Links - 19th January 2021

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Memories of VE Day - "[On A Bridge Too Far] ‘Written in America, for the American audience. And when Richard Attenborough took me on, he said, John, there's a script. You can't change it, nor can I, we had to film it, practically word for word. Typical sort of American version. All the Americans are gung ho, the Brits are laid back.’
‘You still sound frustrated by that today,’
‘I suppose a bit annoyed. You know when I see it sometimes, it appears on television, you see headlines, military advisor Colonel Waddy. I think, oh, God, they’ll think that I wrote the script’
‘Because you think he gave a misleading impression?’
‘Yes, yes. It wasn't historical. When I objected, Richard Attenborough, the American producer said tell the Colonel I make movies for money, not for history’"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Monday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "‘I wouldn't want to be in Elon’s PR team because every time he brings out his phone, they must be very nervous and he recently tweeted that he thought the price of his stock was too high and knocking off $14 billion off the value of the shares’…
‘Argentina might default on its debt today. I think it'll be the eighth time since it got independence from Spain in 1816.’
‘Yeah, it's Groundhog Day again, isn't it with Argentina? And I know you've mentioned it on this program before, but just think of those investors who lent them money on 100 years, back in 2017. They must be pretty distressed at the moment’"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Friday's business with Rob Young - "[On paying customers to use electricity] ‘So where do you get the money from then to then pass on to your customers?’
‘So the way the electricity system works is National Grid need to make sure at all times that they're generating the same amount that customers using. Traditionally, when they're generating too much they turn generators off. And that costs money. So instead of paying generators to turn off and the cost of that, we can pay customers to use those green electrons when they're available. The great news is that means that they’ll be using fewer brown electrons, and therefore the overall impact is to make a greener grid, it’s cheaper for customers, and it'll let us move to renewable electricity system faster and cheaper.’
‘So when there is, in a sense, excess electricity on the grid, you are being paid by the grid to take that electricity off the grid’s hands.’"
The elephants in the room - how do you cover base load with 'green' energy, and as 'renewables' account for a bigger and bigger share of the electricity supply, since they cannot be so easily turned off, when will the supposed cost advantages of green electricity disappear?

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Wednesday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "‘I think the general idea of boosting pay across the board is not the most sensible thing to do in the current situation where, you know, within two or three months, we could have 10% of the workforce unemployed. And the way to get them back into work is not to make it much more expensive to employ them. Some of the groups which fall into this category of I think the Resolution Foundation, say 4.2 million, about 3/5 of those are part time workers anyway. 20% of them are full time students. I think we need to be much more selective. Certainly we need to look at the the pay of social care workers. But that is a completely different question from an across the board pay increase.’
‘Whose job then is it for the key workers you have identified? Whose job is it to make sure they get a living wage?’...
‘I don't think it's anybody's job really. Quite honestly, as I say, if you disaggregate these figures, then three fifths of these workers are part time. The idea of a living wage is the idea for somebody who's working full time. And I understand that but it's a different issue for the people who want to work part time. And the overwhelming majority of these people who want to work part time actually want to work part time, they don't want to work full time. Many of them also do not want the fixed hours. Another thing that Resolution Foundation asks for of course is virtually an end to zero hours contracts. That would mean that some groups of workers who can't commit to full time or regular hours would be out of the frame here.’...
‘[Zoom’s] sales went up in the three months to the end of April by 170%, 169%. It’s just astonishing how quickly people have turned to this.’
‘Yes, it's it's been a real success story of the Coronavirus. And I think the simplicity of the system, and it doesn't require integration with any other software product, has really made it a standout product for many people to have. The question will be, can this continue? And will competition start ramping up? They've had a few issues with security and safety. But yes, an astounding set of results from Zoom’
‘Some other little snippets from their results. Before the Coronavirus, they were doing it, they had about a maximum of 10 million people a day using the service. Now it's 300 million people a day. And their stock market value of Zoom, which is a pretty, actually quite a small company, quite small revenues. It's now more highly valued than the stock market, than the world's seven biggest airlines put together.’
‘That maybe tells you more about airlines’"

Everything You Wanted To Know About The Tudors: A Podcast With Tracy Borman - HistoryExtra - "‘Why are the Tudors so popular?’...
‘I think I'm asked this more than any other thing. And I probably change my answer each time. So the answer I'm going to give today is that I think really, when it comes to the Tudors, you can't make it up. You've got everything. You've got the drama, the color of the age, a King who marries six times, a virgin queen. It's a very self confident age where, you know, we're expanding overseas, the Shakespeare, flowering of culture. And I think, you know, we tend to look back, this was the kind of Glory Age. Of course, there was a darker side to it as well. But I think really, for me, it's all about the drama...
I think [Edward VI] had the makings of a greater tyrant than his father, Henry the Eighth. He was a terrible young man really, and in his youth he once flew into such a rage that he grabbed one of his falcons from its perch and tore it to pieces in order to get revenge on one of his tutors for trying to tell him what to do...
Why didn't Elizabeth marry. I think she had learned from the examples of her past. Her mother was executed. She saw her stepmother Catherine Howard executed. She saw the miserable marital life of her sister, half sister, Mary. And so she'd learned that really, it's a really tough gig to get married as a queen and do it well. And also she knew she couldn't marry somebody from abroad because her sister had done that. It was a disaster. If she married one of her own subjects, it would be deeply divisive. So I think she just thought: I will have but one mistress here as she famously said, and no master. And I have to say I don't blame her'...
‘Did the Tudors smell?’...
‘Very brief terms. I would say if you're rich then no. If you're poor, probably. The rich didn't smell. It's a real myth everybody stank to high heaven. They didn't bathe very often. Elizabeth famously said: I would take a bath once a month whether I need it or not. And she was considered a very regular bather. What they did though, I mentioned the linen kind of underwear, so to speak. They have their linen underwear changed two or three times a day. Now, this was better than washing because linen is actually really good at drawing out smells, dirt, toxins from the skin. So effectively you wash your linen instead of your skin. Now, Ruth Goodman, that fantastic historian, has tried this. She lived like a Tudor for about three months, just washing her linens, not her skin, and she said she was still sweet smelling by the end of those three months. Of course, if you're poor, you can't afford to do that…
[On Hampton Court] they did like perfume and lavender was a very strong smell. It was a kind of all pervading smell really because people liked to keep lavender on their person. Ladies would would kind of keep it in their bodies so that they smell nice. It also was thought to have kind of medicinal properties. If you inhaled the right scents it would help to ward off disease. Lavender was also thrown on to rushes to help the rooms of the palace smell sweet. Rosemary was also very popular. So I think the first impression would have been actually a very fragrant one. If you could get past the smell of the roasting meat from the enormous kitchens... Henry the Eighth. Somebody who met him in private, he described him as the most timid man you could hope to meet. Now that is not a description we often associate with England's most famous King.'"

One-Parent Families in Denmark - "In spite of a sharp increase in the number and proportion of births outside marriage as well as divorces the number and proportion of genuine oneparent families in Denmark does seem rather stable. This fact is explained by the large number of couples cohabiting without a marriage certificate"
i.e. Most 'single parent' families in Denmark aren't really single parent

Not the Cat’s Meow? The Impact of Posing with Cats on Female Perceptions of Male Dateability - "People use dating sites to look for both long-term and short-term potential partners. Previous research suggests that the presence of a pet may add to women’s perceptions of male attractiveness and dateability. This study sought to understand to what degree, if any, the presence of a cat has on women’s perceptions of men. Women responded to an online survey and rated photos of men alone and men holding cats on measures of masculinity and personality. Men holding cats were viewed as less masculine; more neurotic, agreeable, and open; and less dateable. These results varied slightly depending whether the women self-identified as a “dog person” or a “cat person.” This study suggests that a closer look at the effects of different companion species on perceived masculinity and dateability is warranted"

How to cook the perfect steak - "Beef purists may prefer to take in the unadulterated rich flavour of a quality steak by adding nothing other than a sprinkling of salt and a generous twist of pepper. Contrary to popular belief, seasoning your steak with salt ahead of time doesn't draw out the moisture but actually gives the steak time to absorb the salt and become more evenly seasoned throughout. Feel free to salt your steak for 2 hrs before for every 1cm of thickness. For a classic steak au poivre (peppered steak), sprinkle lots of cracked black pepper and sea salt on to a plate, then press the meat into the seasoning moments before placing it into the pan."

Unsubscribe: The $0-budget movie that ‘topped the US box office’ - "In normal times, blockbuster movies usually dominate the box office charts.The big-budget productions, directed by the likes of James Cameron, Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott, regularly draw the biggest crowds at cinemas across the US and beyond.But on 10 June, one box office-topping movie was watched by just two people, in one cinema.Unsubscribe, a 29-minute horror movie shot entirely on video-conferencing app Zoom, generated $25,488 (£20,510) in ticket sales on that day."

Google takes down Indian app that removed Chinese ones - "Google has taken down an Indian mobile application from its app store that allowed users to remove other Chinese apps from their phones as it violated certain company policies, a spokesman said on Wednesday.The app, called Remove China Apps, had become the top trending free app on Google's mobile app store in India with more than 5 million downloads since late May. Its popularity rose amid calls for a boycott of Chinese mobile apps in India during a Himalayan border dispute between the two nations... Remove China Apps scanned users' phones for apps such as ByteDance's TikTok and Alibaba's UC Browser. Once deleted, a message popped up saying "You are awesome, no China app found."... Many Indians and a spokeswoman for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling party have used the hash tag #BoycottChineseProducts on social media, calling for deletion of popular Chinese apps"

Mr Pritam Singh supports Alfian Sa’at - "There are many Singaporeans who criticise Singapore out of patriotism and genuine care, including opposition leaders like Mr Chiam See Tong and Mr Low Thia Khiang.But  Alfian Sa’at is no ‘loving critic’.For nearly a decade, Alfian has consistently praised Malaysia to illustrate his disdain for Singapore... In 2013, Alfian said he was “so drawn to Dr Mahathir”. And in 2018, Alfian praised a “new Malaysia” under Dr Mahathir and wished Singapore can be more like Malaysia . Dr Mahathir, who has talked about bombing Singapore, and cutting off our water supply.Alfian’s view is that Dr Mahathir’s style of democracy, and Malaysian style governance, should be brought to Singapore.Contrast this with what Alfian wrote about Mr Lee Kuan Yew, on the eve of our 2012 National Day. He posted his poem “Death of a Tyrant”... Alfian likes the  Malaysian Bumiputera policies. He says Singaporean Chinese are being selfish, in not wanting merger with Malaysia... His preference for Malaysia over Singapore is obvious.And if anyone has any doubts where his loyalties lie, here is the answer... In his interview with Today newspaper in March 2012, he wholeheartedly said that “I would love to become a Malaysian”."

