Links, Monday 29th September

"In almost every region of the world where secular governments have been established with a goal of separating religion and politics, a counter-cultural movement has developed in response, determined to bring religion back into public life. What we call “fundamentalism” has always existed in a symbiotic relationship with a secularisation that is experienced as cruel, violent and invasive." Guardian

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"the South African job market still reflects our racialised, gendered and economic exploitative past. White men and white women still have it good in South Africa, and as a group, they have the smallest chance of being unemployed." Daily Maverick

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"Washington’s rate of violent crime against whites is lower than the national average. White skin is quite literally a protection from harm. But it doesn’t insulate your property values. That requires extra vigilance. The fact is, these [black] boys have much more to fear from the whites living alongside them. We can leverage state violence against them — we can call the cops. On message boards, police officers urge gentrifiers to report any “suspicious activity,” which includes legal activity such as walking, talking and standing. Smoking weed in the alley? Call the cops. A group of teenagers talking loudly? Call the cops. Litter? Call the cops, just whatever you do, don’t actually approach people! State repression is the solution to all problems." Jacobin

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Another piece involving Jane Jacobs and gentrification...

"Jacobs and other neighborhood activists advocated for cities that welcomed pedestrians with a mix of commercial and residential uses in each neighborhood. Her advocacy probably saved many American cities from turning into mini-Metropolises pulsing with highways, but neighborhood preservation ultimately spawned its own kinds of problems. The ideal Jacobsian neighborhoods didn’t benefit everyone—sometimes they gentrified, and locals were pushed out in favor of wealthier transplants." Slate

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"I don’t dispute that Oxford produces world-class thinkers, but it also churns out world-class bullshitters." Spectators

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Woohoo!

"From the early hours of Saturday 12 September, the ‘Night Tube’ service will begin, transporting London travellers around some parts of the network through the night on Fridays and Saturdays, ending the night bus woes of many." Londonist

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A basic introduction to the idea of a universal basic income Vox

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"Pity porn is the depiction of sex workers as victims lacking in agency, as if we are incapable of speaking for ourselves, as if we are in need of rescue or rehabilitation. This is a view that fundamentally denies our autonomy over our own bodies, seeks to undermine sex workers’ struggles to have our human rights recognised, and places non sex workers’ voices as more important in dialogues about our lives and our rights. This is unacceptable." Guardian

Links, Sunday 28th September

"Lt. Col. Kakar was a high profile policewoman who fought for women’s rights and against extremism and terrorism until she was assassinated on her way to work at a Kandahar police station.

Ms Slezic says her memory has been “desecrated” by Britain First and the Australian Palmer United senator Jacqui Lambie, who shared Britain First’s post on her Facebook wall." Independent

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" if [we] were gathering around just one demand today, one thing that we could ask for with one voice, it would be a global carbon tax, with revenues redistributed directly back to people through a global universal basic income." Jacobin

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So cute. <3 Pink News

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A suggestion for devolution of the UK at the regional level. Restless Realist

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An interesting rundown of experiments in plant growth conducted under microgravity conditions. Slate

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The best way to make money is to... have money. 

"although Gates has given an astounding $38 billion to his charitable foundation, thanks to Larson, he's getting richer faster than he give his money away." Slate

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Huh

"[Star Trek] Into Darkness looks an awful lot like an allegory for the worldview of 9/11 "Truthers," who believe that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by the American government to justify an invasion of the Middle East... Before we get into the details, keep this in mind: this movie -- which is about a space terrorist being used as an excuse to further a secret space military agenda (in space) -- was co-written by Roberto Orci, who's espoused Truther sentiments on Twitter" Cracked

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"These studies strongly suggest that the media fixation on covert drink spiking with a pill or powder is misplaced, and that such acts are vanishingly rare. They show that it is alcohol we should be wary of." Guardian

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"turn your gaze to a flat on an abandoned council estate in east London. Thanks to a group of self-taught, radicalised women, real political action is happening there. We should support it." Guardian

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"This is the Oranjezicht City Farm, which stands on part of what was the farm belonging to the biggest slave owner in the Cape Colonies, Pieter van Breda, a man who quite possibly, as this was the custom of the time, would have forced himself sexually on his female slaves.

