Links - 22nd November 2023 (1 - Prostitution)

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Links - 21st November 2023 (2)

Political shadows over academia: The disinvitation of Dr Sol Iglesias from NUS Event - "Dr Sol Iglesias, an assistant professor of Political Science at the University of the Philippines-Diliman, has been said to have been disinvited from a panel at the National University of Singapore (NUS).  The panel, part of the “Global Research Forum: Towards a Public Asian Studies” scheduled for January 2024, was to address “Public Intellectuals, Populism and Power: Perspectives from Southeast Asia.”  Dr Iglesias’ disinvitation came after initial communications and preparations, including discussions about travel funding and logistics. On November 2, she was abruptly informed by her NUS colleague that the decision to exclude her came from “higher-ups” in the university.  No official explanation was provided, but Dr Iglesias suspects it is linked to her marriage to Dr Thum Ping Tjin, a Singaporean historian, democracy activist, and the managing editor of the independent media outlet, New Naratif... Dr Iglesias expressed her disappointment and concern, stating, “My academic freedom has been violated by NUS, part of a persistent failure of the university to protect and uphold academic freedom.”   She further elaborated on the implications of her disinvitation, “This is not just about me being disinvited; it’s a reflection of the broader pattern of NUS’s failure to respect and uphold academic freedom.”  Dr Iglesias’ case is not isolated. She refers to other instances where NUS’s commitment to academic freedom appears to be in question.  She highlighted a recent communication from the NUS president following a government-issued Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) order related to an article on government corruption. The president’s message emphasized adherence to Singapore’s laws, which critics argue could indirectly restrict academic freedom.   Another significant incident involved a 2020 webinar on “Public Discourse, Truth and Trust,” where speakers critical of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) were replaced at the last minute. The incident sparked speculations about the influence of political considerations in academic discourse.  Dr Iglesias further points to the treatment of her husband, Dr Thum, as indicative of the challenges faced by academics in Singapore.  Dr. Thum’s critical research on Singapore’s political history and his advocacy for democracy have met with significant opposition from authorities. This includes a prolonged interrogation by the Minister of Home Affairs and Law, K Shanmugam, at the Select Committee, during discussions on the fake news law proposal, and a subsequent police investigation after the 2020 General Elections."
NUS is good at gaming rankings, but not at doing what a university is supposed to

Paul Kirkby #MBGA 🇬🇧 on X - "I am absolutely furious at Laura Kuenssberg for calling for Suella Braverman to be sacked while live on air. This is an outrageous abuse of her position as a BBC presenter.  Kuenssberg is supposed to be impartial, but she has made it clear that she is biased against Braverman. She has repeatedly criticized the Home Secretary, even when she has been right.  In her latest attack, Kuenssberg said that Braverman "made the job of the police harder this weekend" by criticizing their handling of a pro-Palestinian protest. But Kuenssberg is wrong. Braverman was right to criticize the police. They allowed the protesters to chant anti-Semitic slogans and burn Israeli flags. This is unacceptable in a civilized society.  Kuenssberg's call to sack Braverman is a dangerous precedent. It is an attempt to silence a strong and independent voice in the Conservative government.  I urge the BBC to take action against Kuenssberg. She should be suspended or even sacked for her blatant bias and her abuse of her position.  We cannot allow the BBC to be used as a tool to silence the right.  #BackBraverman  #SackKuenssberg"

The dreadful restoration of David Cameron - "The Restoration of Dave is even more troubling than it might seem at first. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a role to which he is less well-suited than foreign secretary. Perhaps only the appointment of Blair, the architect of Iraq’s destruction, would have been worse. After all, Cameron’s decision to intervene militarily in Libya in 2011 led to the implosion of the country and unleashed forces that are still tearing the wider region apart.  The war in Libya was arguably one of the most calamitous foreign-policy moves of the 21st-century. Even Barack Obama conceded in 2016 that it was a ‘shitshow’. And now the co-author of that ‘shitshow’ is heading up the UK’s foreign policy again.  Cameron’s political resurrection serves as a reminder of the catastrophic failures of the technocratic model of politics that reigned before Brexit. It’s a reminder that Sunak’s tired brand of managerialism has failed before and will fail again. Nudging and nannying at home while bombing with abandon abroad didn’t work in the 2010s. And it certainly isn’t the answer to the UK’s problems today."

An Ingenious Blend of Airplane and Helicopter - the Fairey Rotodyne - "Long before powered flight was actually achieved, inventors and aircraft designers had attempted to combine the speed of horizontal flight with the ability to take off and land vertically. The development of rotary-wing aircraft was the first practical solution to that problem."

“This Is Serious”: Facebook Begins Its Downward Spiral - "There was a time when Facebook made us feel good about using the service—I used to love it. It was fun to connect with old friends, share pictures of your vacation with everyone, or show off a video of your nephew being extra-specially cute. But, over time, Facebook has had to make Wall Street happy, and the only way to feed that beast is to accumulate more, more, more: more clicks, more time spent on the site, more Likes, more people, more connections, more hyper-personalized ads. All of which adds up to more money. But as one recent mea culpa by an early Internet guru aptly noted, “What if we were never meant to be a global species?”  If Facebook doesn’t solve these problems, and I’m not sure If it actually can, the outcomes could be devastating for the company."
From 2018

Facebook can track you using dust on your camera lens - "Gizmodo has uncovered a Facebook patent that shows it could one day use data stored on your photos to suggest people you might know on the platform.  The technology would match photos uploaded to different accounts and apply it to Facebook's People You May Know (PYMK) feature."
From 2018

Meme - "Cartoons then: *Cap'n Crunch*
Cartoons now: *Ugly Cap'n Crunch*"

Everybody lies: how Google search reveals our darkest secrets - "Many people underreport embarrassing behaviours and thoughts on surveys. They want to look good, even though most surveys are anonymous. This is called social desirability bias. An important paper in 1950 provided powerful evidence of how surveys can fall victim to such bias. Researchers collected data, from official sources, on the residents of Denver: what percentage of them voted, gave to charity, and owned a library card. They then surveyed the residents to see if the percentages would match. The results were, at the time, shocking. What the residents reported to the surveys was very different from the data the researchers had gathered. Even though nobody gave their names, people, in large numbers, exaggerated their voter registration status, voting behaviour, and charitable giving... Men Google more questions about their sexual organ than any other body part: more than about their lungs, liver, feet, ears, nose, throat, and brain combined. Men conduct more searches for how to make their penises bigger than how to tune a guitar, make an omelette, or change a tyre. Men’s top Googled concern about steroids isn’t whether they may damage their health but whether taking them might diminish the size of their penis. Men’s top Googled question related to how their body or mind would change as they aged was whether their penis would get smaller. Do women care about penis size? Rarely, according to Google searches. For every search women make about a partner’s phallus, men make roughly 170 searches about their own. True, on the rare occasions women do express concerns about a partner’s penis, it is frequently about its size, but not necessarily that it’s small. More than 40% of complaints about a partner’s penis size say that it’s too big. “Pain” is the most Googled word used in searches with the phrase “___ during sex.” Yet only 1% of men’s searches looking to change their penis size are seeking information on how to make it smaller... let me put forth the following conjecture, ready to be tested by scholars across a range of fields. The primary explanation for discrimination against African Americans today is not the fact that the people who agree to participate in lab experiments make subconscious associations between negative words and black people; it is the fact that millions of white Americans continue to do things like search for “nigger jokes”."
The problem with reading too much into Google search data is it assumes that Google searches are representative of the population you want to study, or that Google search data directly translates to real world results (Google trends being abused a lot is a prime example of this, since it measures relative frequency rather than absolute)

Proof that Americans are lying about their sexual desires - "The rate at which women watch violent porn is roughly the same in every part of the world. It isn’t correlated with how women are treated...   Less than 20 percent of porn watched these days features vaginal sex to completion among two people who can conceivably have a healthy baby. Cartoons, anal sex to completion, oral sex to completion, foot sex to completion, incest, elderly porn, tickling, animal porn, sex with objects, etc."
Assuming that just because people watch a certain type of porn means that they are primarily turned on by that kind of sex or even should be in such relationships is problematic, to say the least. If nothing else, people watch porn for something lacking in their sex lives

