TikTok user reveals ‘dirty’ meaning behind ‘Macarena’ and people’s childhoods are ruined - "user @peakay81 has shared the story behind the song, with it being about “a woman whose boyfriend is about to join the army”. “She, when he’s away, has a threesome with his two best mates."
Meme - "So me and my bros wanted to once and for all test the hypothesis that we are all living in a matrix. We came to the conclusion that a matrix could only run so smoothly because of our predictable behavior. For example, if you eat it is likely that you will swallow your food. Therefore, the matrix would be ready to initiate a digestion program. But if a group of people did something unpredictable, the matrix would have to shut down. So what we did is we randomly started gang banging each other. The matrix could have never predicted that becuase that is like super gay. But nothing happened (matrix-wise). But this is not point why I am writing about this. My friends now want to do the gang-banging shit again and I am not sure how to respond to that."
Meme - "TRASH CAN WIND METER
Lid flipped open
Tipped over
In the neighbor's yard
Down the street
I've lost my trash can"
Meme - "What we should have learned from dogs
love care loyalty
what we actually learned
*doggy style*"
Meme - "DM: It seems your quiver is not noted on your character's sheet, where have you been storing all your arrows?
PC:
DM: Nevermind"
Firing Squads Replace Scarce Lethal Injection Drugs In Some State Executions - " South Carolina's Republican governor signed a bill into law last week that sounds like it's from a different century: Death row inmates must choose whether to be executed by the electric chair or a firing squad if lethal injection drugs are unavailable. Lethal injection is the preferred method of execution in states that have the death penalty. But in recent years, they've had difficulty obtaining lethal injection drugs as pharmaceutical companies blocked their drugs from being used in executions... New Hampshire permits hanging, which was once the primary method of execution in the United States. (The state has abolished the death penalty but not retroactively. One prisoner remains on death row there.)... In Utah, it happens this way: A squad of sharpshooters — volunteers solicited from corrections employees or law enforcement – carry out the execution. "The prisoner is strapped into a chair, has a hood put over his or her face and a target placed on his or her chest above the heart. There are sandbags around the chair in case there are either stray bullets or ricochet. Done properly, the sharpshooters should be able to hit the target. And if there are five sharpshooters, four have live ammunition, one has a blank," Dunham says. "The idea is that that provides them with psychological deniability so that they don't have assurance that they actually killed somebody."... The American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina called the state's execution legislation "modern-day lynching." It notes that Black people make up more than half of those on the state's death row despite being only 27% of its population."
Meme - "So you think it was a smart move insulting a moderator and blocking the admin huh. Arrogance and idiocy gets you no where. Admin sends her regards that you're banned from the group for what you pulled off. I bet when your parents friends ask about you your parents changed the subject and we can see why. An arrogant man child who refuses to admit he's wrong. Good luck champ."
So many Facebook group admins are losers. Like Reddit moderators who claim those are jobs
OP: "I laugh reacted at a moderators post and then an admin messaged me saying I was rude but they didn’t give any context so I didn’t know who they were and blocked them. Now I got this message from a different admin (that I blocked just for the laughs… OH NOOOO IM BLOCKED FROM A SHITTY FACEBOOK GROUP WHAT AM I GOING TO DDOOOOOOOOO"
Meme - "I bought my hubby a new 50" TV last week because his old one broke down. We took the old TV and put it in the box that the new one came in and set it in our entryway. Porch pirate came and picked it up on Tuesday night. I just wish I could see his face when he finds out it's no good. He saved us a trip to the dump and got his just karma."
Wales: Plaque for man who liked to tell seagulls to 'f**k off' removed - "The plaque, in memory of Huw Davies, had been placed on a bench overlooking South Beach in Aberystwyth. It read: ‘In loving memory of Huw Davies. Used to sit here and shout ‘f**k off!’ at the seagulls’... ‘An unauthorised plaque had been placed, by an unknown person, on an existing bench within Aberystwyth Castle grounds. The plaque has been removed.’ Locals do not seem to know who Huw Davies was, but have said they found the plaque funny, especially given seagulls’ reputation for being seaside menaces."
