Slate: We’ll Always Have Sky City

Expecting to find Sky City an empty shell, I’d stocked up on water and peanuts at the train station. Instead, the streets hummed with the mosquito-whine of scooters and bustled with pedestrians: Parents pushed strollers, young couples queued for Pocky, teenage boys lounged on shady benches, and elderly women shuffled under their neon umbrellas. I snuck into the back entrance of what I thought was an abandoned hotel, only to discover myself in the chandeliered consulting room of a plastic surgery clinic. It advertised a procedure of “exquisite carvings” that would give patients a “U.S.-nose.” [...]

I learned it had been two years since a new management company had taken over the town. Where an earlier breed of “build-it-and-they’ll-come” developer had judged success in concrete poured, this more enlightened manager had recognized the importance of luring services and stores that would attract residents. The company’s chairman promised he would bring Sky City a Montessori school, “French research institutes,” and spas offering the “world’s most authentic and advanced beauty treatments”; a year later, he pegged the town’s population at nearly 40,000 people—though a bored twentysomething at Madenjoy Real Estate told me that between 14,000 and 18,000 residents had moved in. Still, it appeared something was working: According to Hangzhou Daily, when 663 new units went on sale in August, they sold out in less than four minutes for an average of 14,000 yuan per square meter—about $200 per square foot, slightly more than the average price in Houston. (The average price-per-square-foot for apartments in downtown Hangzhou, two hours away by public transportation, is about triple that, which might explain the high proportion of young families—Paris as starter home.) The developers behind the Hangzhou Paris did not consider it an “eerily depressing ghost town.” They described it as the foundation for a new satellite city.  [...]

Not every former ghost town has come to life. In Shanghai’s Holland Village (no relation to Liaoning’s), most storefronts along the main street stood empty or deserted, their dusty concrete floors littered with desiccated bouquets or curled posters. Like something out of fairy tale fever dream, I met an elderly woman who lived inside the town’s wooden windmill—the previous tenant, a wedding photography studio, had left it in her care after business went south. Several buildings, including replicas of Amsterdam’s Maritime Museum and De Bijenkorf department store, were under construction—just as they had been during a previous visit in 2008. Since then, the developers had successfully completed a stone cathedral, which they’d outfitted with crucifixes, a crèche, and a wooden altarpiece, then rented to local businesses for use as offices.

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openDemocracy: A 'Minister for Loneliness' is a sticking plaster for the ills of neoliberalism

According to research by the Coop and the Red Cross, loneliness affects at least nine million people in Britain. The Campaign to End Loneliness reports that over three-quarters of GPs say they are seeing between one and five patients a day who have come in mainly because they are lonely. Reflecting no doubt this growing social reality, there has been a lot of talk in the media about the problem of loneliness over recent years, and charitable and campaigning organizations dedicated to addressing the problem have mushroomed. Most recently, following the death of MP Jo Cox, who campaigned energetically on loneliness, the Jo Cox Commission on loneliness was set up by the Government last year, and has recently published its recommendations. The Government has acted rapidly, giving responsibility for loneliness to the Minister for Sport and Civil Society, Tracey Crouch, and promising to publish a cross-governmental strategy on the issue later in the year to implement the other recommendations of the Cox Report. So that’s it then: due to the efforts of many determined campaigners, loneliness has finally come to the attention of our leaders, and they have a plan! We can move on to other matters. [...]

Starting with the historical roots, which go back to the Enlightenment thinkers, loneliness is to some extent the negative corollary of the modern desire for individual freedom from the restrictions and constraints of traditional institutions and forms of life: religion, family, village, tyrannical bosses and so on. Individuals want to exercise greater choice over their work, the place they live, their moral and political beliefs, their sexual orientation and so on.

But the downside of this desire is the creation of the more mobile and restless individuals that we are today, who choose to opt out of traditional communities like extended family, neighbourhood, church, or union. The difficulty is that we cannot always find substitutes for the fellowship and feeling of community these institutions provided and which they need. Increased demand for individual liberty tends to produce more lonely individuals. This is why it is so important for modern societies to create institutions and places which foster community and togetherness, places that people know they can find company and fellowship whilst not sacrificing their individual freedom. [...]

The second way that neoliberalism fosters loneliness is by eliminating anything which is not “productive” in a narrow economic understanding of this term - anything which does not produce a return-on-investment for shareholders. Governments of all colours have in recent years implemented policies which dissolve or undermine youth clubs, sports clubs, libraries, and charities supporting disabled or older people, or other vulnerable groups - exactly the kind of collective projects which protect people from loneliness in modern freedom-loving societies. At the same time, the army of volunteers who once ran such community projects is drying up, exhausted from having had every last drop of their productivity - that is, their energy - squeezed from them in their day job. These are some of the real causes of contemporary loneliness.

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Scientific American: Cleaning Up Air Pollution May Strengthen Global Warming

New research is helping to quantify just how big that effect might be. A study published this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters suggests that eliminating the human emission of aerosols—tiny, air-polluting particles often released by industrial activities—could result in additional global warming of anywhere from half a degree to 1 degree Celsius.

