Travelling to New Zealand? Hand over your password or risk a US$3,300 fine - "The new regulations, which took effect on Monday (Oct 1), are part of additional powers given to New Zealand's Customs Service to allow them to make so-called digital strip searches if they have reasonable suspicion of offence or wrongdoing...
New Zealand is not the first country to introduce such digital strip searches. United States’ Customs and Border Protection agents are also allowed to perform "advanced searches" on travellers' electronic devices, and can review, copy and analyse the content if there is "reasonable" suspicion of wrongdoing or national security concern."
Commentary: Know your rights when a border agent demands access to your digital device - "Both Australian and New Zealand customs officers are legally allowed to search not only your personal baggage, but also the contents of your smartphone, tablet or laptop. It doesn’t matter whether you are a citizen or visitor, or whether you’re crossing a border by air, land or sea... In Canada, for example, hindering or obstructing a border guard could cost you up to C$50,000 (US$38,514) or five years in prison... Find out whether what you are being asked is optional or not. Just because someone in a uniform asks you to do something, it does not necessarily mean you have to comply... Microsoft, Apple and Google all indicate that handing over a password to one of their apps or devices is in breach of their services agreement, privacy management, and safety practices"
Berkeley Whole Foods store obtains restraining order against vegan activists - ""DxE members have repeatedly entered our stores and property to conduct demonstrations that disrupt customers and team members by blocking access to our aisles, departments and cash registers, interfering with our business and putting the safety of both customers and team members at risk," a Whole Foods representative said in a statement to the Guardian."
The decline of the French intellectual - "Successive generations of modern intellectuals — most of them schooled at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris — have hotly debated the meaning of life in books, newspaper articles, petitions, reviews and journals, in the process coining abstruse philosophical systems such as rationalism, eclecticism, spiritualism, republicanism, socialism, positivism, and existentialism... The dominant characteristics of contemporary French intellectual production are its superficial, derivative qualities (typified by figures such as Bernard-Henri Lévy) and its starkly pessimistic state of mind. The pamphlets which top the best-selling non-fiction charts in France nowadays are not works offering the promise of a new dawn, but nostalgic appeals to lost traditions of heroism, such as Stéphane Hessel’s “Indignez Vous!” (2010), and Islamophobic and self-pitying tirades echoing the message of Marine Le Pen’s Front National about the destruction of French identity... How is France’s loss of its bearings to be explained? Changes in the wider cultural landscape have had a major impact on Gallic self-confidence. The disintegration of Marxism in the late 20th century left a void which was filled only by postmodernism. But the writings of the likes of Foucault, Derrida and Baudrillard if anything compounded the problem with their deliberate opaqueness, their fetish for trivial word-play and their denial of the possibility of objective meaning... Arguably the most important reason for the French loss of intellectual dynamism is the growing sense that there has been a major retreat of French power on the global stage, both in its material, “hard” terms and in its cultural “soft” dimensions. In a world dominated politically by the United States, culturally by the dastardly ‘Anglo-Saxons,” and in Europe by the economic might of Germany, the French are struggling to reinvent themselves."
Chinese experts ‘filtered’ trade war advice to Beijing policymakers - "Chinese policymakers have been left searching for answers to the trade war with the US because the domestic think tanks Beijing has called on for guidance have provided “filtered information” to avoid offending supervisors... Beijing’s researchers also have been hamstrung by government restrictions on foreign travel... Coming under scrutiny is the Belt and Road Initiative, President Xi Jinping’s ambitious infrastructure plan aimed at helping China to better connect with Asia, Europe and Africa. The undertaking – representing a sharp departure from former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping’s diplomacy maxim of “hiding capacities and biding time” – is blamed by some critics for triggering confrontational anti-China sentiment in the US."
What happens when you have a lack of freedom of speech
United States or China as world leader? Asians overwhelmingly prefer the US, Pew study finds - "When it comes to global leadership, Asia prefers the United States over China by a wide margin, according to data compiled by the Pew Research Centre. When asked if it would be better for the world to have the US or China as the leading global power, 73 per cent of Asian respondents – represented by polls taken in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia and Australia – favoured the United States, versus 12 per cent for China, the new research showed. The 25-country median – which includes Germany, Canada and Brazil – was 63 per cent for the US and 19 per cent for China... “If you look at the data about the preference for US leadership in Asia today, it is huge in preference for the United States despite the fact that China is the dominant economic partner for every country in East Asia”... “In terms of Chinese soft power, what really hurts them is the perception that they don’t protect the civil liberties of their own people.” On that point, the broader international poll found that 51 per cent of respondents believe “the US is more likely to respect personal freedoms”, compared with 37 per cent for China.
Clear proof that the US has brainwashed the world, according to Sinophiles
China’s detention of ex-Interpol chief highlights the arrogance of its anti-corruption investigators - "The international media have overwhelmingly and rightly panned Beijing for its audacity in disregarding international norms, which has undermined the international community’s confidence in Chinese leadership of global organisations and set back its efforts to expand its international presence. Ironically, the incident, like a short, dark film played out on the international stage, could have been avoided or its implications minimised through a simple phone call or an email from the Chinese authorities to Interpol on the day of, or soon after, Meng’s secret detention in Beijing... it was not the first time an incident like this happened. Back in 2015, when the bookseller Lee Bo suddenly disappeared and later reappeared in Shenzhen – widely believed to be the work of Chinese security officials – both the Hong Kong government and the Chinese government’s own liaison office based in Hong Kong appeared to have been caught off guard. That episode caused widespread international concern and tarnished the reputation of both Hong Kong and China."
WHOOPI GOLDBERG STILL FIGHTS FOR ROLES - "Goldberg tried to carve out a niche after the success of ''The Color Purple,'' her debut film. She went after parts written for white women or men (''Jumpin` Jack Flash,'' ''Burglar,'' ''The Telephone''-which wasn`t even released nationally) and through sheer force of personality won the roles."
Power relations means it's only bad to race swap in one direction
Cate Blanchett defends straight actors playing gay characters - "Hollywood has been criticised for giving LGBT roles to straight actors. Scarlett Johansson dropped out of playing a transgender character in July following a backlash. Blanchett, who played a lesbian woman in 2015’s Carol, disagrees with the idea that a performer can only form a deep bond with a character if they have shared experiences, and believes it defies the point of acting."
Leonardo da Vinci’s genius may be rooted in a common eye disorder, new study says - The Washington Post - "There is now evidence that da Vinci’s renowned capacity to reproduce the three-dimensional world in paintings may have been aided by an eye disorder that allowed him to see in both 2-D and 3-D... Da Vinci is believed to have had a condition called intermittent exotropia — commonly referred to as being “walleyed” — a form of strabismus, eye misalignment that affects about 4 percent of the U.S. population"
A pioneering scientist explains ‘deep learning’ - "there’s a convergence occurring between AI and human intelligence. As we learn more and more about how the brain works, that’s going to reflect back in AI. But at the same time, they’re actually creating a whole theory of learning that can be applied to understanding the brain and allowing us to analyze the thousands of neurons and how their activities are coming out. So there’s this feedback loop between neuroscience and AI which I think is even more exciting and important"
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Loederman sold his medal for $765,000 to pay medical bills - "In a lot of ways (and as others have observed) Lederman’s story represents the best and worst of America. Lederman was born in the 1920s to a father who worked in a laundry facility. He went on to discover the Higgs boson subatomic particle, the so-called “God particle” that you can read more about here. But even an accomplished physicist and university professor isn’t immune from America’s sky-high health care prices. The United States routinely has health care prices well-above the rest of the world. A day in an American hospital, for examples, costs an average of $5,220 here — compared to $765 in Australia or $424 in Spain"
JC teen says 'no studying' sign at Coffee Bean outlet is "discriminatory against students"
Nowadays everything is "discrimination"
How Chinese cuisine became Indian food - "Indianised Chinese food was becoming increasingly popular, which food writers say was because it appealed to the country’s gravy-loving palate and was packed with delicious flavours. The secret to its success was the use of a “holy trinity” of ingredients—tomatoes, soy sauce, and chilli—that offered Indian customers a taste of something they couldn’t often find in local food. “Indian (food) is one of the few cuisines that has very few umami flavours…That was the one taste that Indian cuisine was lacking, and the creation of Chinese cuisine satisfied that,” Sanghvi said."
Indonesia home to 252 satay varieties - Food - The Jakarta Post - "the research also came out with a new definition of satay as a side dish made up of meat or vegetables cooked in spices according to its respective regions.... The festival also put the spotlight on Indonesia’s popular nasi goreng, from seafood, lamb and Padang to fried corn rice. Murdijati said the research she conducted on the variety of fried rice in Indonesia found that there were 104 different varieties across the country. Of them, the origins of 36 are known, while the rest was developed from existing recipes"
Following this definition, lots of countries have satay - not just Indonesia
Pizzas must shrink or lose their toppings under Government anti-obesity plan - "Pizzas must shrink or lose their toppings under Government plans to cap the calories in thousands of meals sold in restaurants and supermarkets... Research shows one in five meals are consumed outside the home, with today’s children spending at least twice as much time eating out as those who grew up in the 1970s."
The state of the UK
Healing From Internalized Whiteness 3-Day Training - Everyday Feminism - "whiteness is like the air that you breathe when you live in a polluted city — where you get taught that pollution has no negative impact. You don't notice that it’s toxic or pervasive — even when it's making you feel sick. And like pollution, whiteness is treated like it’s healthy, normal, and comes with no consequences. So you feeling sick is ‘good’ and any attempt to treat it is wrong — and socially punished. No wonder it’s so hard for white people to notice how much white supremacy and racism is both around and within them!"
Why're there so many masochistic suckers out there?
What would happen if someone held a workshop on combatting "blackness"?
Shoebox Britain: how shrinking homes are affecting our health and happiness - "Britain’s housing crisis is pushing more of us into shoebox homes. Houses are shrinking, too. In 2014, the average new-build in the UK was 76 sq m, the smallest in Europe (Danish homes were almost double the size, research by the University of Cambridge showed). The average living room in a house built in the 1970s, meanwhile, was 25 sq m, compared to 17 today, according to LABC Warranty, which provides warranties for new-builds."
Meanwhile in Singapore...
L'origine de Bert
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
The Medical Humanities' Contribution to Medicine
At the Singapore Writers Festival, I went to a talk on the Medical Humanities (Singapore Writers Festival - What Does Literature Teach Us About Medicine?).
I was skeptical at first, but the talk was actually quite interesting (though on reflection, the panel had almost nothing to do with literature; this year they shoehorned a lot of non-writing related material in - at the Minimalism event one speaker actually admitted there was nothing to do with writing).
Here are some aspects the medical humanities cover/some insights from the field from 2 of the speakers - one on end of life and another on linguistics (the third speaker talked about charms in Medieval English medicine but that wasn't quite as interesting, so).
End of life:
Some doctors are scared of telling their patients that they're dying, so they recommend treatments of limited use.
Some patients ask for chemotherapy and debilitating treatments. They don't know the tradeoffs - qualitative vs quantitative time (e.g. you may live 3 months longer but suffer a lot more). Stories about dying can help us - we won't just look at prolonging life (in terms of lifespan).
End of life conversations make people feel like they're giving up - but they're important (more for your family rather than you, since you'll be gone). Some ways to approach the conversations: the tell ask tell model. The patient says what's most important to him, for example being pain free, eating spicy food or retaining lucidity for as long as possible. Patients will ask what treatment options match these goals. Patients will then consider the trade offs and decides what to do.
Linguistics:
Linguists analyse patient-doctor conversation. The speaker takes video recordings of actual patient doctor consultations and studies their interactions. He showed us one example:
A video of a doctor talking about putting a scope up the patient's penis. It is routine to the doctor but the patient is worried about pain. The doctor needs to struggle between proving information and empathy.
"we'll give you some local anesthetic only" - this de-emphasises the power of the anesthetic
Patient: "Will I be falling asleep throughout"
Doctor: "No you won't be asleep. You'll be awake"
Patient: "Wah" - The patient continues to be fearful
Doctors need to diagnose. So the language used is very transactional. Do you have this? Yes/no. The patient is lost in this. The doctor looks at the patient as an object to be fixed. So they should be more aware of the patient and not just objectify him - put on the human hat, not just the doctor hat. At the same time, during medical training doctors become less human. They become detached so they don't burn out. This is a coping mechanism.
At NTU, medical students get training in communicating with actors to help with all this.
Also, bad things happen when doctors don't talk to each other. The chance of being harmed in a plane - 1 in a million. But chances of the healthcare system harming you - 1 in 300. Up to half of these are preventable. Errors in diagnosis are 1 in 10 to 1 in 20 - more common than errors in treatment.
In Singapore patients are subservient to doctors so it's hard for them to be patient centred.
Some soldiers lose a limb but laugh because of adrenaline.
I was skeptical at first, but the talk was actually quite interesting (though on reflection, the panel had almost nothing to do with literature; this year they shoehorned a lot of non-writing related material in - at the Minimalism event one speaker actually admitted there was nothing to do with writing).
Here are some aspects the medical humanities cover/some insights from the field from 2 of the speakers - one on end of life and another on linguistics (the third speaker talked about charms in Medieval English medicine but that wasn't quite as interesting, so).
End of life:
Some doctors are scared of telling their patients that they're dying, so they recommend treatments of limited use.
Some patients ask for chemotherapy and debilitating treatments. They don't know the tradeoffs - qualitative vs quantitative time (e.g. you may live 3 months longer but suffer a lot more). Stories about dying can help us - we won't just look at prolonging life (in terms of lifespan).
End of life conversations make people feel like they're giving up - but they're important (more for your family rather than you, since you'll be gone). Some ways to approach the conversations: the tell ask tell model. The patient says what's most important to him, for example being pain free, eating spicy food or retaining lucidity for as long as possible. Patients will ask what treatment options match these goals. Patients will then consider the trade offs and decides what to do.
Linguistics:
Linguists analyse patient-doctor conversation. The speaker takes video recordings of actual patient doctor consultations and studies their interactions. He showed us one example:
A video of a doctor talking about putting a scope up the patient's penis. It is routine to the doctor but the patient is worried about pain. The doctor needs to struggle between proving information and empathy.
"we'll give you some local anesthetic only" - this de-emphasises the power of the anesthetic
Patient: "Will I be falling asleep throughout"
Doctor: "No you won't be asleep. You'll be awake"
Patient: "Wah" - The patient continues to be fearful
Doctors need to diagnose. So the language used is very transactional. Do you have this? Yes/no. The patient is lost in this. The doctor looks at the patient as an object to be fixed. So they should be more aware of the patient and not just objectify him - put on the human hat, not just the doctor hat. At the same time, during medical training doctors become less human. They become detached so they don't burn out. This is a coping mechanism.
At NTU, medical students get training in communicating with actors to help with all this.
