Title IX Is Too Easy to Abuse - "By some kind of weird alchemy involving the sum of its parts, this strange little event manages to hit upon almost every troubling aspect of the way that these cases are interpreted and punished on the contemporary campus. It proceeds from the assumption that if two drunk college students make out, one of them—and only one of them—is a victim of the event. It resulted in a fairly common but extremely severe consequence meted on students found guilty of very minor offenses—banishment from the university until the complainant graduates. And it suggests how easily the system can be manipulated by a student with an alleged grudge... The court found that even if only one student makes a report, if the school possesses knowledge that both were intoxicated, “the school has an affirmative obligation to investigate both students for misconduct without waiting for a ‘report,’” Engel said. In other words—college students and administrators take note—the days of blaming one person (almost always the man) for a no-harm, no foul, mutually drunken hook up may be coming to an end. It was a ridiculous standard, one that that infantilized college women, demonized male sexuality, and was responsible for harsh punishment meted out to an unknown number of college students, almost all of them male. It trivialized something grave: sex crime. And because it poured all of these experiences through an interpretive system that forced women into the role of passive victims and men in that of aggressive predators, it has helped stoke understandable resentment among young men on campuses across the country... in many regards, universities monitor the sexuality of their students more intrusively than in the 1950s... This is beyond the overreach of the modern university; this is an affront to the most essential and irreducible of all of the American ideas: the freedom of the individual."
Should You Ride an Electric Scooter? - "electric scooters are a novel mode of transportation. They unite many of the best elements of traveling by car, bike, and foot. Like cars, they have an engine, so you can get to work without getting sweaty. Like bikes, there isn’t really road congestion, so you can travel faster than most cars can. And like walking, they let you spend your commute outside. For people like me—office workers who commute within the city they live—it’s the fastest, least-sweaty option available."
Why Do Witches Ride Brooms? (NSFW) - "to achieve their hallucinations, these early drug users needed a distribution method that was a little more complicated than simple ingestion. When consumed, those old-school hallucinogens could cause assorted unpleasantnesses—including nausea, vomiting, and skin irritation. What people realized, though, was that absorbing them through the skin could lead to hallucinations that arrived without the unsavory side effects. And the most receptive areas of the body for that absorption were the sweat glands of the armpits ... and the mucus membranes of the genitals. So people used their developing pharmacological knowledge to produce drug-laden balms—or, yep, "witch's brews." And to distribute those salves with maximum effectiveness, these crafty hallucinators borrowed a technology from the home: a broom. Specifically, the handle of the broom. And then ... you get the idea"
Harvard Finds a Scapegoat - "How can Harvard, of all places, tell students not to join exclusive institutions? But many faculty—not to mention students and alumni—say such a policy would also be an unnecessary breach of students’ freedom. As psychology professor Steven Pinker wrote recently, “A university is an institution with circumscribed responsibilities which engages in a contract with its students. Its main responsibility is to provide them with an education. It is not an arbiter over their lives, 24/7.” As the folks at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education point out, Harvard is clearly violating promises of freedom of association it’s made to its students over the years... “Since you have been a student at Harvard University has a student or someone employed by or otherwise associated with Harvard . . . continued to ask you to go out, get dinner, have drinks or have sex even though you said no?” If you answered yes to that question, you were counted as a victim of sexual assault... The drinking culture has gone off the rails. Students are not exercising good judgment regarding sexual encounters because many of them are too drunk to do so... men and especially women describe “pre-gaming,” that is, getting tipsy before they even leave their dorm rooms. For women, this is often so that they can shed their inhibitions and behave like men (also known as “empowerment”)."
Beauty standards and family values in China - "A beautiful woman is kind of a higher risk in a marriage. She might want to spend more money on clothing or cosmetics. She might run away with someone who gets attracted to her and woes her. So she's considered a less stable choice for an enduring family life"
Far from zen: Japan monk sues temple for overwork - "A Japanese monk is suing his temple, claiming he was forced to work non-stop catering to visiting tourists and that the heavy workload gave him depression"
PR practitioners are unhappiest S’pore workers: JobsCentral Survey - "The top 5 job functions with the unhappiest workers in Singapore are:
1. Public Relations
2. Customer Support
3. Finance
4. Engineering
5. Sales...
Money may not be able to buy happiness. The happiest group of workers, according to gross monthly salary, are those who earn between $8,000 and $9,000 per month. This group scored 67 points, much higher than the overall average of 57.4. On the other hand, those who earn above $10,000 per month (the highest salaried group in the survey), scored 58 points"
Stressed out men in Japan stab themselves to avoid going to work
The sickening business of wellness - "Health is all the stuff that you know you should do. Wellness is all the peripheral shit that someone marketed to you because it sounded almost like health. It’s modern-day snake oil, and today it either comes from extremely well-off celebrities who look healthy under 18 layers of makeup, internet charlatans who probably know they’re full of shit, and people who might not know there’s no science to back them up, but they do see your open wallet and know when business is good."
Research news - Rotten egg gas holds key to healthcare therapies - "It may smell of flatulence and have a reputation for being highly toxic, but when used in the right tiny dosage, hydrogen sulfide is now being being found to offer potential health benefits in a range of issues, from diabetes to stroke, heart attacks and dementia... In light of misleading headlines on the above press release, the authors would like to stress that neither the papers... nor the accompanying press release above make any reference at all to cancer or to any health benefits from inhaling (sniffing) hydrogen sulfide."
Headlined as "Smelling farts may be good for your health"
What the UK can learn from Singapore's smart city - "To preserve a sense of privacy, older participants in pilot smart flats cover motion sensors with towels, putting in sharp focus what it's like for a human to make this so-called living lab their home. Local sceptics ask, "For whom is this nation smart?"... Perhaps the biggest problem is that the master plan comes into conflict with the risk-averse and rules-based culture the state has long encouraged to ensure a harmonious society"
Why So Many Smart People Aren’t Happy - "There are expectations that if you achieve some given thing, you're going to be happy. But it turns out that's not true. And a large part of that is due to adaptation, but a large part of it also is that you see this mountain in front of you and you want to climb over it. And when you do, it turns out there are more mountains to climb. The one thing that has really really helped me in this regard is a concept that I call “the dispassionate pursuit of passion” in the book, and basically the concept boils down to not tethering your happiness to the achievement of outcomes"
Guanxi: How Business Is Done in China - "Guanxi places the moral obligations that stem from personal relationships above all other considerations, including an employer's code of conduct and even laws. These obligations, moreover, often transcend time and distance. The notion that accepting employment with a company, particularly a foreign company, could somehow override one's duties to people with whom one has long-term relationships is an alien concept under guanxi. In fact, putting a company's interests ahead of personal obligations would be considered immoral. From this cultural perspective, a Chinese national working for a Western company would see it as his or her moral duty to steer business to a longtime friend's company, regardless of price or quality. If a relationship requires that gifts be provided in return for certain favors, guanxi likewise sanctions the exchange. The practice is considered not only ethical but also legal. Still, guanxi has its limits; it is not a license to steal. Like other tenets of Chinese culture, the principle is based on moderation. Excessive guanxi violates both ethical and legal norms"
The Science of Sex Differences in Science and Mathematics - "Amid ongoing public speculation about the reasons for sex differences in careers in science and mathematics, we present a consensus statement that is based on the best available scientific evidence. Sex differences in science and math achievement and ability are smaller for the mid-range of the abilities distribution than they are for those with the highest levels of achievement and ability. Males are more variable on most measures of quantitative and visuospatial ability, which necessarily results in more males at both high- and low-ability extremes; the reasons why males are often more variable remain elusive. Successful careers in math and science require many types of cognitive abilities. Females tend to excel in verbal abilities, with large differences between females and males found when assessments include writing samples. High-level achievement in science and math requires the ability to communicate effectively and comprehend abstract ideas, so the female advantage in writing should be helpful in all academic domains. Males outperform females on most measures of visuospatial abilities, which have been implicated as contributing to sex differences on standardized exams in mathematics and science. An evolutionary account of sex differences in mathematics and science supports the conclusion that, although sex differences in math and science performance have not directly evolved, they could be indirectly related to differences in interests and specific brain and cognitive systems. We review the brain basis for sex differences in science and mathematics, describe consistent effects, and identify numerous possible correlates"
From 2007. They might not be able to publish this today
Suicide triggers as sex-specific threats in domains of evolutionary import: Negative correlation between global male-to-female suicide ratios and average per capita gross national income - "Using data from the World Health Organization and the World Bank, several evolutionary-informed hypotheses, regarding the correlation between male-to-female suicide ratios and average per capita Gross National Income, are empirically tested. Overall, the findings are congruent with Darwinian-based expectations namely as economic conditions worsen the male-to-female suicide ratio is exacerbated, with the negative correlation being the strongest for the “working age” brackets"
Evolutionary psychology delivers again
Geography as Destiny: A Brief History of Economic Growth | Foreign Affairs - "The truly disturbing aspect of this story, of course, is the tenacity of cultural inheritance and the inevitability of geographic destiny. Africa remains slow to develop even today because of an unfavorable climate, a view recently advanced by Landes' Harvard colleague Jeffrey Sachs. The Middle East is held back by the culture of submission characteristic of Islam. Much of Latin America remains handicapped by the legacy of Iberian colonialism. As for the future, no Huntingtonian clash of civilizations here; for "the rest" is too weak. Unfortunately for Landes, an increasing number of economies refuse to conform to the pattern"
Of careers and carers - South Korea’s working women - "foreign firms in South Korea have seen an opportunity. Since female talent is undervalued, it is relatively cheap. A study in 2010 found that foreign multinationals hire lots of South Korean women with degrees, and that this boosts their return on assets."
So much for mocking economists' assertion that where women are discriminated against in the workplace, greedy companies will hire them because they are more cost effective
Why Western 'liberals' so easily buy into Hamas' anti-Semitic blood libel - Palestinians - Haaretz.com - "Who takes children, including a 12-year-old boy with an infant in his arms, to violent clashes with the IDF along the Gaza border fence? Even an amateur journalist would have no trouble coming up with the answer. Hamas officials were broadcasting it loud and clear. Here, for example, is what Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ leader in the Strip, told Al Jazeera in Arabic: “We decided to turn the bodies of our women and children into a dam blocking Arab collapse.” This being the declared intention, the question should not have been who the monsters are that teargas infants, but what Israel should do when faced with a cynical, murderous organization that shields its terrorists with the bodies of women and children. One answer to that question is apparently contained in the criticism leveled at the IDF for use of “disproportionate force”: When you’re confronting children and women, even if armed terrorists in civilian clothing are hiding among them, lethal force should not be used. This does not seem to apply to the case of Leila al-Ghandour, given that, according to the first story, she died precisely from just such nonlethal means. What should Israel have done, then? Avoid using nonlethal means, too? Stand aside and, since women and children are among the rioting crowds, just let them breach the fence, even though we know they were planning to slaughter civilians in the adjacent Israeli communities?... Hamas itself has called the riots that began over two months ago “the March of Return.” In other words, it declared publicly that the goal was Israel’s destruction. Nor did Hamas hide the fact that in the service of annihilating Israel as a state, it’s necessary also to annihilate Israelis. The plan was “to take down the border and tear out [the Israelis’] hearts from their bodies,” as Sinwar unambiguously put it... The number of people killed on the day the U.S. Embassy was moved to Jerusalem, was 62 (61 if Leila al-Ghandour’s name is removed from the list). According to Haaretz, about 2,770 were wounded, of these an estimated 1,350 from live ammunition. This means that 95 percent of those hit by snipers were neutralized without being killed, despite the smoke, noise and pandemonium. Of the 61 killed, about 50, according to Hamas, were members of that organization (which is not to say that there were no members of other military organizations among the remaining 11). This means that 80 percent of the casualties were not innocent civilians, but rather out-and-out terrorists who were picked off successfully even though they were hiding in a large crowd, amid the smoke and noise. Any journalists worth their salt would have had to come to the conclusion that Israel was using extreme caution, both in its choice of weapons and in their use, and had nonetheless succeeded in stopping a mass assault on the fence, thereby averting a far greater number of fatalities... The liberal democratic worldview has been sinking into the rot of moral kitsch for over half a century now. Increasingly we identify weakness with right, and power, irrespective of the goals for which it’s invoked, with wrong. Since the West has been powerful since the advent of modernity, we now categorize it automatically on the side of evil. Call it the Edward Said paradigm, although Said only gave it its clearest form, long after its birth in the 1960s... The Palestinian ethos of victimhood dovetails reciprocally with the West’s urge to cleanse itself of the guilt over colonialism"
One Palestinian supporter was unable to propose what sort of proportionate response the Israelis could've come up with, and proclaimed that since there were so many people they would be able to come up with a way (she also evidenced the "power makes one wrong" worldview)
Of course others, with light prodding, freely admitted that Israel should just have let them in since the land was "unjustly" taken in the first place
L'origine de Bert
Monday, August 13, 2018
So Singapore has a law on joss sticks
Environmental Public Health Act
(Chapter 95, Section 113)
Environmental Public Health (Burning of Joss Sticks and Candles) Regulations
Prohibition of burning of joss sticks or candles exceeding certain height or cross section
2. No person shall set or keep alight, or cause or permit to be set or kept alight —
(a) any joss stick which has —
(i) a total height exceeding 2,000 mm; or
(ii) a cross section with a length or diameter at its widest exceeding 75 mm; or
(b) any candle which has a total height exceeding 600 mm.
Restriction of burning of joss sticks or candles exceeding certain height or cross section
3.—(1) Except as provided in paragraph (2), no person shall set or keep alight, or cause or permit to be set or kept alight —
(a) any joss stick which has —
(i) a total height exceeding 700 mm but not exceeding 2,000 mm;
(ii) a cross section with a length or diameter at its widest exceeding 50 mm but not exceeding 75 mm; or
(b) any candle which has a total height exceeding 500 mm but not exceeding 600 mm.
(2) Any owner or occupier of any of the premises specified in paragraph (3) may, in or on those premises, set or keep alight, or cause or permit to be set or kept alight not more than —
(a) 6 joss sticks as described in paragraph (1)(a); and
(b) 2 candles as described in paragraph (1)(b).
(3) The premises referred to in paragraph (2) are —
(a) the enclosed part of any building;
(b) any temple or other place of worship; and
(c) any other premises which is situated at least 30 metres away from any building.
(4) For the purposes of this regulation —
“a cross section with a length or diameter at its widest”, in relation to any joss stick, means the distance between the farthest points on the largest cross-sectional area of the joss stick;
“enclosed part of any building” means any part of a building that has a ceiling or roof, and is, except for doors and passageways, completely enclosed by walls or windows.
Penalty
4. Any person who contravenes regulation 2 or 3(1) shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding $2,000.
(Chapter 95, Section 113)
Environmental Public Health (Burning of Joss Sticks and Candles) Regulations
Prohibition of burning of joss sticks or candles exceeding certain height or cross section
2. No person shall set or keep alight, or cause or permit to be set or kept alight —
(a) any joss stick which has —
(i) a total height exceeding 2,000 mm; or
(ii) a cross section with a length or diameter at its widest exceeding 75 mm; or
(b) any candle which has a total height exceeding 600 mm.
