China's latest online skinny fad sparks concern - "In the latest fad to rock Chinese social media, women have been flocking to Uniqlo stores to post pictures of themselves trying on clothes - from the children's section.Platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Weibo - the Chinese equivalent of Instagram and Twitter - have been flooded with selfies of young women in fitting rooms, wearing tiny T-shirts from the popular Japanese retailer... Other trends which have gone viral in the past include the "belly button challenge", where women wound their arms around their back to touch their belly button, and the collarbone challenge, which had girls balancing coins behind their collarbones.There was also the "A4 waist challenge", where women shared photos of waists as wide as the narrow edge of an A4 piece of paper, which measures 21cm (8.2in). In fact, such extreme viral skinny challenges pop up so frequently on Chinese social media that there are even niche categories. The Uniqlo trend is an example of "BM Style", a teen fashion aesthetic involving crop tops, slim jeans and short skirts.It takes its name from the Italian clothing brand Brandy Melville which mostly stocks one-size-fits-all pieces. Its standard size is comparable to the extra-small size from other brands... "There is a popular Chinese saying which means 'a good woman cannot be over 100 jin' which is about 50kg [110lb]""
Of course it's only good to glorify obesity
York Regional Police - Posts | Facebook - "Like pickup trucks through the ice, so are the days of our winter.This F-150 is at the bottom of #LakeSimcoe, where the fish will stay until spring. Ice fishing season is over, guys."
New Yorker’s Steve Coll Suggests Journalists Should Reconsider Value of Free Speech - "Those of us in journalism have to come to terms with the fact that free speech, a principle that we hold sacred, is being weaponized against the principles of journalism, and what do we do about that?"
When journalists realise they can't dictate the narrative anymore
This is not Iran, this is New York - Imam declares women's freedom as a threat to society - "As you can see in the video below in comments translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, an imam in New York promotes and justifies oppression of women... Syracuse, NY Imam Khadar Bin Muhammad"
For Trump, It’s Not the United States, It’s Red and Blue States - The New York Times - "President Trump argued this week that the death toll from the coronavirus was actually not so bad. All you had to do was not count states that voted for Democrats."
Given how much flyover country and "deplorables" are mocked, and the campaign to "deprogram" 73 million Americans, the outrage is rich
Thailand serves up cannabis cuisine to happy customers - "The restaurant at the Chao Phya Abhaibhubejhr Hospital in Prachin Buri started serving its own happy meals this month, after Thailand de-listed cannabis as a narcotic, allowing state-authorised firms to cultivate the plant. “Cannabis leaves, when put in the food or even a small amount ... it will help the patient to recover faster from the illness,” said Pakakrong Kwankao, the project leader at the hospital.“The cannabis leaf can improve appetite and make people sleep well, and also be in a mood, in a good mood.”The hospital is known as a pioneer in Thailand for studying marijuana and its ability to relieve pain and fatigue... The restaurant’s offerings include a happy pork soup, deep-fried bread topped with pork and a marijuana leaf, and a salad of crispy cannabis leaves served with ground pork and chopped vegetables... Thai deputy education minister Kanokwan Vilawan said the next step was to offer famous Thai dishes to reach an international audience.“We plan to add more (cannabis) to Thai dishes that are already well known, such as green curry soup, to boost the popularity of these dishes even more”"
Singaporean women prefer taller and richer men, believe men should make first move: Survey - "39 per cent of Singaporean women said that they would date a man who earns less than them. This percentage was marginally lower than female respondents from Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, where 40 to 41 per cent of women said that they would do so.Women from Hong Kong, on the other hand, were the most willing to date men with lower earning power, with 57 per cent saying that they would.Singaporean men seemed open to date women who earned more, with 87 per cent of respondents saying so. Similarly, more than 80 per cent of male respondents in other countries said that they were willing to do that as well... When it came to physical attributes such as height, only 20 per cent of Singaporean women were willing to date someone shorter than them. While this was the lowest figure across all countries, it was not significantly lower, with the percentages in other places ranging from 21 to 31 per cent.In comparison, more than three times that number of Singaporean men, or 66 per cent, were open to dating taller women... Commenting on the results that Singaporean women prefer to date taller men and higher-earners, Lunch Actually’s co-founder Violet Lim told TODAY that the findings were not shocking. “(Our agency) has been doing this for the last 15 years and at the end of the day, different genders look for different things.”She said that the findings did not mean that Singaporean women are materialistic or shallow. Women may prefer taller men because they feel more secure around them. Likewise for men who may prefer women with long hair as it used to be a sign of fertility, Ms Lim said."
