Links - 1st August 2018 (1)

10 Hawkers Tell Us Why Geylang Isn’t What It Used to Be - "Now you’re probably wondering, if charcoal is so great, why doesn’t everyone just use it? Well, they can’t. In hawker centres, the use of charcoal is prohibited as the embers pose a fire hazard. However, in Geylang where shophouses are privately owned and with the permission of landlords, places like Geylang Claypot Rice can continue to cook the old-fashioned way... “There are a few Chinese working quarters located along Geylang,” says Ron. Not only is it convenient for them to get around Singapore for work, but the rent is cheap as well. To cater to this new demographic, a large number of Chinese KTVs and restaurants have sprung up along Geylang in recent years, snapping up previously empty shophouse units. In addition, mala hot pots, Chinese BBQ skewers, and Tsingtao beer can be found around every Lorong. And while this has certainly gone towards increasing Geylang’s foot traffic, most hawkers perceive this change to be for the worst, believing that these businesses change the well-worn exterior of Geylang, and lend a colder, more closed off vibe to the place"

Male incompetence is a subtle form of misogyny - "Few have the patience to watch someone do a job badly over and over again and so often, they’ll just take it upon themselves to do your chores as well as their own. Emotional labour is doubled when you’ve got an incompetent clown on your hands."
Being unable to do things to a standard a woman demands (which might not be objectively justifiable) = misogyny and forcing emotional labour on women
I'm sure they blame female incompetence on the patriarchy too

Iraqi migrant beaten for T-shirt saying 'I'm Muslim, don't panic' - "An asylum seeker who jokingly wore a T-shirt saying 'I'm Muslim, don't panic' was so savagely beaten by his fellow refugees that he had to be rushed to hospital. The 23-year-old Iraqi had thought that his fellow Islamic asylum seekers would see the funny side, but instead they accused him of offending their religion and decided to teach him a painful lesson."
Islamophobia!

Study: Large number of Turks in Germany put Islam above the law - "90 percent of the people of Turkish origin surveyed said they feel comfortable in Germany. Eighty-seven percent said that they feel closely or very closely connected to Germany. That's 2 percent more than the number who said they felt a close connection to Turkey... "East Germans feel they've been treated more unfairly in reunified Germany than Turkish immigrants do"... Half of all the respondents said that Islam is the only true religion. Almost half of those surveyed agreed with the following statement: "It is more important to obey religious laws than state laws." Some 36 percent said that only Islam is in a position to resolve the current problems facing society, and 7 percent said violence is justified if the aim is the expansion of Islam."
88% of a group not born in a country feeling a close connection to it is huge

Turkey's President Erdogan calls on Europe's Muslims to support him - "He announced he will expand Turkey's state news agency's coverage in Europe to hit back at 'propaganda' published about Muslims, and urged European Turks to improve their power by gaining places in parliaments across the Bloc. 'Are you ready to demonstrate to the whole world the strength of European Turks? Are you ready to give the terrorist organisations and their local and foreign henchmen an Ottoman slap?', he said, while rallying against his critics, including the PKK Kurdish guerrillas... Erdogan sees himself as a 'protector of Muslims in former Ottoman dominions,' Janusz Bugajski, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) told the Stockholm Center for Freedom... Thousands of Turks came from Germany, the Netherlands and Austria, and from across the Balkans for the rally. 'Turkey is our mother nation,' said Coskun Celiloglu, a Macedonian student of Turkish descent. 'We came to Sarajevo just for one day to support our saviour Erdogan.'"

At rally in Bosnia, Erdogan flexes his muscles as strongman of the Muslim world - "Erdogan “wants to show domestic constituents he is still the leader of the Islamic world,” said Dimitar Bechev, a political scientist who focuses on Russian and Turkish influence in southeastern Europe. It’s a role that Erdogan has consciously tried to build for himself in recent years. Hamdi Firat Buyuk, a freelance political analyst based in Sarajevo, said the call-and-response use of the takbir (“Allahu akbar!”) at Sunday’s rally only started being commonly heard at Erdogan rallies after the 2016 coup attempt"

LBC on Twitter: "Erdogan has said he is the ‘protector’ of Muslims in Europe. @ShelaghFogarty asks: Is Erdogan drawing battle lines between Christians and Muslims?… https://t.co/VgYEORg8zH"

Germany's Arriba water park to segregate men and women after migrant sex attacks - "It comes days after police arrested two asylum seekers from Afghanistan for a sex attack on two girls on the slides at the Arriba water park in Norderstedt in the Schleswig-Holstein region."

Refugee admits to swastika arson attack - "A Syrian refugee has confessed to setting light to a hotel in Rhineland-Palatinate where he was staying and spraying swastikas on the walls to make it look like a political crime. The 26-year-old claimed that he started the fire in protest against the cramped living conditions in the hotel in Bingen, where a number of refugees and seasonal workers were living, and against what he saw as poor prospects for his future."

