Links - 14th April 2020 (1)

The Simpsons Voice Actor Will No Longer Play Apu - "Hank Azaria, the voice actor responsible for iconic Simpsons voices like Moe, Chief Wiggum, and Comic Book Guy, will be dropping one famous character from his repertoire: Apu... Apu is an Indian immigrant in The Simpsons who runs the Kiwk-E-Mart convenience store in Springfield. The character has come under controversy since comedian Hari Kondabolu released his 2017 documentary, The Problem with Apu, which dove deep into the character and representation... it’s unclear whether Apu will be phased out of the show or if someone else will be voicing the character going forward."
If you can't achieve anything, you can still be known for destroying something else

mirax on Twitter - "Deeply unfunny comic with self-esteem issues uses race card to silence a fictional character who was not only loveable but witty and funny. #slowclap."

Wisconsin students walk out to protest racial slur firing - Los Angeles Times - "Students at a Wisconsin high school skipped class Friday and marched through the streets of the state capital to protest the firing of a black security guard who was terminated for repeating a racial slur while telling a student not to call him that word... Madison schools have a zero-tolerance policy on employees saying racial slurs"
Meanwhile white academics who use the word in an academic context get fired and everyone cheers

Kathy Bates: 'I told Clint that after 50 years, I feel like I've hit the big time' - "“About people like Weinstein and the casting couch and all of that,” she says, “I have a confession. In my day, if you went up to a guy’s hotel room, you knew exactly why you were going and in those days it was consensual... I’m not happy about the men who are being accused falsely"... “I hate to complain about it, but never being considered the romantic lead – which is fine, I’m over that, been there, done that – means they look at me in a different way. But then I look at my friends who are beautiful girls but not working after 40 – very few of them. Well, Nicole Kidman is … She is the spokesperson for the Lymphatic Education & Research Network. “I spoke before the American Society of Breast Surgeons and it’s so hard to convince them – Nobel laureates! I gave them these statistics and there were gasps in that room.” Though she likes Twitter, she mostly uses it for getting the word out about the condition. “I joined in 2011 and initially used it to engage with fans and then it got to be so time-consuming that I had to cut back. Then after a couple of unpleasant experiences with fans I rarely use it and I don’t get sucked into provocative tweets.”"

The Most Successful Ethnic Group in the U.S. May Surprise You - "Today, 29 percent of Nigerian-Americans over the age of 25 hold a graduate degree, compared to 11 percent of the overall U.S. population, according to the Migrations Policy Institute. Among Nigerian-American professionals, 45 percent work in education services, the 2016 American Community Survey found, and many are professors at top universities. Nigerians are entering the medical field in the U.S. at an increased rate, leaving their home country to work in American hospitals, where they can earn more and work in better facilities... [they are] confidently emerging as one of the country’s most succesful immigrant communities, with a median household income of $62,351, compared to $57,617 nationally, as of 2015... Nigerians have also achieved a lot in their country of origin... Anyone from the Nigerian diaspora will tell you their parents gave them three career choices: doctor, lawyer or engineer"
The power of white supremacy!

Laurence Fox broke up with ‘too woke’ girlfriend for supporting Gillette toxic masculinity advert - "Laurence Fox has revealed he once broke up with a girlfriend for being “too woke” and said women like her are “primed” to be victims... he and his ex also argued because she was a vocal supporter of Christine Blasey Ford, who in 2018 accused the then-US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in high school in 1982... The actor’s comments come days after he came under fire for accusing a woman of racism for calling him a “white privileged male” on Question Time. Fox also described the race row surrounding the Duchess of Sussex as “boring”."

