purplecat

Two weeks again, so a lot of links again.

DreamWidth

purplecat | Photos from the Oxford Half Marathon

purplecat | Random Neolithic Stuff on a Friday
A photo of Windmill Hill. Mostly grass and sky.

purplecat | Fourth Doctor: Season 18 Outfit
Paper doll of the Fourth Doctor

purplecat | The Randomiser: Survival
I review Survival

purplecat | The Randomiser: The War Games
I review the War Games

purplecat | Random Neolithic Stones on a Friday
Another shot of Avebury

purplecat | Random Doctor Who Picture
A picture from Fury from the Deep

Twitter

( Under a cut because NASA Space Apps generated a lot of Twitter Activity )

Facebook

Photo: Block 19 October 28, 2018 at 11:42AM
via Facebook https://ift.tt/2O7RE6A

I Helped Create the Milo Trolling Playbook—Stop Playing Right Into It | Observer

A really interesting read. Over the past few weeks I've become increasingly concerned about the culture of outrage. I'm not against it per se, I went on the Women's March and I remain glad I marched. But the hysterical and knee-jerk reactions to anything certain groups do, the name-calling and labelling, the refusal to debate, the implications that significant proportions of the population are on some level too evil or too stupid to be allowed to vote - this all deeply concerns me and it feels profoundly counter-productive. This article highlights one of the ways in which it is counter-productive.

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Flattering emails will get you everywhere, except when they're from junk journals

I think the spam email I got commending my expertise in "pulp and paper engineering" was better than this one, though I didn't follow that up as the author here did. TBH, there's not much in this article beyond the suggestion that someone else may be planning to take on Beall's work (and given the criticism of people like jesuswasbatman, one hopes someone who will apply a more consistent and moderate standards).

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Experience: I accidentally bought a giant pig | Life and style | The Guardian

Does what it says on the tin.

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Fake news is a problem for the left, too

I've been saying this since the run-up to the Brexit vote and it bothers me a lot that an awful lot of the people I say it to respond with "but the other side is much worse."

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Why sitting is not the 'new smoking'

I've always been deeply suspicious of the "sitting is bad for you" messages. Maybe it is because I believe, as a general rule, that it is better for your body to be comfortable than uncomfortable and I develop backache after an even short amount of standing (I'm fine walking or running but standing mostly definitely and consistently hurts after quite a short while - buffets, museums and guided tours all tend to be bad news for me). This article clearly believes that it isn't the sitting so much as the low levels of physical activity that are the problem.

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Why are some black Africans considered white Americans? | Black History | Al JazeeraM

I find the issue of who counts as "black" fascinating. Mind you, this headline is misleading, it is not that Sudanese descended Americans count as white, so much as they count as "brown" (a classification of which I was unaware).

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'It feels like a wilfully ignored secret': how commentators painted Stoke-on-Trent all wrong | UK news | The Guardian

It has to be said my experience of Stoke is mostly through the eyes of claraste and her family, but they expressed the same frustration as articulated in this article that the city they knew, one that was troubled but full of grassroots enterprise striving to make it a better place, was not the one they were seeing reported in the press.

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Revealed: How Isis turns normal towns and villages into theatres and factories of death | The Independent

A grim piece. To quote the conclusion "It is the Isis message. Holy judgement is about punishment and death. The town square is for execution. The place of fruit and agricultural growth is a factory for shells. The school is a place of military recruitment. The hospital is to repair men for further killing. The only joy is to be sought in paradise. Nothing Deir Hafer’s former rulers left behind had the slightest connection with life."

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Once again it would appear to be a while since I posted one of these!

Dorothea Lange’s Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps — Anchor Editions

Some stunning photos, together with quotes from many of those involved.

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News: The Opening of Lascaux IV, Dordogne, France. – Darkness Below UK

fredbassett attends the opening of Lascaux IV in France. Lovely photos.

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IEEE puts out a first draft guide for how tech can achieve ethical AI design | TechCrunch

I played a small part in the development of this guide, as a late addition to one of the sub-committees.

