Interesting Links for 21-02-2018

[andrewducker]

The teenagers are rebelling, thank goodness

(tags: teenagers racism society GoodNews )

Why the Good Friday Agreement is important

(tags: NorthernIreland )

Standup comedian's husband sues for defamation over 'provocative' show

(tags: comedy relationships law uk )

Why the awfulness of the CIA is such a massive problem

(tags: cia usa OhForFucksSake )

Supplements are a $30 billion racket—here’s what experts actually recommend

(tags: health )

KFC's current situation is a warning about assuming that the cheapest contractor can deal with your complex problems

And here's the press release from October about how awesome it was going to be: https://www.logisticsmanager.com/kfc-picks-dhl-qsl-uk-logistics/
(tags: transport food chicken epicfail )

Ten years on from Norway's quota for women on corporate boards

(tags: women business )

This is one of the silliest things I've heard Theresa May say

"Oh go on, please give up a chunk of your power during a time of national crisis. You know you want to."
(tags: politics houseoflords )

Scottish income tax - how it affects you

(tags: Scotland tax )

How The Last Jedi is connected to a racist medieval story

(tags: history StarWars )

The “Microaggression” Concept

(tags: society racism sexism )

Swype pioneered a new way to type on smartphones—now it’s dead (which is a shame, because it's still my favourite keyboard)

(tags: keyboard )

Counting Calories Is Not the Key to Weight Loss

(tags: diet food health )

Woman kicked off flight after crew heard her talking about period pain

(tags: menstruation airplanes EpicWTF OhForFucksSake )

How lasers and robo-feeders are transforming fish farming

(tags: fish robots lasers automation )

Black Panther: The Tale of Two Different Viewing Experiences

(tags: marvel movies racism )

China cracks down on funeral strippers

(tags: nudity death china )

How we teach girls to be overly cautious and boys to disregard consequences

(tags: gender behaviour society )

You can write a key logger in pure CSS.

(tags: security OhForFucksSake web )

High-testosterone traders earn lower returns

(tags: testosterone men investment psychology hormones )

When isolated people who have health problems are supported by community groups and volunteers, the number of emergency admissions to hospital falls spectacularly

(tags: community health )

The Myth of the Tragedy of the Commons

(tags: economics fraud capitalism )

Ikea joins Big Clean Switch to offer 100% renewable energy tariff

(tags: ikea renewables uk electricity )

Comments

[miss_s_b]

I mean the default Samsung keyboard is basically Swype now, but yeah, I'm sad too.

[andrewducker]

I've got found GBoard or Swiftkey or any of the others to be as good as Swype. Functionality is very similar, but they aren't quite as slick.

[miss_s_b]

Yeah, it doesn't seem to learn quite as well, but it's not quite not-as-good enough to bother paying 99p for Swype. I am admitting my complicity in Swype's downfall here...

[calimac]

Teenagers are rebelling: I had a secondary-school lit teacher who did that, making up draconian rules to teach us what fascism was like and letting it run before revealing it was made up. I was infuriated, not at the rules but at the teacher for screwing with our minds like that. I filed a complaint against him with administration, and he promised not to do it again.

Good Friday Agreement: Anybody from e.g. London who's frightened of armed police in Belfast should be terrified of visiting the US. Here all police are armed, even the ones directing traffic. And that's even before considering how panicked they easily get and start shooting people.

KFC: At least their response to being out of chicken is to post warnings and close restaurants. I once visited a restaurant that specialized in chicken, that had the word "chicken" in its name, and was seated and given a menu, and only when the waitress came to take my order and I ordered chicken was I informed that they were out of chicken. I walked out and gave them a 1-star Yelp review.

Also, I thought it was only in the US that people phoned the police emergency number to report problems ordering at restaurants.

Last Jedi and John de Mandeville: I was alarmed at the report that the Middle Ages are popular among the alt-right. Fortunately that doesn't seem to have become a widespread infection. B. recently joined a large Facebook group discussing medieval history, which seems to be OK and without alt-right overtones.

Swype: One reason I'm reluctant to get a smartphone is reading reports on the rapidly increasing complexity and unobviousness of the repertoire of gestures required to operate them. I fear I'd never catch up, especially as an older person running out of brain space for new tasks. Also, I have trouble enough with my tablet, often making gestures I don't mean, and it'd be worse in the greater compression of a smartphone.

Myth of the Tragedy of the Commons: This is bigger garbage than what it seeks to refute. Sure, there are small communities that have worked it out, but the world is full of examples of the tragedy in operation, from the disappearance of trees from Easter Island to what's currently going on with the climate. (Attempts to find a group solution to that have been utterly pathetic.)

[zotz]

"The teenagers are revolting", Shirley?

[zotz]

The traditional view of the deforestation of Easter Island - that it's simply from overpopulation and mismanagement - is probably fairly misleading. See for example this recent article by a researcher from the University of Bristol.

