Links - 14th April 2020 (2)

How Many Prince Charleses Can There Be in One Room? (Ep. 401) - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "DUCKWORTH: So my husband thinks that the great irony is that I have spent my entire professional career studying everything other than I.Q. In fact, my doctoral dissertation is called Non-I.Q. Predictors of Success. It’s got a hyphen in it. Non hyphen I.Q."

Existential Comics on Twitter - "Big congrats to all the people giving up on their New Years resolutions right around now. As Jean-Paul Sartre reminds us, allowing past decisions to control our actions is a bad faith denial of our transcendent radical freedom"

Eccentrik Hat on Twitter - "Feminist approach to men’s mental health:
“Kill all men”
“The future is female”
“Toxic Masculinity”
“I drink male tears”
“Masculinity so fragile”
“Mansplaining, manspreading, manterrupting”
“Male, pale and stale”
“Oh no, he committed suicide. Shame ... we tried so hard to help”"

Activist acquitted because Quebec City prosecutors were incapable of holding trial in English - "Steve Marquis, the chief Crown prosecutor for Quebec City, told Judge Pierre Bordeleau that neither he nor any of his available colleagues were capable of presenting the prosecution's arguments in English. (Singh, who is fluently bilingual, had requested a trial in English.) Marquis - who told the judge that the original prosecutor in the case, who could proceed in English, was on maternity leave - asked for a delay in the proceedings, which Bordeleau denied. The judge then acquitted Singh on the two charges, obstruction of justice and impersonation, that he was facing. Singh, 49, a veteran activist, was arrested Aug. 20, 2017, at an anti-fascist counter-protest to an alt-right gathering. When arrested, Singh told police his name was Michel Goulet (the name of an old Quebec Nordiques player) and said he resided in La Colisee (the Nordiques' old arena)."

Academic Probed Over Paper Praising His Adviser’s Marriage - "In a 2013 paper published in China’s Journal of Glaciology and Geocryology, Xu Zhongmin included information irrelevant to the topic of ecological economics by inserting details on the ecosystem of his adviser Cheng Guodong’s relationship with his wife, Zhang Youfen... In an interview with The Paper, Xu defended his approach, saying his adviser’s marriage was “an example” to prove the “development theory” of his paper. The study was part of a 2 million yuan ($290,000) research project on the Heihe River Basin... The questionable content of Xu’s paper comes at a time when Chinese academia is plagued with cases of plagiarism, fake peer reviews, and other academic misconduct. In November, the scientific community became alarmed after Cao Xuetao, a high-profile academician, was called out for apparent discrepancies in his research."

The 5 worst shopping malls in Singapore - "Alas, money can’t buy soul. Even during Christmas time, The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands lacks warmth. There’s a pretentious, plastic feel to the place; from the overly grand architecture, to the crass consumerism of high-end brands placed end-to-end.The service staff of these high-end boutiques, although competent for sure, seem to play the part. They tend to place more emphasis on projecting elegance and dignity than friendliness, to an extent that it becomes hard to tell how much of the cold in here can be attributed to air-conditioning."

The Most and Least Expensive Cars to Maintain - "Luxury imports from Germany, such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz, along with domestic luxury brand Cadillac, are the most expensive. A Toyota is about $10,000 less expensive over 10 years, just in terms of maintenance.Toyota is by far the most economical manufacturer. Scion and Lexus, the second and third most inexpensive brands, are both Toyota subsidiaries. Together, all three are 10% below the median cost. Most domestic brands, like Ford and Dodge, are in the middle of the pack.  While luxury cars call for the most expensive maintenance, many budget vehicles rank relatively high. Kia, an entry-level brand, surprises with maintenance costs 1.3 times the median. In this case, sticker prices don't represent maintenance costs."

