Interesting Links for 23-08-2023

[andrewducker]

1. The UK has a massive housing shortage, and yet builders are building less, because inflation is up.

(tags:uk housing OhForFucksSake )

2. Pioneering wind-powered cargo ship sets sail

(tags:wind shipping Technology )

3. Gaps in Elon Musk's SpaceX Starlink service cost Ukrainian lives and forced retreat

(tags:Ukraine Russia ElonMusk war )

4. We're All Just Temporarily Abled. (I notice this more and more. Every time a new twinge comes along I wonder if it'll be the one that doesn't ever get better)

(tags:bodies age aging )

5. Leaving the ECHR isn't popular, even with Tories

(tags:echr rights Europe politics polls UK )

6. W. H. Auden's 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring.

(tags:review lotr )

7. Could decriminalisation solve Scotland's drug problem? (Lessons from Portugal)

(tags:drugs decriminalization portugal scotland )

8. Can't lose what you never had: Claims about digital ownership and creation in the age of generative AI

(tags:ai intellectual_property regulation fraud usa )

Comments

[calimac]

6) Have you seen my 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring?

[andrewducker]

I hadn't, but now have and enjoyed it!

[nancylebov]

#4. I know there was a time when I wasn't emotionally involved in the question of whether there were bannisters, but I don't remember what it was like.

I don't think the failing to remember those days is a problem with my memory. I think not caring about bannisters is a non-experience, while being concerned about bannisters is a vivid thing.

I'm 70, and I've gotten off easy so far compared to a lot of people.

[andrewducker]

Yes, I'm sure that at some point that will be me too. Fingers crossed I get some travelling in first!

[nancylebov]

People with bad knees can still travel.

[bens_dad]

2.British, but not new. As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingsail mentions, wingsails were in use both on cargo ships and yachts in the 1990s.
I remember being aboard one of their yachts, though only while mooring, in Bristol Dock.

Sadly, John Walker had the treasonous idea that it was wrong to spend customer's money from pre-paid future orders on building the factory and could not raise investment capital to move into mass-production. A wingsail was successfully tested on a cargo ship before the company folded.

[andrewducker]

Fascinating. Shame they didn't get backing back then!

Temporarily Able

[agoodwinsmith]

There are many things I don't even consider doing anymore. Is there a curb between where I start and where I want to go? It there something to hold onto near the curb so I can pull myself up? No? Then it is not in my mental map anymore.

It used to be that big potted plants on the stairs between me and the rails was a no go, but now it's the stairs entirely, so fine, put your stupid designer décor there.

Uneven surfaces - pretty cement where the surface has been brushed and the pebbles below allowed to show: I really like the look of it, but I won't go there. Grass is bad news because the ground below the mow is irregular and you can't see the shallow pits that you drop into and fall out of.

That's okay. I was probably only going to spend money there, so no biggie.

Re: Temporarily Able

[andrewducker]

*hug*
I'm sorry, that must be very frustrating.

Re: Temporarily Able

[channelpenguin]

oh my gosh. so many things that most of us (hope to) never notice. I am not sure I would mentally cope at all.

Re: Temporarily Able

[channelpenguin]

( Ihad a minor preview of similar with 2 years of horrible back pain. the kerb and hole things for sure!)

4

[channelpenguin]

I learned this early. 6 months on crutches commuting to London after a motorbike crash at age 25 -- then again a year later when they took the metalwork out. I have been injured many times in my life and recovery is never linear and never certain. Illness can also do lasting damage.

I am happy that so many people are NOT forced to learn this early!

Re: 4

[andrewducker]

I'm sorry you had to.

[hairyears]

(1) The perverse incentives of a housebuilder's 'land bank' have all the worst defects of Ricardian rent-seeking, together with an intrinsic reinforcement effect on inflation.

The short version, straight from the Monetarist view of economics, is that inflation, being a decline in the purchasing power of money, makes 'real' assets a more attractive store of value than investable cash...

This becomes a self-reinforcing macroeconomic problem when hoarding unproductive assets (gold, undeveloped land, rents and ransoms) becomes more attractive than productive investments in economic activities that generate value.

It is (or ought to be, in England) a core goal of economic policy to push back against this.

[andrewducker]

At this point I'm rather feeling that the government should just be building houses itself. "Oh no, it's not profitable to make sure people have a roof over their heads? Time for socialism!"

[hairyears]

(5) Leaving the EHCR...

It's a useful litmus test, to ask a Conservative voter (or MP) if they knew that the ECHR predates the EU, and the moral and political impetus that created the European Convention on Human Rights came from Winston Churchill.


The litmus test for intelligence and education among such intellectual luminaries is to ask if they are aware of the role of the EHCR in the Good Friday Agreement, and why Washington is so annoyed at Westminster's willingness to discard it.

[andrewducker]

Alas, from various leaked Whatsapp chats I saw, many of them seem to know nothing, and want to know about that level.