Links, Tuesday 31st January

Not really that surprising, but still, yikes!

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Great news. Let's hope Obama goes wild with further pardons and commutations in the next few days!

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Fascinating history of the (extremely successful) British covert operation to get the US involved in WWII

"American communists, fascists and isolationists complained bitterly and loudly in 1940 and 1941 that Britain was secretly manipulating the U.S. media as part of a campaign to pull America into the war. These accusations, confidently dismissed by liberal politicians and newspapers as paranoid ravings, were inaccurate only in that they were understated. Even the most alarmist commentators and conspiracy-mongers underestimated the depth and effectiveness of British covert activity."

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UN officials stating unequivocally in the British Medical Journal that the War on Drugs has caused seriously human rights violations and must be rethought

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I apologise for the usual overblown way of reporting things which is typical of Cracked, but I genuinely had not known about Trump's connection to Prosperity Gospel organisations before this

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An argument that the recent rise of populist politics represents (in part) a rejection of the use of (certain kinds of) statistics. Interesting throughout

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Hmm, apparently the stripiness of zebras probably has very little to do with avoiding predators, and lots to do with deterring biting insects!

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"Roma are used by nation-builders to create ideas of solidarity and belonging for the majority at the expense of Roma themselves. They're constructed as a threat, a necessary aberration, supposedly undermining the values and principles the European nation holds so dear... In contemporary western Europe, it's generally Muslims. In eastern Europe it's Roma." Vice

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"Our approach to freedom need not be identical but it must be intersectional and inclusive. It must extend beyond ourselves. I know with surpassing certainty that my liberation is directly linked to the liberation of the undocumented trans Latina yearning for refuge. The disabled student seeking unequivocal access. The sex worker fighting to make her living safely." NY Mag

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And here is my political commentary for today... I think "Gangham Style" is my favourite, but post your own suggestions in the comments! :)

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Well, this is terrifying. Animation and audio manipulation technologies are now reaching the point where it's just about possible to generate a completely fake video clip of a real person saying things that they haven't actually said, but that would be indistinguishable from the real thing. Imagine the havoc created by a clip of Trump promising to drop the bomb on Beijing, distributed widely via Twitter.

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Great work, this crew <3 I'm noticing the cleverness of targeting a building that, although clearly a house, was previously the Spanish cultural centre- so was presumably zoned commercial rather than residential - thereby circumventing the recent law criminalising the squatting of residential properties. Also, the sheer political savvy and downright decency of housing rough sleepers. Solid work all round.

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Good piece on greenwashing and the construction of highly environmentally damaging "eco-estates" in Cape Town.

"The township of Masiphumelele, where metal shacks use what little space is available, is often described as encroaching on the wetland’s edge. In contrast, the Lake Michelle estate, which is completely built within the wetland and appropriating its heart, figures less in analysis of wetland problems."

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Interesting. Fundamental research on opioid receptors in the brain may pave the way for compounds that have the analgesic properties of morphine, but don't result in some of the harmful side-effects (tolerance, respiratory suppression, etc).

"the [mu-opioid] receptor is like a double garden gate that can open onto two pathways, the G-protein and beta-arrestin paths. Use morphine to unlock the gate, and it swings open as one unit onto both paths. Change the gate itself so the beta-arrestin side remained locked and you could open to just the G-protein path and reap the crucial benefits of morphine with fewer side effects."

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"Vaishnav’s main explanation for the continued electoral success of criminally tainted politicians [in India] is quite simple: They provide services the state does not... More so, these politicians use their criminality as a badge, as a way to signal their credibility to the voters. If anything, the more voters know about the criminality of a candidate, the better that candidate will do." FT

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A history of white supremacism in Australia. The bit about slavery and forced labour in the late 19th century is something I wasn't aware of

"The primary driver of slavery on the South Pacific Islands and in Australia from the 1860s onward was pretty straightforward. Britain wanted cheaper cotton. The world’s cotton market had been thrown into turmoil because it could no longer depend on the blood and sweat of free labor provided by the slaves of the American South. The British Empire’s textile industry was suffering, and even though the UK had abolished slavery in 1833, they were not above looking the other way when it came to getting cheaper cotton.

This explosion in cotton prices led entrepreneurial men of highly questionable ethics to go island hopping in the South Pacific. Starting in the 1860s, ships with names like the Marion Rennie, the Forest King, and the Krishna picked up native peoples by any means necessary and brought them to places like Fiji and Queensland, Australia to work on cotton and sugar plantations."

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The UK is hardly doing a great job of protecting immigrants' human rights... :/

"Department of Health figures show that the Home Office made 8,127 requests for patient details [from the NHS] in the first eleven months of 2016, which led to 5,854 people being traced by immigration enforcement."

