The Atlantic: The Hidden Economics of Porn

Humans have been creating images of sex and genitalia for millions of years, but it is only in the past few centuries—since the 1600s, according to historians—that these representations started meeting academics’ preferred definition of pornography, which involves both the violation of taboos and the intention of arousal. The first efforts to make money off of this new endeavor could not have come long after that. [...]

Shira Tarrant: It's hard for several reasons. Official records are hard to come by. Many productions don't even keep official records, and there are very few researchers looking at the economic side of porn, because a lot of times for academics and researchers, pornography is viewed as a sort of LOL, to-the-side kind of thing, rather than the very serious financial and economic matter that it is. This is true for the industry's revenues, but also for pay rates for individual actors. So those numbers get a little fuzzy, even though the industry is willing to say that it's suffering from piracy and after the Great Recession, and things like that. [...]

Making ethical decisions about pornography means knowing where your porn comes from and the labor conditions under which it was made. Those are the sorts of questions that economists are concerned with. If we're willing to be concerned about those issues when it comes to sneakers or food, then we need to transfer those concerns to the adult industry as well. [...]

Tarrant: I like the comparison that you use—that the algorithm is not unlike algorithms that Amazon or Netflix use, or the ads on Facebook based on your browser history elsewhere. Again, there's that part of their rational brain that turns off and they think that pornography is this whole other kind of experience that is unlike the rest of their consumer history online. It starts with how pornography is keyworded. So, people put in search terms, but those search terms aren't all that original, really. Because where do we learn the search words that we're looking for? It's sort of a chicken-and-egg problem. And so porn gets keyworded in very stereotyped, often sexist, often racist ways, and also just with a narrow-minded view of sexuality.

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The Atlantic: How Cubans Live as Long as Americans at a Tenth of the Cost

Many consider it more than decent. After a visit to Havana in 2014, the director-general of the World Health Organization Margaret Chan called for other countries to follow Cuba’s example in health care. Years before, the World Health Organization’s ranking of countries with “the fairest mechanism for health-system finance” put Cuba first among Latin American and Caribbean countries (and far ahead of the United States).

Cuba has long had a nearly identical life expectancy to the United States, despite widespread poverty. The humanitarian-physician Paul Farmer notes in his book Pathologies of Power that there’s a saying in Cuba: “We live like poor people, but we die like rich people.” Farmer also notes that the rate of infant mortality in Cuba has been lower than in the Boston neighborhood of his own prestigious hospital, Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s. [...]

The difference comes back to the basic fact that in Cuba, health care is protected under the constitution as a fundamental human right. The U.S. protects unlimited firearms and freedom from quartering soldiers but does not guarantee health care. Instead we compromise, taking inefficient and expensive half-measures to rescue people in serious peril. [...]

It’s largely done, as the BBC has reported, through an innovative approach to primary care. Family doctors work in clinics and care for everyone in the surrounding neighborhood. At least once a year, the doctor knocks on your front door (or elsewhere, if you prefer) for a check-up. More than the standard American ritual of listening to your heart and lungs and asking if you’ve noticed any blood coming out of you abnormally, these check-ups involve extensive questions about jobs and social lives and environment—information that’s aided by being right there in a person’s home.

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Quartz: The key difference between populism and fascism

Brexit, Donald Trump’s US presidential election, the ascent of France’s Marine Le Pen, Italy’s Five Star Movement: The whole Western world appears to be in the thrall of populists. For many, this seems like a bit of a dejà vu, evoking the 1920s and 1930s, with their looming threat of fascism.

There are, indeed, similarities between today’s political landscape and what Europe experienced in the buildup to World War II, as well as with other times when populism eventually turned into fascism—such as Francoist Spain, or Peronist Argentina. But while fascism usually is rooted in populism, starting with populism doesn’t inevitably mean you’ll wind up with fascism. [...]

The adoption of violence to impose fascist authority is a key element of fascism both as a movement and as a regime, says Finchelstein. It expresses itself as street violence first, and then through the militarization of government. Fascist leaders take power not just through popular support, but thanks to the action of squads that violently attack opponents, and that are then incorporated into the running of the state as paramilitary formations.

On the other hand, Finchelstein explains, “populism combines low level actual violence with high level rhetorical violence,” applying it to “an authoritarian way of understanding democracy.” In that is another important distinction between fascism and populism: “fascism is never a democracy, while populism undermines democracy, but doesn’t remove it.”

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Jacobin Magazine: A Second Chance

However, in spite of the setback, government and FARC negotiators managed to quickly make changes to the agreement, and it was signed in Bogotá’s Teatro Colon on November 24. While Uribe’s Democratic Center party has maintained its opposition, the new deal will be ratified by Congress, where Santos’s ruling coalition has a commanding majority. Uribe’s populistic and often truth-distorting campaign managed to derail the previous version but it appears that the new deal will pass a congressional vote on December 1.

It is a pity, then, that the new version is in many ways a worse deal.

Businessmen who funded the right-wing paramilitaries, who have crushed Colombian trade unions, displaced millions of peasants from their land, and have been responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths in the conflict, will now be shielded from prosecution. While the previous deal allowed for the redistribution of idle land from ranchers to peasants, such moves will now be illegal.

Foreign judges in the transitional justice system will not have sentencing power, only acting as advisers to Colombian judges. And the government will be able to employ the dangerous practice of aerial fumigation to combat coca cultivation. These changes make the transitional justice system less effective and more open to corruption, endanger the health of Colombians living in coca-producing areas, and fail to address Colombia’s appalling inequality and uneven distribution of farm land.

Nonetheless, this deal is still better than the return to conflict which many feared.  With thousands of FARC fighters awaiting demobilization, any delay could prove costly and lead to more breakaway groups such as FARC’s first front, who rejected the peace process and are still engaged in fighting.

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Atlas Obscura: Stunning Photos of Switzerland’s 'Ghost Cats'

Since then, Geslin has notched up about 30 precious sightings, ranging from distant glimpses to, on one memorable occasion, a mother leading her three cubs to feed within meters of his hide. This total might seem a modest return for six years of searching—six years of pursuing every clue, staking out every hideaway, and sitting in hides for 96 hours at a stretch. But few people anywhere have enjoyed such success.

Having spent years photographing big cats around the world, Geslin was amazed to find how little was known about the one living on his own doorstep. His book, Lynx: regards croisés (“different perspectives”), published in France in 2014, is the first full photographic study of this species in the wild, and testament to his extraordinary dedication and perseverance.

Just a few decades ago, such a project would have been impossible. The lynx had not been seen in Switzerland since 1904. Once common across much of Europe, it had also disappeared from France, Germany, and many other former strongholds. By 1940, the continent’s entire population had fallen to an estimated 700 animals, confined largely to the wildest reaches of Scandinavia. This sorry tale mirrored that of the lynx’s fellow large carnivores, the wolf, wolverine, and brown bear. All had declined dramatically in Europe, victims both of ruthless persecution— either for sport or because, as hunters of wild game and occasional livestock killers, they were viewed as competition—and the relentless destruction of their natural habitats. [...]

But while the animal slips under the radar of most of its human neighbors, the foresters are beginning to notice a difference, with roe deer populations thinning out and forests showing signs of regeneration. It is not simply that lynx keep deer numbers down. After all, there are only so many deer a handful of lynxes can catch and eat. It is also that the herbivores’ behavior changes when a predator is around. They gather in smaller numbers and, ever alert to possible attack, become more mobile, less inclined to linger in feeding areas. Just the scent of a lynx’s territorial markings on a trailside tree trunk can be enough to keep them on the move. Park rangers, Geslin reports, wish more of the cats could be introduced. “They tell me that since we’ve had lynx they never have any problems.” 