Also, bad things happen when doctors don't talk to each other. The chance of being harmed in a plane - 1 in a million. But chances of the healthcare system harming you - 1 in 300. Up to half of these are preventable. Errors in diagnosis are 1 in 10 to 1 in 20 - more common than errors in treatment.
In Singapore patients are subservient to doctors so it's hard for them to be patient centred.
Some soldiers lose a limb but laugh because of adrenaline.
Post ID: 6087215724430166110
Links - 27th November 2018 (1)
Trial by Combat? Trial by Cake! - "In 1817, a strange case shook London. A man accused of murder demanded a trial by combat, and his demand was granted. The public was shocked. No one had claimed the right to trial by combat in England since 1638. Surely there was no way that such a thing could happen in this day and age. The court, however, begged to differ. Trial by combat had never been taken off the books of English law, and as a result, the accused killer, Abraham Thornton, was perfectly within his rights to try his case on the battlefield... the practice remained a popular means of settling disputes for centuries. Perhaps this is because there were pragmatic justifications for the practice as well as religious ones. In a tight-knit medieval village, where everyone knew everyone else’s business, a trial by combat swiftly resolved simmering tensions with the catharsis of a bloody spectacle. Moreover, everyone was obliged to accept the result as the will of God, which saved the presiding magistrates from taking any responsibility for an unsatisfactory outcome. Even the Church did not hesitate to defend their land claims with the help of burly hired champions... If an accused man died before the time of his duel, his corpse would be carried to the appointed place. In fact, there was at least one case of a dead man winning his duel: His body was too heavy for his appointment to carry from the field of battle, so the corpse was declared the victor. The trial by combat was only one of a number of ordeals used in medieval England to determine guilt or innocence: The Ordeal of Fire, the Ordeal of Hot Iron, the Ordeal of Water. The names suggest the painful and treacherous tasks which the accused underwent in the attempt to prove their innocence. Far more appetizing, however, is the Trial by Cake, which involved swallowing a dry lump of consecrated bread, or “corsned,” without convulsing. Unsurprisingly, the Trial by Cake was fairly easy to pass, although there is a story about how Godwin, the Earl of Kent, choked on a lump of bread after solemnly swearing that he had had no hand in the assassination of the king’s brother. In the end, the value of these rituals was not that they revealed the truth, but rather that they removed the uncertainty. They gave people an outcome. They did not unveil the truth—they created it... the English courts learned their lesson from the Thornton and Ashford case, and the right to trial by combat was stricken from the books. This is just as well, as in 2002 a man evoked the ancient right in an attempt to get out of paying a small fine. He challenged the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency to appoint a champion to face him in a fight to the death “with knives, swords, or heavy hammers.” His request was denied, no doubt saving the life of some poor intern."
Criminal Behavior, Not Racism, Explains 'Racial Disparities' in Crime Stats - "A new study on racial disparities in police conduct found that differences in offending by suspects, not racism, explains officers' responses... 'When adjusting for crime, we find no systematic evidence of anti-black disparities in fatal shootings, fatal shootings of unarmed citizens, or fatal shootings involving misidentification of harmless objects'... Two recent studies found cops more reluctant to use deadly force against blacks... aren't blacks routinely "racially profiled" by cops? Not according to the Police-Public Contact Survey... There's also the National Crime Victimization Survey, which questions victims of crimes, whether or not the criminal was captured, as to the race and ethnicity of the suspect. It turns out that the race of the arrested matches the percentage given by victims. So unless victims are lying about the race of their assailant, unconcerned about whether he gets caught, blacks are not being "overarrested." A reasonable discussion about blacks and police practices cannot take place without acknowledging the disproportion amount of crime committed by blacks... "the police have much more to fear from black males than black males have to fear from the police. In 2015, a police officer was 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male was to be killed by a police officer"... when civilians knew they were being recorded, they — not the cops — behaved better and stop making false accusations. The use of force by cops also declined, but, again, not because the police changed their conduct. No, the cops continued performing as they'd been trained. Civilians, aware that they were being taped, were less confrontational and were more likely to cooperate and follow instructions. As a result, cops needed to use force less frequently."
For some reason many Americans think they should be confrontational to the police and then when the police use force the latter are in the wrong
Supposedly even though very few black people are killed by police, this is worth protesting because the police are supposed to be representing the justice system and so are held to a higher standard. Yet false rape accusations and convictions, even if we accept that they are rare, are alright because they are few
Student charged for allegedly making false anti-LGBT threats against herself - "Anna Ayers, who is a member of the OU student senate, was arrested Monday and charged by the Ohio University Police Department with three separate counts of “making false alarms.” It is alleged that Ayers falsely reported multiple threatening messages, including a “death threat,” which she claims was because of her being a member of the LGBTQ community"
Vegetarian meat substitutes 'exceeding salt limits' Meat has more flavour after all
Peruvian Lomo Saltado Actually Comes From Chinese Immigrants - "Although it refers to Chinese food, the dishes that make up chifa are far removed from anything you would find in China. It’s also markedly different from the hybridized Chinese takeout you find throughout the United States and has little similarity to other hybridized Chinese-Latino cuisines. This uniquely Peruvian style of Chinese food incorporates Peruvian ingredients and is altered to suit Peruvian tastes, while also playing into the orchidaceousness that many Peruvians of the time associated with East Asia. What this translates to is a repertoire of flamboyant, meaty specialties swimming in intensely seasoned sauces. Dishes feature flavors, textures, and ingredients that are uncommon in Peruvian creole cuisine: sticky fruit-studded gravies, land and sea animals on the same plate, and dainty garnishes of boiled quail’s eggs. This makes trips to a chifa feel like a culinary adventure to the average Peruvian, let alone Joe Shmoe. Additionally, dishes maintain Hispanicized versions of Cantonese names, adding to chifa's colorful mystique... One of the most celebrated Peruvian dishes after ceviche also has its origins in chifa: Lomo saltado, with its balance of Peruvian and Cantonese elements, is perhaps the strongest (and most delicious) example of the ingrained Chinese food culture in Peru. Furthermore, the technique for making this stir-fry is quintessentially Chinese, as is the addition of soy sauce. The kick of ají chili, the nuttiness of ground cumin, and the slices of juicy tomatoes against crisp French fries all represent the combination of European and indigenous traditions that form the foundation of Peruvian cuisine. Add a sprinkle of chopped cilantro and a scoop of white rice, and you have the Peruvian melting pot on a plate"
if You Keep Insulting Muslims and Their Culture They Are Going to Become Violent Terrorists!! - "We Must Help Them Feel Included So They Can Feel Like They Are Fairly Represented in Our Society Instead of Maligned and Mocked or Else They Will Turn Against Us!
White People Are All Redneck Uneducated Racists With Privilege. Ha Ha You'll Be a Minority. You Stupid Fucking Bigots.
WHY ARE YOU BECOMING MORE FAR RIGHT AND NOT VOTING FOR US ANYMORE??? YOU IDIOTS!!!!"
We’ve launched a migrant rescue ship to resist the racist right in Italy | Michael Hardt and Sandro Mezzadra
Apparently if you don't facilitate human trafficking, you are racist
Trump-Hitler comparisons too easy and ignore the murderous history - "“Everyone seems to have become Hitler.” Historian Gavriel D. Rosenfeld wrote these words in his study of how the Nazi past has become a recurring theme in contemporary culture – to the point of almost becoming trivial. What is especially interesting is that he had already reached that conclusion a year before Donald Trump was elected to be the 45th president of the United States... As a historian of modern Germany, I have spent many years exploring the crimes that Hitler and his followers committed. When people make facile comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis, they are trying, usually in good faith, to warn us about the dangers of ignoring history and its supposed lessons. But it is my very familiarity with that history that makes me highly skeptical about the inflationary use of such comparisons. They do more to confuse than clarify the urgent issues at stake... The Hitler comparison has, for many, become nothing more than a cudgel for branding someone or something as morally wrong or evil, for making what the Germans call a Totschlagargument: a “knock-out” or “killer” argument intended to end all discussion... False equivalencies not only risk trivializing Hitler and the horrors he unleashed. They also prevent people from engaging with the actual issues at hand – ones that urgently require our attention: immigration reform, rampant xenophobia, social and economic restructuring in a globalized world, and a loss of faith in government’s ability to solve pressing problems. There is an ultimate reason why the Hitler comparison should not be used as lightly as it often is nowadays. Whenever we apply that political or moral comparison, we set the bar for inhumanity as high as possible. Should the abyss of World War II and the Holocaust really be the main measure for all things political? The danger here is that policies only become worthy of moral outrage if they lead to genocidal violence. One would hope that in the 21st century, our society would have developed higher – or perhaps lower – standards than these."
Why do digital health startups keep failing? - "Consumer technology startups often push quickly to get a minimum viable product to market and then iterate to improve that product based on what most resonates with consumers. Entrepreneurs and investors from the tech world mistakenly assume that this “lean startup” approach, which works well for products like photo-sharing tools and meal-delivery apps, should be equally successful for tackling any kind of problem. However, this strategy is ill-suited to healthcare, a much more complex and regulated industry... tech’s “move fast and break things” model can become “move too quickly and break your company.” For example, many founders coming from tech are focused on building and marketing products to consumers. They don’t realize until well into their company’s development that doctors and insurers are actually the gatekeepers and customers to whom they should be selling their products. This is why 61% of digital health companies that start B2C end up pivoting to B2B and selling to insurance companies, employers, hospitals, or other healthcare providers. A better approach for healthcare is need-driven innovation. Rather than leaping to invent a technology (like a sleep monitor) and then searching for a challenge it can be used to address (promoting more restful sleep), one starts by deeply understanding an important problem in healthcare and then designs a technology that is uniquely suited to solve it."
The Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish - "When Jews fled Spain during the Inquisition, they carried their language with them. Today, Ladino reflects the trajectories of the Sephardic Jewish diaspora, but can it survive?"
The Science of Sibling Rivalry - "We don’t choose our siblings the way we choose our partners and friends. Of course, we don’t choose our parents either, but they usually make that up to us by sustaining us on the way to adulthood. Brothers and sisters are just sort of there. And yet, when it comes to our development, they can be more influential than parents. This holds whether they are older and cool, or younger and frustrating; whether we follow in their footsteps, or run screaming in the other direction."
Not exercising worse for your health than smoking, diabetes and heart disease - ""Being unfit on a treadmill or in an exercise stress test has a worse prognosis, as far as death, than being hypertensive, being diabetic or being a current smoker," Jaber told CNN. "We've never seen something as pronounced as this and as objective as this.""
Commentary: What’s wrong with the Singaporean accent? - "I have noticed that some Singaporeans are speaking English with a somewhat “foreign” accent. I have also received queries from concerned observers about why more and more Singaporeans are sounding “fake”... These speakers, linguists such as William Labov would say, are motivated by “a profound linguistic insecurity”. Speakers exhibit signs of linguistic insecurity when they brand their own speech variety as inferior to other varieties, and show “an observable recognition of an exterior standard of correctness”. The Singaporean accent, for these speakers, is considered to be less than ideal. To feel linguistically superior, it becomes paramount to adopt someone else’s accent which is supposedly more “correct” and more “standard”... My research on the Singaporean accent has shown that Singaporean English speakers are highly intelligible, and that the Singaporean accent is well understood all around the world, and in fact, even more so compared to other well-known accents of English."
Lewinsky affair not an abuse of power, says Hillary Clinton - "Lewinsky, for her part, long maintained the affair was consensual, but in an essay published in Vanity Fair earlier this year wrote she had begun to re-evaluate that view. Bill Clinton has also been accused by several other women of sexual misconduct in cases going back to the 1970s, prompting a reckoning of his place in history by Democrats in light of the #MeToo and Time's Up movements."
It's only bad when non-Democrats do it
Criminal Behavior, Not Racism, Explains 'Racial Disparities' in Crime Stats - "A new study on racial disparities in police conduct found that differences in offending by suspects, not racism, explains officers' responses... 'When adjusting for crime, we find no systematic evidence of anti-black disparities in fatal shootings, fatal shootings of unarmed citizens, or fatal shootings involving misidentification of harmless objects'... Two recent studies found cops more reluctant to use deadly force against blacks... aren't blacks routinely "racially profiled" by cops? Not according to the Police-Public Contact Survey... There's also the National Crime Victimization Survey, which questions victims of crimes, whether or not the criminal was captured, as to the race and ethnicity of the suspect. It turns out that the race of the arrested matches the percentage given by victims. So unless victims are lying about the race of their assailant, unconcerned about whether he gets caught, blacks are not being "overarrested." A reasonable discussion about blacks and police practices cannot take place without acknowledging the disproportion amount of crime committed by blacks... "the police have much more to fear from black males than black males have to fear from the police. In 2015, a police officer was 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male was to be killed by a police officer"... when civilians knew they were being recorded, they — not the cops — behaved better and stop making false accusations. The use of force by cops also declined, but, again, not because the police changed their conduct. No, the cops continued performing as they'd been trained. Civilians, aware that they were being taped, were less confrontational and were more likely to cooperate and follow instructions. As a result, cops needed to use force less frequently."
For some reason many Americans think they should be confrontational to the police and then when the police use force the latter are in the wrong
Supposedly even though very few black people are killed by police, this is worth protesting because the police are supposed to be representing the justice system and so are held to a higher standard. Yet false rape accusations and convictions, even if we accept that they are rare, are alright because they are few
Student charged for allegedly making false anti-LGBT threats against herself - "Anna Ayers, who is a member of the OU student senate, was arrested Monday and charged by the Ohio University Police Department with three separate counts of “making false alarms.” It is alleged that Ayers falsely reported multiple threatening messages, including a “death threat,” which she claims was because of her being a member of the LGBTQ community"
Vegetarian meat substitutes 'exceeding salt limits' Meat has more flavour after all
Peruvian Lomo Saltado Actually Comes From Chinese Immigrants - "Although it refers to Chinese food, the dishes that make up chifa are far removed from anything you would find in China. It’s also markedly different from the hybridized Chinese takeout you find throughout the United States and has little similarity to other hybridized Chinese-Latino cuisines. This uniquely Peruvian style of Chinese food incorporates Peruvian ingredients and is altered to suit Peruvian tastes, while also playing into the orchidaceousness that many Peruvians of the time associated with East Asia. What this translates to is a repertoire of flamboyant, meaty specialties swimming in intensely seasoned sauces. Dishes feature flavors, textures, and ingredients that are uncommon in Peruvian creole cuisine: sticky fruit-studded gravies, land and sea animals on the same plate, and dainty garnishes of boiled quail’s eggs. This makes trips to a chifa feel like a culinary adventure to the average Peruvian, let alone Joe Shmoe. Additionally, dishes maintain Hispanicized versions of Cantonese names, adding to chifa's colorful mystique... One of the most celebrated Peruvian dishes after ceviche also has its origins in chifa: Lomo saltado, with its balance of Peruvian and Cantonese elements, is perhaps the strongest (and most delicious) example of the ingrained Chinese food culture in Peru. Furthermore, the technique for making this stir-fry is quintessentially Chinese, as is the addition of soy sauce. The kick of ají chili, the nuttiness of ground cumin, and the slices of juicy tomatoes against crisp French fries all represent the combination of European and indigenous traditions that form the foundation of Peruvian cuisine. Add a sprinkle of chopped cilantro and a scoop of white rice, and you have the Peruvian melting pot on a plate"
if You Keep Insulting Muslims and Their Culture They Are Going to Become Violent Terrorists!! - "We Must Help Them Feel Included So They Can Feel Like They Are Fairly Represented in Our Society Instead of Maligned and Mocked or Else They Will Turn Against Us!