Restriction of burning of joss sticks or candles exceeding certain height or cross section
3.—(1) Except as provided in paragraph (2), no person shall set or keep alight, or cause or permit to be set or kept alight —
(a) any joss stick which has —
(i) a total height exceeding 700 mm but not exceeding 2,000 mm;
(ii) a cross section with a length or diameter at its widest exceeding 50 mm but not exceeding 75 mm; or
(b) any candle which has a total height exceeding 500 mm but not exceeding 600 mm.
(2) Any owner or occupier of any of the premises specified in paragraph (3) may, in or on those premises, set or keep alight, or cause or permit to be set or kept alight not more than —
(a) 6 joss sticks as described in paragraph (1)(a); and
(b) 2 candles as described in paragraph (1)(b).
(3) The premises referred to in paragraph (2) are —
(a) the enclosed part of any building;
(b) any temple or other place of worship; and
(c) any other premises which is situated at least 30 metres away from any building.
(4) For the purposes of this regulation —
“a cross section with a length or diameter at its widest”, in relation to any joss stick, means the distance between the farthest points on the largest cross-sectional area of the joss stick;
“enclosed part of any building” means any part of a building that has a ceiling or roof, and is, except for doors and passageways, completely enclosed by walls or windows.
Penalty
4. Any person who contravenes regulation 2 or 3(1) shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding $2,000.
Post ID: 3110875567914621420
Links - 13th August 2018 (1)
The Psychological Price of Entrepreneurship - "entrepreneurs experience more anxiety than employees. In the latest Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, 34 percent of entrepreneurs--4 percentage points more than other workers--reported they were worried. And 45 percent of entrepreneurs said they were stressed, 3 percentage points more than other workers."
Travel Is No Cure for the Mind - "Regardless of what you do to break out of the box, it won’t work. You can change your external environment all you want, but you will continue to travel with the one box that will always accompany you. The box known as your mind."
When diversity means uniformity | The Spectator - "If your office is chocka with Italians, Greeks, Spaniards, Germans, Danes, Finns, Bosnians, Hungarians, Czechs, Russians, Americans, Canadians, Australians, Kiwis, Argentines, Guatemalans, Mexicans, Romanians who aren’t travellers and South African Jews — I could go on — together speaking dozens of languages and bringing to their workplace a richly various historical and cultural legacy, the entire workforce could be categorised as ‘White: Other’. Your office is not diverse. dazzled by this very highest of social goods, many of our institutions have ceased to understand what they are for. Drunk on virtue, Penguin Random House no longer regards the company’s raison d’être as the acquisition and dissemination of good books. Rather, the organisation aims to mirror the percentages of minorities in the UK population with statistical precision. Thus from now until 2025, literary excellence will be secondary to ticking all those ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual preference and crap-education boxes. We can safely infer from that email that if an agent submits a manuscript written by a gay transgender Caribbean who dropped out of school at seven and powers around town on a mobility scooter, it will be published, whether or not said manuscript is an incoherent, tedious, meandering and insensible pile of mixed-paper recycling. Good luck with that business model. Publishers may eschew standards, but readers will still have some. In the news last week, we find the ultimate example of this fatal confusion over what is your actual job. Will Norman, London’s ‘walking and cycling commissioner’, bemoaned the fact that too many cyclists in the city are white, male and middle-class. ‘The real challenge for London cycling,’ he declared, ‘is diversity.’ As opposed to building more cycle lanes for everybody, or fixing potholes lethal to everybody’s wheel rims, Norman regards his principal function as increasing black and minority ethnic ridership. I’ll be fascinated how he accomplishes this noble mission. Will he resort to stereotypes — broadcasting gangsta rap from lampposts alongside cycling superhighways, where pop-up snack stands hand out free chapattis?"
Lionel Shriver joins the Nazis
We’re now confusing diversity and equality. Which is our priority? | Kenan Malik - "Although it welcomed “open debate”, Shriver’s comments were “not consistent with Mslexia’s ethos’ and mission”. So, an open debate, but only with the right views – the importance of diversity but not of a diversity of views... Britain is diverse in many other ways too – by religion, age, occupation, regional affiliation, politics and so on. It’s unlikely that any institution would ever be representative in all these categories (especially political viewpoint). Here “diversity” means being representative in a few chosen categories, and only in those categories... equality and diversity are not synonymous. There are many reasons for a workforce or institution not to be representative of society. Consider the recent debate about admissions to Oxford University... black students both disproportionately apply for the most competitive courses and are more likely to miss their predicted A-level grades. Taking this into account, Oxford, according to Fact Check, “was very slightly more likely to offer a place to black candidates”... The promotion of diversity, as the African-American academic and activist Adolph Reed has sardonically observed, can lead to the perspective that “a society in which 1% of the population controlled 90% of the resources could be just, provided that roughly 12% of the 1% were black, 12% were Latino, 50% were women, and whatever the appropriate proportions were LGBT people”. Diversity policies, in other words, do not necessarily challenge inequality, but simply make it “fairer”."
U.S. Leapfrogs Singapore, Hong Kong to Win World’s Most Competitive Economy
So much for Trump dooming the US
Teaching Boss Slams School Reading Lists: Not Interested in 'Conservative' Shakespeare, 'Dead White Men' - "The head of the UK’s largest teaching union has warned that plans to move towards a ‘knowledge-based’ curriculum risks “hurtling” England into the past. Dismissing plans for a traditional, academic curriculum as outdated, National Education Union (NEU) joint general secretary Mary Bousted argued the importance of including “identity”-focused figures to inspire people from minority groups... “If a powerful knowledge curriculum means recreating the best that has been thought by dead, white men — then I’m not very interested in it,” the Times Educational Supplement reported her saying. While 2014 curriculum reforms ensure that pupils must study at least one Shakespeare play before they finish school, as well as a 19th-century novel, Bousted suggested that canonical texts should come packaged with warnings they are out-of-date, privilege-tainted and inherently oppressive. “It is important for students to know some of ‘the best that has been thought and said’ but it is also important for them to know that it was a choice that was made and a choice made by the powerful... the movement’s advocates claim they are “decolonising” British institutions, despite the fact that white people are indigenous to the British Isles."
Presumably decolonising the curriculum is not a choice and it's driven by the powerless
Students grades slashed for using 'gendered language' at universities across the country - "Top universities across Australia have taken to slashing students grades for using banned 'gendered language'. Terms such as 'man', 'she', 'wife', 'mother' and any other terminology that angers the PC brigade have been blacklisted. Students claimed they have lost marks for referring to 'mankind' or 'workmanship' in assignments, as they are not deemed 'inclusive language.'"
Average Associations Between Sexual Desire, Testosterone, and Stress in Women and Men Over Time - "testosterone negatively predicted partnered desire in women but not men"
Why Valedictorians Rarely Become Rich and Famous -- and the Average Millionaire's College GPA is 2.9 - "1. "Schools reward students who consistently do what they are told" -- and life rewards people who shake things up.
2. "Schools reward being a generalist" and the real world rewards passion and expertise."
Jeremy Corbyn 'did nothing' after being told of paedophiles in his borough - "The Labour-run council had, meanwhile, both facilitated the abuse by employing known paedophiles and brazenly attempted to cover it up, shredding crucial documents and dismissing subsequent media reports about the scandal as ‘gutter journalism’. Staff who raised concerns were accused of racism and homophobia, and often hounded out of their jobs. Some, including Liz Davies and Neville Mighty, received death threats. Almost 30 council employees accused of child sex crimes were allowed to take early retirement (on generous pensions) instead of being subjected to formal investigations or referred to the police."
At least the Catholic Church didn't persecute whistleblowers
Why can’t we hate men? - The Washington Post - "Suzanna Danuta Walters, a professor of sociology and director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Northeastern University, is the editor of the gender studies journal Signs... We have every right to hate you. You have done us wrong. #BecausePatriarchy. It is long past time to play hard for Team Feminism. And win"
#notallfeminists #yesallmen
No true feminist puts sugar in her porridge
This is what a feminist looks like
Warning: Saying that men are trash will get you banned from Facebook - "comic Marcia Belsky fired off a “men are scum” rejoinder to a friend’s Facebook post, which led to a 30-day ban from the site. Belsky was taken aback by Facebook’s treatment, and she’s not the only one. Dozens of women writers, comedians, and artists have begun compiling their stories of being FacebookJailed as a result of bland and broad comments like “men ain’t shit.”"
Of course, people are complaining that this is "misogyny"
Holyrood Live: Scottish government intends to give vote to refugees
Next step: open borders
The Right to Kill – Foreign Policy - "The Kamayurá are among a handful of indigenous peoples in Brazil known to engage in infanticide and the selective killing of older children. Those targeted include the disabled, the children of single mothers, and twins — whom some tribes, including the Kamayurá, see as bad omens. Kanhu’s father, Makau, told me of a 12-year-old boy from his father’s generation whom the tribe buried alive because he “wanted to be a woman.”... what may seem an overdue safeguard has drawn widespread condemnation from academics and indigenous rights groups in the country. The Brazilian Association of Anthropology, in an open letter published on its website, has called the bill an attempt to put indigenous peoples “in the permanent condition of defendants before a tribunal tasked with determining their degree of savagery.”... Brazil’s National Indian Foundation, better known by its shortened Portuguese name Funai, does not collect data on child-killing rates and resists publicly acknowledging the phenomenon. When pressed, the foundation maintains that the practice affects a negligible fraction of the total indigenous population. The Brazilian Association of Anthropology says child killing is in decline. To bring up the issue at all, Funai said in a 2016 press release, “is in many cases an attempt to incriminate and express prejudice against indigenous peoples.”... when the Latin American Institute of Social Sciences published a “Map of Violence” report charting killings across Brazil, the municipality with the highest relative homicide rates in the country was Caracaraí, an Amazon town of 19,000 residents, many of whom belong to the Yanomami tribe. The unexpected first-place ranking reflected the first-ever inclusion of data on indigenous infants, Amadeu Soares, the state secretary of public safety, told reporters at the time. “It is the culture of indigenous peoples to sacrifice children who were born with some problem, some deficiency,” he said. Yet Soares demanded that the authors remove Caracaraí from the top spot... Critics argue that this countrywide debate over the rights of indigenous Brazilians, begun by evangelical missionaries, has sinister parallels to the country’s colonial history and the violence experienced by the indigenous at the hands of outsiders — violence that continues to this day... many Brazilians find it unacceptable that the government would allow tribes to kill disabled children in the name of cultural preservation, rather than let the state provide them with medical treatment... according to Almeida’s report, the Suzukis had done irreparable damage to the Suruwaha way of life by showing that certain physical disabilities didn’t necessitate killing."
Apparently human rights are about being able to kill children
Things Fall Apart: Populism and Foreign Policy - "Attaining political maturity contemporaneous with the Bush 43 invasion of Iraq, Obama was wary of American over-reach and committed to a foreign policy pullback. He embedded that withdrawal in a denial of American exceptionalism, a pillar of U.S foreign policy since Pearl Harbor. If you stop believing in yourself, it is difficult to ask others to believe in you. The rejection of America’s special role in the world helped set the stage for “Make America Great Again.” Was Barack Obama the ultimate Donald Trump enabler?... Even as President, Trump is easy to underestimate. Appealingly so. Many critics derive amusement, even a sense of superiority, from his foibles. His factual errors and even spelling mistakes provide an opportunity for mockery, but the lazy epiphany of error-spotting is a poor substitute for a substantive rebuttal. And a significant portion of the criticism is either ad hominem or an over-reach, either of which helps Trump. Those who are serious about policy should look at the direction in which he is taking the country, rather than fixate on these errors."
Let Them Eat Grass – Foreign Policy - "An unpublished Chinese government study admits to 17 million unnatural deaths, while historian Frank Dikötter’s book Mao’s Great Famine estimated "at least" 45 million premature deaths. Yet in China today, the famine of 1959-1962 remains unresolved... When there is a blockade on news and suppression of public opinion, not only will the masses become unenlightened, the rulers will also become deaf and dumb"
Study: Most Violent Rapes in Sweden Committed by 'Men of Foreign Origin' - "A new survey of sexual assaults in Sweden concludes that 95.6 percent of violent rape was committed by men with a foreign background. The study by Joakim Jonasson, based on more than 4,000 convictions between 2012 and 2017, found the groups most represented in violent rape cases were Somalis, Eritreans, Algerians, Iraqis, and Gambians. Jonasson also found that 90 percent of gang rapes were committed by men with non-European ancestry, and that those foreign-born men sexually harass native Swedes much more than they harass foreign-born women also living in Sweden."
Woman's tongue inseminated by a squid after eating undercooked seafood
No longer just an urban legend
Who Are the 'Whales' Driving Free-to-Play Gaming? You'd Be Surprised - "the whales are actually the stereotype of the hardcore gamer: young(er) males who also play console games. Kind of swats the idea that games like Candy Crush Saga make their money off bored soccer moms who don't know any better, right? EEDAR, in a survey of 3,000 active mobile and tablet gamers, said men accounted for two thirds of the top 5 percent of paying mobile gamers. In fact, women were less likely to pay money for mobile games, accounting for 65 percent of the non-paying segment. Even more contrary to stereotype, EEDAR's survey says free-to-play "whales" spent the majority of their gaming time on consoles"
Looks like even for casual games (which those who push the 'more women are gamers than men thus women are gamers' line include), men are more hardcore (i.e. gamers) than women
Male and Female Gamers: How Their Similarities and Differences Shape the Games Market - "of gamers who consider themselves to be core, 70% are men. Core gamers are defined as those who agree that gaming is an important part of their life, that spend a significant amount of their free time gaming, and enjoy playing against or with others... Across all segments, men are much more likely to spend than women. The difference is most apparent for PC gaming, with 57% of core male gamers paying versus 39% of women.
Kim Jong-un impersonator 'detained' at Singapore airport ahead of dictator and Trump's nuclear summit
What happens when you try to be creative in Singapore
Men better at Scrabble as women won’t waste time practising useless skills, finds study - "male players spend their time practising anagrams and analysing the game, whereas women are more likely to play the game as a hobby. The research, published in the journal Psychological Research, found there is no inherent difference in talent between genders. Yet, despite the fact there are slightly more female participants in Scrabble tournaments, male players tend to dominate them."
Maybe it's sexism that society doesn't socialise women to want to be good in useless things
Travel Is No Cure for the Mind - "Regardless of what you do to break out of the box, it won’t work. You can change your external environment all you want, but you will continue to travel with the one box that will always accompany you. The box known as your mind."
