Links - 14th June 2020 (2)

Cotton Candy® - "These plump, juicy, all-natural green grapes are one of our newest varieties, and they're one that everyone is excited about. Cotton Candy® grapes taste exactly like the pink spun-sugar treat you loved as a kid at the circus—and we mean exactly. Pop some in your mouth, close your eyes, and you're that kid again! And here's a bonus: these grapes aren't sticky and loaded with granulated sugar like the fluffy stuff you munched on back in the day. But they're just as sweet—and much juicier. This is fresh fruit you can snack on all you want. Everyone who's tried these one-of-a-kind grapes has had a jaw-dropping, totally amazed, reaction."
What sorcery is this?

Toronto Police are putting surveillance cameras in Chinatown and people aren't happy - ""Heightened police surveillance will target poor + BIPOC folks—Police surveillance does NOT equal safety," Friends of Chinatown TO tweeted"

CCTV surveillance for crime prevention - "The results of this systematic review—based on 40 years of evaluation research—lend support for the continued use of CCTV to prevent crime"
It doesn't matter if you get mugged. At least you're not a victim of 'racism'

Otters invade condo, steal koi fish, bring to pool to feast and swim laps : singapore

Zam Zam owner convicted of conspiring to hire hitman to slash rival from Victory murtabak restaurant - "the two establishments, both of which were founded in the early part of the twentieth century, have been feuding for almost 100 years... The judge said it was unfortunate that the feud had erupted over a failed business venture, and the two restaurants began engaging in the "persistent touting of patrons".This resulted in more tensions between the management and staff at both restaurants."

WMU student demands school apologize for white people singing 'negro spirituals' - "An African-American student at Western Michigan University called out her school’s mostly white choir for what she calls cultural appropriation... “So apparently Western Michigan University thinks it’s ok for WHITE peoples to sing negro spirituals while the instructor talking bout ‘these songs don’t belong to one race.’ They sure as hell DO,” read the video caption.Faught’s tweet has over 2 million views and was retweeted 32,000  times.Other users commented on the tweet, expressing the same disgust for the recital.One user, M. Rasheed, commented, “They WANT us to hate them.”Another user wrote that “white ppl are culture vultures.”... “This isn’t entertainment. It’s our history and the cultural appropriation was NOT there. And to make it worse, the instructor was BLACK. and he had the audacity to say that spirituals ‘belong to everybody they don’t belong to one race’," Faught went on. Faught continued, saying that she had written a letter to the dean, as well as other university officials...  she asserted that “Negro Spirituals need to be reserved for people of African descent.” Faught asked that music instructor John Wesley Wright, himself an African-American, not be invited back to campus and that the Western Michigan University School of Music make a public apology. She also wrote that the next time the school decided to use a cultural theme for a program, they should consult members of that ethnic group to ensure that the program is not offensive. "
Representation, when done by white people, is racist

‘Highly unusual’ marriage breakdown: Apex court grants husband 75% of S$13.6 million in matrimonial assets - "One allegation, which she made when their marriage broke down in 2001, resulted in criminal charges against him. He was eventually acquitted three years later after a trial, with a district judge noting that his wife was “most eager to concoct evidence calculated to cause damage to (him)”.After an interim judgement of divorce was finally issued in 2016, a High Court judge awarded the husband 25 per cent of the matrimonial assets. On Tuesday (Feb 25), however, the highest court of the land overturned that decision and increased his share to 75 per cent... In their judgement, the apex court — comprising Judge of Appeal Judith Prakash and Justices Belinda Ang and Woo Bih Li — found it necessary to determine the value of the properties, so that the family need not uproot their lives by selling them off.They then ruled that the husband should get a “far larger share” for the properties that were bought after the clinic closed in 2003.This was because his wife’s behaviour around that time would have “adversely affected” the clinic’s income.The judges also found that there was a “negative value” in her indirect contributions due to her misconduct in making the complaints, including the one that resulted in the husband’s criminal trial.“These acts of the wife amounted to harassment and undermined the co-operative partnership that marriage is intended to be,” the three judges said... “While we have said that marriage is an equal cooperative partnership of efforts, this does not mean that the contributions of both parties in a marriage are always equal."