White People Are All Redneck Uneducated Racists With Privilege. Ha Ha You'll Be a Minority. You Stupid Fucking Bigots.
WHY ARE YOU BECOMING MORE FAR RIGHT AND NOT VOTING FOR US ANYMORE??? YOU IDIOTS!!!!"
We’ve launched a migrant rescue ship to resist the racist right in Italy | Michael Hardt and Sandro Mezzadra
Apparently if you don't facilitate human trafficking, you are racist
Trump-Hitler comparisons too easy and ignore the murderous history - "“Everyone seems to have become Hitler.” Historian Gavriel D. Rosenfeld wrote these words in his study of how the Nazi past has become a recurring theme in contemporary culture – to the point of almost becoming trivial. What is especially interesting is that he had already reached that conclusion a year before Donald Trump was elected to be the 45th president of the United States... As a historian of modern Germany, I have spent many years exploring the crimes that Hitler and his followers committed. When people make facile comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis, they are trying, usually in good faith, to warn us about the dangers of ignoring history and its supposed lessons. But it is my very familiarity with that history that makes me highly skeptical about the inflationary use of such comparisons. They do more to confuse than clarify the urgent issues at stake... The Hitler comparison has, for many, become nothing more than a cudgel for branding someone or something as morally wrong or evil, for making what the Germans call a Totschlagargument: a “knock-out” or “killer” argument intended to end all discussion... False equivalencies not only risk trivializing Hitler and the horrors he unleashed. They also prevent people from engaging with the actual issues at hand – ones that urgently require our attention: immigration reform, rampant xenophobia, social and economic restructuring in a globalized world, and a loss of faith in government’s ability to solve pressing problems. There is an ultimate reason why the Hitler comparison should not be used as lightly as it often is nowadays. Whenever we apply that political or moral comparison, we set the bar for inhumanity as high as possible. Should the abyss of World War II and the Holocaust really be the main measure for all things political? The danger here is that policies only become worthy of moral outrage if they lead to genocidal violence. One would hope that in the 21st century, our society would have developed higher – or perhaps lower – standards than these."
Why do digital health startups keep failing? - "Consumer technology startups often push quickly to get a minimum viable product to market and then iterate to improve that product based on what most resonates with consumers. Entrepreneurs and investors from the tech world mistakenly assume that this “lean startup” approach, which works well for products like photo-sharing tools and meal-delivery apps, should be equally successful for tackling any kind of problem. However, this strategy is ill-suited to healthcare, a much more complex and regulated industry... tech’s “move fast and break things” model can become “move too quickly and break your company.” For example, many founders coming from tech are focused on building and marketing products to consumers. They don’t realize until well into their company’s development that doctors and insurers are actually the gatekeepers and customers to whom they should be selling their products. This is why 61% of digital health companies that start B2C end up pivoting to B2B and selling to insurance companies, employers, hospitals, or other healthcare providers. A better approach for healthcare is need-driven innovation. Rather than leaping to invent a technology (like a sleep monitor) and then searching for a challenge it can be used to address (promoting more restful sleep), one starts by deeply understanding an important problem in healthcare and then designs a technology that is uniquely suited to solve it."
The Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish - "When Jews fled Spain during the Inquisition, they carried their language with them. Today, Ladino reflects the trajectories of the Sephardic Jewish diaspora, but can it survive?"
The Science of Sibling Rivalry - "We don’t choose our siblings the way we choose our partners and friends. Of course, we don’t choose our parents either, but they usually make that up to us by sustaining us on the way to adulthood. Brothers and sisters are just sort of there. And yet, when it comes to our development, they can be more influential than parents. This holds whether they are older and cool, or younger and frustrating; whether we follow in their footsteps, or run screaming in the other direction."
Not exercising worse for your health than smoking, diabetes and heart disease - ""Being unfit on a treadmill or in an exercise stress test has a worse prognosis, as far as death, than being hypertensive, being diabetic or being a current smoker," Jaber told CNN. "We've never seen something as pronounced as this and as objective as this.""
Commentary: What’s wrong with the Singaporean accent? - "I have noticed that some Singaporeans are speaking English with a somewhat “foreign” accent. I have also received queries from concerned observers about why more and more Singaporeans are sounding “fake”... These speakers, linguists such as William Labov would say, are motivated by “a profound linguistic insecurity”. Speakers exhibit signs of linguistic insecurity when they brand their own speech variety as inferior to other varieties, and show “an observable recognition of an exterior standard of correctness”. The Singaporean accent, for these speakers, is considered to be less than ideal. To feel linguistically superior, it becomes paramount to adopt someone else’s accent which is supposedly more “correct” and more “standard”... My research on the Singaporean accent has shown that Singaporean English speakers are highly intelligible, and that the Singaporean accent is well understood all around the world, and in fact, even more so compared to other well-known accents of English."
Lewinsky affair not an abuse of power, says Hillary Clinton - "Lewinsky, for her part, long maintained the affair was consensual, but in an essay published in Vanity Fair earlier this year wrote she had begun to re-evaluate that view. Bill Clinton has also been accused by several other women of sexual misconduct in cases going back to the 1970s, prompting a reckoning of his place in history by Democrats in light of the #MeToo and Time's Up movements."
It's only bad when non-Democrats do it
Post ID: 6876114456980817325
Monday, November 26, 2018
Links - 26th November 2018 (2)
Health Promotion Board takes down their ad that featured hate symbol Pepe the Frog in it
How come Red Swastika School and other Buddhist organisations are still around, then?
No, giving up burgers won’t actually save the planet - "Almost all articles on this topic suggest going vegetarian could achieve emission cuts of 50 percent or more. But these figures are never a reduction of total emissions, just those emitted from food. This is an important distinction because four-fifths of emissions are being ignored. The real impact is five times less. Anyway, a systematic peer review of studies shows vegetarian diets likely reduce an individual’s emissions by the equivalent of 540 kg (1,190 lbs.) of CO2. For the average person in the industrialized world, that’s the equivalent of cutting emissions by just 4.3 percent. Vegetarian diets are also slightly cheaper, and saved money will be spent on goods and services that emit more CO2. A new Swedish study shows a vegetarian diet is 10 percent cheaper, freeing up about 2 percent of an individual’s budget. The extra money would likely be spent proportionally on existing purchases. This boosts one’s carbon emissions by about 2 percent. So eating carrots instead of steak means you effectively cut your emissions by about 2 percent. This won’t save the planet. Climate change is both trivialized and hampered by unrealistic senses of magnitude, and by silly suggestions that your or my actions can transform the planet... Similarly, neither subsidized solar panels nor wind turbines near shopping malls provide a meaningful solution to global warming. The International Energy Agency estimates that globally we get less than 1 percent of our energy needs from solar and wind, and even by 2040, doing everything promised in the Paris Treaty, we’ll get just 3.6 percent. Over the next quarter century, solar and wind will not be a major part of the picture. Nor does buying an electric car change things by much. The IEA estimates that, optimistically, we’ll go from around 2 million electric cars today to 300 million in 2040. This will reduce global emissions by less than 1 percent because these cars will still get half their electricity from fossil fuels, and because oil will become cheaper and used more elsewhere, as demand from cars falls. We have become so invested in the mistaken premise that the individual can take meaningful action against climate change that we are doing far too little to clamor collectively for the effective investment needed for global warming to be tackled."
Deepening our understanding of academic inbreeding effects on research information exchange and scientific output: new insights for academic based research - "We find that mobility(or lack of) at the early research career stage is decisive in influencing academic behaviorsand scientific productivity. Less mobile academics have more inward oriented informationexchange dynamics and lower scientific productivity. The analysis also indicates that theinformation exchange and scientific productivity of academics that changed institutionsonly once do not differ substantially from that of ‘‘mobile inbred academics’’. Thisemphasizes the need for mobility throughout scientific and academic careers and calls forpolicies to curtail academic inbreeding"
Navel Gazing: Academic Inbreeding and Scientific Productivity - "academic inbreeding is associated with lower scholarly output. Second, theacademically inbred faculty is relatively more centered on its own institution and less open to the rest of thescientific world. This navel-gazing tendency is a critical driver of its reduced scientific output when comparedwith noninbred faculties. Third, we reveal that academic inbreeding could be the result of an institutionalpractice, such that these faculty members contribute disproportionately more to teaching and outreach activities,which allows noninbred faculty members to dedicate themselves to the research endeavor. Thus, a limitedpresence of inbreds can benefit the research output of noninbreds and potentially the whole university, but adominantly inbred environment will stifle productivity, even for noninbreds"
The effect of academic inbreeding on scientific effectiveness
NYPD boss accused of stuffing her panties in co-worker’s mouth - "A ball-busting female boss at a Brooklyn precinct is under investigation for allegedly stuffing a pair of her panties into a male colleague’s mouth... Sgt. Ann Marie Guerra, the second-in-command at the 72nd Precinct Detectives Squad, flipped out on Detective Victor Falcon when he complained about her leaving her underwear all over the unisex locker room... “She has been on social media spouting man-hating rhetoric about fellow sergeants having ‘little d–ks’”"
School bans bags so boy turns up carrying books in a microwave - "Jacob staged a silent protest by using a wicker basket and a microwave to make a point... ‘How can you even get to places on time with all the right books, let alone do things like sanitary towels."
Ryan Miller - "This new goofy identity politics idea of innate virtue and evil corresponding to long ago historical wrongs driven by race and gender and ethnicity, and then applied to present day peeps totally removed from all that, is utterly absurd and confuses the shit out of the task of actually identifying real and ongoing incidents and episodes of racist and sexist discrimination." ~ Anonymous friend of mine."
Waitrose forced to change name of 'sexist' sandwich following complaints - "'Gentleman's Smoked Chicken Caesar Roll'. The roll, which is part of the Heston Blumenthal range at the chain, contains 'gentleman's relish', an anchovy mayonnaise, so there is some logic behind the name... There has been some backlash (mostly from men) to the suggestion that the name of the sandwich is sexist, as there are plenty of other foods which have been given female names [like Pink Lady and Granny Smith Apples, Woman's Weekly, Ladyfingers and Bombay Bad Boy pot noodles]"
The modern meaning of "sexist" is "anything that makes a distinction between the sexes" (when not used for feminist ends, naturally)
Liz - "All White People Are Racist. The Sooner We Realize This the Sooner We Can Be Critical of Ourselves and the Ways We Benefit From Whiteness"
"Ive Noticed People Who Claim to Be Anti-Racist End Up Being Extremely Racist"
Inspectors knock - Japanese citizenship - "TO BECOME a Japanese citizen, a foreigner must display “good conduct”, among other things. The rules do not specify what that means, and make no mention of living wafu (Japanese-style). But for one candidate, at least, it involved officials looking in his fridge and inspecting his children’s toys to see if he was Japanese enough (he was)."
Linda Gottfredson’s Scientific Keynote Cancelled: Why? - "Linda Gottfredson, Professor Emerita at the University of Delaware, has been disinvited from giving a keynote talk at the International Association of Educational and Vocational Guidance meeting in Sweden... The title of her planned talk was “What should I do? Ethical challenges in helping youth navigate career choices in a world where family expectation, ingrained stereotypes, social engineers and genetic proclivities compete for influence.” I haven’t seen the talk, but the title indicates its likely content: young people must find their way into jobs, how should counseling specialists advise them, given all the sound and fury? Why was such an unremarkable keynote talk cancelled? The talk was dropped following four letters of complaint. Written no doubt by well-meaning scholars, the letters express great anxiety about intelligence research... A profound discomfort with empirical findings emerging from intelligence research lies at the heart of the disinvitation. People who work in this field are equable about these findings (see, for example the open-access article ‘Top 10 replicated findings from Behavioral Genetics’) — they are, after all, descriptive not prescriptive... Gottfredson has for years supported healthcare providers concerned with Type II Diabetes. Among the millions of patients some, inevitably, cope less well with this illness, which, by the way, is about as tricky to manage as a complex investment portfolio. Gottfredson uses her expertise to evaluate the cognitive burden entailed in diabetes self-care — such as figuring out how and when to take the medications, what to do in a crisis, and how to manage blood sugar levels. Rather than ignore the data on variation in intelligence, or soft-pedal its implications, Gottfredson works to reduce harms from this particular source of inequality... We should be vigilant against threats to free speech, because free speech protects us from much that is evil. It is especially disappointing to see Gottfredson treated this way because she can be trusted. She does not shirk from telling the truth even when it hurts her"
Lawsuit accuses Seneca Valley 'mean girls' of targeting boy with false allegations - "The 26-page lawsuit — filed in Pittsburgh on the eve of Mean Girls Day — alleges that T.F. “was forced to endure multiple court appearances, detention in a juvenile facility, detention at home, the loss of his liberty and other damages until several of the girls reluctantly admitted that their accusations were false” this summer. The lawsuit contends T.F. was bullied on multiple occasions by classmates. In one example, the lawsuit said students last year placed masking tape with the word “PREDATOR” written on it on his back without his knowledge during choir practice. The lawsuit alleges the boy was further damaged from “gender bias” by school officials and Goldinger’s office, which even after learning the girls’ accusations were false “did not take any action against the females involved,” said attorney Craig Fishman of Pittsburgh, who represents the Floods. “(T.F.) was basically being tortured in school by the other students and investigators, but the administration was only focused on protecting the girls who were lying”"
Believe. Women.
Aziz Ansari’s New Standup Tour Is a Cry Against Extreme Wokeness - "The furor directed at Ansari, though, was not simply a consequence of his alleged misbehavior. The more complex concern was his apparent hypocrisy. Ansari had built a reputation as an ardent feminist and amateur dating guru... In his latest set, Ansari suggests that collective anger has overcorrected; now, rather than hold power to account, it targets the slightest and least consequential controversies. “Why is everyone weighing in on this shit?” Ansari asked of the Twitter users who flocked to debate whether an American teen-ager’s choice of prom dress constituted so-called cultural appropriation. “Everyone weighs in on everything. They don’t know anything. People don’t wanna just say, ‘I don’t know.’ ” The amused but progressive spirit that once informed Ansari’s commentary on current events seems to have crusted into suspicion about wokeness and its excesses. Without ever mentioning the #MeToo movement—or his own experience as one of its most disputed casualties—Ansari decries the destructive performativity of Internet activism and the fickle, ever-changing standards of political correctness"
So much for riding the SJW tiger
British chicken sexing in crisis: experts needed to spot a 'very, very small' difference - "“The mark is remarkably very, very small, less than 0.1mm,” she says. “It’s a very small difference to look for. Males look more three-dimensional and females look flat. In about 10 per cent of chicks, it’s very similar but you have to find out which is which.”"
