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What adventure awaits?!

Every destination has its default image downscaled into the kind of low-color, low-pixel version that might render on an era-appropriate monitor.

An example of some meandering.

A mix of going and examining.

FYI.

Wikipedia as a classic text adventure: this "game"nowexists, and it's thanks to a London developer who figured out a cleverway to interpret the gushing fountain of data that is Wikipedia's API.

The Javascript project works on any desktop or mobile web browser, and it starts out looking like an '80s Infocom video game box. (Always a good beginning.) Wikipedia: The Text Adventure generates alist of major landmarks, and clicking any of them takes you to a landing page with a basic location description as pulled from its Wikipedia article summary, along with a list of nearby locations marked off by cardinal directions. You're restricted to a text box, and, appropriately, typing "help" into it brings up a list of commands you can type. (Mobile users can also tap on keywords in the summaries, which isn't as cool, but it's a welcome alternative.)

Getting anywhere is as simple as typing "go" and its name, or you can learn more about mentioned contents by typing "examine" and their name. Want to pick something up? "Take" it. You can't really use objects in various places, but it's fun to, say, pick up the Mona Lisa.

Your available commands are limited because The Text Adventure was not built with narrative quests in mind. But its auto-generated images and focus on locations is novel in the Wikipedia-interpretation world, and the result is an intriguing example of how to turn the information project into an imaginary nation-hopping toolnot to mention an open, wide-eyed exploratory system that fondly recalls the likes of Where In The World is Carmen Sandiego?

Developer Kevan Davis starteda slightly related project a few years ago, which he launched in November 2015 as part of that month's "NaNoWriMo" novel-writing challenge. The idea: automatically pull textfrom Wikipedia's API tocreate abook. The result, Davis tells Ars Technica, was "a strange time-mangled version of Around The World In 80 Days," in which "mangled sentence fragments" connected a narrative that traveled "generally eastward" until it clockedin at around 50,000 words.

His API tool'sfocus on physical locations, complete with descriptions and relative-location information, gave him an idea: "you could put that under a player's control and make a text adventure of it."

Davis says he put Wikipedia: The Text Adventure out without building more defined content, like quests or significant easter eggs (though he admits he snuck a few jokes in). He doesn't seem driven to addanything major because, in initial tests, people didn't need the prodding. "It seems like people are having enough fun making their own queststrying to get home from far-flung corners of their home town, walking between two landmarks in different cities, or collecting an inventory of particular treasures or oddities," Davis tells Ars.

If you're looking for self-made quest recommendations, Davis offers a few:Pripyat ("being a tough place to explore in real life"), Lobuche, Nepal, ("there are enough articles near to Mount Everest that it's a bit of a puzzle to reach the top"), and the White House ("which has articles for all its rooms"). He's clearly spent time Wikipedia-ing through his home city, as well:"there's such a density of modern buildings and ancient history, letting you step from a Roman encampment to an unbuilt skyscraper, to a long-demolished 17th century coffee house."

Listing image by Kevan Davis

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A programmer turned Wikipedia into a classic text adventure - Ars Technica

Both Jeff Horn and the Manny Pacquiao vs Jeff Horn Wikipedia Page was under attack today from frequent vandalism.

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What seem to be an epic battle about to begin, vandalism started happening all across Jeff Horn and the events Wikipedia pages before the fight even began. Changes were made on the event wiki page including:

Donald Trump vs Isis, Dionesia Pacquiao vs Jeff Horny, Boy kangkong vs. Kevin Duling, billed as "Battle of the Bad breaths", 45 Pac Man, Manny fight record to 0 - 58 - 2 and Jeff King Kong Jr Horn with this all being before the fight even began.

After the fight had happened a second surge of trollers happen but this time on both Jeff Horns page and the event Wikipedia page. More edits included:

Brisbane rigged city, Battle of the Rigging, Horn robbed the decision, changing the decision to horn losing, Horn won via cheating ass refs they cheated my guy deadass, Win but did he?, 16 - 1 - 1 on Horns record, landed half the punches as his opponent and many more.

Senior Wikipedia editor and Boxrec editor Benjamin Watt, spend over an hour after the fight battling off persistent Vandalizers before admin staff change the wikipedia pages to protected mode.

Watt commented This isnt the first time I seen a surge of vandalism, I remember earlier this year when WWE Wrestler Jinder Mahal, won their WWE World title, and the vandalism on that was much worse than this.

Both Pages are currently on temporary protective mode, however if a new surge of vandalizer happen, it is more likely the change will be permanent which is similar to what Justin Bieber and Floyd Mayweather Jr. have on their pages.

