I saw a ridiculous Linkedin post about the Novel Coronavirus today which 2 of my Facebook friends had shared.
In "Something's Not Right Here Folks", Mario Cavolo claims that:
- 2009's H1N1 was from "the United States"
- The US took a long time to declare an emergency
- 2009's H1N1 was terrible
- "bizarrely negative forces are attacking China and Chinese people" and there are "vicious, political, xenophobic racist attacks and smearing of all things China"
- Claims that the Chinese government are intentionally under-reporting infections are "hateful vicious attacks" because 2009's H1N1's full extent also was under-reported, and the same thing is happening here
- It's purely the fault of "a few local government officials in Wuhan" that news of the Novel Coronavirus was suppressed (this is the only point at which he admits any Chinese culpability for the outbreak at any level)
- ""What about..." reactions don't help"
- China, Germany, Japan and other countries didn't close their borders to Americans in 2009
- "if you don't have anything good, anything supportive to say about China or Chinese people", you should "just keep your mouth shut"
Strangely, most of these claims are wrong to varying extents.
Depressingly, almost all of the comments are supportive. Perhaps that is the nature of LinkedIn, and many seem to come from ethnic Chinese.
And the author, naturally, does not respond well to being corrected on facts and confused popularity with truth:
Jeremy S.: The ignorance here is remarkable. We abuse some for strict and swift quarantine while celebrating China for swift quarantine? We say not to call it a Chinese virus and in the same article call a virus that arose in Mexico a US virus. Ironically in that case China was the only country that closed its borders to Mexico and impounded Mexican travellers.
For some extra irony we are choosing to see the worst of 'the west' while complaining about seeing only the worst of China.
Moreover, as much as people love to bang the drum, this is not a racial issue. Well for some morons it is,but they are not representative. There is antipathy towards China right now from all races and religions. Some is valid and some isn't. Criticism should not be conflated with hate - people are just afraid and frankly a lot of people in China are worried too.
People loving this article are part of the problem. We are all people, people. Stop fanning racial and nationalistic division and tapping into Chinese xenophobia to get lIkes or showing your popular prejudice and ignorance via misled virtue signalling
Mario Cavolo: Wow, really Jeremy? Here's what you do. You mix some good intelligent thoughts with your abusive shit. I wrote this article just for YOU and 99.9% of the comments support what i wrote for the accuracy and meaning of the intended narrative. So go ahead and troll elsewhere. 250,000 people agree with me, not you. Thanks, Mario
Other things OP got wrong not that were not pointed out by Jeremy S.:
- The US government certified a public health emergency on April 26, 2009
- H1N1's mortality rate was 0.02% (vs 0.05% for the seasonal flu this flu season in the US - which actually makes it *less* deadly). This makes it much less serious than the current coronavirus which, from what we know, has a 2% mortality rate. Incidentally, inconveniently for those alleging it is deadly and the Chinese government is covering deaths up, the mortality rate outside mainland China is 0.7% and excluding Hong Kong as well it is 0.4% as of February 6, 2020, 19:50 GMT (Source: Countries where Coronavirus has spread - Worldometer). Obviously these figures are subject to revision but that there don't seem to be good grounds for panic for now.
- While Chinese citizens are "victims" of "racist" and "xenophobic" border closures, he ignores the plight of the residents of 34 cities in China, who are victims too - of the Chinese government's racist and xenophobic lockdowns of their cities. Apparently 45 million people are affected by "the largest quarantine in modern public-health history".
- ""What about..." reactions don't help"... in a post full of "What about..." reactions
- Many Chinese people are also critical of their country's response to the virus. There sure are a lot of self-loathing racist Chinese nationals out there
- The Wuhan mayor himself blamed Beijing's rules for the lack of transparency (this is a phenomenon one often sees in totalitarian regimes - absolving the top of the hierarchy by blaming those at the bottom; this isn't helped by the Xi Jinping personality cult [again - totalitarian regimes], which means one cannot say anything negative about him)
- A Chinese respiratory medicine expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong thinks that the Chinese government is under-reporting cases and China has a culture of false reporting; Liaoning admitted cooking the books from 2011 to 2014 (i.e. this is not under-reporting due to the full extent of the disease not being known, as with 2009's H1N1)
L'origine de Bert
Friday, February 07, 2020
When all else fails, play the Anti-China Conspiracy Card - Coronavirus White Expat in China Edition
Post ID: 6018080838570897380
Links - 7th February 2020 (1) (China's 'peaceful' rise)
Chinese communist leaders denounce U.S. values but send children to U.S. colleges - The Washington Post - "In some ways, the rush to U.S. campuses by the party’s “red nobility” simply reflects China’s national infatuation with American education. China has more students at U.S. colleges than in any other foreign country. They numbered 157,558 in the 2010-11 academic year, according to data compiled by the Institute of International Education — up nearly fourfold in 15 years.But the kin of senior party officials are a special case: They rarely attend state schools but congregate instead at top-tier — and very expensive — private colleges, a stark rejection of the egalitarian ideals that brought the Communist Party to power in 1949. Of the nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the supreme decision-making body of a Communist Party steeped in anti-American rhetoric, at least five have children or grandchildren who have studied or are studying in the United States... top American universities still carry more cachet among many in China’s political and business elite, in part because they are so expensive. A degree from Harvard or the equivalent ranks as “the ultimate status symbol” for China’s elite... The attraction of a top-brand university is so strong that some princelings flaunt even tenuous affiliations with a big-name American college. Li Xiaolin, the daughter of former prime minister and ex-Politburo member Li Peng, for example, has long boasted that she attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a “visiting scholar at the Sloan Business School.” MIT says the only record it has of attendance by a student with Li’s name was enrollment in a “non-degree short course” open to executives who have “intellectual curiosity” and are ready to spend $7,500 for just 15 days of classes. The welfare of princelings studying abroad can become a matter for the Chinese government.During his final year at Oxford University in England, Bo Guagua ran into trouble because of inattention to his studies. When the university initiated a disciplinary process against him, the Chinese Embassy in London sent a three-person diplomatic delegation to Oxford to discuss the matter with Bo’s tutor at Balliol College, according to an academic who was involved in the episode... The stampede to American campuses has delivered a propaganda gift to critics of the Communist Party, which drapes itself in the Chinese flag and regularly denounces those who question its monopoly on power as traitorous American lackeys. A widespread perception that members of the party elite exploit their access and clout to stash their own children and also money overseas “is a big Achilles’ heel for the party”... The cook at a fast-food eatery near his Cambridge apartment building said Bo Guagua used to come in regularly but didn’t make much of an impression. “He just ordered the usual stuff, BLTs. Nothing special,” said the cook, who gave his name as Mustafa.Staff at Changsho, a Chinese restaurant, however, remember a more extravagant customer. Late one evening, for example, Bo came in alone, ordered four dishes and left after barely touching the food. “He didn’t even ask for a doggie bag,” recalled a restaurant worker, appalled at the waste."
A Sichuan Scenic Area Loses All Buddhist and Taoist Statues - "Located in Nanchong city in the southwestern province of Sichuan, Lingyun Mountain is a national 4A-level scenic area and a Buddhists and Taoists pilgrimage site, adorned with thousands of outdoor religious statues and cliff-carved sculptures. But in its campaign to annihilate religions, the CCP has recently covered all these symbols of faith with high artistic value, reportedly, spending at least eight million RMB (about $ 1,130,000)... In other similar cases in China, explosives have been used to demolish large cliff-carved religious icons, not just cover them"
Beijing Launches New Rule: Residents Must Pass Facial Recognition Test to Surf Internet - "In addition, no cell phone or landline number can be transferred to another person privately... “MIIT’s new rule on using facial recognition to identify an internet user means the government can easily track their online activities, including their social media posts and websites they visit,” Tang said.“Then these people become scared of sharing their real opinions online because their comments could anger the authorities and they could get arrested for it.”"
Opinion | Xi Jinping Wanted Global Dominance. He Overshot. - The New York Times - "The trade war... is the first real occasion to assess Mr. Xi’s leadership capabilities. And his performance might not look so good, even if one discounts the setbacks related to the trade war. First and foremost, Mr. Xi has utterly failed to manage the United States–Chinese relationship. In contrast, every Chinese leader since the founding of the communist state in 1949 had recognized the paramount importance of those ties, worked hard to improve them — and reaped huge benefits... Mr. Xi’s second major shortcoming has been his failure to articulate a coherent set of policies to stop the Chinese economy’s long-term weakening, after many years of stellar performance... A third criticism of Mr. Xi is that under him, China has sponsored or condoned actions by Chinese citizens and entities worldwide that have damaged the country’s international reputation while degrading its own moral fabric.Take intellectual property, for example. The United States seems to have hard evidence that it was the policy of Huawei, a flagship Chinese high-tech company, to reward employees for I.P. theft. And, as I have written before, such a policy is encouraged, arguably even mandatory, under China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law. Traditionally, the ideal Chinese state is a Confucian state that adheres to strict moral and behavioral norms. Yet for all his cracking down on corruption at home, Mr. Xi has encouraged moral turpitude abroad; his vision of China is a nation of patriotic thieves. All Chinese arguably have lost face as a result, and now innocent people overseas may be dismissed out of hand as guilty by association."
Apple self-driving car project: Chinese engineer charged with stealing secrets
More U.S. Firms Say China Has Stolen Their Intellectual Property: Poll - "A new CNBC poll finds that one in five corporations say China has stolen their intellectual property within the last year."
How Donald Trump’s tweets outgunned China’s heavy media weapons in the trade war publicity battle - "China is losing the publicity battle in its trade war with the United States, as its propaganda apparatus fails to respond to information challenges, according to analysts.Beijing’s decades—long preference for secrecy over transparency was not able to keep up as US officials including US President Donald Trump took the offensive and dictated the narrative, the analysts said.’... In contrast to media in the US, Beijing has heavily censored news coverage and public discussion of the trade war since Trump first imposed punitive tariffs on Chinese goods last July.So much so that the US-China trade war was one of the most censored topics last year on China’s ,widely popular WeChat app, according to WeChatscope, a research project by the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre. Nevertheless, screenshots of Trump’s tweets and international media reports on the trade talks have been circulated widely on Chinese social media platforms. News about the negotiations has also affected China’s share markets. For example, shares fell 5.6 per cent... “Beijing has disclosed little information about the talks in the past year and has found no narrative [of its own] so people are following Trump’s comments,” Wu said."
Beijing Appeals for Foreign Funds in Belt-and-Road Adjustment - "The U.S. and other countries have warned that aspects of the program pose financial risks to borrowers, alleging a lack of transparency and graft in deals that primarily benefit Beijing.... As criticism built over the past year or so, Beijing de-emphasized big-ticket infrastructure projects in its Belt and Road publicity and stepped up pledges to ensure sustainable lending and fight graft. “Everything should be done in a transparent way and we should have a zero tolerance for corruption,” Mr. Xi said... Recalibrating Mr. Xi’s signature foreign policy is a welcome move but also “a big ask,” said George Magnus, an economist at Oxford University’s China Center. “To change its structure by incorporating Western ideas and values including the rule of law, full and open accounting, and market-based transparent lending standards and terms is most likely a bridge too far.”... “Remind me to disinvite your president,” Mr. Guo said at one point, according to the people, who said Chinese officials lodged diplomatic complaints against countries that sought amendments it disliked. China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment"
7 problems created by China's New Silk Road - "countries considering taking on Chinese investment — loans and financial obligations from China that are part of its BRI — should worry about specific risks, which range from financial sustainability to the erosion of national sovereignty... “It’s been almost a cliché that the Chinese government is legitimate as long as there is 7.5% growth,” Eder said. “So [it] didn’t have that anymore. But they’re building up the second pillar of legitimacy with this collection of foreign policy successes, prestige, influence ... worldwide.”... Those projects often entailed “opaque bidding processes for contracts and financial terms that are not subject to public scrutiny,” they added, which usually means a Chinese loan is followed by a Chinese contractor on the construction site... on top of Chinese banks requiring Chinese contractors get the jobs, the contractors don’t even “transfer skills to local workers, and sometimes involve inequitable profit-sharing arrangements,” which didn’t benefit the local community at all. In some cases, China-funded projects even bore the possibility of espionage... With so many of these projects being massive infrastructure undertakings — from power plants to dams — the authors said that “some instances have proceeded without adequate environmental assessments or have caused severe environmental damage.” Finally, the opacity and the convoluted structure of these projects created ripe conditions for corruption, especially “if they have a high level of kleptocracy,” the authors said, particularly in the form of “payoffs to politicians and bureaucrats.” The country that exemplified most of the challenges above was Ecuador — particular with its Coca Codo Sinclair Hydroelectric Dam.Chinese financing of the dam is “a prime example of how infrastructure projects facilitated by Beijing can run against the host country’s public interest, corrupt institutions, and indebt recipient governments”... after all this trouble, the dam itself isn’t operable, which provides no economic benefits, the authors highlighted. “Water released from the dam causes flooding that cripples some downstream farming and has drowned farmers.”“China took advantage of Ecuador,” Ecuador Energy Minister Carlos Pérez said. “The strategy of China is clear. They take economic control of countries.”"
China's Xi Jinping broke promise on South China Sea, says top US general - "The United States military's top general said on Wednesday (May 29) that Chinese President Xi Jinping reneged on promises not to militarise the South China Sea, and called for "collective action" to hold Beijing responsible... "The fall of 2016, President Xi Jinping promised President (Barack) Obama that they would not militarise the islands. So what we see today are 10,000 foot (3km) runways, ammunition storage facilities, routine deployment of missile defence capabilities, aviation capabilities, and so forth""
China's communists fund Jacinda Ardern's Labour Party: What the United States Congress was told - "An influential United States Congress hearing has been told "one of the major fundraisers for Jacinda Ardern's party" is linked to the Chinese Communist Party and it showed China had penetrated New Zealand's political networks.As a result, US lawmakers needed to consider whether New Zealand should be kicked out of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance because of problems at its "political core"... New Zealand "have denied that there's a problem at all" and failed to follow Australia's lead in setting up an inquiry into China's activities."
Award-Winning Photojournalist Disappears In China, And Here Are 21 Of His Pics China Don’t Want You To See - "Most of the Lu Guang’s best photography reveals sad and shocking aspects of life in China, such as this heavy truck carrying coal and lime driving away, causing dust to fly and harming the nearby residents"... “The reality in China is you never know if you’re going to get into trouble because there are no written rules,” the photographer said in an interview"
American Entrepreneurs Who Flocked to China Are Heading Home, Disillusioned - "For years, American entrepreneurs saw a place in which they would start tech businesses, build restaurant chains and manage factories, making potentially vast sums in an exciting, newly dynamic economy. Many mastered Mandarin, hired and trained thousands in China, bought houses, met their spouses and raised bilingual children.Now disillusion has set in, fed by soaring costs, creeping taxation, tightening political control and capricious regulation that makes it ever tougher to maneuver the market and fend off new domestic competitors. All these signal to expat business owners their best days were in the past... absorbing a sixfold rise in tailoring rates since 2003 changed China into a high-cost, low-profit, stressful hardship. He lost the feeling “it’s all happening” in Shanghai and will try Thailand.... Many mark a turn in the climate for foreign businesses at around 2012... The first foreigner hired at a video sharing service called Tudou.com, a China version of YouTube, Mr. Mushero got a fast education about keeping a site functioning on China’s rough-and-tumble internet. One duty involved locating clips of pornography hidden in uploaded cat videos... Tougher regulations and competition deterred foreign players. China’s reputation for technology theft kept many out of the market, which reduced the number of Mr. Mushero’s potential clients. In 2013, the American Chamber of Commerce said only 10% of its members trusted data security enough to consider cloud services in China"
A Sichuan Scenic Area Loses All Buddhist and Taoist Statues - "Located in Nanchong city in the southwestern province of Sichuan, Lingyun Mountain is a national 4A-level scenic area and a Buddhists and Taoists pilgrimage site, adorned with thousands of outdoor religious statues and cliff-carved sculptures. But in its campaign to annihilate religions, the CCP has recently covered all these symbols of faith with high artistic value, reportedly, spending at least eight million RMB (about $ 1,130,000)... In other similar cases in China, explosives have been used to demolish large cliff-carved religious icons, not just cover them"
Beijing Launches New Rule: Residents Must Pass Facial Recognition Test to Surf Internet - "In addition, no cell phone or landline number can be transferred to another person privately... “MIIT’s new rule on using facial recognition to identify an internet user means the government can easily track their online activities, including their social media posts and websites they visit,” Tang said.“Then these people become scared of sharing their real opinions online because their comments could anger the authorities and they could get arrested for it.”"
Opinion | Xi Jinping Wanted Global Dominance. He Overshot. - The New York Times - "The trade war... is the first real occasion to assess Mr. Xi’s leadership capabilities. And his performance might not look so good, even if one discounts the setbacks related to the trade war. First and foremost, Mr. Xi has utterly failed to manage the United States–Chinese relationship. In contrast, every Chinese leader since the founding of the communist state in 1949 had recognized the paramount importance of those ties, worked hard to improve them — and reaped huge benefits... Mr. Xi’s second major shortcoming has been his failure to articulate a coherent set of policies to stop the Chinese economy’s long-term weakening, after many years of stellar performance... A third criticism of Mr. Xi is that under him, China has sponsored or condoned actions by Chinese citizens and entities worldwide that have damaged the country’s international reputation while degrading its own moral fabric.Take intellectual property, for example. The United States seems to have hard evidence that it was the policy of Huawei, a flagship Chinese high-tech company, to reward employees for I.P. theft. And, as I have written before, such a policy is encouraged, arguably even mandatory, under China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law. Traditionally, the ideal Chinese state is a Confucian state that adheres to strict moral and behavioral norms. Yet for all his cracking down on corruption at home, Mr. Xi has encouraged moral turpitude abroad; his vision of China is a nation of patriotic thieves. All Chinese arguably have lost face as a result, and now innocent people overseas may be dismissed out of hand as guilty by association."
Apple self-driving car project: Chinese engineer charged with stealing secrets
More U.S. Firms Say China Has Stolen Their Intellectual Property: Poll - "A new CNBC poll finds that one in five corporations say China has stolen their intellectual property within the last year."