Family of 4 allegedly drives to Sembawang with fishing nets & abducts 20 wild chickens in 3 days

[HDB @ Anchorvale Link] JNAUnlocked 13 | A Scholar's Home - YouTube - "A Home that fulfills your future generation’s dreams. This is the perfect homely environment that will breed futures scholars, contributors of society, leaders of companies and more."

Germany′s first ′porn karaoke′ bar opens in Hamburg - "visitors are invited to go on stage and moan along to clips from pornography films from the 1970s and 1980s as they soundlessly play on screens in the background. Currently, visitors can choose from nearly 30 retro clips."

Pratik Jadhav on Twitter - "art museums will literally be like "this room is dedicated to one specific artist in one specific french village and only his paintings done with this one brush" "and this room is All of Asia" #artmuseum""
The same people who crow over this denounce Western museums with non-Western art. And are (wilfully?) ignorant of how Asian museums almost all have no non-Asian art, and mostly have no foreign art

The Food Chain, Dan Barber: My life in five dishes

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Dan Barber: My life in five dishes

"‘Dan thought he’d try out his single udder butter on the three star Michelin chef’

‘I gave him a slice of bread and he took the butter and he slathered it on the bread and he smelled and he brought it to his nose. I mean, it was, just the whole thing was watching him was so cinematic in some ways. And at the end of it I, in my best possible French, um, could you give me some feedback on, you know, on the butter because I'm, but, it's butter from the family farm and I'm very excited about the milk that we're producing. And I remember him. He said it's, it's tres bon, you know, and I just thought like, is it? No, it's like, no it's not. It's not. You could just tell.’

‘Dan pressed him a little and eventually Alain asked him, had it rained a lot lately? Flummoxed, Dan admitted that there had been terrible rain for the last two weeks. Ducasse’s palate was so sensitive, it could detect that the cow had been feeding on watery grass, producing watery milk, which he could then taste in the butter’

‘To his credit, like, he could taste weather, was basically what I was thinking which was just awesome. And I was like more thinking this guy's a Jedi. And then you know, he was like got ready to leave, his assistant was like rushing him out and he turned around. He's like, you know. I had another question for you. Was the, was the butter made by hand or was it made in a robo coop, in a, in a food processor? And I said no, it's made by hand because we know that we're mixing the butter, makes for a much smoother and more unctuous butter and, and he said oh okay, and you know, sort of apologized for even insinuating that the butter was made in a machine.’

‘Dan was perplexed but didn't think any more of it until a few days later, when he realized that Alain's taste buds had sussed something out. Something that Dan hadn't even known himself at the time.’

‘A week later, I was up in the pastry kitchen. I was watching a young intern make the butter. In a robo coop’...

‘Taste is the soothsayer. You know, it's the truth teller. Taste does not lie unles you allow it to lie. Unless you add sugar and fat and salt and dadada. Which you know, which are fine in in the right proportions but in the American diet, they are the only thing. And what that obscures is, is, you know how things are grown so real flavor, true flavor is great agriculture actually’

‘Fascinated with how agriculture could deliver real flavor, Dan began traveling the world for answers in the mid 2000s, eventually turning those escapades into a book. His research meant visiting a great many producers who'd got it right. And it was during this process that Dan made a realization that was to call into question his entire farm to table, eat locally and seasonally ethos. Dan had been using wheat from a farmer named Klaus Martins to make his restaurant bread for many years. But when he went to take a closer look at the fields, Dan was shocked to see there wasn't much wheat at all.’

‘I mean, what I saw was rye and barley. I saw buckwheat, I saw clover like cover crops. I saw a lot of leguminous crops.’

‘In order to grow the wheat, Klaus said grown a number of other crops in strict rotation, keeping the soil full of nutrients without chemical fertilizers.’

‘What I learned in that moment, the first five minutes of my time with Klaus in the first day of my setting out to research my, my farm to table treatise was that I was a joke. I was a, I was an emperor without clothes. How was I the farm to table chef? I was sitting here, you know, luxuriating in being the farm to table chef when, when I wasn't supporting the farm. I was supporting one tiny slice of the farm. This wheat actually was meticulously timed in a rotation around his farm all to build the kind of soil fertility that gives you the flavor. They gave me the wheat that I was so celebrated for. And so most of what he grow went into, either was plowed into the soil or went into animal feed and got pennies on the dollar.’

‘And that realization led Dan to create the third dish he wants to share with us on the Food Chain from the BBC World Service. He wanted to shine a spotlight on those unloved grains and show the world how delicious they could be.’...

‘I work a lot with vegetables and grains as mainstay actors on the plate and that's’... that's not

‘Like your fourth dish, the carrot steak’

‘Yeah and that the carrot steak is an example of that, is elevating this, the carrot to the center of the plate like we elevate the steak to the center of the plate. We have these carrots that we grow under a lot of stress in the winter like after multiple small freezes and get the carrots sweet and really filled with flavor. And then we air, we hang them to dry like like you dry age steak, we dry dry age them with with beef tallow, which we rub on the carrots and then they just take on this funkiness that's just extraordinary and, and we roast them like a steak but we serve that with sides like creamed spinach and potatoes and, and rich sauce of meat, which is, it's not a vegetarian dish at all. It's just that meat has its place on the plate and then the root vegetable takes center stage and if you grow it right, starting with the seed and you grow it right, the right soil. But key to this is the gastronomy. If you put the right gastronomical technique to it, the vegetable easily stands up to the steak’"

Links - 18th January 2021 (2)

Chinese soldiers are 'too unfit and masturbate too much', military says - "In one city, 57% of recruits failed the test. The military said 8% of men had an enlarged vein in their scrotum, which they claim is caused by too much sitting down. This was attributed to ‘long time playing computer games, excessive masturbation, less exercise and so on’. A poor diet was also to blame for plenty of candidates’ ill health, with 25% failing blood and urine test due to drinking too much alcohol and fizzy drinks, the military said.The army said 46% of recruits failed a vision test because they spend too long staring at screens, including their phones.Other reasons for failure include candidates eating too much junk food, having sinus problems due to drinking poor quality water, and mental health issues."

Plot Twist: The Key to Better Sleep Is Not a Bedtime—It’s a Wake-Up Time - "Having a set wake-up time doesn’t mean you can regularly go to bed late and still feel well-rested. Your bedtime is still connected to your wake-up time and you should always aim to get enough sleep every night, Breus explains. The difference here is that if you’re keeping good sleep habits, your body will be more forgiving if you have the occasional late night or two... If you’re sleeping at the right time and getting the right amount of sleep, you shouldn’t need a nap. But if you are a nap enthusiast, don’t stress about giving up the habit. If you do need to doze off for a bit, Breus recommends doing so in the afternoon between 1 pm and 3 pm for 25 minutes tops. “In the afternoon, your body temperature drops and releases melatonin. If your nap surpasses 25 minutes, you transition into a deep sleep, which will probably make you feel less refreshed”... If you need to take something to ensure a good night’s sleep, you might want to think about taking supplements. Studies show that taking melatonin can improve sleep quality, and Breus also suggests considering a dietary supplement, like SeroVital Advanced, which contains an amino-renewal complex that works synergistically to improve sleep"

Funny GIF by JustViral.Net - Find & Share on GIPHY
Toddler throws pillow at man. Man throws pillow at toddler

Titania McGrath on Twitter - “Rape did not exist among native nations prior to white contact. I repeat, rape * did not exist * among native nations prior to white contact.”
"Historians must stop referring to Genghis Khan and his soldiers as rapists.Rape is an exclusively white practice. People of colour *cannot* rape.From now on, please say that “Khan was enacting whiteness through mass insemination of unwilling partners”."
Addendum: Animals must have learnt rape from white people

Canada Post sets new record with 8 year delivery time for expedited shipping. : toronto

Dr Chelsea Nichols on Twitter - "I've posted about this before, but I'm never going to stop until the whole world knows about SEX WEASELS in Renaissance art. (A thread) In the 16th century, it was widely believed that weasels conceived through their ears and gave birth through their mouth.This spawned a whole language of hidden sexual symbolism in art, with weasels standing in for everything from fertility talismans to phallic symbols"

Did Tanya McDowell Get 5 Years for Sending Her Son to a Better School While Felicity Huffman Got 14 Days? - "McDowell and Huffman's criminal cases make poor direct comparisons because they involve different criminal charges, different circumstances and different criminal jurisdictions... McDowell in 2012 received five years in state prison in Connecticut in a plea agreement reached with prosecutors over numerous charges, one of which included felony larceny. The larceny charge resulted from sending her son to a school district in which she did not not live, and it drew a public outcry. But she was arrested again, after the school incident, on charges that she offered drugs and prostitutes to undercover police officers... McDowell faced seven counts for the school incident and drug charges, which were resolved together with a plea deal in which she was sentenced to a total of five years behind bars, five years’ probation, and a 12-year suspended sentence. McDowell, unlike Huffman, also had a criminal record: a previous conviction for bank robbery and for having a weapon in a vehicle. McDowell’s record may have influenced her sentencing: “A person’s prior criminal history is taken into consideration in determining any subsequent plea agreement and the corresponding sentence,” Mark Dupuis, spokesman for the Connecticut state division of criminal justice told us in an email."
Better not tell the race baiters

Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib - "Trivia: What were the original names of Mount Faber* and Fort Canning Hill**?If you do not know, that is part of the violence of colonialism. Violence is not just physical but psychological too. One of the psychological violence that has long-term ramification is the erasure of indigenous history, knowledge and heritage. This is the difference between pre-modern conquests and the age of colonialism... while one can argue that the age of colonialism is long gone (though not fully), the mind continues to be colonised. Sociologist, Syed Hussein Alatas calls this as the “captive mind”"
Comments (elsewhere): "We should declare war on Indonesia, successor state to Majapahit. Who were the ones who burnt down the original Singapore and allowed a runaway prince to found malacca... since everybody is so keen on righting previous wrongs"
"Or maybe if you go back far enough the sultan or orang laut claimed it from someone else who claimed it from someone else etc. "
"So whoever named them Telok Blangah and Bukit larangan didn’t take it from the natives by force, I’m sure."
Of course, having your mind colonised by Western liberal postcolonialism is a good thing

South Korean football team apologises for using sex dolls to fill stands - "The K-League club FC Seoul said the dolls, which had been dotted around stands currently off-limits to supporters due to the coronavirus outbreak, had been ordered inadvertently after a “misunderstanding” with the supplier."
Sex dolls don't just need to be used for sex

90-year-old Japanese gamer grandma breaks world record, praises Grand Theft Auto 5【Video】 - "The world’s oldest video game streamer, Hamako Mori, has played titles like Call of Duty and Dauntless for decades — and shows no signs of stopping.

