RAF on ‘high alert’ to defend Falklands - "Britain is on “high alert” to defend the Falkland Islands, the head of the RAF has declared. Air Chief Marshal Sir Harv Smyth insisted that protecting the British outpost in the South Atlantic was “non-negotiable”. He said that the RAF was ready to step in at a “moment’s notice”, with fighter aircraft having been based there since the 1982 war. His comments come amid fears that the US could back Argentina in its push for sovereignty after a leaked email from the Pentagon suggested the Trump administration could support Buenos Aires’ claim to the Falklands, which the Argentines call the Malvinas."
Left wingers hate Trump more than "colonialism", so
Given their performance in the Iran war, maybe Argentina will try its luck again
Sam Pratt on X - "Our recent PSPB paper showing that liberals and conservatives have different perceptions of victimhood (AoVs) is generating quite a bit of discussion on r/science. Short summary of the results (and 🔗 ) below 🧵"
Claire Lehmann on X - "Interesting. Progressives see vulnerability as group-based, whereas conservatives see vulnerability as more individualised"
Left wingers are collectivists and right wingers are individualist after all
Meme - Daily Turkic @DailyTurkic: "Türkiye wants its stolen bronze horses back from Italy 🇮🇹
• In 1204, the Fourth Crusade looted Istanbul and took the bronze horses.
• Today, they stand on St. Mark's Basilica."
Readers added context: "Constantinople was the seat of the Byzantine Empire. i.e. The Eastern Roman Empire. i.e. Romans built these. interesting sapling flatbill, guess where Rome is?"
Homer Pavlos @HomerPavlos: "Italians stole the Horses of St. Mark from Constantinople in 1204, when the emperor was Alexios V Doukas of the Greek noble families Doukas-Angelos-Komnenos. The Turks were eating with their feet then. You have created nothing. You live on Greek land showing off Greek artifacts"
Meme - "White Guy: Can only breed with white women or else kids will look nothing like him.
Black Guy Chad: Can have kids who look like him with women of any race."
Meme - "Are scenes like this really necessary? Does seeing a girl's naked boobies really advance the plot in a meaninful way or add important character information?" *Monique Gabrielle in Evil Toons* Chinatown fruit stall altercation: Vendor claims tourists squeezed fruits and asked questions repeatedly - "A Chinatown fruit stall owner has spoken out after her encounter with an American tourist went viral, saying the group of tourists had stood at the stall for more than 10 minutes, asking questions and squeezing the fruits repeatedly... The stall owner added that the group repeatedly asked for prices. While attempting to pay, one of them revealed that she only had $2 in cash, and requested to pay in US dollars or by card. She added that the tourists had asked if she could sell in smaller quantities, such as 200g of grapes instead of the standard 1kg. “I felt they were deliberately trying to make things difficult and had no intention of buying,” the fruit stall vendor said."
Tourist criticized for saying 'if not for China, there's no Singapore' - "A female tourist has drawn heavy criticism after being filmed allegedly cutting in line at Universal Studios Singapore and declaring, "If not for China, there's no Singapore."" <
p>#trending: In viral video, man from China 'stunned' that S'poreans dislike being identified as Chinese; locals weigh in - "In multi-national, multi-racial Singapore, what does melding one’s nationality with o
ne’s ethnicity look like? In a video posted on social media platform TikTok on Tuesday (May 7), user “The Singaporean Son” said that Singaporeans seem to have a strong disdain to being referred to as Chinese. In the 36-second clip, the user, who implied he hails from mainland China, shared the observations he had made after moving to Singapore... “They prefer to be called Singaporeans. With the passing of time, they have forgotten their culture and also their roots!”"
'Short-tempered and brusque': Chinese touri st says Singapore service staff unfriendly compared to Malaysian counterparts
Ironic. In China...
