Northern Ireland has been shrouded in cloud, with patches of drizzle, mist, and fog for more than a week.

As people across the UK roll their clocks back to GMT on Sunday morning, there's one clock that will always show the wrong time.

Council leader Liam Robinson says that "detailed work" is underway to mitigate the budget deficit.

Emily Sutcliffe says it is "unfair" she has lost her account documenting life with her two sons.

All about the Bibby Stockholm barge, which is moored in Portland, Dorset.

A new booking system has been put in place in Norfolk’s waste recycling centres.

The tourist information centre in Cromer has been vital for some, but is set to close.

Back in November 2016 Music Ally wrote an article about how Laura Marling fans could pre-save her new album on Spotify. This was the first ever pre-save. This functionality wasn’t (and still isn’t) an official Spotify tool, it was put together by David Emery (who now works at Apple Music) who was VP of global...

Customers are some of your best leads. According to a 2022 HubSpot Blog survey of more than 500 sales professionals, more than 70 percent said that upsell and cross-sell drives up to 30 percent of their revenue.

Boundary anomalies, ahoy!

UPDATE: MSPs have voted that Grant's bill will have to go to consultation and will not be fast-tracked. Which is good news. But the fight is not over, and expect more to come when the consultation hits.

At the same time that the Moratorium 2012 campaign kicks off in London, spearheading a common-sense approach to sex work, there appears a bid in Scotland to try to make prostitution illegal. Just to recap: soliciting, running a brothel, and kerb crawling are already illegal (as too are trafficking and sexual exploitation of children). Exchanging sex for money at this point is not. Not yet.

Labour MSP Rhoda Grant claims "Scotland should become an unattractive market for prostitution and therefore other associated serious criminal activities, such as people trafficking for sexual exploitation, would be disrupted." Grant is, unfortunately, badly informed and wrong. I'm going to keep this one short and sweet because the points are pretty straightforward...

Scotland does not have a sex trafficking epidemic

Sex trafficking is the excuse frequently given these days to harass and criminalise sex workers. Problem is, it's not remotely the "epidemic" they would have you believe. If you're not already up to speed on the whys and wherefores, I highly recommend reading Laura Agustin's work on this. Or if I may be so cheeky to suggest you could also buy my book. 

Specifically, it is not happening in Scotland.  “In Scotland, to the best of my knowledge, we don't have a conviction for human trafficking,” said police constable Gordon Meldrum. Meldrum had previously claimed research “proved” the existence of 10 human trafficking groups north of the border, and 367 organised crime groups with over 4000 members. “We had one case which was brought to court previously but was abandoned. My understanding is it was abandoned due to a lack of evidence, essentially.” Strange how the evidence seemed to disappear precisely when someone was asked to produce all these fantasy baddies, isn't it? 

It's not only Scotland where the trafficking hype falls flat though: investigation throughout the UK has comprehensively failed to find any supposed sex trafficking epidemic.

Not convinced by the evidence? Then consider this: criminalising sex workers and their clients removes the most reliable information sources police have for investigating abuses. Police don't have a great track record on this: In interviews by the Sex Workers Project with 15 trafficking survivors who experienced police raids, only one had been asked by law enforcement if she was coerced, and only after she was arrested. SWOP-NYC make this case clearly.

Criminalising sex work has been shown in Scotland to make criminal activity worse

Criminalisation has all kinds of effects on the behaviour of sex workers, but unfortunately, none of those effects are good. Fear of police forces sex workers to get into clients’ cars quickly, and possibly be unable to avoid dangerous attackers posing as clients. When vigilantes and police roam the pavements, sex workers wait until the wee hours to come out, making them more isolated and vulnerable to harm.

Such an approach can also result in a transfer of activity from streetwalking to other ways of getting money. High-profile crackdown results in repeated arrests of prostitutes, which translate to fines that sex workers, now burdened with criminal records, are unable to pay except by more prostitution or by fraud, shoplifting, and dealing drugs.

Take Aberdeen, for instance. From 2001 onward, the city had an established tolerance zone for sex workers around the harbour. That ended with passage of the Prostitution (Public Places) (Scotland) Act in 2007. In the following months the city centre experienced an influx of streetwalkers and an increase in petty crimes.

