Vito Gesualdi on Twitter - "Sorry what? EA is donating a million dollars to non profits working to end bullying & online harassment!?!?
Some facts:
- they didn't speak up during GamerGate at all
- @femfreq has been a non profit on the front lines of this issue for years constantly struggling with funding"
"Anita Sarkeesian is throwing a fit because EA donated a bunch of money to useful charities instead of giving it to her"
"Feminist Frequency actually abandoned their anti-bullying work in 2018. Anita is basically demanding Electronic Arts fund her terrible Star Trek podcast. "
Family horrified after porn played at father’s funeral instead of memorial video - "A British family mourning the loss of a young father and his infant son were horrified when graphic porn was accidentally played instead of a memorial video at his funeral.Hundreds of mourners had gathered Wednesday at Thornhill Crematorium in Cardiff, a port city in Wales, to say goodbye to 33-year-old Simon Lewis and his newborn boy, Simon Lewis Jr., after they were killed on New Year’s Eve in a head-on car crash.The priest hit play on what was supposed to be a tribute to Lewis’ life, but instead “very loud” sexual moans from a hard-core porn video filled the church... Church staff tried to shut off the sex tape, but had a lot of trouble.“It took them nearly four minutes to turn it off,” a grieving friend told the Telegraph. “People couldn’t believe what they were seeing.”"
Major Corporations Bravely Come Out In Support Of Incredibly Popular, Socially Acceptable Movement | The Babylon Bee - "For Pride Month, hundreds of corporations are being applauded for bravely coming out in support of an incredibly popular, socially acceptable, entirely mainstream movement: the LGBTQ+ community... "I am much more confident in my gayness when I see that these huge corporations are willing to exploit their support of gays for profit."Meanwhile, companies that openly support incredibly unpopular religious causes were booed for their cowardice."
Adults urged not to use kids' playground slides - "If you are an adult, you should not be on playground slides meant for children aged five to 12.This was the advice given by the National Parks Board (NParks) and playground contractor Semec Enterprise, after safety concerns were raised by parkgoers over a new pair of steep slides at Admiralty Park.On Tuesday, Shin Min Daily News reported that a 24-year-old woman suffered injuries to her head, shoulders and calf, after being thrown out of one of the 23m-long, 9m-tall slides. Her adult sister also suffered bruises on her feet. The twin slides are among the 26 slides at Admiralty Park, which re-opened two weeks ago after a two-year facelift.Ms Agnes Au, general manager of Semec, which supplied the playground equipment at the park, said: "The reasons why it isn't safe for adults to slide down are clear - a heavier weight will lead to a faster speed, and a bigger build is more likely to hit the sides of the slides.""
Why doesn't Gandalf use his magical powers more often in battle? - Quora - "magic in Tolkien’s world has little in common with the Force in Star Wars or magic in Harry Potter. To be precise, the name “wizards” is basically a mistake made by the ignorant Men and Hobbits of Middle-earth; since they didn’t know what Gandalf, Saruman, and Co. were actually doing, they used for them the name they gave to magicians and/or dark arts practitioners (Galadriel says she can’t really understand what they mean when they speak of “magic”, because of this confusion). In actual fact, they were angelic beings, created by the one true God, Eru, before the physical world, who had been clothed in flesh and sent to guide, counsel, and help the Free Peoples against Sauron. Consequently, their powers were basically spiritual and/or mental, not impressive shots of energy"
"It is simply not their job descriptio.The Istari were sent to council and lead the people of middleearth On their own way to greatness. Their job was to be there if needed and to keep them from doing really stupid things.So in order to do that, they started people on their quests and supervised their growth, like a shepherd. Only if the opponent (say Sauron for example) cheated by using supernatural powers in order to stop the heroes, they intervened or engaged overpowered Enemies directly."
Drugs, Vietnam, and the Vietnam veteran: an overview. - "Highlights are presented on the issue of drug use among servicemen in Vietnam and its aftereffects. Two stages of Vietnam drug use are identified-a period of increasing marijuana use followed by the 1970 influx of highly potent heroin to which 1/5 of the enlisted troops were addicted at some time during their tour. The major contributing factors appear to be: (1) the need of troops in stressful combat situations for self-medication, escape, and hedonistic indulgence; (2) the relaxation of taboos against drug use in the United States; and (3) the availability of illicit drugs at low cost, which was apparently the result of profiteering by a number of South Vietnamese officials. Related to the above was the growing disenchantment with the war and the progressive deterioration in unit morale. These drugs are seen as serving many of the functions performed by alcohol in earlier millitary conflicts. There is no hard evidence that duty performance in Vietnam was seriously affected by drug use. Since 95% of those who were addicted to narcotics in Vietnam have not become readdicted, the situation does not appear to be as severe as originally supposed. Myths as to the persistence and intractibility of physiological narcotic addiction were dispelled. A major negative effect has been the difficulty that soldiers with less-than-honorable discharges due to drug abuse have had in obtaining jobs. Other long-term effects from drug use are less clear and are difficult to separate from the overall effects of the war."
This shows that the claim that drugs are inherently addictive and unhealthy is wrong
Keywords: Vietnam War, Vietnam Veterans
FEATURE-Party drugs a hit with wealthy in Singapore - "Singapore’s party drug scene used to be the domain of high-flying foreign bankers and other expatriates who would take ecstasy and snort cocaine in defiance of the city state’s drug laws which, with a mandatory death sentence for drug trafficking, are among the toughest in the world. But these days, the drug scene for foreigners is not as pronounced as among well-to-do locals in a country which has the world’s fastest-growing number of high net worth individuals, totalling some 67,000 in 2006... Singaporean authorities say drug use is low, but anecdotal evidence tells of the emergence of an underground party drug scene mostly at night clubs frequented by the wealthy... In 2004, the CNB carried out a raid which exposed a glitzy underground drug scene. The cocaine drug bust saw 23 people arrested, including the former editor of high-society magazine Singapore Tatler, an award-winning French chef and an oil broker... "Every couple of years, they (the police) go out and get people so everyone is way too scared to do drugs," said a British lawyer, who declined to be named. "The drugs of choice here (for foreigners) really are women and alcohol.""
Previously shared in 2007, but a propos
Strange how drugs didn't ruin their lives and make them lose their inherited fortunes, and how they all still have fast paced jobs and are not in jail (at least for non-drug related offences)
Why is the EU afraid to allow Turkey in? - Quora - "there is evidence that Moslem immigrants do not always make good citizens. We can see this in the votes cast by the Turkish diaspora in Europe in the 2017 Referendum on making Erdogan into an untrammelled Dictator-President – a concept, be it noted, that is completely unacceptable to Europeans... In general, the pattern is that those countries with large Turkish immigrant populations, forming a significant percentage of the population, voted: ‘Yes’; those with small ones: ‘No’. Overall, much more heavily ‘Yes’ than in Turkey itself... we come to very high percentages of Turkish Turks favouring a system that would be illegal in their country of adoption. So much, then, for the ‘softening’ effects over generations of living in a liberal, democratic society.So the conclusion is inevitable: large-scale Turkish immigration into Christian-based countries is inadvisable. And that would be the inevitable consequence of Turkish EU membership."
"The EU just does not want a Turkish membership currently, simply because they cannot / do not want to pay for it !!!"
Sally Challen is no hero - "There is something sinister in the Sally Challen story. The way in which this woman who battered her husband to death with a hammer has been turned into an iconic figure, virtually into a heroine of justice, leaves a sour taste. Her photograph has been sympathetically emblazoned on the front page of the Guardian. Labour MP Jess Phillips said she cried with joy when she heard the news a few months ago that Challen’s murder conviction had been quashed. Many feminists are cheering yesterday’s news that Challen won’t face a retrial after the court accepted her manslaughter plea.To reiterate: this woman smashed a man’s skull in with a hammer. She’s no hero... There are many concerning things here. The first is the way in which the opinion of an expert, in this case a forensic psychiatrist, effectively overrode the verdict of a jury. This strikes me as an implicit attack on the wisdom of the jury system. Does one expert’s view carry more weight than the deliberations of 12 ordinary men and women? Secondly there is the suggestion, in the broader public discussion around the case, that killing is an understandable response to being insulted or demeaned by one’s partner. This is what campaigners are actually saying. That the courts should be more lenient with women who have killed partners who exercised ‘coercive control’ over them. Bear in mind that coercive control can include such behaviour as ‘repeatedly putting you down’ and ‘monitoring you via online communication tools’. Only nasty blokes do things like this, but that is no justification for killing them... What are we saying here: that women are sometimes incapable of controlling their emotions and their behaviour? Some men are treated abominably by their wives. They are put down, mocked, told they are pathetic, prevented from going to the pub, and so on. If one of these men smashed his wife’s head in with a hammer, would we say that wasn’t true murder?... For feminists to turn a killer into a hero suggests they have become seriously and perhaps irreversibly unanchored from moral reason."
So much for feminism not being about hating men
16 things that are more expensive in Singapore than other first world countries - "Pizza, Bacon, Wedding, Consumer Tech, Gym Membership, Musicals, Ramen, Bubble Tea, Cheese, FIFA World Cup, Health supplements, Clothes, Infant formula, Ice cream, Petrol, Alcohol"
Female teacher jailed 33 months for sex acts with 15-year-old student - "A female secondary school teacher who entered into a nine-month relationship with a 15-year-old student and engaged in sexual acts with him in a Geylang hotel was sentenced to 33 months’ jail... She was handed two years’ jail for two counts of sexual penetration acts of a minor, and an added nine months for two charges of procuring and committing obscene acts with a juvenile... They were discovered after the boy's mother found love letters, her car keys and other belongings in his room and alerted the school... she arranged for a five-day long staycation with the victim at Super 8 hotel in Geylang, where they performed sexual acts on each other at her direction. To avoid suspicion, the victim told his parents that he was at a camp with the uniformed group... In 2013, a 32-year-old primary school teacher was jailed for a year for having sex with her 13-year-old student. Another female 32-year-old teacher who had sex with a 15-year-old student was jailed for a year in 2012."
A female sexually penetrating a male - kinky
Female teacher jailed over sexual relations with her secondary school student - "In late 2016, the teacher wanted to make up for being away from the victim as she was going overseas with her friends for an extended period, the court heard.They decided to have a staycation or “honeymoon” and checked into a hotel in Geylang over five days from 28 November 2016 to 2 December 2016.The victim told his mother that he was going for a school camp.During their stay at the hotel, the teacher and student engaged in physical intimacy.On one occasion, they watched a movie on her laptop in bed before she told him that she “wanted to try something new” and re-enact a scene from the movie. She told him to kiss her from the neck down to her private parts. Around December 2016 to early 2017, the victim’s mother stumbled upon a series of letters folded into heart shapes while she was cleaning the house.“Unknown to her at that time, these were letters that the accused had written to the victim - one for each day that she would be away on holiday”... the victim asked his mother if she would consider marrying someone 11 years older than her... Sexually explicit text messages and photos of the teacher and student kissing were found on their phones. There was also a two-minute video of the duo French-kissing on a bed in the hotel room... the teacher “knew the wrongfulness of the relationship (with the victim), but was not able to shake it off due to her weakness in being decisive and assertive”. “She has a weak nature”"
Yahoo has the juicy details other outlets leave out
L'origine de Bert
Saturday, August 10, 2019
'Communism' and History in Singapore
Episode 25: Questions and Answers II
"‘How real or exaggerated was the communist threat in Singapore in its early years?’
I presume he means in the 50s and 60s.
‘Recent contrary accounts say that the threat has been grossly exaggerated. But I heard recently at the funeral of the ex-Principal of Zhong Zheng High in the 1950s, many old boys turned up and admitted that they were influenced by the communists to cause unrest, although they themselves were never card carrying members’...
The crux of your anecdote is that you assume that these are mutually opposing positions, right? That students could be influenced by the communists, and that the threat could be grossly exaggerated. But these are not mutually opposed positions. You see, the fundamental problem is that we today tend to project backwards what we know today on to the people of the past. We forget that the past is actually in many ways, a very alien place. It had different values, different beliefs. Most of all, we have the benefit of hindsight, and they don't. We have the benefits of, well, historical researchers like myself, who go into the archives, and are able to point out what was going on at the time from all these different angles…
We need to understand this idea of communism, right? In order to understand this anecdote. So really, I think there are three important points I want to make. First of all, when we talk about being influenced by the communists. Well, the thing is, everyone was influenced by the communists back then, right? Socialism was the future of humanity, the future of mankind. See, following the excesses of the 1920s, and particularly the failures of unrestrained capitalism. And then the rise of fascism in the 1930s, leading to war in the 1940s, right? Humanity was absolutely sick and tired of these. And of course, a lot of these forces were caused by colonialism and imperialism.
So after World War Two, a lot of people said, we need to find a new way of living. We need to reshape the way we live our lives. Because the the powers that we possess, have grown so large, that we threaten the entire world, if we go too far. And the most optimistic said, we need to reshape human society, we need to arrange our lives to be better people to take care of each other. And this whole spectrum, this whole idea that we can change our society was basically what we think of the left, right? We need to change our society to be better to avoid all these problems that the right wing, right, the conservative capitalist forces caused. So opposed to that is the left wing. And this was a huge spectrum, ranging from the people who felt that, you know, it was inevitable that we would rearrange, but you need to slowly, cautiously move forward. You know, people like the Fabian socialists, who sought to encourage the reshaping of society through gradual processes, all the way to the extreme left, who sought to use all sorts of extreme methods to reshape society, including violence and terror, right.
So the 1950s then were shaped by two forces, okay. The first, of course, was what I talked about. Socialism, all the way stretching to what you might call violent communism, and it took on all these forms later that we think of Maoism, Stalinism. Okay.
And in its milder forms, we see its impact on Europe. The UK, for example, after the war tries to… create a new state. It tries to create the NHS for example, the welfare state saying that if during the war, we can have full unemployment, you know, why can we do it after the war? Why can't we take care of all of our people and all these are manifestations of socialism. In the US, you know, we have FDR and his new deal followed by Truman, and so on and so forth.
So socialism was on the rise throughout the world, people saw it as inevitable that we had to change the way we lead our lives. And so this was the rise, also, this led to the rise of communism in the USSR, in China, right, in these new ideologies, which, you know, sought to end exploitation.
Now, alongside this was nationalism and self determination, anti colonialism because these go hand in hand, right? Colonialism was fundamentally in many places as much about capitalist exploitation, as it was about territorial occupation, especially for Singapore, for the British Empire. Singapore was fundamentally about exploitation, economic capitalist exploitation. That was what the Empire was, was trying to achieve via Singapore, via Malaya. So these two forces, anti colonialism and socialism go hand in hand. They are in some ways, almost the same thing, they are closely allied with each other.
And so it is because of these that, we see that anti colonial movements were also fundamentally about reshaping society to end capitalist colonialist exploitation. So my point is that, as in the, what I have been discussing throughout this podcast, right, when people have debates about what is the future of Singapore? What is the future of Malaya after independence? A lot of times the answer is, well, it cannot be the same society we've had before. It cannot be this colonial capitalist exploitative system, it's got to be something that's fair, it's got to be something that takes care of people, that recognizes that people are human beings, not capitalist digits to be exploited. And it has to recognize the fundamental rights of people.
So very often this new idea, socialism was something that was put forward to be taken, to be part of our new identity. And, of course, this was very much of the appeal of the People's Action Party. And later, you know, the PAP and the Barisan, both of whom were staunchly socialist parties, right.
