Links - 24th October 2019 (1)

Swiss-raised Japanese woman points out fundamental difference in Japanese, western communication - "''In the west, there’s the preexisting shared notion that ‘People are all different, so it’s absolutely essential to confirm your impressions and ask questions. Making assumptions is impolite.’ But in Japan, the attitude is ‘Everyone feels this way, so it’s normal. If you have to double-check about everything, it’s proof that you don’t trust the person!’'... Japanese conversationalists are less likely to explicitly nail down every detail than their western counterparts are. Japanese society, starting at an early age, stresses the importance of thinking about other people’s feelings and circumstances. In its idealized form, the concept gets extended all the way to not only trying to provide for the needs or preferences of others, but to preemptively act in a way so that they won’t have to incur any self-placed guilt by directly stating what their problem is or asking you to accommodate them. And in a country where traditions and ceremony are so highly valued for their ability to create harmony, there’s often a surprisingly high chance of both people in the conversation having the same image of what counts as “normal” or “obvious” for a given topic. But as Daya points out, the success rate isn’t 100 percent, and when a message someone thinks should be “obvious” isn’t quickly conveyed to the listener, the aura of consideration and courteousness can break down pretty quickly.
    “If someone’s words aren’t understood, they often blame the listener for not being smart enough to understand. But it could be that the speaker’s way of explaining is lacking, or some combination of both problems. As long as you both are committed to understanding one another, you can meet each other half-way, but in Japan a lot of people think that the end goal of a verbal disagreement is to beat the other person into submission.”...
It stands to reason that if your opinion is “normal,” than whoever doesn’t grasp it immediately must be unreasonable, and if your take on things is the “obvious” one, it becomes hard to see the non-understanding party as anything other than dumb"

Reproducibility: A tragedy of errors - "In the course of assembling weekly lists of articles in our field, we began noticing more peer-reviewed articles containing what we call substantial or invalidating errors. These involve factual mistakes or veer substantially from clearly accepted procedures in ways that, if corrected, might alter a paper's conclusions.After attempting to address more than 25 of these errors with letters to authors or journals, and identifying at least a dozen more, we had to stop — the work took too much of our time. Our efforts revealed invalidating practices that occur repeatedly (see ‘Three common errors’) and showed how journals and authors react when faced with mistakes that need correction...
Science relies essentially but complacently on self-correction, yet scientific publishing raises severe disincentives against such correction. One publisher states that it will charge the author who initiates withdrawal of a published paper US$10,000."

‘Batman’ star Adam West had sex with eight women a night - "West discovered the only limits to his bedroom batpowers were those caused by his famous costume.The actor explained years later: “Because of the physical limitations of the costume, you gotta have quickies.”And he had an awful lot of them, as well as dates with fellow stars including actress sisters Natalie and Lana Wood, and Raquel Welch.West explained: “Burt and I were like kids in a candy store. It was the Swinging Sixties with free love and women threw themselves at us. I remember one night with eight different women. Orgy is a harsh word, but it was eight at one time. I’d have young female co-stars in my dressing room at 7:45 in the morning.” In fact, West did once turn up at what he described as an “orgy” in Hollywood with Frank Gorshin, who played “Batman” baddie The Riddler.But they were thrown out for behaving like their TV alter-egos and making everyone laugh... trusty Boy Wonder Ward, who is now 71, claimed West was definitely the ringleader when it came to their own adventures.He recalled decades later: “When I entered ‘Batman’ as a naive 20-year-old who had only dated a couple of girls, I met Adam West, who immediately introduced me to the wildest sexual debauchery that you can imagine. We often found that women were banging on our windows while we were bedded down with other women.”He added: “We’re talking about wild times in the dressing rooms, on the set, between the shots, in the lunch wagon. And then of course, doing the personal appearances on the weekend, that’s where it really got wild. And I have to be honest with you, we became like sexual vampires.”He added that the costumes seem to be part of the lure for women: “If you look at our show, you’ll see that we always stood with our legs open, our fists on hips and our bat bulges forward, which had a profound effect on women.”"

