Links - 7th December 2017 (2)

Rivalry | Tell Me Something I Don't Know - "One of the things that I think we all see as people who live in Chicago is that so much of the violence that we see in certain communities is being driven by social media far more than easy access to guns or even the drug trade and it's the exact same things that we've just spoken about which is the kind of public one upping and the idea that someone whose whole kind of value proposition is around being the toughest and having power and control, now the social media just kind of disintermediates it across the entire city...
One of the best approaches we could have to reducing violence in Chicago would be to have a massive media campaign which the message is: real men fight. And I think we should put up boxing rings around Chicago and use social media and so basically change the culture so that instead of shooting each other we actually let these guys get into the ring and beat each other up"

In the U.S., the Biggest Cities Are the Least Happy - "the three happiest counties (which scored above a 3.5 on the happiness scale) are mostly rural or a mix of suburban and rural, according to the study. These counties include Douglas County, Colorado, outside Denver, which has a density of 300 people per square mile; Shelby County, Tennessee, outside Memphis, which has a density of 1,200 people per square mile; and Johnson County, Kansas, outside Kansas City, which has a density of 1,110 people per square mile. Note that each of these places is located near a large city, which may allow residents to benefit occasionally from urban resources and amenities while still living in a much lower-density area. Indeed, the study finds that denser counties tend to have less happy residents, even when controlling for factors like greater crime and poverty. While these variables do weaken the relationship between density and unhappiness, the effect remains negative and significant. This leads the authors to conclude that size and density—what they call “the defining features of cities”—are associated with greater unhappiness. Even if cities were to reduce their levels of crime, poverty, or unemployment, urban residents would still be less happy than those living elsewhere. In this way, the study notes, “cities act like a magnifying glass, bringing out the best and the worst in us.”"

The World's Happiest Countries Take The Most Antidepressants - "Although Scandinavian countries have better access to mental health treatment than most nations, they may no longer be considered the world’s happiest. In the latest Gallup and Healthways Global report, Central America overtook Scandinavia as the world’s happiest region. Panama came in at number one, followed by Costa Rica and then Denmark. Sweden ranks below Austria, Brazil, Uruguay and El Salvador. There’s even a relatively new book called The Almost Nearly Perfect People that debunks the myth of “the Scandinavian Utopia,” claiming that Danes and Swedes aren’t as happy as the rest of the world might expect"

Study: Moms more tired than dads but still like caring for kids - "Despite their exhaustion, moms were more likely than dads to say they felt happy while caring for their kids. Both moms and dads said child care was much more meaningful for them than other work, with 62 percent of parents calling child care “very meaningful,” versus 36 percent who said the same about paid work. Women, however, were more likely than men to find housework meaningful, with 46 percent calling it “very meaningful,” compared with 28 percent of men... “We are socialized as women to take care of the home,” said Tamar Kremer-Sadlik, an adjunct professor of anthropology at UCLA. “We are still supposed to be the perfect mom and have a beautiful house.”"
If they like it (and presumably want to do it) are they still oppressed? If so does it mean women are stupid and don't know what they want or what's good for them unless a feminist feministsplains it to them?
Are feminists socialised into being feminists?

