Observations - 5th March 2022

Some people got upset when I asked if a guy fucking a FTM is gay

It looks like they think that it is gay for a man to fuck both a MTF and a FTM. Presumably that would apply the other way around too - it is gay for a woman to fuck both a MTF and a FTM

So straightness is presumably defined as fucking someone of the other sex who also identifies as the other sex

But then, I'm sure if the FTM stops identifying as a guy, they will still think it's gay to fuck it

So gender norms almost surely come into it too

As a friend commented, don't fuck flat girls unless they are very pretty, or you'll feel gay

 

Since many Americans love Imperial units so much and claim units divisible by 12 or 16 are superior to those divisible by 10 (i.e. metric), they should abandon base 10 for all their numbers and move to base 12 or 16

"In the end, I think the terrorists have won.They have driven Americans so mad with fear that they have effectively destroyed themselves. The US of 2001 has long ago ceased to exist. It is not recognisable today."

Whoever came up with the date format YYYY-DD-MM needs to be spanked

I drove around Northern Upstate New York for a few hours. The roads were Malaysian quality. Actually, Penang had better roads. Their excuse will be that harsh weather destroys the roads, but Canadian roads are of much better quality, and Californian roads are bad too

China-related topics probably make many ethnic Chinese emotional in a way that other political topics don't, because it touches on their identity. A deeper complication might be why the Chinese Communist Party is identified with, rather than a more abstract notion of Chineseness and/or China. This might have something to do with the conflation between Party, State and Nation (which has parallels in Singapore) and says something about the lack of modernity in Chinese political thought (or at least not modernity in the Western sense)

If you pay politicians poorly, most politicians will be rich people

With traditional religions you know there's little or no point arguing with people, and people have been socialised to backoff when it comes to the touchy topic of religion (with politics and sex, the issue is just of them being contentious - in principle one is thought to be able to change one's mind about the former, and in the latter discomfort or offence doesn't typically result from disagreement but being obscene). But with secular religions it's harder to realise you're bumping up against faith positions and threatening people's identities, so things can get a lot more fraught
 

 

"Hitler wasn't a white supremacist. He was a Nordic supremacist who believed that white Slavic peoples were subhuman"

"Many of the most enthusiastic opponents of Jews are leftist Jews, especially those seeking attention by trashing Jews “as a Jew.” Gilad Atzmon, Norm Finkelstein, Peter Beinart, the list goes on and on...
The biggest misconception that alt-right has about Jews is that they want borders “for thee but not for me (israel)”. What they simply don’t understand is that leftist Jews also oppose Israel, and many want a one-state solution turning Israel into the 24th ar*b m*slim country in the ME."

"They say liberals love humanity but hate humans. Conservatives hate humanity but love humans." 

 

"Some of our leaders and the media (looking at you, Vox) have peddled this notion that fear of Islamic terrorism is akin to fear of shark attacks - highly irrational and just an exercise in hysterics.

President Barack Obama has said that "terrorism takes far fewer lives in America than handguns, car accidents and falls in bathtubs," which is an attempt at rationalizing and calming the fears and anxiety of the nation. This game of statistical equivalence smacks of denial and is particularly concerning to me because of the failure to distinguish intent."

"I honestly think it will take a nuclear attack before these people take the threat seriously"

"Eventually a group of true believers will get a hold of a nuclear device, and such people will finally understand the world they live in and promptly shut the fuck up."

"I really don't think they will shut up; they will just mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I wish I was completely joking."

"the Nazis did everything they could to wipe Poland from the map as a political entity.

They didn't do this in Norway or Belgium, for example, where the Nazis at least maintained the basic machinery of a coherent state.

Poland on the other hand wasn't occupied so much as erased. And it's worth noting the Jews propotionately fared far worse in Eastern Europe, where the Nazis sought to eradicate those states, than they did in Western Europe.

A Belgian or French Jew was still nominally Belgian or French. A Polish Jew was literally an unperson."

 

Me: Well I guess A imagines that blocking me after grossly mischaracterising what I said proves that he won the argument

It's telling that his "mental health" is so fragile that someone pointing out his bad logic hurts it

B: It's always a sure sign your burn was sick. lol

Me: as [C] says, nowadays blocking a person says more about the blocker than the blockee 

"Indians are very good at complaining"

"i find tt they are very quick to pull out the "oppressed minority" card. i worked as a promoter, selling beer at a booth. some indians asked for extra free gifts while buying fewer products. when i refused, wat happened? im a racist, apparently  
i worked as a credit card promoter. one indian woman asked me the requirements so i just rattled off the list of documents. she was so offended she threatened to call the police on me. why? according to her, i had displeased her by not immediately assuming tt she alr held multiple credit cards   i noticed tt no other race wld ask for special treatment, not the chinese, not the angmohs, just the indians
and when they dun get special treatment, YOU are the racist  

they like to say "why? is it because im indian?"
idk how to reply"

Observations - 7th February 2022

"Back when I was a grad student in anthropology I ran into more than one prof who said it was imperialist blah-blah-blah to stamp out practices like sutee and thugee."

"Yesterday: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere!
Today: Injustice anywhere in the United States is a threat to justice everywhere!
Tomorrow: Don't talk about injustice anywhere, unless the United States can be blamed for it."

"I was born in a time and place (Hungary, 1988) when in my country it mattered a great deal if people were of the right demographic or had the right political opinions. With the goal to address historical injustices - this time, the oppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie - a certain percentage of university students had to come from worker families and you could not get advance beyond a low-level position at a company or in a university department without being a Party member and obediently repeating all the talking points about the glorious successes of Communism and the coming defeat of the capitalist West. It didn't work well: 'affirmative action' hires were incompetent and the system favored psychopaths and con-men who could stick to the script over genuine talent. I don't wish a similar system for America because I fell in love with that country but it looks like things are headed there."

"African-Americans are really nasty to more recent immigrants that don’t think America is a fundamentally racist country or that racism keeps them from where they want to go.
I dated a girl from Haiti years ago and asked her if she had experienced racism. She said she had experienced a little bit, and sure, it wasn’t nice, but it wasn’t in anyway something that kept her from living her life as she wanted or doing things she wanted to do. She told me she experienced far more hostility from American black people, who would get pissed at her because she had no problem having white friends or dating white people and not having the kind of anger she is required to have 24/7. She just wanted to be a normal person and live her life and for a lot of activists that’s unacceptable."

Liberals keep bitching about how school vouchers violate the separation of church and state (one even claimed that churches should not accept food stamps as that's also a violation - I told her to go and sue because many do). There is a very simple way to solve the church and state "problem" with school vouchers. Give all parents a $6,000/year tax credit but charge $6,000/year for all public schools

"Reddit banning any right-wing top subreddits over past 5 years made it such a useless news aggregator for politics. You cannot even see both sides even if u wanted on reddit. If you lived through the days when the bans hit, the excuses were the filmsiest ever, some excuses about promoting violence when there was no such thing."

"With moderation, message boards are left-leaning Reddit.
Without moderation, message boards are right-leaning. 4chan."

"White liberals: "Abolish whiteness!"
Everyone else: "Are you going to kill yourself? Because you're white."
White liberals: "Hahaha, you're stupid!"
I've seen white liberals in person say out loud that they want to "ban white people".
But they never kill themselves."

