Apple's Ridiculous Censorship of the Nudity in Papers, Please - "Papers, Please's pixelated, low-res nudity—which is seen when you use a body-scanning X-ray machine on the citizens who wish to enter your country—is hardly pornography, neither titillating nor sensual. Second, Apple is happy to sell you movies on iTunes that have actual naked humans, so it has a double standard for games. But the biggest issue is that removing Papers, Please's nudity defangs the game's artistic impact. Papers, Please is about the degradation to which those crossing the border into a totalitarian nation are subjected, and the bleakness of working in that situation."
What's Too Sexy for the App Store? Even Apple's Not Sure
The Buddhist Acceptance and Rejection of Mock Meats - "There is mention of seitan textured to emulate goose in the classic Chinese cookery book Recipes From the Sui Garden by the Qing Dynasty Chinese poet Yuan Mei. And the Ming Dynasty novel Journey to the West references wheat gluten several times, including a scene in which demons attempt to serve a monk a meal of human flesh and brains fried to resemble wheat gluten—that is, meat masquerading as mock meats... She says it’s all about creating a savory, umami flavor and a chewy, satisfying texture—that is the point of mock meats, not that they clearly resemble any animal. “Why do people want to eat meat? They want it because of the texture and the flavor, not because it’s a dead animal.”"
Hampstead ponds row continues on whether transgender demands are going too far - "they said they were ‘identifying’ as men for the day to highlight the problems inherent in the planned legislation, adopting Man Friday as the name of their campaign, set up on the website Mumsnet... some participants have faced a barrage of online abuse and even physical threats from hardline transgender activists... One woman sported a pantomime beard; another wore a lime green mankini (a male version of a bikini). It was all done with a lightness of touch but serious intent... Hannah also cites the case of sexual predator Christopher Hambrook, who four years ago was jailed indefinitely in Canada after falsely claiming to be transgender and sexually assaulting vulnerable females in women’s refuges... Twitter has been condemned for deleting accounts of female members of the group Fair Play For Women for stating what its members term the ‘biological fact that men cannot become women’. Gender self-identification has wide implications for women’s rights, yet the government minister Maria Miller, chair of the Women And Equalities Committee, led an inquiry that proposed it should become law without hearing from a single women’s organisation. Women like Hannah and her fellow pond protester Amy Desir, 30, a divorced mother-of-two from Luton, Bedfordshire, are incensed at this silencing of free speech. Amy, who works in middle management for a medical technology firm, was sufficiently concerned to become an activist. ‘I’ve never seen myself as a feminist until now’... ‘In December, when Swim England published its guidance about men who self-identify as women being allowed into female changing rooms, I thought it was Orwellian. It was talking about “re-educating” people.’... Teacher Debbie Hayton, 50, is among the handful of trans women who are prepared to talk publicly. She supports both the right of men and women to preserve single-sex spaces, and the ‘good-natured’ Man Friday campaign... To abandon this ‘gate-keeping’ process in favour of an amorphous ‘feeling’ of womanhood could engender suspicion of trans people and their motives... ‘Women and girls do not expect to see male genitalia in women-only changing areas, and I don’t either. Trans women with male genitalia who apply discretion are more likely to be accepted that than those who do not. Grudging toleration is a poor substitute for genuine acceptance.’... ‘Views are being suppressed because critical thinking is being conflated with criticism, which, in turn, is being conflated with hate — and that is dangerous because it leads to the shutting down of free speech."
Transgender Woman Is Charged With Voyeurism at Target in Idaho - The New York Times - "Based on a review of surveillance footage and interviews with witnesses, the suspect and her roommate, a detective on Tuesday arrested Shauna Smith, 43, on one felony count of voyeurism. She was booked into Bonneville County Jail as a man, using her legal name, Sean Patrick Smith"
We were told that this possibility was a paranoid right wing invention
Target Sex Offense Study Press Release - "voyeurism-related offenses increased significantly after the publication of Target’s policy—doubling or tripling according to all measures, while other sexual offense categories changed little. The findings are consistent with the “sex-predator” theory which has posited that sexual offenders may use gender-identity policies in private spaces to gain access to women and children in order to perpetrate sexual violence. This study is the first longitudinal analysis of risks related to gender-inclusion policies. The incident database is open-source and is available for further exploration and analysis."
Cassandra Raper - Edit. I dont ever want any threats being... - "this is a great example of how when if comes to men being abused by women it is laughed at and swept under the rug. But could you imagine the reaction if men were saying the exact same things about their girlfriends or wives. It would cause an outrage. I dont care how you put it. These are examples of abusive behaviour towards men. And it just goes to show why men usually keep that shit quiet and dont tell anyone. Ever notice how we barely see or hear anything about domestic violence on men?? Did you know men have a higher suicide rate in Australia? How humiliating it must be to know your girlfriend boasts about throttling you infront of your friends online. Violence against men should not be ignored and if you read these comments and think im being ridiculous then you are part of the problem... If you carry enough self pride to post these things online then clearly something in your brain tells you this behaviour is completely acceptable."
New York gay sex club defends reduced entry price for tops - "I’m a big big old bottom, and this has always been a fantasy of mine, but for it to work – and for the experience to be achieved for the cumdump bottoms – we need a huge ratio of tops to bottoms, which means discounting admission for anyone who wants to top."
China's ZTE built to spy and bribe, court documents allege - "ZTE, the Chinese telecommunications company bidding for major contracts in Australia, and at the centre of Donald Trump’s trade war with Beijing, was established partly as a front for military intelligence and has been linked to corruption in 18 countries, according to explosive court documents filed in the US"
Software is Eating the World-Tesla Edition - "Last week Consumer Reports refused to recommend Tesla’s Model 3 because it discovered lengthy braking distances. This week Consumer Reports changed their review to recommend after Tesla improved braking distance by nearly 20 feet with an over the air software update!"
Chinese group hacks a Tesla for the second year in a row - " For the second time, Chinese security researchers were able to hack a Tesla Model X, turning on the brakes remotely and getting the doors and trunk to open and close while blinking the lights in time to music streamed from the car's radio — an effect they dubbed "the unauthorized Xmas show.""
Fire at London’s Hayward Gallery as Rotting Fish Artwork Explodes
About Us| 6IXTY8IGHT - "Launched in 2002, 6IXTY8IGHT is renowned for fun and inspiring fashion and lingerie targeted at females aged between 15-30 years old. Young, fresh and full of attitude, 6IXTY8IGHT girls love mix-and-matching their wardrobe, interpreting contemporary trends, and styling their self-expressive looks with a casual-cool attitude. Today, there are more than 100 6IXTY8IGHT stores across Hong Kong, China, Macau, Taiwan and Korea."
6ixty8ight = 69 minus 1?
Local man fired after one day of driving a school bus - "he explained to his new bosses that he had a legal, medical marijuana prescription... “They called me to say there was a complaint from a parent saying they smelled marijuana,” said Madore, adding he couldn't get any more details on the complaint, such as where the smell was coming from or when the parent smelled it. Madore said he didn’t meet any parents along the way. He said he didn’t use any of his medical marijuana that day – he only smokes it in the evening. He wasn’t carrying any and he didn’t have any devices used to smoke it."
If wages are to rise, workers need more bargaining power - Free exchange: Power is money - "Product markets have become more concentrated, meaning that fewer firms account for a larger share of output. That increases companies’ power in labour markets, since workers are less able to find alternative employment or to pit rival employers against each other in a bidding war. In a recent paper Suresh Naidu, Eric Posner and Glen Weyl estimate that this rise in firms’ power may reduce labour’s share of national income by as much as a fifth. They argue that one way to help struggling workers might be to use antitrust policies to make product markets less concentrated and more competitive. A complementary approach would be to increase workers’ power
The Economist promoting unions - parallel universe confirmed
Rutgers Professor Unleashes Anti-White Rant: 'Little Caucasian A**holes' - "James Livingston, who teaches history at the university, bashed white people, including children, after visiting a burger joint. Livingston notes that he is a white person but was quick to "resign" himself from the race."
Opinion | Elon Musk, the Donald of Silicon Valley - The New York Times - "The Apple of the 1980s was a brilliant idea with a terrible leader. Tesla, by contrast, today is a terrible idea with a brilliant leader. The terrible idea is that electric cars are the wave of the future, at least for the mass market. Gasoline has advantages in energy density, cost, infrastructure and transportability that electricity doesn’t and won’t for decades. The brilliance is Musk’s Trump-like ability to get people to believe in him and his preposterous promises. Tesla without Musk would be Oz without the Wizard. Much of the blame for the Tesla fiasco goes to government, which, in the name of green virtue, decided to subsidize the hobbies of millionaires to the tune of a $7,500 federal tax credit per car sold, along with additional state-based rebates. Would Tesla be a viable company without the subsidies? Doubtful. When Hong Kong got rid of subsidies last year, Tesla sales fell from 2,939 — to zero. It may be unfair to describe Tesla as Solyndra on wheels, but only slightly... Electric vehicles were supposed to be the car of the future because we were running out of oil — until we weren’t"
Sultan of Yogyakarta: A feminist revolution in an ancient kingdom - "The sultan, who is 72, recently changed his own title so that it is gender neutral and has given his eldest daughter the new name Gusti Kanjeng Ratu Mangkubumi - which means The One Who Holds the Earth. That was seen as further indication she is being lined up to take over the throne when the time comes... He says the move is a dangerous break with hundreds of years of tradition and accused his brother's family of being power-hungry and greedy. And he sends a strong warning about what will happen. "We have made a family commitment that we will not fight now, but when the sultan has left this world, we have an agreement with the people that we will drive his wife and his daughters out of the palace."... The Javanese royal rule stretches back to the 16th Century and while the family is now Muslim like most Indonesians, the rituals they carry out are steeped in mysticism, a product of Hinduism, Buddhism and animism of the past. And tradition has it that the Sultan of Yogyakarta has to take the goddess Kanjeng Ratu Loro Kidul as his mystical wife... Yogyakarta is the only place in Indonesia where residents don't get to directly elect their leader. When it was suggested by Jakarta that this should change in 2010 there were angry protests on the streets of Yogyakarta and the central government backed down... Despite an increasing number of young Javanese Muslim women now choosing to wear the headscarf, hijabs are not allowed in the palace... "This is not about religion, it's about protecting our culture and tradition and society understands that. The Sultan is above all religions." But this is increasingly a provocative stance to take in today's Indonesia. Recently the daughter of Indonesia's first President Sukarno, Sukmawati, was reported to the police for blasphemy and forced to apologise for saying in a poem that the Javanese hairbun was more beautiful than a Islamic chador."
Islamophobia!
Shockingly, this article doesn't mention if he has any sons (he doesn't)
Royal revolution as Indonesian sultan taps female heir - "the recent ceremony to mark the 70th birthday of Hamengku Buwono X, Indonesia's last sultan with real political power, had one key difference from previous celebrations - many of his relatives refused to attend... "A female sultan is an impossibility," the sultan's cousin, Kanjeng Raden Tumenggung Jatiningrat, told AFP. "One symbol in this palace is a rooster - so if we have a queen should we change it to a hen?" The rooster is a symbol of bravery. He added that a female ruler could not oversee rituals in the mosque or other ceremonies that have traditionally been led by men... "About 90 per cent of the family don't respect him anymore," raged Gusti Bendoro Pangeran Haryo Prabukusumo, a stepbrother of the ruler who snubbed the event."
Landlady Offers Free Rent for One Year if Tenant Spends One Night With Her - "his young man in Beijing, China who was renting a room received a message from his landlady as he had been delaying his rent payment for a month."
S’pore loan shark runner reports non-payment for loanshark work to police, gets arrested instead
Ambien Makes People Crazy and Everyone Knows It - "Sanofi, makers of the sleep aid Ambien, branded Roseanne Barr a racist in a tweet and claimed their drug has many side effects but "racism" is not one of them. That's a risky claim. For one, Ambien has been reported to make people do things they would never do if not on the drug. That's a fact. A simple Google search will show you countless stories of horrific hallucinations and behaviors that people have experienced while taking Ambien... The drug is classified as a hypnotic. The known side effects are extremely worrying, including confusion, depersonalization, dysphoria, paranoia, hallucinations and becoming violent. This drug appears to be very dangerous and Sanofi is making light of it by claiming that their drug had nothing to do with Roseanne's odd online behavior. Are they sure about that?... Scott Adams, Dilbert creator and internet personality, thinks Sanofi's flippant tweet is one of the worst things he's ever seen a company do. In a Periscope broadcast, he said, "Like a bad lawyer, [Sanofi has] introduced into evidence something you shouldn't have introduced into evidence," which has opened up a line of questioning about their drug that they probably don't want to have. As a result, stories of Ambien users having bad experiences are flooding the web...
Side effects of 'Ambien' (Sanofi-Aventis) include:
ABNORMAL THINKING BEHAVIORAL CHANGES AND COMPLEX BEHAVIORS"
Bill Clinton: Press Went Easy on Obama --- 'They Liked Having the First African-American President'
When your girlfriend is a radiologist and she decides to finally send you nudes
Scientists Just Discovered That Water Can Exist as Two Different Liquids
Star Citizen’s is selling a $27,000 bundle of spaceships - "Star Citizen, announced in 2012 with a $500,000 Kickstarter campaign, has been in development since 2011. It has been heavily criticized for the lengthy development period"
Protesters toss scooters into street to block tech buses in SF - "Protesters in the Mission District blocked tech buses for nearly an hour Thursday morning in San Francisco, tossing scooters into the street to waylay the commuters. The activists, blocking buses at the intersection of 24th and Valencia streets, set off smoke bombs, chanted “we are unstoppable, another world is possible,” and carried signs that read “Techsploitation Is Toxic,” and “Sweep Tech Not Tents,” in reference to the city’s recent efforts to clear homeless encampments."
L'origine de Bert
Saturday, August 04, 2018
Friday, August 03, 2018
Links - 3rd August 2018 (2)
Colour Blindness - "Colour (color) blindness (colour vision deficiency, or CVD) affects approximately 1 in 12 men (8%) and 1 in 200 women in the world"
The women with superhuman vision - "Although the relevant combination of genes does not seem to be especially rare – perhaps 12% of women might have four distinct cones – many of the people that Jordan tested just didn’t seem to show any differences in their perception"
Men and Women Really Do See Things Differently - "Females are better at discriminating among colors, researchers say, while males excel at tracking fast-moving objects and discerning detail from a distance—evolutionary adaptations possibly linked to our hunter-gatherer past."
The Story Behind This Bald Eagle Stealing a Rabbit From a Fox - "“I thought the eagle would scare the fox into dropping its dinner,” says Ebi. Yet, for just a few seconds, the fox steadfastly held on before it was flung back onto the ground."
Somali militant group bans samosas for being too Christian - "the extremist group al-Shabaab has proclaimed—via loudspeakers mounted to vehicles—that this delicious snack shall henceforth be banned from sale or consumption. Samosas are, in the words of al-Shabaab, “offensive.” Their reason for offense? The triangular shaped of the snack (it’s known as samboosas in the Horn of Africa) resembles the symbol of Christianity’s Holy Trinity"
The making of StarCraft - "With Command & Conquer having found huge success with its modern military setting, it was clear there was one option for Blizzard from the start—and so initially ‘Orcs in space' was the driving goal for the game. “It was sort of like re-envisioning what would happen if the world of Warcraft just went into space,” Patrick says, “and so the perspective was the same, the art style was a bit different.” Gone was the natural greens and browns of fantasy-fuelled Warcraft, instead here Blizzard opted for something more space-like—a horrific blend of putrid pinks, bright blues and garish greens. It stood out, for sure, but not in a good way. Blizzard found itself the victim of trade show disaster as the team attended E3 1996 to discover that no one was a fan of what would be the company's next game."
