Links - 3rd March 2017

Support for EU freedom of movement rules 'eroding' - "One of the most senior Dutch government ministers has said a fundamental EU principle, freedom of movement, needs to be radically reformed. Deputy prime minister Lodewijk Asscher said support was falling across Europe over the way it has been implemented"

Russian Orthodox Church lends weight to Putin patriotism

4 Russian Travel Tips for Visiting America - "2. On Talking to American Women
The short version: American women are a little uptight. They might call the cops if you look at them too long. And don’t be gallant, that creeps them out.
4. On American Optimism
Short Version: These people do not stop smiling. Also, they don’t want to hear your problems because it interrupts their smiling. “Surviving” makes you a hero over there. Here it just means you were unlucky, but not unlucky enough to have died"

Belching smoke through the Channel, Russian aircraft carrier so unreliable it sails with its own breakdown tug

Russian charity 'accidentally advocates beaver genocide' - "instead of asking people to "Do Good", as initially intended, the flyers read "Exterminate Beavers" after intricacies in the Russian language were confused by the printer... the company had cited Russian regulations dating back to the Soviet era specifying that minor typos do not qualify as contract violations. The printing house allegedly told the charity "no one will notice" the error and encouraged them to continue distributing the leaflets"

Russia scorns Boris Johnson's 'hysteria' as bombs hammer Aleppo - "The Russian defence ministry said Boris Johnson’s comments that Russia should be investigated for war crimes in Aleppo were “Russophobic hysteria”."
Identity Politics is for everyone

MP killed in explosion while having sex - "A GLAMOROUS Russian politician and her husband died semi-naked in the back of their 4x4 when he set off a bomb in a jealous rage"

Russia furore over FGM in mainly Muslim Dagestan - "A report on female genital mutilation (FGM) in the North Caucasus has sparked a fierce debate in Russia, with some clerics defending the practice. A civil society group found FGM to be common among Muslims in mountain villages in Dagestan. Girls' genitals were cut in primitive homes. Regional Muslim leader Ismail Berdiyev suggested all women should undergo FGM but later withdrew the remark."
Funny, according to Reza Aslan it's an African problem

Why Do Russians Never Smile? - "There’s even a Russian proverb that translates, roughly, to “laughing for no reason is a sign of stupidity”... Smiling is a sign of certainty and confidence, so when people in those countries smile, they might seem odd. Why would you smile when fate is an invisible wolf waiting to shred you? You might, in those “low-UA” countries, even be considered stupid for smiling... In countries such as India, Argentina, and the Maldives, meanwhile, smiling was associated with dishonesty—something Krys found to be correlated to their corruption rankings."

Russia banned a Polish board game that simulates Communist-era shopping

Russia and the Curse of Geography, From Ivan the Terrible to Vladimir Putin - "Two of Russia’s chief preoccupations—its vulnerability on land and its lack of access to warm-water ports—came together in Ukraine in 2014"

Vladimir Putin ‘wants to regain Finland’ for Russia, adviser says

Effects of an exercise intervention using Dance Dance Revolution on endothelial function and other risk factors in overweight children. - "Twelve weeks of DDR-use improved FMD, aerobic fitness, and MAP in overweight children. Improvements occurred without changes in inflammatory markers or nitric oxide production"

Who killed the curry house? - "men came to Britain alone, and only later sent for their wives and children, which partly explains why curry house food never bore much resemblance to authentic cookery from the subcontinent. Home cooking in India and Bangladesh was generally done by women... This blastingly hot food was an invented cuisine that no Indian person would fully recognise as their own. Given the choice, even the curry house owners themselves often preferred to go home and eat fresher, more subtle food than the dishes they served in their own restaurants. What they didn’t anticipate was that one day, some of their customers might start to feel the same way... To many British Asian people, whether they had grown up in the UK or arrived as adults, British-Indian food seemed odd, both in form and flavour. The young cookery writer Meera Sodha, author of the 2016 cookbook Fresh India, always felt that curry house food was “misrepresentative” of the Gujarati cuisine she grew up eating at her mother’s table in Lincolnshire. The entire flavour profile of curry house curries, Gulhane told me, is founded on the tang of dried fenugreek leaf, a herb his mother never used, which acts as a flavour enhancer, comparable to MSG. (While talking to Gulhane, I suddenly realised that the spicy aroma at Uddin’s that I had found so distinctive and alluring as a child must have been fenugreek leaf.)"

