Myanmar coup: where the power lies - "Almost since its post-colonial inception in 1948, Myanmar has been embroiled in civil war, with restive ethnic groups repeatedly mounting insurgencies against the ruling Bamar Buddhist majority. As the coups in 1962 and 1988 show, it has therefore been a nation maintained, indeed held together, through the exercise of often crude, frequently brutal military force. That military imperative, that might-is-right tendency, is still paramount in Myanmar. That is why, contrary to the fantasies of many politicians, commentators and celebs in the West, Suu Kyi’s emergence from nearly two decades of house arrest in 2011 and eventual election victory in 2015 was never going to herald a bright, new democratic dawn. Rather, under the terms of the 2008 constitution, she and the NLD effectively entered into a mutually beneficial power-sharing agreement: the NLD finally had its seat at the table, and the continued exercise of military force to suppress the ongoing insurgencies acquired a democratic veneer... Hence the inevitability of the spectacle that so disillusioned Suu Kyi’s Western cheerleaders — namely, that of the one-time Nobel Peace Prize winner defending the horrific treatment of the Muslim Rohingya minority in Rakhine State in August 2017, following a spate of attacks on state forces by a Rohingya militia."
How the EU plans to expand the nanny state - "In 2016, Jean-Claude Juncker, then president of the European Commission, admitted that the EU had sometimes been overzealous in its regulation. ‘We were wrong to overregulate and interfere too much’, he said. A year later, he launched the Task Force on Subsidiarity, Proportionality and ‘Doing Less More Efficiently’. Ironically, though predictably, the Task Force concluded that the EU should not, in fact, be doing less. A report published this week by the European Commission is another milestone in the EU’s journey towards regulating every detail of its citizens’ lives. Focusing on alcohol, tobacco, e-cigarettes and ‘unhealthy food’, the first draft of its ‘Beating Cancer Plan’ proposes a range of nanny-state interventions that fall well outside of the EU’s remit. While the document contains many reasonable proposals for international collaboration on scientific research, the Commission could not resist adding a section promoting paternalistic lifestyle regulation. Perhaps the most startling recommendation is a ban on vaping outdoors, a proposal that not only has no scientific justification and is outside the EU’s competence, but would be a pro-cancer policy since it would discourage smokers from switching to e-cigarettes. Smoking bans are entirely a matter for national governments, but that hasn’t stopped the Commission promising to ‘update the Council Recommendation on Smoke-Free Environments and recommend to extend its coverage to emerging products, such as e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products and to strengthen smoke-free environments, for instance concerning outdoor public places’. It also promises to ‘work with member states to reduce online marketing and advertising’ of alcoholic beverages and intensify ‘capacity-building activities’. ‘Capacity building’ is a euphemism for using taxpayers’ money to fund single-issue pressure groups to lobby for policy changes at the national level. EU agencies have been doing this for years. It is a highly dubious use of public money. National governments are quite capable of deciding how they want to regulate advertising... The EU has the authority to ban advertising in any medium that can cross borders, as it has already done with tobacco, but there are many arguments against extending this to ‘unhealthy food’. For a start, there is no legal definition of ‘unhealthy food’... The food business is Europe’s largest industry and food advertising is an important source of revenue for many media, advertising platforms and other services (including public transport and the arts). Since no member state has banned adverts for ‘unhealthy food’ on television, there is no justification on market harmonisation grounds. Nor would a ban help facilitate trade between member states. On the contrary, it would hinder it. Facilitating trade might have been the original idea behind the Single Market, but the Commission now seems happy to trample on the EU’s fundamental freedoms in its efforts to encourage clean living. It even plans to ‘review EU legislation… on cross-border purchases of alcohol by private individuals’. It would be quite a departure for the EU to deny citizens the right to buy unlimited quantities of goods from other member states. Isn’t that what the union is supposed to be all about?... The Commission document is full of policies that are either none of its business (smoking bans, food taxes), or don’t work (plain packaging, advertising bans), or would be counterproductive for ‘beating cancer’ (e-cigarette flavour bans, vaping bans). Many of them tick all three boxes. It is a shopping list of ill-considered and illiberal policies, almost none of which requires EU action and most of which have been rejected by a majority of member states."
