"You don't make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies." - Yitzhak Rabin
***
Following anti inequality logic, it's better not to have new drugs because only the rich can afford them
If a lesbian tells another woman that she likes her dress, is it sexual harassment?
To some people, equality means that everyone must be equally miserable.
Given how worked up feminists get over terms like "chairman" it is curious their own movement's name has a gender bias
Should a feminist support discrimination against the childless in the form of family-friendly policies?
If you don't want to hire someone who's married with children for a job that requires frequent overtime at night and on weekends and lots of business travel, is that discrimination?
"My impression online is that the amount of blog/Facebook space dedicated to bashing actual, open racists and bigots such as the KKK/ISIS/Stormfront is insignificant, while the harshest vitriol is reserved for moderates who oppose racism, but not in the exact terms they want."
"It's very easy to poke fun at extremists. Easy to the point where taking the opportunity says more about you than them."
The real diversity problem in SciFi is homocentrism: why are humans always the centre of the universe?
"Institutionalised racism is like the unified field theory of social theories- it can be used to explain anything."
Post colonialism is about blaming colonialism for everything
"Color-blindness is not the denial that issues related to race still exist, it's merely a state of mind that demands you see people as PEOPLE before anything else. If everyone adopted that mentality then issues pertaining to race would disappear."
[On being upset at slavery-linked institutions] "How far back do you go with this type of shit.....I'm still really upset when the french invaded Britain in 1066 and don't even get me started on what those scandinavians used to do what with all their raping and pillaging....bastards"
Social justice warriors need to hang together. Because they've unfriended everyone else.
Why is it okay to discourage teenage pregnancy but not single parenthood?
If the rise of identity politics is a reaction to the narrowing of the ideological spectrum, it just shows that despite all the kumbaya rhetoric, people want enemies and think the differences between us are more important than the similarities
50 years ago if you'd talked about gay marriage you'd have been trolling
100 years ago if you'd talked about animal rights you'd have been trolling
200 years ago if you'd talked about women's rights you'd have been trolling
If you hate haters, are you a hater?
"Opponents of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party argued that the Nazis were neither a party of workers nor socialists. Today, we are told again and again that Islamic State is ‘neither a state nor Islamic’, and that when we use the term ‘Islamic State’, it only ‘feeds into its hands’. In fact, the contrary is true: believing that refusing to call the Islamic State by its own name can somehow delegitimise it is only self-deluding. (A rose, or a National Socialist, by any other name is still what or who it is.)"
[On the Europe refugee crisis] "The problem is that, it seems, many of the refugees, and children of the refugees, blame the secular countries, rather than their own leaders' failed policies, or, gasp, their own cultures. It's always colonialism, imperialism, support for dictators, crusader this, the Jews that."
"Taliban also trained by Saudi and Pakistan...Not just U.S.. Why omit the culprits without whom USA won't be able play a role? Or is it USA is pawn in Saudi agenda"
Isn't blaming Western foreign policy for Islamist terror in western countries victim blaming?
Somehow Western intervention leads to violent extremism only in the Muslim world.
"The peaceful majority is irrelevant. o ask the Jews"
Would the Chinese privilege crowd rather Chinese or white people appear in ads in Singapore?
There's an easy way to give single mothers equal benefits in Singapore.
Take away benefits from married mothers.
The problem with giving people benefits is they soon turn into entitlements (e.g. single mothers in Singapore not getting the same benefits as married ones)
Maybe the way to keep hawker food in Singapore cheap: allow them to move back to street hawking - no rent paid
If the number of Tamil speakers dwindles to 0.1% of the population, will it still remain a national language?
"If we were to all work according to gebiz and follow procedures, the academic year would be over before anything gets done"
[On 377A] "Liberal wish-list usually too long while giving little back in return, it's not like they will vote for them anyway so no incentive for govt. to alienate it's vote base to court a group that doesn't like them."
Keywords: liberal wishlist, liberal wish list
"You really cannot hope that something that will happen in 50 years' time is proof that it should be effected now." - on 377A
Masturbating in an echo chamber can be fun, but if you get your jizz on people outside it that's disgusting.
It's sad people like to watch videos of people on YouTube talking. I don't know about them but I read faster than they talk.
Saturday, February 06, 2016
Links - 6th February 2016
"Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off." - Raymond Chandler
***
The racial tensions behind Sweden’s idyllic facade - "I’m three times screwed in Swedish society: I’m black, Muslim and Somali"
Trader is fined £300 by council for using black bin bags instead of grey - "the company that supplies the sacks had run out of them, so staff at Charli, a designer fashion store, were forced to use normal black bags instead. To their horror, Haringey council officials patrolling the area spotted the four bags left outside the store and imposed a £75 fine for each. Shop owner Sangita Ibrahim, 47, said: "The shop was really busy and they came in like the Gestapo. "Staff were told they would face criminal prosecution and receive a criminal record for the bags. I felt like I was going to be frogmarched away"... the shop asked the council several times for the correct bags before resorting to using the black ones. "We repeatedly asked for a delivery of bags but it never came, so we had to use ordinary black bags""
Chris Gayle: Cricketer fined in 'sexism' row - "it's a comment that has cost cricket star Chris Gayle dearly, after his club fined him $AUD10,000 ($7,100) for his remarks to Australian Network Ten reporter Mel McLaughlin live on national television. After she congratulated the West Indian on smashing a 15-ball 41 for the Melbourne Renegades in a Monday Big Bash League match against the Hobart Hurricanes, Gayle complimented McLaughlin's eyes, propositioned her for a post-match drink and laughingly told her: "Don't blush, baby"... Australian hockey international Georgie Parker also suggested the situation would be different if the gender roles had been reversed... Gayle told a media scrum at Melbourne airport that the incident had been blown out of proportion. "There wasn't anything meant to be disrespectful or offensive to Mel. If she felt that way, I'm really sorry for that. There wasn't any harm meant in that particular way. It was a simple joke. The game was going on. Entertainment, things get out of proportion but these things happen.""
Ahh... priorities
The Joys of Watching a Bridge Shave the Tops Off Trucks - WSJ - "More than 100 vehicles have crashed into a low bridge in Durham, N.C., since 2008. Jürgen Henn tracks it all on his website, 11foot8.com"
S'pore tour group stranded up to 3 1/2 days - "During the ordeal which stretched to 31/2 days for 11 of the travellers, some of them spent two nights at two airports, slept in near-freezing temperatures and went without food and water for 10 hours... Recruitment manager Lin Yaohui, who was part of the tour group, told Wanbao that the situation was "a mess" and airline staff and ground crew "did not care" about their plight... They received food and drinks only at 8pm, after the tour guide begged the airport ground crew to help them, he said. There were no water coolers or vending machines at the airport, added Mr Lin, so his 68-year-old mother took medication for her heart condition using tap water from the toilet. He said that the temperature at the airport that night was 3 deg C to 4 deg C and the entire tour group slept on ice-cold metal benches or on the floor... elderly tourists and young children in the group had to sleep on cold, hard floors in winter with no access to food, water or their own luggage, as they were "forced to check them in by Turkish Airlines". Ms Oh also claimed that she was sexually harassed by a cleaner at the Ataturk Airport toilet. The man allegedly stood blocking her only way out with "one hand doing the money sign and the other hand fondling his crotch". She managed to escape when another man distracted him."
Kyrgyzstan detains Briton for 'horse penis' delicacy comparison - "A Briton working at a gold mine in Kyrgyzstan has been detained and faces up to five years in jail for comparing a local delicacy to a horse penis, according to authorities. Police detained Michael McFeat, an employee of the Toronto-based CenterraGold, after he posted the comment on Facebook, which caused a temporary strike at the mine... McFeat wrote that his Kyrgyz colleagues were queueing for their “special delicacy, the horse’s penis” during holiday celebrations, referring to a traditional horse sausage known as chuchuk. He now faces racial hatred charges, which can result in between three to five years in prison under Kyrgyz law."
This is why you get hardship allowance for working in third world countries
Meet the lawyer taking on Uber and the rest of the on-demand economy - "Liss-Riordan, 45, has spent her entire legal career going after employers for allegedly short-changing their employees. She specializes in worker misclassification lawsuits—the illegal practice of companies who classify their workers as independent contractors, rather than normal employees, in order to avoid paying them benefits they’re owed under federal law. She’s filed class-action lawsuits on behalf of truck drivers, waiters, delivery men, cable installers, call center workers, and exotic dancers. FedEx andStarbucks are among companies that have paid out millions of dollars for misclassifying workers and misallocating workers’ tips, respectively, as a result of suits she’s filed."
Diet debate: Is breakfast a waste of time? - "Studies repeatedly show that skipping breakfast is more common in people who are overweight or obese. But this could be a dangerous trap - when the number of ice cream sales goes up so does the number of people getting sunburn. It doesn't mean ice-cream is causing sunburn...The few clinical trials that have actively altered people's eating habits also showed no impact on waistlines."
Crab in da Bag gets a 2-star review on Facebook, reacts passive-aggressively to win customer back - "You know this is going to go viral when it involves watching CCTV footage to count number of mussels a customer has eaten. Also, we are not sure how appropriate it is for a business to put it out on a public platform that a customer has mutual friends with the business-owner, and also to highlight the customer’s employer."
The little car you can drive in France without a licence - "You can simply go shopping for a VSP a voiture sans permis - a small two-seater car that anyone aged 14 or over can take out on the road with as little as four hours' experience behind the wheel, sometimes not even that."
Netherlands: Let's talk about sex - "A liberal attitude towards sex education appears to be paying off for the people of the Netherlands. The country has the lowest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe. Dutch children are taught about sex from a young age, but opt to have sex at a later age than their European counterparts."
A White Terrorist Is A 'Troubled Loner,' But Unarmed Black Teens Are 'Thugs'
The "evidence" presented in this story that "the media" call blacks thugs: Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson (who's black) calling Trayvon Matin a thug, the Baltimore rioters being called thugs by the Governor, Mayor, City Council President and Barack Obama (who's black), a former DEA agent on CNN calling Michael Brown a thug. Presumably "the media" is supposed to censor their guests, or they're racist.
MAS stewardess wept for having to serve alcohol, says mufti - "Perlis Mufti Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin said a Malaysia Airlines stewardess had wept in front of him as she complained about having to serve alcohol and not being allowed to wear the headscarf... "She is only trying to support her children and this is not the first time I hear of such complaints," said Asri in a Facebook posting last night. Asri said he sympathised with the woman and said it was unbecoming for the national air carrier of a majority Muslim country to prevent its air stewardess from wearing the headscarf and serve alcohol... a Muslim stewardess should also not be made to serve alcohol or better off, for MAS not to serve alcohol at all."
I foresee more record shattering losses at MAS
Hong Kong politicians call for Beijing to answer over bookseller's 'abduction' - "Politicians in Hong Kong are demanding answers from Beijing over the mysterious disappearance of a group of booksellers who specialised in tabloid-style exposés about China's communist leaders."
One Country, One System
Ginsberg's theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - "Ginsberg's theorem is a parody of the laws of thermodynamics in terms of a person playing a game...
The "theorem" is given as a restatement of the first, second, and third laws of thermodynamics:
You can't win. (restatement of first law of thermodynamics)
You can't break even. (restatement of second law of thermodynamics)
You can't even get out of the game. (restatement of third law of thermodynamics)"
Mother Kills 9-Year-Old Son For Having Small Penis In Indonesia - "An Indonesian woman drowned her nine-year-old son in the bath, claiming she was worried that his "small penis" would affect his prospects for the future... her son had had a small penis prior to being circumcised, but that it appeared to shrink further after the operation"
Eggplant vs. Aubergine - "What we call zucchini, they call courgette. Our snow pea is their mangetout. What we know as squash, they know as marrow. And what we call eggplant, they call aubergine, which to many ears sounds much more elegant."
Erdogan cites Hitler’s Germany as example of effective presidential system - "Erdogan has already jailed a number of his political opponents and journalists who are critical of him. On New Year’s Eve, political opponent Feyzi Isbasaran was sentenced to nearly three years in jail for posting tweets deemed insulting to the Turkish president. Isbasaran is a former member of Erdogan’s own AKP party. Meanwhile, opposition MP Eren Erdem, from the Republican People's Party (CHP), was accused of “treason” for telling RT that Islamic State had obtained sarin gas supplies via Turkey. He also alleged that Ankara had done nothing to stop the flow, despite having all the evidence at their disposal... He has also unleashed a harsh crackdown on Kurds in the southeast of the country, who have had week-long curfews imposed on them."
Germany has defaulted on its debts, too - "Germany's own strong position was possible only because it has escaped its debts in the past... Albrecht Ritschl, an economic historian, has calculated that Germany had truly been exceptional when it came to escaping its debts. "Germany is king when it comes to debt," Ritschl told Der Spiegel in 2011. "Calculated based on the amount of losses compared to economic performance, Germany was the biggest debt transgressor of the 20th century"... Germany defaulted on its debts during the 1930s, and the German states that predated a unified Germany defaulted at least three times in the 19th century. Modern-day Germany, the economic powerhouse of Europe, is a product of all these defaults."
In Iceland, ‘respect the elves – or else’ - "half of the population entertains the possibility that a parallel community of elves, dwarves and ghosts might exist – a statistic repeated in tourist brochures since a landmark 1975 survey... Speak to Icelandic construction workers and they’ll repeat the history of mishaps that have befallen those who failed to heed elven warnings. These are so numerous that even non-believers would rather play it safe than risk incurring the wrath of the huldufólk... “They’re a symbol for everything that was simple and straightforward in the good old days,” she says. “They were originally figures of magical wealth and prosperity, when Iceland was terribly poor. For rural farmers, starving in their turf-houses, the elves embodied the dream of a richer, more comfy world, a parallel community enjoying palatial homes and fine food.” But now they serve the opposite role. The huldufólk are forever clothed in 19th-century peasant costume, an image of parsimony in the days before our era of reckless excess."
Egyptian golden jackal is actually a grey wolf scientists discover in DNA test
How thousands of Icelanders suddenly started worshiping the Norse gods again - "“We see the stories as poetic metaphors and a manifestation of the forces of nature and human psychology”... The people of Iceland were never sold on Jesus. “From the time of Iceland’s formal adoption of Christianity as the official state religion in the year 1,000 C.E., Iceland has never been a fanatically Christian country nor particularly orthodox in its Christianity,” wrote scholar Michael Strmiska of SUNY Orange. “A strong case can be made that the acceptance of Christianity was motivated more by economic and political considerations than authentic Christian fervor. … Good political and economic relations with Christian Europe depended on at least a semblance of Christian conversion, and so this semblance was achieved.”"
***
The racial tensions behind Sweden’s idyllic facade - "I’m three times screwed in Swedish society: I’m black, Muslim and Somali"
Trader is fined £300 by council for using black bin bags instead of grey - "the company that supplies the sacks had run out of them, so staff at Charli, a designer fashion store, were forced to use normal black bags instead. To their horror, Haringey council officials patrolling the area spotted the four bags left outside the store and imposed a £75 fine for each. Shop owner Sangita Ibrahim, 47, said: "The shop was really busy and they came in like the Gestapo. "Staff were told they would face criminal prosecution and receive a criminal record for the bags. I felt like I was going to be frogmarched away"... the shop asked the council several times for the correct bags before resorting to using the black ones. "We repeatedly asked for a delivery of bags but it never came, so we had to use ordinary black bags""
Chris Gayle: Cricketer fined in 'sexism' row - "it's a comment that has cost cricket star Chris Gayle dearly, after his club fined him $AUD10,000 ($7,100) for his remarks to Australian Network Ten reporter Mel McLaughlin live on national television. After she congratulated the West Indian on smashing a 15-ball 41 for the Melbourne Renegades in a Monday Big Bash League match against the Hobart Hurricanes, Gayle complimented McLaughlin's eyes, propositioned her for a post-match drink and laughingly told her: "Don't blush, baby"... Australian hockey international Georgie Parker also suggested the situation would be different if the gender roles had been reversed... Gayle told a media scrum at Melbourne airport that the incident had been blown out of proportion. "There wasn't anything meant to be disrespectful or offensive to Mel. If she felt that way, I'm really sorry for that. There wasn't any harm meant in that particular way. It was a simple joke. The game was going on. Entertainment, things get out of proportion but these things happen.""
Ahh... priorities
The Joys of Watching a Bridge Shave the Tops Off Trucks - WSJ - "More than 100 vehicles have crashed into a low bridge in Durham, N.C., since 2008. Jürgen Henn tracks it all on his website, 11foot8.com"
S'pore tour group stranded up to 3 1/2 days - "During the ordeal which stretched to 31/2 days for 11 of the travellers, some of them spent two nights at two airports, slept in near-freezing temperatures and went without food and water for 10 hours... Recruitment manager Lin Yaohui, who was part of the tour group, told Wanbao that the situation was "a mess" and airline staff and ground crew "did not care" about their plight... They received food and drinks only at 8pm, after the tour guide begged the airport ground crew to help them, he said. There were no water coolers or vending machines at the airport, added Mr Lin, so his 68-year-old mother took medication for her heart condition using tap water from the toilet. He said that the temperature at the airport that night was 3 deg C to 4 deg C and the entire tour group slept on ice-cold metal benches or on the floor... elderly tourists and young children in the group had to sleep on cold, hard floors in winter with no access to food, water or their own luggage, as they were "forced to check them in by Turkish Airlines". Ms Oh also claimed that she was sexually harassed by a cleaner at the Ataturk Airport toilet. The man allegedly stood blocking her only way out with "one hand doing the money sign and the other hand fondling his crotch". She managed to escape when another man distracted him."
