Links - 25th November 2019 (2)

It’s just a tan: Twitter punches back at perpetually-offended liberals attacking Jennifer Aniston - "Aniston shot five different covers for fashion outlet InStyle, all reportedly inspired by 60s and 70s glamour photoshoot trends, but, naturally, the PC police homed in on just one of the covers which has seemingly upset the delicate balance between light and dark, good and evil, or something like that. The apparently ‘racist’ picture, taken by world-renowned photographer Michael Thompson, stood out from all the rest, with the 50-year-old ‘Friends’ sitcom star deemed “too-tanned,” “too-photoshopped” or “ten shades darker than normal” according to the social media arbiters of good taste."

Singapore justice in 1974: Slander permitted, because it's in Hokkien - "'Mr. Tay’s speech was in Hokkien and there was no evidence before the court and also in the plaintiff’s amended statement of claim of the Hokkien words which the plaintiff regarded as “defamatory.”The judge said the only official language of the court was English and it was fatal to the plaintiff’s case not to have the original words, as alleged spoken in Hokkien, set out in its pleadings.'...
For the absence, in the statement of claim, of a sentence in Chinese, whose absence has no impact on the substance of the case (the sentence in Chinese could be produced during trial), a slander could not be challenged in court."

It’s OK if it’s a three-way: Man busted in bed with two other women at resort, cites ‘fear of lizards’ when questioned - "Thirty JHEAT officials were deployed to the resort, where another couple was arrested, when a 40-year-old man was discovered to be sleeping in a room with his 20-year-old girlfriend. When questioned by officials, the man claimed that he fell asleep in his paramour’s room after going to pick something up. Sharia law bans unmarried men and unmarried women from sharing any “secluded place, house or room under circumstances that may give rise to the suspicion that they are engaged in an immoral act.”"

Man spends £30,000 fighting £100 speeding fine - "Richard Keedwell, 71, said a "seriously flawed" legal system meant fighting the fine had taken nearly three years and used up his sons' inheritance money.He claims he was wrongly clocked doing 35mph in a 30mph zone on a day trip to Worcester in 2016"

Man jailed after blaming speeding ticket on fictional Frenchman - "After the offence, which would have resulted in a £100 fine, he "created an extraordinary web of lies" across two years, Hampshire police said... Henry was described as a "fantasist" and "akin to Walter Mitty" by the judge during sentencing at Winchester Crown Court... Henry, of Church Road in Weston-on-the-Green, Oxfordshire, intercepted her post and returned the paperwork stating a man called Grevin Musee - Paris waxwork museum Musee Grevin in reverse - was the driver and new owner of the car. Police said the documents were sent to Monsieur Musee, which translates as Mr Museum, and that they were returned claiming a man from the Isle of Lewis named George Harris was in fact the driver. A two-year investigation established that neither man existed.Hampshire police said it was told by Interpol that its French suspect was in fact the name of the Paris waxwork museum.Henry was caught after his fingerprints were found on the original speeding fine documents. He had also given the fake name name to Avon and Somerset Police when an Audi TT registered to Henry was caught speeding in August later the same year.It was then found he had provided false dates of sale to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, set up bogus email addresses and doctored messages from insurers in a bid to cover his tracks, police said."

Butcher’s “Non-Halal Certified” sign vilifies Muslims, Ad Board suggests sign should instead read “Unfortunately, Non-Halal” - "A butcher in South Australia has breached the Advertisers Code of Ethics by marking non-halal approved food products as “Non-Halal Certified,” according to the Advertising Standards Community Panel. The panel was in agreement with a complaint that argued the sign, which appeared on the shopfront window, “pokes fun” at Muslims and “perpetuates a culture of vilification towards religious minorities, that results in harm towards them.”The Adelaide-based business said the sticker was not intended to offend, but to inform shoppers that their food products are not halal certified. Responding to the complaint, the business said: “The sign is only stating that we are not halal approved. In no way is it meant in a malice way. We are getting asked quite frequently whether we are halal approved so I am just stating that we are not and that saves a lot of wasted time.” The majority of the panel disagreed, suggesting the sign incites hatred and contempt of Muslims and would have been less likely to breach advertising standards if the message said, “Unfortunately, non Halal” or “Not Halal approved.”... The panel also took issue with the fact that the wording was accompanied by imagery of an emu and kangaroos, suggesting “Islamic dietary practices are not Australian” and giving off “a strong impression” that Muslims are not welcome in the store."
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Revealed: Countries With The Best Health Care Systems, 2019 - "Taiwan has the best health care systems in the world, that’s according to the 2019 edition of the CEOWORLD magazine Health Care Index, which ranks 89 countries according to factors that contribute to overall health.Three additional Asian nations were among the top 10 in 2019: South Korea (second place), Japan (third), and Thailand (sixth). As for European countries, they occupy five of the top ten spots in this year’s ranking: Austria (4th place), Denmark (5th), Spain (7th), France (8th), and Belgium (9th). Australia rounded out the top 10 at 10th place.Of the 89 countries surveyed, Taiwan’s healthcare comes in 1st place on the list scoring a 78.72 out of 100 on the Health Care Index. At the opposite end of the spectrum, with a score of 33.42, Venezuela top the list of the countries with the worst health care systems for 2019."

