Links - 30th March 2020 (3)

20 Miss Universe Winners Of The Last Century Who Have Beaten The Time And Still Look Young And Beautiful.

Saudi businessman accused of paying £800,000 bribe to get his mother on terror watch list - "the man wanted to get his mother "out the way" by having her jailed after a financial dispute broke out between them."

Age Of Shitlords - Posts - "all of us queers are gonna love 2020.
Here’s why:
1. According to scientists, heterosexuality will be declining by 85% by the end of 2020, which means straight people will be a minority
2. 90% of gen z teens are lgbtqa+, which means the next generation aren’t straight
3. About 95% of “straight” men aren’t actually straight and in 2020 a lot of them are gonna show that
4. Jokes/Memes at lgbtqa+ people will no longer be tolerated and they just aren’t funny
5. No more heteronormativity in shows, movies, games etc
6. Trans people become more common than cis people
7. The future is lgbtqa+! ️‍
Hope this cheers all my queer followers up! This is the type encouragement we need. This is the truth! Don’t hesitate to share this around, the homophobes are gonna be crying!
the future is lgbtqa lgbtqia gay "
This was posted on collegegirlwonders on Tumblr, which is now deleted
From the other posts, this was not a joke

10 things you didn’t know – or might have forgotten – about Goh Chok Tong - "The four Tans who vied for the Presidency had close associations with Mr Goh. Dr Tony Tan was in his Cabinet, Mr Tan Jee Say used to be his principal private secretary, Dr Tan Cheng Bock, ex-People’s Action Party MP, is an old friend and his doctor while Mr Tan Kin Lian was his  PAP branch secretary at his Marine Parade constituency. Bet you don’t remember that last one…
He saw PM Lee Hsien Loong’s CV when the younger man was being vetted as a candidate for the 1984 general election. And Mr Lee is NOT a straight A student! He got a C4 for Chinese! The book doesn’t say at what level and it could be that it’s a B4 or a C5 – because I don’t think there’s a C4 even in those days….
More on the Lee family…You know that it was Mr Goh who brought Mr Lee into politics right? Mr Lee Kuan Yew didn’t recommend his son. But Mr Lee did suggest his daughter, Wei Ling. Mr Goh said no, after consulting her brother and former Foreign Minister George Yeo, both of whom also said no. No explanation was given for the no answer in the book.
More on the Lee family…he did consider Mr Lee Hsien Yang but decided against it because he thought the elder brother would outshine the younger one. Also, how was he himself going to cope with so many Lees? “Nobody would believe I am my own man, isn’t it?”
More on the Lee family…the candidature of Madam Ho Ching did cross his mind but she said “not at this stage”. Then she got married to Mr Lee Hsien Loong and…that was that.
He was uncomfortable and felt humiliated when the late Lee Kuan Yew publicly said in his 1988 National Day rally speech that his preference was for Dr Tony Tan as Number 1. He told his old friend Dr Ahmad Mattar that he would “walk out” if Mr Lee repeated it next year. But that year, all he could do in front of the public eye was stay “wooden” (his word). In fact, he wryly referred to several descriptions people have of his role straddling father and son – seat warmer, puppet, Holy Goh. He also described himself rather off-handedly as a “lubricant” because both the Lees had their own independent cast of mind and he had to stop them clashing.
Although Mr Lee Kuan Yew never pushed his son forward as prime minister, there was one time he lost his temper in Cabinet and told Mr Goh: “If Loong is not my son, I would have asked him to take over from you now.” This was during the Marxist conspiracy in 1988 when Mr Goh delayed his decision to re-arrest some conspirators who had recanted their confessions. He took a day. Mr Lee, who was not in town then, said he would have re-arrested them immediately...
I am going to take a deep breath here and say this: I know he’s being bashed for his statements on mediocrity but this is a man who grew up without electricity or sanitation facilities in Pasir Panjang and lost his dad when he was 14. He pulled himself up by his bootstraps, and there is very little hint of any kind of snobbery or elitism portrayed in the book. By all accounts, he’s a humble, nice guy whom the late Mr Lee thought was ‘too’ nice. I am going to go so far as to suggest that we don’t remember a man for one line, but for his life of service."

Singapore Matters - "Alfian Sa'at: "I just want them to come here and say their piece so I can block them."
Some people's idea of [free speech] is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage. —WINSTON CHURCHILL"
"The irony of people championing free speech is that they constantly block people they disagree with and deny them their right of expression.So what freedom of speech are they fighting for? Not yours."
More: SG Oppie Logic - Posts

Is it time to ditch the Fitbit? - "The 10,000 steppers not only struggled to meet their daily goal but broke less of a sweat than those doing the “Active 10”, who achieved 30% more moderate-to-vigorous physical activity despite moving for less time.More concerning, in my steps-centric view, are the programme’s findings on high-intensity interval training (HIIT), with a short burst of activity such as a sprint apparently as effective as a 45-minute run. Even worse: people who cycled for just 40 seconds three times a week recorded a quantifiable improvement in their fitness levels, and potentially a reduced risk of heart disease. I  don’t need to work it out for you, but I will: that is two minutes of exercise a week. Total."

