Interesting Links for 18-07-2025

[andrewducker]

1. UK voting age to be lowered to 16 by next general election

(tags:voting UK )

2. Netflix uses AI effects for first time to cut costs

(tags:ai cgi netflix )

3. The world's most contagious falsehoods

(tags:myths beliefs misconceptions )

4. The fascinating world of avant-garde perfumes

(tags:smell art )

Comments

[calimac]

1) When the US voting age was lowered to 18, there was a cartoon showing a teen girl saying angrily to her parents, "It's not fair! If 18 year olds can vote, so should 17 year olds!" Of course, today that girl would be over 70, but if she moved to the UK, she'd finally get her chance.

3) A couple clicks revealed links to related articles but not to proof or even arguments on the topic. Particularly annoying was the one at "Salieri hated Mozart," which is the untruth I have the most knowledge about. The article says nothing about that, but is a defense of Salieri's value as a composer. True that studying his work, and a lot of other crappy 18C music, can tell us a lot about the musical culture of the time, but ordinary listeners don't need that. Salieri was not a very good composer.
I also want to quibble with the common disbelief of "We evolved from chimps." Substitute "apes" in general for chimps, and while it's true we didn't evolve from present-day apes (like chimps), if you could see a living specimen of the common ancestor, you'd say, "That's an ape."

[juan_gandhi]

Salieri was okay... relatively speaking, of course. For some experts, Mozart is just a pop art.

[calimac]

All the real experts I know in the business have the highest respect for Mozart.

[cmcmck]

3.

Here's another one!

https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/07/15/social-contagion-theory-debunking-amelia-hansford/

[andrewducker]

Jesus! I didn't realise anyone was still falling for ROGD!

[cmcmck]

It seems our shrieky friends love it as does the boss of the UN's equality set up!

[cmcmck]

Oh and the article about the UN imbecility is here:

https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/07/15/un-gender-draft-report-socially-contagious/

[juan_gandhi]

Thank you so much! The list of mythconceptions, it's amazing. There's one issue I don't believe, but I'll have to live with it (and test more).

[andrewducker]

Nothing wrong with a bit of scepticism!

[bens_dad]

I have just returned my annual electoral roll form.
It asks for names of 16 and 17 year-olds, as they may be 18 when the roll is replaced. This includes Ben.

I guess this means that next year's for will need dob of 14yos and 16yos will have to wait a year or two to vote in local elections.

----

The Indy newspaper suggested that Reform might benefit most from this change (along with Labour and the Greens) but some on Radio 4's Any Question panel were suggesting that Labour were only doing it for their own interest.

[andrewducker]

Current polls for 16 and 17 year olds show:
- Lab 33%
- Ref 20%
- Grn 18%
- LD 12%
- Con 10%

But also that only 18% of them say they'll definitely vote.

I suspect the overall effect will be negligible.