FiveThirtyEight; The End Of A Republican Party

Moments of historical change in the course of a party’s life can be difficult to spot. In “Party Ideologies in America, 1828-1996,” political scientist John Gerring marks the beginning of the modern Republican Party as Herbert Hoover’s shifting campaign rhetoric in 1928 and 1932, when he talked more about the virtues of the American home and family than hard-tack economics. Hoover’s oratory about the progress of the individual being threatened by an overzealous government bureaucracy stuck around for the next eight decades, and the wisdom of generations has helped us discern that this was indeed the start of a new Republican era. [...]

The results of a FiveThirtyEight and SurveyMonkey poll conducted in June found that one of the most indicative variables in determining Republican identification this year was agreement with the statement that the “number of immigrants who come to the United States each year” should “decrease.” Trump’s campaign kicked off with a speech last June that labeled Mexican immigrants as the dregs of society — “They’re bringing crime, they’re rapists,” he said — and has hammered on the immigration issue since, adding Muslims to the dragnet of groups deemed undesirable in the United States. The election has taken on a distinctly racial tinge, and in doing so, has clarified the motivations of voters somewhat. [...]

Somewhere in recent years, the GOP’s engagement with modern America and how to best project those values into a nation of 320 million people became dysfunctional. As the country has diversified, the party has remained monochromatic, has grayed, and rather than allowing some birch-like give on shifting cultural norms, has become an unbending oak of ideological purity. The GOP now finds itself lacking an intimate’s ability to criticize productively, given its demographic and cultural divergence from the majority of the country. [...]

Despite its demographic inertia, the Republican Party has not been without its moments of change. The tea party movement, which rose up from the grassroots in 2009, has significantly altered the way the GOP conducts its business. But the party’s “revolution” was led not by young men and women storming the barricades but by the gray-haired masses sitting down in their Adirondack Chairs and fighting to keep things as they have been. According to a 2010 New York Times/CBS News poll of tea party supporters, 75 percent were 45 or older. In keeping with Republican Party trends, the group was also overwhelmingly white, at 89 percent, and only 23 percent had a college degree.

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The Atlantic: In Ferguson, the Seeds of Trump's Defeat

Two years ago, the protests in Ferguson that followed Brown’s death galvanized African Americans—and many others—around what some see as a new civil-rights movement. Now, as a presidential election of historically divisive proportions nears conclusion, the black community has experienced it as a fresh trauma: As America’s first black president prepares to leave office, one of the major-party nominees appears to them to be not just a racist, but running on a platform of racism.

Some have argued that Trump's nomination may have come as a white backlash to events like the Ferguson protests, which Trump has called “race riots.” But if Trump loses the presidential election, an outcome that looks increasingly likely, it will be due to the backlash to the backlash: the increasingly diverse American electorate, starting with an African American community that proved stubbornly resistant to Trump’s belated attempts to woo them. [...]

Franks, who is now 32, represents the rising generation of activists determined to translate protestors’ passion into something constructive—and to take on entrenched interests in the Democratic Party to do so. In the activist community, Franks has been criticized for his willingness to work with police to achieve change. He told me he had hope of finding common ground once he gets to the Republican-controlled legislature, and that he believed working within the system was the way to change it.

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The Atlantic: Why Is Dating in the App Era Such Hard Work?

The purpose of dating is not much clearer than its definition. Before the early 1900s, when people started “dating,” they “called.” That is, men called on women, and everyone more or less agreed on the point of the visit. The potential spouses assessed each other in the privacy of her home, her parents assessed his eligibility, and either they got engaged or he went on his way. Over the course of the 20th century, such encounters became more casual, but even tire kickers were expected to make a purchase sooner rather than later. Five decades ago, 72 percent of men and 87 percent of women had gotten married by the time they were 25. By 2012, the situation had basically reversed: 78 percent of men and 67 percent of women were unmarried at that age. [...]