This is unremarked in Oranjezicht City Farm’s own literature. The website’s mention of his offspring Michiel van Breda’s private orchestra is treated with a Victorian flutter, rendering it charmingly old-timey without baring the fact that this orchestra was comprised of imprisoned slaves who had been roughly torn from Asia, Madagascar, Mozambique, southern Tanzania and the east African coast, as well as the Khoe and San from the supposed hinterlands beyond the ­Liesbeek River in the Cape." City Press

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"even after you account for education, age, income, and foreign birth, lighter-skinned Latinos and Asians are more likely to identify and vote Republican than their darker-skinned counterparts." Slate

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The Conservative Party opposes human rights. What a surprise. Guardian

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This comes from a very "how can we improve our profits" angle, but wage transparency is basically a radical cause. If some people earn more than others, they should be able to publicly justify that difference, or take a pay cut. Slate

Links, Sunday 21st September

Some questionable language in this article, including a truly WTF title, but nevertheless an interesting brief history of the sex trade in Johannesburg. City Press

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"Assume $90 trillion is likely to be spent on infrastructure anyway over the next 15 years, and it would take only an additional $4 trillion to rapidly scale up climate-friendly alternatives. The biggest issue is, at current rates, an additional $9 trillion would be spent in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry over the same time span—a gross misallocation of funds if we’re serious about tackling global warming." Slate

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“it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” Slate

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"It’s weird that no one worries about the implications of hitting children on a body part that is culturally and biologically sexual. After all, the spankings I so “repulsively” enjoy are physically identical to the spankings that 81 percent of American parents and hundreds of U.S. school districts inflict or condone." Slate

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"Studies report that doubling the number of cyclists results in a one-third reduction in the number of car-bike collisions." Vancourier

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When the Bolshevik's captured the Tsar's Winter Palace during the 1917 revolution, citizens access to the Palace wine cellars resulted in such civil disorder that the new authorities felt the need to impose martial law. Cracked

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There'll be many more people in the world by the end of the century. Lots of challenges, lots of opportunities.

"A ground-breaking analysis released on Thursday shows there is a 70% chance that the number of people on the planet will rise continuously from 7bn today to 11bn in 2100." Guardian

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Yet another drive for nuclear power in South Africa, just as small-scale renewable generation is starting to become more economical. smh Amabhungane

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"to say Sex Work is not Sex Trafficking is to reify the current trafficking narrative, accepting that it refers to something real and bad that must be fought against... It throws under the bus all migrants, documented or not, who don’t much like selling sex and don’t call themselves sex workers but don’t want to be saved or deported." Laura Augustin

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An argument for the social function of science fiction.

"Good SF supplies a plausible, fully thought-out picture of an alternate reality in which some sort of compelling innovation has taken place. A good SF universe has a coherence and internal logic that makes sense to scientists and engineers." WPI

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You still base your life around what your invisible friend tells you to do, so maybe let's not start throwing stones...

"I have a PhD in Islamic studies from Oxford University, unlike my opponents who went to some donkey college in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia." BBC

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Most news outlets LOVE portraying cyclists as dangerous maniacs. Case in point, this London newspaper has seen fit to report on a traffic incident that happened in New York. Not only that, they've seen fit to publish a picture of the cyclist, even though he hasn't been charged with anything. I'm sure they were partly prompted in this decision by the fact that he is black and wears his hair in dreads. They way they've reported it sets out to imply that he is at fault without any factual basis: "It was unclear whether or not he had ignored a red traffic light." They also make much of the fact that he was not in the cycle lane, despite the fact that this is perfectly legal. Metro (via donotlink)

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This is what happens when you try to make fair and scientifically objective decisions on the basis of something - gender - that is neither fair nor scientific. MIC

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Wowzers, did you know that "Not being a willing sexual partner with your spouse" is a form of infidelity? FamilyShare

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"There is by now evidence from a variety of laboratories around the world using a variety of methodological techniques leading to the virtually inescapable conclusion that the cognitive-motivational styles of leftists and rightists are quite different. This research consistently finds that conservatism is positively associated with heightened epistemic concerns for order, structure, closure, certainty, consistency, simplicity, and familiarity, as well as existential concerns such as perceptions of danger, sensitivity to threat, and death anxiety." Mother Jones

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Wowzers, videos of people doing ordinary things from the perspective of an MRI scanner. Youtube

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"strikingly, 75 percent of Ebola victims are women, people who do much of the care work throughout Africa and the rest of the world." Slate

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""It's an aspect of my feminism," she says. "We spend so much time taking care of ourselves in ways that men don't, because of the beauty standards that society has for women... it's a total inequality. That's one small reason why I say; 'fine, essentially, y'all set this up, therefore you are going to pay for it!'."

