The Braindump Blog

Finished reading All Our Relations by Tanya Talaga 📚.

Starting out by focussing on a suicide epidemic amongst young Canadian Indigenous people, this book chronicles the historic, and unfortunately oftentimes ongoing, injustices that have been meted out on Indigenous people ever since the usually white European colonists ‘discovered’ the ‘New World’.

From a past of overtly eliminating a people they regarded as inferior, through to more recent decades which included a ‘residential schools’ policy forcibly assimilating any remaining Indigenous children, the author argues that the now-dominant society has caused physical, mental, cultural and spiritual crises amongst entire communities of Indigenous people.

A few success stories are included showing that there may be hope when these communities are able to develop or collaborate on culturally and practically relevant solutions to situations so bad that poor health, poverty, addiction, isolation, despair and even suicide is commonplace.

The focus seems mainly on the Canadian experience, but several examples from elsewhere are provided. Upsettingly, they lead towards the conclusion that the offences committed against, and resulting challenges faced by, Indigenous people around the world are quite similar.

Unflatpacked some garden furniture today, just in time for it to be far too cold outside to actually use.

I’m somewhat shocked to feel this way given the source, but I don’t hate all the policies from the Conservative’s autumn statement announced yesterday. At least not in the short term.

It’s amazing how much changes within a few weeks. Whilst some of the policies under the Truss administration weren’t nearly as tax-cutting as it seemed on the surface, they were extremely regressive. Just last month we were hearing that the top rate of income tax was going to be entirely abolished - free money for the rich! And now under the Sunak administration it’s actually going to be applied to more people; anyone with an income of over around £125k as opposed to the current £150k.

Benefits are going up inline with inflation, we’re seeing an increase in capital gains tax and a fiscal drag on inheritance tax. And a windfall tax on the incredible profits of energy producers. All very un-Conservative-stereotype.

Overall it’s still grim news in the economy - basically everyone is going to be worse off in the near feature. Living standards are set to fall by an unprecedented 7%. Plenty of this is due to the abject mismanagement of the economy by the Conservative party in recent times. Unemployment, inflation and energy bills are all set to rise. If you’re already struggling that’s obviously a much huger burden than if you’re doing well enough right now.

The statement’s policies are not nearly enough to make life particularly bearable for anyone already in or near crisis. But, I guess, credit where credit’s due - the tax changes announced yesterday are actually somewhat progressive.

Here’s a reproduction of the impact calculated by the Resolution Foundation provided by the Guardian.

Where the statement is rather more disingenuous is with regards to cuts in public funding. Cuts to public services tend to impact the poorest in society more than the rich. Cuts are certainly in the statement, and they’re big (and dangerous). But the bulk of them are scheduled not to hit until 2024-2025. Of course by then there’s a good chance we’ll have had a general election. A cynic might suggest it’s a cursed gift from a party that doesn’t really believe it’ll be in power at that point.

Watched season 12 - the final season - of The Big Bang Theory 📺.

It’s mostly more of the same, so if you found the (post-introduction of female scientists) stereotypes problematic then you still will. If you found the geek references, characters or general style annoying or stale then not all that much changed. But if you took pleasure from the fairly predictable series and its nerdy references then it’s worth finishing it off.

Much of the ending is comfortably heart-warming, although I do feel sympathy for Kathryn VanArendonk’s frustration with one of the storylines (warning: the link containers spoilers, albeit for a 3 year old episode).

Listening to the If Books Could Kill podcast 🎙️.

Peter Shamshiri (of 5-4 cohost fame) and Michael Hobbes (from Maintenance Phase) discuss and debunk ‘airport bestseller’ books that they believe have ruined our minds.

So far they’ve covered Freakonomics and Outliers, two books that in all honesty I remember being extremely into in my youth, in a pop-sci way. The former felt even somewhat formative in terms of my future interests.

This was at a point in time I was blissfully unaware of study design shenanigans, the replication crisis and the various other practices that can infect the scientific record. Here’s hoping not too much of my worldview is built on lies.

The British Museum, London, inside and out.

The wellbeing agenda, with its focus on milder problems, can lead to great statistics in a way that doesn’t work for severe mental illness

This is a sentiment I feel I’ve seen from quite a few articles recently.

Not just in terms of statistics, but a more general idea that we may finally be becoming more understanding and supportive of people with more common, typically less severe, mental health issues such as mild anxiety or depression - something that is undoubtedly good and necessary. But that there’s a way in which it’s been somewhat at the expense of folk with extremely serious and debilitating conditions.

I don’t yet have a sense of to what extent this is a real phenomenon or not. But it does seem like it’s an idea that’s in the ether at present.

Some context as Hunt prepares to unleash horrendous spending cuts and tax increases on us: Liz Truss' catastrophic failure of a 7 week premiership is estimated to have cost the UK £30 billion.

