OCBC’s new anti-scam measure upsets some users; bank clarifies only apps with risky permission settings flagged - "OCBC said that only Android apps with risky permission settings that could put a user’s mobile phone under the threat of malware will be flagged by the bank’s new security feature. It said not all apps from unofficial platforms will be flagged by its latest security update. Mr Beaver Chua, head of anti-fraud at OCBC group financial crime compliance, made the clarification on Tuesday (Aug 8), two days after the bank announced its new security feature that prevents users from logging onto their Internet banking and OCBC Digital app on their mobile phones if it detects apps downloaded from unofficial portals."
Dad batters schoolgirl with metal bar for wearing make-up then walks free from court - "A thug, dad to seven kids, beat his 15-year-old daughter with a metal bar, and even bit her, for wearing make-up. Hussein Alinzi was spared jail even though he beat his daughter outside her all-girls school during an argument. The 59-year-old hit her with a metal bar on June 22 last year, on the morning of her English GCSE at Whalley Range High School, in Manchester, when he dropped her off early at school to find the gates locked still. She had been advised by teachers to arrive early for her English exam. During the assault Alinzi accused his daughter of secretly planning to meet a boy ahead of the exam and berated her for wearing makeup. She briefly lost consciousness but came around and subsequently tried to sit the test. However she complained of feeling dizzy and nauseous and was taken out of the exam hall before being admitted to A&E. The youngster was found to have suffered 14 different sites of injury including facial bruising and was also treated for a bite mark to her left temple. She later filed a report to her teachers, and then police telling how her father had previously bullied and abused her over a two year period. This included threats such as: "I will run you over," and "I will kill you," and "I hope you die." She also said he had prevented her from going to the park and she was only allowed to have female family friends. It emerged she had only been wearing makeup to school on the advice of her mother to cover up bruises he had inflicted on her in earlier beatings... he got off with an eight month prison sentence suspended for 18 months when his daughter said she still loved him."
When you have a dual track justice system
Court dismisses CBC copyright infringement lawsuit against Conservative Party - "A lawsuit launched by the CBC against the Conservative Party of Canada in the final days of the 2019 federal election accusing the party of copyright infringement for using the broadcaster's footage in an online ad and tweets has been dismissed by a federal court. In his written decision released Thursday, Federal Court Justice Michael Phelan found that the use of such material fell under "fair dealing" and there was "no objective evidence of the likelihood of any reputational damage" to the CBC... At issue was a video titled "Look at What We've Done," published around Oct. 4 on a Conservative Party website (notasadvertised.ca), a Facebook page and a YouTube page. The video included footage from CBC's The National and Power & Politics. It also included footage from CTV News, Citytv and Global News. The Conservative Party also published four tweets from the 2019 federal election leaders' debate, which was broadcast on 15 different online platforms and by 10 different TV networks, including the CBC."
CBC media bias is a myth.
Revolt over paying for UK TV licence - "A record 2.84 million people now insist they are no longer obliged to pay £159 for the annual charge because they don’t watch BBC channels or any kind of live TV. This figure is an increase of more than 360,000 in the previous twelve months."
Men Set Their Own Cites High: Gender and Self-citation across Fields and over Time - "How common is self-citation in scholarly publication, and does the practice vary by gender? Using novel methods and a data set of 1.5 million research papers in the scholarly database JSTOR published between 1779 and 2011, the authors find that nearly 10 percent of references are self-citations by a paper’s authors. The findings also show that between 1779 and 2011, men cited their own papers 56 percent more than did women. In the last two decades of data, men self-cited 70 percent more than women. Women are also more than 10 percentage points more likely than men to not cite their own previous work at all. While these patterns could result from differences in the number of papers that men and women authors have published rather than gender-specific patterns of self-citation behavior, this gender gap in self-citation rates has remained stable over the last 50 years, despite increased representation of women in academia. The authors break down self-citation patterns by academic field and number of authors and comment on potential mechanisms behind these observations. These findings have important implications for scholarly visibility and cumulative advantage in academic careers."
I saw someone claiming that an organisation citing its own paper means the research is not credible
Meme - *Guy in front of Magnum ad so it looks like a woman is sucking his dick*
Meme - Fatima @fatimaxsr: "My poor parents bought me a pride balloon for my graduation because they thought it meant they were proud of me"
Meme - "It's just a carpet woven from pure evil"
Meme - "Religious People: Death is not the end.