What Caused the Baby Formula Shortage? - WSJ - "By now you’ve heard that some 40% of the nation’s baby formula is out of stock, causing new mothers to hunt from store to store to feed their infants. This should never happen in America. How did it? Here’s the government part of the story you won’t hear from the political class. Abbott Laboratories in February recalled several brands and shut down a plant in Michigan after complaints that four infants fell severely ill with a dangerous bacteria after ingesting its powdered formula. The Food and Drug Administration launched an investigation and onsite inspection, noting earlier findings that had detected the bacteria at the plant. It’s not clear when the FDA was made aware of the problems at the plant and why it didn’t take action sooner. Abbott said this week that “after a thorough review of all available data, there is no evidence to link our formulas to these infant illnesses.” The FDA said Friday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention closed its investigation after finding no more cases of infant illness. Some conservatives blame the FDA for causing a scare, but the agency had no choice but to investigate the complaints and warn consumers. The real culprit is government policies that have limited formula options. Last year Abbott accounted for 42% of the U.S. formula market, about 95% of which is produced domestically. There are only four major manufacturers of formula in the U.S. today: Mead Johnson, Abbott, Nestle, and Perrigo. One reason the market is so concentrated is tariffs up to 17.5% on imports, which protect domestic producers from foreign competition. Non-trade barriers such as FDA labeling and ingredient requirements also limit imports even during shortages. Canada’s strong dairy industry has attracted investment in formula production. But the Trump Administration sought to protect domestic producers by imposing quotas and tariffs on Canadian imports in the USMCA trade deal. The FDA can inspect foreign plants so the U.S. import restrictions aren’t essential for product safety. They merely raise prices for consumers and limit choice. Further limiting competition is the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) for low-income mothers. By the Department of Agriculture’s estimate, WIC accounted for between 57% and 68% of all infant formula sold in the U.S. Under the welfare program, each state awards an exclusive formula contract to a manufacturer. Companies compete for the contracts by offering states huge rebates on the formula women can buy. The rebates equal about 85% of the wholesale cost, according to a 2011 USDA study. Women can only use WIC vouchers to purchase formula from the winning manufacturer. These rebates reduce state spending, but there’s no such thing as free baby formula. Why would manufacturers give states an enormous discount? Because the contracts effectively give them a state monopoly. Stores give WIC brands more shelf space. Physicians may also be more likely to recommend WIC brands. After 30 states switched their WIC contracts between 2005 and 2008, the new provider’s market share increased on average by 84 percentage points."
"Capitalism has failed"
Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg under internal review for trying to stop story about ex-boyfriend: WSJ - "Facebook has recently started an internal review of Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Meta Platforms Inc. after she came under fire for pressuring U.K. tabloid the Daily Mail to stop publication of an article about her then-boyfriend Bobby Kotick... One of the concerns of Sandberg’s legal team and public-relations advisors, inside and outside Facebook, was that this story would negatively reflect on her reputation as being an advocate for women"
Secondary school bans students from using slang terms such as ‘like’ and ‘bare’ - "A London secondary school has “banned” its pupils from using slang, with phrases on the prohibited list including “that’s long”, “bare” and “oh my days”. Students at the Ark All Saints Academy in southeast London are also not permitted to use the terms “basically”, “like”, and “you know” at the beginning of sentences... the list of banned words and phrases only applies to formal learning situations and exams, and can still be used among pupils on the playground... Some linguistic experts have warned against policing slang language. "
So much for teaching professionalism and register. When the kids grow up and find themselves disadvantaged, this will be blamed on structural discrimination
a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/in-plain-sight/endless-debt-native-americans-plagued-high-interest-loans-n236706">Endless Debt: Native Americans Plagued by High-Interest Loans - "On Zuni and Navajo land near Gallup, tribal laws prohibit high-interest lending on reservations. But those laws have little effect, experts say, because lenders don’t operate on tribal lands, forcing residents to travel to border towns for loans. “The reservations are credit ghettos,” said Marvin Ginn, the director of Native Community Finance, a U.S. Treasury-chartered Native Community Development Financial Institution, which provides credit and financial services to the underserved. “When we come off the reservation, the easiest and sometimes only way to get a loan is through a predatory lender.”"
