Interesting Links for 19-02-2021

[andrewducker]

Perth becomes first UK city centre with resident beavers

(tags:UK Scotland animals beavers cities )

Buffy Deserves Better Than Joss Whedon

(tags:JossWhedon buffy abuse tv viaKalimac )

Parenting: Three ways to calm your kids during a temper tantrum

(tags:children emotion psychology parenting )

Fifty construction workers from Edinburgh St James Quarter project self isolating following Covid-19 outbreak

(tags:Edinburgh construction pandemic )

I wish I was sixteen again so I could enjoy the new Mortal Kombat movie the way it was meant to be seen

(tags:movies violence games trailer video )

Japan's ruling party invites more women to meetings, as long as they don't talk

(tags:women Japan politics OhForFucksSake )

California State Legislator Introduces Bill to Decriminalize Psychedelics

(tags:psychedelics decriminalization California USA GoodNews )

New Kalashnikov comes with WiFi, Bluetooth and phone sync

(tags:guns WiFi Bluetooth wtf technology )

Wildlife Photographer Captures Never Before Seen Yellow Penguin

(tags:birds colour penguins photos )

UK Supreme Court rules Uber drivers are workers

(tags:Jobs law employment UK GoodNews )

The 'war on woke' and law and policy commentary - and the importance of responding to illiberals but not on their terms

(tags:society politics )

Relax. Machines Already Took Our Jobs

(tags:automation history )

COVID/Vitamin D: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

(tags:vitaminD pandemic research )

Comments

[anna_wing]

I've never felt the desire to kill my own dinner, or even shoot at targets (when one is astigmatic and short-sighted, some hobbies are just not worth the trouble) so I seek enlightenment from sport shooters. What would be the value-add of a shotgun with phone sync, Wifi and bluetooth? Except perhaps to star in some modern locked-room murder mystery...

[andrewducker]

I have no idea. It seems ridiculous to me.

[aldabra]

I was wondering that. The only application I've come up with is to set it up remotely and fire it by text message. I, ah, can't see the circumstances in which that would be safe, useful, and constructive.

[aldabra]

"Entering a semi-game niche could be an option." Are they envisaging team-LARPing with live assault weapons? Why? In which jurisdictions? Is this compatible with the well-regulated militia idea?

[mlknchz]

As someone who has ben a sport-shooter for 40 years, I can say with confidence that it HAS no utility in any application. Kalashnikov is using those features to appeal to a younger demographic. It's purely and simply a marketing gimmic.

[movingfinger]

I'm loving the idea of the gun locking up because the app hasn't been updated.

COVID and Vitamin D

[anna_wing]

China and New Zealand are both at quite high latitudes relative to the Equator and had very low rates of infection, purely and obviously because of government response.

300,000-odd mostly Indian subcontinental migrant workers (what the UK calls "Asians") in equatorial Singapore had very high rates of infection because of being stuck in crowded dormitories, but very low rates of severe illness or death, partly because most of them were youngish and healthy, and partly because of obvious governmental response - rapid isolation and free, high quality medical treatment for all symptomatic patients.

Anyway, surely "race" is a very dodgy concept upon which to base medical conclusions, at least when applied to genetics (I suppose it could be relevant if it's used as a synonym for "culture", since different lifestyles and food habits could definitely have medically relevant consequences). The connection between ancestry and skin colour and physical features is pretty tenuous, or there wouldn't be all that business in the US about "passing".

I agree that it's good to keep your Vitamin D levels up to a decent level in general, without dragging COVID into it

Re: COVID and Vitamin D

[cmcmck]

'The connection between ancestry and skin colour and physical features is pretty tenuous'.

This! Absolutely. I'm Morticia Addams white and have both Jewish and Romani ancestry which, of course, pass unnoticed and uncommented upon.

My also being trans usually means that 'passing' can mean something quite other! :o)

Re: COVID and Vitamin D

[anna_wing]

I thought Judaism is a religion? I've met Jews from all over - Israelis, of course, but also Germans, Moroccans, Ethiopians, Iraqis, Myanmars, English....

Re: COVID and Vitamin D

[andrewducker]

Judaism is a religion. Jewishness is both - they are a tribe who believe. You can join the belief system, but you can also be born into the tribe. The Nazis didn't ask what people believed, but who they were descended from.

Re: COVID and Vitamin D

[cmcmck]

Exactly.

I'm roughly a quarter Jewish by the Nazi way of thinking (not to mention a quarter Romani) and that would have been enough to cost me my life.

Re: COVID and Vitamin D

[cmcmck]

It is, but it is also very much a culture if not an ethnicity.

And racist politics over the centuries has always claimed it to be a race. We all know where than led. :o(

Re: COVID and Vitamin D

[anna_wing]

Ah, I see. Like Sikhs and Parsees. Though I have not heard of anyone converting to either of those religions.

Re: COVID and Vitamin D

[cmcmck]

We have a Sikh community locally and they are happy to accept converts although it isn't common.

[mlknchz]

I was a Buffy and Angel fan from the start, and I just recently re-watched the series for the second time. I'm immensely saddened, but not terrible surprised. I remember thinking at the time that Charisma Carpenter was being badly treated by Whedon because of her pregnancy. I'm sad to find out that's not where the bad treatment began or ended. It's obvious that he also had a penchant for casting very thin, near-anorexic looking young women, which I find very problematic

[calimac]

I had not previously heard about Whedon's treatment of Carpenter in her pregnancy, partly because I don't normally follow celebrity news and partly because I'd stopped watching Angel by then. So for me all this news has been very much a post-facto event.

Relax. Machines Already Took Our Jobs

[jack]

My theory was that progress always leads to jobs being replaced like this, although they gave better examples. But that whoever in society has the most power grabs any disruption as an excuse to throw out the status quo and ratchet everyone else's share downward.

Automating mills was always going to happen and is better for humanity as a whole than not automating them. But Ludd was 100% right that the existing workers were going to be screwed over by the owners in the process.

A national income would conveniently fix this for all disruptions at once and also make it less likely people would disrupt things just for the sake of disrupting them -- eg the Uber example their business relies on holding drivers hostage, if they couldn't engineer that situation, they'd have to focus on things that genuinely made taxis better instead of upending everything to pay drivers less.

Re: Relax. Machines Already Took Our Jobs

[andrewducker]

Oh yes. We should deal better at retraining people and supporting them.

(And a UBI would be great for that.)

[calimac]

"UK Supreme Court rules Uber drivers are workers"

You'll excuse me for wishing that were an S instead of a K. As if that would be likely to happen.

[andrewducker]

Would that need to be state by state over with you?

[calimac]

In practice, it probably would. I'm dreaming here, same as I'm dreaming of a liberal court.

But whenever the federal Supreme Court can conclude that there's an issue covered by the federal Constitution involved, it's entitled to weigh in and give the final word, and often enough it does. Marriage laws, for instance, are normally a state-by-state prerogative, but in the Obergefell case, they ruled that the due process clause of the 14th amendment overrode any right of the states to prohibit same-sex marriages.

[simont]

I was very sleepy when I first read this comment, and spent a while trying to work out why you'd have preferred it if Uber drivers had been ruled to be worsers.

[symbioid]

Me too lol...