Links - 29th October 2022 (2 - General Wokeness [including Little Mermaid raceswapping])

Ana De Armas Addresses The Fact She’s Playing Marilyn Monroe As A Cuban Woman - "After Latina actor de Armas took on the character of Monroe, who was American, the actor noted it was a sign of a shift in Hollywood when it comes to casting.u"
Anyone can play a "white" role. But a "white" can only play a "white" role

Meme - "The reasons people like miles morales, but don't like the new velma.
Miles Morales
* they actually wrote a whole new character while keeping the original the same instead of plagiarizing someone else work
* Miles morales looks cool and has all new powers and villains of his own to add onto the spiderman universe
* Miles is actually a likable character, and they didn't have to rewrite the story just to make his character fit
* he has a super smoking hot mom to show true detail and depth of what women actually are suppose to look like in real life.
Velma
* This velma is just plagiarism of someone else's work. There's no real creativity from this or art
* They made her fat and ugly to appeal to other fat liberal women so they don't feel insecure watching the show
* Her new personality is super annoying and cringy just like she hulk, and they had to rewrite the whole story of scooby doo just to make her character work. Scooby isn't even in the show. Lmao"

ᛖᛟᚱ Odinson on Twitter - "Disney has released a trailer for their new movie, 'The Little Mermaid' a fantasy in which a black woman is quiet in public."

The Little Mermaid - Official Teaser Trailer - YouTube
Top comments: "Love the part where Ariel said to The Prince, ”It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me”. Great scene."
"I love the part when Eric calmly asked Ariel, “Ariel, did you put your name into the Goblet of Fire”. Truly a masterpiece"
"I love the part when Ariel says to Morbius “we must Morb to ascend” then segues into a musical sequence"
"I love the part where Sebastian says to Ariel, “One does not simply walk into Mordor,” gave me chills."
"Love the part when she says, "Look at me... Look at me... I'm the mermaid now!" Goosebumps!"
"Love the part where Ariel said "I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite store on the Citadel". Felt such emotion in that scene."
Since liberals claim that in fiction you can do anything, there's nothing wrong with these

Meme - Winnie the Pooh: "The Little Mermaid is black"
Winnie the Pooh in tuxedo: "Disney is fan baiting to drum up controversy for another live action movie no one wanted."
Winnie the Pooh in tux with monocle: "Disney handing the black community a washed up white character instead of focusing on existing black stories that are actually good like The Princess and the Frog and patting themselves on the back for it just shows how lazy and out of touch they really are with the message they're trying to send."

Meme - "Turning a white character black for the sake of diversity is not only racist but it tells black people they're not good enough to have their own characters"

Meme - Disnerds:
Tytiana Adisa Jacobs: "This ain't it, and I'm a black woman. why can't we get Our Own shit instead of remakes of regurgitated characters. there are so many African mermaids to choose from, like Yamaya, Mami Wata, lyata or Kitapo to name a few. We deserve our own ish, they coulda created a new character but NOOOOO they wanna pander and recycle ish that originally wasn't even for us"

Meme - "*Black Little Mermaid* Girls: "omg I can finally be her"
*Super Saiyan from Dragon Ball* Boys: "literally me""
"Representation" is narcissism

Meme - Jack V Lloyd @jackvlloyd: "People who think that one can only relate to a fictional character if they have the same race have clearly never been to an anime convention."
Christian Malazarte @ChristianMalaza: "It really is one of the lowest displays of intellectual depth to insist that your race be "represented" ina movie. I don't watch movies and look for Asians to identify with... and I like Denzel because he's Denzel, not because he's black"
"For those who understand the anime subculture, loads of black youths said via YouTube videos and such that non-black characters like Goku and Vegeta really resonated with them and inspired them despite them clearly not being black. Well-written characters are such regardless of their apparent ethnicity, trying to artificially raise representation without creating appealing original characters by simply race-bending them does more harm than good."

In the Little Mermaid (1991), Ariel meets an African mermaid from the Ivory Coast. This is because mermaids are fictional and can be black. : shittymoviedetails
Weird why they didn't just make a movie about the Ivory Coast mermaid, then

Meme - Jesse (Gesi) Moriarty Erhard @vandalibm: "Credits to our memer Artificial Intelligence scientist @TenGazillioniQ. He fixed The Little Mermaid, and turned the woke actor into a ginger white girl. He says he can do fix the whole movie when it comes out with 4x A6000 in 24 hours. It's over for wokecels"
Both accounts are banned but ISIS are not : KotakuInAction
"'Mermaids aren't real! It doesn't matter what colour she is!' Except when you re-imagine her as White, you get banned from social media."

Disney Chooses Bald Actress To Play Rapunzel In Live-Action Remake | Babylon Bee - "Several fans were upset with the casting, pointing out that the actress is bald, while Rapunzel has hair. "I'm all for diversity," said Disney fan Janet Cutler. "My pronouns are Xe / Xer. But this is a bit too far. Rapunzel is supposed to have hair. It's sort of core to the entire story."  Another Disney fan echoed the sentiment. "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair," said Disney fan Andrew Steeplechase. "That's one of the key quotes in the story. I'm not sure that works as well with a bald Rapunzel."  Historians and experts pushed back against the desire for a haired Rapunzel. "Demanding that Disney cast Rapunzel — a fictional character I might add — with an actor who has hair, is simply ableist, sexist, racist, and several other -ists," said Sandra Rice, the chair of Harvard's Folklore and Mythology department. "Sadly, this is another example of the white cis-hetero patriarchal system that we live in." Rice then began to sob... Disney has not yet announced who will play Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel in the upcoming biopic Night, but the company is down to two finalists for the role: Michael B. Jordan and Lena Dunham."

Meme - "If You're Pissed about Black Ariel, We Have Some News For You. Non-white actors have been playing Disney characters for awhile now-and totally killing it"
"John Leguizamo Slams James Franco's Casting as Fidel Castro: 'He Ain't Latino! How Is This Still Going On?'"
Meanwhile, Franco's father was Portuguese and Castro's father was from Spain

Meme - "Imagine getting upset over the race of a fictional character mao"
"Nooooooo! You can't just whitewash characters of color!"

Meme - "Casting black actors into white characters is okay *happy crowd*
Let's do Tarzan next *unhappy crowd*"

Meme - "*Storm* Guy: Awesome character Liberal: *silent*
*Michonne (The Walking Dead)* Guy: She's badass Liberal: *silent*
*Shuri* Guy: Cool character Liberal: *silent*
*Monica Rambeau* Guy: Cool character Liberal: *silent*
*Niobe (Matrix)* Guy: Cool character Liberal: *silent*
*Blade* Guy: He's perfect for the role Liberal: *silent*
*Black Panther* Guy: Great character and actor Liberal: *silent*
*Ariel* Guy: She doesn't look like Ariel Liberal: You racist! You hate all black people!"
Comments: "It's just laziness. They have no imagination or talent to write new characters so they just take old ones and race swap them then use the resulting drama to get attention for their crap remake"
"Have any of you actually found somebody that is legitimately outraged over the mermaid being black? I see more people mad about people being mad than I do actual people who are mad."
Not to mention riding off an existing character's popularity

Facebook - "Hypocrisy is us black people 🤣😂.  Okay I’ve been following these debates. I understand both sides. We can establish that the two major debates about representation is Black Ariel and Black Elves and even Black Targaryens 🤣😂.  So I’ll say this. Yes we know these are FICTIONAL CHARACTERS but as a writer of stories I try to respect the culture the character I’m writing about is from that people will immediately identify with.  Folklore is CULTURAL it’s the stories we hear from our grandparents and such to teach us lessons. Those stories stay with us through life as part of our cultural inheritance.  If a Bemba writer who is interested in writing a fantasy genre based on Bemba folklore wrote a story about the gods and goddesses of the Bemba engaging in a war with the Lozi gods over the empire of the land (Zambia) we would expect the depiction of these gods to be black. Because for sure the writer is imagining them as black and indigenous to the people who carry them as part of their culture.  Similarly, I expect a Greek writer who is writing about Greek folklore to imagine them white because they’re white.  If a Screenwriter picks these stories up and says hey, these are great stories let me write a script and relay it to big producers who can adapt these stories and see how it goes, then for sure the Director in his normal mind will have to hire actors who are the skin tone of the characters in those folklore. Despite them being fiction. They belong to a culture of people. Now that we have that settled, in the case of the Little Mermaid, without a doubt, it’s a Danish man as a creator of the story. It was written for the Danish who are European. Ariel is imagined to be from the Atlantic ocean, at least that is where King Triton rules the 7 seas from. So yes the creator imagined Ariel white when he wrote that folklore. She is white... Similarly. An African from Cape Town could have written about an African mermaid from the Atlantic Ocean who speaks Xhosa or as a white South African Mermaid who is of Dutch descent and speaks Afrikaans... The Lord of the Rings was based on European folklore. Etc. You get the gist.  Now my problem is this with black people, we have plethora of folklore. So many tribes and so many stories in fact if we gathered all of them they’d outweigh any mythology that exists.  The only African mythology to even be used creatively is Egyptian mythology. It ended there 🤣😂.  Yet we have PLENTY. But you are mad that some people decided to highlight their mythology and make creative stories from them and you cry about representation?  Where are the black novelists or animators or creatives doing African mythological stories or writing African sci-fi or African fantasy based on African mythology? Where are they?  No one will tell our stories for us, market them and hype them on our behalf. No one but us. The thing with black people is it’s just easier to toss blame and rant and complain that’s why they can even steal some things knowing that all you’ll do is rant and complain. Exhibit A, saying oh they white washed black characters in some of the things we watch. It ends there.  To y’all it just feels nice to black wash a white character instead of enabling yourselves to PRODUCE what YOU want to see on screen or whatever.  Even Black Panther was written by WHITE people and illustrated by WHITE people but they did it so carefully to respect the lore and culture of different African cultures they got inspired from so I give Stan Lee and Jack Kirby kudos for that. But see? It even took a white man to write a black story then today ati iyo shani 🤦🏾‍♀️.  You either play the game or get played. Can’t have it both ways really.  Not everything is about racism, you were just lazy."