I spent a whole school year commuting to class by plane to save money on rent - "A college graduate has revealed that he spent a whole school year commuting to class by plane - flying from Los Angeles to San Francisco three times a week just so he could avoid paying rent.  The student, named Bill, who asked for his last name not to be shared, said he took a total of 238 flights from August 2022 to May 2023, and spent a total of $5,592.66 and 576,445 frequent flier miles on his travels.  Bill, who never missed a class, explained to Los Angeles news outlet KTLA that he was ecstatic when he was accepted into University of California, Berkeley's one-year Master of Engineering program last year. However, he didn't want to give up his low-rent apartment in LA and knew he wanted to move back after graduating, so to avoid having to pay 'expensive' rent in the Bay Area, he decided to fly back and forth for his classes... he had to wake up at 3.30am on the days he had class, so he could get on a 6am flight from LAX to SFO.  After arriving in San Francisco, he took the 8.30am BART train to Berkley, and made it to class by 10am.  After a full day of learning, he would do the reverse back to LA, and would usually arrive home around midnight... While he did spend more than $5,000 on commuting - and roughly 76,000 minutes, he calculated - he still saved a ton of money since rent near the college averages around $3,358 per month... Thankfully, he was also able to cut costs by using more than half a million airline miles he had built up."

Designer’s tweets during first trip to Japan perfectly show why it’s such a great place to visit - "In just the first day of his stay, designer tweeted more than 50 things that pleasantly surprised him about Japan."

From Astrology to Cult Politics—the Many Ways We Try (and Fail) to Replace Religion - "Ultimately, religion is about the human need for meaning. This need is inherent, not learned. It is a fundamental component of the human condition.  Indeed, the degree to which humans perceive their lives as meaningful correlates reliably with observable measures of psychological and physical health. A sense of meaning also helps people mobilize toward the pursuit of their goals (persistence), and serves to protect them from the negative effects of stress and trauma (resilience). In short, people who view their lives as full of meaning are more likely to thrive than those who don’t. When people turn away from one source of meaning, such as religion, they don’t abandon the search for meaning altogether. They simply look for it in different forms. As I discuss in my new book, Supernatural: Death, Meaning and the Power of Invisible World, the decline of traditional religion has been accompanied by a rise in a diverse range of supernatural, paranormal and related beliefs. Nearly one third of Americans report having felt in contact with someone who has died, feel that they have been in the presence of a ghost, and believe ghosts can interact with and harm humans. These numbers are going up, not down, as more people seek something to fill the religion-shaped hole in their lives. By no coincidence, infrequent church attendees are roughly twice as likely to believe in ghosts as regular churchgoers... The parts of the United States where secular liberals are predominant tend to be the same areas where the market for alternative spiritual experiences and products is most lucrative. Even prominent media outlets such as The New York Times and (in Britain) The Guardian, whose readership consists primarily of secular liberals, frequently publish articles about topics such as witchcraft and astrology—even if they are careful not to legitimize the claims made by proponents of these beliefs... In his 2011 book, The Believing Brain, Michael Shermer argues that alien beings are “secular gods—deities for atheists.”... Another doctrine lying within this borderland between science fiction and religion is transhumanism, whose adherents dream of transcending mortality through medicine and bioengineering... And if you imagine that secular ideologies and political movements now seem to exhibit faux-religious characteristics, you aren’t alone. “We have the cult of Trump on the right, a demigod who, among his worshippers, can do no wrong,” wrote Andrew Sullivan recently in New York magazine. “And we have the cult of social justice on the left, a religion whose followers show the same zeal as any born-again Evangelical. They are filling the void that Christianity once owned, without any of the wisdom and culture and restraint that Christianity once provided.”...  studies find that it is people who score low on commitment to a religious faith who are most likely to invest in political ideologies to counter threats to meaning in life. Also, the more extreme secular ideologies on both the left and right often involve conspiracy theories, which are cognitively similar to paranormal and supernatural-lite religious substitutes and similarly motivated by the need for meaning. Importantly, there are reasons to doubt that these various alternatives to religion can successfully meet people’s need for meaning. Modern religious substitutes often reflect the individualism of the West, which is in tension with our species’ inherent social nature."

Meme - "Me
My Femboy bf *kissing*
My Tomboy gf *kissing*"

Unusual Buildings: 10+ Photos From Around The World

Why Modern Movies Suck - Nobody Can Stay Dead! - YouTube

The pandemic showed the value of tinned food - so why are people still so snobbish? - "I’ve also noted people who live in food-spoiling continental climates don’t get squeamish about tins. I’ve seen Greeks, Croats and Italians decant olives and mixed-bean salad from tins without fear of being deemed oiks."

Meme - "Adeline Brie
You're friends on Facebook
Works at OnlyFans
Studied at Chemeketa Community College
Idk who your friend Richard Rivera is but he laughed at my pictures and I saw y'all are friends so I'm blocking you both
This person is unavailable on Messenger."
People go bonkers over laugh reacts

Meme - "*Thirst trap photo*
"You're so beautiful
marry me?"
"Never mind I just jerked off you mean nothing to me"
Post-nut clarity is real

Wife leaves shocking 'tip' scolding waitress for calling her husband 'sweetheart' as social media users slam jilted spouse as 'rude and insecure' - "A waitress has revealed the shocking moment she was left a 'tip' from an angry customer - as her expected 20 percent bonus was instead a furious note saying: 'Don't call my husband sweetheart.'... 'In the southern US, everyone is called honey, sweety, sweetheart and my personal favourite, ‘sugar'', said one commenter."

Country names in French : French (mirror)

VIDEO: Body cam footage shows woman smiling, laughing after killing 2 people in crash - "Police body camera footage shows a 24-year-old Illinois woman smiling, laughing, and singing after authorities told her she killed two people in a crash.  Stephanie Melgoza was sentenced to 14 years in prison on Thursday. Authorities said she was under the influence and speeding, with Megloza pleading guilty to two counts of aggravated DUI and two counts of aggravated reckless driving."

Meme - "Antinatalist: Doesn't want a kid because the parent will suffer
Child-Free: Doesn't want a kid because the kid will suffer
Perfect couple"

Man who killed 2-year-old daughter, left charred remains in pot gets over 21 years’ jail, caning - "the judge stressed that the victim's first name, Umaisyah, should be published so that she can be remembered by her name instead of as "the deceased" or "the victim"...   The court heard that Umaisyah was abused by her parents until her eventual death. Her father would hit her with items such as a belt or a hanger and would punch her thigh and pinch her body.   The couple also abused their other children in a similar fashion. The man would hit his children, who were aged between two and nine at the time, and leave them alone in the flat without adequate food and water.  In March 2014, the accused and his wife were upset at the girl as she was playing with her faeces after soiling her diaper.  When the girl cried "despite being asked not to", her mother slapped her cheeks and "flicked her lips", the prosecution said.  The accused, who had consumed meth earlier that morning, forcefully slapped his daughter two to three times.  As a result, the girl's legs went weak. She sat on the floor and her body started leaning to the right while her upper body bent forward. She stopped crying and started gasping for air.  Her mother saw blood and liquid coming out of her mouth and nose.  Umaisyah had suffered a significant traumatic brain injury which led to a concussive brain seizure.   Her father performed a few rounds of cardiopulmonary resuscitation but she did not respond. Despite the life-threatening nature of her injuries, neither parent called for help or took her to hospital.  They were concerned that they would be arrested for her injuries. The accused was also worried about being arrested for his drug use.  It is possible that medical intervention could have  saved the girl, the prosecution said. The couple, who have since divorced, tried to cover their tracks, destroying evidence and lying to the authorities and their own family members about the victim's whereabouts.  On the day Umaisyah died, her parents placed her body in a metal pot and set her body on fire in the back of the accused's lorry.  They made sure her body was fully burnt before placing the pot in a cardboard box, sealing it with masking tape and covering it in cling wrap.  They kept the box under the kitchen stove in their flat.  Umaisyah's uncle, named only as Z, was warned against touching the box and told it contained items from the accused's lorry...   Umaisyah's uncle, Z, became increasingly curious about the contents of the box. He tried to throw it away in 2017 as it was dirty and there were cockroach eggs in the cling wrap.  When Umaisyah's mother found out, she had the box freshly wrapped and warned her brother not to touch it again.  After the mother went to prison in 2019, her brother opened the box and saw a lump that was decomposed and wet.  He later showed the contents of the pot to his sister's friends when they visited the flat after attending her sentencing for other crimes.  The friends felt uneasy and reported it to the police.  The child's body was "charred beyond recognition", the prosecution said. At autopsy, small bones and a loose tooth were uncovered from the soot and debris, the court heard.  All facial features were absent, and the hands and feet could not be identified...   The man said he had found solace in religion, but Judge Abdullah said: "It's between you and your maker. It is irrelevant to sentencing. I'm here to impose punishment on behalf of the state.""

