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Saturday, July 10, 2021

Links - 10th July 2021 (2)

Professor Who Questioned Student's Request Reinstated - "The University of California, Los Angeles, reinstated a lecturer in accounting it suspended this summer over his email to a student seeking a low-stakes final exam for the class, especially Black students, in light of the protests for racial justice. The lecturer, Gordon Klein, responded to the student via email, “Do you know the names of the classmates that are Black? How can I identify them since we've been having online classes only?” Are there any students who “may be of mixed parentage, such as half Black-half Asian?” Klein continued. “What do you suggest I do with respect to them? A full concession or just half?” At the time, UCLA’s Anderson School of Management said it was looking into Klein’s “offensive” comments, and that “respect and equality for all are core principles at UCLA Anderson.”"
Apparently it's racist not to have double standards for blacks

Plants overrun housing project in Chengdu, turning 'eco-paradise' into mosquito-infested jungle - "An experimental green housing project in a Chinese megacity promised prospective residents life in a "vertical forest", with manicured gardens on every balcony.All 826 apartments were sold by April this year, according to the project's estate agent, but instead of a modern eco-paradise, the towers look like the set of a desolate, post-apocalyptic film.The problem? The mosquitoes love the plants, too."

STDs are sexist, and women are the losers. Here's why - "“STDs are biologically and psycho-socially sexist at all levels,” said Dr. Hunter Handsfield, a professor emeritus of medicine at the University of Washington Center for AIDS and STD who has studied sexually transmitted diseases for 40 years.“Women bear the largest burden of these diseases,” agreed Dr. Edward Hook, co-director of the Center for Social Medicine and Sexually Transmitted Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.“Chlamydia and gonorrhea, for example, are two of the leading preventable causes of infertility and ectopic pregnancies in the United States, and on Earth.” One reason STDs are sexist: In heterosexual pairings, they are more readily transmitted from the man to the woman than from the woman to the man. British boys aged 12 and 13 will now be vaccinated against the HPV virus.Related Article Cervical cancer can be eliminated. We must do more to prevent this deadly disease“So at any one exposure, a susceptible woman is more likely to catch it than a susceptible man,” Handsfield said. That’s because the lining of the vagina is thinner and more delicate than the skin on a penis, so it’s easier for bacteria and viruses to penetrate and take hold. Once there, the moist environment of the vagina is perfect for growth.And once the infection is acquired, it could be more severe or more damaging to a woman’s health. Take herpes, for example. “Because of the nature of the female genitalia, if you get new herpes, there’s likely multiple painful blisters,” Handsfield said. “For men, typically a few blisters.”Another example is human papillomavirus, or HPV. It causes cervical cancer, which can be deadly unless caught early.“Yes, men can get penile cancer from HPV,” Hansfield said, “but at about one hundredth the rate that women get cervical cancer from HPV.”...  “If a guy goes into a doctor’s office with a urethral discharge,” Handsfield said, “there are only a very small handful of things that can cause it, and most of those are STDs. Any half-trained medical school student can diagnose it and accurately get it treated.”A woman’s discharge or uncomfortable urination, however, could be due to a number of reasons, including a urinary tract infection. Doctors often need urine samples or must swab the vagina and send samples to a lab for analysis, which might take days to come back and are sometimes inconclusive.“Even the most sophisticated expert clinicians end up scratching their heads about the cause of 20% or 30% of women’s vaginal discharge”...
What women should do
Take away the guilt.
Know your body.
Get tested often."
Biology is sexist
In light of this, is it still "sexist" to discourage promiscuity in women?
I like how the "what women should do" bit has nothing at all that would reduce their risk of getting STDs. Presumably telling women to insist on protection is "victim blaming" - rape hysteria is bleeding over

This bisexual pastor-turned-stripper has never been happier - "Growing up in a strict Baptist family, Nikole Mitchell was expected to be quiet, reserved and sweet. But her dreams weren’t quite so conservative.“From a young age, I had fantasized about being a stripper,” Mitchell, who now works as an erotic dancer on OnlyFans, told The Post. “But I was indoctrinated to believe my desires and my body were innately sinful and bad.”So instead of pursuing the pole, the mother of three went all-in on religion — and became a pastor. Even that, however, was rebellious in her family’s eyes.“I was taught that women aren’t allowed to lead and that women belong in the kitchen and with the children,” said Mitchell, 36. “So even though it went against everything I was told, I decided to become [a pastor] because of my love for performing.”"

Subway is chewed out after lab tests find no tuna DNA in its tuna sandwiches - "“There’s two conclusions,” a lab analyst told the paper. “One, it’s so heavily processed that whatever we could pull out, we couldn’t make an identification. Or we got some and there’s just nothing there that’s tuna.”  And when Inside Edition tested tuna samples from three Subway locations in Queens earlier this year, the lab found that the specimens were, in fact, tuna. What’s more, the California class-action suit has walked back its claims somewhat. The complaint has shifted from whether Subway’s tuna is tuna at all to whether it’s “100% sustainably caught skipjack and yellowfin tuna.”...  in 2017, Canadian lab test results found that the sandwich chain’s chicken only contained about 50% actual chicken DNA; the rest was soy filler"

Subway rolls ruled too sugary to be bread in Ireland - "An Irish franchisee of the US company had claimed it should not pay VAT on the rolls it uses in heated sandwiches.But the court ruled that because of the level of sugar in the rolls they cannot be taxed as bread, which is classed as a "staple product" with zero VAT.Under Ireland's VAT Act of 1972, ingredients in bread such as sugar and fat should not exceed 2% of the weight of flour in the dough... in Subway sandwiches the sugar content is around 10% of the flour in the dough for both white and wholegrain rolls."

