Interesting Links for 27-07-2022

[andrewducker]

1. Art designed to be zoomed in on

(tags:art )

2. The business card that's also a DIY abortion kit

(tags:abortion )

3. Porn makes men worse in bed - and women better

(tags:porn sex )

4. SNP to consider raising Scotland school starting age to six years old

(tags:school Scotland age )

5. Passenger gets stranded in Frankfurt airport when her flight is cancelled. All the white passengers get to go to hotels, she gets left with no food, water, or place to stay

(tags:OhForFucksSake flying viaPatrickHadfield racism germany )

6. Gaming time has no link with levels of well-being

(tags:gaming happiness mentalhealth psychology )

Comments

[channelpenguin]

5. I hate to say this, but it isn't clear to me that this was because of racism or anti-US feeling or simply apalling incompetence by United as an airline.

If they took white United passengers to hotels but not the rest... then sure. It's despicable racism. But I can't confirm that from the story as given.

Confusion damages the cause.

Of course it's despicable and inhumane behaviour no matter what! One night in a closed airport is one thing [by the way, have had to do that! ]. Scaring people with the prospect of several is inexcusable.

Germany can be a bit unforgiving - it feels like if you haven't got backup planning on your backup planning for even the most unexpected problems (plus the specific insurance against it, and of course the emergency contact phone numbers for it, a fully charged phone, phone credit) then you really should have. But that's just my impression.

[marymac]

There seems to be a dual problem in that the US/EU passengers have visa/visa waiver/Schengen and therefore can leave the transit terminal and return when flights are running again, but if you don't have a visa which you shouldn't need for transiting, you can't pass border control.

THEN the true fuckery starts, which is that United don't think it's their problem, Lufthansa don't think it's their problem, the border control staff aren't able to issue temp visas and it apparently didn't occur to anyone in any customer service capacity to direct them to the airside hotel/bed areas which exist for exactly this purpose.

Not sure it's totally racism in action except in the structural sense of who gets visa waivers and who doesn't, in so much as that would take more capacity than the massively compounding layers of incompetence suggest was going around, but the effect is pretty much the same.

[channelpenguin]

Good summary and good point on the "who gets visas"

[cellio]

Airline customer support was crap before the pandemic and now it's appalling. And they use the pandemic as an excuse but they could do better if they gave a damn. Stranding people like that and not even lifting a finger to help is disgusting.

It used to be that some were bad and you learned to avoid them (Air Canada I am looking at you), but now it seems to be all of them and I don't know if it's even safe to get on a plane any more unless I can afford to blow several extra days and pack extra food in carry-on. Ugh.

[asim]

I hate to say this Then Don't. This person is recounting their personal experience, not giving testimony in a trial -- or to an journalist, for that matter. You could just allow the story to stand; it's not your job to explain how to tell People of Color how best to express their frustrations and anger.

That said, this bit from you is actually infuriating: Germany can be a bit unforgiving

Germans can also -- and this might be a shock, given you yourself are working off "impressions" -- be Racist. In fact, my first experience of direct Racism, working in the American South as a Black Man, was with Germans, working at a German-owned car plant in the region. It was so bad that my boss at the time, who hated me, forced the German employees involved to apologize to me publicly, on the office floor.

So yeah, miss me with the "oh, this Person of Color just doesn't understand how Germans operate!" business. It's entirely possible this person travels to Germany on the regular and knows very well the situation. And even if they don't, other People of Color, like myself, have the experience to know that the lack of forgiveness can be far greater, when you happen to have a darker hue.

[channelpenguin]

I'll stand by that the facts of the story, as told, do not unequivocally indicate racism.

For any other offense I gave, I apologise.

You are right, too many Germans bloody well can be racist, as I sadly know after 7 years here. They can also be horribly unhelpfully officious to all and sundry. So it could be a bad combo of both, naturally.

[jack]

"the irony that porn – a male-dominated industry that targets a male-dominated audience – is associated with the erosion of the quality of men's sex lives and the improvement of women's sex lives."

This conclusion lands differently if it's "dissatisfied men and satisfied women are more likely to want to watch porn" vs if it's "porn makes men's sex life worse and women's sex life better". I'm not sure if the proved the direction of causation, but they didn't state it in the summary.

[channelpenguin]

Exactly my thought!

[chess]

It seems like that conclusion doesn't follow from their data, either: they asked about _partner_ satisfaction and personal _competence/functioning_.

So it didn't necessarily improve the women's sex life, it made them better at sex to the benefit of their partners (probably majority male).

So all it is saying is 'if you watch a bunch of sex which is scripted around the male perspective, people who are trying to please men get better at it and people who are men get worse at it', which seems relatively obvious?

I expect you couldn't recruit the numbers but I'd love to see this done with a sample related to _female-focused_ porn (of which there is not anything like as much, but increasing quantities...)

[melchar]

I just gave a donation to anarchists who are working to help women get an abortifacient when the Supreme Court has decided half the US population should have no agency over their own health. Who the heck has it come down to -this-?!

[andrewducker]

It's so fucking ridiculous.