This suggests that banning "predatory lending" will not solve the issue
Regulations Target Western Sky and Native American Predatory Lending - "Western Sky has interest rates upward of 300 percent. It is able to skirt the law because it is Native American-owned and it operates completely on a Native American reservation, distributing loans online. While Native American tribes must abide by federal U.S. laws, tribal sovereignty allows them to ignore state-specific laws. Working with Native American tribes has become a common way for predatory lenders – especially payday lenders – to avoid state consumer protection laws. Tribes that own lending businesses argue that they are simply supporting themselves. “The fact is our tribe – and tribes nationwide – benefit from the positive economic impact from these and other businesses activities, with revenues directed towards such critical needs as medical care, education and many other basic necessities,” wrote Charles Moncooyea, vice chairman of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe. The 10 tribes with lending businesses accounted for 35 percent of payday loans in 2010, generating $11.2 billion in loans. Thanks to high interest rates, their profits add up to much more."
How a Payday Lender Used Tribal Immunity to Get Rich Quick - "American Web Loan claimed it could charge sky-high rates because it was owned by a Native tribe, the Otoe-Missouria. The tribe’s sovereign status meant that the business would have immunity against state usury laws and civil suits... “Tribes have to make money, but doing it at the expense of the public gives tribal sovereignty a bad name,” said Nathalie Martin, a University of New Mexico law professor who has written about alliances between payday lenders and Native tribes. “When you use your sovereignty for these types of things, it could be seen as weakening and cheapening that sovereignty.”"
Octopus Arms Have Minds of Their Own
Octopuses on ecstasy just want a cuddle - "After absorbing the drug, the animals ignored toys, such as Star Wars figurines, that would normally have intrigued them. Instead, the octopuses socialized and spent more time touching one another with their arms than these creatures usually do."
Watch: The scientific reason why baby octopuses ride jellyfish - "The octopus seemed to be in control of its living vehicle, the researchers write. It actually steered the jellyfish, using it for protection by turning the jelly's tentacles toward the divers photographing the phenomenon. "The interaction between the octopod and divers, namely by rotating the jelly towards what we presume to be a perceived threat, supports a potential defensive use of the hijacked jelly," the scientists explain. "Thus, we argue that the octopod seems to be using the jelly to protect itself." Using jellyfish stingers as an attack shield isn't the only way seven-armed octopuses benefit from jellyfish; they also eat jellies. But that doesn't seem to be what's happening here, the researchers explain. If it were only looking for a snack, the octopus would have taken a bite and moved on... The blanket octopus, Tremoctopus violaceus, gets a bit more creative — and decidedly less adorable — with its use of jellyfish for protection. It uses jellyfish tentacles as weapons, researchers reported in a 1963 paper published in Science. Male and small female blanket octopuses carry around fragments of tentacles from Physalia physalis, aka the dreaded Portuguese Man-of-War, Bennice says. The stinging tentacles don't bother the octopus, which holds fragments with its first two pairs of arms. In addition to defense, the tentacle-wielding habit may help the octopus capture, food, too"
Octopuses sometimes punch fish out of spite
Spider-Man vs the Real Deal: Spider Powers - "Spider-Man is able to sense danger lurking near, the warning signal coming as a pain in his head that varies with the intensity of the threat. Spiders can detect danger coming their way with an early-warning system called eyes. You probably expected that. But that’s not all: their most important source of information about the world and its hazards comes from highly sensitive hairs that cover the bodies of most spiders. These hairs perceive even low-level vibrations coming through whatever surface a spider is standing on. Many species also bear hairs that sense vibrations in the air, including sound."
Meme - "Ordered balloons for my mummy finishing chemo on Tuesday saying "fuck cancer" and got this this morning"
"Hi Shannon Thank you for shopping with us. Amazon seller Eighty80 LTD has encountered an unexpected problem with completing your order.
