Links - 12th September 2017 (3)

How to Treat Sex Workers, According to Sex Workers - "the overprotective client: They want to spend half an hour talking to you about your personal life first and ask you way too many personal questions, including whether you're really doing this voluntarily. And then there are the clients who like you so much that they want to save you from this "awful life" that they think you lead as a sex worker. These clients constantly say things like: "But you're so cute, and you're so smart. You don't need to do this kind of work," or "Shouldn't you try and get a real job?" It's super annoying because it means that you're not taking me seriously. I understand it's coming from a good place, but it is also very condescending. I am a professional, and I take my job seriously."

An artificial womb successfully grew baby sheep — and humans could be next

Playboy and the False Normalization of the Hijab - "Playboy magazine has just featured an article about a hijab-wearing Muslim-American, Noor Taguri, “making a forceful case for modesty.” Yes. You read that correctly. In its October “Renegades” issue, Playboy is showcasing a religious-conservative practice as emblematic of an independent woman... The assumption made by some liberals is that the “authentic” Muslim woman is the hijab-wearing one, while non-hijabis are seen as Westernized, inauthentic Muslims... from the ’80s onward, theocratic Islamism began replacing Arab socialism as the ideology of resistance against “the West.”... Do look up the late great Egyptian feminist Huda Sharawi who truly stepped out of her “comfort zone” when, in 1923, she shocked Muslims everywhere by removing her hijab publicly for the first time."
When even Playboy fetishises the hijab...
This is a reminder that, contrary to oft-circulated photos of women in Tehran and Kabul, the hijab was indeed not unknown before the late 1970s

Australia defends cat cull to Morrissey and Brigitte Bardot - "Morrissey has accused Australia of "taking idiocy just too far". Mr Andrews said cats endangered more than 120 species and their cull would protect native wildlife. "Our native species are simply not equipped to coexist with feral cats; they did not evolve alongside predators like the feral cat," he wrote in his open letter. He said the plan, which was first announced in July, will see two million cats killed over the next five years, and has the support of major environmental organisations. Morrissey has angrily attacked the scheme, calling the Australian government "essentially a committee of sheep-farmers who have zero concerns about animal welfare or animal respect". "The cats are, in fact, two million smaller versions of Cecil the lion," he said, referring to the famous big cat killed by a US dentist in Zimbabwe."
Some animals are more equal than others

Graffiti Removal Guy Comes Back to Discover Image of Himself in the Same Spot

A Graffiti Artist Tests The Patience Of Local Authorities With This Hilarious Experiment

On Knowing Your Enemy: Sam Harris - "The Israelis have had a spotless record of airline security since 1972. It is widely imagined that they would never be so stupid as to profile people on the basis of race, ethnicity, or nationality. But this is just a pious fantasy. The Israelis have well-trained screeners who use all the information they can possibly glean to mitigate the risk of terrorism. Racial and ethnic profiling appears to be central to their process. I agree with many of my critics that we should emulate the Israeli approach insofar as it is possible. That would require smart, well-trained screeners who are empowered to use their discretion (i.e., to profile). I have discovered that most secular liberals are quite unwilling to think in any detail about the threat we face in our “war on terror.” For instance, why should we be especially concerned about suicide bombing? Because it is much harder to prevent and tends to be much more destructive than ordinary bombing. People who want to get safely home after committing an act of terrorism are significantly restricted in what they can do, and they can be deterred in ways that aspiring martyrs cannot. Anyone determined to board an airplane and destroy it in flight is, by definition, a suicide bomber... What percentage of porn stars are also theoretical physicists?... It is possible to make educated guesses of this kind with a high degree of confidence. In the context of airport security, this is “profiling” by another name... If you believe that the creator of the universe wants you to wage jihad against infidels, I think you can be perfectly healthy in psychological terms while becoming a suicide bomber. Secularists who doubt this seem to be the ones devoid of empathy, in fact: They are unwilling or unable to see the world through the eyes of our enemies—even when our enemies tell us, ad nauseam, exactly how they see the world. The most dangerous failing of secularism (and of moderate religion) is that its adherents cannot seem to grasp that some people really believe martyrdom is a path to Paradise... On a website whose purpose is to bear witness to Muslim moderation, we learn that it is a matter of consensus that an apostate should be killed if he or she speaks publicly against the faith"

The challenge of translating Harry Potter into French

Why Are These 3 STEM Fields Dominated By Women? - "in other fields including medicine, research revealed that when talking to women in leadership positions like a health care provider, people tended to interrupt more, which reflects a greater sense of comfort, empowerment, and participation."
Looks like "mansplaining" is actually a good thing
The thing those fields have in common seem to be that women are more interested in them