 

"With a boy you have one penis to watch out. With a girl, you have a whole street of penises to watch out."

"Isn't Grease just a musical about how a girl needs to change herself and become sexualized in order to get the guy she wants?"

"the word “incel” is on the same tier as “boomer” at this point, people only use them when they have no better argument"

"my ex once told me that I shouldn't corner female opponents in debate by constructing watertight cases
because when most women post an opinion on anything they are really looking for social affirmation, not a discussion or exploration of the topic"

Apparently many guys go into meetup groups and message many of the girls in there. So organisers can create fake honeypot accounts to identify these guys and ban them

 

"my friend's bro did ATEC as Armour Infantry under a female OC

their unit was massacred after she marched them into a minefield- bro said
she cried at the AAR.

can't said that gave the men a lot of confidence in her abilities.

The whole incident really wasn't the picture the SAF had in mind for their female recruitment ads"

Observations - 21st October 2020

"None of what you just said is accurate" followed by a block seems to be code for "I can't refute any of what you said so I shall eliminate this cognitive dissonance" 

If you tell people they're wrong, they get annoyed
But if you show people they're wrong, they get really pissed off 

So people don't like it when you analyse their Facebook posts and show them that they've been predominantly posting about a topic and so are verifiably obsessed about it
 

"Looking for hotels in India is the first time I've ever sorted price from high to low." 

"typical Asian parents
Not saying parents like that don't exist in most angmoh countries
They do exist, but in these angmoh countries they are known as "controlling" and "narcissists"
In Asian countries they are just normal parents" 

It seems that "mental health" has metastasised to the point that anything one doesn't like hurts one's "mental health"

Shouldn't those against fluoridated (or even lithium-ed) water be against chlorinated water too?

Wondering if people who demand that employers accept that most jobs can be done from home realise that jobs that can be done from home can also be done abroad in a third world country. So they're asking for their jobs to be offshored

 

One of the few advantages about the coronavirus hysteria (with people fantasising about a >20% fatality rate and stocking up 4-6 months of supplies) was that people have (mostly) stopped hyperventilating about how climate change will kill us all. Of course there's always the next moral panic (or going back to old ones)...

One climate change hystericist claimed to me that we should ignore economics in the quest to end climate change because profit considerations meant business had been ignoring the environment. Besides echoing the perversity here of refusing the most effective way of solving the putative problem, it was also incoherent (since the relationship is tenuous at best)

 
"Pedos" are to the right what "bigots" are to the left - an excuse for virtue signalling

The same people who want to abolish the electoral college in the US proclaiming that "land doesn't vote" also think that Brexit was an outrage because England voted leave against the wishes of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Addendum: They also claim that referenda are the tools of dictators and rail againt "populism", all while asserting that all votes need to have equal power. Principles don't matter. Only power

Amused that the same people who mock businesses for not having 6 months of cash flow in cash seem to be the same ones who condemn cash hoarding. Also they assume (re)starting a business is as easy as finding a new job. Doubtless they have never tried the former

Observations - 15th December 2019

"When I bake bread, I give thousands of yeast organisms false hope by feeding them sugar, before ruthlessly baking them to death in an oven and eating their corpses."

"It must be seriously alarming for cut guys to realize that their dick still stinks if it isn't washed."

The original whataboutism was chiding someone for looking at the speck in his brother's eye, but not the log in his own

It is curious that those who insist we should listen to scientists that climate change is a serious threat don't listen to them on climate change being more serious a problem than plastics. Or indeed, on GMOs, nuclear and fracking.

First they came for our plastic bags
Now they've come for our straws
Next they'll come for our utensils
What will follow that? Eventually we'll be lugging around our whole houses just to save companies money (disguised as environmentalism)


""I had a super liberal kumbaya brotherhood of all men friend that went to South America and came back super LKY style conservative.
he got wacked on the head from behind and then went back to his hotel room to find out that all his stuff was cleaned out. Then he found out his credit cards were all maxed out as well.
The police shrugged and told him it was unwise to be travelling as a lone asian dude in that area."

"Saying people "let" bedbugs bite is a form of victimblaming."

"calling illegal immigrants undocumented is like calling drug dealers unlicensed pharmacists."


"Gahmen keeps close tabs on all opposition related matters
and even Amos Yee
when Amos' asylum was approved, it was labeleld as "negative news"
on the Gahmen intranet
called "media watch"
they also keep track of Triple H, Roy, etc."

Maybe many Singaporeans talk about "denouncing" Singaporean citizenship when they mean renouncing it because it's a Freudian slip


Why don't the people who get upset at having to pay for other people's healthcare get upset at having to pay for other people's security? Many of the same arguments apply: personal responsibility (you can buy a gun and defend yourself), moral hazard (you can choose not to go to or live in a bad neighbourhood), taxation being theft/extortion etc

Telling people to go home if they hate your freedoms doesn't work if they make up a non-negligible part of your population. Not least since they can also move to subvert those freedoms for everyone else

Observations - 5th June 2019

"There used to be an old lady who sold tissue in tampines mrt in the mornings

She usually came with her husband and maid in tow

They would sit a distance away

Then she started coming on a wheelchair. Now never come liao

She managed to 'con' strangers' sympathy.

Once when her husband and maid didn't accompany her, I saw one zehzeh had bought food for her and was feeding her some more!"

***

"I wish they would ban satirical sites because they can spread fake news in the name of satire, with impunity."
Ahh, Singaporeans!

For some reason, Singapore is blocking more and more types of websites - not just porn, with one religious (Chick) and one drug (Marijuana) website. For example, last I checked William Hill and Paddy Power (online betting/gambling) were blocked.

Facebook's badge indicating a group administrator is important. Because if you call one out on his bullshit, he might boot you from the group

Google, Yahoo Singapore and Yahoo have very different hits when you search "sweet cat" HMM


If bodily autonomy is such a sacred principle why are seat belts compulsory?

Ironically most of the people supporting mandatory vaccination would also support abortion rights based on the right to bodily autonomy

Claiming that Western values are universal values is a subtle form of ethnocentrism

If you buy play tickets without reading the description and then get triggered by the play, you're an idiot

Wondering why the incels who are misogynists and hate strong female characters so much don't have a problem with Game of Thrones

"feminist schoolmate of mine would do a lot of projects about female empowerment and also post angsty Fb posts about how she was trying to do some heavy lifting and two guys (complete strangers) didn't offer their help
note that she didn't ask for any help, and she explicitly stated that they didn't help her despite being male."

***

BBC: Best of Today: Friday's business with Joe Lynam, 12 February 2016

Interview with Jenny Campbell, Chief Executive of YourCash:

'Women make other choices about their ambitions and their preferences and so on, but I also think there is an element of women probably as they get into more senior roles not negotiating quite as hard as the men'

'They don't lean in'

'They don't lean in in my view. So if I'm interviewing a man and a woman for the same job and there's a range, a pay range on that job, the man will automatically assume he can get the top number. Whereas the lady will often, I'll say, negotiate for some of the softer parts of the package like flexibility on holidays etc'

***

"If one can cite specific incidents as evidence that "Colonization was Evil" once can also cite specific incidents (Shaka Zulu virtually exterminating the population of Ndwandweland) and conclude that LACK of colonization was Evil. That is, you cannot taint a very broad historical pattern by citing a few events. Those events WERE bad, but to conclude that they were caused solely by colonization is like concluding that World War II, and the Holocaust, were caused by Industrialization. The fact is, in
Africa, like every where else, war and conquest go back a long way- when you see in a history book that such -and-such kingdom existed between 900 and 1200 AD, what do you think ended it? What ended, for example, Great Zimbabwe?

