Tinder Plus pricing higher for older people - "the judges ruled in his favour, invoking California civil rights law: customers had to be treated as individuals rather than as members of a group based on attributes such as gender, race or age.They noted rulings that upheld differences in treatment based on age: higher interest rates on bank deposits for seniors, cheaper movie tickets for children. The justification: social policies that match, such as retirement for the elderly and restrictions on child employment.But Tinder's pricing model, they said, for which the price point changed at age 30, amounted to prohibited arbitrary discrimination. The judge who wrote the ruling pointed out that Tinder's argument could be used to justify "higher prices for all consumers 30 and older in even the most essential areas of commerce – such as grocery shopping, gasoline purchases, etc. – even in instances where an individual did not in fact enjoy the economic advantages that are presumed about his or her age group"... Tinder didn't respond to our repeated requests for an interview with its chief marketing officer, Jenny Campbell, or its country director for Australia, Kristen Hardeman, to discuss these prices and how they appear to contravene Australia's discrimination laws... there are times when this happens in annoying though seemingly harmless ways – airlines tweaking the price of flights depending on where and when a person wants to fly, as well as where and when they search for them, for example.A few years ago, if you booked a ride on Uber, the fare would be based on distance and time and only go up with local demand. Then Uber changed the algorithm to better predict a person's willingness to pay, incorporating factors such as the wealth of their destination suburb. The impact of an algorithm can be dramatic, especially in dollar terms. Orbitz, a travel site, was reported showing Apple Mac users more-expensive travel options after determining they would spend up to 30% more a night on hotels.In 2016, Benjamin Shiller, an assistant professor in economics at Brandeis University in the US, estimated that Netflix could increase its profits by 12% if it adopted personalised pricing based on people's web browsing behaviour. This would clearly be a boon to Netflix – less so for the consumers who'd be left paying double the price for the same service, which is what Shiller calculated some would pay.Even small pricing manipulations tend to leave people feeling duped.In 2000, for example, BBC News reported that Amazon had been charging higher prices for DVDs to frequent shoppers than new visitors of the online store... In 2008, a credit card company settled allegations made by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that it had failed to disclose the way it rated people's credit risk. The company had determined that people who used their cards to pay for therapy, marriage counselling or tyre-repair services were a higher credit risk, based on the repayment histories of its other customers... Our latest national Consumer Pulse survey, which ran in June, shows that four in five Australians are concerned about businesses not being transparent when it comes to the different prices they may be giving to different people. Four in five people are also concerned about businesses using data on our online habits to offer a higher price for a product. A quarter aren't aware that organisations can use their personal data to give them a higher quote for a product than they do for someone else. That's not to say that personalised pricing can't be used to do good. For instance, some may see it as socially beneficial to charge wealthy people more for a product and charge people struggling financially, less. But there's an important distinction to make in all of this: instead of working out how much we can afford to pay, first-degree price discrimination is about finding out how much we're willing to pay."
Diane Abbott Once Argued That 'On Balance Mao Did More Good Than Harm' - "Labour was engulfed in a bizarre row over Mao, after shadow chancellor John McDonnell decided to quote from his Little Red Book in the Commons.On This Week, Neil wondered why it was seen as ok to wear a t-shirt with a picture of Mao but not one of Hitler... Neil chipped in: "Mao killed tens of millions of people."Abbott said: "He led his country from feudalism he helped to defeat the Japanese and he left his country on the verge of the great economic success they are having now."
Considering that the Communists let the Nationalists fight the Japanese and the Great Leap Forward and other policies destroyed China's economy...
Farmer fish become first animal found domesticating another species - "So far, the only other organisms known to domesticate others have been insects – for example ants farm aphids, protecting them from predators in exchange for the sweet sticky goo they excrete. But the behavior has never been observed in other vertebrate species before.Until now. On an expedition to coral reefs in Belize, a team led by researchers at Griffith and Deakin Universities discovered that longfin damselfish appear to have domesticated mysid shrimp."