Quay Services, which operates a drop-in centre for streetwalkers, reported that sex workers became more afraid to seek assistance, and the number of women coming to the centre dropped to “just a handful”. There was also evidence that displacing sex workers led to more activity in the sex trade, not less – convictions for solicitation tripled.

This kind of ‘crime shuffling’ takes prostitution out of one area and dumps it on another. It only resembles an improvement if you fail to look at the full picture.

Prohibition never works

There is a lot of talk in the political sphere about the need for “evidence based policy”. This means rejecting approaches that are moralistic and manipulative. Sex workers have suffered the tragic consequences of prejudicial social attitudes that lead to bad policy. The prohibition approach has not worked. It will never work. The people who endorse this view are putting people in danger and should not be guiding public opinion any longer. Disliking sex work is not a good enough argument to justify criminalising it. Is there any public interest served by preventing adults from engaging in a consensual transaction for sexual services? No, there is not.

Bit like the war on drugs: making the business profitable only to criminals, awaiting the inevitably grim results, then claiming that it’s the drugs themselves, not the laws, wot caused it. Few reasonable people believe that line of argument when it comes to drugs. Why does anyone believe it when it comes to sex?

Moral disapproval is a bad basis for policymaking. I don't find the idea of taking drugs at all appealing, but I don't assume my own preferences should be the basis for law.

The condescension heaped on people who do sex work is embarrassingly transparent. All this mealy-mouthed, 'oh but we want to help them, really’. How’s that again? By saddling people with criminal records and taking away their children? Do me a favour.

As well as the happy prostitutes there are unhappy sex workers in need of support. Society should protect the unwilling and underage from sexual exploitation and provide outreach for those who need and want it. We already have laws and services for that. Maybe the laws should be more intelligently enforced and the services better supported. But prosecuting the victimless crimes does neither of these. It helps no one.

The potential existence of abuses does not mean such work should be automatically criminalised if for no other reason than doing so makes the lives of people in sex work worse, not better. Criminalisation is the very opposite of compassion. Rhoda Grant is hiding behind an "end demand" approach that will not achieve what she claims it will, but will punish sex workers and send those with already chaotic lives further into a downward spiral. If that isn't punishing them with no hope for change then I don't know what is.

It's time we started acting like grownups and stopped pretending that making something illegal makes it cease to exist.

Mercedes have put the car from Lewis Hamilton's controversial 2021 championship defeat on display in the lobby at their factory.

1. Why is Trump’s election as US president prompting a Bitcoin surge?  Al Jazeera English
2. Why crypto mania is reaching new heights  The Economist
3. Cryptocurrency traders: share what got you into crypto, and how you feel about recent developments  The Guardian
4. Bitcoin Continues Its Ascent To $100,000 Amid Ethereum, Solana, Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, BNB, XRP, Avalanche Rebound  Forbes
5. What to know about bitcoin’s post-election rally  BNN Bloomberg

by Mitchell Longan[1] Introduction The European Parliament is currently considering a proposal to address problems of piracy and other forms of copyright infringement associated with the digital world.[2] Article 13 of the proposed Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single

By Hasan Basri Cifci[1] In the world of 2014, the Commission of Facebook/WhatsApp merger case[2] concluded that integration and interoperation of Facebook and WhatsApp were unfeasible. However, Facebook integrated its three subsidiaries (WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook) under its brand in

For a long time, high school students have been forced to practice selecting correct answers on college scholastic ability tests. Recently, it has been suggested that schools introduce biomimicry activities for STEM education to develop students' 21st century competency. However, there have been arguments about which system is more appropriate in terms of enhancing a student's competency development. Therefore, we evaluated neurological evidence of students' competency using fMRI scans taken during the selecting a correct answer for a biology question and during a biomimicry activity. Results showed that the repetitive practice of selecting correct responses limited a student's neurological activities to the brain network of the visual cortex and the front-parietal working memory cortex. However, the biomimicry activity simultaneously involved diverse prefrontal, parietal and temporal cortexes, and the putamen, limbic and cerebellum lobes. Therefore, this study proposes that the biomimicry activities could stimulate their coordinated brain development.

