Links - 6th February 2020 (1)

The Best Method for Making Bacon - "People often joke that bacon makes everything better. I tend to agree. I use it a lot as a flavoring agent in recipes — a slice or two to infuse a pot of dried beans with porky richness, for example. But on #treatyoself days, I’ll cook up a mess of bacon as a more substantial component to a dish, or as a standalone food. This is the bacon to pile onto burgers or BLTs, or to enjoy alongside pancakes or waffles, dragging the strips through syrup or runny egg yolks...
Method: Baking on Parchment Paper...
Bottom Line: Effortless cleanup (that allows you to save drippings), pretty slices, and easy control of the crispiness or chewiness of the bacon. This method has it all.
Rating: 10/10"

How drag cabaret got me talking sense on Brexit
More Guardian Gold

Big Brother is watching: Chinese city with 2.6m cameras is world's most heavily surveilled - "With 2.58m cameras covering 15.35 million people – equal to one camera for every six residents – Chongqing has more surveillance cameras than any other city in the world for its population, beating even Beijing, Shanghai and tech hub Shenzhen. Eight of the 10 most surveilled cities in the analysis are in China. London ranked sixth with 627,707 cameras covering 9 million residents and Atlanta, Georgia, came 10th with 7,800 cameras for 501,178 people... To meet international privacy standards enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both collection and use of biometric data should be limited to people found to be involved in wrongdoing, and not broad populations who have no specific link to crime. Individuals should have the right to know what biometric data the government holds on them. China’s automated facial recognition systems violate those standards... Cities elsewhere may not be too far behind China’s mass surveillance."

Facebook will start hiding spam public posts from users sharing 'vast amounts per day' - "Facebook is due to start hiding posts from people who spam users' news feed with clickbait, sensationalised and misinformative articles... Facebook said it carried out research which showed that a small group of users were "routinely sharing vast amounts of public posts per day", which was effectively spamming people's feeds. The study showed that the same people, who were sharing vast amounts of public posts, were also sharing low quality content."

Billy Dee Williams Says Pronoun Use Did Not Mean ‘Gender-Fluid’ - The New York Times - "Billy Dee Williams recently told Esquire magazine that he uses both male and female pronouns to refer to himself. “I say ‘himself’ and ‘herself,’ because I also see myself as feminine as well as masculine,” said Williams, who is known for playing Lando Calrissian in the “Star Wars” universe. “I think of myself as a relatively colorful character who doesn’t take himself or herself too seriously.”  His comments were widely taken to mean that he had embraced gender-fluid pronouns... Williams heard that his words were interpreted as a move toward gender fluidity, he thought, “Oh please,” he told The Times. “I just want to tell everybody, read Carl Jung. He was a contemporary of Freud’s.”"

Norwegian mayor asks church to replace Star of David decor, cites Israel - "A Norwegian mayor asked a church to replace its traditional Star of David Christmas decoration due to complaints that it’s too associated with Israel and Jews. Strand Mayor Irene Heng Lauvsnes asked the Klippen Pentecostal church, which lights a large Star of David neon decoration in a municipal park where it holds a Christmas celebration, to replace the symbol with a “traditional Christmas star”... The unnamed critics said the church “designed [the decoration] as a Star of David, a national symbol both for the Jews and for the State of Israel” and “therefore does not fit in the public space” in Strand. The church is considering the request as it does “not want to provoke in any way,” its representative told Strandbuen. The use of the Star of David in Christmas decorations is common throughout Northern Europe... “Municipal Christmas bureaucrats obviously do not want a Jewish or Israeli mark on their Christmas. Then we almost have to remind them of some key facts about why we celebrate Christmas at all,” Selbekk wrote in a column titled “merry Jew-free Christmas,” adding “That holiday is marked by the fact that a Jewish boy was born to a Jewish mother in a Jewish stable in a Jewish city in a Jewish country.”"

Christmas advert made for £100 stars two-year-old Arthur

Wife builds pub in back garden as she's sick of husband sneaking off for a pint

Sebastian Ang - When you're rioting and someone hired a lvl 20 bard - "When you're rioting and someone hired a lvl 20 bard"

Segments of Random Thoughts - Posts - "The knives are out for Boris. Left wing media lies are spinning out of control.   They reported that he said “people of colour” coming to the country need to be controlled.   He said “people of talent”  What a disgusting attempt to smear him. We can’t let these people win."
"Channel 4 News has been forced to apologise after misquoting Boris Johnson to make him appear racist."

'I was called scum and told I should be shot': what it's like to campaign as a young Tory this election - "“Ya Tory b------”, were the three words Alex Tant-Brown, 21, remembers hearing as he was beaten up by two men in a nightclub toilet. He believes his attackers had recognised him as Chairman of Sheffield Hallam University Conservatives Association, and decided he deserved a swollen eye and battered nose for this role. Later he posted a photo of his bloodied face on Twitter, writing: “When someone recognises you as a Conservative on a night out”. But to add insult to (literal) injury, he was met with a new kind of abuse.“This is awesome you deserve it” (sic), messaged one user. “Absolute c---”, “stupid ugly rat” and “I hope you die” were a selection of the numerous others that followed. Some did not believe him at all – claims he cannot respond to due to an investigation being underway... 59 percent of Tory-voting students are reluctant to express themselves at universities compared to 36 percent for Labour and 37 percent for Liberal Democrats... Young has felt stifled by his university due to the left-wing bias, despite being on a politics course. He became so fed up with that he engaged in his own social experiment, writing an article from a Marxist agenda on neoliberal governmentality to see if there was a contrast in his grades. “Unsurprisingly it was my best essay gaining a first”... William Rowland, an active member of the student Conservative club at Cambridge University, had "uncomfortably hot" water from a thermal flask poured over him after he cheered a Republican win at a party to watch the results of the U.S. midterms.He was also told he had taken the place of a more deserving student after he defended Brexit in a heated political conversation... Sunil Sharma, 25, who works in finance, says he was once chastised by a group of people in a London bar who were stunned when he revealed having campaigned for Conservative politicians.  They “repeatedly made it clear that as a man of Indian descent, it is shameful that I would vote Conservative. After finding out my dad was a Conservative councillor, I was told how we were “sell-outs” and even more disgraceful that I would as a young man working in London.”  Paul Burke, 28, from Sunderland says “I get messages from young people, mainly women and people of the LGBTQ community who are being abused for being conservative, that they’re somehow traitors.”... Paisley Thomson, 20, told me she’s been called “Nazi scum”, “Tory bitch”, and that she “deserved to be raped” for her views... Tory is now code for “evil”, even though the majority of this country have voted this way."