Blame the Teenagers for What Happened in McKinney, Not the Police - "If you live near McKinney, Texas and you like to party, you might have been aware of the Dime Piece Cookout before it went down this past Friday... The liberal media has since presented this as an “innocent children’s pool party,” but I’ve never encountered a children’s party where people go to meet “fine ass n*ggas.” In fact, I’ve never heard of children’s parties with terms like “Dime Piece” and “Make It Clap” in the title. For those mercifully uninitiated, the former is a slang term for attractive women. “Dime” as in a 10-out-of-10 on the sexy scale, and “piece” is short for “piece of ass.” The latter, “make it clap,” refers to a girl twerking on the dance floor and making her butt cheeks clap together... So we have an unsanctioned, heavily promoted, loud, sexually charged teen party right in the middle of a neighborhood filled with parents and children of all different races. This party is being organized by people who have shown themselves to be both loose with the facts and unconcerned with respecting the peace, privacy, and rules of the community. And we have no adult supervision — save for a few alleged grown ups who see no problem with a bunch of bikini-clad 14 year olds playing the role of “dime pieces.” This is called “context,” my friends. And with this context, we can now take another look at the latest racial outrage surrounding this event in McKinney, Texas over the weekend... By the standards of the peanut gallery and their ringleaders in the media, that’s all you need to know. The girl was black, the cop was white. Racism. Period. End of discussion. Time to protest. But, being that I’m dumb enough to care about the full truth, I can’t help but wonder if our judgments should be based on more than an isolated, momentary glimpse of an out-of-context scene. I’ve been informed repeatedly that such thoughts stem from my bigotry, which is odd, because I never knew “bigot” means “guy who refrains from jumping to baseless conclusions”... The video goes viral, sans context, and the nation erupts in another round of racial outrage. It’s immediately decided that the cop was racist, the “children” were all innocently attending an innocent pool party and had done nothing at all to provoke the police response, and yet again the police war on black America has reared its ugly head. The media ran with it, as usual... just like in Ferguson, residents who have spoken out in McKinney have been rewarded wutg death threats and vandalism."

Is it Possible That There Is Something In Between Consensual Sex And Rape…And That It Happens To Almost Every Girl Out There? - "He interrupted my inner conflict with something that would have way more weight years later. “I feel like you want me to make a move, just so you can turn me down,” he said. Before I even had a chance to decide if he was right, we were making out. In my state of extreme intoxication, my mind was racing in search of a decision. This was exciting. This was fun. But this was also really, really weird, and ultimately, not a road I wanted to go down. I couldn’t decide if the excitement and lust in the air would win over the pit in my stomach. It wasn’t until he grabbed a condom that I really knew how I felt. I was not okay with this. I did not want to have sex with him. But I did... this weird place in between consensual sex and rape? It’s there. It does exist. And it’s happening all the time. As it turns out, almost every woman I spoke to had been there at some point or another"

Fresh concerns raised over academic conduct of major US nutrition and behaviour lab - "Wansink’s research first fell under scrutiny in late 2016 when, in a blog post called “The Grad Student Who Never Said No”, he appeared to champion the use of grey research practices as career tools for young scientists – practices such as selectively reporting positive results from a dataset of primarily null outcomes, and presenting data fishing as hypothesis testing. Analyses of the published results by Tim van der Zee, Jordan Anaya and Nick Brown later identified what appear to be hundreds of statistical inconsistencies in four of the articles where Wansink admitted deploying such practices, and Anaya later raised concerns about the accuracy of seven additional publications. After refusing to share the raw data, Wansink promised to conduct an internal investigation of four of the eleven publications. "

The Straits Times - Posts - "New York city restaurant staff fired after calling Asian customer 'Ching Chong' on receipt"
Comment: " I don't see a problem with that. What's the issue? I go around telling people I have Ching Chong taste when it comes to food.
When I see clothes that look very Chinese, I call them Ching Chong clothes.
Is it racist to call Caucasians "Angmo"?
If we are confident and proud of our skin we won't have issues such as these."

Supermarket Removes All Foreign Food From Shelves To Make A Point About Racism, And Here’s The Result - "When customers walked into Edeka supermarket in Hamburg recently, they were surprised to find that the shelves were almost empty, and the small handful of products that remained were all made in Germany"
Maybe to make a point about mass migration they can put stuff in your cart you don't want, make you pay for it and if you complain lock you in a room for an hour
Comments: "The same ppl who scream diversity also scream buy local and down with globalization...."