How Donald Trump’s tweets outgunned China’s heavy media weapons in the trade war publicity battle - "China is losing the publicity battle in its trade war with the United States, as its propaganda apparatus fails to respond to information challenges, according to analysts.Beijing’s decades—long preference for secrecy over transparency was not able to keep up as US officials including US President Donald Trump took the offensive and dictated the narrative, the analysts said.’... In contrast to media in the US, Beijing has heavily censored news coverage and public discussion of the trade war since Trump first imposed punitive tariffs on Chinese goods last July.So much so that the US-China trade war was one of the most censored topics last year on China’s ,widely popular WeChat app, according to WeChatscope, a research project by the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre. Nevertheless, screenshots of Trump’s tweets and international media reports on the trade talks have been circulated widely on Chinese social media platforms. News about the negotiations has also affected China’s share markets. For example, shares fell 5.6 per cent... “Beijing has disclosed little information about the talks in the past year and has found no narrative [of its own] so people are following Trump’s comments,” Wu said."
Beijing Appeals for Foreign Funds in Belt-and-Road Adjustment - "The U.S. and other countries have warned that aspects of the program pose financial risks to borrowers, alleging a lack of transparency and graft in deals that primarily benefit Beijing.... As criticism built over the past year or so, Beijing de-emphasized big-ticket infrastructure projects in its Belt and Road publicity and stepped up pledges to ensure sustainable lending and fight graft. “Everything should be done in a transparent way and we should have a zero tolerance for corruption,” Mr. Xi said... Recalibrating Mr. Xi’s signature foreign policy is a welcome move but also “a big ask,” said George Magnus, an economist at Oxford University’s China Center. “To change its structure by incorporating Western ideas and values including the rule of law, full and open accounting, and market-based transparent lending standards and terms is most likely a bridge too far.”... “Remind me to disinvite your president,” Mr. Guo said at one point, according to the people, who said Chinese officials lodged diplomatic complaints against countries that sought amendments it disliked. China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment"
7 problems created by China's New Silk Road - "countries considering taking on Chinese investment — loans and financial obligations from China that are part of its BRI — should worry about specific risks, which range from financial sustainability to the erosion of national sovereignty... “It’s been almost a cliché that the Chinese government is legitimate as long as there is 7.5% growth,” Eder said. “So [it] didn’t have that anymore. But they’re building up the second pillar of legitimacy with this collection of foreign policy successes, prestige, influence ... worldwide.”... Those projects often entailed “opaque bidding processes for contracts and financial terms that are not subject to public scrutiny,” they added, which usually means a Chinese loan is followed by a Chinese contractor on the construction site... on top of Chinese banks requiring Chinese contractors get the jobs, the contractors don’t even “transfer skills to local workers, and sometimes involve inequitable profit-sharing arrangements,” which didn’t benefit the local community at all. In some cases, China-funded projects even bore the possibility of espionage... With so many of these projects being massive infrastructure undertakings — from power plants to dams — the authors said that “some instances have proceeded without adequate environmental assessments or have caused severe environmental damage.” Finally, the opacity and the convoluted structure of these projects created ripe conditions for corruption, especially “if they have a high level of kleptocracy,” the authors said, particularly in the form of “payoffs to politicians and bureaucrats.” The country that exemplified most of the challenges above was Ecuador — particular with its Coca Codo Sinclair Hydroelectric Dam.Chinese financing of the dam is “a prime example of how infrastructure projects facilitated by Beijing can run against the host country’s public interest, corrupt institutions, and indebt recipient governments”... after all this trouble, the dam itself isn’t operable, which provides no economic benefits, the authors highlighted. “Water released from the dam causes flooding that cripples some downstream farming and has drowned farmers.”“China took advantage of Ecuador,” Ecuador Energy Minister Carlos Pérez said. “The strategy of China is clear. They take economic control of countries.”"
China's Xi Jinping broke promise on South China Sea, says top US general - "The United States military's top general said on Wednesday (May 29) that Chinese President Xi Jinping reneged on promises not to militarise the South China Sea, and called for "collective action" to hold Beijing responsible... "The fall of 2016, President Xi Jinping promised President (Barack) Obama that they would not militarise the islands. So what we see today are 10,000 foot (3km) runways, ammunition storage facilities, routine deployment of missile defence capabilities, aviation capabilities, and so forth""
China's communists fund Jacinda Ardern's Labour Party: What the United States Congress was told - "An influential United States Congress hearing has been told "one of the major fundraisers for Jacinda Ardern's party" is linked to the Chinese Communist Party and it showed China had penetrated New Zealand's political networks.As a result, US lawmakers needed to consider whether New Zealand should be kicked out of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance because of problems at its "political core"... New Zealand "have denied that there's a problem at all" and failed to follow Australia's lead in setting up an inquiry into China's activities."
Award-Winning Photojournalist Disappears In China, And Here Are 21 Of His Pics China Don’t Want You To See - "Most of the Lu Guang’s best photography reveals sad and shocking aspects of life in China, such as this heavy truck carrying coal and lime driving away, causing dust to fly and harming the nearby residents"... “The reality in China is you never know if you’re going to get into trouble because there are no written rules,” the photographer said in an interview"
American Entrepreneurs Who Flocked to China Are Heading Home, Disillusioned - "For years, American entrepreneurs saw a place in which they would start tech businesses, build restaurant chains and manage factories, making potentially vast sums in an exciting, newly dynamic economy. Many mastered Mandarin, hired and trained thousands in China, bought houses, met their spouses and raised bilingual children.Now disillusion has set in, fed by soaring costs, creeping taxation, tightening political control and capricious regulation that makes it ever tougher to maneuver the market and fend off new domestic competitors. All these signal to expat business owners their best days were in the past... absorbing a sixfold rise in tailoring rates since 2003 changed China into a high-cost, low-profit, stressful hardship. He lost the feeling “it’s all happening” in Shanghai and will try Thailand.... Many mark a turn in the climate for foreign businesses at around 2012... The first foreigner hired at a video sharing service called Tudou.com, a China version of YouTube, Mr. Mushero got a fast education about keeping a site functioning on China’s rough-and-tumble internet. One duty involved locating clips of pornography hidden in uploaded cat videos... Tougher regulations and competition deterred foreign players. China’s reputation for technology theft kept many out of the market, which reduced the number of Mr. Mushero’s potential clients. In 2013, the American Chamber of Commerce said only 10% of its members trusted data security enough to consider cloud services in China"
Post ID: 890199406158690800
Thursday, February 06, 2020
Links - 6th February 2020 (2) (US Healthcare)
How does the quality of the U.S. healthcare system compare to other countries?
The US system performs badly when measured by:
Age-adjusted mortality
Healthcare Access and Quality Index
Years of Life Lost
Age-standardized Disability Adjusted Life Years
Hospital admissions for preventable diseases
Medical, medication, or lab errors or delays
The US does do better on a few measures (post procedure outcomes) but the disparity in outcome is generally not a lot - and the costs are way higher. Plus they do badly on some post procedure outcomes too. Ironically, given how much people bang on about how wait times in the US are short, the US doesn't do well by this measure either (Percent of adults who made a same-day or next day appointment when needed care)
The Astonishingly High Administrative Costs of U.S. Health Care - "A widely cited study published in The New England Journal of Medicine used data from 1999 to estimate that about 30 percent of American health care expenditures were the result of administration, about twice what it is in Canada. If the figures hold today, they mean that out of the average of about $19,000 that U.S. workers and their employers pay for family coverage each year, $5,700 goes toward administrative costs... Like the overall cost of the U.S. health system, its administrative cost alone is No. 1 in the world.Using data from 2010 and 2011, one study, published in Health Affairs, compared hospital administrative costs in the United States with those in seven other places: Canada, England, Scotland, Wales, France, Germany and the Netherlands.At just over 25 percent of total spending on hospital care (or 1.4 percent of total United States economic output), American hospital administrative costs exceed those of all the other places. The Netherlands was second in hospital administrative costs: almost 20 percent of hospital spending and 0.8 percent of that country’s G.D.P.At the low end were Canada and Scotland, which both spend about 12 percent of hospital expenditures on administration, or about half a percent of G.D.P.Hospitals are not the only source of high administrative spending in the United States. Physician practices also devote a large proportion of revenue to administration. By one estimate, for every 10 physicians providing care, almost seven additional people are engaged in billing-related activities... “The extraordinary costs we see are not because of administrative slack or because health care leaders don’t try to economize,” said Kevin Schulman, a co-author of the study and a professor of medicine at Duke. “The high administrative costs are functions of the system’s complexity.”Costs related to billing appear to be growing... One obvious source of complexity of the American health system is its multiplicity of payers. A typical hospital has to contend not just with several public health programs, like Medicare and Medicaid, but also with many private insurers, each with its own set of procedures and forms (whether electronic or paper) for billing and collecting payment. By one estimate, 80 percent of the billing-related costs in the United States are because of contending with this added complexity.“One can have choice without costly complexity,” said Barak Richman, a co-author of the JAMA study and a professor of law at Duke. “Switzerland and Germany, for example, have lower administrative costs than the U.S. but exhibit a robust choice of health insurers.”"
Does Ownership Matter? An Overview of Systematic Reviews of the Performance of Private For-Profit, Private Not-For-Profit and Public Healthcare Providers - "The aim of this article was to provide an overview of what is known about the effects on economic, administrative and health related outcomes of different types of ownership of healthcare providers -namely public, private non-for-profit (PNFP) and private for-profit (PFP)... When comparing PNFP and public providers, as well as for PFP and public providers, no clear differences were found... PFP providers seem to have worst results than their PNFP counterparts"
So much for private is always superior to public, and so much for market incentives meaning the product will always be better (i.e. Private For Profit providers being the worst)
Phantoms In The Snow: Canadians’ Use Of Health Care Services In The United States - "To examine the extent to which Canadian residents seek medical care across the border, we collected data about Canadians’ use of services from ambulatory care facilities and hospitals located in Michigan, New York State, and Washington State during 1994–1998. We also collected information from several Canadian sources, including the 1996 National Population Health Survey, the provincial Ministries of Health, and the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association. Results from these sources do not support the widespread perception that Canadian residents seek care extensively in the United States. Indeed, the numbers found are so small as to be barely detectible relative to the use of care by Canadians at home."
5 Myths About Canadian Health Care - "Myth #5: Canada rations health care; the United States doesn’t.
This one’s a little bit tricky. The truth is, Canada may “ration” by making people wait for some things, but here in the United States we also “ration” — by cost. An 11-country survey carried out in 2010 by the Commonwealth Fund, a Washington-based health policy foundation, found that adults in the United States are by far the most likely to go without care because of cost. In fact, 42 percent of the Americans surveyed did not express confidence that they would be able to afford health care if seriously ill.Source: “How Health Insurance Design Affects Access to Care and Costs, by Income, in Eleven Countries,” Health Affairs, November 2010.Further, about a third of the Americans surveyed reported that, in the preceding year, they didn’t go to the doctor when sick, didn’t get recommended care when needed, didn’t fill a prescription or skipped doses of medications because of cost.Finally, about one in five of the Americans surveyed had struggled to pay or were unable to pay their medical bills in the preceding year. That was more than twice the percentage found in any of the other 10 countries.And remember: We’re spending way more on health care than any other country, and for all that money we’re getting at best middling results."
Not to mention the top cause of bankruptcy in the US is healthcare costs
Comparative Performance of Private and Public Healthcare Systems in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review - "providers in the private sector more frequently violated medical standards of practice and had poorer patient outcomes, but had greater reported timeliness and hospitality to patients. Reported efficiency tended to be lower in the private than in the public sector, resulting in part from perverse incentives for unnecessary testing and treatment. Public sector services experienced more limited availability of equipment, medications, and trained healthcare workers."
How do mortality rates in the U.S. compare to other countries? - "For most of the leading causes of death, mortality rates are higher in the U.S. than in comparable countries"
Some champions of US healthcare claim that once you take out traffic accidents, gun deaths/suicides and obesity-related causes, the US healthcare system performs excellently and is good value for money. Clearly the first two are red herrings from the mortality data. And other countries with a lot of fat people (e.g. Australia) still perform much better than the US
Survey: 79 Million Americans Have Problems with Medical Bills or Debt - "41 percent of working-age Americans—or 72 million people—have medical bill problems or are paying off medical debt, up from 34 percent in 2005. If you add in the 7 million elderly adults who are also dealing with these issues, a total of 79 million Americans have medical bill or debt problems... Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults under age 65, or 116 million people, had medical bill problems or debt, went without needed care because of the cost, were uninsured for a time, or were underinsured—that is, whatever coverage they had was not providing adequate protection from high medical expenses."
'I live on the street now': how Americans fall into medical bankruptcy - "“My bills were hundreds of thousands of dollars, so I had no choice but to file bankruptcy.”LeClair is on the verge of having to file for bankruptcy a second time due to the mounting medical debt she has accrued for additional cancer-related surgeries, regular appointments, medications and supplies related to her recovery, despite having health insurance and paying as much as she can out of pocket for copays, deductibles and premiums to maintain insurance. “My medical bills are at $52,000. I’ve done everything from credit cards to consolidation loans, I just keep simply paying one credit card with another interest-free one until I can pay the next one,” LeClair added. “It’s the side of cancer most people don’t understand or know about and it’s never-ending. It just keeps adding up and adding up and before you know it you’re back in debt that you can’t believe again.” Bankruptcy can also make it difficult to find employment given that many employers will disqualify a candidate with a bankruptcy filing found from a background check. According to a study published in February 2019, about 530,000 bankruptcies filed annually are because of debt accrued due to a medical illness... “A lot of people, a little over 60%, are filing bankruptcy at least in part because of medical bills. Most of them are insured. It’s clear that despite health insurance, there are many, many people incurring costs not being covered by their insurance”... “Medical debt is incredibly common, it’s the main cause of calls from collection agencies, and the vast majority of people with it have insurance,” said Himmelstein, lead author of the study Medical Bankruptcy: Still Common Despite the Affordable Care Act. One out of every six Americans has an unpaid medical bill on their credit report, amounting to $81bn in debt nationwide, while about one in 12 Americans went without any medical insurance throughout 2018. Even as many Americans struggle to afford health insurance coverage in the first place, those that have it are not insulated from facing massive debt due to medical bills... “One of the biggest hurdles you face as a patient is just the sheer confusion of the process. You think you just show up and present your card, sometimes pay a copay, and that’s it. You don’t expect all these plan limitations and authorizations,” Hillman added. “What are you going to do if your authorization gets denied? You don’t really have a choice to not go get care. All these processes that are in the finest of fine print. And sometimes it feels like you are literally paying for nothing.”"
Thread by @MaryRobinette - "When I lived in Iceland, I found a lump. I had no idea how to navigate finding a doctor, so I went to our show's production manager.
Me: I found a lump. Can you help me find a doctor?
PM: Just go to the cancer center.
Me: Okay. How do a get a referral?
PM: What's a referral?
After I explain what a referral is, he looks baffled.
PM: Just go to the cancer center...
Having accepted that I don't need a referral, I say, "How do I make an appointment?"
CC: An appointment? Yes, we can do that if your schedule is very busy, otherwise just come in.
Me: I don't need an appointment?
CC: You found a lump! You know your body, yes? Come in.
So I go. The nurse checking me in apologizes because, since I'm not Icelandic, I'll have to pay for the visit.
It's 3 krónur. That's 3 dollars at that point...
CC: Yes, that does feel like a lump. Let's do a mammogram.
I prepare to hear about making an appointment for that.
CC: I'm sorry, but it's across the hall. Do you mind following me?
I've been in the building for about twenty minutes at this point when I'm strapped into the mammogram -- WHICH HAD WARMERS -- and she does her thing.
CC: There is something there, you are right. I want to see it with an ultrasound.
And then she leads me next door...
Forty-five minutes after walking into the Icelandic Cancer Center and 3 krónur poorer, I had the answer. In the US, a similar lump took two weeks and three different office visits.
I think about this every time I have to fight with medical insurance in the US.
The terrors of "socialised healthcare"
Curiously, if medicine in the US is so great, why do they need to make appointments and wait for followup treatments or investigations?
East Liberty Primary Care Doc Pulls The Plug On Insurance - "Wong’s practice is about as opposite of UPMC and AHN as a physician can get in Pittsburgh. He’s doesn’t accept any form of insurance. Patients pay up front for care at an iPad station when they check themselves into the clinic.For each medical visit, Wong charges a flat fee of just $35... A 2016 study found that for every hour a doctor spends on direct patient care, they spend another two hours on paperwork.“Everybody wants slightly different information,” said Julie Sakowski, a health care economist at Seton Hall University, in South Orange, N.J.*Sakowski has researched how much medical practices spend on communicating with insurance providers. Sakowski puts it between 10 and 20 percent of a practice’s income... Wong said his business model allows him more time to see patients and generate income.And he has no employees.Patients pay up front, so Wong’s practice doesn’t employ a biller. And since he doesn’t accept insurance, he also doesn’t have a medical coder, which is a person whose job is to submit documentation to insurance companies. These are the reasons, said Wong, why he can charge patients so little."
Of course, libertarians claim that government is always more inefficient so single payer will always cost more - even though the US has the most expensive healthcare in the world, which is more expensive than countries with single payer
The Truth About Waiting to See a Doctor in Canada - "SHANOOR SEERVAI: So one of the things that we hear about in the U.S. when our two health systems are compared is that Canada has really long waiting times for health services. How long do people really have to wait to get care?
CHRISTOPHER HAYES: So I guess it’s — it depends on what do you think you’re waiting for. So if you are in a hospital and you need surgery you don’t wait. It gets done in — if it needs to be done in 30 minutes it will be done in 30 minutes. If you need an MRI for care provided in a hospital you will get it whenever — depending on where you are because not every hospital has an MRI, but you will be prioritized and that will happen probably as quickly as it can be done anywhere. It is as the priority drops or is deemed less by whomever that the wait — so the waits are how long will you wait to see a specialist after seeing your family doctor. I mean, the one that people will talk about 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."
Funding of US Biomedical Research, 2003-2008 - "In 2007, industry (58%) was the largest funder, followed by the federal government (33%)"
For all the clamour about how drug prices in the US are unjustly high because drug research is mostly funded by taxpayers (bonus points for blaming Trump even though he's actually done some good in this aspect), the facts are much less sexy
Graham Cox's answer to Why are Europeans so proud of their health care? I have been in hospital in Sweden and the care isn't better than in the US. - Quora
Comment: "The US system is ridiculously expensive, because it’s market based, and the market responds to consumer pressure. It used to be that most healthcare plans were HMOs; you’d designate a primary-care-physician (GP) who would refer you. Consumers said, “I don’t want to go to some under-qualified GP (obviosly that’s not true), I want a specialist!”; and insurance companies said mmmkay. In came PPOs; now patients go to a gastroenterologist when they have a stomach ache, a neurosurgeon when they have a headache, and an opthamologist to get their routine eye exam. The result is worse care (because it’s not coordinated by a single doctor), and many times more expensive. Same thing with brand name drugs. And dozens of other things. But in US culture, a government telling them that a GP will provide better care is NOT going to work - US psyche is trained to belief that government is ineffective. The FDA has gone crazy trying to push generic drugs, yet brand name drugs still outsell generics."
