Sunday, July 09, 2023

Links - 9th July 2023 (1)

Meme - "Am I a good mother Susan?"
"My name's Amy"

Sorry, Android users: These iPhone snobs won't date you - "While Android phones have a larger market share than iPhones, millennials feel a stronger emotional attachment to Apple products than any other brand, according to a 2018 analysis by marketing agency MBLM... Some believe Apple purposefully implemented the text color scheme, which has been part of the iPhone operating system’s design since iMessage launched in 2011, to create a stigma against Android users... For Earle, an Android user, phone type doesn’t matter — but using a texting app that has good data privacy, such as Signal, does.  “If you’re not using good open standards for communication that are encrypted,” he says, “I don’t think we can ever get together.”"

Meme - "I need to learn archery to become a skeleton archer after death, not an shitty infantry skeleton"

Michigan boy, 13, saves sister by hitting potential kidnapper with slingshot - "The boy’s eight-year-old sister was hunting for mushrooms in her back yard in a rural area of Alpena township on Wednesday when a 17-year-old boy emerged from the woods"

Woman in China forks out $8,600 in compensation for stuffing leftover food into handbag at buffet - "The diner surnamed Wen, was caught on surveillance footage ordering more than what she could eat and using several pre-prepared plastic bags to pack leftovers under the table before sneaking them into her handbag.  The manager of the restaurant, surnamed Wu told the Chinese media outlet Hongxing News that Wen was seen visiting the restaurant in Guizhou province five times in over two weeks back in August 2022.  Wu added that the restaurant charged 218 yuan per person for the buffet and each time she ordered, it was 10,000 yuan worth of food – 10 times more than most people...   The restaurant sued Wen for nearly 45,000 yuan for her five recorded binges as the restaurant clearly displayed signs saying “waste over 100g or takeaway needs to be paid according to the menu pricing” which were placed on the cashier desk and at every table.  Wen, who initially refused to pay, did so under legal threat and an additional 8,000 yuan in legal costs"

Ontario announces break up of Peel Region, cities to become independent by 2025 : toronto
So many hateful liberals immediately dunked on Doug Ford, because everything that happens is part of one of his evil plots

Russian Woman Born In S'pore Unable To Get PR, Still On Employment Pass Despite Being Raised Here - "Imagine being born and raised in Singapore, but still considered a foreigner, especially on paper.  Unfortunately, this is the reality for Russian woman Elena Tsvetkova, who admitted that she has felt like a local all her life due to her upbringing on our sunny shores."

International students faced with housing and cost-of-living stress say they were misled about Australia

Why are rents in Australia increasing? The root cause may be more to do with COVID than interest rates and immigration - "Advertised rents began climbing sharply in late 2021 — six months before the Reserve Bank began pushing up interest rates, and at a time when it was forecast not to.  And net migration was negative back when rents were taking off — the number of arrivals didn't even match the number of departures... On the face of it, neither demand nor supply was changing much during COVID as rents started climbing. Australia's population was growing more slowly than at any time in modern history. And, as best as we can tell, the number of properties available for rent was climbing, albeit weakly.  What did change during COVID, according to the research department of the Reserve Bank, was the average number of people per household.  The change doesn't sound big — the average fell from a bit above 2.6 residents per household to a bit below 2.55 — but applied to millions of households it meant about 140,000 more houses and apartments were needed than would have been"

WWI ‘Dazzle' Camouflage Protected Ships by Confusing the Enemy - "By covering ships’ hulls with startling stripes, swirls and irregular abstract shapes that brought to mind the Cubist paintings of Pablo Picasso or Georges Braque, one could momentarily confuse a German U-boat officer peering through a periscope. The patterns would make it more difficult to figure out the ship’s size, speed, distance and direction.  Wilkinson’s idea was a startling contrast to those of other camouflage theorists. American artist Abbott Thayer, for example, advocated painting ships white and concealing their smokestacks with canvas in an effort to make them blend into the ocean...  “When the US Navy adopted Wilkinson's scheme for both merchant and fighting ships there is statistical evidence to support Wilkinson's technique”... Dazzle camouflage was resurrected by the U.S. during World War II, and was used on the decks of ships as well, in an effort to confuse enemy aircraft. Today’s electronic surveillance technology makes dazzle pretty much obsolete for protecting ships, but as Forbes points out, the concept of visually disruptive patterns is still used in military uniforms."