When diversity means uniformity | The Spectator - "If your office is chocka with Italians, Greeks, Spaniards, Germans, Danes, Finns, Bosnians, Hungarians, Czechs, Russians, Americans, Canadians, Australians, Kiwis, Argentines, Guatemalans, Mexicans, Romanians who aren’t travellers and South African Jews — I could go on — together speaking dozens of languages and bringing to their workplace a richly various historical and cultural legacy, the entire workforce could be categorised as ‘White: Other’. Your office is not diverse. dazzled by this very highest of social goods, many of our institutions have ceased to understand what they are for. Drunk on virtue, Penguin Random House no longer regards the company’s raison d’être as the acquisition and dissemination of good books. Rather, the organisation aims to mirror the percentages of minorities in the UK population with statistical precision. Thus from now until 2025, literary excellence will be secondary to ticking all those ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual preference and crap-education boxes. We can safely infer from that email that if an agent submits a manuscript written by a gay transgender Caribbean who dropped out of school at seven and powers around town on a mobility scooter, it will be published, whether or not said manuscript is an incoherent, tedious, meandering and insensible pile of mixed-paper recycling. Good luck with that business model. Publishers may eschew standards, but readers will still have some. In the news last week, we find the ultimate example of this fatal confusion over what is your actual job. Will Norman, London’s ‘walking and cycling commissioner’, bemoaned the fact that too many cyclists in the city are white, male and middle-class. ‘The real challenge for London cycling,’ he declared, ‘is diversity.’ As opposed to building more cycle lanes for everybody, or fixing potholes lethal to everybody’s wheel rims, Norman regards his principal function as increasing black and minority ethnic ridership. I’ll be fascinated how he accomplishes this noble mission. Will he resort to stereotypes — broadcasting gangsta rap from lampposts alongside cycling superhighways, where pop-up snack stands hand out free chapattis?"
Lionel Shriver joins the Nazis
We’re now confusing diversity and equality. Which is our priority? | Kenan Malik - "Although it welcomed “open debate”, Shriver’s comments were “not consistent with Mslexia’s ethos’ and mission”. So, an open debate, but only with the right views – the importance of diversity but not of a diversity of views... Britain is diverse in many other ways too – by religion, age, occupation, regional affiliation, politics and so on. It’s unlikely that any institution would ever be representative in all these categories (especially political viewpoint). Here “diversity” means being representative in a few chosen categories, and only in those categories... equality and diversity are not synonymous. There are many reasons for a workforce or institution not to be representative of society. Consider the recent debate about admissions to Oxford University... black students both disproportionately apply for the most competitive courses and are more likely to miss their predicted A-level grades. Taking this into account, Oxford, according to Fact Check, “was very slightly more likely to offer a place to black candidates”... The promotion of diversity, as the African-American academic and activist Adolph Reed has sardonically observed, can lead to the perspective that “a society in which 1% of the population controlled 90% of the resources could be just, provided that roughly 12% of the 1% were black, 12% were Latino, 50% were women, and whatever the appropriate proportions were LGBT people”. Diversity policies, in other words, do not necessarily challenge inequality, but simply make it “fairer”."
U.S. Leapfrogs Singapore, Hong Kong to Win World’s Most Competitive Economy
So much for Trump dooming the US
Teaching Boss Slams School Reading Lists: Not Interested in 'Conservative' Shakespeare, 'Dead White Men' - "The head of the UK’s largest teaching union has warned that plans to move towards a ‘knowledge-based’ curriculum risks “hurtling” England into the past. Dismissing plans for a traditional, academic curriculum as outdated, National Education Union (NEU) joint general secretary Mary Bousted argued the importance of including “identity”-focused figures to inspire people from minority groups... “If a powerful knowledge curriculum means recreating the best that has been thought by dead, white men — then I’m not very interested in it,” the Times Educational Supplement reported her saying. While 2014 curriculum reforms ensure that pupils must study at least one Shakespeare play before they finish school, as well as a 19th-century novel, Bousted suggested that canonical texts should come packaged with warnings they are out-of-date, privilege-tainted and inherently oppressive. “It is important for students to know some of ‘the best that has been thought and said’ but it is also important for them to know that it was a choice that was made and a choice made by the powerful... the movement’s advocates claim they are “decolonising” British institutions, despite the fact that white people are indigenous to the British Isles."
Presumably decolonising the curriculum is not a choice and it's driven by the powerless
Students grades slashed for using 'gendered language' at universities across the country - "Top universities across Australia have taken to slashing students grades for using banned 'gendered language'. Terms such as 'man', 'she', 'wife', 'mother' and any other terminology that angers the PC brigade have been blacklisted. Students claimed they have lost marks for referring to 'mankind' or 'workmanship' in assignments, as they are not deemed 'inclusive language.'"
Average Associations Between Sexual Desire, Testosterone, and Stress in Women and Men Over Time - "testosterone negatively predicted partnered desire in women but not men"
Why Valedictorians Rarely Become Rich and Famous -- and the Average Millionaire's College GPA is 2.9 - "1. "Schools reward students who consistently do what they are told" -- and life rewards people who shake things up.
2. "Schools reward being a generalist" and the real world rewards passion and expertise."
Jeremy Corbyn 'did nothing' after being told of paedophiles in his borough - "The Labour-run council had, meanwhile, both facilitated the abuse by employing known paedophiles and brazenly attempted to cover it up, shredding crucial documents and dismissing subsequent media reports about the scandal as ‘gutter journalism’. Staff who raised concerns were accused of racism and homophobia, and often hounded out of their jobs. Some, including Liz Davies and Neville Mighty, received death threats. Almost 30 council employees accused of child sex crimes were allowed to take early retirement (on generous pensions) instead of being subjected to formal investigations or referred to the police."
At least the Catholic Church didn't persecute whistleblowers
Why can’t we hate men? - The Washington Post - "Suzanna Danuta Walters, a professor of sociology and director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Northeastern University, is the editor of the gender studies journal Signs... We have every right to hate you. You have done us wrong. #BecausePatriarchy. It is long past time to play hard for Team Feminism. And win"
#notallfeminists #yesallmen
No true feminist puts sugar in her porridge
This is what a feminist looks like
Warning: Saying that men are trash will get you banned from Facebook - "comic Marcia Belsky fired off a “men are scum” rejoinder to a friend’s Facebook post, which led to a 30-day ban from the site. Belsky was taken aback by Facebook’s treatment, and she’s not the only one. Dozens of women writers, comedians, and artists have begun compiling their stories of being FacebookJailed as a result of bland and broad comments like “men ain’t shit.”"
Of course, people are complaining that this is "misogyny"
Holyrood Live: Scottish government intends to give vote to refugees
Next step: open borders
The Right to Kill – Foreign Policy - "The Kamayurá are among a handful of indigenous peoples in Brazil known to engage in infanticide and the selective killing of older children. Those targeted include the disabled, the children of single mothers, and twins — whom some tribes, including the Kamayurá, see as bad omens. Kanhu’s father, Makau, told me of a 12-year-old boy from his father’s generation whom the tribe buried alive because he “wanted to be a woman.”... what may seem an overdue safeguard has drawn widespread condemnation from academics and indigenous rights groups in the country. The Brazilian Association of Anthropology, in an open letter published on its website, has called the bill an attempt to put indigenous peoples “in the permanent condition of defendants before a tribunal tasked with determining their degree of savagery.”... Brazil’s National Indian Foundation, better known by its shortened Portuguese name Funai, does not collect data on child-killing rates and resists publicly acknowledging the phenomenon. When pressed, the foundation maintains that the practice affects a negligible fraction of the total indigenous population. The Brazilian Association of Anthropology says child killing is in decline. To bring up the issue at all, Funai said in a 2016 press release, “is in many cases an attempt to incriminate and express prejudice against indigenous peoples.”... when the Latin American Institute of Social Sciences published a “Map of Violence” report charting killings across Brazil, the municipality with the highest relative homicide rates in the country was Caracaraí, an Amazon town of 19,000 residents, many of whom belong to the Yanomami tribe. The unexpected first-place ranking reflected the first-ever inclusion of data on indigenous infants, Amadeu Soares, the state secretary of public safety, told reporters at the time. “It is the culture of indigenous peoples to sacrifice children who were born with some problem, some deficiency,” he said. Yet Soares demanded that the authors remove Caracaraí from the top spot... Critics argue that this countrywide debate over the rights of indigenous Brazilians, begun by evangelical missionaries, has sinister parallels to the country’s colonial history and the violence experienced by the indigenous at the hands of outsiders — violence that continues to this day... many Brazilians find it unacceptable that the government would allow tribes to kill disabled children in the name of cultural preservation, rather than let the state provide them with medical treatment... according to Almeida’s report, the Suzukis had done irreparable damage to the Suruwaha way of life by showing that certain physical disabilities didn’t necessitate killing."
Apparently human rights are about being able to kill children
Things Fall Apart: Populism and Foreign Policy - "Attaining political maturity contemporaneous with the Bush 43 invasion of Iraq, Obama was wary of American over-reach and committed to a foreign policy pullback. He embedded that withdrawal in a denial of American exceptionalism, a pillar of U.S foreign policy since Pearl Harbor. If you stop believing in yourself, it is difficult to ask others to believe in you. The rejection of America’s special role in the world helped set the stage for “Make America Great Again.” Was Barack Obama the ultimate Donald Trump enabler?... Even as President, Trump is easy to underestimate. Appealingly so. Many critics derive amusement, even a sense of superiority, from his foibles. His factual errors and even spelling mistakes provide an opportunity for mockery, but the lazy epiphany of error-spotting is a poor substitute for a substantive rebuttal. And a significant portion of the criticism is either ad hominem or an over-reach, either of which helps Trump. Those who are serious about policy should look at the direction in which he is taking the country, rather than fixate on these errors."
Let Them Eat Grass – Foreign Policy - "An unpublished Chinese government study admits to 17 million unnatural deaths, while historian Frank Dikötter’s book Mao’s Great Famine estimated "at least" 45 million premature deaths. Yet in China today, the famine of 1959-1962 remains unresolved... When there is a blockade on news and suppression of public opinion, not only will the masses become unenlightened, the rulers will also become deaf and dumb"
Study: Most Violent Rapes in Sweden Committed by 'Men of Foreign Origin' - "A new survey of sexual assaults in Sweden concludes that 95.6 percent of violent rape was committed by men with a foreign background. The study by Joakim Jonasson, based on more than 4,000 convictions between 2012 and 2017, found the groups most represented in violent rape cases were Somalis, Eritreans, Algerians, Iraqis, and Gambians. Jonasson also found that 90 percent of gang rapes were committed by men with non-European ancestry, and that those foreign-born men sexually harass native Swedes much more than they harass foreign-born women also living in Sweden."
Woman's tongue inseminated by a squid after eating undercooked seafood
No longer just an urban legend
Who Are the 'Whales' Driving Free-to-Play Gaming? You'd Be Surprised - "the whales are actually the stereotype of the hardcore gamer: young(er) males who also play console games. Kind of swats the idea that games like Candy Crush Saga make their money off bored soccer moms who don't know any better, right? EEDAR, in a survey of 3,000 active mobile and tablet gamers, said men accounted for two thirds of the top 5 percent of paying mobile gamers. In fact, women were less likely to pay money for mobile games, accounting for 65 percent of the non-paying segment. Even more contrary to stereotype, EEDAR's survey says free-to-play "whales" spent the majority of their gaming time on consoles"
Looks like even for casual games (which those who push the 'more women are gamers than men thus women are gamers' line include), men are more hardcore (i.e. gamers) than women
Male and Female Gamers: How Their Similarities and Differences Shape the Games Market - "of gamers who consider themselves to be core, 70% are men. Core gamers are defined as those who agree that gaming is an important part of their life, that spend a significant amount of their free time gaming, and enjoy playing against or with others... Across all segments, men are much more likely to spend than women. The difference is most apparent for PC gaming, with 57% of core male gamers paying versus 39% of women.
Kim Jong-un impersonator 'detained' at Singapore airport ahead of dictator and Trump's nuclear summit
What happens when you try to be creative in Singapore
Men better at Scrabble as women won’t waste time practising useless skills, finds study - "male players spend their time practising anagrams and analysing the game, whereas women are more likely to play the game as a hobby. The research, published in the journal Psychological Research, found there is no inherent difference in talent between genders. Yet, despite the fact there are slightly more female participants in Scrabble tournaments, male players tend to dominate them."
Maybe it's sexism that society doesn't socialise women to want to be good in useless things
Post ID: 758496087563453636
Sunday, August 12, 2018
Links - 12th August 2018 (2)
Soon, Your Sex Doll Will Have An Intelligent Conversation With You
Sex Doll Brothel Opens Up in Barcelona - "Lumi Dolls brags that its dolls are among the most realistic on the market — and they cost around €120 per hour, which is about $127"
Party Doll Bunny Girl Saori & Geisha Tomoko sex dolls by Orient Industry - "The Party Doll Geisha Tomoko is without doubt the most unusual Orient Industry sex doll available. Not only does she look ravishing, you can squeeze her exquisite right breast and then the drink stored in the table compartment will come out of her left breast. Orient Industry has created a sex doll that is also a drink dispenser: the perfect party hostess. Gesiah Tomoko comes with a traditional Japanse costume."
156: Meet high-end China sex doll offering 'alternative' to adultery - "Like millions in China who leave their hometowns to work in the cities, the 29-year-old automobile designer leads a bachelor's life during the week, returning to his wife and toddler in neighbouring Hebei province every weekend. Liu has been married for more than a decade, and does not want to be unfaithful, but still needs to satisfy his sexual appetites."
Sex doll 'brothel': Paris council to decide on future of Xdolls games centre - "Currently, Xdolls is registered as a games centre, but opponents argue it is effectively a brothel... Mr Lousquy says the dolls are sex toys and that he does not see them as degrading to women."
To Your Brain, A Runner’s High Looks A Lot Like Smoking Weed
Ban running!
Israeli army: Video shows killed Gaza medic throwing gas canister - "The Israeli military released a video Thursday showing a Palestinian volunteer medic who was killed on Friday in Gaza border clashes with the army, throwing a gas canister at the demonstration. In the video, Razan al-Najjar is seen in a white coat throwing the grenade with her face partially covered by a mask. "Razan al-Najjar is not the angel of mercy that Hamas propaganda attempts to portray"
Masked London robbers steal Australian TV crew’s camera and threaten to shoot them - "An Australian journalist has raised concern over London’s “crazy” crime rate after masked robbers forced her crew to hand over a television camera as they were recording... Footage of the incident showed her trying to grab the $25,000 (£14,000) camera back before her colleague shouted “No, no – he’s got a gun.’” “The thing about this was how brazen it was – we were in an upmarket area surrounded by people,” Ms Irving told the Sunrise programme... It comes amid a nationwide surge in violent crime and several disturbing incidents in London, where a 24-year-old woman was heard begging for mercy before being left in a critical condition in a moped mugging"
Correlation between autism diagnosis and organic food sales
The Best Asian Food in North America? Try British Columbia - The New York Times - "Over 74 percent of the city’s 200,000 residents are of Asian background, according to the 2016 census. (Its popularity among Asians is sometimes attributed to the auspiciousness of the Cantonese translation of its name.)... Unlike sprawling Los Angeles, where the best Chinese restaurants are strung along freeway exits in the San Gabriel Valley, the scene here is highly concentrated: Half of Richmond’s estimated 400 Asian restaurants are within a three-block radius of a short stretch of No. 3 Road... “People often say the Chinese food you get here is superior to what you get in China, where everyone is concerned about pollution. A lot of Richmond is still protected farmland, which means there’s great bok choy, gai lan — all the Chinese greens. And we’re right on the Pacific, so we have access to some of the freshest seafood in the world.”
