Links - 9th July 2018 (2)

Everything You Know About the “Crispy Rendang” Saga is Wrong - "Torode Was Judging the Dish as “Nasi Lemak”
Yes, you read that right — the dish in question, was not a standalone rendang. Nor was it served as a side dish alongside many others — which is how most of us in Southeast Asia would normally have it. Zaleha was serving the rendang as part of nasi lemak... a quick Google image search of “nasi lemak” shows that of the nasi lemak dishes which served chicken as the main protein of the dish, well over half of them are — you guessed it — crispy, fried, chicken. In most parts of the Malay Peninsula, I have never ordered a nasi lemak set meal that came without crispy fried chicken, or fish...
Torode’s second critique of the dish was the chicken rendang itself:
“It hasn’t had enough time to cook down and become lovely and soft and falling apart. Instead the chicken is just tough and not really flavoursome,” he said."

The robots are killing Tesla - "In a rare win for humans over robots in the battle for labor efficiency, Wall Street analysts have laid down a compelling argument that over-automation is to blame for problems at the billionaire Elon Musk’s electric-car company."

Experts say Tesla has repeated car industry mistakes from the 1980s - "Musk is discovering that large-scale car manufacturing is really hard, and it's not easy to improve on the methods of conventional automakers. And while automation obviously plays an important role in car manufacturing, it's not the magic bullet Musk imagined a couple of years ago. Far from leapfrogging the techniques of conventional automakers, Tesla is now struggling just to match the efficiency of its more established rivals."

No, the US Isn't Using Vaccine-Laced M&Ms to Save Ferrets - "Yes, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is investigating drones as a way to distribute vaccinations — but not using M&Ms, and not for ferrets directly"

Drag queens banned from performing at Free Pride Glasgow event over fears acts will offend trans people - "The organisation said in a statement that it hopes to create a safe space for all members of the LGBTQIA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, asexual) community, and that while the decision may "disappoint" some people "the needs of the most marginalised groups within our community come first.""

Why raising my son made me question what female empowerment is doing to boys - "While we're all happy to talk about our desire for 'strong women' in society these days, I'm ashamed to admit that I somehow feel disconcerted to hear someone discuss a 'strong man'... any display of male strength seems almost discouraged... someone told me of a picture she'd seen on Instagram — a woman, posing with her young son and daughter. The smiling mother and daughter are wearing t-shirts declaring 'The Future is Female'. Meanwhile, her son looks decidedly lost and perplexed, perhaps uneasy at the thought of a future where he is seemingly obsolete. Shouldn't the future be about change? Or ideas? Not one gender over another?"

Study Of 1.5 Million Men Finds Link Between Penis Shape And Cancer Risk - "Peyronie's disease is caused by a buildup of scar tissue in the penis. As the scar tissue (plaque) builds up, it causes the penis to bend, which can result in painful erections and make sex difficult or impossible"

Man Wins $390,000 In Gender Discrimination Lawsuit After Female Colleague Gets Promotion He Was More Qualified For - "A court in Austria has ruled that transport ministry official Peter Franzmayr was discriminated against on the basis of his gender when a managerial role he applied for was given to a woman instead."
They can just change the law so only anti-female discrimination is banned

The Glory That Was Yahoo - "Many of the apps and services we now take for granted were either invented at Yahoo or quickly found a home there. Before there was a YouTube, there was Broadcast.com, which turned into Yahoo TV. Before Instagram, there was Flickr. Before Evernote, there was Yahoo Notebook. Before Spotify, Yahoo Music. And on and on."

'Problematic' Phrases 'British Values', 'Islamist' Banned in the Classroom by Political Correctness-Obsessed SNP - "According to official SNP advice, it is ‘dangerous’ for educators to refer to the word Islamist — frequently used to refer to fundamentalist adherence to Islam — as it risks “non-expert” audience linking the phenomena to ordinary Muslims in some way. “All audiences will make a connection to the Muslim faith. This phrase is best avoided,” the literature warned, recommending that teachers instead incorporate the term “Al-Qaeda-Inspired Violent Extremists” into their vocabulary of “safe language” regarding terror attacks."
The MILF would be offended to be told they were inspired by Al-Qaeda before the latter ever existed

Woman ’embalmed alive’ after hospital workers give her formaldehyde instead of saline - "Ekaterina Fedyaeva, 28, underwent surgery last month at a hospital in Ulyanovsk, in western Russia, to have ovarian cysts removed"

American politics are radicalizing. The damage will last generations. - The Washington Post - "there are problems when politics ceases to be the realm of partial agreement and becomes a conflict of social movements. The virtues essential to self-government — civility, compromise and moderation of temperament — are devalued. The incremental reforms necessary to solve public problems become impossible. Opponents are dehumanized and viewed as enemies. The cruel and intemperate come to dominate our political life"

Christien Meindertsma: How pig parts make the world turn - "Christien Meindertsma, author of "Pig 05049" looks at the astonishing afterlife of the ordinary pig, parts of which make their way into at least 185 non-pork products, from bullets to artificial hearts."

In Defense of Being Average - "most of us are pretty average at most things we do. Even if you’re truly exceptional at one thing — say math, or jump rope, or making money off the black gun market — chances are you’re pretty average or below average at most other things"

Killing Ride-Sharing Is Not the Solution to America's Transportation Blues - "Unlike Uber, whose losses are covered by shareholders voluntarily sinking cash into the company, transit subsidies come straight from taxpayers, whether they ride it or not. I am aware of no transit agency in the United States that turns a profit. Few are even able to cover half of their operating expenses with traditional farebox revenue... Ridership on New York's public transit systems dipped last year for the first time since 2009. In other words, ridership managed to grow for the first six years that Uber was operating in the city. That it fell in 2017 has at least as much to do with the failings of public transportation as it does with the benefits of Uber. 2017, recall, was the year of the New York subway's "summer of hell," which saw track fires, derailments, claustrophobic waits aboard broken trains, sewage spewing from station ceilings, and an on-time arrival rate of 65 percent."

