Links - 24th November 2018 (1)

Increased responsibility could lead to decreased sexual activity among women - "In Sub-Saharan Africa, women who are empowered to make household decisions tend to have sex less often"
So much for telling men to support feminism to improve their sex lives

Can’t Enter Uni Because of Daddy’s Bad Social Credit - The Blacklist Story That’s Got Weibo Talking

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, The Institution of Marriage - "‘If you have a contract, one party can't unilaterally walk away from that contract unless there are terms in the contract which allow that person to do so, without incurring a penalty. Why should that be different with marriage?... ‘A marriage that's already died’... Isn't it a matter of simple justice that the side that wants to basically break that solemn and permanent binding commitment must give good cause... basically desertion, unreasonable behavior, or adultery’...
'If you have children, before you have children, you should make a commitment and you should regard that commitment as the most important commitment in your life, and you shouldn't break it unless there is a very good reason for doing so… your responsibilities to yourself, I'm afraid, have to be put miles further down the list... if you don't take responsibility for them, who does? We do. The rest of us pick up the tab and the tab currently for family breakdown is running at 48 billion pounds a year'...
‘The idea of fault has actually been eatier [?] lately. It has become from that point quote easier. And yet we are hearing there is so much distress it has to be made even easier. This is a ratchet. This is a ratchet by family lawyers who have gone back for decades to basically remove meaning from marriage so everyone will level playing field.’"

There’s No Perfect Transcription App, But Otter Is Getting There - "The free app, which launched on iOS, Android, and the web in February, records audio and converts speech to text on the fly using voice recognition algorithms. It also synchronizes the audio with the text during playback, so you can tap on any word to hear exactly what was being said at the time"
Otter is awesome

Why Does Having a Son Reduce the Likelihood of Divorce? - "violent men and sexually promiscuous people are more likely to have sons... a man’s mate value is largely determined by his wealth, status, and power, whereas a woman’s mate value is largely determined by her youth and physical attractiveness. This means that the father has to make sure that his son will inherit his wealth, status, and power, regardless of how much or how little of these resources he has"

Why Is eHarmony So Successful? - "they select their members very carefully, and only admit those who are very committed (or desperate; if anyone who chooses to join eHarmony is truly desperate to get married, then it can potentially and partially explain why it produces such a high proportion of all marriages in the US). If Postrel is right, then it means that eHarmony is successful for exactly the same reasons that strict, conservative churches and college fraternities and sororities are successful – extremely high initial cost of membership."

Why Strict Churches Are Strong on JSTOR - "Strictness makes organizations stronger an more attractive because it reduces free riding. It screens out members who lack commitment and and stimulates participation among those who remain. Rational choice theory thus explains the success of sect, cults, and conservative denominations without recourse to assumptions of irrationality, abnormality, or misinformation. The theory also predicts differences between strict and lenient groups, distinguishes between effective and counterproductive demands, and demonstrates the need to adapt strict demands in response to social change."

How Time Preferences Differ: Evidence from 53 Countries - "We present results from the first large-scale international survey on time preference, conducted in 53 countries. All countries exhibit hyperbolic discounting patterns, i.e., the immediate future is discounted more than far future. We also observe higher heterogeneity for shorter time horizons, consistent with the pattern reviewed by Frederick, Loewenstein, and O’Donoghue (2002). Cultural factors as captured by the Hofstede cultural dimensions (Hofstede, 1991) contribute significantly to the variation of time discounting, even after controlling for economic factors, such as GDP, inflation rate and growth rate. In particular, higher levels of Uncertainty Avoidance are associated with stronger hyperbolic discounting, whereas higher degrees of Individualism and Long Term Orientation predict stronger tendency to wait for larger payoffs. We also find the waiting tendency is correlated with innovation, environmental protection, crediting rating, and body mass index at country level after controlling for county wealth. These results help us to enhance the understanding of differences across financial markets and economic behavior worldwide."
Not all cultures are the same

The today and tomorrow of kids: Time preferences and educational outcomes of children - "boys are more impatient than girls and black children are more impatient than white children. Black boys have the highest discount rates of all groups. Most importantly, we show that impatience has a direct correlation with behavior that is predictive of economic success. An increase of one standard deviation in the discount rate is associated with an increase in the number of disciplinary referrals that a child has the following school year by 14%. Our results suggest that impatience might play an important role in determining the success of performance incentive programs for school children."
Of course, one could just blame racism (but somehow not sexism)