Looking for Love: Cheating in Japan - "This past Sunday, I was having brunch with a good Japanese friend of mine, lamenting the lack of men who could juggle work and personal life in this country. My friend stirred her coffee and, after a pause, simply said: “There’s an easy solution to your problem. Why don’t you just date two guys at the same time?” I made her repeat, just to make sure my sweet, Disney-loving and innocent friend was really encouraging me to be unfaithful... What constitutes cheating in Japan? Apparently, a survey by Internet portal R25 found that 23 percent of Japanese women do not consider sleeping with another guy as cheating. I’m not sure what else could top that in terms of being unfaithful!... Honestly, this country is basically a paradise for cheaters. The long working hours and enkai office parties provide endless excuses for late arrivals home. Love hotels are everywhere and, for 6,000 yen, will buy you three hours of discreet and anonymous fun. No willing partner to be found? Soaplands will offer tired workers the happy ending they need before their long train ride home... More interestingly, married couples will often turn a blind eye to their partner’s indiscretions as long as the family unit is not endangered. Some women will not even consider their husband visiting a soapland as cheating, since it is only relieving a physical need and feelings are not part of it. It is just not a good reason enough to divorce, especially if children are involved... it is generally expected for sex to dry up after having kids. It doesn’t help that couples start referring to each other as “mom” and “dad”, instead of “honey” and “darling”...
Even if married Japanese men cheat more than their female spouses, do not doubt for a second that women looking for an affair are having any less fun than their male counterparts. Since soaplands and other services of the sort are usually geared towards men, some economically savvy ladies have found another discreet way to satisfy their cravings. That’s what we call killing two birds with one stone, or since we are talking about Japanese housewives, having your cake and eating it!
“I used to work for this Eikawa where most of our students were bored housewives in their forties, and most of the teachers were gaijin guys with a serious case of yellow fever. I’m sure you can imagine the rest. We all knew how these private lessons really ended, and not just because the guys would boast about their conquests all the time. They would even give the women nicknames! You might think these guys were assholes, but one time, a disgruntled housewife had a guy fired because he didn’t want to go out with her a second time. She complained to the boss he was doing a bad job… and then she tried to ask me for private lessons. Let’s just say I told her I was too busy!...
One last word of warning though, if you are planning to cheat on your spouse or have an affair with a married man or woman, be sure to be extremely discreet. In Japan, a scorned spouse can not only sue their unfaithful partner, but also their lover!""
Sucking a toilet can save your life! - " Imagine this: you’re staying in an upper floor of a high-rise hotel and a fire breaks out. Unfortunately, you are trapped in your room because of smoke and fire outside, and as in most hotels, the windows do not open. Smoke begins to fill the room, and you are quickly running out of air to breath. What do you do? Plumbing that leads to sewer lines, including toilets, have a “gas trap” of standing water that prevents sewer gasses from leaking into a room. In the case of a smoke filled room, this works the opposite direction – the gas trap stops smoke from entering the sewer lines, which still have breathable air. Gross. So I would be sucking on sewer gas? Yes, sewer gas is extremely nasty as you can probably imagine, but when faced with imminent death due to smoke inhalation, beggars can’t be choosers. Luckily, the invention shown above in William Holmes’ U.S. patent 4,320,756 that issued in 1982 provides a solution to this. In addition to providing a tube that can snake through the gas trap and into the air in the sewer line, it also has a charcoal filter that makes heinous sewer gas taste like a warm spring day."
