The Atlantic: The Dark Consequences of Poland's New Holocaust Law

But it’s hard to see how they can walk it back. Proposed by a hardliner in Law and Justice, it’s significant that the law was rushed through just days after undercover reporters for a private Polish television channel filmed a neo-Nazi group in Poland waving Nazi flags, wearing Nazi uniforms, and burning a swastika. The report prompted Polish authorities to open an investigation into “public propagation of fascism.” But that, of course, put Law and Justice in a tough spot with its die-hards, who were already upset after a recent cabinet reshuffle had brought in some moderates. The reshuffle, in turn, came after Poland was trying to make nice after the European Commission threatened it with sanctions if it moved ahead with changes to its judiciary that European officials say threaten the rule of law—the biggest test yet for the bloc.

Messages crafted for domestic consumption reverberate far beyond national borders. “I wouldn’t say this is a completely planned and calculated action, it’s more a reflection of a complete self-isolation and lack of understanding of other countries,” Pawel Machcewicz, a historian and former director of a new WWII museum in Gdansk, told me. “They are surprised but they cannot back down because for their constituents that will mean the weakness, the betrayal of Polish dignity,” he said. [...]

Gross told me he didn’t think the law would have many practical consequences for established historians, although he worried that it might prevent younger ones from studying the Holocaust. Above all, he was concerned about the teaching of history in Polish schools. “No one will dare to teach the Holocaust,” he said. “The ignorance in Polish society about the Holocaust is extraordinary. There were surveys made and the majority of the people who were asked the question ‘Who suffered more during World War II under German occupation, Poles or Jews?’—the majority of the people responded ‘Poles.’ How ignorant do you have to be?” [...]

I’ve often thought back to this line as capturing the inchoate resentment that seems to drive the current Polish government. The French political scientist Dominique Moïsi has written that three emotions tend to drive politics: humiliation, hope, and fear. Poland falls into the humiliation camp. A feeling of grievance, a sense that the wider world doesn’t truly understand the suffering of the Polish people, but also a sense that the Holocaust—in which three million Polish Jews were slaughtered on Polish soil—was giving Poland a bad name.

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Foreign Affairs: Muslim Voters and the European Left

The central problem for the European left is this: the largest and fastest-growing groups of immigrant voters originate from Muslim-majority countries and often bring with them the socially conservative traditions of their homelands. This comes just as left-wing parties have rebranded themselves as champions of secularism, cosmopolitanism, and feminism in order to appeal to their increasingly liberal middle-class base. The result is a clash of values, which plays out most often in cities, where Muslim communities have replicated the village ties, patriarchal structures, and religious practices of their home countries next door to secular, progressive middle-class enclaves. In Brussels, to give just one example, more than 80 percent of Muslims think that women should work less “for the sake of their family,” while only 37 percent of non-Muslims agree. [...]

Many center-left parties want to recruit Muslim candidates who fit their constituents’ secular and socially liberal preferences. They want to have it both ways: appeal to their cosmopolitan base by appearing tolerant while signaling to the Muslim electorate that they are interested in their vote, a strategy that I call “symbolic inclusion.” Parties usually try to achieve symbolic inclusion by selecting secular, progressive, and feminist Muslims. These candidates are frequently female, since simply by running for office, a Muslim woman can convey she is assimilated and not held back by patriarchal norms—a signal that is reinforced when she doesn’t wear a headscarf. A Muslim man cannot so easily convey that he is progressive, and previous research has shown that such shortcuts matter when voters evaluate candidates. [...]

In Belgium and the United Kingdom, by contrast, the percentage of elected Muslim candidates is several times higher than in Austria and Germany, yet the share of female Muslim candidates is much lower. For instance, nearly half of Muslim local politicians in the Austrian and German cities I studied were women, but in British cities only 14 percent were. [...]

Finally, neither symbolic nor vote-based inclusion necessarily advances Muslim social and economic integration. Parties frequently use symbolic candidates as tokens that are meant to please non-Muslim cosmopolitans but that are not supposed to act as agents of real change. Vote-based inclusion of religious traditionalists comes from different motives, but it also does a disservice to the many Muslim voters who want to elect representatives who will fight for good schools, jobs, and housing. Research consistently shows that European Muslims face severe and widespread discrimination in each of these areas. Yet when left-wing parties pursue the Muslim enclave vote, their primary goal is to pick candidates on the basis of their voter mobilization skills rather than their economic policy or antidiscrimination positions.

