Should we stop keeping pets? Why more and more ethicists say yes - "research is revealing that the emotional lives of animals, even relatively “simple” animals such as goldfish, are far more complex and rich than we once thought (“dogs are people, too”, according to a 2013 New York Times comment piece by the neuroscientist Gregory Berns). “The logical consequence is that the more we attribute them with these characteristics, the less right we have to control every single aspect of their lives,” says Herzog. Does this mean that, in 50 years or 100 years, we won’t have pets? Institutions that exploit animals, such as the circus, are shutting down – animal rights activists claimed a significant victory this year with the closure of Ringling Bros circus – and there are calls to end, or at least rethink, zoos. Meanwhile, the number of Britons who profess to be vegan is on the rise, skyrocketing 350% between 2006 and 2016... in 1877, the city of New York rounded up 762 stray dogs and drowned them in the East River, shoving them into iron crates and lifting the crates by crane into the water. Veterinarian turned philosopher Bernard Rollin recalls pet owners in the 1960s putting their dog to sleep before going on holiday, reasoning that it was cheaper to get a new dog when they returned than to board the one they had."
Does Fiber Make You Feel Full? - "The women didn't feel any more full after eating the fiber-rich meal bars... when women consumed the same amount of fiber in either a solid form (like oatmeal) or a liquid forms (like a shake), the solid foods stayed in the woman's digestive system one hour longer, and was more satisfying... protein is a great hunger-queller"
Scientists Have Figured Out Why Fiber Keeps Us Full - "Scientists have figured out the reason fiber is such a wonder food: It contains an anti-appetite molecule called acetate... The researchers looked at a dietary fiber called inulin, which comes from chicory and sugar beets, and is often present in cereal bars. They fed mice a diet high in fat with additional inulin"
Experiments on people > those on rats
Saudi Arabia wants to troll Qatar by turning it into an island - "Riyadh is reportedly fielding offers from at least five companies to dig a canal along the Qatari-Saudi border — known as the “Salwa Canal” project — that would turn the peninsula of Qatar into an island. That would mean creating a 38-mile-long, 65-feet-deep, 660-feet-wide channel simply to surround Qatar completely with water — turning an existing political rift between the two countries into a physical fact... Some reports indicate that Saudi Arabia would use the area along the canal as a place to store nuclear waste — just to rub some salt (or uranium) in the wound."
Canada's Trudeau grilled on efforts to turn back asylum seekers - "A Canadian official familiar with the matter told Reuters that Canada wants to amend a bilateral agreement to allow it to block border-crossing refugee claimants but that the United States is not cooperating... More than 26,000 asylum seekers have crossed illegally into Canada from the United States to file refugee claims in the past 15 months, walking over ditches and on empty roads along the world’s longest undefended border... Trudeau’s government has faced complaints from the province of Quebec, where the vast majority of border crossers have arrived"
The UN Human Rights Council Is a Deeply Flawed Body - "The Council’s rules single out Israel for scrutiny of its actions in the occupied Palestinian territories. No other country is similarly named. The broader problem, however, are the countries doing the scrutinizing: countries like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Ethiopia... Although this geographical quota system addresses the disparities in global representation, it is also the Council’s most serious flaw. With a few honorable exceptions, the overwhelming majority of countries outside the Western Europe and others grouping have flawed-to-abysmal human-rights records and policies. Many are not democracies. Few have representative governments. Fewer still have an incentive to pursue and commit to universal human rights. That these are the countries that criticize Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is bad enough; that they do it while pursuing their own draconian policies makes the membership laughable.
I wonder how many of the people bashing Trump for the US pulling out even knew what the body was about, what it did, or the human rights abusers using it for their political agenda
OK, so The Economist has an ongoing series of articles about the shortcomings of the economics profession - "The article then makes one of the most annoying arguments in journalism, which is to find two conflicting results and conclude that the entire literature is full of conflicting results: Studies finding small or no short-term effects of minimum wage on employment vastly outnumber studies finding big effects, but the article does not mention meta-analysis or the relative quality of the methodologies in question. Waving around papers on publication bias and doing he-said-she-said cherry-picking of empirical results is a GREAT way to get the public not to trust whole literatures full of good, valuable, careful, highly informative research. This kind of thing is not good for anyone. It doesn't help improve the academic literature, and it doesn't help policymakers or the public extract information from the academic literature...."
Report: Trump 'threw' Starburst on table during G7 talks, told Merkel 'don't say I never give you anything'
Schumer rejects GOP proposal to address border crisis - "The GOP leadership supports a bill that would require that immigrant families be kept together in a humane setting while waiting for an immigration judge. Furthermore, it would expedite their hearings to minimize their time in detention."
Beijing Wants to Rewrite the Rules of the Internet - "Beijing has instituted standards that force foreign companies to build China-only versions of their products, and to comply with government surveillance policies. Government security audits allow Beijing to open up these companies’ products and review their source code, putting their intellectual property at risk, which was documented comprehensively for the first time last March in a report by the Office of the United States Trade Representative. Article 37 of the cybersecurity law also increases government control over the sort of data that can be transferred out of the country, while unwritten rules reward companies that store data on local servers. Many of these elements serve a dual purpose: supporting domestic industry while further closing off the internet"
Former PAP candidate Victor Lye apologises for mistake where WP banner was covered by his own
How ‘Weird Al’ eclipsed (almost) every star he ever parodied | The Washington Post
Opinion | How Democracy Became the Enemy - The New York Times - "The democratic West needs to awaken from its slumber. The forgotten people of the post-1989 decades have spoken. They have embraced disruption at any cost, declaring “Enough!” to the economic prescriptions (mainly austerity) and the smug impunity of globalizing elites. Europe cannot open its doors to everyone. It needs a shared immigration policy that works, economic policies that offset rather than accentuate inequality and a Brussels bureaucracy that delivers tangible results to a half-billion Europeans."
Women Are Evil - "women post stories of rape culture and harassment. The responses are overwhelmingly positive, but it is often women, not men, who tell us we are being unfair and perhaps too “hysterical” about the whole thing... This menace of white women has yet to be reckoned with and there is a reason why: criticize the hypocrisy of women and they hide behind their roles as wives and mothers. As if using one’s uterus has ever conferred innocence or empathy."
When feminism and intersectionality find their next oppressor, and when feminism is about silencing women's voices
‘It’s A Human Right’ — Mexican Presidential Candidate Calls For Mass Exodus To America
Maybe Mexico should welcome the rest of Latin America into their borders
Japan worker's pay docked for taking lunch 3 minutes early - "The city had previously suspended another official in February for a month after he had left his office numerous times to buy a ready-made lunch box during work hours. The official was absent a total of 55 hours over six months"
World of Reel: Owen Gleiberman: "Star Wars" is a religion that has begun to lose its faith. - "Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy has been described by an insider [Link] as person that “too frequently second-guessed her own choices and hasn’t effectively resolved disagreements with directors.”... Lest we forget, that if there is a director Kathleen Kennedy has warmed up to during her tenure as Lucasfilm head, it would have to be Rian Johnson. Yes, the same Johnson who is all but HATED by a fairly large group of "Star Wars" devotees and, yet, was given the task of creating a new "Star Wars" trilogy from scratch for the next decade. So Owen is right, the religion is, in fact, maybe over, and Kathleen Kennedy is to blame"
Free College Will Increase Inequality; Here’s A Better Alternative - "Taiwan... a huge spike in college enrollment has led to a ~25% dip in graduate wages. The graph below comes from the wonderfully titled, “Massification of Higher Education in Taiwan: Shifting Pressure from Admission to Employment”"
Expanding university enrollment leading to falling premium for degrees is consistent with the signalling hypothesis
The heart attack gender gap - "Some studies suggest that during a heart attack, women are more likely to have atypical symptoms, such as nausea, dizziness, and fatigue (see "Is it a heart attack?"). But other research finds that regardless of gender, the symptoms usually are more similar than different... 'one study that measured how long people waited before seeking treatment for a heart attack found a median delay time of about 54 hours for women, compared with about 16 hours for men'... women were less likely to receive potentially beneficial medications such as aspirin and cholesterol-lowering drugs, or to receive advice about quitting smoking. Women tend to be older and have more health problems when they develop heart disease, and experts have long assumed those differences might in part explain the gender survival gap. But according to the study authors, providing universal, high-quality care at hospital discharge could help to eliminate the death rate disparities. However, research also shows that women are less likely than men to take prescribed medications"
So much for the feminist claim that women are discriminated against by heart attack health advice because it's targeted at men's symptoms
What your country’s emoji use says about you | Arwa Mahdawi - "Canada uses the “smiling poop” emoji more than any of the other countries... French is still the language of love, even in emoji. The French are far too refined for eggplants or bananas and appear to be more interested in the heart than other organs. The heart emoji is used four times more by French speakers than it is in any other language. About 55% of emojis sent by French speakers are hearts, compared with just 8% in US English, and 12.5% on average. France also leads the world in wedding-related emoji. When it comes to texting, the French really like to put a ring on it. This isn’t quite the case when you’re trying to put a same-sex ring on it, however. French speakers are the least likely to use LGBT emoji."
Oh Roy, my heart goes out to you - "if ordinary citizens such as Roy and I had much better access to data, information and communication channels—including unbiased media outlets that openly discussed, say, the pros and cons of the CPF system—then I might be more critical of him right now... Society is setting a very high bar for tolerable dissent if only academics and writers are adjudged to be dissenting properly. Even though the elitists may not like it—and it represents a marked shift from Singapore’s traditional modus operandi—I believe we need to foster an environment where everybody, from Chairman to satay man, feels confident expressing his/her dissenting view... there are all sorts of obstacles in front of academics and writers such as myself. For every issue and topic in Singapore that I feel confident writing about, there is another that I am unable to broach because of these obstacles. In other words, the evidence of dissent should not be confused with an acceptable climate for dissent"
Singapore’s outdated national security policies - "Singapore’s national security policies aresingapore_flag outdated and in dire need of revision. These policies are heavily influenced by the paranoias of the 1960s, when a vulnerability fetish gave rise to a siege mentality amongst Singaporean leaders that persists today. But Singapore’s main security threats now are not other states but non-state actors, specifically pirates and terrorists... Though Israel is surrounded by hostile neighbours, Singapore is not. Despite what some hawks might argue, it is very difficult to imagine a scenario where modern Indonesia or Malaysia would attack Singapore. In fact, I cannot see any other state attacking Singapore. Why? Simply, Singapore has become too important to the global economy... the biggest deterrent to would-be aggressors is not Singapore’s Armed Force; it is the Armed Forces of China and the US, hovering around the broader Asia-Pacific region... The only period in recent history when South-east Asian states fought against each other was in the 1970s, when Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam were all, to different degrees and in varied ways, caught up in the American-led Vietnam war. South-east Asian states are getting closer by the day, as the region prepares for deeper economic integration in 2015... Singapore currently spends more on defence than on education. Is our country trying to build a knowledge economy or a military state?"
Reimagining the Singapore Armed Forces and National Service - "even if Singapore demilitarises as suggested here, we must always keep open the possibility of remilitarisation. This will not be a difficult or costly process. It might take a couple of years, just like it did in the mid 1960s. But our geopolitical considerations will not change suddenly overnight. They will do so gradually, if at all... maybe there really is some small chance that Malaysia will invade us tomorrow, as hawks have long suggested. Just like there is some small chance that the world will perish on 21/12/2012, as the Mayans once predicted."
Todd Mclaughlin - The stuff that I see on the road still amazes me... - "The stuff that I see on the road still amazes me
I think the romans are attacking"
I'm a Rape Victim Who Hooked Up With My Attacker Years Later - "I knew I should be ashamed and, frankly, worried that my boyfriend—who I’d been with for a year and would go on to date for another three—would find out. But I was neither. Instead, I felt like I’d scratched a hard-to-reach itch. Cheating wasn’t something I took lightly, but whatever deep-seated need I’d satisfied that night was more important than fidelity. An obscure yet palpable sense of relief drove away any hint of guilt before it could take hold. Counterintuitive as it may seem, my impulse to initiate a second encounter with my attacker more than a year after the original incident makes sense to experts on sexual assault"
Maybe this is why the 'rapists' don't think of themselves as rapists
L'origine de Bert
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
Links - 21st August 2018 (2)
Scientists agree: Coffee naps are better than coffee or naps alone - "drinking a cup of coffee and then taking a quick nap. This is called a coffee nap... if you nap for those 20 minutes, you'll reduce your levels of adenosine just in time for the caffeine to kick in. The caffeine will have less adenosine to compete with, and will thereby be even more effective in making you alert."
The Science of Loneliness: How Isolation Can Kill You - "The social experience that most reliably predicted whether an HIV-positive gay man would die quickly, Cole found, was whether or not he was in the closet. Closeted men infected with HIV died an average of two to three years earlier than out men. When Cole dosed AIDS-infected white blood cells with norepinephrine, a stress hormone, the virus replicated itself three to ten times faster than it did in non-dosed cells. Cole mulled these results over for a long time, but couldn’t understand why we would have been built in such a way that loneliness would interfere with our ability to fend off disease: “Did God want us to die when we got stressed?”"
This 0.5K run for underachievers has donuts, coffee, and a smoking rest stop - "Before the event every runner will get a free pint of beer to prepare them for their journey
'Wonder Woman' Wins Best Fight for "No Man's Land" Scene at MTV Movie & TV Awards - "The category's other nominees were Atomic Blonde's stairwell fight, T'Challa and M'Baku's Black Panther duel, Thor and Hulk's gladiator match in Thor: Ragnarok, and Black Widow, Okoye, and Scarlet Witch facing off against Proxima Midnight in Avengers: Infinity War."
How one fan gained a bunch of weight to see Peru play in the World Cup - ""The only tickets that were left on the FIFA website where ticket for disabled people,” Miguel told Clarin. “I looked at the requirements; be in a wheelchair, something specific for women and suffering from morbid obesity, over 35 BMI, body mass index. I was at 30, and I did the math. I needed to put on 25 kg.” He bought the ticket immediately and then set his sights on gaining the weight he needed in three months, which involved eating a lot of carbohydrates. Thankfully he managed to get a medical certificate proving his obesity... At the last World Cup in Brazil in 2014, El Comercio reported that people also took advantage of the disabled tickets to enter in wheelchairs. However, when pictures were released of these people standing up to applaud their teams, they sparked worldwide indignation. This year FIFA required medical certificates"
He told his friends his vest was stab-proof and offered to demonstrate. It wasn't - "Easton died from the self-inflicted knife wound"
Apple fined for misleading customers in Australia - "An Australian court has fined Apple A$9m (£5m;$6.5m) for refusing to fix iPhones and iPads that had been serviced by third parties."
Racial Immunity - "In each of the above incidents, the black person was either doing something illegal (taking up two parking spaces, taking up two handicapped spaces, making violent threats, using a charcoal barbecue in a prohibited area) or violating the policies of a private business (claiming a table and trying to use the bathroom without ordering, sleeping in a common area, demanding food from a bakery that was closed, refusing to follow golf club rules, disturbing fellow tenants). Yet in each case, activists, aided by the leftist press, painted the black people as victims of white racism. And now there’s a campaign, championed by the likes of the Huffington Post, CNN, and the L.A. Times (the latter two having run almost identically worded op-eds within four days of each other), to stop white people from calling the police on (or otherwise reporting) blacks who violate laws or break rules... Ms. Walker is leading a crusade to get “justice” for her 17-year-old brother, Charles Macklin, who was shot dead while trying to carjack a white guy. Authorities cleared the white guy of wrongdoing, and Walker is angry. Sure, her lil’ bro tried to steal the white dude’s car; she admits it. But the white man should’ve let him. “You’ve got insurance,” was her message to the ofay devil who dared to want to keep his vehicle"
Spanish students evicted from dorm to make room for ‘Aquarius’ migrants - "A grand gesture by Madrid to accept migrants rejected by Italy and Malta has backfired on some Spanish students, who were told to leave their dormitories in 24 hours to make room for the new arrivals. Pedro Sanchez, Spain’s newly appointed prime minister, agreed to take in passengers of the rescue ship Aquarius, who are mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, after Italy’s anti-immigration government and Malta blocked the ship from docking... The students, who reportedly pay as much as 750 euros per month for the accommodations, were told to vacate the rooms within 24 hours"
Future right wing voters coming up
Chief of Defence Force MG Melvyn Ong avoids answering questions on “tekan culture” in SAF - "Dave died of heat stroke on 30 Apr. He was admitted to Changi General Hospital in the middle of April after suffering a heat stroke during a training exercise. After struggling for his life close to 2 weeks at the hospital, he passed away... There have been allegations that Dave was 'being tekan' during training, which may have caused him to suffer from heat stroke... When the reporters asked about the question of a "tekan culture" especially in the Guards formation, MG Ong said "there is a certain purpose to every training that we do"... When pressed on by reporters if the "tekan" sessions could be conducted with the right purpose and safety coverage, MG Ong avoided answering."
