Is Homophobia Associated With Homosexual Arousal?

This is the classic 1996 paper which homophiles always cite when claiming that it's "proven" that "homophobes" are secretly gay themselves.

However, none of them seem to have actually read the paper, since it doesn't exactly say what they claim it does:

"Another explanation of these data is found in Barlow, Sakheim, and Beck’s (1983) theory of the role of anxiety and attention in sexual responding. It is possible that viewing homosexual stimuli causes negative emotions such as anxiety in homophobic men but not in nonhomophobic men. Because anxiety has been shown to enhance arousal and erection, this theory would predict increases in erection in homophobic men. Furthermore, it would indicate that a response to homosexual stimuli is a function of the threat condition rather than sexual arousal per se. Whereas diff‌iculties of objectively evaluating psychoanalytic hypotheses are well-documented, these approaches would predict that sexual arousal is an intrinsic response to homosexual stimuli, whereas Barlow’s (1986) theory would predict that sexual arousal to homosexual stimuli by homophobic individuals is a function of anxiety. These competing notions can and should be evaluated by future research."


Interestingly, after this paper was published there were other papers mentioning that there was some support for the anxiety-arousal hypothesis. In a 2019 review:

A review of experimental research on anxiety and sexual arousal: Implications for the treatment of sexual dysfunction using cognitive behavioral therapy

"The idea that anxiety might facilitate sexual arousal is consistent with Zillman’s (1983) excitation transfer hypothesis (i.e., residual excitation from one stimulus creates enhanced excitation to a second stimulus, which a person misattributes as originating from the second stimulus). In addition, Kempeneers and Barbier (2008) proposed that anxiety may not only enhance attention to sexual cues, but that people may misinterpret anxious arousal as sexual arousal, thereby enhancing sexual responsivity through both cognitive and physiological mechanisms. This misinterpretation could be explained by the overlapping bodily sensations present during sexual and anxious arousal (e.g., increased heart rate, sweating, racing thoughts) and likely depends on the context in which the sensations occur...

An equal number of studies found that anxiety increased, decreased, or had no effect on men’s genital arousal...

There are a number of factors that may explain the variability in the results. First, in some studies, researchers induced anxiety simultaneously with erotic stimuli presentation (e.g., using shock threat, aversive conditioning, orally administered ephedrine sulfate, or audio narratives containing erotic and anxiety-inducing content), whereas in other studies, they induced anxiety prior to or following erotic stimuli presentation. In men, most studies that induced anxiety simultaneously found that genital arousal declined or was unaffected (Bozman & Beck, 1991; Brom, Laan, Everaerd, Spinhoven, & Both, 2015; Hale & Strassberg, 1990; Lange, Wincze, Zwick, Feldman, & Hughes, 1981), although Barlow, Sakheim, and Beck (1983) found that shock threat increased genital arousal in men...

In the few studies using a sequenced approach, researchers presented participants an anxiety-inducing stimulus (typically a film or audio clip), followed by an erotic stimulus (Fleischman, Hamilton, Fessler, & Meston, 2015; Hoon, Wincze, & Hoon, 1977; Palace & Gorzalka, 1990; Sipski et al., 2004; Wolchik et al., 1980). Only one study found that the anxiety induction increased genital arousal in men during the erotic film clip (Wolchik et al., 1980)."


Meanwhile, after scanning the 214 citations of the original paper on Researchgate, I have not found any experimental research directly replicating this 1996 paper (many papers are in Spanish and some are in Italian, both of which I cannot read, so maybe I missed something), but there is one that uses eye tracking:

Homophobia: An Impulsive Attraction to the Same Sex? Evidence From Eye-Tracking Data in a Picture-Viewing Task

"men high in homophobia looked significantly longer at homosexual than at heterosexual photographs, but only when they had a high impulsive tendency toward homosexual stimuli. This result indicates that some men high in homophobia have indeed a sexual interest toward homosexual stimuli whereas others do not"

The manikin task used to measure impulsive approach tendencies toward homosexual stimuli (IAHS) seems very strange, though.

Meanwhile, an earlier paper, In Search of the Defensive Function of Sexual Prejudice: Exploring Antigay Bias Through Shorter and Longer Lead Startle Eye Blink, concludes:

"Given these results, combined with those of our previous studies, we conclude that evidence for the existence of a group of men who exhibit antigay bias because of a hidden or unconscious attraction toward men is difficult to demonstrate using current methodology"

And other experimental research contradicts the claim:

Is Homophobia Associated with an Implicit Same-Sex Attraction?

"Some theorists propose that homophobia stems from underlying same-sex attraction. A few studies have tested this hypothesis, yet without a clear measure of implicit sexual attraction, producing mixed results. For the first time, we test this attraction-based account of homophobia among both men and women using an implicit measure of sexual attraction. No evidence of an attraction-based account of homophobia emerged. Instead, implicit same-sex attraction was related to positive evaluations of gay men and lesbians among female participants. Even in targeted analyses examining the relation between implicit same-sex attraction and homosexual evaluations among only those theoretically most likely to demonstrate an attraction-based homophobic effect, implicit same-sex attraction was not associated with evaluations of homosexuals or was associated with more positive evaluations of homosexuals. In addition, explicit same-sex attraction was related to positive evaluations of gay men and lesbians for male participants. These results are more in keeping with the attitude-similarity effect (i.e., people like, rather than dislike, similar others)."


So it is unclear that the claim that "homophobes" are secretly gay is better supported than the alternative - that they really are agitated by homosexuality.

Keywords: homophobes are gay, homophobes are homosexual

Links - 4th September 2019 (1)

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 191 - Seth Stephens-Davidowitz on "What the internet can tell us about human nature" - "'It's much more common for people to search for "I regret having children" than "I regret not having children... the biggest increase in political polarization has been amongst elderly people -- who are the least likely to use social media. And the least likely to use the internet frequently. So it doesn't seem to be caused by the internet... the top search with "My husband wants," in India is, "My husband wants me to breastfeed him." ... if you do, "Tips on breastfeeding." Like in pretty much all country's in the world, not surprisingly, 99% of searches on "Tips to breastfeed" are tips to breastfeed a child. But in India they're about equally split between tips to breastfeed a child and tips to breastfeed a husband.'
'Yeah, even controlling for how many people have children.'"

Toy Story 4 Slammed For ‘Lack Of Diversity, Anti-Feminism, And Disablism’ By Writer - "writer and theatremaker Stella Duffy spoke out about the missed opportunity for Toy Story 4 to commit to more representation for minorities.Duffy, 56, has criticised the fourth instalment for having no black lead characters and has dismissed the idea that feisty Bo Peep is a feminist.Furthermore, she has also argued the film is ‘disablist’, regarding it to be prejudiced against those with disabilities."
Apparently toys have a race

Sudan crisis: Internet restored - but only for lawyer - "A lawyer in Sudan has told the BBC that the internet has been restored after a three-week shutdown - but only for him.Abdel-Adheem Hassan on Sunday won a lawsuit against telecoms operator Zain Sudan over the blackout ordered by Sudan's military rulers.However, he says his victory is only benefitting him so far as he filed the case in a personal capacity."

Fugitive on run for 13 years is caught after he uses another man's IC to see a doctor - "A man who spent 13 years on the run after slashing a man at a 7-Eleven store was arrested this year after he used a copy of another man's identification card to obtain medical services.For his crimes, 58-year-old James Nalla Rajan Naidu Adhiseshan was sentenced to jail on Tuesday (Jun 25) for 18 months... He went to Sengkang Polyclinic on Aug 14, 2017, and presented a photocopy of an NRIC belonging to a prison inmate, Chandran Sinathanmby, who was in jail at the time... Naidu visited the polyclinic several more times that month, receiving among other things a blood test and a referral to Changi General Hospital (CGH) for an abnormal liver function test.After CGH received Naidu's referral, it conducted a check and found that the real Chandran was in jail at the time and could not have visited the polyclinic.CGH informed the polyclinic, which lodged a police report... Naidu's 13-year run from the law finally came to an end in February this year when he visited Sengkang General Hospital (SKGH) on the same day as Chandran.Chandran, who had been released from prison by that time, had received an SMS from SKGH about an orthopaedic surgery appointment on Feb 25.He turned up at the hospital, where a doctor asked him about a foot fracture. Chandran was surprised, as his foot was not fractured, and he had not visited SKGH before.The doctor advised him to lodge a police report.At the hospital, Chandran also bumped into Naidu, who was in a wheelchair.Seeing that he was wheelchair-bound, Chandran offered to help Naidu with his registration.When Naidu's queue number was called, Chandran wheeled him to the registration counter, and Naidu handed the photocopy of Chandran's NRIC to the hospital employee.Chandran then realised that Naidu was using a copy of his NRIC. He alerted the hospital staff, who called the police.Naidu tried to run away, but was detained by hospital security"

Woman 'deserved' violent rape for 'slavery,' suspect allegedly said - "A black parolee arrested for raping and bashing a white woman on the roof of his Bronx apartment building allegedly told a witness that she “deserved” the brutal attack because of slavery"
"Anti-racist" stirring up of racial hatred against white people has consequences

China no match for Japan in Southeast Asia infrastructure race - "Japan is still winning the Southeast Asia infrastructure race against China, with pending projects worth almost one and a half times its rival, according to the latest data from Fitch Solutions.Japanese-backed projects in the region’s six biggest economies -- Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam -- are valued at US$367 billion ($497 billion), the figures show. China’s tally is US$255 billion.The figures underline both the rampant need for infrastructure development in Southeast Asia, as well as Japan’s dominance over China, despite President Xi Jinping’s push to spend on railways and ports via his signature Belt and Road Initiative."

