There’s a certain pederastic vibe to this 1910 painting by Spanish artist Joaquín Sorolla. Despite the possible moral objection, I think the work is worth admiration.

“The newly developed intercontinental ballistic rocket with ‘unlimited range’ was one of several unveiled by the Russian leader in his state of the nation address in Moscow,” Jay Akbar of The Sun reports. “They include a nuclear-powered cruise missile, a nuclear-powered underwater drone and new hypersonic missile which apparently have no equivalent.”

It’s as if the Cold War never ended. Truly frightening.

The Local writes about a legal case that has upset Sweden the past few days:

The ruling, pushed through by two lay judges on a divided court, argued it was "not uncommon for women to falsely claim they have been assaulted" in order to get an apartment. It also said the man appeared to come from a “good family, unlike hers”.

The judgment also said, apparently referring to the couple’s foreign background, that the woman was less credible for having reported the assault to the police rather than attempting to resolve it within the family which it said would have been "the normal thing in ‘these circles’”.

I’ve noticed it in a number of pro-Trump blogs and newsletters lately. In the recent past, there’s been a kind of kinship between American conservatives and libertarians on economic issues, but now it seems right-wingers think tariffs are good and free trade is bad. The world is a strange place.

Kathryn Watson of CBS News writes:

On Saturday, Bannon received a warm welcome from the audience of French far-right leaders of the National Front, not the least of which when he told them to embrace any charges of racism and wear them “as a badge of honor.”

“Our populist nationalist movement in the United States is maybe 10 or 15 years old,” Bannon said. “We are here to learn from you.”

Bannon said he’s observed this all over the world, in places like Japan, Korea, the Middle East, the U.S., and now in Western Europe.

“History is on our side. And the biggest reason—the globalists have no answers to freedom. Let them call you racist. Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativist. Wear it as a badge of honor,” Bannon said, applause erupting from the audience. “Because every day, we get stronger, and they get weaker.”

Make no mistake, Bannon is advocating the precise ideas that sparked two world wars. Globalism grew out of that experience, and now the far-right is praying on ignorance to revenge a world of global responsibility when it’s needed the most. He’s very dangerous.

“We show straight men a picture of a woman masturbating and they respond just like a straight guy, but then you also show them a guy masturbating and their eyes dilate a little bit,” Ritch Savin-Williams of Cornell University tells Broadly. “So we’re actually able to show physiologically that all guys are not either gay, straight, or bi.”

“Stephen Hawking became a leader in exploring gravity and the properties of black holes,” Dennis Overbye of the New York Times writes.

“Overall 90,000 more EU citizens came to the UK than left in the year to September 2017, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), but this level of net migration was 75,000 lower than the same figure in September 2016,” Marina Shapira of the University of Stirling writes for The Local. “In the same period, 130,000 EU citizens emigrated, the most since 2008.”

The Sun reports that Dr Geoff Hackett, author of a 28-page report from the British Society for Sexual Medicine, suggests that doctors ask the question. “If a man is in a relationship with a woman and is having problems with erectile dysfunction it might be because they are in a relationship with the wrong gender,” he says.

Or it might be that they simply aren’t that into the woman next to them in bed? Perhaps a new woman, or a man, or both, is the answer? Or just get a Netflix subscription and give up sex altogether?

“Donald Trump is sticking with his ban on military service by transgender people, releasing a memo to that effect Friday evening,” the Advocate reports. “The presidential memo cites a report received last month from Secretary of Defense James Mattis concluding that trans people are not fit to serve.”

From CBS’s 60 Minutes interview with the adult film star who talks about threats from Donald Trump:

I was in a parking lot, going to a fitness class with my infant daughter. Taking, you know, the seats facing backwards in the backseat, diaper bag, you know, gettin’ all the stuff out. And a guy walked up on me and said to me, “Leave Trump alone. Forget the story.” And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, “That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.” And then he was gone.

It’s like something from House of Cards or a John le Carré novel. Truth is stranger than fiction.

“In another interview with his longtime atheist friend, Eugenio Scalfari, Pope Francis claims that Hell does not exist and that condemned souls just ‘disappear’,” Michael Chapman of CNS News writes. “This is a denial of the 2,000-year-old teaching of the Catholic Church about the reality of Hell and the eternal existence of the soul.”

Truly groundbreaking stuff!

Update, 30 March 2018: It was too good to be true. In a statement, released after Scalfari’s report garnered worldwide attention, the Vatican says:

The Holy Father Francis recently received the founder of the newspaper La Repubblica in a private meeting on the occasion of Easter, without however giving him any interviews. What is reported by the author in today’s article is the result of his reconstruction, in which the textual words pronounced by the Pope are not quoted. No quotation of the aforementioned article must therefore be considered as a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father.

#Sad

I’m spending the Easter holiday in Valletta. Tomorrow, I’ll take part in a Sephardic seder. I look forward to the brown eggs.