Links - 2nd September 2018 (2)

林美瑜 - 你的朋友也是不是这样？ 快点tag他 www.lvking.com (video)

Meet the ultra-Orthodox Jews who want to see Israel dismantled.
Maybe the alt right will say they're paid actors, since obviously all Jews are working to further the cause of Israel

Is it better to rent or buy a home? - "Using the current U.S. median home price of $232,700, we can see that home prices are currently running at about 4.04 times the typical household income. This ratio isn’t quite as high as it was during the housing bubble, but it’s still pretty steep. Based on this, renting is likely to make the most sense right now in many parts of the country."

Wrong to have total free flow of people: DPM Tharman - "Noting that a third of Singapore's workforce is already made up of foreigners, he added: "It would be mindless to have an open border without any policy framework to govern and constrain the flow of people into your job market. It will not just be wrong politics but wrong economics.""
I wonder what economics he's reading, given the economics consensus seems to be that open borders are good

A SON SPEAKS OUT By Moses Farrow - "I’m a very private person and not at all interested in public attention. But, given the incredibly inaccurate and misleading attacks on my father, Woody Allen, I feel that I can no longer stay silent as he continues to be condemned for a crime he did not commit... For months now, she had been drilling it into our heads like a mantra: Woody was “evil,” “a monster,” “the devil,” and Soon-Yi was “dead to us.” This was the constant refrain, whether or not Woody was around. (So often did she repeat it that Satchel would announce to one of our nannies, “My sister is fucking my father.” He had just turned four.) My mother was our only source of information about Woody – and she was extremely convincing... It was important to my mother to project to the world a picture of a happy blended household of both biological and adopted children, but this was far from the truth. I’m sure my mother had good intentions in adopting children with disabilities from the direst of circumstances, but the reality inside our walls was very different. It pains me to recall instances in which I witnessed siblings, some blind or physically disabled, dragged down a flight of stairs to be thrown into a bedroom or a closet, then having the door locked from the outside. She even shut my brother Thaddeus, paraplegic from polio, in an outdoor shed overnight as punishment for a minor transgression. Soon-Yi was her most frequent scapegoat... In her widely-circulated 2014 open letter in The New York Times, the adult Dylan suddenly seemed to remember every moment of the alleged assault, writing, “He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me. He talked to me while he did it, whispering that I was a good girl, that this was our secret, promising that we’d go to Paris and I’d be a star in his movies. I remember staring at that toy train, focusing on it as it traveled in its circle around the attic. To this day, I find it difficult to look at toy trains.” It’s a precise and compelling narrative, but there’s a major problem: there was no electric train set in that attic. There was, in fact, no way for kids to play up there, even if we had wanted to... I’ve seen the results of that investigation. It specifically concluded that “Dylan was not abused by Mr. Allen,” that her statements had a “rehearsed quality” and that they were “likely coached or influenced by her mother.” Those conclusions perfectly match my own childhood experience: coaching, influencing, and rehearsing are three words that sum up exactly how my mother tried to raise us... A second, 14-month investigation by the New York State Department of Social Services, reached the same conclusion as Yale/New Haven: “No credible evidence was found that [Dylan Farrow] has been abused or maltreated.”... To those who have become convinced of my father’s guilt, I ask you to consider this: In this time of #MeToo, when so many movie heavyweights have faced dozens of accusations, my father has been accused of wrongdoing only once, by an enraged ex-partner during contentious custody negotiations... As a trained professional, I know that child molestation is a compulsive sickness and deviation that demands repetition"
Not that this will make any difference in the crusade to slime Woody Allen

Want to know what you are eating at an Icelandic Þorrablót? Here's your answer! - "Súrir hrútspungar, sour, whey-pickled ram's testicles. The testicles are boiled and cured in whey."

A woman discovers a new side to herself after being confronted with the sexual appetites of the REAL Mr. Grey, Danny DeVito.

Swedes Develop Invisible Bike Helmet
Cheh, airbag

Worst Choir ever? - YouTube

Singaporeans (Girls) Try: NO MAKEUP FOR A WEEK! | EP 73 - YouTube

Coordination Between Clinton Campaign and Journalists - our.wikileaks.org - "Journalists were revealed within the Podesta Emails to be coordinating with the Clinton campaign. Below is a collection who were included."
Presumably if you criticise journalists for this, you're a dangerous, far right fascist. At the same time, Breitbart must be condemned

Cops Arrested a Black Man. He Called Them Nazis, So He Was Charged With a Hate Crime.
If you want to criminalise hate speech...