"Most of the battery of tests a US hospital will insist on are taken for evidence in case of a subsequent malpractice suit, not for an actual clinical need."
The US system performs badly when measured by:
Age-adjusted mortality
Healthcare Access and Quality Index
Years of Life Lost
Age-standardized Disability Adjusted Life Years
Hospital admissions for preventable diseases
Medical, medication, or lab errors or delays
The US does do better on a few measures (post procedure outcomes) but the disparity in outcome is generally not a lot - and the costs are way higher. Plus they do badly on some post procedure outcomes too. Ironically, given how much people bang on about how wait times in the US are short, the US doesn't do well by this measure either (Percent of adults who made a same-day or next day appointment when needed care)
The Astonishingly High Administrative Costs of U.S. Health Care - "A widely cited study published in The New England Journal of Medicine used data from 1999 to estimate that about 30 percent of American health care expenditures were the result of administration, about twice what it is in Canada. If the figures hold today, they mean that out of the average of about $19,000 that U.S. workers and their employers pay for family coverage each year, $5,700 goes toward administrative costs... Like the overall cost of the U.S. health system, its administrative cost alone is No. 1 in the world.Using data from 2010 and 2011, one study, published in Health Affairs, compared hospital administrative costs in the United States with those in seven other places: Canada, England, Scotland, Wales, France, Germany and the Netherlands.At just over 25 percent of total spending on hospital care (or 1.4 percent of total United States economic output), American hospital administrative costs exceed those of all the other places. The Netherlands was second in hospital administrative costs: almost 20 percent of hospital spending and 0.8 percent of that country’s G.D.P.At the low end were Canada and Scotland, which both spend about 12 percent of hospital expenditures on administration, or about half a percent of G.D.P.Hospitals are not the only source of high administrative spending in the United States. Physician practices also devote a large proportion of revenue to administration. By one estimate, for every 10 physicians providing care, almost seven additional people are engaged in billing-related activities... “The extraordinary costs we see are not because of administrative slack or because health care leaders don’t try to economize,” said Kevin Schulman, a co-author of the study and a professor of medicine at Duke. “The high administrative costs are functions of the system’s complexity.”Costs related to billing appear to be growing... One obvious source of complexity of the American health system is its multiplicity of payers. A typical hospital has to contend not just with several public health programs, like Medicare and Medicaid, but also with many private insurers, each with its own set of procedures and forms (whether electronic or paper) for billing and collecting payment. By one estimate, 80 percent of the billing-related costs in the United States are because of contending with this added complexity.“One can have choice without costly complexity,” said Barak Richman, a co-author of the JAMA study and a professor of law at Duke. “Switzerland and Germany, for example, have lower administrative costs than the U.S. but exhibit a robust choice of health insurers.”"
Does Ownership Matter? An Overview of Systematic Reviews of the Performance of Private For-Profit, Private Not-For-Profit and Public Healthcare Providers - "The aim of this article was to provide an overview of what is known about the effects on economic, administrative and health related outcomes of different types of ownership of healthcare providers -namely public, private non-for-profit (PNFP) and private for-profit (PFP)... When comparing PNFP and public providers, as well as for PFP and public providers, no clear differences were found... PFP providers seem to have worst results than their PNFP counterparts"
So much for private is always superior to public, and so much for market incentives meaning the product will always be better (i.e. Private For Profit providers being the worst)
Phantoms In The Snow: Canadians’ Use Of Health Care Services In The United States - "To examine the extent to which Canadian residents seek medical care across the border, we collected data about Canadians’ use of services from ambulatory care facilities and hospitals located in Michigan, New York State, and Washington State during 1994–1998. We also collected information from several Canadian sources, including the 1996 National Population Health Survey, the provincial Ministries of Health, and the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association. Results from these sources do not support the widespread perception that Canadian residents seek care extensively in the United States. Indeed, the numbers found are so small as to be barely detectible relative to the use of care by Canadians at home."
5 Myths About Canadian Health Care - "Myth #5: Canada rations health care; the United States doesn’t.
This one’s a little bit tricky. The truth is, Canada may “ration” by making people wait for some things, but here in the United States we also “ration” — by cost. An 11-country survey carried out in 2010 by the Commonwealth Fund, a Washington-based health policy foundation, found that adults in the United States are by far the most likely to go without care because of cost. In fact, 42 percent of the Americans surveyed did not express confidence that they would be able to afford health care if seriously ill.Source: “How Health Insurance Design Affects Access to Care and Costs, by Income, in Eleven Countries,” Health Affairs, November 2010.Further, about a third of the Americans surveyed reported that, in the preceding year, they didn’t go to the doctor when sick, didn’t get recommended care when needed, didn’t fill a prescription or skipped doses of medications because of cost.Finally, about one in five of the Americans surveyed had struggled to pay or were unable to pay their medical bills in the preceding year. That was more than twice the percentage found in any of the other 10 countries.And remember: We’re spending way more on health care than any other country, and for all that money we’re getting at best middling results."
Not to mention the top cause of bankruptcy in the US is healthcare costs
Comparative Performance of Private and Public Healthcare Systems in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review - "providers in the private sector more frequently violated medical standards of practice and had poorer patient outcomes, but had greater reported timeliness and hospitality to patients. Reported efficiency tended to be lower in the private than in the public sector, resulting in part from perverse incentives for unnecessary testing and treatment. Public sector services experienced more limited availability of equipment, medications, and trained healthcare workers."
How do mortality rates in the U.S. compare to other countries? - "For most of the leading causes of death, mortality rates are higher in the U.S. than in comparable countries"
Some champions of US healthcare claim that once you take out traffic accidents, gun deaths/suicides and obesity-related causes, the US healthcare system performs excellently and is good value for money. Clearly the first two are red herrings from the mortality data. And other countries with a lot of fat people (e.g. Australia) still perform much better than the US
Survey: 79 Million Americans Have Problems with Medical Bills or Debt - "41 percent of working-age Americans—or 72 million people—have medical bill problems or are paying off medical debt, up from 34 percent in 2005. If you add in the 7 million elderly adults who are also dealing with these issues, a total of 79 million Americans have medical bill or debt problems... Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults under age 65, or 116 million people, had medical bill problems or debt, went without needed care because of the cost, were uninsured for a time, or were underinsured—that is, whatever coverage they had was not providing adequate protection from high medical expenses."
'I live on the street now': how Americans fall into medical bankruptcy - "“My bills were hundreds of thousands of dollars, so I had no choice but to file bankruptcy.”LeClair is on the verge of having to file for bankruptcy a second time due to the mounting medical debt she has accrued for additional cancer-related surgeries, regular appointments, medications and supplies related to her recovery, despite having health insurance and paying as much as she can out of pocket for copays, deductibles and premiums to maintain insurance. “My medical bills are at $52,000. I’ve done everything from credit cards to consolidation loans, I just keep simply paying one credit card with another interest-free one until I can pay the next one,” LeClair added. “It’s the side of cancer most people don’t understand or know about and it’s never-ending. It just keeps adding up and adding up and before you know it you’re back in debt that you can’t believe again.” Bankruptcy can also make it difficult to find employment given that many employers will disqualify a candidate with a bankruptcy filing found from a background check. According to a study published in February 2019, about 530,000 bankruptcies filed annually are because of debt accrued due to a medical illness... “A lot of people, a little over 60%, are filing bankruptcy at least in part because of medical bills. Most of them are insured. It’s clear that despite health insurance, there are many, many people incurring costs not being covered by their insurance”... “Medical debt is incredibly common, it’s the main cause of calls from collection agencies, and the vast majority of people with it have insurance,” said Himmelstein, lead author of the study Medical Bankruptcy: Still Common Despite the Affordable Care Act. One out of every six Americans has an unpaid medical bill on their credit report, amounting to $81bn in debt nationwide, while about one in 12 Americans went without any medical insurance throughout 2018. Even as many Americans struggle to afford health insurance coverage in the first place, those that have it are not insulated from facing massive debt due to medical bills... “One of the biggest hurdles you face as a patient is just the sheer confusion of the process. You think you just show up and present your card, sometimes pay a copay, and that’s it. You don’t expect all these plan limitations and authorizations,” Hillman added. “What are you going to do if your authorization gets denied? You don’t really have a choice to not go get care. All these processes that are in the finest of fine print. And sometimes it feels like you are literally paying for nothing.”"
Thread by @MaryRobinette - "When I lived in Iceland, I found a lump. I had no idea how to navigate finding a doctor, so I went to our show's production manager.
Me: I found a lump. Can you help me find a doctor?
PM: Just go to the cancer center.
Me: Okay. How do a get a referral?
PM: What's a referral?
After I explain what a referral is, he looks baffled.
PM: Just go to the cancer center...
Having accepted that I don't need a referral, I say, "How do I make an appointment?"
CC: An appointment? Yes, we can do that if your schedule is very busy, otherwise just come in.
Me: I don't need an appointment?
CC: You found a lump! You know your body, yes? Come in.
So I go. The nurse checking me in apologizes because, since I'm not Icelandic, I'll have to pay for the visit.
It's 3 krónur. That's 3 dollars at that point...
CC: Yes, that does feel like a lump. Let's do a mammogram.
I prepare to hear about making an appointment for that.
CC: I'm sorry, but it's across the hall. Do you mind following me?
I've been in the building for about twenty minutes at this point when I'm strapped into the mammogram -- WHICH HAD WARMERS -- and she does her thing.
CC: There is something there, you are right. I want to see it with an ultrasound.
And then she leads me next door...
Forty-five minutes after walking into the Icelandic Cancer Center and 3 krónur poorer, I had the answer. In the US, a similar lump took two weeks and three different office visits.
I think about this every time I have to fight with medical insurance in the US.
The terrors of "socialised healthcare"
Curiously, if medicine in the US is so great, why do they need to make appointments and wait for followup treatments or investigations?
East Liberty Primary Care Doc Pulls The Plug On Insurance - "Wong’s practice is about as opposite of UPMC and AHN as a physician can get in Pittsburgh. He’s doesn’t accept any form of insurance. Patients pay up front for care at an iPad station when they check themselves into the clinic.For each medical visit, Wong charges a flat fee of just $35... A 2016 study found that for every hour a doctor spends on direct patient care, they spend another two hours on paperwork.“Everybody wants slightly different information,” said Julie Sakowski, a health care economist at Seton Hall University, in South Orange, N.J.*Sakowski has researched how much medical practices spend on communicating with insurance providers. Sakowski puts it between 10 and 20 percent of a practice’s income... Wong said his business model allows him more time to see patients and generate income.And he has no employees.Patients pay up front, so Wong’s practice doesn’t employ a biller. And since he doesn’t accept insurance, he also doesn’t have a medical coder, which is a person whose job is to submit documentation to insurance companies. These are the reasons, said Wong, why he can charge patients so little."
Of course, libertarians claim that government is always more inefficient so single payer will always cost more - even though the US has the most expensive healthcare in the world, which is more expensive than countries with single payer
The Truth About Waiting to See a Doctor in Canada - "SHANOOR SEERVAI: So one of the things that we hear about in the U.S. when our two health systems are compared is that Canada has really long waiting times for health services. How long do people really have to wait to get care?
CHRISTOPHER HAYES: So I guess it’s — it depends on what do you think you’re waiting for. So if you are in a hospital and you need surgery you don’t wait. It gets done in — if it needs to be done in 30 minutes it will be done in 30 minutes. If you need an MRI for care provided in a hospital you will get it whenever — depending on where you are because not every hospital has an MRI, but you will be prioritized and that will happen probably as quickly as it can be done anywhere. It is as the priority drops or is deemed less by whomever that the wait — so the waits are how long will you wait to see a specialist after seeing your family doctor. I mean, the one that people will talk about 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."
Funding of US Biomedical Research, 2003-2008 - "In 2007, industry (58%) was the largest funder, followed by the federal government (33%)"
For all the clamour about how drug prices in the US are unjustly high because drug research is mostly funded by taxpayers (bonus points for blaming Trump even though he's actually done some good in this aspect), the facts are much less sexy
Graham Cox's answer to Why are Europeans so proud of their health care? I have been in hospital in Sweden and the care isn't better than in the US. - Quora
Comment: "The US system is ridiculously expensive, because it’s market based, and the market responds to consumer pressure. It used to be that most healthcare plans were HMOs; you’d designate a primary-care-physician (GP) who would refer you. Consumers said, “I don’t want to go to some under-qualified GP (obviosly that’s not true), I want a specialist!”; and insurance companies said mmmkay. In came PPOs; now patients go to a gastroenterologist when they have a stomach ache, a neurosurgeon when they have a headache, and an opthamologist to get their routine eye exam. The result is worse care (because it’s not coordinated by a single doctor), and many times more expensive. Same thing with brand name drugs. And dozens of other things. But in US culture, a government telling them that a GP will provide better care is NOT going to work - US psyche is trained to belief that government is ineffective. The FDA has gone crazy trying to push generic drugs, yet brand name drugs still outsell generics."
"Most of the battery of tests a US hospital will insist on are taken for evidence in case of a subsequent malpractice suit, not for an actual clinical need."
Post ID: 3656774543809298230
"The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad"
"The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful. For example, Mr. Blatchford attacks Christianity because he is mad on one Christian virtue: the merely mystical and almost irrational virtue of charity. He has a strange idea that he will make it easier to forgive sins by saying that there are no sins to forgive. Mr. Blatchford is not only an early Christian, he is the only early Christian who ought really to have been eaten by lions. For in his case the pagan accusation is really true: his mercy would mean mere anarchy. He really is the enemy of the human race-- because he is so human...
At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. The meek do inherit the earth; but the modern sceptics are too meek even to claim their inheritance. It is exactly this intellectual helplessness which is our second problem...
[There is an] attack on thought: that urged by Mr. H.G.Wells when he insists that every separate thing is "unique," and there are no categories at all. This also is merely destructive. Thinking means connecting things, and stops if they cannot be connected. It need hardly be said that this scepticism forbidding thought necessarily forbids speech; a man cannot open his mouth without contradicting it. Thus when Mr. Wells says (as he did somewhere), "All chairs are quite different," he utters not merely a misstatement, but a contradiction in terms. If all chairs were quite different, you could not call them "all chairs."
Akin to these is the false theory of progress, which maintains that we alter the test instead of trying to pass the test. We often hear it said, for instance, "What is right in one age is wrong in another." This is quite reasonable, if it means that there is a fixed aim, and that certain methods attain at certain times and not at other times. If women, say, desire to be elegant, it may be that they are improved at one time by growing fatter and at another time by growing thinner. But you cannot say that they are improved by ceasing to wish to be elegant and beginning to wish to be oblong. If the standard changes, how can there be improvement, which implies a standard?."
--- The Suicide of Thought / GK Chesterton
"The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad" is also (mis)quoted as: "This modern world is full of old Christian ideas gone mad"
At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. The meek do inherit the earth; but the modern sceptics are too meek even to claim their inheritance. It is exactly this intellectual helplessness which is our second problem...
[There is an] attack on thought: that urged by Mr. H.G.Wells when he insists that every separate thing is "unique," and there are no categories at all. This also is merely destructive. Thinking means connecting things, and stops if they cannot be connected. It need hardly be said that this scepticism forbidding thought necessarily forbids speech; a man cannot open his mouth without contradicting it. Thus when Mr. Wells says (as he did somewhere), "All chairs are quite different," he utters not merely a misstatement, but a contradiction in terms. If all chairs were quite different, you could not call them "all chairs."
Akin to these is the false theory of progress, which maintains that we alter the test instead of trying to pass the test. We often hear it said, for instance, "What is right in one age is wrong in another." This is quite reasonable, if it means that there is a fixed aim, and that certain methods attain at certain times and not at other times. If women, say, desire to be elegant, it may be that they are improved at one time by growing fatter and at another time by growing thinner. But you cannot say that they are improved by ceasing to wish to be elegant and beginning to wish to be oblong. If the standard changes, how can there be improvement, which implies a standard?."
--- The Suicide of Thought / GK Chesterton
"The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad" is also (mis)quoted as: "This modern world is full of old Christian ideas gone mad"
Post ID: 870731319889980697
Links - 6th February 2020 (1)
The Best Method for Making Bacon - "People often joke that bacon makes everything better. I tend to agree. I use it a lot as a flavoring agent in recipes — a slice or two to infuse a pot of dried beans with porky richness, for example. But on #treatyoself days, I’ll cook up a mess of bacon as a more substantial component to a dish, or as a standalone food. This is the bacon to pile onto burgers or BLTs, or to enjoy alongside pancakes or waffles, dragging the strips through syrup or runny egg yolks...
Method: Baking on Parchment Paper...
Bottom Line: Effortless cleanup (that allows you to save drippings), pretty slices, and easy control of the crispiness or chewiness of the bacon. This method has it all.
Rating: 10/10"
How drag cabaret got me talking sense on Brexit
More Guardian Gold
Big Brother is watching: Chinese city with 2.6m cameras is world's most heavily surveilled - "With 2.58m cameras covering 15.35 million people – equal to one camera for every six residents – Chongqing has more surveillance cameras than any other city in the world for its population, beating even Beijing, Shanghai and tech hub Shenzhen. Eight of the 10 most surveilled cities in the analysis are in China. London ranked sixth with 627,707 cameras covering 9 million residents and Atlanta, Georgia, came 10th with 7,800 cameras for 501,178 people... To meet international privacy standards enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both collection and use of biometric data should be limited to people found to be involved in wrongdoing, and not broad populations who have no specific link to crime. Individuals should have the right to know what biometric data the government holds on them. China’s automated facial recognition systems violate those standards... Cities elsewhere may not be too far behind China’s mass surveillance."
Facebook will start hiding spam public posts from users sharing 'vast amounts per day' - "Facebook is due to start hiding posts from people who spam users' news feed with clickbait, sensationalised and misinformative articles... Facebook said it carried out research which showed that a small group of users were "routinely sharing vast amounts of public posts per day", which was effectively spamming people's feeds. The study showed that the same people, who were sharing vast amounts of public posts, were also sharing low quality content."