As far as Mahatma Gandhi (and lots of others) are concerned, eggs are as vegetarian as milk - "One fourth of India's vegetarian population actually seems to quietly go along with this. The Hindu-CNN-IBN State of the Nation survey in 2012 concluded that about 31% of Indians profess to vegetarianism while another 9% count themselves as "eggetarians," essentially vegetarians who will eat egg... Indian vegetarians' shunning of eggs can be vehement – a Jain Samiti spokesperson commenting on Madhya Pradesh's move said it would reduce "sensitivity" in children. But their championing of other animal products, like milk or even cow urine can be equally vehement."
Girl Surprised When Man Wearing Confederate Flag Helps Change Tire - "“For me and my family, as a black person, the Confederate army = oppression,” she tweeted. “Therefore the flag as a symbol utilized = oppression.”"
Wellness, Womanhood, and the West: How Goop Profits From Endless Illness - "Since Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop launched in 2008, the site has earned its reputation as the internet’s kooky rich aunt. From detoxes to cleanses; vitamins to clean food; vaginal eggs to vaginal steaming and recurring features by a self-described “Medical Medium” (a man who diagnoses disease via spirit guidance), Goop has built a small digital empire. In between primers on how to wear denim jackets and a curated shop featuring Ulla Johnson jumpers and Marni sandals, Goop peddles “wellness,” the site’s iteration of health content, sleekly packaged as lifestyle content"
I said something very similar to Jezebel, the feminist blog, and got scolded for being misogynistic, so
Mario Rudeboy - Posts - "I'm a Muslim and proud to be one but I think it's time as Muslims we fix this bullshit problem we have. Yes we do have a problem with our community & so called 'Muslim' brothers. Whatever is going on it's time we stop blaming others, stop being the 'victims' & blaming the west. We need to fix this epidemic of inbreds from doing these despicable crimes. Sorry I don't care if you think I'm being harsh. Islam is a beautiful religion BUT these uneducated monkeys misinterpret things & feel they are acting on Gods behalf & it's only getting worse... I'd love to see these people talk crap in Muslim countries. They would be smashed in seconds. Locked up & tortured. I think it's time the British or west deport not only those who incite hatred against the country themselves, but the entire family also. You come to a country to milk the benefit system, free education & health system yet complain. Try that in Pakistan or Iraq or the Gulf. See what will happen. It's pissing me off seeing this shit. Monkeys like Anjem Choudhury etc. Try talk bad in the Muslim states and see... I was raised in England. Never had any issues with racism or islampbobia. My closest friends were English & non Muslims. They treated me like a brother and likewise. I was able to practice my religion without offending them and they did without offending me"
How common is lntersex? A response to Anne Fausto‐Sterling - "If the term intersex is to retain any meaning, the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female. Applying this more precise definition, the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%"
In response to SJWs who claim Male/Female as choices for sex is inadequate
How to Save Europe
Interestingly Soros is against ever closer union, compulsory migrant quotas and compulsory Euro membership
There's No Such Thing as a Slut - "All but five or six of the women practiced “slut-shaming,” or denigrating the other women for their loose sexual mores. But they conflated their accusations of “sluttiness” with other, unrelated personality traits, like meanness or unattractiveness. It seems there was no better way to smear a dorm-mate than to suggest she was sexually impure."
It would be more accurate to title this "Why, when women call each other sluts, they don't mean 'a promiscuous woman'"
Also this suggests that just bashing men for oppressing women is misguided
Japan’s Affection for Love Hotels - "love hotels came to be categorized as “immovable sex-related establishments,” placed under the jurisdiction of the police. Because of this, when new hotels were built an effort was made to steer clear of the “love hotel” classification. This was done, for example, by hotel owners avoiding designs featuring bizarre exteriors and interiors... around 90% of the time women are the ones to choose the room at a love hotel. More love hotels these days are offering special, low-priced “ladies plans” for female guests who simply want to spend the night at a hotel. This offers guests a resort-like experience, with upscale amenities such as esthetic services and gourmet meals. Hotels hope that women who take advantage of these plans will end up as return customers, bringing along a male companion the next time."
MGTOW—A boycotting of women - "generally speaking: women just aren’t worth my time. Doesn’t mean I hate women—just means I’m not interested in them. Feminists have two important slogans: “her body her choice” and “She doesn’t owe you anything”. Well, it goes both ways: “MY body, MY choice”, “I don’t owe YOU anything.”"
WHAT A WAYNE-ANKER: LeedsLive Editor Says Reporter Who Published Tommy Robinson Address was 'Brave' - "Robinson wrote on social media “Do you know how many times I have gone into Bedford police station, I have gone into Kempston police station, to say here are comments to kill my family but nothing ever gets done.”... an address had been released online claiming to be where he lived, but the information was wrong and the current occupants of that address were now “terrified”."
Doxxing is good when it's against the "Far right"
Women now hold a majority of all management and professional positions in the U.S. - "Women now hold 52 percent of management, professional, and related positions, according to a new report from BMO Bank."
"Male privilege"
Mariella Frostrup: Men face 'double standard' over celebrity lust - "Broadcaster Mariella Frostrup has complained of a new "double standard" that allows women to lust over men - but sees accusations of sexism arise when the role is reversed... she can comment on a "shot of a shirtless, sea-soaked Aidan Turner". But men would not be able to remark similarly on his female co-stars... "we live in confusing times and I'm the first to admit to double standards - if a male colleague had penned those preceding lines about any of Turner's equally appealing female co-stars, his cries of contrition would be drowned out by Twitter's Troll Chorus." The presenter said she feared that "we are losing not only our sense of humour but our sense of proportion as we throw every act of perceived sexism into the #MeToo basket"... "There's an enormous difference between judging a person's worth only on the basis of their physical assets and expressing admiration for a fellow human with God's gift (allegedly) of good looks.""
In a different age this would've been called... sexism
To say nothing of the double standard that if a man had said the exact same thing as her, Twitter's Troll Chorus would've been bashing him as a misogynist
'Pokemon Go' players deter suicides in Fukui - "“The area around Tojinbo had been very dark and eerie after 5 p.m. after all the tourists leave,” Shige told The Japan Times on Friday. “But since ‘Pokemon Go’ was released, the area has been bustling, even late at night.”... the atmosphere “was not quite right for committing suicide”"
Black applicants make up half of cheats, says Ucas - "More than half of students submitting fraudulent applications for degree courses are black, the university admissions body said yesterday. Black candidates make up 52 per cent of all applications flagged despite comprising only 9 per cent of applicants, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) said. The figures triggered a race row... Applications can be considered fraudulent for several reasons, including plagiarism of the personal statement, falsifying exam results, sending false documents, using fake identities, or making multiple applications at once. Ucas defended its systems from accusations of bias, saying the software that flagged questionable applications did not see the candidate’s ethnicity, and neither did university staff who raised queries. It said the proportion of flagged, or suspicious, applications from black students turned out to be almost identical to the proportion later confirmed as fraudulent... Only a small number of applications were flagged — 5,160 (0.18 per cent) and about 40 per cent of those — 2,085 (or 0.07 per cent of all applications) had their applications cancelled. The percentages cancelled, by ethnic group, were broadly proportionate to the percentages flagged in each ethnic group... The Ucas report said: “This suggests that the verification activities undertaken by Ucas are generally robust and fair.” It reviewed all cancelled applications from the past two years, and said it found they were genuine."
Of course, this story is being reported differently in other news sources, which omit the fact that the number of applications confirmed as fraudulent roughly matches up with that flagged by the software
Comments: "Sad to say it, but this was my experience in the university I worked in for years. We had proportionately far more issues with plagiarism, outright copying and various other forms of cheating amongst certain BME groups than among 'the rest'. I've had postgrad applications from African and Middle Eastern countries with 'degree certificates' from the Universities of Potters Bar and Golders Green; personal statements lifted straight from Google; syllabus details for degrees that don't exist and even a 'certificate' from my own university which had been faked. The other trick is to get someone else to sit your English language test. When IELTS started requiring photo ID at tests, we got a lot fewer mis-matches between results and actual ability."
"A huge majority of all applicants do not cheat. This whole business has been blown out of all proportion"
Oxford University involved in Twitter row with David Lammy - "Oxford University has apologised to David Lammy after retweeting a post labelling his criticism "bitter". The original tweet, sent by a student, was in response to the Labour MP saying Oxford was "a bastion of white, middle class, southern privilege"."
Apparently you can't be bitter in the pursuit of social justice
The Deadly Legacy of HIV Truthers - "Thousands of people died because the conspiracy theory was able to outrun the facts, thriving in the climate of fear and suspicion around a grisly disease that had struck a vulnerable population. To some groups who’d been fighting on behalf of AIDS patients, it was too tidy to see a multimillion-dollar drug market emerge, to treat the same people who’d already been stigmatized and marginalized... The message to HIV educators, Sheehy said, was “you’re an enemy of the gay community, and we’re going to silence you.” Finally, ACT UP San Francisco spokesman David Pasquarelli and one other activist were arrested and jailed. (The other activist said he didn’t agree with Pasquarelli’s views on HIV, but felt that HIV-prevention campaigns were aimed at suppressing gay sexuality.)... The more frequently someone used the internet, the readier they were to believe that there was no proof that HIV causes AIDS.
Conspiracy theories can kill
Samantha Bee Apologizes For Her Ivanka Trump Comments After Widespread Backlash - "Samantha Bee has apologized for calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless c**t” on her show “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee”... “The collective silence by the left and its media allies is appalling”"
Gendered insults against women aren't bad when used against "conservatives", even when they come from feminists
Actor Patton Oswalt Triggered By Ivanka Trump Cuddling Her Son
British man beaten by 10 Chinese in Cambodia for having 'Taiwan' tattooed on his forehead - "One of the Chinese men then shouted in Mandarin "Taiwan, China! In response, Paul retorted "Taiwan, Taiwan!" Paul says that they then "went insane, grabbed poles and started attacking me."
Israel restores electricity to Gaza - "IEC employees repaired the damage caused to the company's equipment in the Gaza vicinity as a result of a rocket fired by terrorists."
Worst. Genocide. Ever.
I'm sure many people blame Israel for a terrorist taking out Gaza's electricity supply in the name of "resistance"
Former NTUC Income CEO shares his thoughts on newly introduced CareShield Life versus ElderShield - "The increase in premium is about 15%. This is reasonable considering that the benefit provided under the new scheme is 50% higher."
Police dog killed with an axe by man shouting 'Allahu akbar' in Schiedam, Holland - "the suspect was a Syrian who had been living with his father in Schiedam"
Beware: Amazon Still Sells Counterfeit Memory Cards - "Counterfeit products can be found across Amazon these days. Engadget reports that two years ago, Apple purchased 100 Lightning cables and chargers marked “Fulfilled by Amazon” over 9 months and found that roughly 90% of the cables it received were counterfeit. In 2011, a SanDisk engineer estimated that roughly 1/3 of SanDisk-branded memory cards on Earth are actually fakes"
The women with superhuman vision - "Although the relevant combination of genes does not seem to be especially rare – perhaps 12% of women might have four distinct cones – many of the people that Jordan tested just didn’t seem to show any differences in their perception"
Men and Women Really Do See Things Differently - "Females are better at discriminating among colors, researchers say, while males excel at tracking fast-moving objects and discerning detail from a distance—evolutionary adaptations possibly linked to our hunter-gatherer past."
The Story Behind This Bald Eagle Stealing a Rabbit From a Fox - "“I thought the eagle would scare the fox into dropping its dinner,” says Ebi. Yet, for just a few seconds, the fox steadfastly held on before it was flung back onto the ground."
Somali militant group bans samosas for being too Christian - "the extremist group al-Shabaab has proclaimed—via loudspeakers mounted to vehicles—that this delicious snack shall henceforth be banned from sale or consumption. Samosas are, in the words of al-Shabaab, “offensive.” Their reason for offense? The triangular shaped of the snack (it’s known as samboosas in the Horn of Africa) resembles the symbol of Christianity’s Holy Trinity"
The making of StarCraft - "With Command & Conquer having found huge success with its modern military setting, it was clear there was one option for Blizzard from the start—and so initially ‘Orcs in space' was the driving goal for the game. “It was sort of like re-envisioning what would happen if the world of Warcraft just went into space,” Patrick says, “and so the perspective was the same, the art style was a bit different.” Gone was the natural greens and browns of fantasy-fuelled Warcraft, instead here Blizzard opted for something more space-like—a horrific blend of putrid pinks, bright blues and garish greens. It stood out, for sure, but not in a good way. Blizzard found itself the victim of trade show disaster as the team attended E3 1996 to discover that no one was a fan of what would be the company's next game."
As far as Mahatma Gandhi (and lots of others) are concerned, eggs are as vegetarian as milk - "One fourth of India's vegetarian population actually seems to quietly go along with this. The Hindu-CNN-IBN State of the Nation survey in 2012 concluded that about 31% of Indians profess to vegetarianism while another 9% count themselves as "eggetarians," essentially vegetarians who will eat egg... Indian vegetarians' shunning of eggs can be vehement – a Jain Samiti spokesperson commenting on Madhya Pradesh's move said it would reduce "sensitivity" in children. But their championing of other animal products, like milk or even cow urine can be equally vehement."
Girl Surprised When Man Wearing Confederate Flag Helps Change Tire - "“For me and my family, as a black person, the Confederate army = oppression,” she tweeted. “Therefore the flag as a symbol utilized = oppression.”"
Wellness, Womanhood, and the West: How Goop Profits From Endless Illness - "Since Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop launched in 2008, the site has earned its reputation as the internet’s kooky rich aunt. From detoxes to cleanses; vitamins to clean food; vaginal eggs to vaginal steaming and recurring features by a self-described “Medical Medium” (a man who diagnoses disease via spirit guidance), Goop has built a small digital empire. In between primers on how to wear denim jackets and a curated shop featuring Ulla Johnson jumpers and Marni sandals, Goop peddles “wellness,” the site’s iteration of health content, sleekly packaged as lifestyle content"
I said something very similar to Jezebel, the feminist blog, and got scolded for being misogynistic, so
Mario Rudeboy - Posts - "I'm a Muslim and proud to be one but I think it's time as Muslims we fix this bullshit problem we have. Yes we do have a problem with our community & so called 'Muslim' brothers. Whatever is going on it's time we stop blaming others, stop being the 'victims' & blaming the west. We need to fix this epidemic of inbreds from doing these despicable crimes. Sorry I don't care if you think I'm being harsh. Islam is a beautiful religion BUT these uneducated monkeys misinterpret things & feel they are acting on Gods behalf & it's only getting worse... I'd love to see these people talk crap in Muslim countries. They would be smashed in seconds. Locked up & tortured. I think it's time the British or west deport not only those who incite hatred against the country themselves, but the entire family also. You come to a country to milk the benefit system, free education & health system yet complain. Try that in Pakistan or Iraq or the Gulf. See what will happen. It's pissing me off seeing this shit. Monkeys like Anjem Choudhury etc. Try talk bad in the Muslim states and see... I was raised in England. Never had any issues with racism or islampbobia. My closest friends were English & non Muslims. They treated me like a brother and likewise. I was able to practice my religion without offending them and they did without offending me"
How common is lntersex? A response to Anne Fausto‐Sterling - "If the term intersex is to retain any meaning, the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female. Applying this more precise definition, the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%"
In response to SJWs who claim Male/Female as choices for sex is inadequate
How to Save Europe
Interestingly Soros is against ever closer union, compulsory migrant quotas and compulsory Euro membership
There's No Such Thing as a Slut - "All but five or six of the women practiced “slut-shaming,” or denigrating the other women for their loose sexual mores. But they conflated their accusations of “sluttiness” with other, unrelated personality traits, like meanness or unattractiveness. It seems there was no better way to smear a dorm-mate than to suggest she was sexually impure."
