This sadistic Japanese fitness game insults girls into working out - "A Japanese romance-slash-fitness game, of course, in which a vaguely hunky manga character berates you into working out. The game is called Burn Your Fat With Me! For Girls, and I discovered it last month in the Apple Store after playing other types of otome, or romantic adventure games geared primarily toward teen girls."
What’s the matter with a little brother/sister action? - "The scenario of course is designed to ward off the most common moral objections to incest, and in doing so demonstrate that much of moral reasoning is a post-hoc affair-a way of justifying judgments that you've already reached though an emotional gut response to a situation. Although we like to think of ourselves as arriving at our moral judgments after painstaking rational deliberation, or at least some kind of deliberation anyhow, Haidt's model-the "social intuititionist model"-sees the process as just the reverse. We judge and then we reason. Reason is the press secretary of the emotions, as Haidt is fond of saying, the ex post facto spin doctor of beliefs we've arrived at through a largely intuitive process... we must recognize even the people we consider to be the epitome of pure evil-the Islamic fundamentalists who engineered 9/11 for example-are motivated by moral goals, however distorted we find them to be"
No football in void decks: Singapore’s irresistible urge to police empty spaces - "Architect professor Jason Pomeroy argues that by assigning specific activities to public spaces and restricting others (such as by banning running, smoking, ball games and speaking loudly), the state has turned void decks into sterile spaces which end up being underutilised."
New DOJ Statistics on Race and Violent Crime - "Some observers argue that what causes the overwhelming preponderance of black-on-white over white-on-black violence is “chance of encounter,” due to the fact that there are five times as many whites as blacks in the American population. However, there are only about 30 percent more Hispanics than blacks, yet black-on-Hispanic violence is almost as lopsided as black-on-white violence. This suggests blacks may be deliberately targeting both whites and Hispanics. Using figures for the 2013 racial mix of the population–62.2 percent white, 17.1 percent Hispanic, 13.2 percent black–we can calculate the average likelihood of a person of each race attacking the other. A black is 27 times more likely to attack a white and 8 times more likely to attack a Hispanic than the other way around. A Hispanic is eight times more likely to attack a white than vice versa."
The secret lives of international students - "For many of the 500,000 foreign students in Australia, our liberal, more tolerant society offers them a golden chance to open up and enjoy their youth."
Why Germans Work Fewer Hours But Produce More: A Study in Culture - "In German business culture, when an employee is at work, they should not be doing anything other than their work. Facebook, office gossip with co-workers, trolling Reddit for hours, and pulling up a fake spreadsheet when your boss walks by are socially unacceptable behaviors. Obviously, in the United States these behaviors are frowned up on by management. But in Germany, there is zero tolerance among peers for such frivolous activities."
Academic Torrents - "We've designed a distributed system for sharing enormous datasets - for researchers, by researchers. The result is a scalable, secure, and fault-tolerant repository for data, with blazing fast download speeds"
Footage reveals one of the most common Roma scams tourists fall for in Paris - "The 26-point strategy (see box above) is focusing on Eastern European gangs, who were believed to be responsible for much of the thefts from tourists."
Racial profiling!
While I'm personally disappointed by President... - Jennifer Taryn Walters - " The military is not for everyone, if we can disqualify you over the cost and risks associated with mere asthma... why should we take on people with far greater health concerns. There are other ways you can serve your country. My biggest disappointment in the whole ordeal is how the trans community were desperately riding the coat tails of the gay and lesbian community. The LG community has fought a different battle for a longer time, we as transgender people have to fight our own battles and not just say "well you let the the gays do this" or "I should be lumped into their category". Being gay is a sexual orientation, being transgender is a medical condition that comes with is own set of obstacles. We cannot assume to be treated the exact same as people radically different from us. The trans community has pushed and pushed and pushed its ever changing motives and agendas to lengths that have not been seen before in a social movement. If you're upset that you can't serve now, I suggest you look inside your own community and blame the people who slandered "straight" men who don't like penises as transphobic. I also suggest that you look to the people who have basically stollen money from tax payers over hurt feelings. I don't want my military going broke over lawsuits that some grunt called a transwoman the wrong gender or that someone overheard the word "tranny" in a group of returning soldiers. This community has no right to blame anyone but ourselves on my humble opinion."
William Hawkyns - Regarding Trump's ban on Transgenders serving in... - " It took three years of regular seizures, pharmaceutical trials, and heartbreak, but at some point I realized that my condition was not only a hazard to my health, but a threat to those with whom I served. I couldn't train regularly, I couldn't handle a firearm on the range, and I wasn't able to even drive, thereby hindering my ability to participate in a number of operations, to include the deployments I was so desperately seeking... I say this because Trump's decision today regarding the transgendered community is absolutely the correct one. The medical requirements for those who have yet to transition is tremendous, and the time away from crucial training events is something that could cost young men and women their lives on the battlefield."
Comment elsewhere: ""The prevalence of suicide attempts... is 41 percent, which vastly exceeds the 4.6 percent of the overall U.S. population who report a lifetime suicide attempt... "
A suicidal person out of the military is unlikely to cause other deaths. In the military? You want a suicidal person piloting a plane? Driving a truck filled with explosives? Even if they don't directly kill others, a military suicide can mean a man down when combat starts, which gets others killed."