And, of course, Singapore itself has certain circumstances. Remember, after World War Two, the big heroes that came out of world war two were the Malayan Communist Party. The Malayan communist party were, they may have called themselves communists. But if you look at the kind of things they proposed, right, they were nowhere as radical as communists elsewhere. Fundamentally, they were a nationalist party which sought to end colonialism. And sought so to bring about the independence of Malaya. And they were the big heroes of World War Two and the Japanese occupation, because they were the only real effective resistance against the Japanese. So to many people in Singapore, communism slash socialism, right, you fell somewhere on this spectrum. It was the way of the future. It was inevitable. It was what was necessary. But it also was a product of world war two, it was patriotic, it was anti colonial.
And because of the big success of communism, of the Malayan Communist Party, initially during the Emergency, and also before that in organizing labor, right. And then when they were driven underground, nobody actually knew who was and wasn't communist.
So this is my second point, right, that a lot of people will say, oh, yes, I was influenced by the communists but they don't actually know for sure that they were interested influenced by the Malayan Communist Party or simply other people who were claiming to be communist. And this is again, something you see a lot in Special Branch files. That they admit that there is no direct link to the Malayan Communist Party which for all intents and purposes after 1950 was irrelevant in Singapore because the leadership had been totally arrested. They were smashed, their lines of communication, their networks. They were, they existed, but they were irrelevant. The only person really still active in Singapore after 1950 was Eu Chooi Yip, their propaganda Chief, who was later withdrawn in the mid 50s, right. And then the plan was inserted…
But you see, it wasn't just the MCP, anyone who wanted to claim the mantle of the MCP could simply say, I am part of the Malayan Communist Party. And I actually have this whole underground behind me and so you should work with me. And so there were a lot of groups which tried to set up these cells and claim that they were part of the Malayan Communist Party who had absolutely no link to the Malayan Communist Party. But were just trying to tap into the reputation of the Malayan Communist Party. And so Special Branch investigates all these people and finds you know, that there's all these anti colonials who simply want to resist, resist the British, get rid of the British, push forward independence, you know, they wanted freedom.
And the quick and easy way of rallying people to their cause in the 50s was to say, oh, we are linked with the Malayan Communist Party. Because that not only tapped into the great reputation, remember the MCP are still heroes at this point, right. But also that would then imply oh, we have all sorts of resources that you don't know about, that no one knows about. So there were plenty of all these random people who were anti colonials who just claimed they were MCP and there's no way no one you and I meeting them and they say, oh, I'm MCP or whatever. How would you verify right? And this is one scenario probably that happens to these old boys. You know they receive documents for example or they might meet people who go oh I’m Communist Party and you should do this and you should, let's fight the British you know and these are young impressionable kids right and these are people trying to impress young impressionable kids. You know people in their, who are in school, school children and so they say oh we’re Communist Party...
So you can see here how these kids could have been influenced by the communists, by the idea of the Communist Party without actually having been influenced by the Malayan communist party itself which was basically irrelevant at this point in time.
But the third point I want to make is what is a communist? And I've said this before and it's very important but any definition of say the Barisan Socialists or Lim Chin Siong right. Any definition of a communist that says the Barisan Socialists or Lim Chin Siong is a communist would also then define Lee Kuan Yew as a communist… because the two of them were so similar, right. Their main difference was not about communism, it was about things like the use of the Internal Security Act. It was about internal party democracy in the PAP. It wasn't about their fundamental economic beliefs, you know, it wasn't about socialism. Both were socialists right? So for example, if you say oh, a communist is someone who colludes with the Malayan Communist Party underground right. Well, Lee Kuan Yew did that and he openly admits it in his autobiography. He admitted it at his radio talks in 1962. He collaborated with the MCP underground to win elections, he openly admits it and in fact, he's the only person, the only one of the major leaders of Singapore's political parties at that time whom we have definitive evidence that he collaborated with the communists.
So why was he not detained? Because this was a political situation, not a security one. If it was a security situation where the communists were a threat to Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew would have been detained straight away. But it wasn't, it was a political situation in which the British were trying to figure out which of these Singapore politicians would be the most trustworthy that they could hand power over to which would provide a stable Singapore and reliably pro British Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew was that man.
So on the other hand if we say oh communists has to be a card carrying member of the Communist Party and therefore Lee Kuan Yew is not a communist. Well we know for sure Lim Chin Siong was not a communist. Fong Swee Suan was not a communist. Devan Nair was not a communist...
This is way before the excesses of China were well known, before the Soviet Union, the excesses of Soviet Union were well known. Communism was a very different thing in the 50s. And it was a very wide spectrum of beliefs, you know, peaceful action, violent action, constitutional action, non-constitutional action, you know. Nationalization… retention of a capitalist system. It's important to remember, as I keep saying that the Barisan Socialists were economically, socially to the right of the British Labour Party at that time, and you never call the British Labour Party a Communist Party...
Why is history so important to Singapore?... The Singapore government tells a very specific narrative of history that has the purpose of trying to legitimize first the idea of Singapore, the state of Singapore, which we have to remember, is a very unnatural thing, Singapore has always been part of Johor, it was never meant to be split off from the Malayan mainland, but because of politics was split off in 65. And so you need to construct narrative of history to justify this split, right, the existence of Singapore is to try and make it seem inevitable in the minds of its inhabitants.
And also you need a narrative of history that justifies your policies, the PAP’s monopoly of power, the authoritarian policies, there, the fact that they suspend the normal rules of democracy, that we don't have free and fair elections, and so on and so forth. Right. So our history is designed to do to do all these things. And so when a historian comes along, who disagrees, then obviously, you know, that historian is a threat…
First of all, you have to understand the history of how history has been taught in Singapore. And right after separation, the PAP faced a quandary, right? They couldn't teach Malayan history anymore, because Malayan history emphasized Singapore as part of Malaya but now we were split off from Malaya. And you couldn't teach Chinese history because that was not only just politically inconvenient, but the the main opposition to the PAP was from the Chinese schools, you know, the Chinese University Nantah and the PAP didn't want to emphasize that so instead they took a different tack. They said, oh, we have no history. Rajaratnam said something like history starts now. Ong Pang Boon said history has no practical use, and the government didn't encourage any new research. Any new studies of history. Textbooks from the 1960s which still, which gave Singapore as part of Malaya continued to be used in Singapore's official curriculum well into the 1980's.
Lee Kuan Yew said, you know, it's more important to know where you're going then where we've been, right and he wanted to de-emphasize the Malaysian period… the Malayan aspects of our history.
So also, this enabled him to say a lot of things and do a lot of things, to make assertions without being checked. So in the 80s, he would say things like, oh, Singapore was a swarm and PAP built it up. And there were no historians who could then point out, wait a moment in 1961 or so, you gave a speech where you said Singapore today is the richest country in Asia, it has the highest per capita income in Asia, you know, and this is all due to the PAP. Well, it can't be a rich country in 1961. And then now you say it's a you know, in the 20 years later, you say, Oh, it was a swamp in 1960, and the PhD built it up today in 1980 to a rich country. These are mutually opposing facts.
So when the government has a monopoly over history, then people who don't produce inconvenient facts that contradict its reading of history. And then from this government's reading of history, it can then justify its policies.
Now, in the 1980s and into the 90s things changed in Singapore and. Ane of the major things was that Singapore went to a change of leadership, it went into a change of the electoral system. It went through a period where people started demanding more accountability and democracy and the PAP turned, sort of its focus turned backwards rather than forwards, right. So no more do you have this forget about the past, we need to look to the future.
Because once the PAP’s vote began declining, once opposition politicians began to be elected into parliament, the PP increasingly became a party that looked back on its glory, on its former glory rather than towards the future. And especially of course, the retirement of Lee Kuan as Prime Minister meant that its glory days were now in the past.
So from the mid 90s, you see this new National Education, the Singapore story which sought to entrench in people's minds this idea that the PAP has done great things for Singapore and that you need to understand where we've come from, right, the PAP wanted to create this idea of gratitude to the party in order to then promote their continuation in power and continue to justify their hold on power. So we have seen a lot of this in the past 20 years…
SG50 and the 2015 elections for example, the election’s focus is very much on the past right. The manifesto of the PAP quite amazingly had no promises for the future. It was all about the past. SG50, Lee Kuan Yew, SG50, Lee Kuan Yew over and over again. And so they need to control the history in order to be able to continue to campaign on it in order to continue to justify their policies based on it."
"‘How real or exaggerated was the communist threat in Singapore in its early years?’
I presume he means in the 50s and 60s.
‘Recent contrary accounts say that the threat has been grossly exaggerated. But I heard recently at the funeral of the ex-Principal of Zhong Zheng High in the 1950s, many old boys turned up and admitted that they were influenced by the communists to cause unrest, although they themselves were never card carrying members’...
The crux of your anecdote is that you assume that these are mutually opposing positions, right? That students could be influenced by the communists, and that the threat could be grossly exaggerated. But these are not mutually opposed positions. You see, the fundamental problem is that we today tend to project backwards what we know today on to the people of the past. We forget that the past is actually in many ways, a very alien place. It had different values, different beliefs. Most of all, we have the benefit of hindsight, and they don't. We have the benefits of, well, historical researchers like myself, who go into the archives, and are able to point out what was going on at the time from all these different angles…
We need to understand this idea of communism, right? In order to understand this anecdote. So really, I think there are three important points I want to make. First of all, when we talk about being influenced by the communists. Well, the thing is, everyone was influenced by the communists back then, right? Socialism was the future of humanity, the future of mankind. See, following the excesses of the 1920s, and particularly the failures of unrestrained capitalism. And then the rise of fascism in the 1930s, leading to war in the 1940s, right? Humanity was absolutely sick and tired of these. And of course, a lot of these forces were caused by colonialism and imperialism.
So after World War Two, a lot of people said, we need to find a new way of living. We need to reshape the way we live our lives. Because the the powers that we possess, have grown so large, that we threaten the entire world, if we go too far. And the most optimistic said, we need to reshape human society, we need to arrange our lives to be better people to take care of each other. And this whole spectrum, this whole idea that we can change our society was basically what we think of the left, right? We need to change our society to be better to avoid all these problems that the right wing, right, the conservative capitalist forces caused. So opposed to that is the left wing. And this was a huge spectrum, ranging from the people who felt that, you know, it was inevitable that we would rearrange, but you need to slowly, cautiously move forward. You know, people like the Fabian socialists, who sought to encourage the reshaping of society through gradual processes, all the way to the extreme left, who sought to use all sorts of extreme methods to reshape society, including violence and terror, right.
So the 1950s then were shaped by two forces, okay. The first, of course, was what I talked about. Socialism, all the way stretching to what you might call violent communism, and it took on all these forms later that we think of Maoism, Stalinism. Okay.
And in its milder forms, we see its impact on Europe. The UK, for example, after the war tries to… create a new state. It tries to create the NHS for example, the welfare state saying that if during the war, we can have full unemployment, you know, why can we do it after the war? Why can't we take care of all of our people and all these are manifestations of socialism. In the US, you know, we have FDR and his new deal followed by Truman, and so on and so forth.
So socialism was on the rise throughout the world, people saw it as inevitable that we had to change the way we lead our lives. And so this was the rise, also, this led to the rise of communism in the USSR, in China, right, in these new ideologies, which, you know, sought to end exploitation.
Now, alongside this was nationalism and self determination, anti colonialism because these go hand in hand, right? Colonialism was fundamentally in many places as much about capitalist exploitation, as it was about territorial occupation, especially for Singapore, for the British Empire. Singapore was fundamentally about exploitation, economic capitalist exploitation. That was what the Empire was, was trying to achieve via Singapore, via Malaya. So these two forces, anti colonialism and socialism go hand in hand. They are in some ways, almost the same thing, they are closely allied with each other.
And so it is because of these that, we see that anti colonial movements were also fundamentally about reshaping society to end capitalist colonialist exploitation. So my point is that, as in the, what I have been discussing throughout this podcast, right, when people have debates about what is the future of Singapore? What is the future of Malaya after independence? A lot of times the answer is, well, it cannot be the same society we've had before. It cannot be this colonial capitalist exploitative system, it's got to be something that's fair, it's got to be something that takes care of people, that recognizes that people are human beings, not capitalist digits to be exploited. And it has to recognize the fundamental rights of people.
So very often this new idea, socialism was something that was put forward to be taken, to be part of our new identity. And, of course, this was very much of the appeal of the People's Action Party. And later, you know, the PAP and the Barisan, both of whom were staunchly socialist parties, right.
And, of course, Singapore itself has certain circumstances. Remember, after World War Two, the big heroes that came out of world war two were the Malayan Communist Party. The Malayan communist party were, they may have called themselves communists. But if you look at the kind of things they proposed, right, they were nowhere as radical as communists elsewhere. Fundamentally, they were a nationalist party which sought to end colonialism. And sought so to bring about the independence of Malaya. And they were the big heroes of World War Two and the Japanese occupation, because they were the only real effective resistance against the Japanese. So to many people in Singapore, communism slash socialism, right, you fell somewhere on this spectrum. It was the way of the future. It was inevitable. It was what was necessary. But it also was a product of world war two, it was patriotic, it was anti colonial.
And because of the big success of communism, of the Malayan Communist Party, initially during the Emergency, and also before that in organizing labor, right. And then when they were driven underground, nobody actually knew who was and wasn't communist.
So this is my second point, right, that a lot of people will say, oh, yes, I was influenced by the communists but they don't actually know for sure that they were interested influenced by the Malayan Communist Party or simply other people who were claiming to be communist. And this is again, something you see a lot in Special Branch files. That they admit that there is no direct link to the Malayan Communist Party which for all intents and purposes after 1950 was irrelevant in Singapore because the leadership had been totally arrested. They were smashed, their lines of communication, their networks. They were, they existed, but they were irrelevant. The only person really still active in Singapore after 1950 was Eu Chooi Yip, their propaganda Chief, who was later withdrawn in the mid 50s, right. And then the plan was inserted…
But you see, it wasn't just the MCP, anyone who wanted to claim the mantle of the MCP could simply say, I am part of the Malayan Communist Party. And I actually have this whole underground behind me and so you should work with me. And so there were a lot of groups which tried to set up these cells and claim that they were part of the Malayan Communist Party who had absolutely no link to the Malayan Communist Party. But were just trying to tap into the reputation of the Malayan Communist Party. And so Special Branch investigates all these people and finds you know, that there's all these anti colonials who simply want to resist, resist the British, get rid of the British, push forward independence, you know, they wanted freedom.
And the quick and easy way of rallying people to their cause in the 50s was to say, oh, we are linked with the Malayan Communist Party. Because that not only tapped into the great reputation, remember the MCP are still heroes at this point, right. But also that would then imply oh, we have all sorts of resources that you don't know about, that no one knows about. So there were plenty of all these random people who were anti colonials who just claimed they were MCP and there's no way no one you and I meeting them and they say, oh, I'm MCP or whatever. How would you verify right? And this is one scenario probably that happens to these old boys. You know they receive documents for example or they might meet people who go oh I’m Communist Party and you should do this and you should, let's fight the British you know and these are young impressionable kids right and these are people trying to impress young impressionable kids. You know people in their, who are in school, school children and so they say oh we’re Communist Party...
So you can see here how these kids could have been influenced by the communists, by the idea of the Communist Party without actually having been influenced by the Malayan communist party itself which was basically irrelevant at this point in time.
But the third point I want to make is what is a communist? And I've said this before and it's very important but any definition of say the Barisan Socialists or Lim Chin Siong right. Any definition of a communist that says the Barisan Socialists or Lim Chin Siong is a communist would also then define Lee Kuan Yew as a communist… because the two of them were so similar, right. Their main difference was not about communism, it was about things like the use of the Internal Security Act. It was about internal party democracy in the PAP. It wasn't about their fundamental economic beliefs, you know, it wasn't about socialism. Both were socialists right? So for example, if you say oh, a communist is someone who colludes with the Malayan Communist Party underground right. Well, Lee Kuan Yew did that and he openly admits it in his autobiography. He admitted it at his radio talks in 1962. He collaborated with the MCP underground to win elections, he openly admits it and in fact, he's the only person, the only one of the major leaders of Singapore's political parties at that time whom we have definitive evidence that he collaborated with the communists.
