Links - 2nd June 2019 (1)

After 47 years, Victoria’s landmark Bengal Lounge nearing its end - "Iconic cocktail bar, nostalgic rite of passage for legions of 19-year-old British Columbians who therein imbibed their first legal drink, disgraced relic of British colonialism. Born 1969 in the Empress Hotel, Victoria, B.C., is scheduled to come off life support on April 30, 2016, a victim of modern-day political correctness and bottom-line bean counting, aged 47.To the dismay of many monarchists and recovering government bureaucrats, the sun will finally set on a beloved last bastion of the British Raj. The Bengal Lounge in Victoria’s Fairmont Empress Hotel is closing at the end of April. The landmark Colonial India-themed bar is being turned into a function room for special events... Heritage activist Suzanne Johnston immediately launched an online petition to save the dark, clubby wood-panelled lounge, which boasted an entranceway guarded by two teak elephants and a balding tiger hide splayed above the back wall’s jade-veneered fireplace. According to local legend, both artifacts were gifts from the King of Siam (now known as Thailand) when he visited the hotel in 1930"

People in open-concept homes are realizing the walls were there for a reason - The Boston Globe - "Unless the couple’s two school-age children are in their rooms, the couple can’t watch a (non- PBS Kids) TV show, have a neighbor over for a drink, or conduct a work call.

The future of academic freedom and the curious, disturbing case of Derek Pyne - "he curious and disturbing case of Derek Pyne, an economics professor at Thompson Rivers University (TRU) in Kamloops, B.C. Prof. Pyne was banned from campus and suspended, with pay, by his school this past summer over research he conducted into so-called predatory journals – publications that offer academics a home to publish their research (sometimes for as little as a hundred bucks) with little to no scrutiny of the work itself... They have been labelled predatory because initially the belief was they were preying on naive scholars desperate for a place to be published – even for a fee. Increasingly, however, there is a feeling that many of these same academics know exactly what they are doing – using dubious sources to inflate their publication records for financial gain and prestige. Prof. Pyne had his peer-reviewed study published last year in the University of Toronto’s respected Journal of Scholarly Publishing. His research found that 50 per cent of more than three dozen administrators and professors in one faculty at a particular Canadian university (later identified as TRU’s department of business and economics) had their careers furthered by getting work printed in outlets with highly questionable professional credentials.The suspended professor has said he raised his findings with both the president and provost of TRU but his concerns were ignored. On the contrary, he was made the problem and was very quickly kicked off campus."

Why Conservatives Have Better Sex Lives Than Liberals - "A former adolescent campaigner for Bob Dole whom I spoke with seemed to agree with that assessment, in somewhat different terms. "Conservatives tend to be more satisfied across all areas of life, so I'm not surprised that includes their sex lives," he wrote in an email. "Lefties are more often dissatisfied—they whine about *micro*-aggressions—and the reason for this is that conservatives' view of the world and human nature is closer to reality, whereas Leftist ideologies tend to be utopian, which inevitably disappoints."He also suggested God might have something to do with it. "Leftism is a narcissistic, materialist ideology, and selfish sex in which the flesh is treated merely as flesh is almost always unsatisfying. Sex that is giving, concerned with the other person, and treats the body it ought to be, which is as a symbol of the soul, is far more gratifying.""

'Fat Sex Therapist' compares fitness trainers to Nazis, children's dieting to sexual assault - "“I truly believe that a child cannot consent to being on a diet the same way a child cannot consent to having sex,” Sonalee Rashatwar, whose Instagram username is "The Fat Sex Therapist," proclaimed Thursday from the main stage of St. Olaf College.She continued, “I experience diet culture as a form of assault because it impacts the way that I experience my body.”... The talk included assertions that fitness contributed to the recent Christchurch shooting, that people should "challenge" the rule of law, as well as the authority of and the police... Rashatwar listed science as one of these supposedly white supremacist everyday things. “We should be critical of the use of science and the production of knowledge to continue promoting this idea that certain bodies are fit, able, and desirable...is it my fatness that causes my high blood pressure, or is it my experience of weight stigma?" Rashatwar asked. She then connected the science suggesting that obesity is unhealthy to Nazism, saying that "fatphobic" science is “often actually eugenic science....eugenic science is Nazi science.”... Rashatwar specified how she personally enacts these ideas in her life as a sexual trauma therapist. She said that in her professional role, her code of ethics dictates an absolute prohibition on physical contact with clients. However, Rashatwar claimed that “I will never live by a professional code of ethics that tells me what I am allowed and not allowed to do with my body.”"

David Whysharksmatter Shiffman - Posts - "Attention everyone in Canada who didn’t believe me that you can buy shark meat at the grocery store in Florida. This is my parents’ neighborhood grocery store."
Sustainable shark meat!

The King CF of #WorldsOfDC on Twitter - "Although he has lived in Japan for 25 years, Pico Iyer doesn’t choose to learn more than a smattering of Japanese because he says needs mystery and “a sense of open space in life, something to offset the sense of the familiar.”
"The idea that one can “choose” or choose not to be fluent in a language is laughable. If you’ve lived so long in such a monolingual environment and haven’t picked up any, you are.. just quite special."
"Well he has picked up "any" just not fluent. And I wonder if you will say this to all the asian immigrants who have been here for more than 40 years and still know very little english."

