Links - 6th June 2019 (2)

Bjørn Lomborg - Posts - "Again: MMR Vaccines Don't Cause Autism. Now confirmed by the biggest study consisting of 657,461 Danish children. Remarkably, MMR vaccination reduced the risk for autism in girls (hazard ratio significantly lower than 1 at 0.79)."

Queensland University of Technology backflips over allocation of prize money for female runners - "Brisbane runner Alexandra Blake crossed the line first in the women's 5 kilometre race category at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Classic, but was outraged when she had not received a cent, unlike her male counterparts... When she confronted a race official, she claims she was told, "the money was only for the first three across the line, that was always the case and we made that very clear in our advertising". Her father, Mark Blake, posted on social media that organisers should be ashamed of themselves."This is a pure disgrace and sexist in the extreme. It's not about the money — it's about the simple concept of equality," he said."My daughter who won the 5km was told by the race director — it's simple enough, if you want prize money you simply have to beat the men."You sir should never be allowed near athletics or any sport again.""
Sexism is treating men and women the same and communicating this clearly in advance
It's okay, in a few years transwomen will be getting all the women's prizes anyway

Keynote speaker at Harvard diversity conference says Christians should be ‘locked up’ - "To celebrate a “Decade of Dialogue” in its annual diversity conference, Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts & Sciences invited a straight white man to give the keynote lecture.But not just any straight white man.Tim Wise, an “anti-racism writer, educator and activist,” has denigrated Christians as “Jeezoids” and fascists and called Pope Francis evil. He has tweeted that “people who believe in a God of hell/damnation deserve to be mocked viciously and run out of the public square.”... “Just because I have a husband and a four-year-old, people might assume that I’m straight … when I am very queer,” said Huckel, who leads the global diversity and inclusion initiative at gambling technology provider IGT. She didn’t explain how she is “very queer.”"
Diversity means Christians are evil
Does he believe in mocking Jews and Muslims viciously?

The term ‘people of color’ erases black people. Let’s retire it - Los Angeles Times - "According to the Fashion Spot’s annual “Diversity Report,” one out of every three models in 2018 fashion ads were women of color. That certainly sounds like progress. But editorials and magazine covers lean heavily toward non-black women of color, and the terms non-white and women of color are used repeatedly to bolster the analysis.To see for myself, I picked up a random high-end fashion magazine. Out of hundreds of models it had a total of 12 black women in it, admittedly better than the one or two I was expecting. Looking closer, however, I noticed that these women were either all extremely light-skinned, very dark-skinned or highly established in their careers, like Lupita Nyong’o.This was highly conditional inclusivity. Your everyday black girl was missing."
When "inclusive" and/or inoffensive language is "racist"
Every minority needs to hit a quota, apparently

A new generation of flying cars is taking to the air. But without the cars - Los Angeles Times - "Thanks to advances in electric propulsion technology, the new designs look more like many-rotored helicopters. And while the early concepts were envisioned as personal transportation, the reality is more likely to be short-range flying taxi services in cities... Advances in battery and electric-motor technology gleaned from the auto industry, as well as improvements in lightweight carbon-fiber materials, are another reason eVTOL flying car designs are more viable than they may have been 10 years ago... Uber has said the price per flight could eventually be comparable to an UberX car ride... Uber, Terrafugia and others plan to have human pilots at the helm, at least initially, before eventually transitioning to fully autonomous flying vehicles"

Americans don't trust their government, its institutions, or each other. This is not a good place to be - Los Angeles Times - "Increasingly, Americans do not tolerate people who do not stay in identifiable political and even geographical lanes. There is probably no more hated politician right now than the temperamentally centrist lame-duck Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.). Acres of pixels are expended most every time a perceived center-right type is hired by a reliably left-leaning news outlet — Kevin Williamson at the Atlantic, Bari Weiss at the New York Times, Hugh Hewitt at MSNBC... 61% of Democrats think the phrase “racist/sexist/bigoted” applies generally to the Republican Party, while 54% of Republicans think the Democratic Party is “spiteful.” More than one in five members of each bloc think the other can be rightly described as “evil.”... We are careening dangerously from a high-trust to a low-trust society. We trust one another less, we trust government and other mediating institutions less. This trend, which like many of our pathologies predates and arguably helped give rise to the Trump presidency, has ominous consequences.High-trust societies have lower transaction costs, lower crime rates and less corruption. People are nicer and better behaved when they’re reasonably confident that the local grocer won’t steal their credit card information and the IRS won’t audit them based on their politics. Low-trust countries are clannish, unable to develop the civil institutions of a free society, and those in power tend to use government authority like a club to punish political enemies. The resulting disorder builds demand for strongmen, for more centralized state power. None of this is good."

Parrot clams up after it was detained for warning owners of law enforcement presence in drug raid - Story - "Police seized the bird in hopes of getting more information out of the loyal lookout, but according to Brazilian journalists, the faithful fowl kept its beak shut"

F R E S H S T O L E N M E M E S - Posts - "Chemistry substitute was slowly writing endgame spoilers on the board every time we talked"

Animal Rights Activist Wants To Abolish Guide Dogs Because They Don’t Consent To Work - "Campaigner Wendy Turner Webster appeared on ITV’s Good Morning Britain to express her controversial opinion, where she argued working dogs, including guide dogs, sniffer dogs, police dogs and working sheep dogs, are used for the benefit of humans without consent."

