Links - 26th April 2020 (2)

Cosplay as "Local Malaysian Girl" at Tesco - YouTube

Edinburgh law student Robbie Travers who ridiculed Isis is accused of hate crime | News | The Times - "Edinburgh University is investigating a law student over claims that he mocked Islamic State on social media and put “minority students at risk and in a state of panic and fear”... One of his Facebook postings came after the US air force dropped a “massive ordnance air bomb” on an Isis stronghold in Afghanistan in April.Mr Travers wrote: “Excellent news that the US administration and Trump ordered an accurate strike on an IS network of tunnels in Afghanistan.“I’m glad we could bring these barbarians a step closer to collecting their 72 virgins.”Esme Allman, a second-year history student and the former black and ethnic minority convenor of the university’s students’ association, filed a complaint to the university. Another complaint, made on her behalf, said: “Not only do I believe this behaviour to be in breach of the student code of conduct, but his decision to target the BME Liberation Group at the University of Edinburgh, and how he has chosen to do so, puts minority students at risk and in a state of panic and fear while attending the University of Edinburgh.”... One of the complaints against Mr Travers says: “While I have not met him personally, given my matriculation at the University of Edinburgh, my membership of the Black and Minority Ethnic Liberation Group at the university, and how I identify personally, I take issue with this clear and persistent denigration and disparagement of protected characteristics and blatant Islamophobia.”Mr Travers said that Ms Allman’s complaint was hypocritical and posted a comment that she is alleged to have made in which black men were described as “trash”. In her own Facebook post, which has been seen by The Times, Ms Allman wrote: “To conclude, black men are trash. All men are trash.” The complaint on Allman's behalf said that “Travers published a decontextualised quote by Allman from a privileged conversation generated by minority students in a safe space he is neither subscribed to nor a member of, without her consent”.Mr Travers said that he would not “be intimidated into being silenced, and will continue to make criticism of hateful ideas, supremacist ideas and beyond regardless of any characteristic of the individual promoting the ideology”."
I thought ISIS had nothing to do with Islam
Does this mean that all minorities are Muslim?

Guy Travels 2,400 km to Surprise GF, Finds Her in Another Man’s Arms - "He was so excited to see his girlfriend and even prepared a beautiful surprise as he bought a teddy bear mascot to wear for the lovely moment."

Is Dentistry a Science? - The Atlantic - "Common dental procedures are not always as safe, effective, or durable as we are meant to believe. As a profession, dentistry has not yet applied the same level of self-scrutiny as medicine, or embraced as sweeping an emphasis on scientific evidence. “We are isolated from the larger health-care system. So when evidence-based policies are being made, dentistry is often left out of the equation”... Consider the maxim that everyone should visit the dentist twice a year for cleanings. We hear it so often, and from such a young age, that we’ve internalized it as truth. But this supposed commandment of oral health has no scientific grounding... Today, an increasing number of dentists acknowledge that adults with good oral hygiene need to see a dentist only once every 12 to 16 months. Many standard dental treatments—to say nothing of all the recent innovations and cosmetic extravagances—are likewise not well substantiated by research. Many have never been tested in meticulous clinical trials. And the data that are available are not always reassuring... Fluoridation of drinking water seems to help reduce tooth decay in children, but there is insufficient evidence that it does the same for adults. Some data suggest that regular flossing, in addition to brushing, mitigates gum disease, but there is only “weak, very unreliable” evidence that it combats plaque. As for common but invasive dental procedures, an increasing number of dentists question the tradition of prophylactic wisdom-teeth removal; often, the safer choice is to monitor unproblematic teeth for any worrying developments. Little medical evidence justifies the substitution of tooth-colored resins for typical metal amalgams to fill cavities. And what limited data we have don’t clearly indicate whether it’s better to repair a root-canaled tooth with a crown or a filling. When Cochrane researchers tried to determine whether faulty metal fillings should be repaired or replaced, they could not find a single study that met their standards. “The body of evidence for dentistry is disappointing,” says Derek Richards, the director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Dentistry at the University of Dundee, in Scotland. “Dentists tend to want to treat or intervene. They are more akin to surgeons than they are to physicians."... When physicians complete their residency, they typically work for a hospital, university, or large health-care organization with substantial oversight, strict ethical codes, and standardized treatment regimens. By contrast, about 80 percent of the nation’s 200,000 active dentists have individual practices, and although they are bound by a code of ethics, they typically don’t have the same level of oversight."

S’pore company lets you rent a date for S$60-S$200, no physical contact & only at public spaces - "Here’s Maybe.The concept appears to be modelled on sites like “Oh My Oppa”, where people rent a Korean guy to serve as a tour guide."

Lucas Lynch - "Would've loved to see what the Karen consensus on the Superbowl Halftime Show would've been if Lizzo or Missy Elliot had been the halftime featured artists, and the event featured them dancing in scantily clad outfits.Would the Seven Karen Army be screaming about objectification? Doubt it.Free sexual expression of women seems to be great, as long as they are unattractive in a traditional sense, for some weird reason.That this maps on to tendencies in female intrasexual competition I'm sure is just a total coincidence."

Lucas Lynch - "Superbowl LIII: *topless man* White Women: *Gushing*
Superbowl LIV: *2 women showing off* White Women: *Annoyed and making phone call*"
"The most true meme ever created does not exi...."