Who? "The men, obviously," she smiles. And how are they going to pay for it? "In cash. I take their money. Of all the people who are living and working in this capitalist patriarchy, sex workers are winning. We have good strategy. People say it cheapens the experience," she laughs. "No, it doesn't, it makes it more expensive." Independent

Links, Wednesday 17th September

It's worth pointing out that it's not inherently dangerous (or even expensive) to travel between North Africa and Europe - lot's of middle class Europeans do it for their holidays. The reason tragedies like this occur is that European immigration and border policies make it impossible to migrate legally, or even migrate *illegally* but in a safe way. These policies place desperate migrants into the hands of people traffickers who are unable to guarantee safety at best, and are dangerous criminals at worst.

"About 500 migrants are feared to have drowned after the boat carrying them from Egypt to Malta was apparently rammed and deliberately sunk by people-traffickers, an intergovernmental group has said." Guardian

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What does it say about the state of Israeli democracy that soldiers who blow the whistle on illegal activities carried out by the IDF are themselves threatened with criminal sanction?

"Forty-three Israeli military intelligence reservists who signed a letter refusing to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories have been denounced as criminal by defence minister Moshe Ya'alon, as the country's political and military leadership turned its fire on the refuseniks." Guardian

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So apparently it's still standard in the US military to refer to enemy-controlled territory as "Indian Country"... Jacobin

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"compared with white families, black families place an even greater emphasis on following the rules and obeying authority. Given the disproportionate consequences black youth face for their transgressions, this differential is hardly surprising. Yet the disseminators of this lie persist, attempting to convince the nation that African Americans are (“culturally, not biologically!” they hasten to add) simply unable to assess even the most brutally obvious consequences of their actions on their lives." Jacobin

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Not a perfect article, but it does illustrate the harms caused by legalisation (as opposed to proper decriminalisation) of sex work, and how often legalisation is driven by the desire of middle-class residents to "clean up" an area as opposed to actually helping sex workers.

""We used to have so-called '10-euro hotels' in Vienna — small, self-organized establishments close to the street walker's patch where sex workers could take clients and 20 minutes cost €10," Knappik said. "The fee was paid by the customer, rooms had showers and bathrooms, and the situation was generally safe because other sex workers were present."

The solution in his eyes is not to install wooden carports in the outskirts, but to let sex workers return to those downtown locations where they have been working safely for decades. "We are against centralization and ghettoization," Knappik said. "Street prostitution was made impossible in 2011 and now we are offered a 10 percent improvement. We want to go back to the start. The women have to be able to stand in front of the love hotels downtown."" Vice

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If anyone needs an insight into South African road etiquette...

“The light turned green and they were still crossing. He didn’t hoot or nudge them gently with his bumper. Thank goodness that the Metrobus driver behind him mounted the pavement and drove around him, scattering the pedestrians. Of course, the bus wiped out and took out some other cars but I managed to shoot through the intersection before the police cordoned off the road. Otherwise I would have missed my yoga class.” ZA News

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"The average price of a London home is now up to £514,000 — $833,000 at current exchange rates — which is clearly far more than the cost of constructing a decent place for a family to live. Under the circumstances, you'd think there would be a huge opportunity here, with tons and tons of new-built flats under construction in London and selling for £400,000 a piece and the city's population booming. But it doesn't happen because of planning and zoning restrictions. The dynamic leaves the city with a few signature prestige projects like the Shard under way in London, but nothing like the kind of mass construction of mid-rise middle class housing that there's robust market demand for." Vox

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I'll get to writing, just as soon as I've finished reading this... Atlantic

Links, Tuesday 16th September

We know our place, we do. *touches forelock*

"Live television coverage of a speech by Frances O’Grady, General Secretary of the TUC, was cut off this morning minutes after she had warned of a return to a “Downton Abbey” society –  for a newsflash announcing that the Duchess of Cambridge is expecting her second child." Indepedent