It would be more accurate to title this "Why, when women call each other sluts, they don't mean 'a promiscuous woman'"
Also this suggests that just bashing men for oppressing women is misguided
Japan’s Affection for Love Hotels - "love hotels came to be categorized as “immovable sex-related establishments,” placed under the jurisdiction of the police. Because of this, when new hotels were built an effort was made to steer clear of the “love hotel” classification. This was done, for example, by hotel owners avoiding designs featuring bizarre exteriors and interiors... around 90% of the time women are the ones to choose the room at a love hotel. More love hotels these days are offering special, low-priced “ladies plans” for female guests who simply want to spend the night at a hotel. This offers guests a resort-like experience, with upscale amenities such as esthetic services and gourmet meals. Hotels hope that women who take advantage of these plans will end up as return customers, bringing along a male companion the next time."
MGTOW—A boycotting of women - "generally speaking: women just aren’t worth my time. Doesn’t mean I hate women—just means I’m not interested in them. Feminists have two important slogans: “her body her choice” and “She doesn’t owe you anything”. Well, it goes both ways: “MY body, MY choice”, “I don’t owe YOU anything.”"
WHAT A WAYNE-ANKER: LeedsLive Editor Says Reporter Who Published Tommy Robinson Address was 'Brave' - "Robinson wrote on social media “Do you know how many times I have gone into Bedford police station, I have gone into Kempston police station, to say here are comments to kill my family but nothing ever gets done.”... an address had been released online claiming to be where he lived, but the information was wrong and the current occupants of that address were now “terrified”."
Doxxing is good when it's against the "Far right"
Women now hold a majority of all management and professional positions in the U.S. - "Women now hold 52 percent of management, professional, and related positions, according to a new report from BMO Bank."
"Male privilege"
Mariella Frostrup: Men face 'double standard' over celebrity lust - "Broadcaster Mariella Frostrup has complained of a new "double standard" that allows women to lust over men - but sees accusations of sexism arise when the role is reversed... she can comment on a "shot of a shirtless, sea-soaked Aidan Turner". But men would not be able to remark similarly on his female co-stars... "we live in confusing times and I'm the first to admit to double standards - if a male colleague had penned those preceding lines about any of Turner's equally appealing female co-stars, his cries of contrition would be drowned out by Twitter's Troll Chorus." The presenter said she feared that "we are losing not only our sense of humour but our sense of proportion as we throw every act of perceived sexism into the #MeToo basket"... "There's an enormous difference between judging a person's worth only on the basis of their physical assets and expressing admiration for a fellow human with God's gift (allegedly) of good looks.""
In a different age this would've been called... sexism
To say nothing of the double standard that if a man had said the exact same thing as her, Twitter's Troll Chorus would've been bashing him as a misogynist
'Pokemon Go' players deter suicides in Fukui - "“The area around Tojinbo had been very dark and eerie after 5 p.m. after all the tourists leave,” Shige told The Japan Times on Friday. “But since ‘Pokemon Go’ was released, the area has been bustling, even late at night.”... the atmosphere “was not quite right for committing suicide”"
Black applicants make up half of cheats, says Ucas - "More than half of students submitting fraudulent applications for degree courses are black, the university admissions body said yesterday. Black candidates make up 52 per cent of all applications flagged despite comprising only 9 per cent of applicants, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) said. The figures triggered a race row... Applications can be considered fraudulent for several reasons, including plagiarism of the personal statement, falsifying exam results, sending false documents, using fake identities, or making multiple applications at once. Ucas defended its systems from accusations of bias, saying the software that flagged questionable applications did not see the candidate’s ethnicity, and neither did university staff who raised queries. It said the proportion of flagged, or suspicious, applications from black students turned out to be almost identical to the proportion later confirmed as fraudulent... Only a small number of applications were flagged — 5,160 (0.18 per cent) and about 40 per cent of those — 2,085 (or 0.07 per cent of all applications) had their applications cancelled. The percentages cancelled, by ethnic group, were broadly proportionate to the percentages flagged in each ethnic group... The Ucas report said: “This suggests that the verification activities undertaken by Ucas are generally robust and fair.” It reviewed all cancelled applications from the past two years, and said it found they were genuine."
Of course, this story is being reported differently in other news sources, which omit the fact that the number of applications confirmed as fraudulent roughly matches up with that flagged by the software
Comments: "Sad to say it, but this was my experience in the university I worked in for years. We had proportionately far more issues with plagiarism, outright copying and various other forms of cheating amongst certain BME groups than among 'the rest'. I've had postgrad applications from African and Middle Eastern countries with 'degree certificates' from the Universities of Potters Bar and Golders Green; personal statements lifted straight from Google; syllabus details for degrees that don't exist and even a 'certificate' from my own university which had been faked. The other trick is to get someone else to sit your English language test. When IELTS started requiring photo ID at tests, we got a lot fewer mis-matches between results and actual ability."
"A huge majority of all applicants do not cheat. This whole business has been blown out of all proportion"
Oxford University involved in Twitter row with David Lammy - "Oxford University has apologised to David Lammy after retweeting a post labelling his criticism "bitter". The original tweet, sent by a student, was in response to the Labour MP saying Oxford was "a bastion of white, middle class, southern privilege"."
Apparently you can't be bitter in the pursuit of social justice
The Deadly Legacy of HIV Truthers - "Thousands of people died because the conspiracy theory was able to outrun the facts, thriving in the climate of fear and suspicion around a grisly disease that had struck a vulnerable population. To some groups who’d been fighting on behalf of AIDS patients, it was too tidy to see a multimillion-dollar drug market emerge, to treat the same people who’d already been stigmatized and marginalized... The message to HIV educators, Sheehy said, was “you’re an enemy of the gay community, and we’re going to silence you.” Finally, ACT UP San Francisco spokesman David Pasquarelli and one other activist were arrested and jailed. (The other activist said he didn’t agree with Pasquarelli’s views on HIV, but felt that HIV-prevention campaigns were aimed at suppressing gay sexuality.)... The more frequently someone used the internet, the readier they were to believe that there was no proof that HIV causes AIDS.
Conspiracy theories can kill
Samantha Bee Apologizes For Her Ivanka Trump Comments After Widespread Backlash - "Samantha Bee has apologized for calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless c**t” on her show “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee”... “The collective silence by the left and its media allies is appalling”"
Gendered insults against women aren't bad when used against "conservatives", even when they come from feminists
Actor Patton Oswalt Triggered By Ivanka Trump Cuddling Her Son
British man beaten by 10 Chinese in Cambodia for having 'Taiwan' tattooed on his forehead - "One of the Chinese men then shouted in Mandarin "Taiwan, China! In response, Paul retorted "Taiwan, Taiwan!" Paul says that they then "went insane, grabbed poles and started attacking me."
Israel restores electricity to Gaza - "IEC employees repaired the damage caused to the company's equipment in the Gaza vicinity as a result of a rocket fired by terrorists."
Worst. Genocide. Ever.
I'm sure many people blame Israel for a terrorist taking out Gaza's electricity supply in the name of "resistance"
Former NTUC Income CEO shares his thoughts on newly introduced CareShield Life versus ElderShield - "The increase in premium is about 15%. This is reasonable considering that the benefit provided under the new scheme is 50% higher."
Police dog killed with an axe by man shouting 'Allahu akbar' in Schiedam, Holland - "the suspect was a Syrian who had been living with his father in Schiedam"
Beware: Amazon Still Sells Counterfeit Memory Cards - "Counterfeit products can be found across Amazon these days. Engadget reports that two years ago, Apple purchased 100 Lightning cables and chargers marked “Fulfilled by Amazon” over 9 months and found that roughly 90% of the cables it received were counterfeit. In 2011, a SanDisk engineer estimated that roughly 1/3 of SanDisk-branded memory cards on Earth are actually fakes"
Post ID: 7885246670477004320
Painfotainment
Hardcore History 61 – (BLITZ) Painfotainment
"[On the Middle Ages] It talks about one of these breaking on the wheels that happens, and the original source is talking about how as the condemned is being killed, as they're being broken on the wheel, they are singing or shouting religious verses, and the crowd is picking up where the condemned leaves off. So he'll do the first verse, they'll do the second in unison. He'll do the third, they'll do the fourth, it's a call and response while he's being killed.
What's more, according to the source, he's talking to the guy who's killing him - the executioner. And I guess the only way to put it is he's making requests. Tell the crowd, I want the next verse in Latin and all this kind of stuff. It's completely bizarre to the modern mind, but as Freedland says, this is the kind of thing that the people in that era would have seen as potentially beautiful, a wonderful lesson for the kids, right? A morality lesson here.
Here's what could happen to you, if you go wrong, but if you continue to believe in God and you sincerely seek redemption through repentance, you too can make it to heaven... the people in the crowd very well may have seen the violence being done to the malefactor's body as necessary to get to the heavenly goal. And if that's the case, that what was being done to that malefactor's body was a good thing...
Spectators did so largely out of a sincere desire to participate in the ceremony that held profound personal meaning for them and not because they wanted to gawk from a distance at the suffering of others. These were less spectacles, he writes, in the way that we understand the words today, than they were rituals in which those who attended saw themselves as full participants rather than onlookers, when was as usually the case, the condemned participated fully in the ritual of repentance, seeking forgiveness from divine and earthly authorities... the public transformation of the condemned criminal into a repentant sinner enabled the entire community to undergo a kind of healing...
When they will finally do away with the public execution here, some of the people who were critical of that said that you're depriving the condemned of the only support they have in this moment where they're going to die, the crowd's on their side. But sometimes it's not...
The executioner is at hand. And this person shows up... in his best robes of office, came with a drink and shared the famous last drink with the condemned. There's also in many places, was a famous last meal, sometimes called the hangman's meal. And this is supremely weird, I think it was Richard Evans who pointed out for a lot of these poor convicted German criminals during this era, this lavish meal that they gave them right before they died was probably the greatest meal that they'd ever had and far above anything that they'd ever even seen. And oftentimes the people who judged you and the religious figures, and even the executioner will eat with you at this meal and you might be required to wear your own burial shroud so the whole thing's not weird, not at all, right? It's part of the psychological breakdown...
But if a guy with 394 kills on his record comes to me and says, listen, I know what I'm doing here, I've done this a lot of times, let me tell you how it's gonna go easiest for you and easiest for me, I think I'm gonna listen to him. After all If I squirm around too much and don't do what this guy wants, he's gonna take more than one shot at my head if this is a decapitation... these people are under enough pressure anyway, they have a reputation not totally without reason of drinking too much... violence against executioners who botch the job, well, the sources are abundant"
"[On the Middle Ages] It talks about one of these breaking on the wheels that happens, and the original source is talking about how as the condemned is being killed, as they're being broken on the wheel, they are singing or shouting religious verses, and the crowd is picking up where the condemned leaves off. So he'll do the first verse, they'll do the second in unison. He'll do the third, they'll do the fourth, it's a call and response while he's being killed.
What's more, according to the source, he's talking to the guy who's killing him - the executioner. And I guess the only way to put it is he's making requests. Tell the crowd, I want the next verse in Latin and all this kind of stuff. It's completely bizarre to the modern mind, but as Freedland says, this is the kind of thing that the people in that era would have seen as potentially beautiful, a wonderful lesson for the kids, right? A morality lesson here.
Here's what could happen to you, if you go wrong, but if you continue to believe in God and you sincerely seek redemption through repentance, you too can make it to heaven... the people in the crowd very well may have seen the violence being done to the malefactor's body as necessary to get to the heavenly goal. And if that's the case, that what was being done to that malefactor's body was a good thing...
Spectators did so largely out of a sincere desire to participate in the ceremony that held profound personal meaning for them and not because they wanted to gawk from a distance at the suffering of others. These were less spectacles, he writes, in the way that we understand the words today, than they were rituals in which those who attended saw themselves as full participants rather than onlookers, when was as usually the case, the condemned participated fully in the ritual of repentance, seeking forgiveness from divine and earthly authorities... the public transformation of the condemned criminal into a repentant sinner enabled the entire community to undergo a kind of healing...
When they will finally do away with the public execution here, some of the people who were critical of that said that you're depriving the condemned of the only support they have in this moment where they're going to die, the crowd's on their side. But sometimes it's not...
The executioner is at hand. And this person shows up... in his best robes of office, came with a drink and shared the famous last drink with the condemned. There's also in many places, was a famous last meal, sometimes called the hangman's meal. And this is supremely weird, I think it was Richard Evans who pointed out for a lot of these poor convicted German criminals during this era, this lavish meal that they gave them right before they died was probably the greatest meal that they'd ever had and far above anything that they'd ever even seen. And oftentimes the people who judged you and the religious figures, and even the executioner will eat with you at this meal and you might be required to wear your own burial shroud so the whole thing's not weird, not at all, right? It's part of the psychological breakdown...
But if a guy with 394 kills on his record comes to me and says, listen, I know what I'm doing here, I've done this a lot of times, let me tell you how it's gonna go easiest for you and easiest for me, I think I'm gonna listen to him. After all If I squirm around too much and don't do what this guy wants, he's gonna take more than one shot at my head if this is a decapitation... these people are under enough pressure anyway, they have a reputation not totally without reason of drinking too much... violence against executioners who botch the job, well, the sources are abundant"
Post ID: 8455893324623679668
Links - 3rd August 2018 (1)
What's Behind Marvel's Campaign To Remove The X-Men From Merchandising? - "Where the feud has been most public recently has been through the sale of things that aren’t comics, however. The comics website Bleeding Cool has long kept track of merchandising changes — but recently there have been several egregious examples of Marvel excluding the X-Men and Fantastic Four from toys and clothes. Last year, a list of Fantastic Four-related characters that were allegedly not allowed to be used as part of a series of collectible cards celebrating the companies’ 75th anniversary got leaked to the site, but the latest (and most bizarre) alterations highlighted by Bleeding Cool have come from T-Shirts, funnily enough."
Did Marvel Comics Just Silently Kill the X-MEN? - "It looks like Marvel’s finally doing what we’ve long feared they would do: using the Inhumans to eradicate the X-Men once and for all. Why? Because unlike the X-Men, Marvel can bring the Inhumans to the big-screen, and they plan on doing so when they kick off Phase 4 with an Inhumans flick in 2019."
A giant indoor farm in China is breeding 6 billion cockroaches a year. Here's why - "The world’s largest cockroach farm is breeding 6 billion adult cockroaches a year and using artificial intelligence to manage a colony larger than the world’s human population – all for medicinal use. It is part of the production process for a “healing potion” consumed by millions of patients in China"
Bill’s fashion – Steven Seagal in the 80s, Hillary’s fashion – Steven Seagal right now
NEVER go full Tariq! Tariq Nasheed’s WOKE take on Cosby verdict is the WOKEST level of WOKENESS - "This Bill Cosby verdict is a perfect lesson for Black ppl. One Black person having money does NOT make you exempt from systematic white supremacy. They used the "I'm white and I say so" law to take Cosby down. Thats because white supremacists know the importance of being on code"
This is just the modern equivalent of OJ Simpson
5 criticisms of billionaire mega-philanthropy, debunked - "“Couple decides to give majority of their earnings to charity” is hardly a headline that you’d expect people to take umbrage at. But when you replace “couple” with “Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan,” suddenly everyone goes crazy. Even though the majority of commentators have been positive, a significant proportion of people have reacted with anger or even condemnation to the news this week that the first couple of social media will be donating 99% of their Facebook shares (some $45 billion) to a new charitable initiative."
Only woman MP in male-dominated S’pore Parliament voted against Abortion Act in 1969 - "Chan Choy Siong was one of the first few female politicians in Singapore, and she was the only woman MP in Parliament at that time. She was against the Abortion Act... Speaking to the male-dominated Parliament, she stated: “All of you are not women.” She explained that the MPs for the Abortion Act are not well aware of the effects and damages that will be inflicted upon a woman during the abortion process."
