andrewducker | Interesting Links for 17-11-2021

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Interesting Links for 17-11-2021

Racism Is Institutional In British Cricket: (tags:UK cricket racism OhForFucksSake )
Supersaurus: Scientists realise dinosaur might have been the longest ever after fixing fossil mix-up: (tags:dinosaurs )
Chile wants to export solar energy to Asia via 15,000km submarine cable (losses would be just under 50%): (tags:solarpower chile Asia )
Joanna Cherry's popularity is not going up: (tags:LGBT SNP transgender politics Scotland )
Englandâs austerity-hit courts losing days of work to collapsing ceilings, broken lift and arctic conditions: (tags:justice UK OhForFucksSake )
There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada: (tags:Canada transport roads weather )
Remarkably accurate neurosurgery residency interview: (tags:medicine USA surgery doctors funny satire video interview )
Activision CEO Bobby Kotick told an employee he would have her killed. He kept an exec from being fired after a sexual harassment claim. He didn't tell his board of alleged rapes and other misconduct.: (tags:games rape abuse misogyny OhForFucksSake )
John Carmack on Steve Jobs: (tags:Doom games Apple stevejobs johncarmack history computers graphics opengl )
Amazon to stop accepting Visa credit cards issued in UK: (tags:UK Amazon visa credit wtf )
The students losing thousands in an Edinburgh rental scam: (tags:edinburgh property fraud )
âClear riskâ UK joining Pacific trade deal will raise drug prices for NHS: (tags:uk nhs trade )
The FTC is moving to end âclick to subscribe, call to cancelâ: (tags:business usa )
Netflix has started publishing its top 10 watched movies and TV shows: (tags:netflix )
Dogs! Being! Kissed!: (tags:dogs behaviour )

I'm surprised but pleased that an undersea cable that long would have only 50% losses, without having to have such a huge diameter that it would be unwieldy.

Of course if battery storage prices keep dropping, long-distance transport won't be needed.

Oh yeah, if we can make enough batteries to last us through the night then we're sorted!

I think the most recent and most comprehensive polling on GRA suggests that Joanna Cherry's position is supported by the majority of SNP voters.

I tend to expect that local solar infrastructure - from panels to batteries - is going to keep being built, delivered and installed in order to render undersea cable installations unnecessary.

"Almost 40 per cent (37 per cent) of Scots backed the general principle of GRA reform, the poll found, with just over one in four (26 per cent) opposing the moves"

"A total of 44 per cent of women support the reform versus 16 per cent who don't"

"SNP voters are shown to be twice as likely to back the sacking of Ms Cherry (32 per cent) than oppose it (13 per cent)."

From https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/nicola-sturgeon-backed-majority-snp-support-over-joanna-cherry-sacking-says-poll-3130975 in February.

I'm not finding anything more recent that says that Scots have increased their support of bigotry.

James Kelly of Scot Goes Pop has commissioned quite a carefully considered set of polling questions on GRA and related issues, including some that poke around in the methodoligical weaknesses of the poll you are refering to. Results started being released last week.

Broadly speaking the new poll has a clear majority of voters, including pretty much every cross-break by political party support, age, gender and so on, opposed to the Scottish Government's, SNP and SGP's policy on this issue. Roughly 50%+ against, 25%- against and 25%-ish undecided / declined to answer.

1. Because, of course it would have racism baked into its structure. It was never envisioned that sports ought to be for everyone who wants to play.

4. At least Canada gets new courthouse buildings set up from time to time. We even manage to refit them occasionally to keep up with the times re: accessibility, internet support, etc.. We're still a young enough country for that, and the anti-tax fixation hasn't taken permanent hold in our national "brain" yet.

5. True. Disturbingly so. We have at least one entire small city - Merritt - fully evacuated, as well as smaller towns and villages. Highways and railway lines washed out and/or flooded at several points, partially isolating metro Vancouver. Air and boat travel is still practical, but it's going to be more difficult.

7. Disgusting and unsurprising. The cruelties just keep adding up there, don't they?

Interesting.

If I get the chance, I'll take a look at some point.

Not that it matters particularly, with it being in the agreement that both parties have signed up to. Thank goodness!

It matters in as much
1) voters appear to be opposed to the government policy by some margin, including the government's own voters - if it becomes an election issue then that is a problem for the parties in government
2) voters do not like the way the government are conducting the discusson on their policy
3) it has the potential to split the SNP in quite a public way and drag the SGP in to the mire of a bitter public feud in the pro-independence movement - and voters do not like parties that do not look unified. (It is the thing they HATE most about political parties.)

The potential is there for this to end up going badly wrong for the SNP electorally resulting in a government with very different priorities.

So there is a non-trivial chance that you *temporarily* get the GRA reform you want and lose indepedence, a return to the EU and have to admit in public that Douglas Ross is the duly elected leader of your people.

It seems unlikely to split the party unless members of the party go against the policy of the party, as agreed at the party conference.

SNP Conference is upcoming. If it turns out that some people want to split the party by going against party policy then I guess they might do so at that point.

So hopefully no major members of the party will attempt to split it. We'll have to wait and see if they do!

My bet (with myself) is that cables will probably win in the contest between cables and batteries.

If your line losses on a 15,000 km subsea cable are only 50% then power that costs $20 / MWH to produce in Chile comes off the cable costing $40 / MWH plus the cost of the cable - that means the cable can cost $60 / MWH and still be in the right ball park of cost for power.

I reckon we are a lot lot closer to $60 / MWH cables than we are to huge batteries. Not necessarily 15,000 km long subsea cables but long distance cables.

