Links - 14th September 2018 (2)

Natalie Portman equates eating meat to Nazism in a new PETA video.
Maybe liberals will all become vegetarians, leaving more meat for the rest of us

Work less, get more: New Zealand firm's four-day week an 'unmitigated success' - "Reduced hours for same pay increased successful work-life balance management, cutting stress levels and boosting commitment"

Strip clubs could be outlawed in Scotland as new government guidlines rule lapdancing is 'act of violence' against women - "Draft guidelines set by the official Scottish government strategy deems stripping as an act of “violence against women and girls”. It classifies “lap dancing, stripping and pornography” as acts of violence, alongside physical and psychological abuse in a relationship, rape, child sex abuse, human trafficking and workplace sexual harassment. Now a number of women’s groups are backing the new regulations, and are calling for the Government to follow Iceland’s footsteps and ban strip clubs completely... Women’s organisations have since argued stripping harms all women by promoting objectification of female bodies, is associated with poor working conditions and causes drinking problems among dancers."
Muslim countries would approve. To prevent the objectification of female bodies we can make women wear veils

Probe for Melbourne GP clinic 'charging more to see female doctors' - "Laura said she asked a young receptionist about the sign and the receptionist said that the extra charge was because "women's issues take longer". When Laura asked a different receptionist about it, she said the separate prices were a long-standing policy because the female doctors sometimes took more time with their patients."
The claim is that this is discriminatory, but if you want to see a female doctor only isn't this sexist?

Opt out! Cassandra the Information Technology Wobbegong on My Health Record | First Dog on the Moon - "There's a health data breach in Australia every two days... A client who publicly criticised Centrelink had her Centrelink data released to the media... Once your record is there it is there until long after you die and who knows what prime minister Pauline Hanson might decide to do"

Singapore health system hit by ‘most serious breach of personal data’ in cyberattack; PM Lee's data targeted - "A total of 1.5 million SingHealth patients’ non-medical personal data were stolen, while 160,000 of those had their dispensed medicines’ records taken too, according to MCI and MOH"
The good news is that with the upcoming compulsory National Electronic Health Record (NEHR) system (healthcare database) with no optout and which forces private providers to take part as well, ALL Singaporeans can have their full medical records hacked into and leaked online

Postcard from China: In China, I've never felt more Singaporean - "On Taobao, a popular online shopping website, you can rent a foreigner for various purposes, whether it’s to model at a company event or simply to turn up at a nightclub. A business is more successful and a bar or club is cooler when there is a large proportion of foreign patrons. In this context, however, “foreign” is code for “only white people,” and it’s racist, of course. But the intention is less malicious than pragmatic and the rationale is simple: white people are easily identified as being foreign, and foreign anything makes everything better."

The Dark Knight at 10: how Christopher Nolan reshaped superhero cinema - "With Wonder Woman as the emboldened, upbeat exception along with the wisecracking Flash (Ezra Miller, livening up Justice League every time he appeared onscreen), the recent efforts from the DC camp simply slather on the somberness. They mistake world-weariness for outright pessimism, and aspire to nothing more profound than that most overused of registers: “gritty”. The DC canon has more grit than a sandpaper factory, full of grimacing heroes who would fly into the sun before they allowed themselves to crack a smile. They consider wielding power to be a great and terrible burden, just like Batman, but unlike the brutal vigilante protecting a town that nonetheless loathes him, they’re not supported with the motivation for that jaded viewpoint. More troubling still, DC’s works form the vanguard of a much wider movement towards the homogeneously dark"

'The Dark Knight' Changed the Movie Business, But at What Cost?

This map shows the US really has 11 separate 'nations' with entirely different cultures - "Woodard mapped out the regions in his 2012 book “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America.” Some of his regions might sound familiar, like the “Deep South”; others might surprise American readers, like his “Midlands” region that stretches from New Jersey to northeastern New Mexico."

Assertive Chinese identity due to China’s rise is a threat to Singapore: Bilahari Kausikan - "“(I) have come to the sad conclusion that they (pro-China entities) just cannot get it,” said Kausikan, adding that the equality of the different races in Singapore is an “alien concept” to them... The Chinese ambassador to Malaysia Bai Tian had openly campaigned for Malaysian Chinese Association president Liow Tiong Lai in the latter’s constituency in Bentong, in an incident Kausikan described as “so wrong in so many dimensions”."

It's Called Murder Culture - "'I've got some time to kill'
'Sure, I'll take a stab at it'
'Don't shoot the messenger!'
'I think adding gravy was overkill'
'I'd kill for some chocolate'...
It describes a culture in which dominant social norms belittle, dismiss, joke about, or even seem to condone murder and violent assault... Language creates violence. When you resort to a vocabulary of terror, you send a clear message that you think lethal violence is acceptable, hilarious, even desirable"
Since this is Vice I can't tell if it's a parody of rape culture

Is Australia racist? Here are the 10 stunning stats - "36.4% believe the number of immigrants accepted into Australia is too high or much too high"
Presumably if Australia was accepting 100% of its population every year in migrants and 90% of Australians thought that was too much, that would be proof Australia is incredibly racist

Colonial Legacies and Economic Growth - "Much of the work on colonialism has been theoretical or anecdotal. In this paper, I close the gap between the literature on development and new growth theory by testing the effect of colonization on subsequent growth and development. In a sample of 63 ex-colonial states from 1961-1990, I find that colonies that were held for longer periods of time than other countries tend to perform better, on average, after independence. Finally, I show that the level of education at the time of independence can help to explain much of the development gap between the former British and French colonies in Africa."
If colonialism were disastrous for countries, we would expect colonies held for shorter periods of time to perform worse

