The New Yorker: How the Little Ice Age Changed History

The Little Ice Age is an example of how we so often find complete consensus around every aspect of climate change. Just kidding. We know for sure that the earth became cooler: the evidence can be found through a variety of techniques for assessing historical temperatures, such as the study of ice cores and tree rings. There are also extensive written accounts of the cold in the form of letters and diaries, sermons, the records of wine growers, and so on. The cooling happened in phases, with an initial drop beginning around 1300, and a sharper and more abrupt onset of cold starting in 1570 and lasting for about a hundred and ten years. It is the latter period that provides the focus for Blom’s book. Agreement about the fact that the cooling occurred, however, is not matched by an equivalent consensus about why. [...]

Whatever the cause, the effects were pronounced. Although Blom’s focus is Europe, the most densely settled northerly area of the planet, he makes it clear that the effects of the Little Ice Age were global in scale. In China, then as now the most populous country in the world, the Ming dynasty fell in 1644, undermined by, among other things, erratic harvests. In Europe, rivers and lakes and harbors froze, leading to phenomena such as the “frost fairs” on the River Thames—fairgrounds that spread across the river’s London tideway, which went from being a freakish rarity to a semi-regular event. (Virginia Woolf set a scene in “Orlando” at one.) Birds iced up and fell from the sky; men and women died of hypothermia; the King of France’s beard froze solid while he slept. Some of the central events of English history turn out to have been linked to the Little Ice Age: in 1588, the Spanish Armada was destroyed by an unprecedented Arctic hurricane, and a factor in the Great Fire of London, in 1666, was the ultra-dry summer that succeeded the previous, bitter winter. Fingerprints of the cold period can be found in surprising places. Why do the most admired violins in the history of music, made by Stradivarius and Guarneri, come from the middle of the Little Ice Age? Blom cites research arguing that trees took longer to mature in the cold, which resulted in a denser wood, with “better sound qualities and more intense resonance.” [...]

Over time, however, larger structural shifts emerged. In the basic bargain of feudal life, a peasant kept one part of his harvest for himself, put one part back into the ground for the next year’s harvest, and gave the last part to his feudal lord. When peasants had no surplus grain, this system collapsed. If local crops were failing, trading at a distance, to bring goods from farther afield, was critical. Money, and the ability to buy and sell with cash or its equivalent, took on a larger role. Cities with a culture of trade especially benefitted from this shift. The preëminent example in “Nature’s Mutiny” is Amsterdam, which went from being a sleepy backwater of the Habsburg Empire to a thriving, economically dynamic center of rapidly expanding commercial networks, with a population that grew tenfold in just over a century.

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The Atlantic: The Mormon Church Tries to Create a Little More Space for LGBTQ Families

Christofferson is gay. His brother, Todd Christofferson, is a member of the highest body of authority in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Todd was calling Tom to let him know that the LDS Church was about to roll back a controversial 2015 policy that automatically labeled Mormons in same-sex marriages apostates and barred their minor children from being baptized—a rite required for membership in the LDS Church and seen as necessary for eternal salvation. Under the new policy, same-sex marriages are still considered a “serious transgression,” according to a Church announcement, but not definitively apostasy. The children of LGBTQ couples can now be baptized. [...]

The new policy will create space for LGBTQ Mormons and their families to engage more comfortably in their Church communities, and many hope it means they will find greater welcome there. The former policy “caused a lot of pain and turmoil to people that I love,” Christofferson said. “I know a number of folks for whom that was a breaking point.” Although Christofferson openly identifies as gay and left the Church for a number of years while he was in a relationship with another man, he has since rejoined the Church. For other LGBTQ Mormons, “my hope is, now that [the policy has] changed, they will consider rejoining and worshipping with us and help us to keep moving forward,” he said. For many current and former Mormons, however, the consequences of the 2015 policy cannot be undone. Their relationships—with the Church, with their families, and with God—have been irreparably damaged. [...]

Other LGBTQ Mormons—and their families—left the church over the policy. Although LDS policies are guided by the central authority of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, local leaders have some degree of autonomy in how they deal with individual cases, and that can make all the difference in whether LGBTQ people find welcoming space in Mormon communities. The 2015 policy took away some of that flexibility, adding extra strain to family relationships and friendships—and people’s faith. “There was a lot of suffering caused by the policy, and it’s going to be hard for a lot of hearts to heal from that,” says Gustav-Wrathall. Like others, he draws a connection between the policies of the LDS Church and the high rate of suicide among LGBTQ teens in Utah, while acknowledging that it’s impossible to know the cause of most suicides. “What parents must be feeling,” he said, is: “Would my child still be here with me if this policy hadn’t happened?”

