Links - 22nd June 2019 (2)

Meme - "Jezebel: Victoria's Secret doesn't want plus-size or trans women walking the runway"
"The NBA dont want my 5‘10 ass either Get the fuck over it"

Why native English speakers fail to be understood in English – and lose out in global business - "Speakers who have English as their mother tongue can find themselves in a baffling predicament. While at home they are persuaded that the rest of the world now speaks their lingo, abroad they discover that their own English renders them incomprehensible to colleagues and business partners... When an American manager in Japan cannot understand why his Japanese staff will not give him the “ballpark figure” he has demanded, this breakdown in communication can lead to a real disintegration in workplace relations. And the underlying feelings of mistrust are mutual. The inability of the travelling native English speaker to refrain from homeland idiosyncrasies, subtextual dexterity and cultural in-jokes has been found to result in resentment and suspicion"

The Terrible Results from the Misconception Study 2017 - "Most people in the richest countries are absolutely wrong about the state of the world. We have tested their knowledge. We asked 12 basic fact questions to the general public in fourteen rich countries, using online panels. Every question had three alternatives: A, B or C. When we went to the zoo and marked bananas with A, B & C, the chimpanzees picked the right answer every third time. On average a monkey picking answers randomly would score 4 out of 12 correct answers. But the average score for the humans was much lower: only 2.2! That’s why the logo for the study is a monkey... The problem here is not the lack of correct knowledge. The problem is the presence of wrong “knowledge”. To score this bad requires a false perception of the world, that make you pick the wrong answer systematically."
Basically people think the world is in an awful state and has gotten worse - but really things have gotten better and better

Melvyn Bragg on Heloise and Abelard | History Extra Podcast - History Extra - "You had these prayer sites in all of Europe, I mean, a third of the population was engaged in prayer. And they believed it. They just chanting the prayers like you, people going down the street doing Hare Krishna all the time, the prayer after prayer after prayer, and the more prayers you, you’ll get through Purgatory quickly... [Her uncle] arranged for a castration... Abelard was castrated. And being the knightly man he was he said it didn't hurt because... these things didn't matter if you were a, a believer and b, a knight... things that hurt you most you say didn't hurt, anyway, he was castrated. There was a furore in Paris, the people who did it were castrated and blinded. Except Fulbert the organizer, he got away with it"

Stephen Rippon on the Landscape of England | History Extra Podcast - History Extra - "‘Crossing these wastelands… If you were moving between two tribal territories, kingdoms... How would it have been different on one side to the other?
‘I think the differences would have been subtle. You would have noticed that perhaps, the styles of the pottery vessels looked different. If you went to the funeral of somebody who had died, you would have noticed some different funerary practices, for example. And you might have noticed some differences in the appearance of people in terms of their dress, their jewelry, and so on. What you wouldn't notice, differences in the colors of people's skins, and so on, and almost certainly not the language they were speaking… a sort of racially homogenous people, but communities expressing distinct identities in sort of some of those differences in daily life, we tend not to see it within sort of England now. Although down here in the southwest, for example, we have a great rivalry with our friends and neighbors in Cornwall to whether we put the cream or the jam on our cream teas first… or where you crimp your pasty. They’re trivial examples. But these are modern examples of how you get communities creating little differences in the way they do things. And that's a really important way of creating identity. And that's what we were seeing in the Iron Age, people created different identities for themselves, through the way that they dressed their jewelry, the way that they styled their pottery vessels, the way they buried their dead.’"

Hue And Cry - "hue and cry, formerly, in English law, pursuit of a criminal immediately after he had committed a felony. Whoever witnessed or discovered the crime was required to raise the hue and cry against the perpetrator (e.g., call out "Stop, thief !" ) and to begin pursuit; all persons within hearing were under the same obligation, and it was a punishable offense not to join in the chase and capture....
In former English law the cry had to be raised by the inhabitants of a hundred in which a robbery had been committed if they were not to become liable for the damages suffered by the victim."

Robot App Trolls Telemarketers By Keeping Them On The Phone For Hours - "This robot app, created by Roger Anderson of The Jolly Roger Telephone Company, does exactly that. By using a series of pre-recorded words and conversation topics, the robot successfully keeps the telemarketer on the phone. It's harmless because the robot is super polite, and as the telemarketer in the below recording keeps pointing out, he's paid to be on the phone anyway — so "wasting his time" isn't really wasting his time personally, just the company's time. It's just annoying him a little bit, while costing the invasive company money. Game, set: ROBOT.The robot has a lot of noncommittal phrases in the bank like "yeah" and "uh huh," which gets the telemarketer going at the start. But the robot also has some other stories to spin. It tells the telemarketer it's confused because it's just woken up from a nap, and that the telemarketer sounds like someone they knew in high school"
This will be good to foist on illegal moneylenders

Jolly Roger Telephone | Revenge Has Never Been So Sweet - "Robots available in the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.
Service available to Canadians, but requires long-distance calling to the US"

Anti-Immigrant Violence in Germany Tied to Dating Competition - "Researchers find more anti-immigrant violence in areas where dating competition is tough"
This suggests that since migrants have - even worse - a horrendously lopsided sex ratio...

