The Guardian: Still ticking: The improbable survival of the luxury watch business

And therein lies the mystery of the modern timepiece. These days, no one requires a Swiss watch to tell the time – or a watch from any country. The time displayed on our mobile phones and other digital devices will always be more accurate than the time displayed on even the most skilfully engineered mechanical watch, yet the industry has a visual presence in our lives like few others. The storefronts of the world’s big-money boulevards glow with the lustre of Rolex and Omega; newspapers and magazines appear to be kept in business largely by watch adverts; airports would be empty shells without them. The export value of the Swiss watch trade fell by 3.3% last year, due primarily to a downfall in demand from the east Asia. But it is up 62.9% compared with six years ago. In 2015 the world bought 28.1m Swiss watches valued at 21.5 billion Swiss francs. [...]

But why do we continue to buy these over-engineered and redundant machines? Why do so many people pay so much for an item whose principal function may be bought for so little? And how does the watch industry not only survive in the digital age, but survive well enough to erect a 16,000-litre salt‑water shrine to its continued mastery of an outmoded art? Far beyond the telling of time, watches tell us something about ourselves. And so the answers to these questions lie within our propensity for extreme fantasy, our consumption of dazzling marketing, our unbridled and shameless capacity for ostentation, and our renewed reverence for craftsmanship in a digital world. [...]

But accurate timekeeping has long ago ceased to be the point. And this, with deep irony, is another reason why the global watch industry survives. Once you can afford to spend even entry-level prices for a Patek Philippe or a Hublot, your watch has begun to represent status and one-upmanship. A watch is a statement of achievement, and also of intent. (It is also one of the easiest ways to export money from one country to another.) Something glittery on your wrist says something about your earning power and your taste, much as an expensive car can do; it is not always an attractive trait. It’s a delusion, of course, but the fatter and more complicated and expensive the watch, the more the wearer may assume control of the universe, the still centre of a spinning wheel.

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Salon: My two husbands

I’m polyamorous, which means I believe you can love multiple partners at the same time. I’m in a relationship with my husband of nearly 17 years, and my boyfriend, with whom I celebrated my second anniversary in May. (In polyamorous lingo, our relationship is known as a “V”; I’m the “hinge” of the V and my two partners are the vertices.) People often say our lives sound complicated, but the truth is, we’re quite harmonious. We often joke that we’d make incredibly boring subjects for reality TV. [...]

One of the biggest hurdles in non-monogamy — probably the hurdle — is jealousy. My husband was an incredibly jealous person back then, but he began to question its usefulness and purpose. Jealousy is born from a fear of losing a partner; if you believe that love and intimacy can be shared, and are not diminished by sharing, then that fear loses a lot of its power. It was liberating for my husband to step outside of the box that saw everyone else as some kind of threat. [...]

And my husband feels that he benefits a great deal from being non-monogamous. He is far more introverted than I am, and knowing I have another partner to spend time with helps him to feel like it’s OK for him to spend time alone, or to turn down invitations to social events he once would have felt obligated to attend with me. Being polyamorous allows us more breathing room to each be ourselves, rather than feeling like our needs are in conflict with one another. Maybe because I am more fulfilled now and living in a way that feels authentic for me, our marriage is stronger than it’s ever been.

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SciShow: Why Do Cats Love Boxes?

Why do cats love to hang out in boxes so much? It has something to do with being stone cold predators. And, a little anxiety.

The Spectator: Putin’s next move

A Russian invasion of Estonia and-Latvia would be complete in as little as 36 hours, according to a study by the Rand Corporation for the Pentagon. Russian tanks would be rumbling through Tallinn and Riga before Nato could so much as convene an emergency meeting to invoke Article 5 of its charter for mutual defence. The Rand study showed that it would take more than a week for Nato to get its tanks to the Baltics from Germany in response. By then it would all be over.So Nato has decided to send four battalions of troops to the Baltics, including one from Britain — exactly the kind of reinforcement that General Shirreff wants. The Baltic states have welcomed this. [...]

James Carden, a former adviser to a US presidential commission on Russia, agrees. ‘We have a habit of leading on these people who are along the periphery of Russia. Do the Baltics really think that we’ll get into a nuclear exchange if Russia runs over their borders? We won’t. We’re not going to go to war for them. De Gaulle knew this as far back as the 1960s, that the US would not trade New York for Paris in a-nuclear war.’ But he doubted that Russia really-wanted the Baltics back: it was just sending a-message to the West. [...]

Putin, then, may have adopted Richard Nixon’s ‘madman theory’ — the attempt to scare a potential enemy into thinking you might just go to war, might even drop the big one, if pushed. Others in the Russian federation are playing their part — it sometimes seems as if the whole country has been gripped by world war three hysteria. The state-controlled TV channel NTV took its cameras into a nuclear bunker, telling-viewers: ‘Everyone should know where the nearest bomb shelter is.’ The chairman of the Duma’s defence committee even appeared on television in his old uniform as commander of the country’s airborne troops and promised to fly to the US on a military-transport plane if ordered to by President Putin. ‘We need to stop apologising to the Westerners,’ he said.

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Independent: Don't worry Remainers, Britain will rejoin the European Union within 30 years

Meanwhile the EU is facing its own crisis. Despite its vast infrastructure, the left is also turning its back on the union. It accuses the bloc of fiscal and social dumping, speculation, tax fraud, high unemployment, an environmentally destructive economic model and wealth inequality.