Facebook - "Black people use to fly untill we were introduced to Western diet,and we lost all our magical powers,this one of the reasons they(white people)use to call us:FALLEN ANGELS/GODS."
WE
the void on Twitter - "every woman knows it’s not all men. but we don’t know WHICH men. so we stay wary of ALL men. it’s not rocket science"
"This is literally the same logic racists use when talking about black people."
Power relations means never having to say you're sorry
Disney Bounces Their Boob Screeners - "If you happen to be an exhibitionist, the Happiest Place on Earth just got a little happier -- 'cause Disney is dropping their last line of defense against roller-coaster boobie flashers.It's all over rides like Splash Mountain -- aka Flash Mountain -- where some people would whip out certain body parts in the hopes that the park camera would catch the nudity ... and then display the naked shot on the photo preview screens for all to see.Disney had created "image screening positions" to prevent the XXX shots from going public. But now, execs have told the OC Register the screeners have been "redeployed" -- and that they no longer need to monitor the rides because "actual inappropriate behaviors by guests are rare.""
The World Is Studded With Artificial Mountains - " The majority of the artificial mountains in the United States are the byproducts of cement and steel production, formed at the height of those industries between the late 1800s and mid-20th century."
Bucks County woman created ‘deepfake’ videos to harass rivals on her daughter’s cheerleading squad, DA says - "A Bucks County woman anonymously sent coaches on her teen daughter’s cheerleading squad fake photos and videos that depicted the girl’s rivals naked, drinking, or smoking, all in a bid to embarrass them and force them from the team, prosecutors say.The woman, Raffaela Spone, also sent the manipulated images to the girls, and, in anonymous messages, urged them to kill themselves... There was no indication that her high school-age daughter, who was not publicly identified, knew what her mother was doing"
Penguin jumps onto tour boat to escape killer whale
The Ocean Sunfish: Why The Rant Is Wrong - "Many, many animals suffer from public misperception and bad PR. Previously I have discussed how Komodo dragons are misrepresented as incompetent hunters by media, and how Atlantic bluefin tuna are almost entirely seen as a luxury dish and not as the endangered predator it is. But there are animals that have it even worse. These are species which are wrongly labeled as being just plain useless, and they include today's subject: the Ocean Sunfish, or Mola (Mola mola)... People have gone as far as to edit the Wikipedia page on ocean sunfish to further reflect their opinions on this species: someone added that a number of sunfish migrated to North America to vote for Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential elections... But there are worse problems with the rant. Almost everything about that rant is wrong. Most of the information on it is actually from outdated research, or outright unsupported by anything. Yet it is taken as fact by most of the people who read it... Considering the lack of research and lack of conservation effort oriented at this unusual, highly threatened species, greater public awareness is going to be paramount to keeping the ocean sunfish afloat. But most of the public knows this species through the infamous rant, and as a result, a significant proportion now actively hates this fish. At best they may think of it as yet another organism that exists only because of sheer numbers, rather than as the well-adapted, swift-moving, deep-diving predator it is. And that cuts off a huge source of funding to research or conservation, since nobody would want to study a species that's "useless". That Facebook rant may eventually be the literal death to this species. If that happens, Scout Burns will be the first person in history to ensure the extinction of a species through a Facebook post."
