Interesting Links for 13-01-2020

[andrewducker]

How Animals Behave When We Aren't Looking (gorgeous magical art)

(tags:art animals magic viaNancyLebov )

Inspiring middle-age success stories

(tags:MiddleAge success twitter )

The Machine Stops (working when you take all of the people out of the process)

(tags:automation process )

Edinburgh woman becomes youngest to reach South Pole solo

(tags:antarctic edinburgh women )

What's been driving long-run house price growth in the UK? (Low interest rates)

(tags:uk housing )

Iran protests escalate as public anger against leaders grows

(tags:iran protests )

The debate of our era.

(tags:war satire TheOnion Iraq Ian USA viaJohnBobShaun )

Comments

[coth]

The Machine Stops - oh yes! When it all works, fine. If not...you're stuffed.

[andrewducker]

And that seems to be getting worse.

Every time I see a horrible green screen app from the 70s replaced with a new shiny web app it does less and copes worse with having to carry out manual fixes.

[dewline]

Or a blank page or empty space where an image file was supposed to be.

[hilarita]

Yes. Computers make mistakes because humans make mistakes, and humans program the computers. Computers enable humans to make mistakes faster than ever before.

[drplokta]

Low interest rates have lots of other effects on the housing market, driving it away from what people perceive as normal (though it’s really the high-inflation high-interest-rate era from the sixties to the nineties that was abnormal). We get longer-term mortgages, because with high interest rates there’s no point having a longer term, since your initial payments are nearly all interest and so a longer term barely reduces them. The “housing ladder” breaks, since it depends on rapid accumulation of equity and reduction in mortgage payments as a proportion of your salary, driven by high inflation.