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"A 2002 study conducted by researchers at the University of New Mexico and published in the journal Addiction showed that motivational interviewing, cognitive behavioral therapy and naltrexone, which are often used together, are far more effective in stopping or reducing drug and alcohol use than the faith-and-abstinence-based model of A.A. and other “TSF” — for 12-step facilitation — programs. Results of an updated study have not yet been released." NY Times

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A handy little infographic about contraceptive methods NY Times

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"It looks like it would almost be better for government to hire all those non-ferrous metal [aluminium] workers, pay them their current salaries for doing nothing, and shut down that sector entirely. Easier than building another Medupi." Rolling Alpha

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"conflicts that in Sweden or Japan would be solved through quiet consultations between interested parties in the bureaucracy are fought out through formal litigation in the U.S. court system. This has a number of unfortunate consequences for public administration, leading to a process characterized, in Farhang’s words, by “uncertainty, procedural complexity, redundancy, lack of finality, high transaction costs.” By keeping enforcement out of the bureaucracy, it also makes the system far less accountable." Foreign Affairs

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This is some really serious shit. The UN and donor countries generally need to get on the case.

"In a worst-case hypothetical scenario, should the [ebola] outbreak continue with recent trends, the case burden could gain an additional 77,181 to 277,124 cases by the end of 2014." Wired

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What do people think of this argument?

"But to reduce this as an opposition to black wealth is a mistake. It ignores that there exists a special relationship between us, the common black folk, and the black owners of capital.

We celebrate black success because we expected liberation for one would be liberation for all. Those are the terms under which the struggle was waged. But when political freedom came, it became a case of every person for themselves. Black politicians declared that they did not struggle to be poor and black capitalists proclaimed it was their turn to eat, abandoning previously held notions of a collective struggle." City Press

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A little bit about what it's actually like to have schizophrenia... Cracked

Links, Friday 12th Sept

"If you write about the history of slavery, you become used to the pattern: No matter how many accounts you cite from ex-slaves, people often say they need more information before they can accept what former cotton pickers say about how cotton picking worked." Guardian

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"In his recent biography on Biko, Xolela Mangcu recalls that in Ginsburg in the1980s, "UDF crowds would in their hundreds go and sing in front of Steve Biko's house: U-Steve Biko, I-CIA – alleging Steve had worked for the CIA."... Others have paid the price for this over the last ten years too: the Landless Peoples’ Movement, the Anti-Privatization Forum, Treatment Action Campaign, Abahlali baseMjondolo, Unemployed People's Movement, and the striking mineworkers of Marikana have all been labelled tools of imperialism." Groundup

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"After four years of painstaking effort, and by using a magnetometer, a ground-penetrating radar (GPR), and a 3D laser scanner, archaeologists have shown that Stonehenge was once a sprawling complex that extended for miles." iO9

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This says it all, really.

"The woman at the centre of the Supreme Court case which overturned the country's prostitution laws has been thrown out of a Senate hearing studying a proposed replacement law." cp24

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A better review.

"On the eve of the civil war, property rights in stolen labor were more valuable than all the industrial capital in the United States put together. Per capita wealth among the white population was highest in the most slave-intensive states. And slavery-fueled politicians were eying further expansion of slave agriculture both into the American southwest and into Cuba and other portions of Latin America.

[Baptist's] point is that this system was not an aberration pitted against the rising world of Victorian capitalism. Instead, it was an integral element of the emerging order. Follow the free market thread from the customer to the shop to the factory to the textile supplier and you'd find forced labor on land confiscated violently from its indigenous inhabitants." Vox

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"According to SWEAT, fear of baby snatching had been reported by a number of sex workers who were mothers. However, these fears were not directed at pimps, but at police and social workers ‘who take away kids because they feel that a sex worker is an unfit mother’" ZAM

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"The signatories include officers, former instructors and senior NCOs from the country’s equivalent of America’s NSA or Britain’s GCHQ, known as Unit 8200 – or in Hebrew as Yehida Shmoneh-Matayim.

