Links - 24th January 2018 (2)

WeChat Admits It Gives All Private User Data to the Chinese Government

Tucker to Pro-Antifa Professor: Do You Teach Students That 1st Amendment Rights Don't Apply? - "Mike Isaacson, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and founder of Smash Racism D.C., argued that Antifa activists have the right to respond to violence with violence. Carlson said Isaacson is "blurring the lines" between physical violence and speech with which he disagrees... Following the interview, the NYPD's largest police union noticed a tweet from Isaacson last month, in which the professor called it a "privilege" to "teach future dead cops" at John Jay College."

Scholar declares war on 'too sexy' Roman myths - "Peter Jones, former senior lecturer in classics at Newcastle University, was stunned when a Latin tutor at a US university branded him ‘offensive’ and ‘sexist’ for including scenes from the rape of Lucretia and the tale of three naked goddesses in the latest edition of his renowned textbook, Reading Latin. He said: ‘In order to understand the ancient world, you have to understand the way they thought about things, which is quite different from the way we think. It is hard to see why people who wish to understand the ancient world find material that the ancient world took for granted so unpalatable. Certain universities and students seem unwilling to get inside the head of cultures they don’t understand, and take offence too easily at other cultures.’ The Latin instructor from Ohio State University complained to Jones’s publisher about the inclusion of ‘two stories about rape’ and ‘one of the very few versions of the Judgement of Paris where Paris views Hera, Athena and Aphrodite with their clothes off’... ‘Though deities seldom compete to win golden apples these days, it is not as if rape has vanished from the face of the earth, let alone racism and classism. One might have thought that historical takes on issues of such contemporary importance were the perfect medium to explore them “safely’’.’ Many UK and US universities have banned traditional texts that might ‘trigger’ negative responses and have created ‘safe spaces’ and ‘controversy-free zones’ for students. The Ohio lecturer declined to be interviewed when approached by The Mail on Sunday and asked not to be named."

How Murderous Are Humans? - "Which mammal is most likely to be murdered by its own kind? It’s certainly not humans—not even close. Nor is it a top predator like the grey wolf or lion, although those at least are #11 and #9 in the league table of murdery mammals. No, according to a study led by José María Gómez from the University of Granada, the top spot goes to… the meerkat. These endearing black-masked creatures might be famous for their cooperative ways, but they kill each other at a rate that makes man’s inhumanity to man look meek. Almost one in five meerkats, mostly youngsters, lose their lives at the paws and jaws of their peers. Gómez’s study is the first thorough survey of violence in the mammal world, collating data on more than a thousand species. It clearly shows that we humans are not alone in our capacity to kill each other. Our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, have been known to wage brutal war, but even apparently peaceful creatures take each other’s lives. When ranked according to their rates of lethal violence, ground squirrels, wild horses, gazelle, and deer all feature in the top 50... Gómez’s team calculated that at the origin of Homo sapiens, we were six times more lethally violent than the average mammal, but about as violent as expected for a primate"

The U.S. and North Korea almost went to war over a single poplar tree in the demilitarized zone - "Pak put his wristwatch in his pocket to protect it from being stained or damaged and yelled “kill the bastards” in Korean. The mob of North Korean officers suddenly enveloped the UNC troops with a vicious and bludgeoning assault... the armed forces initiated Operation Paul Bunyan (seriously) on the morning of August 21, 1976. Japan was put on high alert ahead of the mission, and all in the Joint Security Area prepared for possible conflict. North Korea readied itself with 150 to 200 armed troops, and established two-man machine gunning positions. The operation was executed by a team of 110 troops, 64 of whom were Korean tae kwon do experts. A handful came armed with chainsaws and descended upon the poplar. Swarming above and standing at the ready was a garrison of tactical military equipment, including 27 helicopters and farther off, three B-52 bombers."
The best part is the initial cutting had been scheduled with the North Koreans

Tinder Date Ends In Disaster After Woman Gets Stuck In A Window Trying To Retrieve Her Own Poo

10+ Highly Offensive Comics That Will Make You Feel Guilty For Laughing At Them

Sports Media, Stop Wringing Your Hands Over Colin Kaepernick - "everyone should take a step back and look at the facts surrounding Kaepernick. From a pure football perspective, Kaepernick is not a particularly good quarterback. Ever since he led the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl in 2012, the league adjusted to Kaepernick and he has since regressed immensely; in 2016 Kaepernick ranked 23rd in terms of total QBR... Now let's examine Kaepernick's protests. In the end, what did they accomplish? Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. All it did was turn people away from football. This is something that too many sports writers fail to understand: people don't like it when sports and politics intertwine, especially when Kaepernick is suggesting that America is inherently racist. That is a slap in the face to the good, hard-working Americans in this country, but more importantly, people often turn to sports as a release from life's struggles. Infusing politics into sports ruins that enjoyment since politics is divisive. When you combine Kaepernick's middling football skills with the polarizing nature of his protests, it's easy to see why teams haven't signed him. It's simply not worth it to tailor a team's system to a fringe starter who has teams wondering if he's putting his political agenda above playing football."