Do Cops Need a College Education? - "Police behavior regarding arrest and search show no significant difference when considering college education. Officers with a college education and those without behave the same. The author points out that there is little discretion in making arrests or conducting searches, since both are governed by law and court decisions. However, these are just two of the areas in which police utilize discretion. The Michigan State study looked at another area of discretion: use of force. The conclusion was that although higher education has little influence on arrests and searches, a college education significantly reduces the likelihood of force occurring"
Mocking someone for not having a college education would usually be considered elitist. But people do it to cops all the time
Police agencies find it hard to require degrees - "Most departments give higher pay to recruits with four-year degrees, he says, but have avoided requiring recruits to have them for several reasons. Among them: concerns about recruiting enough minority officers in increasingly diverse urban areas"
Disparate impact!
Court OKs Barring High IQs for Cops - "A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court’s decision that the city did not discriminate against Robert Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test... Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, took the exam in 1996 and scored 33 points, the equivalent of an IQ of 125. But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training... The court said the policy might be unwise but was a rational way to reduce job turnover."
Do college grads make better cops? - "College-educated police officers are more likely to be dissatisfied with their job. But they are less likely to use force on citizens... cops with a degree may have negative views of their supervisors. They’re also less likely to favor community policing, a strategy aimed partly at reducing the number of deadly police-citizen incidents that currently dominate the headlines. “Our latest results on police views might lead one to question whether a college education is beneficial for officers,” says William Terrill, professor of criminal justice at Michigan State University... Job dissatisfaction might stem partly from the fact that college-educated officers who join the force wanting to make a genuine difference in society are instead met with the reality of patrolling high-crime areas at night"
Nutritionists write open letter to Jamie Oliver challenging 'damaging' childhood obesity rhetoric - "Led by Dr Laura Thomas, they criticise the government’s strategy in dealing with the crisis and raise concerns about how the language used by leading figures could contribute to eating disorders and weight stigma... "Encountering microaggressions, inequality, poverty, status – these all have an effect.”"
Uhh
Throwback Thursday: Hilarity Ensues as Sweden Starts Driving on the Right Side of the Road
Trudeau uses NYU graduation speech to criticize growth in identity politics - "Respect people who don't look or think like you do, Trudeau said. Engage those with whom you may not agree. And take up a leadership role against the aggressive nationalism and identity politics that are making the world a far more complex place to live."
So much for Trudeau's "Because it's 2015". Presumably identity politics is only bad when it's right wing
The Business Of Video Games: How Much Is Being Spent And Why [Infographic] - "In 2016 the average buyer of video games was 36 years old and mostly male. These stats changed from 2015 and not in the direction that I thought they would. The average buyer went down in age and the percentage of men buying games went up."
Women may make up the majority of those who play games. But men are clearly the majority of gamers
Twice the number of women play Overwatch than any other FPS - "Women make up 16% of Overwatch’s playerbase. That’s around five million female players, generating over $250 million in revenue for Blizzard. Why does this out of all the shooters appeal to women the most? Well, it’s mostly down to the setting, the diverse cast, and the powers"
16% is still tiny. Of course you can still blame sexism
Political correctness is exceptionally unpopular - "Sixty-six per cent think political correctness has gone either much too far (42 per cent) or a little too far (25 per cent). Nine per cent think that it has not gone far enough, with 17 per cent answering “about right”. “Too far” has a majority in every political, geographic and demographic group apart from under-25s. But even among the youth, there is little evidence of “generation snowflake”, with “too far” 20 points ahead of “not far enough” (37-17)... There is, of course, the “political correctness gone mad” cliche. But a look at its broader usage suggests significant acceptance by neutral sources, both in the media and elsewhere. The BBC, for example, includes a political correctness programme category, and numerous other uses of the term without quotation marks, as do various other media sites, academic publications, pollsters’ websites and court judgements. Waterstones has a PC section in its online book shop. And qualitative researchers tell me that the term (and the topic itself) increasingly arises unprompted in focus groups. Other polling suggests that public opinion on political correctness is about more than a phrase with negative connotations. A recent YouGov poll found that 67 per cent felt that “Too many people are easily offended these days over the language that others use” came closer to their view than “People need to be more careful about the language they use to avoid offending people with different backgrounds”... Across the Atlantic, the 2016 American National Election Study found 58 per cent thinking that people were too easily offended. Americans generally give answers less hostile to political correctness than Brits do, although it could be argued the United States is less PC than the UK and that the explanation lies there... Right now Britain is bitterly divided, with the public split on many issues. Poll findings as lopsided as these are pretty rare. And it is hard to think of an issue on which the tone of debate within elite circles diverges so sharply from public opinion. Is it possible that by going to great lengths to avoid causing offense, the political bubble, the media and the corporate world have offended others?"
New Microsoft Project Turns Boring First-Person Videos Into Awesome Hyperlapses - "There are barely any mountain bikers, climbers, skydivers or skiers left who don’t have a GoPro camera attached to their helmet. Nobody really wants to sit through an hour of video of you heading up and down the slopes, however. You could just speed those videos up, but then they become completely unwatchable. Thanks to a new Microsoft Research project, however, you may soon be able to turn those long boring first-person videos into really smooth hyperlapse sequences that run at 10x the speed of the original video but don’t make you want to throw up because of the camera shake."
An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks
Ronda Rousey says she has A LOT of sex before each fight - "Unlike some of her male counterparts, Rowdy says she tried to squeeze in as much sex as she can before she gets in the Octagon “For girls, it raises your testosterone, so I try to have as much sex as possible before I fight.”"
A porno intro worthy of an Oscar
Mark Lutchman 🇺🇸 on Twitter: "Know why bi-racial adults identify with their black lineage & not their white? Because there's no benefit of being white, no privilege.… https://t.co/cBwdHOwmOG"
'I've lost the city I used to shoot' - "Lui Hock Seng, an 81-year-old photographer, is nostalgic for the long-vanished Singapore he used to capture."
The Evolution Of Star Wars Games
Video: Millennials are ruining proposals with this engagement ring/smartphone case - "For people desperate to turn their marriage proposals into the perfect social media moment, this engagement ring box that doubles as a phone case is the perfect combination. Called the RokShok, when the case is opened, it positions the ring perfectly in front of the camera to film the reaction, making modern proposals even less romantic."
I am a liberal. But I know Democrats in office are no better than Republicans | Alice Dreger - "I live in East Lansing, Michigan, a city so blue that our public library has a social justice reading group – for preschoolers. Our police chief is on good terms with the ACLU. Our high school recently designated all-gender bathrooms with unanimous support of the school board, and our Islamic Center hosted a citywide “Go Solar!” event... Watching our city government came as something of a shock. While the policies were consistently liberal – in favor of the arts, the environment, and the unions – the behaviors were troubling. We saw cronyism, unmanaged conflicts of interest, and a general attitude that citizens are at best naive bores... when people get elected to serve in government, whether they are Republicans or Democrats, independent or Green, they tend to be human, not heroic. Liberals, like conservatives, assume they will govern differently once in power... what I’ve come to believe matters much more than my vote is giving people high-quality, non-partisan news. This is news that doesn’t take sides – that requires us to try to rise above our loyalties, to try to cancel out each other’s biases in the collaborative reporting and editing process."
Trump says he is likely to support ending blanket federal ban on marijuana
Maybe liberals will be anti-marijuana now
Is Pop Music Evolving, or Is It Just Getting Louder? - "After peaking in the 1960s, timbral variety has been in steady decline to the present day, the researchers found. That implies a homogenization of the overall timbral palette, which could point to less diversity in instrumentation and recording techniques. Similarly, the pitch content of music has shriveled somewhat. The basic pitch vocabulary has remained unchanged—the same notes and chords that were popular in decades past are popular today—but the syntax has become more restricted. Musicians today seem to be less adventurous in moving from one chord or note to another, instead following the paths well-trod by their predecessors and contemporaries. Finally, it comes as no surprise that music has gotten louder... Loudness comes at the expense of dynamic range—in very broad terms, when the whole song is loud, nothing within it stands out as being exclamatory or punchy... pop music of yore was better, or at least more varied, than today’s top-40 stuff. (A recent study also found that song lyrics are darker and more self-focused than they used to be.)"
Sex Doll Brothel Opens Up in Barcelona - "Lumi Dolls brags that its dolls are among the most realistic on the market — and they cost around €120 per hour, which is about $127"
Party Doll Bunny Girl Saori & Geisha Tomoko sex dolls by Orient Industry - "The Party Doll Geisha Tomoko is without doubt the most unusual Orient Industry sex doll available. Not only does she look ravishing, you can squeeze her exquisite right breast and then the drink stored in the table compartment will come out of her left breast. Orient Industry has created a sex doll that is also a drink dispenser: the perfect party hostess. Gesiah Tomoko comes with a traditional Japanse costume."
156: Meet high-end China sex doll offering 'alternative' to adultery - "Like millions in China who leave their hometowns to work in the cities, the 29-year-old automobile designer leads a bachelor's life during the week, returning to his wife and toddler in neighbouring Hebei province every weekend. Liu has been married for more than a decade, and does not want to be unfaithful, but still needs to satisfy his sexual appetites."
Sex doll 'brothel': Paris council to decide on future of Xdolls games centre - "Currently, Xdolls is registered as a games centre, but opponents argue it is effectively a brothel... Mr Lousquy says the dolls are sex toys and that he does not see them as degrading to women."
To Your Brain, A Runner’s High Looks A Lot Like Smoking Weed
Ban running!
Israeli army: Video shows killed Gaza medic throwing gas canister - "The Israeli military released a video Thursday showing a Palestinian volunteer medic who was killed on Friday in Gaza border clashes with the army, throwing a gas canister at the demonstration. In the video, Razan al-Najjar is seen in a white coat throwing the grenade with her face partially covered by a mask. "Razan al-Najjar is not the angel of mercy that Hamas propaganda attempts to portray"
Masked London robbers steal Australian TV crew’s camera and threaten to shoot them - "An Australian journalist has raised concern over London’s “crazy” crime rate after masked robbers forced her crew to hand over a television camera as they were recording... Footage of the incident showed her trying to grab the $25,000 (£14,000) camera back before her colleague shouted “No, no – he’s got a gun.’” “The thing about this was how brazen it was – we were in an upmarket area surrounded by people,” Ms Irving told the Sunrise programme... It comes amid a nationwide surge in violent crime and several disturbing incidents in London, where a 24-year-old woman was heard begging for mercy before being left in a critical condition in a moped mugging"
Correlation between autism diagnosis and organic food sales
The Best Asian Food in North America? Try British Columbia - The New York Times - "Over 74 percent of the city’s 200,000 residents are of Asian background, according to the 2016 census. (Its popularity among Asians is sometimes attributed to the auspiciousness of the Cantonese translation of its name.)... Unlike sprawling Los Angeles, where the best Chinese restaurants are strung along freeway exits in the San Gabriel Valley, the scene here is highly concentrated: Half of Richmond’s estimated 400 Asian restaurants are within a three-block radius of a short stretch of No. 3 Road... “People often say the Chinese food you get here is superior to what you get in China, where everyone is concerned about pollution. A lot of Richmond is still protected farmland, which means there’s great bok choy, gai lan — all the Chinese greens. And we’re right on the Pacific, so we have access to some of the freshest seafood in the world.”
Do Cops Need a College Education? - "Police behavior regarding arrest and search show no significant difference when considering college education. Officers with a college education and those without behave the same. The author points out that there is little discretion in making arrests or conducting searches, since both are governed by law and court decisions. However, these are just two of the areas in which police utilize discretion. The Michigan State study looked at another area of discretion: use of force. The conclusion was that although higher education has little influence on arrests and searches, a college education significantly reduces the likelihood of force occurring"
Mocking someone for not having a college education would usually be considered elitist. But people do it to cops all the time
Police agencies find it hard to require degrees - "Most departments give higher pay to recruits with four-year degrees, he says, but have avoided requiring recruits to have them for several reasons. Among them: concerns about recruiting enough minority officers in increasingly diverse urban areas"
Disparate impact!
Court OKs Barring High IQs for Cops - "A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court’s decision that the city did not discriminate against Robert Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test... Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, took the exam in 1996 and scored 33 points, the equivalent of an IQ of 125. But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training... The court said the policy might be unwise but was a rational way to reduce job turnover."
Do college grads make better cops? - "College-educated police officers are more likely to be dissatisfied with their job. But they are less likely to use force on citizens... cops with a degree may have negative views of their supervisors. They’re also less likely to favor community policing, a strategy aimed partly at reducing the number of deadly police-citizen incidents that currently dominate the headlines. “Our latest results on police views might lead one to question whether a college education is beneficial for officers,” says William Terrill, professor of criminal justice at Michigan State University... Job dissatisfaction might stem partly from the fact that college-educated officers who join the force wanting to make a genuine difference in society are instead met with the reality of patrolling high-crime areas at night"
Nutritionists write open letter to Jamie Oliver challenging 'damaging' childhood obesity rhetoric - "Led by Dr Laura Thomas, they criticise the government’s strategy in dealing with the crisis and raise concerns about how the language used by leading figures could contribute to eating disorders and weight stigma... "Encountering microaggressions, inequality, poverty, status – these all have an effect.”"
Uhh
Throwback Thursday: Hilarity Ensues as Sweden Starts Driving on the Right Side of the Road
Trudeau uses NYU graduation speech to criticize growth in identity politics - "Respect people who don't look or think like you do, Trudeau said. Engage those with whom you may not agree. And take up a leadership role against the aggressive nationalism and identity politics that are making the world a far more complex place to live."
So much for Trudeau's "Because it's 2015". Presumably identity politics is only bad when it's right wing
The Business Of Video Games: How Much Is Being Spent And Why [Infographic] - "In 2016 the average buyer of video games was 36 years old and mostly male. These stats changed from 2015 and not in the direction that I thought they would. The average buyer went down in age and the percentage of men buying games went up."
Women may make up the majority of those who play games. But men are clearly the majority of gamers
Twice the number of women play Overwatch than any other FPS - "Women make up 16% of Overwatch’s playerbase. That’s around five million female players, generating over $250 million in revenue for Blizzard. Why does this out of all the shooters appeal to women the most? Well, it’s mostly down to the setting, the diverse cast, and the powers"
16% is still tiny. Of course you can still blame sexism
Political correctness is exceptionally unpopular - "Sixty-six per cent think political correctness has gone either much too far (42 per cent) or a little too far (25 per cent). Nine per cent think that it has not gone far enough, with 17 per cent answering “about right”. “Too far” has a majority in every political, geographic and demographic group apart from under-25s. But even among the youth, there is little evidence of “generation snowflake”, with “too far” 20 points ahead of “not far enough” (37-17)... There is, of course, the “political correctness gone mad” cliche. But a look at its broader usage suggests significant acceptance by neutral sources, both in the media and elsewhere. The BBC, for example, includes a political correctness programme category, and numerous other uses of the term without quotation marks, as do various other media sites, academic publications, pollsters’ websites and court judgements. Waterstones has a PC section in its online book shop. And qualitative researchers tell me that the term (and the topic itself) increasingly arises unprompted in focus groups. Other polling suggests that public opinion on political correctness is about more than a phrase with negative connotations. A recent YouGov poll found that 67 per cent felt that “Too many people are easily offended these days over the language that others use” came closer to their view than “People need to be more careful about the language they use to avoid offending people with different backgrounds”... Across the Atlantic, the 2016 American National Election Study found 58 per cent thinking that people were too easily offended. Americans generally give answers less hostile to political correctness than Brits do, although it could be argued the United States is less PC than the UK and that the explanation lies there... Right now Britain is bitterly divided, with the public split on many issues. Poll findings as lopsided as these are pretty rare. And it is hard to think of an issue on which the tone of debate within elite circles diverges so sharply from public opinion. Is it possible that by going to great lengths to avoid causing offense, the political bubble, the media and the corporate world have offended others?"