£20bn was blown…on unfunded cuts to national insurance and stamp duty, with a further £10bn added by higher interest rates and government borrowing costs as the markets reacted with dismay.

A recent paper quantifies the economic inequities exacerbated by the way that credit cards that offer rewards to their users work.

Of course the cost of these rewards has to come from somewhere.

This includes the various fees and interest charged by the credit card companies to its users. Unsurprisingly, people with low credit scores are more likely to end up paying these fees.

Now whilst credit rating doesn’t correlate 1:1 with e.g. income - so as the paper says the net effect isn’t a pure “take money from the poor to give to the rich” money grab - it does predictably correlate with various other dimensions of potential privilege. It’s obviously a lot easier to pay off your credit card balance and not incur interest charges if you have a big pile of existing money at your disposal.

Credit card companies also make money by charging shops every time a customer uses their credit card. To the extent that the need to fund rewards results in the credit card companies increasing the merchant fees to retailers, who correspondingly increase their products' prices to compensate, that’s also another way that poorer folk may be penalised - a small % increase in cost may not be noticed by the wealthy, but for people in poverty it might be that every penny counts.

Retailers don’t usually charge different prices for customers based on which card they use to purchase something, and so those people who don’t choose to use or do not have access to rewards credit cards may end up paying for other people to get rewards.

We estimate an aggregate annual redistribution of $15 billion from less to more educated, poorer to richer, and high to low minority areas, widening existing spatial disparities.

Listening to Midnights, by Taylor Swift 🎶.

In possibly the coldest take available on the internet today, Taylor Swift’s new album is really good. It’s broken a few records in terms of sales and popularity.

When I first listened to it I felt like all the bassy synths gave it a kind of ominous feel that I didn’t need in 2022, but a couple of listens later and I fully appreciate it. The general conceit is that each song reflects a sleepless night of her life, and sure enough some of the included angst may be familiar to those of us who are not multi-millionaire musical megastars too.

Apparently the album is filled with secret messages for the internet to discover. I came to Swift far too late and probably lackadaisically to get any of them but they’re there for those more informed.

Here’s one of the highlights, with a fun spooky (albeit originally controversial) video.

For anyone thinking to join the relative masses in signing up to Mastodon in protest to Elon Musk’s shenanigans now he owns Twitter, Danielle Navarro’s post looks to be a great intro guide. Particularly for anyone who’s in the “data community”, but most of it is applicable to the platform as a whole.

Whilst I’ve not yet explored it myself, Mastodon is actually one way you can subscribe to this blog - follow @adam@braindump.amedcalf.com if that’s something you’d like to do!

Things like this are exactly what cause me angst about joining the Labour party.

To be fair the headline “Keir Starmer: Too many people from overseas recruited to NHS” is a little selective, perhaps misleadingly so. Within the same interview Starmer also said he’d encourage immigration for different types of jobs. He also acknowledged that we have a desperate need for more NHS staff. But his proposed solution was that the UK needs to do way more in terms of increasing training opportunities and making jobs in the NHS bearable enough that any sane person isn’t so deterred by the conditions that they wouldn’t want the training in the first place.

I’m fully on board with that as a plank of the approach. It’s absolutely necessary. But it’s not an either/or situation. We have a NHS staffing crisis right now. Earlier this year it was calculated that around 110,000 NHS vacancies were unfilled. A British politician with the wellbeing of their constituents in mind should use whatever reasonable means we have to solve it.

Starmer is not known to be a naïve or stupid politician so when he said “I think we’re recruiting too many people from overseas into, for example, the health service” I’m sure he’d have understood how that might sound.

What’s particularly gruelling about this example is that reducing the immigration of medical workers isn’t even a popular policy. In the latest poll I can find, most people are actively in favour of immigration in terms of increasing the supply of doctors and nurses in the UK.

From page 15 of the British Future report on attitudes to immigration this year:

55% of respondents to this survey commissioned from IPSOS, designed to be representative of the British pouplation, would prefer recruitment of migrants as nurses to increase, with only 13% against. The figures for doctors are very similar.

Even most Conservative party supporters are in favour! Compared to Labour supporters they’re more likely to say the numbers should be reduced, but only by a few percentage points.

Of course this might not be apparent in the public discourse. Inevitably there is a certain percentage of the population who would rather see the immigration numbers go down than sustain the NHS. They’re loudly represented on social media, likely encouraged by the recent Conservative tendency to seemingly try and recreate a US-style culture war to our shores.

This is not to say that what job you do necessarily should be the basis of your ability to immigrate to the UK - I believe it shouldn’t be. But the point is that there is likely little need to “strategically” appear to be against immigration to fill NHS positions if that’s what’s going on, because most of the population actually wants to see more.