War and conquest was endemic and historic on the continent, just like the others. The only difference colonization brought was white skinned people to add to the complexity.

Here's a thought: the Bantu people originated in what is now Nigeria. Now they are dominant in South Africa. Are they colonists, too? Were they, when they destroyed the Khoikhoi culture in what is now Botswana? Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Should we blame the Bantu for doing it?"

***

"local influenza that went from ordinary teen to crazy overtatted girl with blank expression, probably from too much hard partying and hookupswhat's remarkable about this account is that you can follow the transition from normal to overpartied"


"Gender Myopia – The condition of being so narrowly focused on what your gender is attracted to, you are completely blinded to the realities of what the other gender is attracted to. You think the other gender wants exactly what you want, which they don’t.

Example of male gender myopia: Men sending women pictures of their penises in order to turn them on.

Example of female gender myopia: Women bragging about how “sassy” or “tough” or “independent” they are in order to attract men."

Observations - 17th April 2019

"Behind every successful man there is a woman. Because women don't follow unsuccessful men"

If men shouldn't be upset if their supposed child isn't related to them (i.e. cucking), why should women be upset if the hospital hands them the wrong baby?


So apparently some white people in Singapore feel there's double standards because anything they do, they'll get STOMPed, and they get shouted at more. The former is almost certainly true

Amused that in Singapore you can't let mentally defective women have sex with men they're not married to ("Permitting mental defective to use premises for sexual penetration")

The bar for being an unsung hero in Singapore seems much lower than in the rest of the world, which is why road sweepers and hawkers qualify


Meritocracy is the worst form of rewarding people except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time

The heretic is more dangerous than the infidel because he has glimpsed The Truth but still refuses to follow it; at least the infidel's transgressions can be charted up to ignorance.

"When I was in uni had a shared network with a guys college
I've seen some well organized shit
There was one guy super systematic.
1 dick 1 hole. 2 dicks 1 hole, etc etc"


"I'm not sure why you enjoy putting out the names of several books and articles. If you can't bring forth the author's argument on your own and into the context of the discussion, you can't possibly expect the other person to read the entire book then come back to the argument at hand."

Great minds discuss ideas; small minds dismiss facts that come from people or sources they dislike


Amused that the APAC recruitment head of a major tech MNC says Malaysia is the hardest place in SEA to recruit. And they need training on PowerPoint and writing emails

"Actually the religious authorities in malaysia can only raid budget hotels because they have no power to raid 3 star etc hotels"

Observations - 13th March 2019

Amused that Visa, Mastercard & JCB charge a certain merchant 4% but American Express only does 1.5%

Apparently River Valley high made students who were dating break up
(Friend from RV: "I don't know about "make" but I heard during my time the disciplinary mistress had called up the parents of two of my ex-classmates
(I was in a different sec 3 class by then) who were dating, to check if the parents knew and approved of their relationship. And both sides were aware and ok with it so no further action was taken, I believe.
my memory is fuzzy and it could be that the disciplinary mistress did try to break them up but ended up with calling parents to rally support for ending the relationship)"

"Star Wars and Star Trek universes collide and stormtroopers are facing a bunch of red shirts. They start firing at each other immmediately, and as usual stormtroopers can't hit anything, but the red shirts collapse and die anyway."

Intrigued by a virtue ethics argument against animal cruelty (that animal cruelty is not wrong because of animal suffering but because cruelty makes you a bad person). But then that would also apply to violent video games and BDSM

"Dad reports that CNY songs are a Northern thing as he doesn't recall any Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hainanese, or Hakka songs from his childhood in the 30s and 40s."

If child porn makes people abuse children, do snuff films make people murder?

"Telling someone they can't be sad because others have it worse is like saying someone can't be happy because others have it better."

"When I was in school I came across an old science textbook from the 80s. I read in it that the scientific consensus was we were going to run out of oil by the year 2000. Lol."

I thought the UK's conditions to retain permanent residence were lax - visiting the country every 2 years. But New Zealand's PR never expires even if you haven't visited the country in forever

"The more you try to justify yourself to people like that, the more it acknowledges that they have the right to question you. It shows you think they get to be your inquisitor, and once you grant someone that sort of power over you, they just push more and more." - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality / Eliezer Yudkowsky

"I think a loss of 'neighborliness' is mostly a good thing. Having a society with excessive cohesion is repressive."
Ahh libertarians. Then again, this explains a lot about their fetish for market fundamentalism

Ironic that Adaware, which is supposed to be "the Internet's security and privacy leader", hijacks my browser and makes itself my default search engine and changes my new tab page - just like malware


How do you distinguish a genuine call for discussion or explanation from an invitation to virtue signal?

"Their favourite thing to do is post images of people holding tiki torches at Charlottesville, not actually doing anything wrong, while saying Antifa is justified."

"The message sent by recalling someone for one too lenient sentence while no judges ever get recalled for handing out 30 year sentences like Halloween candy is apparently something California voters refused to consider" - @notwokieleaks on Twitter on the Aaron Persky (Brock Turner judge) recall

Why were so many people were so upset about Trump's "Gag Order" on the EPA when many other democracies don't allow government employees to communicate directly with the public about their work? (Ireland, Australia, Canada)

"I like the annoy feminists by saying I make it a point not to explain anything to women just in case kenna mansplaining
Reality can explain things to them better when shit goes wrong"
"There was a meme going around, where a feminist asked a guy to explain what is mansplaining"

Observations - 8th November 2018

Maybe people are religious about their diets because they are hard so they need religious zeal to sustain them

"People used to curse taxi drivers and companies and praise Grab and Uber
Now they curse Grab and praise... taxi companies
Market competition!"
"It IS the lesser of two evils. Especially with Grab, they can just ban you from using the app without giving you proper reasons. And if you have GrabPay unused credits, they can forfeit it."
"my recent uber driver who is forced to go onto grab says that uber drivers and passengers are more civil towards each other than grab ones :S
he said it's because uber charges passengers if they cancel or MIA and this puts the onus on them to wait for the drivers who will usually return the courtesy... and that grab passengers are usually late which causes the drivers to give angry calls to the passengers who then turn up in a foul mood so it's a vicious cycle"

"Beauty fades, dumb is forever"

If a news story came out reporting that a study concluded that fire could be useful in the development of civilisation, there would be people indignantly condemning it in the comments and talking about how fire killed 10 kids the previous week


"those of my friends who have gone to work in chinese companies/ take the chinese govt grants etc have always ended up having to push the PRC agendas
i can't recall any exceptions...
basically writing all sorts of articles to say which China is correct, why what they advocate is correct etc etc"

"[China is] finalising the research which shows that Zheng He reached USA
before Columbus
Guess who is gonna kena claimed..."

