Links - 9th July 2018 (1)

An Unholy Fight Over a Saintly Beer - The New York Times - "Smooth, complex, soft, salty and strong — yet delicate, luscious and elegant. Those are just a few of the adjectives used to describe Westvleteren beer, which is often hailed by aficionados as one of the best in the world. Part of the mystique rested in its exclusivity. For more than 170 years, the beer has been produced and distributed solely by the Trappist monks of St. Sixtus Abbey in Westvleteren, a village in western Belgium."

PornHub greets bloggers after YouTube gun ban introduced
Ammosexuals indeed

Nobody Knows Anything About China – Foreign Policy - "As a foreigner in China, you get used to hearing the retort “You don’t know China!” spat at you by locals. It’s usually a knee-jerk reaction to some uncomfortable modern issue or in defense of one of the many historical myths children in the mainland are taught as unshakeable facts about the world. But it’s also true. We don’t know China. Nor, however, do the Chinese — not even the government. We don’t know China because, in ways that have generally not been acknowledged, virtually every piece of information issued from or about the country is unreliable, partial, or distorted. The sheer scale of the country, mixed with a regime of ever-growing censorship and a pervasive paranoia about sharing information, has crippled our ability to know China. Official data is repeatedly smoothed for both propaganda purposes and individual career ambitions. That goes as much for Chinese as it does for foreigners; access may sometimes be easier for Chinese citizens, but the costs of going after information can be even higher."

How to Stop Eating Sugar - Smarter living Guides - The New York Times

Big Sugar isn’t to blame for steering us away from fat. - "our own examination of the historical events in question shows this alluring tale of industry meddling is based on a highly selective and profoundly flawed interpretation of the history. The long-deceased Mad Men–era Harvard scientists who stand accused of having been “paid off” to “shift the blame” to fat were, in fact, already on record in support of low-fat diets as a way to fight heart disease for nearly a decade before the sugar men came calling. In adopting this stance they were in sync with the dominant nutritional paradigm of the era: the idea that the fatty American diet, by raising cholesterol levels in the blood, was behind the epidemic of heart attacks that was killing so many middle-aged breadwinners. No blame-shifting was even required!"

Beggars are now accepting mobile payments because we don't carry loose change anymore - "According to the China Channel , nefarious companies are actually PAYING the destitute citizens to be out on the street begging. Because the payments are digital, they can easily take a small cut of each transaction that's processed... he practice could also allow these companies to harvest data about WeChat app users, because you need to have a personal account set up in order to use it to transfer money."

Laws against racial and religious insult tend to backfire: Cherian George - "insult laws tend to be weaponised by political opportunists. “Groups manufacture indignation and then demand that the state uphold its insult laws by punishing the individuals and groups accused of causing offence,” he explained, citing the vilification and prosecution of former Jakarta governor “Ahok” Basuki Purnama for blasphemy as a “classic case”, that was “by no means unique”... while such laws are ostensibly on the books to protect social harmony, they have the opposite effect... Singapore is an anomaly in criminalising the wounding of racial and religious feelings with no ill effects... legal solutions provide a “false sense of security” and can backfire, especially if states “make the mistake” of trying to prohibit insult"

Adolf Hitler and the Myth of Nazi Gun Control Laws - " the Weapon Law of 1938 actually significantly loosened strict German gun laws that had been put into place by the Weimar Republic government in the years following World War I... The idea that armed German Jews specifically would have been able to fight back against the Holocaust is highly unlikely. The Nazi Germany war machine was one of the most powerful military systems ever constructed, especially prior to and in the early years of World War II, and it would have been able to quash almost any armed armed resistance. In fact, the largest revolt by armed Jewish citizens during the war — the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising — was ended in less than a month and resulted in the death of 13,000 Jews versus less than 300 Germans... the popular Adolf Hitler quote used seems to have no basis in fact. For starters, as written above, gun registration was actually instituted by the Weimar government and was relaxed by the Nazis. Furthermore, Harcourt wrote in a 2004 Fordham Law Review article titled On Gun Registration, the NRA, Adolf Hitler, and Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Gun Culture Wars (A Call to Historians) that, “It turns out, for example, that Hitler’s infamous quote, rehearsed in so many newspapers, is probably a fraud and was likely never uttered. The citation reference is a jumbled and incomprehensible mess that has never been properly identified or authenticated, and no one has been able to produce a document corresponding to the quote.”"