Bitcoin Could Break the Internet, Central Bank Overseer Says - "The Bank for International Settlements just told the cryptocurrency world it’s not ready for prime time -- and as far as mainstream financial services go, may never be... cryptocurrencies are too unstable, consume too much electricity, and are subject to too much manipulation and fraud to ever serve as bona fide mediums of exchange in the global economy... the race by so-called Bitcoin miners to be the first to process transactions eats about the same amount of electricity as Switzerland does. “Put in the simplest terms, the quest for decentralized trust has quickly become an environmental disaster”"
Giant Horror Plant That Causes 3rd Degree Burns Has Spread to Yet Another US State
Soul Calibur VI's Female Fighters Get Slut-Shamed, Body-Shamed By Kotaku
Yoga and meditation boost your ego, say psychology researchers
Anthony Bourdain and Barack Obama's Dinner Table – Ngô Thì Nhậm, Vietnam - "It looks much as it did when Bourdain and Obama sat down to eat there, but there are a few key changes. Guests hoping to relive the experience can now order a “Combo Obama” from the menu: bun cha, a seafood spring roll, and a bottle of Hanoi beer for a total of 85,000 VND, or about $3.60. But what they can’t do is sit down at that same table, in those same blue plastic stools. The restaurant’s encased the entire set-up in glass for posterity. (From time to time, they also pop a decorative plant on top.) The metal-topped table’s still set, as if waiting for the return of its diners, ready with plates, bowls, chopsticks, and beers."
President's 14-person delegation includes top lieutenants and is HALF WOMEN - "President Donald Trump headed a 14-member delegation that included seven women that during his first summit event in Singapore in advance of his meeting with Kim Jong-un."
So much for sexism
Mobile App Tracks Microaggressions on College Campuses - "A professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has created an app for students to report microaggressions on campus. Christy Byrd, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, created the app to gather more data on the amount and types of microaggressions that were occurring on campus... those who reported more microaggressions typically had lower self-esteem, a higher chance of depression, and lower feelings of competence."
As funding dries up, Umno cybertroopers fade away or switch sides - "They used to earn tens of thousands a month, with some pulling in several million ringgit to slander Pakatan Harapan (PH) and trumpet the virtues of Barisan Nasional (BN)."
Why Sally Mann’s Photographs of Her Children Can Still Make Viewers Uncomfortable - Artsy - "Many of the subsequent images that eventually formed the “Immediate Family” series featured her children on the family farm—in the nude, injured, or in other vulnerable positions"
White People Are Cowards - "I thought white people were evil. I was wrong... Until all white people do and say something, people in power will always be able to point to the silent majority and say that no one cares about racism or inequality. Ultimately, whiteness affords them the right to remain silent. I thought white people were evil. I was right."
And they wonder why the "Far right" is growing
Meanwhile, if you ask all Muslims to condemn Islamist terrorism...
Are the Roma Primitive, or Just Poor? - The New York Times - "members of the defense team offered an unusual legal defense: rather than focusing on the argument that the Roma are forced to resort to crime because of poverty and discrimination, it claimed that in some cases they were simply following age-old Roma traditions and generally operate outside the norms of society in “the style of the Middle Ages.”... the interior minister, Manuel Valls, a Socialist, caused a furor by saying only a minority of Roma could fit into French society... In the Marais district of Paris, where young Roma gangs brazenly target tourists and locals at metros and bank machines, one pregnant girl said begging was her only lifeline... what prosecutors had characterized as the practice of selling child brides was, in fact, part of a centuries-old tradition of Roma dowry... Ms. Jaroka, who grew up in a poor community of Roma musicians in Tata, in Hungary, said she owed her success to her parents, a waiter and dressmaker, who insisted that she, her sister and her brother get an education in unsegregated schools. Today, her sister is a music therapist; her brother, a soccer coach. “We Roma,” she said, “also need to learn to emancipate ourselves.”"
The shamed faces of the Roma men accused of selling their women for their stealing skills as France launches major crackdown on the community - "There are an estimated 15,000 Roma gipsies in France. Two years ago the then interior minister, Claude Gueant, claimed the vast majority of street robberies in Paris were carried out by Romanian immigrants."
No Country for the Old - "Sweetheart-scamming the old and infirm did not originate with this San Francisco family; there is a long tradition of such cons in Gypsy culture... Olsen reports that according to Gypsy legend, a Gypsy had stolen the gold spike intended to pierce the heart of Jesus. So before dying, ''a grateful Christ on the cross had given Gypsies a heavenly license to steal from the gaje'' (non-Gypsies). A Gypsy in Florida who had left the life to become a deputy sheriff told Faron, ''They consider the United States a great big fruit tree, and they take that fruit and eat it.''... more than a million complaints of financial chicanery committed against elderly people are filed each year in the country, many involving Gypsies. Many more cases go unreported, because the victims are too humiliated to admit that they have been taken"
Anger as 100 travellers invade historic Thwaites Brewery and evict staff - "TRAVELLERS turned the site of a historic British brewery into “a disgusting mess” after more than 100 moved their caravans in and violently threatened employees turning up for work"
'Disastrous' copyright bill vote approved - "They voted to approve the controversial Article 13, which critics warn could put an end to memes, remixes and other user-generated content. Article 11, requiring online platforms to pay publishers a fee if they link to their news content, was also approved... 70 influential tech leaders, including Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee, signed a letter opposing Article 13, which they called "an imminent threat to the future" of the internet... "15 MEPs voted for upload filtering. They understand the internet better than the people who invented it, apparently.""
New Zealand: We don't want foreign buyers — except Singaporeans? - "Singapore nationals will join Australians and certain types of visa holders in an exemption from a controversial bill seeking to ban sales in the Kiwi residential property market to foreigners."
Southern Poverty Law Center, Inc. Admits It Was Wrong, Apologizes to Quilliam and Maajid Nawaz for Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists, and Agrees to Pay $3.375 Million Settlement
The Southern Poverty Law Center has lost all credibility - The Washington Post - "The SPLC is a once-storied organization that did important work filing civil rights lawsuits against the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s. But it has become a caricature of itself, labeling virtually anyone who does not fall in line with its left-wing ideology an “extremist” or “hate group.” Nawaz is a case in point. Since abandoning Islamic radicalism, he has advised three British prime ministers and created the Quilliam Foundation, to fight extremism. He is not anti-Muslim. He is a Muslim and has argued that “Islam is a religion of peace.” So how did he end up in the SPLC’s pseudo-guide to anti-Muslim bigots? His crime, apparently, is that he has become a leading critic of the radical Islamist ideology he once embraced... Let’s hope this settlement is the first of many, because this is not the first time the SPLC has done this. In 2010, it placed the Family Research Council (FRC) — a conservative Christian advocacy group that opposes abortion and same-sex marriage — on its “hate map.” Two years later, a gunman walked into the FRC headquarters with the intention to “kill as many as possible and smear the Chick-fil-A sandwiches in victims’ faces.” He told the FBI that he had used the SPLC website to pick his target. Unfortunately, many in the media still take the SPLC seriously... The SPLC also lists Charles Murray, a colleague of mine at the American Enterprise Institute and one of the most respected conservative intellectuals in the United States, on its website as a “White Nationalist.” Last year, an angry mob of students, many citing the SPLC’s designation, physically attacked Murray during a speech at Middlebury College. He escaped unharmed, but the liberal professor who invited him ended up in the hospital... Unfortunately, the settlement that the SPLC reached with Nawaz is not likely to deter it from smearing others — $3.4 million is a drop in the bucket for the center, which raised $132 million between November 2016 and October 2017 and has a $477 million endowment, including a reported $92 million in offshore accounts. Sliming conservatives is big business. The only way to stop the SPLC is if people stop giving it money and the media stop quoting it or taking it seriously"
What is Political “Extremism”? - "In analyzing the rhetoric and literature of several hundred “fringe” and militant “special interest” groups I have identified several specific traits that tend to represent the extremist style...
1. Character Assassination.
2. Name Calling And Labeling.
3. Irresponsible Sweeping Generalizations.
4. Inadequate Proof For Assertions.
5. Advocacy Of Double Standards.
6. Extremists Tend To View Their Opponents And Critics As Essentially Evil
7. Extremists Tend To Have A Manichean Worldview.
8. Extremists Very Often Advocate Some Degree Of Censorship And Repression Of Their Opponents And Critics.
9. Extremists Tend To Identify Themselves In Terms Of Who Their Enemies Are
10. Extremists Are Given To Arguments By Intimidation.
11. Wide Use Of Slogans, Buzzwords And Thought-Stopping Cliches.
12. Doomsday Thinking.
13. Extremists Often Claim Some Kind Of Moral Or Other Superiority Over Others.
14. Extremists Tend To Believe That It’s OK To Do Bad Things In The Service Of A “Good” Cause.
15. Extremists Tend To Place Great Value On Emotional Responses.
16. Some Extremists, Particularly Those Involved In “Cults” Or religious movements such as fundamental evangelical Christians, Zionists, members of the numerous new age groups and followers of certain “gurus,” claim some kind of supernatural, mystical or divinely-inspired rationale for their beliefs and actions...
Extremists traits tend to have three things in common:
The represent some attempt to distort reality for themselves and others.
They try to discourage critical examination of their beliefs, either by false logic, rhetorical trickery or some kind of intimidation.
They represent an attempt to act out private, personal grudges or rationalize the pursuit of special interests in the name of public welfare"
The Value of Arguing with Extremists: Building a Moderate Center - "Know your enemy
Get extremists to show their true colors
Bring more reasonable people at risk of developing extremist views into the conversation"
The Science of Loneliness: How Isolation Can Kill You - "The social experience that most reliably predicted whether an HIV-positive gay man would die quickly, Cole found, was whether or not he was in the closet. Closeted men infected with HIV died an average of two to three years earlier than out men. When Cole dosed AIDS-infected white blood cells with norepinephrine, a stress hormone, the virus replicated itself three to ten times faster than it did in non-dosed cells. Cole mulled these results over for a long time, but couldn’t understand why we would have been built in such a way that loneliness would interfere with our ability to fend off disease: “Did God want us to die when we got stressed?”"
This 0.5K run for underachievers has donuts, coffee, and a smoking rest stop - "Before the event every runner will get a free pint of beer to prepare them for their journey
'Wonder Woman' Wins Best Fight for "No Man's Land" Scene at MTV Movie & TV Awards - "The category's other nominees were Atomic Blonde's stairwell fight, T'Challa and M'Baku's Black Panther duel, Thor and Hulk's gladiator match in Thor: Ragnarok, and Black Widow, Okoye, and Scarlet Witch facing off against Proxima Midnight in Avengers: Infinity War."
How one fan gained a bunch of weight to see Peru play in the World Cup - ""The only tickets that were left on the FIFA website where ticket for disabled people,” Miguel told Clarin. “I looked at the requirements; be in a wheelchair, something specific for women and suffering from morbid obesity, over 35 BMI, body mass index. I was at 30, and I did the math. I needed to put on 25 kg.” He bought the ticket immediately and then set his sights on gaining the weight he needed in three months, which involved eating a lot of carbohydrates. Thankfully he managed to get a medical certificate proving his obesity... At the last World Cup in Brazil in 2014, El Comercio reported that people also took advantage of the disabled tickets to enter in wheelchairs. However, when pictures were released of these people standing up to applaud their teams, they sparked worldwide indignation. This year FIFA required medical certificates"
He told his friends his vest was stab-proof and offered to demonstrate. It wasn't - "Easton died from the self-inflicted knife wound"
Apple fined for misleading customers in Australia - "An Australian court has fined Apple A$9m (£5m;$6.5m) for refusing to fix iPhones and iPads that had been serviced by third parties."
Racial Immunity - "In each of the above incidents, the black person was either doing something illegal (taking up two parking spaces, taking up two handicapped spaces, making violent threats, using a charcoal barbecue in a prohibited area) or violating the policies of a private business (claiming a table and trying to use the bathroom without ordering, sleeping in a common area, demanding food from a bakery that was closed, refusing to follow golf club rules, disturbing fellow tenants). Yet in each case, activists, aided by the leftist press, painted the black people as victims of white racism. And now there’s a campaign, championed by the likes of the Huffington Post, CNN, and the L.A. Times (the latter two having run almost identically worded op-eds within four days of each other), to stop white people from calling the police on (or otherwise reporting) blacks who violate laws or break rules... Ms. Walker is leading a crusade to get “justice” for her 17-year-old brother, Charles Macklin, who was shot dead while trying to carjack a white guy. Authorities cleared the white guy of wrongdoing, and Walker is angry. Sure, her lil’ bro tried to steal the white dude’s car; she admits it. But the white man should’ve let him. “You’ve got insurance,” was her message to the ofay devil who dared to want to keep his vehicle"
Spanish students evicted from dorm to make room for ‘Aquarius’ migrants - "A grand gesture by Madrid to accept migrants rejected by Italy and Malta has backfired on some Spanish students, who were told to leave their dormitories in 24 hours to make room for the new arrivals. Pedro Sanchez, Spain’s newly appointed prime minister, agreed to take in passengers of the rescue ship Aquarius, who are mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, after Italy’s anti-immigration government and Malta blocked the ship from docking... The students, who reportedly pay as much as 750 euros per month for the accommodations, were told to vacate the rooms within 24 hours"
Future right wing voters coming up
Chief of Defence Force MG Melvyn Ong avoids answering questions on “tekan culture” in SAF - "Dave died of heat stroke on 30 Apr. He was admitted to Changi General Hospital in the middle of April after suffering a heat stroke during a training exercise. After struggling for his life close to 2 weeks at the hospital, he passed away... There have been allegations that Dave was 'being tekan' during training, which may have caused him to suffer from heat stroke... When the reporters asked about the question of a "tekan culture" especially in the Guards formation, MG Ong said "there is a certain purpose to every training that we do"... When pressed on by reporters if the "tekan" sessions could be conducted with the right purpose and safety coverage, MG Ong avoided answering."
Bitcoin Could Break the Internet, Central Bank Overseer Says - "The Bank for International Settlements just told the cryptocurrency world it’s not ready for prime time -- and as far as mainstream financial services go, may never be... cryptocurrencies are too unstable, consume too much electricity, and are subject to too much manipulation and fraud to ever serve as bona fide mediums of exchange in the global economy... the race by so-called Bitcoin miners to be the first to process transactions eats about the same amount of electricity as Switzerland does. “Put in the simplest terms, the quest for decentralized trust has quickly become an environmental disaster”"
Giant Horror Plant That Causes 3rd Degree Burns Has Spread to Yet Another US State
Soul Calibur VI's Female Fighters Get Slut-Shamed, Body-Shamed By Kotaku
Yoga and meditation boost your ego, say psychology researchers
Anthony Bourdain and Barack Obama's Dinner Table – Ngô Thì Nhậm, Vietnam - "It looks much as it did when Bourdain and Obama sat down to eat there, but there are a few key changes. Guests hoping to relive the experience can now order a “Combo Obama” from the menu: bun cha, a seafood spring roll, and a bottle of Hanoi beer for a total of 85,000 VND, or about $3.60. But what they can’t do is sit down at that same table, in those same blue plastic stools. The restaurant’s encased the entire set-up in glass for posterity. (From time to time, they also pop a decorative plant on top.) The metal-topped table’s still set, as if waiting for the return of its diners, ready with plates, bowls, chopsticks, and beers."
President's 14-person delegation includes top lieutenants and is HALF WOMEN - "President Donald Trump headed a 14-member delegation that included seven women that during his first summit event in Singapore in advance of his meeting with Kim Jong-un."
So much for sexism
Mobile App Tracks Microaggressions on College Campuses - "A professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has created an app for students to report microaggressions on campus. Christy Byrd, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, created the app to gather more data on the amount and types of microaggressions that were occurring on campus... those who reported more microaggressions typically had lower self-esteem, a higher chance of depression, and lower feelings of competence."
As funding dries up, Umno cybertroopers fade away or switch sides - "They used to earn tens of thousands a month, with some pulling in several million ringgit to slander Pakatan Harapan (PH) and trumpet the virtues of Barisan Nasional (BN)."
Why Sally Mann’s Photographs of Her Children Can Still Make Viewers Uncomfortable - Artsy - "Many of the subsequent images that eventually formed the “Immediate Family” series featured her children on the family farm—in the nude, injured, or in other vulnerable positions"
White People Are Cowards - "I thought white people were evil. I was wrong... Until all white people do and say something, people in power will always be able to point to the silent majority and say that no one cares about racism or inequality. Ultimately, whiteness affords them the right to remain silent. I thought white people were evil. I was right."
And they wonder why the "Far right" is growing
Meanwhile, if you ask all Muslims to condemn Islamist terrorism...
