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Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

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Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#141

Post by Nilzor »

SerLava wrote: post #120
baddox wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm much less forgiving of the format. Every example I've seen has been a colossal and seemingly deliberate waste of the reader's (my) time. Even when it is reasonably skillfully written and contains information on a subject I'm interested in, I vastly prefer the writing style of, say, Wikipedia.

When they combine these god-damned long form articles with clickbait titles it's that much worse. At least clickbait spam content has the class to let you off the hook after 5 seconds. You click on an article about MH370 or the Paris attacks or something, and the fourth paragraph is "Jean-Denis lives in a quiet suburb of Orlean with his two children and their dog, a basset hound golden retriever mix named Harmonie."…

Haha so true. And then the mix of chronology just to mix things up...

"But Jean-Denis didn't always live a comfortable life in the suburbs. The first seven years of his life he grew up with his grandparents in Transylvania. The potato crop wasn't always good, and the long winters taught him about patience. A trait he's been needing in the search for the MH370."

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#142

Post by vacri »

rquantz wrote: post #136
vacri wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm probably a bit old-fashioned, but I think that the set 'literature' does not intersect with the set 'bounces a giant angled magenta byline in my face' (the "find a $100 smartphone" bit) Actually, one question I used to like to ask people: "In bookshops, what qualifies a book to move from 'fiction' to 'literature'?" (yes, you can get poetry and whatnot in the literature section, but it's primarily fiction-based)

In the Strand, the section you're talking about is called "Literary Fiction." Since we're talking about sets: literature ⊃ literary fiction There's plenty of literature that is not fiction.

Well, sure. 'Literature' is used for all kinds of things, from classic novels to poetry to scientific papers. But in (non-specialist) bookshops, it's primarily 'classic/good fiction' with some other stuff thrown in. Those shelves are usually marked 'Literature', not 'Literary Fiction'...

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#143

Post by pjmlp »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #116
rwhitman wrote: post #55

The MH370 tracking problem is unfortunate but what I'm most fascinated by in all of this is the continuing reminder of how powerless we are as a civilization when it comes to the oceans. A plane crashes in an area with no landmass and we lose it. We've overfished many species to near-extinction because we completely failed to understand exactly how many fish there actually are. The sea acts as a natural eraser for hu…

I live by the Atlantic, people go missing every so often. It seems tragic but normal to the locals. The sea is the sea. It'll slurp you out and kill you. Tourists seems quite shocked that there isn't more that could be done. Everything in a city is very safe, it's pretty hard to accidentally kill yourself. It stands to reason that we should put up some more signs, or have someone stop them from doing something silly.…

I also come from a coast city on the Atlantic and can fully relate to that.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#144

Post by thomasz »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #115
7952 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the continuing reminder of how powerless we are as a civilization when it comes to the oceans. That is symptomatic of our child like relationship with the environment. We are deeply dependant but have little understanding or agency. It is obvious that high fish stocks will allow more catches than near extinction levels. Catching 1% of 1 billion is better than 40% of 1 million. Yet we continue to treat fish as a sho…

No one can police the sea. We have big issues with illegal fishing. What can we do about it?

Ban all factory ships from unloading freight for one or two generations.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#145

Post by tcannon »

Last year I sailed my 30' boat from Oakland to Hawaii. I went three weeks with no sign of life aside from Albatross and flying fish. None. I couldn't even get my sat phone to work 90% of the time. I covered, roughly, the distance from Oakland to about Massachusetts. My boat was much smaller, and had very little as far as safety equipment on a passenger jet. While both might be exceptionally hard to spot -- even a 1000' vehicle with 1000' span would be hard to find on solid ground somewhere between CA and MA, add deep water, and that piece of wing was not attached to the plane when it hit the water. I know this as it still was shaped like a wing. I'm also a pilot and can only guess as well as other pilots, but when you over-stress the airframe from a loss of control, you can fold a wing. No life jackets floating as they're still in the plane which likely hit well before that chunk of wing fluttered down into the water. I doubt we'll ever really know. Seems unlikely to have been a bomb, as shit would be washing up.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#146

Post by thirdsun »

baddox wrote: post #82
notatoad wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with long form journalism if you have a complex story to tell with lots of information to convey. The problem is not with the format, it's with journalists trying to pad out a tweet's worth of information into a long-form article.

I'm much less forgiving of the format. Every example I've seen has been a colossal and seemingly deliberate waste of the reader's (my) time. Even when it is reasonably skillfully written and contains information on a subject I'm interested in, I vastly prefer the writing style of, say, Wikipedia.

Do you really don't see any value in a long form piece like you'd find in The New Yorker? I'm not saying that's all gold - it's easy to screw up and some topics simply don't need it, but if well done, I often find myself not being able to stop reading.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#148

Post by TeMPOraL »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #43
TrevorJ wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the business model. The longer you are on a web page the more ad cycles you see. I agree with you, its' not good writing, but I think that is where it comes from.

But the more you annoy the reader that's just looking for the reason the search is going to fail in 30 days. And the more you do that as a business, the more a bunch of readers (those who prefer that you not waste their time) get inoculated to you, and quit clicking on links to you. That's bad business.

That's bad long-term, but profitable short-term. It's rare a business that cares about the former.
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