Links - 13th November 2017 (2)

My Mental Health Struggles Don’t Justify Trigger Warnings - "Victimhood is a prison, and for years I was within it, forced to re-enact patterns of failure and to periodically relive the worst experiences of my life. My trauma became the lens through which I saw the world. As long as I remained trapped in the prison of victimhood, I hadn’t really survived my experience. It continued to dominate my life in many ways. It wasn’t until I started to redefine the narrative of my life that things got better... Trigger warnings are one of the latest fads in an ongoing cultural obsession with glorifying victimhood... In advancing the narrative that people with mental illness and PTSD are so fragile that they need to be protected at all times, universities not only fail to help people overcome their traumas, they increase the already toxic stigma against people with mental illness"

In trouble? We can be your friend for hire - "We listen to you. You have never had anyone listen to you until you have had a litigator take down your statement, ask you questions, think about your answers, and then ask you more questions. We are your secret diary. We will pay attention to you. We will not brush aside your problems. We will acknowledge your conflict. We will sit with you to understand your dispute better than you will yourself. And you can tell us anything. We will never tell anyone else. We will resist any power on earth to make us break your trust in us."

There’s No Such Thing as an ‘Illiberal’ - WSJ - " Anyone who advocates nationalist and religious ideas in the wrong circles gets tossed straight into the basket of illiberals, with Messrs. Putin, Erodgan and Kim. This is worth thinking about with care. A country where you can no longer advocate a nationalist or religious viewpoint without being stigmatized in this way is a place where only one political party is legitimate: the liberal one... The politics of liberals vs. illiberals, if adopted as the basis for public discourse, will mean the end of the old democratic system of two legitimate political parties... There is no such thing as illiberalism. No reasonable purpose is served by using a term that lumps together totalitarians, autocrats, conservatives and democratic nationalists, as though these are all varieties of a single dark worldview. The way back toward an intelligent and tolerant politics is to learn to draw such distinctions again, and to wield them in distinguishing genuine enemies from potential allies and friends, abroad as well as at home. "

The Business Case for Brexit - WSJ - "The Volkswagen emissions scandal came from a big company bullying the EU into rules that suited it and poisoned us. The anti-vaping rules in the latest Tobacco Products Directive, which will slow the decline of smoking, came from lobbying by big pharmaceutical companies trying to defend the market share of their nicotine patches and gums. The de facto ban on genetically modified organisms is at the behest of big green groups, many of which receive huge grants from Brussels"

A Guaranteed Income for Every American - WSJ - "The UBI is to be financed by getting rid of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, housing subsidies, welfare for single women and every other kind of welfare and social-services program, as well as agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare. As of 2014, the annual cost of a UBI would have been about $200 billion cheaper than the current system. By 2020, it would be nearly a trillion dollars cheaper... A key feature of American exceptionalism has been the propensity of Americans to create voluntary organizations for dealing with local problems... When one small Midwestern state, Iowa, mounted a food-conservation program during World War I, it engaged the participation of 2,873 church congregations and 9,630 chapters of 31 different secular fraternal associations... The advent of the New Deal and then of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society displaced many of the most ambitious voluntary efforts to deal with the needs of the poor"

Stuntman Training : interestingasfuck

Gender, race, and perceived risk: The 'white male' effect - "Risks tend to be judged lower by men than by women and by white people than by people of colour. Prior research by Flynn, Slovic and Mertz [Risk Analysis, 14, pp. 1101-1108] found that these race and gender differences in risk perception in the United States were primarily due to 30% of the white male population who judge risks to be extremely low."
If true, this would explain not just why men but white men are overrepresented in some areas, i.e. it might not be due to racism or sexism or both

'It used to be easier': Mum's honest post about how to parent in 2017 is going viral - "Make sure your children’s academic, emotional, psychological, mental, spiritual, physical, and social needs are met while being careful not to over stimulate, underestimate, improperly medicate, helicopter..."

Sun Tzu and the Lesson of the Concubines - "Sun Tzu’s book, The Art of War, earned him an audience with the King of Wu, who said, “I have thoroughly read your thirteen chapters. May I submit your theory of managing soldiers to a small test?” Sun Tzu replied, “Sir, you may.” The King of Wu asked, “Can the test be applied to women?” Sun Tzu replied that it could, so arrangements were made to bring 180 beautiful women from the palace. Sun Tzu divided them into two companies with one of the King’s favorite concubines at the head of each"

Kelly Campagna on Twitter: "Left: "A man can't talk about abortion since he doesn't have a uterus." Also Left: "A man can be a woman even if he doesn't have a uterus.""

