Observations - 13th March 2019

Amused that Visa, Mastercard & JCB charge a certain merchant 4% but American Express only does 1.5%

Apparently River Valley high made students who were dating break up
(Friend from RV: "I don't know about "make" but I heard during my time the disciplinary mistress had called up the parents of two of my ex-classmates
(I was in a different sec 3 class by then) who were dating, to check if the parents knew and approved of their relationship. And both sides were aware and ok with it so no further action was taken, I believe.
my memory is fuzzy and it could be that the disciplinary mistress did try to break them up but ended up with calling parents to rally support for ending the relationship)"

"Star Wars and Star Trek universes collide and stormtroopers are facing a bunch of red shirts. They start firing at each other immmediately, and as usual stormtroopers can't hit anything, but the red shirts collapse and die anyway."

Intrigued by a virtue ethics argument against animal cruelty (that animal cruelty is not wrong because of animal suffering but because cruelty makes you a bad person). But then that would also apply to violent video games and BDSM

"Dad reports that CNY songs are a Northern thing as he doesn't recall any Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hainanese, or Hakka songs from his childhood in the 30s and 40s."

If child porn makes people abuse children, do snuff films make people murder?

"Telling someone they can't be sad because others have it worse is like saying someone can't be happy because others have it better."

"When I was in school I came across an old science textbook from the 80s. I read in it that the scientific consensus was we were going to run out of oil by the year 2000. Lol."

I thought the UK's conditions to retain permanent residence were lax - visiting the country every 2 years. But New Zealand's PR never expires even if you haven't visited the country in forever

"The more you try to justify yourself to people like that, the more it acknowledges that they have the right to question you. It shows you think they get to be your inquisitor, and once you grant someone that sort of power over you, they just push more and more." - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality / Eliezer Yudkowsky

"I think a loss of 'neighborliness' is mostly a good thing. Having a society with excessive cohesion is repressive."
Ahh libertarians. Then again, this explains a lot about their fetish for market fundamentalism

Ironic that Adaware, which is supposed to be "the Internet's security and privacy leader", hijacks my browser and makes itself my default search engine and changes my new tab page - just like malware


How do you distinguish a genuine call for discussion or explanation from an invitation to virtue signal?

"Their favourite thing to do is post images of people holding tiki torches at Charlottesville, not actually doing anything wrong, while saying Antifa is justified."

"The message sent by recalling someone for one too lenient sentence while no judges ever get recalled for handing out 30 year sentences like Halloween candy is apparently something California voters refused to consider" - @notwokieleaks on Twitter on the Aaron Persky (Brock Turner judge) recall

Why were so many people were so upset about Trump's "Gag Order" on the EPA when many other democracies don't allow government employees to communicate directly with the public about their work? (Ireland, Australia, Canada)

"I like the annoy feminists by saying I make it a point not to explain anything to women just in case kenna mansplaining
Reality can explain things to them better when shit goes wrong"
"There was a meme going around, where a feminist asked a guy to explain what is mansplaining"