Links - 13th August 2018 (1)

The Psychological Price of Entrepreneurship - "entrepreneurs experience more anxiety than employees. In the latest Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, 34 percent of entrepreneurs--4 percentage points more than other workers--reported they were worried. And 45 percent of entrepreneurs said they were stressed, 3 percentage points more than other workers."

Travel Is No Cure for the Mind - "Regardless of what you do to break out of the box, it won’t work. You can change your external environment all you want, but you will continue to travel with the one box that will always accompany you. The box known as your mind."

When diversity means uniformity | The Spectator - "If your office is chocka with Italians, Greeks, Spaniards, Germans, Danes, Finns, Bosnians, Hungarians, Czechs, Russians, Americans, Canadians, Australians, Kiwis, Argentines, Guatemalans, Mexicans, Romanians who aren’t travellers and South African Jews — I could go on — together speaking dozens of languages and bringing to their workplace a richly various historical and cultural legacy, the entire workforce could be categorised as ‘White: Other’. Your office is not diverse. dazzled by this very highest of social goods, many of our institutions have ceased to understand what they are for. Drunk on virtue, Penguin Random House no longer regards the company’s raison d’être as the acquisition and dissemination of good books. Rather, the organisation aims to mirror the percentages of minorities in the UK population with statistical precision. Thus from now until 2025, literary excellence will be secondary to ticking all those ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual preference and crap-education boxes. We can safely infer from that email that if an agent submits a manuscript written by a gay transgender Caribbean who dropped out of school at seven and powers around town on a mobility scooter, it will be published, whether or not said manuscript is an incoherent, tedious, meandering and insensible pile of mixed-paper recycling. Good luck with that business model. Publishers may eschew standards, but readers will still have some. In the news last week, we find the ultimate example of this fatal confusion over what is your actual job. Will Norman, London’s ‘walking and cycling commissioner’, bemoaned the fact that too many cyclists in the city are white, male and middle-class. ‘The real challenge for London cycling,’ he declared, ‘is diversity.’ As opposed to building more cycle lanes for everybody, or fixing potholes lethal to everybody’s wheel rims, Norman regards his principal function as increasing black and minority ethnic ridership. I’ll be fascinated how he accomplishes this noble mission. Will he resort to stereotypes — broadcasting gangsta rap from lampposts alongside cycling superhighways, where pop-up snack stands hand out free chapattis?"
Lionel Shriver joins the Nazis

We’re now confusing diversity and equality. Which is our priority? | Kenan Malik - "Although it welcomed “open debate”, Shriver’s comments were “not consistent with Mslexia’s ethos’ and mission”. So, an open debate, but only with the right views – the importance of diversity but not of a diversity of views... Britain is diverse in many other ways too – by religion, age, occupation, regional affiliation, politics and so on. It’s unlikely that any institution would ever be representative in all these categories (especially political viewpoint). Here “diversity” means being representative in a few chosen categories, and only in those categories... equality and diversity are not synonymous. There are many reasons for a workforce or institution not to be representative of society. Consider the recent debate about admissions to Oxford University... black students both disproportionately apply for the most competitive courses and are more likely to miss their predicted A-level grades. Taking this into account, Oxford, according to Fact Check, “was very slightly more likely to offer a place to black candidates”... The promotion of diversity, as the African-American academic and activist Adolph Reed has sardonically observed, can lead to the perspective that “a society in which 1% of the population controlled 90% of the resources could be just, provided that roughly 12% of the 1% were black, 12% were Latino, 50% were women, and whatever the appropriate proportions were LGBT people”. Diversity policies, in other words, do not necessarily challenge inequality, but simply make it “fairer”."

U.S. Leapfrogs Singapore, Hong Kong to Win World’s Most Competitive Economy
So much for Trump dooming the US

Teaching Boss Slams School Reading Lists: Not Interested in 'Conservative' Shakespeare, 'Dead White Men' - "The head of the UK’s largest teaching union has warned that plans to move towards a ‘knowledge-based’ curriculum risks “hurtling” England into the past. Dismissing plans for a traditional, academic curriculum as outdated, National Education Union (NEU) joint general secretary Mary Bousted argued the importance of including “identity”-focused figures to inspire people from minority groups... “If a powerful knowledge curriculum means recreating the best that has been thought by dead, white men — then I’m not very interested in it,” the Times Educational Supplement reported her saying. While 2014 curriculum reforms ensure that pupils must study at least one Shakespeare play before they finish school, as well as a 19th-century novel, Bousted suggested that canonical texts should come packaged with warnings they are out-of-date, privilege-tainted and inherently oppressive. “It is important for students to know some of ‘the best that has been thought and said’ but it is also important for them to know that it was a choice that was made and a choice made by the powerful... the movement’s advocates claim they are “decolonising” British institutions, despite the fact that white people are indigenous to the British Isles."
Presumably decolonising the curriculum is not a choice and it's driven by the powerless

