Nautilus Magazine: How to Be Lucky

Psychology studies have found that whether you identify yourself as lucky or unlucky, regardless of your actual lot in life, says a lot about your worldview, well-being, and even brain functions. It turns out that believing you are lucky is a kind of magical thinking—not magical in the sense of Lady Luck or leprechauns. A belief in luck can lead to a virtuous cycle of thought and action. Belief in good luck goes hand in hand with feelings of control, optimism, and low anxiety. If you believe you’re lucky and show up for a date feeling confident, relaxed, and positive, you’ll be more attractive to your date. [...]

If this kind of vicious cycle takes hold, it can make a big difference. Economists Victoria Prowse and David Gill of Purdue University think responses to bad luck might even explain part of the gender gap seen in the workforce. In a lab experiment using a competitive game that involved both skill and luck, they found that women were more discouraged by bad luck than men. After experiencing bad luck, women had a greater tendency to reduce the amount of effort they put into the next round of the competition, even when the game’s stakes were small. [...]

Teigen points out that, in many activities, lucky is the opposite of safe. In one study he found that people who have lucky stories are often those who have taken a lot of serious, often careless, risks. For example, a woefully inexperienced paraglider told him about having averted a crash. Ultimately, that approach to courting luck could backfire. “I am a little bit careful about wishing people good luck,” he says. “I’d rather they be safe than lucky.” [...]

The key to deciding whether an event is lucky or unlucky is the comparison you make between the actual event and the “counterfactual” alternative you’re imagining, Teigen says. The people asking “Why me?” are making an upward comparison to other people who weren’t assaulted or who avoided an accident. The people who feel lucky to have survived are comparing themselves downwardly to people who had a worse fate. Both are valid interpretations, but the downward comparison helps you to hold on to optimism, summon the feel-good emotion of gratitude, and to weave a larger narrative in which you are the lucky protagonist of your life story.

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The Huffington Post: All These European TV Shows Are Mocking Donald Trump With Spoof Tourism Ads

Satirical TV shows across Europe are trying to woo U.S. President Donald Trump. In a way.

They’re using hilarious spoof tourism ads to persuade him to put their nations “second” (because he has already pledged to put “America First”).

Dutch TV show “Zondag Met Lubach” kicked off the proceedings in January when it used Trump’s own speaking style to point out the Netherlands’ best assets. Not to be outdone, shows in Denmark, Portugal, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Lithuania have all followed suit.

The everysecondcounts.eu is aiming for all European nations to eventually put forward their case to enjoy a “special relationship” with the U.S. Check out the clips below:

see the clips

The Conversation: Trump isn’t lying, he’s bullshitting – and it’s far more dangerous

News outlets are still working through the process of figuring out what to call these mischaracterizations of reality. (“Alternative facts” seems to have been swiftly rejected.) Many outlets have upped their fact-checking game. The Washington Post, for instance, released a browser extension that fact-checks tweets by the president in near real-time.

Other outlets have resisted labeling Trump’s misstatements as lies. Earlier this year, for instance, the Wall Street Journal’s editor-in-chief Gerard Baker insisted that the Wall Street Journal wouldn’t label Trump’s false statements “lies.” [...]

In addition to being unconcerned about the truth (which liars do care about, since they are trying to conceal it), Frankfurt suggests that bullshitters don’t really care whether their audience believes what they are saying. Indeed, getting the audience to believe something is false isn’t the goal of bullshitting. Rather, bullshitters say what they do in an effort to change how the audience sees them, “to convey a certain impression” of themselves. [...]

Second, because Trump’s communication style relies heavily on anger, people who are predisposed to his message may become even less critical of potential bunk. Research suggests that when people are angry, they evaluate misinformation in a partisan way, typically accepting the misleading claims that favor their own political party. One study, for instance, primed participants by having them write essays that made them feel angry about a political issue. The authors then presented them with misinformation about the issue that either came from their own party or the opposing party. Participants who felt angry were more likely to believe their party’s misinformation than people who were primed to feel anxious or neutral.

