tiecladartist · 10 months ago
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On my third bg3 playthrough and I found not one, not two, but THREE areas I missed in Cazador's palace the first times 😓
Never found Lady Incognita's attic (I think that was the name).
Never found that dude's confession after all the button puzzles.
Never found the fancy rapier beneath the cells or the entrance to the sewers.
I just wish these places had more to them? Like, idk, someone there, or a comment from Astarion at least. The environmental storytelling was cool, but the ends felt lackluster.
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upshotre · 5 years ago
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Inside The Worlds Of Melaye, Dickson And Co
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Azu Ishiekwene Defeat is an orphan. Nothing illustrates its orphanage status as vividly as the fate of two politicians involved in last week’s elections in Kogi and Bayelsa states: Senator Dino Melaye and Governor Seriake Henry Dickson. As he went down, Melaye, the PDP candidate in the Kogi West senatorial election rerun, deployed his video-making talent to its utmost. Even before the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared the process inconclusive, the senator had manufactured two videos, each with the distinctive ring of a drowning man, to plead his case. In one of the videos adapted from a Channels TV interview, Melaye described the election as helicopter election. “For the first time,” he said, “rigging has been advanced to the level that now the use of helicopter in perpetuating this electoral atrocity manifested yesterday.” He suggested that the helipad and control tower might be in Lugard House, under the control of Governor Yahaya Bello. He had barely finished making this first video when, out of the necessity to find another scapegoat, he produced a sequel entitled, “I have been rigged out.” The world never saw a more desolate, broken and contrite Melaye as the one portrayed in this I-have-been-rigged-out video. Almost in tears, Melaye moved from blaming Bello to excoriating INEC for his looming defeat. Never in the history of elections in Nigeria, he said, had there been anything like this – when the umpire not only appeared to be taking sides, but actually helped the incumbent to stir up deadly violence and steal votes, while security forces provided cover or conveniently looked the other way. A devasted Melaye swore that the blood of the dead and the gods of the disenfranchised would rise up and avenge his defeat, as if he was an innocent bystander in the political battlefield. While Melaye was mourning his likely defeat, the outgoing governor of Bayelsa, Dickson, had not even cast his vote when he declared that Saturday – the same day he was supposed to crown his ambition as Bayelsa’s ultimate political godfather – was a sad day, accusing his opponents of being “too hungry” for victory to play by the rules.   In a follow up statement, Dickson declared definitively, that the election in Bayelsa was a “military coup”, orchestrated by the ruling the party, ostensibly with the acquiescence of INEC. A common thread among the losing candidates, which also appears to find increasing sympathy among segments of civil society groups, is that INEC has the lion’s share of the blame for the shabby outcome of last weekend’s poll. It’s easy for politicians to find scapegoats when elections do not favour them. If, however, they take just one quick look at the man in the mirror, they might just find that the desperation for power for its own sake, the quest for a zero-sum game, and the utter contempt and disregard for due process; that is to say, the sum total of what politicians stand for, is the single biggest threat to free and fair elections. Whatever credit Professor Attahiru Jega may get for the conduct of the 2015 election, the determination of voters to remove the PDP, and President Goodluck Jonathan’s gracious concession even before the final results were officially announced, were perhaps the single biggest success factors. Unfortunately, politicians have been regressing since. Melaye’s hubris may not exactly be at the far end of the scale of political violence, but Dickson’s odyssey like that of politicians on the other side that he is trying to disparage, is hardly inspiring. He may have forgotten, but a few still remember how he emerged as the PDP’s candidate eight years ago. Timipre Silva, who was in his first term as Bayelsa governor at the time, had fallen out with President Goodluck Jonathan in a dispute in which the National Security Adviser, late Patrick Aziza, was determined to show Silva who the boss was. To ensure that Silva did not present himself at the PDP primaries in Yenagoa he was barricaded in his Abuja home in a military-style operation. He was kept under house arrest of sorts, effectively ruling out his participation in the primaries and therefore blocking his return for a second term. Dickson, then in his second term as a member of the House of Representatives, was flown to Yenagoa. His name was wangled to INEC in the middle of the night and everything else from then on, including the courts, was pressed into Dickson’s service. It’s hardly the kind of antecedent that should lend itself to any complaint about due process or one that should embolden the victim this time