The Week That Was — February 7th
We’re back with The Week That Was, even if a bit late and missed last week! It’s been a long week with some struggles with depression, but today’s been better and I’ve also gotten some writing done today here. The short story I mentioned a couple weeks ago I’m still trying to work out some of the problems I have so it’s on the backburner some, while I’m also working on a long wanted done piece for TechRaptor.
If you haven’t seen it, this week I talked about a couple of different things:
- The Brian Flores v NFL lawsuit, and the bombshell allegations he dropped
- How Canada’s Far Right is ‘Having a Moment’ right now
Now let’s talk about a few things I’ve seen
Jeff Bezos Trying to get Dutch to Dismantle Bridge So 500M (US) Yacht Can Leave City
People sometimes talk about first world problems for issues that aren’t that serious but are annoying or frustrating that we experience in a world where we have, even at its worst, a lot of advantages. There is however, at least one level of problems above that — MegaRich People Problems perhaps?
Jeff Bezos reportedly owns the massive yacht being built by Oceanco, which will measure 127 meters, or over 416 feet, long and be essentially a supersized yacht. Being built in Alblasserdam, to get out to the Ocean apparently it needs to go through Rotterdam and that runs into a problem…
Officially known as Koningshaven Bridge, De Hef (which means The Lift) is a vertical lift bridge over the Koningshaven channel in Rotterdam. Built in 1927, it was named a national monument in 1993, and has a clearance of about 40 meters (over 131 feet), but that isn’t enough for Jeff’s Y721, and so he has reportedly asked the city to take off the middle of the bridge so they can sail the finished yacht out.
Originally it appears that permission was granted, but there was blow back from local folks who seemed to feel that, even if he was footing the bill, having one of the world’s richest people just walking in and saying remove your monument so I sail my monument to ego out to sea, was a bit much. There is a limit to how much being rich should let you get away with, and requiring countries to risk heritage sites is probably going well past that line. The counter argument seems to be ‘but jobs’ and that some of the construction would move elsewhere.
Here’s a thought — how about we chop Bezo’s ego so that it can fit under 40 meter tall. Here’s a report about it by CBC if you want to see more.
Russia Building an Oil Arctic Silk Road
One of the side effects of climate change is that one of the deadliest attempts of people has become a real possibility — the North West Passage. In Canada, its been something we’ve talked about on occasion because we do have such a large arctic presence. But, while we’re talking and maybe thinking about it Russia is going all in and pulling people with them.
Russia is building giant roads to new ports, with new gigantic oil tankers designed to take oil from the north of Russia, down to China using money invested by China, Saudi Arabia and others. Many of the new ships are able to go through the Arctic Sea without an icebreaker even!
This takes a trip that would be 48 days from China to Rotterdam down to 19 days for China to the new Russian megaport that has had over 110 billion invested in it, with many more billions to come. New roads, villages, electric plants, and everything need to be built to support this megaport, and there are a series of other ports getting invested into along the path.
The project is both an astounding showing of what focused people can do, how economic incentives can make even the priciest projects happen, and a scary showing of the fact that even knowing the planet is burning up we won’t stop with the fossil fuels. At the cost of these ports, they are reliant on oil sales and there are going to be a lot of them as the investors, Russia, and the oil companies want their money from this project. Its scary that we’re doing this as a species, and shows part of a big problem we have that even while we are making grand promises to move away from fossil fuels governments are pouring more and more money into it. Here’s the B1M on it:
And before anyone says, that changing a lot of environmental stuff is too big a project to do, and there’s not enough time and stuff, I want to point you to something else. The ozone layer. When was the last time you heard about that? No, its not because it got destroyed, it’s because scientists, politicians, and people worked together seeing that we were just shy of doomsday o’clock and put into place large overhauls banning a lot of products, putting into place new rules, and other steps to help stop the depletion of the ozone layer and help it heal. You don’t hear about it because we actually managed to fix it. It IS POSSIBLE folks — and honestly coming across this video was one of the most inspiring things I’ve seen in a while because it gives hope in the face of cataclysmic climate change that we as a species could do this… if we decide to.
The Problem with the Winter Olympics — or Why We Shouldn’t Host Sporting Events in Authoritarian Repressive Regimes
Some of you (hi mom!) have heard me talk about this some and its something that has made an event that I normally enjoy at best bittersweet this year. The Winter Olympics are hosted in Beijing and that has a lot of problems — though don’t ask the corrupt governing bo… I mean the IOC about it.
First of all, talking about the Chinese government and the problems it creates with hosting events there has to start with the Uyghurs, and how they are being used for slave labour in China. It’s been called a genocide by multiple countries, yet somehow we’re still working with the government and going there to happily play sports. In a move to help bury that and show everything is fine, despite the numerous reports proving otherwise, they chose a Uyghur as a torchbearer — something that they insist was NOT AT ALL intended to deflect criticism. Whether meant for internal or external deflection or propaganda, there is no way that the Chinese Communist Party didn’t have political motivation behind that choice.
If you are wondering, what is the Uyghur feeling on the matter, I’ll avoid the reductive comments about them being too busy in work camps and instead cite something I got from the East Turkistan Government-in-Exile,
“Many groups including Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers, and even American and European organizations have asked the IOC to cancel the Genocide Games. The IOC said no, so we asked governments to boycott the Olympics fully, and they also said no.”