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JSTOR Daily: Don't fall in love on OkCupid

“The thing that’s so interesting—and, from a research perspective, useful—about OkCupid is that their algorithm is transparent and user-driven, rather than the black-box approach employed by Match.com or eHarmony,” he said. “So, with OkCupid, you tell them what you want, and they’ll find your soul mate. Whereas with Match or eHarmony, they say, ‘We know what you really want; let us handle the whole soul mate thing.’ But the truth is none of these sites really has any idea what they’re doing—otherwise they’d have a monopoly on the market.” 

The problem, Lewis noted, is an ancient and obvious one: There’s no such thing as love-hacking. “OkCupid is premised on this great notion that we know what we want,” he said, “but we often have no idea what makes for chemistry or compatibility.” The algorithm, in other words, is geared to find you someone who’s like you—all those political questions, say, on which your ideal match would share your values—which isn’t necessarily the same as a desirable long-term partner. Meeting up with a 99 percent match for cocktails, in other words, is sort of like gazing in a mirror on a good hair day, which may explain why the looks-first model employed by Tinder is winning with tech-savvy younger users. It’s simpler. It discards the unhelpful information.

So, come Valentine’s Day, remember to remember the grim reality: Since the rise of online dating in the early 2000s, research by sociologists, most notably a large-scale 2012 study published by the Association for Psychological Science, has consistently found that matching algorithms, no matter how sophisticated, just do not work. Indeed, the authors of that study wrote, “no compelling evidence supports matching sites’ claims that mathematical algorithms work—that they foster romantic outcomes that are superior to those fostered by other means of pairing partners.” The feel-good principles on which these search-methods are grounded—similarity of values, complementarity of sexual preference—are, sorry to be a killjoy, actually rather poor predictors of subjectively rated romantic success. “[T]hese sites,” the authors continue, “are in a poor position to know how the two partners will grow and mature over time, what life circumstances they will confront and coping responses they will exhibit in the future, and how the dynamics of their interaction will ultimately promote or undermine romantic attraction and long-term relationship well-being.” When you finally get that note-perfect message from a total cutie—who, OMG, is also a 99 percent match!?—in other words, don’t get too excited.

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Social Europe: The Crisis Of (Nordic) Social Democracy

The once-dominant role and current crisis of social democracy in much of Europe in the last century can hardly be understood without analysing the shift from confrontation to compromise in the relationship between the trade union and labour movement and the employers/right-wing forces. This historical compromise between labour and capital was the result of comprehensive class struggles that shifted the balance of power in favour of labour. Employers viewed such a compromise as a tactical step in order to dampen and counteract the radicalism of a strong and growing trade union movement. In Norway it was formalized through the first Collective Basic Agreement between the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO in Norwegian) and the Norwegian Employers’ Association in 1935. That same year the Labour Party, with support from the Peasants’ Party, won government power for the first time.

Based on this compromise, the foundation was laid for the golden age of social democracy. It was a real compromise, where employers eventually had to give a number of concessions to the trade union and labour movement – including the acceptance of major political interventions in the market. Thus, the basis was laid for great social progress for workers. The welfare state developed. The Norwegian, or Nordic, model came into being. [...]

It is therefore not only the crisis of social democracy we are experiencing but that of the compromise-based post-war political model in Europe. In the first phase of this political crisis, new far right parties emerged – viz. Front National in France, the so-called freedom parties in Austria and the Netherlands, and the Progress Party in Norway. The lack of any alternative policy from social democratic and left-wing parties means they must take their share of responsibility for this development. They had no policy to take on the neoliberalist attacks on the social gains that had been won through the welfare state. In recent years, however, we have seen that new political alternatives have started to grow also on the left (Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, Momentum in the UK, and the newly established Power to the People in Italy). These are young and incomplete initiatives, which can fail (like Syriza) or succeed, but in any case will further develop through struggles and experiences, victories and defeats.

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The Atlantic: Urban Foxes and Coyotes Learn to Make Nice

In the wild and in the countryside, coyotes are not only bigger than red foxes, but they’re also higher up the food chain. They tend to push weaker competitors out of their territories and will even kill to protect access to limited food sources. So while red foxes exist in the same general area and may even establish homes at the periphery of where coyotes live, they rarely venture into the other predators’ domain.

