Interesting Links for 03-12-2022

[andrewducker]

1. A really important thing to remember when you're wondering why you don't look like fitness coaches no matter what you do

(tags:exercise genetics video )

2. One tiny diorama, every day

(tags:art calendar )

3. Smartphones wiped out 97% of the compact camera market

(tags:cameras phones business )

4. Elon Musk's legal problems are *hilarious*

(tags:ElonMusk Twitter work rights law funny )

5. Impressive examples of working around the limitations placed on AI.

(tags:ai viaSwampers )

6. Kanye West: American Nazi

(tags:USA Nazis OhForFucksSake )

7. Are You Decorating for the Holidays with Children, or Playing the Lead in a Heist Movie?

(tags:children movies crime funny viaSwampers )

8. The cruel, dishonest and shameful story of Britain's last colony may be coming to an end

(tags:UK OhForFucksSake )

9. 'Control Freak' and the Power of the Intimate Video Game Memoir

(tags:games design biography )

10. Scotland agrees to return totem pole stolen from First Nation village in Canada after nearly a century on display in Edinburgh

(tags:Scotland Canada museums )

11. The Maddening Mess of Airport Codes! ✈️

(tags:airport history video )

12. Why China Is Still Stuck in a Zero-Covid Nightmare

(tags:China Pandemic )

13. The real reason that September, October, November, and December are numbered 9,10,11, and 12. (Not the reasons I was taught)

(tags:calendars history rome viaDanielDWilliam )

14. World's first job guarantee trial 'eliminates' long-term unemployment (by creating new jobs)

(tags:work Australia )

15. 98% of teenagers who use puberty blockers go on to use gender-affirming hormones (new study published in the Lancet)

(tags:Netherlands hormones LGBT transgender teenagers )

Comments

[simont]

#13: I'm curious to know what reasons you were taught.

I had always believed that the numbers were off by two because the year originally started in March, which makes sense of the numbers and also of the fact that the weird variable fixup thing happens just before the start of the next March.

That Twitter thread doesn't really seem to contradict any of that, it just adds a lot more detail. (Like how in a previous design the variable fixup thing was "entire intercalary month decided on by hand each year" rather than "reasonably organised occasional day", and that the reason why the start of the year shifted is because consuls' taking office was offset from starting to plan your military campaigns and at some point minds were changed about which one ought to match the calendar year.)

I'd certainly never heard in the first place the claim that the start of the year shifted because of Julius Caesar inserting July to confuse matters. Was that the wrong idea you were given, or was it something else?

[andrewducker]

That was exactly what I was taught.

But it's entirely possible that that wasn't actually in a history class, but just at some point growing up from a random person.

[skington]

The story I'd heard also conflated (a) renaming months after Julius Caesar and Augustus with (b) adding two new months, so September to December no longer lined up with their numbers.

[andrewducker]

Yup, that's the one!

[mellowtigger]

I learned that Augustus couldn't be outdone by ol' Julius, so he had to have the same number of days in his month. But he wasn't so bold as to take the month that came first. So July/August has two consecutive months of 31 days. Nice story, but it's wrong. :(

[cmcmck]

15. Which should tell the naysayers all they need to know about the situation, but it won't!

[haggis]

To me it says that we are restrcting access to puberty blockers far too much and many people who would benefit from them are not getting access! But it absolutely supports the idea that we should believe trans kids!

[cmcmck]

I fear you may well be right.

I transitioned at fifteen back in the seventies and would have given my eye teeth for access to puberty blockers.

Twice round that particular roundabout is no fun at all although I preferred the second trip! :o)

[hairyears]

The nastiest thing about the Puberty Blocker hate campaign...

(I won't say 'debate', it's best to call it what it is)

...Is that pharmaceutical puberty-blocking agents are a key part of a 21st-century endocrinologist's clinical practice.

Puberty deferral for trans adolescents is a small part of the work that these medications do.

They are used for a number of painful and distressing conditions including precocious puberty - which has an extremely damaging (and, in some contexts, dangerous) effect on the lives of frighteningly young children.

