Interesting Links for 11-12-2024

[andrewducker]

1. The Scottish government is to back a move to bar MSPs from also sitting as MPs or members of the House of Lords

(tags:scotland politics )

2. Next-generation datacenters consume zero water for cooling

(tags:water cool heat Technology )

3. Israel targets Syria: 480 strikes in 48 hours after Assad's ouster as they destroy weapons caches

(tags:Israel Syria weaponry )

4. "I'm a Syrian in the UK - here's what Britons don't understand about my country"

(tags:syria war civilwar asylum )

5. Google's new AI predicts weather and the risks of extreme conditions better than the existing state-of-the-art

(tags:ai weather )

6. Medical misogyny leaving women in pain for years without a diagnosis for common conditions including endometriosis, heavy periods and chronic UTI

(tags:women misogyny uk nhs epicfail healthcare )

7. "My boyfriend sent me a heartfelt message - then I learned he'd used ChatGPT"

(tags:relationships ai writing )

Comments

[calimac]

Formally, they can recommend impeachment.

Informally, congressional committees can have an immense impact on public opinion.

UK parliaments can’t fire individual government ministers, can they? I thought they could just barrack them to death. Congress can do that too.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, similar situation. Although theoretically parliament can vote to change Prime Minister and change the whole executive. I'm not sure that's ever happened though!

[calimac]

Governments have fallen because of parliamentary votes, but the incumbents' usual response to that is to call an election. Which they frequently lose (Callaghan, 1979). There have been cases of governments resigning for reasons adjacent to, though not the same as, losing a parliamentary vote (1905, 1922, 1974).