Kyrgyzstan detains Briton for 'horse penis' delicacy comparison - "A Briton working at a gold mine in Kyrgyzstan has been detained and faces up to five years in jail for comparing a local delicacy to a horse penis, according to authorities. Police detained Michael McFeat, an employee of the Toronto-based CenterraGold, after he posted the comment on Facebook, which caused a temporary strike at the mine... McFeat wrote that his Kyrgyz colleagues were queueing for their “special delicacy, the horse’s penis” during holiday celebrations, referring to a traditional horse sausage known as chuchuk. He now faces racial hatred charges, which can result in between three to five years in prison under Kyrgyz law."
This is why you get hardship allowance for working in third world countries
Meet the lawyer taking on Uber and the rest of the on-demand economy - "Liss-Riordan, 45, has spent her entire legal career going after employers for allegedly short-changing their employees. She specializes in worker misclassification lawsuits—the illegal practice of companies who classify their workers as independent contractors, rather than normal employees, in order to avoid paying them benefits they’re owed under federal law. She’s filed class-action lawsuits on behalf of truck drivers, waiters, delivery men, cable installers, call center workers, and exotic dancers. FedEx andStarbucks are among companies that have paid out millions of dollars for misclassifying workers and misallocating workers’ tips, respectively, as a result of suits she’s filed."
Diet debate: Is breakfast a waste of time? - "Studies repeatedly show that skipping breakfast is more common in people who are overweight or obese. But this could be a dangerous trap - when the number of ice cream sales goes up so does the number of people getting sunburn. It doesn't mean ice-cream is causing sunburn...The few clinical trials that have actively altered people's eating habits also showed no impact on waistlines."
Crab in da Bag gets a 2-star review on Facebook, reacts passive-aggressively to win customer back - "You know this is going to go viral when it involves watching CCTV footage to count number of mussels a customer has eaten. Also, we are not sure how appropriate it is for a business to put it out on a public platform that a customer has mutual friends with the business-owner, and also to highlight the customer’s employer."
The little car you can drive in France without a licence - "You can simply go shopping for a VSP a voiture sans permis - a small two-seater car that anyone aged 14 or over can take out on the road with as little as four hours' experience behind the wheel, sometimes not even that."
Netherlands: Let's talk about sex - "A liberal attitude towards sex education appears to be paying off for the people of the Netherlands. The country has the lowest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe. Dutch children are taught about sex from a young age, but opt to have sex at a later age than their European counterparts."
A White Terrorist Is A 'Troubled Loner,' But Unarmed Black Teens Are 'Thugs'
The "evidence" presented in this story that "the media" call blacks thugs: Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson (who's black) calling Trayvon Matin a thug, the Baltimore rioters being called thugs by the Governor, Mayor, City Council President and Barack Obama (who's black), a former DEA agent on CNN calling Michael Brown a thug. Presumably "the media" is supposed to censor their guests, or they're racist.
MAS stewardess wept for having to serve alcohol, says mufti - "Perlis Mufti Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin said a Malaysia Airlines stewardess had wept in front of him as she complained about having to serve alcohol and not being allowed to wear the headscarf... "She is only trying to support her children and this is not the first time I hear of such complaints," said Asri in a Facebook posting last night. Asri said he sympathised with the woman and said it was unbecoming for the national air carrier of a majority Muslim country to prevent its air stewardess from wearing the headscarf and serve alcohol... a Muslim stewardess should also not be made to serve alcohol or better off, for MAS not to serve alcohol at all."
I foresee more record shattering losses at MAS
Hong Kong politicians call for Beijing to answer over bookseller's 'abduction' - "Politicians in Hong Kong are demanding answers from Beijing over the mysterious disappearance of a group of booksellers who specialised in tabloid-style exposés about China's communist leaders."
One Country, One System
Ginsberg's theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - "Ginsberg's theorem is a parody of the laws of thermodynamics in terms of a person playing a game...
The "theorem" is given as a restatement of the first, second, and third laws of thermodynamics:
You can't win. (restatement of first law of thermodynamics)
You can't break even. (restatement of second law of thermodynamics)
You can't even get out of the game. (restatement of third law of thermodynamics)"
Mother Kills 9-Year-Old Son For Having Small Penis In Indonesia - "An Indonesian woman drowned her nine-year-old son in the bath, claiming she was worried that his "small penis" would affect his prospects for the future... her son had had a small penis prior to being circumcised, but that it appeared to shrink further after the operation"
Eggplant vs. Aubergine - "What we call zucchini, they call courgette. Our snow pea is their mangetout. What we know as squash, they know as marrow. And what we call eggplant, they call aubergine, which to many ears sounds much more elegant."
Erdogan cites Hitler’s Germany as example of effective presidential system - "Erdogan has already jailed a number of his political opponents and journalists who are critical of him. On New Year’s Eve, political opponent Feyzi Isbasaran was sentenced to nearly three years in jail for posting tweets deemed insulting to the Turkish president. Isbasaran is a former member of Erdogan’s own AKP party. Meanwhile, opposition MP Eren Erdem, from the Republican People's Party (CHP), was accused of “treason” for telling RT that Islamic State had obtained sarin gas supplies via Turkey. He also alleged that Ankara had done nothing to stop the flow, despite having all the evidence at their disposal... He has also unleashed a harsh crackdown on Kurds in the southeast of the country, who have had week-long curfews imposed on them."
Germany has defaulted on its debts, too - "Germany's own strong position was possible only because it has escaped its debts in the past... Albrecht Ritschl, an economic historian, has calculated that Germany had truly been exceptional when it came to escaping its debts. "Germany is king when it comes to debt," Ritschl told Der Spiegel in 2011. "Calculated based on the amount of losses compared to economic performance, Germany was the biggest debt transgressor of the 20th century"... Germany defaulted on its debts during the 1930s, and the German states that predated a unified Germany defaulted at least three times in the 19th century. Modern-day Germany, the economic powerhouse of Europe, is a product of all these defaults."
In Iceland, ‘respect the elves – or else’ - "half of the population entertains the possibility that a parallel community of elves, dwarves and ghosts might exist – a statistic repeated in tourist brochures since a landmark 1975 survey... Speak to Icelandic construction workers and they’ll repeat the history of mishaps that have befallen those who failed to heed elven warnings. These are so numerous that even non-believers would rather play it safe than risk incurring the wrath of the huldufólk... “They’re a symbol for everything that was simple and straightforward in the good old days,” she says. “They were originally figures of magical wealth and prosperity, when Iceland was terribly poor. For rural farmers, starving in their turf-houses, the elves embodied the dream of a richer, more comfy world, a parallel community enjoying palatial homes and fine food.” But now they serve the opposite role. The huldufólk are forever clothed in 19th-century peasant costume, an image of parsimony in the days before our era of reckless excess."
Egyptian golden jackal is actually a grey wolf scientists discover in DNA test
How thousands of Icelanders suddenly started worshiping the Norse gods again - "“We see the stories as poetic metaphors and a manifestation of the forces of nature and human psychology”... The people of Iceland were never sold on Jesus. “From the time of Iceland’s formal adoption of Christianity as the official state religion in the year 1,000 C.E., Iceland has never been a fanatically Christian country nor particularly orthodox in its Christianity,” wrote scholar Michael Strmiska of SUNY Orange. “A strong case can be made that the acceptance of Christianity was motivated more by economic and political considerations than authentic Christian fervor. … Good political and economic relations with Christian Europe depended on at least a semblance of Christian conversion, and so this semblance was achieved.”"
Friday, February 05, 2016
Reactions to Shanmugam making a police report against Sangeetha Thanapal
Note: This was excerpted from Links - 5th February 2016 in order to classify it under the label "sangeetha"
Law and Foreign Minister K. Shanmugam to make police report over 'inaccurate and seditious' Facebook post by Sangeetha Thanapal : singapore
"Sample post: It’s so tiring to even leave the house and deal with being in public, because Chinese people refuse to treat us as human. Chinese Privilege is being treated as a human being, rather than an object to avoid... my advice to all minorities who aren’t super rich and open to licking PAP balls, RUN. Run to another country as soon as you can."
"These people are everything that's wrong with the younger generation. Everything is an act of microaggression that's out to offend people"
"Lolololol been waiting for this for some time already. As a minority Singaporean I'm sick of her divisive SJW antics and I'm #nothershield."
"I used to get very offended all the time and it got seriously exhausting. So I decided to have a more humorous outlook."
Law and Foreign Minister K. Shanmugam to make police report over 'inaccurate and seditious' Facebook post by Sangeetha Thanapal : singapore
"Sample post: It’s so tiring to even leave the house and deal with being in public, because Chinese people refuse to treat us as human. Chinese Privilege is being treated as a human being, rather than an object to avoid... my advice to all minorities who aren’t super rich and open to licking PAP balls, RUN. Run to another country as soon as you can."
"These people are everything that's wrong with the younger generation. Everything is an act of microaggression that's out to offend people"
"Lolololol been waiting for this for some time already. As a minority Singaporean I'm sick of her divisive SJW antics and I'm #nothershield."
"I used to get very offended all the time and it got seriously exhausting. So I decided to have a more humorous outlook."
Links - 5th February 2016
Thai faces jail for insulting king’s dog: Lawyer - "Thanakorn Siripaiboon, 27, has been charged by police with lese majeste for a “satirical” Facebook post about the king and his dog... Thanakorn also faces lese majeste, sedition and computer crimes charges for clicking “like” on a doctored photo of the king and sharing it, plus an infographic on a growing corruption scandal engulfing the junta... Even the US ambassador faces a police investigation for royal defamation over a speech last month in which he expressed concern at the lengthy sentences."
Men Strip, "Finger" and Molest Bikini-Clad Girls at Water Park after Being Given Free Entry - "On 19/4, a water park in Hanoi, Vietnam called ‘Ho Tay’ opened for free admission... many other guys went home and updated their facebook status about their “achievements” at the water park like how many boobs they had grabbed or how many girls they’d molested on that day."
Europe has taken over the Holocaust - "Killing six million people is a moral stain on one's nation that surely ought to endure more than a couple of generations. But, on the other hand, almost everything else about the Germany of 60 years ago is gone - its great power status, its military machine, its aggressive nationalism, its need for lebens-raum. The past is another country, but rarely as foreign as the Third Reich. Why should Holocaust guilt be the only enforced link with an otherwise discarded heritage? "Enforced" is the operative word. If most Germans don't feel guilty about the Holocaust, there's no point pretending they do"
The Land without Muslims - "The official policy of Japan is not to give citizenship to Muslims who come to Japan, and even permits for permanent residency are given sparingly to Muslims... In contrast with what is happening in Europe, very few Japanese are drawn to Islam... The most interesting thing in Japan’s approach to Islam is the fact that the Japanese do not feel the need to apologize to Muslims for the negative way in which they relate to Islam"
The Big Apple: “We campaign in poetry, but when we’re elected we’re forced to govern in prose”
John Burgess's answer to Why didn't President Barack Obama close Guantanamo as he promised in his first presidential campaign? - Quora - "there's a continuity of US foreign policy from one Administration to another, one party to the next. There's a reason for that: practical solutions do not grow on ideological trees. Real problems have relatively few solutions and wishing doesn't change that. In fact, so many policies (foreign and domestic) that were followed by Bush are also being followed by Obama because those are the best available policies"
What Liberals Still Don’t Understand About Fox News - "The reliably liberal Frank Rich appreciates better than most Fox’s essential harmlessness. In a piece published last year in New York, he concluded that aside from infuriating liberals, Fox flexes little political power. The median age of a Fox viewer is 68, eight years older than the MSBNC and CNN median age, and its median age is rising. “Fox is in essence a retirement community,” Rich writes, and a small one at that!"
Monthly sex worker tests are ridiculous, health experts say - "Health and human rights experts said it was ridiculous to force sex workers to have monthly tests when they were at extremely low risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections. Three Australian studies have found that about one in every six men admit to having paid for sex at least once. Professor of Sexual Health at Melbourne University, Christopher Fairley, said research showed monthly testing was unnecessary and a waste of public health resources because sex workers have much lower rates of STIs than other people. This was backed by a recent study of patients at the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre which showed that of 2896 female sex workers tested for STIs over three years, only 3 per cent were positive. In contrast, the study found that 41 per cent of 4208 STIs diagnosed at the clinic over the three years were in men having sex with men. "You are at lower risk of catching an STI if you have sex with a sex worker than if you have sex with a member of the public""
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, 60th Anniversary – Memorable Reports 1 - "That incredible stoicism is everywhere. In Irkutsk at least, people seem simply to accept that winter is harsh and this one especially so. It is without doubt the cruellest Siberian winter in living memory. Yet outdoors everything appears to function normally; even schools reopened as the temperature rose briefly to minus 25"
10 Inspirational Quotes You'd Never Guess Were Said By Horrible People
Rethinking Singapore’s housing policies - "A second and more fundamental objection to the use of housing as a form of retirement security is that it is highly regressive and inequitable. The people who benefit the most from housing as a form of social security are those who have the means to own more than a single property. The Government has a general aversion to inter-generational transfers through the fiscal system (of taxing the young to pay for the benefits of the old); this is why Singapore does not have the tax-financed pensions found in most developed countries. But the current approach of relying on house price appreciation to finance the retirement of the elderly is, de facto, a form of inter-generational transfers too, since it is always the next generation that has to bear the burden of rising house prices... if house prices increase more rapidly than wages over a sustained period, people may begin to view financial speculation or investing in property as a more reliable way of securing income gains than through their own labour. This would erode society’s work ethic, increase status competition and envy, and divert society’s resources from productive activities to less productive and potentially destabilising ones."
65 Rules For Being A Man According To Elevator Gossip at Goldman Sachs. - "55. If it’s got velvet ropes and lines, walk away unless you know someone."
A new study finds arranged marriages are happy.
Sex Assault: A Crime against the Young & Attractive? - "The main factors driving sexual assaults may be the attractiveness and vulnerability of young people of both genders, rather than negative attitudes toward women, a new study suggests. More than half of sexual assault victims in the study were under 20. The group at greatest risk of being assaulted was 15- to 19-year old females, and the most common age of all victims of rape (of both genders) was 15. Homosexual men were as likely as heterosexual men to commit sexual assault... adolescents' higher risk of sexual assaults could be explained by their attractiveness, their vulnerability, and their active social lives, which increase contact with potential offenders... Many scholars and activists believe that sexual assaults stem from hatred of women, patriarchy or the desire to control and dominate. But the researchers say that the similarity between the rates of assaults committed by gay and straight men suggests that attitudes toward women are not likely playing a strong role in sexual assaults... 10- to 14-year-old girls were at greater risk of rape than women in their 20s. In the study, 15-year-old girls were about nine times more likely to be raped than 35-year-old women, and 15-year-old boys were more likely to be victims than 40-year-old women... Older people and women rarely commit sex crimes, but when they do, they also attack young people"
Certain Self-Defense Actions Can Decrease Risk - "potential rape victims who resisted their attackers physically and verbally significantly reduced the probability that a rape would be completed and did not significantly increase the risk of serious injury... The most effective actions, according to victims, are attacking or struggling against their attacker, running away, and verbally warning the attacker... the only self-protective tactics that appear to increase the risk of injury significantly were those that are ambiguous and not forceful. These included stalling, cooperating and screaming from pain or fear. A separate study found that even when a rape was completed, women who used some form of resistance had better mental health outcomes than those who did not resist"
Food evolution - "At present, there are more than a thousand recipes from the caterers' menu database to choose from, and new dishes are introduced each month to update the menus... Although 2WO Tan no longer cooks for fellow servicemen and women, it still matters to him how satisfied they are with cookhouse meals. "Based on the feedback we get, we constantly look for ways to improve the taste of fresh rations," said 2WO Tan, who has dedicated 29 years of his life to warming the hearts and tummies of soldiers with food... About five new dishes are added to the menus of the 24-hour field ration packs every three months, replacing unpopular ones, said HQ Supply Ration Warrant Master Sergeant (MSG) Mok Shao Wei. Added SFIM Assistant General Manager Tan Yan Ren, who works on the supply of field rations: "We review the menus quarterly and develop new recipes regularly to provide variety. So by the end of each year, you will find that more than half of the food items on the menus have been replaced... "dialogue sessions and surveys are conducted every quarter, where 100 servicemen are randomly selected to suggest improvements to the field rations menu"... On the outcome of the dialogue sessions, Mr Tan said: "The entrees used to be mostly rice-based. At present, these meals only constitute about 25 percent of the dishes offered, with pasta and noodles becoming the popular picks. It is a reflection of the taste profile of our soldiers nowadays." Fresh rations' menus are also discussed with selected soldiers when caterers propose monthly menus to each unit's F&B manager... when a unit has outfield training on a particular day, caterers are advised to avoid serving "heaty" food like curry chicken for lunch. Menu development also takes SAF-level activities into account. To prepare servicemen and women for the annual Army Half Marathon this year, the cookhouses served carbohydrate-loading meals four days prior to the event...
