Links - 30th June 2018 (2)

Donations of deer semen make up majority of contributions in Texas candidate's race: report - "The group does not give the semen directly to the campaign, but accepts the straw donations and sells them at auction"

did failed SJW product kill Toys R Us? WorldClassBullshitters informs us that the toy retailer may shut all stores this coming week and shows nearly all the excess toys in his store are Star Wars and WWE Diva Dolls. : KotakuInAction - "WorldClassBullshitters takes us to their local TRU to show off the excess stock that warms the shelves since nobody bought them. nearly all the stock seems to be StarWars toys that sometimes date back to TFA and Rogue One... the other shelfwarmers tended to be girl's dolls about boy's franchises mainly the Star wars Forces of Destiny dolls,the Marvel Fan Girls barbies, and the oddest product WWE Divas. virtually every boy's action figure is out of stock except for marvel's Toys-to-life brand Playmation. essentially all the stuff nobody wanted or asked for and they seemed to dominate the toy aisle making little room for worthwhile stuff and in turn, making trips to the toy store not that worthwhile... bottom line though have these SJW pitched products the cause of this bankruptcy like the comic Shops and Sony Pictures?... most of the major toy companies have dropped in sales the past few years, specifically the top two Mattel and Hasbro, who have been peddling the SJW type toys"
i.e. SJWs don't boy toys but expect other people to go bankrupt trying to socially reengineer society

Singapore volunteers help walk dogs from animal shelters - "For some, volunteering at the shelters is a chance to spend time with dogs they cannot keep as pets at home. Reasons include family members who are not keen on pets and being unable to take on the full-time commitment."

Opinion | We’re All Fascists Now - The New York Times - "Mary Beard, the celebrated Cambridge classicist and self-described “bloody lefty” who recently published a book-length manifesto denouncing the world’s long history of misogyny. Last month, Ms. Beard commented on a scandal gripping Britain: Oxfam workers in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake are accused of hiring prostitutes, including, reportedly, underage girls. “Of course one can’t condone the (alleged) behavior of Oxfam staff in Haiti and elsewhere,” she wrote. “But I do wonder how hard it must be to sustain ‘civilized’ values in a disaster zone.” For expressing the thought that people in lawless places often behave in terrible ways, Ms. Beard was torn apart on social media as an “absolute monster” who was somehow excusing the exploitation of vulnerable women and girls. Her Cambridge colleague, Priyamvada Gopal joined in, accusing her of “patrician white ‘feminist’ racism.” Why are so many demonstrably non-fascist people being accused of fascism?... this ritual we keep witnessing of an in-group wielding its power against a perceived heretic seems to come from a deep human desire for a sense of belonging and purpose. Organized religion may be anathema on the political left, but the need for the things religion provides — moral fervor, meaning, a sense of community — are not. Partly, too, it is the result of a lack of political proportion and priority. It’s instructive that students at the University of Chicago spent their energy a few years back protesting Dan Savage, the progressive sex columnist who used the word “tranny” in a talk that included a discussion about reclaiming words, while ignoring a lecture the very same week by former Senator Rick Santorum, the Pennsylvania Republican who has compared gay relationships to bestiality. Freud called this the narcissism of small differences. But it is also a concerted attempt to significantly redraw the bounds of acceptable thought and speech... The main effect is that these endless accusations of “fascism” or “misogyny” or “alt-right” dull the effects of the words themselves. As they are stripped of meaning, they strip us of our sharpness — of our ability to react forcefully to real fascists and misogynists or members of the alt-right. For a case study in how this numbing of the political senses works, look no further than Mitt Romney and John McCain. They were roundly denounced as right-wing extremists. Then Donald Trump came along and the words meant to warn us against him had already been rendered hollow. Orwell warned that the English language “becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”"
To think that not too long ago liberals flocked to Mary Beard's defence against "trolls"

Yes, antifa is the moral equivalent of neo-Nazis - The Washington Post - "Mark Bray, a Dartmouth lecturer who has defended antifa’s violent tactics, recently explained in The Post, “Its adherents are predominantly communists, socialists and anarchists” who believe that physical violence “is both ethically justifiable and strategically effective.” In other words, they are no different from neo-Nazis... the New York Times has published no fewer than six opinion pieces this year defending communism... Can one imagine the Times running similar pieces about the Nazis?"