Billy Dee Williams Says Pronoun Use Did Not Mean ‘Gender-Fluid’ - The New York Times - "Billy Dee Williams recently told Esquire magazine that he uses both male and female pronouns to refer to himself. “I say ‘himself’ and ‘herself,’ because I also see myself as feminine as well as masculine,” said Williams, who is known for playing Lando Calrissian in the “Star Wars” universe. “I think of myself as a relatively colorful character who doesn’t take himself or herself too seriously.” His comments were widely taken to mean that he had embraced gender-fluid pronouns... Williams heard that his words were interpreted as a move toward gender fluidity, he thought, “Oh please,” he told The Times. “I just want to tell everybody, read Carl Jung. He was a contemporary of Freud’s.”"
Norwegian mayor asks church to replace Star of David decor, cites Israel - "A Norwegian mayor asked a church to replace its traditional Star of David Christmas decoration due to complaints that it’s too associated with Israel and Jews. Strand Mayor Irene Heng Lauvsnes asked the Klippen Pentecostal church, which lights a large Star of David neon decoration in a municipal park where it holds a Christmas celebration, to replace the symbol with a “traditional Christmas star”... The unnamed critics said the church “designed [the decoration] as a Star of David, a national symbol both for the Jews and for the State of Israel” and “therefore does not fit in the public space” in Strand. The church is considering the request as it does “not want to provoke in any way,” its representative told Strandbuen. The use of the Star of David in Christmas decorations is common throughout Northern Europe... “Municipal Christmas bureaucrats obviously do not want a Jewish or Israeli mark on their Christmas. Then we almost have to remind them of some key facts about why we celebrate Christmas at all,” Selbekk wrote in a column titled “merry Jew-free Christmas,” adding “That holiday is marked by the fact that a Jewish boy was born to a Jewish mother in a Jewish stable in a Jewish city in a Jewish country.”"
Christmas advert made for £100 stars two-year-old Arthur
Wife builds pub in back garden as she's sick of husband sneaking off for a pint
Sebastian Ang - When you're rioting and someone hired a lvl 20 bard - "When you're rioting and someone hired a lvl 20 bard"
Segments of Random Thoughts - Posts - "The knives are out for Boris. Left wing media lies are spinning out of control. They reported that he said “people of colour” coming to the country need to be controlled. He said “people of talent” What a disgusting attempt to smear him. We can’t let these people win."
"Channel 4 News has been forced to apologise after misquoting Boris Johnson to make him appear racist."
'I was called scum and told I should be shot': what it's like to campaign as a young Tory this election - "“Ya Tory b------”, were the three words Alex Tant-Brown, 21, remembers hearing as he was beaten up by two men in a nightclub toilet. He believes his attackers had recognised him as Chairman of Sheffield Hallam University Conservatives Association, and decided he deserved a swollen eye and battered nose for this role. Later he posted a photo of his bloodied face on Twitter, writing: “When someone recognises you as a Conservative on a night out”. But to add insult to (literal) injury, he was met with a new kind of abuse.“This is awesome you deserve it” (sic), messaged one user. “Absolute c---”, “stupid ugly rat” and “I hope you die” were a selection of the numerous others that followed. Some did not believe him at all – claims he cannot respond to due to an investigation being underway... 59 percent of Tory-voting students are reluctant to express themselves at universities compared to 36 percent for Labour and 37 percent for Liberal Democrats... Young has felt stifled by his university due to the left-wing bias, despite being on a politics course. He became so fed up with that he engaged in his own social experiment, writing an article from a Marxist agenda on neoliberal governmentality to see if there was a contrast in his grades. “Unsurprisingly it was my best essay gaining a first”... William Rowland, an active member of the student Conservative club at Cambridge University, had "uncomfortably hot" water from a thermal flask poured over him after he cheered a Republican win at a party to watch the results of the U.S. midterms.He was also told he had taken the place of a more deserving student after he defended Brexit in a heated political conversation... Sunil Sharma, 25, who works in finance, says he was once chastised by a group of people in a London bar who were stunned when he revealed having campaigned for Conservative politicians. They “repeatedly made it clear that as a man of Indian descent, it is shameful that I would vote Conservative. After finding out my dad was a Conservative councillor, I was told how we were “sell-outs” and even more disgraceful that I would as a young man working in London.” Paul Burke, 28, from Sunderland says “I get messages from young people, mainly women and people of the LGBTQ community who are being abused for being conservative, that they’re somehow traitors.”... Paisley Thomson, 20, told me she’s been called “Nazi scum”, “Tory bitch”, and that she “deserved to be raped” for her views... Tory is now code for “evil”, even though the majority of this country have voted this way."
‘We’re Self-Interested’: The Growing Identity Debate in Black America - The New York Times - "A spirited debate is playing out in black communities across America over the degree to which identity ought to be defined by African heritage — or whether ancestral links to slavery are what should count most of all. Tensions between black Americans who descended from slavery and black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean are not new, but a group of online agitators is trying to turn those disagreements into a political movement.They want colleges, employers and the federal government to prioritize black Americans whose ancestors toiled in bondage, and they argue that affirmative action policies originally designed to help the descendants of slavery in America have largely been used to benefit other groups, including immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean. The American descendants of slavery, they say, should have their own racial category on census forms and college applications, and not be lumped in with others with similar skin color but vastly different lived experiences... In 2017, black students at Cornell University protested for the admission of more “underrepresented black students,” who they defined as black Americans with several generations in the United States. “There is a lack of investment in black students whose families were affected directly by the African Holocaust in America”... University administrators say that black students from other countries contribute to increased diversity on campus, even if their admittance does not mitigate the injustices of American slavery. Many black immigrant groups are also descended from slavery in other countries... Hollywood has become the source of much of the frustration around the dividing line between United States-born African-Americans and black immigrants. When the black British actress Cynthia Erivo was hired to play the abolitionist Harriet Tubman, the casting received immediate backlash. Similarly, the filmmaker Jordan Peele has been criticized for hiring Lupita Nyong’o, who is Kenyan, and Daniel Kaluuya, who is British, to play African-American characters in his movies.
I guess this means Obama wasn't really black enough
Identity politics just leads to endless fragmentation and rancor
If it is the legacy of slavery that leads to negative outcomes for African-Americans, then this suggests that "racism" is not the issue, since there is no practical way for "racist" structures to distinguish between blacks who have a legacy of (American) slavery and those who don't
George Kuforiji Protested by White Parishioners During Mass - "Pastor George Kuforiji is a Nigerian immigrant who was ordained in 2015 and moved to St. Francis of Assisi Parish in South East Oregon in 2018... Parishioners pushed back by protesting during a June 30 mass, carrying signs, shouting at the priest, and singing the hymn, “We Shall Overcome” — a song associated with the civil rights movement — while Kuforiji attempted to continue saying mass"
Since African-Americans hate Africans this is oddly fitting
Is 15 Too Old to Trick-or-Treat? One City Said Yes - The New York Times - "Are you too old to go trick-or-treating?That’s a question some residents in Chesapeake, Va., will be asking this Halloween after the city passed an ordinance earlier this year capping the activity at age 14. That’s less restrictive than the previous ordinance, which warned people older than 12 could go to jail. But the city changed the rule after an outcry last year on social media turned Chesapeake into the butt of late-night television jokes... The 1970 ordinance stated that no one older than 12 was allowed to trick-or-treat and that anyone caught could be fined as much as $100, arrested and sent to jail for six months.In the 49 years since, there have been no arrests for overage trick-or-treating"
Mexican Call for Conquest Apology Ruffles Feathers in Spain. And Mexico. - The New York Times - "Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, surely knew that he was wading into fraught territory when he wrote to King Felipe VI of Spain and Pope Francis with a request rooted in history.As the 500th anniversary of the 1521 Spanish conquest of the Aztecs nears, Mr. López Obrador proposed that the two men ask forgiveness for the abuses inflicted on the indigenous peoples of Mexico.What he may not have expected was the blowback his proposal received — on both sides of the Atlantic... Pablo Casado, the leader of the conservative Popular Party, described the Mexican demand as an affront to the Spanish people. Spain, he said, should instead celebrate “with pride” its historical role in Mexico, “the way great nations do it, those that have contributed to the discovery of other people.”... what caught the attention of his many critics in Mexico was his call for an apology.“The Spaniards who stayed in Spain bear no responsibility for what happened here 500 years ago,” wrote one columnist, Sergio Sarmiento.Some noted that Cortés conquered the Aztecs in alliance with other indigenous communities, raising a question about whether Spain was the only one at fault.“Do we properly know who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them’?” wrote Jorge G. Castañeda, a former foreign minister. “Is this a Pandora’s box we want to open? Or is it pure demagogy?”Mr. López Obrador was accused of trying to create a distraction to divert attention from Mexico’s problems, including brutal gang violence and a slowing economy. One reporter asked the president why he was not demanding that France and the United States, which also invaded Mexico, apologize as well. And if Spain should apologize, critics said, should Mexico not apologize as well for its treatment of indigenous groups since independence?... Could Spain ask France to apologize for crimes committed during the Napoleonic wars, he asked, when the French invaded the Iberian Peninsula? Could France itself ask for an apology from Italy for the way the Romans conquered the Gauls under Julius Caesar?"
Method: Baking on Parchment Paper...
Bottom Line: Effortless cleanup (that allows you to save drippings), pretty slices, and easy control of the crispiness or chewiness of the bacon. This method has it all.
Rating: 10/10"
How drag cabaret got me talking sense on Brexit
More Guardian Gold
Big Brother is watching: Chinese city with 2.6m cameras is world's most heavily surveilled - "With 2.58m cameras covering 15.35 million people – equal to one camera for every six residents – Chongqing has more surveillance cameras than any other city in the world for its population, beating even Beijing, Shanghai and tech hub Shenzhen. Eight of the 10 most surveilled cities in the analysis are in China. London ranked sixth with 627,707 cameras covering 9 million residents and Atlanta, Georgia, came 10th with 7,800 cameras for 501,178 people... To meet international privacy standards enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both collection and use of biometric data should be limited to people found to be involved in wrongdoing, and not broad populations who have no specific link to crime. Individuals should have the right to know what biometric data the government holds on them. China’s automated facial recognition systems violate those standards... Cities elsewhere may not be too far behind China’s mass surveillance."
Facebook will start hiding spam public posts from users sharing 'vast amounts per day' - "Facebook is due to start hiding posts from people who spam users' news feed with clickbait, sensationalised and misinformative articles... Facebook said it carried out research which showed that a small group of users were "routinely sharing vast amounts of public posts per day", which was effectively spamming people's feeds. The study showed that the same people, who were sharing vast amounts of public posts, were also sharing low quality content."
Billy Dee Williams Says Pronoun Use Did Not Mean ‘Gender-Fluid’ - The New York Times - "Billy Dee Williams recently told Esquire magazine that he uses both male and female pronouns to refer to himself. “I say ‘himself’ and ‘herself,’ because I also see myself as feminine as well as masculine,” said Williams, who is known for playing Lando Calrissian in the “Star Wars” universe. “I think of myself as a relatively colorful character who doesn’t take himself or herself too seriously.” His comments were widely taken to mean that he had embraced gender-fluid pronouns... Williams heard that his words were interpreted as a move toward gender fluidity, he thought, “Oh please,” he told The Times. “I just want to tell everybody, read Carl Jung. He was a contemporary of Freud’s.”"
Norwegian mayor asks church to replace Star of David decor, cites Israel - "A Norwegian mayor asked a church to replace its traditional Star of David Christmas decoration due to complaints that it’s too associated with Israel and Jews. Strand Mayor Irene Heng Lauvsnes asked the Klippen Pentecostal church, which lights a large Star of David neon decoration in a municipal park where it holds a Christmas celebration, to replace the symbol with a “traditional Christmas star”... The unnamed critics said the church “designed [the decoration] as a Star of David, a national symbol both for the Jews and for the State of Israel” and “therefore does not fit in the public space” in Strand. The church is considering the request as it does “not want to provoke in any way,” its representative told Strandbuen. The use of the Star of David in Christmas decorations is common throughout Northern Europe... “Municipal Christmas bureaucrats obviously do not want a Jewish or Israeli mark on their Christmas. Then we almost have to remind them of some key facts about why we celebrate Christmas at all,” Selbekk wrote in a column titled “merry Jew-free Christmas,” adding “That holiday is marked by the fact that a Jewish boy was born to a Jewish mother in a Jewish stable in a Jewish city in a Jewish country.”"
Christmas advert made for £100 stars two-year-old Arthur
Wife builds pub in back garden as she's sick of husband sneaking off for a pint
Sebastian Ang - When you're rioting and someone hired a lvl 20 bard - "When you're rioting and someone hired a lvl 20 bard"
Segments of Random Thoughts - Posts - "The knives are out for Boris. Left wing media lies are spinning out of control. They reported that he said “people of colour” coming to the country need to be controlled. He said “people of talent” What a disgusting attempt to smear him. We can’t let these people win."
"Channel 4 News has been forced to apologise after misquoting Boris Johnson to make him appear racist."
'I was called scum and told I should be shot': what it's like to campaign as a young Tory this election - "“Ya Tory b------”, were the three words Alex Tant-Brown, 21, remembers hearing as he was beaten up by two men in a nightclub toilet. He believes his attackers had recognised him as Chairman of Sheffield Hallam University Conservatives Association, and decided he deserved a swollen eye and battered nose for this role. Later he posted a photo of his bloodied face on Twitter, writing: “When someone recognises you as a Conservative on a night out”. But to add insult to (literal) injury, he was met with a new kind of abuse.“This is awesome you deserve it” (sic), messaged one user. “Absolute c---”, “stupid ugly rat” and “I hope you die” were a selection of the numerous others that followed. Some did not believe him at all – claims he cannot respond to due to an investigation being underway... 59 percent of Tory-voting students are reluctant to express themselves at universities compared to 36 percent for Labour and 37 percent for Liberal Democrats... Young has felt stifled by his university due to the left-wing bias, despite being on a politics course. He became so fed up with that he engaged in his own social experiment, writing an article from a Marxist agenda on neoliberal governmentality to see if there was a contrast in his grades. “Unsurprisingly it was my best essay gaining a first”... William Rowland, an active member of the student Conservative club at Cambridge University, had "uncomfortably hot" water from a thermal flask poured over him after he cheered a Republican win at a party to watch the results of the U.S. midterms.He was also told he had taken the place of a more deserving student after he defended Brexit in a heated political conversation... Sunil Sharma, 25, who works in finance, says he was once chastised by a group of people in a London bar who were stunned when he revealed having campaigned for Conservative politicians. They “repeatedly made it clear that as a man of Indian descent, it is shameful that I would vote Conservative. After finding out my dad was a Conservative councillor, I was told how we were “sell-outs” and even more disgraceful that I would as a young man working in London.” Paul Burke, 28, from Sunderland says “I get messages from young people, mainly women and people of the LGBTQ community who are being abused for being conservative, that they’re somehow traitors.”... Paisley Thomson, 20, told me she’s been called “Nazi scum”, “Tory bitch”, and that she “deserved to be raped” for her views... Tory is now code for “evil”, even though the majority of this country have voted this way."
‘We’re Self-Interested’: The Growing Identity Debate in Black America - The New York Times - "A spirited debate is playing out in black communities across America over the degree to which identity ought to be defined by African heritage — or whether ancestral links to slavery are what should count most of all. Tensions between black Americans who descended from slavery and black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean are not new, but a group of online agitators is trying to turn those disagreements into a political movement.They want colleges, employers and the federal government to prioritize black Americans whose ancestors toiled in bondage, and they argue that affirmative action policies originally designed to help the descendants of slavery in America have largely been used to benefit other groups, including immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean. The American descendants of slavery, they say, should have their own racial category on census forms and college applications, and not be lumped in with others with similar skin color but vastly different lived experiences... In 2017, black students at Cornell University protested for the admission of more “underrepresented black students,” who they defined as black Americans with several generations in the United States. “There is a lack of investment in black students whose families were affected directly by the African Holocaust in America”... University administrators say that black students from other countries contribute to increased diversity on campus, even if their admittance does not mitigate the injustices of American slavery. Many black immigrant groups are also descended from slavery in other countries... Hollywood has become the source of much of the frustration around the dividing line between United States-born African-Americans and black immigrants. When the black British actress Cynthia Erivo was hired to play the abolitionist Harriet Tubman, the casting received immediate backlash. Similarly, the filmmaker Jordan Peele has been criticized for hiring Lupita Nyong’o, who is Kenyan, and Daniel Kaluuya, who is British, to play African-American characters in his movies.
I guess this means Obama wasn't really black enough
Identity politics just leads to endless fragmentation and rancor
If it is the legacy of slavery that leads to negative outcomes for African-Americans, then this suggests that "racism" is not the issue, since there is no practical way for "racist" structures to distinguish between blacks who have a legacy of (American) slavery and those who don't
George Kuforiji Protested by White Parishioners During Mass - "Pastor George Kuforiji is a Nigerian immigrant who was ordained in 2015 and moved to St. Francis of Assisi Parish in South East Oregon in 2018... Parishioners pushed back by protesting during a June 30 mass, carrying signs, shouting at the priest, and singing the hymn, “We Shall Overcome” — a song associated with the civil rights movement — while Kuforiji attempted to continue saying mass"
Since African-Americans hate Africans this is oddly fitting
Is 15 Too Old to Trick-or-Treat? One City Said Yes - The New York Times - "Are you too old to go trick-or-treating?That’s a question some residents in Chesapeake, Va., will be asking this Halloween after the city passed an ordinance earlier this year capping the activity at age 14. That’s less restrictive than the previous ordinance, which warned people older than 12 could go to jail. But the city changed the rule after an outcry last year on social media turned Chesapeake into the butt of late-night television jokes... The 1970 ordinance stated that no one older than 12 was allowed to trick-or-treat and that anyone caught could be fined as much as $100, arrested and sent to jail for six months.In the 49 years since, there have been no arrests for overage trick-or-treating"
Mexican Call for Conquest Apology Ruffles Feathers in Spain. And Mexico. - The New York Times - "Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, surely knew that he was wading into fraught territory when he wrote to King Felipe VI of Spain and Pope Francis with a request rooted in history.As the 500th anniversary of the 1521 Spanish conquest of the Aztecs nears, Mr. López Obrador proposed that the two men ask forgiveness for the abuses inflicted on the indigenous peoples of Mexico.What he may not have expected was the blowback his proposal received — on both sides of the Atlantic... Pablo Casado, the leader of the conservative Popular Party, described the Mexican demand as an affront to the Spanish people. Spain, he said, should instead celebrate “with pride” its historical role in Mexico, “the way great nations do it, those that have contributed to the discovery of other people.”... what caught the attention of his many critics in Mexico was his call for an apology.“The Spaniards who stayed in Spain bear no responsibility for what happened here 500 years ago,” wrote one columnist, Sergio Sarmiento.Some noted that Cortés conquered the Aztecs in alliance with other indigenous communities, raising a question about whether Spain was the only one at fault.“Do we properly know who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them’?” wrote Jorge G. Castañeda, a former foreign minister. “Is this a Pandora’s box we want to open? Or is it pure demagogy?”Mr. López Obrador was accused of trying to create a distraction to divert attention from Mexico’s problems, including brutal gang violence and a slowing economy. One reporter asked the president why he was not demanding that France and the United States, which also invaded Mexico, apologize as well. And if Spain should apologize, critics said, should Mexico not apologize as well for its treatment of indigenous groups since independence?... Could Spain ask France to apologize for crimes committed during the Napoleonic wars, he asked, when the French invaded the Iberian Peninsula? Could France itself ask for an apology from Italy for the way the Romans conquered the Gauls under Julius Caesar?"
