The Atlantic: Hopping on a Plane for a First Date

Online dating companies are privy to the fact that people use them for travel. Last year, Tinder launched a paid feature called “Passport” which lets people swipe on members anywhere in the world. And Scruff, a dating app for gay men, has a section called “ScruffVenture” which helps users coordinate travel plans and connect with host members in foreign countries. Scruff’s founder, Eric Silverberg, told me the company added the feature when they noticed lots of users were already posting travel itineraries in their profiles; now one in four members posts a new trip every year. [...]

“I guess people on online-dating sites know what they’re looking for, but these younger people in nevermet relationships aren’t really looking for love online,” the /r/LongDistance moderator, a 20-year-old college student who goes by Bliss online, tells me. (As a female gamer, she’s asked me not to use her name for fear of being harassed or doxed.) “Then one day they realize they love the person they’ve been talking to online. It’s a weird mindset to be in.” Bliss was a nevermet herself who, when I called her, had just met her German boyfriend of three years for the first time when he flew to her hometown in Florida. They’d first connected through the online game Minecraft, which is how Bliss thinks most nevermets on the subreddit meet: through video games, Instagram, or Reddit.

To me, someone who hates first dates, this sounds great. I like the idea of going on a date with someone after you get to know them. “With Tinder, you’re shopping,” says Vivian Zayas, the director of the personality, attachment, and control lab at Cornell University. “But playing these games and chatting, the mentality is more organic, like in a normal social network.” Plus, research suggests the sheer amount of time people spend together is one of the best predictors of attraction—we’re more likely to like people we find familiar.

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Bloomberg: Trump Will Be the Big Loser If Netanyahu Falls

That doesn’t make him guilty. The cops aren’t always right. Bibi says they are biased. Now the police report goes to the attorney general, Avihai Mandelblit. If he decides to indict, Netanyahu will have to step down. This will take some time, and circumstances can change, but at the moment I’d put the odds against the prime minister at about 3-to-1. [...]

In the current Israeli political constellation, there is no alternative coalition Netanyahu could form if this one collapses. He could hand the reins over to one of his fellow Likudniks, which would preserve the coalition, and wait for his day in court, but nobody who knows Bibi thinks he will do any such thing. He intends to fight on and do what it takes to stay in office. [...]

The two men also have a common goal. Trump’s key project is to reverse and wipe away every trace of the policies of his predecessor, Barack Obama, foreign as well as domestic. Netanyahu spent the eight years of the Obama administration butting heads over what he considered to be misguided American behavior. [...]

And Netanyahu is valuable to Trump in this. He is a cautious but potentially powerful warrior. And he has a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He is a trusted and reliable go-between for Washington and Moscow, a role of great importance to both sides given the proximity of their forces and proxies in Syria.

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The Atlantic: What Iran Is Really Up To in Syria

“Iran is now mainly preoccupied with Syria’s future and cementing its share of influence and power in the Arab world. The enmity with Israel is simply the card it will use in negotiations to achieve its goals,” Ali al-Amine, a Beirut-based expert on Shiite affairs who runs a news site critical of Hezbollah and Iran’s regional meddling, told me. [...]

In the end, Iran and Hezbollah embedded themselves into the Syrian state. That allowed them to begin expanding a long-term economic, military, political, and even religious and cultural presence. It was precisely this outcome, along with Hezbollah’s acquisition of advanced missiles and weapons, that Israel tried to thwart when it began a campaign of escalating strikes inside Syria in January 2013. [...]

There are already signs of Assad’s resistance to Putin’s agenda in Syria. On Tuesday, the Syrian foreign ministry announced that it saw no role for the United Nations in overseeing the drafting of a new constitution for the country, even though the Russians have gone out of their way to court Staffan de Mistura, the body’s Syria envoy, and make sure he is involved in this process to lend it legitimacy. De Mistura attended the Syria conference in the Black Sea resort of Sochi last month that was boycotted by most of the opposition. And while Russia has been skeptical of Assad’s determination to regain “every inch” of Syria, it has backed him and the Iranian-led militias in this year’s offensives to retake rebel-held Idlib province in the north and the Eastern Ghouta near Damascus. So far, close to 900 civilians have already been killed in these campaigns, according to the Violations Documentation Center.