100 Easy Ways to Make Women's Lives More Bearable - "2. Related: Never, ever try to explain feminism to a woman.
3. Trans women are women. Repeat that until you perish.
7. Be kind to women in customer service positions. Tip them extra. (But not in a creepy way.)
9. Don’t maintain a double standard for… anything, ever.
22. How much of what you are watching/reading/listening to was made by women? Gender balance your bookcase.
43. Make a round of tea for the office.
44. Wash it up.
50. If you manage a team, make sure that your employees know that you recognize period pain and cystitis as legitimate reasons for a sick day.
64. Never again comment on how long it takes a woman to get ready. WE ARE TRYING TO MEET THE RIDICULOUS STANDARDS OF A SYSTEM YOU BENEFIT FROM.
65. Challenge the patriarchs in your religious group when they enable the oppression of women.
67. Trust women's religious choices. Don't pretend to liberate them just so you can criticise their beliefs.
76. Repeat after me: Always. Hold. Men. Accountable. For. Their. Actions.
85. Trust a woman to know her own body. If she says she won't enjoy part of your sexual repertoire, do not try to convince her otherwise.
87. It is not cute to try to persuade a woman to have sex with you. EVER. AT ALL. Go home.
89. Accidentally impregnated a women who doesn't want a kid? Abortions cost money. Pay for half of it.
90. Accidentally came inside a woman without protection? Plan B is expensive. Pay for all of it.
92. Examine your opinion on abortion. Then put it in a box. Because, honestly, it's completely irrelevant.
94. Understand that not all women have periods or vaginas.
SPOING!
Presumably trans women (who cannot get pregnant) get an opinion on abortion but not trans men who can
Comments: "Lemme sum this article up for you folks who don't wanna read it. Don't talk to women. Don't look at women if you aren't attractive and then only look if youre sure you have been given visual consent. Don't approach women. Men are lesser beings and don't deserve to breathe the same air as women. Also, equality and stuff"
"I've read a lot of bad VICE articles, but this one deserves a medal for it's shittiness. I'm a feminist and don't really consider myself an "anti-sjw", but this article has convinced me to log out of Facebook for today, maybe forever. I want to live in the real world, where hopefully most people aren't this batshit insane."
"So in other words put a woman in a bubble cause they can't deal. And we wonder why these college kids need safe spaces from facts"
"My suggestion to men? Don't associate with any women who take this list or this page seriously. They're unstable. For sure."
"So....to sum up the article, toxic Feminism good. Got it, I’ll just keep my questions and counterpoints regarding Scum: A Manifesto to myself."

Women know less about politics than men worldwide - "Women know less about politics regardless of gender equality, according to a survey by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The report focused on ten nations, both developed and developing, where men and women were asked questions about domestic and international news. Despite the diversity of the ten sample countries – Australia, Canada, Colombia, Greece, Italy, Japan, Korea, Norway, the UK, and the US – women answered fewer questions correctly than men in every country... gaps in political knowledge are wider in countries that have done the most to promote gender equality. These gender gaps in Norway, the UK and the US are as large, or larger than gaps in South Korea and Japan. Women's scores in the UK, the US, and Canada were more than 30% lower on average than men, whereas in Greece, Italy and Korea, women's average score was only 20% lower... the frequency with which people watch the news on television plays a role in gender gaps. Apart from Colombia and the US, the more people watch TV news, the better informed they tend to be. However, watching, reading and listening to the news tend to be more male activities, particularly in Canada, Norway, UK and US."
So an epistocracy (one liberal solution to block Brexit and Trump) would be sexist because it would exclude more women
Amusingly here too greater gender equality is associated with a larger gender gap - the feminists definitely have some voodoo logic to explain this (as usual)

The leftwing case for Brexit (one day) - "The leftwing case for Brexit is strategic and clear. The EU is not – and cannot become – a democracy. Instead, it provides the most hospitable ecosystem in the developed world for rentier monopoly corporations, tax-dodging elites and organised crime. It has an executive so powerful it could crush the leftwing government of Greece; a legislature so weak that it cannot effectively determine laws or control its own civil service. A judiciary that, in the Laval and Viking judgments, subordinated workers’ right to strike to an employer’s right do business freely. Its central bank is committed, by treaty, to favour deflation and stagnation over growth. State aid to stricken industries is prohibited. The austerity we deride in Britain as a political choice is, in fact, written into the EU treaty as a non-negotiable obligation. So are the economic principles of the Thatcher era"

How the education gap is tearing politics apart | David Runciman - "The educational divide that is opening up in our politics is not really between knowledge and ignorance. It is a clash between one worldview and another... Polling carried out before the referendum, which asked people what they thought was likely to happen in the aftermath of a Brexit vote, found that university graduates thought that it would produce an immediate financial crash, whereas those with fewer qualifications thought it much more likely that things would carry on as before. Prior political preferences shape what we think the evidence shows, not the other way round. None of this would have surprised Lippmann. When he argued that ordinary voters were incapable of judging complex policy questions on their merits, he did not exclude the educated from that judgment. He meant everybody... “The historical record leaves little doubt that the educated, including the highly educated, have gone astray in their moral and political thinking as often as anyone else”... Jeremy Corbyn’s support among Labour party members contains a high proportion of university graduates. Yet in a YouGov poll, 55% of Corbyn supporters agreed with the statement that intelligence services such as MI5 have been working to undermine Corbyn since he became leader. That figure compares with only 19% of the wider public who give credence to the same claim... When Gove suggested that the experts should not be trusted because they have a vested interest in what they are saying, that was his point: once knowledge becomes a prerequisite of power, then it no longer speaks for itself. It appears to speak for the worldview of the people who possess it. At that point it ceases to be knowledge and simply becomes another mark of privilege."