Florida woman stuffed plastic Easter eggs with porn and placed them in stranger's mailboxes, deputies say - "the eggs contained pornographic images, non-threatening references to nearby churches and county buildings, and other items...  Inside the Civic was 42-year-old Abril Cestoni.Detectives said Cestoni admitted to placing the items in the mailbox, saying she was "educating people.""

Αιεχ Μσση - "In this age of Premium Snapchats and OnlyFans there’s gonna be a lot of bullying 10-20 years from now of kids showing each other the others’ mom’s nudes

I,Hypocrite - Posts - "Dumbass Trump supporter you're an idiot I have a higher IQ then you little racist"
"how many chromosomes do you have"
"more than you"

WendysIsOverParty: Here's why Twitter canceled Wendy's - "A Business Insider article, published May 18 and highlighting $440,000 in donations from Bodenstedt to President Donald Trump's reelection campaign, has sparked outrage among some vocal Twitter users."

Keshaun Dangz on Twitter - "i have had hiccups for multiple hours and i’m about to lose my mind, all remedies welcome"
"@lil_yenta Self flagellation, specifically on your backside. This also works for your white privilege, which is clearly dripping from you."
Uhh

Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh - "On Wednesday Global Times Singapore, one of Singapore’s pro-PAP internet brigade, decided that I am a pro-China agent of foreign interference in Singapore’s domestic politics. As part of a group including Donald Low and Zuraidah Ibrahim. Seems like they got the “CMI” down pat, but forgot the “O”. (Sorry, my Eurasian brothers and sisters: left out again.)This pro-PAP group’s supporters have called me a “traitor” and said that I “should be banned from entering Singapore”.My quick, snarky response, sent to some friends, was: “I’m a 4th generation Singaporean, mofo. Who the fuck are you?”I did not want to post anything, but decided that I must for a simple reason. It reveals the emptiness of this relentless campaign against people who speak out of turn. When pro-PAP forces have difficulty competing intellectually, they resort to ad-hominem attacks. Take out the person rather than the argument.  The easiest way is to just brand us as “foreign agents”. This same tactic has been used over the decades, most recently against Kirsten Han and Pingtjin Thum.What worries me is how easily some Singaporeans buy the pro-PAP line that somebody who speaks out of turn is a foreign agent... Some days I am a Western stooge. Now a Chinese one. Haiyah, make up your damn mind, lah. My brown ass doesn’t like being tossed across the Pacific. I can feel my ancestors in India turning in their graves. There are a couple of things that I find hilarious about this line of argument. First, as anybody who reads my writing knows, I have always personally been in favour of a PAP government; but I believe it will perform better if cut down to size...  In any other country I would be called a PAP supporter. In Singapore, well, for some I am now an agent of foreign interference.Second, these brainiacs have made their assessment based on the fact that I wrote a single op-ed for the South China Morning Post (SCMP).How strange. Over the past decade I have written commentaries for many publications, including The Straits Times, Mothership, Rice Media, The Economist, Foreign Affairs and Nikkei Asian Review.It should be blindingly obvious that I am not a Chinese agent; I am just a bloody whore."

The racism lurking behind Scottish nationalism - "Too often, when minority voices such as mine — children of the colonies, born in Britain — oppose the break-up of what we now consider our country, Scottish nationalists too readily seek to silence our voices by accusing us, instead, of being English “colonists”. Such rhetoric is not only overly antagonistic, it also displays a fundamental ignorance about why most ethnic minorities in Britain have expressed a preference for calling ourselves British over English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish. And while I embrace being both a non-Anglo-Saxon Englishman and a Brit, it is not easy for many of us to forget the nationalist-inspired violent racism levied against us growing up, and still present today.For ‘progressive’ Scottish Nationalists to draw an equivalence between ethnic minorities who oppose their separatism and British colonialism, smacks of the very colonial privilege they seek to denounce. The fact of the matter is that Scottish colonists profited greatly from the creation of the British Empire. Scotland’s debt to Empire is her dirty little secret, seldom acknowledged but ever-present. The “tobacco lords” of Glasgow were enriched by slavery in the Americas and Africa, while a quick visit to the former North British Rubber Company in Edinburgh serves to disabuse most naysayers suffering under such a false sense of righteousness. The pernicious narrative peddled by Scottish nationalists that England colonised Scotland, and then the rest of the world — and so England must even now be resisted in Scotland — sounds suspiciously like an act of whitewashing Scottish culpability, at least to the ears of this descendant of a former colony... We should beware the kid gloves with which metropolitan opinion formers treat the SNP. Their party machine is curiously similar to Momentum, and much of what we would never tolerate from Corbyn now rules in Edinburgh. As such, they are riddled with all the trappings of power, while harbouring a nasty, illiberal and authoritarian streak"

The worst except for all the others - GDP predictions are reliable only in the short term | Graphic detail | The Economist - "For the past 20 years The Economist has kept a database of projections by banks and consultancies for annual GDP growth. It now contains 100,000 forecasts across 15 rich countries. In general, they fared well over brief time periods, but got worse the further analysts peered into the future... The biggest errors occurred ahead of GDP contractions... If forecasters displayed such biases consistently, an aggregator could beat the crowd by granting more weight to those with good records. But top performers rarely repeat their feats"

How accurate are economic forecasts? - "Economists themselves mostly understand their poor forecasting record. Many businesses, however, want at least a best guess about the economic future.Economists, moreover, mostly find that the media won’t report their comments about their forecasts’ weaknesses. In the words of RBA governor Glenn Stevens, people appear to want “the illusion of certainty”...  The RBA’s Stevens said in a November 2015 speech that the bank now tries to emphasise a range of possibilities, of which its “central forecast” is only the most likely. He also disclosed that he and other RBA staff have considered leaving out the central forecasts altogether and just publishing the likely ranges.They concluded the media would just report the number in the middle of the range"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Wednesday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "‘Normally directors choose to take payment in dividends because it incurs much less tax. And if you're a basic rate taxpayer, you only pay seven and a half percent tax on dividends. If you're contributing less in tax, shouldn't you take out less when it comes to things like support schemes, they, shouldn't be perhaps less than 80%?’
‘Well, the logic behind the different taxes that you're, if you're working for yourself, you have, you don't have any of that protections that employees have. Whether that's, you know, all day basic, that kind of thing. This is a very, very standard way of working which has been, you know, not just accepted but actually encouraged by the government. The government has made a lot of its support for entrepreneurs, startups, and some of these companies we have started one person hopefully will grow into bigger ones. So this has never been an issue. It's never been something that yeah, the government said they want to stop. If, when this, this whole thing is over, and the Chancellor did refer to maybe the tax system could change in the future, then that may well be sensible and something which is justifiable doing. The problem is we're in this right now. And these are people whose income has completely disappeared because they work for themselves. So all we're asking is that they get treated the same as, as other people.’"

Everything You Wanted To Know About Ancient Greece

Everything You Wanted To Know About Ancient Greece (Part 1) | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra

"‘There were about 1000 separate Greek cities. So you can't say that there was one thing, ancient Greek democracy. Those cities which had democracy had their own democracy. So in other words, each one will be slightly different from all the others. And the majority of Greek cities never had any form of democracy, it's important to remember that of those 1000, perhaps a quarter, perhaps 250, had a form of democracy at some time, not necessarily for all the period. Well, the earliest form, the earliest type of democracy is the Athenian, and it was created round about 500 BC. And its main point is not to be what the Athenians had before, which was tyranny and tyranny, and I'm going to come on to this later, is not a constitutional form of government, but it is a way in which a sole ruler rules by might based on force. He might observe the pre existing laws, he might not, but he rules by force. Well the Athenians decided no, we want constitutional government, we want a republic. And this is where democracy comes in... Athens was the leader, Athens’s form of democracy was more complete, more advanced, more developed than any other Greek city.'...

'When in the early modern period, the 16th 17th 18th century, the word democracy starts creeping back, especially in England in the 17th century in France and in America in the 18th century, then democracy acquires a salience and people start looking back to the ancient Greeks. Well, what did they do? How did they do it? But, there was a universal agreement in the 19th century when democracy starts expanding quite considerably, that the system we must have, partly because of size, must be indirect. It must be representative, parliamentary, not direct on the ancients’ model. And there was, in fact, quite a lot of discussion about the danger of direct democracy of the ancient time. Namely, the danger of it shifting over into, well, the tyranny of the mob. Mob rule. So, emotion instead of reason governing public decisions and then turning on minorities, something actually the ancients weren't particularly fussed about because there weren't the sort of minorities that we have developed in our very much more plural systems. So that wasn't a concern. By our standards, the ancients were very intolerant. They didn't have any concern for either racial or ethnic or gender minorities. The majority rule, and they should rule and they're all pretty much the same because they're all adult male Greeks...

You and I probably think that election is a very democratic sort of thing. Oddly enough, the ancient Greeks thought that election tended to favor the rich, the famous, the well born, in other words, the elite. And if you have an egalitarian spirit as the ancients did, you don't actually want to privilege elites anymore than they already are. However, this is where prudence, rationality kicks in. If you're going to have a general leading thousands of your fellow citizens in a very key battle and the Greeks were often fighting, each other, as well as foreigners, both on land and at sea, then you need to have people who are above averagely intelligent, smart, well connected, experienced. And so, you keep election for the top military offices, and you keep election for the top financial offices on the basis that if somebody is very rich, they're going to be used to handling lots of money. They'll know how to account for it and they’re not going to be so tempted to put their hand in the till, as if you were poor, whereas most Athenians were poor. And so most people holding offices by lot were poor'...