Korean Cosplayer Pion Kim Attacked For Cosplaying as a Mexican Overwatch Character - "The whole point of cosplaying, or dressing up as fictional characters, is to inhabit a person totally unlike oneself. The community prides itself on being inclusive and accepting, encouraging fat people to dress up as skinny characters or men to dress up as women. But all hell broke lose when a Korean woman donned the costume of a Mexican hacker from the hugely popular Overwatch video game... Some social justice warriors accused Kim of “brownface” for using a subtle bronzer to darken her skin, and conducted what amounted to a witch hunt against her. Many in the Mexican community stood up for Kim, alleging that “gringos” were getting offended on their behalf and saying they didn’t care if people cosplay as a Mexican character. “I’m mexican, i have a ‘dark skin tone,'” a woman wrote on Facebook. “And I think that Sombra cosplay was amazing. She did an amazing job. I mean, if you want to cosplay an ‘Avatar character’ you OBVIOUSLY will paint your skin BLUE, she did the same with Sombra.” Despite the support, Kim apologized for her (non)transgression and vowed to never cosplay as Sombra again. A real loss considering the brilliance of her Sombra rendition."

These People From Japan Don't Care if You Wear Kimonos - "Japanese people couldn’t care less if some whitey wears their clothes — they were actually happy to see an American inspired by Japanese culture... When they were told that Perry’s performance was heavily criticized they were very confused... “Indian curry and Japanese curry are different even though they are both curry,” one man said. “Even if you ate the Japanese version of foreign food, knowing it’s different from the original one, it would make you interested in the original version and want to learn about their culture.”"

Counter-protesters join kimono fray at MFA - "about two dozen protesters and half as many counterprotesters filled the MFA’s Impressionist gallery. On one side, a group of mostly young Asian-American and white women gathered to protest “Kimono Wednesdays,” demanding additional context for the event and questioning views of Asians as “the other” in American culture. They held signs with messages like “Not your Asian fetish” and “I have been assaulted, raped, harassed + stalked, denied my humanity repeatedly & you don’t want to think about me because I am just another Japanese woman”... Stepping into the dispute this week were several counterprotesters wearing kimonos, including some older Japanese women, who advocated for the museum to return to its initial “Kimono Wednesdays” programming. One held a sign saying “I am not offended by people wearing kimono in front of French paintings.” Another sign read, in part, “I welcome museum exhibits that share Japanese culture with the community.” Etsuko Yashiro, 53, of Concord, who helps organize Boston’s Japan Festival, said she was there to share the beauty of kimonos with an American audience. Ikuko Burns, 79, who was born in Tokyo and has lived in Boston for 53 years, explained how she used to bring kimonos to local schools as a consultant for the Children’s Museum to teach introductory lessons on Japan. “I’m a little bit disappointed by the other side,” she said, questioning what the protest had to do with Monet’s painting and chalking it up to the participants’ youth... Wearing a cherry-blossom-patterned kimono, Ara Mahar, 23, of Dorchester, who founded the Boston branch of an international kimono group, held a sign referencing a YouTube video in which a Japanese man is asked when foreigners can wear kimonos. The answer? “Whenever”... “We actually do not quite understand what their point of protest is,” said Jiro Usui, the Deputy Consul General of Japan in Boston. “We tried to listen to those people who are protesting, but we think together with the MFA we should encourage that Japanese culture be appreciated in a positive way.”"
Too bad it got cancelled as they caved to the SJWs

Protesters shut down Milo Yiannopoulos event at UC Davis - "protesters blocked access to the venue. Surrounding the lecture hall with signs, they chanted, "Say it loud, say it clear, racists are not welcome here.""

Berkeley cancels Milo Yiannopoulos talk after violent protests - "More than 1,500 protesters had gathered at Sproul Plaza, chanting and holding signs that read: "No safe space for racists" and "This is war.""
How convenient to blame anarchists who conveniently do what students protest for

German court rules that firebombing a synagogue is not anti-Semitic - "the 2014 firebombing of a synagogue in Wuppertal, a region just east of Düsseldorf, was an act of criminal arson, but not anti-Semitic. Instead, the court found it was a protest against Israel, even though the synagogue was obviously not in Israel and those who worship there are Jews, not Israelis. The decision upheld that of a lower court, which stated the perpetrators, a trio of Palestinian-born German residents, wanted to “call attention to the Gaza conflict” when they prepared and then lobbed Molotov cocktails at the synagogue one July night in 2014. No one was injured, but the attack caused €800 in damages. The men were ultimately given suspended sentences"
Can one attack a mosque to protest ISIS?