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Jeff Horn, Manny Pacquiao fight Wikipedia pages vandalized by irate fans over scoring outcome - WBN - World Boxing News

America's second-favorite frog hasn't croaked yet.

Pepe the Frog creator Matt Furie announced his plans to resurrect and rebrand the character this week as a universal symbol for peace, love and acceptance

Amid the 2016 presidential campaign, Pepe had become a symbol of the so-called "alt-right" a loose affiliation of ultra-right-wingers, white nationalists and white supremacists and many Trump supporters in general.

Frustrated with the racist and hateful appropriation of his character, Furie literally killed off and buried the once chill frog dude in May.

But he then launched a $10,000 Kickstarter campaign to Save Pepe last Monday.

This project is an effort to re-rebrand Pepe the frog as a symbol of love, peace and acceptance, Furie said in a Kickstarter video. And my aim for the project is to create a brand new zine in the spirit of the original Boys Club, and tell the story of Pepes resurrection and rebirth and the story that follows.

The fundraiser has raised more than $17,000 so far, nearly doubling its initial goal.

"It is a very messy situation, Jason Furie, Matts brother who is helping with the project, told MSNBC's Joy Reid on Sunday. And him as the creator of the image is the most upset by this, but at the end of the day were trying to symbolically rebrand him into something more positive.

Matt Furie, who in June was named one of the 25 most influential people on the internet by TIME, has also acquired the help of a lawyer to explore legal challenges against alt-right figures profiting from Pepes use.

An attendee holds up a sign of Pepe the Frog during a campaign event for Donald Trump in Bedford, New Hampshire on Sept. 29, 2016. Secret Service agents later confiscated the sign. Damon Winter / The New York Times via Redux

We do reject the right of other people taking Matts character and hijacking him and making a profit from Pepe, that attorney, Kimberly Motley, said on MSNBC on Sunday. Thats where they legal challenges lie. You dont have the right to take a persons creation and then profit off that creation, which we see many people in the alt-right movement have done so.

In September, the Anti-Defamation League added the character to its Hate on Display database and describe its use by the alt-right as carrying racist, anti-Semitic or other bigoted themes.

In the fall, the ADL and Furie joined forces to launch the

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Pepe the Frog Creator Wants to Make Him a Symbol of Peace and Love - NBCNews.com

According to analysts customs unions concern trade in goods so they should not constrain what the UK does in the services sector. Photograph: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Signing Britain up to a customs union with the European Union need not prevent it from striking important trade deals elsewhere, according to influential new thinking in Whitehall.

Officials and business leaders are anxious to puncture what they see as myths about a customs union that have deterred ministers from considering it as a much-needed economic option after Brexit.

While leaving the existing EU customs union is a direct consequence of Brexit, civil servants believe that agreeing a new customs union with the EU is not only possible but still compatible with key aims of Liam Foxs Department for International Trade.

There is a crucial difference between the [existing] customs union and a [future] customs union and [chancellor Philip] Hammond understands this now because the Treasury have taken him through it, said one official familiar with the process.

The simplistic analysis by those who want to paint it in the worst way is that its totally unacceptable because we would still be bound by EU trade deals. That is true of membership of EU customs union but you can have customs unions with the European Union customs union.

Such a deal would allow physical products to trade freely across borders without export duties or delay only as long as the EU and UK shared a common external tariff with other countries. But most experts are agreed that such a deal need not prevent Britain seeking deals with countries outside the EU to liberalise trade in the crucial services sector.

Customs unions are about trade in goods by definition because you only pay tariffs on goods, explained the anonymous official. They are nothing to do with the trade in services, which is the majority of what the UK does, so why should signing up to a customs union to facilitate what you do in trade in goods constrain what you do in services?

We could go off and see if we can do better than the EU in trade in services, they added. There is an argument that is not a bad thing to try because the EU generally, particularly France and Germany, has never been keen on liberalising trade in services. Its never been keen in the single market, let alone with third parties, so the UK striking out on its own might be able to do a bit better. The point is what you dont do is ruin your trade in goods while you find out.

Importantly from a British perspective, Turkey, which has such a customs union with the EU, is not obliged to follow EU single market rules on allowing freedom of movement.

Its still challenging, but a lot of this is why people have started talking about customs union so much recently, said the official, who believes some immigration agreement would still be necessary. You cant get anywhere on trade in services without discussing the terms on which the people providing the services can move back and forth.

Nonetheless, this variant of soft Brexit could prove more palatable than full membership of the single market to many in Westminster and business.

