Interesting Links for 13-05-2023

[andrewducker]

1. UK: Keep calm and respect diversity, says UN expert

(tags:UnitedNations LGBT diversity UK transgender )

2. Google's new music AI is *amazing*

(tags:music Google funny ai )

3. Washington's New Narrative for the Global Economy

(tags:USA economy China politics )

Comments

[cmcmck]

1. Hopefully the Tories will learn a lesson from the UN stuff and recall that Labour were dragged kicking and screaming (not out of the goodness of their hearts as they've tried to rewrite history) by the ECtHR (Goodwin and 'I' v United Kingdom Government) into passing the Gender Recognition Act.

Whatever the Tories try to do here will end up in court and will end messily.

[dewline]

1. Yes, please. In Canada, we need to heed this advice too.

3. Now we know what the Beltway wants. We also know what Xi Jinping wants. The rest of us to keep both of them off our cases to some extent, don't we?

[calimac]

This is the first I've seen of the Beltway used as a metonym for the US governmental complex. Usually we say "inside the Beltway" as most of it is located there, the Beltway being the equivalent of London's M25, but so much (the Pentagon, CIA, NIH, etc) is outside of Washington itself that people tend to feel uncomfortable using that as the metonym, though I note that the article at the link does do so.

(Further terminological complex: there is no legal entity of the city of Washington. The formal name of the place is the District of Columbia, period. There once was such a city, but it was merged into the District government 150 years ago, so it's a kind of ghost deadname.)