Free speech: How university academics are taking steps to be open to uncomfortable ideas - ""My impression is that activist University of Sydney students are very eager to import fashionable United States and United Kingdom culture war campaigns, but have had little traction in doing so," says Salvatore Babones, one of the university's sociologists who is originally from the US. "When William Wentworth is the most evil person you can find in your history, you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel for statues to topple." Wentworth-type incidents don't concern Babones. He has not observed a proliferation of "safe spaces" at Sydney and has never seen a trigger warning outside the student newspaper. He worries about something much more subtle, something difficult to quantify and something that poses a far more serious issue for universities – one that cannot be fixed by free speech codes, or ministerial edits, or even vice-chancellors' intervention. His fear is that academics have become resistant to considering uncomfortable ideas... As the left in the wider community shuts down controversial debates by "no-platforming" (refusing a platform for views deemed offensive), "cancelling" (rejecting someone because they have violated a social standard) and social media "call-outs" (publicly highlighting someone's social transgressions), even some left-leaning academics fear those practices are being adopted within academia, and worry about their long-term impact... the erosion of viewpoint diversity has been a slow creep, the result of decades' worth of tiny biases in hiring, promotion and peer review processes. It's not because diverse viewpoints are not allowed; he does not fear being rapped on the knuckles by management for expressing an unpopular view, but the consequences would be subtle, such as resistance by colleagues to a promotion. He cites the example of a PhD student who struggled to find academic work because her research was critical of strategies used by Palestinians. "I've found it impossible to even find a venue for publishing academic papers that would cast populism in a favourable light, because editors and the potential pool of peer reviewers are so strongly anti-populist that they won't consider any argument to the contrary," says Babones, author of The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the Tyranny of Experts. "I have come across very few people who ... say, 'I disagree with this, but it is of very high quality'."... At the University of NSW, another Heterodox member, Jamie Roberts – who did his PhD in politics, and does not identify as a conservative – has often felt like he was walking on eggshells on race and gender issues. "But for me, more significantly, it's hard to talk about all the power and virtue stuff," he says. "I believe that some believe that completing a PhD in the arts and social sciences bestow on them a sort of moral authority about what are, ultimately, complex and debatable social issues." "The danger is that universities – the arts and social sciences part – will become, if they haven't already become, the seminaries of the 21st century, where to climb the ranks you just have to repeat the dogma of the moment and close ranks with those around you."... [There was] a conference last year at Sydney University, when academics debated – and ultimately decided against – withdrawing an invitation to a speaker who espoused an unfashionable view about the impact of transgender studies on feminism. Another was particularly annoyed by a tweet from a participant at an Australian Sociological Association conference. "Sociology demands that you have a social justice lens. Any right-wing sociologists should be booted out of the club”"

DC Barbecue Joint Kicks Out Patron For Harassing Customer In MAGA Hat - "TJ Helmstetter tweeted Thursday night that he was kicked out of his “favorite restaurant,” Hill Country Barbecue and Market, after accusing a tourist wearing a MAGA hat of racism. Helmstetter reportedly called the tourist a Nazi for sporting the MAGA hat, a hat bearing President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan.Helmstetter identifies himself as a “progressive communicator” on Twitter and works as a communications strategist and entrepreneur according to his LinkedIn account.Helmstetter called the tourist a “Nazi” and said that Hill Country Barbecue and Market supports “Trump and Nazis.”... Helmstetter claims to have called the manager at Hill Country Barbecue, saying that the manager told him the restaurant is “an equal opportunity restaurant who welcomes all political viewpoints.”“Cool, except MAGA hats actually make clear that POC and LGBT are not welcome at all”"
Liberal tolerance is only for those who hold the right views

Popular Instagram hotspot in Bali “Gates of Heaven” turns out to be sheet of glass visual trickery

In Early-Morning Roundups, Denver Grabs Geese In City Parks To Kill Them And Send Meat To Hungry Families - "Scott Gilmore, deputy executive director or Denver Parks and Recreation, said it’s easy to see the need for the goose rodeos. He pointed down to the lake bank, which the geese had denuded and covered in greasy fecal matter.“There’s no vegetation. They’ve eaten everything. There’s poop everywhere on the ground. There’s algae starting to bloom in the lake,” he said. “It’s about managing the damage the geese are causing to this environment.”... Under USDA rules, the birds can either be incinerated, tossed in a landfill or made into supper. He said he wanted to do something positive with meat rather than see it go to waste. Since news of the cullings first broke, Gilmore said he’s been inundated with online comments and voicemails, some of which are threatening. He said two voicemails suggested he should be killed for how he has chosen to manage the geese. He said they weren’t specific threats, but did alert the police"

To end fatphobia, we need to dismantle Western civilization, says Philly therapist Sonalee Rashatwar - "As the fat-positivity movement has gained momentum, so, too, have debates around how fat folks should lead healthy lives. Rashatwar, though, considers how sizeism is affected by racism, misogyny, classism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism, and she counsels people against intentional weight loss... Rashatwar traces contemporary fatphobia to colonial brutality and how enslaved people were treated. Citing researcher-advocate Caleb Luna, Rashatwar said curing anti-fatness would mean dismantling society’s foundation: “I love to talk about undoing Western civilization because it’s just so romantic to me.”... "I was not surprised that the person who shot up the mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, was also a fitness instructor. I was not surprised by that because people who are Nazis, people who are white supremacists, people who are trying to think of the perfect race are also super fatphobic. … Oftentimes it’s very eugenic"... "One really important macro way that we would have to undo fatphobia would be to finally get rid of BMI, to not use it for insurance purposes. Because people who are of my BMI category and up are denied insurance coverage, are denied lifesaving procedures and medication, are denied gender affirmation surgery, are denied all kinds of things that we deserve access to — fertility treatments and IVF.""
When people openly proclaim that they want to destroy Western Civilisation...

Chinese city cracks down on men wearing ‘Beijing bikinis’, calls it ‘uncivilised’ - "Middle-aged men in China are frequently seen with their tops rolled up to expose their bellies, especially during the summer... Such men, called bang ye (膀爷), which means “topless guy”, reveal their midsections as they believe doing so can help them stay cooler in the heat"
Of course, the feminists won't complain that women aren't prohibited from wearing midriff-baring outfits

Chick flick: cockatoo gives anti-nesting spikes the bird in viral video - "The video posted on the social network – titled “Fuck the police” – by Isaac Sherring-Tito shows the cockatoo perched high on a ledge above a street slowly pulling away and ripping off the spikes installed to prevent birds like the cockatoo from perching on the ledge... Cockatoos are not the only bird to have thwarted the spikes. In Geraldton, the local church and other buildings have reportedly been plagued by corellas which have also ripped up spikes installed to prevent them nesting on buildings."

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 233 - Clive Thompson on "The culture of coding, and how it’s changing the world" - "''I think actually one of the most interesting conversations now is whether classic antitrust actions need to be taken against the scale of some of these companies, because at this point they might be actually thwarting innovation. Because mostly, at this point in time, what innovation is in Silicon Valley is trying to create a company that one of the four big ones will buy up and either kill or phagocytose, basically. Like at this point in time, there's no one who's trying to compete with any of the major four or five big companies. It’s not at all a competitive landscape.'...
'laws, or social programs with unintended consequences. Like DARE, the drug abuse resistance education program here in the US, I don't know if you had it in Canada. It was designed to keep kids off drugs, and it actually increased the rate at which kids started taking drugs'"

An0maly on Twitter - "Kamala Harris is calling out Joe Biden for his segregationist past. Just wait until she finds out the Democratic Party’s involvement in slavery, KKK, destroying black families & refusing to election black people for 100+ years after Republicans did. #DemDebate"

Links - 3rd September 2019 (2)

We can probably measure media bias. But do we want to? - "Eighty-seven percent of Republicans and 53 percent of Democrats think news organizations tend to favor one side when reporting on political and social issues... Maybe journalists shouldn’t dismiss this opinion out of hand. After all, while 28 percent of journalists identify as Democrats, just 7 percent identify as Republicans. (A full 50 percent identify as independent.) Most reporters will claim they know how to keep their opinions out of their reporting—but with humans notoriously bad at recognizing and managing their own biases, there’s a case that media companies really should care about this issue... economists Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro analyzed the 2005 Congressional Record to find phrases frequently used by either liberal or conservative members of Congress, and compared these to the news content of over 400 newspapers over the same time period. Their 2010 analysis found that newspapers’ political slant correlated fairly well with the public’s perception of them: The Washington Times slanted right, The Washington Post slanted left, and so on... Google “media bias,” and you’ll find Media Bias/Fact Check, run by armchair media analyst Dave Van Zandt... A similar effort is “The Media Bias Chart,” or simply, “The Chart.” Created by Colorado patent attorney Vanessa Otero... Both efforts suffer from the very problem they’re trying to address: Their subjective assessments leave room for human biases, or even simple inconsistencies, to creep in. Compared to Gentzkow and Shapiro, the five to 20 stories typically judged on these sites represent but a drop of mainstream news outlets’ production."
Liberal logic: if a field is dominated by whites, it will be racist to non-whites due to unconscious bias. But if a field is dominated by liberals, it will be fair and unbiased