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Water Wars - "At a local wedding reception in Freetown, an Icelandic friend was embarrassed when as part of the entertainment a Sierra Leonian man came on stage in a straw hat and started rudely imitating a Chinese person. He danced goofily on the spot, pinging his elastic bracers and imitating the way Chinese people speak. The room roared with laughter"

The Partisan Divide on Political Values Grows Even Wider | Pew Research Center - "Two decades ago, the average partisan differences on these items were only somewhat wider than differences by religious attendance or educational attainment and about as wide as the differences between blacks and whites (14 points, on average). Today, the party divide is much wider than any of these demographic differences... In recent years, there has been a decline in the share of Democrats who say that most people can get ahead if they work hard. Only about half of Democrats (49%) express this view, down from 58% three years ago. A large majority of Republicans (77%) continue to say hard work pays off for most people. Democrats are divided by education and race in their views of hard work and success. White Democrats and those with higher levels of education are less likely than nonwhite Democrats and those with less education to say that hard work leads to success... The shares of Republicans and Democrats who express very unfavorable opinions of the opposing party have increased dramatically since the 1990s"
The lived experience of minorities seems to differ from what white Democrats try to whitesplain to them

How we discovered three poisonous books in our university library - "Industrial production of Paris green was initiated in Europe in the early 19th century. Impressionist and post-impressionist painters used different versions of the pigment to create their vivid masterpieces. This means that many museum pieces today contain the poison. In its heyday, all types of materials, even book covers and clothes, could be coated in Paris green for aesthetic reasons. Of course, continuous skin contact with the substance would lead to symptoms of exposure... A plausible explanation for the application – possibly in the 19th century – of Paris green on old books could be to protect them against insects and vermin. Under certain circumstances, arsenic compounds, such as arsenates and arsenites, may be transformed by microorganisms into arsine (AsH₃) – a highly poisonous gas with a distinct smell of garlic. Grim stories of green Victorian wallpapers taking the lives of children in their bedrooms are known to be factual"

Commentary: Inequality has a geographic dimension - between and within neighbourhoods in Singapore - "Harvard University Professor Robert Putnam found that diversity of demographics such as income, race, or religion are often linked to greater distrust in neighbourhoods... residential estates with a more diverse range of dwelling types – which include Marine Parade and Bukit Merah - are correlated with more petty crime... Putnam has found that having diverse people residing in the vicinity do not necessarily lead to more meaningful contact or shared experiences.
Contact must be meaningful, not superficial, and contrived"
Actually the moral seems to be to have 'ghettos' instead

HIV / AIDS - Our World in Data - "Overall, prevalence increased until the mid 2000s, where it peaked globally and has since declined. Southern Africa remains the world region with the highest prevalence. In 2015 Botswana had the highest prevalence: 22 percent of 15-49 year olds had HIV... In 2016 more than 36 million had HIV globally; 72 percent were based in Sub-Saharan Africa. In terms of the absolute number of people with HIV, South Africa had the greatest number in 2016 with more than 6.3 million... 0.05% of the world population are currently (2015 data) newly infected with HIV every year. This incidence of HIV was halved from 0.1% in the mid 1990s. The distribution of these new cases is not even across different regions. While in Asian and Latin American countries the incidence is well below 0.1% there are some countries with much higher incidence. In South Africa 1.44% of the previously uninfected population was infected with HIV in 2015."

Jury fails to reach verdict in Buckingham Palace terror trial - "Mohiussunnath Chowdhury, 27, from Luton, denies preparing acts of terrorism, claiming he only wanted himself to get killed. Mr Chowdhury drove to the palace on 25 August last year with a samurai sword, the Old Bailey previously heard... Mr Chowdhury, of Kirkwood Road, told the Old Bailey that he was upset at the role of the UK government in arming Saudi Arabia and the deaths of innocent people in Yemen."

Sex, spas, sleaze: what Orchard Road of Singapore hides in plain sight - "“The women from the spas don’t approach couples or families. So as long as that level of respect is there, I think most people don’t mind that the sex trade is a few metres away.” The tilt to sleaze is partly due to the low rental rates in this mall, according to a report in The Straits Times newspaper last month, part of an overall slump in visitors experienced by malls along Orchard boulevard... “The irony is that you don’t have to look far to notice the sleaze that takes place along this stretch of road,” he says, asking not to be named. “A walk up the wrong flight of stairs or missed turn at a corridor of a notorious mall and you’ll see what I mean. “The vice has become so normalised that it’s already part of the road’s identity – one cannot exist without the other.”"

Men Without Beards Are Just Like Women and Provoke 'Indecent' Thoughts, Islamic Preacher Says - "“Men should grow beards. [Beards are] one of the two body parts that separate men from women," Murat Bayaral said Saturday. "For example, if you see a man with long hair from afar, you may think he is a woman if he does not have a beard. Because nowadays, women and men dress similarly. God forbid! You could be possessed by indecent thoughts,” he explained, expressing fear that men might look at members of the same sex with sexual interest. The talk comes as Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan takes the country down an increasingly religious path with a new version of Islamic nationalism... “Erdogan declared in 2012 his intent to raise ‘devout generations,’ and former Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arinç stated in 2014 that women should not laugh out loud in public.”... Turkey was traditionally one of the countries where it was possible to see even prominent religious scholars close-shaven."

[OT] It's Now 'White Privilege' to Not Want to Live in Your Own Shit - Google Groups - "Black Lives Matter Advocate and pretend black person Shaun King (aka Talcum X) has outdone himself this time:
Shaun King @ShaunKing
I've noticed that it's only White Americans who complain about the fecal matter on the streets of San Francisco. White entitlement issues again.
Damn white people and their...
*shuffles deck, picks card*
...aversion to living in their own shit!
Since when did it become racist to not want to have to play "don't step on
the doo-doo grenade" on your way to work?"

The Left needs to face reality: Trump is winning - "a Pew finding about Trump supporters upends stereotypes: Just 31 percent are white men without college degrees, while 66 percent are college graduates, women or nonwhites."