The Irish Times: Fintan O’Toole: Is Brexit the maddest thing England has ever done? Not quite

Edward was not mad. He knew the claim wasn’t real. He made it because he was in dispute with the actual French monarchy about the feudal status of his own vast holdings in the southwest of the country, the duchy of Aquitaine. He needed the support of the Flemings, but they were also feudal subjects of the French monarchy. They couldn’t support him unless he declared that he was in fact king of France. So he did.

This reminds us, though, of one of the great problems of Brexit: saving face. People – and states – don’t act merely out of self-interest. There are times when they make claims they know to be daft. But they can’t find a way to back down.

The claim that the English monarch was king of France started out as a way of dealing with an immediate political problem, just as Brexit has its origins in David Cameron’s strategy for dealing with internal dissent in the Tory party. It, too, was thought of as a kind of deliberate overreach: Edward, like the less extreme of the Brexiters, thought he was making an exaggerated gesture that could be easily bargained away in later negotiations. [...]

It is astonishing how much pain people will suffer and inflict rather than admit they made a mistake. Brexit is not the Hundred Years War, but unless someone finds a way out it now, the consequences will be felt for a century.

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The Guardian: For how long can we treat the suffering of animals as an inconvenient truth?

Those alert to animal sentience already find themselves in difficult situations. Richard Dawkins, for example, has declared: “We have no general reason to think that non-human animals feel pain less acutely than we do.” This, Dawkins says, should change our cultural habits. Practices such as branding cattle, castration without anaesthetic and bullfighting, for instance, “should be treated as morally equivalent to doing the same thing to human beings”. [...]

There’s no escape via the “lower” animals, though. Plenty of research suggests that chickens are not unfeeling meat stores on two drumsticks. They suffer distress, even when they are not suffering themselves. Uncomfortable as it may be to learn this, chickens demonstrate empathy for one another. Studies of fish brains and behaviour suggest that intensive farming practices are almost certainly causing fish conscious distress. And then there are the cephalopods: the octopus, squid and cuttlefish. Their brains have the capacity to think, plan, reflect and learn and almost certainly feel, in the same way that humans do. Octopuses make this clear, showing intention and imagination when they carry shelters with them, build settlements, vary their hunting habits from day to day and escape from captivity when given the chance. Thanks to revelations such as these, while I still eat cows, sheep and pigs, I no longer eat octopus. It’s my own little cognitive dissonance; after all, I haven’t quite given up eating cuttlefish, even though I know about studies that show that they, like cats and dogs, dream when asleep. I have, unconsciously, drawn a line. [...]

Bioethicist David Mellor, who was influential in drafting New Zealand’s progressive animal welfare legislation, says our deepened scientific understanding of the animal experience means we should move away from giving the animals in our care mere “freedoms” from negative experience; we should, instead, be ensuring they enjoy lives that are “worth living”.  

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The Local: For first time ever, Paris counts its homeless

Charities estimate the homeless population of Paris to be about 3,000. Many are foreign, often from Eastern Europe. But there's no official data -- an issue that city hall, under pressure to tackle one of the capital's most visible problems, is now trying to fix.

After two blazing rows sparked by politicians' offhand remarks about homelessness, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo carried out the city's first-ever homeless census on Thursday night.

Some 2,000 volunteers and officials fanned out until 1am, counting the bodies huddled in doorways and surveying those awake about their housing and health problems. Rail workers counted those sheltering at metro stations. [...]

An estimate by statistics agency INSEE put France's national homeless count at 143,000 in 2012, but charities say this has likely rocketed due to a housing crunch and the migrant crisis.

Macron's centrist government opened 13,000 extra places in emergency winter shelters. But two ruling party members have landed themselves in hot water over homelessness in the space of just days.  Urban affairs minister Julien Denormandie prompted an uproar by asserting only 50 men were sleeping rough in the Paris region -- a stunning underestimate, according to charities. And days later, Paris lawmaker Sylvain Maillard, a member of Macron's party, added fuel to the fire by insisting that some stay on the streets, even in the snow, "by choice".  

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AJ+: The Myth Of The Absent Black Father

Research shows that in local news, national news and commentary across all U.S. media, black fathers were shown spending time with their kids almost half as often as white fathers. That's despite the fact that black fathers have outperformed other groups when it comes bathing, feeding and playing with their kids. So where does this stereotype come from? 

TED Talk: The dangerous evolution of HIV | Edsel Salvaña

Think we're winning the battle against HIV? Maybe not, as the next wave of drug-resistant viruses arrives. In an eye-opening talk, TED Fellow Edsel Salvana describes the aggressive HIV subtype AE that's currently plaguing his home of the Philippines -- and warns us about what might become a global epidemic.