Links - 15th January 2020 (2)

Tinder, Bumble: Why Nadia Bokody asked 100 men for sex on dating apps - "I’ve been swiping right for the last three hours, in the interest of carrying out a little social experiment. The objective is simple: proposition a hundred men for sex, and tally up their responses... Before long, my phone is buzzing and pinging like a 20-something hipster at Splendour.The results are in, and they’re … baffling... For most women, having infinite options at your fingertips doesn’t translate to increased sexual assertiveness.While I have friends who’ve had casual sex via Tinder (and have done so myself), none of these incidences occurred without fairly intensive vetting first.Likewise, even my female friends with the most liberal attitude to sex will readily delete and block guys who ask for it in their opening line. If you’re a purist, this would seem to reinforce the long-held theory that men biologically crave sex, while women begrudgingly exchange it for monogamy. But if you’ve been reading my columns for a while now, you’ll know that’s complete BS... After allowing a few hours for my matches to reply, I had four “no” responses, 24 who didn’t answer — perhaps out of disinterest, being weirded out, or just not seeing my message — and a whopping 72 “yes” responses."
The mental gymnastics are amusing

Average Canadian household spent more on taxes than living costs in 2018, report finds - "The average Canadian household paid nearly $40,000 in taxes last year, more than the combined cost of clothing, food and shelter... Other estimates of Canadian household tax rates are lower than the Fraser Institute’s. In 2017, the Broadbent Institute calculated that the typical Canadian family faces an effective tax rate of around 24 per cent.A key difference in methodology is that the Fraser Institute includes a number of taxes not paid directly by Canadian individuals, but that are paid by businesses and may be buried in the cost of goods... But as economies develop, the share of income taken up by spending on necessities tends to decline.“I suspect it’s not uncommon among the Western welfare state countries,” Mr. Poschmann said. “We’re not big outliers. We’re neither an extremely high-tax country and we’re not a low tax country, either.""

William Dalrymple on the East India Company | History Extra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "This is a great sweep that starts with the time Shakespeare's writing Hamlet in 1599 and ends with the end of the company in 1858. But the real focus is this period when the most bizarre thing happens. When a London Corporation takes over the Mughal Empire. But in that period, the East India Company changes from being a normal, large scale but normal trading corporation buying textiles in India and selling them abroad to being a trading company, that's also an imperial power, that by the time the book closes in 1803, has an army of 260,000, twice the size of the British Army...
[Indians] regard us as Imperial looters and plunderers who looted their country, exported the wealth, stole their national treasure and put it in the British Museum. And they're much more angry about it now than they were oddly enough sort of 40, 50 years ago, such was the effectiveness of British imperial propaganda. That we brought civilization, we built railways, we introduced tea, we introduced cricket and parliamentary democracy. The generation of freedom fighters who I first met when I went to India as a fresh out of university lad in 1984, they were still there and while they might rage and rant against the Raj, but they would you know, do it while serving you either tea with Marmite or gin and tonic. That's all past now...
In the beginning, you know, they were 40% of world manufactuing and we were three and that was not because India just fell behind. It's because India was thrown under the bus."
Apparently Indian freedom fighters with personal experience of colonialism had false consciousness. How Indians hate the British today surely has nothing to do with Indian propaganda
Apparently the Industrial Revolution happening in the UK was India being thrown under the bus

History of Chinese economy 1200-2017 - "China was the wealthiest part of the world from 1200 to the 1300s — aside from Italy. Even as late as the 1600s it was roughly on par with the Brits. After that, however, the GDP per capita relative to Britain declined all the way up to the 1970s, when it was below 10% of the British standard of living... "most of the relative and absolute decline occurred from the 18th century onwards, coinciding with the accelerating pace of industrial revolutions, which ushered the modern age of much faster productivity growth rates.""
Presumably colonialism was why Japan went from 4.1% of global GDP in 1700 to 2.6% in 1900, just as China and India went from 22.3% and 24.5% to 11.1% and 8.6% respectively in the same years