I Was Once Transgender. Why I Think Trump Made the Right Decision for the Military. - "Through my website, sexchangeregret.com, I hear from people who experienced firsthand how damaging and unnecessary reassignment surgeries were. For them, the sex change failed to resolve the emotional and psychological disorders that drove the desire to change gender. Many write after living the transgender life for years. They write to ask for advice on how to reverse the original surgical change and restore their lives to the original birth gender like I did, a process called detransition. Some service members will come to regret having undergone the surgery and will want to detransition. Where will the military be then? Will the military pay for the sex change reversal procedure, too? Failed “sex change surgeries” are not uncommon and will drive up the cost to care for the military transgender population above the projected $3-4 billion 10-year cost. Beyond the financial cost, there’s the question of the service member’s military readiness during their transition or detransition, as the process often comes with a great deal of anxiety and emotional instability."
The Pentagon spends 5 times more on Viagra than transgender services
This is like saying that since the absolute number of transsexuals who try to kill themselves (commit suicide) is low, it's not a problem
This is also ignoring how people respond to incentives
Transgender Suicide Rate Isn’t Due To Discrimination - "The Centers for Disease Control’s numbers on suicide indicate that the highest rates of suicide over the past 15 years or so belong to…white people. In contrast, in most of the years surveyed black people had the lowest suicide rate among all ethnicities. White suicide actually rose in the period 2000-2014. If discrimination were truly a motivating factor for suicide, you would expect the black suicide rate to be a good deal higher than it is, if not higher outright than the white rate: blacks report overwhelmingly higher rates of perceived racial discrimination than whites, and it is reasonable to assume that actual instances of discrimination against blacks are a good deal higher than those against whites. Yet the suicide rate of the former remains stubbornly lower than that of the latter... discrimination is almost certainly a nondeterminate factor in general suicide rates. Mental illness, on the other hand, is very clearly a motivating factor in a great many suicides: the rate of successful suicide is extremely correlative with conditions of mental illness. Since transgenderism is a deleterious psychological affliction, it is wholly unsurprising to find higher rates of suicide among that class of people."
AR Devine: An Alt-Liberal Perspective: Sex changes: Why we shouldn't alter the traditional meaning of gender - "The vast majority of non-conforming gender identities have surfaced and proliferated in the past few decades in western societies largely amongst those with a liberal arts University education. This trend occurred at a time when post-modernist theories that promote a cornucopia of gender identities have been in the ascendancy in academia. It is not the traditional definition of gender that is a social construct, but rather the emergence of a multiplicity of gender identities... Blaire White, a transsexual woman and popular Youtube commentator, states that most non-conforming gender identities are not in fact transgendered. She argues that non-conforming gender identities, such as non-binary, are only found amongst feminists and those on the left, whereas people who experience gender dysphoria and wish to live as the opposite sex can be found across the political spectrum... If we allow individuals' subjective feelings to become a basis for legal definitions of identity then people who identify as transspecies or otherkin have as much a right to have their identities acknowledged as a non-binary or genderfluid individual. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that one day you will go to work and Pete from accounts will be dressed in a badger outfit and demanding that his identity as a badger be respected and if you point out that he is in fact a bloke you may well be sacked for a 'hate crime.' Once upon a time, the men in white jackets would have come for Pete, but soon the boys in blue may come for you."
34 Ridiculous Chinese Character Tattoos Translated
Hyperpartisan Facebook Pages Are Publishing False And Misleading Information At An Alarming Rate - "A BuzzFeed News analysis found that three big right-wing Facebook pages published false or misleading information 38% of the time during the period analyzed, and three large left-wing pages did so in nearly 20% of posts"
Buzzfeed and its readers finally realize that they are easy to troll - "In the past year alone, Internet trolls have convinced the mainstream media that Pepe the frog is racist, that drinking milk is a white supremacist trademark, and just recently, that the OK sign is a far right hate symbol. It seems like that last one was the final nail in the coffin, and Buzzfeed has had enough."
Women Reveal What They Do To Show Men That They're Interested
Nobel secretary regrets Obama peace prize - "In an amusing anecdote, Mr Lundestad relates how he found Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who won the award in 1994, watching an episode of the Tom and Jerry cartoon in his hotel with other Palestine Liberation Organisation members. "It was made very clear that they intended to watch until the end," he said."
Just your average day on public transport : StarWars
It's time to stop using the word 'Asians' - "Obviously Sikhs and Hindus and other "Asian" non-Muslims, including Jains, Zoroastrians, Christians and Buddhists, don’t want to be associated with sexual grooming of vulnerable white girls. The vast majority of Muslims don’t want to either. The girls targeted in Rochdale, Derby and now in Luton are all non-Muslim. This is nothing new for British Hindus and Sikhs, who have complained about targeting of their girls for decades; Indians refer to the practice as "love-jihad"... commentators are unwilling to label the perpetrators "Muslim", opting instead to hide behind the fudge of "Asian". Lessons can be learned from Britain's own colonial history. The Empire's attitudes towards natives may have been problematic from a modern perspective, but it was careful to distinguish between the different inhabitants of the subcontinent... it is simple cowardice to pretend that grooming is not a problem for the Muslim community, but Asians in general"
Hundreds of British mums 'breast-ironing' their daughters using red-hot rocks, hammers and spatulas - "It is thought more than 1,000 women across the UK have been subjected to the barbaric ritual. The sickening act is commonplace in parts of Africa, but those at the frontline of child protection say it is also happening in African communities in the UK... The idea is that by removing their breast tissue, youngsters will be less sexually attractive and less likely to become pregnant at a young age, preventing them bringing shame on their families. Sadly it is mostly carried out by the girls’ own mothers, who believe it is in their best interests."