New Microsoft Project Turns Boring First-Person Videos Into Awesome Hyperlapses - "There are barely any mountain bikers, climbers, skydivers or skiers left who don’t have a GoPro camera attached to their helmet. Nobody really wants to sit through an hour of video of you heading up and down the slopes, however. You could just speed those videos up, but then they become completely unwatchable. Thanks to a new Microsoft Research project, however, you may soon be able to turn those long boring first-person videos into really smooth hyperlapse sequences that run at 10x the speed of the original video but don’t make you want to throw up because of the camera shake."
An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks
Ronda Rousey says she has A LOT of sex before each fight - "Unlike some of her male counterparts, Rowdy says she tried to squeeze in as much sex as she can before she gets in the Octagon “For girls, it raises your testosterone, so I try to have as much sex as possible before I fight.”"
A porno intro worthy of an Oscar
Mark Lutchman 🇺🇸 on Twitter: "Know why bi-racial adults identify with their black lineage & not their white? Because there's no benefit of being white, no privilege.… https://t.co/cBwdHOwmOG"
'I've lost the city I used to shoot' - "Lui Hock Seng, an 81-year-old photographer, is nostalgic for the long-vanished Singapore he used to capture."
The Evolution Of Star Wars Games
Video: Millennials are ruining proposals with this engagement ring/smartphone case - "For people desperate to turn their marriage proposals into the perfect social media moment, this engagement ring box that doubles as a phone case is the perfect combination. Called the RokShok, when the case is opened, it positions the ring perfectly in front of the camera to film the reaction, making modern proposals even less romantic."
I am a liberal. But I know Democrats in office are no better than Republicans | Alice Dreger - "I live in East Lansing, Michigan, a city so blue that our public library has a social justice reading group – for preschoolers. Our police chief is on good terms with the ACLU. Our high school recently designated all-gender bathrooms with unanimous support of the school board, and our Islamic Center hosted a citywide “Go Solar!” event... Watching our city government came as something of a shock. While the policies were consistently liberal – in favor of the arts, the environment, and the unions – the behaviors were troubling. We saw cronyism, unmanaged conflicts of interest, and a general attitude that citizens are at best naive bores... when people get elected to serve in government, whether they are Republicans or Democrats, independent or Green, they tend to be human, not heroic. Liberals, like conservatives, assume they will govern differently once in power... what I’ve come to believe matters much more than my vote is giving people high-quality, non-partisan news. This is news that doesn’t take sides – that requires us to try to rise above our loyalties, to try to cancel out each other’s biases in the collaborative reporting and editing process."
Trump says he is likely to support ending blanket federal ban on marijuana
Maybe liberals will be anti-marijuana now
Is Pop Music Evolving, or Is It Just Getting Louder? - "After peaking in the 1960s, timbral variety has been in steady decline to the present day, the researchers found. That implies a homogenization of the overall timbral palette, which could point to less diversity in instrumentation and recording techniques. Similarly, the pitch content of music has shriveled somewhat. The basic pitch vocabulary has remained unchanged—the same notes and chords that were popular in decades past are popular today—but the syntax has become more restricted. Musicians today seem to be less adventurous in moving from one chord or note to another, instead following the paths well-trod by their predecessors and contemporaries. Finally, it comes as no surprise that music has gotten louder... Loudness comes at the expense of dynamic range—in very broad terms, when the whole song is loud, nothing within it stands out as being exclamatory or punchy... pop music of yore was better, or at least more varied, than today’s top-40 stuff. (A recent study also found that song lyrics are darker and more self-focused than they used to be.)"
Post ID: 5069367168527410616
Research Funding and Quality of Research Output
Helen Dale:
"Repeat after me: the bodies funding research have no bearing on quality of research output. Trust me on this. The Soviet Union & Nazi Germany kicked our arses in rocketry for years and they were, well, Commies & Fascists.
‘Who funds you’ is the most illiterate question to ask someone from a think-tank, because it assumes that only government can do good research. Well, yes, government often does good research. But those same Commies and Fascists who did great rocketry also did Lysenkoism and ‘German Physics’.
Meanwhile liberal democracies have done things like large-scale eugenics, sticking LSD in the water supply, introducing cane toads to pristine tropical environments, and crop-dusting densely populated regions with DDT. At the same time as curing polio and smallpox.
Evaluate scholarship on the merits, not the funder or the author. And if the state gets trumped by a think-tank (common in economics and law, where the really bright don’t always go into the academy) or a freshman trumps a professor (google Srinivasa Ramanujan) or vice versa, suck it up.
Because that’s what adults do.
I think I need to write a book called ‘how to adult’. Because FFS critical reasoning 101 is getting old."
The medical establishment profits from giving vaccines. Therefore they can't be trusted when they tell you to get vaccinated. Being an anti-vaxxer is being anti-capitalist!
"Repeat after me: the bodies funding research have no bearing on quality of research output. Trust me on this. The Soviet Union & Nazi Germany kicked our arses in rocketry for years and they were, well, Commies & Fascists.
‘Who funds you’ is the most illiterate question to ask someone from a think-tank, because it assumes that only government can do good research. Well, yes, government often does good research. But those same Commies and Fascists who did great rocketry also did Lysenkoism and ‘German Physics’.
Meanwhile liberal democracies have done things like large-scale eugenics, sticking LSD in the water supply, introducing cane toads to pristine tropical environments, and crop-dusting densely populated regions with DDT. At the same time as curing polio and smallpox.
Evaluate scholarship on the merits, not the funder or the author. And if the state gets trumped by a think-tank (common in economics and law, where the really bright don’t always go into the academy) or a freshman trumps a professor (google Srinivasa Ramanujan) or vice versa, suck it up.
Because that’s what adults do.
I think I need to write a book called ‘how to adult’. Because FFS critical reasoning 101 is getting old."
The medical establishment profits from giving vaccines. Therefore they can't be trusted when they tell you to get vaccinated. Being an anti-vaxxer is being anti-capitalist!
Post ID: 3289727441680369742
Links - 12th August 2018 (1)
Does the President Have an 'Absolute Right' to Self-Pardon? - "numerous scholars have argued that such an action would likely be constitutional, as the power to pardon is exceptionally broad — by design"
I,Hypocrite - Home - "My teenager... came downstairs blathering that feminism is cancer. We intervened immediately... Anyone who replies with Nazi propaganda like "diversity of thought" gets blocked. Fuck your thoughts."
Freedom of speech, habeas corpus and diversity of thought - Nazism sounds steadily better
Comments: "It's gone full circle. The evangelicals calling everything fun Satanic have been replaced by leftists!"
Solange and Jay-Z: it's simply not the same if a man is hit by a woman | Barbara Ellen
Feminism!
Rethinking dietary cholesterol. - "The European countries, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Korea and India among others do not have an upper limit for cholesterol intake in their dietary guidelines... Although numerous clinical studies have shown that dietary cholesterol challenges may increase plasma LDL cholesterol in certain individuals, who are more sensitive to dietary cholesterol (about one-quarter of the population), HDL cholesterol also rises resulting in the maintenance of the LDL/HDL cholesterol ratio, a key marker of CHD risk."
Eggs and Cholesterol — How Many Eggs Can You Safely Eat? - "Because getting cholesterol from the diet isn't always an option, the liver actually produces cholesterol. But when we eat a lot of cholesterol rich foods, the liver starts producing less (1, 2). So the total amount of cholesterol in the body changes only very little (if at all), it is just coming from the diet instead of from the liver"
Miss America is scrapping the swimsuit portion from its pageant - ""We will no longer judge our candidates on their outward physical appearance. That's huge," she said. Carlson also said the new Miss America competition will be more inclusive to women of "all shapes and sizes." The official Miss America Twitter account tweeted a short video of a white bikini going up in a puff of smoke with the hashtag #byebyebikini."
"we don't tell Lebron to solve calculus while he's three-pointing the ball into the net, we don't tell Usain Bolt to talk about philosophy while he's doing the 100 meter dash, why the hell do we expect beauty contestants to answer dumb arbitrary 'brainy' questions just to win a beauty pageant?"
Bye bye ratings
Apple's new diverse emoji are even more problematic than before - The Washington Post - "Apple has allowed for further racial segregation with these new emoji. Because I’m black, should I now feel compelled to use the “appropriate” brown-skinned nail-painting emoji? Why would I use the white one? Now in simple text messages and tweets, I have to identify myself racially. I’ll now question other people’s emoji use when they’re speaking to me: Why is he sending me the black angel emoji specifically? Why is she sending me the black-girl emoji instead of the white one? What Apple has done is introduce race into everyday conversations where it doesn’t necessarily need to be. Clorox already has felt the weight of that reality, when in response to the new emoji, the brand tweeted “where’s the bleach?” The barrage of criticism that followed the face-palm moment pressured the company to tweet an apology, noting that it never meant the comment as a reference to race... there’s nothing specifically “black” about an emoji with browner skin. Deepening the skin color of a previously white emoji doesn’t make the emoji not white. It’s just a bastardized emoji blackface. The blond-haired emoji man and the blue-eyed emoji princess are clearly white, but you can slip them into a darker-colored skin. These new figures aren’t emoji of color; they’re just white emoji wearing masks. Understandably, Apple didn’t want to create caricatures, giving those emoji an afro or thicker lips"
You can't win
Report: Quitting Facebook cost WhatsApp’s founders $1.3 billion
Google touts 'inclusive' vegan salad emoji for diversity - "“If you need any evidence” that Google is making those ideals a priority, she went on, behold the latest change to the emoji lineup: an egg-less salad. The bowl of leafy greens and sliced tomatoes, minus the egg, makes a “more inclusive vegan salad,” Daniel asserted"
Read Google employees’ shareholder plea to link diversity to compensat - "The lack of clear, communicated policies and actions to advance diversity and inclusion, with concrete accountability and leadership from senior executives, has left many of us feeling unsafe and unable to do our work."
Why hiring snowflakes is bad for business
A Camel Through the Eye of a Needle, and Other Wild Tales of Translation - "Other mistranslations are more sinister, like the popular translation of “arsenokoites” as “homosexuals,” which is a bit absurd, as there is a separate Greek word for that. “Arsenokoite” is a cognate of “man” and “bed” and no one knows what the word means because its usage is so rare. It’s been suggested that it was a reference to gigolos, but that’s an equally unsupported guess. Because the word occurs next to “malakos” (luxurious) it is more likely a colorful reference to the soft-living and pleasure-loving rich (who have a harder time in the New Testament than camels do). Malakos (soft) also gets mistranslated “effeminate,” mostly in order to support the reading of “arsenokoites” as “homosexuals.” But “malakos” doesn’t mean effeminate; there’s a different word for that, too. Malakos means luxury-loving, softened by easy life and too many soft cushions. In Greek, that concept doesn’t carry gendered connotations. Romans associated that with being “like a woman,” and because Romans had issues with effeminacy/masculinity*, we inherited both their commentary and their misreading. But the Greeks didn’t have these issues. (They had other issues.)"
Tunisia keeper 'fakes' injury to help players break Ramadan fast - "After drinking some water and eating a few dates, the North African nation bagged an equaliser six minutes later and went on to hold the European champions for the next 30 minutes to a 2-2 draw."
How to Buy Happiness - "t’s not so much that doing things makes us happier than having things—it’s that we like doing things with people. This is particularly true for extroverts: In one study, they got significantly happier after shopping with others, no matter what they bought... Extroverts were happier when forced to spend money at the bar, while introverts were happier spending at the bookstore... When people were assigned to buy goodies for either a hospitalized child or themselves, those who bought treats for a sick child reported more positive feelings. The effect was the same in a rich country (Canada) as in a poor one (South Africa). Spending on friends and family likewise gives us a boost because—unsurprisingly—it brings us closer to them"
AI winter is well on its way - "Predicting the A.I. winter is like predicting a stock market crash - impossible to tell precisely when it happens, but almost certain that it will at some point. Much like before a stock market crash there are signs of the impending collapse, but the narrative is so strong that it is very easy to ignore them, even if they are in plain sight. In my opinion there are such signs visible already of a huge decline in deep learning (and probably in AI in general as this term has been abused ad nauseam by corporate propaganda), visible in plain sight, yet hidden from the majority by the increasingly intense narrative"
Case Study — Musicians and Mortality - "Through a synergy of sloppy data graphics, careless reporting, excessive hype, muddled thinking, and uncritical use of social media, we end up with misleading meme that reaches orders of magnitude more people than the original scholarly research did. We see this as a serious problem and urge actors at every stage — from scholarly authors to data visualization experts to the people hitting "retweet" on twitter — to do their best to prevent this from happening."
the death of romance and the rise of 'the loner' in collectivist south korea
Why won’t Twitter suspend Iran’s Supreme Leader after threatening tweet - "A controversial tweet by Iran’s top leader has many (once again) questioning Twitter’s terms of service. On Sunday, the “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took his long-standing hatred of Israel to social media, tweeting, “Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will happen.” As many quickly pointed out, it felt very much like a threat–one openly calling for an entire country’s destruction"
J.Crew under fire for promoting boy in a feminist T-shirt
I'm sure many who cheer this would be against it if he were wearing a religious T-shirt
Only a man can run an airline, says Qatar boss - "Akbar Al Baker, International Air Transport Association chair and chief executive of Qatar Airways, said his job could only be done by a man."
Row over 'staggering' failure to pick woman for Bank of England MPC
Having a vagina makes you understand economics better
The Big Read: No easy answers to HDB lease decay issue, but public mindset has to change first - "homeownership is “far more popular than renting in Singapore and, arguably, an intrinsic part of the social compact”, said Singapore Management University (SMU) law don Eugene Tan. “Relying on a contractual understanding of the leases is legally appropriate (for the Government) but politically limiting and divisive,” he noted... At the heart of the debate is a very Singaporean view of public housing flats as “sure-win” investments — a mindset that the Government is partly responsible for shaping, experts pointed out... At a dinner for the International Housing Conference held in 2010 by HDB, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong linked the value of HDB flats to the strength of the economy: “Provided Singapore continues to do well, our flats will maintain their value, and Singaporeans can enjoy an appreciating asset.” In 2011, then-National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan also reiterated the importance of the policy as he rebutted a suggestion by the Workers’ to peg the prices of new flats to the incomes of qualifying households instead of resale market prices... Since the first million-dollar HDB flat transaction in Queenstown, at least 89 flats have been sold S$1 million or more"
Lee Kuan Yew Promised in 2013: The Value of HDB Flats Will Never Drop
I went to Takarajima 24, an onahole internet cafe - "Takarajima 24’s basically got you covered no matter what. They had DVDs for fetishes I didn’t even know existed, like women coated in gold body paint? Living statues or something? There were multiple releases for that genre... I took a proper look at the bin, and it changed everything. ‘Would you like to review what your life should be…?’ it asked, as I held an increasingly slippery foam cup filled with my sperm in a depressingly dark and tiny room whilst on holiday overseas."
