Links - 31st March 2020 (2)

Unwitting Online Porn Actresses Win $13M After Being Defrauded By Adult Sites - "One by one, amateur models came across the Craigslist ad that promised to help launch their careers. And one by one, those women learned they were expected to do more than just pose for pictures.A California judge has ruled that the owners of a San Diego-based pornographic website has to pay $13 million in damages after they defrauded 22 women in order to get them to perform in explicit videos. The women were told the videos would never be posted to the Internet. They were told no one would ever find out their true identity...   In the scheme, the website GirlsDoPorn and other affiliated sites would offer thousands of dollars to women to participate in a pornographic video. They would fly a woman to San Diego, take her to a hotel room, and pressure her to sign a contract quickly without reading it. Sometimes they would ply her with alcohol and marijuana.  The women were told that the videos would only be shipped on DVDs to customers overseas. If the women were unsure about participating, they would be connected with so-called "reference models" to reassure them. Those models were paid to lie about where the videos would be released. Despite those promises, the court said, GirlsDoPorn did exactly the opposite — publishing the videos on their paid subscription websites and posting some to popular free pornographic websites. Models' names and numbers were posted to a site called PornWikiLeaks. Online trolls would spread that information to the women's social circles, including friends, family and employers.  "Defendants immediately benefitted from doxxing of their models," the judge said. "Publication and dissemination of the models' names and personal information increased views and traffic to Defendants' tube channels, increased name ID for their brand, and boosted subscription sales.""

Xiaomi security camera user ends up seeing footage of other people’s homes
Maybe this isn't a bug, but a feature

16 Real Places That Look Like They're From the Future

Segments of Random Thoughts - Posts - "Please talk to your family and friends about politics, even if it's uncomfortable. Please use your privilege as a white person to protect people of color." - Teen Vogue
"Woke white leftists suffer from a combination of "people of colour" fetish and white saviour complex. The end result is this patronising garbage."

Lily Martin - "Colonizers believed the world was theirs for the taking, saw the masses of people as disposable, and believed that nothing mattered more than the currency in a white man’s pocket."
"Though the film is cast with numerous talented, critically-acclaimed actors, there’s no getting around the fact that once again, Laurie, Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, their parents, their great aunt, and their friends are all played by white people."
""Moron" and words like it were used to support racist, classist ideas and to advance white supremacy."
"'This is how to masturbate if you have a vagina.' You're welcome"
"'How to masturbate if you have a penis: 9 tips and techniques'. Yes, there actually is a lot to learn."
"Antifa grows out of a larger revolutionary politics that aspires toward creating a better world..."
"Look at the ideological activists at Teen Vogue who push their agenda under the guise of a publication for young people... "
I'm all up for the "diverse" Little Women remark - once we have an all-white Black Panther remake

The Spiderverse - "Just slide the food through the web and nobody gets hurt.
Amazing Spider-Man Vol 2 52: “Dig This”"

For the love of Durians - "Scratch the stalk of the durian. If the stalk is green, it means that the durian has just dropped recently, and it is still fresh. If the stalk is brown or dry, the durian is probably not fresh and you shouldn’t purchase it.  When a durian first drops, the flesh is firm and creamy. After a while, it starts deteriorating. Sometimes you will see people knocking the durian to check the consistency of its flesh, if it is wet or dry. But if the durian does not pass the first stage of the scratch test, it doesn’t matter because it still won’t be fresh inside...
For first time durian eaters, I would receommend them to try the D13 durians first. It’s sweet, but not too overwhelming. Once they are accustomed to the taste, they can try more intense flavours such as those from the Mao Shan Wang durians."

Scientific faith: Belief in science increases in the face of stress and existential anxiety - "some secular individuals may use science as a form of “faith” that helps them to deal with stressful and anxiety-provoking situations."Science as religion

