When you can't live without bananas

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Monday, June 12, 2023

Links - 12th June 2023 (1)

'I don't have conservative clothes': Woman attending Malay wedding for first time shares pain of finding the right outfit - "As she was putting on make-up, _fluffyyy noted that Malay wedding guests are required to "cover their shoulders and legs".  This conservative dress code is a "mark of respect to the newlyweds and their family members"...   The bride and groom also suggested that guests come in nude, beige or brown-coloured outfits, all of which _fluffyyy doesn't own.  Thankfully for her, a sibling eventually swooped in to lend her a dress suited for a Malay wedding.  In the end, she went with a much more modest look — a brown dress borrowed from her sister paired with a white cardigan."

Movie of the Week: Dancing Lady (1933) – Dear Mr. Gable - "  “Now beat it!” he says as he smacks her in the butt.  “Thank you!” she chirps.  Yeah you’d have a sexual harassment suit against you for that nowadays, Mr. Gallagher…"

Meme - "GRAMMAR POLICE. TO SERVE AND CORRECT *pens*"

Meme - "Did you... Did you ever notice how in the Bible, when ever God needed to punish someone, or make an example, or whenever God needed a killing, he sent an angel? Did you ever wonder what a creature like that must be like? A whole existence spent praising your God, but always with one wing dipped in blood."
"Peter, shit like this is exactly why I brought you here to break up with you"

Meme - Jojo whispering to stone-faced Mark Zukerberg: "I heard he wants to violate your Community Standards"

Meme - "how i met the woman i really wanted to bang and ended up with her after your mother died"
On How I Met Your Mother

Meme - "Action movie characters the whole move. *murder, death of henchmen*"
"Action movie characters when they meet the guy who killed their entire family and destroyed their life.
'I can't. I'm just... TOO GOOD a person.'"

TN Church Sends Nasty Letter Threatening to Boot Member for Her Sinful Lifestyle - "The West Sparta Church of Christ in Middle Tennessee is the latest to take its social media offline after it got exposed for being an awful place...
'For the last several weeks we have noted that you have stopped attending the assembly of the church. After attempts to discuss this situation with you, we fear that you are not longer convinced in the need to assemble with the church for which Christ died. We are very saddened by your decision.  This ‘failure to assemble' is not the only problem that you must address. We have been informed and understand that you have a living arrangement that is not Biblical and must be terminated immediately. This action alone reflects that you have not avoided "all appearance of evil" as the scriptures direct us (I Thess. 5:22). Please understand our obligation as shepherds: first, we must watch for your soul (Hebrews 13:17) and second, protect the congregation by withdrawing from every brother/sister that walks disorderly (II Thess. 3:6). If these issues are not corrected and public repentance made by Sunday, February 21, 2021, we will withdraw fellowship.
The Elders,
Bill Burns
Ray Shafer
Jeff Turner...
this letter went viral enough that the church shut down its website, Facebook page, and phone line following intense backlash. Its Yelp reviews aren't that hot right now either. According to some Facebook posters, that happened only after the church issued a hasty (now deleted) explanation... which also didn't go over very well."

Meme - FTX to CREDIT SUISSE in Squid Game: "Why are you here? I thought you were financially stable."

Meme - "Sr. Account Manager Credit Suisse  Back on my feet at one of the world's largest and most stable banks. Just moved to Zurich and start on 03/20/2023
Account Manager SVB
Sep 2022 - Mar 2023
Account Manager FTX
Oct 2020 - Aug 2022
Took a year off because look at my prior employers
Funemployed Sep 2019 - Sep 2020
Sales Business Development WeWork
Apr 2017 - Aug 2019
Research Assistant Theranos
Mar 2012 - Mar 2017"

Indian Penny-wise : funny

Japanese Penis Festival shrine distances itself from penis mascot - "at least one person dressed in a penis costume so impressive that it confused people into thinking it was an official mascot related to the shrine.  The penis costume has been appearing since at least 2015, when the shrine sent out a similar tweet, alerting people to the fact that the character is in no way related to them. Part of the problem is the fact that the character bears a striking resemblance to Gachapin, a famous character from a children’s TV program on Fuji TV."

