Links - 3rd May 2019 (2)

Journalist Complains of Being Fired Just Days After Mocking 'Right-Wing' Reporter's Pay: How Will I Afford My Therapist? - "A reporter gloated that alternative journalist Tim Pool was “not doing so well” professionally — just days before bemoaning losing her own job. Sarah Morrison, a self-described liberal freelance writer for outlets including Vocative and The Guardian, mocked Pool in response to his Twitter takedowns last week of the media’s tantrum about “Make America Great Again” hat-wearing Covington Catholic School students... Pool, for the record, has said that he does not see himself as a member of either the political right or left."

How the National Coalition for Men and Other MRA Groups Use the Rhetoric of 'Equality' to Punish Women - "Men's rights activists have also been lobbying to redefine sexism to include "misandry" as a way to codify their sense of victimhood, knock women down a peg or two, and further secure their elevated place in society (which they are very anxious about losing)"
Of course, feminists would never do such a thing
I love the irony of claiming that it's sexism to allow 'sexism' to cover misandry

Peter Kro-THOT-kin on Twitter - "We are in a war between those who choose to be human and those who choose to be white. In order to effectively stamp out fascism, we must take on all hierarchies at once. White supremacy cannot be disentangled from patriarchy and class oppression. Liberalism is not the answer."
From a blue checkmark, of course

Woman's friends turned on her after she slimmed down from size 28 to size zero - "the home educator, of West Salem in Ohio, says she was shocked to lose around 15 close pals, many of whom she’d known for years, after beating the bulge.Jen told Metro US: ‘It’s really sad. I lost probably ninety percent of my friends. I don’t know why. ‘They just became petty, they just stopped talking to me. It’s not because I’ve changed. My heart is the same. My outside has changed, but my inside is the same.’She added: ‘They would make fun of me, and pick on me because of what I’m eating. They would say things like “Oh, are you too good to eat pizza now?” I can’t eat the cheese or carbs anymore, since the surgery, because they make me feel sick. ‘Interestingly, it wasn’t always my larger friends who reacted badly. The issue with my slimmer friends was that I started to get more attention. You always look better as a thin person if you go out with less attractive friends, and I think some of them were resentful that I was starting to get attention too.’... she constantly feels cold since losing most of her body fat, leaving her too chilly to don the skimpy outfits she had dreamed of wearing while obese"

These are America’s favorite foods from around the world - "An international YouGov study of more than 25,000 people in 24 markets finds that American food ranks 7th out of the 34 cuisines. YouGov asked people which of 34 national cuisines they had tried and whether they liked or disliked them. Italian cuisine beat all other fares, with pizza and pasta standing among the most popular foods in the world. The cuisine received an average popularity score of 84% across the 24 nations we studied...
Italian, Chinese and Japanese cuisines are the world's most popular"
Least popular cuisines worldwide: Peruvian, Finnish, Saudi Arabian (Filipino is 4th)
Most culinarily cosmopolitan countries: Philippines, Singapore, Australia (liking the most types of food)
Most culinarily conservative: Japan, China, Thailand
Addendum: Interestingly British food is disliked in Europe but more appreciated outside it - no wonder there's Brexit!
Keywords: the Japanese like, Japanese food, cuisine globally, Italian cuisine is world's most popular, Washington Post, WashingtonPost, most popular cuisine in the world, countries rate each other's cuisines, countries rate each other's foods, rating cuisines by country, Italian cuisine is world’s most popular, rate other countries' cuisines, rate other cuisines, Peruvian food, Peruvian cuisine, Italian Japanese French

Homebuyer is shocked to discover the basin in his new luxurious flat is smaller than his hand - "A homebuyer in a Chinese city has vented his fury after discovering a sink smaller than his hand in his expensive flat.He was shocked to see the extremely small basin - meant for people to wash their hands in - while checking into his new home in a luxury residential complex in Guangzhou"

Hulu Series 'Shrill' Collaborates with Planned Parenthood: Getting an Abortion Makes You Feel 'Really Good' and 'F*cking Powerful' - "after Annie rests post-abortion, she tells her roommate that she now feels “really, really good” and “very fucking powerful.” Hulu has featured a number of shows with political messages over the last few years.The growing streaming service picked up Sarah Silverman’s commentary show I Love You, America, which featured plenty of political posturing, such as when Silverman compared President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler in October. I Love You, America was later cancelled after only 21 episodes.Hulu is also home to the series Handmaid’s Tale, which depicts a society where women are sexually subservient to men. The show has become a hit with the Resistance crowd on the left, many of whom think the world of Handmaid’s Tale — adapted for TV and based on the best-selling novel by Margaret Atwood — is comparable to Trump’s America."
So much for people being pro-abortion being a paranoid far right Christian conservative myth made up to oppress women

Actress declares that her 'first abortion' at age 19 was 'my best one.' And the audience loves it. - "Actress and outspoken abortion advocate Martha Plimpton ("The Goonies" and a host of TV shows) proudly told a Seattle audience that she got her "first abortion" at age 19 from a Seattle Planned Parenthood and that it was her "best" abortion... The crowd responded with wild cheering"

