Links - 13th March 2020 (1)

8-year-old girl at this Johor stall can fry char kway teow better than you - "Second-grader Zhuang Kaihui has been helping out at her grandmother's char kway teow stall ever since she was six, and recently picked up the spatula to learn the ropes of frying the dish. While she may be too young to wield the wok, Zhuang occasionally shows off her skills at the stall, frying up a mean plate of her favourite noodles under the watchful eye of her grandmother... Situated in Kulai, Johor, the stall, which locals christen "21-mile Char Kway Teow" due to the lack of a signboard, has been in operation for 42 years and shows no signs of stopping."

Pete Buttigieg faces criticism for calling Jesus a refugee - "South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg faced a flurry of criticism on Christmas day after he suggested that Jesus Christ entered into the world as a refugee."Today I join millions around the world in celebrating the arrival of divinity on earth, who came into this world not in riches but in poverty, not as a citizen but as a refugee"... "Joseph and Mary went to their ancestral home in Bethlehem for a census," conservative commentator Matt Walsh tweeted."[I]n no sense did Jesus 'come into this world as a refugee.' There’s also no reason to think that Joseph was particularly impoverished. So nothing about this tweet is correct". He argued Jesus wasn't a refugee when his family fled to Egypt, either, as "Egypt was a Roman territory."

Pete Buttigieg slammed for spreading fake news about Jesus on Christmas - The Post Millennial - "The Buttigieg Twitter storm over Jesus’s status is reminiscent of another recent row—one involving disgraced former women’s march organizer Linda Sarsour who tweeted the following back in July: “Jesus was Palestinian of Nazareth and is described in the Quran as being brown copper-skinned with wooly hair.”... As noted by Seth J. Frantzman in the Jerusalem Post, revisionist claims like Buttigieg’s and Sarsour’s result in “a negation of Jewish history and a modern-day attempt at replacement theology: to replace historical Jewish connections to the land 2,000 years ago, recreating an imagined history of Palestinians in place of Jews.”"

No, Buttigieg, Jesus Wasn't A Refugee, And Doesn't Endorse Your Policies - "Members of the holy family were not noncitizen refugees. Rather, they traveled to their home town of Bethlehem to register for a tax, or census. Their story relates to the $150 billion in cross-border remittances the United States loses each year when foreign residents send money abroad, and to the importance of counting citizens in the U.S. census — but it has nothing to do with refugee policy.Afterward, the holy family fled to Egypt when King Herod threatened them. But then they returned to Israel when the threat subsided. Notwithstanding the fact that both Israel and Egypt were controlled by Rome at the time of Christ, meaning the holy family didn’t even cross a border, today, many refugees remain in their destination countries indefinitely rather than returning home and aiding reconstruction. Buttigieg probably did not intend to suggest modern-day refugees should go back where they came from. An even worse immigration policy analogy came from a California church that protested President Trump’s border detention policy by displaying the baby Jesus and his parents as “kids in cages.” In fact, real-life “kids in cages” started under President Barack Obama. Moreover, the holy family were not illegal immigrants caught while unlawfully crossing an international border, unlike those detained in places where the U.S. needs a border wall. The general counsel of the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office argued, “[O]n the night that we first came to the United States — Christmas Eve, 1979 — my mother, my brother and I were what President Trump would probably call illegal aliens.” Yet she also acknowledged that she and her family members were Jews fleeing Iran, a country that in 1979 succumbed to an antisemitic Islamist theocracy. Accordingly, Trump’s so-called Muslim ban privileged families such as hers because it “prioritize[d] refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution.”Prioritizing religious minorities not only helps Jews from Iran or Christians from Syria, but it also helps Muslims suffering persecution in countries such as China and Myanmar, and even atheists in places like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. If the Brooklyn general counsel did her job, she would stop her office’s unconscionable and unconstitutional policy of treating illegal immigrants better than it treats U.S. citizens... If the experience of Native Americans losing their land to European immigrants offers a lesson for modern-day immigration policy, that lesson means the opposite of what Ocasio-Cortez and Buttigieg think it means. Importantly, Barber also alluded to another historical example that justifies immigration law enforcement. He said, “The reason we took the land is because people wanted to keep their slaves.” True. Spain brought the first African slaves to America 500 years ago. This year marks the 400-year anniversary of enslaved Africans reaching Virginia in 1619. The trans-Atlantic slave trade — human trafficking — is part of the history of immigration in America.This trade was banned in 1807. Nonetheless, the last known shipment of African slaves occurred decades later during an illegal border crossing"

