Links - 23rd August 2017 (2)

California travel ban: 4 states added to list - "California has issued a ban on state-funded and state-sponsored travel to four more states that it says have laws discriminating against LGBTQ people. The travel ban was first put into effect January 1 when state measure AB 1887 became law. The law says California is "a leader in protecting civil rights and preventing discrimination" and should not support or finance "discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people"... Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee were the original states banned by AB 1887, but Becerra added Alabama, Kentucky, South Dakota and Texas on Thursday, citing what he called new discriminatory legislation enacted against the LGBTQ community in those states."
Comments: " Travel ban on states that discriminates against LGBT people:
"This is social justice!"
Travel ban on Muslim countries where LGBT people get jailed or lynched to death:
"This is Islamophobic racism!""
"It's only bigotry when white people do it."

Siam Road Char Koay Teow Closes Stall For 10 Days Because The Crowd Is Stressing Uncle Out - "The famous char koay teow stall in Penang ranked #14 in the Top 50 list at the recent World Street Food Congress 2017 in Manila, the Philippines... stall owner Tan Chooi Hong pleaded with customers to not photograph or write about him, as he is unable to cope with the sudden flood of customers... One of few char koay teow stalls that are still using charcoal to fire up the wok, customers from all over Malaysia have been known to queue for hours for a plate of the world-famous dish... Customers have also been known to start queueing even before Tan and his son arrive. In a recent Facebook video, some could be heard chanting "Char koay teow! Char koay teow!" just as the duo arrived with their push stall cart."

German police officers expelled after public sex, group urination, and a strip tease involving a service weapon ahead of G20 summit - "one of the officers involved in the party told Bild newspaper he didn’t see what all the fuss was about, because it was just a “normal night for Berlin”... The police reportedly got bored with the lack of television at their makeshift accommodation in converted shipping containers, and decided to stage their own entertainment."

The Minimum Wage: Evidence from a Danish Discontinuity - "In Denmark the minimum wage jumps up by 40% when a worker turns 18. Thus the authors, Kreiner, Reck and Skov, ask what happens to the employment of young people when they hit their 18th birthday? Answer: employment drops dramatically, by one-third...
A variety of restrictions mean that under-18 age workers can do less than adults (e.g. they can’t legally lift more than 25 kilos or have a driver’s license.) Thus, productivity increases at age 18, making the employment loss at this age even more dramatic. The authors can’t tell for certain if workers are quitting or getting fired but there are few other obvious discontinuities around exactly age 18. Students are eligible for certain benefits at age 18 but the authors are able to look at sub-samples where this objection doesn’t apply and the results are robust."

Boots apologises after outcry over skin chart - "Boots was forced to apologise after customers dubbed an in-store skincare chart 'offensive' because they believed it implied that brown and black skin 'is not normal'... One user, Sophie Watts, responded by saying: 'This is honestly one of the most disgraceful and ridiculous things I have ever seen!'... Others were angry at people with black and brown skin being told to use low SPF factors, as they believe it is 'not enough'"
If this is one of the most disgraceful things someone has seen, she leads a very privileged life
Maybe in a few years someone will call Boots racist because they don't advise darker skinned people to use less sunscreen, meaning "minorities" pay more than they should for sunscreen, which hurts them

Have lots of sex, live a whole lot longer - "women who had regular sex had significantly longer telomeres — boosting their overall life expectancy... The researchers found women who had sex during the course of the week-long study had telomeres that were up to 30 percent longer. But relationship quality had no effect on them."

Pond scum is the new kale - "The cyanobacteria collected from the surface of freshwater lakes and ponds – also known as spirulina – is turning up in blue drinks, ice cream, lattes and M&Ms, as holistic experts and plant-based nutritionists rave about its health benefits. Kate Middleton reportedly sips it in her smoothies."

PICTURES: Here's What Environmentalist Leftists Leave Their Campground Looking Like - "More than 1,000 volunteers are assisting in cleaning up litter after the Glastonbury Music Festival (GMF) in the United Kingdom. In addition to the volunteers, £785,000 will be spent on the cleanup; it is unclear if taxpayers are footing the bill... The GMF's organizers push left-wing causes; hyping "climate change" and being "green." Michael Eavis, founder of the GMF, frames his operation as environmentally conscientious"

Paradox: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Wears Islamic-Themed Socks To Gay Pride Parade

Tough shore leave rules for Chinese navy personnel during Liaoning’s Hong Kong visit - "every Liaoning carrier soldier needs to abide by Interior Service Regulations which restrict communication and interaction between people inside and outside the Chinese military, making Liaoning personnel less free than US soldiers."

