Saturday, December 03, 2022

Links - 3rd December 2022 (1)

Meme - "17th century mfers when Pachelbel dropped Canon in D"

Meme - Abraham Ray: "Screenshots don't lie"
Michael Byrd: "They can easily be manipulated"
Abraham Ray: "Nah not these ones"
Abraham Ray: "Screenshots don't lie"
Michael Byrd: "Are yo underwear clean"
Abraham Ray: "Nah not these ones"

Meme - "Back in my day, "buttlicker" was a top shelf, break in case of emergency, schoolyard insult. nowadays it is a selectable option on most dating sites."

David J Prokopetz - "Popular media tends to depict catgirls as having roughly the same preferences in prey items as regular housecats, but this represents a misunderstanding of how feline prey selection works. Cats don’t hunt mice because they prefer the flavour; cats are hyper-optimised predators that will hunt and kill literally anything they can catch. Their preferences in terms of prey items are less a matter of taste and more a matter of scale: you can only venture so high on the food chain when you weigh ten pounds. Given access to the force multipliers of tools and opposable thumbs, a catgirl would absolutely look at a T-rex and see tonight’s dinner."
"#as far as a catgirl is concerned a tyrannosaurus is just a very large chicken
#and she's got ALL the secret herbs and spices"

Meme - "Hi, is this Paul?"
"Who is this"
"This is Erica from the dentist's office. I got your number from your file"
"Pretty sure this violates Hippo but shoot your shot guess"
"I'm not flirting with you. We have you on video stealing thousands of dollars of x-ray equipment"

Quickies: Accents Weather Forecasts (UK)

Become a vet they said....it will be fun they said
Elephant diarrhea

What's the Difference Between Pigeons and Doves? - "the difference is more linguistic than taxonomic.  “The word dove is a word that came into English from the more Nordic languages, whereas pigeon came into English from French”... There’s no difference between a pigeon and a dove in scientific nomenclature, but colloquial English tends to categorize them by size. Something called a dove is generally smaller than something called a pigeon, but that’s not always the case. A common pigeon, for example, is called both a rock dove and a rock pigeon."

First date with NPC - *Skyrim girl in Venice*
Second date with NPC - YouTube

Trolley problem memes - Posts | Facebook - "Bioethics problems are such headscratchers.
This isn't entirely contrived, BTW - the real-life situation that immediately comes to mind is trying to get FDA approval for a drug that obviously works based on available evidence that's yet insufficient by FDA standards."
Refuted Claims From Observational Studies Often Persist Despite Strong Evidence Against Them - "Prominent claims from observational studies of the cardiovascular benefits of vitamin E often continue to be supported in medical literature despite strong contradictory evidence from randomized trials, according to a new study. Similar findings were found for claims regarding the protective effects of beta-carotene on cancer and estrogen on Alzheimer disease."

The Meme Policeman - Posts | Facebook - "If you think you don't trust scientists, you're mistaken. You trust scientists in a million different ways every time you step on a plane, or for that matter turn on your tap or open a can of beans. The fact that you're unaware of this doesn't mean it's not so."
"This meme echoes the popular sentiment that “scientists” are responsible for nearly every advancement and innovation we enjoy. In reality, most progress has come from the engineers & tinkerers of the world, which is highlighted in Matt Ridley’s great book, “How Innovation Works.” Here are some examples:
▪️Perhaps the most important innovation that ushered in the Industrial Revolution and our modern world was converting heat into machine work via the steam engine. Two of the biggest leaders in this were Thomas Newcomen, a blacksmith, and the Scottish instrument maker, James Watt. They succeeded where other scientists and professors failed.
▪️A source of steady and incremental improvement in the efficiency of steam engines came from the journal Lean’s Engine Reporter, founded by a Cornish mining engineer. This acted like an open-software movement of the time where other engineers could learn from each other.
▪️The inventor of the turbine, Charles Parsons, was also an engineer...
Science and engineering need not be antagonists, as they both fulfill important purposes. Indeed, many innovations have also come directly from scientists. But overwhelmingly, the products that we rely on to improve our lives came from engineers and tinkerers rather than university professors and scientific researchers... The notion that we trust airplanes or toilets because of science, and not demonstrated ability, is absurd."