“As Good As It Gets”: Sauron’s Battle Armor In LOTR Gets Perfect Score From Medieval Arms Expert - YouTube
Featuring Toby Capwell

Meme - "First date
so what do you do?
Me remembering that women like bad boys: I, uh... sell drugs
... are you serious?
me remembering women also like sensitive men: yeah, to children in need"

No, hunter gatherers were not peaceful paragons of gender equality - "  It seems like people are always trying to use hunter gatherers to further some wacky theory or other. The Paleo Diet isn’t too bad; it is at least a reasonably accurate representation of what hunter-gatherers actually eat, though your chances of replicating hunter-gather food at home are slim–which is why we end up with things like “Paleo Bread.” But then you have the far less accurate theories, often pushed by people who really ought to know better. Like the theory that hunter gatherers had no wars, or that they were all gender egalitarians. Or that there was once a global civilization of feminist goddess-worshipers who were wiped out by evil agriculturalists.  Oh, those evil, evil agriculturalists. But let’s backtrack a minute. Where do these wacky theories come from?  The short answer is that they come from Marxists. You may laugh or roll your eyes, but I was actually assigned Das Kapital twice in college–once in my major, political science, and once in my minor, anthropology. I was also assigned explicitly Marxist papers in my Feminism class. This was a reputable university where many of my professors were identifiably conservative, not an obvious liberal bastion like Berkley or Reed.  Marx is deep in academia.  You do not have to be explicitly citing Marx or realize that you are using theories of the world derived from Marx to be using one of Marx’s theories, anymore than you have to have studied the Chicago School of Economics or the Austrian School to pick up one of their theories and start using it. But most academics of the past 100 years or so have known the intellectual provenance of their ideas, because like me, they were assigned it in class and no one in academia is shy about explicitly citing Marx... suffice to say, real-life experience has not been terribly kind to Marx’s theories. Nonetheless, they still undergird a great deal of academic thinking and were formative in the educations of many, many anthropologists... Alas, many a beautiful theory has been destroyed by an ugly fact, and the ugly fact in this case is that pre-state people killed each other all the damn time. Take the Dorset, completely wiped out by the Thule (Inuit) about 700 years ago... Speaking of Columbus, he wrote of the Indians he met in the Bahamas, “Many of the men I have seen have scars on their bodies, and when I made signs to them to find out how this happened, they indicated that people from other nearby islands come to San Salvador to capture them; they defend themselves the best they can. I believe that people from the mainland come here to take them as slaves.”... “A recent study… gave some astonishing cross-cultural figures. The homicide rate in modern Britain is roughly 0.5/100,000; in the USA it is about 20 times as high, at about 10.5. The highest death rate recorded in a nation, as opposed to a tribe, is 34 / 100,000, in Colombia. Though it is difficult to calculate exact correspondences for much smaller populations, about whom much less is known, it is still clear that Stone Age tribes make up in enthusiasm what they lack in the technology of murder. Even the !Kung bushmen, popularised as “The Harmless People”, had a had a homicide rate of 41.9 on this scale; the Yanomamo come in at 165. The record appears to be held by the Hewa people of New Guinea, with a score of 778. … the Murngin hunter-gatherer aborigines of Northern Australia come in with a score of 330.”...  Steven Pinker estimates, in The Better Angels of our Nature, that about 15% of people died of violence–murder or warfare–in pre-state societies.  This is about the same % as the Russians lost in WWII, if we go with the high estimate of Soviet casualties–about half that if we take the low estimate... “The Genetic Pacification of Europe“–basically the idea that European governments have been executing their violent criminals (or otherwise letting them die in jail) for centuries, resulting in a drastic reduction in the prevalence of genes coding for violence in areas with long histories of strong, organized state rule... “The frequency distribution of variants of the MAO-A gene differs between ethnic groups. 59% of Black men, 54% of Chinese men, 56% of Maori men, and 34% of Caucasian men carry the 3R allele. 5.5% of Black men, 0.1% of Caucasian men, and 0.00067% of Asian men carry the 2R allele.”"
Weird. Liberals tell us that white people brought slavery to the New World

American tourist gang-raped on jungle trek in Papua New Guinea: Report - ""The male trekker was tied to a tree and the female tracker was repeatedly raped before three of her fingers were chopped. The incident took place for an hour before they (trekkers) were set free... Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed the attack and added that the couple were hiking without a licensed tour operator.  There are endemic levels of domestic violence against women in the Pacific region, with a 2013 United Nations study finding that 80 per cent of men surveyed in PNG reported physically or sexually abusing their partners.  Two years ago, a US academic was gang-raped by an armed mob in the country while conducting research on birds and the impact of climate change in a remote forest on Karkar Island in Madang province.  In the same year, a group of eight Australian and New Zealand trekkers were violently attacked by bandits, with three of their porters killed, while hiking on the remote Black Cat track.  Four of the eight tourists were also hurt, including one who was speared in the leg."

ƎƆ∀Ⅎ•Ǝ˥∀Ԁ•ℲƎHƆ on X - "Black people marinate their chicken is dawn dish soap or bleach so their opinions on food don't matter."

Rey vs Luke and Mary Sues

Movies and Delight

Everyone complains about Rey being a Mary Sue, but isn’t Luke the same way? Sure, he was trained by Yoda for like a month, but Anakin/Vader had been training to fight and kill since he was a child.

No. Not even close.

Luke had raw talent, but he was trained by Kenobi AND Yoda, and when he ran off half-cocked to face Vader, what happened?

Yup. He loses that fight along with his hand.

Answer me this; does Rey have any character flaws, and if she does, does she pay a penalty for it? Do those penalties have any lasting consequences (physical or emotional scars, loss of life or limb) that she must overcome in order to move forward?

Accusing Luke Skywalker of “being the same way” (he isn’t) does not excuse Rey’s problems as a character.

As for Anakin/Vader, he did have more training, but he’s also past his prime, half machine, and more interested in turning Luke to the Dark Side rather than beating him in combat.

Luke lost fights, lost comrades, and lost his hand. He had raw talent, but needed training. All he had in the beginning was potential. In his last confrontation with Vader, it was Luke’s ferocity and youth that turned the tables on an older and less agile opponent.

Most importantly, it was Luke’s belief in his father’s redemption and Vader’s final act to protect his son that won the day. Palpatine would have killed Luke otherwise. There was no “I am all the Jedi” moment for Luke Skywalker.

Everything Rey was given, Luke had to earn. Luke had to help rescue Leia and fight beside Han and Chewie to earn their trust and friendship. Rey was given Han, Leia and Chewie. Rey got those friends because Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm said so. Kathleen Kennedy and pals wanted Rey to be accepted by the fans without having to work for it, so she shoplifted Luke Skywalker’s friendships, abilities and talent with the Force.

Rey and Luke are not the same. Luke is a hero and an icon. Rey is little more than a female empowerment avatar for Kathleen Kennedy.

Think I’m wrong? Kennedy is trying the same thing with Indiana Jones and Phoebe Waller Bridge. I don’t think the results are going to be much different.