Professor of physiology says transgender athletes have advantage in speed, power - "Otago University professor in physiology Alison Heather has researched transgender changes, particularly in top level sport... the IOC changed their regulations to include trans women in the women's category of events if they remained under the testosterone levels of 10 nanomoles per litre (NMOL/L) a year prior to competing, as well as during competition. However, a CIS female (a born female) can reach nowhere near the testosterone level of 10 NMOL/L. The average female sits at 2.8 NMOL/L and the average male 23-25 NMOL/L. This means the likes of Hubbard competes at three times the amount of testosterone to other weightlifting females... after transitioning a trans woman's muscle mass, lung capacity and muscle memory all remain the same as when they were CIS male... British Journal of Sports Medicine scientists Stephane Bermon and Pierre-Yves Garnier found there was statistically significant differences in the performance of higher testosterone female athletes versus lower testosterone athletes at the 2011 and 2013 International Athletics Federation World Championships across five separate events."
Who Made That T-Shirt? - The New York Times - "In 1904, the Cooper Underwear Company ran a magazine ad announcing a new product for bachelors. In the “before” photo, a man averts his eyes from the camera as if embarrassed; he has lost all the buttons on his undershirt and has safety-pinned its flaps together. In the “after” photo, a virile gentleman sports a handlebar mustache, smokes a cigar and wears a “bachelor undershirt” stretchy enough to be pulled over the head. “No safety pins — no buttons — no needle — no thread,” ran the slogan aimed at men with no wives and no sewing skills. Someone in the U.S. Navy must have seen the logic in this, because the following year, the quartermaster’s office specified that sailors should wear undershirts with no buttons under their uniforms; soon thousands of men became acquainted with the comfort of the cotton pullover."
Koalas Have Been Caught Pole Dancing In Brisbane
Another Reason Companies Fail - Price's Law - "Price’s Law says that 50% of work at a company is done by a small number of people. Specifically, it says that 50% of work is done by the square root of the number of employees."
Betsy DeVos and the Politics of Campus Sexual Assault - "The politicization of sexual assault on campus is surprising, even in a hyper-partisan environment. For one, there’s evidence of a dramatic shift in how Democrats think about students’ rights. Ever since the 1950s and ‘60s, when the fiercely liberal Warren Court—an era of the Supreme Court during which Justice Earl Warren presided as Chief Justice—dramatically expanded the rights of the accused in landmark decisions like Miranda v. Arizona and Gideon v. Wainwright, defendants’ rights have been associated with progressive activism. Yet that’s flipped in recent years, with Democrats overwhelmingly focused on the victims of sexual assault and Republicans overwhelmingly focused on the victimization of those accused of it... why did Obama adopt this stance in the first place, effectively bucking traditional Democratic norms by requiring universities to relax their standards for due process? The answer is likely—and unsurprisingly—political. After a devastating 2010 midterm election, Democrats in Congress looked to Senator Michael Bennet’s campaign in Colorado—one of the few bright spots for their party in 2010—as a model. Bennet had relied heavily on identity politics, rallying women, minorities, and millennials. And he had triumphed."
I,Hypocrite - Home - "My teenager... came downstairs blathering that feminism is cancer. We intervened immediately... Anyone who replies with Nazi propaganda like "diversity of thought" gets blocked. Fuck your thoughts."
Freedom of speech, habeas corpus and diversity of thought - Nazism sounds steadily better
Comments: "It's gone full circle. The evangelicals calling everything fun Satanic have been replaced by leftists!"
Solange and Jay-Z: it's simply not the same if a man is hit by a woman | Barbara Ellen
Feminism!
Rethinking dietary cholesterol. - "The European countries, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Korea and India among others do not have an upper limit for cholesterol intake in their dietary guidelines... Although numerous clinical studies have shown that dietary cholesterol challenges may increase plasma LDL cholesterol in certain individuals, who are more sensitive to dietary cholesterol (about one-quarter of the population), HDL cholesterol also rises resulting in the maintenance of the LDL/HDL cholesterol ratio, a key marker of CHD risk."
Eggs and Cholesterol — How Many Eggs Can You Safely Eat? - "Because getting cholesterol from the diet isn't always an option, the liver actually produces cholesterol. But when we eat a lot of cholesterol rich foods, the liver starts producing less (1, 2). So the total amount of cholesterol in the body changes only very little (if at all), it is just coming from the diet instead of from the liver"
Miss America is scrapping the swimsuit portion from its pageant - ""We will no longer judge our candidates on their outward physical appearance. That's huge," she said. Carlson also said the new Miss America competition will be more inclusive to women of "all shapes and sizes." The official Miss America Twitter account tweeted a short video of a white bikini going up in a puff of smoke with the hashtag #byebyebikini."
"we don't tell Lebron to solve calculus while he's three-pointing the ball into the net, we don't tell Usain Bolt to talk about philosophy while he's doing the 100 meter dash, why the hell do we expect beauty contestants to answer dumb arbitrary 'brainy' questions just to win a beauty pageant?"
Bye bye ratings
Apple's new diverse emoji are even more problematic than before - The Washington Post - "Apple has allowed for further racial segregation with these new emoji. Because I’m black, should I now feel compelled to use the “appropriate” brown-skinned nail-painting emoji? Why would I use the white one? Now in simple text messages and tweets, I have to identify myself racially. I’ll now question other people’s emoji use when they’re speaking to me: Why is he sending me the black angel emoji specifically? Why is she sending me the black-girl emoji instead of the white one? What Apple has done is introduce race into everyday conversations where it doesn’t necessarily need to be. Clorox already has felt the weight of that reality, when in response to the new emoji, the brand tweeted “where’s the bleach?” The barrage of criticism that followed the face-palm moment pressured the company to tweet an apology, noting that it never meant the comment as a reference to race... there’s nothing specifically “black” about an emoji with browner skin. Deepening the skin color of a previously white emoji doesn’t make the emoji not white. It’s just a bastardized emoji blackface. The blond-haired emoji man and the blue-eyed emoji princess are clearly white, but you can slip them into a darker-colored skin. These new figures aren’t emoji of color; they’re just white emoji wearing masks. Understandably, Apple didn’t want to create caricatures, giving those emoji an afro or thicker lips"
You can't win
Report: Quitting Facebook cost WhatsApp’s founders $1.3 billion
Google touts 'inclusive' vegan salad emoji for diversity - "“If you need any evidence” that Google is making those ideals a priority, she went on, behold the latest change to the emoji lineup: an egg-less salad. The bowl of leafy greens and sliced tomatoes, minus the egg, makes a “more inclusive vegan salad,” Daniel asserted"
Read Google employees’ shareholder plea to link diversity to compensat - "The lack of clear, communicated policies and actions to advance diversity and inclusion, with concrete accountability and leadership from senior executives, has left many of us feeling unsafe and unable to do our work."
Why hiring snowflakes is bad for business
A Camel Through the Eye of a Needle, and Other Wild Tales of Translation - "Other mistranslations are more sinister, like the popular translation of “arsenokoites” as “homosexuals,” which is a bit absurd, as there is a separate Greek word for that. “Arsenokoite” is a cognate of “man” and “bed” and no one knows what the word means because its usage is so rare. It’s been suggested that it was a reference to gigolos, but that’s an equally unsupported guess. Because the word occurs next to “malakos” (luxurious) it is more likely a colorful reference to the soft-living and pleasure-loving rich (who have a harder time in the New Testament than camels do). Malakos (soft) also gets mistranslated “effeminate,” mostly in order to support the reading of “arsenokoites” as “homosexuals.” But “malakos” doesn’t mean effeminate; there’s a different word for that, too. Malakos means luxury-loving, softened by easy life and too many soft cushions. In Greek, that concept doesn’t carry gendered connotations. Romans associated that with being “like a woman,” and because Romans had issues with effeminacy/masculinity*, we inherited both their commentary and their misreading. But the Greeks didn’t have these issues. (They had other issues.)"
Tunisia keeper 'fakes' injury to help players break Ramadan fast - "After drinking some water and eating a few dates, the North African nation bagged an equaliser six minutes later and went on to hold the European champions for the next 30 minutes to a 2-2 draw."
How to Buy Happiness - "t’s not so much that doing things makes us happier than having things—it’s that we like doing things with people. This is particularly true for extroverts: In one study, they got significantly happier after shopping with others, no matter what they bought... Extroverts were happier when forced to spend money at the bar, while introverts were happier spending at the bookstore... When people were assigned to buy goodies for either a hospitalized child or themselves, those who bought treats for a sick child reported more positive feelings. The effect was the same in a rich country (Canada) as in a poor one (South Africa). Spending on friends and family likewise gives us a boost because—unsurprisingly—it brings us closer to them"
AI winter is well on its way - "Predicting the A.I. winter is like predicting a stock market crash - impossible to tell precisely when it happens, but almost certain that it will at some point. Much like before a stock market crash there are signs of the impending collapse, but the narrative is so strong that it is very easy to ignore them, even if they are in plain sight. In my opinion there are such signs visible already of a huge decline in deep learning (and probably in AI in general as this term has been abused ad nauseam by corporate propaganda), visible in plain sight, yet hidden from the majority by the increasingly intense narrative"
Case Study — Musicians and Mortality - "Through a synergy of sloppy data graphics, careless reporting, excessive hype, muddled thinking, and uncritical use of social media, we end up with misleading meme that reaches orders of magnitude more people than the original scholarly research did. We see this as a serious problem and urge actors at every stage — from scholarly authors to data visualization experts to the people hitting "retweet" on twitter — to do their best to prevent this from happening."
the death of romance and the rise of 'the loner' in collectivist south korea
Why won’t Twitter suspend Iran’s Supreme Leader after threatening tweet - "A controversial tweet by Iran’s top leader has many (once again) questioning Twitter’s terms of service. On Sunday, the “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took his long-standing hatred of Israel to social media, tweeting, “Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will happen.” As many quickly pointed out, it felt very much like a threat–one openly calling for an entire country’s destruction"
J.Crew under fire for promoting boy in a feminist T-shirt
I'm sure many who cheer this would be against it if he were wearing a religious T-shirt
Only a man can run an airline, says Qatar boss - "Akbar Al Baker, International Air Transport Association chair and chief executive of Qatar Airways, said his job could only be done by a man."
Row over 'staggering' failure to pick woman for Bank of England MPC
Having a vagina makes you understand economics better
The Big Read: No easy answers to HDB lease decay issue, but public mindset has to change first - "homeownership is “far more popular than renting in Singapore and, arguably, an intrinsic part of the social compact”, said Singapore Management University (SMU) law don Eugene Tan. “Relying on a contractual understanding of the leases is legally appropriate (for the Government) but politically limiting and divisive,” he noted... At the heart of the debate is a very Singaporean view of public housing flats as “sure-win” investments — a mindset that the Government is partly responsible for shaping, experts pointed out... At a dinner for the International Housing Conference held in 2010 by HDB, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong linked the value of HDB flats to the strength of the economy: “Provided Singapore continues to do well, our flats will maintain their value, and Singaporeans can enjoy an appreciating asset.” In 2011, then-National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan also reiterated the importance of the policy as he rebutted a suggestion by the Workers’ to peg the prices of new flats to the incomes of qualifying households instead of resale market prices... Since the first million-dollar HDB flat transaction in Queenstown, at least 89 flats have been sold S$1 million or more"
Lee Kuan Yew Promised in 2013: The Value of HDB Flats Will Never Drop
I went to Takarajima 24, an onahole internet cafe - "Takarajima 24’s basically got you covered no matter what. They had DVDs for fetishes I didn’t even know existed, like women coated in gold body paint? Living statues or something? There were multiple releases for that genre... I took a proper look at the bin, and it changed everything. ‘Would you like to review what your life should be…?’ it asked, as I held an increasingly slippery foam cup filled with my sperm in a depressingly dark and tiny room whilst on holiday overseas."
Professor of physiology says transgender athletes have advantage in speed, power - "Otago University professor in physiology Alison Heather has researched transgender changes, particularly in top level sport... the IOC changed their regulations to include trans women in the women's category of events if they remained under the testosterone levels of 10 nanomoles per litre (NMOL/L) a year prior to competing, as well as during competition. However, a CIS female (a born female) can reach nowhere near the testosterone level of 10 NMOL/L. The average female sits at 2.8 NMOL/L and the average male 23-25 NMOL/L. This means the likes of Hubbard competes at three times the amount of testosterone to other weightlifting females... after transitioning a trans woman's muscle mass, lung capacity and muscle memory all remain the same as when they were CIS male... British Journal of Sports Medicine scientists Stephane Bermon and Pierre-Yves Garnier found there was statistically significant differences in the performance of higher testosterone female athletes versus lower testosterone athletes at the 2011 and 2013 International Athletics Federation World Championships across five separate events."
Who Made That T-Shirt? - The New York Times - "In 1904, the Cooper Underwear Company ran a magazine ad announcing a new product for bachelors. In the “before” photo, a man averts his eyes from the camera as if embarrassed; he has lost all the buttons on his undershirt and has safety-pinned its flaps together. In the “after” photo, a virile gentleman sports a handlebar mustache, smokes a cigar and wears a “bachelor undershirt” stretchy enough to be pulled over the head. “No safety pins — no buttons — no needle — no thread,” ran the slogan aimed at men with no wives and no sewing skills. Someone in the U.S. Navy must have seen the logic in this, because the following year, the quartermaster’s office specified that sailors should wear undershirts with no buttons under their uniforms; soon thousands of men became acquainted with the comfort of the cotton pullover."
Koalas Have Been Caught Pole Dancing In Brisbane
Another Reason Companies Fail - Price's Law - "Price’s Law says that 50% of work at a company is done by a small number of people. Specifically, it says that 50% of work is done by the square root of the number of employees."
Betsy DeVos and the Politics of Campus Sexual Assault - "The politicization of sexual assault on campus is surprising, even in a hyper-partisan environment. For one, there’s evidence of a dramatic shift in how Democrats think about students’ rights. Ever since the 1950s and ‘60s, when the fiercely liberal Warren Court—an era of the Supreme Court during which Justice Earl Warren presided as Chief Justice—dramatically expanded the rights of the accused in landmark decisions like Miranda v. Arizona and Gideon v. Wainwright, defendants’ rights have been associated with progressive activism. Yet that’s flipped in recent years, with Democrats overwhelmingly focused on the victims of sexual assault and Republicans overwhelmingly focused on the victimization of those accused of it... why did Obama adopt this stance in the first place, effectively bucking traditional Democratic norms by requiring universities to relax their standards for due process? The answer is likely—and unsurprisingly—political. After a devastating 2010 midterm election, Democrats in Congress looked to Senator Michael Bennet’s campaign in Colorado—one of the few bright spots for their party in 2010—as a model. Bennet had relied heavily on identity politics, rallying women, minorities, and millennials. And he had triumphed."
