99 Percent Invisible: Thermal Delight

In the summer of 1902, the Sackett and Wilhelms Lithography & Printing Company in Brooklyn, New York had a problem. They were trying to print an issue of the popular humor magazine Judge, but the humidity was preventing the inks from setting properly on the pages.

The moisture in the air was warping the paper and messing up the alignment. So the company hired a young engineer named Willis Carrier to solve the problem. 

Carrier developed a system that pumps air over metal coils cooled with ammonia to pull moisture from the air, but it had a side effect — it also made the air cooler. The room with the machine became the popular lunch spot for employees. Carrier had invented air conditioning, and began to think about how it could be used for human comfort.

Before air conditioning took off, a hot and crowded theater was the last place anyone wanted to be during the summer. So Carrier approached a bunch of theater owners and pitched them on his technology — it wouldn’t be cheap, he explained, but higher ticket sales could pay for it.

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openDemocracy: Poland vs. Azamat Baiduyev: how an EU member state deported a Chechen refugee back to face the Kadyrov regime

That same day, Baiduyev was flown to Moscow. He then flew to Grozny, capital of Chechnya. Soon after, according to contacts of Akhmed Gisayev, head of the Human Rights Analysis Center, reported that “roughly a hundred people with weapons, portable radios and police vehicles” surrounded a house belonging to Baiduyev’s uncle.

According to witnesses, some of these men spoke Russian without a Chechen accent and had a Russian appearance, which indicates that the Russian FSB was involved in the operation alongside the Chechen Interior Ministry. Azamat was abducted by force. It is not known where he is currently located. [...]

This final question is important because, according to Jacek Białas, a lawyer from the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, regardless of the fault of the individual, the case law of the European Court of Human Rights indicates that the decision to deport to a country where they are threatened with torture or death is a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as the Polish Law on Foreigners. [...]

If the Polish authorities did not ask Russia to guarantee the security of Azamat Baiduyev, this is a serious charge in light of international law. If they did, it shows the kind of importance Russia attaches to these guarantees.

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Haaretz: What Russia and Turkey Really Want in Syria

And last week, Russia struck a bold deal with Turkey that averts a battle for Idlib — at least for now. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will seek broader backing for the accord at the UN General Assembly this week, and try to drum up Western money for Syria’s costly reconstruction.

Syria’s Cold War patron, Russia wants to maintain influence over Damascus once the war winds down, to keep a strategic foothold in the Mideast and a stable client for Russian weapons and commodities — and to warn the U.S. and its allies against future interference. Russia’s announcement Monday that it will supply Syria’s government with sophisticated S-300 air defense systems sent that message loud and clear, depsite Israel's vow to continue to restrain Iranian actions in the country. [...]

As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan takes the stage Tuesday at the UN, he will be seeking to head off or at least delay new crises along the Syrian border. Turkey wants to avoid a new wave of refugees and stop extremists it once tacitly supported from setting up camp on Turkish soil. And most of all, Ankara wants to keep the region’s Kurds at bay. [...]

Iran is loath to see an expansion of Turkish and U.S. influence in the region, and argues that the West fueled jihadis with past support for the Syrian opposition.

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Political Critique: No orphans allowed in Czechia

Czech anti-immigration sentiments got lifted up from the domain of quacks, wannabe Nazis and populists into actual policy when Andrej Babiš woke up one day and realized his party’s popularity dropped a couple percent; a situation very easily remedied by causing an international faux pas by telling Italy he will not accept a single immigrant (because look what they did to your country). His resolve has been tested for the last few weeks with a full-on media barrage regarding the proposed acceptance of fifty orphans from Syria – an issue on which he managed to change his firm opinion only about five or six times a week. [...]

And here is the thing: those fifty orphans could seriously help us there. The Czech Republic has mostly managed to avoid EU scrutiny due to Babiš playing chameleon and changing colors based on whether he was speaking to home or foreign audience. But it seems the chameleon is going senile and cannot shift its complexion as fast as it once could – and sometimes, like in Italy, the true colors shine through. Now, viewed from the outside, there is an opportunity to put his money where his mouth is and prove that he is dedicated to a common European cause. The only problem is that, back home, he has just announced zero tolerance for immigrants. What to do, what to say? [...]

