Interesting Links for 20-04-2025

[andrewducker]

1. In Gaza, we are seeing the normalisation of evil

(tags:gaza Israel Palestine )

2. On language and trans people, some tips

(tags:transgender language )

3. Life before the Equalities Act 2010

(tags:transgender gender equality rights UK law history )

4. The lead civil servant on drafting the Equality Act says the aim was to include trans people.

(tags:equality lgbt transgender OhForFucksSake law uk )

5. The Minister who introduced the Gender Recognition Bill in the House of Lords in 2003 made it clear that "a transsexual person would have protection under the Sex Discrimination Act [the predecessor to the Equality Act] as a person of the acquired sex or

(tags:transgender lgbt law uk history )

6. Settlers of Catan - Globe Edition

(tags:3dprinting boardgames SettlersOfCatan )

7. Thousands of trans rights protesters on Edinburgh streets following court ruling

(tags:Edinburgh transgender protests )

8. Musk to Force Pentagon to Build and Then Pay Him to Use Network of Killer Satellites

(tags:ElonMusk corruption space )

9. Hungary's Orbán urges Hungarians to vote against Ukraine's membership of EU

(tags:Hungary Ukraine Europe OhForFucksSake )

10. The UK is going to have to start making choices about Europe and the USA

(tags:UK USA Europe )

11. Fusion power plants would require titanic amounts of lithium.

(tags:materials fusion )

12. "Masking Is Life": Experiences of Masking in Autistic and Nonautistic Adults

(tags:autism society psychology )

Comments

[sobriquet9]

8) Musk will be providing launch vehicles to put killer satellites in orbit. His company has convincingly demonstrated it can put things in orbit faster and cheaper than everyone else. Satellites and kill vehicles will be built by others like Anduril, Lockheed Martin, etc.

It's a stupid idea, but not because of Musk.

[juan_gandhi]

Thank you! I especially liked the idea of masking. That's what most of us do, I think.

[juan_gandhi]

OMG. This sounds too familiar. I just wasn't aware. Anyway, too late for me. More, we are two of us like this here. Ok, now I know what makes us different.

[andrewducker]

I'm sorry, that sounds really hard.

[mountainkiss]

Do you have consent to post this quote?

[juan_gandhi]

Well, actually, once I found a soulmate, everything went just perfect ever since. We manage to ignore the outside world, and live our happy lives together. Only recently I started suspecting that we are kind of different. So what.

[andrewducker]

Nope.

It's an anonymous quote with no identifying information in it. I wouldn't have thought that that was something I'd need to worry about.

I'll replace it though, as I assume you do.

[andrewducker]

I think everyone does it a bit.

But most people don't do it to the extent that autistic people do.

A friend talking about it said that it was about controlling everything in their life, sitting still, not tapping feet, chewing fingers, or other physical stims, carefully working out what they were going to say, dealing with eye contact and auditory issues, etc.

Which all sounds really hard.

(Replacing deleted comment above)

[calimac]

12) I find 'masking' impossible. I can't be anything other than myself, at least not without a playscript to read.

[andrewducker]

It's awesome to find someone that you relate to that well!

[andrewducker]

Yes, mostly me too.

[andrewducker]

Yes, it's a very silly idea which is going to make him a bunch of money through corruption.

[mountainkiss]

I would not have posted this without explicit consent. It’s a comment on a locked post being passed on to a wider readership, which the author might unexpectedly see. I myself would be very uncomfortable seeing anything I had written posted in this way, never mind something this personal. But I am not the morals police. You should do what you believe to be right, obvs.

[andrewducker]

No no, totally worth raising. I'm distracted and what I consider the important (not connecting people to statements they've made privately) is not necessarily what they will consider important.

Paraphrasing hopefully sorts things.

[sobriquet9]

You seriously think Musk wants more money?

The idea is stupid because missile defense undermines mutually assured destruction doctrine, and because it increases the chance of accidental all-out nuclear war by shortening the reaction time. That's why Brilliant Pebbles idea was shelved before, and Golden Dome is effectively the same thing.

[andrewducker]

With Tesla sales crashing I think that other sources of income are more and more important to him.

But yes, strategically it makes the world much riskier.

[mountainkiss]

I do not know that I can take a view on this. I think it would depend on the person. I am sounding horribly sanctimonious!

