Interesting Links for 17-03-2022

[andrewducker]

Why comments are usually terrible, and how to make them better

(tags:comments web )

I can see 29 distinct colours. How about you?

(tags:colour eyes genetics )

The happiness of love turns to sadness when unspent.

(tags:love dogs death sadness grief )

Disney employees are staging walkouts over company's response to the 'Don't Say Gay' bill

(tags:Disney LGBT )

Ukraine-Russia peace talks make significant progress as 15-point plan to end war drawn up by officials

(tags:Ukraine Russia war )

Americans overestimate how big minorities are (I'd be very surprised if Brits didn't think the same)

(tags:USA minorities polls demographics viaJennieRigg )

His software sang the words of God. Then it went silent.

(tags:Jews singing religion computers death lgbt )

UK sets out action plan to tackle inequality based on recommendations from a commission that concluded there was no systemic racism in Britain.

(tags:UK racism )

Why Russians Support Putin's War Against Ukrainians

(tags:Russia Ukraine war polls )

France ends gas heaters subsidies, boosts heat pumps in bid to cut Russia reliance

(tags:France heating electricity Russia )

Russian war in Ukraine 'largely stalled on all fronts', UK claims

(tags:russia ukraine )

In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

(tags:surgery airplanes )

Comments

Colours

[channelpenguin]

I can see 35. On my phone. Wonder about on a properly calibrated screen. Guess I have 4 cone types (not the least bit surprised). I vastly prefer blue/purple colours and some flowers of those shades seem to glow.

[nancylebov]

Americans make comparable overestimates of the proportion of Jews and the proportion of people in NYC. Maybe they think the whole country is like NYC, though that doesn't explain the wilder over estimate of the number of Muslims.

[rmc28]

I got 35 on my laptop screen. I don't especially dislike yellow, but yeah, I don't wear it (except in rainbows). I do love blue/purple much more though.

[bearshorty]

I see 36. I seem to be strongest in blues and terrible in greens but still a lot overall. I do have a preference for blues and purples. But also red. Don't really like yellow, that's true.

[splodgenoodles]

I see 37 or 38 and yes, I do like bees. How ever could you have predicted that?

I really like yellow though. Don't wear it except in small doses because it looks terrible on me, but I've got favourite soft furnishings in yellow. Other than that I love rich greens and jewel colours.

Used to wear a lot of black, still do, but that's the law when you live in Melbourne. Don't know why, it just is.

[cmcmck]

I can see 32. Seem to lose the greens a bit.

[bens_dad]

I see more colours in your image than the one on Diana Derval's LinkedIn page.

I fail some of the Ishihara tests and have "weak red cones" but have had high score on some other colour discrimination tests and have been known to "carry a colour" - judge which of two similar colours in front of me is closest to one I saw half an hour ago in a different place - better than some other people.

I scored high thirties on your image but not more than thirty two on Derval's original.
I may be interpolating a smooth variation and seeing the steps because they don't match that curve, rather than because I can actually distinguish between colours of the blocks.

[ninetydegrees]

I see 36 I think. The transition from blue to green is kinda blurry for me, pretty much as in real life (I often see blue where others see green and vice versa). I do get tricked by background light, and yellow in certain shades is my favorite color :) Tetrachromat I may not be!

"France ends gas heaters subsidies, boosts heat pumps in bid to cut Russia reliance"

Lots of sudden announcements and promises right before presidential election day. Hm...

Trope Trainer

[cellio]

That's fascinating. I had no idea it was one programmer and not a conventional company.

I used Trope Trainer for years. I did listen to the digital voice early on, and I ran through samples of the 24 different traditions my copy knew about just to hear them, but I learned the musical system (from actual sheet music :-) ) and then mainly used Trope Trainer as a resource -- most especially to print nice large-print copies I could practice from. I never upgraded that older Mac to Catalina (too many things would stop working), so the program continued to run. One day it started hanging on launch, and eventually I figured out it was trying to contact a web site that was no longer there, and eventually I learned how to use a firewall to prevent the outbound call so I could run the software. Then, six months ago, I got a new Mac that can't run the software, so my only access to it now is on that older machine, for as long as it's runnable. Before migrating to the new machine I saved PDF copies of each week's portion, so that when I need those nice large-print copies in the future I can print from that. It's imperfect (I can't customize exactly what part of each portion I want, just print, e.g., pages 7 through 10 with some extra text on either end), but it's better than nothing.

I'm sorry to learn that it wasn't the usual path of companies killing products or things killing companies, but something much more personal.

[starwatcher]

I see 36 and... I like yellow. Wish they'd explained why folks with more types of cones might have a problem with it.

(As a matter of fact, my page -- in both LJ and DW -- is green-and-yellow. Of course, many people may not that if they read in their "own style", as I do, but it's here.)

[darkoshi]

I can see 38 colors, especially in the image on the Derval site. But that's only because of the noticeable transition between each block of colors. If the colors were separated out from each other with a common color between them, I'd have a much harder time distinguishing which ones were different or not.

Yellow isn't my favorite, but I don't dislike it and do have some yellow clothes. It looks better together with black. I remember one time at work, when we were given handouts on neon-yellow paper. I like bright colors and was surprised when some people said the color was ghastly.

[aldabra]

Oh! I always thought people who design municipal roundabouts must have different colour vision from me, because they insist on filling them with yellow and orange and pink. I would go for blue and white and purple.

36 going on 39 depending on monitor. But sometimes only because they're directly adjacent.

Snopes on the tetrachromat "test"

[bens_dad]

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/people-4th-retinal-cone/

[danieldwilliam]

I think a lot of the talk about peace talks is a Russian attempt to shape the West's perception tha the war is nearly over and that they don't have to send weapons to Ukraine any more.