Are the Roma Primitive, or Just Poor? - The New York Times - "members of the defense team offered an unusual legal defense: rather than focusing on the argument that the Roma are forced to resort to crime because of poverty and discrimination, it claimed that in some cases they were simply following age-old Roma traditions and generally operate outside the norms of society in “the style of the Middle Ages.”... the interior minister, Manuel Valls, a Socialist, caused a furor by saying only a minority of Roma could fit into French society... In the Marais district of Paris, where young Roma gangs brazenly target tourists and locals at metros and bank machines, one pregnant girl said begging was her only lifeline... what prosecutors had characterized as the practice of selling child brides was, in fact, part of a centuries-old tradition of Roma dowry... Ms. Jaroka, who grew up in a poor community of Roma musicians in Tata, in Hungary, said she owed her success to her parents, a waiter and dressmaker, who insisted that she, her sister and her brother get an education in unsegregated schools. Today, her sister is a music therapist; her brother, a soccer coach. “We Roma,” she said, “also need to learn to emancipate ourselves.”"
The shamed faces of the Roma men accused of selling their women for their stealing skills as France launches major crackdown on the community - "There are an estimated 15,000 Roma gipsies in France. Two years ago the then interior minister, Claude Gueant, claimed the vast majority of street robberies in Paris were carried out by Romanian immigrants."
No Country for the Old - "Sweetheart-scamming the old and infirm did not originate with this San Francisco family; there is a long tradition of such cons in Gypsy culture... Olsen reports that according to Gypsy legend, a Gypsy had stolen the gold spike intended to pierce the heart of Jesus. So before dying, ''a grateful Christ on the cross had given Gypsies a heavenly license to steal from the gaje'' (non-Gypsies). A Gypsy in Florida who had left the life to become a deputy sheriff told Faron, ''They consider the United States a great big fruit tree, and they take that fruit and eat it.''... more than a million complaints of financial chicanery committed against elderly people are filed each year in the country, many involving Gypsies. Many more cases go unreported, because the victims are too humiliated to admit that they have been taken"
Anger as 100 travellers invade historic Thwaites Brewery and evict staff - "TRAVELLERS turned the site of a historic British brewery into “a disgusting mess” after more than 100 moved their caravans in and violently threatened employees turning up for work"
'Disastrous' copyright bill vote approved - "They voted to approve the controversial Article 13, which critics warn could put an end to memes, remixes and other user-generated content. Article 11, requiring online platforms to pay publishers a fee if they link to their news content, was also approved... 70 influential tech leaders, including Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee, signed a letter opposing Article 13, which they called "an imminent threat to the future" of the internet... "15 MEPs voted for upload filtering. They understand the internet better than the people who invented it, apparently.""
New Zealand: We don't want foreign buyers — except Singaporeans? - "Singapore nationals will join Australians and certain types of visa holders in an exemption from a controversial bill seeking to ban sales in the Kiwi residential property market to foreigners."
Southern Poverty Law Center, Inc. Admits It Was Wrong, Apologizes to Quilliam and Maajid Nawaz for Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists, and Agrees to Pay $3.375 Million Settlement
The Southern Poverty Law Center has lost all credibility - The Washington Post - "The SPLC is a once-storied organization that did important work filing civil rights lawsuits against the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s. But it has become a caricature of itself, labeling virtually anyone who does not fall in line with its left-wing ideology an “extremist” or “hate group.” Nawaz is a case in point. Since abandoning Islamic radicalism, he has advised three British prime ministers and created the Quilliam Foundation, to fight extremism. He is not anti-Muslim. He is a Muslim and has argued that “Islam is a religion of peace.” So how did he end up in the SPLC’s pseudo-guide to anti-Muslim bigots? His crime, apparently, is that he has become a leading critic of the radical Islamist ideology he once embraced... Let’s hope this settlement is the first of many, because this is not the first time the SPLC has done this. In 2010, it placed the Family Research Council (FRC) — a conservative Christian advocacy group that opposes abortion and same-sex marriage — on its “hate map.” Two years later, a gunman walked into the FRC headquarters with the intention to “kill as many as possible and smear the Chick-fil-A sandwiches in victims’ faces.” He told the FBI that he had used the SPLC website to pick his target. Unfortunately, many in the media still take the SPLC seriously... The SPLC also lists Charles Murray, a colleague of mine at the American Enterprise Institute and one of the most respected conservative intellectuals in the United States, on its website as a “White Nationalist.” Last year, an angry mob of students, many citing the SPLC’s designation, physically attacked Murray during a speech at Middlebury College. He escaped unharmed, but the liberal professor who invited him ended up in the hospital... Unfortunately, the settlement that the SPLC reached with Nawaz is not likely to deter it from smearing others — $3.4 million is a drop in the bucket for the center, which raised $132 million between November 2016 and October 2017 and has a $477 million endowment, including a reported $92 million in offshore accounts. Sliming conservatives is big business. The only way to stop the SPLC is if people stop giving it money and the media stop quoting it or taking it seriously"
What is Political “Extremism”? - "In analyzing the rhetoric and literature of several hundred “fringe” and militant “special interest” groups I have identified several specific traits that tend to represent the extremist style...
1. Character Assassination.
2. Name Calling And Labeling.
3. Irresponsible Sweeping Generalizations.
4. Inadequate Proof For Assertions.
5. Advocacy Of Double Standards.
6. Extremists Tend To View Their Opponents And Critics As Essentially Evil
7. Extremists Tend To Have A Manichean Worldview.
8. Extremists Very Often Advocate Some Degree Of Censorship And Repression Of Their Opponents And Critics.
9. Extremists Tend To Identify Themselves In Terms Of Who Their Enemies Are
10. Extremists Are Given To Arguments By Intimidation.
11. Wide Use Of Slogans, Buzzwords And Thought-Stopping Cliches.
12. Doomsday Thinking.
13. Extremists Often Claim Some Kind Of Moral Or Other Superiority Over Others.
14. Extremists Tend To Believe That It’s OK To Do Bad Things In The Service Of A “Good” Cause.
15. Extremists Tend To Place Great Value On Emotional Responses.
16. Some Extremists, Particularly Those Involved In “Cults” Or religious movements such as fundamental evangelical Christians, Zionists, members of the numerous new age groups and followers of certain “gurus,” claim some kind of supernatural, mystical or divinely-inspired rationale for their beliefs and actions...
Extremists traits tend to have three things in common:
The represent some attempt to distort reality for themselves and others.
They try to discourage critical examination of their beliefs, either by false logic, rhetorical trickery or some kind of intimidation.
They represent an attempt to act out private, personal grudges or rationalize the pursuit of special interests in the name of public welfare"
The Value of Arguing with Extremists: Building a Moderate Center - "Know your enemy
Get extremists to show their true colors
Bring more reasonable people at risk of developing extremist views into the conversation"
Post ID: 9128564653408692668
The History of Manners
The history of manners - History Extra
"By the law of nature... people who occupied territory ought to cultivate it, they ought to practice agriculture. So when the early explorers, travellers, colonists encountered say the Native Americans, they found that they had very little agriculture and they hunted over lands, but they didn't actually turn over the soils. They didn't till the soil and the theory was that if people occupied land without cultivating it, they were not entitled to own it and the people who came along and say took even the land and cultivated it were, and that was because God had intended that the land should be used. Quite sincerely, I mean it certainly worked to their advantage, but that's not why they said it I think...
The question of dissimulation bothered a lot of 18th Century philosophers, including the famous continental philosopher Immanuel Kant who spent ages agonizing as to whether it was immoral to tell your servant to say that you were not at home or to sign a letter Yours Faithfully when you weren't really very faithful. But the consensus which emerged which I think is what is still the position today is that benevolence should take priority over truthfulness...
'Many people in England at least, were slightly antagonistic towards the idea of Continental feminised manners'
'They were certainly resistant to Italian and French men. As in the Italians and the French were the real architects of civility because they thought they effemininised men in the sense that they made them quite unsuitable for a sort of military'...
The 16th, 17th century were periods of intense friendship between men. Not necessarily homosexual friendships, but very close friendships. And people were quite explicit about that. And there was a great cult of friendship. Similarly, friendships between women, that was regarded as a sort of ideal to which one should aspire, everybody needed an intimate friend...
In Israel in the late 1990s, somebody actually tried to bring in a law against queue jumping but of course it wasn't passed. And the role of manners today is to fill the gaps which the laws have left. There is no law against pushing and shoving in a queue... Manners or civility is essentially about how can people live together in large communities, particularly live with strangers...
In recent years, and particularly in the United States, there has been a lot of talk about civility, and by civility, they mean the ability to conduct arguments between people of different ethnic, religious, social character without coming to blows. And how can you, Barack Obama said the important thing is to be able to disagree without being disagreeable...
[Civility] began in the early modern period. When they for example, allowed there to be a loyal opposition to the government. I mean, that would be inconceivable in the second century but there it is in the 18th century... disagree with people but conduct what we would call a civilized debate. That's to say without starting to lash out and hit the other person. And that ability today, when we live in a multiracial society, multiethnic society, different religions, all sorts of values, conflicting in many ways, at that point civility can become the essential form of social cement for keeping the show on the road.
Since civility is a tool of white supremacy, Obama is a white supremacist
"By the law of nature... people who occupied territory ought to cultivate it, they ought to practice agriculture. So when the early explorers, travellers, colonists encountered say the Native Americans, they found that they had very little agriculture and they hunted over lands, but they didn't actually turn over the soils. They didn't till the soil and the theory was that if people occupied land without cultivating it, they were not entitled to own it and the people who came along and say took even the land and cultivated it were, and that was because God had intended that the land should be used. Quite sincerely, I mean it certainly worked to their advantage, but that's not why they said it I think...
The question of dissimulation bothered a lot of 18th Century philosophers, including the famous continental philosopher Immanuel Kant who spent ages agonizing as to whether it was immoral to tell your servant to say that you were not at home or to sign a letter Yours Faithfully when you weren't really very faithful. But the consensus which emerged which I think is what is still the position today is that benevolence should take priority over truthfulness...
'Many people in England at least, were slightly antagonistic towards the idea of Continental feminised manners'
'They were certainly resistant to Italian and French men. As in the Italians and the French were the real architects of civility because they thought they effemininised men in the sense that they made them quite unsuitable for a sort of military'...
The 16th, 17th century were periods of intense friendship between men. Not necessarily homosexual friendships, but very close friendships. And people were quite explicit about that. And there was a great cult of friendship. Similarly, friendships between women, that was regarded as a sort of ideal to which one should aspire, everybody needed an intimate friend...
In Israel in the late 1990s, somebody actually tried to bring in a law against queue jumping but of course it wasn't passed. And the role of manners today is to fill the gaps which the laws have left. There is no law against pushing and shoving in a queue... Manners or civility is essentially about how can people live together in large communities, particularly live with strangers...
In recent years, and particularly in the United States, there has been a lot of talk about civility, and by civility, they mean the ability to conduct arguments between people of different ethnic, religious, social character without coming to blows. And how can you, Barack Obama said the important thing is to be able to disagree without being disagreeable...
[Civility] began in the early modern period. When they for example, allowed there to be a loyal opposition to the government. I mean, that would be inconceivable in the second century but there it is in the 18th century... disagree with people but conduct what we would call a civilized debate. That's to say without starting to lash out and hit the other person. And that ability today, when we live in a multiracial society, multiethnic society, different religions, all sorts of values, conflicting in many ways, at that point civility can become the essential form of social cement for keeping the show on the road.
Since civility is a tool of white supremacy, Obama is a white supremacist
Post ID: 6199343036527511916
Links - 21st August 2018 (1)
The Rise Of Sweden's Far-Left Militants - YouTube
From 2014 - before Antifa started causing trouble in the US. It's just a matter of time before antifa attacks the house and car of someone who denies being part of a "far right" group too. Unsurprisingly in the interview they support communism
Comment: "The "Revolutionary Front" would be easy to sympathize with if it wasn't for the fact they are so incompetent that they've attacked Slovakian immigrants mistaking them for Swedish nationalists, they have also hacked down an elderly widows door then smashed all her belongings because the previous occupant had voted for a nationalist party. If they had just kept it between them and nationalists in streetfights then I'd have no problem with them, but the fact they constantly ambush people for voting parties they dislike, attacking random apolitical people for having shaved heads or for vandalising others property has made me hate them entirely. They need to be shut down by the government. They are a terrorist organization and are far more violent and dangerous to the average person in Sweden than nationalists. They can't even call themselves antifascists when they attack members of the fucking liberal party for disagreeing with them, and they always jump them from behind while outnumbering the opposition 5-1."
New Research Shows Bitcoin's Meteoric Rise Was a Scam - "Academic researchers at the University of Texas have concluded at least half of Bitcoin's rise to a peak price of nearly $20,000 last year was due to manipulation by traders on Bitfinex, the primary Bitcoin exchange, using another cryptocurrency called Tether to boost prices when they dipped on other exchanges."
High cost of housing drives up homeless rates, UCLA study indicates - "higher median rent and home prices are strongly correlated with more people living on the streets or in shelters. The research backs other studies that have found a similar relationship."
Trump was right. The rest of the G7 were wrong | George Monbiot - "In arguing for a sunset clause to the Nafta trade agreement, this odious man is exposing the corruption of liberal democracy"
When the Guardian agrees with Donald Trump
Women shun cycling because of safety, not helmet hair | Helen Pidd - "Some 76% of women who already cycled or wanted to start said segregated lanes would help them to cycle more... The main reason most women don’t cycle in the UK is because they think it is dangerous. You can tell them until the cows come home that the roads are statistically safe, and that you are more likely to be killed walking than on a bicycle. But when they sit on the top deck of a bus and look down to see a cyclist squashed up against the kerb they feel no compulsion whatsoever to join them. Women do seem to be more vulnerable, perhaps because they are often more reluctant to “own” the lane and so end up in the gutter: 10 out of 13 cyclists killed in London in 2009 were women, and eight of them were killed by left-turning HGVs, according to the campaign group Cycling UK. Xavier Brice, at Sustrans, believes city planners are to blame. “Fifty-one per cent of the UK population is female, yet most of our cities are failing to design roads and streets for women to cycle”"
Apparently women being more risk averse than men or worse cyclists than men aren't possibilities
Travel Experts Reveal 10 Ways To Save On Travel - "the cheapest days to travel are Tuesday, followed by Wednesday, and then Saturday... There are sites to set up accommodations for travelers to house-sit, or to actually swap homes for a period of time. This is a great way to get to know a new city without spending a ton of money."
The Decline and Fall of Asia's Airline Empires - "That's left the two cities' airlines exposed. Long-haul international aviation is a cutthroat business, and its best practitioners historically have had either state support or an easily dominated domestic market at their backs. Cathay and Singapore have never had the latter, and it's a hotly contested debate whether they benefit from the former -- especially when compared with their aggressive new state-owned competitors... Crushed between the tectonic plates of the Chinese and Gulf carriers, the cities' airlines are also geographically disadvantaged. Two-thirds of humanity lives within an eight-hour flight of Emirates' base in Dubai, making it particularly well-placed to link global travelers"
Einstein's travel diaries reveal 'shocking' xenophobia - "Ze’ev Rosenkranz, senior editor and assistant director of the Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology, said: “I think a lot of comments strike us as pretty unpleasant – what he says about the Chinese in particular. “They’re kind of in contrast to the public image of the great humanitarian icon. I think it’s quite a shock to read those and contrast them with his more public statements. They’re more off guard, he didn’t intend them for publication.”"
Time to tear down all the statues
Chinese internet users are surprisingly sympathetic to Einstein’s racist remarks - "Many in China are saying the physicist’s remarks match their own impressions of what China must have been like in the early 20th century... "Just look at the economic status, education, and hygiene conditions, which most of the common people wouldn’t care that much about because they didn’t have the conditions… He described them as obtuse and blunt but he also said people were industrious.” Some noted Einstein’s descriptions are a lot like those of the famous Chinese writer Lu Xun, whose short stories depicted people’s suffering as they experienced the radical social changes of that time"
Indonesia: Son dies after mother's coffin falls on him in freak accident
New Study Busts the Myth That Knights Couldn't Move Well in Armor - "Medieval scholars have long known that armor worn by knights of that era allowed for far more mobility than most people realize. There’s even a 1924 educational film created by the Metropolitan Museum of New York to address the popular misconception. But until quite recently, little quantitative data was available to support that stance.
Medieval Knight vs Modern Soldier on Assault Course [video] - "they set up this experiment to find out, pitting men in modern combat kit, full fireman’s gear and a full set of armour"
A Medieval Man Used a Knife as a Prosthetic Limb - "he attached a knife to the stump with a cap, buckle, and leather straps, using his teeth. Not only did he survive the amputation and DIY prosthetic attachment, but he lived on for a very long time."
Le combat en armure au XVe siècle - YouTube
Anatomy And Physiology 101: Science Explains Why Butt Hair Exists On The Human Body - "no one actually knows why we have butt hair, but (no pun intended) it may simply exist because there's "no significant evolutionary pressure against it.""