Meme - "The year is 1998. Nobody gave 2 sh**s that the protagonists in Rush Hour were a black dude and a chinese dude. No, "I cannot relate because they don't look like me" nonsense. 35 million budget. 245 million box office. Hilarious movie. Still one of my favorites. This is a reminder that race has been weaponized to distract people from the fact that Hollywood has nothing but crappy movies to offer thanks to their SJW woke socialist agenda."
This is why it has a content warning today

5 Disney Princesses Reimagined As Caucasian - "1. Pocahontas
Pocahontas as we know her is a Powhatan Native American, but as another race—Caucasian—she is just as beautiful."
2. Princess Jasmine
This image shows us that Aladdin would have been just as amazing, if not even better, with Jasmine as a Caucasian princess.
3. Esmeralda
Sure, this reimagining may look weird at first, but Esmeralda’s story in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame is inspiring no matter what race she is depicted as.
4. Princess Tiana
The Princess And The Frog is an exciting journey about the power of friendship and acceptance, not the color of Princess Tiana’s skin. It’s important for all girls, regardless of race, to feel represented in movies for kids.
5. Mulan
Wow! Simply gorgeous. #WhiteDisneyPrincesses"

Kambree on Twitter - "Woke: a state of awareness only achieved by those dumb enough to find injustice in everything except their own behavior."

Disney employees stage walkouts to protest company response to Florida bill
Disney employees among 108 arrested in human & child trafficking ring

Meme - ">rants about privileged white men
>immediately then tries to start a relationship with a white male billionaire
Literally every time
*Catwoman and Batman*"

Woke Chelsea Handler: White Men Owe Us an Apology - "The far-Left comic previously said white men are the only comedy targets left in modern times. Now, she’s admitting that not all of them are bad.  Just enough, though, to make blanket statements about people who share her skin color...   “I know it’s not all men, obviously, I have to keep saying that, which is so annoying. My brother says, ‘Chelsea, not all white guys are bad. Well, you are for even saying that. Don’t even say that” “No one is saying all white guys are bad. We’re saying there are enough bad ones out there, that as a collective, you guys all owe us an apology.”...   Two white women agree that white men can’t have opinions on equality, race or so-called “white privilege,” but they can have opinions on all of the above."
Weird. The left claim they don't hate white men. "Stereotypes" are good when they demonise the "powerful"
Are there any other demographics where collective apologies can be demanded on behalf of the bad ones? (e.g. making Muslims apologise for Islamist terrorism)

White People Shouldn't Disguise Their Guilt as an Apology - "When I was 19, I was at my first internship when my manager called my 4A curly hair "fluffy." When I was 21, I was sitting down at my annual performance review when my boss walked in, saw my weave, and exclaimed, "Oh! Your hair looks great. It was getting wild for a minute." When I was 25, I was sitting in the passenger seat catching up with a childhood friend when he wondered out loud if my family and I got together for a Fourth of July barbecue to eat watermelon. When I was 29, I was sporting cornrows with synthetic hair after being natural for two years when I was judgmentally asked, "But I thought you were embracing being natural?" Unfortunately, each microaggression and slight — or verbal and nonverbal digs that demean marginalized communities — I experience as a Black woman is not singular but instead a collective narrative that tells me that I am different and do not belong... they are overcompensating by profusely apologizing. This, in turn, makes me feel like they are in no way concerned about my feelings but instead worried about theirs and protecting their image as being "one of the good ones."   We are in an interesting place in history, where people are scared to be seen as a racist. As a result, it's created a culture in which many white people and white adjacents assume that overapologizing and "clearing the air" is the answer to racial equality"
Why it's dangerous for non "minoirites" to talk to "minorities"
When whatever you do, you will forever be despised

"Woke" people can be some of the most abusive people you'll ever meet : unpopularopinion - "it allows for people to become abusive while thinking they are completely in the right. That's an incredibly dangerous thing.  My ex was one of these people. She cared deeply about fixing social issues and because of that she felt it was fine to steamroll everyone she knew and cared about because their discomfort was worth the change she was pushing. To an extent, I even agree with that. She was way too hypocritical though. Eventually she became dead to my feelings. If she hurt me, I did something to deserve it, or I was overreacting out of fragility and needed to "get a grip". She was never willing to admit wrong, and my views were always tainted because I was a guy.  I spent way too long in that relationship hating myself because I respected her efforts for change. It wasn't until I sought therapy that I realized how hurtful she was being. Eventually I came to the conclusion that believing the same things she did didn't give her a pass to treat people awfully. So yeah, sometimes the most outwardly caring and seemingly empathetic people can be the most abusive ones in your life."

minorityvoices posts fake stories : SingaporeRaw - "Not once did they contact me to verify my stories even though I provided by contact details. A point to note is that these stories are FAKE... Who knows how many more of the anonymous stories they have published thus far are untrue? Is it ok to miselad people and instigate hate like this?"

Meme - Now This: "FOOTAGE: Instagram @honcice THIS ARTIST REPLACES WHITE MEN WITH BLACK WOMEN *Vitruvian Man*"
"making up brand new stories and works of art" *No*
"obsessively cannibalizing all existing stories and works of art" *Yes*
When you have no creativity or talent, all you can do is raceswap

British Muslims’ citizenship reduced to ‘second-class’ status, says thinktank - "British Muslims have had their citizenship reduced to “second-class” status as a result of recently extended powers to strip people of their nationality, a thinktank has claimed.  The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) says the targets of such powers are almost exclusively Muslims, mostly of south Asian heritage, embedding discrimination and creating a lesser form of citizenship... Webbersaid: “These classes of citizenship were brought in to target British Muslims of south Asian and Middle Eastern heritage. Such divisions act as a constant reminder to minority ethnic citizens that they must watch their step, and reinforce racist messages about ‘undeserving’ racialised groups unworthy of being British.”"
"Laws targeting terrorists are racist because some races are more likely to be terrorists than others"

Mental illness and the left - "It has been claimed that left-wingers or liberals (US sense) tend to be more mentally ill than right-wingers or conservatives. This potential link was investigated using the General Social Survey. A search found 5 items measuring one's own mental illness in different ways (e.g."Do you have any emotional or mental disability?"). All of these items were associated with left-wing political ideology as measured by self-report. These results held up mostly in regressions that adjusted for age, sex, and race. For the variable with the most data, the difference in mental illness between "extremely liberal" and "extremely conservative" was 0.39 d. This finding is congruent with numerous findings based on related constructs."
Meme - "Matt, I have been a therapist for over 30 years. Nearly 90% of my patient load are liberals. This is true of any therapist, psychologist or psychiatrist. Liberal politics and ideology are but a symptom of vast systemic mental illness."

Opinion | I’m With Condoleezza Rice About White Guilt - The New York Times - " “I don’t have to make white kids feel bad for being white.”  Writing for The Grio, the longtime cultural critic Touré offered a piercing reply, calling Rice a “soldier for white supremacy” and saying that white people today, including children, “should cringe at what their ancestors did.” If school curriculums include the harshest aspects of America’s history, he argued, “I really don’t care if learning this makes white kids feel bad — and if it doesn’t, then they are too heartless.” I can see how someone arrives at that perspective, because white guilt can seem so central to what Black progress needs to be about — emphasis on “seem.” We’re increasingly encouraged to dwell on “white privilege” and “systemic racism” as key impediments, if not the key impediments, to Black progress. But we must ask just what purpose fostering white guilt serves.- Of course, there is a visceral sense of power in fostering white guilt: One has made people realize something and made them see you as deserving of recompense, as harmed and therefore owed. There can be a sense of accomplishment in just demanding that white Americans sit with past wrongs. But presumably, the goal is to make America “a more perfect union,” as the Constitution has it. And if that’s the goal, our collective efforts to reach it presumably would be about addressing societal conditions rather than these more soul-focused endeavors. One might argue that a realer, not to mention healthier, manifestation of Black affirmation would come from more concrete markers of progress than the dutiful hand-wringing of well-meaning white people about their forebears’ sins. A compelling reason for fostering white guilt would be that if doing so led white Americans to go out and foster change in society. And sometimes it can — but is white guilt necessary to or the best way to effect societal change?  For the civil rights victories of the 1960s, it wasn’t. We tend to forget how seismic the changes were during that one decade...  over the decades since the 1960s, when the idea that white Americans need to be guilty settled in among a contingent of Black thinkers, it seems that somehow, no matter what we say or do, white people are never guilty enough and white guilt is supposed to go on in perpetuity. Might it be that the effort to make white people any guiltier than they are is a Sisyphean effort? The dream that white people will, en masse, shed their “fragility” and embrace feeling really, really guilty is about as likely as Schoenberg’s ever being brunch music for more than a rarefied few... I don’t completely trust white guilt. It lends itself too easily to virtue signaling, which overlaps only partially, and sometimes not at all, with helping people"
So much for liberals claiming white guilt isn't the objective

Mark Hemingway on Twitter - "Oberlin College to pay $36.59M to bakery owners who claim they were falsely accused of racism"
"Really CNN? "Claim" -- they got a large defamation judgment in court that was upheld by the Ohio supreme court!"