Christian bakers in 'gay cake' row did not discriminate against same-sex marriage activist, Supreme Court rules - ""As to Mr Lee's claim based on sexual discrimination, the bakers did not refuse to fulfil his order because of his sexual orientation. "They would have refused to make such a cake for any customer, irrespective of their sexual orientation."... "The bakers could not refuse to supply their goods to Mr Lee because he was a gay man or supported gay marriage, but that is quite different from obliging them to supply a cake iced with a message with which they profoundly disagreed.""
How come Red Swastika School and other Buddhist organisations are still around, then?
No, giving up burgers won’t actually save the planet - "Almost all articles on this topic suggest going vegetarian could achieve emission cuts of 50 percent or more. But these figures are never a reduction of total emissions, just those emitted from food. This is an important distinction because four-fifths of emissions are being ignored. The real impact is five times less. Anyway, a systematic peer review of studies shows vegetarian diets likely reduce an individual’s emissions by the equivalent of 540 kg (1,190 lbs.) of CO2. For the average person in the industrialized world, that’s the equivalent of cutting emissions by just 4.3 percent. Vegetarian diets are also slightly cheaper, and saved money will be spent on goods and services that emit more CO2. A new Swedish study shows a vegetarian diet is 10 percent cheaper, freeing up about 2 percent of an individual’s budget. The extra money would likely be spent proportionally on existing purchases. This boosts one’s carbon emissions by about 2 percent. So eating carrots instead of steak means you effectively cut your emissions by about 2 percent. This won’t save the planet. Climate change is both trivialized and hampered by unrealistic senses of magnitude, and by silly suggestions that your or my actions can transform the planet... Similarly, neither subsidized solar panels nor wind turbines near shopping malls provide a meaningful solution to global warming. The International Energy Agency estimates that globally we get less than 1 percent of our energy needs from solar and wind, and even by 2040, doing everything promised in the Paris Treaty, we’ll get just 3.6 percent. Over the next quarter century, solar and wind will not be a major part of the picture. Nor does buying an electric car change things by much. The IEA estimates that, optimistically, we’ll go from around 2 million electric cars today to 300 million in 2040. This will reduce global emissions by less than 1 percent because these cars will still get half their electricity from fossil fuels, and because oil will become cheaper and used more elsewhere, as demand from cars falls. We have become so invested in the mistaken premise that the individual can take meaningful action against climate change that we are doing far too little to clamor collectively for the effective investment needed for global warming to be tackled."
Deepening our understanding of academic inbreeding effects on research information exchange and scientific output: new insights for academic based research - "We find that mobility(or lack of) at the early research career stage is decisive in influencing academic behaviorsand scientific productivity. Less mobile academics have more inward oriented informationexchange dynamics and lower scientific productivity. The analysis also indicates that theinformation exchange and scientific productivity of academics that changed institutionsonly once do not differ substantially from that of ‘‘mobile inbred academics’’. Thisemphasizes the need for mobility throughout scientific and academic careers and calls forpolicies to curtail academic inbreeding"
Navel Gazing: Academic Inbreeding and Scientific Productivity - "academic inbreeding is associated with lower scholarly output. Second, theacademically inbred faculty is relatively more centered on its own institution and less open to the rest of thescientific world. This navel-gazing tendency is a critical driver of its reduced scientific output when comparedwith noninbred faculties. Third, we reveal that academic inbreeding could be the result of an institutionalpractice, such that these faculty members contribute disproportionately more to teaching and outreach activities,which allows noninbred faculty members to dedicate themselves to the research endeavor. Thus, a limitedpresence of inbreds can benefit the research output of noninbreds and potentially the whole university, but adominantly inbred environment will stifle productivity, even for noninbreds"
The effect of academic inbreeding on scientific effectiveness
NYPD boss accused of stuffing her panties in co-worker’s mouth - "A ball-busting female boss at a Brooklyn precinct is under investigation for allegedly stuffing a pair of her panties into a male colleague’s mouth... Sgt. Ann Marie Guerra, the second-in-command at the 72nd Precinct Detectives Squad, flipped out on Detective Victor Falcon when he complained about her leaving her underwear all over the unisex locker room... “She has been on social media spouting man-hating rhetoric about fellow sergeants having ‘little d–ks’”"
School bans bags so boy turns up carrying books in a microwave - "Jacob staged a silent protest by using a wicker basket and a microwave to make a point... ‘How can you even get to places on time with all the right books, let alone do things like sanitary towels."
Ryan Miller - "This new goofy identity politics idea of innate virtue and evil corresponding to long ago historical wrongs driven by race and gender and ethnicity, and then applied to present day peeps totally removed from all that, is utterly absurd and confuses the shit out of the task of actually identifying real and ongoing incidents and episodes of racist and sexist discrimination." ~ Anonymous friend of mine."
Waitrose forced to change name of 'sexist' sandwich following complaints - "'Gentleman's Smoked Chicken Caesar Roll'. The roll, which is part of the Heston Blumenthal range at the chain, contains 'gentleman's relish', an anchovy mayonnaise, so there is some logic behind the name... There has been some backlash (mostly from men) to the suggestion that the name of the sandwich is sexist, as there are plenty of other foods which have been given female names [like Pink Lady and Granny Smith Apples, Woman's Weekly, Ladyfingers and Bombay Bad Boy pot noodles]"
The modern meaning of "sexist" is "anything that makes a distinction between the sexes" (when not used for feminist ends, naturally)
Liz - "All White People Are Racist. The Sooner We Realize This the Sooner We Can Be Critical of Ourselves and the Ways We Benefit From Whiteness"
"Ive Noticed People Who Claim to Be Anti-Racist End Up Being Extremely Racist"
Inspectors knock - Japanese citizenship - "TO BECOME a Japanese citizen, a foreigner must display “good conduct”, among other things. The rules do not specify what that means, and make no mention of living wafu (Japanese-style). But for one candidate, at least, it involved officials looking in his fridge and inspecting his children’s toys to see if he was Japanese enough (he was)."
Linda Gottfredson’s Scientific Keynote Cancelled: Why? - "Linda Gottfredson, Professor Emerita at the University of Delaware, has been disinvited from giving a keynote talk at the International Association of Educational and Vocational Guidance meeting in Sweden... The title of her planned talk was “What should I do? Ethical challenges in helping youth navigate career choices in a world where family expectation, ingrained stereotypes, social engineers and genetic proclivities compete for influence.” I haven’t seen the talk, but the title indicates its likely content: young people must find their way into jobs, how should counseling specialists advise them, given all the sound and fury? Why was such an unremarkable keynote talk cancelled? The talk was dropped following four letters of complaint. Written no doubt by well-meaning scholars, the letters express great anxiety about intelligence research... A profound discomfort with empirical findings emerging from intelligence research lies at the heart of the disinvitation. People who work in this field are equable about these findings (see, for example the open-access article ‘Top 10 replicated findings from Behavioral Genetics’) — they are, after all, descriptive not prescriptive... Gottfredson has for years supported healthcare providers concerned with Type II Diabetes. Among the millions of patients some, inevitably, cope less well with this illness, which, by the way, is about as tricky to manage as a complex investment portfolio. Gottfredson uses her expertise to evaluate the cognitive burden entailed in diabetes self-care — such as figuring out how and when to take the medications, what to do in a crisis, and how to manage blood sugar levels. Rather than ignore the data on variation in intelligence, or soft-pedal its implications, Gottfredson works to reduce harms from this particular source of inequality... We should be vigilant against threats to free speech, because free speech protects us from much that is evil. It is especially disappointing to see Gottfredson treated this way because she can be trusted. She does not shirk from telling the truth even when it hurts her"
Lawsuit accuses Seneca Valley 'mean girls' of targeting boy with false allegations - "The 26-page lawsuit — filed in Pittsburgh on the eve of Mean Girls Day — alleges that T.F. “was forced to endure multiple court appearances, detention in a juvenile facility, detention at home, the loss of his liberty and other damages until several of the girls reluctantly admitted that their accusations were false” this summer. The lawsuit contends T.F. was bullied on multiple occasions by classmates. In one example, the lawsuit said students last year placed masking tape with the word “PREDATOR” written on it on his back without his knowledge during choir practice. The lawsuit alleges the boy was further damaged from “gender bias” by school officials and Goldinger’s office, which even after learning the girls’ accusations were false “did not take any action against the females involved,” said attorney Craig Fishman of Pittsburgh, who represents the Floods. “(T.F.) was basically being tortured in school by the other students and investigators, but the administration was only focused on protecting the girls who were lying”"
Believe. Women.
Aziz Ansari’s New Standup Tour Is a Cry Against Extreme Wokeness - "The furor directed at Ansari, though, was not simply a consequence of his alleged misbehavior. The more complex concern was his apparent hypocrisy. Ansari had built a reputation as an ardent feminist and amateur dating guru... In his latest set, Ansari suggests that collective anger has overcorrected; now, rather than hold power to account, it targets the slightest and least consequential controversies. “Why is everyone weighing in on this shit?” Ansari asked of the Twitter users who flocked to debate whether an American teen-ager’s choice of prom dress constituted so-called cultural appropriation. “Everyone weighs in on everything. They don’t know anything. People don’t wanna just say, ‘I don’t know.’ ” The amused but progressive spirit that once informed Ansari’s commentary on current events seems to have crusted into suspicion about wokeness and its excesses. Without ever mentioning the #MeToo movement—or his own experience as one of its most disputed casualties—Ansari decries the destructive performativity of Internet activism and the fickle, ever-changing standards of political correctness"
So much for riding the SJW tiger
British chicken sexing in crisis: experts needed to spot a 'very, very small' difference - "“The mark is remarkably very, very small, less than 0.1mm,” she says. “It’s a very small difference to look for. Males look more three-dimensional and females look flat. In about 10 per cent of chicks, it’s very similar but you have to find out which is which.”"
Christian bakers in 'gay cake' row did not discriminate against same-sex marriage activist, Supreme Court rules - ""As to Mr Lee's claim based on sexual discrimination, the bakers did not refuse to fulfil his order because of his sexual orientation. "They would have refused to make such a cake for any customer, irrespective of their sexual orientation."... "The bakers could not refuse to supply their goods to Mr Lee because he was a gay man or supported gay marriage, but that is quite different from obliging them to supply a cake iced with a message with which they profoundly disagreed.""
Post ID: 5989393881611110826
Who fact checks the fact checkers? - Snopes
The Daily Mail Snopes Story And Fact Checking The Fact Checkers
"The Daily Mail’s article makes a number of claims about the site’s principles and organization, drawing heavily from the proceedings of a contentious divorce between the site’s founders and questioning whether the site could possibly act as a trusted and neutral arbitrator of the “truth.”
When I first read through the Daily Mail article I immediately suspected the story itself must certainly be “fake news” because of how devastating the claims were and that given that Snopes.com was so heavily used by the journalistic community, if any of the claims were true, someone would have already written about them and companies like Facebook would not be partnering with them. I also noted that despite having been online for several hours, no other major mainstream news outlet had written about the story, which is typically a strong sign of a false or misleading story. Yet at the same time, the Daily Mail appeared to be sourcing its claims from a series of emails and other documents from a court case, some of which it reproduced in its article and, perhaps most strangely, neither Snopes nor its principles had issued any kind of statement through its website or social media channels disclaiming the story...
When I reached out to David Mikkelson, the founder of Snopes, for comment, I fully expected him to respond with a lengthy email in Snopes’ trademark point-by-point format, fully refuting each and every one of the claims in the Daily Mail’s article and writing the entire article off as “fake news.”
It was with incredible surprise therefore that I received David’s one-sentence response which read in its entirety “I'd be happy to speak with you, but I can only address some aspects in general because I'm precluded by the terms of a binding settlement agreement from discussing details of my divorce.”
This absolutely astounded me. Here was the one of the world’s most respected fact checking organizations, soon to be an ultimate arbitrator of “truth” on Facebook, saying that it cannot respond to a fact checking request because of a secrecy agreement.
In short, when someone attempted to fact check the fact checker, the response was the equivalent of “it's secret.”
It is impossible to understate how antithetical this is to the fact checking world, in which absolute openness and transparency are necessary prerequisites for trust. How can fact checking organizations like Snopes expect the public to place trust in them if when they themselves are called into question, their response is that they can’t respond...
When pressed about claims by the Daily Mail that at least one Snopes employee has actually run for political office and that this presents at the very least the appearance of potential bias in Snopes’ fact checks, David responded “It's pretty much a given that anyone who has ever run for (or held) a political office did so under some form of party affiliation and said something critical about their opponent(s) and/or other politicians at some point. Does that mean anyone who has ever run for office is manifestly unsuited to be associated with a fact-checking endeavor, in any capacity?”
That is actually a fascinating response to come from a fact checking organization that prides itself on its claimed neutrality. Think about it this way – what if there was a fact checking organization whose fact checkers were all drawn from the ranks of Breitbart and Infowars? Most liberals would likely dismiss such an organization as partisan and biased. Similarly, an organization whose fact checkers were all drawn from Occupy Democrats and Huffington Post might be dismissed by conservatives as partisan and biased. In fact, when I asked several colleagues for their thoughts on this issue this morning, the unanimous response back was that people with strong self-declared political leanings on either side should not be a part of a fact checking organization and all had incorrectly assumed that Snopes would have felt the same way and had a blanket policy against placing partisan individuals as fact checkers.
In fact, this is one of the reasons that fact checking organizations must be transparent and open. If an organization like Snopes feels it is ok to hire partisan employees who have run for public office on behalf of a particular political party and employ them as fact checkers where they have a high likelihood of being asked to weigh in on material aligned with or contrary to their views, how can they reasonably be expected to act as neutral arbitrators of the truth?
Put another way, some Republicans believe firmly that climate change is a falsehood and that humans are not responsible in any way for climatic change. Those in the scientific community might object to an anti-climate change Republican serving as a fact checker for climate change stories at Snopes and flagging every article about a new scientific study on climate change as fake news. Yet, we have no way of knowing the biases of the fact checkers at Snopes – we simply have to trust that the site’s views on what constitutes neutrality are the same as ours.
When I asked for comment on the specific detailed criteria Snopes uses to screen its applicants and decide who to hire as a fact checker, surprisingly David demurred, saying only that the site looks for applicants across all fields and skills. He specifically did not provide any detail of any kind regarding the screening process and how Snopes evaluates potential hires. David also did not respond to further emails asking whether, as part of the screening process, Snopes has applicants fact check a set of articles to evaluate their reasoning and research skills and to gain insight into their thinking process.