So why was he not detained? Because this was a political situation, not a security one. If it was a security situation where the communists were a threat to Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew would have been detained straight away. But it wasn't, it was a political situation in which the British were trying to figure out which of these Singapore politicians would be the most trustworthy that they could hand power over to which would provide a stable Singapore and reliably pro British Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew was that man.
So on the other hand if we say oh communists has to be a card carrying member of the Communist Party and therefore Lee Kuan Yew is not a communist. Well we know for sure Lim Chin Siong was not a communist. Fong Swee Suan was not a communist. Devan Nair was not a communist...
This is way before the excesses of China were well known, before the Soviet Union, the excesses of Soviet Union were well known. Communism was a very different thing in the 50s. And it was a very wide spectrum of beliefs, you know, peaceful action, violent action, constitutional action, non-constitutional action, you know. Nationalization… retention of a capitalist system. It's important to remember, as I keep saying that the Barisan Socialists were economically, socially to the right of the British Labour Party at that time, and you never call the British Labour Party a Communist Party...
Why is history so important to Singapore?... The Singapore government tells a very specific narrative of history that has the purpose of trying to legitimize first the idea of Singapore, the state of Singapore, which we have to remember, is a very unnatural thing, Singapore has always been part of Johor, it was never meant to be split off from the Malayan mainland, but because of politics was split off in 65. And so you need to construct narrative of history to justify this split, right, the existence of Singapore is to try and make it seem inevitable in the minds of its inhabitants.
And also you need a narrative of history that justifies your policies, the PAP’s monopoly of power, the authoritarian policies, there, the fact that they suspend the normal rules of democracy, that we don't have free and fair elections, and so on and so forth. Right. So our history is designed to do to do all these things. And so when a historian comes along, who disagrees, then obviously, you know, that historian is a threat…
First of all, you have to understand the history of how history has been taught in Singapore. And right after separation, the PAP faced a quandary, right? They couldn't teach Malayan history anymore, because Malayan history emphasized Singapore as part of Malaya but now we were split off from Malaya. And you couldn't teach Chinese history because that was not only just politically inconvenient, but the the main opposition to the PAP was from the Chinese schools, you know, the Chinese University Nantah and the PAP didn't want to emphasize that so instead they took a different tack. They said, oh, we have no history. Rajaratnam said something like history starts now. Ong Pang Boon said history has no practical use, and the government didn't encourage any new research. Any new studies of history. Textbooks from the 1960s which still, which gave Singapore as part of Malaya continued to be used in Singapore's official curriculum well into the 1980's.
Lee Kuan Yew said, you know, it's more important to know where you're going then where we've been, right and he wanted to de-emphasize the Malaysian period… the Malayan aspects of our history.
So also, this enabled him to say a lot of things and do a lot of things, to make assertions without being checked. So in the 80s, he would say things like, oh, Singapore was a swarm and PAP built it up. And there were no historians who could then point out, wait a moment in 1961 or so, you gave a speech where you said Singapore today is the richest country in Asia, it has the highest per capita income in Asia, you know, and this is all due to the PAP. Well, it can't be a rich country in 1961. And then now you say it's a you know, in the 20 years later, you say, Oh, it was a swamp in 1960, and the PhD built it up today in 1980 to a rich country. These are mutually opposing facts.
So when the government has a monopoly over history, then people who don't produce inconvenient facts that contradict its reading of history. And then from this government's reading of history, it can then justify its policies.
Now, in the 1980s and into the 90s things changed in Singapore and. Ane of the major things was that Singapore went to a change of leadership, it went into a change of the electoral system. It went through a period where people started demanding more accountability and democracy and the PAP turned, sort of its focus turned backwards rather than forwards, right. So no more do you have this forget about the past, we need to look to the future.
Because once the PAP’s vote began declining, once opposition politicians began to be elected into parliament, the PP increasingly became a party that looked back on its glory, on its former glory rather than towards the future. And especially of course, the retirement of Lee Kuan as Prime Minister meant that its glory days were now in the past.
So from the mid 90s, you see this new National Education, the Singapore story which sought to entrench in people's minds this idea that the PAP has done great things for Singapore and that you need to understand where we've come from, right, the PAP wanted to create this idea of gratitude to the party in order to then promote their continuation in power and continue to justify their hold on power. So we have seen a lot of this in the past 20 years…
SG50 and the 2015 elections for example, the election’s focus is very much on the past right. The manifesto of the PAP quite amazingly had no promises for the future. It was all about the past. SG50, Lee Kuan Yew, SG50, Lee Kuan Yew over and over again. And so they need to control the history in order to be able to continue to campaign on it in order to continue to justify their policies based on it."
Post ID: 1321927541423801867
Links - 10th August 2019 (2)
David Marshall and the Dawn of Meet-the-People Sessions in Singapore – The Workers' Party - "So what did citizens enquire about back then in the 1950s? As Comber recalled, the top issue that MPs faced during MPS was unemployment; the second, immigration and social welfare matters; and the third, applications for subsidised flats from the now-defunct Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT). Today, residents of all walks of life continue to see their elected representatives at MPS to raise issues not too dissimilar from those of yesteryear.
So from the start, Singaporeans have used Meet the People sessions for bread and butter issues, i.e. to use their MPs as cheat codes for daily life
Hello, my name is Edward Foo, a volunteer from... - Edward Foo Poh Jien - "Hello, my name is Edward Foo, a volunteer from the Ready4Repeal online movement. I volunteered to talk to my Member of Parliament (MP), ER. DR. LEE BEE WAH regarding section 377a of the penal code... I then said: “This is regarding section 377a, and I was wondering what your views on this matter are.” The MP then said: “I have other residents with real problems”, and exited the room."
Kirsten Han - Looking at the comments related to Edward Foo’s post...
Comment: "our post misses the point because the objection is not about the role of a MP (about which you are surely right) but the purpose of Meet-the-People-Sessions. I've been volunteering at MPS for a few years and my understanding of it is that it's for social welfare and other bread-and-butter issues. If the MP had entertained them, she would have had less time for the other residents, many of whom have time-sensitive problems. As it is, the MP does not have time to meet each resident (this probably explains the MP's brusque reaction).As a political representative, the MP does have an obligation to hear the petition. But Edward Foo should have used an approach that did not come at the expense of other residents' ability to get social assistance. He could have emailed her, or even approach her after the MPS was over."
Masterchef Singapore Has to be Either Racist or Boring. Which Should It Be? - "Although Masterchef Channel 8 exercises majority privilege, it remains the only sensible decision because you cannot produce a Masterchef that is ‘Singaporean’ and inclusive at the same time.Our diversity forbids it.Pork and alcohol are haram to Muslims but an integral part of most Chinese cooking. Beef is freely consumed by Malay people, but forbidden for Buddhists and Hindus. To cover all bases, a good number of Hindus, Buddhists and Taoists are also vegetarians who forgo all of the above.How would Masterchef Singapore fare if you take into account everyone’s dietary taboos?My guess would be ‘badly’. "
Apparently there was some issue with the English rights too
Use the Command Line to Easily Create a List of Your Personal Files- Your Music, Your Pictures or Whatever - "If you have ever wanted to make a list of all the files contained in a particular folder, you will have discovered that the Windows Explorer interface provides no easy way to do this. It is very straightforward, however, when using the command line. Furthermore, the command line provides a simple way to list all the files of a certain type- for example, all your MP3 files. The method uses the directory or "dir" command. This command will be old news to many but it remains one of the most useful for average PC users."
Does Gargling Wlth Salt Water Ease a Sore Throat? - "Gargling with warm salt water actually does provide symptomatic relief -- and it has preventative benefits, too. Says Segal-Maurer, "You’re creating a high-salt barrier and you’re pulling out a lot of fluids from the tissues in the throat area, so you’re washing the virus out. The salt functions as a magnet for water. It’s good for symptomatic relief. And you end up swallowing some of it, so it’s sort of helping you with dehydration as well.”"
Journalist Petronella Wyatt Tells Today Programme She Was 'Flattered' By Groping In Westminster - "A senior political journalist has revealed she was “flattered” by men groping her when she worked in Westminster in the 1990s... Petronella Wyatt appeared with Women’s Equality Party leader and former political reporter Sophie Walker to talk about their experiences of working in politics, as allegations of sexual harassment continue to rock the chambers.Wyatt, who is the former deputy editor of the Spectator, told host Michelle Hussein: “There were a couple of men that were a bit gropey. But do you know what? I was flattered.”... “A lot of abuse or sexual harassment is a breach of good manners,” she claimed, adding “women have waived their right to gallantry by saying we’re the same as men”... Wyatt also accused Walker of “belittling” the severity of some of the accusations against MPs by ”equating a silly text message or a grope with rape.”"
Michael Ray Laemmle's answer to What is the funniest restaurant incident you have seen? - Quora - "A gorgeous black woman, clearly a business professional, physically fit, and put-together in a super sharp business suit and high heels, walked up to the counter and ordered three buckets of fried chicken and take-out meals. Potatoes, biscuits, and so on.The obese young black woman behind the counter, taking her order, asked, “Will you be dining in, or taking this out?”... “Bitch,” the business professional said, waving her hand in the air. “Do I look like I can eat a whole bucket of chicken myself?”The woman behind the counter threw up her hand in response, and said, “Bitch, do I look like I know your business?”The businesswoman threw up her hand and said, “Bitch, you better act like you know my business, because my business is gettin’ my shit and getting the fuck out of this here KFC.”“Bitch, your order be ready in about ten minutes. Can I get you something while you wait, bitch?”“Bitch, I’ll take a cup so I can get me some water.”Things had suddenly calmed down and de-escalated. I don’t know how, and what went unspoken, but the tension was definitely released.There was a lot going on here: racial tension, gender tension, class tension, personal tension"
Guide to water heaters: Essential information and considerations when buying - "According to information on City Gas’ website, based on an energy study conducted by Dr. Lee Siew Eang, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s department of building, gas water heaters are relatively more environmentally-friendly with 63 per cent less carbon emissions as compared to electrical heaters"
Why didn't electricity immediately change manufacturing? - "The leading thinker on economic growth, Robert Solow, famously quipped: "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics."... Economists called it the "productivity paradox".For a hint about what was going on, rewind 100 years. Another remarkable new technology was proving disappointing: electricity... Until about 1910, plenty of entrepreneurs looked at the new electrical drive system and opted for good old-fashioned steam.Why? Because to take advantage of electricity, factory owners had to think in a very different way. They could, of course, use an electric motor in the same way as they used steam engines. It would slot right into their old systems.But electric motors could do much more. Electricity allowed power to be delivered exactly where and when it was needed.Small steam engines were hopelessly inefficient but small electric motors worked just fine. So a factory could contain several smaller motors, each driving a small drive shaft"
[Bad] mega.co.nz may delete your data immediately when they suspend your account - Google Groups
What Left-Wing Educators Don't Teach During 'Black History Month' - "As economist and author Thomas Sowell says: "More whites were brought as slaves to North Africa than blacks brought as slaves to the United States or to the 13 colonies from which it was formed. White slaves were still being bought and sold in the Ottoman Empire, decades after blacks were freed in the United States." Are students taught that "race-based preferences," sometimes called "affirmative action," were opposed by several civil rights leaders? While National Urban League Executive Director Whitney Young supported a type of "Marshall Plan" for a period of 10 years to make up for historical discrimination, his board of directors refused to endorse the plan. In rejecting it, the president of the Urban League in Pittsburgh said the public would ask, "What in blazes are these guys up to? They tell us for years that we must buy (nondiscrimination) and then they say, 'It isn't what we want.'" A member of the Urban League in New York objected to what he called "the heart of it -- the business of employing Negroes (because they are Negroes)." Bayard Rustin was one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s key lieutenants and helped to plan and organize the civil rights march in D.C. that culminated in King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech. Rustin, an openly gay black man, also opposed race-based preferences... generations of civil rights leaders opposed immigration -- both legal and illegal immigration? After the Civil War, black abolitionist Frederick Douglass implored employers to hire blacks over new immigrants. Twenty-five years later, Booker T. Washington pleaded with Southern industrialists to hire blacks over new immigrants"
Why is Australia filled with so many dangerous animals/plants? : askscience - "For the question of why we have so many venomous snakes here to begin with, one has to look at the dispersal of snakes within Australia. First there was the best snakes of all (fact), the Aspidites-- primitive snakes that branched off the snake family before pythons evolved. Australia was pretty empty with just these guys around, so when the elapids came down from Asia, there was lots of space for them to diversify into. Elapids are very venomous snakes with fixed front fangs: cobras, mamba, etc. All venomous snakes in Australia are descended from these elapids.Australia has pretty venomous snakes because they all came from highly venomous stock... Our spiders are not more venomous that those of anywhere else in the world. We haven't had a spider-bite fatality since the '50s, and even then it was children and the elderly that succumbed.South America and Africa have many more venomous species than Australia, including more venomous lizards and venomous mammals (!).Edit: I worked out some ratios of lethal snakes:non-lethal snakes for a few different countries here. Australia ain't so bad."
"we only have two species [of spider] that can kill you. We definitely don't have larger ones either-- while there are outliers like the lanky huntsman, we don't have anything approaching the size of tarantulas and other spiders from South America and Asia."
Maybe Australia is just an outlier for the developed world
Matchmaking service clients looking for Mr Right but finding nothing but unhappiness - "Ko, who would not give her real name, recalled a consultant at Love Group Hong Kong showing her photos of four to five men – all said to have the qualities of her ideal partner. The men had to be at least 179cm tall with an annual salary of HK$1 million (US$127,528) or more, English-speaking and with overseas experience. The 31-year-old was told she could meet these men after she had paid for the service. But after forking out HK$19,900 (US$2,538) from October last year for a six-month plan, she did not meet any men who fitted the bill for her.Instead, she received 28 profiles of potential matches by February, with just one or two who came close to her stated requirements. Her worst date, she claimed, was a marble manufacturer who was rude and could not speak English. “I felt like I was being cheated,” Ko said... Psychologist Bella Chan, 45, signed a six-month plan for HK$39,900 (US$5,088) in April last year. Chan, not her real name, wanted to meet a Western man in his late 40s to early 50s with an income of more than HK$1 million per year."
So from the start, Singaporeans have used Meet the People sessions for bread and butter issues, i.e. to use their MPs as cheat codes for daily life
Hello, my name is Edward Foo, a volunteer from... - Edward Foo Poh Jien - "Hello, my name is Edward Foo, a volunteer from the Ready4Repeal online movement. I volunteered to talk to my Member of Parliament (MP), ER. DR. LEE BEE WAH regarding section 377a of the penal code... I then said: “This is regarding section 377a, and I was wondering what your views on this matter are.” The MP then said: “I have other residents with real problems”, and exited the room."
Kirsten Han - Looking at the comments related to Edward Foo’s post...
Comment: "our post misses the point because the objection is not about the role of a MP (about which you are surely right) but the purpose of Meet-the-People-Sessions. I've been volunteering at MPS for a few years and my understanding of it is that it's for social welfare and other bread-and-butter issues. If the MP had entertained them, she would have had less time for the other residents, many of whom have time-sensitive problems. As it is, the MP does not have time to meet each resident (this probably explains the MP's brusque reaction).As a political representative, the MP does have an obligation to hear the petition. But Edward Foo should have used an approach that did not come at the expense of other residents' ability to get social assistance. He could have emailed her, or even approach her after the MPS was over."
