Interesting Links for 04-09-2024

[andrewducker]

1. Is My Blue Your Blue? (Hue 177 for me, bluer than 76% of the population)

(tags:colour perception names )

2. Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant for maths problem do worse on tests

(tags:maths ai teaching )

3. Rail nationalisation takes a step closer under Starmer's first major public reform

(tags:rail uk labour )

4. Labour won't ban dynamic pricing despite Oasis tickets anger, but will make it more transparent

(tags:labour economics music )

5. New coastal neighbourhood masterplan unveiled for Seafield in Edinburgh

(tags:edinburgh housing sea viaDanielDWilliam )

6. What British women really fantasise about

(tags:fantasy sex uk )

7. I'd love to see some science-based discussion on this piece about whether Covid is something worth stressing about.

(tags:pandemic )

8. Grenfell disaster - key points

(tags:UK fire fraud death OhForFucksSake )

Comments

[anna_wing]

I'm at 171 but that was only because I was being forced into a binary choice. Turquoise is neither green nor blue. It is turquoise (or blue-green).

[nancylebov]

8. In addition to everything else, every other building with cladding from those manufacturers should be checked.

[redbird]

We've been getting regular "it's time to stop worrying about covid" articles since some time in 2020, many of them saying "only X thousand people have died" even as they had to change that to "only X hundred thousand" and then as the numbers reached a million deaths in the US alone. And they keep telling us that we have tools to handle it, and then they took away the monoclonal antibodies, and testing hospitalized patients for covid, and reporting how many people are hospitalized with covid, and free vaccines for people without insurance, and almost every protection other than staying at home.

But somehow it's "scaremongering" to point out that at least a thousand Americans died of covid in a recent week. Yes, she says she "supports my right to wear a mask," which I suppose means that she doesn't think the Nassau County police should be able to demand that I unmask because they don't believe I have a good enough reason to want to avoid infection.

When someone starts an article by admitting that they're afraid of death and disability, and my masking, or asking my doctor to mask, or turning down invitations is a reminder that covid is still deadly, I might take them seriously.

I know that's not a science-based discussion, but frankly at this point I'm not just afraid of this still-deadly virus, I'm afraid of people who would rather I died quietly than be out there in a mask, trying to live my life, as people keep saying I have to.

[bens_dad]

Blue 178, 80%.
I have weak red cones and consider myself "colour partially-sighted".

We had new LED traffic lights recently and my father-in-law said that the Go light was blue. If forced to pick a side I would agree with him.

I wonder how much the colour depends upon the screen ? It is not as if I have colour-calibrated my phone, so see no reason for its blue to be the same as my tablet's.

[greenwoodside]

Your boundary is at hue 171, greener than 72% of the population. For you, turquoise is blue.

But I imagine that the results could depend a lot on the light in the room, the screen being used, and the device settings.

Welsh (and probably stuff from the Goedelic branch of the Celtic languages, too, I guess) has a word glas which is sometimes translated as greeny-blue. These days it means blue, on the whole, but once was closer in meaning to green. That's still very visible in some words and idioms. e.g. glaswellt meaning 'grass'.

I read somewhere that not just the Celtic languages have a fuzziness around the green/blue distinction, but don't have time to investigate further at the moment...

[ninetydegrees]

1) Your boundary is at hue 170, greener than 76% of the population. For you, turquoise is blue.

Exactly as I expected. I've gotten used to asking other people if this is blue or green for them (the answer is always blue XD).

[zz]

Your boundary is at hue 172, greener than 63% of the population. For you, turquoise is blue.

[liv]

#7: I don't think there's much more to say about the science of Covid; we've been studying it intensively for well over 4 years. Yes, new discoveries will made and hopefully new vaccines and treatments, but we really have plenty of scientific data. As we are now: Covid rarely has severe acute outcomes (hospitalization or sudden death) in healthy vaccinated people under 70, but it does kill tens of thousands of people (in the UK; scale appropriately for the country you're interested in) each year. Whether you should "stress about" that depends on whether you are, or care about people who are, elderly or vulnerable. Covid causes chronic symptoms in roughly 5% of people, including children and healthy adults, and this can include really debilitating Long Covid. Whether you should "stress about" that depends on how often you want to take a 1 in 20 chance of experiencing something between unpleasant and disabling for a period ranging from months to years. We have precise measurements of the economic effects of people missing work due to acute Covid and dropping out of the workforce or having to move to a part time or less challenging job due to Long Covid. Whether you should "stress about" that depends on whether you think fewer people being able to work to their previous full capacity has bad effects that you care about.

"Is it worth stressing?" is not really a scientific question, it's a question about risk tolerance for both individuals and society. We pretty much know what the risks are. Sure, it would be nice to have more fine-grained data about how frequent and how bad different forms of Long Covid can be, and about the population who are vaccinated but haven't had boosters in several years, and about how much more dangerous variants are or could potentially be. But we know plenty enough to know how dangerous Covid is, and to calibrate our stress about it based on that.

#7

[lsanderson]

‘A ton of Covid out there’: US summer wave not taken seriously enough – experts
Epidemiologists push newly approved booster vaccines as current virus strain threatens at-risk groups
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/04/covid-19-summer-wave

Having my roommate test positive for COVID at the Glasgow Worldcon and several friends having dealt with or dealing with COVID, it ain't over yet.

Get your updated COVID jab, four free test kits (at the end o' September the article sez), and remember to get Paxlovid if you can take it early. It really, really, really works. And you don't have to be 80 or older to get it without co-morbidities this side o' the pond. (Ask me why I spent a few hours researching NHS Paxlovid rules...) Having my own experience with being the one in the hotel room with the positive test, it ain't a fun time, even if your hotel does not catch on fire.

[bens_dad]

5. A new environmentally friendly coastline.

The picture shows a sea-wall not far above the waves.

I thought we were supposed to be moving away from hard sea walls, to soft, growing, flood-able areas that were better at resisting attack from the the sea over the long term ?

[ Eventually the sea will break a sea wall, but plants grow back faster than the sea can destroy them when the geography/geometry is right. ]

[mountainkiss]

I got 174 which is the median and am absolutely delighted.