Commentary: The curious case of Singapore’s devotion to bubble tea - "In a 2018 piece on Eater, writer Jenny G Zhang asserts bubble tea’s role as a visible identifier amongst Asian-Americans in the US. As an icon of mainstream Asian culture, drinking bubble tea can foster a sense of belonging within the community. In Singapore, bubble tea serves more to evoke camaraderie and kinship in spaces such as the workplace. In offices, much like in secondary school, having a tribe to call your own allows you to stay engaged and bring your most authentic self to work. This is where bubble tea can come in. The lexicon of bubble tea orders is a rallying point for fans, setting them apart from a sea of individuals. Terms such as sugar level, toppings and less ice are a unique language that binds bubble tea drinkers as a fraternity. Bubble tea drinkers thus gravitate to each other at the office, just as smokers who go for smoke breaks together do. Except in this instance, the question of “You want to go for a smoke?” becomes “I’m going down to buy bubble tea. Do you want one?”... It’s worth noting that at its peak in 2002, Singapore was home to close to 5,000 bubble tea shops, which inevitably led to ruthless price wars and competition before the bubble officially burst in 2004. It was only in early 2010 that the milk tea variant of bubble tea re-emerged into the Singapore market, with franchises promising quality ingredients and products backed by well-known international brands from Taiwan and China."
PM Lee: Sengkang defeat a significant loss to 4G team - "“My team and I will serve all Singaporeans, whichever party you vote for,” he said. “Whether or not you voted for the PAP, we will listen to you, do our best to address your concerns and try to win your support.”" - July 11, 2020
PM Lee, Pritam Singh spar over ‘free rider’ opposition voters, use of reserves and what happens if PAP is voted out - "if you vote against the Government, because somebody else will look into getting the PAP into government, you just become a free rider." - September 2, 2020
giffindersite: Image
Girl places mentos in a bottle of Coke then puts her mouth over it. Coke shoots out from her nostrils
Facebook - "Are pure membership-based media less biased than ad-supported ones? That's not necessarily the case. Basic truth is that both models are bound by commercial forces. As the editor of Tech in Asia, which runs both models, it's something I've been thinking about. Membership models are susceptible to losing large corporate subscribers. They could also fall prey to groupthink. Such publications are driven to make their subscribers happy. It creates a feedback loop that feeds one segment better while driving out others. Ad-based models, of course, face pressure from advertisers. That's why a wall between editorial team and biz team exists. Good publishers stand by their journos. I've published sensitive articles on companies even when our sales people are negotiating deals with them. There's another debate: which model leads to better UX? Here, I'm biased towards subscriptions. Writing for paying users takes your content to another level. Ad-based media focuses on clickbait and virality. Many people also do not want to see ads. That said, subscription media can be clickbaity too. Nothing drives sensationalism like money - ie attracting subscribers. Branded content can be insightful as well. I've seen plenty of them, especially on Tech in Asia. At the end of the day, we gotta pay the bills. The ideal situation is where the way we make money 100% aligns with UX."
Harry Kim Deserved A Promotion - "The internet when you were 12 in 2007: Most of your friends didn't use it and neither did your parents. Corporations didn't fully understand it yet, commercialization consisted almost exclusively of banner ads. The most popular social media was MySpace, of which you could personalize almost every aspect and nobody's parents used. Instead of having one Nerd Website that everyone uses, you had accounts on a bunch of different forums related to your interests and each had its own unique environment. YouTube was an uncharted terrain of kids just like you uploading whatever they wanted, unpolished and unedited with no ad partnerships.
The internet in 2020: Literally everyone is online, every member of your family has an account on each of the most popular websites. Instead of being a place you can enter on your own terms when you're ready, the internet now comes to you, giving you a little spike of anxiety with every new notification. Ad spam is everywhere and it's becoming increasingly harder to differentiate between real people and marketing schemes. The most popular social media websites have streamlined, neutral colored UIs that cannot be personalized at all beyond a singular photo and username. Instead of being a haven for fellow weirdos, everyone is a denizen of the internet now. 90% of online activity for your interests takes place on a single website, the community is going to be devastated if it ever goes down but what can be done? YouTube is just mainstream television but on the internet now, YouTubers are rich celebrities who live in Hollywood mansions."