This was highly unexpected, as I had assumed that a fact checking site as reputable as Snopes would have a detailed written formal evaluation process for new fact checkers that would include having them perform a set of fact checks and include a lengthy set of interview questions designed to assess their ability to identify potential or perceived conflicts of interest and work through potential biases.
Even more strangely, despite asking in two separate emails how Snopes assesses its fact checkers and whether it performs intra- and inter-rater reliability assessments, David responded only that fact checkers work together collaboratively and did not respond to further requests for more detail and did not answer whether Snopes uses any sort of assessment scoring or ongoing testing process to assess its fact checkers.
This raises exceptionally grave concerns about the internal workings of Snopes and why it is not more forthcoming about its assessment process. Arguing that because multiple fact checkers might work on an article, reliability is not a concern, is a false argument that shows a concerning lack of understanding about reliability and accuracy. Imagine a team of 50 staunch climate deniers all working collaboratively to debunk a new scientific study showing a clear link between industrial pollution and climate change...
In a newspaper workflow, fact checking typically occurs as an editorial function, double checking what a reporter wrote. At Snopes, fact checking is the core function of an article and thus if multiple people contributed to a fact check, it is surprising that absolutely no mention is made of them, given that at a newspaper all reporters contributing to a story are listed. Not only does this rob those individuals of credit, but perhaps most critically, it makes it impossible for outside entities to audit who is contributing to what fact check and to ensure that fact checkers who self-identify as strongly supportive or against particular topics are not assigned to fact check those topics to prevent the appearance of conflicts of interest or bias.
David also did not respond to a request for comment on why Snopes fact checks rarely mention that they reached out to the authors of the article being fact checked to get their side of the story. Indeed, Journalism 101 teaches you that when you write an article presenting someone or something in a negative light, you must give them the opportunity to respond and provide their side of the story...
David did not respond to a request for comment on this or why the site does not have a dedicated appeals page for authors of stories which Snopes has labeled false to contest that label and he also did not respond to a request to provide further detail on whether Snopes has a written formal appeals process or how it handles such requests...
This is precisely the same approach used by Facebook for its former Trending Topics team and more recently its hate speech rules (the company did not respond to a request for comment).
From the outside, Silicon Valley looks like a gleaming tower of technological perfection. Yet, once the curtain is pulled back, we see that behind that shimmering façade is a warehouse of good old fashioned humans, subject to all the same biases and fallibility, but with their results now laundered through the sheen of computerized infallibility...
At the end of the day, it is clear that before we rush to place fact checking organizations like Snopes in charge of arbitrating what is “truth” on Facebook, we need to have a lot more understanding of how they function internally and much greater transparency into their work."
If you dismiss everything the Daily Mail says, then you ignore the journalism that they do that others are unwilling and/or unable to do.
In other words, even if you agree with their partisan agenda, you should have grave concerns about how Snopes does its "fact checking". Fact checkers are not neutral and they are not the gold standard. Just because Snopes says something doesn't mean it's true; in fact, as we know from many of their "fact checks", they can be very economical with the truth.
From my archives:
Who Is Fact Checking The Media Fact Checkers?: "We had firsthand experience with errant fact checks when Snopes published one in April claiming that IBD had "resuscitated" a "false" claim about 3.5 million more registered voters than eligible voters. In fact, we'd published that editorial eight months earlier — as was obvious from the time stamp on the article itself. (It went viral this spring on Facebook.) Snopes later rewrote that section of its fact check — but never acknowledged its original mistake. It also changed the ruling on the underlying claims from "false" to "mixture.""
From Muhammad Syed - "Both of the top two have put out false articles about Islam. Politifact on FGM and Snopes on slavery by Mohammed. I've reached out to both in the past with data / citations on their error with no retractions issued. Sadly, by refusing to use the truth as the ultimate benchmark they poison the discourse at large, opening a gateway to those looking to dispute reality itself."
Snopes 'Fact Checks,' Facebook Threatens Satire Site for Mocking CNN - "The Christian satire site Babylon Bee has been fact-checked by Snopes and threatened by Facebook after it published an Onion-style article about CNN about purchasing a washing machine to “spin the news.” The Babylon Bee openly advertises itself as a satire site"
Balderdash: Links - 8th September 2018 (1) - "FACT CHECK: Do Police Kill More White People Than Black People? - "CLAIM: Police shootings kill more white Americans than black Americans.
RATING: Mixture
WHAT'S TRUE: In absolute numbers, more white people than black people are killed in police shootings (because white people outnumber black people in America)...
Of course, they ignore the fact that you [also] need to adjust the killings of black people by police by the crime rate to avoid having inaccurate and misleading "analysis""
Balderdash: Links - 20th March 2018 (2) - "FACT CHECK: Was a Woman Attacked on Camera for Wearing a 'Make America Great Again' Hat in Hollywood? - "WHAT'S TRUE
YouTube star Blaire White did get into an altercation over her red "Make America Great Again" hat when she went to an anti-Trump protest on Hollywood Boulevard.
WHAT'S FALSE
Police said White and her boyfriend initiated the altercation by crossing an LAPD dividing line meant to keep opposing sides separate to prevent violence."
Comments: ""Yeah people beat the shit out of her, but hey she was asking for it by just being there. Verdict: MIXED" Wow, fuck Snopes."
"By this logic, you could say of a woman who was raped upon entering a dark alley at night while wearing provocative clothing that it was only "partly true" that she got raped. This is worse than victim blaming, it's intentionally obscuring the fact that there was a victim in the first place""
Addendum:
Snopes Is a Sneaky Liar About California’s Bill To Ban Christian LGBT Talk - "If you haven’t already lost significant respect for Snopes as an impartial fact-checker, its analysis of a bill that bans all transactions involved in stating Christian beliefs about homosexual behavior should. That bill passed 50-18 on April 19 and is being considered in the state senate. Snopes’ insistence that California Assembly Bill 2943 would not result in the Bible being banned in California is akin to Snopes calling “demonstrably and clearly false” the claim that Joseph Stalin killed everyone around him... Constitutional law attorney Jenna Ellis concludes: “A Christian bookstore could be sued for carrying a book such as Ryan T. Anderson’s latest, When Harry Became Sally, solely because the message is in conflict with the LGBT agenda…. Thus, this law is not viewpoint neutral and specifically targets psychotherapists, counselors, pastors, lay counselors, authors, speakers, and any other speakers from promoting a message of heterosexuality, and instead allows only a message affirming the LGBT viewpoint.” The Snopes articles makes it sound like Christians have nothing to fear from this bill, that the bill won’t have the effect of chilling all speech and inhibiting the sale and use of all texts that indicate that homosexual practice and transgender identity are morally wrong. Don’t you believe it for a moment."
Liberal Fact-Checker Snopes Caught Approving 'Wildly Misleading,' Anti-GOP Fake News - "Politico’s Jake Sherman slammed the image for being “more incorrect than correct.” Even writers from the left-leaning Washington Post called out the meme as inaccurate... Snopes determined that the meme, which has widely been debunked and mocked, was “True.” Not “Miscaptioned” or “Mostly True” or “Mostly False.” Nope. Snopes went with its highest rating for truthfulness for a meme that had been debunked as demonstrably wrong.Perhaps the most damning evidence against Snopes is the simple fact that the original poster of the meme has since deleted it"
On the meme claiming almost everyone who voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act got voted out
Snopes Rates Liberal Meme 'True' After Former Hillary Staffer Deletes Photo and Admits It's Inaccurate - "Business Insider reporter Joe Perticone pointed out that despite having a red X placed over her face indicated that she had been voted out of Congress, Seema Verma never actually served in Congress. Politico reporter Jake Sherman tore apart the meme stating that it was “insane fake news” and was in fact “more incorrect than correct.” Kitchel later deleted the tweet and admitted that it was inaccurate"
"The Daily Mail’s article makes a number of claims about the site’s principles and organization, drawing heavily from the proceedings of a contentious divorce between the site’s founders and questioning whether the site could possibly act as a trusted and neutral arbitrator of the “truth.”
When I first read through the Daily Mail article I immediately suspected the story itself must certainly be “fake news” because of how devastating the claims were and that given that Snopes.com was so heavily used by the journalistic community, if any of the claims were true, someone would have already written about them and companies like Facebook would not be partnering with them. I also noted that despite having been online for several hours, no other major mainstream news outlet had written about the story, which is typically a strong sign of a false or misleading story. Yet at the same time, the Daily Mail appeared to be sourcing its claims from a series of emails and other documents from a court case, some of which it reproduced in its article and, perhaps most strangely, neither Snopes nor its principles had issued any kind of statement through its website or social media channels disclaiming the story...
When I reached out to David Mikkelson, the founder of Snopes, for comment, I fully expected him to respond with a lengthy email in Snopes’ trademark point-by-point format, fully refuting each and every one of the claims in the Daily Mail’s article and writing the entire article off as “fake news.”
It was with incredible surprise therefore that I received David’s one-sentence response which read in its entirety “I'd be happy to speak with you, but I can only address some aspects in general because I'm precluded by the terms of a binding settlement agreement from discussing details of my divorce.”
This absolutely astounded me. Here was the one of the world’s most respected fact checking organizations, soon to be an ultimate arbitrator of “truth” on Facebook, saying that it cannot respond to a fact checking request because of a secrecy agreement.
In short, when someone attempted to fact check the fact checker, the response was the equivalent of “it's secret.”
It is impossible to understate how antithetical this is to the fact checking world, in which absolute openness and transparency are necessary prerequisites for trust. How can fact checking organizations like Snopes expect the public to place trust in them if when they themselves are called into question, their response is that they can’t respond...
When pressed about claims by the Daily Mail that at least one Snopes employee has actually run for political office and that this presents at the very least the appearance of potential bias in Snopes’ fact checks, David responded “It's pretty much a given that anyone who has ever run for (or held) a political office did so under some form of party affiliation and said something critical about their opponent(s) and/or other politicians at some point. Does that mean anyone who has ever run for office is manifestly unsuited to be associated with a fact-checking endeavor, in any capacity?”
That is actually a fascinating response to come from a fact checking organization that prides itself on its claimed neutrality. Think about it this way – what if there was a fact checking organization whose fact checkers were all drawn from the ranks of Breitbart and Infowars? Most liberals would likely dismiss such an organization as partisan and biased. Similarly, an organization whose fact checkers were all drawn from Occupy Democrats and Huffington Post might be dismissed by conservatives as partisan and biased. In fact, when I asked several colleagues for their thoughts on this issue this morning, the unanimous response back was that people with strong self-declared political leanings on either side should not be a part of a fact checking organization and all had incorrectly assumed that Snopes would have felt the same way and had a blanket policy against placing partisan individuals as fact checkers.
In fact, this is one of the reasons that fact checking organizations must be transparent and open. If an organization like Snopes feels it is ok to hire partisan employees who have run for public office on behalf of a particular political party and employ them as fact checkers where they have a high likelihood of being asked to weigh in on material aligned with or contrary to their views, how can they reasonably be expected to act as neutral arbitrators of the truth?
Put another way, some Republicans believe firmly that climate change is a falsehood and that humans are not responsible in any way for climatic change. Those in the scientific community might object to an anti-climate change Republican serving as a fact checker for climate change stories at Snopes and flagging every article about a new scientific study on climate change as fake news. Yet, we have no way of knowing the biases of the fact checkers at Snopes – we simply have to trust that the site’s views on what constitutes neutrality are the same as ours.
When I asked for comment on the specific detailed criteria Snopes uses to screen its applicants and decide who to hire as a fact checker, surprisingly David demurred, saying only that the site looks for applicants across all fields and skills. He specifically did not provide any detail of any kind regarding the screening process and how Snopes evaluates potential hires. David also did not respond to further emails asking whether, as part of the screening process, Snopes has applicants fact check a set of articles to evaluate their reasoning and research skills and to gain insight into their thinking process.
This was highly unexpected, as I had assumed that a fact checking site as reputable as Snopes would have a detailed written formal evaluation process for new fact checkers that would include having them perform a set of fact checks and include a lengthy set of interview questions designed to assess their ability to identify potential or perceived conflicts of interest and work through potential biases.
Even more strangely, despite asking in two separate emails how Snopes assesses its fact checkers and whether it performs intra- and inter-rater reliability assessments, David responded only that fact checkers work together collaboratively and did not respond to further requests for more detail and did not answer whether Snopes uses any sort of assessment scoring or ongoing testing process to assess its fact checkers.
This raises exceptionally grave concerns about the internal workings of Snopes and why it is not more forthcoming about its assessment process. Arguing that because multiple fact checkers might work on an article, reliability is not a concern, is a false argument that shows a concerning lack of understanding about reliability and accuracy. Imagine a team of 50 staunch climate deniers all working collaboratively to debunk a new scientific study showing a clear link between industrial pollution and climate change...
In a newspaper workflow, fact checking typically occurs as an editorial function, double checking what a reporter wrote. At Snopes, fact checking is the core function of an article and thus if multiple people contributed to a fact check, it is surprising that absolutely no mention is made of them, given that at a newspaper all reporters contributing to a story are listed. Not only does this rob those individuals of credit, but perhaps most critically, it makes it impossible for outside entities to audit who is contributing to what fact check and to ensure that fact checkers who self-identify as strongly supportive or against particular topics are not assigned to fact check those topics to prevent the appearance of conflicts of interest or bias.
David also did not respond to a request for comment on why Snopes fact checks rarely mention that they reached out to the authors of the article being fact checked to get their side of the story. Indeed, Journalism 101 teaches you that when you write an article presenting someone or something in a negative light, you must give them the opportunity to respond and provide their side of the story...
David did not respond to a request for comment on this or why the site does not have a dedicated appeals page for authors of stories which Snopes has labeled false to contest that label and he also did not respond to a request to provide further detail on whether Snopes has a written formal appeals process or how it handles such requests...
This is precisely the same approach used by Facebook for its former Trending Topics team and more recently its hate speech rules (the company did not respond to a request for comment).
From the outside, Silicon Valley looks like a gleaming tower of technological perfection. Yet, once the curtain is pulled back, we see that behind that shimmering façade is a warehouse of good old fashioned humans, subject to all the same biases and fallibility, but with their results now laundered through the sheen of computerized infallibility...
At the end of the day, it is clear that before we rush to place fact checking organizations like Snopes in charge of arbitrating what is “truth” on Facebook, we need to have a lot more understanding of how they function internally and much greater transparency into their work."
If you dismiss everything the Daily Mail says, then you ignore the journalism that they do that others are unwilling and/or unable to do.
In other words, even if you agree with their partisan agenda, you should have grave concerns about how Snopes does its "fact checking". Fact checkers are not neutral and they are not the gold standard. Just because Snopes says something doesn't mean it's true; in fact, as we know from many of their "fact checks", they can be very economical with the truth.
