Links - 13th June 2020 (1)

Gingerswappingresponse - Posts - "New BBC Drama will show world where White people are slaves to Black rulers"
"Is it about the Barbary slave trade? Between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 19th centuries."
"That awkward moment when the BBC got so woke that somehow ended up being historically accurate by accident"

Diabetes: Scientists use human cells to cure disease in mice - "The mice were given severe diabetes using a substance known as streptozotocin, but human cells implanted in the animals were able to control their blood sugar levels, curing the disease."

Cracked.com - Posts - "Private prison threatens to close unless state or federal officials fill up 300 more beds"
"In any sane country, having to shut down a prison due to lack of criminals would be a success. But supply creates its own demand!"

Private prison demands New Mexico and feds find 300 more prisoners in 60 days or it will close - "county officials issued a statement citing the threatened closure and emphasized that every virtually every politician in the region, from county officials to state officials to congressmen, were scurrying to save jobs—as opposed to shutting a privatized prison by an operator that has been sued many times for sexual harassment, sexual assault, deaths, use of force, physical assaults, medical care, injuries and civil rights violations... This is a perfect snapshot of what’s upside-down with privatization: the lack of economic opportunities and politicians who genuflect at providing jobs, regardless of the larger social implications, pushing law enforcement into the dirty business of ramping up arrests and convictions so private firms and shareholders can make more money."

Democracy in Africa: success stories that have defied the odds - "Countries such as Benin, Botswana, Ghana, Namibia, Mauritius, Senegal and South Africa have not only become beacons of political rights and civil liberties, they have done so against the greatest of obstacles. These experiences teach us important lessons about where democracy can work, and why... A cohesive national identity is likely to make it easier to maintain national unity, while wealth and economic success have been found to promote political stability. A strong national infrastructure, underpinned by respect for the rule of law, means that the government is likely to be effective without being abusive. And, a vibrant middle class and powerful civil society are usually seen as important to promote accountability and responsive government.What is remarkable about the democratisation of African states is that most did not enjoy a single one of these “pre-conditions”... With the exception of Botswana, they are all diverse multi-ethnic societies in which the question of national identity has been problematic. In Ghana and Mauritius for instance, ethnic identities have historically played a role in structuring political networks. This increased the tension around elections. It is striking that, with the exception of Benin and possibly Senegal, these democracies have grown stronger during a period in which the world is supposed to be backsliding on democracy... Some might be tempted to think that the role of the global community has been critical in keeping governments on the straight and narrow. But in reality, democracy is built from within, as the fact that aid-dependent countries such as Uganda and Rwanda have remained firmly authoritarian shows only too well."

Douglas Chow - How superstition or a poor excuse can sabo u big... - " Ms Soh, a shareholder of the Korean restaurant chain, said: "When our lawyers found out that she replaced herself with her elderly illiterate mother as the sole director of her 20 companies and put up her Wilkinson Road bungalow for sale, we decided to freeze all her assets in case she dissipates everything and leaves us with a useless paper judgment."Ms Lena Sim said she had done so at the advice of a fengshui master after her business took a dive.And because she listened to her fengshui master, she was served a Mareva injunction in February, which saw the banks freezing her accounts. Ms Sim said she was unable to make payments to her food suppliers and landlords. Some suppliers have already stopped delivering ingredients to her restaurants.On Friday night, two of the chain's outlets - Ju Hao at Bukit Panjang Plaza and MOF Izakaya at Lot One - were repossessed by CapitaLand after she failed to pay rent. That was the last MOF outlet."