Ladies and gentlemen, I present your new No. 1 player, Iga Swiatek : tennis
Unicorn outfit tennis player

Meet Oscar, the Cat that Predicts Death and Provides Comfort - "Time and time again, animals have proven the ability to provide an unparalleled level of comfort for end-of-life patients. Yet what has famously transpired at Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Centerin Providence, RI over the past decade has, quite frankly, still managed to leave us speechless.  What has famously transpired is the story of Oscar the Hospice Cat, known for his ability to predict death and comfort patients who will soon pass away. A story so compelling that Dr. David Dosa, a health researcher at Brown University and a geriatrician working with patients at the Steere House, actually wrote an entire book about it."

America Doesn’t Know Tofu - "Leave soy curds to be, and they will coalesce into silken tofu. Spoon them into a mold, press out some water, and they become soft, firm, pressed, or thin tofu sheets. Smoke, dehydrate, ferment, or alkali-treat these tofus and you arrive at several new varieties. Throw them in the freezer and their inner structures will become porous like a sponge.  There are also tofus made without soy curds. Cook soy protein with fat, starch, and seasonings and you’ll have a smooth, dense, fishcake-like tofu. Or warm soymilk and enjoy the rich, high-protein film that forms on top, either as thin sheets or rolled into delicious tofu sticks, fresh or dried. All in all, there are more than 20 types of tofu.  A common misconception outside of Asian communities is that tofu is just an ingredient. In fact, it’s an entire category of proteins. Just as a chef would never cook chicken breast like chicken feet, so too are these tofus completely different from one another. They have different strengths and weaknesses. They have different flavors. They have different mouthfeels. It’s not like substituting a black bean for a kidney bean. Because these tofus are so different from one another, and from meat, each one opens up its own world of culinary possibilities. These are the most versatile plant-based proteins in existence... The ability of Chinese craftspeople and chefs to turn humble plant-based ingredients into dazzling culinary experiences is on par with the highest gastronomy in the West. But to the creators, these foods are rarely seen as “art.” They are subsistence. To consumers, these foods are not pride and treasure. They are relics of poverty, discardable afterthoughts en route to modernization."

Meme - "When he says he's hung like a dragon, but you misunderstood... *Mushu in Mulan with Mulan making small penis sign*"

‘Merkel kicked every can down the road’ - "Some people adore Angela Merkel. Some journalists have called her the leader of the Western world. I have never bought this. I have followed her since before she was chancellor. She was very skillful in reading political trends and managing her position inside her party. But she was never particularly interested in solving problems. When the eurozone crisis started, she was the one who kicked the can down the road. That was basically the tenet of her reign.  Another problem was energy policy. She triggered Germany’s exit from nuclear energy before it had a plan to move on from coal. That not only made electricity more expensive, but also made Germany dependent on imported Russian gas. And it meant that Germany ended up with one of the worst records on tackling climate change in Europe.  Merkel also failed to modernise Germany. Germany is still in the pre-digital world. The German public sector is still reliant on the fax machine. Health-sector offices are often not computerised. And even Germany’s industrial base is still largely reliant on analogue technology. Merkel was essentially a representative of the old economic model. She was not interested in innovation. Her main focus was to peddle German products to foreign powers.  Germany needs to do some deep thinking about its future. Merkel did not prepare it for that... Olaf Scholz, who is most likely to become chancellor, is in the same mould as Merkel."

Man Orders Kway Chap Without Meat At Bugis Stall But Gets Rejected, Hawker Says Tough To Fulfil Request - "Since he doesn’t eat meat, including intestines and pig skin, he asked for the dish with four pieces of tau pok, one fish cake, and two servings of kway.  However, the stall owner allegedly refused to sell it to Mr Yang, saying that it was because he did not order meat. This confused Mr Yang as he had managed to order the dish without meat from the same stall before without incident.  “I’ve eaten kway chap all over Singapore, and this is the first time I’ve encountered such an arrogant [boss],” he said. “The problem isn’t the money. It’s his attitude.”... Mr Yang’s meatless order had come up to S$4. This was cheaper than a single set meal, which costs at least S$5, so he decided not to sell it to him.  Mr Zhang added that Mr Yang had offered to pay the price of a regular set meal, but the former didn’t think it was right.  He’s worried that someone might complain about a kway chap dish without meat being so expensive, and giving in to Mr Yang’s request would make it hard for him to argue back."
Many Singaporeans just follow the system for the sake of following it

