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Sunday, September 20, 2020

Links - 20th September 2020 (2)

How you define racism may stop you from seeing it where it exists - "Some things are glaringly racist – being called racial slurs, being attacked for looking or sounding different, being mistreated because of skin colour. Most of us can probably agree these things are racist.These fit into the established understanding of racism – ‘the belief that one’s own racial or ethnic group is superior’ – as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary.But these basic definitions can miss crucial aspects of the true meaning of racism – power dynamics, prejudice, and structural racism.Professor Peter Wade, a sociologist from the University of Manchester, tells us how racism more complex and insidious than the traditional definition, explaining that it is a system of oppression that has historically existed and continues to do so against minorities and debilitating their lives in covert and overt ways... Changing the definition of racism could bridge the current disconnect between those oppressed and those doing the oppressing."
Is the "true meaning of racism" like the "true meaning of Christmas"?
Translation: grievance mongers need to keep seeing racism to keep themselves relevant
Considering that most minorities don't think they're discriminated against, this sort of Orwellian wordplay will just alienate the "oppressed" even more

Prof finds majority of minorities don't face discrimination - "The study, led by Professor Brian Boutwell, consisted of reviewing response data from a survey of more than 14,000 Americans, finding that the vast majority claim to have “never” or “rarely” been a victim of discrimination. The results, relatively consistent across racial lines, found that only 25 percent of Americans responded “yes” to ever experiencing discrimination... when asked about what they think caused unfair treatment, most respondents eschewed “race” as a motivating factor.  Rather, most instead chalked up their discriminatory experiences to “other” causes, such as personal appearance or political views"
So by obsessing about racism (which isn't a big issue) and stoking political partisanship, liberals are just increasing oppression

Brandon Orselli on Twitter - "*image* bUt ReAL wOmEn CaN't LoOk LiKe JrPg ChArAcTeRs"

Finnish reading dogs help kids learn and grow - "Fifth-grader Donita is reading aloud from a children’s book while a Bernese mountain dog called Hilma-Maria listens attentively. When Donita scratches Hilma’s chin, the big dog’s eyes close blissfully.Hilma is no ordinary dog – she’s a “reading dog,” on the job today at Hovirinta School in Kaarina, a town in southwestern Finland. Hilma’s mistress, Maarit Haapasaari, who is with her in the small classroom, started to use reading dogs in Kaarina in 2011, bringing the method to Finland for the first time.Reading to a dog can be a highly rewarding experience for kids in need of reading practice. “The idea is to encourage children with reading difficulties to read aloud,” she says. “Dogs will listen contentedly to a child, not caring if the reader makes mistakes or only reads slowly.”Kids who read to dogs experience a sense of fulfilment that boosts the children’s self-esteem and encourages them to pick up books more readily in future."... “Together with creative writing specialist Veera Vähämaa, we’ve also developed and registered a concept we call ‘Writing stories to tell to dogs,’” says Haapasaari. “Children write their own stories that they can then read aloud to a dog.""

Being Libertarian - UK - Posts - "Communism is about love. Love for humanity, your neighbours, your community. Without love, it's impossible to be a Communist, or at least a good Communist."
"Communism loved 50 million people to death in my country."

anjana on Twitter - "feminism is calling your landlord your owner. thank u for our rights UN"

Infographic: Fight Back Against Wokeness With More Gendered Language | The Babylon Bee

What Is Baby Shark? - Origins of Pinkfong's Viral Video - "The video isn't recent: It dates back to November 2015, uploaded by a Korean education company called Pinkfong. While it was pretty successful from the start, the video went really viral in Asia in August 2017, Forbes reports, when people began posting videos of themselves doing the dance moves and hashtagging it #babysharkchallenge"

Orwell & Goode - Posts - "The health director of Los Angeles is the most unhealthy looking person I have ever seen."
"False Information. Checked by independent fact-checkers"
"Lmao they fact checked an opinion"

We Don’t Celebrate the USSR on Victory in Europe Day—Here’s Why - "when Americans, Britons, and Europeans celebrate V-E Day, we are not (or should not be) celebrating the number of Germans killed in the war or the magnitude of sacrifice made to ensure their defeat. We are celebrating peace; we are celebrating justice; and we are celebrating the kind of world order which the Allied victory made possible — a world order to which the Soviet Union contributed nothing."

Man inspired by Crimewatch programme jailed for Carousell scams - "Inspired by a Crimewatch TV episode about Carousell scams, an unemployed couple decided to commit the same offences.Muhammad Haadii Asmadi, 30, was jailed 10 months on Monday (18 May) after he pleaded guilty to nine out of 24 charges of cheating and abetting by conspiracy to cheat via the online marketplace platform, with the remaining considered for sentencing.His fiancee, Sushilawati Selamat, also 30, was earlier sentenced to eight months’ jail"

Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage - "Customers called in saying their pizza was delivered cold. Or the wrong pizza was delivered and they wanted a new pizza.Again, none of his restaurants delivered.He realized that a delivery option had mysteriously appeared on their company's Google Listing. The delivery option was created by Doordash... Doordash was causing him real problems. The most common was, Doordash delivery drivers didn't have the proper bags for pizza so it inevitably would arrive cold. It led to his employees wasting time responding to complaints and even some bad Yelp reviews.But he brought up another problem - the prices were off. He was frustrated that customers were seeing incorrectly low prices. A pizza that he charged $24 for was listed as $16 by Doordash.My first thought: I wondered if Doordash is artificially lowering prices for customer acquisition purposes.My second thought: I knew Doordash scraped restaurant websites. After we discussed it more, it was clear that the way his menu was set up on his website, Doordash had mistakenly taken the price for a plain cheese pizza and applied it to a 'specialty' pizza with a bunch of toppings.My third thought: Cue the Wall Street trader in me…..ARBITRAGE!!!! If someone could pay Doordash $16 a pizza, and Doordash would pay his restaurant $24 a pizza, then he should clearly just order pizzas himself via Doordash, all day long. You'd net a clean $8 profit per pizza... Some regional director would be able to show top-line revenue growth while some accounting line-item, somewhere, would not match up, but the company was already losing hundreds of millions of dollars. I imagined their systems might even be built to discourage catching these mistakes because it would detract, or at a minimum distract, from top-line revenue... Tricking businesses onto your platform and creating additional headaches for small business owners in the pursuit of Softbankian growth is a bad as it gets. Many restauranteurs were complaining about their Google listings being "hijacked" by Doordash, sometimes even usurping their own preferred delivery.These underhanded tricks aren't unique to Doordash though. In recent weeks there has been some great work coming out around a Yelp - Grubhub phone scam. This one is just priceless (seriously, read this Buzzfeed piece). Grubhub for their own sites generates a phone number for each restaurant that goes to a centralized, Grubhub owned call center. If someone calls in and orders via this number, the restaurant gets charged a fee. Apparently, some enterprising BD folks came up with the idea that Yelp could put the Grubhub phone numbers in place of the real restaurant phone number on the Yelp listing. Customers who think they’re “helping” their local restaurants by calling in the order are still creating a fee for Grubhub... What is it about the food delivery platform business? Restaurants are hurt. The primary labor is treated poorly. And the businesses themselves are terrible... Delivery can work. Just look at a Domino’s stock chart. But, delivery has been carefully built as part of a holistic business model and infrastructure. Maybe that’s the viable model... You have insanely large pools of capital creating an incredibly inefficient money-losing business model. It's used to subsidize an untenable customer expectation. You leverage a broken workforce to minimize your genuine labor expenses. The companies unload their capital cannons on customer acquisition, while this week’s Uber-Grubhub news reminds us, the only viable endgame is a promise of monopoly concentration and increased prices. But is that even viable?"

'I am Korean yet culturally black' - "Cindy Wilson, author of "Too Much Soul: The Journey of an Asian Southern Belle," was born I Wol-yang in Seoul and adopted by African-American parents in 1975 when she was a few months old. Her name was changed to Cindy and she was brought to America by her adoptive parents the following year.Unlike some other adoptees who have spent a great deal of time and energy to find their birth parents, Wilson has never tried to find her roots. She said she considers her adoptive parents, not birth parents, to be her true family.Raised in Mississippi, Wilson identifies as being part of the African American community, even though she is Asian."
Luckily she's not white

Most implicit bias training in health care lacks proper foundation, research finds - "An increasing number of medical schools and other health care organizations are starting to incorporate implicit bias training in their curriculums to help health care professionals recognize any unconscious prejudice and attitudes they may have toward certain groups of people. However, current training is not grounded in a framework where research findings translate to clinical treatment, raising a serious concern about the effectiveness of the training"

Idiotocin on Twitter - "Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix can shrug their shoulders as much as they like about their little movie but when the armed forces are preparing to deal with active shooters at screenings you might want to admit that you’ve made Citizen Kane for incels. To the people in my mentions... no, I do not want a shooting to happen so that I can be proven right, because I am not a psychopath. Funny that your minds went there, though.
Oh and I’ve muted this thread so you’re all just screaming at each other xoxo"
"Hello there, I'm just replying here to let you know that zero (0) acts of violence, be they white supremacist, incel, or otherwise, have been committed due to the 2019 film Joker starring Joaquin Phoenix and directed by Todd Phillips"
"@Philip_Ellis blocked you"
On Joker
Liberals like to pretend that no one is able to respond to their claims - because they block anyone who is
Comments: "Nananananah I can’t hear you! I win!"
"I know how concerned he was, so I think we should update him every month on the current number of shootings at joker screenings, both public and private, just to help assure him that people are staying safe I think it would mean a lot to him"

Chicago woman mauled to death by the French bulldog she rescued - "An animal rights activist was mauled to death in her Chicago home by at least one of her three dogs... All of the dogs appeared to be well cared for, Van Sickle told People. “It was evident to us this was a very loving home, a very pet-friendly home.”It is unclear why the attack occurred."
Damn bias against bulldogs!

Dog who viciously attacked, killed its owner in her Fox Lake home will likely be euthanized - "Lake County Animal Care and Control Spokeswoman Hannah Goering said that there is no evidence the dog, a 2-year-old male French bulldog mix named Blue, had been trained to fight.“Blue is in great health, no visible scars or torn-up ears”... Blue and Rocco both had blood on them but authorities believe Blue was the primary biter. He had previously bit Urso’s boyfriend on April 13 and April 21. Police were called to Urso’s residence on both of those occasions and Blue was seized by Lake County Animal Care and Control. The dog was returned to Urso after she requested it back... Blue will likely be humanely euthanized unless Urso’s family expresses interest in adapting him, which none of them have so far, Goering said. If they do express interest, the matter could end up in court and health officials would argue against the adoption because the dog is a public health risk."

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