These findings are remarkably stable over time
Did pasta come from China? Absolutely not, historians say - "pasta culture was already flourishing in the Mediterranean region centuries before he travelled east, among the ancient Greeks and later among the Romans... Mr Giorgio Franchetti, a food historian and scholar of ancient Roman history, is the author of a book, Dining With the Ancient Romans, which was recently translated into English. He roundly dismisses the Marco Polo theory about the origins of pasta.“It’s pure nonsense,” he says. “The noodles that Marco Polo maybe brought back with him at the end of the 1200s from China were essentially made with rice and based on a different, oriental culinary tradition that has nothing to do with ours.”His book’s recipes are based on texts, including some from the Roman soldier and historian Cato the Elder, that clearly describe food preparation and the quantities required. The recipes also draw on documents and food culture artefacts recovered in the area around Mount Vesuvius on the Gulf of Naples.Mr Franchetti says his culinary research includes insights derived from relics found under the ashes of Vesuvius’ eruption in AD79 that destroyed Pompeii, including documents and well-preserved food remains."
'Sex addiction’ cited by Atlanta shooting suspect is not an official diagnosis, doubted by some experts - The Washington Post - "while the world of entertainment has in recent years popularized the idea of “sex addiction” through films and TV shows, researchers who study human sexuality and addiction say it is far from an established psychiatric diagnosis. “There’s an idea that when people are too turned on, they cannot control their own behaviors,” David J. Ley, a clinical psychologist and the author of “The Myth of Sex Addiction,” told The Washington Post. “But the research shows that these ‘sex addicts’ don’t demonstrate observable difficulties in self-control.” As HuffPost has reported, the American Psychiatric Association in 2012 removed sex addiction from the DSM-5, the nearly 1,000-page guidebook used by psychiatrists to diagnose mental disorders. Some scientists question if it is merely a mask for or symptom of other behaviors... For researchers like Nicole Prause, there is another reason to be skeptical of his self-described “sexual addiction”: There is no scientific consensus that such a diagnosis exists. “There’s no doubt that people are coming into my office upset about sexual behaviors,” Prause, a neuroscientist at Liberos in Los Angeles, told The Washington Post. But while “sex addiction is one model for understanding those types of problems, it’s also the least likely.” In a peer-reviewed study at the University of California at Los Angeles, Prause found significant differences in the brain’s response to sex when compared to behaviors like smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol or gambling. While people addicted to these things often demonstrate neurological “cues” upon viewing their drug of choice, no such brain waves appeared in people who said they were addicted to sex, her team’s research found. Sex also fails to follow the trajectory marked by other addictive behaviors over time, which start out as pleasurable but become a necessity for avoiding negative emotions, Prause added... Treatment like the kind reportedly received by Long — a devout Christian — may in fact exacerbate the issues at hand. Self-identification as a sex addict is most closely linked to growing up in a conservative or religious environment, he said. One peer-reviewed study, for instance, found that attempting to suppress sexual thoughts and fantasies among religious people only increased the presence of those thoughts. “There is absolutely no scientific evidence that sex addiction treatment works,” Ley said, but judges, juries and others may nonetheless “send people to sex addiction treatment thinking it’s going to reduce their risk.”"
Gad Saad on Twitter - "JUST IN: CNN has lost 47% of its primetime audience in the key 25-54 age demographic since Pres. Trump left office"
"This is due to white supremacy."