High Court revokes LPA, says woman signed under 'undue pressure' from doctor son - "A general practitioner, who nursed grievances against his parents for forcing him to study medicine, took his mother to sign a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) five days after learning of his father's plans to do so... Justice Choo considered the history of acrimony between the son and his family and text messages showing the heated disputes over who should care for the woman. Justice Choo expressed doubts about the son's claims that he had reconciled with his mother in 2014, especially when she was showing signs of cognitive impairment. He also found it odd that the son insisted on caring for his mother at this juncture. The judge said the son's rush to execute the LPA seemed to be motivated by animosity towards his family, and suggests that he had pressured his mother into her decision. The judge added that when the son told his mother he would have to "leave without her" if she did not tell the psychiatrist she wanted him to care for her, the woman would have felt pressured to appoint him as her donee, lest she be left at the clinic... The son stopped talking to both his parents at the end of 2010 or beginning of 2011. In a long, vitriolic e-mail in November 2012, he blamed his father for preventing him from studying liberal arts overseas, and making him study medicine at a "third rate" local university instead. He said in the e-mail that with his IQ of 160 to 180, there were only 340 to 350 people in the world who were as smart as or smarter than him. "Instead of working and teaching at a top, internationally renowned university, I am a no-name Dr in Singapore," the e-mail said. The son was also angry that his father had taken a loan for his medical education and expected him to pay it back. "You didn't just deny me a future. You denied the world someone truly gifted. I wouldn't curse a father like you on anyone," he said... the father and two daughters, represented by lawyer Suresh Damodara, applied to revoke the LPA, arguing that the woman lacked mental capacity. Several relatives filed affidavits to support the son, with one aunt saying that the challenge to the LPA was filed "out of spite"."
I raised my kids on Pixar – and it has ruined classic cinema for them - "Pixar has ruined this generation: they have no attention span and zero tolerance for mild amusement; if you have some crap CGI you think you can get past them, don’t even start."
James Lindsay - Posts | Facebook - "Telling generations of kids "you go to college so you can get a good job (instead of a not-good job)" was a lie that is doing incalculable damage to our society. Made a lot of university administrators rich as hell, though. College isn't the problem here, 1337s. Systematically creating a whole bunch of (heavily indebted) people who the economy can't properly employ who are simultaneously convinced that they're too good for normal jobs is the problem here."
Why are these borders so weird? - "A small island beyond the island-continent's south-eastern shore, Tasmania is Australia's afterthought; Down Under's own Down Under. It is the only state of Australia that is also an island. And yet Tasmania manages to share a land border with Victoria, the southernmost state on the Australian mainland. It does so entirely by accident. When Tasmania's sea border with Victoria was drawn at a latitude of 39°12' South, it was thought the line crossed open water only. Upon closer inspection, however, the line did cross a tiny island, which an earlier survey had misplaced somewhat."
Breaking out of the Malthusian trap: How pandemics allow us to understand why our ancestors were stuck in poverty - "very suddenly, in the middle of the 14th century, incomes jumped up to a substantially higher level. Until the mid-1340s the English lived on around £800 per year; but then, in a period of less than five years, incomes increased to over £1000. Prosperity kept on increasing so that by the end of the century they reached a new plateau at close to £1,200 per year. Within half a century the English saw their incomes increase by almost 50%. This rise in prosperity happened during some of the most terrible decades in English history. In June 1348 the plague arrived in England and it quickly became a pandemic of enormous dimensions that ravaged the entire island: It is estimated that in the three years after 1348 the population of the country declined from 4.8 million to 2.6 million. Almost half of the English population died. The devastation caused by the Black Death was so large that it is clearly visible in our reconstructions of the long-run development of the world population. Why did one of the very worst pandemics the world has ever seen coincide with a rise in living standards?... Before the Black Death, English farmers maximized agricultural output by eking out a living even on very unproductive lands, but as the pandemic killed half the population, the ratio between land and labor increased and the survivors were able to leave the least fertile lands behind and instead focussed on the more productive areas of the island. As a consequence of this, their productivity rose, and as a consequence their living standards increased... The Black Death resulted in an increase in material living standards for the survivors, but precisely because the source of the gains was a one-off reduction in the population, the gains were a one-off step change towards better living standards... efforts to support the poor used to be regularly met with scorn in the pre-growth economy. The Malthusian argument against redistribution was that any well-meaning effort would inevitably make everyone worse off: improving the living conditions of the poor would lead to fewer deaths and the ensuing increase of the population would decrease everyone’s living standards. The chart above also shows when England broke out of the Malthusian trap – the first country in the world to do so. From around 1685 onwards we see what Malthus thought was impossible: the speed of innovation fueling productivity growth became so fast that both the size of the population and income per person started growing at the same time. The economy changed from a zero-sum game to a positive-sum game in which the living standards of people increased over time and the share of English people in extreme poverty declined rapidly... In a positive-sum economy your living standards are not determined by the productivity of your piece of land, but by the productivity of the economy that you are part of – the goods and services that you rely on are produced in a large-scale collaboration of millions of workers. Your economic well-being depends on them."