Not saying that batteries won't eventually become cheaper than cables but once the cables are built it will be a long time before they are replaced.

Jings and indeed Crivens.

"If it turns out that some people want to split the party by going against party policy then I guess they might do so at that point."

Exactly this but also, the party is much more than the activists who go to conference. It rests on its support amongst ordinary voters. A "party" can remain 100% unified on its policy platform by pro-actively expelling anyone who even thinks disagreeing with the policy platform ought to be allowed but voters can take their suppport elsewhere.

That seems very reasonable.

Judging by the recent polls, that doesn't seem to be what voters are doing. 48% support for the SNP indicates that voters are happy to support them even if they disagree over this point.

So, they're not leaving over this. It seems like the major thing would be your point "voters do not like parties that do not look unified. (It is the thing they HATE most about political parties)" - so best hope that nobody goes about acting disunified!

I think you are drawing the wrong conclusion from the voting intention polling.

It doesn't indicate that voters support SNP policy on this issue. It doesn't particularly indicate that they are content to go along with the generality of the SNP offer despite disagreeing with them on this issue.

Most voters do not pay attention to politics. Almost no voters pay attention to policy outside of elections. Mid-term voters generally look at the tone and values of a political party, whether it appears competent and occassionally a policy issue will break through - such as a botched budget or the recent Tory corruption scandal.

Remembering that we life in a polity where almost every voter ranks "the economy" as one of the most important issues but almost no voters could draw you a set of supply and demand curves.

High information voters are tracking policy at a headline level on perhaps 3 or 4 major issues. Activists and political hobbiests (like thee and me) are ultra high information voters with a particular niche interest in 1 or 2 policy issues.

So voters are not leaving the SNP over a policy they disagree with not because they are prepared to put up with the SNP position on a policy they don't agree with but because they currently are not paying attention to the policy debate.

But if the BBC headlines are "Joanna Cherry expelled from SNP by Youth Wing Activists" then voters (not activits and not even high information voters, but ordinary punters) might start paying more attention to the issues involved. The James Kelly polling suggests that if they do start paying attention to this issue specifically that might be bad news for your team.

As for hoping that people don't go around acting disunified, I'm not sure a strategy that relies on your enemies continuing to do what you want them to do is a well founded strategy.

If the answer is that we shouldn't call attention to SNP policies, then possibly making public statements against them and running polls against them which you then attempt to garner as much publicity as possible for is not in the interests of Independence?

I wish I was more surprised by the failure of cricket in the UK to address racism than I am.

I remember, many years ago now, being really irritated by a fellow cricketers continued inability to pronounce a Sri Lankan player's name whilst having no problem with getting his mouth around "Auchtermuchty" "Ecclefechan" "Kirkcaldy" "Cholmondesley-Warner" and the like. Sri Lankan names are often quite long and have some unfamiliar combinations of sounds, and a bit a of run up the first couple of times the first couple of times I think is not unreasonable so I was prepared to give the guy the benefit of the doubt but by fourth meeting where he got mentioned several times and this guys "struggled" with his name it felt rude at best.

That is absolutely the correct take from this.

So let me see if I understand this. A guy rents a flat on AirBNB, and pretends to be its owner and advertises it for rent, collects deposits from numerous tenants each of whom he tells will be getting the place, and then disappears with all the money. That is truly evil.

This is a different language, but I find myself completely unable to pronounce "Ahmadinejad." It's embarrassing.

That name is a special case for me, along Abu Hamza, Cheryl Baker, Sue Lawley as all of those names have been the basis of a pun in a stand up routine about mis-hearing names and song lyrics that has got stuck in my head, a bit like an earworm. I used to be able to pronounce "Ahmadinejad" but all I can manage now is "My New Dinner Jacket"

But clever or at least cunning. I find I have to respect the crocodilian cunning of the scam.

I think I'd want to practice a few times in private.

Mind you a 15,000 km cable does sound very courageous, on a Sir Humphrey scale of bravery.

Oh yes. I think I'd want to see a couple of one's half the length be proved feasible before handing them all the cash.

Unless, of course, the difficulty of laying cables doesn't scale with length, and it's merely a case of repeatedly laying segments until you get there. I'd want to talk to several experts about that though.

And I think many cricket commentators do. I heard a conversation between a couple of them about practicing during the recently concluded Twenty20 World Cup.

(Also the very excellent Indy Nydall from the Great War YouTube series keeps apologising for the damange he's doing to Eastern European place names.)

I expect Scotland's newly won status as a world cricketing power after that tournament is going to cause some East Asian commentators all kinds of problems as they are forced to wrestle with our ludicrous names. "What do you mean it's pronounced "Milgavie, " are you mad?"

I think the difficulty scales with depth and with the condition of the seabed. Both of which are influenced by the length. A longer cable is likely to go through deeper water and the longer the cable the more likely you are to hit difficult seabed conditions.

I think you could probably build a 3,000 km cable in shallow water and easy conditions for roughly 3 times the cost of a similar 1,000 km cable but find that a 2,000 km cable in very very deep water costs much more than twice the cost.

There may also be a limit to how deep you can put these things.Some pattern like; 100 meters, easy, 1,000 meters tricky, 6,000 meters very difficult indeed, 7,000 meters - might as well be on the moon.

I just found this, which has a bit of a map:
https://www.ft.com/content/674557bc-13c7-4010-a7f8-7b8c06b3a32e

Unfortunately, the maps of the sea floor that I've found aren't nearly detailed enough to give an idea of what the ridges are like on the way over:

The more detailed maps will be private in one way or another.

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