"China has not been completely successful in its efforts to support science over mythology. But it has been successful in reducing the influence of religion at the national policy level – that is a real triumph"
When you hate religion so much you promote human rights violations


So if you use an iPhone, when you're overseas your phone may incur data roaming charges even if data is disabled because of automatic VoLTE connections. No wonder it's a phone for rich people

Modern version of fengshui: Finding and eliminating wireless dead zones


If someone tells me not to buy him a present and I do so anyway, technically I am violating his consent

"I am becoming increasingly sceptical of rape claims
Thanks in part to my female friends that said they were raped
Your instinct is to believe them, but as time goes on and the more details they add to their story you get the impression that a lot of things are not kosher about the truthfulness of their narrative
It also starts to come off as them trying to convince themselves they were victimised
i think there is only one case in which i came across where the female was victimised. the other cases I had fell apart when critically examined. if anything it seems to be good material for a study into how women may actually be instinctively using victimisation as a tool of male manipulation. it stands to reason that women descended from ancestors that were good at the art of male manipulation"

"One can speculate why- but women have a drive to invade male spaces and control them... it is a constant sore point for feminists that while women make up most of consumers in society it is the enterprises started and run by men that generate the most value
Creating enterprises from the ground up is too difficult for feminists- so the natural drive is to invade, co-opt and control already successful enterprises run by men
Be it demanding top companies promote women to their board, lowering standards for women in the military and fire service, or taking successful male-oriented cultural franchises and destroying them to get women on board"

"Stop being offended by what someone said to you, by that Facebook post, by a piece of art, by people displaying their affection. Be offended by WAR, POVERTY, INJUSTICE."


"The difference between being romantic and being creepy depends on how attractive you are"

I would pay money to see what happens when undesirable women throw themselves at incels

"I think relationship should be like Nintendo 64-Classic, fun to spend hours with, and every issue easily fixed by blowing on it then shoving it back in."

"sex work is the only activity where hiring a professional is considered wrong and is often illegal"

"aiyah after awhile u realise PMS = pre, present and post
ie. perpetual"

"I spent my whole life trying not to be careless. Women and children can afford to be careless, but not men"

"A woman's loyalty is tested when her man has nothing. A man's loyalty is tested when he has everything"

"I once had a chat with prostitute who was fishing for business at a karaoke place and she told me not to feel sorry for women in their profession as they are very clear about their motivations. It was always about easy money, and no other job pays better. And don't be moved by their sob stories because it was just a sales tactic to increase your generosity."

Observations - 6th October 2018

"Join the military.
See the world.
Kill people."

"a HR manager [commented] about how Singaporeans need to stop "killing one another", and he gave the analogy of how certain nationalities would celebrate their people who are 97% competent and put them up for promotion, but his Singaporean teams would say that the 97% competent is still lacking 3% and not ready for promotion."

“I've been married for over 20 years, and my Japanese wife still freaks out about my gaijin nose at least once a week"


"If Arabs had to choose between two states, secular and religious, they would vote for religious and flee to secular." - Ali Al Wardi

Mizan Nayan @amizannayan: Islam was introduced to move Arab from tribalism, but Arab tribalism has conquered Islam. - Dr. Eyad Serraj.

"In Sunni Islam, female circumcision is mandatory in the Shafi'i mazhab and encouraged in the other mazhabs. This is because the Prophet's family practised it. So it has a basis in the Sunnah."

"Muslims who wish to convert from Islam face severe obstacles"
"Hence the agony in mat rockers' voices as they belt out: "you can check out anytime but you can never leave"."


The problem with people who have "funny" fake names on Facebook is that when you want to find them it's a pain

"I think a better title for this article would be "two dickheads had an argument on social media and for some reason we need you all to care about this""

To get around the minimum fee on microtransactions problem (which is why they want to charge us $5 for a month rather than $0.05 per article), media sites should offer packages - e.g. 30 articles for $3

MMORPG: Many Men Online Role Playing as Girls

If your app won't stop harassing me till I write a review with no way to dismiss the nag permanently I'm giving it a one star rating


"Even spagetti is straight until hot amd wet"

"Has the National Council of Churches made a statement about the adulterous @STcom scandal yet?"
"Maybe when there is a yearly parade at Hong Lim Park called Scarlet Dot celebrating adultery under the freedom to love outside of mono-normative constraints they might."

"Transgendered people want to be accepted for who they are, yet they weren't able to accept themselves for who they were?"

Claiming Christians who have opinions on public policy are just hiding their dominionist views is like accusing secular Muslims of taqqiya whenever they denounce Islamism

"I used to talk to older generations of Chinese about SJWs in the West.
They would say to me, "Yeah, yeah.. We heard it all before, privilege, oppressor class, victim class, identity struggle, self crit sessions, class struggle theory whatever.. Those white kids sound like lamer versions of the Red Guards. You heard of the Red Guards?"

"Once you please one group, you have to please everyone."

Observations - 7th September 2018

Technically, 'For the many, not the few' is anti-minorities.

When westerners go to other countries they're told to dress in culturally appropriate/sensitive ways. When non westerners go to Western countries it's culturally appropriate/sensitive for them to wear whatever they want.


Amused that Singaporean women complain so much about paying a bit more in Careshield premiums to support other women, but the men do NS to protect Singaporean women, and mostly don't complain about the sexism. This says something about how the sexes approach entitlements

Feminists champion the rights of underaged girls to have abortions without letting their parents know. But if underaged girls have the capacity to consent to an abortion, why can't they consent to things like sex and female genital cutting (setting aside the fact that many feminists don't even think adult women have the capacity to consent to female genital cutting). Hormone blockers are another example


"Sometimes you tell lies, sometimes you tell the truth. No one knows when you're lying. In real life this is the way you run a business"

So apparently the reason why people stay in Sales once they join the line is their spending habits grow to meet the salary, and they can't sustain their lifestyles in a non-Sales position

If finding a way to increase productivity is rewarded by slashing headcount, what is the incentive to increase productivity?

"Do what you love and you'll work super fucking hard all the time with no separation or any boundaries and also take everything extremely personally"

"it is easier to "prove" saving costs than it is to measure productivity losses."


What if companies deliberately coded their websites to only work in IE to prevent employees using unauthorised browsers?

Aggressive enforcement of geographical restrictions on streaming just means that people will pirate content instead

Main reason people write down passwords: password policies making you use one you can't remember, and change it every 3 months

99% of coupons on coupon sites just redirect you to the merchant. It's a scam!

If a system blocks you from reusing old passwords, doesn't that mean it stores old passwords and thus is even more of a security risk since if it's hacked you lose even more sensitive information?

Given how many sites now detect adblockers and nag you, is there any reason to continue using one?

IT Best Practice: Replacing an old but functional system with a new, graphical one that is slower, blockier, has sexy - but useless - features and less essential functionality


Racial harmony in Singapore is mocking your presidents as the prata man, Colonel Sanders and the Milo auntie

So apparently Singapore can take away your permanent residency even if you live in the country if you don't earn enough (as long as you leave, no matter how temporarily)

"when PMDs are on roads, LTA polices like hawks before any accidents happen; when PMDs wreak havoc on pavements, wait for pedestrians to get seriously injured before following up."

The fact that Singapore has gun nuts despite no gun culture or history shows how thoroughly it has imported the US culture wars

"Human rights [in Singapore] are about every 5 presidents there must at least be one from a minority race."

"Singapore is actually a very good case study on fluoridation- 100% of population for 50 years
Any pattern will be somewhat obvious by now."
"The effects are obvious. A subservient population"

Why, when it comes to business costs in Singapore, does the government always harp about wages but not rent?