Links - 21st November 2023 (1 - Justin Trudeau)

Expert: Justin Trudeau’s French isn’t bad; Quebecers just don’t think he belongs - "Quebec’s criticism of Justin Trudeau’s French serves to position him as an “outsider” to Quebecois identity, according to a professor at Binghamton University, State University of New York.  Yulia Bosworth, assistant professor of French linguistics at Binghamton, studied Quebec’s “obsession” with Justin Trudeau’s French, which pundits and scholars perceive as terrible and construe as a major failure on his part, both personal and professional. She determined that Quebec’s criticism reflects its view of Canada’s current prime minister as an outsider and its denial of him as a francophone, or someone who speaks French. Bosworth determined that Quebec’s language attitudes and ideologies are dominated by linguistic purism and French monolingualism."

‘Freedom Convoy’ and UFOS. When will Ottawa give us straight answers? | The Star - "An eight-month investigation by National Post and the Investigative Journalism Foundation (IJF) of 1,308 judicial and tribunal appointments by the Liberal government since 2016 shows an overwhelming majority — 76.3 per cent — of appointees who had previously made political donations had given to the Liberal Party of Canada.  In comparison, just 22.9 per cent of appointees had given to the Conservative Party of Canada, and 17.9 per cent of those who donated gave to the New Democratic Party. Moreover, the number of Conservative donors appointed to the judiciary has dropped significantly since the Liberals came to power, whereas the number of NDP donors more than doubled between 2016 and 2022, the year the NDP entered an agreement to support the Liberals... Legal scholars say partisanship within the judicial appointment process not only constrains the diversity of the judiciary and undermines the public’s confidence in the country’s legal system, it also brings political influence into decisions made by Canada’s courts.  “We continue to have this challenge of partisan affiliation in those who are getting appointed,” said Erin Crandall, associate professor of political science at Acadia University who has published extensively on Canada’s judicial appointment processes...   In 2019, the Globe and Mail revealed that the PMO used a partisan database called Liberalist, as well as caucus resources and MP networks, to vet candidates recommended by the justice minister before formalizing their appointment"

Ottawa to remove GST on new rental housing, ask grocers to stabilize prices: PM - "most of Thursday's measures surround housing, with the federal government pledging to remove GST on construction of new rental apartment buildings — a move Trudeau first promised in the 2015 election that brought the Liberals to power.  On Thursday, Trudeau said Liberals deliberately scrapped that promise because it didn't respond to needs at the time."

Canadians are right to despair over a dysfunctional Canada - The Hub - "It came to office in 2015 purporting to have a new way of thinking about economic policymaking that would place an emphasis on inclusion and then growth would follow. What we’ve gotten instead is broad-based stagnation that has failed to deliver on either goal.   Yet the Canadian malaise isn’t merely an economic story. It’s also evident in other parts of our society.   A major one is the fragility of Canada’s health-care systems. Even though the pandemic has officially ended, we still face a wait-time crisis across the country... The Trudeau government’s health-care spending deals with the provinces have failed to arrest these trends or produce meaningful results more generally. They instead reflect the government’s reductionist view that the number of zeroes in a press release is tantamount to solving a problem. Public borrowing is relatively easy. Public administration is hard.   So, too, apparently is keeping track of how many people are in the country. The government recently conceded that its method of counting non-permanent residents (such as those on student or work visas) is flawed and has led to an undercounting of about 1 million people per year.   And that’s hardly the sole problem in the country’s immigration system. The monthly application backlog has averaged as many as 860,000 so far this year. These numbers are actually down from a peak of more than two million late last year—though the reduction has not primarily come through efficiency or improved processes but simply by waiving eligibility requirements for hundreds of thousands of applicants.    There are also growing concerns about the proper settlement of refugees in light of reports about them sleeping on the streets of the country’s major cities. The prime minister has called these developments “unacceptable in a country like Canada” but he seemingly fails to recognize that they reflect his own government’s top-down immigration targets that have essentially left provinces and cities struggling to fulfill Ottawa’s fantastical promises. The list of failures invariably goes on and on. The Hub has comprehensively covered the housing crisis in which one must now belong to the top 10 percent of income earners in order to aspire to own a home in the Greater Toronto Area, as well as the alarming crime and substance abuse problems exhibiting themselves in big and small communities across the country. Then there are more elementary signs of state-capacity challenges that have left doubts about whether the Trudeau government’s run-up in federal spending has come with any attendant improvements in its state capacity. Last year’s passport delays (which the prime minister similarly called “unacceptable”) and the 67,400 percent increase in the cost of the ArriveCan app (which incidentally he called “highly illogical and inefficient”) have become symbols of Ottawa’s basic dysfunction... As the government has grown, its failures have perhaps counterintuitively become more ubiquitous, and the public’s hope and trust have suffered as a result. The net result is the malaise in which we now find ourselves. We know in other words what the Trudeau government’s unprecedented deficits and debt have bought us: despair.   But in hindsight it was a highly predictable outcome. The Trudeau government’s unconstrained vision was destined to run up the federal debt and undermine the basic functioning of the national government. As the old public policy axiom goes, if you have too many priorities, you ultimately have none. It’s been a painful education for the prime minister, his government, and the rest of us."

Poilievre is killing us, Liberals say, asking what Trudeau is up to - "Backbench MPs, those without caucus responsibilities who haven’t sat down with the PM, generally feel their voices are ignored.  They are frustrated at the way the prime minister treats his caucus. They recount how he frequently monopolizes caucus meetings with talking points, leaving little time for members’ input. Not that, they feel, he values what they think. “This is a prime minister who never likes to even allow you to finish your sentence in national caucus,” expressed one MP. “[If] you’re going to say something he’s not going to like, he always cuts you off.”  “Why should I listen to you folks?,” said another MP mimicking Trudeau. “You’re all know-nothings and coattail candidates.”  “People are really disillusioned,” offered another MP. “Really, really, disillusioned,” said a fourth.  Some MPs said that over their entire careers, the PMO had never spent as much time listening to them as I had in my 30-minute calls with them... Some want more investments in housing to address declining affordable stock as well as soaring home prices that raised rents, and high interest rates that keep many new projects grounded. They’d like to see HST rebates for developers, incentives for rental units, and increased infrastructure allotments to update municipal water and sewage systems so more homes can be built. They’d like to see the government grant struggling business owners an extension on their COVID loans, and rural Canadians helped by excluding home heating from the carbon tax.  Others want the government to stop focusing so much on “woke” issues.  Still others feel the Liberals need to return to their centrist roots and chart a path back to balance, if they are to be re-elected."

It's true: gatekeepers are keeping Canada dead last - The Hub - "When it comes to much-needed investment in the natural resource sector, the federal government’s preference for gatekeeping over growth is part of the problem. It’s worth looking at a few examples to bring the issue to life.    Regulatory processes have only gotten more burdensome since B.C.’s Site C hydroelectric project received environmental certification. Approved in the final year of the Harper government, the process was no picnic even back then.       The environmental assessment required a 15,000-page Environmental Impact Statement, stuffed into 27 binders measuring 17 feet long when lined up on a bookshelf. Within those pages was excruciatingly detailed documentation of everything from the expected—fish, birds, wildlife, air quality—to the less expected—”visual resources”, ancient “subsistence procurement sites”, “lithic scatters” (not stone tools themselves, but the tiny flakes of rock knocked off during the tool-making process).  Having withstood more than a dozen court challenges (adding even more costs and uncertainty), Site C has prevailed at least partly because it’s a public, ratepayer-funded project that is crucial to meeting climate targets. Now imagine how prospects look for private investment in the much-maligned oil and gas or forestry sectors. Demand for liquefied natural gas is growing and is expected to almost double by 2040. At the same time, democratic countries are looking to reduce their reliance on Russian natural gas. LNG is also a means of combatting climate change, significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions by displacing coal-fired generation overseas. It is telling that, despite this context, oil and gas get no more than a few brief mentions in the budget, usually in the context of curbing emissions or transitioning away from the sector... It’s the same story when it comes to forestry. The industry cites greater regulatory complexity and uncertainty as major challenges, and even B.C.-based forestry companies are investing their dollars elsewhere, to the tune of $10 billion in 2021 alone.  It was laughable to see the budget mention “lengthy regulatory processes” as one among a “unique set of challenges” facing Canada’s critical minerals industry. The fact is, the government has done nothing but add to the burden faced by the natural resource sector... In 2018, a new federal Impact Assessment Act was implemented, which, in addition to expanding the list of impacts to be considered, tacks on a 180-day ‘planning process’ and adds multiple stop-the-clock opportunities along the way. It also increases the likelihood of referral to the onerous review panel process.  On top of this, the government has enshrined into law the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, article 32(2) of which requires that states must work with Indigenous people to obtain “free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories.” The real-world implications of this, and UNDRIP as a whole, are poorly understood and increase uncertainty... So yes, Pierre Poilievre is right. When it comes to natural resources, governments at all levels seem more interested in adding gatekeepers than they are in facilitating growth. We need a course correction, and fast, if we are to have any reason for optimism about Canada’s economic future."

