Links - 14th April 2019

Japan’s sex industry is becoming less sexual - More smutty than slutty - "softer services seem to be gaining popularity at the expense of harder ones such as vaginal sex (which is illegal but widely available) or oral sex (which is legal). The sex trade in Japan has long been about not only intercourse, but also the yearning for intimacy and romance, says Masahiro Yamada, a sociologist, and these are the services that are growing. There are, for example, more kyabakura, places where men go to be served drinks and fawned over by women, and “image clubs”, where men act out fantasies (minus the climax, at least in theory) in mock doctor’s surgeries or train carriages. Onakura shops allow men to masturbate, while female employees watch. The pornography industry is in rude health, too... some elderly men visit soaplands “just to talk to the babes”. The owner of a “delivery-health” business, which dispatches girls to homes and hotels in Hiroshima, says that older people have replaced those in their 20s as his main customers. Rather than having intercourse, he says, they simply want to spend time in the company of young women... Services for the young are often about “doing it by themselves—quasi-sex”, Mr Matsushima says. Services that make masturbation more enjoyable are booming, such as websites that offer chats with naked girls or video parlours where men can watch adult DVDs in a private booth.Some see all this as a sign of the decreasing confidence of Japanese men. Local media talk of “herbivores” who are fearful of independent women. Maid cafés, where women in frilly aprons blow on customers’ food before spooning it into their mouths, are packed with men (and tourists). In soineya stores, or cuddle cafés, clients pay to lie next to a girl. If they pay extra they get a pat or the woman stares directly into their eyes. Sociologists reckon the lack of confidence may also account for another trend in the sex industry: the fetishism of young girls. Some businesses, for example, give men the chance to walk or lie with someone dressed as a schoolgirl, which is legal as long as the sex workers involved are not actually of school age... sex-related facilities and services grew by 2.1% in 2014, and sales in sex shops by just under 1%, despite Japan’s ageing and shrinking population. Pornhub, the world’s largest porn site, says Japan is its fourth-largest source of traffic. Mr Ikoma, the editor, attributes this in part to the business being more culturally accepted in Japan than elsewhere. Many companies still see fit to entertain clients in the equivalent of strip clubs, while pornographic magazines are sold in most convenience stores"

2020 Olympics: Japanese chains scrap porn magazines - "Two of Japan's biggest convenience store chains have said they will stop selling pornographic magazines ahead of the 2019 Rugby World Cup, and the Olympic Games in Tokyo next year.7-Eleven, which runs more than 20,000 shops in Japan, said it wanted "to create a proper shopping environment for all our customers".Its rival, Lawson Inc, with some 14,000 stores, made a similar announcement... "In the past, 7-Eleven was mostly used by male customers to buy beverages and fast food, and our product assortment was designed accordingly," the chain told Reuters."However, as the role and usage of 7-Eleven stores has changed in recent years, 7-Eleven became an important shopping destination for families, children and elder people as well."The chain said pornography accounted for less than 1% of its sales, adding that other merchandise could be sold in the vacant space."

Oxford University students back ‘racist’ scholar Noah Carl’s appointment to Cambridge fellowship | News | The Times - "A group of Oxford PhD students have backed the appointment of a scholar accused of racism to a Cambridge University fellowship. They said that academics campaigning against him were pandering to popular opinion.Noah Carl was awarded the Toby Jackman Newton Trust research fellowship at St Edmund’s College. The college is investigating the appointment after more than 200 academics signed a letter accusing him of “racist pseudoscience”.Dr Carl, a social scientist, has spoken at a eugenics conference and has said hostility to immigrant groups draws on “rational beliefs” about stereotypes that are “quite accurate”.In a letter to The Times, published today, the PhD students say the 200 academics are not experts in Dr Carl’s field of study and are being swayed by fashion. “We are not writing to corroborate Dr Carl’s conclusions. We are simply concerned by the use of popular opinion as the arbiter of truth. This is dangerous”"

Academics' Mobbing of a Young Scholar Must be Denounced - "Given that Dr Carl has not linked group differences in IQ to genetic differences, and does not appear to have ever used the term “genetic intelligence,” it is reasonable to assume that professor Graeber has not read the work he has publicly denounced. If Professor Graeber’s cavalier approach is representative of the group of academics who have signed the petition—and it doesn’t seem probable that many of them will have taken the trouble to examine Dr Carl’s work before signing the letter—it can be assumed that most of these scholars have denounced a junior colleague, and publicly trashed his reputation, on the basis of hearsay, and as a convenient way to advertise their opposition to the discussion of race, genes and IQ in the academy...
'If the signers think we should condemn anyone who gives ammunition to “extremist and far right media,” they should write a new letter condemning themselves'"

Left-Wing Academics Hound Cambridge Scholar for 'Wrongthink' - "The letter, clickbaitingly titled ‘No Place for Racist Pseudoscience at Cambridge’, claims that Carl’s work is “ethically suspect” and “methodologically flawed”. It demands an investigation into Carl’s research fellowship at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge, presumably with a view to having it withdrawn. What the letter’s authors have signally failed to do is provide any evidence for these damaging claims. Toby Young, himself the victim of a similar orchestrated online hate mob campaign, notes in the Spectator.
What’s odd about the letter is that it makes these career-ruining allegations without offering a scintilla of evidence to support them. No specific papers of Dr Carl’s are cited and there isn’t a single quote from anything he’s written. The words ‘race’, ‘criminality’ and ‘genetic intelligence’ are quoted, but these are scare quotes not actual quotes taken from Dr Carl’s work. I’ve looked at his published academic research and cannot find a single instance of him using the phrase ‘genetic intelligence’, which isn’t surprising since no serious scholar writing about group or individual difference in IQ would use such a phrase...
Carl is being hunted by the outrage mob not for anything he has personally written about race, genes and IQ, but merely for defending the intellectual freedom of other academics to do so.The leftist outrage mob knows that this is a tactic that works. Charles Murray has been about as welcome as the Ancient Mariner at a wedding, even in many right wing circles, ever since he published his controversial 1994 investigation of race and IQ The Bell Curve... Three decades ago, Allan Bloom warned of The Closing of the American Mind. His dread prognosis has unfortunately come true, not just in U.S. academe but across the Western world. No longer is the goal of higher education the free and frank exchange of ideas. Rather, it is increasingly about cabals of narrow-minded academics closing the field to anyone who doesn’t share their reductive, post-modernist, cultural Marxist views."