2010: The Weekend Meal, which has greater menu variety, was created for personnel on weekend duty."
Bomb Threat at DC GamerGate Meetup Shows There Are Bad Eggs on the Other Side - "A Washington, DC-area bar hosting a meetup for supporters of GamerGate was briefly evacuated Friday night after someone called in a bomb threat... While it’s not clear who specifically made the bomb threat, Twitter personality Arthur Chu—a celebrated Jeopardy! winner, Salon columnist, and vitriolic critic of GamerGate—personally spearheaded efforts to convince the bar, Local16, to cancel the event. He sent emails to Local16 management asserting that GamerGate was a “right wing hate group and harassment campaign that’s caused tremendous damage to my life.” Letting the meetup take place was akin to “letting anti-feminists gather to celebrate the harassment and intimidation of women in tech,” he claimed. I’m not sure how GamerGate has damaged Chu’s life—indeed, criticizing the movement has given Chu an impressive podium in his post-Jeopardy! career—but it seems hyperbolic (to say the very least) to brand the entire meetup as a right-wing, anti-women hate group. As Yiannopoulos pointed out in his write-up of the event, attendees included a lesbian video game designer—who currently relies on a cane and had some difficulty evacuating the after the bomb threat—and her fiancé. Presumably these are not the right-wing opponents of women in tech that Chu was talking about... Chu seems unable to separate the real abusers from the honest critics of his perspective, and plenty of other people on both sides of GamerGate have done the same. The mentality of “you either agree with me or you’re a Nazi,” is often on display. But threats of violence against another group are never okay, and that goes for militant GamerGate anti-feminists, scorched-earth social justice warriors, and everyone in between."
#GamerGate Event Evacuated After Multiple Bomb Threats - "The Society of Professional Journalist’s #GamerGate “#SPJ AirPlay” event in Miami, FL was evacuated today after repeated bomb threats. According to event organizer and moderator, Michael Koretzky, six bomb threats were directed at the event."
Men Strip, "Finger" and Molest Bikini-Clad Girls at Water Park after Being Given Free Entry - "On 19/4, a water park in Hanoi, Vietnam called ‘Ho Tay’ opened for free admission... many other guys went home and updated their facebook status about their “achievements” at the water park like how many boobs they had grabbed or how many girls they’d molested on that day."
Europe has taken over the Holocaust - "Killing six million people is a moral stain on one's nation that surely ought to endure more than a couple of generations. But, on the other hand, almost everything else about the Germany of 60 years ago is gone - its great power status, its military machine, its aggressive nationalism, its need for lebens-raum. The past is another country, but rarely as foreign as the Third Reich. Why should Holocaust guilt be the only enforced link with an otherwise discarded heritage? "Enforced" is the operative word. If most Germans don't feel guilty about the Holocaust, there's no point pretending they do"
The Land without Muslims - "The official policy of Japan is not to give citizenship to Muslims who come to Japan, and even permits for permanent residency are given sparingly to Muslims... In contrast with what is happening in Europe, very few Japanese are drawn to Islam... The most interesting thing in Japan’s approach to Islam is the fact that the Japanese do not feel the need to apologize to Muslims for the negative way in which they relate to Islam"
The Big Apple: “We campaign in poetry, but when we’re elected we’re forced to govern in prose”
John Burgess's answer to Why didn't President Barack Obama close Guantanamo as he promised in his first presidential campaign? - Quora - "there's a continuity of US foreign policy from one Administration to another, one party to the next. There's a reason for that: practical solutions do not grow on ideological trees. Real problems have relatively few solutions and wishing doesn't change that. In fact, so many policies (foreign and domestic) that were followed by Bush are also being followed by Obama because those are the best available policies"
What Liberals Still Don’t Understand About Fox News - "The reliably liberal Frank Rich appreciates better than most Fox’s essential harmlessness. In a piece published last year in New York, he concluded that aside from infuriating liberals, Fox flexes little political power. The median age of a Fox viewer is 68, eight years older than the MSBNC and CNN median age, and its median age is rising. “Fox is in essence a retirement community,” Rich writes, and a small one at that!"
Monthly sex worker tests are ridiculous, health experts say - "Health and human rights experts said it was ridiculous to force sex workers to have monthly tests when they were at extremely low risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections. Three Australian studies have found that about one in every six men admit to having paid for sex at least once. Professor of Sexual Health at Melbourne University, Christopher Fairley, said research showed monthly testing was unnecessary and a waste of public health resources because sex workers have much lower rates of STIs than other people. This was backed by a recent study of patients at the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre which showed that of 2896 female sex workers tested for STIs over three years, only 3 per cent were positive. In contrast, the study found that 41 per cent of 4208 STIs diagnosed at the clinic over the three years were in men having sex with men. "You are at lower risk of catching an STI if you have sex with a sex worker than if you have sex with a member of the public""
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, 60th Anniversary – Memorable Reports 1 - "That incredible stoicism is everywhere. In Irkutsk at least, people seem simply to accept that winter is harsh and this one especially so. It is without doubt the cruellest Siberian winter in living memory. Yet outdoors everything appears to function normally; even schools reopened as the temperature rose briefly to minus 25"
10 Inspirational Quotes You'd Never Guess Were Said By Horrible People
Rethinking Singapore’s housing policies - "A second and more fundamental objection to the use of housing as a form of retirement security is that it is highly regressive and inequitable. The people who benefit the most from housing as a form of social security are those who have the means to own more than a single property. The Government has a general aversion to inter-generational transfers through the fiscal system (of taxing the young to pay for the benefits of the old); this is why Singapore does not have the tax-financed pensions found in most developed countries. But the current approach of relying on house price appreciation to finance the retirement of the elderly is, de facto, a form of inter-generational transfers too, since it is always the next generation that has to bear the burden of rising house prices... if house prices increase more rapidly than wages over a sustained period, people may begin to view financial speculation or investing in property as a more reliable way of securing income gains than through their own labour. This would erode society’s work ethic, increase status competition and envy, and divert society’s resources from productive activities to less productive and potentially destabilising ones."
65 Rules For Being A Man According To Elevator Gossip at Goldman Sachs. - "55. If it’s got velvet ropes and lines, walk away unless you know someone."
A new study finds arranged marriages are happy.
Sex Assault: A Crime against the Young & Attractive? - "The main factors driving sexual assaults may be the attractiveness and vulnerability of young people of both genders, rather than negative attitudes toward women, a new study suggests. More than half of sexual assault victims in the study were under 20. The group at greatest risk of being assaulted was 15- to 19-year old females, and the most common age of all victims of rape (of both genders) was 15. Homosexual men were as likely as heterosexual men to commit sexual assault... adolescents' higher risk of sexual assaults could be explained by their attractiveness, their vulnerability, and their active social lives, which increase contact with potential offenders... Many scholars and activists believe that sexual assaults stem from hatred of women, patriarchy or the desire to control and dominate. But the researchers say that the similarity between the rates of assaults committed by gay and straight men suggests that attitudes toward women are not likely playing a strong role in sexual assaults... 10- to 14-year-old girls were at greater risk of rape than women in their 20s. In the study, 15-year-old girls were about nine times more likely to be raped than 35-year-old women, and 15-year-old boys were more likely to be victims than 40-year-old women... Older people and women rarely commit sex crimes, but when they do, they also attack young people"
Certain Self-Defense Actions Can Decrease Risk - "potential rape victims who resisted their attackers physically and verbally significantly reduced the probability that a rape would be completed and did not significantly increase the risk of serious injury... The most effective actions, according to victims, are attacking or struggling against their attacker, running away, and verbally warning the attacker... the only self-protective tactics that appear to increase the risk of injury significantly were those that are ambiguous and not forceful. These included stalling, cooperating and screaming from pain or fear. A separate study found that even when a rape was completed, women who used some form of resistance had better mental health outcomes than those who did not resist"
Food evolution - "At present, there are more than a thousand recipes from the caterers' menu database to choose from, and new dishes are introduced each month to update the menus... Although 2WO Tan no longer cooks for fellow servicemen and women, it still matters to him how satisfied they are with cookhouse meals. "Based on the feedback we get, we constantly look for ways to improve the taste of fresh rations," said 2WO Tan, who has dedicated 29 years of his life to warming the hearts and tummies of soldiers with food... About five new dishes are added to the menus of the 24-hour field ration packs every three months, replacing unpopular ones, said HQ Supply Ration Warrant Master Sergeant (MSG) Mok Shao Wei. Added SFIM Assistant General Manager Tan Yan Ren, who works on the supply of field rations: "We review the menus quarterly and develop new recipes regularly to provide variety. So by the end of each year, you will find that more than half of the food items on the menus have been replaced... "dialogue sessions and surveys are conducted every quarter, where 100 servicemen are randomly selected to suggest improvements to the field rations menu"... On the outcome of the dialogue sessions, Mr Tan said: "The entrees used to be mostly rice-based. At present, these meals only constitute about 25 percent of the dishes offered, with pasta and noodles becoming the popular picks. It is a reflection of the taste profile of our soldiers nowadays." Fresh rations' menus are also discussed with selected soldiers when caterers propose monthly menus to each unit's F&B manager... when a unit has outfield training on a particular day, caterers are advised to avoid serving "heaty" food like curry chicken for lunch. Menu development also takes SAF-level activities into account. To prepare servicemen and women for the annual Army Half Marathon this year, the cookhouses served carbohydrate-loading meals four days prior to the event...
2010: The Weekend Meal, which has greater menu variety, was created for personnel on weekend duty."
Bomb Threat at DC GamerGate Meetup Shows There Are Bad Eggs on the Other Side - "A Washington, DC-area bar hosting a meetup for supporters of GamerGate was briefly evacuated Friday night after someone called in a bomb threat... While it’s not clear who specifically made the bomb threat, Twitter personality Arthur Chu—a celebrated Jeopardy! winner, Salon columnist, and vitriolic critic of GamerGate—personally spearheaded efforts to convince the bar, Local16, to cancel the event. He sent emails to Local16 management asserting that GamerGate was a “right wing hate group and harassment campaign that’s caused tremendous damage to my life.” Letting the meetup take place was akin to “letting anti-feminists gather to celebrate the harassment and intimidation of women in tech,” he claimed. I’m not sure how GamerGate has damaged Chu’s life—indeed, criticizing the movement has given Chu an impressive podium in his post-Jeopardy! career—but it seems hyperbolic (to say the very least) to brand the entire meetup as a right-wing, anti-women hate group. As Yiannopoulos pointed out in his write-up of the event, attendees included a lesbian video game designer—who currently relies on a cane and had some difficulty evacuating the after the bomb threat—and her fiancé. Presumably these are not the right-wing opponents of women in tech that Chu was talking about... Chu seems unable to separate the real abusers from the honest critics of his perspective, and plenty of other people on both sides of GamerGate have done the same. The mentality of “you either agree with me or you’re a Nazi,” is often on display. But threats of violence against another group are never okay, and that goes for militant GamerGate anti-feminists, scorched-earth social justice warriors, and everyone in between."
#GamerGate Event Evacuated After Multiple Bomb Threats - "The Society of Professional Journalist’s #GamerGate “#SPJ AirPlay” event in Miami, FL was evacuated today after repeated bomb threats. According to event organizer and moderator, Michael Koretzky, six bomb threats were directed at the event."
India: Land of Scams?
From a New Delhi hotel:
"Scams & Schemes in India upon arrival
Verified video by Ministry of Tourism Govt. of India"
"India: Scams & Schemes
Dishonest Taxi Drivers at the Airport - Taxi driver from airport try to misguide you in many ways providing wrong information about your hotel. His plan is to direct you into a fake tourist office as he gets good commission for this job. Don't trust him. Arrange from the hotel to send you a taxi is good idea.
New Delhi Train Station Scam - If you have booked a ticket, you reach the station and someone approaches you to tell you the train has been cancelled, its a scam to get you to book a car at high prices. Don't fall for it.
Tourist Office Scam : Private tourist offices will often try to arrange the whole trip for you. Be aware. Better not to believe all the proposals they make. Sometimes they tell you trains are full booked so they can arrange private taxi for you. Also check the prices of trains, buses, hotels,... before you deal wit a tourist agency.
Train booking scam : When you ask for the booking office in the train station people send you to a private tourist office to sell you more expensive train-tickets or even tell you the trains are full booked and you need to book a private taxi to your destination. Don't believe that."
Delhi scams | About Delhi | Rough Guides
"Delhi can be a headache for the first-time visitor because of scams to entrap the unwary – even down to dumping dung onto visitors’ shoes and, then charging them to clean it off. The most common wheeze, though, is for taxi drivers or touts to convince you that the hotel you’ve chosen is full, closed or has just burned to the ground so as to take you to one that pays them commission. They may even pretend to phone your hotel to check, or will take you to a travel agent (often claiming to be a “tourist office”) who will do it, dialling for you (a different number); the “receptionist” on the line will corroborate the story, or deny all knowledge of your reservation. The driver or tout will then take you to a “very good hotel” – usually in Karol Bagh – where you’ll be charged well over the odds for a night’s accommodation. To reduce the risk of being caught out, write down your taxi’s registration number (make sure the driver sees you doing it), and insist on going to your hotel with no stops en route. Heading for Paharganj, your driver may try to take you to a hotel of his choice rather than yours. To avoid this, you could ask to be dropped at New Delhi railway station and walk from there. You may even encounter fake “doormen” outside hotels who’ll tell you the place is full; check at reception first, and even if the claim is true, never follow the tout to anywhere he recommends. These problems can be avoided by reserving in advance; many hotels will arrange for a car and driver to meet you at your point of arrival.
"Scams & Schemes in India upon arrival
Verified video by Ministry of Tourism Govt. of India"
"India: Scams & Schemes
Dishonest Taxi Drivers at the Airport - Taxi driver from airport try to misguide you in many ways providing wrong information about your hotel. His plan is to direct you into a fake tourist office as he gets good commission for this job. Don't trust him. Arrange from the hotel to send you a taxi is good idea.
New Delhi Train Station Scam - If you have booked a ticket, you reach the station and someone approaches you to tell you the train has been cancelled, its a scam to get you to book a car at high prices. Don't fall for it.
Tourist Office Scam : Private tourist offices will often try to arrange the whole trip for you. Be aware. Better not to believe all the proposals they make. Sometimes they tell you trains are full booked so they can arrange private taxi for you. Also check the prices of trains, buses, hotels,... before you deal wit a tourist agency.
Train booking scam : When you ask for the booking office in the train station people send you to a private tourist office to sell you more expensive train-tickets or even tell you the trains are full booked and you need to book a private taxi to your destination. Don't believe that."
Delhi scams | About Delhi | Rough Guides
"Delhi can be a headache for the first-time visitor because of scams to entrap the unwary – even down to dumping dung onto visitors’ shoes and, then charging them to clean it off. The most common wheeze, though, is for taxi drivers or touts to convince you that the hotel you’ve chosen is full, closed or has just burned to the ground so as to take you to one that pays them commission. They may even pretend to phone your hotel to check, or will take you to a travel agent (often claiming to be a “tourist office”) who will do it, dialling for you (a different number); the “receptionist” on the line will corroborate the story, or deny all knowledge of your reservation. The driver or tout will then take you to a “very good hotel” – usually in Karol Bagh – where you’ll be charged well over the odds for a night’s accommodation. To reduce the risk of being caught out, write down your taxi’s registration number (make sure the driver sees you doing it), and insist on going to your hotel with no stops en route. Heading for Paharganj, your driver may try to take you to a hotel of his choice rather than yours. To avoid this, you could ask to be dropped at New Delhi railway station and walk from there. You may even encounter fake “doormen” outside hotels who’ll tell you the place is full; check at reception first, and even if the claim is true, never follow the tout to anywhere he recommends. These problems can be avoided by reserving in advance; many hotels will arrange for a car and driver to meet you at your point of arrival.
New Delhi railway station is the worst place for touts; assume that anyone who approaches you here – even in uniform – with offers of help, or to direct you to the foreigners’ booking hall, is up to no good. Most are trying to lure travellers to the fake “official” tourist offices opposite the Paharganj entrance, where you’ll end up paying way over the odds, often for unconfirmed tickets. And don’t believe stories that the foreigners’ booking hall has closed.
On Connaught Place and along Janpath, steer clear of phoney “tourist information offices” (which touts may try to divert you to – a typical CP tout chat-up line is to inform you which block you are on, so be suspicious of anyone who comes up and tells you that unasked), and never do business with any travel agency that tries to disguise itself as a tourist information office.
Finally, be aware that taxi, auto and rental-car drivers get a hefty commission for taking you to certain shops, which will be added to your bill should you buy anything. You can assume that auto-wallahs who accost you on the street do so with the intention of overcharging you, or of taking you to shops which pay them commission rather than straight to where you want to go. Always hail a taxi or auto-rickshaw yourself, rather than taking one whose driver approaches you, and don’t let them take you to places where you haven’t asked to go.
