arts and creativity—because that’s the world I live in. I was worried that people had no patience for a movie or concert or book, because they can only digest stimuli in 15-second bursts.

But I now see that the problem is much, much bigger.

It’s almost quaint to worry about these screen zombies not reading books. The simple fact is that, increasingly, their entire life is suffering because of a technology shift imposed on them by Silicon Valley.

These addictive and compulsive behaviors are troubling. But even more disturbing is how the largest corporations in the world are investing billions in promoting and accelerating this compulsive use of their tech tools.

If you look at the 10 largest companies in the world, half of them are trying to create this addictive relationship to technology. The days when the dealer in addiction had to hide in the shadows are over. They now operate freely in your home, and every other sphere of your life.

A few days ago, I promised to offer concrete suggestions for dealing with this. Some of these are listed below.

Venezuelan FN49: The First FN49 Contract

Filed under: Americas, Europe, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published Dec 1, 2023

Venezuela was the first nation to purchase the FN-49 rifle, before even the Belgian military. In fact, the Venezuelan contract was signed in 1948, before the “FN-49” designation was even in place. Venezuela bought a total of 8,012 rifles in two batches — 4,000 rifles plus 12 cutaway training examples delivered in 1949 and a further 4,000 more rifles delivered in June 1951. All of them included the integral muzzle brake and scope mounting cuts, although no scopes were ever procured. They were all semiautomatic models.

Some of the rifles were issued and used, but some appear to have remained in depots their entire life. Venezuela was also an early adopter of the FAL, and the FN-49 was only used for a short time. In 1966, all of them (or virtually all) were sold as surplus to InterArms, and brought onto the US collector market.
(more…)

QotD: Mansa Musa’s disastrous foreign aid to Cairo

Filed under: Africa, Economics, History, Middle East, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Mansa Musa’s good intentions may be the first case in history of failed foreign aid. Known as the “Lord of the Wangara Mines”, Mansa Musa I ruled the Empire of Mali between 1312 and 1337. Trade in gold, salt, copper, and ivory made Mansa Musa the richest man in world history.

As a practicing Muslim, Mansa Musa decided to visit Mecca in 1324. It is estimated that his caravan was composed of 8,000 soldiers and courtiers — others estimate a total of 60,000 — 12,000 slaves with 48,000 pounds of gold and 100 camels with 300 pounds of gold each. For greater spectacle, another 500 servants preceded the caravan, and each carried a gold staff weighing between 6 and 10.5 pounds. When totaling the estimates, he carried from side to side of the African continent approximately 38 tons of the golden metal, the equivalent today of the gold reserves in Malaysia’s central bank — more than countries like Peru, Hungary or Qatar have in their vaults.

On his way, the Mansa of Mali stayed for three months in Cairo. Every day he gave gold bars to the poor, scholars, and local officials. Mansa’s emissaries toured the bazaars paying at a premium with gold. The Arab historian Al-Makrizi (1364-1442) relates that Mansa Musa’s gifts “astonished the eye by their beauty and splendor”. But the joy was short-lived. So much was the flow of golden metal that flooded the streets of Cairo that the value of the local gold dinar fell by 20 percent and it took the city about 12 years to recover from the inflationary pressure that such a devaluation caused.

Orestes R Betancourt Ponce de León, “5 Historic Examples of Foreign Aid Efforts Gone Wrong”, FEE Stories, 2021-06-06.

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