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There’s such a thing as collective narcissism (and it might explain a lot that’s going on at the moment) – Research Digest

An interesting article which focuses primarily on collective narcissism as a facet of national identity. However it seems like there should be other applications - e.g., to political identity which might be illuminating in other ways.

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Britain's productivity has fallen. That's a good thing - CapX

An interesting alternative perspective, both on productivity and on wage stagnation.

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Should we have intervened in Syria? I don’t know – and neither do most armchair generals

This is almost exactly how I feel about this. I watch the events in Syria with horror, but am far from convinced things would be any better if the UK had been more involved. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't, but I'm very, very aware that almost everything I know about Syria I learned from Facebook (that which I didn't learn from Facebook I probably learned from the Guardian or the Telegraph, neither of which I think are necessarily deeply insightful when it comes to the complex politics of this part of the Middle East) which doesn't exactly give me a great deal of confidence in any judgement I might make about this. This is liberal inaction and wringing of hands, of course, and one of my vague aspirations is to do less of this, but I'm not sure an issue as complex as Syria is the place to start.

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It may have seemed like the world fell apart in 2016. Steven Pinker is here to tell you it didn’t. - Vox

"Look at history and data, not headlines." - a useful counter-point to the widespread panic and doom-mongering that is occurring in my particular filter bubble. Via elisi

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'Fake news' – why people believe it and what can be done to counter it

No answers here, but at least a nuanced analysis of the problem that refrains from simply blaming Facebook.

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Everything you know about British train fares is wrong | CityMetric

An old article served up again. However it confirms my vague unease, when I hear people complain about profiteering on the part of railway franchise holders, that all is not as simple as it seems.

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The obstacles to making the Northern Powerhouse work are huge – and the data proves it | CityMetric

Interesting (if superficial) analysis of the North's problems via pretty maps.

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Doctor Who | Everything Ends - YouTube

I'm not much of a one for fanvids as a general rule, but I do like the work of TheGaroStudios and this is a good one, riffing on the Doctor's line about everything ending from the Christmas special.

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We can't afford a bitter Euro-divorce - CapX

One of the less hysterical articles about the likely implications of Teresa May's commitment to "hard" Brexit.

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The trouble with 'microaggressions'

Just quoting the conclusion: "... “microaggression” is not the best way to think about subtle prejudice. Its definition is amorphous and elastic. It fails to appreciate the ambiguity of social interaction, relies too exclusively on subjective perceptions, and too readily ascribes hostile intent. By doing so, the idea of microaggression contributes to a punitive and accusatory environment that is more likely to create backlash than social progress."

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Who will keep predatory science journals at bay now that Jeffrey Beall's blog is gone?

For those of us in academia this is sad and troubling news. Jeffrey Beall performed an important service in a world where the pressure to publish is exceedingly high.

EDIT: jesuswasbatman (in the comments on DreamWidth) has several criticisms of Beall's approach.

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How dangerous is burnt toast? - Full Fact

We discussed this when it came up on the Today programme. B. was skeptical, based on the information there, that there was any serious cause for concern about burnt toast. This article from Full Fact would seem to confirm that. It is difficult to disagree with its final couple of paragraphs which question whether a public campaign launched on such flimsy evidence might not have the entirely negative effect of causing people to ignore warnings about things we do have good evidence are harmful.

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We should be kind to America's First Victim — Melania Trump

As miss_sb says, Laurie Penny is better at polemic than rational argument. But I've been uncomfortable about much of what the left is saying at Melania Trump and, to be honest (though that's not an argument that exists even as a glimmer in this piece) about assumptions the left is making about the Trump marriage based on a few snippets of video taken under highly stressful conditions.

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I've excised a number of Trump articles I'd saved because, to be honest, I'm finding it very difficult to pick apart what is precisely business as normal for a Republican President (the Mexico City Gag Rule, for instance) and what is not. I find myself more concerned about the attacks on the Press, scientists, the Judiciary, and the gutting and/or sidelining of government departments than I do some of the more concrete issues since without the former I don't see that a lot can be done about the latter (and many of the latter were campaign promises which does make a difference). But even here it is difficult to figure out what may be business as usual (no press releases to be put out while the new administration gets its act together kind of thing), what is exceptional but may not be a bad thing in the long run (forcing the Press to be less reliant on access journalism, for instance) and what is exceptional and straightforwardly a bad sign.