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The abortion 'gag rule' is an utterly cynical piece of political posturing. By cutting funding to NGOs that supply contraception to people in developing countries, it actually systematically *increases* the overall number of abortions taking place (while no doubt making them less safe as well).

Links, Tuesday 17th Jan

Interesting to think through this. Governments often cite 'building infrastructure' as something they can do to promote growth. But infrastructure requires continual spending on maintenance, and this can easily cost more than the additional economic activity created by that infrastructure (or, at least, the amount of tax that can feasibly be raised from that economic activity). So public investment can quite easily be a loss-making endeavour, with those losses obscured by the way government income and expenses are accounted.

This obviously isn't an argument against government investment in general, just an argument for more thorough (and honest!) cost-benefit analysis

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You wouldn't like portrait me...

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I should get "total nihilist who just can't stop smiling" on a t-shirt

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Not sure how much of this is clever editing to enhance anthropomorphism, but look how sad and contemplative they all look

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"The response to violence is never violence, it's always to de-escalate it. Only six shots were fired by Japanese police nationwide [in 2015]. What most Japanese police will do is get huge futons and essentially roll up a person who is being violent or drunk into a little burrito and carry them back to the station to calm them down." BBC

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"Of course, as a child I did not realize that the life I was living was considered in any way provisional or experimental by others: I thought it was just life. And when I wrote a novel about the London I grew up in, I further did not realize that by describing an environment in which people from different places lived relatively peaceably side by side, I was “championing” a situation that was in fact on trial and whose conditions could suddenly be revoked. " NY Review of Books

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Another reason to be somewhat wary of WhatsApp...

... and a rebuttal!

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Excellent news

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Just another example of a Home Office that has adopted the organisational goal of "reduce immigration by any means available" as opposed to "assess migrants' applications fairly under the law"

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Gosh, extremely frightening/impressive to see the Thames Barrier in operation. A lot of London would be underwater if it didn't exist!

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This all sounds great in principle, though I wonder how easy it would be in practice to harvest all this water and bring it up to potable quality...

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Worrying, to say the least...

"According to the joint standing committee on intelligence, between 2006 and 2010, the SSA handled “about three million interceptions”. During this time, only 826 interception orders were granted by the required RICA judge."

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I did enjoy this movie, but I also think this criticism is valid

"Many white viewers of La La Land may well consider nostalgic escapism as a horizontal unifier—something with which everyone identifies—but longing for the past is itself a political act... One suspects Chazelle and his defenders will say analysis of this sort over-interprets, goes too far, but this is a luxury, too, a privilege. “It’s only a movie” is the apologia of people who have never been victimized by culture."

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First it was copying keys from photos, now it's fingerprints...

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Wow, a continent-sized wave!

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You know there's that thing in game theory where you pretend to be completely irrational, to force your opponents to make a deal before you destroy everything for everyone? Maybe Theresa May is doing that.... OR - even better - maybe she's actually three kids propped up on each other's shoulders, and at some point they'll admit they have no idea what they're doing, the farce will end, and we'll all have a good laugh.

Links, Thursday 12th January

A big review of recent research into psychedelic drugs. Worth reading simply for the flashing rainbow bar graphs :D

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It is just unreal that so many members of the Israeli public and political class could watch a video of an IDF soldier shooting to death a severely wounded man who was lying on the ground, posing no threat, and still celebrate that soldier as a hero. This is clearly murder by any definition of the term, and the only conclusion to draw is that they simply believe this murder was justified.

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The government's plan for Brexit is apparently "wish on a star" (and presumably "find someone to blame when it all goes horribly wrong")

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Interesting observation. Having learned to drive in South Africa, I think I definitely have more of a tendency to edge forward before entering the stream of traffic than do most people from developed countries (and I've had to adjust that behaviour to extent as I've learned to drive more safely in the UK).

"Maybe there is greater variability in rational assumptions about the other drivers. You may not know how well their cars can brake, accelerate, and perhaps their lane-switching plans and propensities are harder to predict. So by nudging your car out in successive bits, you may be “taking the temperature” of the other drivers on the road. Keep in mind that they, too, may not have a good sense of how well your car can accelerate (furthermore some of the vehicles are tuks-tuks, not cars). A willingness to make more nudges may be telling the other drivers that your engine is pretty good and your will is strong."

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:'( :'(

"A transgender woman has been found dead in her cell at an all-male prison, apparently the third trans prisoner to take their own life in little over a year...

A friend said the 49-year-old had asked to be placed in a women’s prison and had become miserable, sad and ill after being refused female hormones in HMP Doncaster." Guardian

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😱

"“If you lose sight of your keys for the better part of 20 seconds, you should consider them lost. If you find them later, consider them a souvenir.” Wired

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Wow, this really puts the emission standards cheating on diesel cars into perspective... It turns out you CAN have a (relatively) clean-burning diesel engine, and manufacturers of heavy-duty vehicles are building them!