Secretary-General's message on the occasion of the beginning of Ramadan
Ramadan message from the Prime Minister - Emma Reynolds MP - (Keir Starmer) "In this holy month of fasting and reflection, I trust that you will experience the spiritual renewal associated with this time... The emphasis on giving to charity by Muslims all year round – but in particular during Ramadan – is felt across our country. Up and down the country, mosques, community centres and indeed other places of worship will open their doors, welcoming people from all faiths and none around the table for iftar, to share the spirit of Ramadan."
Someone claimed non-Muslim left wingers don't defend Islam. Not to mention Mark Carney's "Muslim values are Canadian values"
Dan Burmawi on X - "Here is why you shouldn’t trust Islamic sources in English, they whitewash what is written in Arabic. Nor should you trust those who studied the Middle East or Islam in English, as they were taught using these whitewashed resources. Last November, The Arab American News, which also publishes in Arabic as Alwatan, celebrated Muslim election victories with the assimilation-friendly phrase “HISTORIC ELECTIONS.” In Arabic, it was فتوحات انتخابية, “Electoral Futuhat.” Futuhat is not a neutral Arabic word for “victories.” It is the term Muslims have used for fourteen centuries to describe the Islamic military conquests that spread Islam from Arabia to Spain to India. To the American public it projected integration. To the ummah it signaled triumph. Just like the translation of the Quran, Hadith Books, Islamic history books, Al Jazeera’s news, political reports, and promises, it’s all lies and deception."
hoe_math = PsychoMath on X - "When they say "white people have no culture," what they mean by "culture" is "obnoxious behaviors and impulsive violence." It's like when they say "spicy latina" or "fiery latina." Those words mean "poor impulse control." That's what they think culture is! When you scream on the bus and stab people for stepping on your fresh jordans. Ballet, symphony, poetry, tradition, architecture... those are not "culture." "Culture" is when "DEY WILDIN'""
Meme - Adrian Vermeute: "Left image : the self-conception of the liberal. Right image: the empirical reality (h/t @kevinnbass)."
"each member of a liberal polity must be free to devise and realize her own conception of the good life (in consultation, of course, with her community). Conservatism, which does not hesitate to impose a single vision on its adherents, is much easier to advertise-and aestheticize. The highly"
"There is more diversity of thought on the political Right than on the political Left. Although they pride themselves on open-mindedness, liberal thinking actually coalesces around a very narrow set of opinion, whereas as the Right diverges widely."
Left wingers endlessly police other people, so it's no surprise they all think the same way
Meme - "Who remembers watching these as kids?!?!
*Dragon Tales, Beyblade, Pokemon, Sheehan Backroom Casting Couch*"
Meme - "WHO ARE YOU, STRANGE TRAVELER?"
"I COME FROM THE FUTURE. IN THE FUTURE WE DEVELOP TIME TRAVEL, AND WE USE IT TO MAXIMIZE HISTORICAL HAPPINESS."
"SO YOU'VE COME TO STOP THE WICKED BARON FROM IMPALING ALL OF US?!"
"NAH. IF I STOP HIM, YOU STILL LIVE MARGINAL PEASANT LIVES. INSTEAD, I'M USING THIS NEURON-RESTRUCTURING BEAM TO MAKE IT SO ALL OF YOU LOVE GETTING IMPALED."
"BUT-"
*ZAAAAP*
"LATER..."
Impaled peasants: "HOORAY..."
Meme - Gaurav Kumar: "If you're having a bad day, just remember that Sydney Sweeney isn't hugging her knees. *Injured Sydney Sweeney in shower with big breasts*"
Meme - "the kind of cooperation I wanna see in congress *AI photo of busty AOC and Lauren Boebert in black lace lingerie exposing breasts*"
Wall Street Mav on X - "Americans dropped nukes on Japan twice and now they‘re best friends. Americans defended Europeans for free the past 80 years and they are the most ungrateful pricks imaginable. There is a lesson to be learned there."