They allege that the “all-encompassing” intelligence the unit gathers on Palestinians – much of it concerning innocent people – is used for “political persecution” and to create divisions in Palestinian society." Guardian

Links, Tuesday 9th Sept

"Movies tend to portray those hand signals as the key to a stealthy night operation, but hand signals generally aren't visible at night. However, hand signals are great when your ears get ruined by tinnitus:

"Yeah, those cool hand signals you see in movies? They aren't to make us stealthier during assaults or whatever -- they're because combat deafens people," Jerry says." Cracked

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"While the inability for same-sex couples to marry has pushed many to label themselves “second-class citizens”, I find it difficult to completely sympathize with their plight – and the money they’ve spent to end it – when so many LGBT youth are living and dying in the streets everyday with no end in sight." Guardian

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"In modern America we believe racism to be the property of the uniquely villainous and morally deformed, the ideology of trolls, gorgons and orcs. We believe this even when we are actually being racist." NY Times

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"With the condescension of posterity, it’s easy to dismiss the British colonists in Van Diemen’s Land as monsters, genocidal racists carrying out atrocities for reasons unfathomable to liberal-minded folk of the twenty-first century. Yet, precisely as Israeli officials explained the assault on Gaza as a defensive reaction to Hamas’ rockets, the Tasmanian settlers saw themselves as victims, driven to violence by the terror inflicted by the natives." Jacobin

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Another awesome policy which I'm sure will continue to be discussed right up until election day and then die a quiet, mysterious death.

"Personal possession of all drugs should be decriminalised, the Liberal Democrats announced today." Politics.co.uk

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"Market cap to GDP (Buffet’s favorite measure of market valuation) now stands at roughly double it’s pre-bubble mean, second only to the dot com bubble (a level reached once in recorded history and now less than 20% away)." Monkey Mind

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"The videos also show that police claims they used lethal force as a last resort are clearly false... In fact, the jets of water are shown to be aimed towards the rear of the lead group, pushing them towards the waiting line of Tactical Response cops armed with R5 rifles. Around the same time, stun grenades also go off towards the rear of the protesters. In effect, the miners are clearly seen to run away from these non-lethal attacks towards the TRT." Daily Maverick

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Does anyone else notice an issue out of place here...?

"As part of the frontbench team of the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, Malhotra will work on issues including sexual violence, female genital mutilation, forced marriage, trafficking and prostitution." Guardian

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"In the past two months, five sex workers have been murdered in Cape Town. Three of the victims were under 26. Advocacy organisations partly blame the continued criminalization of sex work." Groundup

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Wooohoo!

"Key populations are considered the most at risk for HIV infection and transmission, and are often discriminated against by communities and by health-care workers.

The new clinic - run by the NGO, TB/HIV Care Association in partnership with Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (Sweat) - provides screening for diseases, HIV and Aids testing, sexually transmitted infections, and offers counselling and viral check-ups among other services." IOL

Links, Sunday 7th September

Yikes, WTF Economist? Vox (The full article, preceded by an apology, is available here )

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I have not heard of them before, but the London Black Revolutionary Socialists, but they are doing good work. Be aware.

"Since they got their hands on the documents – which the Mail reckoned must have come from a Home Office mole – the Black Revs and other activists have been tearing up and down the country, using UKBA’s own intelligence to inform the identified businesses that they might want to disappear for a couple of weeks, and what their legal rights are in the event of a raid." Vice

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"Rivers often zinged herself too, but isn't that also a form of woman-bashing? Indeed, it seems Rivers' shrewdness was in recognizing a patriarchal appetite for misogynistic humor -- and exploiting it." Huff Post

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Excellent acronym, guys.

"OGOD’s chairperson, Hans Pietersen told News24 that he is taking two ministers and six schools to task for using taxpayers’ money to suppress the scientific teaching of evolution, and for religious coercion and abuse of learners’ rights." News24

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"Far from expressing penitence, the anonymous prostitute accused the reformers of rank hypocrisy. “You the pious, the moral, the respectable, as you call yourselves … why stand you on your eminence shouting that we should be ashamed of ourselves? What have we to be ashamed of, we who do not know what shame is?”" Laura Augustin

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This guy sounds like kind of a dick himself, but... Seriously, a service entrance to a camp at Burning Man?! David Kiss

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"we should think about the way that sexual labour is connected to the unpaid, underpaid, and exploited work that women–and to a much lesser, but still important extent, men–perform in order to sustain the global capitalist economy. And instead of trying to divorce prostitution from work, we should think instead about the ways that our own demand for licit goods and services is entangled with the illicit and sexual economy, and the ways in which we are complicit in the much wider exploitation of labour."

