Links - 5th January 2020 (1)

Cold Storage Memes For Meritocratic Teens - Posts - "Arrogant Indian expat abusing a local security guard in Singapore"
"The security guard forgot to apply his Chinese privilege before he came to work that day."

John Campea on Twitter - "In Kathleen Kennedy's short tenure at Lucasfilm, having put out just 4 projects so far, has seen them announce with great fanfare, and subsequently lose 4 sets of filmmakers (Colin Trevorrow, Josh Trank, Lord & Miller and now Benioff & Weiss) and drama with Gareth Edwards.
Kennedy's inability to properly vet and make 100% sure she and the filmmakers are on the same page is a failure of her most important responsibility as head of the company. She also has some big wins for sure, but this is TROUBLING."

Dank, Memes, and Target - "Chat with AT&T
Jessica: Welcome to AT&T Chat. How may we help you today?
Me: are you real
Jessica: Hi! My name is Jessica. How can I help
Nice to meet you, sure I'm a real person :)
Me: owo
Jessica: UwU"

81-Year-Old Pensioner Jailed After Joining A Gang Because He Was Lonely - "Former burger van worker Ian Hemmens, from Chichester, West Sussex, was sentenced at Portsmouth Crown Court after being found guilty of helping alleged offender Mahamud Sami flee the country for Bahrain. Sami has not yet been caught.Hemmens was reportedly used as a getaway driver because his age and unassuming appearance made him inconspicuous. Portsmouth Crown Court heard Hemmens chose to act as a getaway driver because he was lonely and it gave him the chance to interact with people."

Canadian veterans of People’s Liberation Army form association, sing of China’s martial glory - "Dressed in the uniform of China’s People’s Liberation Army, the 40 or so singers stood proudly in neat rows and belted out an old favourite.I am a Soldier talks of defeating the Japanese, vanquishing Nationalist leader Chiang Kai Shek in the Communist revolution and being tested by the revolutionary war. The performance “brought forth a whirlwind of Chinese military spirit in a foreign land,” said a report on the concert.The recital earlier this month at the Centre for the Performing Arts in Richmond Hill, Ont., was not offered by a visiting martial choir from Beijing.It was the work of a surprising new Canadian association, dedicated to retired troops of the China’s People’s Liberation Army or PLA — China’s armed forces — who are now settled in this country. The group’s creation last year raises intriguing questions about how far new Canadians should go in honouring their motherlands, which in China’s case is both a major trading partner and an authoritarian adversary with an abysmal human-rights record... “I strongly condemn this kind of activity. I don’t know in what degree they call themselves Canadian,” said Anna Wang, a Chinese-Canadian writer who just published a book detailing her first-hand observations of the Tiananmen protests. “I think they are taking advantage of the freedom of speech in western countries.”The veterans group seems to be part of a rise in expressions of support for Beijing among the diaspora, though the vast majority of Chinese Canadians remain faithful to their adopted country, said Wang. Political scientist Sherman Lai, a retired PLA lieutenant-colonel himself, shook his head, figuratively speaking, when told about the Canadian group... An article in the Chinese-language Easyca.ca news site depicts a retreat in Ontario’s cottage country last year where the group saluted in unison the flags of Canada, China and the PLA. In another shot, casually clad male and female veterans reproduce the Chinese military’s distinctive, high-stepping marching style in front of a People’s Republic flag... Fei Gao, the society’s chairman, said he was unable to answer questions about the organization... “if you take on Canadian citizenship, then you sign up for a certain loyalty to our country, and particularly loyalty to our values, our way of life”... That may be incompatible with proud membership in a veterans group whose military reports directly to the Chinese Communist Party and contributes to “instability both domestically and internationally”"

Indonesian man who helped set strict adultery laws flogged for adultery - "Mukhlis bin Muhammad of the Aceh Ulema Council (MPU) was flogged 28 times.The woman he had the affair with was caned 23 times... Sharia law applies to Muslims and non-Muslims alike in Aceh."