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Al Jazeera: Fillon's victory: A political earthquake in France

The outcome of the Republican primaries revealed a desire among the French people for new faces. Although Fillon started his political career more than 40 years ago, he is ironically considered a newcomer because he was kept in the shadows during the Sarkozy administration. [...]

Fillon's victory is the result of his capacity to create a grassroots movement among The Republicans that supported concrete and radical policy options over the populistic speeches of his former boss, Sarkozy.

It also revealed a determination among Republican sympathisers to elect a candidate who focuses on the party's core values of economic liberalism and social conservatism, rather than on building a bipartisan and moderate platform, as Juppe tried. [...]

On the other hand, Marine Le Pen and the National Front were rooting for the more moderate Alain Juppe to win, allowing the National Front to attract the more conservative Republicans. The choice of Fillon is far less convenient for both Hollande and Le Pen.

In particular, Fillon's strong conservatism is reflected in his ideas on social policies. His Catholic background and hardliner position with regards to same-sex marriage, immigration and - even at times - abortion rights have made him the preferred candidate of a traditionalist and religious electorate that Le Pen was hoping to grab.

On many societal issues, Fillon appeared as a milder, more reasonable version of Le Pen which could be very challenging for her presidential hopes.

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The Intercept: Trump May Not Be Anti-Gay, But Much of His Senior Staff Is

Early in his career, Pence advocated siphoning off government money for HIV treatment and instead putting it toward gay “conversion therapy.” He has urged Congress to “oppose any effort to put gay and lesbian relationships on an equal legal status,” and as recently as last year, Pence signed a license-to-discriminate bill that allowed business to refuse service to LGBT people.

Trump’s pick for attorney general – Sen. Jeff Sessions – has a voting record rated “zero percent” by the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT civil rights group. Sessions voted for a failed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and against the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the policy that did not allow gay people to serve openly in the military. He also opposed expanding the definition of a hate crime to include LGBT people. [...]

Trump also named Betsy DeVos — a billionaire Republican donor and anti-gay activist — as education secretary. DeVos’s family, which includes Blackwater founder Eric Prince, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to anti-gay groups, including groups that advocate for “conversion therapy.”

Trump’s top White House adviser Steve Bannon is the former chairman of Breitbart News Network, which has published headlines like “Gay Rights Have Made Us Dumber, It’s Time to Get Back in the Closet,” and “Day Of Silence: How The LGBT Agenda Is Hijacking America’s Youth.” [...]

Not all of the voices in Trump’s inner circle oppose LGBT rights. Rudy Giuliani — considered a possible pick cabinet pick — came out in support of gay marriage in 2015, and officiated a gay wedding the following year. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Trump’s original transition chair, was the second governor to sign a ban on gay “conversion therapy,” acknowledging that sexuality is not a choice.

Some conservative LGBT advocates have defended Trump by arguing that he has no personal anti-gay animus. Joseph Murray, the administrator for the group LGBTrump, wrote a column arguing that Trump “does not fit the LGBT left narrative,” because he has involved several gay people in his transition team.

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Politico: May’s pre-Brexit expats plan nixed by Merkel

The German chancellor’s polite but firm “Nein” when the two leaders met in Berlin on November 18 dashed the British prime minister’s hopes of a quick, informal deal to reassure expatriates on both sides of the Channel that they will not lose out when Britain leaves the EU, three people familiar with the matter said. [...]

A senior European Commission official had quietly encouraged the initiative in a private capacity, both to improve mutual understanding with London and to avoid any suggestion that European citizens were being taken hostages in the negotiations. If the EU were to say it was ready to safeguard the position of Britons living in Europe, it would gain the moral high ground in the talks, the argument went. [...]

But Merkel had already put paid to the British bid by then, sticking to her mantra that there can be no pre-negotiations before Britain tenders its formal notice of intention to leave the Union, setting in motion a two-year countdown to its withdrawal. [...]

The tactical thinking behind the German rejection speaks volumes about the depth of mistrust between Berlin and London, and about Merkel’s determination to put preserving the unity of the other 27 EU members ahead of the future relationship with a departing Britain.

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Motherboard: Aliens Are Probably Everywhere, Just Not Anywhere Near Humans

Using the new Kepler data, astrobiologist Amri Wandel did some calculations to estimate the density of life-bearing worlds in our corner of the universe. The exciting news is there are probably millions to billions of biotic planets in the Milky Way.

But before we start packing our bags, a sobering reality check: Our corner of the cosmos may be dark. Wandel’s math shows the closest life-bearing world is ten to a hundred light years distance from Earth. And that’s just to find a world that harbors single-celled life. The closest intelligent aliens may be thousands of light years further. [...]

There are a lot of assumptions here: For one, that alien biology will have comparable physical requirements to our own. If biotic life isn’t limited to Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone—a restriction that precludes the icy moons Europa and Titan—the number of life-harboring worlds could actually be much higher.

It’s important to bear in mind that Wandel came to his estimates by updating just one Drake equation parameter: The number of potentially habitable worlds. His new calculations say nothing about the probability of finding life on a “potentially habitable” world. This remains the key missing factor for constraining the distance to our closest alien neighbors.

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Salon: Europe is not a secular paradise — and Americans should be careful when embracing this myth

I had to come to America to realize I’m Christian. Until a couple of years ago, when I moved to New York, I had always embraced my atheism as a given. Even though Spain is largely a Christian country by many standards, I was never baptized, I can count with one hand the times I’ve been to church and I wouldn’t know how to say grace. At home, even if I would not describe my parents as radical atheists, I was born and raised in a religion-free environment — or so I thought. [...]

Most European countries have long embraced universal liberalism — the implicit belief in moral equality for all races and religions — and are proud of what some call “European values.” What that means exactly is largely unclear, but the idea of secularization — or the French laïcité — seems to be a central tenet: In Europe, politics and society are meant to operate without any religious influence. [...]

Philosopher Mark C. Taylor points out in “After God” that “secularism is a religious phenomenon, which grows directly out of the Judeo-Christian tradition.” He argues that secularism is associated with Modernization, but both phenomena are highly rooted in Western religion. The fallacy lies in the fact that Modernization, and especially the Enlightenment, made us think of values such as laïcité as universal. But those values were actually born in Christian societies. And even as religion retreats to the private sphere, centuries of tradition cannot be extirpated from culture — nor am I arguing they should be. [...]

Failing to understand how present Christianity still is in our cultures will only create more tensions with the rising influx of immigrants from non-Christian backgrounds. We need to stop pretending that we live in religiously devoid spaces, and that the issue is that those immigrants of Muslim background need to keep their religion a private matter, because that’s what European Christians do. The immigrants coming in see themselves as coming into a Christian culture — often one that is much more intolerant of their culture than they had expected.

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The Guardian: The small African region with more refugees than all of Europe

But safety doesn’t mean comfort. Kawu is just the latest of approximately 140,000 displaced people sheltering in this remote town of 60,000 people. North-east Nigeria has been hit by a displacement crisis that dwarfs any migration flows seen in Europe in recent years. [...]

About 40% more people have been displaced throughout Borno state (1.4 million) than reached Europe by boat in 2015 (1 million). Across the region, the war against Boko Haram has forced more people from their homes – 2.6 million – than there are Syrians in Turkey, the country that hosts more refugees than any other.

The comparisons mirror a wider trend across Africa. Of the world’s 17 million displaced Africans, 93.7% remain inside the continent, and just 3.3% have reached Europe, according to UN data supplied privately to the Guardian. [...]