"Thursday, February 04, 2016
Links - 4th February 2016
All Anti-Feminist Talk Would Be Criminal 'Hate Speech' If U.K. Activists Get Their Way - "a government allowed to whimsically ban someone from entering the country or ban a group of people from associating based purely on dislike for the content of their beliefs is sure as shit not a government that's going to stop with pickup artists. Throughout history, limits on freedom of speech and association have come down hard on the left, because it's the left that most frequently challenges the status quo. Lip service to social justice goals notwithstanding, there's no reason to think that people in power are going to suddenly stop with this centuries-long tendency now."
Don’t ban Roosh V – criticise and ridicule him - "Scotland’s contemporary aversion to free speech and freedom of association is rearing its ugly head once again. Not content with outlawing football chants, or monitoring social media for offensive material, SNP MPs are now keen on banning a controversial speaker from Scotland... How strange it is that Sheppard promotes education despite his unwillingness to let the Scottish people hear and criticise the views he so opposes. What sort of an education is it when you only hear one side of the argument?... There’s not a single one of Valizadeh’s views I agree with. His writing is rubbish, and his ideas repugnant. However, I know I possess the moral autonomy to hear them and respond critically. It seems our politicians do not think so highly of me... Activist and author Vonny Moyes wrote on Facebook that we need to ban Valizadeh and shut down his meetings ‘to show that women are not submissive, frightened, or controlled by threats’. It seems to me that, by calling for a ban, we would be doing the complete opposite. We would be showing that we are frightened of Valizadeh’s views, and particularly frightened that women might encounter them."
This hits the nail on the head. When liberals talk about "education" and "educating people", they mean people should uncritically accept their views
Fine-touch pressure thresholds in the adult penis. - "The glans of the circumcised penis is less sensitive to fine touch than the glans of the uncircumcised penis. The transitional region from the external to the internal prepuce is the most sensitive region of the uncircumcised penis and more sensitive than the most sensitive region of the circumcised penis. Circumcision ablates the most sensitive parts of the penis."
The effect of male circumcision on sexuality. - "There was a decrease in masturbatory pleasure and sexual enjoyment after circumcision, indicating that adult circumcision adversely affects sexual function in many men, possibly because of complications of the surgery and a loss of nerve endings."
It’s not only Germany that covers up mass sex attacks by migrant men... Sweden’s record is shameful - "It took days for police to acknowledge the extent of the mass attacks on women celebrating New Year’s Eve in Cologne. The Germans were lucky; in Sweden, similar attacks have been taking place for more than a year and the authorities are still playing catch up. Only now is the truth emerging, both about the attacks and the cover-ups. Stefan Löfven, our Prime Minister, has denounced a ‘double betrayal’ of women and has promised an investigation. But he ought to be asking this: what made the police and even journalists cover up the truth? The answer can be discovered in the reaction to the Cologne attacks. Sweden prides itself on its sexual equality and has even pioneered a feminist foreign policy. When hundreds of women were reported to have been molested and abused in Cologne — at the hands of an organised mob — the reaction from Swedish politicians and pundits ought to have been one of outrage. Instead, we were told that the events in Cologne were not unusual. An article in Aftonbladet, Sweden’s largest tabloid, argued that it was racist to point out that the perpetrators in Cologne had been described as North African or Arab, since German men had carried out sexual assaults during Bavaria’s Oktober-fest. Another Aftonbladet article said that reporting on the Cologne attacks was bowing to right-wing extremism. Over the last week, we have been told over and over that the real issue is men, not any particular culture — that Swedish men are no better. Then last week Sweden’s own stories began to emerge... We Swedes pride ourselves on our unrivalled record on respecting women’s rights. But when women’s rights conflict with the goal of accommodating other cultures, it’s almost always women who are pushed to the side"
Why does Sweden Have One of the Highest Sexual Assault Rates in the World? - "'Since 2000, there has only been one research report on immigrant crime. It was done in 2006 by Ann-Christine Hjelm from Karlstads University. It emerged that in 2002, 85% of those sentenced to at least two years in prison for rape in Svea Hovrätt, a court of appeals, were foreign born or second-generation immigrants. A 1996 report by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention reached the conclusion that immigrants from North Africa (Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia) were 23 times as likely to commit rape as Swedish men'...
The report cites a telling story of Swedish journalists misleading their readers about who exactly committed a highly-publicized gang-rape... European journalists immediately assume that the over-representation of black Americans in prison signals racism in the justice system. Could something similar be going on in Sweden? Why aren't crusading journalists like Mikeal Blomkvist trying to find this out? Is it because they trust the Swedish justice system to always reach the right conclusions, no matter what? Is it because they are afraid of finding out that the conviction rates actually do reflect reality?... If you refer to rape suspects who don't even have Swedish citizenship as "Swedish men", you are lying to your readers. Since this actually happens, the conversation should move on: why does it happen?"
Comment: "Note that if I said any of this in public, i immediately would loose my job. It also goes against everything I have learned in school. I already feel like a Nazi just for rewriting these lines.
German authorities accused of playing down refugee shelter sex crime reports - "Barbara Helfrich of the charity Paritaetischer Bund in the central state of Hesse, said some women had come forward. "We have several trustworthy reports on sexual violence and assaults from victims, as well as advisory groups and NGOs," she told Reuters. In a recent open letter, several charities alleged crimes had been committed a city shelter in the state. "There are several cases of rape and sexual assault and increasingly even reports on forced prostitution," the joint letter said, adding that these were not isolated incidents."
Jew arrested for 'moving lips' on Temple Mount - "A strange story that raises questions about the hostile perception of Israelis and their treatment of Muslims. I have often wondered why, if the Israeli government is so horrible towards “Palestinians” – and I’m not ignoring the bloody battling of the past several decades since Israel’s founding – they allow the Dome of the Rock to stand and Muslims essentially to control it? If Israelis are such “evil Zionists,” would they have not blown up the Dome by now and booted Muslims out of Israel?"
Gun Laws, Deaths and Crimes - "President Barack Obama claimed that “states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths.” Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, meanwhile, has made nearly the opposite claim, saying states with stringent gun control laws have “the highest gun crime rates in the nation.” In looking solely at the numbers of gun deaths and gun crimes, the data back up Obama, not Fiorina... One news report that compiled these same CDC numbers on firearm death rates, by 24/7 Wall Street and published by USA Today, listed several reasons besides gun laws that these states might have high rates of gun deaths (suicides included). Many of the states also have higher rates of poverty, lower educational attainment and perhaps more rural areas that make getting to a hospital in time to save someone’s life difficult. But that report also noted weaker gun laws were common among the states with higher gun death rates: “In fact, none of the states with the most gun violence require permits to purchase rifles, shotguns, or handguns. Gun owners are also not required to register their weapons in any of these states. Meanwhile, many of the states with the least gun violence require a permit or other form of identification to buy a gun,” reporter Thomas C. Frohlich wrote... Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Harvard School of Public Health looked at gun laws and gun deaths in all 50 states from 2007 to 2010, concluding that: “A higher number of firearm laws in a state are associated with a lower rate of firearm fatalities in the state, overall and for suicides and homicides individually.” Their research was published inJAMA Internal Medicine in May 2013. But the study said that it couldn’t determine cause-and-effect."
Adam Steiner's answer to Is The Force Awakens better than The Phantom Menace? - Quora - "the Phantom Menace was a decent story badly told. It was more ambitious than what Lucas was at that time capable of delivering. I thought that The Force Awakens was a terrible story told well. In fact I would argue that the Force didn't have a story, more like a collection of pre-agreed scenes, linked by unlikely coincidences. JJ Abram's did his best, its just that his best wasn't particularly interesting. It was product rather than art."
"TFA was like a brilliantly made trailer that went for 2 hours."
Laju hijacking | Infopedia - "the hijackers agreed to release the hostages in exchange for a party of guarantors to ensure their safe passage out of Singapore. The incident ended on 8 February 1974, when the hijackers left for Kuwait."
If Singapore doesn't negotiate with terrorists, why did they let the Laju hijackers what they wanted?
A Deep, Dark, Secret Love Affair - "In his book, "From Third World to First: The Singapore Story 1965-2000," published in 2000, Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's founding father and its first prime minister, disclosed the secret that had been kept for almost 40 years: It was the Israel Defense Forces that established the Singaporean army. The Israeli military mission was headed by Yaakov (Jack) Elazari, then a colonel, who was later promoted to brigadier general. After leaving the army, he became a consultant to the Singaporean army. Hedied 15 years ago. "To disguise their presence, we called them `Mexicans.' They looked swarthy enough," Lee wrote... The two Israelis met with Lee, who writes that he "told Keng Swee to put it on hold until Lal Bahadur Shastri, the prime minister of India, and President Nasser of Egypt replied to my letters seeking their urgent help to build up our armed forces." It's not clear whether Lee, in fact, believed India and Egypt were capable of, or interested in, building up Singapore's army. Many Israelis believe the two leaders were approached only for appearance's sake. After a few weeks of waiting, India and Egypt congratulated Singapore on its independence but did not offer military aid. Lee ordered Goh to push ahead in contacts with the Israelis... "We discovered that there was psychological resistance to conscription in Singapore," he relates. "Of 10 professions, that of soldier was ranked last. In first place was the artist, followed by the philosopher, the teacher and the merchant, and the thief was in ninth place. Soldiering was considered a contemptible profession. In Singapore, conscription was considered a means to overcome unemployment."
Adam Steiner's answer to Were the lightsaber fighting styles in Star Wars inspired by real life sword fighting technique? - Quora - "When Kylo fights Finn the first thing he does is twirl his blade (barf). Then he launches three attacks in a row against Finns sword, which Finn is holding upright in front of him, plausibly the only guard he knows. What Finn is doing is fine, but Kylo's approach seems VERY basic. Why not keep a sensible distance and chop off Finn's legs? Or try a fient? Finn ducks under a wild swing and clips Kylo, which could happen. Kylo then disarms Finn and whacks him with a jumping pirouette. Some people have argued that Kylo fights badly because he is wounded, but Kylo fights very physically and untechnically. If you are wounded you can't fight physically and you try to use technique to compensate. That's the opposite of what happens, so I'm not sure the choreography of Kylo makes sense. When Rey and Kylo fight, over the course of their very brief encounter, Rey seems to transform from clueless novice (throwing some of the worst lunges ever seen) to a competent swordswoman in the space of a few minutes. I don't know if this was intentional. You could argue she is getting used to an unfamiliar weapon. Kylo continues to flail away with wild abandon. Rey outmuscles Kylo, which seems a little implausible to me, even with Kylo wounded. The fight ends with a continuity error. She throws Kylo to her feet, and then a frame later hes standing a good 25 meters away. Presumably this is to allow enough space for the conveniently wide chasm to open up between them."
Tall Privilege | The Cydonian Signal - "There are two ways my ego can handle this basic fact of reality. The first is the road to ruin, the other is the road of acceptance... even if I were to succeed, I would not be a better person. I would still be short. Nothing can change that. Only now, I would be made bitter by my constant shaming of others to change their preferences so they could conform to mine. I would see staturism everywhere and every event would stab at me, right in the heart. Instead of finding serenity in acceptance, I would only obsess over the slight handicap I was born with and make it my identity. The path of activism and awareness, of changing everyone else to meet your ideal and exploding with rage at those that don’t, will only lead to a life wasted and saturated in negativity.But there is a second path – acceptance – and it is the one I have chosen. I can’t help being short. While this may seem depressing at first, and it can be, it can also be freeing. I know I can’t get any taller, so it’s futile to worry about it. The rational response to this is simply to understand that I can’t change my height, nor can I change the world, but there are many other things about myself that I can change... The actual path to happiness is to understand that I was born with a cross to bear, just like everyone else, and I should ascend past my shortcomings."
Don’t ban Roosh V – criticise and ridicule him - "Scotland’s contemporary aversion to free speech and freedom of association is rearing its ugly head once again. Not content with outlawing football chants, or monitoring social media for offensive material, SNP MPs are now keen on banning a controversial speaker from Scotland... How strange it is that Sheppard promotes education despite his unwillingness to let the Scottish people hear and criticise the views he so opposes. What sort of an education is it when you only hear one side of the argument?... There’s not a single one of Valizadeh’s views I agree with. His writing is rubbish, and his ideas repugnant. However, I know I possess the moral autonomy to hear them and respond critically. It seems our politicians do not think so highly of me... Activist and author Vonny Moyes wrote on Facebook that we need to ban Valizadeh and shut down his meetings ‘to show that women are not submissive, frightened, or controlled by threats’. It seems to me that, by calling for a ban, we would be doing the complete opposite. We would be showing that we are frightened of Valizadeh’s views, and particularly frightened that women might encounter them."
This hits the nail on the head. When liberals talk about "education" and "educating people", they mean people should uncritically accept their views
Fine-touch pressure thresholds in the adult penis. - "The glans of the circumcised penis is less sensitive to fine touch than the glans of the uncircumcised penis. The transitional region from the external to the internal prepuce is the most sensitive region of the uncircumcised penis and more sensitive than the most sensitive region of the circumcised penis. Circumcision ablates the most sensitive parts of the penis."
The effect of male circumcision on sexuality. - "There was a decrease in masturbatory pleasure and sexual enjoyment after circumcision, indicating that adult circumcision adversely affects sexual function in many men, possibly because of complications of the surgery and a loss of nerve endings."
It’s not only Germany that covers up mass sex attacks by migrant men... Sweden’s record is shameful - "It took days for police to acknowledge the extent of the mass attacks on women celebrating New Year’s Eve in Cologne. The Germans were lucky; in Sweden, similar attacks have been taking place for more than a year and the authorities are still playing catch up. Only now is the truth emerging, both about the attacks and the cover-ups. Stefan Löfven, our Prime Minister, has denounced a ‘double betrayal’ of women and has promised an investigation. But he ought to be asking this: what made the police and even journalists cover up the truth? The answer can be discovered in the reaction to the Cologne attacks. Sweden prides itself on its sexual equality and has even pioneered a feminist foreign policy. When hundreds of women were reported to have been molested and abused in Cologne — at the hands of an organised mob — the reaction from Swedish politicians and pundits ought to have been one of outrage. Instead, we were told that the events in Cologne were not unusual. An article in Aftonbladet, Sweden’s largest tabloid, argued that it was racist to point out that the perpetrators in Cologne had been described as North African or Arab, since German men had carried out sexual assaults during Bavaria’s Oktober-fest. Another Aftonbladet article said that reporting on the Cologne attacks was bowing to right-wing extremism. Over the last week, we have been told over and over that the real issue is men, not any particular culture — that Swedish men are no better. Then last week Sweden’s own stories began to emerge... We Swedes pride ourselves on our unrivalled record on respecting women’s rights. But when women’s rights conflict with the goal of accommodating other cultures, it’s almost always women who are pushed to the side"
Why does Sweden Have One of the Highest Sexual Assault Rates in the World? - "'Since 2000, there has only been one research report on immigrant crime. It was done in 2006 by Ann-Christine Hjelm from Karlstads University. It emerged that in 2002, 85% of those sentenced to at least two years in prison for rape in Svea Hovrätt, a court of appeals, were foreign born or second-generation immigrants. A 1996 report by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention reached the conclusion that immigrants from North Africa (Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia) were 23 times as likely to commit rape as Swedish men'...
The report cites a telling story of Swedish journalists misleading their readers about who exactly committed a highly-publicized gang-rape... European journalists immediately assume that the over-representation of black Americans in prison signals racism in the justice system. Could something similar be going on in Sweden? Why aren't crusading journalists like Mikeal Blomkvist trying to find this out? Is it because they trust the Swedish justice system to always reach the right conclusions, no matter what? Is it because they are afraid of finding out that the conviction rates actually do reflect reality?... If you refer to rape suspects who don't even have Swedish citizenship as "Swedish men", you are lying to your readers. Since this actually happens, the conversation should move on: why does it happen?"
Comment: "Note that if I said any of this in public, i immediately would loose my job. It also goes against everything I have learned in school. I already feel like a Nazi just for rewriting these lines.
German authorities accused of playing down refugee shelter sex crime reports - "Barbara Helfrich of the charity Paritaetischer Bund in the central state of Hesse, said some women had come forward. "We have several trustworthy reports on sexual violence and assaults from victims, as well as advisory groups and NGOs," she told Reuters. In a recent open letter, several charities alleged crimes had been committed a city shelter in the state. "There are several cases of rape and sexual assault and increasingly even reports on forced prostitution," the joint letter said, adding that these were not isolated incidents."
Jew arrested for 'moving lips' on Temple Mount - "A strange story that raises questions about the hostile perception of Israelis and their treatment of Muslims. I have often wondered why, if the Israeli government is so horrible towards “Palestinians” – and I’m not ignoring the bloody battling of the past several decades since Israel’s founding – they allow the Dome of the Rock to stand and Muslims essentially to control it? If Israelis are such “evil Zionists,” would they have not blown up the Dome by now and booted Muslims out of Israel?"