to lament a hostile takeover, much less a military coup. But here we are, the beneficiary of 2011’s assault on due process but now a victim is not just complaining about a hostile takeover, he says the state was overthrown in a military coup. And his complaint is coming after he hijacked the party primaries and fielded, singlehandedly, both the candidate and his running mate, against the run of play. In the end, the governorship candidate lost, and to compound Dickson’s misery, his plan to cut a deal with his stooges for a bye election that might have taken him to the Senate has also ended. The party primaries that produced Dickson in 2011 is just as shambolic and militaristic as the one by which he manufactured the two PDP candidates in last week’s election. Yet, Dickson – or Countryman as he fondly calls himself – does not see the log in his own eye. Rather than chasing shadows, we should put the blame for shoddy electoral outcomes and violence where it is – at the doorstep of politicians, with the security agencies, and increasingly, the courts, in that order. And politicians, meaning politicians of all stripes, are the two biggest instigators. The APC may have won the governorship elections in Bayelsa and Kogi, but the party cannot be proud of its record in the run up to that election. The poor performance of Bello, which made Governor Nasir El-Rufai carry him on his back and kneel down to beg Kogi voters, meant that Bello already knew he was walking a tightrope before the election and had to rely on desperate measures, including going on all fours and suborning the security agencies, where possible, to survive. It’s hardly an atmosphere conducive to free and fair elections, however well-intentioned the umpire may be. In Bayelsa, the sham party primaries in APC that forced one of the aspirants to go to court; the desperation that forced two APC governors to abandon their states and camp in Yenagoa three days before the election; and the increasing cases of eleventh-hour court rulings, imperiled planning and compounded the climate of fear and tension. Whereas off-season elections are supposed to help INEC deploy more resources and manage elections in the affected states more effectively, it appears to be having the opposite effect. In the zero-sum, do-or-die struggle for power, politicians now deploy overwhelming violence to subvert the process and use social media to spread fake results, only to look for scapegoats elsewhere. The CSOs must call them out. It is easy to forget where we’re coming from. Only four years ago, 80 election results were nullified by the courts after the general elections in that year alone, compared with three court-ordered elections out of 178 three years later. Also, when INEC proposed, among other amendments to the Electoral Act in 2016, that politicians who rig their way to power should be made to refund every kobo collected when they are found out, politicians promptly removed the amendment in the final draft sent to President Muhammadu Buhari for assent.   They want to get to power by hook and/or crook, knowing that no matter how they get there, in the end, they will still retain their loot. If the Kogi and Bayelsa elections were held on separate days, what happened last weekend might have been child’s play. It appears that the more the electoral umpire tries to keep politicians on the straight and narrow path, the more ungovernable they have become, believing that if the outcome does not favour them they would either call for cancellation or win in court. The law is clear about the grounds on which elections may be suspended or cancelled. Stage-managing violence or crying wolf in order to force INEC’s hand is a slippery slope. Since politicians have learnt to fly without perching, INEC must learn to shoot without missing. It must continue to perform its role as umpire without fear, favour or ill-will and spare no cost to prosecute more electoral offenders. The odysseys of Melaye and Dickson are sad reminders of how far we still need to go. Yet, the distance is worth going to strengthen and preserve our institutions. Those who think they have won – or would win – by bending the system, would find a rich harvest of what they have sown down the road. Ishiekwene is the Managing Director/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview Read the full article
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viralhottopics · 8 years ago
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Put us on the map, please: China’s smaller cities go wild for starchitecture
From mountain-shaped apartment blocks to the centre of braised chicken reinventing itself as Solar Valley, Chinas second (and third) tier cities are hiring big-name architects to get them noticed
From egg-shaped concert halls to skyscrapers reminiscent of big pairs of pants, Chinas top cities are famously full of curious monuments to architectural ambition. But as land prices in the main metropolises have shot into the stratosphere, developers have been scrambling to buy up plots in the countrys second and third-tier cities, spawning a new generation of delirious plans in the provinces. President Xi Jinping may have issued a directive last year outlawing oversized, xenocentric, weird buildings, but many of these schemes were already well under way; his diktat has proved to be no obstacle to mayoral hubris yet.