What would a feminist say?
Bullet trains and the economics of high-speed railways - "There’s a “sweet spot” for HSR success, according to David Walker, associate director of KPMG’s Infrastructure and Project Group, who was also involved in a 2013 feasibility study into HSR in Australia. “The sweet spot is where there’s a journey duration of less than three hours and greater than two,” he says. “You need major cities a bit over 150km away from each other so that people want to use HSR, but not too far apart that the journey time becomes arduous. It comes down to geographics and population density. It’s going to work very well in some countries and not so well in other countries.”"
Does Malaysia Need High-Speed Rail? - "Between March 2017 and February 2018, 4 million people flew the Singapore-Kuala Lumpur route. Yet as you note, HSR’s supporters would have us believe that 22 million people will ride the line by 2036. Even cut in half, such a projection is unrealistic. Which brings me back to costs. As many a tourist has learned, the Shinkansen is one of the most expensive ways to move around Japan — and that certainly is one factor that keeps it in the black. By contrast, China’s HSR is wonderfully inexpensive and egalitarian — and loses money on all but a handful of routes"
Judge calls for kitchen knives to be blunted amid crime wave - "Judge Nic Madge has suggested introducing a scheme whereby members of the public could get their kitchen knives modified. They would be taken to centres where they would be grounded down to have round ends"
Knives can't be used for slashing?
‘Reparations Happy Hour’ Invites White People to Pay for Drinks - The New York Times - "In Portland, Ore., organizers of the “Reparations Happy Hour” invited black, brown and indigenous people to a bar and handed them $10 bills as they arrived, a small but symbolic gift mostly funded by white people who were asked not to attend."
How much longer can people be guilt tripped?
How Does Submissive Sex Work in the Age of #MeToo? - The New York Times - "Her 25 years as a counselor have taught her what many women and men privately know, but are now too afraid to admit — the same truth that the success of “Fifty Shades of Grey” tells: Many women like to be dominated in bed. “Not in their lifestyle, not in their career, but in the bedroom, many women would like to surrender,” Dr. Boehm said. This may explain why, on Amazon’s list of best-selling erotica — a medium that, unlike pornography, is mostly produced and enjoyed by women — themes of male dominance tend to, well, dominate... separate research conducted by the sexologists Meredith Chivers and Marta Meana supports the idea that biology plays a supporting role. Moreover, a 2009 study by Patricia H. Hawley at the University of Kansas found that the more socially dominant a woman was, the more likely she was to enjoy fantasies of sexual submission... [the conversation] tends to ignore certain messy truths about sex — the fickleness and wide variability of female desire, for instance, or the inconvenient fact that good sex often defies logic, political values and social mores. This has put young feminists like Ms. Tallarico and Virginia Rand, a 24-year-old writer and actress in Los Angeles, in a tricky situation. Ms. Rand recalled one recent sexual encounter in which her partner asked for verbal consent “every step of the way.” A rape survivor, Ms. Rand is well versed in feminist theory; she understands just how important and vital a shift such behavior from a young man is when it comes to casual sex. Yet, in practice, she had mixed feelings. “It’s difficult because on the one hand you’re like, ‘Dude, if I didn’t want it, I would stop you,’” she said. “On the other hand, that can be used against you if it was assault.”... “it seemed we were going one way, and then all of a sudden we were not.” He asked her if she was sure she didn’t want to. “And then she said, ‘No, it’s O.K.,’” he said. They had sex. Now Mr. Mobley is plagued with a sense of uncertainty and guilt over the incident: “Was it wrong of me, to ask a clarifying question? Was that coercion? That wasn’t what I meant at all. I was just legitimately confused.” Mr. Mobley said that post-#MeToo he and many of his male friends have sworn off making the first move... We tend to expect sexually liberated women to act the same as sexually liberated men (or at least the idea of them — promiscuous, assertive and self-centered in their pleasure seeking). It makes sense: For most of history, we only had the male model as an example. However, in practice, women may choose to enjoy sexual liberation in significantly different ways than their male counterparts... the concept of prescriptive, universal guidelines is anathema to truly mind-bending sex. So is codifying it into a moral or political act"
In other words, yet more problems with affirmative consent and downsides to #metoo
Funny, Crazy Secrets of Animal Behavior Revealed - "Similar to penguins, pandas remind us of toddlers, in the way they sit and eat and hold their food, or stumble around helplessly. We have therefore totally infantilized these bears, creating a mythology that they somehow need our help to survive. But the infantilized pandas we see in zoos are nothing like wild pandas. For instance, there’s this idea that pandas are rubbish at sex and hopeless at reproduction, but this is simply not true. In the wild, pandas are virile, with sperm counts a hundred times higher than humans. They’ve been observed mating up to 40 times in an afternoon"
The Case for Lowering the Voting Age … to Zero
.Mixed IDF units to see lighter physical tests for female soldiers - "Six months after instructing that women in mixed brigades carry 4 full magazines rather than 6, Brig. Gen. Mordechai Kahane announces decision to do away with demand that female soldiers clear an obstacle wall as part of physical assessments; ‘In two wars in Lebanon and Gaza I never saw a need to clear this kind of wall.’"
Maybe in war the enemy won't shoot if they see female soldiers
If such requirements are really unnecessary why not align them for male and female soldiers?
The psychology of stealing office supplies - "Employees who experience broken promises tend to experience a series of very intense negative emotions such as anger, frustration and outrage, which in turn will lead to a higher desire to dominate, retaliate and get even with the employer."
Every story in the world has one of these six basic plots - "researchers at the University of Vermont’s Computational Story Lab, analysed data from thousands of novels to reveal six basic story types – you could call them archetypes – that form the building blocks for more complex stories. The Vermont researchers describe the six story shapes behind more than 1700 English novels"
Michael Jackson's Gravity-Defying Lean Continues To Fascinate - ""Several MJ fans, including the authors, have tried to copy this move and failed, often injuring themselves in their endeavors," reads the paper published in the Journal of Neurosurgery. Trained dancers can lean forward a maximum of 25 to 30 degrees, but even then, it can put serious strain on the Achilles tendon.""
How gut microbes are joining the fight against cancer
This settles it: Cold days are superior to hot days - The Washington Post - "Heat makes people miserable. Economists have found that people would generally be willing to pay 1 percent to 3 percent of their annual income to avoid a 1 degree Fahrenheit increase in summer temperatures... When you get colder, people's emotions start to dip, too, after a point — but by a lesser amount. And there's a lot more variation in how people respond to colder temperatures... You can always put on more clothes when you get cold — but after a certain point you can't take any more off when you're hot (this is especially true when you work in an office)... a one-degree increase in temperature has an effect on your happiness that's similar to living in an area with a median income that is $500 lower. This starts to have implications for what we know about the effects of global warming"
Hotter years 'mean lower exam results' - "Researchers calculated that for every 0.55C increase in average temperature over the year, there was a 1% fall in learning. Colder days did not seem to damage achievement - but the negative impact began to be measurable as temperatures rose above 21C. The reduction in learning accelerated once temperatures rose above 32C and even more so above 38C."
The tropics suck
The Dark Knight of the Soul - "descriptions of meditation's adverse effects have been collecting dust on bookshelves for centuries."
35 and flat broke? Money saving tips to go debt-free - "Across Singapore, 30-something career women with no kids or mortgages are chalking up dizzying amounts of debt. According to Credit Bureau Singapore, women aged 30 to 34 who have unsecured credit (this includes credit cards) owe an average of $5,445 each. And as of July last year, 62,830 unsecured credit customers had not made a minimum payment in two months – a striking 12.7 per cent jump from the previous year."
Africa's last absolute monarch renames Swaziland as 'eSwatini' - "He said the name “Swaziland” had caused confusion. “Whenever we go abroad, people refer to us as Switzerland,” the king said"
Gay marriage in Australia: Brisbane protest turns violent - "THE debate over same-sex marriage turned ugly last night when a protest by “yes” campaigners erupted into violent scenes. Protesters outside a Brisbane church claimed they were attacked with cars as they gathered to oppose a meeting they described as a “homophobic forum”. Police attended the gathering at St Michael’s Dorrington Catholic Church at Ashgrove and at least one woman was treated by paramedics."
Now conservatives have more than the Hamilton Square Baptist Church riots to talk about when talking about gay violence
Why South Asia’s majorities act like persecuted minorities - Banyan
Why grievance politics is dangerous
The economist manifesto - "Smith saw the task of political economy as the pursuit of "two distinct objects": "first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and second, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services". He defended such public services as free education and poverty relief, while demanding greater freedom for the indigent who receives support than the rather punitive Poor Laws of his day permitted. Beyond his attention to the components and responsibilities of a well-functioning market system (such as the role of accountability and trust), he was deeply concerned about the inequality and poverty that might remain in an otherwise successful market economy"
I got kicked out of diversity training - "Things went south even before the workshop actually started, setting a poisonous tone. As the group got organized online, one member shared a screen grab from her Facebook feed, in which a stream of self-appointed diversity advocates pounced on a young woman who had shared her happiness about graduating from medical school. Almost immediately, someone minimized her accomplishment by attributing much of it to “white privilege.”... the workshop leader was the worst of all, egging on members of the forming group to charge “privilege” toward every accomplishment of every white woman. She was bullying and encouraging bullying, and I said so... this expert’s credentials existed only in her imagination... She told us that no woman of color could ever trust any white woman. She told us that every white woman owed every woman of color reparations — and then asked for donations through PayPal. (And yes, some women in the group were quickly guilt-tripped into donating money.) Every question from a group member was denigrated as an avoidance tactic. She shared a video clip of an on-site training in which she shamed and ridiculed a participant for eight minutes — no mention as to whether the participant gave consent for her “whipping” to be paraded in front of some 50 people. She whipped up derechos of blame. I stood up to it and was erased from the group. (A couple other women did the same and were tossed out too.)... I’m not black, Latina, Asian or Native American, and I don’t know what it’s like to move through life initially defined by the color of my skin. But I know what it’s like for people to judge me based on my appearance"
Diversity = bashing white people
Did Marvel Comics Just Silently Kill the X-MEN? - "It looks like Marvel’s finally doing what we’ve long feared they would do: using the Inhumans to eradicate the X-Men once and for all. Why? Because unlike the X-Men, Marvel can bring the Inhumans to the big-screen, and they plan on doing so when they kick off Phase 4 with an Inhumans flick in 2019."
A giant indoor farm in China is breeding 6 billion cockroaches a year. Here's why - "The world’s largest cockroach farm is breeding 6 billion adult cockroaches a year and using artificial intelligence to manage a colony larger than the world’s human population – all for medicinal use. It is part of the production process for a “healing potion” consumed by millions of patients in China"
Bill’s fashion – Steven Seagal in the 80s, Hillary’s fashion – Steven Seagal right now
NEVER go full Tariq! Tariq Nasheed’s WOKE take on Cosby verdict is the WOKEST level of WOKENESS - "This Bill Cosby verdict is a perfect lesson for Black ppl. One Black person having money does NOT make you exempt from systematic white supremacy. They used the "I'm white and I say so" law to take Cosby down. Thats because white supremacists know the importance of being on code"
This is just the modern equivalent of OJ Simpson
5 criticisms of billionaire mega-philanthropy, debunked - "“Couple decides to give majority of their earnings to charity” is hardly a headline that you’d expect people to take umbrage at. But when you replace “couple” with “Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan,” suddenly everyone goes crazy. Even though the majority of commentators have been positive, a significant proportion of people have reacted with anger or even condemnation to the news this week that the first couple of social media will be donating 99% of their Facebook shares (some $45 billion) to a new charitable initiative."
Only woman MP in male-dominated S’pore Parliament voted against Abortion Act in 1969 - "Chan Choy Siong was one of the first few female politicians in Singapore, and she was the only woman MP in Parliament at that time. She was against the Abortion Act... Speaking to the male-dominated Parliament, she stated: “All of you are not women.” She explained that the MPs for the Abortion Act are not well aware of the effects and damages that will be inflicted upon a woman during the abortion process."
What would a feminist say?
Bullet trains and the economics of high-speed railways - "There’s a “sweet spot” for HSR success, according to David Walker, associate director of KPMG’s Infrastructure and Project Group, who was also involved in a 2013 feasibility study into HSR in Australia. “The sweet spot is where there’s a journey duration of less than three hours and greater than two,” he says. “You need major cities a bit over 150km away from each other so that people want to use HSR, but not too far apart that the journey time becomes arduous. It comes down to geographics and population density. It’s going to work very well in some countries and not so well in other countries.”"
Does Malaysia Need High-Speed Rail? - "Between March 2017 and February 2018, 4 million people flew the Singapore-Kuala Lumpur route. Yet as you note, HSR’s supporters would have us believe that 22 million people will ride the line by 2036. Even cut in half, such a projection is unrealistic. Which brings me back to costs. As many a tourist has learned, the Shinkansen is one of the most expensive ways to move around Japan — and that certainly is one factor that keeps it in the black. By contrast, China’s HSR is wonderfully inexpensive and egalitarian — and loses money on all but a handful of routes"
Judge calls for kitchen knives to be blunted amid crime wave - "Judge Nic Madge has suggested introducing a scheme whereby members of the public could get their kitchen knives modified. They would be taken to centres where they would be grounded down to have round ends"
Knives can't be used for slashing?
‘Reparations Happy Hour’ Invites White People to Pay for Drinks - The New York Times - "In Portland, Ore., organizers of the “Reparations Happy Hour” invited black, brown and indigenous people to a bar and handed them $10 bills as they arrived, a small but symbolic gift mostly funded by white people who were asked not to attend."
How much longer can people be guilt tripped?
How Does Submissive Sex Work in the Age of #MeToo? - The New York Times - "Her 25 years as a counselor have taught her what many women and men privately know, but are now too afraid to admit — the same truth that the success of “Fifty Shades of Grey” tells: Many women like to be dominated in bed. “Not in their lifestyle, not in their career, but in the bedroom, many women would like to surrender,” Dr. Boehm said. This may explain why, on Amazon’s list of best-selling erotica — a medium that, unlike pornography, is mostly produced and enjoyed by women — themes of male dominance tend to, well, dominate... separate research conducted by the sexologists Meredith Chivers and Marta Meana supports the idea that biology plays a supporting role. Moreover, a 2009 study by Patricia H. Hawley at the University of Kansas found that the more socially dominant a woman was, the more likely she was to enjoy fantasies of sexual submission... [the conversation] tends to ignore certain messy truths about sex — the fickleness and wide variability of female desire, for instance, or the inconvenient fact that good sex often defies logic, political values and social mores. This has put young feminists like Ms. Tallarico and Virginia Rand, a 24-year-old writer and actress in Los Angeles, in a tricky situation. Ms. Rand recalled one recent sexual encounter in which her partner asked for verbal consent “every step of the way.” A rape survivor, Ms. Rand is well versed in feminist theory; she understands just how important and vital a shift such behavior from a young man is when it comes to casual sex. Yet, in practice, she had mixed feelings. “It’s difficult because on the one hand you’re like, ‘Dude, if I didn’t want it, I would stop you,’” she said. “On the other hand, that can be used against you if it was assault.”... “it seemed we were going one way, and then all of a sudden we were not.” He asked her if she was sure she didn’t want to. “And then she said, ‘No, it’s O.K.,’” he said. They had sex. Now Mr. Mobley is plagued with a sense of uncertainty and guilt over the incident: “Was it wrong of me, to ask a clarifying question? Was that coercion? That wasn’t what I meant at all. I was just legitimately confused.” Mr. Mobley said that post-#MeToo he and many of his male friends have sworn off making the first move... We tend to expect sexually liberated women to act the same as sexually liberated men (or at least the idea of them — promiscuous, assertive and self-centered in their pleasure seeking). It makes sense: For most of history, we only had the male model as an example. However, in practice, women may choose to enjoy sexual liberation in significantly different ways than their male counterparts... the concept of prescriptive, universal guidelines is anathema to truly mind-bending sex. So is codifying it into a moral or political act"
In other words, yet more problems with affirmative consent and downsides to #metoo
Funny, Crazy Secrets of Animal Behavior Revealed - "Similar to penguins, pandas remind us of toddlers, in the way they sit and eat and hold their food, or stumble around helplessly. We have therefore totally infantilized these bears, creating a mythology that they somehow need our help to survive. But the infantilized pandas we see in zoos are nothing like wild pandas. For instance, there’s this idea that pandas are rubbish at sex and hopeless at reproduction, but this is simply not true. In the wild, pandas are virile, with sperm counts a hundred times higher than humans. They’ve been observed mating up to 40 times in an afternoon"
The Case for Lowering the Voting Age … to Zero
.Mixed IDF units to see lighter physical tests for female soldiers - "Six months after instructing that women in mixed brigades carry 4 full magazines rather than 6, Brig. Gen. Mordechai Kahane announces decision to do away with demand that female soldiers clear an obstacle wall as part of physical assessments; ‘In two wars in Lebanon and Gaza I never saw a need to clear this kind of wall.’"
