Links - 15th December 2019 (2)

Woman Quits Job To Become '50s Housewife' Because She Thinks 'Husbands Should Be Spoiled' - "30-year-old Katrina Holte now lives as a ‘1950s housewife’, cooking, cleaning and looking after her husband, while making dresses from 1950s patterns in her spare time.Katrina even transformed her home in Hillsborough into a ‘working shrine’ to the era, fitting it out and decorating it in 1950s decor... While she admits the era was far from perfect, 1950s values really appeal to Katrina"

Explain wife-beating question in Islamic Studies exam, Siti Kasim tells Maszlee - "Lawyer and activist Siti Kasim has called on Education Minister Maszlee Malik to explain an Islamic Studies examination question for Form Five students on permissible ways to “hit a disobedient wife.”“Is this what our Malay children (are) learning in school?? What is this Maszlee? Is this acceptable?... The question, which Malaysiakini has sighted, presents a flowchart with the title “Ways to hit a nusyuz (disobedient) wife”."
Doubtless, Malaysia is cited as an example of moderate Islam

Canada's Green Party edits photo of leader holding single-use cup - "Canada's Green Party has admitted to doctoring a photo of its leader to show her holding a reusable plastic cup.However, leader Elizabeth May said the manipulation was done without her knowledge and she was "completely shocked" to see it.The edited photo showed Ms May holding a plastic reusable cup with the Green Party logo and a metal straw.The party leader said that she had nothing to hide as she was using a compostable disposable cup."

Gizmo can reproduce NYC tap water for people who don’t understand how pizza works - "a company called New York WaterMaker has been selling a specialized water filtration system to pizzerias, bagel stores, and bakeries across America, claiming that it can replicate the chemistry of the Big Apple’s H2O. Even though it’s been repeatedly scientifically disproven that New York City’s tap water is what makes their pizza and bagels so good, entrepreneurs, hucksters, and the pizza-loving public alike cannot seem to let go of this old wive’s tale"

Dear Prudence: My job is turning me into a conservative. - "I work for the state government in the department that involves public assistance. I used to be a true-blue liberal. I supported programs that help people. But I’m seeing a lot of clients who abuse the system or purposely make bad choices. I read evaluations from clients who aren’t really disabled or hear from clients that they don’t want to stop abusing substances. I don’t want to sound like a right-wing blowhard, but I’m afraid I’m turning into one. How can I keep my liberal card in the face of what I see every day?"
"How do I fight cognitive dissonance?". Too bad the answer sneakily avoids answering almost all of the question

Research: Wilderness Therapy For Teens Is More Effective, Less Expensive Than Traditional Treatments - "New research from the University of New Hampshire shows wilderness therapy is more effective and cheaper than traditional methods for treating adolescents with substance use and mental health issues.In wilderness therapy, teenagers receive treatment in the context of outdoor experiences like backpacking trips or rock-climbing.The study found that these outdoor behavioral health programs had higher completion rates, better long-term outcomes, and were less expensive than traditional office-based treatment programs."

the norms misser on Twitter - "looking forward to being killed by an autonomous car because a hater repeatedly uploaded my photo to an image processing database with the tag "trash can""

The Japanese Ghost Town Buried Deep in a Canadian Forest - "the camp had been occupied not by transient loggers, but by a community of about 50 to 60 Japanese Canadians, including women and children, over a period of 20 years... They uncovered a square of nitrogen-rich garden soil, fertilized with bone meal, which at one time may have been lush with Japanese vegetables such as daikon and fuki. Even rarer, the team found the remnants of a traditional Japanese-style bathhouse and shrine, suggesting an attempt at recreating traditional village life unparalleled in North America."

OPP no longer identifying gender of victims and accused involved in crimes - "Ontario's provincial police service will no longer release the gender of people who are charged with crimes and those who are victims of crimes. The policy change comes following a review of legislation and the need to be more progressive"
This will surely help crime prevention

Condom deliveryman in China sued over pregnancy - "A woman from Suzhou province in China has blamed a condom deliveryman who arrived eight minutes later than promised and is suing him for 30,000 yuan (S$5,804)... The woman, known as Su, had ordered condoms from an online delivery service last month which promised to deliver them under 20 minutes. However, after taking a shower, she received a message saying that due to the adverse weather, the delivery could be slightly late. Unable to endure a minute longer, Su and her boyfriend had sex. The condoms arrived in 28 minutes but the two had already finished.Earlier this month, Su discovered she was pregnant and is now suing the deliveryman."

