Friday Links (NYE Edition)

Happy new [Gregorian] year! To celebrate I’ve made this Friday’s links as good news only.

• Remember the removal of sexual orientation from the UN’s resolution against extrajudicial killings that I blogged about a month ago? Well the USA made a point of reintroducing sexual orientation and after some lobbying Here’s a voting breakdown. Thanks USA for being a force of good in the UN.

• You know the trope about the US being the most religious developed nation? Actually, Americans are less religious than they claim, while self-assessment of religiosity is very high, actual observance isn’t much higher than in Europe.
• In Australia, the ACCC rules that Power Balance bracelets are a sham and that they have to refund all customers who think they’re not getting the magikal mystikal majestikal powers from said bracelet.
• More interesting news rather than good news. I stumbled on an old article about a woman who’s literally her own twin. It’s not a bad lateral thinking puzzle but a curious genetic anomaly, with the woman being a colony of cells from 2 completely different DNA sources.
• “The UK banking trade association wrote to Cambridge university to have a student’s master’s thesis censored because it documented a well-known flaw in the chip-and-PIN system”. The uni refused and wrote an awesome reply
• Speaking of awesome replies, the most awesome (1-line) reply to a stupid legal threat ever devised

See you on the other side, where I resolve to have more posts with actual thought in them.