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Saturday, September 16, 2017

Links - 16th September 2017 (2)

Survey Shows That Christian Media Doesn’t Really Reach People Outside the Bubble - "Two-thirds of Americans (67 percent) rarely or never watch Christian television. Those who skip church all together (94 percent) or have no religious affiliation (89 percent) rarely or never watch.
Seven in 10 Americans (72 percent) rarely or never listen to Christian radio. They include those with no religious affiliation (94 percent) or who rarely (84 percent) or never (97 percent) attend church."

Why Do Honor Killings Defy the First Law of Homicide? And Will Smaller Families Lead to Fewer Of Them? - "About three-quarters of honor killings are carried out by family members of the victim. To be specific, the victims’ brothers carry out 29% of them, fathers and (to a much lesser extent, mothers), carry out about 25%, and “other male relatives” carry out an additional 19% of them. (Of the remaining 25%, virtually all are carried out by the victims’ husbands/ex-husbands.)"

Chocolate part 1:3 - why it seizes with just a little water, ...and what to do about it - "In it's solid form, pure chocolate is a relatively stable system virtually free of water (0.5-1.5% by weight). When the chocolate is melted, the stable dispersion is challenged. If just a small amount of water (or steam) finds its way into the chocolate, the water molecules form droplets, since they don't want to mingle with the fat. Since water and sugar like to mingle, the sugar particles are wetted by the water. The result is "the sugar bowl effect", just as when a few drops of water are spilled into a sugar bowl. The tiny sugar particles in the chocolate become moist and cling together giving larger lumps (agglomerates). The result is an inhomogeneous mixture between these sugar agglomerates and the cocoa fat mixture. These won't mix evenly because the sugar has gone watery (the lecithin is probably not capable of stabilising such large amounts of hydrophilic constituents). Since sugar is a major ingredient in chocolate, it all goes grainy. A water content of 3-4% by weight is enough to make the chocolate seize. Since the chocolate might contain som water already the critical amount of added water might be as low as 1.5% by weight (1/3 teaspoon on 100 g, ref. Afoakwa et al.). Add some more water, and everything is "fine" again
If the chocolate has seized, there is really no way back to the original chocolate. However, if some more water is added, the grainy mass magically turns silky smooth again. What happens is that the emulsion inverts; whereas fat was the continuous phase in chocolate, now water is the continuous phase and the fat is distributed/"dissolved" in the water"

Child Support Accountability: Where Is It? - "We expect fiscal accountability on so many levels in our society: of government, of corporations, of financial institutions, of recipients of welfare and food stamps. We are outraged by the fact that lack of personal financial accountability contributed in large part to the housing bust and our present recession. Why then, does it seem that we simply do not care if child support is not used for the direct needs of the children for whom it is being paid?"

What Parents Should Know About Giving Hormones To Trans Kids - "The United States Endocrine Society says that cross-gender hormones should not be used on kids under the age of 16. The standards in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Australia agree. The reason is simple: Cross-sex hormones have irreversible effects on fertility. Cross-gender hormone treatments can sterilize kids—not even Dr. Frankenstein would do that.
So I was shocked to learn that physicians administer cross-gender hormones to kids under the recommended age of 16 and many gender specialists believe “it is best to slowly initiate cross-gender hormones at the same time that the patient’s peers are entering puberty, typically around age 12-14”... A September 2014 report from the Hastings Center by Jack Drescher and Jack Pula says a diagnosis of gender dysphoria in childhood “does not inevitably continue into adulthood” the majority of the time. The majority of trans kids will not choose to transition as adults... Gender dysphoria has been theorized to be a consequence of differences in the brain, but studies don’t find any. A recent study at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, says; “The present data do not support the notion that brains of male to female transgenders are feminized.” The study could not find a difference in the brains between heterosexual men and that of male to female transsexuals. The brains in trans boys are no different than non-trans boys... My concern for trans kids is forged from my own life as a child transgender. I was told that because my strong feelings of being a girl on the inside had persisted for so long that I needed to alter my external appearance to match, from man to woman. Because I was desperate for relief, I followed all the recommendations for someone with gender dysphoria and underwent the transition. I successfully lived and worked as a female for eight years. But after eight years, the male came back. My biological sex had never changed, no matter how many procedures I underwent or how many hormones I took. My life was never the same and my body was forever mutilated. People say to me now, “Too bad. It was your choice. You should have made a more informed decision.” Through my website, SexChangeRegret.com, I hear from people with similar experiences as mine, and in every case, the gender dysphoria is a result of childhood developmental issues. Treating the psychological or psychiatric disorder is the answer, not changing genders."
Transmania means you must give kids (many of whom may not become transgendered adults) hormones that can potentially harm them

When Transgender Kids Transition, Medical Risks are Both Known and Unknown - "“We do know that there is some decrease in bone density during treatment with pubertal suppression,” Finlayson said, adding that initial studies have shown that starting estrogen and testosterone can help regain the bone density. What Finlayson said there isn’t enough research on is whether someone who was on puberty blockers will regain all their bone strength, or if they might be at risk for osteoporosis in the future. Another area where doctors say there isn’t enough research is the impact that suppressing puberty has on brain development... The stakes are higher for children who want to continue physically transitioning by taking the hormones of their desired gender"

Hasbro still hasn’t released a Star Wars Monopoly set with Rey due to ‘insufficient interest’ - "Hasbro eventually produced the game piece for the Monopoly set, which it sold in several countries — but not the United States, according to company spokeswoman Julie Duffy. The explanation? “Insufficient interest.” Fans who really want the piece can contact Hasbro’s customer service line to request a piece. Hasbro’s explanation that there’s been insufficient interest might be technically correct: there could very well be few people asking specifically for a Star Wars Monopoly set with a Rey figure, but this ducks the bigger issue at hand: ensuring that female characters are fairly represented on toy shelves"
"Fairness" means companies must make something there's no demand for

Does Disney want its directors to have creative freedom? - "Disney’s incompatibility with the likes of Jenkins, DuVernay, and Edwards, and now the sudden ouster of Lord and Miller, paints a picture of a company that makes heavy demands and is averse to risk, no matter how much it values talent."

Man with 'DEVAST8' face tattoo says he can't find work - "A young man with a tattoo on his face reading ‘DEVAST8’ has said he is having difficulty finding work after being released from prison. Mark Cropp, from New Zealand, had been inebriated when his cell mate - who is also his brother - gave him the tattoo, while he was completing a two-year sentence in prison for an aggravated robbery charge. The tattoo was supposed to be small and go along his jawline, but after the pair drank an improvised alcoholic beverage made from fermented apples, sugar and bread, the mark turned out to be significantly larger."

How the privileged prevent other people's children from doing well - "Dr Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution recently published a book called Dream Hoarders, detailing some of the structural ways the well-educated rig the system. The most important is residential zoning restrictions. Well-educated people tend to live in places like Portland, New York and San Francisco that have housing and construction rules that keep the poor and less educated away from places with good schools and good job opportunities. These rules have a devastating effect on economic growth nationwide. Research by economists Hsieh Chang-tai and Enrico Moretti suggests that zoning restrictions in the nation's 220 top metro areas lowered aggregate United States growth by more than 50 per cent from 1964 to 2009. The restrictions also have a crucial role in widening inequality. An analysis by economist Jonathan Rothwell finds that if the most restrictive cities became like the least restrictive, the inequality between different neighbourhoods would be cut in half. Dr Reeves' second structural barrier is the college admissions game. Educated parents live in neighbourhoods with the best teachers, they top off their local public school budgets and they benefit from legacy admissions rules, from admissions criteria that reward children who grow up with lots of enriching travel and from unpaid internships that lead to jobs."
You might as well say meritocracy is rigging the system too, since intent doesn't seem to be needed

A Fancy Meat Primer for Those Who Didn't Study Charcuterie in High School - "How embarrassing, right? I mean, she obviously was balking at the Italian words, and not the prices of the gourmet sandwiches. (Everyone knows you can’t be Italian and poor.) At least he didn’t take her to a French bistro or the IKEA food court, as the KÖTTBULLAR would have been the end of it all. Also, thank goodness for Mexican food, a cuisine with non-English menu items that are more accessible to those without an advanced degree of some kind. (I’d like to think Brooks ordered a mole dish just so he could give a mini-lecture on how mole is not a culinary monolith.) Anyway, I wouldn’t want such an unfortunate scenario to befall you, especially if you have a friend that likes to take you to lunch as some sort of classist cultural litmus test, so I’ve put together a little primer for these primo Italian meats"

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Kill A Chicken To Scare The Monkey - "[On Thailand's lese-majeste law] It was a moment of foolishness she explained. She'd been angry with her husband who had gone off with another woman. Her friend had suggested getting back at the woman by setting up a Facebook account in her name and posting controversial comments. [Name] says it was the friend who published the offending posts, and that she'd not known they would involve the monarchy. She says she had an alibi and that she wanted to plead not guilty. But her lawyer had persuaded her to change her plea to avoid what would otherwise have been a life sentence. So the strength of the state's case against her was never tested in court."