Customer who threatened to blow up Lloyds is spared jail after judge accepts online banking 'frustration' - "Dean Prescott, 44, made the crank call to emergency services and falsely suggested a bomb had been planted at his bank after he encountered difficulties while logging into his personal account to check his balance... ''The call handler considered the defendant may have been drunk whilst he was calling but the threat was taken seriously and four police officers attended the defendant's address.  ''He was at home on his own and said he knew it was a 'bit stupid what he had done' and he was formally arrested. Nothing was found in connection with the bomb threat itself but his mobile phone used to make the call was seized... The case comes after the Financial Services Ombudsman (FOS) said it receives about 150 to 200 complaints every three months about online banking services, most of them about system outages and IT failures.   At the same time, high street banks are increasingly shutting their physical branches, leaving customers with no other option but to persist with online banking."

"Eastern Air Lines Losers" Ad From 1967 - "[It] simply has the title “Presenting The Losers.”... '“Pretty good, aren’t they? We admit it. And they’re probably good enough to get a job practically anywhere they want. But not as an Eastern Airlines stewardess.      We pass up around 19 girls, before we get one that qualifies. If looks were everything, it wouldn’t be so tough. Sure, we want her to be pretty… don’t you? That’s why we look at her face, her make-up, her complexion, her figure, her weight, her legs, her grooming, her nails and her hair.      But we don’t stop there. We talk. And we listen. We listen to her voice, her speech. We judge her personality, her maturity, her intelligence, her intentions, her enthusiasm, her resiliency and her stamina.      We don’t want a stewardess to be impatient with a question you may have, or careless in serving your dinner, or unconcerned about your needs. We try to eliminate these problems by taking a lot more time and passing up a lot more girls.      It may make our job a lot harder. But it makes your flying a lot easier.”'

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 Is Now Playable On Your Web Browser - "Chrono Divide is a fan-made project which aims to recreate the original Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 using web technologies. The result is a game client that runs on any modern web browser (yes, even on mobile!), without the need for any additional plugins or applications installed."

Meme - *Girls Gossiping*: "I heard he can insert the USB on the first try"

Does the public service prefer Liberals to Conservatives? - "Conservatives have long felt that the bureaucracy tries to stymie their agenda, and one senior federal public servant (who insisted on remaining nameless lest he lose his job for being so blunt) assured me that, in Ottawa anyway, Conservatives have reason to feel that way.  “I’ve attended meetings where initiatives are discussed that ‘can wait for the next government,’ [meaning the] Liberals,” this 25-year-veteran emailed me...  This public servant said he actually wanted to champion some more conservative-leaning ideas but that it was tough.  “I can tell you that in my experience, directives from any party stripe are implemented without fail from our professional public servants,” he wrote. “At the same time, the ones issued by Liberals are actioned with far more innovation and enthusiasm than Conservative ones.  Subversion?  Nothing so overt that I've witnessed. But it's certainly taboo to admit any Conservative leanings while Liberal ones are blatantly encouraged.”"
How the civil service can protect our democracy — or subvert it | The Star - "When Justin Trudeau won a surprise electoral victory in 2015, he visited the Lester B. Pearson Building in Ottawa to make a courtesy call on civil servants there. He was given a rock star’s welcome, which confirmed what Conservatives had long suspected: that the bureaucracy was replete with Liberals who’d tried at every turn to stymie the Tory agenda when Stephen Harper was in power."
The Power Behind Democracy's Throne | The Agenda - YouTube - "and so there's often um a lot more pressure gets put on the civil service and the institutions of neutrality with conservative governments uh you saw it with the harper government but you can also see it really really clearly with more conservative governments at the provincial level where in many in some provinces uh aspects of neutrality have been dismantled...  and so that thing at foreign affairs i mean on the one hand it showed disloyalty to the previous government but it also it um showed excess of loyalty to the government of the day uh and that was what caused a lot of sort of you know disapproval among senior civil servants about that behavior"
On Canadian civil service liberal bias

