Interesting Links for 26-07-2018

[andrewducker]

I thought WTO rules would be disastrous but simple. Turns out they're *really* disastrous and hellishly complex

(tags: wto trade UK Europe doom )

Without the Russians, Trump wouldn’t have won

(tags: politics fraud hacking usa russia wikileaks )

Big tech warns of 'Japan's millennium bug' ahead of Akihito's abdication

(tags: Technology time date japan )

Under GDPR, Data Breach Reports in UK Have Quadrupled

(tags: data hacking privacy uk )

Mearns farm loses £350,000 as fruit left to rot due to picker shortage

As noted in the article - this isn't even because of Brexit. These workers were frequently from outside of the EU. This is because our evil government believes that we should close ourselves off from the world, even when it harms us.
(tags: work farming immigration scotland )

Students with brain parasites are 1.4x more likely to major in business, 1.7x to emphasise entrepreneurship

(tags: entrepreneurship business ToxoplasmaGondii fear )

Mars has a vast reservoir of water, scientists find in major breakthrough in search for alien life

(tags: mars water )

The real reasons why British workers won't pick fruit

The entire working culture of the UK has transformed since British workers last filled seasonal farm work jobs to any significant extent. Rural communities have been transformed due to the “drift from the land” of locals, and people from cities moving to the country or buying second homes, pricing potential farm workers out of the local housing market. As a result, physically able unemployed people are now less likely to live anywhere near the farms requiring workers. Transport systems in rural areas are limited, and basic, temporary housing is unlikely to attract people away from comfortable, permanent housing situated close to friends and family.
(tags: farming UK Europe immigration work )

Fan artists explain why the wave of She-Ra fan art is subversive and uplifting

(tags: fandom art animation girls )

GlaxoSmithKline makes $300M investment in 23andMe, forms 50-50 R&D pact

(tags: genetics research )

Boris Johnson Has Been Privately Talking To Steve Bannon As They Plot Their Next Moves

(tags: BorisJohnson fascism OhForFucksSake Conservatives )

Trump and EU officials agree to work toward 'zero tariff' deal

So, how does Putin feel about this?
(tags: usa europe trade )

Mountain View’s unusual rule for Facebook: No free canteen

(tags: sanfrancisco food business law )

The year Mexico legalised drugs

Only stopped because...of the USA.
(tags: history legalisation drugs mexico )

Stockpiling food simply won't work. There's no space, money, or time

(tags: uk europe fail doom )

These are all the possible different types of Brexit people have suggested

(tags: uk europe )

UK could cancel Brexit and stay in EU on same terms, says French government

(tags: uk europe )

Comments

[cmcmck]

With the fruit picking stuff, I found myself wondering how we got to the farms when I was a kid as nearly everyone from the council prefab estate where I grew up went fruit or hop picking or both.

Nobody much had a car and do you know, I really can't recall how we got there as we were townies.

[calimac]

The change in farm-worker demographics would explain, for instance, why Norfolk used to be something of a Labour stronghold. Not so much in recent decades.

I'd compare this to the US, where farm-workers are mostly migrants who travel from region to region as the crops ripen first here, then there, and who at least in the West are usually Hispanic and mostly undocumented (thus the current administration's immigration policies are causing shortages in truck-farming produce, though not as bad as the food shortages will be for the UK under hard Brexit), if I knew much more about it than that.

Big tech warns of 'Japan's millennium bug' ahead of Akihito's abdication

[jack]

Huh, so apparently Japan does use eras to denote dates in day-to-day life. I wasn't sure which countries used something other than Gregorian dates and which didn't.

A little while back, I remember looking for a chart of which dating system is used in which country and just not finding anything -- as in, which is most commonly used for standard business or government communication, even if people also use other calendars for other things. And yes, I know for some countries the answer will be more complicated. But I really couldn't find anything. And I couldn't work out if that meant, "actually everyone just uses the Gregorian calendar now" or "it's so complicated no-one could even provide a simple-words summary saying 'most countries do X, about 20% do Y, etc' or something else.

Re: Big tech warns of 'Japan's millennium bug' ahead of Akihito's abdication

[andrewducker]

There's a section here which is good:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_calendar

Re: Big tech warns of 'Japan's millennium bug' ahead of Akihito's abdication

[nojay]

Japan mostly uses Christian-era calendaring -- my first trip to Japan was to attend Nippon 2007, the Japanese Worldcon. Official documents and things like railway tickets use era-dating but confusingly they actually print some of the ticket details in English. A Japan Rail reserved-seat ticket I got a couple of months back has the issue date printed on it as 30.-5.12, that is Heisei 30, month 5, day 12 but the date of use is printed as "MAY.21".

I've been told that expiry dates on food, medicines etc. use era-dating.

[nancylebov]

Perhaps people in the UK can buy from the American prepper industry-- there's a lot of shelf-staple food. It's a large market because Mormons are required to keep a year's worth of food. Now that I think about it, I have no idea how much of prepper market is Mormons, and how much is people who are expecting disaster without a religious requirement.

[danieldwilliam]

That explains why many of the lists on what to stockpile have mentioned Mormons.

[mountainkiss]

What would you do with a stockpile of Mormons when the Brexipocalypse arrives?

[danieldwilliam]

It depends how bad things have gotten.
In the first instance, I’d probably try and ransom them back to Utah them for reliable supplies of olives, cheese and beer.
If things get bad, then they will be forced to toil in the Meadows growing cotton, sugar and tobacco for export to the mills of Glasgow.
If the situation is so dire that May resigns of her own volition then I’ll start thinking about eating the fat ones.
IF Rees-Mogg ends up as Prime Minister then I believe the only remaining option is to strap them to the bonnet of a souped up 4*4 and drive recklessly through the New Town tooting my horn and tutting viciously at tourists whilst sweltering in a set of steampunk leathers.

[agoodwinsmith]

Argh. As I was reading the comments about the shelf-stable food of preppers, I realized that many of those will require water to reconstitute - and I suppose the chemicals that keeps water purification plants safe are also delivered just-in-time. Oh good. Don't forget some bleach, then.
https://www.doh.wa.gov/Emergencies/BePreparedBeSafe/SevereWeatherandNaturalDisasters/WaterPurification
Iodine also works:
http://www.princeton.edu/~oa/manual/water.shtml

[armiphlage]

Also sewage treatment plants have just-in-time deliveries of chemicals. Which, if they fail, will make the water treatment plants even more overloaded.

There are very good public health reasons to NOT stockpile chemicals for water and sewage treatment. The least expensive, and most effective way to chlorinate water is with tanker loads of compressed liquid chlorine. My city's sewage plant has a short rail spur that (deliberately) can only hold a single tanker car at a time, to mitigate the potential risk of a spill.

Calcium hypochlorite and sodium hypochlorite are solids (when dry), and safer to stockpile, but are much more expensive. Municipalities would probably not be able to afford much of them.

[snippy]

When I was a child (in the Pacific Northwest of the US, in the late 1960s and early 1970s), the strawberry fields ran bus routes (with school buses when school was out for summer break) for free so you could go pick strawberries and get paid. We were paid by the flat.

[mountainkiss]

I think Putin probably thinks that if he waits 48h then Trump will have a different view.

[danieldwilliam]

He needs to wait 36 hours if he wants a different view. By 48 hours the view will be back to the original view.