Interesting Links for 20-09-2019

[andrewducker]

UK cannot meet EU deadline for Brexit plan and needs another year, government says

(tags:UK Europe incompetence OhForFucksSake )

Reviewing Tolkien

(tags:Tolkien movies review )

Outcry as Saga travel firm advertises cruise 'exclusively for Brits'

(tags:travel UK racism OhForFucksSake )

Green light for £314m overhaul of Edinburgh centre

(tags:transport city Edinburgh )

How a Nazi-punching satire led to the first union drive at a well-known tech company—and, workers say, the firing of two organizers in eight days.

(tags:Nazis Kickstarter unions OhForFucksSake )

Asylum seeker denied cancer treatment by Home Office dies

(tags:cancer death OhForFucksSake migration asylum )

Global dimming isn't worth taking into consideration

(tags:globalwarming pollution )

I may have to make one of these!

(tags:food wtf eggs )

New windfarms in the UK don't need subsidies

(tags:subsidies windpower uk electricity environment )

Sertraline: Antidepressant works by reducing anxiety symptoms

(tags:antidepressants anxiety psychology )

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

Good times on the offshore wind costs.

That implies that the situation would be similar in North America. Although North America has steeper coastal shelves.

[andrewducker]

They'd better get floating wind farms up and running then!

[armiphlage]

There is a (stalled) plan to put them in the Great Lakes too.

But homeowners are objecting to seeing them on the distant horizon.

[danieldwilliam]

A not entirely unreasonable point of view I suppose.

Although I personally quite like them in the distance and particularly in the sea.

There is one, on land, on the way to our cottage. It's on the other side of a steep hill as you drive from Edinburgh so as you come round a corner you suddenly find yourself at about the same level as two or three turbines.

[jack]

Reviewing Tolkien

How did scribbling a children's story on a back of an exam paper and then slowly intertwining it with a growing mythos get rejected biopic-wise?

UK cannot meet EU deadline for Brexit plan and needs another year, government says

Oh god. "Hi, can I have an extension please, my suppurating incompetence fucked over my entire country."

Oh god. If only someone had told him that in advance<fatal sarcasm>

Oh god. He's still on that? He's already funted his majority, can't he kick DUP to the kerb and suck up an Irish sea border backstop or a whole-UK backstop? Can parliament come back and vote for SOMETHING?

[andrewducker]

Assuming 40% of MPs will not vote for any kind of Brexit, can you think of any deal which would get 85% of remaining MPs to vote for it?

[anef]

Much as I don't want Brexit to happen, I think if a deal was then supported by a referendum it would be hard for a majority of MPs to vote against.

[andrewducker]

Oh yes. Second referendum is definitely the way to achieve a compromise.

[jack]

Ah, the "keep burning fossil fuels" solution to climate change turned out to have been a bit overstated?

[andrewducker]

Apparently! Who knew it would be bad?

[ninetydegrees]

"Sertraline: Antidepressant works by reducing anxiety symptoms"

Great article, thanks. As someone with both anxiety and depression, I feel like they are two sides of the same coin, work similarly and feed each other. The psychiatrist who started me on antidepressants said I had depression but that the real issue was anxiety. This has been illuminating.

[cmcmck]

When you think about it Saga is a pretty strange concept from the get go in assuming that over fifties would only ever want to meet other over fifties.

My f-list on here has people from in their teens to people in their eighties and that's pretty much how I like it in the real world too. :o)

Come to that, 'adults only' sounds pretty tedious as well.

[calimac]

I can't seriously disagree with anything Rilstone writes about the Tolkien bio-pic - I've said some of it myself, though not nearly as well - though I have some quibbles. 1) Even without the private papers, there are already some newer and more insightful Tolkien biographies out there, the best being John Garth's Tolkien and the Great War. (There's also a lot of useless trash, so be cautious.) 2) While we can't know if G.B. Smith would have become a great poet, we do have his surviving poetry and it's very promising from a man so young. Much better than anything Tolkien had written by the same time, even though Tolkien was two years older. 3) PS on carrying childhood jokes and nicknames into adulthood: this is why E.R. Eddison incongruously called his imaginary peoples Demons and Witches. 4) Elrond came into the mythology long after Earendel, and that he's Elrond's father is not that important to his very striking personal story. 5) The real problem with using The Hobbit as the film's punchline is that, for all its increasing depth, it's too light a story to carry the weight of everything the film's Tolkien says he'll put in the tale.

Global dimming: It's said that when the US shut down airline flights for several days after 9/11, temperatures in major cities went up. Fewer pollutants blocking sunlight. Let's hear it for pollutants?

[rangifer]

The plea for more time was made after Emmanuel Macron and the Finnish presidency of the EU issued an ultimatum in Paris on Wednesday, giving Boris Johnson until the end of September to table workable proposals – or “it’s over”.

It bears noting that the Finnish PM considers the September deadline merely "indicative", for whatever that's worth. Helsinki's motive for having gone ahead with the whole declaration to begin with appears a little murky but looks to be basically process-oriented: They're stuck with the presidency and that means they'd like to ensure enough time for a proper judicial review of any UK proposals, and for whatever baffling reason thought that this was a good way to communicate that.

[andrewducker]

Thank you, that's useful context.

[rangifer]

And, of course, since neither the French nor the Finnish government has the power to make their joint ultimatum mean anything legally, it's not a hugely effective tool for putting real pressure on the UK. Politically it's more complicated, but basically I'm taking the whole September deadline thing as another expression of mounting French frustration.

[andrewducker]

As my only Finnish expert, could you clear something up for me?
Wikipedia says "However, even in private schools, the use of tuition fees is strictly prohibited, and selective admission is prohibited, as well"

And yet here's a school with an entrance exam and fees!
https://www.engs.fi/about/fees

Can you deconfuse me?

[rangifer]

Possibly! I think Wikipedia is a touch off the mark here. Tuition fees are almost always prohibited, but exceptions are made for a handful of foreign-language schools like this one. I also believe university students from outside the EU/EEA are required to pay tuition fees these days. (The latter is a pretty new development, so it's no surprise Wikipedia isn't up to date.)

Entrance examinations are generally standard for upper secondary education and vocation schools, and for anything above that. I'm not sure what the Wikipedia editor means by "selective admission", but there's certainly a whole grab-bag of laws in place designed to prevent discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, gender, and the like.