Masterchef Singapore Has to be Either Racist or Boring. Which Should It Be? - "Although Masterchef Channel 8 exercises majority privilege, it remains the only sensible decision because you cannot produce a Masterchef that is ‘Singaporean’ and inclusive at the same time.Our diversity forbids it.Pork and alcohol are haram to Muslims but an integral part of most Chinese cooking. Beef is freely consumed by Malay people, but forbidden for Buddhists and Hindus. To cover all bases, a good number of Hindus, Buddhists and Taoists are also vegetarians who forgo all of the above.How would Masterchef Singapore fare if you take into account everyone’s dietary taboos?My guess would be ‘badly’. "
Apparently there was some issue with the English rights too
Use the Command Line to Easily Create a List of Your Personal Files- Your Music, Your Pictures or Whatever - "If you have ever wanted to make a list of all the files contained in a particular folder, you will have discovered that the Windows Explorer interface provides no easy way to do this. It is very straightforward, however, when using the command line. Furthermore, the command line provides a simple way to list all the files of a certain type- for example, all your MP3 files. The method uses the directory or "dir" command. This command will be old news to many but it remains one of the most useful for average PC users."
Does Gargling Wlth Salt Water Ease a Sore Throat? - "Gargling with warm salt water actually does provide symptomatic relief -- and it has preventative benefits, too. Says Segal-Maurer, "You’re creating a high-salt barrier and you’re pulling out a lot of fluids from the tissues in the throat area, so you’re washing the virus out. The salt functions as a magnet for water. It’s good for symptomatic relief. And you end up swallowing some of it, so it’s sort of helping you with dehydration as well.”"
Journalist Petronella Wyatt Tells Today Programme She Was 'Flattered' By Groping In Westminster - "A senior political journalist has revealed she was “flattered” by men groping her when she worked in Westminster in the 1990s... Petronella Wyatt appeared with Women’s Equality Party leader and former political reporter Sophie Walker to talk about their experiences of working in politics, as allegations of sexual harassment continue to rock the chambers.Wyatt, who is the former deputy editor of the Spectator, told host Michelle Hussein: “There were a couple of men that were a bit gropey. But do you know what? I was flattered.”... “A lot of abuse or sexual harassment is a breach of good manners,” she claimed, adding “women have waived their right to gallantry by saying we’re the same as men”... Wyatt also accused Walker of “belittling” the severity of some of the accusations against MPs by ”equating a silly text message or a grope with rape.”"
Michael Ray Laemmle's answer to What is the funniest restaurant incident you have seen? - Quora - "A gorgeous black woman, clearly a business professional, physically fit, and put-together in a super sharp business suit and high heels, walked up to the counter and ordered three buckets of fried chicken and take-out meals. Potatoes, biscuits, and so on.The obese young black woman behind the counter, taking her order, asked, “Will you be dining in, or taking this out?”... “Bitch,” the business professional said, waving her hand in the air. “Do I look like I can eat a whole bucket of chicken myself?”The woman behind the counter threw up her hand in response, and said, “Bitch, do I look like I know your business?”The businesswoman threw up her hand and said, “Bitch, you better act like you know my business, because my business is gettin’ my shit and getting the fuck out of this here KFC.”“Bitch, your order be ready in about ten minutes. Can I get you something while you wait, bitch?”“Bitch, I’ll take a cup so I can get me some water.”Things had suddenly calmed down and de-escalated. I don’t know how, and what went unspoken, but the tension was definitely released.There was a lot going on here: racial tension, gender tension, class tension, personal tension"
Guide to water heaters: Essential information and considerations when buying - "According to information on City Gas’ website, based on an energy study conducted by Dr. Lee Siew Eang, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s department of building, gas water heaters are relatively more environmentally-friendly with 63 per cent less carbon emissions as compared to electrical heaters"
Why didn't electricity immediately change manufacturing? - "The leading thinker on economic growth, Robert Solow, famously quipped: "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics."... Economists called it the "productivity paradox".For a hint about what was going on, rewind 100 years. Another remarkable new technology was proving disappointing: electricity... Until about 1910, plenty of entrepreneurs looked at the new electrical drive system and opted for good old-fashioned steam.Why? Because to take advantage of electricity, factory owners had to think in a very different way. They could, of course, use an electric motor in the same way as they used steam engines. It would slot right into their old systems.But electric motors could do much more. Electricity allowed power to be delivered exactly where and when it was needed.Small steam engines were hopelessly inefficient but small electric motors worked just fine. So a factory could contain several smaller motors, each driving a small drive shaft"
[Bad] mega.co.nz may delete your data immediately when they suspend your account - Google Groups
What Left-Wing Educators Don't Teach During 'Black History Month' - "As economist and author Thomas Sowell says: "More whites were brought as slaves to North Africa than blacks brought as slaves to the United States or to the 13 colonies from which it was formed. White slaves were still being bought and sold in the Ottoman Empire, decades after blacks were freed in the United States." Are students taught that "race-based preferences," sometimes called "affirmative action," were opposed by several civil rights leaders? While National Urban League Executive Director Whitney Young supported a type of "Marshall Plan" for a period of 10 years to make up for historical discrimination, his board of directors refused to endorse the plan. In rejecting it, the president of the Urban League in Pittsburgh said the public would ask, "What in blazes are these guys up to? They tell us for years that we must buy (nondiscrimination) and then they say, 'It isn't what we want.'" A member of the Urban League in New York objected to what he called "the heart of it -- the business of employing Negroes (because they are Negroes)." Bayard Rustin was one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s key lieutenants and helped to plan and organize the civil rights march in D.C. that culminated in King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech. Rustin, an openly gay black man, also opposed race-based preferences... generations of civil rights leaders opposed immigration -- both legal and illegal immigration? After the Civil War, black abolitionist Frederick Douglass implored employers to hire blacks over new immigrants. Twenty-five years later, Booker T. Washington pleaded with Southern industrialists to hire blacks over new immigrants"
Why is Australia filled with so many dangerous animals/plants? : askscience - "For the question of why we have so many venomous snakes here to begin with, one has to look at the dispersal of snakes within Australia. First there was the best snakes of all (fact), the Aspidites-- primitive snakes that branched off the snake family before pythons evolved. Australia was pretty empty with just these guys around, so when the elapids came down from Asia, there was lots of space for them to diversify into. Elapids are very venomous snakes with fixed front fangs: cobras, mamba, etc. All venomous snakes in Australia are descended from these elapids.Australia has pretty venomous snakes because they all came from highly venomous stock... Our spiders are not more venomous that those of anywhere else in the world. We haven't had a spider-bite fatality since the '50s, and even then it was children and the elderly that succumbed.South America and Africa have many more venomous species than Australia, including more venomous lizards and venomous mammals (!).Edit: I worked out some ratios of lethal snakes:non-lethal snakes for a few different countries here. Australia ain't so bad."
"we only have two species [of spider] that can kill you. We definitely don't have larger ones either-- while there are outliers like the lanky huntsman, we don't have anything approaching the size of tarantulas and other spiders from South America and Asia."
Maybe Australia is just an outlier for the developed world
Matchmaking service clients looking for Mr Right but finding nothing but unhappiness - "Ko, who would not give her real name, recalled a consultant at Love Group Hong Kong showing her photos of four to five men – all said to have the qualities of her ideal partner. The men had to be at least 179cm tall with an annual salary of HK$1 million (US$127,528) or more, English-speaking and with overseas experience. The 31-year-old was told she could meet these men after she had paid for the service. But after forking out HK$19,900 (US$2,538) from October last year for a six-month plan, she did not meet any men who fitted the bill for her.Instead, she received 28 profiles of potential matches by February, with just one or two who came close to her stated requirements. Her worst date, she claimed, was a marble manufacturer who was rude and could not speak English. “I felt like I was being cheated,” Ko said... Psychologist Bella Chan, 45, signed a six-month plan for HK$39,900 (US$5,088) in April last year. Chan, not her real name, wanted to meet a Western man in his late 40s to early 50s with an income of more than HK$1 million per year."
Post ID: 719603401225833670
The NHS child gender clinic
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, The NHS child gender clinic
‘Doctors at the UK’s only NHS children's gender clinic are misleading patients and making decisions about treatment that will have an impact on their lives, their whole lives. It would be a serious allegation whoever made it but it comes from a former member of staff, Dr. Kirsty Entwistle, who is a clinical psychologist has written an open letter in which she says accusations of transphobia are preventing the clinic staff from speaking out. Well Paul Jenkins is the chief executive of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. And he’s here in the studio… one of the things she says is that clinicians tell children and families that puberty blockers, these hormone blockers are fully reversible. But the reality is that no one knows what the long term impact is, on children's brains. Is that true that the reality, the long term reality is not known?’
‘So can I start by saying I'm absolutely clear that the service we offer through the service is safe, caring and thoughtful in its approach to a very contestable contested and complicated issue. To turn to the issue of the medication, there are a number of interventions that are offered. And actually it's worth noting that only less than 50% of people who are referred to our service actually end up being referred to a hormone treatment. But the first one that the hormone blockers are referred to is reversible, it's actually used in a much broader range of indications than just gender dysphoria. And it's been used for around 30 years.’...
‘She says we don't know. Because we don't know the long term effect of these on the brain’
‘So what I would say is this is, so it's a very contested area of medicine’
‘Hang on a second, if it's contested why are you not telling people that it’s contested, rather than saying that it's fully reversible?’
‘The puberty blockers are reversible. What I would say more generally, is this is an area where we need to be thoughtful about our practice, we need to hear concerns like the one that’re raised here and give proper attention to them. But what as a service we've really been committed to is participating in long term research. So our trust was awarded a significant grant to do the first long term outcome study.’
‘But hang on, on the one hand, you're saying that they do not have a long term effect. On the other hand, you're saying we need to do research to find out if they do have a long term effect’
‘I’m talking more broadly about the impact… of all the interventions’...
‘She says as well, there are children who have had very traumatic early experiences and early losses who have been put on the medical pathway without having explored or addressed their early adverse experiences. If you make the mistake of suggesting this in a team meeting, you run the risk of being called transphobic’
‘I would be very disappointed if that was a view of our service, we take a very thoughtful approach, we don't, we're not wedded to a medical model. And the whole purpose of the GID service is to explore with each individual, what is best for that young person, take account of their circumstances. And in some cases, we will take a very long time to come to a view about what the best approach working with that’
‘But in some cases, will you say look, you have had a traumatic experience, it is probably that that has caused you to come to us. You are not someone who should be transgender.’
‘I think there are two things here, I think we need to respect the feelings and experiences of young people who are uncomfortable with their natal gender and give proper respect to that. We may also need to explore a whole range of things that have happened to young people in their, in their lives, some of which may be relevant to their feelings, some of which may not be and I would feel that our service is set up in a way that does give space to explore those more complex, more complex issues.’
‘So are you willing to to say to children and to their parents who come to you no, we think our service is not for you?’
‘Yes. And I think there are cases where we will come to that conclusion’
‘Right. So there are people. So again, she's wrong. You turn people away and say this is not for you.’
‘Yeah. Yeah.’
‘She says that it is highly unlikely that any child presenting at the clinic will be told that they're not transgender. Again, that's false, isn't?’
‘I'm not, I think it's unhelpful to see these as black and white issues, as I said, the purpose of the service is to explore on an individual basis with those young people and their families, what they're feeling, what their experiences are, not to dispute the genuineness of how they feel about their-’
‘But that's the problem, isn't it? What she is saying is that you feel nervous, and people will fully understand why you feel that you want to be inclusive, and you want to talk to them about things that they genuinely feel. But what she feels, it seems from this letter, is that you've got the balance wrong, and you are not able because you're frightened of being labeled as transphobic, including members of staff inside the organization. There is this failure to be blunt with people on occasions and say, look, this isn't for you.’
‘So again, I think that's not the way that, I can well understand some of the pressures that are individual members of staff, we've heard some of those concerns. We are trying to look at some of our processes and procedures to make it easier for clinicians to concentrate on that individual, work with young people rather than being swayed or influenced by some of the very heated debate about the issue that exists in the outside.’
‘And when the heated debate takes place, this is another, the last thing she calls for. She says you must protect and support staff when they're falsely accused of transphobia and take formal action against people who make false accusations. Will you?’
‘Well if those issues were raised with me, and I think one of the disappointments here is that those issues were not raised in the organization, then, yes, we would if that was justified.’
‘Doctors at the UK’s only NHS children's gender clinic are misleading patients and making decisions about treatment that will have an impact on their lives, their whole lives. It would be a serious allegation whoever made it but it comes from a former member of staff, Dr. Kirsty Entwistle, who is a clinical psychologist has written an open letter in which she says accusations of transphobia are preventing the clinic staff from speaking out. Well Paul Jenkins is the chief executive of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. And he’s here in the studio… one of the things she says is that clinicians tell children and families that puberty blockers, these hormone blockers are fully reversible. But the reality is that no one knows what the long term impact is, on children's brains. Is that true that the reality, the long term reality is not known?’
‘So can I start by saying I'm absolutely clear that the service we offer through the service is safe, caring and thoughtful in its approach to a very contestable contested and complicated issue. To turn to the issue of the medication, there are a number of interventions that are offered. And actually it's worth noting that only less than 50% of people who are referred to our service actually end up being referred to a hormone treatment. But the first one that the hormone blockers are referred to is reversible, it's actually used in a much broader range of indications than just gender dysphoria. And it's been used for around 30 years.’...
‘She says we don't know. Because we don't know the long term effect of these on the brain’
‘So what I would say is this is, so it's a very contested area of medicine’
‘Hang on a second, if it's contested why are you not telling people that it’s contested, rather than saying that it's fully reversible?’
‘The puberty blockers are reversible. What I would say more generally, is this is an area where we need to be thoughtful about our practice, we need to hear concerns like the one that’re raised here and give proper attention to them. But what as a service we've really been committed to is participating in long term research. So our trust was awarded a significant grant to do the first long term outcome study.’
‘But hang on, on the one hand, you're saying that they do not have a long term effect. On the other hand, you're saying we need to do research to find out if they do have a long term effect’
‘I’m talking more broadly about the impact… of all the interventions’...
‘She says as well, there are children who have had very traumatic early experiences and early losses who have been put on the medical pathway without having explored or addressed their early adverse experiences. If you make the mistake of suggesting this in a team meeting, you run the risk of being called transphobic’
‘I would be very disappointed if that was a view of our service, we take a very thoughtful approach, we don't, we're not wedded to a medical model. And the whole purpose of the GID service is to explore with each individual, what is best for that young person, take account of their circumstances. And in some cases, we will take a very long time to come to a view about what the best approach working with that’
‘But in some cases, will you say look, you have had a traumatic experience, it is probably that that has caused you to come to us. You are not someone who should be transgender.’
‘I think there are two things here, I think we need to respect the feelings and experiences of young people who are uncomfortable with their natal gender and give proper respect to that. We may also need to explore a whole range of things that have happened to young people in their, in their lives, some of which may be relevant to their feelings, some of which may not be and I would feel that our service is set up in a way that does give space to explore those more complex, more complex issues.’
‘So are you willing to to say to children and to their parents who come to you no, we think our service is not for you?’
‘Yes. And I think there are cases where we will come to that conclusion’
‘Right. So there are people. So again, she's wrong. You turn people away and say this is not for you.’
‘Yeah. Yeah.’
‘She says that it is highly unlikely that any child presenting at the clinic will be told that they're not transgender. Again, that's false, isn't?’
‘I'm not, I think it's unhelpful to see these as black and white issues, as I said, the purpose of the service is to explore on an individual basis with those young people and their families, what they're feeling, what their experiences are, not to dispute the genuineness of how they feel about their-’
‘But that's the problem, isn't it? What she is saying is that you feel nervous, and people will fully understand why you feel that you want to be inclusive, and you want to talk to them about things that they genuinely feel. But what she feels, it seems from this letter, is that you've got the balance wrong, and you are not able because you're frightened of being labeled as transphobic, including members of staff inside the organization. There is this failure to be blunt with people on occasions and say, look, this isn't for you.’