More Acid Attacks In London - "There have been over 1,800 reported acid attacks in London since 2010... "Since 2014 about 74% of investigations have been wound down due to problems with identifying perpetrators, or victims being unwilling to press charges""
Maybe acid attacks are part and parcel of living in a big city

Hong Kong handover: "One country, two systems" is full of contradictions—look at the Hong Kong-China border - "For China, this boundary—once an acrimonious reminder of how Western imperial powers brought China to its knees—became handy for the People’s Republic to filter out “subversive elements” deemed detrimental to its interior stability. It helps intercept undesirable information, material, or individuals at the frontier before they slip into China and become more difficult to purge. As a measure of risk management, maintaining a boundary allows Beijing to better control interactions between the mainland and the SAR—a form of administrative quarantine."

German White Woman Completes Her Racial Reassignment - "German “model” Martina Adam is rivalling Rachel Dolezal with her latest operation – racial reassignment. Martina Adam, also known as Martina Big due to her huge implants and appearances on “Botched,” has completed her transition into her new life as a “black” female."

Bokhari: The Secret Rightwing Messages of Harry Potter - "1) Walls between different societies are good
2) Don’t trust establishment politicians (or establishment media)
3) If a group has a terrorist problem, sometimes you have to ban them"

Harry Potter and the millennial mind | The Spectator - "The ‘Potterverse’ is the millennial universe. It informs the way we see ourselves and the way we look at the world; our moral imagination. If you have ever wondered why young people are often so childish in their politics, why they want to divide the world between tolerant progressives and wicked reactionaries, it helps to understand that. Harry Potter may be a literary fantasy but for many it is also a substitute religion in a secular era. The books are about the fight between good and evil, and the power of magic... The Potterverse, then, keeps developing. Yet it is a naive landscape in which most problems are solved by magic. To believe in it, even ironically, is to divide people into goodies and baddies, and ignore the complexity of reality. For all the joy that Harry Potter brings to its millions of readers, the world cannot be sorted by a magical hat."

Harry Potter, Muggles and meritocracy - "Thus the Potterverse, as Toad writes, is about "the legitimacy of authority that comes from schools" - Ivy League schools, elite schools, US News & World Report top 100 schools. And because "contemporary liberalism is the ideology of imperial academia, funnelled through media and non-profits and governmental agencies but responsible ultimately only to itself", a story about a wizarding academy is the perfect fantasy story for the liberal meritocracy to tell about itself... Voldemort, the dark lord, has Muggle blood, but he isn't trying to rally an army of non-magic-wielders to seize Hogwarts' towers; he's trying to remake meritocratic - er, magical - institutions in his own dark image. And so the battle for Harvard - er, Hogwarts - is the battle for the world. Which is basically the premise of a great deal of youthful liberal activism these days - that once the last remnants of Slytherin are eradicated from the leafy quads of Yale or Middlebury, once Draco Malfoy's frat or final club is closed and the last Death-Eater sympathisers purged from the faculty, then the battle of ideas will have been finally and fully won."

It is not ok to joke about killing men - "At some point when everyone was busy believing that feminism had something to do with achieving equality, Clementine Ford arrived on a broomstick. She confidently announced she was here to fix gender inequality and people blindly believed her... In a copy of her book, ‘Fight Like A Girl’, she wrote a note to a fan. It asked “Have you killed any men today? And if not, why not?”... Eddie McGuire was utterly vilified for commenting he’d pay extra if Caroline Wilson stayed under water at the Big Freeze?... When I wrote in an earlier column about the male suicide crisis and the desperate need to take this seriously, regardless of gender, I was slammed as a “misogynist” while hate mail and insults poured in."

Turkey sizes 50 Christian churches and monasteries and declared them as state property - "Turkish authorities have transferred the ownership of churches, houses of worship and cemeteries that have belonged to the Syriac community for over 1,600 years to Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) as part of a process of liquidation in Mardin province"

Hair today, gone tomorrow: Serial hair-snipper arrested in Japan - "Police charged the 23-year-old graduate student with assault on Monday (Dec 5) after he admitted cutting the hair of a woman on a packed morning train in Nagoya, a city west of Tokyo... Yoshida said he had planned on selling his ill-gotten merchandise online... Local police reportedly stepped up their patrols earlier this year after receiving complaints from other women whose hair or skirts had been cut on area trains."

Portland Police Chief Says Antifa Protesters Used Slingshot to Launch Urine and Feces-Filled Balloons at Riot Cops - "He said the decision to corral 345 people in downtown streets prevented violent confrontations between right-wing and left-wing protesters. He said photographing the detained protesters' IDs sped up their release. And he said sending police into the streets wearing riot gear was necessary because of credible reports of protesters bringing weapons—reports he says proved true."