The international community has largely failed to help: UN funding is still 61% ($297m) short of its target. Local residents have stepped in where they can. Babakara al-Kali, a Maiduguri businessman, has given a plot of land to about 3,000 IDPs – forgoing the 10m naira (£25,000) he previously charged construction workers and mechanics to rent it every year. “If you help someone, God will help you,” Kali says. “So I decided to help them.” [...]

But according to several interviewees, including the local governor, this social alienation was partly fuelled by rapid climate change. North-east Nigeria borders Lake Chad, a vast inland lake that supplies water to about 70 million people in four countries – Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger. But since the 1970s, it has shrunk by 90% – from 25,000km2 to less than 2,500km2. And those who live near its former shores say this shrinkage is one indirect cause of violence in the region, and the subsequent displacement.

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The New Yorker: A New Cuba (OCTOBER 3, 2016)

Obama said that his operating theory was based on three premises. “No. 1 was, Cuba is a tiny, poor country that poses no genuine threat to the United States. No. 2, in this era of the Internet and global capital movements, is that openness is a more powerful change agent than isolation. That’s not always the case. There are unique circumstances, like North Korea, which is such a closed system that all you do there is reward those who are in power, and there’s no capacity to reach people.

“No. 3 was the belief that, if you are interested in promoting freedom, independence, civic space inside of Cuba, then the power of things like remittances to give individual Cubans some cash, even if the government was taking a cut, that then allowed them to start a barbershop, or a cab service, was going to be the engine whereby individual Cubans—not directed by the United States, not directed by the C.I.A., not through some grand conspiracy, but Cuban people—who now have their own little shop and have a little bit of savings can start expecting more.” [...]

The project, according to Obama and a number of his key advisers, started with the modest goal of tweaking a few regulations, but it evolved into an ambitious bid to open up Cuba’s closed system, by using seduction instead of force. For a generation brought up with the terror of the Cuban missile crisis, this meant abandoning a half-century-long crusade. Over the years, the United States had tried to dislodge the Castro regime by a variety of methods, including invasion, attempted assassination, funding dissidents, and a baroque plot to create a fake Twitter service that was intended to aid an antigovernment uprising. When Obama announced the opening with Cuba, John Boehner, then the Republican Speaker of the House, said, “There is no ‘new course’ here, only another in a long line of mindless concessions to a dictatorship that brutalizes its people and schemes with our enemies.” For a younger generation, though, it seemed obvious that commerce would triumph over politics. “We just don’t believe that rhetoric about changing the Cuban political system is constructive,” one of Obama’s aides told me. “And we don’t think it resonates broadly with the Cuban people, who are more focussed on their economic well-being.” [...]

I asked Obama why, considering Fidel’s long-standing distrust of the Americans, Raúl had finally stepped forward. “It’s my sense that two things are going on,” he said. “One is that there is a recognition—particularly in light of what’s happening in Venezuela—that sustaining their economic model over the next ten years becomes increasingly untenable. So they’re very much in the mode of: how do we make our economy run without giving up power?” He went on, “My impression also is that Raúl recognizes that any substantial change to their economic system—and, by extension, at least their civil society, if not their full political system—requires him to do the downfield blocking. If a younger generation tries to pull this off without the revolutionary credentials, there will be too much pushback.”

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Politico: A Russia reset? Maybe not yet

But interviews with more than a dozen officials and experts contacted by POLITICO since the election reveal an unyielding bipartisan and institutional opposition to any perceived effort by Trump to appease Putin. Such a gesture would be met with strong resistance from Congress, European allies, career national security officials and possibly even some key Trump officials. [...]

Trump has also repeatedly expressed admiration for Putin and bragged that the Russian has called him “brilliant” — Putin actually used an adjective closer to “impressive” —leading critics to worry that the New Yorker may be dangerously eager for Putin’s friendship and approval.Many analysts expect that Putin will offer Trump military cooperation against the Islamic State, which has not been a focus of Russian operations in Syria. In return, Putin will seek recognition of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula; an end to economic sanctions; and reduced U.S. military and political engagement in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Earlier this month, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told the Associated Press that a “slow down or withdrawal of NATO’s military potential from our borders” could “lead to a kind of detente in Europe.” [...]

The first obstacle to Trump’s outreach could be within his own circle of top advisers. Vice president-elect Mike Pence derided Putin in an October debate as “small and bullying,” and said that recent “provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength.” Trump’s pick for CIA director, Rep. Mike Pompeo, has called the U.S. response to Putin’s aggression in Ukraine “far too weak.” [...]

Most top Republicans in Congress take a far more hawkish line towards Putin than Trump does. In September, House Speaker Paul Ryan rebuked Trump’s praise of the Russian, calling Putin “an aggressor that does not share our interests.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he would send arms to Ukraine’s government and expand U.S. missile defense systems in eastern Europe—moves that would enrage Putin.

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The Atlantic: The Understudied Female Sexual Predator

Two years ago, Lara Stemple, Director of UCLA’s Health and Human Rights Law Project, came upon a statistic that surprised her: In incidents of sexual violence reported to the National Crime Victimization Survey, 38 percent of victims were men––a figure much higher than in prior surveys. Intrigued, she began to investigate: Was sexual violence against men more common than previously thought? [...]

In “When Men Are Raped,” the journalist Hanna Rosin summarized the peer-reviewed results that Stemple published with co-author Ilan Meyer in the American Journal of Public Health. “For some kinds of victimization, men and women have roughly equal experiences,” Rosin wrote. “Stemple is a longtime feminist who fully understands that men have historically used sexual violence to subjugate women and that in most countries they still do. As she sees it, feminism has fought long and hard to fight rape myths—that if a woman gets raped it’s somehow her fault, that she welcomed it in some way. But the same conversation needs to happen for men.” [...]

Among adults who reported sexual contact with prison staff, including some contact that prisoners call “willing” but that is often coercive and always illegal, 80 percent reported only female perpetrators. Among juveniles, the same figure is 89.3 percent. Queer men and women were two to three times more likely to report abuse. “The disproportionate abuse by female staff members does not occur because women are more often staffing facilities,” the authors write. “Men outnumber women by a ratio of three to one in positions requiring direct contact with inmates.” [...]

Stereotypes about women “include the notion that women are nurturing, submissive helpmates to men,” they write. “The idea that women can be sexually manipulative, dominant, and even violent runs counter to these stereotypes. Yet studies have documented female-perpetrated acts that span a wide spectrum of sexual abuse.”

They argue that female perpetration is downplayed among professionals in mental health, social work, public health, and law, with harmful results for male and female victims, in part due to these “stereotypical understandings of women as sexually harmless,” even as ongoing “heterosexism can render lesbian and bisexual victims of female-perpetrated sexual victimization invisible to professionals.”

Jakub Marian: Percentage of pupils learning French by country in Europe

French was and to a certain degree still is one of the most influential languages in the world. It is one of the official languages of the UN, EU, NATO, OECD, and other important organizations, so it shouldn’t be surprising that it is one of the most widely studied foreign languages in the world, with over 150 million non-native speakers.

The following map (based on data by Eurostat from 2012) shows the percentages of pupils in general (non-vocational) upper secondary education who learn French in European countries: [...]

Finally, readers not familiar with the linguistic situation in Europe may be surprised by the isolated large percentage in Romania. This is caused by the fact that Romanian, just like French, is a Romance language, so French is the easiest major world language for Romanians to learn. French is also likely studied by a majority of pupils in Moldova, where Romanian is the most common native language, but Eurostat unfortunately does not provide any data for Moldova.