Why buying a 10-year-old car is a savvy move - "The graphic, shown below, indicates that the cheapest thing to do is to buy a 10-year-old used vehicle, keep it for five years, and then repeat. The most expensive approach is buy a brand new car, keep it for five years, and then do that again. Is it ever cheaper to go with a brand new car rather than a used car?Yes. The graphic indicates that if you buy new and keep that ride for 20 years, that will cost you less than buying a three-year-old used vehicle that you drive for 15 years."
From Reddit analysis

NTU Once Rejected Canadian's Application For Chinese Course, Because He Was Chinese - "Derek Leung, a Canadian-born Chinese man, never got the chance to study his mother tongue growing up in Canada... Mr Leung ended up settling for another module after a course coordinator told him that his family background made it unfair."

Don’t throw out old, sprouting garlic — it has heart-healthy antioxidants - "“Sprouted” garlic — old garlic bulbs with bright green shoots emerging from the cloves — is considered to be past its prime and usually ends up in the garbage can. But scientists are reporting in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry that this type of garlic has even more heart-healthy antioxidant activity than its fresher counterparts."
And apparently it's not that bitter too, especially after you cook it

Sheep facial recognition: Funding helps bring software one step closer - "As more farmers moved towards management technologies such as digital scales and automatic drafting gates, a reliable low-cost method of identification was essential...  Future applications for the technology were broad and included tracking animal locations to prevent stock rustling, monitoring animal behaviour, estimating weight, diseases, welfare, or other characteristics, or estimating parentage without the need to observe lambing or do DNA parentage testing.  Other projects included a pasture quality system and optimising fertiliser application."

Wachete - Monitor web changes - "Monitor website or entire portal for changes
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Monitor pages which require to enter login and password or submission of values."
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Visualping: #1 Website change detection, monitoring and alerts - "We monitor webpages… so you don't have to!
Select an area and relax: We’ll send you an email alert when something changes"
Max 65 checks per month (you can check daily, weekly or monthly for each page)

Indie game dev sees big boost in sales after he uploads it to The Pirate Bay - "Danger Gazers, "a post-apocalyptic roguelite top-down shooter" released earlier this month that saw a big boost in sales after its developer uploaded it to The Pirate Bay.Danger Gazers is $10 on Steam, but if you don't feel like dropping a tenner, that's okay too. "This torrent was officially brought to you by ShotX. This is the latest DRM-free version of Danger Gazers (1.1.0), there's no catch here, no Steam only features, just the fully functional game," the torrent description says. "As a developer, my only request would be to consider supporting and buying in case you like Danger Gazers and want more indie games in the future."The developer, Shota Bobokhidze, went deeper into his reasons for sharing the game on TPB last week on Reddit. "There are people who can't afford the game, some want to play the game before buying, some that never buy games. Just trying to help those people out and make the best of the situation"

Christopher Tolkien dead: Son of Lord of the Rings author JRR dies aged 95 - "Christopher Tolkien, the son of Lord Of The Rings author JRR Tolkien, has died aged 95, the Tolkien Society has said.Christopher continued his father's work after his death and was an accomplished author in his own right.He has been credited with keeping his father's legacy alive and spawning the field of 'Tolkien studies'. Without him readers enraptured by the stories of Middle Earth may not have had any more than the four novels from JRR to enjoy... Christopher was also a translator and helped bring epic legendary sagas from historical periods to modern readers.One of these works was the Saga of Hervör and Heidrek, a legendary saga from the 13th century which Christopher translated from Icelandic.It was one of the historic works which inspired JRR's mythical legends of Middle Earth... Christopher criticised director Peter Jackson's film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy in an interview with French publication Le Monde, even doubting whether they could retain the beauty and essence of his father's books. He said: "They gutted the book, making it an action movie for 15-25 year-olds."