From Harbin City of Music to Dezhou Solar Valley, provincial capitals are branding themselves as themed enclaves of culture and industry to attract inward investment, and commissioning scores of bold buildings to match. Even where there is no demand, city bureaucrats are relentlessly selling off land for development, hawking plots as the primary form of income accounting for 80% of municipal revenues in some cases. In the last two months alone, 50 Chinese cities received a total of 453bn yuan (54bn) from land auctions , a 73% increase on last year, and its the provincial capitals that are leading the way.
At the same time, Xis national culture drive has seen countless museums, concert halls and opera houses spring up across the country, often used as sweeteners for land deals, conceived as the jewels at the centre of glistening mixed-used visions (that sometimes never arrive). Culture, said Xi, is the prerequisite of the great renaissance of the Chinese people, but it has also proved to be a powerful lubricant for ever more real estate speculation even if the production of content to fill these great halls cant quite keep up with the insatiable building boom. From mountain-shaped apartment blocks to cavernous libraries, heres a glimpse of whats emerging in the regions.
Fake Hills, Beihai
A render of how the Fake Hills would look. Illustration: MAD architects
Forming an 800 metre-long cliff-face along the coast of the southern port city of Beihai, the Fake Hills housing block is the work of Ma Yansong, Chinas homegrown conjuror of sinuous, globular forms whose practice is appropriately named MAD. Having studied at Yale and worked with Zaha Hadid in London, where he nourished his penchant for blobs, Ma has spent the last decade dreaming up improbable mountain-shaped megastructures across the country.
Less scenic mountain and more lumpen collision of colossal cruise-liners The first phase of construction on Fake Hills has been completed. Photograph: MAD
As it rises and falls, the undulating roofline of Fake Hills forms terraces for badminton and tennis courts, as well as a garden and swimming pool. Sadly the overall effect is less scenic mountain range than a lumpen collision of colossal cruise-liners.
Greenland Tower, Chengdu
Greenland Tower, Chengdu. The building harks back to the crystalline dreams of early 20th-century German architect Bruno Taut. Illustration: Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill Architecture
A crystalline spire rising 468 metres above the 18 million-strong metropolis of Chengdu, the Greenland Tower will be the tallest building in southwestern China, standing as a sharply chiselled monument to the countrys (and by some counts the worlds) largest property developer, Greenland Holdings. It is designed by Chicago-based Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill, architects of Dubais Burj Khalifa, who say the faceted shaft is a reference to the unique ice mountain topography of the region. It harks back to the crystalline dreams of early 20th-century German architect Bruno Taut, who imagined a dazzling glass city crown to celebrate socialism and agriculture; whether Sichuans farmers will be welcomed into the penthouse sky garden remains to be seen.
Sun-Moon mansion, Dezhou
A rival to Silicon Valley the Sun-Moon mansion of Solar Valley, Dezhou. Photograph: Alamy
Once known as a centre of braised chicken production, the city of Dezhou in the north-eastern province of Shandong now brands itself as Solar Valley, a renewable energy centre intended to rival Californias Silicon Valley. At its heart is the Sun-Moon mansion, a vast fan-shaped office building powered by an arc of solar panels on its roof. It is the brainchild of Huang Ming, aka Chinas sun king, an oil industry engineer turned solar energy tycoon who heads the Himin Solar Energy Group, the worlds biggest producer of solar water heaters as well as purveyor of sun-warmed toilet seats and solar-powered Tibetan prayer wheels.
Harbin Opera House
Harbin Opera House, with the St Petersburg of the east in the background. Photograph: View Pictures/Rex/Shutterstock
Nicknamed the St Petersburg of the east, the far northern city of Harbin has long had a thriving cultural scene as a gateway to Russia and beyond. In the 1920s, fashions from Paris and Moscow arrived here before they reached Shanghai, and it was home to the countrys first symphony orchestra, made up of mostly Russian musicians.
Inside Harbin Opera House. Photograph: View Pictures/Rex/Shutterstock
Declared city of music in 2010, Harbin has recently pumped millions into a gleaming new concert hall by Arata Isozaki, a gargantuan neo-classical conservatory and an 80,000 sq metre whipped meringue of an opera house by MAD. Shaped like a pair of snowy dunes, up which visitors can climb on snaking paths, the building contains a sinuous timber-lined auditorium designed as an eroded block of wood.