National Arts Council faces online backlash for congratulating Sonny Liew for Eisner awards - "Liew made a nuanced call for more dialogue between the authorities and the arts community. Otherwise, he said, "it would be too easy to form antagonistic tribes caught up in conflicts no one actually wants to be in, instead of having everyone work together to nurture artists and the arts here in Singapore"... "The NAC is clearly not some monolithic all-powerful organisation, but rather one made up of many disparate individuals, many of whom are trying to do their best, as part of a relatively small branch of the government, acting under the constraints of ministers and ministries. "And even higher up in the food chain, I think it is often the system that determines outcomes, whatever the actual intentions of individuals within it."... [The NAC] would like to encourage people to celebrate Liew's achievement by attending his theatrical venture Becoming Graphic next month at the Singapore International Festival of Arts, which is commissioned by the council."
If the NAC were so evil, why did they commission a work from him?
Iranian TV host who promotes Islamic dress code sparks backlash for drinking beer without hijab - "An Iranian state television presenter has sparked outrage after footage emerged of her drinking beer without wearing a hijab while on holiday in Switzerland... Azadeh Namdari, who is also a presenter and actress, has actively endorsed wearing the hijab... Ms Namdari said she had been sitting alongside members of her family and "maharem" - close relatives who a woman is not required to wear a hijab among – in a park. She claimed her scarf had fallen abruptly and the clip was immediately recorded by a random person. She did not mention the bottles of beer in the video or seek to explain them."
Iranian women cut their hair off and dress as men to avoid morality police
‘Allergic’ diners driving chefs crazy with picky demands - "“You have these people who come in on a first date and they say ‘I’m allergic to onions’ because they just don’t want to have onion breath,” Friesen said. “And we say ‘well, it’s an Asian restaurant, you know there are onions in pretty much everything’ ... or eschalots or onion powder or whatever. And then they say ‘oh OK it’s fine. I’ll just eat everything’. So clearly it’s not an allergy at all... Maria Said, of Allergy & Anaphylaxis Australia, says the huge spike in customised cooking has led to a watered-down kitchen culture where cooks can become complacent to genuine, life-threatening allergies."
When you can't live without bananas
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Anne Rice on writing about Others
"You can write from the point of view of anybody: a man, a woman, a gay man, a gay woman, a person of color, a native American, an ancient Egyptian, King Solomon, anyone. Don't ever let anyone tell you that you cannot do this.
When I was writing The Feast of All Saints, a good friend told me in essence I had no right to write about people of color. Shortly after, I went to Haiti to do research for this novel, and in a hotel bar in Port-au-Prince, I ran into an American black man, and I asked him about this very question. I told him about my book. "Write it," he said. He became extremely intense. "Write it." He felt it was of the utmost importance that I give birth to the novel I was envisioning.
Later, back home in America, I asked the same question of a famous black author at a book signing. He said the same thing. Write the story. That was good enough for me.
The bottom line is, you go where the intensity is for you as a writer; you give birth to characters for deep, complex reasons. And this should never be politicized by anyone. Your challenge is to do a fine and honest and effective job. Don't ever let anyone insist you give up without even trying.
Two of the greatest novels about women that I've ever read, Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary were written by men. One of the finest novels about men that I've ever read, The Last of the Wine, was written by a woman. That was Mary Renault. And her novel, The Persian Boy, about a Persian eunuch is a classic.
The vital literature we possess today was created by men and women of immense imagination, personal courage and personal drive. Ignore all attempts to politicize or police your imagination and your literary ambition."
--- Anne Rice (attr)
Besides rebutting cultural appropriation and related tropes, this also speaks against an older fad of prioritising personal experience over everything else.
When I was writing The Feast of All Saints, a good friend told me in essence I had no right to write about people of color. Shortly after, I went to Haiti to do research for this novel, and in a hotel bar in Port-au-Prince, I ran into an American black man, and I asked him about this very question. I told him about my book. "Write it," he said. He became extremely intense. "Write it." He felt it was of the utmost importance that I give birth to the novel I was envisioning.
Later, back home in America, I asked the same question of a famous black author at a book signing. He said the same thing. Write the story. That was good enough for me.
The bottom line is, you go where the intensity is for you as a writer; you give birth to characters for deep, complex reasons. And this should never be politicized by anyone. Your challenge is to do a fine and honest and effective job. Don't ever let anyone insist you give up without even trying.
Two of the greatest novels about women that I've ever read, Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary were written by men. One of the finest novels about men that I've ever read, The Last of the Wine, was written by a woman. That was Mary Renault. And her novel, The Persian Boy, about a Persian eunuch is a classic.
The vital literature we possess today was created by men and women of immense imagination, personal courage and personal drive. Ignore all attempts to politicize or police your imagination and your literary ambition."
--- Anne Rice (attr)
Besides rebutting cultural appropriation and related tropes, this also speaks against an older fad of prioritising personal experience over everything else.