Leslie Kajomovitz on X - "🧵The UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) launched the "Islamic Philanthropy Fund (IPF)," embedding doctrines into its operations. Backed by partners tied to Muslim Brotherhood networks, the fund integrates Zakat and Sadaqah, compliance with sharia law and fatwas into aid. All while IOM, funded largely by Western taxpayers, supports an agency facilitating illegal migration into the very countries funding the agency."
Leslie Kajomovitz on X - "Did you know the United Nations has a roadmap to transform the entire organization into Sharia-compliant funding and projects across every single UN agency and body? These are not individual agency initiatives. This comes from the very top of the organization as a global initiative. And because donations are not enough, they also want to tap into people’s accumulated wealth and property after they die as a source of “funding.” In 2022, a roadmap document detailing how to transition the entire United Nations into Sharia-compliant programs and funding sources was presented. One of the goals is to “accumulate” wealth for the UN and its Sharia programs, including its Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and “the public good.” The UN aims to tap into an estimated pool of money worth more than half a trillion per year, along with an estimated one trillion in already accumulated real estate, wealth, and assets. The goal is to accumulate and manage all that wealth under the principles of “the Holy Quran,” because, according to the document, there is a “paradigm with capitalism.” Currently, four UN agencies (UNRWA, UNICEF, UNHCR, IOM) officially have Sharia-compliant frameworks and programs. A few other agencies, such as UNICEF, WFP, UN Women, UNDP, an
d others, are in the pilot stage. WHO is apparently in the initial stages of planning. These Sharia-compliant programs inherently discriminate against non-Muslims. In addition, the UN has formed partnerships and MOUs with organizations tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, which makes it even more problematic. I repeat, I can trace this entire initiative back to at least 2015, when it was first presented to the UN General Assembly Fourth Committee (Decolonization). For ten years, the UN has been planning and building these mechanisms in the open, with member states receiving all the details about it, both in writing and in some cases as open debates, sessions, and meetings, but
nobody in our government thought this was outrageous and unacceptable? Our taxes are being used to build a global communist sharia-compliant organization. What is the next step? If you are not an Islamic country, we will have no vote & be mandated to pay jizya "contribution"? The United Nations cannot be reformed."
Time to ban Christianity to prevent Theocracy
Thread by @cremieuxrecueil on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Researchers put together an incredible workplace wellness program that provided thousands of workers with paid time off to receive biometric health screening, health risk assessments, smoking cessation help, stress management, exercise, etc. What did this do for their health?🧵
So, for starters, this program had a large sample and ran over multiple years. Because of it, we have evidence on what people do with clinical health info, with exercise encouragement and advice, with nutritional knowledge, through peer effects, and so on. Participants in the treatment group were prompted to participate with cash rewards ranging from $50 to $350. Go to screening? Earn some money, help yourself by bolstering your knowledge about yourself and potentially improving your health. What could be simpler?
The participants certainly seemed to think so. The cash rewards did get more people into screenings and advising, and they even got some people moving more. If estimates from earlier studies were to be believed, this effort should even do enough to save employers money! But that didn't work. Average monthly medical spending didn't change when comparing the treatment to the control group. In fact, this study stands out in the literature, as getting nulls across basically every outcome relevant to the employer. Health and wellness incentives and opportunities did not make people less absent or medically costly, or much else (which we'll get to).
Before getting to other outcomes, we have to ask: Why trust this over other results? A few reasons: For one, it was bigger than other studies in the experimental literature. For two, it was preregistered, publicly archived, and independently analyzed by outside researchers. All of that on its own is really good. But what really takes the cake is that the prior literature was impacted by p-hacking and publication bias, whereas these researchers committed to publishing their results regardless.
Who do you trust more? "We aren't financially conflicted and we'll publish regardless of what happens and of course we provide data and code." or "p = 0.04, this program is life-changing (ignore my financial conflicts of interest :))" I know my answer, you know my answer.
Now let's talk other outcomes.