People in the U.S. Think They Are Better Than They Actually Are. People in Asia Don't - Scientific American - "How competent are you, compared with your colleagues? When psychologists approach teams of coworkers with variations of this question, an interesting pattern emerges. If people have a truly realistic perspective of their abilities, then their self-assessments should generally fall around the middle. Instead psychologists have repeatedly found that people’s self-assessments are inflated. In fact, superstars and underperformers alike tend to think they are better than they truly are. This effect is one example of a positive illusion: a cognitive bias that makes you feel more competent, more blessed, more fortunate and better than you are...  the available evidence is based almost exclusively on a small fraction of humanity called Westerners. If positive illusions were truly essential to our species, we would expect them to be universal. But my work—and that of other research teams—suggests otherwise.   In the early 1990s my colleagues and I started our “Culture and the Self” project, exploring how the sense of the self might vary across cultures. We found no strong evidence for the better-than-average effect or other positive illusions in East Asia. In Japan, for example, when university students were asked what proportion of their peers were better than them in various traits and abilities, the average estimate fell around 50 percent.  In our newest area of research—cultural neuroscience—we find that the neural pathways that support positive illusions are absent in certain communities. In other words, a pattern that most psychologists have seen as a human universal is instead a product of culture."
Weird. I thought it was racist to say people from different cultures are different (e.g. pain response)

DJ Cooper fails FIBA drug test using pregnant girlfriend's urine - "D.J. Cooper has been hit with a two-year suspension by FIBA after using his pregnant girlfriend's urine to try and pass a drug test"

Meme - LemonPepperAINNA: "Teacher: Turn to page 23
Page 23:
*Sketch with Florida as penis, Michigan as head, Maine as foot etc*"

Eating certain herbs and spices ‘could stop mosquitoes biting you’ - "mosquitoes were consistently drawn to the smells of people emitting more carboxylic acids - probably produced by skin microbes - but were repelled by a person who had elevated levels of eucalyptol.  Eucalyptol, an aromatic component of many plants, is found in mugwort, sweet basil, rosemary, sage and cardamom and is a common ingredient in toothpaste and mouthwash."

State Department to phase out Times New Roman font, adopt Calibri - The Washington Post - "The U.S. State Department is going sans serif: It has directed staff at home and overseas to phase out the Times New Roman font and adopt Calibri in official communications and memos, in a bid to help employees who are visually impaired or have other difficulties reading... The change was recommended by the secretary’s office of diversity and inclusion, but the decision has already ruffled feathers among aesthetic-conscious employees who have been typing in Times New Roman for years in cables and memos from far-flung embassies and consulates around the world.  “A colleague of mine called it sacrilege,” said a Foreign Service officer in Asia, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal policy changes. “I don’t mind the decision because I hate serifs, but I don’t love Calibri.”... “I’m anticipating an internal revolt,” said a second Foreign Service officer... Many experts agree that serif typefaces — categories of fonts with added strokes — are more difficult to read on computer screens. (The difference is lessened when it comes to printed materials.)  Size is important too: The best practice, according to the University of Edinburgh’s Disability and Inclusive Learning Service, is to use 14-point font and avoid writing in block letters or italicizing or underlining text... But there is no one-size-fits-all accessibility solution, says Jack Llewellyn, a London-based designer who specializes in typography, and a change in font that could help some readers may actually make reading more difficult for others... Other design factors, including the alignment of the text, the spacing between lines and the contrast in color between the text and the background can make a bigger difference in accessibility than font type or size, says Ian Hosking, a senior research associate at the Engineering Design Center at the University of Cambridge. Hosking says those seeking to make text accessible to the largest number of people should allow personalization. “Pick a good default font, go to one-and-a-half line spacing, consider a baseline off-white background with black text, and then guide” readers to increase or decrease the contrast or font size based on what feels most comfortable to them, he says.  This approach comes with trade-offs, Hosking points out: Increasing the line spacing, for example, makes a document longer. For institutions like the State Department that prize succinct and standardized memos, that could be a problem.  Overall, designing a functional, usable and readable document is a “complicated” and “individual” process with no “simple solution,” he says.  The debate over fonts and design is long-running. In its memo, the State Department cited Microsoft’s use of Calibri as a default font as a reason for its shift. But in 2021, Microsoft announced it would phase out Calibri as a default font in favor of one of five new custom sans-serif fonts."