Matt O'Brien: No, Trump's new Green Card rules are not un-American, anti-immigrant or unlawful - "U.S. immigration law explicitly states that anyone seeking admission to the United States, or applying for a green card, is ineligible if he/she is likely to become a “public charge.” The term “public charge” is a legal term of art that specifically refers to a person who is, or is liable to become, totally dependent upon government assistance for his/her survival... The first public charge law in the United States was enacted in 1645 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Public figures of the time praised this legislation in the decidedly blunt, un-PC language of their day, noting that it would prohibit the settlement of undesirable “vagabonds, paupers, toss-pots and other idle ne’er-do-wells.”... The first public charge law directly applicable to migrants was passed in 1882. For over one hundred years thereafter, immigrants’ admissibility to the United States was determined primarily based on their prospective ability to earn a living. And it is worth noting, millions of hard-working blue-collar immigrants still made their way to the United States and didn’t see public charge laws as “anti-immigrant.”In fact, had a social welfare system existed at the time, most of the Great Wave immigrants would have refused to access it. A desire to succeed through hard work, on their own terms, was what attracted them to the U.S. in the first place, not the promise of a handout. However, by the 1970s the notion of the “social welfare state” had taken firm root... In 1996, Congress attempted to address this situation, identifying “a compelling government interest to enact new rules for eligibility and sponsorship agreements in order to assure that aliens be self-reliant in accordance with national immigration policy.” It passed the Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which strengthened public charge doctrine and required poorer immigrants to find a financial sponsor who agreed to support them should they fall on hard times. Both pieces of legislation passed with broad bi-partisan support and were signed without hesitation by then-President Clinton.However, in response to complaints from alien advocacy groups that the public charge rules were both “draconian” and “anti-immigrant,” the Clinton administration backpedaled... The Trump administration is both hewing closely to American tradition and respecting a law that was duly enacted by Congress. Why is it so important that the public understand the history of and logic behind the public charge rules? Because America’s social safety net is paid for with taxpayer dollars. Carelessly providing millions of dollars in benefits to foreigners who have never paid into our system will make America broke"

Bending the Law to Avoid Deporting Criminals - WSJ

Adam Liaw on Twitter - "My favourite (if controversial) summer barbecue hack is to buy a half loaf of bread and get them to run it through the slicer lengthways instead of sideways. It produces a sausage-sized piece of bread that makes for perfect “sausage in bread”. You’re welcome."

Nathan Puddy on Twitter - "What are some "guy secrets" girls don't know about?
The average guy is so starved for positive attention that a simple compliment is enough to get him interested in you."

How Often Should My Snake Eat? - "Snakes do not need to eat every day, and in fact they will not. If your new snake is refusing food, then you are probably feeding it too often. And if you feed your snake live prey (which is not always a necessity), the prey animal can injure and even kill your snake, especially if the reptile is not in the mood to eat. So how often should you feed your snake? It depends on a few variables, and there is no exact answer that will fit every snake. Here's what to consider.
    Size—How often you need to feed your snake varies by the size of the snake. And although it may seem surprising, smaller snakes actually need to eat more often. Small snakes, even adults, may need to eat twice every week. Larger snakes can go longer between meals, on average feeding once every one to three weeks...
Wondering why your reptile friend only needs to eat once a week? It makes sense if you think about it. Snakes swallow their food whole, and that means they need more time for digestion than you do, for instance. Your digestive process (and that of most mammals) begins when you start to chew your food. You have already helped along the process before the food reaches your stomach. Not so for your scaly companion, who has to expend a lot more energy simply on digesting its meal. Additionally, a snake's long, linear digestive system undergoes special processes to become dormant after digesting a large meal."

How Snakes Survive Months Without Food - "Snakes can lower their metabolic rates by up to 70 percent, allowing them to survive prolonged periods without food while growing longer nonetheless"

The Death of a Teenage Nymphomaniac - "Forrest Gump taught us that it doesn’t matter how intelligent you are, you can achieve anything as long as you’re a cis, hetero, white man."
"Oh, yes. Forrest Gump was so privileged. It’s not like he was mentally handicapped and his mother had to bang the school principal to get him into school or anything. It’s not like he was constantly bullied because he was handicapped and had braces on his knees. It’s not like he got into college only because he was a fantastic runner. It’s not like he went through a war and lost his best friend. It’s not like the woman he loved got sick and died and left him as a single father. Holy shit. Did you even watch the fucking movie, or are your concepts of privilege limited to one’s gender identity, sexual orientation, race, and sex? Or do you really believe that mentally handicapped people are privileged as long as they are cis, hetero, white males?"
"Apparently OP doesn’t like when disabled people belonging to certain races, genders, and sexual identities succeed."
"SJW logic: This mentally disabled person is privileged because he accomplished something and is a white man."

Lake District 'must change' to attract more diverse visitors - "The head of the Lake District National Park Authority in Cumbria says the rugged landscape excludes too many people and must change to attract a more diverse mix of visitors.His warning comes after attempts to make the UNESCO World Heritage site more inclusive have sparked a series of rows with conservationists. The authority is facing a High Court judicial review in the New Year over its refusal to ban 4x4 vehicles from some fell trails, while Keswick Town Council has passed a vote of no confidence in it over the creation of a tarmac path through woodland... Research shows visitors to the Lake District, where the rugged fells inspired the romantic poets and author Beatrix Potter, are too heavily weighted towards older, able-bodied white people. But conservationists have accused the park authority of launching an attack on the beauty and tranquillity of the area.  A crowdfunding effort to challenge the authority's "refusal to stop 4x4s and motorbikes ruining one of the most beautiful places in England" has raised more than £30,000 and will go to the High Court in 2020. Meanwhile, an £8m project to create an accessible multi-user trail with a tarmac surface between Keswick and Threlkeld has been condemned by Keswick Town Council.  The scheme, which will be completed at the end of 2020, was designed to replace a traditional stone-surfaced path that was destroyed by Storm Desmond in 2015."
"Diversity" ends up destroying everything