Interesting Links for 11-05-2023

[andrewducker]

1. Your parents may have helped you, but they made everything more expensive for everyone else

(tags:inheritance uk inequality )

2. Tories Blame Too Much Housebuilding For Local Election Losses

(tags:Conservatives housing wtf uk politics )

3. What Happens When a Woman Walks Like a Man? (I have observed this a *lot* - and been guilty of it myself when I wasn't thinking about it)

(tags:gender patriarchy walking women men )

4. Anyone here care about Good Omens season 2?

(tags:TV neilgaiman )

5. Edinburgh Tram Inquiry: Final report sent to printers

(tags:edinburgh trams )

6. Autonomous underwater drones are now crossing the English channel

(tags:uk france drone sea video )

7. Renewable energy projects worth billions stuck on hold because the grid isn't ready for them.

(tags:renewables electricity infrastructure co2 environment uk )

Comments

[lilysea]

Back in 2010 or 2011, I was going very slowly down a wide brick footpath on a very long, very straight road

with a wheeled walking frame/rollator due to knee issues.

A group of four or five men were briskly walking four or five abreast quite some distance away. (Maybe 800 metres? Maybe a kilometre? It was a very long, perfectly straight, road). They could see me coming from ages away.

"Surely they'll bunch up when they get closer to me?"

I thought. "After all, there's nowhere for me to go unless I leap onto a busy road full of cars!"

No, one of them RAMMED HIS SHINS INTO MY SOLID STEEL WALKING FRAME AT TOP SPEED, and then acted annoyed at ME.

[lilysea]

Years ago, I had to SIT on an elderly man to stop him manspreading.

A crowded bus on the way to work. I needed a seat due to chronic back pain issues that meant I couldn't safely stand on a moving bus. The only seat available was the priority seat - a thin elderly man was manspreading over a seat meant for two people.

Me: excuse me, I have an injury that means I need a priority seat, can you please move your leg?

Man: ignores me

Me: repeats another 3 or 4 times

Man: ignores me

Me: starts very VERY slowly lowering my bottom towards the seat, thinking "he'll move his leg"

Man: does not move

Me: All 85 kilograms of me is now resting on his leg

Man: yelps in anger shock and horror "YOU SAT ON ME!!!!"

What did he think was going to happen if he didn't move?

I had TOLD him that I needed a priority seat, and he was stubbornly manspreading over a seat for two people and refusing to shift his leg.

(and no, he had no sign of any injury that would cause him to need to manspread so dramatically)

[dewline]

2. Well, that's incoherent writing in that article. Are the UKCons complaining that too many people are able to find housing now?

3. I am unsurprised. I try to avoid practicing such things, and have become more conscious of the concern...partly as a side effect of the Pandemic Still In Progress.

4. I'm not a fan. I do know a lot of people who are hopeful about this next season with varying degrees of caution, so I hope they find cause for some joy here.

7. Distressing. The death-and-disability tolls still being taken by the Pandemic Still In Progress are putting us further behind!

7 GB Queue

[danieldwilliam]

Waiting a year or 5 years is an improvement on where things were a decade ago.

I'd also take the grid operators scheduling pessimism with a pinch of salt. They are strongly incentivised to be pessimistic and strongly disincentivised not to be optimistic. They want to avoid any suggestion that they are on the hook for power plant being curtailed and not able to sell their production.

Our fundamental problem is and will remain that we are a long narrow island with all the people at one end and all the wind at the other.

Manslamming.

[channelpenguin]

I did this experiment 20 years ago in London. Lots of surprised men. In one case I even said "well if neither of us got out if the way, what do you expect"

[movingfinger]

4. I can't find much excitement or anticipation about Good Omens 2, no, and I think it's mainly because the story was complete as told. Also, it's without Pratchett. Gaiman's solo work is generally not to my taste; I think he may be better as a collaborative writer/scripter. But if he didn't take the no doubt stupefying money, they'd find a way to get someone else...

[zz]

i can't imagine walking down the road *not* in constant collision avoidance mode. the joys of crippling social anxiety and autistic continuous planning.

[anna_wing]

3 Open umbrellas are quite useful for this. I use them against sun as well as rain, and I'm short so the spokes are usually at eye height for most people. Not my 2metre tall Czech colleague, but he watched out for everyone in case he tripped over them.

[hairyears]

(2) Makes perfect economic and electoral sense... For Ricardian Landlords who rely for their electoral success on property-owning boomers whose prosperity is based on house price inflation.


(3) Would benefit from comments by transgender people who have undergone gait coaching: it's body language as well as locomotion.

Also from women with manic depression: the anecdotal reports I have suggest that they can stride confidently though crowds in the 'up' mood, and are continually bumped and struggling in their 'down' phase.