From my archives:
Who Is Fact Checking The Media Fact Checkers?: "We had firsthand experience with errant fact checks when Snopes published one in April claiming that IBD had "resuscitated" a "false" claim about 3.5 million more registered voters than eligible voters. In fact, we'd published that editorial eight months earlier — as was obvious from the time stamp on the article itself. (It went viral this spring on Facebook.) Snopes later rewrote that section of its fact check — but never acknowledged its original mistake. It also changed the ruling on the underlying claims from "false" to "mixture.""
From Muhammad Syed - "Both of the top two have put out false articles about Islam. Politifact on FGM and Snopes on slavery by Mohammed. I've reached out to both in the past with data / citations on their error with no retractions issued. Sadly, by refusing to use the truth as the ultimate benchmark they poison the discourse at large, opening a gateway to those looking to dispute reality itself."
Snopes 'Fact Checks,' Facebook Threatens Satire Site for Mocking CNN - "The Christian satire site Babylon Bee has been fact-checked by Snopes and threatened by Facebook after it published an Onion-style article about CNN about purchasing a washing machine to “spin the news.” The Babylon Bee openly advertises itself as a satire site"
Balderdash: Links - 8th September 2018 (1) - "FACT CHECK: Do Police Kill More White People Than Black People? - "CLAIM: Police shootings kill more white Americans than black Americans.
RATING: Mixture
WHAT'S TRUE: In absolute numbers, more white people than black people are killed in police shootings (because white people outnumber black people in America)...
Of course, they ignore the fact that you [also] need to adjust the killings of black people by police by the crime rate to avoid having inaccurate and misleading "analysis""
Balderdash: Links - 20th March 2018 (2) - "FACT CHECK: Was a Woman Attacked on Camera for Wearing a 'Make America Great Again' Hat in Hollywood? - "WHAT'S TRUE
YouTube star Blaire White did get into an altercation over her red "Make America Great Again" hat when she went to an anti-Trump protest on Hollywood Boulevard.
WHAT'S FALSE
Police said White and her boyfriend initiated the altercation by crossing an LAPD dividing line meant to keep opposing sides separate to prevent violence."
Comments: ""Yeah people beat the shit out of her, but hey she was asking for it by just being there. Verdict: MIXED" Wow, fuck Snopes."
"By this logic, you could say of a woman who was raped upon entering a dark alley at night while wearing provocative clothing that it was only "partly true" that she got raped. This is worse than victim blaming, it's intentionally obscuring the fact that there was a victim in the first place""
Addendum:
Snopes Is a Sneaky Liar About California’s Bill To Ban Christian LGBT Talk - "If you haven’t already lost significant respect for Snopes as an impartial fact-checker, its analysis of a bill that bans all transactions involved in stating Christian beliefs about homosexual behavior should. That bill passed 50-18 on April 19 and is being considered in the state senate. Snopes’ insistence that California Assembly Bill 2943 would not result in the Bible being banned in California is akin to Snopes calling “demonstrably and clearly false” the claim that Joseph Stalin killed everyone around him... Constitutional law attorney Jenna Ellis concludes: “A Christian bookstore could be sued for carrying a book such as Ryan T. Anderson’s latest, When Harry Became Sally, solely because the message is in conflict with the LGBT agenda…. Thus, this law is not viewpoint neutral and specifically targets psychotherapists, counselors, pastors, lay counselors, authors, speakers, and any other speakers from promoting a message of heterosexuality, and instead allows only a message affirming the LGBT viewpoint.” The Snopes articles makes it sound like Christians have nothing to fear from this bill, that the bill won’t have the effect of chilling all speech and inhibiting the sale and use of all texts that indicate that homosexual practice and transgender identity are morally wrong. Don’t you believe it for a moment."
Liberal Fact-Checker Snopes Caught Approving 'Wildly Misleading,' Anti-GOP Fake News - "Politico’s Jake Sherman slammed the image for being “more incorrect than correct.” Even writers from the left-leaning Washington Post called out the meme as inaccurate... Snopes determined that the meme, which has widely been debunked and mocked, was “True.” Not “Miscaptioned” or “Mostly True” or “Mostly False.” Nope. Snopes went with its highest rating for truthfulness for a meme that had been debunked as demonstrably wrong.Perhaps the most damning evidence against Snopes is the simple fact that the original poster of the meme has since deleted it"
On the meme claiming almost everyone who voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act got voted out
Snopes Rates Liberal Meme 'True' After Former Hillary Staffer Deletes Photo and Admits It's Inaccurate - "Business Insider reporter Joe Perticone pointed out that despite having a red X placed over her face indicated that she had been voted out of Congress, Seema Verma never actually served in Congress. Politico reporter Jake Sherman tore apart the meme stating that it was “insane fake news” and was in fact “more incorrect than correct.” Kitchel later deleted the tweet and admitted that it was inaccurate"
Post ID: 8693061687296027495
Links - 26th November 2018 (1)
4chan solved part of math problem puzzling scientists for decades - "Apparently part of the solution to a difficult mathematics problem has been available for years on a 4chan board about anime. The anonymous author provided it as a tip about how to best watch a non-linear series. The amusing story where anime and science intersected was brought to light by Robin Houston, a computer scientist and mathematician... The problem in question comes from the math field of combinatorics and deals with permutations. A permutation is an act of changing the arrangement, especially the linear order, of a set of items. For instance, the numbers 1, 2 and 3 can be arranged in six different ways, i.e. there are six possible permutations for three elements. A superpermutation is a string that contains all possible permutations of a set as sub-strings."
Social media ‘aids oppressors’, says Saudi rights campaigner - "One of Saudi Arabia’s most prominent exiled activists has quit Twitter and Facebook, saying that the social media giants have become tools for oppressive governments and trolls to harass and silence campaigners."
Of course, "oppressive governments and trolls" aren't the only ones who "harass and silence" people on Twitter
Why Fascists Hate Masturbation - "Reich suggested that sexual suppression was a tool of fascism, a way to train young people to submit to authority, even in something relating to their own body."
In Milpa Alta, people still speak the Aztec language - "Milpa Alta (‘high cornfield’ in Spanish) couldn’t be more different from the smog-laden city to which it formally belongs and that it overlooks from its mountainside location. What used to be known as distant farmland and Nahua villages has slowly been ceded into the city. Although literally part of Mexico City, it's rarely visited by other Mexico City residents. Foreign tourists are even more unusual. And although it’s officially within the city limits, the people of Milpa Alta in many ways live as they have done for hundreds of years."
North America’s nearly forgotten language - "Powell cautioned me that it was important to get the story of Chinook Wawa right. “There’s nothing transcendent about Chinook Wawa,” he said. “Because it’s part of our history, it enriches our present. That’s all.”... “People say how romantic our place names sound, and are always disappointed when I tell them they’re descriptions that mean ‘big water’, ‘shaped like a hummingbird beak’, or ‘purple flowers grow here’,” said Erik Blaney a business owner and tour operator from the Tla'amin First Nation. He tells me that people are always after a story; “something with a great creator or full moon.”"
[1705.03394] That is not dead which can eternal lie: the aestivation hypothesis for resolving Fermi's paradox - "If a civilization wants to maximize computation it appears rational to aestivate until the far future in order to exploit the low temperature environment: this can produce a 10^30 multiplier of achievable computation. We hence suggest the "aestivation hypothesis": the reason we are not observing manifestations of alien civilizations is that they are currently (mostly) inactive, patiently waiting for future cosmic eras. This paper analyzes the assumptions going into the hypothesis and how physical law and observational evidence constrain the motivations of aliens compatible with the hypothesis."
Do we really need eight hours of uninterrupted sleep a night? - "The sleep period is made up of 90-minute cycles. Waking up between these sleep cycles is a normal part of the sleep pattern and becomes more common as we get older... It’s thought the siesta was the dominant sleep pattern before the industrial revolution required people to be continuously awake across the day to serve the sleepless industrial machine. It’s still common in rural communities around the world, not just in Mediterranean or Latin American cultures. Our siesta tendency or post-lunch decline of alertness still occurs in those who never take afternoon naps. And this has less to do with overindulging at lunchtime and more to do with our circadian rhythms... International sleep researchers have trialled a number of different sleep schedules: sleep for 20 minutes every hour; one hour sleep every three hours; ten hours sleep every 28 hours. Participants survive easily on all these schedules despite their impracticality in our 24-hour world."
My Parents Give Me $28,000 a Year - "Not long ago, my wife, a composer, asked me if I would ever advise a student from a low-income family to pursue a career in the arts... “Your parents give you $28,000 a year. They paid for your tuition. They made it possible for you to do what you’d do if money were no object—because money was no object for you.”... We spend a lot of time in the New York City theater scene talking about how to bring in “new voices.” We talk about ways to create more performance opportunities for historically underrepresented groups, such as women and people of color. We talk about ways in which society as a whole tends to favor straight white guys—and how that manifests itself in the arts. And while these conversations are important, and while I agree that society is, often, skewed to favor those SWGs (bless their hearts), it’s amazing how little time we spend discussing the largest, most obvious barrier to new voices in the arts: money... $28,000 is a dollar figure familiar to children of the wealthy. Actually, the new dollar figure is $30,000, as it just increased this year, due to inflation. (Come on, parents! Keep up with the times. Heh heh…) It’s the maximum amount a couple can give to an individual, tax free. Wealthy individuals are frequently advised by their accountants to do this to avoid the (quite low) inheritance tax. It results in free income for wealthy kids. I don’t even report it to the IRS–and that’s entirely legal. I could get this money every year for the rest of my life (or as long as my parents choose to give it to me)—without having to lift a finger
Also, she had a boyfriend but now identifies as a "queer woman" (so much for "born that way"/"born this way")
Too bad the sums for her proposals of free college tuition, universal healthcare and universal basic income can't be paid for by stiffing the rich (as she suggests) don't add up
Trump Is Right to Leave the Universal Postal Union - "President Donald Trump declared his intention to exit a 144-year-old international postal agreement known as the Universal Postal Union. If he follows through, Trump will be helping the American small businesses that so many politicians woo on the campaign trail, only to abandon once in office... Chinese counterfeiters can offer free shipping because they pay only about $1.40 to send a mug 8,000 miles from China to an American home, or five times less than what we pay. Let the absurdity of that situation sink in for just a moment, and then consider that we can’t ship a mug across the street for $1.40. And if I were to ship one Mighty Mug to China, the U.S. Postal Service would charge me $22.00—or $62.50 with tracking. As the weight of the package increases, so does the problem: We pay up to $17.61 to mail a four-pound package, but a shipper in China pays $3.67.The culprit is the Universal Postal Union, or UPU, which a century and a half ago set the conditions for global mail exchange. The UPU required postal authorities to give equal treatment to foreign and domestic mail, and established a uniform flat rate to mail a letter anywhere in the world... Despite being the world’s second-largest economy, China is still classified as a developing country, getting the same subsidized rates as countries such as Cuba and Botswana. What this amounts to, in essence, is a massive undue subsidy paid for by U.S. ratepayers in the form of higher shipping costs... The overall effect of discounted rates on U.S. businesses is difficult to measure, but in the 2017 fiscal year, the U.S. Postal Service lost $170 million on inbound packets from China, and that cost is expected to balloon in the 2018 fiscal year to roughly $300 million... What the president did is good for consumers—who may not even realize they’re buying lower-quality knockoffs— good for postal ratepayers, good for the postal service, good for the country, and good for the planet if it discourages wasteful international shipping. It will also go a long way to keeping me and my 12 workers on the job."
Universal Postal Union fast-tracks rate review on Trump threat
Vatican's 'Pokemon GO' game lets you chase Jesus
There is a difference between elites and those with elitist attitudes: Chan Chun Sing - "Sweeping generalisations of people are also unfair and unnecessary, said Mr Chan. He recounted a visit to Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) where a few students said they have been mocked by others, and called elitist. “Is that fair? Let’s pause for a moment. We hardly know the individual but we have branded them”... Mr Chan said that he and his sister were raised by their mother in a three-room flat after his parents’ divorce. There were instances where he was looked down upon, because he did not “speak the way they speak”."
Jews Defending Themselves, That's What Bothers the UN and Europe - "The UN and EU, who completely ignored terrorist arson, missiles and general destruction aimed at Israel for the past eight months, have now suddenly woken up. The prospect of Jews defending themselves is more than they can bear"
‘Masculinity crisis’ in China leads parents to enrol kids in boot camp - "Her son, on the other hand “lacks the time to play” because playtime has “made way for a range of extra-curricular activities”. Monday is for calligraphy; Tuesday is for piano and robotics; Wednesday is for language and calligraphy; Thursday is for English; Friday is for Weiqi (the intellectual board game Go); Saturday is for mathematics, English and Weiqi; and Sunday is for badminton, art and Weiqi. “I pack in so many activities for him because that’s what everyone does. I don’t have a choice,” she said.""
IKEA customer arrested for 'drawing phallic symbols' on walls
Genes linked to being gay may help straight people get more sex
In This Insect, Females Have Penises And Males Have Vaginas - "At io9, Annalee Newitz has written an interesting piece criticising much of the coverage of this story, including this post, and specifically the use of the term “female penis”... do we make a special case for sex-related terms? Newitz would say yes, because of the cultural and social baggage that “female penis” carries, in a way that “snail foot” does not"
Basically io9 says that because of politics we should change how we do science. Not coincidentally that happened in the Soviet Union too
Given that this is from 2014, io9 would certainly have a different view today, thanks to trans mania
Singapore's Public Housing, Envy of World, Hits Rough Patch - "The value of the homes has been falling even as prices of private dwellings rebounded over the past five quarters, leading to a 13.8 percent gap in their price performance, the widest in more than a decade. Private home prices rose 0.5 percent in the third quarter, after climbing 3.4 percent in the previous three months."
People Are Horrified That Many Bank Notes Are Made Of Animal Fat - "the currency of at least 23 countries contains the hard, fatty substance that derives from rendered animal fat... other counties include the UK, Malaysia and Singapore... even our mobile phones contain animal parts... Someone else suggested: "That is really horrible to hear. But, we can all limit cruelty of animals in our daily life by going vegan and using cruelty free products. Its sooo easy." Others, meanwhile, were quick to defend things - saying that it was a good use of animal by-products."
Tallow, tallow everywhere
Apps Installed On Millions Of Android Phones Tracked User Behavior To Execute A Multimillion-Dollar Ad Fraud Scheme - "a significant portion of the millions of Android phone owners who downloaded these apps were secretly tracked as they scrolled and clicked inside the application. By copying actual user behavior in the apps, the fraudsters were able to generate fake traffic that bypassed major fraud detection systems."
