Interesting Links for 14-09-2021

[andrewducker]

Hands-on with Facebook's first smart glasses

(tags:transparentsociety glasses cameras facebook )

UK's Chief Medical Officers Give Green Light To Covid Vaccines For All 12 To 15-Year-Olds

(tags:uk pandemic children vaccination )

American Psycho Business Card Scene - With Cats

(tags:cats funny video AmericanPsycho movies )

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (by Ursula K. Le Guin)

(tags:fiction writing scifi society gender )

HGV driving tests won't test if drivers can reverse. Which is how you get to loading docks...

(tags:viaNeilRodger UK driving transport Doom )

Understanding the onset of hot streaks across artistic, cultural, and scientific careers

(tags:achievement psychology art science writing )

Government says discrimination against black people and Travellers 'objectively justified' with new laws

(tags:racism UK law OhForFucksSake conservatives )

Disturbing trend? UK hotels adding service charge to room rate

(tags:hotel uk money OhForFucksSake )

Why even giant ships can't solve the shipping crisis

(tags:shipping trade doom )

France grants citizenship to 12,000 COVID frontline workers

(tags:france pandemic citizenship )

What the Torah Teaches Us About Gender Fluidity and Transgender Justice

(tags:transgender Jews lgbt )

Women's Science Fiction keeps getting filed under "Young Adult" even when it's not.

(tags:women publishing children OhForFucksSake )

One Woman's Mission to Rewrite Nazi History on Wikipedia

(tags:nazis wikipedia propaganda )

Comments

[cybik]

I believe most of Robin McKinley’s work gets put in YA. Much of this is fine. When it comes to Deerskin, which has a horrible incestuous rape scene in it, this is not fine. I entirely agree that women’s sci fi and fantasy is often assumed to be for younger readers, which I suspect is because of the general devaluing of women’s work: it’s not “serious”, it’s for kids.

[cmcmck]

As a trans woman with Jewish ancestry, I find that piece fascinating.

I more than once ran into: 'a man should use that which pertaineth to a man and a woman that which pertaineth to a woman' (Deuteronomy)

To which my response was generally to state that I DO use that which pertaineth to a woman.

For some reason, that tends to throw 'em! :o)

Carrier Bags

[danieldwilliam]

What do you suppose is the simplist receptical to make?

Re: Carrier Bags

[andrewducker]

A wooden or stone bowl?

Re: Carrier Bags

[danieldwilliam]

You could make a wooden bowl using hot coals from a fire I think.

Re: Carrier Bags

[andrewducker]

Or a pointy stone?

Re: Carrier Bags

[danieldwilliam]

You could do it with a pointy stone, might be less work if you burn the middle out and then scrape out the charred bits.

Re: Carrier Bags

[andrewducker]

Indeed! You are completely correct!

https://youtu.be/aVbnj4sEgks

Re: Carrier Bags

[danieldwilliam]

I think I remember watching a documentary with someone making a canoe out of a tree using the same method.

Re: Carrier Bags

[andrewducker]

The ability to make fire seems pretty handy. We should hold on to that.

Re: Carrier Bags

[danieldwilliam]

We should find something to keep it in.

Re: Carrier Bags

[anef]

I would have thought a bag made out of hide would be relatively easy to invent. String would probably come a bit later. Hollowed gourds would probably be earlier than stone or wooden bowls.

Re: Carrier Bags

[andrewducker]

Gourds, definitely.

Does hide require tanning and other tool work that makes it harder than bowls? Or are they easy?

Re: Carrier Bags

[original_aj]

All you need is to scrape off the flesh and fat that will spoil, and if you have the tools to get the hide off the animal that's trivial.

You can use sinews or thin strips of hide to lace it together.

And that's ignoring that large male animals have a bag of skin already.....

Re: Carrier Bags

[andrewducker]

Cheers!

Re: Carrier Bags

[anef]

Oh, and bladders, of course!

Re: Carrier Bags

[magedragonfire]

Or bags or sacks or carrying-cloths made out of large leaves, folded or twisted. Banana leaf is still great for that.

Re: Carrier Bags

[armiphlage]

Birch bark was the equivalent to plastic for the First Nations of eastern Canada. A sharp stone could slice huge sheets off a tree in minutes. Lightweight, waterproof, and easy to form into a pouch, basket, bucket, box, or any other container.