Oberlin & Gibson's Bakery: Oberlin College Finally Agrees to Pay $36.59 Million to Bakery over False Racism Accusation - "After a legal battle spanning several years, Oberlin College has finally agreed to pay $36.59 million in damages to a local bakery for falsely accusing the business owners of racism. Oberlin had repeatedly appealed a lower court ruling which found that the college, in 2016, defamed Gibson’s Bakery after a shoplifting incident involving three black students... “While the Ohio Supreme Court’s recent decision has made us hopeful, if the money doesn’t come through within the next couple months, I’ll be forced to declare bankruptcy and shut the doors of Gibson’s for good,” Gibson added.  In 2016, a clerk at Gibson’s Bakery refused to sell wine to a black student who had a fake I.D., and saw that the student was attempting to steal more bottles without paying. The shoplifting confrontation devolved into a physical altercation between three black students and the clerk.  Oberlin and the student body did a significant amount of business at the bakery, and before the three students pled guilty to the shoplifting, the students began accusing the bakery of discrimination.   A school administrator at Oberlin helped hand out flyers during a protest about the bakery, Oberlin stopped doing business with the bakery, and the school Senate was allowed to issue a statement saying, “a Black student was chased and assaulted at Gibson’s after being accused of stealing… Gibson’s has a history of racial profiling and discriminatory treatment of students and residents alike.”  Oberlin argued that it was protecting the students’ First-Amendment rights by letting them protest, but a lower court ruled that the school defamed the bakery by not putting a stop to the discrimination claims and, in the case of the administrator who handed out flyers, endorsing them. Following the supreme court’s decision, the trial team and the Gibson family released a statement celebrating the outcome and accusing Oberlin of trying to confuse the relevant facts of the case."

Loss, trauma, and human resilience: have we underestimated the human capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events? - "Many people are exposed to loss or potentially traumatic events at some point in their lives, and yet they continue to have positive emotional experiences and show only minor and transient disruptions in their ability to function. Unfortunately, because much of psychology's knowledge about how adults cope with loss or trauma has come from individuals who sought treatment or exhibited great distress, loss and trauma theorists have often viewed this type of resilience as either rare or pathological. The author challenges these assumptions by reviewing evidence that resilience represents a distinct trajectory from the process of recovery, that resilience in the face of loss or potential trauma is more common than is often believed, and that there are multiple and sometimes unexpected pathways to resilience."
Unfortunately, nowadays everything is "trauma", since that can be weaponised

When Disagreement Becomes Trauma - "the University of British Columbia released its Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence Task Force report, which contains 54 recommendations aimed at confronting “systemic racism against Indigenous, Black and People of Colour (IBPOC) within the UBC community.” Though it’s two years in the making, and almost 300 pages in length, the report contains surprisingly scant evidence that UBC is a racist institution. Instead, the authors mostly indict UBC on the basis of their own “reflections of lived experiences”—an “integrative” anti-racist fact-finding method described as “truthing.”... to refute a truthing isn’t an act of mere disagreement, but rather a symptom of the truth-denier’s bigotry and intellectual dishonesty... Numerous Canadian institutions have published similar long-form mea culpas in recent years, all of them generally heavy on the kind of circular logic and faddish terminology contained in the UBC report... what concerns me more than the actual content of this tedious propaganda is the accompanying demand that we all treat it as unfalsifiable. The whole mission of a university is based around the practice of gathering (real) evidence and evaluating it by means of observation, objective analysis, and intellectual disputation. The Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence Task Force report, on the other hand, sets out IBPOC testimonials as sacred forms of revealed truthery, without allowing the possibility (or even legitimacy) of counterargument. This allergy to disagreement is now a growing feature of intellectual life all across Canada... anyone disagreeing with anyone about anything might be at risk of public shaming and official sanction. Mount Royal University has been in the news for other reasons of late, having fired a professor named Frances Widdowson for questioning institutionally approved truthings in a number of areas... Harm. Trauma. Terrorization. Holocaust denial. Fascism. In every example I’ve supplied, this kind of apocalyptic language has been used to describe mere discourse...  times being what they are, we’re all supposed to pretend that this is a normal way for humans to respond to disagreement. And as a matter of political tactics, it’s proven an effective means for activists to insulate their claims from criticism: After all, how can anyone prevail against an opponent who claims that discussion itself represents an agony beyond endurance? This phobic attitude toward debate in progressive circles explains why reasoned advocacy aimed at persuading others is increasingly being replaced by one-note sloganeering aimed at fellow travellers. An entire page of UBC’s new report, for instance, consists of nothing more than a list of large-print slogans instructing black people that, “You are beautiful,” “You are brilliant,” ”You are seen”; and exhorting them to “be unapologetically Black.” (Nowhere is it explained how the apologetic and unapologetic varieties of blackness manifest themselves in day-to-day scholastic life. But one presumes that the unapologetic strain is associated with a more militantly expressed rejection of “whiteness”—a word that appears more than 30 times.) In the wider world beyond the campus gates, fortunately, things are very different: While many profs and activists are wont to pretend that each debate has only one legitimate side, the rest of us have the freedom to defy their edicts, and even to broadcast our heresies on social media (or in Quillette articles). And when we talk about the “culture war,” to some extent we’re talking about which of these two models of discourse moderation—neurotic versus normal—eventually will hold sway over society at large. Twitter is where much of this battle takes place, a fact that helps explain the agitation that developed in progressive circles following news that Elon Musk was buying the social-media company. Even before Musk made his move, Twitter was already seen as problematic by the Left, insofar as its (largely) free-for-all ethos served as a standing rebuke to their growing hostility toward ideological pluralism. This is why so many of the most active social-justice accounts devote much of their bandwidth to questions of whom to mute, block, report, or ignore, and often toggle back and forth frenetically between protected and non-protected modes, all with the purpose of curating the same kind of perfectly orthodox, dissent-free milieu they’ve constructed for themselves within real-life social and professional silos. In the back of social-justice puritans’ collective imagination, there was always the dim hope that the lords of Twitter would someday see the light, and tighten moderation standards so severely that any kind of vigorously stated conservative anti-truthery would be classified as hate speech or harassment."

People were sharing actual historical facts in the Trivia section so IMDB deleted them. : KotakuInAction
On The Woman King. Slavery is good when black people do it

Meme - The Louis Vixxen @TheeLouisV: "The same Egypt that's in Africa??? Someone skipped history class and went straight into selling misinformation"
Nrken19: "Reconstructed face of a Fayum mummy from Egypt."

Tradthottery Pornography

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Links - 29th October 2022 (1)

Scissors or Sword? The Symbolism of a Medieval Haircut - "He offered the Queen an ultimatum. Would she wish to see her grandsons live with their hair cut short, or would she prefer to see them killed? Beside herself with grief, Clotild stated that if they were not to succeed to the throne she would rather see them dead than with their hair cut short. Rejecting the scissors, she opted for the sword.The sequel to this story, told by Gregory of Tours (d. 594), reveals an alternative to death or short-haired dishonour. A third grandson, Chlodovald, was well guarded and escaped his uncles. Seeking to escape the fate of his brothers, he cut his hair short with his own hands and became a priest. Voluntary tonsuring did not carry the ignominy of shearing under duress... The Merovingian kings, who had established themselves in the ruins of Roman Gaul, were known as the Reges criniti, the long-haired kings. For them, their long hair symbolised not only their aristocratic status but also their status as kings. It was invested with a sacral quality and believed to contain magical properties... Hair was able to carry such symbolic meanings because it is a body part which is easily subject to change: it can be dyed, shaped, worn loose, bound or be removed. Moreover, since it surrounds the most expressive part of the body, the face, any changes made to it are inherently visible and noticeable...   The relationship between long hair and high birth was an ancient one and was present in societies other than Merovingian Gaul. In Ireland, for example, cropped hair denoted a servant or slave. Tacitus had noted the importance of long hair in early Germanic society, commenting that it was the sign of free men. Hair colour, too, bore social significance. In the Irish epic, Tain bo Cuailnge, King Conchobar has golden hair which is associated with royalty, while brown and black hair are also attributed to chieftains and heroes. The association of long hair with a warrior class possessed strong Biblical validation in the story of Samson in Judges 16:17. Long hair denoted strength and virility. In women, moreover, it represented fertility. Since long hair was part of the social badge of a warrior aristocracy, it was protected by law. In the law codes of the Alamans, Frisians, Lombards and Anglo-Saxons, the cutting of hair brought forth penalties. According to the Laws of King Alfred, anyone who cut off a man's beard had to pay a compensation of 20 shillings, and in Frederick Barbarossa's Landfried of 1152, it was forbidden either to seize a man by the beard or to tear any hairs from his head or beard. In the Frankish Pactus Legis Salicae, if a puer crinitus (long-haired boy) was shorn without the consent of his parents, the heavy fine of forty-five solidi was imposed, while among the Burgundians there were heavy fines for cutting the hair of a freewoman... A particularly ancient function of hair treatment was the manner in which it denoted ethnicity and hence could be used to distinguish different ethnic groups. Tacitus thought that the Suevi were characterised by their distinctive, knotted, hair. Other groups like the Lombards and the Frisians were named after their particular fashion for styling beard or hair. The Byzantines, for example, remarked how the Avars 'wore their hair very long at the back, tied with bands and braided'. Both the great sixth-century Spanish churchman, Isidore of Seville, the author of the Etymologiae, a concise encyclopedia of classical culture, and Paul the Deacon, the historian of the Lombards, derived the name Lombard from the German Langbarte or long beard. Gregory of Tours recounts how, in 590, Queen Fredegund ordered the army of the Saxons in the Bayeux area to attack a Frankish duke but to disguise themselves as Bretons by cutting their hair in the Breton way and wearing Breton clothing. William of Malmesbury's Gesta Regum distinguished Saxons from Normans at the time of the Norman Conquest by reference to the differences between the hair styles of the two ethnic groups. Just before the Norman invasion of England, Harold sent some spies who reported that all the Norman soldiers were priests, ...because they have their entire face, with both lips, shaved, whereas the English left the upper lip uncut, with the hairs ceaselessly flourishing. William was writing in the twelfth century, but his evidence is confirmed by the Bayeux Tapestry which shows almost all the Norman soldiers clean shaven and the Anglo-Saxon soldiers with long moustaches...   Whereas the period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of the Carolingian Empire seems to have been dominated by a tolerant, and indeed encouraging, attitude towards facial hair and beards, the Carolingian period and the subsequent post-millennial European world saw the development of a hostility towards long hair and considered it an issue characterised by scandal. In the eighth century, Bede had written that, '...the beard which is a mark of the male sex and of age, is customarily put as an indication of virtue'. However, on Ash Wednesday 1094, Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury refused to give either ashes or his blessing to men who `grew their hair like girls'. At Rouen in 1096, a church council decreed `that no one should grow his hair long but have it cut as a Christian'."