Top Apple Mac App Adware Doctor Sends User Data to China: Research
Gender issue with these tissues: Kleenex rebrands Mansize tissues sold in Britain - "Kleenex "Mansize" tissues sold in Britain will be binned after more than 60 years on the shelves. They will be called "Extra Large" tissues instead, after consumers had issues with the tissues, complaining that the name "Mansize" was sexist... A spokesman from Kimberley-Clark, which owns Kleenex, told The Telegraph that its consumer service had been registering a consistent increase in gender-related complaints about the Mansize name."
Ironically when it comes to censorship (for conservative ends, at least) we are told that we shouldn't let a small, unrepresentative minority bully everyone else. So much for "if you don't like it, don't buy it"
Social media ‘aids oppressors’, says Saudi rights campaigner - "One of Saudi Arabia’s most prominent exiled activists has quit Twitter and Facebook, saying that the social media giants have become tools for oppressive governments and trolls to harass and silence campaigners."
Of course, "oppressive governments and trolls" aren't the only ones who "harass and silence" people on Twitter
Why Fascists Hate Masturbation - "Reich suggested that sexual suppression was a tool of fascism, a way to train young people to submit to authority, even in something relating to their own body."
In Milpa Alta, people still speak the Aztec language - "Milpa Alta (‘high cornfield’ in Spanish) couldn’t be more different from the smog-laden city to which it formally belongs and that it overlooks from its mountainside location. What used to be known as distant farmland and Nahua villages has slowly been ceded into the city. Although literally part of Mexico City, it's rarely visited by other Mexico City residents. Foreign tourists are even more unusual. And although it’s officially within the city limits, the people of Milpa Alta in many ways live as they have done for hundreds of years."
North America’s nearly forgotten language - "Powell cautioned me that it was important to get the story of Chinook Wawa right. “There’s nothing transcendent about Chinook Wawa,” he said. “Because it’s part of our history, it enriches our present. That’s all.”... “People say how romantic our place names sound, and are always disappointed when I tell them they’re descriptions that mean ‘big water’, ‘shaped like a hummingbird beak’, or ‘purple flowers grow here’,” said Erik Blaney a business owner and tour operator from the Tla'amin First Nation. He tells me that people are always after a story; “something with a great creator or full moon.”"
[1705.03394] That is not dead which can eternal lie: the aestivation hypothesis for resolving Fermi's paradox - "If a civilization wants to maximize computation it appears rational to aestivate until the far future in order to exploit the low temperature environment: this can produce a 10^30 multiplier of achievable computation. We hence suggest the "aestivation hypothesis": the reason we are not observing manifestations of alien civilizations is that they are currently (mostly) inactive, patiently waiting for future cosmic eras. This paper analyzes the assumptions going into the hypothesis and how physical law and observational evidence constrain the motivations of aliens compatible with the hypothesis."
Do we really need eight hours of uninterrupted sleep a night? - "The sleep period is made up of 90-minute cycles. Waking up between these sleep cycles is a normal part of the sleep pattern and becomes more common as we get older... It’s thought the siesta was the dominant sleep pattern before the industrial revolution required people to be continuously awake across the day to serve the sleepless industrial machine. It’s still common in rural communities around the world, not just in Mediterranean or Latin American cultures. Our siesta tendency or post-lunch decline of alertness still occurs in those who never take afternoon naps. And this has less to do with overindulging at lunchtime and more to do with our circadian rhythms... International sleep researchers have trialled a number of different sleep schedules: sleep for 20 minutes every hour; one hour sleep every three hours; ten hours sleep every 28 hours. Participants survive easily on all these schedules despite their impracticality in our 24-hour world."
My Parents Give Me $28,000 a Year - "Not long ago, my wife, a composer, asked me if I would ever advise a student from a low-income family to pursue a career in the arts... “Your parents give you $28,000 a year. They paid for your tuition. They made it possible for you to do what you’d do if money were no object—because money was no object for you.”... We spend a lot of time in the New York City theater scene talking about how to bring in “new voices.” We talk about ways to create more performance opportunities for historically underrepresented groups, such as women and people of color. We talk about ways in which society as a whole tends to favor straight white guys—and how that manifests itself in the arts. And while these conversations are important, and while I agree that society is, often, skewed to favor those SWGs (bless their hearts), it’s amazing how little time we spend discussing the largest, most obvious barrier to new voices in the arts: money... $28,000 is a dollar figure familiar to children of the wealthy. Actually, the new dollar figure is $30,000, as it just increased this year, due to inflation. (Come on, parents! Keep up with the times. Heh heh…) It’s the maximum amount a couple can give to an individual, tax free. Wealthy individuals are frequently advised by their accountants to do this to avoid the (quite low) inheritance tax. It results in free income for wealthy kids. I don’t even report it to the IRS–and that’s entirely legal. I could get this money every year for the rest of my life (or as long as my parents choose to give it to me)—without having to lift a finger
Also, she had a boyfriend but now identifies as a "queer woman" (so much for "born that way"/"born this way")
Too bad the sums for her proposals of free college tuition, universal healthcare and universal basic income can't be paid for by stiffing the rich (as she suggests) don't add up
Trump Is Right to Leave the Universal Postal Union - "President Donald Trump declared his intention to exit a 144-year-old international postal agreement known as the Universal Postal Union. If he follows through, Trump will be helping the American small businesses that so many politicians woo on the campaign trail, only to abandon once in office... Chinese counterfeiters can offer free shipping because they pay only about $1.40 to send a mug 8,000 miles from China to an American home, or five times less than what we pay. Let the absurdity of that situation sink in for just a moment, and then consider that we can’t ship a mug across the street for $1.40. And if I were to ship one Mighty Mug to China, the U.S. Postal Service would charge me $22.00—or $62.50 with tracking. As the weight of the package increases, so does the problem: We pay up to $17.61 to mail a four-pound package, but a shipper in China pays $3.67.The culprit is the Universal Postal Union, or UPU, which a century and a half ago set the conditions for global mail exchange. The UPU required postal authorities to give equal treatment to foreign and domestic mail, and established a uniform flat rate to mail a letter anywhere in the world... Despite being the world’s second-largest economy, China is still classified as a developing country, getting the same subsidized rates as countries such as Cuba and Botswana. What this amounts to, in essence, is a massive undue subsidy paid for by U.S. ratepayers in the form of higher shipping costs... The overall effect of discounted rates on U.S. businesses is difficult to measure, but in the 2017 fiscal year, the U.S. Postal Service lost $170 million on inbound packets from China, and that cost is expected to balloon in the 2018 fiscal year to roughly $300 million... What the president did is good for consumers—who may not even realize they’re buying lower-quality knockoffs— good for postal ratepayers, good for the postal service, good for the country, and good for the planet if it discourages wasteful international shipping. It will also go a long way to keeping me and my 12 workers on the job."
Universal Postal Union fast-tracks rate review on Trump threat
Vatican's 'Pokemon GO' game lets you chase Jesus
There is a difference between elites and those with elitist attitudes: Chan Chun Sing - "Sweeping generalisations of people are also unfair and unnecessary, said Mr Chan. He recounted a visit to Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) where a few students said they have been mocked by others, and called elitist. “Is that fair? Let’s pause for a moment. We hardly know the individual but we have branded them”... Mr Chan said that he and his sister were raised by their mother in a three-room flat after his parents’ divorce. There were instances where he was looked down upon, because he did not “speak the way they speak”."
Jews Defending Themselves, That's What Bothers the UN and Europe - "The UN and EU, who completely ignored terrorist arson, missiles and general destruction aimed at Israel for the past eight months, have now suddenly woken up. The prospect of Jews defending themselves is more than they can bear"
‘Masculinity crisis’ in China leads parents to enrol kids in boot camp - "Her son, on the other hand “lacks the time to play” because playtime has “made way for a range of extra-curricular activities”. Monday is for calligraphy; Tuesday is for piano and robotics; Wednesday is for language and calligraphy; Thursday is for English; Friday is for Weiqi (the intellectual board game Go); Saturday is for mathematics, English and Weiqi; and Sunday is for badminton, art and Weiqi. “I pack in so many activities for him because that’s what everyone does. I don’t have a choice,” she said.""
IKEA customer arrested for 'drawing phallic symbols' on walls
Genes linked to being gay may help straight people get more sex
In This Insect, Females Have Penises And Males Have Vaginas - "At io9, Annalee Newitz has written an interesting piece criticising much of the coverage of this story, including this post, and specifically the use of the term “female penis”... do we make a special case for sex-related terms? Newitz would say yes, because of the cultural and social baggage that “female penis” carries, in a way that “snail foot” does not"
Basically io9 says that because of politics we should change how we do science. Not coincidentally that happened in the Soviet Union too
Given that this is from 2014, io9 would certainly have a different view today, thanks to trans mania
Singapore's Public Housing, Envy of World, Hits Rough Patch - "The value of the homes has been falling even as prices of private dwellings rebounded over the past five quarters, leading to a 13.8 percent gap in their price performance, the widest in more than a decade. Private home prices rose 0.5 percent in the third quarter, after climbing 3.4 percent in the previous three months."
People Are Horrified That Many Bank Notes Are Made Of Animal Fat - "the currency of at least 23 countries contains the hard, fatty substance that derives from rendered animal fat... other counties include the UK, Malaysia and Singapore... even our mobile phones contain animal parts... Someone else suggested: "That is really horrible to hear. But, we can all limit cruelty of animals in our daily life by going vegan and using cruelty free products. Its sooo easy." Others, meanwhile, were quick to defend things - saying that it was a good use of animal by-products."
Tallow, tallow everywhere
Apps Installed On Millions Of Android Phones Tracked User Behavior To Execute A Multimillion-Dollar Ad Fraud Scheme - "a significant portion of the millions of Android phone owners who downloaded these apps were secretly tracked as they scrolled and clicked inside the application. By copying actual user behavior in the apps, the fraudsters were able to generate fake traffic that bypassed major fraud detection systems."
Top Apple Mac App Adware Doctor Sends User Data to China: Research
Gender issue with these tissues: Kleenex rebrands Mansize tissues sold in Britain - "Kleenex "Mansize" tissues sold in Britain will be binned after more than 60 years on the shelves. They will be called "Extra Large" tissues instead, after consumers had issues with the tissues, complaining that the name "Mansize" was sexist... A spokesman from Kimberley-Clark, which owns Kleenex, told The Telegraph that its consumer service had been registering a consistent increase in gender-related complaints about the Mansize name."
Ironically when it comes to censorship (for conservative ends, at least) we are told that we shouldn't let a small, unrepresentative minority bully everyone else. So much for "if you don't like it, don't buy it"
Post ID: 4678401166769770099
Sunday, November 25, 2018
Links - 25th November 2018 (2)
BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Romantic Love - "[On writing romance novels] ‘I feel that really people do know the difference so I just feel no one thinks it's okay to go around killing people, as long as you wear a dinner jacket because they watch a James Bond film.’
‘Why don’t people have affairs in your books?’
‘Because I don’t think that's what I want to write about. It's not true love, if you have affairs. Just better not to. Lots of people do write about affairs if you want a book with affairs in it, you know, I'm sure there's someone out thee for people to read’
‘But want interests me is that your readers presumably don’t want to read about affairs either… I'm interested to know from your point of view why people are so obsessed with wanting to have that vicarious experience through your books of what it's like to fall in love’
‘Because falling in love is wonderful. I mean, it's obviously a long time ago, for me, and for you, but we can remember, and it was pretty special and it has kept us going all through the years, and I'm not saying the actual in-love state lasts forever, but it develops into something. Or can develop into real companionship and shared sense of humor. I mean, so many other things and I think that's what falling love can lead to that. It doesn't always, but it can.’...
‘I often argue that we're living at a time when it's the generation of friendships. But friendships can be passionate, that's true, but friendships and all other kinds of love are never replacements for romantic love.’...
‘I'm glad you've mentioned friendship because I think it's been desperately underrated. It's been regarded a sort of love for wimps for these two centuries now’...
'Friendship, which now really has been relegated. For someone like Aristotle and for his followers like someone like say, Thomas Aquinas, great Christian theologian. Friendship was the master love, not romantic love. Friendship was where the real greatness of life could be discovered.'...
'Literature, novels, are subversive. They’re subversive of moral constraints. And that's their function. And they enable us to vicariously live in a world without moral constraints'"
BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, The Morality of 2017 - "‘The students that need protecting from views they don't agree with. Gloria’s recently reported example where the inaugural guest at Sussex university’s Free Speech Society was ordered to submit his talk in advance to ensure that it didn't offend anybody.’...
'When people say I find that offensive, it means shut up and they're saying it even more frequently than they were a year ago, which is worrying. And I'm worried about attributing the most malign motives to political opponents, which I think is a result of echo chambers where you never hear something that you find offensive.'...
'There are more people being disinvited and not allowed on university companies today than in the past... I'm now asked to submit speeches in advance. I am told, endlessly what the safe space policy is. It’s not just a group of people getting together and having a chat. I’m told as an outside speaker. Student societies are warned constantly about what can and can’t be said. That is a change. And as a historian, as somebody interested in society, you must be able to see that is dangerously censorious. And your generation's getting the blame because you are not arguing against it. You are excusing it.'...
'I read history at University and it worries me very much the way we want to kind of manipulate history. One of the things you learn when you study history is that we’re only at a pinpoint in time, tomorrow everything will be different. And there's this kind of arrogance that the views we have today have some kind of special significance and that we can re-interpret the past and attach blame. As she said turn history into a morality play. And this is fundamentally an unhealthy thing to do and by the way any one of us, any number of us may be the victim of this in the future. Social views will change again, and suddenly we find ourselves being torn down, the iconoclasts will go for all of us as well'"
BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Religious orthodoxy versus liberal values - "'Secularism has dramatically changed in the last 20 years. It started as a way for a diverse society to live with its own diversity. And that's a good thing. And it's turned into a campaign to eliminate religion from the public square. Secularism’s betrayed its best insight.'...
[On circumcision] ‘How is banning a non-negotiable aspect of Jewish identity, the state being neutral with regard to religion?’
‘It's not a question of being neutral. It's about protecting children and safeguarding children. I think the state has every right to want to safeguard children. So while you have a right to your beliefs, you don't necessarily have a right to impose them on others. And you certainly don’t have the right to impose them with a knife’
‘So you’re happy for the state to ban a religion’...
‘I don't accept your premise that’s it’s non negotiable, it's a tradition. All traditions can be moved away from. Religion has a long history, it's very adept at evolving and changing. So this idea that religion is fixed and can't be changed is just a premise I don’t agree with’...
‘I think there is a case for saying it's a harm against a person under the Offense of the person act. So I think we just need to treat religion in the same way as we do any other belief.’...
I think there's an increasing intolerance of religious institutions and freedom of association based on a religious tradition. And we’re seeing that in a number of areas. Perhaps the worst I've come across is in Belgium where care homes have been fined for not facilitating euthanasia. In other words, a right to euthanasia has been enshrined in law. Not only do you have a right to euthanasia, but there becomes an obligation on a Catholic care home to facilitate euthanasia if the individual chooses to enter that care home...