Me: OH GOD, THERE'S MORE!?!?"
Meme - ianstagram: "My freshmen year roommate was a complete fucking disaster but he would throw parties and everyone would pass out in our living room and every morning I left for class at I would just get little choruses of "have fun at class, good luck" from hungover stoners and let me tell you, as someone who thrives off attention and positive reinforcement, this setup really worked for me"
Whig and Tory | Definition, Difference, History, & Facts | Britannica - "Originally “Whig” and “Tory” were terms of abuse introduced in 1679 during the heated struggle over the bill to exclude James, duke of York (afterward James II), from the succession. Whig—whatever its origin in Scottish Gaelic—was a term applied to horse thieves and, later, to Scottish Presbyterians; it connoted nonconformity and rebellion and was applied to those who claimed the power of excluding the heir from the throne. Tory was an Irish term suggesting a papist outlaw and was applied to those who supported the hereditary right of James despite his Roman Catholic faith."
Boy who wounded teacher Abigail Zwerner boasted: 'I shot that bitch dead'
Six-year-old’s shocking boast after shooting his teacher revealed - "Newly unsealed court documents reveal that the first-grader who shot his teacher earlier this year later bragged to school officials, claiming “I shot that b**** dead.” Abigail “Abby” Zwerner was left with severe injuries to her torso and her hand after being shot on 6 January at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia. The six-year-old boy who pulled the trigger of his mother’s gun made the shocking comments... Ms Zwerner allegedly told investigators there had been multiple “disciplinary incidents” involving the boy before the shooting. The incidents involved physical violence and threats of violence. A retired Newport News elementary school teacher who had been assigned to Richneck told investigators that she was choked in September 2021 by the same student."
Damn racism! Clearly she needed a gun to protect herself
Facebook, Social Media and Love: Facebook official - FML - "Today, after dating my girlfriend for about a month, she changed her Facebook status to taken. When I saw the update, I immediately clicked "Like." Then I looked up and saw I wasn't the person she had put herself in a relationship with. FML"
Meme - "Kangaroos are just deer that have been to prison"
Meme - "They meant your address bro
STREET NAME: Lil Tee"
Meme - "Millionaire: Makes $20m in 2020
Millionaire: Hires "artist" to make "art" for $25k
Artist: Puts one streak on canvas
Millionaire: Thanks artist and has art appraised by an appraiser in his same circle of friends
Appraiser: Values artwork at $20m
Millionaire: Donates $20m artwork to museum to get $20m tax write off
Millionaire: Pays no taxes in 2020
Me at museum: This is stupid, it's just a line on a canvas
Hipster next to me: No, you just don't understand it because you're uncultured."
Meme - "The reason these toys are critical as kids... *fitting blocks into holes*
*trying to fit a large mattress into a small car*"
Cardi B throws microphone into crowd at gig after being hit by drink - "The 30-year-old reacted by throwing her microphone at the concertgoer from the stage. Although the rapper no longer had a microphone, her voice was still heard on the pre-recorded backing track playing through the speakers... Although Cardi B's microphone was live, the fact that her voice was still heard on the backing track after she threw the mic prompted accusations of lip synching, as many jokingly compared her with the 1980s group Milli Vanilli."
"A black woman not needing a mic to be heard over a crowd of people is NOT evidence of lip syncing"
Meme - "Please don't touch yourself... ask your server for help... Thank you!!"
Sean Davis on Twitter - "The state of Georgia criminally indicted the former president of the United States for tweeting that people should turn on the television. They criminally indicted the White House chief of staff for asking for a phone number. And they criminally indicted the former GOP state chairman for reserving a room. Understand what time it is and what they’re willing to do to you to keep their grip on power."
How apocalyptic is now? - "The Soviet state was believed — by the new government and its progressivist camp-followers in the West, if not by the majority of Russians — to be building a society that would be better than any that had existed before. Curiously, the collapse of the Soviet state was greeted in the West with an outbreak of apocalyptic optimism much like that which accompanied its foundation... In line with this thinking, a number of Right-wing foundations cancelled their international relations programmes on the ground that foreign and defence policy would no longer be needed. That a reversion to history as usual should be unthinkable testifies to the mind-numbing power of secular faith. While progressive ideologies are often divided into reformist and revolutionary varieties, the difference is not fundamental. Both rest on the faith that history is an accretive process in which meaning and value are conserved and increased. Actually history is repeatedly punctuated by discontinuities in which what was gained is irrecoverably lost."