‘So again, I think that's not the way that, I can well understand some of the pressures that are individual members of staff, we've heard some of those concerns. We are trying to look at some of our processes and procedures to make it easier for clinicians to concentrate on that individual, work with young people rather than being swayed or influenced by some of the very heated debate about the issue that exists in the outside.’
‘And when the heated debate takes place, this is another, the last thing she calls for. She says you must protect and support staff when they're falsely accused of transphobia and take formal action against people who make false accusations. Will you?’
‘Well if those issues were raised with me, and I think one of the disappointments here is that those issues were not raised in the organization, then, yes, we would if that was justified.’
Post ID: 8438849403931610879
Links - 10th August 2019 (1)
The Queen’s Twitter Account Makes Major Error When Tweeting About D-Day Commemoration - "The official twitter account of the Royal Family posted a video of Queen Elizabeth II welcoming leaders from “the allied nations that took part in D-Day,” but the footage included the chancellor of Germany.The video was taken while the queen was welcoming world leaders to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day ahead of the National Commemorative Event."
Stop asking 'how are you?' Harvard researchers say this is how successful people make small talk - "“How are you?” These are the three most useless words in the world of communication. The person asking doesn’t really want to know, and the person responding doesn’t tell the truth. What follows is a lost opportunity and meaningless exchange with zero connection.But the key to making the most out of small talk, according to Harvard researchers, is to simply ask the other person follow-up questions... those who were asked more meaningful follow-up questions (a.k.a. questions that aren’t “how are you?” or “what do you do?”), found the other person much more likable."
Clever Cosplayer Hacks Nerf Blaster to Cast Floating Holographic Spells
A Stanford professor drops his ridiculous defamation lawsuit against his scientific critics - Los Angeles Times - "Stanford environmental professor Mark Z. Jacobson made a big splash in 2015 with a paper predicting that renewable sources could provide 100% of the energy needed in the 48 contiguous states by 2050. But he made an even bigger splash last September, when he responded to a critique of his claim published in a leading scientific journal by filing a $10-million defamation lawsuit."
John and Yoko waiting for the maid to make the bed so they can continue protesting against the system. : pics
Irish Moms - Posts - "If animals can do it, and insects can do it, why the f*ck can't you?! *cyclists blocking an entire lane by riding 3 in a row*"
Chinese soldiers spotted hauling baby formula onto warships in Sydney Harbour
Anti-#GamerGate Journalist Peter Bright Arrested For Soliciting Child Sex - "Bright, however, has a long history of being anti-#GamerGate, and using his blue checkmark account on Twitter to rag on #GamerGate and accuse people of being pedophiles. This is despite the fact that in his Twitter profile he defines himself as poly/pan/pervy, and was a staunch supporter of feminism... the FBI report indicated that they could find not actionable evidence remotely indicating that #GamerGate was ever a harassment campaign... Bright also took digs at anime fans, claiming that “anime is for pedos”... the original allegations surrounding #PizzaGate was that there was coded language and odd phraseology in the John Podesta e-mail leak. It was alleged that the food references were code words used by pedophiles to talk about their victims. The coded language was never thoroughly proven, but in our examination of the e-mails there was one letter that outright stated that people would be bringing their kids to a pool party in October for Podesta’s “entertainment”. This was neither coded nor hidden, and the e-mail is still available to read on the Wikileaks website... the citizen investigators looking into #PizzaGate called for an investigation into Podesta and those linked to him, but the media swiftly changed the narrative into a story about dungeons in pizza parlors and then swiftly passed it off as a “fake hoax”, resulting in the Wikipedia entry purposefully leaving out key details in order to misrepresent and obfuscate the topic matter."
Another male feminist bites the dust
Troy Garnaut - There’s a reason there are only 100 Jews left in... - "Now lets kill some jews."
"There’s a reason there are only 100 Jews left in Egypt. Hesham Mansour is an Egyptian actor and writer with over 800,000 followers on Twitter, 55,000 Likes on Facebook, and another 51,000 followers on Instagram."
Naturally, blue check mark!
Training a Single AI Model Can Emit As Much Carbon As Five Cars In Their Lifetimes - "In a new paper, researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, performed a life cycle assessment for training several common large AI models. They found that the process can emit more than 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent -- nearly five times the lifetime emissions of the average American car (and that includes manufacture of the car itself)"
Unbiased America - Posts - "MEXICO OFFERS MAJOR IMMIGRATION CONCESSIONS TO AVOID TARIFFS U.S. and Mexican officials are closing in on a deal that would dramatically increase Mexico’s immigration enforcement efforts and give the United States far more power to deport Central Americans seeking asylum, the Washington Post is reporting"
Mexico says sale of presidential plane will curb illegal migration - "Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has pledged to use profits from the sale of his presidential plane to fund efforts to curb illegal migration. "
How Europe smothered the radical Left - "The ‘four freedoms’ refer to the European single market and its guarantee of free movement for goods, capital, services and people – i.e. unimpeded capitalism within the borders of an EU riven by inequalities of productivity, wealth, infrastructure and education. National borders are erased when it comes to things that suit the most powerful interests – access to cheap money, cheap assets, cheap products and cheap labour. But when it comes to the redistribution required to address the resulting imbalances in economic and social power, the borders magically reappear. In many ways, the EU is running a more radical and unequal form of capitalism than America is."
Lucas Adler - Finally catching up on #GOT. Like many men, I was... - " Like many men, I was initially worried about Cersei's quote that was sure to become the anthem of annoying girls everywhere - "You want a wh@re? Buy one. You want a queen? Earn her.."I was relieved to see what subsequently happened to Cersei after that scene. Please remind any annoying person who tries to use this as the new "If you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best" nonsense, lol."
Meme - "You want a whore, buy one. You want a queen, earn her"
"Oh man... She's just like me *fat purple haired woman on couch with facial hair and bad complexion*"
Extremism and hate preachers on the rise at campuses, universities warned - "Extremist speakers are on the rise at universities, figures show, amid warnings that hate preachers are enjoying “near unfettered” access to students.During the last academic year, there were 200 events held at university campuses which featured individuals with radical views, according to an analysis by a counter extremism think-tank.These included hate preachers, pro-jihad activists and anti-Semites, some of whom toured around the country delivering lectures to students... some of those 200 speakers’ views include supporting convicted terrorists, defending Hamas’s use of suicide bombings and animosity towards Jews and “disbelievers”.They also include advocating for an intifada in America and violent jihad, punishments such as stonings for homosexuals and the establishment of an Islamic caliphate... The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) hosted more extreme speakers and events in the past academic year than any other university in the country, for the third year running the report claimed.The London university, which is known for its liberal outlook, held 43 events that featured speakers with extreme Islamic views, a three-fold increase on the previous year."
Far-right Polish priest detained at Stansted airport - "A notorious Polish priest accused of spreading antisemitism and Islamophobia has been detained by UK authorities hours before he was due to address a far-right rally in Shropshire.Jacek Międlar, a leading figure for rightwing extremists in Poland, was held by UK border officials after landing at Stansted airport, Essex, to prevent him attending the controversial event in Telford."
JMP - "Health insurance is a primary driver of rising medical expenditures. I examine insurance’s effect on risky sex, a behavior with quick, meaningful negative results. Leveraging mandated zero cost-sharing for contraception and pre-policy insured rates as a measure of treatment intensity, I find this 2012 policy reduced fertility but caused unintended consequences: decreased prevention and increased sexually transmitted infections. I discuss imperfections of controlling for pre-trends using state-trends in difference-in-differences and suggest approaches to control for pre-trends directly. I use the 2010 dependent coverage mandate to examine the overall effect of insurance and find protective net effects of insurance on STIs."
Humans respond to incentives
This suggests that free contraception increases STIs/STDs
MDA confirms ban on Christ film - "The Media Development Authority (MDA) has confirmed that the film, The Last Temptation of Christ, is banned in Singapore... One of the most notable critics of the ban on the book, however, was Singapore’s former Minister of Culture, S Rajaratnam.“The banning of a memorable book which the vast majority of Singaporeans have ignored for some 30 years without serious damage to their health and mind is unlikely to bring Singapore crashing down,” he wrote in one of his letters to the Straits Times then.Mr Rajaratnam said his persistence in speaking against the ban “is not over the banning of one book but concern over the cast of mind and motive that led to the banning.”Rebutting the government’s reason that the ban was imposed to ensure religious harmony, Mr Rajaratnam said, “[The] best way of ensuring racial and religious harmony would be by compelling the hysterical minority to ‘empathise’ with the sane majority.”He added, “The reason why Singapore has so far been an exception to what is becoming a world-wide rule is that this Government had the courage always to be on the side of sanity against the intolerance of the hysterical.” In 2011, the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, George Yeo, explained why the government had chosen to ban The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, which Muslims found offensive, but allowed The Last Temptation of Christ, the book. The Straits Times reported Mr Yeo as having said, “So we got questioned. Our reply was the Christians are less likely to riot.”"
Strange, it seems race and religion were not always as hysterically treated in Singapore as they are now. Probably because the Communist bogeyman still existed back then
James Lindsay on Twitter - "When I taught in the university, my last classes ending at Christmas 2009, the general consensus was that if your students could correctly guess your religion or your politics, that was a sign you were doing something wrong in your classroom that needed correction.
You may be wondering what makes Social Justice scholars feel entitled to teach their ideology. Beyond self-righteousness, it is this: their theory claims that *everything* carries ideology with it, so you must teach the right(eous) ideology rather than the (unjust) default ones.
In Social Justice philosophy, it is taught that established (aka rigorous) ways of knowing were developed by the white supremacist cishetero-patriarchy, and because that power and privilege always works to maintain itself, legitimate ways of knowing carry an ideology of injustice
This, admittedly, sounds batshit insane (because it 99.9% is). The explanation is that they believe everything comes down to ways we talk about things ("discourses," which maintain power dynamics), and the dominant always rig the system to maintain their dominance in that way.
Therefore, Social Justice scholarship, thus educational activism, believe that oppressive ideologies are being taught not only by default but also beneath our awareness. Their mission of "liberation" seeks to undo this, so it's a "superior" ideology to teach and institutionalize.
It's of incredible importance to realize that Social Justice thought isn't nonsense or bullshit; it's a bizarre comic-book universe that, from within, makes a kind of sense. Imposed upon the world, however, it's a disaster."
"Of all the comparisons between social justice ideology and religion, perhaps my favorite is the implicit belief that if you fail to indoctrinate the impressionable, you won’t win their minds in a fair battle of ideas."
"I used to teach A Women in Politics course. First assignment: write a persuasive essay on any women’s issue. Second assignment: write a persuasive essay taking the opposite viewpoint of the first assignment."
Stop asking 'how are you?' Harvard researchers say this is how successful people make small talk - "“How are you?” These are the three most useless words in the world of communication. The person asking doesn’t really want to know, and the person responding doesn’t tell the truth. What follows is a lost opportunity and meaningless exchange with zero connection.But the key to making the most out of small talk, according to Harvard researchers, is to simply ask the other person follow-up questions... those who were asked more meaningful follow-up questions (a.k.a. questions that aren’t “how are you?” or “what do you do?”), found the other person much more likable."
Clever Cosplayer Hacks Nerf Blaster to Cast Floating Holographic Spells
A Stanford professor drops his ridiculous defamation lawsuit against his scientific critics - Los Angeles Times - "Stanford environmental professor Mark Z. Jacobson made a big splash in 2015 with a paper predicting that renewable sources could provide 100% of the energy needed in the 48 contiguous states by 2050. But he made an even bigger splash last September, when he responded to a critique of his claim published in a leading scientific journal by filing a $10-million defamation lawsuit."
John and Yoko waiting for the maid to make the bed so they can continue protesting against the system. : pics
Irish Moms - Posts - "If animals can do it, and insects can do it, why the f*ck can't you?! *cyclists blocking an entire lane by riding 3 in a row*"
Chinese soldiers spotted hauling baby formula onto warships in Sydney Harbour
Anti-#GamerGate Journalist Peter Bright Arrested For Soliciting Child Sex - "Bright, however, has a long history of being anti-#GamerGate, and using his blue checkmark account on Twitter to rag on #GamerGate and accuse people of being pedophiles. This is despite the fact that in his Twitter profile he defines himself as poly/pan/pervy, and was a staunch supporter of feminism... the FBI report indicated that they could find not actionable evidence remotely indicating that #GamerGate was ever a harassment campaign... Bright also took digs at anime fans, claiming that “anime is for pedos”... the original allegations surrounding #PizzaGate was that there was coded language and odd phraseology in the John Podesta e-mail leak. It was alleged that the food references were code words used by pedophiles to talk about their victims. The coded language was never thoroughly proven, but in our examination of the e-mails there was one letter that outright stated that people would be bringing their kids to a pool party in October for Podesta’s “entertainment”. This was neither coded nor hidden, and the e-mail is still available to read on the Wikileaks website... the citizen investigators looking into #PizzaGate called for an investigation into Podesta and those linked to him, but the media swiftly changed the narrative into a story about dungeons in pizza parlors and then swiftly passed it off as a “fake hoax”, resulting in the Wikipedia entry purposefully leaving out key details in order to misrepresent and obfuscate the topic matter."
Another male feminist bites the dust
Troy Garnaut - There’s a reason there are only 100 Jews left in... - "Now lets kill some jews."
"There’s a reason there are only 100 Jews left in Egypt. Hesham Mansour is an Egyptian actor and writer with over 800,000 followers on Twitter, 55,000 Likes on Facebook, and another 51,000 followers on Instagram."
Naturally, blue check mark!
Training a Single AI Model Can Emit As Much Carbon As Five Cars In Their Lifetimes - "In a new paper, researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, performed a life cycle assessment for training several common large AI models. They found that the process can emit more than 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent -- nearly five times the lifetime emissions of the average American car (and that includes manufacture of the car itself)"
Unbiased America - Posts - "MEXICO OFFERS MAJOR IMMIGRATION CONCESSIONS TO AVOID TARIFFS U.S. and Mexican officials are closing in on a deal that would dramatically increase Mexico’s immigration enforcement efforts and give the United States far more power to deport Central Americans seeking asylum, the Washington Post is reporting"
Mexico says sale of presidential plane will curb illegal migration - "Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has pledged to use profits from the sale of his presidential plane to fund efforts to curb illegal migration. "
How Europe smothered the radical Left - "The ‘four freedoms’ refer to the European single market and its guarantee of free movement for goods, capital, services and people – i.e. unimpeded capitalism within the borders of an EU riven by inequalities of productivity, wealth, infrastructure and education. National borders are erased when it comes to things that suit the most powerful interests – access to cheap money, cheap assets, cheap products and cheap labour. But when it comes to the redistribution required to address the resulting imbalances in economic and social power, the borders magically reappear. In many ways, the EU is running a more radical and unequal form of capitalism than America is."
Lucas Adler - Finally catching up on #GOT. Like many men, I was... - " Like many men, I was initially worried about Cersei's quote that was sure to become the anthem of annoying girls everywhere - "You want a wh@re? Buy one. You want a queen? Earn her.."I was relieved to see what subsequently happened to Cersei after that scene. Please remind any annoying person who tries to use this as the new "If you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best" nonsense, lol."