Meme - "AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FOOT SPIKE OVER THE LAST 2000 YEARS
ROMAN, WESTPHALIA, CA. 150 AD
FRANCE, BURGUNDY, 12. CENTURY
RUSSIA, THE WESTERN FRONT, 1915
GERMANY, EASTERN FRONT, 1943
AMERICA, VIETNAM, 1960
DANMARK, LIVINGROOM FLOOR, 2020 *Lego*"

Meme - "*My Little Pony* No matter how bad things are... *My Little Pony Cum Jar* they can Always get WORSE *Man preparing to put jar in butt*"

Meme - "When all answers in an exam seem correct... But you have to choose the right one... *5 women in lingerie*"
I had saved this in March 2020, so it's not AI women

Meme - "Please stop using your kids as a profile picture.
In a Relationship with ***
*toddler and man*"

Meme - Criston Cole: "Spoiled cunt."
Criston Cole: "Every woman is an image of the Mother, to be spoken of with reverence."

anica on Twitter - "my boyfriend just casually dropped the fact that for most of his adult life, he has been able to force himself to wake up from a nightmare by just envisioning the StarCraft menu screen mid-dream and picturing himself hitting the “quit” button on it."

Epic, heroic, urban… What’s the difference between fantasy sub-genres? - "The traditionally popular forms of fantasy tend to fall into four main areas (with a good deal of overlap): high fantasy, epic fantasy, heroic fantasy, and finally, sword and sorcery... Epic fantasy is relatively self-explanatory in that it deals with the scope and scale of the story. Something is of epic scale if it threatens an entire world or universe. Epic stories don’t just involve a village, city, or even country, they are far more wide-reaching and are filled to the brim with so many characters you may need to keep a list of them to hand. To accompany this epic plot, you often have a novel of epic length. You know the kind… where they could double as weights or door stops in a violent storm. Epic stories also tend to have fairly black and white ideas of good and evil/light and dark. Think Jedi versus Sith, everyone in Middle Earth that’s not under Sauron’s control, or Belgarion’s questing party against Torak in The Belgariad. This genre also tends to include magic in some guise as well as characters on a quest, but these are elements they also tend to share with the high fantasy subgenre.
High fantasy is set apart mostly by its tendency to focus on characters rather than an epic scale of the events. The world tends to have very specific, well-defined magic rules. While epic fantasy also often involves a kind of quest, the quest of one – or a few – protagonist takes centre stage in a high fantasy piece. The choices made by the individuals are what matter most. An easy way to picture this difference is to look at The Illiad, with its tremendous cast of characters and major war as an epic fantasy, with its counterpart, The Odyssey, focusing on the journey and accomplishments of one man as high fantasy...
Heroic fantasy stories are action-adventure stories with one main hero (and potentially a supporting cast to help the hero along). The genre tends to fit somewhere between high and low fantasy, being neither too grand in scale nor entirely solely focused on the character’s own personal goals. Most importantly, heroic fantasy must be heroic – in the sense that the hero’s goals are moral. The hero is not weighed down by too many character flaws, tends to be self-sacrificing, and only succeeds after much hard work. So what separates heroic fantasy from sword and sorcery? Sword and sorcery is heroic fantasy’s pulpy cousin. Often referred to as the ‘fathers’ of the sword and sorcery subgenre are authors Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock. One of the most popular original sword and sorcery stories is that of Howard’s Conan the Barbarian. The settings of sword and sorcery tales tend to be less well developed than those that appear in heroic fantasies, though they tend towards more exotic physical descriptions. Also, the protagonists of sword and sorcery are generally morally ambiguous, sometimes on paths of redemptions that lead them to take questionable actions from time to time."