MMA Fighter Refuses to Take Photos With Ring Girl After Being Accused of Sexual Harassment - "After being unjustly accused of sexual harassment, South Korean fighter Park Dae Sung has learned to stay away from ring girls.Park, who won the “Road FC 036 $1M Tournament” on Saturday in Jangchung Gymnasium, can be seen running away from a ring girl, and at one point even shouted “Don’t come!” at her during the usual photo-taking ritual held after a match."So much for nothing will happen to you if you're not a creep

You Can’t Have #MeToo Without Free Speech. Just Ask Australians. - ""Australia is the only Western democracy without an explicit constitutional protection for freedom of speech," Matt Collins, a defamation lawyer and the president of the Victorian Bar, told me. "People say that Sydney is the libel capital of the world," he added...
Australia's limits on speaking freely go beyond libel laws. An Australian court has even barred news outlets from reporting on the sexual abuse allegations levelled against a Catholic cardinal, George Pell...
That's why it's so frustrating to watch many activists, often on college campuses, complain that they are insufficiently protected from hate speech. "Hate speech" is a component of free speech, and if the First Amendment ceased to protect the former, we could quickly find ourselves in the sort of society where speaking truth to power was subjectively considered "hateful" by the relevant adjudicators."

Kevin Spacey: Massachusetts prosecutors drop sex assault case - "The accuser was ordered to take to the stand this month after he said he lost the phone he had used on the night of the alleged assault. Mr Spacey's lawyers had accused the man of deleting text messages and said the phone could be used to prove their client's innocence. However, he invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and refused to testify... Amid multiple allegations of misconduct, the Oscar-winning actor was dropped from Netflix series House of Cards in 2017 and had his scenes edited out of the film All the Money in the World.The Nantucket case was one of few criminal cases to be brought as a result of Hollywood's #MeToo scandal."
So much for 'believing 'victims''
This might just be a first - the alleged victim pleading the fifth. Too bad he's already been un-personed

CJ #ClimateChangeIsReal on Twitter - "Lena Dunham awkwardly tries to kiss Brad Pitt on the red carpet
"I'm sorry but Lena Dunham just assaulted Brad Pitt and I'm unamused about the lack of narrative here"
"I honestly think if she were a man, we’d be hearing Harvey Weinstein level stories about her. I also think she believes because she isn’t conventionally attractive, she’s allowed to violate the boundaries of people"
"That’s basically what she said when she attacked Odell Beckham Jr. for not speaking to her at the Met Gala in, like, ‘16 or ‘17 and when she got called out for lying she essentially said “Well, women traditionally weren’t allowed to be assholes, so what I did was fine.”"

#HimToo? Katy Perry's music video co-star accuses her of sexual assault at party - "A male model has accused pop star celebrity Katy Perry of pulling down his pants and exposing him in front of a group of people at a party without his consent.Josh Kloss, who played a “love interest” in Perry’s “Teenage Dream” music video, claimed that the former Christian music singer pulled down his pants and exposed his genitals to her friends at costume designer Johnny Wujek’s birthday party."

Henry Cavill is scared to date because of #MeToo - "“There’s something wonderful about a man chasing a woman. There’s a traditional approach to that, which is nice. I think a woman should be wooed and chased, but maybe I’m old-fashioned for thinking that,” he said. But Cavill says it’s “very difficult” to pursue a woman that way “if there are certain rules in place.” “Because then it’s like, ‘Well, I don’t want to go up and talk to her, because I’m going to be called a rapist or something,’” he continued. “So you’re like, ‘Forget it, I’m going to call an ex-girlfriend instead and then just go back to a relationship, which never really worked.’ But it’s way safer than casting myself into the fires of hell, because I’m someone in the public eye, and if I go and flirt with someone, then who knows what’s going to happen?”... But he isn’t the only man who is feeling this way. Licensed clinical psychologist Ramani Durvasula, author of Should I Stay or Should I Go?, tells Yahoo Lifestyle that some of her male clients now say they feel “censored” when it comes to dating"
Of course he got slammed for going against the narrative, and unfortunately apologised

Turning Pages: Romance and the influence of #MeToo - "A bestselling Australian romance author recently declared she was ashamed of some of her early books, and she wished she could go back and rewrite them... "Many of the behaviours that are now being called out – sexual innuendo, workplace advances, stolen kisses because the kisser couldn't resist – feel in many ways like an old friend," Cuthbert said. "They exist in the romance bubble … and they readily tap into that shared emotional history over and over again in a way that feels familiar and safe."... Romance writers have the potential to affect women around the world, Cuthbert says, and the obligation to create the books that women need to read now. So how would the new romance novel look? Sex has to include active, informed consent for everything. Make sure your lovers practise safe sex – and if there's an unwanted pregnancy, don't romanticise it. "We need to divorce the idea of sexy from the idea of surprise. Your heroine can be pursued, but she must not be prey."... The alpha male of traditional romantic fiction teeters right on the brink of toxicity: it's a short step from gorgeous bad boy to domineering brute, and much of the appeal lies in flirting with danger. The idea of rules for writing also worries me a little. But then the romance genre has always had its own rules, and it's inevitable they should shift with the times. Over the years, many of these novels have become a lot more raunchy. It will be interesting to see how they meet the challenge of being raunchy, responsible and feminist."
The difference between romance and sexual harassment is how attractive you are

Ex-US Senator Al Franken regrets resigning over sexual misconduct claims - "The Minnesota Democrat stepped down just three weeks after allegations of unwanted touching first surfaced, amid mounting pressure from colleagues.Mr Franken told The New Yorker he wished his case had first been examined by the Senate Ethics Committee.Now, seven of the 36 Democrats who demanded he resign say they regret it. Mr Franken's hastened resignation came after Los Angeles radio host Leeann Tweeden claimed the former Saturday Night Live comic "aggressively" kissed her while they rehearsed a scene during a 2006 tour to entertain US troops in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Ms Tweeden's account was bolstered by a photo of the two, in which Mr Franken appeared to touch her breasts while she slept. Her accusations were quickly followed by claims from seven additional women of groping or unwanted touching."
So much for believing women

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 196 - Eric Schwitzgebel on "Weird ideas and opaque minds" - "We take these things that we visibly think of as being crazy views and we say, "Well, the philosopher couldn't really have meant that so let's interpret them more charitably, more reasonably," and preventing us from seeing how different the philosopher's view might really be.We kind of tame the philosopher, translate into modern terms and then we actually lose an important part of the value, I think, of reading cross-culturally and reading the history of philosophy, as you get exposed to views that are radically different from your own.You get a sense of how, things that you might perceive as crazy, people actually thought were maybe, literally true, in other cultures or other times. If you're overly charitable, then you lose one of the important values you can get from reading broadly in philosophy...
When I was an undergraduate, one of my friends was taking a women's studies class and he was very upset because the women's studies professor said, "All men are attracted to rape." He's like, "I really don't think that."... he could have steel manned what she said. But one possibility is that she really meant that literally, and that what she wanted him to do was, really, much more seriously consider the possibility that, literally, all men are attracted to rape...
Gopnik and Flavell both thought that children about three or four years old could just make these whopping mistakes about their own experiences, their own attitudes, their own stream of conscious experience. Especially Flavell. I thought Flavell made a good case, and we could talk about the case if you want. The summary version is I thought Flavell made a good sense of four-year-olds could be radically mistaken about their stream of experience, and it's a little hard to reconcile with the idea that maybe adults will be completely infallible...
people in the '50 in the United States and the '40s thought that dreams just generally were black and white. I don't think that they thought it was just dreams in the United States, as influenced by media. I think they just thought dreams are a black and white kind of thing. Most people thought that in the 1950s.It's related to the presence of media in the culture, so if you look pre-20th century, very few people will say that dreams are black and white. If you look 21st century, very few people will say that dreams are black and white. You look at the arc of it and it relates to the dominance of black and white film media in the culture. And we got some cross-cultural evidence for this. This guy emailed me and said, "We should try this in China," because this was about the year 2000. He said, "Well, in rural China, most people are exposed to black and white media, their TVs are black and white, whereas in urban China, most people -- especially the wealthier people -- are exposed to mostly color media." So we asked about their dreams and we found rural people in China in the early 2000s tended to say that their dreams were black and white, and urban people tended to say their dreams were colored"

Peter Shawn Taylor: Voltaire wasn’t prepared to die defending the right to free speech, but we can still learn from him - "Consider again the predicament of Niedzviecki, who resigned as editor of Write after penning a defence of free speech and encouraging writers of all cultures to explore the lives of others. “An editor of a writers’ magazine expresses his opinions about writing and the need to see the world through others’ eyes. And for this, the writers’ union apologizes and the editor is removed,” says Kors. “Surely that is Voltairian irony in and of itself.”"

