Interesting Links for 16-10-2017

[andrewducker]

No link found between psychedelics and mental health issues

(tags: mentalhealth psychology psychedelics )

Great Ormond Street Hospital failing intersex children

(tags: lgbt sex children uk )

When you find out one of your friends is a creep

(tags: abuse society )

Stranger Danger: Drone Edition

(tags: drone children wtf )

I have always felt that the USA was a bit...untidy

(tags: usa design comic )

How to negotiate your own Brexit, a simple guide

(tags: UK Europe politics OhForFucksSake )

A “negative emissions” plant has opened in Iceland

(tags: Iceland co2 Technology )

New figures show Britain £500bn poorer than thought

(tags: UK money OhForFucksSake debt )

Were There Dark Ages?

Read the comments.
(tags: history )

More details on Britain being £500Bn poorer than we thought.

Oddly, paywalled on mobile for me, but not on desktop. No idea what the Telegraph is playing at!
(tags: money uk europe economics OhForFucksSake )

Severe flaw in WPA2 protocol leaves Wi-Fi traffic open to eavesdropping

(tags: wifi Technology security fail )

Beyond XX and XY: The Extraordinary Complexity of Sex Determination

(tags: gender biology hormones genetics )

Find a gym buddy – not letting them down may be the most powerful incentive to get exercising

(tags: exercise psychology motivation social )

Frequent hair dye use linked to increased breast cancer risk

(tags: cancer breasts hair )

Comments

[cmcmck]

I'd like to negotiate my own staying put if I could find an EU country willing to give me a passport- I so regret not staying three months longer in Belgium back then. I can't definitively prove my Latvian ancestry either due to that evil thing called the Sho'ah. :o(

Perhaps Scottish other half might eventually be the answer?

[andrewducker]

I hope so!

Or cancelling Brexit. Which I feel mildly more confident about than at this time last year.

[calimac]

Is the EU willing to allow cancelling? Their attitude has been, "Once you invoke Article 50, that's it. You have two years to the day."

The British government strategy seems to consist entirely of trying to get the EU to change its mind. Except Hammond, whom I used to consider a sober fellow, but who seems aware that the country is driving straight over a cliff and whose strategy is to postpone worrying about it until after they sail off the edge.

[andrewducker]

My understanding is that we cannot unilaterally revoke Article 50. We would need the EU27 to agree to unanimously let us stay in.

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-17-648_en.htm says that it can't be unilaterally revoked.

David Allen Green seems convinced that it would take agreement to let us revoke the article: https://qz.com/1002636/can-brexit-be-reversed-can-article-50-be-revoked/ and he's pretty solid on this kind of thing.

And the EUs official response agrees with this: http://uk.businessinsider.com/eu-brexit-resolution-article-50-can-be-revoked-2017-3

I am fairly hopeful that if we came to our senses then we could do a deal to stay in.

[calimac]

You don't need to provide links to prove that unilateral revocation isn't possible. Nobody, not even those driving the car over the cliff, thinks that it is.

What they're trying to do is get the EU to change its mind.

Nor is it in question whether the EU could, within the rules, change its mind.

What is totally, utterly, and completely absent is the slightest indication that the EU has any interest or desire whatever to do so. They set out their position when the referendum passed, and have not changed it since then. And saying "pretty please?" is not going to alter the entire landscape.

[andrewducker]

I've definitely read quotes from Donald Tusk which were in favour.

Whether it could reach unanimity is another matter...

[cmcmck]

The Wile E Coyote moment.

We were discussing this very thing over breakfast this morning.............

[cmcmck]

That would be the best outcome of all.

[calimac]

Is that it with the sex determination thing? One paragraph and a confusing chart? I was hoping for something that I could actually use to communicate with the people of Trumpian intelligence who think that sex and gender are purely binary.

Article on male attitudes towards sex abuse suggests that the reason men balk at accusing other men is that they fear being guilty of it themselves. But I don't; I don't get drunk, I don't manhandle or proposition women. What I have trouble wrapping my mind around is that men of my own generation could be so profoundly primitive. Pick-up artists who think they're subtle and try to work the angles; that I easily believe. But Harvey's defense is that he didn't know better because he grew up during the Dark Ages.* No he didn't.

*Not his wording, but that's the size of it. And see? It's too toxic a term to use seriously, even if you do claim that 500-1000 AD was a low point in Western European cultural creativity.

[skington]

I've never been able to read the comments on Slate Star Codex because, unless you have a huge monitor and/or make the website full-screen, the sizeable right-hand column reserved for ads and the significant level of indentation at each level means that comments rapidly get squeezed to a point where there's only a small handful of words per line.

[andrewducker]

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/17/highlights-from-the-comments-on-dark-ages