Gun Laws, Deaths and Crimes - "President Barack Obama claimed that “states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths.” Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, meanwhile, has made nearly the opposite claim, saying states with stringent gun control laws have “the highest gun crime rates in the nation.” In looking solely at the numbers of gun deaths and gun crimes, the data back up Obama, not Fiorina... One news report that compiled these same CDC numbers on firearm death rates, by 24/7 Wall Street and published by USA Today, listed several reasons besides gun laws that these states might have high rates of gun deaths (suicides included). Many of the states also have higher rates of poverty, lower educational attainment and perhaps more rural areas that make getting to a hospital in time to save someone’s life difficult. But that report also noted weaker gun laws were common among the states with higher gun death rates: “In fact, none of the states with the most gun violence require permits to purchase rifles, shotguns, or handguns. Gun owners are also not required to register their weapons in any of these states. Meanwhile, many of the states with the least gun violence require a permit or other form of identification to buy a gun,” reporter Thomas C. Frohlich wrote... Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Harvard School of Public Health looked at gun laws and gun deaths in all 50 states from 2007 to 2010, concluding that: “A higher number of firearm laws in a state are associated with a lower rate of firearm fatalities in the state, overall and for suicides and homicides individually.” Their research was published inJAMA Internal Medicine in May 2013. But the study said that it couldn’t determine cause-and-effect."
Adam Steiner's answer to Is The Force Awakens better than The Phantom Menace? - Quora - "the Phantom Menace was a decent story badly told. It was more ambitious than what Lucas was at that time capable of delivering. I thought that The Force Awakens was a terrible story told well. In fact I would argue that the Force didn't have a story, more like a collection of pre-agreed scenes, linked by unlikely coincidences. JJ Abram's did his best, its just that his best wasn't particularly interesting. It was product rather than art."
"TFA was like a brilliantly made trailer that went for 2 hours."
Laju hijacking | Infopedia - "the hijackers agreed to release the hostages in exchange for a party of guarantors to ensure their safe passage out of Singapore. The incident ended on 8 February 1974, when the hijackers left for Kuwait."
If Singapore doesn't negotiate with terrorists, why did they let the Laju hijackers what they wanted?
A Deep, Dark, Secret Love Affair - "In his book, "From Third World to First: The Singapore Story 1965-2000," published in 2000, Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's founding father and its first prime minister, disclosed the secret that had been kept for almost 40 years: It was the Israel Defense Forces that established the Singaporean army. The Israeli military mission was headed by Yaakov (Jack) Elazari, then a colonel, who was later promoted to brigadier general. After leaving the army, he became a consultant to the Singaporean army. Hedied 15 years ago. "To disguise their presence, we called them `Mexicans.' They looked swarthy enough," Lee wrote... The two Israelis met with Lee, who writes that he "told Keng Swee to put it on hold until Lal Bahadur Shastri, the prime minister of India, and President Nasser of Egypt replied to my letters seeking their urgent help to build up our armed forces." It's not clear whether Lee, in fact, believed India and Egypt were capable of, or interested in, building up Singapore's army. Many Israelis believe the two leaders were approached only for appearance's sake. After a few weeks of waiting, India and Egypt congratulated Singapore on its independence but did not offer military aid. Lee ordered Goh to push ahead in contacts with the Israelis... "We discovered that there was psychological resistance to conscription in Singapore," he relates. "Of 10 professions, that of soldier was ranked last. In first place was the artist, followed by the philosopher, the teacher and the merchant, and the thief was in ninth place. Soldiering was considered a contemptible profession. In Singapore, conscription was considered a means to overcome unemployment."
Adam Steiner's answer to Were the lightsaber fighting styles in Star Wars inspired by real life sword fighting technique? - Quora - "When Kylo fights Finn the first thing he does is twirl his blade (barf). Then he launches three attacks in a row against Finns sword, which Finn is holding upright in front of him, plausibly the only guard he knows. What Finn is doing is fine, but Kylo's approach seems VERY basic. Why not keep a sensible distance and chop off Finn's legs? Or try a fient? Finn ducks under a wild swing and clips Kylo, which could happen. Kylo then disarms Finn and whacks him with a jumping pirouette. Some people have argued that Kylo fights badly because he is wounded, but Kylo fights very physically and untechnically. If you are wounded you can't fight physically and you try to use technique to compensate. That's the opposite of what happens, so I'm not sure the choreography of Kylo makes sense. When Rey and Kylo fight, over the course of their very brief encounter, Rey seems to transform from clueless novice (throwing some of the worst lunges ever seen) to a competent swordswoman in the space of a few minutes. I don't know if this was intentional. You could argue she is getting used to an unfamiliar weapon. Kylo continues to flail away with wild abandon. Rey outmuscles Kylo, which seems a little implausible to me, even with Kylo wounded. The fight ends with a continuity error. She throws Kylo to her feet, and then a frame later hes standing a good 25 meters away. Presumably this is to allow enough space for the conveniently wide chasm to open up between them."
Tall Privilege | The Cydonian Signal - "There are two ways my ego can handle this basic fact of reality. The first is the road to ruin, the other is the road of acceptance... even if I were to succeed, I would not be a better person. I would still be short. Nothing can change that. Only now, I would be made bitter by my constant shaming of others to change their preferences so they could conform to mine. I would see staturism everywhere and every event would stab at me, right in the heart. Instead of finding serenity in acceptance, I would only obsess over the slight handicap I was born with and make it my identity. The path of activism and awareness, of changing everyone else to meet your ideal and exploding with rage at those that don’t, will only lead to a life wasted and saturated in negativity.But there is a second path – acceptance – and it is the one I have chosen. I can’t help being short. While this may seem depressing at first, and it can be, it can also be freeing. I know I can’t get any taller, so it’s futile to worry about it. The rational response to this is simply to understand that I can’t change my height, nor can I change the world, but there are many other things about myself that I can change... The actual path to happiness is to understand that I was born with a cross to bear, just like everyone else, and I should ascend past my shortcomings."
What are your thoughts on "Roosh" worldwide meeting to call for legalizing rape?
Details: See article: 'Pick-up artist' slammed and ridiculed online over notion of ‘legal rape’
Gabriel Seah's answer to What are your thoughts on "Roosh" worldwide meeting to call for legalizing rape? - Quora
This uber-manhood group, lead by a "pick-up artist", is calling for the decriminalization of rape laws, and making WOMEN responsible for such actions.
Gabriel Seah's answer to What are your thoughts on "Roosh" worldwide meeting to call for legalizing rape? - Quora
What would your thoughts be on a meeting to call for legalizing the sale of poor families' children for rich people to eat?
Would you call the police?
Refuse to associate with anyone who attends?
Boycott the people or institution supporting such a heinous proposal?
Pelt participants with rotten tomatoes?
Refuse to associate with anyone who attends?
Boycott the people or institution supporting such a heinous proposal?
Pelt participants with rotten tomatoes?
Such a meeting occurred on 16th November 2015 in Florida International University (HEARTS Book Club - Honors College).
It was a HEARTS Book Club meeting to discuss Jonathan Swift's Gulliver’s Travels.
There are more parallels between a Jonathan Swift book club and the planned Return of Kings' International Meetup Day On February 6, 2016 than are apparent at first glance.
I can't find the place where Roosh is alleged to have, coming from “the best of motives”, argued "that legalizing rape would significantly decrease its rate forcing women to “take better care of their bodies”".
I have, however, found the article which other media sources are presumably using to justify their claim that the group "believes rape should be legalised on private property" ('Legal rape' group leader announces he will come to Australia).
For one, How To Stop Rape was not published on the site Return of Kings but on Roosh's personal website.
More importantly, it is clear from reading the article that it is not entirely serious.
Take the following extract, for example:
Thankfully, a man only has to be told the phrase “rape is bad” at some point after puberty by an overweight feminist to definitively stop his future brutal and bloody rape career. It’s a miracle that more men have not raped their mothers, babysitters, and sisters before being taught in college that rape is actually not a good thing.I knew from an early age that rape was bad, as was all forms of violence, not just against women but men as well. I also knew that killing, stealing, and having sexual interest in relatives was bad. I don’t remember if someone specifically taught me these rules, but I also don’t remember being taught that the sun rises and sets once a day, or that I will go splat if I jump off a tall building
Compare the serious tone in this article to the following equally serious extract:
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.
A discerning reader would at least suspect that neither of these essays is not meant to be read literally.
This is especially obvious when comparing the former to Roosh's usual writing.
Of course, I don't think that "How to Stop Rape" is as finely crafted a piece as "A Modest Proposal". For one it mixes satirical and serious points too liberally for the satirical intent to shine through.
Yet, a bad poet's poems are still poems (even if they are not as good as a good poet's).
I am not the first to note the article's satirical intent, or even to make a parallel to A Modest Proposal.
In February 2015, a full year before the current hooplah, the Raw Story reported on this alleged call to make rape legal (Misogynist blogger: Make rape on private property legal so women can have ‘learning experiences’) and noted that "Some of Vörek’s commenters immediately likened his column to Jonathan Swift’s satirical “A Modest Proposal.”"
The Raw Story tucked this at the very end of the post, but at least they put it in somewhere.
The current media circus, unfortunately, did not even pick this qualifier up.
Now that we've established that Roosh did not call for rape to be legalised on private property, let us move on to the meetup itself.
The purpose of the meetup is to
allow masculine men to regularly bond and converse with each other while providing support in the case conflict or disturbances affect their city or nation
(About | Tribal Meeting)
This might sound ominous to some people, so let's unpack that. Past meetups, on which this is modeled, were
an enjoyable male bonding session where we could have locker room banter, ask for advice, tell stories, and share ideas for a couple of hours before heading to the nightlife district for an additional drink or two
So in other words, it's for (heterosexual) men to meet up, talk and have a beer while discussing something broadly termed "neomasculinity" (a worldwide definition of which is not imposed; http://www.returnofkings.
This sounds like what people used to call a "male bonding" session.
Anyhow, if you don't believe a word that I wrote above, note that even Snopes, that stalwart granddaddy of Urban Legend and Hoax Debunking Sites rates the claim that "Men's rights activist "Roosh V" organized a "make rape legal" event across 43 countries on 6 February 2016." as "Mostly False" ('Make Rape Legal' Event in 43 Countries?)
I don't agree with much of what Roosh V writes, but even if you don't agree with any of his views at all, the best thoughts come from Richard D:
Although I do not agree with most of the things you write, I will be at the Brisbane event this weekend to hear you speak, and to help ensure that you are heard.
Freedom of speech only has value if it applies to everyone, especially those who think differently. The people who threaten you with violence to try and silence you are criminals against a free society.
(http://www.returnofkings.com/793...)
Sadly
Apparently the best response to imaginary pro-rape views is to make death threats.
Go figure.
Go figure.
This is yet another worrying episode in the liberal attack on free speech. As Reason.com notes,
a government allowed to whimsically ban someone from entering the country or ban a group of people from associating based purely on dislike for the content of their beliefs is sure as shit not a government that's going to stop with pickup artists
Tuesday, February 02, 2016
Links - 2nd February 2016
This Is What Sugar Does To Your Brain - "We know that too much sugar is bad for our waistlines and our heart health, but now there's mounting evidence that high levels of sugar consumption can also have a negative effect on brain health -- from cognitive function to psychological wellbeing"
How Much Does A Bowl Of Ajisen Ramen Really Cost? - "if a bowl of ramen is sold at $12, the cost of the ingredients used would be about $2, or about 16.6% of the sales price... While the cost of ingredient for the noodle may only be 16.6% of sales price, the cost incurred by the company for selling and distribution of the noodle is almost 71% of total sales. In other words, even though the ingredients in your ramen costs only $2 to purchase, about $8.50 is required to actually cook and serve the ramen to you at the air-conditioned restaurant... Ajisen Ramen makes a profit of about $1 for every bowl of $12 noodle that they sell."
M’sia Democratic Action Party seen as anti-Malay, anti-Islam, says survey - "A survey conducted by the Selangor state government’s Darul Ehsan Institute (IDE) between Nov 13 and 15 last year, involving 1,716 Malay respondents in the state, found that almost two-thirds or 72 per cent agreed that DAP was a racist party and that it was only looking after the interests of the Chinese community."
Being against Malay supremacy is racist
Goodbye Vasectomy, Hello Sperm Switch: Men Can Turn Fertility On And Off With New ‘Sperm Switch’ Invention
New Bathroom Rule: It's Worse Than We Thought - "The rule states that it is illegal to ask someone who is confused about their gender to use a separate facility for the benefit of women and children who might be uncomfortable. However, once a man begins to undress in the women’s locker room a person who “expresses concern or discomfort…should be directed to a separate or gender-neutral facility.” So, all you women who are uncomfortable with the naked guy over there, “Please come with me and leave him alone”... It is illegal to ask “unwelcome personal questions about an individual’s sexual orientation, gender expression or gender identity, or transgender status.” The commission provides no guidance to the public about how they are supposed to know which questions are unwelcome before they ask them. It is also illegal for a business to deliberately “misuse” someone’s preferred pronoun. If a man believes he is a woman, but you refer to him as a “he” anyway, he can sue you... If you believe a rule of this kind would never be exploited by people with bad intentions, simply search for Jason Pomares, Norwood Smith Burnes, or Taylor Buehler on the search engine of your choice. Burnes exposed himself to children in a Walmart restroom in 2010 while Pomares dressed as a woman and snuck into a Macy’s bathroom to videotape women in 2013. Buehler wore a bra and wig and slipped into a bathroom and locker room in 2012 to watch women at Everett Community College. All three men were arrested. In addition, Christopher Hambrook sexually assaulted multiple women in a Toronto women’s shelter while “identifying” as a woman."
Should you throw away food if a fly lands on it? - "'While there is little doubt that flies can carry bacteria, viruses and parasites from waste to our food, a single touchdown is unlikely to trigger a chain reaction leading to illness for the average healthy person.'... Dr Webb said flies in the city are typically more hygienic than those in the country who frequently come in contact with dead animals and animal waste... Recent research has found that flies are fussier than we might think and avoid certain rotten fruits . The insects have dedicated brain circuits that can pick up toxic moulds that might be harmful to the insects"
PayPal, Square and big banking's war on the sex industry - "Monday a federal appeals court ruled that pressuring credit card companies like Visa and Mastercard to stop doing business with speech-protected websites violates their First Amendment rights. Specifically ones that feature content from sex workers. And in June, the FDIC clarified that it's against the rules for businesses like PayPal, Chase and Square to refuse business or close accounts based on "high risk" assessments related to human sexuality. But it may not be enough to stop what's become an entrenched pattern of systematic discrimination by payment processors -- one that disproportionately denies financial opportunities for women... a federal judge strengthened First Amendment protections for websites by ruling speech can be irreparably harmed by withdrawal of payment processing... Ultimately the fact of the matter is, while keeping corporate mitts off free speech is everyone's business, sex is becoming a woman's business."
‘Frivolous’ $20 Billion Lawsuit Provides Theory on Why Comcast Employs Sharpton Despite Low Ratings - "A black-advocacy group filed a $20 billion lawsuit against Comcast and Time Warner Cable, accusing the two cable giants of racial discrimination... The lawsuit takes issue with Comcast only carrying one channel that is entirely black-owned. Other channels claiming to serve the black community are called “window dressing” that are “white-owned businesses.” Comcast pushed back against the claims. “We are proud of our outstanding record supporting and fostering diverse programming, including programming from African-American–owned and –controlled cable channels. We currently carry more than 100 networks geared toward diverse audiences, including multiple networks owned or controlled by minorities,” the company said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter."
Comment: "I can’t be the only one to see irony in a racially exclusive group sueing another group for not being diverse enough."
Livermore: Sikh families claim discrimination at Boomers go-kart track - "Two Bay Area families claim they were barred from riding go-karts at a popular Livermore track last summer because of their head attire, and one of them, a Muslim family, filed a discrimination complaint Tuesday with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing... The one-page complaint alleges Abdo bought tickets to the ride on Aug. 8 and waited in line for several minutes with his son and two daughters -- one of whom wore a headscarf. When it was their turn to ride, an employee told Abdo that his daughter was not allowed to ride the go-karts because any head gear was not permitted on the ride. When Abdo asked to speak to a manager, the manager told him, "I am sorry, but for safety reasons, this is our company policy," the complaint reads... the park created the rule because headwear and neckwear are a possible chocking hazard and a hazard to other drivers: "Around the world, people have died when hajabs, scarves and other lengthy headwear or neckwear became entangled into a go-kart's wheels or engine causing violent neck breaks and crushed windpipes. In one horrific accident ... a woman was literally decapitated when her hijab was snagged around her neck and she crashed into a wall.""
Can you sue if you insist on wearing headgear on and get injured? Can you sue if someone wears headgear and the accident injures you?
Answer to Where do the rudest tourists come from? - Quora - "5. If it's a group of guys, they will make passes at any girl/guy they see, even worse for local girls/guys, because they will act like they deserve some "vacation fun" from any girl/guy they are even mildly decent to. Also, their friends are also putting a lot of pressure on them to have sex, because more often than not they have a "scorecard" they are keeping, and the winner gets bragging rights.