Facebook refuses to remove cartoon of police officer having his throat slit - "Facebook has refused to remove a sickening cartoon of a police officer having his throat slit from a Black Panther page used by Dallas cop killer Micah Xavier Johnson. The gruesome image shows a man dressed in black slashing a uniformed officer's throat with a knife as blood spills out of the cop's neck. It was posted on the 'Black Panther Party Mississippi' page, which Johnson posted a twisted rant on just days before he embarked on his massacre."

Man charged over offensive T-shirt carrying Hillsborough slur - "some members of the public have ordered an eccentric list of items to be delivered to the man’s house, including four taxis, a 70-can crate of Lilt, a clown, a giant crane and nearly £2,000 worth of take-away. A man, 50, was arrested on Monday and later charged with “displaying abusive writing... likely to cause distress”."

Social Justice Warrior Bullshit Generator - "coalition build accountable transphobia"
"identify accountable minorities"
"call out oppressed pronouns"

Ways of Knowing: How We Choose What We Believe - "Caught up in Galileo's plight and "heroic" passing of his forbidden writings to his pupil for future generations, few audiences have realized that this was the bitterest and most meaningful lesson of the play. Brecht's condemnation of his exemplar as hero and criminal is also an indictment of modern scientific-industrial power systems those individuals in positions of influence... Disillusioned by Galileo's recantation (1, Galileo Galilei, Teacher of Mathematics and Physics, do hereby publicly renounce my teaching that the earth moves."), his student, Andrea Sarti, rejects his teacher with the famous line, "Unhappy is the land that breeds no heroes." Galileo replies, "Unhappy is the land that needs a hero." Galileo has not fulfilled the heroic role his pupils envisioned for him, for, in the horror of the moment, he has fallen victim to human frailty"

Will granddaughter pay the price of fight for equality? - "traditional roles have become ever more ideologically despised — so much so that last week the very act of being a housewife or mother was banned from advertisements for perpetuating ‘outdated’ gender stereotypes. For all the efforts of feminism, and the enlargement of women’s opportunities, it seems it’s also made that world more painful, complicated and unrewarding. Burn your bras and wear miniskirts, we cried. Be free! But aren’t young girls today just as imprisoned by the drive to bear their flesh as the cliched Victorian wife in crinolines? It’s almost as compulsory for a young woman to take a pouting semi-naked selfie today as it was for a teenager in the Fifties to wear bobby socks. It’s somehow ironic that the one section of society which still dresses modestly — women in ethnic and religious minorities — say they do so to protect their sacred space as females. Meanwhile, the majority of other young women brutally expose their bodies, catering to every tawdry male fantasy, as a sign of their ‘freedom’... I have learned, over the years, that the ‘stereotypical’ roles of femininity can give a sense of identity and security unmatched by anything in the corporate or professional world."

Yasmin Eleby marries herself after failing to meet 'the one' before 40 - "while Ms Eleby's actions are unusual, she is not the first person to marry herself. In July last year, a former radio host from Australia, Sammy Power, celebrated her 50th birthday by tying the knot with a life-sized cardboard cutout of herself. She said that the ceremony commemorated a year of important life changes; quitting smoking and drinking and losing 25kgs."
???

Tennessee teen accepted to Yale after Papa John's essay - "Carolina Williams, who was accepted to the Ivy League school in March, won praise from admissions officers for her standout essay answer... Despite her successful application, Carolina has decided not to attend Yale. She will study business at Auburn University in Alabama because she liked the scholarships"

Rendevu app matches sex workers to clients - "Ms Jovi said that she finds Rendevu a help because 'it takes the nasty surprise out of who is coming to visit you. 'It's super safe, because everyone is vetted and customers have to put their credit card details into the app before they receive their booking."
HornyGoWhere wouldn't have been legal in Singapore anyway

