Interesting Links for 18-07-2017

[andrewducker]

A List Of Times Doctor Who Was Ruined Forever

(tags: drwho funny )

Scientists marvel at creatures' precise body clock

(tags: time genes life )

Taiwan woman divorces husband who ignored her messages

(tags: communication relationships divorce marriage )

Is Love Racist? The TV show laying our biases bare

(tags: love relationships viaSwampers race uk )

Custos startup uses bitcoin bounties to make pirates rat on one another

(tags: piracy copyright bitcoin )

UK students should not try to pay off loans early

(tags: tax students uk )

Pay-per-mile road tax plan wins £250,000 Wolfson economics prize

(tags: tax cars transport economics viaSwampers )

Humans hardwired to lean to the right while kissing the world over

(tags: psychology romance kissing )

Manchester’s bike-share scheme isn't working – because people don't know how to share

(tags: sharing society bicycles UK manchester )

Flow battery developer ViZn Energy says it can pair solar and storage for 4¢/kWh

(tags: solarpower batteries electricity )

Generating random English place names

(tags: geography names AI England )

Doctor Who: We regret to inform you that you are still legally a man

(tags: drwho law lgbt transgender uk )

“Board game of the year” goes to Kingdomino (my copy arrives today!)

(tags: games )

A brain implant turns “loser” mice into aggressive fighters

(tags: mice brain aggression personality cyborg )

Programmers discuss "What's the worst thing your code has done?"

(tags: fail programming )

Smoking in the UK now down to 15%, government aims for 12%

(tags: smoking uk )

Advertising watchdog to get tough on gender stereotypes

(tags: advertising stereotypes gender uk )

Comments

Taiwan woman divorces husband who ignored her messages

[jack]

Yeah; ignoring "I'm in hospital, can you visit" is a very high level of ignoring messages! I feel like there's some cultural differences I'm missing even before that. For that matter, the husband is clearly not doing the "marriage" thing, but I generally prefer a country defaulting to no-fault divorce; if she *feels* like the marriage has broken down it basically has whether you can prove it in court or not.

Re: Taiwan woman divorces husband who ignored her messages

[andrewducker]

Yeah. Clearly not a "He never answers my texts" so much as "He ended our relationship. You can tell by the way that he never answers my texts, even when I'm in hospital."

Is Love Racist? The TV show laying our biases bare

[jack]

I have a weird tension here. I feel like, people *are* under an obligation to test out their boundaries and (probably) discover that "I don't fancy people of X race" was just a prejudice they get over.

But if they really try and really can't, sometimes you just can't control your sexual attraction. And you need to not make a big noise about it and write angry thinkpieces about "my prejudices are a natural law for everyone", and not rub people's faces in the fact you don't fancy them. But also, not force yourself to date people who have no attraction towards.

But I'm not sure if that's a reasonable compromise. Particularly in race; sexual attraction is really weird, but "only attracted to people of my own race" doesn't seem to be a thing (more attracted maybe, and "can't be bothered dating ignorant majority makes sense, but not as a "my orientation is....") But I don't want to pre-judge which orientations actually exist and which don't.

Re: Is Love Racist? The TV show laying our biases bare

[andrewducker]

I don't think that people should feel bad for what they're attracted to. But I think they should also be mindful about them.

And I also think that it's normal to be attracted to whatever you grew up with. So if you didn't grow up with, for instance, Korean people around you at all, then you probably won't be instantly attracted to them. But...you hopefully wouldn't entirely rules them out either.

Re: Is Love Racist? The TV show laying our biases bare

[mlknchz]

I agree; attraction is attraction...it's like saying gay men are misogynist simply because they don't find women sexually attractive.
Can we please leave people SOMETHING they won't be judged about?

Re: Is Love Racist? The TV show laying our biases bare

[fub]

I think I agree with you.
But the article also mentions people saying something along the lines of "south-east Asian women are more submissive, so I like them better" -- and I do think that such statements are problematic.

Re: Is Love Racist? The TV show laying our biases bare

[jack]

That seems to be something that *is* very racist. (Even if there are cultural differences, you can avoid being essentialist about that.)

I think maybe the problem is, everyone should generally be a lot less racist than they are now, but when I read articles about that, I feel like they're telling me to take it to the logical conclusion, and obliterate any not-completely-egalitarian sexual orientation. But actually they're just being emphatic, not necessarily precise.

