Links - 26th December 2019 (1)

Detroit Police Chief Calls Rashida Tlaib Racist for Saying Only African Americans Should Work With Facial Recognition Software - "Rashida Tlaib, the freshman Democratic representative from Michigan, has been accused of racism following comments she made demanding that Detroit's chief of police only hire black analysts for the city's facial recognition crime centers.Rep. Tlaib made the comments on a visit to the Real Time Crime Center in Detroit on Monday where she told police chief James Craig: "Analysts need to be African Americans, not people that are not. I think non-African Americans think African Americans all look the same."... Craig said her comments were offensive given that his department hires high numbers of people, both white and black, that are trained extensively in using the tools... "to say people should be barred from working somewhere because of their skin color? That's racist"... "It's a double standard," Craig said. "Certainly, as the police chief of this city, if I had made a similar comment, people would be outraged and they would be calling for my resignation." The Detroit News, one of the most popular publications in the city, also released an editorial criticizing Tlaib—highlighting the double standard of her stance in contrast to her criticism of President Donald Trump and his "go back where they came from" tweets directed at herself and three other congresswomen."

Woke segregationism - "Sheffield University Students’ Union has banned white students from attending anti-racist meetings... The union says this is part of its shift from ‘a non-racist to an actively anti-racist’ stance... Asking for a clear hierarchy of racial groups according to their ‘power’ (sounds a bit racist, doesn’t it?) always proves fruitless, so we’re left in the dark to work out who exactly can be discriminatory to who on the basis of their race. But generally speaking, it is okay to be nasty to white people (not racism), but not okay to be nasty to every other racial group (racism)."
Actually this is a pretty blatant admission that anti-racism is about hating white people

Anti-racism event hosted by Edinburgh University bans white people from asking questions - "The conference has been organised by the Resisting Whiteness group which opposes racism and describes itself as a QTPOC (queer and trans people of colour) organisation... There will be two “safe spaces” at the event one of which white people will be barred from entering... "We will therefore not be giving the microphone to white people during the Q&As, not because we don't think white people have anything to offer to the discussion, but because we want to amplify the voices of people of colour.".... "Imagine if this event was called 'Resisting Blackness' and non-white people were told they could not ask questions, nor access a room because they were the 'wrong' colour."

China’s pork shortage puts dog and rabbit meat back on the menu in rural communities - "In a supermarket in the county’s town centre, the price of lean pork was 72 yuan (US$10) per kilogram while pork rib cost 74 yuan (US$10.50) a kilogram – more than double what was being charged a year ago and at least as high as prices in major cities like Shanghai and Beijing."

Teachers are increasingly becoming sugar babies to supplement salary - "US public school teachers are paid notoriously low wages and are often forced to work multiple part-time jobs just to meet their basic needs. Rather than drive Uber or tend coffee shop counters, an increasing amount of these educators are choosing to supplement their income by going on dates with wealthy "daddies."... just over 10,000 of the site's members self-identified as educators.Teacher salaries vary widely by state, but nationwide the average public school teacher can expect to bring home $60,483. In some states, like Mississippi and West Virginia, teachers on average make less than $46,000 per year. The average Sugar Baby, according to Seeking Arrangement's own stats, supposedly brings in $2,800 every month from their dates. That comes out to $33,600 per year. For some educators, that's nearly equivalent to working a second full-time teaching job."
Rubbish clickbait article. Median household income for West Virginia was $43,469 in 2017. Median household income in Mississippi is $43,529. Apparently a few teachers earning more than an entire household means teachers are underpaid

Malaysian Roti Canai Recipe - "In Indonesia, paratha roti came to be known as roti cane. In Malaysia, it became roti canai. In Singapore, it is called roti prata.The main difference between the original paratha and its adaptations in Southeast Asia is the preparation of the dough. In South Asia, the dough is rolled. In Southeast Asia, the dough is flipped and spun in the air, and thrown against the oiled work surface until paper thin. In South Asia, the thinly rolled dough is folded like a paper fan. In Southeast Asia, the paper-thin dough is folded like an envelope. Irrespective of the preparation, the cooked bread is layered, flaky on the outside and slightly chewy inside."

Martin Scorsese says he 'doesn't have time’ to write female characters - "The Oscar-winning filmmaker was speaking at an Italian press conference for The Irishman when he rejected claims that his work isn’t diverse in terms of gender... "Am I supposed to? If the story doesn’t call for it, then it’s a waste of everybody’s time. If the story calls for a female character lead, why not?” Emma Tillinger Koskoff, a producer on The Irishman who was at the press conference, also refuted the claim, suggesting the 1974 film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore as an example of a Scorsese film with a female lead. “Oh, that’s only one film. They don’t count that,” Scorsese replied. “Age of Innocence – they don’t count that. Casino – Sharon Stone’s great in that. They don’t count that. Forget it. It’s all these men.”... Asked if he would like to write more female characters, Scorsese said he would. “But you know what, I’m 76 now. How am I going to have the time? I don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t know. I don’t have time anymore.”"
Of course, The Independent has to come up with an inflammatory clickbait headline. Apparently pandering is a good thing

