Links - 19th February 2019 (2)

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Behind the (Food TV) Scenes - "‘When you're talking about ghost writing cookbooks, are you writing the recipes for dishes that [celebrity] chefs have already invented? Or are you coming up with the whole thing from scratch?’
‘It totally depends on who the chef is. Certain books I do, I make them up from scratch. Other ones I take a bit more of a brief or there's a bit more of a conversation going on. But actually the last few that I've done you just end up writing the whole thing yourself. It actually makes my life a lot easier if no one else gets involved. I can just sit down and get on with it’"

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Don't Panic! - "[On the assassinated Maltese journalist] At the time of her death she was facing 47 libel actions. In Malta weirdly you can still sue the dead so the corpse and its family are still facing 30 or so libel suits"

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Keep America Great - "[On the caravan] He wasn't about to accept the offer of asylum the Mexican government had made overnight. It would be like being in prison, he said, of the stipulation that the migrants had to remain in the southern Mexican states of Chiapas or Oaxaca while their applications were being processed. For that he figured he may as well keep going and apply for asylum in the United States instead"
I guess if you don't need to fear for your life, you can choose your country

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, The Next Move - "Even today, my audioguide explained, the mustache carries with it a symbolism of what it means to be a Rajput, a fierce and proud warrior. This, it seems, has permeated through Indian society. Many men may still hold on to traditional notions that the mustache carries connotations of masculinity and power. As I leave the grounds I pass a few of the palace workers, all with mustaches themselves. Some years ago in the southern states of Madhya Pradesh, police were officially encouraged to grow mustaches to confer command respect and honor, but there is a darker side. Last year lower caste men in Gujarat were beaten up by Rajput men for simply sporting mustaches it was reported. The argument of the assailants it said was that they believed the right to have a mustache was the sole preserve of the upper caste martial clan"

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Nationalists and Patriots - "[On educational graffiti on pavements] They chose to paint on pavements rather than walls because people today walk looking down at their smartphones. I'd seen it done outside some shops in Milan and noticed how it captured people's attention he explains, so last year they tested the idea outside schools. We did graffiti featuring maths formulae, like an advertising campaign for revision. Everyone liked it a lot but unfortunately we didn't think about social media. But this year they did. With phone in hand passers by already perfectly positioned to snap and post"

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, From Our Home Correspondent 18/11/2018 - "This intergenerational group has sprung from the vision of nursery director Judith Ish-Horowicz… Concerned that the very young and the very old were having almost no contact in 21st century Britain she cooked up this extraordinary fusion project, convinced that the two seemingly disparate groups had much to offer the other. Judith tells me how she's watched the children develop social skills way beyond their years and a touching empathy. She's been astonished to see how the little ones have adapted their movements around their elderly friends to make sure they don't knock over a Zimmer frame or kick away a cane with boisterous play. In turn, the geriatric play group members have found not only new energy, but a new purpose. A care home can be a lonely, isolating place Judith reminds me, but when you know you're spending the morning teaching reading or numeracy skills to a small child, well, you've got a social use again. It's called creating a community she explains"

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Irish Abortion Referendum - "Watching the Irish referendum campaign from the outside, I was struck by how little discussion of abortion as an act, as a medical or scientific reality there really was. It was conducted almost entirely at the emotional level... The problem is, when you say that, history only moves one way, progress only looks like one thing. It's okay for people to make this kind of decision to repeal the Eighth Amendment. But if you look at another country like Poland, which is moving towards a less and less happy settlement on abortion, then that's anti progress, and that's bad, even though that might be the settled democratic will of the people"

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Cold War 2.0? - "People don't go to Russia seeking asylum in the same way that they do come to Britain. There is actually a moral difference here...
At one point we were talking about, arguing about whether NATO would really have gone up to Russia’s borders… And then someone saying, well, they opened an office in Ukraine. Well there’s a big difference between opening an office in a country and invading it... the [arguments] that say you did this, and that's why Putin is behaving in this monstrous way."

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, The Morality of Big Data - "‘What you're basically saying is that there's a group of people who’ve decided that there's a good use of the manipulation of big data for nice medical ends, but not in other instances. That's nerve racking, because I was bemused about the fact that the data mining techniques we used in the Obama campaign, and he was called hip and modern. And when Labor did it in the last election, everyone was saying, oh, that's what we need to be - a digital new party. And then now suddenly, data sharing and big data manipulation is not a good thing. It's bad. Why? Because apparently it led to the terrible Brexit outcome and so on and so forth'"