Does Hollywood Still Have a Princess Problem? (Ep. 394) - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "HELDMAN: It is true that a decade ago, films led by men made a lot more money on average than films led by women... So in terms of box-office revenues, what we found is that in the past decade, the gap in terms of films led by men and films led by women has closed...
BOHREN: We find that the employers believe that Indian workers outperform American workers by about 2.8 or so questions on average. So when we look at this, we find that the wages offered by the employers are consistent with their beliefs. That’s suggestive of belief-based discrimination rather than any sort of preference favoring Indian workers... We found that once we provided information on the performance differences, the gap in the wage paid to these two groups shrunk. So this is suggestive that one potential intervention to try and correct for inaccurate beliefs is just provide employers or provide evaluators with the actual performance of different groups...
HELDMAN: A lot of folks don’t know that Hollywood actually, in its very early years, the silent years, was more gender-equitable than it is today. But as soon as it became big business, it became a male-dominated sector"
Not coincidentally, the past decade is when people started really obsessing about gender diversity in films. So this suffers from the same problems as the "research" on the "benefits" of "diversity" for corporate profits - those who would do better in the first place are more inclined to follow a liberal agenda (fittingly, that got invoked). The fact that the sign of the effect reversed in the last decade - in the wake of a liberal agenda to increase gender diversity - shows that this is the case
Surprise surprise - evidence that employers aren't actually bigoted but are just trying to reward perceived productivity
Strange how despite path dependence Hollywood became less gender equal. I guess "role models" didn't help - so there's no reason to expect them to help today (or to expect quotas to start a virtuous cycle)

Deja Vu♥ on Twitter - "CONDOMS should be sold and Pads should be given for free. Sex is a choice and MENSTRUATION isn't. Young girls without money are suffering out there. Should I go deeper?"
Besides showing an ignorance of public health policy, this ignores how toilet paper isn't free either

How Snobbery Helped Take The Spice Out Of European Cooking - "this notion of layering many contrasting flavors and spices isn't unique to Indian cooking.  In fact, most of the world's cuisines tend to follow that principle... In medieval Europe, those who could afford to do so would generously season their stews with saffron, cinnamon, cloves and ginger. Sugar was ubiquitous in savory dishes. And haute European cuisine, until the mid-1600s, was defined by its use of complex, contrasting flavors... Back in the Middle Ages, spices were really expensive, which meant that only the upper class could afford them. But things started to change as Europeans began colonizing parts of India and the Americas."Spices begin to pour into Europe," explains Krishnendu Ray, an associate professor of food studies at New York University. "What used to be expensive and exclusive became common."Serving richly spiced stews was no longer a status symbol for Europe's wealthiest families — even the middle classes could afford to spice up their grub. "So the elite recoiled from the increasing popularity of spices," Ray says. "They moved on to an aesthetic theory of taste. Rather than infusing food with spice, they said things should taste like themselves. Meat should taste like meat, and anything you add only serves to intensify the existing flavors."... "There was a shift in the nature of sauces.""Indian sauces — and many sauces in the world — are basically purees with flavors and spices," she says. "In Europe, they go over to sauces that are based on meat stock."For Indian and Asian chefs, the sauce or curry was the star. In India, Jains — and many Hindus — don't eat meat. And in general, most Indians believed that meat was unclean and inelegant, so the goal was, in part, to cover up the fleshiness of meat by thoroughly infusing it with spice. "In Europe, meat was considered the manliest, strongest component of a meal," Laudan notes, and chefs wanted it to shine. So they began cooking meat in meat-based gravies, to intensify its flavor... hints of the older, medieval way of cooking still remain in Western cuisine.  "Think of a barbecue sauce — very medieval," says Ken Albala, a professor of culinary history at the University of the Pacific, in that it's sweet and sour and full of an array of spices and flavorings. "We do like contrasting flavors.""

Organizers of climate-emergency declaration verifying names after 'Micky Mouse' turns up as signatory - "a paper signed by more than 11,000 scientists declaring a climate emergency was published in the journal BioScience... at least one name on the list is raising questions: Micky (sic) Mouse from the Micky Mouse Institute for the Blind in Namibia... among the Australian scientists who signed were "a naturopath, a hypnotist, an industrial designer, a commercial business analyst, and a psychologist.""