There certainly is a moral case to be made against encouraging immigration to fulfil Britain’s unmet medical needs, but it’s a very different one. As Kollar and Buyx write in their review of this phenomena:

Health-worker migration, commonly called “medical brain drain”, refers to the mass migration of trained and skilled health professionals (doctors, nurses, midwives) from low-income to high-income countries. This is currently leaving a significant number of poor countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, with critical staff shortages in the healthcare sector. A broad consensus exists that, where medical brain drain exacerbates such shortages, it is unethical…

Simplistically, one foreign nurse moving here is potentially one less nurse serving the country they were originally in. If done en masse, probably some recompense, ideally of a structural nature, should be given. However, this debate doesn’t seem to be the one that interests the politicians, media or general public at present.

Witnessing the Lincoln Chorale, accompanied by the Lindum Baroque Orchestra, honouring the king with their voices.

Featuring such classics as Zadok the Priest. I had no idea that was the title of this evergreen number.

Recently learned that I’m just one degree of separation from one of those accidental Bitcoin millionaires.

A acquaintance of a friend mined BTC to a wallet stored on a SD card years ago. After recently re-finding the card, he’s now got a new house with a few million $ left over.

Finished reading: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 📚.

This one is a real classic, perhaps the archetype of magical realism . That’s a style most associated with Latin American authors where things are going along just like we might ourselves expect to happen in real life. But occasionally something unquestionably fantastical happens. People fly, ghosts appear, spells are cast - whatever you can imagine. But to the characters in the book it’s perfectly normal, not even worth remarking on. Their world just works that way.

This book tells the story of many generations of a family in a beautiful, sometimes poetic, manner. In some parts it felt like hearing someone’s dream experience, other times more like a myth or legend from times long past.

Parts were somewhat disorientating to me, not least because many of the characters have similar names to each other; a fact remarked on within the book. It should be noted that there are some ‘uncomfortable’ scenes, and took me a good amount of focus to get through it. But it was an entirely worthwhile effort to make.

Watched The Power of the Doctor Doctor Who special 📺.

So I liked it, but I love Daleks and Cybermen enough as sci-fi enemies that you could even put them in Matt Hancock’s episode of “I’m a Celebrity” and I’d say it was good. Add in the master, UNIT and the actual companions and various previous incarnations of the eponymous hero themselves from decades-old episodes and it can’t disappoint.

It might be fairly said that the story itself was rather chaotic and incoherent at times, so I don’t blame anyone who thought it was too messy to follow. But if you have any nostalgia for Dr W then you’ll probably like it.

Also a great ending. I often regret seeing all the early “the next Doctor will be played by X” stories as it naturally spoils the when and who of the relevant episode’s grand finale. But this one still managed to surprise me.

Matt Hancock, the former Conservative Health Secretary who previously had to resign that position due to having a Covid-rule-breaking affair with a member of his staff, has now had the whip fully withdrawn from him.

It turns out that rather than going to the effort of doing his day job representing his constituents he’s signed up to take part on the “I’m a Celebrity…Get me out of here!” reality show due to start in November.

Update:

Andy Drummond, deputy chairman of the West Suffolk Conservative Association, said he was looking forward to seeing Mr Hancock “eating a kangaroo’s penis”.

Aren’t we all? Thanks for that, BBC.

Happy Halloween!

My current favourite recently-learned spooky fact is that the infamous film The Exorcist - the one that originally induced audiences to faint, vomit and maybe even have heart attacks - is in fact based on a true story. It’s the story of Ronald Edwin Hunkeler, although his name wasn’t widely known until last year, after he had died the year before.

From the age of 14 it was reported that he had been possessed by something menacing. People around him heard strange noise, and things flew around the house. Red scratches appeared on his body, spelling out various words. He had violent outbursts and spoke Latin phrases in a strange voice. Walls shook and furniture slid. All of which you may have seen in the film’s recreation, albeit featuring a younger girl.

It’s not clear that the infamous head-spinning scene actually happened in Ronald’s case though. Which is shown below, but perhaps don’t click on it if you don’t like scary things or bad language.

In later life, Ronald became a NASA engineer. His work was used in the 1960s Apollo space missions and, more recently, for space shuttle materials. He apparently went out of his way to ensure people didn’t know of his exorcist related history, unfortunately going through his life always afraid of people figuring it out.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s now a matter of debate how true the true story was. The fact that The Exorcist is based on Ronald and what people around him reported is true. But whether the original events concerned were of paranormal origin or were in fact deliberate trickery done by the kid has been questioned at some length. But even if it was an act, it sounds like it was an unusually convincing and long-lasting one from a likely troubled child.

A descendent of Captain William Humphries has finally returned “Red Deer” - a book by Richard Jefferies that he borrowed in 1938 to a library in Coventry.