McDonald's Is Pissed About a Fucking Filet O' Fish - "When McDonald’s sent an Edmonton restaurant owner a legal order to stop using the name “Effing Filet O’Fish,” he didn’t get mad. He got creative.Woodshed Burgers owner and chef Paul Shufelt changed the name of his sandwich to “McEffing Fish Filet,” and trademarked it. He says in the last two days it has become the restaurant’s second most popular item—which is pretty unusual for a burger place."

Why so many people are eating McDonald's Filet-O-Fish right now - "During Lent each year McDonald's sees an uptick in sales of its Filet-O-Fish sandwiches.The burger-chain sells nearly 25% of their wild-caught Alaska Pollock fish sandwiches during Lent, when many Catholics forgo meat on Fridays... Kroc challenged Groen to a Friday sell-off to see whether customers preferred Kroc's Hula Burger, which consisted of a piece of grilled pineapple and cheese on a bun, or the Filet-O-Fish. Bullington said Groen won by a landslide, with the Hula Burger selling six sandwiches and Filet-O-Fish selling 350."

Ending religion is a bad idea, says Richard Dawkins | News | The Times - "An honesty box experiment appears to have made the country’s foremost atheist question his views.Richard Dawkins said he feared that if religion were abolished it would “give people a licence to do really bad things”. He said that security camera surveillance of customers in shops did appear to deter shoplifting, adding that people might feel free to do wrong without a “divine spy camera in the sky reading their every thought”.“People may feel free to do bad things because they feel God is no longer watching them”"

'Bad' video game behavior increases players' moral sensitivity: May lead to pro-social behavior in real world - ""Rather than leading players to become less moral," Grizzard says, "this research suggests that violent video-game play may actually lead to increased moral sensitivity. This may, as it does in real life, provoke players to engage in voluntary behavior that benefits others. The study, "Being Bad in a Video Game Can Make Us More Morally Sensitive"... several recent studies, including this one, have found that committing immoral behaviors in a video game elicits feelings of guilt in players who commit them."
More evidence against the monkey see, monkey do theory of human behavior

It’s All about the Boobs in Lara Croft Cosplay (36 pics)

2,500 More MS-DOS Games Playable at the Archive - "Another few thousand DOS Games are playable at the Internet Archive! Since our initial announcement in 2015, we’ve added occasional new games here and there to the collection, but this will be our biggest update yet, ranging from tiny recent independent productions to long-forgotten big-name releases from decades ago... The update of these MS-DOS games comes from a project called eXoDOS, which has expanded over the years in the realm of collecting DOS games for easy playability on modern systems to tracking down and capturing, as best as can be done, the full context of DOS games"

Opinion | Martin Scorsese: I Said Marvel Movies Aren’t Cinema. Let Me Explain. - The New York Times - "I was asked a question about Marvel movies. I answered it. I said that I’ve tried to watch a few of them and that they’re not for me, that they seem to me to be closer to theme parks than they are to movies as I’ve known and loved them throughout my life, and that in the end, I don’t think they’re cinema... For me, for the filmmakers I came to love and respect, for my friends who started making movies around the same time that I did, cinema was about revelation — aesthetic, emotional and spiritual revelation. It was about characters — the complexity of people and their contradictory and sometimes paradoxical natures, the way they can hurt one another and love one another and suddenly come face to face with themselves. It was about confronting the unexpected on the screen and in the life it dramatized and interpreted, and enlarging the sense of what was possible in the art form.And that was the key for us: it was an art form. There was some debate about that at the time, so we stood up for cinema as an equal to literature or music or dance... Many of the elements that define cinema as I know it are there in Marvel pictures. What’s not there is revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes. They are sequels in name but they are remakes in spirit, and everything in them is officially sanctioned because it can’t really be any other way. That’s the nature of modern film franchises: market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they’re ready for consumption... In the past 20 years, as we all know, the movie business has changed on all fronts. But the most ominous change has happened stealthily and under cover of night: the gradual but steady elimination of risk. Many films today are perfect products manufactured for immediate consumption. Many of them are well made by teams of talented individuals. All the same, they lack something essential to cinema: the unifying vision of an individual artist. Because, of course, the individual artist is the riskiest factor of all."