Meme - "Hi. My name is Paul. I have a PhD and tenure. Today I decided to test if a bottle of super glue was open by squirting it into my hand. Then I tried to clean my hand by wiping it on a box."
Johanna Klein @yohklein1 Replying to @RoboticoEl: "Graduate of both Harvard and MIT here. On more than one occasion have had to have hotel staff come to room to explain to me how to operate a shower. Have also asked on Facebook how to uncap a bottle of laundry detergent."
The second is by a woman, so this can't be used to bash men

A Funny Thing Happened When We Asked Nutrition Experts For One Piece Of Advice - "For months, Juna Gjata, the co-host of WBUR's new podcast, "Food, We Need To Talk," asked every eating expert she interviewed the same question: "If you could tell people to change only one thing that would have the biggest impact on their health for the rest of their lives, what would it be?"... none of them focused on food. All had the same answer: just exercise. And several focused on one particular type: resistance exercise — also known as strength training — as the best benefit for the least amount of time... They begin by looking back at Juna's old misconception about exercise as simply a way to burn off calories on the treadmill. Eddie notes that actually, the most important thing about exercise is that it increases and maintains muscle mass...
Westcott: Muscle not only burns calories and uses energy when you're active; when you're at rest, muscle also burns lots of energy — so much energy that it makes up about 30% of your resting metabolic rate. When you're sound asleep at night, your muscles burn 30% of your calories...
Eddie: And it becomes even more important as we get older, because the natural course of events is to actually lose muscle mass. Our metabolism just slows down. And the way that we raise our metabolism is not green tea supplements or apple cider vinegar shots — there's no science backing them. There's lots of science, though, for good, old-fashioned exercise...
Di Stefano: When you do lots of cardio, where you just get on a treadmill and jog, jog, jog, or you get on an elliptical and go forever, the body is getting a couple of different messages. It's getting the message, "We need stamina and endurance." And it burns a significant amount of calories, so we probably want to become more efficient. We don't need much strength. So, a great way to become more efficient at calories is to pare down muscle...
Eddie: Also, the physiologic effects of starting to lift weights actually come much quicker than just going on the treadmill. For patients who have obesity, we start with resistance exercise. And the psychological benefit comes very quickly when you realize that you can and will get better from a little bit of hard work. And you really don't have to do that much exercise to get the most results. Which is good news for a lot of us, because the time intrusion of exercise is still what gets most people not to start and not to continue. And remember, what we're trying to do is get people to change in small ways, and to commit to changes that they're going to enjoy and do for the rest of their lives. It's not a 12-week beach body challenge. And the research shows that with the resistance training that we've talked about, two or maybe three times a week is all you need. And a half hour at a time, you're going to see those dramatic results. It's almost like an inoculation. It's just enough to get your muscles moving... if you only had one exercise to do, I would say squatting. Get the proper form. Up and down off of your chair, just to strengthen your legs, get into your core. You're also going to work your arms, by doing a little bit of pushups. If you can't do them on the floor, do them against the the edge of a table. And you're going to work your core. If you do that, your life has already changed. If you're overweight, the best thing you can do to carry that weight — until hopefully you lose it — is to make your muscles stronger. That then is going to take the stress off of your joints."

How The 'Kung Fu Fighting' Melody Came To Represent Asia - "This nine-note tune and its cousins rely heavily on the pentatonic scale, which music from many East Asian and West African countries used...   One of the first instances of the cliche Nilsson found was in a show in 1847 called The Grand Chinese Spectacle of Aladdin, or The Wonderful Lamp."