Man Hires Female Escort For Two Hours To Help Him Move House - "she’s not the only one who had this bizarre experience. A few others chimed in with their odd encounter and said that they experienced a similar situation.One woman even shared that she was hired for three hours by a man who also wanted help to pack up his belongings to move out of his house."

Ralph Breaks the Internet: how storyboards helped make the movie great - "Some live-action blockbusters are still produced from scripts that are finalized well in advance of filming, but in an age when special effects workshops often have to start building a movie’s big action setpieces years before its release date, a complete script can be a rare luxury when a movie is actually filming — to say nothing of one based on an actual story that makes sense. Industry anecdotes about huge blockbusters where the script was being written right while production was happening are unfortunately common. This can lead to an all-time classic. More often it leads to something like Men in Black III.Because the process of making an animated film is so expensive — there’s a lot more time and labor involved, since whole worlds have to be drawn or created in a computer and then animated — it’s imperative to only animate sequences that are as close to final as they can get. So on an animated film, story is typically determined ahead of time, and occasionally even before the screenwriter has started her first draft."

What makes every Pixar movie tick, in one chart - "Inside Out owes so much to Pixar's brand, in fact, that we decided to break down what ties all the Pixar movies together to find the common themes throughout the franchise's history. Check out how Pixar structures its movies and the threads and themes that tie the films together."

WWF Funds Guards Who Have Tortured And Killed People - "The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) had long helped fund and equip Chitwan’s forest rangers, who patrol the area in jeeps, boats, and on elephant backs alongside soldiers from the park’s in-house army battalion. Now WWF’s partners in the war against poaching stood accused of torturing a man to death. WWF’s staff on the ground in Nepal leaped into action — not to demand justice, but to lobby for the charges to disappear. When the Nepalese government dropped the case months later, the charity declared it a victory in the fight against poaching. Then WWF Nepal continued to work closely with the rangers and fund the park as if nothing had happened... In national parks across Asia and Africa, the beloved nonprofit with the cuddly panda logo funds, equips, and works directly with paramilitary forces that have been accused of beating, torturing, sexually assaulting, and murdering scores of people... WWF is not alone in its embrace of militarization: Other conservation charities have enlisted in the war on poaching in growing numbers over the past decade, recruiting veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to teach forest rangers counterinsurgency techniques and posting promotional materials showing armed guards standing at attention in fatigues and berets. Ex–special forces operatives promote their services at wildlife conferences. But WWF stands out as the biggest global player in this increasingly crowded space... Since 1872, when Native American tribes were forced to leave their ancestral lands to make way for Yellowstone National Park, hundreds of thousands of people worldwide have lost access to their land to ensure animals roam in people-free spaces. These communities, from the Tharu in Nepal to the Baka in Central Africa, remain on the outside looking in at land where their ancestors gathered food, built shelter, and made medicine out of natural resources for generations."
Since many people care more for animals than humans (e.g. the uproar about Harambe, cheers when poachers and hunters are killed or injured), it's not clear this is a bad thing to them

Andrew Sullivan: The Nature of Sex - "“Why should I let the toad work squat on my life?” asked the poet Philip Larkin. And the answer, of course, is money and meaning. We work to afford a decent life and to give some kind of direction and purpose to our days. It’s so ingrained in modern Western culture we don’t even notice it. Some of us, including me, wrap much of our self-worth around work. It seems self-evident to do more, more efficiently, and more lucratively, almost every day of our lives. In the U.S., vacations are sparse and short, and often seen entirely as a way to recuperate in order to work more effectively when you get back to the office, or the laptop, or the factory. For many of our social ills — poverty, family breakdown, drug abuse — work is seen as a solution.And so it’s worth pondering a lovely little essay by Jonathan Malesic, in Commonweal, the increasingly vital Catholic magazine, on the work ethic of monks. In the Monastery of Christ in the Desert in New Mexico, there is a set time for working, and it’s only a few hours a day, from 8:45 a.m. to 12:40 p.m., in order to sustain the community... “The monks go out of their way to resist efficiency in the work of God, reciting prayers at a pace much slower than what I’m used to at Catholic parishes. Even within religious communities I’ve visited at Catholic universities, Vespers — evening prayer — takes about fifteen minutes. At Christ in the Desert, it’s half an hour. Both groups follow the same text. It’s just that the monks in the desert sing it, drawing out every syllable.”...
If you’ve been waiting for the U.S. Senate to exercise its constitutional prerogatives in the era of Trump, you need wait no longer. A big bipartisan majority has finally stood up to Trump … by voting to advance an amendment in favor of continuing the 18-year occupation of Afghanistan and the ongoing intervention in Syria!"