How Black Pepper Won Europe From a Tastier Pepper - "This pepper is called long pepper, and it first showed up in the Mediterranean around the sixth century B.C. Greek cooks took to it immediately. It was spicy, in a way that no other plant available to Europeans was at the time. But long pepper is almost entirely forgotten today, even though it set the stage for black pepper to win a centuries-long takeover of spice cabinets... It’s a story of geography, of supply and demand, and of quantity winning out over quality."
Nate Fischer on Twitter - "The presentation estimated how many customers of companies including CVS and Anthem might overdose. It projected that in 2019, for example, 2,484 CVS customers would either have an overdose or develop an opioid use disorder. A rebate of $14,810 per “event” meant that Purdue would pay CVS $36.8 million that year."
"The people who cooked up this scheme for Purdue would have you expelled from polite society for making a crude joke"
"To our country’s educated class, decency means decorum, not morality."
skedaddleth - "Greek Mythology: Unfortunately, Zeus was horny.
Norse Mythology: Unfortunately, Loki was bored.
Egyptian Mythology: Unfortunately, Set was envious.
Japanese Mythology: Unfortunately, Susanoo was rude."
"Diné mythology: Unfortunately, Coyote had “a good idea”."
"Celtic Mythology: Unfortunately you pissed off the Fae"
"Hindu mythology: Unfortunately, another asura managed to obtain a boon from Bramha/Vishnu/Shiva"
"I love how everyone’s mythology has some variation of “And then there was This Asshole”"
Safari park baboons seen armed with knives, screwdrivers and CHAINSAW as 'pranksters give them weapons to wreck cars' - "The primates at Knowsley safari park, Merseyside, are long known to pounce on anyone pausing in the enclosure and ripping off a windscreen wiper or mirror... In 2012 car manufacturer Hyundai let 40 monkeys from the park loose on its New Generation i30 model for 10 hours to prove it had the strength for families with small children."
Porn Site Offers B.C. Health Minister $100,000 For More Glory Holes - "Health minister Adrian Dix received an unusual offer from a porn website to help build glory holes around B.C. The letter follows a release from the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC). It suggested safe ways to have sex, amid the pandemic."
Min-Liang Tan (Razer founder) - "Some f****** **** on Valorant just called me a noob and asked me to upgrade my mouse to a Razer. This is why I don't enable my mic in game."
Meme - "Jeff Bezos going to space when he should pay more in taxes and could treat his employees better
The Soviet Union going to space when it terrorized its own citizens and couldn't provide food and other basic necessities"
Facebook - "The American taxpayer gives NASA $23.3 Billion a year. Because screw the poor, am I right?"
Riva on Twitter - "man if you think billionaires self-funding trips to space is a waste of resources just wait until you learn about the government"
These are the same people who want NASA to get more money
Patrick Hedger on Twitter - "Selfish jerks. They wasted their resources doing this instead of making bikes for people in need. *Wright Brothers*"
Facebook - "Can't believe these sociopaths did this when the average lifespan was decades below what it is now and the poverty statistics were worse then than they are now by orders of magnitude. #neverInnovate"
Being Libertarian on Twitter - "Imagine how many people the #Wright brothers could've fed with the money they spent on innovating"
"Typical narcissistic rich guys"
