Broadly: 'We Sell a Lot of Dicks': Inside a Factory Making Male Sex Dolls for Women

In 2016, Sinthetics wants to further revolutionize sex with manikins marketed towards women. The Kellers first started designing male manikins for gay customers, according to Bronwen. "The gay market felt underrepresented," she explains. Then a woman purchased a doll, and Sinthetics decided to produce silicone men specifically for women. Now they'll see if women can surpass the stigmas surrounding sex dolls. They see the risk as worth it. But they're also creating the manikins for more personal reasons: "This is a passion project," Bronwen says.

Matt designs each manikin based on clients' custom orders. Like most people in sex industries, Matt did not originally intend to go into this specific career path. He went to school for industrial design. For nearly a decade, he worked in the "Halloween industry," designing life-size scary decorations, which he loved doing. "We started out high-end," Matt explains. Then, according to him, his employer began outsourcing to China and selling to Wal-Mart. Matt's handmade art had been turned into mass-produced pieces of shit, so he quit. [...]

The couple has altered their product for women. Matt builds gay customers silicone men that weigh 108 pounds and stand at 5'9", but Bronwen says female buyers need smaller dolls. "Imagine a very heavy man you have to carry and clean," she says. "A crushing stigma [surrounds sex dolls]... Nobody is gonna call her girlfriend and ask her to help her move a doll."

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The Telegraph: Canada expected to legalise cannabis by July 2018

Prime minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government will introduce legislation to legalise recreational marijuana the week of April 10th and it should become law by July next year, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to lack of authorisation to discuss the upcoming legislation.

Mr Trudeau has long promised to legalise recreational pot use and sales. Canada would be the largest developed country to end a nationwide prohibition of recreational marijuana. In the US, voters in California, Massachusetts, Maine and Nevada voted last year to approve the use of recreational marijuana, joining Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska. Uruguay in South America is the only nation to legalise recreational pot. [...]

The task force recommended adults be allowed to carry up to 30 grams of pot for recreational purpose and grow up to four plants. It also recommended that higher-potency pot be taxed at a higher rate than weaker strains. It also said recreational marijuana should not be sold in the same location as alcohol or tobacco. Under the task force proposals, alcohol-free cannabis lounges would be allowed.

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The Conversation: New research shows immigration has only a minor effect on wages

Economic arguments against immigration often take two forms – immigrants either suppress the wages of workers, or immigration creates higher unemployment. But our research shows that the impact of immigration on the labour market in Australia over the last 15 years is negligible. [...]

Past attempts at gauging the impact of immigration on the labour market compared geographical areas with different percentages of immigrants. The problem with this approach is that it assumes that geographic labour markets are fixed and distinct. It rules out the selectiveness of migrants and whether incumbents react to new migrants by moving to other neighbourhoods.

To get around this we used an approach pioneered by George Borjas, who found that immigration significantly impacted low-skill US workers who were at the same skill level as new immigrants. We looked at changes in immigration rates into different skill groups in Australia to identify the effects of immigration on the earnings and employment prospects of Australian workers. [...]

In our study we looked at six outcomes – annual earnings, weekly earnings, wage rates, hours worked, participation rate and unemployment. We explored 114 different possibilities in all. We estimated the model for both HILDA and the SIH data across the whole population and separately by male and female. We restricted it to young people and broadened our definition of skill groups. We also controlled for overall macroeconomic conditions.

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JSTOR Daily: The Recipe for Secession: What Makes Nations Leave

Political Sociologist Michael Hechter has explored what the ingredients to a true secession are. His conclusion: secession doesn’t come from one event, but is borne of economic disparities, identity crises, legislative failure, and bad blood.

Different economic interests: In theory, nations work for the betterment of their populations. But if different regions feel that their contributions outweigh their benefits (as was the popular sentiment in Brexit, substantiated or not), calls for separation naturally follow.

Cultural identity: As with any major decision, there is an emotional component. A nation’s identity isn’t purely (or even necessarily mostly) tied to economic shared interests. Rather, it’s a shared sense of affinity and similarity. There are numerous ways a shared cultural identity can form—and numerous ways it can fracture. [...]

A failure to negotiate an alternative. Unless military action is considered an option, seceding states must come to an agreement with their parent state. And as Hechter notes, “If there is one constant in history apart from the universality of death and taxes, it is the reluctance of states to part with territory.” Unless the seceding territory is a clear liability, there are multiple ways—legislative, economic, political—to appease a disgruntled population.

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Independent: Clever teenagers twice as likely to smoke cannabis, study finds

Students who are high academic achievers at the age of 11 are also more likely to drink alcohol as teenagers, but less likely to smoke tobacco cigarettes, a nine-year study by University College London found.

Analysing data for 6,059 young people from state-funded and fee-paying schools in England, experts deemed bright children less likely to smoke cigarettes as teenagers but more likely to smoke cannabis.

This is thought to be a result of middle-class parents being more likely to warn their children of the dangers of tobacco and smoking traditional cigarettes. [...]

“These associations persist into early adulthood, providing evidence against the hypothesis that high academic ability is associated with temporary ‘experimentation’ with substance use.”

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