Interestingly, most of the objections to Catholic schools in particular come from the fact that they tend to discriminate in their admissions policy and large number of non-Catholics who would like to attend those schools can’t get in. So I think the question ought to be asked, why are these schools are popular with non-Catholics? Perhaps they are doing something which other schools are not doing... The vast majority of schools, Catholic schools do keep their doors open [to non-Catholics], but there are some areas of the country where they are so popular and you can't expect the church to build a school for the education of Catholic children and then discriminate against Catholic children in the admissions policy. So you need to allow these schools to expand...
‘These arguments [against male circumcision] are extremely close to some of the nasty and most poisonous things that have been said in this country, from the Middle Ages, onwards... blood libel’...
‘Anybody doing what is involved in circumcision in a non-religious context would be breaking the law. And so it depends what your starting point is... You think to have this debate, to have this, even to have this debate is somehow, courting a return to some kind of appalling anti-Semitism’
Condemning female genital cutting must be Islamophobic
Sask. First Nation shocked at child killer's transfer to healing lodge on its land | CBC News - "The chief of the Nekaneet First Nation says his band is 'shocked' that convicted child murderer Terri-Lynne McClintic has transferred to a minimum-security healing lodge on their land. "We have no say in who goes there," Alvin Francis, chief of Nekaneet, said. "My heart goes out to the Stafford family because it is a horrible crime." McClintic was convicted eight years ago of the gruesome rape and murder of an eight-year-old Ontario girl. There are no fences around the minimum-security Okimaw Ohci healing lodge near Maple Creek, where McClintic is now serving her sentence."
NTUC has lost sight of original purpose - "The National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) was set up decades ago for the people. It helped with employment issues and provided affordable meals, insurance, education and more. Over the years, however, it seems that the NTUC's management has lost sight of its original purpose. It is not uncommon today to hear complaints of sky-high rents for shops in NTUC-managed malls. The prices at NTUC Foodfare outlets are not cheap, insurance premiums are going up and items in their supermarket chain cost quite a bit too."
WVS Database - "With industrialization and the rise of postindustrial society, generational replacement makes self-expression values become more wide spread and countries with authoritarian regimes come under growing mass pressure for political liberalization... Norms concerning marriage, family, gender and sexual orientation show dramatic changes but virtually all advanced industrial societies have been moving in the same direction, at roughly similar speeds... Although a majority of the world’s population still believes that men make better political leaders than women, this view is fading in advanced industrialized societies, and also among young people in less prosperous countries... Since 1981, economic development, democratization, and rising social tolerance have increased the extent to which people perceive that they have free choice, which in turn has led to higher levels of happiness around the world... Objective factors that have been found to favour democracy (including economic prosperity, income equality, ethnic homogeneity, world market integration, global media exposure, closeness to democratic neighbours, a Protestant heritage, social capital and so forth) exert an influence on democracy mostly insofar as these factors favour emancipative values. Emancipative values do not strengthen people’s desire for democracy, for the desire for democracy is universal at this point in history. But emancipative values do change the nature of the desire for democracy. And they do so in a double way... The social dominance of Islam and individual identification as Muslim both weaken emancipative values"
British paper sues Lance Armstrong for $1.5m over lost libel action - "The disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong is being sued for more than $1.5m by a British newspaper which lost a libel action for publishing doping allegations against him."
Why the Democratic Party has to “fight dirty” if they want to beat the Republicans
"It's only okay when we do it"
A feminist manifesto: a feminist makes the case against feminism - "patriarchy and capitalism are of the same system. They support one another and one cannot be removed without the other... this idea that every woman should be a feminist, I don't actually agree with because not every woman needs to be on the streets, not every woman needs to put her body on the line"
Strange how women are/were more oppressed in traditional societies than modern ones, even though the latter have more capitalism
Dave Rubin on Twitter - "'The Simpsons' To Drop Beloved Character Apu Following Backlash, Report Says"
"Social Justice, which is neither about being social, nor achieving justice, ruins everything it touches. Goodbye to a great character on the longest running comedy in history thanks to a mob of self-absorbed zombies who can only destroy and never create"
‘The Simpsons’ producer confirms Apu is being written out of show following controversy - "If you are a show about cultural commentary and you are too afraid to comment on the culture, especially when it’s a component of the culture you had a hand in creating, then you are a show about cowardice"
Trigger Me Timbers - Posts - "SJWs: Apu is a racist character - FIX THIS!!
Fox: [Writes Apu out of the show to avoid offending anyone further]
SJWs: Not like that, you White Supremacist!!"
Lucas Lynch - "Thank you, no come again. Political correctness kills off one of the most beloved minority characters. A similar result actually to the closing of the musical "The Great Comet of 1812" - Josh Groban was replaced by one of the actors of Hamilton, and ticket sales fell off a cliff. To save the musical they brought in Mandy Patankin, after which people cried that this was a racist conspiracy. Patankin then declined to take the role, after which the musical did indeed close, and numerous actors of color all lost very good jobs."
‘Why don’t people have affairs in your books?’
‘Because I don’t think that's what I want to write about. It's not true love, if you have affairs. Just better not to. Lots of people do write about affairs if you want a book with affairs in it, you know, I'm sure there's someone out thee for people to read’
‘But want interests me is that your readers presumably don’t want to read about affairs either… I'm interested to know from your point of view why people are so obsessed with wanting to have that vicarious experience through your books of what it's like to fall in love’
‘Because falling in love is wonderful. I mean, it's obviously a long time ago, for me, and for you, but we can remember, and it was pretty special and it has kept us going all through the years, and I'm not saying the actual in-love state lasts forever, but it develops into something. Or can develop into real companionship and shared sense of humor. I mean, so many other things and I think that's what falling love can lead to that. It doesn't always, but it can.’...
‘I often argue that we're living at a time when it's the generation of friendships. But friendships can be passionate, that's true, but friendships and all other kinds of love are never replacements for romantic love.’...
‘I'm glad you've mentioned friendship because I think it's been desperately underrated. It's been regarded a sort of love for wimps for these two centuries now’...
'Friendship, which now really has been relegated. For someone like Aristotle and for his followers like someone like say, Thomas Aquinas, great Christian theologian. Friendship was the master love, not romantic love. Friendship was where the real greatness of life could be discovered.'...
'Literature, novels, are subversive. They’re subversive of moral constraints. And that's their function. And they enable us to vicariously live in a world without moral constraints'"
BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, The Morality of 2017 - "‘The students that need protecting from views they don't agree with. Gloria’s recently reported example where the inaugural guest at Sussex university’s Free Speech Society was ordered to submit his talk in advance to ensure that it didn't offend anybody.’...
'When people say I find that offensive, it means shut up and they're saying it even more frequently than they were a year ago, which is worrying. And I'm worried about attributing the most malign motives to political opponents, which I think is a result of echo chambers where you never hear something that you find offensive.'...
'There are more people being disinvited and not allowed on university companies today than in the past... I'm now asked to submit speeches in advance. I am told, endlessly what the safe space policy is. It’s not just a group of people getting together and having a chat. I’m told as an outside speaker. Student societies are warned constantly about what can and can’t be said. That is a change. And as a historian, as somebody interested in society, you must be able to see that is dangerously censorious. And your generation's getting the blame because you are not arguing against it. You are excusing it.'...
'I read history at University and it worries me very much the way we want to kind of manipulate history. One of the things you learn when you study history is that we’re only at a pinpoint in time, tomorrow everything will be different. And there's this kind of arrogance that the views we have today have some kind of special significance and that we can re-interpret the past and attach blame. As she said turn history into a morality play. And this is fundamentally an unhealthy thing to do and by the way any one of us, any number of us may be the victim of this in the future. Social views will change again, and suddenly we find ourselves being torn down, the iconoclasts will go for all of us as well'"
BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Religious orthodoxy versus liberal values - "'Secularism has dramatically changed in the last 20 years. It started as a way for a diverse society to live with its own diversity. And that's a good thing. And it's turned into a campaign to eliminate religion from the public square. Secularism’s betrayed its best insight.'...
[On circumcision] ‘How is banning a non-negotiable aspect of Jewish identity, the state being neutral with regard to religion?’
‘It's not a question of being neutral. It's about protecting children and safeguarding children. I think the state has every right to want to safeguard children. So while you have a right to your beliefs, you don't necessarily have a right to impose them on others. And you certainly don’t have the right to impose them with a knife’
‘So you’re happy for the state to ban a religion’...
‘I don't accept your premise that’s it’s non negotiable, it's a tradition. All traditions can be moved away from. Religion has a long history, it's very adept at evolving and changing. So this idea that religion is fixed and can't be changed is just a premise I don’t agree with’...
‘I think there is a case for saying it's a harm against a person under the Offense of the person act. So I think we just need to treat religion in the same way as we do any other belief.’...
I think there's an increasing intolerance of religious institutions and freedom of association based on a religious tradition. And we’re seeing that in a number of areas. Perhaps the worst I've come across is in Belgium where care homes have been fined for not facilitating euthanasia. In other words, a right to euthanasia has been enshrined in law. Not only do you have a right to euthanasia, but there becomes an obligation on a Catholic care home to facilitate euthanasia if the individual chooses to enter that care home...
Interestingly, most of the objections to Catholic schools in particular come from the fact that they tend to discriminate in their admissions policy and large number of non-Catholics who would like to attend those schools can’t get in. So I think the question ought to be asked, why are these schools are popular with non-Catholics? Perhaps they are doing something which other schools are not doing... The vast majority of schools, Catholic schools do keep their doors open [to non-Catholics], but there are some areas of the country where they are so popular and you can't expect the church to build a school for the education of Catholic children and then discriminate against Catholic children in the admissions policy. So you need to allow these schools to expand...
‘These arguments [against male circumcision] are extremely close to some of the nasty and most poisonous things that have been said in this country, from the Middle Ages, onwards... blood libel’...
‘Anybody doing what is involved in circumcision in a non-religious context would be breaking the law. And so it depends what your starting point is... You think to have this debate, to have this, even to have this debate is somehow, courting a return to some kind of appalling anti-Semitism’
Condemning female genital cutting must be Islamophobic
Sask. First Nation shocked at child killer's transfer to healing lodge on its land | CBC News - "The chief of the Nekaneet First Nation says his band is 'shocked' that convicted child murderer Terri-Lynne McClintic has transferred to a minimum-security healing lodge on their land. "We have no say in who goes there," Alvin Francis, chief of Nekaneet, said. "My heart goes out to the Stafford family because it is a horrible crime." McClintic was convicted eight years ago of the gruesome rape and murder of an eight-year-old Ontario girl. There are no fences around the minimum-security Okimaw Ohci healing lodge near Maple Creek, where McClintic is now serving her sentence."
NTUC has lost sight of original purpose - "The National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) was set up decades ago for the people. It helped with employment issues and provided affordable meals, insurance, education and more. Over the years, however, it seems that the NTUC's management has lost sight of its original purpose. It is not uncommon today to hear complaints of sky-high rents for shops in NTUC-managed malls. The prices at NTUC Foodfare outlets are not cheap, insurance premiums are going up and items in their supermarket chain cost quite a bit too."
WVS Database - "With industrialization and the rise of postindustrial society, generational replacement makes self-expression values become more wide spread and countries with authoritarian regimes come under growing mass pressure for political liberalization... Norms concerning marriage, family, gender and sexual orientation show dramatic changes but virtually all advanced industrial societies have been moving in the same direction, at roughly similar speeds... Although a majority of the world’s population still believes that men make better political leaders than women, this view is fading in advanced industrialized societies, and also among young people in less prosperous countries... Since 1981, economic development, democratization, and rising social tolerance have increased the extent to which people perceive that they have free choice, which in turn has led to higher levels of happiness around the world... Objective factors that have been found to favour democracy (including economic prosperity, income equality, ethnic homogeneity, world market integration, global media exposure, closeness to democratic neighbours, a Protestant heritage, social capital and so forth) exert an influence on democracy mostly insofar as these factors favour emancipative values. Emancipative values do not strengthen people’s desire for democracy, for the desire for democracy is universal at this point in history. But emancipative values do change the nature of the desire for democracy. And they do so in a double way... The social dominance of Islam and individual identification as Muslim both weaken emancipative values"
British paper sues Lance Armstrong for $1.5m over lost libel action - "The disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong is being sued for more than $1.5m by a British newspaper which lost a libel action for publishing doping allegations against him."
Why the Democratic Party has to “fight dirty” if they want to beat the Republicans
"It's only okay when we do it"
A feminist manifesto: a feminist makes the case against feminism - "patriarchy and capitalism are of the same system. They support one another and one cannot be removed without the other... this idea that every woman should be a feminist, I don't actually agree with because not every woman needs to be on the streets, not every woman needs to put her body on the line"
Strange how women are/were more oppressed in traditional societies than modern ones, even though the latter have more capitalism
Dave Rubin on Twitter - "'The Simpsons' To Drop Beloved Character Apu Following Backlash, Report Says"
"Social Justice, which is neither about being social, nor achieving justice, ruins everything it touches. Goodbye to a great character on the longest running comedy in history thanks to a mob of self-absorbed zombies who can only destroy and never create"
‘The Simpsons’ producer confirms Apu is being written out of show following controversy - "If you are a show about cultural commentary and you are too afraid to comment on the culture, especially when it’s a component of the culture you had a hand in creating, then you are a show about cowardice"
Trigger Me Timbers - Posts - "SJWs: Apu is a racist character - FIX THIS!!
Fox: [Writes Apu out of the show to avoid offending anyone further]
SJWs: Not like that, you White Supremacist!!"
Lucas Lynch - "Thank you, no come again. Political correctness kills off one of the most beloved minority characters. A similar result actually to the closing of the musical "The Great Comet of 1812" - Josh Groban was replaced by one of the actors of Hamilton, and ticket sales fell off a cliff. To save the musical they brought in Mandy Patankin, after which people cried that this was a racist conspiracy. Patankin then declined to take the role, after which the musical did indeed close, and numerous actors of color all lost very good jobs."
Post ID: 3063378746892408716
How to choose a meal place with your woman
"Words of wisdom from an old man on being engaging with your wife/girlfriend on what to eat:
"If you are with your girlfriend or wife on a date and you are not sure what to eat, don't ask her what she wants to eat. Ask her, 'Honey, guess where we are going for lunch/dinner?'
Then let her make a bunch of guesses, and choose the first food that she mentioned.""
"If you are with your girlfriend or wife on a date and you are not sure what to eat, don't ask her what she wants to eat. Ask her, 'Honey, guess where we are going for lunch/dinner?'
Then let her make a bunch of guesses, and choose the first food that she mentioned.""
Post ID: 8582058871477009848
Links - 25th November 2018 (1)
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Post ID: 6555531370543322901
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