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"Many people think that 2016 was particularly bad, but data tells us that it is not an exception. In fact, we should expect more famous people to die in 2017 than in 2016. Why? The answer is simple: because the number of famous people has increased over time." MIT Media Lab

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"Some hospitals are trying to make caregiving jobs seem manly — like with a recruitment poster comparing the “adrenaline rush” of being an operating room nurse to mountain climbing." NY Times

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I see this dude is well-intentioned, and obviously it's good to raise money for Crisis, but surely it would have been better to commission an *actual homeless person* to write this piece? (and pay them a decent wage for it)

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Speaking of pollution from diesel engines... 😱😱😱

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This just keeps getting more horrific...

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"Soon after the [stand-your-ground] law took effect in Florida, there was a sudden and sustained 24% jump in the monthly homicide rate. The rate of homicides involving firearms increased by 32%. The authors found that in states without a stand-your-ground law over the same time period those rates remained flat, suggesting that a nationwide crime wave was not to blame for the abrupt increase." Economist

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"It seems obvious that if prisoners were not in fear of legal repercussions from doing so, many would choose to use cannabis instead – most users claim to prefer it, and it is undoubtedly less risky. Cannabis use results in less hospitalisation, less addiction and less violence. As a harm reduction strategy, some form of decriminalisation/tolerance of cannabis seems an attractive proposition if it displaced the growing problems associated with [synthetic cannibinoids]."

"...the role of prohibition in driving the prisons crisis cannot be ignored. Along with the 10-20% of prisoners who are jailed for drugs related offenses there are the 50% of the remainder who are inside for crimes related to their involvement in the drugs market or fundraising to buy drugs." Transform

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Apparently the best way to prevent peanut allergies is to start feeding babies peanuts ASAP!

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I love the incredibly alarmist tone of this piece combined with various bits of extremely good news for drug users :D

1) ""Patrick" told us that it's illegal for him to open suspect parcels and there's "nothing he can do about it".'

2) "I've spent 14 years as a postman in uniform and I have never seen a drug dog,"

3) "About a third of people said they'd broaden their drug-using repertoire,"

4) "Tests found the pill's only active ingredient was MDMA"

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The racial overtones of the war on drugs are as apparent in France as they are anywhere else (although the French state, of course, never talks about race or acknowledges its racism)

"French teens have some of the highest levels of cannabis use in Europe, and I noticed that my white, middle-class friends in France seemed to think drugs were already effectively decriminalised. The police don’t bother them about it; it’s no big deal. By contrast, the French people of Arab or African descent I got to know told a different story."

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People, there has *never* been a fatal overdose at *any* supervised injecting facility (about 90 of them exist, all over the world)

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Aha, this clarifies for me the superiority of Signal over WhatsApp for privacy, despite both using end-to-end encryption (WhatsApp stores lots more meta-data)

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Where are the all the conventionally attractive lefties we need to save us?!

"Since good-looking politicians win more votes, a beauty advantage for politicians on the left or on the right is bound to have political consequences. We show that politicians on the right look more beautiful in Europe, the United States and Australia. Our explanation is that beautiful people earn more, which makes them less inclined to support redistribution. Our model of within-party competition predicts that voters use beauty as a cue for conservatism when they do not know much about candidates and that politicians on the right benefit more from beauty in low-information elections. Evidence from real and experimental elections confirms both predictions." Science Direct

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:( :(

"Tonight, January 9th, Backpage.com has removed its Adult content section as the result of ongoing legal and congressional pressure and unconstitutional censorship.

As we and our chapters have previously written, this closure has deeply impacted our communities, removing a unique, low-cost and low-barrier way for some of the most marginalized individuals in the adult industry who otherwise might have relied on a third-party or riskier street-based sex work to earn a living." SWOP-USA

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This article is like "OMG so weird that all these private security firms are based in this cute, quaint little town!" and I mean, come on, this whole ISLAND is cute, quaint and thoroughly militaristic.

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:'( :'(

"... sex workers have long argued that Backpage provides a safe public platform to vet clients and report predators, and that without it, the industry will be pushed further underground. On Tuesday, activists said the termination had removed a source of income for many vulnerable people and would force some with no choice but to work on the streets where they are much more likely to face violence and police harassment." Guardian

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This case raises really interesting questions... Obviously online content needs to be moderated, but how do you ensure the psychological wellbeing of the moderators who may see extremely violent or otherwise disturbing content? Are some people better suited to it than others? How would you design support structures to help people cope? Is it best to have relatively few people doing this sort of work, or would it be better to 'share the load'?