“We also pleaded with athletes not to go, and they ignored us. So we now plead with the public not to watch the games to make this the least-watched Olympics in history.” — Dr. Mamtimin Ala, the EU Representative for the ETGE.
They don’t speak for everyone but it is a voice of the people who have been persecuted there.
Of course, the games themselves haven’t been free of issues, with things like the situation around Peng Shuai (who after being sequestered for a while, yesterday gave a controlled interview in front of Chinese Olympic Officials refuted that she had made sexual assault allegations) being only part of the story. One story you might have missed had to deal with how the Chinese government is being overly controlling on foreign journalists covering the event.
There’s a closed loop where they must stay around the olympic venues and accomodation to provide control of the journalists, but a frightening story popped up during the Opening Ceremony. A Dutch Journalist was taken off the air, and dragged him away for questioning while doing a live report. According to Sjoerd den Das, who was reporting live for NOS (the Netherlands public broadcaster), this was part of a series of things over the last few weeks that officials have hindered them in their work while reporting on the games. Here’s a bit of what he wrote about it on Twitter:
Shortly before 7 o’clock, we began filming around the Bird’s Nest. The police kindly directed us outside the area that was being cordoned off around that time. We followed their orders. We then spent some time setting up to film a TV live at the place the police had just referred us to. However, just after we had gone live, I was forcefully pulled out of the picture without any warning by a plainclothes man wearing a red badge that read, “Public Safety Volunteer.” He did not identify himself.
At the same time, another man took our light installation. When asked, they couldn’t say what we had done wrong. We were able to continue our TV live from a parking lot around the corner. In recent weeks, we, like several foreign colleagues, have been hindered or stopped several times by the police while reporting on subjects related to the Games. Therefore, it’s hard to see last night’s incident as an isolated incident, as the IOC claims, although such interference rarely happens live on broadcast. And now back to work.
CBC’s report on it is what brought it to my attention, and the IOC saying that it was an isolated incident to them appears to be laughable. One wonders if there will be journalists detained there at the end of the games the way this is going, and it helps illustrate why repressive regimes should not be given marquee sporting events.
The international community should not be supporting them. The Nazis shouldn’t have had the 1936 Olympics either, and given we’re talking about genocide of a religious minority group I think that’s not an entirely unfair point here. Additionally the CCP leader who doesn’t like being called Winnie the Pooh (oh bother) is trying to raise support to get re-elected for a third term with the party after amending the constitution to remove the term limits, meaning that supporting it the governments ares directly helping the person in charge of these stay in power.
This isn’t an isolated incident either. One needs only look at the FIFA World Cup later this year, which is being hosted in Qatar. Thousands of migrant workers have died in Qatar since the event was awarded, and numerous others are trapped.
Look, if we’re going to have sporting events that are covered in blood, lets go bring back the gladiatorial games. At least then we were honest about it.
What I’m Playing
I’ve been playing Pokemon Legends: Arceus which has been a fun romp at times, as it has reinvented some aspects of Pokemon, although there are aspects of it that seem rushed around the edges and need to be worked out for future games. It is however, a breath of fresh air to the series, and may launch a substantial subseries that could help deal with some of the fractured fan base that Pokemon has.
I’ve also been playing Expeditions Rome, the third game in the Expeditions series, and what will be the final project by developer Logic Artists. Its a strategy/tactics RPG, that is essentially historical fiction — Caesar dies and you essentially get to fill the hole in history that leaves. I’ve been on something of a Roman history kick lately, so playing this was perfect with that and seeing some of the famous folks of the Caesaran times was a treat. I would say that the game has an over-abundance of weapons, and some other stuff but I’ve had fun — and it even had one crazy quest talking about Roman beliefs around the afterlife and when you take a drug to see what it is to report to a shaman you see a vision about that you were in your past life a cat. In an otherwise very straightlaced game this whole sequence had me laughing and here’s a screenshot of it:
What I’m Watching
I had a chance to watch American Underdog: The Kurt Warner story a few days ago and I thought it was a really good film overall. While in theory a football movie, there isn’t much football in it at all and it’s focused on Warner’s journey. It does omit some stuff (his time in the European Football League, and one year as a Rams third string QB weren’t included), but it tells the Cinderella story that was Warner’s career beginning quite well. My one disappointment might be that it didn’t continue after that — because sure he had the super bowl and it ended that but Warner’s story continues to be inspirational beyond the 1999 Super Bowl.
Warner would go on to have a few more good years for the Rams, but begin to struggle with injuries and leave the team, ending up as a caretaker QB for the Giants, where he had some problems and people were beginning to talk about him being done before he left the Giants and joined the Arizona Cardinals where he was healthier and had another fantastic year leading the Cardinals to a Super Bowl performance. That part of his story tells that just because you’ve won doesn’t mean that the difficult parts are over… nor when it gets really tough, just because you had one win will you be denied another and how to keep persevering.
What I’m Reading
In what would shock people who know me, I’ve not been reading that much lately. I don’t know why, but I just haven’t over the past couple of weeks read any of the books I have. Looking for something light, and drawing on that Roman kick I mentioned above, I started re-reading the Codex Alera series by Jim Butcher again, and am now reading Furies of Calderon. Codex Alera follows primarily the character of Tavi, who starts as a sheepherder in a world several thousand years after a lost roman legion had been teleported there. In this world there are spirits of nature and elements (called furies) bonded to everyone giving people powers… well aside from Tavi who has no powers for some reason. The concept literally started as “lost roman legion x pokemon” and its a fun read by Butcher.
