Links - 12th March 2020 (1)

Countries With The Most Public Holidays - "Of all countries on the globe, Cambodia tops the list for the most public holidays with 28 public holidays observed annually. Sri Lanka follows with 25, India and Kazakhstan with 21, Colombia, the Philippines and Trinidad and Tobago with 18, China and Hong Kong with 17, and Thailand, Turkey, and Pakistan with 16."

For richer, for poorer: do public holidays help or hinder economic growth? - "“The sectors that lose from bank holidays are offices, factories and construction sites. These sectors account for about 47% of the economy. Those that gain are retail, wholesale, hotels and restaurants. These sectors account for about 14% of the economy.”In what it admitted was a rough and ready calculation, CEBR said each bank holiday cost £2.3 billion in foregone GDP, making more than £18 billion for all eight holidays... “Should we reduce the number of bank holidays...This is more a social than an economic judgment. Money is not the only thing and a healthy lifestyle needs time off to reflect and relax.”"

Haikal Idris on Twitter - ""Can anyone name ONE country where muslims is the majority and theres particular race being oppressed? Yes exactly. NONE!"
"Oh boy here’s a thread
Indonesia: Chinese minorities targeted in 1998 riots and culture genocide
Egypt: Christians killed, persecuted with most recent being 26 killed in a church bombing
Afghanistan: Hazara people massacred, persecuted and marginalised
Brunei: Christians banned from proselytism
Iran: Kurds and Baluchs discriminated and marginalised
Somali: Bantu ethnic minority marginalised, stigmatised and called slaves
Sudan: Slavery of black Africans with slaves sold at 50USD a person
Iraq: Kurds genocide, Mandaean and Yazidi ethnic cleansing, total number of Christians in Baghdad from 500k to 250k now
Lebanon: Apartheid against Palestinians in their country
Saudi Arabia: Anyone not Arab and from Asia is automatically a second class citizen
Bangladesh: 150k Biharis have been killed since 1971
Pakistan: Christian, Hindu, Atheist & Ahmadis discriminated, their places of worship attacked
Turkey: Discrimination against Armenians, Assyrians, Jews, Zazas and cultural genocide of Kurds
Malaysia: Ask your non-malay friend"

Andy Lee Chaisiri's answer to Why don’t some Chinese restaurants make authentic Chinese food instead of the Americanized version? - Quora - "When I lived in Beijing I once asked a cab driver what he considered ‘Authentic Beijing food’, his response was something along the lines of…
“Nothing is authentic Beijing food, not even duck, Beijing is where servants of the imperial court brought their regional foods and changed them to local tastes”.
So yeah that “Americanized Chinese food” you’ve had, it’s got over a century of history, it’s as ‘authentic’ as any Chinese food.
Hell most ‘Americanized Chinese food’ has more history than say ‘authentic Italian margarita pizza’, that tomato cheese dish was created in 1889. Meanwhile ‘new Americanized Chinese food’ like chop suey has been around since the 1800’s. How about that ‘authentic Beijing duck’?... 1864, that makes it possibly newer than ‘Americanized Chinese food’ like chop suey! Look at all those ‘Authentic Chinese dishes’ with tomatoes, baby corn, bell peppers, red peppers, those are all ingredients from the Americas, they’re the product of international trade."

Mon Querubin's answer to Why don’t some Chinese restaurants make authentic Chinese food instead of the Americanized version? - Quora - "I onced asked here on Quora why Americanized Chinese foods are maligned whereas Southeast Asian Chinese dishes are celebrated despite both being not authentic Chinese. My question was removed from Quora in 20 minutes."
An "insincere" question is anything which threatens the liberal consensus

Wish.com and the Rise of Shipping From China - The Atlantic - "The package came in a small black box, covered in tape. It had no return address. Under layers of packaging, there was a box labeled Smart Watch, with no brand name. Inside the box was the watch itself, which looked nothing like the inexpensive Apple Watch I’d hoped it would be. Instead, the large digital face featured icons for Twitter, Facebook, a pedometer, and a photo-taking app called “Camina” rather than “camera.” It was about what you’d expect for a smart watch that cost less than $20... Wish is emblematic of a growing trend in e-commerce: shoppers buying directly from Chinese manufacturers and merchants. Wish and sites like AliExpress, LightInTheBox, and even Amazon have enabled more Chinese sellers to penetrate the U.S. market, where they compete with U.S. manufacturers and U.S. retailers who themselves have been importing goods from China. Though the products from these sites take longer to arrive because they’re coming from overseas, some analysts think sites like Wish represent the future of shopping. Wish is, according to Forbes, worth $8.5 billion, about the same as Macy’s, J.C. Penney, and Sears combined. Its valuation has more than doubled since a year ago, when it received $500 million in funding. Its logo now appears on the jerseys of the Los Angeles Lakers... “As long as retail has existed, you’ve always had retailers sell to customers, because many manufacturers were unfit to do so,” Juozas Kaziukėnas, the founder and CEO of Marketplace Pulse, an e-commerce research site, told me. “But over time, as information has spread and it becomes easier, you have manufacturers selling, too.” Kaziukėnas estimates that as many as one-third of Amazon’s sellers are based in China. Often, Chinese sellers will ship products in bulk to the United States, where they’ll sit in warehouses operated by Amazon, Wish, or other companies, until U.S. companies order them, he said... The Postal Service makes it easy for Chinese sellers to ship cheaply to the United States: Under a program called ePacket, merchants can ship items that weigh less than 4.4 pounds, and receive tracking and delivery confirmation services for a low rate. Often, it costs less to ship a package to a U.S. destination from China than it does to ship that item domestically. Sites like Wish have created a whole new type of shopping for customers whose first priority is low prices... It’s much cheaper to make goods in China because of the low cost of labor and lax labor requirements. That’s why shoppers once flocked to stores like Target or Walmart, where they could buy low-priced goods imported from China. Target and Walmart provided quality control, but for customers willing to take a risk, sites like Wish work well... Sites like Wish also create problems for localities trying to collect sales tax on items sold online. Most sellers from China are third-party sellers, which means that sites like Amazon and Wish do not have to collect sales tax on items sold in most states. (Many states are currently fighting this practice in court.) Even if more states begin requiring third-party sellers to begin collecting sales tax, it will be more difficult to enforce the law against companies based in China than those with a U.S. presence... Still, there are signs that some customers won’t stand for low-quality products... At the end of the day, it seems, you still get what you pay for."

