Interesting Links for 29-10-2013

[andrewducker]

• Many Now Think Inflation Helps
  (tags: economics inflation )
• The Best Of The Internet's Reaction To The St. Jude Storm
  (tags: funny weather internet )
• This is what happens when you interrupt a programmer
  (tags: programming development thinking comics )
• Cockblocking Rapists Is A Moral Obligation; or, How To Stop Rape Right Now |
  (tags: advice rape )

Comments

[bart_calendar]

We pretty much cock block potential rapists at the bar I hang out in regularly.

For a while my apartment was the closet one to the bar so the bar staff would routinely buzz my door about midnight and then carry up a girl who was way too drunk and had been about to go home with an obvious creep and deposit her on my couch.

This got to the point where in a reference to pulp fiction someone printed out a sticker reading "Drunk Bitch Storage" and stuck it on my door.

Luckily now my friend Thomas has a flat that's even closer to the bar so they carry the girls there now.

[andrewducker]

They should get a spare room, dump people in there, and then charge them hotel rates...

[bart_calendar]

If they did that they'd have to admit they were breaking the law by serving drunk people.

[philmophlegm]

"Many now think inflation helps." Conversely, many think it doesn't. However, there probably is something of a consensus that Japanese-style deflation is certainly something to be avoided

[andrewducker]

Oh yes. 3% fine, 25% bad. I suspect there are arguments for 5%, I doubt there are good ones for anything higher than that!

[philmophlegm]

There will definitely be people who would be happy not worrying about higher inflation than 5% because they are focused on other targets - lower unemployment, higher growth for example - and they would see higher inflation as an acceptable trade-off.

It's essentially a moral trade-off because different segments of the population are affected by unemployment, low growth and inflation.

[andrewducker]

True, yes.

I'm thinking of the long-term here, largely. And that the long-term effects of high inflation would be bad for people at all levels. A few months of 25% inflation would be annoying, but shouldn't throw the country into disarray. If it stayed that way for long periods then investment would, I'd have thought, start to have problems.

I don't actually know enough about when it starts to go wrong though!

[momentsmusicaux]

> This is what happens when you interrupt a programmer

YES. THIS. A THOUSAND TIMES THIS.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I've likened it to building a complex mechanical device in my head before - and if you're interrupted before all the pieces are in place then you're left with a pile of pieces rather than a ticking watch!

[momentsmusicaux]

What really confuses Tolstoy is that I am able to be interrupted sometimes, or interrupt myself, but for a limited time only. So I can ask her a question about something, or respond to her briefly, because in my head I am holding all the pieces up in the air on pause. But then it turns into a conversation and I feel they are about to fall, and I have to go, 'Sorry, got to get back'.

[andrewducker]

Yup - I can hold it together for a few seconds in my short-term memory, but not very long.

[momentsmusicaux]

But I want my house built by nanobots, not a giant printer! This is all wrong!

:p

[alextfish]

Whoa, the Phonebloks thing is actually happening? I saw the Phonebloks idea a week or two ago, and thought it was a lovely idea and never ever going to happen. But now Motorola are actually planning on doing it?