Interesting Links for 25-04-2018

[andrewducker]

Nasa scientists baffled by unexplained strange shapes found in the Arctic

(tags: arctic ice weird )

Abolish all bank holidays and let workers choose their time off

This is how my office mostly works. Closed Christmas and New Year, and otherwise I take my days whenever I like.
(tags: holidays uk )

Amazon can now deliver packages to the inside of your car

(tags: cars Amazon delivery )

Autistic? Living in Edinburgh? There's an event on autism awareness you may be interested in

(tags: autism edinburgh media )

How streaming saved the music industry

(tags: music streaming money )

"My wife didn't want to do Maternity pictures. So I did them."

(tags: pregnancy men photos funny viaElfy )

The 3-ladder system of social class in the U.S.

(tags: class usa )

90 percent of all the plastic that reaches the world's oceans gets flushed through just 10 rivers

(tags: plastic ocean environment rivers )

The Ocean Cleanup's Machine Is About to Set Sail

(tags: plastic ocean GoodNews )

In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity

(tags: uk academia )

Apple will start paying €13 billion in back taxes to Ireland

(tags: tax ireland apple )

Cognitive behavioral therapy can improve emotion regulation in children with autism

(tags: therapy emotion autism )

Children are as fit as endurance athletes

(tags: children fitness )

Women tend to get less stressed over time.

(tags: women stress age )

Study of long-term heterosexual couples finds women over-estimate and men underestimate their partner’s sexual advances

(tags: sex relationships )

Comments

[ninetydegrees]

"Abolish all bank holidays and let workers choose their time off"

I wish. What do you do about schools? In my country parents and young children having the same day off means you don't have to pay for a babysitter, or take a day off to watch your kids.

[andrewducker]

Take the day off when schools are shut?

And not force non parents to do likewise?

[ninetydegrees]

Take the day off when schools are shut?

XD This would never pass. Days off like these don't count as vacation days in the private sector. We teachers would be blamed as usual for being lazy and having more time off than everybody else...

[skington]

Contra the author, I think there is clear, if minor, utility in everyone having (minimally) the same days off.

For one thing, “hooray, it's a bank holiday on Monday” is a small moment of sharing in an increasingly individualised workplace. We no longer watch the same TV because streaming, but that at least is still universal.

For another, e.g. I'm typically rubbish at taking holidays, so having a compulsory “take a day off, goddammit!” moment is a useful corrective.

Talk about how the gig economy and zero hours contracts militate against common shared holidays is actively missing the point: it's not enough to mention that Jeremy Corbyn also wants to crack down on that sort of thing. His point is precisely that there should be more holidays, open to everyone, and that the gig economy and zero-hours contracts are bad. To say that the policy might accidentally lead to fewer days off by choice, or won't help increasing amounts of people, is to confuse the details of the policy (spelled out by an opposition without the support of civil servants) with its intent.

(Similarly, I imagine that once the civil service got involved with the proposal, there would be Monday bank holidays on the closest days to the Saints days.)

Finally, regarding the idea that it's better to get a straight number of holiday days rather than x days + bank holidays: great idea, talk to your union! (Or ask your boss or their HR department first, if that's likely to work.) Personally I know that my union has been getting interested in remote working recently, so I would be surprised if this wasn't something they'd also be interested in talking about.

And if you don't have a union yet, get one. It's basically work insurance: you hope you never have to use it, but it's there if you have to.

[doug]

I can see the argument for coordinating days off, but I don't think that's feasible with our modern ideas of how we like to spend leisure time. I remember Sundays in the pre-Sunday-trading era when there was almost literally nothing to do outside the home or church: the shops were closed, the few cafes and tea shops that existed were closed, even the pubs were closed. (Apart from 12-2, so you could get a few in with your mates at lunchtime.) It was rubbish. Even if you could make it to the beach (very little public transport), there was no ice cream, nowhere to buy a replacement bucket and spade, no arcades, no crazy golf, no chip shop. These days there's all of those plus a whole range of attractions that simply did not exist back then, and all of those need staff to work on bank holidays.

Oh, and banks also work on bank holidays these days - the physical branches may well be closed (though certainly not all - I happen to know Metro Bank opens every day apart from Christmas Day, New Year's Day, and Easter Monday), but the payment processing still happens and needs people to look after it, and most banks have some form of 24h contact.

I have mixed feelings about the proposal overall. Personally, I'd waaay rather have an extra four days leave allowance to be taken when I want. One big thing for me is childcare: it's a nightmare juggling and covering half terms and holidays, even with two parents. I 'waste' a lot of Mondays when it would be much more convenient to spread the leave so we can cover twice the time. (This effect gets further magnified by complicated part-time working stuff I won't clutter things up with.) There are a lot of obvious practical issues with the simplistic policy as stated, but many of those could be addressed. I can see where he's coming from, and the four-nations thing has a nice symbolic value, particularly for someone whose patriotism gets hammered by the press. But I still think on balance an extra four days leave entitlement would be better. Even though I fear it wouldn't make any difference to me and many others in nice jobs - I already have more than the statutory minimum leave allowance and can imagine my employer deciding to keep it the same.

ScienceDaily: still terrible

[skington]

I've decided that I now hate ScienceDaily even more, now that they've changed the format of the introductory paragraph.

It used to be that the first paragraph above the photo and the left-hand navigation was just a repeat of the first paragraph in the article. Jarring, but something you could get over.

Now that first paragraph is an abstract instead - so you have to actively not read it if you want to read the rest of the story like a proper newspaper article, like it's presented.