This according the Sun. Who knows if it’s true. As they say, the first victim of war is truth. However, there’s been several reports about Putin’s health issues. Hate to sound so inhumane, but Putin would’t be missed were he to die soon. Problem is that his replacement seems equally bad.

I recently came across a website called “Daily Telegraph New Zealand”. There were immediate red flags waving, because this website pushes all the usual conspiracy theories, combined with pro-Russian propaganda and a regular dose homophobia—one article was about how visualising gay people in mainstream culture will make boys feminine and unable to become manly soldiers (well, someone needs to read up on Alexander the Great).

I also recognised a few names of well-known lunatics, such as Russia Today’s Timur Fomenko—a man who’s created his own parallel universe where Russia is the most splendid nation ever.

Anyhow, I found this article about the website, written and researched by David Farrier. It describes how dodgy news works.

Pamela Paul in the New York Times: “I left because I was terrible on Twitter. I may not have been the only one, but Twitter Me was petty, insecure, desperate to please, angry, narcissistic and needy.”

It might seem odd considering how Russia has made homophobia part of its state ideology, but rape is not about sexuality, it’s about power and humiliation.

Not really, but according to Putin’s propaganda the author Astrid Lindgren was one of several Nazi Swedes. In reality, she was an outspoken opponent to both racism and nationalism. Not that Putin’s people care about reality.

Yesterday, I took this photo of Dar Młodzieży—Polish for “Gift of the Youth”. I later learned that it’s a sail-training ship for young men and women. Quite spectacular.

This is great news for the local economy, which has struggled during the covid pandemic. Three out of ten tourists who set foot in Spain last month traveled the islands.

I got a new job in Copenhagen yesterday. Set to begin in June. Yay! 🙂🥂🇩🇰

Here’s an article about how Putin is making his opponents leave Russia. It doesn’t take much to be labelled a foreign agent.

They did nothing when Putin attacked Ukraine. Now they’re protesting against NATO instead.

I’ve always liked old maps, and considering that I just got a new job in Copenhagen, why not one of that city. Now it’s Friday evening and the sun is about to leave room for the night.

שבת שלום

A new study published in the International Journal of Primatology suggests that the monkey, spotted near the Kinabatangan River in Malaysian Borneo, is a combination of two different species. Cool!

In new research published in the journal PNAS, scientists taught an AI algorithm to model first impressions and accurately predict how people will be perceived based on a photograph of their face. So, in the future, you don’t have to ask if you’re ugly or handsome.

According to new study published by arXiv, the space agency wants to send a message with digitised images of the human form along with an invitation for any receiving intelligences to respond.

This article from the Pew Research Centre is from 2019, but it’s still worth reading. I don’t think it’s better now than it was three years ago.

Putin today used his Victory Day speech to justify his invasion of Ukraine by telling Russian soldiers they are fighting for the same cause their fathers and grandfathers did in the Second World War. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Too bad Putin won’t allow Russians access to real facts.

This story is too cute to ignore. The Washington Examiner writes that a bomb-sniffing dog and his owner were awarded a service medal by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday during a ceremony in Kyiv alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Apparently, Trudeau had a scent of dynamite.

A top US intelligence official has said Putin could view the prospect of defeat in Ukraine as an existential threat to his regime and resort to using a nuclear weapon.

After the Swedish Social Democrats yesterday decided in favour of a NATO membership. Only the Greens and the Communists in the Riksdag are against.

This is old news now, but on Saturday, Ukraine won the contest seen by millions europeans. It remains to be seen if Ukraine can arrange the finals in 2023.

The autocrat has destroyed Turkey. Now he wants to make a mess of NATO, too.

After two years of pandemic, this was a welcome injection of money.

According to the Israeli defence minister, Iran is now weeks away from accumulating enough fissile material for one nuclear bomb.

I often disagree with Haaretz, but this law banning the Palestinian flag is ridiculous. I get that it represents terrorism, but even support for such ideas must be allowed.

This article in Daily Art Magazine lists only a few of the thousands of strange relics in the world. My favourite in this list is the Virgin Mary’s breast milk.