And the award for best writing in a porno movie goes to... - YouTube - "This is from a movie called Trailer Trash Nurses 4"
The Sims Horror Movie - YouTube
The Gobbledy Gooker: Wrestling's Most Bizarre Gimmick
Dora the Explorer Movie Trailer (with Ariel Winter) - YouTube
Ariel Winter Breast Reduction Surgery Exclusive Interview - "Glamour: How did you settle on a D-cup?
Ariel: [My doctor and I] did. I knew for sure that I wasn't going to go bigger than a D because the whole point was to get rid of it! I was a 32F and that was too big for me! My doctor said we shouldn't go bigger than a D, and I agreed. He said he didn't think we should go smaller than a C, and I agreed. And the reason I said that was because I have always been a curvier girl. Always. And I enjoy being a curvier girl. I don't want to be disproportionate again. I have a big butt, I like having a big butt. I didn't want to have a big butt and no boobs!...
Glamour: Have you noticed a change in how people treat you since the surgery?
Ariel: People start looking me in the eye. Guys I'm friends with can start looking me in the eye. Other people I know can finally not turn around and whisper behind my back about, "Are those real? Are those fake?" I've heard that for so many years. Even at 14, people would ask me, "Do you have fake boobs?"
Kobe Bryant's 20-year career also shows how far video games have come - "Bryant, 37, is one of three NBA players still active who debuted in video games as sprites and not as a motion-captured, 3D-modeled and animated figures"
Captain Novolin - Wikipedia - "Captain Novolin is an educational platform video game, starring the eponymous superhero who has type 1 diabetes. It was developed by Sculptured Software and published by Raya Systems for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The game became available to the public in 1992 and was sponsored by Novo Nordisk, makers of the Novolin brand of insulin... Captain Novolin can die if his blood glucose level goes too high or low. Players can earn bonus points by correctly answering questions that relate to diabetes"
Fear is the path to the dark side - "Obsidian on KOTOR2 and what KOTOR3 might have been"
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Critical Mass Catering - "Do some cuisines just lend themselves to mass catering? And do some cultures take it more in their stride?...
Indian food is, in my opinion, perfect and made for mass catering and being mass produced. Let's says a set menu consisting of lamb, chicken, rice, naan bread, a nice salad. Everything is put into curries and put in the middle of the table. It's hot. It still looks like curry. And that's the beauty of Indian food...
The more we cater for, the less kind of we can charge a head... almost like printing just because we've got to make that food anyway in the kitchen. For us, it's just a matter of ordering more ingredients, still producing that food and cooking it with the same staff"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Rosalind Franklin - "When Rosalin Franklin was at Cambridge women couldn't graduate. They didn't technically belong to the university. They were there as a presence but they weren't ordinary students... I get the impression that she would have liked to be remembered not as a woman, but as a scientist who did very, very important work in DNA, in coal, in the tobacco mosaic virus. She was not particularly keen on campaigning for women. That wasn't how she thought of herself. And I think she'd rather be remembered as a great scientist for her scientificry... than for being a pioneering woman or a downtrodden woman or anything else in her identity."
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Sun Tzu and The Art of War - "[According to Sun Wu] Warfare is a last resort so he's not an advocate of warfare... Confucians would also agree with that. The Daoists would definitely agree with it because they think warfare is violence. It's artifice, it takes people away from their natural course. Confucians think that warfare should be unnecessary because if you're a moral leader your own population will follow you but external states will also bring tribute to you. Mohists were willing to wage warfare but they were also pacifists so they were only willing to help those who were losing. Sun Wu was different from them in the sense that he thought warfare had a role to play in bringing about order. He thought differently about the role but also the nature of war... it's important to win a victory as fast as possible... morality is far less a concern for him than for any of the others we know of at the time... Just in 2015, there were 240 books published in China and in Japan, and partly in the West about the Sun Tzu. And these include a certain number of scholarly, academic publications, but also books about Sun Tzu and the Mao. And Sun Tzu and management"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Tocqueville: Democracy in America - "I've never been to a place like this before. This is quite astonishing place. What holds it together, what holds it together is the fact that Americans want to make money. And the other thing is their self interest. And he's never seen, I've never seen anything like this book because as Robert says previous republics have been held together by virtue. This is not being held together by virtue, it's being held together by the desire to make money. And the pursuit of self interest... While Americans disagree on something, conversation, discussion will flourish. Once they've made up their mind the majority will silence all opinions. That's beginning that fear about the power of public opinion... in a country which is held together by the desire to make money, by self interest, the primary concern will be a desire for comfort, material well being and majority will impose that, that desire at the expense of liberty. They will place well being before liberty. And if it's one thing Tocqueville stands for, it's you should always place Liberty above other considerations...
Despotism traditionally would be described as rule by fear and the rule by one person... What's new here. It's not, it's not fear, it's public opinion that is doing the work and it's not one person, it's the mass of the people. And I think Tocqueville is just about the first person to identify this as a very, very serious threat to liberty... we've got the people, which in the face is a good thing. Of course, the people should rule. But what Tocqueville was trying to say is be very careful because within the rule of the people, there's a new danger about which we have to be very, very concerned and that is the power of public opinion, and once public opinion comes into play, you're silenced... you might wish to marry an African Americans and so on, it might be perfectly legal, but you can't because the weight of public opinion will deter you from doing so. So he is identifying something very, very new. Upon which later writers like John Stuart Mill will build"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Almoravid Empire - "One of the features of the Almoravids. The men wear veils, but the women often don't... women have a lot of political and cultural autonomy, which is important to them."
Daisuke Shima Heralds in 10 Years of an Erect Japan - "Daisuke Shima, celebrated actor and the star of the upcoming series “Mom is a Transvestite”, welcomed in the tenth anniversary of Viagra’s Japanese debut by launching its “Hardness is a Man’s Honorable Decoration (硬さは男の勲章)” campaign... while most agree with the western stereotype that Asian men tend to be on the small side, the Japanese hold the fierce belief that they are much harder than Americans."
The Alt-Centrist - Posts - "Enforcing border control and immigration policy is hate speech.
The user who posted this has been zucc'd and cannot even appeal due to account restrictions.
#HateSpeech"
Posting on Facebook that you should use the navy to prevent illegal immigrants from coming to your country by picking them up, sinking their empty boats and returning them to their home country from where they can "apply for residency/asylum like everyone else" is considered hate speech and is a zucc-able offence
South Korea: Shin Tae-yong made players swap shirts to try to confuse opposition - "South Korea's coach says he made his players wear different numbered shirts in recent friendlies to confuse opponents who he says cannot tell them apart... "They might know a few of our players but it is very difficult for Westerners to distinguish between Asians and that's why we did that.""
Risotto, robotics and virtual reality: how Canada created the world's best libraries - "Given that books and articles can now often be accessed by other means, the Toronto Public Library network has tried to move beyond the original (but still significant) mandate of maintaining physical collections. It sees its relevance in providing programmes and services, as well as in facilitating free, or cheap, use of technologies that might otherwise only be available in exclusive spaces, such as art schools or science laboratories."
Labour suspends activist challenging gender self-identification policy - "Labour has suspended an activist who attempted to stand as women’s officer while claiming he identified as a woman “on Wednesdays”, as the party’s ruling body reaffirmed transgender women were eligible to stand on all-women shortlists... The party recently suspended a number of campaigners who vociferously opposed the policy of allowing trans women to be on all-women shortlists, including several who had crowdfunded a legal challenge to the policy."
If you can identify as a pastafarian...
Meet the man standing to be a Labour party women’s officer | Coffee House - "David Lewis... is a member of the Labour Party. After several years of supporting the party, he became a full member last year having been “inspired” by Jeremy Corbyn... Generally, equalities law doesn’t allow organisations such as Labour to reserve jobs or services for any particular group, but the Equality Act 2010 includes some exemptions for single-sex services... Some women have resigned from Labour over this issue... Many (but not all) of the people who raise questions about self-identified gender rules are women, women who are struggling to make their voices heard in what passes for the public debate about gender, because those who speak out are at risk of abuse and accusations of transphobic bigotry. Or even being assaulted."
Apparently discrimination against genderfluid people is alright
From 2014 - before Antifa started causing trouble in the US. It's just a matter of time before antifa attacks the house and car of someone who denies being part of a "far right" group too. Unsurprisingly in the interview they support communism
Comment: "The "Revolutionary Front" would be easy to sympathize with if it wasn't for the fact they are so incompetent that they've attacked Slovakian immigrants mistaking them for Swedish nationalists, they have also hacked down an elderly widows door then smashed all her belongings because the previous occupant had voted for a nationalist party. If they had just kept it between them and nationalists in streetfights then I'd have no problem with them, but the fact they constantly ambush people for voting parties they dislike, attacking random apolitical people for having shaved heads or for vandalising others property has made me hate them entirely. They need to be shut down by the government. They are a terrorist organization and are far more violent and dangerous to the average person in Sweden than nationalists. They can't even call themselves antifascists when they attack members of the fucking liberal party for disagreeing with them, and they always jump them from behind while outnumbering the opposition 5-1."
New Research Shows Bitcoin's Meteoric Rise Was a Scam - "Academic researchers at the University of Texas have concluded at least half of Bitcoin's rise to a peak price of nearly $20,000 last year was due to manipulation by traders on Bitfinex, the primary Bitcoin exchange, using another cryptocurrency called Tether to boost prices when they dipped on other exchanges."
High cost of housing drives up homeless rates, UCLA study indicates - "higher median rent and home prices are strongly correlated with more people living on the streets or in shelters. The research backs other studies that have found a similar relationship."
Trump was right. The rest of the G7 were wrong | George Monbiot - "In arguing for a sunset clause to the Nafta trade agreement, this odious man is exposing the corruption of liberal democracy"
When the Guardian agrees with Donald Trump
Women shun cycling because of safety, not helmet hair | Helen Pidd - "Some 76% of women who already cycled or wanted to start said segregated lanes would help them to cycle more... The main reason most women don’t cycle in the UK is because they think it is dangerous. You can tell them until the cows come home that the roads are statistically safe, and that you are more likely to be killed walking than on a bicycle. But when they sit on the top deck of a bus and look down to see a cyclist squashed up against the kerb they feel no compulsion whatsoever to join them. Women do seem to be more vulnerable, perhaps because they are often more reluctant to “own” the lane and so end up in the gutter: 10 out of 13 cyclists killed in London in 2009 were women, and eight of them were killed by left-turning HGVs, according to the campaign group Cycling UK. Xavier Brice, at Sustrans, believes city planners are to blame. “Fifty-one per cent of the UK population is female, yet most of our cities are failing to design roads and streets for women to cycle”"
Apparently women being more risk averse than men or worse cyclists than men aren't possibilities
Travel Experts Reveal 10 Ways To Save On Travel - "the cheapest days to travel are Tuesday, followed by Wednesday, and then Saturday... There are sites to set up accommodations for travelers to house-sit, or to actually swap homes for a period of time. This is a great way to get to know a new city without spending a ton of money."
The Decline and Fall of Asia's Airline Empires - "That's left the two cities' airlines exposed. Long-haul international aviation is a cutthroat business, and its best practitioners historically have had either state support or an easily dominated domestic market at their backs. Cathay and Singapore have never had the latter, and it's a hotly contested debate whether they benefit from the former -- especially when compared with their aggressive new state-owned competitors... Crushed between the tectonic plates of the Chinese and Gulf carriers, the cities' airlines are also geographically disadvantaged. Two-thirds of humanity lives within an eight-hour flight of Emirates' base in Dubai, making it particularly well-placed to link global travelers"
Einstein's travel diaries reveal 'shocking' xenophobia - "Ze’ev Rosenkranz, senior editor and assistant director of the Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology, said: “I think a lot of comments strike us as pretty unpleasant – what he says about the Chinese in particular. “They’re kind of in contrast to the public image of the great humanitarian icon. I think it’s quite a shock to read those and contrast them with his more public statements. They’re more off guard, he didn’t intend them for publication.”"
Time to tear down all the statues
Chinese internet users are surprisingly sympathetic to Einstein’s racist remarks - "Many in China are saying the physicist’s remarks match their own impressions of what China must have been like in the early 20th century... "Just look at the economic status, education, and hygiene conditions, which most of the common people wouldn’t care that much about because they didn’t have the conditions… He described them as obtuse and blunt but he also said people were industrious.” Some noted Einstein’s descriptions are a lot like those of the famous Chinese writer Lu Xun, whose short stories depicted people’s suffering as they experienced the radical social changes of that time"
Indonesia: Son dies after mother's coffin falls on him in freak accident
New Study Busts the Myth That Knights Couldn't Move Well in Armor - "Medieval scholars have long known that armor worn by knights of that era allowed for far more mobility than most people realize. There’s even a 1924 educational film created by the Metropolitan Museum of New York to address the popular misconception. But until quite recently, little quantitative data was available to support that stance.
Medieval Knight vs Modern Soldier on Assault Course [video] - "they set up this experiment to find out, pitting men in modern combat kit, full fireman’s gear and a full set of armour"
A Medieval Man Used a Knife as a Prosthetic Limb - "he attached a knife to the stump with a cap, buckle, and leather straps, using his teeth. Not only did he survive the amputation and DIY prosthetic attachment, but he lived on for a very long time."
Le combat en armure au XVe siècle - YouTube
Anatomy And Physiology 101: Science Explains Why Butt Hair Exists On The Human Body - "no one actually knows why we have butt hair, but (no pun intended) it may simply exist because there's "no significant evolutionary pressure against it.""
And the award for best writing in a porno movie goes to... - YouTube - "This is from a movie called Trailer Trash Nurses 4"
The Sims Horror Movie - YouTube
The Gobbledy Gooker: Wrestling's Most Bizarre Gimmick
Dora the Explorer Movie Trailer (with Ariel Winter) - YouTube
Ariel Winter Breast Reduction Surgery Exclusive Interview - "Glamour: How did you settle on a D-cup?
Ariel: [My doctor and I] did. I knew for sure that I wasn't going to go bigger than a D because the whole point was to get rid of it! I was a 32F and that was too big for me! My doctor said we shouldn't go bigger than a D, and I agreed. He said he didn't think we should go smaller than a C, and I agreed. And the reason I said that was because I have always been a curvier girl. Always. And I enjoy being a curvier girl. I don't want to be disproportionate again. I have a big butt, I like having a big butt. I didn't want to have a big butt and no boobs!...
Glamour: Have you noticed a change in how people treat you since the surgery?
Ariel: People start looking me in the eye. Guys I'm friends with can start looking me in the eye. Other people I know can finally not turn around and whisper behind my back about, "Are those real? Are those fake?" I've heard that for so many years. Even at 14, people would ask me, "Do you have fake boobs?"
Kobe Bryant's 20-year career also shows how far video games have come - "Bryant, 37, is one of three NBA players still active who debuted in video games as sprites and not as a motion-captured, 3D-modeled and animated figures"
Captain Novolin - Wikipedia - "Captain Novolin is an educational platform video game, starring the eponymous superhero who has type 1 diabetes. It was developed by Sculptured Software and published by Raya Systems for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The game became available to the public in 1992 and was sponsored by Novo Nordisk, makers of the Novolin brand of insulin... Captain Novolin can die if his blood glucose level goes too high or low. Players can earn bonus points by correctly answering questions that relate to diabetes"
Fear is the path to the dark side - "Obsidian on KOTOR2 and what KOTOR3 might have been"
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Critical Mass Catering - "Do some cuisines just lend themselves to mass catering? And do some cultures take it more in their stride?...
Indian food is, in my opinion, perfect and made for mass catering and being mass produced. Let's says a set menu consisting of lamb, chicken, rice, naan bread, a nice salad. Everything is put into curries and put in the middle of the table. It's hot. It still looks like curry. And that's the beauty of Indian food...
The more we cater for, the less kind of we can charge a head... almost like printing just because we've got to make that food anyway in the kitchen. For us, it's just a matter of ordering more ingredients, still producing that food and cooking it with the same staff"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Rosalind Franklin - "When Rosalin Franklin was at Cambridge women couldn't graduate. They didn't technically belong to the university. They were there as a presence but they weren't ordinary students... I get the impression that she would have liked to be remembered not as a woman, but as a scientist who did very, very important work in DNA, in coal, in the tobacco mosaic virus. She was not particularly keen on campaigning for women. That wasn't how she thought of herself. And I think she'd rather be remembered as a great scientist for her scientificry... than for being a pioneering woman or a downtrodden woman or anything else in her identity."
