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
Saturday, June 30, 2018
Links - 30th June 2018 (1)
My Talk at WIS2 - "Enforced silence is always and everywhere the enemy of truth and progress. If someone is forbidden from speaking, you are obviously not going to hear what they have to say. But enforced silence is also a way of robbing someone of their humanity"
Ba Humbugi! Let's Nameus That Speciesus - The New York Times - "There are species named for body parts and bodily functions, for celebrities, painters and writers, for cartoon characters and favorite sports. For those who find it to be all too much, there is even Ba humbugi, a snail from Fiji."
When Smug Liberals Met Conservative Trolls - The New York Times - "for many on the right, the real lesson of the Stewart-Carlson exchange was “Do as I say, not as I do.” Mr. Stewart urged sincerity and good-faith efforts at dialogue when lecturing Mr. Carlson but practiced the opposite when it suited him. Mr. Stewart’s smugness was itself a form of trolling. And conservatives, no matter what liberals might think of them, are not stupid. The clear lesson was that if you want to win, stop being the debate team kid in the bow tie and start being the class clown who gives that guy a wedgie... It’s no coincidence that at the moment the alt-right leader Richard Spencer was famously sucker-punched on camera, he was in the middle of explaining the elaborate in-joke signaled by his Pepe the Frog lapel pin. Nor that when Russians allegedly tried to meddle in the last presidential election, they chose to do it in meme form, with Facebook ads featuring Jesus and the Devil arm wrestling over the prospect of a Clinton victory, or promoting “Buff Bernie” pro-L.G.B.T. coloring books. Differences remain as fundamental as ever, but the way we talk about them is so superficial as to have become incoherent... One of the primary reactions to this new framing of the political debate has been exactly what you’d expect: Many sane, self-respecting people no longer want anything to do with either side."
This is Your Period in 2 Minutes | Glamour - YouTube
White guy parodies catcall video after New York street harassment footage goes viral - "Inspired by viral video of a woman being verbally harassed more than 100 times in 10 hours, Funny Or Die News conducted an “experiment” to see what would happen to a white man in her shoes. The generic-looking bloke looks uncomfortable as catcallers shower him with compliments, offer him burritos, jobs, Starbucks gift cards and high-fives, before carrying him through the streets on a throne. The video ends with this note: “100+ instances of verbal street privilege took place within 10 hours. This doesn’t include the countless Bud Light Limes, fist pumps, and small business loans that were offered. If you want to help, please do nothing. Leave the patriarchy in place.”"
Meet The Homeless Man Who Survives By Going Home With Women And Looking Good (Video)
IGN Brasil - Silvio Santos cada vez perdendo mais a linha...
Short Is Not A Cut Above | Style On The Dot - "A Singaporean journalist was booted out of the Oscars press room early this week for not wearing a long evening dress to the event. If only the folks at the Oscars knew: she was just a typical Singaporean... That she had survived the kick-out and was keen to tell all about it showed that many Singaporean girls are not embarrassed by their lack of sense of occasion. This is typical of the young today: I am in my best dress—that’s good enough"
yo amo los NOVENTAS 90´S - Posts - "Street Figther Cosplay!!!"
Illinois Enacts New Law Impacting Inquiries on Criminal Background Checks - "An employer (or employment agency) covered by the new law “may not inquire about or into, consider or require disclosure” of the criminal record or criminal history of an applicant until after the applicant has been determined to be qualified for the position and notified that the applicant has been selected for an interview. For those covered employers or employment agencies who do not conduct interviews, the inquiry into an applicant’s criminal background or history cannot take place until after a conditional offer of employment has been made to the applicant."
They just want black people to be discriminated against more
Queensland floods giant spider rescued from tree branch
Trump doesn’t have a science adviser. This slime mold is available. - "Jeff Sessions, the US attorney general, was sent a letter written on the behalf of slimy creatures that have, since May, enjoyed a collective faculty appointment at Hampshire College in Western Massachusetts. The slime mold’s recommendation for Sessions was that “cannabis and its chemical derivatives should be legalized by the United States government.”... The mold is Hampshire College’s first “nonhuman resident scholar,” complete with its own office and faculty webpage. (This very much fits in with the culture of Hampshire College, an institution that is so liberal arts it doesn’t have “majors” and that recently hosted an event exploring “the effects of mass incarceration through dance.”)... The slime mold holds office hours, and the Hampshire students who work in the lab are its research assistants"
Minnesota has the most refugees per capita in the U.S. Will that continue? - "They say the more refugees, the better. They argue that refugees boost the economy, diversify our state and eventually pay back the costs of their resettlement. Yet, refugees cost an estimated $107,000 each in food aid, medical expenses and other services, according to one researcher. Communities have no control over the in-flow of refugees, yet they must share the cost of supporting them. And residents often don’t speak out or even ask questions of the process for fear of being called racists... A 2017 Notre Dame study on the economic outlook of refugees said that after 20 years, refugees are more likely than native-born residents to be receiving welfare and food-support payments — and they are also more likely to be employed... The family fled to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where they remained for eight years. “I did house cleaning, plumbing, cutting grass, driving a taxi,” recalled Sivasundaram. The family remembers, above all, the crime. “You couldn’t use a phone in the street. Someone would take it,” said Sivasundaram. “Someone would cut off the ears of old ladies for the earrings.” The boys faced a unique danger. “They would have kidnapped me for the military, or sold me to another country,” said Kapilas, his 17-year-old son... They laugh about the quirks of their new homeland. “I like Chick-Fil-A. The food in Malaysia is healthier, but this is tastier,” said Simraj, 16. Apilas, 13, is fascinated by boneless fish, which he never encountered in Malaysia. “I always ask: Is that fish, or is that steak?” he said."
Perhaps just as liberals conflate illegal and legal immigrants, they conflate refugees and economic migrants to claim that refugees boost the economy
Oxford University Issues Public Apology After Photo of Female Custodian Cleaning Campus Goes Viral - "Oxford University political theory professor Sophie Smith published a tweet on Thursday with a photo of a female custodian erasing a “Happy International Women’s Day” chalk writing on the Clarendon steps on Oxford’s campus... Smith fired back, demanding that the custodian receive the rest of the day off and a “warm cup of tea.” “I appreciate your apology, but far more importantly can you please make sure that the woman asked to remove the message receives a heartfelt apology, a warm cup of tea, the rest of the day off and, along with all our precarious staff, good enough pay to live in this city,” Smith tweeted."
Moral of the story: Don't hire women cleaners? Allow graffiti?
Poll: Feminism Makes People Less Attractive to the Opposite Sex - "Sky Data asked people in the UK, “If someone told you they were a feminist, would it make you more or less likely to want to start a romantic relationship with them?” While the majority of respondents said it made “no difference,” 17% said it would make attraction less likely, with just 7% saying it would make a relationship more likely. Even amongst women, a slight majority said they found male feminists more of a turn off than a turn on when it came to romantic attraction. Participants were also asked, “Are you a feminist?” 66% answered no, with 34% saying yes. Even amongst women, a clear majority, 58% to 42% said they didn’t identify as feminists. The survey also found that 40% thought feminism had “gone too far,” with 27% thinking it had gone “as far as it should go” and 33% thinking it hadn’t gone far enough."
Jamie Oliver: My customers steal 30,000 napkins a month and even take the toilet fittings
'Me Too' Leads to Women Being Shunned in the Office - "Korea has an ingrained office drinking culture, where all kinds of bullying by superiors goes on amid enforced conviviality. To be on the safe side, men now deliberately exclude women from office gatherings and business trips, leading to an equally unwelcome form of ostracism... "I rarely talk with my boss these days. He used to be very chatty with the female staff, but nowadays he only gives instructions by text message." Her boss apparently told other workers that he feared any comments could be misunderstood by female staff"... Online communities here are filled with comments from men saying that their female colleagues scare them now"
Another example of how feminism can make women worse off
Survey finds men, women rate sexual harassment differently - "In a list of 20 actions ranging from groping to light-hearted flirting, men in all cases but one were less likely than women to rate a specific act as sexual harassment. The exception – light-hearted flirting – was considered sexual harassment by 12 percent of both men and women. In all other cases, however, women were 10 to 20 percent more likely to rate an action as sexual harassment than men."
i.e. Men are less sensitive, which helps to explain the above
1 in 10 Women Sexually Harassed at Work - "Most harassment was off-color remarks or forcing women to pour alcohol in group meals or sit next to particular men."
From another article: "Of those who reported having experienced some form of sexual harassment, the most common form was off-color remarks with 33.8 percent, followed by comments on how someone's looks or dresses with 30 percent. Other uncomfortable situations included speculation about the women's sex life"
Even in Korea, the bar for sexual harassment is very low; it doesn't say whether persistence was needed for it to be counted as harassment
Workplaces No Exception to Rampant Bullying - "The most frequently cited case was of a team leader singling out one employee and encouraging other members of the team to gang up on them. The second-biggest scourge mentioned was when a number of workers ostracize one of their colleagues. There are also cases of employees ostracizing their boss. Although bullying is rampant in workplaces, the majority of companies do not seem to take this social ill seriously. Rather, in some cases, companies fire the bullied employee for disrupting the harmony of the organization"
From Korea too
The spread of true and false news online - "Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information, and the effects were more pronounced for false political news than for false news about terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, or financial information. We found that false news was more novel than true news, which suggests that people were more likely to share novel information. Whereas false stories inspired fear, disgust, and surprise in replies, true stories inspired anticipation, sadness, joy, and trust. Contrary to conventional wisdom, robots accelerated the spread of true and false news at the same rate, implying that false news spreads more than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it."
Poll Finds Black Americans More Likely to Be Seen as Racist - "Thirty-seven percent of poll respondents said "most black Americans" are racist, compared to just 15 percent who said most whites are racist and 18 percent who said most Hispanics are racist. Black respondents ranked their own demographic as more likely to be racist. Thirty-one percent of African-Americans said most blacks are racist, according to the polling organization, while only 24 percent of those respondents said most whites are racist... 32 percent of respondents thought race relations are getting worse, compared to 29 percent who said they're getting better"
Looks like many blacks don't subscribe to the "black people cannot be racist" school of thought
The Invasion of the Male Space: An Encounter at the Barbershop - "Put yourself into a locker-room of a sports team. People are whipping each other with towels, calling each other names and generally horsing around. Now imagine that the team manager, a girl, walks into the locker room. All of that behavior gets locked down in seconds. Typically, it gets locked down because men, through experience, know that women are uncomfortable in a setting like that. What I have found is that this is simply how men communicate when we are around one another"
Women-only sex club makes its Asian debut in Shanghai, doing its bit to reduce gender inequality - "By instilling its members with sexual confidence, LeJeune hopes to help reduce gender inequality. “My motto is ‘Confidence in the bedroom, confidence in the boardroom’, because the two are linked,” she says. “Confident women will reach out for the more senior roles in their companies and demand equal pay and take the CEO position. There can only be good come from that"
Student barred from class for claiming there are two genders - "the class was forced to watch a Ted-Talk on February 28 featuring Paula Stone, a transgender woman, who gave examples of “mansplaining,” “male privilege,” and systematic sexism. Following the video, Ingle wrote that the instructor “opened the floor to WOMEN ONLY. Barring men from speaking until the women in the class have had their chance to speak.” After some time had elapsed, Ingle stated he “took this opportunity to point out the official view of biologists who claim there are only two biological genders,” and refuted the “gender wage gap,” after which class resumed as normal... “During my time as a Religious Studies major, I have had professors insult me for opposing views, call me names such as ‘racist’ or ‘sexist’, and have had my views discredited due my race, gender, and sexual orientation”"
Indiana University of Pennsylvania Professor Alison Downie Explains Why Smiling Christians Enraged Her - "Religion professor Alison Downie, who threw a student out of her class for arguing that there are only two genders, published a blog post earlier this year explaining why a group of smiling Christians sent her into an unanticipated rage... One member of the church held up a sign to passing cars that read “SMILE! It’s Sunday!” According to her own account, Downie flew into a fit of rage after she read the sign. She explained that the sign made her want to bring intense pain upon the members of the church so that they could understand that faith alone is not reason enough to smile."
David Moe's answer to Since Europeans and Canadians criticize the US medical system, why do so many of them fly to the US to get treatment? - Quora - "Nobody in their right mind would go to the US for a hip replacement since the Indian doctors are perfectly good and the hospital standards if you are paying cash in India are quite high. Many of the doctors were trained in Canada and the US. There is no reason at all for a Canadian to have a medical procedure done in the US unless they have far more money than they really need and want to throw it away somehow. Everywhere else is cheaper. Dental care is not covered by Canadian Medicare, so I know people who go to Mexico for their dental work, and combine it with a vacation, since the savings can pay for the vacation. Nobody goes to the US for dental work. Bottom line: American medical care is just way too expensive by international standards... Americans who need medical treatments and have to pay for it themselves are better off going to Mexico, India, or some other country because the costs are much lower and the standards for private health care nearly as high."
Ba Humbugi! Let's Nameus That Speciesus - The New York Times - "There are species named for body parts and bodily functions, for celebrities, painters and writers, for cartoon characters and favorite sports. For those who find it to be all too much, there is even Ba humbugi, a snail from Fiji."