US election: what impact do celebrity endorsements really have?
I'd been wondering this and am a little surprised at the conclusion that celebrity endorsements are important, since I'd a feeling that they were the sort of thing that only seemed impressive and compelling to people who were already signed up to a cause.
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'Don't feed the trolls' really is good advice – here's the evidence
It must be said I've always thought "don't feed the trolls" sounded like good advice. But I have seen several think pieces which have asserted that trolls do not go away if ignored. I'm sure this research isn't the end of the story, but it is interesting none the less.
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Post-truth politics and the US election: why the narrative trumps the facts
Interesting analysis of "Post-truth politics" which digs into the issue of construction of narratives.
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Why Britain should play the long game with its Brexit strategy
It is depressing to think that any chance we may have of remaining in the single market probably depends on the rise of far right parties across Europe.
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The civil service must keep calm and carry on with Brexit – but can it?
Interesting, though I would say clearly biased, viewpoint from a former civil servant.
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Robots versus immigrants: which group would “steal” the most British jobs?
Included largely because this is such an obvious question to ask/link to make and yet it had never occurred to me before.
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How can we engineer our cities to protect against the threats of the 21st century? | CityMetric
Included for the entirely unremarked upon factoid at the end that Manchester is the most "resilient" of the 12 cities they looked at. In other respects this reads a bit like a piece of marketing for city analysis and design services.
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Theresa May committed to introducing 'Alan Turing law' and pardon gay men convicted of 'gross indecency' | The Independent
I was always rather uncomfortable with the campaign to have Alan Turing pardoned. The use of the service he rendered to the country as part of the argument suggested that, in some sense, his service compensated for his homosexuality when, in fact, the argument should have been that the conviction was unjust irrespective of Turing's actions and service. I felt that if a pardon were given it should be given to all those so convicted so I'm glad to see steps now being taken in this direction.
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How much more trouble will the three Brexiteers cause for Theresa May?
The article makes the point that Davis' remark about the improbability of the UK remaining a member of the Single Market is very much considered as obvious by most in Westminster. I'm surprised that Boris' remark that Article 50 will be triggered early next year isn't considered equally obvious given what I understand about the timings of various electoral cycles. Still, as a remainer, I at least can enjoy watching the Brexiteers getting told off.
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Rise in 'freebirthing' suggests women feel midwives and doctors are ignoring their needs
Complicated thoughts around this one, including both the observation of the well-known effect that over-rigid adherence to safety procedures can have the negative effect of essentially driving people away from them altogether and that, while I have no complaints whatsoever about my treatment in hospital when giving birth, the experience didn't bear a great deal of relation to the "woman-centric" birth-plan specific story we'd been told in ante-natal classes.
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Removing gender bias from algorithms
Interesting both from a machine learning point of view and from the point of view of how language can reinforce stereotypes.
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Trump’s joke about "Second Amendment people" was targeting gun owners, too.
A lot of nonsense has been written about Trump's "second ammendment people" remark. I mean it's obviously not something a cautious and thoughtful politician would have said but that's kind of the point of Trump. However this analysis is interesting.
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Meet Chuño, a space worthy food that the Incas made eight centuries ago
Freeze-dried potatoes with a shelf-life of up to a decade, made by the Incas.
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bironic | New vid! Book trailer for "Ancillary Justice" by Ann Leckie
Rather incredible fan video trailer for the book Ancillary Justice.
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100 Years of Film History Retold with the Best Shot in Each Year
Does what it says on the tin - though obviously one can argue about the choices of film.

