Interesting Links for 06-03-2019

[andrewducker]

Female Cyclist Forced To Stop When She Nearly Catches Male Racers After Their Head Start

(tags:cycling )

A quick look at QUIC (the next generation of HTTP over TCP/IP)

(tags:internet networking web Technology )

Picosecond lasers weld glass and metal together for the first time

(tags:lasers materials )

Prospiracy Theories

(tags:conspiracy satire truth funny )

Should vagrants be flogged in the street?

(tags:homelessness libdem )

Emmanuel Macron: Dear Europe, Brexit is a lesson for all of us: it's time for renewal

(tags:europe thefuture )

The Movement To Skip The Electoral College Just Passed A Major Milestone (but has a long way to go)

(tags:politics usa voting viaDanielDWilliam )

A Brief History of British and Irish Languages

(tags:language Wales Scotland UK England Ireland history viaDanielDWilliam )

A Behind the Scenes Take on Lithium-Ion Battery Prices

(tags:batteries thefuture Technology )

GMB launches Scotland's first sex workers' union

(tags:Scotland unions sexwork )

Widening Russia Money Laundering Scandal Hits European Banks

(tags:Russia europe fraud banking )

Missing out on sleep robs brain cells of ability to repair themselves

(tags:brain sleep )

The Special Curse of Living on Instagram's Favorite Street (Paris's Rue Cremieux)

(tags:Paris celebrity photography )

Goldman Sachs relaxes dress code (which companies still insist on more formal dress codes?)

(tags:clothing work )

On Food Shopping for Brexit

(tags:UK europe OhForFucksSake food Conservatives )

What is it like working at a company during and after the release of a negatively received game?

(tags:games work epicfail )

Momentum fined over ??16,000 for multiple breaches of electoral law during 2017 election

(tags:labour politics uk )

What Causes the Smell of New & Old Books?

(tags:smell books chemistry )

Unless something is done, paying by cash will become near-impossible in the UK soon.

I haven't used cash in weeks (if not months) - but the people hardest hit are the poor and those with bad mental health.
(tags:cash money uk Technology )

Study Finds No link Between Violent Video Games And Teen Aggression (Yet again)

(tags:psychology aggression games violence )

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

My question on the cyclist article is - what would the appropriate course of action have been had the organisers made the same error of scheduling two races too close together but those races had been a main race and a race for Seniors or Masters?

[fanf]

Reginald Braithwaite has some interesting comments on Twitter: https://twitter.com/raganwald/status/1102966537869094913

Basically, in his experience being on a bike amongst the support vehicles isn’t a problem; what is likely to be a problem is if the leader of the second race catches up with the first race and gains an unfair advantage from slipstreaming with the earlier riders, negating the usual disadvantage of breaking away from the peloton.

I guess that would apply regardless of the rider categories if the two races.

[danieldwilliam]

It was the slipstreaming I was thinking of and, as the issues of unfair advantage for the front rider in the second race would be the same, wondering whether changing the competitors might illuminate what the right course of action was - once the organisers had made the original error in separation.

[davidcook]

I was just pondering that, or even if the races were the other way around - i.e. leader of the men's race catching up to the support train behind the women's race.

More to the point, though, while it was poor scheduling on the part of the organisers, the men's bunch must have been slacking off considerably. They "should" have been riding at 40+ km/h, and the following race wouldn't have got near them (bold assertion not backed up by references at the moment because I should be in bed, but I've followed cycling for many years and never seen any women's professional race average 40+).

[danieldwilliam]

I'm in two minds about the Popular Vote Compact change to the Electoral College.

I'm in favour of democracy. However, democracy is not solely or entirely about who has the most votes in a popular vote. There are questions of securing minority rights in the face of a tyranous majority. There are questions about the mechanics of different voting systems.

So I'm open to the argument that the US Electoral College (in the context of a state that is federation of small states) ought to give some protection to smaller states in the face of a tyrannous majority and that is okay in a democracy. Whether the Electoral College ever did that, or does so currently, or can or will do so in the future is another question.

[andrewducker]

I'm not convinced that the electoral college, and the office of The President is the right place to offer protection to smaller states. If that's a positive goal (and I'm not convinced that it is), then doing it through the Senate/House seems to be a better method, where you can actually hand additional power directly to that state by giving it more votes.

[danieldwilliam]

I am not convinced that it is a postive goal of the Electoral College (i.e. an outcome that was actively designed for by the drafters). A lot of these parts of the US Constitution reflect the desires of the slave holding states to create an electoral sytstem buffer on abolution - see also the considering of slaves to be 3/5ths of a person for the purposes of assigning electoral districts and so on.

There is some protection for smaller states in the composition of the Senate. Each state, regardless of size, has two Senators. Wyoming has one Senator per 280 thousand people. California has one per 19 million.

There is also a little protection in the House of Representatives, as each state gets a minimum of one Representative. North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming would not have a whole representative to themselves if the Representatives were stricly apportioned by population. The way the seats are allocated is a bit hit and miss for smaller to medium sized states.

Whether the whole of those three factors is enough of a protection for smaller states and the right kind I don't know. It gives smaller states (in theory) more Presidential focus and more electoral clout, especially in the Senate. This in theory should allow them a better chance of at least blocking action they don't like or trading stuff they need for stuff other people want.

I think fundamentally I'm a little bit wary of changing one part of a constitution without considering how it works with other parts. I'm also wary that my support for this measure is driven by my left of centre desire to see a Democrat in the White House.

(Although NB, as my dad once remarked, it might be better for the US to have a Democrat in the White House, it might not be better for us. See the Cuban Missile Crisis for example.)

[agoodwinsmith]

The people who get left behind in a cashless society are so vulnerable. Someone I know in the UK is being cared for by the daily-more-threadbare social safety network, mostly, but the systems that rely on no staff need the person to have technology they can't afford: smartphone. A code they need to access a system that unlocks a service is only sent to smartphones. They have spent the last two days fruitlessly trying to access the services with the aged duct-taped technology they have been given by more prosperous-only-by-comparison friends. They've given up.

I am convinced that those with more than enough resources for a medium-sized country to be very comfortable are doing a deliberate one-hand-not-knowing-what-the-other-hand-is-doing population cull.