Nancy Pelosi finding out the hard way that you can't out-troll Trump - "President Trump just grounded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.The White House published a letter Thursday afternoon announcing the president had canceled the congresswoman’s scheduled seven-day tour of Brussels, Egypt, and Afghanistan. Pelosi’s congressional delegation was slated to depart at around 3:00 p.m. Thursday, meaning they learned of the cancellation roughly 30 minutes prior to takeoff."Due to the Shutdown, I am sorry to inform you that your trip to Brussels, Egypt, and Afghanistan has been postponed," the president’s letter reads. "We will reschedule this seven-day excursion when the Shutdown is over." “In light of the 800,000 great American workers not receiving pay, I am sure you would agree that postponing this public relations event is totally appropriate,” it adds. “I also feel that, during this period, it would be better if you were in Washington negotiating with me and joining the Strong Border Security movement to end the shutdown. Obviously, if you would like to make your journey flying commercial, that would certainly be your prerogative.” As congressional delegations are typically flown by the U.S. military for overseas trips, the president does indeed have the power to cancel the trip. The commander in chief has oversight of the armed forces. That doesn’t mean this isn't petty or ridiculous — then again, so is Pelosi's talk of canceling the State of the Union"

Using data to determine if Die Hard is a Christmas movie

Dog vs. cat: New data show which pet brings you more joy - The Washington Post - "there is little difference between pet owners and non-owners when it comes to happiness, the survey shows. The two groups are statistically indistinguishable on the likelihood of identifying as “very happy” (a little over 30 percent) or “not too happy” (in the mid-teens).But when you break the data down by pet type — cats, dogs or both — a stunning divide emerges: Dog owners are about twice as likely as cat owners to say they’re very happy, with people owning both falling somewhere in between... dog owners, for instance, are more likely to be married and own their own homes than cat owners, both factors known to affect happiness and life satisfaction... Dog owners tended to be more agreeable, more extroverted and less neurotic than cat owners... Other research makes the case that some of the pet-happiness relationship is causal, at least when it comes to canines. A 2013 study found, for instance, that dog owners are more likely to engage in outdoor physical activity than people who don’t own dogs, with obvious benefits for health and happiness... Dog owners, for instance, are more likely to seek comfort from their pet in times of stress, more likely to play with their pet, and more likely to consider their pet a member of their family"
This fits in with cat owners being masochists since cats are terrible

Elizabeth Warren apologizes for calling herself Native American - The Washington Post - "Using an open records request during a general inquiry, for example, The Post obtained Warren’s registration card for the State Bar of Texas, providing a previously undisclosed example of Warren identifying as an “American Indian.” Warren filled out the card by hand in neat blue ink and signed it. Dated April 1986, it is the first document to surface showing Warren making the claim in her own handwriting. Her office didn’t dispute its authenticity... Warren released the DNA results showing she had a Native American ancestor six to 10 generations ago. The move backfired, with Cherokee leaders outraged that she used the test to show any connection to the tribe, a process they control. It also dredged up uncomfortable issues about defining race via bloodlines... The Texas bar registration card is significant, among other reasons, because it removes any doubt that Warren directly claimed the identity. In other instances Warren has declined to say whether she or an assistant filled out forms... The date coincided with her first listing as a “minority” by the Association of American Law Schools. Warren reported herself as minority in the directory every year starting in 1986 — when AALS first included a list of minority law professors — to 1995, when her name dropped off the list."

Rewarding failure has become an American epidemic - "The proverb is simple: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” But a teenage girl and her mom in New Jersey figured out how to circumvent that difficult “trying” part — by whining until success was easily achieved.At Hanover Park High School last month, a mother complained when her daughter got cut after cheerleading tryouts. Instead of telling her tough luck, the athletic director placated the mom and changed the team’s policy, allowing any wannabe cheerleader to join the squad.Naturally this upset the kids who made the team fair and square, and they brought their grievances to the school board... what happens to those who are accepted on the basis of “inclusion” rather than merit?Three years ago New York City’s Fire Department found out after allowing female applicant Choeurlyne Doirin-Holder to fail her way into a $81,000-a-year desk job. Firefighters fumed at the preferential treatment in an online forum. “If you can’t meet the standards, you are a danger to yourself, the public and most importantly everyone operating on the fire ground who is doing their job,” one wrote, according to The Post. That prediction proved accurate. After just 10 days on the job, Doirin-Holder was injured while inspecting equipment in a station house, stepping off a ladder incorrectly and fracturing her foot. It’s not just the FDNY that has lowered standards. When some women were unable to pass the fitness test for combat positions in the Marines, one of the most difficult endurance tests for female recruits was removed. And as low levels of unemployment reduced their pool of potential enlistees, the Army started allowing at least 4 percent of those scoring at the bottom third of its aptitude tests into basic training (up from 2 percent). The Army also expanded its waivers for marijuana use, so where once a history of taking pot was disqualifying, it no longer is... All this mollycoddling comes at an emotional and developmental cost.Jessica Lahey, author of the best-selling book “The Gift of Failure,” told The Post: “Kids are smarter than we give them credit for, and they know when we lower our expectations for them. When we give praise, awards or a slot on the team unearned . . . they no longer trust adults to be honest and unbiased arbiters of quality. Lying to kids about the quality of their work or downgrading our expectations so as not to make kids feel bad will only result in their no longer trusting our judgment.”"
On equality of results being unfair and unjust