When Smug Liberals Met Conservative Trolls - The New York Times - "for many on the right, the real lesson of the Stewart-Carlson exchange was “Do as I say, not as I do.” Mr. Stewart urged sincerity and good-faith efforts at dialogue when lecturing Mr. Carlson but practiced the opposite when it suited him. Mr. Stewart’s smugness was itself a form of trolling. And conservatives, no matter what liberals might think of them, are not stupid. The clear lesson was that if you want to win, stop being the debate team kid in the bow tie and start being the class clown who gives that guy a wedgie... It’s no coincidence that at the moment the alt-right leader Richard Spencer was famously sucker-punched on camera, he was in the middle of explaining the elaborate in-joke signaled by his Pepe the Frog lapel pin. Nor that when Russians allegedly tried to meddle in the last presidential election, they chose to do it in meme form, with Facebook ads featuring Jesus and the Devil arm wrestling over the prospect of a Clinton victory, or promoting “Buff Bernie” pro-L.G.B.T. coloring books. Differences remain as fundamental as ever, but the way we talk about them is so superficial as to have become incoherent... One of the primary reactions to this new framing of the political debate has been exactly what you’d expect: Many sane, self-respecting people no longer want anything to do with either side."
This is Your Period in 2 Minutes | Glamour - YouTube
White guy parodies catcall video after New York street harassment footage goes viral - "Inspired by viral video of a woman being verbally harassed more than 100 times in 10 hours, Funny Or Die News conducted an “experiment” to see what would happen to a white man in her shoes. The generic-looking bloke looks uncomfortable as catcallers shower him with compliments, offer him burritos, jobs, Starbucks gift cards and high-fives, before carrying him through the streets on a throne. The video ends with this note: “100+ instances of verbal street privilege took place within 10 hours. This doesn’t include the countless Bud Light Limes, fist pumps, and small business loans that were offered. If you want to help, please do nothing. Leave the patriarchy in place.”"
Meet The Homeless Man Who Survives By Going Home With Women And Looking Good (Video)
IGN Brasil - Silvio Santos cada vez perdendo mais a linha...
Short Is Not A Cut Above | Style On The Dot - "A Singaporean journalist was booted out of the Oscars press room early this week for not wearing a long evening dress to the event. If only the folks at the Oscars knew: she was just a typical Singaporean... That she had survived the kick-out and was keen to tell all about it showed that many Singaporean girls are not embarrassed by their lack of sense of occasion. This is typical of the young today: I am in my best dress—that’s good enough"
yo amo los NOVENTAS 90´S - Posts - "Street Figther Cosplay!!!"
Illinois Enacts New Law Impacting Inquiries on Criminal Background Checks - "An employer (or employment agency) covered by the new law “may not inquire about or into, consider or require disclosure” of the criminal record or criminal history of an applicant until after the applicant has been determined to be qualified for the position and notified that the applicant has been selected for an interview. For those covered employers or employment agencies who do not conduct interviews, the inquiry into an applicant’s criminal background or history cannot take place until after a conditional offer of employment has been made to the applicant."
They just want black people to be discriminated against more
Queensland floods giant spider rescued from tree branch
Trump doesn’t have a science adviser. This slime mold is available. - "Jeff Sessions, the US attorney general, was sent a letter written on the behalf of slimy creatures that have, since May, enjoyed a collective faculty appointment at Hampshire College in Western Massachusetts. The slime mold’s recommendation for Sessions was that “cannabis and its chemical derivatives should be legalized by the United States government.”... The mold is Hampshire College’s first “nonhuman resident scholar,” complete with its own office and faculty webpage. (This very much fits in with the culture of Hampshire College, an institution that is so liberal arts it doesn’t have “majors” and that recently hosted an event exploring “the effects of mass incarceration through dance.”)... The slime mold holds office hours, and the Hampshire students who work in the lab are its research assistants"
Minnesota has the most refugees per capita in the U.S. Will that continue? - "They say the more refugees, the better. They argue that refugees boost the economy, diversify our state and eventually pay back the costs of their resettlement. Yet, refugees cost an estimated $107,000 each in food aid, medical expenses and other services, according to one researcher. Communities have no control over the in-flow of refugees, yet they must share the cost of supporting them. And residents often don’t speak out or even ask questions of the process for fear of being called racists... A 2017 Notre Dame study on the economic outlook of refugees said that after 20 years, refugees are more likely than native-born residents to be receiving welfare and food-support payments — and they are also more likely to be employed... The family fled to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where they remained for eight years. “I did house cleaning, plumbing, cutting grass, driving a taxi,” recalled Sivasundaram. The family remembers, above all, the crime. “You couldn’t use a phone in the street. Someone would take it,” said Sivasundaram. “Someone would cut off the ears of old ladies for the earrings.” The boys faced a unique danger. “They would have kidnapped me for the military, or sold me to another country,” said Kapilas, his 17-year-old son... They laugh about the quirks of their new homeland. “I like Chick-Fil-A. The food in Malaysia is healthier, but this is tastier,” said Simraj, 16. Apilas, 13, is fascinated by boneless fish, which he never encountered in Malaysia. “I always ask: Is that fish, or is that steak?” he said."
Perhaps just as liberals conflate illegal and legal immigrants, they conflate refugees and economic migrants to claim that refugees boost the economy
Oxford University Issues Public Apology After Photo of Female Custodian Cleaning Campus Goes Viral - "Oxford University political theory professor Sophie Smith published a tweet on Thursday with a photo of a female custodian erasing a “Happy International Women’s Day” chalk writing on the Clarendon steps on Oxford’s campus... Smith fired back, demanding that the custodian receive the rest of the day off and a “warm cup of tea.” “I appreciate your apology, but far more importantly can you please make sure that the woman asked to remove the message receives a heartfelt apology, a warm cup of tea, the rest of the day off and, along with all our precarious staff, good enough pay to live in this city,” Smith tweeted."
Moral of the story: Don't hire women cleaners? Allow graffiti?
Poll: Feminism Makes People Less Attractive to the Opposite Sex - "Sky Data asked people in the UK, “If someone told you they were a feminist, would it make you more or less likely to want to start a romantic relationship with them?” While the majority of respondents said it made “no difference,” 17% said it would make attraction less likely, with just 7% saying it would make a relationship more likely. Even amongst women, a slight majority said they found male feminists more of a turn off than a turn on when it came to romantic attraction. Participants were also asked, “Are you a feminist?” 66% answered no, with 34% saying yes. Even amongst women, a clear majority, 58% to 42% said they didn’t identify as feminists. The survey also found that 40% thought feminism had “gone too far,” with 27% thinking it had gone “as far as it should go” and 33% thinking it hadn’t gone far enough."
Jamie Oliver: My customers steal 30,000 napkins a month and even take the toilet fittings
'Me Too' Leads to Women Being Shunned in the Office - "Korea has an ingrained office drinking culture, where all kinds of bullying by superiors goes on amid enforced conviviality. To be on the safe side, men now deliberately exclude women from office gatherings and business trips, leading to an equally unwelcome form of ostracism... "I rarely talk with my boss these days. He used to be very chatty with the female staff, but nowadays he only gives instructions by text message." Her boss apparently told other workers that he feared any comments could be misunderstood by female staff"... Online communities here are filled with comments from men saying that their female colleagues scare them now"
Another example of how feminism can make women worse off
Survey finds men, women rate sexual harassment differently - "In a list of 20 actions ranging from groping to light-hearted flirting, men in all cases but one were less likely than women to rate a specific act as sexual harassment. The exception – light-hearted flirting – was considered sexual harassment by 12 percent of both men and women. In all other cases, however, women were 10 to 20 percent more likely to rate an action as sexual harassment than men."
i.e. Men are less sensitive, which helps to explain the above
1 in 10 Women Sexually Harassed at Work - "Most harassment was off-color remarks or forcing women to pour alcohol in group meals or sit next to particular men."
From another article: "Of those who reported having experienced some form of sexual harassment, the most common form was off-color remarks with 33.8 percent, followed by comments on how someone's looks or dresses with 30 percent. Other uncomfortable situations included speculation about the women's sex life"
Even in Korea, the bar for sexual harassment is very low; it doesn't say whether persistence was needed for it to be counted as harassment
Workplaces No Exception to Rampant Bullying - "The most frequently cited case was of a team leader singling out one employee and encouraging other members of the team to gang up on them. The second-biggest scourge mentioned was when a number of workers ostracize one of their colleagues. There are also cases of employees ostracizing their boss. Although bullying is rampant in workplaces, the majority of companies do not seem to take this social ill seriously. Rather, in some cases, companies fire the bullied employee for disrupting the harmony of the organization"
From Korea too
The spread of true and false news online - "Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information, and the effects were more pronounced for false political news than for false news about terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, or financial information. We found that false news was more novel than true news, which suggests that people were more likely to share novel information. Whereas false stories inspired fear, disgust, and surprise in replies, true stories inspired anticipation, sadness, joy, and trust. Contrary to conventional wisdom, robots accelerated the spread of true and false news at the same rate, implying that false news spreads more than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it."
Poll Finds Black Americans More Likely to Be Seen as Racist - "Thirty-seven percent of poll respondents said "most black Americans" are racist, compared to just 15 percent who said most whites are racist and 18 percent who said most Hispanics are racist. Black respondents ranked their own demographic as more likely to be racist. Thirty-one percent of African-Americans said most blacks are racist, according to the polling organization, while only 24 percent of those respondents said most whites are racist... 32 percent of respondents thought race relations are getting worse, compared to 29 percent who said they're getting better"
Looks like many blacks don't subscribe to the "black people cannot be racist" school of thought
The Invasion of the Male Space: An Encounter at the Barbershop - "Put yourself into a locker-room of a sports team. People are whipping each other with towels, calling each other names and generally horsing around. Now imagine that the team manager, a girl, walks into the locker room. All of that behavior gets locked down in seconds. Typically, it gets locked down because men, through experience, know that women are uncomfortable in a setting like that. What I have found is that this is simply how men communicate when we are around one another"
Women-only sex club makes its Asian debut in Shanghai, doing its bit to reduce gender inequality - "By instilling its members with sexual confidence, LeJeune hopes to help reduce gender inequality. “My motto is ‘Confidence in the bedroom, confidence in the boardroom’, because the two are linked,” she says. “Confident women will reach out for the more senior roles in their companies and demand equal pay and take the CEO position. There can only be good come from that"
Student barred from class for claiming there are two genders - "the class was forced to watch a Ted-Talk on February 28 featuring Paula Stone, a transgender woman, who gave examples of “mansplaining,” “male privilege,” and systematic sexism. Following the video, Ingle wrote that the instructor “opened the floor to WOMEN ONLY. Barring men from speaking until the women in the class have had their chance to speak.” After some time had elapsed, Ingle stated he “took this opportunity to point out the official view of biologists who claim there are only two biological genders,” and refuted the “gender wage gap,” after which class resumed as normal... “During my time as a Religious Studies major, I have had professors insult me for opposing views, call me names such as ‘racist’ or ‘sexist’, and have had my views discredited due my race, gender, and sexual orientation”"
Indiana University of Pennsylvania Professor Alison Downie Explains Why Smiling Christians Enraged Her - "Religion professor Alison Downie, who threw a student out of her class for arguing that there are only two genders, published a blog post earlier this year explaining why a group of smiling Christians sent her into an unanticipated rage... One member of the church held up a sign to passing cars that read “SMILE! It’s Sunday!” According to her own account, Downie flew into a fit of rage after she read the sign. She explained that the sign made her want to bring intense pain upon the members of the church so that they could understand that faith alone is not reason enough to smile."
David Moe's answer to Since Europeans and Canadians criticize the US medical system, why do so many of them fly to the US to get treatment? - Quora - "Nobody in their right mind would go to the US for a hip replacement since the Indian doctors are perfectly good and the hospital standards if you are paying cash in India are quite high. Many of the doctors were trained in Canada and the US. There is no reason at all for a Canadian to have a medical procedure done in the US unless they have far more money than they really need and want to throw it away somehow. Everywhere else is cheaper. Dental care is not covered by Canadian Medicare, so I know people who go to Mexico for their dental work, and combine it with a vacation, since the savings can pay for the vacation. Nobody goes to the US for dental work. Bottom line: American medical care is just way too expensive by international standards... Americans who need medical treatments and have to pay for it themselves are better off going to Mexico, India, or some other country because the costs are much lower and the standards for private health care nearly as high."
Friday, June 29, 2018
Links - 29th June 2018 (2)
Black Protest Has Lost Its Power - WSJ - "To hear, for example, that more than 4,000 people were shot in Chicago in 2016 embarrasses us because this level of largely black-on-black crime cannot be blamed simply on white racism... That’s why, in the face of freedom’s unsparing judgmentalism, we reflexively claim that freedom is a lie. We conjure elaborate narratives that give white racism new life in the present: “systemic” and “structural” racism, racist “microaggressions,” “white privilege,” and so on. All these narratives insist that blacks are still victims of racism, and that freedom’s accountability is an injustice. We end up giving victimization the charisma of black authenticity. Suffering, poverty and underdevelopment are the things that make you “truly black.” Success and achievement throw your authenticity into question. The NFL protests were not really about injustice. Instead such protests are usually genuflections to today’s victim-focused black identity. Protest is the action arm of this identity. It is not seeking a new and better world; it merely wants documentation that the old racist world still exists. It wants an excuse... the NFL protests may be a harbinger of change. They elicited considerable resentment. There have been counterprotests. TV viewership has gone down. Ticket sales have dropped. What is remarkable about this response is that it may foretell a new fearlessness in white America—a new willingness in whites (and blacks outside the victim-focused identity) to say to blacks what they really think and feel, to judge blacks fairly by standards that are universal. We blacks have lived in a bubble since the 1960s because whites have been deferential for fear of being seen as racist. The NFL protests reveal the fundamental obsolescence—for both blacks and whites—of a victim-focused approach to racial inequality. It causes whites to retreat into deference and blacks to become nothing more than victims. It makes engaging as human beings and as citizens impermissible, a betrayal of the sacred group identity"
The Black Family in 1965 and Today - ""The average high-income black person lives in a neighborhood with a higher poverty rate than the average low-income white person"... The concentration of poverty in inner cities means many black children are exposed daily to crime and violence. Their turbulent environment makes it harder for them to acquire habits of discipline and self-restraint."
