Interesting Links for 05-05-2020

[andrewducker]

Vote Leave AI firm wins seven government contracts in 18 months (seems to be connected to the people running the tracking app)

(tags:UK Europe NHS OhForFucksSake )

Nearly a quarter of British employees furloughed in last fortnight

(tags:UK employment pandemic )

The Hidden Rules of Conversation

(tags:language communication video conversation )

Apple and Google provide first look of COVID-19 tracing in iOS and Android

(tags:Apple Google Android ios pandemic )

Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

(tags:history science sun )

Edinburgh artist creates beautiful images of what the city would look like overgrown

(tags:nature Edinburgh art )

'Time has come' for universal basic income, says Sturgeon

(tags:Scotland GuaranteedIncome viaCharlesStross )

UK COVID-19 contact-tracing app data may be kept for 'research' after crisis ends

(tags:NHS privacy apps pandemic )

Comments

The Hidden Rules of Conversation

[jack]

Huh. It's interesting because I often feel like I'm missing hidden conversational rules. But those all seem to accord with what I naturally expect. But when I seem to get into a conversational muddle, it feels like I'm expecting people to follow those rules but they're not, or they are but I completely misread what information was already implicit, or something like that...

Re: The Hidden Rules of Conversation

[andrewducker]

Yeah, knowing that you need to take context onto account doesn't help if there's context you're just not aware of.

Universal Basic Income

[dewline]

Is being argued for in many places. PM Sturgeon will find allies across the planet. Including the Canadian New Democrats and Greens, going by the fundraising/activism e-mails I've been seeing.

Re: Universal Basic Income

[penta]

I can see the appeal, but also a bit of reason to worry.

The moment you have UBI, the government suddenly has an incredible need to limit population growth as a way of controlling budgetary expansion. I could see one-child policies not merely happening in China...

Re: Universal Basic Income

[andrewducker]

More people generate more money. I'd expect that to be true under a system with UBI.

(Also, the replenishment rate in Europe is already lower than necessary to keep the population stable)

Re: Universal Basic Income

[dewline]

And population replenishment is a continuing issue in Canada as well. It's why pre-Pandemic policy was pushing for immigration as a net positive activity, and why the federal "baby bonus" cheques are still standing practice as well here.

Re: Universal Basic Income

[anna_wing]

Not an issue in any developed or richer developing country, most of which are already below replacement from local births. There might be problems with immigrants, I suppose, though that could be dealt with quite easily by limiting economic migrants' right to acquire citizenship, the way a lot of Asian and Middle-eastern countries do.

The Hidden Rules of Conversation

[anna_wing]

I agree with this for conversations that are mostly about sharing information. Conversations serve many other purposes as well, though, and those have their own separate sets of rules.

Conversations to show goodwill, to reaffirm connections, to induce one or other or both of the speakers to do specific things, to perform for an external party, to reaffirm a particular situation, to make a particular impression on one of the participants...all operate under different assumptions and rules. A lot of confusion occurs simply because two people may have entirely different ideas about what kind of conversation they're having.

Re: The Hidden Rules of Conversation

[andrewducker]

Entirely true. Huge amounts of context you need to have in common or you risk a lot of miscommunication and upset.

The Sun

[danieldwilliam]

I recall reading about a debate on how old the solar system was with several conflicting views based on sedimentary rock formation (the longest) the heat of the Earth (the shortest, but based on lack of knowledge of radioactive isotopes in the Earth and some other model. Sedimentary rock formations seemded to be the most accurate.

But I can't remember how that compared to the 100 million years estimated by the Scientific American but I think all of the estiamtes were considerably longer.

Wild Edinburgh

[danieldwilliam]

I wonder what it would be like to live in an Edinburgh that looked like those re-wilded images. And what would we have to do to make that work in terms of transport and getting the shopping home?

Re: Wild Edinburgh

[andrewducker]

Ziplines I'd have thought.

Or a really good machete.

Re: Wild Edinburgh

[danieldwilliam]

I was hoping for something for science fictional. Jetpacks or something.

Re: Wild Edinburgh

[andrewducker]

Fine.
Steam powered laser machete.

Furlough

[danieldwilliam]

A quarter is a lot. I mean huge. I think it roughly doubles the size of the state.

As I've been interacting with other businesses I've been a little surprised at how m any had furloughed people. It seems like everyone is being very cautious and that that caution is re-enforcing itself.

Re: Furlough

[andrewducker]

Yeah, lots of companies are making use of this to increase their cash flow. Which doesn't seem unreasonable, to be honest.

Re: Furlough

[dewline]

While also being wary that the caution we're taking now doesn't backfire later.