Links - 18th November 2018 (2)

Commentary: Should a man be expected to earn more than his wife? - "The study from the US census titled Manning Up and Womaning Down, looked at what it termed “non-traditional couples” — the 22.9 per cent of married couples where the woman earns more than her spouse, according to data from the US Internal Revenue Service. It found that both partners in such couples inflate the husband’s salary and reduce the wife’s when they report. However, the researchers were especially struck by the finding that a higher-earning woman tends to talk up her husband’s salary even more than he does... "I don’t want to micromanage housework. I want a partner with equal initiative."
There are strategies to deal with this, such as that deployed by the City lawyer who instructed me on the secret to a happy marriage. Throw money at cleaners, ban guilt, lower your domestic standards and insist that neither parent bakes for the school cake sale."

Does Divorce Risk in Sweden depend on Spouses' Relative Income? A Study of Marriages from 1981 to 1998 - "The relationship between increasing women’s earnings and rising divorce rates frequently has been explained by the so-called independence effect: If a wife enjoys a higher earning than her husband does, she gains less from marriage. It has also been argued that in a society with egalitarian gender attitudes this effect is less important. In this paper, we test if the independence effect applies to Sweden, a country in which egalitarian gender views dominate and female labour-force participation and divorce rates are high. Our analysis is based on a large register data set and intensity regression models. We found support for the ‘independence effect’: The relationship between the share of a wife’s income and the divorce risk is positive regardless of the couple’s total income and the wife’s education level."
Even in the most feminist country in the world, you can't change human nature
The independence effect can also be explained as female hypergamy

Why Is Hospital Food So Disgusting? - "Food for the sick wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time, Brad’s Jell-O would have been wine jelly, and the reconstituted broth a clear consomme. Cookbooks and home economics manuals used to include sections on “invalid cookery” as a standard part of domestic instruction. Why was the stuff on Brad’s hospital tray so deeply unappetizing? How did we get here?"

Grooming: Sajid Javid orders officials to build profile of sex gangs - "Javid was responding to a letter from members of a cross-party working group on the issue that includes the Labour MP, Sarah Champion, whose Rotherham constituency was one of those to suffer at the hands of a gang. It emerged on Wednesday that she was given extra police security after getting death threats in response to comments she made about the British Pakistani men who groomed white girls for sexual abuse.
Racism! Islamophobia!

Is Google’s Caste System the Future of the Workforce? - "Google, like other tech companies, espouses an idealistic vision—“be socially beneficial,” and “avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias” are among the principles listed in the guidelines for its artificial-intelligence arm. But while Silicon Valley ostensibly aims to change the world for the better, its actual practices are accelerating a trend throughout the U.S. and the world that’s creating a new tier of second-class workers. According to Bloomberg, Google is not required to provide full benefits to its contractors. In addition, contractors are reportedly not privy to the same corporate perks that full-time workers enjoy: they clock in and out every day, while full-time workers take their time getting to the office; they must pay for the Google shuttles that employees ride to work for free; and they aren’t entitled to stock options."

Ever Wanted to Get Revenge? Try This Instead - The New York Times - "“I wanted to confront my detractors,” he said, “not to shame them, but to simply ask why they wrote that negative thing about me. And then see where the conversation could go from there.” Those conversations became part of a podcast Mr. Marron created called “Conversations With People Who Hate Me.” The dialogue often featured people finding a common ground or similar experience, such as being bullied in high school. Through these conversations, Mr. Marron is able to spin negativity into something that can be leveraged for good."

Dozens injured as hundreds of migrants storm Spain's Ceuta border with Morocco - "More than 700 sub-Saharan migrants on Thursday stormed the border fence surrounding the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in Morocco, with dozens injured in an incursion of “unprecedented violence”. Sixteen migrants and ten officers from Spain’s Guardia Civil received hospital treatment following Thursday morning’s incident, during which the group bombarded agents with quicklime, sticks, stones and bags of excrement as well as aerosols used as flame throwers, the force said in a statement. The incursion, which comes days after Spain officially overtook Italy in migrant arrivals by sea, occurred at around 6.30 am when the men used angle grinders and shears to cut through the outer and inner layers of the border fence... The 602 migrants who ultimately made their way onto Spanish soil have been taken into Ceuta’s temporary migrant reception centre, a facility already overflowing with 650 current residents for its 520 places. It is not the first such incursion across the borders of Ceuta and Melilla, the two Spanish outposts in North Africa which are seen by many fleeing poverty and conflict as their best hope of reaching a new life in Europe. But it is the first entry of such a magnitude into Ceuta since February 2017, when 850 migrants crossed into the territory in four days. Security forces speaking to Europapress said the level of violence employed in the assault was “unprecedented”."
Maybe Morocco is also considered an unsafe country whose people must flee for their lives
This suggests that being welcoming to migrants just attracts more
Luckily this wasn't Israel or they would be condemned for protecting their borders

Conservatives Find Life More Meaningful Than Liberals - "social, rather than economic, conservatives were especially likely to find meaning in life. This was true even when controlling for their “religiosity,” which means it wasn’t just that conservatives had a more ardent belief in God... Past studies have also shown that conservatives tend to be happier than liberals. Republicans are happier in their marriages. Similarly, this current study also found that economic, but not social, conservatives were more satisfied with their lives... Conservatives also tend to be more “self-enhancing” than liberals are, says Peter Ditto, a psychologist at the University of California at Irvine. They tend to talk up how great their lives are and downplay their struggles. But it’s liberals who actually act happier, even if they say they aren’t, Ditto says. He found in a study that people affiliated with Democratic causes are more likely to show a genuine “Duchenne” smile—a “smile with your eyes,” as Tyra would say—and to use positive words in their speech. Then again, Ditto speculated, “the bar for meaning-in-life might just be lower for conservatives.” Ouch... the labels “liberal” and “conservative” don’t actually mean that much right at this current moment. These days, Democrats are rooting for George W. Bush appointee Robert Mueller, and the nation’s most prominent conservative is questioning the justice system"

