Links - 29th January 2020

Common test used to determine racism is flawed, says UTM professor - "Known as the Implicit Association Test, the tool is supposed to reveal hidden truths by delving into the secret unconscious. Test-takers can discover they are racist, among other things, even if they are unaware of their implicit bias.The problem, according to Ulrich Schimmack, a psychology professor at U of T Mississauga, is that the test can’t delve into our unconscious and reveal our hidden prejudices. Instead, the test is “basically a roulette wheel that comes up with a random number.”Yet the tests have been used in countless academic studies and have been employed by companies and institutions in their implicit bias training sessions. They have been featured in mainstream media and are freely available to anyone through Project Implicit, a website hosted by Harvard and marketed to the general public as a means of determining their implicit bias.Schimmack says the test became popular after it was published some 20 years ago because psychologists had been fascinated with the unconscious but had no scientific method to measure it. The promise of the IAT was that it would “finally provide a scientific window to the unconscious.”... “We found our happiness IAT was giving us random results. It wasn’t useful at all to measure a person’s happiness,” Schimmack says. “Then you wonder, if it’s not working for this, when does it work and what does it really measure?”He published those first findings 10 years ago and continued his research without the use of IAT. More recently, though, he noticed another decade had passed and the test was still being widely used and taken at face value, so he took a closer look at the tool... one study claimed the IAT could predict some people would not vote for Barack Obama due to anti-black implicit bias. But on closer inspection, Schimmack says they found that was not true.  Schimmack says his colleague also found that, in simulations, IAT scores could not predict if a police officer was more likely to shoot a black suspect or a white suspect.  Others have also criticized the authors of the IAT for making bold claims without demonstrating that their measurement predicts any real world behaviour of discrimination"

US man eliminates competition, creates dating app where he's the only guy allowed on it - "Aaron Smith, a 31-year-old from the US, wasn't having much luck on regular apps so he decided to take matters into his own hands... "Singularity saves you countless hours of swiping by just matching you with me""

Malaysian man had no time to buy a cake for wife’s birthday, gets her a burger instead
"Happy Betday"

'Thanksgiving Four' say Google is punishing them - "Google has fired four employees in what activists within the company describe as an attempt to "crush" workers' attempts to organise.The people, who have been dubbed the "Thanksgiving Four", had their contracts terminated on Monday.Staff were told via an internal memo that the firings were related to data security and employee safety.But those who lost their jobs have said they were being punished for "speaking out". The sackings followed a demonstration at Google's San Francisco office on Friday, attended by more than 200 Google employees. Two of the four fired employees, Rebecca Rivers and Laurence Berland, spoke at the protest... Observers see the move as heralding the end of Google's famously open working culture. Executives have locked down the degree to which employees can access information on projects they are not involved with, while earlier this month Google's chief executive Sundar Pichai told staff its weekly "all-hands" meeting would no longer take place... "They think this will crush our efforts, but it won't," the Google workers statement distributed on Monday added.  "For every one they retaliate against, there are hundreds of us who will fight, and together we will win. One of the most powerful companies in the world wouldn't be retaliating against us if collective action didn't work.""
"Don't be evil"