Thai lese-majeste trial shut "for national security"

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Identity Politics - "A few days before we spoke the last British forces had by mutual agreement left the city for good. The date was nineteen ninety four. But I wanted to ask Kohl about rumblings of discontent, especially in Britain, about the moves by Germany and France towards the so called political union in europe including the creation of a European single currency. In a foretaste of today's events British Conservative eurosceptics were looking to put the brakes on this European project. Until then I'd only seen Helmut Kohl get angry once before when he was pelted with eggs by protesters in Eastern Germany who accused his government of ignoring them... He said brusquely: I will not allow it... For him there was just one red line. He would not let anyone stand in the way of Germany and like minded countries which had chosen to bind themselves more tightly together"

philosophy bites: Janet Radcliffe Richards on Men and Women's Natures - "In the early days of intelligence testing women came up better on IQ tests than men and for that specific reason they introduced the pattern recognition parts of the test which men were better at than women. I personally don't think that sex equality of outcome should be one of our aims, but this takes a great deal of arguing... [On gender differences] It's a disastrous mistake not to investigate them as far as we can because this is terrible for women too. And we may be forcing women into things that are uncongenial, making demands which aren't suitable. We need to understand the nature of the raw material we're working with if we're to achieve anything good with it"

philosophy bites: Chandran Kukathas on Hayek's Liberalism - "Hayek's not really quite as hostile to government as people think. Especially if you look at some of his earliest philosophical and political writings, what he's concerned to do is not so much criticize government as to explain what its proper role is and he has really quite an extensive role for government, which is one of the reasons why he's drawn a lot of criticism from libertarians. But in one of his earliest essays he argues that one of the problems with twentieth century liberals was that they really took too uncritically the phrase laissez-faire as if that would simply solve all the problems. Really the task was to try to articulate what were the things that were best done by government, what were the things that government should stay clear of... I would make a distinction between the earlier and the later Hayek. The Hayek of the nineteenth thirties and forties going up to the Hayek of nineteen sixty when he wrote the Constitution of Liberty had probably a much more extensive role for government in mind... He always retained a certain view that there was something that we simply needed government for... he was concerned that the outcomes of markets could mean destitution for some people and so in spite of his critique of socialism and the welfare state he did on the whole defend institutions such as a welfare minimum to make sure that people couldn't fall below a certain point so that if the market did in fact not provide for some people they would not fall in hard times... he hoped that there would never be Hayekians in the world because he thought that followers were always a bad idea and followers were always worse than the people they followed. Marxist were much worse than Marx. Keynesians were much worse than Keynes. And so he really hoped there won't be any Hayekians"

philosophy bites: Michael Sandel on Genetic Enhancement in Sport - "The worry that it will corrupt sports in athletic competition as a place where we admire the cultivation and display of natural gifts. It will distance us from the human dimension of sport. If you imagine a future when it were possible to engineer a bionic athlete, let's say in baseball which is my favorite sport. Who could hit every pitch for a home run of six hundred feet. It would be maybe an amusing spectacle but it wouldn't be a sport. We might admire the pharmacist or the engineer but would we admire the athlete? We would lose contact with the human dimension in the display of natural human gifts that I think is essential to what we admire and appreciate in sports"

He’s One of the Most Famous Political Operatives in America. America Just Doesn’t Know It Yet. - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "He went to see Hayek, who at that time, I think, was teaching at the L.S.E., the London School of Economics. [He] said, “I’ve read your book. It’s great. I want to help put these ideas into practice. I’m going to run for parliament as a conservative M.P.” Hayek said to him, “If you want to change things, don’t do that because the first thing you have to do is win the battle of ideas. Don’t go into Parliament. The better use of your time, money and effort will be to set up a think tank.” That’s exactly what he did. And so Rachel’s grandfather set up the Institute of Economic Affairs, which became the powerhouse think tank for free market thinking in the U.K. and around the world and incubated a lot of the ideas that Margaret Thatcher adopted and implemented as prime minister...
At least in America — everyone complains about Washington, the federal government — but at least the president is elected. At least Congress is elected. In the E.U. situation, you’ve got a centralized bureaucracy that is driving policy. People point to the European Parliament and so on and the fact that representatives of elected governments sit on the council of ministers that make decisions. That’s all true. But the driving force of policy initiation in the E.U. is the European Commission, which is an appointed body. To me, there’s a fundamental objection there, which is this is not democratic. That means it is wrong — even if the outcomes may from time to time be good. It doesn’t matter. It’s not democratic. It’s wrong. I’m all in favor of a single market, which was the initial idea that Britain signed up to. That’s good and helpful. But when it turns into, as it has, a move towards a European government, but one that is not democratically accountable, then I can’t support that regardless of its actual impact because I object to it on principle. They want a United States of Europe run from Brussels. Britain doesn’t. Therefore, you’ve got to accept that reality and leave."

Thanks Apple for wiping my podcasts

So I upgraded to iTunes 12.7, and I ticked an innocuous option to synchronise my subscribed podcasts across devices.

Then when I went to view my podcasts, many of them had disappeared.

I suspect when you synchronise the podcasts, those you didn't subscribe to via the App Store (i.e. they were subscribed to via a RSS feed) get wiped since they are not registered in Apple's database (and thus there is no record of a podcast on Apple's side to synchronise with).

It's almost certainly not a corrupted library issue because the podcast files disappeared too - and iTunes didn't even have the grace to put them in my Recycle Bin - they just outright disappeared.

I went through one round of restoring podcasts by resubscribing to the podcasts for which empty folders were left (even if the podcast files inside were missing), but some directories (even those with files inside) were deleted too. Go figure.

Lucky I have a 5 month old backup to restore from.

Moral of the story: if Apple asks you to sync podcast subscriptions and settings, don't!

On a related note something similar has happened in the past when I changed my App Store to a different country and then back to the original one.

I think switching the country forces a sync, so hopefully disabling synchronisation will prevent this issue (I might test this - AFTER making a backup).


Related threads on Apple Communities:

Why did iTunes 11.1 (126) delete all (SEVERAL H... | Communities

where have my music and podcast libraries gone | Communities

Links - 16th September 2017 (1)

80% of data in Chinese clinical trials have been fabricated - "Worst of all, it wasn't just a few scientists or pharma companies doing the dirty work. The report found that pretty much everyone involved was guilty of some kind of malpractice of fraud."
Why predictions of impending Chinese scientific dominance ring hollow

A surprising number of American adults think chocolate milk comes from brown cows - "Seven percent of all American adults – roughly 16.4 million people – do not know that chocolate milk is made of milk, cocoa, and sugar... Forty-eight percent of respondents also didn’t know how chocolate milk is made."

Study warns that science as we know it is evolving into something shoddy and unreliable - "the model suggests that the 'bad' (if you will) scientists who take shortcuts in relation to the incentives on offer will end up passing on their methods to the next generation of scientists who work in their lab, creating in effect an evolutionary conundrum that the study authors call "the natural selection of bad science""

The globalisation of marriage markets - "freer movement of people between Hong Kong and China resulted in more Hong Kong women not being married or getting divorced. The data also shows that these disadvantages in the marriage market lowered Hong Kong women's bargaining power within the household. Relative to men, their probability of being a household head decreased by 8.5 percentage points after the triggering events. Finally, we found the adverse outcomes in the marriage market had an incentive effect on their labour market behaviour. They were more likely to participate in the labour market or take a second job. As such, we can tentatively conclude that global hypergamy would result in a new pattern of regional and gender inequality in the marriage market. Men in affluent destination countries gain, as do women in poor source countries, because each group has access to more potential marital partners. But women in affluent destination countries and men in poor source countries lose, as they have more competitors in the marriage market."

Teachers 'denied schoolboy, 10, water on the hottest day of the year to avoid upsetting Muslim pupils during Ramadan'

EXCLUSIVE: Teachers Report 15-Year-Old Boy To Govt Extremism Watchdog for Jokes about Caitlyn Jenner and Campaigning for UKIP - "Michael Higginson, a 15-year-old year 10 student at Vision Studio School in Mansfield, also claims teachers openly back the Labour Party and said the website for his local UKIP branch is blocked on the school’s Internet service. He told Breitbart London the school’s “safeguarding officer” told him he could have committed “a hate crime” and that they “needed to find out if [he was] an extremist” before he was subsequently interviewed by two police officers... One school in Hampshire called the police in February 2016 after a pupil viewed the UKIP website on a class computer, and a boy in Yorkshire was referred for opposing the burqa... Despite the vast majority of violent extremist being Islamists, in Yorkshire, “far-right” referrals have accounted for nearly 50 per cent of the caseload and 30 per cent of the caseload in the East Midlands."

