Links - 2nd October 2019 (2)

Chinese Cartoonist, Cosplayers Who are 'Spiritually Japanese' Arrested for ‘Anti-China Extremism’ - "“Spiritually Japanese” is a derogatory term for Chinese fans of anime and cosplay, according to Yahoo! News Japan. However, the Communist Youth League of China explicitly states that the term, also known as jingri (精日), refers to Chinese people patronizing Japanese nationalism — particularly their World War II military — and expressing contempt for their own country.Jingri went viral in March 2018 when two young people were arrested in Nanjing for cosplaying Japanese World War II military uniforms. At the time, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi reportedly described jingri as “scumbags among Chinese people.”"

saira rao on Twitter - "Quite a few Black and brown women have recently asked me how they can help their white women friends understand white privilege, in the hopes that they'll start their anti-racism journey. In the hopes that their white women friends can become trustworthy.
Here's what I've learned: whiteness is the most powerful drug on the planet. And if you, yourself, don't want to wean yourself off of whiteness, it can't and won't happen. You have to not just want to wean yourself, you have to *desperately* want to wean yourself.
I was a white feminist until 2016. I was deeply self-loathing and internally oppressed. Nearly all my closest friends were white women. These women were in my wedding, and I in theirs. They cradled me when I wept for my dead mother. They would have done anything for me.
EXCEPT GIVE UP WHITENESS. I spent one full year meeting them for coffee, drinks, lunch, dinner. I sent them articles. I wrote articles. I sent them those. Rather than show an interest in awakening, nearly ALL of them, dumped me.
Dumping has involved a pinch of ghosting, a dash of "I'm really worried about you, WE are really worried about you." It's involved leaving me and my family out of group plans - and pretending it was an accident.
It's involved leaving me out of group plans - and not pretending it was an accident. Some of these women weren't really even friends before, but have bonded over their mutual disdain for me and my "craziness." They've bonded around WHITENESS.
This is no different than the KKK. Instead of robes, they coalesce around brunch, weddings, spin classes."
Comments: "Why does everyone leave me after I pester the shit out of them for only a year with my cult beliefs and I call them innately defective? Why world, why are you such an enigma?"
"This reminds me I'll tell my friends to give up their brownness while I give up my whiteness it's only fair"
"Giving Tatiana a run for her money. Great parody!"
"How do you give up whiteness? Like how do I get rid of my skin colour?"
"Why would anyone choose to be around someone who is so virulently RACIST, making them feel quilty for the color of their skin, their nation’s history, culture, heroes and traditions? Surprised they hung around you at all."
"You're depressing, hateful, angry, with a one-trick mind that leaves your needle stuck in the groove, ranting over and over about the invisible baddies. Learn something new, expand your heart."
"You’re either a comedic genius or a complete loon. Either way, I was entertained."
"Weird how they didn't like to hang with somebody who thought they were all racists."
"Let me get this straight: You were surrounded by close friends, who attended your wedding and involved you in their own, who supported you through loss — and you spent an entire year repeatedly telling these people their skin makes them evil monsters. And they DIDN’T instantly drop you, they phased out after a whole YEAR of this?And somehow this reflects poorly on THEM?"
"I would also dump a friend who was a cultist trying to get me to join their cult. What sane person wouldn't?"
And liberals claim anti-racism is not about hating white people

Segments of Random Thoughts on Twitter - "I came to America decades ago as a woman from Lebanon trying to make it.I never understood where all of this talk about inequality comes from. Americans have NO CLUE how lucky they have it.Go live in the Middle East for a year and tell me you don’t have equality here. Morons."
"@ACTBrigitte Make him who is without inequality check the first privilege."

Mike Pitts On Britain's Archaeological Discoveries | History Extra Podcast - History Extra - "I think the biggest story at the moment, is that until very recently, it was easy to imagine Stonehenge as an isolated monument, this incredibly distinctive structure with these carved megaliths, the biggest, best everything else, you know, you like. And not far from London, so it's very much in the public eye, you know, and to see that in isolation. And in fact, in the middle of last century, archaeologists were actually talking about imagining an architect coming from ancient Greece to design Stonehenge because it was impossible to put it into any kind of local context"
If it'd been made by non-white people, people would be calling the mid-20th century archaeologists racist

Inside the museum dedicated to failure

The only sport that matters - Japanese office chair racing

Dr Jessica Budds 🇪🇺 #FBPE #RevokeArticle50 on Twitter - "We are rolling out our #KnifeFree chicken boxes in over 210 chicken shops in England and Wales, including Morley’s, Dixy Chicken and Chicken Cottage. They use real life stories to show people how they can go #KnifeFree."
"@ukhomeoffice Is there some sort of link between fried chicken and knife crime?"

