Links - 4th January 2020 (1)

Harriman: Sea Otters in Alaska - "In July, 1911, the United States, Japan, Russia and Great Britain entered into a treaty "for the protection of fur seals and sea otters in the North Pacific, by outlawing the killing of fur seals and sea otters in these waters by any Americans except Alaska Natives." The U.S. Navy was charged with enforcing the treaty, and, the sea otter in Alaska made a remarkable recovery"
Western countries - leading the way in altruism even in the early 20th century

Drone Research Shows Why Albatross Wings Are Black On Top - "the dark upper wing surface absorbs sunlight very efficiently -- so efficiently, in fact, that the dark upper wing surface could become as much as 10° Celsius (18° F) warmer than the pale underside. This temperature difference lowers air pressure on the upper side of the wing, which reduces drag and generates additional lift, according to the researchers. This serves to make soaring less energetically expensive for these large seabirds, particularly over long distances."

Tubercles on Humpback Whales' Flippers: Application of Bio-Inspired Technology - "In “bubbling” behaviors, underwater exhalations from the paired blowholes produce clouds or columns of bubbles, which concentrate the prey (Winn and Reichley 1985; Sharpe and Dill 1997; Leighton et al. 2007; Reidenberg and Laitman 2007). Bubble nets are produced as the whale swims toward the surface in a circular pattern from depth. At completion of the bubble net, the whale pivots with its flippers and then banks to the inside as it turns sharply into and through the center of the net (Ingebrigtsen 1929; Hain et al. 1982)."

BBC World Service - 30 Animals That Made Us Smarter, Whale and wind turbine - "History books tell us the vast number of humpbacks that were hunted commercially for their oil, meat and baleen. During this time, more than 90% of the global population were killed, and in 1998, they were listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN. But thanks to a moratorium on commercial whaling a few years earlier in 1982, amongst other reasons, by the International Whaling Commission, their numbers have steadily increased. They were reclassified in 2008 as being of least concern, although certain populations still retain an endangered status.”
Great, Japan can hunt humpback whales too now since extinction is fake news

China’s Debt Relief along the Belt and Road – What’s the Story?
So China does actually do some debt relief, but it's less than before BRI. Which means as a proportion of their lending it's been going down

The German city of Dresden has been forced to declare a 'Nazi emergency' - "The eastern German city of Dresden has declared a "Nazi emergency" as officials warned of a rise in far-right support and violence.The city is the birthplace of the Islamophobic Pegida movement, which holds weekly rallies here, while the anti-immigration Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD) party won 28 per cent in September regional elections... It was backed by the left and liberal parties but rejected not only by the AfD members but also by centre-right Christian Democrats who said it should not have targeted right-wing extremism only."

Right- and left-wing violence cannot be equated, says expert - "if an anti-Semitic crime cannot be fully cleared or dispelled, it is automatically categorised as a right-wing extremist act, even if it is not.Moreover, in recent years we have observed an increase in physical attacks on Jews where perpetrators are of Arab descent...
If one believes the statistics, there are more left than right-wing extremists in Germany. However, more crimes are being committed by the right. Is this true?
This is because of how offences are classified – one has to distinguish between hate crime and propaganda offences. The German penal code is strongly tailored to deal with right-wing extremist acts, notably with regard to inciting people and forbidden symbols. This means that that the amount of propaganda offences perpetrated by the right is much higher than on the left."
If you cook the statistics, you can use them for political ends. Like bashing the "far right" and ignoring leftist violence

Frank Magnitz: Far-right German politician is beaten unconscious - "A far-right German lawmaker has been beaten unconscious by at least three masked assailants in an attack seen by police as "politically motivated."Frank Magnitz, a member of parliament and the leader of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party (AfD) in Bremen, was assaulted on Monday afternoon as he walked through the center of the city... This attack comes after an explosion targeted an AfD office in the eastern state of Saxony on January 3. Police said there has been a rise in attacks against the party, and that most incidents were acts of vandalism"

General election 2019: Who has selected the most women as candidates? - "Politicians understand by encouraging the adoption of women candidates in these "retirement" seats - many of whom will inherit strong majorities and are seen as relatively safe - the parties can boost their number of female MPs and edge towards gender balance.The selections in such prized "safe" seats remains ongoing, but at the time of writing, more female candidates had been selected than the number of incumbent female MPs who are leaving the Commons"
This is a great way to tell people that female politicians don't get into Parliament on their own merits and shouldn't be taken seriously

Eranski on Twitter - "I just realized AOC has open DMs and my mind is filled with intrusive thoughts of boomers in sunglasses demanding feet pics from her & sending her bathroom selfies with The Punisher logo tattooed on their sunburned sweaty chests."
"@coherentstates Replace “boomer” with any ethnic or cultural minority, does this tweet still read okay to you? Congratulations Twitter, you’ve invented the world’s first ageist slur."