Meme - "You want a whore, buy one. You want a queen, earn her"
"Oh man... She's just like me *fat purple haired woman on couch with facial hair and bad complexion*"
Extremism and hate preachers on the rise at campuses, universities warned - "Extremist speakers are on the rise at universities, figures show, amid warnings that hate preachers are enjoying “near unfettered” access to students.During the last academic year, there were 200 events held at university campuses which featured individuals with radical views, according to an analysis by a counter extremism think-tank.These included hate preachers, pro-jihad activists and anti-Semites, some of whom toured around the country delivering lectures to students... some of those 200 speakers’ views include supporting convicted terrorists, defending Hamas’s use of suicide bombings and animosity towards Jews and “disbelievers”.They also include advocating for an intifada in America and violent jihad, punishments such as stonings for homosexuals and the establishment of an Islamic caliphate... The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) hosted more extreme speakers and events in the past academic year than any other university in the country, for the third year running the report claimed.The London university, which is known for its liberal outlook, held 43 events that featured speakers with extreme Islamic views, a three-fold increase on the previous year."
Far-right Polish priest detained at Stansted airport - "A notorious Polish priest accused of spreading antisemitism and Islamophobia has been detained by UK authorities hours before he was due to address a far-right rally in Shropshire.Jacek Międlar, a leading figure for rightwing extremists in Poland, was held by UK border officials after landing at Stansted airport, Essex, to prevent him attending the controversial event in Telford."
JMP - "Health insurance is a primary driver of rising medical expenditures. I examine insurance’s effect on risky sex, a behavior with quick, meaningful negative results. Leveraging mandated zero cost-sharing for contraception and pre-policy insured rates as a measure of treatment intensity, I find this 2012 policy reduced fertility but caused unintended consequences: decreased prevention and increased sexually transmitted infections. I discuss imperfections of controlling for pre-trends using state-trends in difference-in-differences and suggest approaches to control for pre-trends directly. I use the 2010 dependent coverage mandate to examine the overall effect of insurance and find protective net effects of insurance on STIs."
Humans respond to incentives
This suggests that free contraception increases STIs/STDs
MDA confirms ban on Christ film - "The Media Development Authority (MDA) has confirmed that the film, The Last Temptation of Christ, is banned in Singapore... One of the most notable critics of the ban on the book, however, was Singapore’s former Minister of Culture, S Rajaratnam.“The banning of a memorable book which the vast majority of Singaporeans have ignored for some 30 years without serious damage to their health and mind is unlikely to bring Singapore crashing down,” he wrote in one of his letters to the Straits Times then.Mr Rajaratnam said his persistence in speaking against the ban “is not over the banning of one book but concern over the cast of mind and motive that led to the banning.”Rebutting the government’s reason that the ban was imposed to ensure religious harmony, Mr Rajaratnam said, “[The] best way of ensuring racial and religious harmony would be by compelling the hysterical minority to ‘empathise’ with the sane majority.”He added, “The reason why Singapore has so far been an exception to what is becoming a world-wide rule is that this Government had the courage always to be on the side of sanity against the intolerance of the hysterical.” In 2011, the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, George Yeo, explained why the government had chosen to ban The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, which Muslims found offensive, but allowed The Last Temptation of Christ, the book. The Straits Times reported Mr Yeo as having said, “So we got questioned. Our reply was the Christians are less likely to riot.”"
Strange, it seems race and religion were not always as hysterically treated in Singapore as they are now. Probably because the Communist bogeyman still existed back then
James Lindsay on Twitter - "When I taught in the university, my last classes ending at Christmas 2009, the general consensus was that if your students could correctly guess your religion or your politics, that was a sign you were doing something wrong in your classroom that needed correction.
You may be wondering what makes Social Justice scholars feel entitled to teach their ideology. Beyond self-righteousness, it is this: their theory claims that *everything* carries ideology with it, so you must teach the right(eous) ideology rather than the (unjust) default ones.
In Social Justice philosophy, it is taught that established (aka rigorous) ways of knowing were developed by the white supremacist cishetero-patriarchy, and because that power and privilege always works to maintain itself, legitimate ways of knowing carry an ideology of injustice
This, admittedly, sounds batshit insane (because it 99.9% is). The explanation is that they believe everything comes down to ways we talk about things ("discourses," which maintain power dynamics), and the dominant always rig the system to maintain their dominance in that way.
Therefore, Social Justice scholarship, thus educational activism, believe that oppressive ideologies are being taught not only by default but also beneath our awareness. Their mission of "liberation" seeks to undo this, so it's a "superior" ideology to teach and institutionalize.
It's of incredible importance to realize that Social Justice thought isn't nonsense or bullshit; it's a bizarre comic-book universe that, from within, makes a kind of sense. Imposed upon the world, however, it's a disaster."
"Of all the comparisons between social justice ideology and religion, perhaps my favorite is the implicit belief that if you fail to indoctrinate the impressionable, you won’t win their minds in a fair battle of ideas."
"I used to teach A Women in Politics course. First assignment: write a persuasive essay on any women’s issue. Second assignment: write a persuasive essay taking the opposite viewpoint of the first assignment."
Post ID: 2879420809463351340
Thursday, July 25, 2019
Links - 25th July 2019 (2)
Racial and gender biases plague postdoc hiring - "Faculty members in biology viewed male and female applicants to be similarly competent and likely to be hired—a result that Eaton “was happily surprised to see.” But in physics, it was a different story: Faculty members preferred male applicants, giving them a one-point higher competence rating—on a nine-point scale—and a two-point higher hireability rating than female applicants.Faculty members in both disciplines exhibited racial bias. In physics, Asian and White applicants were given higher competence and hireability ratings than Black and Latino applicants. In biology, Asian and White applicants were viewed as more competent than Black applicants. Asian applicants were also viewed as more hirable than Black and Latino applicants. (The ratings they gave other groups didn’t statistically differ.)"
Of course they can frame this as 'white supremacy' by claiming Asians have 'whiteness' rather than consider why Asians and Whites might be preferred
iPadOS first look: how Apple’s new tablet OS will boost iPad user experience - "the photos illustrating this piece are from Apple’s official media site, but I couldn’t directly download the original zipped files to my iPad Pro because the device lacks a download manager and the ability to store files locally. Instead, I had to send the photos to my Android smartphone, which has a download and storage system akin to computers, and unzipped them there."
To bad for iPhone users
She Put Our Dogs Down When We Divorced – The Narrative - "Six months later, when our divorce was final, I asked my daughter how her mom was doing. She looked down at the floor, cleared her throat, and scuffed her feet. “Mom’s doing OK,” she said without looking at me, “She had the dogs put to sleep.”My mouth fell open to the floor. I was livid.Burn the butcher block clock I’d made as a gift for our fifth wedding anniversary? Sure.Pawn all the jewelry I’d bought over the years? You bet.Kill living creatures who loved you as a parent? Karma’s going to be waiting for you.I’ve discovered since then; this is not an uncommon thing in a divorce"
Meanwhile there're women who fight for custody of dogs just to put them to sleep
Man jailed for hitting autistic 5-year-old boy at Yishun indoor playground - "The boy tried to take the shovel again and when he could not, he became frustrated and hit Soo’s back. Soo then kicked the victim on his abdomen, causing the boy to stagger backwards. Soo also threw the shovel to the side so that the boy would stop approaching him, the court heard.When the child tried to hug him from behind a short while later, Soo pushed him again.The boy hit Soo on the back in response. Soo then stood up, swung his right arm backwards and hit the boy’s upper body. This caused the boy to fall backwards and onto a slide."
Self-defence against persistent attacks is a crime
How to Change Your Mind (Ep. 379) - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "There are a lot of reasons why it may be easier to change your mind when you’re younger. It could be the fact that your brain is simply more plastic then — something scientists assumed for a long time but now are starting to question. Or it could be that your positions are less entrenched, so it’s less costly to change them. Or it could be that the stakes are lower: the fate of the world doesn’t hinge on whether you are pro-broccoli or anti-broccoli... most people were not able to explain climate-change policies in much detail. But here’s what’s interesting. The level of confidence in their understanding of issues, which participants were asked to report at the start of the experiment, was drastically reduced after they tried, and failed, to demonstrate their understanding...
SLOMAN: If instead of saying, “Explain how the policy works,” if what we said to them was, “Give us all the reasons you have for your view on this policy,” then we didn’t get that effect at all. That didn’t reduce people’s sense of understanding; it didn’t reduce their hubris."
Algeria shuts southern borders to Syrians over security fears - "Algeria has barred all Syrians from entering the country via its southern border with Mali and Niger to keep out members of defeated rebel groups from Syria deemed to pose a security risk"
Islamophobia!
Morocco slams Algeria over expelling Syrian refugees to its borders - "“It is immoral and unethical to manipulate the moral and physical distress of these people, (and) to sow trouble in the Morocco-Algerian border.”"
Pluralist - Twitter Slams Parents of 10-Year-Old Drag Queen for ‘Child Abuse’ - "“Desmond Is Amazing” introduces himself in the video as a “drag kid” who lives in New York City.”... “If you don’t see that this child is being exploited then ideology has possessed you to the core.”... “If this were a little girl, @HuffPost would be calling it sexist & the fault of the patriarchy.”
It's time to start calling this what it is: Pedophilia - "VICE Canada is celebrating the next generation of drag queens with a video promoting a new documentary about preteen drag kids.The documentary follows four young boys dressed as sexualised women parading about on stage for the entertainment of adults... "In what moral universe is it acceptable to encourage a 10-year-old boy to dress like an adult male mimicking a sexualized adult female, use that as a ticket to fame and then claim it as virtue?""
Segments of Random Thoughts - Posts - "Kids can handle the kink at Pride parades, families say"
"“Children” and “kink” are two works that don’t belong together but this is the far left and what they want."
"Don’t forget “drag kids” and “drag queen story hour”. They’re using the LGBT community as a shield because they think people won’t speak up against these things in the fear of being labelled a homophobe or transphobe. I think they’re wrong. Sexualisation of children is a step too far. I reckon most people would gladly die on that hill."
Keith Douglas - Photos from Toronto Pride 2019. All the yellow... - "Photos from Toronto Pride 2019. All the yellow dots are covering private areas that are actually exposed in the original photos. I covered them just so the image remains FB friendly.This is taking place in a public space. You'll notice cops in one photo (doing nothing about the public indecency) and a child in another photo. There are many other photos out there, these are just some that I came across online.Now I am all for the LBGTQ having equal rights (not special rights). I am even all for them having pride events where they celebrate it. I simply have a problem with the events involving nudity and kink in public spaces where children are involved.By all means, do whatever you want at a private, 18+ only event. Go all out. Be as sexually free as you could possibly want to be. No shame! Have fun!Just leave the kids and public spaces out of it."
The Truth About Waiting to See a Doctor in Canada - "On average, Canadians pay 30 percent of their total health costs where the provincial plans cover 70 percent. So in that bucket would be medications, if you weren’t in a program — durable medical equipment, other health disciplines like psychotherapy, physiotherapy, social work outside of the hospital, skilled nursing, or nursing care in your home. It’s not that none of that is covered, but a lot of that is not covered... the one that people will talk about [for long wait times] is cataracts, hip surgeries, non — not cancer type surgeries, where there — things will get worse if you don’t get treated. And so you can wait months for those surgeries."
8 facts that explain what’s wrong with American health care - "If the health-care system were to break off from the United States and become its own economy, it would be the fifth-largest in the world... The US, which has a mostly private health-care system, manages to spend more on its public health-care system than countries where the health-care system is almost entirely public. America's government spends more, as a percentage of the economy, on public health care than Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, or Australia. It spends even more than that on private health care... we have much higher administrative costs than most other countries... American hospitals tend to throw more technology at health problems — a heart attack, for example, is treated with more scans and tests in America than elsewhere, and that also drives up the price of going to the doctor in the United States... we've created a tax system where the people with good jobs are getting their health care subsidized by the people with worse jobs or even no jobs... here's one fact about insurers that often gets lost in the debate over health care: Their profit margins tend to be relatively small... As to who makes the most money, it's mostly drug companies and device manufacturers — the people who make the things that insurance companies buy. They typically run profit margins around 20 percent. One reason the cost of American health care is so high is that insurers are so weak. Having hundreds of different carriers, for example, means no one insurer has lots of negotiating power — hence those high prices drug and device makers can charge."
The U.S. Leads the World in Health-Care Spending (The Worst Patients in the World) - "One hint that patient behavior matters a lot is the tremendous variation in health outcomes among American states and even counties, despite the fact that they are all part of the same health-care system. A 2017 study published in JAMA Internal Medicine reported that 74 percent of the variation in life expectancy across counties is explained by health-related lifestyle factors such as inactivity and smoking, and by conditions associated with them, such as obesity and diabetes—which is to say, by patients themselves... healthy community norms are particularly evident in certain places with strong outcome-to-cost ratios, like Sweden. Americans, with our relatively weak sense of community, are harder to influence... Saha fostered health-boosting relationships within patient communities. She notes that patients in groups like these have been shown to have significantly better outcomes for an array of conditions, including diabetes and depression, than similar patients not in groups... we must consider Americans’ fairly unusual belief that, when it comes to medical care, money is no object. A recent survey of 10,000 patients found that only 31 percent consider cost very important when making a health-care decision—versus 85 percent who feel this way about a doctor’s “compassion.” That’s one big reason the push for “value-based care,” which rewards providers who keep costs down while achieving good outcomes, is not going well: Attempts to cut back on expensive treatments are met with patient indignation... Lopes has also practiced in Singapore, where his very first patient shocked him by refusing the moderately expensive but effective treatment he prescribed for her cancer—a choice that turns out to be common among patients in Singapore, who like to pass the money in their government-mandated health-care savings accounts on to their children. Most experts agree that American patients are frequently overtreated, especially with regard to expensive tests that aren’t strictly needed. The standard explanation for this is that doctors and hospitals promote these tests to keep their income high. This notion likely contains some truth. But another big factor is patient preference. A study out of Johns Hopkins’s medical school found doctors’ two most common explanations for overtreatment to be patient demand and fear of malpractice suits—another particularly American concern... some of his patients used to come in demanding laparoscopic surgery to investigate abdominal pain that would almost certainly have gone away on its own. “I told them about the risks of the surgery, but I couldn’t talk them out of it, and if I refused, my liability was huge”... In most of the world, what the doctor says still goes... American patients’ flagrant disregard for routine care is another problem. Take the failure to stick to prescribed drugs, one more bad behavior in which American patients lead the world. The estimated per capita cost of drug noncompliance is up to three times as high in the U.S. as in the European Union. And when Americans go to the doctor, they are more likely than people in other countries to head to expensive specialists. A British Medical Journal study found that U.S. patients end up with specialty referrals at more than twice the rate of U.K. patients. They also end up in the ER more often, at enormous cost. According to another study, this one of chronic migraine sufferers, 42 percent of U.S. respondents had visited an emergency department for their headaches, versus 14 percent of U.K. respondents. Finally, the U.S. stands out as a place where death, even for the very aged, tends to be fought tooth and nail, and not cheaply"
Do I really need a primary-care doctor? - "the commonly held belief that we all need a yearly physical is false. An annual physical is not currently recommended for the healthy adults by the governing health bodies in the US, Canada, or the UK... America’s physician workforce is composed of roughly 33% primary-care doctors and 67% specialists. Other high-performing health care systems, like Canada or Australia, have more balanced ratios... the lifestyle of a specialist is far better, involving less punishing hours while making millions of dollars more over their careers... Kids need a consistent pediatrician. The elderly need a consistent internist. The chronically ill, no matter their age, need a consistent team and place to receive care. But for the rest of us—around 75% of the population—the old-fashioned “doctor-patient relationship” is unrealistic and largely unnecessary in our society. Rather than spend time and energy trying to pin down a primary-care doctor, it could well make more sense to simply stick with an urgent-care clinic when you come down with the flu."
We Have Too Many Specialists and Too Few General Practitioners - "Wherever I travel around the world, I find the same problem -- too few GP's, too many specialists... Medical mistakes are far too common because each specialist is treating (or more likely over treating) her own pet organ. No one is considering the whole patient to organize a global, integrated, safe, and effective treatment plan. The less time doctors talk to patients, the more unneeded, costly, and often harmful are the tests and treatments they order."