The Black Family: 40 Years of Lies - "Moynihan argued that the rise in single-mother families was not due to a lack of jobs but rather to a destructive vein in ghetto culture that could be traced back to slavery and Jim Crow discrimination... Moynihan went much further than merely overthrowing familiar explanations about the cause of poverty. He also described, through pages of disquieting charts and graphs, the emergence of a “tangle of pathology,” including delinquency, joblessness, school failure, crime, and fatherlessness that characterized ghetto—or what would come to be called underclass—behavior... For white liberals and the black establishment, poverty became a zero-sum game: either you believed, as they did, that there was a defect in the system, or you believed that there was a defect in the individual. It was as if critiquing the family meant that you supported inferior schools, even that you were a racist. Though “The Negro Family” had been a masterpiece of complex analysis that implied that individuals were intricately entwined in a variety of systems—familial, cultural, and economic—it gave birth to a hardened, either/or politics from which the country has barely recovered... Scholars invented a fantasy family—strong and healthy, a poor man’s Brady Bunch—whose function was not to reflect truth but to soothe injured black self-esteem and to bolster the emerging feminist critique of male privilege, bourgeois individualism, and the nuclear family. The literature of this period was so evasive, so implausible, so far removed from what was really unfolding in the ghetto, that if you didn’t know better, you might conclude that people actually wanted to keep the black family separate and unequal... Other black pride–inspired scholars looked at female-headed families and declared them authentically African and therefore a good thing... In fact, some scholars continued, maybe the nuclear family was really just a toxic white hang-up, anyway... Feminists, similarly fixated on overturning the “oppressive ideal of the nuclear family,” also welcomed this dubious scholarship... Fretting about single-parent families was now not only racist but also sexist, an effort to deny women their independence, their sexuality, or both. As for the poverty of single mothers, that was simply more proof of patriarchal oppression. In 1978, University of Wisconsin researcher Diana Pearce introduced the useful term “feminization of poverty.” But for her and her many allies, the problem was not the crumbling of the nuclear family; it was the lack of government support for single women and the failure of business to pay women their due."
The Curse of Double-Digit Growth - "Werker identified shared characteristics of double-digit growers; conditions that often weren't sustainable. He found that natural resource exports were a crucial driver in 17 of the incidents of high growth, while 13 were pushed along by political reforms or economic diversification, most of which were temporary. Nine featured foreign aid and remittances playing a significant role, and another nine benefited from the catch-up following low-income levels caused during war or conflict. Five incidents were credited, or partially credited, to government spending on infrastructure or jobs. In most cases accelerated growth proved a two-edged sword... Overall, the double-digit fraternity exhibited a worse performance on every indicator of the quality of the business environment compared to the 6-7 percent growers"
‘Crosses’ on rooftops of housing project in Langkawi create stir - "A decision by the Kedah state government to order the developer of a housing project in Langkawi to paint over air wells on rooftops that resemble crosses from afar has led to calls for Malaysians to be less prejudicial over one another’s religions. According to media reports, Kedah State Education, Transport and Housing Committee chairman Tajul Urus Mat Zain said the developer did not mean to create the cross symbols, but had built an internal air well to enhance light and air ventilation... “Even the multiplication sign is a cross; even the letter ‘t’ is a cross"... an opposition Member of Parliament, Mr Lim Lip Eng, questioned whether the cross-shaped Kuala Lumpur International Airport should also be torn down because of religious sensitivities... He suggested that the individuals who raised the issue were suffering from “eye problems”, after aerial angles of the offending homes showed that the air wells were square rather than cross-shaped. The case in Kedah is the most recent controversy over Christian icons, both actual and perceived, in Malaysia. In April, an angry mob protested outside a church in Taman Medan, Petaling Jaya, and demanded the removal of the cross affixed to the exterior of the building."
Malaysia Boleh!
Why Some of the Worst Attacks on Social Science Have Come From Liberals - "What she found, over and over, was that researchers whose conclusions didn’t line up with politically correct orthodoxies — whether the orthodoxy in question involved sexual abuse, transgender issues, or whatever else — often faced dire, career-threatening consequences simply for doing their jobs. Two examples stand out as particularly egregious cases in which solid social science was attacked in the name of progressive causes. The first involves Napoleon Chagnon, an extremely influential anthropologist who dedicated years of his life to understanding and living among the Yanomamö, an indigenous tribe situated in the Amazon rain forest on the Brazil-Venezuela border... Chagnon’s reputation as a careful, dedicated scholar didn’t matter to his critics — what mattered was that his version of the Yanomamö was “Not your standard liberal image of the unjustly oppressed, naturally peaceful, environmentally gentle rain-forest Indian family”... Dreger also recounts her earlier investigation into the controversy surrounding J. Michael Bailey, a Northwestern University psychologist and researcher of human sexuality and former chair of that university’s psychology department... some transgender people and activists hold very dear the idea that they have simply been born in the wrong type of body, that transitioning allows them to effectively fix a mistake that nature made. The notion that there might be a cultural component to the decision to transition, or that sexuality, rather than a hardwired gender identity, could be a factor, complicates this gender-identity-only narrative. It also brings sexuality back into a conversation that some trans activists have been trying to make solely about gender identity — roughly parallel to the way some gay-rights activists sweep conversations about actual gay sexuality under the rug, preferring to focus on idealized, unthreatening-to-heterosexuals portrayals of committed gay relationships between clean-cut, taxpaying adult"
The liberal war on science
How to Spot a Bad Boss During an Interview - "You can often get a sense of your potential manager by asking probing questions, but be careful how you phrase them. “People say an interview is a two-way process,” Lees says. “In practice, that doesn’t work very well.” The interviewer might misinterpret multiple questions about his management approach as disinterest in the job. Fernández-Aráoz agrees: “What you should not do is ask direct questions, like ‘Tell me about your leadership style,’” he says. Not only could this signal hesitancy on your part, but it’s unlikely to get you an honest answer, because your interviewer is in selling mode. Instead, ask questions that will help your potential manager visualize you actually doing the job. “What will I do on a day-to-day basis?” “How will I learn?” Phrasing your questions as if you already have the job will help the hiring manager create a mental picture of you in the role. At the same time, you can watch how she responds. “Look for her willingness to engage in dialogue, rather than asking you pre-established questions,” says Fernández-Aráoz. “Think of it like rehearsing a collaborative working session with your future boss.” If she’s willing to engage with you during the interview, she’ll likely engage with you in a working relationship"
Micropenis: Prevalence and etiologic profile at CHU of Rabat - "The prevalence of micropenis is increasing in our service. Etiologies are diverse but idiopathic causes are the majority in our series, assuming hypothesis on parental contamination by endocrine disruptors."
So much for that Voynich manuscript “solution” - "a history researcher and television writer named Nicholas Gibbs published a long article in the Times Literary Supplement about how he'd cracked the code on the mysterious Voynich Manuscript. Unfortunately, say experts, his analysis was a mix of stuff we already knew and stuff he couldn't possibly prove"
SPLIT: Feminists Reject Pussy Hat As Offensive to 'Women with Penises' and 'Brown Genitalia' - "Never mind that the hat has cat ears, and not a vulva. The color pink, according to the Pussyhat Project, which first designed the headwear following the 2016 general election, was chosen “because pink is associated with femininity,” according to a post on its website"
I Love Wolf Whistles and Catcalls; Am I a Bad Feminist? - "Harassment, by its very nature, is unacceptable. But is catcalling always harassment? The Independent's social-media editor, Felicity Morse, loves catcalls, and I'm guessing she gets loads because she's freaking hot. Even though I'm probably not supposed to say that. She told me, "If I'm dressed up in a sexy little something, if I'm sashaying down the street and tossing a head of freshly washed hair like I think I'm Beyoncé, I find a catcall rather appreciative. But if I'm out jogging or running to the bus stop, huddling past a building site in the rain, I find it intrusive." It also depends on the number of men and what they're doing: "If they are working on a building site or something, where they can't really leave their work, it's almost traditional to wolf-whistle and pretty meaningless, so I don't feel threatened. But a big gang of young men in the dark? I wouldn't even acknowledge I'd heard them." Would she give her number to a guy in the street? "Probably, but I wouldn't have high hopes for a relationship! That's not harassment; it's flattering. If he doesn't go away? That's harassment." She'd still ban catcalls on the basis that they upset many women, though. This is kind of my problem with the debate around street attention. It's part of a culture that infantilizes women and teaches them to be constantly afraid... Nichi Hodgson, author of Bound to You, sex columnist for Men's Health, and director of the Ethical Porn Partnership, said there's a certain kind of middle-class woman that finds catcalls particularly galling: "There's a sense of being sullied if an uncouth or lower-class kind of man—a white-van man, for example—heckles. But if it's a Roger Sterling type who can just about pull it off with a certain retro-sexist panache, the offense isn't experienced the same." Laura said that growing up in working-class West Yorkshire and learning to hit back with witty repartee was a kind of rite of passage. The same is true where I come from, although it's the blokes who need the comebacks. Let's just say Nottingham girls aren't shy... I phoned my mom afterward, and she said catcalls are like periods—she hated them when she was younger but feels sad now they're about to dry up. Wow, mother... The Guardian's Ellie Mae O'Hagan said it doesn't surprise her that some women like catcalls: "One of the ways patriarchy sustains itself is by convincing women that their worth is determined by the approval of men along a strict set of terms. Getting wolf-whistled at is a small confirmation that a woman is meeting the terms patriarchy demands of her." Couldn't you say that about pretty much anything, though? Like, if a woman tells another woman "Great dress!" is she letting her know that she's meeting the expectations of capitalism and the fashion industry and beauty culture? Or is she just telling her she likes her dress? Or is it a bit of both?... Ellie goes further and cites studies that suggest sexual violence is "to an extent rooted in ideologies of male sexual entitlement," though I struggle to see any real connection between rape and the guy who wolf-whistled at me this morning... men, for the record, I haven't spoken to any woman yet who likes being told, "I'd like to fuck you up the ass" as you drive past her in the street. So stop it with that, you shitheads. I just wish we could make a distinction between harassment like this and harmless fun... I'll leave you with the words of 86-year-old Jinx Allen Craig, the woman in catcalling's greatest portrait, An American Girl in Italy: "It's not a symbol of harassment. It's a symbol of a woman having an absolutely wonderful time!""
Requirement to tell foster kids the Easter Bunny is real violated couple’s charter rights, judge rules - "A couple’s charter rights were violated when a children’s aid society closed the pair’s foster home over their refusal to tell two young girls the Easter Bunny is real, an Ontario court has ruled... Lindsay told them it was part of their duty as foster parents to teach the girls about the Easter Bunny... The Baars told Lindsay they intended to hide chocolate eggs and have the girls find them on Easter and play other games, but didn’t plan not to speak to the children about the Easter Bunny, unless the girls specifically asked questions about the character"
Evidence supporting the biologic nature of gender identity. - "Evidence that there is a biologic basis for gender identity primarily involves (1) data on gender identity in patients with disorders of sex development (DSDs, also known as differences of sex development) along with (2) neuroanatomical differences associated with gender identity."
So much for claims that sex and gender are unrelated, or that sex is a scientific myth, or other outlandish claims inspired by trans mania
The mirage of working as a stewardess in Dubai - "We were also told that our organs wouldn’t be viable for transplant after 2 years of flying. We were afraid to ask why but we had our guesses right. Above all that any testimony in court would not be taken into account after 3 years of working as a flight attendant. We didn’t ask the reason and even if we did I am pretty sure the response would have been a rhetorical question"
Science Analyzes the Academy Awards Speech - "Crying is less common that you’d think: only 21% of actors and actresses choke up and a mere 3% of directors do. And it’s a relatively recent phenomenon: fully 71% of the tears have come since 1995"
In Defense of Looting - "It is in solidarity with these latter protesters–along with those who loot–and against politicians and de-escalators everywhere that I offer this critique, as a way of invigorating discussion amongst those engaged in anti-oppression struggle, in Ferguson and anywhere else the police violently perpetuate white supremacy and settler colonialism. In other words, anywhere in America... Modern American police forces evolved out of fugitive slave patrols, working to literally keep property from escaping its owners. The history of the police in America is the history of black people being violently prevented from threatening white people’s property rights. When, in the midst of an anti-police protest movement, people loot, they aren’t acting non-politically, they aren’t distracting from the issue of police violence and domination, nor are they fanning the flames of an always-already racist media discourse. Instead, they are getting straight to the heart of the problem of the police, property, and white supremacy. Solidarity with all Ferguson rebels! Justice for Mike Brown!"
Ahh... anti-racism!
The Black Family in 1965 and Today - ""The average high-income black person lives in a neighborhood with a higher poverty rate than the average low-income white person"... The concentration of poverty in inner cities means many black children are exposed daily to crime and violence. Their turbulent environment makes it harder for them to acquire habits of discipline and self-restraint."