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Sun Tzu and The Art of War - "[According to Sun Wu] Warfare is a last resort so he's not an advocate of warfare... Confucians would also agree with that. The Daoists would definitely agree with it because they think warfare is violence. It's artifice, it takes people away from their natural course. Confucians think that warfare should be unnecessary because if you're a moral leader your own population will follow you but external states will also bring tribute to you. Mohists were willing to wage warfare but they were also pacifists so they were only willing to help those who were losing. Sun Wu was different from them in the sense that he thought warfare had a role to play in bringing about order. He thought differently about the role but also the nature of war... it's important to win a victory as fast as possible... morality is far less a concern for him than for any of the others we know of at the time... Just in 2015, there were 240 books published in China and in Japan, and partly in the West about the Sun Tzu. And these include a certain number of scholarly, academic publications, but also books about Sun Tzu and the Mao. And Sun Tzu and management"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Tocqueville: Democracy in America - "I've never been to a place like this before. This is quite astonishing place. What holds it together, what holds it together is the fact that Americans want to make money. And the other thing is their self interest. And he's never seen, I've never seen anything like this book because as Robert says previous republics have been held together by virtue. This is not being held together by virtue, it's being held together by the desire to make money. And the pursuit of self interest... While Americans disagree on something, conversation, discussion will flourish. Once they've made up their mind the majority will silence all opinions. That's beginning that fear about the power of public opinion... in a country which is held together by the desire to make money, by self interest, the primary concern will be a desire for comfort, material well being and majority will impose that, that desire at the expense of liberty. They will place well being before liberty. And if it's one thing Tocqueville stands for, it's you should always place Liberty above other considerations...
Despotism traditionally would be described as rule by fear and the rule by one person... What's new here. It's not, it's not fear, it's public opinion that is doing the work and it's not one person, it's the mass of the people. And I think Tocqueville is just about the first person to identify this as a very, very serious threat to liberty... we've got the people, which in the face is a good thing. Of course, the people should rule. But what Tocqueville was trying to say is be very careful because within the rule of the people, there's a new danger about which we have to be very, very concerned and that is the power of public opinion, and once public opinion comes into play, you're silenced... you might wish to marry an African Americans and so on, it might be perfectly legal, but you can't because the weight of public opinion will deter you from doing so. So he is identifying something very, very new. Upon which later writers like John Stuart Mill will build"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Almoravid Empire - "One of the features of the Almoravids. The men wear veils, but the women often don't... women have a lot of political and cultural autonomy, which is important to them."
Daisuke Shima Heralds in 10 Years of an Erect Japan - "Daisuke Shima, celebrated actor and the star of the upcoming series “Mom is a Transvestite”, welcomed in the tenth anniversary of Viagra’s Japanese debut by launching its “Hardness is a Man’s Honorable Decoration (硬さは男の勲章)” campaign... while most agree with the western stereotype that Asian men tend to be on the small side, the Japanese hold the fierce belief that they are much harder than Americans."
The Alt-Centrist - Posts - "Enforcing border control and immigration policy is hate speech.
The user who posted this has been zucc'd and cannot even appeal due to account restrictions.
#HateSpeech"
Posting on Facebook that you should use the navy to prevent illegal immigrants from coming to your country by picking them up, sinking their empty boats and returning them to their home country from where they can "apply for residency/asylum like everyone else" is considered hate speech and is a zucc-able offence
South Korea: Shin Tae-yong made players swap shirts to try to confuse opposition - "South Korea's coach says he made his players wear different numbered shirts in recent friendlies to confuse opponents who he says cannot tell them apart... "They might know a few of our players but it is very difficult for Westerners to distinguish between Asians and that's why we did that.""
Risotto, robotics and virtual reality: how Canada created the world's best libraries - "Given that books and articles can now often be accessed by other means, the Toronto Public Library network has tried to move beyond the original (but still significant) mandate of maintaining physical collections. It sees its relevance in providing programmes and services, as well as in facilitating free, or cheap, use of technologies that might otherwise only be available in exclusive spaces, such as art schools or science laboratories."
Labour suspends activist challenging gender self-identification policy - "Labour has suspended an activist who attempted to stand as women’s officer while claiming he identified as a woman “on Wednesdays”, as the party’s ruling body reaffirmed transgender women were eligible to stand on all-women shortlists... The party recently suspended a number of campaigners who vociferously opposed the policy of allowing trans women to be on all-women shortlists, including several who had crowdfunded a legal challenge to the policy."
If you can identify as a pastafarian...
Meet the man standing to be a Labour party women’s officer | Coffee House - "David Lewis... is a member of the Labour Party. After several years of supporting the party, he became a full member last year having been “inspired” by Jeremy Corbyn... Generally, equalities law doesn’t allow organisations such as Labour to reserve jobs or services for any particular group, but the Equality Act 2010 includes some exemptions for single-sex services... Some women have resigned from Labour over this issue... Many (but not all) of the people who raise questions about self-identified gender rules are women, women who are struggling to make their voices heard in what passes for the public debate about gender, because those who speak out are at risk of abuse and accusations of transphobic bigotry. Or even being assaulted."
Apparently discrimination against genderfluid people is alright
Post ID: 2732548524379126398
Monday, August 20, 2018
Links - 20th August 2018 (2)
This Campaign Against Sexual Violence Strongly Favors Female Victims, Strips Men Of Due Process - "the first page proposes the proper attitude of law enforcement. It reads, “I am a criminal investigator … When someone tells me they were raped or sexually assaulted, I Start by Believing.” The necessary corollary is belief in the accused’s guilt. The Start by Believing approach is spreading to law enforcement professionals throughout America through publications such as “Start by Believing to Improve Responses to Sexual Assault and Prevent Gender Bias,” which is funded by a DOJ grant. By contrast, the Center for Prosecutor Integrity (CPI) insists that law enforcement should be evidence-driven and unbiased. Equal respect should be extended to accusers and to the accused. Start by Believing’s championing of bias led the non-profit CPI to file a complaint, dated February 1, with the DOJ Office of Inspector General (OIG). The DOJ’s funding of Start by Believing, CPI states, is an “abusive use of federal grant monies.”"
The Proud Whopper? This is not the gay liberation we fought for | Julie Bindel - "Almost every aspect of gay life has been commercialised – we can buy sperm, gay-themed wedding services, and holidays – and whenever there is a gay festival or event, the banks, airlines, restaurant chains and other large companies are usually there to profit, all in the name of supporting our quest for equality... Lesbians and gay men have accepted a fake, highly limited liberation which involves spending and sponsorship, and embraces the notion of inviting church and state back into our relationships (preferably monogamous, with mortgages and babies). In the radical days of the Gay Liberation Front, both lesbians and gay men wanted to abolish marriage, not be invited to join this oppressive, patriarchal regime. As Jill Tweedie wrote in this newspaper in 1971, Gay Lib does not plead for the right of homosexuals to marry, "Gay Lib questions marriage"."
“Avocado hand” injuries on the rise - "the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons is seeing a growing number of patients in the emergency room as a result of "avocado hand" – injuries from failed attempts to cut an avocado."
Netflix film crews 'banned from looking at each other for longer than five seconds' in #metoo crackdown - "New rules imposed on set reportedly include no looking at anyone for longer than five seconds, no lingering hugs, no flirting and no asking for a colleague's phone number... “It has sparked jokes," they added, "with people looking at each other, counting to five, then diverting their eyes.”"
#nottheonion
McGill music student awarded $350,000 after girlfriend stalls career - "Abramovitz never got the email. Jennifer Lee, a fellow McGill music student and Abramovitz’s girlfriend at the time, did. They had started dating in September 2013, and within a month he was staying at her apartment almost full time. He trusted her. He let her use his laptop. He gave her his passwords. Scared he would move away and perhaps no longer be in a relationship with her, Lee deleted the email. She sent the Colburn Conservatory of Music an email, pretending to be Abramovitz, refusing the offer because he would “be elsewhere.”"
Cancer Research UK drops the word 'women' from smear test campaign to include transgender men
Does Marvel Not Own the Rights to Make an Incredible Hulk Film? - "Disney tried to get the distribution rights from Universal, but Universal is uninterested in selling. They plan on using their rights to distribute any future Hulk movie. Disney is not interested in another studio distributing their property, so we remain at an impasse. The Hulk can continue to appear in other Marvel films, but Disney, for now, at least, seem like they are not willing to put out a new “Hulk” movie under this current arrangement"
Canada detains hundreds of children for immigration violations, report finds - "Canada regularly detains hundreds of children who have run afoul of the country’s immigration laws – including some who are held in correctional facilities and even in solitary confinement, according to a new report calling for sweeping reforms to the practice."
But when Trump does it...
Feminist Scholars Defend Female Professor Accused of Sexual Misconduct - "Avital Ronell, a professor of German and comparative literature at New York University, is currently facing a Title IX investigation over alleged sexual misconduct. Astonishingly, feminist professors around the country are arguing that the investigation is unfair... The group of academics who signed the letter doesn’t claim to have any reason to dispute the facts behind the allegation against Ronell. However, they claim that terminating Ronell would be an “injustice.”... It’s important to note that these scholars are the architects behind most of the major women’s movements in America today. These are the same movements that advocate for “always believing victims” of sexual assault. It seems, however, that they can not consistently apply the principles they espouse when the person on the receiving end is a colleague that they feel has been wrongfully accused of misconduct."
Listen and believe - when the 'victim' is female and the 'perpetrator' is male. Par for the course for feminism/feminists
Interestingly, the Title IX complaint by a male student of sexual assault by his female professor concluded since he did not have “corroborating witnesses,” there was “insufficient evidence to find, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Professor Ronell engaged in prohibited non-consensual sexual contact.” So hopefully male students accused of sexual misconduct at NYU now have the same protections as women (or female feminists, anyway)
What Happens to #MeToo When a Feminist Is the Accused? - The New York Times - "Mr. Reitman, who is now 34 and is a visiting fellow at Harvard, says that Professor Ronell kissed and touched him repeatedly, slept in his bed with him, required him to lie in her bed, held his hand, texted, emailed and called him constantly, and refused to work with him if he did not reciprocate. Mr. Reitman is gay and is now married to a man; Professor Ronell is a lesbian. Professor Ronell, 66, denied any harassment. “Our communications — which Reitman now claims constituted sexual harassment — were between two adults, a gay man and a queer woman"... Professor Ronell and some who are backing her have tried to discredit her accuser in familiar ways, asking why he took so long to report, and why he seemed so intimate with Professor Ronell if he was, in fact, miserable. Maybe, Professor Ronell suggested, he was frustrated because he just wasn’t smart enough... she and her colleagues were particularly disturbed that, as they saw it, Mr. Reitman was using Title IX, a feminist tool, to take down a feminist."
Apparently women can't hold any power over men, only vice versa, victim blaming is okay if it's from feminists against men and feminists should be immune from feminist scrutiny and feminist logic
Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek wrote a letter saying Avital Ronell's Title IX investigation is unfair - "The sentiments in the letter go directly against the basic principles that most agree on when it comes to how to respond to sexual-assault allegations: Its writers malign the accuser, suggest the accused’s prominence should influence how they’re treated, and claim—without conducting an investigation of their own or providing evidence—that the accused cannot be found guilty. It also portrays the act of investigating as actively harmful to the accused."
How a Letter Defending Avital Ronell Sparked Confusion and Condemnation - "Brian Leiter, a professor at the Law School at the University of Chicago who writes a widely read blog about philosophy, posted a link to the letter. Leiter made clear his view on the professors’ appeal for Ronell. He published the message under the heading: "Blaming the victim is apparently OK when the accused in a Title IX proceeding is a feminist literary theorist."... Judith Butler, a professor of critical theory and comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley, was the first name on the list of signatories. (Butler, whose work on gender and sexuality is broadly influential, is also president-elect of the Modern Language Association.) She said in an email to The Chronicle that the letter pulled from Leiter’s blog was an "incorrect version" and that it contained errors in the list of names. Butler declined to provide a correct version of the letter or explain how this version was incorrect... Leiter wrote in his blog that "the signatory list reads like a ‘who’s who’ of ‘theory’ (as they call bad philosophy in literature departments).""
Not In The Name Of Feminism: Nothing About the Defence of Professor Ronell is Feminist - "A person of grace and wit and intellectual mastery is entitled to the same respect and dignity accorded to anyone accused of an offence–no more, no less. That is the very essence of the rule of law. In what seems to be a veiled warning to the University, the letter continues that, “if she were to be terminated or relieved of her duties, the injustice would be widely recognized and opposed. The ensuing loss for the humanities, for New York University, and for intellectual life during these times would be no less than enormous and would rightly invite widespread and intense public scrutiny.” The sheer sense of entitlement that oozes is palpable, in that they seem to care less whether the truth is discovered and appropriately handled, but emphasise that certain outcomes would invite backlash and ‘rightly’ so... Irrespective of the evidence or the substance of allegations therefore, they have decided that they will oppose the judgment"
This is what a feminist looks like/this is what feminists look like
Twitter Removes Louis Farrakhan's Blue Checkmark, Leaves Hate-Sermon - "Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan lost his verified status with Twitter over the weekend after he tweeted out a video about “unmasking the Satanic Jew and the Synagogue of Satan.” The hate-sermon has not been removed by Twitter."
Twitter Is Banning Conservatives for Posting Facts
Harvard Rated Asian-American Applicants Lower on Personality Traits, Suit Says - The New York Times - "Harvard consistently rated Asian-American applicants lower than others on traits like “positive personality,” likability, courage, kindness and being “widely respected,” according to an analysis of more than 160,000 student records filed Friday by a group representing Asian-American students in a lawsuit against the university. Asian-Americans scored higher than applicants of any other racial or ethnic group on admissions measures like test scores, grades and extracurricular activities, according to the analysis commissioned by a group that opposes all race-based admissions criteria. But the students’ personal ratings significantly dragged down their chances of being admitted, the analysis found."
Where to Find Bangkok’s Best Street Food While You Can - The New York Times - "Even Pritipal Singh Sirikumar, whose stand selling crisp, yummy samosas was founded by his father some 50 years ago, dreamed of moving from his open-air nook — about the size of a couch — at the corner of a Chinatown soi. He said it would be to have his own shophouse. “Then we can put in tables and chairs. We can serve more customers. I will serve lassi.” Mr. Sirikumar’s sentiments were echoed by people like Pongsuang Kunprasop, known as Note, a friend I hadn’t seen in a decade but who refused to eat street food with me. “Been sharing sidewalks with rats and cockroach at night for all my life,” he wrote in an email. Over the course of a week, I did not see much vermin, nor did I fall ill. (I did carry charcoal pills, a gift from Ms. Songvisava and Mr. Jones, said to counteract food poisoning.) But I also came to appreciate the appeal of air-conditioning, and to understand that the romance attached to the cart, by Thais as well as Westerners, does not always mesh with reality... Addresses for many of the vendors are nonexistent or nonsensical, but this Google Map shows just about every place I visited"
What made the friendship between Scalia and Ginsburg work - The Washington Post - "One former clerk told us Scalia was Ginsburg’s favored souvenir shopping buddy when they traveled together. On a trip to India, they famously rode an elephant, with Scalia sitting up front. What about feminism? “It had to do with the distribution of weight,” Ginsburg deadpanned slyly. They shared New Year’s Eves with their families and friends: “Scalia kills it and Marty [Ginsburg, Ruth’s husband] cooks it,” recalled one guest, former Bush solicitor general Theodore Olson. “I never heard them talk about anything political or ideological, because there would be no point”... “If you can’t disagree ardently with your colleagues about some issues of law and yet personally still be friends, get another job, for Pete’s sake,” is how Scalia once described their lifetime appointments. “As annoyed as you might be about his zinging dissent, he’s so utterly charming, so amusing, so sometimes outrageous, you can’t help but say, ‘I’m glad that he’s my friend or he’s my colleague,’ ” Ginsburg said. Sometimes, she said, she had to pinch herself to not laugh in the courtroom when Scalia said something audacious. Even in that VMI case, Ginsburg was grateful for how Scalia disagreed: giving her a copy of his dissent as soon as possible, so she could properly respond. “He absolutely ruined my weekend, but my opinion is ever so much better because of his stinging dissent,” she said. Whether or not it was how Scalia saw it, for Ginsburg their public friendship also made a statement about the court as an institution: that it was strengthened by respectful debate, that it could work no matter how polarized its members were."