It’s in good condition apparently, which is kind of amazing when most likely it was kept in a house that was bombed in the Blitz.

Being 84 years overdue it had accumulated quite a fine. Fortunately at 1 old penny a day it only worked out to £18.27 in today’s money. Embarrassingly, I’ve paid library fines bigger than that. Today the library charges 25p per day, so if someone pulls the same stunt again that’ll cost them £7673.

It was returned by the Captain’s grandson Paddy Riordan, who told the BBC that he wasn’t sure why it had taken so long to get returned, but “It really wasn’t that exciting a book”.

Believe it or not it’s by no means the most overdue return of a library book. That honour is held by the catchily named “Scriptores rerum Germanicarum septentrionalium, vicinorumque populorum diversi”. That translates to “Various historians of the Northern Germans and of neighbouring peoples”.

A copy of that book was returned to Sidney Sussex College 288 years after it had been borrowed in the year 1668.

This one had been borrowed by Colonel Robert Walpole, who was an MP in 1689, and the father of the confusingly similar named Sir Robert Walpole, who Wikipedia records as being the first Prime Minister of the UK.

In that case no fine was exacted.

Elsewhere I’ve recently written about Dries Depoorter’s creepy art project “The Follower” that takes non-consensual photos of you taking photos of yourself.

And for data analysts who find that their favourite R library was archived from CRAN, an easy way to install it anyway.

Everyone’s favourite group of Covid-19 lockdown defying goats are back at it again.

Originally sighted running rampage over the human-deserted lockdown streets of Llandudno, it’s apparently got out of control enough that a special taskforce has had to be convened.

They’re descended from some Kashmir mountain goats that Queen Victoria, forgetting that a goat is for life, not just for Christmas, gave to Llandudno a century ago (or perhaps actually regifted from the Shah of Persia, to be accurate). She may have been a big fan of cashemere, but somehow hadn’t foreseen that Covid restrictions 100 years later would mean that their descendants wouldn’t have access to contraception.

Consequently: welcome to the baby boom generation of the goat world. OK boomer.

Who amongst us hasn’t been caught running wild in streets, sleeping in bus shelters, fighting in the car park and snacking on people’s hedges? Nonetheless, the goats have seemingly been encouraged to return to their home, Great Orme.

It all seems very good natured, with positive sentiments about them abounding, from anyone who hasn’t had their houses eaten at least. I’d imagine their relocation has probably not been entirely devoid of controversy though.

Last year there were rumours that they’d end up on the set of “I’m a Celebrity…Get me out of here!” also known as Gwrych Castle, which naturally is already full of beasts of a more spectral persuasion. Some of the residents of Llandudno were not super pleased at this idea, with one ominously suggesting that “If they take more than a few goats then people are going to be very upset.”.

(Also: a special thank you to my friend for highlighting this story - in memoriam of a site I used to have many years ago, sadly no longer in existence, which went through a phase of sharing these kind of critical goat news updates.)

Another probable first: our new Prime Minister is substantially richer than the King.

The Sunak household is estimated to have a net worth of £730 million, most of which comes from his wife Akshata Murty’s stake in her father’s Indian company, Infosys. That’s about double the estimate for King Charles’s wealth.

The Information Commissioner has warned companies to avoid using AI-based emotion detection technology to make meaningful decisions on the basis that there’s no evidence yet that it’s anything much beyond an ‘expensive random number generator’.

Derek Thompson writes about Britain’s economic decline over the past few years. In the midst of decreasing living standards, we’re now one of the poorest and least productive countries in Western Europe by some measures, especially outside of London.

In the past 30 years, the British economy chose finance over industry, Britain’s government chose austerity over investment, and British voters chose a closed and poorer economy over an open and richer one. The predictable results are falling wages and stunningly low productivity growth

There’s a recent tradition that each new Conservative Prime Minister gets to help design their own special lectern to deliver speeches from. They cost £2000-£4000 to make; a lucrative business in recent times I guess.

It seems like they’re usually supposed to convey a certain something the PM wants to project. David Cameron’s was supposed to look statesmanlike. Theresa May’s was designed to look feminine. Boris Johnson’s was a bit bulkier in order to cope with him thumping it during his more rousing speeches.

I’m not sure of the intent behind Liz Truss' twisty one, but it’s often described as looking like a game of Jenga. Based on Wikipedia’s description of that game as involving “creating a progressively more unstable structure” this seems apt.

The version of it that was used for speeches in the Conservative HQ is predictably covered in Union Jack designs.

Poor Rishi Sunak was appointed in such a hurry that there wasn’t time for him to design his own one. He’s ended up with a straight edition of Liz Truss’s one that had been created “just in case”. In case of exactly what I’m not sure, but, hey, it turned out to be useful after all.