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Bloomberg: Why 'Color Revolutions' Can't Be Exported

Such conclusions are based on the superficial similarity of the scenarios. People rise up against a corrupt authoritarian regime, usually provoked by an event like a stolen election or a new unpopular policy. They unite around a simple symbol (like a rose in Georgia in 2003 or a white ribbon in Moscow in 2011). The protests and the new government formed if they succeed immediately get U.S. support. [...]

If Saakahsvili is in possession of some sort of "color revolution" toolkit, he's been remarkably unsuccessful at applying it in Ukraine -- and not because this time around, he didn't enjoy U.S. support. He has excellent connections in Washington, especially in conservative circles, and the Atlantic Council crowd is largely indignant at Poroshenko's lawless, authoritarian treatment of a critic and political rival. If Saakashvili managed to mobilize enough popular support in Ukraine, he probably would have gotten some sort of U.S. political backing given his strong anti-corruption credentials and the growing Western fatigue with sly and grasping Poroshenko. [...]

The Chinese regime's political scientists, according to a 2010 paper by National Chengchi University's Titus Chen, came to the conclusion that "raging domestic grievances" and the institutions of electoral politics, which fostered a political opposition and gave it opportunities for seizing power, were more important causes of "color revolutions" than any foreign interference. In response, the regime has made an effort to punish corruption and avoided political liberalization, as well as to make it more difficult for Western actors to influence people in China. Putin's regime, of course, is doing all that too -- but its focus appears to be on the foreign aspect. That's a mistake that could eventually lead the Putin system to ruin -- if Russians ever get angry enough, they won't need a playbook to mess it up. No U.S. interference will be needed.

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The Atlantic: Donald Trump's Language Is Reshaping American Politics

But Trump’s words are his substance. “Politics is persuasion as well as coercion,” the political scientist Jacob Levy wrote last week, rightly arguing that Trump has “changed what being a Republican means.” He has done so not through legislative coercion—indeed, he barely seems to understand the basics of American government—but through persuasive insistence. On issues as diverse as the alleged dangers of immigration and the nature of truth, Trump’s words have the power to cleave public opinion, turning nonpolitical issues into partisan maelstroms and turning partisan attitudes on their head. Trump’s rhetoric doesn’t produce the legislative artifacts that journalists typically use to analyze presidential power—it hasn’t translated to many actual laws passed. But the country is only just beginning to understand the scope of Trump’s lexical influence. [...]

But that’s precisely what’s happened. In 2014, about 60 percent of both Republicans and Democrats said the FBI was doing an "excellent" or "good" job. Last year, their views forked: Republican approval of the agency fell by about 10 points, while Democratic opinion improved by a similar margin. The same thing happened with football: Less than 20 percent of Republicans said they had unfavorable views of the NFL in the summer of 2017. But their disapproval had more than tripled by October, after Trump blasted players for kneeling to protest police violence during the national anthem. One analysis determined that, following the anthem protests, the NFL—a $13 billion industry that is the linchpin of the massive pay-TV ecosystem—became one of the most polarizing brands in the country. [...]

Finally, Trump’s refusal to accept critical information as true—from his denial of Russian interference in the 2016 election to the “alternative facts” about his inauguration size—has demolished the right’s faith and trust in a free press. Three-quarters of the GOP now say that news organizations make up anti-Trump stories. Even worse, a January study found that nearly half of Republicans believe that accurate stories that “cast a politician or political group in a negative light” are “always” fake news. Trump, along with Fox News, has given his supporters the license to self-deport from reality.  

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The Guardian: The DUP is a party that loves power but hates pesky responsibility

There are few pronouncements from the DUP that can be understood unless heard from the perspective of a DUP stalwart. And this is a party that knows its supporters. Nearly a third of its members are Free Presbyterians – a denomination (founded by the late Ian Paisley) which constitutes just about 0.6% of the population in Northern Ireland.

The DUP is revelling in its moment in the limelight because it has no long-term strategy for Northern Ireland – it has no motivation to have one. In the long-term – so a crude (and I believe misguided) reading of demographic trends would suggest – unionists are outnumbered and thus outvoted into a united Ireland. The DUP perpetuates the idea that unionism’s position is precarious in order to bolster the rationale for its uncompromising stance.

