Links - 11th May 2019 (2)

Funny Sex, Taiwan's first sex-themed restaurant – everything you need to know - "The phrase style over substance could have been coined for Funny Sex. In Fullerton’s estimation, the food was ‘poor to average’.He added: ‘I swear that all these theme restaurants get their food from the same place. And not a very good place.’"

Oral sex is associated with reduced incidence of recurrent miscarriage - "A possible way of immunomodulation of the maternal immune system before pregnancy would be exposure to paternal antigens via seminal fluid to oral mucosa... this study suggests a possible protective role of oral sex in the occurrence of recurrent miscarriage in a proportion of the cases"

Austin Petersen Banned from Facebook. AGAIN. - "Austin Petersen tweeted out that both his personal and public Facebook pages were put on a 3-day ban due to “graphic violence.” What is Facebook referring to you may ask? Well, on Austin’s personal page, he made a comment referring to some shooting and the government getting their gun-grabbing hands all around said tragedy. Austin simply said “Never let a crisis go to waste.”... I think at this point it’s kind of obvious that Facebook and Twitter are okay with censoring anyone to the right of Mao, from Jordan Peterson to the new pro-life movie Unplanned."

Son of Spengler on Twitter - "Star Wars Actors Mark Hamill and Natalie Portman Will Boycott Georgia If It Bans Abortion"
"Star Wars was filmed in Tunisia, where homosexuality can be punishable by 3 years in prison and abortion is illegal after the first trimester"

Predictions about Net Neutrality's Repeal Did Not Come to Pass - "In 2015, the Obama administration implemented an arcane rule that prohibited Internet service providers from charging consumers more for access to certain content providers or providing preferential access to some websites over others: “Net Neutrality.” In 2018, the Federal Communications Commission under Chairman Ajit Pai reversed that rule. Judging from the response, you would think he committed a war crime.Egged on by entertainers like HBO’s John Oliver, who organized opposition to Net Neutrality’s repeal through his the provocatively named website “GoFCCYourself,” Internet users bombarded the regulatory agency and its chairman with threats and racial agitation. Pai was called a “dirty, sneaky Indian” and warned not to offend those with the “power to murder Ajit Pai and his family.”... One year after the FCC vote and six months after Net Neutrality’s repeal took effect, we can begin to assess the damage this Trump administration policy has done to the Internet. Though it may surprise Net Neutrality’s most vigorous defenders, the new status quo isn’t half bad. “Broadband download speeds in the U.S. rose 35.8 percent and upload speeds are up 22 percent from last year”... The fact is that Obama-era regulations forced ISPs to pare back capital expenditures that would have previously been dedicated to wireline and wireless technology to meet new compliance and legal costs (a decline in investments of 12 and 8 percent, respectively). Today, USTelecom reports that broadband investment is back on the rise"
Somehow death threats are okay for liberal causes
Somehow, big internet companies out of the goodness of their hearts pushed for net neutrality. How noble

One Year Ago Today, the FCC Killed the Internet - "Everything you love about the internet will be ruined, we were told. "The illegal music you downloaded on Napster or Kazaa. The legal music you've streamed on Spotify. The countless hours of pornography you've watched. The movies and TV shows you've binged on Netflix and Amazon and Hulu. The dating site that helped you find the person you're now married to. All of these things are thanks to net neutrality." Except all those things existed before net neutrality was implemented in 2015 and—shocker!—it all still exists today (well not Kazaa, but no one misses Kazaa)... The net neutrality fear-mongering is worth remembering because of how widespread, mainstream, and self-assured it was. The front page of CNN.com called the FCC's vote "The end of the internet as we know it," but I just checked and CNN.com is still there, somehow. The same is true of The New York Times' website, where you can still find an op-ed declaring that repealing net neutrality would be the "final pillow in [the internet's] face."... net neutrality was always, as FCC chairman Ajit Pai told Reason pre-repeal, "a solution that won't work to a problem that doesn't exist.""

Princess Awesome designers launch gender-neutral clothes for boys - "Princess Awesome, the children’s clothing company that revolutionised gender-neutral clothing for girls, has turned its attention to boys"
SPOING!

Maids in America: The Decline of Domestic Help - "Today’s arrangement is a historical anomaly. Consider the genteel poverty of protagonists in novels by chroniclers of class such as Edith Wharton, Louisa May Alcott, and Jane Austen. Regardless of their reduced circumstances, these characters would have been shocked by the idea that they should be responsible for sweeping, let alone mopping, their own floors. In perhaps literature’s most extreme example, even the eternally optimistic but penniless Micawber family from Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield can’t imagine giving up its servant.This situation remained the status quo for so long because it relied on a cheap and abundant supply of labor from unskilled workers... according to the 1870 census, “52 percent of employed women worked in ‘domestic and personal service.’”