Che Guevara and the West - "The 100 million victims of communism deserve better... His image is ubiquitous in the West — adorning the shirts and bags of an affluent but historically illiterate generation. Prince Harry, third in line to the British throne, was spotted wearing a Che t-shirt few years ago. This year’s “Icons” collection by Belstaff (an Italian clothing company) contains a “Che Guevara replica jacket.” Che Guevara, as Alvaro Vargas Llosa shows in The Che Guevara Myth and the Future of Liberty, was a megalomaniac and a murderer. Embarrassingly for the young idealists sporting his image, he was also a racist, a homophobe and an anti-Semite... Communism has so far escaped an appropriate degree of moral opprobrium for several reasons... The complicity of the current governing and intellectual elites in most of Central and Eastern Europe in the perpetuation of communism... Some, like the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, were Soviet spies. Others, like the Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, were ordinary communist party members. While the degree of their complicity with communism varies, these men (and women) have been morally compromised. Absolute condemnation of communism, in other words, would amount to condemnation of their past behavior. Few people have the courage publicly to admit their mistakes. Most prefer to justify their actions or to forget them. Unfortunately, many of the Western intellectuals who promoted communist ideas and minimized communist crimes have never recanted. Driven by naïve idealism and loathing of Western imperfections, they embraced a utopian vision of a society free of inequities between classes, races and genders; a society free of profit, greed and war. The more Western democracies tried to overcome their shortcomings, the more did the Western idealists trust the empty rhetoric of communism. In the end, the only equality that communism achieved was that of a breadline and that of a mass grave. Che Guevara symbolizes communism like no other. His image, like his beliefs, belongs in the dustbin of history."

When I ordered a 42-INCH TV I wasn't expecting a DWARF TRANSVESTITE - "I thought Raoul was a brand name. So I filled in the form and paid my money. When the doorbell rang the next day I was excited but it was a tiny wee bloke in a dress who said he was Raoul and I could do anything I wanted to him. He wasn't even a good tranny - he had a beard and hairy legs. I phoned trading standards but they didn't believe me so I thought I'd get my money's worth and we did some hand stuff"

Helicopter jailbreak gangster captured in France after 3-month hunt - "A gangster who made a Hollywood-style helicopter prison break was arrested in northern France early Wednesday after three months on the run, at times hiding under a burqa to get around... He has cited movie baddies such as Tony Montana in "Scarface" as an inspiration and said he discovered his "calling" at the age of 12."

Researchers Identify Hundreds of 'Selfie Deaths' From Media Reports - "between October 2011 and November 2017 there were English-language media reports of at least 259 separate “selfie deaths” in 137 separate incidents. The leading cause of death identified from the reports was drowning, but there were also numerous incidents involving transportation (including being struck by trains), falls, and fires. Less common causes of selfie-related deaths included electrocution, firearms, and animals... The vast majority of the deaths involved those aged 10-29. It also noted that roughly three-fourths of the incidents involved males, whose tendency towards stereotypically masculine risky behavior is well-documented... India had the highest number of deaths, followed by Russia, the United States, and Pakistan."

Twitter Blacklists Popular 'Wired Sources' News Account - "Wired Sources, a popular conservative news aggregation account whose slogan is “They ignore it? We report it,” has been banned from Twitter. The last tweet Wired Sources made before the ban was a video of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) admitting that the Democrat Party’s call for an FBI investigation against Judge Brett Kavanaugh was an “opening” to block him from the Supreme Court... “News outlets are being banned on Twitter in broad daylight, but at least we can rest assure that CNN will track down the guy who made the CNN gif because mocking CNN is a threat to the ‘Free Press’”... Twitter’s actions, in this case, do not follow the promise of CEO Jack Dorsey to Sean Hannity to be more transparent."

Talyors Hill riot: Victoria Police under fire for making no arrests of Sudanese rioters in Melbourne - "The community terrorised by warring Sudanese gangs has reacted with fury amid revelations police 'tactically' chose not to arrest the rampaging perpetrators... The riot squad broke up the two groups, who bragged police 'can't touch us', abused locals as 'white trash' and threatened to ransack their homes. Metro Commander Tim Hansen said arresting the youths was never the priority of police, even when officers were pelted with rocks... Victoria Police has come under fire from locals and the wider Melbourne community for not making any arrests, with many arguing officers are 'running scared of African gangs'."
Maybe this is why they show up in the crime statistics less than the "racist" "far right" thinks

Unemployment rate falls to 49-year low
So much for Trump bringing about the end of the world