Tianjin Binhai library
Tianjin Binhai library. Illustration: MVRDV
Due to open this summer in the sprawling port city of Tianjin, this space-age library by Dutch architects MVRDV is imagined as a gaping cave of books, carved out from within an oblong glass block. The shelves form a terraced landscape of seating, wrapping around a giant mirrored sphere auditorium that nestles in the middle of the space like a pearl in an oyster.
Inside the space-age Tianjin Binhai library. Illustration: MVRDV
Along with a new theatre, congress centre and a science and technology museum by Bernard Tschumi, the building forms part of a new cultural quarter for the city, itself being swallowed into the planned Beijing-Tianjin mega-region population 130 million, thats more than Japan.
Huaguoyuan Towers, Guiyang
Arups twin towers are almost complete. Illustration: LWK & Partners
Nowhere in China is the disparity between economic reality and architectural ambition more stark than in Guiyang, capital of rural Guizhou, the poorest province in the country, which has the fifth most skyscraper plans of any Chinese city. The twin 335-metre towers of the Huaguoyuan development, by Arup, are now almost complete, standing as the centrepiece of a new mixed-use office, retail and entertainment complex, while SOM is busy conjuring the even higher Cultural Plaza Tower, a 521-metre glass spear that will soar above a new riverfront world of shopping malls and theatres. It has the glitz and gloss of any other Chinese citys new central business district, but as Knight Franks David Ji points out: It will be hard for a city like Guiyang to find quality tenants to fill the space.
Yubei agricultural park, Chongqing
Will Alsops Yubei agricultural park. Illustration: Will Alsop
Architectural funster Will Alsop may finally have found his calling in the supercharged furnace of Chinas second-tier cities booming leisure economy, crafting a number of fantastical dreamworlds from his new satellite studio in Chongqing where he is busy building a new cultural quarter around his own office, with a restaurant, bar and distillery. He is also plotting an enormous agricultural leisure park in Yubei, 20 miles north of the city, designed to cater to the new middle classes nascent appreciation of the countryside, a place hitherto associated with peasants and poverty. The rolling landscape will be dotted with cocoon-like treehouses, a flower-shaped hotel and a big lake covered by an LED-screen canopy, so visitors can enjoy projected blue skies despite the smog.
Zendai Himalayas centre, Nanjing
A limestone mountain range : Zendai Himalayas Centre, Nanjing. Illustration: www.i-mad.com
Erupting across six city blocks like a limestone mountain range, the Zendai Himalayas Centre will be Mas most literal interpretation yet of his philosophy of fusing architecture and nature. Taking inspiration from the traditional style of shanshui landscape brush painting (literally meaning mountain-water), the 560,000 sq metre complex is designed to look as if it has been eroded by millennia of wind and water, not thrown up overnight by an army of migrant labourers. Once again, Ma appears to be forgetting that elegant feathery brushstrokes dont often translate well into lumps of glass and steel. It is one of many such green-fingered schemes in Nanjing, including Stefano Boeris vertical forest towers and the Sifang art park, where Steven Holl, SANAA, David Adjaye and others have built pavilions in a rolling landscape as another decoy for a luxury real estate project.
Huawei campus, Dongguan
A render of Huawei campus, Dongguan, which is based on 12 European towns
Telecoms giant Huawei has courted lawsuits for copying from rivals in the past, but its love of imitating clearly extends to architecture too. The companys new campus, under construction on a 300-acre site in Dongguan, is based on 12 European towns. There are the dreaming spires of Oxford, the quaint redbrick houses of Bruges, the palazzos of Verona and the chateaux of Burgundy, all connected by a meandering Swiss railway. It might look like a theme park, but the employees will have little time for leisure: Huaweis founder likens his staff to a pack of hungry wolves and offers them a dedicated employee agreement to voluntarily forgo paid holiday and overtime.
Guardian Cities is dedicating a week to the huge but often unreported cities on the front line of Chinas unprecedented urbanisation. Explore our coverage here and follow us on Facebook. Share stories via WeChat (GuardianCities) and by using #OtherChina on Twitter and Instagram
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