"For orca, or killer whales, diet itself is a cultural statement. Fish-eating or meat-eating orca define themselves by their consumption, to the extent that captive whales accustomed to dining on seals will starve rather than eat proffered salmon." Guardian
>>><<<
The technology of human locomotion through water continues to improve
>>><<<
Horrifying story about how many drug courts in the US force opiate addicts to end maintenance treatment, which is often the only thing keeping them stable and keeping them safe from overdosing.
>>><<<
I have been having trouble understanding why the Syriza government has capitulated so thoroughly to European creditors on bailout terms after the "no" result in last Sunday's referendum. This makes *some* sense of it, though I still feel like I'm missing something
>>><<<
I've heard the argument that Tsipras has wanted Grexit all along, but knew that it was political suicide to actually argue for it, so has instead manoeuvred Greece's creditors to the point when they will essentially "force" him into it. I'm not sure I buy this theory, but if that is his plan, it's working out rather well...
>>><<<
This is a good explanation of why so much of the software that runs huge organisations ends up buggier than it could be, but I'd like to see a more general discussion of what amount of bugginess is *optimal*, given the diminishing returns to debugging as software becomes more functional.
>>><<<
[CN: rape]
Irish cop receives a slap on the wrist for raping a sex worker he had arrested earlier that day for "brothel-keeping" (i.e. working with a friend for safety). This is why we *need* decriminalisation, so cops have no legal power over sex workers.
>>><<<
Varoufakis was willing to go all the way to the brink, in the hopes that the Eurogroup would back down. I don't get the impression that gamble would really have paid off either. Right from the get-go, it's clear it was either going to be capitulation or Grexit.
"The Eurozone can dictate terms to Greece because it is no longer fearful of a Grexit. It is convinced that its banks are now protected if Greek banks default. But Varoufakis thought that he still had some leverage: once the ECB forced Greece’s banks to close, he could act unilaterally.
He said he spent the past month warning the Greek cabinet that the ECB would close Greece’s banks to force a deal. When they did, he was prepared to do three things: issue euro-denominated IOUs; apply a “haircut” to the bonds Greek issued to the ECB in 2012, reducing Greece’s debt; and seize control of the Bank of Greece from the ECB."
>>><<<
"Seeing an opportunity, U.S. beverage producers followed Perrier’s lead. In 1994, Pepsi launched Aquafina. Coca-Cola joined the club with Dasani in 1999. Homegrown brands, though, couldn’t boast glamorous European roots. So instead, they made Americans afraid of the tap. One ad from Royal Spring Water claimed that “tap water is poison.” Another, from Calistoga Mountain Spring Water, asked: “How can you be sure your water is safe? . . . Unfortunately, you can’t.” Fiji Water infuriated Ohio with the tagline “The label says Fiji because it’s not bottled in Cleveland.” The insinuation, of course, was that there was something wrong with local water." Washington Post
>>><<<
"The story of the eurozone’s relationship with Greece post-crisis is a story of external powers trying to restructure an entire political system from outside, using the crude tools of control that are available to them. The situation is somewhere between the kinds of Washington Consensus restructuring and conditionality that the IMF used to impose as a quid-pro-quo for emergency loans to countries in crisis, and the massive efforts to restructure the political systems of Afghanistan and Iraq post invasion. Obviously these past efforts have mostly turned out pretty badly (perhaps you can argue some of the IMF cases – but you’d have an uphill battle if you really wanted to make a general defense)." Crooked Timber
>>><<<
This actual makes a whole lot of sense.
"the only way for Jurassic Park to get its hands on any dinosaurs would be to have their geneticists build them from scratch, which would explain why all the dinosaurs in the movie look like how we, the ignorant public, imagine dinosaurs look, as opposed to how they actually appeared in nature. For instance, in real life, a velociraptor was the size of a chimpanzee, whereas in Jurassic Park, velociraptors are large enough to play professional basketball. Also, they had feathers. Most dinosaurs probably had feathers."