Putting aside the rather distressing implication that a human life loses value with age (something the masterpiece of applied necromancy posing as our current President should get through its brain, whichever canopic jar that might be stowed away in), this first attack was deflected rather easily by pointing out that we’d have our choice of orphans to accept; no one was talking a specific group of children. This did not stop plenty of other parties to join the fun; the xenophobic SPD calling the initiative “pseudohumanistic cries of the neo-marxists” (given the rhetorical capabilities of the average SPD member, one can only assume a dictionary was heavily involved in the creative process behind that phrase) and a party called Czech Sovereignty (nope, never heard of them either) outright accused the orphans of being ISIS fighters – amazing foresight since no specific children were chosen.

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Politico: Romania’s dangerous family referendum

In truth, the initiative — launched in 2015 by a coalition of NGOs that receive backing from the Orthodox church — is a dangerous diversion tactic. For the government, which gave its backing to the proposal, it’s a useful way to distract voters, thousands of whom took to the streets earlier this year to protest rampant corruption. [...]

Supporters of the proposed constitutional alteration are attempting to use this divisive, hurtful and anti-family campaign to distract from public dissatisfaction with their policies. It might not be corruption in the financial sense, but their actions are certainly morally bankrupt. [...]

There is no upside to this campaign. The rights of married couples of opposite sexes will stay the same, while different types of families would see their legal protections stripped away. It is entirely contrary to the EU values of dignity and equality to ask voters to strike the fundamental rights from their fellow citizens. [...]

Human rights organizations and citizens in Romania are already urging voters to stay at home on October 7 to invalidate the result, which needs a 30 percent turnout rate to be considered valid. That would show this vote for what it is: a shameless exercise in political opportunism.

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CityLab: Scotland Tries for the Bilbao Effect at the New V&A Dundee

Earlier this month, the jewel in this ongoing revamp of the quayside was unveiled: The V&A Dundee, a spectacular design museum just opened on the quayside that is an offshoot (albeit an independent one) of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. Containing the largest exhibition space in Scotland, the museum hopes to garner attention for a city that has for too long had a low profile, not just across the U.K. but even within Scotland itself. In other words, Dundee is trying to do more or less what the city of Bilbao did with its Guggenheim Museum. [...]

Certainly, the 148,000-person city is not the industrial powerhouse it once was. A century ago, it was known nationally for “jute, jam, and journalism,” a reference to its role as a center for textile production, as the headquarters of a major (and still extant) media company, and as the place where marmalade is (apocryphally) said to have been invented. The city’s industrial base was decimated in the 1980s and, just like the rest of the U.K., Dundee is now battling galloping inequality. With many manufacturing jobs gone, an estimated 28 percent of the city’s children live in poverty. In the most deprived areas of the city, such as the housing projects of Whitfield, that child poverty level reaches over 96 percent. [...]

If V&A Dundee is straining under competing tensions, that’s partly a reflection of the stringent standards to which cultural spending is held in an age of relative austerity. In order to gain government funding, cultural institutions in the U.K. must demonstrate their worth as motors of social and economic transformation far beyond their primary role. Katrina Brown, director of the Glasgow visual-arts organization The Common Guild and former curator of Dundee Contemporary Arts, insists the proper focus for the museum’s success will be in providing something for Dundonians themselves.

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The Atlantic: The Not-So-Great Reason Why Divorce Rates Are Declining

After accounting for the rising average age of married Americans and other demographic shifts during that time, Cohen found “a less steep decline—8 percent—but the pattern is the same.” That is, the divorce rate in 2016 was still lower than one would have predicted if the demographics of married people were the same then as in 2008. [...]

The point he was making was that people with college degrees are now more likely to get married than those who have no more than a high-school education. And the key to understanding the declining divorce rate, Cherlin says, is that it is “going down some for everybody,” but “the decline has been steepest for the college graduates.”

The reason that’s the case is that college graduates tend to wait longer to get married as they focus on their career. And they tend to have the financial independence to postpone marriage until they’re more confident it will work. This has translated to lower rates of divorce: “If you’re older, you’re more mature … you probably have a better job, and those things make it less likely that you’ll get into arguments with your spouse,” Cherlin says. [...]

Chen connects this trend to the decline of well-paying jobs for those without college degrees, which, he argues, makes it harder to form more stable relationships. Indeed, Cohen writes in his paper that marriage is “an increasingly central component of the structure of social inequality.” The state of it today is both a reflection of the opportunities unlocked by a college degree and a force that, by allowing couples to pool their incomes, itself widens economic gaps.

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