Links - 29th May 2015

Tory MP Charlotte Leslie targeted by anti-fracking vandals - "Eco-warriors are suspected to be behind an attack on a Conservative candidate’s family which flooded their garden with 1,300 litres of oil... The Environment Agency had to be called in after the domestic heating oil – worth about £500 – saturated the soil and threatened nearby water sources. Miss Leslie said: ‘If this is linked to anyone with an environmental conscience, I will gently suggest that causing an environmental incident is perhaps not the best way to raise concerns about the environment."

My Weekend Confusing People With a Futuristic Credit Card - "It’s Stratos. It’s a single card designed to replace all your credit, debit, loyalty, and membership cards with one piece of plastic. It works with a smartphone app to store and switch between cards, and activates with a single tap. It lights up, you press on the plastic once to pick your card, and it swipes. It’s easy, and it’s going to confuse everyone."

Straits Times - Celebrity Chef Dishes Out Canteen Food - "Emmanuel Stroobant revamps students' menu for healthier and tastier meals. Students at Stamford American International School are now tucking into restaurant-quality dishes created by celebrity chef Emmanuel Stroobant... The menu is changed on a monthly basis and dishes are not repeated within the month. Students pay for their $9 meals by tapping their wristbands on a sensor"
???

Woman in Liberia 'caught Ebola after sex with survivor 6 months later'

Women patients feel more pain when with partner, study suggests - "bringing a loved one along for support may not be the best strategy for every patient."

Would you vote for this man? - "He certainly stood out from the other candidates, all of whom went for the standard awkward-school-photo-style approach. On a background of sunbursts and nationalistic designs, only Teruki’s name emblazoned in kanji characters appears to protect his modesty."

You Can Fill This Dildo With The Ashes Of Your Dead Lover

#GamerGate Makes the Left Uncomfortable Because Gamer Gaters Have Adopted the Left’s Tactics - "At the risk of engaging in some questionable psychoanalysis, allow me to suggest that one of the reasons the left is so disturbed by the rise of #GamerGate is that this is the first time in many years that these self-proclaimed Social Justice Warriors have met any sort of organized pushback. And they find it doubly infuriating to see the tools they have used so successfully—the Twitter mob, the email campaign, the claims of grievance—turned against them."

Tiger moms are just signalling to other tiger moms - "High parental investment also isn’t about the children in the proximate sense (though parents sincerely believe that it matters ultimately). Rather, it’s a form of inter-familial status competition. The “best” parents are those who invest the most, and achieve the best outcomes in their offspring."

The students who turn to sex work to make ends meet - "More than 6,750 students from across the UK took part in an online study by Swansea University. It claims nearly 5% of them had actually worked in the sex industry and male students were more likely to become involved than women."

What Happens When Apple Buys a Company You Depend On - "FoundationDB’s story isn’t a new one. Instead, it’s yet another a cautionary tale about putting too much faith in unproven companies offering proprietary software that could go away at any time—especially when a behemoth like Apple swoops in to buy it up. Often, such acquisitions are purely to hire new talent or integrate a startup’s technology into a new or existing product. In FoundationDB’s case, it’s unlikely that Apple wants to get into the business of selling enterprise database software. That leaves companies that depended on that software out of luck. And when startups suffer, so does innovation."

Cleaning with Bleach May Lead to Childhood Infections

You can now buy your cat battle armour

China teen who has undergone extensive plastic surgery's pictures are an internet hit - "China is renowned for its extreme cosmetic procedures. Last year a man reportedly had several procedures to look like Lei Feng, a Chinese soldier who became the face of communist party propaganda in the 1960s."

Girl Goes On Profanity-Laced Rant Over Job Rejection Because Of "Unprofessional" Clothes - "I hate to throw my own generation under the bus, but that status precisely sums up why employers hate hiring millenials. We’re entitled. We’re classless. We’re wholly unprepared for the real life outside of college “safe spaces.” (Oh my god. I sound so old. Where’s my cane?!”) “A woman comes in wearing something mildly sexual and this is somehow indicative of her dedication and work ethic?” How you present yourself matters. It says a lot about you. That might require investing in an outfit a step above Charlotte Russe and Forever 21 to get the job you want. This isn’t patriarchal oppression. If a dude showed up wearing something “mildly sexual” for a job interview, he’d probably be escorted from the building. It just isn’t the time or place for all that... Could it be that the employer sensed that you have “DRAMA!” written all over you? You’re not auditioning for the Real Programmers of Silcoin Valley. “You clearly are too stupid to realize who just turned down.” Right. More like, “Phew. Dodged that bullet.” You told a company in your desired field to go F themselves on social media. I’m sure the calls from prospective employers are just rolling in because YOU’RE GOING TO CHANGE THE WORLD and they better recognize... You were late to the interview... The job recruiter did you a favor by telling you what you did wrong. You should have used this as a learning experience to improve for next time but it’s so much easier to blame your mistakes on other people."
Keywords: fat, millenial

