Interesting Links for 14-10-2022

[andrewducker]

1. When the police are injured at Notting Hill Carnival how did it happen?

(tags:police festival assault )

2. Oblivion Mod Lets Players Order A Pizza Straight From the Game

(tags:pizza games )

3. Why the Chancellor of Exchequer should read the book he wrote

(tags:UK politics history conservatives epicfail )

4. "Free speech" networks and anti-semitism

(tags:freespeech bigotry Jews )

5. What's expected of us (a short story about free will and time travel)

(tags:timetravel FreeWill short_story scifi )

6. Scientists identify gene associated with strong immune response to Covid jabs (30% of UK people have it)

(tags:pandemic vaccination genetics )

7. A dish of neurons may have taught itself to play Pong (badly)

(tags:neuroscience games brain )

8. Having a baby? Sorry, your social life is over for the next 15 years (I'm very glad that I was 45 when it happened, and didn't mind too much)

(tags:babies funny life )

Comments

[simont]

#5: that Ted Chiang short story is referenced in Ken Macleod's The Night Sessions, in which one character introduces another to a 'Predictor' phone app which has very similar functionality.

(However, it's explained in the novel as not involving actual time travel – merely reading your brain well enough to detect your decision to press the button before your consciousness is aware of having made it.)

I saw the short story first but forgot who it was by, and then when I read The Night Sessions I assumed it was the same author adapting a previous idea, and later got very confused to find the short story was by Ted Chiang instead!

[andrewducker]

I love the description of the Science Fiction genre as being a conversation, and this kind of thing just makes me love it more.

[channelpenguin]

Odd, I would have imagined that kids BRING a bit of social life - at least that which involves other parents of kids? Through activities and sports etc. If not, then that is sad, part of such things should also let the parents socialise with each other a bit in activity-related parties/gradings/matches/exhibitions/performances/whatever..

[channelpenguin]

ah... but by "social life" the author seems to mean "drinking, eating in restaurants and going to festivals". depressing, but I suppose that is some people's idea of social life. So no, it is not generally a great idea to be drunk in charge of kids...

[andrewducker]

Why is "Having nice meals and listening to live music" depressing?

[channelpenguin]

It isn't, quite the opposite! It is just depressing when it seems like people aren't open to any other forms, but hey ho, personal preferences.

My parents took us to normal restaurants from we were babies (where we didn't require extra "amusement" or kiddies menus and we behaved). I don't know about live music because my dad worked late and offshore so much. My mum took me to theatre and shows and cinema from an early age too. 5 or so I think if not younger.

I will freely admit that maybe not ALL kids are capable of that, but I do think it is more possible than most people think? I don't know WHY I (a defiant and troublesome child) behaved well - probably I liked the going out and didn't want to jeopardise it? But I really do think people owe it to their kids to show them that adults have a life (that they can sometimes share).

[andrewducker]

I agree that you can do some stuff. And more as kids grow up! We've taken Sophia out to cafes a few times and she can behave perfectly well - although having some kind of activity helps, because otherwise she will demand that we entertain her in some way. But paper and colouring pencils aren't hard to come by.

[channelpenguin]

That's good to hear, that you are getting out with her. But I'm sure that was utterly normal in my childhood for most people. Maybe I misremember.

I think for our family, the meal WAS the "activity". The whole thing was a kind of training in socialisation. I would never have dreamt of "demanding to be entertained" :-). I mean life isn't endlessly entertaining and I would think that needs to be learned. We talked to each other and ate the food ... and didn't expect anything else.

[andrewducker]

Much though we love Sophia, we need to talk to each other too. And so we have things for her to do that aren't just pepper us with questions or tell us whatever is going through her head at any moment. 7-year-olds are totally capable of taking part in conversations over a longer period, 4-year-olds, not so much. Very entertaining, but there's only so much nonsense I can take.

[channelpenguin]

Ah, right. Well I think my dad loves kid nonsense :-).

[anef]

We *loved* going out to restaurants when we were children, and we always behaved faultlessly (that I remember!), much better than we behaved at home.

[andrewducker]

We certainly get to see the parents of our kids' friends. But they aren't necessarily our kind of people (although some of them may be), and "standing together near the kids while they have fun" isn't necessarily the kind of social life people want.

[channelpenguin]

I meant more involving that "standing near" but I guess that really depends on the parents and the activity. And it is that "some of them maybe" that is the possibility and opportunity.

