openDemocracy: “The Putinist majority could fast become anti-Putinist”

It seems to me that this understanding of an ideological evolution represents a trap. I do not believe that Russia has, from the beginning of this conservative turn, transformed into a space isolated from the rest of the world, where other laws obtain, other values reign, where even the people themselves have mutated into one or another anthropological type— sovki [derogatory term for people still “stuck” in the Soviet past, for surviving members of Homo Sovieticus - ed.] , zombies, vatniki [literally, “quilted jackets,” a derogatory term for lower class nationalistic Russians -ed.] 

Despite Putin’s Russia’s attempt to transform itself on the level of rhetoric into an alternative to the contemporary world, it remains fully a part of that world. Despite the conservative turn, Russia has not even for a minute ceased to be a part of the world capitalist order ruled by the laws of the market. In this sense, conservative rhetoric is an important constitutive part of the spirit of Russian capitalism. This spirit not only does not contradict basic market values, but gives them a new form, and a new disguise. [...]

From our own life experience we know that Russia is a country of aggressive social inequality, with a fairly atomized and unintegrated society, in which people habitually think of their own interests and take their neighbors and other inhabitants of their cities for suspicious competitors, from whom one can expect only scams and dirty tricks, and who implicitly or explicitly covet our place in the sun. In this sense, Russian society is even more individualistic than Western society, in which various forms of self-organisation are incomparably more developed. [...]

In this version of the conservative turn, there is no special “Russian way.” Of course, we encounter this combination of the market with a veneer of conservative values in other countries. Just such a symbiosis of nationalism, conservatism, religious obscurantism, and a severely pro-market policy (albeit with local specificities and in different proportions), for example, is widespread in Eastern Europe. The same trend reflects the evolution of American Republicans over the past decade. In this sense, Russia is not only not unique, but even the opposite—it stands at the vanguard of some global or pan-European tendencies.  [...]

Second, the current government’s policy is grounded in part on economic liberal principles. If we understand the logic of the government’s reforms in education, health and culture, we will find that it largely corresponds to what is commonly called neoliberalism: the dominance of the principle of profitability, of economic “efficiency” over the interests of society.

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The Conversation: A philosopher argues why no one has the right to refuse services to LGBT people

Ever since the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that gay people have the right to marry, those upset by this ruling have shifted their strategy from denying the right to limiting its enforcement.

Even if gay people have a right to marry, they argue, people also have the liberty to practice their religion as they wish. Accordingly, they claim, they cannot be forced to “aid or abet” those seeking to marry partners of the same sex. [...]

Rights, in contrast, are stronger. They not only give us these freedoms, but they also protect these freedoms from any kind of interference. But not all liberties are protected by rights. When people talk about religious liberty, it is accordingly important to understand what kind of liberty they might mean. For it might not be a liberty that is protected from the kind of interference that is at issue in these cases. [...]

So when people claim that aiding and abetting gay marriage would infringe on their religious liberty, in most cases what they must mean is that this would violate their particular conception of positive liberty – their particular conception of how we each should live, a conception that is based on their religious views. [...]

Indeed, for those who have any doubt about this, simply imagine what it was like to experience life as a black person under Jim Crow. One cannot imagine being subject to these kinds of restrictions and still thinking of oneself as truly free. The protection against arbitrary treatment is accordingly central to almost every possible conception of the good and plan of life a freedom loving person might select.

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The Atlantic: Why People Have Out-of-Body Experiences

Out-of-body experience can vary person to person, but they often involve the sense of floating above one’s actual body and looking down. For neuroscientists, the phenomenon is a puzzle and an opportunity: Understanding how the brain goes awry can also illuminate how it is supposed to work. Neuroscientists now think that out-of-body experiences involve the vestibular system—made up of canals in the inner ear that track a person’s locations in space—and how that information gets integrated with other senses in the brain. [...]

Olaf Blanke, a neuroscientist at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, says that the study “puts previous anecdotal suggestions about a strong vestibular component in [out-of-body experiences] on firm grounds.” Blanke, who has worked with Lopez previously but not on the current study, has also shown that electrically stimulating the brain area that integrates vestibular and visual information can induce an out-of-body illusion. Whether the perturbation is in the inner ear itself or the brain, the end result seems to be the same: a feeling of having defied physics and left one’s body.

But there is still another mystery. While 14 percent of Elzière’s patients experiencing dizziness reported out-of-body experiences, 14 percent is not 100 percent. And healthy people appear to sometimes have such experiences, too. A vestibular disorder alone does not cause people to feel like they’ve left their bodies. “We believe out-of-body experiences might be a combination of several factors,” says Lopez. He also surveyed patients about their mental states, and found that those with anxiety and depression in addition to dizziness were more likely to have out-of-body experiences.

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FiveThirtyEight: The Identity Politics Of The Trump Administration

The administration is not proposing less intervention from the federal government, which is the typical Republican approach, but rather it is seeking to wield federal power, just as Obama did. But whereas Obama’s policies focused on protecting African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims, people who are gay or transgender, and other groups that most Americans view as marginalized, Trump and his team are focusing on defending different groups: Christians, police officers, victims of crimes by undocumented immigrants, and people who fear Latino immigrants are taking their jobs or redefining U.S. culture, among others. [...]

The Department of Justice, and law-enforcement agencies generally, have broad discretion in terms of what crimes to prioritize, what kinds of punishment to pursue and how they operate. Both Obama and Trump have used that authority — or, in Trump’s case, pledged to use that authority — to focus resources on the issues they and their voters care about most. And Trump, like Obama, is trying to push local law-enforcement agencies to emphasize those same priorities. [...]