Post ID: 2281697685747735396
Links - 24th October 2017 (1)
Man ordered to pay $65K in child support for kid who isn’t his - "Texas’ family code, chapter 161, states that even if one is not the biological father, they still owe support payments that accrued before the paternity test proved otherwise. In Cornejo’s case, that amounts to some $65,000."
Game of Thrones: greyscale, diagnosed and explained - "Jules Lipoff, MD, is an assistant professor of clinical dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include telemedicine and global health, and he serves as a volunteer telemedicine consultant for Doctors Without Borders. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, McSweeney's, and the Village Voice, in addition to numerous academic journals. He is the author of the only report of greyscale in the medical literature."
Competition over collective victimhood recognition: When perceived lack of recognition for past victimization is associated with negative attitudes towards another victimized group - "Groups that perceive themselves as victims can engage in “competitive victimhood.” We propose that, in some societal circumstances, this competition bears on the recognition of past sufferings—rather than on their relative severity—fostering negative intergroup attitudes. Three studies are presented. Study 1, a survey among Sub-Saharan African immigrants in Belgium (N = 127), showed that a sense of collective victimhood was associated with more secondary anti-Semitism. This effect was mediated by a sense of lack of victimhood recognition, then by the belief that this lack of recognition was due to that of Jews' victimhood, but not by competition over the severity of the sufferings. Study 2 replicated this mediation model among Muslim immigrants (N = 125). Study 3 experimentally demonstrated the negative effect of the unequal recognition of groups' victimhood on intergroup attitudes in a fictional situation involving psychology students (N = 183). Overall, these studies provide evidence that struggle for victimhood recognition can foster intergroup conflict."
Or: Why the Oppression Olympics, Victim Culture, Identity Politics and Intersectionality are poison
Star Wars animator took LSD during production: 'I got to the green screen and it was like 'Aaagh, I took way too much'' - "He is far from the first creative to have had very positive experiences with LSD, Steve Jobs having frequently said his hallucinogenic trips were among the most important experiences of his life, and Francis Crick having discovered DNA while taking psychedelic drugs."
No wonder creativity is low in Singapore
Why Do Remakes Have To Be “Darker” and “Grittier”? - "It’s a mix of desire and shame that older fans have to grapple with: if Power Rangers and superheroes are for kids, the way to make them seem appropriate is to remove the childish aspects and go the “darker-and-grittier” route, which results in popcorn movies attacking real-world issues with varying degrees of success... Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice earned plenty of money but scathing reviews, while the more earnest Wonder Woman has succeeded both among critics and moviegoers. It’s not even clear whether the assumption that Millennials wanted “darker and grittier” was ever solid to begin with. Maybe we needed to grow up alongside Harry Potter, but we didn’t necessarily want to stay in that muddled, murky place where his story ended."
Laura 🇬🇧 on Twitter: "Look at the difference in Owen Jones's articles when a Muslim terrorist murders 22 and when a "far right" terrorist murders 1. https://t.co/61ZY06Utt2" - "Manchester is suffering now – but its spirit will overcome this atrocity "
vs
"Far-right extremists are cornered and dangerous. They must be challenged"
Children's Animated Films Have More Death Than Adult Movies, Study Says - "two-thirds of children’s movies depicted the death of an important character while only half of films for adults did. They also found that the main cartoon characters in children’s films were two-and-a-half times more likely to die, and three times as likely to be murdered, when compared with their counterparts in films for adults.
Roomba's Next Big Step Is Selling Maps of Your Home to the Highest Bidder - " If a company isn’t using simultaneous localization and mapping (or SLAM, as the mapping technology used by Roomba and its competitors is known), their robovac is probably inferior. If a company is making a robovac that uses the advanced tech, big data is the business model it should be thinking about. People will likely click “agree” to whatever terms are put in front of them. Hell, I never considered buying a Roomba until I started writing this article and thought about how much neater my apartment would be if I had one. Convenience trumps privacy every time."
India will ban driverless cars in order to protect jobs - "The haphazard roads and chaotic traffic in parts of the country make it difficult to safely introduce driverless technology onto the roadways. But Indian company Tata Elxsi has been trying to get around those issues by testing self-driving vehicles on a track designed to resemble the roads and traffic of India. Complete with pedestrians, livestock, unsignaled lane merges and lack of signage, the testing track is meant to give driverless cars as real of an experience as possible while still respecting India's ban of self-driving cars from its roads. How today's statement from Gadkari will impact Tata Elxsi's business plans isn't yet clear."