Maybe in war the enemy won't shoot if they see female soldiers
If such requirements are really unnecessary why not align them for male and female soldiers?
The psychology of stealing office supplies - "Employees who experience broken promises tend to experience a series of very intense negative emotions such as anger, frustration and outrage, which in turn will lead to a higher desire to dominate, retaliate and get even with the employer."
Every story in the world has one of these six basic plots - "researchers at the University of Vermont’s Computational Story Lab, analysed data from thousands of novels to reveal six basic story types – you could call them archetypes – that form the building blocks for more complex stories. The Vermont researchers describe the six story shapes behind more than 1700 English novels"
Michael Jackson's Gravity-Defying Lean Continues To Fascinate - ""Several MJ fans, including the authors, have tried to copy this move and failed, often injuring themselves in their endeavors," reads the paper published in the Journal of Neurosurgery. Trained dancers can lean forward a maximum of 25 to 30 degrees, but even then, it can put serious strain on the Achilles tendon.""
How gut microbes are joining the fight against cancer
This settles it: Cold days are superior to hot days - The Washington Post - "Heat makes people miserable. Economists have found that people would generally be willing to pay 1 percent to 3 percent of their annual income to avoid a 1 degree Fahrenheit increase in summer temperatures... When you get colder, people's emotions start to dip, too, after a point — but by a lesser amount. And there's a lot more variation in how people respond to colder temperatures... You can always put on more clothes when you get cold — but after a certain point you can't take any more off when you're hot (this is especially true when you work in an office)... a one-degree increase in temperature has an effect on your happiness that's similar to living in an area with a median income that is $500 lower. This starts to have implications for what we know about the effects of global warming"
Hotter years 'mean lower exam results' - "Researchers calculated that for every 0.55C increase in average temperature over the year, there was a 1% fall in learning. Colder days did not seem to damage achievement - but the negative impact began to be measurable as temperatures rose above 21C. The reduction in learning accelerated once temperatures rose above 32C and even more so above 38C."
The tropics suck
The Dark Knight of the Soul - "descriptions of meditation's adverse effects have been collecting dust on bookshelves for centuries."
35 and flat broke? Money saving tips to go debt-free - "Across Singapore, 30-something career women with no kids or mortgages are chalking up dizzying amounts of debt. According to Credit Bureau Singapore, women aged 30 to 34 who have unsecured credit (this includes credit cards) owe an average of $5,445 each. And as of July last year, 62,830 unsecured credit customers had not made a minimum payment in two months – a striking 12.7 per cent jump from the previous year."
Africa's last absolute monarch renames Swaziland as 'eSwatini' - "He said the name “Swaziland” had caused confusion. “Whenever we go abroad, people refer to us as Switzerland,” the king said"
Gay marriage in Australia: Brisbane protest turns violent - "THE debate over same-sex marriage turned ugly last night when a protest by “yes” campaigners erupted into violent scenes. Protesters outside a Brisbane church claimed they were attacked with cars as they gathered to oppose a meeting they described as a “homophobic forum”. Police attended the gathering at St Michael’s Dorrington Catholic Church at Ashgrove and at least one woman was treated by paramedics."
Now conservatives have more than the Hamilton Square Baptist Church riots to talk about when talking about gay violence
Why South Asia’s majorities act like persecuted minorities - Banyan
Why grievance politics is dangerous
The economist manifesto - "Smith saw the task of political economy as the pursuit of "two distinct objects": "first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and second, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services". He defended such public services as free education and poverty relief, while demanding greater freedom for the indigent who receives support than the rather punitive Poor Laws of his day permitted. Beyond his attention to the components and responsibilities of a well-functioning market system (such as the role of accountability and trust), he was deeply concerned about the inequality and poverty that might remain in an otherwise successful market economy"
I got kicked out of diversity training - "Things went south even before the workshop actually started, setting a poisonous tone. As the group got organized online, one member shared a screen grab from her Facebook feed, in which a stream of self-appointed diversity advocates pounced on a young woman who had shared her happiness about graduating from medical school. Almost immediately, someone minimized her accomplishment by attributing much of it to “white privilege.”... the workshop leader was the worst of all, egging on members of the forming group to charge “privilege” toward every accomplishment of every white woman. She was bullying and encouraging bullying, and I said so... this expert’s credentials existed only in her imagination... She told us that no woman of color could ever trust any white woman. She told us that every white woman owed every woman of color reparations — and then asked for donations through PayPal. (And yes, some women in the group were quickly guilt-tripped into donating money.) Every question from a group member was denigrated as an avoidance tactic. She shared a video clip of an on-site training in which she shamed and ridiculed a participant for eight minutes — no mention as to whether the participant gave consent for her “whipping” to be paraded in front of some 50 people. She whipped up derechos of blame. I stood up to it and was erased from the group. (A couple other women did the same and were tossed out too.)... I’m not black, Latina, Asian or Native American, and I don’t know what it’s like to move through life initially defined by the color of my skin. But I know what it’s like for people to judge me based on my appearance"
Diversity = bashing white people
Post ID: 4093788743299038235
Wednesday, August 01, 2018
Links - 1st August 2018 (2)
Why the left has turned its back on freedom of speech - "When they call for far-right marches or speakers to be banned, leftists repeat the censoriousness of McCarthyism. (Indeed, the House Un-American Activities started as a purge of fascism from America before moving on to communism.) When some on the left fret that lads’ mags or ‘sexist’ songs like ‘Blurred Lines’ or old books that contain the word nigger will unleash readers’ and viewers’ base instincts and potentially destabilise society, they echo the stiff, Christian censorship radicals once opposed. When leftists brand as ‘phobic’ – that is, irrational – anyone who thinks a man cannot become a woman, they repeat the terrible thing that was once done to them: they brand those who hold views they find difficult or offensive as ‘ill’, unstable, a threat to society... the idea that unfettered speech leads to the expression of prejudiced ideas and that this could damage the self-esteem of certain groups. It is such a racially paternalistic argument, setting up white liberals, essentially, as the defenders of black people from psychic harm... Across the board, leftists demonise freedoms they once argued for... The left has helped to make ‘freedom’ into a dirty word. Freedom is dangerous, they claim. It makes minority groups feel bad. It stirs up hateful passions among the mob (ie, the public). It can even cause rape and death: see the idea that lads’ mags facilitate rapaciousness or that criticism of the ideology of transgenderism can cause young trans people to kill themselves. Where earlier radicals saw freedom as the greatest social good, the thing that allowed individuals to become truly autonomous and understanding and knowledgable, today’s so-called radicals see it as the harbinger of hate and spite and violence and death... Anyone who believes they can make the argument that certain words and images are too dangerous for public life and that this argument won’t then be used against their words and images is a fool of the most serious kind. Thomas Paine, intellectual architect of the left, made this point: ‘He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.’... the left embrace of censorship promotes the idea that individuals are either wicked or weak, either dangerous creatures who must be controlled or fragile creatures who must be protected. It promotes suspicion and distrust of humankind... The story of the left’s embrace of censorship is a really a story of its growing estrangement from the people."
10 Bizarre Uses of Animals in War - "Several armies have set animals on fire and directed them at the enemy to panic and scatter war elephants. One of the most spectacular of these unpleasant schemes was undertaken the Turkic general Timur while invading India in 1398. Piling hay and wood onto the backs of camels, he set them on fire and sent them screaming into the enemy elephant formation. Flaming animals have also been used against other enemy troops. In a battle between rebels and the Chinese army during the Southern Song Dynasty, monkeys were clothed in straw, dipped in oil and set on fire. Released in the enemy camp, they spread the flames to tents and caused chaos among the troops...
during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). During the siege of a monastery, Nationalist pilots attached live turkeys to fragile supplies before dropping them into the monastery. The flapping of the turkeys was intended to slow the fall of the supplies, acting as a form of a parachute. The turkeys could then be added to the defenders’ food supplies – a poor reward for their heroic service...
During the First Gulf War (1990-1991), the United States planned to use chickens to detect poisonous gasses... 41 of 43 chickens intended for use in Kuwaiti Field Chicken (KFC) died within a week of arriving in Kuwait, and the plan was abandoned."
Gender, Partisanship, and Issue Gaps - "for a number of issue areas, women are more supportive of an activist government than men of the same party"
The liberal case against identity politics - "I expected there to be some reaction, just from people who are totally committed to identity politics. But I was not expecting the tsunami of response. The piece was the most-read political commentary piece in the New York Times that year, and I got my first Twitter bath, all in acid, and realised just how difficult it is to even raise the questions that I raised... I discovered just how symbolic and self-reinforcing the politics of the identity movements are, and the degree to which they’re getting in the way of building a democratic majority in the country again... identity politics has become focused on the identity of the individual self, rather than a shared characteristic and an idea of how we might pursue a common agenda together. Identity politics in this country became much more about self-expression, self-assertion and self-discovery, and so the political horizon of young people growing up in this atmosphere is limited to issues touching the way they happen to define their identity... it’s led to a kind of narcissistic turn within, accompanied by an indifference and an incomprehension of the realities of achieving anything in the long-term politically. And it’s that turn within and the radicalisation which comes with it, which has led to a very subjectivised politics. If I have a political aim and a political position, I can argue with someone about that, and my commitment is to my argument and my principles. But if my politics comes out of the way in which I define myself in an intimate way, and the way I understand my subjective experience, I’m not going to be very interested in engaging with people who are very critical. I’m going to be highly sensitive and feel that my very self has been challenged, rather than my arguments or my politics... Even in our educational system, from a very early age, kids are taught about their identities... children start keeping a diary about their identity – in kindergarten, from the age of six... You look at American movies, you look at the way in which American corporations deal with diversity issues right now, identity is put forward as this kind of secret self within, this little homunculus that’s your true self and made up of all these attachments that you can gain or drop as you like. And those identities have to be protected and cultivated and not offended. That’s not a psychological model that opens people up to public debate about issues, including those that don’t necessarily have anything to do with them personally. For example, there’s very little interest among young people today about foreign policy, because it doesn’t have anything to do with their identities... Take the rise of white identity. There are all sorts of things that have contributed to white supremacy, which is real. But the recent spike in this sense of a wounded white population, if you look at surveys, really starts to surge in about 2014. What contributed to this was the identity focus on the left, and then how that played out on right-wing media. It became a weapon for Fox News and for Breitbart to portray the Democrats as only being about these groups, and not being about you, the Fox viewer. You just don’t want to be in that position... Right after my article was published in the New York Times, someone who teaches at my university, Columbia, whom I’ve never met, wrote an article in the LA Review of Books comparing me to David Duke, who is the head of the KKK. She said we were both white supremacists
How the left and right switched places - "There will always be left-wing people and right-wing people. Basically, the former think people are essentially good and the latter warn that people are foremost bad... the new conservatives tend to mask themselves as ‘progressives’, ‘liberals’ or ‘left-wing’... it is the modern left that now believes humanity is essentially bad, inherently fallen. Meanwhile, where is the hatred for mankind emanating from conservatives? It seems to have evaporated. Old-fashioned conservatives today speak in terms of solutions, not problems"
Singapore’s workforce ranks the unhappiest amongst her Asian counterparts - "Office location, good colleagues, and company reputation are important drivers of job happiness
Fresh graduates are happiest at work and C-suites the unhappiest
Poor Leadership and lack of training and development opportunities are main cause of unhappiness"
I’m still here: back online after a year without the internet - "I guess those first months felt so good because I felt the absence of the pressures of the internet. My freedom felt tangible. But when I stopped seeing my life in the context of "I don't use the internet," the offline existence became mundane, and the worst sides of myself began to emerge... So much ink has been spilled deriding the false concept of a "Facebook friend," but I can tell you that a "Facebook friend" is better than nothing."
“But Will It Last?”: Marital Instability Among Interracial and Same‐Race Couples - "Comparisons across marriage cohorts reveal that, overall, interracial couples have higher rates of divorce, particularly for those marrying during the late‐1980s. We also find race and gender variation. Compared to White/White couples, White female/Black male, and White female/Asian male marriages were more prone to divorce; meanwhile, those involving non‐White females and White males and Hispanics and non‐Hispanic persons had similar or lower risks of divorce"
RNLI naked mugs sacking: Two lifeboat heroes dismissed over 'safety risk' - "The pair had swapped “banter" tea mugs as a Secret Santa present – one of which had Mr Winspear’s face superimposed on a naked woman. RNLI bosses let them go after a female manager discovered the mugs at their HQ in north Yorkshire... Both men were hauled before disciplinary hearings that looked through their private messages on WhatsApp. Mr Winspear and Mr Laws were dismissed, and four of their colleagues have also walked out over the incident... "The mugs were just banter, a bit of fun. One of the sacked men served 15 years.""
Swedish woman raped and sexually assaulted by Afghan migrant teens - "she had been a member of a Facebook group which campaigns against the deportation of migrants from Sweden... She said Hassani asked her why she had followed them back if she did not want to have sex with them."
Addendum: Also reported as "Woman who campaigns against deportation of migrants raped by Afghans" and "Woman who campaigns against the deportation of migrants from Sweden was raped and sexually assaulted by two Afghan teenagers she met outside a bar"
Michael Gove: A-level ranking plan insults any child who wants to succeed on merit - "I’ve been confronted with more and more evidence from universities that A-levels are no longer doing the job they should. Professors tell me they have to provide catch-up classes for bright students who arrive at university with good grades, but who have not been provided with enough knowledge in the A-level syllabus to match the performance of students from other countries, or students who started the same course a generation ago. The same academics also tell me they are finding it more and more difficult to identify the most able pupils, when so many come with fistfuls of As and A stars. . we have the silly idea from one exam board, tellingly launched at the Labour Party conference, that we should further devalue the gold standard. The education system, it is argued, should inflate the value of lower grades if a candidate comes from what is believed to be a weaker school. All students are to be treated equally, but some will be treated rather more equally than others. The authors of this scheme, I am sure, imagine they are doing their bit to advance social mobility."
How low can we go? An assessment of greenhouse gas emissions from the UK food system and the scope reduction by 2050 - "A switch from beef and milk to highly refined livestock product analogues such as tofu and Quorn could actually increase the quantity of arable land needed to supply the UK"
Scientists Find Half The Advice on Dr Oz Is Wrong or Has No Evidence to Back It Up - "the shows give their viewers around 12 different recommendations per episode. But only half of them are supported by research. The other half are either baseless or actually contradict what the best-available science tells us."