Though retaining a customs union with the EU would madden the Tory right, there is a strong macro-economic case for doing so, said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform. According to the Treasurys unpublished analysis, the economic benefits of future [free trade agreements] would be significantly less than the economic cost of leaving the customs union.

The government has spoken little about its plans since Theresa Mays Lancaster House speech when she called instead for a bespoke customs union with carve-outs for vulnerable sectors such as the car industry.

This was dismissed by EU leaders as cherry-picking and would breach World Trade Organisation rules that say bilateral customs unions are only permissible if they cover substantially all trade in goods.

Privately, officials in Brussels are said to be much more open to the idea of a wide-ranging new customs union with Britain, as long as it respects existing common market rules and has a dispute resolution mechanism such as the European court of justice.

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New customs union with EU after Brexit is still an option, analysts say - The Guardian

The European Union, whose parliament meets here on the French border with Germany, has not exactly been popular in recent years.

Complaints about unelected bureaucrats, lack of transparency, compromised sovereignty, unrestricted migration and costly member obligations have all fueled Euroskepticism.

But it seems the EU has finally gotten its groove back.

Two new surveys find that over the past year, citizens of member countries have decided that maybe this whole European idea the ambitious postwar project to promote continental peace and prosperity isn't so terrible after all.

The first survey, from Pew Research Center, polled people in 10 EU countries. In all but one, fond feelings for the union increased, most by a sudden huge amount. Here in France, favorability rose from 38 percent last year to 56 percent this spring. Across the border in Germany, it went from 50 percent to 68 percent. Even in Brexiting Britain, positive sentiment for the EU climbed from 44 percent to 54 percent.

The other survey, from the European Commission's Eurobarometer, also found an upswing in the share of European citizens who view the EU positively and have trust in it. Again, the upswing occurred in virtually every country.

What's going on? How did the EU turn its reputation around?

To some extent, Europeans may simply be realizing that the grass isn't actually greener on the other side the other side being, in this case, life outside the European Union.

Britain's upcoming exit has led to political chaos and economic uncertainty, not to mention sagging consumer confidence and departing jobs. Tens of thousands of jobs may leave London's financial sector alone.

The same Pew survey found that majorities of nearly every country say Brexit will be bad for both the EU and Britain. Even a plurality of Brits believe Brexit will end badly for them. (Greece, which was threatening to "Grexit" the euro zone before departure portmanteaus were cool, is the only surveyed country in which a plurality believes Britain will be better off.)

Perhaps other EU members have watched Britain's isolationist dysfunction and started to better appreciate the European project, even with its many flaws.

Not just coincidentally, in no country that Pew surveyed did a majority of respondents say they want to leave the European Union. This finding jibes with other recent polls.

Nonetheless, even though they don't want to leave, in nearly all of the countries at least half of respondents still want to hold a referendum to vote on whether to leave.

This may seem peculiar, given that Britain got such an unwelcome surprise when it held its own referendum. But this desire to hold a vote may reflect frustration with the lack of a say in what happens in Strasbourg (and Brussels, Luxembourg and Frankfurt, where other major EU business gets done). A referendum could be viewed as a way to gain more leverage over EU officials, even if the vote is really a bluff.

"People think that voting will empower them," says Luigi Zingales, a University of Chicago professor who has studied economic and public opinion trends in the EU. "Most Europeans are happy with the idea of some form of European integration and the common market. They just want more voice in the process."

Zingales also argues that a force bigger than Brexit may be more important in reviving the EU's reputation: the fact that finally, a decade after the global financial crisis struck, so many European economies are actually improving.

Zingales notes that in the Pew data, only his home country of Italy hasn't started feeling more warmly toward the EU. Italy also happens to be the only surveyed country whose citizens are more pessimistic about their economy today than they were a year ago.

"When things go poorly, you blame everybody: your government, the EU government, probably also the United Nations," he says. "When things go well, maybe you're now sort of OK with everything."

Lending credence to this theory is that trust in the EU government and trust in national governments have been rising in virtual lockstep, according to the Eurobarometer data.

In other words, a healing economy may lead to less scapegoating, more political stability. As things get better, people realize they overreacted, and their far-right, anti-immigrant, anti-internationalist, burn-it-all-down feelings subside.

If economics are indeed what's driving the retreat from insularity in Europe, that bodes well for the United States, too. Our recovery, after all, is light-years ahead of most of Europe's. Maybe our fever will break soon as well.

Catherine Rampell is writing from Strasbourg, France. Her email address is crampell@washpost.com. Follow her on Twitter, @crampell.(c) 2017, Washington Post Writers Group

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Millennial View: Catherine Rampell The newly popular European Union - SouthCoastToday.com