Links - 24th June 2018 (1)

Consumption of Domestic Cat in Madagascar: Frequency, Purpose, and Health Implications - "although cat was not a preferred source of meat, many (34%) Malagasy respondents had consumed cat meat before, with most (54%) of these indicating such consumption occurred in the last decade. We did not detect a link between consumption of cat meat and recent access to meat (a proxy for food security). Cat meat was almost never purchased, but rather was obtained when the owners consumed their own pet cat, as a gift, or by hunting feral cats. Cat meat was usually consumed in smaller towns following cat–human conflict such as attacks on chickens, but in the large capital city, cat meat was procured primarily from road-killed individuals. These results suggest cat-meat consumption is typically an opportunistic means to obtain inexpensive meat, rather than principally serving as a response to economic hardship. These results further suggest cat handling and consumption may present a potential pathway for transmission of several diseases, including toxoplasmosis, that may warrant heightened public health efforts."
Another place to go to eat pussy!

Ang Moh Syndrome — Iwani - "There's something bittersweet about holding the gaze of the handsome stranger across the train car (and that's how you know it's real, because making eye contact on the tube is unacceptable otherwise). Unfortunately, unlike London, Singapore is nearly devoid of such bittersweet connections. Here, the only person staring at you across the train cabin usually has a pedo 'stache, an unreasonably shiny forehead, and one too many shirt buttons undone... what kills the romance - at least amongst the expat community - is a terrible affliction that I like to call Ang Moh Syndrome (Ang Moh being the collective term for white people in Singapore). This is a woeful situation in which 'Yellow Fever' and an inflamed ego combine to create a ghastly condition. With my expert opinion, garnered by at least ten first dates, first-hand interviews and extensive social media stalking, I will attempt to give an introductory understanding as to why dating in Singapore is such an awful mess. There are several stages of dating for the average male expat in Singapore. I always say that the best time to date a man is within a few weeks of him reaching Singapore, or after many many years of living here. These are the periods before Ang Moh Syndrome settles in, and after the epidemic has (hopefully) passed."

How To Lose A (Singaporean) Guy in 10 Days — Iwani - "Step 1. Ask him out.
Step 2. Watch as he magically disappears, never to speak to you again unless absolutely necessary...
how internationals (myself included) operate is that two people meet, perhaps in a coffee shop, or an art gallery, or a bookstore, or - why am I lying, they meet on Tinder or in a slightly overcrowded club with an awful DJ who won't stop playing Pitbull. If said people have a connection (beyond one party wanting to sleep with the other and then awkwardly ignore his/her Whatsapp messages for the next few days), then one will ask the other out for "drinks" or "coffee." Note that "coffee" likely means getting to know you and "drinks" usually means getting to know your hooha too... On the other hand, local dating etiquette flips it the other way around. Both parties are likely already friendly, or have mutual friends, or at the very least work/study at the same place. There is no room for complete strangers in the equation, because one needs to be sure one's potential love interest is not a highly functioning sociopath. The process of courtship is very slow, and is somewhat like a job too. It requires between six months to one year of friendship experience to suss out the person's dateability. Thereafter, one is promoted to lowkey bae (but the other party must not know that immediately)."

He's Just Not That Into You (Singapore Edition) — Iwani - "Now, ask yourself, how many couples do you know (in person or in the media) consisting of an asian man and a black woman? I had to look it up. From my time living in Singapore, I have learnt more about East Asian standards of beauty, which are increasingly influenced by Korean pop-culture. Everywhere, you are saturated by images of petite and dewy women with narrow noses, rosy lips and pale skin. Western standards of beauty are pervasive in the media here as well. Both are very different from Black standards of beauty, in which the ideals are to have Beyoncé-type curves, straight edges, and Zendaya-worthy eyebrows, amongst other things. As a black woman, I don't fit into Asian standards in any way (except maybe a clear complexion - I gotta tell you, Korean skincare products are ridiculously good)... The way I see it is like this: one straight man can look at another man and think, 'that's a really handsome guy!' However, it doesn't mean that he's attracted to him. A man can appreciate that another man is good-looking or attractive to others, but it would never occur to that man to date him, or to want him. The same goes for black women. Beyonce herself could come to Singapore, and many men could appreciate that she's literal perfection, but that doesn't mean that they'd want to date her"