Nudist bathers in Germany 'threatened by men who swam onto beach and shouted Allahu Akhbar' - "Bathers at a nudist beach in northwest Germany say they were insulted and threatened by a group of "Mediterranean-looking men," one of whom reportedly shouted "Allahu Akhbar" at them. Staff at the Freibad Xantener Südsee said they were forced to call the police after the men refused to stop abusing naked bathers at the resort, which is near the town of Wesel."

300 world 'super routes' attract 20% of all air travel, Amadeus reveals in new analysis of global trends - "seven out of the top ten world’s busiest air travel routes are in Asia. Jeju-Seoul in South Korea remains the world’s busiest air route""

Revisiting why incompetents think they’re awesome - "Unfortunately, in those places ruled by the smug and complacent, a classic paper has become a weapon. The findings of Dunning and Kruger are being reduced to "Stupid people are so stupid that they don't know they are stupid." Rather bluntly, Dunning himself said, "The presence of the Dunning-Kruger effect, as it’s been come to be called, is that one should pause to worry about one’s own certainty, not the certainty of others." And that humorously suggests the Dunning-Kruger effect is now a candidate to become a second Godwin's law... narcissists think they are brilliant. Who knew? In addition, the researchers found that extroverts were also more likely to overestimate their abilities, while self-esteem and gender were not correlated. And, importantly, none of these seemed to be correlated to actual performance. But this also throws into confusion my own conclusion (also a conclusion that Dunning and Kruger hinted at): if the skills required to self-evaluate and the skill under evaluation do not overlap, then performance in one should not predict performance in the other"

Malaysian starts crowdfunding to help reduce country's debt - "Nik Shazarina Bakti, a legal officer at Sisters in Islam (SIS), hopes to gather Malaysians and the rest of the world to help contribute towards the cause. On the page, the 27-year-old law graduate reminded Malaysians of the time when the people gave up their jewellery, money and valuables so that Tunku Abdul Rahman and the then government could raise enough funds to go to London and claim Merdeka... The Pakatan Harapan government said the nation's debt stands at a whopping RM1 trillion."

Putrajaya forms public crowdfunding campaign to help Malaysian economy - "Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said the crowdfund, dubbed Malaysia’s Hope Fund (Tabung Harapan Malaysia), was formed following concern from fellow Malaysians over the economic mismanagement by the former Barisan Nasional government."

The last Maoists in China find refuge in capitalist Hong Kong - "Hong Kong may be the heartland of capitalism but it is also the improbable last redoubt of the unlikeliest of Chinese dissidents – China’s band of Maoists."

Indian girl, 3, dies after drinking poisoned breast milk after mother unknowingly bitten by snake - "Police said that the Indian mother, 35, who also died, did not realise she had been attacked while sleeping, and had unknowingly breasted the three-year-old girl upon waking"

Guan Eng shocked Treasury can’t access certain accounts - "Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng said he was shocked when senior Treasury officers told him they were unable to access certain accounts and reports. “There were also complaints that certain ‘red’ files were only accessible to certain parties. This impeded officials and auditors from carrying out their professional responsibilities with integrity”"

Kendrick Lamar stops white fan after she raps the N-word onstage with him: Watch - "a young woman named Delaney slipped not just once, but twice in what’s probably the worst possible setting: On stage with Pulitzer Prize winner Kendrick Lamar. Sure, she was singing along to the rapper’s 2012 song “m.A.A.d. City”, which features the word on multiple occasions, but, girl, come on."
So much for being a fan

Question - "what do the icons next to a name mean on facebook comment"
"It's meant to help identify trolls and other disruptive people who join groups just to spam stupid angry things."
"There is a Graphic of a BLACK HAND next to my name in my posts and I have no idea why it's there. Is FB telling people I am a member of some death cult?"

The Ready Player One backlash, explained - "In 2011, Ready Player One was beloved. It was “a guaranteed pleasure.” It was “witty.” It was not only “a simple bit of fun” but also “a rich and plausible picture of future friendships in a world not too distant from our own.” What gives? How did the consensus on a single book go from “exuberant and meaningful fun!” to “everything that is wrong with the internet!” over the span of seven years?... Wade’s best friend has a white male avatar but is secretly a black lesbian, a revelation to which Wade reacts by deciding that it does not matter because he doesn’t even see people’s race, gender, or sexuality. It’s a passage that reads remarkably like the “I don’t care if you’re black, white, green, or purple” speech, and that carries the same basic problem: Wade should care that his best friend is a black lesbian because those are important facts about his best friend’s life. But in this world, they’re unimportant, because only things that affect straight white dudes really matter"
In other words, what changed was that the SJWs took over