Fantasy Dining Alice in a Labyrinth – Tokyo, Japan - "This place is much more than a restaurant. It’s a labyrinth of storybook pages, followed by a stack of books that make you feel caterpillar-sized. You enter into the main dining room to see various scenes from Lewis Carroll’s classic novel: the hedges from the Queen’s croquet-ground, enormous cards on the ceiling, and chairs in the shape of rose-bushes. The staff welcomes you in Alice’s pinafore dress and Mad Hatter-inspired costumes.   To top off the interior design, even the food is Wonderland-themed. You can have an appetizer in the shape of cut-out cards and roses (with references to the famous “Eat me” quote in the book, of course), beef ragù pasta with the Cheshire Cat’s iconic grin, or an ice-cream parfait that resembles the White Rabbit."

It’s OK. Don’t Cook. This Approach Is Surprisingly Healthy. - WSJ - "according to a 2017 NPD report, among the most popular meals prepared at home are cold cereal, toaster pastries, yogurt and tap water. Half of all dinners need to be prepared in 30 minutes or less... Meal kits were an early attempt to answer this need. These subscription boxes of pre-measured ingredients produced healthy meals and saved time on planning and shopping. But they still required significant cooking—anywhere between 30 minutes and an hour of prep time for dishes such as quinoa tabbouleh with fairy-tale eggplants. And because the services required a subscription, subscribers had to decide what to eat for dinner a week or more in advance, a commitment many proved unwilling to make: According to the Chicago research firm Food Genius, as many as 80% of Americans don’t make plans for dinner until at least 4 p.m. the same day. Services that once seemed like the saviors of home cooking crashed, hard: Blue Apron, one of the early meal-kit pioneers, has lost more than 90% of its value since its 2017 IPO, making it one of the worst public offerings of the decade. The next generation of kits try to solve for these issues. Meal kits from the company Plated are now in Albertsons and Safeway stores, while the kits from HelloFresh, can be purchased at Giant Food and Stop and Shop. Shoppers can grab one on the way home rather than commit in advance. And if even that’s too much trouble, Kroger, which offers Home Chef-brand meal kits, last month began piloting no-prep heat-and-eat meals, too."

Transportation: Beep beep - FML - "Today, I saw a woman still texting on her phone as she started to drive away when the light turned green. I made sure to stare her down and give her a dirty look because she wasn't paying attention to driving. She laughed as I rear-ended the car in front of me. FML"

Love and Wanker: Never drink and text - FML - "Today, like a drunk idiot, I texted my ex to ask if he maybe still had feelings for me. He texted back that yes, he did still have feelings for me, but then he has a wank and the feelings all disappear down the toilet wrapped in a tissue. Not gonna lie, I cried myself to sleep clutching a bottle of Schnapps. FML"

Love, Sex, Weird and Dating: Booty-full - FML - "Today, the guy from college my sister set me up with told me I'm too nice to continue lying to. Turns out he's one of my sister's booty calls and she bribed him to go on a date with me so I'd stop being so miserable and depressing. Apparently he didn't want to take me out, so the bribe was she'd let him do butt stuff. FML"

Alleged Lee Zeldin attempted attacker charged with felony, immediately released just as congressman predicted - "A man who allegedly attacked Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., with a sharp object at a campaign stop in Perinton, New York, Thursday evening was charged with a felony and released from custody within hours of his arrest, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department said.   The suspect, identified as David G. Jakubonis, 43 of Fairport, N.Y., was charged with attempted assault in the second degree... Zeldin, who is the Republican candidate for governor in New York, predicted the alleged attacker would be released."

Yikes Lmao (vampireapologist: One of my favorite thing I’ve...) - "One of my favorite thing I’ve learned about animals studies is that you should avoid using colorful leg bands when you’re banding birds because you can accidentally completely skew the data because female birds prefer males with colorful bands. Apparently if you put a red band on a male red wing blackbird his harem size can double. So like you can completely frick up the natural reproduction of a group of birds by giving a guy a bracelet so stylish that females CANNOT resist him"

Meme - "82 toyota corolla
$500
My uncle recently passed away so we need to sell his old car.
*exhaust pipe linked to trunk/boot for suicide*"

Meme - "You want some bacon?"
"No, Sorry. I'm a jew"
Relax.  It's free..."