WWI helmet provides better blast protection than new US model: Study - "A helmet used by French soldiers in World War I provided better protection from overhead blasts than a modern American model... "While we found that all helmets provided a substantial amount of protection against blast, we were surprised to find that the 100-year-old helmets performed just as well as modern ones"

Would you kill one person to save five? Depends if you’re a millennial or not - "Across all countries, the average endorsement rate for the footbridge sacrifice was 51 per cent. It was higher in most western countries (61 per cent in the US; 56 per cent in Ireland). In contrast, most Asian countries were below average, with just 32 per cent of Chinese people finding the footbridge sacrifice morally acceptable.The report tries to explain what accounts for this cross-cultural difference? Is it average income? Levels of individualism? Religiosity? The authors suggest a different variable at play: relational mobility (RM), or the ease with which people in a given society can develop new relationships.Pushing someone off a bridge is the sort of thing that would give you a bad reputation in your community. But in a society where you can develop new friends the risk of being ostracised is reduced. Or as the report puts it, “People in low relational mobility societies may be less likely to express and even hold attitudes that send a negative social signal.”... Something has been lost in recent years – a sense of honour perhaps, or a religious attachment to fate. Something also has been gained – unemotional, technology-driven logic. Whether you find this concerning may depend on your historical perspective, given so many atrocities of recent decades have been conducted in a spirit of the ends justifying the means.
The Koran says if you kill a human being, it is like killing all mankind but if you save one you save all mankind. So should I kill one to save five?"

New Costa Rica photos raise questions about Trudeau's vacation spending - "Over the past few days, Trudeau has been criticized for spending large sums of taxpayer money for non-governmental business, as well as for having a large carbon footprint for taking the trip down south. In comparison, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was photographed coming back from his vacation in economy class."

Gad Saad - Posts - "Paris police attacker reportedly ran web search on killing 'infidels' before rampage"
"We may never know his true motives. We need to exhibit nuanced thinking. Likely due to paleo-ketogenic, socioethological, bio-botanical reasons"

Is Bernie Sanders the American Version of Jeremy Corbyn? - "One of the many problems with the concept of intersectionality is that it largely precludes activism on behalf of any single minority. Any particular identity is immediately overwhelmed by a variety of additional identities that supplant, complicate, or qualify it. And all these identities have their own hierarchy of oppressors and the oppressed, splintering them still further.And so it is with what was once the gay-rights movement. A simple defense of the rights and freedom of homosexuals — people, biologically male and female, who are attracted to their own sex — has become impossible in an intersectional framework... this is key, it seems to me, in understanding why “LGBTQ” activists have revealed such hostility to a figure like Pete Buttigieg. He does not deserve their support because he is white, male, cis, Christian, and has managed to be extraordinarily successful in life as well as politics. That places him quite high up on the oppressor matrix, his gayness notwithstanding... The first serious, openly gay candidate for the presidency does not represent “progress,” because he actually threatens “queer survival” — whatever that latter term actually means. In fact, Pete is, in their eyes, a regression — not because of his politics (which are very liberal), but simply because of his whiteness, maleness, cis-ness, and extraordinary talent. Queers should support a woman, a racial minority, a trans person, a disabled person, before they should support a white cis gay man... Yes, Pete Buttigieg is in “alignment” with “white supremacy.” And that is a far more important thing to know about him than his homosexuality. What Pete has revealed, in other words, is that the gay-rights movement is dead. There are simply too many intersectional identities within the category of being gay to contain them in a movement simply for “gay rights.” What that means is that no gay organization can simply be about gays anymore. It has to be about race, class, gender, ability, immigration status, HIV status, and gender identity. Which means that it has to be indistinguishable from every other intersectional movement. At some point, well-meaning but naïve white, cis, gay men will come to understand that the movement they are largely funding is dedicated to their demonization and marginalization. And maybe, those not wedded to intersectional ideology will eventually decide to stop cutting the checks that makes this possible."
And yet, we are told, liberals don't hate white people, men, cis people and Christians. But if you hate success...
Intersectinality poisons everything