People are freezing their genitals to 'spice up' their sex life - and improve their appearance

Police arrest man who cross-dressed to peep inside female toilet at ITE - "Police have arrested a man who allegedly dressed up as a woman to peep inside the toilet at ITE College West in Choa Chu Kang"'
Trans activists will say that this was probably not a trans person, but that ignores the question of how you tell a bona fide trans person from a fake one (especially since there's no external verification of that characteristic)

Young Japanese people are not having sex - "Some men claimed they "find women scary" as a poll found that around 31% of people aged 18 to 34 from the island nation say they are virgins."

Black Lives Matter activist creates database of people suspected of racism - The website's logo is a Swastika - "Professional victim and delusional moron, Tariq Nasheed, after spending the past day accusing the latest Planet of the Apes movie trailer of racism, has decided to create a database of suspected bigots on Social Media"

Is Tinder in Trouble? Users Flee Hook-Up App Amid Rise in Fake Accounts

Here's When Machines Will Take Your Job, as Predicted by AI Gurus - "In the next 10 years, we should have AI do better than humans in translating languages (by 2024), writing high-school-level essays (by 2026), writing top 40 songs (by 2028) and driving trucks. And while the consensus may be that driving trucks may come by 2027, it's easy to predict that this could happen even sooner, with top tech entrepreneurs like Elon Musk constantly pushing the envelope and promising these innovations earlier"

Why China May Never Democratize

North Korea's barmy list of 15 state-approved hairstyles for men and women - "Surprisingly, however, none of the 15 styles appear to match Jong-un’s infamous hairstyle... “You can forget about dyeing your hair though.” However, social media users have been quick to point out the posters may simply be guides for North Koreans, as opposed to “mandatory styles”."

Couple married in one of UK's first gay Muslim weddings suffer online abuse - "A couple who had one of the UK's first same-sex marriages involving a Muslim partner have received online abuse after their wedding... One commenter said "Islam doesn't accept this" while another wrote: "Just putting asian costumes doesn't make it a Muslim marriage, there is no concept of gay marriage in Islam." Another said: "They are not Muslims, we don't have gays and lesbians." Mr Choudhury, 24, was previously bullied at school, attacked by other Muslims and banned from his local mosque"
Since we have "LGBT against Islamophobia" we should have "Muslims against homophobia"

Pav from the Nau: India’s Portuguese Food Trail - "The most significant contribution of the Portuguese has been the variety of fruits and vegetables that they introduced to the Indian land. Many of the most common fruits and vegetables consumed in India today, came with the Portuguese. These include potato, tomato, tapioca, groundnuts, corn, papaya, pineapple, guava, avocado, rajma (kidney bean), cashew, chikoo, capsicum and even the chilli. Not just spicy chillies, even some of the most popular sweets in India have Portuguese connections and this can be attributed to the chenna, which gave rise to a new chapter in Indian cooking. Made from split milk, chenna is the base preparation for several well-known foods today, including the paneer. Prior to this introduction, the practice of splitting of milk had been considered taboo in Hindu traditions."

Award-Winning Journalist Who Broke Story of Jewish Women Barred From Chicago 'Dyke March' Removed From Reporting Duties - "Gretchen Rachel Hammond — whose June 24 story caused a national storm after she detailed how three women flying Jewish Pride flags embossed with the Star of David were instructed to leave the gathering by organizers from the Dyke March Collective — confirmed to The Algemeiner on Monday that while she was still employed by the paper, she was not presently engaged in its reporting and writing operations."

This Guy Made A Fake Tinder Profile To Prove That Girls Never Think Hot Dudes Are Creepy - "It doesn’t matter how raunchy and offensive his opening line is, these girls are totally into him!"

Scientists discover what’s killing the bees and it’s worse than you thought - "Scientists had struggled to find the trigger for so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that has wiped out an estimated 10 million beehives, worth $2 billion, over the past six years. Suspects have included pesticides, disease-bearing parasites and poor nutrition. But in a first-of-its-kind study published today in the journal PLOS ONE, scientists at the University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture have identified a witch’s brew of pesticides and fungicides contaminating pollen that bees collect to feed their hives... Bee populations are so low in the US that it now takes 60% of the country’s surviving colonies just to pollinate one California crop, almonds"

Unattractive People Are Seen As Better Scientists - "Good looking, sociable people don’t make good scientists, according to popular stereotypes... While they may be perceived as being less able, Gheorghiu et al. also found that attractiveness was a strong, positive predictor of whether scientists were seen as interesting

The Real Reason Most Women Don't Go Into Tech - "Both genders took about an equal amount of business-related degrees. But most graduate degrees taken by women leaned more towards education, nursing, social work and counselling. Is this a leftover from the past? No. It’s likely because many women, per a recent Pew Research Center report, choose to be stay at home moms and these careers offer more flexibility than the typical technology job"

This Is What Ariel Would Look Like If She Evolved In Different Ocean Environments

Women are paying for expert vagina yoni massages for £200! - "Isis explained that her treatments cost upwards of $300 (£200), and involve the use of herbs, steam, and massaging tension out of the vagina... Katie even suggests that by giving clients orgasms, the treatments can ‘reduce the risk of many types of cancer usually associated with women’."

Youths from ethnic minorities could get softer sentences - "Judges will be told to consider the ‘discrimination and negative experiences of authority’ they may have suffered... A spokesman for the Sentencing Council said yesterday: ‘The guidelines recognise that black and ethnic minority children are over-represented in the care system, and children in care are more likely to end up in the criminal justice system."

The bacon freak-out: Why the WHO's cancer warnings cause so much confusion - "Scientists are confident that high levels of sunlight can cause skin cancer. They're also confident that smoking can cause lung cancer. But the similarities end there. No one believes that sunlight and smoking are equally dangerous... Based on existing research, the IARC estimates that eating 50 grams of processed meat daily — one hot dog, say, or two bacon slices — can increase your relative risk of colorectal cancer by 18 percent. That's way less scary than it sounds. In the United States, a person's lifetime odds of getting colorectal cancer are already about 4.5 percent. So eating a hot dog's worth of processed meat every day would raise that lifetime risk to ~5.3 percent... It's one thing to establish causality. It's another thing entirely to tell us what the risks actually entail."

The impact of a celebrity promotional campaign on the use of colon cancer screening: the Katie Couric effect. - "Katie Couric's televised colon cancer awareness campaign was temporally associated with an increase in colonoscopy use in 2 different data sets. These findings suggest that a celebrity spokesperson can have a substantial impact on public participation in preventive care programs."

Empathy Cards by Emily McDowell are greeting cards designed for cancer patients by a cancer survivor. - "“Get well soon” cards “don’t make sense when someone might not,” McDowell writes. “Sympathy cards can make people feel like you think they’re already dead. A ‘fuck cancer’ card is a nice sentiment, but when I had cancer, it never really made me feel better. And I never personally connected with jokes about being bald or getting a free boob job, which is what most ‘cancer cards’ focus on.”"

Cancer is the 'best death' – so don't waste billions trying to cure it, says leading doctor - "Dr Richard Smith, a former editor of the British Medical Journal, said that cancer allowed people to say goodbye and prepare for death and was therefore preferable to sudden death, death from organ failure or “the long, slow death from dementia”."

Cancer of Islamic extremism was tolerated for 20 years - "Once legitimacy rests on who is deemed a “credible” or “authentic” Muslim, the conversation can only slide downhill. It was this “not Muslim enough” game within our communities that Anjem was destined to win. By definition, such a game is stacked in favour of the fanatic. As a nation, we came to tolerate such incredible intolerance. Too many on the left simply assumed Islamism was “Muslim culture, so let’s enjoy it”. Too many on the right said “it’s Muslim culture, let’s keep it at arm’s length”, while Islamists told Muslims “this is your culture, you have no choice but to follow it”. Very few were actively engaged in challenging Islamism, as they would racism or antisemitism."

Drinking very hot drinks 'probably' causes cancer, but coffee is okay - "the IARC said there is evidence to suggest that drinks consumed at temperatures above 65°C (149°F) can cause cancer of the esophagus, classifying them as "probably carcinogenic to humans." The organization's findings were based on studies conducted in places like Iran, China, and South America, where tea is often consumed at around 70°C (158°F)."

Did Cancer Evolve to Protect Us? - "The team’s hypothesis is that when faced with an environmental threat to the health of a cell—radiation, say, or a lifestyle factor—cells can revert to a “preprogrammed safe mode.” In so doing, the cells jettison higher functionality and switch their dormant ability to proliferate back on in a misguided attempt to survive. “Cancer is a fail-safe,” Davies remarks. “Once the subroutine is triggered, it implements its program ruthlessly.” Speaking at a medical engineering conference held at Imperial College London, on September 11, Davies outlined a set of therapies for cancer based on this atavistic model. Rather than simply attacking cancer’s ability to reproduce, or “cancer’s strength,” as Davies terms it, the model exposes “cancer’s Achilles’ heel.” For instance, if the theory is correct, then cancer evolved at a time when Earth’s environment was more acidic and contained less oxygen. So the team predicts that treating patients with high levels of oxygen and reducing sugar in their diet, to lower acidity, will strain the cancer and cause tumors to shrink... Davies and his colleagues also advocate immunotherapy—specifically, selectively infecting patients with bacterial or viral agents."

