Links - 4th December 2016

Telegram bot that tells you bus timings : singapore - "I create a bot that gives you the nearest bus stops as well as bus timings just by sending your location!"
This beats the bus apps

The Crown’s portrayal of history is an insult to my generation’s struggles | Harry Leslie Smith | Opinion | The Guardian - "I am angry that Netflix has spent $130m (£105m) on the 10-part series The Crown. This is a biopic concerning the marriage of Queen Elizabeth when she was still a princess in 1947, followed by her coronation in 1953. Unfortunately, The Crown views postwar Britain from the perspective of our sovereign and all who inhabited her world. This does an enormous disservice to the epoch, because it was a time when a socialist tide raised all boats. History was literally being made from the bottom up because, while Princess Elizabeth was being fitted for her wedding dress, ordinary Britons were dismantling a thousand years of feudal mentality through the creation of the welfare state. We’ve seen this approach before. Nothing better illustrates TV’s lush treacle homage to the landed gentry than Downton Abbey, a drama that ran for six series as a parlour-room interpretation of historical moments that shaped Britain at the turn of the 20th century. But Downton has not been the exception to the rule, rather a template used by TV and movie producers to crush the truth from history and make the entitled the heroes of narratives about our nation’s collective past."
This is like being upset Doctor Strange doesn't feature the perspective of ordinary Nepalis
Comment: "And there have been no tv series or movies EVER on the the ordinary joe, the worker, the plight of the down trodden? If you don't want to watch a tv series about the wealthy ruling class, don't watch Downton Abbey or The Crown, watch Billy Elliot, Brassed Off, How Green Was My Valley, Call the Midwife, Our Friends in the North, Grange Hill."

A woman ‘calling for jihad’ was invited on a German talk show

'Ferguson Effect' is a plausible reason for spike in violent US crime, study says - "A new justice department-funded study concludes that a version of the so-called “Ferguson Effect” is a “plausible” explanation for the spike in violent crime seen in most of the country’s largest cities in 2015... The new research cuts against months of statements from Obama administration officials denying that there is any evidence for a Ferguson Effect, a suggested link between protests over police killings of black Americans and an increase in crime and murder... Rosenfeld explores an alternative version of the Ferguson Effect, in which “longstanding grievances and discontent with policing in African American communities” are “activated” by controversial incidents of police violence, and then “chronic discontent erupts into violence”... This idea, which is not new in the fields of criminology or sociology, holds that the emergence of “honor codes”, for example ones which admonish “snitching” and promote informal resolutions to conflict, can drive violent crime. “Predatory violence increases because offenders believe victims and witnesses will not contact the police,” Rosenfeld said. Phillip Atiba Goff, a leading researcher on racial bias in policing and the president of the Center for Policing Equity, told the Guardian in April that it would a “reasonable hypothesis” to suggest “the decay in police legitimacy is harming both police morale and community morale”. Rosenfeld notes that 10 cities with relatively large African American populations accounted for two-thirds of the increase in homicides, which would be expected if the spike represented a crisis of confidence endemic to black communities... A study of Baltimore’s dramatic homicide spike found a close correlation between drops in some proactive policing and a rise in violence. Researchers dubbed this the Freddie Gray effect. An analysis of recent Chicago police and crime data by FiveThirtyEight found a similar link"

Murder Rate Spike Could Be 'Ferguson Effect,' DOJ Study Says - "Rosenfeld says "some version." That's because people disagree about what that effect is. It could be about police holding back, afraid they'll be criticized later for what they see as doing their job. Or you could look at it from the opposite point of view: that it's a matter of citizens — especially black people — losing faith in local cops... Rosenfeld says he wants to see more detailed statistics. For instance, he wants to see if the month-by-month arrest records show the police holding back. The problem is, the FBI is painfully slow about releasing detailed national numbers. We may not get a complete view of the Ferguson effect until this fall — a full two years after Ferguson itself."

Is There a ‘Ferguson Effect’? - The New York Times - "The sociologist Stephen Morgan. Working with a researcher named Joel Pally, he tracked reported crimes and arrests in Baltimore from before the 2014 uprising in Ferguson until well after the 2015 Baltimore protests over the death in police custody of Freddie Gray. Professor Morgan found that in the eight months after Ferguson, arrests did in fact decline in Baltimore. The police didn’t stop arresting people for serious offenses, but there were fewer arrests for things like vandalism and prostitution. There was even a drop-off in arrests for driving violations. This is consistent with Ms. Mac Donald’s idea that broken-windows policing suffered as law enforcement came under heightened scrutiny. Against Ms. Mac Donald’s idea, however, was the fact that crime rates didn’t budge. After the Freddie Gray protests, it was a different story... By itself, scrutiny of police departments doesn’t seem to move the needle when it comes to crime — contrary to the Ferguson effect thesis. On the other hand, when departments were required to alter their policies, signifying stronger public concern, crime was higher (temporarily) and officers spoke of working in a low-morale environment"

The Ferguson effect - "A 2005 study of de-policing after the anti-cop riots in Cincinnati in 2001 by University of Washington economist Lan Shi, for example, found a significant increase in felony crime caused by the drop-off in officer engagement."