Medical spending: not affected in total, admin-wise, drug-wise, office-wise, hospital-wise, or in terms of any utilization metric.
Employment and productivity: Didn't affect employee retention, salaries, promotions, sick leave, overtime, etc.
More employment and productivity: Didn't affect job satisfaction or feelings of productivity. BUT, did affect views about management priorities on health (increased) and the likelihood of engaging in a job search (increased).
That's backfiring, potentially.
Participants failed to increase their number of gym visits, didn't participate in the IL marathon, 10k, or 5k more often, despite smoking cessation advice and help they didn't smoke less, they didn't report better health, hell, they became (marginally-significantly) fatter! Across basically every metric, the results were null, null, and--my favorite--null. And this is what we expect with credible intervention evaluations of high-quality samples. This is so common, in fact, that it's been dubbed the "Stainless Steel Law":
But the most amazing detail, in my opinion, is that this study went further: It explained why prior observational work showed such large benefits for workplace wellness programs. The reason is selection: health-conscious employees selected into the program and stuck with it!
These programs' effectiveness is a classic example of selection leading to results that simply cannot be trusted. But... how?! Why?! After all, this program had all the ingredients that so many prominent people think will solve America's public health issues. The answer is that they misunderstand people. Most people are lazy, commitment is hard
My recommendation to ppl who haven't learned that is to do a clinical rotation or read abt the thousands of programs across America that have done food delivery coaching, etc., with no effect This leads me to something important: Do you know why Ozempic works so well and has enjoyed such incredible popularity of late? If you can understand these headlines, you'll get it. Ozempic makes it automatic to lose weight. It takes out the effort, and people have an easier time doing more (in this case, work) than they do being asked to eat less or doing things that simultaneously bore and fatigue them (exercise) without a commitment mechanism like a boss. For this reason, GLP-1RAs are going to decisively beat all efforts to advise people, to provide them with healthy food and instructions on how to prepare it, and all of that tried-and-true advice that's been around and in vogue for decades, but clearly hasn't worked. To top this all off, here's the result of a contemporaneous large, cluster-randomized controlled trial of workplace wellness programs at BJ's Wholesale Club. Similar intervention, somewhat optimistic effects, and, once again, no results to show for it."
I changed a road sign to make my commute easier 13 years ago. : r/confession - "On my daily commute there was very inconvenient 'no right turn between 7am-9:30am' sign. I had to make the right turn abut 7:20am every day. For a long time I would just break the law and make my turn any way or go around if I thought there was too many people watching. But (maybe out of boredom) I did a bit of research and found the ticket for the illegal turn was more than buying a sign from the supplier that makes signs for our area and several other locations. So I ordered a new sign that was 'no right turn between 7:30am- 9:30am'. I figured it was a good investment. I went to the trouble of buying it through an alias and having it sent to a location that was not at all near to where I was. Real cloak and dagger stuff, but it was part of the fun. Then in the middle of the night I went and removed two bolts and put up the new sign. At first I was expecting for it to be removed or someone look into to it, but it is more than a decade later and no one ever noticed or changed it. BTY, Yes I did think of just taking it down, but I figured that would be noticed by someone, and to be honest the whole scheme of getting a new one was part of the fun.
Edit- spelling errors"
Pakistan: some Christians denied aid unless they convert to Islam - "The head of an organization that combats anti-Christian persecution charges that some Pakistani Christian families are being denied flood aid unless they convert to Islam. “Some Christian refugees are openly denied aid, while others are told to leave or convert to Islam,” said Carl Moeller, president and CEO of Open Doors USA. “You can imagine that terrible choice: either you abandon your faith or you cannot feed your child.”... A Pakistani bishop said that the Church, in contrast, does not discriminate in assisting the victims of the worst flooding in the nation’s history. “The tireless work of Caritas continues in all directions, in every diocese and without discrimination on the recipients,” said Bishop Max John Rodrigues of Hyderabad. “In the diocese, we help everyone. Many religious and Catholic volunteers are working in the area. I see a lot of solidarity: Muslims, Christians, and Hindus are united in suffering. “As far as the aid brought by Islamic charity groups, they defend themselves by saying that according to their doctrine, the money from the zakhat (Islamic alms) should go only to Muslims,” he added. “We should keep in mind that in this country there is a general discrimination against minorities and the poorest workers. It is a widespread mentality which can also affect this tragedy. The fact that the rich are better off than the poor, having saved their own land, is a serious matter which the government must address.”"