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VICE: Photos of the Homes Polish Immigrants Left Behind

There are currently 9.5 million Poles living in the United States, and many of them have their roots in the beautiful, but historically poorer, mountain region of Podhale. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, a number of Polish highlanders emigrated to America. But they hoped to come back one day and use the favorable exchange rate to build spacious mansions. However, various circumstances—be it better social care for the elderly, or their children not wanting to leave the place they'd been born for a land they barely knew—kept many of them in the US. So many of these mansions were left unfinished.

Warsaw-based photographer Natalia Dołgowska was born in Zakopane, which is Podhale's biggest town. Last year, she traveled back to her home region to photograph the empty buildings that belong to Podhale immigrants in America, as well as photos of their new lives, which they mailed to relatives back home. "I realized that all my childhood, I've been feeling close to America. Growing up, I always envied my friends who had family there—their plastic Christmas trees, their bubble gum, and their flashy sneakers," Natalia said to VICE Poland.

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Al Jazeera: The young Muslims finding love via an app

For the past four weeks, she has been using Muzmatch, a smartphone app for Muslims to meet potential marriage partners. But unlike well-established dating apps, such as Tinder and Hinge, Muzmatch specifically caters to Muslims searching for a spouse - giving young Muslims greater influence in finding the right mate. [...]

Dating is often prohibited in Muslim families. Traditionally, family members are often directly involved in seeking and vetting possible partners - and the couple's respective families often meet to approve the marriage. [...]

The app markets itself solely to Muslims seeking marriage. It claims to have more than 120,000 users across 123 countries, about two-and-a-half years after launching. About two thirds of users are men. The UK, its home country, is its biggest market, followed by the US, Canada, Pakistan and Australia, but it also caters to singles in Indonesia, India, Morocco, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia, among others. [...]

Muzmatch's religious parameters, which members can check off, include the sect of Islam and things such as how often they pray. A wali, or guardian, can be nominated as a third-party moderator to monitor chats within the app, and photos can be made private.

Education levels are also delineated, and the app is conscientiously aspirational. Mocked-up promotional material presents two Yale graduates using its messaging service - Muzmatch says about 71 percent of its users are university-educated.

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Nautilus Magazine: How the Western Diet Has Derailed Our Evolution

A group of Italian microbiologists had compared the intestinal microbes of young villagers in Burkina Faso with those of children in Florence, Italy. The villagers, who subsisted on a diet of mostly millet and sorghum, harbored far more microbial diversity than the Florentines, who ate a variant of the refined, Western diet. Where the Florentine microbial community was adapted to protein, fats, and simple sugars, the Burkina Faso microbiome was oriented toward degrading the complex plant carbohydrates we call fiber. [...]

“It was the most different human microbiota composition we’d ever seen,” Sonnenburg told me. To his mind it carried a profound message: The Western microbiome, the community of microbes scientists thought of as “normal” and “healthy,” the one they used as a baseline against which to compare “diseased” microbiomes, might be considerably different than the community that prevailed during most of human evolution. [...]

Many who study the microbiome suspect that we are experiencing an extinction spasm within that parallels the extinction crisis gripping the planet. Numerous factors are implicated in these disappearances. Antibiotics, available after World War II, can work like napalm, indiscriminately flattening our internal ecosystems. Modern sanitary amenities, which began in the late 19th century, may limit sharing of disease- and health-promoting microbes alike. Today’s houses in today’s cities seal us away from many of the soil, plant, and animal microbes that rained down on us during our evolution, possibly limiting an important source of novelty. [...]

The problem with the fiber hypothesis, however, has always been twofold. People who eat plenty of fiber seem to have a lower risk of many diseases, including heart disease and diabetes. But when scientists have fed fiber to volunteers, they haven’t historically observed much benefit. And this underscores the real mystery: By what mechanism does fiber improve health?

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Quartz: A conspiracy theory about sex and gender is being peddled around the world by the far right

In Mexico, thousands of protesters denounced the spread (link in Spanish) of “gender ideology” in marches against same-sex marriage this September. Weeks earlier, religious groups in Colombia accused the government of wanting to indoctrinate children by teaching “gender ideology” in schools; weeks later, they would accuse officials of injecting similar forms of treachery (Spanish) into an attempted peace deal to end the country’s half-century of civil war.

Activists in Spain and Poland have used the same phrase to combat efforts to recognize that gender identity and sexual orientation go beyond heterosexual men and women. In France, the idea has circulated (link in French) under the slightly different “gender theory.” Even Pope Francis raised the notion last month, urging priestly compassion for individuals grappling with their gender identity or sexual orientation but rejecting “the indoctrination of gender theory” and its “ideological colonization.” [...]

In fact, “gender ideology” is an invention of the right. It’s a hodgepodge of disparate ideas developed by a diverse group of thinkers over the past 50 years, linked mainly in the minds of its opponents. It doesn’t really exist beyond its creators’ manifestos and protest banners, but it’s already helped them score some very real victories. [...]

“Gender ideology” has been a very effective communication and persuasion tool. It helps its “fighters” to avoid overtly homophobic language—which is prohibited by law in some countries—and to frame their arguments in secular terms. For example, instead of saying that same-sex marriage goes against religious teachings, opponents argue that it threatens the natural order of things.

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Nautilus Magazine: Why Revolutionaries Love Spicy Food

Food historians have pointed to the province’s hot and humid climate, the principles of Chinese medicine, the constraints of geography, and the exigencies of economics. Most recently neuropsychologists have uncovered a link between the chili pepper and risk-taking. The research is provocative because the Sichuan people have long been notorious for their rebellious spirit; some of the momentous events in modern Chinese political history can be traced back to Sichuan’s hot temper. [...]

The first mention of the chili pepper in the Chinese historical record appears in 1591, although historians have yet to arrive at a consensus as to exactly how it arrived in the Middle Kingdom. One school of thought believes the pepper came overland from India into western China via a northern route through Tibet or a southern route across Burma. But the first consistent references to chili peppers in local Chinese gazettes start in China’s eastern coastal regions and move gradually inland toward the West—reaching Hunan in 1684 and Sichuan in 1749—data points that support the argument that the chili pepper arrived by sea, possibly via Portuguese traders who had founded a colony near the southern Chinese coast on the island of Macao. [...]

The historian Robert Entenmann wrote his doctoral thesis at Harvard on the great migration. According to his calculations, there were only around 1 million residents left in Sichuan by 1680, but between 1667-1707, 1.7 million immigrants arrived. So at about exactly the same time that the chili pepper had made its way as far inland as Hunan, the Hunanese were moving en masse to Sichuan, driven by overpopulation in their home province and sheer economic necessity. [...]

Another, more provocative explanation for chili pepper popularity holds that its geographical distribution can be explained by its purported anti-microbial properties. In a 1998 paper published in the Quarterly Review of Biology, Cornell’s Paul Sherman and Jennifer Billing found a correlation between the mean temperature of a country (or region) and the number of spices called for in recipes representing the “traditional” cuisine of that region. The equation was simple: The hotter the temperature, the more spices consumed. Their theory: Spices performed an anti-microbial function especially useful in tropical or subtropical regions where meat was likely to go bad quickly.

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Quartz: Europeans don’t have true citizenship. They have a second-class status dating back to Ancient Rome

Europe has been doing a bit more than trying to tackle this dilemma; it has been running the world’s biggest open-air social-science experiment for the past two decades. In 1993, as a culmination of attempts to forge a united Europe after millennia of war, the EU not only gave birth to itself but it also quietly created—without much discussion of what it would mean—the entirely new concept of European citizenship.