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, D-Day 75th Anniversary - "‘There's a lot of people who think because warfare, the character of warfare is constantly evolving, therefore, the rules of war are also constantly changing. But actually, the core principles remain the same. They just need to be interpreted in light of the changing circumstances of the time, the changing character of war, obviously needs to be taken into account is to how you interpret the rules’...
‘When I looked at a project recently, on urban warfare… an awful lot more was changing, than just the technology getting quicker, more deadly, more intense, it was quite possible that you would have a lot of killing happening, without really ever knowing who had pressed the button, who was even behind it, that must change something of the moral calculation, doesn’t it?’
‘I think, if you consider the archers at Agincourt, then I'm not sure it really has. The penance that archers had to pay after a battle in the Middle Ages took into account that they wouldn't know who it was that they'd have killed.’...
'Isn’t really your first duty to your own fighters? And therefore, I mean, things like drones, your duty is to risk your own people as little as possible. I mean, it is not more moral, is it, to throw people into the Battle of the Somme and suffer 20,000 casualties in a day - that is not more moral than using drones is it?'...
‘If you only fight without putting your people in harm's way, if you only wage war without risk to your own people, then what you're actually demonstrating is a willingness to kill but not to die for your cause. And I'm not sure that we should be getting involved in wars where we're not prepared to actually pay a blood price of our own people’"

Liberals' astonishingly radical shift on gender

Liberals' astonishingly radical shift on gender

"[On promoting 'they' as an all-use pronoun] In Manjoo's view, this idea — that the overwhelming majority of people are either men or women and so can be labeled either he or she, him or her, without causing offense or tyrannizing them — is "invisibly stifling" and "sad." Speaking of his own children, Manjoo laments how "silly gender norms" limit "their very liberty" with "little prospect for escape," relegating them to "a ubiquitous prison of the mind" that is "reinforced everywhere, by everyone." Hence the need to work toward "eradicating these distinctions in language" as a first step toward eradicating them "in society." As for the final element in the consensus, it holds that, other than "small-minded grammarians" (more on them below), the only people who would object to such a change in the use of "they" are those who are hopelessly "intolerant."

The first thing to be said about these convictions is that, apart from a miniscule number of transgender activists and postmodern theorists and scholars, no one would have affirmed any of them as recently as four years ago. There is almost no chance at all that the Farhad Manjoo of 2009 sat around pondering and lamenting the oppressiveness of his peers referring to "him" as "he." That's because (as far as I know) Manjoo is a man, with XY chromosomes, male reproductive organs, and typically male hormone levels, and a mere decade ago referring to such a person as "he" was considered to be merely descriptive of a rather mundane aspect of reality. His freedom was not infringed, or implicated, in any way by this convention. It wouldn't have occurred to him to think or feel otherwise. Freedom was something else and about other things.

The emergence and spread of the contrary idea — that "gender is a ubiquitous prison of the mind" — can be traced to a precise point in time: the six months following the Supreme Court's Obergefell decision, which declared same-sex marriage a constitutional right. Almost immediately after that decision was handed down, progressive activists took up the cause of championing transgender rights as the next front in the culture war — and here we are, just four short years later, born free but everywhere in chains.

How should we understand this astonishingly radical and rapid shift in self-understanding among highly educated progressive members of the upper-middle class?...

A kind of spiritual-moral madness periodically wells up and sweeps across vast swaths of the United States. In the 18th and 19th centuries, these Great Awakenings were decidedly "low church" affairs and invariably emerged from America's plethora of Protestant sects. Today, for perhaps the first time in American history, it is a nominally secular, progressive elite that finds itself swept up into a moral fervor and eager to overturn (linguistic and other) conventions in a surge of self-certainty and self-righteousness...

In addition to raising a fusty objection to the ungrammatical use of a gender-neutral plural pronoun to refer to single, gendered individuals, grammarians might also point out that English is far less gender-infused than many other languages. Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, German, and many other languages divide the world into masculine, feminine, and sometimes (but not always) neuter nouns. Masculine chairs, feminine houses, and so on, reflected in definite and indefinite articles and pronouns in every sentence ever read, written, spoken, or heard in languages across the world. Talk about a prison with little prospect for escape!

The comparatively slight fudging of the grammatical rules that Manjoo proposes for American English would be utterly impossible in these other languages, used by many hundreds of millions, without tearing them apart from top to bottom. Looks like Anglo-American culture stands at the forefront of human freedom after all.

But what is this freedom that Manjoo and so many others suddenly crave for themselves and their children? That's more than a little mysterious. Slaves everywhere presumably know that they are unfree, even if they accept the legitimacy of the system and the master that keeps them enslaved. But what is this bondage we couldn't even begin to perceive in 2009 that in under a decade has become a burden so onerous that it produces a demand for the overturning of well-settled rules and assumptions, some of which ("the gender binary") go all the way back to the earliest origins of human civilization?

The beginnings of an answer can be found in the writings of a number of thinkers who have analyzed, often critically but from a range of religious and political perspectives, the potential excesses of liberalism and democracy — and especially the antinomian logic of individualism. Alexis de Tocqueville, Robert Nisbet, Christopher Lasch, Walker Percy, Michel Houellebecq, and others have reflected deeply on what might be called the phenomenology of individualism — how a society devoted at the level of principle to the liberation of the individual from constraints can easily produce citizens who continually feel themselves to be newly enslaved and in need of ever new and more radical forms of liberation.

That's because all societies — as collectivities of individuals sharing a common culture as well as common laws, rules, and norms (including linguistic rules and norms) — invariably constrain individuals more than they would be if they lived in absolute isolation from others. Any one of those limits on the individual will can feel as if it's an intolerable constraint, and the principle of individual freedom can always be invoked in order to combat it.

This is how a progressive in 2014 can consider it an unacceptable limitation on individual freedom for gay couples to be denied the right to marry — and base that argument on the claim that a gay man's love and natural desire for another man, like a lesbian's love and natural desire for another woman, is irreducible and ineradicable — and then insist just five years later that it is an unacceptable limitation on individual freedom for anyone to be presumed a man or a woman at all.

As Andrew Sullivan has powerfully argued, the two positions are fundamentally incompatible. The first, which morally justifies same-sex marriage, presumes that biological sex and binary gender differences are real, that they matter, and that they can't just be erased at will. The second, which Manjoo and many transgender activists embrace and espouse, presumes the opposite — that those differences can and should be immediately dissolved. To affirm the truth of both positions is to embrace incoherence.

But that assumes that we're treating them as arguments. If, instead, we view them as expressions of what it can feel like at two different moments in a society devoted to the principle of individualism, they can be brought into a kind of alignment. Each is simply an expression of rebellion against a different but equally intolerable constraint on the individual. All that's changed is the object of rebellion."


On the "myth" of the slippery slope - gay marriage being forced through unleashed pronoun/gender madness and trans mania.

Virtue signalling means as each proposition becomes uncontroversial, new and more outlandish propositions need to be sought out and signed up to.

Links - 3rd September 2019 (1)

Why is it so unacceptable for a white woman to pose with an African baby? - "An award-winning TV presenter has been banned from reporting on the homeless problem in London because she is black.Can you imagine the (entirely-justified) furore? And yet here we are, in 2019, receiving news that Comic Relief, a charity which has since 1985 used celebrities to raise more than £1bn for African causes, will no longer do so.Why? Because one such celebrity posted a picture of herself holding an African child on Instagram while filming a campaign to raise funds for neonatal clinics in Uganda. A fierce backlash ensued. Her crime? That she was white. It would - aptly - have been comical, had it not lost the charity £8m in donations.The charge against Stacey Dooley, a well-respected investigative journalist for the BBC (rather than a Love Island contestant doing one day's charity work to score Instagram likes) was led by Labour MP David Lammy, who accused her of “perpetuating tired and unhelpful stereotypes”, by posing as "a white, beautiful heroine, holding a black child". "The world does not need any more white saviours," he declared, boldly speaking on behalf of 7.5 billion humans... In a final blow, Lammy declared with a quite astounding level of flippancy, that it was images like Dooley’s that "keeps the continent of Africa poor". Not civil war or government corruption or unfair trade deals, or, yes, its colonial hangover, but pictures of white charity workers with black babies. Why, of all the entities he could have attacked, did he choose to lambast one with only good intentions? Perhaps Lammy, too, has good intentions, but like so many of his fellow Labourites, his rhetoric reeks of hypocrisy. After he criticised Comic Relief’s ‘white saviour’ approach, the Richard Curtis-led charity invited him to Africa to front their next campaign instead - an offer he snubbed because he didn’t want to “be part of their PR machine”.Dianne Abbot, a vocal critic against private schools, quietly but now famously sent her own son to one, a move even she conceded was "intellectually incoherent". Jeremy Corbyn boycotted a banquet with Donald Trump, a democratically elected president, on his recent state visit but was more than happy to break bread with Chinese president Xi Jinping, leader of an oppressive communist dictatorship, when he came to stay. Just this week Jo Brand, a hard-Left charity campaigner and avid Labour supporter, suggested, albeit jokingly, about pouring battery acid, rather than mere milkshakes, on one's political opponents. When Curtis bent to pressure and told MPs on Monday that he imagines the future of Comic Relief’s fundraising efforts “will not be based on celebrities going abroad”, Lammy, and his absurd campaign against Dooley, won. A ridiculous distraction from a hard truth: gone are the days when a photo of Princess Diana cradling an African child was merely a document of her charity work. Now, such an image is shameful."