The Post Millennial on X - "Trudeau—who has been in power for 8 years—attempts to blame Harper for the current housing crisis"

Liberals need to help Bank of Canada slay inflation, not hinder it - "Government policy has actually been procyclical. With the economy growing and unemployment at 50-year lows, Ottawa increased federal spending, increased the deficit, increased the debt, and expanded the federal workforce. What ever happened to counter-cyclical fiscal policy? At the end of 2022, despite widespread labour shortages and inflation running five per cent above target, Ottawa continued to stimulate the economy, refusing to curtail discretionary spending, shift capital outlays to beyond the cycle, freeze the size of the public service or do anything else to pull back on demand and help the Bank of Canada get inflation back under control.   Compounding its procyclical fiscal policy, the government has made the inflation battle harder by increasing immigration flows at a time of severe housing shortages and sharply rising rents and home prices."

The Amazing Zoltan on X - "Another disastrous Trudeau town hall. First PMJT claims that democracy only works if everyone agrees with him. Trudeau then says that anyone who disagrees with him "went down an internet rabbit hole." Finally, he claims no one but him is smart enough to fix the things he broke"

EDITORIAL: If Canada is divided, that’s on Trudeau | Toronto Sun - "We’re beginning to wonder what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau believes he is responsible for in Canada, as opposed to things he says are not his fault... if Trudeau believes he is in no way responsible for Canadians being divided, why did Canadians surveyed in a Leger poll last year agree by a margin of 61% to 22% — the rest were undecided — that Trudeau has created national unity problems because he “often favours certain groups and regions of the country over others?”  Liberal MP Joel Lightbound, following the 2021 federal election, during which Trudeau weaponized the issue of vaccine mandates – a strategy he continued when he invoked the Emergencies Act, said:  “I can’t help but notice with regret that both the tone and the policies of my government changed drastically on the eve and during the last election campaign. From a positive and unifying approach, a decision was made to wedge, to divide and to stigmatize … Now that we have one of the most vaccinated populations in the world, we’ve never been so divided.”"

Globe editorial: Why won’t Justin Trudeau name a new ethics commissioner? - The Globe and Mail - "It has been almost six months since the previous ethics commissioner, Mario Dion, resigned on Feb. 21, but the Liberals have yet to appoint his replacement.  They made a patently lame attempt at naming an interim commissioner in March when they gave the job to the sister-in-law of a senior Liberal cabinet minister. The inevitable outcry forced Martine Richard to step down three weeks later... The real problem was and is the Liberals’ rank indifference to the rules governing the conduct of MPs.  Ms. Richard’s tone-deaf appointment notwithstanding, nothing captures that toxic culture better than Mr. Dion’s recommendation, as he left office, that the government send its entire caucus for remedial courses on such core competencies as not giving lucrative contracts to your good friends and family members, and not attempting to influence a quasi-judicial tribunal on behalf of another person. Clearly, there is work for a federal ethics commissioner. And yet Mr. Trudeau still hasn’t replaced Mr. Dion. This is problematic in more than one way.  Under the rules governing the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, the Prime Minister is allowed to name an interim commissioner for a maximum of six months. Given that Mr. Trudeau named Ms. Richard to the job on March 28, he presumably has until the end of September to name a fulltime replacement.  Mr. Dion this week said the delay in naming a new commissioner means investigations have to sit on a shelf until someone is appointed... every province and territory has managed to put an ethics watchdog in place. Worse, the federal job has now been vacant for the longest period since the current version of the role was created in 2007.  That means the government that has had the largest number of high-profile run-ins with the ethics commissioner is also the government that has allowed the henhouse to sit unguarded for a record number of days. Foxes are gonna fox, to use a more modern version of the old saying... one despairs that he may never get around to it, because Mr. Trudeau is a serial failure when it comes to filling federal vacancies.  The Globe and Mail reported on a critical shortage of federally appointed judges in May, when there were 88 vacancies on benches across the country. As of this month, that number has been reduced to... 86.  There is also the matter of naming someone to head a public inquiry into Beijing’s interference in Canadian elections, a responsibility Mr. Trudeau continues to duck.  A democracy needs independent watchdogs to guard its institutions against the threats that are always skulking about. Why doesn’t Mr. Trudeau understand that?"

Elizabeth May frustrated by lack of detail in top secret documents on foreign interference - "Green Party Co-Leader Elizabeth May is expressing frustration with the level of information contained in the two top-secret documents on foreign interference she was permitted to review this week."

Liberals bring identity quotas to Canada Media Fund - "In 2021, the Liberals said they would dramatically boost funding for the Canada Media Fund. And they did — but that funding came with diversity quotas and a new emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). It’s another bald-faced example of the Liberals infusing identity into public (or publicly-funded-but-government-adjacent) media programs to craft Canada in their image. Now, the program is beholden to diversity-based budgeting (with diversity “targets” in its largest funding branch), an identity tracking system for content producers and a “narrative positioning” policy that guides how stories about certain groups are told...   For the most part, everyone other than straight, white, non-disabled men get special treatment by the fund.   Aside from getting mandatory coverage through the use of quotas, the groups listed above are shielded with “narrative positioning” policies that took effect this year. If the main character, key storyline, or subject matter has anything to do with the above groups, creators must either be from that group or take “comprehensive measures that have and will be undertaken to create the content responsibly, thoughtfully and without harm.” These can include consultations, sharing of ownership rights, and hiring policies from the community. While narrative requirements weren’t mandated by the Liberals in their grant to the fund, they complement the overall DEI strategy.  Storytellers vying for certain grants have to sign an attestation form agreeing with the narrative policy and write a compliance plan if their works have anything to do with the above groups. Plainly, it’s a force of narrative control.  This doesn’t go both ways; women can make documentaries about men consult-free, non-white people can make TV dramas about white people consult-free, and so on...   Together, it looks like both the fund, and the party responsible for doubling its taxpayer support are more concerned about the identities of filmmakers and TV producers than the actual media being produced."

Liberals planning to use C-11 to impose ‘diversity’ rules on streaming media - "The Liberals are using C-11, the online amendment to the Broadcast Act, to require internet broadcasters to include ‘diversity quotas’ for streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and Apple TV... Under proposed draft regulations, the CRTC would require the companies to dedicate 30% of its spending on independent English programming — such as programming for children and youth, dramas, documentaries, news and public affairs — to go to producers who self-identify as ‘indigenous, official language minorities, visible and sexual minorities or disabled.’ Those requirements would increase to 35% by 2026."

Trudeau blocks release of info in China's interference to MP and media | Toronto Sun - "Bill Blair, then Canada’s public safety minister, has said he didn’t see the memo. He’s had many explanations, none of them satisfactory, on why he didn’t see it, and the only logical conclusion is that he’s bad at his job. Despite Katie Telford, Justin Trudeau’s chief of staff, stating that Trudeau reads every security briefing, he claims never to have seen it.  The memo, issued a little over three weeks before the Trudeau Liberals called the 2021 election, had to have been seen by someone. The public safety minister’s chief of staff or someone in his office must have seen the memo before choosing not to do anything.  In early May, The Toronto Sun submitted requests under Canada’s Access to Information Act to obtain copies of the tracking records for the memo. It’s customary for intelligence memos such as this to be tracked, so the government can keep records of who has received the information. Despite asking the Privy Council Office and Public Safety for the tracking records, both replied that they couldn’t find anything... either the government has abandoned a decades-old policy for handling such documents, or they don’t want to release them because they would incriminate them. When you combine the denial of records with their refusal to answer Michael Chong’s questions, it makes the idea that they are hiding something all the more plausible.  More proof for why a public inquiry is needed if Canadians are to ever get at the truth"

Debt interest costs threaten sustainability of federal finances - "small interest rate increases can trigger large increases in government debt interest costs. Moreover, with anemic real GDP growth forecasts and an increase in interest rates, the long-term sustainability of the federal fiscal position becomes more of an issue. We are in for interesting times."