Meme - "Hung up this really cute picture of my wife in her office today
*laundry area*
EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH "

Meme - "Kantoren. Geen toegang Boring area. Do not enter"
This is actually the office area in Forum Groningen

Meme - New York Times Pitchbot @DougJBalloon: "Opinion I I am a strong supporter of democracy. Here's why I spend most of my time laundering far right authoritarian propaganda into Atlantic-friendly think pieces."
@ripoff _clowns: "Which Atlantic writer is this? Is this all of them? It's all of them, isn't it?"
"Liz, Caitlin, Conor, Yascha, Shadi"
Meme - "GERMAN JEW WHO HAS WRITTEN AT LENGTH ABOUT THE AUTHORITARIAN THREAT"
"NYT PITCHBOT DUDE: IS THIS A CLOSET FASCIST?"
To the far left, if you disagree with them, you must be far right

John Q Public on Twitter - "It’s just all about the vibes. 1) If you don’t give off the right aesthetic signals and aren’t alarmed about the things we’re alarmed about, you can’t be one of us. 2) Thus you’re one of them. 3) Thus you’re a fascist."

Meme - Ej Dickson @ejdickson: "As I reported a few weeks ago, there has been a growing, coordinated effort on the right to fear-monger about SSRIs. The fact that a (questionable) study undermining the efficacy of SSRIs is trending right now, is just one part of that coordinated effort. The Far Right's Next Target for a Bullshit Moral Panic: Antidepressants"
Auron MacIntyre on Twitter - "If you think the left purging science they don’t like is a relatively recent phenomenon you’re in for a terrible surprise"

Meme -  *2 horses drinking*

Meme - "I have a mommy kink"
"so u want me to act like ur mom orrr"
"Yessss"
"WHY ARE ALL THESE DAMN DISHES IN THE SINK"
"Bruh
Bro no"

This Cafe Has Brilliantly Disguised Its 'B' Health Inspection Rating - Bloomberg - "Harlem's Astor Row Cafe has figured out a clever way to camouflage the 'B' rating it received from city health inspectors. By supplying additional letters to spell out "SUNDAY BRUNCH," the off-putting inspection sign now helps promote one of the cafe's main attractions."

Meme - "Years ago, my Mother-in-law began reading, "The Exorcist". She said it was the most evil book she ever read. So evil in fact, she couldn't finish it, took it over to the beach and threw it into the ocean off a fishing pier. I went and bought another copy, ran the faucet over it and left it in the night table drawer by her bed. My Father-in-law said that night was the first time she ever screamed and fainted. I'm going to Hell, but I'll go laughing."

This Is Supercool 3D Printed Jesus Mecha Christ Transformer - "What would Jesus look like if he were a transformer? What if, when up on the cross, rather than accepting his fate and dying for our sins, Jesus had instead refused to do his father’s bidding and instead used the final dregs of his divinity to instead change into a giant robot and release murderous mechanical vengeance on the assembled Roman forces? Well, thanks to Jesus Mecha Christ, you can play out that very scenario in the privacy of your own home. Jesus Mecha Christ (so satisfying to type!) is a 3D-printed toy which you can either buy in kit form or ready-assembled on Etsy and which is a transforming model of crucified Jesus which, with a few deft twists and turns, transforms into a robot warrior."

Meme - "People in Science
Undergraduate PhD student Postdoc PI/Professor Technician
Seen by Undergraduate PhD student Postdoc PI/Professor Technician"

— ameerkatofficial: ginnyshipsdrarry:... - "The Little Mermaid 1989"
"Do you guys know how long it took me to work out that he has seven daughters because there are seven seas?"
"Attina- Bering sea (Bering is the largest, Attina is the oldest)
Alana- Black sea (hair)
Adella- Mediterranean sea (personality is romantic)
Aquata-  Coral sea (personality is shy)
Arista- White sea (hair)
Andrina- Caribbean sea (personality is carefree)
Ariel- Red sea (hair)"