Under the Maastricht Treaty, European citizenship exists “over and above national citizenship. Every citizen who is a national of a member state is also a citizen of the union.” Not everyone in the EU realizes this, but it is true. Citizenship of the EU confers a series of rights, including the unprecedented ability to live and work anywhere in the EU indefinitely. With that comes legal parity with national citizens on everything, bar the right to vote in general elections. [...]

What’s more, the European immigrant doesn’t think of himself as an immigrant. He thinks of himself as a European—equal with the local citizens. This can lead to some very strange moments. In the aftermath of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, the Labour MP Stella Creasy recalled a moment during the campaigning in her London constituency: [...]

Immigrants who do not think of themselves as such don’t really exist in history, because you usually need permission to be in someone else’s country. Before 1708, when Britain passed the Foreign Protestants Naturalization Act (pdf)—to give asylum to French Huguenots fleeing Catholic persecution—a foreigner could become a British citizen only through a private act of Parliament or by petitioning the king. (The concept of “Britishness” was itself fairly new—the union with Scotland had only occurred two years earlier.)

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CityLab: How Hyperconnected Cities Are Taking Over the World

In the medieval period, empires battled and colluded with each other in the quest for land. The resulting system, in which nations became the main actors on the global stage, is perhaps the one most of us know best. But it’s changing.

We’re now moving toward a new era where insular, political boundaries are no longer as relevant. More and more people are identifying as “global citizens,” and that’s because we’re all more connected than we’ve ever been before. As a result, a “systems change” is taking place in the world today in which cities—not nations—are the key global players, argues Parag Khanna in his new book, Connectography: Mapping the Future of the Global Civilization. In it, Khanna, who is a global strategist and world traveler, writes: [...]

Cities are a key element to that evolution for many reasons. First of all, the world has become urban. If you want to understand where people are, people are in cities. Second: economics. Most of the world's economic power is concentrated in cities, and therefore they become the pivotal entities you need to analyze to understand the world economy. Thirdly, cities are increasingly connecting to each other. They're forging their own diplomatic networks, [which] I call "diplomacity. [...]

I think the spread of technologies across leading cities, things like the C40 does, are very very important. [C40 is a network of cities around the world working to tackle climate change.] I think it's literally, empirically more important than our climate-treaty negotiations, because those are not binding. Meanwhile, what the C40 does ... is lower the cost of technology. You don't get China to implement CO2 scrubbers just by telling it to do so. You have to devise and deploy the technologies to make it cheap, and to make the factory owners say, “This will not harm my output.”

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CityLab: An Incredibly Detailed Map of Europe's Population Shifts

The BBSR collected data between 2001 and 2011. While that might sound slightly outdated, these are actually the most up-to-date figures Europe has to offer, as 2011 is the most recent year for which comprehensive population data is available for the whole of Europe. According to its makers, the map provides a level of detail previously unavailable, as it is the first ever to collect data published by all of Europe’s municipalities. The results are impressively comprehensive and reveal a few surprises. [...]

Look at the Eastern section of the map and you’ll see that many cities, including Prague, Bucharest, and the Polish cities of Poznań and Wrocław, are ringed with a deep red circle that shows a particularly high rise in average annual population of 2 percent or more. As this paper from Krakow’s Jagiellonian University’s Institute of Geography notes, Eastern cities began to spread out in the new millennium because it was their first chance to do so in decades. [...]

We already know from other available data that Europe is experiencing a migration to the northwest, but the BBSR map adds complexity to this picture and reveals some interesting micro-trends. The dark blue coloring of the map’s Eastern section shows that the lean years for Eastern states are by no means over. Residents have continued to leave Albania, Bulgaria and Latvia in particular in search of jobs, while even relatively wealthy eastern Germany has been hollowed out almost everywhere except the Berlin region.

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Al Jazeera: What the hijab means to me

I wear hijab not because it represents my morality, intellect, backwardness or modernity, but because it makes me feel complete. I choose to wear a hijab and it represents my pride in being a Muslim and somehow makes me fulfil my duties to my religion, but it doesn't give me the liberty to judge those who don't wear it. [...]

My evolution from niqab to uncovered happened in around 2008 when I was dealing with my sexuality and was exploring my feelings about Islam. I felt I couldn't be both Muslim and queer at the same time, so I prioritised being queer and rebelled against everything else. [...]

These days, I miss wearing the hijab for various reasons - familiarity, fitting in and a veil from aggressive eyes and attention. In Nigeria, there's a certain harassment that comes to people who do not wear stereotypical female clothes. Because I sometimes wear masculine clothes, people will say really mean things. [...]

Only after experiencing it did I realise that my hijab gives me an identity as a Muslim woman, devout and respectable. It protects me - not only from the eyes of men, but from anyone who can value me and evaluate me based on anything other than my ability, my intellect, my heart. [...]

Eventually, I stopped wearing the hijab. I put my hair in dreadlocks and have never taken them out, and I show my blackness proudly to the world. Ultimately, uncovering led me to a deeper love of blackness than I'd previously known.

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Atlas Obscura: Fascinating Photos from the Secret Trash Collection in a New York Sanitation Garage

On the second floor of a nondescript warehouse owned by New York City’s Sanitation Department in East Harlem is a treasure trove—filled with other people’s trash.

Most of the building is used as a depot for garbage trucks, but there’s a secret collection that takes over an entire floor. The space is populated by a mind-bogglingly wide array of items: a bestiary of Tamagotchis, Furbies; dozens of Pez dispensers; female weight lifting trophies; 8-track tapes; plates, paintings, sporting equipment and much more.

This is the Treasures in the Trash collection, created entirely out of objects found by Nelson Molina, a now-retired sanitation worker, who began by decorating his locker. Collected over 30 years, it is a visual explosion, organized by type, color, and size. Recently, Atlas Obscura had the chance to visit the collection with the New York Adventure Club, take some photos, and revel in the vast creative possibilities of trash. 

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Quartz: Morocco wants to build a new city from scratch—with China’s help

Morocco is working on a $10 billion project with the Chinese group Haite to develop an industrial city that will host some 300,000 locals.

The project envisions a large Chinese-style industrial park on the edge of the Mediterranean, built on about 2,500 acres with room to expand up to nearly 5,000 acres. [...]

Morocco has made significant improvements to its infrastructure to attract investment. The national highway network grew from 100 kilometers in 1999 to 1,772 kilometers in 2016. Morocco also plans to open Africa’s first high-speed rail line between Tangiers and Kénitra by 2018. The railroad is expected to reduce the travel time from Casablanca, Morocco’s largest city, to Tangiers from nearly five hours to a little more than two. [...]

“If the Chinese firms build and finance this infrastructure it is all to the good for Morocco. But chances are it will not happen,” said Deborah Brautigam, director of the China Africa Research Initiative at John Hopkins University, in a written statement to the American Media Institute. When tentative agreements like this one do move forward, she said, they tend to progress very slowly.

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Quartz: Finland offered a state apology for the pain and abuse suffered by generations of children in its care

The apology follows research (link in Finnish) carried out by the University of Jyväskylä and published earlier this year by the government, which examined mistreatment and abuse in the country’s welfare system between 1937 and 1983. Around 150,000 children are estimated to have lived in child welfare institutions, orphanages, reform schools (which were founded for children with perceived behavioral problems), or foster homes during that period. The researchers interviewed some 300 of them, all of whom had experienced abuse while living there. [...]

“The apology is very significant,” she adds. “Finland does not have much of a culture of apology. This is the first large-scale public apology expressed on behalf of the state.” No decision has been made on whether compensation will be issued.