Covid didn't change that much
"I'm a Barbie girl" again, but in the style of 6 classical composers 🎹 🎤 - Josep Castanyer Alonso - YouTube - " 00:06 In the style of Mozart
00:49 In the style of Beethoven
01:33 In the style of Schumann
02:35 In the style of Schubert
03:43 In the style of Chopin
05:02 In the style of Ravel"
Meme - "For $250.00 an hour I Will pose as a couples therapist & convince your loved one they are wrong about everything"
Meme - "sigh. I'm so starved for real human interaction...
I know!
One small pepperoni pizza, please. Delivery!"
*drone drops off pizza*
Meme - "A Life Time Gamer
Kid: *playing computer game to get #1. Father cheers him on and mother thinks he's smart"
Teen: *playing computer game to level up. Father is puzzled and mother says he should concentrate on his studies*
Adult: *playing computer game to get #1 rank. Father is dead and old mother brings him food and drink and tells him to get a job*
Older adult: *playing computer game to get #1 Father is dead, with portrait hanging crookedly, even older mother is slumped over in a wheelchair and place is dirty*
I'm a Winner , I'm the Best."
Meme - "The sunset was beautiful tonight"
*red, white and blue*
"Is this what American sky's look like?"
"Yes"
Meme - "Glory Hole Attendant
Open Lot - Las Vegas, NV 89103
Cash pay - Lots of tips - Free meals"
Meme - "States with the most talking during movies
Decibels"
"It's true, we southerners have a hard time shutting up. I'll own it"
"That's not a map of southerners..."
This is USA 2000 black density.png
The REAL Little Mermaid was their surprise wedding singer. - YouTube - "Jodi Benson, the voice of The Little Mermaid appeared at her first non-family wedding to sing "Part of Your World.""
She did it for free too
Meme - Breeke Lo: "Last time Ah Boy's teacher always say.. "You all very lucky born in Singapore, children in China or India can't even afford a good education, so you all better study hard ok?" So Ah Boy study very hard. Today, Ah Boy's manager is from China and his CEO is from India."
Singapore MP Tin Pei Ling leaves Grab after seven months for 'external-facing' fintech role
Girl behind ‘Girl Explaining’ meme says she has a new boyfriend now - "The girl in the image is Denise “Denu” Sanchez, who told Know Your Meme that the photo is of her and her then-boyfriend at a club in Argentina. They have since broken up... But she wasn't actually explaining something to him. In fact, she told Know Your Meme, she was just trying to sing a cumbia song. The meme is a distant cousin of the “Bro Explaining” meme, which refers to a photo of a man in a Houston Astros shirt speaking to a blonde woman in a white tank, according to Know Your Meme... she said some have treated her like she's a “toxic girlfriend.” “It’s funny to see how people draw conclusions from a photo and think they know a lot about how you are!” she said. She said she hadn’t realized the image had resurfaced until recently. "Friends laugh a lot whenever I mention it," she said, "and they were surprised when I started to get famous.""
Slavery Old and New | Desiring God - "Many Christians, keenly aware of the evils of early modern slavery, have suggested that the slavery mentioned in the New Testament was far more humane than its American counterpart. Yet the historical data suggests that Greco-Roman slavery could be just as oppressive and abusive as the later system — and in some ways even more so."
Some Christians were insisting to me that the slaves mentioned in the New Testament were really servants, and not slaves, and they kept going on about mistranslation. Apparently almost all translators are wrong, and the historical context of the Roman world is irrelevant, because feelings
Why getting permission for air conditioners is so hard in Switzerland - "Geneva’s rules are among the strictest in Switzerland When applying for a permit to install a unit, you have to prove that you need temperature control in your house — for instance by submitting a medical certificate stating that your health condition requires it. Being comfortable in your own home is not a valid reason, as far as Geneva officials are concerned... Zurich is another canton with strict AC-related rules In order to save energy, the installation of conventional air conditioning systems is generally banned. Local ordinance requires all applicants for authorisation to prove that the air conditioner is particularly energy-efficient. Because this was not the case, the city of Zurich refused to grant permission to an elderly care facility to temporarily run their older AC model during a heatwave in 2018. Rules in some other cantons are a bit laxer, requiring, as is the case in Vaud, to cover 50 percent of AC’s electricity consumption with renewable energy sources."