Post ID: 5319905849370347971
Wednesday, February 05, 2020
Links - 5th February 2020 (2)
Let's all laugh - Posts - "Since it's illegal to spank them when they misbehave, if they act grown, give them to grown men haircut. *ugly haircut*"
Betrayed by the Big Four: whistleblowers speak out | Financial Times - "These individuals worked for four of the most renowned names in the business world: EY, Deloitte, KPMG and PwC. They are among 20 former employees from the Big Four accounting firms who have spoken to the Financial Times about their experience of harassment, bullying and discrimination in the workplace over the course of a year’s investigation into how these firms treat whistleblowers within their ranks.The FT identified a disturbingly common pattern in terms of how complainants were treated: most initially felt ignored, then isolated and were eventually pushed out. Legal clauses aimed at silencing them swiftly followed; nine of those interviewed said they were pressured into signing restrictive non-disclosure agreements. Others were asked to sign but resisted. “Much worse than the incident itself is the fact that the company I thought was going to protect me then betrayed me and protected him and hung me out to dry,” says Mary. “That has been much more damaging to me in the long run.”... Many of these whistleblowers — most of whom shared documents with the FT that supported their accounts — claim they were treated like pariahs by their employers at a time when they most expected to receive support.They found this particularly galling given the influential role the Big Four — who employ more than one million people between them and posted $154bn in collective revenues over the past 12 months— have in advising the world’s most powerful institutions on best management practices... The 20 whistleblowers interviewed for this article worked around the world, from San Diego to Tokyo to London, but their experiences were strikingly similar. Almost all complained about an individual of a higher rank within the firm. In most of these cases, the whistleblower left within months of raising their concerns, while the alleged perpetrator remained.The reason this pattern is so stark is simple, according to several current and former insiders: the Big Four want to protect their top fee-earners, even if this is to the detriment of the rest of the workforce. "
Caleb Hull 🏻 on Twitter - AOC: "Me waiting on the haters to apologize after we were proven right on Amazon and saved the public billions "
"@AOC It's incredible how dumb your followers are and how they're praising you for this. Amazon was initially offering 25,000 jobs in YOUR DISTRICT to now only offering 1,500 jobs OUTSIDE your district. Meaning you caused 94% job loss in NYC."
Recreational Marijuana Laws and Junk Food Consumption: Evidence Using Border Analysis and Retail Sales Data by Michele Baggio, Alberto Chong - "We use retail scanner data on purchases of high calorie food to study the link between recreational marijuana laws (RMLs) and consumption of high calorie food. To do this we exploit differences in the timing of introduction of marijuana laws among states and find that they are complements. Specifically, in counties located in RML states monthly sales of high calorie food increased by 3.1 percent for ice cream, 4.1 for cookies, and 5.3 percent for chips."
So pot does give you the munchies
Ethnicity has greatest impact on degree grades: Report - "attending an independent school does not appear to enhance university performance. State school students tend to do better in degree studies than students with the same prior educational attainment from independent schools... "Degree outcomes are not affected by the average performance of the school that a student attended"... The most reliable indicator is A-level performance"
So much for standardised exams being useless
Grammatical case - Wikipedia - "Languages such as Ancient Greek, Armenian, Assamese, most Balto-Slavic languages, Basque, most Caucasian languages, German, Icelandic, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Sanskrit, Tamil, Tibetan (one of a few tonal languages), the Turkic languages and the Uralic languages have extensive case systems, with nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and determiners all inflecting (usually by means of different suffixes) to indicate their case. The number of cases differs between languages: Persian and Esperanto have two; modern English has three but for pronouns only; German and Icelandic have four; Romanian has five; Latin, Slovenian, Russian and Turkish each have at least six; Armenian, Czech, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, Slovak and Ukrainian have seven; Sanskrit and Tamil have eight; Estonian has 14; Finnish has 15; Hungarian has 18 and Tsez has 64 cases."
Meme - "Meet Fatima. She Is a Muslim Woman Who Is Breaking Stereotypes
Fatima Makes and Sells Heroin and Crystal Meth
'I Wanted to Show the World That Muslim Women Are Empowered- That Muslim Women Can Also Be Drug Dealers'"
New Study Finds Cash Transfers To Poor Families Lift Up Their Neighbors Too - "Over the past decade there has been a surge of interest in a novel approach to helping the world's poor: Instead of giving them goods like food or services like job training, just hand out cash — with no strings attached. Now a major new study suggests that people who get the aid aren't the only ones who benefit... as expected, the families who got the money used it to buy lots more food and other essentials. But that was just the beginning. "That money goes to local businesses," says Miguel. "They sell more. They generate more revenue. And then eventually that gets passed on into labor earnings for their workers." The net effect: Every dollar in cash aid increased total economic activity in the area by $2.60. But were those income gains simply washed out by a corresponding rise in inflation? "We actually find there's a little bit of price inflation, but it's really small," says Miguel. "It's much less than 1%.""
Meanwhile libertarians with their simplistic economics claim that a universal basic income of $1,000 will just make all landlords raise rent by $1,000, making it useless
In an ethnic breakdown of sports, NBA takes lead for most diverse - "With 80.7 percent of players being people of color, the NBA takes the lead among men’s sports for player diversity."
Basically an admission that "diversity" is being anti-white
Lori Hendry on Twitter - "When all the guns have been banned, When all the words have been censored, When all the history has been erased, When all our freedoms have been taken, Only then will you discover that you should’ve spoken up and done something about it..."
The Real News Crisis Isn’t Fake News - "In the aftermath of the twin shocks of 2016—Brexit on one side of the Atlantic, Donald Trump on the other—many in the media identified “fake news” as the culprit and as one of the emergent evils of the modern world. It was invoked the way terrorism was after 9/11: shadowy, stateless, destabilizing. It’s no surprise that, by June 2019, 50 percent of Americans viewed it as a bigger threat than terrorism, with 70 percent saying that it was greatly affecting trust in government institutions... In general, there is little evidence suggesting that fake news has had a major impact on how people view current events. Furthermore, fake news is most likely to reach “heavy news consumers,” whose opinions have already been set... the study finds few instances of Russian trolls turning voters into frothing Trumpers"
Sadly the author had to turn this into a bashing of "right wing media outlets"
3 Problems With USB-C You Need To Know About - "We’ve scared you enough at this point that you are probably going to be concerned about plugging in random USB-C cables into your devices, and that’s a good thing. But we shouldn’t leave you without a solution, and we won’t.Your best bet for almost any cable, including USB-C cables, is to buy AmazonBasics cables—they aren’t just really affordable, but they are consistent, and most important, the listings on Amazon are clearly labeled with the speed"
Woman wants Ontario to raise $4 HST exemption for prepared food - "A realtor in Waterloo is feeling frustrated that a tax exemption, designed to make food more affordable for people on low incomes, hasn't risen with inflation... prepared food under $4.00 is priced differently than food over $4.00.When HST was introduced in 2009, the government made special accommodations for meals under $4.00. Consumers aren't charged the provincial portion of the HST — just the 5 per cent federal tax."When [it] was put in place, it was realistic that you can go out and get a small lunch for $4.00 and under," she said.Brown-Aitken feels the new cap should be set to at least $7.00 to match the price "for a reasonable sandwich and drink" at fast-food joints like Tim Horton's or McDonalds."In doing a bit of research, it's looking like $7.00 would be a very lean lunch for somebody. Most often, even in fast-food, it's closer than $10.00"... Alan Macnaughton, a professor in the School of Accounting and Finance at the University of Waterloo, said the $4.00 exemption predates 2009, and was actually set in 1989... "It was 1989 when $4.00 would be the equivalent of $7.00 today""
Man with autism opens own coffee shop after no one would hire him - "When Michael Coyne -- who has autism and is a Special Olympics athlete -- applied for jobs, he kept getting passed over."
SNL mocked my appearance. Here's why I didn't demand an apology - "SNL's Pete Davidson mocked my appearance - "he lost his eye in war . . . or whatever," Davidson said, referring to the eye patch I wear. His line about my looking like a "hit man in a porno movie" was significantly less infuriating, albeit a little strange. I woke up on the Sunday morning after the show to hundreds of texts about what Davidson had said. A lot of America wasn't happy. People thought some lines still shouldn't be crossed.I agreed. But I also could not help but note that this was another chapter in a phenomenon that has taken complete control of the national discourse: outrage culture. It seems like every not-so-carefully-worded public misstep must be punished to the fullest extent, replete with soapbox lectures and demands for apologies. Anyone who doesn't show the expected level of outrage will be labelled a coward or an apologist for bad behaviour. I get the feeling that regular, hardworking, generally unoffended Americans sigh with exhaustion - daily. Was I really outraged by SNL? Really offended? Or did I just think the comment about losing my eye was offensive? There is a difference, after all. I have been literally shot at before, and I wasn't outraged. Why start now?So I didn't demand an apology and I didn't call for anyone to be fired. That doesn't mean the "war . . . or whatever" line was acceptable, but I didn't have to fan the flames of outrage, either... There are many ideas that we will never agree on. The left and the right have different ways of approaching governance, based on contrasting philosophies. But many of the ultimate goals - economic prosperity, better health care and education, etc. - are the same. We just don't share the same vision of how to achieve them... When all else fails, try asking for forgiveness, or granting it. On Saturday, Pete Davidson and SNL made amends. I had some fun. Everyone generally agreed that a veteran's wounds aren't fair game for comedy. Maybe now we should all try to work towards restoring civility to public debate."
I raped my girlfriend. Can my relationship survive? - "I raped my girlfriend.Some background: My girlfriend and I were high school sweethearts. We have been together for 12 years and were each other’s first sexual partners. Five years ago, she cheated on me with a friend about whom I had expressed discomfort with her hanging out with because she snuck around to hang out with him. I did not hear about this until last year. A year after she cheated, he had completely tossed her aside, and he was moving across the country as she and I were preparing to move in together to be closer to her graduate school. She was withdrawing and pulling away from me; I was stressed and I angrily pressured her to have sex with me more often. I raped my girlfriend. I did not threaten her with a weapon of any kind, I did not physically force myself on her, and she verbally gave consent, but it was still rape because she did not want to have sex—I just did not know it at the time."
The redefinition of rape into any sex a woman doesn't like after the fact continues. And he gets gaslighted/gaslit to boot
The Big Read: After the sound and fury, the dust settles on e-scooter footpath ban - "These days, 58-year-old Loy Chit See no longer feels bothered or stressed when he takes his children out for walks at the weekend. The same could not be said before the ban, when e-scooters could be seen everywhere in his Serangoon estate.“I nearly got knocked down once, the guy just sped past and I couldn't believe it,” said the father of two children aged seven and ten. “The stress becomes high … When I walk (my children) to NEX (shopping mall), I have to be extra careful.”After the ban, Mr Loy said the number of e-scooters he sees in his neighbourhood has dropped significantly. Like Mr Loy, many of the 16 pedestrians we spoke to across e-scooter “hotspots” such as Punggol, Choa Chu Kang, Yishun and Serangoon, welcome the ban... Mr Mahadi lamented that the actions of some black sheep have caused the authorities to enact a ban — to the chagrin of responsible users. “Now everyone has to pay for it”"
Betrayed by the Big Four: whistleblowers speak out | Financial Times - "These individuals worked for four of the most renowned names in the business world: EY, Deloitte, KPMG and PwC. They are among 20 former employees from the Big Four accounting firms who have spoken to the Financial Times about their experience of harassment, bullying and discrimination in the workplace over the course of a year’s investigation into how these firms treat whistleblowers within their ranks.The FT identified a disturbingly common pattern in terms of how complainants were treated: most initially felt ignored, then isolated and were eventually pushed out. Legal clauses aimed at silencing them swiftly followed; nine of those interviewed said they were pressured into signing restrictive non-disclosure agreements. Others were asked to sign but resisted. “Much worse than the incident itself is the fact that the company I thought was going to protect me then betrayed me and protected him and hung me out to dry,” says Mary. “That has been much more damaging to me in the long run.”... Many of these whistleblowers — most of whom shared documents with the FT that supported their accounts — claim they were treated like pariahs by their employers at a time when they most expected to receive support.They found this particularly galling given the influential role the Big Four — who employ more than one million people between them and posted $154bn in collective revenues over the past 12 months— have in advising the world’s most powerful institutions on best management practices... The 20 whistleblowers interviewed for this article worked around the world, from San Diego to Tokyo to London, but their experiences were strikingly similar. Almost all complained about an individual of a higher rank within the firm. In most of these cases, the whistleblower left within months of raising their concerns, while the alleged perpetrator remained.The reason this pattern is so stark is simple, according to several current and former insiders: the Big Four want to protect their top fee-earners, even if this is to the detriment of the rest of the workforce. "
Caleb Hull 🏻 on Twitter - AOC: "Me waiting on the haters to apologize after we were proven right on Amazon and saved the public billions "
"@AOC It's incredible how dumb your followers are and how they're praising you for this. Amazon was initially offering 25,000 jobs in YOUR DISTRICT to now only offering 1,500 jobs OUTSIDE your district. Meaning you caused 94% job loss in NYC."
Recreational Marijuana Laws and Junk Food Consumption: Evidence Using Border Analysis and Retail Sales Data by Michele Baggio, Alberto Chong - "We use retail scanner data on purchases of high calorie food to study the link between recreational marijuana laws (RMLs) and consumption of high calorie food. To do this we exploit differences in the timing of introduction of marijuana laws among states and find that they are complements. Specifically, in counties located in RML states monthly sales of high calorie food increased by 3.1 percent for ice cream, 4.1 for cookies, and 5.3 percent for chips."
So pot does give you the munchies
Ethnicity has greatest impact on degree grades: Report - "attending an independent school does not appear to enhance university performance. State school students tend to do better in degree studies than students with the same prior educational attainment from independent schools... "Degree outcomes are not affected by the average performance of the school that a student attended"... The most reliable indicator is A-level performance"
So much for standardised exams being useless
Grammatical case - Wikipedia - "Languages such as Ancient Greek, Armenian, Assamese, most Balto-Slavic languages, Basque, most Caucasian languages, German, Icelandic, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Sanskrit, Tamil, Tibetan (one of a few tonal languages), the Turkic languages and the Uralic languages have extensive case systems, with nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and determiners all inflecting (usually by means of different suffixes) to indicate their case. The number of cases differs between languages: Persian and Esperanto have two; modern English has three but for pronouns only; German and Icelandic have four; Romanian has five; Latin, Slovenian, Russian and Turkish each have at least six; Armenian, Czech, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, Slovak and Ukrainian have seven; Sanskrit and Tamil have eight; Estonian has 14; Finnish has 15; Hungarian has 18 and Tsez has 64 cases."
Meme - "Meet Fatima. She Is a Muslim Woman Who Is Breaking Stereotypes
Fatima Makes and Sells Heroin and Crystal Meth
'I Wanted to Show the World That Muslim Women Are Empowered- That Muslim Women Can Also Be Drug Dealers'"
New Study Finds Cash Transfers To Poor Families Lift Up Their Neighbors Too - "Over the past decade there has been a surge of interest in a novel approach to helping the world's poor: Instead of giving them goods like food or services like job training, just hand out cash — with no strings attached. Now a major new study suggests that people who get the aid aren't the only ones who benefit... as expected, the families who got the money used it to buy lots more food and other essentials. But that was just the beginning. "That money goes to local businesses," says Miguel. "They sell more. They generate more revenue. And then eventually that gets passed on into labor earnings for their workers." The net effect: Every dollar in cash aid increased total economic activity in the area by $2.60. But were those income gains simply washed out by a corresponding rise in inflation? "We actually find there's a little bit of price inflation, but it's really small," says Miguel. "It's much less than 1%.""
Meanwhile libertarians with their simplistic economics claim that a universal basic income of $1,000 will just make all landlords raise rent by $1,000, making it useless
In an ethnic breakdown of sports, NBA takes lead for most diverse - "With 80.7 percent of players being people of color, the NBA takes the lead among men’s sports for player diversity."
Basically an admission that "diversity" is being anti-white
Lori Hendry on Twitter - "When all the guns have been banned, When all the words have been censored, When all the history has been erased, When all our freedoms have been taken, Only then will you discover that you should’ve spoken up and done something about it..."