If Vegans Replaced Plants With Insects, They'd Harm Fewer Animals - "even if one believes that insects almost definitely suffer, the nature of insect death would be far less painful than the death experienced by fuzzy mammals ground up by harvesters and gutted by rodenticides. When a fly is swatted, death is so swift that it’s virtually imperceptible. Not so for the field mice. If the goal is to reduce suffering, the choice is unavoidable: Vegans should eat insects."

The myth of the Indian vegetarian nation - "only about 20% of Indians are actually vegetarian - much lower than common claims and stereotypes suggest"

Viking seafarers may have navigated with legendary crystals

Immigrants founded more than 40% of new companies in some US states

The dots do matter: how to scam a Gmail user - "I recently received an email from Netflix which nearly caused me to add my card details to someone else’s Netflix account. Here I show that this is a new kind of phishing scam which is enabled by an obscure feature of Gmail called “the dots don’t matter”. I then argue that the dots do matter, and that this Gmail feature is in fact a misfeature. Finally I’ll suggest some ways the Gmail team can combat such scams in future"

[TMG Exclusive] Tan Chuan-Jin to cardboard collector critics: "Hey, I'm trying!" - "politicians especially from the People’s Action Party, simply couldn’t “win”. If they stayed put, they would be scolded for being too cloistered; if they went out, it would be linked to how they were prepping for votes."

Gamers make best cyber security experts, McAfee survey says - "According to its survey involving 300 senior security managers and 650 security professionals at major corporations, at least 92 per cent of respondents say that gamers have the necessary skills for cyber security jobs, such as endurance and perseverance, the urge to look at things at a new angle, different perspectives and logic and problem solving skills."

MAILBAG: Why Don't We Hear More About The Christian Left? - "there are lots of devout Christians on the left, many of whom take their faith into account when casting their votes. But these data show that there's a difference between having lots of people and being a cohesive political force."

A (Shockingly) Short History Of 'Hello' - "The Oxford English Dictionary says the first published use of "hello" goes back only to 1827. And it wasn't mainly a greeting back then. Ammon says people in the 1830's said hello to attract attention ("Hello, what do you think you're doing?"), or to express surprise ("Hello, what have we here?"). Hello didn't become "hi" until the telephone arrived."

PWC: Millennial employees forced big changes at the consulting and tax firm — Quartz at Work - "Virtually identical percentages of millennial employees and non-millennial workers said they would prefer to be able to shift their work hours to schedules that could accommodate both their personal and professional obligations—heading home early for family dinner, for example, in exchange for an early start or signing back on once the kids were in bed. The only difference was that millennials were willing to speak up about their dissatisfaction, and to opt out when problems couldn’t be resolved"

You May Empathize More With Attractive Others, Study Shows - "Prior research has shown that people empathize more with people who are similar to oneself. People high in empathy have been shown to be more willing to help similar people than people who are different from themselves. Brain studies have also shown group membership to play a significant role in empathy."
Why the fashionable claim that morality = empathy is fatlly flawed

Why America still controls its nukes with ancient floppy disks - "low-tech is safer tech, because it can't be hacked... high-profile examples have also arisen showing how the military can regard technology too optimistically, revealing some of the risks of embracing it"

Yes, anti-pipeline Vancouver really is North America’s largest exporter of coal

Why TED Is a Massive, Money-Soaked Orgy of Self-Congratulatory Futurism - "The model for your standard TED talk is a late-period Malcolm Gladwell book chapter. Common tropes include:
Drastically oversimplified explanations of complex problems.
Technologically utopian solutions to said complex problems.
Unconventional (and unconvincing) explanations of the origins of said complex problems.
Staggeringly obvious observations presented as mind-blowing new insights.
What’s most important is a sort of genial feel-good sense that everything will be OK, thanks in large part to the brilliance and beneficence of TED conference attendees"

Back to the Health Policy Drawing Board - The New York Times - "Most nations have solved [adverse selection] by adopting universal coverage financed by taxes. The United States probably would have followed this approach except for a historical anomaly during World War II. Fearing runaway inflation in tight labor markets, the American government imposed a cap on wages. But the cap didn’t apply to fringe benefits, which employers quickly exploited as a recruiting tool. Employer health plans proved particularly attractive, since their cost was a deductible expense and they were not taxed. Before the war started, only 9 percent of workers had employer-provided insurance, but 63 percent had it by 1953... People would lose insurance if they lost their jobs, which inhibited labor mobility, but since employment relationships were relatively durable in the postwar years, this arrangement worked well enough. But after peaking at almost 70 percent in the 1990s, employer coverage began declining in the face of stagnating wages and rising insurance costs. By 2010, only 56 percent of the nonelderly American population still had workplace health plans... The United States spends far more on health care than any other nation, yet gets worse outcomes on most measures. In part this is because administrative and marketing expenses are much lower under single-payer plans. But by far the most important source of savings is that governments are able to negotiate much more favorable terms with service providers. Virtually every procedure, test, and drug costs substantially more here than elsewhere... A June 2017 poll showed that 60 percent of Americans said the government should provide universal coverage, and support for single-payer insurance rose more than one-third since 2014... In no other wealthy country do we see people organize bake sales to help pay for a neighbor’s cancer care. We can avoid this national embarrassment without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone."
Looks like those who rage about socialised healthcare are indeed a minority (not to mention cranks who think single payer is slavery, or that public healthcare is always inferior because it's public)