Links, Tuesday 16th August

CN for *extremely* graphic depictions of birth and surgery

"Childbirth is not empowering. It’s grisly, frightening, and astonishing stuff. Which is not to say that it can never be pleasurable or rapturous, or even mundane. Rather, hoping for something as politically freighted as “power” out of a chaotic biological experience aligns us with a long history of moralizing about birth — a history that has rarely given women the space to honestly encounter what happens to their own bodies." Hairpin

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You might not expect this, given my various political positions, but I'm actually not that fussed about inheritance taxes. I think inequality in income (and especially inequality in consumption) should worry us more than inequality in paper wealth. That is, I don't care if the Duke of Westminster happens to be a wealthy person, but he should be taxed extremely punitively if he want's to *live* like a wealthy person, as opposed to simply re-investing everything in new productive enterprises.

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I would kind of love to take this course

"In this class we will go a step further and say that something is fucked if it presents hard conceptual challenges to which implementable, real-world solutions for working scientists are either not available or routinely ignored in practice."

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Amazing. I hope they crack it :)

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"There’s a reason the word “sissy” comes up repeatedly—method acting, as it’s practiced today, depends on framing less drastic techniques as feminine, and therefore inferior." Atlantic

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Wow, was not familiar with this history. Apparently a judge in the US unequivocally ruled that MDMA has legitimate medical uses way back in the 1980s, but simply didn't have the authority to reverse the DEA decision.

"The judge was unequivocal in finding that MDMA should still be allowable as a therapeutic device... The judge’s opinion was damning, but it wasn’t the end of the story. An administrative judge only has the power to recommend a course of action — the ultimate say rests with the administrator. And DEA administrator John Lawn simply assigned MDMA to Schedule I anyhow."

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This is useful!

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"And in fact, I would argue that self-compassion also provides a sense of self-worth, but it's not linked to narcissism the way self-esteem is. It's not linked to social comparison the way self-esteem is, and it's not contingent, because you have self-compassion both when you fail and when you succeed. The sense of self-worth that comes from being kind to yourself is much more stable over time than the sense of self-worth that comes from judging yourself positively." Atlantic

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Yay, removing barriers to cannabis research!

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Just a reminder about that time James Blunt (in his pre-pop star days) defied a direct order to attack Russian troops in Kosovo, possibly averting World War III in doing so

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Someone making the case for the land value tax, which I mentioned in connection to the inheritance of the Grosvenor estate the other day.

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Maybe nightlife in London can actually be saved...

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Awww this is so great, exactly how I would like to go (though hopefully at a somewhat more advanced age)

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The benefits of a planning system that actually functions...

"...in 2014 there were 142,417 housing starts in the city of Tokyo (population 13.3m, no empty land), more than the 83,657 housing permits issued in the state of California (population 38.7m), or the 137,010 houses started in the entire country of England (population 54.3m)."