Britain has blood on its hands over the brutal suffering of refugees across the Channel
Strange, I thought David Lammy was against white saviors
So does the UK have a responsibility to accept refugees from the hellish warzone that is France or not?

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 193 - Eric Jonas on "Could a neuroscientist understand a microprocessor?" - "'I'm generally skeptical of a lot of the value of fMRI work. I think that the analogy that I make there is it's like trying to understand how your computer works with a thermal imager. Good luck with that... So people study c-elegans, this tiny little worm that has 302 neurons. We still don't really understand how its behavior works, and every single c-elegans has the same 302 neurons'"

My IRB Nightmare - "The training was several hours of videos about how the Nazis had done unethical human experiments. Then after World War II, everybody met up and decided to only do ethical human experiments from then on. And the most important part of being ethical was to have all experiments monitored by an Institutional Review Board (IRB) made of important people who could check whether experiments were ethical or not. I dutifully parroted all this back on the post-test (“Blindly trusting authority to make our ethical decisions for us is the best way to separate ourselves from the Nazis!”) and received my Study Investigator Certification...
IRREGULARITY #1: Consent forms traditionally included the name of the study in big letters where the patient could see it before signing. Mine didn’t. Why not?
Well, because in questionnaire-based psychological research, you never tell the patient what you’re looking for before they fill out the questionnaire. That’s like Methods 101. The name of my study was “Validity Of A Screening Instrument For Bipolar Disorder”. Tell the patient it’s a study about bipolar disorder, and the gig is up. The IRB listened patiently to my explanation, then told me that this was not a legitimate reason not to put the name of the study in big letters on the consent form. Putting the name of the study on the consent form was important. You know who else didn’t put the name of the study on his consent forms? Hitler... Study data are Confidential and need to be kept Secure. Never mind that all the patients’ other secure test results were on the online chart. Never mind that the online chart contains all sorts of stuff about the patients’ diagnoses, medications, hopes and fears, and even (remember, this is a psych hospital) secret fetishes and sexual perversions. Study data needed to be encrypted, then kept in a Study Binder in a locked drawer in a locked room that nobody except the study investigators had access to... Faced with someone even more obsessive and bureaucratic than they were, the IRB backed down and gave us preliminary permission to start our study...
[In our audit, it was found that] The woman in the corner office who kept insisting everybody take the Pre-Study Training…hadn’t taken the Pre-Study Training, and was therefore unqualified to be our liaison with the IRB. I swear I am not making this up. Faced with submitting twenty-seven new pieces of paperwork to correct our twenty-seven infractions, Dr. W and I gave up. We shredded the patient data and the Secret Code Log. We told all the newbies they could give up and go home. We submitted the Project Closure Form to the woman in the corner office (who as far as I know still hasn’t completed her Pre-Study Training). We told the IRB that they had won, fair and square; we surrendered unconditionally.They didn’t seem the least bit surprised... I feel like I was dragged almost to the point of needing to be in a psychiatric hospital myself, while my colleagues who just used the bipolar screening test – without making the mistake of trying to check if it works – continue to do so without anybody questioning them or giving them the slightest bit of aggravation...
'“research is not especially dangerous. Some biomedical research can be risky, but much of it requires no physical contact with patients and most contact cannot cause serious injury. Ill patients are, if anything, safer in than out of research.” As for social-science research, “its risks are trivial compared with daily risks like going online or on a date.”... To a lawyer’s eyes, IRBs are strangely unaccountable... Over time, IRB review has grown more and more intrusive. Not only do IRBs waste thousands of researcher hours on paperwork and elaborate consent forms that most study participants will never understand. Of greater concern, they also superintend research methods to minimize perceived risks. Yet IRB members often aren’t experts in the fields they oversee. Indeed, some know little or nothing about research methods at all.IRBs thus delay, distort, and stifle research, especially research on vulnerable subgroups that may benefit most from it. It’s hard to precise about those costs, but they’re high: after canvassing the research, Schneider concludes that “IRB regulation annually costs thousands of lives that could have been saved, unmeasurable suffering that could have been softened, and uncountable social ills that could have been ameliorated.”'...
I sometimes worry that people misunderstand the case against bureaucracy. People imagine it’s Big Business complaining about the regulations preventing them from steamrolling over everyone else. That hasn’t been my experience. Big Business – heck, Big Anything – loves bureaucracy. They can hire a team of clerks and secretaries and middle managers to fill out all the necessary forms, and the rest of the company can be on their merry way. It’s everyone else who suffers. The amateurs, the entrepreneurs, the hobbyists, the people doing something as a labor of love. Wal-Mart is going to keep selling groceries no matter how much paperwork and inspections it takes; the poor immigrant family with the backyard vegetable garden might not. Bureaucracy in science does the same thing: limit the field to big institutional actors with vested interests. No amount of hassle is going to prevent the Pfizer-Merck-Novartis Corporation from doing whatever study will raise their bottom line. But enough hassle will prevent a random psychiatrist at a small community hospital from pursuing his pet theory about bipolar diagnosis"
Liberals love regulation, yet GDPR helps big companies since they can take on the regulatory burden

The Central Perk, Beijing – Beijing, China - "One Beijing man’s obsession with the American TV show Friends has driven him to create a working replica of the show’s main hangout spot, the Central Perk cafe... each menu item is food actually mentioned on the show with an annotation stating which episode the snack appeared in. The café is popular among local college students, who often watch reruns of American TV shows to practice their English. For them, Friends has proven chock full of colloquialisms and mannerisms that cannot be picked up in class. And according to reports, it also offers another rarity in Beijing: cheap coffee, another godsend for college students. And in case a visit to a working coffee shop from a fictional television series which has been off the air for almost a decade isn’t enough of a “Friends experience,” Du has also constructed an exact replica of character Joey’s apartment next door to the Central Perk, complete with foosball table and oversize TV stand"

Why Was Generals 2 Cancelled? - Investigating Command & Conquer - YouTube

How to Increase Your Wi-Fi Signal - YouTube - "Do you need a stronger wireless signal or greater network access? I'm Mark Erickson, and this is Infinite Solutions. In this episode, I'll show you a simple hack to extend the range of your wireless card."
From 2007 but presumably still useful

A Brief History of Lao Sai in Singapore - "Singapore in the 1800s is not so different from say, Modern-day Northern Mali. According to Lee Yong Kiat’s Medical History of Early Singapore, a significant portion of hospital beds were devoted to the treatment of diarrhoeal diseases. At the Singapore General Hospital (European Seamen’s Hospital, 1849-1850), dysentery was the second biggest source of patients after ‘fever’. There were 26 cases of dysentery, with 6 deaths."

'End of Photography as Evidence': Realistic Photos Created by AI - "Artificial intelligence has been used to created hyper-realistic portrait photographs of men, women, and children of different races who never existed, prompting one author to declare the “end of photography as evidence.”“None of these faces are real. All made up by AIs. The end of photography as evidence,” declared author and Wired founding executive editor Kevin Kelly in a Twitter post, citing research from Nvidia... Facebook has also showcased the work of their A.I. research department, who are able to map different skins onto people’s bodies in real-time video.The technology allows you to make everyone in a video wear the same clothes, or have the same skin color.“It’s not hard to imagine this technology’s being used to smear politicians, create counterfeit revenge porn or frame people for crimes”... “Lawmakers have already begun to worry about how deepfakes could be used for political sabotage and propaganda.”"

Jenan Moussa on Twitter - Al Jazeera Arabic: Gas ovens killed millions of Jews... That's how the novel says. What is the truth of the #holocaust and how did the Zionist movement benefit from it?"
Al Jazeera English: "This Holocaust survivor retells the horror of ”what can happen when good people don't do anything.""
"Arabic content versus English content"

Beijing 2008, a painting by Liu Yi - "The work, titled “Beijing 2008”, depicts four young women playing Mahjong.The woman with the tattoos on her back is China. On her left, focused intensely on the game, is Japan. Across from China, the one with the shirt and head cocked to the side is America. Lying on the floor is Russia. And the girl standing on the right is Taiwan.Of China’s visible set of tiles “East Wind” has a dual meaning. Firstly, it signifies China’s revival as a world power. Secondly, it signifies the military might and weaponry that China possesses has already been placed on the table. On one hand, China appears to be in a good position, though we cannot see the rest of her tiles. Additionally, she is also handling some hidden tiles below the table, behind her foot."