Finnair flight 666 to HEL on Friday 13

A day without murder: no one is killed in El Salvador for first time in two years

If you want to earn more, work less - "The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare released the government’s first report on karoshi this October, and it found that nearly one in four (23%) companies have some employees who work more than 80 hours of overtime per month... long-working office martyrs were less likely than their peers to have received a bonus in the last three years... many of us believe we need to be in the office both when our boss shows up and when he or she leaves. However, Vanderkam thinks that’s a big (and often misguided) assumption. “Maybe your boss wants the place to herself in the morning and she’s actually annoyed that you’re getting there early, too.”... employee output declines sharply after 50 hours per week and nosedives after 56 hours to the point where someone who puts in 70 hours doesn’t produce anything more with those additional 14 hours. Similar studies have linked long hours with absenteeism, long-term memory loss and impaired decision-making skills."

The BuzzFeed Fiasco Shows Us Why Trust in Institutions Is Dying - "I don’t know which school of journalism Buzzfeed Ben went to, but in my first Masters degree, there was substantial instruction on the ethics of journalism and its implications. Dumping raw unverified data, especially HUMINT, with glaring inaccuracies that can be quite easily verified (and which make the entire report look flawed) crosses a lot of ethical boundaries. The context is this: the report in question has been in the deepest corners of the web since last year, but there’s a reason why Hillary’s campaign opposition researchers, and other established media organisations didn’t touch it. And that’s not just because of its terrible syntax errors and glaring spelling mistakes. It is, at this stage, too good to be true. A cursory Google search can point out that fake news includes not just hoaxes but deliberately publishing propaganda and disinformation (дезинформация), and using social media to drive web traffic and amplify its effect... Trust is earned through integrity. The reason there is a dying trust in Western institutions and lamentable death of expertise, is because the gatekeepers in press and academia have become partisan... The same people who actively supported Wikileaks and opposed Bush 43, are now reversed. Those who supported a Reset with Russia, now see Putin’s hand in everything. It’s almost like a pole is switched overnight, simply because Hillary lost and Trump won"

Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire - "Donald Trump wasn’t the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country. Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers"

The Modern Marriage Trap, and How to Get Out of It - "80 percent of women and 70 percent of men say that they want a relationship with “flexible gender boundaries” and prefer sharing over specialization. That’s nice, but it’s not usually how things turn out. That’s because there are forces external to couples that push them into asymmetrical arrangements, ones that impact same-sex as well as different-sex couples. Three-quarters of gay and lesbian couples with two working parents specialize, and that can’t be explained by gender stereotypes, ideologies, or human nature... there are forces bigger than each of us, bigger than our partnerships, and bigger than marriage itself. They shape how our lives turn out whether we like it or not."

Tattooed women outnumber men in a new poll - "40 percent of women made the tattoo experience a shared one, often getting inked with friends and loved ones, They also took the experience "a little more seriously" than their male counterparts. "Women have a tendency sometimes of getting that little souvenir keepsake tattoo with deeper meaning, whereas men tend to go a little overboard and fill themselves up with larger pieces""

CBS Radio Deceptively Implies Chicago Torturers Were White Trump Supporters, Victim Was Black

Piers Morgan defiant after making mum cry on Good Morning Britain
If a woman cries because of a man, she's won

No, Ryan Gosling Isn’t A Sexist For Thanking Eva Mendes - "Thanking your wife is now a sign of being a sexist. Ryan Gosling won a Golden Globe for his performance in “La La Land” and chose to thank his wife, Eva Mendes, for being a good wife, mother, and support for the rest of the family. Instead of this move making him conscientious, supportive of his wife, or a sweet husband, apparently it instead makes him a sexist and misogynist, someone who is upholding the patriarchy and holding down his wife. The world has truly gone mad when a husband can’t love his wife without being slagged... I’m sure Mendes is thankful for The Independent’s criticism of her personal life choices and reproduction. I guess reproductive choices are above reproach, beyond critique, totally a woman’s purview… until they’re not"

Filter bubbles and Facebook: Why so many people hate "the liberal elite" - "As an opinionated citizen with consistently liberal views, I am used to being attacked and insulted by conservatives for my choices and opinions. But the liberal critiques I read weren’t so much attacking my decision as they were questioning my intelligence and my ability to understand the issue. For the first time in my life, I was on the outside of the so-called liberal bubble, looking in. And what I saw was not pretty. I watched as many of my highly educated friends and contacts addressed those who disagreed with them with contempt and arrogance, and an offensive air of intellectual superiority."