‘Deadpool 2’ Crew Warned Producers Before Stuntwoman’s Death - "Hollywood’s lack of diversity might have indirectly contributed to her death... crew members alerted producers that Harris was too inexperienced to safely pull off the stunt, noting her previous crashes on practice runs, but were ignored because producers felt an African-American woman needed to perform the stunt for accurate representation. (Harris was standing in for Atlanta’s Zazie Beetz, who plays Domino, in the scene.) Though Harris was a licensed racer, Deadpool 2 was her first film and the accident occurred during her first live take... One stunt coordinator who spoke with Deadpool 2 crew members says that producers risked Harris’s life by wanting Beetz to have a racially correct double: “The producers put pressure to have somebody of the same sex and ethnicity in a position she wasn’t qualified to be in. The stunt coordinators caved to the pressure. All the stunt people could do was take it to their higher-ups. They’re going to follow their chain of command”... In 2014, the issue made headlines when Gotham attempted to use a white stuntwoman in blackface as a stand-in for a black actress despite union opposition to such practices; the show eventually cast a black stuntwoman and said it “made a mistake.”"
Once again, Affirmative Action and Political Correctness kill (and this is somehow spun as meaning we need even more of it); an aversion to blackface means black people die

Black stunt performers: Hollywood's other race scandal - "For decades, white stunt performers would paint their faces and bodies black to double for black stars. Similarly, it was not uncommon for stuntmen to put on heels and wigs to double for women"
It's better for more stuntmen and women to die than for white people to do stunts for black actors

9 Reasons to Switch From Chrome to Firefox - "1. Firefox Is Better for Battery Life
2. Firefox Is Better for Tab-Heavy Users
3. Firefox Knows It’s Just a Browser
4. Firefox Embraces the Open Source Mindset
5. Firefox Actually Cares About Privacy
6. Firefox Allows More Customization
7. Firefox Supports Chrome Extensions
8. Firefox Boasts Unique Extensions
9. Firefox Can Do What Chrome Can (Mostly)"

Facebook’s new features like Messenger Day are distracting and obtrusive - "Facebook seemed committed to prioritizing the user experience over all else, including its strategic objective to drive mobile advertising revenue. I would argue the first signs of trouble over this apparent rule at Facebook came with its rollout of live video. That feature itself wasn’t overly intrusive at first but, over time, Facebook appeared very keen to get users to engage with the feature more, whether posting their own videos or viewing live videos created by others. That meant increasingly obvious and arguably more intrusive indicators of live videos in users’ feeds, in picture-in-picture videos that popped up in the corner of the app and eventually in the dedicated video tab. That last was particularly egregious in its use of notification-like red numbers which indicated there were new videos available to watch even though users hadn’t turned notifications on, and there was, in fact, no way to turn this feature off. This was the first time Facebook appeared to sacrifice the user experience to a strategic objective"

Human Races May Have Biological Meaning, But Races Mean Nothing About Humanity - "Assertion: Because most genetic variation occurs within races, two random individuals from different races may be genetically closer than two random individuals from the same race.
The image above, from a 2009 paper, is one of the clearest refutations of such assertions. An evolutionary chart, or phylogeny, of human population is not difficult to construct. Multiple different genetic methodologies have converged upon the same general pattern of Africans differentiating from non-Africans, and West Eurasians differentiating from East Eurasians, and so forth...
Assertion: “We are all Africans”...
It looks as if modern human populations are a synthesis of a dominant “Out of Africa” lineage, flavored with assorted other populations, until recently known as “archaic modern humans.” The most famous of these were Neanderthals, but it looks as if they may just be the first in a long list of other ancestors humans interbred with...
Assertion: Because modern humans are a young species, there has not been enough time for major differences to emerge between populations.
This is false. 5 to 10 thousand years ago a set of strangely mutated humans arose. They continued to be able to digest lactose sugar as adults, in contravention of the mammalian norm. In fact, humans are the only mammals where many adults continue to be able to consume milk sugar as adults. The rapidity of this shift has been incredible. 5,000 years ago almost everyone in Scandinavia was lactose intolerant. Today, very few are."