[calimac]

That is an extraordinarily crude parody of Jared Diamond's hypothesis. I can only hope it's a response to people who vaguely heard of his work and didn't read it.

[zotz]

He only popularised it. The idea goes back a lot further.

I don't doubt a detailed rebuttal of Diamond's version in particular is possible, but that isn't setting out to be it.

[calimac]

If the article is only designed to reply to the absurd and pointless parody hypothesis it posits, and not to Diamond's quite different and more sophisticated one (despite the fact that it cites him), it is to that extent a nullity. If someone actually writes a rebuttal to Diamond, I'll read it then. Until then, his work stands unrebutted.

Nor does even this article really disprove the applicability of the tragedy of the commons.

[zotz]

There may well be a fuller rebuttal somewhere else. I didn't put it forward as a rebuttal of Diamond's version, most obviously because you hadn't mentioned that it was Diamond's version you had in mind, so it's rather perverse of you to claim that it's failed for not doing go.

I would say its main purpose was to highlight some of their recent research and it's implications for the idea in general. This isn't to say that they or someone hasn't gone through Diamond's version thoroughly elsewhere. It may or may not be unrebutted.

[calimac]

It's hardly perverse. Diamond's hypothesis is very well known and the best version of the story of ecological collapse on the island. Given that it exists, and you know about it, what's perverse is to offer a rebuttal of a straw man cheap version as a substantive evidence of weakness in the idea in general. It doesn't have any implications for the idea in general because it's only nibbling around some thin edges.

If I were to praise the achievements of science fiction literature, would you post some creeb attacking a few pieces of random newsstand trash that the writer had picked up, and call that evidence that praise of SF is misleading? And then object because I hadn't named the specific authors I thought were good?

[andrewducker]

I've heard the theory, never read any Diamond, or even really knew of his connection to it. Had no idea he was considered generally important. I thought he was a pop science writer.

[calimac]

Diamond is an honored professor of environmental geography at UCLA, so this is his professional specialty. He writes for a general audience, but his works are hardly lightweight or dismissable as "pop science". His discussion of this case is in his book Collapse which is where I learned of it. I'd recommend the book. I see his books, particularly the earlier Guns, Germs, and Steel (which won the Pulitzer Prize) cited frequently in serious discussions of environmental history.

[zotz]

I know of Diamond's version of the prehistory of Easter Island, yes, but I've also read others. You seem enormously committed to Diamond's account in particular, which is obviously your right, but I'm not and I'm not obliged to take that version as definitive.

[calimac]

It doesn't matter if it's definitive or not. It exists, and you don't rebut it with something that doesn't address it. Its arguments are not somehow diluted by the existence of other ideas on the subject.

Your argument was that there are weakness in the ecological collapse theory. My reply is that there exists a stronger version of that theory. You already knew this, so I shouldn't even have had to point that out.

[naath]

supplements' tldr, vit D (I take 5000 a day on medical advice, 1000 is apparently the recommendation) for all, folic acid for the pregnant, B12 and Ca for the old, otherwise only things you are deficient in because you can't/won't eat it or have been told by a doctor you need eg because of drug interactions. Why does my mum keep telling me I should take vit C when I scoff oranges...

[lilysea]

Magnesium for those of us who have one or more of:
- migraines
- muscle pain
- fibromyalgia
- insomnia
- Anxiety

(source: several GPs, several pharmacists.)

[zotz]

It doesn't sound like there's a version of this conversation that we're both interested in having. Your insistence on Diamond's version in particular strikes me as missing in the point completely, and it sounds like I'm coming across roughly the same to you.

[heron61]

The teenagers are rebelling, thank goodness

Huh, I assume that this is due to current politics, but I'm puzzled that it's worked before, because I would assume that if it's being done every year, students would find out about it from older students and mess with it.

Supplements are a $30 billion racket—here’s what experts actually recommend I mostly agree with this, but given that the "experts" recommended a level of Vitamin D that's well lower than many similar recommendations I've seen, I'm rather dubious of the overall conclusions.

[calimac]

What I realize now that I didn't before is that "version" is the wrong word. It implies a connection. The only connection is the topic.

It's like this. Something happened on Rapa Nui. Everybody and their brother has a theory as to why. Some of those theories are flimsy. That's your point. Some of them are not. That's my point.

[mountainkiss]

Magnesium has significantly helped me with several of these.

[mountainkiss]

Quite possibly true, but it is also legitimate not to want to eat things.

[naath]

Yes, of course, and it is good that you can get your vit C in a pill if you won't eat fruit (and bad that either way is expensive). But presumably if you choose not to eat something you know you did that and need to replace the nutrient somehow; or am I having excess faith in humanity?

[mountainkiss]

Given what we appear to be like with prescription medication, I am not sure that I would assume this.