Woman Resurrects A Bird With Her Breasts (Viral Twitter Thread) - "twitter user @Fizzygrrl seems to have indeed brought a bird back to life - twice - using her magical breasts"
On Summer Heacock
UCLA Academic Freedom Committee on “Academic Freedom to Quote Offensive Source Material in Class Discussions” - "There was a high-profile controversy earlier this year involving UCLA Political Science Department lecturer Ajax Peris, who was faulted for reading—in a lecture about the history of racism—a passage from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail ("when your first name becomes 'nigger,' your middle name becomes 'boy' (however old you are) … and your wife and mother are never given the respected title 'Mrs.' … —then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait"), and playing a documentary on lynching where the word "nigger" was also quoted... University classes often examine and discuss source materials that people—legislators, donors, the public, students, and others—may find offensive. These materials may include writings that expound offensive ideas, or discuss violent, even horrific events. The materials may include visual depictions of genocide, slavery, and other atrocities, as well as the symbols of regimes and ideologies responsible for such horrors. The materials may also discuss regrettably everyday crimes such as rape, child molestation, murder, and domestic abuse, as well as other disturbing matters such as depression and suicide.Just to offer a few examples, the materials may include passages from Mein Kampf; photographs from concentration camps; photographs of lynchings; depictions of swastikas or Ku Klux Klan rallies; court documents discussing racist behavior; passages from the autobiographies of the victims of violence, war, and oppression, or from fictional descriptions of violent events; or statistical data that reflects disparities among various groups. The materials may also include books, films, songs, and other works that include specific words or phrases that many find offensive, from vulgarities to epithets to blasphemy. They may also include creative works that try to accurately capture the (often harsh) reality of some time, place, or environment, as well as critique and analysis of those works. Such material can come up in many different fields, such as history, law, sociology, psychology, biology, African American studies, women's studies, art, art criticism, literature, music, musicology, film, and theater, just to name a few.Academic freedom includes instructors' rights to assign such material, and to display and discuss it in class and in related assignments, both in writing and verbally. Academic freedom likewise includes students' rights to discuss the material. The willingness to confront and discuss even highly disturbing realities is a vital part of the "freedom to teach"—"the right of the faculty to select the materials" and "determine the approach to the subject."[1] Indeed, the freedom to candidly discuss such realities is especially important to those who want to draw people's attention to injustice, violence, and oppression, whether they are faculty members, civil rights leaders, artists, or others."
Liberals claim that they don't want to erase history, but if you can't even teach history that liberals find offensive at the college level...
Burbank school district removes 5 novels over racism charges - Los Angeles Times - "Five novels had been challenged in Burbank: Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” Theodore Taylor’s “The Cay” and Mildred D. Taylor’s Newbery Medal-winning young-adult classic “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.”The challenges came from four parents (three of them Black) for alleged potential harm to the public-school district’s roughly 400 Black students. All but “Huckleberry Finn” have been required reading in the BUSD. The ongoing case has drawn the attention of free-speech organizations across the country, which are decrying it as the latest act of school censorship... None of the five novels in dispute is openly supportive of segregation or bigotry. All were flagged for words we now find offensive. But the parents’ objections are not merely over language. They also worry about the way these books portray Black history and the lessons they might impart to modern readers.“The Cay” and “Huckleberry Finn” feature white children learning from the suffering and wisdom of older Black men. “To Kill a Mockingbird” stars Atticus Finch, a white lawyer who defends a Black man accused of raping a white woman. Its white-savior story line reads much differently nearly 60 years after its publication. “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” may have instigated Helligar’s complaint, but it is something of an outlier. Narrated by a young Black girl growing up in the South during the Great Depression and Jim Crow era, it’s the only novel on the list by a Black author.Notably, the BUSD’s reading list hasn’t been revised in three decades. “For over 30 years,” said Helligar, “these books have been on this list. The true ban is that there aren’t other books of other voices that could ever be on there”"
Apparently the free speech organisations don't understand the First Amendment since the books aren't being banned for everyone, and the arc of history is such that works which condemn racism are now racist, and bigots need to be educated!
BC teacher suspended after showing class 'To Kill A Mockingbird' film - "The teacher, Andrew Michael Dennis, showed his Grade 6/7 students the film in September 2018, a resolution agreement by the BC Commissioner for Teacher Regulation found. The resolution states that the film dealt with themes too mature for students that age, such as sexual assault and racism, as well as racial slurs... Dennis also showed his students JRR Tolkien film The Hobbit, and read them "The Lottery," which is typically given as materials for grades 11 or 12. Dennis then showed his students film adaptation of The Lottery, then had his students play a Lottery-themed dodgeball game"