andrewducker | Interesting Links for 19-09-2017

Stanislav Petrov, the man who refused to destroy the world, has died: (tags: nuclearweapons russia history death )
Warren Buffett wins $1M bet made a decade ago that the S&P 500 stock index would outperform hedge funds: (tags: finance investment )
Amazon exert a massive amount of power over civil society: (tags: amazon society )
What It Looks Like When You Photoshop Men Out of Politics: (tags: politics men photoshop )
Kids Praised for Being Smart Are More Likely to Cheat: (tags: psychology children achievement )
'They just kept topping it up' – how one credit card user became £28,000 in debt: (tags: credit debt money OhForFucksSake )
UK debt is explosive – and it only needs a spark to light the fuse: (tags: debt uk )
The Best Health Care System in the World: Which One Would You Pick?: (tags: healthcare usa Switzerland Australia France Germany uk )
Reliance on 'gut feelings' linked to belief in fake news: Doesn't surprise me. Either you put your thoughts first when it comes to working out what to believe or you'll end up being taken in by stories because they feel right to you.
(tags: belief )
Gut Germs Appear to Play Role in Multiple Sclerosis: (tags: microbiome disease )
Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs: (tags: drugs law decriminalization )
What A Doctor Calls A Condition Can Affect How We Decide To Treat It: (tags: language healthcare )

I vividly remember my infant being diganosed with "benign idiopathic neonatal convulsions", which is just a Latinate way of saying he had fits as a newborn but they didn't really know why and it didn't seem to cause any long-term problems. Because I can speak and understand the medical-Latinate terms easily, I don't know whether the more Anglo-Saxon "fifth-day fits" would be more or less scary, but I bet it might make a difference to many.

Which way round this goes isn't always obvious - if you were told a household contact of yours had had a Yersinia pestis infection and they wanted to screen you to make sure you hadn't picked it up too, most people would probably freak out less than if they said it was plague.

This is a potentially serious issue and all that, but I was mostly tickled to read

'people were more likely to seek more urgent care for “androgenic alopecia” than “male pattern baldness.”'

which made me imagine chaps dialling 999 to report their receding hairline.

Interesting Links for 19-09-2017

What A Doctor Calls A Condition Can Affect How We Decide To Treat It