>>><<<
"Our results on vegetarianism were particularly striking. In a survey of professors from five US states, we found that 60 per cent of ethicist respondents rated ‘regularly eating the meat of mammals, such as beef or pork’ somewhere on the ‘morally bad’ side of a nine-point scale ranging from ‘very morally bad’ to ‘very morally good’. By contrast, only 19 per cent of non-philosophy professors rated it as bad. That’s a pretty big difference of opinion! Non-ethicist philosophers were intermediate, at 45 per cent. But when asked later in the survey whether they had eaten the meat of a mammal at their last evening meal, we found no statistically significant difference in the groups’ responses – about 38 per cent of professors from all groups reported having done so (including 37 per cent of ethicists)." Aeon
>>><<<
"The slave-backed securities of the early 19th century worked in the same way as the mortgage-backed securities of the early 21st. They spread the risks and provided a means by which capital from all over the world could be channelled into the Deep South. This also meant that, even after abolition, British investors could still profit from the slave trade. They no longer owned slaves. Instead, they owned slave-based derivatives; financial instruments made up of mortgages on enslaved people." Flipchart Fairy Tales
>>><<<
Agree so strongly on this. The ongoing economic disaster in Europe is fundamentally a monetary phenomenon, and will only be resolved by a concerted effort to put more money in circulation. And yet the ECB is apparently content to let the inflation rate hover around 0% for the indefinite future.
Zimbabwe managed to achieve inflation rates in the millions of percent, and yet we're really being asked to believe that Western central banks, with all their sophistication and expertise, can't even manage 2%?
"Obviously the Greek economy does have some real issues. Maybe these OECD "toolkit" ideas will even [improve] things. But one problem Greece definitely has is the ongoing suction of money out of the Greece economy and into the coffers of Greece's creditors. But those creditors don't particularly need the money. Europe as a whole has lots of high unemployment and low inflation. Heck even in Germany inflation is running below two percent. If European states want more Euros, the European Central Bank should print up some Euros and start handing them out." Matt Yglesias
>>><<<
Generally interesting piece on girls with autism conditions
>>><<<
My view of this is that some degree of rent control can be a good thing so long as you keep an eye on the underlying economics. Trying to keep rents significantly lower than the market-clearing price for any length of time will almost certainly lead to problems, but this kind of rent "brake" could conceivably "smooth out" sharp changes to prices that might otherwise occur due to sudden supply or demand shocks.
It's difficult to know what to do if the supply is constrained by exogenous factors (as it is in London and the Southeast by strict planning rules and the political refusal of government to build any more social housing). Rent control is somewhat more defensible, since supply isn't going to rise much anyway in response to price increases. But you're then effectively taxing landowners and handing the value over to whoever happened to be renting the property at the time rent controls came into operation (and their descendants) - not a terrible outcome, but somewhat arbitrary. Much better to sharply increase the actual tax on land/property ownership to reflect the windfall value of supply restriction and distribute that value in a more considered way.
Best of all, obviously, simply to build enough homes!
>>><<<
"The revolution will not come on the tidal wave of your next multiple orgasm had with your seven partners on the floor of your communal living space. It will only happen if you have an actual plan for destroying systems of oppression and exploitation." Yasmin Nair
>>><<<
Great piece on the appropriation of Soho's sex industry glamour by giant corporations (all while actual sex workers and being steadily forced out)
"As the reality of sex work in Soho disappears, its essence has become a marketing tool. Brothel chic. A Disneyland version of what was for many, a life, work – a world that wasn't particularly exotic or glamorous but simply the thing they did for a certain number of hours a week to pay the bills."
>>><<<
"Housework is not work. Sex work is not work. Emotional work is not work. Why? Because they don’t take effort? No, because women are supposed to provide them uncompensated, out of the goodness of our hearts." Toast
>>><<<
"The World Health Organization (WHO) recognises a global ‘water poverty line’ of 1,000m3 per capita per year, and yet in 2009 the World Bank estimated that Yemen had only 120m3 of water available per person each year, one of the lowest figures in the world. This water scarcity is believed to be a key reason behind as much as 70 to 80 per cent of the country’s violence, according to a study by Sana’a University researchers." Geographical
>>><<<
The technology of human locomotion through water continues to improve
>>><<<
Horrifying story about how many drug courts in the US force opiate addicts to end maintenance treatment, which is often the only thing keeping them stable and keeping them safe from overdosing.