For vulnerable high school girls in Japan, a culture of ‘dates’ with older men - The Washington Post - "“It’s easy to talk to these girls,” said one man in his 30s who was sitting at a wooden school desk in AKB High School, a cafe in Akihabara, a part of Tokyo known for its subcultures. A 17-year-old girl in a school uniform brought the man and his colleague, both of whom declined to give their names, beers and chitchat. “We actually find regular bars uninteresting these days,” he said. “I got tired of regular bars with old women.” They admitted that the uniforms are a big part of the attraction. “They look so cute,” said his friend, in his 40s. “The uniforms make them look one and a half times cuter than they actually are.” This is Japan’s shady “JK” or “high school dating” business. (“Joshi kosei” means “high school girl” in Japanese, and the English initials JK are universally used here to describe the practice.)... There are various levels of high school dating, starting with cafes staffed by underage girls and peep shows where high school girls sit behind a one-way mirror in their school uniforms, posing according to customers’ requests. There is also “tour guiding,” when girls go for a walk with men, a walk that often ends with some kind of sexual service, and the straightforward “compensated dating” — being paid for sex. Kazue Muta, a professor of sociology and gender studies at Osaka University, said the element of taboo makes girls in school uniforms sexually attractive to men. “Japan is a patriarchal society, and it has this mentality that the young and seemingly innocent are valuable and more alluring,” she said... Although the age of consent in Japan is technically 13, in most places local ordinances increase it to 18... “Many Japanese men find something erotic in a school uniform,” Taka said. “They are disappointed if they find out she’s not still at school.” Girls involved in the JK business are insistent that they choose to do this work, and Taka says it’s not exploitation because the girls want to be in the business. “When we recruit for girls under 18, we’re flooded with applications.” Mio, a 17-year-old in her second year of high school in Tokyo, started in this business last year, having sex with a man in a karaoke room for $30. “When I’m at home at night, I get lonely and want to be needed by someone. That’s when I do it,”
WHO | Q&A on the carcinogenicity of the consumption of red meat and processed meat - "processed meat has been classified in the same category as causes of cancer such as tobacco smoking and asbestos (IARC Group 1, carcinogenic to humans), but this does NOT mean that they are all equally dangerous. The IARC classifications describe the strength of the scientific evidence about an agent being a cause of cancer, rather than assessing the level of risk...
According to the most recent estimates by the Global Burden of Disease Project, an independent academic research organization, about 34 000 cancer deaths per year worldwide are attributable to diets high in processed meat. Eating red meat has not yet been established as a cause of cancer. However, if the reported associations were proven to be causal, the Global Burden of Disease Project has estimated that diets high in red meat could be responsible for 50 000 cancer deaths per year worldwide. These numbers contrast with about 1 million cancer deaths per year globally due to tobacco smoking, 600 000 per year due to alcohol consumption, and more than 200 000 per year due to air pollution...
Eating meat has known health benefits"
The Supreme Court decides that faith is now banned from Canada’s public spaces - "Trinity Western University suffered a stinging loss in the Supreme Court of Canada on Friday, which found that law societies in B.C. and Ontario were justified in not accrediting the university’s prospective law school because of its policy on premarital sex. But no one should harbour any illusions that the pain will be limited to the small Christian school in B.C.’s Fraser Valley."
Iranian Feminist Says Western Feminists Make Things Worse for Her Cause at Home
DNA "Nanobots" Choke Off Cancer Blood Supply In Study - "This study was done in mice, so there’s still a long ways to go before the nanobots come anywhere close to being deployed in humans. The tech, however, is fascinating; it involves recruiting engineered DNA bots to home in on cancerous cells to inject them with a deadly payload... The programmed DNA bots avoided causing any clotting or harm to healthy cells."
I,Hypocrite - Posts - "@liltigerbabe: Can someone at @sony please explain why you chose NOT to hire a Japanese performer to wear traditional Japanese wardrobe, for a Japanese game? This is extremely offensive to your Asian-American consumers and blatant cultural appropriation. Please explain
Ghost of Tsushima Theme Music Flute Performance at E3 2018
@mombot Hello. I am Japanese. Let me explain: That man is one of the few living people officially recognized as a master of that instrument. If you don't believe me, you may Google "Cornelius Boots". He has dedicated his life to his art. As for the attitude you have, and the outcome you probably hope to achieve Please reconsider
"If someone says that you can't do or be something because yof your skin color, and you are racist if you do, the racist probably isn't you."
I don't work at @sony, but I hope my explanation was clear. Did you have any other technical or cultural questions today, @liltigerbabe?
Another satisfied customer. *You are blocked*
Sorry that page doesn't exist!""
Plus, apparently SJWs don't know that Sony is a Japanese company
The Proud Whopper? This is not the gay liberation we fought for | Julie Bindel - "Almost every aspect of gay life has been commercialised – we can buy sperm, gay-themed wedding services, and holidays – and whenever there is a gay festival or event, the banks, airlines, restaurant chains and other large companies are usually there to profit, all in the name of supporting our quest for equality... Lesbians and gay men have accepted a fake, highly limited liberation which involves spending and sponsorship, and embraces the notion of inviting church and state back into our relationships (preferably monogamous, with mortgages and babies). In the radical days of the Gay Liberation Front, both lesbians and gay men wanted to abolish marriage, not be invited to join this oppressive, patriarchal regime. As Jill Tweedie wrote in this newspaper in 1971, Gay Lib does not plead for the right of homosexuals to marry, "Gay Lib questions marriage"."
“Avocado hand” injuries on the rise - "the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons is seeing a growing number of patients in the emergency room as a result of "avocado hand" – injuries from failed attempts to cut an avocado."
Netflix film crews 'banned from looking at each other for longer than five seconds' in #metoo crackdown - "New rules imposed on set reportedly include no looking at anyone for longer than five seconds, no lingering hugs, no flirting and no asking for a colleague's phone number... “It has sparked jokes," they added, "with people looking at each other, counting to five, then diverting their eyes.”"
#nottheonion
McGill music student awarded $350,000 after girlfriend stalls career - "Abramovitz never got the email. Jennifer Lee, a fellow McGill music student and Abramovitz’s girlfriend at the time, did. They had started dating in September 2013, and within a month he was staying at her apartment almost full time. He trusted her. He let her use his laptop. He gave her his passwords. Scared he would move away and perhaps no longer be in a relationship with her, Lee deleted the email. She sent the Colburn Conservatory of Music an email, pretending to be Abramovitz, refusing the offer because he would “be elsewhere.”"
Cancer Research UK drops the word 'women' from smear test campaign to include transgender men
Does Marvel Not Own the Rights to Make an Incredible Hulk Film? - "Disney tried to get the distribution rights from Universal, but Universal is uninterested in selling. They plan on using their rights to distribute any future Hulk movie. Disney is not interested in another studio distributing their property, so we remain at an impasse. The Hulk can continue to appear in other Marvel films, but Disney, for now, at least, seem like they are not willing to put out a new “Hulk” movie under this current arrangement"
Canada detains hundreds of children for immigration violations, report finds - "Canada regularly detains hundreds of children who have run afoul of the country’s immigration laws – including some who are held in correctional facilities and even in solitary confinement, according to a new report calling for sweeping reforms to the practice."
But when Trump does it...
Feminist Scholars Defend Female Professor Accused of Sexual Misconduct - "Avital Ronell, a professor of German and comparative literature at New York University, is currently facing a Title IX investigation over alleged sexual misconduct. Astonishingly, feminist professors around the country are arguing that the investigation is unfair... The group of academics who signed the letter doesn’t claim to have any reason to dispute the facts behind the allegation against Ronell. However, they claim that terminating Ronell would be an “injustice.”... It’s important to note that these scholars are the architects behind most of the major women’s movements in America today. These are the same movements that advocate for “always believing victims” of sexual assault. It seems, however, that they can not consistently apply the principles they espouse when the person on the receiving end is a colleague that they feel has been wrongfully accused of misconduct."
Listen and believe - when the 'victim' is female and the 'perpetrator' is male. Par for the course for feminism/feminists
Interestingly, the Title IX complaint by a male student of sexual assault by his female professor concluded since he did not have “corroborating witnesses,” there was “insufficient evidence to find, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Professor Ronell engaged in prohibited non-consensual sexual contact.” So hopefully male students accused of sexual misconduct at NYU now have the same protections as women (or female feminists, anyway)
What Happens to #MeToo When a Feminist Is the Accused? - The New York Times - "Mr. Reitman, who is now 34 and is a visiting fellow at Harvard, says that Professor Ronell kissed and touched him repeatedly, slept in his bed with him, required him to lie in her bed, held his hand, texted, emailed and called him constantly, and refused to work with him if he did not reciprocate. Mr. Reitman is gay and is now married to a man; Professor Ronell is a lesbian. Professor Ronell, 66, denied any harassment. “Our communications — which Reitman now claims constituted sexual harassment — were between two adults, a gay man and a queer woman"... Professor Ronell and some who are backing her have tried to discredit her accuser in familiar ways, asking why he took so long to report, and why he seemed so intimate with Professor Ronell if he was, in fact, miserable. Maybe, Professor Ronell suggested, he was frustrated because he just wasn’t smart enough... she and her colleagues were particularly disturbed that, as they saw it, Mr. Reitman was using Title IX, a feminist tool, to take down a feminist."
Apparently women can't hold any power over men, only vice versa, victim blaming is okay if it's from feminists against men and feminists should be immune from feminist scrutiny and feminist logic
Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek wrote a letter saying Avital Ronell's Title IX investigation is unfair - "The sentiments in the letter go directly against the basic principles that most agree on when it comes to how to respond to sexual-assault allegations: Its writers malign the accuser, suggest the accused’s prominence should influence how they’re treated, and claim—without conducting an investigation of their own or providing evidence—that the accused cannot be found guilty. It also portrays the act of investigating as actively harmful to the accused."
How a Letter Defending Avital Ronell Sparked Confusion and Condemnation - "Brian Leiter, a professor at the Law School at the University of Chicago who writes a widely read blog about philosophy, posted a link to the letter. Leiter made clear his view on the professors’ appeal for Ronell. He published the message under the heading: "Blaming the victim is apparently OK when the accused in a Title IX proceeding is a feminist literary theorist."... Judith Butler, a professor of critical theory and comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley, was the first name on the list of signatories. (Butler, whose work on gender and sexuality is broadly influential, is also president-elect of the Modern Language Association.) She said in an email to The Chronicle that the letter pulled from Leiter’s blog was an "incorrect version" and that it contained errors in the list of names. Butler declined to provide a correct version of the letter or explain how this version was incorrect... Leiter wrote in his blog that "the signatory list reads like a ‘who’s who’ of ‘theory’ (as they call bad philosophy in literature departments).""
Not In The Name Of Feminism: Nothing About the Defence of Professor Ronell is Feminist - "A person of grace and wit and intellectual mastery is entitled to the same respect and dignity accorded to anyone accused of an offence–no more, no less. That is the very essence of the rule of law. In what seems to be a veiled warning to the University, the letter continues that, “if she were to be terminated or relieved of her duties, the injustice would be widely recognized and opposed. The ensuing loss for the humanities, for New York University, and for intellectual life during these times would be no less than enormous and would rightly invite widespread and intense public scrutiny.” The sheer sense of entitlement that oozes is palpable, in that they seem to care less whether the truth is discovered and appropriately handled, but emphasise that certain outcomes would invite backlash and ‘rightly’ so... Irrespective of the evidence or the substance of allegations therefore, they have decided that they will oppose the judgment"
This is what a feminist looks like/this is what feminists look like
Twitter Removes Louis Farrakhan's Blue Checkmark, Leaves Hate-Sermon - "Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan lost his verified status with Twitter over the weekend after he tweeted out a video about “unmasking the Satanic Jew and the Synagogue of Satan.” The hate-sermon has not been removed by Twitter."
Twitter Is Banning Conservatives for Posting Facts
Harvard Rated Asian-American Applicants Lower on Personality Traits, Suit Says - The New York Times - "Harvard consistently rated Asian-American applicants lower than others on traits like “positive personality,” likability, courage, kindness and being “widely respected,” according to an analysis of more than 160,000 student records filed Friday by a group representing Asian-American students in a lawsuit against the university. Asian-Americans scored higher than applicants of any other racial or ethnic group on admissions measures like test scores, grades and extracurricular activities, according to the analysis commissioned by a group that opposes all race-based admissions criteria. But the students’ personal ratings significantly dragged down their chances of being admitted, the analysis found."
Where to Find Bangkok’s Best Street Food While You Can - The New York Times - "Even Pritipal Singh Sirikumar, whose stand selling crisp, yummy samosas was founded by his father some 50 years ago, dreamed of moving from his open-air nook — about the size of a couch — at the corner of a Chinatown soi. He said it would be to have his own shophouse. “Then we can put in tables and chairs. We can serve more customers. I will serve lassi.” Mr. Sirikumar’s sentiments were echoed by people like Pongsuang Kunprasop, known as Note, a friend I hadn’t seen in a decade but who refused to eat street food with me. “Been sharing sidewalks with rats and cockroach at night for all my life,” he wrote in an email. Over the course of a week, I did not see much vermin, nor did I fall ill. (I did carry charcoal pills, a gift from Ms. Songvisava and Mr. Jones, said to counteract food poisoning.) But I also came to appreciate the appeal of air-conditioning, and to understand that the romance attached to the cart, by Thais as well as Westerners, does not always mesh with reality... Addresses for many of the vendors are nonexistent or nonsensical, but this Google Map shows just about every place I visited"
What made the friendship between Scalia and Ginsburg work - The Washington Post - "One former clerk told us Scalia was Ginsburg’s favored souvenir shopping buddy when they traveled together. On a trip to India, they famously rode an elephant, with Scalia sitting up front. What about feminism? “It had to do with the distribution of weight,” Ginsburg deadpanned slyly. They shared New Year’s Eves with their families and friends: “Scalia kills it and Marty [Ginsburg, Ruth’s husband] cooks it,” recalled one guest, former Bush solicitor general Theodore Olson. “I never heard them talk about anything political or ideological, because there would be no point”... “If you can’t disagree ardently with your colleagues about some issues of law and yet personally still be friends, get another job, for Pete’s sake,” is how Scalia once described their lifetime appointments. “As annoyed as you might be about his zinging dissent, he’s so utterly charming, so amusing, so sometimes outrageous, you can’t help but say, ‘I’m glad that he’s my friend or he’s my colleague,’ ” Ginsburg said. Sometimes, she said, she had to pinch herself to not laugh in the courtroom when Scalia said something audacious. Even in that VMI case, Ginsburg was grateful for how Scalia disagreed: giving her a copy of his dissent as soon as possible, so she could properly respond. “He absolutely ruined my weekend, but my opinion is ever so much better because of his stinging dissent,” she said. Whether or not it was how Scalia saw it, for Ginsburg their public friendship also made a statement about the court as an institution: that it was strengthened by respectful debate, that it could work no matter how polarized its members were."
For vulnerable high school girls in Japan, a culture of ‘dates’ with older men - The Washington Post - "“It’s easy to talk to these girls,” said one man in his 30s who was sitting at a wooden school desk in AKB High School, a cafe in Akihabara, a part of Tokyo known for its subcultures. A 17-year-old girl in a school uniform brought the man and his colleague, both of whom declined to give their names, beers and chitchat. “We actually find regular bars uninteresting these days,” he said. “I got tired of regular bars with old women.” They admitted that the uniforms are a big part of the attraction. “They look so cute,” said his friend, in his 40s. “The uniforms make them look one and a half times cuter than they actually are.” This is Japan’s shady “JK” or “high school dating” business. (“Joshi kosei” means “high school girl” in Japanese, and the English initials JK are universally used here to describe the practice.)... There are various levels of high school dating, starting with cafes staffed by underage girls and peep shows where high school girls sit behind a one-way mirror in their school uniforms, posing according to customers’ requests. There is also “tour guiding,” when girls go for a walk with men, a walk that often ends with some kind of sexual service, and the straightforward “compensated dating” — being paid for sex. Kazue Muta, a professor of sociology and gender studies at Osaka University, said the element of taboo makes girls in school uniforms sexually attractive to men. “Japan is a patriarchal society, and it has this mentality that the young and seemingly innocent are valuable and more alluring,” she said... Although the age of consent in Japan is technically 13, in most places local ordinances increase it to 18... “Many Japanese men find something erotic in a school uniform,” Taka said. “They are disappointed if they find out she’s not still at school.” Girls involved in the JK business are insistent that they choose to do this work, and Taka says it’s not exploitation because the girls want to be in the business. “When we recruit for girls under 18, we’re flooded with applications.” Mio, a 17-year-old in her second year of high school in Tokyo, started in this business last year, having sex with a man in a karaoke room for $30. “When I’m at home at night, I get lonely and want to be needed by someone. That’s when I do it,”
WHO | Q&A on the carcinogenicity of the consumption of red meat and processed meat - "processed meat has been classified in the same category as causes of cancer such as tobacco smoking and asbestos (IARC Group 1, carcinogenic to humans), but this does NOT mean that they are all equally dangerous. The IARC classifications describe the strength of the scientific evidence about an agent being a cause of cancer, rather than assessing the level of risk...
According to the most recent estimates by the Global Burden of Disease Project, an independent academic research organization, about 34 000 cancer deaths per year worldwide are attributable to diets high in processed meat. Eating red meat has not yet been established as a cause of cancer. However, if the reported associations were proven to be causal, the Global Burden of Disease Project has estimated that diets high in red meat could be responsible for 50 000 cancer deaths per year worldwide. These numbers contrast with about 1 million cancer deaths per year globally due to tobacco smoking, 600 000 per year due to alcohol consumption, and more than 200 000 per year due to air pollution...