You Don't Need to Walk 10,000 Steps Every Day - The Atlantic - "“It turns out the original basis for this 10,000-step guideline was really a marketing strategy,” she explains. “In 1965, a Japanese company was selling pedometers, and they gave it a name that, in Japanese, means ‘the 10,000-step meter.’”Based on conversations she’s had with Japanese researchers, Lee believes that name was chosen for the product because the character for “10,000” looks sort of like a man walking. As far as she knows, the actual health merits of that number have never been validated by research... “The basic finding was that at 4,400 steps per day, these women had significantly lower mortality rates compared to the least active women,” Lee explains. If they did more, their mortality rates continued to drop, until they reached about 7,500 steps, at which point the rates leveled out. Ultimately, increasing daily physical activity by as little as 2,000 steps—less than a mile of walking—was associated with positive health outcomes for the elderly women. That nuance can mean a lot to people who want to be less sedentary but aren’t sure how to start or whether they can do enough to make a difference, says Lindsay Wilson, a clinical professor of geriatric medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. “I don’t think setting the bar at 10,000 steps is a very successful way to approach exercise,” she says. “Some people are not walkers. They don’t have safe neighborhoods, or they feel unsteady on sidewalks. You need to be more creative. Is this a person who needs to go to a gym class or the pool, or sit on a stationary bike?”... setting the same goal for everyone can be discouraging to the people who need activity the most... “A big challenge is that the public and the media want cut-and-dried, black-and-white messages and findings, and science just doesn’t operate that way”... for people hoping to improve their overall health, there’s often significant evidence that incremental improvements in things such as diet, hydration, and exercise can have real benefits, even if numerical goals are missed."

Islam spread through the Christian world via the bedroom - "For much of the early Islamic period, the mingling of Muslims and non-Muslims was largely predicated on a basic imbalance of power: Muslims formed an elite ruling minority, which tended to exploit the resources of the conquered peoples – reproductive and otherwise – to grow in size and put down roots within local populations. Seen in this light, forced conversion was far less a factor in long-term religious change than practices such as intermarriage and concubinage. The rules governing religiously mixed families crystallised fairly early, at least on the Muslim side. The Quran allows Muslim men to marry up to four women, including ‘People of the Book’, that is, Jews and Christians. Muslim women, however, were not permitted to marry non-Muslim men... Underlying the injunction was the understanding that marriage was a form of female enslavement: if a woman was bound to her husband as a slave is to her master, she could not be subordinate to an infidel... Since Muslim men were free to keep as many slaves as they wished, sex with Jewish and Christian women was considered licit, while sex with Zoroastrians and others outside the ‘People of the Book’ was technically forbidden. After all, they were regarded as pagans, lacking a valid divine scripture that was equivalent to the Torah or the Gospel. But since so many slaves in the early period came from these ‘forbidden’ communities, Muslim jurists developed convenient workarounds. Some writers of the ninth century, for example, argued that Zoroastrian women could be induced or even forced to convert, and thus become available for sex. Whether issued via marriage or slavery, the children of religiously mixed unions were automatically considered Muslims... Because Muslims were members of the elite, who enjoyed greater access to economic resources than non-Muslims, their fertility rates were probably higher... The idea that one would have a public legal identity as a Muslim but a private spiritual identity as a Christian produced a unique subculture of ‘crypto-Christianity’ in Córdoba. This seems to have spanned generations, fuelled by the tendency of some ‘crypto-Christians’ to seek out and marry others like them."

Crip Sanchez, Jedi Dre... TMC on Twitter - " RT @6illeh: 9 years ago my middle school science teacher told me I will never amount to anything 8 years later I got his daughter pregnant, life’s crazy"

Why intelligent people suffer more mental disorders - "People with high IQ are considered to have an advantage in many domains. They are predicted to have higher educational attainment, better jobs, and a higher income level. Yet, it turns out that a high IQ is also associated with various mental and immunological diseases like depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, ADHD as well as allergies, asthma, and immune disorders... highly intelligent people are 20% more likely to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), 80% more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD, 83% more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety, and 182% more likely to develop at least one mood disorder.When it comes to physiological diseases, people with high cognitive abilities are 213% more likely to have environmental allergies, 108% more likely to have asthma, and 84% more likely to have an autoimmune disease. The researchers turned to the field of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) to look for some of the answers. PNI examines how the chronic stress accumulated as a response to environmental factors influences the communication between the brain and the immune system.  The researchers point out that highly intelligent people have tendencies for “intellectual overexcitabilites" and a hyper-reactivity of the central nervous system... This hyper-reactivity, however, can also lead to deeper depressions and poor mental health. This turns out to be particularly true for poets, novelists and people with high verbal intelligence. Their intense emotional response to the environment increases tendencies for rumination and worry, both of which predict depression and anxiety disorders.  Heightened psychological responses can affect immunity... People with overexcitabilites may have strong reactions to seemingly harmless external stimuli like an annoying clothing tag or a sound. This reaction may turn into low level chronic stress and launch an inappropriate immune response."