How to Help Your Body Adjust to Cold Weather - "nude men who spent eight hours a day in a 50°F (10°C) chamber became habituated to the cold and had mostly stopped shivering after two weeks... There’s evidence that a particular type of fatty tissue, known as “brown fat,” may help the body generate heat in response to persistently cold conditions... The placement of this brown fat is important. Kajimura says that temperature perception is monitored by the brain, which detects the cold in part by noting the temperature of blood flowing into it through the neck. “That’s why putting a scarf on makes you feel warm,” he says. By warming the neck and the blood flowing through it, a scarf “tricks” the brain into believing it’s warm—just as a cold cloth on the neck can help the brain cool off in summer. It’s possible that, in response to regular cold exposure, brown fat in the neck area both forms and becomes more active, keeping us more comfortable at colder temperatures. Brazaitis says the human body seems to possess a number of different mechanisms that help it adjust to the cold. But most people in the developed world suppress these adaptive mechanisms, at least to an extent, by shielding their bodies from “thermal distress.” “Putting on more clothes, drinking more hot drinks, increasing room temperature, consuming more food, which increases inner metabolic rate—this behavior does not allow [the body] to become more resistant to cold”... Adjusting your thermostat down by a few degrees, shedding layers, and spending more time outside in cold conditions—basically, anything that causes you to shiver—will help your body acclimate to the cold, Brazaitis says. If you can induce shivering a few times a day, you’ll begin to feel more comfortable in colder temps after just one week"

What Is Brown Fat, and Does Being Cold Burn Calories? - "while the body’s first response to cold is to shiver, it eventually makes and activates enough brown fat to take over those heat-producing responsibilities, she explains. In either case, your body is burning extra calories in response to cold. That can even translate to some body-weight benefits. As long as you’re not overeating to make up for the extra energy your cold-exposed body is using up, you can expect to lose some weight in response to cold... There may be some additional metabolic benefits. Among people with higher levels of brown fat, “we see better insulin sensitivity, lower levels of circulating fatty acids and also lower levels of triglycerides”... Enerbäck says the healthy metabolic shifts associated with brown fat are in some ways just the opposite of what happens in people with type 2 diabetes. There’s some excitement among scientists that cold exposure and brown-fat genesis could be used to counteract or prevent diabetes, obesity and other metabolic disorders." But there are reasons to be wary—especially for those who suffer from heart disease, or are at risk for a heart event or stroke.“When exposed to cold, the body tries to prevent heat loss by shrinking blood vessels, so you get increased blood pressure and heart rate,” says Shingo Kajimura, an associate professor of cell and tissue biology at the University of California, San Francisco.These cold-induced blood-pressure swings could trigger a heart attack or stroke in people who are at risk. “This is why there are so many 911 calls at three A.M. in the middle of winter,” Kajimura says. “Older people get up to go to the bathroom, and when they step out on the cold floor, that stimulates blood vessel constriction and stroke.” (Research has shown that a roughly 5-degree drop in ambient temperature increases a person’s risk for stroke by 11%.)"

Confession: My boyfriend hawked fruits to pay my University fees but I can't date him anymore - "Sometimes some women are never grateful to the men in their lives after they start cashing in good money. A huge percentage of women around the world admit they would not date a man that earns less then they do. A confession that has been going around has left many in shock after a Kenyan woman made a confession to a local daily about her current dilemma. She has fallen out of love with her boyfriend who went through hard times to see her through high school and university.
"I am a 26 year old woman and my parents died when i was 14 years old. I dropped out of school because no one could afford to pay my fees. I met a guy when I was 16 and he took me back to school. He sold fruits on the street so he could pay my school fees.He later got a job as a truck driver and sent me to university. I am now working as a lawyer. My problem is that I feel I cant continue with this relationship because the guy is not the type of man I would like to marry one day.How best can I tell him that he is not my type without hurting his feelings? I am grateful that he sent me to school but I can't be in a relationship with him anymore. I want somebody in my own class and not a truck driver. Please help.""

Candace Owens on Twitter - "When we look back at the age of millenials, our legacy will be “that period of time in western civilization where life had gotten so great that people began making up problems”. My generation is suffering from peace."