You Can't Have Denmark Without Danes - "Las Olsen, chief economist at Danske Bank, said: “We have this high trust, and it is a huge asset. It is very good for productivity that you don’t have to spend a lot of time and money checking everything.” Olsen has lived abroad, and when I asked him if it was really that different in Denmark, he said: “Oh, yes. When you come from Denmark to other countries you tend to trust people too much. Danes can get ripped off in the beginning.” He paused for emphasis. “It is a real phenomenon. And it is often one reason why people seem to be happier, and I think that makes sense. It’s very detrimental to be cheated, to feel that you’re cheated, or that you might be cheated.” And yes, statistics show that the Scandinavian countries are the most trusting places in the world... This sort of thing allows Danish labor to be more productive than workers elsewhere. An economy’s labor productivity, after all, is its output divided by the number of hours worked. Supervision and enforcement are in some sense wasted labor; they don’t, by themselves, produce extra output... “There is a large part of Danish society that thinks it must be the welfare state” that created the trust, said Christian Bjornskov, an economist at Aarhus University who studies trust. “We know that’s not true,” he added. “Trust was just as high in the 1930s.” There’s other evidence against the proposition that trust starts with government programs. Lots of countries with generous welfare systems aren’t particularly trusting, for example, and those systems produce all the dire effects American conservatives warn about. And as Bjornskov suggests, low corruption distinguished Scandanavian societies centuries ago. That’s a trait that may go all the way back to the Vikings."
This is why travelling in the Third World is annoying

Danish Men: Not John Wayne - "There are NOT a lot of men in Denmark, although there is quite a bounty of tall, timid boys. While the culture of egalitarianism has done some great things for Denmark – where else will you see tattooed musclemen pushing baby carriages? – it has led to a terrific siphoning off of testosterone. Danish men seem too timid to do anything that makes men men, such as taking risks, taking initiative, or enjoying the pure thrill of the chase. Don’t return a Frenchman’s calls, and he will become intrigued and pursue you until the end of the Earth. Don’t return a Dane’s phone call (singular) and he will forget the whole thing. Either that, or worse, he will sit home and sulk about it... I have learned that expecting a door to be held open for me is an invitation to get hit in the face with a door. I have struggled home with large packages while male neighbors just cheerfully wave hello. Wearing high heels and a skirt, I have wrestled my bike out from a pile of collapsed junkers while hefty workmen smoked cigarettes against the bike rack."
Yay feminism

Why Do Canadians Say 'Eh'? - "the sections of the U.S. Upper Midwest that border Canada often have “eh” speakers, and it’s fairly common in New Zealand as well. It is possible that the word came originally from some population of Scots-Irish immigrants, a major early group in Canada. “Eh” is still used in Scotland and in Northern England, but it’s used in a much more limited way"

Im Japanese Recently Chinese Con-Artists Tried to Contact Us With Japanese Texting App Like Whatsapp but Japanese Know How to Handle Chinese Thugs Just Texting Em Back June 4th Tiananmen Square Massacre in Chinese Languge六四天安門 事件 Then BOOM! That Poor Chinese Guy's Internet Access Is Cut Out by CCP You Can Try This When Chinese Harass You Online

Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the #MeToo Movement - "Ginsburg: Well, that must not be ignored and it goes beyond sexual harassment. The person who is accused has a right to defend herself or himself, and we certainly should not lose sight of that. Recognizing that these are complaints that should be heard. There’s been criticism of some college codes of conduct for not giving the accused person a fair opportunity to be heard, and that’s one of the basic tenets of our system, as you know, everyone deserves a fair hearing.
Rosen: Are some of those criticisms of the college codes valid?
Ginsburg: Do I think they are? Yes...
I was married in my husband’s home, and just before the ceremony, my mother-in-law took me aside and said, “I’d like to tell you the secret of a happy marriage.” I'll be glad to know what it is. She said, “Dear, in every good marriage, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf.” And that is advice I have applied not only in 56 years of marriage, but to this day, in my current workplace. And if an unkind word is said, you just tune out.
Rosen: It’s a profound lesson about never reacting in anger, in always maintaining your equanimity, and if others lose their temper, not losing yours.
Ginsburg: Well, emotions like anger, remorse, and jealousy are not productive. They will not accomplish anything, so you must keep them under control. In the days when I was a flaming feminist litigator, I never said to judges who asked improper questions, “You sexist pig.”...
Rosen: You were interested in that survey that found that the women justices were interrupted more. What is your considered judgment of that?
Ginsburg: I think my colleagues would notice that and perhaps be more careful. But we all—we do interrupt each other as the former law clerks here know, and one of the most amusing incidents of that, there was an oral argument and Justice O’Connor, who often asked the first question, and I thought she was done so I asked a question, and she said, “Just a minute, I’m not finished.” I apologized to her at lunch. She said, “Ruth, don’t give it another thought. The guys do it to each other all the time.” The next day in USA Today is a headline: “Rude Ruth Interrupts Sandra.” And I was asked to comment, so I said what Sandra had said at lunch, the men interrupt each other regularly, and you haven’t noticed that. That reporter, to his credit, watched the Court through the next two sittings and said, “You know, you’re right, I just never noticed it when it was two men.”"
Ruth Bader Ginsburg supports toxic masculinity!
Feminism is about not just not being a little deaf, but hearing things that were never said