Betteridge's law of headlines - Wikipedia - "Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no"."

Did Battlestar Galactica Have The Worst Ending In Science Fiction History? - "BSG is not just a space opera, it's a mystery, and the answer to all of the show's riddles is one of the chief attractions of the final episode. The fact that the answers tended to be either "God" or "because we said so" was, to be honest, a bit disappointing. And because Ronald D. Moore decided to build the last two seasons around "big mysteries" instead of character-driven storylines, you can't excuse his failure to pay off those mysteries by saying the show is really all about the characters.The other problem with God turning out to have been such a huge force in the show's narrative arc, Templeton notes, is the Ghostbusters rule: "If someone asks you if you are a god, you say yes!" (And the corollary is that gods, at least in science fiction, usually turn out to be false.) Templeton has a huge, exhaustive list of all the plot contrivances and happenstances that end up being laid at God's door, including everything Head Six arranged during the course of the series, and it's quite an impressive list. It's fine to have a Supreme Being set the story's events in motion and cause trouble for our heroes, but not quite so great for God(s) to swoop in and solve all our problems at the end of the story. There's also the always-tenuous relationship between science fiction and our reality — not to mention between science fiction and science... Katee Sackhoff has said there's a line of dialogue she refused to say in the final episode. After she puts in the notes to the magic song and jumps the fleet to Earth, President Roslin asks, "Where have you taken us?" And in Moore's script, she was supposed to respond: "Somewhere... all along the watchtower." But she and Mary McDonnell kept giggling when they got to that line, so it ended up getting cut. Thank goodness. Here's what I always come back to when I think about the BSG finale, though — I feel as though Moore put us on notice with the final episode of season three. When we first encounter the mysterious Bob Dylan Cylon signal, and four totally random characters turn out to be Cylons, and Starbuck comes back from the dead, the show is basically hoisting a giant sign saying "You Are Now Leaving Storytelling Logic. Please Drive Safely."

Battlestar's "Daybreak:" The worst ending in the history of on-screen science fiction - "its final hour was the worst ending in the history of science fiction on the screen... Other SF shows have ended very badly, to be sure. This is particularly true of TV SF. Indeed, it is in the nature of TV SF to end badly. First of all, it's written in episodic form. Most great endings are planned from the start. TV endings rarely are. To make things worse, TV shows are usually ended when the show is in the middle of a decline. They are often the result of a cancellation, or sometimes a producer who realizes a cancellation is imminent. Quite frequently, the decline that led to cancellation can be the result of a creative failure on the show -- either the original visionaries have gone, or they are burned out. In such situations, a poor ending is to be expected.  Sadly, I'm hard pressed to think of a TV SF series that had a truly great ending... Even "soft" SF, not so constrained to the rules of physics, has its rules. All good fiction must be consistent within itself and the writer's contract with the reader...  they usually lay out their magic at the start. We know at the very beginning that Gandalf is a wizard and the world of Lord of the Rings is full of elves and hobbits. From the beginning, there is a sort of "negotiation" of the suspension of disbelief between the reader and writer; a contract of sorts. We would be equally upset with battlestars appearing in Lord of the Rings as we would be with Nazgul aboard Cylon heavy raiders.  Still, while all levels of fantasy can produce greatness, there is a special relevance that can only be produced through realism. Non-realistic stories must gain their relevance through allegories. They present a world which is not ours, but has parallels that teach lessons about the real world... In the long run, using deus ex machina is a cheat. It's the easy way out of plot problems, and it must been seen as a failure. When you can say "god did it" you can write just about anything. The author takes on too much power, including too much power to do things that make no sense... some of the best character dramas reveal the ending right at the start. You are not in suspense about how it will end, but instead about how we will get there. I've seen a number of great shows begin with a character's death. There was never any doubt during MASH that the Korean war would someday end. That didn't hurt the show, in fact it made it better."

Muslim women thank PM Modi on passage of triple talaq bill - "Scores of Muslim women thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for ensuring the passage of the triple talaq bill in Rajya Sabha, at events organised by the BJP in the city on Wednesday. Addressing a gathering at party leader Vijay Goel's residence, Union minister Prakash Javadekar said the move will empower Muslim women.Goel said Prime Minister Modi never indulged in vote-bank politics and was inspired only by the well being of people... In a major success for the Modi Government, Parliament on Tuesday approved the bill that makes instant triple talaq among Muslims a criminal offence after the contentious legislation was passed by Rajya Sabha."
Is this Islamophobia? Apparently despite his anti-Muslim reputation, this won him a lot of votes from Muslim women