America’s Epidemic of Unnecessary Care - "Virtually every family in the country, the research indicates, has been subject to overtesting and overtreatment in one form or another. The costs appear to take thousands of dollars out of the paychecks of every household each year. Researchers have come to refer to financial as well as physical “toxicities” of inappropriate care—including reduced spending on food, clothing, education, and shelter. Millions of people are receiving drugs that aren’t helping them, operations that aren’t going to make them better, and scans and tests that do nothing beneficial for them, and often cause harm... The United States is a country of three hundred million people who annually undergo around fifteen million nuclear medicine scans, a hundred million CT and MRI scans, and almost ten billion laboratory tests. Often, these are fishing expeditions, and since no one is perfectly normal you tend to find a lot of fish. If you look closely and often enough, almost everyone will have a little nodule that can’t be completely explained, a lab result that is a bit off, a heart tracing that doesn’t look quite right.Excessive testing is a problem for a number of reasons. For one thing, some diagnostic studies are harmful in themselves—we’re doing so many CT scans and other forms of imaging that rely on radiation that they are believed to be increasing the population’s cancer rates. These direct risks are often greater than we account for.What’s more, the value of any test depends on how likely you are to be having a significant problem in the first place. If you have crushing chest pain and shortness of breath, you start with a high likelihood of having a serious heart condition, and an electrocardiogram has significant value. A heart tracing that doesn’t look quite right usually means trouble. But, if you have no signs or symptoms of heart trouble, an electrocardiogram adds no useful information; a heart tracing that doesn’t look quite right is mostly noise. Experts recommend against doing electrocardiograms on healthy people, but millions are done each year, anyway... we’ve added thousands of dollars in costs and, sometimes, physical risks, not to mention worry and days of missed work. Overtesting has also created a new, unanticipated problem: overdiagnosis. This isn’t misdiagnosis—the erroneous diagnosis of a disease. This is the correct diagnosis of a disease that is never going to bother you in your lifetime... the number of people with permanent complications from thyroid surgery has skyrocketed... unnecessary care often crowds out necessary care, particularly when the necessary care is less remunerative... unnecessary care could crowd out necessary care—but enough that dedicated primary care could cut death rates in half?"
Of course they can frame this as 'white supremacy' by claiming Asians have 'whiteness' rather than consider why Asians and Whites might be preferred
iPadOS first look: how Apple’s new tablet OS will boost iPad user experience - "the photos illustrating this piece are from Apple’s official media site, but I couldn’t directly download the original zipped files to my iPad Pro because the device lacks a download manager and the ability to store files locally. Instead, I had to send the photos to my Android smartphone, which has a download and storage system akin to computers, and unzipped them there."
To bad for iPhone users
She Put Our Dogs Down When We Divorced – The Narrative - "Six months later, when our divorce was final, I asked my daughter how her mom was doing. She looked down at the floor, cleared her throat, and scuffed her feet. “Mom’s doing OK,” she said without looking at me, “She had the dogs put to sleep.”My mouth fell open to the floor. I was livid.Burn the butcher block clock I’d made as a gift for our fifth wedding anniversary? Sure.Pawn all the jewelry I’d bought over the years? You bet.Kill living creatures who loved you as a parent? Karma’s going to be waiting for you.I’ve discovered since then; this is not an uncommon thing in a divorce"
Meanwhile there're women who fight for custody of dogs just to put them to sleep
Man jailed for hitting autistic 5-year-old boy at Yishun indoor playground - "The boy tried to take the shovel again and when he could not, he became frustrated and hit Soo’s back. Soo then kicked the victim on his abdomen, causing the boy to stagger backwards. Soo also threw the shovel to the side so that the boy would stop approaching him, the court heard.When the child tried to hug him from behind a short while later, Soo pushed him again.The boy hit Soo on the back in response. Soo then stood up, swung his right arm backwards and hit the boy’s upper body. This caused the boy to fall backwards and onto a slide."
Self-defence against persistent attacks is a crime
How to Change Your Mind (Ep. 379) - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "There are a lot of reasons why it may be easier to change your mind when you’re younger. It could be the fact that your brain is simply more plastic then — something scientists assumed for a long time but now are starting to question. Or it could be that your positions are less entrenched, so it’s less costly to change them. Or it could be that the stakes are lower: the fate of the world doesn’t hinge on whether you are pro-broccoli or anti-broccoli... most people were not able to explain climate-change policies in much detail. But here’s what’s interesting. The level of confidence in their understanding of issues, which participants were asked to report at the start of the experiment, was drastically reduced after they tried, and failed, to demonstrate their understanding...
SLOMAN: If instead of saying, “Explain how the policy works,” if what we said to them was, “Give us all the reasons you have for your view on this policy,” then we didn’t get that effect at all. That didn’t reduce people’s sense of understanding; it didn’t reduce their hubris."
Algeria shuts southern borders to Syrians over security fears - "Algeria has barred all Syrians from entering the country via its southern border with Mali and Niger to keep out members of defeated rebel groups from Syria deemed to pose a security risk"
Islamophobia!
Morocco slams Algeria over expelling Syrian refugees to its borders - "“It is immoral and unethical to manipulate the moral and physical distress of these people, (and) to sow trouble in the Morocco-Algerian border.”"
Pluralist - Twitter Slams Parents of 10-Year-Old Drag Queen for ‘Child Abuse’ - "“Desmond Is Amazing” introduces himself in the video as a “drag kid” who lives in New York City.”... “If you don’t see that this child is being exploited then ideology has possessed you to the core.”... “If this were a little girl, @HuffPost would be calling it sexist & the fault of the patriarchy.”
It's time to start calling this what it is: Pedophilia - "VICE Canada is celebrating the next generation of drag queens with a video promoting a new documentary about preteen drag kids.The documentary follows four young boys dressed as sexualised women parading about on stage for the entertainment of adults... "In what moral universe is it acceptable to encourage a 10-year-old boy to dress like an adult male mimicking a sexualized adult female, use that as a ticket to fame and then claim it as virtue?""
Segments of Random Thoughts - Posts - "Kids can handle the kink at Pride parades, families say"
"“Children” and “kink” are two works that don’t belong together but this is the far left and what they want."
"Don’t forget “drag kids” and “drag queen story hour”. They’re using the LGBT community as a shield because they think people won’t speak up against these things in the fear of being labelled a homophobe or transphobe. I think they’re wrong. Sexualisation of children is a step too far. I reckon most people would gladly die on that hill."
Keith Douglas - Photos from Toronto Pride 2019. All the yellow... - "Photos from Toronto Pride 2019. All the yellow dots are covering private areas that are actually exposed in the original photos. I covered them just so the image remains FB friendly.This is taking place in a public space. You'll notice cops in one photo (doing nothing about the public indecency) and a child in another photo. There are many other photos out there, these are just some that I came across online.Now I am all for the LBGTQ having equal rights (not special rights). I am even all for them having pride events where they celebrate it. I simply have a problem with the events involving nudity and kink in public spaces where children are involved.By all means, do whatever you want at a private, 18+ only event. Go all out. Be as sexually free as you could possibly want to be. No shame! Have fun!Just leave the kids and public spaces out of it."
The Truth About Waiting to See a Doctor in Canada - "On average, Canadians pay 30 percent of their total health costs where the provincial plans cover 70 percent. So in that bucket would be medications, if you weren’t in a program — durable medical equipment, other health disciplines like psychotherapy, physiotherapy, social work outside of the hospital, skilled nursing, or nursing care in your home. It’s not that none of that is covered, but a lot of that is not covered... the one that people will talk about [for long wait times] is cataracts, hip surgeries, non — not cancer type surgeries, where there — things will get worse if you don’t get treated. And so you can wait months for those surgeries."
8 facts that explain what’s wrong with American health care - "If the health-care system were to break off from the United States and become its own economy, it would be the fifth-largest in the world... The US, which has a mostly private health-care system, manages to spend more on its public health-care system than countries where the health-care system is almost entirely public. America's government spends more, as a percentage of the economy, on public health care than Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, or Australia. It spends even more than that on private health care... we have much higher administrative costs than most other countries... American hospitals tend to throw more technology at health problems — a heart attack, for example, is treated with more scans and tests in America than elsewhere, and that also drives up the price of going to the doctor in the United States... we've created a tax system where the people with good jobs are getting their health care subsidized by the people with worse jobs or even no jobs... here's one fact about insurers that often gets lost in the debate over health care: Their profit margins tend to be relatively small... As to who makes the most money, it's mostly drug companies and device manufacturers — the people who make the things that insurance companies buy. They typically run profit margins around 20 percent. One reason the cost of American health care is so high is that insurers are so weak. Having hundreds of different carriers, for example, means no one insurer has lots of negotiating power — hence those high prices drug and device makers can charge."
The U.S. Leads the World in Health-Care Spending (The Worst Patients in the World) - "One hint that patient behavior matters a lot is the tremendous variation in health outcomes among American states and even counties, despite the fact that they are all part of the same health-care system. A 2017 study published in JAMA Internal Medicine reported that 74 percent of the variation in life expectancy across counties is explained by health-related lifestyle factors such as inactivity and smoking, and by conditions associated with them, such as obesity and diabetes—which is to say, by patients themselves... healthy community norms are particularly evident in certain places with strong outcome-to-cost ratios, like Sweden. Americans, with our relatively weak sense of community, are harder to influence... Saha fostered health-boosting relationships within patient communities. She notes that patients in groups like these have been shown to have significantly better outcomes for an array of conditions, including diabetes and depression, than similar patients not in groups... we must consider Americans’ fairly unusual belief that, when it comes to medical care, money is no object. A recent survey of 10,000 patients found that only 31 percent consider cost very important when making a health-care decision—versus 85 percent who feel this way about a doctor’s “compassion.” That’s one big reason the push for “value-based care,” which rewards providers who keep costs down while achieving good outcomes, is not going well: Attempts to cut back on expensive treatments are met with patient indignation... Lopes has also practiced in Singapore, where his very first patient shocked him by refusing the moderately expensive but effective treatment he prescribed for her cancer—a choice that turns out to be common among patients in Singapore, who like to pass the money in their government-mandated health-care savings accounts on to their children. Most experts agree that American patients are frequently overtreated, especially with regard to expensive tests that aren’t strictly needed. The standard explanation for this is that doctors and hospitals promote these tests to keep their income high. This notion likely contains some truth. But another big factor is patient preference. A study out of Johns Hopkins’s medical school found doctors’ two most common explanations for overtreatment to be patient demand and fear of malpractice suits—another particularly American concern... some of his patients used to come in demanding laparoscopic surgery to investigate abdominal pain that would almost certainly have gone away on its own. “I told them about the risks of the surgery, but I couldn’t talk them out of it, and if I refused, my liability was huge”... In most of the world, what the doctor says still goes... American patients’ flagrant disregard for routine care is another problem. Take the failure to stick to prescribed drugs, one more bad behavior in which American patients lead the world. The estimated per capita cost of drug noncompliance is up to three times as high in the U.S. as in the European Union. And when Americans go to the doctor, they are more likely than people in other countries to head to expensive specialists. A British Medical Journal study found that U.S. patients end up with specialty referrals at more than twice the rate of U.K. patients. They also end up in the ER more often, at enormous cost. According to another study, this one of chronic migraine sufferers, 42 percent of U.S. respondents had visited an emergency department for their headaches, versus 14 percent of U.K. respondents. Finally, the U.S. stands out as a place where death, even for the very aged, tends to be fought tooth and nail, and not cheaply"
Do I really need a primary-care doctor? - "the commonly held belief that we all need a yearly physical is false. An annual physical is not currently recommended for the healthy adults by the governing health bodies in the US, Canada, or the UK... America’s physician workforce is composed of roughly 33% primary-care doctors and 67% specialists. Other high-performing health care systems, like Canada or Australia, have more balanced ratios... the lifestyle of a specialist is far better, involving less punishing hours while making millions of dollars more over their careers... Kids need a consistent pediatrician. The elderly need a consistent internist. The chronically ill, no matter their age, need a consistent team and place to receive care. But for the rest of us—around 75% of the population—the old-fashioned “doctor-patient relationship” is unrealistic and largely unnecessary in our society. Rather than spend time and energy trying to pin down a primary-care doctor, it could well make more sense to simply stick with an urgent-care clinic when you come down with the flu."
We Have Too Many Specialists and Too Few General Practitioners - "Wherever I travel around the world, I find the same problem -- too few GP's, too many specialists... Medical mistakes are far too common because each specialist is treating (or more likely over treating) her own pet organ. No one is considering the whole patient to organize a global, integrated, safe, and effective treatment plan. The less time doctors talk to patients, the more unneeded, costly, and often harmful are the tests and treatments they order."
America’s Epidemic of Unnecessary Care - "Virtually every family in the country, the research indicates, has been subject to overtesting and overtreatment in one form or another. The costs appear to take thousands of dollars out of the paychecks of every household each year. Researchers have come to refer to financial as well as physical “toxicities” of inappropriate care—including reduced spending on food, clothing, education, and shelter. Millions of people are receiving drugs that aren’t helping them, operations that aren’t going to make them better, and scans and tests that do nothing beneficial for them, and often cause harm... The United States is a country of three hundred million people who annually undergo around fifteen million nuclear medicine scans, a hundred million CT and MRI scans, and almost ten billion laboratory tests. Often, these are fishing expeditions, and since no one is perfectly normal you tend to find a lot of fish. If you look closely and often enough, almost everyone will have a little nodule that can’t be completely explained, a lab result that is a bit off, a heart tracing that doesn’t look quite right.Excessive testing is a problem for a number of reasons. For one thing, some diagnostic studies are harmful in themselves—we’re doing so many CT scans and other forms of imaging that rely on radiation that they are believed to be increasing the population’s cancer rates. These direct risks are often greater than we account for.What’s more, the value of any test depends on how likely you are to be having a significant problem in the first place. If you have crushing chest pain and shortness of breath, you start with a high likelihood of having a serious heart condition, and an electrocardiogram has significant value. A heart tracing that doesn’t look quite right usually means trouble. But, if you have no signs or symptoms of heart trouble, an electrocardiogram adds no useful information; a heart tracing that doesn’t look quite right is mostly noise. Experts recommend against doing electrocardiograms on healthy people, but millions are done each year, anyway... we’ve added thousands of dollars in costs and, sometimes, physical risks, not to mention worry and days of missed work. Overtesting has also created a new, unanticipated problem: overdiagnosis. This isn’t misdiagnosis—the erroneous diagnosis of a disease. This is the correct diagnosis of a disease that is never going to bother you in your lifetime... the number of people with permanent complications from thyroid surgery has skyrocketed... unnecessary care often crowds out necessary care, particularly when the necessary care is less remunerative... unnecessary care could crowd out necessary care—but enough that dedicated primary care could cut death rates in half?"
Post ID: 7626087701012102579
Stephan Guyenet on "What causes obesity?"
Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 189 - Stephan Guyenet on "What causes obesity?"
"'If we look at the history of calorie intake and calorie expenditure in this country, what we see is that, for most of the last hundred years, people have been able to roughly match calorie expenditure with an appropriate calorie intake. If you look at calorie intake a hundred years ago, it was actually pretty high. It was almost as high as it is today, and yet, there was very little obesity.
Presumably, that's because almost everyone was working manual labor jobs, we barely had any automobiles, there weren't washing machines, there weren't automatic dryers. We're doing a lot of things that required physical effort, building things in factories, milking the cows, weeding fields. What you see over the course of the next 40 or 50 years in the United States is that our calorie intake actually declined'...