We are in the early stages of a dating revolution. The sheer quantity of relationships available through the internet is transforming the quality of those relationships. Though it is probably too soon to say exactly how, Witt and Weigel offer a useful perspective. They’re not old fogies of the sort who always sound the alarm whenever styles of courtship change. Nor are they part of the rising generation of gender-fluid individuals for whom the ever-lengthening list of sexual identities and affinities spells liberation from the heteronormative assumptions of parents and peers. The two authors are (or in Weigel’s case, was, when she wrote her book) single, straight women in their early 30s. Theirs is the “last generation,” Witt writes, “that lived some part of life without the Internet, who were trying to adjust our reality to our technology.” [...]

As Weigel tells it, dating is an unintended by-product of consumerism. Nineteenth-century industrialization ushered in the era of cheap goods, and producers needed to sell more of them. Young women moved to cities to work and met more eligible men in a day than they could previously have met in years. Men started taking women out to places of entertainment that offered young people refuge from their sharp-eyed elders—amusement parks, restaurants, movie theaters, bars. “The first entrepreneurs to create dating platforms,” Weigel calls their proprietors. Romance began to be decoupled from commitment. Trying something on before you bought it became the new rule.

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The Guardian: Hannah Gadsby: why I love the Arnolfini Portrait, one of art history’s greatest riddles

Not only did Van Eyck have a habit of painting women to look like they were with child even when they were without, but it was also fashionable at the time to look pregnant when you were not. Faking the harvest to attract the seed, so to speak. It’s untidy logic but still makes more sense than thigh gap. [...]

Panofsky argued, very persuasively, that this portrait was not just a work of art, it was also a legal document – the wedding certificate, as it were, of the couple in the painting: Italian cloth merchant, Giovanni Arnolfini, and his wife Giovanna Cenami. Panofsky then showed how every detail of the painting supported his thesis: the small round mirror (God’s all-seeing eye); the small dog at the couple’s feet (“fido” for “fidelity”); the shoes that the couple have taken off (indicating they are in a sacred space and God had just mop-eth the floor); the oranges on the windowsill (you can’t get pregnant if you have scurvy).

Panofsky did such a thorough job and with it he ushered in a new era of art history. He suggested the world was both knowable and solvable. But here’s the snag: in 1990 a document came to light that certified the wedding of Giovanni Arnolfini and Giovanna Cenami occurred in 1447, 13 years after the portrait was painted and six years after the artist had died.

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Motherboard: The Montreal Protocol Is the Most Successful Climate Agreement Ever

That realization lit a fire under scientists and, importantly, government officials. (Margaret Thatcher, who trained as a chemist, was among those spooked by it.) In 1987, almost every country in the world signed the Montreal Protocol, agreeing on a plan to phase out damaging CFCs. Consumers bought in, too, voluntarily boycotting the spray cans. As a result of this global effort to get rid of CFCs, scientists now say the ozone layer is slowly healing. [...]

“The Montreal Protocol has done more for climate protection than any other agreement,” Zaelke, who is founder and president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, told me over the phone. Thanks to Montreal, “nearly 100 climate pollutants have been phased out, by nearly 100 percent,” he continued. [...]

Then there’s the fact that the Montreal Protocol deliberately takes developing countries’ needs into account, he said. With the new HFC ban, richer nations will phase the chemicals out first, followed by developing ones. Another element of it is that, while the pledges from Paris are voluntary, the Montreal Protocol actually includes trade sanctions—it can punish nations that don’t abide by its terms (although it's never been used to do so). These sanctions are only used as a last resort, but they still give the agreement some teeth.

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Atlas Obscura: London Is Still Paying Rent to the Queen on a Property Leased in 1211

Earlier this October, at a ceremony at the Royal Courts of Justice, London paid its rent to the Queen. The ceremony proceeded much as it had for the past eight centuries. The city handed over a knife, an axe, six oversized horseshoes, and 61 nails to Barbara Janet Fontaine, the Queen’s Remembrancer, the oldest judicial position in England. The job was created in the 12th century to keep track of all that was owed to the crown.