A freed terrorist strikes again: two stabbed in Streatham attack - "A terrorist wearing a fake suicide vest stabbed two people on a busy London high street on Sunday just days after his release from prison and while under surveillance by counterterrorism officers who shot him dead.Sudesh Amman, 20, had been automatically released from jail halfway through a three years and four month prison sentence for possessing a bomb making manual.Government sources on Sunday night admitted that there had been concerns about his behaviour but they were powerless to keep him behind bars... Up to 180 convicted Islamist terrorists have been released early from jail in the past two decades, analysis shows, and the Telegraph warned that Amman was due for release in the wake of the London Bridge attack... Amman was shot dead by plain clothes officers who had been following him within eight seconds of stabbing his first victim in the back in Streatham... Sunday's attack will raise questions about how a terrorist apparently under 24-hour surveillance was able to attack innocent people in broad daylight on a busy high street... The knife obsessed college student had been jailed for 3 years and four months in December 2018 after sharing an al-Qaeda magazine in a family WhatsApp group and had reached the automatic halfway release point in his sentence, including time served on remand."
I wonder what the manpower cost of following all these released terrorists is - quite apart from the harm of reoffending

Dainy Radical Love Bernstein on Twitter - "Still a powerful cartoon!" *Cartoon showing a GOP man smothering Justice*"
"Please be careful with sharing this image, it is very triggering for many of us to suddenly see a graphic image of a woman being held down like that.(Suffering a mild panic attack now.)"
Not a parody. How do these people live everyday life?

CNN Condemns D-Day Soldiers For Lack Of Diversity | The Babylon Bee - "Everyone was really happy that the Allied forces stopped Hitler. Everyone, that is, except CNN, who published a retrospective on the war this week, zeroing in on the real issue of Operation Overlord: no gay female trans POCs in any of the units."

How Serbian Immigrants Made an Ohio Town the ‘Fried Chicken Capital of the World' - "You can only try pahovana piletina in two places. One is Vojvodina, Serbia, where the unique style of fried chicken was born. The other is Ohio, where “Barberton-style fried chicken,” as it’s known there, became one small town’s claim to fame. What started as a comforting meal for an immigrant family came to define a community, turning a humble Ohio town into the “Fried Chicken Capital of the World.”... you fry the chicken low and slow in pork lard for 20 minutes... This “porcine baptism,” writes John T. Edge, author of Fried Chicken: An American Story, leaves the chicken “sheathed in a crisp but slightly chewy mantle.” Papich says the frying method leaves the poultry with soft, porky notes"

Socialist Venezuela Proposes To Privatize Its Collapsing Oil Industry - "Venezuela sits atop the world's largest proved reserves of petroleum, even bigger than Saudi Arabia's. In 2007, Venezuela's Bolivarian socialist government under President Hugo Chavez seized without compensation the assets of several private American oil production and service companies then operating in that country. In those heady days, global oil prices were ascending and would eventually peak in July 2008 above $132 per barrel. This oil price boom boosted Venezuela's GDP per capita to nearly $15,000 annually, thus bolstering Chavez's political popularity. But peak oil fears abated as they always do when demand draws forth more supply, causing prices to fall.In the succeeding years, socialist efficiency has had its totally predictable effects on the Bolivarian Republic's oil industry... This offer may be less than tempting to Big Oil since the Bolivarian Republic still owes billions to the oil companies whose property it seized 10 years ago."
Damn US sanctions!

Florida police make traffic stop and find bag full of drugs labeled 'Bag Full Of Drugs'

Is Paying a Premium for European Foods Worth It? - "Take Parmigiano-Reggiano, the Italian PDO and world-renowned hard cheese made with raw cow's milk. True Parmesan's sharp, nutty taste comes from the breed of cows, says Paxson, what they eat, the seasonality of the production cycle and the microbial environment where the cheeses are aged. “And then there's the skill embedded in these culinary traditions and this cuisine,” she says. “Does Parmigiano-Reggiano taste different from a similar cheese produced in Wisconsin? Of course it does.”Spanish olive oil is another prime example. According to Davis, Spain is much hotter and drier than Italy and Greece, leading to less bacteria growth on the olives, as well as less insects—including fruit flies. “This means the use of less pesticides for both a cleaner olive, and a cleaner oil,” he says. As with wine, dry and warm climates can stress the vines—something that in small quantities is good for the fruit and leads to a much more concentrated and stronger extra-virgin olive oil flavor profile... While Matt Accarrino, head chef at San Francisco's Michelin-starred SPQR, concedes that no great substitutes really exist for Parmigiano-Reggiano or balsamic vinegar of Modena (not currently on the EU tariff list), he maintains that a lot of how you experience food has to do with your environment, such as eating maple syrup taffies at a sugar shack in Quebec or sipping Scottish whisky at a distillery on the Isle of Islay... tariffs like these also offer both restaurateurs and consumers an opportunity to stop and reflect. “A lot of food is how it makes you feel,” he says, “and many of us have an emotional connection to French wine or Italian cheese,” from a Paris vacation we once took or an unforgettable meal. “These 'legacy foods' may serve as benchmarks and reference points [for our culinary experiences], but to rely on them solely?” Accarrino already incorporates ingredients like locally foraged sea urchin, and bacon and quail eggs from Bay Area producers into SPQR's dishes, because “I'm very conscious that we're an Italian-inspired restaurant in San Francisco. Italians from Puglia in the south don't cook with cheeses from northern Italy. They use what's in their own backyard. I think that these kinds of tariffs bring into light that sort of culinary cycle where you can say, 'what do we have right here?'”"
We need double blind taste tests