In this paper, we study and provide algorithms for source-provenance of answers to extended SPARQL queries. Extended SPARQL queries are an extension of SPARQL 1.1 queries which support not only a single dataset but multiple datasets, each in a particular context. For example, normal subqueries, aggregate subqueries, (NOT) EXISTS filter subqueries may (optionally) have their own dataset. Additionally, GRAPH patterns can query multiple RDF graphs from the local FROM NAMED dataset and not just one. For monotonic queries, the source why provenance sets that we derive for an answer mapping are each the minimal set of sources appearing in the query that if we consider as they are while the rest of the sources are considered empty, we derive the same answer mapping. We show that this property does not hold for non-monotonic queries. Among others, knowing source why provenance is of critical importance for judging confidence on the answer, allow information quality assessment, accountability, as well as understanding the temporal and spatial status of information.

Aim/Purpose: The paper introduces new concepts including cognitive mapping, cognitive message processing, and message resonance. Background: This paper draws upon philosophy, psychology, physiology, communications, and introspection to develop the theory of cognitive mapping. Methodology: Theory development Contribution: The theory offers new ways to conceptualize the informing process. Findings: Cognitive mapping has a far-reaching explanatory power on message resonance. Recommendation for Researchers: The theory of cognitive mapping offers a new conceptualization for those exploring the informing process that is ripe for exploration and theory testing. Future Research: This paper forms a building block toward the development of a fuller model of the informing process.

In my knowledge graph class yesterday we talked about the SPARQL query language and I illustrated it with DBpedia queries, including an example getting data about the movie Double Indemnity. I had brought a google assistant device and used it to compare its answers to those from DBpedia. When I asked the Google assistant “Who […]

The post Why does Google think Raymond Chandler starred in Double Indemnity? appeared first on UMBC ebiquity.

Power in business schools is ubiquitous. We develop individuals for powerfull positions. Yet, the way we deal with power is limited by our utilitarian focus, avoiding the visceral nature of power. In relation to this we address two questions business schools don't ask: what is the experiential nature of power? How are we teaching power? We use experiential, aesthetic developments on power in the social sciences to critique the rational-utilitarian stance on power found in business schools, drawing on the work of Dewey and French philosopher Levinas to treat power as a lived phenomenon. We overview and critique approaches to teaching power in business curricula informed by our own research on Executive MBA students learning through choral conducting. Taking an appreciative-positive stance, this research showed students developing new, non-rational, non-utilitarian understandings of power. They developed nuanced learning on the feeling, relationality and responsibility of exercising power. Coming out of this we argue for more experiential and reflexive learning methods to be applied to the phenomena of power. Finally we shine a reflexive light on ourselves and our 'power to profess', suggesting ways we can change our own practice to better prepare our students for the power they wield.

Building on prior work showing that abusive supervision is a reaction to subordinates' poor performance, we develop a self-control framework to outline when and why supervisors abuse poor performing subordinates. In particular, we argue poor performing subordinates instill in supervisors a sense of hostility towards the subordinate, which in turn leads to engaging in abusive supervision. Within this self-control framework, poor performance is more likely to lead to abusive supervision when (a) the magnitude of the hostility experienced is higher (e.g., for those with a hostile attribution bias), or (b) the translation of hostility into abusive supervision is unconstrained (e.g., for those who are low in trait mindfulness). In two experimental studies with full-time supervisors where we manipulated the independent variable (Study 1) and the mediator (Study 2), and in a multi-wave and multi-source field study with data collected from supervisor-subordinate teams (50 supervisors and 206 subordinates) at two time points (Study 3), we found overall support for our predictions. Implications for how to reduce the occurrence of abusive supervision in the workplace are discussed.