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Links - 13th September 2017 (3)

The History of Pho - "Pho is so elemental to Vietnamese culture that people talk about it in terms of romantic relationships. Rice is the dutiful wife you can rely on, we say. Pho is the flirty mistress you slip away to visit... Vietnam is a country with a history spanning more than 3,500 years, but pho is a relatively new food. It was born at the beginning of the twentieth century in and around Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, located in the northern part of the country... In the agriculturally rich and freewheeling South, pho broth developed a sweet edge as cooks added a touch of Chinese rock sugar. Southerners also liked a lot of accessories: bean sprouts, Thai basil, chili sauce, and a hoisin-like fermented bean sauce. Northerners were aghast. The new additions desecrated their well-balanced, delicate soup. To this day, the regional pho fight between Hanoi and Saigon (North versus South) rages on."

Mad Scientist Builds Deadly Weapons With Items He Bought AFTER Going Through Airport Security - "“People who understand security understand that the current screening procedures exist primarily to put passengers at ease — ‘security theater,’ if you will. They also know that, given enough time, a persistent attacker will succeed to some degree,” he said. “I think people have kind of been suspecting that the type of things I’ve built are possible.”"

What does it cost to make a running shoe? - "for a shoe priced at $100, adidas earned just $2.05 and Nike made $5.3. But didn’t we just say that a $160 shoe is produced for $30? So where does the rest of the money disappear?"

Women are better leaders than men, study of 3,000 managers concludes - "The study, led by Professor Øyvind L. Martinsen, head of Leadership and Organisational Behaviour at the BI Norwegian Business School, assessed the personality and characteristics of nearly 3,000 managers. In nearly all areas, they concluded that women were better leaders than their male counterparts. Women outperformed men in four of the five categories studied: initiative and clear communication; openness and ability to innovate; sociability and supportiveness; and methodical management and goal-setting. However men did appear to be better than women at dealing with work-related stress and they had higher levels of emotional stability."
The study looked at existing leaders, not the general population. You'd expect female leaders to be better than the general population (whether because they like the work and are capable at it and thus do it, or discrimination - so both sides would agree on that). This is like having a female kickboxer beat up an average Joe and then saying this shows women are better fighters than men
Very cunningly, This Independent article has a second, clickbait title to this which shows up when the article is posted on other websites or services. This is hidden in tags like <meta property="og:title" content="Science has proven that women are better leaders than men" />


How Donald Trump Redefined ‘the West’ - The New York Times - "The irony, of course, is that Poles accept a vision of a planet wrecked by terrorists and sullied by migrants when not a single terrorist act has taken place in Poland for decades and there are almost no refugees within the country’s borders."
SPOING!

'No choice' but to test MRT signalling system throughout the day: SMRT - "Responding to complaints about why the project was taking so long, Mr Lee said that no two railway systems were identical. "The system hardware and software we have are customised for the unique local environment," he said. "While the system supplier had experience working with other operators in the world, they are unable to simply replicate the well-oiled systems of Taipei, Hong Kong and London, and import those here.""
Despite the gushing of IBs and Singapore fetishists, SMRT says they're not as well-oiled as Taipei, Hong Kong and London

Une famille de sangliers se balade en pleine nuit dans Draguignan

Veteran spends 54 years in NHS hospital after going in with broken leg and never recovering - "A war veteran has died after spending 54 years in hospital, in what is believed to have been the longest stay of any patient in the UK. James Morris was admitted into hospital with a broken leg in 1962 but never went home after suffering a cardiac arrest on the operating table and being left in a vegetative state. Mr Morris, who was disabled and could only say three words, died last month aged 75... "Over the years we found a way to communicate with him. He was all there mentally but couldn't communicate with us at all. He only ever learned how to say three words again - his three loves - 'home', 'pub' and 'horses'. "We often took him on holidays in Britain and the hospital knew how much he loved the pub so they would even take him there now and again.""
With growing pro-euthanasia culture, this will not happen in the future

If you recognize this, your childhood was awesome.
Counterstrike map in real life

Things aren't always as they seem

Issue#373139: NTU is Ivy League class liao? - "This morning i saw an ad outside a a double decker bus. Saying that NTU is Ivy League class university.
How come ministers all educated in UK, US leh?
And IDA need to hire southern pacific mba holder?"

TouchFreeze - "TouchFreeze is a free and simple utility for Windows that automatically disables the touchpad while you are typing in text"
Solution for over-sensitive touchpads which cause the cursor to keep jumping around when you're typing. Works without administrator rights too!

3 Free Tools to Disable Your Laptop Touchpad When Typing - "Touchpad Blocker only blocks the clicks during typing which is enough to prevent the cursor from involuntary jumping. The big advantage this tool has over the others is there a some useful configuration options so you can at least set a few things up to your liking. Do note that clicks and movements from a standard mouse are also blocked during typing with Touchpad Blocker... This can be individually configured by the “block move and wheel events” and “block taps and clicks” check boxes"

Spider-Man: Homecoming finally fulfills the promise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe - "There’s something missing from superhero movies. It’s a fundamental and unique quality of the interconnected comic book superhero universe, and it’s hard to pin down in a single word. It’s not just world building, or interconnectivity, or an ever spooling timeline, but a combination of all three. It’s the idea that the superhero community is generational — that a young superhero walks into the Justice League tower for the first time and into the footprints of giants. It’s the idea that superheroes shape the world around them in big and small ways — and not just by making world governments draw up the Sokovia accords. The best word for this concept that I’ve found is legacy. And Spider-Man: Homecoming is the first time that I’ve felt like I was seeing it in a major superhero blockbuster."

Household dust makes people fat, groundbreaking research indicates - "The dust particles were found to contain endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), synthetic or naturally occurring compounds that can interfere with or mimic the body’s hormones. These include flame retardants in sofas and carpets, as well as phthalates, substances added to plastics to increase their flexibility"

Magazine Shames People For Not Wanting to Have Sex With Transgender People, Says It’s Transphobic - "A liberal wonderland known as The Daily Beast (traffic down almost 40% in the last year) has complained about the latest totally-not-shocking survey showing most people wouldn’t want to date a transgender person, claiming it’s due to transphobia. Samantha Allen, a senior reporter for the site, who previously brought hits like the one decrying the LGBT community as racist for not wanting to have sex with people of color, has now deemed the people who don’t really want to date or have sex with a transgender person as “anti-transgender”."
Lesbians who don't want to have sex with men are misandristic

The March for Science Is the Problem, Not the Solution - "Unfortunately, the March for Science, rather than put science to work for the people, will “simply increase the size of the echo chamber.”[31] In all likelihood, it will be viewed as celebrating the science-based technocracy controlled by educated elites that some people frown upon."

'Neo-Nazi' in Florida National Guard arrested after explosives found at Tampa Palms murder scene - "A man accused of shooting his two roommates Friday in a Tampa Palms apartment told police he shared neo-Nazi beliefs with the men until he converted to Islam then killed them because they showed disrespect for his faith. The revelations weren't over. Officers found a garage stocked with bomb materials as they arrived to investigate the double homicide, leading to federal explosive charges against Brandon Russell — a Florida National Guardsman and admitted neo-Nazi who kept a framed photo of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh on his dresser... Arthurs made references to "Allah Mohammed" as officers walked him to a patrol car. "I had to do it," he said, according to the report. "This wouldn't have had to happen if your country didn't bomb my country." Jail records show Arthurs was born in Florida... Arthurs told police he had become angry about the world's anti-Muslim sentiment and "wanted to bring attention to his cause."

Chinese shopping mall introduces remedy for bored men: the hubby hatch - "some women were not taken by the idea: “It’s impossible to ask a man to stop playing games,” one woman complained. “I may now have to wait for him when I finish shopping but he’s still playing games.” Said another: “A man is supposed to accompany his girlfriend to shop. I’ll be the bored one if he plays games and has fun by himself.”"

Pragmatic Chinese women prefer to date men who earn two to three times as much as they do: survey

Harvard committee proposes banning all social clubs; punishing violators - "Harvard would extend previously-proposed sanctions against students joining single-gender clubs, to all “fraternities, sororities, and similar organizations,” regardless of their co-ed status. And instead of instituting a blacklist — leaving non-compliant students unable to captain Harvard-recognized sports teams, or be nominated for prestigious scholarships, for example — violators would be subject to formal “disciplinary action.” This latest proposal comes from the same faculty committee empaneled to “revise or replace” a previous, controversial proposal to blacklist members of single-gender clubs in an effort to foster campus inclusivity... He goes on to criticize the report’s suggestion of “deep unhappiness among students with the social environment created by the clubs” when, in fact, a student referendum showed that a plurality of student voters opposed the single-gender sanctions proposal."

