they are massive in China - basically ebay, paypal and amazon rolled up into one. They are filing for an IPO (un the US) in a few months and will be one of the biggest chinese companies

I'm against them - for several reasons

The first is that it is hard to know what exactly will trigger a memory for people. It seems very.. I can't think of the exact word, but you have to be very arrogant or condescending or something to look at a piece of art and say "Somebody could be traumatised by this! I must make sure they don't see it!". It seems like getting offended on behalf of other people for the purpose of showing how morally superior they are, creating a controversy where there probably wasn't one.

The second is that the term get thrown around so much that it loses it's impact. I think if it was left for the really high-impact stuff, it might be OK. But people will always argue that their particular trigger is important and should be considered just as valid as other people's. When it gets to the level that was in the article, people protesting about a sculpture of a man in underwear, it becomes a joke. Do these same people also protest the big billboards of Dan Carter in his Jockeys?

The third is more of a philosophical reason. Are we really helping people by sheltering them from potentially upsetting situations? Again, I recognise the argument when it is a very high-impact sort of thing. But i think exposure to related situations over time is more beneficial and toughening - it's not like trigger warning are going to be everywhere, so you will still encounter them. A bit of common sense can let you know what not to look at in many cases.

Same here- I wonder if the people who comment regularly feel the same and just ignore that nagging voice that tells me "that comment isn't really very good"

It's also a gateway to eurogames in general. I discovered Carcassonne after trying to find other games similar to Settlers, and I generally prefer it, because it is shorter but has just as much strategic depth, to me. Being shorter means it is easier to get people who have not played or are a bit skeptical to play, as well.

The author here seems a bit too quick to describe isolated incidents as typical of NZ society. Yes, there is a large of people with racist views but this is quickly changing - at least superficially, as people realise it is (at least) not socially acceptable to air their racist views.

Also, on the Kiwi/Iwi billboards - only "mild criticism form the national media"? I remember that the discussion of these billboards raged for weeks in the national media and was quite heated.

It's easy to ascribe a national character to a few examples. I wonder if the author spent any length of time in other cities around NZ. Christchurch has a reputations as quite a racist city, compared to, say, Wellington (a city roughly the same size).

This seems like an interesting game.

My first thought was that you should drill out the holes in all directions, but it seems that by not doing this you are making it harder for the players. Or, possibly, it is easier to fit an awkward shaped block in when you have 6 possible orientations instead of just 2.

Episodes is really good. Not sure if it well known in America or not. Kind of like a behind the scenes look at two people trying to recreate a British TV show in the US. Matt LeBlanc stars as a fictionalised version of himself and is surprisingly good. The humor is a blend of dry British humor and the more broad american style

This is probably my favourite show ever. Also good, in a similar vein, but a bit more drama is Green Wing. Tamsin Greig is in it too. It takes place in a hospital.

It seems like not enough weight is given to the quality of the articles - there should be several ways to determine this. In the article it mentions the "impact factor" of a journal that an article is published in, but this seems limited. Perhaps a better way would be the number of times it is cited (within a certain timespan) with bonuses the more it is cited.