In the past few years several Western countries have owned up to the mass neglect of children by state welfare bodies. In 2008, the Canadian government formally apologized to its indigenous population for the physical abuse that occurred in church-run residential schools from the mid-19th to early 20th century. That same year Australia apologized to the “Stolen Generations” of indigenous and mixed-race children taken forcibly from their families during the first decades of the 20th century; the following year, it apologized also to some 500,000 Australians who suffered neglect and abuse in orphanages and children’s homes. In 2010 the UK apologized for its role in sending over 130,000 children to former colonies—Australia among them—between the 1920s and 1960s, where many ended up suffering abuse at the hands of those who were meant to care for them. And in 2013, Irish prime minister Enda Kenny issued an apology to the thousands of women and girls who were forced to perform unpaid manual labour at Ireland’s Catholic-run Magdalene Laundries from 1922-96.

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Quartz: The dark and sordid history behind America’s obsession with cranberries

Ocean Spray is the world’s leading supplier of cranberry-related products, controlling 75% of cranberry farms in the US and Canada since 1930. This includes their cranberry juice, fresh cranberries, craisins (which were created as an Ocean-Spray marketing ploy, by the way), cranberry sauce, and a whole smattering of other products. Ocean Spray sells 20% of their fresh cranberries during the week leading up to Thanksgiving—a whopping 80 million pounds of them. [...]

Cranberries are grown in bogs primarily in the northern part of the US in soft, marshy ground with acid-peat soil. They’re hard to harvest on the vines they grow on, so instead, the bogs are flooded at harvest time, water reels pull them off the vine, and the cranberries float to the top, allowing them to be collected and sent off to market. Those images you see of farmers in waders, up to their chests in water with cranberries floating all around them? Totally accurate. [...]

President Eisenhower did not eat cranberries for Thanksgiving that year, and neither did the majority of the country. In a single year, cranberry sales dropped by nearly 70% (pdf). According to the American Council on Science and Health, the great cranberry scare of 1959 set off the very first carcinogen panic in the United States. This scare was mostly overblown and overhyped: The lab rats would have had to consume truckloads of cranberries treated with aminotriazole before getting any tumor growths. Still, the negative publicity had a direct effect on sales, which should have been enough of an incentive to have Ocean Spray rethink their methods. It wasn’t. [...]

It would make sense for cranberry farms to be held to some US government oversight, such as the Clean Water Act, but due to a confusing loophole, they aren’t. Agricultural run-off from places like cranberry bogs and rice fields is not regulated, and Ocean Spray takes full advantage of that ambiguity. In Wisconsin, for example, cranberry bogs have destroyed more wetlands than all other uses combined, and the evidence is mounting that continuing non-organic farming of cranberries will continue to be an immense environmental hazard.

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CityLab: The Women Replacing Spain's Franco-Era Street Names

Though Franco died in 1975, many streets and squares still bear his and his associates’ names, surviving under a policy of forgiving and forgetting the crimes committed during his rule. Now, they’re finally being swept away, and a clutch of major cities are using the opportunity to commemorate more women, who currently lend their names to just 5 percent of Spain’s streets. The changes might rattle some traditionalists, and also annoy Spain’s lingering fascist sympathizers, but they also seem long overdue. So why now?

The simple reason is that Spain’s political map has changed radically since the 2015 elections, at least at the municipal level. After decades of see-sawing between the right wing Popular Party and the center-left Socialist Party, many Spanish voters opted for a host of smaller left wing parties that gather together under the umbrella of the Podemos party. Podemos-linked coalitions have taken power in many key cities, including Madrid and Barcelona, and they aren’t turning a blind eye to reminders of Spain’s bloody 20th century dictatorship. [...]

While street names are a key place to commemorate important figures in Spain, the scales are overwhelmingly tipped toward men. The women who are featured are typically saints or nuns, providing a skewed picture of women’s role in national life. An article from El Diario, for example, found 137 Madrid streets named after apparitions of the Virgin Mary (such as Our Lady of the Pillar) and 125 named after female saints, but only one named after a female teacher. As Professor Patricia Arias Chachero says in that article, “It’s almost as if the situation is the practical confirmation of the popular saying—that a woman’s place is not in the street, but in the house.”

ome cities have been trying to remedy this imbalance for a while. In 2005, for example, Córdoba mandated that 50 percent of all new street names commemorate women. This year, the tide seems to be turning faster. The northern city of León just invited the public to choose from a list of women to be honored, with Rosa Parks, Frida Kahlo, Jane Austen and the mathematician and philosopher Hypatia all in the running. The most popular choice was Ángela Ruiz Robles, an inventor and León native whose 1949-patented Enciclopedia Mecánica is widely considered the first prototype for the electronic book reader.

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The Atlantic: What’s So Great About American World Leadership?

The big message of 2016 is that large numbers of American voters, Democrat and Republican, do not buy what their political leaders have been selling for so long, and that includes foreign policy. The evidence of this from Trump’s victory is reinforced by Senator Bernie Sanders’ remarkable showing in the Democratic primaries, and by years’ worth of public-opinion surveys showing the widespread view that the United States “does too much in helping solve world problems.” It is also reinforced by the high poll numbers of an outgoing president who has mounted his own quiet campaign against key elements of Washington’s foreign-policy orthodoxy. [...]

Does that sound harsh? Here is a list, in no particular order, of some key goals both the Bush and Obama administrations set for themselves in foreign policy: Prevent North Korea getting nuclear weapons; prevent Iran getting nuclear weapons and contain its growing influence in the Middle East; transform Iraq and Afghanistan into stable, progressive, pro-Western states, or at least leave them as minimally functioning countries; contain and eventually crush jihadist extremism; harness the Arab Spring to enhance U.S. influence in the Arab world; reconcile Russia to the U.S.-led order and resist its efforts to rebuild a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe; resist China’s challenge to the U.S.-led order in Asia; broker a durable settlement between Israel and the Palestinians; and prevent another 9/11 on U.S. soil. [...]

But now it seems the American electorate has told them to think again. Perhaps democracy works after all, at least to identify problems if not to choose the right person to find solutions. It is hard to imagine anyone less suited to conceive and create a new and more sustainable vision of America’s role on the world than its president-elect. His mix of bullying belligerency and “America First” isolationism suggests that he will apply American power either too forcefully or not forcefully enough. That risks escalating crises and raising the chances of major war, a complete unravelling of U.S. influence beyond the Western Hemisphere—or quite possibly both.   

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Vox: Why small talk is so excruciating

The problem, of course, is that small talk precedes big talk in the normal course of human affairs. Most people feel the need to get comfortable with one another before they jump into the deep end of serious conversation or ongoing friendship. Which means if you hate and avoid small talk, you are also, as a practical matter, cutting yourself off from lots of meaningful social interaction, which is a bummer. Also, research shows that more frequent small talk, even among those who identify as introverts, makes people happier. Also, despite recent advances in technology, small talk remains an unavoidable part of many basic life tasks. [...]

In the 1970s, however, sociolinguistics became more attuned to the everyday forms of speech that, after all, constitute the bulk of our verbal communication. And feminist sociolinguistics in particular noted that a dismissive attitude toward speech that establishes and maintains relationships — as opposed to task-oriented or informational speech — was of a piece with patriarchal disrespect for traditionally female roles. Think of the derogatory implications of the term "gossip," which is, after all, social talk about social dynamics. [...]

Malinowski was wrong — small talk is not just important for those seeking companionship (or avoiding silence). It's also important in a whole range of social, commercial, and professional settings. It weaves and reweaves the social fabric, enacting and reinforcing social roles. Think of the different varieties of small talk between doctor and patient, vendor and customer, employer and employee. Each has its own rhythms and rules. And of course the character of small talk differs from place to place, culture to culture. For example, silence, contra Malinowski, is not viewed as threatening or uncomfortable in all cultures.