Man Finishes 480-Mile Hike in Bear Suit, Describes Stench Inside His Costume - "Jessy Larios walked almost 500 miles from Los Angeles to San Francisco in a bear suit."

Meme - "I've noticed a trend in life. The larger a thing is, the more likely it is to be evil. This applies to companies, youtubers, people, and mountains."
"in cases of dogs the direct opposite is true"
"A notable outlier"

Meme - "GLORY HOLE TRAINING CAMP"
Higher quality

Meme - Jack Posobiec: "Never mess with occult and black magic. Even tarot cards, seances, fortune telling etc. You dont know what you're getting into. Or who you're talking to."
compOs3r.crypto @compOs3rcoin: "I feel the same way about prayer"
Henrietta @Pet_day_diva: "For me it's glory holes"

'Never disrespect my mum': Singaporean buys multiple bags after mum was ignored at Dior outlet in Rome - "On the second visit, a different sales associate served the middle-aged woman, now accompanied by her daughter.  "He gave us basic customer service, he gave us coffee and water and it was super hot," Nahtyourbby explained.  From the video, it looked like they bought several bags.   Not that it impressed the sales associate who first ignored Nahtyourbby's mum, as she allegedly turned to her colleague to wish him congratulations in a sarcastic manner just as they were making payment.  With the TikTok video getting over eight million views, some netizens were left scratching their heads as they wondered if there was a need for Nahtyourbby to flaunt her wealth.  "Rich people's problems are so funny," one said. Others pointed to the fact that the sales associate's behaviour is a common sales tactic and unfortunately, the mother-daughter pair fell for it.   Nahtyourbby disagreed, suggesting there might have been racist undertones to the staff's behaviour."
Staff provide bad service = racism
Bad service and "racism" are a very effective sales tactic, so...

Ben Davis comes back to haunt Singapore as Thailand claim massive first win at Southeast Asian Games - "Davis, who is technically still a Singaporean citizen but defaulted on the country's mandatory national service in order to further his professional career -- then opting to switch his international footballing allegiance to Thailand -- opened the scoring at the Thien Truong Stadium on the stroke of halftime when he converted from the penalty spot after baiting Syahrul Sazali into bringing him down inside the area."
National Religions cannot be challenged

Vice tried to alter history with photoshopped Khmer Rouge victim photos - "The article covered a project by Matt Loughrey, an Irish artist who has been working to colorize headshots of the people that were murdered in the S-21 prison in Cambodia, now known as the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. A quarter of Cambodia’s population died as a result of the Khmer Rouge’s genocide. “These portraits, recently colorized,” the article noted, “humanize the tragedy.”... John Vink, a photojournalist who was based in Cambodia for sixteen years, tweeted that Loughrey had gone beyond simply adding color to the photos. No, he had gone quite beyond that: the smiles themselves had been photoshopped. “He is falsifying history,” Vink said, with a side-by-side comparison of the original photo and Loughrey’s version attached. Loughrey issued a response, calling the accusation “nonsense.” The families in Cambodia that he had worked with, Loughrey says, had requested those smiles be added, and in some instances the prisoners had genuinely been smiling. “That my altered pictures were published alongside my quote is happenstance,” he said.   That explanation in itself pushes the blame towards Vice’s editors, who had for some reason or another failed to clearly note that the editing on the photos had gone beyond color alterations, yet still tries to justify a reason for why the smiles had been added. Then, however, National Cambodian Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial then pushed a statement that said the coloring and addition of smiles had been done without the consent of family members. At this point, we must ask: then for what reason were the smiles added?... Vice retracted this piece. Although they did so only after threat of legal action from the Cambodian government, it was the right decision. They owed at least that much to the historical record on one of the 20th century’s worst genocides, and to all the people that this tragedy affected."

Meme - "NOTE TO TRAVELLERS: The public bus may be an hour early OR an hour late. Plan accordingly. Also, the last bus, 18.30, may not come at all."
From Thailand
Ahh third world countries

Daiso to open new stores in Singapore amid ‘stable future’; wants products to be 'not just something cheap' - "Daiso, a budget retailer known for its S$2 items, announced in April that it would be rolling out a new 15-tier pricing system due to rising raw material and logistics costs.  Since May 1, prices of its products in Singapore, both in stores and online, now range from S$2.14 to S$25.47."
"Always $2" does not mean always $2

Climate change: Could beer made from urine help water shortages? - "Singapore’s water agency is rolling out a craft beer that is mostly made from wastewater. The sewage is treated to become “ultra-clean” water, before it is used to create the tropical blonde ale... NEWBrew - a craft beer which describes itself as having a “toasted, honey-like aftertaste” - is another way of keeping Singapore hydrated while protecting its water supplies."

FTC Fines Twitter $150 Million for Using 2FA to Generate Ad Revenue

Commentary: Be concerned about unhealthy mindsets about dating and marriage, not fewer babies - "Even couples who have made the decision to settle down and have children early might find their plans stymied by practical constraints.  Eligible Singaporeans have a strong financial incentive to apply for subsidised Built-to-Order flats, which come with up to three years of waiting time even after successful balloting. Although rental options for married couples waiting to collect their keys have expanded, couples may prefer to give birth only after their flat is ready. Apart from housing considerations, a climate of economic insecurity and the large salary chasm between top-tier and mid-level employees can create excessively competitive work environments, especially among those who have already invested heavily in their education.   To prove themselves, employees may feel pressured to put in more hours and remain mentally engaged with their jobs at all times.   Such high demands on worker physical and mental health can take a toll on family life and even interest in marital sex. A recent survey released in July found that working hours and work-related stress were the top reasons for lack of interest in sex among Singapore newlyweds. Since the probability of conception per cycle is twice as high among couples who have unprotected sex every other day compared to those only have sex once a week, these factors can substantially lengthen the interval from marriage to parenthood... nearly 70 per cent of couples see assistive reproductive technologies as a panacea for fertility issues. Nearly 75 per cent did not know that success rates are lower than 50 per cent, or that the rates are highly age dependent. The tendency to be overly optimistic regarding one’s chances of successful pregnancy is by no means peculiar to Singaporeans. Multiple studies in developed countries document that women tend to greatly overestimate the probability of pregnancy at all ages, especially after age 40. The evidence suggests that men are even less informed about the effects of age on fertility. Apart from the risks of involuntary infertility, there is also low awareness of the increased risks of birth defects, complications during pregnancy, births associated with delayed childbearing, or the health risks of in-vitro fertilisation to both mother and child... many put their faith in the unfounded fertility myth that age is no obstacle to fertility, since a woman is in good health and has access to the latest reproductive technologies.  By contrast, public education campaigns can come across as insensitive, akin to asking an older woman her age, or even appear coercive, by pushing a deadline on those not yet ready or able to conceive. To others who remain optimistic, the messages can seem irrelevant (“It won’t happen to me”)."
Liberals were very upset by the modern fairy tales - because they only like "science" when it agrees with their prejudices
Babies are not compatible with the relentless pursuit of GDP

Is the Government Buying Science or Support? A Framework Analysis of Federal Funding-induced Biases - "The purpose of this report is to provide a framework for doing research on the problem of bias in science, especially bias induced by Federal funding of research. In recent years the issue of bias in science has come under increasing scrutiny, including within the scientific community. Much of this scrutiny is focused on the potential for bias induced by the commercial funding of research. However, relatively little attention has been given to the potential role of Federal funding in fostering bias. The research question is clear: does biased funding skew research in a preferred direction, one that supports an agency mission, policy or paradigm? Federal agencies spend many billion dollars a year on scientific research. Most of this is directly tied to the funding agency mission and existing policies. The issue is whether these financial ties lead to bias in favor of the existing policies, as well as to promoting new policies. Is the government buying science or support?"
Of course, we are told that government grant funding does not induce conflicts of interest

