Daily Archives: April 19, 2017

Can millennials build the world's most sustainable modern town from scratch?

That's the premise of "Jungletown" (8 p.m. Tuesdays on Viceland), a documentary series about the vision of Jimmy Stice. With his shaggy hair and mellow vibe, he seems to have just stepped off a surfboard, but he's a real estate entrepreneur and is good at wooing Silicon Valley investors and "interns" for his town-building project.

The series follows 80 young interns who pay $5,000 to spend 10 weeks in a remote, muddy, yet lush corner of Panama. They come to Kalu Yala, as the town is called, with big dreams but soon realize they're not in paradise. There's horse poop everywhere and it needs to be shoveled. And the jungle is ... a jungle.

Two interns leave because, as Stice puts it, "they didn't understand the vision," which he says is "researching how you can live beautifully." Meanwhile, he jets off to conferences and stocks up on pinot noir.

Millennial stereotypes are as plentiful as the ants that crawl the jungle floor. People have "idea orgasms." And they debate whether a man bun is the best way to tame unruly locks. Still, it makes for thought-provoking TV. Is Kalu Yala a way to heal the Earth, a real estate investment or a loony pipe dream?

See the original post here:

Can millennials create a new utopia in 'Jungletown'? - Colorado Springs Gazette

Reviewed with help from Jonathan Brown (Yogdog)

Stellaris release in the middle of last year saw Paradox Development Studio turning over a new leaf. No longer were their grand strategy games confined to the history of our planet, but they were branching out into our potential future and interstellar conquest. However, much like all of PDS games, Stellaris felt more like a foundation for the team to grow and build upon and now, coming up on a year later, theyve done just that with the major Utopia expansion and the associated 1.5 Banks update.

As is typical of Paradox games, theres a paid expansion and a free update. The expansions get a lot of the flashier changes, but that doesnt mean that there are slim pickings for those with the base game, and Banks has some significant changes and additions of its own.

The underlying civics and ethics that your empires government has been built upon have been reworked to allow for greater customisation, and thats fed into the main part of the game with the overhauled factions. These groups have certain desires and political demands that you ought to try and satisfy. Some will have unreasonable demands, but successfully balancing the factions that pop up can maintain the status quo, and even let you adopt a new set of ethics and form of government, while seriously neglecting a faction can lead to an uprising. The Utopia expansion lets you push to new extremes, with the singular Hive Mind and the diplomacy shunning Fanatic Purifier government.

Similarly, deciding species rights within your empire has been reformed to give you more options when expanding to encapsulate another species. Certainly, you can give them equal rights, trying to integrate them, but you can also purge them in new and cruel ways processing, neutering or forcing them into labour and there are three new types of slavery.

One thing that Banks really helps to foster is a feeling that your empire can evolve and change over time. Alongside factions and species rights is the new Traditions system and the Unity resource that you need to foster to unlock them. Split into seven different mini tech trees, these effectively amount to boosts and perks, helping you to push a particular path, whether its engendering a sense of discovery and exploration or enabling your empire to get the most out of vassal states.

The Tradition trees tie in neatly with the Ascension Perks that are a big part of the Utopia update. Completing a particular trees unlocks lets you pick from a list of perks that your empire satisfies; a perk that could be anything, from letting you build Megastructures through to letting you implant your mind in robotic bodies, or master your biological evolution and so on.

The Megastructures are easily the most eye-catching new additions to the game, letting a relatively confined empire built tall and continue to grow within their borders. It starts with creating space stations that can be substitutes for small planets, before you pick up the relevant technologies that allow you to then construct Dyson spheres to siphon all the energy from a star, ring worlds, massive sensor arrays and so on, each of which have to be built in stages over a period of years, if not decades. Though not unique, as with Civilizations wonders, theyre satisfying, if time consuming, to work towards creating.

Ascension Perks allow you to really focus your civilisations growth in a particular direction, which the Traditions dont let you do on their own. In fact, the Traditions cut against the role playing nature of the game, where you set out to play in a particular fashion. Youll undoubtedly earn enough Unity to unlock each and every option, but while youd think that Harmony would nullify or lessen the Domination and Supremacy trees, you can simply unlock them all and they remain constant between playthroughs. It means you end up with boosts that do little to nothing for your style of play, similar to how your scientific research ends up encompassing all possible technology, without branching you off in any specific direction. Its a minor point to raise, but it detracts from the overall feel of the game and the system.

While Utopia and the Banks update expand and rewrite some significant parts of the game, Stellaris is still left sorely lacking in other areas, and Im keen to see Paradox push on in those regards sooner rather than later. The entire diplomacy system needs to be torn out and rewritten from scratch, in my opinion, as its often far too restrictive and limiting. In a game which ought to be rife with interstellar intrigue, you cant make a deal with the devil or use the enemy of my enemy is my friend as a justification. If your morals and ethics arent perfectly well aligned, its difficult to really get much traction.