‘Whether you're a citizen, or not a citizen, and you might actually live in a city, you're a Greek, let's say from Corinth, but you decide you want to go and live in Athens because the business opportunities are better for you. So you then become a resident alien, you don't become a citizen. This is a very big difference between the Greek world and the Greek idea of what it is to be a citizen and the Roman one. In Rome, it's possible even for a freed slave, to become a citizen, a Roman citizen. If you are freed in Greece, you're typically not Greek by ethnicity, and you now become a resident alien, you're free, but you're never a citizen. So that's a big status distinction…

Big difference between Greece and Rome here. You typically both come into Athens or wherever, Corinth as a slave and you die as a slave. The Greeks were not so keen on manumitting, on freeing their slaves, as the Romans were. And as I say, if they did choose, let's say, the slave gets very old, has an accident, and they wish to free them or they wish to sell them on to someone else, then that slave doesn't cease to be a slave or doesn't become a citizen, but becomes a resident alien. I suppose if they had any natal ties, they might still want to go back to their original homeland, but that we don't really know much about.’… They all live with their masters except those very skilled craftsmen slaves, and they were typically male, who lived apart. That is they were established by the master in a workshop. And for example, the politician Demosthenes, his father had two lots of slaves like that. One lot made couches and the other lot made knives and they lived apart and so to some extent determined their own lifestyle, their own rate of work and all that, of course, subject to producing the goods that Demosthenes’ dad required. But most slaves if they were in agriculture, they lived on the farm and most Greeks lived actually in the country, not in urban environments… normally they were not allowed to have sex except forced to by the master or mistress. I mean, it's not a great scenario.

But the Greeks did not typically want their slaves to breed. They didn't want them to have children because it was cheaper to buy a new slave on the market than it was to rear the slave. The mother, after all, if she was a female slave might die in childbirth. The male slave as a young boy might get sick, and that would be time off work. It's not efficient. So whereas the Romans seem to have gone in for breeding, as the old south in America did, they had to because they couldn't import slaves after 1807, the Greeks relied on imports.

Now Sparta is in many ways a peculiar society. It's rather remote in the sense it's way down south. It's not a commercial town. It does have craftsmen, but it's basically agricultural. And it is a conquest state. So the Spartans expanded from Sparta out over the whole of the Southern Peloponnese. So they had a mini Empire, their city’s territory, was the largest in the entire Greek world by a factor of over three. I mean, it was really hugely bigger than anywhere else. So how do they work? How was the basically agricultural produce produced and by whom? It was done by a whole population. These are Greeks. They're not bought on the market from abroad. They're not foreigners, they're locals, whom at one point the Spartans had enslaved and called, and it's a very unpleasant term, helots. And the Greek word heílotes means a captive. So, their very name, their collective name, bears witness to how their ancestors had originally been enslaved thereafter. Now this is unlike slavery in Athens and elsewhere. Reproduction, breeding was the only way in which the Spartans reproduce their slave community’…

Every year, the chief officials of the Spartan state uttered a declaration and the Declaration was in two parts. First to the Spartans, shave your mustaches and obey the laws and it's very interesting. There are sculptures which show I mean, they're presumably meant to be Spartans in bronze or in stone, without a mustache so they grew a full beard, but no mustache, shave your mustache, obey the laws. Second half of the proclamation was to declare the helots enemies of state. So that and it’s really partly not so much a pragmatic thing, but it's a religious thing. If you kill another human being in everyday converse, and everyday transactions, you commit homicide. Well that in Greek eyes, incurred pollution, it meant you were polluted in some way, you needed to be purified of that blood guilt. If on the other hand, and this is similar to us, I'm afraid, if you kill an enemy in war, say I go over and we're in Afghanistan, I kill a Taliban. That's not murder. That's homicide, but it's not murder. In the same way, if a Spartan killed a helot, because of this decree, this declaration, he was not committing murder, he was committing homicide. And so he was absolved in advance from pollution, encouraging him therefore, not to hold back killing a helot if that was thought to be necessary or desirable. So the helots are at the same time the workforce of the entire Spartan state, but they're also slaves under constant threat of death."

Everything You Wanted To Know About Ancient Greece (Part 2) | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra

"‘What about the perception of homosexuality more widely? Was it celebrated in ancient Greece? Was Oscar Wilde right in his suggestion of a sort of gay utopia?’

‘Well, he's both right and wrong insofar as there was no religious argument against it as there was for him. Judeo-Christian tradition is very down on homosexuality. Insofar as it was celebrated in myth, in the ancient world, Heracles had boyfriends. And that was great. In those terms, compare it with late 19th century Victorian England. Boy, I would have taken Ancient Greece any time if I was gay then. But on the other hand, it's complicated. For the reasons I've given. You've got to be careful. The protocols, how you do your pederasty matter, it wasn't just that it wasn't criminalized, it had to be done in the proper way. And then there's a famous or rather notorious passage of Plato, and it's in The Laws and he's talking about well, how should we regulate sexual relations?

Are homosexuals, as we call it - it’s a modern term - are same sex relations okay between men? Well, no because they are unnatural. Why are they unnatural? Because they don't give rise to offspring. Reproductive naturalism. He anticipates the Christian view of the purpose of marriage being to produce legitimate offspring, to have sex only within marriage. Well Plato, having previously in an earlier work, celebrated through his mouthpiece Socrates, same sex relationships of a, they could be sexual but not exclusively sexual kind, which elevates the behavior of both of them. It's a sort of higher form of converse than purely physical which is what male-female might be thought to be. Because women were not educated to be equals with men, typically in ancient Greece.

So Plato goes from, in a way celebrating a form of idealized spiritualized, same sex homosexuality to a position of very negative down on it. And if I was to be crude, I'd say well as he got older, he wasn't that interested or that capable of having sex with anybody. He never married, which is very unusual. And I think therefore whether or not he was a, as it were a preferred homosexual, by the end he's pretty sour and embittered, and he's quite down on any sort of what he considers deviant behavior. And he has fierce punishments in this ideal state, which is not very ideal by most of our standards’...

‘Why was homosexuality and bisexuality accepted in ancient Greece, but not in Rome?’

‘I've thought about this. It's very, very hard to say. I mean, one reason is if you conquer a people, and you think yourself, therefore superior to them, you look for the things that differentiate your civilization from theirs. And the Romans singled out their abhorrence, their rejection of this deviant custom among the Greeks of homosexuality, which they thought was effeminate. At least one party in any homosexual relationship they thought must play the part of the woman. So it's not what a true Roman masculine man should do. And you may, might immediately think, as I immediately think, what about the Spartans? They institutionalized pederasty, homosexuality? They were no wimps. So the point is, the Romans were being very selective in what they chose not to adopt from the Greeks. They actually adopted a great deal of other stuff, but this was one custom which they, like, I mean, there have been many other cultures that have thought did a terrible thing. And of course, typically any Judeo Christian culture does, officially, think of it as a terrible thing in terms of its primary documents. So I think that's the answer. The Romans conquered the Greeks. Greeks were feeble. One reason they were feeble, or one manifestation of their feebleness was their addiction to buggery.’...

'There were separate spaces. The Greeks actually had a word meaning a cut out space. So a sanctuary which might or might not include a temple was. So there were as it were shrines and specifically religious spaces in terms of an altar, and a temple. But religion was practiced everywhere. You go to battle, you slaughter a an animal before the battle to get the will of the gods, you look at its lip, liver, and then if it's favorable you go to battle. If it's not, you don't. So battlefield. You're at home, you wake up in the morning, you have your family Hermes, just outside your back door, you pour a libation, that is wine, or some other liquid, it might be olive oil, and that is your way of making your peace with the gods constantly.

There's a tooing and froing. There’s a sort of notion of a contract, that if you the human, do the gods favors, if you look after them, and if you worship them, give them their due, then the gods are bound by contract to do you a favor in return. It's a give and take. So religion was everywhere in principle and just about any phenomenon could be given a religious interpretation. A rainbow, well the Greeks had a word for that, a goddess called Iris. The sun is a god, Helios. Or you look at a spring, ah there's a nymph playing there, female, you pour a libation to that nymph. So everywhere, Greeks were massively religious, and that's why it's a bit of a paradox that some Greeks were able to draw a distinction and actually to even question whether the gods I mean, Zeus, Hermes and so on were real, or whether they were figments of human imagination. So in other words, you get the beginnings of atheism, through humanism, as well as normally most Greeks being what you and I would call very religious.'

‘And you mentioned Zeus and Hermes there. How many Greek gods and goddesses were there?’