But the Trump administration, despite its generally get-tough posture, does have a soft spot for one group that has technically violated the law: those addicted to opioids. At the launch of the president’s task force on opioid abuse in March, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is leading the task force, likened drug addiction to cancer, heart disease and diabetes, saying addiction is a disease that people should not be ashamed to talk about. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, the states facing the highest rates of death from drug overdoses are West Virginia, New Hampshire, Kentucky and Ohio. Three of those states — Kentucky, New Hampshire and West Virginia — have smaller black and Latino populations than the national average. The opioid problem has hit heavily white areas of America, and some experts say that explains why it has not led to the type of tough-on-crime policies that came amid the crack epidemic in black areas in the 1980s and 1990s. [...]

Studies on voucher programs have not backed up the administration’s enthusiastic claims about the programs’ benefits, finding instead that students who use school vouchers learn about as much as or less than those enrolled in traditional public schools. But one clear beneficiary will be Christian private schools, which draw in the vast majority of students who attend private schools through voucher programs in many states.

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Quartz: People have an irrational need to complete “sets” of things

New research reveals that people are irrationally but effectively motivated by the idea of completing a set, even if it means working harder or spending more money—with no additional reward other than the satisfaction of completion and the relief of avoiding an incomplete set. Imagine arriving at your boss’s summer BBQ and presenting her with five beers in a box designed to hold six. No matter that your favorite craft beer store permits you buy bottles one at a time. Chances are you’d still buy six, just to fill all six spaces in the box. [...]

The results of the field study were stark. Among those who chose to give gifts, 21 percent of those in the “Global Survival Kit” condition chose to donate all six items, compared with just 5 percent in the “gift” condition and 3 percent in the cash condition.

“The strength of the increase was a really nice surprise,” says Doug Wayne, director of national digital marketing and web strategy at the Canadian Red Cross, who decided to collaborate with the research team after meeting Norton through a colleague. “Ultimately, it speaks to how powerful that framing is.” [...]

“People persist with completing pseudo-sets even when it’s costly for them to do so,” John says. “That, to me, is especially compelling as a researcher—that completing this totally arbitrary set is so motivating to people that they are willing to participate in an obviously bad bet.”

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Quartz: Embracing aging can lead to a longer and happier life

In the 20th century, thanks largely to clean water and antibiotics, the American lifespan increased by 30 years. Who doesn’t want even more, if new technologies like gene editing and nanomedicine can safely put them within our grasp? As Neo.life describes it, it’s the most important story today: “how biology and technology are coming together to help us all live healthier, happier, and longer lives.” But the challenge for all of us, no matter our age, is to not frame it as an “anti-aging” story. Here’s a pro-aging take on each of those modifiers—healthier, happier, and longer lives—starting with life extension itself. [...]

Don’t get me wrong. I’m intrigued by the regenerative potential of tissues and organs, and all in favor of more research into the biology of aging. Until we understand what happens to our cells and organ systems far better than we do now, no health promotion strategy will have much of an effect on average life expectancy and maximum lifespan. More years of healthy life would be wonderful. But just as the enemy is disease, not aging, the goal needs to be health, not youth. [...]

A growing body of fascinating research shows that attitudes toward aging have measurable effects on how our minds and bodies function. People who don’t equate aging with disability and decline walk faster, do better on memory tests, and are more likely to recover fully from severe disability. That’s why the World Health Organization is developing a global anti-ageism campaign: to extend not just lifespan but “healthspan.” Not coincidentally, people with positive feelings about getting older also live longer—and they live better.How worried are you about getting older, and why? Has what you dreaded come to pass? Check your age bias. It segregates us, pits us against each other, and fuels needless fears—and it might be your biggest health risk.

Even in Silicon Valley, tied with Hollywood as the most ageist place on the planet, people know that tans and Teslas aren’t what make us happy. What does? Aging itself. Study after study shows that people are happiest at the beginnings and the ends of their lives; Google “U shaped happiness curve.” You don’t have to be a Buddhist or a billionaire, because the curve is a function of the way aging itself affects the brain. We get better at dealing with negative emotions like anger, envy, and fear. The knowledge that time is short makes us focus on the present and spend our time more wisely—and living in the present is why the very young and very old enjoy life the most. That’s what the “mindfulness” mania is constantly reminding us, and why so many myths couple immortality and misery.

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Vox: Trump’s approval rating is below 50% across the Midwest — and in Texas

Gallup rolled together all of its daily tracking polls of Donald Trump’s approval rating since January (a massive sample of 81,000 adults) to create a state-by-state map of average approval across the first six months. Trump’s numbers have generally been worse in his second quarter than they were in his first, so this map probably somewhat overestimates Trump’s level of support across the board, but the basic message that he’s moderately unpopular should be the same either way.

One thing this map shows is that for all the anecdote-rich longform journalistic voyages into “Trump country,” there’s nothing magical going on here. Part of being moderately unpopular nationwide is being moderately unpopular in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa. At the same time, even a moderately unpopular Trump remains very popular in the GOP strongholds of Appalachia and the Great Plains. It’s striking that Trump, who fared unusually poorly with Mormons in 2016 for a Republican, appears to have been “normalized” in the eyes of the people of Utah. [...]

Another striking fact is that Trump’s approval in Ohio — and even Wisconsin — is higher than his approval ratings in North Carolina, Florida, Arizona, or even Texas. Part of that is that by polling “all adults,” the poll ends up obscuring the historically low turnout rate of Texas Latinos. But it also goes to show that as Democrats try to put together their next winning coalition, they may find it easier to win over some new Sunbelt states than some old Rust Belt ones.

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SciShow Psych: What Makes A Meme Go Viral?

The Guardian: Does having a racial preference when dating make us racist? Mona Chalabi | Comment is Free