San Francisco Chronicle CRUSHES Berkeley, Leftists Over Response To Ben Shapiro Speech - "Unless a speaker fully embraces the far-left's views of intersectionality, anti-free speech codes, ubiquitous white supremacy, America as the enemy of all that's good, etc., that speaker is now at risk of feeling the full force of the SJW/Antifa mob. Asimov notes that the cost of law enforcement for the event is a stunning $1.5 million. As The Daily Wire has highlighted, both the university and the police department are implementing extreme measures, including shutting down multiple buildings and parking lots, creating a "concrete wall" around parts of the campus, offering free walking escorts for those who fear they might become victims of (left-wing) violence, and setting up safe spaces and prepping their counselors for anyone who is traumatized by the presence of a conservative with the guts to speak his mind on a college campus in 2017. Why all of these extensive, unorthodox measures for a conservative Orthodox Jew speaker? Because Berkeley has witnessed firsthand what damage the social justice left can do to those they deem "fascists," law enforcement, and public and private property."

UC Berkeley free speech in spotlight over super-tight security plans - "“It doesn’t matter what the guy’s going to say,” said Michael Heaney, a professor at the University of Michigan who studies the sociology of protest movements. “He could talk about the joys of apple-picking. What matters is that the counter-movement is trying to use the energy of the (event) to grow. This is an opportunity for them — and they are likely to seize upon it.”"

CIA head: Bin Laden's porn stash won't be released - "The CIA previously rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for the pornography from the website BroBible in 2015."

The iPhone Is Guaranteed to Last Only One Year, Apple Argues in Court - "When it released its iPhone 7 Environmental Report a year ago, Apple wrote that it "conservatively assumes a three-year period for power use by first owners," which is "based on historical customer use data for similar products"... in court, Apple argues that it is only responsible for ensuring the iPhone lasts one year... We know this because Apple is currently fighting a class-action lawsuit over the widespread premature failure of tens of thousands of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus devices due to a design flaw that's become known as "touch disease.""

'Can't you use GPS?': A train delay, a bus ride gone south and a day to remember - "SMRT staff told the driver to switch the external display to "Off Service", and to make his way back to Woodlands bus interchange to resume normal duty. He was equally unsure, so I reopened Google Maps and accompanied him on the journey... my one enduring image is what I saw when our shuttle passed three others in the Dhoby Ghaut area: Standing next to each driver, a passenger grasping a mobile phone in one hand while gesturing and giving directions with the other."

Analyst says iPhone X for 'relative rich' who value phone appearance - "The $999 price tag of Apple's iPhone X represents a "substantial increase that seems justifiable only for relatively rich people who care deeply about the appearance of their phone," wrote KeyBanc analyst Andy Hargreaves in a note Tuesday... "The lack of compelling features in the iPhone X also raises longer-term concerns about Apple's pricing power""

Georgia Tech student Scout Schultz shot dead by police - "Police encountered Scout Schultz, 21, outside a campus dormitory in Atlanta after a call about "a person with a knife and a gun" late on Saturday. Video shows Schultz refusing to obey police commands, and advancing on them. A family lawyer said Schultz was holding a closed multi-tool. The student's parents said police should not have used lethal force. "Why did you have to shoot?" the victim's father said at an emotional news conference on Monday. "That's the question, I mean that's the only question that matters right now. Why did you kill my son?" In a video filmed by a fellow student at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Schultz is pictured outside the entrance to a parking garage and can be heard saying "Shoot me!" several times while walking towards the officers. "Drop the knife, man, come on," a police officer responds. "Nobody wants to hurt you," another says, before one officer eventually opens fire, hitting Schultz in the chest... Police in the US are permitted - and often required - to use lethal force against any suspect who they believe presents an immediate danger to officers or members of the community... Georgia Tech's campus police do not carry Tasers, but are equipped with pepper spray... Schultz - who identified as intersex and preferred to be referred to by the pronoun "they" - was the president of the Pride Alliance at Georgia Tech, and was politically active in progressive causes... Schultz's mother Lynne said Scout, who was born Scott Schultz, had numerous medical issues, suffered from depression and had attempted suicide two years ago. "Why didn't they [police] use some nonlethal force, like pepper spray or Tasers?""
Black Lives Matter!
Why did its father misgender it?

