Sports? What sports? A web roundup on Sochi 2014

As usual, The Onion sums up what all the other English-language coverage of the Sochi Olympics will likely sound like. Maryam Omidi goes to Zizek for an explanation of the widely-circulated twin toilet story. How are Western magazines covering the Olympics? Brian Whitmore, Kirill Kobrin and Mark Galeotti discuss the politics surrounding the Sochi games. William Nickell explores the history of Sochi’s sanatoria, Soviet social hygiene and health in an illustrated website, a lecture, and his ongoing cartographic project “Sochi in Six Dimensions.” Rob Hornstra and Arnold van Bruggen’s Sochi Project chronicles the North Caucasus as a site of centuries of Russian colonialism (as well as much more). Circassian activists protest the Olympics taking place on the site of mass atrocities against their ancestors. Bruce Grant on “Naturalizing Violence in the Caucasus Mountains.” Max Adveev photographs the migrant workers who built the Olympic sites. “Sochi is being sold as Capitalist Realism,” writes Sean Guillory. Anya Bernstein describes the amnesty granted to the members of Pussy Riot in advance of the Olympics as a “sovereign exception.” Masha Alyokhina and Nadya Tolokonnikova give an excellent interview on the Colbert Report. Trials continue for protesters arrested at Bolotnaya Square last year. Julia Ioffe on the beleaguered anti-Putin opposition movement.  Homophobia has become state policy in Russia. Gay Propaganda is a book about the lives of LGBT people living in Russia. “The games have always been a little gay,” says a cheeky Canadian PSA. “Protesting the Sochi Olympics is a lot less about “gay rights” than it is about instrumentalizing divisive identity issues to serve US and EU geopolitical aims,” argues Maximilian Forte. Masha Gessen on why Russia’s recent ban on adoptions by same-sex couples prompted her to bring her family to the US. Aleksandr Baunov extends the analysis with an interpretation of Russian foreign policy as sexual sovereignty. Jennifer Carroll reports from among the protesters in Kyiv’s EuroMaidan encampment. Yanukovych to meet with Putin on the sidelines at Sochi. “[T]here is simply no time to waste in getting our Olympic athletes and employees a nutritious and delicious breakfast – Chobani Greek Yogurt,” writes an irate Senator Charles Schumer.