But unpicking this this tightly knit EU fabric would take several decades. The EU needs reforming and it will change, but it won’t disappear. It’s a collective organisation that has helped weak countries – and they all are weak, in one way or other – focus on their potential to improve. Spain benefited from a unified Europe after nearly 40 years under obscurantist Franco; Portugal did well in the EU group and so do Ireland and Italy. [...]

Socially divided, with unparalleled inequalities weakened workers' rights in spite of tax haven status, England will be no Switzerland in 30 years’ time. It will need the support of the group to thrive again, just as the EU helped rescue its fortunes in the aftermath of the Second World War.

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The New Yorker: Iran Is Enjoying Our Presidential Election

Among hard-liners, the response to the series has been gleeful. It fits their profile of the United States as the Great Satan. Mashregh, a Web site linked to the Revolutionary Guards, commented, “House of Cards has skillfully shown the deception in the complicated political sphere of liberal American civilization, as well as the treason, power-hungriness, promiscuities and crimes behind those ruling in the country.” [...]

In Tehran today, a Clinton Presidency is viewed as simultaneously reassuring and unnerving. She would represent continuity on the nuclear deal (“We have offered to negotiate directly with the government on nuclear issues,” she said at Georgetown), but she has also expressed “solidarity with those inside Iran struggling for democratic change,” which both frightens the regime and infuriates it. [...]

I asked Izadi to tell me what Iranians were concluding from the Presidential debates. “In general, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, U.S. relations with Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and so forth, affect people’s lives here,” he replied. “So seeing how U.S. elections are conducted, how American politicians behave toward each other, and what they think about Iran and the rest of the Middle East are of interest to Iranians.” As for “House of Cards,” he said, “for people who begin with a negative view of American politicians, the series reinforces those ideas. I guess people realize that the U.S. political process is at least as complicated as the Iranian political process.” Besides, he said, “ ‘House of Cards’ is also a good show.”

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Al Jazeera: The battle for Mosul is about much more than Mosul

Yet the actual consequences of this week's events depend heavily on several critical military, demographic, and political developments whose outcome now is totally unknown.

These include: How fierce a fight will ISIL put up in Mosul, after not resisting much at Dabiq? Will Iraqi Sunni, Shia and Kurdish forces and political leaders be able to reach understandings on how to govern Mosul and other liberated areas? Will Turkey be satisfied that it has achieved its military-strategic aims in Syria and Iraq, and refrain from confrontations with Iraqi or Kurdish troops? [...]

Also significant in the campaign against Mosul has been the Iraqi armed forces and government taking the lead on the ground, and - unprecedentedly - fighting in close coordination with Kurdish forces.

This implies a critical new level of shared political appreciation that only these two groups of fighters should liberate the city on the ground, while others provide support from the air or in other ways, including intelligence and logistics.

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VICE: Domestic Violence Shelters Are Turning Away LGBTQ Victims

A report released Tuesday by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) shows that Jacob, whose story is detailed in the report, was hardly alone in his struggle to find help. Surveying 1,976 instances of LGBTQ intimate partner abuse from 2015, NCAVP found that nearly half of survivors (44 percent) had been turned away from shelters. Of those, 71 percent reported that they were denied services due to their gender identity, because women-only shelters would not accept gay men or trans women, for example. Transgender women had a particularly tough time finding services that wouldn't slam the door in their faces, but gay, bisexual, and transgender men also reported that domestic violence shelters for men rarely even exist. [...]

For male domestic violence victims of all backgrounds, services are still woefully sparse—one of the country's first shelters for male victims of domestic violence just opened this February in Arkansas. And for women in same-sex relationships, fleeing to the seeming safety of a domestic violence shelter presents a unique problem. As a survivor named Sylvia described in the NCAVP report, she was afraid to enter a shelter once learning there was no way to guarantee her abusive girlfriend would be barred from entering. For lesbian and bisexual women, the threat of an abuser following them into a shelter is a very real prospect. [...]

Statistics show that the LGBTQ community is impacted by intimate partner violence at rates higher than those of heterosexuals. According to the 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey published by the Centers for Disease Control, the most recent report available, bisexual women and men suffer from domestic violence more than any other group in terms of sexual orientation: 37.3 percent of bisexual men (compared to 29 percent of straight men) and 61.1 percent of bisexual women (at nearly double the 35 percent of straight women) reported physical violence, rape, or stalking at the hands of a partner. Lesbians were the second-highest group at 43.8 percent, and 26 percent of gay men reported domestic abuse as well.

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The Guardian: Brexit vote reignites the debate on Britishness in Northern Ireland

The outcome of June’s referendum triggered a summer of speculation. Had attitudes changed? If unionists saw EU membership as important, might they reconsider their ancient hostility to reunification with Ireland?

Some asked if there should be a “border poll”, a referendum on whether Northern Ireland should stay in the UK or join the Irish Republic. Others feared a push by Scotland towards independence could fatally undermine unionist confidence in the unity of the UK.

But passions quickly cooled. Politicians, among them Bertie Ahern, the former Irish prime minister, said the time wasn’t right for a reunification vote.

In unionist strongholds voters stress that pro-remain is not the same as a pro-reunification. Even diehard loyalists say they are opposed to any “hard border” with the Irish Republic post-Brexit. [...]

A BBC poll in September found that eight out of 10 people in a survey of 1,000 voters said Brexit would not change their views on the union with Britain or a united Ireland. The same poll said 63% would still back remaining within the UK. A majority in the poll – 52% – were opposed to holding a border poll on Irish unity.

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