Links - 30th June 2018 (1)

My Talk at WIS2 - "Enforced silence is always and everywhere the enemy of truth and progress. If someone is forbidden from speaking, you are obviously not going to hear what they have to say. But enforced silence is also a way of robbing someone of their humanity"

Ba Humbugi! Let's Nameus That Speciesus - The New York Times - "There are species named for body parts and bodily functions, for celebrities, painters and writers, for cartoon characters and favorite sports. For those who find it to be all too much, there is even Ba humbugi, a snail from Fiji."

When Smug Liberals Met Conservative Trolls - The New York Times - "for many on the right, the real lesson of the Stewart-Carlson exchange was “Do as I say, not as I do.” Mr. Stewart urged sincerity and good-faith efforts at dialogue when lecturing Mr. Carlson but practiced the opposite when it suited him. Mr. Stewart’s smugness was itself a form of trolling. And conservatives, no matter what liberals might think of them, are not stupid. The clear lesson was that if you want to win, stop being the debate team kid in the bow tie and start being the class clown who gives that guy a wedgie... It’s no coincidence that at the moment the alt-right leader Richard Spencer was famously sucker-punched on camera, he was in the middle of explaining the elaborate in-joke signaled by his Pepe the Frog lapel pin. Nor that when Russians allegedly tried to meddle in the last presidential election, they chose to do it in meme form, with Facebook ads featuring Jesus and the Devil arm wrestling over the prospect of a Clinton victory, or promoting “Buff Bernie” pro-L.G.B.T. coloring books. Differences remain as fundamental as ever, but the way we talk about them is so superficial as to have become incoherent... One of the primary reactions to this new framing of the political debate has been exactly what you’d expect: Many sane, self-respecting people no longer want anything to do with either side."

This is Your Period in 2 Minutes | Glamour - YouTube

White guy parodies catcall video after New York street harassment footage goes viral - "Inspired by viral video of a woman being verbally harassed more than 100 times in 10 hours, Funny Or Die News conducted an “experiment” to see what would happen to a white man in her shoes. The generic-looking bloke looks uncomfortable as catcallers shower him with compliments, offer him burritos, jobs, Starbucks gift cards and high-fives, before carrying him through the streets on a throne. The video ends with this note: “100+ instances of verbal street privilege took place within 10 hours. This doesn’t include the countless Bud Light Limes, fist pumps, and small business loans that were offered. If you want to help, please do nothing. Leave the patriarchy in place.”"

Meet The Homeless Man Who Survives By Going Home With Women And Looking Good (Video)

IGN Brasil - Silvio Santos cada vez perdendo mais a linha...

Short Is Not A Cut Above | Style On The Dot - "A Singaporean journalist was booted out of the Oscars press room early this week for not wearing a long evening dress to the event. If only the folks at the Oscars knew: she was just a typical Singaporean... That she had survived the kick-out and was keen to tell all about it showed that many Singaporean girls are not embarrassed by their lack of sense of occasion. This is typical of the young today: I am in my best dress—that’s good enough"

yo amo los NOVENTAS 90´S - Posts - "Street Figther Cosplay!!!"

Illinois Enacts New Law Impacting Inquiries on Criminal Background Checks - "An employer (or employment agency) covered by the new law “may not inquire about or into, consider or require disclosure” of the criminal record or criminal history of an applicant until after the applicant has been determined to be qualified for the position and notified that the applicant has been selected for an interview. For those covered employers or employment agencies who do not conduct interviews, the inquiry into an applicant’s criminal background or history cannot take place until after a conditional offer of employment has been made to the applicant."
They just want black people to be discriminated against more

Queensland floods giant spider rescued from tree branch

Trump doesn’t have a science adviser. This slime mold is available. - "Jeff Sessions, the US attorney general, was sent a letter written on the behalf of slimy creatures that have, since May, enjoyed a collective faculty appointment at Hampshire College in Western Massachusetts. The slime mold’s recommendation for Sessions was that “cannabis and its chemical derivatives should be legalized by the United States government.”... The mold is Hampshire College’s first “nonhuman resident scholar,” complete with its own office and faculty webpage. (This very much fits in with the culture of Hampshire College, an institution that is so liberal arts it doesn’t have “majors” and that recently hosted an event exploring “the effects of mass incarceration through dance.”)... The slime mold holds office hours, and the Hampshire students who work in the lab are its research assistants"

