Interesting Links for 28-02-2024

[andrewducker]

1. Beautiful Edinburgh garden many locals don't know about named most peaceful spot in UK (I'd lived here twenty years before I knew it was there)

(tags:Edinburgh gardens nature )

2. If you're wondering why there's a worldwide shortage of ADHD drugs, blame the USA

(tags:USA adhd OhForFucksSake regulation manufacturing )

3. Tumblr and Wordpress to Sell Users' Data to Train AI Tools

(tags:ai Tumblr wordpress OhForFucksSake )

4. Texas will add more grid batteries than any other state this year, more than doubling its capacity

(tags:Texas batteries GoodNews )

5. The reason why Tory MPs won't use the word 'Islamophobia'

(tags:islam UK politics )

6. Small steps forward in understanding the links between DNA damage and aging

(tags:genetics aging )

7. How the gender pay gap in the UK compares to other nations

(tags:gender wages pay UK )

8. Atmospheric rivers mapped by scientists in California

(tags:rain weather )

9. Botanical gardens can cool city air by an average of 5 °C (and other green spaces are also effective, if less so)

(tags:gardens cities temperature )

Comments

[nancylebov]

Nice little garden you're got there.Pity if more people knew about it.

[dewline]

Yeah. That's worrying.

5)

[calimac]

"This played out several times. It’s wrong. Why? Because it’s wrong. It was as if we’d fallen into a perpetual logic loop, sentenced to living out the same moment over and over again."

Sounds like Dave McCarty.

Re: 5)

[andrewducker]

Hah!

Yes. People who have no reason that they will talk about tend to sound like that.

Item 4

[dewline]

Good news from an unexpected region. Also, thanks for pointing out Canary Media's existence.

2.

[channelpenguin]

how is that even possible? grrr

Re: 2.

[andrewducker]

It just seems ludicrous.

Hopefully other manufacturers will step in.

Re: 2.

[hairyears]

The obvious conclusion is that parts of the American 'free market economy' are effectively a planned economy.

The US healthcare sector is probably the most glaring example.

The tangled web of oligopolies, lobbying, legislation and misregulation that makes it so is somewhat less transparent than Soviet-era Kremlinology.

Nevertheless, it represents an exercise of unaccountable power, to the disadvantage of the citizens, denizens, and prisoners who live there; and elsewhere, as we see today with ADHD medications...

...And with creeping 'soviet' infiltration of our own healthcare system, at all levels.

[altamira16]

The US has been experiencing shortages in ADHD medication for a while. There is a lot of suspicion that a lot of people got diagnosed with ADHD during the pandemic by people not qualified to diagnose them.

[andrewducker]

In which case they should be tightening up control over prescribing, rather than refusing to produce enough to supply other countries with it.

[altamira16]

Are the shortages experienced there recent? We have been experiencing shortages for over a year.

[andrewducker]

Since September, as far as I can tell. So more recent than yours.

[hilarita]

There are other times when it's been in somewhat short supply - exam season, for instance, as students who don't take it all the time do for exams.

[bens_dad]

The quiet garden piece links is based on research at https://earth.fm/the-quietest-places-in-the-worlds-loudest-cities/
which found that Edinburgh is the loudest city in the UK, twice as many people in Edinburgh are exposed to loud noise (>65dB) as *any* city (>250 000 people) in the US, but much fewer than half as many as in Vienna, and Edinburgh wouldn't make the top ten in Europe.

I'm wondering if the definition of city limits is sufficiently different in the three "regions" to account for the massive differences ?

[andrewducker]

Hmm. 65dB is, apparently, loud laughter. https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Technical/Sounds/Decibles.htm

So if you commute into town, and someone laughs on the bus, that's you on the list!

[danieldwilliam]

Heaven forfend that any citizen of Edinburgh should be seen laughing in a public place!

[andrewducker]

The shame!

[symbioid]

Heh - this reminds me of Limmy's old bus sketch.

[channelpenguin]

My singing voice has been clocked at 98-102Db next to my ear. Not even directly in front. That's a jet engine 500m away, somebody told me :-). My laughter frequently startles people in a room, and I can sometimes see them actually flinch...

#maybeitsascottishthing

[andrewducker]

Edinburgh: so loud because of all the singing.

[symbioid]

I hate the DEA so much it needs to die in the fires of the racist history it was born in.