12 Reasons Science Shows Conservative Women Have The Best Sex - "a new study of 19,000 people in five European countries that found “very right-wing” people are the most satisfied with their sex lives. Center-right people, however, were slightly less satisfied than centrists, and it all went down from there. “The old rules about correlation not equalling causation always apply,” study publisher Joe Twyman of YouGov told Ball. “Being very right wing doesn’t make you sexually satisfied, but nonetheless, these results suggest it is, in contrast to at least some stereotypes popular in the political world, those on the very right of the political spectrum who enjoy their sex life the most.”  This is only surprising to cultural libertines, who have for a century (Alfred Kinsey, anyone? Freud?) if not more maligned their political opposition with implications and outright statements that we conservatives are oh, so dull in bed. Don’t tell my husband, because I don’t want that to happen to us, okay?... Because women are more vulnerable than men, we gain the most benefits from the clear sexual boundaries and expectations that traditional morality teaches...
1. We’re Okay With Men and Women Being…Men and Women
2. Waiting for Something Makes It Better
3. A Lower Number of Sex Partners Makes for Better Sex
4. The More You Do It With One Person, the More You Both Like It
5. Turns Out Hookups Aren’t Very Sexy
6. We Know Chaotic Love Lives and Missing Parents Suck
7. We Know Sex Isn’t Everything
8. We’re Not Scared of Children
9. Marriage Alleviates Relationship Anxiety
10. Pornography Is a Proven Libido-Killer
11. We Actually Care About Women
12. We’re Romantics At Heart"
I've seen a lot of hilarious liberal cope over the fact that right wingers have better sex

The Missing Right-Wing Firms: A Beckerian Puzzle - "the labor market is full of right-wing workers. If left-wing employers don’t want to hire them, you would expect both pragmatic and right-wing employers to pick up the slack. If left-wing workers don’t want to toil alongside right-wing workers, similarly, you would expect both pragmatic and right-wing employers to tacitly create politically segregated workplaces. If left-wing consumers don’t want to buy products from right-wing firms, finally, you would expect both pragmatic and right-wing employers to keep politically disfavored workers out of the public eye. In the real world, however, it seems very hard to find businesses that warmly cater to moderate and right-wing workers. Sure, you can work for a right-wing think tank, a conservative church, Fox News, or Republican-allied lobbyists. And I just visited a decidedly right-wing gift shop in West Virginia; it really stood out! Yet all such establishments sum to a tiny sliver of GDP. I understand, of course, why few businesses warmly cater to libertarians, or theocrats, or monarchists. There aren’t enough monarchist barbers to economically justify a monarchist barbershop. Where, though, are the firms where Republicans don’t look over their shoulders before they say they’re pro-life? Where are the firms where moderates don’t look over their shoulders before they declare that affirmative action has already gone far enough? Where are the firms where males don’t look over their shoulders before they express solidarity with the latest target of #MeToo? Billions of 360-degree glances look like a massive profit opportunity. Why then are so few businesses trying to capitalize on said opportunity?...
Explanation #4. Few moderates or right-wingers care enough to create a major profit opportunity. While they don’t relish looking over their shoulders, they prefer their current job to an alternative where they can shoot their mouths off but earn a $1000 less per year. In this story, the left proverbially just “wants it more.” And as usual, the market takes the intensity of conflicting preferences into account.
Tentative evaluation: Very plausible, especially considering how strong the age-ideology correlation has become. When today’s conservatives encounter politics on the job, they don’t start polishing their resume to find a more politically hospitable home. They tell themselves, “I’m too old for this @%!&!” and get back to work.
Note: A slight variant is that left-wing consumers are more willing to boycott firms they dislike than right-wing consumers. The media’s liberal bias could easily amplify this: The left is more likely to hear about corporate policies they find objectionable than the right. (Though this in turn raises the question, “Why does a highly competitive media market lead to such pronounced left-wing bias?”) Explanation #5. Discrimination law covertly stymies the creation of right-wing firms. Most obviously, any firm that openly and aggressively opposed #MeToo and #BLM would soon be sued into oblivion.
Tentative evaluation: Even more plausible. Imagine what would happen if a firm’s top brass loudly declared that, “Discrimination simply isn’t a problem here” – and routinely fired complainers for contradicting the party line. Picture a firm blanketed in propaganda telling workers to “Be color-blind,” “Laugh it off,” and “No one likes a tattle-tale.” A small business in a conservative area might get away with this for a few years, but a Fortune 500 company that stuck to its right-wing guns would go down in flames. This does not prevent firms from promoting a mildly right-wing corporate culture, but you won’t attract many politically homeless workers with such marginal improvements."

These Virtual Reality Headsets Make Farmed Chickens Believe They Roam Free

Meme - Flora Gill @FloraEGill: "Someone needs to create porn for children. Hear me out. Young teens are already watching porn but theyre finding hard core, aggressive videos that give a terrible view of sex. They need entry level porn! A soft core site where everyone asks for consent and no one gets choked etc"
Flora Gill @FloraEGill: "Absolutely not getting swept up into another twitter cesspool so deleted tweet before it picks up steam! Obviously not an actual solution, but it is a real problem. Everyone take a deep breath"

Toronto chef says we need to stop eating avocados - "our appetite for guac and all things avocado is wreaking havoc with both the environment and the culinary culture of much of Latin America... "The current rate at which this fruit is being consumed, and its increase in demand, directly threatens the way of life of millions of people," Camarena tells blogTO. "Be it from lack of access to water, deforestation, land erosion, criminal activity or inaccessibility to our produce."...   Water is a big issue. It takes 60 gallons of water to grow a single avocado, and as Camarena says, Mexico already has an issue with available clean drinking water... not only is it an inefficient food to grow, a variety of factors including mishandling, over-handling, pests and a notoriously finicky ripening process mean that a lot of those avocados never make it to the consumer... "The price of avocado continues to increase, and with it, so does its disappearance from the tables of those who count on it as part of their diets," says Camarena.  "To many Latin Americans, avocado, also known as aguacate and palta among others, is not just a dip to watch the Super Bowl with," he says. "It isn't a trendy superfood, nor is it something to overindulge on. For many of us Latin Americans, that naturally ripe, local product is pretty central to our diet, culture and identity.""
If avocados are so bad, Latin Americans should stop eating them too

To Attract The Best, First Understand Why They Leave - "According to a study of 19,700 post-exit interviews, 89% of employers think their people leave for more money. The employees who actually leave for more money? Just 12%.   So, if it’s not about money, why do people leave for greener pastures?  There’s an old adage in HR: People quit their bosses; not their jobs...
Compensation and benefits: Money isn’t the most important factor, but it matters. The good news is you don’t have to pay top dollar to retain good people – as long as you’re fulfilling other job satisfaction needs. If you pay in top 75th percentile in your geographic area, you won’t lose many people due to money alone."
Many people are contemptuous of the fact that pay isn't a major factor for why most leave

Meme - "Seven Deadly Sins
Pride
Greed
Lust
Envy
Gluttony
Wrath
Sloth"
"James Charles (makeup youtuber, extremely prideful) , Ethan Klein (gave up his reaction content to make podcasts) ,Chris Chander (less said the better) Ricegum, Nicoado Avocado (former vegan vlogger, gained about 15 stone with his clearly attention seedling mukbangs), Sam Hyde (a comedian popular among the alt right, often named as the perpetrator of mass shooting and terror attacks as a meme) Yandere Simulator Developer (been working on the game for about 6 or 7 years now)"

The Perils of Audience Capture - "In 2016, 24 year old Nicholas Perry wanted to be big online. He started uploading videos to his YouTube channel in which he pursued his passion—playing the violin—and extolled the virtues of veganism. He went largely unnoticed.  A year later, he abandoned veganism, citing health concerns. Now free to eat whatever he wanted, he began uploading mukbang videos of himself consuming various dishes while talking to the camera, as if having dinner with a friend.  These new videos quickly found a sizable audience, but as the audience grew, so did their demands. The comments sections of the videos soon became filled with people challenging Perry to eat as much as he physically could. Eager to please, he began to set himself torturous eating challenges, each bigger than the last. His audience applauded, but always demanded more. Soon, he was filming himself eating entire menus of fast food restaurants in one sitting.  In some respects, all his eating paid off; Nikocado Avocado, as Perry is now better known, has amassed over six million subscribers across six channels on YouTube. By satisfying the escalating demands of his audience, he got his wish of blowing up and being big online. But the cost was that he blew up and became big in ways he hadn't anticipated. Nikocado, moulded by his audience’s desires into a cartoonish extreme, is now a wholly different character from Nicholas Perry, the vegan violinist who first started making videos. Where Perry was mild-mannered and health conscious, Nikocado is loud, abrasive, and spectacularly grotesque. Where Perry was a picky eater, Nikocado devoured everything he could, including finally Perry himself. The rampant appetite for attention caused the person to be subsumed by the persona. We often talk of "captive audiences," regarding the performer as hypnotizing their viewers. But just as often, it's the viewers hypnotizing the performer. This disease, of which Perry is but one victim of many, is known as audience capture, and it's essential to understanding influencers in particular and the online ecosystem in general... I'm suspicious of those with strong, sharply delineated brands. Human beings are capricious and largely formless storms of idiosyncrasies, so a human only develops a clear and distinct identity through the artifice of performance... This is the ultimate trapdoor in the hall of fame; to become a prisoner of one's own persona"
This is just a specific case of chasing the money