‘Absolutely countless in the sense that you can multiply one god or goddess by giving her or him a different epithet. I'll just give you one example. Athena. Athena Polias is the patron goddess of Athens. But if you go up on the Acropolis there are two other temples, to different Athenas. One of them is Athena Parthenos, the virgin, the maiden. That's the Parthenon. And then there's another one called Athena Nike, if you own running shoes by Nike, that means victory. So there's one goddess, three different manifestations for the Greeks, three different goddesses’"

So much for the myth that Ancient Greece was a gay paradise

Links - 18th January 2021 (1)

George W. Bush won't support Donald Trump’s reelection, report says - "George W. Bush will not support the re-election of Donald Trump, according to people familiar with his thinking, The New York Times reported Saturday.The paper said the former president and Texas governor won't vote for Trump's reelection and that his brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, "isn't sure how he'll vote." The paper spotlights several members of the Republican Party who are dissenting from party lines, though Bush was the only prominent Texas politician mentioned. Freddy Ford, a spokesman for Bush, told The Texas Tribune that Bush would steer clear of speaking publicly on his presidential vote and called The New York Times assertion false. "This is completely made up," Ford said in an email. "He is retired from presidential politics and has not indicated how he will vote."... In 2014, before Jeb Bush ran for president (a race he lost to Trump), George P. told the Texas Tribune’s Evan Smith he wouldn’t endorse his father."
It's only wrong when Fox News or the Daily Mail report material challenging the liberal consensus. But the New York Times can lie as much as they want and still be trustworthy

I,Hypocrite - Posts - "having *Flag of England* or *Flag of United Kingdom* in your display name is an easy way of someone saying they’re racist, islamophobic, homophobic and hate women"
Comment: "We have the same nonsense here, it started with the confederate flag which was ostensibly reasonable even if debatable, then it was the Gadsden flag which literally has zero connection with slavery or the confederacy, now it's the actual American flag. Their goal is to destroy our history and demonize our institution so we'll accept even worse institutions."
"what's even more ridiculous is that the "Confederate flag", which folks despise sooo much, is actually the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia...not the actual Confederacy."
So much for the "myth" that liberals hate their countries, as well as the "myth" of the slippery slope (it used to be just the English flag that was demonised)

Bev on Twitter - "Chinese Peranakans in Singapore have had a history of blackface. Since a lot of them were colonial collaborators, they aspired towards their colonisers’ culture as well — this involved putting on and enjoying minstrel. As a peranakan, I feel like we need to talk about this more."
So since the arts in Singapore have a history of structural racism, we need to defund them

Dr. Carly Goldstein в Twitter - "@ZackBergerMDPhD My house was burglarized in Feb. So much stolen and damaged in the process. Made me incredibly sad to think how desperately they needed my jewelry and computer...probably more than I did. It still sucks and feels violating, but kudos for finding compassion in your frustration."
When you're such a bleeding heart you excuse those who rob you

Explicit tweet depicts BDSM dog play involving SAF uniforms; Mindef investigating

Balaji S. Srinivasan on Twitter - "Democrats need to learn experts aren’t always right. Republicans need to learn experts aren’t always wrong. Libertarians need to learn that a state can succeed. Progressives need to learn that a state can fail"

Allie Beth Stuckey on Twitter - "Liberal privilege is never having to worry about losing your job or your business for voicing your political opinions. You can be a full on communist, falsely accuse 10 people of racism, & support partial birth abortion and you won’t be viewed as problematic in the slightest."

Burgess Owens on Twitter - "The most popular racist term today... "White Privilege". Don't you dare tell me my skin color holds me back. Don't you dare tell me my skin color makes me a victim."

Bill Maher on the Perils of Political Correctness - The New York Times - "“My whole career,” Maher says, “has been this battle: Why can’t I talk on TV the way I talk at home or with my friends? My goal was to take that gap, which on most shows you can drive a truck through, and close it to nothing.”
Most late-night hosts don’t criticize both the right and the left as much as you do. Why do you think that is?
It’s hard to answer that question without sounding self-serving. I will say this: Our studio audience is not representative of liberals across the country. Your paper and The Atlantic had long articles in the last year saying that 80 percent of Americans think this politically correct BS has gone too far. But the people on Twitter are the people who control the media a lot. They’re the millennials who probably grew up with helicopter parents who afforded them a sense of entitlement. They are certainly more fragile than previous generations. Trigger warnings. Safe spaces. Crying rooms. Microaggressions. That crowd feels like anything that upsets their tender sensibilities is completely out of line... liberals protect people, and P.C. people protect feelings. They don’t do anything. They’re pointing at other people who are somehow falling short of their standards, which could have changed three weeks ago. They’re constantly moving the goalposts so they can go, “Gotcha!” For example, when I was growing up, the most liberal thing you could do is not see color. Well, that’s wrong now. You see color, always, so you can register your white privilege. But I grew up in the Martin Luther King era: Judge by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. I still think that’s the best way to do it. Not see it... the air on the left is becoming stale. I railed for years against the Fox News bubble, and that is as strong as ever, but I didn’t think it would get this bad on the left. Comedians are afraid to make jokes in clubs, because somebody will tape it and send it out on Twitter and get the mob after you... Of course, intolerance exists everywhere, but the places where, let’s say, human rights workers have their work cut out for them the most are probably traditional Islamic societies. To conflate thinking that with Islamophobia is a facile and unconvincing trick.
I do wonder if, at least in the past, you’ve done some conflating of your own as far as, for example, treating theocracies or dictators as exemplars of Islamic rank and file.
I think you have it backwards. The government of Pakistan is more liberal than the people. Their senate recently passed legislation to end child marriages and local police forces have intervened. Yes, we have things in our country that are at odds with liberal values, but someone once said that, at some point, a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind... to those who say, when I mention instances of Islamism, “But it’s not everywhere,” I say, “If a doctor tells you you have cancer, do you go, Yeah, but it’s not everywhere?”... I define political correctness as the elevation of sensitivity over truth...
I saw this headline: “Mario Lopez Apologizes.” It was this groveling apology to the L.G.B.T.Q. community. You know what the problem was? They asked him about this trend in Hollywood of letting your 3-year-old decide their gender and Mario Lopez said maybe 3 is a little young for that decision. Monster!... Young people should be the free ones pushing the boundaries and not the ones inhibiting us. “Well, I’m not a woman, so I could not possibly know that experience.” “I’m not a person of color, so I can’t speak about that.” Professors are afraid to speak, because what they say, even if it’s science, might go against the politically correct notion. This is pernicious. I’m sorry, but I have to lay that at the doorstep of the far left and the younger generation. It’s not the worst thing in the world to hear something you find somewhat offensive. You can turn the channel. Look at something else. Go to a puppet show; you’ll never be offended."
Re: Pakistan - So much for the myth that governments (and politicians) are always to blame, not the people

California Restaurant Industry Group Sues Berkeley Over Natural Gas Ban - "The California Restaurant Association filed suit against the city of Berkeley Thursday alleging that its recently approved ban on the use of natural gas in newly constructed buildings will have "uniquely negative impacts" on the culinary community.In July, Berkeley became the first city in the U.S. to ban natural gas pipes in new buildings as a means of achieving greenhouse gas reduction goals... a shift to electric heat would change the cooking process and increase costs. "Many restaurants will be faced with the inability to make many of their products which require the use of specialized gas appliances to prepare, including for example flame-seared meats, charred vegetables, or the use of intense heat from a flame under a wok," the lawsuit said. "Indeed, restaurants specializing in ethnic foods so prized in the Bay Area will be unable to prepare many of their specialties without natural gas.""
If they can show it will hurt ethnic food more, they can argue it's racist and get it struck down! Or all the restaurants can just leave Berkeley

Anonymous professors attack colleague behind ‘grievance studies’ hoax as threat to university - "Peter Boghossian’s colleagues believe he “likely” committed academic dishonesty by seeking to publish several hoax papers in peer-reviewed academic journals associated with what he calls “grievance studies.”The Portland State University philosophy professor would like to respond to their concerns in person, but he can’t.The 11 professors and one doctoral student left their names off a letter to the editor published by the student newspaper Friday, while including their titles and departments... The professor told The College Fix he had taken great pains to engage critics, contrary to the anonymous letter’s portrayal.When Boghossian moderated a discussion with the fired Google engineer James Damore earlier this year, he told the audience that all tenured and tenure-track women’s studies professors had been invited to “be with us tonight on stage” for a “conversation,” not a debate. The same invitation was available for a future event on intersectionality... Boghossian compared this effort to having a conversation with someone who believes in Santa Claus.These “cowards” are the “very same people who laud and champion diversity,” yet spurn one of the few heterodox voices on campus, he said: “I’m not a hardline dogmatist” and he’s never voted Republican.He’s also not tenured, leading Boghossian to previously predict PSU will fire him... The PSU Vanguard, which published the anonymous letter, is also catching heat for not only publishing an anonymous letter, but mocking Boghossian in cover art and inside graphics.It also failed to verify the accuracy of his partners’ names, referring to “Heather” Pluckrose, editor-in-chief of Areo magazine, and James “Lindsey,” a mathematician and author. Pluckrose’s name was corrected to “Helen” sometime Tuesday, but Lindsay’s name is still misspelled.The anonymous colleagues are “obviously enraged at me” to the point where none of them caught the misspellings before submitting the letter... Nearly all the 26 comments now posted criticize the letter writers. A self-identified “female math undergraduate” said she had crossed off PSU as a potential graduate school, comparing the letter writers to “evolution denialists.”... “It is utterly incredible to me what the university has become … They can’t defend their ideas, they link me with Trump, they attack me as a person.”... “Talk about wasting somebody’s time,” Lindsay continues, reading the portion of the letter about the strain on peer reviewers. “They wanted to make a graduate or undergraduate level course in masculinities based on the Hooter’s paper,” referring to one of the published hoax papers on “Breastaurant Masculinity.”He defends the project as “an audit to raise the quality of scholarship coming out of shit fields” by professors who are “trying to turn [academia] into a cult.”Mike Nayne, a filmmaker who has been documenting the trio, says off-screen with Boghossian: “You’ve just been written up in the ‘Mean Girls’ burn book.” Boghossian says he’s not expecting sympathetic colleagues to write “another letter in support of me” because they are “too terrified … they’d be targeted and they could go up before the diversity board”... The scholars have given no evidence that the trio “falsified data” – a “legally specific claim” – yet they raise the question of how “extremely implausible data” was accepted so easily by several journals"
Yet liberals are upset by the journal of controversial ideas, which will allow pseudononymity. I guess knowing authors' identity is only important when they say the "wrong" things

Seamus (FreedomToons) on Twitter - "hey guys, I'm drawing the line. if you support bad thing, unfollow me. i only support good thing and will no longer be associating with people who i am better than"
So brave! So stunning!
This is a parody of liberals who proclaim that if you disagree with them, unfollow them

Men hired for sexual fantasy break into wrong house - "In a sex fantasy gone wrong, two men with machetes entered the wrong house in New South Wales, Australia, before quickly realising their error.One of them has now been acquitted of entering a home armed with a weapon in July 2019, Australian media report.They had been hired to carry out a client's fantasy of being tied up in his underwear and stroked with a broom... "He was willing to pay A$5,000 if it was 'really good'," the judge said.However, the client moved to another address 50km (30 miles) away without updating the two men. They then entered a home on the street of the original address. When the resident noticed a light on in his kitchen at 06:15, he assumed it was a friend who came by daily to make morning coffee.When the men called out the name of their client, the resident turned on the light and removed a sleep apnoea mask he was wearing.It was then that he saw them standing above his bed with the machetes, which they appeared to have brought as props for the role play. When they realised their error, one of the pair said, "Sorry, mate", and shook the resident's hand, according to local reports.The two men then drove to the correct address, where the client noticed one man had a "great big knife" in his trousers and asked them to leave the weapons in their car.The client then cooked bacon, eggs and noodles, and a short time later, the police arrived at the property, found the machetes in the car and arrested the hired pair."