Why the media loved Trump so much
she's a lovely contradiction - "My ancestors, watching me dump an entire stick of cinnamon, two cloves, an allspice berry, and a generous grating of nutmeg into my tea, sweetened with white sugar and loaded with cream, while I sit in my clean warm house surrounded by books, 25+ outfits for different occasions, and 6 pairs of shoes, in a building heated so well I have the windows open in mid-autumn:
Our daughter prospers. We are proud of her. She has never labored in a field but knows riches we could not have imagined."
"I like this so much better than the idea that our ancestors would be embarrassed or ashamed of us for being “soft” or some crap like that."
"My ancestors, watching me stuff my face with fried chicken while studying: She eats like an imperial concubine and can afford to study like am imperial scholar. WE MADE IT"
Look at how the Washington Post covered RBG's death vs. Antonin Scalia's in 2016 - "Say it with me now:
DeMoCrAcY DiEs In DaRkNeSs"
NFL cites obscure manual that says players 'should' stand for anthem - "The policy, which is outlined in the league's operations manual and which was only recently made available online, notes that players "should" stand for the anthem and are "judged by the public" for their actions during the ceremony. It also threatens disciplinary action "for violations of the above, including first offenses... According to Nancy Armour of USA Today, the changes were made in 2015, which would even predate the first time Colin Kaepernick did not stand for the anthem."
An apologist first claimed that the NFL didn't have authority over players since it wasn't their employer (ignoring the fact that it has authority over them "if they have violated league bylaws or committed "conduct detrimental to the welfare of the League or professional football"". then claimed that Kaepernick wasn't breaking any rules, ignoring the fact that after the NLF publicly threatened to fine players who knelt, he continued doing so (presumably after a law is passed, this apologist would continue to do what he did before it was passed and claimed the law was passed after the fact and so he didn't have to obey it). But clearly even before Kaepernick's protests there was already a rule in place prohibiting it
NFL viewership down and study suggests it’s over protests
The apologist also claimed that the protests had the opposite effect to being detrimental to the welfare of the league or football, and compared the protests to boycotting the Qatar World Cup
Ivan Tells You How To Lose Weight.pptx - Google Slides
Intermittent fasting doesn't help weight loss: UCSF study - "Weiss suggests that the placebo effect might have caused both groups to lose weight: Many people will pay closer attention to what they eat when enrolled in a nutrition study, meaning they’re more likely to make healthier food choices.So going forward, he says, consumers should be increasingly skeptical about any nutrition study claiming weight loss benefits that doesn’t involve a control group. There may also be a potential downside to intermittent fasting. A smaller percentage of participants were asked by the researchers to come on-site for more advanced testing, including changes in fat mass, lean mass, fasting glucose, fasting insulin and so on. Through those measurements, researchers discovered people who engaged in time-restricted eating seemed to lose more muscle mass than the control group. Weiss says the outcome wasn’t definitive, but he is hoping to conduct further studies down the line." Effects of Intermittent Fasting on Health, Aging, and Disease
Japanese Fasting Study Reveals Complex Metabolic Changes in the Human Body - "By analyzing the blood of four young, healthy human participants after they fasted for 34 and 58 hours — whoa! — the team found 42 different substances whose levels increase while a person is fasting (as well as two that go down), only 14 of which scientists had previously detected in fasting humans. That means they discovered 30 substances the human body produces in large quantities during fasting that scientists didn’t know about."
The Damaging Double Standard Behind Intermittent Fasting - " When these prominent women share their regimens, the public and media outlets accuse them of disordered eating, in the process normalizing the kinds of body images that have driven millions of women to develop eating disorders of their own.But in recent years, high-profile men have begun to publicly divulge their eating habits, not as a way to meet a standard, as women feel they must, but to show how they exceed one."
When you need to push a narrative. This is the first article I've ever read that makes a gendered distinction. Most talk about IF doesn't even mention an embodied subject, and when practitioners are mentioned women get treated the same as men
Meme - Being Libertarian @beinlibertarian: "If Biden says Cuomo should step down it could be problematic for Biden. He is someone with a VP that believed the women that accused him of similar events. And she still took the job."
