SOH Ideas: Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2013: Dan Savage - Savage Advice

There's a flaw in the way we choose our life partners. We pair up based (mostly) on preferences outside of the bedroom, and hope that what happens in the bedroom will match up. Infidelity is not the end of the world, it's a reality of long-term relationships. We accept the good and the bad when it comes to our partner's jobs, families, and failures, but quickly default to divorce when we yield to natural temptation.

It's time to stop fooling ourselves and accept that outdated concepts of "proper" sex are torpedoing discussions needed to reach mature sexual compromises. Many of the relationships that we think of as monogamous are actually probably 'monogomish': mostly monogamous, but with bits on the side. If we really want to protect the sanctity of marriage, we need to make it our playground, not our prison.

Join us for a dose of reality about love and some Savage advice on your questions and problems.

Dan Savage is the author of the internationally syndicated advice column Savage Love, host of the popular podcast Savage Lovecast. He is also an essayist whose work has featured in the New York Times and on This American Life. His latest book is American Savage: Insights, Slights, and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love, and Politics. 

Crooked Media: Wilderness The Change

What is Barack Obama’s legacy? A closer look at how an historic presidency shaped the party and the country.

The Wilderness is a documentary from Crooked Media and Two-Up about the history and future of the Democratic Party. Pod Save America’s Jon Favreau tells the story of a party finding its way out of the political wilderness through conversations with strategists, historians, policy experts, organizers, and voters. In fifteen chapters, the series explores issues like inequality, race, immigration, sexism, foreign policy, media strategy, and how Democrats can build a winning majority that lasts.

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Social Europe: Breaking The Populism ‘Doom Loop’

When they raise issues that are of genuine concern to voters, populists from Trump to Grillo put forward simple solutions to complex issues – “Worried about immigration? Build a wall!”, “Tired of low pay and poor social services? Leave the EU!”, “Frustrated at how our nation is insulted by the global elite? Kick-out George Soros!” – that will not solve them. If populists have a point in highlighting the failures of liberal democracy with regard to managing immigration or facilitating increasing economic inequality, their opponents have failed in explaining that it is only with the consensus and compromise building approach inherent in liberal democracy that they can be solved. 

It is not enough for defenders of liberal democracy to wait on the sidelines for populism to fall on its sword. When the actions of populists fail to deliver change to the major policy challenges they promised to solve, there will still be popular resentment about the – both perceived and real – distance of liberal democracy from the lives of ordinary voters. This situation I describe as a ‘populism doom loop’. As liberal democratic institutions and actors continue to resist reform, the ‘doom loop’ of support for populists caused by distant and disconnected liberal democratic institutions and actors will continue. The loop must be broken for the crisis of democracy to end. [...]

The key issue here is with the ability of voters to process this information critically. This is not to label the electorate as ignorant or stupid, far from it. Rather it is to point to the desultory state of civics education around the world. Citizens have not received the kind of comprehensive education required to become active, involved, and informed citizens in an era of information oversaturation. Massachusetts has recently taken a step forward in this regard by passing a bill aimed at modernising civics education with a focus on explaining how the US political system works across its different levels, as well as promoting critical engagement with the media.

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Aeon: What makes people distrust science? Surprisingly, not politics

The same research that has observed the effects of political ideology on attitudes towards climate change has also found that political ideology is not that predictive of skepticism about other controversial research topics. Work by the cognitive scientist Stephan Lewandowsky, as well as research led by the psychologist Sydney Scott, observed no relation between political ideology and attitudes toward genetic modification. Lewandowsky also found no clear relation between political conservatism and vaccine skepticism. [...]

My colleagues and I recently published a set of studies that investigated science trust and science skepticism. One of the take-home messages of our research is that it is crucial not to lump various forms of science skepticism together. And although we were certainly not the first to look beyond political ideology, we did note two important lacunae in the literature. First, religiosity has so far been curiously under-researched as a precursor to science skepticism, perhaps because political ideology commanded so much attention. Second, current research lacks a systematic investigation into various forms of skepticism, alongside more general measures of trust in science. We attempted to correct both oversights. [...]

From these studies there are a couple of lessons to be learned about the current crisis of faith that plagues science. Science skepticism is quite diverse. Further, distrust of science is not really that much about political ideology, with the exception of climate-change skepticism, which is consistently found to be politically driven. Additionally, these results suggest that science skepticism cannot simply be remedied by increasing people’s knowledge about science. The impact of scientific literacy on science skepticism, trust in science, and willingness to support science was minor, save for the case of genetic modification. Some people are reluctant to accept particular scientific findings, for various reasons. When the aim is to combat skepticism and increase trust in science, a good starting point is to acknowledge that science skepticism comes in many forms.

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Al Jazeera: The ICC is reaching out to victims of war crimes in Palestine

In an extraordinary move, the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court recently issued a decision ordering its registry "to establish, as soon as practicable, a system of public information and outreach activities for the benefit of the victims and affected communities in the situation in Palestine". [...]

The decision came at a time when state representatives gathered in The Hague to mark twenty years since the adoption of the Court's founding treaty, the so-called Rome Statute. Those participating in the celebrations reminisced at the landmark decision to establish the first permanent international criminal institution capable, in theory, of holding world leaders to account for their role in the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The novelty of the decision by the Pre-Trial Chamber on the situation in Palestine reminds us, however, of the court's shortcomings in engaging with victims and affected communities in a timely, continuous, and valuable manner as well as ensuring their early participation in the proceedings so that their unique views and concerns are taken into consideration from the beginning until the end.  

The Rome Statute put victims at the heart of the court's work and gave them the right to participate in the proceedings and ultimately receive reparations for harm suffered. It also gave them the right to provide information to the court. As is rightly pointed out by the Pre-Trial Chamber, in order to exercise these rights, victims must be made aware of them and the work of the court. It is in this light that the decision on information and outreach for Palestinians should be praised. [...]

