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Saturday, July 21, 2018

Links - 21st July 2018 (2)

Malaysian police seize 284 luxury bags, 72 bags of cash and valuables from Najib-linked apartments - "Mr Singh said early Friday morning that the police are still working on opening a safe in that house. Mr Najib’s lawyer, Datuk Harpal Singh, said the police took action to drill through the safe as the key had been misplaced, and the safe had not been opened in two decades."

Chinese school installs facial recognition cameras to keep an eye on pupils - "A school in eastern China has installed cameras to monitor pupils’ facial expressions and attentiveness in class.. China has been spearheading the use of cameras to monitor its population since 2015, when the Ministry of Public Security launched a project to build the world’s most powerful facial recognition system. Its goal was to identify any of the country’s citizens within three seconds, by matching someone’s face with their ID photo."

No emphasis and poor teachers the causes, say employers - "JobStreet.com’s country manager Chook Yuh Yng said poor communication skills in English was the se­­cond biggest problem among fresh graduates – the first being poor attitude and unrealistic salary expectations."

PM: Poor English eroding Malaysian graduates’ self-belief - "poor English proficiency led over 1,000 medical graduates to quit their ambitions to become doctors"

Which countries are best at English as a second language? - "The Netherlands has emerged as the nation with the highest English language proficiency, according to the EF English Proficiency Index, with a score of 72. It is ahead of five other northern European nations at the top of the chart. In fact, the only non-European nation in the top ten is Singapore at number six... better English in a country correlates with higher income, higher levels of innovation and a better quality of life In nearly all countries surveyed, women had stronger English skills than men"
So much for Singaporeans being good at English

Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain - "Until the 1970s in some areas, many workers were woken by the sound of a tap at their bedroom window. On the street outside, walking to their next customer's house, would be a figure wielding a long stick. The "knocker upper" was a common sight in Britain, particularly in the northern mill towns, where people worked shifts, or in London where dockers kept unusual hours, ruled as they were by the inconstant tides... While the standard implement was a long fishing rod-like stick, other methods were employed, such as soft hammers, rattles and even pea shooters."

China Proves Marx Right
When evidence that would disprove a theory is used to claim it is right...

Cannes 2018: Kristen Stewart removes heels on red carpet in protest over dress code - "Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Frémaux responded to the uproar on Twitter at the time, writing: “For the steps (red carpet), nothing has changed: Smoking (tuxedo), black tie. No mention of heels.”"
Apparently Kristen Stewart doesn't know that there's a dress code for men

Trump Refers To Immigrants As 'Animals.' Again. - "Referring to subgroups as animals has been used to justify violence"
An earlier version of this article, IIRC, didn't even mention the gang
First liberals conflated illegal immigrants with all immigrants. Now they're conflating MS-13 gang members with all immigrants
Somehow, Trump making a remark to Comey is obstruction of justice, but criticising a Democrat mayor warning criminals that law enforcement is an "attack on a Democratic politician" (presumably it's not obstruction of justice to tip off criminals)
Presumably using the term "Trumpanzee" is not an issue


Celebrities Freak After Trump Calls MS-13 Gangsters ‘Animals’: ‘Dehumanizing Bigot Monster’ - "It is not the first time that Trump has used the phrase to describe the bloodthirsty organization, who have been classified by the FBI as the most violent and organized criminal network in the United States... Disgraced comedienne Kathy Griffin, who previously posed in Photos of herself holding Trump’s bloody head, claimed that the president really meant “all immigrants” and that she was left “fucking disgusted” by his remarks"

The Associated Press on Twitter - "AP has deleted a tweet from late Wednesday on Trump’s “animals” comment about immigrants because it wasn’t made clear that he was speaking after a comment about gang members."
Unlike the Huffington Post and a lot of the lying media, AP has integrity

Muslims are forced to eat pork and drink alcohol as punishment in China's Islamic 're-education' camps, former inmates reveal - "Around 900,000 to one million Muslims are estimated to have been detained in such re-education camps in China's western province of Xinjiang as Beijing tries to clamp down on potential separatist movements... Asked to comment on the camps, China's Foreign Ministry said it 'had not heard' of the situation... Before meals of vegetable soup and buns, the inmates would be ordered to chant: 'Thank the Party! Thank the Motherland! Thank President Xi!'... a government instructor claimed said that Uighur women historically did not wear underwear, braided their hair to signal their sexual availability, and had dozens of sexual partners.
China's peaceful rise. And some Muslims cheer the US being replaced by China