Majority of Palestinians Support Knife Attacks, Unless The Attacker Is a Young Girl - "Two-thirds of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip support the current spate of knife attacks against Israelis on the streets of Israel and the Palestinian territories—but almost three-quarters disapprove of young girls doing the stabbing"
So much for the stereotype that most people want peace
Pro-LGBT Muslim Group Kicked Out of Muslim Conference Where Linda Sarsour Spoke - "A pro-LGBT and feminist Muslim organization says it was expelled from tabling at the annual Islamic Society of North America convention earlier this month where self-proclaimed LGBT ally Linda Sarsour headlined as a keynote speaker... Sarsour has courted controversy for calling for jihad against the “fascists and white supremacists and Islamophobes reigning in the White House”"
Woman Tries 'Happy Ending' Massage In Bangkok, This is What She Has To Say About It
The Blonde Vegan Backlash - Jordan Younger Profile on Orthorexia Nervosa - "she uploaded a post titled "Why I'm transitioning away from veganism" and, as she describes in her new book, Breaking Vegan, her blog crashed under the ensuing traffic, much of it angry broadsides: "I heard about your excusatarian change to a diet with animal products," one reader griped. "Fine. If we can all 'do what we want,' I'll be over to barbecue your family later," threatened another. Younger had revealed she was suffering from orthorexia nervosa—an obsession not with thinness but with purity and health—and was thus dropping all dietary labels. "I kept saying to my therapist, 'Can't I just be a gluten-free pescatarian?'" she says. "But she said there's no such thing, and besides, the label is what's so unhealthy for my mind.""
Are we becoming more STUPID? IQ scores are decreasing - "Jan te Nijenhuis, a psychology professor at the University of Amsterdam, says Westerners have lost an average of 14 IQ points since the Victoria Era. He believes this is due to more intelligent women have fewer children than those who are less clever"
A negative Flynn Effect in France, 1999 to 2008–9 - "it might be that the increase in the numbers of immigrants with lower IQs in the French population may explain the decline. This increase has occurred throughout western Europe and a number of studies have shown that immigrants from North Africa and south- west Asia typically have an average IQ of around 85 to 90 (Lynn, 2006, 2008; Lynn & Vanhanen, 2012; Rindermann & Thompson, 2014; for a large meta-analysis see te Nijenhuis, de Jong, Evers, & van der Flier, 2004). This conclusion has been confirmed by Kirkegaard (2013) who has shown that in Denmark the number of non-European immigrants increased from approximately 50,000 in 1980 to 400,000 in 2012 and the IQ of non-European immigrants in 18–19 year old military conscripts was 86.3, relative to 100 for indig- enous Danes. These immigrants are likely to have had some impact on reducing the average IQ of the populations, but it is doubtful whether the increase in the number of immigrants with lower IQs has been sufficiently great to have had a major effect. For instance, in Norway it was shown by Sundet, Barlaug, and Torjussen (2004) that immigrants comprised approximately 2–3% of their conscript samples and that these would have reduced the IQ by only around 0.1–0.2 IQ points (correspondence with Sundet, quoted in Dutton, 2014). In addition, Dutton and Lynn (2013) have observed a decline in IQ scores among Finnish military conscripts from 1997, despite a negligible number of non-Europeans in Finland of the appropriate age at that time. Furthermore, increasing numbers of immigrants with lower IQs than the host population has apparently had no effect in reversing the Flynn Effect in the United States"
A neuroscientist just tricked 4 dodgy journals into accepting a fake paper on 'Midi-Chlorians' - "an admission in the study that the "majority of the text in the current paper" was in fact stolen from Wikipedia surely should have let them know something was up? But again, nothing – at least not on the part of the journals that accepted the paper."
This doesn't help arguments for open access journals
No Voice at VOX: Sense and Nonsense about Discussing IQ and Race - "Sam Harris is not an expert in intelligence research but I am. After hearing the podcast, I emailed congratulations to him and Murray for conducting an informative discussion of complex and controversial issues. Every point they enumerated as having broad support among intelligence researchers is correct. There is an overwhelming weight of evidence to support the ideas that intelligence is something real, it can be reliably and validly measured without bias, and the measures predict many real world variables that are important to most human beings. There also is broad agreement that one component of intelligence is a general ability (the g-factor) to reason and problem-solve across a wide range of situations. There also is overwhelming evidence that genes play a significant role in explaining differences in intelligence among individuals"
Review. Puzzling monogamy - "In suppressing intrasexual competition and reducing the size of the pool of unmarried men, normative monogamy reduces crime rates, including rape, murder, assault, robbery and fraud, as well as decreasing personal abuses. By assuaging the competition for younger brides, normative monogamy decreases (i) the spousal age gap, (ii) fertility, and (iii) gender inequality. By shifting male efforts from seeking wives to paternal investment, normative monogamy increases savings, child investment and economic productivity. By increasing the relatedness within households, normative monogamy reduces intra-household conflict, leading to lower rates of child neglect, abuse, accidental death and homicide"
WashPost Is Richly Rewarded for False News About Russia Threat While Public Is Deceived - "In the past six weeks, the Washington Post published two blockbuster stories about the Russian threat that went viral: one on how Russia is behind a massive explosion of “fake news,” the other on how it invaded the U.S. electric grid. Both articles were fundamentally false. Each now bears a humiliating editor’s note grudgingly acknowledging that the core claims of the story were fiction: The first note was posted a full two weeks later to the top of the original article; the other was buried the following day at the bottom... what was the Post’s motive in publishing two false stories about Russia that, very predictably, generated massive attention, traffic, and political impact? Was it ideological and political — namely, devotion to the D.C. agenda of elevating Russia into a grave threat to U.S. security? Was it to please its audience — knowing that its readers, in the wake of Trump’s victory, want to be fed stories about Russian treachery? Was it access and source servitude — proving it will serve as a loyal and uncritical repository for any propaganda intelligence officials want disseminated? Was it profit — to generate revenue through sensationalistic click-bait headlines with a reckless disregard to whether its stories are true? In an institution as large as the Post, with numerous reporters and editors participating in these stories, it’s impossible to identify any one motive as definitive. Whatever the motives, the effects of these false stories are exactly the same as those of whatever one regards as Fake News... The most ironic aspect of all this is that it is mainstream journalists — the very people who have become obsessed with the crusade against Fake News — who play the key role in enabling and fueling this dissemination of false stories. They do so not only by uncritically spreading them, but also by taking little or no steps to notify the public of their falsity... in my 10-plus years of writing about politics on an endless number of polarizing issues — including the Snowden reporting — nothing remotely compares to the smear campaign that has been launched as a result of the work I’ve done questioning and challenging claims about Russian hacking and the threat posed by that country generally. This is being engineered not by random, fringe accounts, but by the most prominent Democratic pundits with the largest media followings."
