Interesting Links for 09-03-2024

[andrewducker]

1. UK joins coalition shipping emergency aid from Cyprus to Gaza

(tags:uk palestine aid cyprus )

2. MPs report calls for a complete ban on non-disclosure agreements in sexual harassment cases

(tags:harrassment law uk )

3. To unravel the origin of life, treat findings as pieces of a bigger puzzle

(tags:life research viaPatrickHadfield )

4. When Is a Bird a 'Birb'? An Extremely Important Guide

(tags:birds meme viaPatrickHadfield )

Comments

[misbegotten]

Birb! Thank you for that extremely important link.

[andrewducker]

The people needed to know!

[pseudomonas]

The two comments I have on that are: a) that would be an unremarkable article were it not published by the Audubon Society b) they end with "It's about reminding us that—regardless of birb-status—all birds are good" and I question whether they've ever met an urban seagull, and if so, how they managed to meet one that wasn't being an utter arsehole*.

* hmm. possibly I mean "cloaca"?

3)

[calimac]

It's now been fifty years since my first library job was assembling a collection of every single scientific paper that had ever been written on the subject of chemical evolution and the origin of life. I learned a lot about it in the process, and I've sometimes wondered about what advances had been made in the field since then, as it had grown dramatically from its introduction by A.I. Oparin fifty years before that.

I'd known that the deep-sea vent hypothesis had been introduced to compete with the "warm little pond" hypothesis, but actual advances in the research? From this article, it appears that there's not been a blessed thing.

Re: 3)

[andrewducker]

I think that lots of little bits have happened, but it's not given us any overall answers.

But then it's possible that we might not ever get final answers to this question.

Re: 3)

[calimac]

I'm not looking for an overall answer - if there were one, it would have made more general news - but any advance at all. Besides the deep-sea vent hypothesis, the field seems stuck where it was in the late 1960s, prior to which time it advanced rapidly. No "lots of little bits" visible in that article.

Re: 3)

[channelpenguin]

Maybe that means we are as as close as we are ever going to get. And have been for some time.

[fanf]

Of course if a birb is round enough it is a borb

[drplokta]

We should have a more general ban on non-disclosure agreements requiring you to keep confidential information that you already had on the date when you signed the agreement. I can’t think of any legitimate use for such agreements; they’re only ever used for cover-ups. It is of course perfectly reasonable in many situations for someone to ask you to sign an NDA before they give you confidential information.

[andrewducker]

My instinctual reaction is that people should be able to sell their right to talk about things. But I honestly can't think of any circumstances where it's good for society at large for people to do so after the fact.

[pseudomonas]

I guess scenario of "door to the Industrial Secrets room is accidentally left unlocked; someone wanders in and sees the Secret Technology Whiteboard before anyone realises that they shouldn't have done so". This seems likely to happen a lot less frequently than "person becomes aware that their boss is an abusive bastard".

There's other scenarios that seem closer to blackmail, of the "photographer peeks in through window; agrees not to release the resulting photos in exchange for £££" variety.

[andrewducker]

Agreed.

[pseudomonas]

Maybe this is something where if you want to have someone agree to a retrospective NDA, you go to a judge and make the case that a) the material you want non-disclosed doesn't constitute evidence of wrongdoing or any other material that there's a public interest case for disclosure (eg information which if disclosed would prevent certain types of harms) b) there's no coercion and any quid-pro-quo you're offering the person is on (public? private?) record.