Cererean Scratchpad

 The Beleaguered Boris Johnson, desperate to do something to keep his position, has asked his cabinet for proposals on how to deal with the cost of living crunch. Predictably, the suggestions were dreadful , and including such big brain ideas as reducing the frequency of vehicle inspections (because it's not like malfunctioning vehicles can cause any problems) and relaxing the standards around childcare. Labour, of course, want to tax the oil companies, as they apparently lack any sense of where the oil companies get the money from that they wish to tax, or any idea of what is driving the price increases. Not that it will help -- though it may help some people on an individual level, or maybe even catch the eye of someone with a small amount of power and influence -- but I figure I will throw my own ideas out about what we can do to help people affford to live. Some I have already suggested here. 1. Legalise E-scooters. The fact that you need a driving license to legally ride thes...

My mind is like this: it's not that I process things more slowly than anyone else (if anything I suspect it's significantly faster), but what I do is process them far more deeply . It might be compared to running a model on a computer -- the more detailed the model, the more accurate the output will be, but you will pay for it in having to wait far longer for the model to run. When my mind has grabbed hold of something, it will not let go of it until it has digested it and understood it. There is a model of autism called monotropism that holds that the autistic brain focuses on fewer things at any one time than a neurotypical brain does. This is the only model I have come across that accurately describes how I experience what is called "autism" (truthfully, I'm not sure it exists in any meaningful sense, rather than being a collection of disparate traits thrown together by clueless psychologists). I find it a great shame that it isn't given much attention, ...

Twitter isn't a wild west of conversation. The wild west had codes of honour people were expected to follow. We have to make our own. So here's the one I think I try to follow. Still trying to get clear what I exactly feel about these things.   Quote Tweeting If used to add something useful to the discussion, QT away. If you're not adding anything though, just quoting from the persons own thread or article... don't, this is just an attempt to steal likes from them (of course if you're trying to quote tweet in a thread, where you don't have an alternative way of adding it, feel free). Possibly allowable if you need to make it clear it's a thread so that people will click through. If you're doing it to dunk, check their follower count. Dunk upwards. It is bad form if you have tens of thousands of followers to direct a pile on to someone with fifty four who never expected to be seen by so many. I try to keep within an order of magnitude, so at present anyon...

I actually don't know how normal it is, but it's a popular format, so... Gift giving is an ancient practice which strengthens social bonds. It also has the potential, as per the Sam Vimes Boots Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness, to help bootstrap someone to a higher level of wealth by providing them with goods that they can't afford for themselves. If the man who is buying the cheap cardboard boots has a wealthy friend, that friend could buy him a pair of leather boots that he could not afford to buy himself, and raise his disposable income by some ten dollars a year. However, there's a catch. Gift giving between non-kin is generally understood to be reciprocal. We are naturally predisposed to look favourably on people who give us things, that is why it is possible to buy peerages. Quid pro quo isn't a bad thing, it's what creates a mutual bond of obligation. But if one person in the relationship can afford significantly greater value gifts than the other, giv...

  MBTI. Enneagram. The Big Five. The Dark Triad. A myriad of psychiatric conditions and disorders. Each capturing a small part of what makes us *us*. But only ever a very small part. People cannot be reduced down to some number of axes on which they vary. These are useful tools for self understanding, yes, but they alone cannot provide a big picture view. What we need is not a category to place ourselves in, but a map. We are not some neat garden, but a forest of personality traits, experiences, traumas, values etc, all of which interact with each other in complex ways to produce eight billion different people at present. And I think I have the beginnings of a mapping tool. Emphasis on beginnings -- this is a start, not a finished product, and it may or may not turn out to be useful. It starts with two things: the drives one has towards a thing, and the way one understands said thing and takes in information. One to act, the other to recieve. This then breaks down into t...

The Strong Female Character. She is strong, she is fierce, she can compete with the men on their own turf. She Isn't Like Other Girls. Or she embraces her femininity and uses her sexuality as a weapon, turning the thing that draws men who wish to control her upon them, flipping the tables so that she is the one who is in control. It's all so tiresome. There seems to be the idea pervading our culture that the only way a woman can have value is if she's a man or a sex object. Often when a character who doesn't fit either of these categories (*cough* Sansa Stark), her strengths are overlooked and her flaws emphasised, perpetuating the idea that femininity equals weakness and the most valuable values are the ones seen as masculine. So here are several of my favourite characters who I feel are strong whilst also demonstrating their femininity, in no particular order after the first. It is perhaps no surprise that most of them are mothers. 1. Doctor Janet Frasier (Stargate SG...

Britain, as all countries are, is facing a crisis. Oil prices have shot up on the back of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Energy prices were already there after two years of uncertainty. Diesel is running low. Despite this, riding an e-scooter on the roads or pavements is still illegal without onerous licensing and insurance. This is still the case, even though they are comparable at worst to electric-assist bicycles.The transport committee of Parliament has called for them to be allowed on roads and cycle lanes without the requirement for a license, as is the case of e-bikes. Scooters and bicycles, both human powered and electric assisted, are an ideal form of transport for intermediate journeys, between one and five miles. Increasing uptake of e-scooters would have benefits beyond replacing short car trips however, as they would significantly extend the number of people within five to ten minutes of public transport. At walking pace, only people within four hundred metres of a rail...

 Transport takes a quarter of the energy used in the United Kingdom. Are there ways we can reduce this? I think so. Here are a few thoughts on this, from the easy and most plausible to least. 1. Move back to click-and-collect. How much fuel is consumed driving from house to house to deliver small packages? Especially considering that engines have to either be idled or switched off, introducing inefficiencies. Shifting the last mile delivery back on to the customer, who can walk or bike or scoot to pick up their things, could save some fuel. 2. Push-on/push-off ferries. Like roll-on/roll-off, but linking the containers into trains so they don't require a truck to get them on the ferry. The rapid loading/unloading offered by this may open up the possibilities of using coastal transport and inland waterways a lot more, with trucks taking them short distances from the riverside to their destination. 3. Micro-containerisation. Another quick loading/unloading concept. If there are standa...

We're no longer in winter, just in time for gas prices to go crazy, and with them electricity prices. When winter comes again, many of us will face a harsher struggle to stay warm than before. Perhaps all of us will, if shortages require rationing. So I have a few thoughts on what we can do to lower the demands for heating that could be implemented quickly and fairly cheaply. They aren't new; our ancestors faced the same struggle, we have much experience from them we can draw on when we need to. If they were new, they wouldn't be quick and cheap(ish). 1. Mist showers. The mist shower (invented by Buckminster Fuller -- who else?) atomisers water to a far higher degree than a normal shower. This great reduces water flow, whilst still soaking the body. Testing by NASA shows that they are as effective as normal showers at washing the body, with a far lower demand for hot water and so energy. It is plausible that we could cut energy use by 1.5 kWh per shower, without sacrificin...

 Wonder Woman (2017) tells the story of a goddess, Diana (Gal Gadot), who seeks to end WWI (which in the movie is driven by the god Ares) and prevent the use of chemical weapons by the German Empire to turn the tide of the war in their favour. She is joined in the mission by the American spy Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), who discovered this plot, and who in my view takes the film from good to great. Because Steve Trevor is human. A talented one, yes, but after all still human, with all the limitations that that carries. And I believe that his inclusion, contrasting with the literal goddess Diana, serves in some way as an audience surrogate and adds a dimension not usually found in superhero movies. This is seen nowhere better than in the celebrated "No Man's Land Scene". Diana and Steve are making their way to the front line when they come across a woman with a young child, who has fled from a nearby village that was attacked by the Germans. She has nothing, and those who co...