Links - 20th July 2019 (3)

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 195 - Zach Weinersmith on "Emerging technologies that'll improve and/or ruin everything" - "something like a fifth or a quarter of elite scientists will admit to taking nootropic drugs, brain enhancers like modafinil or Adderall. I've heard cocaine. So there's already an arms race happening... Once 25% of people are doing it, you're pretty highly incentivized to do it too, and not just peer pressure. Economic pressure...
'Of the technologies you looked at, which do you think is least risky, and which do you think is most risky to society or civilization as a whole?'
'I would say least risky has got to be organ printing or maybe precision medicine. Any of the medical stuff. To the extent we can come up with some way it's bad, the good so outweighs it. With organ printing you could say well, it's going to change the way we think about our bodies, and that's probably true. I don't know if it's negative but it's weird. On the other hand there's, whatever it was, 122,000 people in the US waiting for an organ. It's very hard to say, "Well there's an ethical conundrum with giving you an immediate exit from dialysis."'...
'Safe Is Not an Option: Overcoming the Futile Obsession with Getting Everyone Back Alive that is Killing Our Expansion into Space.'...
'A lot of times, risk aversion doesn't actually mitigate risk. He discussed some cases I think with the Space Shuttle, where basically escape hatches were built in the design, which actually make it substantially more dangerous, because it's just one more thing to break.'...
My wife is a parasitologist, for example and there are all sorts of stories about parasitologists who want to bring ... I probably shouldn't repeat this, but who want to bring some species home from South America or Africa, and they bring it in their bodies to get it through customs...
Gell-Mann amnesia... there's this funny thing that happens where if you read anything in the popular press about a subject that you personally happen to be an expert in, you discover how off-base it is. And you're like, "Oh god, they're just misrepresenting everything and misunderstanding everything."And then when you read about anything that you're not an expert in, you kind of forget that. And you just take it as truth. And you forget that there's no reason to expect that your particular field should be an exception and maybe you should be more uncertain about everything."

2506 Sidearms of the Great War | The History Network - "Artillery is estimated to have caused 90% of Battlefield casualties in the Great War

2507 William ‘Billy’ Bishop pt.1 | The History Network - "Landing was not a strength for him, and he soon would gain reputation for causing more damage to his planes by landing than did any fight with the enemy"

EPISODE 100! Meme Fest: The Art of Memes — The Art History Babes - "The art movement continuously rejected the ruling art conventions and questioned the status of art. The Dadaists embodied the essence of anti-art. So that being said, Dadists never had a clear goal with their own art intentions, they were just making art that made no sense. But it reflected the social situation of the time"

Episode 117: Art History BB: The Swing — The Art History Babes - "During this time in France, a swing was considered a symbol of infidelity. Between the rhythmic movement of the swing to the position of the body, it was considered a metaphor for sex… additionally the fountain she faces and kicks her shoe toward could be a nod to Cupid, the Roman god of desire and lust. Cupid raises his finger to his lips. Is this an attempt at hushing the barking dog? The hardly visible but obviously aggravated dog is barking at the man pushing the swing but to no avail. The pup’s warnings are going unnoticed by this oblivious man. And desire is overpowering fidelity in the scene. And just the cherry on top, if peering up her skirt isn't kind of scandalous enough, the angle of his outstretched arm is just undeniably phallic."

Episode 102: Vinny Van Gogh — The Art History Babes - "‘I wonder how many times doctors told Van Gogh to do cocaine about his epilepsy.’...
‘They used to smoke cigarettes when women were pregnant, to keep them from gaining too much weight.’"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Friday's business with Rob Young - "This is a weird scene to say the least. Workers are celebrating being fired. Car manufacturer Ford announced that they’ll be closing down its factory after 50 years of operation in Brazil. These workers are celebrating that they got a very good severance package"

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Biden Suggests Starting ‘Physical Revolution’ To Deal With Republicans - "Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden appeared to suggest using violence against Republicans on Monday in response to a question about how he as president would deal with opposition to his agenda in the Senate from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell."

Joe Biden 2020 Campaign and Democratic Party Miscalculations - "'Fifty-six percent of Democrats self-identify as “moderate” and 9 percent even embrace “conservative,” according to an April poll from the Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University. While leftist activists pine for the end of the legislative filibuster to grease the skids for partisan legislation, a December GW Politics poll found that 66 percent of Democrats said they prefer elected officials who “make compromises with people they disagree with” over those who “stick to their positions.” Only 36 percent of Republicans said the same.'...
key candidates have made such extreme statements in the effort to appeal to what turned out to be the Democratic minority that they’ve rendered themselves more vulnerable in the general election. It’s hard to walk back pledges to wipe away private health insurance or tear down border walls, for example. It turns out that dreams of a united, energized progressive tidal wave may well die in the face of a more-moderate electorate that mainly seeks a return to normalcy, modest reforms, and an end to daily political drama. We’ll see, of course, and I freely acknowledge this take could age badly, but at the very least there is a real recognition that the Online Left is out of step with the bulk of the Democratic electorate. That fact alone could help diminish the power of angry online activism and the reduce the influence of Twitter tirades. If that happens, win or lose Joe Biden will have made an important contribution to American political discourse."