Children are sometimes so innocent that they do embarrassing things… These 15 photos made me blush!
Low IQ & Liberal Beliefs Linked To Poor Research? – William M. Briggs - "Watch out Sam Harris, Gordon Hodson and Michael A. Busseri of Brock University are giving you competition for the worst use of statistics in an original paper. Their “Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes: Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact” published in Psychological Science1—headlined in the press as Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice—is a textbook example of confused data, unrecognized bias, and ignorance of statistics"
Phone Sex - Introduction - Phillip Toledano - "A contract of mutual self-delusion exists betwen the caller and phone sex operator"
Republican Grief Over Scalise's Shooting Called 'So Funny' by NE Democratic Party Official
CBS: GOP Baseball Shooting is Trump's Fault - "If a Republican shoots a Democrat, it's due to Republican hatred.
If an apolitical psycho shoots a Democrat, it's the fault of Republican incitement to violence.
If a Democrat shoots a Republican, it's the fault of... Republicans."
Why we are eating the wrong kind of apples - "An "addiction" to sugar is leading us to eat the wrong kind of apples, according to Raymond Blanc. The chef said a reliance on sugar was behind the growth in popularity of apples such as Gala, Jazz and Pink Lady, which many people choose over the more traditional Cox"
The War On the Cider Apple - "the seedling orchard came to be seen as having just one purpose, the production of hard cider and cider brandy. Per capita alcohol consumption rates in the United States were among the highest in the world in the 1820s, and a temperance movement emerged to combat the evil of drink."
Before You Applaud Termination Of Officer, Here's The One Thing You Missed - "The masses have begun to applaud the termination of the officer who “assaulted” a black teen and became the face of “police brutality” this week on social media while everyone seemed to weigh in on his actions. However, before the celebrations begin, there’s something to consider. Since it’s not in widely circulated videos, it seems to be the one thing that everyone has missed. By now, you’ve heard of Richland County Senior Deputy Ben Fields and the incident that occurred between him and a black female student at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina. News of his termination hit social media, and many are applauding this outcome"
Game of Thrones: greyscale, diagnosed and explained - "Jules Lipoff, MD, is an assistant professor of clinical dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include telemedicine and global health, and he serves as a volunteer telemedicine consultant for Doctors Without Borders. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, McSweeney's, and the Village Voice, in addition to numerous academic journals. He is the author of the only report of greyscale in the medical literature."
Competition over collective victimhood recognition: When perceived lack of recognition for past victimization is associated with negative attitudes towards another victimized group - "Groups that perceive themselves as victims can engage in “competitive victimhood.” We propose that, in some societal circumstances, this competition bears on the recognition of past sufferings—rather than on their relative severity—fostering negative intergroup attitudes. Three studies are presented. Study 1, a survey among Sub-Saharan African immigrants in Belgium (N = 127), showed that a sense of collective victimhood was associated with more secondary anti-Semitism. This effect was mediated by a sense of lack of victimhood recognition, then by the belief that this lack of recognition was due to that of Jews' victimhood, but not by competition over the severity of the sufferings. Study 2 replicated this mediation model among Muslim immigrants (N = 125). Study 3 experimentally demonstrated the negative effect of the unequal recognition of groups' victimhood on intergroup attitudes in a fictional situation involving psychology students (N = 183). Overall, these studies provide evidence that struggle for victimhood recognition can foster intergroup conflict."
Or: Why the Oppression Olympics, Victim Culture, Identity Politics and Intersectionality are poison
Star Wars animator took LSD during production: 'I got to the green screen and it was like 'Aaagh, I took way too much'' - "He is far from the first creative to have had very positive experiences with LSD, Steve Jobs having frequently said his hallucinogenic trips were among the most important experiences of his life, and Francis Crick having discovered DNA while taking psychedelic drugs."
No wonder creativity is low in Singapore
Why Do Remakes Have To Be “Darker” and “Grittier”? - "It’s a mix of desire and shame that older fans have to grapple with: if Power Rangers and superheroes are for kids, the way to make them seem appropriate is to remove the childish aspects and go the “darker-and-grittier” route, which results in popcorn movies attacking real-world issues with varying degrees of success... Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice earned plenty of money but scathing reviews, while the more earnest Wonder Woman has succeeded both among critics and moviegoers. It’s not even clear whether the assumption that Millennials wanted “darker and grittier” was ever solid to begin with. Maybe we needed to grow up alongside Harry Potter, but we didn’t necessarily want to stay in that muddled, murky place where his story ended."
