Interesting Links for 19-11-2024

[andrewducker]

1. Shell Is Closing 1,000 Gas Stations To Focus On EV Charging

(tags:oil electricity cars viaDanielDWilliam )

2. Coca-Cola remade its iconic Christmas ad with AI - and it looks as terrible as you'd expect

(tags:advertising christmas ai cocacola )

3. This is how polls should be reported

(tags:polls visualisation )

4. High gas and electricity prices likely to be the new normal

(tags:gas electricity economics )

5. Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted, sparking warnings of possible 'hybrid warfare'

(tags:Finland Germany infrastructure Russia )

6. Treating bullying as everyone's problem reduces incidence in primary schools

(tags:bullying psychology research school )

7. Only farms worth more than £3m will be taxed

(tags:farming farm tax UK )

Comments

5

[danieldwilliam]

I am of the view that the hybrid war is not possible, it's actual but we haven't realised we are in it yet.

3

[danieldwilliam]

Very much so. They are a tool for understanding how people currently feel. They have some limitations at this job. They can also be useful for predicting how people will feel and behave in the future but they bring their existing limitations and some others to that job.

People should not be surprised that they have been surprised by an unexpected outcome from using a tool the wrong way.

[autopope]

Wrt. the Baltic cables, this is nothing new in warfare: most of the intercontinental undersea telegraph cables had to be re-layed or repaired after the first world war (and again, after the second) because everybody went on a cable-cutting spree targeting their enemies.

I'll be more worried if Russia starts lobbing ASAT weapons at Starlink or NATO communications satellites in LEO. (Risk of a deliberate Kessler cascade being engineered by Russia, on the threshold of losing their ability to maintain a space industry so no more shits left to give: non-zero.)

[hilarita]

3. Yes. That does seem to me a much clearer visualisation of how close things really are.
6. Hooray! I am all for a low-cost intervention that improves this, and isn't a way to bully the bully (by staff being heavy-handed, especially towards Black kids) or a way to bully the bullied more ("you must have provoked them! Stand up for yourself (which of course then tends to land the bullied kid in more trouble for retaliation)! Just ignore it...")

[bens_dad]

5. Undersea cables and pipelines.

I recently read something about the German ammunition dumps rusting in the Baltic and wondered whether they could have had anything to do with the gas pipeline breaches a year or two back.

(I am not saying that I don't think the Russians are up to anything, just that there may be other possibilities).

[drplokta]

The summary “Only farms worth more than £3m will be taxed” is over-simplified to the point of falsehood. Only farms worth more than £3m will be taxed, provided they were jointly owned by a married couple who are leaving them to their children, they include a house worth at least £350,000, and the estate contained no other assets at all. Which is to say, that supposed £3 million will never apply in practice.

My own solution for this is that inheritance tax should be deferred rather than waived on family homes, family businesses and family farms. You can keep living in the house, running the business or running the farm for as long as you want, but when you do eventually sell it the government gets its share. If it’s inherited again before it’s sold, the government’s share increases.

That fits in well with the change to targeting public sector net financial liabilities instead of net borrowing, because the government’s deferred shares would be financial assets and so would be netted off against debt.

[mountainkiss]

This polling article is not arrant nonsense.