The Story Behind Bizarre Tree-Climbing Goats of Morocco - "Because seeing goats in trees is such a novel sight, more and more farmers have purchased larger number of goats to create a profitable attraction. This means that many of the goats visitors see in the trees, especially in areas close to major roads, have actually been lifted into the trees by the farmers. They are kept in the trees throughout the day and then taken down in the evening. Ropes are often used to haul the animals in and out of the trees, and the goats may sometimes be tethered in the trees. The goats may stand on branches, though it’s not uncommon to notice small planks of wood nailed to the branches to act as a more stable support for the photogenic goats."

Crony Capitalism Is The Norm In A French Film Industry Shielded From Free Markets - "Dany Boon earned $4.6 million for the movie “The Perfect Plan”—a fee which exceeded ticket sales. Daniel Auteuil earns $2 million per movie, even though his “last four movies were huge financial failures.” Jean Reno, Marion Cotillard, and Audrey Tautou receive “fees between $660,000 and $2.6 million.” Owing to these amounts, a significant return on investment should be expected by French taxpayers in the form of spreading the French culture around the globe. Yet this is far from being the case. Return on investment? There is none! Vincent Maraval stressed that “on the top 10 movies of an industry that produces 220 of them, only one [it could be argued] provided a return on investment.” The CNC has failed to disseminate the French culture. Maraval pointed out that “our talents are unknown across our borders” and the French movies are “limited to the French market only.” Worse: the French taxpayers are actually the producers of films that they would have never invested a penny in if asked. Art is a business, but if the French movie industry were to be managed as a real business two things would happened: First, based on business forecasts and ROI, only one out of 10 French movies would actually be funded, meaning that 90 percent of the present French production would never make it into the theaters. Public money would really be saved. Second, French actors would be paid according to their market value and talent. Let’s take the example of French actor Vincent Cassel. In the free market American movie industry, Cassel was paid $300,000 to perform in the Academy Award-winning “The Black Swan,” which generated $330 million in revenue worldwide. In the subsidized French movie industry, the same actor received a $2 million fee for “Mesrine,” which generated only $30 million worldwide. But pure business is not an option for the French movie industry. There is so much money to be plundered from the government that the French “artists” cannot imagine working without it"

Removal of swastika tiles at Intramural Center draws praise, criticism - "For over 100 years, people entering the IU Intramural Center have been met with swastikas.The swastikas were part of a display including other icons from across different cultures. For years, they drew controversy. But in the beginning of July, IU started to remove the tiles containing swastikas from the collection and sand down the images.IU spokesperson Amanda Roach said in a statement to the Indiana Daily Student the tiles have been brought up to administration every year, but a decision was made to remove the tiles this year... The removal is the latest incident of the university addressing controversial campus landmarks. In 2017, the Office of the Provost announced classes would no longer take place in Woodburn Hall 100, a lecture hall which contained a mural panel depicting a KKK rally. Trustee Ora Wildermuth’s name was taken off the Intramural Center in 2018 due to his segregationist beliefs.The tile display was created in 1917 when the oldest section of the Intramural Center, the Men’s Gymnasium, was built. Signs around the Intramural Center explained why the swastikas were included on the tiles.The term swastika originated from Sanskrit, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website. For thousands of years, the symbol was used in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. The symbol also appeared in pre-Christian European artifacts. Western culture at the beginning of the 20th century became fascinated with the swastika as a good luck symbol... Even though the swastika tiles at the Intramural Center were installed before Nazi usage, some feel the positive intention behind their creation does not defend the effect of seeing the symbol. IU Hillel Rabbi Sue Silberberg said she had received complaints about the swastikas for years.“It has such a strong negative impact on people who see it that I think it’s almost like giving Hitler a victory all over again,” Silberberg said."
It's easy to destroy history. When something else becomes non-Kosher, they can remove some other tiles, and eventually nothing will be left