Notches

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"Boars accustomed to crate breeding at a young age were more compliant about entering the crate when they were older. An aged boar unaccustomed to the crate might violently resist, circumstances, in turn, that ruined hog erections." Notches

Links, Friday 5th Sept

This dude is cool.

"There's one [a supernova] that happened in 2008: we detected this really weak gamma-ray burst, but what was crazy about it was that it was visible with the naked eye, even though it came from the other side of the universe, 4 or 5 billion light years away. There are no other galaxies, even ones immediately adjacent to us, that are bright enough to see with the naked eye--except for Andromeda, which is pretty faint. And this thing was lit up, shining so bright you could see it across the universe. We worked out at one point it was outshining a good 10 or 15% of the rest of the universe combined, for some definition of words in that sentence. If that thing happened anywhere in our galaxy, it could have sterilized the Earth's surface." Rolling Stone

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"Part of the reason why the family built the Labia Theatre, the Mail & Guardian recorded a few years ago, was out of gratitude to the South African government at not detaining them during World War II." Daily Maverick

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A smart guy saying a smart thing.

"Sweden’s international influence is not well-deserved, since the law has been demonstrably detrimental in terms of exacerbating the harms that can be associated with sex work, detrimentally impacting service provision and harm reduction, increasing stigma and social exclusion, and I also emphasise that the law has failed to reduce levels of sex work, which was the principal aim of the legislation. So, the law has failed to achieve its goal, and it’s been hugely damaging." Ruth Jacobs

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[TW: suicide]

"Suicidal tendencies are transitory," said Dr Shekhar Saxena, director of the department of mental health and substance abuse at the WHO and an author of the report. "People who have an intense desire to commit suicide grab the nearest possible means. If you can restrict their access even for a few hours, you can save a lot of lives. People think about it and talk to people and decide not to do it." Guardian

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"What they refer to as “the council” are trying to change a policy that has been around since the horse-and-cart days. At the moment, the crew can go home whenever they finish their work. This means that they can work as hard as they want, and often get to travel home around two o’clock. For some who travel far, like Redewaan James, whose home is in Mitchell’s Plain and who wakes up at four-thirty each morning, this is precious time." Daily Maverick

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[TW: sex while unconscious]

This is how strong the hold of heteropatriarchal monogamy is in our society: This dude's wife hates having sex with him so much she'd rather be unconscious when it happens. And this advice columnist thinks that this is a *totally legit solution*. smh Slate

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"This case highlights the same well-known and extensively documented problems that can lead to false arrests and convictions: Police who are incentivized to find any suspect quickly, rather than the right one carefully; false confessions elicited after improper questioning; exculpatory evidence never turned over; the prosecution of vulnerable, mentally ill, or very young suspects in ways that take advantage of their innocence rather than protecting it; prosecutorial zeal that has far more to do with the pursuit of victories than the pursuit of truth; and a death penalty appeals system that treats this entire screwed-up process of investigation and conviction as both conclusive and unreviewable." Slate

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A bit more context to the Ferguson situation:

"Some of the towns in St. Louis County can derive 40 percent or more of their annual revenue from the petty fines and fees collected by their municipal courts. A majority of these fines are for traffic offenses, but they can also include fines for fare-hopping on MetroLink (St. Louis’s light rail system), loud music and other noise ordinance violations, zoning violations for uncut grass or unkempt property, violations of occupancy permit restrictions, trespassing, wearing “saggy pants,” business license violations and vague infractions such as “disturbing the peace” or “affray” that give police officers a great deal of discretion to look for other violations.... There’s also a widely held sentiment that the police spend far more time looking for petty offenses that produce fines than they do keeping these communities safe." Washington Post

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A good summary of the most research research on behavioural factors relating to HIV transmission. Bottom line: the contribution of "sugar daddy" relationships, multiple concurrent relationships and "reckless" behaviour in people who know their positive status to overall transmission are considerably oversold. O'Neil Institute

Links, Wednesday 3rd September

Never forget: while left-wing religious fundamentalists are okay on some issues, any commitment they have to human rights is basically accidental. Irish Times

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This in the context where many countries still require forced sterilisation or other unwanted medical interventions before a person is allowed to formally transition.