Watch - Discover - "Parrot and Hamster Playing With Hamster Wheel
Parrot Putting Hamster in Hamster Wheel and Spinning it! One of the funniest things I have seen in a long time! Brilliant!
On closer look it might actually be a mouse!"

Amazon will pay $0 in taxes on $11,000,000,000 in profit for 2018 - "TCJA had been criticized in large part due to the benefits it provided the wealthiest Americans and big corporations. Wamhoff says it’s ironic that the corporate tax rate was slashed to 21% (from its previous 35%) because the effective corporate tax rate under previous tax law was 21%, after accounting for tax breaks and loopholes.Therefore, Wamhoff says, we’ll likely see the effective tax rate fall even lower.But if anyone thinks that Amazon is alone, they would be wrong. Last week, Netflix also did not pay American federal or state income taxes according to a separate ITEP report, despite posting record profits. Netflix has disputed those findings, while ITEP claims that the $131 million paid by Netflix is taxes on foreign income.And historically Wamhoff says, this story is nothing new. Several corporations have avoided paying federal income tax throughout the years"

Enough With the Obsession With Gender-Diverse Space Crews - "Vice President Pence chaired the sixth meeting of the recently revived National Space Council, a group originally chartered in 1958, disbanded in 1993 and then revived under the current administration to help chart the direction of America’s activities in space. There were four guest panelists highlighted at the end of the session. One spoke about nuclear power and nuclear thermal propulsion for spaceflight; one spoke about in situ resource utilization on the Moon and Mars; and one spoke about planetary exploration, the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan in particular. All were interesting and appropriate topics for a meeting whose topic was, well, the future of space exploration.And then there was Saralyn Mark, an M.D. and specialist in gender-based medicine, who spoke about gender bias. Her main point: NASA needs to — no kidding — realize there are gender differences because sending “gender diverse” crews to Mars is going to be difficult. At least I think that was her point. It was frankly hard to listen to because enough already! We’ve been sending gender-diverse crews to space since 1983. We’ve had women do every job a man does in space. Every one. Space walks? Check. Shuttle commander? Check. Space Station commander? Check. Record for long-duration flights? Check. So what’s going to be the new gender-bias thing NASA needs to start — start? — paying attention to?... Dr. Mark’s big pitch is that diversity demands attention, especially in situations like a long space flight during which people have to understand their differences and get along. Well, what about six men and women on the Space Shuttle or the International Space Station representing multiple nationalities, different ethnicities and religions, and — in their home countries — competitive political ideologies? That’s not diverse enough for you? NASA has been doing this quietly and efficiently and without fanfare for the better part of the past 36 years.After Dr. Mark’s testimony, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine once again mentioned how inspired his 11-year old daughter would be to see women taking leadership positions in space exploration. Well, Mr. Bridenstine, your agency has had women in leadership roles on and off the planet far longer than you have held your current position. And there have been women astronauts living, working and leading on spacecraft decades longer than your daughter has been alive. Why is she not inspired by that? I fully support the goal of landing American astronauts on the moon and on Mars. I will be proud to wave that flag. Because that’s the only flag we should be waving."
Internalised patriarchy!
She missed the memo that it's fascist to wave the American flag

Garbage Human - Posts - "Jenny @ San Japan A5
@asunnydisposish:
I've been seeing this happen a lot recently on my TL so I just wanted to say that if you are non-Asian and drawing Asian characters with literal yellow skin and slits for eyes, you should take a moment to consider why you choose to depict us that way."
*Picture of @asunnydisposish with slits for eyes*"