[mtbc]

Yeah, I never found my kids much in the way of social life, which may reflect the kind of social life I had/like. We could still have friends over, we could still go out to restaurants, etc. (I didn't mind taking cranky little ones outside to calm them), we even met some people via taking kids to the same things (and it meant in general I had more to talk about with anyone else who also had kids), but I am not the kind of person who likes to go out to party hard with loud music and alcohol and whatever else it is that the normal people do, nor am I much into active sports, etc., and we never fed our kids separate children's food or whatever, I was always happy to try to explain stuff to them. I suppose it might have limited the movies we saw in the cinema though, so long as they were allowed in with a parent, my youngest would simply sleep on me for the second half of a movie, and at drive-in they had even sometimes watched something else out of the back window. With things like long walks or whatever, can carry/push them along. Maybe we were lucky but I don't think my kids impacted my social life deleteriously at all.

[cellio]

The kids are still at the center of it, though. You don't get to choose the people you hang out with and try to be friends with; it's dictated by which other kids yours get along with, or hockey versus soccer versus ballet, etc. And even that probably doesn't kick in until the kid is a few years old.

(Non-parent who has tried to maintain friendships with new parents and seen their struggles.)

[calimac]

5) It seems to me that the story demonstrates that determinism is not incompatible with free will. For no matter how predetermined your actions are, you still have to choose to do them. As shown by the characters whose response to the Predictor is to refuse to do anything.

8) Really agree with Channelpenguin here: it's a strangely limited idea of social life. What about seeing your friends, which is my idea of a social life? Having no children myself I can only speak to this from the other side, but when my friends started to have children that didn't prevent me from visiting and having conversations and book discussions; indeed, the opportunity to play with the small children was a positive attractor.

I was the principal research assistant to a college professor friend writing a scholarly book. She had a 4-year-old. We got most of the work done while the kid was in day care; sometimes she hired a sitter, often one of her own students; and when the kid was home it was my job to take her out in the yard and play for an hour in the late afternoon to give the parents a break. I loved that part.

As for my take on the author's idea of a social life: B. and I rarely go out to nice restaurants for dinner, it's just not our thing. We used to go out for Valentine's Day until we figured out that's the very worst time to dine in a restaurant. For B.'s birthday she has me take her out for breakfast in one of those hearty American breakfast places.

I've once - once! - attended one of those music festivals in a field that Britain seems to specialize in (it was Cropredy). The music was fabulous and the experience remains a warm memory 30 years later, but it is not something I would ever have wanted to do a second time. Sleeping in a tent in a muddy field full of cowpats, surrounded by people who wanted to stay up noisily, was worth the trouble - exactly once.

[andrewducker]

5) But do you choose to do them? Or do you just do them, and then feel like you made a choice afterwards?

8) I think a lot of people's social lives revolve around bars and drinking. They don't know what to do if they aren't drinking with their mates, and frankly probably wouldn't get on that well if they were teetotal. I don't know how common that is in other countries, but it seems very common in the UK.

I totally agree about restaurants and Valentines Day. Jane and I enjoy going out for breakfast occasionally, followed by a nice walk somewhere. That seems generally much more fun.

[channelpenguin]

Exactly that about the drinking thing! Bugs the hell out of me about UK culture. One reason I left. Even though as a teetotaler I had no issue with being in bars... Just often had better stuff to do...

[calimac]

5) I'm not talking about afterwards; I'm talking about before. You have to decide to undertake your conscious actions. Some things are reflexive, but not all of them. I've read time travel stories in which the character knows that something is going to happen, knows they have to do it, but then has to gird up to actually do it. That's a conscious choice, not in the sense that you had another option - and it's common enough in ordinary life to feel you have only one option - but in that the action is a conscious undertaking.

[calimac]

3) Well, I see that's obsolete. Wow, that was fast. This marks a new low in "the lady's for turning."

[andrewducker]

Apparently the shortest time served for a chancellor who wasn't a placeholder and didn't die in post.

[snippy]

4. I can't even with the long history of Christianity's hatred and pursuit of Jews. We persist in thriving despite not following their rules, thus demonstrating they cannot have the one true religion.
8. I liked my children (and I like them now, as adults). And part of raising them is making them feel connected to the community, as is demonstrating how adults relate to each other in public. We practiced things at home that they could do in public. And I live what might have been considered a childlike life when I was a kid - I go to the comic book store and the bookstore, I like to picnic in the park with a frisbee and a kite, I like to walk along the beach and build sand castles. My kids love reading just like I do because they saw me with a book in my hand every spare moment. I took them to concerts (bands they liked) both in parks (where they could dance and play) and in auditoriums where they had to sit quietly. We built legos and Brio trains and Matchbox car race tracks. I'm baffled by people who raise kids without enjoying it.

[marymac]

8. Huh, my social life only actually died when I went back to work after H. I just carted him round in the carrier, assuming I'd been allowed to wrestle him away from his grandparents. Although in fairness, I went back to work in January 2020, so so did absolutely everyone else's. But within the constraints of the situation we do lunch out and playdates and invite people for Sunday dinner.

Eventually they will stop simultaneously becoming gremlins at exactly seven every evening and we might get to take them to fun things that start after five, like the Halloween lights and Christmas walks.