The Black Family: 40 Years of Lies - "Moynihan argued that the rise in single-mother families was not due to a lack of jobs but rather to a destructive vein in ghetto culture that could be traced back to slavery and Jim Crow discrimination... Moynihan went much further than merely overthrowing familiar explanations about the cause of poverty. He also described, through pages of disquieting charts and graphs, the emergence of a “tangle of pathology,” including delinquency, joblessness, school failure, crime, and fatherlessness that characterized ghetto—or what would come to be called underclass—behavior... For white liberals and the black establishment, poverty became a zero-sum game: either you believed, as they did, that there was a defect in the system, or you believed that there was a defect in the individual. It was as if critiquing the family meant that you supported inferior schools, even that you were a racist. Though “The Negro Family” had been a masterpiece of complex analysis that implied that individuals were intricately entwined in a variety of systems—familial, cultural, and economic—it gave birth to a hardened, either/or politics from which the country has barely recovered... Scholars invented a fantasy family—strong and healthy, a poor man’s Brady Bunch—whose function was not to reflect truth but to soothe injured black self-esteem and to bolster the emerging feminist critique of male privilege, bourgeois individualism, and the nuclear family. The literature of this period was so evasive, so implausible, so far removed from what was really unfolding in the ghetto, that if you didn’t know better, you might conclude that people actually wanted to keep the black family separate and unequal... Other black pride–inspired scholars looked at female-headed families and declared them authentically African and therefore a good thing... In fact, some scholars continued, maybe the nuclear family was really just a toxic white hang-up, anyway... Feminists, similarly fixated on overturning the “oppressive ideal of the nuclear family,” also welcomed this dubious scholarship... Fretting about single-parent families was now not only racist but also sexist, an effort to deny women their independence, their sexuality, or both. As for the poverty of single mothers, that was simply more proof of patriarchal oppression. In 1978, University of Wisconsin researcher Diana Pearce introduced the useful term “feminization of poverty.” But for her and her many allies, the problem was not the crumbling of the nuclear family; it was the lack of government support for single women and the failure of business to pay women their due."
The Curse of Double-Digit Growth - "Werker identified shared characteristics of double-digit growers; conditions that often weren't sustainable. He found that natural resource exports were a crucial driver in 17 of the incidents of high growth, while 13 were pushed along by political reforms or economic diversification, most of which were temporary. Nine featured foreign aid and remittances playing a significant role, and another nine benefited from the catch-up following low-income levels caused during war or conflict. Five incidents were credited, or partially credited, to government spending on infrastructure or jobs. In most cases accelerated growth proved a two-edged sword... Overall, the double-digit fraternity exhibited a worse performance on every indicator of the quality of the business environment compared to the 6-7 percent growers"
‘Crosses’ on rooftops of housing project in Langkawi create stir - "A decision by the Kedah state government to order the developer of a housing project in Langkawi to paint over air wells on rooftops that resemble crosses from afar has led to calls for Malaysians to be less prejudicial over one another’s religions. According to media reports, Kedah State Education, Transport and Housing Committee chairman Tajul Urus Mat Zain said the developer did not mean to create the cross symbols, but had built an internal air well to enhance light and air ventilation... “Even the multiplication sign is a cross; even the letter ‘t’ is a cross"... an opposition Member of Parliament, Mr Lim Lip Eng, questioned whether the cross-shaped Kuala Lumpur International Airport should also be torn down because of religious sensitivities... He suggested that the individuals who raised the issue were suffering from “eye problems”, after aerial angles of the offending homes showed that the air wells were square rather than cross-shaped. The case in Kedah is the most recent controversy over Christian icons, both actual and perceived, in Malaysia. In April, an angry mob protested outside a church in Taman Medan, Petaling Jaya, and demanded the removal of the cross affixed to the exterior of the building."
Malaysia Boleh!
Why Some of the Worst Attacks on Social Science Have Come From Liberals - "What she found, over and over, was that researchers whose conclusions didn’t line up with politically correct orthodoxies — whether the orthodoxy in question involved sexual abuse, transgender issues, or whatever else — often faced dire, career-threatening consequences simply for doing their jobs. Two examples stand out as particularly egregious cases in which solid social science was attacked in the name of progressive causes. The first involves Napoleon Chagnon, an extremely influential anthropologist who dedicated years of his life to understanding and living among the Yanomamö, an indigenous tribe situated in the Amazon rain forest on the Brazil-Venezuela border... Chagnon’s reputation as a careful, dedicated scholar didn’t matter to his critics — what mattered was that his version of the Yanomamö was “Not your standard liberal image of the unjustly oppressed, naturally peaceful, environmentally gentle rain-forest Indian family”... Dreger also recounts her earlier investigation into the controversy surrounding J. Michael Bailey, a Northwestern University psychologist and researcher of human sexuality and former chair of that university’s psychology department... some transgender people and activists hold very dear the idea that they have simply been born in the wrong type of body, that transitioning allows them to effectively fix a mistake that nature made. The notion that there might be a cultural component to the decision to transition, or that sexuality, rather than a hardwired gender identity, could be a factor, complicates this gender-identity-only narrative. It also brings sexuality back into a conversation that some trans activists have been trying to make solely about gender identity — roughly parallel to the way some gay-rights activists sweep conversations about actual gay sexuality under the rug, preferring to focus on idealized, unthreatening-to-heterosexuals portrayals of committed gay relationships between clean-cut, taxpaying adult"
The liberal war on science
How to Spot a Bad Boss During an Interview - "You can often get a sense of your potential manager by asking probing questions, but be careful how you phrase them. “People say an interview is a two-way process,” Lees says. “In practice, that doesn’t work very well.” The interviewer might misinterpret multiple questions about his management approach as disinterest in the job. Fernández-Aráoz agrees: “What you should not do is ask direct questions, like ‘Tell me about your leadership style,’” he says. Not only could this signal hesitancy on your part, but it’s unlikely to get you an honest answer, because your interviewer is in selling mode. Instead, ask questions that will help your potential manager visualize you actually doing the job. “What will I do on a day-to-day basis?” “How will I learn?” Phrasing your questions as if you already have the job will help the hiring manager create a mental picture of you in the role. At the same time, you can watch how she responds. “Look for her willingness to engage in dialogue, rather than asking you pre-established questions,” says Fernández-Aráoz. “Think of it like rehearsing a collaborative working session with your future boss.” If she’s willing to engage with you during the interview, she’ll likely engage with you in a working relationship"
Micropenis: Prevalence and etiologic profile at CHU of Rabat - "The prevalence of micropenis is increasing in our service. Etiologies are diverse but idiopathic causes are the majority in our series, assuming hypothesis on parental contamination by endocrine disruptors."
So much for that Voynich manuscript “solution” - "a history researcher and television writer named Nicholas Gibbs published a long article in the Times Literary Supplement about how he'd cracked the code on the mysterious Voynich Manuscript. Unfortunately, say experts, his analysis was a mix of stuff we already knew and stuff he couldn't possibly prove"
SPLIT: Feminists Reject Pussy Hat As Offensive to 'Women with Penises' and 'Brown Genitalia' - "Never mind that the hat has cat ears, and not a vulva. The color pink, according to the Pussyhat Project, which first designed the headwear following the 2016 general election, was chosen “because pink is associated with femininity,” according to a post on its website"
I Love Wolf Whistles and Catcalls; Am I a Bad Feminist? - "Harassment, by its very nature, is unacceptable. But is catcalling always harassment? The Independent's social-media editor, Felicity Morse, loves catcalls, and I'm guessing she gets loads because she's freaking hot. Even though I'm probably not supposed to say that. She told me, "If I'm dressed up in a sexy little something, if I'm sashaying down the street and tossing a head of freshly washed hair like I think I'm Beyoncé, I find a catcall rather appreciative. But if I'm out jogging or running to the bus stop, huddling past a building site in the rain, I find it intrusive." It also depends on the number of men and what they're doing: "If they are working on a building site or something, where they can't really leave their work, it's almost traditional to wolf-whistle and pretty meaningless, so I don't feel threatened. But a big gang of young men in the dark? I wouldn't even acknowledge I'd heard them." Would she give her number to a guy in the street? "Probably, but I wouldn't have high hopes for a relationship! That's not harassment; it's flattering. If he doesn't go away? That's harassment." She'd still ban catcalls on the basis that they upset many women, though. This is kind of my problem with the debate around street attention. It's part of a culture that infantilizes women and teaches them to be constantly afraid... Nichi Hodgson, author of Bound to You, sex columnist for Men's Health, and director of the Ethical Porn Partnership, said there's a certain kind of middle-class woman that finds catcalls particularly galling: "There's a sense of being sullied if an uncouth or lower-class kind of man—a white-van man, for example—heckles. But if it's a Roger Sterling type who can just about pull it off with a certain retro-sexist panache, the offense isn't experienced the same." Laura said that growing up in working-class West Yorkshire and learning to hit back with witty repartee was a kind of rite of passage. The same is true where I come from, although it's the blokes who need the comebacks. Let's just say Nottingham girls aren't shy... I phoned my mom afterward, and she said catcalls are like periods—she hated them when she was younger but feels sad now they're about to dry up. Wow, mother... The Guardian's Ellie Mae O'Hagan said it doesn't surprise her that some women like catcalls: "One of the ways patriarchy sustains itself is by convincing women that their worth is determined by the approval of men along a strict set of terms. Getting wolf-whistled at is a small confirmation that a woman is meeting the terms patriarchy demands of her." Couldn't you say that about pretty much anything, though? Like, if a woman tells another woman "Great dress!" is she letting her know that she's meeting the expectations of capitalism and the fashion industry and beauty culture? Or is she just telling her she likes her dress? Or is it a bit of both?... Ellie goes further and cites studies that suggest sexual violence is "to an extent rooted in ideologies of male sexual entitlement," though I struggle to see any real connection between rape and the guy who wolf-whistled at me this morning... men, for the record, I haven't spoken to any woman yet who likes being told, "I'd like to fuck you up the ass" as you drive past her in the street. So stop it with that, you shitheads. I just wish we could make a distinction between harassment like this and harmless fun... I'll leave you with the words of 86-year-old Jinx Allen Craig, the woman in catcalling's greatest portrait, An American Girl in Italy: "It's not a symbol of harassment. It's a symbol of a woman having an absolutely wonderful time!""
Requirement to tell foster kids the Easter Bunny is real violated couple’s charter rights, judge rules - "A couple’s charter rights were violated when a children’s aid society closed the pair’s foster home over their refusal to tell two young girls the Easter Bunny is real, an Ontario court has ruled... Lindsay told them it was part of their duty as foster parents to teach the girls about the Easter Bunny... The Baars told Lindsay they intended to hide chocolate eggs and have the girls find them on Easter and play other games, but didn’t plan not to speak to the children about the Easter Bunny, unless the girls specifically asked questions about the character"
Evidence supporting the biologic nature of gender identity. - "Evidence that there is a biologic basis for gender identity primarily involves (1) data on gender identity in patients with disorders of sex development (DSDs, also known as differences of sex development) along with (2) neuroanatomical differences associated with gender identity."
So much for claims that sex and gender are unrelated, or that sex is a scientific myth, or other outlandish claims inspired by trans mania
The mirage of working as a stewardess in Dubai - "We were also told that our organs wouldn’t be viable for transplant after 2 years of flying. We were afraid to ask why but we had our guesses right. Above all that any testimony in court would not be taken into account after 3 years of working as a flight attendant. We didn’t ask the reason and even if we did I am pretty sure the response would have been a rhetorical question"
Science Analyzes the Academy Awards Speech - "Crying is less common that you’d think: only 21% of actors and actresses choke up and a mere 3% of directors do. And it’s a relatively recent phenomenon: fully 71% of the tears have come since 1995"
In Defense of Looting - "It is in solidarity with these latter protesters–along with those who loot–and against politicians and de-escalators everywhere that I offer this critique, as a way of invigorating discussion amongst those engaged in anti-oppression struggle, in Ferguson and anywhere else the police violently perpetuate white supremacy and settler colonialism. In other words, anywhere in America... Modern American police forces evolved out of fugitive slave patrols, working to literally keep property from escaping its owners. The history of the police in America is the history of black people being violently prevented from threatening white people’s property rights. When, in the midst of an anti-police protest movement, people loot, they aren’t acting non-politically, they aren’t distracting from the issue of police violence and domination, nor are they fanning the flames of an always-already racist media discourse. Instead, they are getting straight to the heart of the problem of the police, property, and white supremacy. Solidarity with all Ferguson rebels! Justice for Mike Brown!"
Ahh... anti-racism!
Ways of Saying the Same Thing in Mandarin
English: If you do not leave me, we will die together
直译: 如果你不离开我，我们会死在一起。(二级水平)
你如果不离开我,我就和你同归于尽。 (四级水平)
你若不离不弃,我必生死相依。 (六级水平)
问世间情为何物？直教人生死相许。(八级水平)
天地合，乃敢与君绝。(专家水平)
你在或不在，爱就在那里，不增不减。(活佛水平)
Partial translation from my friend Renee:
Level 4: "if you do not leave me, I will make you perish with me".
Level "6: If you do not leave me, I will follow/be with you forever, whether it be in life or in death"
Level 8: "What is love ? It teaches one to never forsake another in life or in death"
Links - 29th June 2018 (1)
Poll: Trump approval rating ticks up to 47 percent - "Trump's approval rating was lifted in part by a 10 point climb among Hispanic voters. His approval rating rose by 6 points among Republicans and by 4 points among Democrats compared to last month’s poll"
Looks like many Hispanics are self-hating racists
Why do people quit their jobs at dream companies like Facebook or Google? - "People without a firm sense of who they are, what they want, and where their interests and passions lie are vulnerable to this. They end up taking their cues from family, friends, and teachers because they don’t have an inner compass to guide them. Every person walking this earth is different, and changes from month to month and from year to year. Once you realize there is no “best” of anything, it becomes much easier to seek out what is “best for you” and make career decisions based on your own criteria, not based on any conventional wisdom about what success looks like."
Controversial assault ruling sparks debate in Sweden - "a Stockholm-based man had been acquitted of an alleged assault against his wife from 2015 because his guilt could not be proven. The ruling, pushed through by two lay judges on a divided court, argued it was "not uncommon for women to falsely claim they have been assaulted" in order to get an apartment. It also said the man appeared to come from a "good family, unlike hers". The judgment also said, apparently referring to the couple's foreign background, that the woman was less credible for having reported the assault to the police rather than attempting to resolve it within the family which it said would have been "the normal thing in 'these circles'"... Lay judges serve as part of the bench and are used instead of a jury in criminal cases in district courts, together with a professional judge... Roger Haddad, justice spokesman for the Liberal Party, along with the Centre Party a member of Sweden's four-party centre-right Alliance opposition, referred to controversial comments one of the lay judges had made on a previous occasion in support of in some instances creating separate laws for Muslims living in Sweden... "Most lay judges are of course good," commented lawyer Viktor Banke, who also criticized the ruling in an opinion piece in Sweden's largest tabloid Aftonbladet, adding that almost "all significant mistakes are committed by lay judges. Which is not that strange because the idea is that they are lay people.""
