Links - 8th October 2018 (2)

Singapore has the world’s worst annual leave – and it could actually be shortening people’s lives - "while Singapore came out as the city with the world’s second highest life expectancy, researchers explained that it lost the top spot to Tokyo solely because of its poor annual leave numbers. The country came in dead last out of 89 cities for vacation leave, meaning people from every other city – including Hong Kong, New York and Seoul – had more vacation days on average. While statistics were generally taken from the UBS Global Cities Ranking 2018, a spokesman explained to Business Insider that Spotahome used Singapore’s state-mandated 7 days minimum annual leave as its data point"
Singapore has no minimum wage. Therefore Singaporean workers are paid $0

How a small dairy store from Ohio became one of the biggest names in the Japanese convenience store industry - "Japan, with its densely packed cities and increasing taste for modernization, was an ideal environment for the convenience store model. Lawson’s took off. Today, Lawson has over 14,000 stores in Japan. It’s the number three convenience store brand after 7-Eleven (~21,000 stores), and a homegrown rival called FamilyMart (~17,000 stores). For perspective, there are only around 10,000 7-Elevens in the United States and Canada combined... In Japan, convenience stores compete with restaurants and fast-food joints, said Michael Jacobs, a retail analyst at T. Rowe Price based in Tokyo, so the selection tends to be much better than your average American gas-and-go... Currently, the company has stores in China, Thailand, the Philippines, as well as two stores in Hawaii, which it established in 2012."

American Airlines Passengers Asked to Urinate in Plastic Bags - "The incident stemmed from a diaper that was flushed down one of the toilets, causing the problems. Passengers were forced to choose between bottles and bags and holding it for two hours prior to landing."

Almost Everything We Know About the Earliest Copies of the New Testament Is Wrong - "None of this is good news for those who, for religious reasons, want to use the existence of early manuscripts of the New Testament as evidence for the accuracy of scripture, the life of Jesus, or the status of the Bible in the first centuries of the Common Era. Anyone who previously thought that the manuscripts of the New Testament proved anything about the accuracy or authenticity of God’s message should read Nongbri’s book."

Why Does Donald Trump Want the Death Penalty for the New York Attack, But Not for Others? [Updated] | GQ - "An earlier version of this article used a headline noting that Trump had publicly called for the death penalty in the New York attack, but not the Las Vegas shooting in particular. That discrepancy is probably related to the fact that the Las Vegas shooter is dead. We regret the error."

Allen Lobo's answer to Are things actually bad in Venezuela or is that capitalist propaganda? - Quora - "The highest judge in the land is a convicted MURDERER. Not merely corrupt. Not even a thief, trafficker, crook or fraud. A convicted killer. Did that sink in and has it exploded yet?"
Of course, this is more capitalist propaganda!

Syrian refugee Ibrahim Ali is charged with murder of Vancouver schoolgirl Marrisa Shen, 13, a case that stunned Canada

Study: Male Scientists Publish More, Women Cited More - "During year 10, for example, 40 percent of the women published no articles at all, compared with about 20 percent of men. But even top producers reflected the trend: During year 17, the top 5 percent of women averaged 3.5 or more papers. The top 5 percent of men published five or more papers. Since men had more papers, men also had more overall citations. But women had more citations per paper. By the end of the 17 years, the average paper by a woman was cited 1.5 times more often than the average paper by a man."
Diminishing marginal output

Research shows four in five experts cited in online news are men - "After surveying more than 1,000 economists from 18 countries, the researchers found that female economists were far more likely than men to prefer government interventions over market solutions. They were also more likely to be in favour of increased environmental protection, to think that labour market policies were unequal, and were slightly more likely to disapprove of austerity"
Given that people also complain about how there's a lack of women in various fields, the finding that most experts quoted by the media are men is hardly surprising

Men cite themselves more than women do - "Men cite their own papers 56% more than women on average, according to an analysis of 1.5 million studies published between 1779 and 2011... academics working in ecology and evolution, sociology and molecular biology are the most likely to cite themselves, whereas historians and classical studies scholars are the least likely."

The Gender Citation Gap in International Relations - "women are systematically cited less than men after controlling for a large number of variables including year of publication, venue of publication, substantive focus, theoretical perspective, methodology, tenure status, and institutional affiliation"

Women In Academia Are Less Likely Than Men To Cooperate With Lower-Ranked Colleagues - "In society, there is a belief that women will be more cooperative than men. In academia, that is not the case, according to a paper in Current Biology. Instead, women in academia are less likely to cooperate than men. The findings are based on an analysis of the publication records of professors working at 50 North American universities.And the lack of cooperation is most evident in an area where women overwhelmingly dominate - psychology. "People are often upset to hear evidence of sex differences in behavior," says Joyce Benenson of Harvard University. "But the more we know, the more easily we can promote a fair society." Males cooperate more in nature also, such as we see among other primates"

I Spent Two Years Trying to Fix the Gender Imbalance in My Stories - "I would need to contact around 1.3 men to get one male quote, and around 1.6 women to get one female one... Finding diverse sources, and tracking them, takes time, but not that much time. I reckon it adds 15 minutes per piece, or an hour or so of effort over a week. That seems like a trifling amount, and the bare minimum that journalists should strive for... I’m not asking people for their opinions because of their gender; I’m asking because of their expertise. Every single person I contact is qualified to speak about the particular story that I’m writing; it’s just that now, half of those qualified people happen to be women."
This is one example of the liberal reasoning that you don't need the best qualified person for the job - just one adequately qualified (who ticks the right boxes)

Imam Tawhidi on Twitter - "When the ‘Far-Left’ label me “Far-Right”, I sit and wonder how they won’t let us assume someone’s gender, but will falsely assume someone’s political identity."