Starbucks is installing needle-disposal boxes in locations across America following OSHA penalties and worker concerns about drug use in bathrooms - "Starbucks stores in at least 25 US markets have installed needle-disposal boxes in bathrooms in recent months. By this summer, the chain aims to have installed sharps boxes in bathrooms in all regions where such action has been deemed necessary... three Starbucks employees in Seattle told local news outlets that they encountered hypodermic needles on the job nearly every day. They said they had to take antiviral medications to protect themselves from HIV and hepatitis... A number of employees who spoke with Business Insider said that they felt safety issues grew more serious after Starbucks announced an open-bathroom policy in May 2018... In a study led by Brett Wolfson-Stofko for New York University’s Center for Drug Use and HIV Research, 58% of the 86 New York City business managers surveyed said they had encountered drug use in their businesses’ bathrooms. Another Center for Drug Use and HIV Research study of 15 service-industry workers found that a significant majority had encountered drug use, syringes, or both in bathrooms while on the job."
The high cost of virtue signalling. It's very expensive to not be "racist"

Pew: Twitter users are younger and more Democratic than most Americans - "A recent report from the Pew Research Center says Twitter users are younger, more highly educated, have higher incomes and are more likely to identify as Democrats compared to the general public. They're also more likely to support immigration and see evidence of racial- and gender-based inequality in society... It might not come as a shock that a handful of Twitter users are the most vocal, but the report finds that just 10 percent of users are responsible for 80 percent of tweets created by US adults. The median Twitter users post twice a month, while the most active accounts produce roughly 138 tweets in the same time. The most active users are also more likely to be women and to tweet regularly about politics. The report paints an interesting picture of the average Twitter user, especially given all the news about abuse and harassment on the platform, Twitter's complicated role in meddling with elections and bans on conservative users who violate the company's terms"

History of bubble tea: how boba, born of a staff competition in Taiwan, became a global phenomenon - "The 26-year-old slurps down the drink at least once a week, and even made time for a cup on his wedding day... Bubble tea, which has its roots in 1980s Taiwan, has become something of a global sensation. The drink started life at the Chen Shui Tang tea shop in the city of Taichung, where owner Liu Han-chien sold his high mountain oolong tea.The story goes that Liu wanted to change the way people drank tea, so he experimented by putting traditional milk tea in a cocktail shaker with ice. “I think it’s a kind of revolution in [Chinese] tea history because no one served chilled tea at that time. People thought we were crazy … but young people liked it very much”... It became known as “bubble tea” because of the thick layer of foam that forms on top of the drink after it is shaken. The addition of pearls, or large tapioca balls nicknamed “boba”, dates to 1987, when her father held a competition among his staff to come up with a creative concoction. His store manager, Lin Hsiu-hui, liked to eat fen yuan, or tapioca balls, so she added them to the milk tea. The rest is history... He compares it to Italian cuisine when Italian immigrants first came to the US at the end of the 19th century. “Most of the conversation about Italian food was how terrible it was – how garlicky, how spicy, how it made them drink alcohol. And of course alcohol was a bad thing because at that point of time, there was a robust discussion about prohibition. And in fact Italian food had almost no prestige in American cities”"

Getting Good Durian On Geylang Durian Street in Singapore - - "Geylang Durian Street is dangerous if you’re a durian lover. It’s especially dangerous if you’re a new durian lover, and obviously not a local Singaporean. It’s here, maybe more than anywhere else in the world, that you’re likely to get duped into buying some seriously bad durian, for the worst price. My Singaporean durian friends usually snicker when I tell them I’m going to buy durian in Geylang.“Wait, you’re going to Geylang?” They say incredulously. “Why????”They know it’s a place for suckers to get suckered. They expect me, the author of this durian blog, to know better. There are obviously better choices if you’re after honesty and a peaceful, sit-down-and-savor experience... I’m inexplicably drawn to the mischievous dodginess of this old red light district, the hustle and bustle of the crowds flowing into and out of the stalls, and the way the durian vendors and I look each other up and down, them wondering if it’s worth trying to scam this gweiloh and me wondering how they’re going to try to scam me."

Bernie Sanders: Democrat Party Identity Politics - "I’m old enough to remember a time when an independent secular Jewish socialist with a long record of support for Communist regimes would be considered a force for diversity in a typical field of Democratic candidates... Sanders was asked how he would compete in such a diverse field.“We have got to look at candidates, you know, not by the color of their skin, not by their sexual orientation or their gender and not by their age,” Sanders replied. “I mean, I think we have got to try to move us toward a non-discriminatory society which looks at people based on their abilities, based on what they stand for.” The reaction from many quarters of the liberal establishment was fit for a Tom Wolfe novel. The LGBT magazine Out ran the sardonic headline, “Bernie Sanders Bravely Asks Us to Consider a Straight President.” Neera Tanden, the head of the Center for American Progress, sneered, “At a time where folks feel under attack because of who they are, saying race or gender or sexual orientation or identity doesn’t matter is not off, it’s simply wrong.”... Sanders’s political radicalism is eclipsed entirely by his whiteness and maleness. This is partly because so much of the Democratic party has adopted his policy positions that he no longer stands out the way he did just two years ago. Still, it’s a remarkable change, made all the more remarkable because it’s mostly an elite liberal phenomenon.There’s little evidence that average Democrats, including minorities, care as much about the demands of wokeness as the liberal talking heads on TV claim. For instance, a majority of African-American Virginians do not want Governor Ralph Northam (of blackface infamy) to resign. Even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the face of the new, socialist, ethnically diverse Democratic party, owes her upset election not so much to allegedly socialism-craving people of color but to more-affluent white liberals. As Politico’s David Freedlander noted, Joseph Crowley, the old white male Ocasio-Cortez defeated in the primary, did quite well with blacks and Latinos, whom Crowley had served ably for years, while Ocasio-Cortez’s best margins came from “highly educated, whiter and richer” precincts that could afford to virtue-signal at the ballot box."