Interesting Links for 30-08-2022

[andrewducker]

1. Children's hospitals targeted by anti-LGBTQ activists online

(tags:children bigotry LGBT transgender hospital OhForFucksSake )

2. Insects become airborne, slowed down to a speed the human eye can appreciate

(tags:slowmotion insects flying )

3. Scotland's new disability benefits system comes into force

(tags:Scotland disability welfare )

4. What are *your* most contradictory beliefs?

(tags:belief )

5. Solving mazes with spring kinematics

(tags:algorithms video )

Comments

[dewline]

1. I worry about CHEO (Childrens' Hospital of Eastern Ontario) here in Ottawa, Sick Kids in Toronto, etc., and also about the school boards across Ontario generally since our municipal elections' campaigns are now underway. I see evidence of unofficial "slates" of anti-LGBTQ candidates running for positions on those school boards.

3. I really hope this becomes an improvement over the system as it was for those needing the help!

[zz]

4. What are *your* most contradictory beliefs?

dunno if it counts as a belief, but it's the one i run into pretty much every time i read any news:

human rights are sacrosanct, and not protected/defined strongly enough anywhere in the world for my taste.
vs
i want to torture people who use power to violate others' human rights, ideally by making them experiencing the suffering they've caused, till they learn empathy for the suffering of others.
failing that, kill them. (both because it would be satisfying, and the easiest solution to them being a problem)

[calimac]

4. I don't have deep religious beliefs, but I usually prefer literature and music by authors and composers who do.

[andrewducker]

I saw this and thought of you

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/grammy-richard-wagner-british-decca-records-covent-garden-b2159693.html

[snippy]

4: That kids come out with their own personalities and there's not much past teaching them to eat and use the toilet that parents can do, but that nevertheless I was a bad mother and so was my mother.

[andrewducker]

*hug*

You can definitely be a bad mother, but I'm generally of the opinion that the kind of people who think "Am I a bad parent?" aren't.

[snippy]

Thank you - and I agree mostly. It's my insecurities, not my reality.

[hairyears]

I watched that insects taking-off clip to the very end, wondering if they'd actually capture dipterans taking flight...

Yes, they did: it's the final segment, and they show side-by-side fotage of a hoverfly and a bee fly.

You know I have a bit of a hobby photographing wild bees?


I can't tell you how difficult capturing that footage would have been: emergency take-offs to evade a predator are a an essential survival action for a hoverfly and they are completely beyond the reach of human senses and responses.

...They simply disappear from your field of view, like a a continuity glitch in reality; and the automation required to compensate for that will leave you wasting tens of thousands of frames for every single usable image you get to publish.

[andrewducker]

It's incredibly impressive. I wonder how many takes they had!