Interesting Links for 05-11-2020

[andrewducker]

Students give female teaching assistants vastly worse reviews than men - even when they're the same person

(tags:psychology bias misogyny teaching )

Why the Post Office's Last-Minute Ballot Crisis Isn't as Dire as It Seems

(tags:voting USA mail )

Denmark to cull entire mink population after coronavirus mutation spreads to humans

(tags:animals Denmark pandemic aieeee! )

Boris Johnson: Lord of Misrule (a fascinating insight from an ex colleague)

(tags:BorisJohnson lies politics UK conservatives OhForFucksSake )

Scientists hail earwax test for checking stress hormone levels (and possibly other things)

(tags:stress hormones ears )

Why Latinx people vote for Trump

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1324083909404090374.html
(tags:SouthAmerica USA voting )

750M genetically modified mosquitoes to be released in Florida

(tags:Florida USA mosquito genetics )

The alignment chart of kitchen corner cabinets

(tags:design alignment funny cooking storage )

New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression

(tags:depression psilocybin hallucinogenics )

Comments

Gender bias article

[claudeb]

A good read from top to bottom, but this takes the cake: "The overall bias favoring the male TA wasn’t shocking to Khazan and Greenhaw, but did surprise their co-author, associate professor Steve Johnson [...]"

Breaking: man is surprised to learn gender discrimination exists. In related news, you need money to survive in the modern world, and they're not distributed with any degree of fairness.

Last but not least, water is wet. We don't want to learn, do we.

Re: Gender bias article

[snippy]

I disagree with the ratings of the corner cabinets. Only the one labeled "neutral good" is easy to keep clean-all the others range from difficult to impossible to clean.

Re: Gender bias article

[snippy]

Sorry, meant to be a top level comment.

Re: Gender bias article

[andrewducker]

I've struggled with believing awful things in the past - my own life was relatively sheltered, and obviously people don't tend to be abusive or horribly sexist with me in the room, so it seems really weird to me that there's this whole other world I don't see, where terrible things happen.

But I've seen far too much evidence to not believe.

COVID19 mutation in European mink

[anna_wing]

My. There's really no end to this, is there? I suppose it will have to be Blackglama, then.

[calimac]

Article listing the characteristics of Boris emphasizes, without saying so, his similarities to Trump: behavior so awful that it undercuts any given example of it; propensity to lie even unnecessarily; lack of interest even in his own declared policies.

[mountainkiss]

The article did make me thoughtful about one aspect of psychology here: Stewart's account of Johnson as playing stupid to appeal, whilst Trump really is stupid and unashamed of it. It made me wonder whether there are people who have such great fear of being patronised or thought stupid by others that they feel either genuinely positive about a stupid candidate or negative about a clever one, regardless of what the impact for them of bad government would be.

[calimac]

Both these phenomena definitely exist, though the reasons may vary. People seemed to like George W. Bush despite his crude mentality because they thought him personable (I'd describe the personality he presented as unpleasantly bloke-y). On the other side, Jimmy Carter's speeches on energy policy were dismissed because folks found him a lecturing schoolmarm type. Nobody ever claimed his warnings were factually wrong, and indeed they were most prescient; but apparently that didn't matter.

[momentsmusicaux]

I'm glad to see that for once someone has explained the reasoning for their alignment chart choices! Most of the time they seem rather random to me.

[naath]

so... cheap mink fur?

[anna_wing]

Hard to say. High-end furs like mink are a luxury product, so the market is small and price inelastic. Northern European and high-level Canadian fur is generally the most expensive anyway, because of higher quality and production costs. These animals will probably not be turned into fur, just killed and, presumably, incinerated.

A lot will depend on whether cheaper producers elsewhere spook too, and whether the COVID19 link is mink-specific, or would affect foxes, rabbits, nutria, squirrels, raccoons, coyote, all the lower-end furs.

Anyway, given the global retail slump, you can already get good deals on existing stock from reputable brands, if you are so inclined.

[naath]

I have a lawful evil cupboard, I HATE it, but new kitchen = £££££

[aldabra]

Oh I want a neutral evil cupboard. (And, you know, a kitchen to put it in...)

Boris Johnson: Lord of Misrule (a fascinating insight from an ex colleague)

[anef]

I have a lot of time for Rory Stewart, and his article does dispose of the thesis that I was trying to put to M recently, that Boris, while being a liar (which is clearly evident), was at least embarrassed about lying. Clearly the shuffle-footed, "aw shucks" behaviour is a clever attempt to disguise quite how badly he is treating the truth, rather than an attempt to apologise for it.