This would virtually ensure that the planet will warm beyond the most stringent climate targets outlined in the Paris climate agreement. World leaders have set an ambitious goal of keeping global temperatures within 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius of their preindustrial levels. But research suggests the world has already warmed by about 1 degree—meaning even another half a degree of warming could push the planet into dangerous territory. [...]

The research also suggests that removing aerosols could have striking regional consequences by causing major changes in precipitation and other weather patterns in certain parts of the world. Aerosols don't linger in the atmosphere for very long, meaning they don't have time to spread around the world the way carbon dioxide and some other greenhouse gases do. Their effects tend to be strongest in the regions where they were emitted in the first place. [...]

Many nations, including the United States, have made significant strides in cutting down on air pollution—often for health-related reasons—over the last few decades, and other countries are stepping up their efforts now, as well. Additionally, global efforts to cut down on greenhouse gases are likely to have a spillover effect on aerosols, because air pollution is often a byproduct of the same industrial sources that produce carbon emissions. Reducing one type of emission can help cut down on the other.

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The Calvert Journal: Turbofolk

And in the past decade or so, it’s become gayer than ever. Indeed, the queer side of Serbian pop culture is pretty hard to miss when music videos, performances and concerts spill over with oiled-up orange muscle men, fierce divas, flamboyant drag performances and even rainbow flags, all to a soundtrack of sick synths and thundering club beats. Belgrade’s most prolific and successful music video director, Dejan Milićević, whose work over the past 15 years shaped the genre’s entire look, is openly gay; it’s not just in the West that gay men, historically shut out of other spaces, find a natural home for themselves in the entertainment industry. [...]

While western music videos bombard us with images of semi-dressed nubile young women on a daily basis, their Serbian counterparts feature just as many scantily clad men as women, if not more. Contemporary Serbian pop-folk is a veritable homoerotic fantasy land, pioneered in full mainstream view by gay male directors and creatives, where divas call the shots, male objectification is endemic and queerness is often more a text than a subtext. Many of the genre’s biggest female stars since the millennium — from Jelena Karleuša to Goga Sekulić, Nikolija to Ana Nikolić — are simultaneously hyperfeminine and hypermasculine: dominant, uncompromising personalities wielding sexual and social power on screen and stage. Their music videos frequently feature them with hosts of scantily clad men at their beck and call, like a Balkan subversion of US hiphop videos where male rappers are surrounded by available female bodies.  [...]

The sensual clip for Daniel Djokić’s single Like It Like This, another Milićević production, is entirely focused on selling Daniel’s body as a sexual commodity. It’s near-impossible to imagine any straight-presenting western male pop star releasing a video like this that posits them so unequivocally as a piece of meat. The English lyrics to the chorus feel like a message from Serbia’s gay turbofolk community to the world: “This is the only time we’re ever gonna like it like this. There’s no money in our pocket but we like it like this. We have nothing but the music and we like it like this.”  

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The Atlantic: How Far Can Germany's Social Democrats Bend Before They Break?

The 28-page framework Merkel’s conservatives and Schulz’s Social Democrats drafted is intended to form the basis of a coalition government. On immigration, both sides agreed to cap the number of asylum seekers the country takes in to between 180,000 and 220,000 a year; before talks, the SPD had categorically rejected such a cap as a violation of the country’s moral obligation to protect refugees. Some asylum seekers with limited status will be able to bring their families to Germany, but this, too, will be restricted to up to 1,000 people a month. There would be no tax hike for the wealthiest Germans. The SPD also failed to establish what it calls a “citizen’s insurance,” a healthcare plan that guarantees the same standards for public and private patients in Germany.  

There were some wins for the center-left, like a ban on exporting weapons to countries involved in Yemen’s ongoing war (German companies have been involved in lucrative arms deals with Saudi Arabia) and reforming the EU with a euro-zone budget and better protections against financial crises. After delegates voted on the framework agreement Sunday, Schulz promised to wrest further important concessions in the next stage of talks. [...]

If the grand coalition fails, the populists could point to the inability of centrist parties to achieve anything substantial. But if it succeeds, it could fuel the argument that nothing will change in Berlin, despite social upheaval over migration and globalization. The AfD would also gain important symbolic power as the largest opposition party. In parliamentary sessions, it would be the first to speak after the governing coalition, and it would chair parliamentary committees as well, possibly including the budgetary committee—the most important in the Bundestag.

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Bloomberg: Six Lessons From Merkel’s Impasse and What They Mean for Germany

Merkel has kept her hold on power for 12 years by occupying the political middle ground, sticking to pro-European policies and finding partners to govern with who broadly shared that outlook. But the days of steady, stable coalition-building in Germany are over, hastened by the refugee crisis of 2015-16 that upended the political landscape. A fragmented parliament, acrimonious partisan standoffs and factional fighting over migration within Merkel’s bloc make Berlin look more like Rome or Washington these days. With the Social Democrats still wavering and the pro-market Free Democratic Party having pulled out of previous coalition talks, only Merkel’s bloc is showing it wants to govern. Yet its worst election result since 1949 makes her more dependent than ever on a coalition partner to govern with a reliable majority in parliament. It’s a paradox with no obvious solution, neither for Merkel nor any other political leader. [...]

