How prevalent is far-right extremism? - "Before the latest attack, both New Zealand and Australia said their main security risk was from Islamist terrorism.And New Zealand's Security Intelligence Service's most recent annual report makes no reference to far-right extremism... Europol, the European Union's law enforcement agency, recorded five right-wing terror plots in 2017, all of which were in the UK.This was out of a total of 205 potential or successful attacks recorded by European intelligence agencies, with 137 "separatist", 24 "left-wing" and 33 "jihadist" plots among them.In 2017, a total of 1,219 terror suspects were arrested. Of these, 20 were classified as far-right extremists (705 were "jihadists")... of the 18 attacks foiled in the UK since March 2017, four came from the extreme right wing... In 2017-18, there were 7,318 [PREVENT] referrals across the country, 1,312 of which related to the extreme right... In Germany, "politically motivated" crimes are recorded by the government. In 2017, 39,505 such offences were recorded, of which half were attributed to people with right-wing ideologies, including 1,130 acts of violence (although more acts of violence were attributed to the far left)... Historically, it has been more difficult to detect right-wing terrorism in the West because of its scattered nature, according to Raffaello Pantucci, director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute.His organisation's research highlights the tendency for right-wing terrorists in Europe to be "lone actors" who are less likely to exhibit noticeable changes in behaviour or discuss plans with friends or family than their Islamist extremist counterparts... "[The intelligence agencies] still see it as a lesser threat and the scale of it is not as big as Islamic extremism.""
Addendum: 4 Nov 2019: Extremist violence on the rise in Germany - "In 2015, 1,408 acts of far-right violence were recorded, against 990 the previous year, said the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution... Far-left acts of violence – often targeting far-right activists or police – also rose sharply, to 1,608 violent offences from 995 the previous year"
In other words, in Germany there was more violence from the far left (more left wing violence) in 2014, 2015 and 2017 than the far right (or right wing violence); I am unable to find more recent comparisons
Keywords: violence from the left
[Addendum: Is Germany going too far in trying to control right-wing extremists? - "A study by the Berlin Senate's Department of Internal Affairs in January noted that left-wing extremists were increasingly targeting people. Their strategies included ambushing police officers and subjecting conservative residents and businessmen to verbal and physical abuse and assaults.Despite the damage, the German media and society's focus on left-wing violence has been much less than on neo-Nazi attacks on refugee shelters, Werner J. Patzelt, political scientist at the Technical University of Dresden, told DW.The reason, Patzelt said, was because "we have this concept in Germany that being left is basically good, being right is definitely bad, and all means can be used in the fight against the bad. And violence is a legitimate means against the resurgence of fascism, Nazism, racism."... Militant left-wing activists continued to enjoy public acceptance in Germany. Last year, parliamentary vice president Claudia Roth of the Green Party was accompanied by left-wing radicals in a protest march against the AfD in Hanover. The incident did not generate much interest in the media compared to the backlash faced by the AfD when it was linked to the anti-Islamization PEGIDA movement.According to political scientist Patzelt, such acts of violence against right-wing groups would only serve to bring them closer. "Because when you see that you are being threatened, that the constituency offices of the AfD are damaged several times, then it naturally strengthens the desire to rebel and the decision to not get intimidated.""]
A possible weight loss strategy: Skip breakfast before exercise - "Exercise burns calories, but in many past studies, people who begin a new exercise program do not lose as much weight as would be expected, because they often compensate for the energy used during exercise by eating more later or moving less."
Cutting Carbs in Morning Equals Better Weight Loss, Waist Size - "He described the rationale underpinning the novel diet, which restricts the amount of carbohydrate consumed before lunchtime. "Normally, overnight we fast and in the morning, with breakfast, our insulin rises and then drops again towards lunchtime. As insulin drops, the fat stores tend to mobilize and act as energy substrates," he explained."Theoretically, inducing a lower insulin response after a low carbohydrate breakfast should mean we can prolong the low [overnight] insulin and fat mobilization state, resulting in a net effect on weight and fat loss.""