Eating meat has known health benefits"
The Supreme Court decides that faith is now banned from Canada’s public spaces - "Trinity Western University suffered a stinging loss in the Supreme Court of Canada on Friday, which found that law societies in B.C. and Ontario were justified in not accrediting the university’s prospective law school because of its policy on premarital sex. But no one should harbour any illusions that the pain will be limited to the small Christian school in B.C.’s Fraser Valley."
Iranian Feminist Says Western Feminists Make Things Worse for Her Cause at Home
DNA "Nanobots" Choke Off Cancer Blood Supply In Study - "This study was done in mice, so there’s still a long ways to go before the nanobots come anywhere close to being deployed in humans. The tech, however, is fascinating; it involves recruiting engineered DNA bots to home in on cancerous cells to inject them with a deadly payload... The programmed DNA bots avoided causing any clotting or harm to healthy cells."
I,Hypocrite - Posts - "@liltigerbabe: Can someone at @sony please explain why you chose NOT to hire a Japanese performer to wear traditional Japanese wardrobe, for a Japanese game? This is extremely offensive to your Asian-American consumers and blatant cultural appropriation. Please explain
Ghost of Tsushima Theme Music Flute Performance at E3 2018
@mombot Hello. I am Japanese. Let me explain: That man is one of the few living people officially recognized as a master of that instrument. If you don't believe me, you may Google "Cornelius Boots". He has dedicated his life to his art. As for the attitude you have, and the outcome you probably hope to achieve Please reconsider
"If someone says that you can't do or be something because yof your skin color, and you are racist if you do, the racist probably isn't you."
I don't work at @sony, but I hope my explanation was clear. Did you have any other technical or cultural questions today, @liltigerbabe?
Another satisfied customer. *You are blocked*
Sorry that page doesn't exist!""
Plus, apparently SJWs don't know that Sony is a Japanese company
Post ID: 5014281362824364813
Japanese women doctors and society
So recently there was a brouhaha over the Japanese medical school which altered exam scores to keep women out.
The deception and falsification of results is certainly a bad thing, among other things because it affects the integrity of the admissions process.
One cannot say that there is no merit to the school's motivation, though. Per the Time article, "women tend to quit as doctors after starting families, causing hospital staffing shortages".
Japanese female doctors leaving the profession is blamed on the work environment and Japanese society. Even if we took this as the only or overwhelming reason for Japanese female doctors quitting the profession*, it is not clear that it is a medical school's job to change these things (even if it had the power to do this in the first place - which it doesn't).
Not uncoincidentally, Singapore until 2002 imposed a quota on female medical students, for similar reasons. And in Pakistan more than 70% of medical students are women - but only 23% of registered doctors, suggesting that there is a great waste of resources in training female medical doctors; this also has serious implications for their healthcare system.
If one wants to not waste resources and/or benefit society - while still not having any gender discrimination, there're some alternatives.
Medical schools could overbook like airlines. If you expect 50% of women to leave, assuming 50% of your intake is female, boost intake by 25% (simplifying assumption: no men leave). Of course there may be capacity issues in ramping up intake. And this doesn't solve the wastefulness issue. Plus you may over/under plan and end up with too many/few spots.
Remove all subsidies for medical education. If students bear the cost of their education they'll be less likely to drop out of the profession, and the taxpayer won't waste money training doctors who won't stay. Of course you get other problems then, like fewer poor families producing doctors, this making medicine look elitist and the ideal of meritocracy being compromised, but you can't have everything.
Have a bond for doctors to recover the cost of their education. Yet, you can't make it so long that it's prohibitive. And after the bond they can still quit and society still loses out (though less so since they've already worked a while).
So there're no easy answers.
Of course, the politically palatable option (and this most likely outcome) is to continue to heavily subsidise medical education while not having restrictions on intake. As the cost is borne by the taxpayer it is semi-invisible, and most people will be happy.
* - It is notable that even in the US, significantly more women than men leave medicine. And while in Estonia the percentage of women doctors is in the high 70s, in Norway and Sweden they're only around 40% - and in Russia and Eastern Europe a majority of practicing physicians are female (despite - or perhaps because - there is more gender inequality there).
The deception and falsification of results is certainly a bad thing, among other things because it affects the integrity of the admissions process.
One cannot say that there is no merit to the school's motivation, though. Per the Time article, "women tend to quit as doctors after starting families, causing hospital staffing shortages".
Japanese female doctors leaving the profession is blamed on the work environment and Japanese society. Even if we took this as the only or overwhelming reason for Japanese female doctors quitting the profession*, it is not clear that it is a medical school's job to change these things (even if it had the power to do this in the first place - which it doesn't).
Not uncoincidentally, Singapore until 2002 imposed a quota on female medical students, for similar reasons. And in Pakistan more than 70% of medical students are women - but only 23% of registered doctors, suggesting that there is a great waste of resources in training female medical doctors; this also has serious implications for their healthcare system.
If one wants to not waste resources and/or benefit society - while still not having any gender discrimination, there're some alternatives.
Medical schools could overbook like airlines. If you expect 50% of women to leave, assuming 50% of your intake is female, boost intake by 25% (simplifying assumption: no men leave). Of course there may be capacity issues in ramping up intake. And this doesn't solve the wastefulness issue. Plus you may over/under plan and end up with too many/few spots.
Remove all subsidies for medical education. If students bear the cost of their education they'll be less likely to drop out of the profession, and the taxpayer won't waste money training doctors who won't stay. Of course you get other problems then, like fewer poor families producing doctors, this making medicine look elitist and the ideal of meritocracy being compromised, but you can't have everything.
Have a bond for doctors to recover the cost of their education. Yet, you can't make it so long that it's prohibitive. And after the bond they can still quit and society still loses out (though less so since they've already worked a while).
So there're no easy answers.
Of course, the politically palatable option (and this most likely outcome) is to continue to heavily subsidise medical education while not having restrictions on intake. As the cost is borne by the taxpayer it is semi-invisible, and most people will be happy.
* - It is notable that even in the US, significantly more women than men leave medicine. And while in Estonia the percentage of women doctors is in the high 70s, in Norway and Sweden they're only around 40% - and in Russia and Eastern Europe a majority of practicing physicians are female (despite - or perhaps because - there is more gender inequality there).
Post ID: 7177709425620663539
Links - 20th August 2018 (1)
Singapore may have gained over $700m in exposure as host of Trump-Kim summit: Analyst Meltwater
Opinion | How to Lose the Midterms and Re-elect Trump - The New York Times - "“When they go low, we go high,” said another first lady, Michelle Obama, at the Democratic National Convention in 2016. It’s a fine set of marching orders, disobeyed ever since. It was definitely ignored by those of you in the Manhattan theater where the Tony Awards were held on Sunday. You answered De Niro’s expletives with a standing ovation."
EU: Erasmus gives Europe opportunity, love and babies - "One in three Erasmus students hooked up with people from other countries - three times the rate of those who stayed in their native lands for university
EU's Erasmus study abroad programme is 'responsible for 1m babies' - "A study published by the European Commission this week suggests that more than a quarter of those who take part in its long-running Erasmus scheme meet their long-term partner while studying abroad – and that more than one million babies may have been produced as a result... A third of ex-Erasmus students had a partner of a different nationality, compared with 13 per cent of those who stayed at home during their studies... “I call it a sexual revolution: a young Catalan man meets a Flemish girl – they fall in love, they get married and they become European, as do their children. The Erasmus idea should be compulsory – not just for students, but also for taxi drivers, plumbers and other workers. By this, I mean they need to spend time in other countries within the European Union; they should integrate.”... Around 40 per cent of students went on to live and work abroad. Studying abroad also improved the job prospects of young people, it found. Researchers said that while one in five young people in Europe are currently jobless, 64 per cent of the businesses questioned said international experience would make a candidate more employable."
European Commission - PRESS RELEASES - Press release - Erasmus Impact Study confirms EU student exchange scheme boosts employability and job mobility - "92% of employers are looking for personality traits boosted by the programme such as tolerance, confidence, problem-solving skills, curiosity, knowing one's strengths/weaknesses, and decisiveness when making a recruitment decision. Tests before and after exchange periods abroad reveal that Erasmus students show higher values for these personality traits, even before their exchange starts; by the time they come back, the difference in these values increases by 42% on average, compared with other students."
After about a month of complaining to HR with other female coworkers, we finally got this creepy coworker of ours unceremoniously fired! I feel like we scored one for all STEM girls in the house! : TrollXChromosomes - "dude is totally socially-awkward, never talks to anyone, never smiles, when you tell him to cheer up he gets angry and gives you these silly "death stares"... This is more job-related, but he seems to be extra mean in code reviews (for those who don't know about programming, it's when a programmer "reviews" the code another programmer wrote) when the reviewee is a woman. He only talks to male coworkers, although not much, but female coworkers, he shuns. Answers in monosylabes, cuts the conversation short and in a couple of times he's been very rude when doing that."
Man telling woman to smile = misogynist
Woman telling man to smile = he is a misogynist
Social Justice is Popular. But the Rule of Law is Sacrosanct - "I tried to remind people why due-process safeguards exist within our system. The presumption of innocence and the requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal cases—these safeguards are there to protect all of us from the mob and from the state. And on most days, those safeguards don’t protect men such as Gerald Stanley. On most days, they protect disadvantaged black or indigenous men such as Raymond Crump Jr.—because those are the people who are most likely to end up on the wrong side of a prosecution... In life, you have to be careful what you wish for. If you decide that social justice trumps the rule of law, you may be horrified to see how that principle is applied by those whose views you find to be regressive. Due process knows no colour. It knows no gender. It knows no hash tags. That is what makes due process, and the rule of law more generally, so essential to a free society... the impetus toward social justice can damage the rule of law by inciting an attitude of tribalism. If society is depicted as a pastiche of warring groups, in which powerful groups systematically exploit the disadvantaged, then this will encourage everyone to circle the wagons around their own tribe—and even to circumvent the rule of law on behalf of their own tribe if they can get away with it... During my careers as a scientist, a lawyer and a journalist, I have learned to never “just believe” anyone. I have seen great people lie, and bad people tell hard truths. What I believe in is process. As a scientist, I relied on the scientific method and peer review. As a lawyer, I relied on such tools as discovery and cross-examination. As a journalist, I try to interview both sides and let them challenge each other. That is how truth emerges: By clear-eyed scrutiny and by open debate, not blinkered loyalty to one narrative, even if that narrative is coded in the appealing language of social justice"
The Democratic Party’s 2018 View of Identity Politics Is Confusing, and Thus Appears Cynical and Opportunistic - "Clinton supporters constantly accused Obama supporters of being driven by misogyny for opposing the first female president (a charge voiced by Clinton herself), while Obama supporters routinely depicted the Clintons and their supporters as racist due to the nature of their opposition to the first African-American president. The term “Bernie bros,” which became so widespread as a term of recrimination against Sanders supporters in 2016, was actually conceptually invented in 2008 to malign Obama supporters... all of these stalwart, bedrock imperatives of identity politics seem strangely absent from the 2018 election cycle. These professed beliefs, in fact, seem to have vanished from Democratic Party politics almost entirely."
What Really Drives Populism? A Conversation with Dr. Frank Mols - "wealth and affluence are typically associated with heightened anxiety, sense of entitlement, fear of falling, and a host of other pernicious effects of being more affluence... in a meritocracy, poverty is equated with ‘personal failure’, and this explains that people in meritocracy are more prone to become anxious and stressed (fear of falling). In a society where social class is fixed (e.g. India, or Victorian England) this stress is absent because a person’s fortunes are predetermined by birth, and hence ultimately not their responsibility or failure."
Dank Learning: Generating Memes Using Deep Neural Networks
Justin Trudeau Is Running a Milk Racket – Foreign Policy - "You may be tempted to raise an eyebrow when I tell you that the protectionist racket in milk, cheese, eggs, and poultry has become the third rail of Canadian politics. But it should be noted that many otherwise free-trading nations go weird when it comes to food. Japanese rice tariffs have been as high as 1,000 percent. To protect its meat industry, France has passed a law banning the use of labels such as “soy sausage” or “mushroom burger” on vegetarian products. And in the United States, Big Sugar cynically props up a nakedly protectionist law that guarantees a minimum price that’s a quantum leap beyond the amount customers would pay on the global market... “There is an entire country full of consumers — taxpayers and voters — who are paying one and a half to three times more for their milk, other dairy products, chicken and eggs than they should be — amounting to more than $200 more a year per average family"... It isn’t the usual fake news from Trump when he tweets that “Canada charges the U.S. a 270% tariff on Dairy Products!” He’s being only slightly imprecise here: The actual breakdown is 270 percent on milk, 245 percent on cheese, and 298 percent on butter. And, as Hall Findlay has argued, the losers aren’t just foreign exporters but also Canadian consumers."
The World Wants You to Think Like a Realist – Foreign Policy - "Thinking like a realist also helps you understand why states with radically different political systems often act in surprisingly similar ways. To take an obvious example, the United States and Soviet Union could not have been more different in terms of their domestic orders, but their international behavior was much the same... if you think like a realist, you’re likely to be skeptical about the ambitious schemes that idealists keep dreaming up to bring an end to conflict, injustice, inequality, and other bad things. Striving to build a safer and more peaceful world is admirable, but realism reminds us that the ambitious efforts to remake world politics always create unintended consequences and rarely deliver the promised results... you are more likely to act with a degree of prudence, and you’ll be less likely to see opponents as purely evil (or see one’s own country as wholly virtuous) and less likely to embark on open-ended moral crusades. Ironically, if more people thought like realists, the prospects for peace would go up."
【徳島製粉】 金ちゃん ぶっかけうどんCM全集 【全5種】 - YouTube
Bukkake Udon
Mini Power Pork Patty With Epic Meal Time - YouTube
How To Cook Perfect Eggs Every Time - YouTube
Ad of the Day: This Remarkable Makeup Ad With High School Girls Has One Hell of a Twist - "The spot, titled "High School Girl?" and created by Watts of Tokyo, opens with a professor opening the door to her classroom. As a soft female vocalist begins to sing over a loungy beat, we pan slowly across the faces of the girls in the room, who seem ordinary enough: One holds a guitar, another drinks from a bottle of water. At the end of the room, a last girl gives us a knowing look and gazes back down at her book."
The Emerging Fetish of Laying Alien Eggs Inside Yourself - "Recently, while on the internet looking at weird sex things, I came upon the gushing testimony of a young woman who had just discovered Primal Hardwere's patented Ovipositor; one of the most unusual and confronting sex toys I've ever heard of. The Ovipositor is basically a big dildo that lays goopy eggs molded from gelatin in the body cavity of your choice. Fans of the Ovipositor say that the sensation of mushy extraterrestrial ovum slopping back out of them is a real treat."
This Group of Straight Men Is Swearing Off Women - "it's hard to listen to any concerns—valid or otherwise—coming from the "manosphere" when these groups employ such disrespectful and, at times, hateful rhetoric."
If MGTOW can be ignored because of disrespectful and hateful rhetoric, feminists can too
Why Are So Many Women Searching for Ultra-Violent Porn? - "A quarter of straight porn searches by women are for videos featuring violence against their own sex. Five percent of searches by women are for content portraying nonconsensual sex. While men still search for significantly more porn than women, search rates for these more extreme types of sexual content are at least twice as common among women than men... "If there is a genre of porn in which violence is perpetrated against a woman, my analysis of the data shows that it almost always appeals disproportionately to women," he writes... It isn't uncommon for women to have fantasies about coercive sex, as the findings of a study into women's rape fantasies from 2012 indicate. The team of researchers from the University of North Texas and University of Notre Dame played 355 young women an erotic rape fantasy – as opposed to a literal portrayal of sexual assault – over headphones to investigate how aroused they became... The researchers then investigated if the women's fantasies were indicative of "sexual blame avoidance", a hypothesis that women socialised by our slut-shaming culture chose forced sex themes to negate feelings of shame and guilt. The opposite was found to be true. Women who reported being less repressed about sex were more likely to have rape fantasies, more open to fantasy in general, more likely to have consensual fantasies and finally, they were found more likely to have high self-esteem... a study from 2011 found the women most likely to watch porn – especially the most extreme kinds – were those who had suffered sexual assaults and psychological violence at the hands of their families"
Sex, Stonings, and Back Street Abortions: The Truth Behind the Maldives 'Tropical Paradise' Image - "While a man gets a three month "probationary period" on marriage and can always divorce his wife simply by saying "I divorce you" three times, a woman has to go through the court system. All the same, there is no social stigma around divorce for women. I recall one recently married fisherman boasting that his new wife had been married six times; this, he explained with a sly wink, meant she was experienced. The figure was about average for a woman in her forties. Despite the emphasis on conservative appearance and the vicious social ostracism of anyone caught with their pants down, many Maldivians were surprisingly liberal in their views towards sex. Extramarital sex might have been a crime, but other people's wives and husbands were fair game... High promiscuity and high rates of unprotected sex (90 percent, according to one study), coupled with the threat of Sharia punishments and social ostracism, meant a culture of horrific covert abortions"
Number One In Poverty, California Isn't Our Most Progressive State -- It's Our Most Racist One - "If racism is more than just saying nasty things — if it is, as scholars like James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michelle Alexander and countless others have described, embedded into socioeconomic structures — then California isn’t just the least progressive state. It’s also the most racist... Environmentalism is used to justify de facto racial segregation in California’s housing. Environmental lawsuits are a major reason for longer delays and higher costs of new housing. “The core legal structure of CEQA,” notes housing attorney Jennifer Hernandez, “protects the existing characteristics of those neighborhoods and thus perpetuates land use practices founded in race and class discrimination.”"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Oxford University's diversity problem - "'Look, not at the number of black people in the community, but the number of black kids getting As, and the proportion Oxford takes is roughly the same as the proportion in our society of young people getting three As who are black.'