The Real News Crisis Isn’t Fake News - "In the aftermath of the twin shocks of 2016—Brexit on one side of the Atlantic, Donald Trump on the other—many in the media identified “fake news” as the culprit and as one of the emergent evils of the modern world. It was invoked the way terrorism was after 9/11: shadowy, stateless, destabilizing. It’s no surprise that, by June 2019, 50 percent of Americans viewed it as a bigger threat than terrorism, with 70 percent saying that it was greatly affecting trust in government institutions... In general, there is little evidence suggesting that fake news has had a major impact on how people view current events. Furthermore, fake news is most likely to reach “heavy news consumers,” whose opinions have already been set... the study finds few instances of Russian trolls turning voters into frothing Trumpers"
Sadly the author had to turn this into a bashing of "right wing media outlets"
3 Problems With USB-C You Need To Know About - "We’ve scared you enough at this point that you are probably going to be concerned about plugging in random USB-C cables into your devices, and that’s a good thing. But we shouldn’t leave you without a solution, and we won’t.Your best bet for almost any cable, including USB-C cables, is to buy AmazonBasics cables—they aren’t just really affordable, but they are consistent, and most important, the listings on Amazon are clearly labeled with the speed"
Woman wants Ontario to raise $4 HST exemption for prepared food - "A realtor in Waterloo is feeling frustrated that a tax exemption, designed to make food more affordable for people on low incomes, hasn't risen with inflation... prepared food under $4.00 is priced differently than food over $4.00.When HST was introduced in 2009, the government made special accommodations for meals under $4.00. Consumers aren't charged the provincial portion of the HST — just the 5 per cent federal tax."When [it] was put in place, it was realistic that you can go out and get a small lunch for $4.00 and under," she said.Brown-Aitken feels the new cap should be set to at least $7.00 to match the price "for a reasonable sandwich and drink" at fast-food joints like Tim Horton's or McDonalds."In doing a bit of research, it's looking like $7.00 would be a very lean lunch for somebody. Most often, even in fast-food, it's closer than $10.00"... Alan Macnaughton, a professor in the School of Accounting and Finance at the University of Waterloo, said the $4.00 exemption predates 2009, and was actually set in 1989... "It was 1989 when $4.00 would be the equivalent of $7.00 today""
Man with autism opens own coffee shop after no one would hire him - "When Michael Coyne -- who has autism and is a Special Olympics athlete -- applied for jobs, he kept getting passed over."
SNL mocked my appearance. Here's why I didn't demand an apology - "SNL's Pete Davidson mocked my appearance - "he lost his eye in war . . . or whatever," Davidson said, referring to the eye patch I wear. His line about my looking like a "hit man in a porno movie" was significantly less infuriating, albeit a little strange. I woke up on the Sunday morning after the show to hundreds of texts about what Davidson had said. A lot of America wasn't happy. People thought some lines still shouldn't be crossed.I agreed. But I also could not help but note that this was another chapter in a phenomenon that has taken complete control of the national discourse: outrage culture. It seems like every not-so-carefully-worded public misstep must be punished to the fullest extent, replete with soapbox lectures and demands for apologies. Anyone who doesn't show the expected level of outrage will be labelled a coward or an apologist for bad behaviour. I get the feeling that regular, hardworking, generally unoffended Americans sigh with exhaustion - daily. Was I really outraged by SNL? Really offended? Or did I just think the comment about losing my eye was offensive? There is a difference, after all. I have been literally shot at before, and I wasn't outraged. Why start now?So I didn't demand an apology and I didn't call for anyone to be fired. That doesn't mean the "war . . . or whatever" line was acceptable, but I didn't have to fan the flames of outrage, either... There are many ideas that we will never agree on. The left and the right have different ways of approaching governance, based on contrasting philosophies. But many of the ultimate goals - economic prosperity, better health care and education, etc. - are the same. We just don't share the same vision of how to achieve them... When all else fails, try asking for forgiveness, or granting it. On Saturday, Pete Davidson and SNL made amends. I had some fun. Everyone generally agreed that a veteran's wounds aren't fair game for comedy. Maybe now we should all try to work towards restoring civility to public debate."
I raped my girlfriend. Can my relationship survive? - "I raped my girlfriend.Some background: My girlfriend and I were high school sweethearts. We have been together for 12 years and were each other’s first sexual partners. Five years ago, she cheated on me with a friend about whom I had expressed discomfort with her hanging out with because she snuck around to hang out with him. I did not hear about this until last year. A year after she cheated, he had completely tossed her aside, and he was moving across the country as she and I were preparing to move in together to be closer to her graduate school. She was withdrawing and pulling away from me; I was stressed and I angrily pressured her to have sex with me more often. I raped my girlfriend. I did not threaten her with a weapon of any kind, I did not physically force myself on her, and she verbally gave consent, but it was still rape because she did not want to have sex—I just did not know it at the time."
The redefinition of rape into any sex a woman doesn't like after the fact continues. And he gets gaslighted/gaslit to boot
The Big Read: After the sound and fury, the dust settles on e-scooter footpath ban - "These days, 58-year-old Loy Chit See no longer feels bothered or stressed when he takes his children out for walks at the weekend. The same could not be said before the ban, when e-scooters could be seen everywhere in his Serangoon estate.“I nearly got knocked down once, the guy just sped past and I couldn't believe it,” said the father of two children aged seven and ten. “The stress becomes high … When I walk (my children) to NEX (shopping mall), I have to be extra careful.”After the ban, Mr Loy said the number of e-scooters he sees in his neighbourhood has dropped significantly. Like Mr Loy, many of the 16 pedestrians we spoke to across e-scooter “hotspots” such as Punggol, Choa Chu Kang, Yishun and Serangoon, welcome the ban... Mr Mahadi lamented that the actions of some black sheep have caused the authorities to enact a ban — to the chagrin of responsible users. “Now everyone has to pay for it”"
Post ID: 6823456303295829309
How to Hate Taxes a Little Bit Less
How to Hate Taxes a Little Bit Less (Ep. 400) - Freakonomics Freakonomics
"People will give money to government voluntarily if they support what the government is doing... what we found, to our shock and astonishment, was that people would give almost as much to a government organization as they would to a private organization. Allowing people to earmark is really successful at getting people to give more...
Imagine you’re old and frail; you don’t have much time left; and imagine the estate tax is about to be lowered. Here’s what Slemrod and his co-author Wojciech Kopczuk found, in a study they called “Dying to Save Taxes.” “For individuals dying within two weeks of a tax reform,” they write, “a $10,000 potential tax saving increases the probability of dying in the lower-tax regime by 1.6%.” In other words, the dying person hangs on just long enough to die under the new estate-tax rate. Or, if you are a suspicious type, you might imagine the dying person’s family tries to prolong their life in order to pay less tax, or maybe even fakes some paperwork after the fact. In any case, that’s how much effort can go into avoiding taxes...
SLEMROD: The best estimate we have is that for federal taxes, about 16 percent of what should be remitted is not...
They wanted to have a tax on real estate that was higher the more grand your residence. But it wasn’t easy to get a sense of the value of a residence. So what could you easily observe that would be an indicator of how fabulous your residence was? Well, first they tried fireplaces. The problem is that you have to have somebody go inside. What is correlated with the grandness of your home for which you don’t have to go inside? Windows. So for centuries there was a tax based on how many windows a house in England had... There was some extra business because as always, when there is a tax the creative juices of avoidance and evasion get rolling.
So what you can still observe to this day in England is how older houses, where it’s clear there was once a window and then it was bricked up to reduce window tax. We also know there were cases where windows would be installed that would allow light to come into two different rooms, so the glaziers had some business there...
In at least one country that had a bachelor tax, there was an exception that if you could prove that you had asked a woman to marry you and she had refused, then you were exempt from the tax. So a market arose for what were called professional lady rejectors, who, for a fee, would fill out the form saying yes, you had asked them for their hand in marriage and they had refused. And you would take this to the tax office and be exempt from the bachelor tax...
But is there a concern that participatory budgeting would radically realign the actual federal budget? Based on the evidence from her research, Lamberton doesn’t see that happening.
LAMBERTON: So in the aggregate what ends up happening, in the U.S. at least, is the defense budget, which is a huge, huge portion of the pie, goes down — and I will say that’s in part because our participants tended to be slightly more liberal than the population as a whole. But a lot of the other budgetary categories don’t change an enormous amount. So while on an individual level you might see big change, in the aggregate it actually isn’t a seismic shock that would be that different from what you would see when an administration changes...
KOLL: The Japanese economy ultimately is very much a two-tiered economy, in the sense that you’ve got the economic concentration in the megacities — Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. Those three centers effectively account for about three-quarters of Japan’s employment and value-add creation. So the hinterland, the rest of the country, effectively is always in deficit, and that — if you look at the Japanese national budget — is also reflected in a very big redistribution effort. If the budget in Japan is about 80 trillion, you find that almost 20 trillion go to redistributing funds from the rich urban centers into the regions of the economy...
What’s happening in Japan — the imbalance between cities and “the hinterland” — is not so different from what’s happening in many countries, including the U.S., as the world gets more urbanized. But in Japan, it is extreme. Ninety-four percent of the Japanese population lives in urban areas. In the U.S., that number is just over 80 percent. The trend in Japan, as elsewhere, is that young people who grow up in rural areas eventually move to the big city, which leaves their hometown with an aging population and a depleted tax base.
To fight this problem, Japan introduced in 2008 what’s called a hometown tax system, or furusato nozei. It allowed people to make donations to their hometowns — which, after the first 2,000 yen or roughly $20, can then be deducted from their personal taxes. But here’s the thing: the donation, despite the name, didn’t actually have to be to your own hometown; you could direct the money to any region. Nor did you even have to be from a rural area to take advantage of the hometown tax. And — here’s maybe the most Japanese thing about the hometown tax — when you made a donation to a particular region, they would send you something nice in return."
"People will give money to government voluntarily if they support what the government is doing... what we found, to our shock and astonishment, was that people would give almost as much to a government organization as they would to a private organization. Allowing people to earmark is really successful at getting people to give more...
Imagine you’re old and frail; you don’t have much time left; and imagine the estate tax is about to be lowered. Here’s what Slemrod and his co-author Wojciech Kopczuk found, in a study they called “Dying to Save Taxes.” “For individuals dying within two weeks of a tax reform,” they write, “a $10,000 potential tax saving increases the probability of dying in the lower-tax regime by 1.6%.” In other words, the dying person hangs on just long enough to die under the new estate-tax rate. Or, if you are a suspicious type, you might imagine the dying person’s family tries to prolong their life in order to pay less tax, or maybe even fakes some paperwork after the fact. In any case, that’s how much effort can go into avoiding taxes...
SLEMROD: The best estimate we have is that for federal taxes, about 16 percent of what should be remitted is not...
They wanted to have a tax on real estate that was higher the more grand your residence. But it wasn’t easy to get a sense of the value of a residence. So what could you easily observe that would be an indicator of how fabulous your residence was? Well, first they tried fireplaces. The problem is that you have to have somebody go inside. What is correlated with the grandness of your home for which you don’t have to go inside? Windows. So for centuries there was a tax based on how many windows a house in England had... There was some extra business because as always, when there is a tax the creative juices of avoidance and evasion get rolling.
So what you can still observe to this day in England is how older houses, where it’s clear there was once a window and then it was bricked up to reduce window tax. We also know there were cases where windows would be installed that would allow light to come into two different rooms, so the glaziers had some business there...
In at least one country that had a bachelor tax, there was an exception that if you could prove that you had asked a woman to marry you and she had refused, then you were exempt from the tax. So a market arose for what were called professional lady rejectors, who, for a fee, would fill out the form saying yes, you had asked them for their hand in marriage and they had refused. And you would take this to the tax office and be exempt from the bachelor tax...
But is there a concern that participatory budgeting would radically realign the actual federal budget? Based on the evidence from her research, Lamberton doesn’t see that happening.
LAMBERTON: So in the aggregate what ends up happening, in the U.S. at least, is the defense budget, which is a huge, huge portion of the pie, goes down — and I will say that’s in part because our participants tended to be slightly more liberal than the population as a whole. But a lot of the other budgetary categories don’t change an enormous amount. So while on an individual level you might see big change, in the aggregate it actually isn’t a seismic shock that would be that different from what you would see when an administration changes...
KOLL: The Japanese economy ultimately is very much a two-tiered economy, in the sense that you’ve got the economic concentration in the megacities — Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. Those three centers effectively account for about three-quarters of Japan’s employment and value-add creation. So the hinterland, the rest of the country, effectively is always in deficit, and that — if you look at the Japanese national budget — is also reflected in a very big redistribution effort. If the budget in Japan is about 80 trillion, you find that almost 20 trillion go to redistributing funds from the rich urban centers into the regions of the economy...
What’s happening in Japan — the imbalance between cities and “the hinterland” — is not so different from what’s happening in many countries, including the U.S., as the world gets more urbanized. But in Japan, it is extreme. Ninety-four percent of the Japanese population lives in urban areas. In the U.S., that number is just over 80 percent. The trend in Japan, as elsewhere, is that young people who grow up in rural areas eventually move to the big city, which leaves their hometown with an aging population and a depleted tax base.
To fight this problem, Japan introduced in 2008 what’s called a hometown tax system, or furusato nozei. It allowed people to make donations to their hometowns — which, after the first 2,000 yen or roughly $20, can then be deducted from their personal taxes. But here’s the thing: the donation, despite the name, didn’t actually have to be to your own hometown; you could direct the money to any region. Nor did you even have to be from a rural area to take advantage of the hometown tax. And — here’s maybe the most Japanese thing about the hometown tax — when you made a donation to a particular region, they would send you something nice in return."
Post ID: 2313833795031078327
Links - 5th February 2020 (1)
UK polls: Brexit Party attracts numerous Indian-origin candidates - "Britain's Brexit Party, led by Nigel Farage as the far-right outfit pitching for a so-called hard exit from the European Union (EU), has managed to attract a large number of Indian- origin candidates to contest the General Election... "The UK has become the Jewel in the Crown of the European Raj," says Dr Kulvinder Singh Manik, who is contesting from Bradford South in northern England – a Labour Party stronghold."I want to stand up for my people, to emancipate them from this anti-democracy. We are living in a Marxist-Lenin attempt to overthrow our democracy," says Manik, who works in the state-funded National Health Service (NHS).The 47-year-old had voted to remain in the EU in the 2016 Referendum but has since changed his mind and says his family is fully behind his anti-Brexit stance. Punjab-born Surjit Singh Duhre, contesting a similar Labour stronghold of Doncaster Central, claimed receiving death threats on the campaign trail and had to be convinced by party leader Farage not to quit the race."I've been told I'm a racist, a traitor and a Judas just because I'm standing for the Brexit Party," says 64-year-old Duhre, a former Labour Party member... Ironically, despite being perceived as a party which is predominantly anti-immigration, it has managed to attract numerous candidates from Britain's immigrant communities."
Doubtless Uncle Tanveers according to liberals
The wealthy single Chinese women choosing white sperm donors to have a baby - they want a family but not a Chinese husband - "US sperm bank California Cryobank has 70 available donors out of 500 who identify as Chinese. But experts say regardless of the availability of Chinese or Chinese-American donors, women are still choosing to have mixed-race children.“Basically, the selected sperm donors are mostly white”... Zhan Yingying, a co-founder of the Diversity Family organisation, said it was rare for her to come across a mother who chose a sperm donor of Chinese ethnicity. Traits such as double eyelids and pale skin are often valued according to Chinese beauty standards. “Before choosing the sperm donor I had not considered a particular race,” insisted Carrie, but after seeing the catalogue she realised she had a preference for foreign physical traits – and now has two half-Danish children.For baby Oscar, Xiaogunzhu said personality was the major factor in her decision, as the donor was listed as “full of joy”. But on her Weibo blog, photos of Oscar with the hashtag #mixed-race baby draw admiration.“I personally don’t care about the colour of the skin,” she said. “I only care that the eyes are big and the features are good.”"
Meme - "Macaroni Cheeseburger"
"Why do Americans eat like they have free health care?"
Man whose deadly farts ‘can kill mosquitoes hired to create Mosquito Repellent made from his intestinal gas’ - "Joe Rwamirama, 48, from Kampala, Uganda says boffins have launched a study into the chemical properties of his unique trouser toxin. The odd job man says no one in his home village has ever contracted malaria because his powers knock out insects over a six mile radius.If true, that would make his fallout zone larger than that of the atomic bomb which destroyed Hiroshima in 1945."
In Japan, Dead American Brands Get a Second Chance - "North American visitors to the shopping corridors of Tokyo and Osaka may be surprised to find brands they’d written off as dead at home. In between the Uniqlos, Lawsons, Tokyu Hands, and other domestic chains that dominate the streets of Japanese cities, you’ll see American names that you’ll recognize from the nearest dead or dying mall: Toys ‘R’ Us, Tower Records, Barney’s, and Dean & Deluca. They echo U.S. chains that have been gone bankrupt in their homeland and yet survive, even thrive, in Japan and other Asian markets...
there are as many explanations as there are chains living out what seem to be second lives.
Licensing agreements
American brands still carry cachet
Density, density, density...
many Japanese listeners still consider obtaining actual CDs or even vinyl LPs an important sign of their fandom for artists. In 2016, Quartz reported that nearly 80 percent of music sales were on hard copies... The country is about ten times as dense as the United States, and that makes a big difference for retailers with an urban foothold. For example, most of the 40 million people that live in the Tokyo metropolitan area alone can reach the city center in about an hour"
The I.R.S. Sent a Letter to 3.9 Million People. It Saved Some of Their Lives. - The New York Times - "“There has been a lot of skepticism, especially in economics, that health insurance has a mortality impact,” said Sarah Miller, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan who researches the topic and was not involved with the Treasury research. “It’s really important that this is a randomized controlled trial. It’s a really high standard of evidence that you can’t just dismiss.”... gaining coverage was associated with a 12 percent decline in mortality over the two-year study period (the first months of coverage seemed to be most important, presumably because people could get caught up on various appointments and treatments they might have been missing)."
White Couple's 'Clean' Chinese Restaurant Shuts Down After Only 8 Months - "Lucky Lee’s, a Chinese-American restaurant ran by nutritionist Arielle Haspel, has closed down eight months after opening its doors in April... Lucky Lee’s opening in April received major backlash from the Asian community after its restaurateur marketed the restaurant’s Chinese food as “clean” while traditional food as “oily,” “salty,” and “icky.”... The reason behind the closure was not revealed despite a report in October from The Villager stating the restaurant was “flourishing” after the controversy died down."
A vegan German restaurant would probably fail too
In Rogue One, Cassian says he has been in this fight since he was 6 years old. But when he was 6, the Empire didn't exist yet. This is because he fought as a child soldier for a pro-CIS insurgent group against the Republic. : StarWars - "To Cassian, and presumably many former separatists, the fight against the Republic and against the Empire was one unified struggle. To Cassian, the rebellion he was fighting for in Rogue One was a continuation of the same fight he fought in the Clone Wars. An interesting perspective."
Meme - "Let us all remember the time before the Kardashian family knew about plastic surgery"
Court sides with bank staffer who says he was denied promotion because he’s not gay - "The Canadian Human Rights Commission was ordered to properly assess a discrimination complaint by a former employee of a major bank who claims his boss told him he had “no hope” for promotion unless he joined their “group” of gay and bisexual men.He was told only males who were gay or bisexual were promoted in the office, he claims.The commission had improperly dismissed the employee’s discrimination complaint based on sexual orientation, in this case for being straight... Aaren Jagadeesh worked as a financial services representative for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in Toronto. He was repeatedly turned down for promotions."