MicroProse is Back to Develop New Games - "The company MicroProse is known for one of the most popular simulators and strategy games released back in the 1980s — Sid Meier’s Civilization, Sid Meier’s Pirates! or Railroad Tycoon. It appears that we’ll see something interesting once again."

Amir on Twitter - "Yes, you guessed it, @MSNBC is already defending John Bolton as a true patriot. There are not enough words in the English language to accurately describe what I think of these paid propagandists. This trash would have defended Hitler himself if Trump had fired him."

The World Expected a Chinese Tech Takeover. Alibaba Can’t Even Conquer Vietnam. - WSJ - "Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has long ruled the world’s biggest online shopping market in China—and many expected it to have conquered other markets by now. Instead, Alibaba, like many Chinese tech giants, has found how hard it is to translate domestic domination into international success... Some initiatives have shown promise, such as the performance of Alibaba’s global shopping site AliExpress in Russia and Brazil, both large markets with price-conscious customers. Yet its bigger bets, including in Southeast Asia, have lagged behind competitors in growth or size, while bleeding money. Alibaba has had trouble navigating workforces and markets different from its own, at times employing a hard-charging, top-down management style that worked in China but not as well in other markets, say people familiar with the business... Alibaba’s challenges abroad reflect the hurdles China’s giants face in competing with Amazon, Google and other Western rivals globally. Many Chinese tech companies thrived at home with the help of staff willing to work punishing hours. Government policies have also limited foreign competition—an advantage companies can’t count on overseas... So far none have managed to reach the scale and clout of their Western counterparts. Often, Chinese executives assume smaller markets will be a snap, only to learn otherwise... Southeast Asia seemed like a logical step for Alibaba when it bought a controlling stake in Singapore-based Lazada, at the time the region’s largest e-commerce firm, for $1 billion in 2016. It added another $1 billion the next year and $2 billion more in 2018.E-commerce in the region, with 650 million people, was growing quickly, doubling in size to $23 billion last year, a study by Google and Singaporean state investment fund Temasek found. Many countries there are culturally and economically close to China. Three and a half years later, Lazada has lost share in key markets, and its No. 1 spot regionwide is being challenged by Shopee, a unit of Singapore-based Sea Group, according to data from app tracker App Annie and people familiar with the companies’ sales. In Indonesia, the region’s biggest market, Lazada last year ranked fourth among e-commerce companies, behind global unknowns Shopee, Tokopedia and Bukalapak... In Thailand, one of Lazada’s strongest markets, shoppers have grown suspicious of new Chinese merchants on the site offering inexpensive goods alongside descriptions that seemed translated by machine into the local language... Mr. Zhang, the new Vietnam chief, had never lived abroad or spent significant time in Vietnam, and was far more comfortable chatting with compatriots in Chinese than with local managers in English, said people close to the company’s operations.He was a relatively raw manager with little experience leading a company, say people who knew him. At one early town hall, Mr. Zhang said how lucky Vietnam was to have him, remarking that he was more famous in China than Lazada’s then-CEO.Mr. Zhang had a top-down management style that frustrated employees used to Lazada’s flatter, more Western style of operating, people close to the business say. He seldom explained decisions and expected to be obeyed without question, they said. Mr. Zhang wanted to wean Lazada Vietnam off discounts and other spending it had been using to boost results, the people said. He would often criticize the local team, saying, “You guys spend money like stupid”... He abruptly halted most free shipping—a move that pummeled sales as customers moved to other platforms like Shopee that were still subsidizing. The move upset merchants in Vietnam, who were already perplexed by elements of Lazada’s tech overhaul, and many moved to rival sites... When Mr. Zhang or his deputies from Hangzhou were questioned about their strategy, they referred back to their experiences at Tmall and Taobao, Alibaba’s Chinese online marketplaces.“The answer we got for every single question started with ‘In Tmall/Taobao, we did…’ or ‘In China, this is how it happens,’ ” said one letter sent by several Vietnamese managers last year to Lucy Peng, an Alibaba executive sent to lead Lazada in Southeast Asia. “Unfortunately, we are neither Tmall/Taobao or in China.” Ms. Peng gave a speech to Chinese managers sent by Alibaba, urging them to respect local staff and cultures, which was translated into English and distributed in Lazada, according to people who received the message."

