Links - 12th July 2016

Audio Quality Quiz Results: You Did Slightly Better Than Guessing Randomly - "Last week, we published a quiz testing listeners on their ability to discern between lossless audio and compressed mp3s. We picked six songs from different eras and genres: an early digital recording of a Mozart piano concerto, an a cappella version of a pop song, the billionth song ever sold on iTunes, the most-streamed song of 2014 and two songs from musicians who happen to own digital music services. We cut a short clip from each song and then offered that clip three ways: as a 128 kbps MP3 file, a 320 kbps MP3 file and a higher-quality lossless WAV file. Then we asked you to guess which one was the lossless file... most listeners have trouble discerning between lossless audio and a high-quality mp3"

Outrage after gorilla Harambe killed when child falls into exhibit at Cincinnati Zoo - "The killing of a gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo in order to save a child who fell in its enclosure has sparked nationwide outrage. Animal activists have created online petitions and Facebook pages after a special zoo response team shot and killed the 17-year-old gorilla named Harambe. The four-year-old boy spent a terrifying 10 to 15 minutes alone on Saturday with the adult male gorilla. Harambe grabbed and dragged the little boy after the boy fell into the gorilla exhibit, officials said. Many are angry the endangered gorilla was put down. Others want the boy's mother to face child endangerment charges, CBS News' Jamie Yuccas reported. Facebook pages like "Justice for Harambe" are quickly spreading. The Facebook page currently has more than 11,000 likes."
Looks like gorillas are more important than children. "Animal rights" is just misanthropy in disguise; if you value charismatic megafauna above other animals (I'm betting the vast majority of the protestors aren't vegan), you're still speciest - which is even less consistent/defensible than human-centred speciesm

#JusticeForHarambe Is An Absurd Hashtag - "Anyone with children knows that they disappear. It’s not unheard of. It’s totally disconcerting that the child was able to get into the gorilla enclosure, but with witnesses confirming that it happened in the blink of an eye it’s incredible that so many Perfect Parents™ are calling for the mother’s head, but of course they are. This is the internet. Land of armchair perfectionists and parents who’ve never made a mistake... A child should potentially be removed from his home and placed in foster care because his mom’s eyes strayed for a moment at the zoo? Excuse my language, but fuck every single person who signed this petition. You would petition to remove a child from his home because some sad news from a zoo made you an armchair animal activist? Go back to playing Candy Crush. You’re not needed here. In addition to the utter insanity that is a petition for a CPS investigation, everyone on the internet is all of a sudden an expert in animal behavior"

The freakout over Harambe the gorilla shows the dangers of internet mob justice - "It would be one thing if the reaction to Harambe's death were the only instance of mob justice potentially damaging people's lives. But we have seen this before: In previous cases, internet mobs have reacted angrily to certain stories or movements by harassing people, threatening their lives, and even ruining their livelihoods. The most recent example was the death of Cecil the lion... While some form of punishment may have been acceptable for Palmer, that is not for a mob to decide. In our civilized society, this is supposed to be left to the formal criminal justice system. The fundamental problem with mob justice is that it's prone to randomness... Mob justice also tends to overlook issues that are, frankly, more important. Harambe's death is sad, but it's not even close to the most tragic thing that happened in the past week. Just over the weekend, four people died and at least 53 others were wounded from gun violence in Chicago. Yet the internet mob does not, currently, seem to be in a fit of rage over those tragedies — even as there's evidence that many of these killings go unsolved."