Natural History Museum is branded sexist... for not having enough female animal exhibits - "A study of five museums found that women weren't the only females forced to fight sexism – apparently leopards and lions face it, too, with the famous London collection and others accused of being prejudiced... Male birds outnumbered females by 60 per cent to 40 per cent, while mammals were 52 per cent male... Perhaps it's the peacock's showy tail, the lion's mane and the antlers grown by stags that can make them bigger crowd-pleasers... It is harder to classify females into the correct species when there are not many to refer to"

Bangladeshi MP allegedly hired eight lookalikes to take her place in exams - "A Bangladeshi politician has been expelled from university after allegedly hiring as many as eight lookalikes to take her place in exams.Tamanna Nusrat, from the ruling Awami League party, is accused of paying the lookalikes to pretend to be her in at least 13 tests. The scandal emerged after the private broadcaster Nagorik TV entered a test hall and confronted one of the women posing as Nusrat... “The proxy students were protected by the MP’s musclemen when they sat for the tests. Everybody knew it but nobody uttered a word because she is from a very influential family.”... Test fraud, cheating and leaking of question papers ahead of exams are common in Bangladesh, prompting authorities frequently to cancel results."
Since even the Guardian has published this, is it still racist to say that cheating is a big problem in Bangladesh?

Are tattoos associated with employment and wage discrimination? Analyzing the relationships between body art and labor market outcomes - "Previous research has found that tattooed people are widely perceived by hiring managers to be less employable than people without tattoos. This is especially the case for those who have visible tattoos (particularly offensive ones) that are difficult to conceal. Given this backdrop, our research surprisingly found no empirical evidence of employment, wage or earnings discrimination against people with various types of tattoos. In our sample, and considering a variety of alternative estimation techniques, not only are the wages and annual earnings of tattooed employees in the United States statistically indistinguishable from the wages and annual earnings of employees without tattoos, but tattooed individuals are also just as likely, and in some instances even more likely, to gain employment. These results suggest that, contrary to popular opinion as well as research findings with hiring managers and customers, having a tattoo does not appear to be associated with disadvantage or discrimination in the labor market."

'Baby Shark' song used to soothe toddler becomes rallying cry in Lebanon - "A popular children’s song became a rallying cry in Lebanon after protesters in Beirut spontaneously sang the hit to calm a toddler caught in the midst of a noisy demonstration... the crowd spontaneously broke out into a rendition of the song “Baby Shark”, complete with hand gestures depicting a shark’s bite, and big smiles."

S’pore primary school boy asks dad why is he talking to opposition politicians if they’re ‘bad’ - "the man’s son apparently asked his father who Yee was after witnessing their meeting.After the man told his son that Yee was from an opposition political party, his son allegedly said:“Why are you talking to them? They are against the government and they are bad, right?”"

Lawrence Solomon: If Alberta turns separatist, the Rest of Canada is in big trouble - "Canadians don’t value our fossil fuel economy, which explains why so many are OK to trash pipelines and see Alberta tank. Only 19 per cent think it more important to pursue oil and gas development than to go green and regulate oil, according to EKOS polling. That 19 per cent figure shrinks to eight per cent for Canadians who consider themselves Liberals, six per cent for NDPers and two per cent for those who vote Green, meaning that politicians of most stripes have no interest in alienating their supporters to help Alberta’s energy economy recover.Those figures also explain why Alberta’s sense of alienation is on the rise. According to Ipsos, fully 62 per cent believe Alberta “does not get its fair share from Confederation” (up from 45 per cent two decades ago), 46 per cent feel more attached to their province than to their country (up from 39 per cent) and 34 per cent “feel less committed to Canada than I did a few years ago” (up from 22 per cent). Just 18 per cent of Albertans believe “the views of western Canadians are adequately represented in Ottawa.” One-quarter of Albertans now believe Alberta “would be better off if it separated from Canada,” a number that may well rise if the provincial economy founders, and would certainly rise if Albertans realized that they need Canada a lot less than Canada needs them. Without Alberta’s wealth and foreign-exchange earnings, the living standard of Canadians outside Alberta would drop and the Canadian dollar would plummet, likely leading to inflation as the cost of imports rose. Albertans, in contrast, would see their affluence rise and, because oil sales are denominated in U.S. dollars, Alberta would be largely insulated from the inflation to its east and west... Anyone thinking that Alberta would be unable to police its borders needs to be reminded that, for the past 70 years, Alberta’s patrols have made it the continent’s only rat-free jurisdiction."

Kouign-amann: The French pastry's history, origin, pronunciation. - "“Not before the cheese,” Genevieve told me. Of course, the cheese. As the 19th-century French food writer, Brillat-Savarin, once wrote, “Un dessert sans fromage est une belle à qui il manque un oeil“—a dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman without an eye. (His words, not mine.)"

SJWCentral - @allirothberg Allison Rothberg on Jordan Peterson: "he just cries and shakes for 50 minutes. what a terribly stupid weak man"
"Imagine crying about toxic masculinity for years and when a man breaks down because of his wife having cancer you call him weak for crying. What a terrible woman"
The only emotions feminists allow men to feel are shame and disgust for being male