Meme - "What is worst thing you’ve ever masturbated to?"
"I was pretty young, maybe like 8, 9, 10, something like that. Too young to be able to ejaculate but old enough to get a "funny feeling" in my penis and want to play around with it to no result sometimes. One night I wandered out of my room and my parents were watching something in the living room. It was in black and white and there seemed to be a bunch of naked people walking around and then the naked people were in a big pile. At this point my parents realized I was there and yelled at me to go back to my room and what was on TV wasn't for kids. I thought it was some kind of porn, it wasn't the first time I‘ve caught them watching something like Cinemax or something I wasn't supposed to see. That image popped up a lot in my early fruitless wiener rubbing sessions. Naked people in a big pile, yeah. Many years later I saw the footage and recognized it as parts of it had been burned into my younger mind. Unfortunately it was part of a holocaust documentary and the naked people had been killed and put into a big naked pile to be dumped into a mass grave. TL;DR: fapped to corpses of holocaust victims"

Facebook - "Singapore loses top spot in global competitiveness ranking on unfavourable geography"
"Wait, I though our low tax rates and absence of taxes on capital are supposed to ensure that we remain the world’s most competitive economy. How can the high tax, road to serfdom, socialist countries of Sweden and Denmark be more competitive than us?! This study must be biased"

Meme - Laura Ingraham @IngrahamAngle: "My mom worked as a waitress until she was 73 to help pay for our college, even helped with loan repayment. Loan forgiveness just another insult to those who play by the rules."
Erin Ryan @morninggloria: "personally if it were the early 1990s and i were a dartmouth-educated attorney and knew that my elderly mother was still working as a waitress in order to pay off student loans... i would help her not have to do that. but maybe that's just me!"

Why Literature? - "It has often happened to me, at book fairs or in bookstores, that a gentleman approaches me and asks me for a signature. “It is for my wife, my young daughter, or my mother,” he explains. “She is a great reader and loves literature.” Immediately I ask: “And what about you? Don’t you like to read?” The answer is almost always the same: “Of course I like to read, but I am a very busy person.”... It seems clear that literature has become more and more a female activity... This is the case almost everywhere. In Spain, for example, a recent survey organized by the General Society of Spanish Writers revealed that half of that country’s population has never read a book. The survey also revealed that in the minority that does read, the number of women who admitted to reading surpasses the number of men by 6.2 percent, a difference that appears to be increasing... We live in the era of the specialization of knowledge... Specialization leads to a lack of social understanding, to the division of human beings into ghettos of technicians and specialists... literature has been, and will continue to be, as long as it exists, one of the common denominators of human experience through which human beings may recognize themselves and converse with each other, no matter how different their professions, their life plans, their geographical and cultural locations, their personal circumstances... In today’s world, this totalizing and living knowledge of a human being may be found only in literature... fiction does not exist to investigate only a single ‘precinct of experience. It exists to enrich through the imagination the entirety of human life, which cannot be dismembered, disarticulated, or reduced to a series of schemas or formulas without disappearing... We learn how to speak correctly—and deeply, rigorously, and subtly—from good literature, and only from good literature... Can the screen really replace the book in all its aspects? I am not so certain... That is a chasm that I cannot cross. I cannot accept the idea that a non-functional or non-pragmatic act of reading, one that seeks neither information nor a useful and immediate communication, can integrate on a computer screen the dreams and the pleasures of words with the same sensation of intimacy, the same mental concentration and spiritual isolation, that may be achieved by the act of reading a book... all good literature is radical, and poses radical questions about the world in which we live. In all great literary texts, often without their authors’ intending it, a seditious inclination is present. Literature says nothing to those human beings who are satisfied with their lot, who are content with life as they now live it
Just have people read writing meant for general audiences
You don't need to romanticise books - papyrus scrolls and then manuscripts used to be romanticised
Ironically nowadays this sort of universalism is despised - only "minorities" get to write about their "own" experiences
This is yet another of those claims of literary truth, i.e. stuff that sounds good but for which there is no rational argument
The self indulgent masturbation in a vacuum of literature afficionados has always been the most annoying kind, even if some other disciplines do it too
Maybe this is why literature gives us so many Marxists - they want to be radical for the sake of being radical. Apparently love poetry isn't literature