Message from seller Eighty80 LTD:
Hi Shannon We have refunded your order because we agree with your balloons! Do not worry, the balloons are still on the way for you, use the refunded money to get some cake? All the love from Noelle at Eighty80 Ltd"
Tattooed Italian mobster nabbed in Caribbean thanks to YouTube cooking videos | Toronto Sun - "A mafia fugitive hiding in the Dominican Republic has been tracked down thanks to his tattoos visible in cooking videos he posted on YouTube... Marc Feren Claude Biart, 53, was arrested on March 24 in the town of Boca Chica, close to the capital Santo Domingo, where he had arrived more than five years ago from Costa Rica... He and his wife posted on YouTube several videos of Biart cooking Italian dishes. Although they were careful not to show his face, police recognized him from the tattoos."
Provocative new study finds bullies have highest self esteem, social status, lowest rates of depression - "A just-published Canadian study has added heft to a provocative new theory about bullying: that the behaviour is literally in the genes, an inherited trait that actually helps build social rank and sex appeal. If accepted, the hypothesis rooted in evolutionary psychology could transform how schools confront the persistent and often-shattering problem. Conventional wisdom has long suggested that bullies are “maladapted,” troubled people, lashing out because they had been abused or harassed themselves or at least had dysfunctional home lives... Most anti-bullying programs try to change the behaviour of bullies — and they usually don’t work, says Wong, who reviewed the literature on program outcomes for her PhD thesis. That’s probably because the behaviour is biologically hard-wired, not learned... Wong recommends that, instead of trying to change how bullies think, schools expand the range of competitive, supervised activities they can participate in — giving them a less harmful channel for their dominating tendencies... A pilot project at an Arizona school sought to steer students identified as bullies into high-status “jobs” — like being the school’s front-door greeters — to focus their aggression on something less harmful. Bullying fell “dramatically” in its wake, says Tony Volk, a Brock University psychologist who helped pioneer the genetic theory of bullying and took part in an upcoming study of the Arizona project. Meanwhile, separate research Volk is working on offers more evidence bolstering the concept: the bullies among 178 teenagers surveyed by the professor and his colleagues got more sex than everyone else. “The average bully isn’t particularly sadistic or even deeply argumentative,” he says. “What they really are is people driven for status.” The hypothesis may be a hard sell in the anti-bullying world, however, where the notion that many people bully because it is in their nature — and can’t be easily changed — is troublesome. Rob Frenette, co-founder of the advocacy and support group Bullying Canada, says he has yet to encounter a bully who did not have some underlying issue — such as violence at home — that was a likely environmental trigger for the bullying...
' Society tends to be focusing a lot on youth bullying, but you see the same things among adults. This is a societal issue, not just youth. Kid bullies turn into teen bullies and evolve to adult bullies. Adult bullies tend to rise to management, receive status and recognition in the workplace and community for ability to “tackle tough issues and people”, and are often celebrated as strong and capable leaders. Hard wired or not, people, of all ages and stages, in our society are rewarded for bully-type behaviour all the time'...
'the increase in bullying, like autism, may also be due to the vast broadening of the definition of the word'...
the type of bullies Frenette cites, and that often are the public face of the problem, form a separate category, well-defined by psychologists, called bully-victims, says Volk, the St. Catharines, Ont., professor. They are the ones who are troubled themselves and strike out in visible, blatant ways that quickly come to the attention of authorities, he said. Evidence indicates it is the “pure” bullies, however, who account for 80-90% of bullying, yet are more socially adept, more popular and fly more under the radar"
How Being Bullied Affects Your Adulthood - "Sometimes, having been bullied seems to have positive outcomes. About 47 percent of deLara’s interviewees said they had mined something beneficial, like a sense of inner strength or self-reliance, from the experience. Others cultivated empathy or consciously decided to treat others well or make something of their lives."
Bullied Teenagers Who Exercise Regularly Are 23% Less Likely to Attempt Suicide
Maybe if they exercise they get bullied less
Zambian student is arrested in Russia for 'Nazism' after TWERKING in front of a war memorial - "The woman, identified by local media as Rebecca Ziba, 21, posted a clip of herself 'shaking a**' next to the Memorial of Glory in the city of Khanty-Mansiysk."
Does the left hate "Nazis" more or love black women more?
France’s big bet on hydrogen is doomed to fail - "Emmanuel Macron’s ambitions to make the country a leader in green hydrogen technology have likely put Renault on the wrong track"
Meme - "Teacher: Human sperm contains sugar
Sarah: Then why is it not sweet?