What I Learned in the Peace Corps in Africa: Trump Is Right - "As a twenty-one-year-old starting out in the Peace Corps, I loved Senegal. In fact, I was euphoric. I quickly made friends and had an adopted family. I relished the feeling of the brotherhood of man. People were open, willing to share their lives and, after they knew you, their innermost thoughts. The longer I lived there, the more I understood: it became blindingly obvious that the Senegalese are not the same as us... The Ten Commandments were not disobeyed – they were unknown. The value system was the exact opposite. You were supposed to steal everything you can to give to your own relatives. There are some Westernized Africans who try to rebel against the system. They fail. We hear a lot about the kleptocratic elites of Africa. The kleptocracy extends through the whole society. My town had a medical clinic donated by international agencies. The medicine was stolen by the medical workers and sold to the local store. If you were sick and didn't have money, drop dead. That was normal... In Senegal, corruption ruled, from top to bottom... Americans think it is a universal human instinct to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It's not. It seems natural to us because we live in a Bible-based Judeo-Christian culture. We think the Protestant work ethic is universal. It's not. My town was full of young men doing nothing. They were waiting for a government job. There was no private enterprise. Private business was not illegal, just impossible, given the nightmare of a third-world bureaucratic kleptocracy. It is also incompatible with Senegalese insistence on taking care of relatives. All the little stores in Senegal were owned by Mauritanians. If a Senegalese wanted to run a little store, he'd go to another country. The reason? Your friends and relatives would ask you for stuff for free, and you would have to say yes. End of your business. You are not allowed to be a selfish individual and say no to relatives. The result: Everyone has nothing. The more I worked there and visited government officials doing absolutely nothing, the more I realized that no one in Senegal had the idea that a job means work. A job is something given to you by a relative. It provides the place where you steal everything to give back to your family. I couldn't wait to get home. So why would I want to bring Africa here? Non-Westerners do not magically become American by arriving on our shores with a visa... African problems are made worse by our aid efforts. Senegal is full of smart, capable people. They will eventually solve their own country's problems. They will do it on their terms, not ours. The solution is not to bring Africans here. We are lectured by Democrats that we must privilege third-world immigration by the hundred million with chain migration. They tell us we must end America as a white, Western, Judeo-Christian, capitalist nation – to prove we are not racist. I don't need to prove a thing"
Of course her reality of lived experience and personal experience with Senegalese culture will be ignored by liberals (who have never been to the Third World) as racist stereotyping

Violent crime rises in Germany and is attributed to refugees - "Violent crime rose by about 10 percent in 2015 and 2016, a study showed. It attributed more than 90 percent of that to young male refugees... The government-sponsored study showed a jump in violent crime committed by male migrants aged 14 to 30. Christian Pfeiffer, a criminology expert and one of the study researchers, told Deutschlandfunk radio there were huge differences between various refugee groups depending on where they came from and how high their chances were of staying and gaining legal status in Germany. Asylum seekers who are regarded as war refugees who have relatively good chances of staying in Germany tend to avoid trouble more, the study found."
Maybe the liberal response is to say you should let everyone stay

Study finds young, devout Muslims in Germany more prone to violence - "The willingness to commit violent crimes grows among young Muslim immigrants in Germany the more religious they become, according to a joint survey by the German interior ministry and the Institute for Criminology Research of Lower Saxony (KFN). By comparison, the study found that just the opposite was true for Christian immigrants... The study said the reason for this difference had to do with the very different image of masculinity. Muslim devotion promotes the acceptance of macho behavior, said Christian Pfeiffer, the director of the Lower Saxony research institute and one of the authors of the study"

Survey: Underlying Sympathy for Radical Islamic Extremism in German Schools - "Twenty-seven per cent said they agreed with the statement: “The Islamic laws of Sharia, according to which, for example, adultery or homosexuality are severely punished, are much better than the German laws,” Die Welt reports."

