Like many other bloggers, I don’t always have something useful, funny, or interesting to say. Unlike many other bloggers, however, when I find myself with nothing useful, funny, or interesting to say, I remain silent.
It’s a healthy practice, and one that I wish more bloggers observed, but it’s not very helpful for a little blog trying to build an audience. The world moves pretty fast these days, and any blog that isn’t updated regularly and reliably is going to face an uphill battle.
So beginning this week, I’m going to try and post something daily every Monday through Friday. I will not as a rule be posting on weekends.
I’m also going to try a new format: rather than writing what amount to long essays several times per week, I’m going to try and keep things tighter, shorter, and even a little lighter, touching on more than a single story in each post. I’ll try to touch on one or two of the day’s Danish or American news stories in a little depth before moving on to quick little hits at Danish headlines that caught my eye.
Hopefully the new format induces more readers to check in more often, even as it makes my own life a little easier (I work more than a full-time job and am a full-time Dad, so my time comes at a premium).
So with that out of the way, let’s move straight to today’s headlines.
Trump’s attempting a coup in Brazil?
Analysis: USA withstood Trump’s coup attempt. Can Brazil survive the same?
Berlingske.dk, April 11
If only it began on Wednesday
Ramadan begins Tuesday, creating corona worries in several places
TV2.dk, April 11
The power of cognitive dissonance
“Denmark is regularly ranked among the best countries for women.”
Deciphering ‘gender-equal’ Denmark’s unconventional relationship with feminism
CPHPost.dk, April 10
“Despite all these positive developments, Denmark is also one of the least feminist nations in the developed world.”
Same article
Skynet’s getting kinky
Artificial intelligence undresses Danish women on the internet
DR.dk, April 11
All that glitters is not gold…
Piss is worth gold as fertilizer. It’s brainless that we pour it down the toilet
Information.dk, April 12
Great expectations
Berlingske’s home page on April 12 ran a large photo from 2015: one of many iconic shots of a column of “refugees” making their way on foot along the Danish highways. The photo was accompanying this headline:
They were referred to as well-educated and with good prospects for
successful integration. Five years later, another picture emerges
Berlingske.dk, April 12
The article describes the optimistic outlook for Syrian immigrants to Denmark in 2015, and how that optimism appears to have been at least partially misplaced. Prior to 2015, two out of three Syrian immigrants were in the Danish workforce: from 2015 forward, it’s only four out of ten.
The article looks at some recent Syrian immigration cases that have received national attention and examines employment and education statistics among Syrian immigrants compared to those metrics among other immigrant populations… and finds them wanting. (Only Palestinian immigrants are less well integrated.) It addresses the moral and legal problems of treating well-integrated immigrants differently from poorly-integrated immigrants (morality demands it; current law forbids it).
Curiously, the article makes no mention of crime.
I say “curiously” because Berlingske Tidende is part of Berlingske Media, which also owns the tabloid B.T., who had run a similar story yesterday. Rather than focus on the Syrian immigrants’ relatively poor assimilation, however, B.T. emphasized statistics in which the Syrians were excelling:
Explosion in charges and convictions for rape – Syrian immigrants on top
Bt.dk, April 11
Leave it to B.T. to accentuate the positive!