The ‘anti-woke’ backlash is no joke – and progressives are going to lose if they don’t wise up | Ellie Mae O’Hagan - "a significant chunk of the audience groaned as soon as the phrase “white privilege” was uttered. Fox was not the only person in that studio who was weary of contemporary antiracist discourse, and he wasn’t the only person willing to show it... The progressive tendency to regard “anti-woke” crusaders as aberrations is a hangover from the liberal consensus established in the late 90s... The reason liberals still believe this consensus holds is that the politics New Labour ushered in was so dominant and all-encompassing that almost every opinion that existed outside of it was dismissed as the view of cranks... social liberalism was not merely a popular point of view: it was the new normal. It was also fundamentally modernising. The idea of these newly founded values being contested would have seemed like time going backwards... Progressives need to wise up to the fact that they are losing this argument and decide what they are going to do in response. If they don’t, they may soon find that the future they always assumed was theirs is being made without them. Or as Florian Philippot, senior strategist to Marine Le Pen, tweeted after Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton: “Their world is collapsing. Ours is being built.”"
She ignores the fact that Gen Z is more conservative than milennials, or that the newly founded values were indeed contested - as not being liberal enough, resulting in a backlash to the excesses of liberalism (but then, this is The Guardian after all - that there is even a degree of reflexivity is surprising)

Why warm milk is getting a cool reception - "Shelf-stable milk, also known as ambient or UHT (ultra high temperature) milk, is a grocery staple in Europe and other parts in the world where fridge space is often limited. Unopened packages of the stuff can be kept at room temperature for months without spoiling, since the milk is heated to extremely high temperatures and packaged in aseptic containers.In Canada, ingrained cultural preferences make shelf-stable milk a tough sell. We tend to like our milk cold, fresh, and bought from a refrigerated dairy aisle... "The freshest form of milk that you can find in the world, which comes right out of a cow, is warm."... Just because shelf-stable milk can be stored at room temperature doesn't mean it must be consumed lukewarm. Mr. Djamgouz says one of the challenges is making consumers think of it as they would beer; most wouldn't hesitate buying beer at room-temperature, then chilling it before serving. But with shelf-stable milk, he says, "They automatically think that they need to drink it warm." Another major obstacle is consumers' distrust of dairy that doesn't deteriorate."Somehow, shelf-stability in consumers' mind can be associated with chemical treatment"... An influx of immigrants who grew up on shelf-stable milk has made it easier for the brand to grow in Ontario, Mr. Sheehy says, noting that in Europe, roughly 98 per cent of the milk market is UHT... Those who've grown up on the stuff, however, tend to prefer it"

Linguists Hear an Accent Begin - Scientific American - "“Accent development is the first step in language change. Fifteen hundred years ago, languages like English, Dutch and Swedish were actually all dialects of the same language. But of course, then they diversified over time.”... Harrington and his team turned to members of the British Antarctic Survey, who speak with a variety of English accents.“When you are in Antarctica during the winter period, then there’s no way in, and there’s no way out. So they were isolated together, and they interacted with each other, and they have to cooperate with each other.”Harrington’s team recorded the winterers reciting a list of words before they left for Antarctica. Then, while there, the winterers recorded themselves saying the same words four more times. The linguists then analyzed the recordings—in particular, resonances: the way airflow shapes sound."

How much do we really know about why we give to charity? - "One recent study estimates the British, for example, donate 54p in every £100. That's three times more than the Germans but three times less than Americans give.By my reckoning, that's also roughly what Britons spend on beer, not much less than they spend on meat and three times what they spend on bread.In economic significance, the charity fundraiser is up there with the butcher, brewer and baker... advertising executives interviewed for the Guardian newspaper. Images of starving children don't rack up many "likes" on social media, they say, build your brand instead, engage and entertain.  Economists have also studied what motivates donations. One theory is called "signalling": we donate in part to impress other people. That might explain the enduring popularity of wristbands, ribbons and stickers: they display not only the causes that matter to us but our generosity too... attractive young women who asked for donations fared much better - about as well as the lottery sellers. As the study drily acknowledges: "This result is largely driven by increased participation rates among households where a male answered the door."That's evidence for the signalling theory of altruism - and you can see exactly what kind of pretty young lady these gentlemen were keen to signal to... if charities are selling a warm glow and the ability to send social signals, that doesn't give them much incentive to do anything useful. They just have to tell us a good story... The economists Dean Karlan and Daniel Wood wondered whether evidence of effectiveness would improve fundraising, and worked with a charity to find out.Some supporters got a typical mailshot, an emotional story about an individual beneficiary called Sebastiana. "She's known nothing but abject poverty her entire life," it read.Others got the same story but with an additional paragraph noting that "rigorous scientific methodologies" confirmed the charity's impact.The results? Some people who'd previously given big donations seemed impressed and gave more. But that was cancelled out by small donors giving less. Merely mentioning science seemed to have punctured the emotional appeal and cooled the warm glow.And this may explain why GiveWell hasn't even tried to assess the household names of the charity world - the likes of Oxfam, Save The Children, and World Vision.In an exasperated-sounding blog post, the organisation explains such charities "tend to publish a great deal of web content aimed at fundraising but very little of interest for impact-oriented donors". "

