Links - 10th November 2017 (2)

10+ Dark And Unexpectedly Hilarious Comics By David Daneman

Guess Who — ginzers: spoopy-roxxi: ginzers: ... - "I’m really not understanding why you think cultural appropriation would be ok, unless you are assuming that the girl in the picture is part Japanese."
"The only people who think culture shouldnt be shared are racists like you. A vast majority of Japanese people actually enjoy other people making an effort to spread and enjoy japanese culture, and encourage it. Many make businesses in deliberately taking pictures of people in kimono. A common omiage (gift) for foreigners from japanese people is traditional japanese things such as kimonos, tea seats, shisa dog statues, ect. And to top it off, basically 80 percent of japanese customs, traditions, and food, came from other countries. Japanese is an integration of different cultures, like america. Japan takes influences from places like korea, china, russia, and europe. If japan stuck to itself, there would be no tempura, japanese tea, tea ceremonies, kabuki, japanese bread, japanese curry, j- pop, anime, cars, or modern fishing techniques. The picture is not “yellow face” they are not making fun of asians. In fact, it looks like they put extra care and research into their work. The only reason that you have a problem with this is because that little girl is white and you know that it is acceptable on tumblr to crap all over white people. The only racist here is you."
Addendum: This is about a little girl dressed up as a geisha with a Japanese tea party

My Life as an Ivy League Sugar Baby - "My sugar dicks were cliché as they come. I didn't realize that I would be giving more than sex to these men, that they weren't really paying for my body, but my attention. My validation. The light in my eyes that recognized the light in theirs... you get all the perks of running your own business without the need for startup capital or marketing"

What happens after enrollment? An analysis of the time path of racial differences in GPA and major choice - "black/white gpa convergence is symptomatic of dramatic shifts by blacks from initial interest in the natural sciences, engineering, and economics to majors in the humanities and social sciences. We show that natural science, engineering, and economics courses are more difficult, associated with higher study times, and have harsher grading standards; all of which translate into students with weaker academic backgrounds being less likely to choose these majors. Indeed, we show that accounting for academic background can fully account for average differences in switching behavior between blacks and whites."
In other words, blacks switch to easier courses because they're not prepared for the harder ones due to affirmative action. The same is true for legacy admissions. Given that both let in students who are not prepared for the material, that makes sense
Naturally this got protested, even back in 2012

Racial controversy at Duke challenges affirmative action - "A minority group at Duke University is protesting a recent study by university researchers that found that black students take easier classes than white students. The study has inflamed racial tensions on campus... The study also argued that though elite universities are trying to increase the number of minority students in natural sciences and engineering through affirmative action, the policy is actually working against them."

84% of Vegetarians and Vegans Return to Meat. Why? - "I told my mom and dad that my decision was based on animal welfare and the high carbon footprint of meat. But the truth is that while I theoretically cared about animals and the planet, mostly I just wanted to be different... it seemed like I was always hungry no matter how large my bowl of beans and rice. Even worse than constant hunger, I didn't seem to enjoy food the way other people did. Eating was a chore, like folding laundry or paying bills, but even more annoying because if I didn't do it I would die. I was sick of being hungry, I was sick of beans and rice, and so at the age of 31, I have made a decision: I will try and become a meat-eater"

Why Do Most Vegetarians Go Back To Eating Meat? - "thirty-five percent of our participants indicated that declining health was the main reason they reverted back to eating flesh. For example, one wrote, "I was very weak and sickly. I felt horrible even though I ate a good variety of foods like PETA said to." Another wrote, "My doctor recommended that I eat some form of meat as I was not getting any better. I thought it would be hypocritical of me to just eat chicken and fish as they are just as much and animal as a cow or pig. So I went from no meat to all meat." The most succinct response was by a man who wrote, "I will take a dead cow over anemia any time"... About one in five of our participants had developed an irresistible urge to taste cooked flesh once more. This occurred even among some long-term vegetarians. Participants talked about their protein cravings or how the smell of sizzling bacon would drive them crazy. One, for example, said "I just felt hungry all the time and that hunger would not be satisfied unless I ate meat.""