The meaningful implementation of the decision on the situation in Palestine is dependent on the allocation of adequate human and financial resources to information and outreach activities. It is also dependent on a mindful engagement between the court and civil society. But most importantly, it requires that the court itself directly and immediately interacts with Palestinian victims and affected communities. The responsibility to reach out to victims and include them in the work of the court lies primarily with the organs of the court.

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CityLab: Sweden Will Meet Its 2030 Green Energy Target 12 Years Early

You can’t fault the Swedish Energy Agency for ambition: Last year, it decided to increase its target for renewable energy, aiming to produce an additional 18.4 terawatt hours per year by 2030. That’s a huge amount—it would be enough to provide all the power needs for the U.K.’s 66 million citizens for just under three days. [...]

Behind this unexpectedly rapid success lies a huge push for a more sustainable energy sector. Sweden already has a cross-party agreement to have all its energy needs met from renewable sources by 2040. To date, renewables’ share of energy consumption in Sweden has risen to as much as 57 percent of the total—in 2015, a year when strong winds and heavy rain made wind and hydroelectric power plants especially productive.

By the end of this year, the country of 10 million should have 3,681 wind turbines producing power. So swift has been the proliferation of Swedish wind farms that the government is facing kickback on their site selection, both for the usual aesthetic reasons but also because they now threaten to encroach on airspace used by the military. Indeed, the expansion push has proved so effective that there are now fears that it might even risk shooting the renewable energy market in the foot. [...]

Sweden still relied on cheap imported oil during most of the 20th century, making the shock of the 1973-4 oil crisis especially sharp. The impact of the crisis on the region isn’t always understood by people whose countries were partly shielded from it by their own oil and gas production. In neighboring and equally stricken Denmark, for example, it led to the wholesale replacement of domestic bathtubs with showers, and tubs are now a rarity in that country’s homes. Faced with spiraling energy prices and a desperate need to make energy savings, Sweden hunted round for locally-produced alternatives to oil.

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Politico: Fears of World War III are overblown

NATO allies also worry about Trump’s comment this week that it is problematic for the U.S. to come to the defense of smaller NATO allies such as Montenegro. But let’s not forget that at the height of the Cold War it was never 100 percent certain what the U.S. would do in case of an attack on West Germany. Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt would not have asked for U.S. medium-range missiles in Europe in the 1970s had he had full confidence in NATO’s largest member. Nor is NATO enlargement off the table completely. Macedonia has just crossed a major hurdle in its push for membership. [...]

NATO is still very much exerting pressure on Russia. It’s considered more of an annoyance than an immediate threat in Moscow, but also keeps the country in permanent “war mode” vis-à-vis the U.S. Because Moscow is focused on Washington, this means Europeans usually get a pass. [...]

Should Ukraine’s leaders decide to repeat Mikheil Saakashvili’s mistake in 2008 and launch a major offensive to retake Donbas — however unlikely — the Russian response could indeed be devastating and lead to Ukraine’s loss of sovereignty, as Putin recently stated. But does this mean Russia will move on Ukraine unprovoked? Most certainly not.  

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Politico: Why I’m no longer a Russiagate skeptic

What about my argument that Trump is constitutionally incapable of keeping a secret? That, too, is no longer operative. Since I first wrote, we’ve learned that Trump — a skinflint who once had his own charity pay a $7 fee to register his son for the Boy Scouts — was willing to shell out $130,000 of his own money to hush up a fling with a porn actress, Stormy Daniels. And he still hasn’t copped to sleeping with her, despite the discovery of their nondisclosure agreement and contemporaneous evidence that the affair really happened. None of this leaked out until well after the election, proving that Trump is indeed capable of keeping his yap shut when he wants. Not convinced? How about the fact that Brett Kavanaugh’s name didn’t leak out as Trump’s latest Supreme Court pick until minutes before the announcement?

Politically speaking, Trump’s devotion to his pro-Putin line doesn’t make sense. Yes, the Republican base is impressionable, and perhaps Republican voters would accept it if Trump came out and said, “You bet, Russia helped get me elected, and wasn’t that a good thing? We couldn’t let Crooked Hillary win!” But nobody would say his odd solicitousness toward the Kremlin leader is a political winner, and it certainly causes an unnecessary amount of friction with Republicans in Congress. He’s kept it up at great political cost to himself, and that suggests either that he is possessed by an anomalous level of conviction on this one issue, despite his extraordinary malleability on everything else—or that he’s beholden to Putin in some way. [...]

As for my argument that Trump’s collection of misfit toys was too incompetent, and too riven by infighting, to collaborate with Russia, this one might still be true. There were certainly sporadic, repeated attempts by some on or around the campaign to collaborate, but we don’t know if, or how, those flirtations were consummated. But certainly, the intent was there, as Donald Trump, Jr. has said publicly. They were all too happy to accept Russian help, even if they weren’t sure that would be enough to win in the end. [...]

If Trump is indeed a tool of Putin, what might we expect him to do next? Well, I wouldn’t be sleeping too soundly in Kiev, Podgorica or Riga right now. If the Kremlin tests America’s wobbling commitment to NATO, watch how Trump responds. And pay attention, too, to what the White House says about Russia’s absurd demand that the U.S. hand over former ambassador to Moscow Mike McFaul — Wednesday’s spectacle of Sarah Huckabee Sanders refusing to immediately rule out the idea flies in the face of decades of American diplomacy. Trump may have grudgingly admitted that Russia did the deed, but nobody should be surprised if he starts shedding doubt on it all over again. Maybe, just maybe, he can’t admit that Moscow tried to put him in the Oval Office because he’s under strict instructions not to.

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