Minnesota has the most refugees per capita in the U.S. Will that continue? - "They say the more refugees, the better. They argue that refugees boost the economy, diversify our state and eventually pay back the costs of their resettlement. Yet, refugees cost an estimated $107,000 each in food aid, medical expenses and other services, according to one researcher. Communities have no control over the in-flow of refugees, yet they must share the cost of supporting them. And residents often don’t speak out or even ask questions of the process for fear of being called racists... A 2017 Notre Dame study on the economic outlook of refugees said that after 20 years, refugees are more likely than native-born residents to be receiving welfare and food-support payments — and they are also more likely to be employed... The family fled to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where they remained for eight years. “I did house cleaning, plumbing, cutting grass, driving a taxi,” recalled Sivasundaram. The family remembers, above all, the crime. “You couldn’t use a phone in the street. Someone would take it,” said Sivasundaram. “Someone would cut off the ears of old ladies for the earrings.” The boys faced a unique danger. “They would have kidnapped me for the military, or sold me to another country,” said Kapilas, his 17-year-old son... They laugh about the quirks of their new homeland. “I like Chick-Fil-A. The food in Malaysia is healthier, but this is tastier,” said Simraj, 16. Apilas, 13, is fascinated by boneless fish, which he never encountered in Malaysia. “I always ask: Is that fish, or is that steak?” he said."
Perhaps just as liberals conflate illegal and legal immigrants, they conflate refugees and economic migrants to claim that refugees boost the economy

Oxford University Issues Public Apology After Photo of Female Custodian Cleaning Campus Goes Viral - "Oxford University political theory professor Sophie Smith published a tweet on Thursday with a photo of a female custodian erasing a “Happy International Women’s Day” chalk writing on the Clarendon steps on Oxford’s campus... Smith fired back, demanding that the custodian receive the rest of the day off and a “warm cup of tea.” “I appreciate your apology, but far more importantly can you please make sure that the woman asked to remove the message receives a heartfelt apology, a warm cup of tea, the rest of the day off and, along with all our precarious staff, good enough pay to live in this city,” Smith tweeted."
Moral of the story: Don't hire women cleaners? Allow graffiti?

Poll: Feminism Makes People Less Attractive to the Opposite Sex - "Sky Data asked people in the UK, “If someone told you they were a feminist, would it make you more or less likely to want to start a romantic relationship with them?” While the majority of respondents said it made “no difference,” 17% said it would make attraction less likely, with just 7% saying it would make a relationship more likely. Even amongst women, a slight majority said they found male feminists more of a turn off than a turn on when it came to romantic attraction. Participants were also asked, “Are you a feminist?” 66% answered no, with 34% saying yes. Even amongst women, a clear majority, 58% to 42% said they didn’t identify as feminists. The survey also found that 40% thought feminism had “gone too far,” with 27% thinking it had gone “as far as it should go” and 33% thinking it hadn’t gone far enough."

Jamie Oliver: My customers steal 30,000 napkins a month and even take the toilet fittings

'Me Too' Leads to Women Being Shunned in the Office - "Korea has an ingrained office drinking culture, where all kinds of bullying by superiors goes on amid enforced conviviality. To be on the safe side, men now deliberately exclude women from office gatherings and business trips, leading to an equally unwelcome form of ostracism... "I rarely talk with my boss these days. He used to be very chatty with the female staff, but nowadays he only gives instructions by text message." Her boss apparently told other workers that he feared any comments could be misunderstood by female staff"... Online communities here are filled with comments from men saying that their female colleagues scare them now"
Another example of how feminism can make women worse off

Survey finds men, women rate sexual harassment differently - "In a list of 20 actions ranging from groping to light-hearted flirting, men in all cases but one were less likely than women to rate a specific act as sexual harassment. The exception – light-hearted flirting – was considered sexual harassment by 12 percent of both men and women. In all other cases, however, women were 10 to 20 percent more likely to rate an action as sexual harassment than men."
i.e. Men are less sensitive, which helps to explain the above

1 in 10 Women Sexually Harassed at Work - "Most harassment was off-color remarks or forcing women to pour alcohol in group meals or sit next to particular men."
From another article: "Of those who reported having experienced some form of sexual harassment, the most common form was off-color remarks with 33.8 percent, followed by comments on how someone's looks or dresses with 30 percent. Other uncomfortable situations included speculation about the women's sex life"
Even in Korea, the bar for sexual harassment is very low; it doesn't say whether persistence was needed for it to be counted as harassment