Parcel Santa gets delivery into condo residents' hands 24/7 - "These Federated Lockers, which are expected to be placed in public housing estates (after pilot tests in 2018) would help to solve a problem commonly faced by online shoppers and delivery companies - a parcel arrives for the customer but nobody is home to receive it."
Reddiporeans, do you return your trays and cutlery at coffee shops, hawker centres and fast food restaurants? Why or why not? : singapore - "I used to always return my trays. Then one day that cleaner granny told me "if you keep returning the tray they will fire me one day""
"My aunt's neighbour was a cleaner. She told us that the food court she worked at started to encourage tray returns, put stickers on tables, make the return area very visible, etc. 2 months later a few of the cleaners (about one quarter) were let go."
"Got scolded by cleaners for returning tray at hawker center. Never again."
Prove that returning trays reduce jobs - if you still can't tell. - "The Public Hygiene Council has been working closely with schools to roll out programmes aimed at instilling such social habits. But we need the help of parents to reinforce these efforts and be role models themselves. I hope that, over time, we will be able to do away with cleaners in the food centres"
Wedding caterer allegedly dumps leftover curry into Tampines river; sparks heated debate on race online - "These netizens excoriated Tan for not having enough proof that it was a wedding caterer who dumped the curry into the river. Others accused Tan of being a “cheap attention seeker” and of trying to create a “racial war”. Some others went as far as digging up Facebook photos of Tan with her friends and family, using personal pictures to attack her"
Being against pollution is racist
What would you do if a stranger hurls racial slurs at you? : singapore - "When we were going up the escalator, the man bumped into my father and asked my father "what do you want?" And my father said "no nothing", upon stepping out from the escalator he called my father "chinese pig" and then stomped off."
The muted reaction to this is amusing considering how much people on r/singapore rage against Chinese people when it's the other way around (or less)
Teenager disabled for life after eating slug as a dare at party - "A talented rugby player became paraplegic after swallowing a garden slug as a dare at a 19th birthday party. Sam Ballard, now 28, fell seriously ill within days of swallowing the slug whole at his friend’s house in Sydney, Australia. Doctors told him he had been infected with rat lungworm, which caused an infection on his brain."
Don't tell me not to swallow slugs. Tell others not to dare me to swallow them
Addendum: He ate a slug on a dare, became paralyzed and died - "Unlike in rats, the worm’s life cycle is not completed in a human. So instead of passing through the digestive tract, the worm larvae “can get lost, and it will go to the brain, and it’ll stay there,” said Heather Stockdale Walden, an assistant professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases and Pathology at the University of Florida"
Belgian Man Convicted of ‘Sexism in the Public Space,’ a First - The New York Times - "For the first time, a Belgian criminal court has convicted a man of “sexism in the public space,” for verbally abusing a female police officer who tried to question him after he was seen jaywalking. The man, whose name was not disclosed, was convicted of sexism, slander and threatening a police officer, and fined 3,000 euros, or $3,725... During the arrest, the man claimed to be the victim of discrimination “because of his dark skin color”"
The feminist agenda proceeds apace
Canadian professor under investigation for promoting free speech in class - "Acadia University in Nova Scotia told Rick Mehta, who teaches psychology, that it had received a barrage of complaints from both campus members and others about his classroom content and social media comments... The petition does not include any quotes from Mehta’s speaking or writing that back up its claims about his views. It simply includes a screenshot of Mehta’s retweet of a tweet that says it is “statistically impossible” for all children educated in residential schools to have had a “negative experience.” One person wrote in the petition comments that Mehta’s supposed views on “trans issues, sexuality issues, gender politics” are dangerous and destructive"
Malaysians rudely mock musician Dua Lipa's birthday message to father causing her to change caption - "Babi is a diminutive way to say “father” in Albanian. Whilst Dua was born in London, both of her parents are ethnic Albanians who immigrated to the UK from Kosovo in the 1990s. Makes sense that she would refer to her father in her family’s native language. That’s nice, isn’t it? Great to keep traditions alive, and stay connected to your roots... No sooner had Dua posted it than Malaysians began mocking her family’s heritage, commenting that in Malaysian Bahasa, babi meant pig."
Yorkshire man who stuck finger in woman's bottom didn't assault her - "A jury of six men and six women took just two hours and one minute to unanimously acquit Scott Howard of assault by penetration. The 26-year-old had been accused of sexually assaulting his lover while she was on top of him during sex in March last year... During cross-examination, she said she did not orgasm during sex with the defendant and they had only been having intercourse for about five minutes when it happened... Mr Batchelor said that his client accepted having sex with her, but said that the offence never happened. There were cheers from the public gallery as the jury foreperson delivered the verdict"
William Freeman must register as sex offender - "An ex-company director has to register as a sex offender for putting his arm around a female friend and kissing her on the shoulder... She then pulled away from him, and he apologised for what he had done. The woman then reported the August 2016 incident to police and he was arrested. Freeman, of Barford, Warwick, originally denied a charge of sexual assault, but changed his plea to guilty on the first day of his trial. Judge Sylvia de Bertodano, said: 'I am glad you have accepted today your responsibility for this, rather than putting this lady through a trial. 'It is difficult to know what to say to someone like you. 'I don't know what was going through your mind, and I don't suppose you do either. 'This was an impulsive act. You have had a very serious lesson taught to you - you do not make advances towards women who don't want you to."
If women complain that men aren't spontaneous enough, they know why
Kosovo-Serbia row makes Europe clocks go slow - "bedside clocks had slowed down by up to six minutes since mid-January. Central heating timers and oven clocks are also affected - but not computers or smart phones. Countries from Spain to Turkey and from Poland to the Netherlands are part of a large area in Europe linked together into an electricity grid that operates at a synchronised frequency. This frequency regulates time-keeping in certain devices. The UK and some Nordic countries are not affected... This failure to act on time forced the frequency to "deviate" - and the drop affected the clocks"
The girl who stopped her own marriage - "What is so striking about Rajasthan is how girls like Monika are taking the fight against child marriage into their own hands, in a culture where their voices are often not heard. The education these girls receive, though it’s often limited, is teaching them that they should not be married off before 18"
Civil liberties: Mario Vargas Llosa: “Political correctness is the enemy of freedom” - "Mario Vargas Llosa is in good form. The Peruvian Nobel Laureate laughs easily as he expounds on his theories of freedom and the individual and talks about his new book, La llamada de la tribu, or, The Call of the Tribe, which argues in favor of liberal thought in reference to seven influential authors: Adam Smith, José Ortega y Gasset, Friedrich von Hayek, Karl Popper, Raymond Aron, Isaiah Berlin and Jean-François Revel. These men belong to a school of thought that believes in the individual as an autonomous and responsible being, and freedom as the supreme asset. They defend democracy and the separation of powers as the best system available to reconcile society’s contradictory values. They espouse a doctrine that rejects the “tribal spirit” that has historically fueled fascism, communism, nationalism and religious fanaticism. The Call of the Tribe is also an intellectual autobiography that takes the reader from Vargas Lllosa’s Marxist and existentialist beginnings through to his endorsement of liberalism... Isaiah Berlin says that economic freedom can’t be unrestricted because that was what led to children being stuck in the mines in the 19th century. Hayek, on the other hand, had such extraordinary confidence in the market that he believed it could solve all problems if it was allowed to work. Berlin was much more realistic. He believed that, in effect, the market was what brought economic progress but if progress meant the creation of such huge inequality, it put the essence of democracy at risk... the use of the label “progressive” is very significant; in Spain it is used to describe forces defending the dictatorships in Cuba and Venezuela. I believe unfortunately that this is the intellectuals’ contribution to the distortion of language. They have infused Marxism and communism with prestige as was done earlier with Nazism and fascism. Blindly, intellectuals have always seen democracy as a mediocre system that lacked the beauty, perfection and coherence of the big ideologies... Political correctness is the enemy of freedom because it rejects honesty and authenticity. We have to tackle it as the distortion of the truth."
Now even Nobel Prize winners are Nazis
Voodoo dolls of bosses improve staff morale, study finds - ""It may not have to be a voodoo doll per se: theoretically anything that serves as a symbolic act of retaliation, like throwing darts at a picture of your boss, might work"... Although voodoo dolls are often linked to Africa and the Americas in popular fiction, early records suggest they have their origins in the British medieval period, when people would make rag dolls or sculptures of witches - called poppetts - and pierce them with pins to inflict harm or break an enchantment."
The Verdict Is In: AI Outperforms Human Lawyers in Reviewing Legal Documents
Study: Most people can tell if you're rich from your face - "The effect is "likely due to emotion patterns becoming etched into their faces over time," says Bjornsdottir. The chronic contraction of certain muscles can actually lead to changes in the structure of your face that others can pick up on, even if they aren't aware of it. When the researchers showed the undergrads photos of people looking visibly happy, they could not discern socioeconomic status any better than chance. The expressions needed to be neutral for the subtle cues to have an effect."
Illegal immigrants with sex, robbery convictions among those who evaded capture after Dem mayor's warning - "Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf tweeted out an impending warning of the four-day raid last week, alerting targeted individuals to the imminent arrests, and infuriating Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, who say that many more could have been caught if they hadn't been warned. The raid led to the arrest of 232 illegal immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area, 180 of which ICE said “were either convicted criminals, had been issued a final order of removal and failed to depart the United States, or had been previously removed” from the country and had come back illegally... "I did what I believe was right for my community as well as to protect public safety," Schaaf said Friday, according to NBC Bay Area. "People should be able to live without fear or panic and know their rights and responsibilities as well as their recourses.""
Crime is okay if committed by illegal immigrants
YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Men, Lawsuit Says - WSJ - "YouTube last year stopped hiring white and Asian males for technical positions because they didn’t help the world’s largest video site achieve its goals for improving diversity... YouTube recruiters were allegedly instructed to cancel interviews with applicants who weren’t female, black or Hispanic, and to “purge entirely” the applications of people who didn’t fit those categories, the lawsuit claims... People familiar with YouTube’s and Google’s hiring practices in interviews corroborated some of the lawsuit’s allegations, including the hiring freeze of white and Asian technical employees, and YouTube’s use of quotas. Mr. Wilberg’s lawsuit, filed in January in California’s San Mateo County Superior Court, alleges that Google discriminated against him for his sex and race, retaliated by firing him when he complained, and in the process violated antidiscrimination laws"
Diversity is discrimination
Sohrab Ahmari: How to Fight the Campus Speech Police: Get a Good Lawyer - WSJ - "Mr. Mael says he decided to hold his political opponent accountable by challenging him in the university’s marketplace of ideas, including by publishing articles and circulating petitions. Mr. Philip interpreted this as harassment, and in a Dec. 9, 2013, complaint to Brandeis administrators, he presented charges under the university code of conduct"
Single Ladies, It’s Time to Pony Up When the Check Comes - WSJ - " In a survey published in 2015 of 17,000 men and women ages 18 to 65 (conducted by researchers at California State University, Wellesley College and Chapman University), 84% of men and 58% of women reported that men paid for most expenses, even after dating for a while. A 2013 survey of 2,000 men and women by the financial planning company LearnVest found that a majority of men, and an even larger majority of women, think that the man should pay on a first date... from the point of view of women’s progress. Just as we’re supposed to dress for the job we want, so too should we act for the reality we want. Historically speaking, a man paying for a date isn’t merely an act of courtship, or a way to be gentlemanly. It’s also a way to show dominance and the ability to fulfill the role of breadwinner... Men seem willing to give up that show. In the Cal State study, nearly two-thirds of them believed that women should contribute to paying for a date, and half said that they would stop dating a woman who never paid. Still, they’re conflicted: 76% reported feeling guilty in accepting women’s money. For women, though, the mentality has been harder to shake. While more than half claimed to offer to help pay, 39% hoped that their offer would be rejected... nearly half of women say that they’re bothered if men expect them to help pay for a date, regardless of who makes more. Even millennials, progressive as they are, are not bucking this trend"
So men are actually more feminist than women
Looks like many Hispanics are self-hating racists
Why do people quit their jobs at dream companies like Facebook or Google? - "People without a firm sense of who they are, what they want, and where their interests and passions lie are vulnerable to this. They end up taking their cues from family, friends, and teachers because they don’t have an inner compass to guide them. Every person walking this earth is different, and changes from month to month and from year to year. Once you realize there is no “best” of anything, it becomes much easier to seek out what is “best for you” and make career decisions based on your own criteria, not based on any conventional wisdom about what success looks like."
Controversial assault ruling sparks debate in Sweden - "a Stockholm-based man had been acquitted of an alleged assault against his wife from 2015 because his guilt could not be proven. The ruling, pushed through by two lay judges on a divided court, argued it was "not uncommon for women to falsely claim they have been assaulted" in order to get an apartment. It also said the man appeared to come from a "good family, unlike hers". The judgment also said, apparently referring to the couple's foreign background, that the woman was less credible for having reported the assault to the police rather than attempting to resolve it within the family which it said would have been "the normal thing in 'these circles'"... Lay judges serve as part of the bench and are used instead of a jury in criminal cases in district courts, together with a professional judge... Roger Haddad, justice spokesman for the Liberal Party, along with the Centre Party a member of Sweden's four-party centre-right Alliance opposition, referred to controversial comments one of the lay judges had made on a previous occasion in support of in some instances creating separate laws for Muslims living in Sweden... "Most lay judges are of course good," commented lawyer Viktor Banke, who also criticized the ruling in an opinion piece in Sweden's largest tabloid Aftonbladet, adding that almost "all significant mistakes are committed by lay judges. Which is not that strange because the idea is that they are lay people.""