Laura 🇬🇧 on Twitter: "Look at the difference in Owen Jones's articles when a Muslim terrorist murders 22 and when a "far right" terrorist murders 1. https://t.co/61ZY06Utt2" - "Manchester is suffering now – but its spirit will overcome this atrocity "
vs
"Far-right extremists are cornered and dangerous. They must be challenged"
Children's Animated Films Have More Death Than Adult Movies, Study Says - "two-thirds of children’s movies depicted the death of an important character while only half of films for adults did. They also found that the main cartoon characters in children’s films were two-and-a-half times more likely to die, and three times as likely to be murdered, when compared with their counterparts in films for adults.
Roomba's Next Big Step Is Selling Maps of Your Home to the Highest Bidder - " If a company isn’t using simultaneous localization and mapping (or SLAM, as the mapping technology used by Roomba and its competitors is known), their robovac is probably inferior. If a company is making a robovac that uses the advanced tech, big data is the business model it should be thinking about. People will likely click “agree” to whatever terms are put in front of them. Hell, I never considered buying a Roomba until I started writing this article and thought about how much neater my apartment would be if I had one. Convenience trumps privacy every time."
India will ban driverless cars in order to protect jobs - "The haphazard roads and chaotic traffic in parts of the country make it difficult to safely introduce driverless technology onto the roadways. But Indian company Tata Elxsi has been trying to get around those issues by testing self-driving vehicles on a track designed to resemble the roads and traffic of India. Complete with pedestrians, livestock, unsignaled lane merges and lack of signage, the testing track is meant to give driverless cars as real of an experience as possible while still respecting India's ban of self-driving cars from its roads. How today's statement from Gadkari will impact Tata Elxsi's business plans isn't yet clear."
Majority of Palestinians Support Knife Attacks, Unless The Attacker Is a Young Girl - "Two-thirds of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip support the current spate of knife attacks against Israelis on the streets of Israel and the Palestinian territories—but almost three-quarters disapprove of young girls doing the stabbing"
So much for the stereotype that most people want peace
Pro-LGBT Muslim Group Kicked Out of Muslim Conference Where Linda Sarsour Spoke - "A pro-LGBT and feminist Muslim organization says it was expelled from tabling at the annual Islamic Society of North America convention earlier this month where self-proclaimed LGBT ally Linda Sarsour headlined as a keynote speaker... Sarsour has courted controversy for calling for jihad against the “fascists and white supremacists and Islamophobes reigning in the White House”"
Woman Tries 'Happy Ending' Massage In Bangkok, This is What She Has To Say About It
The Blonde Vegan Backlash - Jordan Younger Profile on Orthorexia Nervosa - "she uploaded a post titled "Why I'm transitioning away from veganism" and, as she describes in her new book, Breaking Vegan, her blog crashed under the ensuing traffic, much of it angry broadsides: "I heard about your excusatarian change to a diet with animal products," one reader griped. "Fine. If we can all 'do what we want,' I'll be over to barbecue your family later," threatened another. Younger had revealed she was suffering from orthorexia nervosa—an obsession not with thinness but with purity and health—and was thus dropping all dietary labels. "I kept saying to my therapist, 'Can't I just be a gluten-free pescatarian?'" she says. "But she said there's no such thing, and besides, the label is what's so unhealthy for my mind.""
Are we becoming more STUPID? IQ scores are decreasing - "Jan te Nijenhuis, a psychology professor at the University of Amsterdam, says Westerners have lost an average of 14 IQ points since the Victoria Era. He believes this is due to more intelligent women have fewer children than those who are less clever"
A negative Flynn Effect in France, 1999 to 2008–9 - "it might be that the increase in the numbers of immigrants with lower IQs in the French population may explain the decline. This increase has occurred throughout western Europe and a number of studies have shown that immigrants from North Africa and south- west Asia typically have an average IQ of around 85 to 90 (Lynn, 2006, 2008; Lynn & Vanhanen, 2012; Rindermann & Thompson, 2014; for a large meta-analysis see te Nijenhuis, de Jong, Evers, & van der Flier, 2004). This conclusion has been confirmed by Kirkegaard (2013) who has shown that in Denmark the number of non-European immigrants increased from approximately 50,000 in 1980 to 400,000 in 2012 and the IQ of non-European immigrants in 18–19 year old military conscripts was 86.3, relative to 100 for indig- enous Danes. These immigrants are likely to have had some impact on reducing the average IQ of the populations, but it is doubtful whether the increase in the number of immigrants with lower IQs has been sufficiently great to have had a major effect. For instance, in Norway it was shown by Sundet, Barlaug, and Torjussen (2004) that immigrants comprised approximately 2–3% of their conscript samples and that these would have reduced the IQ by only around 0.1–0.2 IQ points (correspondence with Sundet, quoted in Dutton, 2014). In addition, Dutton and Lynn (2013) have observed a decline in IQ scores among Finnish military conscripts from 1997, despite a negligible number of non-Europeans in Finland of the appropriate age at that time. Furthermore, increasing numbers of immigrants with lower IQs than the host population has apparently had no effect in reversing the Flynn Effect in the United States"
A neuroscientist just tricked 4 dodgy journals into accepting a fake paper on 'Midi-Chlorians' - "an admission in the study that the "majority of the text in the current paper" was in fact stolen from Wikipedia surely should have let them know something was up? But again, nothing – at least not on the part of the journals that accepted the paper."