The entire class:"
McEwen on Twitter - "People who think Americans won't take trains if they are a couple of hours slower than planes need to meet the Midwesterners who are like "why bother flying it's only a ten hour drive""
Cashier not invited to work drinks given £74,000 compensation - "Failing to invite a colleague to work drinks is victimisation, a tribunal has ruled as a casino worker is handed £75,000 in compensation. Cashier Rita Leher, 51, claimed she felt "shunned" by colleagues at Aspers casino in Stratford, east London, and was the only one not invited to cocktail bar Las Iguanas for drinks. Fellow cashiers also '"insensitively" discussed the social event in front of her... Her exclusion from the drinks event was because colleagues "did not wish to socialise with someone who had complained of discrimination""
Alternatively, she might have been an unpleasant person, which is why she got shunned
Pro-Pedo Prof Gets Clown-Slapped and Placed on Leave - "Allyn Walker, a trans assistant professor at Old Dominion University (ODU) and author of the book A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity, was put on administrative leave by the college he/she/they/zhim-zhim works for... “I’ve definitely heard the idea that you brought up though that the use of the term minor-attracted person suggests that it’s okay to be attracted to children,” Walked told Prostasia. “But using a term that communicates who someone is attracted to doesn’t indicate anything about the morality of that attraction.”"
With anti "pedo" virtue signalling, anything that deviates from the party line means you are pro "pedo"
Professor who researched ‘minor-attracted persons’ steps down - "An Old Dominion University professor researching “minor-attracted people” (MAPs) agreed to step down from their position Wednesday after their work sparked threats and protests. In a joint statement on Wednesday, Allyn Walker and the university announced their resignation from their position as assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice after the expiration of their contract in 2022... Walker, who is transgender, explained that their research was meant to prevent child sex abuse, attributing the backlash to their trans identity and misrepresentation online... The backlash came after Walker gave an interview about their book, “A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity” earlier this month. “I think we have a tendency to want to categorize people with these attractions as evil or morally corrupt,” Walker said in the interview. “But when we’re talking about non-offending MAPS, these are people who have an attraction that they didn’t ask for. And one that frequently they would do anything to change. But they find that they’re unable to change those attractions. And most importantly, the people in my study did not act on them,” they added."
Apparently this person is actually non-binary instead
It is more important to virtue signal about "pedos" than to take steps to prevent children from being abused
Virginia professor resigns amid uproar over comments about adults attracted to children - "They said potential sex-offenders can be prevented from committing crimes by developing coping strategies."
Snickers Responds To Claims It Removed The 'D**K Vein' From Its Chocolate Bar - "This may have been the result of chocolate melting and then reforming, a manufacturing error, or some other cause."
For Centuries, Massive Meals Amazed Visitors to Korea - "Yi Geuk-don, a 15th-century Confucian scholar, complained to the king that the people were not saving food in good harvests, but ate in one meal the amount of food that the Chinese would eat in a day. In Swaemirok, a book chronicling life during the Joseon Dynasty in the late 16th century, author Oh Hui-mun wrote that an “ordinary grown man of Joseon eats about seven hob of rice per meal”: more than two pounds. Europeans who visited Korea in the 19th century also noted that Koreans typically ate double to triple the amount of food that the Japanese or the Chinese ate... Perhaps because of the better eating, Hesse-Wartegg also noticed Korea’s soldiers were “muscular, stocky and well-nourished” and “in a much better condition” than Chinese and Japanese soldiers. There is even a photographic evidence of how much Koreans ate in the 19th century. A photo postcard sold in France in the late 19th century shows a Korean man in front of his table, with the caption “Bon appetit!” In his book, Korean History on the Table, food writer Ju Yeong-ha noted the rice bowl in the photo was 3.5 inches tall with a diameter of over 6 inches, holding nearly a liter of rice to be eaten with soup that came in an even larger bowl, with an assortment of side dishes. For one person. In one meal... Fertile lands and superior farming techniques certainly played a role, as Korea is one of the earliest locations in the world to adopt paddy-style rice farming. Farmers grew rice seedlings, then transplanted them into flooded fields, allowing for more intensive planting and easier management. Ju Yeong-ha also notes the importance of Daedong-beob, the taxation system that the Joseon Dynasty introduced in the early 17th century. Prior to Daedong-beob, Koreans paid taxes to the king in the various forms of goods that the royal court required, such as lumber, horses, and silk. Daedong-beob unified the various forms of taxes to a single kind: rice. This, in effect, made growing rice equivalent to growing money, encouraging even more production than strictly necessary. With so much more rice, Koreans simply had access to more food... in areas of Korea with strong food traditions, the practice of serving an inordinate amount of food is alive and well. A good example is the southwestern city of Jeonju, the birthplace for many world-famous Korean dishes, such as bibimbap. Jeonju is notorious for both the quality and the quantity of its food—at its renowned Makgeolli Alley, a $15 kettle of makgeolli (rice wine) comes with dozens of delicious little dishes covering up the entire table. According to a survey conducted in 2002, one of the few complaints of international visitors to Jeonju was that the local restaurants served too much food."