Parcel Santa gets delivery into condo residents' hands 24/7 - "These Federated Lockers, which are expected to be placed in public housing estates (after pilot tests in 2018) would help to solve a problem commonly faced by online shoppers and delivery companies - a parcel arrives for the customer but nobody is home to receive it."
Reddiporeans, do you return your trays and cutlery at coffee shops, hawker centres and fast food restaurants? Why or why not? : singapore - "I used to always return my trays. Then one day that cleaner granny told me "if you keep returning the tray they will fire me one day""
"My aunt's neighbour was a cleaner. She told us that the food court she worked at started to encourage tray returns, put stickers on tables, make the return area very visible, etc. 2 months later a few of the cleaners (about one quarter) were let go."
"Got scolded by cleaners for returning tray at hawker center. Never again."
Prove that returning trays reduce jobs - if you still can't tell. - "The Public Hygiene Council has been working closely with schools to roll out programmes aimed at instilling such social habits. But we need the help of parents to reinforce these efforts and be role models themselves. I hope that, over time, we will be able to do away with cleaners in the food centres"
Wedding caterer allegedly dumps leftover curry into Tampines river; sparks heated debate on race online - "These netizens excoriated Tan for not having enough proof that it was a wedding caterer who dumped the curry into the river. Others accused Tan of being a “cheap attention seeker” and of trying to create a “racial war”. Some others went as far as digging up Facebook photos of Tan with her friends and family, using personal pictures to attack her"
Being against pollution is racist
What would you do if a stranger hurls racial slurs at you? : singapore - "When we were going up the escalator, the man bumped into my father and asked my father "what do you want?" And my father said "no nothing", upon stepping out from the escalator he called my father "chinese pig" and then stomped off."
The muted reaction to this is amusing considering how much people on r/singapore rage against Chinese people when it's the other way around (or less)
Teenager disabled for life after eating slug as a dare at party - "A talented rugby player became paraplegic after swallowing a garden slug as a dare at a 19th birthday party. Sam Ballard, now 28, fell seriously ill within days of swallowing the slug whole at his friend’s house in Sydney, Australia. Doctors told him he had been infected with rat lungworm, which caused an infection on his brain."
Don't tell me not to swallow slugs. Tell others not to dare me to swallow them
Addendum: He ate a slug on a dare, became paralyzed and died - "Unlike in rats, the worm’s life cycle is not completed in a human. So instead of passing through the digestive tract, the worm larvae “can get lost, and it will go to the brain, and it’ll stay there,” said Heather Stockdale Walden, an assistant professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases and Pathology at the University of Florida"
Belgian Man Convicted of ‘Sexism in the Public Space,’ a First - The New York Times - "For the first time, a Belgian criminal court has convicted a man of “sexism in the public space,” for verbally abusing a female police officer who tried to question him after he was seen jaywalking. The man, whose name was not disclosed, was convicted of sexism, slander and threatening a police officer, and fined 3,000 euros, or $3,725... During the arrest, the man claimed to be the victim of discrimination “because of his dark skin color”"
The feminist agenda proceeds apace
Canadian professor under investigation for promoting free speech in class - "Acadia University in Nova Scotia told Rick Mehta, who teaches psychology, that it had received a barrage of complaints from both campus members and others about his classroom content and social media comments... The petition does not include any quotes from Mehta’s speaking or writing that back up its claims about his views. It simply includes a screenshot of Mehta’s retweet of a tweet that says it is “statistically impossible” for all children educated in residential schools to have had a “negative experience.” One person wrote in the petition comments that Mehta’s supposed views on “trans issues, sexuality issues, gender politics” are dangerous and destructive"
Malaysians rudely mock musician Dua Lipa's birthday message to father causing her to change caption - "Babi is a diminutive way to say “father” in Albanian. Whilst Dua was born in London, both of her parents are ethnic Albanians who immigrated to the UK from Kosovo in the 1990s. Makes sense that she would refer to her father in her family’s native language. That’s nice, isn’t it? Great to keep traditions alive, and stay connected to your roots... No sooner had Dua posted it than Malaysians began mocking her family’s heritage, commenting that in Malaysian Bahasa, babi meant pig."
Yorkshire man who stuck finger in woman's bottom didn't assault her - "A jury of six men and six women took just two hours and one minute to unanimously acquit Scott Howard of assault by penetration. The 26-year-old had been accused of sexually assaulting his lover while she was on top of him during sex in March last year... During cross-examination, she said she did not orgasm during sex with the defendant and they had only been having intercourse for about five minutes when it happened... Mr Batchelor said that his client accepted having sex with her, but said that the offence never happened. There were cheers from the public gallery as the jury foreperson delivered the verdict"
William Freeman must register as sex offender - "An ex-company director has to register as a sex offender for putting his arm around a female friend and kissing her on the shoulder... She then pulled away from him, and he apologised for what he had done. The woman then reported the August 2016 incident to police and he was arrested. Freeman, of Barford, Warwick, originally denied a charge of sexual assault, but changed his plea to guilty on the first day of his trial. Judge Sylvia de Bertodano, said: 'I am glad you have accepted today your responsibility for this, rather than putting this lady through a trial. 'It is difficult to know what to say to someone like you. 'I don't know what was going through your mind, and I don't suppose you do either. 'This was an impulsive act. You have had a very serious lesson taught to you - you do not make advances towards women who don't want you to."
If women complain that men aren't spontaneous enough, they know why
Kosovo-Serbia row makes Europe clocks go slow - "bedside clocks had slowed down by up to six minutes since mid-January. Central heating timers and oven clocks are also affected - but not computers or smart phones. Countries from Spain to Turkey and from Poland to the Netherlands are part of a large area in Europe linked together into an electricity grid that operates at a synchronised frequency. This frequency regulates time-keeping in certain devices. The UK and some Nordic countries are not affected... This failure to act on time forced the frequency to "deviate" - and the drop affected the clocks"
The girl who stopped her own marriage - "What is so striking about Rajasthan is how girls like Monika are taking the fight against child marriage into their own hands, in a culture where their voices are often not heard. The education these girls receive, though it’s often limited, is teaching them that they should not be married off before 18"
Civil liberties: Mario Vargas Llosa: “Political correctness is the enemy of freedom” - "Mario Vargas Llosa is in good form. The Peruvian Nobel Laureate laughs easily as he expounds on his theories of freedom and the individual and talks about his new book, La llamada de la tribu, or, The Call of the Tribe, which argues in favor of liberal thought in reference to seven influential authors: Adam Smith, José Ortega y Gasset, Friedrich von Hayek, Karl Popper, Raymond Aron, Isaiah Berlin and Jean-François Revel. These men belong to a school of thought that believes in the individual as an autonomous and responsible being, and freedom as the supreme asset. They defend democracy and the separation of powers as the best system available to reconcile society’s contradictory values. They espouse a doctrine that rejects the “tribal spirit” that has historically fueled fascism, communism, nationalism and religious fanaticism. The Call of the Tribe is also an intellectual autobiography that takes the reader from Vargas Lllosa’s Marxist and existentialist beginnings through to his endorsement of liberalism... Isaiah Berlin says that economic freedom can’t be unrestricted because that was what led to children being stuck in the mines in the 19th century. Hayek, on the other hand, had such extraordinary confidence in the market that he believed it could solve all problems if it was allowed to work. Berlin was much more realistic. He believed that, in effect, the market was what brought economic progress but if progress meant the creation of such huge inequality, it put the essence of democracy at risk... the use of the label “progressive” is very significant; in Spain it is used to describe forces defending the dictatorships in Cuba and Venezuela. I believe unfortunately that this is the intellectuals’ contribution to the distortion of language. They have infused Marxism and communism with prestige as was done earlier with Nazism and fascism. Blindly, intellectuals have always seen democracy as a mediocre system that lacked the beauty, perfection and coherence of the big ideologies... Political correctness is the enemy of freedom because it rejects honesty and authenticity. We have to tackle it as the distortion of the truth."
Now even Nobel Prize winners are Nazis
Voodoo dolls of bosses improve staff morale, study finds - ""It may not have to be a voodoo doll per se: theoretically anything that serves as a symbolic act of retaliation, like throwing darts at a picture of your boss, might work"... Although voodoo dolls are often linked to Africa and the Americas in popular fiction, early records suggest they have their origins in the British medieval period, when people would make rag dolls or sculptures of witches - called poppetts - and pierce them with pins to inflict harm or break an enchantment."
The Verdict Is In: AI Outperforms Human Lawyers in Reviewing Legal Documents
Study: Most people can tell if you're rich from your face - "The effect is "likely due to emotion patterns becoming etched into their faces over time," says Bjornsdottir. The chronic contraction of certain muscles can actually lead to changes in the structure of your face that others can pick up on, even if they aren't aware of it. When the researchers showed the undergrads photos of people looking visibly happy, they could not discern socioeconomic status any better than chance. The expressions needed to be neutral for the subtle cues to have an effect."
Illegal immigrants with sex, robbery convictions among those who evaded capture after Dem mayor's warning - "Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf tweeted out an impending warning of the four-day raid last week, alerting targeted individuals to the imminent arrests, and infuriating Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, who say that many more could have been caught if they hadn't been warned. The raid led to the arrest of 232 illegal immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area, 180 of which ICE said “were either convicted criminals, had been issued a final order of removal and failed to depart the United States, or had been previously removed” from the country and had come back illegally... "I did what I believe was right for my community as well as to protect public safety," Schaaf said Friday, according to NBC Bay Area. "People should be able to live without fear or panic and know their rights and responsibilities as well as their recourses.""
Crime is okay if committed by illegal immigrants
YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Men, Lawsuit Says - WSJ - "YouTube last year stopped hiring white and Asian males for technical positions because they didn’t help the world’s largest video site achieve its goals for improving diversity... YouTube recruiters were allegedly instructed to cancel interviews with applicants who weren’t female, black or Hispanic, and to “purge entirely” the applications of people who didn’t fit those categories, the lawsuit claims... People familiar with YouTube’s and Google’s hiring practices in interviews corroborated some of the lawsuit’s allegations, including the hiring freeze of white and Asian technical employees, and YouTube’s use of quotas. Mr. Wilberg’s lawsuit, filed in January in California’s San Mateo County Superior Court, alleges that Google discriminated against him for his sex and race, retaliated by firing him when he complained, and in the process violated antidiscrimination laws"
Diversity is discrimination
Sohrab Ahmari: How to Fight the Campus Speech Police: Get a Good Lawyer - WSJ - "Mr. Mael says he decided to hold his political opponent accountable by challenging him in the university’s marketplace of ideas, including by publishing articles and circulating petitions. Mr. Philip interpreted this as harassment, and in a Dec. 9, 2013, complaint to Brandeis administrators, he presented charges under the university code of conduct"
Single Ladies, It’s Time to Pony Up When the Check Comes - WSJ - " In a survey published in 2015 of 17,000 men and women ages 18 to 65 (conducted by researchers at California State University, Wellesley College and Chapman University), 84% of men and 58% of women reported that men paid for most expenses, even after dating for a while. A 2013 survey of 2,000 men and women by the financial planning company LearnVest found that a majority of men, and an even larger majority of women, think that the man should pay on a first date... from the point of view of women’s progress. Just as we’re supposed to dress for the job we want, so too should we act for the reality we want. Historically speaking, a man paying for a date isn’t merely an act of courtship, or a way to be gentlemanly. It’s also a way to show dominance and the ability to fulfill the role of breadwinner... Men seem willing to give up that show. In the Cal State study, nearly two-thirds of them believed that women should contribute to paying for a date, and half said that they would stop dating a woman who never paid. Still, they’re conflicted: 76% reported feeling guilty in accepting women’s money. For women, though, the mentality has been harder to shake. While more than half claimed to offer to help pay, 39% hoped that their offer would be rejected... nearly half of women say that they’re bothered if men expect them to help pay for a date, regardless of who makes more. Even millennials, progressive as they are, are not bucking this trend"
So men are actually more feminist than women
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
Links - 27th June 2018 (2)
Segregation at Comic Con: No Straight, White Males Allowed at Parties
Earliest Images of Breast Cancer Found in Renaissance Paintings - "there’s a perception that breast cancer is a modern disease. As the thinking goes, lifestyle, longevity and other factors have made the cancer much more prevalent in the industrial age. But recent research is showing that the disease was quite common all the way back to antiquity... it was culturally taboo for upstanding women of the day to undress for a painter. That meant artists would either pay women of a certain sort to model for them or they would use men as models and tack on breasts and a female head. That, plus a strong feeling that the male body was the ideal image of beauty, led to many paintings of women that look like “men with breasts.”
R v Oakes - Wikipedia - "David Edwin Oakes was caught with eight vials of hashish oil outside of a tavern in London, Ontario. He claimed he had purchased ten vials of hashish oil for $150 for his own use. He was also in possession of $619.45, which he claimed to have received from a government program. Despite Oakes' protests that the vials were meant for pain relief and that the money he had was from a workers' compensation cheque, section 8 of the Narcotic Control Act ("NCA") established a "rebuttable presumption" that possession of a narcotic inferred an intention to traffic unless the accused established the absence of such an intention. Oakes made a charter challenge, claiming that the reverse onus created by the presumption of possession for purposes of trafficking violated the presumption of innocence guarantee under section 11(d) of the Charter... The Court was unanimous in holding that the shift in onus violated both Oakes' section 11(d) rights and indirectly his section 7 rights, and could not be justified under section 1 of the Charter. This was because there was no rational connection between basic possession and the presumption of trafficking"
Meanwhile in Singapore...
