Interesting Links for 18-09-2018

[andrewducker]

Details on the end of European time changes

(tags: time europe )

Early gender tests leading to selective abortions of girls in UK

(tags: patriarchy uk abortion )

Who likes to be alone? Not introverts

(tags: introversion personality loneliness psychology )

Household cleaning products may contribute to kids being overweight by altering their gut microbiota

(tags: children microbiome cleanliness weight )

Growing up in a violent environment is bad for kids, whether or not you are directly bullied

(tags: violence bullying children behaviour )

How safety standards made infant walkers 90% safer

(tags: safety children walking )

People tend to cluster into four distinct personality groups

(tags: personality psychology )

Using literally figuratively is literally prehistoric

(tags: language history )

Only a quarter of Mail readers think UK will get good Brexit deal. Mostly they blame the British government

(tags: UK Europe fail polls newspapers DailyMail )

In January 2019 Britain will switch from a pro-Brexit to an anti-Brexit country - even if nobody changed their minds

(tags: UK Europe demographics )

Coca-Cola in talks to develop cannabis drinks

(tags: marijuana cocacola inflammation )

Sixteen gambling regulators unite to grumble about loot boxes and skin gambling

(tags: gambling games regulation )

A memory of Rees-Mogg

(tags: Conservatives politics class )

Value of EU citizens to the economy is the equivalent of 5p on income tax

(tags: europe uk tax doom )

UK children with maths difficulties (dyscalculia) are 100 times less likely to receive an official diagnosis than peers with dyslexia

(tags: mathematics children fail uk )

Comments

[mountainkiss]

That polling is fascinating. The Mail readers would still vote for it again. I wonder why.

[andrewducker]

If I had to guess:

1) Identity. If you spend two years talking about "Remoaners" then it becomes hard to leave "your" camp and join "their" camp.

2) Racism: 40% of people are, in some way, uncomfortable about the number of "foreign people" in the UK*

3) Hope: There will be a chunk who think that this Brexit has been messed up by an incompetent government, but once we're free of the clutches of the EU then the next government (or the one after) can sort it out.

I'm totally open to other suggestions though.

• https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/17/four-in-10-people-think-multiculturalism-undermines-british-culture-immigration

[mountainkiss]

There'll also be stuff about the phrasing of the poll questions.

Details on the end of European time changes

[jack]

Wow. Strange to think of this actually being something that could happen (even though we've been talking about it ever since daylight saving was introduced)

[xenophanean]

Nooooo! Don't take away my extra hour of daylight in Summer! That would be super-annoying, it'd pretty much add an extra hour of waiting to go to work each day between March and September. I wouldn't be impressed.

[naath]

Find something to do with your mornings maybe? We are fast approaching the time when thanks to your 'extra hour of daylight' (it's not extra, it's justc moved) I have to get up in the dark (I have to anyway later ins the year, but the 'fall back' pushes me specifically back over the 'dark waking up' line; and I get tired of people who think that because they want to get up earlier then I have to too. Dark mornings are so much worse than dark evenings.

[andrewducker]

That would assume we stick with summer time, rather than UTC.

[calimac]

If I read the item correctly, the default is going to be year-round summer time. We have a measure on the ballot in California to establish that, though it turns out the state can't do that without the approval of Congress. I hate changing the clock, but I hate the idea of year-round summer time almost as much.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I'm not sure what I'd like as an answer. I don't enjoy the changeover, but the winter mornings here are no fun, with dawn being at 8:45 in December. On full year summer time that would be 9:45.

Although sunset would then be 16:40 rather than 15:40.

[naath]

sunset later ... but still at work, how... nice. Now I can get to work *and* leave in the dark, yay. The jetlag is mildly annoying, but that is worse.

(and why does .ca do summertime, it's practically equatorial?)

[xenophanean]

From my reading, the EU's giving countries the option to go with ST or normal time, but not the switch.

Who likes to be alone? Not introverts

[jack]

What stood out to me is spending 15 minutes a day alone is something people have feelings about. OK, maybe most people cohabit, but does commuting to work count? They don't go for a walk at lunchtime? Nothing?