‘We’re Self-Interested’: The Growing Identity Debate in Black America - The New York Times - "A spirited debate is playing out in black communities across America over the degree to which identity ought to be defined by African heritage — or whether ancestral links to slavery are what should count most of all. Tensions between black Americans who descended from slavery and black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean are not new, but a group of online agitators is trying to turn those disagreements into a political movement.They want colleges, employers and the federal government to prioritize black Americans whose ancestors toiled in bondage, and they argue that affirmative action policies originally designed to help the descendants of slavery in America have largely been used to benefit other groups, including immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean. The American descendants of slavery, they say, should have their own racial category on census forms and college applications, and not be lumped in with others with similar skin color but vastly different lived experiences... In 2017, black students at Cornell University protested for the admission of more “underrepresented black students,” who they defined as black Americans with several generations in the United States. “There is a lack of investment in black students whose families were affected directly by the African Holocaust in America”... University administrators say that black students from other countries contribute to increased diversity on campus, even if their admittance does not mitigate the injustices of American slavery. Many black immigrant groups are also descended from slavery in other countries... Hollywood has become the source of much of the frustration around the dividing line between United States-born African-Americans and black immigrants. When the black British actress Cynthia Erivo was hired to play the abolitionist Harriet Tubman, the casting received immediate backlash. Similarly, the filmmaker Jordan Peele has been criticized for hiring Lupita Nyong’o, who is Kenyan, and Daniel Kaluuya, who is British, to play African-American characters in his movies.
I guess this means Obama wasn't really black enough
Identity politics just leads to endless fragmentation and rancor
If it is the legacy of slavery that leads to negative outcomes for African-Americans, then this suggests that "racism" is not the issue, since there is no practical way for "racist" structures to distinguish between blacks who have a legacy of (American) slavery and those who don't

George Kuforiji Protested by White Parishioners During Mass - "Pastor George Kuforiji is a Nigerian immigrant who was ordained in 2015 and moved to St. Francis of Assisi Parish in South East Oregon in 2018... Parishioners pushed back by protesting during a June 30 mass, carrying signs, shouting at the priest, and singing the hymn, “We Shall Overcome” — a song associated with the civil rights movement — while Kuforiji attempted to continue saying mass"
Since African-Americans hate Africans this is oddly fitting

Is 15 Too Old to Trick-or-Treat? One City Said Yes - The New York Times - "Are you too old to go trick-or-treating?That’s a question some residents in Chesapeake, Va., will be asking this Halloween after the city passed an ordinance earlier this year capping the activity at age 14. That’s less restrictive than the previous ordinance, which warned people older than 12 could go to jail. But the city changed the rule after an outcry last year on social media turned Chesapeake into the butt of late-night television jokes... The 1970 ordinance stated that no one older than 12 was allowed to trick-or-treat and that anyone caught could be fined as much as $100, arrested and sent to jail for six months.In the 49 years since, there have been no arrests for overage trick-or-treating"

Mexican Call for Conquest Apology Ruffles Feathers in Spain. And Mexico. - The New York Times - "Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, surely knew that he was wading into fraught territory when he wrote to King Felipe VI of Spain and Pope Francis with a request rooted in history.As the 500th anniversary of the 1521 Spanish conquest of the Aztecs nears, Mr. López Obrador proposed that the two men ask forgiveness for the abuses inflicted on the indigenous peoples of Mexico.What he may not have expected was the blowback his proposal received — on both sides of the Atlantic... Pablo Casado, the leader of the conservative Popular Party, described the Mexican demand as an affront to the Spanish people. Spain, he said, should instead celebrate “with pride” its historical role in Mexico, “the way great nations do it, those that have contributed to the discovery of other people.”... what caught the attention of his many critics in Mexico was his call for an apology.“The Spaniards who stayed in Spain bear no responsibility for what happened here 500 years ago,” wrote one  columnist, Sergio Sarmiento.Some noted that Cortés conquered the Aztecs in alliance with other indigenous communities, raising a question about whether Spain was the only one at fault.“Do we properly know who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them’?” wrote Jorge G. Castañeda, a former foreign minister. “Is this a Pandora’s box we want to open? Or is it pure demagogy?”Mr. López Obrador was accused of trying to create a distraction to divert attention from Mexico’s problems, including brutal gang violence and a slowing economy. One reporter asked the president why he was not demanding that France and the United States, which also invaded Mexico, apologize as well. And if Spain should apologize, critics said, should Mexico not apologize as well for its treatment of indigenous groups since independence?... Could Spain ask France to apologize for crimes committed during the Napoleonic wars, he asked, when the French invaded the Iberian Peninsula? Could France itself ask for an apology from Italy for the way the Romans conquered the Gauls under Julius Caesar?"