6. If they are girls, they are likely to be on a serious attention seeking mission. They will flirt with everyone, even exchange numbers with some people. BUT do not make the mistake of investing any time into liking her. By all means, be polite if she flirts with you. But if you try to flirt back, send a message or two, propose hanging out again, you will be discussed amongst them as "that guy/girl I met yesterday who is turning out to be kinda creepy." They are on vacation with the sole purpose of stroking their egos. The more attention they get, the better. Trying to pursue the normal course of interaction with them is futile. Enjoy the moment if they speak to you. But know that out of sight, out of mind. No matter what connection you think you have made, its all in your head"
Former intel chief: WH worried over re-elect 'narrative' - "President Barack Obama's former top military intelligence official said Tuesday that the White House ignored reports prefacing the rise of ISIS in 2011 and 2012 because they did not fit its re-election "narrative"... Obama was served poorly by a small circle of advisers who were worried about his re-election prospects at the time. The story they needed to tell, he said, was that pulling troops from Iraq would not leave the region vulnerable to the rise of a radical Islamic group like ISIS... Obama has been criticized by opponents for referring to ISIS as the "JV squad" and apparently underestimating the group's threat. The Pentagon's inspector general is investigating complaints that top intelligence officials manipulated reports to make the threat of ISIS look minimal."
Obama's counterterrorism policy facing mounting criticism - "With al-Qaida and the Islamic State group enjoying safe havens across parts of Yemen, Syria and Iraq, and with terror attacks on the rise worldwide, doubts are growing about the effectiveness and sustainability of the administration's "light footprint" strategy against global extremist movements. A template predicated on training local forces and bombing terrorists from the air is actually making the situation worse, some say. Many are arguing for deeper U.S. involvement, if not with regular ground troops, then at least with elite advisers and commandos taking more risks in more places. "What they are doing now is making it more likely that there will be a bigger, more disastrous catastrophe for the United States," said David Sedney, who resigned in 2013 as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan and Pakistan... Former Army deputy chief Lt. Gen. Richard Zahner says the Obama administration's policy of "benign neglect" toward strife-torn Yemen and Syria has ensured the existence of terrorist safe havens there for both al-Qaida and Islamic State militants... Timothy Hoyt, a professor of counterterrorism studies at the Naval War College, agreed. Terrorist attacks against the U.S. and its allies have been far less lethal than past campaigns in Britain by the Irish Republican Army, he said, "which suggests that some elements of our counterterrorism strategy are working." It's "absurd," he said, to blame U.S. policy for an uptick in sectarian violence across a Middle East convulsed by political upheaval. Drone strikes have clearly made it harder for terrorists to plan complex attacks, he said. While the strikes create international backlash, he added, there is no evidence they are a driving force in the growth of terror networks... The Wahishi operation underscored a little-understood trend of the drone war: Most "high value targets" have been killed in what are known as signature strikes, in which a missile is aimed at a group of militants whose identities aren't confirmed until after they're dead"
How Chinese Tourists Usurped the Ugly Americans - "At the Louvre in Paris, there's a sign for that warns people not to defecate and urinate on the premises. It's only in Chinese... Hong Kong Airlines, as CNN reported in April, had to teach their cabin crew kung fu in order to deal with drunken passengers flying to and from mainland China."
Why Obama Hasn’t Closed Guantanamo Bay—and Probably Never Will - "The President’s other option is to defy the transfer ban, as his former attorneys advised. But their argument is weak. “There’s very little to be said for” the argument, according to Marty Lederman, Obama’s former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel, the Office that will advise the President on the legality of any such move. Lederman notes that a constitutional override argument “would present the same dangers, and threaten to establish the same troubling precedents, as when President Bush claimed the constitutional authority to disregard laws” related to national security — an authority, of course, that President Obama once vehemently disclaimed... Support for closing Guantanamo peaked in President’s Obama’s first year, and most Americans now oppose transferring the dangerous detainees to the United States. A provocative defiance of a law that embodies the popular will on an issue of national security by a late-term President whose seriousness in that context has been questioned lately would be unpopular and controversial. Congress would go ballistic. The issue would not go away in the next administration, as Republicans and many Democrats would try to reverse the President’s move. President Obama would thus be doing his successor no favors. He or she, and the presidency, would suffer dealing with the fallout. Candidate Clinton might be hurt by the fallout sooner if the President puts in motion the Guantanamo closure before the election, which he almost certainly will need to do... President Obama’s long equivocation on this issue implies that he understands these consequences. His least bad option, it seems, is to appear to want very much to close Guantanamo (which he does), and to talk and act as if he is doing all he can, but to capitulate in the end"
One in 20 prisoners of Gypsy, Romany or Traveller background, says HMIP - "One in 20 inmates – or 5% – told Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) that they considered themselves to be Gypsy, Romany or Traveller in 2012-13, compared with 4% the previous year. Based on the most recent prison population figures from the Ministry of Justice, 5% would equate to just over 4,200 inmates and is similar to the total number of women in prisons. The proportion is even higher in secure training centres (STCs), which hold young people between 12 and 18 years old, with 12% considering themselves Gypsy, Romany or Traveller. In Medway STC in Kent, this figure was 22%. In the 2011 census just 0.1% of people –about 58,000 – identified themselves as "Gypsy or Irish Traveller""
How Much Does A Bowl Of Ajisen Ramen Really Cost? - "if a bowl of ramen is sold at $12, the cost of the ingredients used would be about $2, or about 16.6% of the sales price... While the cost of ingredient for the noodle may only be 16.6% of sales price, the cost incurred by the company for selling and distribution of the noodle is almost 71% of total sales. In other words, even though the ingredients in your ramen costs only $2 to purchase, about $8.50 is required to actually cook and serve the ramen to you at the air-conditioned restaurant... Ajisen Ramen makes a profit of about $1 for every bowl of $12 noodle that they sell."
M’sia Democratic Action Party seen as anti-Malay, anti-Islam, says survey - "A survey conducted by the Selangor state government’s Darul Ehsan Institute (IDE) between Nov 13 and 15 last year, involving 1,716 Malay respondents in the state, found that almost two-thirds or 72 per cent agreed that DAP was a racist party and that it was only looking after the interests of the Chinese community."
Being against Malay supremacy is racist
Goodbye Vasectomy, Hello Sperm Switch: Men Can Turn Fertility On And Off With New ‘Sperm Switch’ Invention
New Bathroom Rule: It's Worse Than We Thought - "The rule states that it is illegal to ask someone who is confused about their gender to use a separate facility for the benefit of women and children who might be uncomfortable. However, once a man begins to undress in the women’s locker room a person who “expresses concern or discomfort…should be directed to a separate or gender-neutral facility.” So, all you women who are uncomfortable with the naked guy over there, “Please come with me and leave him alone”... It is illegal to ask “unwelcome personal questions about an individual’s sexual orientation, gender expression or gender identity, or transgender status.” The commission provides no guidance to the public about how they are supposed to know which questions are unwelcome before they ask them. It is also illegal for a business to deliberately “misuse” someone’s preferred pronoun. If a man believes he is a woman, but you refer to him as a “he” anyway, he can sue you... If you believe a rule of this kind would never be exploited by people with bad intentions, simply search for Jason Pomares, Norwood Smith Burnes, or Taylor Buehler on the search engine of your choice. Burnes exposed himself to children in a Walmart restroom in 2010 while Pomares dressed as a woman and snuck into a Macy’s bathroom to videotape women in 2013. Buehler wore a bra and wig and slipped into a bathroom and locker room in 2012 to watch women at Everett Community College. All three men were arrested. In addition, Christopher Hambrook sexually assaulted multiple women in a Toronto women’s shelter while “identifying” as a woman."
Should you throw away food if a fly lands on it? - "'While there is little doubt that flies can carry bacteria, viruses and parasites from waste to our food, a single touchdown is unlikely to trigger a chain reaction leading to illness for the average healthy person.'... Dr Webb said flies in the city are typically more hygienic than those in the country who frequently come in contact with dead animals and animal waste... Recent research has found that flies are fussier than we might think and avoid certain rotten fruits . The insects have dedicated brain circuits that can pick up toxic moulds that might be harmful to the insects"
PayPal, Square and big banking's war on the sex industry - "Monday a federal appeals court ruled that pressuring credit card companies like Visa and Mastercard to stop doing business with speech-protected websites violates their First Amendment rights. Specifically ones that feature content from sex workers. And in June, the FDIC clarified that it's against the rules for businesses like PayPal, Chase and Square to refuse business or close accounts based on "high risk" assessments related to human sexuality. But it may not be enough to stop what's become an entrenched pattern of systematic discrimination by payment processors -- one that disproportionately denies financial opportunities for women... a federal judge strengthened First Amendment protections for websites by ruling speech can be irreparably harmed by withdrawal of payment processing... Ultimately the fact of the matter is, while keeping corporate mitts off free speech is everyone's business, sex is becoming a woman's business."
‘Frivolous’ $20 Billion Lawsuit Provides Theory on Why Comcast Employs Sharpton Despite Low Ratings - "A black-advocacy group filed a $20 billion lawsuit against Comcast and Time Warner Cable, accusing the two cable giants of racial discrimination... The lawsuit takes issue with Comcast only carrying one channel that is entirely black-owned. Other channels claiming to serve the black community are called “window dressing” that are “white-owned businesses.” Comcast pushed back against the claims. “We are proud of our outstanding record supporting and fostering diverse programming, including programming from African-American–owned and –controlled cable channels. We currently carry more than 100 networks geared toward diverse audiences, including multiple networks owned or controlled by minorities,” the company said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter."
Comment: "I can’t be the only one to see irony in a racially exclusive group sueing another group for not being diverse enough."
Livermore: Sikh families claim discrimination at Boomers go-kart track - "Two Bay Area families claim they were barred from riding go-karts at a popular Livermore track last summer because of their head attire, and one of them, a Muslim family, filed a discrimination complaint Tuesday with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing... The one-page complaint alleges Abdo bought tickets to the ride on Aug. 8 and waited in line for several minutes with his son and two daughters -- one of whom wore a headscarf. When it was their turn to ride, an employee told Abdo that his daughter was not allowed to ride the go-karts because any head gear was not permitted on the ride. When Abdo asked to speak to a manager, the manager told him, "I am sorry, but for safety reasons, this is our company policy," the complaint reads... the park created the rule because headwear and neckwear are a possible chocking hazard and a hazard to other drivers: "Around the world, people have died when hajabs, scarves and other lengthy headwear or neckwear became entangled into a go-kart's wheels or engine causing violent neck breaks and crushed windpipes. In one horrific accident ... a woman was literally decapitated when her hijab was snagged around her neck and she crashed into a wall.""
Can you sue if you insist on wearing headgear on and get injured? Can you sue if someone wears headgear and the accident injures you?
Answer to Where do the rudest tourists come from? - Quora - "5. If it's a group of guys, they will make passes at any girl/guy they see, even worse for local girls/guys, because they will act like they deserve some "vacation fun" from any girl/guy they are even mildly decent to. Also, their friends are also putting a lot of pressure on them to have sex, because more often than not they have a "scorecard" they are keeping, and the winner gets bragging rights.
6. If they are girls, they are likely to be on a serious attention seeking mission. They will flirt with everyone, even exchange numbers with some people. BUT do not make the mistake of investing any time into liking her. By all means, be polite if she flirts with you. But if you try to flirt back, send a message or two, propose hanging out again, you will be discussed amongst them as "that guy/girl I met yesterday who is turning out to be kinda creepy." They are on vacation with the sole purpose of stroking their egos. The more attention they get, the better. Trying to pursue the normal course of interaction with them is futile. Enjoy the moment if they speak to you. But know that out of sight, out of mind. No matter what connection you think you have made, its all in your head"
Former intel chief: WH worried over re-elect 'narrative' - "President Barack Obama's former top military intelligence official said Tuesday that the White House ignored reports prefacing the rise of ISIS in 2011 and 2012 because they did not fit its re-election "narrative"... Obama was served poorly by a small circle of advisers who were worried about his re-election prospects at the time. The story they needed to tell, he said, was that pulling troops from Iraq would not leave the region vulnerable to the rise of a radical Islamic group like ISIS... Obama has been criticized by opponents for referring to ISIS as the "JV squad" and apparently underestimating the group's threat. The Pentagon's inspector general is investigating complaints that top intelligence officials manipulated reports to make the threat of ISIS look minimal."
Obama's counterterrorism policy facing mounting criticism - "With al-Qaida and the Islamic State group enjoying safe havens across parts of Yemen, Syria and Iraq, and with terror attacks on the rise worldwide, doubts are growing about the effectiveness and sustainability of the administration's "light footprint" strategy against global extremist movements. A template predicated on training local forces and bombing terrorists from the air is actually making the situation worse, some say. Many are arguing for deeper U.S. involvement, if not with regular ground troops, then at least with elite advisers and commandos taking more risks in more places. "What they are doing now is making it more likely that there will be a bigger, more disastrous catastrophe for the United States," said David Sedney, who resigned in 2013 as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan and Pakistan... Former Army deputy chief Lt. Gen. Richard Zahner says the Obama administration's policy of "benign neglect" toward strife-torn Yemen and Syria has ensured the existence of terrorist safe havens there for both al-Qaida and Islamic State militants... Timothy Hoyt, a professor of counterterrorism studies at the Naval War College, agreed. Terrorist attacks against the U.S. and its allies have been far less lethal than past campaigns in Britain by the Irish Republican Army, he said, "which suggests that some elements of our counterterrorism strategy are working." It's "absurd," he said, to blame U.S. policy for an uptick in sectarian violence across a Middle East convulsed by political upheaval. Drone strikes have clearly made it harder for terrorists to plan complex attacks, he said. While the strikes create international backlash, he added, there is no evidence they are a driving force in the growth of terror networks... The Wahishi operation underscored a little-understood trend of the drone war: Most "high value targets" have been killed in what are known as signature strikes, in which a missile is aimed at a group of militants whose identities aren't confirmed until after they're dead"
How Chinese Tourists Usurped the Ugly Americans - "At the Louvre in Paris, there's a sign for that warns people not to defecate and urinate on the premises. It's only in Chinese... Hong Kong Airlines, as CNN reported in April, had to teach their cabin crew kung fu in order to deal with drunken passengers flying to and from mainland China."
Why Obama Hasn’t Closed Guantanamo Bay—and Probably Never Will - "The President’s other option is to defy the transfer ban, as his former attorneys advised. But their argument is weak. “There’s very little to be said for” the argument, according to Marty Lederman, Obama’s former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel, the Office that will advise the President on the legality of any such move. Lederman notes that a constitutional override argument “would present the same dangers, and threaten to establish the same troubling precedents, as when President Bush claimed the constitutional authority to disregard laws” related to national security — an authority, of course, that President Obama once vehemently disclaimed... Support for closing Guantanamo peaked in President’s Obama’s first year, and most Americans now oppose transferring the dangerous detainees to the United States. A provocative defiance of a law that embodies the popular will on an issue of national security by a late-term President whose seriousness in that context has been questioned lately would be unpopular and controversial. Congress would go ballistic. The issue would not go away in the next administration, as Republicans and many Democrats would try to reverse the President’s move. President Obama would thus be doing his successor no favors. He or she, and the presidency, would suffer dealing with the fallout. Candidate Clinton might be hurt by the fallout sooner if the President puts in motion the Guantanamo closure before the election, which he almost certainly will need to do... President Obama’s long equivocation on this issue implies that he understands these consequences. His least bad option, it seems, is to appear to want very much to close Guantanamo (which he does), and to talk and act as if he is doing all he can, but to capitulate in the end"
One in 20 prisoners of Gypsy, Romany or Traveller background, says HMIP - "One in 20 inmates – or 5% – told Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) that they considered themselves to be Gypsy, Romany or Traveller in 2012-13, compared with 4% the previous year. Based on the most recent prison population figures from the Ministry of Justice, 5% would equate to just over 4,200 inmates and is similar to the total number of women in prisons. The proportion is even higher in secure training centres (STCs), which hold young people between 12 and 18 years old, with 12% considering themselves Gypsy, Romany or Traveller. In Medway STC in Kent, this figure was 22%. In the 2011 census just 0.1% of people –about 58,000 – identified themselves as "Gypsy or Irish Traveller""
"You've become about as shrill as the SJWs you often rail against"
A: If "feminism" = gender equality
Then "masculinism" = gender equality as well?
Edit: no, not trolling. This arose from a long discussion. Masculinism as a term is ridiculous IMO. I'm just putting that in as a foil. What say you people?
Edit: I find it amusing that the likes from this post are only from guys.
Edit: oh wow I started a wonderful shitstorm. Still, plenty of points and counterpoints being put out, I'm learning a lot
B: No.
To vouchsafe equal rights to one section of society inevitably infringes on the privilege of another.
Men don't need an equal rights group, just as straight people don't need a 'straight pride day', or white people don't need a 'white lives matter' group.
You don't like an infringement on your privilege? GTF over it.
Like I said, A, I assume this was a troll.
Me: So basically men are evil
A: Some people would think it
C: How did this go from Andrew's statement to "men are evil"?
Me: Conservative Christians, about homosexuality, say that you should "love the sinner, hate the sin".
One critique of this idea is that the sin is inextricably associated with the sinner. In other words, it is impossible to "love the sinner, hate the sin" - if you hate the sin, at some level you will hate the sinner.