"regarding the whole drama about racist landlords, when my wife then girlfriend was renting a room, it turned out even her indian landlord preferred to rent to Chinese folks because of problems with her own race.

some prayer rituals and incense in the house
bringing undesirable visitors"

Observations - 4th August 2018

"I'm glad I grew up in the 80's, where we learned to fight back against bullies. A story with no villains has no heroes."

The Texas Revolution is a cautionary tale of open borders and uncontrolled migration - when it was Americans who were rushing to settle in Mexico, not vice versa (see also: Dilemma: The Syrian Refugees are just like the Pilgrims / The Pilgrims were genocidal religious extremists)

Who checks the bias of the ones checking bias?

It is interesting that 20 years ago Ahmed Best got a lot of flak over his portrayal of Jar Jar Binks, just as Kelly Marie Tran is today. But the narrative framework being used to understand the former and the one being used for the latter are very different

Whataboutism used to be called pointing out hypocrisy (and considered a good thing).

"I find that view pathetic in many ways, but I do have to admit that I think Nietzsche's famous "God is Dead!" passage does strike me as an accurate description of *why* identity is becoming the central force in modern politics. The gods have been destroyed by the enlightenment, and people are looking for something "real" to believe in. In that sense, identity has a leg up over abstract commitments like classical liberalism or humanism. Ultimately, I think the benefits of liberalism are also real, but they are separated from direct observable reality by a series of logical steps. Whereas, "I'm black, and you're white" has a reality that is right at the surface"


"So a depressed person genuinely believes he's worthless. Is it appropriate to call him worthless in accordance with how he perceives himself?"

[On intersex people 'proving' that sex isn't binary] "Genetic defects are what you are arguing to be treated as the norm and in turn you are arguing to justify permanent physical changes to one's body in encouragement of a psychological dysphoria."
"Would you let a minor get a nose job, liposuction, or a boob job if they are suicidal due to a negative body image?"


"If it's unofficial, it's hazing or ragging. If it's sanctioned, it's team-bonding, resilience-building, being a sport, mandatory OBS or conscription."

"Strangely for a country which professes to hate state control, Americans prefer the interventionist traffic light to the natural minarchism and self-regulation of the mini-roundabout"

"Wakes are purposeful. They serve to comfort the living that have been left behind. They celebrate the life of the person who has passed and band together the living so they can support each other through the loss. Weddings, on the other hand. Entirely pointless. They're basically a very expensive announcement to the world that the couple can now do the nasty with social approval."

Maybe the American predilection for, in drama, endangering the world in order to save just one person is linked to their culture's exalting individualism

So Yogalingam is a real name. So is Gaylord, but the risque meaning of gay is quite recent, while Lingam has been associated with the penis for 5 millennia

"A car is really one of the underappreciated heroes of modern child rearing. It's a self propelled, all in one diaper changing station, rain shelter, noise insulator, stroller carrier, breastfeeding cover, extra clothes / supplies carrier and white noise generator. Oh, and it can serve as a cause of all that child rearing too."


"We have a proverb that essentially states in the land where a prophet (or imam) is martyred, that land will be cursed. And having prayed at the Tomb of Jesus Christ / the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and seeing where the crucifix was planted, I can see that this must be the only reason that Israel and Palestine continue this way 70 years later."

According to City Time Traveller 2's Intramuros (Manila) episode, one difference between Spanish and Dutch, British and Portuguese colonialism was that the latter were about economic exploitation but the Spanish were also about cultural transformation, including religion. Also Casa Manilla is cool because its base is stone and its top is wood

"I often wonder how History would have viewed the USA if we had the bomb but not used it. “You had the capability to end the war, a war which killed hundreds of thousands of allied forces and millions of Japanese civilians, a war that left Japan fragmented and half under occupation by the Soviet Union, yet you failed to use it""

Observations - 16th June 2018

"There has now been created a world in which the success of others is a grievance, rather than an example." - Thomas Sowell

***

"I've done a gal with [no boobs] before. Take it from me only do it if she is very pretty
Otherwise you will feel a bit strange when you feel nothing at all in front
You will also feel a bit pedo and a bit gay"

If soy really gave you boobs East Asian women would be stacked rather than being the smallest in the world

"the flatter the girl, the closer you can be to their heart"

"If your class is full of pretty girls, you're studying a useless course."

"I can't afford a sex doll, so I just get my wife to lie in a bathtub full of ice water for about 15 minutes before coming to bed. She then lies perfectly still, staring off into the distance while I pretend she's a lifeless, pasty rubber sex-golem."


Maybe people are dogmatic and judgmental about diet because unlike religion, talking about your diet is not frowned upon in polite company, so they feel like they can channel their impulses that way

"I can assure you if I order the same food, it will be much cheaper. It's happened many times. I get my nasi padang and my wife likes the look of it and she orders the same thing and she pays more than I... I'm tanned and I speak Malay like a native... The same thing happens also with others. I once had lunch with a group from the place I worked. The women complained about the price of the nasi padang. One woman had exactly the same food as me. But mine was cheaper. She was furious. Haha."
"The Nasi pandang machek who speaks to me in Malay English charged me about $1.5 less cos I am tanned n look Malay."


If, according to the prevailing theory of sexual offence motivation, sex is not the motive but power, then gay men cannot use their sexuality as a defence against accusations of sexual assault

"If breasts aren't sexual then we should change cultural greetings like shaking someone's hand to "breast grabs". If a man grabs your breast it should be no different than if he patted you on the back and said "Nice work on that Anderson account, Tammy". ...(HONK!), (HONK!) No more sexual assault charges. No more "Inappropriate touching" or sexual harassment complaints."

"We need to MANsplain because many of you MISSunderstood the facts"

Is it sexist to advise women to wear "culturally appropriate clothes" when travelling?


If a man refuses to sleep with black women, is he racist?
If a lesbian refuses to sleep with men, is she sexist?

At what point does the validity of appeals to history expire? Is it okay for the Hans to hate on Manchus today because the Qing oppressed them for 4 centuries?

"'Trump is Hitler!' I've heard that so many times that if he turns out to be anything less than Hitler, I'm going to be like, 'He did a pretty good job.'" - Dave Smith

"I am starting to understand why I find Asian Americans Insufferable
It probably has something to do with how they have abandoned their original cultures and have been lucky enough to be adopted by another that has allowed them to be successful, but at the same Time they have a victimhood complex despite having easier lives than Asian Asians and are biting the hand that feeds them"

"I have lectured in Belarus and taught in Serbia during the Milosevic regime and I said what I damned well pleased. I have to say though that the only places I really felt I had to watch my mouth were Saudi Arabia - and American universities." - Stephen W. Browne, who was also elected Honorary Member of the Yugoslav Movement for the Protection of Human Rights in 1997 (Source)

"My 'punch a nazi in the face' friends have suddenly disappeared now that it's a Palestinian waving the swastika."
"The IDF took down more neo-nazis in one day than Antifa has in the past half century."

[On land redistribution in South Africa] "Zulu's aren't native to that region either. They migrated to SA from further north. Waring with every tribe on their way. People assume just because they black they're native to SA."
"Most of the African slave trade was and is still Africans trading other Africans to each other."