Dungeons And Dragons Honor Among Thieves Review: Perfectly Captures The Playing Experience, For Better And Worse - "In a world where playing Dungeons and Dragons is no longer limited to freaks and geeks but is instead enjoyed by over 13 million people in the United States alone, with even more than that listening to actual play podcasts like Critical Role, The Adventure Zone, and Not Another DnD Podcast, it’s fitting that a movie has finally captured what a real role-playing campaign is like. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves takes the chaos and ad-hoc storytelling of playing a game with friends and condenses it into just over two hours. The movie’s greatest strength is its greatest weakness; those who squeal at seeing Icewind Dale will love it, while those who don’t know the significance of Elminister will enjoy a fantasy Ocean’s Eleven... For those that play Dungeons and Dragons on a regular basis, the film is well-worth seeing just for the fan service included; from Baldur’s Gate to Neverwinter, displacer beasts to gelatinous cubes, noted gamers Goldstein and Daley knew how to play the setting’s greatest hits. In fact, the worst thing to come out of the movie for role-players is now there will be someone in every play group who thinks Druids are overpowered. Despite the pacing issues getting started, the film’s back half is a crowd-pleaser and a delightful throwback to a time of stand-alone fantasy films that weren’t concerned with launching the next big blockbuster franchise"

Sophia Lillis Played Dungeons & Dragons Long Before Role in New Hit Movie - "Sophia says she was part of a D&D club back in high school, so casting her was a perfect fit. That being said, she says the cast did play together ahead of shooting, and despite her experience ... she says one of her costars took the crown."

How Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Became a High Fantasy Heist Movie - "“When the actors arrived in Belfast, we played a several-hours-long game of D&D with them,” Goldstein says. “And that gave those who were not familiar with it a quick taste of what the game is like and how you interact, and they played as their characters.” It not only helped the cast bond and introduced them to the world but also informed the directors’ takes on the characters.  “It was informative, both to them and to us, because I think we incorporated some of the things we learned from that game into the film,” Goldstein says.   During their pre-shoot D&D game, the directors learned quite a bit about their cast.  “I would say that every time Justice Smith had to perform an action, it was Animal Friendship. A lot,” Daley recalls, referring to a spell that lets you convince a beast that you mean it no harm. “He relied on Animal Friendship at every turn, even in the least appropriate times.”  Goldstein adds, “He’d be falling off a cliff with no animals around, and he would still try Animal Friendship.”...   “We’d be excited to dive back into this world, but our producer Jeremy Latcham likes to remind us of his approach in the early days of Marvel – make one good movie,” Goldstein says. “Don’t think about universe building. Don’t think about franchises. Just put everything into the one movie you’re making. Then if it works, you do more. That’s how we approached it.”"

‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ Plays Like Your Best D&D Game | WIRED - "Chances are slim that any studio or filmmaker correctly guesses what D&D fans might want in a movie adaptation. The in-jokes, the bizarre encounters, the recklessly stupid decisions that shouldn’t work but do—they’re all bespoke to each player’s experience. Yet somehow, Honor Among Thieves manages to zero in on players’ energy, if not their specifics. Our heroes, from Chris Pine’s bard Edgin to Justice Smith’s sorcerer Simon, form an unlikely party with existing interconnected allegiances, grudges, and relationships. Some of them would die for each other. Some can’t stand each other. And they’re all thrust together by just-plausible-enough circumstances. In other words, it’s just as chaotic and silly as your typical D&D game. Which is to say that everything repeatedly and consistently goes off the rails... every quest—including a magical heist and undead interrogations—feels like it matters. The quests drive the central plot forward, but more importantly, they create a fun ride that gives the party members a chance to connect. The treasure truly is the friends they made along the way. Not that the story lacks heart. Writer and director duo Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley seem to get what players love about D&D. While the game may be known for wacky antics and absurd detours, there’s a reason people still gravitate to a romantic, fantasy setting. In between the laughs and shenanigans, your characters have heartfelt moments where they fall in love, avenge a friend, or mourn a comrade.  So how does a movie that relies so heavily on tropes manage to avoid feeling tropey? It’s authentic to its source material. Whoever cast Pine as a bard deserves a raise. Rodriguez sells the barbarian-with-a-heart-of-gold archetype perfectly. Smith is charming as a bumbling sorcerer, and Sophia Lillis nails the energy of that one friend who wrote a brooding character that doesn’t like other people, but has to go along with the party because otherwise why are you even playing with us, Becky? It’s almost hard to tell whether this is intentional or not—until the arrival of Regé-Jean Page’s paladin Xenk, who is so clearly the one guy at the table who is taking the role-playing way more seriously than anyone else. His presence illuminates that, more than anything, Goldstein and Daley didn’t set out to fill their movie with D&D archetypes, so much as archetypes of the game's players, and then give those players setting-appropriate characters. In this vein, Honor Among Thieves almost could have gone even more meta than it did, but it’s probably wise that it didn’t... It taps into the intimacy of collective enjoyment in a way few other adaptations could ever pull off."