The accidental Singer sewing machine revolution - "Gillette adverts stand against toxic masculinity. Budweiser makes specially-decorated cups to encourage non-binary and gender-fluid people to feel pride in their identity.These examples of so-called "woke capitalism"- of corporations promoting progressive social causes - may feel ostentatiously up-to-the-moment. But woke capitalism is not as new as you might think."

Part of Real Paleo Diet: It's a Tuber - Scientific American - "I think the people who assume the paleo diet was based on protein simply haven’t done their homework properly"

Gift-Wrapping Effects on Product Attitudes: A Mood-Biasing Explanation - "Two questions were addressed. First, does gift wrapping an item have a favorable influence on attitudes toward owning what is received? Results of all four experiments consistently support an affirmative answer to that question. Second, what explains the attitudinal results? I argued that gift wrapping, through repeated pairing with joyous events in people's lives, has utility in cuing a happy mood which, in turn, positively biases attitudes. Results of the last three experiments support this mood biasing position by demonstrating that a happy mood consistently mediates gift-wrapping effects on attitudes"

Moths Flee or Face Bats, Depending on Toxicity - Scientific American - ""those species which were really toxic—so when the bats captured them, they almost never ate them—those species were much more likely to be what we call nonchalant, species that do not perform evasive maneuvers very often. On the other hand, species that were really palatable were much more likely to perform those evasive maneuvers, almost, in a sense, sort of hedging their bets. Be"cause if they don’t make that escape, if they are captured by a bat, those species are more likely to be eaten.”Another factor is that evasive maneuvers have their own set of risks, which may be why unpalatable moths tend to avoid them. For example, diving away from bats burns fuel, gives the insects less time to seek out mates and could expose them to other perils, such as getting stuck in water.“Or there could be predators on the ground like mice and other mammals... Dowdy is now trying to identify the chemical compounds responsible for making some tiger moths taste bad. Once those findings are in, chemical analysis of museum specimens could help reveal how rare, endangered or even extinct insects have behaved around predators.  “We can still study animal behavior even without a living organism. That’s, I think, pretty amazing.”  Other animals with conspicuous warning signals, such as garishly colored poison dart frogs and foul-smelling skunks are also known to be slow movers”

Certain Zip Codes Pick Losers - Scientific American - "people who buy products destined to fail—like Crystal Pepsi—also buy other duds... certain customers kept buying products most other people didn’t want. In a follow-up experiment, they found that those people also tended to purchase more unpopular, niche items at a clothing retailer. But it goes further. These same people bought homes that appreciated less than other homes. And what’s more, they were more likely to support political candidates who lost. All of which indicates that these people—who, based on zip codes, also tend to live near each other—consistently pick losers... the neighborhoods tend to be suburban, with lower household income, less educated residents and more single parents. People there also use a lot of coupons, and more of them are white than are the residents of other zip codes.  As to why these zip codes pick losing candidates or products? It’s possible they’re just not as engaged as other consumers.  “One of the things we looked at is: Are these people less likely to write product reviews? The answer is yes. If they write reviews, do they tend to be shorter reviews? And the answer is yes.”"