No, The Ancient Egyptians Were Not “Africans” - "there is the entire industry of Negritude and Black Zionism, which extends a black origin to all the civilizations of the ancient world, including Egypt (and even ancient Greece and Rome).This has led to a common belief that since Egypt is in Africa, the ancient Egyptians were sub-Saharan Africans, i.e., they were blacks. The problem with this view is that it assumes that the passing millennia have had no effect whatsoever on the population of Egypt. Nothing could be further from the truth.The fact is Africa did not become “black” until about 1400 AD, with the Bantu expansions and the eventual slaughter and reduction of other races, by them, that were living in Africa, such as the pygmies and the Khoisan.As well, all of North Africa has always been “non-black,” and this includes Egypt.However, modern-day mythologizers (the purveyors of “black racialism”) and the historians have always been at odds over this topic. The former seek to affirm the “blackness” of Africa, while the latter point to historical fact. Facts usually do not get in the way of politics... there are red-haired and blonde mummies. Famously, Ramesses II had red hair, and Yuya and his wife Thuya are blonds, while brown hair was common."
We wuz kangz

Meme - "Boys? you mean sex toys that are rude and don't even vibrate? no thank u"
"Whatever, Fleshlight that cries."

Ontario's French university receives only 19 applications from province's students - "After much pushback and protest kept Universite de l'Ontario Francais alive, the new French language school has only received 19 applications from Ontario students as of Jan. 17.Vice-rector Denis Berthiaume confirmed that the University has also received around 20 additional admission requests from abroad or from adults who are considering a return to school. That brings the total number of requests received so far to 39.Rector André Roy had previously said the school's goal was to have 200 students for its first semester, which is scheduled to begin this September... The applications also don't mean that students will necessarily choose the university, which is located in downtown Toronto, if they are admitted, as students can apply for admission to multiple programs."
Lobbying is relatively cost free, but responding to it isn't

Johannes Sulistyo's answer to Why are citizens of countries like Spain, Italy, and France who eat a lot of bread not among the most overweight people in the world? - Quora - "A woman in Netflix's “American Factory” is poor, when GM closed its factory, she lost her job and has to live in her sister's basement. But then, when Fuyao opened, she decided to rent a one-bedroom apartment. By the looks of it, it is far more luxurious than my idea of a “assembly line worker” pay. That's right, even the documentary later shows just that. Moreover, she clearly looked obese."
This is an interesting observation on American spending habits and suggests that many Americans are broke all the time not because the system is rigged against normal people

Off with the heads: Pitt Rivers Museum removes human remains from display - "For almost 80 years, the shrunken human heads at Oxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum have fascinated and appalled visitors with their sewn-up lips and eye sockets, and straggly long hair decorated with iridescent beetles.But under a major revamp to address the museum’s problematic colonial past, the heads, which inspired a scene in the film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, have been removed from display, along with 113 other human remains, including decorated skulls, scalps and Egyptian mummies.When the Pitt Rivers, one of the world’s most important ethnological museums, reopens later this month for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic, visitors will instead encounter an ethical display of its collection. This will address how exhibiting human remains has “reinforced racist and stereotypical thinking” of other cultures, portraying them as “savage, primitive or gruesome”, said the museum’s director, Dr Laura Van Broekhoven."
Promoting understanding of different cultures is bad when that understanding makes non-white cultures look bad

Don't de-colonise the Pitt Rivers — Westernise it - "The Pitt Rivers is unusual among anthropology museums in that it displays artefacts, not by region, but by theme. This means that, although the chaotic arrangements and handwritten labels give a superficial impression of Victorian fustiness, the attentive visitor comes away with a far more open-minded understanding of the diversity of human societies... The inclusion of modern Western objects in these displays reinforces that impression of sameness, and sometimes highlights oddities in our own societies that we might not always notice. My favourite cabinet, for instance, contains beauty implements, including neck rings used to elongate the necks of Kayan women placed alongside a 21st century silicone breast implant. This placement means that anyone tempted to think the neck rings “savage”, “primitive”, or “gruesome” is sharply reminded of our own culture’s stranger beauty practices... Perhaps, for instance, the cabinet could include the page from a 1943 issue of Time Magazine that includes a photo of a young American woman gazing on a “Jap skull” sent to her by her sweetheart, a soldier fighting in the Pacific. Or one of the spikes on which decapitated heads were once displayed above the stone gateway at the southern end of London Bridge. Preparing and displaying the bodies of enemies or traitors is hardly unique to the Shuar. On the contrary, capital punishment is a human universal: it is modern Britain that is unusual in having abolished the practice only half a century ago, and in defiance of popular sentiment.By condemning the display of decapitated heads, Dr Van Broekhoven is inadvertently displaying her own ethno- and present-centrism"

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