Do Companies Have Too Much Power? - "Capitalism works best when competition is strong. When companies have too much power, they are able to charge consumers far more than it costs to make a product or deliver a service, generating huge profits. Companies facing fewer challengers also have less incentive to innovate or pay their employees well. A world dominated by powerful companies may also lead to slower economic growth.  Many researchers believe we already live in this world. Economists Jan De Loecker of Princteon and Jan Eeckhout of University College London are sounding the alarm particularly loudly. In 2017, they reported that markups in the US, defined as the amount above cost at which a product is sold, had jumped from about 18 percent in 1980 to 70 percent in 2014. They suggested that this rise could account for many of the problems in the US economy, from inequality to fewer startups.  Now, in 2018, De Loecker and Eeckhout are back with another paper about the power of companies, and it’s more bad news (pdf). According to their analysis of the financial statements 70,000 companies across 134 countries, the rise in markups is a worldwide phenomenon. They find that while global average markups were less than 10 percent in 1980, they were at almost 60 percent in 2016. For most countries, the companies in the dataset represent more than two-thirds of that country’s economy. While the greatest increases in markups have come come in North America and Europe, every region but South America saw large rises—and that’s because markups in South America were already high. The economists’ latest analysis does not attempt to explain the rise, but in their examination of the US, De Loecker and Eeckhout offer a few possible explanations, including deregulation and an increase in mergers and acquisitions. Not everybody agrees with their analysis. The dispute is a technical one... University of Chicago economics PhD student James Traina points out that costs of goods sold ignores most of a company’s marketing and management expenses. Marketing and management costs have skyrocketed in the US since 1980, and he finds that when these costs are included the rise in US markups is much smaller. De Loecker and Eeckhout dispute Traina’s methodology, contending that many marketing and management costs are not truly short-term in nature. The IMF has since weighed in, and come down on the side of De Loecker and Eeckhout... companies with the highest markups invest the least, basking in their market power and resting on their laurels"

Miscellaneous: Today, I went to the pharmacy to purchase a brace for my sprained... - FML - "Today, I went to the pharmacy to purchase a brace for my sprained wrist. My wife and I had recently ran out of KY lotion, so I decided to pick up a bottle while I was there. It didn't occur to me that these two items could be perceived as being related until the cashier began to giggle. FML"

Eamonn Maxwell (he/him) on Twitter - "Q/ What's the hardest part of playing Wordle?
A/ Keeping it to yourself, apparently...

Meme - "Today, my boyfriend wanted to take our relationship to the next level. I assumed since we live together that he meant marriage. I was wrong; the next level is me jacking him off with my feet. FML"

Miscellaneous: Today, when I am asked to do something and I don't do it immediately,... - FML - "Today, when I am asked to do something and I don't do it immediately, my mother threatens to "twerk" in front of my friends. FML"

Meme - "Today, I found out why the parents whose children I babysit use me so often and on such short notice. It's not because they have abrupt nights out; it's because their kids hate me, and me being around is their way of punishing them. FML"

Study: Investing in Legos Will Earn You More Money Than Gold - "the market prices of retired Lego sets sold on the secondary market grow by at least 11% annually, which is higher than the average returns provided by gold, large stocks, bonds, and alternative investments. For their study, the authors analyzed the prices of 2,322 unopened Lego sets from 1987 to 2015 and information about primary sales and online auction transactions... prices for Lego sets on the secondary market, which vary greatly and range in returns from between -50% to +600% on an annual basis, typically start to increase two or three years after a set has been retired. This means you have to factor in high costs like delivery and storage into your investment.  Secondly, the prices of small or very big sets will grow faster than medium-sized sets, the researchers found. The sets that see the biggest growth in value on the secondary market are those related to famous buildings, movies, or holidays. As such, it shouldn’t be a surprise that some of the most expensive Lego sets include the Millennium Falcon, the Death Star II, and the Imperial Star Destroyer. Other highly valued Lego sets include limited edition sets and those given out at promotional events. And finally, the secondary Lego market is not something you can jump into easily if you’re not a fan, Dobrynskaya said. There are a lot of Lego sets out there, and it takes a true fan to analyze the market and make a bet on a set that might be worth a lot more someday."

Links - 28th October 2022 (2)

Addendum: This post first got put behind a warning for readers, then got reinstated after I removed something, then 2 hours later got put behind a warning again. I removed something else but who knows if it'll last?

New Yorkers confirm high taxes are pushing them to flee the state in droves - "Nearly four of every 10 voters here are thinking of fleeing. Their No. 1 reason: high taxes... a stunning 36.7% say their top reason for wanting out is that taxes are “too high,” a gripe more people cited than any other. Even a quarter of “progressives,” 32% of “liberals” and 38% of “moderates” cite high taxes as their strongest motivation to leave.   Never mind the druggies and crazies, disastrous schools or even surging crime (though 48% say crime’s Priority One for the next gov, vs. 43% who cite taxes). And so much for Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s blaming the weather; only 7.7% cited that as their chief reason...   They’re certainly right about New York’s tax burden: It’s long been among the nation’s highest, and the Democrat-dominated Legislature keeps pushing to make it worse. Last year, when Dems slapped another $4 billion tax on high-end earners, making the top combined city-and-state rate a whopping 14.8%, we asked if lawmakers were actively “trying to fuel a mass exodus.” Looks like that’s exactly what they’ve done.  Notably, the second-most cited reason — a desire to find a “better job or economic opportunities” — is linked to the first: High taxes spur not only people but companies to flee and take jobs with them, reducing opportunity. That helps explain why New York so often suffers more unemployment than elsewhere: In January, the national jobless rate was 4%, but 5.3% in the state (and 7.6% in the city)."

Quality of life plummets, taxes rocket — and New York City faces doom: Goodwin - "  Murder climbed nearly 45 percent last year and is up an additional 13.5 percent this year. The increases translate into an additional 153 New Yorkers shot, stabbed and strangled.  Shootings are up 72 percent in two years, and car thefts are up a staggering 91 percent. The city is in a death spiral, with unprovoked attacks and subway pushings adding more reason for rational fear.   Albany’s answer: Put more handcuffs on cops, turn just about every criminal suspect loose, empty the prisons and raise taxes. Also, let’s give money — $2.1 billion, to be exact — to illegal immigrants by creating an “excluded workers’ fund.”  Coupled with sanctuary status, the big progressive handout will be heard all the way to Central America. If only such compassion extended to taxpayers."

When higher education doesn't mean higher pay - "The share of low-paid workers has remained at about 40 percent of all American employees since 1995, but the group has gone through one surprising change: Those baristas and cashiers are much more educated today than they were two decades ago... About 22 percent of Americans who earn between $12.01 and $16 per hour now hold college degrees, compared with 16 percent in 1995... some types of degrees are more likely to lead to underemployment, or working in roles that don't match the holder's skills, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.   The top major for underemployment? Criminal justice, where 75 percent of graduates end up in low-skilled jobs. And no surprise, the second most-likely major to result in underemployment is the performing arts, where 65 percent of grads are working in jobs that don't match their skills.   Majors with the lowest rates of underemployment are nursing and chemical engineering, at 12.8 percent and 16.8 percent, respectively."
From 2017
"Capitalism has failed" because with a degree in feminism you still can only do service jobs

A History of Soy Milk - "There were just two problems: the flavor, and the farting. As traditionally prepared in China, soy milk often had a bitter taste and a peculiar flavor that soy-industry researchers call “beany.” “Beany” has variously been described as chalky, cardboard-y, or fishy; resembling sweaty feet; or reminiscent of licking a wet popsicle stick—all of which hint at its prismatic unpleasantness, particularly to Western palates. Soy milk also had a well-earned reputation for causing digestive distress, which was why Chinese parents did not typically feed it to young children...   According to Matthew Roth—who tells Miller’s story in his fascinating history of soy, Magic Bean: The Rise of Soy in America—Miller mitigated soy milk’s fartiness by extending the cooking time and tempered its bitterness by adding sugar, but the beaniness remained. Then, while he toiled over a hot cauldron of soy slurry, God took the ladle. As Miller recounted in his memoir, “I heard a divine voice behind me that said, ‘Why don’t you cook it longer with live steam?’” Steam distillation, God’s proposed method, was a processing technique commonly used to deodorize oils, and it swept off many of the volatile molecules responsible for the ugly flavors... It wasn’t enough for soy milk to be good for you, and for it to taste good enough. For soy milk’s day to dawn, it had to become desirable, craveable, delicious.  Enter Vitasoy.  Founded by Kwee Seong Lo, a Malaysian-born entrepreneur, Vitasoy was proof that soy milk could have mass appeal... His breakthrough was to liberate soy milk from the bondage of its resemblance to milk, which didn’t have much of a market in East Asia anyway. Instead, Lo packaged soy milk as though it were a soft drink, in curvy glass bottles crowned with metal caps; he also worked with a chemical engineer to make it shelf-stable, as imperishable as soda pop. Vitasoy came sweetened and vitamin-fortified, in flavors including chocolate and malt. It was sold chilled in the summer and warm in the winter. Ads promised Vitasoy drinkers that they would become taller, stronger, and more beautiful. (“The drink’s main drawback is that it tastes a good deal like liquid library paste,” Time magazine snootily opined, in 1968.)    People bought it, lots of it. By 1962, Vitasoy had become the best-selling soft drink in Hong Kong, surging ahead of Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and 7 Up. Its success attracted worldwide attention, including from international aid organizations, such as USAID and UNICEF. These groups saw soy milk as an inexpensive and tasty source of protein, and a weapon in the global war against hunger. Beyond those humanitarian goals, they saw geopolitical gains: In Cold War calculations, the oppressed were potential recruits to anti-capitalist ideologies. Feeding soy milk to the world’s hungry was thus a hedge against global Communist domination...   The quality of commercial soy milk had also improved, thanks to food science. In the late 1960s, flavor researchers at Cornell University had definitively identified an enzyme called lipoxygenase as the source of soy milk’s reviled beany flavor. When soaked soybeans were ground at temperatures below 180°F (82°C), lipoxygenase went on a catalytic rampage, converting fatty acids into a whole spectrum of rancid-tasting and unpleasant molecules. Scientists also pinpointed oligosaccharides, or complex sugars, as the culprits behind soy-milk flatulence. By the 1970s, it was possible to manufacture a bland, creamy, and fartless soy milk—a truly inoffensive beverage, suitable for mass consumption...   Soy milk’s reputation began to change in the 1990s, when stories about soy’s miraculous health benefits began circulating in the media. In 1995, The New England Journal of Medicine published research that linked soy protein consumption with lower levels of “bad” LDL cholesterol and increased levels of “good” HDL cholesterol. Four years later, the FDA began allowing makers of soy products to advertise this benefit on their packaging, which is why you often see a heart logo on soy-milk cartons, a symbol of cardiac health. There were all kinds of other health benefits attributed to soy; it was supposed to reduce the risk of breast and prostate cancers, protect bones against osteoporosis, temper the symptoms of menopause, and supercharge weight loss... it was only in the 1990s, when soy milk became whiter, creamier, and sweeter, and came in vanilla, eggnog, chai mocha, and other tantalizing dessert-like flavors, that a broad swath of consumers started to give it a chance. You can still get carob-flavored soy milk, but you’re much more likely to find chocolate.   As so often happens in nutrition, subsequent research walked back some of the dramatic benefits of soy that earlier studies had found. But soy wasn’t simply another superfood that failed to deliver: There was a full-blown backlash against the bean, one directed against the same molecules that had been touted as the source of its health-giving powers.  Daidzein and genistein, soy’s supposedly miracle-working isoflavones, are phytoestrogens—that is, plant-derived molecules that bear a structural resemblance to estrogen... At the same time, soybeans were increasingly implicated in what were seen as the wider problems of industrial agriculture: monoculture, clear-cutting rain forests, GMOs. To many eco-conscious people, soy didn’t seem quite so virtuous anymore."

