Interesting Links for 09-11-2017

[andrewducker]

The Shortest History of Germany review (I read this, and highly recommend it)

(tags: books Germany history )

A 30-minute lesson in the malleability of personality has long-term benefits for anxious, depressed teenagers

(tags: depression anxiety mentalhealth psychology teenagers )

Scientific review offers chance for more people to give blood

(tags: blood donations uk )

Tesco have gotten into the Christmas spirit early this year

(tags: Christmas shopping funny satire )

UK needs to expand house building (because it has under built for fifty years)

Sadly, far too sensible for any government to actually do it.
(tags: housing uk economics viaDanielDWilliam )

Vince Cable says direct rule should be imposed if British overseas territories fail to tackle unacceptable tax practices

(tags: tax uk )

Britain tries to water down EU anti-tax haven measures days after Paradise Papers revelations

(tags: Tag UK europe )

Logitech wants people to upgrade to their new tech - so they're disabling the old tech

(tags: technology obsolescence OhForFucksSake )

Facebook asks users for nude photos in project to combat revenge porn

(tags: nudity photos facebook )

The Early 20th-Century ID Cards That Kept Trans People Safe From Harassment

(tags: Germany history transgender lgbt viaElfy )

We asked 86 burglars how they broke into homes

(tags: theft crime advice viaMonique )

Agate carving dating to around 1450 B.C., recovered from the grave of Griffin Warrior at the site of Pylos in Greece

(tags: archaeology greece art war )

Why does Taylor Swift write so many one-note melodies?

(tags: music )

Life Advice: For the sake of your friends, family, and sanity, do not throw yourself into a new career with no idea of how it works, assuming your enthusiasm will overcome your total ignorance and utter incompetence

(tags: OhForFucksSake food business fail idiocy )

A short story about perfection and time and reaching beyond your grasp

(tags: life time short_story )

Scottish government launches consultation on making legally changing gender easier

(tags: gender scotland law transgender )

Comments

[jack]

"Life Advice: For the sake of your friends, family, and sanity, do not throw yourself into a new career with no idea of how it works, assuming your enthusiasm will overcome your total ignorance and utter incompetence"

Indeed.

Although sadly, many success stories do seem to come from the same sort of start. I guess maybe the difference is, did you do what research you could and compare yourself to people who were experienced in this? Or did you hide from finding out what was involved in case it was hard?

[andrewducker]

The bit where he spent three months working in someone else's kitchen and didn't spend it learning everything he possibly could made me want to slap him.

[jack]

Yeah. That's pretty much a promise of disaster.

[awesomelies]

I sent that piece to my brother, who's a professional chef. The polite version of his first comment was: "If you can't make a profit from a pop-up why on earth would you think you can make a profit from a full-blown restaurant?"

On which note, he also clearly didn't bother to make any sort of business plan that involved working out how to price his dishes, because even when his restaurant was briefly a hit he was still losing money...

[andrewducker]

He seems to have made no plan about anything, at all. I'm surprised his family and friends didn't string him up from a lamppost.

[jack]

"Vince Cable says direct rule should be imposed if British overseas territories fail to tackle unacceptable tax practices"

Good to hear any politician speaking out in favour of tax. I wonder if there's some middle ground, though, imposing a standard set of tax rules on any companies larger than a certain amount, or similar, whilst allowing local governments to govern other things.

[cmcmck]

The consultation is going on south of the border too and btw, that's why the sudden outbreak of really nasty anti trans media stuff such as that I pointed up the other day. TMW inform me that the usual suspects on the far right/christianist wing have got hold of a shedload of funding from somewhere and the hatespeak is the result- bought journalists etc.

As I found, IPSO is about as much use as a chocolate teapot!

Wonder who is funding all that?............

[momentsmusicaux]

When I was a kid I used to say I wanted my dad to open a restaurant. And he'd say to me, The best way to make a small fortune in the restaurant business is to start with a large fortune.

Bookshops

[nojay]

I heard the same thing about bookshops. Saying that I actually met someone who did convert a large(ish) fortune into a small fortune that way, quite deliberately. He came back from six months in Nepal to discover his half-forgotten early investment in something called "Bitcoin" had made him a near-millionaire. He blew half of it on opening and running a short-lived bookshop but he didn't really expect to make money from it, he just wanted to run a bookshop.

[maia]

A 30-minute lesson in the malleability of personality has long-term benefits for anxious, depressed teenagers

If there were only one thing I could tell my 14-year-old self, it would be this: every time you do anything, even the tiniest thing, you physically reinforce the neurological pathways that make it easier to do something similar in the future. Your brain can be re-wired. Neither who you are nor what you're good at is set in stone; you become what you DO.

[doug]

Yeah, that sounds good advice. Not just for teenagers.

I found this para from TFA hilarious:

"The results for anxiety weren’t as good, but still showed promise – the personality change intervention led to greater declines in symptoms at nine months based on parents’ reports, although not based on the teenagers’ self-reports."

I think those results suggest an effect but not the one they are saying. My guess is the teenagers got better at covering anxiety in front of their parents over time.