Millennials' extreme hatred for Baby Boomers is totally unjustified - "Millennials (and to some extent their Gen-X and Gen-Z brethren) hate their elders with a ferocity never before seen in our culture. Egged on by the media-savvy likes of 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, they blame prolonged heat waves on boomers who supposedly stood by and cheered as the Earth went up in flames. The phrase “OK BOOMER” has now become young people’s “repeated retort to the problem of older people who just don’t get it,” marking “the end of friendly generational relations,” The New York Times declared last week. According to the article, a teen designer has already sold $10,000 worth of sweatshirts with the “OK BOOMER” slogan repeated many times on the front, ending with the line, “Have a terrible day.”Generation gaps will always be with us. Historian Marc Wortman found a generational split over sending young men off to war way back in 1941. But unlike those of us who came of age in the 1960s-early 1970s, who merely disapproved of our elders’ “colonialist” wars and shag rugs, millennials (born between 1980-1994) can’t stand the air we boomers breathe.Too many millennials whine that their complacent elders bequeathed them a rotten America and a rotten world — economic malaise that will leave them with lousier lives than their parents and a planet on fire from climate change. But if they spent more time studying actual history, which can’t easily be found on iPhones, they’d know that boomers were, and remain, the most socially and environmentally conscious generation America ever has ever known. Maybe too much so — our universities’ overwhelmingly “progressive” agendas originated in the 1960s and have become more dominant ever since... Despite horror stories about six-figure debt, college grads owed an average $29,200 for student loans in 2018, according to the nonprofit Institute for College Access & Success. That’s barely more than the $4,000 I owed when I graduated in 1971 — which was $25,249 adjusted for inflation in 2019 dollars... Maybe today’s young workers who resent lunching at their desks would prefer busing tables in a high-volume steakhouse under merciless, slave-driving owners, as I first did when I got out of college.Our bosses fed us sandwiches before a 10-hour shift that included no lunch or dinner break inside or out"

Meme - "“Please trust me, I grew up in a Communist nation and escaped it as an adult, it was Hell, everyone suffered, their promises were empty, you don’t want it here”
Millenial Westerners: “Okay boomer""

Microsoft Japan’s experiment with 3-day weekend boosts worker productivity by 40 percent - "Microsoft Japan carried out a “Working Reform Project” called the Work-Life Choice Challenge Summer 2019. For one month last August, the company implemented a three-day weekend every week, giving 2,300 employees every Friday off during the month. This “special paid vacation” did not come at the expense of any other vacation time... even though the employees were at work for less time, more work was actually getting done! A lot of the increase in productivity is attributed to the changing of meetings. With only four days to get everything done for the week, many meetings were cut, shortened, or changed to virtual meetings instead of in-person. And even though it should seem obvious, it’s also important to note that 92.1 percent of employees said that they liked the four day workweek at the end of the trial. Due to its success this year, Microsoft is planning on repeating it again next summer or perhaps at other times as well."

German firm tests out 5-hour work day, employees work from 8am to 1pm - "Lasse Rheingans, the company’s managing director, reduced the workday to five hours from the standard eight, keeping employee salaries and annual leave the same as before.However, this comes with some conditions – employees are mandated to keep their phones away and avoid distractions such as small talk.Employees also check their emails only twice a day, and meetings are scheduled to last no more than 15 minutes.As such, work efficiency is maximised within the five hours, and employees can go home at lunchtime... Rheingans is quite adamant on this management method. In a 2018 Business Insider article, he talked about what he felt was a pointless “work longer” mentality.
“In my experience, there is nothing to gain from working longer,” said Rheingans, “In software development, for example, you end up making more mistakes, you have to go back over everything and in the end you invest more time than would have if you’d worked shorter hours and focused harder.”
Many of his employees were happy about the changes, delivering better quality work for clients.Employees were also able to engage in their personal hobbies, and Rheingans himself had more time to spend with his children.The new working arrangement also proved to be economically successful to some extent, as Rheingans added that the company turned a profit in 2018, when the trial was in place. He now implements the five-hour work day in summer months."
As with Microsoft, this is a summer thing. This suggests that this is good - but only when there isn't a lot of work to do

Tokyo companies’ late-night overtime habits exposed in time-lapse YouTube video channel【Videos】 - "In order to present a more accurate picture of their working environments, the organization Tokyo Workers films the Tokyo offices of major Japanese companies, in time-lapse, to see how late their interior lights are on."

