Interesting Links for 24-11-2021
Nov. 24th, 2021 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
- Covid stamp duty holiday cost £6.4bn and helped rich house buyers in south
- (tags:housing uk OhForFucksSake )
- In simple English, what does it mean for a number to be transcendental?
- (tags:numbers )
- Americans are struggling to deal with a rising tide of hatred and extremism
- (tags:USA hate bigotry school LGBT )
- What gets to be a valid word? A linguist's view
- (tags:language )
- The woman with XY chromosomes
- (tags:women genetics )
- New licencing laws for short term lets in Scotland
- (tags:rental Scotland housing )
- The Moral of the Roller-Skating Christmas Pudding - the Significance of the Absenteeism of the Lord Chancellor
- (tags:politics law uk )
- The Conspiracy Chart
- (tags:conspiracy visualisation )
- When Americans think each season starts
- (tags:time date usa polls )
- Striving For Perfection, Rather Than Excellence, Can Kill Creativity
- (tags:psychology creativity perfectionism )
Short-Term Lets in Scotland
Date: 2021-11-24 12:27 pm (UTC)As a resident of Edinburgh and the owner of a holiday let in more rural Scotland I think they are about right.
I think I'd like to see more powers to remove licences from owners who run their short-term lets in an anti-social way.
I'd also like to see the control and licencing schemes able to be used to raise some revenue significantly above the costs of administering the scheme.
Re: Short-Term Lets in Scotland
Date: 2021-11-24 01:27 pm (UTC)Re: Short-Term Lets in Scotland
Date: 2021-11-24 01:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-11-24 12:58 pm (UTC)3) There's little of that in the liberal community where I live, but I'm watching for it. But there are other things. When a neighbor proposed establishing a day-care center in our residential area, the Two-Minutes Hate that ensued was truly bizarre.
4) Language purists may content themselves with the fact that, if a significant number of people think a usage is wrong, that is itself a noteworthy fact of usage.
5) The weirdness of chromosome irregularities is something I learned about in genetics half a century ago. That includes mosaics (the technical term for a case like this one). The specifics here are very interesting, but the general concept ain't news, and the tendency of sex-essentialists to brush it aside is unacceptable.
7) And this is why turning the House of Lords into a popularly-elected body would be a bad idea. You've already got a legislative chamber filled with careerist politicians, you don't need another one. (In the US we have two, and it doesn't help.)
8) Conspiracies: "Denver Int'l Airport"? Why? What about it?
9) Seasons: I felt a lot less frustrated at continued hot weather once I gave up on the childhood notion that September was an autumn month. By the way, I vote with those who measure seasons environmentally (buds, leaves, temperature) not by solstice/equinox. Solstice/equinox are enabling conditions for the seasons, not the seasons themselves.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-24 01:20 pm (UTC)As for Denver, there are several: https://www.denverpost.com/2016/10/31/definitive-guide-to-denver-international-airport-conspiracy-theories/
no subject
Date: 2021-11-24 03:26 pm (UTC)We also need to recognize what’s happening locally is part of a far-reaching, far-right political project, and that our resistance locally should be seen as part of a larger nationwide, if not global, anti-fascist and anti-racist movement.
We are indeed looking at a new fascist international here. We see evidence of it in the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, Hungary, Russia, and elsewhere. This is a continuing threat to humanity's hope of a liveable future.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-24 03:42 pm (UTC)Excellent and perfect
Date: 2021-11-25 05:40 am (UTC)Re: Excellent and perfect
Date: 2021-11-25 09:00 am (UTC)Perfect: The one thing which is better than all of the others.
The former will certainly constrain you, but there will (generally) be numerous good answers to a question. Discarding all options which don't feel like the absolutely best one will leave you searching for much longer, if not indefinitely.
Re: Excellent and perfect
Date: 2021-11-26 03:02 am (UTC)I was thinking about it in the context of the traditional arts, where practice makes perfect, but definitions of 'perfect' can vary. A friend of mine, trained in the Chinese pottery tradition (which emphasises the achievement of errorless mastery), once apprenticed himself to a Japanese master in the hopes of learning and understanding the Japanese approach of perfection in imperfection, using the accidental and the aleatory. After a year or so, both he and his master accepted that his way was the way of seeking perfection in perfection, and that was just the way it was. But the goal in both cases was beauty, not "creativity" in the abstract, so I think it's a completely different context from what the study was looking at.
Basically, being willing to break a hundred unsatisfactory pots for every one that reaches your standards is a feature, not a bug.