Neil deGrasse Tyson calls lunar eclipses ‘un-spectacular,’ angers Twitter - "“Lunar eclipses are so un-spectacular that if nobody told you what was happening to the Moon you’d probably not notice at all,” reads Tyson’s tweet. “Just sayin’.”... as posted by none other than Wendy’s themselves: “Sir, this is a Wendy’s.”"
The Surprising Reason that There Are So Many Thai Restaurants in America - "according to a representative from the Royal Thai Embassy in DC, there are just 300,000 Thai-Americans—less than 1 percent the size of the the Mexican-American population. Yet there are an estimated 5,342 Thai restaurants in the United States, compared to around 54,000 Mexican restaurants; that’s ten times the population-to-restaurant ratio. So, why are there so many Thai restaurants in the US?... The Thai government paid for it. Using a tactic now known as gastrodiplomacy or culinary diplomacy, the government of Thailand has intentionally bolstered the presence of Thai cuisine outside of Thailand to increase its export and tourism revenues, as well as its prominence on the cultural and diplomatic stages. In 2001, the Thai government established the Global Thai Restaurant Company, Ltd., in an effort to establish at least 3,000 Thai restaurants worldwide. At the time, Thai deputy commerce minister Goanpot Asvinvichit told the Wall Street Journal that the government hoped the chain would be “like the McDonald’s of Thai food.” Apparently, the government had been training chefs at its culinary training facilities to send abroad for the previous decade, but this project formalized and enhanced these efforts significantly... The Ministry of Commerce’s Department of Export Promotion, most likely run by bureaucrats rather than restaurateurs, drew up prototypes for three different “master restaurants,” which investors could choose as a sort of prefabricated restaurant plan, from aesthetic to menu offerings. Elephant Jump would be the fast casual option, at $5 to $15 per person; Cool Basil would be the mid-priced option at $15 to $25 a head; and the Golden Leaf prototype would cost diners $25 to $30, with décor featuring “authentic Thai fabrics and objets d’art.” (Does your favorite Thai spot have objets d’art? The restaurant may have been built from a government prototype.) The Department of Export Promotion also matched and set up meetings between Thai and foreign business people, conducted market research on local tastes around the world, and sent representatives from Thai cooking institutes abroad to train chefs at foreign restaurants. Meanwhile, the Export-Import Bank of Thailand offered loans to Thai nationals hoping to open restaurants abroad, and the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Bank of Thailand set up an infrastructure for loans of up to $3 million for enterprise in the food industry, including foreign Thai restaurants. The Public Health Ministry published a book in 2002 called A Manual for Thai Chefs Going Abroad, which provided information about recruitment, training, and even the tastes of foreigners. The Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Industry, the Thailand National Food Institute, the public Kasetsart University, and the Ministry of Agriculture were all involved in the push to bolster Thai food abroad, from training chefs to inspecting exports to researching new recipes to appeal to foreign tastes. A special visa was even established in New Zealand specifically for Thai chefs. It worked. At the time of the Global Thai program’s launch, there were about 5,500 Thai restaurants beyond Thailand’s borders; today there are over 15,000. The number in the US increased from around 2,000 to over 5,000. Now that the restaurants are opened, the government is concerned with maintaining their quality and their value as export channels. As of August 2017, 413 Thai restaurants in the US have been awarded “Thai Select” certificates by the Thai Ministry of Commerce to denote quality and authenticity. Thai restaurants in locales as far as Mexico and Nigeria have been recognized... Inspired by Thailand’s success, South Korea, for example, has earmarked tens of millions of dollars beginning in 2009 for its Korean Cuisine to the World campaign. Taiwan has followed suit, as has Peru with its Cocina Peruana Para el Mundo (“Peruvian Cuisine for the World;” quite creative) initiative, as well as Malaysia (“Malaysia Kitchen for the World 2010”—clearly there’s a pattern here). Even the North Korean government has recognized food’s diplomatic power, and has maintained an international chain of over 100 restaurants called Pyongyang, featuring North Korean staples as well as musical performances by a purportedly captive North Korean staff. The phenomenon of escaping and defecting waitresses may have put a damper on the North Koreans’ enthusiasm for this project."