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Jacobin Magazine: From the Union Hall to the Church

There’s some truth to this hypothesis, but it underestimates Bolsonaro’s large number of votes from women (41 percent of valid votes), black and mixed race people (41 percent of total votes) and low-income groups concentrated in families that receive between two and five minimum wages (61 percent). In addition, this hypothesis tends to downplay the importance of the support Bolsonaro received from non-denominational evangelical churches (59 percent of the total votes, against only 26 percent of the votes for Haddad, according to Datafolha), without which, according to most political analysts, he would probably have lost the second round to the Workers’ Party candidate.[...]

The political scientist André Singer and sociologist Gustavo Venturi convincingly argue that low-income support for the ultra-right candidate stemmed from his emphasis on public safety –– a real concern in a country that sees constant street crime and over sixty thousand murders a year. [...]

Lulismo was defined by the way it aimed to stabilize social conflict in Brazil. Between 2003 and 2013 it forged two different forms of consensus. First, a form of passive consensus among the subaltern classes who were attracted to the PT’s distributivist public policies, such as the Bolsa Família program and the policy of valorization of the minimum wage. Second, the PT constructed an active consensus among the leaders of the main social movements in the country. Despite the neoliberal macroeconomic policy advocated and sustained by the PT governments, the conjunction of these two forms of consent was able to guarantee the strengthening of certain policies compatible with the project of building a wage society in Brazil. Of course, the limits of Lulismo were revealed when the international economic crisis put an end to the commodity super-cycle that had benefited the Brazilian economy during the PT governments. [...]

The popularity of certain policies, such as Bolsa Família or university racial quotas, strengthened a backlash from those precarious workers who, living in the informal sector or receiving low wages, did not directly benefit. In the eyes of many of these workers, the public policies of the PT era have done nothing more than stimulate laziness and political clientelism, transforming citizens into parasites and objects of electoral exploitation by corrupt politicians. The Brazilian far-right managed to instrumentalize this feeling through the rhetoric of “meritocracy,” appealing to popular resentment against the PT as the crisis deepened and decimated jobs. [...]

Surprisingly, the neo-Pentecostal evangelical movement was the one that benefited the most in organizational terms from the Lulista hegemony. According to data from the 2010 census, its growth went from 15.4 percent in 2000, to 22.2 percent in 2010 (see table below). This is different from what happened in the 1970s, when the flourishing of religiosity in grassroots communities occurred pari-passu with the strengthening of union power. Now a rather different theology is taking root in the sphere of low-income groups: the neo-Pentecostal theology of prosperity — a variant of US televangelism in which achieving grace correlates to the satisfaction of individual desires for protection and material prosperity.

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openDemocracy: The Return of la Marine

The turn in fortunes is also reflected in Marine Le Pen's improved public image. Not only has she reappeared on the cover of major French news magazines; pollsters are also again taking her seriously enough as a major political contender to measure her support as well as her appeal, particularly compared to the current president of the republic. The results show that the president of the RN has managed to restore much of her credibility, even if a large majority of the electorate continues to view her negatively. In the most recent survey, a large majority of respondents credited her with being dynamic and courageous, but also arrogant and authoritarian – albeit less so than Emmanuel Macron, who has come to epitomize smugness.

Marine Le Pen owes her rebound in the polls to a significant extent to the revolt of the gilets jaunes, the grassroots protest that started in late 2018 against the rise in the tax on gas and diesel, promoted as a step towards advancing the government's green agenda. The tax hike provoked widespread rage in the rural countryside, directed particularly against Paris where it occasioned acts of violent rioting. The eruption of rage particularly benefited Marine Le Pen – and for good reason. An opinion poll on the reasons for the growing tensions in French society from early this year identified the growing "social difficulties" of parts of the population as well as "the sense that the Parisian elites (political, economic, and in the media) are disconnected from the everyday reality experienced by the French" as the main drivers of popular disaffection, aggressiveness and rage. The sense of disconnect found its most memorable expression in a slogan, attributed to the gilets jaunes: Ils évoquent la fin du monde, nous on parle de la fin du mois [They evoke the end of the world, we talk about the end of the month]. [...]