China Drops Censorship of Zombie and Vampire Movies - "The Chinese government has ended a ban on movies showing zombies and vampires in a bid to prop up its failing film industry. Official censors have long restricted blockbusters depicting the undead under rules that outlaw the promotion of “cults or superstition”."

The end of the internet startup - "the 2010s seem to be suffering from a startup drought. People are still starting startups, of course. But the last really big tech startup success, Facebook, is 13 years old... an industry that used to be famous for its churn is starting to look like a conventional oligopoly — dominated by a handful of big companies whose perch atop the industry looks increasingly secure."

Language Log » Japanesey Chinese - "Japanese language elements have been increasingly noticeable in contemporary Chinese usage, particularly among the young generation on the internet. Nowadays a number of youth (especially girls and young women) in China and Taiwan think it is trendy to speak or write Chinese with foreign elements, and because Japanese is currently the only non-Sinitic language / script in the world still employing Chinese characters in daily usage, borrowing from Japanese appears easier, and thus more visible, in Chinese than borrowings from other languages."

The most effective individual steps to tackle climate change aren't being discussed - "The four actions that most substantially decrease an individual's carbon footprint are: eating a plant-based diet, avoiding air travel, living car-free, and having smaller families."

Iraq war vet lied about mom's death after Trump's travel ban - "A war contractor who claimed President Trump’s controversial travel ban caused his mother to die in Iraq lied about the circumstance"

Is it true that no two democracies have ever gone to war with each other? - "It seems that historically whoever wins a war is then in the position to label the losing side as 'undemocratic'. It is the winners that write the history books. So no two democracies have ever gone to war with each other because the winning side tends to be seen as an autonomous nation, joined by public opinion and imbued with national pride. Whereas the losing nation is depicted as divided and the people at loggerheads with their leaders."

Sweden's 'feminist' government criticised for wearing headscarves in Iran - "Lofven's Swedish government describes itself as a "feminist government" and it has spoken of the need for a "feminist" foreign policy. Hillel Neuer, executive director of human rights group and frequent Iran critic UN Watch, noted this apparent contradiction... Alinejad later shared to Facebook a recent image of Sweden's deputy prime minister Isabella Lovin signing a document with an all-female staff behind here. That image had recently gone viral as many viewed it as a criticism of US President Trump's abortion policies"
Swedish feminism is only for white people so this is not hypocrisy

The Case Of The Disappearing Kickstarter

Soon Li Yong Tau Foo - Crazy Queue & Grumpy Auntie At Singapore's Most Stressful Hawker Stall - "Contrary to its name “Soon Li” 顺利, which in Chinese means “smooth flowing”, there is nothing “Soon Li” about the whole buying process. Warning: this can be one of the most stressful hawker food experiences you ever come across. It felt like The Hunger Games."

The Psychology of Morality

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, The Psychology of Morality

"I do believe in vice and virtue and I think to denounce the sin but not the sinner just makes vice too easy for us all. But I'm actually quite amused by how our view of vice advice changes over a short period of time on things like homosexuality, divorce, single parenthood and I am amused too by how vehemently those who don't keep up with fashionable morality are condemned by the so called progressives...

You can see that those people who've got traditional ideas of morality are now branded as intolerant redneck religious bigots on the one hand and on the other hand we've got this kind of moral indifference or moral relativism of non judgmentalism and so. And then we've got the moral shallowness of virtue signaling...

Circumstances make a great effect on how altruistic you are. So for example when people are watching we are more altruistic. Now does that mean that we're just doing that to get the respect and social status that we derive from other people? Maybe. Or maybe it alerts us to our place in the world...

There's only one good way of virtue signaling - that's being virtuous...

This is something that's completely lost again I think in contemporary society between judgmentalism and making judgments. So on the one hand making judgments is something that is absolutely unavoidable for a human being. We are rational creatures, we have to make judgments. Every time I wake up in the morning I'm making a judgment...that's different from being judgemental which is to say making judgments on the basis of insufficient evidence...

What was the one sin that Jesus hated? No not sex, not money. Not all the other things that we get self righteous about but self righteousness itself so obviously this attitude that this survey is throwing up is at least two thousand years old and presumably a lot older than that...

'The New Testament seems to be very judgmental. I mean there are the Pharisees, the money lenders in the temple, the rich men who cannot pass through the eye of the needle. Lots of judgmentalism going on, isn't there?... I thought you just said that Christ didn't like judgmentalism'

'Yes that's exactly what I said is the sin he hates is the self righteousness of the Pharisees and the people who think they're ok.'

'Yeah but he's making a judgment'

'He is but he's god, I mean he is entitled to'

'Ah. But we're not. I thought we were made in his image... so we shouldn't judge Pharisees?... Should Christian churches condemn or condone homosexuality or divorce?'...

The reason we love to hate pedophilia is most of us are not tempted by pedophilia. So it may go on being that something wicked. But what is much more interesting Michael is to second guess what in fifty or a hundred years time you know if things reverse. So for instance it is possible to imagine that in a hundred years time we might be as shocked by abortion as we are by slavery...

When people in good conscience try and be I think rightly judgemental because by the way if you don't judge somebody morally what you're actually doing is treating them with indifference. I mean if you don't care what they think I mean and you are also treating your own ideas with indifference. If you believe something in good conscience you don't want to keep it to yourself, you have to go out and persuade. That's part of being accountable as a human being... we confused that with moral grandstanding which is to condemn people for their good faith"

Links - 13th September 2017 (2)

Sexism in tech: Why a startup founder had sex with an investor - "Even back then, I got how female commerce worked. I understood that letting a man lust after me was the price for entry. I knew being hot got me in the door and that after that I had to make that work for me. Culturally, we are taught as women that our main power is our looks and sexuality. Then it's a matter of what you do with it. Personally, I used the s--- out of it, and I was more successful than my male colleagues because of it... I gave him permission to act this way. My sleeping with him is actually part of the problem... It would also be so easy to jump on the "inappropriate investor" train here. Had I said no and left the bar offended and appalled, I could have easily overlooked how I created a business meeting in my head that had never existed for the other person. I could have come out accusing him of being inappropriate, using text messages to back it up. But I have to own my part in that, too. He never gave me any indication it was a professional meeting. That was my agenda, and one he clearly did not share. So who am I to call him out? It's complicated. Because in an ecosystem where socializing and happy hours are a big way to meet or get to know investors, there are no real clear lines about what is personal and what is professional. I think clarifying this up front has to become a big priority for both men and women. Real talk. I'm also not the first or only woman who has ever used being a woman to get time with a man. This is where we as women need to take more responsibility, too. I was saying to a friend about the stories coming out that these are not even the worst ones, because these women didn't sleep with these men. And men wouldn't keep behaving this way if it didn't work... it's really important that when we expose men, it's real and warranted and not a one-sided story open to interpretation. Once these stories are out, there is nothing a man can do to defend against falsehoods. I think we have a responsibility as women to be introspective and to be honest with ourselves... we can talk about changing men until we are blue in the face, but the only person who is ever truly responsible for my safety is me... I've done work with many teachers around this topic, and one of my favorite teachers is Lynne Forrest and her work with the "victim triangle." She teaches that while we may have been a victim of something, we can learn how to move out of "victim consciousness" (allowing your identity to crystallize around being a victim) to a more empowered place. For all I have been through, I don't identify as a victim, and I'm so grateful for that empowerment and freedom. "

Silicon Valley sexism backlash: 'Boys will be boys' - ""Should Dave McClure pay for his mistakes? Most likely yes. Should he have to step down into the shadows of the company he made? Hell no," said Petraeus, founder of a digital technology company, Corpus Caeleste. "I don't understand why a guy, who is an otherwise great businessman who helped over a thousand companies around the world, should have his professional life erased simply because he likes to sleep around"... Under intense public pressure, Caldbeck resigned, bringing his venture capital firm, Binary Capital, to the brink of collapse, after six women detailed his sexual advances as they met with him to discuss funding, jobs and advice... One prominent venture capitalist, Vinod Khosla, said this week that he does not believe sexual harassment is that common in venture capital. “It’s a reality because it’s perceived as a reality”... Concern is also growing in some quarters that the punishments being meted out don't fit the crime. There's a "witch hunt mentality," says Heidi Dangelmaier, who runs an all-female innovation firm, GirlApproved, in New York. Tatyana Kanzaveli, CEO of health-care start-up Open Health Network in Los Altos, Calif., says she's worried about a broad indictment of men. The globe-trotting McClure, who favored sandals and T-shirts and colorful language, had a reputation as someone who helped women, people of color and entrepreneurs in developing countries, says Sarah Cone, managing partner with Social Impact Capital. He "lacked all professionalism," Cone said, "but that's also what he built his reputation on. You don't hang around Dave for his buttoned-up nature.""