UK students should not try to pay off loans early

[jack]

That makes sense, although I'm always hesitant at people's complete omission of any possibility the government won't suddenly change the rules again to force everyone with a loan to pay more, given that's what the whole system seemed set up to do from the start. I mean, I hope they don't, and it seems likely the same logic of that article would apply in either case, but I expected them to say, "even if the government removed that cap, if there's a 9% repayment rate for life, it's better to pay for life that try to pay the loan off now" not "well, here's the current situation". I've read other articles talking about "oh my why on EARTH might people not want to take loans out when the repayment terms are so clearly specified and generous (but can be changed at any time)" and ground my teeth.

Re: UK students should not try to pay off loans early

[andrewducker]

I'd like to hope that the terms aren't retroactively changeable in this case.

But I also think that explicitly making it a graduate tax would have been a much better idea.

Re: UK students should not try to pay off loans early

[doug]

The terms have already been changed retrospectively, to freeze the repayment threshold rather than indexing it to earnings as originally promised:
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/nov/25/student-loans-george-osborne-criticised-freezing-repayment-threshold

Manchester’s bike-share scheme isn't working – because people don't know how to share

[jack]

Having bikes where you don't need to find a vacant rack at the other end does sound very good. It's a shame it doesn't seem to be working :( I guess, paying remotely helps, since you can charge people if they just disappear with it, but not enough, judging by the "it's still on the system, but in my house" stuff?

Re: Manchester’s bike-share scheme isn't working – because people don't know how to share

[andrewducker]

I hope that it does start working. I'd like for such things to be successful, even with a few bad actors in the system.

Doctor Who: We regret to inform you that you are still legally a man

[jack]

Indeed, although I think the doctor is probably much worse off than that, in that he seems to usually have no legal status on earth at all (albeit one he can usually skirt with one-off hacks or plot-dodges).

Re: Doctor Who: We regret to inform you that you are still legally a man

[andrewducker]

While also being the president.

(Did I ever mention how much I hate that?)

Re: Doctor Who: We regret to inform you that you are still legally a man

[jack]

I blocked that out. It sort of makes sense -- so many crises would make sense if everyone just listen to the doctor. But *surprise* no-one actually listened to him when it mattered. It got a very brief and mostly pointless joke or two, and a sort of ham-fisted LOOK HOW IMPORTANT THE DOCTOR IS moment and didn't do much else.

I've not watched beyond the following episode -- I'm going to ignore that bit, and hopefully the writers will too. I was fine with the weird compromise where important people are sometimes aware of the doctor, but he also often has difficulty inveigling his way into mundane situations, and I assume the show will naturally revert back to that.

Advertising watchdog to get tough on gender stereotypes

[jack]

Yes! I remembering hearing this from Sweden and it seemed really good. It's hard to eradicate gender stereotypes, but not constantly bombarding everyone with them all the time is a very good start!

Re: Advertising watchdog to get tough on gender stereotypes

[andrewducker]

Yes. I'm not comfortable censoring things generally, but adverts are so pervasive, and enter our homes without invitation, that I'm happy for some things to be limited.

Re: Advertising watchdog to get tough on gender stereotypes

[jack]

Yeah, I'm not sure why I'm so ok with this, but it seems I am. I guess it's partly, there's such an overwhelming need. And partly, I don't feel companies are going to suffer at all by not being able to be rampantly sexist in passing.

A List Of Times Doctor Who Was Ruined Forever

[calimac]

Perhaps you might be amused to know that the first time I was informed that Star Wars had been ruined forever was when The Empire Strikes Back came out. Yes, really. I think the person was upset that Luke suffered.

Re: A List Of Times Doctor Who Was Ruined Forever

[andrewducker]

I am amused. Goes to show how little some people like change.

(I'm more of a fan of change. I'd rather that the show tried something and it went horribly wrong than that they stagnated.)

Scientists marvel at creatures' 'precise' body clock

[calimac]

Judging on when they expect to be fed, our cats haven't got it.

Re: Scientists marvel at creatures' 'precise' body clock

[andrewducker]

Jim is woken by the sun.

Which is 4am right now.

Thankfully he will go back to sleep if you forcibly snuggle him for ten seconds.