Dungeons & Dragons Movie Easter Eggs: Mimics, Monsters & Cartoon Nods

Chindian Man Treated Rudely By Restaurant Staff Despite Clarifying He Wasn't Fasting - "Recently, a frustrated Malaysian shared how he was interrogated by a restaurant staff despite already telling them multiple times that he was not a fasting Muslim  Last Wednesday, 14 April, Daniell Denis went to a famous fast food restaurant in Taman Sutera, Johor Bahru to have breakfast with a friend.  They were ordering from the restaurant's touchscreen menu when a staff walked up to him and said, "If you are Muslim, you cannot eat here."  Daniell answered that he was not and the staff left.  They continued to order, when the same staff approached him again and asked, "Are you sure that you are not Muslim? If you are Muslim, please just take away."... "I replied, again, that I was not Muslim. But then she questioned 'What race are you?'. I told her that I'm Chinese and she went away," he wrote on Facebook, clarifying that his father is Chinese while his mother is Indian.  Finally paying for their orders and sitting down to wait for their food, Daniell said the staff came once again to his table to tell him, "If you are Muslim, can you please just take away?"  Not being able to stand the treatment he was receiving anymore, the customer silently whipped his IC out of his wallet to prove his ethnicity to her.  "But she immediately grabbed my IC and walked back to the kitchen. I had no idea who she was going to show it to. I quickly followed her and told her that it was wrong to simply take my IC like that, and she gave it back," he recounted."

"Why Is It So Hard Just To Have Lunch This Month?" Chinese Boy Puzzled By Question: Why You Never Puasa? - "this Chinese boy is a pure Chinese not even mixed race! But genetically he is with darker complexion thus, he is always been mistakenly thought he is a Malay. People that he don’t know will normally speak Malay to him.  The boy’s sister told media outlet, that the brother encounters the same problem every year during the ramadan month. He will be questioned more than 10 over times when he dine in for lunch... It’s not easy even to dine in! That’s a good idea to put IC on the table while eating... Some netizen also encountered the same problem, been asking for race and need IC as a proof ~  Netizen : I went buy roasted pork for Ching Ming festival and the auntie asked me adik, why buy pork .. but i’m Chinese leh!"

Can restaurants sell food to Muslims during Ramadan and/or allow those exempted from fasting to dine in? Here’s what lawyers say | Malay Mail - "Some state Islamic laws for example go beyond just selling food, but also covers the buying, giving or offering of food; while other states have the additional condition of being a person who has reached puberty in relation to the offence of eating during fasting hours. These offences come under the general name of “disrespect for Ramadan” in most of the state laws in Malaysia...  The Federal Territories’ mufti department’s website also carries a June 27, 2016 opinion from then Federal Territories Mufti Datuk Zulkifli Mohamad, who listed Muslims exempted from fasting as also including women who are menstruating and the elderly who are unable to fast.  The mufti’s opinion in June 2016 had also stated that it is harus or permissible for such Muslims to be exempted from fasting and that it is afdhal or best or preferable if they eat in places away from the public eye in order to protect themselves from slander and saving others from having prejudices that would cause them to sin...  Fahri Azzat, who is both a civil lawyer and Shariah lawyer, said the offence of disrespect for Ramadan by selling food to Muslims for immediate consumption during fasting hours only applies to Muslim individuals, and not to companies...  Asked about situations where a Muslim exempted from fasting is unable to find alternative spaces to eat, Fahri said: “That sounds quite tragic. Then they have to run the risk of prosecution if they cannot find some private place with some semblance of privacy.”  Nizam Bashir, who is also both a civil lawyer and Shariah lawyer, said the state Islamic laws on the disrespect for Ramadan offence do not apply to companies — and their employees — who sell food during the Ramadan period.  He said it would only apply to Muslim individuals who are sellers...  As for whether there can be prosecution if food or drinks are sold to a Muslim exempted from fasting, Nizam noted that the offence in the Selangor state law for example does not provide exceptions for such a situation."