Segments of Random Thoughts - Posts - "Higher education is a fraud. My brother (who is considerably younger than me) went to two very reputable UK universities for highly sought-after courses that are relevant to the job market. He came out in a worse shape than when he started his degrees. The universities did not teach him how to read or write, or how to structure an argument. Most importantly, they did not teach him how to think critically. I had to help him with his dissertation. I told my bro to get his act together because even I wouldn’t hire him. Few years ago I was made buddy/mentor of a fresh-from-uni graduate in the place where I used to work. The grad was so useless that he didn’t even pass his probation. How he got the job in the first place is beyond me. And the fact that people are in massive debts for this non-education is a scandal of epic proportions. Reflecting back on my own experience, I realised that my unis did not teach me anything useful either. Whatever skills I gained were purely down to me. If I ever have kids, I’m not going to encourage them to go to uni, unless they want to study STEM."

Sydney Watson on Twitter - "I feel like more taxpayers would support funding universities if they weren't churning out useless degrees & far-left ideologues. As long as that's the case, politicians are going to have a hard time convincing anyone to put their tax dollars towards "higher education"."

Links - 2nd September 2019 (2)

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Political turmoil in Austria - "Silver Borge did not expect his assassin to come armed with a serious complaint. The man arrived at nightfall navigating by flat bottomed boat along the jungle fringed creeks of Eastern Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast. A local farmer they call Dio or big man had hired him to kill Silver. But the hitman wasn't happy. He'd been paid just 5000 cordobas, around $150 or 120 pounds and that, said the assassin, was too low. I just thought you should know, he said before disappearing into the tropical night"

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Slum landlords in Marseille - "More hard evidence is emerging of China's intent to control its Muslim minorities, their belief and culture. It's estimated that more than a million people, mainly Uighers and Kazakhs are being held in vast secure buildings and camps without conviction or trial. The Chinese authorities first denied they existed. Now they say they’re schools intended to combat an alleged rise in Islamic extremism by language lessons and job training. John Sudworth watchd the expansion of these camps in the western region of Xinjiang last year, and recently he's been allowed in one. Why, he wondered."

Tensions between trans women and gay men boil over at Stonewall anniversary - "A black transgender woman wanted to be heard, but the white men wanted to celebrate... long-simmering tensions between transgender women of color and white gay men have boiled over during the celebration of World Pride and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising."
The poison of intersectionality!

How Knights Of The Old Republic Pulled Off A Voice-Acting Triumph

Beyond Meat needs to communicate how it makes its plant-based burger - "Twice in June, ingredients used by both of America’s most popular plant-based meat companies were called into question.On June 21, a consumer interest group issued concerns around one of the ingredients in Beyond Meat’s production process. And earlier in June, the World Health Organization said that eating heme—a main ingredient in the Impossible Foods burger—is linked with the formation of carcinogens in the gut... How do they truthfully and thoughtfully communicate what they are making—highly processed food—to consumers who are invested in their social missions, yet dubious of food that humans have tinkered with? While plant-based meat companies are ultimately making processed foods, their marketing is more in line with natural, organic offerings"

Logic, Empathy, Honesty - Posts - "Once again, the games media with it's virtue signalling nonsense.
"Oh no, a game set in ancient europe is full of white people!"
"Oh no, the developers are giving us a mute button instead of punishing players for saying things I dint like!""
Kotaku virtue signalling: Mordhau's Developers Are On Some Bullshit [Update] | Kotaku Australia

Diary Of A Man Forced By His Boss To Visit The New Funan Mall - "Funan is a Capitaland mall, and for this reason, it is unreviewable. Reviewing it is as pointless as reviewing the SMRT gantry or the Food Court Drink Stall. They are not attractions/things per se, but features of our landscape, as necessary and as unchanging as the tides.I said as much to my Editor, Julian, who basically told me to go fuck myself in reply. The opening of a new mall is a sacred event in our national calendar, he pronounced—I’m paraphrasing here—and people WILL be talking about it. Hence, we MUST show up, if only to show that RICE is as relevant and as facile as the next digital media outlet.I contemplate stabbing him with a pair of blunt scissors—Et tu, PJ? —but what’s the point? Another company. Another OT. I set my alarm for 7.30 AM Saturday and fall asleep dreaming of ‘Work-life Balance’"

I Don't Care if It Was Too Harsh He My Dad Needed to Be Told the Truth - "Happy Birthday to My Little Girl I Think About You Often I Hope All Is Well"
"Look I Have Been Holding Off Replying Because Truly I Wish No You No Harm or Ill Will and the Truth Is Going to Hurt You Please Stop Trying to Contact Me We Don't Have a Relationship Because You Choose to Remain the Way That You Are and That Energy Is Toxic to Me if You Can Get to the Point Where You Renounce Your Support for Trump Quit Being on the Opposite Side of Reproductive Freedom and Treat Me Like an Adult With My Own Agency Instead of Your Little Girl Maybe I Will Consider It but You Won't Do Those Things So Please Stay Out of My Life"
When you're such a fanatical liberal that you let your politics poison your relationships and your life

Segments of Random Thoughts - Posts - "BBC Slut Certificate. This certifies that I, Fox, am owned by black cock. I must obey black men and my body is for their pleasure exclusively!"
"I can be proudly owned by a Black Man while simultaneously not wanting to be treated like a patriarchal possession by my father. I don't expect anyone on her to really see the difference though. That's asking way too much from you all."
"This is the woman who lashed out at her dad when he wished her happy birthday, because he supports Trump."

1 in 3 sex workers have degrees – survey - "Nearly 40 percent of sex workers in the UK have a degree from either college or university, a recent study has found.The study, which took data from British sex workers who were not trafficked into selling sex but had chosen to do so, revealed that 38 percent held an undergraduate degree, with a further 17 percent completing a level of postgraduate study... More than 70 percent of respondents had previously held jobs in the healthcare, educational or charity sector"
This suggests they like caring for people

Japan whaling: Commercial hunts to resume despite outcry - "Japan has now withdrawn from the International Whaling Commission (IWC), which banned hunting, and will send out its first whaling fleet this July... in 1986, all IWC members agreed to a hunting moratorium to allow whale numbers to recover.Conservationists were happy but whaling countries - like Japan, Norway and Iceland - assumed the moratorium would be temporary until everyone could agree on sustainable quotas. Instead it became a quasi-permanent ban... Like other whaling nations, Japan argues hunting and eating whales are part of its culture. A number of coastal communities in Japan have indeed hunted whales for centuries but consumption only became widespread after World War Two when other food was scarce.From the late 1940s to the mid-1960s whale was the single biggest source of meat in Japan but since become a niche product again... The ministry will allow for the hunting of three species: minke, Bryde's and sei whales.According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, minke and Bryde's whale are not endangered. Sei whale are classified as endangered but their numbers are increasing.So in terms of numbers, Japan's commercial whaling will have only a minimal impact.In fact, some defenders of whaling argue that whale meat has a smaller carbon footprint than pork or beef... Besides the question of stock sustainability, a key argument against the hunt is that harpooning whales leads to a slow and painful death.Modern hunting methods, though, aim to kill whales instantly and it backers say the near-global anti-whaling sentiment is deeply hypocritical., compared to, say, industrial meat production."

In an astonishing turn, George Soros and Charles Koch team up to end US ‘forever war’ policy - The Boston Globe - "BESIDES BEING BILLIONAIRES and spending much of their fortunes to promote pet causes, the leftist financier George Soros and the right-wing Koch brothers have little in common. They could be seen as polar opposites. Soros is an old-fashioned New Deal liberal. The Koch brothers are fire-breathing right-wingers who dream of cutting taxes and dismantling government. Now they have found something to agree on: the United States must end its “forever war” and adopt an entirely new foreign policy. In one of the most remarkable partnerships in modern American political history, Soros and Charles Koch, the more active of the two brothers, are joining to finance a new foreign-policy think tank in Washington. It will promote an approach to the world based on diplomacy and restraint rather than threats, sanctions, and bombing. This is a radical notion in Washington, where every major think tank promotes some variant of neocon militarism or liberal interventionism"
This is great. Since one side says anything funded by Soros is wrong and the other side says anything funded by the Koch Brothers is wrong, everyone can agree that this initiative is evil and the US should be at war forever

Fathers and Feminism: The Case Against Genetic Entitlement by Jennifer S. Hendricks - "This Article makes the case against a nascent consensus among feminist and other progressive scholars about men's parental rights. Most progressive proposals to reform parentage law focus on making it easier for men to assert parental rights, especially when they are not married to the mother of the child. These proposals may seek, for example, to require the state to make more extensive efforts to locate biological fathers, to require pregnant women to notify men of their impending paternity, or to require new mothers to give biological fathers access to infants.These proposals disregard the mother's existing parental rights and transfer too much power from women to men. Although they directly affect only a particular class of legal disputes about genetic fathers and adoption, their implications stretch not only to other kinds of custody disputes but also to the law's treatment of sex and gender differences in reproduction more broadly. The principle of genetic entitlement that underlies these proposals is male-centered and therefore an undesirable basis for the law of reproduction and parentage."
Gender equality is patriarchy!

Nearly 50% of Japan’s singles have no dating prospects: Survey - "Nearly 50 per cent of singles in Japan who wish to get married are unable to find a suitable partner, with 61.4 per cent of the group stating they are not doing anything to change the situation... A lack of opportunity to meet an appropriate partner, or not having enough financial resources or ability to get along with the opposite sex are cited as major reasons in the outcome of the survey included in its annual report on Japan’s declining birth-rate... the number of newborns in Japan hitting a record-low of 918,397 in 2018, staying below the 1 million mark for the third year in a row."