Was Killing Harambe the Gorilla Really the Only Option? | The Scientific Parent - "Tranquilizing the animal was not an option. Just like anesthesia isn’t one size fits all for humans, it’s the same for wild animals. It would have taken time to get the right drugs at the right dose in the shot, then it would have taken time to take effect (if the dose was right), time the zoo didn’t have. Complicating matters, a large animal when tranquilized doesn’t fall to the ground dopey like they do in cartoons. Instead, the fight or flight instinct kicks in, and they can become violent... While the public saw a gorilla playing curiously with a child, myself and other zoologists saw that the child was in incredible danger the moment he fell into the moat. The gorilla ignored the zookeepers, and tranquilizing him wasn’t an option. The zoo had no choice but to kill Harambe. I’m not trying to blame the gorilla for being shot, he was only following his natural instincts. When I worked in wildlife tourism in South Africa it would shock tourists how brutal, vicious and violent nature is. The baby giraffe that adorably hobbles to its legs and runs within minutes of birth has to do this or it is dead, eaten by a predator. It is that simple. The antelope that runs the slowest doesn’t make it. The cheetah that doesn’t catch an antelope starves. A new lion taking over a pride will kill all cubs to protect his own bloodline. Around the world people die because they’ve lost their natural fear and respect of wildlife"

Black Outrage Over Gorilla Shot To Protect 'White Privilege' - "'Killing an endangered gorilla at a zoo for a white boy’s safety is white privilege. If the boy was black they would’ve found a tranquilizer'... There’s just one flaw in this GorillaLivesMatter thesis. Can you guess what it is?"

Study finds possible new jet-lag treatment: Exposure to flashing light - "Short flashes of light at night are more effective than using continuous light as therapy to prevent disruptions in people’s circadian rhythms"

10 Things I Learned About the World from Ayn Rand's Insane "Atlas Shrugged' - "The mark of a great businessman is that he sneers at the idea of public safety."

China dissatisfied with G7 statement on S China Sea - "China on Friday said it was strongly dissatisfied with a statement by G7 members, in which they expressed concern over the South China Sea"
If China controls the whole world, it's not interference in other countries' internal affairs

Amber Heard is pictured smiling hours after Depp's 'iPhone attack': Actress claims 'cocaine and booze binges turned Johnny into an abusive monster who left her fearing for her life' - but why was this image deleted before court appearance?

Johnny Depp's Exes Reportedly Slam Amber Heard's 'Outrageous' Domestic Violence Allegations

Have You Ever Beat Up A Boyfriend? Cause, Uh, We Have - "According to a study of relationships that engage in nonreciprocal violence, a whopping 70% are perpetrated by women. So basically that means that girls are beating up their BFs and husbands and the dudes aren't fighting back. With Amy Winehouse busting open a can of whupass on her husband last week, we decided to conduct an informal survey of the Jezebels to see who's gotten violent with their men. After reviewing the answers, let's just say that it'd be wise to never ever fuck with us"
Equality means women beating men up and glorifying it
Comments: "I particularly enjoyed the girl who casually admitted to drunkenly beating up her boyfriend, and her only concern was how she could stop feeling bad about it."
"Honestly I don’t know why I read Jezebel articles... I can usually give an accurate summary based on the Headline and “Jezebel”... but sometimes I am surprised. It’s like the lottery where instead of losing money, it’s man-hate and instead of winning money, it’s some level of logic."

New Demos study reveals scale of social media misogyny - "The study, which specifically monitored the use of the words ‘slut’ and ‘whore’ by UK Twitter users over a three-week period, found 6,500 unique users were targeted by 10,000 explicitly aggressive and misogynistic tweets... The study builds on Demos’ previous research in 2014, which found that ‘slut’ and ‘whore’ dominate misogynistic language on Twitter, and that both male and female users are responsible for the abuse. In this 2016 research, 50 per cent of the propagators were found to be women.
If half of "misogynists" are women, what does that say about blaming men for "patriarchy" (which is, despite the PR line, what happens in reality)?
Addendum: Also reported as: Study: 50% of 'Misogynistic' Tweets Posted by Women - "The news will come as a shock to feminist campaigners who have long claimed that men are the main perpetrators of internet trolling. It also follows a 2014 study from cosmetics firm Dove which found out of over five million negative tweets relating to beauty and body image, 80% were sent by women"