Observations - 20th May 2018

Life goal: To have someone publish, after I die, "The collected essays, blog posts, online chats and emails of Gabriel Seah"

Eating lots of salad makes me feel like a white girl. Maybe I should eat more yong tau hoo and fish soup to connect with my roots


"Swiss style cooking teaches you the value of good ingredients. Asian style cooking teaches you the value of good sauces."


University admissions and job candidate selection are basically exercises in objectification


""Peter Pan men" "refuse to grow up" "video game escapism"
"Man up and marry"

Feminists talk a lot about freedom from gender performance, but they have a rather narrow script of approved behaviours for men to follow

So why do feminists rail on MGTOW? They can't be bothered with sex (no rape), leave women alone (no harassment), and just entertain themselves with a subsistence level life playing video games (no competition for empowering jobs).

Heh, it's all they ever wanted

the golden goose no longer lays eggs"


"My mother, through whom my family got healthcare through her job as a public school teacher, at one point threatend to take away my father's health insurance while he was on chemotherapy fighting for his life against cancer. He was feverishly consulting lawyers and trying to see what he could do to prevent this from happening (this was in the pre-Obamacare era, he died in 2006).

She justified such treatment - and this was only one example - the name of feminism and historical iniquities against women.

"No true feminist" you may say? No true Scottsman right?"


Is it worse to be wrong for the right reasons or right for the wrong reasons?

The same arguments for euthanising animals would apply to babies and children as well.

If you think human lives aren't more important than animal ones, we should kill off humans to protect animals

If, as animal rights activists say, we have moral responsibility to some animals, isn't it discrimination to not care about others (e.g. in the wild)? Unless you're talking about the distinction between positive and negative duties, but then Peter Singer says it's immoral to not donate most of your income for the welfare of kids halfway around the world whom you
don't know, so aren't we discriminating against animals if we don't similarly care for animals in the wild

If sentient suffering is the reason eating animals is wrong, we could eat humans if we killed them painlessly

If bestiality is wrong because animals are incapable of consenting to sex, is it rape every time they mate with other animals?

If meat is murder can you really be friends with murderers? (cf. being friends with "racists" [like Trump supporters])


If a politician, representing his constituents, does or says something opposite to what he believes or says, is he a hypocrite?

Just as voting is better seen as civic participation than influencing election outcomes, voter ID can be seen more as an affirmation of the democratic process than a way to prevent fraud

Observations - 17th May 2018

"What 'multiculturalism' boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture - and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture." Thomas Sowell

***

On the study which supposedly showed that homophobes are gay: "we learned in science class that watching a loved one run over by a car can cause an erection due to the extreme excitement and anxiety. This is clearly not a form of sexual excitement-with maybe a few warped exceptions."

Since courts in the developed world subscribe to the view that sexual assault is about power, not sex (that the accused is not sexually aroused by the alleged victim is not considered a defence), if a gay man is accused by a woman of sexual assault his sexuality would presumably not be a defence.

"Girls like the men in GQ, unfortunately the men in GQ also like the men in GQ...."


"*** once told me to shove it when i called gay people homosexual
its derogatory she said
i should be claling them gays and lesbians
and when i told her this is the most neutral term to call them, scientfically speaking she said fuck your science"


"percuma = free in Malay, useless in Indonesian"

"I've found a new way to explain what lppl is. Lppl = touche" (LPPL is typically said by other people though)

Bjorn means bear. Maybe Scandinavian male names are more funky than Anglo ones

How many people can read the Arabic signs at hawker stalls in Singapore? What if someone puts up one that says "warning: not halal"?


Military personnel are probably less respected in countries with mass conscription. Familiarity breeds contempt.

How does SAF mobilisation work if you live in Johor?


In Nazi concentration camps, escape put other prisoners at risk as they would be punished for the escapees' "crimes".

Other prisoners would also have to work harder to take up the slack created by the escapees' escape.

Prisoners (not just prisoners of war but also undesirables) were also told that their efforts were necessary for the country's war effort and survival.

The parallels with National Slavery are uncanny.


Amused that you can use VBE to make an Excel sheet not just Hidden but VeryHidden

After eating Indian food for almost every meal for 9 days, I started to smell like curry. So now I have personal evidence for the "why Indians smell different" theory

If you're slow to reply to others, should you expect others to be quick to reply to you?

"Someone should write a book about things Malcolm Gladwell has gotten wrong."

"I have witnessed quite a few work incidents where colleagues slice chilli padi then go take a piss. Didn't end well for them."

The best things about an activity tracker are being able to monitor your sleep and being notified when someone calls you

Why do Americans use ounces but not drachms or grains but instead grams? Can't we at least get consistency?

The "low importance" email flag is so rarely used that when I see an "unimportant" email I actually pay more attention to it

Observations - 7th May 2018

"If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today." - Thomas Sowell

***

If the courts in Singapore knew that the right legal ruling would cause racial riots, how would they rule? National Propaganda always talks about the Maria Hertogh riots, but they never say what should've been done. Probably because there would've been no good outcome

If so many laws in Singapore have an exemption for the government doesn't that mean that the government is above the law? Rule of law means that the government is constrained by the law, after all

One big problem with the National Myth of NS is that it's played like a trump card that no one can ever argue with. Given the breathless rhetoric, it's almost like serving NS is as good as dying for your country. And when it conflicts with other narratives (like importing foreigners to augment/replace the shrinking population)...


Why are libertarians so in love with markets and property rights, excluding other forms of human interaction and organisation?

If, as leftists tell us, free trade agreements are anti democratic aren't international law and international organisations anti-democratic? Down with the UN!


What happens if someone with a guide dog wants to enter a space occupied by someone with a dog allergy?

Meritocracy and social immobility are only contradictory if one assumes merit is randomly distributed in the population

"The thread could be about chocolate chip cookies and you'd find a way to bring Trump into the discussion. 😁"

"Most US police departments only require a high school diploma. Pretty scary."
Why is elitism okay in certain situations?

[On Crazy Rich Asians] "In any case, it’s a fiction? Surely, it perpetuates certain stereotypes but hey i dont watch harry potter and believe there are some magical beings flying the skies of UK."

"a Hollywood reproduction of a Hollywood storyline... with Asian faces... Hollywood studios and a Hollywood distribution company. Plus Kevin Kwan and Jon Chu are only slightly more Asian than I am (and I have no Asian heritage AFAIK)! As they say in the movie ... Asian on the outside, White on the inside."
The bar for "diversity" gets ever higher

Quite sure that those who demand that the media must portray "reality" would protest and complain about racism if the majority of drug addicts in Singapore media were Malay

"Adolf Hitler was a failed liberal arts student who blamed everything on ethnicities he deemed privileged."

"there was a discussion thread on the Holocaust
and some black person said fuck Jews, black people are dying
long story short, someone came out and said "Jews never asked for anything special cos they went thru the Holocaust. They just carried on. BLack people are often asking for handouts because of something that happened hundreds of years ago to their ANCESTOR"

"a liberal acquaintance was challenging me to prove that liberals were less tolerant of dissenting views than conservatives, i posted him the studies which showed liberals were 3 times more likely to unfriend.
he unfriended me."