Hierarchy is a reality of group life, for humans as well as for most other group-living species. And yet, there remains considerable debate about whether and when hierarchy can promote group performance and member satisfaction. We suggest that progress in this debate has been hampered by a lack of clarity about hierarchy and how to conceptualize it. Whereas prevailing conceptualizations of hierarchy in the group and organization literature focus on inequality in member power or status (i.e., centralization or steepness), we build on the ethological and social network traditions to advance a view of hierarchy as cascading relations of dyadic influence (i.e., acyclicity). We further suggest that hierarchy thus conceptualized is more likely to capture the functional benefits of hierarchy whereas hierarchy as inequality is more likely to be dysfunctional. In a study of 75 teams drawn from a wide range of industries, we show that whereas acyclicity in influence relations reduces conflict and thereby enhances both group performance and member satisfaction, centralization and steepness have negative effects on conflict, performance, and satisfaction, particularly in groups that perform complex tasks. The theory and results of this study can help to clarify and advance research on the functions and dysfunctions of hierarchy in task groups.

Accumulated knowledge on organizational justice leaves little reason to doubt the notion that organizational members benefit when leaders adhere to interpersonal justice rules. However, upon considering how justice behaviors influence subordinates' cognitive processes, we predict that interpersonal justice has a surprising, unintended negative consequence. Supervisors who violate interpersonal justice rules trigger subordinates to search for reasons why their supervisors are threatening them, causing subordinates to be more attuned to supervisors' individual characteristics and therefore unlikely to use stereotypes when evaluating them. In contrast, supervisors who adhere to interpersonal justice rules allow subordinates to divert attention away from them, leading subordinates' judgments of their supervisors to be influenced by stereotypes. Consistent with these predictions, in a survey we found that minority supervisors faced bias relative to Caucasian supervisors when supervisors adhered to—but not when they violated—interpersonal justice rules. We replicated this effect in an experiment and established that it is explained by an alternating pattern of stereotype activation and inhibition: participants viewed minority supervisors to be more deceitful than Caucasians when supervisors adhered to—but not when they violated—interpersonal justice rules. We then conducted exploratory analyses and identified one factor (unit size) that mitigates this troubling pattern.

As an academic, I have cheered for and welcomed the open access (OA) mandates that, slowly but steadily, have been accepted in one way or another throughout academia. It is now often accepted that public funds means public

The tech billionaire joins the incoming administration to "dismantle government bureaucracy" - but what's in it for both of them?

When the chips are down, Cornyn has shown he’s more interested in placating anti-gun voices than defending the rights of law-abiding Americans.

...

There’s a high chance your car insurance has gone up recently. If not, the bad news is it might increase at your next renewal. But there’s good news, too. You don’t have to simply accept an auto insurance increase! Take money expert Clark Howard’s advice to save. He says: “This year coming up in ‘25 […]

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A psychological lens examines the low crime rate in Baltistan

Just how brilliant is the most iconic Pakistani hit of all time?

A pinch of salt can do more than you think!

In this article you will find the best cloud storage for photos.

The post Why should you find the best cloud storage for photos 2020? appeared first on Template Monster Help.

The trailer has left people feeling confused, somewhat surprised and also overjoyed. For me, it's disappointment.

I only have 3 panels, people.

Real reason why Ben Affleck 'eager' to finalize divorce with Jennifer Lopez

Ben Affleck is reportedly eager to finalize the divorce proceedings with Jennifer Lopez.

Revealing the reason, an insider told DailyMail that the 52-year-old filmmaker is "over the constant questions about...

Activism: As the Pirate Party slowly veered to the left in politics, I got to experience Sullivan’s Law, which states that organizations that don’t outright declare themselves otherwise will inevitably drift off to the political left. The law doesn’t explain this phenomenon, but I think I can.

The Pirate Party was unique in its composition of activists. Whereas most political organizations can plot the political attitudes of their activists to a bell curve on the political left-to-right scale, that is, the organization can identify a clear peak and center mass where they lie politically, the Pirate Party instead had a complete empty trough in the middle, with waves crashing into the left and right wall on the left-to-right spectrum plot.

We had the most fervent anarchocapitalists and the most fervent anarchocommunists. At the same time. Cooperating. That was probably something of a political first. It also allowed me to see differences between these two groups that weren’t clear from the outset, and which might explain why organizations drift left over time.

