Interesting Links for 07-11-2023

[andrewducker]

1. Happy Mastoversary!

(tags:mastodon socialnetworking )

2. Can solar and wind power Britain? An update of David MacKay's numbers

(tags:renewables windpower solarpower uk )

3. Dengue rates plunged by up to 97% after release of lab-altered mosquitoes

(tags:disease mosquito GoodNews )

4. It's nice to know that I'm not the only person who looks up the plots of movies too scary for me to watch on Wikipedia

(tags:Wikipedia horror movies video funny )

5. File this under "Headlines that should be satire but somehow aren't."

(tags:headline Israel Palestine wtf OhForFucksSake health weight )

6. The UK planning system is a disaster

(tags:UK planning building infrastructure OhForFucksSake )

7. Not content with scamming people out of large amounts of money for bad monkey art, NFC companies are now trying to blind them

(tags:eyesight light OhForFucksSake EpicStupidity blockchain )

8. EU equality laws to be reinstated by the UK to avoid 'gap in protections' for workers

(tags:UK Europe equality law )

9. Scottish ministers refuse to comply with UK government strike plan

(tags:uk scotland unions strike )

10. Is 'Long Covid' similar to 'Long SARS'? (If so it can persist permanently)

(tags:pandemic disease )

Comments

7 Bored Apes

[danieldwilliam]

Once again the Crypto-Bros discover that there is a reason some things are regulated but only after they have experienced first hand the downside of under-regulated activity.

Re: 7 Bored Apes

[andrewducker]

Yup! Almost like there's a reason for most regulation!

Re: 7 Bored Apes

[dewline]

Amen to that.

2 David MacKay

[danieldwilliam]

I was a great fan and respecter of David MacKay's work. He was suitably diligent and sceptical and also came from a place of recognising the need to decarbonise the UK's energy system.

I did always think he was too pessimistic. That he'd assumed a conservative and static technology base and a hostile public response based on cost. Not unfair assumptions at the time when he was trying to address some Polyanna-ish handwaving on the part of the renewables sector. I always took his work to come from a position of asking the renewables sector if they were sure they could deliver and if not, then the future looked like this. Which was a good and worthy challenge.

He certainly challenged me to make a better case for a renewable future. I'm sure his challenge improved the work of many people in the energy sector.

I'm also sure he would be pleased to have been wrong.

Re: 2 David MacKay

[andrewducker]

I think you're right on all counts there. He was honestly sceptical, which is a valid and valuable position to take.

I'm very glad that things are going better than he predicted.

[sixbeforelunch]

Re #4 I do that too! I can’t handle scary movies but I like watching the trailers and then looking up the plot on Wikipedia.

[nancylebov]

5. doesn't link to a particular headline.

If you want more about Bored Apes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpH3O6mnZvw is about Bored Apes actually being a white supremacy conspiracy from 4chan. I have no idea whether it's paranoid or deducing a real pattern.

[andrewducker]

They've deleted the post! Which was about losing weight through stress about Hamas/Israel.

[nancylebov]

I suppose enough people yelled at them.

[dewline]

8. Good. The "Euroskeptics" want to make things worse, so their rage can just get vented in an airlock.

10. Yikes.

[mellowtigger]

10. I just noticed that this article is from a year ago. Still, though, it's what I was warning about too. I'm glad that I'm not the only one who sees the (terrible) possibility. It seems like the window of opportunity for my being wrong keeps getting shorter. Yet I still don't see air filters in the few frequently traveled areas I visit like a grocery checkout lane or the library for voting today.

[calimac]

7. Puzzled as to what this could mean, I looked it up and was shocked to find it meant "blind" literally.

[andrewducker]

It really did require an epic amount of stupidity on the part of whoever organised it.

[bens_dad]

It really did require an epic amount of stupidity on the part of whoever organised it.

... and someone else in Hong Kong did the same thing six years ago.

Not sure whether this will amount to jail-time stupidity or just going-bust stupidity.

4.

[channelpenguin]

i am not a big horror fan, well not modern stuff. But I have never found it "scary" just "upsetting". Usually mutilating people. Why would I watch that?

[bens_dad]

1. I parsed that as a compound of Mastectomy rather than Mastodon (though that would have been "MastEversary").

How to use the stress from the Israel-Hamas war to lose weight

[jack]

OK, I have two BIG problems with this.

1. It's ridiculous and horrific.
2. Contra the headline, the article IN NO WAY tells you how to use the stress from the Israel-Hamas war to lose weight. It says that some people lose weight from stress, and that you can avoid gaining weight from stress by calming down and not eating more, but nothing about doing what the headline says.

Re: How to use the stress from the Israel-Hamas war to lose weight

[andrewducker]

Agreed on both points!

[azurelunatic]

One of my friends discovered that a supposedly UVA or UVB light sold at a dollar store in the US seems to have been actually a UVC light. So the criminal negligence may be at a different point than one might have first thought. They have hypothesized that a bunch of unsold UVC lights manufactured during the height of the pandemic may have been criminally reboxed and sold to unsuspecting customers. They tried using the light, felt that it wasn't quite right, and only after seeing the apefest problems realized that something could be bad in a more systemic way.

Their thread starts here: https://twitter.com/outliersgeorg/status/1721446109401522400

[andrewducker]

I'm glad they realised!

[hairyears]

(8) The Scottish government is staying well away from the political posturing of an extremely damaging law.

Damaging, but effective in the sense that some of the damage is advantageous to a particular Conservative agenda: bear that in mind when you hear warnings and criticisms of 'failures' that malicious actors celebrate as successes!

Meanwhile, the capped penalties for unions have a backdoor:

The maximum damages that courts can award against a union for unlawful strike action is £1m.

It wasn't fines that curtailed (but did not halt!) the activities of the National Union of Miners in the strikes of the early 1980's.

Their repeated failure to comply with the court orders led to a separate set of penalties for contempt of court, *which were and are unlimited*, backed up with asset seizures.

In theory, union officials can be imprisoned for contempt: thankfully, even the Thatcher regime stepped back from such a political disaster.

The current Westminster cabinet would delight in taking such a conflict to these extremes, and escalate it as far as their media will tolerate. Or encourage.

What would the state of politics and civic life be like, in the aftermath of the inevitable national strikes and civil disorder that would follow such folly?

Someone, somewhere in Westminster, wants that. Thankfully, Holyrood doesn't.

[andrewducker]

I'm very glad to be up here!