Geneva’s strict rules boost sales of most polluting air conditioners - "Other cantons require air conditioners to be powered by solar panels. This increases the upfront cost for anyone without solar panels, putting them out of reach of many home owners. Given the restrictions and administrative hurdles to install an inbuilt air conditioning solution, people are buying mobile units instead. Emrush Dermaku, a manager at an Interdiscount electronics store in the canton told RTS that sales of portable air conditioners were up 50% on last year. The problem with mobile air conditioners is their high ecological footprint. Because the whole device is placed inside, it heats and cools the room at the same time. One way to let the heat out is to place the back of the unit near an open window. However, this can let out much of the cold air coming out the other side, requiring the device to be run on higher power for longer. Florent Tempion, an air conditioning installer told RTS he receives up to 100 calls a day from people wanting to install air conditioning private homes. When people are told they can’t they don’t understand he said."
Americans Unseat Chinese as Top Foreign Homebuyers in Singapore - Bloomberg - "Americans replaced Chinese as the top foreign buyers of private apartments in Singapore, according to OrangeTee & Tie. Mainland Chinese have been the largest foreign buyer group in the Asian hub since 2016, accelerated by an influx of wealth into the city-state during the pandemic. To keep a lid on prices, the government doubled stamp duties for foreign buyers to 60% — the highest among major markets — and also raised levies for buyers of second homes in late April. Property buyers of certain nationalities including the US, however, are exempt from such tax hikes. They’re given the same stamp duty treatment as Singaporeans due to respective free trade agreements"
Why Is “Moral Grandstanding” Even Supposed to Be a Thing? - "grandstanding is about using “moral talk to dominate others”. So, virtue signaling is about fitting in, while moral grandstanding is about taking over... “hypocrisy” has been the defining sin of modernity. We explain away other sins, Judith Shklar argued, but “not hypocrisy, which alone is now inexcusable.” But why should that be? Especially, if it’s true, as the cases above suggest that, at least sometimes, it’s better to be a hypocrite than not? Consider what John Rawls calls the “fact of reasonable pluralism.”... Hypocrisy becomes the defining vice where pluralism is pervasive because authenticity becomes the only universal virtue. But the truth is, you don’t get very far criticizing people for not living up to the standards they profess. First of all, we are all hypocrites sometimes. And it’s a good thing too. I pontificate on the virtues of swimming for exercise and tell people I swim a mile a day – even during the times when I actually do not. I talk a lot about the injustice of economic inequality – including to students in my classes. But I have done almost nothing concrete to address the issue in real life. But I think it’s still better to profess these views, and have these aspirational standards and fail to meet them, than not to have any standards at all – or not talk about them unless you always live up them. Arguably, people who have higher standards are apt to always be the biggest hypocrites, since they leave themselves more room to fail. Anyway, as Kant said, “Every action is a new beginning.” One may always yet succeed. Secondly, the important question behind the question of people living up to the standards they profess is what the standards should be. If you profess to be a “effective altruist”, a socialist, a libertarian, or a Methodist, why should I care the most about, for example, how well you really followed the effective altruist strategy of maximizing your income potential so you can give more away? I care more about questions of economic justice and what to do about economic injustice and, yes, even what your view of economic justice is – much, much more than I care about whether you are living up to your own professed ideals in regard to economic justice."
Azerbaijan military assistance waiver delayed as review drags on - "The Biden administration appears to be slow-walking the renewal of a long-standing military assistance program to Azerbaijan amid growing warnings of ethnic cleansing in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh."