The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery - "Self-checkout theft has become so widespread that a whole lingo has sprung up to describe its tactics. Ringing up a T-bone ($13.99/lb) with a code for a cheap ($0.49/lb) variety of produce is “the banana trick.” If a can of Illy espresso leaves the conveyor belt without being scanned, that’s called “the pass around.” “The switcheroo” is more labor-intensive: Peel the sticker off something inexpensive and place it over the bar code of something pricey. Just make sure both items are about the same weight, to avoid triggering that pesky “unexpected item” alert in the bagging area... When Voucher Codes Pro, a company that offers coupons to internet shoppers, surveyed 2,634 people, nearly 20 percent admitted to having stolen at the self-checkout in the past... retailers bore some blame for the problem. In their zeal to cut labor costs, the study said, supermarkets could be seen as having created “a crime-generating environment” that promotes profit “above social responsibility.” Whether out of social responsibility or frustration with shrinkage, some retailers, including Albertsons, Big Y Supermarket, Pavilions, and Vons, have scaled back or eliminated self-scanning, at least in some stores. But others continue to add it... “There is NO MORAL ISSUE with stealing from a store that forces you to use self checkout, period. THEY ARE CHARGING YOU TO WORK AT THEIR STORE.”"

The Left's ignorance of Stalin's tyranny against the kulaks should worry us all - "A few years ago, Survation was commissioned by New Culture Forum to do a poll of 16-24 year-olds. It found that 28 per cent had never heard of Stalin, almost half had never heard of Lenin and an astonishing 70 per cent had never heard of Mao Tse Tung, whose regime was responsible for more deaths through murder and famine than any other in the 20th century. The chances of more than a small minority having heard of the kulaks are remote... One of the revision books has a page in which it asks children to consider the “positive” and the “negative” views of collectivisation. One of the “positive” views suggested is that “it got rid of the greedy and troublesome kulaks”. It is astonishing to hear Stalinist hate propaganda treated as an argument that might be used in a GCSE essay. Even more worrying is that knowledge of these things is so rare. It is the fault of the education system. This manages to spread knowledge of Hitler very successfully. Only 8 per cent of young people have never heard of him."

UK: Convicted Somali Gang Rapist Says He's Too Depressed To Be Deported - "Yaqub Ahmed, 30, was convicted of gang raping a sixteen-year-old girl after a night out in London in August 2007.Each gang member involved in the rape was sentenced to nine years in prison.Now, Ahmed’s lawyer argues the deportation should be stopped as his client feels ‘suicidal’ and ‘depressed.’ Ahmed had previously attempted to remove his electronic tag and flee the UK after being granted bail in March.A little under half of foreign criminals set for deportation in the UK lodge legal appeals."

Feminist assaults Gavin McInnes and Milo Yiannopolous, brags about it on Twitter - "After tweeting about how she was shaking uncontrollably in anger, Madison took it upon herself to dump two glasses of water on them... The attack aligns with divisive rhetoric being spouted in U.S. politics since the 2016 election. Last year, California Democrat Maxine Waters encouraged her supporters to publicly confront and harass members of the Trump administration, as well as their supporters."

EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS: Student's graded assignment littered with anti-conservative rhetoric, accusations of racism - "A teaching assistant for a course titled Racial and Ethnic Issues at North Carolina State University claimed that President Donald Trump “supported white nationalists and neo-Nazis” and likened meritocracy to racism. The TA, Christian Alberg, wrote the remarks as feedback on one of several student assignments obtained by Campus Reform via student Victoria Howell... Howell referred to course notes that stated: "conservatism has white supremacist traits and supports the ideology of white supremacy.” Alberg confirmed the course notes made this comparison in his comments and added that former President Obama’s statements on meritocracy could also constitute “new white supremacy.”... Alberg referred to Howell’s criticism of the breakdown of the nuclear family in the African American community as “new racism.”According to the course, “new racism” is described as “a new form of white supremacy” with views that “are far from rare.” PowerPoint slides from the course indicated “new white supremacy” includes believing that groups “should not receive any treatment or government-sponsored assistance.”... course professor Melvin Thomas confirmed some examples of "new white supremacy."... Thomas also added that the information presented in his classes is “based on scientific research--not right or left-wing ‘alternative facts’ or opinions”. “The student lost points because their answers were factually incorrect and not because of their conservative beliefs.”  Howell received a 0 percent grade on the essay assignment"
Republican skepticism of higher education is taken as evidence of anti-intellectualism. Yet liberals criticise Nazi science