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VCIE: We Asked a Game Theorist How Democrats Should Fight Trump

Steven Brams: It seems to me that Trump is seeing all of these confrontations he's having as zero-sum games, which means when you win, I lose, so there's no possibility of agreement or compromise. That worked fine in the election, that's how he was successful in both the primaries and the general, because there are always winners and losers—but I think now that he's president, continuing this strategy of seeing every conflict as zero-sum is misplaced. I think the consequences are going to be what we've observed: His approval ratings have fallen, and he's going to be castigated by people from very different sides of the political spectrum, including Republicans.  [...]

If you're playing a non-zero-sum game against someone who thinks that it is in fact a zero-sum game, what can you do? Just convince them that they're wrong?

That's part of the story, yes. But when one player has a zero-sum point of view and the other player does not, that defines a new game. Now you're looking at payoffs that the players think very differently about. That might have some other kind of solution. [...]

I don't think anybody is "irrational." We have to be careful about how we define rationality. Rationality, in its simplest form, means you choose the best and most effective means to an end. An extreme example would be if you decide to commit suicide, and you succeed in doing so, you're rational. So in a way, if Trump wants to commit political suicide—which I don't think he thinks he's doing, but he may be doing in effect—then he's being perfectly rational in creating all these confrontations. So his goals are different from others' goals, but he's being rational with respect to his goals. I think one of his goals is to continually be controversial and be in newspapers and other media all the time. These are not normally the goals of politicians.

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Politico: Trial takes Catalan rebellion to tipping point

Former regional president Artur Mas and two of his cabinet members will go on trial on Monday in Barcelona accused of disobeying Spain’s Constitutional Court by staging a non-binding vote on independence in 2014. They face being banned from public office for up to 10 years.

The first in a series of high-voltage criminal cases involving half a dozen separatist leaders will add tension to the stand-off between Madrid and Barcelona over the Catalan government’s pledge to hold a binding referendum on independence by the end of September. [...]

Preventative measures could range from warning civil servants in Catalonia not to organize the logistics for the vote, to Madrid seizing hold of some relevant competences now in the hands of the Catalan government, such as the regional police. There could also be a new wave of criminal prosecutions against public officials, namely Catalan President Carles Puigdemont and his entire cabinet. [...]

In elections for the regional Catalan legislature in 2015, pro-independence forces won 48 percent of the vote and an absolute majority of seats in the assembly, which supported a government led by Puigdemont and approved an 18-month roadmap for independence.

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FiveThirtyEight: Most People — And Perhaps Most Clergy — Don’t Want Political Endorsements In Church

The “Johnson Amendment,” a 1954 rule named for then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson, authorized the removal of the tax-exempt status of charitable organizations, including religious organizations, that endorsed political candidates. For the past six decades, the Johnson Amendment has been enforced through custom more than legal action. There are very few legal cases involving pastors endorsing candidates from the pulpit, and the IRS has all but refused to engage in enforcement. A 2012 lawsuit from the Freedom from Religion Foundation revealed that the IRS had failed to hire an official to monitor church electioneering as agreed to in a 2009 lawsuit. A few religious advocacy groups such as the Alliance Defending Freedom have championed “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” for pastors to protest these government restrictions, and Trump first began making pledges to end this IRS restriction during the campaign as an appeal to evangelical Christians.

But surveys of both the public and the clergy suggest opposition to pulpit endorsements. The question has been asked1 several times since 1980 — most recently in 2008 — according to the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research’s iPoll database. During that time, opinion was remarkably stable; a narrow majority of Americans (between 50 percent and 59 percent) opposed clergy endorsing candidates. The one exception came in 1984, when 77 percent said they were opposed to “priests, ministers and rabbis us[ing] religious arguments to endorse presidential candidates.” Outside of the iPoll database, LifeWay Research, a religious survey research firm, has found higher opposition to clergy endorsements — in 2008, 75 percent disagreed that it is appropriate for churches to publicly endorse candidates for public office. That number grew to 79 percent in 2015. It was even higher among Hispanic Americans (82 percent) in a 2011 Latino Decisions poll.