The federal government is relying on wishful thinking to rationalize federal deficits - "The prime minister and his finance minister routinely take to the media to justify federal spending and the deficit, expected to exceed $40 billion despite a surge in revenues. When they’re not attacking (as the prime minister recently did on Quebec’s most-watched talk show) people who argue for fiscal restraint as proponents of “austerity,” they invoke the idea of “crowding in.”   But this is pure political chicanery. There’s no chance the current deficit will generate “crowding in,” despite what the prime minister says.  So, what is crowding in? Generally, economists agree that budget deficits cause interest rates to increase. This makes private investment costlier—a process known as “crowding out.” But this comes with the assumption that the deficits are incurred for regular operating expenses. Things are different if the deficit is meant to finance expenses for uniquely productive projects that are complementary to what the private sector does such as X, Y, and Z. When this happens, economists speak of crowding in that might partially or completely offset the crowding out effect. Simply put, if governments pick the right projects and the right companies, they can attract and generate additional private-sector activity that would otherwise not occur, thus growing the economy.   These uniquely productive projects must be goods and services that private producers could not profit from because there’s no way to charge consumers for using them. These are known as public goods. Historical examples include lighthouses, weather information services, postal services, roads, policing, national defence, and flood controls. Deficits to finance investments in these goods and services can actually help the private sector grow. Another way a deficit could be beneficial is if it generates a good with “spillovers.” A classic example would be a piece of military technology that’s repurposed by private providers. As such, if the government can again pick the right technologies, it could crowd in investments by the private sector.   These are the two main ways that crowding in could theoretically happen. The problem is that crowding in practically rarely occurs... the list of things deemed “public goods” has been narrowed and contested. Governments already provide most things that are widely agreed upon—national defence, courts, policing. Moreover, a large share of the current deficit—for items such as $13 billion for dental care and increases in the Canada student grants—fail to even remotely qualify as public goods. With regard to spillovers, the case is even weaker. The heroic assumption is that governments can pick the right technologies and right companies to invest in—but in reality, governments appear ill-equipped to do so. Indeed, empirical studies on the effect of business subsidies or targeted support to technological adoption seem to find that government spending reduces this type of economic activity and sometimes deters further innovation. This inability to pick winners is also apparent in the types of programs—clean technology adoption, for example—that the federal government announced in its latest budget. Assessments of government efforts to fund green energies (and their adoption) both in the United States and Canada generally find that taxpayers were (on net) left worse off as most of the projects picked by governments ended up failing. It’s hard to imagine why the current plan to pick winners would work better than in the past. This is why empirical studies that attempt empirical generalizations regarding the importance of crowding in relative to crowding out tend to find that the latter dominates the former, especially in countries that already have large governments"

Justin Trudeau's 'woke agenda' critiqued at Conservative event - "Retired lieutenant general Michel Maisonneuve and his wife, Barbara, took the stage on Thursday at the Conservative Party convention(opens in a new tab), with the couple deriding Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's so-called "woke agenda(opens in a new tab)." "Our country has been led by a government that has been focused on virtue signalling," Maisonneuve told the crowd in Quebec City. "Apologizing for who we are and how we came to be." His wife echoed the sentiment from Maisonneuve, accusing Trudeau of having an "innate ability to see endless flaws in everyone else, but none in himself."   Maisonneuve previously generated headlines following a 2022 speech in Ottawa in which he criticized the Trudeau Government's climate change policies and denounced cancel culture.        In Thursday night's speech(opens in a new tab) he once again took aim at the "woke movement" that he claims is destroying "Canadian values.""

Barbara Kay: Mary Simon’s flippancy about French is a danger to Canada
From 2021

Chris Selley: These are the only people who should ever be considered for governor general - "This is a feature, not a bug. The greatest strength of a well-run constitutional monarchy — which certainly describes Canada’s under Elizabeth II’s peerless stewardship — is precisely that it walls off fundamental matters of state in a zone of apolitical dignity. You don’t have to like the monarch, or her representative. But you should at least appreciate that their caprices do not alter the ship of state’s course. The only actual job a Canadian viceregal has is to represent the head of state on Canadian soil, at the federal or provincial legislature in question. The head of state is Elizabeth II, who has no public opinions about religion versus science, women in the STEM professions, head injuries in professional sport or anything else our last two governors general have weighed in on. The pay is good and the perks are considerable at Rideau Hall, but this should be seen as just recompense for smart, accomplished, dedicated people keeping their mouths shut and doing what their learned advisers tell them. By and large, the provinces are pretty good at appointing dutiful people to fill the role. The only lieutenant governor I can name off the top of my head is Ontario’s Elizabeth Dowdeswell, because I have covered Queen’s Park in person. She seems to really love her job, which is to say showing up and saying pleasantly uncontroversial things at cabinet swearings-in, portrait unveilings and other events, and hosting receptions afterward in her quarters. I am sure she has opinions about things. Born in Belfast, raised in rural Saskatchewan, she has led an accomplished life as a deputy minister in both Regina and Ottawa, and as executive director of the UN Environment Programme, and as a professor at the University of Toronto. Maybe I could find some of those opinions if I went looking for them. But as it stands I have absolutely no idea what those opinions are, and I don’t particularly care, and that’s exactly as it should be. The federal viceregal will always be higher profile by default, but the same principle should hold: Anyone who desperately wants the job shouldn’t get it. Anyone who deserves the job probably isn’t on any normal person’s radar. By rights, the next governor general should be someone almost no one has ever heard of. The idea of appointing an Indigenous governor general, specifically and on principle, was reportedly in the process of being achieved when Trudeau’s gang came up with Payette and figured they couldn’t possibly lose. Clearly no vetting of any consequence was done: her reputation as a boss and coworker from hell long predated her installation at Rideau Hall... For a prime minister who has almost literally nothing of note to offer except symbolic gestures, Trudeau is absolutely terrible at pulling off symbolic gestures."

Absence of a governor general in a minority government situation 'completely untenable,' scholar says - "this is very bad for Justin Trudeau because Julie Payette was his choice. She was not vetted properly, and this once again calls his judgment into question. You cannot repair nor undo this. This is a major stain on the reputation of Justin Trudeau and it’s not good for the Liberal government at all."

Links - 20th November 2023 (2)

iPhone 15 Pro screen burn-in or image retention concerns emerge - "This concern adds to the growing list of challenges faced by users of these new iPhone models, including problems such as overheating, display issues, rapid battery drain and other software and hardware complications. Moreover, these issues have emerged within a mere two weeks of the product’s release, leaving users understandably frustrated and unable to fully enjoy their new devices."

Meme - "Apple in 1993:
Does More. Costs Less. It's that simple.
Apple in 2020:
Does Less. Costs More.
The rest of this slogan is available for additional purchase starting from $699.99"

'Ritual mass murder' report in Chapel St Leonards was yoga class - "A yoga class was mistaken for a "ritual mass murder" scene after members of the public saw several people lying on the floor and reported it to police.  Five police cars descended on the North Sea Observatory in Chapel St Leonards, Lincolnshire, on Wednesday night.  Yoga teacher Millie Laws said she thought reports of her being a "mass murderer" were a "joke at first"... The 22-year-old teacher said she was teaching seven students at the Seascape Cafe, which is inside the building, when she saw two dog walkers peering closely through the glass window during the Shavasana or relaxation stage of the class.  "They're [students] laying down with blankets over them, their eyes are closed. It's very dark in there. I just had candles and little tea lights lit the whole room, and I was just walking around playing my drum. I had a nice floaty top on with large bell sleeves," she said."