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 228 - William Gunn and Alex Holcombe on "Is Elsevier helping or hurting scientific progress?" - "The cost structure of some of the society journals are quite a lot higher than the cost structure of Elsevier. The AAAS, the publishers of one of the largest scientific journals, Science, they estimated that it would cost them $30,000 per article, which is, if they went to an all author-pays model. Which is quite a lot higher than Elsevier or some of the other commercial publishers charge. And in fact a lot of societies use Elsevier to host their journals because of that cost structure...
There was an analysis done… where they looked at the content of faculty tenure review packets. And they looked to see kind of what phrases were mentioned more, what things people were using to assess their faculty for promotion.And what they found that was a surprising finding, was that the impact factor of the journal -- which is bad way of measuring the importance of a journal, because it's just basically an average of how many things are published divided by how many citations were there, so it's a terrible metric…But that used to have this status of, oh researchers have no choice because we have to publish in these high impact factor journals because it's important for our career.And in fact, when you look at the data that is mentioned in single digit percentages of tenure review packets"

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 227 - Sarah Haider on "Dissent and free speech" - "I'm friends with scientists and teachers of science in Muslim majority countries, who regularly communicate with me how frustrating their jobs are. And how difficult it is for them to navigate doing what they do, and trying to really teach science and the benefits of science, and what’s the state of our knowledge today, without stepping on religious toes...
There is sort of a hindering of a group of people who are potentially my allies. And really on the same page. And they'll reach out to me and they'll say,“I'm 100% with you. I agree with you, but I don't want to retweet you. I'm not going to share it, because there's my best friend who won't speak to me again. Or maybe not that extreme, but that suddenly there's this cloud of suspicion that'll be cast over me, because I share somebody like you, or because I follow somebody like you.”"

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 224 - Rick Nevin on "The long-term effects of lead on crime" - "if you look at the rise and fall of crime, and map it against the rise and fall of lead exposure with a 23 year time lag, it was an unbelievably close fit. That might sound like a coincidence. I have since discovered exactly the same pattern in almost a dozen other nations around the world... People are generally unaware of the fact that black juvenile felony arrest rates now are less than 1/2 of what the white juvenile felony arrest rates were in the early 1980s.You can see the much steeper decline in black juvenile arrest rates over the last 20 or 30 years. That is, again, completely consistent with the much steeper decline in more severely elevated blood lead levels among black children 20 years earlier... The phase out of lead in gasoline, the cost was justified by the anticipated benefit of better educational achievement and higher lifetime earnings as a result of that.A researcher named Joel Schwartz, who actually won the MacArthur award, I believe, for his work on this subject, put together this perspective that there was a strong association between IQ levels and education attainment and subsequent lifetime earning.There's a lot of research, even as early as the 1960s, especially in the 70s, that showed that lead clearly had an impact on IQ scores. Putting those two together, he said "If we reduce childhood lead exposure, you're going to increase education attainment and significantly increase lifetime earnings as a result."...
In the case of James Flynn in particular -- Flynn gets more credit -- they actually call the rising IQ trend the "Flynn Effect" now. Even though he was credited with discovering it, he makes it clear in The Rising Curve that he doesn't think that any of the explanations for it are satisfactory, that there's something else missing. I'm convinced that it's lead.'...
'I have a weakness for book titles that reference earlier book titles as a response to them.There was a pair of books -- I forget the authors -- One was titled How the Mind Works. The second one was titled The Mind Doesn't Work That Way'"

Commie Gibberish Of The Day - Posts - "Sadiq Khan on why he allowed the Trump baby blimp: "Can you imagine if we limited freedom of speech because soembody's feelings might be hurt?""
"Arrests for offensive Facebook and Twitter posts soar in London"

Mike Prinke's answer to What was Darth Vader's general mental stability like? - Quora - "Anakin Skywalker suffers from anger issues at a young age as a consequence of his station as a slave. He is exceedingly talented, brilliant, even, but will see no opportunities in life, can’t escape under penalty of head explosion, and is frequently bullied. The novels reveal to us that Watto would often beat him as a child, and include a scene deleted from the films where he gets into a fight with another kid. It is likely that his mother was not spared any of the same kind of treatment but that as a young boy he was helpless to intervene on her behalf. He frequently fantasizes and even dreams about becoming a powerful Jedi so that he can come back and free all the slaves. This is the root of what would become a messiah complex later in life. He is in effect always trying to compensate for frustration and powerlessness he felt as a child."

Anti Social Justice Warriors - Posts - "We need to talk about how female monsters in fiction are always single"
"So are male monsters. And a lot of them have "unattainable" body types as well. Besides, I thought women were supposed to be all "independant", "not needing a man", and all that other shit. Or maybe there just isn’t enough time to cram in a villain love interest to make insecure feminists feel better about themselves?"