How Rhetoric on the Left Fuels Bigotry on the Right - "“Failing to draw distinctions between people like Sam Harris and people like Richard Spencer strips the designation ‘alt-right’ of its power and meaning,” she wrote on Twitter. “When that label is used promiscuously, people start to take it less seriously … And when conservatives, classical liberals or libertarians are told by the progressive chattering class that they—or those they read—are alt-right, the very common response is to say: ‘Screw it. They think everyone is alt-right.’ And then those people move further right.” Weiss’s concerns did not imply the need for any great progressive concession—merely describing people like Sam Harris accurately would suffice to address them. Yet they were met with anger and mockery... An observer could be forgiven for supposing that the progressive left has always rejected the notion that promiscuous labeling can push people toward extremism. Yet progressives have long championed a variation on that same position. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, most progressives have argued that it is counterproductive to label violent extremism by groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS as “Muslim” or “Islamic” or “Islamist” terrorism, despite the professed beliefs of its perpetrators, in part because doing so would make it easier for terror groups to gain converts and harder for us to win over moderate Muslims... The left should stop promiscuously labeling popular figures as ideologically diverse as Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro as members of the alt-right. Doing so is wrong simply because it is inaccurate. And strategically, if you want the term to retain any stigma, you could hardly do a dumber thing than expanding its scope to inaptly include very popular figures. Their fans will sooner conclude that they cannot trust the mainstream to apply the label, or that it doesn’t mean anything, or that they must be alt-right if it definitionally includes someone who likes Harris or Shapiro, than abandon commentators to whom they’re drawn"

Hippos Poop So Much That Sometimes All the Fish Die - "the mud and water at the bottom of these hotspots is a stagnant mess of ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, and other chemical grotesqueries. It’s also starved of oxygen: Almost all of the gas is consumed by bacteria as they slowly digest the accumulated hippo poop... the duo showed that migrating wildebeest nourish the Serengeti by drowning en masse in the Mara, adding about 1,100 tons of dead meat to the river every year"

Why US TV host James Corden should stop dissing Asian foods as disgusting for cheap laughs – it’s cultural chauvinism

8 Baffled Foreigners Reveal The Weirdest American "Food" They've Seen - "“I think most (not all) American cheese tastes like plastic and that they have misunderstood the concept of what cheese is," Sandberg explains to FashionBeans. "In the U.S. 'cheese' is basically just understood as a way to get fat."
Too bad Americans can't blame racism

The Secret to Magic Mornings? Put the Kids to Work - The New York Times - "We devised a personalized morning checklist for each child — with their input. And we created a breakfast menu and a lunch menu, just like the ones they give you in hotels. We’re talking the works here. For breakfast the children can have cereal, muffins, eggs however they want, smoothies. You name it! And the lunch menu is equally expansive. Each night the kids complete their menus for the next day’s breakfast and lunch. We’re not serving as their cook, maid and butler. And we’re not forcing them into servitude, either. We’re teaching them life skills, based on the theory of the University of Rochester psychology professors Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. They suggest that for kids (and adults) to be motivated and happy they need three basic psychological needs to be satisfied: relatedness, competence and autonomy."

Someone, somewhere, is making a banned chemical that destroys the ozone layer, scientists suspect - The Washington Post - "Emissions of CFC-11 have climbed 25 percent since 2012, despite the chemical being part of a group of ozone pollutants that were phased out under the 1987 Montreal Protocol... A U.S. observatory in Hawaii found CFC-11 mixed in with other gases that were characteristic of a source coming from somewhere in eastern Asia, but scientists could not narrow the area down any further... The ozone layer is slowly recovering, and ozone-depleting substances are still declining. But the apparent increase in emissions of CFC-11 has slowed the rate of decrease by about 22 percent, the scientists found. This, in turn, will delay the ozone layer’s recovery and, in the meantime, leave it more vulnerable to other threats."
"Eastern Asia"

Singapore Airlines has some of the best plane food out there — here's an inside look at how the airline makes 50,000 meals a day - "For safety purposes, Singapore Airlines’ cabin crew have their own meal options separate from passengers’ options. Pilots and copilots must also be provided with different meals from passengers, as well as different meals from one another. No shellfish is allowed in the cockpit either."