Teach "Don't Steal", not "Lock your doors" - Posts - "haha look at all these fragile white males getting defensive when I yell at them about how evil they are. clearly this proves me right somehow"

Private parts for private property: evolution of penis size with more valuable, easily stolen shells - "I introduce a novel hypothesis, the ‘private parts for private property' hypothesis, which posits that enlarged penises evolved to prevent the theft of property during sex. I tested this hypothesis in hermit crabs, which carry valuable portable property (a shell) and which must emerge from this shell during sex, risking social theft of their property by eavesdroppers. I measured relative penis size (penis-to-body ratio) for N = 328 specimens spanning nine closely related species. Species carrying more valuable, more easily stolen property had significantly larger penis size than species carrying less valuable, less easily stolen property, which, in turn, had larger penis size than species carrying no property at all. These patterns in penis size remained even when phylogeny was controlled for, and the patterns were not explained by alternative hypotheses. Instead, the results suggest larger penises evolved as morphological adaptations to facilitate safe sex, in which individuals retain their valuable property by extending a long penis outside the shell to copulate."

Lucas Adler - Fascinating how nobody expects that random Jews in... - "Fascinating how nobody expects that random Jews in Europe or America will suddenly lash out in acts of terrorism upon random white people in an 'inevitable' reaction to the synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh and San Diego, right? I was told terrorism is a response that *all* people have as a response to 'oppression', and hardly any group of people has suffered this more than the Jews. And yet random acts of terror as a result do not occur. How do they and Ahmadi Muslims seem to escape this 'inevitable' human tendency?"
"It is remarkable, also, how Vietnamese and Japanese people lacks terrorist trends against the West, or how even among the poor and marginalized Romani pople there is no terrorist trend rising."

MOORE: 20 Years After 'Sex And The City,' The 'Real-Life Carrie Bradshaws' Are Wishing They Hadn't Slept Around - "In the early 2000s, modeling themselves on Carrie Bradshaw and her friends, women in their 20s and early 30s began to have sex “like men.” One night stands and sexual exploration became the ultimate feminist statement. If men could do it, then why shouldn’t they? “There was no such thing as a bad date,” writes dating columnist Julia Allison of her time living the Sex and the City lifestyle, “only a good date or a good brunch story.” In fact, in the years since the show’s premiere, Sex and the City has come to be seen as not feminist enough — receiving criticism for leaving its four heroines happily paired up romantically by the series finale. In 2010, The Telegraph complained that “The happiest character, Charlotte, is by far the most conventional – rich husband, children, no job (by the end), a Park Avenue palace.” In 2017, Marie Claire called one of the show’s main characters “anti-feminist” for saying that “everyone needs a man.” If a lesson is to be learned from the show, today’s critics seem to be suggesting, it’s that it didn’t go far enough. In order to be truly feminist, it seems, women must give up romance altogether. There's only one problem: eventually women do want to settle down. In fact, many of the women who bought into the Sex and the City lifestyle 20 years ago are coming forward to share their regrets. Julia Allison says the show literally “ruined her life.” She says it peddled a “fear of intimacy disguised as empowerment.” Writing for The New York Post, Allison wistfully wonders what her life might have been like if she hadn’t bought into the Sex and the City philosophy. “Perhaps I’d be married with children now?”"

Why Most Bakeries Sell Frozen Bread & Croissants - "[In France] For modern day bakeries, buying pre-made product is easier because they know that skilled artisan bakers are hard to find, the products are labor-intensive (croissants can take anywhere from 20 hours to 3 days to make), the price of butter & milk has sky-rocketed, and most importantly if they did manage to find a skilled artisan baker but they were sick, who would replace them?... are you standing in front of a bakery (boulangerie), a baker (boulanger) or an artisan baker (artisan boulanger)?... When you see artisan baker/artisan boulanger it is a big step up because these words tell us that there is a skilled/trained artisan sourcing ingredients and making the dough and baking it on premises, but even then, I question, are they using quality flour? Fresh yeast? Margarine or butter?"

Ethnicity, the amygdala, and the social environment: a neuroimaging study - "Ethnic minorities have greatly increased rates of schizophrenia. The risk is most pronounced when individuals are living in areas with few people of the same ethnicity as them. Amygdala hyperactivity has been linked to paranoid symptoms in psychosis, and increased levels of paranoia have been observed in ethnic minority individuals... We have shown for the first time, to our knowledge, increased amygdala response to white faces in individuals of black ethnicity. Significant correlations were observed between amygdala response and neighbourhood variables associated with increased psychosis risk. This finding has relevance for our understanding of the increased rates of paranoia and psychotic disorders in ethnic minority individuals."
A downside of diversity and ethnic mingling?

The Incredible Shrinking Singapore Stock Market - "Many of the businesses that have left the exchange in the past few years are well-known in Singapore. They range from GLP Pte., one of the world’s biggest warehouse owners, to Osim International Pte., Asia’s largest maker of massage chairs. Some chief executive officers who’ve taken their companies private, lamenting what they see as low valuations in the city-state, are seeking more liquid markets that can generate higher stock prices. For example, Lee says, sofa maker Man Wah Holdings Ltd. was taken private in September 2009. Within six months, it was relisted in Hong Kong at about eight times its market value. Chew Sutat, SGX’s head of equities and fixed-income businesses, says delisting is a global trend. What’s more, he says, it’s a healthy market function that weeds out weaker companies. Unlike some exchanges, Chew says, SGX doesn’t refrain from delisting zombie companies just to keep its numbers up. But that doesn’t tell the whole story... some of the factors often cited as driving Singapore’s economic success are the very ones holding back the stock market... stocks and securities account for just 9.6 percent of household assets, according to government statistics. That compares with 48 percent in the U.S. And Singaporeans who do put money into equities increasingly turn to options beyond the city-state, a diversification that’s facilitated by exchange-traded funds, among other things... the delisting trend could be a good sign, says Tamara Henderson, who covers Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand for Bloomberg Economics in Singapore. It creates a situation in which unlisted companies, free of the constraints of quarterly reporting, are more able to focus on long-term growth, thereby stabilizing the economy. “It’s probably a sign of wealth,” she says."