O’Sullivans Law states that any organization that is not expressly right-leaning in politics will change over time to become left-leaning. There are some hypotheses as to why, including the observation that right-wing people will tolerate and even welcome left-wing people in an otherwise unpolitical organization, but that left-wing people will generally not tolerate right-wing people. While this observation can be made, I believe it is not enough for an entire organization to shift politically.

The explanation is far simpler, and it’s been hiding in plain sight for everyone.

Left-wing people are collectivists. They believe that the greater good shall have precedence over the wishes and desires over the individual, and organize to achieve this. Conversely, they do not feel at home when somebody tells them to promote a cause in whatever way they themselves think is best in their individual situation.

Right-wing people are individualists. They believe that the greatest good, even for the worst-off people, is best achieved by giving individuals as free reign as possible so that innovation and creativity can take place. Conversely, they do not feel at home when somebody is trying to dictate to them what to do and not to do.

This is almost painfully clear when working with both groups at the same time in a political organization. Ah yes, that’s the magic word, right there. Organization. A Non-profit organization, specifically. Do you know how these are run?

Basically without exception, they are run as a general assembly, where people are elected to positions and decisions are taken with a majority vote.

…decisions are taken with a majority vote.

It became painfully clear to me, that the form of a neutral association — the form we have, or had, accepted as neutral — is actually nothing of the sort. It turns out, that an organization that takes collective decisions promotes people who like collective decision-making, and turns away people who prefer individual initiatives.

The association with its board, its general assembly, and its majority votes isn’t neutral. It is pushing its membership left, through its very nature, by selecting for those who enjoy collective decision-making and procedural trickery, and marginalizing those who prefer individual initiatives.

This is why, if I were to found a new political organization today, I would never use the traditional Non-profit Association format, for it is not neutral and it will ruin whatever original vision you had.

For this same reason, I have come to be sceptical of center-right political parties who are run by this majority vote. They’ll never be as powerful as they can be, had they instead organized by individual initiatives — because they are competing against left-wing political parties who feel right at home in this form of organization, which they usually mandated to be the norm for everyone.

Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivers a statement during the United Nations climate change conference COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan November 12, 2024. — Reuters

BAKU: Climate change remains a point of concern and contention for countries around the world who are now fighting...

Latinos left the Democratic party in a mass exodus last week, costing Kamala Harris the presidency.

“It's a real shame for sufferers of PTSD and CPTSD, who can greatly benefit from therapy with these substances,” one respondent said.

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"I think he's a person on our team that has some offensive confidence right now."

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While we cannot be entirely sure what cows think about when they listen to music, we can safely assume that they like it. But cows ... Read more

The post Why Do Cows Like Music? appeared first on CMUSE.

The contemporary dating scene might, at times, resemble TS Eliot’s wasteland or, worse, a post-apocalyptic landscape punctuated by primeval beings who shy away from light. Apps like ... Read more

The post Seven Reasons Why You Should Date a Classical Musician appeared first on CMUSE.

“The hiring in some sectors and the layoffs in others is a clear reflection of the ‘feast or famine’ realities occurring with those industries serving consumers."

The post While many file for unemployment, these companies are hiring thousands. Here’s why. appeared first on Boston.com.

The Massachusetts House passed a bill that requires employers to disclose data about wages and post salary ranges on job listings.

The post Here’s why readers want Mass. employers to list salaries on job listings appeared first on Boston.com.

"After today, I don't know how you don't walk away and just feel better about that quarterback position in there with Drake Maye."

The post Former Patriot Ted Johnson explained why Drake Maye is preferable to ‘mopey’ Caleb Williams appeared first on Boston.com.

"I just felt like I didn’t fit into the situation."

The post Former Pro Bowler explains why he ‘didn’t like’ playing for the Patriots  appeared first on Boston.com.

"He's the one who took my game to a whole new level," Gronkowski said of Belichick, adding that he thinks his former coach will be "unbelievable" as a television analyst.

The post Rob Gronkowski discussed why ending up with Bill Belichick, Patriots was ‘perfect fit’ appeared first on Boston.com.

"I had to go down with the ship, buddy."

The post Julian Edelman explains why he didn’t join Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski on Buccaneers  appeared first on Boston.com.