Links - 19th July 2019 (2)

Genetic ancestry highly correlated with ethnic and linguistic groups in Asia - "their study conducted within and between the different populations in the Asia continent showed that genetic ancestry was highly correlated with ethnic and linguistic groups... The researchers noted that the geographical and linguistic basis of genetic subgroups in Asia clarifies the need for genetic stratification when conducting genetic and pharmacogenomic studies in this continent, and that human genetic mapping of Asia has important implications for the study of genetics and disease and for research to understand migratory patterns in human history.
Related: Genetic Structure, Self-Identified Race/Ethnicity, and Confounding in Case-Control Association Studies
So much for race being a myth
Keywords: Race is a myth, race was a myth
Addendum: Strange how this research is replicated

How Science and Genetics are Reshaping the Race Debate of the 21st Century - "we as a species have been estimated to share 99.9% of our DNA with each other... the long history of racism is a somber reminder that throughout human history, a mere 0.1% of variation has been sufficient justification for committing all manner of discriminations and atrocities"

Bonobos Join Chimps as Closest Human Relatives - "Chimpanzees now have to share the distinction of being our closest living relative in the animal kingdom. An international team of researchers has sequenced the genome of the bonobo for the first time, confirming that it shares the same percentage of its DNA with us as chimps do. The team also found some small but tantalizing differences in the genomes of the three species—differences that may explain how bonobos and chimpanzees don't look or act like us even though we share about 99% of our DNA. "
Presumably it's a myth that humans and chimpanzees are separate species

How to stop human trafficking? Stop watching porn, Game of Thrones, activist says - "Her mission: to abolish slavery everywhere forever, and one of the ways she is doing that is by encouraging people to stop watching porn. She believes pornography is fueling human trafficking, and she believes people should do their part to help stop it.Caine, who spoke last Saturday at the "Heaven Come" conference, a Christian worship gathering, said the porn industry is funded by slaves -- young women and children."

Tigers Are Orange Because Their Prey Sees Them As Green, Study Says - "deer, which is the main prey of tigers, are only capable of seeing blue and green light, which effectively renders them color-blind to red. Therefore, to deer, the tigers are seen as green, which gives them an ideal cover against the backdrop of forests and canopy jungles when hunting for prey."

Why Don't Women Vote For Feminist Parties? - "From the beginning, Britain’s only feminist political party shared an odd sort of fellowship with UKIP, which was, until recently, Britain’s leading anti-EU party. Both purported to represent roughly half of the population: women, in the case of the Women’s Equality Party (WEP), and those who wanted to leave the EU in the case of UKIP. Both were orientated toward a single issue. And both were plucky outsiders in an electoral system that is notoriously hostile towards new parties. Although their policy positions could hardly have been more different, founding members of the WEP looked to UKIP as a model of what a small party could achieve. But in terms of electoral success, the two parties diverged some time ago... its lack of success is by no means unusual among women’s parties, dozens of which have been founded worldwide in the last century. The party with the greatest influence to date has been Sweden’s Feminist Initiative (FI). In the 2014 European elections, FI campaigned under a slogan of “replace the racists with the feminists!” winning 5.3 percent of the vote and becoming the first feminist party to send a Member of the European Parliament to Brussels. However, its success was short lived. The migrant crisis has changed the Swedish political landscape and in the most recent European election FI lost their only MEP along with 80 percent of their 2014 voters... Democracy is a team sport and we choose our teams based on our identities, but with the exception of gender. On the whole, if you know a person’s class, race, education, profession, and region—perhaps also their first language and religion—you will have a good idea of their voting behavior. Working class Londoner of South Asian heritage? Labour. Middle class public sector worker living in Brighton? Green. White stockbroker living in the Home Counties? Definitely Tory. These groupings may change over time... When it comes to electoral politics, however, women are not an identity bloc and they never have been. Gender has a small impact on voting behaviour, in that women tend to lean left and are also less politically engaged on average. But, on the whole, knowing a person’s sex gives you very little insight into how they are likely to vote. Although the gender gap is enough to influence an election result, sex has much less of an impact than other demographic factors. Simplistic references to “the women’s vote” overlook this fact... The dream of a minority of Second Wave feminists that women would leave their husbands en masse and establish female-only communities never came to pass. Women are not an isolated group—they not only live among men, but also often love them as spouses, sons, fathers, and brothers. And that’s as it should be."

Fake nurse in Quebec discovered and fired — after 20 years on the job - "the woman managed to get hired and keep her job by providing the nursing licence number of someone with the same name.Her ploy was discovered a few weeks ago when she enrolled in a training course. An official noticed that the age listed on her licence number did not match up with her actual age... Savard was at a loss to explain how someone with no formal training had lasted in the job so long. Perhaps she had worked as a nurse’s aide and had absorbed the necessary skills, she suggested. It is also possible that because she was surrounded by competent people at the hospital, her shortcomings were never detected"

Do scenic spots benefit our health? - "people feel healthier when they live in more scenic locations, and this holds across urban, suburban and rural areas. Crucially, we also found that scenic areas were not simply green areas. While our analysis confirmed that people do report better health in areas with more green land cover, we found that reports of health can be better explained when considering ratings of scenicness, rather than purely by measurements of green space... We discovered that features such as “Valley”, “Coast”, “Mountain” and “Trees” were associated with higher scenicness. However, some man-made elements also tended to improve scores, including historical architecture such as “Church”, “Castle”, “Tower” and “Cottage”, as well as bridge-like structures such as “Viaduct” and “Aqueduct”. Interestingly, large areas of greenspace such as “Grass” and “Athletic Field” led to lower ratings of scenicness, rather than boosting scores... It appears that the old adage ‘natural is beautiful’ seems to be incomplete: flat and uninteresting green spaces are not necessarily beautiful, while characterful buildings and stunning architectural features can improve the beauty of a scene"

Wellbeing enhanced more by places than objects, study finds - "Volunteers looked at images of 10 places and 10 objects meaningful to them. Ten images of everyday places and objects, and 10 positive and 10 negative images that had been quantified for their emotional content were also shown. Each image was presented three times."

