Links - 13th November 2017 (1)

‘No Borders’ Activist Gang Raped By Migrants, Pressured Into Keeping Quiet To Not ‘Damage Cause’ - "La Stampa reports that the woman, around 30 years of age, would have reported the horrific crime were if not for her fellow left-wing activists, who convinced her that if the truth got out it could damage their utopian dream of a world without borders. But Corriere Della Serra also reports that some of her fellow activists are now accusing the woman of reporting the rape out of “spite,” because her group was withdrawn from the camp following a separate controversy."

University of Alabama Alpha Phi sorority criticized for recruitment video - "A sorority chapter at the University of Alabama has taken down a popular video and deleted all of its social media pages in the wake of criticism over the recruitment video, which has been depicted as lacking diversity and objectifying women."
It's quite a nice video

Obama on Moms Who Stay Home to Raise Kids: 'That's Not a Choice We Want Americans to Make'
Is this sexist?

How a Working-Class Couple Amassed a Priceless Art Collection

Restaurants Serving Frozen Food Is Fraud, Italy’s Highest Court Upholds - "Italy’s highest court recently upheld a law whereby restaurants can be fined for not disclosing that they are serving frozen food on the menu."

College students seeking sugar daddies for tuition, rent - "He said he created SeekingArrangement.com out of his own frustration with women. An MIT graduate, he had difficulty meeting women and realized a site such as this would highlight what set him apart - money. “Money and sex are things that people want,” he said. “I think the controversy comes into play on seeking arrangement because we are so upfront about it.”"

Inside the world of Malaysian sugar babies - ""online, college girls get harrased and hit on by guys all the time anyway. All they’d have to do is negotiate a price"... “I am willing to pay my sugar baby up to RM3,000 a month,” said Jon, 25, who currently works in his father’s company. It would take up a large chunk of his salary RM5,000 salary, but he doesn’t mind. “It’s less complicated to have a sugar baby, and besides, even if I had a girlfriend I’d spend a lot of money on her anyway.”... Shaun, 27, likes how the two parties can be upfront about their expectations in a sugar relationship. “Being a manager, I feel I can afford to splurge on a girl,” he said. “So I appreciate it when the girl is honest about what she wants."

Healing Crystal Dildos - "The best part about these dildos? They practically double as home decor, so you totally avoid the semi-wkward moment when a visitor spots your self-pleasuring gadget on your bedside table. Chakrubs' official website states that using these intriguing toys results in "learning to quiet the mind in order to feel subtle energies, develop emotional intelligence, strengthen self-awareness, and accepting every aspect of who you are." It goes on to explain how using them "not only gets you off, but turns you on in a way in which you will remain turned on and awakened with a renewed sense of self-awareness and wisdom.""

Simple code gives access to iPhone’s secret settings, showing extra information on signal strength and call settings - "The tool is enabled by dialling *3001#12345#* and then pressing the call button. Your phone will switch away onto a grey screen, after which you’ll see the extra information."

I’m terrified of my new TV: Why I’m scared to turn this thing on — and you’d be, too - "I’m now afraid to use it. You would be too — if you read through the 46-page privacy policy."

Singapore mistaken for Libya in Cambodian government video targeting ‘excessive’ civil rights - "Images of Singapore’s skyline have been mistakenly used to depict Libya in a Cambodian government video, which warns that a misuse of civil rights can lead a nation to ruin. In a thinly veiled warning to stirring protest groups in the country, the video titled “Using The Rights In An Anarchic Way” uses examples of Syria and Libya as once beautiful, peaceful countries “destroyed by its own people"... The video was produced by the Cambodian Human Rights Committee"

Ghana: Call to remove Gandhi statue over 'racist views' - "A group of Ghanaian academics, students and artists is calling for the removal of a statue of Mahatma Gandhi from a university campus, saying that the leader of India's independence movement was racist towards black people... an online campaign using the #GandhiMustFall hashtag gained traction, while a statue of his in Johannesburg was vandalised during a rally attended by protesters holding placards reading "Racist Gandhi Must Fall"."

Shark Brain Looks Like Female Vagina : Damnthatsinteresting

11 Months After Marijuana Legalization, Here's What's Happening to Mexican Cartels - "drug cartels were instead trying to push cheap heroin after wholesale cannabis prices in Sinaloa crashed from $100 per kilogram five years ago to less than $25. "It's not worth it anymore," longtime marijuana farmer Rodrigo Silla told the Washington Post. "I wish the Americans would stop with this legalization.""