The Difference Between Tamari and Soy Sauce - "tamari is specifically a Japanese form of soy sauce, traditionally made as a byproduct of miso paste. The differences in production give each sauce its own unique flavor. Tamari has a darker color and richer flavor than the common Chinese soy sauce you may be more familiar with. It also tastes more balanced and less salty than the sometimes harsh bite of soy sauce, which makes it great for dipping."

A Cultural History Of The Kebab - "A kebab is a dish of sliced or ground cooked meat with its roots in Middle Eastern cuisine. The method of cooking little pieces or strips of meat on skewers dates back thousands of years, and there are many theories as to the exact origin of the kebab. Excavations of the Minoan settlement of Akrotiri uncovered stone supports for skewers from before the 17th century BCE, and even Homer’s Iliad mentions pieces of meat roasted on skewers (ὀβελός).  In cities where this delicacy has been a staple for centuries, meat could already be found pre-sliced in butcher’s shops. This is likely because fuel used for cooking was relatively scarce compared to Europe, where the wide forests enabled farmers to roast large hunks of meat...   More generally, the word “kebab” was popularized by Turkish people and, today, kebab dishes have been incorporated into local cuisines and innovations, thanks to the ubiquitous fast food that is the döner kebap...   Kebab is normally cooked on a skewer over a fire, but some kebab dishes are made in a pan, in the oven, or even as a stew, like the tas kebab. In most cases, the meat traditionally used for kebab is mutton or lamb, but regional recipes sometimes include beef, goat, chicken, fish or, more rarely, pork...   Although the history of street food in Greece dates back to antiquity, the iconic gyros and souvlaki only emerged after World War II. First brought to Athens in the 1950s by immigrants from Turkey and the Middle East, gyros were originally known as “döner kebap.” This is typically served in a pita wrap, or on a plate, with fries and various salads and sauces, including tzatziki.  Around the same time, the Greek word gyros replaced “döner kebap,” and the dish’s Greek variant became widely popular, particularly in North America. You can actually get classic shish kebab or souvlaki – little cubes of meat cooked on a skewer – in most English-speaking countries.    Although gyros are unquestionably Middle Eastern in origin, the matter of whether modern souvlaki came to Greece via Turkish cuisine — and so should be considered a Greek version of shish kebab —  or whether it’s a contemporary revival of a Greek tradition going back to the Minoan civilization in the 17th century BC, is still a hot-button issue (at least between Greeks and Turkish people).   Ćevapi or ćevapčići, which derives from the word “kebab,” is a grilled dish of minced meat traditionally found in the countries of south-eastern Europe. It’s considered a national specialty of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, and is also very common in Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Albania and Slovenia, as well as in North Macedonia, Bulgaria and Romania. The ćevapi’s Balkan roots date back to Ottoman times, while the Romanians have a dish with similar origins called mititei. Pinchitos or pinchos morunos is a kebab dish of Moorish origin found in Spanish cuisine. The name pinchitos is used in the southern Spanish autonomous communities of Andalusia and Estremadura, and consists of small cubes of meat on a skewer (pincho in Spanish ), traditionally cooked over charcoal braziers. Outside Europe, pinchitos are also highly popular in Venezuela.   With regard to the kebab’s origins, there’s a key moment in its history that can’t be overlooked, when it became even more popular and beloved than ever. Germany – the 1970s. The döner kebap explodes onto the scene with the help of Gastarbeiter (migrant workers, literally “guest workers”) from Turkey in Berlin.  The original dish evolved into its distinctive form, bread brimming with salad, vegetables and sauces, sold in large portions at very low prices. It quickly became the definitive fast food in the German capital and across much of Europe.   The first claim staked on the introduction of the Turkish döner kebap to Germany dates to 1969, when Nevzat Salim and his father started selling Iskender Kebap in Reutlingen (a German city in the state of Baden-Württemberg). But the Association of Turkish Döner Producers in Europe (ATDID) attributes the widespread popularity of the dish to Turkish Gastarbeiter Kadir Nurman’s food stall at West Berlin’s “Zoologischer Garten” (Berlin Zoo) station in 1972, offering the döner kebap as a fast food option.  The döner kebap originally sold in Berlin contained only meat, onions and a little salad. Over time, it evolved into a dish stuffed to the brim with salad, vegetables and an array of sauces. Funnily enough, in Berlin, if you ask for hot sauce on your kebab in Turkish, you still use the German word scharf, demonstrating the hybrid nature of the Berlin-style döner kebap."

Meme - "What do we call the science of classifying living things?
Racism."

Experimental replication shows knives manufactured from frozen human feces do not work - "The ethnographic account of an Inuit man manufacturing a knife from his own frozen feces to butcher and disarticulate a dog has permeated both the academic literature and popular culture. To evaluate the validity of this claim, we tested the basis of that account via experimental archaeology. Our experiments assessed the functionality of knives made from human feces in controlled conditions that provided optimal conditions for success. However, they were not functional. While much research has shown foragers to be technologically resourceful, innovative, and savvy, we suggest that this ethnographic account should no longer be used to support that narrative."
Ignoring lived experience from minority voices!

Tomaž Vargazon's answer to How would airships have fared against the airplane if the Hindenburg hadn't exploded? - Quora - "  Once jet planes came online the airship was doomed to go the way of the Dodo. Their military value was nil and they were deathtraps. The Hindenburg was a great disaster true, but it wasn’t even the worst. When USS Akron crashed in 1933 due to a thunderstorm, 73 passengers and crew lost their lives, almost twice the death toll at Hindenburg. USS Akron was a helium-filled ship. There were another five disasters that were worse than Hindenburg in the few years of the airships: British R38 (1921, 44 dead), the US airship Roma (1922, 34 dead), the French Dixmude (1923, 52 dead), and another British R101 (1930, 48 dead). There were “just” 31 fatalities with Hindenbrugh disaster.  Hindenburg was merely a spectactular event that came with vivid video and live radio broadcast. That sets it apart from the others, the disaster itself was truly nothing special for the concept of the airship. The moment airplanes could begin to reach across the Atlantic was the death knell of the airship."

Are AirPods Out? Why Cool Kids Are Wearing Wired Headphones - WSJ - "On the practical level, price is crucial. While AirPods range from $129 for the most basic 2nd-generation model to $179 for the new 3rd-gen release to $549 for the AirPods Max, Apple corded headphones go for just $19, and those from other brands can cost even less. For disorganized types, corded headphones are easier to keep track of and needn’t be charged. Plus, some folks have vague, pseudo-scientific objections to “radiation” that they associate with wireless pods... A cord also projects a “you can’t sit with me” factor that some people find appealing. While AirPods subtly blend into your look, making you at least appear available to the outside world, corded headphones wall you off from others... The person in the Patagonia vest who automatically updates to the latest iPhone, the latest operating system, and yes, the latest AirPods with the “spatial audio” is perhaps too conformist to be perceived as truly cool."
This ignores the price of non-Apple wireless earphones

Teen admits cutting construction worker's safety rope, molesting classmate - "the boy molested his classmate sometime between January and March 2016, when she was 13 years old. He brushed his hand against her upper thigh and buttock over her clothes. In December 2017, he found a discarded can of lubricant and thought it would be funny to spray it on lift buttons to make them slippery so that passengers might accidentally press the wrong buttons...   On Oct 29, 2018, he took his friend's phone and called the police, saying: "I was kidnapped. Don't kill me, don't kill me." By doing so, he transmitted a message he knew to be false to the police.  On the theft charge, the teen admitted to entering a cafe after it had closed on Sep 9, 2019, and stealing two packets of instant noodles worth S$5.  He also cheated two people in October 2021 by making them believe that he was selling an in-game item from the online game Growtopia. He ran this scheme on others, cheating buyers of S$511, for which he has made full restitution."