Meme - "When the world's richest guy is bald, It's a proof that there is no cure for baldness So don't waste your money in hair growth remedies.
*Jeff Bezos*"

Westerners in shock & awe at S’pore hotel’s room service robot - "Hotel Jen, which appears to be the hotel the Twitter user was staying in, has had this nifty little service for a while now.The first two robots, adorably named Jeno and Jena, were introduced back in November 2017."

Gang of 16 threaten gym users with knives in Finsbury Park robbery - "Six of the "biggest athletes" from the sports academy were walking home together at 8.20pm on Monday when they were accosted by a group of about 16 males near the Stroud Green Road gate... Dynamic Sports Academy coach Adrian Klemens said: "They were being tailed by one of them on a bike. Then there were 16 of them. They circled them and picked one off to the side and said: 'Give me your phone or I will stab you - put in your Apple Pay password.'"Out of our group three were white and three were black and they said to the black guys: 'You're good,' and just attacked the white guys."Adrian said the victim they took to the side kept putting his password in wrong because it was his mum's account, prompting one assailant to tell him: 'If you get this wrong again you're dead.'... "We need a physical presence in the park. I've been running that sports academy for 13 years and I've never seen police.""

What's Blockchain Actually Good for, Anyway? For Now, Not Much | WIRED - "the cryptographic machinery behind blockchains is notoriously slow. Early platforms, like Ethereum, which gave rise to the ICO frenzy, are far too sluggish to handle most commercial applications. For that reason, “decentralized” projects represent a tiny portion of corporate blockchain efforts, perhaps 3 percent, says Apolline Blandin, a researcher at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.The rest take shortcuts. So-called permissioned blockchains borrow ideas and terms from Bitcoin, but cut corners in the name of speed and simplicity. They retain central entities that control the data, doing away with the central innovation of blockchains. Blandin has a name for those projects: “blockchain memes.”... The system lacked practical features she uses all the time, like a simple way to link documents. She liked the software she uses now. It was built by an established company that was just a call away, in case anything fritzed. “I’m having a hard time understanding how blockchain is going to really positively affect my citizens,” Kinville says. “Is it the speed of the blockchain? The security? Between faxes and emails, things get done just as quickly.” The city’s data is backed up on three servers; Kinville keeps a print copy, just in case... For a while, blockchain was seen as a panacea, says Andrew Stevens, a Gartner analyst who coauthored the “blockchain fatigue” study. Stevens’ team focused on projects that touted blockchain as a way to identify fraudulent and tainted goods in supply chains. They predicted 90 percent of those projects would eventually stall. Blockchain evangelizers were finding that supply chains more complex than expected, and that blockchain offered no ready-made solutions. When it comes to mission-critical blockchain projects, “there are no deployments across any supply chains,” he says... Using blockchain simply to track and trace items is pointless on its own, says Jerry Cuomo, CTO of IBM Blockchain; there are already tools for that. But if there’s a dispute—say, between a retailer and a packer in its supply chain—companies find it useful to have a record with a common set of facts. Blockchain is, in theory, purpose-built to do just that. But it’s still early days, he says. “Try to start something with 20 companies and you’ll be in the room with 20 lawyers.”... Using Ethereum just wasn’t practical for handling day-to-day transactions from thousands of users and vendors. “It’s just too much for the technology today”"

Blockchain wins the John McAfee Award for Destroying Time and Wealth - "In December 2017, McAfee grew frustrated with people doubting the long-term viability of cryptocurrencies. “Bitcoin now at $16,600,” he tweeted. “Those of you in the old school who believe this is a bubble simply have not understood the new mathematics of the blockchain, or you did not care enough to try. Bubbles are mathematically impossible in this new paradigm. So are corrections and all else.”Ignoring that it would be very bad for literally anything if pricing corrections were impossible, that tweet did not age well. Since then, Bitcoin has lost 75 percent of its value. It is now trading at $4,000."