[sobriquet9]

He's the richest man in the world. Even if Tesla continues to tank and he drops to #2 or #10, he would still have more money than he ever needs. He demonstrated he does not care about money by doing what he did with Twitter.

Since he's clearly not motivated by money, accusing him of corruption is not justified.

[andrewducker]

You're really not!

You worried that someone would be upset, alerted me to that, and then made it clear that you personally weren't judging me. That seems like the opposite of sanctimonious to me!

[mountainkiss]

This is cheering thank you!

[andrewducker]

His wealth is largely tied up in Tesla stock. He's spending his time at the moment gutting the regulators who were investigating him. The man's incredibly corrupt.

[armiphlage]

11. Many elements, including lithium, can be extracted from seawater. Mining's currently much cheaper, but redox-couple electrodialysis (which I admit I'm not an expert on) theoretically could be a source if geopolitics prevents extraction from naturally concentrated lithium deposits.

[armiphlage]

2. I will attempt to use "anticistamines" in conversation.

[juan_gandhi]

I know it was a rare luck, and we just quit our previous lives to stay forever together.

[andrewducker]

That is lovely!

[andrewducker]

Hah!

[teaotter]

12. I'll need to think about this more. Thank you for the link!

[andrewducker]

I hope it's useful!

There's a bit more discussion in the comments here that might also help.

[bens_dad]

He demonstrated he does not care about money by doing what he did with Twitter.

No. He demonstrated that money is not the most important thing that he cares about.

IIUC he needs money to colonise a) Mars and b) the stars.
Being paid to put stuff into space gets someone else to pay for some of his R&D too.

[bens_dad]

Most of the autistic people in this study were women.
I am not at all sure that autistic boys mask to any great extend.

As a boy I was vaguely aware of pressure to conform, which I usually ignored.
Most of the time I did as I wanted and it was not a problem since it was what people I respected wanted me to do anyway.

While I am not certain I would recognise masking in my son, I think he too has a strong ability and desire to do what he wants and not what other people want him to do.

[bens_dad]

3. This guy seems to be looking at this the same way as Lord Sumption, former Master of the Rolls (ie he used to be the top judge).

I think it’s quite important to note that you are allowed to exclude trans women from these [single-sex] facilities. But you are not obliged to do it.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/18/ruling-on-woman-definition-at-odds-with-uk-equality-acts-aim-says-ex-civil-servant

It isn't a big consolation, but it does seem to be an important point.

[sobriquet9]

No amount of corruption could possibly be enough to pay for colonizing Mars, let alone stars.

The R&D necessary to put stuff into low Earth orbit is already done and paid for. Falcon 9 flies every other day. Interplanetary and interstellar travel is way outside the Golden Dome requirements and budget.

[sobriquet9]

Which regulators, the ones who went after SpaceX for pouring fresh water onto the launchpad?

Or the ones that did not see any problems with Tesla for 20 years, but suddenly found all kinds of violations after Musk begun supporting Trump?

[andrewducker]

I'm sorry you've been paying no attention but he's been under investigation by many regulators for many violations for years.

https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1848250352627294368

There's a very simplified diagram. Link to newspaper story from last year there.

[andrewducker]

That's an excellent point. See also the recent link about autistic women. Apparently they tend to be focused much more than average on being accepted.

[channelpenguin]

Maybe it's not about money, but definitely about power. I don't know if there's technically another word for that other than "corruption"?n

[channelpenguin]

I am a woman, and if I'm autistic (Andrew could take a guess, he's known me since we were teenagers), I didn't (and don't) feel any so am urge to mask my (slight) weirdness. I've worked in IT all my life. My major hobbies have also been ones full of geeks (music, motorbikes,sailing) a lot of whom don't mask or don't mask much. So maybe I don't stand out!

I come from a family of engineers on both sides of my father's side and my mother is musically talented, a bit hyperactive and definitely socially "odd" like she often doesn't "get" people (also very impatient and great at optimising task parallelism). So, at home, I guess that oddness was normal?

Mind you, my sister is insanely good with numbers (like doing actuary exams for "fun" when she was managing a bunch of them type insane), but also the most effortlessly social of us all.

I know I'm dreadful with eye contact when speaking German, so I think there's definitely something hard about it when people have to think too hard about what and how they are going to say things!