"Unlike in most of the countries that allow new gender recognition, trans people in Denmark now do not even need a medical expert statement, but can simply self-determine. There are still restrictions – the minimum age is 18, and there is a six-month waiting period before the person has to reconfirm their wish to have their gender legally changed – but the law seems to be moving in the right direction." Guardian

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What does it say about me that I sort of resent having to give credit to Nick Clegg for doing a good thing?

"The major new initiative, first announced by Nick Clegg in 2013, will see every five to seven-year-old at England’s 16,500 primary schools eligible for free dinners." Guardian

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Huh

"Your science teacher was wrong. Not about genetics as a concept -- that's pretty solid -- but about tongue rolling being an example of it. As early as the 1950s, studies had already been done that showed rolling your tongue isn't a trait passed down from your parents. It's something you learn." Cracked

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"In March 1985, Wales and Lesotho established the world’s first nation-to-nation twinning." M&G

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"The long-running attempts to break into high-profile users' accounts could explain how photos from as long ago as December 2011 – two months after Apple launched iCloud – could appear in the lists of files held by some group members." Guardian

Links, Monday 1st September

"The Commission of Inquiry into Policing in Khayelitsha has identified “serious, overlapping (policing) inefficiencies”. These include a lack of regular patrols, unanswered phones at police stations, poor detective work, wide-spread vigilante killings and policing based on “chance and luck” and not on “intelligence”." Groundup

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"I have regrets, of course. Nobody's saying we were saints. But in the whole time I was smuggling pot, I never saw a gun until those DEA agents knocked on my door. And no one died bringing that weed to America until the law came down on Steve [a cop who killed himself when he was indicted]." Cracked

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[TW: sexual violence]

This whole story is absolute horrible, and demonstrates how the police and universities continue effectively to condone rape by reinforcing impunity. Medium

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"or her book Just One of the Guys? Transgender Men and the Persistence of Gender Inequality, sociologist Kristen Schilt interviewed dozens of FTM (female to male) transgender individuals. One subject noted that when he expresses an opinion, everyone in a meeting now writes it down. Another noted, "When I was a woman, no matter how many facts I had, people were like, “Are you sure about that?’ It’s so strange not to have to defend your positions." When they suggested women for promotions, other men said, “Oh! I hadn’t thought about her”—they were able to promote women because their advice was taken more seriously. Personality traits that had been viewed negatively when they were women were now seen as positives. “I used to be considered aggressive,” said one subject. “Now I'm considered 'take charge.' People say, ‘I love your take-charge attitude.’"" New Republic

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"The treated monkeys were exposed to a lethal level of Ebola before receiving three doses of ZMapp starting three, four and five days after infection. The treatment reversed their symptoms including excessive bleeding, rashes, and liver damage. Three weeks after they were infected, no trace of the virus could be detected in the infected animals' blood." Guardian

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Well shit.

"Lesotho Prime Minister Tom Thabane confirmed on Saturday that the military had seized power in a coup and that he had fled to neighbouring South Africa in fear of his life." M&G

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"...research has generally shown that the strongest predictor of an accident isn't speeding, but variance from the average speed of traffic — and a car going five miles per hour slower than the surrounding traffic has a greater chance of causing an accident than one going five miles per hour faster than it." Vox

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"South Africa’s schools are a hostile environment for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex pupils, said gender activists this week. Because these LGBTI pupils do not conform to prescribed male and female gender roles, they get assaulted and bullied. A fifth have attempted suicide and a fifth have been raped or sexually assaulted, according to research." M&G

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"With rare exceptions, like the business meeting you wanted an excuse to miss, passengers are never happy to have their flight cancelled. But it may be good for you to have someone else’s flight cancelled. In particular, strategically cancelling a small number of flights and inconveniencing a small number of passengers can prevent delays and other hassles for a far larger number of passengers." New Republic

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:(

"China has endorsed a framework for the first direct election in Hong Kong in two years, but stopped short of allowing citizens of the special administrative region from directly nominating candidates, which activists have been demanding." Al Jazeera

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"The first woman I "healed" just had a cold. Like a lot of people who agree to stand up in front of a congregation and talk about their illness, she had a thing for exaggeration. That's one of the first things you learn about faith healing -- you're not the only one operating a con." Cracked