Ditto with "love the patriarch, hate the patriarchy".
Actually I see that feminists generally express more aggression towards men/the "patriarchy" than conservative Christians towards gays/homosexuality. This is probably because whereas conservative Christians see homosexuality as a sin, feminists see "patriarchy" as something that is actively hurting them.
So there is an elision of men and "patriarchy". From "patriarchy" hurting women to men hurting women. From "patriarchy" being evil to men being evil.
There is a stereotype (hah! this is normally a bad thing) that men are not disadvantaged by "patriarchy".
Yet, nowadays even many feminists acknowledge that men are disadvantaged in some ways in modern society. Of course, they claim the answer is more feminism, but at least they don't say that "Men don't need an equal rights group" (their answer is that the equal rights group men need are the feminists).
It is not a coincidence that #killallmen was a hashtag promulgated by some feminists not too long ago, and that some feminists boast that they "bathe in male tears". This speaks of the underlying antipathy towards men that is especially evident in the school of feminism that claims that "Men don't need an equal rights group", and that more subtly exists in feminism as a whole.
C: Gabriel, you seem to have developed a caricature of feminists on the basis of militant feminism. Many of those extremist views seem as ludicrous to the rest of us as to you, feminist or not.
I'm glad there are many who are still unravelling and piecing together this equality business, and it is evolving. As has already been mentioned, and as is the main reply to YC's question, the term feminism originated in a time when the chasm between male and female power was much larger and necessitated much more drastic actions. Do you want to change it? OK, sure. There are some pretty good suggestions from Veena, consider those.
"the patriarchy" is embedded in society. How we view success and power are very much a product of this history. Hence your comment below about masculinity and the characteristics of lauded women.
I'm not sure why you jump so quickly from A's comments to assuming he or anyone else on this thread thinks that "all men are evil". You've become about as shrill as the SJWs you often rail against.
Me: If 99.9% of curries you have eaten give you diarrhea, it is safe to assume the next curry will. As a good Bayesian I have confirmed my priors lots of times.
While there're low key feminists who are reasonable, those who like to talk a lot about feminism and especially those who use certain keywords and phrases are almost certainly of a certain kind.
I am not the only one to make such observations (There’s no point in online feminism if it’s an exclusive, Mean Girls club , The end of men: Why feminists won’t accept that things are looking up for women. , Warning: If you upset today's ferocious online feminists, prepare for a flood of abuse – Telegraph Blogs)
"Men are evil" is a short and easy way to explain the logic behind "Men don't need an equal rights group" and that saying that men are marginalised is just a backlash to "privilege" being challenged.
C: you're not the only one to think so, and no one here is saying you are unique in your point of view. But recognise that just like you, militant feminists have their points of view too, emanating from their personal experiences, and like to be as valid as yours. Your default is to assume feminists who engage you are of the same variety. And to jump on people's statements with that assumption. Just like an SJW. Ironic.
A: Ow. I think near everyone here is jumping on statements with assumption. The problem I see here is that we like to use "short and easy" phrases alá Gabriel but they can be easily misinterpreted from the poster's original intentions. Look at how people assumed my post was to troll. To avoid this, one would have to be very exact and specific, but that as we know. Is really tedious after repeating so many times.
What I am glad here is that people are actually civil here. No name calling or that sort like in previous posts. I like
Me: C If a woman had been raped by men 100 times, would she be justified in thinking that all men are rapists?
Personal experiences shape how one thinks, but they do not mean one is justified in doing so.
I have observed feminist interactions (both with me as a participant and without) for a very long time and I can usually predict what will happen next, what arguments will be trotted out etc.
You will notice that my reply was "So basically men are evil" - summarising B's logic and giving him a chance to respond to me. And I do not think that it is unreasonable - when you posit half the world's population as an oppressor class undeserving of a voice a reasonable person might think that you think that they are evil.
And I do not have long essays lying around ready to paste in comment boxes. If I had explained everything that I have done so far at the start I would probably be wasting my time. Far better to start with one pithy comment and expand and explain as I go along, adapting to the flow of the conversation.
Also notice that I did not go:
"OMGBBQWTF YOU ARE A MISANDRIST. FUCK YOU I AM BLOCKING YOU NOW"
If you notice my responses everywhere you will notice that I always try to engage people.
That SJWs make *an* assumption is not why they're distasteful. It's that they are irrational, rude and intolerant. For starters.
A: Hahhaha that "outburst" reminds me of someone
C: The main issue I took with your assumption was that there was a huge leap of logic. I didn't see what he said as being logically encompassed by your statement, not even with your explanation. There, we diverge.
Kudos on engaging people. 14 years after first getting to know you, it's still interesting to see what you have to say, even if I don't always agree with you.
Then "masculinism" = gender equality as well?
Edit: no, not trolling. This arose from a long discussion. Masculinism as a term is ridiculous IMO. I'm just putting that in as a foil. What say you people?
Edit: I find it amusing that the likes from this post are only from guys.
Edit: oh wow I started a wonderful shitstorm. Still, plenty of points and counterpoints being put out, I'm learning a lot
B: No.
To vouchsafe equal rights to one section of society inevitably infringes on the privilege of another.
Men don't need an equal rights group, just as straight people don't need a 'straight pride day', or white people don't need a 'white lives matter' group.
You don't like an infringement on your privilege? GTF over it.
Like I said, A, I assume this was a troll.
Me: So basically men are evil
A: Some people would think it
C: How did this go from Andrew's statement to "men are evil"?
Me: Conservative Christians, about homosexuality, say that you should "love the sinner, hate the sin".
One critique of this idea is that the sin is inextricably associated with the sinner. In other words, it is impossible to "love the sinner, hate the sin" - if you hate the sin, at some level you will hate the sinner.
Ditto with "love the patriarch, hate the patriarchy".
Actually I see that feminists generally express more aggression towards men/the "patriarchy" than conservative Christians towards gays/homosexuality. This is probably because whereas conservative Christians see homosexuality as a sin, feminists see "patriarchy" as something that is actively hurting them.
So there is an elision of men and "patriarchy". From "patriarchy" hurting women to men hurting women. From "patriarchy" being evil to men being evil.
There is a stereotype (hah! this is normally a bad thing) that men are not disadvantaged by "patriarchy".
Yet, nowadays even many feminists acknowledge that men are disadvantaged in some ways in modern society. Of course, they claim the answer is more feminism, but at least they don't say that "Men don't need an equal rights group" (their answer is that the equal rights group men need are the feminists).
It is not a coincidence that #killallmen was a hashtag promulgated by some feminists not too long ago, and that some feminists boast that they "bathe in male tears". This speaks of the underlying antipathy towards men that is especially evident in the school of feminism that claims that "Men don't need an equal rights group", and that more subtly exists in feminism as a whole.
C: Gabriel, you seem to have developed a caricature of feminists on the basis of militant feminism. Many of those extremist views seem as ludicrous to the rest of us as to you, feminist or not.
I'm glad there are many who are still unravelling and piecing together this equality business, and it is evolving. As has already been mentioned, and as is the main reply to YC's question, the term feminism originated in a time when the chasm between male and female power was much larger and necessitated much more drastic actions. Do you want to change it? OK, sure. There are some pretty good suggestions from Veena, consider those.
"the patriarchy" is embedded in society. How we view success and power are very much a product of this history. Hence your comment below about masculinity and the characteristics of lauded women.
I'm not sure why you jump so quickly from A's comments to assuming he or anyone else on this thread thinks that "all men are evil". You've become about as shrill as the SJWs you often rail against.
Me: If 99.9% of curries you have eaten give you diarrhea, it is safe to assume the next curry will. As a good Bayesian I have confirmed my priors lots of times.
While there're low key feminists who are reasonable, those who like to talk a lot about feminism and especially those who use certain keywords and phrases are almost certainly of a certain kind.
I am not the only one to make such observations (There’s no point in online feminism if it’s an exclusive, Mean Girls club , The end of men: Why feminists won’t accept that things are looking up for women. , Warning: If you upset today's ferocious online feminists, prepare for a flood of abuse – Telegraph Blogs)
"Men are evil" is a short and easy way to explain the logic behind "Men don't need an equal rights group" and that saying that men are marginalised is just a backlash to "privilege" being challenged.
C: you're not the only one to think so, and no one here is saying you are unique in your point of view. But recognise that just like you, militant feminists have their points of view too, emanating from their personal experiences, and like to be as valid as yours. Your default is to assume feminists who engage you are of the same variety. And to jump on people's statements with that assumption. Just like an SJW. Ironic.
A: Ow. I think near everyone here is jumping on statements with assumption. The problem I see here is that we like to use "short and easy" phrases alá Gabriel but they can be easily misinterpreted from the poster's original intentions. Look at how people assumed my post was to troll. To avoid this, one would have to be very exact and specific, but that as we know. Is really tedious after repeating so many times.
What I am glad here is that people are actually civil here. No name calling or that sort like in previous posts. I like
Me: C If a woman had been raped by men 100 times, would she be justified in thinking that all men are rapists?
Personal experiences shape how one thinks, but they do not mean one is justified in doing so.
I have observed feminist interactions (both with me as a participant and without) for a very long time and I can usually predict what will happen next, what arguments will be trotted out etc.
You will notice that my reply was "So basically men are evil" - summarising B's logic and giving him a chance to respond to me. And I do not think that it is unreasonable - when you posit half the world's population as an oppressor class undeserving of a voice a reasonable person might think that you think that they are evil.
And I do not have long essays lying around ready to paste in comment boxes. If I had explained everything that I have done so far at the start I would probably be wasting my time. Far better to start with one pithy comment and expand and explain as I go along, adapting to the flow of the conversation.
Also notice that I did not go:
"OMGBBQWTF YOU ARE A MISANDRIST. FUCK YOU I AM BLOCKING YOU NOW"
If you notice my responses everywhere you will notice that I always try to engage people.
That SJWs make *an* assumption is not why they're distasteful. It's that they are irrational, rude and intolerant. For starters.
A: Hahhaha that "outburst" reminds me of someone
C: The main issue I took with your assumption was that there was a huge leap of logic. I didn't see what he said as being logically encompassed by your statement, not even with your explanation. There, we diverge.
Kudos on engaging people. 14 years after first getting to know you, it's still interesting to see what you have to say, even if I don't always agree with you.
Monday, February 01, 2016
Links - 1st February 2016
"There is beauty in darkness in everything. Sorrow in joy, life and death, thorns on the rose. I knew then that I could not escape pain and torment any more than I could give up joy and beauty" - Cate Tiernan
***
‘One man’s vulgarity is another man’s lyric’: Toronto man found not guilty in Twitter harassment trial - "Stephanie Guthrie and Heather Reilly accused Elliott of harassment partly based on his use of hashtags — a word, acronym or phrase after a number symbol used to create trackable conversations — they used. It was an assertion the judge found contrary to the open nature of Twitter. He said the pair may have felt harassed, but he couldn’t prove Elliott knew they felt that way, nor did the content of his tweets include explicitly threatening language. Knazan also discussed the link between Twitter and freedom of expression. People must “tolerate the annoyance” of oppositional views as part of that Charter right, “Freedom of expression represents society’s commitment to tolerate the annoyance of being confronted by unacceptable views…One man’s vulgarity is another man’s lyric,” he said, quoting from Robert Sharpe and Kent Roach’s book the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The judge also noted a lack of “reasonableness” in Guthrie’s assertion she could expect to use Twitter to make negative comments about Elliott and not be exposed to his response or self defence... Elliott peppered his tweets to Reilly “with mean, crass” comments, the judge noted. But again he cited the fact that Reilly, like Guthrie, had also continued to tweet negative things about Elliott. And he noted that the crown in either case wasn’t able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt there was a real threat of violence... His defence argued the pair continued to “taunt” Elliott even after blocking him, and they wouldn’t have done so if they were genuinely afraid of him."
If being rude to rude feminists were a crime, would being a rude feminist be a crime?
Jail no place for prolific tweeter - "it is not reasonable to be afraid of someone simply because that person expresses disagreement with you. In this case, we are reminded that “one man’s vulgarity is often another man’s lyric.” If the lyrics are hurting your ears, take off your headphones, because complaining to the police about it will no longer get the lyricist thrown behind bars."
Oplexus comments on Europe the Unready. "At first sight, the financial crisis, the refugee crisis, and the terrorist attacks might not seem to have anything in common. But in each case Europe’s ability to protect itself turns out to have been undermined by its imperfect union." - "Europe has taken its prosperity for granted, assuming that it would always be there. What a lot of European politicians don't seem to realize is that the values that made Europe the wealthiest continent on Earth need to be protected. Simply throwing open your borders to everybody on the globe does not bode well. If you're not willing to protect and stand up for your societies, other people will eventually see that as weakness and take it for granted.
I wonder how much longer countries like Sweden and Germany can sustain their lavish welfare states with hundreds of thousands of people pouring into their countries with no knowledge of the native language or culture. European leaders are naive, and had this strange idea that because they had achieved egalitarian, progressive societies, suddenly everybody else on the planet deserved a piece of it. If Europe is not willing to defend the values that made it great, it will lose it all. Which is a shame, because it took centuries of war and misery for Europe to even reach this point, and now it is willingly thowing it away due to its own hubris and white savior complex"
The Accidental Sexism of Google's Gift to Women - "each attendee received a swag package containing a notebook, a pen, a package of mints, and a mirror... to some, the kit--in particular, the makeup-compact-style mirror--was a reminder of the double standard that too often constrains women in Silicon Valley to prescribed roles, when it's not excluding them entirely. For one of the most admired tech companies on earth to give out makeup mirrors at a women's event--what kind of message does that send?... it seems every week offers fresh evidence of just how hard it is to retire hackneyed stereotypes. Just recently, IBM faced criticism for an ad campaign asking women engineers to hack hairdryers. Last week, venture capitalist Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital said his firm wouldn't lower its standards to hire more women. Defending the choice of swag items, Google points out that the kit was meant for attendees. Half of those in attendance were men, according to the company. Remaining boxes were shared after the event with the (mostly female) entrepreneurs presenting. The idea was to hand out materials that would help anyone of any gender prepare for a presentation, a Google representative explains. This wasn't the first time the company has given out mirrors, either--they've done so at general events and trainings"
Moral of the story: dont bother doing stuff for "diversity". You'll just get whacked anyway
Real "diversity" means lowering standards to let in "minorities"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, In the Shadow of the Strong Men - "'In Libya, everybody was happy', he told me. 'In America, there are people sleeping under bridges. In Libya, never. There was no discrimination, no problems, nothing. The work was good and so was the money. My life is all thanks to Gaddafi. He was the Messiah of Africa.' Kareem was far from unusual in this part of Ghana. As we talked, two other men sauntered over to join in the conversation and turned out to share his passion for the late Libyan dictator. 'Gaddafi was a nice guy', said Mustafa Abdel Mormin (sp?), a cheerful 35 year old construction worker who had worked in Libya for 7 years. 'He never cheated anybody. He was perfect. The best. What was the point of killing him?' added Elias Yaya (sp?), the local Iman, who had a round hat, a pointed beard and a very loud voice. 'You kill someone to solve the problem, and now the problem is worse. Why kill Gaddafi?'
Gaddafi may have been a ruthless autocrat but for years the relative affluence and stability of his rule was a godsend to migrants desperate for work... Before Gaddafi was ousted, he officially warned the European Union that if his regime were to collapse, as many as 2 million migrants would arrive on Europe's shores, creating chaos. He may have been more a dictator than a Messiah, but he seems to have been right about that...
'You know why I put it here?' he asks. 'When you open a FN office, you have to do exactly the same thing as if it's a... sex shop'
'Really?' I ask
'Yes. It's exactly the same thing as a sex shop. It has to be seen but no one should see who's inside'
'Like a guilty secret', I suggested
'Exactly', he says. 'The Front National is like a guilty secret'"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, November in Paris - "What purpose has the narrow gauge train with its maximum speed of about 25 miles per hour been serving recently? I once asked a station master on a narrow gauge line in the western state of Gujarat why so many passengers were waiting for the train at his station when the main road with faster buses on it ran parallel with the track. He replied with a broad smile: 'That's obvious. We are not too particular about ticketless travel. The bus conductors collect the fares'. The station master at Jabalpur assured me the passengers on his lines did buy tickets... an ex-soldier, recognisable by his formidable white moustache, was on his way to a hospital appointment. He felt the train was more dignified than the bus... Several passengers told me they found the train more comfortable than the bus. I didn't like to think what travelling in the buses was like. The train was so overcrowded that passengers were standing on the steps outside carriages, clinging precariously to the open doorway, while others sang cross-legged on the carriage roofs. High speeds on broad gauge lines and on many main lines overhead electrification have rendered the old Indian tradition of rooftop riding almost obsolete. Another tradition which is dying is the variety of food which used to be cooked on railway platforms"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, Damascus Rules - "'Do you think the 7 million Colombian victims of the 50 year war with the FARC will see that as justice?', I asked him... 'Listen, the victims, the families of the 200,000 dead, they are the strongest supporters of peace', he said. Colombia is a country of victims...