This is a real slide from an Air Force brief on the real threat of incels - "Personnel at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland were recently treated to a threat brief regarding an "increase in nationwide activity" by self-described "incels," members of an online subculture of "involuntary celibacy" who adopt an ideology of misogyny, mistrust of women, and violence in response to their failed attempts at romantic relationships."
The materials included a meme. Clown world hypothesis confirmed

Mark Field suspended as minister after grabbing climate protester by neck - "Guests at the event raised concerns about security because the protesters appeared to have evaded airport-style checks.“It seemed to be very difficult to get the security at the venue to do their job once it became clear that something was happening,” one person who was present complained.Attendees said they feared a terrorist attack was taking place in the seconds after the activists burst in... Questions were being asked in political circles about whether the chancellor would return to Mansion House given the lack of security. “You’ve had protests when George Osborne has appeared and now this. Liz Truss was there, but if she becomes chancellor it’s not a certainty she’ll be back to give a speech this time next year,” a guest said.The City of London Corporation, which organises the dinner, said it was investigating the security breach.Greenpeace did not provide details of how the activists gained entry to Mansion House."
Amusingly, some liberals are positioning evading security and invading a private event uninvited as a violation of freedom of speech

Mark Field and the Greenpeace protest: free speech versus the need for security - "We can never assume, as your editorial claims (22 June), that “there was no physical threat”. This cannot have been clear at the time; there have been too many occasions when unanticipated assaults have led to death or serious injuries, as in the case of Jo Cox MP. Recent attackers, both individually or in groups, have used concealed knives or explosives to carry out their murderous intentions. Dissent can only be seen to be “non-violent” after the event.I now speculate what might have been my reaction to all this if the protester had been a young man, and the individual who sought to forestall a possible tragedy had been a courageous female. Surely some credit should be given to anyone who decides to intervene when the intentions of an interloper are unclear"

Anti-Semitism

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Anti-Semitism

"For more than three years now the Labour Party which has often talked as if it had a monopoly of virtue has wrestled with accusations that it's institutionally prone to one of the oldest vices... the picture that's been painted most recently in a damaging expose on the BBC Panorama program, is that it has grown largely unchecked and the leftward shift of the party under Jeremy Corbyn.

The central allegation is that many activists associate all Jews with the capitalism they detest, and the State of Israel, which they regard as oppressors of those with whom they sympathize. The party is now being investigated for racism by the Equality and Human Rights commission… Is anti semitism just another form of racism or given its dreadful history, something uniquely pernicious?...

‘In my view, anti semitism is unique in its obsessional imputations of world conspiracy and unique malice against the Jewish people, based entirely on lies. Anti Zionism or anti Israelism has exactly the same unique characteristics and I believe this is no coincidence.’...

Anti Zionism depending on what you mean by that, is pretty reprehensible. And I rather agree with your view that... one of the things that justifies Israel's existence is part of all of this. But you can be extremely critical of the State of Israel, indeed, I have been known to be. And you can be very critical of particularly the actions of the Israeli government. When you wish the state to disappear, to deny a state that's been in existence for 71 years, and you pretend that you can just push it into the sea, then I think it is verging on if not necessarily, always anti semitism.

So I think criticism of Israel is fine... If you criticize the Israeli government for something, for instance, the nationality law, which many of us don't like, if you do that, that is fine. But you then also need to be seen to be criticizing other governments. If alone of all states, the only state you criticize, and the only state you express this kind of loathing for is Israel, then I think you have a serious problem, and you're probably an anti Semite...

In the Labour Party, we also read that Jews are regularly being accused of financing the slave trade, a conspiracy to subvert US foreign policy, they're called dirty Zionists. There are pictures of an alien creature with the Star of David on its back clamped on the Statue of Liberty. Jews are being blamed for 911, for ISIS, Rothschilds are said to be controlling the world...

‘The Labour Party is dealing with hundreds and hundreds of these examples. How many would it take for you to say there was a serious problem here?’

‘Certainly a lot more than have been alleged at the moment’...

There is nothing wrong with criticizing Israel, it should be criticized like any other country, the issue is it’s not criticized like any other country. The issue is, it is subjected to lies and libels, which consists of or are intended to destroy its legitimacy as existing at all. That is delegitimized, dehumanized and demonized. That is the problem with it.

And the problem with the support for the Palestinians is that what people don't really accept is that the Palestinian cause is itself based upon a denial of the Jews’ own history. And Palestinianism is marked. I'm not talking about the Hamas, I’m talking about the Palestinian Authority, which people of moderate views support as being moderate.

And they are coming up with stuff saying the Jews are behind 911, they control the world's media finances and worse, sermons say the Jews are the fabricators of history who dance and live on the body parts of others and the blood of others. They demonize Jews.

Now if people support Palestinianism, and never even criticize, never even mention this, is it surprising that those people come up with exactly the same kind of libels about the Jewish people controlling the world's finances, being behind 911 in the Labour Party? It’s not a coincidence"

Links - 2nd September 2019 (1)

Twenty-one years of using insect resistant (GM) maize in Spain and Portugal: farm-level economic and environmental contributions - "For every extra €1 spent on this seed relative to conventional seed, farmers have gained an additional €4.95 in extra income. These income gains have mostly arisen from higher yields (+11.5% across the two countries using the technology). The seed technology has reduced insecticide spraying by 678,000 kg of active ingredient (−37%) and, as a result, decreased the environmental impact associated with herbicide and insecticide use on these crops (as measured by the indicator, the Environmental Impact Quotient (EIQ)) by 21%. The technology has also facilitated cuts in fuel use, resulting in a reduction in the release of greenhouse gas emissions from the GM IR maize cropping area and contributed to saving scarce water resources."

Lee Kuan Yew made journalists 'look behind their backs': veteran journalist PN Balji - "“There were many (journalists) who were penalised by him because he didn’t like what they wrote…and that made a lot of people frightened and made many people look behind their backs,” mused Balji, who counts himself among those to fear incurring Lee’s wrath. As he ruefully says in his book, “Nearly every editor in Singapore has a Lee Kuan Yew story to tell.”On one occasion, Balji chose to ignore what he saw as an unreasonable embargo on Lee’s Chinese New Year message in 1981 and went to print. The then-New Nation acting editor later received an angry response from Lee via his press secretary, “Who is that journalist practising Western-style journalism?”While Balji got off with a warning, many others did not. “His record with journalists who veered off the straight and narrow path was legendary. Some have been detained without trial, some blackballed and others forced to leave journalism and even the country,” writes the 70-year-old, who also details stories of colleagues being punished for their outspokenness. But the genius of Lee, who was never afraid to actively intervene in the media industry, lay in his ability to mix the carrot and the stick. “He made sure that Singapore Press Holdings and of course Mediacorp, had no competition. And that had a positive effect because SPH could make tonnes of money. Nobody (else) was prepared to come and work or start a newspaper or TV station under those kinds of restrictions.”Balji added, “So SPH could boom and when SPH boomed, people like us also boomed, because we got good salary increments.”... Balji may have been a reluctant editor, but he was far from reticent in calling self-censorship “the greatest sin in Singapore journalism”. And as far as he is concerned, it is “worse than what it used to be before.”As an example, he pointed to recent mainstream media coverage the day after a decision was made by Malaysia and Singapore to scrap the Instrument Landing Systems (ILS) at Seletar Airport in favour of Global Positioning System-based (GPS) instrument procedures.“As a reader, I would like the newspapers and/or media to tell me: which is a better system, GPS or ILS?”... “They will say, we cannot do this because it will upset Mahathir, for example. Then what you do about your profession? So I think that the fear factor is always there.”"