Darwin's Kids Doodled All Over His "Origin of Species" Manuscript - "Most of the original 600 pages are lost, and of the 45 pages that exist today, many were repurposed by Darwin's brood of 10 children as art supplies."

Jealous man fattens up girlfriend to ward off other men - After two years of over-eating she gained 40 kilograms, the Daily Mail reported. After awakening the food addict in Tai, he asked her to marry him in front of their favourite restaurants. He went down on bended knee and held out a bouquet made of chocolates. Tai said yes to the bizarre proposal, which was in front of their friends, who were each holding up pictures of food. Pan said he would feed Tai even more once she is his wife."

Complex societies evolved without belief in all-powerful deity - "a new analysis of religious systems in Austronesia — the network of small and island states stretching from Madagascar to Easter Island — challenges that theory. In these states, a more general belief in supernatural punishment did tend to precede political complexity, the research finds, but belief in supreme deities emerged after complex cultures have already formed... “I think the ordering of events these authors prefer is what one expects from first principles,” says evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel of the University of Reading, UK. He says that societies became more politically complex as networks of trade and reputation emerged, and that the key to this process was language, not religion. So what are MHGs for? “They are tools of control used by purveyors of religion to cement their grip on power,” says Pagel. “As soon as you have a large society generating lots of goods and services, this wealth can be put to use by someone who can grab the reins of power. The most immediate way to do this is to align yourself with a supreme deity and then make lists of things people can and cannot do, and these become ‘morals’ when applied to our social behaviour.” Anthropologist Hervey Peoples at the University of Cambridge, UK, says that there is good evidence that, even if MHGs do not drive political and social complexity, they can affect and stabilize it. “This study is impressive and innovative, but may be hard to generalize,” she adds."

Iowa police forced to shoot raging driver on college campus - "The driver of a stolen truck who was shot and killed on the Iowa State University campus Mondayhas been identified as 19-year-old Tyler Comstock of Boone. Ames police also have identified the officer who reportedly fired the shots that killed Comstock following a vehicle pursuit through town as Adam McPherson. McPherson has been with the Ames Police Department for more than eight years and is assigned to the day shift patrol division... It is standard procedure to place an officer involved in a shooting on paid leave pending the outcome of an investigation... instead of pulling over, Comstock is accused of speeding up and continuing west to Beach Avenue. Comstock, at one point, is accused of stopping the vehicle and reversing, pushing the trailer into the police car and partially onto its hood, according to police. Comstock then sped away again, police reported, running a red light and becoming unhitched from the trailer. McPherson continued to follow the truck around Union Drive and eventually north on Morrill Road -- against one-way traffic in the bike and pedestrian lanes, according to police. Witnesses told police that people were jumping out of the way of the truck, which then jumped the curb onto a grassy area north of the university's Campanile. McPherson unsuccessfully tried to ram the vehicle to get it to stop, police reported."
Stupid Gawker headline: Dad Calls Cops on Son to Teach Him a Lesson, Cops Shoot Son Dead

From Our Prison to Your Dinner Table - "Smith was frank about the strategy of keeping his businesses small, far beyond their production capability. “If I wanted to, I could have my prisoners build every desk and chair in every Wells Fargo in the country,” he told me. “But I don’t want to do that.” Wiser, he said, to stick with sectors that were invisible and niche, just small enough so that no one—not private enterprise, not organized labor, not consumers—would notice. “Prison officials don’t want to get into industries that will cause businesses on the outside to go to the media and raise hell,” says Alex Friedmann. Consumers are uncomfortable feasting on the products of slave labor; furniture companies tend to notice when they lose contracts that involve bidding on the open market; unions tend to protest competition from indentured servants."

Hilarious Twitter campaign against ridiculous food presentations