Interesting Links for 22-09-2017

[andrewducker]

This is what happens when you ask Twitter to buy the drinks

(tags: birthday Twitter alcohol funny )

Acclaimed French chef asks to be stripped of three Michelin stars

(tags: food reviews france stress )

Why Is Payroll Software Hard

(tags: software design money tax law )

IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to total $185M

(tags: computers money ibm epicfail )

Council agrees business case for extending Edinburgh tram to Leith

(tags: Edinburgh trams )

Another problem with “we’ll just hire the best.”

(tags: diversity psychology work )

EU paid for report that failed to prove piracy is harmful– and tried to hide findings

(tags: Europe piracy copyright OhForFucksSake )

Individualized diets for irritable bowel syndrome better than placebo

(tags: food IBS )

Babies learn benefits of hard work by witnessing parents persevering with difficult tasks

(tags: psychology behaviour children parenting )

In favour of an opt-out organ donation system

(tags: organdonor law UK )

Why Wages Aren’t Growing

(tags: economics wages )

Weather forecasting is better than it’s ever been.

(tags: viaFanf weather )

When Amazon recommendations and dodgy journalism lead to a moral panic

(tags: Amazon journalism panic OhForFucksSake )

Uber London licence not renewed

(tags: London taxi )

Female film casting same as 100 years ago

(tags: movies women UK viaSwampers )

What do American college students think about the First Amendment?

(tags: usa freespeech university polls )

More details on Uber losing its license

(tags: London taxi regulation )

Comments

What do American college students think about the First Amendment?

[jack]

I'm interested that he tried to put some numbers on it, but I feel like the questions would need to be more specific to actually come to any conclusions. Do most students have the same idea what counts as "hate speech"? Does it make a difference whether someone is permitted to speak to people who specifically invited them, or invited to speak at a sanctioned event? Are we lumping together "offensive" things which are catastrophically harmful with ones that are not?

I admit, that, *in abstract* my answer to "should we use disruptive tactics including violence to prevent offensive views being heard" is "probably not". But if I'm subjected to an endless parade of speakers saying "lets roll human rights back 100 years" then disrupting them is probably right. But that means that question doesn't really tell you what it says it tells you.

[calimac]

Uber says, "far from being open, London is closed to innovative companies."

If by "innovative" you mean "rogue, lawbreaking" - which Uber apparently does, that being what its innovations consist of - then yeah.

[heron61]

For me, the key was reading this question:

If you had to choose one of the options below, which do you think it is more important for colleges to do?

Option 1: create a positive learning environment for all students by prohibiting certain speech or expression of viewpoints that are offensive or biased against certain groups of people

Option 2: create an open learning environment where students are exposed to all types of speech and viewpoints, even if it means allowing speech that is offensive or biased against certain groups of people?

Given that for all students who aren't cis het white males, there's a very real chance that this biased speech may not be singularly non-abstract, since it's directed at them, I'm completely understand preferring choice 1, and in fact am honestly puzzled as to why anyone who isn't a fairly dubious person thinks Option 2 is honestly a better learning environment for anyone who is at all likely to be on the wrong end of speech that is offensive or biased against certain groups of people.

In short, I'm deeply unimpressed with the author of the article and his alarmist panic about the survey results.