European human rights chiefs order British press NOT to reveal when terrorists are Muslims - "The recommendations came as part of a list of 23 meddling demands to Theresa May’s government on how to run the media in an alarming threat to freedom speech. The report, drawn up by the Council of Europe's human rights watchdog, blamed the recent increase in hate crimes and racism in the UK on the 'worrying examples of intolerance and hate speech in the newspapers, online and even among politicians', although the research was done before the EU referendum campaign had even begun."
Relevant section of report: " ECRI regrets that a way has not been found to establish an independent press regulator and that, as a result, certain tabloids continue to publish offensive material, as indicated above. ECRI urges the media to take stock of the importance of responsible reporting, not only to avoid perpetuating prejudice and biased information, but also to avoid harm to targeted persons or vulnerable groups. ECRI considers that, in light of the fact that Muslims are increasingly under the spotlight as a result of recent ISIS-related terrorist acts around the world, fuelling prejudice against Muslims shows a reckless disregard, not only for the dignity of the great majority of Muslims in the United Kingdom, but also for their safety. In this context, it draws attention to a recent study by Teeside University50 suggesting that where the media stress the Muslim background of perpetrators of terrorist acts, and devote significant coverage to it, the violent backlash against Muslims is likely to be greater than in cases where the perpetrators’ motivation is downplayed or rejected in favour of alternative explanations"

Believe in conspiracy theories? You're probably a narcissist - "Previous research linked the endorsement of conspiracy theories to low self-esteem... low self-esteem could be largely explained 'by the general negativity toward humans'... A recent study suggested that if people really were hiding the truth about events such as the moon landings, it would only take four years to come to light. Dr David Robert Grimes from Oxford University created an equation to express the probability of a conspiracy being either deliberately uncovered by a whistle-blower, or inadvertently revealed by a bungler"

Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali says shut down Muslim schools - "Daily Mail Australia caught on camera former Islamic school student Uthman Badar, the leader of Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, calling for ex-Muslims to be executed. He went to Malek Fahd Islamic School in south-west Sydney, along with fellow Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman Hamzah Qureshi who also regularly appears in social media videos. Another Islamic school in Sydney's west, Al-Faisal College in Auburn, removed references to reproduction in a textbook and instead gave credit to Allah"

RACIST: Pitzer College Students Just Told White Girls To Stop Wearing Hoop Earrings - "Contrary to what these girls suggest about hoop earrings being a staple in non-white cultures, they have been a staple in ancient cultures like Greece, Rome, Egypt, and Sumer... Pitzer College claims that diversity is one of its community values. Given their student body's penchant for racism, this claim seems to get lost in the facts."

Ethiopian tribesmen compete to get as fat as possible - "Women and girls deliver milk and blood each morning in pots or bamboos. Although there is no prize for becoming the biggest competitor, there is a lot of pride up for grabs, and a large waistline is considered attractive by women in the tribe... 'The cows are sacred to the Bodi tribe so they are not killed. The blood is taken by making a hole in a vein with a spear or an axe, and after that, they close it with clay.'"

The $850 gadget that folds your laundry with robot arms and steams out creases

The end of rush hour - "Research led by scientists at University College London, carried mout across three continents, found that working more than 55 hours a week raises your odds of a stroke by a third, in addition to raising the odds of a heart attack. When we work harder, and feel ourselves to be under time pressure, we become worse parents – and worse spouses. A study of air traffic controllers found that the quality of their parenting in the evening could be predicted by the number of planes they had to land during the day: the more they had to cope with at work, the less they wanted to engage with their children on returning home. In 2014, Pannone solicitors, part of the UK law firm Slater & Gordon, reported that workplace pressure was cited as a factor in around half of its divorce cases... When staff at Boston Consulting Group were forced to limit their hours as part of a trial, their work actually benefited"

Malcolm Gladwell’s Plagiarism Problem - "“Malcolm Gladwell has made a name for himself peddling social theories that attempt to explain our world in simple-to-understand and incorrect ways,” they write, noting that “virtually every one of Gladwell’s ridiculously popular books has been met with criticism for playing fast and loose with the facts and using anecdotes as evidence of some larger truth.”"

Adil Rashid: Paedophile claimed his Muslim upbringing meant 'he didn't know it was illegal to have sex with a girl of 13' - "A muslim who raped a 13-year-old girl he groomed on Facebook has been spared a prison sentence after a judge heard he went to an Islamic faith school where he was taught that women are worthless. Adil Rashid, 18, claimed he was not aware that it was illegal for him to have sex with the girl because his education left him ignorant of British law... Rashid claimed he had been taught in his school that ‘women are no more worthy than a lollipop that has been dropped on the ground’."

Oia Cafe Taipei - Drink Tea With The Cutest Alpacas Roaming Around You

White women benefit most from affirmative action — and are among its fiercest opponents
I keep seeing this claim waved around. It seems what these people mean by affirmative action is an increase in the number of that group in the student population. This is even more incoherent than the other (even more popular) redefinitions of racism = prejudice + power, or of legacy admissions being affirmative action, because this doesn't even involve any version of preferential admission at all