Why sit in Stormont making unpopular decisions about budgets and tedious policy decisions about those schools and hospitals when you can instead concentrate on Westminster? There, at least, you don’t have to share anything with Sinn Féin. And from there you can keep the whole of Europe waiting for you to give a limp thumbs up to Theresa May’s Brexit deal. And yet, the DUP’s decision to shrug off the pesky responsibility of devolved government has a material, crushing effect on Northern Ireland, most particularly on its young.

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Quartz: These charts show why the UK will always be “lashed” to the EU

But with more than 500 million consumers, the EU is anything but “minute.” Its trade in goods alone dwarfs other regional trade blocs. In 2016, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the EU, and the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) accounted for 58% of global trade, more than half of the world exports ($8.7 trillion), and 60% of world imports, according to the WTO (pdf). Most of this was in the EU. Regional agreements in emerging markets, like MERCOSUR (the Southern Common Market) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), are still relatively small.

The EU has more consumers than NAFTA (484 million), but fewer than ASEAN (630 million). The sticking point for Johnson and others who share his view is that, despite which regions have the potential to increase trade the fastest (in part because they start from a lower base), proximity matters in trade. In economics, this is known as the gravity model of trade, and it’s pretty reliable. [...]

The external market for trade is more evenly split across services and goods, and for both the gravity model holds—size and distance matter. (These interactives by the UK’s statistics body make the point.) Of the world’s 50 most populous countries, the UK only exported more than £10 billion ($14 billion) in goods to three nations outside of Europe in 2016—the US, China, and Japan. (The outlier on the chart is the US.)

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Deutsche Welle: EC President Juncker defends system against French calls for reform

"Some in British political society are against the truth, pretending that I am a stupid, stubborn federalist, that I am in favor of a European super-state," Juncker told a news conference in Brussels. "I am strictly against a European super-state. We are not the United States of America ... This is total nonsense." [...]

His comments have been seen as a thinly-veiled criticism of French President Emmanuel Macron and his newly-formed Republique En Marche party which has not yet declared which EU grouping it will join. "It’s totally possible to set up your own group and I believe that European reformists have a vocation to federate around them other movements," Macron said in Paris this week.

"Europe would gain from a political revamp... which is both possible and desirable if we want to give a clear mandate to the commission," Macron told reporters. He accused the EU leadership of being ideologically incoherent with "fundamental differences" within the political groupings of the conservative EPP, the social democratic S&D and the liberal ALDE.

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Bloomberg: How to Fix the Eastern Ukraine Problem

The operation would be modeled on a largely forgotten initiative in the Yugoslav wars -- the UN transitional administration in Eastern Slavonia, a Serb-held region of eastern Croatia. A force of 5,000 blue helmets secured the area and the border with Serbia, an election was organized, a managed transition to Croatian control followed -- all in the space of two years from 1996 to 1998. The region retained a soft border with Serbia; thousands of refugees returned to their homes, although some residents of eastern Slavonia moved to Serbia as UNTAES wrapped up. [...]

Gowan's proposals for eastern Ukraine are based on a simple logic. The Minsk agreements require a local election before Russia restores control of the border to Ukraine. Elections won't take place without an external catalyst and wouldn't be fairly conducted without international administration and policing. Ergo, something close to a full international takeover of eastern Ukraine is desirable. It's also the only way to alleviate Russian President Vladimir Putin's stated concerns for the safety of the pro-Russian population if Ukrainians were allowed to re-establish control, a risk that Gowan acknowledges. The international administration would also serve as a buffer for non-combatants who have worked for the "people's republics" -- such as teachers or public servants -- to transition to a peaceful life in which they aren't persecuted by a vindictive Ukrainian government. [...]

"In peacekeeping as in war, no plan survives first contact with reality," Gowan concedes. It's important, however, to start with a clear understanding of the strategic political goals and then fit the means to them, and Gowan does just that. His proposal gives the Kremlin a way to end the conflict without surrendering the rebels to Kiev's vengeance and to maintain cultural and economic times with eastern Ukraine; and it provides the Kiev government with a way to getting its territories back and the border with Russia under its control again.

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