'Obesity really has two fundamental characteristics and this is something that's been pointed out by my mentor, Mike Schwartz, at the University of Washington. That is, first of all, it developed due to this imbalance between intake and expenditure -- but the second is that you actually have a change in how the brain regulates body fatness and how the brain regulates the amount of energy that is coming in. Essentially the brain, instead of defending a lean state, it begins to defend an obese state against changes... That's why weight loss is so hard, is that once your brain is defending that high level of body fatness, if you try to lose weight, your brain is like, "No, this is not what I want to do."...
[On the Biggest Loser] Researchers had actually followed up on the people who lost these massive amounts of weight, 100+ pounds on The Biggest Loser and they tend to regain most, if not all, of that weight in fairly short order after the show.That's not really what you would expect if body weight were not regulated. If there was not some change that occurred or some difference in the way that these things are regulated, between someone who's obese and someone who's lean, because they're gaining weight at a much faster rate than you would expect for someone who started off at that lower body weight. Someone who starts off lean and tries to stay lean, it's going to be a lot easier than someone who starts off obese, becomes lean and tries to stay there...
There's a lot of evidence independent of that, that there is this regulation of body fat levels that does regulate around a specific preferred level. There's a researcher named Rudy Leibel, for example, who's done a lot of this work. If you take people who are either lean or obese, basically the same either way, and you get them to weight reduce by 10%, you see very profound changes in their physiology and their brain response to food cues. What you'll find is that they will have a decrease in their metabolic rate that is disproportionate to the amount of weight that they lost.It's not just because their bodies are smaller but there's actually this starvation response that kicks in that actually conserves energy even beyond that, to try to regain the lost fat.
That also has neurobiological correlates, where you can put people in an fMRI machine and you see that, basically, all of the brain structures that are responsible for making us crave food light up like a Christmas tree after the weight loss.Also, you find that when you give them food, the same amount of food is less satiating after they have lost weight. We know a lot about the mechanisms underlying this. This is why I'm so confident about this, is that we actually have a really good picture of how this works.
It relates to a hormone called leptin that's produced by fat tissue and that is a signal to the brain of how much fat is in your body. When a person loses weight, their leptin goes way down and that's really the key signal to the brain that causes that so-called starvation response that tries to bring the body fat back. The reason we know that that's key signal is that if you replace leptin back up to the pre-weight loss level, you don't get those responses..
When leptin was first discovered, it was thought of as this incredible potential miracle weight loss drug. It was very clear that it played a really important role in body fat regulation. There's almost a century of research leading up to the discovery of leptin.Basically, when you just take people who are overweight or obese and you inject leptin into them, it doesn't really do anything. It doesn't cause them to lose weight. What they figured out is these people already have high-levels of leptin, and increasing those levels further, in other words telling the brain, "Well, actually you have even more fat," doesn't really tell the brain to eat less. The brain is really responsive to decreases of leptin as a starvation signal, but is not really responsive to increases of leptin as an excess signal'...
'It's not about causing weight loss, it would be about keeping weight off'...
'There was actually this inflammatory process occurring in the hypothalamus which is the part of the brain that regulates body fat and receives that leptin signal.It turns out, from other groups as well, that this is part of a generalized stress response that occurs in the hypothalamus of animals that are becoming obese. There's increasing evidence that it actually plays a causal role. If you can prevent that inflammation from happening in the hypothalamus and these other associated stress response changes, you can actually attenuate the fat gain that occurs in experimental models of dietary obesity.We actually were able to extend that into humans...
People who have obesity actually have MRI signals in their hypothalamus that look a lot like they are also inflamed. The more signal you have in your hypothalamus that looks like inflammation, the higher your body fat in this level is likely to be.'...
'If you look at animal models of obesity, the absolute most fattening thing you can possibly give to a rodent, for example, is to give them a variety of highly palatable human junk foods. Human junk food is insanely fattening to just about any species... You actually see, also, calorie expenditure effects. What I mean by that is, at least, in certain contexts, what you'll see is that they actually burn less energy than they should on those diets. It's not quite that simple in rodents.Although in humans, you really see a lot of more effects on the energy-in side than on the energy-out side. People who have obesity have a higher level of calorie expenditure, a higher metabolic rate than people who are not obese.'...
'The difficulty with the calories out argument is that people who have obesity almost invariably have higher calorie expenditure, not a lower calorie expenditure. You can't really explain obesity by saying they have a reduced calorie expenditure because they don't, they have a higher calorie expenditure. The only way you can really explain it thermodynamically is by saying the calorie intake is higher so then, the question becomes why is the calorie intake higher.'...
As far as we currently know, if you really look at the most tightly controlled studies available in humans, of which there are a number, as far as we currently know, the calorie value of food is the only food property that meaningfully impacts body fatness. There are a number of studies that have varied other things like the carbohydrate to fat ratio, varied things like sugar intake, even varied protein. There are many, many other hypotheses that you could test about how food compositions affects body fatness that haven't been tested yet.But in terms of the basics like macro-nutrients, it doesn't have any effect. It's independent of calories, is what current evidence suggests. And so we don't really have any evidence, right now, that things other than the calorie value of food impacts that food's effect on your body fat. We do actually have pretty good evidence that the macro-nutrient composition -- that is the fat, carbohydrate and protein composition -- does not affect body fatness independently of calories...
We had these animals that their "preferred weight" or defended body weight is dependent on which diet they were on, not how many calories they're currently eating. If you take those animals that have gained a bunch of weight from eating these really awesome, calorie dense, delicious food and you switch them back to a healthy diet, a lower calorie density, unrefined diet, they will spontaneously lose weight even if you let them eat as much as they want. Their set point actually changes. It can actually go back down even if it had gone up.
And I think you see the same thing in people. Not everyone who diets does so by forcing themselves to eat smaller portions. Sometimes, when people change their diets in ways that are qualitatively better, like going from a refined calorie dense, junk food diet to a lower calorie density, healthy diet that's fresh vegetables and meats and fruits and whole grains and potatoes and things, you will see that people will spontaneously lose weight. Their appetite will spontaneously decrease... What people tend to do when they go on really bland, repetitive diets, they don't feel as hungry, they don't eat as much...
They had another group of people that they asked to lose the same amount of weight over the same period of time by just applying portion control to their habitual diet. It's like, you're going to eat the same foods you always eat, you're just going to eat less of it to match this weight loss curve of this other group.What they found is that the group that lost weight by portion control was ravenous. They had very, very different responses. They reported in the study that the people were very uncomfortable, they were dreaming of food. I'm not going to go into it because it would take a long time to explain, but they had some more physiological measures of hunger drive.
Basically, what they found was that people who lost weight on the bland diet weren't any more hungry at the end. People who lost weight by portion control were super hungry, and their food motivation kicked in so that starvation response was activated in one case but not the other, presumably because the set point had changed...
'There are a lot of randomized controlled trials that have compared low carbohydrate to low fat diets. Generally, the low carbohydrate diets cause more weight loss, although they both cause weight loss.But when you really start to dig in to those studies, the answer becomes less obvious than it seems on the surface. The reason is that if you really look at the low fat diets that are typically used as a comparator, they're really, really wimpy low fat diets...
They're not very low in fat, first of all. They're usually not as low in fat as the low carb diet is low in carbs. Second of all, they tend to be based on this antiquated concept of low fat diets, where only the low fat matters and you don't care about any other aspects of quality'
'People often replace the fat with sugar to make it taste good.'...
'Focusing on diet quality, I should say, gives you better effectiveness to not caring. You get better weight loss... the quality aspect matters independently of the macro-nutrient aspect... By quality, I'm talking about the degree to which a diet is refined junkie food.'
More evidence against the insulin-carbohydrate hypothesis of obesity
"'If we look at the history of calorie intake and calorie expenditure in this country, what we see is that, for most of the last hundred years, people have been able to roughly match calorie expenditure with an appropriate calorie intake. If you look at calorie intake a hundred years ago, it was actually pretty high. It was almost as high as it is today, and yet, there was very little obesity.
Presumably, that's because almost everyone was working manual labor jobs, we barely had any automobiles, there weren't washing machines, there weren't automatic dryers. We're doing a lot of things that required physical effort, building things in factories, milking the cows, weeding fields. What you see over the course of the next 40 or 50 years in the United States is that our calorie intake actually declined'...
'Obesity really has two fundamental characteristics and this is something that's been pointed out by my mentor, Mike Schwartz, at the University of Washington. That is, first of all, it developed due to this imbalance between intake and expenditure -- but the second is that you actually have a change in how the brain regulates body fatness and how the brain regulates the amount of energy that is coming in. Essentially the brain, instead of defending a lean state, it begins to defend an obese state against changes... That's why weight loss is so hard, is that once your brain is defending that high level of body fatness, if you try to lose weight, your brain is like, "No, this is not what I want to do."...
[On the Biggest Loser] Researchers had actually followed up on the people who lost these massive amounts of weight, 100+ pounds on The Biggest Loser and they tend to regain most, if not all, of that weight in fairly short order after the show.That's not really what you would expect if body weight were not regulated. If there was not some change that occurred or some difference in the way that these things are regulated, between someone who's obese and someone who's lean, because they're gaining weight at a much faster rate than you would expect for someone who started off at that lower body weight. Someone who starts off lean and tries to stay lean, it's going to be a lot easier than someone who starts off obese, becomes lean and tries to stay there...
There's a lot of evidence independent of that, that there is this regulation of body fat levels that does regulate around a specific preferred level. There's a researcher named Rudy Leibel, for example, who's done a lot of this work. If you take people who are either lean or obese, basically the same either way, and you get them to weight reduce by 10%, you see very profound changes in their physiology and their brain response to food cues. What you'll find is that they will have a decrease in their metabolic rate that is disproportionate to the amount of weight that they lost.It's not just because their bodies are smaller but there's actually this starvation response that kicks in that actually conserves energy even beyond that, to try to regain the lost fat.
That also has neurobiological correlates, where you can put people in an fMRI machine and you see that, basically, all of the brain structures that are responsible for making us crave food light up like a Christmas tree after the weight loss.Also, you find that when you give them food, the same amount of food is less satiating after they have lost weight. We know a lot about the mechanisms underlying this. This is why I'm so confident about this, is that we actually have a really good picture of how this works.
It relates to a hormone called leptin that's produced by fat tissue and that is a signal to the brain of how much fat is in your body. When a person loses weight, their leptin goes way down and that's really the key signal to the brain that causes that so-called starvation response that tries to bring the body fat back. The reason we know that that's key signal is that if you replace leptin back up to the pre-weight loss level, you don't get those responses..
When leptin was first discovered, it was thought of as this incredible potential miracle weight loss drug. It was very clear that it played a really important role in body fat regulation. There's almost a century of research leading up to the discovery of leptin.Basically, when you just take people who are overweight or obese and you inject leptin into them, it doesn't really do anything. It doesn't cause them to lose weight. What they figured out is these people already have high-levels of leptin, and increasing those levels further, in other words telling the brain, "Well, actually you have even more fat," doesn't really tell the brain to eat less. The brain is really responsive to decreases of leptin as a starvation signal, but is not really responsive to increases of leptin as an excess signal'...
'It's not about causing weight loss, it would be about keeping weight off'...
'There was actually this inflammatory process occurring in the hypothalamus which is the part of the brain that regulates body fat and receives that leptin signal.It turns out, from other groups as well, that this is part of a generalized stress response that occurs in the hypothalamus of animals that are becoming obese. There's increasing evidence that it actually plays a causal role. If you can prevent that inflammation from happening in the hypothalamus and these other associated stress response changes, you can actually attenuate the fat gain that occurs in experimental models of dietary obesity.We actually were able to extend that into humans...
People who have obesity actually have MRI signals in their hypothalamus that look a lot like they are also inflamed. The more signal you have in your hypothalamus that looks like inflammation, the higher your body fat in this level is likely to be.'...
'If you look at animal models of obesity, the absolute most fattening thing you can possibly give to a rodent, for example, is to give them a variety of highly palatable human junk foods. Human junk food is insanely fattening to just about any species... You actually see, also, calorie expenditure effects. What I mean by that is, at least, in certain contexts, what you'll see is that they actually burn less energy than they should on those diets. It's not quite that simple in rodents.Although in humans, you really see a lot of more effects on the energy-in side than on the energy-out side. People who have obesity have a higher level of calorie expenditure, a higher metabolic rate than people who are not obese.'...
'The difficulty with the calories out argument is that people who have obesity almost invariably have higher calorie expenditure, not a lower calorie expenditure. You can't really explain obesity by saying they have a reduced calorie expenditure because they don't, they have a higher calorie expenditure. The only way you can really explain it thermodynamically is by saying the calorie intake is higher so then, the question becomes why is the calorie intake higher.'...
As far as we currently know, if you really look at the most tightly controlled studies available in humans, of which there are a number, as far as we currently know, the calorie value of food is the only food property that meaningfully impacts body fatness. There are a number of studies that have varied other things like the carbohydrate to fat ratio, varied things like sugar intake, even varied protein. There are many, many other hypotheses that you could test about how food compositions affects body fatness that haven't been tested yet.But in terms of the basics like macro-nutrients, it doesn't have any effect. It's independent of calories, is what current evidence suggests. And so we don't really have any evidence, right now, that things other than the calorie value of food impacts that food's effect on your body fat. We do actually have pretty good evidence that the macro-nutrient composition -- that is the fat, carbohydrate and protein composition -- does not affect body fatness independently of calories...
We had these animals that their "preferred weight" or defended body weight is dependent on which diet they were on, not how many calories they're currently eating. If you take those animals that have gained a bunch of weight from eating these really awesome, calorie dense, delicious food and you switch them back to a healthy diet, a lower calorie density, unrefined diet, they will spontaneously lose weight even if you let them eat as much as they want. Their set point actually changes. It can actually go back down even if it had gone up.
And I think you see the same thing in people. Not everyone who diets does so by forcing themselves to eat smaller portions. Sometimes, when people change their diets in ways that are qualitatively better, like going from a refined calorie dense, junk food diet to a lower calorie density, healthy diet that's fresh vegetables and meats and fruits and whole grains and potatoes and things, you will see that people will spontaneously lose weight. Their appetite will spontaneously decrease... What people tend to do when they go on really bland, repetitive diets, they don't feel as hungry, they don't eat as much...
They had another group of people that they asked to lose the same amount of weight over the same period of time by just applying portion control to their habitual diet. It's like, you're going to eat the same foods you always eat, you're just going to eat less of it to match this weight loss curve of this other group.What they found is that the group that lost weight by portion control was ravenous. They had very, very different responses. They reported in the study that the people were very uncomfortable, they were dreaming of food. I'm not going to go into it because it would take a long time to explain, but they had some more physiological measures of hunger drive.
Basically, what they found was that people who lost weight on the bland diet weren't any more hungry at the end. People who lost weight by portion control were super hungry, and their food motivation kicked in so that starvation response was activated in one case but not the other, presumably because the set point had changed...
'There are a lot of randomized controlled trials that have compared low carbohydrate to low fat diets. Generally, the low carbohydrate diets cause more weight loss, although they both cause weight loss.But when you really start to dig in to those studies, the answer becomes less obvious than it seems on the surface. The reason is that if you really look at the low fat diets that are typically used as a comparator, they're really, really wimpy low fat diets...
They're not very low in fat, first of all. They're usually not as low in fat as the low carb diet is low in carbs. Second of all, they tend to be based on this antiquated concept of low fat diets, where only the low fat matters and you don't care about any other aspects of quality'
'People often replace the fat with sugar to make it taste good.'...
'Focusing on diet quality, I should say, gives you better effectiveness to not caring. You get better weight loss... the quality aspect matters independently of the macro-nutrient aspect... By quality, I'm talking about the degree to which a diet is refined junkie food.'
More evidence against the insulin-carbohydrate hypothesis of obesity
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