"What Trump has done since election:
- Made nothing but positive statements;
- Said gay marriage is established law
- Won't repeal Obamacare but may improve it
- Refuses to accept presidential salary;
-Told his supporters that are causing issue to stop;

What Hilary's supporters have done since his election:
- Rioted;
- Attempted to change politics via mob rule;
- Disowned their children"


‘’Women make up more than half of the world’s population and potential. It is neither just nor practical for their voices to go unheard… Women need a seat at the table. And when that isn’t available, then you know what? They need to create their own table.’’
"Said Meghan markle...... Marrying into royalty.... Rather than making her own table"

"What boys [will be] boys really means: "guys rough house and are kind of gross"
What feminist say boys [will be] boys means: "Men believe rape is ok especially if they were wearing something revealing""

Observations - 7th March 2018

The most profound form of US exceptionalism is not thinking that the US is best at everything, but that it works on a different logic from the rest of the world (besides gun laws, also:
- Requiring photo ID to vote is racist and anti-democratic, even though many first world liberal democracies like Canada and Australia do
- If the government censors speech in any way that is a slippery slope leading to the state controlling everything you say
- Military parades are only done by totalitarian dictatorships - like France and Canada)
Addendum: If you abolish tipping, service staff will starve
If someone resists arrest and the police officer is forced to subdue him, he is an hero (sic) and a victim of police brutality
Imperial units are superior to metric because ???
Keywords: American Exceptionalism

Snappy soundbites and protest slogans drive polarisation as positions get simplified and collapsed. Then you need to choose one side or the other to avoid being slammed by both. Also one can have ideals while realising the need to work within reality - thus seeming contradictory


"Civil wars take two or more relatively evenly matched sides. Fat blokes with rifles (whether or not semi-automatic) no match for a half decent military"

"If you install an alarm system, it makes it more likely that a burglar will attack the home of a neighbour. That would make it a negative externality."

The failure of strata mall owners to coordinate and modernise debunks anarchist/libertarian fantasies of self organisation and mutual aid in the absence of government

"Luck is probability taken personally"

Note to self: When Pocket/Read It Later has the "component returned failure code", "ns_error_malformed_uri" error, logging in and out will clear it

"All employers worth their salt in Denmark actually provide private insurance for employees because the public health care here is notoriously inefficient in spite of being allocated a fuckton of tax money. The Danish state is a leech."

Was polled on my sentiments on various aspects of life, apparently for gahmen. Surveyor said I had a very unique personality

Shame from being held up to other people's standards of machismo is temporary
Death is forever

If someone owes you money, maybe sending him 1 cent a month so it will appear on his bank account and annoy him will guilt him into paying

I can understand non-disclosure agreements. But not non-disclosure agreements that don't allow you to acknowledge their own existence

"Many people are judgemental, yet sensitive. A very bad combination."


The best reason to keep your Facebook private - so you lessen the chances of being reported by idiots and getting zucced

Amused that people imagine that lobbyists from big tech companies push for net neutrality out of the goodness of their hearts. Cui bono?

I miss the days when Google Doodles were rare. And thus actually meant something.


I actually prefer the taste of Coke Zero to Coke

People who are dogmatic about food are even more annoying than religious fundamentalists - because food doesn't have the anti-religious stigma that pervades secular society

I'm sure the first person to put tomatoes on what later became pizza got shouted down as ruining Italian food

Indian guy told me I was the first Chinese person he'd seen eating with his hands. Strike one for racial harmony?

Observations - 6th March 2018

"Wasn’t it merely months ago that Cathay bravely stood up for LGBT rights over the objections of bigoted fanatics? And now Cathay is to be boycotted just because its sister company (over which it probably has next to zilch influence) is making shows that Alfian doesn’t like."

"I actually grew up as a victim of racism from my teachers.
1 from my primary school who picked on me because of my mixed ethnic background and because I didn't look malay and the other from my religious class who attributed my inability to parrot arabic because of my mixed ethnic background as well"

"Huh? Saying you pushed Eden away and then got penetrated is like Cecilia Sue saying she tried to push Ng Boon Gay away but somehow ended up having contact with his private part."


“the SPLC considers the Daily Caller to lean into hate speech, which is good enough for me. If they ever do the same for CNN or The Economist, I would support their removal as well. All "news" simply is not equal in this day and age.”

"I expect the proponents of "you're more likely to die in a car crash than from an islamic terror attack" to be consistent and to say "your kid is more likely to die at the skate park than from a mass school shooting".
Right?"

""Not up for debate" is a phrase almost exclusively used by people who do not have an argument nor do they know how to debate."

RT @atomasevic: Me: Good morning Neil!
Neil DeGrasse Tyson: To you, perhaps. But to 4 billion other people it’s an afternoon, or a night. You see, the way the solar system works...
Me: Fuck off! (Re:)


If my boss asks me to help him get a coffee he is abusing his power because I dare not say no and hurt my career

Why are lip plates and neck rings okay but not pricking the clitoral hood? (to say nothing of ear piercing)

"women, in general, do get sexually harassed, perhaps a lot... If you ask them face to face, they will say no."
"So basically when a woman says no she means yes"

"if the law states that a drunk person may not give consent, is the reverse also true i.e a drunk person may not withdraw consent"

One way men can avoid being accused of mansplaining - never talk to any women, ever

Singaporean Feminist: "there are university students here who genuinely believe women should have their pay docked for producing "unequal work" when they go on maternity leave. Nice system for men, they get to use female bodies to breed while simultaneously penalising women for breeding"
This is not the only articulation of this view I've seen. In other words, many feminists believe in equal pay for unequal work


Wondering how spammers send me spam that comes flagged for followup in Hotmail

It takes some nerve to request a read receipt on spam you send out

Got unsolicited call from someone who claimed to be from a licensed moneylender. I told him if he was licensed he would know cold calling was illegal. He quickly ended the call.

Observations - 15th December 2017

"When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear." - Thomas Sowell

***

Are rich liberals stupid for voting against their economic interests - for politicians who will raise taxes?

If a Chinese has bad experiences with Indian people and concludes Indian people are annoying, he is racist
If an Indian has bad experiences with Chinese people and concludes Chinese people are racist, he is right

The fact that minorities are only championed and fetishised when they're unsuccessful points to an underlying ideology of envy and spitefulness

"I asked some antifas why its okay for them to be violent but duterte's "vigilantism" is a human right violation
Wahhhh everyone damn triggered."

"Whatever happened to "be the change you want to see in the world?"
It became "bitch about the change you want to see in the world.""

"If our ecosystem is collapsing because we consume too much, should we really be bringing people from low consuming countries to high consuming countries where they'll end up consuming more than they would have back home?"

"When I was younger and dumber I thought I could transform unhappy people into happy people by giving them whatever they wanted, or fixing whatever they thought was broken. This approach worked approximately zero times. Once a dopamine addict’s alleged problem is fixed, the addict still needs the next high. So they magnify small problems into big ones just to feel something. Or they create a problem where there was none."


Do people who don't look like their parents have identity issues? (mixed race children and adoptees being some examples)

Having a second kid so the first one doesn't think it's the most important person in the world is like not having a second kid because you're afraid of favouritism. Or, in a different way, like giving away your money to charity so you don't gamble it away

"The best celebration after surviving the first year is a year's holiday without the kid. 😩"


Going by the philosophy that those who have not accomplished much have no standing to criticise those who have done more (a philosophy which seems not uncommon in Singapore), Confucius should be ignored since he only had a brief civil service career before becoming a scholar. So all the rulers who sought his advice were idiots

A lot of Singaporeans think that testing claims for logical consistency is changing the subject. But then, so much about Singapore is special pleading or exceptionalism


Why do people celebrate Down's Syndrome in a way that they don't cerebral palsy?