That in turn makes it difficult to break out of the familiar end game of grand empires butting heads in combat, smashing two huge Doom Stack fleets into one another in a decisive manner. The galactic crises still help to spice up the mid-end game to a certain degree, and the stories that you can explore are still enjoyable to me that said, Ive spent nowhere near as long with the game as some people while the Ascension Perks can give you new end goals to aim for, but I still find myself feeling that Im heading toward a kind of stalemate that can only be decided one way.

Utopia and Banks amount to a significant improvement to Stellaris that rewrites and overhauls a lot of the game for the better, adding yet more ways to try and build your empire. However, it also feels like Paradox are still just getting started with exploring everything that the game can be. It might take time for them to get there, but its a journey Im looking forward to taking with them.

Originally posted here:

Stellaris: Utopia Brings Further Depths To Its Grand Galactic Strategy - TheSixthAxis

Its not about Croydon, its not about Brexit its about thuggery

As a Kurdish teenager recovers in hospital from a sickening attack that left him fighting for his life, the citizens of Croydon are trying to come to terms with what happened on Friday 31st March on the Shrublands estate. How could such a savage beating take place on our doorstep? Why Croydon? Why England? Why now?

Judging by vitriol spouted in much of the national press and on social media, this was bound to happen. What did we expect, living in such a violent, racist borough that shines like a beacon of Brexit-induced hate? If the attack itself wasnt disturbing enough, its been followed by an extraordinary outpouring of tasteless, unfounded comments, Croydon-bashing and political point-scoring that only served to highlight prejudices.

No sooner had police announced that this was being treated as a Croydon hate crime, then the likes of MP Diane Abbot were claiming that it was an inevitable result of Brexit. The insinuation was that this was an attack by Croydons racist thugs who want immigrants shipped out of the UK. As the fallout increased in the press, a quick search for #Croydon on Twitter that wonderful debating forum that much of the media now reprints as news revealed racism is well and truly alive in the UK, at least online.

The coverage implied the attack was the result of Croydons black gang culture

First, there were people screaming that Croydon is a hotbed of Brexit-voting yobs. They didnt mention colour, but the inference was there. Then, when the police published images of some of the suspects, the Brexiteers and Croydon haters were gleefully bleating that the attack was a symptom of Croydons violent black gang culture.

This horrible episode turned into an almighty attack on Croydon and its people, and a slanging match between the far right and the far left. And all this while, the young man at the centre of it all was lying in intensive care. Fortunately, as I write this, he is on his way to recovery.

What makes this appalling crime and the vitriol which followed so hard to understand is it doesnt fit the Croydon I know. This is a town and borough with an extremely diverse and growing population and a strong spirit, where people are generally warm, down to earth and accepting of one another. Croydon is not exactly the new utopia, but it is consistently and unfairly derided for problems shared by many urban areas across the UK.

The Financial Times says that this is the sort of place where this was bound to happen

The fact that this particular crime took place in Shrublands, a relatively green estate next to Addington golf course and bordered by suburban West Wickham and Shirley was all but lost in the ranting that followed the attack. It doesnt fit the narrative. Neither does the fact that absolutely nobody except those involved knows exactly what happened. The police investigation has barely begun.

A few weeks on, and the national media is beginning to cover the story in a bit more depth, in the way they do when they come to a place for five minutes and make disparaging remarks. The Financial Times this week even went to Shrublands, which it described as ragged. Commenting on a moment of silence held for the Kurdish refugee, the FT went on to say: Shrublands residents many wearing tracksuits, some drinking glared at the outsiders but kept their distance. The FT article, like many, basically says that this is the sort of place where this sort of thing was going to happen due to rising tensions between locals and outsiders. There may well be tensions in Shrublands, as there are in many areas of London and the UK, but this alone does not justify a brutal attack.

Like the FT, I have no idea what really happened that fateful evening or why, but I do know that this was an orgy of violence by what appears to have been a very angry mob. Could this have happened outside Croydon? Of course it could. Would it have prompted the same types of headlines and comments if it had happened in Clapham or anywhere else in south London? Do Croydon citizens really think it was a direct result of a referendum on leaving the EU?

Scum is the only thing we can say with certainty

The angry mob and a them and us mentality has always existed in this world and probably always will. Thankfully, it only occasionally rears its ugly head when people of similar violent persuasion come together at the same point in time and something triggers vile mob behaviour. Croydon MP Gavin Barwell described the culprits as scum. And hes right. It really is the only thing that we can say with certainty.

So lets try to put an end to the incessant Croydon bashing and political point scoring for a moment and wait for the police investigation to unfold. Hopefully, this will get to the bottom of what sparked such a disgusting attack. Then we can look at how we as a community, and as a country, can try to reduce the chances of this kind of attack happening again. Hopefully, the culprits will be given the sentence they deserve for the sake of the poor refugee who got caught up in an extreme example of mob behaviour in that most innocuous of circumstances: waiting for a London bus.

I'm not even a proper Croydoner. I moved here 16 years ago. Then I abandoned it for Marseille but something drew me back here last year. Maybe it was the banter. I write and edit online and print communications, I teach English to non-native speakers, and I drink lots of tea. I have a thing for Croydon, Marseille, Arsenal, architecture and bears.

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The Reker Ahmed attack was about mob violence - The Croydon Citizen