Colorado is using $3 million from marijuana tax to provide food and housing for the homeless

Taxpayers angry over memo that told officials to make life harder for them - "TAXPAYERS in the Alpes-Maritime were left fuming by a leaked internal tax office memo which told officials to make things difficult for them if they visit the tax office in person instead of using internet-based services."

Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths - "Having been in touch with a dead person is more common among women than men (33% vs. 26%). Women are also twice as likely to have consulted a fortuneteller or psychic (20% vs. 10%). Blacks report more experience feeling in touch with the dead than whites or Hispanics (41%, 29% and 30%, respectively)"
Women are significantly higher on the irrational beliefs scale. One article I read said this wasn't evidence for women being more irrational because more men believed in conspiracy theories but more rigorous analysis (Oliver and Wood 2014) shows the reverse to be true - women are more likely to believe in them

Paranormal Beliefs Come (Super)Naturally to Some - "Women are more likely than men to believe in haunted houses, communicating with the dead, and astrology. Men, on the other hand, show a slightly greater proclivity than women to believe in extraterrestrial beings... Kathleen, a New Jersey counselor who treats both men and women for a variety of issues, isn't surprised by the finding that women are, in some cases, bigger believers in the paranormal. She suspects it's a function of how men's and women's brains work. "Women are just more receptive, more intuitive, and more plugged in, whereas men tend to be logical and sequential," she says. "In my work, I find that women are much more inclined to speculate about hypothetical situations"... "It doesn't surprise me at all that women are less interested in extraterrestrials than [are] men," says Frank Drake, director for the Center for the Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute. "It reflects two things -- it's well-documented that girls in school lose interest in science at about age 12, and people who are educated in science are much more likely to believe in life in outer space.""

People who believe in conspiracy theories more likely to be suffering from stress, study finds

Understand me or not? Accent, acceptability and intelligibility in International English: The case of Singapore - "It has been claimed on numerous occasions by prominent Singaporeans that Singapore English is difficult for non-Singaporeans to understand, and that this might adversely affect Singapore's standing and performance in the global marketplace. This study investigates the intelligibility and acceptability of Singapore English relative to other international varieties of English... Singapore English was found to be relatively easy to understand, as well as generally well-accepted, among the respondent groups surveyed."

More cases involving sex with minors - "The 12 cases heard in court this year involved both male and female perpetrators. They also included two young male victims. To protect these minors, more needs to be done to educate girls on how to resist, and to teach the males about the consequences of sex with minors and how to accept no for an answer, said Ms Lim."
Tellingly, AWARE sees women as the victims and men as the perpetrators - even when there are male victims and female perpetrators

15 Things You Didn't Know About 'DuckTales' - "THE SHOW'S APPEAL WAS UNIVERSAL.
In 1991, DuckTales became the first American cartoon to be shown in the former Soviet Union."
Interestingly I saved this to my Pocket in June 2013 but it's dated May 2017

The new sign on French menus - "The bad news is that - just like anywhere else in the developed world - many French restaurants just reheat pre-prepared food, rather than cooking it from scratch. French consumers estimated, in a poll last October, that barely half of restaurant meals were home-made, while the Union of Hotel Skills and Industries suggests that 85% of restaurants secretly make use of frozen or vacuum-packed food... Now any restaurant that serves a home-made dish can indicate it on the menu with a new logo - in the shape of a saucepan with a roof-like lid. From next January it will be compulsory for all menus to carry the logo - so if you don't see it, the food is not fait maison. "We chose to represent 'home-made' with a logo so that foreign tourists could understand it," says a government spokeswoman. "French gastronomy represents 13.5% of foreign tourists' expenses and it's undeniable that if we add value to the quality of our restaurants, it will have an impact on tourism." Even professional chefs in smart restaurants have been cutting corners, it seems. They can buy steak tartare that has been chopped irregularly to make it look as if it was just hand-prepared in the kitchen, and any number of faux home-made tarts and pies... Alain Tortosa, gourmet and creator of the directory Restaurantsquifontamanger.fr, mentions the case of a chef who went out for dinner and knew he was eating an industrially made Boeuf Bourguignon. "It was so good that the chef was soon asking himself why he was taking the trouble to make his own," he says.
81% know that some restaurants use pre-prepared products
82% say the use of industrial food by restaurants is incompatible with what they expect
73% say they are satisfied with the quality of meals served in restaurants
34% would be willing to pay more for a restaurant that serves homemade food...
Alain Tortosa can see the law actually reducing the number of home-made dishes on menus. He gives the example of a restaurant owner whose menu is almost entirely made with industrial food, except for the apple pie he makes himself. Under the new law, he will have to put a logo next to the pie - but this will only serve to underline the fact that all the other dishes are pre-prepared."

