Links - 16th July 2020 (2)

French colleagues report Sharon Au to HR after she emails them about work at 8pm - "the HR was more concerned about Au’s well-being as they encouraged her to pick up hobbies such as yoga, instead of reprimanding her. The company even gave her movie tickets to get a life outside of work... reminding colleagues of work in the evening can be counted as a form of harassment in France."

Segments of Random Thoughts - Posts - "In the future it will be impossible for women to escape the digital footprint of their sexual pasts. They collectively know this. Thus, it's necessary to socially condition men to believe their 'manhood' is insecure if they hold any standards for women."
Only women are allowed to have standards

Their bodies are ruined and they're more expensive than prostitutes: Men confess why they refuse to date single mums (but with views like that what woman would want them?) - "THEY'RE more expensive than prostitutes, their bodies aren't what they used to be and their children walk in during sex.These are just some of the brutally offensive reasons that a growing group of men have given for not wanting to date single mums... "I don’t want to be second best," he says.  “There’s a real trend in current parenting that the children always have to come first and women now seem to live for their kids”... relationship psychotherapist Caron Barruw says the problem isn't single mums, but the immature commitment-phobic men who won't date them.  "This is an immature and selfish way of looking at relationships""
Apparently only women are allowed to reject potential partners

Meme - "BRUH how u have "crippling anxiety" but got no problem cheating on your boyfriend, meeting up having unprotected sex with men you barely know, posting lewd photos of yourself for attention and abusing mind altering substances daily?"
"idk"

Anti-Communist Asu/k/a - Posts - "China has zero new coronavirus cases."
"But Taiwan and Hong Kong do, so you admit that they are not part of China?"

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, America's Comeback Kid - "[On South Africa] I don't condone violence against African foreigners, but I understand the anger she says. The Nigerians are drug dealers who are destroying our communities, and the police do nothing. She claims that hospitals and other public services are under too much strain because of the migrants and immigrants. The authorities are corrupt and turn a blind eye to our suffering, she adds vehemently. We have so many South Africans out of work. My washer woman complains that she struggles to make a living because migrants are willing to work for less money. We South Africans are too tolerant, she concludes with deep conviction, her friends nodding vigorously in agreement. As somebody who was born in Africa myself, I'm somewhat taken aback by the views expressed by this highly educated and articulate group about their fellow Africans. I wonder how much more aggressive sentiment might be in less privileged circles… I seek guidance from one of South Africa's most prominent and respected businessmen… He explains the legacy of apartheid is in fact partly responsible because it made violence and brute force the language of political discourse.
Is this racism?
Apparently before apartheid all the Africans in what is now South Africa lived in harmony

What is behind South Africa's xenophobic attacks on foreigners? - "South Africa is back in the news yet again for all the wrong reasons. At least 12 people were killed and hundreds arrested after mobs attacked foreign-owned shops in Johannesburg and Pretoria last week. The attacks drew condemnation from across the African continent and resulted in reprisal attacks abroad. Nigeria began evacuating some of its citizens, recalled its high commissioner, and boycotted the World Economic Forum on Africa summit in Cape Town.The latest wave of xenophobic attacks is undergirded by the belief that foreigners—mainly migrants from other African countries—are to blame for South Africa’s social and economic woes. And while a significant number of the population hold anti-immigrant views, data shows the country faces bigger challenges than hosting foreign nationals."
Interestingly, when you tell liberals their so-called problems are imaginary or trivial in comparison to real ones, they respond with accusations of whataboutism, say you're allowed to care about multiple things at once, or claim that one person's greater suffering doesn't diminish another person's lesser suffering

9 best tools to prevent your PC from sleeping or locking - "Don’t Sleep is probably one of the most advanced tools on our list. This is a portable application, so there’s no need to install it in order to run it.The application allows you to choose what type of actions you want to block. You can block Standby / Hybrid Sleep / Hibernation, Shutdown, Log-Off and Screensaver / Monitor standby .You can block all options, or you can select them individually from the list.The application also comes with a timer, and you can schedule a specific time or date for a certain action. For example, you can set the application to turn itself off, to stop blocking or to turn off your PC.There are total 7 actions that you can schedule, which is enough for most users.The application allows you to quickly access many system tools such as Task Manager, Power Options, Screensaver settings, etc. You can even turn off your PC or monitor right from this application.Don’t Sleep also supports Mini-HTTP feature that allows you to control the application using your web browser. By doing so, you can configure this application from any device on your network.Mini-HTTP offers the most basic options, but the feature can be useful to some users.You can also set this application to start along with Windows or you can change how the application behaves once your computer wakes up from Sleep Mode.Don’t Sleep is powerful but relatively simple application that offers advanced features. If you want to prevent your PC from going to sleep, this application is just what you need."

High cholesterol 'does not cause heart disease' new research finds, so treating with statins a 'waste of time' - "Cholesterol does not cause heart disease in the elderly and trying to reduce it with drugs like statins is a waste of time, an international group of experts has claimed.A review of research involving nearly 70,000 people found there was no link between what has traditionally been considered “bad” cholesterol and the premature deaths of over 60-year-olds from cardiovascular disease. Published in the BMJ Open journal, the new study found that 92 percent of people with a high cholesterol level lived longer... Vascular and endovascular surgery expert Professor Sherif Sultan from the University of Ireland, who also worked on the study, said cholesterol is one of the “most vital” molecules in the body and prevents infection, cancer, muscle pain and other conditions in elderly people."