There's always a bigger fish. : pics - *Kevin Hart, Dwayne Johnsson, Shaquille O'Neal, Yao Ming*

This 38-year-old study is still spreading bad ideas about addiction - "Alexander lost eight days’ worth of data due to a malfunctioning piece of electronic equipment used to measure the amount of liquid the rats consumed, which may or may not have impacted his results. He also failed to control for important variables, Snodgrass said. For example, male and female rats in the boring cage were isolated from each other, he said, but they were housed together in the Rat Park cage. Soon, Rat Park was filled with rat pups. Alexander never explained what happened to the pups, Snodgrass said, such as whether they were removed or left in the cage and somehow factored into the results. “The females would wean one litter after approximately 18 days and then would begin to cycle again,” Snodgrass said. “You can’t do this. You can’t have one group of subjects mating and with pups and compare it to a group that doesn’t engage in these behaviors and say that the difference between the two groups is caused by environmental differences.”  When scientists tried to replicate the Rat Park study, they got mixed results... The authors of the study note that in 1979 the supplier both they and Alexander used for Wistar rats changed, noting that “the Wistar rats used in the Alexander, et al. study were Old Colony Wistar rats, and the ones used in the 1996 were New Colony Wistar rats.” The author concluded that the difference in behavior between the rats in the initial Rat Park study and the 1996 study were, “likely genetic in nature” (Petrie, 1996). This is especially notable considering Alexander’s current position that genetics do not play any role in the development of addiction...  Finally, there is the obvious fact that rats aren’t human and thus behave differently than humans do...  Alexander’s study was an important breakthrough in understanding addiction, but the results were far from conclusive. The study’s real problems have less to do with the science and more to do with the grandiose claims made based on the results. For example, morphine (an opioid) was the only type of drug used in the experiment, but Alexander extrapolated that addiction to all drugs would present similarly."

What Your Tweets Say About Your Mood - The Atlantic - "The seemingly lonely people swore more, and talked more about their relationship problems and their needs and feelings. They were more likely to express anxiety or anger, and to refer to drugs and alcohol. They complained of difficulty sleeping and often posted at night. The non-lonely control group, perhaps fittingly, began a lot more conversations by mentioning another person’s username. They also posted more about sports games, teams, and things being “awesome.”... researchers from the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research and the Georgia Institute of Technology analyzed 52,815 Facebook posts from 51 patients who had recently experienced psychosis. They found that the language the patients used on Facebook was significantly different in the month preceding their psychotic relapse, compared with when they were healthy. As their symptoms grew worse, they were more likely to swear, or to use words related to anger or death, and they were less likely to use words associated with work, friends, or health. They also used first-person pronouns, a possible sign of what’s called “self-referential thinking,” the study authors write, or the tendency for people who are experiencing delusions to falsely think that strangers are talking about them. (In the recent loneliness study, the lonely Twitter users were also more likely to use the words myself or I than the control group.)... Paul Appelbaum, a professor of and an expert on psychiatry ethics at Columbia University—and the father of one of my colleagues—says it’s an “open secret” that clinicians in psychiatric emergency rooms will look up patients online if they have concerns about their potential to harm themselves or others, especially if the patient isn’t very forthcoming. But that process consists essentially of one-off Facebook stalking, not an in-depth linguistic analysis... A smartphone could be used to remotely track changes in someone’s speech or movement. People in the throes of mania, for example, often talk more quickly, and they sometimes roam about at all hours of the night. Conversely, depressed people sometimes stay too still, planting in bed or on the couch for days. “There are also many apps that have been developed that involve input from the patient: information about mood or thoughts or behavior, which can be monitored remotely for changes in their status”"

Power Rangers Original Cast Members ‘Disappointed’ by Film Reboot - "David Yost and Walter Jones, better known as Billy the Blue Ranger and Zack the Black Ranger, spoke at Chicago fan convention C2E2...   “I was a little disappointed that they changed the characters around a little bit because I wanted Zach to be with his kido because Hip Hop Kido was a really important element of who I was on Power Rangers.” Jones said of his character’s fighting style. “I think if they would have added that, then there could have been some parkour and there could have been so many other elements to that character that it would have been awesome.” Yost was critical of a key component of the Rangers’ transformation into superheroes.  “The only thing I care about progression wise when they do a sequel and they morph they better bring it, and they better say “It’s Morphin Time,” he said. “When we said, ‘It’s morphing time!,’ it was like, ‘Shit’s about to go down;’ when they said it in the movie it was so lackadaisical. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’”"

(removed Toronto being kinky story that presumably got this post put behind a warning for readers)

(removed masturbation story that presumably got this post put behind a warning for readers)

I Turned My Hobby Into My Side Hustle and It Became A Nightmare

Strippers can apparently better forecast the market than your finance bro - "The user, @botticellibimo, explained that “the strip club is sadly a leading indicator and i can promise ya’ll we r in a recession lmao.”... Referencing the 2001 Enron Corporation scandal, they claim strip clubs are where “energy salesmen bring their clients” and “recruiters bring prospective finance bros,” describing strip clubs and the world of business as “deeply integrated.”  As strippers, “we always have to be aware of fluctuations in the market and how upper class white men are behaving and spending their money,” the user continued. “Ask ANY stripper we have to be aware of how rich people are going to spend their money, stripping is betting on how the rich spend their money.”... company holiday parties, which take place in December when finance employees typically receive their end of year bonuses, “make up a large part of strip club revenue,” emphasizing again the inextricable connection between strip clubs and the condition of the market... in early 2007, a friend who was stripping at the time told them “the club is way too dead for way too long,” and advised them to sell their stock then and buy it back after the market crashed.  “i thought she was crazy. but she did it, and she ended up almost doubling her money.”"

Meme - "Hear me out: A glory hole but instead of a penis someone shoves a taco in your mouth"

Facebook - "The fourth little pig's house was made of wolf skulls. They aren't very sturdy, but they send a message."

Meme - "People On The 'Right Side Of History Are Usually Fighting For Freedom And Liberty, Not Censorship And Reeducation Camps"

Meme - "5 OUT OF 6 PEOPLE AGREE THAT RUSSIAN ROULETTE IS COMPLETELY SAFE"

Meme - "Hiroshima everybody needs a friend
Hiroshima Nagasaki"

Meme - "Let Go of the Things in Your Life That Are Holding You Back
Woman: "See You Around"
Kid: "Mamma""

Facebook - "During World War 2, the German army used a radar system called Wotan. The British scientist R.V. Jones figured out how the system worked by assuming that it used a single beam based on the fact that the Germanic god Wotan had only one eye."

Blackpink and 4 Korean girls

Can masturbating REALLY boost your immune system and fight Covid? - "masturbation caused a temporary spike in immune cells, including killer cells that fight viruses...  almost half of men and women who masturbated before bed said they either got better sleep quality, or fell asleep quicker."

Why Medieval Torture Devices are Not Medieval - "Whether it is the Pear of Anguish or the Iron Maiden, these torture devices are portrayed as medieval. The reality, however, is that many of these devices never existed in the Middle Ages... Today historians are starting to take a look at these medieval torture devices, and are realizing that they are not only not medieval, but might not even have been torture devices at all... objects calling themselves the Pear of Anguish first start appearing around the middle of the 19th century. There is a reference to a ‘pear’ type object that was used by a well-known criminal in Paris at the turn of the 17th-century: he apparently had a device designed for him that allow him to gag his victims. But beyond that there is no mention of such a torture device from the Middle Ages. In fact, a careful examination of these devices show that it could never have been used to torture people. Not only would have the springs been too weak to open up a bodily orifice, but the way the latch was designed meant that it could not be opened at all if it was inside something. Bishop offers some suggestions on what this device could have been:
One could imagine them as surgical instruments – some sort of speculum perhaps, or a device for levering open the mouth in order that a dentist might operate. But then they could just as easily be shoe-extenders, or sock-stretchers, or glove-wideners...
medieval people were just not as imaginative and creative as modern day people believe. Instead what little we know about torture methods suggests that fairly simple methods were used, such as binding people very tightly with ropes. Some so-called torture devices, like the Pillory, actually did little to harm individuals. It was used by city authorities in medieval London, for instance, to punish various criminals. For example, several bakers who committed fraud were sentenced to spend a few hours bound up in the pillory, where they had their fake bread burnt under them. This punishment was intended to humiliate and expose the wrongdoer – physically they received little harm, perhaps some sore muscles and a bit of smoke inhalation (depending how much smoke a loaf of bread could create). Convicted women also had the benefit of being able to use a stool when they were sent to the pillory... Perhaps, because we want to see ourselves as more civilized and intelligent than people who live hundreds of years ago, we will imagine that they were more eager to torture people and do it in a more cruel fashion. Therefore it allowed us to be convinced that devices like the Rack, the Iron Maiden, and the Pear of Anguish were somehow everyday objects of the Middle Ages. It might say more about us than about our medieval ancestors."
Apparently if a torture device existed before the Middle Ages, we can't call it a medieval torture device. Uhh

Spanish sisters tortured to death in ‘honour’ killings after refusing to help husbands emigrate from Pakistan - "Urooj Abbas, 21, and Anisa Abbas, 23, were allegedly forcefully married to their cousins more than a year ago, but were unable to get their husbands visas to emigrate to Spain. They were unhappy with their marriage and wanted to divorce their husbands to marry different people in Spain, Geo News reported. The sisters were called back to Pakistan’s north-eastern district of Gujrat on 19 May and were shot dead a day later... Qandeel Baloch, a Pakistani social media sensation who was known for her progressive views on women empowerment, was strangled to death by her brother in 2016 for “dishonouring” the family. Her brother Muhammad Waseem said he had no remorse for her death and was pardoned in February this year under Islamic law."