>>><<<
I have been having trouble understanding why the Syriza government has capitulated so thoroughly to European creditors on bailout terms after the "no" result in last Sunday's referendum. This makes *some* sense of it, though I still feel like I'm missing something
>>><<<
I've heard the argument that Tsipras has wanted Grexit all along, but knew that it was political suicide to actually argue for it, so has instead manoeuvred Greece's creditors to the point when they will essentially "force" him into it. I'm not sure I buy this theory, but if that is his plan, it's working out rather well...
>>><<<
This is a good explanation of why so much of the software that runs huge organisations ends up buggier than it could be, but I'd like to see a more general discussion of what amount of bugginess is *optimal*, given the diminishing returns to debugging as software becomes more functional.
>>><<<
[CN: rape]
Irish cop receives a slap on the wrist for raping a sex worker he had arrested earlier that day for "brothel-keeping" (i.e. working with a friend for safety). This is why we *need* decriminalisation, so cops have no legal power over sex workers.
>>><<<
Varoufakis was willing to go all the way to the brink, in the hopes that the Eurogroup would back down. I don't get the impression that gamble would really have paid off either. Right from the get-go, it's clear it was either going to be capitulation or Grexit.
"The Eurozone can dictate terms to Greece because it is no longer fearful of a Grexit. It is convinced that its banks are now protected if Greek banks default. But Varoufakis thought that he still had some leverage: once the ECB forced Greece’s banks to close, he could act unilaterally.
He said he spent the past month warning the Greek cabinet that the ECB would close Greece’s banks to force a deal. When they did, he was prepared to do three things: issue euro-denominated IOUs; apply a “haircut” to the bonds Greek issued to the ECB in 2012, reducing Greece’s debt; and seize control of the Bank of Greece from the ECB."
>>><<<
"Seeing an opportunity, U.S. beverage producers followed Perrier’s lead. In 1994, Pepsi launched Aquafina. Coca-Cola joined the club with Dasani in 1999. Homegrown brands, though, couldn’t boast glamorous European roots. So instead, they made Americans afraid of the tap. One ad from Royal Spring Water claimed that “tap water is poison.” Another, from Calistoga Mountain Spring Water, asked: “How can you be sure your water is safe? . . . Unfortunately, you can’t.” Fiji Water infuriated Ohio with the tagline “The label says Fiji because it’s not bottled in Cleveland.” The insinuation, of course, was that there was something wrong with local water." Washington Post
>>><<<
"The story of the eurozone’s relationship with Greece post-crisis is a story of external powers trying to restructure an entire political system from outside, using the crude tools of control that are available to them. The situation is somewhere between the kinds of Washington Consensus restructuring and conditionality that the IMF used to impose as a quid-pro-quo for emergency loans to countries in crisis, and the massive efforts to restructure the political systems of Afghanistan and Iraq post invasion. Obviously these past efforts have mostly turned out pretty badly (perhaps you can argue some of the IMF cases – but you’d have an uphill battle if you really wanted to make a general defense)." Crooked Timber
>>><<<
This actual makes a whole lot of sense.
"the only way for Jurassic Park to get its hands on any dinosaurs would be to have their geneticists build them from scratch, which would explain why all the dinosaurs in the movie look like how we, the ignorant public, imagine dinosaurs look, as opposed to how they actually appeared in nature. For instance, in real life, a velociraptor was the size of a chimpanzee, whereas in Jurassic Park, velociraptors are large enough to play professional basketball. Also, they had feathers. Most dinosaurs probably had feathers."