'That's not the comparator, Nick. Surely the comparator is why as a proportion, you have double the chance when you're white then when you apply, than when you're black then when you apply'...
'Often they do make offers to black students who proportionally are less likely to make the grade'"
Maybe A levels should be abolished and students should be funneled to each university to perfectly match population statistics
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Wedding fever? 'I'll be in bed!' - "Amongst women in general there is much more interest in the Royal story and in the wedding"
Stereotypes!
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Jilly Cooper's marriage tips - "To love and to cherish, really. Be kind to each other and sort of enjoy each other... sadness the other day. Little girl at school was asked her idea of romance and happiness and she said: daddy marrying mommy."
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, 'Peace is like tango... it takes two' - "We left Gaza to the last soldier, the last settler. We evacuated synagogues, we evacuated graves of Israelis who died there... we expected it to turn into a Singapore or Hong Kong, of the Mediterranean and it didn't, because Hamas took over and manipulate"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Martha Kearney reports from Israel, Gaza and the West Bank - "'Is it fair to put all the blame of the international community? Don't the Palestinian people themselves need to accept some responsibility? I'm thinking in particular of the fact the political leadership is divided. It's divided between Fatah here in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza'
'I am sorry to say it's not the problem. Who's trying to market these thoughts or these ideas is not fair enough with the Palestinian people because in 1948 there was no Hamas and there was no Fatah'...
'You're pointing towards the fence which divides Gaza from Israel'...
'I wanted to go with them, my children'
'You're going to take children up there? But they could be facing live fire'
'The land wants blood'
'You need to spill blood to get your land back'
'Yes, our country needs blood'
External locus of control
"We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us"
BBC World Service - The World This Week, Trump: Korea talks in the balance - "'We had that extraordinary letter from President Trump, that three paragraphs explaining why this summit was cancelled. And then within 24 hours, suggestions that it could be back on. What has changed?'
'well, what's changed is one simple thing, which is an out of character, conciliatory statement from Pyongyang itself, where it talks about being willing to meet the US at any time in any format. It praises the President for his efforts to try to get this summit together. It's really something that you never really see from North Korea in that sense'
'Yeah, which suggests that President Trump's approach might have worked.'...
'Both sides benefit from a bit of an on off, quite frankly. It allows them to look like they are driving a hard bargain if you like.'"
Opinion | How to Lose the Midterms and Re-elect Trump - The New York Times - "“When they go low, we go high,” said another first lady, Michelle Obama, at the Democratic National Convention in 2016. It’s a fine set of marching orders, disobeyed ever since. It was definitely ignored by those of you in the Manhattan theater where the Tony Awards were held on Sunday. You answered De Niro’s expletives with a standing ovation."
EU: Erasmus gives Europe opportunity, love and babies - "One in three Erasmus students hooked up with people from other countries - three times the rate of those who stayed in their native lands for university
EU's Erasmus study abroad programme is 'responsible for 1m babies' - "A study published by the European Commission this week suggests that more than a quarter of those who take part in its long-running Erasmus scheme meet their long-term partner while studying abroad – and that more than one million babies may have been produced as a result... A third of ex-Erasmus students had a partner of a different nationality, compared with 13 per cent of those who stayed at home during their studies... “I call it a sexual revolution: a young Catalan man meets a Flemish girl – they fall in love, they get married and they become European, as do their children. The Erasmus idea should be compulsory – not just for students, but also for taxi drivers, plumbers and other workers. By this, I mean they need to spend time in other countries within the European Union; they should integrate.”... Around 40 per cent of students went on to live and work abroad. Studying abroad also improved the job prospects of young people, it found. Researchers said that while one in five young people in Europe are currently jobless, 64 per cent of the businesses questioned said international experience would make a candidate more employable."
European Commission - PRESS RELEASES - Press release - Erasmus Impact Study confirms EU student exchange scheme boosts employability and job mobility - "92% of employers are looking for personality traits boosted by the programme such as tolerance, confidence, problem-solving skills, curiosity, knowing one's strengths/weaknesses, and decisiveness when making a recruitment decision. Tests before and after exchange periods abroad reveal that Erasmus students show higher values for these personality traits, even before their exchange starts; by the time they come back, the difference in these values increases by 42% on average, compared with other students."
After about a month of complaining to HR with other female coworkers, we finally got this creepy coworker of ours unceremoniously fired! I feel like we scored one for all STEM girls in the house! : TrollXChromosomes - "dude is totally socially-awkward, never talks to anyone, never smiles, when you tell him to cheer up he gets angry and gives you these silly "death stares"... This is more job-related, but he seems to be extra mean in code reviews (for those who don't know about programming, it's when a programmer "reviews" the code another programmer wrote) when the reviewee is a woman. He only talks to male coworkers, although not much, but female coworkers, he shuns. Answers in monosylabes, cuts the conversation short and in a couple of times he's been very rude when doing that."
Man telling woman to smile = misogynist
Woman telling man to smile = he is a misogynist
Social Justice is Popular. But the Rule of Law is Sacrosanct - "I tried to remind people why due-process safeguards exist within our system. The presumption of innocence and the requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal cases—these safeguards are there to protect all of us from the mob and from the state. And on most days, those safeguards don’t protect men such as Gerald Stanley. On most days, they protect disadvantaged black or indigenous men such as Raymond Crump Jr.—because those are the people who are most likely to end up on the wrong side of a prosecution... In life, you have to be careful what you wish for. If you decide that social justice trumps the rule of law, you may be horrified to see how that principle is applied by those whose views you find to be regressive. Due process knows no colour. It knows no gender. It knows no hash tags. That is what makes due process, and the rule of law more generally, so essential to a free society... the impetus toward social justice can damage the rule of law by inciting an attitude of tribalism. If society is depicted as a pastiche of warring groups, in which powerful groups systematically exploit the disadvantaged, then this will encourage everyone to circle the wagons around their own tribe—and even to circumvent the rule of law on behalf of their own tribe if they can get away with it... During my careers as a scientist, a lawyer and a journalist, I have learned to never “just believe” anyone. I have seen great people lie, and bad people tell hard truths. What I believe in is process. As a scientist, I relied on the scientific method and peer review. As a lawyer, I relied on such tools as discovery and cross-examination. As a journalist, I try to interview both sides and let them challenge each other. That is how truth emerges: By clear-eyed scrutiny and by open debate, not blinkered loyalty to one narrative, even if that narrative is coded in the appealing language of social justice"
The Democratic Party’s 2018 View of Identity Politics Is Confusing, and Thus Appears Cynical and Opportunistic - "Clinton supporters constantly accused Obama supporters of being driven by misogyny for opposing the first female president (a charge voiced by Clinton herself), while Obama supporters routinely depicted the Clintons and their supporters as racist due to the nature of their opposition to the first African-American president. The term “Bernie bros,” which became so widespread as a term of recrimination against Sanders supporters in 2016, was actually conceptually invented in 2008 to malign Obama supporters... all of these stalwart, bedrock imperatives of identity politics seem strangely absent from the 2018 election cycle. These professed beliefs, in fact, seem to have vanished from Democratic Party politics almost entirely."
What Really Drives Populism? A Conversation with Dr. Frank Mols - "wealth and affluence are typically associated with heightened anxiety, sense of entitlement, fear of falling, and a host of other pernicious effects of being more affluence... in a meritocracy, poverty is equated with ‘personal failure’, and this explains that people in meritocracy are more prone to become anxious and stressed (fear of falling). In a society where social class is fixed (e.g. India, or Victorian England) this stress is absent because a person’s fortunes are predetermined by birth, and hence ultimately not their responsibility or failure."
Dank Learning: Generating Memes Using Deep Neural Networks
Justin Trudeau Is Running a Milk Racket – Foreign Policy - "You may be tempted to raise an eyebrow when I tell you that the protectionist racket in milk, cheese, eggs, and poultry has become the third rail of Canadian politics. But it should be noted that many otherwise free-trading nations go weird when it comes to food. Japanese rice tariffs have been as high as 1,000 percent. To protect its meat industry, France has passed a law banning the use of labels such as “soy sausage” or “mushroom burger” on vegetarian products. And in the United States, Big Sugar cynically props up a nakedly protectionist law that guarantees a minimum price that’s a quantum leap beyond the amount customers would pay on the global market... “There is an entire country full of consumers — taxpayers and voters — who are paying one and a half to three times more for their milk, other dairy products, chicken and eggs than they should be — amounting to more than $200 more a year per average family"... It isn’t the usual fake news from Trump when he tweets that “Canada charges the U.S. a 270% tariff on Dairy Products!” He’s being only slightly imprecise here: The actual breakdown is 270 percent on milk, 245 percent on cheese, and 298 percent on butter. And, as Hall Findlay has argued, the losers aren’t just foreign exporters but also Canadian consumers."
The World Wants You to Think Like a Realist – Foreign Policy - "Thinking like a realist also helps you understand why states with radically different political systems often act in surprisingly similar ways. To take an obvious example, the United States and Soviet Union could not have been more different in terms of their domestic orders, but their international behavior was much the same... if you think like a realist, you’re likely to be skeptical about the ambitious schemes that idealists keep dreaming up to bring an end to conflict, injustice, inequality, and other bad things. Striving to build a safer and more peaceful world is admirable, but realism reminds us that the ambitious efforts to remake world politics always create unintended consequences and rarely deliver the promised results... you are more likely to act with a degree of prudence, and you’ll be less likely to see opponents as purely evil (or see one’s own country as wholly virtuous) and less likely to embark on open-ended moral crusades. Ironically, if more people thought like realists, the prospects for peace would go up."
【徳島製粉】 金ちゃん ぶっかけうどんCM全集 【全5種】 - YouTube
Bukkake Udon
Mini Power Pork Patty With Epic Meal Time - YouTube
How To Cook Perfect Eggs Every Time - YouTube
Ad of the Day: This Remarkable Makeup Ad With High School Girls Has One Hell of a Twist - "The spot, titled "High School Girl?" and created by Watts of Tokyo, opens with a professor opening the door to her classroom. As a soft female vocalist begins to sing over a loungy beat, we pan slowly across the faces of the girls in the room, who seem ordinary enough: One holds a guitar, another drinks from a bottle of water. At the end of the room, a last girl gives us a knowing look and gazes back down at her book."
The Emerging Fetish of Laying Alien Eggs Inside Yourself - "Recently, while on the internet looking at weird sex things, I came upon the gushing testimony of a young woman who had just discovered Primal Hardwere's patented Ovipositor; one of the most unusual and confronting sex toys I've ever heard of. The Ovipositor is basically a big dildo that lays goopy eggs molded from gelatin in the body cavity of your choice. Fans of the Ovipositor say that the sensation of mushy extraterrestrial ovum slopping back out of them is a real treat."
This Group of Straight Men Is Swearing Off Women - "it's hard to listen to any concerns—valid or otherwise—coming from the "manosphere" when these groups employ such disrespectful and, at times, hateful rhetoric."
If MGTOW can be ignored because of disrespectful and hateful rhetoric, feminists can too
Why Are So Many Women Searching for Ultra-Violent Porn? - "A quarter of straight porn searches by women are for videos featuring violence against their own sex. Five percent of searches by women are for content portraying nonconsensual sex. While men still search for significantly more porn than women, search rates for these more extreme types of sexual content are at least twice as common among women than men... "If there is a genre of porn in which violence is perpetrated against a woman, my analysis of the data shows that it almost always appeals disproportionately to women," he writes... It isn't uncommon for women to have fantasies about coercive sex, as the findings of a study into women's rape fantasies from 2012 indicate. The team of researchers from the University of North Texas and University of Notre Dame played 355 young women an erotic rape fantasy – as opposed to a literal portrayal of sexual assault – over headphones to investigate how aroused they became... The researchers then investigated if the women's fantasies were indicative of "sexual blame avoidance", a hypothesis that women socialised by our slut-shaming culture chose forced sex themes to negate feelings of shame and guilt. The opposite was found to be true. Women who reported being less repressed about sex were more likely to have rape fantasies, more open to fantasy in general, more likely to have consensual fantasies and finally, they were found more likely to have high self-esteem... a study from 2011 found the women most likely to watch porn – especially the most extreme kinds – were those who had suffered sexual assaults and psychological violence at the hands of their families"
Sex, Stonings, and Back Street Abortions: The Truth Behind the Maldives 'Tropical Paradise' Image - "While a man gets a three month "probationary period" on marriage and can always divorce his wife simply by saying "I divorce you" three times, a woman has to go through the court system. All the same, there is no social stigma around divorce for women. I recall one recently married fisherman boasting that his new wife had been married six times; this, he explained with a sly wink, meant she was experienced. The figure was about average for a woman in her forties. Despite the emphasis on conservative appearance and the vicious social ostracism of anyone caught with their pants down, many Maldivians were surprisingly liberal in their views towards sex. Extramarital sex might have been a crime, but other people's wives and husbands were fair game... High promiscuity and high rates of unprotected sex (90 percent, according to one study), coupled with the threat of Sharia punishments and social ostracism, meant a culture of horrific covert abortions"
Number One In Poverty, California Isn't Our Most Progressive State -- It's Our Most Racist One - "If racism is more than just saying nasty things — if it is, as scholars like James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michelle Alexander and countless others have described, embedded into socioeconomic structures — then California isn’t just the least progressive state. It’s also the most racist... Environmentalism is used to justify de facto racial segregation in California’s housing. Environmental lawsuits are a major reason for longer delays and higher costs of new housing. “The core legal structure of CEQA,” notes housing attorney Jennifer Hernandez, “protects the existing characteristics of those neighborhoods and thus perpetuates land use practices founded in race and class discrimination.”"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Oxford University's diversity problem - "'Look, not at the number of black people in the community, but the number of black kids getting As, and the proportion Oxford takes is roughly the same as the proportion in our society of young people getting three As who are black.'
'That's not the comparator, Nick. Surely the comparator is why as a proportion, you have double the chance when you're white then when you apply, than when you're black then when you apply'...
'Often they do make offers to black students who proportionally are less likely to make the grade'"
Maybe A levels should be abolished and students should be funneled to each university to perfectly match population statistics
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Wedding fever? 'I'll be in bed!' - "Amongst women in general there is much more interest in the Royal story and in the wedding"
Stereotypes!
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Jilly Cooper's marriage tips - "To love and to cherish, really. Be kind to each other and sort of enjoy each other... sadness the other day. Little girl at school was asked her idea of romance and happiness and she said: daddy marrying mommy."
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, 'Peace is like tango... it takes two' - "We left Gaza to the last soldier, the last settler. We evacuated synagogues, we evacuated graves of Israelis who died there... we expected it to turn into a Singapore or Hong Kong, of the Mediterranean and it didn't, because Hamas took over and manipulate"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Martha Kearney reports from Israel, Gaza and the West Bank - "'Is it fair to put all the blame of the international community? Don't the Palestinian people themselves need to accept some responsibility? I'm thinking in particular of the fact the political leadership is divided. It's divided between Fatah here in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza'
'I am sorry to say it's not the problem. Who's trying to market these thoughts or these ideas is not fair enough with the Palestinian people because in 1948 there was no Hamas and there was no Fatah'...
'You're pointing towards the fence which divides Gaza from Israel'...
'I wanted to go with them, my children'
'You're going to take children up there? But they could be facing live fire'
'The land wants blood'
'You need to spill blood to get your land back'
'Yes, our country needs blood'
External locus of control
"We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us"
BBC World Service - The World This Week, Trump: Korea talks in the balance - "'We had that extraordinary letter from President Trump, that three paragraphs explaining why this summit was cancelled. And then within 24 hours, suggestions that it could be back on. What has changed?'
'well, what's changed is one simple thing, which is an out of character, conciliatory statement from Pyongyang itself, where it talks about being willing to meet the US at any time in any format. It praises the President for his efforts to try to get this summit together. It's really something that you never really see from North Korea in that sense'
'Yeah, which suggests that President Trump's approach might have worked.'...
'Both sides benefit from a bit of an on off, quite frankly. It allows them to look like they are driving a hard bargain if you like.'"
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