Romanticizing the Hunter-Gatherer - "In 1966, at the ‘Man the Hunter’ symposium held at the University of Chicago, anthropologist Richard B. Lee presented a paper that would radically rewrite how academics and the public at large interpret life in hunter-gatherer societies. Questioning the notion that the hunter-gatherer way of life is a “precarious and arduous struggle for existence,” Lee instead described a society of relative comfort and abundance... It’s not often that you see a 50-year-old paper repeatedly referenced in mainstream publications, but you can find mentions of Lee’s work pretty much everywhere today... It is when you look into the data on mortality rates, and dig through diverse ethnographic accounts, that you realize how badly mistaken claims about an “original affluent society” really are.While you’ll read much about Lee’s work in the popular press, you’ll find little on his critics. Anthropologists Henry Harpending and LuAnn Wandsnider wrote, “Lee’s (1968, 1969, 1979) studies of !Kung diet and caloric intake have generated a misleading belief among anthropologists and others that !Kung are well fed and under little or no nutritional stress.”... Across hunter-gatherer societies, only about 57% of children born survive to the age of 15. Sedentary populations of forager-horticulturalists, and acculturated hunter-gatherers, have a greater number of children surviving into adulthood, with 64% and 67%, respectively, surviving to the age of 15... But what about egalitarianism? In a 2004 study, Michael Gurven marshals an impressive amount of cross-cultural data and notes that hunters tend to keep more of their kill for themselves and their families than they share with others... In the realm of reproductive success, hunter-gatherers are even more unequal than modern industrialized populations, exhibiting what is called “greater reproductive skew,” with males having significantly larger variance in reproductive success than females... polygynous marriage is practiced in the majority of hunter-gatherer societies for which there are data. Across these societies, the average age at marriage for females is only 13.8, while the average age at marriage for males is 20.7. Rather than defending what would be considered child marriage in contemporary Western societies, anthropologists often omit mentioning this information entirely... among the Mardu hunter-gatherers of Australia, “Mardu men accord themselves greater ritual responsibility, higher status, more power, and more rights than women. It is a society in which male interests generally prevail when rights are contested and in the centrally important arena of religious life.”... 11 of these 15 societies have homicide rates higher than that of the most violent modern nation, and 14 out of the 15 have homicide rates higher than that of the United States in 2016. The one exception, the Batek of Malaysia, have a long history of being violently attacked and enslaved by neighboring groups, and developed a survival tactic of running away and studiously avoiding conflict... “…the Batek frequently recount their nostalgic memories of British doctors, administrators and army personnel visiting their communities in helicopters to deliver medicines and other supplies,” which conflicts with the idea that hunter-gatherer societies would have no want or need of anything nation states have to offer... In wealthy, industrialized populations oriented around consumerism and occupational status, the idea that there are people out there living free of greed, in natural equality and harmony, provides an attractive alternative way of life. To quote anthropologist David Kaplan, “The original affluent society thesis then may be as much a commentary on our own society as it is a depiction of the life of hunter-gatherers. And that may be its powerful draw and lasting appeal.”... At this year’s annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, President Alisse Waterston said that the “responsibility now for anthropologists is to participate in envisioning an alternative world.”... If academics and journalists are unwilling to report uncomfortable facts, then they have no one but themselves to blame if they suffer a consequent loss of public trust"

Emo bois of India: Rise of the planet of emos - Posts - "Hi sweet you butiful. Very nice and very butiful"
"I thought I'd be safe on LinkedIn..."
"Every app is a dating app if you're south Asian enough"

Man Who Cut Off Finger To "Save His Life" After Snake Bite Told That It Was "Not Necessary At All" - "A man in China was out cutting firewood near his village in the mountains of the Shangyu district of Zhejiang province when a snake bit him on the index finger of his right hand.Believing it to be a "hundred pacer" snake (Deinagkistrodon acutus), and believing the bite of the snake to be fatal, the man named only as Zhang by local media took the decision to hack off his finger before the venom could spread around his body. The snake is known locally as the "hundred pacer" because of a belief that its venom is so strong you won't be able to walk more than 100 steps before dying... Zhang wrapped his hand in cloth and headed 80 kilometers (50 miles) to the nearest hospital in order to receive treatment, leaving what he believed to be his now-useless finger on the mountainside... “It’s not necessary at all," Dr Yuan told Hangzhou Daily. "The five-step snake is not that toxic."... “Some [bite victims used] knives to cut their fingers or toes, some used ropes or iron wires to bind the bitten limb tightly, and some even tried to destroy the venom in their body by burning their skin,” Dr Yuan told Hangzhou Daily.“When they arrive at the hospital, some people’s limbs are already showing signs of gangrene.”Doctors at the hospital say that if he had brought his finger along with him, they could even have reattached it"