Why Britain banned mobile apps - "Apps are “very expensive to produce, and they’re very very expensive to maintain because you have to keep updating them when there are software changes”... How did the UK reach an increasingly mobile population? Responsive websites, he replies. “For government services that we were providing, the web is a far far better way… and still works on mobile.” Sites can adapt to any screen size, work on all devices, and are open to everyone to use regardless of their device. “If you believe in the open internet that will always win,” he says. And they’re much cheaper to maintain, he adds, because when an upgrade is required, only one platform needs recoding... Key to the GDS’ approach is designing for user needs, not organizational requirements... Most Ministers might want there to be sharing options on websites so that citizens can easily promote government on Facebook and Twitter. But the GDS tested this, and found that only 0.1% of citizens ever clicked on them. These stats allowed officials to remove them from the design, making the site simpler, cleaner and quicker to load. Secondly, the GDS has an approach that “Google is the homepage”. They don’t assume that citizens will visit the main government site; instead, they design for them to have come to a page after looking for a search engine... A third rule is to strip out all unnecessary questions and steps in a process. For example, he says, every service asked citizens their marital status, but it was only a legal requirement for one application. This approach allowed them to remove half of the 500 steps it required to get an allowance to care for an elderly relative or disabled loved one. Fourth, the design team removes all unnecessary design. For example, the pages on Gov.UK – the central portal – don’t have any pictures on them. This is because they distract from the information on the page, and user research showed that they reduced the clarity... How does Britain measure digital success? It isn’t necessarily the popularity of a digital service, Terrett says. “It’d be nice if they like it, don’t get me wrong, but liking is not really a useful metric.” Instead his team looked to see if users have completed an online transaction, or stopped halfway through. Equally, did they find the information they needed and leave a webpage, or did they have to search for more information?"
I'm glad I'm not the only one against the app fetish

The North Korean Army is rusting away. So it's getting creative. - "Forced to make do without traditional weaponry, North Korea is expanding its "asymmetric" forces, including nuclear weapons, commandos, and hackers, the report concludes... Pyongyang is cultivating commando and cyber forces for isolated, coercive attacks meant to forcefully shape North Korea's external relations without resorting to full-blown war. For example, a pocket submarine like the one that sank the South Korean corvette Cheonan in 2010, enraging South Korea and underscoring the North's reputation for volatility, is more useful than a full-size conventional submarine that might survive a few hours during major combat."

Chinese, Korean, Japanese (genetic edition)
Chinese, Japanese and Koreans are genetically distinct

Unrequited Love…or Stalking? The Pitfalls of Dating in Korea - "In Korea, it is accepted practice for men to relentlessly pursue the objects of their heart’s desire, sometimes for many years, and despite if said objects clearly, repeatedly, and vehemently express their disinterest. Far from being viewed as stalking however, it is generally viewed as both a sweet and noble sign of one’s love and dedication. There’s even a proverb specifically for this: “열번찍어 안넘이 가는 나무 없다,” which roughly translates as “There is no tree that can withstand being chopped 10 times.”... many Korean women would surely exploit the practice, in a playing hard to get fashion (some more Korean that comes to mind is “희망고문하다,” literally to “hope-torture [someone],” or to repeatedly string someone along and then break their heart). But I think that the consensus of most Westerners is that if the woman says she’s not interested…then she’s not interested, and hence that the man’s behavior after being told is stalking, regardless of how sweet or noble his intentions"

Insider Perspective: Seven Reasons Why Korea Has the Worst Productivity in the OECD - "1. Rigid Structures and Hierarchy
2. Communication Issues
3. Mobile Phones and Online Communication
In a recent survey of 706 office workers by job search portal Career.co.kr, it found that over 61 percent of respondents said they have a resting place at work. Of these 61 percent, a quarter said that they would escape to the toilets, with just under 45 percent responding that they use their phone during this time for games, Internet, SMS, and phone calls. Go into any office building toilet in Seoul and you will hear mobile message tones or game sounds going off like firecrackers.
4. Hungover Workers Taking Excessive Breaks
5. Form Rules Over Substance
6. Poorly-equipped, Older Graduates
7. The Art of Looking Busy"

Are we too quick to cry 'bully'? - "Say the word in almost any school these days, and it will get a quick reaction. In many cases, advocates said, that's helpful. But sometimes, when it's not really bullying, kids miss out on a chance to learn to cope with minor conflicts on their own.
"The label 'bullying' is really incendiary," Englander said. "It ratchets everything up emotionally. It makes it hard to really address, rationally, what the best course of action is"... "Being deliberately isolated and laughed at cruelly every single day can be devastating socially and academically, because the target must both endure the present and constantly dread the future," Englander wrote in the book "Bullying and Cyberbulling," released this month. "It's this unrelenting cruelty and the callous nature of such an environment that is watered down when we include every social slight or quarrel under the bullying rubric." "If everyone's a victim," she wrote, "then no one's a victim"... Becki Cohn-Vargas, an educator for more than two decades, recalled how conflicts between students were never as black-and-white as they seemed at first. A child who bullied might express remorse, then relapse. A girl would complain of bullying by a child she'd once targeted. LGBT students in a school known for its kind atmosphere would quietly admit to daily torment. Religious students were targeted, and secular students, too. All over the playground and lunchroom, students might freeze out another child, demeaning him without saying a word. To identify a child as a bully or victim was difficult -- and dangerous."

Could Your Child Have Too Much Self-Esteem? - "We have long believed that low self-esteem is to blame for many of society’s ills, from academic failure to high-risk behaviors such as substance abuse and unprotected sex. But the past two decades of research suggest that low self-esteem many not be as destructive as we once thought, and high self-esteem can be equally problematic. In fact, our modern emphasis on praise may be contributing to a generation of self-obsessed, irresponsible and unmotivated kids. Roy Baumeister, a professor of social psychology at Florida State University, found that criminals and drug abusers actually have higher self-esteem than the general population"

Don't call students 'genius' because word is associated with men, Cambridge lecturers told - "Cambridge University examiners are told to avoid using words like “flair”, “brilliance” and “genius” when assessing students’ work because they are associated with men, an academic has revealed. Lucy Delap, a lecturer in British history at Cambridge University, said that History tutors are discouraged from using these terms because they “carry assumptions of gender inequality”... Dr Delap, who specialises in gender history, said that one of the reasons why men get more first class degrees at Oxford and Cambridge than women is because female students struggle with the “male dominated environment”."

Marc Jacobs: Backlash 'erodes freedom of speech' - ""It's gotten to the point that the more I express my opinion, the more problematic it becomes, but the hypocrisy feels absurd to me. The people who attack me in effect, are saying one thing but acting completely the opposite way. In other words, they are saying 'you can't say or do what you want, but we can.'"

80 Per Cent Of Swedish Police Consider Quitting Due To Danger - "Sweden may be descending into a crisis as a new report suggests 80 per cent of police officers are considering switching careers due to the danger they face in the field. The criminal situation in Sweden may be heading for an even worse turn as a new report has shown that the vast majority of the Swedish police force is so unhappy they are looking into other careers. Sweden has been rocked by increasing levels of criminality from sex attacks at music festivals, hand grenade attacks and violence toward the police in areas populated mostly by migrants. The report states that up to three Swedish police quit every day as they feel the government isn’t giving them the tools to tackle the epidemic of criminality"

Yip Pin Xiu should not get $1m (nor $2m) - "A good teacher once asked me whether it was uplifting or condescending to measure a disabled person by a different standard and not hold them to the standards required of able-bodied people. I still don’t have the answer to that question... If we’re all about equality, how about we cut Schooling’s prize money to match Yip’s? That would make it equal, wouldn’t it? And it would cost a heck of a lot less money, which can be used for talent development of other athletes. This should appease the agents of equality. But this kind of equality strikes us all as innately unfair. A Paralympic medal is not an Olympic medal. It is not less than an Olympic medal, but neither is it more. I mean that in the same way that a disabled person like Yip is not less than an able-bodied person, and she is also not more. And they are certainly not exactly equal. That’s why the Paralympics exist."