British-Palestinian schoolgirl expelled from public speaking competition - "Leanne Mohamad, a 15-year-old student at Wanstead High School in London, won a regional final of the Jack Petchey Speak Out Challenge with her speech ‘Birds not Bombs’, in which she describes the historical and contemporary reality for Palestinians under Israeli settler colonialism. The Jack Petchey-sponsored competition is run by Speakers Trust, and bills itself as the world’s biggest youth speaking event... The decision to expel Mohamad, made by a Speakers Trust and Jack Petchey Foundation judging panel, was based on her breaching two rules: that “the speech must have a positive and uplifting message”, and that “a speaker should never inflame or offend the audience or insult others.”"
If you go to the Great British Bakeoff and you make the most awesome fish and chips in the world, you won't win

'They're Natural Born Killers': Wild Animals in Captivity Inherently Dangerous - "Treadwell felt he had befriended a group of wild grizzly bears. He lived among them, he could approach them and touch them and video shows Treadwell petting and talking to a bear cub that follows him around. "You are doing very well, you're a cute bear," he said. "They don't want to hurt me. They just need help." Until the day when they killed him and his girlfriend, and then devoured them both."

The Next James Bond Movie Should Go Back in Time - "Anyone can fire a gun or bug a phone, but not everyone can walk up to Auric Goldfinger on the golf course like they “belong there.” And if you’re thinking that all this makes James Bond sound like white male privilege, weaponized? That’s because he kind of is – and should that mean the audience gets to vicariously enjoy his unfettered travel to exotic destinations, welcome access to beautiful, sexually-adventurous women, flashy cars, fancy parties, and blank check for collateral mayhem? Well, now you know why they keep making these movies."

The opium farmers with the police on their side - "Growing opium is a very serious crime in Afghanistan. You can be punished with death, yet here is a policeman welcoming a BBC reporter to a poppy field at the height of the harvest."

Uncomfortably Muscular Women That Freak Me Out

Johns Hopkins Students Say First Semester Grades Give Them Depression, Should Be Abolished - ""Students from low-income backgrounds, first generation students, students struggling with mental health, students with disabilities, international students, and sexual assault survivors—as well as students whose experiences exist at intersections of marginalized race, gender, and sexuality—are disproportionately affected by the policy change"... Taicz is right that she's paying an obscene amount of money to attend Johns Hopkins. Tuition there is $50,000 a year, and that's not even including room and board. But if students like Taicz are really just looking for a network of comprehensive mental support, there are certainly cheaper counselling services out there."

This Claremont Safe Space for Women of Color Is Actually Pretty Hateful and Racist - "Are non-inclusive safe spaces—ones designed for members of a specific minority—bastions of toleration? Not at the Claremont Colleges... The Claremont Independent, a conservative student newspaper of the Claremont Colleges, recently obtained screenshots from a virtual safe space: 5C Women of Color, a Facebook group for black female students at the colleges... this so-called safe space is just really racist. One woman, an Asian student, referred to Asian men as "nerdy ones who can just hide in their tech caves" and "they get all angry when it comes to how Asian men are asexualized/emasculated." Another female student, who works for the Asian American Resource Center and sits on the mental health committee, commented, "F*ck your masculinity whiny Asian cis bros this is why I only hang out with femmes.""
This is okay but not the reverse, because men are evil

We Asked a Law Professor Whether the Government Could Really Ban Rough Sex - ""Plaintiff has no constitutionally protected and judicially enforceable fundamental liberty interest under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to engage in BDSM sexual activity."The ruling has inspired outrage within the BDSM community, but for others, the case left a lot of unanswered questions: Didn't the Supreme Court rule in 2003 that sodomy laws are invalid? Do the same protections not apply to BDSM? Should people be worried about a clampdown on kink?... Consent of the victim is generally not a defense to assault or battery—except in cases involving "ordinary physical contact" or blows incidental to sports, such as football, or boxing, or wrestling. Once something becomes sufficiently severely harmful, then yes, assault and battery laws are in part aimed at preventing injury to people. Even where consent might be present. And a classic example is a fistfight"
So much for the freedom to love and the right to privacy (under which abortion was legalised)