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The village and the girl

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The village and the girl

#21

Post by steve-howard »

stephengillie wrote: post #7
savanaly wrote: post #5

A living advertisement for browser extensions like Readability, Clearly, etc. that actually allow you to read articles like this.

Or just disable Javascript. Everyone's trying to outdo "What is Code" and so we'll be dealing with this kind of journalistic showmanship for the next few months. Edit: The article is very well written and truly touching. It feels like reading The Good Earth all over again. In another way, it reads like a story about American Settlers from the 1800s. It's sad to hear about people abiding solely through subsistence far…

"What is Code" was quite noisy, but I think the trend has been going on since at least "Snow Fall": http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/

I dislike the trend towards adding animations to articles, as I find it very distracting, but their continuing popularity makes me think I'm probably in the minority.

Re: The village and the girl

#22

Post by rthomas6 »

Could we stop talking about the fucking layout and talk about the article?

China's culture, people, and most of all economy is opaque to most outsiders and I think it's fascinating. They built an entire city from nothing in just a few years, just... on a whim. Because the leaders thought that would be best for the country as a whole. It's fascinating and scary and amazing, and I can't think of another place that works even similar to this.

Yet it seems that us westerners largely ignore China except in terms of imports and exports. Why? Is it the language? The lack of widespread cultural exports? I mean most people know very little about China as a country compared to how important they are on the world's stage. In fact you could pick almost any other country with a respectable GDP and I could tell you a whole lot more about it.

Re: The village and the girl

#23

Post by thaumasiotes »

nfoz wrote: post #19
PlzSnow wrote: post #9

These "immersive" stories will disappear once the realization that the ROI on them doesn't work. Expensive to create, but no income generated because no-one reads them because they are annoying. The only companies left using them will be those with no concern about ROI such as here; the state-funded BBC. I'm sure it looks good on the designer's CV though. Who cares about the people who have to actually read the conte…

That's what I used to think about all-flash websites. They did go away, more or less, but only because the Web became that same pixel-per-pixel full-designer-control application platform, with all the same obnoxious problems that made us hate Flash, minus the binary blob. The overwhelming majority of websites would be better served by simple HTML3 with no javascript at all. Or rather, their users would be better serv…

> the Web became that same pixel-per-pixel full-designer-control application platform, with all the same obnoxious problems that made us hate Flash, minus the binary blob.

Browsers now disable right click?

Re: The village and the girl

#25

Post by analyst74 »

A very well written article, but there was one line that struck me, yet seems totally brushed off by the author.

"...his father killed himself by drinking rat poison after a family argument over money".

I can imagine, but will never truly understand the kind of hardship and turmoil the family suffered between greed, family value and survival.

Re: The village and the girl

#26

Post by blackbagboys »

rthomas6 wrote: post #22

Could we stop talking about the fucking layout and talk about the article? China's culture, people, and most of all economy is opaque to most outsiders and I think it's fascinating. They built an entire city from nothing in just a few years, just... on a whim. Because the leaders thought that would be best for the country as a whole. It's fascinating and scary and amazing, and I can't think of another place that work…

Well, it was probably also built because massive construction projects are an easy way to boost the GDP of administrative sub-regions and the career prospects of the CCP officials in charge of those administrative units depend upon whether or not they can show that they boosted GDP.

The motivations and dynamics at play are not really all that alien.

Re: The village and the girl

#27

Post by denzil_correa »

rthomas6 wrote: post #22

Could we stop talking about the fucking layout and talk about the article? China's culture, people, and most of all economy is opaque to most outsiders and I think it's fascinating. They built an entire city from nothing in just a few years, just... on a whim. Because the leaders thought that would be best for the country as a whole. It's fascinating and scary and amazing, and I can't think of another place that work…

> Could we stop talking about the fucking layout and talk about the article?

Sometimes, we tend to carry the hacker attitude a bit too far.

Re: The village and the girl

#28

Post by yitchelle »

tomtang0514 wrote: post #18
astrange wrote: post #12

I didn't have a single problem reading this article.

Agreed. However I didn't find it makes the whole experience better either.

I had a difference experience to you. Although I didn't get much out of the embedded videos. The still photographs had more impact for me. Just my $0.02. It is a good article.

Re: The village and the girl

#29

Post by stephengillie »

stephengillie wrote: post #7
savanaly wrote: post #5

A living advertisement for browser extensions like Readability, Clearly, etc. that actually allow you to read articles like this.

Or just disable Javascript. Everyone's trying to outdo "What is Code" and so we'll be dealing with this kind of journalistic showmanship for the next few months. Edit: The article is very well written and truly touching. It feels like reading The Good Earth all over again. In another way, it reads like a story about American Settlers from the 1800s. It's sad to hear about people abiding solely through subsistence far…

Sorry for putting the edit in this comment. I didn't realize how much it would detract from the conversation. Now that I've seen the downvotes, it's too late to edit.

Re: The village and the girl

#30

Post by Paul_S »

jdmichal wrote: post #10
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox's reading mode is also confused.

For some reason Firefox reading mode starts about half way down the article.

I can't read it at all without just removing the style. Insane. Fascinating article though, worth the effort.

Pages used to have a "printable version" button, whatever happened to those?

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