Interesting Links for 20-07-2022

[andrewducker]

1. Yay! 60% of Americans aren't Creationists!

(tags:religion usa headdesk evolution belief )

2. UK pay falls at fastest rate on record as inflation hits

(tags:inequality uk pay )

3. A fictional dictionary entry from the future, about the first ever upload. Fascinating and horrifying.

(tags:transhumanism viaCharlesStross scifi )

4. How to encourage your child to have a healthy relationship with food

(tags:psychology food children )

5. Anti-Corbyn Labour officials covertly diverted election funds away from winnable seats, Forde report finds

(tags:labour corruption OhForFucksSake )

6. Beware of bad science reporting: No, we haven't killed 90% of all plankton

(tags:FactCheck ocean doom )

7. A cool debugging story (this one about nuclear detectors in space!)

(tags:space nuclearweapons bug history development viaPatrickHadfield )

8. Government quietly removes commitments to women's rights after summit on freedom of beliefs

(tags:UK abortion women rights OhForFucksSake )

9. Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book Is Being Disneyfied

(tags:Disney neilgaiman )

10. The Labour Party is making a terrible mistake if it ignores the Forde report

(tags:labour democracy politics corruption uk )

11. Stranger Things 4 creators reveal they've secretly been editing past seasons without viewers noticing

(tags:TV editing )

12. Battery cost declines raise prospects of all-electric container shipping

(tags:electricity ships shipping batteries )

13. A Brief History of "Nobody Wants to Work Anymore"

(tags:work history newspapers )

14. 'Unacceptable' waits for Edinburgh high-rise mould repairs

(tags:edinburgh housing OhForFucksSake )

15. Gender-Affirming Care Improves Mental Health And Saves Lives

(tags:psychology transgender lgbt )

Comments

[channelpenguin]

3. Inspired, no doubt, by Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa line of cell cultures.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa

[andrewducker]

Search for 2021-01-05 16:49:54 in the article :-)

[adrian_turtle]

The first link has their respondents divided among Catholics, Protestants, and people with no religion. I am a sufficiently religious Jew to hang up when a survey asks me which of those categories I belong in. I don't know a whole lot about survey design, but I know participant refusal can skew your results pretty badly.

[cmcmck]

I'm a practising Quaker and that would end up as 'Protestant sort of, but one many other Protestants don't recognise because unitarian', so I'd be hanging up too.

[andrewducker]

Sadly I can't find the original stats, and whether they just ignored anyone who said "Muslim" or "Jew", or if they lumped them in elsewhere.

[adrian_turtle]

Catholic + Protestant + None = 101%, which strongly suggests they asked people to self-categorize just that way. If anyone said, "no, I'm Muslim," the surveyor would just tick "no religion," and go on to the next question. Same as the surveyor would tick "Protestant" if somebody said they were a Methodist. The point I was trying to make was that the Muslim would be more likely to roll their eyes at the Christian essentialism and hang up.

But it's significant that they say "none," rather than "other" or "other/none." I'd hang up on somebody who asked if I was Catholic or Protestant or not religious. I might stay on the line if the choices were Catholic, Protestant, other, or none. Even if "other" didn't have a write-in field.

[dewline]

1. YAY!!! (Now submit to Creationist oppression or ELSE!)

5. Oh HELL.

6. Noted.

8. Horrific news, that one...

13. The real complaint remains "Nobody wants to starve on the job anymore!"

15. Hence the resistance to such care's existence for those who need it, right?

[andrewducker]

(15) I assume they want them to just stop existing, yeah.

[cmcmck]

Shan't! :o)

[dewline]

Good!

I am very cross with those demanding your premature end.

[cmcmck]

Me too!

[dewline]

As for the Biden White House and their executive order? They're actively working on kindness, so I wish them every possible success with it!

12 Electric container shipping

[anna_wing]

I like rotary sails, myself (I believe Maersk was experimenting with those)...

A lot of newbuild container ships are apparently going for LNG.

https://shipandbunker.com/news/world/427838-newbuild-orders-favour-alternative-bunker-fuels.

Given the length of time a ship can be in service, I think there will be plenty of time to work on battery technology for fully electric ships.

Re: 12 Electric container shipping

[andrewducker]

Apparently sails haven't ever been used on ships anywhere near as large as a modern massive shipping vessel. People are investigating, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Re: 12 Electric container shipping

[hutchingsmusic]

The rotary sails are not sails in the conventional sense - they're large rotating towers using the Magnus Effect (which sounds utterly unbelievable to anyone unfamiliar with it but appears to genuinely work). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship Combining these with highly efficient batteries could work for shipping at scale.

Re: 12 Electric container shipping

[anna_wing]

Meant to link this but forgot.

https://www.amusingplanet.com/2021/02/flettner-rotor-sailing-ships-without.html

[channelpenguin]

13. Oh, I definitely REALLY actually don't want to work. But have been doing so for nearly 30 years, as I can't seem personally, for me, to solve that problem. I'm getting very very tired and down. My dad battled through until 65 feeling mostly the same (as I surmised, he never really SAID all that much, except he'd love to win the football pools / lottery so "his girls" wouldn't have to work). I'm so glad my parents have had 10 years of decent retirement now. I can't see any of "us" (mine and adjacent generations) managing to have any at all and it makes me want to cry.

[andrewducker]

I don't particularly want to work. But I'm not crushed by it either.

[channelpenguin]

Well that's at least good.

I'm not sure I'm "crushed" but I'm not even good at it anymore. I've utterly lost interest in continual learning (or, more accurately, *not* learning because I have no time, at least partly because I'm fixing stuff that would be better/not need fixed if I'd learned things!). But this is now OT.