Links - 18th June 2013

New IU study: 'How' often is more important than 'why' when describing breakups - ""It wasn't until after I had collected many breakup stories that I realized my students had told me something quite revealing that would come up time and time again. ... American undergraduates focus on the 'how' of a breakup when describing their breakups, not the 'why' or the 'who,'"... "The medium used for the conversation mattered enough to be almost always mentioned," Gershon said. "People would invariably mark when a different medium was used, explaining when communication shifted from voicemail to texting to Facebook and then to phone." Her results differ from other ethnographic research done elsewhere, such as in Japan and Britain, where the story often focuses on justifying why the relationship had to end. Character was the emphasis overseas, not the method... In many cases, the young people Gershon interviewed were looking for validation that it had been a bad breakup and the medium was crucial evidence."

Hey Danish tourists, stop pissing on our roads! : Shanghaiist - "How very dare they! Don't they know that only locals are allowed to piss and shit in public?!"

Your Instagram photos may be hurting the feelings of the Chinese people - "some Chinese users feel "upset and betrayed" when she'd post photos "they thought didn't represent China in a good way." Users especially objected to her focus on hutongs, while they make for beautifully gritty images of old China, the odd garbage man or demolished house seems a far cry from the lightning-paced modernization in downtown Beijing and Shanghai."

Parents in Singapore love extra tuition - "Madam Teo has signed her daughter up for tuition six days a week. The girl's classes start after school at 4pm and end at 9pm. But more than just time, Madam Teo has also invested a considerable amount in her daughter's tuition - $3,000 per month. Kiasu? She's not the only mother worried about her child's grades. Parents here collectively spend US$680 million (S$840 million) on tuition in a year, a report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) showed. The ADB report, quoting 2012 figures, said the amount spent on private supplementary tutoring has been on the rise and has doubled from just a decade ago. Close to one in two Singaporean parents spend on tuition for their children, MasterCard's latest survey on Consumer Purchasing Priorities - Education showed"

Gif's inventor says ignore dictionaries and say 'Jif' - "The OED told the BBC that it was beyond the software engineer's control to determine how the word should be said... The Gif Pronunciation Page has long catalogued evidence that Gif sounds like Jif. The site suggests the reason for this was to make it sound like a popular brand of American peanut butter - "one of the principal three programmer foods (the other two being Pepsi and nacho cheese Doritos)"."

'Ghost Tits': Olivia Munn Loses Her Cleavage In Horror Movie Parody From Paulilu Mixtape (VIDEO)

s/pores » Blog Archive » Imaginary Frontiers and Deferred Masculinity: Singapore Working Class Men in Batam > Terence Chong - "In light of their subordinated masculinities, working class men generally speak of two things when they travel to Batam for sex. Firstly, they talk of being pushed or squeezed from the metropolis... Secondly, they speak of seeking new spaces – both territorial and cultural – as necessary to regain their sense of self... It is Batam, an imaginary frontier away from the unforgiving metropolis, where the deferred masculinity of these working class Singaporean men can be articulated heteronormatively. In short, sex in Batam is “an escape into the fantasy of men-as-men and women-as-women, an uncomplicated distribution of roles which provide a refuge from life, because nobody has to step outside the prescribed exchanges and dialogues”... Dan’s feelings of friendship suggest that the sexual encounter, though premised on economic power, may be characterised by more than just “libidinal bonds”... The imaginary frontier has allowed the sexual encounter to develop into a more socially complex relationship where money purchases the opportunity for men like Dan to display certain traits like care and concern which may otherwise not be required from his emotionally-distant wife or busy teenage daughters... The imaginary frontier is thus a space for the men to play out certain emotional needs and familial desires while the sex worker may willingly subject herself to such male imaginations, either because of the rewards at stake, or because her own imagination of a caring, perhaps even lovelorn, boyfriend offers a comforting counterbalance to the uncertainties and dangers in her profession... Sex is part of a collective experience and cannot be simply isolated as an act of hegemonic masculinity or exploitation of women. Interestingly, Khairun’s ability to treat the girl to meals, drinks and cigarettes in Batam is a simultaneous reminder of his inability to do the same in Singapore"

How The Human Face Might Look In 100,000 Years - "Kwan based his predictions on what living environments might look like in the future, climate and technological advancements. One of the big changes will be a larger forehead, Kwan predicts – a feature that has already expanding since the 14th and 16th centuries. Scientists writing in the British Dental Journal have suggested that skull-measurement comparisons from that time show modern-day people have less prominent facial features but higher foreheads, and Kwan expects the human head to trend larger to accommodate a larger brain."

