Everyone knows what Europe looks like on an actual political map: there are two or three countries in the center that are stable, and about 10 in the periphery that will be bankrupt very soon. The generic map is so boring we won't even show it. Luckily, courtesy of visual artist Yanko Tsvetkov, we have some European maps that are sure to enliven any cocktail hour. Note for the sensitive: these are not what one would call politically correct.

And yes, the level of homogeneity that makes up the "Union" is truly staggering.

When open source software developers are making design decisions, how do they talk about users? To begin to answer this question, 100 contentious Firefox bug reports were analyzed for distinct uses of the word “user.” The results show that developers use authoritative words (such as allow, educate, and require) to describe what software does for users. Most statements involved confident speculation about what users need, expect and do, whereas a minority of statements demanded evidence for such unsubstantiated claims. The results also show that when describing users, developers describe them in general terms, rather than referring to particular uses cases or user populations. These results suggest that, at least in the broader Firefox developer community, developers rely largely on stereotype and instinct to understanding user needs. communities have begun to form dedicated user research teams in order to improve the user experience of their software.

The original version of Disney's classic "Fantasia" featured a character called Sunflower, a little black centaur handmaiden. Sunflower was an extremely insulting caricature, a blithely racist stereotype of the "servile grinning nigger" variety. Her sole function in the film was to eagerly polish and shine the hooves of the tall, sexy Aryan centaur women who glared down their petite noses at this scuttling servant whenever she got underfoot in her haste to make Mistress pretty.

I was stupefied by what I saw in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen's Twins. These new robots, who begin the film conjoined as a shitty old ice cream truck but who soon get upgraded into Chevy concept cars, seem to be the most extreme racial caricatures seen in a movie in decades. The Twins have a simian appearance, with wide faces and huge ears.

Red Alert‭ ‬may clearly be a satire of absurd national stereotype,‭ ‬rather than an‭ ‬endorsement of it but,‭ ‬nonetheless,‭ ‬the second you make any kind of generalised statement about the Japanese,‭ ‬it’s an invitation to misunderstanding