The scandalous shaming of Noah Carl | Coffee House - "Dr Carl points out that there is no empirical evidence that allowing race, genes and IQ to be publicly discussed harms minorities. However, there are good reasons to think that suppressing such debates will cause harm. It creates the impression that equal rights are contingent on different groups being genetically identical when it comes to key psychological traits like IQ. That’s dangerous because if it turns out that the groups aren’t identical – and, remember, Dr Carl doesn’t make that claim – those seeking to deny equal rights to minorities will be able to point to this as ‘proof’ that their prejudice is based on science. If this isn’t a rational basis for their attitudes, they will argue, why are the Left so anxious to quash the ‘evidence’? In effect, those seeking to suppress unwelcome research findings for fear that they may be used by racists to advance their agenda are endorsing the twisted logic of their opponents who argue that minorities shouldn’t be granted equal rights because they’re genetically different. It would be better, surely, if defenders of equality were to point out that anyone making this link is committing the naturalistic fallacy – of inferring an ought from an is – and that people morally deserve to be treated as equals, regardless of how different they might be from you"

Wesley Yang on Twitter - "White liberals have grown dramatically more progressive on race over time, and in 2014 became more progressive than black people, with the disparity sharply widening each successive year"
"Irish, Italians, Jewish and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without special favors" - Percent Disagree
2014 is a good date to date the explosion of SJWs to

The Screen - Posts - "“So let me get this straight... Men are not allowed to talk about abortion because they don’t have uteruses, but they are allowed to identify as women even though they have penises. ...Liberals have lost their minds.”"
Are infertile or postmenopausal women allowed to talk about abortion?
Eric Hobsbawm: history and politics - History Extra - "The fundamental belief of Marxism is that women's, the problem of women's equality, women's rights will be resolved by the revolution. And so trying to fight for them beforehand is a diversion. It's, it's, in a way, it's making bourgeois capitalism more acceptable. And I think he never quite overcame that."

Agrippina the Younger: a Roman woman of great power - History Extra - "Roman women were very much supposed to traditionally be pure virgins, until they had one husband for whom they had lots of children. And that was it. And certainly, they were never allowed to have any kind of sexuality of their own. Men had sexuality, women were just for having babies. But at the same time, Romans were deeply suspicious of female sexuality so. And they were very convinced that if you let women have half a centimeter of freedom, then they would immediately take off all their clothes, which occasionally did happen, such as with Augustus’s daughter, Julia. So the ideal position for a Roman women, particularly a Roman woman who was the wife of a powerful man was to be effectively silent and beautiful, and have children and always be in a supportive role, but to never have any kind of potential shame brought upon her which could be done even by being alone with a man in the wrong situation."

War and music - History Extra - "War always seems to bring out great art... it tends to bring out some of the sort of deepest and most creative qualities... there is something about the feeling that your own personal life is at stake here that kind of you know reinforces the creative instincts and brings out something that's, that's really really of a higher quality"

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Untold food stories: Rohingya and Uighur cuisine - "‘You can keep in touch with developments in Uigher cuisine online but just not on the phone, you can't call home?’
‘By phone is probably impossible at the moment. Even you call someone in your hometown, nobody pick up your phone because too much like scary to pick up the phone from abroad. The calling’"

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, The New Food Bank Frontline - "We first had the crocodile meat donated. The organization was so worried. You know, they came to us saying people think they are devil worshippers…
‘If someone has donated a huge amount of chocolate bars, or sweets, or crisps or whatever it is, something that you know isn't very good for people. Do you distribute it anyway so you're not wasting the food? Or are you forced to waste it yourself? How do you make that decision?’
‘We welcome them with big wide open arms... a lot of times, as much as we are trying to help the underprivileged, I feel that we're also on a mission to brainwash the donors as well. And sometimes the donors keep thinking that, oh, they only need the rice or the oil, you know, but I mean for us who can afford a Snickers bar every day, that's cool. But for people who are in need, I mean, even just chocolate bar is something few and far in between. So every other month, we are celebrating some kind of festival with some kind of sweet and some kind of goodie.’...
We have actually received 12,000 pieces of these [moon]cakes before. And we redistributed them... And some of the elderly when we saw them, they had tears rolling down their eyes. They said: I've not eaten a piece of moon cake for five years because I can't afford it. For people in need this is truly a luxury. It's okay to give them some sugar and some love and some cholesterol from time to time. It doesn't always have to be clean, healthy food...
We actually were very privileged to get like I think we had 2000 cartons of chicken curry. And we had a problem redistributing it to human beings and one of the dog shelters heard of us and so they said can my dogs eat some curry? And so from there we actually learned that dogs actually eat curry as well"

World-changing women - History Extra - "The game of chess before Isabella [of Castile], the Queen had virtually no power on the board at all. The rules of chess what changed as a result of Isabella's power"

Capture2Text - "Capture2Text enables users to quickly OCR a portion of the screen using a keyboard shortcut. The resulting text will be saved to the clipboard by default."
This is almost perfect, just performing badly with italicised text