Interesting Links for 07-07-2020

[andrewducker]

Tech Confronts Its Use of the Labels 'Master' and 'Slave'

(tags:Slavery technology language )

Santa Is More Real Than Peter Pan: Children Have A "Hierarchy" Of Belief In Fictional Characters

(tags:belief children fiction )

Why Boris Johnson's call for driverless Tube trains is a political stunt

(tags:politics trains London )

LOS ANGELES, JULY, 2020 (with the music I imagined when I saw the video)

(tags:fireworks USA video bladerunner )

The New Science of Sex and Gender

(tags:science sex gender )

Comments

[zz]

i just don't get the master/slave, or master on its own, thing. apart from having plenty of other meanings & history (i mean, to me m/s is more likely to make me think of bdsm...), the argument smells of american exceptionalism/cultural imperialism - "america's view on something is the only valid/moral view on something".

[anna_wing]

This is unfortunately the case in a vast number of domains.

[andrewducker]

Master on its own is one thing, must referring to things as slaves, when we have people whose very recent ancestors *were* slaves seems at the least to be in bad taste.

[mountainkiss]

Because everything Boris Johnson does is a political stunt.

[andrewducker]

Pretty much.

[momentsmusicaux]

A stunt, from Johnson? I AM SHOCKED!

It's a massive undertaking. Paris has converted one of its metro lines to driverless, and is in the process of converting another. It gives a significant increase in capacity, as I gather. But all the stations need to be converted, as well various stuff like signalling and comms across the length of the line. And on the tube, lines are LONG. And you have the problem of outdoor sections where there can be people or obstacles on the line. Line 1 in Paris has a couple of outdoor sections but they are very short and fenced off. London has loads of track which is basically converted suburban rail lines.

Also, in Paris, they had a line that was build as automatic from the start, so they had the tech and the experience.

It's significant that when they extended the Jubilee in 2000ish they didn't retrofit the existing line to have platform doors and make it automatic.

I'm sure the London Reconnections blog will have a response to this pretty soon, anyway.

Fireworks video

[anna_wing]

The fireworks video is ...remarkably apocalyptic.