CRISPR used to edit genes of human embryos for first time in U.S. - "Molecular scissors known as CRISPR/Cas9 corrected a gene defect that can lead to heart failure"

Paedophiles 'could be prescribed child sex dolls' to prevent real attacks, says therapist - "Her comments came after a former primary school governor was found guilty of importing a life-size child sex doll from China to the UK. David Turner, 72, will be sentenced in September... "I would love to get to a stage where society can accept that some people are sexually attracted to children and yet they remain completely law abiding, and it is safe for those people to admit to their attraction""

It turns out the iPad was just too expensive after all

Venezuela Bolivar Worth Less Than 'World of Warcraft' Currency

Jin Ji Braised Duck, And The 2nd-Gen Hawker Behind The Revamp - "he sells out almost daily, and has observed a 30% increase in overall sales after the revamp"

Not a shot! Anti-vax movement prompts Brooklynites to withhold inoculations from their pets, vets say - "A Clinton Hill–based veterinarian said she has heard clients suggest the inoculations could give their pups autism, however, echoing the argument of those who oppose vaccinating kids. But even if pooches were susceptible to the condition, their owners probably wouldn’t notice, according to the doctor... There was a recent uptick in canine vaccinations after an outbreak of the bacterial disease Leptospirosis, which infected several people in the Bronx earlier this year and is lethal to dogs, according to Liff, who said it’s not unusual for trends in human medicine to trickle down to animal health care."

Clementine Ford: Isolation from platonic touch is a tragedy of modern manhood - "prior to the 20th century it was common for men to be physically intimate with each other without their intimacy being assumed to be sexual in nature. There have been thousands of photographs collated by historians that show men reclined in a comfortable and physical expression of friendship. They are seen leaning against each other, hands draped across each other's thighs and often holding hands. Some sociologists theorise that this freedom was the result of different social assumptions made about homosexuality, and the pathologisation of sexuality at the turn of the 20th century was what changed things. Others suggest it may have been a response to the increase of women's power and their burgeoning presence in public life. Simply put, that with women moving more determinedly out of the domestic sphere and into the public one, men looked for ways to distinguish themselves from them and their inherently "feminine" traits."
On the cultural stigmatisation of male friendship and touch

Malaysia's train operator RapidKL uses Annabelle doll to warn commuters to mind their manners - "Malaysia's MRT and LRT operator RapidKL is trying to spook users into behaving themselves at stations and trains by using Annabelle, a haunted doll from a movie with the same name."

Discuss: Entrepreneurs, stop trying to start a business young - "To me, the best founders are people who have learned how to be employees... I’m looking for people who know what the fuck they’re doing. And these people are those who’ve spent enough time learning, re-learning, studying, gathering experience, and following the right road. They’ve worked in their industry before. They’ve had a boss who’s given them instructions. Their bosses have encouraged them when they’ve done well and come down hard on them when they messed up... Remember, Steve Jobs worked for Atari before he founded Apple."

Into Thin Air: Mountain Climbing Kills Brain Cells - "They found brain damage in virtually every Everest climber but also in many climbers of lesser peaks who returned unaware that they had injured their brain... even when climbers showed no signs of acute sickness, the scans still found brain damage"

Princess Diana's revelations about sex and sorrow to be aired on British TV - "Charles' father, Prince Philip, had given him permission to have an affair if the marriage did not work."

Google's New Hate Speech Algorithm Has a Problem With Jews - "the machines learned the comments sections of The New York Times, the Economist, and the Guardian... “Many terrorists are radical Islamists.” The comment, Perspective informed me, was 92 percent likely to be seen as toxic. What about straightforward statements of facts? I reached for the news, which, sadly, has been very grim lately, and wrote: “Three Israelis were murdered last night by a knife-wielding Palestinian terrorist who yelled ‘Allah hu Akbar.’” This, too, was 92 percent likely to be seen as toxic. You, too, can go online and have your fun, but the results shouldn’t surprise you. The machines learn from what they read, and when what they read are the Guardian and the Times, they’re going to inherit the inherent biases of these publications as well. Like most people who read the Paper of Record, the machine, too, has come to believe that statements about Jews being slaughtered are controversial, that addressing radical Islamism is verboten, and that casual anti-Semitism is utterly forgivable. The very term itself, toxicity, should’ve been enough of a giveaway: the only groups that talk about toxicity—see under: toxic masculinity—are those on the regressive left who creepily apply the metaphors of physical harm to censor speech not celebrate or promote it. No words are toxic, but the idea that we now have an algorithm replicating, amplifying, and automatizing the bigotry of the anti-Jewish left may very well be"
This is good evidence for the New York Times, the Economist and the Guardian's readers' anti-Semitism and pro-Isalmism

SPUTNIK EXCLUSIVE: Research Proves Google Manipulates Millions to Favor Clinton - "It is somewhat difficult to get the Google search bar to suggest negative searches related to Mrs. Clinton or to make any Clinton-related suggestions when one types a negative search term. Bing and Yahoo, on the other hand, often show a number of negative suggestions in response to the same search terms. Bing and Yahoo seem to be showing us what people are actually searching for; Google is showing us something else — but what, and for what purpose?... Google suppresses negative suggestions selectively, not across the board. It is easy to get autocomplete to suggest negative searches related to prominent people, one of whom happens to be Mrs. Clinton's opponent."