'Rogue One' Has The Perfect Heroine — But Where's Our Female Han Solo? - "It’s no secret that Rogue One went through extensive reshoots. /Film’s Peter Sciretta painstakingly combed through the scenes from the trailers and promotional teasers that were left out of the finished film, noting that early reports suggested that screenwriter Tony Gilroy “reworked the Jyn character to make her less arrogant and abrasive and more empathetic”"
This would seem to explain why female feminists are obnoxious - they see it as a feminist move
It's quite apparent the author didn't saw watch the same movie. Quite apart from the scene that was supposedly "cut entirely from the film" (which is virtually all in it), the author missed Jyn's confronting Cassian about his assassination mission, having "continually unexpected" behavior, lying to K-2SO about knowing it wasn't him and leading a rogue mission (literally) - or maybe even all that isn't enough. Plus it seems Han being cast as unlikeable when he was apparently flying off with his reward but redeeming himself when he saved Luke during the Death Star run (which also shows how Luke couldn't have destroyed it without help) doesn't count - because both of them are men
Star Wars: The Last Jedi Toy Sales Tank - "Star Wars toys sales were down for 2017 despite Star Wars: The Last Jedi having been released in the all-important holiday month of December... Star Wars: The Last Jedi featured no new memorable characters, which is right on the money. A lot of fans weren't happy with the new characters in Star Wars: The Last Jedi with reasons cited including the new characters weren't needed or they took time away from the Force Awakens characters. Admiral Holdo, DJ and Rose just aren't likable characters. It probably didn't also help that a majority of the audience didn't like Star Wars: The Last Jedi as well. And now we see how much of a mistake it was including "cutesy" creatures like the Porgs who obviously were written into the script to sell merchandise, but this, too, backfired on director Rian Johnson and Disney."
Addendum: Star Wars 'Last Jedi' Toy Shipments Down Sharply From 'Force Awakens' - "that’s down 47 percent from the seven months leading to Rogue One in 2016 and off 56 percent from the same time period ahead of The Force Awakens in 2015."
It's telling that they were even lower than Rogue One
The Fans Behind the Force: A Look at the Demographics and Interests of Star Wars Fans - "A typical Star Wars fan is likely male, aged 18-44, watches science, history and horror TV shows and works in IT or legal."
Of the The Force Awakens characters, Kylo Ren was a lot more popular than Finn and Rey - combined. Which is telling
10 Theories Why 'Solo: A Star Wars Story' is Underperforming at the Box Office - "Perhaps the most popular theory as to why Solo isn't hauling in money is because The Last Jedi "ruined" the franchise for fans and now, those who feel this way are refusing to see Solo as a way to "punish" Disney. There have been actual calls for fans to straight-up boycott Solo because of their displeasure with The Last Jedi."
'Solo' Will Post First Loss for Disney's 'Star Wars' Empire
Disney’s Star Wars And The Problem No One Will Talk About - "Push an agenda
Demonize anyone who doesn’t support the agenda
Lose fans and money
Blame the fans for your failure
If Social Justice Warriors actually took Economics in college, this would be their four-step business model...
While some will blame “Star Wars Fatigue”, Disney’s other property known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe has shown no such fatigue after 10 years of superhero movies... The blame for this lies in one person’s hands. Kathleen Kennedy. Kennedy has turned Star Wars into her own personal playground for her feminist agenda at the expense of the fanbase... For six months, the brass at Lucasfilm and many media outlets mocked and demonized people who hated the direction of the franchise calling them “angry sexist bigots” in defense of the film. This is why The Last Jedi has a 91% with critics, but on 46% with audiences on Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes denies claims that The Last Jedi scores were rigged by bots
An Amazon Echo sent someone's private conversation to one of their contacts
‘Kindly adjust’ to our English - "Indian English is a living, practical language, used by millions every day. Many phrases we take for granted in ordinary conversation are actually quite unusual abroad—calling elders 'auntie' or 'uncle'... 'mugging' (cramming hard for an exam, with much rote learning involved) means two very different things abroad (a criminal assault by a robber, or an elaborate and often comically exaggerated expression). When an Indian student tells a foreigner he was “mugging for an exam”, bewilderment is guaranteed. Some Indian Englishisms are merely translated from an Indian language: “what is your good name?” is the classic, since all Bengalis have a daak naam that they are called by, and a bhalo naam (or good name) for the record"
Did Indian English influence Singlish?
London cyclists too white, male and middle class, says capital's cycling chief in vow to tackle diversity 'problem' - "Too few women and people from ethnic minority groups cycle in London and more must be done to promote diversity among a largely white, male and middle class biking community, the city’s walking and cycling commissioner has said. Grand schemes, such as the Cycle Superhighway network of partially-segregated routes linking the suburbs with the centre, are too often perceived as simply a way of getting “middle-aged men cycling faster around the city”, Will Norman acknowledged. He said he was considering setting diversity targets for London’s cycling population to ensure progress was achieved. Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups account for about 15 per cent of the city’s cycle trips – around two-thirds less than Transport for London estimates it could be."
Alternatively, they could just discourage white middle class men from cycling, since BAMEs are smart enough to use modern technology to get around
10 Bizarre Uses of Animals in War - "Several armies have set animals on fire and directed them at the enemy to panic and scatter war elephants. One of the most spectacular of these unpleasant schemes was undertaken the Turkic general Timur while invading India in 1398. Piling hay and wood onto the backs of camels, he set them on fire and sent them screaming into the enemy elephant formation. Flaming animals have also been used against other enemy troops. In a battle between rebels and the Chinese army during the Southern Song Dynasty, monkeys were clothed in straw, dipped in oil and set on fire. Released in the enemy camp, they spread the flames to tents and caused chaos among the troops...
during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). During the siege of a monastery, Nationalist pilots attached live turkeys to fragile supplies before dropping them into the monastery. The flapping of the turkeys was intended to slow the fall of the supplies, acting as a form of a parachute. The turkeys could then be added to the defenders’ food supplies – a poor reward for their heroic service...
During the First Gulf War (1990-1991), the United States planned to use chickens to detect poisonous gasses... 41 of 43 chickens intended for use in Kuwaiti Field Chicken (KFC) died within a week of arriving in Kuwait, and the plan was abandoned."
Gender, Partisanship, and Issue Gaps - "for a number of issue areas, women are more supportive of an activist government than men of the same party"
The liberal case against identity politics - "I expected there to be some reaction, just from people who are totally committed to identity politics. But I was not expecting the tsunami of response. The piece was the most-read political commentary piece in the New York Times that year, and I got my first Twitter bath, all in acid, and realised just how difficult it is to even raise the questions that I raised... I discovered just how symbolic and self-reinforcing the politics of the identity movements are, and the degree to which they’re getting in the way of building a democratic majority in the country again... identity politics has become focused on the identity of the individual self, rather than a shared characteristic and an idea of how we might pursue a common agenda together. Identity politics in this country became much more about self-expression, self-assertion and self-discovery, and so the political horizon of young people growing up in this atmosphere is limited to issues touching the way they happen to define their identity... it’s led to a kind of narcissistic turn within, accompanied by an indifference and an incomprehension of the realities of achieving anything in the long-term politically. And it’s that turn within and the radicalisation which comes with it, which has led to a very subjectivised politics. If I have a political aim and a political position, I can argue with someone about that, and my commitment is to my argument and my principles. But if my politics comes out of the way in which I define myself in an intimate way, and the way I understand my subjective experience, I’m not going to be very interested in engaging with people who are very critical. I’m going to be highly sensitive and feel that my very self has been challenged, rather than my arguments or my politics... Even in our educational system, from a very early age, kids are taught about their identities... children start keeping a diary about their identity – in kindergarten, from the age of six... You look at American movies, you look at the way in which American corporations deal with diversity issues right now, identity is put forward as this kind of secret self within, this little homunculus that’s your true self and made up of all these attachments that you can gain or drop as you like. And those identities have to be protected and cultivated and not offended. That’s not a psychological model that opens people up to public debate about issues, including those that don’t necessarily have anything to do with them personally. For example, there’s very little interest among young people today about foreign policy, because it doesn’t have anything to do with their identities... Take the rise of white identity. There are all sorts of things that have contributed to white supremacy, which is real. But the recent spike in this sense of a wounded white population, if you look at surveys, really starts to surge in about 2014. What contributed to this was the identity focus on the left, and then how that played out on right-wing media. It became a weapon for Fox News and for Breitbart to portray the Democrats as only being about these groups, and not being about you, the Fox viewer. You just don’t want to be in that position... Right after my article was published in the New York Times, someone who teaches at my university, Columbia, whom I’ve never met, wrote an article in the LA Review of Books comparing me to David Duke, who is the head of the KKK. She said we were both white supremacists
How the left and right switched places - "There will always be left-wing people and right-wing people. Basically, the former think people are essentially good and the latter warn that people are foremost bad... the new conservatives tend to mask themselves as ‘progressives’, ‘liberals’ or ‘left-wing’... it is the modern left that now believes humanity is essentially bad, inherently fallen. Meanwhile, where is the hatred for mankind emanating from conservatives? It seems to have evaporated. Old-fashioned conservatives today speak in terms of solutions, not problems"
Singapore’s workforce ranks the unhappiest amongst her Asian counterparts - "Office location, good colleagues, and company reputation are important drivers of job happiness
Fresh graduates are happiest at work and C-suites the unhappiest
Poor Leadership and lack of training and development opportunities are main cause of unhappiness"
I’m still here: back online after a year without the internet - "I guess those first months felt so good because I felt the absence of the pressures of the internet. My freedom felt tangible. But when I stopped seeing my life in the context of "I don't use the internet," the offline existence became mundane, and the worst sides of myself began to emerge... So much ink has been spilled deriding the false concept of a "Facebook friend," but I can tell you that a "Facebook friend" is better than nothing."
“But Will It Last?”: Marital Instability Among Interracial and Same‐Race Couples - "Comparisons across marriage cohorts reveal that, overall, interracial couples have higher rates of divorce, particularly for those marrying during the late‐1980s. We also find race and gender variation. Compared to White/White couples, White female/Black male, and White female/Asian male marriages were more prone to divorce; meanwhile, those involving non‐White females and White males and Hispanics and non‐Hispanic persons had similar or lower risks of divorce"
RNLI naked mugs sacking: Two lifeboat heroes dismissed over 'safety risk' - "The pair had swapped “banter" tea mugs as a Secret Santa present – one of which had Mr Winspear’s face superimposed on a naked woman. RNLI bosses let them go after a female manager discovered the mugs at their HQ in north Yorkshire... Both men were hauled before disciplinary hearings that looked through their private messages on WhatsApp. Mr Winspear and Mr Laws were dismissed, and four of their colleagues have also walked out over the incident... "The mugs were just banter, a bit of fun. One of the sacked men served 15 years.""
Swedish woman raped and sexually assaulted by Afghan migrant teens - "she had been a member of a Facebook group which campaigns against the deportation of migrants from Sweden... She said Hassani asked her why she had followed them back if she did not want to have sex with them."
Addendum: Also reported as "Woman who campaigns against deportation of migrants raped by Afghans" and "Woman who campaigns against the deportation of migrants from Sweden was raped and sexually assaulted by two Afghan teenagers she met outside a bar"
Michael Gove: A-level ranking plan insults any child who wants to succeed on merit - "I’ve been confronted with more and more evidence from universities that A-levels are no longer doing the job they should. Professors tell me they have to provide catch-up classes for bright students who arrive at university with good grades, but who have not been provided with enough knowledge in the A-level syllabus to match the performance of students from other countries, or students who started the same course a generation ago. The same academics also tell me they are finding it more and more difficult to identify the most able pupils, when so many come with fistfuls of As and A stars. . we have the silly idea from one exam board, tellingly launched at the Labour Party conference, that we should further devalue the gold standard. The education system, it is argued, should inflate the value of lower grades if a candidate comes from what is believed to be a weaker school. All students are to be treated equally, but some will be treated rather more equally than others. The authors of this scheme, I am sure, imagine they are doing their bit to advance social mobility."
How low can we go? An assessment of greenhouse gas emissions from the UK food system and the scope reduction by 2050 - "A switch from beef and milk to highly refined livestock product analogues such as tofu and Quorn could actually increase the quantity of arable land needed to supply the UK"
Scientists Find Half The Advice on Dr Oz Is Wrong or Has No Evidence to Back It Up - "the shows give their viewers around 12 different recommendations per episode. But only half of them are supported by research. The other half are either baseless or actually contradict what the best-available science tells us."
'Rogue One' Has The Perfect Heroine — But Where's Our Female Han Solo? - "It’s no secret that Rogue One went through extensive reshoots. /Film’s Peter Sciretta painstakingly combed through the scenes from the trailers and promotional teasers that were left out of the finished film, noting that early reports suggested that screenwriter Tony Gilroy “reworked the Jyn character to make her less arrogant and abrasive and more empathetic”"
This would seem to explain why female feminists are obnoxious - they see it as a feminist move
It's quite apparent the author didn't saw watch the same movie. Quite apart from the scene that was supposedly "cut entirely from the film" (which is virtually all in it), the author missed Jyn's confronting Cassian about his assassination mission, having "continually unexpected" behavior, lying to K-2SO about knowing it wasn't him and leading a rogue mission (literally) - or maybe even all that isn't enough. Plus it seems Han being cast as unlikeable when he was apparently flying off with his reward but redeeming himself when he saved Luke during the Death Star run (which also shows how Luke couldn't have destroyed it without help) doesn't count - because both of them are men
Star Wars: The Last Jedi Toy Sales Tank - "Star Wars toys sales were down for 2017 despite Star Wars: The Last Jedi having been released in the all-important holiday month of December... Star Wars: The Last Jedi featured no new memorable characters, which is right on the money. A lot of fans weren't happy with the new characters in Star Wars: The Last Jedi with reasons cited including the new characters weren't needed or they took time away from the Force Awakens characters. Admiral Holdo, DJ and Rose just aren't likable characters. It probably didn't also help that a majority of the audience didn't like Star Wars: The Last Jedi as well. And now we see how much of a mistake it was including "cutesy" creatures like the Porgs who obviously were written into the script to sell merchandise, but this, too, backfired on director Rian Johnson and Disney."
Addendum: Star Wars 'Last Jedi' Toy Shipments Down Sharply From 'Force Awakens' - "that’s down 47 percent from the seven months leading to Rogue One in 2016 and off 56 percent from the same time period ahead of The Force Awakens in 2015."
It's telling that they were even lower than Rogue One
The Fans Behind the Force: A Look at the Demographics and Interests of Star Wars Fans - "A typical Star Wars fan is likely male, aged 18-44, watches science, history and horror TV shows and works in IT or legal."
Of the The Force Awakens characters, Kylo Ren was a lot more popular than Finn and Rey - combined. Which is telling
10 Theories Why 'Solo: A Star Wars Story' is Underperforming at the Box Office - "Perhaps the most popular theory as to why Solo isn't hauling in money is because The Last Jedi "ruined" the franchise for fans and now, those who feel this way are refusing to see Solo as a way to "punish" Disney. There have been actual calls for fans to straight-up boycott Solo because of their displeasure with The Last Jedi."
'Solo' Will Post First Loss for Disney's 'Star Wars' Empire
Disney’s Star Wars And The Problem No One Will Talk About - "Push an agenda
Demonize anyone who doesn’t support the agenda
Lose fans and money
Blame the fans for your failure
If Social Justice Warriors actually took Economics in college, this would be their four-step business model...