Enforcement officer kicks PMD rider off device along Bedok Reservoir Road to stop him
Brooklyn teacher sacked after telling first graders that Santa and Tooth Fairy aren't real - "Parents at a Park Slope school were upset after their children came home crying Monday because their substitute teacher told them some unsettling news."
An American Food Site Misunderstood What Mincemeat Is And Published A Ground Beef Pie - "Others started getting into it over other food terms, like the lie that is grilled cheese, which maybe should be called "skillet-fry cheese?"... the site updated its very popular recipe to now read: Mincemeat and Apple Tart — Now Meat Free!!And, because Spruce "stands by everything we do," Handelsman said the office was going to bake the tart with the ground beef "and all try it.""People make beef and fruit dishes all the time," he laughed. "I bet it's going to be pretty good.""
Chinese Scholars Are Claiming That English Is a Chinese Dialect - "Apparently, almost all European languages are derived from Mandarin. At least that’s what the World Civilisation Research Association, a group made up of Chinese scholars and professors, would like us to believe, reports state. They say this claim is backed by over 20 years of research, which were presented at the first ever China International Frontier Education Summit in Beijing in July... Apart from language, the organisation claimed that Western civilisation also originated in China. They say this is backed by Zhai Du Gangjian, a professor who supposedly conducted 20 years of research that shows how the civilisations that first spoke English came from the Indus River Valley when China’s Yellow Emperor ruled it. Perhaps that wildest among the scholars’ statements is one that claims that accounts on ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt were all fabricated... “Thanks, we can no longer laugh at the Koreans who claimed Confucius and Genghis Khan are Korean”"
China is going to claim possession of the rest of the world due to historical precedent soon
The New York Times - Posts - "One of India’s most troubling rape cases of recent months was brought to a sudden and shocking end on Friday. Four men who had been accused of raping and killing a young woman were taken under a bridge by police officers and shot dead."
Not sure who is more disturbing - those cheering police executions or those gullible enough to believe the police brought 4 suspects to a crime scene at 3am to reenact the crime, where 2 tried to snatch the police's guns so all 4 were shot. And that this wasn't the first time this had happened
From the Indian community to Chinese to Filipinos, Singapore feels the strain of immigration - "When a Singaporean man was caught on camera in October yelling vulgarities at a security guard outside his apartment building, telling the hapless worker he had paid S$1.5 million (US$1.1 million) for the place and should not have to fork out extra for guest parking, the video of the exchange soon went viral.Singaporeans on social media quickly identified the man, assumed he was an Indian expatriate, and told him to “go home” and not bring his country’s caste system to the city state... Close to seven in 10 of 4,015 citizens and permanent residents polled thought immigrants were not doing enough to integrate into Singapore... Singapore Indians were among those who raged against Erramalli in private gatherings and on social media, their feelings fuelled by the perception that these new migrants tend to look down on them.As National University of Singapore historian John Solomon recounted in a 2016 book on the Indian diaspora, members of the Tamil community have expressed concern about the appearance of caste names in wedding and funeral announcements in Singapore’s only Tamil-language newspaper.“Whether or not new immigration from India is indeed bringing about a gradual revival in caste identities in Singapore, the growth of this perception has manifested itself in popular xenophobic stereotypes about the new Indian migrant as an exporter of atavistic and backward social ideas,” he wrote. Kumaran Pillai, publisher of current affairs website The Independent News, said recent Indian migrants tended to “have their own enclaves”. “They hang around and move in their own circles, they rarely mix and talk with locals”... Asked where this perception came from, he gave anecdotes. Pillai said Indian immigrants often cut queues “because [they are] richer or hold a better position”. It was common to see foreigners being rude to service staff, he added. “They’re perceived as a bit uppity, those in management positions. It’s not caste, it’s class consciousness,” Pillai said. And Erramalli telling the security guard “I’m not staying in HDB [public housing] , you know” embodied that snobbery... He also gave examples in which Singaporean-Indian women had supposedly been judged by immigrant colleagues over practices deemed unacceptable in India, such as wearing short skirts or enjoying a drink in a bar with male co-workers."
Apparently condemning the caste system is xenophobic
Unmentioned in the article is that the security guard was Chinese. So much for 'Chinese Privilege'
Doubtless Uncle Tanveers according to liberals
The wealthy single Chinese women choosing white sperm donors to have a baby - they want a family but not a Chinese husband - "US sperm bank California Cryobank has 70 available donors out of 500 who identify as Chinese. But experts say regardless of the availability of Chinese or Chinese-American donors, women are still choosing to have mixed-race children.“Basically, the selected sperm donors are mostly white”... Zhan Yingying, a co-founder of the Diversity Family organisation, said it was rare for her to come across a mother who chose a sperm donor of Chinese ethnicity. Traits such as double eyelids and pale skin are often valued according to Chinese beauty standards. “Before choosing the sperm donor I had not considered a particular race,” insisted Carrie, but after seeing the catalogue she realised she had a preference for foreign physical traits – and now has two half-Danish children.For baby Oscar, Xiaogunzhu said personality was the major factor in her decision, as the donor was listed as “full of joy”. But on her Weibo blog, photos of Oscar with the hashtag #mixed-race baby draw admiration.“I personally don’t care about the colour of the skin,” she said. “I only care that the eyes are big and the features are good.”"
Meme - "Macaroni Cheeseburger"
"Why do Americans eat like they have free health care?"
Man whose deadly farts ‘can kill mosquitoes hired to create Mosquito Repellent made from his intestinal gas’ - "Joe Rwamirama, 48, from Kampala, Uganda says boffins have launched a study into the chemical properties of his unique trouser toxin. The odd job man says no one in his home village has ever contracted malaria because his powers knock out insects over a six mile radius.If true, that would make his fallout zone larger than that of the atomic bomb which destroyed Hiroshima in 1945."
In Japan, Dead American Brands Get a Second Chance - "North American visitors to the shopping corridors of Tokyo and Osaka may be surprised to find brands they’d written off as dead at home. In between the Uniqlos, Lawsons, Tokyu Hands, and other domestic chains that dominate the streets of Japanese cities, you’ll see American names that you’ll recognize from the nearest dead or dying mall: Toys ‘R’ Us, Tower Records, Barney’s, and Dean & Deluca. They echo U.S. chains that have been gone bankrupt in their homeland and yet survive, even thrive, in Japan and other Asian markets...
there are as many explanations as there are chains living out what seem to be second lives.
Licensing agreements
American brands still carry cachet
Density, density, density...
many Japanese listeners still consider obtaining actual CDs or even vinyl LPs an important sign of their fandom for artists. In 2016, Quartz reported that nearly 80 percent of music sales were on hard copies... The country is about ten times as dense as the United States, and that makes a big difference for retailers with an urban foothold. For example, most of the 40 million people that live in the Tokyo metropolitan area alone can reach the city center in about an hour"
The I.R.S. Sent a Letter to 3.9 Million People. It Saved Some of Their Lives. - The New York Times - "“There has been a lot of skepticism, especially in economics, that health insurance has a mortality impact,” said Sarah Miller, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan who researches the topic and was not involved with the Treasury research. “It’s really important that this is a randomized controlled trial. It’s a really high standard of evidence that you can’t just dismiss.”... gaining coverage was associated with a 12 percent decline in mortality over the two-year study period (the first months of coverage seemed to be most important, presumably because people could get caught up on various appointments and treatments they might have been missing)."
White Couple's 'Clean' Chinese Restaurant Shuts Down After Only 8 Months - "Lucky Lee’s, a Chinese-American restaurant ran by nutritionist Arielle Haspel, has closed down eight months after opening its doors in April... Lucky Lee’s opening in April received major backlash from the Asian community after its restaurateur marketed the restaurant’s Chinese food as “clean” while traditional food as “oily,” “salty,” and “icky.”... The reason behind the closure was not revealed despite a report in October from The Villager stating the restaurant was “flourishing” after the controversy died down."
A vegan German restaurant would probably fail too
In Rogue One, Cassian says he has been in this fight since he was 6 years old. But when he was 6, the Empire didn't exist yet. This is because he fought as a child soldier for a pro-CIS insurgent group against the Republic. : StarWars - "To Cassian, and presumably many former separatists, the fight against the Republic and against the Empire was one unified struggle. To Cassian, the rebellion he was fighting for in Rogue One was a continuation of the same fight he fought in the Clone Wars. An interesting perspective."
Meme - "Let us all remember the time before the Kardashian family knew about plastic surgery"
Court sides with bank staffer who says he was denied promotion because he’s not gay - "The Canadian Human Rights Commission was ordered to properly assess a discrimination complaint by a former employee of a major bank who claims his boss told him he had “no hope” for promotion unless he joined their “group” of gay and bisexual men.He was told only males who were gay or bisexual were promoted in the office, he claims.The commission had improperly dismissed the employee’s discrimination complaint based on sexual orientation, in this case for being straight... Aaren Jagadeesh worked as a financial services representative for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in Toronto. He was repeatedly turned down for promotions."
Enforcement officer kicks PMD rider off device along Bedok Reservoir Road to stop him
Brooklyn teacher sacked after telling first graders that Santa and Tooth Fairy aren't real - "Parents at a Park Slope school were upset after their children came home crying Monday because their substitute teacher told them some unsettling news."
An American Food Site Misunderstood What Mincemeat Is And Published A Ground Beef Pie - "Others started getting into it over other food terms, like the lie that is grilled cheese, which maybe should be called "skillet-fry cheese?"... the site updated its very popular recipe to now read: Mincemeat and Apple Tart — Now Meat Free!!And, because Spruce "stands by everything we do," Handelsman said the office was going to bake the tart with the ground beef "and all try it.""People make beef and fruit dishes all the time," he laughed. "I bet it's going to be pretty good.""
Chinese Scholars Are Claiming That English Is a Chinese Dialect - "Apparently, almost all European languages are derived from Mandarin. At least that’s what the World Civilisation Research Association, a group made up of Chinese scholars and professors, would like us to believe, reports state. They say this claim is backed by over 20 years of research, which were presented at the first ever China International Frontier Education Summit in Beijing in July... Apart from language, the organisation claimed that Western civilisation also originated in China. They say this is backed by Zhai Du Gangjian, a professor who supposedly conducted 20 years of research that shows how the civilisations that first spoke English came from the Indus River Valley when China’s Yellow Emperor ruled it. Perhaps that wildest among the scholars’ statements is one that claims that accounts on ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt were all fabricated... “Thanks, we can no longer laugh at the Koreans who claimed Confucius and Genghis Khan are Korean”"
China is going to claim possession of the rest of the world due to historical precedent soon
The New York Times - Posts - "One of India’s most troubling rape cases of recent months was brought to a sudden and shocking end on Friday. Four men who had been accused of raping and killing a young woman were taken under a bridge by police officers and shot dead."
Not sure who is more disturbing - those cheering police executions or those gullible enough to believe the police brought 4 suspects to a crime scene at 3am to reenact the crime, where 2 tried to snatch the police's guns so all 4 were shot. And that this wasn't the first time this had happened
From the Indian community to Chinese to Filipinos, Singapore feels the strain of immigration - "When a Singaporean man was caught on camera in October yelling vulgarities at a security guard outside his apartment building, telling the hapless worker he had paid S$1.5 million (US$1.1 million) for the place and should not have to fork out extra for guest parking, the video of the exchange soon went viral.Singaporeans on social media quickly identified the man, assumed he was an Indian expatriate, and told him to “go home” and not bring his country’s caste system to the city state... Close to seven in 10 of 4,015 citizens and permanent residents polled thought immigrants were not doing enough to integrate into Singapore... Singapore Indians were among those who raged against Erramalli in private gatherings and on social media, their feelings fuelled by the perception that these new migrants tend to look down on them.As National University of Singapore historian John Solomon recounted in a 2016 book on the Indian diaspora, members of the Tamil community have expressed concern about the appearance of caste names in wedding and funeral announcements in Singapore’s only Tamil-language newspaper.“Whether or not new immigration from India is indeed bringing about a gradual revival in caste identities in Singapore, the growth of this perception has manifested itself in popular xenophobic stereotypes about the new Indian migrant as an exporter of atavistic and backward social ideas,” he wrote. Kumaran Pillai, publisher of current affairs website The Independent News, said recent Indian migrants tended to “have their own enclaves”. “They hang around and move in their own circles, they rarely mix and talk with locals”... Asked where this perception came from, he gave anecdotes. Pillai said Indian immigrants often cut queues “because [they are] richer or hold a better position”. It was common to see foreigners being rude to service staff, he added. “They’re perceived as a bit uppity, those in management positions. It’s not caste, it’s class consciousness,” Pillai said. And Erramalli telling the security guard “I’m not staying in HDB [public housing] , you know” embodied that snobbery... He also gave examples in which Singaporean-Indian women had supposedly been judged by immigrant colleagues over practices deemed unacceptable in India, such as wearing short skirts or enjoying a drink in a bar with male co-workers."
Apparently condemning the caste system is xenophobic
Unmentioned in the article is that the security guard was Chinese. So much for 'Chinese Privilege'
Post ID: 97416767585676488
Tuesday, February 04, 2020
Links - 4th February 2020 (2)
Kathleen Stock on Twitter - "Just been told that Oxford University Press (USA) dropped entire book of interviews with women in philosophy, after Holly Lawford-Smith & I were proposed as included in it. Our inclusion was judged "problematic". This after Kate Manne withdrew for same reason. More when I know it"
Feminism only supports women who toe the party line
Daniel Schildt on Twitter - "Media websites: “Our European visitors are important to us. This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European Economic Area while we work to ensure your data is protected in accordance with applicable EU laws.”"
Thot Police - Posts - "If a sexy man compliments me that's fine. If a ugly man looks at me for too long that's harassment. Yeah i said it! I don't make the rules sorry"
"It's only sexual harassment of he's ugly or poor."
"If he’s cute, it’s called flirting but if he’s ugly that’s sexual harassment and you’d better go to HR."
"Girls banding together to support and help one another and end harassment from ugly boys is why i live #Riverdale"
French exchange student at NUS gets scolded for questioning chicken rice stallholder about food’s origins
Japanese Politicians Are Thinking about Building Gundam. Like, Real, Working Gundam. - "Masaaki Taira and Hideki Niwa are slated to discuss how the LDP is "seriously considering the development of Gundam."Back in 2008, it was estimated that a working (not just a full scale mock-up like above), one-to-one scale would cost US$725,000,000 for parts and materials. That figure doesn't include the cost of labor or the cost of insanity required to build such a machine. These politicians probably do not mean they want to make a 60-foot tall, 43.7 metric ton Gundam replica (at least I hope they don't), but instead, large mecha contraptions that could be used by, presumably, the country's Self Defense Force. In an age of drone attacks, however, mecha don't exactly seem ideal on the battlefield."
BBC accused of being partial on poultry with Christmas advert featuring vegan turkeys - "Farmers have accused the BBC of being in breach of its impartiality rules by promoting veganism with a Christmas advert featuring turkeys wearing "I love vegans" jumpers. The animated birds are seen wearing “I love vegans” jumpers in the recently released festive clip, and rejoicing at meat-free meals. Concerns have been raised over the impartiality of the “campaigning” broadcaster and the impact of its coverage on livestock producers, with the advert cited as another example of a perceived bias against rural communities... “The cartoon turkeys in ‘Go Vegan!’ t-shirts are intended to be comedic and playful in keeping with the slightly surreal, exuberant spirit of the film, rather than any kind of endorsement or encouragement of a vegan lifestyle.” Turkey has steadily become the primary Christmas centrepiece following its introduction to the British dinner table in the 16th century, replacing the varied game of goose, boar or peacock"
Long-distance timber trade underpinned the Roman Empire's construction - "By comparing their dated planks to Mediterranean and central European oak reference chronologies, the authors found that the oaks used for the Roman portico planks were taken from the Jura mountains in eastern France, over 1700km away. Based on the sapwood present in 8 of the thirteen samples, the authors were able to narrow the date these oaks were felled to between 40 and 60 CE and determined that the planks all came from neighboring trees. Given the timber's dimensions and the vast distance it travelled, the authors suggest that ancient Romans (or their traders) likely floated the timber down the Saône and Rhône rivers in present-day France before transporting it over the Mediterranean Sea and then up the river Tiber to Rome, though this cannot be confirmed. The authors note that the difficulty of obtaining these planks—which were not specially sourced for an aesthetic function but used in the portico's foundations—suggests that the logistical organization of ancient Rome was considerable, and that their trade network was highly advanced."
🅽🅸🅲 | MrNotThatFamous on Twitter - "It’s not that men are creeps- men are ostracized. Grown women cry and scream when they see male celebrities- a man would be tackled and removed from the location. Every grown lady I’ve encounter says they are a child’s girlfriend and/or future wife. Guys can’t even joke like that"
Man builds fake EU border and charges desperate people thousands to cross - "Russian authorities have apprehended a man after he erected a fake border near Finnish territory in an alleged attempt to swindle desperate people looking to pass into the European Union."
Opinion | America Doesn’t Need France’s Economy - The New York Times - "Tankersley’s piece coincided with a fresh round of nationwide strikes in France, where at least 800,000 people took to the streets to protest Emmanuel Macron’s attempts to modernize the country’s byzantine public pension systems. At least one of these plans — there are 42 in all — dates to the reign of Louis XIV, and some kick in when workers retire in their fifties, costing the state an ever-mounting fortune as average lifespans get longer.Successive French administrations of both the left and right have been trying to reform this and other aspects of the country’s statist economy for decades, with limited results. Social benefits, once given, are hard to pare, much less withdraw. Hence the frequent strikes: Since 1789, French governments have been acutely sensitive to mass protests, and too often have capitulated to them. Hence also France’s perennial economic crisis.The country’s unemployment rate has not fallen below 7 percent since 1983 and is now at 8.6 percent. Long-term unemployment exceeds 40 percent, compared with 13.3 percent in the U.S. The country’s annual growth rate has barely exceeded an average of 1 percent per year since the 21st century began. It’s expected to come in at 1.3 percent for this year. As of last year, the median monthly take-home pay was just $1,930, meaning half of all French workers make even less. It’s why the country erupted in protest when Macron proposed raising fuel taxes a few cents per liter... the health service that used to be the toast of Francophiles is overwhelmed, understaffed, and “on the brink of collapse,” according to a report in The Guardian. French universities, while cheap, are overcrowded, underfunded, and notoriously mediocre: “Too easy to get in and too easy to get out,” as one local observer put it. French workers exercise their right to strike roughly seven times more frequently than German workers do, and 125 times more than Swiss ones... All of this should stand as a stark warning to Democrats. France has the highest overall tax take among O.E.C.D. countries (46.9 percent of G.D.P.), the highest rate of government spending, (56.38 percent of G.D.P.), the highest rate of safety-net spending, and the third highest rate of pension spending.Whatever else all this taxing and spending might be doing, it’s clearly not creating jobs or prosperity. As for making people happy, France doesn’t break the top 20 in this year’s World Happiness Report. Even Mexico ranks higher... If anything, it’s a tribute to the French that they continue to punch above their weight in so many fields, when the weight of the state lies so heavily on their backs.But as far as models go, the story of France’s economy in the past 40 years is mostly one of bad turns, thwarted hopes, and forgone opportunities"
Segments of Random Thoughts on Twitter - "Facebook is a white supremacist site. It frequently bans people who want progress for the Muslim world and therefore criticise it, because FB doesn't want the Muslim world to make progress. They want Muslims to be free from criticism and stuck in their backwardness and misery."