Joe Keskold on Twitter - "Had a fight with my poly partner today. The f word was used. I found out she's been making love to another man during our sex strike, and got unfairly angry. When she noted how many female selfies I've faved, I realized we're even. And it's important to recognize my own toxicity."
Being a male feminist means having no self-respect
Addendum: Apparently this was a joke account
Belief in Learning Styles Myth May Be Detrimental - "Many people, including educators, believe learning styles are set at birth and predict both academic and career success even though there is no scientific evidence to support this common myth... the essentialist group members were more likely to state that learning styles are heritable, instantiated in the brain, don’t change with age, mark distinct kinds of people, and predict both academic and career success. The nonessentialist group held looser beliefs about learning styles, viewing them as malleable, overlapping and more determined by environmental factors... Psychological essentialism is the belief that certain categories of people have a true nature that is biologically based and highly predictive of many factors in their lives. People with essentialist opinions about learning styles may be more resistant to changing their strongly held views even when they learn that numerous studies have debunked the concept of learning styles... Previous research has shown that the learning styles model can undermine education in many ways. Educators spend time and money tailoring lessons to certain learning styles for different students even though all students would benefit from learning through various methods. Students study in ways that match their perceived learning style even though it won’t help them succeed. Some teacher certification programs incorporate learning styles into their courses, which perpetuates the myth for the next generation of teachers. Academic support centers and a plethora of products also are focused on learning styles, despite the lack of scientific evidence supporting them... Previous surveys in the United States and other industrialized countries across the world have shown that 80% to 95% of people believe in learning styles. It’s difficult to say how that myth became so widespread"
Apple Is Finally Killing iTunes - "The move, which has been rumored for years now, will align Apple’s media strategy across the board: iPhones and iPads already offer separate Music, TV and Podcast apps in lieu of the centralized iTunes app that lives on Macs and Macbooks. Users can expect the new Music app to offer some of the same functionalities that iTunes currently does — such as purchasing songs and syncing phones — just with a sleeker interface that’s free of the outdated and oft-bemoaned features of the heritage product, and more closely bundled with streaming service Apple Music."
Sexual orientation and psychiatric vulnerability: a twin study of neuroticism and psychoticism. - "we tested whether apparent sexual orientation differences in psychiatric vulnerability simply mirrored sex differences-for our traits, this would predict nonheterosexual males having elevated Neuroticism scores as females do, and nonheterosexual females having elevated Psychoticism scores as males do. Our results contradicted this idea, with nonheterosexual men and women scoring significantly higher on Neuroticism and Psychoticism than their heterosexual counterparts, suggesting an overall elevation of psychiatric risk in nonheterosexuals. Secondly, we used our genetically informative sample to assess the viability of explanations invoking a common cause of both nonheterosexuality and psychiatric vulnerability. We found significant genetic correlation between sexual orientation and both Neuroticism and Psychoticism, but no corresponding environmental correlations, suggesting that if there is a common cause of both nonheterosexuality and psychiatric vulnerability it is likely to have a genetic basis rather than an environmental basis."
Home | Gay Horney | Long and Foster - "I have been a full-time Realtor since 1976 and specialize in Relocation buyers from all over the world"
District judge rapped for copying too much from prosecution in ruling over meth case - "In his ruling over a drug consumption case, a district judge copied the prosecution’s closing arguments so substantially that the High Court has said it could not be relied on to justify the accused’s conviction and sentence... Justice Aedit also noted that while he was not provided the reasons why the district judge had copied the prosecution’s submissions so substantially, the “pressures of work are not a sufficient reason”, as “all jobs these days are stressful and demanding”."
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Gordon Riots - "The word, the mob, could be used in a very positive way. I mean, Charles James Fox, for example, said that it's better to be ruled by a mob than a standing army. You know, and he put it another way when he said better to be ruled by an ill dressed mob than a well dressed mob. So this idea that what EP Thompson called the moral economy of the crowd existed, this kind of unwritten contract between the rulers and the people, that at various times, these kinds of violent outbursts would happen, for very good reasons. Usually, if, you know, there was socio economic grievances, and there's a kind of venting of this, and then in the wake of that, usually the authorities will give a, you know, would give us a kind of response, will give something back. Whether it's a transitional point, even Thomas Paine in the Rights of Man, you know, that great revolutionary text that, you know, for publishing that you could be thrown in jail, and people were, he still referred back to the Gordon rights in terms of a mob...