China's growing threat to academic freedom - "Chinese academics now struggling under what the Scholars at Risk Network describes as systematic Chinese government policies intended “to constrict academic activity and to intimidate, silence, and punish outspoken academics and students” might find much to relate to in Wu’s story.Yet foreign scholars may also find this story relatable... Recently, one foreign scholar was arrested in China, apparently for possessing a “forbidden book”: the Hokkaido University historian Nobu Iwatani, who was just released following over two months of detention.Iwatani’s detention marks a potential new, dangerous phase in the CCP government’s undermining of academic freedoms for its expansive regime security interests. However, the circumstances of his release may provide some indicators for how academic associations and institutions can push back against such infringements... Japanese news organizations finally broke the story, though without releasing Iwatani’s name. Soon Iwatani’s detention had become international news. In hindsight, this publicity generated welcome effects, beginning with indignant reactions from Japanese media and academics which may have stiffened the resolve of the Japanese government to demand Iwatani’s release. In late October the Japanese Association of Scholars Advocating Renewal of the Japan-China Relationship published an open letter signed by many prominent China studies scholars. It stated that they were “shocked beyond words” by Iwatani’s detention, warned that academic exchange between China and Japan was being undermined and demanded an explanation for Iwatani’s detention. Other research groups posted similar letters of protest... as word spread of Iwatani’s detention, Japanese academics began canceling research trips to China. One scholar told me of being the only Japanese researcher at a recent conference in China, all the others having pulled out. A high level Japan-China policy forum scheduled for Nov. 2 was also canceled in reaction to Iwatani’s detention... During a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in Bangkok on Nov. 4, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hinted that the prospects for President Xi Jinping’s scheduled state visit to Japan next year might hinge on a proper handling of Iwatani’s case. This strategem seems to have paid off... The now silenced Chinese jurist Xu Zhangrun warned last year that under Xi’s rule China is becoming “a polity that is fundamentally totalitarian in ambition … this is something that should unsettle the whole world.” Yet among China’s elites there are also anxieties over the profound tensions between such totalitarian ambition and the norms of global systems of commercial, scientific and geopolitical collaboration upon which China is so dependent."
It is claimed that when working with Asian powers, behind-the-scenes negotiation works better than public pressure which will only make them dig in more. But apparently this isn't the case here

Xi Jinping Portraits Replace Catholic Symbols in Churches - "Places of worship refusing to be controlled by the state are being shut down, while government-run churches are used to worship the Chinese Communist Party... What has hurt the congregations the most was the removal of a painting of the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child, later discarded into a dark corner of the church. Instead, a portrait of president Xi Jinping was hung in the center of one of the walls, surrounded by propaganda slogans on both sides. A few days later, officials confiscated the keys to the church and locked all its doors and windows. The congregation lost their place of worship... The church’s cross, a painting of the Virgin Mary, and religious couplets were removed, and portraits of Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong were displayed instead."

Opinion: Social media in Egypt: From harbinger of a revolution to weapon of authoritarian control - The Globe and Mail - "Social media was celebrated after the revolution as having facilitated the overthrow of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. Eight years later, the same platforms are leveraged by an increasingly authoritarian Egyptian state to stifle freedom of expression, arrest ordinary citizens and track political dissidents."

A Montreal Bagel War Unites Rival Kings - The New York Times - "rumors began to circulate that a City Hall official was planning to ban the ovens, which emit fine particles that can aggravate respiratory ailments like asthma. Angry neighbors had complained to the city and some were boycotting the vaunted bagel shops. Coming to the defense of the bagels were fans who treasure the carb-heavy snack as an essential part of the city’s Jewish history and social fabric... The Montreal bagel has such a hold on the Canadian psyche that fears of its demise spurred a national outcry. “The Death of the Montreal Bagel?” asked a story last year in The Globe and Mail, a leading national newspaper... Mr. Morena, at St-Viateur, dismissed what he called anti-bagel “radicals.” “Why are they picking on small mom-and-pop bagel shops?” he asked, standing under St-Viateur’s wall of fame showing local celebrity patrons like Celine Dion.  “I want to be able to say that my bagels are hand rolled and cooked in a wood burning oven,” he said. “That’s what makes a Montreal bagel.”... For the moment, the bagel war is at an impasse. City Hall is considering a regulation that would require businesses with wood-burning ovens to install purifiers. Fairmount Bagel said it had already done so, while St-Viateur has installed a filter in one of its seven locations.  But the authorities in the area have banned new businesses from installing such ovens, causing alarm that the art of Montreal bagel-making could disappear... Such is the pull of the Montreal bagel that a Japanese tourist once arrived in a limousine in front of Fairmount Bagel, holding a map with a line of dots leading from Osaka to the bagel shop. And St-Viateur once received an order for 20 dozen bagels for Prince Charles. Mr. Morena thought it was a joke until a British naval officer arrived to pick them up... in a province that recently passed a law banning teachers, judges and police from wearing religious symbols like turbans or skullcaps while at work, the bagel had become a secular symbol of civic pride. That, he added, was helped by its manifest superiority to New York bagels"