The ugly trade in Palestinian pain - "much of what happens in the Israel-Palestine conflict is now largely a performance, a piece of bloody theatre, staged for the benefit of outsiders, especially for myopically anti-Israel Western activists and observers... after midday prayers clerics and leaders of Hamas ‘urged thousands of worshippers to join the protests’. And Hamas’s urging was littered with false claims. It told people ‘the fence had already been breached’ and Palestinians were ‘flooding into Israel’. This was a lie. A Washington Post reporter details how Hamas’s leaders told people to keep attacking the border fence because ‘Israeli soldiers [are] fleeing their positions’. In truth, as Hamas knew only too well, the IDF was reinforcing its positions... Turkey killed hundreds of Kurdish people in Syria in recent months, and people in London and Paris and Washington did not take to the streets to complain. But as soon as Israel gets embroiled in conflict, out came the protesters, fuming, burning the Israeli flag."

Why are Females Prone to Mass Hysteria? - "Throughout history, groups of people in cohesive social units have suddenly fallen ill or exhibited strange behaviors, from headaches and fainting spells to twitching, shaking and trance states. But whether it’s an outbreak of spirit possession at a shoe factory in Malaysia, a collapsing marching band at a school gala in England or a twitching epidemic in a Louisiana high school, the pattern is invariably the same. Most, and often all of those affected, are females. In fact, of the 2,000+ cases in my files which date back to 1566, this pattern holds true over ninety-nine percent of the time... girls near puberty are most frequently affected. Sirois observes that outbreaks in Western schools, affect girls at about the same rate as those in other parts of the world, despite the social conditions being fairly uniform for both sexes. Many psychogenic conditions are more common in females, including individual cases of conversion disorder, and globus hystericus, a feeling of a lump in the throat that produces a sensation of choking... females are more likely to talk to each other about their symptoms, which can spread outbreaks... Many anthropologists believe that mass hysteria and spirit possession in Asia and Africa are culturally appropriate ways of indirectly negotiating problems – a form of subconscious collective bargaining."

Gender gap discovered in science exam performance: Test difficulty may be the cause - "females and males do equally well on exams that require mostly memorization. The same holds true for low- and high-socioeconomic status students. However, when tests include cognitively challenging questions that require elevated critical thinking, females and lower socioeconomic students score lower than their male or high-status peers, even though the students have equal academic ability... there is a national movement to create biology tests that are more cognitively challenging, as these types of tests can improve students' conceptual understanding of biology; however, doing so may harm the very students they are trying to help."
This is a pretty naked admission that diversity is about lowering standards

Say Hello To Vaginismus, The Locked Vagina Syndrome - "its walls can contract with the force of a thousand Spartans and prevent the entry of a penis, sex toy and even a tampon, involuntarily"

Former AG criticises Govt for not prosecuting Keppel management in 1995 bribery case - "Former Attorney-General Walter Woon wrote an article, which was published in ST today ('Punishing corporate corruption', 30 Apr), criticising the government for not prosecuting the Keppel management involved in the 1995 bribery case."

Poh Soh Kai: “We must learn from history and not myths, history that is grounded in the events and realities of the time” - "According to the report of the Commissioner of Police, there were 40 odd card holding communists during that period. Even if we assume that they were all active in the unions and social bodies, how great was their influence? That would depend on the policies adopted by the party. If the policies promote the people’s welfare and reflect their democratic aspirations, then they would be supported by the people. This is well illustrated in the Hong Lim by-election of April 1961. A leadership struggle had ensued between Lee Kuan Yew and Ong Eng Guan resulting in the Hong Lim by election. A main point in Ong’s manifesto was the release of all political detainees still detained by Lee Kuan Yew after Lee had won the 1959 elections to be Prime Minister of Singapore. Lee had promised to release all political prisoners during his campaign. Once elected, he reneged on his promises and only released a handful. This was not acceptable to the Singapore electorate. Hence, Ong’s pledge to release these prisoners resonated with an electorate disappointed with Lee Kuan Yew. However, Lee had secured a written letter of support from the Communist Party. This is a fact. Armed with this assurance, Lee Kuan Yew was of the opinion, that he would win the Hong Lim by-election without the assistance of the trade unionists... Where is the great Communist influence? Lee Kuan Yew realised that he had been duped by his own propaganda; that he had grossly over-estimated the strength of the Communists... The Operation was scheduled to be held in December 1962. But it was postponed until February 1963 when the Brunei rebellion gave them the pretext to arrest. Lee Kuan Yew said this opportunity afforded by the Brunei rebellion is “heaven sent.” No security operation can wait for “heaven sent” opportunities."