Is Cuomo's Downfall a #MeToo Success Story—or #MeToo Overreach? - "Cuomo's conviction in the court of public opinion was far from a case of due process. The AG's report conflated corroborated accusations with uncorroborated ones, and serious charges of misconduct with trivial offenses against post-#MeToo decorum. And as such, it is just as much an example of #MeToo overreach as it is a success story. Cuomo himself cast many of the allegations against him in the context of changing mores... Commisso's allegation, the most serious of the lot, is also the least corroborated. By her own admission, she never mentioned the alleged assault to anyone until March 2021, nearly three months after the first sexual harassment accusations against Cuomo from former aide Lindsay Boylan. Notably, too, no other accusations come close in severity; while other women have reported unwanted and inappropriate touching on the arms, back, or waist, none of it rises to the level of sexual assault. And Cuomo's attorney, Rita Glavin, asserts that the breast-grabbing story is false and refuted by records from the date Commisso gave. As opposed to Commisso's allegation, many of the other allegations against Cuomo do, in fact, fall into the category of behavior rendered suspect by cultural and generational shifts, as Cuomo himself has argued. Cuomo is faulted throughout the AG's report for complimenting female staffers and state employees on their looks—for example, telling a female doctor giving him a COVID-19 test on camera, "You make that gown look good." The report treats this as an offensive gender-based remark, and it's true Cuomo would not have said it to a male doctor (unless he was openly and flirtatiously gay or bisexual). But for much of Cuomo's career, such a comment would have been regarded as harmless—even charming. Ditto for kisses on the cheek and hugs around the waist while posing for photos, which the report also treats as incriminating. Except for during the last few years and for a brief period in the 1990s, when Anita Hill's Senate Judiciary Committee testimony sparked a #MeToo-like conversation on sexual harassment, none of these behaviors would have been considered harassment or misconduct... Many working women, high- or low-status, have genuinely enjoyed flirtation and banter, finding that such interactions make for a more energized and more human work environment. To be sure, giving recourse to workers who are offended by such behavior while allowing some freedom to those who enjoy it is a fine line to walk. But the progressive quest for a sexless workplace is oddly puritanical and paternalistic. Moreover, as Cuomo's lawyer pointed out, Cuomo, much like President Biden, has a longstanding habit of physical displays of affection with both women and men. Here too, the story may be one of shifting standards: Should equal-opportunity hands-on behavior be regarded as intrusive and creepy, or as warm and friendly?... Will some of the seemingly damning revelations look different on closer investigation, like the charges against Al Franken? Only time will tell."
Feminists love double standards when they benefit women
shoe on Twitter - "Gov. Cuomo: "We want to do with gun violence with what we just did with COVID.""
"everyone hide your grandparents"
Nancy Pelosi on Twitter - "Too many women are sexually assaulted while in college. Joined @NYGovCuomo to discuss why #EnoughIsEnough!"
Cuomo in 2013: There Should Be 'Zero Tolerance' for Sexual Harassment - "There should be a zero tolerance policy when it comes to sexual harassment & must send a clear message that this behavior is not tolerated"
Cuomo again refuses to resign over sexual harassment scandal
How the New York Times A/B tests their headlines - "headlines tend to get more dramatic as time passes. Take this article about Cuomo’s sex scandal... The headlines get even spicier in this article about Trump’s CPAC address... Okay last example: this wildly popular article about Oprah’s interview with Meghan Markle... I actually watched this interview—all two hours of it—and I can tell you that the first two headlines are a much better summary of what went down... The NYT might be more restrained than BuzzFeed, but we should keep in mind that it’s not a neutral observer. As the examples above show, A/B tested headlines paint a picture that’s a lot more dramatic than the reality. Frequent NYT readers will end up thinking the world is scarier and more shocking than it really is."
