Interesting Links for 08-07-2020

[andrewducker]

I think I've found the best advertising campaign of all time

(tags:advertising fish celebrity wtf )

Coronavirus: Three England pubs close after positive tests

(tags:UK alcohol pandemic )

Brooklyn Nine-Nine on Hold Until Team Feels 'Morally Okay' With Show

(tags:police comedy TV )

Government awards £252m PPE contract to private equity firm based in the tax haven of Mauritius

(tags:tax pandemic OhForFucksSake )

Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

(tags:surveillance advertising web )

Diane Reay's "Miseducation - Inequality, Education and the Working Classes"

(tags:books Education uk OhForFucksSake )

Brain-Eating Amoeba Case Confirmed in Florida

(tags:brain aieeee! USA florida )

'That's ridiculous': Edinburgh reacts to lamposts in the middle of Leith Walk cycle lanes

(tags:cycling OhForFucksSake Edinburgh transport )

4G internet balloons take off over Kenya

(tags:kenya internet balloon )

Germany Announces Ban on Single-Use Plastics Starting in 2021

(tags:Germany plastic environment )

Comments

[anna_wing]

Surely it is also a really important factor whether the society actually respects and values education.

It was a gigantic culture shock to me to meet people in university whose parents had not supported their educational ambitions. I am not talking about money. One of my classmates had won a scholarship to Cambridge, and had been forbidden by her father to take it up because she was working-class and "should know her place". She was a mature student when we were classmates, there only because she had married a doctor, who supported her wishes. Someone else I knew had also got a scholarship (something that I would have expected would be a source of honour and pride in her family) and had to fight family resistance all the way, because "it would make her get above herself".

It was very difficult to understand how a family would deny their child such an opportunity out of sheer malice.

I suppose it is good to know that a brain-eating amoeba exists. It is rainy season, and my swimming-pool definitely does not sufficiently resemble the Blue Screen of Death. Maintenance will be arranged.

[dewline]

Class warfare taking an old, ongoing and perverse turn in those two ladies' cases! Glad they got out from under that obscene nonsense!

[anna_wing]

They were very lucky. How many clever but poor children in their generation were held back by their own society's devaluation of educational achievement as a goal of ambition? It was my first encounter with how damaging a caste system could be.

[fanf]

What, a dodgy government contract that isn’t for £108 million?!?!

[lilysea]

Germany Announces Ban on Single-Use Plastics Starting in 2021

Ugh. Disabled people need single use plastic straws to be able to safely drink, and not aspirate fluid into their lungs which can = burns or pneumonia.

No nonplastic single use straw is an adequate substitute for all Disabled people - issues include not being suitable for hot liquids; not being safe for people with involuntary movements [glass/metal straws]; allergy issues and more...

[andrewducker]

The UK straw ban has an exception for people who need them because of disability.

[dewline]

Germany should take up similar rules if they're not already in the statute as proposed.

[calimac]

My candidate for the greatest ad campaign ever, certainly of my time, was the self-deprecating Volkswagen ads of the 1960s. In a day when cars were generally sold as glamorous, VW sold functionality.

The peak of their campaign, in 1969, was this ad. Nothing about the car, not even its picture; just a logo. And this:

[andrewducker]

That is fantastic.

[dewline]

Cramped as the dickens for a passenger already overtall by their standards, too...but the ad campaign worked.

[ninetydegrees]

"I think I've found the best advertising campaign of all time"
All these people being glorious or happy with dead fish kinda kills the message for me. But to each their own.

"Brooklyn Nine-Nine on Hold Until Team Feels 'Morally Okay' With Show"
Great news.

cycle lanes

[channelpenguin]

seems normal for me - you should see some Berlin cycle lanes! And some people tell me one is legally obliged to use cycle lanes of they exist - though that can't be true... as it is I don't use my road bike at all because of the combo of cobbled streets and tree root / hole filled, sometimes ultra narrow cycle lanes and grumpy car drivers when I use the road!

[drplokta]

But there’s no such thing as single-use cutlery. There’s just cheap cutlery. If cutlery is sufficiently cheap, people will dispose of it after use, whatever it’s made of. If it’s not that cheap, then they won’t. So a ban on single-use cutlery is really a ban on cheap cutlery.

[andrewducker]

There's really cheap plastic cutlery which doesn't survive hot water well and clearly isn't designed to be generally reused.

I mean, you *can* reuse a paper plate, but if you tried to claim it wasn't designed to be single use you'd be laughed out of court.