Meme - "Came across this at my parents house. Stay classy Nintendo
February 28, 1991
Dear David:
Thanks for sending in your game idea. It's obvious that you spent a great deal of time and thought on it, and I was really impressed by your creativity. Although we receive many outstanding proposals every day, we're limited to using our own creative resources to develop our products, most of which are designed and made in Japan. Every game we make takes a substantial investment of both time and money. In fact, creating a game as complex as Super Mario Bros. 3 can require years and involve the talents of complete teams of planners, artists and programmers. Because we can't use your game diagrams we are returning them to you. We encourage you to keep developing your creative ideas. Who knows David--perhaps someday you'll be the one designing games. Thanks again for writing. We appreciate your interest in our products.
Sincerely,
NINTENDO OF AMERICA INC.
LouAn M. Williams
Consumer Service Representative
Enclosure"

Meme - "So I walked by the vending machine yesterday at work....
WARNING: Endoscopy equipment is NOT to be used for stealing food from the vending machine! ~ Management"

Meme - "Diss tracks were savage in the 1700s
My Mill grinds Pepper, and Spice, Your Mill grinds Rats,and Mice"

Meme - "Don't spam click the like button for 30 seconds. worst mistake of my life"
There're still people who claim if you don't do anything wrong, you won't get zucced on Facebook

Meme - "Someone advice me to do skincare, here we go, it's my mother's skin cream, I will become a white man soon"
"White face isn't cool James"
"I'm so sorry my friend. In China dark skin represent low status work in field. I do not want to be dark skin. very cool very swag I like it"
"THIS IS COLOURIST LMFAOOOOO"
jameswhite @JamesCageyWhite: "I'm so sorry my friend. Please do not judge China culture mind you business. Please buy my t- shirt to support me"

Shower Thoughts on Twitter - "Finding out stripper poles spin in place (instead of strippers around the poles) is the grown-up’s finding out Santa isn’t real."

World of Engineering on Twitter - "Biology tells you that you are 7% BLOOD. Chemistry tells that you are 70% WATER. Physics tells you that you are 99,999999% EMPTY SPACE."

Meme - "Americans: Nooo you can't drink, you are only 20
I'm sorry dad"
"Germans: *Kids drinking beer*"

Meme - *Blonde* "BLM: Bang Local MILFs"

Why You Shouldn't Put The Cork Back In Your Wine Bottle - "when you put the cork back into a half-empty bottle, the wine is exposed to more oxygen both because of the porous cork and because there's more air in the bottle. "What we really want to do is reduce the amount of oxygen to wine ... What I recommend is a Mason jar. All you do is take whatever wine you have left over [and] pour it into a Mason jar or any kind of airtight container. In desperate times, I have cleaned out a kombucha container and used that. Seal it tight. There you have it. There is so much less oxygen in here than in the rest of the bottle."

'They call me a unicorn': Singaporean moves to Melbourne, colleagues tease him for grinding 5 days a week - "Muhammad Fadhil Abdul Latiff, 34, received quite the culture shock when he started work in Melbourne."

Prisoners Could Serve '1,000 Year Sentence in 8.5 Hours' in the Future - "Dr Roache said drugs could be developed to distort prisoners' minds into thinking time was passing more slowly.  "There are a number of psychoactive drugs that distort people’s sense of time, so you could imagine developing a pill or a liquid that made someone feel like they were serving a 1,000-year sentence," she said.  A second scenario would be to upload human minds to computers to speed up the rate at which the mind works, she wrote on her blog .  "If the speed-up were a factor of a million, a millennium of thinking would be accomplished in eight and a half hours... Uploading the mind of a convicted criminal and running it a million times faster than normal would enable the uploaded criminal to serve a 1,000 year sentence in eight-and-a-half hours. This would, obviously, be much cheaper for the taxpayer than extending criminals’ lifespans to enable them to serve 1,000 years in real time.""