Links - 17th January 2021 (2)

Your Brain Is Not an Onion With a Tiny Reptile Inside - "A widespread misconception in much of psychology is that (a) as vertebrate animals evolved, “newer” brain structures were added over existing “older” brain structures, and (b) these newer, more complex structures endowed animals with newer and more complex psychological functions, behavioral flexibility, and language. This belief, although widely shared in introductory psychology textbooks, has long been discredited among neurobiologists and stands in contrast to the clear and unanimous agreement on these issues among those studying nervous-system evolution. We bring psychologists up to date on this issue by describing the more accurate model of neural evolution, and we provide examples of how this inaccurate view may have impeded progress in psychology. We urge psychologists to abandon this mistaken view of human brains."

Why Do Paper Cuts Hurt so Much? - "Physically, paper cuts hurt as much as they do for a variety of reasons. They typically occur on parts of our bodies that are the most sensitive, such as the fingers, lips or tongue. The nerve networks of these body parts can discriminate with exceptional clarity and specificity, sensations of pressure, heat, cold and injury. Our brains even have specialized areas to receive signals coming from these parts in high definition. The exquisite sensing abilities that makes our fingers, lips and tongue so good at what they normally do, also makes injuries all the more painful.These same highly sensitive areas are also parts we use all the time. Cuts on fingers, lips and the tongue tend to reopen throughout day dooming us to relive the pain again and again. Finally, the depth of the wound is perfect for exposing and exciting the nerve fibers of the skin without damaging them the way a deeper, more destructive injury can severely damage the nerve fibers impairing their ability to communicate pain. With a paper cut, the nerve fibers are lit, and they are fully operational"

Why Are So Many American Jews Politically Liberal? - "The explanation of Jewish liberalism as a fulfillment of Judaism also downplayed the fact that Jewish leftism was intensely secular and rejected the Orthodox definition of Jewish identity... Another interpretation looked not to Judaism but to recent history to explain this Jewish commitment to liberalism. Prior to the late nineteenth century, the Jewish political orientation in Europe and the Arab lands was passive. Jews feared the state and were detached from political involvement. Since the parties of the left in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries favored Jewish emancipation and opposed anti‑Semitism, Jews naturally supported the political left and distrusted the political establishment, which was often anti‑Semitic... With good reason, Jews identified anti‑Semitism with the right... While favoring the amelioration of social and economic problems by a strong central government, the Jewish approach to politics also contained an anarchistic strain. Jews had a deep distrust of authority because established political and social authority had threatened Jewish interests... In contrast to the Irish, Jews tended to view politics in terms of social and economic redemption rather than as an opportunity for personal advancement. Largely excluded from the politics of eastern Europe, most Jews did not believe politics was a place where a nice Jewish boy should pursue a career. Jews were influential in postwar American politics as intellectuals, contributors, and voters, but not as politicians. Skeptical toward politicians, Jews are not skeptical toward the political process. For them, it is the means to create a better world."

Doing yoga on log, fail GIFs - Gifvif

Parliament: New ERP system 'not a threat to privacy' - "Data collected by a satellite-tracked electronic road-pricing (ERP) system Singapore is building will be "aggregated and anonymised", said Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew in response to questions about how privacy will be safeguarded." - Nov 3, 2014
ERP, traffic data to be used to counter terror threat - "Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) data and public transport cameras will be added to the Home Team's arsenal in the fight against terrorism and serious crime - as the Government toughens its stance on the use of such information in the face of mounting threats." - Apr 7 2016

The Best Cleaning Product Only Costs About $1 - "These holy grail items are as low-cost as they are versatile. Plus, they’re probably a whole lot greener than most of the chemicals you’re already using...
Salt
Vinegar
Hydrogen Peroxide
Lemon
Rubbing Alcohol"

Sewer Cleaners Wanted in Pakistan: Only Christians Need Apply. - The New York Times - "A recent spate of deaths among Christian sewer cleaners in Pakistan underscores how the caste discrimination that once governed the Indian subcontinent’s Hindus lingers, no matter the religion.Like thousands of other lower-caste Hindus, Mr. Eric’s ancestors converted to Christianity centuries ago, hoping to escape a cycle of discrimination that ruled over every aspect of their lives: what wells of water they could drink from, what jobs they could hold. Manual sewer cleaners, known as sweepers, are at the bottom of that hierarchy, the most untouchable of the untouchable Hindu castes.But when the Indian subcontinent broke up in 1947 and Pakistan was formed as a homeland for the region’s Muslims, a new, informal system of discrimination formed. In Pakistan, Muslims sit at the top of the hierarchy. And as one of Pakistan’s small Christian minority, Mr. Eric has now been forced into the same work his Hindu ancestors had tried to avoid through religious conversion. Although India has outlawed caste-based discrimination with mixed success, in Pakistan it is almost encouraged by the state. In July, the Pakistani military placed newspaper advertisements for sewer sweepers with the caveat that only Christians should apply. After activists protested, the religious requirement was removed... Doctors often refuse to treat the sweepers, who are seen as unclean and untouchable.Officially, Pakistan denies the existence of caste-based practices in the country. But across the country, the discrimination persists.One form of abuse commonly meted out on Pakistan’s religious minorities has been to accuse them of blasphemy, a crime that is punishable by death in the country, and that at times has been used to settle personal disputes. In one infamous case in 2010, Asia Bibi, a Christian woman, was sentenced to death, accused of blaspheming Islam. It later emerged that her Muslim colleagues had ordered her to fetch water as they harvested berries on a hot day. When she drank from the communal cup, they accused her of polluting it and an argument ensued."

Meme - "THE LEFT: We now live in a world where the richest 8 men own more than the poorest 3.6 BILLION"
""LIBERALS": That's an outrage! At least 4 of them should be women of colour"
Why corporates love liberalism so much

Russia’s Clash With the West Is About Geography, Not Ideology - "In the latter half of the 19th century, Russia had been contained by France and Britain — in the Balkans, the Middle East, India, and China — well before Kennan made “containment” a household word. Its defensive options being limited, its military doctrine has historically been offensive. It has sought to dominate its neighbors as a means of preventing the borderlands from being used against it by other powers. Whereas the West sees Russia’s fear of invasion as groundless, history has shown Russian leaders that foreign intentions are typically hidden or fluid. Each age brings a new existential threat; there would always be another Napoleon or Hitler... While military conflicts in Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine have been attributed to aggressive Kremlin efforts to re-establish elements of the Soviet empire, it is notable that Russia has not annexed any of the breakaway regions — with the exception of Crimea, which houses the Russian Black Sea Fleet. The reason is not merely deniability, but also the fact that annexation of pro-Russian territories would have strengthened the pro-Western forces in the remaining parts of each country. Annexation would undermine Russia’s primary objective, which is keeping the countries beyond the reach of Western institutions seen to threaten Russian interests. The presence of frozen conflicts in the three nations effectively blocks them from joining NATO. The alliance has always rejected aspirants with unresolved border disputes, internal territorial conflicts, and insufficient military capacity to provide for a credible national defense... Gorbachev, no fan of Putin’s, also supported the annexation of Crimea, as well as Russian military action in Georgia. The West, he wrote in his memoirs, had been “blind to the kind of sentiments NATO expansion aroused” in Russia. "
I find it interesting how Russia thinks to protect itself it is justified in oppressing others

Jennifer Wright on Twitter - ""Women in the past were modest and had more respect for themselves." Here's Agnes Sorel, who had her gowns tailored to expose her favorite boob in the 1440s"

Caitlin Johnstone on Twitter - "Trump could have run as a Democrat in 2016 with a liberal-sounding platform, enacted the exact same policies he's enacted as president, and, as long as he kept saying nice-sounding things, Democrats would think he's awesome right now."

madison is not a fan of fascism or cops on Twitter - "day one of my zero waste journey! used my pasta water from breakfast to make my coffee "

Can’t You Just Fire Me? Man Paid to Do Nothing Wanted $2 Million - Bloomberg - "An executive who was paid about $18,000 a month by LafargeHolcim Ltd. to do nothing failed in his suit to force the cement maker to fire him with a payout worth more than $2 million. Timing was his undoing. When his employer Lafarge SA announced in 2015 a staff-buyout program as part of its merger with Holcim Ltd., Antoine Zenone hoped he could get a golden handshake. But the company told him he wasn’t eligible and French judges have said “non” -- three times in a row... Zenone was seeking about 2.1 million euros ($2.3 million) and until recently had been paid 16,195 euros gross a month by Lafarge without having to provide any work"

Baltimore's 30,000 Public Employees Cost Taxpayers $2 Billion But Can't Save Their Own City - "Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com investigated just how much taxpayer money flows into the Baltimore bureaucracy at every level: federal, state, and local. We found the city drowning in taxpayer dollars... Baltimore received more funding per resident ($573) than the comparable cities of Portland, OR ($274); Nashville, TN ($353); Oklahoma City, OK ($201); Detroit, MI ($372); and Milwaukee, WI ($183)"
Clearly, proof that even more money is needed!

The Real Reason Apple Made the iPhone SE So Cheap - "Over the past few years, Apple has methodically pivoted its business strategy away from getting you to replace your iPhone as frequently as possible. Instead, it’s maximizing the money it makes in a different way: selling you subscription services and accessories that work with the iPhone.  The recently updated iPhone SE is a prime example of that new strategy in action... Like Apple’s other new iPhones, the new iPhone SE has no headphone jack, which means buyers will at least consider buying a pair of AirPods ($159) or AirPods Pro ($250) to listen to music and take calls. Or perhaps they’ll buy an Apple Watch instead, which only works with iOS and starts at $499 for the latest model. Apple’s new focus on subscription services is good for customers in some ways. Phones are more affordable, and there’s less pressure to constantly upgrade.But Apple’s change in strategy has also put some seams in the formerly almost seamless iOS experience. Sometimes the upsell tactics are subtle, like putting Apple TV and Music icons front and center on new iPhone home screens. But other upsell tactics are more aggressive. In the settings of a new device, for instance, you’ll find a countdown warning you of how many days are left to buy AppleCare. Apple Music sends push notifications offering free trials. After a few days, you’ll notice that the free iCloud storage — a measly 5 GB — has already run out. When you use Apple Wallet, a giant advertisement for Apple Card hovers at the bottom of your screen."

