The Economist: Bromantic interest

But a bigger change is afoot. A popular online collection of old photos shows how much American men used to casually touch each other: Victorian gentlemen posing with hands clasped; grizzled cowboys sitting with arms entwined, and a striking amount of lap-sitting. But such pictures from the middle of the 20th century and later are rare.  The culprit is homophobia: as gay men became more visible, they were reviled, and men in the English-speaking world (though not only there) started avoiding any touch that might indicate they were that way inclined. [...]

It turns out that straight men’s need for intense, intimate relationships with each other never went anywhere, as evidenced by the ebullient burst of words celebrating it. Pop culture has been a leading indicator: our Prospero blog recently reviewed two movies in the same week—“The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” and “The End of the Tour”—which our reviewers concluded were essentially “bromances”, a male friendship at the heart of each story. The word itself was boosted by 2009’s “I Love You, Man”, which Wikipedia describes without scare-quotes as a bromantic comedy—a genre with its own Wikipedia entry, created in 2014. [...]

A whole generation of young men feel comfortable taking man-dates out together, saying “I’m gay for” a male celebrity they like, and generally pressing man-, bro- (and dude-) into service for new words signalling that their straight-maleness is secure. The eagerness is refreshing, and telling. Everyone wins when no one is afraid to appear to be something that was never wrong in the first place.

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Al Jazeera: Analysis: The implications of the Qatar-Turkey alliance

Shortly after Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates severed diplomatic relations with Qatar and closed their airspace to commercial flights, Turkey condemned the blockade against Qatar, sent food stocks to stave off possible shortages in the country, and fast-tracked legislation through parliament to deploy Turkish troops on Qatari soil. [...]

A key ally of Qatar, Turkey is setting up a military base in the country - the first Turkish overseas military installation in the Middle East. Qatar also hosts the largest US airbase in the Middle East, Al-Udeid, where around 10,000 military personnel are stationed.

The defence cooperation between Doha and Istanbul dates back to 2014, when the two nations signed an agreement aimed at helping them confront "common enemies". [...]

They have both also refused to classify the Muslim Brotherhood movement and Hamas as "terrorist organisations" and backed rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. [...]

Furthermore, Turkey's disputes with several of its fellow NATO partners have prompted Ankara to seek new partnerships and diversify its alliances to counterbalance the country's dependence on its traditional Western allies.

Turkey already has a presence in Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo whether through peacekeeping, humanitarian or other missions. In addition, Turkey is also reportedly setting up a military training camp - said to be its largest overseas facility - this year in Mogadishu, Somalia. The camp will be used to train Somali soldiers in the fight against the al-Shabab group.

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Quartz: It was normal for women in 18th- and 19th-century China to have two husbands

That’s right: in 18th and 19th century rural China, women took two (or sometimes more) husbands. This happened in every province in China, and for the most part, their communities tolerated or even accepted it.

The little-known prevalence of polyandry comes to light in Matthew Sommer’s fascinating history of peasant family structures, Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing Dynasty China. Since most peasants were illiterate and the Qing elite regarded polyandry as supremely immoral, there are few traces of the practice. Sommer, a Stanford University historian, draws descriptions from court cases. [...]

Given how hard it was for peasants to survive, this was no easy feat to pull off. Between 1700 and 1850, the Middle Kingdom’s population tripled in size. Cultivated farmland, however, only doubled—encouraging people to simply work the land even harder. That left more people depending on less productive land for food. Mass famine was common.

Meanwhile, thanks to female infanticide and the Chinese elite’s concubine habit, among other things, the Middle Kingdom was amidst a “marriage crunch,” as demographic historian Ted Telford put it. The scarcity of demand meant rural men had to pay a heavy bride price—steeper than most could afford. The value of women’s sexual attention, companionship, and child-bearing capacity rose too. [...]

Exactly how common was the practice? It’s impossible to know. Since the Qing elite condemned the practice—while at the same time celebrating polygyny—many polyandrous families weren’t always open about the “uncle” living in the spare bedroom. Sommer notes that for every case recorded in the legal records of the time, there “must have been a great many others that left no specific written record.”

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The Conversation: Emergency doctors are using acupuncture to treat pain, now here’s the evidence

The study, published today in the Medical Journal of Australia, finds acupuncture is as effective as medication in treating pain for lower back pain and ankle sprain. But it took more than an hour for either to provide adequate pain relief. [...]

Using acupuncture to relieve pain involves placing needles in various parts of the body to stimulate the release of endorphins and other neurochemicals, which can act as the body’s naturally occurring pain relievers.

For generations various cultures around the world have used acupuncture to treat multiple conditions, including providing pain relief. And in Australia, it is reimbursed through the Medicare Benefits Schedule when administered by a medical doctor. [...]

So, we randomly assigned more than 500 patients to receive standard painkillers, standard painkillers plus acupuncture, or acupuncture alone when they presented with back pain, migraine or ankle sprain at four Melbourne hospitals (some private, some public). While the patients knew which treatment they had, the researchers involved in assessing their pain didn’t (known as a single-blind study). [...]

Our findings suggest acupuncture may be a viable option for patients who come to the emergency department for pain relief. This is especially important for those who cannot or choose not to have analgesic drugs.

This is also an important finding in light of the potential for side effects and abuse with opioid analgesics, which might otherwise be used to relieve pain in the emergency department.

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Salon: Inside Donald Trump’s “America last” presidency

In its own inside-out, upside-down way, it’s almost wondrous to behold. As befits our president’s wildest dreams, it may even prove to be a record for the ages, one for the history books. He was, after all, the candidate who sensed it first.  When those he was running against, like the rest of Washington’s politicians, were still insisting that the United States remained at the top of its game, not an— but the — “indispensable nation,” the only truly “exceptional” one on the face of the Earth, he said nothing of the sort.  He campaigned on America’s decline, on this country’s increasing lack of exceptionality, its potential dispensability.  He ran on the single word “again”— as in “make America great again” — because (the implication was) it just isn’t anymore.  And he swore that he and he alone was the best shot Americans, or at least non-immigrant white Americans, had at ever seeing the best of days again. [...]

Despite the mainstream pieties of the moment about the nature of the system Donald Trump appears to be dismantling in Europe and elsewhere, it was anything but either terribly “liberal” or particularly peaceable.  Wars, invasions, occupations, the undermining or overthrow of governments, brutal acts and conflicts of every sort succeeded one another in the years of American glory.  Past administrations in Washington had a notorious weakness for autocrats, just as Donald Trump does today.  They regularly had less than no respect for democracy if, from Iran to Guatemala to Chile, the will of the people seemed to stand in Washington’s way.  (It is, as Vladimir Putin has been only too happy to point out of late, an irony of our moment that the country that has undermined or overthrown or meddled in more electoral systems than any other is in a total snit over the possibility that one of its own elections was meddled with.)  To enforce their global system, Americans never shied away from torture, black sites, death squads, assassinations, and other grim practices.  In those years, the U.S. planted its military on close to 1,000 overseas military bases, garrisoning the planet as no other country ever had. [...]

If a Trump presidency achieves a record for the ages when it comes to the precipitous decline of the American global system, little as The Donald ever cares to share credit for anything, he will undoubtedly have to share it for such an achievement.  It’s true that kings, emperors, and autocrats, the top dogs of any moment, prefer to take all the credit for the “records” set in their time.  When we look back, however, it’s likely that President Trump will be seen as having given a tottering system that necessary push.  It will undoubtedly be clear enough by then that the U.S., seemingly at the height of any power’s power in 1991 when the Soviet Union disappeared, began heading for the exits soon thereafter, still enwreathed in self-congratulation and triumphalism.

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