Chinese relatives marry, divorce 23 times in home scheme - "Eleven Chinese relatives married and divorced each other 23 times within a month to obtain apartments given out by the state... The cunning family came up with the scheme after officials offered 40 sq m apartments to residents living in an area where homes were demolished, as part of a development project in eastern Zhejiang province. Police said that 13 people became residents of the village and were eligible for the apartments through the marriage scam"

Is Your Smartphone Listening to Your Conversations? - "the CDT alerted the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to a technology called SilverPush. It uses audio beacons to track your activities across devices: Your TV emits a tone during a commercial break, a tone that’s inaudible to you, but your phone is listening for it. Now they can link the TV and phone as belonging to the same person... The internet is rife with anecdotal stories about digital eavesdropping. Many people feel that conversations they’ve had within earshot of their phones have been used to tailor advertising... With services like Siri or Google Assistant, your phone is always listening for a keyword, but that’s processed locally. It doesn’t start recording your audio until it hears “Ok Google” or “Hey Siri.” At that point, it records and uploads an audio file."

Suzannah Lipscomb On 16th-Century Women | History Extra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "[On public trials] ‘Is this something that's particular to the Protestant Reformed Church? Or was it something that existed before the Reformation as well?’
‘It is, especially developed by the Protestants, I mean, because it involves so many lay people in the governance of society, which isn't really something that the Roman Catholics would have adopted. And also, there's a specific reason why we don't have this sort of the sort of records from Roman Catholic areas, although we do have some bishops’ tribunals, we don't have it from, you know, ordinary people policing each other, because people’s sins are dealt with in the privacy of the confessional, as opposed to being aired before this panel of judges who will, you know, lay judges, but judges who then are saying, who will then determine what punishment should be imposed’
‘Right, so we have a sort of semi official, moral police neighborhood watch type organization institutionalized in the consistory, What sort of cases would come before this, this body?’
‘So any form of moral failing. Dancing comes up quite a lot.’...
'Any profanity, blasphemy would call somebody before the consistory'...
‘Invoking the devil, people did that in speech sometimes.’… ‘Dancing, swearing, swearing, all manner of sexual misbehavior. So adultery, obviously, sex before marriage. When we do, one or two cases of homosexual activity, disappear very quickly from the pages, because they're considered so serious, they're sent to be considered in front of the actual legal magistrates. But hetereosexual sexual misdemeanors certainly appear a lot. And also quarrels, when people have fought with each other, that appears a lot as well. People going to Roman Catholic services, particularly even if they've stood at the back and not participated. There's a whole, you know, if they've carried out superstitious rituals, if they've gone to see one of the Bohemians, they're called the sort of soothsayers or local fortune tellers. You know, there's basically a lot of activity that will bring you before the consistory... the consistory itself could only handle spiritual punishments, ie shaming punishments, like being called before the consistory itself, and having to say that you're sorry, and you shouldn't have done it.’...
'[At church] everybody's there, and in front of everybody, you have to say what you've done. If you refuse to do that, or if you commit the sin again, then they might excommunicate you from the church, which doesn't sound like a big deal, but actually means that you're thrust out of both social and economic community, and you can't do business with people. You can't socialize with members of the church. So it is actually quite serious...
A man has to get consent from his parents, or a male guardian if he's under the age of 30'"

History of Japanese Curry and Guide to Curry Based - "At the beginning it was very expensive, a luxury that only rich families could afford: curry powder was  imported from Britain. It was only after the great curry powder scandal of 1931, when cheap curry was sold in place of the more expensive British variety, that people realized that they couldn’t really tell the difference between curry types, and this gave a boost to the domestic manufacturers... In the late 1990s, a great variety of regional curry recipes emerged: there is Nashi pear curry from Shimane prefecture, bitter melon curry from Okinawa, scallop curry from Aomori prefecture and so on. Some of those dishes are very peculiar, like whale curry from Wakayama prefecture or Nattō curry from Mito."

Spaghetti Napolitan is Japan's unique take on pasta - "On Aug. 30, 1945, newly appointed Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed at Atsugi Airport in Yokohama and headed straight to an elegant hotel overlooking the harbor that had escaped destruction during the war. The Hotel New Grand served as his headquarters for three days, before turning into a residence for U.S. officers.Anxious to please his new customers, Shigetada Irie, the head chef of the hotel, drew inspiration from the spaghetti with ketchup that was part of U.S. military rations to create a new pasta dish that he called “spaghetti Napolitan.” According to historical accounts, Irie did not use ketchup in his sauce; after all, he had been trained in methods of classical French and Italian cuisine by the first head chef of the hotel, a Swiss. Instead he used canned tomato puree, flavored it with sauteed garlic and bacon, and added canned mushrooms and chopped vegetables. He later supposedly left the pasta for hours after cooking it so that the texture would become more like that of udon noodles, suited to Japanese tastes. (The hotel still serves its version of spaghetti Napolitan, which includes a tomato-based sauce without a trace of ketchup.)"