Making these medications harder to prescribe for anyone turns out to mean that they are harder to get access to for everyone who needs them, for all the conditions that must be treated by them.

I hope that I don't need to tell anyone here that this is a very bad thing.

And if you tell a hate cultist that bad things are happening in this indiscriminate, callous, and entirely unnecessary way, they will look at you, straight-in-your-face, and say:

"Good."

Psychopaths are formulating national policy and one of them is now Secretary of State for Health.

If anyone you know is bring influenced by these hate cultists into believing that Puberty Blockers are evil - and everybody you know is consuming news media where journalists have proven all too eager to be corrupted into promoting the opinions of manipulative psychopaths - then that person you know is someone who must be told the truth.

Pray that they are still capable of believing it.

It is only a matter of time before they become impermeable to factual evidence and fall into a closed social circle of mutually-affirming delusionists, and become hateful.

[bens_dad]

13. I had heard this idea that Julius and Augustus *added* months, upsetting the numbered months that followed, but believed (correctly it seems) it to be wrong.

However I am now confused about who moved the new year from March/Spring Solstice to January.
I was under the impression that until the C17 or C18 the British (English+Welsh?) new year started in March so we were not following the Roman switch of 153BC.

My recollection of when we switched from March to January is mixed up with the switch to the Gregorian calendar but I note that the 6 April Gregorian is 25 March (Lady's Day) Julian , allegedly since it was OK to have a short calendar year but they did not dare to have a short tax year !

* Ah. Wikipedia says that Scotland moved to 1 Jan in 1600, but the rest of the British Empire moved in 1752.

[bens_dad]

#3. I am not surprised that smart phones have killed compact cameras, but that link recommends https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-trends/Nikon-pulls-plug-on-SLR-camera-development-in-shift-to-mirrorless which seems much bigger news: Nikon to pull the plug on SLR cameras !

SLRs?

[lsanderson]

They've been pining for the fjords for quite some time. Mirrorless cameras have less moving parts and have taken over the shrinking market for fancy cameras. Development is expensive and budgets are being cut as markets shrink. SLRs are an easy place to cut.

[dewline]

3. As someone who finds a positive value in both "traditional" digital cameras and "smartphone" cameras, I find this news distressing.

4. Yes, they are. At least, as explained by Mr. Cohen.

10. Finally!

[rhythmaning]

What an excellent crop of links!

[andrewducker]

Thank you!

[rhythmaning]

As a corollary to the thread on Roman months, the start of the year astronomically used to be measured from the first of point Aries - the zodiacal constellation which marked March.

It is still astronomically important (or was when I studied astronomy fifty years ago). But sdue to precession is no longer in Aries. It is still called the first point of Aries, though. Obvs.

(And I'm glasd Wikipedia backed up my memories!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_point_of_Aries

[bens_dad]

#15
69% of people studied were assigned female at birth.
Reading the popular press you wouldn't guess there were two trans-men for every trans-woman.

At the start of GnRHa treatment, the median age was 16·0 (14·1–16·9) years for people assigned female at birth.
I'm surprised that many young women are still in puberty at that age. How much of women's puberty comes after the obvious symptom: periods ?

[andrewducker]

According to Wikipedia, girls tend to go through puberty from 10/11 - 15/17, with menstruation coming in at 12/13.

So yeah, for the later ones that's very late.

[stormehowl]

I'm a newbie to your journal but a big thank you for compiling such great reads for us.

[andrewducker]

My pleasure!

[mme_n_b]

As of today you are the last person in my feed that still links to Twitter.

[andrewducker]

As soon as people stop posting interesting things there...

[mellowtigger]

#12 That story (like so many covering China's recent troubles) reads like SARS-CoV-2 is "one and done" for infection. The only thing that's certain is that it ain't so. People get reinfected within weeks, and each infection carries significant risk. Zero Covid is still the best policy. Yes, it will eventually fail to shield everyone, but they've already bought their population almost 2 years longer than the rest of the world in the timeline of progression. That's more time to find pharmaceuticals that mitigate the long term cost.

[cellio]

Link 4 is glorious.

[andrewducker]

Agreed. You don't get takedowns that fun very often, let alone from lawyers!