In cities, though, it looks like they’re learning how to get along. That’s according to Drake’s latest study published in the journal PLOS One. Over the years, foxes and coyotes, like so many other wild species, have settled in the city, and they’re inevitably here to stay. Some animal species have adapted to thrive amid the human-dominated landscape of high-rises, fragmented green space, and heavy traffic. Now, at least in the case of these two wildlife predators, they may be changing their behavioral instincts to coexist with each other—thanks in part to the abundance of food. [...]

What they found went against what experts generally know about foxes’ natural instincts. As the fox moved closer to the heartland of coyote territory, their speed didn’t increase, nor did they change directions. “That suggested to us that they’re comfortable being around coyotes, and over a period of the time, it has gotten used to [them],” says Drake. “They know that, ‘When I encounter a coyote nothing bad happens to me, so it’s okay for me to continue.’” Similarly, their study also found a lack of aggression in the coyotes’ movements.

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Deutsche Welle: Welfare state: Who's bigger on benefits, Germany or the UK?

"In Britain it's a tripartite [system] made up of the individual, the employer and the state. And so there is a sense in which you either have to find a way to make changes to the tax base to pay for it within the economy that you've got, or you have to explore a separate way of paying for it via an insurance model. Or the alternative is that you move away from the idea that the NHS is a universal service model," says Chris Renwick, senior lecturer in Modern History at the University of York and author of Bread for All: The Origins of the Welfare State. [...]

Germany has a multi-payer, dual system that is mandatory for everyone living in the country. Depending on income and employment status, citizens choose between statutory health insurance provided by non-governmental "sickness funds," and private insurers. Contributions are based on a percentage of income (statutory) and age and risk (private). The state, in its various levels of government, plays next to no role in the financing of health care. [...]

Traditionally, Germany has always had a much more generous type of welfare benefit. This is especially true of unemployment benefits whereby if someone becomes unemployed that person gets a very high percentage of his or her last income for a year. [...]

These days structural and economic changes are making it very expensive to run the welfare systems. And public policy makers, says Hogwood, are struggling to cope. "Governments think that they can't afford to maintain these old systems but they still want to retain that element of legitimacy that the welfare system generated for them because if you don't maintain that, you get a breakdown in social cohesion. You get a conflict between social groups which we're seeing now."

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El País: The “Center Moment”: Ciudadanos now Spain’s strongest political force

The rise of Ciudadanos is due to several factors, starting with its strong result in the Catalan elections of December 21, when it came in first (but failed to secure an absolute majority, which is collectively held by separatist parties).

The outcome reflected voters’ feeling that the unionist Ciudadanos did the best job at challenging the pro-independence drive that has led to Spain’s most serious constitutional crisis since the attempted coup of 1981. [...]

Secondly, the Metroscopia poll also reveals that many voters believe Ciudadanos is the only party with a clear plan for Spain – even if this plan has yet to be fully spelled out.

The party’s success can also be put down to what might be described as Spain’s “Center Moment:” many of the more center-oriented supporters of the PP, PSOE and even Podemos are switching to Ciudadanos, which describes itself as “a liberal, progressive, democratic and constitutionalist party.”

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The Guardian: How to close the female orgasm gap

This silence has real consequences. Almost 30% of college-age women can’t identify their clitoris on an anatomy test, according to a study from University of Wisconsin-Madison. Another survey by the UK gynecological cancer charity, Eve Appeal, finds that women are more familiar with men’s bodies than their own: while 60% could correctly label a diagram of the male body, just 35% of women correctly labeled female anatomy. (For the record, men scored even worse.) 

Lack of sexual health knowledge is associated with lower rates of condom and contraceptive use. It also contributes to pleasure disparities in the bedroom. While gay and straight men climax about 85% of the time during sex, women having sex with women orgasm about 75% of the time and women having sex with men come last at just 63%, research from the Kinsey Institute shows. The reasons for this “orgasm gap” are surely multifaceted, but we can start to address it by talking more about the importance of women’s pleasure. [...]

Knowing our own bodies can promote our own health and wellbeing, and empower our relationships. The Kinsey study showed that compared to women who orgasmed less frequently, women who experienced more pleasure were more likely to ask for what they want in bed, act out fantasies and praise their partner for something they did in bed, among other things. We can’t talk about what we like or don’t like with our partners if we don’t know ourselves.

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