Microsoft Excel Can Now Turn Pictures of Tables Into Actual, Editable Tables

Machine learning is making pesto even more delicious - "The research showed, counterintuitively, that exposing plants to light 24 hours a day generated the best taste."

Why Nestle is one of the most hated companies in the world - "Mars and other big companies have indeed had their share of scandals (sometimes the same ones as Nestle), but not nearly on the same scale. Nestle has shown, time and time again, that they have few ethics and little interest in a real social responsibility. From promoting their formula to uneducated African mothers to lying about production dates, to using water without a permit to dealing with ruthless dictators, they have often gone the extra mile to make an extra profit – even when the extra mile meant hurting people, directly or indirectly."

'Trumpism' is not enough of a mass movement to be fascism, visiting professor says - "“’Trumpism,’ whatever that turns out to be, is not even an emergent form of fascist rule,” Riley said. “I’m going to suggest instead that this is a form of what I’m going to call neo-Bonapartist patrimonialism.”Neo-Bonapartist patrimonialism is Trump’s direct relationship — “unmediated by thought” — with his supporters. The relationship demands loyalty to his personal power, Riley said, but Trumpism is different from fascism... Because fascist regimes are focused on accumulating land and “overturning the international order,” Trump’s approach to international relations are not fascist, Riley said. Trump is focused more on conserving the U.S.’ current land and power and stays relatively uninvolved in international politics, unlike other, more traditional fascist leaders"

Raptorific - Evidence against the argument that Superman’s disguise wouldn’t fool anyone: - "Dolly Parton once lost a Dolly Parton look alike contest to a fucking drag queen.
Charlie Chaplin once failed to even place at a Charlie Chaplin impersonator contest.
Hugh Jackman went to comic con as Wolverine, only 2 people noticed him and one told him he was too tall.
Christopher Reeve use to go to a restaurant in costume when filming Superman. When he went in the Superman costume he was mobbed by people all the time. When he went in the Clark Kent costume no one realized he was Christopher Reeve.
One time my dad changed his facial hair between semesters and one of his professors saw his last name and asked if he was related to himself, believing him to be an entirely new person"

Mo Brooks: Illegal Alien-Flooded States Diluting Votes of Middle America - "After the 2010 Census, illegal aliens were counted for reapportioning Congressional districts and electoral college votes. Hence, states that had fewer illegal aliens saw a shift of their political power to states that had more illegal aliens."
No wonder liberals support illegal immigration and open borders

Chain Migration Expected to Add 8M Potential Foreign-Born Voters to U.S. Electorate over Next Two Decades - "Research by University of Maryland, College Park political scientist James Gimpel has found in recent years that more immigrants to the U.S. inevitably means more Democrat voters and thus, increasing electoral victories for the Democratic Party.
In 2014, Gimpel’s research concluded with three major findings:
Immigrants, particularly Hispanics and Asians, have policy preferences when it comes to the size and scope of government that are more closely aligned with progressives than with conservatives. As a result, survey data show a two-to-one party identification with Democrats over Republicans.
By increasing income inequality and adding to the low-income population (e.g. immigrants and their minor children account for one-fourth of those in poverty and one-third of the uninsured) immigration likely makes all voters more supportive of redistributive policies championed by Democrats to support disadvantaged populations."

Students push UC to expand terms of ethnic identification - "The UCLA students said having their own ethnic designation goes beyond self-identity and has real implications for the larger Arab and Middle Eastern communities.The "white" label can hurt them with universities and companies that use the information to promote diversity, they say, and can result in the gathering of little or no statistical data on important issues, such as health trends in the community... there has been a push to establish a separate category as the general population has grown more diverse and because of the possible benefits it could bring."Back then, to get rights you needed to be white," said Yasi Chehroudi, president of the Iranian Student Group, which is helping spearhead the University of California campaign. "Now it helps to be yourself."... while Arab Americans suffer from stereotyping, they tend to be more educated and affluent than the average American. The report questioned whether they should be placed in a minority category, which could increase their chances for benefits aimed at the socially and economically disadvantaged"
Why don't they want White Privilege?

Regulations cost single-family home buyers in Canada’s hottest markets an extra $229,000 on average, C.D. Howe finds - "Buyers in Canada’s most overheated real estate markets paid an average of $229,000 extra per home between 2007 and 2016 because of regulations making it difficult for builders to construct more single-family houses"