Links - 6th June 2019 (1)

HIV used to cure 'bubble boy' disease - "US scientists say they used HIV to make a gene therapy that cured eight infants of severe combined immunodeficiency, or "bubble boy" disease"

Politically Incorrect D.Va II: Can't Nerf This - Posts - ""Nintendo is taking down stages from #SmashBros Ultimate if they contain the Trans Flag and doling out 9 hour suspensions for the accounts that post them. What. @Nintendo The. @NintendoAmerica Fuck. @NintendoEurope"
"Making political statements are for other people to do. We want people to smile and have fun when they play our games.""
- Reggie Fils-Aime"
Private companies are only allowed to censor when it's for progressive ends

Occupy Democrats Logic - Posts - "The Alt-Right is using a new dogwhistle.
Just like putting pepe or the OK sign on their profile, they now add "LGBTQ" which means "Let's Go Beat The Queers" to signal their homophobia to others in the Alt-Right without drawing suspicion from regular internet users."

Krinkle on Twitter - "Someone pointed out that "oh my god, becky, look at her butt" passes the bechdel test and I haven't stopped laughing for a week"

'This is why people hate millennials': Vegan 'Influencer' Says It's 'Invasive' to Look Someone in the Eye - "Chris Lavish, a 26-year-old “influencer and digital director,” is being ridiculed after giving an interview to The Cut. In the magazine’s profile, Lavish stated that he finds it “very invasive” when people look him in the eye and claims that is the reason he always wears sunglasses, favoring a pair of “big Guccis” when he is out in public."

Rami Malek promises 007 a tough time - "The new production's delays were prompted in part by Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle's replacement with Cary Fukunaga in September. He reportedly left because producers refused to let him kill Bond and replace him with a female or non-white actor."
The agenda is real

how many people go bankrupt from cancer - "[In the US] 42% of new cancer patients lose their life savings ...
62 percent of cancer patients report being in debt due to their treatment.
55 percent accrue at least $10,000 in debt, while 3 percent file for bankruptcy.
Cancer costs exceed $80 billion in America each year...
There's good reason the term "financial toxicity" is in the name of this report... 40 percent of Americans can't afford to pay $400 in case of an emergency... Over half of all cancer patients "experienced house repossession, bankruptcy, loss of independence, and relationship breakdowns.""

The Humorists - Posts - "I just found out this is how they X-ray small children and I can’t stop laughing"

Synagogue Gunman: Trump Is 'Jew-Loving, Traitorous C*cksucker'
Clear proof that Trump is anti-semitic and can be blamed for this and the Pittsburgh attack against a synagogue where Shabbat worshippers were hurt!

Hillary Clinton on Vladimir Putin's 'Manspreading'
No wonder she lost

God Emperor Trump - Posts - "Ban white men"
"White Men in 1919: Give women the right to vote.
White Women in 2019: Abolish White Men"

History of pad Thai: how the stir-fried noodle dish was invented by the Thai government - "the delicious concoction – “Thai stir-fry” in the local vernacular – is not historically a traditional dish in Thailand. Pad Thai’s roots are as political as they are culinary. It was imposed upon the populace almost 80 years ago as a cornerstone ingredient of a nationalistic agenda... “He simply had this particular version of a Thai noodle that was made by his housekeeper in his kitchen and he really liked it,” Van Esterik says.“So that dish somehow became standardised. It became almost a prototype for an example of a noodle dish. And from then on, it sort of had a different role. It became a ‘Thai noodle dish’, and [Phibun] was promoting the idea that one should eat it, particularly civil servants, for lunch.”It was originally called kway teow pad Thai – kway teow being “rice noodles” – and later abbreviated to pad Thai. However, pad Thai may not have been that new a creation. It’s believed a similar noodle dish was introduced to the kingdom during the Ayutthaya era by Chinese traders in the 1700s. Phibun had it modified with the addition of ingredients that made it more nutritious and tasty so that it would instil pride in people when they ate the dish. “When you look at pad Thai compared to other noodles, it has a lot of sources of protein. It’s got eggs, peanuts, shrimp and tofu and bean sprouts, which is an unusual amount of protein”... Another reason for promoting the noodle dish was that after the second world war Thailand experienced a rice shortage. A portion of rice noodles uses half as much of the grain when compared with a bowl full of rice, thus preserving the stock. The Public Welfare Department under the Phibun administration standardised the pad Thai recipe and distributed it to food vendors, along with food carts to encourage locals to eat the dish. That initiative was accompanied by a ban on the sale of Chinese and other foreign food, thus forcibly boosting the consumption of pad Thai... Cliff at Samsen believes it’s the flavour profile of pad Thai – sour, sweet, salty – that makes it appealing to so many palates.“You can’t really find it in any other cuisine. The closest comparison is Vietnamese. But Vietnamese is much lighter. And Vietnamese is very heavy on fresh herbs, fresh vegetables”... "it was kind of promoted for political purposes. And that’s very unusual. It’s the only example that I know of in history""

Socrates shows why moral posturing on social media is so annoying - "there are plenty of characteristics that are true of moral posturing both in Ancient Greece and contemporary society. For example, we still tend to equate knowledge with morality. Folch points out that if someone doesn’t accept certain facts, such as the effects of climate change, many on the left are apt to condemn them for behaving in a way that is immoral. “There’s a sense among the left that if you don’t endorse certain significant claims, then you’re probably not a very good person,” he says. “Having the right beliefs is a very significant part of virtue.” And signaling these “right beliefs” can be important for many to feel that they themselves are virtuous."