It has been said that there was six times more property damaged in the London riots, in the Gordon riots than in the course of the French Revolution in Paris. So that puts it into some sort of perspective."
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Rape victims & mobile data - "‘The person has been the victim of rape has already been through a very difficult experience, and then being asked to hand over the phone can seem like another violation’...
[On being accused of rape] ‘I was innocent, I was asked to give over my phone. So does that mean, I lose all my rights to privacy because I was accused? But I'm innocent, I'm now a victim, because somebody has made it a horrible accusation. So, but I have the understanding of, but I need that, you know, there's going to be something that they may find in there that may assist the prosecution. But there's also going to be something in there that will assist the defense side of things. And it works, has to work both ways with that, that ideology of it all... gathering as much evidence as possible. That is what the police are there to do’"
The Most Interesting Fruit in the World (Ep. 375) - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "the economist Douglas Southgate, an emeritus professor at Ohio State University. He started studying bananas because:
SOUTHGATE: Well, the short answer is that my wife is from Ecuador, which happens to be the leading exporter of bananas, and has been for the last 65 years. Even though the country is no larger than the state of Colorado...
SOUTHGATE: Bananas are far and away the most widely traded fruit, fruit or vegetable.
Andrew BILES: Basically, there are 135 countries that grow bananas...
[He] until recently worked at Chiquita, one of the world’s largest banana companies. His title at Chiquita was C.E.O. of bananas and pineapples...
BILES: In the world, it’s the fourth most-important crop after rice, wheat, and corn. The economic value generated by the banana industry is some $52 billion. And there are some 400 million people that rely on bananas for a staple food or a staple source of income. There are many countries if they did not have bananas, they would go short of food.
The Cavendish banana accounts for just under 50 percent of global banana production but, again, almost 100 percent of exported bananas. And Ecuador alone accounts for more than a quarter of all Cavendish exports...
For the early American banana companies, the transition from luxury fruit to mass import was a strategic move.
SOUTHGATE: The key to the strategy or to understanding the strategy was to realize that they made more money from having a smaller margin on a much larger volume than they would have had continuing to treat bananas as a luxury item... as is always the case, or practically always the case, the major beneficiaries of this efficiency were in fact consumers. Prices were slashed, and within a few years, bananas were no longer a luxury item. They were instead a fruit of poor people. The first food that a lot of poor babies ate after weaning were mashed bananas, in the days before canned baby food...
In the United States and other countries, lots of kids used to die from drinking raw milk — raw milk that had been exposed to flies or whatever. Pasteurization came along, that entire source of mortality went away, and yet there were people who swore up and down that they were never going to consume pasteurized milk. They claimed it didn’t have the same nutritional properties, didn’t taste the same, it was in one way or another undesirable... Most people ended up drinking pasteurized milk and I just have a hunch that if we produce a substitute for the Cavendish, or if we improve the Cavendish by moving in a gene from some other banana people will have a tough time telling the difference, and the product will win acceptance."
Gros Michel or Cavendish, which is the yummiest banana? : Under the peel | The banana knowledge platform of the ProMusa network - "46% of the 113 participants gave a higher score to the taste of Cavendish, compared to 38% who preferred 'Gros Michel'. The remaining 16% expressed no preference. Several participants told us they were surprised there was so little difference in taste. This contrasts with the reaction of a small group of people at a blind taste test held two days before the botanic garden event. They didn't agree which of the two samples was the best, 7 people preferred 'Gros Michel' and 4 the Cavendish cultivar, but they all said that they tasted a difference. Two days after the botanic garden event, we organized another small blind taste test with the remaining bananas, which by then had entered stage 7 (see chart). This time, 7 people preferred the Cavendish and 4 'Gros Michel'. Most commented that the difference in taste between the samples was subtle. The deciding factor was often the texture."