The death of the Montreal bagel? - The Globe and Mail - "My community usually agrees on hot-button issues – Syrian refugees, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, even Bill 101 – but the fate of Montreal bagels tore us apart.People started rage posting – more than 300 comments appeared on my wall in 72 hours. On one side, pleas for the lives of trees, warnings about global warming, concerns about pollution, attacks on gluten; on the other side, accusations of gentrification, appeals for civic traditions and comparisons to the CAQ’s proposed ban on yarmulkes and hijabs... By banning the traditional method of making bagels, we risk erasing something unique and specific to the history of Montreal. Which explains why the bagel apocalypse is such a big deal: It’s part of a larger trend that’s transforming our cities. It looks and smells like gentrification. As real estate prices rise, our neighbourhoods are becoming cleaner and prettier, but local places are closing, replaced with generic chains that threaten to make Montreal feel the same as other cities. St-Viateur Bagel is hanging in there beside a DavidsTea and across from a Lululemon. I don’t want to live in a neutral, homogeneous no-place. It’s rare in this quickly globalizing world of chains and franchises to have a sense of place and history. Sure, we need clean air. But human health also requires a sense of belonging. And this is just what felt threatened by the wood-burning ban... I’m attached to the fire-cooked bagel because I’m attached to the dirtiness of my city. I don’t want my city sanitized. After decades of pasteurization, we discovered the microbiome and realized that humans need bacteria. Parenting manuals now say kids should splash in the mud to develop their immune systems. Sanitation became a moral imperative when Protestants declared that “cleanliness is next to godliness.” Well, Montreal is more French-Catholic and Jewish than WASPy – and has always been a dirty city. We used to be known as Sin City North! There’s a reason why the biggest jazz festival in the world doesn’t happen in Vancouver... The 70 food establishments on the island that burn wood produce about 60 tonnes of fine particulate pollution a year. Those concerned with environmental health will get more bang for their buck if they focus on Quebec’s maple-syrup industry, meat farms or retail shops that import their wares by plane. For urban pollution, it might be more effective to address diesel delivery trucks, enforce idling bylaws and improve public transportation. Although I suppose it’s easier to challenge small family businesses than big industry – such as the centrally located tobacco factory owned by Japan Tobacco International."

TikTok unblocks teen's account after criticizing China detention camps - "Social media app TikTok has issued a public apology for suspending the account of 17-year-old Feroza Aziz after she posted a video criticizing China's treatment of Uighur Muslims. The teen's video went viral for her unexpected transition to anti-China remarks while giving a makeup tutorial."

Medieval Paintings of Cats Licking Their Butts - "Butt licking cats is a weirdly common theme in medieval art, and nobody’s really sure why. The theory is that they were just etched in the margins by bored monks who wanted to amuse themselves. They thought the idea of sneaking in naughty pictures of cats into serious books was funny... But that’s just a theory. Only one medieval monk ever commented on it, and as far as he was concerned, his fellow monks were just wasting time and precious ink"

Ebola nurse Pauline Cafferkey: return to Sierra Leone will give me closure - "Pauline Cafferkey, the Scottish nurse who nearly died twice from Ebola, has said she is seeking “closure” as she announced plans to return to Sierra Leone for the first time since contracting the disease there... Cafferkey was cleared by her regulatory body, the Nursing and Midwifery Council, which had investigated allegations that she concealed her high temperature at Heathrow on her return from Sierra Leone.  The NMC, which could have struck her off the nursing register, said Cafferkey’s judgment had been compromised by her developing illness and so she could not be held responsible for putting the public in danger."
If she gets Ebola again there, will it count?