Ibuprofen: Clarifying some myths | Royal Pharmaceutical Society blog - "Some types of ibuprofen, such as ibuprofen sodium or ibuprofen lysine, do begin to provide pain relief quicker than ibuprofen acid as they may be absorbed more quickly. The maximum blood concentration after taking a single dose of fast-acting ibuprofen lysine or ibuprofen sodium formulations is around 45 minutes compared with 90 minutes for standard ibuprofen acid formulations. In addition, fact-acting ibuprofen formulations or combination products can be more effective. A recent study has compared the effectiveness of different painkillers available without prescription (over the counter, OTC). The most effective OTC painkiller was a combination of ibuprofen plus paracetamol that worked for 7 out of 10 people; fast acting ibuprofen formulations or ibuprofen 200 mg plus caffeine 100 mg was effective for 5 out of 10 people, whereas ibuprofen acid worked for only 4 out of 10 people."

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Fortification: Too Much of a Good thing? - "[On fortifying instant noodles to help people cook at home] Noodles is not the most homemade food as a scratched cooked meal, but it's a better alternative than a package of crisps or some other alternatives that people might have. Then we often encourage the addition of other vegetables to a noodle dish. This then we call home made...
If we look for example at iron, only about half the anemia in the world is actually caused by iron deficiency. There are lots of other reasons why people have anemia so if we're putting all our efforts into putting iron in a very few number of foods and we're not addressing all those other causes: sanitation, improving access to fruits and vegetables or all the other things that we know are important, we are not actually helping address the problem... people don't want to think about and address the underlying poverty and social determinants of health because it gets into politics. It gets into the complex, messy world of why people are poor...
The benefit:cost ratio are six to nine. You know that means for every dollar you spend on fortification you get between six and nine back in terms of reduced spending on health and improved economic productivity. Those benefit cost ratios are very competitive to other things that governments could spend their money on like bridges and roads... Ideally we want everybody in the world to be eating a healthy diet. We want everybody in the world to have enough income. We want all women in the world to be sufficiently empowered, to buy the right kind of food. We want that food to be available and affordable. But we're not there yet so what do you do? What's your choice? Is your choice to say sorry kids. The third of kids that die from malaria, sorry. Well we're working on the underlying determinants. You can die while we're doing that... [On conflicts of interest] Our view is that you have to work with the big companies if you want to change the way they behave. There is an African expression that says if you want to change somebody's head they've got to be in the room"

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, What Time is Dinner? - "In the north of England people are more likely to call the main meal of the evening tea. And they'll typically eat it earlier than in the south where people tend to call it Dinner. But dinner is also known as lunch in the north of England. Confused? The origins of all this lie in economics and historical variations in the working day. But for some the times we eat meals and what we cal them are still an indicator of social class. Take Noel Gallagher of the band Oasis. He told a UK newspaper in 2012: Me and my kids call it tea. My wife calls it dinner. She went to uni, I didn't. She's middle class, I'm not. People do seem to judge others on when they eat...
[On brunch] People will line up to sit crammed in small tables with people's knees knocking each other. Served by usually a hungover artist of some kind or creative person who resents their presence. And they'll eat food that's overpriced and because of the lineup, because of the performance of it all, would take three or four hours. In the middle of a Sunday. A precious Sunday... [The revival of brunch] coincides with the early two thousands when there was this rediscovery and celebration of urban areas and neighborhoods that might have fallen off the socioeconomic radar even though there are always people living there...
They don't have that much money and time to spare. People give the appearance of having all of that, but in reality people are often working, you know, contract jobs, no benefits, with a lot of insecurity - very precarious job holdings. And yet at the same time they are spending a lot of money for brunches, for the kind of meals that perhaps down the street at an old fashioned diner could be had for half the price. But it doesn't come with the same sort of cultural trappings as this new style of brunch eating... People were sort of brunching into oblivion"

You’ll never guess where Russian spies are hiding their control servers - "According to a report published Tuesday by researchers from antivirus provider Eset, a recently discovered backdoor Trojan used comments posted to Britney Spears's official Instagram account to locate the control server that sends instructions and offloads stolen data to and from infected computers. The innovation—by a so-called advanced persistent threat group known as Turla—makes the malware harder to detect because attacker-controlled servers are never directly referenced in either the malware or in the comment it accesses."

Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub
Comments: "Github is engaging in risky behaviour by reaching out to individuals (specifically activists) for hire explicitly on the basis of "diversity" and trying to incorporate those individuals in a highly merit-based environment. Secondly, Coraline seems to think that human relationships are a one way street: that she is entitled to be direct and even confrontational or insensitive, especially if she believes she is "right" or in a "mentor" role, and yet her peers are expected to walk on eggshells around her, lest they be accused of attacking her. One part that stood out as particularly odd was her insistence to stay at work while she was suffering with a mental health issue that was clearly affecting her job performance, in spite of her manager's request that she take mental health leave"
"employees like this have an bigger agenda they are focused on rather than doing work of the company. And the fact that she says she has bipolar depression (and she was on involuntarily mental commitment for 8-days!?!... and yet she can't imagine why somebody would say she is not doing well at work, is also ridiculous on the face of it."
"Isn't this the person who ran a code of conduct that has a website which includes things like "thoughtless use of pronouns" and mentions meritocracy as an evil, not a goal to strive for? Can't really say I'm expecting someone like that to be low friction."
Moral of the story - hiring SJWs is bad for an organisation

Govt to keep ability to amend Constitution without vote: Shanmugam - "With social spending set to increase to support a rapidly ageing population, the Government needs to preserve its ability to make the “necessary adjustments” to the Constitution to strengthen the revenue base and pay for the extra spending, said Law and Foreign Affairs Minister K Shanmugam. This is why the Government does not intend to bring into force Article 5(2A) of the Constitution, he said in response to a question raised by Nominated Member of Parliament Eugene Tan yesterday. The Article states that if Parliament wants to amend certain elements of the Constitution, including any provisions relating to the President’s powers, it must seek a national referendum and get the support of at least two-thirds of voters."

Shortage of eligible men has left women taking desperate steps to preserve their fertility, experts say - "A dearth of marriagable men has left an “oversupply” of educated women taking desperate steps to preserve their fertility, experts say. The first global study into egg freezing found that shortages of eligible men were the prime reason why women had attempted to take matters into their own hands. Experts said “terrifying” demographic shifts had created a “deficit” of educated men and a growing problem of “leftover” professional women, with female graduates vastly outnumbering males in in many countries... The anthropologist suggested some women might need to be prepared to compromise some of their standards in order to find love. But she suggested society should act to increase the number of men going into higher education. “It may be about rethinking the way we approach this,” she said. “Most women who are educated would like to have an educated partner. Traditionally women have also wanted to ‘marry up’ to go for someone more successful, financially well off”... Some women were paying a high price for feminism, she suggested. “As a feminist I think it’s great that women are doing so well but I think there has been a cost that has been paid,” she said, warning that many had been left in “sadness and isolation”... One in five women in the UK is now childless by the end of their fertile life - compared to one in 10 a generation before, he said... The gender gap for higher education is now as large as that between rich and poor people"
Or women could just marry down. This also suggests that some women might not think that female emancipation has been an entirely positive thing, and that the obsession about women suffering oppression because they earn fewer first class honours degrees than men is misplaced

Japan Welcomes "Power Rangers" Home with Rice Field Art - "Back in May, 500 volunteers gathered in Nanyo to plant a mix of heirloom rice plants in such a way that the resulting plants would create a picture of Hollywood's Red Ranger. Called tanbo art, the concept was first attempted in Inakadate, Aomori back in 1993 as a way to revitalize interest in the town. Since then, other villages have gone on to do similar, either for increased tourism or for special events."

A Comparison of Physical Therapy, Chiropractic Manipulation, and Provision of an Educational Booklet for the Treatment of Patients with Low Back Pain - "For patients with low back pain, we found that physical therapy and chiropractic manipulation had similar effects on symptoms, function, satisfaction with care, disability, recurrences of back pain, and subsequent visits for back pain. Although chiropractic treatment involved more visits than physical therapy, the total time spent with either a chiropractor or a physical therapist was similar (about 2.5 hours) as was the total cost of the treatments ($226.08 and $238.54, respectively). Among other rigorous studies comparing chiropractic and physical therapy, a British study concluded that chiropractic was more beneficial,11,12 whereas a Swedish study found no significant differences in outcomes or costs"

Shutdown Windows 8 and Windows 7 in a Single Click, Using Third-Party Apps -You may be aware of our small 147 KB portable freeware tool HotShut that lets you shutdown, restart, hibernate, lock or log off your Windows computer instantly from your taskbar notification area in a click."

Umbrella-sharing startup loses nearly all of its 300,000 umbrellas in a matter of weeks - "Only a few weeks after starting up operations in 11 cities across China, Sharing E Umbrella announced that it had lost almost all of its 300,000 umbrellas... Umbrella renting schemes aren't the only sharing businesses suffering from problems with theft in China. Last month, shared-bike startup Wukong Bicycles went out of business in Chongqing after nearly all of its bikes were stolen following just six months of operation. Shortly afterward, Beijing-based 3Vbike followed suit after their stock of bikes was reduced to just a few dozen."
So much for "stereotypes"

Vatican outlaws gluten-free bread for Holy Communion

How successful is Hong Kong’s MTR compared to S’pore’s MRT? Unbelievable. Out of this world. - "Hong Kong’s railway pricing is super efficient. The percentage of operational costs covered by fares, also known as farebox recovery ratio, is 187 percent between January and June 2015. This is the highest in the world. In comparison, Singapore’s stands at around 125 percent, while the London Tube and the New York subway come in at 90 and 51 percent respectively."