Duck has penis removed after mating 10 times a day - "The UK-based quacker was forced to have his “traumatized” penis surgically removed after it became infected due to his insatiable sex drive. Dave reportedly engaged in fowl play with flocks of lady ducks on the reg.Dave’s owner, Josh Watson of Torquay, Devon, said his “nymphomaniac” pet would “mate with his female companions” Dora, Edith and Freda “between five and 10 times a day” — even when it wasn’t mating season.  It got to the point where his threesome partners would “wander off” during sex and even peck at his pecker to ward off unwanted advances... Unfortunately, the horny drake (i.e., male duck) paid the ultimate price for his amorous activities — his member became “gangrenous.”  “The end of his penis had basically died and it was pretty horrific,” Watson said. “It started not going in, and we’d give him a bath to keep it clean.”  When antibiotics failed to remedy the problem, Watson took Dave to Bristol’s Highcroft Veterinary hospital. Veterinarian Sonya Miles said “overuse and him being far too amorous” had caused Dave’s member to prolapse and become septic — a condition that could become “life-threatening” if untreated.  So they lopped off his putrid phallus, leaving only a centimeter-long stub behind. Fortunately, Dave can still urinate — the duck penis is only used for sex... Dave’s lack of a penis won’t stop him from attempting to mate, according to Miles. To temper Dave’s temptations — and help him recover from surgery — Watson has since separated Dave from his feathery bedfellows."

Chloe Stunning German model that resembles an elf - "Chloe is a stunning model from Germany, she’s currently working as the exclusive brand model for the Korean boutique brand “Chuu” in Korea"

A camel through the eye of a needle: The influence of the prosperity gospel on financial risk-taking, optimistic bias, and positive emotion. - "prosperity gospel messages generate heightened optimistic bias (Experiments 1 and 2), high arousal positive affect (Experiment 2), and financial risk-taking (Experiment 1). The results also indicated that even a secularized version of prosperity gospel leads to positivity bias, for both theists and atheists. This suggests the effectiveness of prosperity gospel lies in its ability to evoke positive states rather than communicate specifically religious teachings"

Embankment's 'mind the gap' announcements have an emotional story behind them - "If you go to Embankment station and get on the Northern Line you’ll hear the famous cries of ‘mind the gap’ as you would in other London stations.However, at this specific station and on this specific line it isn’t the same announcement you’ll be hearing, and the story behind it is heartbreaking... The story – told by John Bull – starts with a woman bursting into tears at Embankment in 2016, begging staff to tell her where ‘the voice’ had gone. She was referring to the voice of the ‘mind the gap’ announcement, which had been recorded by a man called Oswald Laurence. Oswald was the woman’s late husband, and she’d come to Embankment (the last station where it was still played) to hear his voice since his passing, seven years earlier. John said: ‘The woman, a GP called Dr Margaret McCollum, explained that her husband was an actor called Oswald Laurence. Oswald had never become famous, but he HAD been the chap who had recorded all the Northern Line announcements back in the seventies. ‘Oswald’s death had left a hole in Margaret’s heart. But one thing had helped. Every day, on her way to work, she got to hear his voice. ‘Sometimes, when it hurt too much, she explained, she’d just sit on the platform at Embankment and listen to the announcements for a bit longer... The staff apologised to Margaret, telling her that there was nothing they could do, as the system was being digitised. But, touched by her story, they decided to see if they could at least find the recordings of Oswald. They managed to do more than just that in the end, thanks to some hard work from people across the London Underground network. As John said, ‘Archives were searched, old tapes found and restored. More people had worked to digitize them. Others had waded through the code of the announcement system to alter it while still more had sorted out the paperwork and got exemptions.’ Margaret was then given a CD of Oswald’s recordings, and his voice was later completely restored at Embankment, back where it had been since 1969"

Mind the Gap Tube announcement returns after wife's plea - "Oswald Laurence's voice was used on the northbound Northern Line but was phased out until only Embankment used it... The first voice used on the network was that of sound engineer Peter Lodge but several other voices have since been used... he always secretly hoped he would get a chance to "freak people" by saying "I warned you" if someone happened not to take note of the warnings."

How is NordVPN unblocking Disney+? It might be through YOUR own computer. Even if you’ve never used Disney+ or NordVPN. - "NordVPN is linked closely with a Lithuanian data mining company called Tesonet. NordVPN is said to be one of Tesonet’s projects, Oxylabs.io is another one.So what’s the big deal? Oxylabs.io advertises on its website “32M+ residential proxies…100% anonymous proxies from all over the globe with zero IP blocking.” Think of “residential proxies” this way: 1.) Oxylabs installs some malware on to a user’s device, unknown to the user, by bundling it with other software that the user downloads. 2.)This malware enables Oxylabs to sell off your bandwidth, your computing power, and your IP address to third parties, who will route their internet traffic through your device.Does that mean your device can be used by a third party to access child porn or hack into a bank? Absolutely! Another VPN provider named Hola was called out for reselling users’ bandwidth in this way through their B2B service (Luminati), and incidentally Hola is suing Tesonet for copying Hola’s technology."