>>><<<
"Our results on vegetarianism were particularly striking. In a survey of professors from five US states, we found that 60 per cent of ethicist respondents rated ‘regularly eating the meat of mammals, such as beef or pork’ somewhere on the ‘morally bad’ side of a nine-point scale ranging from ‘very morally bad’ to ‘very morally good’. By contrast, only 19 per cent of non-philosophy professors rated it as bad. That’s a pretty big difference of opinion! Non-ethicist philosophers were intermediate, at 45 per cent. But when asked later in the survey whether they had eaten the meat of a mammal at their last evening meal, we found no statistically significant difference in the groups’ responses – about 38 per cent of professors from all groups reported having done so (including 37 per cent of ethicists)." Aeon
>>><<<
"The slave-backed securities of the early 19th century worked in the same way as the mortgage-backed securities of the early 21st. They spread the risks and provided a means by which capital from all over the world could be channelled into the Deep South. This also meant that, even after abolition, British investors could still profit from the slave trade. They no longer owned slaves. Instead, they owned slave-based derivatives; financial instruments made up of mortgages on enslaved people." Flipchart Fairy Tales
>>><<<
Agree so strongly on this. The ongoing economic disaster in Europe is fundamentally a monetary phenomenon, and will only be resolved by a concerted effort to put more money in circulation. And yet the ECB is apparently content to let the inflation rate hover around 0% for the indefinite future.
Zimbabwe managed to achieve inflation rates in the millions of percent, and yet we're really being asked to believe that Western central banks, with all their sophistication and expertise, can't even manage 2%?
"Obviously the Greek economy does have some real issues. Maybe these OECD "toolkit" ideas will even [improve] things. But one problem Greece definitely has is the ongoing suction of money out of the Greece economy and into the coffers of Greece's creditors. But those creditors don't particularly need the money. Europe as a whole has lots of high unemployment and low inflation. Heck even in Germany inflation is running below two percent. If European states want more Euros, the European Central Bank should print up some Euros and start handing them out." Matt Yglesias
>>><<<
Generally interesting piece on girls with autism conditions
>>><<<
My view of this is that some degree of rent control can be a good thing so long as you keep an eye on the underlying economics. Trying to keep rents significantly lower than the market-clearing price for any length of time will almost certainly lead to problems, but this kind of rent "brake" could conceivably "smooth out" sharp changes to prices that might otherwise occur due to sudden supply or demand shocks.
It's difficult to know what to do if the supply is constrained by exogenous factors (as it is in London and the Southeast by strict planning rules and the political refusal of government to build any more social housing). Rent control is somewhat more defensible, since supply isn't going to rise much anyway in response to price increases. But you're then effectively taxing landowners and handing the value over to whoever happened to be renting the property at the time rent controls came into operation (and their descendants) - not a terrible outcome, but somewhat arbitrary. Much better to sharply increase the actual tax on land/property ownership to reflect the windfall value of supply restriction and distribute that value in a more considered way.
Best of all, obviously, simply to build enough homes!
>>><<<
"The revolution will not come on the tidal wave of your next multiple orgasm had with your seven partners on the floor of your communal living space. It will only happen if you have an actual plan for destroying systems of oppression and exploitation." Yasmin Nair
>>><<<
Great piece on the appropriation of Soho's sex industry glamour by giant corporations (all while actual sex workers and being steadily forced out)
"As the reality of sex work in Soho disappears, its essence has become a marketing tool. Brothel chic. A Disneyland version of what was for many, a life, work – a world that wasn't particularly exotic or glamorous but simply the thing they did for a certain number of hours a week to pay the bills."
>>><<<
"Housework is not work. Sex work is not work. Emotional work is not work. Why? Because they don’t take effort? No, because women are supposed to provide them uncompensated, out of the goodness of our hearts." Toast
>>><<<
"The World Health Organization (WHO) recognises a global ‘water poverty line’ of 1,000m3 per capita per year, and yet in 2009 the World Bank estimated that Yemen had only 120m3 of water available per person each year, one of the lowest figures in the world. This water scarcity is believed to be a key reason behind as much as 70 to 80 per cent of the country’s violence, according to a study by Sana’a University researchers." Geographical
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