Let Me Take You Down - "I don’t have anything against motivation if you’re talking about genuine inspiration, the values-driven desire to achieve a goal or well-designed incentives. But what a lot of motivational gurus do is whip their targets into a frenzy of self-adulation, point them in the direction of their jobs, and say “Go.” Sometimes they are instructed to work harder, sometimes to be nicer. But the process is the same: Inflate them with emotional gas, and tell them they are now equipped to succeed. The newly energized targets make unreasonable declarations about what they are going to achieve. Then they set off doing the same thing they did before, only now they believe they can “make it happen.” Soon reality begins to chip away at their confidence. Naturally, there are plenty of books and tapes they can buy to help recapture that magic feeling until the next seminar... Where motivational products don’t breed cynicism, they often breed indifference. Either way, it’s not pretty"

Black Votes Matter - Thomas Sowell - "Black votes matter to many politicians -- more so than black lives. That is why such politicians must try to keep black voters fearful, angry and resentful. Racial harmony would be a political disaster for such politicians. Racial polarization makes both the black population and the white population worse off, but it makes politicians who depend on black votes better off... Obama has repeatedly put the weight and prestige of the presidency on the side of those who denounce the police before any facts are verified -- and even after facts have come out, exposing the fraudulence of such claims as the claim that the "gentle giant" Michael Brown said, "Hands up, don't shoot." When a career race hustler like Al Sharpton, with a history of hoaxes, is a regular visitor and advisor to the White House, that is a reality that whites and blacks alike ignore at their peril. The fact that Sharpton owes millions of dollars in unpaid income taxes ought to be a devastating revelation of what lucrative careers there are in race hustling. When a career race hustler like Al Sharpton, with a history of hoaxes, is a regular visitor and advisor to the White House, that is a reality that whites and blacks alike ignore at their peril. The fact that Sharpton owes millions of dollars in unpaid income taxes ought to be a devastating revelation of what lucrative careers there are in race hustling."

A Complete Analysis of Stannis Baratheon as a Military Commander | Wars and Politics of Ice and Fire

How North Korea is coping with uncouth tourists from China - "Simon Cockerell, of Koryo Tours, which specialises in travel to the reclusive socialist state, cites as an example mainland tourists throwing sweets at North Korean children "like they're feeding ducks". "The North Koreans think that's undignified and offensive," he says."

Identity Politics is Killing Solidarity and Fuelling Fascism - "we saw the grotesque sight of middle-class “left-wing” people declaring themselves to be “oppressed” (for reason of possessing a vagina or extra melanin in their skin), and attacking poor white communities as “privileged”. The new-left had restarted the class war, but this time was firmly on the other side... The pus-filled boil of identity politics, quietly swelling since the 80s, really only burst within the past couple of years. And now, the identity fascists are dismantling all remnants of cross-community solidarity as rapidly as possible. Every progressive movement of recent years is collapsing as identity politics moves in... A Martin Luther King character, should one exist today, would identify a common cause and an opportunity for cross-community solidarity; but this is not the liberal 60s, and there appears to be no room for uniting characters like MLK today. Instead, the issue was seized by black nationalists. The hashtag #filmthepolice gave way to #blacklivesmatter. In a remarkable reversal of logic, black nationalists – backed by identity fascists – declared #alllivesmatter to be a “racist” sentiment... Identity politics is really the politics of the self. The identity warrior’s deepest instinct is: “How can I make this all about MEEEE?” Thus, the ever-vapid commentator Owen Jones walked out of a Sky News dicussion on the Orlando shooting, ostensibly because the other commentators were refusing to acknowledge homophobia. But in reality, Jones had finally found an American massacre that he, as a gay man, could associate himself with, and so become outraged about. Never mind that, as a British person, the chance he will ever encounter a mass shooting is close to zero. Never mind that many of the dead were undocumented Latino migrants rather than middle-class British journalists. Jones’ sexuality is the hook with which he can claim a stake in the misery of strangers, far away. And here is the real tragedy of identity politics: solidarity is dying."