A Story of Slavery in Modern America

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Thursday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "I think that what university gave me in terms of the friendships that I made, the people that I met, I wouldn't have got that had I not gone. It's not something that I necessarily needed and it's not necessarily something that was worth, what, forty eight grand now?...
What do you regard as a graduate level of job and are there enough of them, are there as many of them as there are graduates?...
By the government's definition, I mean it looks like the vast majority of graduates do very well in the workplace. But when you strip out those figures you reveal a different picture and so yes I mean we would certainly be of the viewpoint that unfortunately the rapid expansion of our higher education system, the growth in graduate level and highly skilled jobs has not kept pace...
Certainly you know sort of university does provide a whole range of sort of experiences for the young person. However you know we are in a situation whereby the average student will leave university with fifty thousand pounds worth of debt and according to the IFS seventy seven percent will not ever repay that amount in full. So it's not just about the individual, it's also about investment of public money here... the vast majority of universities are charging the top rate fees but they're actually delivering a wide you know a variety of graduate outcomes"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, David Cassidy: 70s teen idol - "He was totally unmasculine and unthreatening, so he was a safe place to put your first love and we were lucky to have him"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Thursday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "The quickest way you might say to improve UK productivity would be to sack the worst paid workers"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Friday's Business with Rob Young - "There is quite a bit of skepticism about whether the deals available this week are all they're cracked up to be. Witch [sp?] did some research and found that sixty percent of a selection of last year's Black Friday deals were actually cheaper or the same price at other points during the year"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, House of Cards post Spacey - what now? - "The women will triumph over these desperately flawed men and that is what's happened well"
Women are wonderful

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Trees talk... to each other - "I think our contemporary view of nature is romanticized in a way that Shakespeare and the other Elizabethans wouldn't have romanticized nature. Wild woodlands were frightening and savage and places of darkness, not places necessarily kind of of romantic intrigue"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, The UK's 'special' relationship with the US - "Were we to withdraw the invitation we would give serious offence to very very many people in the United States who didn't necessarily vote for Trump during the presidential elections. Because what we have in play here is not just Trump the man, the occupier of the Oval Office. We have the institution of the presidency and the national prestige which is invested in that"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, 'I hate Jane Austen' - "It's blown up into this terrifying cult. It's sort of a bit, you know it's like Elvis or, or Jesus. Or you know look Jim Morrison. Long after somebody's dead... it's the great sham that a woman, there's conspiracy at large to say that she wrote six novels when in fact she wrote one novel six times and people you see sit down to read each new one saying I wonder if it'll be about something other than a young girl who you think will never get married meeting a bloke who looks suitable or maybe he's not suitable oh've they've got married. It happens in every single book. How you can make it into so many adaptations? How, it's like Harry Potter"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Athill: 'Being dead doesn't bother me' - "Everyone about the end. Being dead doesn't bother me at all. The act of dying might be worrying but I've just read a wonderful book by a palliative nurse who's seen tons of people dyingand she's said that's an unnecessary worry because although people have horrid illnesses, the actual act of death she said is very very rarely anything but peaceful. Usually it's people being asleep and lo and behold they don't wake up"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Should brothels be legal? - "'We are providing a public service for people... some men they are unhappy and they have problems in their marriages. And they come here to look for relief or fun or say like that... I rather do this that not going to do it for free in the bars, in the toilets. No condoms'...
I actually turned to sex work because jobs I had been doing in offices and stuff were having really negative impacts on my mental health...
In New Zealand five years after they decriminalized sex work they found no evidence that there were more sex workers...
A lot of guys that come here might have fetishes: domination, they might like to be tied up, might like to be whipped. Their wives won't do that for them. They can come here, they can pay for that service. You know, everyone's happy"

If You Want To Be An Effective Ally, Be Quiet And Know Your Place - "The best part of Wakanda? Wakanda doesn’t need allies. While “Black Panther” is almost entirely disinterested in validating the participation of whiteness in the story of T’Challa and the fate of Wakanda, it offers a model for how white people can resist the urge to simply be allies in the cause of justice and rather be useful without having to be center stage or praised... The lesson of “Black Panther” for white allies is this: They must learn to be the sidekick, to be at the fringe, to give up power, to have people of color in their ears directing them on how to be useful in fighting for the cause of justice"
Confirmation that an ally is someone held in contempt and hated for existing