EA Received A Guinness World Record For Most Downvoted Comment In Reddit History - "'The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes'...
Since being posted it has accumulated 683,000 downvotes. This comment is hated on a scale that no other comment in Reddit history has reached. The second most downvoted comment in comparison only has 88,906 downvotes."

Democracy Dies From Bad Fact-Checking - "The Washington Post has fallen into the habit of accusing Bernie Sanders of misleading the public even in cases where the evidence is strongly on the side of the Vermont senator... The Washington Post is trying to use fact-checking as an ideological weapon. Sanders is under attack not for making false statements, but for calling attention to facts that are politically unpalatable for those who are happy with the economic status quo. It’s unclear why the Post so often goes after Sanders in such a myopic fashion: The paper denies that its coverage is influenced by billionaire owner Jeff Bezos, but institutional bias can be more subtly grounded in factors like the economic class of the editors or the newspaper’s being embedded in elite Washington culture. With these polemics-disguised-as-rebuttals, the Post is discrediting the entire journalistic genre of fact-checking. This is dangerous in a way that goes beyond any damage it does to Sanders as a presidential candidate. In truth, Sanders has little to worry about. The fact-checks are so ludicrous that they are unlikely to sway any voters. What they are more likely to do is feed into a pervasive distrust of the mainstream media, which is bad for democracy... Unfortunately, media outlets sometimes help Trump along in his desire to tarnish them as reliable independent sources of truth"
This is probably only coming out because it's not Trump who's being "fact-checked"

Melissa Chen - Story time. I pitched my second story to my... - "So who is Israa Ghrayeb and why is her story so.... sensitive? She was a 21-year old makeup artist who lived in the West Bank, and just like any normal young lady these days, she was an avid Instagram user. Unlike most of her counterparts though, she was murdered in a brutal honor killing for the shame she brought upon her family because she uploaded a video of her meeting her fiancé in a public place on Instagram. Both her mom and sister were fully aware of the meeting, but this didn't stop her male relatives - brother, father and cousins - from allegedly attacking her. When she tried to flee, she fell from the second floor of the family home, breaking her spine.At the hospital, the family claimed that she sustained those spinal injuries because she had jumped from the balcony after becoming “possessed by demons.” Ghrayeb underwent spinal surgery and as she was recouperating in the hospital, she was once again assaulted by her male relatives. Audio recordings of Ghrayeb’s screams were leaked by nurses at the hospital. Her family members claim they were performing an “exorcism” on her. She went into a coma and passed away shortly after.According to the Palestinian NGO the Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC), in 2016, 23 Palestinian women were killed in honor killings; in 2017, 28; in 2018, 23. Palestinian police figures for 2018 showed that such killings accounted for 12 per cent of the total murder cases in the occupied West Bank.Israa's case seemed to have hit a nerve. Even Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib tweeted about it though unsurprisingly, she found a way to blame Israel for the heinous murder. Last week, hundreds of women protested in Ramallah to raise awareness of Israa's story, of the toxic honor culture that precipitated it, to demand justice for Israa, and to call on Palestinian authorities to reform laws that would afford more legal protection to women.Sensing this is a pivotal case in the fight against honor killings in the region, Ideas Beyond Borders's head translator Ahmed decided to create a page describing "The Case of Israa Ghrayeb" on Arabic Wikipedia. The page was purged, with no explanation at all (which is rare). Even Facebook posts about her story were reported and the content, taken down... In the end, the threat of going public with this story made the arbiters of Arabic knowledge on Wikipedia reverse their position. Israa now exists in Arabic Wikipedia, despite the early attempts to keep her and her story from the Arabic-speaking public"