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Vox: Bernie Sanders — and many Democrats — keep confusing identity politics with tokenism

It’s a perfect illustration of why the debate over “identity politics” in the 2016 election has been so maddening. Sanders’s comments represent a flank of the Democratic party that partly blames Clinton’s loss on her strong embrace of race and gender issues, which could have turned off white male voters in particular. Meanwhile, the marginalized groups who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats fear being thrown under the bus, as they have many times before, so that the party can curry more favor with white Americans. [...]

But to people who actually practice “identity politics,” Sanders is presenting a straw man. He’s describing tokenism — the idea that you need a certain quota of “token” members of marginalized groups for the sake of “diversity,” regardless of whether those members are actually qualified or actually represent their group’s interests. [...]

Generally speaking, identity politics is about recognizing and acting on the fact that different groups can have different interests, goals, and policy needs. It doesn’t require pitting those groups against each other, although it’s often presented that way. Rather, it’s about acknowledging that American politics tends to treat the “white male” identity as the default — and every other identity as some sort of optional bonus feature. [...]

What Sanders doesn’t seem to understand, though, is that these issues are at the heart of “identity politics.” He gives identity-focused progressives much too little credit for their willingness to support other progressive issues — and also gives himself too little permission to champion identity issues without the “yes, but” qualification.

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The Guardian: Dogs have 'episodic memories' just like humans, suggests study

A team from Hungary have discovered that dogs are able to recall their owner’s actions, even when they were not specifically instructed to do so, suggesting that dogs, like humans, have what is known as “episodic memory” – memories linked to specific times and places. [...]

While 94.1% of dogs successfully mimicked their owner when expecting to do so, 58.8% correctly copied their owner when unexpectedly asked to “do it!” a minute later, and 35.3% correctly copied their owner when unexpectedly given the commanded an hour later. [...]

The authors note that the rapid drop-off in success rates over time, together with evidence that the command was unexpected, shows that the dogs were recalling events that had not been imbued with importance – suggesting that they were relying on a type of episodic memory. The conclusion, they add, is backed up the dogs’ ability to mimic actions despite having never physically done them before.

“Traditionally episodic memory has been linked to self-awareness but as we do not know whether dogs are self-aware we call it episodic-like memory,” said Fugazza.

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BBC4 Analysis: Brexit: What Europe Wants

How political forces in other countries will shape any future UK-EU deal.

As a younger man, Anand Menon spent a care-free summer Inter-railing around Europe. Some decades later, and now a professor of European politics, he's taking to the rails again - this time with a more specific purpose. While British ministers squabble over what they want for a post-Brexit UK, less attention is paid to the other 27 countries in the negotiations. Each can veto any long-term deal between Britain and the European Union. And each, critically, has its own politics to worry about. Professor Menon visits four European countries where politicians will face their electorates next year. What forces will decide their political survival? And how will those forces shape the EU's future relationship with the UK?

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Jacobin Magazine: Listening to Trump

It has become apparent that very few coastal lefties, progressives, or liberals actually watched any full-length Trump speeches. I have a different problem: I may have watched too many. During early spring I went down a multi-week-long, late-night, Trump YouTube rabbit hole. I found myself watching hours of raw video feed of Trump campaign speeches. Insomnia got me there but I stayed for the mesmerizing dada quality of the Trump show, and for the mind-bending experience of watching a reality TV freak articulate surprisingly subversive political truths about the economy and America’s role in the world.

Contrary to how he was portrayed in the mainstream media Trump did not talk only of walls, immigration bans, and deportations. In fact he usually didn’t spend much time on those themes. Don’t get me wrong, Trump is a racist, misogynist, and confessed sexual predator who has legitimized dangerous street-level hate. Most of all, Trump is a fraud. And his administration will almost certainly be a terrible new low in the evolution of American authoritarianism. [...]

In Trump’s discourse A does not necessarily connect to B. If you don’t like A, just focus on B. The structure of Trump’s discourse will never demand that all the pieces be connected. That, in part, is what he meant with the Orwellian phrase “truthful hyperbole.” He has even described his own statements as mere “opening bids” in a negotiation. [...]

Often Trump’s sentences were just distinct phrases strung together. The lack of structure, far from boring, gave his stump talks an almost hypnotic quality. The listener could relax and just let it flow. In this regard Trump seems to a have stepped from the pages of Neil Postman’s old book Amusing Ourselves To Death, in that he personified the cut-up dada style assault on coherent thought that is the essence of television.

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Nautilus Magazine: Why Abstract Art Stirs Creativity in Our Brains

In his most recent book, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures, published this year, the Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel argues that such a separation no longer exists. The best-known abstractionists, like Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Dan Flavin, and Willem de Kooning, Kandel writes, effectively created “new rules for visual processing.” Abstract art, says Kandel, is therefore the key to understanding both how art and science inform one another, and together, they might open up entirely new ways of seeing and imagining. Where figurative painting provides the human brain with clear visual information—images of a person, a house, a boat, etc.—abstract art reduces, he says, “the complex visual world around us to its essence of form, line, color, and light.”

In doing so, Kandel noted in our conversation, abstract art engages different parts of our minds, conjures more visceral responses, and just might make us more creative. [...]

Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz supplied that information when he pointed out that, in addition to the light bouncing off the face, there are bottom-up and top-down processes. The bottom-up processes are built into the brain. The human brain has evolved over thousands of years, so it has built-in mechanisms that make very good guesses from incomplete information. If they see a source of light, they guess it’s from above because the sun is above. That’s the major source of light for us. If they see one person is much larger than any other, they assume he’s standing closer, in front of the other person. There are lots of clues that we take that are imperfect, but put them together and they give you 98-percent accuracy. That’s what gets us through life. The brain has evolved to make these very, very great guesses based on minimum information that turn out to be very effective.

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Politico: For EU, Poland is not yet lost

To be sure, things are looking up for the conservative nationalist. Under President Barack Obama, the United States joined the EU in criticizing the weakening of the rule of law in Poland. His successor, Donald Trump, is more likely to give a pass to Kaczyński, a fellow anti-establishment nativist.

Yet Europe has plenty of tools it could use to help Poles resist a dismantling of their liberal democracy without having to resort to the implausible “nuclear weapon” of suspending Warsaw’s EU voting rights.

The parliamentary opposition may be divided and poorly led, but something of the spirit of Solidarity — the grassroots movement that overcame Communist repression — is reawakening to protect civil rights, freedom of speech and diversity. [...]

That creates a dilemma for Commission officials. The next step the Commission can take in the legal procedure against countries that breach fundamental rights is to recommend sanctions. But this would require the unanimous consent of the other members, and is likely to be vetoed by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Kaczyński’s Central European partner in majoritarian autocracy.

The Polish leader could also turn such a move to domestic advantage, denouncing Eurocrats bent on thwarting the will of the people. Similarly, if the EU were to withhold funds for economic development and agriculture, he could blame Brussels, rather than his cronyism and unorthodox policies, for causing economic havoc. [...]

In crafting their response, European leaders should listen to Polish intellectuals who are urging EU action to raise pressure on Kaczyński, sustain civil society and prepare for a restoration of liberalism when he eventually loses power.

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Politico: Barcelona’s war on tourists

Colau made her name campaigning against the increasing number of evictions and foreclosures in Spain after the financial crisis, before turning her sights on the tourism industry. Her local election campaign examined the “tourist bubble” and promised to bring the situation under control, propelling her leftist coalition — Barcelona en Comú (Barcelona in Common) — to victory.