Post ID: 4283864200463559352
Wednesday, August 08, 2018
Links - 8th August 2018 (2)
Gender Stereotypes are Mostly Accurate - "there are 11 papers published in peer reviewed journals reporting a total of 16 studies that have directly assessed the accuracy of gender stereotypes. Ellemer’s review did not cite a single one. How is this possible? In addition to the 11 papers published in peer reviewed journals, several reviews of this evidence have appeared in numerous other sources (a list appears at the end of this article). How could Ellemers’ review have just missed all that?... In 2018, Ellemers declares “females were less likely to have their grants funded,” even though in 2015, she acknowledged that her study actually found no significant evidence of bias!... How is it possible that such a large literature on gender stereotype accuracy was ignored or overlooked by so many experts? How is it possible that the editor and reviewers of Ellemer’s PNAS article on grant funding all overlooked Simpson’s Paradox, which has been well-known since at least the 1970s to constitute an alternative explanation to sexist bias for many outcomes? This is impossible to know. We do know, however, that, throughout the social sciences, empirical findings that contest social justice narratives often are systematically ignored, overlooked, denigrated, and dismissed"
Fall asleep in seconds by listening to a soothing voice read the EU’s new GDPR legislation - "Meditation app Calm provides what it calls “bedtime stories for grown-ups” (an eclectic mix of lullabies, fairy tales, and short stories in audiobook form). But it’s now added highlights from the GDPR legislation to its roster, narrated aloud by former BBC radio announcer Peter Jefferson, who is famous in the UK for his readings of the Shipping Forecast — a nightly maritime weather report that’s cherished by non-maritime listeners for its repetitive and ritual qualities"
The terrible truth about your tin of Italian tomatoes - "The gangmaster or “caporalato” system is rife across the Italian agricultural sector where migrants – both legal and illegal – are organised into informal labour groups that are hired by Italian landowners to harvest their crops."
At this Portland Bakery, White Guilt Poisons the Batter - "a small network of agit-activists, diversity educators, and sycophantic progressive white ‘allies’ are trampling over the lives of innocent individuals in pursuit of an “equitable” power redistribution with them at the top... having established that his staff had done nothing wrong did not alter Blomgren’s decision to fire them. “In this situation it doesn’t really matter that the two staff members working are not themselves racist because the call they made to deny Lillian service caused her to feel like she had been discriminated against,” his statement explained. “Sometimes impact outweighs intent and when that happens people do need to be held accountable. Since both Lillian and the clamoring public were demanding that these staff members be fired that it is what we did putting these two young women out of work.” The bakery has since deleted this statement and denies firing the employees to “save face or to appease anyone.” They now insist the women were fired for their “poor customer service decision” and its “racial implications.”... As a newcomer to Portland, Lisa assumed that this incident was a freak occurrence. She was surprised to discover that it’s actually part of an emerging trend... Kali Wilgus and Liz Connelly were accused of culturally appropriating—that is, stealing—Mexican culture by selling burritos from their new food cart. After receiving death threats and sustained protest, they shut down their business, deleted their social media accounts, and went into hiding... calls to action—and the protests that follow them—are seldom organic or spontaneous occurrences. They are usually the work of professional agitators and activists who set the agenda and lead the way. Using “call-out” tactics as an instrument of public humiliation, they shame their targets and sometimes seek to benefit socially and financially from the controversy they hope to ignite... Whitten was also furious that a white man had been employed as the bakery’s PR specialist. He withdrew plans to host an upcoming ‘Reparations Happy Hour’ event at the bakery in protest. “This is the unfortunate danger of working with white people,” Whitten complained during a 48-minute tirade live streamed to his nearly 5,000 Facebook followers on June 2. The video is both fascinating and appalling, and reveals a working relationship hopelessly compromised by his attempts to exploit and manipulate. The hapless Blomgren is denounced as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” for being white, for refusing to obey Whitten or compensate him for his labor... For his gratuitous and public humiliation of a progressive scholar, Whitten was not only afforded a warm reception at the event but he was thanked by his target, who was evidently grateful to have been shamed in this way"
Symposium: Masterpiece Cakeshop - not as narrow as may first appear - "While Masterpiece was pending in the state adjudication process, a William Jack went to three different bakers and asked for cakes with religious symbols and quotations hostile to same-sex marriage. When the bakers refused to make the cakes, he filed claims of religious discrimination. The commission found no discrimination in these cases, and what it said about these protected bakers was inconsistent with what it said about Masterpiece and its owner, Jack Phillips. The Supreme Court emphasized two such inconsistencies. The commission said that any message from the same-sex wedding cakes would be the customer’s message, not Phillips’; it did not say that with respect to the protected bakers, and the Colorado Court of Appeals clearly implied that the protected bakers could understand themselves as morally responsible for the message on the cakes. The commission said that the protected bakers’ willingness to make other cakes with Christian themes for Christian customers was exonerating, but that Jack Phillips’ willingness to make other cakes for LGBT customers and same-sex couples was irrelevant. More fundamentally, the commission said that refusing to make a cake with a message celebrating same-sex marriage discriminated on the basis of the sexual orientation of the customer requesting that message, but that refusing to make a cake with a religious message opposing same-sex marriage did not discriminate on the basis of the religion of the customer requesting that message... The Supreme Court has announced a powerful ideal. Even when a law has no explicit exceptions, hostile enforcement is unconstitutional. Single-issue agencies that enforce state civil-rights laws must approach claims to religious exemptions with tolerance and respect."
Opinion | What Religion Gives Us (That Science Can’t) - The New York Times - "I do not intend to try to rescue religion as reasonable. It isn’t terribly reasonable. But I do want to argue that its irrationality does not render it unacceptable, valueless or cowardly. Its irrationality may even be the source of its power."
Bruce Pardy: Meet the new ‘human rights’ — where you are forced by law to use ‘reasonable’ pronouns - "the Senate passed Bill C-16, the Liberal government’s legislation that adds “gender identity or expression” to grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act. Bill C-16 was in part the motivation for Peterson’s video... The Ontario Human Rights Commission has stated, in the context of equivalent provisions in the Ontario Human Rights Code, that “refusing to refer to a trans person by their chosen name and a personal pronoun that matches their gender identity … will likely be discrimination when it takes place in a social area covered by the Code, including employment, housing and services like education.”... Human rights were conceived to liberate. They protected people from an oppressive state. Their purpose was to prevent arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, and censorship, by placing restraints on government. The state’s capacity to accommodate these “negative rights” was unlimited, since they required only that people be left alone. But freedom from interference is so 20th century. Modern human rights entitle... When speech is merely restricted, you can at least keep your thoughts to yourself. Compelled speech makes people say things with which they disagree... When Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould testified before the Senate’s Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, she specifically denied that the bill would force the use of gender-neutral pronouns. There are reasons to doubt her sincerity. First, human rights commissions say otherwise... Second, Senator Donald Plett proposed an amendment to the bill that would have clarified that it was not the bill’s intention to require the use of particular pronouns. The minister flatly rejected it, as did Liberal and most “independent” senators... The question is not whether required speech is “reasonable” speech. If a statute required people to say “hello,” “please” and “thank you,” that statute would be tyrannical, not because “hello,” “please” and “thank you” aren’t reasonable things to say, but because the state has dictated the content of private conversation."
Ex-stripper scores six-figure inheritance from dead customer - "Despite the sister’s accusations, Beckham claimed in a deposition they never had a sexual relationship: “We had more of an everlasting friendship.’’"
Attention name-change brigades: These Canadian things may sound offensive, but aren’t - "Simon Fraser University’s sports teams are known as the Clan, a nod to the Scottish origins of the school’s namesake. But all of that will come to an end if a name-change campaign by philosophy professor Holly Andersen is successful. Andersen understands that there is nothing inherently wrong with the name, but wants it changed solely because it sounds like “Klan” — as in “Ku Klux Klan.”...
A lynching is an extrajudicial hanging carried out by a mob, and is particularly associated with terroristic violence against U.S. black communities. It’s also a common surname to many people who have nothing to do with racialized murder. In a world of David Lynch and Merrill Lynch, this might seem obvious, but tell that to Oregon’s Centennial School Board, which recently scrubbed the name “Lynch” from two of its school buildings. The schools were named for Patrick Lynch, an 1800s philanthropist, but school officials nonetheless deemed the name offensive and racist...
Moby Dick, a fish and chips restaurant in White Rock, was blocked from renting space for an expansion on the grounds that their name was offensive...
An Alberta family was not amused when they popped a bottle of Vitamin Water to find the words “you retard” under the cap. The phrase was the most disastrous outcome imaginable of a promotion that combined random French and English words...
Dildo: Canada’s ranking entry on any online list of curious place names. The name is owed to a 1760s surveying voyage by Captain James Cook. Given the sheer quantity of Newfoundland landscape features that required official names, Cook occasionally assigned monikers based on whatever happened to be in his field of view at the time. Back then, however, a dildo referred to any cylindrical object"
Outcry after Miss South Africa wears gloves to greet black kids - "A beaming Miss South Africa was photographed with children at a soup kitchen in what was supposed to be a feel-good charity event. But she ended up fending off accusations of racism for wearing gloves while interacting with black children... she and other volunteers wore disposable gloves at the event in the Soweto section of Johannesburg because they wanted to be hygienic."
Woman Accuses Taco Bell of Racism After Being Refused Fries
Is motherhood the unfinished work of feminism? | Amy Westervelt - "Most surprising to me, as someone told by women’s magazine editors for years “we don’t cover motherhood”, is the fact that publications like Elle and Marie Claire appear to have lifted their long-standing ban on motherhood. Apparently, it is finally OK to talk about one of the possible outcomes of all that great sex women’s mags have been promising us for years... Feminism and motherhood have a complicated relationship. Radical feminist Shulamith Firestone articulated this most starkly in her argument that women would never truly be free of patriarchy until they were freed from the yoke of reproduction. She imagined wistfully a day when babies could be created in mechanical uteruses, freeing women from the physical subjugation of childbirth... motherhood has once again become a bogeyman for feminists. The topic comes up in fewer than 3% of papers, journal articles, or textbooks on modern gender theory. Discussing it marks one as a “gender essentialist” in academia, a label that can end one’s academic career before it even begins"
Asking America's Police Officers to Explain Abusive Cops - "police and their critics often see the same events very differently. For example, one anecdote concerns a man in the back of a police car who told his arresting officers that he was having trouble breathing. They ignored him. He died. Many who watched the video saw callous cops who placed no value on a human being's life. But police officers who watched the same tape saw two cops who thought that their seemingly healthy arrestee was faking, as so many people fabricate medical conditions to avoid being taken to jail"
The City Where Blacks Suffer Under 'Stop and Frisk on Steroids' - "police in Miami Gardens, Florida briefly made headlines after surveillance video captured their harassment of a black clerk at a convenience store. They stopped and questioned the man, Earl Sampson, a ludicrous 258 times. On 62 occasions, they arrested him for trespassing at his place of employment, a pattern of abuse that confounded his employer, the store's owner... This is the reality of anti-racism in American public discourse. Maximum outrage and urgent demands to do something are marshaled against offensive words. A Princeton student who critiqued the concept of white privilege in the school newspaper made national headlines and inspired numerous essays picking apart his logic. But public employees with guns harassing, intimidating, and humiliating innocent black children, because they're black, every day in their neighborhood? Fusion published that story Thursday morning and almost no one noticed."
Words speak louder than actions
When Government Plays Arts Patron - "perhaps because I've spent nearly 30 years as a freelance writer with no sense of entitlement to public subsidies, (though I struggled financially) I have limited sympathy for people seeking taxpayer support for work that offends taxpayer sensibilities. (My sympathy for movie studios or people with other private funding sources is especially limited.)... Arts patronage (again) is inherently discriminatory; as a practical matter, viewpoint discrimination is unavoidable: or, as O'Connor said, "Any content based generalizations...are a consequence of the nature of arts funding."... as a taxpayer and writer, I have little patience for anti-establishment, avant garde artists who seek establishment support and cry censorship when it's denied"
The Singaporean government giving a grant to modern fairytales on fertility is seen as state oppression. Yet it giving grants to artists who criticise the state is not seen as the state hating itself
‘The Last Jedi’ failed its Black and Asian characters, reducing them to comic relief and Canto Bight | AFROPUNK - "When not asking where Rey is, Finn’s purpose is as funnyman. Cut to Finn—here’s a joke. Many jokes. Too many jokes. Sometimes speaking only in punchlines, Finn’s screentime too often only served as a vehicle for someone else’s development or Rian Johnson’s personal... Finn’s partner-in-crime in this film is the well-intentioned, but idealistic Rose. Who I loved! Until I didn’t. In comes that godforsaken Canto Bight. To be fair, the way Canto Bight goes down, the heavy-handed political metaphors, and the Fantastic Beast scene, isn’t Roses fault, or actress Kelly Marie Tran, who is a welcome addition to the trilogy. Not only is this the WORST sequence in the film, it’s also one of the most pointless. But what bothered me the most about Finn (and Rose) was their third act. On Crait, facing off against the First Order, our heroes brave a valiant final attempt to save the Resistance. When the mission seems lost and the remaining Rebels fall back, Finn—filled with the spirit of a kamikaze—tries to sacrifice himself by flying into General Hux gigantic blaster. But, like, why? On what planet did Rian Johnson earn that? It’s like Finn just wanted to die. And, hey, sometimes you just wanna die. But this is the same character who, up until this very moment, has been actively running away from this possibility and now he has a death wish? “What about Rey?!?” He don’t care no ‘mo. Where we leave Rose in this film is just as bad, wtf. After saving Finn from himself, Rose professes her love to Finn, utters some self-righteous cliches, kisses him without permission, and passes out. The worst on-screen kiss maybe ever, at that"
Looks like racist sexist shitlords aren't the only ones who hated The Last Jedi
Rape evidence flaws may have put hundreds of innocents in jail - "Hundreds of innocent people could be behind bars for rape and other serious offences because of the failure to disclose crucial evidence, legal experts have said. The warning came after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) was forced to drop 47 serious sex assault cases in just six weeks after a review found key material had not been shared with the defence... Isaac Itiary, 25, who was accused of raping an underage girl, walked free from court when phone messages emerged supporting his claim that the girl had claimed to be 19... Tana Adkin QC, a member of the Criminal Bar Association's executive committee, said part of the problem was that the police and prosecutors were now more focused on believing the complainant than on obtaining justice.
