Interesting Links for 04-10-2017

[andrewducker]

Brexit negotiations: European Parliament says sufficient progress not made as it urges EU leaders to delay next phase of talks

(tags: uk europe )

Scottish government bans fracking in landmark decision

(tags: scotland oil gas )

Navy Returns to Compasses and Pencils to Help Avoid Collisions at Sea (also increases sleep, abandons 100-hour duty rosters)

(tags: navy usa fail )

Waymo vs. Uber: unsealed court documents reveal damning evidence

(tags: crime Technology OhForFucksSake driving )

Different parts of the brain are used for different genres of computer game

(tags: games brain )

"In the past two weeks, Spain did more for Catalan independence than the Catalans in the past 10 years"

(tags: Spain Catalonia independence )

A look at the gun laws that may have aided Las Vegas shooter

Yay for legal machine guns for civilian use!
(tags: guns usa law )

United States rejects UN resolution condemning use of death penalty to target LGBTQ people

Apparently because it would have also condemned their execution of mentally ill people and children.
(tags: OhForFucksSake usa lgbt death )

Possibly the least romantic song of all time

(tags: vialilysea song video music sex funny )

What sex workers want should be a vital part of feminist politics

(tags: sexwork feminism politics )

Winnie-the-Pooh brought joy to readers, but misery to the Milnes

(tags: writing life history uk )

Fecal transplant success for diabetes might depend on the recipient's gut microbes

(tags: diabetes microbiome )

‘I wasn’t taught that at school’ – British viewers shocked by ITV drama’s ‘brutally honest’ portrayal of the Irish Famine

(tags: Ireland UK history )

This Future Looks Familiar: Watching Blade Runner in 2017

(tags: movies slavery thefuture RidleyScott )

Why the Thames water level changes rapidly during a day in London?

(tags: London funny water )

Why Final Fantasy's Very First Ultima Spell Was Useless

(tags: games design history )

Comments

Navy Returns to Compasses and Pencils to Help Avoid Collisions at Sea

[jack]

It's like ALL life and death professions which rely on people working 16+ hour days keep killing people.

"We can't rely on mission completion as a sole measure of operational success, we also need to not drive into stationary objects and sink" :(

Why the Thames water level changes rapidly during a day in London?

[jack]

Come to think of it, "when the moon's overhead, the water from all round the world rushes to london to be underneath it" does not sound much more sensible :)

[flick]

We watched Bladerunner the other night. God, that film makes no sense at all.

[dewline]

It made sense to someone.

[conuly]

I know for a fact that we spent some serious time on the Irish Famine in high school here in the US, so it's sort of a relief to know that the US educational system is doing something right.

[calimac]

The article on the Milnes movie has a lot of factual glitches, but they appear to be more in the movie than in the article. But for one thing, Milne junior didn't join the Army to get away from being "Christopher Robin," which was no more than a minor irritant at the time. It was after the war, when he had trouble establishing himself in a career, that he began to feel resentful, but that did not last: contrary to many reports, he did not become a bitter old man, and his books should make it obvious he did not.

Also, Milne senior though generally anti-war was not a full-blown pacifist; he had served in WW1 himself; he acknowledged the necessity of fighting Hitler and actively aided his son's desire to serve, even pulling his celebrity strings to get his son around the medical restrictions.

And junior was not a Private. He was a Cambridge undergraduate when he joined up, and such were inevitable officers.

[kmusser]

The UN resolution article is misleading, the resolution is condemning the death penalty in almost all circumstances, not specifically LGBTQ or mentally ill or children; and is explicitly aimed at eventually ending the death penalty altogether. The U.S. is generally pro death penalty, so its vote is not exactly a surprise.

[jjhunter]

My old circadian professor will be SO PLEASED re: the navy changes! The previous way they tended to do the watch rotation scheduling (and what used to be standard on submarines before the changes a few years old) were particularly heinous in how they actively worked against what's easy for people's circadian rhythms to re-sync to.

Which is to say, not only were sailors working ridiculously long hours per week due to the 'same duties, shrinking staffing to do it' issue getting worse and worse, but the traditional watch scheduling they were putting that extra time in by was in and of itself effectively inducing (and reinducing) phase advance jetlag on top of all the others issues that periodic night shift work does to most people.