Photographer captures daily life inside the lonely legal brothels of rural Nevada - "What he saw was shockingly mundane. The sex trade raises moral and political hackles and evokes an emotional response in most Americans. But, McAndrews often captured women preparing for just another day of work."
The women don't at all look like what you'd expect them to

Egypt Islam Center Freezes Dialogue With Vatican - "The Islamic Research Council of the University of al-Azhar, the highest authority of Sunni Islam, is freezing dialogue with the Vatican in protest of Benedict XVI's defense of Christians in Egypt... Last week, Egypt recalled its ambassador to the Holy See, Lamia Aly Hamada Mekhemar. This came after the Pope on Jan. 9 and 10 referred to the Alexandria attack... Thursday's announcement of a dialogue-freeze from Al-Azhar follows a protest from the great imam there, Ahmad al-Tayyeb, who took the Holy Father's references as an "unacceptable intervention in Egypt's affairs"... al-Tayyeb will not be attending the Assisi interreligious meeting convoked by Benedict XVI for October. The Pope announced Jan. 1 that he would personally participate in the Assisi gathering, which marks the 25th anniversary of the first interreligious prayer for peace event held there by Pope John Paul II. "These meetings, ultimately, are not bringing any good to Muslims, and they don't do good to the East but only to the West," declared al-Tayyeb. "And in all the conferences in which we took part in the past, we said clearly that the West is not serious in its way of approaching the nature of Islamic civilization and the civilization of the Middle East and of Easterners." "We hold ourselves to our relationship with the Vatican, but we also have the right not to be in agreement with the Vatican," he added, "and we hope that Benedict XVI, as a religious who appeals for peace, will address a word to Muslims apologizing for the Crusades and acknowledging the richness that the Islamic civilization has contributed to European civilization.""
Islamophobia!

The Grand Imam of Al-Azhar criticises Pope Benedict double standards - ""I disagree with the pope's view, and I ask why did the pope not call for the protection of Muslims when they were subjected to killings in Iraq?" he said at a news conference. The Vatican immediately rejected the accusation, saying the head of the Roman Catholic Church had shown solidarity with the Coptic community as well as concern for the consequences of the violence for the Christian and Muslim population. "Therefore we cannot see how the pope's approach to bring everybody to accept non-violence can be considered meddling""

58 seconds of white people getting dunked on - YouTube - "An in-depth look at the United States' pursuit of isolationism in the early stages of World War I, though the footage has been slightly altered to look like a bunch of white guys getting clowned in the NBA."

BANNED Adam and Eve, the gay version - YouTube

Did men create menopause by chasing after younger women?

SYABM — Michael Legere: Do you even know what feminism... - "Michael Legere: Do you even know what feminism is?
Bernd Jendrissek: Sure, it’s that thing that when you are one, you can’t be Scottish, because no true Scotsman would be a feminist."

David Jones - Google+ - In The Netherlands a few days ago I thought of the… - "Richards apparently thought 2 guys at a conference were being inappropriate when they made a joke of the word 'dongle'. Perhaps this neo-prudery originates in 60s separatism; but the claim that very mild innuendo and joking is a no-no in the workplace just hasn't been my experience in any company I've worked at, anywhere, ever. And it seems the amusing dick jokes date back quite some way and really can be found everywhere. While I was hunting out the misericords in the cathedral I noticed these decorations on the choir stalls. Long-necked creatures on their haunches, obviously. Is anyone offended? I doubt it, if they notice. Are they inappropriate? Well, this is where we might not want to let humourless po-faced ideologues define what's appropriate. These choir stalls date from the 16th century and no member of the congregation has yet taken an axe to them and nobody's tweeted the Bishop demanding their removal"

Liz Hurley 'safety pin' dress voted the greatest dress

Prosthetic Fingers for Ex-Yakuza Members - "If you can get out of the yakuza alive and want to live a normal life, how can you avoid the stigma of missing fingers and all that they imply? Dr. Shintaro Hayashi's solution was to construct highly realistic prosthetic fingers"

Kinder crime: Why a traveler was busted because of a chocolate egg - "Marmite and Vegemite, Denmark
The preferred yeast-extract spreads of Britons and Aussies were banned in Denmark on the basis that Marmite and Vegemite are products that contain “enhanced vitamins.”"

British Tabloid Apologizes to Aliens for Linking Them to Scientology