While some will blame “Star Wars Fatigue”, Disney’s other property known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe has shown no such fatigue after 10 years of superhero movies... The blame for this lies in one person’s hands. Kathleen Kennedy. Kennedy has turned Star Wars into her own personal playground for her feminist agenda at the expense of the fanbase... For six months, the brass at Lucasfilm and many media outlets mocked and demonized people who hated the direction of the franchise calling them “angry sexist bigots” in defense of the film. This is why The Last Jedi has a 91% with critics, but on 46% with audiences on Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes denies claims that The Last Jedi scores were rigged by bots
An Amazon Echo sent someone's private conversation to one of their contacts
‘Kindly adjust’ to our English - "Indian English is a living, practical language, used by millions every day. Many phrases we take for granted in ordinary conversation are actually quite unusual abroad—calling elders 'auntie' or 'uncle'... 'mugging' (cramming hard for an exam, with much rote learning involved) means two very different things abroad (a criminal assault by a robber, or an elaborate and often comically exaggerated expression). When an Indian student tells a foreigner he was “mugging for an exam”, bewilderment is guaranteed. Some Indian Englishisms are merely translated from an Indian language: “what is your good name?” is the classic, since all Bengalis have a daak naam that they are called by, and a bhalo naam (or good name) for the record"
Did Indian English influence Singlish?
London cyclists too white, male and middle class, says capital's cycling chief in vow to tackle diversity 'problem' - "Too few women and people from ethnic minority groups cycle in London and more must be done to promote diversity among a largely white, male and middle class biking community, the city’s walking and cycling commissioner has said. Grand schemes, such as the Cycle Superhighway network of partially-segregated routes linking the suburbs with the centre, are too often perceived as simply a way of getting “middle-aged men cycling faster around the city”, Will Norman acknowledged. He said he was considering setting diversity targets for London’s cycling population to ensure progress was achieved. Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups account for about 15 per cent of the city’s cycle trips – around two-thirds less than Transport for London estimates it could be."
Alternatively, they could just discourage white middle class men from cycling, since BAMEs are smart enough to use modern technology to get around
Post ID: 1589718870723686779
Libertarianism and the Public Good
A: I agree and support free water movement in all F&B:
Mandate that businesses serve free water
B: Translated: Let's force businesses to act against their judgement/self-interest because I want free water
A: self-interest without consideration of the greater common good may destroy the very environment that keep us healthy if not alive.
B: If something acts against a restaurant owner's individual good - how can it be said to be for the "common/public" good? Unless you're saying that the restaurant owner is not part of the "common/public"?
A: individual benefit must not outweigh or compromise the common good.
B: That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that individual benefit makes up the common good. The common good is nothing except for the collection of individual goods. If you deny one individual good - then it ceases to be for the common good.
Me: So we shouldn't ban smoking in hospitals. Even if 100 patients die it's bad to deny a smoker's rights
B: I’m sure private hospitals ban smoking too. See - I’m for private regulation, not public regulation.
Me: So private hospitals can ban smoking but not public ones?
B: At least where the “right to ban” is concerned. Because public ones are funded by all taxpayers (smoking ones included) - they have to serve them all equally. Private ones don’t have such moral obligations.
My stance applies equally for public schools - that because they take taxpayers monies, they should teach all ideas equally (both for and against the government). Private schools don't have such moral obligations either.
Me: Creationism?
B: If they are a private school, sure. Public schools, they are morally obligated to teach creationism and non-creationism, because there are both creationists and non-creationists funding them.
Me: There're flat earther taxpayers too. Time to expand the curriculum!
Ridiculous as this may seem, there're strong parallels with the stance that "if the government gives an organisation $1, that means the government endorses everything it does"
Mandate that businesses serve free water
B: Translated: Let's force businesses to act against their judgement/self-interest because I want free water
A: self-interest without consideration of the greater common good may destroy the very environment that keep us healthy if not alive.
B: If something acts against a restaurant owner's individual good - how can it be said to be for the "common/public" good? Unless you're saying that the restaurant owner is not part of the "common/public"?
A: individual benefit must not outweigh or compromise the common good.
B: That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that individual benefit makes up the common good. The common good is nothing except for the collection of individual goods. If you deny one individual good - then it ceases to be for the common good.
Me: So we shouldn't ban smoking in hospitals. Even if 100 patients die it's bad to deny a smoker's rights
B: I’m sure private hospitals ban smoking too. See - I’m for private regulation, not public regulation.
Me: So private hospitals can ban smoking but not public ones?
B: At least where the “right to ban” is concerned. Because public ones are funded by all taxpayers (smoking ones included) - they have to serve them all equally. Private ones don’t have such moral obligations.
My stance applies equally for public schools - that because they take taxpayers monies, they should teach all ideas equally (both for and against the government). Private schools don't have such moral obligations either.
Me: Creationism?
B: If they are a private school, sure. Public schools, they are morally obligated to teach creationism and non-creationism, because there are both creationists and non-creationists funding them.
Me: There're flat earther taxpayers too. Time to expand the curriculum!
Ridiculous as this may seem, there're strong parallels with the stance that "if the government gives an organisation $1, that means the government endorses everything it does"
Post ID: 4809160041125528159
Links - 1st August 2018 (1)
10 Hawkers Tell Us Why Geylang Isn’t What It Used to Be - "Now you’re probably wondering, if charcoal is so great, why doesn’t everyone just use it? Well, they can’t. In hawker centres, the use of charcoal is prohibited as the embers pose a fire hazard. However, in Geylang where shophouses are privately owned and with the permission of landlords, places like Geylang Claypot Rice can continue to cook the old-fashioned way... “There are a few Chinese working quarters located along Geylang,” says Ron. Not only is it convenient for them to get around Singapore for work, but the rent is cheap as well. To cater to this new demographic, a large number of Chinese KTVs and restaurants have sprung up along Geylang in recent years, snapping up previously empty shophouse units. In addition, mala hot pots, Chinese BBQ skewers, and Tsingtao beer can be found around every Lorong. And while this has certainly gone towards increasing Geylang’s foot traffic, most hawkers perceive this change to be for the worst, believing that these businesses change the well-worn exterior of Geylang, and lend a colder, more closed off vibe to the place"
Male incompetence is a subtle form of misogyny - "Few have the patience to watch someone do a job badly over and over again and so often, they’ll just take it upon themselves to do your chores as well as their own. Emotional labour is doubled when you’ve got an incompetent clown on your hands."
Being unable to do things to a standard a woman demands (which might not be objectively justifiable) = misogyny and forcing emotional labour on women
I'm sure they blame female incompetence on the patriarchy too
Iraqi migrant beaten for T-shirt saying 'I'm Muslim, don't panic' - "An asylum seeker who jokingly wore a T-shirt saying 'I'm Muslim, don't panic' was so savagely beaten by his fellow refugees that he had to be rushed to hospital. The 23-year-old Iraqi had thought that his fellow Islamic asylum seekers would see the funny side, but instead they accused him of offending their religion and decided to teach him a painful lesson."
Islamophobia!
Study: Large number of Turks in Germany put Islam above the law - "90 percent of the people of Turkish origin surveyed said they feel comfortable in Germany. Eighty-seven percent said that they feel closely or very closely connected to Germany. That's 2 percent more than the number who said they felt a close connection to Turkey... "East Germans feel they've been treated more unfairly in reunified Germany than Turkish immigrants do"... Half of all the respondents said that Islam is the only true religion. Almost half of those surveyed agreed with the following statement: "It is more important to obey religious laws than state laws." Some 36 percent said that only Islam is in a position to resolve the current problems facing society, and 7 percent said violence is justified if the aim is the expansion of Islam."
88% of a group not born in a country feeling a close connection to it is huge
Turkey's President Erdogan calls on Europe's Muslims to support him - "He announced he will expand Turkey's state news agency's coverage in Europe to hit back at 'propaganda' published about Muslims, and urged European Turks to improve their power by gaining places in parliaments across the Bloc. 'Are you ready to demonstrate to the whole world the strength of European Turks? Are you ready to give the terrorist organisations and their local and foreign henchmen an Ottoman slap?', he said, while rallying against his critics, including the PKK Kurdish guerrillas... Erdogan sees himself as a 'protector of Muslims in former Ottoman dominions,' Janusz Bugajski, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) told the Stockholm Center for Freedom... Thousands of Turks came from Germany, the Netherlands and Austria, and from across the Balkans for the rally. 'Turkey is our mother nation,' said Coskun Celiloglu, a Macedonian student of Turkish descent. 'We came to Sarajevo just for one day to support our saviour Erdogan.'"
At rally in Bosnia, Erdogan flexes his muscles as strongman of the Muslim world - "Erdogan “wants to show domestic constituents he is still the leader of the Islamic world,” said Dimitar Bechev, a political scientist who focuses on Russian and Turkish influence in southeastern Europe. It’s a role that Erdogan has consciously tried to build for himself in recent years. Hamdi Firat Buyuk, a freelance political analyst based in Sarajevo, said the call-and-response use of the takbir (“Allahu akbar!”) at Sunday’s rally only started being commonly heard at Erdogan rallies after the 2016 coup attempt"
LBC on Twitter: "Erdogan has said he is the ‘protector’ of Muslims in Europe. @ShelaghFogarty asks: Is Erdogan drawing battle lines between Christians and Muslims?… https://t.co/VgYEORg8zH"
Germany's Arriba water park to segregate men and women after migrant sex attacks - "It comes days after police arrested two asylum seekers from Afghanistan for a sex attack on two girls on the slides at the Arriba water park in Norderstedt in the Schleswig-Holstein region."
Refugee admits to swastika arson attack - "A Syrian refugee has confessed to setting light to a hotel in Rhineland-Palatinate where he was staying and spraying swastikas on the walls to make it look like a political crime. The 26-year-old claimed that he started the fire in protest against the cramped living conditions in the hotel in Bingen, where a number of refugees and seasonal workers were living, and against what he saw as poor prospects for his future."
Nudist bathers in Germany 'threatened by men who swam onto beach and shouted Allahu Akhbar' - "Bathers at a nudist beach in northwest Germany say they were insulted and threatened by a group of "Mediterranean-looking men," one of whom reportedly shouted "Allahu Akhbar" at them. Staff at the Freibad Xantener Südsee said they were forced to call the police after the men refused to stop abusing naked bathers at the resort, which is near the town of Wesel."
300 world 'super routes' attract 20% of all air travel, Amadeus reveals in new analysis of global trends - "seven out of the top ten world’s busiest air travel routes are in Asia. Jeju-Seoul in South Korea remains the world’s busiest air route""
Revisiting why incompetents think they’re awesome - "Unfortunately, in those places ruled by the smug and complacent, a classic paper has become a weapon. The findings of Dunning and Kruger are being reduced to "Stupid people are so stupid that they don't know they are stupid." Rather bluntly, Dunning himself said, "The presence of the Dunning-Kruger effect, as it’s been come to be called, is that one should pause to worry about one’s own certainty, not the certainty of others." And that humorously suggests the Dunning-Kruger effect is now a candidate to become a second Godwin's law... narcissists think they are brilliant. Who knew? In addition, the researchers found that extroverts were also more likely to overestimate their abilities, while self-esteem and gender were not correlated. And, importantly, none of these seemed to be correlated to actual performance. But this also throws into confusion my own conclusion (also a conclusion that Dunning and Kruger hinted at): if the skills required to self-evaluate and the skill under evaluation do not overlap, then performance in one should not predict performance in the other"
Malaysian starts crowdfunding to help reduce country's debt - "Nik Shazarina Bakti, a legal officer at Sisters in Islam (SIS), hopes to gather Malaysians and the rest of the world to help contribute towards the cause. On the page, the 27-year-old law graduate reminded Malaysians of the time when the people gave up their jewellery, money and valuables so that Tunku Abdul Rahman and the then government could raise enough funds to go to London and claim Merdeka... The Pakatan Harapan government said the nation's debt stands at a whopping RM1 trillion."
Putrajaya forms public crowdfunding campaign to help Malaysian economy - "Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said the crowdfund, dubbed Malaysia’s Hope Fund (Tabung Harapan Malaysia), was formed following concern from fellow Malaysians over the economic mismanagement by the former Barisan Nasional government."
The last Maoists in China find refuge in capitalist Hong Kong - "Hong Kong may be the heartland of capitalism but it is also the improbable last redoubt of the unlikeliest of Chinese dissidents – China’s band of Maoists."
Indian girl, 3, dies after drinking poisoned breast milk after mother unknowingly bitten by snake - "Police said that the Indian mother, 35, who also died, did not realise she had been attacked while sleeping, and had unknowingly breasted the three-year-old girl upon waking"
Guan Eng shocked Treasury can’t access certain accounts - "Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng said he was shocked when senior Treasury officers told him they were unable to access certain accounts and reports. “There were also complaints that certain ‘red’ files were only accessible to certain parties. This impeded officials and auditors from carrying out their professional responsibilities with integrity”"
Kendrick Lamar stops white fan after she raps the N-word onstage with him: Watch - "a young woman named Delaney slipped not just once, but twice in what’s probably the worst possible setting: On stage with Pulitzer Prize winner Kendrick Lamar. Sure, she was singing along to the rapper’s 2012 song “m.A.A.d. City”, which features the word on multiple occasions, but, girl, come on."
So much for being a fan
Question - "what do the icons next to a name mean on facebook comment"
"It's meant to help identify trolls and other disruptive people who join groups just to spam stupid angry things."
"There is a Graphic of a BLACK HAND next to my name in my posts and I have no idea why it's there. Is FB telling people I am a member of some death cult?"
The Ready Player One backlash, explained - "In 2011, Ready Player One was beloved. It was “a guaranteed pleasure.” It was “witty.” It was not only “a simple bit of fun” but also “a rich and plausible picture of future friendships in a world not too distant from our own.” What gives? How did the consensus on a single book go from “exuberant and meaningful fun!” to “everything that is wrong with the internet!” over the span of seven years?... Wade’s best friend has a white male avatar but is secretly a black lesbian, a revelation to which Wade reacts by deciding that it does not matter because he doesn’t even see people’s race, gender, or sexuality. It’s a passage that reads remarkably like the “I don’t care if you’re black, white, green, or purple” speech, and that carries the same basic problem: Wade should care that his best friend is a black lesbian because those are important facts about his best friend’s life. But in this world, they’re unimportant, because only things that affect straight white dudes really matter"
In other words, what changed was that the SJWs took over
The ugly trade in Palestinian pain - "much of what happens in the Israel-Palestine conflict is now largely a performance, a piece of bloody theatre, staged for the benefit of outsiders, especially for myopically anti-Israel Western activists and observers... after midday prayers clerics and leaders of Hamas ‘urged thousands of worshippers to join the protests’. And Hamas’s urging was littered with false claims. It told people ‘the fence had already been breached’ and Palestinians were ‘flooding into Israel’. This was a lie. A Washington Post reporter details how Hamas’s leaders told people to keep attacking the border fence because ‘Israeli soldiers [are] fleeing their positions’. In truth, as Hamas knew only too well, the IDF was reinforcing its positions... Turkey killed hundreds of Kurdish people in Syria in recent months, and people in London and Paris and Washington did not take to the streets to complain. But as soon as Israel gets embroiled in conflict, out came the protesters, fuming, burning the Israeli flag."
Why are Females Prone to Mass Hysteria? - "Throughout history, groups of people in cohesive social units have suddenly fallen ill or exhibited strange behaviors, from headaches and fainting spells to twitching, shaking and trance states. But whether it’s an outbreak of spirit possession at a shoe factory in Malaysia, a collapsing marching band at a school gala in England or a twitching epidemic in a Louisiana high school, the pattern is invariably the same. Most, and often all of those affected, are females. In fact, of the 2,000+ cases in my files which date back to 1566, this pattern holds true over ninety-nine percent of the time... girls near puberty are most frequently affected. Sirois observes that outbreaks in Western schools, affect girls at about the same rate as those in other parts of the world, despite the social conditions being fairly uniform for both sexes. Many psychogenic conditions are more common in females, including individual cases of conversion disorder, and globus hystericus, a feeling of a lump in the throat that produces a sensation of choking... females are more likely to talk to each other about their symptoms, which can spread outbreaks... Many anthropologists believe that mass hysteria and spirit possession in Asia and Africa are culturally appropriate ways of indirectly negotiating problems – a form of subconscious collective bargaining."