Yann LeCun - Berkeley will take down its freely available video... - "Berkeley will take down its freely available video courses because the Justice Department says they violate the American with Disabilities Act."
Comments: " As a result, the disabled still can't access the courses, but it's more "equal" now because no one can access. What a strange thing."
"Unfortunately, there are lawyers who make their living extorting people using the ADA."
"Let's ban books because some people can't read."
" Look, I love how Americans are always trying to find and put right all the world's injustices. It is a very noble goal. But often it turns into a Superman cartoon. I don't feel like it's an injustice that I don't see well, much the same way as I have long accepted that I am unlikely to become a famous ballerina, or the crown prince of Monaco. That's just how the cookie crumbles... And, by the way, ADA itself is discriminatory as it only applies to Americans. Personally, I'd prefer less grandstanding and superman'ing and more real sensible actions."
Ahh equality!
This is why we can't have nice things
This is like the SJWs who blockaded a staircase because it didn't have a wheelchair ramp, so no one could use it


Free Education Runs Afoul Of The Bureaucrats - "“If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy,” quipped World War II Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover. “God will forgive you, but the bureaucracy won’t.” The University of California-Berkeley might have considered this warning before it committed the heinous crime of uploading some YouTube videos... When regulations aimed at increasing access to a product instead force an entity to stop offering the product in question entirely, something has gone wrong. A rule intended to protect the disabled has made online educational content inaccessible for all virtual students – including disabled ones"

The dangers of Trudeau’s ‘postnational’ Canada - "a case can be made that the housing affordability crises in Metro Vancouver and Toronto is a result of a “postnational” mindset. Canada’s politicians are failing to put serious effort into protecting residents of Vancouver or Toronto from transnational financial forces... As G.K. Chesterton once said, condemning nationalism because it can lead to war is like condemning love because it can lead to murder... “Patriotism is what makes us behave unselfishly. It is why we pay taxes to support strangers, why we accept election results when we voted for the loser, why we obey laws with which we disagree,” writes Daniel Hannan, author of Inventing Freedom. “A functioning state requires broad consensus on what constitutes the first-person plural. Take that sense away, you get Syria or Iraq or Ukraine or – well, pretty much any war zone you can name.”... it’s not normally nationalism that foments catastrophic division – it’s religion, race or tribalism."

Where Are The Adults at Yale?

Where Are The Adults at Yale?

"Baraka’s assertions of Israeli complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks, which he reiterated after reading the poem with vague citations to Arab newspapers, were met with applause and a standing ovation from the assembled Yale students. When he noticed my skeptical expression from the back of the room, he diagnosed me as suffering from “constipation of the face” and being in need of “a brain enema,” to the uproarious laughter of my classmates.

I did not insist upon the establishment of a “safe space” to sulk in my humiliation. Instead, I retired to my dorm and wrote about the event, in my capacity as a budding columnist for the Yale Daily News. Baraka’s speech, and, more importantly, the rapturous response, I wrote, “was one of the most disturbing events in my entire life.” That this trial by fire was provoked not by the white skinheads or Muslim anti-Zionists I had naively assumed were the only purveyors of anti-Semitic hatred, but by blacks, who, because of our shared history of oppression, I had been brought up to believe, were supposed to be my allies, made it all the more distressing.

Today, I look back on the entire incident as a formative event in my evolution from teenager to adult. My experience at Yale of confronting painful ideas, emotionally vexing situations, and learning how to cope with them, informs my opinion about the events roiling the campus today... Free speech is all well and good, apparently, when the speaker is a bigoted lunatic from a “marginalized” group; not so good when the person in question is a Yale professor advocating for her students’ freedom to choose a Halloween costume...

A child developmental psychologist, Christakis shared her concern that a proscription on “objectionably ‘appropriative’ ” Halloween dress was not far removed from preventing “a blonde-haired child’s wanting to be Mulan for a day.”...

A student can be seen screaming at Christakis, calling him “disgusting” and asking, “Who the fuck hired you?” To the whoops and cheers of her peers, she decries his failure to create a “safe space” for students and informs him that he “should not sleep at night.”

With her bravura performance of both “victim and victor,” alternately denunciatory and self-pitying, this young woman is a sterling example of the “cry bully,” what British writer Julie Burchill classifies as one who “always explains to the point of demanding that one agrees with them and always complains to the point of insisting that one is persecuting them.” The following day, one of Christakis’ students published an op-ed in the Yale Herald stating that his stewardship of the college made her “feel that my home is being threatened” because he had failed to apologize for his wife’s email that “marginalized many students of color.”...

When I hear, in 2015, students complain about feeling “marginalized” at Yale due to their racial, ethnic, religious, sexual, or any other identity—and, on top of this, demanding institutional retribution against those who mildly express viewpoints they don’t agree with and sartorial injunctions on pagan bacchanal holiday garb—I can’t help but think of James Meredith. Meredith was the first black student to attend the segregated University of Mississippi and had to do so under the cover of heavily armed federal marshals...

50 years ago, young people manned barricades demanding the overthrow of the system; their watchword was personal freedom. Now they desperately appeal to the system, insisting that it exercise even more control over their already hyper-managed lives...

What we’re witnessing at Yale are the abysmal consequences of a decades-long inculcation of identity politics and grievance mongering, which hold that the relative virtue of an argument is directly proportional to the professed “marginalization” of its proponent, and it is destroying the ideal of a liberal education. Like the students who thought it entirely unobjectionable to hail an unhinged anti-Semite, (indeed, their joy at his defiance seemed inspired by an element of épater la bourgeoisie, precisely because he was unsettling their Jewish classmates), apparently no adults in these young peoples’ lives have informed them that shouting in the face of a professor, hurling imprecations at those who question their assumptions, and then demanding refuge from the tempestuous waves of intellectual discourse in the form of a “safe space” where their fatuous notions go unchallenged, is behavior befitting a toddler, not an undergraduate at one of America’s premier institutions of higher learning. No less a figure than President Barack Obama has assailed this rising tide of intolerance on university campuses, saying that “anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with them, but you shouldn’t silence them by saying you can’t come because I’m too sensitive to hear what you have to say.”

Unfortunately, Yale appears to be letting the inmates take over the asylum"

Links - 13th September 2017 (1)

'Fellatio cafe' where customers receive oral sex while they drink their coffee - "At the end of this year, a new coffee shop, Fellatio Café, will open up in Geneva, Switzerland, where you can get a hot cup of joe, with a side of blowjob. Seriously... And just how much will this sexual service set you back? 60 Swiss francs, or about $50. Plus five francs for the coffee, of course. This is a business after all"

Pole vaulter's penis gets in the way of his Olympic dreams - "Ogita was attempting to clear a height of 5.3 meters (17.3 feet) in group A of the first round of the pole vault, when his leg came in contact with the bar. As he began to drop back down toward the ground, his shin grazed the bar, causing it to wobble dangerously. But it was his penis that delivered the final blow"

NY Senator Gets Annihilated on Twitter After Praising Sharia Law Activist Linda Sarsour
It is appropriate that Linda Sarsour is a "suffragist", since Black Lives Matter is "The New Civil Righs Movement"

Fox's APB Is the Latest Show to Misunderstand Robocop - "RoboCop was intended to be a viciously hilarious attack on police brutality, union busting, mass-media brainwashing, and the exploitation of the working class by amoral corporate raiders. Alas, all too many people only noticed the viciousness, not the targets thereof... the movie is a spiritual sibling to Verhoeven’s other tragically misinterpreted masterwork, 1997’s antiwar satire Starship Troopers"

NY Times Hates 'Theocratic' Pool Hours for Women -- With One Exception, for Muslim 'Me Time' - "The Times can't stand Orthodox Jewish women having sex-segregated swimming hours in a public space....but lauded it for Muslim women in February."

Helicopter parenting is increasingly correlated with college-age depression and anxiety. - "One kid’s father threatened to divorce her mother if the daughter didn’t major in economics. It took this student seven years to finish instead of the usual four, and along the way the father micromanaged his daughter’s every move, including requiring her to study off campus at her uncle’s every weekend... students with helicopter parents were less open to new ideas and actions and more vulnerable, anxious, and self-conscious. “[S]tudents who were given responsibility and not constantly monitored by their parents—so-called ‘free rangers’—the effects were reversed”"
This could explain SJW antics

5 Weird Foods the French Consider Delicacies - "There’s an anecdote that places Napoleon’s chief advisor, Talleyrand, in a Burgundy restaurant with Czar Alexander I in 1814. They arrived late, the food was gone, and the chef spotted some snails in his garden. In a panic he added garlic to mask the taste, parsley to pretty them up and butter to make them easier to swallow. Apparently the Czar liked the dish so much, he demanded the recipe. Whenever he saw snails after that, he referred to them as “snails from Burgundy,” or escargots de Bourgogne."