Muslims In Penang Found Eating & Drinking In Public During Ramadan Can Be Fined & Jailed - "Zakiyuddin said the state wants to raise awareness among Muslims as well as eradicate acts of disrespect for the month of Ramadan  According to the Deputy Chief Minister, the monitoring efforts under the "Respect Ramadan Campaign" showed the seriousness of the state's Islamic administration to invite all Muslims to glorify the holy month... Section 15 of the Penang Syariah Criminal Law Enactment 1996 can also be used against any person who sells any Muslim items such as food, drinks, or cigarettes in public during Ramadan.   Meanwhile, action will be taken against Muslim restaurant operators in Kelantan if their outlets are open before 3pm during Ramadan  According to a report in New Straits Times on 31 March, Kota Baru Municipal Council (MPKB) president Tuan Zainal Abidin Tuan Yusuf said action could also be taken against both customers and restaurant owners, especially those opening their business before 3pm during Ramadan.  "We will also take action against non-Muslim restaurant operators if their businesses are open before 3pm, as MPKB will only allow food premises to operate after 3pm during Ramadan," he was quoted as saying.  However, a statement posted on MPKB's Facebook page contradicts the New Straits Times' report."
So much for not prosecuting people selling food to Muslims

Eatery owners distressed over Ramadan rules - "Jeremy Lim, vice-president and media liaison officer of the Restaurant and Bistro Owners Association, said it was hard for restaurateurs to determine a person’s faith in a multicultural society like Malaysia...   Lim said eatery owners were generally aware that it was a crime to let Muslims dine inside their premises during fasting hours, but he added that some might not know how they would be punished... lawyer Nurainie Haziqah Shafii said in a Twitter post the manager of an eatery in Kuala Lumpur refused to take her dine-in order...  In Kuala Lumpur, selling food or drinks to Muslims for immediate consumption during fasting hours is a crime under Section 15 of the Syariah Criminal Offences (Federal Territories) Act.  An F&B operator guilty of the offence can be fined a maximum of RM1,000 or jailed for six months or made to suffer both penalties. The punishment is doubled for a second or subsequent conviction.  The section provides for the same punishments on Muslims guilty of eating or drinking openly during fasting hours."

BERNAMA - JAIM raids restaurant selling food to black plastic gang - "A restaurant in Peringgit, here, was raided by Melaka Islamic Religious Department (JAIM) enforcement officers after it was believed to be a spot for the black plastic gang (non-fasting Muslims) to buy food during the month of Ramadan.  In the raid carried out this afternoon, two restaurant workers who acted as ‘ulat’ or delivery man were issued with notices.  JAIM director Datuk Che Sukri Che Mat said the operation dubbed Op Plastik Hitam Menggelegak was conducted following intelligence work carried out since the first day of Ramadan.  He also said that the restaurant was a hotspot for those who habitually skipped fasting during the month of Ramadan...   He said the restaurant had also been issued with warning notices previously for carrying out such activities.  “This time the modus operandi is to deliver the pre-packed food and drinks that are ordered through phone to buyers who will wait in their car”"

Principal Apologises For Dividing School Sports Clubs According To Race - "The circular stated that the football and sepak takraw clubs were open to Malay male students only, while basketball and ping pong were only for Chinese male and female students.  Meanwhile, only Malay girls could join the netball club.  The other sports such as handball, chess, petanque, volleyball, bowling, and badminton were open to all." Malaysia Boleh!

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