Students grades slashed for using 'gendered language' at universities across the country - "Top universities across Australia have taken to slashing students grades for using banned 'gendered language'. Terms such as 'man', 'she', 'wife', 'mother' and any other terminology that angers the PC brigade have been blacklisted. Students claimed they have lost marks for referring to 'mankind' or 'workmanship' in assignments, as they are not deemed 'inclusive language.'"

Average Associations Between Sexual Desire, Testosterone, and Stress in Women and Men Over Time - "testosterone negatively predicted partnered desire in women but not men"

Why Valedictorians Rarely Become Rich and Famous -- and the Average Millionaire's College GPA is 2.9 - "1. "Schools reward students who consistently do what they are told" -- and life rewards people who shake things up.
2. "Schools reward being a generalist" and the real world rewards passion and expertise."

Jeremy Corbyn 'did nothing' after being told of paedophiles in his borough - "The Labour-run council had, meanwhile, both facilitated the abuse by employing known paedophiles and brazenly attempted to cover it up, shredding crucial documents and dismissing subsequent media reports about the scandal as ‘gutter journalism’. Staff who raised concerns were accused of racism and homophobia, and often hounded out of their jobs. Some, including Liz Davies and Neville Mighty, received death threats. Almost 30 council employees accused of child sex crimes were allowed to take early retirement (on generous pensions) instead of being subjected to formal investigations or referred to the police."
At least the Catholic Church didn't persecute whistleblowers

Why can’t we hate men? - The Washington Post - "Suzanna Danuta Walters, a professor of sociology and director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Northeastern University, is the editor of the gender studies journal Signs... We have every right to hate you. You have done us wrong. #BecausePatriarchy. It is long past time to play hard for Team Feminism. And win"
#notallfeminists #yesallmen
No true feminist puts sugar in her porridge
This is what a feminist looks like

Warning: Saying that men are trash will get you banned from Facebook - "comic Marcia Belsky fired off a “men are scum” rejoinder to a friend’s Facebook post, which led to a 30-day ban from the site. Belsky was taken aback by Facebook’s treatment, and she’s not the only one. Dozens of women writers, comedians, and artists have begun compiling their stories of being FacebookJailed as a result of bland and broad comments like “men ain’t shit.”"
Of course, people are complaining that this is "misogyny"

Holyrood Live: Scottish government intends to give vote to refugees
Next step: open borders

The Right to Kill – Foreign Policy - "The Kamayurá are among a handful of indigenous peoples in Brazil known to engage in infanticide and the selective killing of older children. Those targeted include the disabled, the children of single mothers, and twins — whom some tribes, including the Kamayurá, see as bad omens. Kanhu’s father, Makau, told me of a 12-year-old boy from his father’s generation whom the tribe buried alive because he “wanted to be a woman.”... what may seem an overdue safeguard has drawn widespread condemnation from academics and indigenous rights groups in the country. The Brazilian Association of Anthropology, in an open letter published on its website, has called the bill an attempt to put indigenous peoples “in the permanent condition of defendants before a tribunal tasked with determining their degree of savagery.”... Brazil’s National Indian Foundation, better known by its shortened Portuguese name Funai, does not collect data on child-killing rates and resists publicly acknowledging the phenomenon. When pressed, the foundation maintains that the practice affects a negligible fraction of the total indigenous population. The Brazilian Association of Anthropology says child killing is in decline. To bring up the issue at all, Funai said in a 2016 press release, “is in many cases an attempt to incriminate and express prejudice against indigenous peoples.”... when the Latin American Institute of Social Sciences published a “Map of Violence” report charting killings across Brazil, the municipality with the highest relative homicide rates in the country was Caracaraí, an Amazon town of 19,000 residents, many of whom belong to the Yanomami tribe. The unexpected first-place ranking reflected the first-ever inclusion of data on indigenous infants, Amadeu Soares, the state secretary of public safety, told reporters at the time. “It is the culture of indigenous peoples to sacrifice children who were born with some problem, some deficiency,” he said. Yet Soares demanded that the authors remove Caracaraí from the top spot... Critics argue that this countrywide debate over the rights of indigenous Brazilians, begun by evangelical missionaries, has sinister parallels to the country’s colonial history and the violence experienced by the indigenous at the hands of outsiders — violence that continues to this day... many Brazilians find it unacceptable that the government would allow tribes to kill disabled children in the name of cultural preservation, rather than let the state provide them with medical treatment... according to Almeida’s report, the Suzukis had done irreparable damage to the Suruwaha way of life by showing that certain physical disabilities didn’t necessitate killing."
Apparently human rights are about being able to kill children