BBC World Service - The World This Week, UK to ask for Brexit delay - "There's no Google Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram in China, only their Chinese equivalents. They were all shut down years ago once the government realized that they could give people access to independent media that contradicted Communist Party rhetoric. But there is LinkedIn, the website for headhunting and posting your CV and work related updates. It’s even managed to thrive in recent years. And it's remained uncensored largely because it indirectly helps the Chinese government grow its soft power by offering companies the chance to connect with associates and expand their business operations overseas. According to its website, it has more than 44 million Chinese users. That's about 6% of China's online community. That's quite significant when you factor in that it's largely only of interest to Chinese people with an international focus, who’re predominantly English speaking. LinkedIn created a Chinese version of its website that suspended some functions, while ensuring that it doesn't look too different to how it does to the rest of the world. When Chinese users login, they can still enter basic information about themselves, search for users to connect with or upload their CVs. But what they can't do is write blog posts, upload images or videos, and they can't see public posts by other users. And because they can only exchange messages privately, the government doesn't need to worry about users broadcasting sensitive information to a mass audience. But the Chinese authorities seem to have not noticed, or at least, have done nothing about the fact that LinkedIn has become an important tool for Chinese users to reach out and talk to people in the West. Users are less suspicious of their messages being read by the authorities than they would be with a domestically created app. And it's largely trusted as a private method of exchanging information without direct government intervention, and with less risk of being brought in for questioning. So for many activists who live in a country saturated by Chinese social networks and Chinese mobile apps, it can be a lifeline to the external world… I've received messages from people in China flagging up large scale protests, but the government never reports on its these protests as evidence of dissent, and it blocks any stories about them. I've also received messages from users related to activities in the Xinjiang autonomous region in northwest China. That's an area really tightly controlled by the Chinese authorities. But LinkedIn isn't fireproof. The Chinese government can and sometimes does suspend or delete accounts, if it suspects their owners to be anti government"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Libya faces civil war - "‘We can all remember David Cameron going to what he called a liberated Benghazi eight years ago. It's great to be in free Libya he said. Well, that’s sounding a bit hollow now isn’t it?’
‘One can always learn lessons, one should learn lessons from interventions, even the ones that are generally perceived as having brought stability. I'm thinking particularly of the ones in the Balkans. The UK participated in the international military action in Libya in 2011. To protect Libyans against the regime. You have to remember that in Benghazi at the time, there was the prospect of a very real, an imminent humanitarian catastrophe. So it was right to seek action to protect those civilians, that the situation then developed in a very difficult way. The Gaddafi regime subsequently fell. And since then, we and others have been working to support and encourage a political transition in Libya. And the situation we see now is, is what has happened as a result of, of the political talks not prospering’
‘Indeed, and you could well argue that without our intervention, you could argue that with our intervention, as a result of our intervention, more people have died than would otherwise have died if we just let them get on with it basically’
‘I think that's a really difficult argument, John, because, you know, there was an overwhelming, imminent and overwhelming humanitarian risk in Benghazi. Had we left that situation to develop organically on its own, I think we'd have seen a huge amount of bloodshed. And I think a lot of people, a lot of members of the public, a lot of commentators would have been clamoring for the government and other governments to intervene. So I don't want to diminish the suffering in in Libya. But I think those sorts of trade offs are very difficult. And also causation in these cases is also extremely difficult.’"
The problem with "Never again!"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Japan-UK relations - "‘My message is that whatever the outcome of Brexit, Britain is going to be the best place in Europe to invest in with our top universities, the best universities in Europe with more tech startups than France, Germany and Italy combine"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Friday's business with Katie Prescott - "Already we're seeing in the States people who have a subscription video on demand service, subscribing to around about 2.8 services on a monthly basis. Now, you know, that would normally include people like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, who’s another big player out in the US, Disney is going to be competing in that market. Now, when it comes to the UK, that figure is substantially lower. It's around about 1.6 subscription services per month
… Interesting research out from the Bank of America, Merrill Lynch that's found that programming computers to decode language from quarterly calls can be used to inform decisions about whether you should buy or sell stocks. So if people are using unclear language, apparently that is a clear sign you should be selling…
Unclear language is probably a sign that you don't really know what you're saying. If you can't say it clearly, you need fancy words then what do you actually mean?"