J.K.Rowling Official Site - "The Harry Potter Lexicon
This is such a great site that I have been known to sneak into an internet café while out writing and check a fact rather than go into a bookshop and buy a copy of Harry Potter (which is embarrassing). A website for the dangerously obsessive; my natural home"

Man jailed for attacking sex worker after finding payment 'not worth it' - "Goh Jun Liang pleaded guilty to one count of voluntarily causing hurt...   She advertised sexual activities for S$130 (US$96) per act, and Goh arranged to meet her at her residence later that night.  They met at the victim's home at 8pm and Goh handed her S$130. They had sexual intercourse before washing up.  After this, Goh requested for a second round and handed another S$130 to the victim.   However, he was unable to perform the act and the victim had to assist him. Goh felt unhappy as she was doing so, as he felt the victim "had used too much strength and caused him pain", the prosecutor said.  Goh was also upset that the victim had called him "troublesome" as he was taking too long."

Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome - "Chrome's invasive new ad platform, ridiculously branded the "Privacy Sandbox," is also getting a widespread rollout in Chrome... Google seemingly knows this won't be popular. Unlike the glitzy front-page Google blog post that the redesign got, the big ad platform launch announcement is tucked away on the privacysandbox.com page... all of Google's documentation about this feature feels like it was written on opposite day, with Google calling the browser-based advertising platform "a significant step on the path towards a fundamentally more private web." The argument here is that someday—not now, but someday—Google promises to turn off third-party tracking cookies in Chrome, and the new ad platform, which has some limitations, is better than the free-for-all that is third-party cookies. The thing is, third-party cookies mostly only affect Chrome users. Apple and Firefox have both been blocking third-party cookies for years and won't be implementing Google's new advertising system—it's only the Chromium browsers that still allow them."

Cardiff: Parents' fury after son refused food and drink during heatwave - "A mum and dad from Cardiff say their son was left 'hungry and humiliated' after he was unable to have lunch due to a problem with the canteen's electronic payment system.  Ben and Anna claim their son, who goes to St Illtyd’s Catholic High School, scanned his fingerprint on the ParentPay system during lunchtime on Thursday (8th September) but when it declined was told by staff: "You can’t have food, no money darling.""

Melton news: Klay Holland who bashed and raped home intruder Shane Cox jailed in Melbourne - "A Melbourne man who overpowered and raped an intruder will spend at least four years in prison.  Klay Holland, 32, faced the Supreme Court of Victoria on Tuesday when he was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment, with a non-parole period of four years and 10 months. Holland's victim, Shane Cox, had broken into a unit in Melton in Melbourne's west in March 2021 armed with a knife and wearing a mask. He had asked for money and drugs, and was allegedly linked to others who had gone to the home to stand over a resident. Cox, 36, who was high on methylamphetamine, was overpowered by Holland who was a guest at the home. Cox was beaten with a baseball bat and was incapacitated on the floor, where Holland then raped him... He was hogtied, his mouth was duct taped and his pants were pulled down to his upper thighs"
Of course, the Americans were very upset. Their love of vigilante justice is probably linked to their individualism

Swiss aim to classify details of bank collapse for 50 years - "the investigating commission will hand over its files to the Swiss Federal Archives after longer than the usual 30 years to ensure confidentiality in the case, which focuses on the activities of the Swiss government, financial regulator, and central bank in the run up to the emergency takeover of Credit Suisse."

Azealia Banks cancels show in Brisbane, Australia - "Azealia Banks has canceled another Australian show and said she won’t return because the country makes her “utterly miserable.”   Banks was due to perform in Brisbane at The Tivoli on Tuesday night but took to Instagram to unleash on Australia before the promoter confirmed in a statement that the show was canceled and all ticketholders would be refunded...   “I’m so sorry you guys, actually I’m not sorry. But listen, last time I was in Brisbane and y’all threw s–t on the stage and damn near almost f–king hit me in the face with a f–king bottle of soda or whatever that s–t was,” she said in a video. “That was the most like racist, most f–king demoralizing experience of my f–king life and right now I’m on a really good track.”  She said she had “enough emotional intelligence to kind of erase room for error before it happens.”  “I am a beautiful black woman and I am not going to get in front of some audience of white people for them to be throwing s–t at me,” she said. “I am so not sorry. I am not sorry at all. Brisbane, y’all are just going to have to take the L and smoke it.”... Banks has previously criticized Australia, calling her performance at Splendour In The Grass in 2015 a “waste of my f–king time.”  Reports from 2013 claim Banks walked off stage 90 seconds into her performance at the Listen Out Festival in Melbourne after a bottle was thrown at her, and 15 minutes into her 50-minute headline set in Sydney when a can of beer was thrown at her."

Meme - Rachel McCartney @RachelMComedy: "I put my leftover dinner in a takeout container last night and dumped it onto my plate this morning and now it looks like it costs $47"

Baby Enlists Dog's Help To Pull Off The Greatest Fridge Heist Ever - "Look, I'm not saying they're all Einsteins, but some babies are way smarter than we give them credit for. Like, for instance, this little tot who enlisted the help of his faithful canine sidekick to grab some sneaky snacks from the fridge."
Keywords Kid climbs on dog to raid fridge

Meme - "15 Disney Princesses Taking A Dump What Their Turds Would Look Smell Like
Yes, Disney Princesses Need To Do Number Two Too
Princess Jasmine's turds would probably be long, curly smell really awful as the food in Arabia at that time would have consisted of dates, barley, rice & meat."

Meme - "So I asked my boyfriend to talk dirty to me in Bulgarian during sexytime... It was incredibly hot, until I recognized the word "tomato" and asked him what he was saying. He then admitted that he was explaining how to make a salad."

Meme - *Gru's Plan*
"Invasive Pig
Cull
Invasive Spotted Lantern Fly
Cull
Invasive Burmese Python
Cull
Invasive House Cat
Trap, Neuter, Release"

Being too intelligent might make you a less effective leader - "But new research suggests that having a very high IQ is not necessarily such a good thing when it comes to leadership – the brightest people are actually less effective leaders, according to new research... The reasons behind the trend are harder to pinpoint. The highly intelligent leaders were not using harmful leadership styles, such as adopting a laissez-faire approach. But they did struggle to adopt the best leadership practices.  One of the reasons may be that very clever people sometimes fail to communicate clearly enough or explain complex tasks. They may also struggle to see what others find challenging. And if a manager comes across as too intellectual, it may make the leader appear aloof or unapproachable."

Disney, Bob Iger, Bob Chapek Sued Over “Fraudulent” Streaming Costs - "Disney has been hit again with another lawsuit from investors over the alleged sleight of hand accounting the company used to hide streaming losses."

Disney Sued By Film Finance Partner For Using ‘Hollywood Accounting’ - "Disney has been hit with a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court by film financier TSG, which claims that the media giant used “nearly every trick in the Hollywood accounting book” to hoard hundreds of millions in profit."