[On bemoaning the youth] "The people who created the next generation are pretty quick to absolve themselves of the mess they created."

'A great novel can change who you are. For example, after I read "War and Peace", I became way more pretentious.'

"Social constructs are a social construct"

"The government says if you're not doing anything wrong you shouldn't have to hide anything. If that's true shouldn't the government declassify everything?" (aka if you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide and nothing to hear from increasing surveillance and violations of privacy)

Reusing disposable plastic containers means the contents may spill. Onto your pants. On 2 separate days. Before you save the earth, you must save yourself.

Observations - 13th August 2017

"Who can refute a sneer?" - William Paley

***

Don't teach your children not to get into cars with strangers, teach people not to kidnap children

"I think this is the greatest flaw in feminist thinking, that in order to achieve their ideal of the perfect woman, one has to give up her femininity and become a man. That's ridiculous."

"Women used to cook like their mothers, now they drink like their fathers."

"now I know why feminists find it easy to believe in male privilege- they take their observations of men being less neurotic and chill as evidence for them having easier lives"
"actually its worse because a lot of the time that men have to worry/ be gancheong/ be involved, it is due to issues created by women"

A feminist told me, about the gender gap in university enrolment, that if women could overcome patriarchy and be overrepresented in universities there was something wrong with men. So much for feminism being for men. If you start with feminist assumptions you will end up with feminist conclusions

Since we evaluate female beauty contest participants on their character and intelligence, why don't we evaluate female CEOs on their looks?

If married mums getting more benefits than single ones is discrimination, the Pioneer Generation Package is also discrimination

If it's okay to breastfeed in an MRT train, why can't diabetics eat and drink? A fussy baby is less important than a potential health emergency

"for some reason [women] still prefer having [a period] instead of using some technological intervention to mitigate or remove it entirely
So after a while I suspect it boils down to needing something to make noise about"

"saying that someone choosing to do sex work somehow cheapens sex . . . makes as much sense as saying someone eating a donut around you will ruin your diet"

"in my white male privilege patriarchal mansplainer experience, a strong independent woman who doesn’t need a man is more often than not a woman who can't get a man, or at least a desirable man."

Why celebrate body positivity, i.e. being fat, but not being ugly?

"The fastest way for a man to find out what needs to be done around the house is to try to take a nap. His wife sure come and kpkb"
"i think women evolved to feel unsettled if they see a man not doing anything"


If prepubescent kids can consent to taking hormone blockers which have health implications why can't adolescents consent to sex?

If essentialism is so bad, why assume that gender (or other) diversity inevitably brings benefits through diverse points of view?

If a restaurant refuses to cook Kosher food for a Jewish customer, is it discriminating against Jews?

"9/11 was nothing compared to the horror of a Ten Commandments display."

Pundits say it's problematic when people don't trust the media, or they think it's lying. But what if it really is?

"377A activists capitalise on convincing gay people they are at risk of getting lynched at any moment"

"To be an 'ally' increasingly seems to mean capitulating in surrender to people who hate you for being born."
"Before you do that, transfer money, resources and status now."

"When burning witches doesn't stop the drought, that means witch magic is very powerful and more witches need to be burnt."

"The difficulty with liberation movements is they don't have a "sunset clause". They all start as vital responses to archaic behaviours and attitudes but they inevitability pass their usefulness boundary and end up going "full retard"."

If you punch a fascist and he punches you back, can you play the victim?

Amused by people blaming the Quebec mosque shooting on Trump. Just like some people used to blame Obama for everything. Horseshoe theory...

If Trump's tweets make you commit violence, you're like men who rape women because they wear short skirts

If I buy travel insurance and someone steals my wallet when I'm abroad because I left it on a table, my claim will probably be rejected. Is that victim blaming?

In the past, asking someone about his religion was showing interest in it, trying to understand another culture, trying to engage him as a person etc. Today it's a microaggression

"i created a fb post for a bb cream with 'skin whitening' benefits
fb rejected my ad because their algorithm flagged 'skin whitening' as racism"

Is it discrimination to treat your child better than a random child you don't know halfway across the world?

[On Cuban exiles] "those who FLED were the exploiters of the country; subsequent swimmers were influenced by the greed of their relatives in Florida." - Ahh, Communist apologists!

Observations - 26th April 2017

"C-section seems to fit the Singaporean mentality
Turning a messy, somewhat random and uncertain event into a controlled one."

Amused that Singaporeans beat up on "outside food" as Singlish, but Disney World (US) and the New York Times use it.

If we can import persimmons from Spain why not oranges?

Amused that to PRCs from Guangdong and Fujian Singapore isn't very different. So they prefer Canada and Australia (which is why you see few Southern Chinese in Singapore). And multiple PRCs have confirmed that Singapore is a lower tier destination - the US/UK are more appealing choices.

Amused that Sections 90 and 305 of the Penal code imply that you cannot lie to XMMs (under 18).

Singaporeans love to say "that is my opinion". But just because anyone can have an opinion doesn't mean it can't be challenged or questioned. Challenging an opinion doesn't mean you are denying someone's right to it.


Asbestos is 100% natural and organic. So feel free to inhale it

"I was talking to someone who sells... in India. The purchasing manager has been telling him ''next week' for 13 months... He burnt his hand at a barbecue so he can't sign the document"

"Rich, dark, hairy man with a girl in a castle - Beauty and The Beast
Poor, dark, hairy man with a girl in a 2-room flat - Crime Watch"

If when the fire alarm sounds you need to wait for them to investigate to see if it's a false alarm, doesn't that waste precious minutes in an emergency?


If a Christian says he thinks murder is wrong because that's in the Bible, is that imposing his views on non Christians?

Actually Christians' condemnation of the "gay lifestyle" is an important distinction: at least in theory they are not opposed to gay people per se.


If policies discouraging single parenthood punish them and their children, what about anti-anti-vaxxer policies like childcare bans?

"I've been watching a show recently where the father was shown as loving, intelligent, a role model for his son and a dedicated member of the community. He's the first TV show father I've seen in a long time who wasn't an idiot.
Unfortunately it's Man in the High Castle, and that man is a nazi."

Orientalism does to Asia what nostalgia does to the past. So what's the issue?

Ebola killed 11,000 people in 2 years. In contrast the flu kills 36,000 people a year. One might thus conclude that the Ebola epidemic was exaggerated, wasn't really a problem, that the media and worldwide health authorities were following their own agenda and that this is just racism against Africa (since we're told that since Islamic terrorism hasn't killed many non-Muslims, we are just overreacting and islamophobic)

"democracy and the will of the people are important to check authoritarianism and need to be followed unless it contradicts their unpopular liberal values at which case the state needs to act in an authoritarian way to enforce their values"

Calling applying critical thinking skills "denying, dismissing or derailing the conversation" is one way to pretend you've won the argument.

Is it a bigger micro aggression to ask an Asian-American if he speaks his ethnic language or to assume he doesn't?

Maybe the recurrent terrorist attacks in Turkey are due to Ottoman colonialism.