Early Female Puberty Linked To Absent Biological Father - "The investigators report that the absence of a biological father in the household predicted earlier pubic hair and breast development - the association was only detected in higher income families. Even after such factors as the girl's bodyweight were considered, the findings still held... Early puberty has been associated with a higher probability of developing breast cancer and reproductive cancers later in life... early breast development was found in higher income families across all ethnic groups, while early pubic hair development was found in African American higher income families. Scientists cannot explain why this occurs. Some theorize that perhaps the lack of a biological father may indicate an unstable family environment, resulting in earlier female puberty. Some have suggested that perhaps when the biological father is absent, the girls are exposed to more unrelated adult males - and their pheromones - leading to earlier puberty. In this study, however, the presence of other adult males in the household did not alter their results"

There's growing evidence that eating fat won't make you fat, but sugar will - "A review of 50 studies on diet and weight gain published in the journal Food and Nutrition Research found that, on average, the more refined grains someone ate (like those from processed cereals and granola bars), the more weight they tended to gain over the study period."

To End the Border Crisis for Good, Give Trump His Wall - "The United States has not allocated the resources, political and financial, to stem the wave of illegal immigrants into this country that is now rising again, or to enable genuine asylum cases to be adjudicated fairly and expeditiously. Our political system — incapacitated by tribalism — has been incapable of addressing the intensifying problem since the Bush administration. Obama was trapped by the same impasse as Trump now is, and detained families in camps... There is fraud and trafficking and opportunism as well as valid family-based escapes from violence and persecution, and it can be hard to tell one from the other... There’s something deeply wrong, it seems to me, with expressing the view that what the government is doing is barbaric and yet allowing the underlying cause of it to continue for political reasons. If that’s the case, then Trump is not the only one using kids as pawns. Chuck Schumer is too. The Democrats need to accept that they lost the last presidential election for a reason, and that their opponent’s main campaign pledge was to tackle illegal immigration, with a wall at the southern border as the centerpiece. Completely resisting a legitimate agenda based on a clear campaign promise — well, it reminds me of the Republicans with Obamacare... the Democrats... give off the appearance, as Hillary Clinton did, of making no distinction between legal and illegal immigration, favoring de facto open borders, and calling anyone who disagrees with them a white supremacist. Until they recognize that illegal immigration is a huge and legitimate problem, and until they propose a set of actual policy proposals to end it humanely and efficiently, they run the risk of another 2016 in 2020."
Andrew Sullivan joins the alt-right

Naz Shah once suspended in anti-Semitism row has Shadow Equalities role - "Naz Shah was stripped of the parliamentary whip and barred from party activity for three months in 2016 while an investigation was carried out. It followed the unearthing of a 2014 Facebook post in which she shared a graphic of Israel's outline superimposed on to a map of the US under the headline: Solution for Israel-Palestine Conflict - Relocate Israel into United States, with the comment: 'Problem solved.'... Ms Shah also waded into the Rotherham sex abuse scandal, sharing a post on Twitter last year that told victims to 'shut their mouths for the good of diversity'."
Labour has an interesting attitude to equality

A 91-year-old Mexican man beaten with a brick, told to 'go back to your country' - "Borjas, a 35-year-old Los Angeles resident, watched the child's mother - a black woman - push the elderly man to the ground and repeatedly bash him in the face with a concrete brick while yelling, "Go back to your country." "I tried to help him, but the lady said, 'If you come over here I'll hit your car with the same brick,' " recounted Borjas, who had attempted to pull over and rescue Rodriguez... A group of young men bounded down the street, accusing Rodriguez of trying to snatch the young girl. They kicked Rodriguez, who was already crumpled on the ground, and stomped on his head."

Mario J. on Twitter: "Shaun King posted about the woman who beat the 92 year old Mexican man with a brick, and then deleted it when he found out a black woman did it."

Lancashire council upholds unstunned halal meat ban - "Councillors in Lancashire have voted to stop supplying halal meat from unstunned animals to schools... He said the council accepts that "a small number of schools may choose to use different suppliers for halal meat". "However we hope that people understand how the council has arrived at this decision, which has been taken solely on the grounds of animal welfare with due consideration for the impacts outlined in the responses to the consultation," he added. But Labour opposition leader Azhar Ali claimed: "The animal welfare issue, which is important to all of us, is being used as a tool to make a particular decision today." Abdul Hamid Qureshi, chief executive of Lancashire Council of Mosques, said they would be meeting to decide how to respond to the decision. "This is a very sad decision. It is discrimination, it is dictatorial - two thirds of the people surveyed said they did not want a ban," he added."
They could always go pescatarian

Diversity among SAF, Mindef scholarship holders - "The eight types of scholarships were awarded to 84 recipients - 22 females and 62 males - and saw a record number of 1,300 applicants, a 60 per cent increase from 2014."
I'm quite sure under 22/84 of SAF regulars are female

Dear Grab, there seems to be an error in your app - "I tell you the number one reason I’m convinced all this is a simple misunderstanding: Moves like this would be something you’d expect in a market where one participant wielded an unhealthy amount of market power. And we know that’s simply not the case here. After all, in your objection to the CCCS’s report, didn’t you say that-
“the CCCS has not taken into account the dynamic developments and intense competition going on over the past few months, from both new and incumbent taxi and ride-hailing players.”
Right on! In a market with intense competition as this, how could a provider show such disdain for its loyal members knowing full well they have a veritable smorgasbord of alternatives to turn to? How could they insult their intelligence by spinning this as an enhancement? How could they expect members to stay loyal in the future when it’s not reciprocated? It would be completely unthinkable!"