Links - 27th April 2018 (2)

Why do young rural women in China become mistresses? - "‘If you’re an official, you have to have a mistress, or at least a girlfriend,’ Xiaoxue said, ‘otherwise you’re not a real man. I used to have this friend who was a fake mistress. She was best friends with a gay guy — not a “duck” [male prostitute], just a normal gay guy — who was an official’s boyfriend. So the official would pay her to come out with him and pretend to be his mistress.’ Most mistresses are rural women who come to the job through other sex work, picked up at the karaoke bars, massage parlours and nightclubs that are often an obligatory part of business socialising. Their work is about emotions as much as sex. As with western punters who seek the ‘girlfriend experience’ online, Chinese men want the illusion of intimacy. ‘You have to be the girlfriend he wanted when he was 20,’ said Xiaoxue. ‘He wants to believe that you would be with him even if he wasn’t paying.’ She distinguished being a mistress from short-term hostessing, where you had to be a perfect servant, always putting the man’s needs first. ‘If you’re too nice to him all the time, he’ll know it isn’t true,’ Xiaoxue said. ‘If he looks at another woman, you should be jealous and sulk all evening until he apologises, so he knows you care.’ Zheng Tiantian, a social anthropologist at the State University of New York, worked as a karaoke bar hostess for two years in Dalian to research her PhD... ‘I’d rather be a mistress than a wife, because you can make much more as a mistress.’ At the same time, both sides desperately seek real feeling, even as they try to conceal it from their contemporaries... ‘I knew he had to have a wife,’ she said. ‘I’m not stupid. But I thought I was his ernai, and that he loved me. Then I found that he kept three others around the city. I was his “fifth woman”, not the second.’... ‘I thought I would always be safe with him,’ said one woman. ‘I liked him so much I even arranged a threesome for his birthday. And I paid the other girl!’... Shanshan and her friends seem less like victims and more like players, aware of the limits of their work and astutely using the vulnerabilities of powerful men for their own ends"

Norway’s tough-love approach to the refugee crisis - "her government’s immigration policy, when combined with its aid policy, is not just a moral response, but the most effective moral response. ‘For me it’s a moral issue as well. You can’t just help the ones you see. You have to think about the millions you don’t see and that have a very difficult life in the world.’ She’s referring to the refugee camps in Jordan, where both Norway and the UK send aid to help those displaced by war... ‘The immigration minister here in Britain said that for the price of helping 3,000 young people here, he could help 100,000 children in other parts of the world.’ She sees this as a modern way to help asylum seekers — and more practical than the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, which obliges signatories to accommodate anyone with a ‘well-founded fear of persecution’. ‘It was an agreement for its time,’ she says. ‘But when people travel through 20 countries to come to a safe haven, I think people can see that this is not right. You could have a safe haven in your neighbouring country, so why go so far?’ Western countries that define their virtue by the number of refugees they let in, she says, also face a moral question: ‘Why should we have a system that works for the people who have money [to pay for the journey] while the rest of the refugees and people in need don’t have the money to go?’ People traffickers, she says, thrive on governments that follow the old rules and accept those who turn up on their shores. ‘If you smuggle an unaccompanied minor from Afghanistan to Europe, they say it is between $3,000 and $20,000.’ Young girls, she says, are sometimes sold to old men to finance such a journey. ‘Also, children are killed, or raped, on their way. So we need to have this under control.’ Being outside the EU, Norway does have a few more controls... “If you are an economic migrant, you are declined in Norway,” she says. “We send people back to Afghanistan if they are not in need of protection; we send them back to Somalia if they are not in need of protection.” Isn’t this a rather expensive process? “Yes, but it’s well worth it.” Police are also sent out to areas where illegal immigrants are suspected of living and working. “If we find them, we send them out. That has also decreased crime in Norway, that’s very good.”

Image of anti-Nazi, anti-Communist protesters in Poland reaches the top of /r/pics under the title "Poland had the right idea"... but a helpful Polish redditor points out that the "protestors" are in fact from the Polish far-right ONR Party and are arguably fascists themselves : SubredditDrama

Pro-choicers think the abortion debate is over. They’re out of touch with the public - "The protest had been organised by the Oxford Student Union’s Women’s Campaign (WomCam) – the irony of a campaign supposedly for the advancement of women’s interests silencing a woman’s voice seemed lost on the protesters. As I sat in the room watching unsuccessful attempts by some of the pro-life women at engaging with the protesters, I was reminded of what the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre wrote in After Virtue, about how contemporary society seems more capable of “pure assertion” than proper moral discourse, hence “the slightly shrill tone of so much moral debate”... No-platformers may continue their undemocratic antics, but they should not claim to speak on behalf of the majority of women who would like to see additional restrictions on abortion in Britain.""