Why one woman stole 50 million academic papers — and made them all free to read - "Alexandra Elbakyan has had enough. Elbakyan is a Russia-based neuroscientist turned academic Robin Hood. In 2011 she founded the website Sci-Hub, which has grown to host some 50 million academic papers — Elbakyan claims this is nearly all the paywalled scientific knowledge that exists in the world. These papers are free for anyone to view and download... In the United States, Sci-Hub users seem to be clustered around academic hot-spots, such as East Lansing, Michigan, where Michigan State University is located. This suggest students and researchers are using Sci-Hub despite having journal access. It's easy to understand why. University libraries have complicated (and sometimes multiple) catalog programs to deliver scientific papers to students and staff. Sci-Hub offers a singular, simple-to-use portal... "American research libraries spent 227% more for their journal collections in 2002 than in 1986. The CPI increased 57% during the same period." The frustrating irony is that universities have to pay these sky-high prices despite the fact they are the institutions funding the research in the journals. Similarly, taxpayers spend $140 billion every year supporting research they can't easily access... "If the process really were as complex, costly and value-added as the publishers protest that it is, 40 percent [profit] margins wouldn't be available""

I'm Done Pretending Men Are Safe (Even My Sons) - "My sons won’t rape unconscious women behind a dumpster, and neither will most of the progressive men I know. But what all of these men share in common, even my sons, is a relentless questioning and disbelief of the female experience. I do not want to prove my pain, or provide enough evidence to convince anyone that my trauma is merited. I’m through wasting my time on people who are more interested in ideas than feelings, and I’m through pretending these people, these men, are safe. I love my sons, and I love some individual men. It pains me to say that I don’t feel emotionally safe with them, and perhaps never have with a man, but it needs to be said because far too often we are afraid to say it. This is not a reflection of something broken or damaged in me; it is a reflection of the systems we build and our boys absorb. Those little boys grow into men who know the value of women, the value that’s been ascribed to us by a broken system, and it seeps out from them in a million tiny, toxic ways."
Comments: "this sounds a bit Borderline Personality Disorder; I hope she finds peace."
"The main objective of this muh feminist feelz propaganda piece is to taunt its readers with “all Whites are racist.”"
"Lady, you do not have a fucking clue what it is to be a man, how to be a man, therefore you should not even try to teach your boys how to be a man because you do not have a fucking clue."
"I find this article deeply disturbing. The author sounds preoccupied with misogyny to the extent it is negatively coloring her perception of her children. She almost sounds scared of them"


Sweden's gender-neutral preschools produce kids who are more likely to succeed - "children who attended one gender-neutral preschool were more likely to play with unfamiliar children of the opposite gender, and less likely to be influenced by culturally enforced gender stereotypes, compared to children enrolled at other pre-schools. Tests showed that the kids from the gender-neutral school were as likely as other children to group people by gender, but didn’t attach traditional associations to the concepts of “male” or “female” children to the same degree. During a matching task, for instance, they were less likely to make choices in line with cultural norms when shown images of boys or girls and jeans or dresses."
Anyone can be successful when you define them as successful

Shia LaBeouf Threatens to Kill Cop with Gun in Bodycam Footage - "Shia LaBeouf went on a racist, violent rant in the police car after being arrested early Saturday morning in Georgia. Shia screamed at the cop, "If I had my gun I'll blow your s*** up." And that wasn't all. He said, "You put your own kind in the f***ing pen." As we previously reported, Shia also ranted about being an American who pays his taxes"
"He will not divide us"

Catfights over handbags and tears in the toilets. With her women-only TV company this producer thought she'd kissed goodbye to conflict... - "The venomous women were supposedly the talented employees I had headhunted to achieve my utopian dream - a female- only company with happy, harmonious workers benefiting from an absence of men. It was an idealistic vision swiftly shattered by the nightmare reality: constant bitchiness, surging hormones, unchecked emotion, attention-seeking and fashion rivalry so fierce it tore my staff apart. When I read the other day that Sienna Miller had said there was no such thing as 'the Sisterhood', I knew what she meant... there was a time when I believed in the Sisterhood - but that was before women at war led to my emotional and financial ruin... Working in TV is notoriously difficult for women. There is a powerful old boys' network, robust glass ceiling and the majority of bosses are misogynistic males. Gradually, what had started out as a daydream - wouldn't it be great if there were no men where I worked? - turned into an exciting concept. I decided to create the first all-female production company where smart, intelligent, career-orientated women could work harmoniously, free from the bravado of the opposite sex... Hideously stereotypical and shallow as it sounds, clothes were a huge source of catty comments, from sly remarks about people looking over-dressed to the merits of their fake tan application. I always felt sorry for anyone who naively showed off a new purchase in the office, because everyone would coo appreciatively to their face - then harshly criticise them as soon as they were out of earshot. This happened without exception... The office was like a Milan catwalk, but with the competitiveness of a Miss World contest - and the low cunning of a mud-wrestling bout... Two of the skinny girls often snidely said about the largest girl: 'I'd kill myself if I got that fat.' One of the assistants got her own back on the food police for several weeks by pretending to buy them fat-free lattes. . . which were really full-fat. Employees considered it acceptable to take time off for beauty treatments - and not out of their holiday allowance... My idealism was my downfall because I tried to see the best in people - I was convinced they would behave as they were treated, so I treated everyone kindly. If I'd have been more cynical, I would have been more successful... The effect a lack of testosterone was having in our office was even more apparent when I temporarily hired two male directors to work on a series (camera operators are usually men because of the heavy equipment). The team suddenly became quieter, more hard-working and less bitchy - partly because they were too busy flirting... I hate how much that sounds like stereotyping, but I'm afraid it's what I found to be true. And while I stand by my initial reason for excluding male employees - because they have an easy ride in TV - if I were to do it again, I'd definitely employ men. In fact, I'd probably employ only men. Making close to half a million in our first year should have meant profit, but this was wiped out by high salaries and accounting errors by staff. Then, when we began having cash-flow problems, Sarah signed herself off sick with stress for a month. She also confessed she'd been dodging calls from people who were due payment, thus ruining my firm's reputation... To pump extra cash into the business, I sold both my cars, but it was too late and we went bankrupt in March 2007, less than two years after I'd formed the company."
SJWing has real consequences when you must spend your own money

Boys told to 'man up' by peers are 4 times more likely to bully others: Survey - "More than half of schoolboys here have hit, punched, shoved or spat on another boy while in secondary school. More than four-fifths have taunted another for being "girly" or not being "manly" enough. These were found in a survey of 809 teenagers aged 17 and 18 by women's rights group Aware. The results, said Aware researcher Chong Ning Qian, are alarming. She found that those who were teased are more likely to go on to bully other boys. Aware decided to survey boys after a campaign to end violence against women found that men, too, "were victims of violence because of gender stereotyping"... The boys were asked whether their peers told them to "man up", "stop being such a girl" or to not cry - a practice Aware calls gender policing -and whether they experienced or committed violence. A whopping 84 per cent admitted to verbally bullying another, by insulting a boy for being feminine or weak and calling him a "sissy" or "gay". A lower - but still significant- proportion resorted to physical bullying: 29 per cent gave a schoolmate a wedgie by yanking his underwear; 54 per cent hit, punched, shoved or spat on another; and 69 per cent took part in a practice called taupok where boys pile on a target... "Boys tend to be a bit more physical. To be violent you have to have the intention to harm someone"... it could be part of "an occasion where someone is celebrating something like a birthday", said Singapore Children's Society chief executive Alfred Tan. He said he would not classify a one-off incident as bullying. But for child psychologist Carol Balhetchet, the main factor is whether the person feels victimised and had asked for the act to stop but was ignored. "Children's sense of fun - especially for boys up to the age of 16 and some even older - is to see how far they can get away with what they see as poking fun at another," said Dr Balhetchet."
AWARE calling taupok violence/bullying just shows they've no clue about men. And the experts agree

Campaign promoting Chinese gets one of its slogan's Chinese words wrong - "Mandarin is hard. Organisers of a Speak Mandarin campaign in Singapore were red-faced after they debuted a banner with a slogan, to encourage people to use the Chinese language more in reading and communicating. However, instead of using the Chinese character for "read" (读), it instead chose one that meant "showing disrespect" (渎)"

Only 7 per cent of Britons consider themselves feminists - "More than two thirds of Britons support gender equality – but just seven per cent would call themselves feminists... men were more supportive generally of equality between the sexes - 86 per cent wanted it for the women in their lives - compared to 74 per cent of women. Younger women were more likely to call themselves feminist, with 19 per cent aged 18-24 using the word, but they were also most likely to oppose feminism... People were asked to say the first word that popped into their heads when they heard the word “feminist”. More than a quarter said “bitchy”"
Britons are even more averse to the label than Americans, even though American feminists seem to have more excesses
Is it sexist to say the men were more feminist than the women?


Racism and the Aladdin Casting Search - "the casting search for Disney’s live-action Aladdin, which has taken longer than initially expected. Production was expected to begin in July, but it’s been pushed back to August in order to accommodate the search for a male lead... “Finding a male lead in his 20s who can act and sing has proven difficult,” reads the article, “especially since the studio wants someone of Middle-Eastern or Indian descent (the animated film is set in the fictional Middle Eastern city of Agrabah)….[T]he search has dragged on, with Disney and Ritchie having to go back to the drawing board multiple times.” “Especially since the studio wants someone of Middle-Eastern or Indian descent”? Seriously? Seriously?... to suggest that it’s taking so long because the talent pool is limited to Middle-Eastern and Indian actors is racist as hell
When reality conflicts with your ideology, clearly reality is to blame
If I were a Middle Eastern/Indian actor and I knew the studio was looking for one and that there were few of my kind, I would ask for more money, which would delay casting
Comments: "This I what you get when you inherently think everything is racist and/or get paid to blog."
"Or... maybe searching exclusively for Arab/Indian men is difficult because it's another factor that narrows down an already very small pool?"


Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire - "Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers"
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