Workplaces No Exception to Rampant Bullying - "The most frequently cited case was of a team leader singling out one employee and encouraging other members of the team to gang up on them. The second-biggest scourge mentioned was when a number of workers ostracize one of their colleagues. There are also cases of employees ostracizing their boss. Although bullying is rampant in workplaces, the majority of companies do not seem to take this social ill seriously. Rather, in some cases, companies fire the bullied employee for disrupting the harmony of the organization"
From Korea too

The spread of true and false news online - "Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information, and the effects were more pronounced for false political news than for false news about terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, or financial information. We found that false news was more novel than true news, which suggests that people were more likely to share novel information. Whereas false stories inspired fear, disgust, and surprise in replies, true stories inspired anticipation, sadness, joy, and trust. Contrary to conventional wisdom, robots accelerated the spread of true and false news at the same rate, implying that false news spreads more than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it."

Poll Finds Black Americans More Likely to Be Seen as Racist - "Thirty-seven percent of poll respondents said "most black Americans" are racist, compared to just 15 percent who said most whites are racist and 18 percent who said most Hispanics are racist. Black respondents ranked their own demographic as more likely to be racist. Thirty-one percent of African-Americans said most blacks are racist, according to the polling organization, while only 24 percent of those respondents said most whites are racist... 32 percent of respondents thought race relations are getting worse, compared to 29 percent who said they're getting better"
Looks like many blacks don't subscribe to the "black people cannot be racist" school of thought

The Invasion of the Male Space: An Encounter at the Barbershop - "Put yourself into a locker-room of a sports team. People are whipping each other with towels, calling each other names and generally horsing around. Now imagine that the team manager, a girl, walks into the locker room. All of that behavior gets locked down in seconds. Typically, it gets locked down because men, through experience, know that women are uncomfortable in a setting like that. What I have found is that this is simply how men communicate when we are around one another"

Women-only sex club makes its Asian debut in Shanghai, doing its bit to reduce gender inequality - "By instilling its members with sexual confidence, LeJeune hopes to help reduce gender inequality. “My motto is ‘Confidence in the bedroom, confidence in the boardroom’, because the two are linked,” she says. “Confident women will reach out for the more senior roles in their companies and demand equal pay and take the CEO position. There can only be good come from that"

Student barred from class for claiming there are two genders - "the class was forced to watch a Ted-Talk on February 28 featuring Paula Stone, a transgender woman, who gave examples of “mansplaining,” “male privilege,” and systematic sexism. Following the video, Ingle wrote that the instructor “opened the floor to WOMEN ONLY. Barring men from speaking until the women in the class have had their chance to speak.” After some time had elapsed, Ingle stated he “took this opportunity to point out the official view of biologists who claim there are only two biological genders,” and refuted the “gender wage gap,” after which class resumed as normal... “During my time as a Religious Studies major, I have had professors insult me for opposing views, call me names such as ‘racist’ or ‘sexist’, and have had my views discredited due my race, gender, and sexual orientation”"

Indiana University of Pennsylvania Professor Alison Downie Explains Why Smiling Christians Enraged Her - "Religion professor Alison Downie, who threw a student out of her class for arguing that there are only two genders, published a blog post earlier this year explaining why a group of smiling Christians sent her into an unanticipated rage... One member of the church held up a sign to passing cars that read “SMILE! It’s Sunday!” According to her own account, Downie flew into a fit of rage after she read the sign. She explained that the sign made her want to bring intense pain upon the members of the church so that they could understand that faith alone is not reason enough to smile."

David Moe's answer to Since Europeans and Canadians criticize the US medical system, why do so many of them fly to the US to get treatment? - Quora - "Nobody in their right mind would go to the US for a hip replacement since the Indian doctors are perfectly good and the hospital standards if you are paying cash in India are quite high. Many of the doctors were trained in Canada and the US. There is no reason at all for a Canadian to have a medical procedure done in the US unless they have far more money than they really need and want to throw it away somehow. Everywhere else is cheaper. Dental care is not covered by Canadian Medicare, so I know people who go to Mexico for their dental work, and combine it with a vacation, since the savings can pay for the vacation. Nobody goes to the US for dental work. Bottom line: American medical care is just way too expensive by international standards... Americans who need medical treatments and have to pay for it themselves are better off going to Mexico, India, or some other country because the costs are much lower and the standards for private health care nearly as high."