Dietary Cholesterol and the Lack of Evidence in Cardiovascular Disease - "most foods that are rich in cholesterol are also high in saturated fatty acids and thus may increase the risk of CVD due to the saturated fatty acid content. The exceptions are eggs and shrimp. Considering that eggs are affordable and nutrient-dense food items, containing high-quality protein with minimal saturated fatty acids (1.56 gm/egg) and are rich in several micronutrients including vitamins and minerals, it would be worthwhile to include eggs in moderation as a part of a healthy eating pattern"

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 188 - Robert Kurzban on "Being strategically wrong" - "'The main lesson that I take from my time as a psychologist is that people are super weird and super puzzling. And one of the things I think that's most surprising or at least puzzling to me is just how inconsistent we are. Part of my background is economics, and economists view people as these coldly rational, consistent beings, and that's just not my experience of humanity'...
one of the specialized systems in your head is this moral system. We all go around the world and we try to identify when people do wrong things. We're very sensitive to other people's moral failings, but by the same token when we ourselves are choosing what to do, we don't always, shockingly, use our own moral compass in deciding what we're going to do.The argument is you have one system in your head which is designed specifically for moral condemnation. And that leads to saying things like, "You shouldn't tweet insults at people, particularly if you're a high status individual and they're a lower status individual." Some people might have that view. I'm just speaking randomly here. Totally randomly.Then you have a guide of your behavior, which let's say, might be this very hot emotional system, which causes you to engage in very aggressive behavior on social media for example. So on the one hand you might say, "Look, here's my moral principle and that's guiding me in what I say, and then here is my behavioral system and that's guiding me in terms of what I do."Those things are not necessarily going to [agree with] one another. There's nothing that prevents people who condemn doing X from themselves doing X when they decide to do it, when it's in their best interest. And that I think is the crux.… And I just gave away the whole book so now you know why everyone else is a hypocrite. You don't have to buy it. That's the whole crux of it which is that we're moral creatures in part. That is to say we're good at condemning other people. But we're not always moral creatures in behavior, because the part of your mind that guides condemnation is a different part from the one that guides behavior, and that's the fundamental conflict."

Tony Roma's - Ribs, Seafood & Steaks - "Tony Roma's Singapore Lease Expiration
With the lease expiration of both Tony Roma's restaurants in Singapore,
our outlets have ceased operations with effect on 1st February 2019.
We would like to thank you for your support over the past 25 years.
Looking forward to the opportunity of serving you again."
Sad.

AnneHerzberg on Twitter - "I have the bill introduced by Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. So they are equating Israel to Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan USSR and South Africa? For f****** sake. 🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️ They are vile vile vile as hell."
"This is unacceptable. I cannot believe Dems continue and support these people."
"Since when it is normal to treat your country’s ally as a worst enemy of your country??? I am beyond appalled."
"This antisemitic playbook has a long and sorry history. Current version developed in the 1940s between Arab League and USSR. @IlhanMN and @RashidaTlaib are just latest to promote it."

Tessa Dunlop on the women of Bletchley Park | History Extra Podcast - History Extra - "You and I, Charlotte can't possibly remember everything from our childhood, we cherry pick the bits we want to, and likewise, the women who worked at the park. And what's really interesting about those women who worked at the park, is that of course, most of them had really no idea of the big picture, i.e. the organization that they were part of, and its relevance or significance at the time. But lest we forget, there was this huge hoo hah in the 70s, or rather a sort of drip feed that gradually built momentum into the juggernaut that's now become Bletchley Park. And they too, dived in and started reading about it, like the rest of us. So sometimes they would sit there telling me things that had happened. And I would say, you couldn't possibly have known that at the time. And sure enough, they had retrospectively learnt about what they'd been doing...
Bletchley Park relied on the very top level, extraordinary minds. You know, an extraordinary machine or concept like the Enigma encryption, the level of Enigma needed something equally extraordinary at the other end to unravel it. And therefore you have got to be well educated. It can't just be, you know, a fluke genius who could do a crossword. That's, again, the kind of Bletchley myth machine. And so there were I think four women who were crypto analysts in the entire park. It's funny because we all I think are quite territorial about our family's heritage and our, you know, the way in which we tell our family stories... [This girl,] her daughter was actually adamant that her mother was a code breaker. And I'm like, well, I suppose, you know, when we do sudoku or a crossword, we're code breakers"
So much for the reality of lived experience and the primacy of personal experience

Author Edward Carey on Madame Tussaud | History Extra Podcast - History Extra - "‘There are surviving waxworks by Marie Tussaud’...
‘There's this self portrait, which is wonderful. And she used to, she made this self portrait of her as an old women and then she would go and sit beside it. And it was her, Madam Tussaud beside herself, which I just said, she had an incredible sense of humor as well.’"

Coffee cup ban: Boston Tea Party's sales fall by £250k - "An independent coffee chain said it has seen sales fall by £250,000 since it banned single use cups last summer.Boston Tea Party (BTP) has called for major national and international brands to follow suit."
People have spoken with their wallets! The only way to save money if you're inconveniencing customers is to start a cartel