Links, Wednesday 27th April

I cannot think of a more comprehensive indictment of government policy in the democratic era :( :(

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:D

"The crew travelled in a Soyuz craft designed in the 60s. Once there, contact with Earth was limited to a few hours a day. Most disconcertingly, perhaps, the morning alarm was the same as the emergency siren. “You’d wake up unsure if it was time to get up or if you were leaking oxygen. It got us out of our sleeping bags pretty quick.”" Guardian

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If only multinational companies were so susceptible to shame...

"For five years, real-estate developer Prahul Sawant ignored government orders to pay his taxes. Then the drummers showed up, beating their instruments and demanding he cough up the cash. Neighbors leaned out windows and gawked. Within hours, a red-faced Mr. Sawant had written a $945 check to settle his long-standing arrears."

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*rant*

I get very annoyed at the way the terms "addict" and "addiction" are thrown around. These are *not* simply synonyms for dependency. We are ALL dependent on various things, for various reasons. If you live in a city without public transport infrastructure, you are dependent on access to car. Probably most of the people I know are, to a greater or lesser degree, dependent on alcohol to have a good time in certain sorts of social situations. If you are a human being (or a guinea pig) you are, uniquely among the mammals, dependent on a dietary source of vitamin C. Dependency, in itself, is neither good nor bad.

"Addiction" refers to a dependency that is, for one or another reason, socially stigmatised and possibly criminalised. To be labelled an "addict" is to be singled out for abuse, often at the hands of the state. But, just to reiterate, dependence on any given substance is, in itself, neither good nor bad.

So, while it does suck that you find yourself eating more sugar or playing more video games than you would like, you are not an "addict" because of this. And it's actually kind of offensive to appropriate a bit of terminology that is implicated in the oppression of incredibly marginalised people to describe your utterly different experience.

*end rant*

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Slapping my forehead so hard right now

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I predicted something much like this happen, playing with my toy bulldozers as a child

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Google Books gets the legal go-ahead to resume scanning!

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"He said [Robert] Moses didn’t want poor people, particularly poor people of color, to use Jones Beach, so they had legislation passed forbidding the use of buses on parkways.

Then he had this quote, and I can still hear him saying it to me. “Legislation can always be changed. It’s very hard to tear down a bridge once it’s up.” So he built 180 or 170 bridges too low for buses." Gothamist

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Good piece on the connections between feminism and vegetarianism, and how the vegetarian movement has increasingly succumbed to patriarchal ideas and messaging.

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:( :( :(

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"In fact, the consistent demand for products like soap on the illicit market can make it as good as stealing cash. Tide laundry detergent has widely been reported as a favorite target of drug gangs." Priceonomics

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Dinosaur feathers!

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"The state has capitulated. Ruling elites in rural areas have captured the state in their own ways, often working in tandem with capital and representatives of political parties at local, regional and national levels. The consequences are devastating for ordinary citizens: crumbling houses due to mining on their doorsteps to which they have never consented, revenue that should be going into community development funding lavish lifestyles for a few, and much more. Those who call for accountability pay the price." Groundup

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"You have to wonder, what was the reason for creating a new permit, when these people were already in possession of a permit in the first place. Well, join the dots and the picture becomes clearer. The Minister makes new regulations for new permits, VFS rakes in the cash, the Gupta’s and the Zuma’s laugh their way to the bank." Tourism Update

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So good :)

"Women’s politics should not – and, in my opinion, does not – revolve around defending the snaps women take of themselves on nights out. Yes, as a black woman, it can feel political to love my appearance in a world that constantly tells me to hate the way I look. However, the implication that my politics end there perpetuates the sexist idea that my appearance, and how much I care about it, can be a basis for dismissing the rest of what I have to say."

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So important

"The pour creates trust: here is a system that understands residents’ needs. This system loosens them from their drinking friends. It keeps them away from Listerine. Without the pour, they would stay outdoors, begging or stealing, in danger of losing their feet to frostbite. Indoors, they take their medicine, see their doctors and mental health workers, eat actual food, re-establish contact with their families. Giving free booze to homeless alcoholics sounds crazy. But it may be the key to helping them live a stable life." Guardian

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"Technology is a thing that men do. And as bodyhacking has become technology (which it wasn’t always) it’s become the realm of men." Fusion

Links, Sunday 17th April

Shameful

"in 2014 and the first half of 2015, the [South Africa] Department of Home Affairs turned down 81% of refugee applications, compared with the international average of 21%"

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Another political activist in South Africa has been assassinated D:

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Very difficult ethical case - deliberately stunting the growth of severely disabled children so that they can more easily be cared for at home. Any thoughts?