Are we there yet? Australians’ attitudes towards violence against women & gender equality (2019)
Naturally, gender equality is defined as whatever benefits women, women are only presented as victims, and empirical positions (e.g. "Women prefer a man to be in charge of the relationship", "Many women mistakenly interpret innocent remarks or acts as being sexist", "Sometimes a woman can make a man so angry that he hits her when he didn’t mean to" are taken as ideological ones)

The Magna Carta, 1215 (translated from the Latin) - "54. No one shall be arrested or imprisoned on the appeal of a woman, for the death of anyone except her husband.
Since people valorise the Magna Carta so much...

Cosplayers who were arrested in Malaysia have been released - "Malaysia's immigration authority, Jabatan Imigresen Malaysia (JIM), conducted a raid on March 23 at the event and 12 people were detained, including the event organiser and three Singaporeans.The participants in the event had entered Malaysia on social visit passes. According to JIM's website, professional visit passes are issued to foreign stage artists who wish to perform in Malaysia"

The nation's favourite: The history and unlikely origins of fish 'n' chips - "Fish and chips is considered Britain’s national dish but it wasn’t until the middle of the 19th century that the double act emerged. Until then the fried fish and cooked potatoes trades had existed separately.It’s thought chipped, fried potatoes originated in Belgium, while pescado frito (fried fish) was a Spanish import... The dish, which was hot, cheap and nutritious, became a working-class staple and was especially popular with factory worker... Workers loved the idea of emulating “posh people” by eating affordable fish and chips with all the trappings of fine dining – white table cloths, cutlery and china plates... During the Second World War Winston Churchill recognised the crucial role of fish and chips, referring to them as “good companions”. Fish and chips were two of the few foods not subject to rationing because the government feared the dish was so embedded in the nation’s culture that any limit would damage morale.British soldiers identified one another during the D-Day landings by calling the word fish. The response was chips, signifying an ally.The origins of mushy peas as the perfect accompaniment probably dates back to the 1970s. The side order is made by soaking dried marrowfat peas in water and baking soda, with a little mint, to produce a thick soupy texture. There are about 10,500 fish and chip shops in the UK, compared to about 1,200 McDonald’s restaurants. There’s hot competition between fish and chips and Indian food for the accolade of nation’s favourite. There are about 9,000 Indian restaurants in Britain... EU rules mean the term fish and chips is gradually disappearing from menus. These days restaurants are meant to specify the precise type of fish rather than using the more vague description, which could include any fish including cheaper substitutes such as pollock and coley.Wrapping fish and chips in newspaper fell foul of health and safety watchdogs in the 1980s.Actress Kate Winslet and footballers Wayne Rooney and John Terry all served fish and chips at their weddings... The Chinese like theirs sprinkled with sugar while New York has four British-style fish and chip shops.Fish and chip shops account for about 10 per cent of the nation’s potato crop and 30 per cent of all the white fish sold in the UK. The industry is worth approximately £1.2billion a year and employs 61,000 workers. Britons consume 382 million portions of fish and chips every year – that’s about six for each adult and child in the country... In one survey fish and chips beat frying bacon as the nation’s favourite smell... Waste fat from fryers has become a fuel source used to power buses in many UK towns.UK chippies traditionally use a simple flour and water mix to make batter, adding a little baking soda to make it bubble and perhaps a dash of vinegar. Other recipes may substitute beer or milk to create a tastier batter.Aficionados say the batter should protect the fish during frying so it’s actually steamed. The fish should be flaky, rather than soggy which signifies the use of frozen rather than fresh fish."

LEAKED: BBC plan next Doctor Who - a muslim transgendered lesbian in a wheelchair : The_Donald

Does sunshine make us happier? - "The happiest region of the whole UK is the most northerly - Shetland, Orkney and the Outer Hebrides. Some islands see only around 1,000 hours of sunshine a year compared to a UK average of 1,340 hours.And when one reads those international lists of the happiest countries, top of the league tend to be places like Norway, Sweden, Canada, Denmark and Finland. There is no correlation between well-being and warm weather - if anything it looks like the opposite.In 1998, psychologists David Shkade and Daniel Kahneman decided to test the theory that a sunny climate equates to a sunny disposition in a paper entitled Does Living in California Make People Happy?... Californians were no happier than people from the Midwest with its wind and rain; second, of all the factors that affected people's life satisfaction, weather was listed at the bottom. Midwesterners moaned about the weather more than Californians, but that didn't appear to make much difference to their overall contentment.The scientists ended their paper with a homily. "It is not unlikely that some people might actually move to California in the mistaken belief that this would make them happier," they wrote. "Our research suggests a moral, and a warning: Nothing that you focus on will make as much difference as you think.""

Twitter Users Freak Out After Single Charlize Theron Says She's Waiting for Someone to 'Step Up' and Ask Her Out - ""It really isn't. I've been single for 10 years. It's not a long shot," Theron said. "Somebody just needs to grow a pair and step up. I'm shockingly available. I have made it very clear.""
Female entitlement!