Every Republican Presidential Candidate Is Hitler - "“Except for Adolf Hitler's extermination of the Jewish people, the American bombardment of defenseless peasants in Indochina is the most barbaric act of modern times.” That quote didn’t come from some Soviet hack coughing up copy for Moscow, but from Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern. (Some years later, McGovern would compare the Communist massacres in Cambodia to the Holocaust and call for some of that barbaric military intervention.)... Even though Goldwater had been an early NAACP member, NAACP leader Roy Wilkins warned, "Those who say that the doctrine of ultra-conservatism offers no menace should remember that a man come out of the beer halls of Munich and rallied the forces of rightism in Germany. All the same elements are there in San Francisco now." The NAACP accused Goldwater of appealing to “fear and bigotry”. Martin Luther King said, “We see danger signs of Hitlerism in the candidacy of Mr. Goldwater.”... Goldwater was Hitler. Nixon was Hitler. Reagan was Hitler. Bush was Hitler. None of the latter three men declared the Fourth Reich, made themselves dictators for life and ran concentration camps. But the Big Lie retroactively rewrites the past by claiming that last decade’s Hitler was a decent moderate while the latest Republican Hitler is a terrifying monster. Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan were all resurrected as moderate contrasts to each other and then to Bush. The process of recreating Bush as a moderate has already begun. And so each Republican makes the electoral journey from Hitler to a political moderate whom a latter generation of liberals mourns while complaining that this latest Republican really is Hitler."

Jim Howard's answer to Why are people comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler? - Quora - "One of Hitler's men shot my Dad! As far as I'm concerned equating any US politician with Hitler is holocaust denial . Most 'your guy is Hitler' comes from the Democrats, which is ironic when you think about it. After all, it's the Democrats who think that the government doesn't have enough power over individuals and businesses. And new this year, many Democrats are at last open socialists. Like Hitler"

How to View a List of Extensions Installed in All Your Browsers - "Installing extensions in web browsers can provide some very useful features. However, if you install a lot of extensions in multiple browsers, you might forget which you installed in which. We have an easy solution if you use Chrome, Firefox, and/or Internet Explorer."

Commentary: Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s slam of Trump does the nation no favors - "Those on the left who are tempted to give Ginsburg a pass on her comments should ask themselves if they would want Justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself in a Clinton v. Trump case if he went on Fox News and said he would move to Britain if Hillary Clinton were elected, or if he called her “Crooked Hillary.” Ironically, Ginsburg has taken a strong position that states can impose codes of conduct on judicial candidates to stop them from making statements that might raise questions about their impartiality. She has also found due process violations when judges serve on cases in which they have an apparent conflict of interest. What about due process rights here?"

Germany's Migrant Rape Crisis Spirals out of Control - "German authorities have repeatedly been accused of underreporting the true scale of the crime problem in the country. For example, up to 90% of the sex crimes committed in Germany in 2014 do not appear in the official statistics, according to André Schulz, the head of the Association of Criminal Police (Bund Deutscher Kriminalbeamter, BDK)."

Lawyer who focused on molest victim's breast size rapped by judge

The Best Restaurants in Lima Are Putting Culture on the Plate - "In 2015, Lima’s international airport welcomed a whopping 4.22 million international visitors, more than any other Latin American hub and double the figure of its closest competitor, Mexico City, according to MasterCard’s latest Global Destination Index (PDF). That number represented a 7 percent year-on-year rise and put it on the list of the top 10 fastest-growing tourism destinations worldwide since 2009. Think all those newcomers were on their way to Machu Picchu? A separate study by the UN World Tourism Organization claims that at least 42 percent of them were coming, first and foremost, to eat"

PETA Killed A Little Girl's Dog, And Her Family Wants Them To Pay. A Lot. - "Among the allegations is that Maya’s death fits with the group’s longstanding practice “to kill lost or stray pets” instead of finding them homes or returning them to their owners — a claim that is bolstered by PETA’s self-reported figures filed with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services."

China passes restrictive new film law - "China has passed a restrictive and long-discussed film law on Monday (Nov 7) banning content deemed harmful to the “dignity, honour and interests” of the People’s Republic and encouraging the promotion of “socialist core values”... Films must not “violate the country’s religious policies, spread cults, or superstitions”, insult or slander people"

Qing dynasty textbook shows how Chinese people tried to learn English 150 years ago - "If you think learning Chinese is hard now, how about mastering English pronunciation via Chinese characters in the mid-19th century?... The book contains helpful phrases such as, "You want cheap go buy other man," "Tomorrow I give you answer" and "Very much this silk." Along with words of wisdom like, "Don't stop half way and fail" and "Don't answer at random."
So the "racist" American "stereotypes" about Chinese people are actually true?

Giant Sucking Sound? That's Singapore Retail - "With a vacancy rate of 8.4 percent, shopping spaces are already the emptiest in almost a decade. And that's with e-commerce accounting for just 2 percent of total sales. Considering that 20 percent of China's retail is already online, industry forecasts of 7 percent e-commerce penetration in Singapore by 2025 may be a "gross underestimation," says Raghav Kapoor, CEO of Smartkarma, a research website... If an Amazon-Alibaba war breaks out in earnest, Singapore's warehouses might be a more interesting investment option than deserted stores."

Brazilian sex theme park set to open in 2018: Erotikaland - "Other bizarre parks around the world include BonBon-Land in Denmark, an X-rated theme park where you can ride on the Fart Dog Switchback, the Rubbish Dump and the Skid Mark roller-coaster, Pedroland, in South Carolina, based on a 1950s-era ethnic stereotype and The Holy Land Experience in Florida, which is based on the life and times of Jesus Christ."