There are huge paintings of historic battles against the Chinese in which many thousands were killed, but only from the 10th to 15th centuries. Strangely there's nothing about Vietnam's more recent border war with China in 1979, which it also won. 'When a small country wins against a big country, it has to be careful' explained one veteran of Vietnam's conflicts... Fishing is crucial, not only to its economy but also to shoring up defences against China. Gal's (sp?) work is seen as so vital that he and others have been exempted from military service"
Crowd cheers as woman is brutally caned for being seen near man who wasn't her husband - "Nur Elita, 20, had to be removed from Baiturrahumim Mosque in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, in an ambulance after she was brutally punished for allegedly showing affection towards another university student."
Sharia Law is alive and well in the UK as investigation uncovers shocking details - "An Islamic judge "laughed" at a domestic violence victim who had gone to him seeking help and asked her "Why did you marry such a man?", it has been claimed... Dutch scholar Machteld Zee managed to get unparalleled access to a number of the religious courts currently operating in the UK - thought to number around 30. Her report, entitled Choosing Sharia? Multiculturalism, Islamic Fundamentalism and British Sharia Councils which has been seen by the Independent newspaper, also claims one judge, known as a qadi at a sharia council also said UK law did not matter in cases of divorce."
Belgium and the Netherlands swap land – because it 'makes sense' - "While Belgium will be losing a splendid piece of nature that juts into the Meuse river dividing the two nations, it will also unburden itself of a jurisdictional nightmare that developed over time as the river meandered to turn the portion of land belonging to Belgium — about 15 soccer fields’ worth — into a peninsula linked only to the Netherlands. Over time, the area was rumoured to be increasingly lawless, a haven for drug dealers and illicit sexual escapades. Then, three years ago, passersby discovered a headless body... In short, the Dutch could not go there because it was Belgian, and Belgian police and judicial authorities found it tough to get there. They are not allowed to cross into the Netherlands without permission and the peninsula had no proper landing zone for boats or equipment coming in by water."
Want to improve your sperm quality? Try having casual sex - Telegraph - ""Men produced higher quality ejaculates when exposed to novel, rather than familiar women," wrote the study authors. "Additionally, men ejaculated more quickly when viewing a new woman after being exposed to the same woman repeatedly." "Our findings are the first to demonstrate that men's ejaculate behaviour and composition change in response to novel female stimulus"... The study expresses concern that male fertility is going under-reported in the medical community, as semen samples are often produced while viewing material of unfamiliar women rather than the man's partner, thus falsely boosting sperm quality."
The 'Apple of China' is selling a water purifier, and the reason why is genius - "Xiaomi has previously been criticised for allegedly appropriating Apple’s designs: Apple’s head of design Jony Ive once went so far as call such copycats “theft.” But the real reason Xiaomi is often referred to as the Chinese equivalent of Apple is the astonishing loyalty of its fans... “This, then, is the key to understanding Xiaomi,” Thompson writes. “They’re not so much selling smartphones as they are selling a lifestyle, and the key to that lifestyle is MiUI, Xiaomi’s software layer that ties all of these things together.”"
Xiaomi now world's second-biggest wearables maker - "Chinese technology firm Xiaomi has become the world’s second largest wearables manufacturer in less than a year"
Alas, I Will Never Actually De-Clutter My House - "To live as Kondo recommends requires a faith in a continuing abundance and prosperity that I was raised not to have. How can you whittle your sock drawer down to six joyful pairs when you know full well that socks wear out?"
When It's Cool To Have Nothing - The New York Times - "others have begun to raise questions about minimalism’s class biases. At her blog Simply Fully, Taryn McCall notes that while she enjoys reading about minimalism online, “many of the most popular blogs that I read are written from the perspective of people who left high-powered, well-paid and benefited corporate careers for a simpler life and now have plenty of savings to show for it”... “Getting rid of things requires the having of things. If minimalism is a kind of voluntary thing-poverty, then real poverty is involuntary minimalism.” She adds, “It will always be easier to say having things doesn’t matter when you have too many things.”"
The Real Victims of Victimhood - The New York Times - "So who cares if we are becoming a culture of victimhood? We all should. To begin with, victimhood makes it more and more difficult for us to resolve political and social conflicts. The culture feeds a mentality that crowds out a necessary give and take — the very concept of good-faith disagreement — turning every policy difference into a pitched battle between good (us) and evil (them). Consider a 2014 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which examined why opposing groups, including Democrats and Republicans, found compromise so difficult. The researchers concluded that there was a widespread political “motive attribution asymmetry,” in which both sides attributed their own group’s aggressive behavior to love, but the opposite side’s to hatred. Today, millions of Americans believe that their side is basically benevolent while the other side is evil and out to get them. Second, victimhood culture makes for worse citizens — people who are less helpful, more entitled, and more selfish... Victims and their advocates always rely on free speech and open dialogue to articulate unpopular truths. They rely on free speech to assert their right to speak. Victimhood culture, by contrast, generally seeks to restrict expression in order to protect the sensibilities of its advocates. Victimhood claims the right to say who is and is not allowed to speak... The fight for victims is led by aspirational leaders who challenge us to cultivate higher values. They insist that everyone is capable of — and has a right to — earned success. They articulate visions of human dignity. But the organizations and people who ascend in a victimhood culture are very different. Some set themselves up as saviors; others focus on a common enemy. In all cases, they treat people less as individuals and more as aggrieved masses."
***
‘One man’s vulgarity is another man’s lyric’: Toronto man found not guilty in Twitter harassment trial - "Stephanie Guthrie and Heather Reilly accused Elliott of harassment partly based on his use of hashtags — a word, acronym or phrase after a number symbol used to create trackable conversations — they used. It was an assertion the judge found contrary to the open nature of Twitter. He said the pair may have felt harassed, but he couldn’t prove Elliott knew they felt that way, nor did the content of his tweets include explicitly threatening language. Knazan also discussed the link between Twitter and freedom of expression. People must “tolerate the annoyance” of oppositional views as part of that Charter right, “Freedom of expression represents society’s commitment to tolerate the annoyance of being confronted by unacceptable views…One man’s vulgarity is another man’s lyric,” he said, quoting from Robert Sharpe and Kent Roach’s book the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The judge also noted a lack of “reasonableness” in Guthrie’s assertion she could expect to use Twitter to make negative comments about Elliott and not be exposed to his response or self defence... Elliott peppered his tweets to Reilly “with mean, crass” comments, the judge noted. But again he cited the fact that Reilly, like Guthrie, had also continued to tweet negative things about Elliott. And he noted that the crown in either case wasn’t able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt there was a real threat of violence... His defence argued the pair continued to “taunt” Elliott even after blocking him, and they wouldn’t have done so if they were genuinely afraid of him."
If being rude to rude feminists were a crime, would being a rude feminist be a crime?
Jail no place for prolific tweeter - "it is not reasonable to be afraid of someone simply because that person expresses disagreement with you. In this case, we are reminded that “one man’s vulgarity is often another man’s lyric.” If the lyrics are hurting your ears, take off your headphones, because complaining to the police about it will no longer get the lyricist thrown behind bars."
Oplexus comments on Europe the Unready. "At first sight, the financial crisis, the refugee crisis, and the terrorist attacks might not seem to have anything in common. But in each case Europe’s ability to protect itself turns out to have been undermined by its imperfect union." - "Europe has taken its prosperity for granted, assuming that it would always be there. What a lot of European politicians don't seem to realize is that the values that made Europe the wealthiest continent on Earth need to be protected. Simply throwing open your borders to everybody on the globe does not bode well. If you're not willing to protect and stand up for your societies, other people will eventually see that as weakness and take it for granted.
I wonder how much longer countries like Sweden and Germany can sustain their lavish welfare states with hundreds of thousands of people pouring into their countries with no knowledge of the native language or culture. European leaders are naive, and had this strange idea that because they had achieved egalitarian, progressive societies, suddenly everybody else on the planet deserved a piece of it. If Europe is not willing to defend the values that made it great, it will lose it all. Which is a shame, because it took centuries of war and misery for Europe to even reach this point, and now it is willingly thowing it away due to its own hubris and white savior complex"
The Accidental Sexism of Google's Gift to Women - "each attendee received a swag package containing a notebook, a pen, a package of mints, and a mirror... to some, the kit--in particular, the makeup-compact-style mirror--was a reminder of the double standard that too often constrains women in Silicon Valley to prescribed roles, when it's not excluding them entirely. For one of the most admired tech companies on earth to give out makeup mirrors at a women's event--what kind of message does that send?... it seems every week offers fresh evidence of just how hard it is to retire hackneyed stereotypes. Just recently, IBM faced criticism for an ad campaign asking women engineers to hack hairdryers. Last week, venture capitalist Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital said his firm wouldn't lower its standards to hire more women. Defending the choice of swag items, Google points out that the kit was meant for attendees. Half of those in attendance were men, according to the company. Remaining boxes were shared after the event with the (mostly female) entrepreneurs presenting. The idea was to hand out materials that would help anyone of any gender prepare for a presentation, a Google representative explains. This wasn't the first time the company has given out mirrors, either--they've done so at general events and trainings"
Moral of the story: dont bother doing stuff for "diversity". You'll just get whacked anyway
Real "diversity" means lowering standards to let in "minorities"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, In the Shadow of the Strong Men - "'In Libya, everybody was happy', he told me. 'In America, there are people sleeping under bridges. In Libya, never. There was no discrimination, no problems, nothing. The work was good and so was the money. My life is all thanks to Gaddafi. He was the Messiah of Africa.' Kareem was far from unusual in this part of Ghana. As we talked, two other men sauntered over to join in the conversation and turned out to share his passion for the late Libyan dictator. 'Gaddafi was a nice guy', said Mustafa Abdel Mormin (sp?), a cheerful 35 year old construction worker who had worked in Libya for 7 years. 'He never cheated anybody. He was perfect. The best. What was the point of killing him?' added Elias Yaya (sp?), the local Iman, who had a round hat, a pointed beard and a very loud voice. 'You kill someone to solve the problem, and now the problem is worse. Why kill Gaddafi?'
Gaddafi may have been a ruthless autocrat but for years the relative affluence and stability of his rule was a godsend to migrants desperate for work... Before Gaddafi was ousted, he officially warned the European Union that if his regime were to collapse, as many as 2 million migrants would arrive on Europe's shores, creating chaos. He may have been more a dictator than a Messiah, but he seems to have been right about that...
'You know why I put it here?' he asks. 'When you open a FN office, you have to do exactly the same thing as if it's a... sex shop'
'Really?' I ask
'Yes. It's exactly the same thing as a sex shop. It has to be seen but no one should see who's inside'
'Like a guilty secret', I suggested
'Exactly', he says. 'The Front National is like a guilty secret'"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, November in Paris - "What purpose has the narrow gauge train with its maximum speed of about 25 miles per hour been serving recently? I once asked a station master on a narrow gauge line in the western state of Gujarat why so many passengers were waiting for the train at his station when the main road with faster buses on it ran parallel with the track. He replied with a broad smile: 'That's obvious. We are not too particular about ticketless travel. The bus conductors collect the fares'. The station master at Jabalpur assured me the passengers on his lines did buy tickets... an ex-soldier, recognisable by his formidable white moustache, was on his way to a hospital appointment. He felt the train was more dignified than the bus... Several passengers told me they found the train more comfortable than the bus. I didn't like to think what travelling in the buses was like. The train was so overcrowded that passengers were standing on the steps outside carriages, clinging precariously to the open doorway, while others sang cross-legged on the carriage roofs. High speeds on broad gauge lines and on many main lines overhead electrification have rendered the old Indian tradition of rooftop riding almost obsolete. Another tradition which is dying is the variety of food which used to be cooked on railway platforms"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, Damascus Rules - "'Do you think the 7 million Colombian victims of the 50 year war with the FARC will see that as justice?', I asked him... 'Listen, the victims, the families of the 200,000 dead, they are the strongest supporters of peace', he said. Colombia is a country of victims...
There are huge paintings of historic battles against the Chinese in which many thousands were killed, but only from the 10th to 15th centuries. Strangely there's nothing about Vietnam's more recent border war with China in 1979, which it also won. 'When a small country wins against a big country, it has to be careful' explained one veteran of Vietnam's conflicts... Fishing is crucial, not only to its economy but also to shoring up defences against China. Gal's (sp?) work is seen as so vital that he and others have been exempted from military service"
Crowd cheers as woman is brutally caned for being seen near man who wasn't her husband - "Nur Elita, 20, had to be removed from Baiturrahumim Mosque in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, in an ambulance after she was brutally punished for allegedly showing affection towards another university student."
Sharia Law is alive and well in the UK as investigation uncovers shocking details - "An Islamic judge "laughed" at a domestic violence victim who had gone to him seeking help and asked her "Why did you marry such a man?", it has been claimed... Dutch scholar Machteld Zee managed to get unparalleled access to a number of the religious courts currently operating in the UK - thought to number around 30. Her report, entitled Choosing Sharia? Multiculturalism, Islamic Fundamentalism and British Sharia Councils which has been seen by the Independent newspaper, also claims one judge, known as a qadi at a sharia council also said UK law did not matter in cases of divorce."
Belgium and the Netherlands swap land – because it 'makes sense' - "While Belgium will be losing a splendid piece of nature that juts into the Meuse river dividing the two nations, it will also unburden itself of a jurisdictional nightmare that developed over time as the river meandered to turn the portion of land belonging to Belgium — about 15 soccer fields’ worth — into a peninsula linked only to the Netherlands. Over time, the area was rumoured to be increasingly lawless, a haven for drug dealers and illicit sexual escapades. Then, three years ago, passersby discovered a headless body... In short, the Dutch could not go there because it was Belgian, and Belgian police and judicial authorities found it tough to get there. They are not allowed to cross into the Netherlands without permission and the peninsula had no proper landing zone for boats or equipment coming in by water."
Want to improve your sperm quality? Try having casual sex - Telegraph - ""Men produced higher quality ejaculates when exposed to novel, rather than familiar women," wrote the study authors. "Additionally, men ejaculated more quickly when viewing a new woman after being exposed to the same woman repeatedly." "Our findings are the first to demonstrate that men's ejaculate behaviour and composition change in response to novel female stimulus"... The study expresses concern that male fertility is going under-reported in the medical community, as semen samples are often produced while viewing material of unfamiliar women rather than the man's partner, thus falsely boosting sperm quality."
The 'Apple of China' is selling a water purifier, and the reason why is genius - "Xiaomi has previously been criticised for allegedly appropriating Apple’s designs: Apple’s head of design Jony Ive once went so far as call such copycats “theft.” But the real reason Xiaomi is often referred to as the Chinese equivalent of Apple is the astonishing loyalty of its fans... “This, then, is the key to understanding Xiaomi,” Thompson writes. “They’re not so much selling smartphones as they are selling a lifestyle, and the key to that lifestyle is MiUI, Xiaomi’s software layer that ties all of these things together.”"
Xiaomi now world's second-biggest wearables maker - "Chinese technology firm Xiaomi has become the world’s second largest wearables manufacturer in less than a year"
Alas, I Will Never Actually De-Clutter My House - "To live as Kondo recommends requires a faith in a continuing abundance and prosperity that I was raised not to have. How can you whittle your sock drawer down to six joyful pairs when you know full well that socks wear out?"
When It's Cool To Have Nothing - The New York Times - "others have begun to raise questions about minimalism’s class biases. At her blog Simply Fully, Taryn McCall notes that while she enjoys reading about minimalism online, “many of the most popular blogs that I read are written from the perspective of people who left high-powered, well-paid and benefited corporate careers for a simpler life and now have plenty of savings to show for it”... “Getting rid of things requires the having of things. If minimalism is a kind of voluntary thing-poverty, then real poverty is involuntary minimalism.” She adds, “It will always be easier to say having things doesn’t matter when you have too many things.”"
The Real Victims of Victimhood - The New York Times - "So who cares if we are becoming a culture of victimhood? We all should. To begin with, victimhood makes it more and more difficult for us to resolve political and social conflicts. The culture feeds a mentality that crowds out a necessary give and take — the very concept of good-faith disagreement — turning every policy difference into a pitched battle between good (us) and evil (them). Consider a 2014 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which examined why opposing groups, including Democrats and Republicans, found compromise so difficult. The researchers concluded that there was a widespread political “motive attribution asymmetry,” in which both sides attributed their own group’s aggressive behavior to love, but the opposite side’s to hatred. Today, millions of Americans believe that their side is basically benevolent while the other side is evil and out to get them. Second, victimhood culture makes for worse citizens — people who are less helpful, more entitled, and more selfish... Victims and their advocates always rely on free speech and open dialogue to articulate unpopular truths. They rely on free speech to assert their right to speak. Victimhood culture, by contrast, generally seeks to restrict expression in order to protect the sensibilities of its advocates. Victimhood claims the right to say who is and is not allowed to speak... The fight for victims is led by aspirational leaders who challenge us to cultivate higher values. They insist that everyone is capable of — and has a right to — earned success. They articulate visions of human dignity. But the organizations and people who ascend in a victimhood culture are very different. Some set themselves up as saviors; others focus on a common enemy. In all cases, they treat people less as individuals and more as aggrieved masses."