Deadly diet: Thai doctors battle cancer-causing fish dish - "Like millions of Thais across the rural northeast, his family regularly ate koi pla - a local dish made of raw fish ground with spices and lime. The pungent meal is quick, cheap and tasty, but the fish is also a favourite feast for parasites that can cause a lethal liver cancer killing up to 20,000 Thais annually... Many villagers complain that cooking the dish gives it a sour taste. Others simply shrug off the dangers and say their fate has already been fixed - a common belief in the Buddhist nation where karma can dictate decisions."

Jezebel Is Angry That Serena Williams Is in an Interracial Relationship with a Redditor - "They couldn’t let their contempt for both f—king white males and Redditors stay buried long enough to write up the news piece... being a tolerant leftist, she ends the article with a threat."

Czech nuclear power station sparks fury after holding bizarre BIKINI contest to choose their new intern - "The sexy snaps were posted on the company website, with fans asked to vote for the hottest to secure the internship job... Representatives of Temelin said the bikini contest was only one part of a beauty pageant among school graduates, adding that they were “trying to make technical education more popular”."

Justices to Hear Case on Religious Objections to Same-Sex Marriage - The New York Times - "The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear an appeal from a Colorado baker with religious objections to same-sex marriage who had lost a discrimination case for refusing to create a cake to celebrate such a union. The case will be a major test of a clash between laws that ban businesses open to the public from discriminating based on sexual orientation and claims of religious freedom. Around the nation, businesses like bakeries, florists and photography studios have said, so far with little success, that forcing them to serve gay couples violates their constitutional rights... In a second development concerning gay and lesbian couples, the Supreme Court reaffirmed on Monday its 2015 decision recognizing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, ruling that states may not treat married same-sex couples differently from others in issuing birth certificates... The case concerned an Arkansas law about birth certificates that treats married opposite-sex couples differently from same-sex ones. A husband of a married woman is automatically listed as the father even if he is not the genetic parent. Same-sex spouses are not... State officials listed the biological mother on the children’s birth certificates and refused to list their partners, saying they were not entitled to a husband’s presumption of paternity. The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled against the women, saying that “it does not violate equal protection to acknowledge basic biological truths.”"
If a restaurant refuses to cook Kosher food for a customer, is it discriminating against Jews?

Female Rangers Were Given Special Treatment, Sources Say - "Way back in January, long before the first women attended the Army’s elite Ranger School – one of the most grueling military courses in the world – officials at the highest levels of the Army had already decided failure was not an option... whereas men consistently were held to the strict standards outlined in the Ranger School’s Standing Operating Procedures handbook sources say, the women were allowed lighter duties and exceptions to policy. Multiple sources told PEOPLE... “We were under huge pressure to comply,” one Ranger instructor says. “It was very much politicized.”... “Combat is brutal and unforgiving,” says Jim Lechner, a retired Army officer and Ranger who was wounded in combat in Mogadishu, Somalia, during the famed “Black Hawk Down” incident. “Fighters must be prepared and capable. If they are not, people will die”... While men were held to a stark pass-fail standard, women were allowed to redo the special training repeatedly"

Female Rangers: An Insider Speaks on the Record - "“Just this year we’ve had more than twenty males take Day 1 Recycles. And that’s just the ones who accepted the offer. We’ve offered Day 1 Recycles to way more soldiers than that. When a soldier doesn’t make it through a training phase, a board looks at all the factors involved and decides whether or not to give them the opportunity to start the course over. If the board believes in the soldier, thinks he’s doing his best and is physically and mentally able to succeed, he gets the chance to start over.”"

Pentagon Could Be 'Shredding' Docs About Female Rangers

NOT Fake News: Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Loretta Lynch Now ALL Under Investigation - "From the nonstop coverage of Trump's alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 presidential election, you'd think he was under FBI investigation. But he isn't. Instead, three big Democratic players are. But you wouldn't know that from the MSM coverage"

The eccentric MP who is Australia's new powerbroker - "He shot his major-party rivals dead in this election's most controversial campaign ad. He once serenaded his supporters with a self-composed song about the excellence of his character. When The Beatles touched down in Brisbane during their 1964 tour of Australia, Mr Katter was among a group who pelted them with eggs as "an intellectual reaction against Beatlemania"... Socially conservative, Katter opposes gay marriage and once said he would "walk backwards from Bourke", a town in far-western New South Wales, to Queensland if a single homosexual constituent could be found in his electorate"