Too bad this won't work for China despite the number of Chinese restaurants, since they are doing even more to undermine their image
Libertarians are going to be very upset that the Thai government successfully promoted Thai restaurants abroad, since their religion is that everything governments do fails
Playing the Role of New York? Toronto. That View of Paris? It’s Montreal. - The New York Times - "The exhibition explores how Canadian cities frequently double as other metropolises in movies and television shows, and what that means about (among other things) film, architecture, cities, national identity and how our perception of the built world is often based on artifice... Toronto plays Tokyo in “Pacific Rim,” Chicago in the movie “Chicago,” Baltimore in “Hairspray” and Boston in much of “Good Will Hunting.” Vancouver plays New York in the Jackie Chan movie “Rumble in the Bronx” (leading to an infamous oversight, in which the city has mountains lurking behind it), and it plays Seattle, Budapest and Mumbai in “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.” Montreal has played Marseille and Montrichard, France, in “Catch Me if You Can” and Paris in “X-Men: Days of Future Past”; Washington, D.C., in “White House Down”; and Brooklyn in the movie “Brooklyn.” Particularly popular filming locations include the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant, a beloved Art Deco complex in Toronto that has played sinister locations in movies like “Undercover Brother” (portraying The Man’s headquarters) and “In the Mouth of Madness” (a mental hospital). The University of Toronto has played Harvard, M.I.T. and Princeton, among many other schools. The reasons for Canada’s prime status as a film “impostor” are many, Mr. Theodore said: tax breaks, lower costs, diverse landscapes, high-quality shooting and editing facilities, friendliness and a general unfamiliarity with Canada among international movie audiences, allowing it to easily stand in without being recognized. Another factor, according to the exhibition’s designer, Thomas Balaban, an architect and professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Montreal, is that Canada’s cities are more generic than those in many countries, particularly those in the United States, which Canada plays most often... In a recent article for Architect magazine, the critic Witold Rybczynski wrote that despite a few radical midcentury exceptions from architects like Erickson, Andrews and Moshe Safdie, “Canadian architects have generally toed the Modernist line, preferring to leave radical experimentation to others.”"
Canada’s top court says voluntary extreme intoxication a defence in violent crimes - "The Supreme Court of Canada issued a major decision on Friday allowing criminal defendants in cases involving assault — including sexual assault — to use a defence known as self-induced extreme intoxication. Effectively, it means defendants who voluntarily consume intoxicating substances and then assault or interfere with the bodily integrity of another person can avoid conviction if they can prove they were too intoxicated to control their actions."
The Peculiar Origins Mail-Order Brides In Colonial America - "Back in England, marriage required enormous financial commitment. Women who didn't come from wealthy families would often have to do years of domestic work to amass enough money to wed. Emigration provided a healthy alternative. The Virginia Company offered yet more incentives. These included a dowry of clothing, furniture, and transportation to the colony as well as a plot of land. An unattached woman would also receive her pick of a range of wealthy bachelors... any settler who financed their own journey to Jamestown would receive a 50-acre plot of land. The same deal was offered to those who sponsored another settler. Eager to take advantage of these offers, wealthy citizens would snatch up others and bring them to the colony as servants to grab as much land as possible"