What's the Difference Between Pastrami and Montreal Smoked Meat? - "In the Jewish deli world, pastrami is king. Except for where it's not.Take a trip to Canada, particularly Montreal, and you'll find a whole different animal: smoked meat.Sure, it looks a lot like pastrami, and it tastes pretty similar, and the general recipe of cured, smoked, and steamed fatty beef is more or less the same. But go ahead, tell that to the Jewish deli cognoscenti. See how that goes over.What exactly are pastrami and smoked meat? Should one of them win the North American deli crown? And what makes them different?I spoke with Eater's Robert Sietsema, who in 2009 wrote an article for Gourmet about the war of the rosy meats. "Good luck!" he said of the assignment, before describing smoked meat as "darker red, greasier, and less smoky." The catch? His visit to Schwartz's, Montreal's most famous smoked meat slinger, where he found the smoked meat "smokier and richer" than New York pastrami.This story, I realized, is going to be harder than I thought."

I don't care about cookies - "The EU regulations require that any website using tracking cookies must get user's permission before installing them. These warnings appear on most websites until the visitor agrees with the website's terms and conditions. Imagine how irritating that becomes when you surf anonymously or if you delete cookies automatically every time you close the browser.This add-on will remove these annoying cookie warnings from almost all websites!"

Where the Left Went Wrong—and How It Can Win Again - The Atlantic - "Twenty years ago, in a series of lectures on the history of American civilization, the philosopher Richard Rorty offered a prediction. His words languished in relative obscurity until the unexpected rise of Donald Trump made them seem prescient... Rorty argued that an ascendant strain of postmodern Leftism with its roots in the academy has tended “to give cultural politics preference over real politics, and to mock the very idea that democratic institutions might once again be made to serve social justice.”This Left is more likely to participate in a public shaming than to lobby for a new law; it is more likely to mobilize to occupy a park or shut down a freeway than to register voters. It “exaggerates the importance of philosophy for politics, and wastes its energy on sophisticated theoretical analyses of the significance of current events.” Its adherents “have permitted cultural politics to supplant real politics, and have collaborated with the Right in making cultural issues central to the public debate.”... like John Dewey, he rejects self-loathing as “a luxury which agents—either individuals or nations—cannot afford,” and finds other aspects of American history and national character to celebrate. Today’s Left would more effectively advance social justice if its adherents possessed a historical memory that extended farther back than the 1960s. they might continue to lament that “America is not a morally pure country,” but might better understand that “no country ever has been or ever will be,” and that no country will ever have “a morally pure, homogeneous Left” to bring about social justice. He urges the Left to be more realist at length:
'In democratic countries you get things done by compromising your principles in order to form alliances with groups about whom you have grave doubts.'...
For Rorty, a Left that neglects victims of economic selfishness will not only fail; its neglect of class will trigger a terrible backlash that ultimately ill-serve the very groups that Leftist identity politics are intended to help... he advised the Left to “put a moratorium on theory … to kick its philosophy habit” and  to “try to mobilize what remains of our pride in being Americans.”...
'The contemporary academic Left seems to think that the higher your level of abstraction, the more subversive of the established order you can be. The more sweeping and novel your conceptual apparatus, the more radical your critique'...
This disengagement from practical politics “produces theoretical hallucinations,” he added. “The cultural Left is haunted by ubiquitous specters, the most frightening of which is called ‘power.’”...
'The Ubiquity of Foucaldian power is reminiscent of the ubiquity of Satan, and thus of the ubiquity of original sin—that diabolical stain on every human soul ... in committing itself to what it calls “theory,” this Left has gotten something which is entirely too much like religion... What stories about blue-eyed devils are to Black Muslims, stories about hegemony and power are to many cultural Leftists'...
“the cultural Left has a preference for talking about ‘the system’ rather than specific social practices and specific changes. The rhetoric of this Left remains revolutionary rather than reformist and pragmatic. Its insouciant use of terms like ‘late capitalism’ suggests that we can just wait for capitalism to collapse, rather than figuring out what, in the absence of markets, will set prices and regulate distribution.” And its abandonment of the melting-pot approach to racial justice, its substitution of multiculturalism, has destroyed the solidarity needed to advance justice in any manner...
Little wonder that [Obama] spent the last year of his presidency expressing frustration at the style of cultural politics gaining traction on elite campuses: He saw how it contradicted the blueprint that he had created for a Left that can win."