How Trump got under the media’s thin skin - "For all the truly righteous indignation we’ve summoned in response to President Trump’s treatment of us, we’ve also put ourselves on too much of a hair trigger when it comes to denouncing criticism and scrutiny. Jack Shafer summed it up nicely in a piece for Politico, in which he fought back against the criticism of scouring journalists’ social media accounts:
As much as I would like to sympathize with my fellow journalists, it doesn’t strike me as unreasonable to ask them to own or repudiate vile or impolitic things they might have stated in the past. Nor is it remotely unfair for the president’s supporters to demand that journalists, who are forever denouncing him as a racist (because he is), be held accountable for their bigoted speech, on Twitter or anywhere else. Journalists don’t deserve a get-out-of-bigotry-jail free card just because they’re journalists. If their past tweets, however ancient, undercut their current journalistic work or make them sound hypocritical, they can’t blame their diminished prestige on Trump’s allies. It’s like blaming a cop for writing you a ticket for speeding in a school zone...
there is also a tendency to label most every criticism of the media an attack on “the free press.” That makes it sound like Trump is attacking our very freedoms and our right to criticize him, when often he’s just complaining about coverage... Attacking coverage is something every president does"

Driving A Tesla Results In More CO2 Than A Mercedes Diesel Car, Study Finds - "A Tesla Model 3 is touted as a zero-emissions car by government regulators, but it actually results in more carbon dioxide than a comparable diesel-powered car, according to a recent study.When the CO2 emissions from battery production is included, electric cars, like Teslas, are “in the best case, slightly higher than those of a diesel engine, and are otherwise much higher,” reads a release from the German think tank IFO. “It’s better read as a warning that new technologies aren’t a climate-change panacea. Recall the false promises about corn and cellulosic ethanol"... IFO isn’t the first research group to conclude electric cars might not reduce carbon dioxide emissions as promised.A study released in 2018 also found driving electric cars might come with higher emissions than diesel vehicles, largely because of lithium-ion battery production.Likewise, a Manhattan Institute study from 2018 also found putting more electric cars on the road would likely increase emissions compared to internal combustion engine vehicles."

University lowers entry score for female applicants in male-dominated courses - "The University of Technology Sydney is trying to encourage more young women to study engineering, computing and construction degrees by adjusting year 12 entry scores for female applicants.The university has received approval from the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board to make a 10-point adjustment to the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank of female students applying for those degrees for the 2020 academic year... “We looked at the performance of Atar and the performance of [grade point average] so a lower Atar did not mean they would get a lower GPA. A higher Atar did not mean they were best in the class,” Agarwal said."
This is a good way to increase hiring discrimination against female engineers, and to degrade the value of your female engineering graduates
Funny how despite the supposed justification of Atar being a bad predictor, they didn't lower the bar for men

These Maps Reveal the Hidden Structures of 'Choose Your Own Adventure' Books

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Ebola spreads to Uganda - "On Monday morning, a family were heading from the Democratic Republic of Congo, back home to Uganda after a funeral. The grandfather had died from Ebola and his daughter had gone to Congo a few weeks earlier to try nurse and back to health. By the time the family got close to the Ugandan border, most of them were suffering from high fevers and diarrhea, telltale symptoms of the deadly virus. They stopped in the health clinic and were put in isolation awaiting tests. But after dark, six members of the family, including a five year old boy, slipped out of the clinic and set off down a desolate and poorly policed road that crosses into Uganda. A few days later, both the boy and his grandmother had died. Health officials have long feared that this outbreak of the Ebola virus could pass over the porous border into Uganda. The border’s over 500 miles long, and many of the crossings are informal. Sometimes just a couple of planks laid across a shallow river...
In Russia, the vast majority of criminal cases that go to court end in a conviction. Less than 0.3% of all verdicts are not guilty...
I've been told many times that everyone hitches around [New Zealand’s] South Island... Given the safety issues everywhere else in the world, South Island must be the last bastion of the habit. The early European settlers relied on pooling their resources. Public transport is still pricey and scant. And somehow in private vehicles the trust is there, on both sides of the gearstick. Here, local people hitch just as much as gap year travelers. There's no shame to it, or to offering a ride to others. I found it hard to chat with other hitchers, but not because we were competing, but simply because we were scattered so far apart"
No wonder Ebola is such a problem there