Interesting Links for 28-07-2018

[andrewducker]

So, What Actually Is Communism Then?

(tags: communism economics society )

Zoo denies painting black stripes on donkey to look like a zebra

(tags: zoo fraud funny )

Chalk under a microscope looks very cool.

(tags: nature photos )

The Flash Gordon movie novelization is entertainment gold.

(tags: scifi books movies funny )

Ban fat-shaming show Insatiable, its critics cry. But none of them have seen it

(tags: tv weight internet viaSwampers )

This is what no-deal Brexit actually looks like

(tags: UK europe )

Why communism is impossible

(tags: communism politics economics )

European Parliament's Brexit Steering Group: No withdrawal agreement without a “backstop” for the Irish border

(tags: europe uk ireland NorthernIreland doom )

Theresa May’s attempt to bypass Brussels in Brexit talks fails as member states line up to back official EU position

Nathalie Loiseau, France’s European affairs minister, said: “There should be no mistake. Michel Barnier does not represent only the Commission. He is the negotiator for the European Union. “He gets his mandate and his guidelines from the heads of state and government. And we have discussed it regularly at the level of ministers. We meet with Michel Barnier on a regular basis. “So do the heads of state and government. So there is no difference between what Michel Barnier says and what we would say individually, each and every member state.”
(tags: UK Europe doom )

The austerity of the coalition government lead directly to Brexit

(tags: austerity uk europe inequality poverty UKIP )

YouTube banning Hobby chemists

(tags: censorship chemistry videos OhForFucksSake )

Law and justice, and divorce: why the Supreme Court has acted unjustly

(tags: divorce law uk )

Canada is using ancestry DNA websites to help it deport people

(tags: immigration genetics canada )

Facebook’s “downvote” system begins rolling out wider in US—here’s how it works

(tags: Facebook discussion )

Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

(tags: language society English history )

‘Star Wars: Episode IX’ Announces Cast; Carrie Fisher to Return

(tags: StarWars )

Why spend £1,000 on a smartphone when you could get one for less than £150?

(tags: phones money )

Architect turned cake-maker serves up mouth-watering geometric 3D-printed cakes

(tags: 3dprinting cake food )

Put Your Face in It: How Gaming Helped Me Understand My Dog

(tags: dogs games )

Homeless people make us miss NHS targets, says UK's chief dentist

(tags: teeth UK government homelessness OhForFucksSake )

Comments

[momentsmusicaux]

> So there is no difference between what Michel Barnier says and what we would say individually, each and every member state.”

The UK government still doesn't get how the EU works...

[andrewducker]

Yup!

[momentsmusicaux]

I think it's a shame they're not going with Meryl Streep to play Leia, which was a rumour that did the rounds a while back.

[calimac]

I have been unable to figure out what the term "backstop" actually means in regard to the Irish border. I understand the Irish border dilemma, you don't have to explain that. What I want to know is what the term "backstop" refers to.

[andrewducker]

"A solution to the Irish border problem which will hold, even if no future trade deal is conducted, and is practical now."

Basically, even if everything else falls through, the EU wants to be sure that the Good Friday agreement will be upheld. They therefore want the UK to pledge to something which does that, and which isn't temporary, or dependent on technology which doesn't exist.

They hope that we can then work out a trade agreement which negates the need for it, but they want it there just in case it turns out to be necessary.

[calimac]

"A solution to the Irish border problem which will hold, even if no future trade deal is conducted, and is practical now."

That kind of explains why I didn't understand what the term meant, because there is no such thing.

[andrewducker]

Yeah. I really don't see how the UK can be outside of the Customs Union, Ireland can be inside of it, Northern Ireland can be inside of the UK, and there can be no border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.

But the UK signed up to the Good Friday Agreement, and the EU is determined to make them live up to that.

And back in December the UK agreed that:
"The United Kingdom remains committed to protecting North-South cooperation and to its guarantee of avoiding a hard border. Any future arrangements must be compatible with these overarching requirements. The United Kingdom's intention is to achieve these objectives through the overall EU-UK relationship. Should this not be possible, the United Kingdom will propose specific solutions to address the unique circumstances of the island of Ireland. In the absence of agreed solutions, the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the allisland economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement."

I am by no means convinced that they knew what they were agreeing to...

[jack]

I mean, I thought the only plausible backstops were "NI stays in customs union" or "all UK stays in customs union", which may be politically untenable in the UK, but what the EU are insisting on.

So if, in theory, there's some non-disastrous deal which could be agreed, and could preserve the Irish non-hard border, but needs extra negotiating over the time of the transition, we can agree to negotiate that, with the fallback that if negotiations break down, the irish border isn't screwed over, even if the UK isn't happy. But in fact, the UK is insisting that there IS such a possible agreement when in fact, there basically isn't.

[skington]

It's even worse than that. The only proper backstop is “The entire UK stays in the Customs Union and Single Market”. We've been having arguments about the customs union because that already gives Brexiters hives, but VAT collection, services, and other things that have so far been ignored mean that in practice Northern Ireland - and therefore the UK as a whole - need to be in the Single Market as well.