Meme - "Hahaha I'm Irish"
"Oh cool what part of lreland are you from?"
"i dont fucking know. I was born in Tampa, Florida. you'd have to ask my ancestor from 300 years ago who came here and had his lineage procreate with every other flavor of white person before I settled on whichever of those 36 heritages had my favorite aesthetic so that I seem cultured"

Can Singapore hold on to its reputation as Asia’s ‘safe haven’? | Financial Times - "The city-state is wrestling with rising inequality — linked to unrestrained capital inflows from the US, Europe and especially China — as it prepares for its first change of leader in almost 20 years. Some are questioning whether an economic model so reliant on foreign capital is benefiting citizens in the way it once did.  There is also the delicate matter of deteriorating Sino-US relations. As more mainland Chinese cash and influence seeps out of China and into Singapore, the country’s high-wire balancing act between Beijing and Washington becomes even more precarious. All 10 accused in the money-laundering sting share one thing in common: possession of a passport believed to be issued in China... Singapore receives a bigger percentage of US foreign direct investment into Asia-Pacific than China and Hong Kong combined... “The money is pouring in,” says Parag Khanna, founder and managing partner of FutureMap, a global strategic advisory firm. Investors want somewhere “genuinely open, home to everyone and that isn’t dominated by one power. Hong Kong has long since ceased to be that pan-Asian hub.”... For Singaporeans preparing for this next era, the opacity of the succession plan adds to an underlying sense of unease about the city-state’s identity. “Philosophically and emotionally, it’s the sense that the ‘Switzerland of the east’ is actually designed more for global plutocrats than ordinary Singaporeans”... Singapore, whose own population is ageing, has become a favoured home for Asia’s millionaires, prompting local pushback to foreign workers and immigration. House prices and rents have skyrocketed, with the median price of a private home hitting $1.2mn in 2022, the highest among cities in the Asia-Pacific, according to data from the Urban Land Institute Asia Pacific Centre for Housing. Rents for private homes outpaced even New York City at the end of last year... Fuelling a large part of this spike in housing costs, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic, has been the movement of rich Chinese, not just tycoons but also talented citizens with specific skills. Many are fleeing a “common prosperity” campaign — aimed at redistributing more of China’s wealth — and a crackdown on multiple industries including property, healthcare, technology and education. “Singapore-washing”, where mainland Chinese companies redomicile and rebrand as Singapore-based international businesses as a hedge against geopolitical risk, has increased. Of 63,801 new corporate entities formed in Singapore last year, 29 per cent had majority foreign ownership, according to analytics group Handshakes. Of those 7,312 were from China, up from 4,951 in 2021... the S$1.8bn money-laundering scandal will reinforce some critics’ view that Singapore acts as a bolt-hole for less-than-respectable money or flight capital... Singapore has “one foot firmly in each canoe, gaining benefits from both [the US and China],” says Drew Thomson, a visiting senior research fellow at National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. “But those canoes are drifting apart, can you really play both sides forever?”"

The limits of our personal experience and the value of statistics - Our World in Data
On the valorisation of personal experience

Meme - "Pro tip: stuff some Crazy Bread DEEP! DEEP! in that turkussy for an EXTRAMOISTBESTEST Thanksgiving bird"

Photographer finds venomous human-hand sized spider guarding babies under his bed - "A photographer's shocking picture of a Brazilian wandering spider hiding under his bed has made him one of the winners of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year.  Gil Wizen won the Urban Wildlife Award as part of the prestigious competition, which is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum.  The photographer snapped the picture of the deadly spider – which feeds on frogs and cockroaches – while he was visiting Ecuador.  After becoming suspicious about the amount of spiders in the room he was staying in, he looked under his bed to discover the Brazilian wandering spider guarding hundreds of baby spiders. Brazilian wandering spiders produce toxic venom which can be deadly to mammals, including humans."

Guy Builds Terrifying Laser-Powered Lawn Mower - ""It's not going to cut your finger off or anything like that," Riley warned in his video, "but a direct hit to your eyeball, even for just a nanosecond, would make you blind for the rest of your life."  Worst of all, Riley's invention is incredibly inefficient, felling grass and other weeds in a narrow beam over an entire week... In short, it's exactly the kind of invention you'd see a YouTuber come up with: not to actually serve a useful purpose, but to give their audience a chuckle — and we're here for it."

Why Did Obama Free This Terrorist? - "On January 17, 2017, as one of the final acts of his presidency, Barack Obama commuted the sentence of 74-year-old Oscar Lopez Rivera, the Puerto Rican nationalist who had served 35 years of a 55-year conviction for the crime of “seditious conspiracy,” as well as attempted robbery, explosives and vehicle-theft charges... from 1974, when the group announced itself with its first bombings, to 1983, when arrests finally destroyed its membership base, the FALN was the most organized, active, well-trained and deadly domestic terror group based in the United States.  The FALN was responsible for over 130 bombings during this period, including the January 1975 explosion in Manhattan’s historic Fraunces Tavern, which killed four and wounded 63. In October of that year, it set off, all within the span of an hour, 10 bombs in three cities, causing nearly a million dollars in damage. In August 1977, the FALN set off a series of bombs in Manhattan, forcing 100,000 workers to evacuate their offices; one person was killed, and six were injured. In 1979, the group even threatened to blow up the Indian Point nuclear energy facility located north of New York City. It later sent a communiqué warning the U.S. to “remember … that you have never experienced war on your vitals and that you have many nuclear reactors.” In 1980, FALN members stormed the Carter-Mondale election headquarters in Chicago, and the George H.W. Bush campaign headquarters in New York, holding employees there hostage at gunpoint. In 1981, they plotted to kidnap President Reagan’s son Ron. Plainly, the group was deadly serious about its objectives—a free, independent and socialist Puerto Rico—and zealous in its pursuit of them... In the mid-1970s, Fidel Castro made Puerto Rican independence a major plank of his country’s foreign policy, much to the consternation of the Ford and Carter administrations. Over this period, Cuba had very close relations to the main pro-independence party in Puerto Rico, the PSP. (The FBI, in fact, held that by the early 1960s, Juan Mari Brás, the PSP’s leader, was a paid Cuban agent). And, according to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the prominent Puerto Rican revolutionary Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, who later co-founded the FALN, was recruited by Cuba’s General Directorate of Intelligence (DGI) as an operative as early as 1963. U.S. authorities claim that Cuban intelligence gave Ojeda Ríos training in espionage and bomb-making techniques, which he then passed on to other pro-independence militants. According to the FBI, by 1973, 135 Puerto Rican radicals had received “extensive instruction in guerrilla war tactics, preparation of explosive artifacts and sophisticated methods of sabotage” within Cuba itself... Clinton’s conditional offer required that FALN members “refrain from the use or advocacy of the use of violence for any purpose.” Clinton offered Lopez this same deal. He refused it. Perhaps it was because he could not, in good conscience, agree to abide by its conditions... As during the 1970s and 1980s, support for outright independence is almost nonexistent"

Female surgeons sexually assaulted while operating - "Sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape have been referred to as surgery's open secret.  There is an untold story of women being fondled inside their scrubs, of male surgeons wiping their brow on their breasts and men rubbing erections against female staff. Some have been offered career opportunities for sex... Nearly two-thirds of women surgeons who responded to the researchers said they had been the target of sexual harassment and a third had been sexually assaulted by colleagues in the past five years... the report shows men are also subject to some of this behaviour (24% had been sexually harassed)"

UK’s biggest pub group to charge 20p more a pint at busy times under surge pricing - "A pint of beer during the busiest periods will cost drinkers 20p more under a “dynamic pricing” system introduced by Britain’s largest pub group.  Stonegate Group, which owns chains including the Slug & Lettuce and Yates’s, said it was raising prices at 800 of its venues during peak times, such as weekends, to help cover soaring costs... Dynamic pricing, often known as surge pricing, is a common feature of other industries, such as aviation, where airlines charge more for tickets during the school holidays.  Uber uses the feature when demand is high, with prices rising automatically when more people are trying to hail a ride.  Dynamic pricing is also a common practice among big sports or gig ticket companies in the US, although it is more rare in the UK... The chief executive of another of Britain’s big pub chains, who asked not to be named, said the practice was not unusual and had been “going on for decades”, in the largest venues, during events and busy periods.  “They’re not the only ones doing it,” he said.  “To be honest, good for them that they’re telling people,” he said, adding that the transparency may have backfired amid dismay on social media and negative publicity."

These Airports Allow Unticketed Visitors Through Security - "Prior to the pandemic, a slowly growing number of U.S. airports had started allowing visitors to do something they used to be able to do regularly in the pre-9/11 era of air travel: meet and mingle at the terminal gates, see their friends and family take off, or welcome loved ones with a warm embrace right at the gate, regardless of whether they were flying anywhere... The new ONT+ Visitor Pass program allows unticketed guests to obtain a visitor pass, which they can use to pass through TSA security checkpoints and either spend more time with friends and family before they depart or greet them when they land. ONT+ is also meant to simply make the bars, restaurants, and retail stores in the terminal’s upper departure levels available to the nontraveling public."