Julie Burchill - "I can't help feeling they're on very dodgy ground, taking on the young male suicide thing. For a start, it's a phony panic, catering to that lowest of modern male desires - to be a victim - for if we are to use the desire for death as a barometer of stress and misery levels among young people, then surely the fact that vastly more young women attempt suicide must mean that young women are still under far more pressure than young men. (Anorexia and bulimia, the scenic-route suicides, are still something like three-quarters female.) That young men succeed in suicide more often than girls isn't really the point. Indeed, the more callous among us would say that it was quite nice for young men finally to find something that they're better at than girls... No one is "in favour" of suicide, but when we interfere with people's right to take their own lives, we are on very dangerous ground. The level of pain that must have been reached to make suicide an option must be unbelievable. Perhaps all it behoves any of us to do at that point is to make the death as comfortable as possible. (Teenage suicide is like teenage sex: if you don't let them do it at home, they'll go out and do it somewhere nasty and dangerous.) And suicide, like car theft, is a side-effect of peace and affluence. You didn't get many suicides in Jarrow in the 30s, and until recently it was all but unknown in Northern Ireland. It really is one of those problems with no solution. The last time I suggested that suicides should be left to get on with it, I received a small number of letters from people whose sons had killed themselves. All of them demanded an apology. I'd advise them this time to save their stamps because, you see, I don't care"
Ahh... feminism!

Scraping by on six figures? Tech workers feel poor in Silicon Valley's wealth bubble - "“I didn’t become a software engineer to be trying to make ends meet,” said a Twitter employee in his early 40s who earns a base salary of $160,000. It is, he added, a “pretty bad” income for raising a family in the Bay Area. The biggest cost is his $3,000 rent – which he said was “ultra cheap” for the area – for a two-bedroom house in San Francisco... techies, many of whom are among the highest 1% of earners, are complaining that they, too, are being priced out... Although he said his salary means he can afford to live a decent life, he finds the cost of living, combined with the terrible commute, unpalatable. He’s had enough, and has accepted a 50% pay cut to relocate to San Diego. “We will be unequivocally better off than we are now.” He said he won’t miss some of the more mundane day-to-day costs, like spending $8 on a bagel and coffee or $12 on freshly pressed juice."

The dream of owning your own home is over. Let’s improve renting | Jonn Elledge - "The main reason buying your own home makes you richer is because it increases in value: somebody will pay more for it tomorrow than you can today. In other words, rising house prices have always been a socially acceptable way of allowing the old to rob from the young. In an economy in which inflation has been held down, that would always eventually prove unsustainable."

In airport security, many say Ben Gurion in Israel is safest - "Critics have accused both Israel and the United States of racial profiling as part of their aviation security procedures... Security expert Dolev says the Israeli tactics are risk-based security and don't amount to "profiling."... "Most of the countries are actually coming here often to see how Israel is dealing with security aviation and the threats from terror aviation""
Possibly the most targeted airport - yet also the safest. Because they actually have real threats to deal with

Psychologists highlight pitfalls of online dating - "One of the weaknesses of online dating is an over reliance on "profiles," the researchers say. Although most dating websites feature photos and detailed, searchable profiles covering everything from personality traits to likes and dislikes, this information isn't necessarily useful in identifying a partner... That's partly because daters don't always know what they want in a mate -- even though they generally think they do. Studies suggest that people often lack insight into what attracts them to others (and why), and therefore the characteristics they seek out in an online profile may be very different from those that will create a connection in person... The abundance of profiles online also may make daters too picky and judgmental, the authors say. The sheer number of options can be overwhelming, and the ease with which people can sift through profiles -- and click on to the next one -- may lead them to "objectify" potential partners and compare them like so many pairs of shoes. "Online dating creates a shopping mentality, and that is probably not a particularly good way to go about choosing a mate"... The shopping mindset may be efficient online, but when carried into face-to-face interactions it can make daters overly critical and discourage "fluid, spontaneous interaction" in what is already a charged and potentially awkward situation... Communicating via email or instant message before meeting in person doesn't always cure this problem. Some online communication is a good thing, the researchers say, but too much of it can skew expectations and ultimately sabotage a match. People tend to read too much into emails and other online conversations, which increases the potential for misunderstandings and disappointment... research suggests it's extremely difficult to predict the likelihood that a relationship will succeed before two people meet... algorithm-based services may encourage a counterproductive "destiny" mindset that prizes initial compatibility over other factors that are important to the long-term health of a relationship, such as the social and economic support individuals offer each other, or their ability to cope with stressful life events... Finkel, for one, advises online daters to identify promising partners and move the conversation off-line as quickly as possible... "There's probably never going to be a substitute for getting two minutes from another person across a cup of coffee.""

Saving the socialist architectural legacy