Polls suggest Merkel remains popular with the public and has strong backing among party leaders, with no obvious successor in sight. She has a record of humbling and outlasting enemies, including in her own party. Lindner may be the latest victim. Since he walked out of coalition talks in acrimony, support for the Free Democrats has fallen to as little as 8 percent, compared with 10.7 percent in the federal election, while his own approval ratings nose-dived. It’s a warning to other would-be challengers as his gamble looks to have failed. [...]

Merkel, 63, dodged a bullet on Sunday when the Social Democrats voted to pursue talks on governing with her Christian Democratic Union-led bloc. While it isn’t the final step, just getting there underscores her perseverance and determination. If she gets a coalition deal with the SPD, her stamina, command of policy details and “step by step” mantra -- ridiculed as a lack of vision by critics -- will have carried the day again. She remains the head of Europe’s biggest economy, the most experienced leader of the G-7 nations, and a formidable negotiator. Whether her domestic opponents get the better of her now, as they must surely do one day, it would be a foolish adversary who wrote her off just yet.

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Haaretz: Young American Jews Increasingly Turning Away From Israel, Jewish Agency Leader Warns

Israel is rapidly losing its hold on young American Jews, who increasingly view the Jewish state as antithetical to their liberal values, a leader of the Jewish Agency warned on Monday. [...]

“I think it’s very important that we move to a new mode and encourage young Jews not only to engage in Israel advocacy and in defending Israel – those are all important things – but also to have them accept the legitimacy of challenging Israel,” Hoffman said. He was alluding to the tendency among Israeli political leaders to view Jewish students as their ambassadors on college campuses. [...]

“In the year since Trump was elected, the situation has only been exacerbated,” he said. “Jewish student college students in the United States, not including those who are Orthodox, see Israel, justifiably or not, as something opposed to their basic liberal and progressive values.” [...]

Older American Jews are not as disengaged from Israel as their younger counterparts, he said, but they were deeply offended by recent actions of the government. “Among large sections of American Jewry, there is a real question today about how much Israel is home to them,” he said.

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CityLab: More Bike Lanes Could Save up to 10,000 Lives a Year in Europe

That’s the finding from a new European Commission-funded study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health that seeks to assess the relationship between cycling’s popularity and death rates. The findings, compiled from 167 cities and published in the journal Preventive Medicine, are striking. If 24.7 percent of all journeys were taken by bike, London could see 1,210 fewer premature deaths annually, Rome could see 433 fewer, and Barcelona could see 248 fewer. Spread across the entire network of cities investigated, that’s a substantial drop in mortality. But how exactly could cycle network expansions make this happen?

Improving bike infrastructure (thus boosting cycling’s modal share) can reduce urban deaths by three key factors: air quality, public health, and collisions. By encouraging more people to switch from other forms of transit (other than walking, whose modal share the study predicts would remain stable), installing more bike lanes increases physical activity and provides health benefits. This modal shift slashes the volume of particulate-emitting vehicles on the road, meaning the air people breathe is less damaging to their health. And finally, as the modal share for motor vehicles drops, the number of people these vehicles kill in collisions drops off. [...]

Thankfully, this money could be more than recouped, the study finds. By reducing premature deaths through improvements in air quality, public fitness, and a drop in fatal road collisions, the benefits of a larger modal share more than outweigh the costs—quite strikingly so, in some cities. If Rome increased its cycling modal share by even 10 percent of its current level—still a major improvement—it could save €70 for every euro spent on bike lanes. Barcelona could save €35 for every euro spent on infrastructure, and London could save the pound equivalent of €8 for every euro spent.

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IFLScience: For The First Time Ever, Orangutans Have Been Proven To Self-Medicate

The apes were first observed chewing leaves, and then rubbing the lather formed due to the saponins released on themselves, a few years back. So far it has only been reported in the Bornean orangutan, and not in either of the other two species of the Asian great apes. Initially, the plant they were using was misidentified as being Commelina, but further and more detailed observations showed that it was actually a species known as Dracaena cantleyi.

The leaves of the plant are incredibly bitter, and the observations show that the apes chew on the leaves to make the lather before spitting out the remaining wadge. This proves that the orangutans are not eating the plant, but are presumably only interested in the substances it exudes, something that must be worth braving the disgusting taste in the first place.

And so the researchers set out to see whether or not D. cantleyi actually has any pharmaceutical properties, and if so what the apes might be achieving by rubbing the lather on their fur. Tests have now shown, the results of which are published in Nature, that the plant does indeed have medicinal properties, and is, in fact, an anti-inflammatory.

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