I usually count myself as introverted, but I don't think of it as a single thing, just a catch-all for "anything at the less people end of the social spectrum".

I feel like I can informally break that into several different tendencies. I usually *need* less time with people that some people. And socialising is more often an effort, if a worthwhile one -- time with Rachel is usually relaxing, but most people, even people I like a lot, I need a break from eventually. And I usually need SOME time away from even the people I'm closest to, maybe that is about an average 15 minutes a day (although that usually happens by default without needing to arrange it).

Re: Who likes to be alone? Not introverts

[naath]

I spend easily 2 hours a day commuting, and I'm not alone in the sense of 'noone can see me' but I am alone in the sense of 'I don't need to talk to people'. 15 minutes is a)nothing and b)I could just read FB... wait, does FB count?

Re: Who likes to be alone? Not introverts

[lilysea]

One of the studies involved asking the participants to spend 15 minutes a day in solitude (on seven different days

I live alone, leave the house twice a week on average, and see my partner at my house three times per week on average.

I guess that makes me an Uber-introvert in the eyes of this study?

Re: Who likes to be alone? Not introverts

[frith]

I have a friend who comes over once a week to play Scrabble and that's stressful. The silence and solitude of snowstorms is bliss.

Using literally figuratively is literally prehistoric

[jack]

Funnily enough, even though I somewhat dislike the erosion of literally (although I make an effort to avoid imposing my personal preferences as any sort of standard of correctness), I'm often more annoyed by the conversation about it.

I feel like there's a natural evolution of the word that might go from the traditional meaning of literally, to meaning "actually", to meaning "very".

But I feel like we're in the middle of the process, not the end. I think people say "he was literally spitting with rage" to mean "he was very very angry". But don't really say "he was literally angry" to mean "he was very very angry", even if we may do at some point.

And as far as I can see, no-one ever ever uses literally TO MEAN figuratively. I don't see people using "literally" in place of "figuratively" in conversations like this:

A: Fortunately he reined him in
B: Wait, like... with an actual bridle?
A: No, figuratively.

I don't know if the meaning of "meaning" has shifted under me, or if lots of people (not in this conversation, but in general) are just claiming to be pedantic while actually just using words completely wrongly.

Re: Using literally figuratively is literally prehistoric

[calimac]

I agree. I see "literally" used as a generic intensifier, not actually to mean "figuratively". Maybe the claim that it is so used is just an intensifier.

But there are lots of intensifiers; to use this one which has another distinctive meaning seems to me to be bad form, no matter how many distinguished authors have used it in the past. Jane Austen used commas in a way that nobody would allow today; how she used "literally" has no greater authority.

Had to do it

[marahmarie]

*see icon*

[marahmarie]

I think part of the conversation around the use of "literally" to mean "figuratively" winds up going around the role hyperbole plays in expressive language, though I'd have to agree the use of literally to mean figuratively is relatively unseen.

Compare "The world literally ended at that moment for me" to "The world ended at that moment for me...well, figuratively speaking" - it seems both statements could mean the same thing, so using "literally" in the first would be a way to compress one's explanation of how it felt, not so much describe what actually happened.

One of the studies involved asking the participants to spend 15 minutes a day in solitude (on seven

[ninetydegrees]

That paper seemed very shoddy to me. First the sample is all undergrads from a certain age range (and probably from the same area or even university). That represents one very specific category of people. Secondly here was solitude meant:

"participants were instructed to take 15 minutes every day to sit by themselves, and to report their experiences with this solitary activity immediately after do" "be by themselves and stay away from any electronic devices that facilitate social interactions. Participants were also asked no t to engage in any other tasks because we wanted to capture people’s experience with solitude"

That's not solitude at all. That's just having to spend 15 minutes every day doing nothing. If they count sending someone 1 text or reading your twitter feed as social interactions... wow.

I'm an introvert. I like being alone, as in physically without any other person in the same room or even the same flat unless they are far enough that I can easily ignore them completely, and I really like silence. But more than that I *need* it. Although they are on to something with dispositional autonomy, they don't really seem to understand what introversion is about.