The Incentives for Groupthink - "James Mortimer outlines the eight symptoms of groupthink as follows:
    An illusion of invulnerability. This creates excessive optimism that encourages taking extreme risks.
    Collective rationalization. Members of the group discount warnings and do not reconsider their assumptions.
    Belief in inherent morality. Members believe in the rightness of their cause and therefore ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions.
    Stereotyped views of out-groups. Negative views of ‘enemy’ make effective responses to conflict seem unnecessary. Remember how those who wouldn’t go along with the dot.com bubble were dismissed as simply not getting it?
    Direct pressure on dissenters. Members are under pressure not to express arguments against any of the group’s views.
    Self-censorship. Doubts and deviations from the perceived group consensus are not expressed.
    Illusion of unanimity. The majority view and judgments are assumed to be unanimous.
    “Mind guards” are appointed. Members protect the group and the leader from information that is problematic or contradictory to the group ’s cohesiveness, view, and/or decisions. This is confirmatory bias writ large.
Each of these symptoms can be observed in many different departments across universities in the UK, the USA, Canada, and Australia. As the Heterodox Academy has noted, between 1995 and 2010 viewpoint diversity practically collapsed in most of our higher educational institutions... Studies on the effects of groupthink have until now been focused on areas in which its negative consequences might be most keenly felt such as foreign policy, the courts, and financial investments. In Intellectuals and Society, a book which eviscerates the habitual and embarrassing blind spots of the intelligentsia, Thomas Sowell points out that academics and journalists – unlike army generals, judges or investment portfolio managers – have faced ‘little to no consequential feedback when they are wrong, no matter how wrong or for how long.’ Indeed, they are ‘insulated from material consequences,’ and enjoy ‘immunity from even a loss of reputation from having been demonstrably wrong.’ It is seldom pointed out that Michel Foucault and many others in the Western radical left supported the Iranian Revolution of 1979. I do not expect the women of Iran will be receiving apologies from those in the academy who openly championed the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1978 any time soon. In fact, from the USSR to Fidel Castro’s Cuba to Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe to Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, it is difficult to find a despotic regime that did not attract the widespread support of supposed ‘intellectuals’ at the time. In 2007, Edinburgh University was forced to revoke an honorary degree awarded to Comrade Mugabe in 1984, back when the true extent of his utopian ideals had not yet had the chance to be fully expressed. But did anyone at Edinburgh University who had supported this at the time suffer in reputation? As people in Venezuela pay for the consequences of economic and social policies championed by people like Owen Jones of The Guardian, Jones himself is not punished for the extent of his error, or fired, or even widely lampooned. Instead, he is rewarded by further exposure and column inches, and given the opportunity to write articles championing politicians who’d like to build their own version of Venezuela in the United Kingdom... Indeed, since the twin earthquakes of Brexit and Trump in 2016, which the entire expert class predicted wrongly, how many of those who made such predictions have suffered a serious loss of reputation for being so stunningly wrong? Did anyone even lose their job? The economies of Britain and America have not, to my knowledge, collapsed... unemployment is currently at forty-year-record lows in both countries... academics are also supremely egotistical and would rather try to rip society down and start again than to accept that they were ever incorrect about anything... In effect, the only potential benefit of opposing groupthink from a professional point of view – to help you stand out – comes with the cost of making the dissenter a target for vitriol... Given how difficult it can be to get a job (and how difficult it can be to lose one once tenured), it is scarcely surprising to find that eight in ten university lecturers in the UK are ‘left-wing’. In 2016, the numbers that voted for Remain from within the academy would make Vladimir Putin blush, because even the most autocratic regimes struggle to post majorities of 90%"

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