I only have sex with married men - "“I prefer them because they’ve only had one woman to please for a very long time before they meet me — and it’s much easier to perfect their skill. “Married men are wonderful — they tell you that you are beautiful, they take you out for delicious meals, they give you presents and have lovely manners, as they are well trained by their wives. “Because so many of the men I meet hardly get any sex from their wives they are so grateful in bed and they really want to please you. I’m definitely not looking to split up marriages — I think I actually enhance them. “Some of the men I see say their marriages are much better because they are having sex with me. They go home much happier to their wives. One man stopped seeing me because his sex life with his wife improved so much.”"

Libertarian economics: A philosophical critique - "I recently sat down with the platform of the American Libertarian Party. What I found did not surprise me. The platform suffers from the very same factual and conceptual difficulties that we find in the writings of the political philosophers that inspired it... there is simply no evidence that private charity has anywhere near the capacity to alleviate the sort of poverty that confronts many parts of this country. The more than 40 million people below the poverty line would simply overwhelm organizations like the Red Cross, whose budget is about one 200th of what the federal government provides for welfare and Medicaid. Natural disasters alone far outstrip the capacity of churches and secular charities. FEMA, with its US$14 billion budget, would be a libertarian casualty. If it isn’t the proper role of government to aid the poor, and private charities can’t handle it, then what? The short answer is that the people who do have property might not have it for long. Look to history. We see property crimes rise predictably with every downturn in the economy. If you take away public assistance, it stands to reason that whatever money you may save you’ll likely lose many times over in increased spending for policing, courts, prisons and other institutions that protect property owners. Indeed, I would argue that welfare is a bargain... governments around the world have been far less than perfect when it comes to protecting the environment. Yet even a modest comparison to private efforts – where, absent regulations, there are few if any incentives to act responsibly – demonstrates that public oversight is the only reasonable option. Leaving environmental decisions to the Exxons, GEs and BPs of the world would, as history has shown, have catastrophic consequences."
Libertarian logic: without government regulations, firms would be more motivated to not destroy the environment because of market pressure

Pakistani Taliban starts magazine for would-be female jihadists

The Alluring Look of a Like-Minded Liberal - "women are more likely to find a man attractive if they share political viewpoints."

How the most ideologically polarized Americans live different lives - "while jobs and family concerns are the most important factors in deciding where and whether to move, “Republican migrants show a preference for moving to areas that are even more Republican,” and “Democrats display a similar preference for their own, though the tendency is not as strong.”"

China faces resistance to a cherished theme of its foreign policy - The belt-and-road express - "According to Tom Miller of Gavekal, a consultancy, the Chinese think they will lose 80% of their money in Pakistan, 50% in Myanmar and 30% in Central Asia. Perhaps they can afford this, but it would be a costly success... Even in Pakistan, one of China’s closest friends in Asia, Mr Xi has been forced to abandon his usual mantra of “non-interference” in others’ internal affairs. Late last year China openly appealed to Pakistan’s opposition politicians not to resist construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a part of the belt that links Xinjiang, China’s westernmost province, with Gwadar on the Indian Ocean"

Why do women still earn a lot less than men? - The Economist explains - "According to data from 25 countries, gathered by Korn Ferry, a consultancy, women earn 98% of the wages of men who are in the same roles at the same employers. Women, however, outnumber men in lower-tier jobs, such as secretarial and administrative roles, whereas men predominate in senior positions. And women cluster in occupations and industries that pay lower salaries overall... In eight countries polled by The Economist and YouGov earlier this year, 44-75% of women with children living at home said they had scaled back at work after becoming mothers... A recent study estimated that in America women’s future wages fall, on average, by 4% per child, and by 10% per child in the case of the highest-earning, most skilled white women. In Britain, a mother’s wages fall by 2% for each year she is out of the workforce, and by twice as much if she has good school-leaving qualifications."
This is interesting international data on the gender wage gap being a myth (previous studies use American data, mostly). The fact that it extends across 25 countries is very telling. Not that this will kill the feminist myth, of course

The real gap: fixing the gender pay divide - "New Korn Ferry Hay Group research shows that male-female pay disparity isn’t exactly as commonly portrayed. Tapping into its database of more than 20 million salaries at 25,000 organizations in 100 nations, the firm found that the gap is remarkably small—as low as 2.7% in France, for instance, or 1.4% in Australia across the globe, or .8% in Britain for like positions. The disparities the research found can be pegged to women still not getting access to the highest-paying jobs. The study shows that gender pay disparities all but disappear if comparisons are made like for like, looking at individuals doing the same function in the same company."