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London is funding the rest of the UK, and other things we just learned about the nation's taxes | CityMetric
Interesting, if depressing, summary of some of the numbers in a Centre for Cities report on economy taxes with some nice infographics.
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PHD Comics: Doing vs Writing
This isn't entirely accurate for Computer Science, but I do sometimes get frustrated that the "doing" of programming up case studies and examples yields comparatively little in terms of publishable results.
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Britain is changed utterly. Unless this summer is just a bad dream | Ian McEwan | Opinion | The Guardian
An extraordinarily cynical piece but one which sums up a lot of what I've been feeling the past couple of weeks, right up to the final paragraph which sounds a note of, I would say, unwarranted Remainer optimism.
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The Corbyn Dilemma — Dan Rebellato
I agree with about 75% of this. I got myself a £3 special for the last Labour leadership election but didn't use it to vote for Corbyn. I find it hard to get a good grip on his policies or leadership, in part because most commentators treat him as either a saintly martyr or the devil incarnate and he clearly is neither. He comes across to me as a political scrapper with steely determination and some distinctly dubious allies but nevertheless an idealistic one. Where he seems to have failed is raising his game from backbench "in the trenches" activism into a frontbench grand vision. I'm not, personally, very taken with him, but just at the moment the PLP and Labour NEC seem to me to be worse.
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Forget Brexit — Italy is poised to tear Europe apart | Europe | News | The Independent
There's another referendum coming up which may topple a government...
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Can Theresa May make it to the top? | Gaby Hinsliff | Politics | The Guardian
Recommended by my sister, an insightful profile of Theresa May from 18 months ago.
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How the BBC's obsession with balance took Labour off air ahead of Brexit
I have huge sympathy with the BBC's nigh on impossible task of being "balanced" so what particularly interested me here was not the general thrust of the argument but the stats comparing the number of media appearances by Corbyn in contrast to Johnson which rather undermines the suggestion he didn't campaign hard enough for Remain.
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Theresa May reshuffle: what is behind the PM's top appointments?
Interesting analysis of Teresa May's appointment of Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary which avoids the tempting (but probably incorrect) idea that she's merely giving him the rope with which to hang himself when Brexit fails (for some meaning of the word "fail").
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Doctor Who | Punishment - YouTube
I'm not much of a one for fanvids, but his Doctor Who one is excellent - very angsty mind.
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The UK is now two nations, staring across a political chasm | John Harris | Opinion | The Guardian
"Even those who understand that something seismic is afoot among predominantly working-class voters are still too keen on the idea that they are gullible enough to be led over a cliff by people with whom they would actually disagree, if only they knew the facts. But most people are not really being “led” by anyone. In my experience, Farage, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove et al are viewed by most people with as much cynicism as the people fronting the remain campaign. Moreover, this argument is dangerously redolent of that lousy old Marxist trope of “false consciousness”, whereby people enthusiastically following the supposedly wrong cause are only a speech or poster away from enlightenment, and a sharp left turn."

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How to think about the EU result if you voted Remain
There are worse things than leaving the EU and giving up on democracy (or the free press) would be among them. This is the first article I've seen that gropes towards articulating why Remainers, like myself, should not be looking for ways to wriggle out of this.

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EU ‘massively impressed’ by the way Britain’s handling this
The Daily Mash struggles to make the situation seem more ridiculous than it already is.

I was discussing the other day, I think with some of the Primeval folk, how almost every city built on or near sandstone (and in some cases some rather less likely rock) seems to have had a positive honeycomb of tunnels burrowed out underneath it by the resourceful inhabitants.

When we moved to Nottingham we went on the tourist trail around Nottingham's Cave system (The Western Caves which you entered via a shopping centre). These had been used as air raid shelters during WWII but went back a lot further than that and included a medieval tannery among other things. I was interested therefore when wellinghall forwarded me a link to the Nottingham Caves Survey which is attempting to create 3D maps of all the tunnels under the city. They're doing this using a 3D laser scanner which just shows how technology has moved on. I recall B. publishing an article (Sellers WI, Chamberlain AT. Echoing the Bats. Discovering Archaeology. 1999 2:94-96.) just after we were married on mapping cave systems using ultrasound and the images he produced then are very reminisicent of the modern laser scanner images, only less detailed.

( Some piccies under the Cut )

This entry was originally posted at http://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/34676.html.

Interesting criticism of the Browne report although I'm not qualified to comment on whether it's pessimism over the interaction of market forces and "culture" are justified.

This entry was originally posted at http://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/28511.html.