This doesn't help arguments for open access journals
No Voice at VOX: Sense and Nonsense about Discussing IQ and Race - "Sam Harris is not an expert in intelligence research but I am. After hearing the podcast, I emailed congratulations to him and Murray for conducting an informative discussion of complex and controversial issues. Every point they enumerated as having broad support among intelligence researchers is correct. There is an overwhelming weight of evidence to support the ideas that intelligence is something real, it can be reliably and validly measured without bias, and the measures predict many real world variables that are important to most human beings. There also is broad agreement that one component of intelligence is a general ability (the g-factor) to reason and problem-solve across a wide range of situations. There also is overwhelming evidence that genes play a significant role in explaining differences in intelligence among individuals"
Review. Puzzling monogamy - "In suppressing intrasexual competition and reducing the size of the pool of unmarried men, normative monogamy reduces crime rates, including rape, murder, assault, robbery and fraud, as well as decreasing personal abuses. By assuaging the competition for younger brides, normative monogamy decreases (i) the spousal age gap, (ii) fertility, and (iii) gender inequality. By shifting male efforts from seeking wives to paternal investment, normative monogamy increases savings, child investment and economic productivity. By increasing the relatedness within households, normative monogamy reduces intra-household conflict, leading to lower rates of child neglect, abuse, accidental death and homicide"
WashPost Is Richly Rewarded for False News About Russia Threat While Public Is Deceived - "In the past six weeks, the Washington Post published two blockbuster stories about the Russian threat that went viral: one on how Russia is behind a massive explosion of “fake news,” the other on how it invaded the U.S. electric grid. Both articles were fundamentally false. Each now bears a humiliating editor’s note grudgingly acknowledging that the core claims of the story were fiction: The first note was posted a full two weeks later to the top of the original article; the other was buried the following day at the bottom... what was the Post’s motive in publishing two false stories about Russia that, very predictably, generated massive attention, traffic, and political impact? Was it ideological and political — namely, devotion to the D.C. agenda of elevating Russia into a grave threat to U.S. security? Was it to please its audience — knowing that its readers, in the wake of Trump’s victory, want to be fed stories about Russian treachery? Was it access and source servitude — proving it will serve as a loyal and uncritical repository for any propaganda intelligence officials want disseminated? Was it profit — to generate revenue through sensationalistic click-bait headlines with a reckless disregard to whether its stories are true? In an institution as large as the Post, with numerous reporters and editors participating in these stories, it’s impossible to identify any one motive as definitive. Whatever the motives, the effects of these false stories are exactly the same as those of whatever one regards as Fake News... The most ironic aspect of all this is that it is mainstream journalists — the very people who have become obsessed with the crusade against Fake News — who play the key role in enabling and fueling this dissemination of false stories. They do so not only by uncritically spreading them, but also by taking little or no steps to notify the public of their falsity... in my 10-plus years of writing about politics on an endless number of polarizing issues — including the Snowden reporting — nothing remotely compares to the smear campaign that has been launched as a result of the work I’ve done questioning and challenging claims about Russian hacking and the threat posed by that country generally. This is being engineered not by random, fringe accounts, but by the most prominent Democratic pundits with the largest media followings."
Children are sometimes so innocent that they do embarrassing things… These 15 photos made me blush!
Low IQ & Liberal Beliefs Linked To Poor Research? – William M. Briggs - "Watch out Sam Harris, Gordon Hodson and Michael A. Busseri of Brock University are giving you competition for the worst use of statistics in an original paper. Their “Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes: Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact” published in Psychological Science1—headlined in the press as Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice—is a textbook example of confused data, unrecognized bias, and ignorance of statistics"
Phone Sex - Introduction - Phillip Toledano - "A contract of mutual self-delusion exists betwen the caller and phone sex operator"
Republican Grief Over Scalise's Shooting Called 'So Funny' by NE Democratic Party Official
CBS: GOP Baseball Shooting is Trump's Fault - "If a Republican shoots a Democrat, it's due to Republican hatred.
If an apolitical psycho shoots a Democrat, it's the fault of Republican incitement to violence.
If a Democrat shoots a Republican, it's the fault of... Republicans."
Why we are eating the wrong kind of apples - "An "addiction" to sugar is leading us to eat the wrong kind of apples, according to Raymond Blanc. The chef said a reliance on sugar was behind the growth in popularity of apples such as Gala, Jazz and Pink Lady, which many people choose over the more traditional Cox"
The War On the Cider Apple - "the seedling orchard came to be seen as having just one purpose, the production of hard cider and cider brandy. Per capita alcohol consumption rates in the United States were among the highest in the world in the 1820s, and a temperance movement emerged to combat the evil of drink."
Before You Applaud Termination Of Officer, Here's The One Thing You Missed - "The masses have begun to applaud the termination of the officer who “assaulted” a black teen and became the face of “police brutality” this week on social media while everyone seemed to weigh in on his actions. However, before the celebrations begin, there’s something to consider. Since it’s not in widely circulated videos, it seems to be the one thing that everyone has missed. By now, you’ve heard of Richland County Senior Deputy Ben Fields and the incident that occurred between him and a black female student at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina. News of his termination hit social media, and many are applauding this outcome"
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