Re: Carrier Bags

[anef]

Fascinating! I can't help wondering whether it would be practical to scale this up as a replacement for plastic now. Probably not or someone would have done it already.

Re: Carrier Bags

[armiphlage]

A century of silviculture has resulted in coniferous forests grown as pulp wood for making paper, with only isolated stands of birch. We would have to change what seedlings are planted after harvest.

Provincial governments would have to be convinced that the bark from pulpwood harvesting (currently only sold as mulch or biomass fuel) could be profitable enough to compensate for the reduction in pulp yield from Crown lands. White spruce wood is nearly 50% cellulose, while birch is only 45%.

For automated manufacturing, I expect disposable plates, bowls, and cups would be the easiest thing to form from bark. There would need to be human involvement in slitting and peeling the bark (trees aren't perfectly cylindrical), and automated vision systems would be needed to reject finished items where insect tunnels or bullet holes would cause leaks.

[dewline]

1. Still, with the attempts to inflict dystopia as if it were going to be paradise!!!

7. No. No. No. HELL NO.

9. You can build the freighters as big as you like, but if the products and containers can't be brought together to be shipped...?

This is one of the problems with "just in time" processes that we should have addressed pre-Pandemic, right?

10. Good on France!

11. Not my religions tradition, yet still I find joy and hope here also, nonetheless, looking at our trans friends, family and other neighbours.

12. Whoops!

(Not even sure that the Hunger Games qualify as YA, to be honest.)

13. I keep revisiting this article this past week. Ksenia Coffman is someone certainly worthy of respect for her ongoing work on this battle against memory-erosion re: Nazism. Particularly during this time of threat from the new fascist international rising everywhere from the Kremlin to Washington to Brasilia to Canberra.

[armiphlage]

With respect to giant freighters, eventually they'll reach the same limit as the A380.

The A380 had a huge passenger-to-flight-crew ratio, which theoretically minimized operating costs. They could fit all their daily traffic between cities in just a couple flights a day.

However, business travelers don't like flying airlines where the only available flight is at 6 AM or 11 PM. So they go with airlines with smaller aircraft and more frequent flight, despite the operating cost per passenger being marginally higher.

Eventually there will be some megasized container ship that is cheap to run. But factory owners won't use it, because they don't want their cargo to sit on the ship for three weeks while they wait for the ship to be filled to capacity.

Women's Science Fiction keeps getting filed under "Young Adult" even when it's not.

[jack]

There was a twitter thread with authors complaining about how inappropriate it was. They were amazingly patient :( I think NK Jemisin's Broken Earth and RF Kuang's Poppy War stood out. Both had a SOME aspect associated with YA, the magical school aspect. But both were very gritty depictions of a nation being on the receiving end of many horrific atrocities :( It was clear that the people repeatedly making that assumption hadn't read a description :(

Re: Women's Science Fiction keeps getting filed under "Young Adult" even when it's not.

[matgb]

There were parts of Poppy War, especially the aftermath of the Nanjing analogue, that made me very quesy, I wouldn't recommend it to younger teens at all and would warn people that are sensitve to that sort of thing.

I'd definitely recommend it overall tho, brilliant series (waiting for the ppb for book 3 but...)

[mountainkiss]

I got very excited when I saw 22 comments and thought "political debate and I will learn stuff!" but then it's all about how to make a bowl in the stone age.

[andrewducker]

Should you ever find yourself in the stone age...

[mountainkiss]

I will be thinking about my fucking skincare regime and reading material not bowls.

[anna_wing]

Pieces of stem from the big bamboo species make excellent containers and cooking utensils (multiple Asian and probably South American cuisines have dishes that can be described as "things-steamed-in-chunks-of-bamboo-stem".

They even come with natural compartments.

I would prefer a higher explicit room rate or indeed a fixed and non-voluntary service charge, which amounts to the same thing. Anything, rather than the US-style tipping/extortion system, which I detest and despise. I wouldn't go to a restaurant anywhere else that used it.

[melchar]

Wonderful - damn near impossible to detect camera glasses able to take 6 hours of privacy-invading montages. Voyeur-vision on a grand scale.