China’s memory manipulators - "a country that has so completely obliterated and then recreated its past – can it be trusted?... efforts to commemorate the past are often misleading or so fragmentary as to be meaningless. Almost all plaques at historical sites, for example, tell either partial histories or outright lies. A few steps east of the Foreign Ministry, for example, is the Temple of the East Peak. Out front is a stone marker, which states that since 1961 it has been a nationally protected monument. A second plaque on the wall gives a few more details, explaining how the temple was built in the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) and is a key Taoist temple. In reality, the temple was completely gutted in the Cultural Revolution, its statues burned or carted off to warehouses, where they were to be destroyed. Of the roughly 50 statues now in the temple, all but five are new. These five older statues belonged to another temple, Sanguanmiao (Three Officials Temple). After the Mao era ended in the late 1970s and temples reopened, the East Peak Temple’s statues could not be located so it was given the statues from the Three Officials Temple, which remains occupied by a government office. Visitors also learn nothing about how the temple’s area was greatly reduced during the Cultural Revolution because it was occupied by military and public security agencies... Of course, the plaques explain none of this. Instead, one gets the impression that the temple is as it always was – an 800-year-old relic of China’s great past"

So, There's Actually A Reason Your Favorite Cartoon Characters Are All Yellow - "yellow characters go well with the commonly used blue background, are associated with happiness and energy, draw attention, and can be seen by people who are colorblind!"

European Union - Polish PM Szydło urges EU to 'wake up' over terrorism - "In an outspoken attack on her fellow leaders the Warsaw chief accused EU member states of “lethargy” after yet another European city - this time Barcelona - was rocked by an Islamist attack. Ms Szydło, who is currently fighting eurocrats over the imposition of refugee quotas, also controversially drew a link between Angela Merkel’s open door migration policy and recent terrorist atrocities... Ms Szydło, who has repeatedly clashed with Brussels over immigration and the rule of law, said EU chiefs “must not be afraid to talk about terrorism” and should “finally replace political correctness with common sense.” She said: "There is no price at which the safety of the Polish people could be sold, so the most important thing for me today is to have partners in Europe, among the European elites, to talk about what should be done to combat terrorism.” And she said that Eastern European nations, who together form the Visegrad grouping, have worked together behind the scenes to create their own counter-terrorism strategy. Ms Szydło did not elaborate further on the strategy they have devised, but all four countries have effectively closed their borders to refugees by refusing to participate in the EU’s migrant quota scheme... In Finland, teenager Mechkah stabbed two women to death with a knife and injured eight more after going on the rampage in the city of Turku, in what was Finland’s first Islamist terror attack. According to the German interior ministry the youngster passed through Germany in late 2015 and early 2016, at the height of the migration crisis when Mrs Merkel opened the country’s borders to people seeking refuge"

Suspect In Finland Stabbing Rampage Identified As 18-Year-Old Moroccan - "Finland recently rejected his application for asylum, according to the public broadcaster YLE... "It is very difficult to get asylum if you come from Morocco. Maybe because there are no big reasons to have it granted.""
The moral of the story seems to be that you need to grant everybody asylum so they don't stab everyone

Trudeau's Anti-Trump Virtue Signaling Creates Illegal Immigration Crisis For Canada

Quebec City Protesters Clash With Police Outside Far-Right Event - "The Quebec group La Meute, which is associated with the far right, called for a rally Sunday to protest the federal and provincial government's handling of the border crossers, but ended up having its members pinned inside a garage while counter-protesters demonstrated outside. Once the counter-protesters turned violent, the Quebec City police declared the protest illegal. Clashes ensued and at least one protester was arrested as officers tried to block access to the building where some of the La Meute protesters had taken refuge... "You're all over the Internet," one masked demonstrator told a woman supporting La Meute. "Everyone knows that you're a f***ing Nazi." The Quebec events were largely spurred by the unprecedented number of people walking across the border to seek asylum."
Apparently believing that illegal immigration should be stopped makes you a f***ing Nazi, and you should intimidate people who think so with violence