In Firing James Gunn, Disney Hurts All of Hollywood - "To demand that every artist who works for you to have never had a past, to have never had jagged edges that have been sanded down over time, is asking for people who will make boring art. I want people who challenged the world around them. I want people who were misfits and outcasts. I want people who raised hell. I want David Bowie and Tim Burton and John Waters and Sarah Silverman and Mel Brooks and Patton Oswalt and Eddie Murphy. I want the voices that carry — and many of those voices didn’t always say things we want to hear."
Actually this is a good argument for not slamming them even for things they say now

Business students more likely to have a brain parasite spread by cats - "Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan parasite carried by cats... Some studies have linked infection with the parasite to slower reaction times, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, suicidal behaviour, and explosive anger.... those who had been exposed to the parasite were 1.7 times more likely to be majoring in business. In particular, they were more likely to be focusing on management and entrepreneurship than other business-related areas. The study also found that professionals attending business events were almost twice as likely to have started their own business if they were T. gondii positive, and that countries with a higher prevalence of T. gondii infection show more entrepreneurial activity. The team behind the study say their data suggests that the parasite may be involved in reducing a person’s fear of failure and high-risk, high-reward ventures. Rodents infected with T. gondii are known to become less fearful of encountering cats."

Burglar wakes up couple to ask to use their Wi-Fi network

Pictured: Las Vegas woman who threw milkshake on McDonald's worker and employee who body slammed her - "A McDonald's employee and the customer she body slammed after the patron threw a milkshake at her, hit her in the face with a metal tray and insulted her mother, have been identified. Erika Chavolla, 24, was working at a Las Vegas McDonalds when she got into a dispute with the 24-year-old customer after she allegedly tried to fill up a water cup with free soda. Sabrinah Fontelar, of Las Vegas, has since bragged on Instagram that she was the customer in the video and has posted screen grabs from the shocking video and links to DailyMail.com's original story."

Man With No Penis Tricked Women During Sex By Using 'Unknown Object' - LADbible - "A sex attacker with no penis has been placed on the sex offenders register after he tricked two women into believing they were having 'sex' with him while the lights were out. But in fact, Carlos Delacruz, 35, actually used an unknown implement when he pretended to have sex with the women who he was in a relationship with... She also suffered 'extreme pain from penetration' during lovemaking and on the first occasion had to tell Delacruz to stop as she was bleeding. The couple then had sex around ten times over the course of their nine-month relationship"
Normally a phallocentric view of sex would be seen as a bad thing
If it was so bad why did they do it 10 times?

Commentary: Expats have an edge over locals. Here's why - "Employers often observe that Singaporean graduates are strong in technical competence but less adept in people skills... Western expatriates may be more effective than locals because of cultural differences and exposure to education systems that emphasise soft skills and self-promotion."

Literature And Life - "Jessica Valenti has noted on The Nation’s Web site that potential triggers for trauma are so manifold as to be beyond the possibility of cataloguing: “There is no trigger warning for living your life.” Some have suggested that a professor’s ability to teach would be compromised should it become commonplace for “The Great Gatsby” to bear a trigger warning alerting readers to misogyny and gore within its pages. Others have worried that trigger-warning advocates, in seeking to protect the vulnerable, run the risk of disempowering them instead. “Bending the world to accommodate our personal frailties does not help us overcome them,” Jenny Jarvie wrote on The New Republic’s online site."

Opinion | The Essay That Helped Bring Down the Soviet Union - The New York Times - "in divorcing human rights from foreign policy President Trump is following President Obama’s lead. Mr. Obama repeatedly prioritized engaging dictatorial regimes rather than challenging their human rights records. His eagerness to strike a nuclear deal with Iran muffled his moral voice during Iran’s Green Revolution of 2009. And he refused to make diplomatic progress conditional on demands that Iran stop supporting terror globally or executing its own people at home"

China Built an Army of Influence Agents in the U.S. - "A common thread runs through much of the United Front’s related activities in the United States and other Western democracies. It uses the freedoms guaranteed in liberal democracies to promote Beijing’s own ends. At times it resembles the tools that democracies such as the United States use to promote their own interests—funding friendly media outlets, recruiting sympathetic locals—but Chinese influence operations often employ elements of secrecy, coercion, and repression that the United States usually does not. It also means that any response to the United Front must be carefully calibrated to preserve the rights and freedoms of Chinese-Americans."

Artificial Intelligence Shows Why Atheism Is Unpopular - "people tend to secularize when four factors are present: existential security (you have enough money and food), personal freedom (you’re free to choose whether to believe or not), pluralism (you have a welcoming attitude to diversity), and education (you’ve got some training in the sciences and humanities). If even one of these factors is absent, the whole secularization process slows down. This, they believe, is why the U.S. is secularizing at a slower rate than Western and Northern Europe... MERV shows that mutually escalating violence is likeliest to occur if there’s a small disparity in size between the majority and minority groups (less than a 70/30 split) and if agents experience out-group members as social and contagion threats (they worry that others will be invasive or infectious). It’s much less likely to occur if there’s a large disparity in size or if the threats agents are experiencing are mostly related to predators or natural hazards."
Too bad the headline is irrelevant clickbait