She Booked An Airbnb Stay In Paris For $52K - But It Was A Scam - "According to sources, Ms Cho and her husband had probably received an email from the listing they saw on Airbnb and was directed to another website that looked identical to the genuine Airbnb website. They had “interacted with a ‘live-chat service'” and then wired their money from DBS Bank directly to a specific source called, “Airbnb Euro Trans” in Poland. She had assumed that this was a “natural” procedure because France was “quite bureaucratic”.It was only after they checked on the real Airbnb website and multiple contacts they made to the “host” failed, that they found out the apartment they had paid for did not exist. The couple did not see any messages that warn users from leaving the site which is one of the features implemented against scammers... Ms Cho told sources that “she will not use Airbnb again” moving forward, and wanted to share her story so others are aware and will not end up in the same plight as her."
If you are bad at recognising scams and following instructions on how to stay safe, you could also get scammed by a fake hotel (e.g. the taxi driver bringing you to a different hotel with the same name to scam you)

After the Toronto attack don't explain Incel ideology, ban it
>Thousands of Islamic terror attacks
MSM: ...
>Three incel attacks in two decades
MSM:"

Confederate Statues Removed while Racist Progressive Statues Remain - "In the present climate of auditing the past, it is inevitable that Margaret Sanger’s Planned Parenthood will have to be disassociated from its founder. Sanger was an unapologetic racist and eugenicist who pushed abortion to reduce the nonwhite population. Should we ask that Ruth Bader Ginsburg resign from the Supreme Court? Even with the benefit of 21st-century moral sensitivity, Ginsburg still managed to echo Sanger in a racist reference to abortion (“growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of”). Why did we ever mint a Susan B. Anthony dollar? The progressive suffragist once said, “I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.”"

Why 'Follow Your Passion' Is the World's Worst Career Advice - "I found:
a) Something I liked to do (writing)
b) Something that people were willing to pay me for (writing)
c) Something that I was good at (writing)
The intersection of those three things allowed me to thrive in my journalist career.
Plenty of us aren't so lucky. Some may have mastered (b) and (c) but not (a) and find that after a while, all they're doing is working for a paycheck. Others may have conquered (a) and (c) and realize that they can't make any decent money. And others do (a) and (b) but, unfortunately, realize after a few years they just don't have that talent."

Most People Have No Idea Whether They’re Paid Fairly - "transparent conversations about money can actually mitigate low pay. So, if an employer pays lower than the market average for a position, but communicates clearly about the reasons for the smaller paycheck, 82% of employees we surveyed still felt satisfied with their work. Conversely, we found overpaying employees in an effort to retain them without having this larger conversation about pay doesn’t ensure they are more satisfied. Our study showed it is more effective for employers to compensate top talent at market value and discuss how pay was determined than to pay them more than market value and keep company compensation practices shrouded in secrecy... women who are paid above the market average for their job are 18% more likely to believe they are underpaid than men in the same pay bracket. While our research can’t pinpoint exactly why this is the case, the public discussion around the gender pay gap is likely at play"
If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it

Last of the Munichans - "Why are Europeans, Germans perhaps most famously, obsessed with Native Americans? So many reasons: The chance to delve into a past where the bad guys are not your grandparents. A crowded continent’s longing for wide open spaces. A romantic attachment to an idealized “authentic” humanity, rooted in the anti-industrial backlash of the 1800s. And, of course, Karl May, the 19th-century writer who devoured James Fenimore Cooper while in prison and cranked out novels of the American West (and the Middle East, and the fantasy planet Sitara) that have been best-sellers for going on 125 years. May’s most enduring hero, Winnetou, wages a heroic, doomed battle against the railroad and white settlement, and the books’ juxtaposition of bareback-riding freedom and overweening state power (plus a heavy dose of Christianity), made them an underground sensation behind the Iron Curtain. Today, Indian clubs from Prague to Potsdam put on elaborate reenactments complete with acres of buckskin outfits"

Straws, coffee cups targets of Vancouver strategy to cut down on plastic garbage - "We heard loud and clear from the disabled community that a ban would not facilitate their needs. We've also heard from other health services providers that it's important to them to have access to the plastic straws as well"
Pro-environmental measures tend to be anti-human