“He wasn’t wearing cologne, but it was almost like he had stepped out of some special preparatory bath or something into the moment,” Fiona Hill tells the BBC.

I sent the weekend in Oslo, where we, among other things, visited the Munch Museum. Cool building.

The complaints noted the image was inappropriate and disrespectful due to the religious and spiritual nature of the hijab worn by the lesbians in the picture.

The ban is wrong. It’s about time that Muslim lesbians get seen and recognised.

In an interview with the Guardian, Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller explain why we need to remember history’s horrid homosexuals.

Two parties—in Berlin and Gran Canaria—are the likely source of the monkeypox cases now seen in several countries.

The nightmare never ends… Yesterday, a gunman killed at least nineteen children and two adults in a rural Texas elementary school. It’s the deadliest American school shooting since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary a decade ago.

People in this part of the world often praise themselves for being so very secularised. In Sweden, atheism is the norm and religious people are seen as superstitious lunatics. However, this country is still steeped in Christianity. Being a cultural Christian is simply not associated with religion, it’s just “normal”, nothing to question. The anti-religious sentiment is therefor exclusively targeted at Jews and Muslims, because their culture is outside the norm and therefor easily labelled as superstition.

Ascension Day is a public holiday in Sweden. Swedes enjoy a day off work. It’s not seen as a religious things. Question it as a Jew is religious lunacy, though.

Croatia is expected to join the eurozone in 2023. Its central bank has now revealed the design of its euro coins.

A man who—along his band members in Depeche Mode—played an important part in my life growing up. I still listen to his music regularly. Fletch died today, only 60 years old. I hope he’ll enjoy the silence.

I’m turning 50 today, and realising that I have survived five decades. I recall a conversation I had with friend on this exact day thirty years ago. Several of my friends back then were in their late teens and early twenties. We were all gay—and convinced that gay life beyond thirty must be hell, and beyond forty—death? Fifty was so ridiculous that we decided that we probably were all dead by then.

Here I am, still feeling young and in deep denial of my own ageing. Life is still good, and even gay men find some appreciation in a culture driven by youth and the admiration of twinks and well-trained, hairless bodies. But things have developed for the better.

Something happened in the gay community around 2010 when the first Bear Bars opened their doors in America. It became a global phenomenon. Bear Culture is about embracing men with hair, belly, and who don’t care about being fit. A gay scene for mature men who looks as such. I found a home here.

Another major thing that has shaped me into the man I am today is the rediscovery of my Jewishness. When I was younger, I couldn’t care less about Judaism, and few friends know about it because I never spoke of it. Besides, Swedes in general known close to nothing about Judaism—they think it’s like Christianity, a religion based on whether you believe in Jesus or not. However, Judaism is about lifestyle. You can be a good Jew by leaving according to the rules. Refraining from pork is more important than believing in God.

Today, on my fiftieth birthday, I feel happy with the man I’ve become. I’m married to a man I love—we met in 1998. Together we own a second home in Spain. I earned a master’s degree and specialised in legal cases with bearing on religious freedom, and now get to travel throughout Europe and met meet many interesting scholars when I do. And I just recently got a new job that I’m really excited about. Life is good.

Thanks to all people who made me stick around for fifty years!

I spent my fiftieth birthday on a boat. After some bad weather, the rainbow appeared. Took the photo through a window, hence the reflection.

No attendee will ever forget this bat mitzvah.

I’m nut sure this is for me, but in times of high inflation and ever-more expensive food, this might be the future for us all.

I’ve been wondering about Jason Kottke’s silence in my feed reader. Looked it up today, expecting some technical error or URL change, but it seems more serious. Reading about his burnout and sabbatical feels a bit like saying goodbye to an old friend. That’s what the internet does to me—I feel close to people I’ve read for years but never actually met or spoken to. Weird, but kind of nice, too.

This is quite alarming. The Associated Press writes that Christian nationalism on the rise in some Republican campaigns. As always, gay people are among the perceived enemies of God.

Nationalism is a virus. I’m a staunch supporter of Israel, but chanting “Death to Arabs” is appalling. Yes, Arab groups often express a wish to kill all Jews, but that’s no excuse. As Michelle Obama put it, “When they go low—we go high.” That’s a good motto.