Interesting Links for 02-10-2018

[andrewducker]

Nicolas Cage: ‘If I don’t have a job to do, I can be very self-destructive’

(tags: acting movies )

Postman Pat and… the law of merchandise

(tags: merchandising law contracts )

NHS to suffer £2.7bn cuts after government miscalculation of public sector pension costs

(tags: nhs pensions Conservatives OhForFucksSake )

Edinburgh Council reveal city-wide electric vehicle plan

(tags: edinburgh electricity cars scotland )

The Financial Times 404 Error Page is brilliant

(tags: web errors 404 funny economics )

Sex worker stall at Brighton university freshers' fairs sparks row

(tags: sexwork university )

Magic Leap Review Part 1 – The Terrible View Through Diffraction Gratings

(tags: augmentedreality fail )

Ruth Davidson doesn't understand what democracy is

(tags: democracy Conservatives Scotland UK europe )

UK will enforce hard border in Ireland if there is no Brexit deal

(tags: uk Ireland Europe NorthernIreland doom )

The Conservatives think Blockchain may resolve Irish border Brexit problem. *sigh*

(tags: ConservatIves technology bitcoin OhForFucksSake uk europe NorthernIreland Ireland )

Cern physicist suspended over 'highly offensive' presentation on sexism in science

(tags: gender physics )

'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' Was Targeted by Russian Trolls

(tags: StarWars russia )

We won't compromise our principles to rescue the Tory party from Brexit, Guy Verhofstadt warns Theresa May

(tags: uk Europe doom )

Traditional societal markers of age aren't applying to millennials, and this is hard for everyone.

(tags: age society )

Artificial sweeteners have toxic effects on gut microbes

(tags: microbiome food )

‘Goblin’ world found orbiting at the edges of the Solar System

(tags: planets space solarsystem )

Why Can a Machine Beat Mario but not Pokemon?

(tags: ai pokemon Mario games )

Civil partnerships: Law to be changed for mixed-sex couples (in England and Wales. Scotland investigating)

(tags: law relationships marriage uk )

Comments

‘Goblin’ world found orbiting at the edges of the Solar System

[jack]

Oh, cool!

I feel like those quotes are not how I expect somehow

The Financial Times 404 Error Page is brilliant

[jack]

:)

Although nowadays I think "you looked for a page that isn't there" is much less often the reason for a 404, it's more likely to be a truncated link or a moved page, and I wish 404 pages frontloaded the information a bit, e.g. saying "you followed a link from 'page'" if that information is available, and "you were trying to reach URL", especially if it redirects you, and if the URL has the information, the title of the page you were going to, and -- ideally, for a major site -- something that actually helps you find the page (usually something based on how pages actually move, not a keyword search on random words in the URL)

Artificial sweeteners have toxic effects on gut microbes

[doug]

I have long had a hunch - and I have very little more to go on than that, really - that artificial sweeteners are the sort of thing that seemed like a really good idea at the time but will turn out to be a really, really bad one. You know, like tetraethyl lead in petrol and CFCs. This single study is pretty weaksauce evidence for that idea, but it's the beginning of the sort of thing that seems very plausible to me.

[danieldwilliam]

If I understand the description of the orbit of the Goblin world correctly it's in quite an elipical orbit, ranging from 65 AU to 2,300 AU and the implication of this is that it's being pulled out of a more circular orbit by a large body orbiting further out aka Planet Nine, (or as it used to be known when I was a lad, Planet X).

Which is pretty cool - that we can spot something that large (or small) but we can't yet see something much, much larger.

[danieldwilliam]

I'm not entirely sure what the point is of extending civil partnerships to heterosexual couples.

It seems to me that we've managed to create two slightly different forms of state sponsored marriage which strikes me as somewhat jurisprudentially inefficient.

MInd you, if the Romans could cope with three or four different legal forms of marriage I dare say we'll cope.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_in_ancient_Rome