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*Applauds*

"Wikimedia and Facebook have given Angolans free access to their websites, but not to the rest of the internet. So, naturally, Angolans have started hiding pirated movies and music in Wikipedia articles and linking to them on closed Facebook groups, creating a totally free and clandestine file sharing network in a country where mobile internet data is extremely expensive."

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:D

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Increasing quinoa consumption in Europe and North America is actually good for people in quinoa-producing countries (which is kind of the commonsense view, despite warnings to the contrary)

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"He sets aside $10,000 per fellow for trips that are often the first time participants have left the state or the country. But fellows must agree to partner with someone they have either tried to kill or who attempted to kill them." Wash Post

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Nudges for doctors

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"If these kinds of relatively small countries were acting to undermine the integrity of the global pharmaceutical patent system, they would be stopped. But political elites in powerful countries allow them to undermine the integrity of the global corporate tax system — even when Ireland was desperately in need of bailout funds from the European Union, it was not forced to change its corporate tax system — largely because the wealthy and powerful want the global corporate tax system undermined." Vox

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Quite a balanced article on the potential therapeutic uses of psychedelics

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"One study out of Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital in 1999 found that 6-month-old boys were more likely to show “facial expressions of anger, to fuss, to gesture to be picked up” and “tended to cry more than girls.”“Boys were also more socially oriented than girls,” the report said — more likely to look at their mother and “display facial expressions of joy.”... many boys, especially early and middle adolescents, develop deep, meaningful friendships, easily rivaling girls in their emotional honesty and intimacy.

But we socialize this vulnerability out of them. Once they reach ages 15 or 16, “they begin to sound like gender stereotypes... They start using phrases such as ‘no homo’ … and they tell us they don’t have time for their male friends, even though their desire for these relationships remains.” NY Times

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Would be interesting to see statistics about typical 'use effectiveness' (though there's also a notoriously large gap between ideal and actual use effectiveness with the pill, so it's worth comparing apples with apples)

"If it is practised perfectly, fertility awareness can be almost as effective as the pill at preventing pregnancy. In 2007, a group of German scientists published a multi-year study of 900 women in the Oxford-based, peer-reviewed journal Human Reproduction. They found that, under conditions of “perfect use,” only 0.6% of the patients practising FAM became pregnant over the course of a year." Guardian

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This will undoubtedly be the first commercial application for autonomous vehicles

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Civil asset confiscation creates really terrible incentives for the police and prosecutors, and is horribly unjust. People accused of crimes often lose far more money than they would in fines, yet there is no need to meet the burden of proof for criminal conviction.

"[Proceeds of Crime Act] often skews police priorities, incentivizing and targeting sex work premises that they see as easy hits to boost their resources rather than the small proportion where sex workers are at risk of harm or coercion,"

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Good overview of some of the discussions happening around the universal basic income in UK policy circles at the moment.

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"This paper studies the impact of the early adoption of one of the most important high-technology machines in history, the public mechanical clock, on long-run growth in Europe... We find significant growth rates between 1500 and 1700 in the range of 30 percentage points in early adoptor cities and areas." Stanford

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As pointed out by the amazing Laura of the ECP, this editorial from the Guardian is astonishing. Horrible as it is, I think it's nevertheless kind of useful to see this reasoning laid out explicitly.

The editorial basically acknowledges that sex workers have more or less unanimously called for decriminalisation, and that it's the best option for making sex work safer - kudos for being evidence-led, at least - but nevertheless rejects decriminalisation on the extremely vague grounds that sex work is "inherently exploitative". The imagined "we" who comprise the reading public are assumed to have a stake in the sexual decisions of certain people, and that "we" therefore have a legitimate right to interfere with those decisions, even against the will of the people concerned. We've seen this sort of reasoning before, in various configurations, although the precise convolutions needed to justify it changes over time.

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"A woman has no right to end a pregnancy, at any gestation, anywhere in the UK. A woman who does so without the permission of two doctors can go to prison, and a young mother from Durham is currently in jail for just that. Other countries do not imprison women for abortion. It’s time to ditch this anachronistic, paternalistic law, regulate abortion like all other healthcare procedures, and trust women with their own bodies." Guardian

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Heh, I cannot think of a more fitting tribute for Antonin Scalia than "ASSoL" :D

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The utter pointlessness of spending government money to destroy a crop that is totally harmless and also the only means of subsistence for desperately poor people.

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This is your brain on drugs (actually)

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Skimming is a useful skill, but true speed reading is basically not a thing

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“[There is] clear, credible and largely unchallenged evidence from the expert witnesses of wrongdoing at DSEI and compelling evidence that it took place in 2015," Independent