Interesting Links for 28-03-2019

[andrewducker]

Storing time data as UTC is not a silver bullet (wish I'd read this last time I'd written something with dates in it)

(tags:date calendars software data )

The British government's view is that in the event of No Deal there both will and won't be a border in Ireland

(tags:ireland NorthernIreland europe uk OhForFucksSake )

The obscene moral spectacle of Theresa May's resignation

(tags:conservatives politics EpicStupidity UK europe )

Facebook to ban white nationalist content

(tags:facebook racism )

Brexit: Arlene Foster says DUP will not support withdrawal agreement in crushing blow for Theresa May

(tags:UK NorthernIreland europe hope DUP )

How Inuit Parents Raise Kids Without Yelling ??? And Teach Them To Control Anger

(tags:psychology children parenting Inuit emotion anger )

Indicative votes: A People's Vote just became much more likely

(tags:UK europe politics hope )

How the UK lost Brexit battle (decisions made two years ago led us inexorably to this point)

(tags:UK europe politics )

The number of new coal plants being built has collapsed by 84% in 3 years

(tags:coal electricity globalwarming GoodNews )

Mercury is the closest planet to all seven other planets (video)

(tags:physics space video viaSwampers )

The Library of Rare Colours (video)

(tags:video colour art history )

Edinburgh sees 80% surge in job adverts

(tags:jobs edinburgh )

How Do Blind People Who've Never Seen Colour Think About Colour?

(tags:blindness colour psychology )

Comments

[haggis]

I wish the coal plant article listed how many plants, rather than just generating capacity. Coal plants are large and built relatively infrequently so those figures could be meaningful or they could be fluctuations due to project delays.

Dates

[channelpenguin]

Yeah, as soon as we heard about the EU non-summer-time thing, we went "aaaaaargh".

another Y2K-style goldmine for contractors :-)?

[cosmolinguist]

I wish it wasn't so remarkable that blind people do know about colors and do think of them the same way we all think about things we cannot see. :(

[danieldwilliam]

I think the next step for the end of coal is to see how many existing coal plants are closed due to price and cost pressure over the next three or four years.

That has big implications for climate change and also the financial stability of the global economy.

[danieldwilliam]

I am genuinely uncertain if the Tory party recognise that they are being unprincipled and hypocritical about Brexit or if they don't realise how they actually behaving. I wonder if they believe that, because they are the Tory Party, the voters will forgive them for their behaviour or even just shrug it off with a "boys will be boys" sort of attitude.

I'm not sure which I would find most disgusting.

And I am disgusted. I'm not a natural Tory voter (1) but it's getting to the point where I think I would struggle to be friends with someone who continued to be a Tory supporter in the wake of what they are doing. I'm not sure I could respect someone who could look at the current Tory party and think they represent the natural party of government.


(1) other than by race, gender, class, income bracket, profession and I suppose age.

time zones

[fanf]

My old essay on this topic https://fanf.livejournal.com/104586.html was kind of a reaction to the 2007 USA / North American time zone changes. I had some scathing words about Exchange, which implemented Jon's option 2 (which has many many failure cases). Jon's option 3 is basically what iCalendar does, and even that isn't enough, because time zones can split so the TZ ID for a particular place and time can become wrong. (I think this happened in Indiana in 2007, iirc.)