Simei's Little India - "AT FIRST sight, Melville Park may seem like any other condominium in Singapore. The type which, when you fly over in aeroplanes, resembles a holiday resort. Perfectly manicured lawns. Lush trees, clear blue swimming pools and putting greens. Children's playgrounds with colourful swings, tunnels, bars, and aesthetically positioned blocks of buildings, some of which have gables.But this condominium in Simei, one of the largest in Singapore with 1,232 units, is special for one more reason. Its occupants are largely Indians - locals, permanent residents and expatriates... Melville Park, which opened in 1996, is often also called the IT condo. Its proximity to the Changi Business Park, a hub for technology businesses, has led a lot of Indians in technology to take up residence there.Mrs Gowri Rajesh, who is part of the management council at Melville and looks after social and public relations, says: "Almost 60 per cent of the residents are Indian. It's a great option for those who work this side of town. The condo is a stone's throw from the airport."

Uncle who frightened nephews by telling them about a child killer goes viral - "Mr Mulvaney was struggling to settle his nephews Rhami Bradley and Devontae Withers, aged just three and six, during a visit to his sister Shanice’s house in Manchester earlier this month.The duo refused to go to bed - until he told the terrifying story of ‘Susan Stranglehands’, written by Madeline Titchmarsh.  The horrifying tale is about a woman from a mental hospital who had her baby taken away and her eyes sewn shut but now blindly prowls bedrooms for eternity in search of the sound of children."

The ironic bigotry of progressive activism - "Though they claim to stand for inclusion and universality, progressives these days are managing to denounce more groups than they include. Anyone who does not share their politics is, at best, persona non grata; at worst, they are downright demonized. Progressives condemn hate, unless it’s toward an individual or group they’ve deemed worthy of hating. The most glaring and pernicious example today is the obsessive delegitimization of Israel, the very embodiment of Jewish people hood.The first prong of attack is the Left’s gross mischaracterization of Jews as predominantly “white,” and therefore powerful, in contrast to Muslims, who are perceived as “brown,” and therefore oppressed. In fact, global Jewry is dominantly brown-skinned, and millions of Muslims are actually white. But it is a small lie to tell for the sake of one’s sacred political theory. Such a fallacious mode of thinking about group oppression begs the question: Who gets to determine the “universal” hierarchy of victimhood? Muslims may be an oppressed group in China, but in the Arab world, Muslims are doing the oppressing. Palestinians may be a persecuted minority in Lebanon, but in Gaza and the West Bank, their leadership is persecuting Christians and practicing gender apartheid against women.The anti-Israel activist group IfNotNow has gone so far as to blame an Israeli victim of a terrorist attack for his own murder, decrying the teenager’s participation in a government they deem a colonialist regime. At the same time, they never disclose that the very term “Palestine” was an imperialist invention of the Roman Empire. When Emperor Hadrian conquered and cleansed the region of Jews in the second century, he sought to eradicate the land’s Jewish roots. To do this, he renamed it from “Judea” to “Syria Palaestina,” after the Philistines, an ancient enemy of the Israelites. The Philistines, who were neither Arab nor Semitic, most likely came from the direction of Greece. They were likewise expelled by the Romans, and lost to history as a people. Thus, the renaming was purely symbolic, and does not attach to any indigenous residents of the land. In the same spirit of falsifying history and denying collective Jewish existence, progressives demonize Jewish “settlers,” conveniently forgetting that the region was once called Judea and Samaria, home to a thriving Jewish population. It was Jordan that illegally occupied the region from 1948-1967, re-naming it the “West Bank,” meaning “west of the Jordan River,” to sever all Jewish connection to the land.During this 19-year period, Jordan ethnically cleansed the area of Jews, destroying all but one of its 35 synagogues. Many of these “West Bank settlers” that progressives vilify are merely refugees, or ancestors of refugees, who have returned home after 75 years of exile... FINALLY, THEY could once again express their shared identity, culture, language and religion without fear of persecution. If anything, the State of Israel is a remarkable reversal of imperialism.Palestinian Arabs are certainly treated as second-class citizens in Lebanon, Iraq and other Arab countries. But in Israel proper, they attend the same schools and universities as Jews, ride the same buses, live in the same apartment buildings, eat in the same restaurants and swim in the same pools. Arabs in Israel are professors, lawyers, doctors, diplomats, scientists, academics, teachers and celebrities. Oftentimes they win beauty pageants and talent competitions.And consistent with the 20% who make up the total Israeli population, around 20% attend university... “The BDS movement and European lawmakers simply do not consider Palestinian workers,” many of whom are employed by Israelis and receive wages four times greater than the Palestinian Authority would pay them, in addition to working in exceptional conditions and receiving medical benefits."

