Interesting Links for 28-04-2024

[andrewducker]

1. IT used to take six hours to divert traffic from the Queensferry Crossing onto an alternative route - now they can do it in 19 minutes.

(tags:roads bridge Scotland )

2. Good write-up of what's going on with the SNP

(tags:politics Scotland snp )

3. ITV says it lost more than £1m on hit TV drama Mr Bates vs Post Office (because there's no international appeal)

(tags:TV money itv business )

4. Real techies don't care about forced eugenics

(tags:technology Holocaust society )

5. Rats will learn how to drive remarkably quickly when food is on the line

(tags:rats driving video )

Comments

[simont]

#1: the miscapitalisation in the link text confused me for a moment, and I wondered why an IT department was doing this job!

(Something something network traffic management something)

[andrewducker]

My fault for copying and pasting from the article carelessly.

#3 Mr. Bates

[lsanderson]

PBS bought it, so they had some sales of it. If we did, i suspect more did.

[rhythmaning]

It's possible I have been reading too much about the crisis in the SNP. Despite the chaos they bring, political crises are such fun! But unlike, say, the incipient collapse of the Tory party, I can't see much good coming from the possible collapse of the SNP.

I read the New Statesman piece, and found it interesting and compelling. But I wonder whether some of those who haven't adjusted to the SNP are the die hard right wingers in the SNP who aren't accepting of the socially liberal wing of the SNP?

I think much of the current situation stem from Yousaf's political clumsiness. He failed to keep the Greens onboard, he failed to exert control over the socially illiberal right wing of his party, and he has failed in delivery for the country, too.

If the right wing re-asserts control on the SNP, which looks likely - whatever happens, I reckon Yousaf is on his way out, and Kate Forbes seems to me most likely to repleace (though I know nothing of the inner workings of the SNP - there may be other challengers I know nothing of), the young socially liberal, pro-indy, anti-cliamte change voters may simply decamp to the Green Party in the next elections. Which would help Labour in the forthcoming Westminster shuffle of the cards, but would make Holyrood a much more interesting place in 2026...

[bens_dad]

Did I misparse, or did you say that climate change deniers would vote Green ?

[rhythmaning]

What I wrote was "anti-cliamte change voters" - a clumsy construction, perhaps (especially with typos included!), but I was trying to avoid "green"!

I certainly didn't intend to suggest climate change deniers would vote Green! (And I'll now go and edit it to remove any confusion!)

[rhythmaning]

Well I would edit it if I could see how to do so...!

[andrewducker]

You can only edit comments until someone replies to them.

[mountainkiss]

I think you mean that real techies don’t care about the morality of forced eugenics. They appear to care about the mechanisms quite a bit.

[andrewducker]

Alas, true.

[jducoeur]

Now I'm trying to puzzle out the right wording for a nancylebov button along the lines of, "Anyone who says 'you aren't a real techie' isn't a real techie".

[calimac]

2) Good write-up indeed, comprehensible to a foreigner who has only been paying intermediate attention (I had not, for instance, known what the term "Bute House Agreement" referred to). Who Alex Salmond is and what Alba is were the only details I already had to know, and those I did.

3) No international appeal, eh? I'd like to see it, because stories of embattled people fighting bureaucratic overreach are always interesting. I didn't know that PBS has picked it up, so I'll have to look. Besides, I've liked Toby Jones's work.

4) What that sounds exactly like is pro-Palestinian protesters who turn out to be anti-Semitic. I hope they're not all like that.

[nancylebov]

4. I don't know whether that's a real conversation, but if it is, that marriage isn't going to last.