Twitter Suspends Benghazi Hero Kris Paronto for Pointing Out Obama Did Not Actually Kill Bin Laden - "Twitter cannot claim Paronto was suspended over the word “retard,” a quick search finds that word all over Twitter. What’s more, Paronto used the word within the context of the movie Tropic Thunder’s catchphrase, “Never go full retard.”"

Swedish Prime Minister: Priests Should Be Forced to Perform Same-Sex Weddings - "Stefan Löfven, a Social Democrat, compared priests who refuse to wed same-sex couples with midwives refusing to carry out abortions"

BREAKING: Newly Revealed Email Shows Google's Bias Against Trump In 2016 Election, Report Says - ""In her email, Murillo touts Google's multifaceted efforts to boost Hispanic in the election," Carlson said. "She knows that Latinos voted in record-breaking numbers, especially in states like Florida, Nevada, and Arizona." Carlson reported that Murillo said that Arizona was a "key state for us," and bragged that the company "used its power to ensure that millions of people saw certain hashtags and social media impressions with the goal of influencing their behavior during the election."... The revelation comes as pressure has mounted against the tech giant over its alleged bias against conservatives, and as Twitter and Facebook both face similar concerns from their users... a newly released study "found that 90 percent of political donations by Google, YouTube, and other subsidiaries of Alphabet have gone to Democrats.""

Sweden election 2018: 'DEATH THREATS and ATTACKS' reported at Swedish polling stations - "two members of the Sweden Democrats were attacked and verbally abused... attackers began screaming at her calling her a “whore” and a “racist” as she campaigned in Nynäshamn, 35 miles south of Stockholm."
Against the "far right", violence is apparently justified

Swedish Election 2018: ‘60% of RAPISTS born abroad’ – will crime stat tip election? - "The Mission Investigation programme, broadcast by SVT, said the total number of men convicted of rape or attempted rape in the last five years was 843. Of those 58 percent were born abroad - 197 were from the Middle East and North Africa, with 45 coming from Afghanistan, and the rest from South Africa and other non-European countries."

Suddenly, the Swedes are talking about their refugee problem - "The best thing about living in a city where two in five people have a foreign background – apart from cheap garages and tasty falafel – is enjoying the small talk with strangers that Swedes see as unnecessary. The Swedish Theory of Love, a documentary that came out last Friday, blames an epidemic of loneliness in the country on the radical welfare reforms enacted in the Seventies, through which the state intervened to free Swedes from economic dependence on each other. That has created a country where one in four people die in hospital without friends or relatives by their side, the film argues. It’s beautifully made, darkly comic and thoroughly depressing, and the film’s Italian-Swedish director Erik Gandini has been predictably vilified. So much in Sweden seems designed to prevent human contact: the little machines that mean you never have to take change from a shop assistant’s hand; the number slips that spare you having to jostle next to anyone in a queue. Could the renowned welfare state be just another way of allowing people to be alone?"

Study: Hiring a Diversity Officer Doesn't Increase a University's Faculty Diversity - "Study author Steven Bradley, a professor of entrepreneurship at Baylor University, said that universities establish a chief diversity officer position in order to “signal” their commitment to diversity."

Bokhari: Twitter Aids Left-Wing Extremists While Banning Conservatives - "One example stood out: the verification process. Verification was initially intended to confirm the authenticity of an account. As Dorsey himself explained, it originated during a flu scare in 2009 to confirm that the CDC’s account was legitimate. But Twitter now uses verification as a signal to determine whose tweets should be given more visibility in shared areas of the site, like conversations, search results, and hashtags. As the company admitted earlier this year, it has also become seen as a stamp of endorsement from the platform... Democrats continue to call social media bias a “conspiracy theory,” but the examples of double standards continue to pile up."

Nolte: 'Star Trek' Actor Wil Wheaton Blacklisted on Social Media by Fellow SJWs - "the mob of tattletale hall monitors Wheaton helped empower had him blacklisted from Mastodon using the fascist online rules Wheaton helped normalize."

MPs raise banning smoking in one’s own HDB flat
This won't help the case that you own your flat

Saudi Arabia detains Egyptian who ate breakfast with female coworker - "The public prosecutor later issued a statement urging foreign residents to adhere to the kingdom's laws and respect its values and traditions."