The truth about being a single woman over 30 examined in Singled Out documentary - "Ms Gibson said she wasn't surprised to hear women struggled to find a suitable man in Australia. She attributed part of the problem to another issue Singled Out identified: Women are more economically independent than ever before and yet the quality of male partners hadn't necessarily improved. "We're seeing more professional women who sort of basically have impressive lifestyle resumes and we're not really seeing men matching that.""
In other words, the problem is female entitlement and hypergamy

What truths does "truth serum" sodium pentothal actually reveal? - "Wilbur then founded an organization which trained therapists to use drugs and hypnosis and probe for childhood abuse. After many leading questions, patients would finally go along with what their therapists were saying, the therapist would declare that a memory had finally be recovered, and the cause of the illness would be reinforced. Recovered memory abuse would range from Sybil's false memory of being flown to (occupied) Holland during World War II to help an English officer smuggle out his wife, all while in the persona of a twelve-year-old, to fantastic stories of Satanic cults sacrificing humans inside regular towns. When cases against parents started falling through, and lawsuits started piling up, truth drugs fell from favor fast"

Muji products to get cheaper outside Japan? - "A wooden spatula from Muji Singapore would set one back nearly S$30, while a similar one from Muji Japan costs only half that... Muji’s eventual goal, Mr Matsuzaki added, would be to set product prices based on a country’s per capita income"

Amber Rudd: viewers of online terrorist material face 15 years in jail - "“I want to make sure those who view despicable terrorist content online, including jihadi websites, far-right propaganda and bomb-making instructions, face the full force of the law,” said Rudd. “There is currently a gap in the law around material [that] is viewed or streamed from the internet without being permanently downloaded"
Since everything is "far right" nowadays...

UK among worst in Western Europe for freedom of press after 'staggering decline', Reporters Without Borders index claims - "Freedom of the press became further imperilled when Home Secretary Amber Rudd threatened to restrict encryption on messaging services such as WhatsApp and announced plans to criminalise the repeated viewing of extremist content"
Maybe antifa will go after Reporters Without Borders next since they are against criminalising repeated viewing of "extremist" content

S’poreans question “double standards” between permits granted for St. Patrick’s Day & Thaipusam - "St Patrick’s Day celebrations and parade are markedly non-religious events, as they are organised by secular groups — the Irish community in Singapore and Singapore River One — and did not show any religious elements, symbols or insignia... The Singapore Police Force (SPF) has said before that outdoor religious foot processions are not allowed, with an exception for the Hindu community for Thaipusam, in light of the importance and significance of the festival to the community"

Deception technology - Wikipedia - "Deception technology automates the creation of traps (decoys) and/or lures which are mixed among and within existing IT resources to provide a layer of protection to stop attackers that have penetrated the network. Traps (decoys) are IT assets that either use real licensed operating system software, or are emulations of these devices."

Mum changes son's name after mistake in new tattoo - "To make sure her new ink was accurate, the mum (who wants to be known only as Johanna) decided to officially change five-year-old Kevin's name to Kelvin."

Parent Outraged After School Gives Students Worksheet on Writing Islamic Faith Declaration - "A Christian parent in West Virginia has voiced outrage after his seventh-grade daughter brought home a packet from her social studies class this week that includes a page asking students to practice writing the Islamic declaration of faith in Arabic calligraphy... Brielle's homeroom class was shown a suicide prevention music video that, in one scene, shows two male high school students in bed together and a sex toy. The Berkeley County School District later admitted that the video shown in the class was not the same one approved by the district and that the video that was shown had "unapproved content."... In 2015, parents in Tennessee voiced outrage with the Maury County School District after their seventh graders were instructed to write "Allah is the only god" when learning about Islam's pillar of creed... a Maryland couple sued a school district claiming that it was guilty of indoctrinating students when teaching about the five pillars of Islam by "requiring" them write out Islamic statements of faith. Earlier this year, a parent filed a lawsuit against a school district in New Jersey after students were subjected to videos that she claims featured Islamic propaganda and even encouraged conversion to Islam in their World Cultures and Geography class."
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