It’s a difficult game to play. Barcelona gets around 30 million visitors a year, according to local government figures, bringing in a huge amount of money to the city of 1.6 million. The impact those tourists are having on rental prices, however, is a major concern for locals, with opinion polls ranking it the second biggest problem for residents, after unemployment. [...]

Colau approved a series of controversial measures after taking power: She froze handing out licenses for all new hospitality establishments, including hotels and private apartments — despite 15,000 pending requests — and launched an assault on short-term rentals through sites such as Airbnb, which she blames for the lack of affordable housing in the city. [...]

The effect of these measures is yet to be seen. The number of hotel guests in Barcelona grew by 5.4 percent in 2015 and long-term rental prices have increased by 30 percent since Colau became mayor. The growth in Madrid, where no such measures have been introduced, was 19 percent over the same period, according to the real estate website Idealista.

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BuzzFeed: There’s A Plan For California To Secede From The US, But It Probably Won’t Work

Members of the “Yes California” initiative filed a proposed ballot measure Monday that would let California residents vote on whether the state should try to break away from the rest of the country. The goal is to get the measure on the ballot in 2018 — something that will happen if organizers collect more than half a million signatures.

If the measure passes at the ballot box, it would eliminate part of the state constitution describing California as an “an inseparable part of the United States of America.”

Passing the measure would then lead to a special election in 2019 where voters would decide if they want to leave the United States and become their own country. [...]

Daniel Farber, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, described the odds of California breaking away from the United States as “one in a billion.” Farber said the Golden State would face an array of challenges if it seceded, including deals over everything from trade to energy to copyrights on Hollywood films. [...]

Instead, he explained, California would need the consent of other states to leave the US. How exactly that consent could be given is unclear — this particular issue hasn’t come up before — though it could ultimately require a constitutional amendment. And either way, it would require the very lawmakers Californians want to break away from to get on board with the plan.

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The Guardian: 'It's not all anal sex': the German schools exploring love, equality and LGBT issues

Despite their fears, anal sex is not being snuck into lessons. What schools are being asked to do is encourage acceptance of different lifestyles and identities. The Hessian ministry of education has said that, from this autumn, teachers must have conversations about sexual and gender diversity with children – not only in sex education classes, which are mandatory in Germany, but in subjects like English and maths too.

“The idea is to show children that there are different ways to love and live,” says Markus Ulrich, of the German LGBT rights group Lesben und Schwulenverband (LSVD). The issue is brought in on a day-to-day basis. “For example, in maths, a teacher could set a question that includes a gay family,” says Ulrich. “Or in English when they study Romeo and Juliet, they could ask about other types of relationships that are sometimes disapproved of.” [...]

Klauenflügel says this cannot happen. “It’s very necessary to connect LGBT acceptance with an acceptance of all different diverse ways of living,” she says. “I think it’s particularly important to teach diversity in schools now – it’s a human rights issue and is about accepting people with different lifestyles, religious beliefs, sexual orientations, genders and backgrounds. It’s a kind of diversity competence that we really need in our society right now.”

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Business Insider: 'This is no longer amusing:' EU officials have lost patience with Boris Johnson

May's decision to appoint Johnson as foreign secretary when she became prime minister surprised many, given the latter's history of gaffes relating to other countries and their leaders. It is a move that looks be backfiring, with Johnson's reputation among his European counterparts seemingly getting worse with each week that passes.

"This is no longer amusing. It is serious stuff," a European ambassador told the Times. Research group British influence has spoken to ambassadors from all 27 EU member states and concluded that Johnson has a "wit that does not always travel well across the Channel."

Last week, Italian minister Carlo Calenda said he felt insulted by Johnson after the Tory MP suggested Italy should push for Britain to remain in the European Single Market otherwise it would be forced to sell less prosecco. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Johnson's German counterpart, told colleagues that he couldn't stand to be in the same room as the British minister, according to a Financial Times report.

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Los Angeles Times: Britain's sweeping surveillance powers act raises concerns for human rights activists

“It defies common sense,” said Carlo, policy officer at human rights organization Liberty. “We are very, very resolutely in opposition to mass surveillance, which can never be considered proportionate or necessary in a democracy.”

But after a year of debate, the Investigatory Powers Bill was approved by Parliament last week and is expected to be ratified into law by the end of the year. The bill includes measures that will force Internet and phone companies to keep a record of the complete Web browsing history of British citizens for up to 12 months, in case they need to be accessed by government agencies.

It also allows the government to obtain “bulk personal data sets,” even if most of the individuals are not suspected of any wrongdoing. [...]

In essence, the bill will force Internet and phone companies to keep records of all users for up to a year, including every website visited and every phone call made, including duration, date and time.

Such surveillance does not have to be targeted or based on any reasonable suspicion and this personal data can be accessed without a warrant in some instances.

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RSA: US Election 2016: The Result | John Prideaux

US Election 2016: The Result with John Prideaux, US editor at The Economist. It may be a post-pollster, post-pundit, post-truth landscape – but can we predict where the world goes from here? An extraordinary US presidential election campaign has resulted in an outcome that few could have predicted at its outset: Donald J Trump will become the 45th US President of the United States.

The implications of this historic decision are, for now, highly unpredictable, and for many, deeply concerning, with many questions unresolved around the course of future US policy on the economy, security, environmental protection, and human rights.

Join our expert panel at the RSA to consider what a Trump presidency says about, and means for America and the world in the days, months and years to come.

Our panel of experts include: John Prideaux, US editor at The Economist; James O'Brien, LBC radio & BBC Newsnight; Professor Malcolm Chalmers, Deputy Director-General of RUSI; Melanie McDonagh, Leader writer, Evening Standard and contributor, The Spectator; Stephen Bush, special correspondent, New Statesman.

The Atlantic: The Cardinal Trying to Save Chicago

In many ways, Chicago is the American test case for Francis’s vision of the Church—one that is vibrant, energized, and focused on caring for those who have been thrown away by society. Many pastors, like Cupich, have welcomed this renewed call to “smell like the sheep” they tend in their churches. But the pope has his enemies, too; especially in America, not everyone agrees that Francis is taking the Church in the right direction. Cupich has made a dizzying ascent, earning a job that’s part Roman consigliere, part CEO, and part social worker. If he succeeds, his work will be a testament to Francis-style Catholicism. If he fails, though, the consequences won’t just be political. Cupich wants to lift people out of poverty, create better education systems, and bring an end to the gun deaths. But the city and the Church he serves are both struggling to hold violence at bay. [...]

It was during this time that he began building his reputation as a Church fixer. In 2002, the American church was just beginning to deal with the fall-out of the clergy sex-abuse scandal uncovered that year by The Boston Globe. Burke, then a justice on the Illinois Appellate Court, was part of the USCCB’s initial working group on the matter, and that’s where she first met Cupich. “We had a very difficult time with the bishops and cardinals, trying to get them to cooperate with our investigation process,” Burke said. Cupich “was a shining light in all of this, because he actually spent a lot of time talking to us and helping us with the whole investigation.” [...]

Cupich, however, is not primarily oriented toward opposing the secular pulls of modern life. As his political work across Chicago shows, he’s more interested in compromise in the hopes of serving the whole community, not just Catholics. “If you think we have what the culture needs, and that we can make our case, then you engage and persuade,” said Carr. “Francis is an engage-and-persuade leader. Cupich is an engage-and-persuade leader.” This attitude has seemed to help Cupich maneuver effectively within the city—he even impressed Preckwinkle, the Cook County Board president, who’s a Unitarian. “I think he has a much more open and inclusive attitude for the region in which he finds himself than his predecessor,” she said. Cupich is “surely more welcoming of people who are not Catholic, or people within the Church who may not have been as warmly received as in the past.”

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