Min and Max secondary stats on 5 star mods : SWGalaxyOfHeroes - "there are only 7 speed 25+ mods out of nearly a million"
Keywords: SWGOH, minimum, maximum

Mod Drop Rate Analysis - Final Report : SWGalaxyOfHeroes

Sainsbury's shows shoppers how to 'get the slave look' with 12 Years A Slave display mannequin

Man Turns Wife's Shopping Trips Into Hilarious Game - "while waiting for his wife to try on some clothes, Venegas was suddenly hit with inspiration... he tries on the exact outfit as one of the mannequins in the store and poses next to them"

ELI5: How does bowing work in Japanese culture. I've heard there are so many subtleties to bowing that a Westerner should never attempt it. Is this true? What are some of these subtleties? : explainlikeimfive - "Never get into a bowing contest with the saleswoman in the Chanel duty free shop at Narita airport.
I’d been nodding and bending politely (I hope) to just about everyone, but this was my first experience of the 90° horizontal at the waist deep bow. I felt it would be rude to turn and walk away while someone was doing that. So I bowed back (deeply, but not horizontally) and said “Arigatou” again. SHE DIDNT STRAIGHTEN UP ! I tried again but she stayed frozen. I started backing up making increasingly more desperate bows to acknowledge hers. Some of my Australian travelling companions noticed and started recording a video with an acerbic commentary. After what seemed a lifetime, I made it to the door and fled. For all I know that poor woman may still be there having suffered some locking spinal catastrophe.
My girlfriend was in the loo and said missing this was her major regret of the trip."
"I don't think you are supposed to bow to sales clerks. Because you did and you were the respectable customer she had to bow lower and longer than you did to show that she knows your social standing in that particular interaction was higher than hers."
"You essentially held the door for a door man, and she didn't know what to do."

Within these walls: inside the legal brothels of Bangladesh - "Bangladesh is one of the few Muslim countries in the world where prostitution is legal. The Kandapara brothel in the district of Tangail is the oldest and second-largest in the country – it has existed for some 200 years. It was demolished in 2014, but has been established again with the help of local NGOs. Many of the women were born there, grew up there and didn’t know where else to go when it disappeared."

Momentum supporters are called on to 'make the Left hate again' - "Labour supporters were encouraged to “make the Left hate again” during a conference for the Corbyn-supporting Momentum campaign group. The Prime Minster's husband, Philip May, was highlighted as a legitimate target for abuse at Momentum’s political festival, The World Transformed. Remarks by Dr Paolo Gerbaudo, a lecturer at King's College London, have emerged in which he says the Left’s campaigning tactics should include hate."

Thai elephant kills owner, tries to hide him - "Police said relatives found the body of Amorn Morakot, 50, covered by tree branches near the spot where he had chained his 37-year-old female elephant in Moo 4 village in Tambon Na Khao."

She Booked An Airbnb Stay In Paris For $52K - But It Was A Scam - "Ms Cho and her husband had probably received an email from the listing they saw on Airbnb and was directed to another website that looked identical to the genuine Airbnb website. They had “interacted with a ‘live-chat service'” and then wired their money from DBS Bank directly to a specific source called, “Airbnb Euro Trans” in Poland. She had assumed that this was a “natural” procedure because France was “quite bureaucratic”. It was only after they checked on the real Airbnb website and multiple contacts they made to the “host” failed, that they found out the apartment they had paid for did not exist. The couple did not see any messages that warn users from leaving the site which is one of the features implemented against scammers... Ms Cho told sources that “she will not use Airbnb again” moving forward, and wanted to share her story so others are aware and will not end up in the same plight as her... There are netizens who blame Ms Cho for what had happened to her.
Don't tell people to beware of scammers. Tell scammers not to scam

Housewife scammed of almost $52,000 by fraudsters on accommodation website Airbnb - "Executive director of the Consumers Association of Singapore (Case), Mr Loy York Jiun, said... "Consumers also have the responsibility to remain vigilant when engaging in online transactions. They should consider using payment methods with prepayment protection. For example, PayPal offers a Buyer Protection programme that safeguards consumers in the event that an order does not arrive.""
Scamming is the only crime in which the victim becomes the accused

First world war's forgotten Chinese Labour Corps to get recognition at last - "The 95,000 Chinese farm labourers who, almost a century ago, volunteered to leave their remote villages and work for Britain in the first world war, have been called "the forgotten of the forgotten"... When the war ended and other men went home, they worked on until 1920, clearing live ordnance and exhuming bodies from battlefield burials and moving them to the new war cemeteries... Painfully symbolically, the Chinese were also painted out of a giant canvas exhibited in Paris at the end of the war. It was believed to be the largest painting in the world, and showed a victorious France surrounded by her allies. It was begun in 1914, but had to be changed in 1917 to include the arrival of the United States – the space was found by painting over the Chinese workers."
The Panthéon de la Guerre was butchered later anyway