Chris Selley: Democracy dies behind Ottawa's veil of secrecy - "The past 20 years in the media business has been characterized by all manner of wrenching upheaval and existential dread, but one thing has remained constant: The federal government’s endless communications bureaucracy stands relentlessly athwart most any attempt by journalists to extract information from it. No matter how banal the inquiry, the access-to-information (ATI) machine is capable of astonishing feats of redaction... Parliamentarians themselves are facing the same problem... I counted 32 people contributing to or copied on various interminable email chains discussing how the ministry should respond other than with facts. Reporters have seen these chains many times before, in which a platoon of well-paid and presumably intelligent human beings spends days on end failing to deliver boilerplate nonsense, never mind on deadline. (The response to an ATI request about how the government handled your previous ATI request is often far more interesting and informative than the response to your original request.) There’s no excuse for that. But as swollen as our heads might sometimes be, journalists aren’t MPs. It’s still striking to see the bureaucracy and a minister’s office collaborating so earnestly to thwart an elected official’s perfectly banal inquiries... Global Affairs funds various Canadian cultural activities overseas — art exhibits, music recitals, etc. — through what it calls the Mission Cultural Fund, which the Liberals seem to fancy as an arm of our reputed “soft-power” influence worldewide. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation discovered that such funding had gone toward a show titled “All the Sex I’ve Ever Had,” in which (per Postmedia’s report) “a select group of seniors recounted their sexual experiences, including their ‘first time, best time, worst time and last time’.” Other funding recipients have included Canadian artist and musician Peaches, for a sex-toy-themed multimedia exhibit in Hamburg titled, “Whose Jizz Is This?” Rempel-Garner again had some very specific, very basic questions for the Global Affairs Department. For example, “what are the details of all spending from this fund, broken down by month … for each initiative funded?” The response: “The department concluded that producing and validating a comprehensive response to this question would require a collection of information that is not possible in the time allotted.” There’s no spreadsheet of this program’s expenditures? No one scrawled them on a notepad? The ministry really can’t add up the figures … given a month and a half? True or not, something is seriously amiss."
Government funding only provides an imprimatur when liberals disapprove of the project, like modern fairy tales
At NYU, Students Were Failing Organic Chemistry. Whose Fault Was It? - The New York Times - "In the field of organic chemistry, Maitland Jones Jr. has a storied reputation. He taught the subject for decades, first at Princeton and then at New York University, and wrote an influential textbook. He received awards for his teaching, as well as recognition as one of N.Y.U.’s coolest professors. But last spring, as the campus emerged from pandemic restrictions, 82 of his 350 students signed a petition against him. Students said the high-stakes course — notorious for ending many a dream of medical school — was too hard, blaming Dr. Jones for their poor test scores. The professor defended his standards. But just before the start of the fall semester, university deans terminated Dr. Jones’s contract."
When doctors become incompetent, the excuses will be plentiful
Rapists above 50 exempted from caning: Any change to law needs ‘serious debate’, chemical castration an option, say lawyers - "Changing a law that exempts male rapists above the age of 50 from being caned may not adequately deter these culprits from targeting children, some lawyers said. One proposed that it may be better to explore having chemical castration as a sentencing option for rapists, while another voiced concerns about health safety measures should men above 50 be caned. They were responding to TODAY regarding President Halimah Yacob’s suggestion on Monday about this matter, saying that her intentions may be good but there are considerations to be made... if the law is changed to allow for caning of male rapists above 50, it could possibly lead to a “slippery slope” situation of people seeking similar changes to Section 325’s provisions to further other punish offenders, such as those facing the death sentence. Mr Peter Ong, managing director of Peter Ong Law Corporation, said that many offences are committed without the realisation of their consequences until it is too late. “Caning may be a (form of) retribution, but not a deterrent.” He also said that raising penalties for various offences have not always led to the desired outcome of preventing the crimes from happening. For instance, changes to the Penal Code were passed in Parliament on Sept 13 last year to increase the maximum penalties for three types of sexual offences, including outrage of modesty. Yet, police crime data released in August this year showed that cases of molestation rose to 773 in the first half of this year, up from 739 cases in the same period last year."
When you don't understand the role of the President
Man-made chemicals blamed as many more girls than boys are born in Arctic - "Twice as many girls as boys are being born in some Arctic villages because of high levels of man-made chemicals in the blood of pregnant women, according to scientists from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (Amap). The scientists, who say the findings could explain the recent excess of girl babies across much of the northern hemisphere, are widening their investigation across the most acutely affected communities in Russia, Greenland and Canada to try to discover the size of the imbalance in Inuit communities of the far north."
From 2007
Bernard Montgomery - Wikipedia - "In 1925, in his first known courtship of a woman, Montgomery, then in his late thirties, proposed to a 17-year-old girl, Betty Anderson. His approach included drawing diagrams in the sand of how he would deploy his tanks and infantry in a future war, a contingency which seemed very remote at that time. She respected his ambition and single-mindedness but declined his proposal of marriage"