Are Conservatives More "Anti-Science" Than Are Liberals? - "A new series of studies by Liu & Ditto (in press) showed that political ideology and moral beliefs influence people's judgments of facts. After reading an essay that argued that the death penalty is barbaric and immoral, people estimated lower crime-reducing benefits and greater costs for the death penalty than after reading an essay that argued that the death penalty was morally justified and showed high regard for human life. They found essentially similar results for several morally charged political issues, including use of torture, promotion of condom use, and stem cell research... Liu & Ditto also found three other interesting patterns. There were modest tendencies for distortions to be strongest among people who: 1. held strong moral convictions; 2. considered themselves most informed; and 3. were conservatives. This last finding was quite modest, so that even if conservatives' views of science are a bit more distorted than liberals, there was ample distortion among liberals. When Liu & Ditto's (in press) findings are combined with this fact -- liberals heavily dominate psychological science (the ratio of liberals to conservatives is about 10:1 in social psychology -- Inbar & Lammers, 2012) -- a serious question about "science" is raised"

Leftists ENRAGED At Dave Chappelle For Telling Jokes About Transgenderism - "Of course, jokes are often offensive by design. In fact, pre-Africa-bound Chappelle almost exclusively dealt with the very real and complex issue of race through funny and, yes, offensive skits. Comedy, which can often be offensive or make one uncomfortable, helps to break down taboos and open up honest dialogue about serious issues. This is particularly useful in a society that attempts to shut down any speech subjectively deemed hateful or merely counter to the views of the so-called oppressed."

Female Student 'Harassed, Threatened' By College After Insisting Her Boyfriend Did NOT Abuse Her - "On college campuses, men are guilty until proven innocent — even when the accusations are being refuted by the supposed victim over and over again. This story of a top tennis player at the University of Southern California (USC) and her star football player boyfriend is unfortunately a perfect example of such injustice. It all started when former USC football kicker Matt Boermeester was accused of abusing his girlfriend, 22-year-old nationally-ranked USC tennis player Zoe Katz — not by Katz, but by a third party. Apparently a neighbor saw the couple roughhousing with one another and interpreted it as "abuse." This person told their roommate; the roommate told a USC coach; and the coach reported the account to the school's Title IX office. After the allegations surfaced, Katz came out to vehemently deny that she had ever been "abused" by Boermeester. In return, the office “misled, harassed, threatened and discriminated against” her, she claims. Katz was told she was a victim and merely protecting her abuser; she was not believed, but instead treated as a child. Her boyfriend was viewed as guilty and suspended from the school"

Title IX cases that resulted in suicide, a suicide attempt at two colleges prompt fresh debate - "after allegedly bungled investigations into sexual assault accusations under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a University of Texas at Arlington student killed himself and a Cornell University student attempted to do so... Suicides make for compelling examples to many -- not just critics of Title IX enforcement."

No sweat! Fried chicken chain in Japan introduces 'girl's perspiration' flavour - "Tenka Torimasu, which has half-a-dozen take-out outlets in the Japanese capital, launched the new sauce earlier this month. And it is not just any girl's sweat, Tenka Torimasu attempts to replicate the "refreshing sweat of young women working hard to become pop singers", local news websites reported."

A meta-analysis of gender stereotypes and bias in experimental simulations of employment decision making. - "men were preferred for male-dominated jobs (i.e., gender-role congruity bias), whereas no strong preference for either gender was found for female-dominated or integrated jobs. Second, male raters exhibited greater gender-role congruity bias than did female raters for male-dominated jobs. Third, gender-role congruity bias did not consistently decrease when decision makers were provided with additional information about those they were rating, but gender-role congruity bias was reduced when information clearly indicated high competence of those being evaluated. Fourth, gender-role congruity bias did not differ between decisions that required comparisons among ratees and decisions made about individual ratees. Fifth, decision makers who were motivated to make careful decisions tended to exhibit less gender-role congruity bias for male-dominated jobs. Finally, for male-dominated jobs, experienced professionals showed smaller gender-role congruity bias than did undergraduates or working adults"