How Alberta Won the Rat Race - "Along an 18-mile strip of land between the Canadian province of Alberta and its neighbor Saskatchewan, the rat patrol keeps guard. An eight-person team, armed with poison and shotguns, hunts daily for any sign of the rodent invaders.The Alberta rat patrol checks more than 3,000 farms a year, but it rarely sees an actual rat. Alberta has 4.3 million people, 255,000 square miles, and no rats—bar the stray handful that make it into the killing zone each year. Ever since 1950, a sternly enforced program of exclusion and extermination has kept the province rat-free. Nowhere else in the world comes close; the only other rat-free areas are isolated islands such as the remote British territory of South Georgia. Public support and education have been key to Alberta’s success. Locals use hotlines (310-RATS or 310-FARM) to report any sign of rodents, though false alarms are common. School programs educate kids about the telltale signs of the invaders. Keeping pet rats is banned and can earn you a fine of almost $4,000... The whole program currently costs just about $380,000 a year—most of the money is spent on exterminators’ salaries—but saves Alberta’s farmers millions... a hugely ambitious program launched in 2016, Predator Free New Zealand, envisages wiping out not only rats but stoats and possums by 2050. It’s an expensive effort. The pilot scheme—conducted on two inhabited islands, covering almost 15 square miles—cost about $3 million"

‘Always Sticking to Your Convictions’ Sounds Like a Good Thing – But It Isn’t - "a curious fact about American society’s supercharged political culture is that even the most humble debates (think: Which fried chicken sandwiches are best?) turn a tweet into matters of conviction.The result is that many of us come to see criticism as intolerable and disagreement with our opinions as a mark of moral inferiority. That’s a problem not just because it can lead to incivility; it’s a problem because it can lead to dogmatism, and when it comes to matters like climate change or immigration, even violent fanaticism... people do change their minds about such things, but the connection between conviction and identity helps to explain why it is so difficult for them to do so – even when the evidence points in the other direction... as Yale psychologist Dan Kahan and his colleagues have emphasized, it can actually be pragmatically rational to end up ignoring the evidence and sticking to your convictions. No one wants to crush their self-image; nor does anyone want to be voted off the island.  Conviction’s connection to identity also helps to explain how our increasingly polarized political culture can encourage us to turn every debate – from debates over chicken sandwiches to the path of hurricanes – into a grudge match...  For many, identity is increasingly constructed online, their self-image determined by what social networks say about them and what they say in response.Social networks, in turn, can act as tools for reinforcing and policing the way in which people describe each other and the convictions these descriptions encourage. Platforms like Facebook not only let people communicate their emotions; they let people reward and punish each other for doing so. Put these facts together – that our identities are shaped by cultural narratives and those narratives are increasingly told online – and you get our digitalized political culture, which promotes, rewards and upholds blind conviction."

Hardcore History 65 – Supernova in the East IV

Hardcore History 65 – Supernova in the East IV

"Morale, of course, is a psychological state, isn't it? So right now we're in the realm of harder to pin down and harder to say that what applies to Person A will apply to Person B, necessarily. But morale is one of those things that on a tactical level, on a battlefield level is undeniably huge, and they've been writing about it, military strategists, since the Bronze Age. The idea is not to kill everybody on a battlefield traditionally, it's to kill enough people to break their will to continue fighting right? To destroy their morale. Killing is a means to an end. Nobody denies this. What is interesting though, is to try to extrapolate what applies, and that is, if not provable, then demonstrable, right? You, you might not be able to prove it in a laboratory, but it's been shown to be true enough times. So you could say reliably, right?

Morale is the most important thing on a tactical battlefield. Is it the most important thing on the strategic one? Does it apply to whole nation states? Can you break their morale? This is an open question in the Second World War. Some people say you can, some people say you can't. Some people say you can but only if you do it this way. Some people say you can but only if you do it that way, what breaks the nation's morale? And what proof do you have that that's something that even occurs? Much of the justification for some of the bombing that's going to be done from the air on cities and populations in cities is based on this idea that you will get them to, you know, petition their governments and say we must have peace now. We can't be bombed anymore...

This is part of the interwar years of aerial development and theory on how aircraft are going to be these great peacemakers sometimes, because very quickly, the populations will tell their governments, you know, you got to get a peace deal going right now, we're not gonna put up with this. And then the Germans bomb places like London, and the evidence seems to contradict that 180 degrees. The people in London and Britain weren't ready to give in because they were being bombed, they were pissed off. Now, does this mean that it doesn't work? No, it means that the jury's still out, right? We're not bombing enough. We're not bombing with the right kinds of bombs, the right kinds of planes. Now, the technology hasn't caught up with theory yet. I mean, there are still people that think once we use these nuclear weapons, we can finally get that morale question working at the grand strategy level the way designed. And by the way, when Germany at the end of the war was bombed to rubble, they finally saw something more akin to numbness creeping into the population, rather than a sense that, you know, they wanted the war to end at all costs, that they were ready to give in, that it made you more likely to surrender. At the very, very end, I think they may have seen some of that, but by that point, you already destroyed all the industry in Germany. So why did it, I mean you didn't bomb them for morale reasons then. You just leveled them and if you want to say it worked, okay, but let's be honest about why...

Civil Rights and wartime are two things that we all understand are sort of at odds with each other. It's tough to maintain peacetime levels of civil rights in wartime, especially Total War. But the problem is, in this conflict in the second world war, this is something that the framework exists, the propaganda is geared toward and people understand it as a war between people who believe in things like what we would call civil rights, and people who don't. And so there's an irony attached to it that in order to beat the people who don't believe in civil rights, you have to do things that reduce the amount of civil rights in the countries that are fighting for that. There's a quote from, I think it's from Mein Kampf, a famous Hitler quote where he said that the great strength of a totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it...

[This] reminds me of some of the critiques of the US Founding Fathers about wars’ danger to political and civil liberty. Wartime exalts the power of the state over the individual, for obvious and understandable reasons. But that's why the fascist states like war and praise war because it dovetails into something they already believe in: the power of the state. In the western democracies that are supposed to have the civil protections that tend to get steamrolled in wartime. Well, it works against the basic, you know, framework of the system as it's at least advertised. If you want a practical example, I would only cite executive order 9066, which is infamous, but if you read it it doesn't sound like it should be.

This is an executive order signed by President Roosevelt... it along with several subsequent sorts of orders and directives, ends up creating a situation where you get 110 to 120,000 people of Japanese birth or descent. The majority of them by the way, you know, 60 or 70% of them American born citizens, sent to what we used to call and it sounded better than, relocation camps. When I was a teenager it got changed to the more ominous internment camps. And now it's common to see the much more ominous, but not Nazi death camp, equivalent of concentration camps. If you actually go read executive order 9066 it, it sounds short. It sounds vague and it sounds something that's sort of commonsensical. I mean, if you look at it, you just think, well, I'd be mad at a president, it would be dereliction of duty if he didn't do something like this...

The Constitution gives the US president a lot of warfighting authority. And so to quote Harry Truman, Roosevelt's successor, when it comes to ultimate responsibility for things, the buck stops here, meaning the President's desk and in the case of Roosevelt, you know, when weighing decisions versus outcomes, the buck stops there. But when you think about it, that's pretty common, isn't it? I mean, certainly in the Third Reich, the buck stops with Hitler, doesn't it? In the Soviet Union, it sure as heck stops with Stalin, doesn't it? He's the one with the responsibility. I think it's fair to say the buck stops with Churchill in the UK, even though that's a Western democracy and they have a parliament.

Who does the buck stop with though in Japan? Earlier we spent quite a bit of time talking about the unique way that the Japanese system, its politics and its culture developed, after, well, really for more than a century before the Second World War and how the system itself would break down. In the war, this is one of the ways it breaks down. There is no place the buck stops, when it comes to Japanese military responsibility. And if you're analyzing the Second World Wars from sort of the big picture level, this is one of the strangest things.

The Japanese command and control, their leadership situation, none of this is anything like any of the other powers. We'd said it's got a very sort of uniquely Japanese sort of feel to it. At the same time, this diffusion of responsibility is something that the other governments either did away with because they're totalitarian, they don't believe in diffusion of power anyway. Or temporarily suspended a lot of it like in the US in the UK with their wartime governments, the Japanese kind of don't. And it's because they can't. There are certain elements that are built into the system right? American propaganda used to always lump the Japanese in with the Germans and the Italians, right? It was always the big three: Hitler Mussolini and Tojo. Is that they're all totalitarians, all fascists, all dictators.

But Tojo wasn't. Might have liked to have been. Japan might have done better if he was. He was the most powerful Prime Minister John L McClane says in A Modern History of Japan, the most powerful Prime Minister of Japan had ever had. Gobbled up a couple of other political offices too, seems to be consolidating his power. Still couldn't control his underlings. He's an army general, couldn't even totally control the army. Forget about the Navy. We talked about the fact that the Japanese have the most hostile inter-service rivalry problem I've ever seen. Army and the Navy actively dislike each other. Don't tell each other things. There really is nobody who can tell them what to do.