[heron61]

The "why communism is impossible" piece reminded me of this link I saw a while ago and which IIRC, you have have posted, about an attempt in Chile to create data drive communism - given that none of the lasting communist regimes have tried anything like that, it could work, and might work better than capitalism (which hasn't worked terribly well of late).

[andrewducker]

The thing is, social democracy has been working pretty well. Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and other countries which are somewhere around 50% of the way between Capitalism and Communism are still doing just fine.

In fact, most of the countries near the top of this list are ok:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_to_GDP_ratio

(Not all of them, by any means)

[heron61]

Sure, but I'm curious if communism + big data might do as well or better. It seems possible, but also impossible to determine w/o various sorts of mid scale tests (at least on the level of a small city).

[birguslatro]

Stafford Beer's 'Brain of the Firm' (Second edition) explains in detail what happened in Chile. Its model was the human nervous system, roughly speaking, and contains lots of feedback loops. The hardware they had available was totally pathetic though.

Whether it could've worked better than capitalism would depend on how you define 'worked'. There was a 'strike' by truckers and the like, (meaning the self-employed and some small businesses), so it wasn't totally a communist state, otherwise they wouldn't have existed. And I'm unsure how the system would produce new types of businesses.

Canada

[agoodwinsmith]

Good grief. I can't get the "Read More" button to open for me[1], but I am both angered and not surprised that we have people like that in our immigration services. Since when does racial background prove nationality? Duh? What are they going to do when faced with someone like me where you're spoiled for choice? Play paper scissor rocks with the various traditional locations of races and force the country that loses to take me?

Duh.

[1] - yes, okay, new browser, on my list, would you like to see my list? you can have my list if you like

Re: Canada

[andrewducker]

Seems to be that in this case they were using it too find a relative, so they could then prove the person's origin from that.

Oh, and click here:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/new/

Re: Canada

[agoodwinsmith]

That assumes that the relative has been DNA-ed.

And: thank you. :)

Re: Canada

[agoodwinsmith]

Here I am by way of Firefox, and I have been able to read the READ MORE - and it is even more duh than I thought: if the issue that the original country won't receive back its citizen, for whatever reason - what makes us think that having a "logical" reason to try another country will have any different outcome?

However, I am very perturbed that my government is using documents against someone which they won't allow that person's lawyer to see. That is not acceptable.

[darkoshi]

Now I want to read that Flash Gordon book.

[andrewducker]

I assume it's the novelization of the film, and second hand copies of that seem to be available on Amazon...

[darkoshi]

Yes, and abebooks.com still has some copies that are cheaper than Amazon. Was just checking if I have an account with them already :)

Communism.

[agoodwinsmith]

(Thanks for Firefox. You've enabled a monster, you know.)

I have always thought that the communist regimes we have had so far have tried to jump over the tough parts to get to the good parts - like trying to do a triple axel before learning how to tie your skates.

Marx was pretty clear that capitalism had to *fail* before communism would be viable. Capitalism may be evil, may operate poorly, may waste resources, blah de blah de blah, but until it becomes unusable, we can't move past it. The communist regimes we've seen have been top-down, imposed by strongman tactics, so essentially dictatorships with fancy frills.

I think some of the behaviours I see today in people 40 and younger are proto-communisms: not buying houses, not buying cars, developing informal networks for sharing resources. It's all very piecemeal and happening in fits and starts - but that's to be expected when there isn't a centralized authority dictating. The sharing collective approach is also going to look different when nested in non-TV-mediated[1] culture.

I suspect the proto-communism efforts are going to spring up and sink back as people's needs change - and as pressure from capitalism's death throes become more intense - it ain't gonna go down easy, and it's going to try to gobble or crush everything of value while it can. I see that impulse in the strongest capitalist adherents: modern-day capital C conservatives. Sometimes they will crush something, not because they want to have it, or that it has anything to do with them, or threatens them in any way - but because they *really* don't want other people to have good things.

[1] - back in the day, one would say "Western culture", or first world or nuclear family or ... but all of these have problems. TV, however, tends to have very fixed ideas about how families should work: bumbly pudgy father, acerbic svelte mother, older daughter, younger son, nice big house, one car for everyone including the dog, personal electronics out the wahzoo, holidays in mind-numbing resorts, blah blah blah. As you have probably guessed, I don't mean the family of TV programs, but the family of TV commercials.

Smartphones

[birguslatro]

The four smartphones I've owned have all been bought second-hand and thus not locked to any provider. (The latest was just for controlling my new robo-vacuum, but that hasn't proved a necessity yet.) And two of them were dual-Sim versions, on the off-chance that'd be useful. The idea being to use one with the best data plan, the other for the rest. Never did that, and there's now so many cheap plans available, it wouldn't be a useful cost-saving plan. That could still have other uses though.

Refurbished, unlocked named brands are an alternative way to get a good phone.