Peter Jackson To Honor Christopher Tolkien With 578-Film Adaptation Of 'The Silmarillion' | The Babylon Bee

Apple may have to abandon Lightning connector cable - "If the regulator enforces its proposed regulation, Apple devices sold in Europe would be required to have a new charging method.It is likely Apple would then adopt USB-C, considering the company's 2019 iPad Pro ditched Lightning in favour of the technology... The European Commission has been campaigning for a single charging method for the past decade.There were more than 30 types of charger on the market in 2009, but that number has since been reduced to just three.The regulator is determined to cut down on electronic waste being created by obsolete cables, which it estimates generate more than 51,000 tonnes of waste per year... Apple, along with 10 other leading tech giants such as Nokia and Samsung, signed a memorandum of understanding in 2009.They pledged to provide micro-USB compatible chargers for consumers.However, Apple took advantage of a loophole that allowed manufacturers to continue using their own chargers if they offered an adaptor... Some analysts are even predicting that Apple could scrap its charging ports altogether by releasing future iPhone and iPad models that rely solely on wireless charging."
I saw people slamming this as being against the free market

Most scientists 'can't replicate studies by their peers' - "According to a survey published in the journal Nature last summer, more than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments... The reproducibility difficulties are not about fraud, according to Dame Ottoline Leyser, director of the Sainsbury Laboratory at the University of Cambridge.That would be relatively easy to stamp out. Instead, she says: "It's about a culture that promotes impact over substance, flashy findings over the dull, confirmatory work that most of science is about.""

Ex-NTU valedictorian under probe for allegedly cheating 73 friends of $800k for breast enhancement treatments - "Ms Alexandra Low, a former financial analyst, is believed to have borrowed money under various pretexts, such as having to make a down payment for a house"

Who’s Really Killing Singapore’s Bookstores? - "As much as we might like to wallow in self-derogatory criticism about how the only culture Singaporeans have is of a bacterial nature, official statistics report otherwise. The National Library Board’s 2016 National Readings Habits Study found that almost 7 in 10 Singaporeans have read at least 1 book in the last 12 months—this is a higher proportion than in some Western European countries like Spain... Sales, revenues, and total number of publications across the world are still rising annually, despite detractors announcing the death of the book at the hands of social media, Netflix, or whatever new technological advancement... Admit it: you’ve walked into Kinokuniya, inhaled the smell of new books to rejuvenate your shriveled soul, eye-fucked the latest titles by Amanda Lee Koe or Margaret Atwood, only to return home to add them to your Book Depository cart.The next day, when you read about MPH’s impending exit from the Singapore market, you beat your breast, wail, and write a moving eulogy about the inexplicable death of bookstores in Singapore...  “Publishers sell the same book at different prices in different markets. What Amazon can do is they buy books from the cheapest place, usually India, and sell it all over the world.”Such a procurement strategy has led to the strange situation in which “international publishers in Singapore can actually find their book online on Amazon for cheaper than their staff rate”... some books we find on the shelves of bookstores, according to Edmund, “have no right to be sold here”.  “Books have territorial rights. If I publish an author, I have the Singapore or world right. In the case of America, most of them only have US right, so the book cannot be sold in Singapore. But because Singapore signed a free trade agreement, we have an open market, and anybody can bring in anything here.”... “Globally, special VAT/GST/Sales Tax treatment for publications is the norm, not the exception, among the countries with VAT/GST/Sales Tax regimes. The large majority (84%) of the countries surveyed, established a favourable tax regime for paper books.”... The book industry in other countries is highly regulated. Book prices are standardised—it’s why, at the back of any international edition of a book, you find that little box (noticeably absent on Singapore-published books) stating the price of the book in various currencies. Bookstores are obligated to sell the books at these prices, no more no less.In countries like Japan, bookstores are not even allowed to give discounts on books. Meanwhile in Singapore, we have shops that run eternal sales. Such measures to control the market might seem draconian or economically illiberal. But books aren’t just inert consumer goods. Books serve as cultural artifacts that reify the identity of a nation; they have positive externalities in their potential to generate “broader society benefits in the form of education, [literacy,] … higher rates of political participation,” and so on.These reasons justify the National Arts Council’s dispensation of grants to authors, publishers, and arts organisations in general.Why not grants for bookstores too, then?"
I suppose worshipping bookstores is a natural outgrowth of worshipping books