Elizabeth Warren Goes All-In on the Woke Vote - "Have you tried explaining what “nonbinary” means to anyone over the age of 50? Please do it and send me the video. The replies to Warren’s tweet were overwhelmingly negative. There are, of course, the standard replies from MAGA types calling Warren "Pocahontas," but there also Democrats, including those in the LGBTQ community, chiming in. Seattle musician, writer, and filmmaker Amy Dyess, who calls herself a liberal, lesbian Democrat, responded to Warren: “You just lost my vote with this regressive nonsense. Read a basic biology textbook. Sex has meaning. It’s a real thing, not make believe. Democrats are supposed to believe in science, but I see you have a new woke religion that preaches alternative facts. This Dem is fed up.” Dyess is “trying to stop Trump from being elected, and the nonsense Dems are catering to isn’t helping”... While Americans are sharply divided on many political issues, from immigration to abortion, 80 percent of respondents across all demographics agreed on one thing: “Political correctness is a problem in our country.” And it’s not just racist old grandpas polishing their shotguns in front of Fox News who are concerned about it. As Yascha Mounk outlined in the Atlantic: “Even young people are uncomfortable with it, including 74 percent ages 24 to 29, and 79 percent under age 24.” The survey found that views on political correctness vary a bit across racial groups, but not in the direction you might anticipate. “Whites are ever so slightly less likely than average to believe that political correctness is a problem in the country: 79 percent of them share this sentiment,” Mounk wrote. “Instead, it is Asians (82 percent), Hispanics (87 percent), and American Indians (88 percent) who are most likely to oppose political correctness.”The one group that doesn’t fit this trend is progressive activists, only 30 percent of whom said PC culture is a problem... This is not the first time Elizabeth Warren has embraced PC dogma: She’s also got her pronouns listed in her Twitter bio, which may make her the oldest woman on the internet to do so. She still managed to fuck it up: Instead of “she/her,” her pronouns were initially listed as “she/hers.” This has since been corrected, but it’s a bit reminiscent of Julian Castro’s flawed attempt to signal his allyship at the first Democratic debate. When speaking about abortion, Castro referred to “trans females” who can pregnant, when what he should have said was “trans men.” These nods at inclusivity may be genuinely held, but by fucking up the basics, Castro and Warren then immediately show how little they actually get it."

Meet the anti-woke left - "Frost describes herself as a socialist. She says she came to socialism through feminist organising. But the current wave of media feminism turns her off. It is about ‘middle-class women trying to get spots in the boardroom’. ‘A lot of this stuff is “fight the power, put me on the throne”.’ Or it’s, ‘Men are rude to me and they explain things to me’, she jokes. Of course, I suggest, there are many real struggles that women face, particularly working-class women – from low pay to childcare – so why do these issues barely get a look in? ‘They don’t care about working-class women’, Frost says of contemporary feminists. ‘Half the time they’re smearing them as reactionaries because they voted for Trump.’ ‘I fundamentally think they are disgusted and horrified by working-class people’, says Khachiyan. ‘Real women don’t live up to the liberal-feminist pieties’, adds Frost. ‘And I think that’s very threatening for the uptight, white, overeducated, liberal women to be confronted with’, replies Khachiyan... Liberals, suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, have been far too moralistic about the Trump vote, she argues: ‘Most people don’t believe that presidential candidates are telling the truth the entire time.’Worse, the left’s response to Trump has been totally counterproductive: ‘Do you want to tell people how bad they are? Do you want them to repent because they’re bad racists? Or do you want them to pursue a left-wing project?’... The problem with liberals, she says, is that ‘they can’t differentiate between their political critiques of Trump and their aesthetic critiques of him… He really brings to the fore all these inarticulable taboos. But as a politician, he’s not very exceptional.’ It is not so much Trump’s policies that anger the liberals, but his brashness, his demeanour. Frost adds, by way of example, that Obama also ‘threw tear gas at the border’. Three years on from the 2016 presidential election, Democrats are still largely in denial or in despair about Trump’s victory. The now-discredited Russia-collusion narrative provided an excuse to avoid any soul-searching... lots of American women are ‘voluntary removing their reproductive organs’. ‘Nobody is talking about this. It’s a middle-class, very elite phenomenon, where they’re like, “I have menstrual problems, I’m going to remove my womb”. Lena Dunham wrote a whole fucking essay about it.’... ‘Antifa have manufactured a threat to have some semblance of an identity’, she says. ‘All these people who say they are anti-fascist don’t know what it means to be persecuted.’"