Of course, liberals who bash "tabloids" and refuse to believe that the earth is round when a "tabloid" says it is see no problem with the NYT using misleading and tabloid-style headlines
Facebook - Laurence Tribe: "@tedcruz took constitutional law from me at Harvard. As did @BarackObama, @RepRaskin, @RepAdamSchiff, Elena Kagan, Merrick Garland, and John Roberts. Cruz knows the junk he’s peddling isn’t really con law but just a con. I can’t plead guilty to making him the POS he’s become."
"Is it proper to refer to one’s former student as a POS? Seems out of bounds from the perspective of minimal decorum no?As a fellow professor, I can’t imagine ever calling a former student a POS. Shame on you for placing political tribalism ahead of norms of minimal professional etiquette."
“Lived Experience” is Not Evidence - "When discussing the prevalence of discrimination, those calming that discrimination is rampant sometimes appeal to their “lived experience” as evidence for their view. Moreover, if statistical evidence is marshaled which suggests that discrimination is not prevalent, some people will take offense and claim that you are invalidating their lived experience.Traditionally, this kind of thinking is called “anecdotal reasoning” and people learn that it is problematic sometime in high-school or early college... Zigerell (2018) meta-analyzed 17 such studies and found that white people exhibited a statistically insignificant tendency to favor black people while black people exhibited a pro black bias that was larger and statistically significant. We see similar results from Mitchell et al. (2005). This paper analyzed data from 34 studies in which people acted as jurors and voted on whether a given defendant was guilty and, if so, what their sentence should be. These experiments compared the recommended verdicts and sentences for defendants that were identical in all ways other than their race.For verdict decisions, white participants exhibited no practically significant bias while black participants exhibited an in-group bias equivalent to a .43 standard deviation difference in treatment based on race. With respect to sentencing decisions, we once against see basically no discrimination among white people and a pro-black bias among black participants equal to an absurdly strong .73 standard deviations. Thus, experimental evidence suggests that black people are far more likely than white people to engage in discriminatory behavior. Nonetheless, when black people treat white people unfairly we usually don’t assume that it is because of our race without specific evidence suggesting that this is so. This different in interpretation arises because we have different theories which we use to interpret and color our experience. Such theories can lead to dramatic errors. Kleck and Strenta (1980) conducted a set of relevant experiments demonstrating this. In them, study participants were assigned a negative physical attribute. Some were given fake scars by make up artists while others had to fill out a biographical saying that they had epilepsy. These subjects then interacted with other people who were given said biography cards. Study participants reported that people liked them less, were patronizing, and tense, because of their assigned physical defects. What the participants didn’t realize was that the people they were interacting with were not actually informed about their supposed epilepsy and a moisturizer that was applied to their scars after they viewed it in a hand mirror was actually a product that erased the whole thing. Thus, they perceived the discrimination they expected, even though none was actually taking place... I want suggest that survey data on personally experienced discrimination attests to their lack of validity because the people who say that they have experienced the most discrimination are not the people who probably actually have, and are instead the people who we might expect to be most influenced by leftist ideologue. The first variable fitting this pattern is age. Society has become less sexist and less racist with time. Because of this, old people should be the most likely to report having experienced significant discrimination. Instead, the data suggests that old people are the least likely to report having experienced discrimination, with middle aged people being the most likely... The second important variable is education. People who are uneducated, and so live in poorer conditions among people who have relatively non-progressive values, should be the most likely to experience discrimination. But what surveys suggest is that those with college degrees are the most likely to report having experienced discrimination.Both these patterns are present in self reported discrimination among women, Hispanics, and blacks, and both patterns are predicted on the basis of exposure to “woke” political ideology. It is also noteworthy that black people are more likely to report having been discriminated against if they live in a black-majority area. This too is easily explainable in terms of the spread of ideology, but not what you would expect if these reports accurately reflected actually discrimination.""
In other words, once again if you expect you are going to be discriminated against, you are going to think you were discriminated against (you're just imagining it). People do imagine discrimination and claim this imaginary discrimination is a real injustice