The iPod-Modding Community Insists There's Never Been a Better Digital Sound - "Apple may have discontinued the last of the click-wheel iPods years ago, but a large community of iPod modders resurrects them for their sound and nostalgia... The Wolfson is an audio chip that converts digital data into sound. It’s not in every version of the iPod, but it is in the fifth-generation iPod Classic from 2005. Many people argue this one has the best sound quality of any iPod. Some say it’s the best of any portable music player. “Anyone who says vinyl is better than digital audio is sort of deluding themselves,” Schultz said. “I defy you to [find me] a better music playback device.”... It’s not just the sanctity of the sound or the lag-free listening experience that draws people to early iPods. It’s also that making modifications is, especially compared with working on modern Apple devices, fairly easy."

What’s Tea? on Twitter - "Y do men not like to vent? What’s so wrong w saying how u feel"
What’s Tea? on Twitter - "Telling him it’s ok to vent so u can use his lows against him in the next argument >"

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum: EP9 Glimpses of Olympias - "Peter Green writes,
‘In the autumn of 357 Philip married his Epirot princess, and for the first time in his life found he had taken on rather more than he could handle. Olympias, though not yet eighteen, had already emerged as a forceful, not to say eccentric, personality. She was, among other things, passionately devoted to the orgiastic rites of Dionysus, and her Maenadic frenzies can scarcely have been conducive to peaceful domestic life. One of her more outré habits (unless, as has been suggested, it had a ritual origin) was keeping an assortment of large tame snakes as pets. To employ these creatures on religious occasions could raise no objections; but their intermittent appearance in Olympias' bed must have been a hazard calculated to put even the toughest bridegroom off his stroke. Our sources, furthermore, while admitting Olympias' beauty, describe her variously as sullen, jealous, bloody-minded, arrogant, headstrong and meddlesome. To these attributes we may add towering political ambition and a literally murderous temper. She was determined to be queen in something more than name: this did not endear her to the Macedonian barons’...
This guy's MO is kind of that he's a guy no one else can handle. And yet this 17 year, 18 year old Epirot princess has given him trouble. I should point out that when they get married, he's got some life experience on her too. He's 25 I think. He's already got a couple of wives. And they're not shrinking violets either. He's married to an Illyrian princess that if the sources are to be believed, is trained in hand to hand combat, sword, shield, helmet, the whole thing. So she'll kill you. And he's not having any trouble handling her."

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, The Moral Purpose of the BBC - "If you look back through social research, the educated establishment when the BBC was created, the first couple of decades was actually more conservative than the rest of the population. But then, once lower middle class people were… the people coming through the education system then were a very small group... So it's the bias of the BBC fundamentally, that it continues to be the voice of education establishment.’...
I made the point about about social justice activism, which I think is what is pushing a lot of the BBC at the moment. And I think that has a very kind, you’ll notice that Doctor Who, for instance, the ratings that have absolutely plummeted, since they started pushing these very sort of paternalistic, woke plots, and I think that does have a very negative effect on the on the country. And also, I mean, to mention the class issue, I think, to say that it's it's dominated by left wing people. I don't think that's right. I think it's dominated by a sort of particular brand of leftist thought which is obsessed with identity politics, and is actually rather bourgeois"