Matthew Seedorff on X - "NEW: First look at the nearly $1 million restrooms at Runyon Canyon Park — 2 stalls, 2 fountains. Some hikers call it “absurd.” Nithya Raman’s office says the grant-funded project is basic park infrastructure."
Chef Andrew Gruel on X - "The funny thing about government - they will overspend on everything, usually triple the price, BUT if you’re a caterer or restaurant, and you get an order from a government office, they always demand a discount because they have “no budget”. We’ve had a joke over the years about never catering for a government dept. because they rip you off. Sadly, many non profits are the same. I used to do free food for most then I saw so many of the orgs we gave free food to turned out to be shady or overpaying themselves."
Recliner on X - "Unfortunately this is true with a number of “non profits”. Entitlement and self righteousness has taken over the “management level” of many entities. Rather then the old mindset of run it lean and efficient to help as many possible…the mission seems to be serve the staff and ego of leaders…regardless of effectiveness. And the expenses and purchases of many, make corporate 500 convention excess look reasonable. It is the one of the worse cultural shifts ever."
Meme - David Jensen: "My camera cost $5,000 and y'all want to shoot for $100-$300, This not a hobby"
Tylor Saunders: "My Uber driver's car cost $40,000. He drove me home for $12"
Why do creatives often have such big egos? Creative people seem to often be a certain type (similarly, people in advertising keep bitching about clients)
ActBlue Faces DOJ Investigation for Misleading Congress About Foreign Donation Vetting.
Mike Lee on X - "It has been obvious for years that the same crew who invented the Russiagate hoax are themselves dependent on foreign election interference."
Peter Schweizer on X - "NYTimes report on Dark Money in politics: "In the 2024 election cycle, over 40 percent of the nearly $2 billion raised by the largest Democratic super PACs came from entities that did not disclose their donors, according to the Times analysis. That was twice the rate of the largest Republican super PACs that cycle.""
DataRepublican (small r) on X - "As fun as it is to see ActBlue exposed, one must always ask the motives when legacy media seemingly puts crosshairs on its own. It’s long been a goal of the “democracy” camp to overturn Citizens United and ban PAC money. Here’s the catch: they want to replace it with union money and taxpayer-funded money schemes much like the NGO gaming of subsidized campaigns which allowed Mamdani to win in NYC. They more or less are moving towards a total monopoly on campaign funds for Democrats. Yes, let’s enjoy the collapse of ActBlue. But beware."
German men need military permit for extended stays abroad - "It relates to a requirement for men between the ages of 18 and 45 to "obtain an approval from the relevant Bundeswehr Career Center if they wish to leave the Federal Republic of Germany for more than three months." The Frankfurter Rundschau, which reported on the provision on Friday, said the rule would apply regardless of whether a German man "planned a semester of studying abroad, working in a foreign country or going on a backpacking trip around the world." A Bundeswehr spokesperson confirmed the report, telling the DPA news agency that in the event of a war breaking out, the military needed to know how many men were living long-term outside the country. While the law requires men to request the permit, the spokesperson clarified, it also obliges the military career center to issue it, if "no specific military service is expected during the period in question.” "Since military service under current law is based exclusively on voluntary participation, such permissions must generally be granted,” the official added... From mid-2027, all men turning 18 will also be required to appear for a fitness test to determine who could be drafted in the event of conflict — a highly controversial measure that has been slammed by critics as a first step towards full conscription."