Opinion | Dear Millennials: The Feeling Is Mutual - The New York Times - "a video of Joe Biden saying he had “no empathy” for “the younger generation” that “tells me how tough things are” resurfaced on social media. The video was over a year old, but it elicited predictable howls from members of the dissed demographic. “Nothing says ‘perfect candidate to lead the most powerful nation in the world’ like ‘I have no empathy,’” wrote someone with the Twitter handle @anarchopriapism.My own reactionary reaction was different. O.K., I thought, I could definitely vote for Joe — provided he has the mettle to stand his ground.I’ve been saying for a while now that both parties could use a Sister Souljah moment, in which a candidate shows the intestinal fortitude to rebuke some obnoxious person or faction within his political base... The signature move in each of these instances (and there are so many more) is to allege an invisible harm in order to inflict an actual one. In place of an eye for an eye, we have professional destruction for emotional upset. Careers and reputations built over decades come to ruin, or nearly so, on account of a personal mistake or a disfavored opinion. All of these struggle sessions play to the sound of chortling twenty-somethings, who have figured out that, in today’s culture, the quickest way to acquire and exercise power is to take offense. This is easy to do, because the list of sins to which one may take offense grows with each passing year, from the culturally appropriated sombrero to the traditionally gendered pronoun... He could make a virtue of the defect by emphasizing his distance from everything that defines the worst aspects of millennial culture — the coddled minds and censorious manner and inability to understand the way the world works. Does it ever occur to some of our more militant millennials that the pitiless standards they apply to others will someday be applied pitilessly to them?"

Turns Out NASA Creates Posters For Every Space Mission And They’re Hilariously Awkward

Professor Who Published Fake Gender Studies Papers To Prove Point Now Targeted By His Own University - "PSU philosophy professor Peter Boghossian is being investigated by his employer for committing a “human subjects” ethics violation by contributing to the hoax, which itself was an academic study."
Strange how sending out fake resumes to study discrimination isn't an ethics violation

15 Gross Medieval Foods That People Actually Ate In The Middle Ages - "During the Middle Ages, it was believed that beaver tails were "cold" and thus could be eaten on fast days. In the 17th century it was no longer just the tail that was allowed on fast days but the whole beaver itself. Apparently, when the Bishop of Quebec asked his superiors whether his parish could eat beavers on Fridays during Lent, the church declared that indeed they could for the beaver was a fish due to the fact that it was an excellent swimmer.
Ever wondered how to roast a cat? According to one Medieval recipe, you start off by cutting off its head and throwing it away “because it is not for eating, for they say that eating the brains will cause him who eats them to lose his senses and judgment.” Then, you cut the cat open and clean it. At this stage, the feline may look ready to be roasted but alas - you must first bury it in the ground for a day and a night before you do so. You can serve the roasted cat by soaking it in broth and garlic.
Forget swans and peacocks that looked as if they were alive. The singing chicken was so much more impressive. It was prepared by tying the bird’s neck with quicksilver and ground sulphur, which, when the bird was reheated, made it sound like it was singing. It was also not uncommon to have a swan, pig or fish breathe fire, an impressive feat that was achieved by soaking cotton in alcohol and then lighting it inside the animal.
A sheep's penis was a rather curious medieval dish that was prepared by washing and cleaning it and then stuffing it with the yolks of ten eggs, saffron, milk, and fat. The whole thing was then blanched, roasted and sprinkled with ginger, cinnamon, and pepper.
There's no denying that medieval chefs were extremely innovative - they not only prepared scrumptious dishes from real-life beasts but also created their very own unique creatures that did not even exist. This creature was known as "Cockentrice" and was prepared by boiling a rooster, cutting it in half and sewing it to the bottom of a pig. The whole thing was then stuffed, roasted, and covered in egg yolks and saffron before being served to the very lucky dinner guests.
Medieval dinner parties were spectacles in themselves. People liked to be amused at the table and so medieval chefs came up with the idea of serving live animals that appeared to be dead at first glance but that would then run off once served at the table. Take the live chicken for example – a chicken was plucked alive in boiling water and glazed which gave it the appearance of it having been roasted. When the chicken fell asleep in the kitchen, it was brought out onto the table along with other dishes. But just as the chicken was about to be carved it would make off down the table, leaving chaos in its wake. Similarly, live frogs would often be placed inside a pie. When the top of the pie was cut open, the frogs would leap out and spring down the table, causing as much alarm as laughter among the guests"