What happens when you have a feminist legal system
Interestingly unlike in Singapore underaged sex isn't absolute liability in the UK
Victim culture fosters contempt for defendants, says ex-DPP - "A former Director of Public Prosecutions has blamed the “victim” culture that he says fosters a contempt for defendants and their rights for the recent collapse of trials after non-disclosure of evidence. Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, QC, said that a promotion in recent years of “victims’ rights over defendants’ protections had come home to roost”. It had led to an “openly hostile attitude to suspects that borders on contempt for them and their rights”... Lord Macdonald did not refer to his successors by name but both Sir Keir Starmer, now a Labour MP, and the current DPP, Alison Saunders, have promoted the “victim” rhetoric to which he referred. Since entering parliament Sir Keir, the MP for Holborn and St Pancras, sought to promote a Victims of Crime Bill to create a Victims Commissioner and Victims’ Code. Saunders, who succeeded him, has been criticised for adopting the same terminology, speaking of “rape victims” rather than rape complainants."
Feminists probably can't see the link between feminism/social justice, Saunders's 2015 guidelines reversing the presumption of innocence in rape cases and the avalanche of false convictions
Fall asleep in seconds by listening to a soothing voice read the EU’s new GDPR legislation - "Meditation app Calm provides what it calls “bedtime stories for grown-ups” (an eclectic mix of lullabies, fairy tales, and short stories in audiobook form). But it’s now added highlights from the GDPR legislation to its roster, narrated aloud by former BBC radio announcer Peter Jefferson, who is famous in the UK for his readings of the Shipping Forecast — a nightly maritime weather report that’s cherished by non-maritime listeners for its repetitive and ritual qualities"
The terrible truth about your tin of Italian tomatoes - "The gangmaster or “caporalato” system is rife across the Italian agricultural sector where migrants – both legal and illegal – are organised into informal labour groups that are hired by Italian landowners to harvest their crops."
At this Portland Bakery, White Guilt Poisons the Batter - "a small network of agit-activists, diversity educators, and sycophantic progressive white ‘allies’ are trampling over the lives of innocent individuals in pursuit of an “equitable” power redistribution with them at the top... having established that his staff had done nothing wrong did not alter Blomgren’s decision to fire them. “In this situation it doesn’t really matter that the two staff members working are not themselves racist because the call they made to deny Lillian service caused her to feel like she had been discriminated against,” his statement explained. “Sometimes impact outweighs intent and when that happens people do need to be held accountable. Since both Lillian and the clamoring public were demanding that these staff members be fired that it is what we did putting these two young women out of work.” The bakery has since deleted this statement and denies firing the employees to “save face or to appease anyone.” They now insist the women were fired for their “poor customer service decision” and its “racial implications.”... As a newcomer to Portland, Lisa assumed that this incident was a freak occurrence. She was surprised to discover that it’s actually part of an emerging trend... Kali Wilgus and Liz Connelly were accused of culturally appropriating—that is, stealing—Mexican culture by selling burritos from their new food cart. After receiving death threats and sustained protest, they shut down their business, deleted their social media accounts, and went into hiding... calls to action—and the protests that follow them—are seldom organic or spontaneous occurrences. They are usually the work of professional agitators and activists who set the agenda and lead the way. Using “call-out” tactics as an instrument of public humiliation, they shame their targets and sometimes seek to benefit socially and financially from the controversy they hope to ignite... Whitten was also furious that a white man had been employed as the bakery’s PR specialist. He withdrew plans to host an upcoming ‘Reparations Happy Hour’ event at the bakery in protest. “This is the unfortunate danger of working with white people,” Whitten complained during a 48-minute tirade live streamed to his nearly 5,000 Facebook followers on June 2. The video is both fascinating and appalling, and reveals a working relationship hopelessly compromised by his attempts to exploit and manipulate. The hapless Blomgren is denounced as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” for being white, for refusing to obey Whitten or compensate him for his labor... For his gratuitous and public humiliation of a progressive scholar, Whitten was not only afforded a warm reception at the event but he was thanked by his target, who was evidently grateful to have been shamed in this way"
Symposium: Masterpiece Cakeshop - not as narrow as may first appear - "While Masterpiece was pending in the state adjudication process, a William Jack went to three different bakers and asked for cakes with religious symbols and quotations hostile to same-sex marriage. When the bakers refused to make the cakes, he filed claims of religious discrimination. The commission found no discrimination in these cases, and what it said about these protected bakers was inconsistent with what it said about Masterpiece and its owner, Jack Phillips. The Supreme Court emphasized two such inconsistencies. The commission said that any message from the same-sex wedding cakes would be the customer’s message, not Phillips’; it did not say that with respect to the protected bakers, and the Colorado Court of Appeals clearly implied that the protected bakers could understand themselves as morally responsible for the message on the cakes. The commission said that the protected bakers’ willingness to make other cakes with Christian themes for Christian customers was exonerating, but that Jack Phillips’ willingness to make other cakes for LGBT customers and same-sex couples was irrelevant. More fundamentally, the commission said that refusing to make a cake with a message celebrating same-sex marriage discriminated on the basis of the sexual orientation of the customer requesting that message, but that refusing to make a cake with a religious message opposing same-sex marriage did not discriminate on the basis of the religion of the customer requesting that message... The Supreme Court has announced a powerful ideal. Even when a law has no explicit exceptions, hostile enforcement is unconstitutional. Single-issue agencies that enforce state civil-rights laws must approach claims to religious exemptions with tolerance and respect."
Opinion | What Religion Gives Us (That Science Can’t) - The New York Times - "I do not intend to try to rescue religion as reasonable. It isn’t terribly reasonable. But I do want to argue that its irrationality does not render it unacceptable, valueless or cowardly. Its irrationality may even be the source of its power."
Bruce Pardy: Meet the new ‘human rights’ — where you are forced by law to use ‘reasonable’ pronouns - "the Senate passed Bill C-16, the Liberal government’s legislation that adds “gender identity or expression” to grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act. Bill C-16 was in part the motivation for Peterson’s video... The Ontario Human Rights Commission has stated, in the context of equivalent provisions in the Ontario Human Rights Code, that “refusing to refer to a trans person by their chosen name and a personal pronoun that matches their gender identity … will likely be discrimination when it takes place in a social area covered by the Code, including employment, housing and services like education.”... Human rights were conceived to liberate. They protected people from an oppressive state. Their purpose was to prevent arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, and censorship, by placing restraints on government. The state’s capacity to accommodate these “negative rights” was unlimited, since they required only that people be left alone. But freedom from interference is so 20th century. Modern human rights entitle... When speech is merely restricted, you can at least keep your thoughts to yourself. Compelled speech makes people say things with which they disagree... When Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould testified before the Senate’s Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, she specifically denied that the bill would force the use of gender-neutral pronouns. There are reasons to doubt her sincerity. First, human rights commissions say otherwise... Second, Senator Donald Plett proposed an amendment to the bill that would have clarified that it was not the bill’s intention to require the use of particular pronouns. The minister flatly rejected it, as did Liberal and most “independent” senators... The question is not whether required speech is “reasonable” speech. If a statute required people to say “hello,” “please” and “thank you,” that statute would be tyrannical, not because “hello,” “please” and “thank you” aren’t reasonable things to say, but because the state has dictated the content of private conversation."
Ex-stripper scores six-figure inheritance from dead customer - "Despite the sister’s accusations, Beckham claimed in a deposition they never had a sexual relationship: “We had more of an everlasting friendship.’’"
Attention name-change brigades: These Canadian things may sound offensive, but aren’t - "Simon Fraser University’s sports teams are known as the Clan, a nod to the Scottish origins of the school’s namesake. But all of that will come to an end if a name-change campaign by philosophy professor Holly Andersen is successful. Andersen understands that there is nothing inherently wrong with the name, but wants it changed solely because it sounds like “Klan” — as in “Ku Klux Klan.”...
A lynching is an extrajudicial hanging carried out by a mob, and is particularly associated with terroristic violence against U.S. black communities. It’s also a common surname to many people who have nothing to do with racialized murder. In a world of David Lynch and Merrill Lynch, this might seem obvious, but tell that to Oregon’s Centennial School Board, which recently scrubbed the name “Lynch” from two of its school buildings. The schools were named for Patrick Lynch, an 1800s philanthropist, but school officials nonetheless deemed the name offensive and racist...
Moby Dick, a fish and chips restaurant in White Rock, was blocked from renting space for an expansion on the grounds that their name was offensive...
An Alberta family was not amused when they popped a bottle of Vitamin Water to find the words “you retard” under the cap. The phrase was the most disastrous outcome imaginable of a promotion that combined random French and English words...
Dildo: Canada’s ranking entry on any online list of curious place names. The name is owed to a 1760s surveying voyage by Captain James Cook. Given the sheer quantity of Newfoundland landscape features that required official names, Cook occasionally assigned monikers based on whatever happened to be in his field of view at the time. Back then, however, a dildo referred to any cylindrical object"
Outcry after Miss South Africa wears gloves to greet black kids - "A beaming Miss South Africa was photographed with children at a soup kitchen in what was supposed to be a feel-good charity event. But she ended up fending off accusations of racism for wearing gloves while interacting with black children... she and other volunteers wore disposable gloves at the event in the Soweto section of Johannesburg because they wanted to be hygienic."
Woman Accuses Taco Bell of Racism After Being Refused Fries
Is motherhood the unfinished work of feminism? | Amy Westervelt - "Most surprising to me, as someone told by women’s magazine editors for years “we don’t cover motherhood”, is the fact that publications like Elle and Marie Claire appear to have lifted their long-standing ban on motherhood. Apparently, it is finally OK to talk about one of the possible outcomes of all that great sex women’s mags have been promising us for years... Feminism and motherhood have a complicated relationship. Radical feminist Shulamith Firestone articulated this most starkly in her argument that women would never truly be free of patriarchy until they were freed from the yoke of reproduction. She imagined wistfully a day when babies could be created in mechanical uteruses, freeing women from the physical subjugation of childbirth... motherhood has once again become a bogeyman for feminists. The topic comes up in fewer than 3% of papers, journal articles, or textbooks on modern gender theory. Discussing it marks one as a “gender essentialist” in academia, a label that can end one’s academic career before it even begins"
Asking America's Police Officers to Explain Abusive Cops - "police and their critics often see the same events very differently. For example, one anecdote concerns a man in the back of a police car who told his arresting officers that he was having trouble breathing. They ignored him. He died. Many who watched the video saw callous cops who placed no value on a human being's life. But police officers who watched the same tape saw two cops who thought that their seemingly healthy arrestee was faking, as so many people fabricate medical conditions to avoid being taken to jail"
The City Where Blacks Suffer Under 'Stop and Frisk on Steroids' - "police in Miami Gardens, Florida briefly made headlines after surveillance video captured their harassment of a black clerk at a convenience store. They stopped and questioned the man, Earl Sampson, a ludicrous 258 times. On 62 occasions, they arrested him for trespassing at his place of employment, a pattern of abuse that confounded his employer, the store's owner... This is the reality of anti-racism in American public discourse. Maximum outrage and urgent demands to do something are marshaled against offensive words. A Princeton student who critiqued the concept of white privilege in the school newspaper made national headlines and inspired numerous essays picking apart his logic. But public employees with guns harassing, intimidating, and humiliating innocent black children, because they're black, every day in their neighborhood? Fusion published that story Thursday morning and almost no one noticed."
Words speak louder than actions
When Government Plays Arts Patron - "perhaps because I've spent nearly 30 years as a freelance writer with no sense of entitlement to public subsidies, (though I struggled financially) I have limited sympathy for people seeking taxpayer support for work that offends taxpayer sensibilities. (My sympathy for movie studios or people with other private funding sources is especially limited.)... Arts patronage (again) is inherently discriminatory; as a practical matter, viewpoint discrimination is unavoidable: or, as O'Connor said, "Any content based generalizations...are a consequence of the nature of arts funding."... as a taxpayer and writer, I have little patience for anti-establishment, avant garde artists who seek establishment support and cry censorship when it's denied"
The Singaporean government giving a grant to modern fairytales on fertility is seen as state oppression. Yet it giving grants to artists who criticise the state is not seen as the state hating itself
‘The Last Jedi’ failed its Black and Asian characters, reducing them to comic relief and Canto Bight | AFROPUNK - "When not asking where Rey is, Finn’s purpose is as funnyman. Cut to Finn—here’s a joke. Many jokes. Too many jokes. Sometimes speaking only in punchlines, Finn’s screentime too often only served as a vehicle for someone else’s development or Rian Johnson’s personal... Finn’s partner-in-crime in this film is the well-intentioned, but idealistic Rose. Who I loved! Until I didn’t. In comes that godforsaken Canto Bight. To be fair, the way Canto Bight goes down, the heavy-handed political metaphors, and the Fantastic Beast scene, isn’t Roses fault, or actress Kelly Marie Tran, who is a welcome addition to the trilogy. Not only is this the WORST sequence in the film, it’s also one of the most pointless. But what bothered me the most about Finn (and Rose) was their third act. On Crait, facing off against the First Order, our heroes brave a valiant final attempt to save the Resistance. When the mission seems lost and the remaining Rebels fall back, Finn—filled with the spirit of a kamikaze—tries to sacrifice himself by flying into General Hux gigantic blaster. But, like, why? On what planet did Rian Johnson earn that? It’s like Finn just wanted to die. And, hey, sometimes you just wanna die. But this is the same character who, up until this very moment, has been actively running away from this possibility and now he has a death wish? “What about Rey?!?” He don’t care no ‘mo. Where we leave Rose in this film is just as bad, wtf. After saving Finn from himself, Rose professes her love to Finn, utters some self-righteous cliches, kisses him without permission, and passes out. The worst on-screen kiss maybe ever, at that"
Looks like racist sexist shitlords aren't the only ones who hated The Last Jedi
Rape evidence flaws may have put hundreds of innocents in jail - "Hundreds of innocent people could be behind bars for rape and other serious offences because of the failure to disclose crucial evidence, legal experts have said. The warning came after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) was forced to drop 47 serious sex assault cases in just six weeks after a review found key material had not been shared with the defence... Isaac Itiary, 25, who was accused of raping an underage girl, walked free from court when phone messages emerged supporting his claim that the girl had claimed to be 19... Tana Adkin QC, a member of the Criminal Bar Association's executive committee, said part of the problem was that the police and prosecutors were now more focused on believing the complainant than on obtaining justice.
What happens when you have a feminist legal system
Interestingly unlike in Singapore underaged sex isn't absolute liability in the UK
Victim culture fosters contempt for defendants, says ex-DPP - "A former Director of Public Prosecutions has blamed the “victim” culture that he says fosters a contempt for defendants and their rights for the recent collapse of trials after non-disclosure of evidence. Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, QC, said that a promotion in recent years of “victims’ rights over defendants’ protections had come home to roost”. It had led to an “openly hostile attitude to suspects that borders on contempt for them and their rights”... Lord Macdonald did not refer to his successors by name but both Sir Keir Starmer, now a Labour MP, and the current DPP, Alison Saunders, have promoted the “victim” rhetoric to which he referred. Since entering parliament Sir Keir, the MP for Holborn and St Pancras, sought to promote a Victims of Crime Bill to create a Victims Commissioner and Victims’ Code. Saunders, who succeeded him, has been criticised for adopting the same terminology, speaking of “rape victims” rather than rape complainants."
Feminists probably can't see the link between feminism/social justice, Saunders's 2015 guidelines reversing the presumption of innocence in rape cases and the avalanche of false convictions
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