The Independent - Posts - "White influencers are being accused of using makeup to 'pretend to be black'"
Comments: "Is it worrying? I mean, who is worried? Syria, worrying. Climate change, worrying. Plastic in oceans, worrying. US new alignment with dictatorships, worrying. Refugee crisis, worrying. Ongoing poverty & starvation etc, worrying. White women taking selfies with the wrong shade of makeup, distinctly not worrying."
"So using white makeup is white privilege, using darker make-up is blackfishing, getting tan is insulting to the aborigen people, get you hair straight is coping asian culture, if I draw a black point on my chin Marie Antoniette will come from the ground telling me I'm fking coping the french beauty, if i do rasta i'll be insulting rastafarian and doing afro hair i'm coping africa hair, if I place a pair of cat ears my cat will come to smash my face accusing me of cat fishing. And I can go on and on."
"Well i guess we should get offended by Geisha make up and clowns and any black person lightening their skin, or straightening their hair..??"
"Does Michael Jackson fall into the category for white fishing ?"
"First there is criticism that western beauty standards are too white. Then when people recognise the beauty of black women and wish to emulate that beauty, it’s not appropriate and comes from a place of white privilege. Perhaps I’m ignorant but acknowledging the beauty of women from different backgrounds to ourselves is surely a good thing?" [Ed: This is a good argument against "cultural appropriation" too, especially when it's concurrent with demands for representation/inclusivity]
"What about those who get a tan? Are they ‘brownfishing’? 🤦"
"idiotfishing is a more worrying trend people online pretending to have a valid point."
" Stop.Seriously.No one cares. For people who are supposedly about letting people be what they identify as--- they seem to be awfully intolerant of people who do exactly that."
"Why is this a problem ? If it acceptable nowadays for men to wear make up and women wear trousers, why is this even being talked about ?"
"What about the Indy masquerading as journalists?"
"Everyone should mind their business.And let people be."
"Say 20 years ago when I was 17, I wore clothes that would be considered as ‘black fashion’ because I liked then or liked celebrities that wore them. I wouldn’t have been accused of culturally appropriating I’d have just looked silly (because they didn’t suite me) and move on. Nowadays the world is up in arms"
"So no ones gonna wear a blond wig anymore ?"
"Whatever happened to "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" ?"
"What about these who use lightening cream to get light or white colour? Are they brownfishing?"
This suggests that some people just want to get offended at anything they can

Walter Ralegh: enemy of the state - History Extra - "Did she love him? Did they love each other? I think, I think I've ended up describing as an eroticized political relationship rather than a political erotic relationship. And that isn't just hair splitting. It's amazing, I mean I wish, I wish I had a fiver for very time I'm asked did he have sex with Elizabeth?... I'm pretty sure no, why would she risk it? But she was attracted by the man and he got away with things that other people couldn't because of his charm and his charisma and we're back to the thing about his truth telling. His lack of conventional deferrence in some ways... Though he wrote an awful lot of stuff, it's not the stuff we now read, I think my mom, you know, being educated in the 30s, 40s, was the last generation to be forced to read those big thick Decline of the Roman Empire, Macaulay things and indeed the History of the World."

Dan Snow on shell shock - History Extra - "The symptoms manifest themselves in various different ways. But they could be an aversion to loud noise and very bright light… artillery, high explosives, supersonic shards of razor sharp steel flying through the air, shrapnel... but also the issues around movement and I don't know if people have ever seen the video archive of people with shell shock. But they have very spasmodic movements, they went very stiff, they walked in a very pronounced way. And what's really weird is that the people I talked to say that no one can really explain why those were the symptoms of psychiatric shock in the first, in the early part of the 20th century. And now people who have battle fatigue, battle shock, PTSD don't seem to exhibit those. The only reason that they could give me... it's a kind of cultural response. So people who suffered a psychiatric wound had perhaps seen or seen film, seen something on the stage with jerky movements, with inability to control ones’ limbs and that leads to, that started to manifest itself through their trauma. And what's really interesting is that now today it takes the form of flashbacks and people think it's because in Hollywood when you see traumatized former veterans and Vietnam war films, or other ones, they have, they suffer from flashbacks, a disturbed sleep and things. So it is that the symptoms of the profound psychiatric damage that people were sustaining do seem to be dependent on the culture in which they exist at the time...
When I've met veterans, they tend to tell you the good stories… when you’re meeting a D Day veteran, it’s a kind self censored group, isn't it? Because the D Day veteran who wants to talk about D Day is probably one who's going to have had better experiences"

Tim Pool on Twitter - "2011: Facebook is allowing citizens in the Arab world to express genuine grievances with their governments and seek reform.
2018: Facebook caused the riots in France, not widespread anger over taxes cut for the wealthy and tax increases for the working class"

Lucas Lynch - Victims of anti-semitism in Europe describe the... - "Victims of anti-semitism in Europe describe the perpetrators of such crimes against them.
51% of perpetrators are described as having a "Muslim extremist" view or a "left-wing political view."
"Far-right political view" clocks in at only 13%, "Christian extremist view" at 5%."
12 country average: 30% are Muslim extremists, 21% are left wingers

Meme - "Tired Of Waking Up To Take Medication? Learn Braille"
"You shouldn't learn braille if you aren't blind it's rude Go die"
"deer diary today i got a death threat for learning a language"

Imam Tawhidi - Posts - "Dear liberals and leftists. There are only two genders: Male and female, nothing else. Because I’m a Muslim and the Quran says so. If you attack me, then you’re a hateful Islamophobe according to your own laws and logic."

Quartz - Posts - "When it comes to pushing for gender equality, small actions can make a big difference. Five simple ways to be a better male ally"
Comment: "So work a little less hard so that women can have an advantage? Hilarious. I dont see how any woman can be on board with this."
" By JP Morgan Chase. Seriously, if you look for author, that's all you find."
"Male allies, because strong independent women need all the reassurance, favors, and help from men that they can get."

Study: Maximizing grain yields won't meet future African needs - "Even if sub-Saharan yields continue rising at the rate they have over the last quarter-century, the region’s existing farmland would still produce only between a third and half of the grain needed in 2050"
Surprisingly they didn't blame colonialism

The Hawaiian seals with eels up their noses are baffling scientists - "The picture - taken this year in the remote north-western Hawaiian islands - has gone viral, drawing attention to a rare phenomenon that continues to baffle scientists who are now begging the endangered seals to "make better choices"."