Interesting Links for 19-01-2023

[andrewducker]

1. The Largest City Ever Destroyed. The forgotten city of Merv

(tags:death war mongolia turkmenistan )

2. Kanye West's lawyers set to take out newspaper adverts advising he is being dropped

(tags:wtf law advertising )

3. The Tories are taking 1984 as a manual again

(tags:conservatives 1984 asylum OhForFucksSake migration )

4. Scottish women's rights centres accuse UK ministers of anti-trans misinformation

(tags:bigotry LGBT transgender women UK Scotland law )

5. What's a girl gotta do to get a rape conviction around here?

(tags:rape law society OhForFucksSake uk RapeCulture police )

6. Five big problems the NHS in Scotland needs to fix

(tags:scotland nhs )

7. Voters are abandoning the Conservatives - many of them haven't moved to Labour

(tags:politics uk )

Comments

1

[danieldwilliam]

400 people is a lot of people to kill in a day given that ancient battles appear to have casualty rates of 5-10%, implying that your average fighter was killing 0.1 of a person or less.

Re: 1

[andrewducker]

I assume the vast majority of those people didn't fight back. But even so it's a titanic number.

Re: 1

[danieldwilliam]

Taking it at face value (which is probably not recommended given the tendency of historical source to say "definitely 1 million" when they actually mean "a lot but I got bored counting" - assume one quarter of those 400 are healthy adult males who don't want to be killed but also don't want the Mongols to kill their families so will fight back. They might not fight back well but they won't be entirely ineffective. That means you have to win 100 fights in a row without anyone getting in a lucky blow.

And that's before you get the 100 able bodied women involved or the occasional enraged grandmother with a skillet.

7 Tory Voters

[danieldwilliam]

It's definately the question of the next general election - are those 2019 Tory voters going to a) vote Tory again b) remain Don't Know and abstain c) Vote Labour d) vote for someone else and if so, whom.

And I think quite a lot of the triangulation we're seeing from the Labour Party at the moment is based on looking at that chart.

Re: 7 Tory Voters

[andrewducker]

I think you're right.

I remember seeing something years ago with the assertion that you mostly win elections not by converting people to your side, but by convincing your side it was worth getting out there and voting, while the other side couldn't do likewise. I don't think this is entirely true - looking at that chart there's a fair bit of movement - but I do think that Labour's game here is to persuade enough of their people to vote to get the Tories out, and not give the Tories enough ammo to say "He's just like Corbyn, vote or he gets in!"

I blame, as usual, the electoral system.