Internet Rallies for Disabled Veteran Besieged by SJWs, Raises $21,000 and Counting - "Will Caligan, a conservative disabled veteran who lost his job after offending the Transgender Mafia with science. Caligan is a talented comics artist who found himself in a bigoted work environment run by people hostile toward anyone with conservative Christian views. Instead of tolerance, Caligan experienced public shaming, threats, a job loss, and colleagues turning their backs on him after he stated a man can not change his DNA based on wishes. Sane people everywhere were alarmed and dismayed that a person could lose his livelihood after one inconsequential exchange on social media... the project raised $21,000 and Caligan was becoming a hot commodity."
Chinese-made condoms too small, Zimbabwe’s health minister complains - "Zimbabwe is one of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa worst affected by HIV/Aids, with an estimated 13.5 per cent of its adult population infected with the virus. The use of condoms is a key way to limit the spread of infection. The country has become one of the top five condom importers in the world"
Better to pretend that everyone's penis is the same size and to spread HIV than to offend people
'Black Panther': Why Wakanda matters - The Washington Post - "The film’s story is based on the iconic Marvel superhero created more than a half-century ago by two Jewish New Yorkers who crafted their comic-book legends amid the turbulent civil rights struggle in the United States... “Wakanda represents this unbroken chain of achievement of black excellence that never got interrupted by colonialism”... The country is rendered as a Pan-African pastiche; viewers of “Black Panther” can point to Ghanaian fabrics and Zulu headdresses, Ethiopian tribal body markings and a prominent Bantu tongue.
Apparently, sometimes cultural appropriation is a good thing and Africa is indeed a country (it wasn't even filmed in Africa)
Ethiopia was only colonised from 1935-1944 at most
‘Black Panther’: Why the relationship between Africans and black Americans is so messed up - The Washington Post - "We call ourselves Francophone Africa versus Anglophone Africa. We categorize ourselves based on who our oppressor was. I always find that a strange thing. Our identity is so deeply tied to our oppression... The accents are all over the place! It was jarring and annoying to me! They wanted to base the accents on Xhosa from South Africa, but some of it sounded Nigerian, others sounded more Ugandan. It was very confusing, and I understand perfecting an accent is difficult, but oh, my goodness, it was so messy! I really liked the costumes. They were great. But ultimately, Wakanda, at least in the film, is an approximation of African culture, an outsider’s version of what African culture might be like — the rituals, song and dance, the rites of passage... As an African, I didn’t feel accurately represented in “Black Panther.” There was only one African artist whose song played in the background — her name is Babes Wodumo, she’s South African. I have nothing against Kendrick Lamar, but it would be good to be more representative of African music... It was like African bingo of sorts!... You know the worst thing? There hasn’t been an African premiere for “Black Panther.”... this film that celebrates blackness has not had an African premiere!... Even today, African political parties have tribal vehicles. They will have a tribal chief who will have the power to determine elections. It is very rare across the continent to find a party that is national in nature. A lot of the conflicts across Africa are tribal. Look at Somalia, which has not had a functional government — so much about the clans. Killmonger, King T’Challa and the Jabari Tribe and how they all want different things — that is what goes on in Africa... A lot of people here supported Black Lives Matter and don’t think police should be shooting black people in the U.S., but they are perfectly okay with the Kenyan or Zimbabwean police cracking down on protesters violently. You speak out against an injustice half a world away, but when there’s injustice right on your doorstep, you’re okay with it because of the party or politician you endorse... Africa is a deeply patriarchal society. In this film, women are equal to the men."
The world language you speak has absolutely nothing to do with how you classify yourself
Maybe Black Panther is more helpfully viewed as an African-American conceit and fantasy than anything truly African
Is it still racist to call Africans tribal?
Tourist asked S’pore Marriott Tang Plaza Hotel for Jeff Goldblum pic in room, hotel obliged
Ubinites and boatmen help make unusual wedding bash a reality - "When the big day arrived, the sleepy island – which is currently inhabited by fewer than 40 residents – was transformed into a flurry of activity with a big wedding bash being held there, possibly in recent years... a tea ceremony and the cutting of the wedding cake took place at an Ubinite’s house, near the famous Ah Ma Drink Stall on the south side of Ubin. The party continued into the night, accompanied by the soundtrack of Chinese oldies, ethnic Malay music which played out on speakers powered by generators... The zi char (cooked food) restaurant on Pulau Ubin catered the food while chairs were borrowed from the temple. Guests were free to don casual attire to beat the humid weather, and some showed up in sarongs"
Mark Cuban: Philosophy degree will be worth more than computer science - "Cuban expects artificial intelligence technology to vastly change the job market, and he anticipates that eventually technology will become so smart it can program itself... To remain competitive, Cuban advises ditching degrees that teach specific skills or professions and opting for degrees that teach you to think in a big picture way, like philosophy."
The Cultural Diversity Case for Free Speech - "Speech codes often claim to protect ‘cultural diversity’ on campuses, but they often do the reverse. They impose narrow American norms of political correctness on foreign grad students, post-docs, and faculty who can’t realistically understand what Americans will find offensive... These foreigners are often attracted to America because we market our country as the bastion of free speech, political liberty, and open sexuality. They expect a promised land of free inquiry very different from the repressive government regimes that they may have left behind. Many countries criminalize various forms of ‘hate speech’, ‘blasphemy’, and wrongthink... At least in China or Saudi Arabia, there were clear and stable expectations about what they couldn’t say. On American campuses, there is no such consistency across issues or across time... The modern British were much more open than Americans about sex, drugs, and drinking, and didn’t have the American obsession with racial politics. But they had plenty of taboos about discussing class, money, the welfare state, and Muslim immigration that took a while to discover. I ended up living in Britain for 9 years, but kept discovering new quirks and sensitivities that were unwritten, unspoken, and unquestioned. When I worked at a Max Planck Institute in Munich in 1995, I had to learn a whole new set of German ideological taboos, centered around fascism and eugenics, construed in the broadest possible terms. Likewise, when I took a sabbatical in Brisbane in 2008, I had to learn the Australian sensitivities around the status of Aboriginal peoples, the history of British colonialism, and East Asian immigration... I tried to list the implicit ideological norms that faculty hires from abroad would be expected to internalize, but that Americans couldn’t even acknowledge were norms. The list grew so long that I realized the situation was hopeless. Many of our ideological taboos are so taboo that we can’t even list them publicly – much less explain them in new faculty orientations. Yet our universities continue hiring foreign faculty and accepting grad students – without ever giving them clear guidance on how to switch ideological cultures, and what they’re actually allowed to believe, say, and do on American campuses... When students come from China or Saudi Arabia to an American campus, they have to adapt to speech codes and norms that bear little resemblance to those shown in classic college comedy-dramas that they may have seen as teens, such as Animal House (1978), Revenge of the Nerds (1984), Good Will Hunting (1998), Legally Blonde (2001), or The Social Network (2010). Most of these movies dramatize a conflict between playful, irreverent, often offensive students and stuffy, repressed, traditional faculty and administrators. In those movies, the irreverent students always win, partly by pushing the boundaries of free speech and partly by humiliating the sanctimonious censors. Yet in the current American climate, it’s mostly the social justice activist students imposing repressive speech codes and norms on politically centrist, conservative, libertarian, or foreign students and faculty.. If the young kink enthusiasts of the Harvard College Munchstudent club want to have a party where the BDSM norms of pre-negotiation and safewords apply, rather than the usual campus policies of affirmative consent, shouldn’t they be able to enact the well-honed rules of their sub-culture rather than conforming to a vanilla administrator’s idea of ‘sexual respect’?"
Is Sleeping with Your Stuffed Animals into Adulthood a Problem? - "A study by researchers at UV University Amsterdam showed that touch—including even that of a Teddy Bear or other stuffed animal—has heath benefits, and can even help relieve existential angst... A recent survey by Best Mattress Brand shows Berry isn't alone in this sentiment. The brand polled 2,000 Americans and discovered 37.5 percent of respondents slept with a stuffed animal as a child. Of those, 7 percent of adults said they still slept with their stuffed animals at night, citing comfort and habit as the main reasons"
Sofie Hagen accuses Cancer Research UK of ‘fatshaming’ obese people - "People have accused Cancer Research UK of ‘fatshaming’ over a hard-hitting poster. The poster aims to warn people that obesity is the second biggest preventable cause of cancer, with only smoking being a higher risk factor... The charity says only 15% of people know about the direct link between weight and cancer so it is important to make them aware... Body positive campaigner Sophie Hagen tweeted: ‘Right, is anyone currently working on getting this piece of sh*t CancerResearchUK advert removed from everywhere? Is there something I can sign? How the f*cking f*ck is this okay?’"
And we're told it's the right that is anti Science
"If it’s all the same to you Sophie, I’ll take medical advice on obesity related illness from scientists rather than an offended fat comedian."
A woman’s place … is in the tenors: female singers revel in opera’s looser gender divide - "If a female singer’s vocal range dips with motherhood or age, she can simply switch to a lower voice, such as tenor"
The Spectacles of #MeToo - "Back in the 80s, I was in a Women’s Studies class when I had a revelation. The professor announced that a well-known feminist had uttered treacherous words, asserting women could “get over” rape. Pandemonium, complete with shrieking and wailing, made its way around the lecture hall like a stadium wave. I remember sitting quietly and thinking, but isn’t getting over rape a good thing?... Eventually, I came to see that course not as a course but as a recruitment drive animated by contrived spectacles, all meant to tip students into frenzies that would in turn tip them into action... young women were out in the world challenging expectations without understanding the risks. They were also hearing that real power lay outside themselves (rather than within) and disrupting gender norms, by any means necessary, was the way to claim it. Combining those messages–disregard your safety and fight like mad–turned many young women into obedient foot soldiers who of course suffered. That’s not to say their activism wasn’t productive, but they’ve given birth to a younger generation of feminists whose frame of reference is still stuck in the 80s. It’s that inattention to changed realities that’s made an unexpected menace possible: the razing sweep of the #MeToo movement... a misleading aspect of the #MeToo campaigners’ insistence that sexual harassment is ubiquitous. For many of us, the norm is living in the middle of that spectrum, a neutral place where, when it comes to men we’re not intimate with, nothing too daring or dastardly happens. It’s middle ground where we may roll our eyes at men or engage in low-level flirting, but where we co-exist with them harmoniously nonetheless... A look at the parade of recent scandals presents a troubling pattern: when social media isn’t being used to ruin careers, legal processes themselves, as disruptive and expensive as they are, are weaponized instead"
This revealing tidbit shows how feminists prize victimhood
Is a call for decent clothing sexist? - "Sexism means that you unfairly treat both genders differently. But consider now the principle of decency during a political discussion (PMP):
“During any political discussion, a person ought not to dress in a sexually arousing way if he or she wants to be taken seriously“.
This principle makes no mention of gender. It is valid for men, women, heterosexuals, and homosexuals alike."
Snopes 'Fact Checks,' Facebook Threatens Satire Site for Mocking CNN - "The Christian satire site Babylon Bee has been fact-checked by Snopes and threatened by Facebook after it published an Onion-style article about CNN about purchasing a washing machine to “spin the news.” The Babylon Bee openly advertises itself as a satire site... the Babylon Bee is more than willing to satirize their own among the Faithful. Naturally, none of this matters to our left-wing tech overlords, who are becoming increasingly desperate to censor free speech coming from conservatives, Christians, and the like... for the sin of tweaking CNN, not only is Facebook threatening the Babylon Bee with extinction, but those who share this satire are being flagged as spreaders of fake news."
SG academic at Oxford: Major “fake news” spreader is Govt – need to educate SGs to be more critical in thinking - "social media has proven adept at rapidly debunking untruths and hoaxes, with "fake news" often not merely debunked but also then mocked and ridiculed online... 'Fake news' is not a problem in Singapore — with one major exception: the People’s Action Party government has, historically, spread 'fake news' for narrow party-political gain." He gave examples of the numerous detentions sanctioned by the PAP government under the Internal Security Act."
Nobody Catcalls the Woman in the Wheelchair - "I don’t know the fear, embarrassment and/or anger that comes with unwanted sexual attention. A not insignificant part of me wishes I did, though... I envied my friends as they talked about how much it hurt to be reduced to nothing but a sex object... the way feminists tend to discuss street harassment as a given reinforces ableist ideas of womanhood... this assumption ignores a different form of harassment faced by those who are disabled. Harassment, after all, isn’t actually about sex, but about power — and my harassers hurt me through the power of desexualization. They use the same voice with me that they’d use with a 3-year-old. They pat my head like they would a dog. They stare at my chair while shushing their childrens’ innocent questions. It’s ableist rather than sexist street harassment (from all genders) that I experience... I did feel an undeniable thrill, just last year, when a guy messaged me on OKCupid with “suck my dick, sexy.” I didn’t respond, but I kept it in my inbox for a while. Its presence was almost comforting. Of course, that comfort was laced with unbearable guilt and self-hatred, but I clung to it nonetheless."
Is it discrimination to not catcall a woman in a wheelchair?
Earliest Images of Breast Cancer Found in Renaissance Paintings - "there’s a perception that breast cancer is a modern disease. As the thinking goes, lifestyle, longevity and other factors have made the cancer much more prevalent in the industrial age. But recent research is showing that the disease was quite common all the way back to antiquity... it was culturally taboo for upstanding women of the day to undress for a painter. That meant artists would either pay women of a certain sort to model for them or they would use men as models and tack on breasts and a female head. That, plus a strong feeling that the male body was the ideal image of beauty, led to many paintings of women that look like “men with breasts.”