One might expect a strong response in support of repealing the Johnson Amendment from those who are its object — clergy. The survey data we have does find a strong response, but in opposition. In 2009, the Cooperative Clergy Study, organized by Professor Corwin Smidt of Calvin College, asked nearly 3,000 Protestant clergy members in nine denominations whether they approved of or engaged in political activities, including endorsing candidates from the pulpit. The most support for endorsing candidates (16 percent) came from Southern Baptist Convention pastors, followed by Pentecostal Assemblies of God ministers (13 percent). The other groups of clergy gave mostly low single-digit support. Similarly, just 4 percent of the religious leaders surveyed said they had ever endorsed a candidate from the pulpit, with somewhat higher shares among Southern Baptist and Assemblies of God clergy (11 percent of each). Other surveys have shown that hearing an endorsement is much more common among black Protestants, although their clergy were not included in this survey. (Note: We don’t have data among other clerics, such as Catholic priests, imams or rabbis.)

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Jakub Marian: Emigration in Europe: Destination countries and percentages of emigrants

Last year, I published a map showing the current state of immigration in Europe. However, I realized that the data contained in the 2015 UN study could also be analysed the other way around—rather than the numbers and most common countries of origin of immigrants, it is possible to create a map showing the numbers of emigrants and the most common destinations of emigrants.

And this is exactly what this article is about. The following map shows the number of people who emigrated from a given country, as a percentage of its current population (or, more precisely, population in 2015). Let me clarify this with an example: The population of Poland in 2015 was approximately 38,612,000, according to the UN, and the number of people born in Poland who lived in a different country was 4,449,000, hence the figure 4,449,000/38,612,000 ≈ 11.5%: [...]

It is also worth noting that the UN data are based on the place of birth, not citizenship or ethnicity. This means, for example, that a German citizen born to a German family living in Poland who later moved from Poland to Germany would count as an emigrant from Poland, even though he or she has never been a Polish citizen.

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Associated Press: Conservative criticism intensifies against Pope Francis

Conservative criticism of Pope Francis intensified Saturday after his intervention in the Knights of Malta order, with posters appearing around Rome citing his actions against conservative Catholics and asking: "Where's your mercy?"

The posters appeared on the same day that Francis cemented his authority over the Knights by naming a top Vatican archbishop, Angelo Becciu, to be his special delegate to the ancient aristocratic order. [...]

On Saturday, dozens of posters appeared around Rome featuring a stern-looking Francis and referencing the "decapitation" of the Knights and other actions Francis has taken against conservative, tradition-minded groups.

Within hours, the city of Rome had plastered over the posters. Police launched an investigation into the conservative circles believed responsible, aided by closed-circuit cameras, the ANSA news agency said.

The posters, written in Roman dialect, also cited the way Francis had "ignored cardinals," a reference to the four cardinals who have publicly asked Francis to clarify whether divorced and civilly remarried Catholics can receive Communion.

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Deutsche Welle: Germany is not shrinking

However, according to revised scenarios the German government has presented in its latest summary of demographic-political developments, this shrinkage apparently isn't happening. The message is that ongoing high immigration, coupled with a recent increase in the birth rate, could keep the country's population stable for another forty years. [...]

The birth rate also shows an upward trend, the government says. It had been dropping for decades, but now appears to have stabilized. The Federal Statistical Office assumes that 1.6 children are currently born for every one woman in Germany. This is also included in the report: "With net migration of 300,000, combined with a birth rate of 1.6 and a more pronounced rise in life expectancy, the population of Germany would remain stable at around today's levels until 2060." [...]

So does this mean the oft-mentioned demographic crisis has been averted? De Maiziere says not. Despite immigration and rising birth rates, the government's latest prognoses show that the average age of the population will increase significantly. According to the report, this means that with a net migration figure of 300,000, the old-age dependency ratio would be only slightly lower than in the variants with lower immigration. In recent years, average life expectancy in Germany increased by almost 2.6 months a year, to 78.2 years for men and 83.1 years for women.

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