In this case, the Remembrancer has presided over the rent owed on two pieces of property for a very long time—since 1235 in one case, and at least 1211 in the other. Every year, in this Ceremony of Quit Rents, the crown extracts its price from the city for a forge and a piece of moorland.

No one knows exactly where these two pieces of land are located anymore, but for hundreds of years the city has been paying rent on them. The rate, however, has not changed—the same objects have been presented for hundreds of years.

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The Intercept‎: U.K.'s Mass Surveillance Databases Were Unlawful for 17 Years, Court Rules

On Monday, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, a special court that handles complaints related to British spy agencies, found that access to the datasets had not been subject to sufficient supervision through a 17-year period between 1998 and November 2015. The tribunal said that due to “failings in the system of oversight” the surveillance regime had violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to privacy. [...]

While the tribunal found that the mass collection of data lacked adequate oversight, it did not rule that the surveillance itself was illegal. The judgment found in favor of the government on that front, stating that the use of the Telecommunications Act to harvest the bulk datasets was lawful. [...]

According to documents that were released earlier this year, the bulk datasets can cover a wide variety of information, potentially revealing details such as people’s political opinions, religious beliefs, union affiliation, physical or mental health status, sexual preferences, biometric data, and spending habits. They may also contain data revealing legally privileged information and journalists’ confidential sources. And the spy agencies have acknowledged that “medical data may appear” in some of the data troves, too, though they claim they do not explicitly harvest people’s medical records.

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Motherboard: Who Needs a Sun? Alien Life Could Survive Off of Cosmic Rays

This got Atri thinking. He researches cosmic rays: charged particles that shower through space, but from which we are protected by Earth’s atmosphere. If life on Earth could use radiation to get the building blocks it needed to survive in its environment, could galactic cosmic rays have a similar effect on planets where the particles reach the surface? In his paper, he demonstrates that—at least theoretically—indeed they could, as long as the planet had a thin enough atmosphere, and some trace amounts of water and other nutrients.

Testing his theory through simulations and calculations, Atri showed that cosmic rays could reach several feet below the surface of a body such as Mars, where bits of nutrients and pockets of water would be broken apart, allowing for similar, simple life forms to survive. This opens up the possibilities for where we might find life in our solar system and beyond. Rather than sticking to Goldilocks planets—not too hot or cold, similar size to Earth, with a similar distance to a star, and a similar atmosphere to allow for liquid water—we could consider stars with no atmosphere, and even bodies with no star.

“Generally when we talk about looking for life elsewhere, we are looking for life exactly like ours,” Atri said. “But this is a completely different type of energy. Our atmosphere protects us from radiation, but for radiolysis to happen the planet needs lots of cosmic rays [and little protection]. It’s actually the opposite of what we think of finding life in other places.”

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Business Insider: TOP UBS ECONOMIST: 'The government is clueless. I don’t think there is really a strategy.'

The British government is "clueless" about how it achieves its aim when it comes to Brexit, according to UBS senior economic advisor and former chief economist George Magnus.

Magnus — one of the City of London's most respected economists — said that it seems the government has no idea how to achieve its goals in Brexit negotiations. Speaking on a panel at the Brexit & Global Expansion Summit in London on Monday, he said: "I don't think there is really a strategy." [...]

"There’s a general consensus amongst negotiators that the UK government is in a state of disarray," he said, echoing Magnus' views.

Magnus also said that the post-referendum economic shock predicted by most economists before the vote "is not going to happen."

Magnus told the conference: "A lot of the kind of the concerns that were issued before the referendum about how we’re going to fall off the edge of a cliff if we vote to leave the EU. That has clearly not happened and in my view is not going to happen any time in the foreseeable future."

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