Other links

Here are some links that have nothing to do with decadence.

1. "Withersdale Church is an important and historic church and there is a box pew in the church for use by the owners of Thorpe Hall." That comes from the particulars of a house for sale in Suffolk. I did not know that that sort of thing is still allowed. I suppose I would have thought it quite wrong in the days when churches were full, but now I think it is charming. It says something that it is worth mentioning to potential buyers.

2. Everything you thought you guessed about the BBC is true: "A whiteboard would be marked up with a clumsy grid system. The grid would revolve around a set of key identities such as “woman”, “northern” or “poc” (person of colour). These would then be cross-categorised with political stances such as “Brexiteer”, “Tory” or “progressive”. Our task would then be to ensure that any proposed panel contained a complete balance of all these attributes. ... There is an understandable nervousness about criticising these sorts of editorial practices since it might provide material for the reactionary commentariat who have no desire to see any diverse voices in journalism at all.  ... Off-camera, a highly influential Westminster social circle revolves around trips to various holiday homes in continental Europe, where various MPs and the journalists who are supposed to report on them have long been playing just as hard as they work." Heaven forbid that the BBC provide material for the "reactionary commentariat". And does the BBC think that only "reactionaries" consider it utterly stupid to try to find a brown-skinned northern Remainer to balance a gay southern female Leaver or what have you?

3. Did you know that African Americans are much less likely to support the Democrats when no-one is watching? There are basically loads of shy black Tories in the US. Of course, having a darker skin and being right-wing in this country opens one up to all sorts of attacks from the left.

4. Fascinating article on how odd Germany is (economically).

5. I don't talk much about football. But you will want to see the worst 20 seconds of football ever played. You will also want to see the time when Donald Trump helped Saint and Greavsie to draw the teams for the Rumbelows Cup. That and Home Alone 2 as well: the Presidency will probably not take up much space in his biographies.

6. Babies. "The Left-leaning IPPR think-tank has addressed the “baby gap” — the difference between the number of children wanted by women and those they actually had — which is running at about 100,000 a year [in the UK]. ...  A Guardian survey in 2014 found a third of couples would have more children were they not so expensive; indeed if British women had all the babies they wanted, our birth rate would be above replacement level. In the US, which has seen huge falls in fertility in the past decade, 40% of women do not have all the children they wish." More here. If you have all the children you want in your family then you are a lucky person, and you are quite possibly very rich. This series of tweets, which has enjoyed some prominence, is relevant too: "Some might say: that's absurd, of course a family can't cover an entire health insurance premium, a 3-bed house, and college for two kids on a single worker's salary, that's not how anyone lives. But ... in the past a family COULD do that. Just not anymore." And so is this, from the BBC, about a chap in Seattle who decided to pay everyone $70k: ""Before the $70,000 minimum wage, we were having between zero and two babies born per year amongst the team," he says. "And since the announcement - and it's been only about four-and-a-half years - we've had more than 40 babies."" That is a demonstration of what economists refer to as the theory of revealed preferences.

7. Bad data visualisations with a big Indian (and therefore cricket) focus.

8. This is a rather specialised kind of humour, but I liked it. Abstract: "In recent years, a number of prominent computer scientists, along with academics in fields such as philosophy and physics, have lent credence to the notion that machines may one day become as large as humans. Many have further argued that machines could even come to exceed human size by a significant margin. However, there are at least seven distinct arguments that preclude this outcome. We show that it is not only implausible that machines will ever exceed human size, but in fact impossible". You might have spotted what it is really about.

9. Losing Taiwan means losing Japan.