John on Twitter - "what are redditors "saving the planet" for if they call unborn children parasites"
Cosmic Crisp: This latest apple launch is nutritious and lasts in fridge for a year - "More than two decades in the making, a new apple variety called the Cosmic Crisp started shipping to retailers across the country in recent days. The new variety of the fruit was developed by researchers at Washington State University, who describe it as an exceptionally tasty and long-lasting cross between the disease-resistant Enterprise and the Honeycrisp apples... "Enterprise was chosen really because of its appearance," Evans told a podcast devoted to eaters called the Sporkful with Dan Pashman. "It looks really nice — it's a very pretty apple."Dubbed Cosmic Crisp for the bright yellow dots on its skin that resemble stars, the apple industry's newest addition keeps well in storage and especially the refrigerator, where it reportedly can still be in eating shape even after a year.But do the new apples live up to the hype, in terms of their taste? According to Pashman, the answer is a resounding yes."That's very juicy, very juicy," he said after a tasting. "The entire sensory experience of this apple is just amped up and elevated. It's extremely crunchy; it's extremely juicy; it's extremely sweet and also acidic. It's like a technicolor apple."
This Is Why Red Delicious Apples Suck So Hard - "Bland, sometimes cardboardy in texture and usually covered in wax, they’re still found in gas stations, in bowls at the reception desks of fancy hotels and, yes, in brown bag school lunches. But who likes to eat them?Not even many growers... If you want it to taste better, the Red Delicious needs to be left on the tree so long that a condition called watercore develops. “What that means is the starches and sugars get converted to sorbitol, or unfermentable sugar,” he says. “They’re very sweet, but they don’t last long. If you let the Red Delicious do that, even the cardboard ones can become nonoffensive. They can get a little interesting-er.”If you want a better-tasting apple, go to an orchard or farm to buy apples.Or try a different variety like the Fuji, which is a better-tasting descendant of the Red Delicious. Or taste an Empire or a Jonagold.“And Winesap — they’re like biting into a glass of chardonnay. They’re so delicious”"
Why Airlines Make Flights Longer on Purpose - "In the 1960s it took five hours to fly from New York to Los Angeles, and just 45 minutes to hop from New York to Washington, DC. Today, these same flights now take six-plus hours and 75 minutes respectively, although the airports haven’t moved further apart... Padding is the extra time airlines allow themselves to fly from A to B. Because these flights were consistently late, airlines have now baked delays experienced for decades into their schedules instead of improving operations... not only does your journey take longer but creating the illusion of punctuality means there’s no pressure on airlines to become more efficient, meaning congestion and carbon emissions will keep rising... this tactic not only enables airlines to claim they have improved on-time (OT) flight performance, but it also makes it easier to swerve the “magical three-hour limit” on delays – the threshold that qualifies passengers to file compensation claims at least under European Union passenger rights’ law"
What’s the Difference Between Greek, Icelandic, and Australian Yogurt? - "Greek
This style of yogurt is arguably what started the whole thick-and-creamy yogurt trend.. traditionally Greek yogurt is made only with full-fat milk... It’s the most tart and tangy of the three....
Icelandic
Also know as skyr, this yogurt from the Nordic island is giving Greek a run for its money. It’s actually made the same way as Greek yogurt, but it’s strained just a bit more to result in a seriously stick-to-your-spoon product that has even more protein. It’s traditionally made with nonfat yogurt, but popular brands like Siggi’s and Smári often add a bit of whole milk or even cream to give it richness. Overall, it’s less tart and more decadent than Greek yogurt.
Australian
Unlike Greek and Icelandic yogurt, Australian yogurt is unstrained. It’s still a bit richer and creamier than traditional yogurt, but the reason for that varies by brand. The popular brand Noosa uses only whole milk to achieve this, while Wallaby uses nonfat milk, but cooks it slower and longer than traditional yogurt to achieve that extra creaminess. Noosa also sweetens their yogurt with honey to give it a unique flavor."
"It's like something Trump would do": Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones hits out at new sequel - "The SNL comedian, who played Patty Tolan in Paul Feig’s 2016 all-female reboot, responded on Twitter after it was revealed that a third instalment of the original 1980s movies will arrive in 2020 – directed by Jason Reitman. Jones wrote: “So insulting. Like fuck us. We dint count. It’s like something trump would do. (Trump voice)”Gonna redo ghostbusteeeeers, better with men, will be huge. Those women ain’t ghostbusteeeeers” ugh so annoying. Such a dick move. And I don’t give fuck I’m saying something!!”... “I have so much respect for what Paul [Feig] created with those brilliant actresses, and would love to see more stories from them,” Reitman said. “However, this new movie will follow the trajectory of the original film.”"
So if you make a shitty movie which bombs, other people aren't allowed to reboot the series
No wonder her version failed
Domestic Workers Claim To Want 'Ang Moh' Employers. Does This Actually Make A Difference? - "my boss mentioned that his neighbours not only allowed their domestic worker to date, but to bring her boyfriend back to their house.This raised a couple of eyebrows, but on the whole, nobody was that surprised. My boss’ neighbours are French... domestic workers perceive foreign employers as being ‘better’, and would prefer to work for an expat family. Their stories also suggested that the stereotype has some basis in truth, as stereotypes often do... the kind of work performed for expat and local employers can differ, leading to different expectations being set. Local families tend to engage domestic workers to look after young children and/or their ageing parents, while expats virtually never request help with eldercare.Leizle also suggested that based on her and her friends’ experiences, local employers can be more accommodating of a new worker. “Most local families are willing to teach you when you are new, but some expat employers have very high expectations from you that your service is 100%.”... I asked David what the top requests he gets from domestic workers are. He told me that the second most common is for an ‘ang moh employer’. The first is that they want to be treated like family."
Feminism only supports women who toe the party line
Daniel Schildt on Twitter - "Media websites: “Our European visitors are important to us. This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European Economic Area while we work to ensure your data is protected in accordance with applicable EU laws.”"
Thot Police - Posts - "If a sexy man compliments me that's fine. If a ugly man looks at me for too long that's harassment. Yeah i said it! I don't make the rules sorry"
"It's only sexual harassment of he's ugly or poor."
"If he’s cute, it’s called flirting but if he’s ugly that’s sexual harassment and you’d better go to HR."
"Girls banding together to support and help one another and end harassment from ugly boys is why i live #Riverdale"
French exchange student at NUS gets scolded for questioning chicken rice stallholder about food’s origins
Japanese Politicians Are Thinking about Building Gundam. Like, Real, Working Gundam. - "Masaaki Taira and Hideki Niwa are slated to discuss how the LDP is "seriously considering the development of Gundam."Back in 2008, it was estimated that a working (not just a full scale mock-up like above), one-to-one scale would cost US$725,000,000 for parts and materials. That figure doesn't include the cost of labor or the cost of insanity required to build such a machine. These politicians probably do not mean they want to make a 60-foot tall, 43.7 metric ton Gundam replica (at least I hope they don't), but instead, large mecha contraptions that could be used by, presumably, the country's Self Defense Force. In an age of drone attacks, however, mecha don't exactly seem ideal on the battlefield."
BBC accused of being partial on poultry with Christmas advert featuring vegan turkeys - "Farmers have accused the BBC of being in breach of its impartiality rules by promoting veganism with a Christmas advert featuring turkeys wearing "I love vegans" jumpers. The animated birds are seen wearing “I love vegans” jumpers in the recently released festive clip, and rejoicing at meat-free meals. Concerns have been raised over the impartiality of the “campaigning” broadcaster and the impact of its coverage on livestock producers, with the advert cited as another example of a perceived bias against rural communities... “The cartoon turkeys in ‘Go Vegan!’ t-shirts are intended to be comedic and playful in keeping with the slightly surreal, exuberant spirit of the film, rather than any kind of endorsement or encouragement of a vegan lifestyle.” Turkey has steadily become the primary Christmas centrepiece following its introduction to the British dinner table in the 16th century, replacing the varied game of goose, boar or peacock"
Long-distance timber trade underpinned the Roman Empire's construction - "By comparing their dated planks to Mediterranean and central European oak reference chronologies, the authors found that the oaks used for the Roman portico planks were taken from the Jura mountains in eastern France, over 1700km away. Based on the sapwood present in 8 of the thirteen samples, the authors were able to narrow the date these oaks were felled to between 40 and 60 CE and determined that the planks all came from neighboring trees. Given the timber's dimensions and the vast distance it travelled, the authors suggest that ancient Romans (or their traders) likely floated the timber down the Saône and Rhône rivers in present-day France before transporting it over the Mediterranean Sea and then up the river Tiber to Rome, though this cannot be confirmed. The authors note that the difficulty of obtaining these planks—which were not specially sourced for an aesthetic function but used in the portico's foundations—suggests that the logistical organization of ancient Rome was considerable, and that their trade network was highly advanced."
🅽🅸🅲 | MrNotThatFamous on Twitter - "It’s not that men are creeps- men are ostracized. Grown women cry and scream when they see male celebrities- a man would be tackled and removed from the location. Every grown lady I’ve encounter says they are a child’s girlfriend and/or future wife. Guys can’t even joke like that"
Man builds fake EU border and charges desperate people thousands to cross - "Russian authorities have apprehended a man after he erected a fake border near Finnish territory in an alleged attempt to swindle desperate people looking to pass into the European Union."
Opinion | America Doesn’t Need France’s Economy - The New York Times - "Tankersley’s piece coincided with a fresh round of nationwide strikes in France, where at least 800,000 people took to the streets to protest Emmanuel Macron’s attempts to modernize the country’s byzantine public pension systems. At least one of these plans — there are 42 in all — dates to the reign of Louis XIV, and some kick in when workers retire in their fifties, costing the state an ever-mounting fortune as average lifespans get longer.Successive French administrations of both the left and right have been trying to reform this and other aspects of the country’s statist economy for decades, with limited results. Social benefits, once given, are hard to pare, much less withdraw. Hence the frequent strikes: Since 1789, French governments have been acutely sensitive to mass protests, and too often have capitulated to them. Hence also France’s perennial economic crisis.The country’s unemployment rate has not fallen below 7 percent since 1983 and is now at 8.6 percent. Long-term unemployment exceeds 40 percent, compared with 13.3 percent in the U.S. The country’s annual growth rate has barely exceeded an average of 1 percent per year since the 21st century began. It’s expected to come in at 1.3 percent for this year. As of last year, the median monthly take-home pay was just $1,930, meaning half of all French workers make even less. It’s why the country erupted in protest when Macron proposed raising fuel taxes a few cents per liter... the health service that used to be the toast of Francophiles is overwhelmed, understaffed, and “on the brink of collapse,” according to a report in The Guardian. French universities, while cheap, are overcrowded, underfunded, and notoriously mediocre: “Too easy to get in and too easy to get out,” as one local observer put it. French workers exercise their right to strike roughly seven times more frequently than German workers do, and 125 times more than Swiss ones... All of this should stand as a stark warning to Democrats. France has the highest overall tax take among O.E.C.D. countries (46.9 percent of G.D.P.), the highest rate of government spending, (56.38 percent of G.D.P.), the highest rate of safety-net spending, and the third highest rate of pension spending.Whatever else all this taxing and spending might be doing, it’s clearly not creating jobs or prosperity. As for making people happy, France doesn’t break the top 20 in this year’s World Happiness Report. Even Mexico ranks higher... If anything, it’s a tribute to the French that they continue to punch above their weight in so many fields, when the weight of the state lies so heavily on their backs.But as far as models go, the story of France’s economy in the past 40 years is mostly one of bad turns, thwarted hopes, and forgone opportunities"
Segments of Random Thoughts on Twitter - "Facebook is a white supremacist site. It frequently bans people who want progress for the Muslim world and therefore criticise it, because FB doesn't want the Muslim world to make progress. They want Muslims to be free from criticism and stuck in their backwardness and misery."
John on Twitter - "what are redditors "saving the planet" for if they call unborn children parasites"
Cosmic Crisp: This latest apple launch is nutritious and lasts in fridge for a year - "More than two decades in the making, a new apple variety called the Cosmic Crisp started shipping to retailers across the country in recent days. The new variety of the fruit was developed by researchers at Washington State University, who describe it as an exceptionally tasty and long-lasting cross between the disease-resistant Enterprise and the Honeycrisp apples... "Enterprise was chosen really because of its appearance," Evans told a podcast devoted to eaters called the Sporkful with Dan Pashman. "It looks really nice — it's a very pretty apple."Dubbed Cosmic Crisp for the bright yellow dots on its skin that resemble stars, the apple industry's newest addition keeps well in storage and especially the refrigerator, where it reportedly can still be in eating shape even after a year.But do the new apples live up to the hype, in terms of their taste? According to Pashman, the answer is a resounding yes."That's very juicy, very juicy," he said after a tasting. "The entire sensory experience of this apple is just amped up and elevated. It's extremely crunchy; it's extremely juicy; it's extremely sweet and also acidic. It's like a technicolor apple."
This Is Why Red Delicious Apples Suck So Hard - "Bland, sometimes cardboardy in texture and usually covered in wax, they’re still found in gas stations, in bowls at the reception desks of fancy hotels and, yes, in brown bag school lunches. But who likes to eat them?Not even many growers... If you want it to taste better, the Red Delicious needs to be left on the tree so long that a condition called watercore develops. “What that means is the starches and sugars get converted to sorbitol, or unfermentable sugar,” he says. “They’re very sweet, but they don’t last long. If you let the Red Delicious do that, even the cardboard ones can become nonoffensive. They can get a little interesting-er.”If you want a better-tasting apple, go to an orchard or farm to buy apples.Or try a different variety like the Fuji, which is a better-tasting descendant of the Red Delicious. Or taste an Empire or a Jonagold.“And Winesap — they’re like biting into a glass of chardonnay. They’re so delicious”"
Why Airlines Make Flights Longer on Purpose - "In the 1960s it took five hours to fly from New York to Los Angeles, and just 45 minutes to hop from New York to Washington, DC. Today, these same flights now take six-plus hours and 75 minutes respectively, although the airports haven’t moved further apart... Padding is the extra time airlines allow themselves to fly from A to B. Because these flights were consistently late, airlines have now baked delays experienced for decades into their schedules instead of improving operations... not only does your journey take longer but creating the illusion of punctuality means there’s no pressure on airlines to become more efficient, meaning congestion and carbon emissions will keep rising... this tactic not only enables airlines to claim they have improved on-time (OT) flight performance, but it also makes it easier to swerve the “magical three-hour limit” on delays – the threshold that qualifies passengers to file compensation claims at least under European Union passenger rights’ law"
What’s the Difference Between Greek, Icelandic, and Australian Yogurt? - "Greek
This style of yogurt is arguably what started the whole thick-and-creamy yogurt trend.. traditionally Greek yogurt is made only with full-fat milk... It’s the most tart and tangy of the three....
Icelandic
Also know as skyr, this yogurt from the Nordic island is giving Greek a run for its money. It’s actually made the same way as Greek yogurt, but it’s strained just a bit more to result in a seriously stick-to-your-spoon product that has even more protein. It’s traditionally made with nonfat yogurt, but popular brands like Siggi’s and Smári often add a bit of whole milk or even cream to give it richness. Overall, it’s less tart and more decadent than Greek yogurt.
Australian
Unlike Greek and Icelandic yogurt, Australian yogurt is unstrained. It’s still a bit richer and creamier than traditional yogurt, but the reason for that varies by brand. The popular brand Noosa uses only whole milk to achieve this, while Wallaby uses nonfat milk, but cooks it slower and longer than traditional yogurt to achieve that extra creaminess. Noosa also sweetens their yogurt with honey to give it a unique flavor."
"It's like something Trump would do": Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones hits out at new sequel - "The SNL comedian, who played Patty Tolan in Paul Feig’s 2016 all-female reboot, responded on Twitter after it was revealed that a third instalment of the original 1980s movies will arrive in 2020 – directed by Jason Reitman. Jones wrote: “So insulting. Like fuck us. We dint count. It’s like something trump would do. (Trump voice)”Gonna redo ghostbusteeeeers, better with men, will be huge. Those women ain’t ghostbusteeeeers” ugh so annoying. Such a dick move. And I don’t give fuck I’m saying something!!”... “I have so much respect for what Paul [Feig] created with those brilliant actresses, and would love to see more stories from them,” Reitman said. “However, this new movie will follow the trajectory of the original film.”"
So if you make a shitty movie which bombs, other people aren't allowed to reboot the series
No wonder her version failed
Domestic Workers Claim To Want 'Ang Moh' Employers. Does This Actually Make A Difference? - "my boss mentioned that his neighbours not only allowed their domestic worker to date, but to bring her boyfriend back to their house.This raised a couple of eyebrows, but on the whole, nobody was that surprised. My boss’ neighbours are French... domestic workers perceive foreign employers as being ‘better’, and would prefer to work for an expat family. Their stories also suggested that the stereotype has some basis in truth, as stereotypes often do... the kind of work performed for expat and local employers can differ, leading to different expectations being set. Local families tend to engage domestic workers to look after young children and/or their ageing parents, while expats virtually never request help with eldercare.Leizle also suggested that based on her and her friends’ experiences, local employers can be more accommodating of a new worker. “Most local families are willing to teach you when you are new, but some expat employers have very high expectations from you that your service is 100%.”... I asked David what the top requests he gets from domestic workers are. He told me that the second most common is for an ‘ang moh employer’. The first is that they want to be treated like family."
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