Decades ago, he stole a tree branch. Now he is the Durian King - "The fruit came from a nearby orchard. Tan asked whether he could have a branch to graft onto one of his trees, but the woman shooed away the idea. So that evening he returned with a villager armed with a rifle. At Tan’s instructions, and for pay, the man pruned a footlong branch with a well-placed shot.Thirty-five years after his heist, Tan is reaping the rewards. The tree limb provided the genetics for an award-winning durian known as the Musang King, which has become Malaysia’s next cash crop and made Tan’s family durian royalty. His success, however, came only recently — thanks to his perseverance through hard economic times and a magnate who happened to spark a Musang King obsession in China, a country whose 1.4 billion stomachs have the power to move markets... China’s massive unmet demand for durian is the prime reason the Hong Kong consulting firm Plantations International predicts that the global market for raw durian will reach $25 billion by 2030 — up from $15 billion in 2016.A growing share of that is expected to come from Malaysia, where the fruit is thought to have originated and the average person eats 24 pounds of it each year — far more than anywhere else in world... Luckily for Tan, Stanley Ho, a legendary casino tycoon from the Chinese territory of Macao, also happens to be a durian devotee.  In 2010, he sent a private jet to Singapore to pick up 88 Musang Kings from a seller there. He wanted 98, but stock was low.  Ho reportedly gave away 10 of his beloved fruits to an even richer billionaire, Hong Kong developer and investor Li Ka-shing.  The story, which was originally reported by a Chinese-language newspaper in Malaysia called China Press, quickly reached China. Soon 4.5-pound Musang Kings were selling for up to $60 each on Chinese e-commerce sites such as Taobao.  Durians are prized in China, not only for their unique flavor — as sweet as ripe banana and simultaneously as bitter as raw garlic — but also supposed health properties. Nursing mothers are encouraged to eat the fruit. And it’s believed to keep you warm during winter. No variety is more prized than the one Tan pioneered... Tan seized on Chinese demand in 2013 by finding a distributor in China and ways to flash freeze the freshly picked fruit with nitrogen for shipping... Their interest comes at a time when global palm oil prices have declined steadily because of new regulations and boycotts... “Don’t worry,” he told a Times reporter when a crimson and black snake appeared a few feet away. “That one is only a little bit poisonous. It will make you pass out for a day. You get to rest.”... On the cusp of the peak durian harvest, which starts each June, he often sleeps in a hammock on the family plantations, guarding ripening fruits from thieves. Durian farming is a cutthroat business. Rivals are suspected of poisoning some of his experimental durian trees.  His biggest fear, however, is that someone steals a branch from one of his new hybrid trees, just like his father did so many years earlier. Tan Chee Keat is developing a durian that has an even smoother texture than his father’s Musang King. He hasn’t named it yet, but he suspects it could result in change on the family throne."
An empire arising from a crime!

Richard Cooper on Twitter - "Female solipsism can't understand why a man wants nothing to do with a wall smashed single divorced mom of 3 with baby rabies..."

Darren Grimes on Twitter - "I’ve heard Opposition MPs call for Boris to be “decapitated”, call Leave voters fascists, stupid & racist, long with glee for the death of our old & cavort with antisemites & the UK’s enemies. Forgive me if I don’t wet my knickers over Boris’s use of “Surrender Bill”. Pathetic."

The People's Tim Dawson on Twitter - "All those people who spend every day saying Boris is a racist with no evidence whatever are remarkably silent about Justin Trudeau. Remarkably silent."

Paul Embery on Twitter - "Labour MP @DawnButlerBrent retweeted me earlier. Then some fanatics told her off for retweeting a 'fascist/white-nationalist/racist' etc (the usual tripe). So she deleted the retweet. I feel a blog about the culture of illiberalism and censorship of the modern Left coming on."

Miley Cyrus: 'I always thought I had to be gay' because men ‘were evil, but it’s not true' - ""There are good men out there guys, don’t give up," she said. "You don’t have to be gay, there are good people with (penises) out there, you just got to find them."... "I always thought I had to be gay 'cause I just thought, like, all guys were evil, but it’s not true. There are good people out there that just happen to have (penises)""
Feminism!

Meme - NPC: "Africa is underdeveloped because of colonialism"
"Colonialism started around 1600. By contrast, the University of Oxford had already been built by 1100"
NPC: *NPC Face*

Neon Trotsky on Twitter - "the CIA protesting a right wing president being installed by a foreign power might be the funniest thing that has ever happened"

ZUBY: on Twitter - "I'm fairly convinced that if you 'leveled the playing field' and gave everybody $25,000 to start, then within 5 years, most of the people who are currently rich would be rich again and those who are currently broke would be broke again. Not ALL. But most."

2010s: Humanity's Best Decade Yet - "28% OF ALL WEALTH EVER CREATED
EXTREME POVERTY HALVED
CHILD MORTALITY RATE REDUCED BY a THIRD
LIFE EXPECTANCY INCREASED FROM 69.5 TO 72.6 YEARS
COUNTRIES CRIMINALIZING SAME-SEX ACTS DOWN 40% TO 27%
COUNTRIES WITH LAWS PROTECTING WOMEN UP 53% TO 78%
DEATH RATE FROM POLLUTION DOWN 19%
WEATHER-RELATED DEATHS DECREASE 95% SINCE 1960s
PEAK STUFF - CONSUMPTION OF 66 OUT OF 72 RESOURCES IS DECLINING
NOT FREE COUNTRIES DOWN 34% TO 26%"

Tumblings Of A Random Fangirl - ">ancient evil awakens
>morals and ethics have changed so much in the last 10,000 years that the ancient evil is considered pretty moderate by todays standards."
"I will topple your empires and your kings. I will drain the wealth from your coffers, and elevate your serfs and servants until they stand on the same ground as the mightiest of emperors. Women shall freely speak their minds, unbound by the fetters you have set, and the lines between man and woman shall be hopelessly blurred and shattered into a thousand facets. Your children shall fall into one another regardless of sex or class or wealth and none shall raise a hand or a word against them. The age of crowns and boundaries and divine right shall end, and it shall fall to each human to choose their - wait - why - why are you cheering"