R v Oakes - Wikipedia - "David Edwin Oakes was caught with eight vials of hashish oil outside of a tavern in London, Ontario. He claimed he had purchased ten vials of hashish oil for $150 for his own use. He was also in possession of $619.45, which he claimed to have received from a government program. Despite Oakes' protests that the vials were meant for pain relief and that the money he had was from a workers' compensation cheque, section 8 of the Narcotic Control Act ("NCA") established a "rebuttable presumption" that possession of a narcotic inferred an intention to traffic unless the accused established the absence of such an intention. Oakes made a charter challenge, claiming that the reverse onus created by the presumption of possession for purposes of trafficking violated the presumption of innocence guarantee under section 11(d) of the Charter... The Court was unanimous in holding that the shift in onus violated both Oakes' section 11(d) rights and indirectly his section 7 rights, and could not be justified under section 1 of the Charter. This was because there was no rational connection between basic possession and the presumption of trafficking"
Meanwhile in Singapore...
Internet Rallies for Disabled Veteran Besieged by SJWs, Raises $21,000 and Counting - "Will Caligan, a conservative disabled veteran who lost his job after offending the Transgender Mafia with science. Caligan is a talented comics artist who found himself in a bigoted work environment run by people hostile toward anyone with conservative Christian views. Instead of tolerance, Caligan experienced public shaming, threats, a job loss, and colleagues turning their backs on him after he stated a man can not change his DNA based on wishes. Sane people everywhere were alarmed and dismayed that a person could lose his livelihood after one inconsequential exchange on social media... the project raised $21,000 and Caligan was becoming a hot commodity."
Chinese-made condoms too small, Zimbabwe’s health minister complains - "Zimbabwe is one of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa worst affected by HIV/Aids, with an estimated 13.5 per cent of its adult population infected with the virus. The use of condoms is a key way to limit the spread of infection. The country has become one of the top five condom importers in the world"
Better to pretend that everyone's penis is the same size and to spread HIV than to offend people
'Black Panther': Why Wakanda matters - The Washington Post - "The film’s story is based on the iconic Marvel superhero created more than a half-century ago by two Jewish New Yorkers who crafted their comic-book legends amid the turbulent civil rights struggle in the United States... “Wakanda represents this unbroken chain of achievement of black excellence that never got interrupted by colonialism”... The country is rendered as a Pan-African pastiche; viewers of “Black Panther” can point to Ghanaian fabrics and Zulu headdresses, Ethiopian tribal body markings and a prominent Bantu tongue.
Apparently, sometimes cultural appropriation is a good thing and Africa is indeed a country (it wasn't even filmed in Africa)
Ethiopia was only colonised from 1935-1944 at most
‘Black Panther’: Why the relationship between Africans and black Americans is so messed up - The Washington Post - "We call ourselves Francophone Africa versus Anglophone Africa. We categorize ourselves based on who our oppressor was. I always find that a strange thing. Our identity is so deeply tied to our oppression... The accents are all over the place! It was jarring and annoying to me! They wanted to base the accents on Xhosa from South Africa, but some of it sounded Nigerian, others sounded more Ugandan. It was very confusing, and I understand perfecting an accent is difficult, but oh, my goodness, it was so messy! I really liked the costumes. They were great. But ultimately, Wakanda, at least in the film, is an approximation of African culture, an outsider’s version of what African culture might be like — the rituals, song and dance, the rites of passage... As an African, I didn’t feel accurately represented in “Black Panther.” There was only one African artist whose song played in the background — her name is Babes Wodumo, she’s South African. I have nothing against Kendrick Lamar, but it would be good to be more representative of African music... It was like African bingo of sorts!... You know the worst thing? There hasn’t been an African premiere for “Black Panther.”... this film that celebrates blackness has not had an African premiere!... Even today, African political parties have tribal vehicles. They will have a tribal chief who will have the power to determine elections. It is very rare across the continent to find a party that is national in nature. A lot of the conflicts across Africa are tribal. Look at Somalia, which has not had a functional government — so much about the clans. Killmonger, King T’Challa and the Jabari Tribe and how they all want different things — that is what goes on in Africa... A lot of people here supported Black Lives Matter and don’t think police should be shooting black people in the U.S., but they are perfectly okay with the Kenyan or Zimbabwean police cracking down on protesters violently. You speak out against an injustice half a world away, but when there’s injustice right on your doorstep, you’re okay with it because of the party or politician you endorse... Africa is a deeply patriarchal society. In this film, women are equal to the men."
The world language you speak has absolutely nothing to do with how you classify yourself
Maybe Black Panther is more helpfully viewed as an African-American conceit and fantasy than anything truly African
Is it still racist to call Africans tribal?
Tourist asked S’pore Marriott Tang Plaza Hotel for Jeff Goldblum pic in room, hotel obliged
Ubinites and boatmen help make unusual wedding bash a reality - "When the big day arrived, the sleepy island – which is currently inhabited by fewer than 40 residents – was transformed into a flurry of activity with a big wedding bash being held there, possibly in recent years... a tea ceremony and the cutting of the wedding cake took place at an Ubinite’s house, near the famous Ah Ma Drink Stall on the south side of Ubin. The party continued into the night, accompanied by the soundtrack of Chinese oldies, ethnic Malay music which played out on speakers powered by generators... The zi char (cooked food) restaurant on Pulau Ubin catered the food while chairs were borrowed from the temple. Guests were free to don casual attire to beat the humid weather, and some showed up in sarongs"
Mark Cuban: Philosophy degree will be worth more than computer science - "Cuban expects artificial intelligence technology to vastly change the job market, and he anticipates that eventually technology will become so smart it can program itself... To remain competitive, Cuban advises ditching degrees that teach specific skills or professions and opting for degrees that teach you to think in a big picture way, like philosophy."
The Cultural Diversity Case for Free Speech - "Speech codes often claim to protect ‘cultural diversity’ on campuses, but they often do the reverse. They impose narrow American norms of political correctness on foreign grad students, post-docs, and faculty who can’t realistically understand what Americans will find offensive... These foreigners are often attracted to America because we market our country as the bastion of free speech, political liberty, and open sexuality. They expect a promised land of free inquiry very different from the repressive government regimes that they may have left behind. Many countries criminalize various forms of ‘hate speech’, ‘blasphemy’, and wrongthink... At least in China or Saudi Arabia, there were clear and stable expectations about what they couldn’t say. On American campuses, there is no such consistency across issues or across time... The modern British were much more open than Americans about sex, drugs, and drinking, and didn’t have the American obsession with racial politics. But they had plenty of taboos about discussing class, money, the welfare state, and Muslim immigration that took a while to discover. I ended up living in Britain for 9 years, but kept discovering new quirks and sensitivities that were unwritten, unspoken, and unquestioned. When I worked at a Max Planck Institute in Munich in 1995, I had to learn a whole new set of German ideological taboos, centered around fascism and eugenics, construed in the broadest possible terms. Likewise, when I took a sabbatical in Brisbane in 2008, I had to learn the Australian sensitivities around the status of Aboriginal peoples, the history of British colonialism, and East Asian immigration... I tried to list the implicit ideological norms that faculty hires from abroad would be expected to internalize, but that Americans couldn’t even acknowledge were norms. The list grew so long that I realized the situation was hopeless. Many of our ideological taboos are so taboo that we can’t even list them publicly – much less explain them in new faculty orientations. Yet our universities continue hiring foreign faculty and accepting grad students – without ever giving them clear guidance on how to switch ideological cultures, and what they’re actually allowed to believe, say, and do on American campuses... When students come from China or Saudi Arabia to an American campus, they have to adapt to speech codes and norms that bear little resemblance to those shown in classic college comedy-dramas that they may have seen as teens, such as Animal House (1978), Revenge of the Nerds (1984), Good Will Hunting (1998), Legally Blonde (2001), or The Social Network (2010). Most of these movies dramatize a conflict between playful, irreverent, often offensive students and stuffy, repressed, traditional faculty and administrators. In those movies, the irreverent students always win, partly by pushing the boundaries of free speech and partly by humiliating the sanctimonious censors. Yet in the current American climate, it’s mostly the social justice activist students imposing repressive speech codes and norms on politically centrist, conservative, libertarian, or foreign students and faculty.. If the young kink enthusiasts of the Harvard College Munchstudent club want to have a party where the BDSM norms of pre-negotiation and safewords apply, rather than the usual campus policies of affirmative consent, shouldn’t they be able to enact the well-honed rules of their sub-culture rather than conforming to a vanilla administrator’s idea of ‘sexual respect’?"
Is Sleeping with Your Stuffed Animals into Adulthood a Problem? - "A study by researchers at UV University Amsterdam showed that touch—including even that of a Teddy Bear or other stuffed animal—has heath benefits, and can even help relieve existential angst... A recent survey by Best Mattress Brand shows Berry isn't alone in this sentiment. The brand polled 2,000 Americans and discovered 37.5 percent of respondents slept with a stuffed animal as a child. Of those, 7 percent of adults said they still slept with their stuffed animals at night, citing comfort and habit as the main reasons"
Sofie Hagen accuses Cancer Research UK of ‘fatshaming’ obese people - "People have accused Cancer Research UK of ‘fatshaming’ over a hard-hitting poster. The poster aims to warn people that obesity is the second biggest preventable cause of cancer, with only smoking being a higher risk factor... The charity says only 15% of people know about the direct link between weight and cancer so it is important to make them aware... Body positive campaigner Sophie Hagen tweeted: ‘Right, is anyone currently working on getting this piece of sh*t CancerResearchUK advert removed from everywhere? Is there something I can sign? How the f*cking f*ck is this okay?’"
And we're told it's the right that is anti Science
"If it’s all the same to you Sophie, I’ll take medical advice on obesity related illness from scientists rather than an offended fat comedian."
A woman’s place … is in the tenors: female singers revel in opera’s looser gender divide - "If a female singer’s vocal range dips with motherhood or age, she can simply switch to a lower voice, such as tenor"
The Spectacles of #MeToo - "Back in the 80s, I was in a Women’s Studies class when I had a revelation. The professor announced that a well-known feminist had uttered treacherous words, asserting women could “get over” rape. Pandemonium, complete with shrieking and wailing, made its way around the lecture hall like a stadium wave. I remember sitting quietly and thinking, but isn’t getting over rape a good thing?... Eventually, I came to see that course not as a course but as a recruitment drive animated by contrived spectacles, all meant to tip students into frenzies that would in turn tip them into action... young women were out in the world challenging expectations without understanding the risks. They were also hearing that real power lay outside themselves (rather than within) and disrupting gender norms, by any means necessary, was the way to claim it. Combining those messages–disregard your safety and fight like mad–turned many young women into obedient foot soldiers who of course suffered. That’s not to say their activism wasn’t productive, but they’ve given birth to a younger generation of feminists whose frame of reference is still stuck in the 80s. It’s that inattention to changed realities that’s made an unexpected menace possible: the razing sweep of the #MeToo movement... a misleading aspect of the #MeToo campaigners’ insistence that sexual harassment is ubiquitous. For many of us, the norm is living in the middle of that spectrum, a neutral place where, when it comes to men we’re not intimate with, nothing too daring or dastardly happens. It’s middle ground where we may roll our eyes at men or engage in low-level flirting, but where we co-exist with them harmoniously nonetheless... A look at the parade of recent scandals presents a troubling pattern: when social media isn’t being used to ruin careers, legal processes themselves, as disruptive and expensive as they are, are weaponized instead"
This revealing tidbit shows how feminists prize victimhood
Is a call for decent clothing sexist? - "Sexism means that you unfairly treat both genders differently. But consider now the principle of decency during a political discussion (PMP):
“During any political discussion, a person ought not to dress in a sexually arousing way if he or she wants to be taken seriously“.
This principle makes no mention of gender. It is valid for men, women, heterosexuals, and homosexuals alike."
Snopes 'Fact Checks,' Facebook Threatens Satire Site for Mocking CNN - "The Christian satire site Babylon Bee has been fact-checked by Snopes and threatened by Facebook after it published an Onion-style article about CNN about purchasing a washing machine to “spin the news.” The Babylon Bee openly advertises itself as a satire site... the Babylon Bee is more than willing to satirize their own among the Faithful. Naturally, none of this matters to our left-wing tech overlords, who are becoming increasingly desperate to censor free speech coming from conservatives, Christians, and the like... for the sin of tweaking CNN, not only is Facebook threatening the Babylon Bee with extinction, but those who share this satire are being flagged as spreaders of fake news."
SG academic at Oxford: Major “fake news” spreader is Govt – need to educate SGs to be more critical in thinking - "social media has proven adept at rapidly debunking untruths and hoaxes, with "fake news" often not merely debunked but also then mocked and ridiculed online... 'Fake news' is not a problem in Singapore — with one major exception: the People’s Action Party government has, historically, spread 'fake news' for narrow party-political gain." He gave examples of the numerous detentions sanctioned by the PAP government under the Internal Security Act."
Nobody Catcalls the Woman in the Wheelchair - "I don’t know the fear, embarrassment and/or anger that comes with unwanted sexual attention. A not insignificant part of me wishes I did, though... I envied my friends as they talked about how much it hurt to be reduced to nothing but a sex object... the way feminists tend to discuss street harassment as a given reinforces ableist ideas of womanhood... this assumption ignores a different form of harassment faced by those who are disabled. Harassment, after all, isn’t actually about sex, but about power — and my harassers hurt me through the power of desexualization. They use the same voice with me that they’d use with a 3-year-old. They pat my head like they would a dog. They stare at my chair while shushing their childrens’ innocent questions. It’s ableist rather than sexist street harassment (from all genders) that I experience... I did feel an undeniable thrill, just last year, when a guy messaged me on OKCupid with “suck my dick, sexy.” I didn’t respond, but I kept it in my inbox for a while. Its presence was almost comforting. Of course, that comfort was laced with unbearable guilt and self-hatred, but I clung to it nonetheless."
Is it discrimination to not catcall a woman in a wheelchair?