Gender gap discovered in science exam performance: Test difficulty may be the cause - "females and males do equally well on exams that require mostly memorization. The same holds true for low- and high-socioeconomic status students. However, when tests include cognitively challenging questions that require elevated critical thinking, females and lower socioeconomic students score lower than their male or high-status peers, even though the students have equal academic ability... there is a national movement to create biology tests that are more cognitively challenging, as these types of tests can improve students' conceptual understanding of biology; however, doing so may harm the very students they are trying to help."
This is a pretty naked admission that diversity is about lowering standards
Say Hello To Vaginismus, The Locked Vagina Syndrome - "its walls can contract with the force of a thousand Spartans and prevent the entry of a penis, sex toy and even a tampon, involuntarily"
Former AG criticises Govt for not prosecuting Keppel management in 1995 bribery case - "Former Attorney-General Walter Woon wrote an article, which was published in ST today ('Punishing corporate corruption', 30 Apr), criticising the government for not prosecuting the Keppel management involved in the 1995 bribery case."
Poh Soh Kai: “We must learn from history and not myths, history that is grounded in the events and realities of the time” - "According to the report of the Commissioner of Police, there were 40 odd card holding communists during that period. Even if we assume that they were all active in the unions and social bodies, how great was their influence? That would depend on the policies adopted by the party. If the policies promote the people’s welfare and reflect their democratic aspirations, then they would be supported by the people. This is well illustrated in the Hong Lim by-election of April 1961. A leadership struggle had ensued between Lee Kuan Yew and Ong Eng Guan resulting in the Hong Lim by election. A main point in Ong’s manifesto was the release of all political detainees still detained by Lee Kuan Yew after Lee had won the 1959 elections to be Prime Minister of Singapore. Lee had promised to release all political prisoners during his campaign. Once elected, he reneged on his promises and only released a handful. This was not acceptable to the Singapore electorate. Hence, Ong’s pledge to release these prisoners resonated with an electorate disappointed with Lee Kuan Yew. However, Lee had secured a written letter of support from the Communist Party. This is a fact. Armed with this assurance, Lee Kuan Yew was of the opinion, that he would win the Hong Lim by-election without the assistance of the trade unionists... Where is the great Communist influence? Lee Kuan Yew realised that he had been duped by his own propaganda; that he had grossly over-estimated the strength of the Communists... The Operation was scheduled to be held in December 1962. But it was postponed until February 1963 when the Brunei rebellion gave them the pretext to arrest. Lee Kuan Yew said this opportunity afforded by the Brunei rebellion is “heaven sent.” No security operation can wait for “heaven sent” opportunities."
Male incompetence is a subtle form of misogyny - "Few have the patience to watch someone do a job badly over and over again and so often, they’ll just take it upon themselves to do your chores as well as their own. Emotional labour is doubled when you’ve got an incompetent clown on your hands."
Being unable to do things to a standard a woman demands (which might not be objectively justifiable) = misogyny and forcing emotional labour on women
I'm sure they blame female incompetence on the patriarchy too
Iraqi migrant beaten for T-shirt saying 'I'm Muslim, don't panic' - "An asylum seeker who jokingly wore a T-shirt saying 'I'm Muslim, don't panic' was so savagely beaten by his fellow refugees that he had to be rushed to hospital. The 23-year-old Iraqi had thought that his fellow Islamic asylum seekers would see the funny side, but instead they accused him of offending their religion and decided to teach him a painful lesson."
Islamophobia!
Study: Large number of Turks in Germany put Islam above the law - "90 percent of the people of Turkish origin surveyed said they feel comfortable in Germany. Eighty-seven percent said that they feel closely or very closely connected to Germany. That's 2 percent more than the number who said they felt a close connection to Turkey... "East Germans feel they've been treated more unfairly in reunified Germany than Turkish immigrants do"... Half of all the respondents said that Islam is the only true religion. Almost half of those surveyed agreed with the following statement: "It is more important to obey religious laws than state laws." Some 36 percent said that only Islam is in a position to resolve the current problems facing society, and 7 percent said violence is justified if the aim is the expansion of Islam."
88% of a group not born in a country feeling a close connection to it is huge
Turkey's President Erdogan calls on Europe's Muslims to support him - "He announced he will expand Turkey's state news agency's coverage in Europe to hit back at 'propaganda' published about Muslims, and urged European Turks to improve their power by gaining places in parliaments across the Bloc. 'Are you ready to demonstrate to the whole world the strength of European Turks? Are you ready to give the terrorist organisations and their local and foreign henchmen an Ottoman slap?', he said, while rallying against his critics, including the PKK Kurdish guerrillas... Erdogan sees himself as a 'protector of Muslims in former Ottoman dominions,' Janusz Bugajski, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) told the Stockholm Center for Freedom... Thousands of Turks came from Germany, the Netherlands and Austria, and from across the Balkans for the rally. 'Turkey is our mother nation,' said Coskun Celiloglu, a Macedonian student of Turkish descent. 'We came to Sarajevo just for one day to support our saviour Erdogan.'"
At rally in Bosnia, Erdogan flexes his muscles as strongman of the Muslim world - "Erdogan “wants to show domestic constituents he is still the leader of the Islamic world,” said Dimitar Bechev, a political scientist who focuses on Russian and Turkish influence in southeastern Europe. It’s a role that Erdogan has consciously tried to build for himself in recent years. Hamdi Firat Buyuk, a freelance political analyst based in Sarajevo, said the call-and-response use of the takbir (“Allahu akbar!”) at Sunday’s rally only started being commonly heard at Erdogan rallies after the 2016 coup attempt"
LBC on Twitter: "Erdogan has said he is the ‘protector’ of Muslims in Europe. @ShelaghFogarty asks: Is Erdogan drawing battle lines between Christians and Muslims?… https://t.co/VgYEORg8zH"
Germany's Arriba water park to segregate men and women after migrant sex attacks - "It comes days after police arrested two asylum seekers from Afghanistan for a sex attack on two girls on the slides at the Arriba water park in Norderstedt in the Schleswig-Holstein region."
Refugee admits to swastika arson attack - "A Syrian refugee has confessed to setting light to a hotel in Rhineland-Palatinate where he was staying and spraying swastikas on the walls to make it look like a political crime. The 26-year-old claimed that he started the fire in protest against the cramped living conditions in the hotel in Bingen, where a number of refugees and seasonal workers were living, and against what he saw as poor prospects for his future."
Nudist bathers in Germany 'threatened by men who swam onto beach and shouted Allahu Akhbar' - "Bathers at a nudist beach in northwest Germany say they were insulted and threatened by a group of "Mediterranean-looking men," one of whom reportedly shouted "Allahu Akhbar" at them. Staff at the Freibad Xantener Südsee said they were forced to call the police after the men refused to stop abusing naked bathers at the resort, which is near the town of Wesel."
300 world 'super routes' attract 20% of all air travel, Amadeus reveals in new analysis of global trends - "seven out of the top ten world’s busiest air travel routes are in Asia. Jeju-Seoul in South Korea remains the world’s busiest air route""
Revisiting why incompetents think they’re awesome - "Unfortunately, in those places ruled by the smug and complacent, a classic paper has become a weapon. The findings of Dunning and Kruger are being reduced to "Stupid people are so stupid that they don't know they are stupid." Rather bluntly, Dunning himself said, "The presence of the Dunning-Kruger effect, as it’s been come to be called, is that one should pause to worry about one’s own certainty, not the certainty of others." And that humorously suggests the Dunning-Kruger effect is now a candidate to become a second Godwin's law... narcissists think they are brilliant. Who knew? In addition, the researchers found that extroverts were also more likely to overestimate their abilities, while self-esteem and gender were not correlated. And, importantly, none of these seemed to be correlated to actual performance. But this also throws into confusion my own conclusion (also a conclusion that Dunning and Kruger hinted at): if the skills required to self-evaluate and the skill under evaluation do not overlap, then performance in one should not predict performance in the other"
Malaysian starts crowdfunding to help reduce country's debt - "Nik Shazarina Bakti, a legal officer at Sisters in Islam (SIS), hopes to gather Malaysians and the rest of the world to help contribute towards the cause. On the page, the 27-year-old law graduate reminded Malaysians of the time when the people gave up their jewellery, money and valuables so that Tunku Abdul Rahman and the then government could raise enough funds to go to London and claim Merdeka... The Pakatan Harapan government said the nation's debt stands at a whopping RM1 trillion."
Putrajaya forms public crowdfunding campaign to help Malaysian economy - "Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said the crowdfund, dubbed Malaysia’s Hope Fund (Tabung Harapan Malaysia), was formed following concern from fellow Malaysians over the economic mismanagement by the former Barisan Nasional government."
The last Maoists in China find refuge in capitalist Hong Kong - "Hong Kong may be the heartland of capitalism but it is also the improbable last redoubt of the unlikeliest of Chinese dissidents – China’s band of Maoists."
Indian girl, 3, dies after drinking poisoned breast milk after mother unknowingly bitten by snake - "Police said that the Indian mother, 35, who also died, did not realise she had been attacked while sleeping, and had unknowingly breasted the three-year-old girl upon waking"
Guan Eng shocked Treasury can’t access certain accounts - "Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng said he was shocked when senior Treasury officers told him they were unable to access certain accounts and reports. “There were also complaints that certain ‘red’ files were only accessible to certain parties. This impeded officials and auditors from carrying out their professional responsibilities with integrity”"
Kendrick Lamar stops white fan after she raps the N-word onstage with him: Watch - "a young woman named Delaney slipped not just once, but twice in what’s probably the worst possible setting: On stage with Pulitzer Prize winner Kendrick Lamar. Sure, she was singing along to the rapper’s 2012 song “m.A.A.d. City”, which features the word on multiple occasions, but, girl, come on."
So much for being a fan
Question - "what do the icons next to a name mean on facebook comment"
"It's meant to help identify trolls and other disruptive people who join groups just to spam stupid angry things."
"There is a Graphic of a BLACK HAND next to my name in my posts and I have no idea why it's there. Is FB telling people I am a member of some death cult?"
The Ready Player One backlash, explained - "In 2011, Ready Player One was beloved. It was “a guaranteed pleasure.” It was “witty.” It was not only “a simple bit of fun” but also “a rich and plausible picture of future friendships in a world not too distant from our own.” What gives? How did the consensus on a single book go from “exuberant and meaningful fun!” to “everything that is wrong with the internet!” over the span of seven years?... Wade’s best friend has a white male avatar but is secretly a black lesbian, a revelation to which Wade reacts by deciding that it does not matter because he doesn’t even see people’s race, gender, or sexuality. It’s a passage that reads remarkably like the “I don’t care if you’re black, white, green, or purple” speech, and that carries the same basic problem: Wade should care that his best friend is a black lesbian because those are important facts about his best friend’s life. But in this world, they’re unimportant, because only things that affect straight white dudes really matter"
In other words, what changed was that the SJWs took over
The ugly trade in Palestinian pain - "much of what happens in the Israel-Palestine conflict is now largely a performance, a piece of bloody theatre, staged for the benefit of outsiders, especially for myopically anti-Israel Western activists and observers... after midday prayers clerics and leaders of Hamas ‘urged thousands of worshippers to join the protests’. And Hamas’s urging was littered with false claims. It told people ‘the fence had already been breached’ and Palestinians were ‘flooding into Israel’. This was a lie. A Washington Post reporter details how Hamas’s leaders told people to keep attacking the border fence because ‘Israeli soldiers [are] fleeing their positions’. In truth, as Hamas knew only too well, the IDF was reinforcing its positions... Turkey killed hundreds of Kurdish people in Syria in recent months, and people in London and Paris and Washington did not take to the streets to complain. But as soon as Israel gets embroiled in conflict, out came the protesters, fuming, burning the Israeli flag."
Why are Females Prone to Mass Hysteria? - "Throughout history, groups of people in cohesive social units have suddenly fallen ill or exhibited strange behaviors, from headaches and fainting spells to twitching, shaking and trance states. But whether it’s an outbreak of spirit possession at a shoe factory in Malaysia, a collapsing marching band at a school gala in England or a twitching epidemic in a Louisiana high school, the pattern is invariably the same. Most, and often all of those affected, are females. In fact, of the 2,000+ cases in my files which date back to 1566, this pattern holds true over ninety-nine percent of the time... girls near puberty are most frequently affected. Sirois observes that outbreaks in Western schools, affect girls at about the same rate as those in other parts of the world, despite the social conditions being fairly uniform for both sexes. Many psychogenic conditions are more common in females, including individual cases of conversion disorder, and globus hystericus, a feeling of a lump in the throat that produces a sensation of choking... females are more likely to talk to each other about their symptoms, which can spread outbreaks... Many anthropologists believe that mass hysteria and spirit possession in Asia and Africa are culturally appropriate ways of indirectly negotiating problems – a form of subconscious collective bargaining."
Gender gap discovered in science exam performance: Test difficulty may be the cause - "females and males do equally well on exams that require mostly memorization. The same holds true for low- and high-socioeconomic status students. However, when tests include cognitively challenging questions that require elevated critical thinking, females and lower socioeconomic students score lower than their male or high-status peers, even though the students have equal academic ability... there is a national movement to create biology tests that are more cognitively challenging, as these types of tests can improve students' conceptual understanding of biology; however, doing so may harm the very students they are trying to help."
This is a pretty naked admission that diversity is about lowering standards
Say Hello To Vaginismus, The Locked Vagina Syndrome - "its walls can contract with the force of a thousand Spartans and prevent the entry of a penis, sex toy and even a tampon, involuntarily"
Former AG criticises Govt for not prosecuting Keppel management in 1995 bribery case - "Former Attorney-General Walter Woon wrote an article, which was published in ST today ('Punishing corporate corruption', 30 Apr), criticising the government for not prosecuting the Keppel management involved in the 1995 bribery case."
Poh Soh Kai: “We must learn from history and not myths, history that is grounded in the events and realities of the time” - "According to the report of the Commissioner of Police, there were 40 odd card holding communists during that period. Even if we assume that they were all active in the unions and social bodies, how great was their influence? That would depend on the policies adopted by the party. If the policies promote the people’s welfare and reflect their democratic aspirations, then they would be supported by the people. This is well illustrated in the Hong Lim by-election of April 1961. A leadership struggle had ensued between Lee Kuan Yew and Ong Eng Guan resulting in the Hong Lim by election. A main point in Ong’s manifesto was the release of all political detainees still detained by Lee Kuan Yew after Lee had won the 1959 elections to be Prime Minister of Singapore. Lee had promised to release all political prisoners during his campaign. Once elected, he reneged on his promises and only released a handful. This was not acceptable to the Singapore electorate. Hence, Ong’s pledge to release these prisoners resonated with an electorate disappointed with Lee Kuan Yew. However, Lee had secured a written letter of support from the Communist Party. This is a fact. Armed with this assurance, Lee Kuan Yew was of the opinion, that he would win the Hong Lim by-election without the assistance of the trade unionists... Where is the great Communist influence? Lee Kuan Yew realised that he had been duped by his own propaganda; that he had grossly over-estimated the strength of the Communists... The Operation was scheduled to be held in December 1962. But it was postponed until February 1963 when the Brunei rebellion gave them the pretext to arrest. Lee Kuan Yew said this opportunity afforded by the Brunei rebellion is “heaven sent.” No security operation can wait for “heaven sent” opportunities."
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