Things Fall Apart: Populism and Foreign Policy - "Attaining political maturity contemporaneous with the Bush 43 invasion of Iraq, Obama was wary of American over-reach and committed to a foreign policy pullback. He embedded that withdrawal in a denial of American exceptionalism, a pillar of U.S foreign policy since Pearl Harbor. If you stop believing in yourself, it is difficult to ask others to believe in you. The rejection of America’s special role in the world helped set the stage for “Make America Great Again.” Was Barack Obama the ultimate Donald Trump enabler?... Even as President, Trump is easy to underestimate. Appealingly so. Many critics derive amusement, even a sense of superiority, from his foibles. His factual errors and even spelling mistakes provide an opportunity for mockery, but the lazy epiphany of error-spotting is a poor substitute for a substantive rebuttal. And a significant portion of the criticism is either ad hominem or an over-reach, either of which helps Trump. Those who are serious about policy should look at the direction in which he is taking the country, rather than fixate on these errors."

Let Them Eat Grass – Foreign Policy - "An unpublished Chinese government study admits to 17 million unnatural deaths, while historian Frank Dikötter’s book Mao’s Great Famine estimated "at least" 45 million premature deaths. Yet in China today, the famine of 1959-1962 remains unresolved... When there is a blockade on news and suppression of public opinion, not only will the masses become unenlightened, the rulers will also become deaf and dumb"

Study: Most Violent Rapes in Sweden Committed by 'Men of Foreign Origin' - "A new survey of sexual assaults in Sweden concludes that 95.6 percent of violent rape was committed by men with a foreign background. The study by Joakim Jonasson, based on more than 4,000 convictions between 2012 and 2017, found the groups most represented in violent rape cases were Somalis, Eritreans, Algerians, Iraqis, and Gambians. Jonasson also found that 90 percent of gang rapes were committed by men with non-European ancestry, and that those foreign-born men sexually harass native Swedes much more than they harass foreign-born women also living in Sweden."

Woman's tongue inseminated by a squid after eating undercooked seafood
No longer just an urban legend

Who Are the 'Whales' Driving Free-to-Play Gaming? You'd Be Surprised - "the whales are actually the stereotype of the hardcore gamer: young(er) males who also play console games. Kind of swats the idea that games like Candy Crush Saga make their money off bored soccer moms who don't know any better, right? EEDAR, in a survey of 3,000 active mobile and tablet gamers, said men accounted for two thirds of the top 5 percent of paying mobile gamers. In fact, women were less likely to pay money for mobile games, accounting for 65 percent of the non-paying segment. Even more contrary to stereotype, EEDAR's survey says free-to-play "whales" spent the majority of their gaming time on consoles"
Looks like even for casual games (which those who push the 'more women are gamers than men thus women are gamers' line include), men are more hardcore (i.e. gamers) than women

Male and Female Gamers: How Their Similarities and Differences Shape the Games Market - "of gamers who consider themselves to be core, 70% are men. Core gamers are defined as those who agree that gaming is an important part of their life, that spend a significant amount of their free time gaming, and enjoy playing against or with others... Across all segments, men are much more likely to spend than women. The difference is most apparent for PC gaming, with 57% of core male gamers paying versus 39% of women.

Kim Jong-un impersonator 'detained' at Singapore airport ahead of dictator and Trump's nuclear summit
What happens when you try to be creative in Singapore

Men better at Scrabble as women won’t waste time practising useless skills, finds study - "male players spend their time practising anagrams and analysing the game, whereas women are more likely to play the game as a hobby. The research, published in the journal Psychological Research, found there is no inherent difference in talent between genders. Yet, despite the fact there are slightly more female participants in Scrabble tournaments, male players tend to dominate them."
Maybe it's sexism that society doesn't socialise women to want to be good in useless things