COMMENT: Unequal access and self-censorship reign in Singapore journalism - ""Reluctant Editor" largely covers Balji's time as editor of The New Paper and Today, with many behind-the-scenes stories of the government's often contentious relationship with the mainstream media. It topped the non-fiction bestseller list at Books Kinokuniya the week it was released.The 70-year-old paints a portrait of a thin-skinned government that often reacted defensively to negative coverage and was unafraid to resort to strong-arm tactics. Jobs were literally at stake, and more than one journalist felt the wrath of the authorities... SPH and Mediacorp outlets are given priority for the most important press releases, speeches and event invites.It is not unusual for accredited outlets like Yahoo News Singapore to be sent press releases hours after the MSM outlets have broken a story, or to be told that certain high-profile events are reserved for "local media only". On one occasion, when we requested an advance copy of the National Day Rally speech - probably the most important political speech of the year - we were given the runaround by senior government officials who all had the same excuse: "I don't have it." Meanwhile, MSM reporters had obtained the speech the day before... Without the equivalent of a Freedom of Information Act, which enables Americans to request the disclosure of information by the US government, local government agencies are often less than forthcoming, particularly on sensitive topics.In April, while Yahoo was pursuing a story about maid abuse, a request was sent to the Manpower Ministry for facts and figures on this issue. We received a one-liner in reply, "We’re unable to facilitate your queries."... Then there is the practice of having your access cut off, often with no notification or explanation. Think of it as being ghosted by a Tinder date.In March this year, in response to a peculiar incident where Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's eldest son was filmed by a stranger who gave him a lift, the police revealed the man's antecedents. To date, the driver has not been charged with any offence. I then did a follow-up story with quotes from lawyers who questioned why the police had potentially prejudiced any case against the driver by publicising his previous brushes with the law. Upon receiving my request for a quote, a police spokesperson called our editor and posed the classic question, "What is your agenda?"After giving the assurance that our “agenda” was only to practise good journalism, we were promised an official response, and therefore held back our story. Two days went by without word from the police.When Yahoo informed the police that we were going ahead with the story, we received a bizarre request: could we not mention that we had asked the police for a response?Shortly after the story was published, something inexplicable happened: Yahoo stopped receiving police press releases about impending court cases... During an interview ahead of his book launch, Balji said self-censorship is "the greatest sin in Singapore journalism" and that it is "worse than what it used to be before". Sometimes, it seems that the MSM does not even need to be pressured to play ball. In late May, news broke that Li Huanwu, a grandson of Lee Kuan Yew, was marrying his male partner in South Africa but none of the MSM outlets covered it... There was also inertia among MSM outlets in their coverage of PM Lee’s recent comments that Vietnam had previously invaded Cambodia, which triggered strong criticism from Singapore’s two Asean neighbours.Perhaps it also had to do with the ever-present fear of reprisal. Just consider that in 2017, the Official Secrets Act was invoked against a Straits Times reporter over the leak of a confidential HDB project.The broad powers that the anti-fake news laws have granted ministers to determine what constitutes a falsehood mean journalists have to tread carefully more than ever. If the journalists themselves are afraid of doing their jobs, how is the public being served? If the journalists do not speak up, then who will? In a country whose institutions are so thoroughly dominated by the ruling party, where will the checks and balances come from?It only feels appropriate to end this commentary with a quote from Balji. Addressing a group of young journalists recently, he asked pointedly, "Are you afraid of losing your job? If you are, then you shouldn't be in this profession.""
Things aren't always getting better

Blasphemy is now a sackable offence - "If you’re not a fan of religion – or political correctness – then it looks like a job at Asda isn’t for you. Examiner Live reports that Brian Leach, a 54-year-old disabled till worker, has been sacked from his job in a Dewsbury Asda because he shared a Billy Connolly video about religion on his personal Facebook page... In the offending clip, says the Mirror, Connolly takes aim at Christianity, Islam and calls suicide bombers ‘f****** idiots’... According to a dismissal letter shown to the press, Leach removed the post, admitted guilt and removed his colleagues from his Facebook circle. But this wasn’t enough. His bosses ruled he had committed gross misconduct by sharing something with the ‘potential to bring the company into disrepute’. This was not before his bosses extracted a quasi-Stalinist apology, quoted in the Mirror, nodding specifically to Connolly’s jokes about Islam"

Baldness solution 'breakthrough' discovered by scientists - "Scientists have discovered a "critical breakthrough" in the treatment for baldness after creating natural-looking hair from stem cells.US researchers said they have refined a method which allowed them to grow hair through the skin of mice using dermal papilla cells derived from human pluripotent stem cells."

UcKema @ los angeles - DC on Twitter - Slate: "Deodorants were created to solve a fake problem and thrived thanks to the patriarchy."
"Come to an anime convention and you will delete this"
"Clearly written by someone who lives in air conditioned offices and has never worked outside a day in their life."
"Checked out other articles written by this person and some of them are beauty centric. U mean to tell me deodorant is a product of the patriarchy but skincare regimens and dieting isnt???!?! This smells like yt nonsense"

RAMZPAUL on Twitter - Tariq Nasheed: "A group of Hispanic white supremacists racially attacked a Black special needs student in Long Beach last week. And they all ran off when the other Black kids showed up. Many of these Hispanic gangs are allied with white extremists groups like the Aryan Nation & Neo Nazis"
"Mexicans are even taking all the White Supremacy jobs."

Schools ‘should teach pupils about sadomasochism’ - "Teachers should talk to their pupils about sadomasochism and promote mutual masturbation and oral sex, a prominent human rights campaigner has said.The recommendations form part of a list of 13 practical and ethical suggestions that Peter Tatchell wants schools to follow in teaching their pupils about sex.From September 2019, relationships education will be compulsory in all state-funded primary schools, and relationships and sex education will be mandatory in all secondary schools... He also said that it should be harder for parents to withdraw their children from sex education lessons, calling for a new requirement that parents attend school to physically remove their child from each lesson."
When sex education is really sex instruction

School gives pupils aged SIX graphic safe sex tips covering oral and anal - "Parents were "absolutely mortified” after a school gave children as young as six letters with graphic descriptions on oral and anal sex.Ipswich West State School's letter gave explicit details on safe sex and included ways for both genders to perform oral sex and the best practice to use condoms safely.It was written after the harmless viral infection molluscum contagiosum was detected in the school in Ipswich in Queensland, Australia... “This week, following medical advice, Ipswich West State School issued a health notice to all parents and carers on a condition called molluscum contagiosum. "An administrative error resulted in an incorrect fact sheet accompanying the notice. “The school apologises for any distress that may have been caused by the provision of information that is not considered age-appropriate."

Segments of Random Thoughts - Posts - "I'm English - but I want USA to beat the Lionesses in the World Cup"
"Of course you do. You write for the Guardian."
"I have a theory that you cannot write for the Guardian unless you hate yourself, your culture and/or your nation."
More evidence that liberals really do hate their countries

Microsoft's Ebook Apocalypse Shows the Dark Side of DRM - "Your iTunes movies, your Kindle books—they’re not really yours. You don’t own them. You’ve just bought a license that allows you to access them, one that can be revoked at any time. And while a handful of incidents have brought that reality into sharp relief over the years, none has quite the punch of Microsoft disappearing every single ebook from every one of its customers.Microsoft made the announcement in April that it would shutter the Microsoft Store’s books section for good. The company had made its foray into ebooks in 2017... Other companies have pulled a similar trick in smaller doses. Amazon, overcome by a fit of irony in 2009, memorably vanished copies of George Orwell’s 1984 from Kindles. The year before that, Walmart shut down its own ill-fated MP3 store, at first suggesting customers burn their purchases onto CDs to salvage them before offering a download solution. But this is not a tactical strike. There is no backup plan. This is The Langoliers. And because of digital rights management—the mechanism by which platforms retain control over the digital goods they sell—you have no recourse... “Once we complete a transaction you can’t just reach into my pocket and take it back, even if you do give me money,” says John Sullivan, executive director of the nonprofit Free Software Foundation. “It’s not respecting the freedom of the individual.”... More than anything, Microsoft’s ebook rapture underscores the hidden dangers of the DRM system that underpins most digital purchases. Originally intended as an antipiracy measure, DRM now functions mostly as a way to lock customers into a given ecosystem, rather than reading or viewing or listening to their purchases wherever they want. It’s a cycle that has persisted for decades and shows no signs of abating... a “sizable percentage” of shoppers think that clicking Buy Now entitles them to similar ownership privileges of digital goods—lending, gift-giving, and more—as their physical counterparts... The issue also extends beyond ebooks and movies. Think of Jibo, the $900 robot whose servers are shutting down. Or the Revolv smart-home hub that Google acquired and promptly shut down—sparking another FTC inquiry. Even Keurig tried to DRM its coffee pods... “This is why we call DRM media and devices defective by design, or broken from the beginning. There’s self-destruction built into the whole concept”... At least Microsoft can afford to pay off its impacted customers. The next time a platform folds—and takes its ecosystem with it—those affected might not be so lucky."

Streaming TV is about to get very expensive – here's why - "The most watched show on US Netflix, by a huge margin, is the US version of The Office. Even though the platform pumps out an absurd amount of original programming – 1,500 hours last year – it turns out that everyone just wants to watch a decade-old sitcom. One report last year said that The Office accounts for 7% all US Netflix viewing.So, naturally, NBC wants it back... As a viewer, you are right to feel queasy. The industry-disrupting success of Netflix means that everybody wants a slice of the pie. Right now, things are just about manageable – if you have a TV licence, a Netflix subscription, an Amazon subscription and a Now TV subscription, you are pretty much covered – but things are about to take a turn for the worse... There will be a point where viewers are going to hit their tolerance for monthly subscriptions – I may be able to manage one more service, but only if I unsubscribe from an existing platform – meaning that TV will become more elitist, tiered and fragmented than it already is. There’s a huge difference between not being able to watch everything because there’s too much choice and not being able to watch everything because you don’t have enough money. Most importantly, we should all remember that this content war is hinged upon a fundamental misunderstanding of viewing habits. Netflix didn’t become a monster because people wanted to watch a specific show; it became a monster because people wanted to watch everything... That will be a memory soon. The Netflix model was great for viewers, but it couldn’t last. The content creators got greedy and scared, and now they’re determined to drag things back to the bad old ways. They will force everyone to pay for everything separately, and the subscriber base will split, and the providers will have to recoup the money they are spending to take on Netflix"