When you hear the way sometimes Tojo is treated by his supposed underlings. Well that puts the lie to the idea that they're anything like Hitler or Stalin in terms of their power because a Hitler’d kill ya. So would Stalin if a general walked in to the office, demanded that you overturn a decision and then called you a stupid fool to your face, James L McLean tells a story in his book where that's exactly what happened to Tojo. Tells another story of another general who walks in, bursts into to Tojo’s office and demands that he either resign or shoot himself…

There's no one here who can override one side, referee disputes. What do you do if the Army and the Navy have disagreements on how to fight the war? And you can't make them agree with each other and unify? And we're all on the same team here, right? What if they go their own way? What if they don't even tell you? Some of the things they're doing, the Japanese war effort throughout the entire conflict looks very strange"

Links - 17th January 2021 (1)

Under new Cambridge law, undocumented immigrants won’t be arrested for driving without a license - " It’s the law that you need a license to drive.But, if you’re undocumented and driving without a license in Cambridge, police have been advised not to arrest you for that.It’s all part of a new law that passed unanimously in the city, which encourages police to summons unlicensed drivers instead of arresting them. The procedure has already been practiced for a while, but city leaders said they felt compelled to officially make it a law, in fear of what could happen to immigration laws should President Trump be re-elected."
It's amazing how much contempt there is for the law in the US - not just among individuals but institutions (and in this case, government itself)

Lily Martin - "How DARE you improve infant mortality rates to never before seen levels...How DARE you create wealth and improve living standards for the vast majority of people such as has never occurred before in history...How DARE you provide universal education, universal suffrage, strive for equal opportunities and human rights such as this earth has never seen before...How DARE you innovate and create technologies which improve the quality of life for millions of people across the globe...How DARE you provide asylum and a better life for thousands of people whose own inheritance didn’t furnish them with the benefits of the west...Hang your head in shame for your strivings and improvements across so many sectors of society....legal...technological....scientific....humanitarian....etcBe ashamed...be VERY ashamed...because Greta said so..."

Australians Against Destructive Leftism - "Descendants of convicts should demand reparations. Their ancestors were torn from their native lands, forced into labour and denied basic rights, causing generations of psychological trauma."

It'z rinaldo msr home of comedy - Posts - "Before you call a guy ugly, remember 95% of your beauty can be removed by a towel.

If Innovation Makes Everything Cheaper, Why Does It Make Nuclear Power More Expensive? - "only by sticking with the same design and the same team were builders able to shorten construction times and reduce costs over time. Keeping the same design and switching teams — or keeping the same team but switching designs — increased costs.The good news is that when utilities stick with the same team and design, costs decline on average by 12 percent. The bad news is that “it is not possible to directly transfer previous knowledge and experience gained on the construction of any type of reactor to the new projects.”Why? Because standardization gives construction managers the opportunity to “learn by doing” and build each consecutive nuclear reactor a little faster and a little cheaper. This makes intuitive sense. “There is no substitute for experience” is oft-repeated because it’s so often true. What matters most is the tacit knowledge in the heads of construction managers, not reactor models.Standardization reduces costs in other ways, the economists found. It reduces the burden on safety regulators whose own lack of experience slows down construction. It reduces the burden on suppliers of key parts, including reactor vessels, steam generators, and turbines. And it lowers technological uncertainty, which can lower the cost of financing — a major source of construction costs.All of this leaves Berthélemy and Rangel with their awkward finding: “innovation hampers the competitiveness of nuclear power through an increase in construction costs.” This is true for both the U.S. and France, but especially for the U.S. Where France has a single national utility that centralized decision-making, the U.S. had dozens of utilities choosing mostly bespoke designs.The difference between the two nations led a former commissioner with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to quip, “The French have two kinds of reactors and hundreds of kinds of cheese, whereas in the United States the figures are reversed.”... Is nuclear power really so different from other sectors? Consider that some of our most radical tech innovations — from the iPhone to the Tesla — are more expensive, not cheaper, than the products they replace, because they offer radical performance improvements alongside greater functionality.And that’s the rub. Nuclear plants made expensive by innovation don’t offer the radically improved performance that their promoters often claim, or that their customers are willing to pay... In truth, from food and clothing to solar panels and natural gas turbines, it’s incremental innovation, experience, and economies of scale — not radical innovation in product design — that, over a period of decades, drive down prices"

Alfred Kinsey: The Story Behind The Father Of The Sexual Revolution - "Although Kinsey has often been hailed as the “father of the sexual revolution,” it was not just religious voices who sought to defame him. Statisticians have pointed out that these subjects were not representative of the “population at large” and leaned towards people who were “sexually active and adventurous.” In other words, Kinsey’s research was in part biased.Kinsey himself was certainly biased in favor of sexual activity, having once declared “there are only three kinds of sexual abnormalities: abstinence, celibacy, and delayed marriage.”But how professional Kinsey was throughout his research is also often brought to question. He allegedly encouraged his research associates to engage in sexual activity with each other and pressured students and team members alike to engage in that activity with him. Kinsey’s assistant, Clyde Martin, even engaged in a sexual relationship with his wife. Kinsey kept recorded video and image evidence of sexual intercourse between subjects, assistants, and friends. Some of these he even participated in. He collected erotica from around that world which was deemed illegal by the U.S. Customs Service... Kinsey went so far as to research sexual stimulation in children as young as five months old. One of the subjects he interviewed for Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was a 63-year-old pedophile named Rex King who had attempted “to bring to orgasm boys between the ages of 2 months and 15 years.” It only recently emerged that this data around sexuality in children came from one single man in Kinsey’s research, rather than from the several that Kinsey had initially claimed.By shielding King in this way, Kinsey may have enabled him"

Lucas Lynch - "Can mathematics be antiracist"
"First they came for the sociology departments, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a sociologist...But thankfully math and sciences were protected, because they believe in a sense of objectivity and logic and would therefore dismantle any such nonsense that activists tried to...... oh shit..."

Communism and the environment - "When communist governments took control of Eastern European nations in 1949, they embraced the Marxist ideology on natural resources - that natural resources have no intrinsic value; their sole purpose is to serve humans. At the same time, the governments promoted heavy industry to feed their military apparatus. The combination was devastating to the environment"
Doesn't stop all the communists when they bash capitalism

This City Hall, brought to you by Amazon - "Chicago has offered to let Amazon pocket $1.32 billion in income taxes paid by its own workers. This is truly perverse. Called a personal income-tax diversion, the workers must still pay the full taxes, but instead of the state getting the money to use for schools, roads or whatever, Amazon would get to keep it all instead.“The result is that workers are, in effect, paying taxes to their boss,” says a report on the practice from Good Jobs First, a think tank critical of many corporate subsidies... Fresno promises to funnel 85 percent of all taxes and fees generated by Amazon into a special fund. That money would be overseen by a board, half made up of Amazon officers, half from the city. They’re supposed to spend the money on housing, roads and parks in and around Amazon.The proposal shows a park with a sign: “This park brought to you by Amazon,” with the company’s smiling arrow corporate logo."

I’m cheating on my husband, but I’m much happier now—and it’s better for him, too.

Dirty truth behind washed and ready to eat vegetables - "We found a staggering amount of bacteria on food claiming to be washed and ready to eat. Glen Pinna from Biotech Laboratories compared a bag of ready to eat lettuce, with a fresh piece of produce.Our tests show loose lettuce has 470,000 microbes per gram, while the washed leaves out of a packet has 9.5 million microbes per gram.The results for broccoli were also surprising. Straight from the shelf, it has 280,000 bacteria per gram. Out of a packet labelled washed, the amount grows to 850,000. Pinna explained washed and ready to eat bags are actually ripe for bacteria growth."The conditions they're creating is really promoting the growth of bacteria," he said. "Anything that you're chopping up and putting into a bag and sealing and not holding under five degrees, those bugs are going to increase."In fact, he advises to avoid all ready to eat products."... all lettuce and leafy vegetables need a wash before eating.However, when it came to fruits such as apples, tomatoes, strawberries and grapes you may as well save the water. There was not much difference between washed and unwashed variations."

Newsofx - Posts - "Why do men kneel while proposing?"
"They're talking to the pussy, not to you."

Ilhan Omar on Twitter - "S̶u̶s̶p̶e̶n̶d̶ Cancel rent and mortgages"
Replies: "Willing to cancel your salary?"

Dr. Jessica Taylor on Twitter - "Beware any interventions or campaigns which encourage or convince women and girls to take responsibility for/ protect themselves from rape, sexual abuse, harassment, stalking or domestic abuse. Victim blaming is still victim blaming even when it’s called ‘keep yourself safe’."
Amazing. The clearest example of feminist lunacy yet

Man who donated his mom's body for dementia research learns it was strapped to a chair and blown up - "Doris Stauffer, 73, died in hospice care following a several year battle with Alzheimer’s, despite doctors saying she didn’t carry the gene for the disease
Medical officials feared the disease may have mutated and hoped to study her brain after her death but her neurologist was unable to accept her remains Finally, her son settled on the Biological Resource Center (BRC) in Maricopa County and signed an agreement to donate Doris' brain to Alzheimer's research Days later he received a wooden box labelled with his mother’s ashes and an ID number - but it was later discovered to  contain just the ashes of just her hand
The rest of her remains were sold to the US Military, strapped into a chair and blown up in a 'blast test' to study what happens to humans in cars hit by IED's"

An extinct bird just ‘evolved itself’ back into existence - "The Aldabra white-throated rail bird was declared extinct, a victim of rising sea levels almost 100,000 years ago.However, the flightless brown bird has recently been spotted – leaving scientists scratching their heads as to how – and why – the species has come back to life.According to research in the Zoological Journal of Linnean Society, the re-incarnated Aldabra bird is a product of ‘iterative evolution’. That’s when old genes thought to have died out re-emerge at a different point in time."

Meme - "Biggest dick award goes to my stepdad."
"Why is everyone hating me all i did was call my stepdad a dick."

Glass Vibrator Urn - "Have your loved one’s ashes preserved in this glass vibrator and keep the intimacy alive even when your former spouse is not. This unique sex toy allows you to pack up to 21 grams of the dearly departed inside of it, so you can enjoy their company every night"

Frisky dolphin gets very carried away mounting unsuspecting female tourist - "The holidaymaker was hoping to see the animals during a visit to Varadero, Cuba, last week - but the experience was more up close and personal than she expected."

Meme - "When you're going 15 over and see a cop behind the bushes...
Fuck! Please don't pull out!"

Aren't Women Wonderful? -  "I (25M) found out my girlfriend (23F) has an onlyfans and it’s killing me inside"
"The whole "women should do what they want" shtick sounds great until it's your girlfriend selling pics of her butthole to simps!"

Meme<.a>- "'lol if a girl hits me im gonna hit her back its obviously self defense' umm if a girl hits you theres a 99% chance its bc ur being a dick??'
'That‘s like saying it's fine to hit a girl for being a bitch, Neither is acceptable or justified.'
'dont you dare defend domestic abuse in my mentions. fuck outta here with that shit i dont associate myself with men like you'"
Only women can suffer domestic abuse, and it's from men.