Restanrant In Taiwan Is Serving Giant Isopod Ramen - "TheRamenBoy is serving Giant Isopod Ramen for 1480元 ($48.22) in Taiwan."

Full article: Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust - "This essay uncovers the systematic, intentional distortion of Holocaust history on the English-language Wikipedia, the world’s largest encyclopedia. In the last decade, a group of committed Wikipedia editors have been promoting a skewed version of history on Wikipedia, one touted by right-wing Polish nationalists, which whitewashes the role of Polish society in the Holocaust and bolsters stereotypes about Jews. Due to this group’s zealous handiwork, Wikipedia’s articles on the Holocaust in Poland minimize Polish antisemitism, exaggerate the Poles’ role in saving Jews, insinuate that most Jews supported Communism and conspired with Communists to betray Poles (Żydokomuna or Judeo–Bolshevism), blame Jews for their own persecution, and inflate Jewish collaboration with the Nazis. To explain how distortionist editors have succeeded in imposing this narrative, despite the efforts of opposing editors to correct it, we employ an innovative methodology. We examine 25 public-facing Wikipedia articles and nearly 300 of Wikipedia’s back pages, including talk pages, noticeboards, and arbitration cases. We complement these with interviews of editors in the field and statistical data gleaned through Wikipedia’s tool suites. This essay contributes to the study of Holocaust memory, revealing the digital mechanisms by which ideological zeal, prejudice, and bias trump reason and historical accuracy. More broadly, we break new ground in the field of the digital humanities, modelling an in-depth examination of how Wikipedia editors negotiate and manufacture information for the rest of the world to consume."

Meme - GG Allin Turing @dubsteppenwolf: "tired of "your feelings are valid" discourse. sometimes my feelings are dumber than dogshit and I have a responsibility to get a grip."
Clearly "toxic"

Man, 30, dies with ping pong ball up his bum after being electrocuted while pleasuring himself - "The single 30-year-old from the Czech Republic, who lived at home with his parents, was found dead on the floor of his bedroom by firefighters, who were forced to kick his door down.  He was wearing a one-piece women's swimsuit, and had 'tightly' wrapped his legs, trunk and neck in straps of plastic and fabric... People most commonly shove objects into their rectum for sexual pleasure.   This is partly to do with the number of nerves in the anus, making it highly sensitive it can also stimulate the prostate in men.   For women, it can also indirectly stimulate parts of the vagina."

'A deadly problem': should we ban SUVs from our cities? - "SUVs are a paradox: while many people buy them to feel safer, they are statistically less safe than regular cars, both for those inside and those outside the vehicle. A person is 11% more likely to die in a crash inside an SUV than a regular saloon. Studies show they lull drivers into a false sense of security, encouraging them to take greater risks. Their height makes them twice as likely to roll in crashes and twice as likely to kill pedestrians by inflicting greater upper body and head injuries, as opposed to lower limb injuries people have a greater chance of surviving. Originally modelled from trucks, they are often exempt from the kinds of safety standards applied to passenger vehicles, including bonnet height. In Europe legislation is being brought in to end such “outdated and unjustified” exemptions."
Risk compensation is only a myth when it comes to masks and covid

Chicago's SUV Tax and Road Damage: Do the Numbers Add Up? - "'Engineering and transportation experts contacted Monday insisted that roads are typically designed for heavy trucks that weigh "at least double," if not 10 times what an SUV does.' They argued that there is virtually no difference between the road damage caused by a 5,401-pound Lexus LX-470 or a 5,070-pound Toyota Sequoia, and the wear and tear caused by a 3,950-pound Ford Crown Victoria, a 4,049-pound Cadillac Deville or a Mercedes Benz S-Class that weighs 4,200 pounds."

Meme - "State Street Diner. MOMS GET FREE CREAM PIE 5.14
Pretty sure that's what made her a mom the first time."
Addendum: I thought this got this post put behind a warning but when I removed it it didn't change anything

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