Scout Schultz made 911 call before being fatally shot by cops - "In the 911 call, Shultz described the suspicious person on campus as a white man who was possibly drunk, had long blond hair, a white T-shirt and blue jeans, the GBI said. The man was also carrying a knife and may have had a gun on his hip, the caller said... Three suicide notes were found in Schultz's dorm and a multipurpose tool containing the knife was taken from the scene"

Georgia Tech student Scout Schultz, who was killed by police, made call about suspicious man, investigators say - The Washington Post - "Bill Schultz said recently that Scout had expressed interest in the anti-fascist political movement and frustration with news coverage of police-involved shootings. “I will say this, that recently Scout has been slightly involved with the anti-fascist community and had expressed a number of anti-fascist ideas to me,” he said. “I tend to think that if there was a cause it might have been anger at the police over all the shootings and all the long litany of police shootings.”
Maybe forcing other people to kill you is the ultimate form of activism

Tueller Drill - Wikipedia - "The Tueller Drill is a self-defense training exercise to prepare against a short-range knife attack when armed only with a holstered handgun. Sergeant Dennis Tueller, of the Salt Lake City, Utah Police Department wondered how quickly an attacker with a knife could cover 21 feet (6.4 m), so he timed volunteers as they raced to stab the target. He determined that it could be done in 1.5 seconds... MythBusters covered the drill in the 2012 episode "Duel Dilemmas". At 20 ft (6.1 m), the gun-wielder was able to shoot the charging knife attacker just as he reached the shooter. At shorter distances the knife wielder was always able to stab prior to being shot"
In other words, why police shoot people with knives

Georgia Tech shooting: Cop who pulled trigger joined force in 2016 - "Roughly 20 feet separated them when Beck fired his gun"

Georgia Tech Shooting: Campus vigil turns violent - "protesters who had attended a vigil on the campus set a police car ablaze. Two police officers received minor injures and one of them was transported to Grady Memorial Hospital, a Tech spokesman said. Three people were arrested and charged with inciting a riot and battery of an officer"

What really happened in 2016, in 7 charts - "What’s most notable beyond that in some ways is all the things that didn’t happen. Trump did not, for example, discover that the white population was deep down yearning for crude racism. Some people were — he won the GOP primary, after all. But Trump got a slightly smaller share of the white vote than the more normal Mitt Romney. Conversely, whatever black and Latino voters hadn’t already abandoned the GOP during the Obama era weren’t driven away by Trump, who did no worse with these groups than Romney had. And while Clinton managed to rally educated white women to her side in a way that previous Democrats had not, she was not broadly more appealing to women than previous Democrats. And, in fact, she did worse with noncollege white women than a black man did four years earlier"
Maybe the explanation for this is that many blacks and latinos were too stupid to realise Trump was racist (while conversely somehow he didn't manage to get more white voters), and many noncollege white women were too sexist to vote for Hilalry
Addendum: "Exit polls indicate that a majority of voters were persuaded by Clinton’s arguments that Trump was unqualified and temperamentally unsuited for the presidency, but a decent swathe of voters who agreed with her about that voted third party rather than for Trump’s opponent — ultimately denying Clinton the victory."

Student On 'Hunger Strike' Until College Fires Professor Cleared Of Sexual Harassment Claims - "Professor Florian Jaege was cleared of the sexual harassment allegations by both an internal and an external investigation. University of Rochester President Joel Seligman has publicly stated that "no violation of the law or University policy was found"... "Until Professor Jaeger is removed from the university, there’s going to be no trust among the student body"... "I fully intend to do this until I’m hospitalized," said the U of R student. "I think what’s of primary importance is the students on this campus feeling safe. And as of right now, they don’t, and they won’t until Professor Jaeger is removed."
Who needs due process when mere accusations are enough?

Professor: Doctors Telling Obese Patients To Lose Weight Is 'Medical Fat-Shaming'

For Casual Anti-White Racism, It’s Just Another Day …. - "'although white Americans are, on average, the “healthiest group,” they are also, on average, far less “resilient” than black Americans. It seems that vulnerability is a cost of privilege, and resilience comes as a result of adversity.'... Though white American men experience fewer stressful life events than everyone else, each stressful event has a greater impact on their lives... being subjected to stressful life events is one thing, but being subjected to stressful life events and being ridiculed and demonized for it rather than being empathized with as a result is another thing entirely... One would expect this effect to be still more pronounced when the discrimination at issue is simply rationalized, ridiculed or flat-out denied. When minorities face even the barest hint of racism, indeed, even implicit bias (nonsense I’ve debunked here), it gets big-time press coverage. But when whites face racism, even of the most bare-faced, explicit variety, it gets ignored and denied... Even while Big Media was hard at work pandering to minorities, poor and less educated white voters of the sort who supported Trump were routinely being branded racists, bigots and the like. Looking even at the precise issue of disparate health outcomes for whites and blacks, we can see how the same publication at issue in today’s article, Salon.com, treated disparate health outcomes when the roles were reversed"
If black Americans are more resilient, does that mean that the obsession with how they are being discriminated against is misplaced?