Last but not least, Marine le Pen has shown remarkable programmatic flexibility on essential issues. For the presidential election of 2017, the FN candidate made the exit from the euro one of the core issues of her presidential campaign. It turned out to be an enormous flop. Following the disaster of 2017, it was quietly dropped, even if Marine Le Pen insisted that regaining "monetary sovereignty" was still on the agenda – albeit for some time in the future. Undoubtedly, Marine Le Pen took note of the fact that a large majority of French voters are opposed to giving up the euro. Under the circumstances, pragmatism trumps ideology, even on the radical populist right. [...]

At the same time, however, the same percentage also agreed that "the unemployed could find work if they only wanted" – a position shared with the right. In other words, RN supporters are overwhelmingly in favor of some measure of social justice, as long as it tied to a notion of "deservedness" associated with productive work. Migrants and refugees clearly don't count among the deserving. For too long the both Marine Le Pen and her father have charged that the vast majority of immigrants come to France primarily to take advantage of France's generous social services; and for too long both have demanded to shut down the pompes aspirantes de l'Etat-Providence (suction pumps of the welfare state) and limit benefits to the native born (FN's policy of préférence nationale).

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Foreign Policy: Moon Jae-in Is the Grown-Up at the Table

The Hanoi summit fell apart as both North Korea and the United States entered the summit with maximalist demands, with no alternative smaller deals on the table. In the working-level talks leading up to the summit, North Korean delegates demanded that the United States remove strategic assets from Hawaii and Guam—a delusional request, even as an opening gambit. The U.S. negotiators made clear that even the demand that North Korea ultimately made at the Hanoi summit—namely that the United States lift the five United Nations sanctions in exchange for dismantling the nuclear facility in Yongbyon—would be a nonstarter, as those sanctions provide most of the U.S. leverage. Yet on meeting with Trump in Hanoi, Kim made the same demand with no fallback position. It’s not clear why. Perhaps Kim thought he could pull a fast one by Trump, or the Pyongyang brain trust was drinking its own Kool-Aid as to the value of the Yongbyon nuclear facility, an aging complex that would likely have to be scuttled soon at any rate. [...]

The Hanoi summit was not a total failure, since it at least clarified the parameters of what is being offered and the asking price of each party. The summit also showed a deal was within reach, putting to bed the persistent claim in Washington foreign-policy circles that no deal with North Korea can be possible. In the post-summit press conference, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho stated the negotiation came down to “one more step” that the U.S. delegates demanded in addition to the demolition of the Yongbyon facility. In an interview given in Russia, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui claimed that Trump was willing to consider sanctions relief on a “snapback” basis, making the relief reversible if North Korea did not make progress in denuclearization. It appears that, despite the initial maximalist stances, the two countries managed to narrow the gap but could not quite overcome the difference in the initial asking prices. [...]

A plausible deal aimed at North Korea’s denuclearization can look like the following: North Korea would freeze all production of long-range missiles and fissile materials, dismantle Yongbyon, and allow U.S. inspectors on the ground to ensure compliance. Pyongyang would also host a U.S. liaison office, which could look after the safety of the U.S. inspectors. In exchange, the United States would grant exemptions to South Korea-led joint economic projects, declare the formal end of the Korean War, and host a North Korean liaison office in Washington. As U.S. inspectors identify additional nuclear facilities in North Korea and oversee their dismantlement, the United States would gradually normalize the relationship with North Korea and ease sanctions on a snapback basis. The end result, in the best-case scenario, would be to have the denuclearized North Korea be another version of Poland or Vietnam—a former enemy that is now a U.S. security interest.

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Haaretz: Turkey Quietly Works to Integrate Syrian Refugees

Refugee camps were set up but Sahlabji, who arrived in 2012, steered clear of the tents. Now almost half of Turkey’s 22 government-run camps for Syrians have closed, and although some residents have returned to Syria, most have stayed and moved to permanent housing across the country.

Despite political rhetoric to the contrary, and with the support of international donors, Turkey is quietly paving the way to integrate many of its nearly 4 million Syrians – by far the biggest group of refugees who have spilled over Syria’s borders during the eight-year-old civil war. [...]

Most Syrians in Turkey are still registered as refugees. A few are unregistered, and a small proportion – at least 55,000 – have been granted Turkish citizenship. [...]

There is public resentment over the influx in some quarters. The government, and President Tayyip Erdogan’s stance in the run-up to municipal elections was to play up the prospects of the Syrians’ imminent return to their homeland.

However, a senior Turkish government official told Reuters that, while Ankara would like to see the refugees return to Syria once stability was restored, it realistically accepted that some would want to stay in Turkey.

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Atlas Obscura: Remembering When Americans Picnicked in Cemeteries (April 20, 2018)

During the 19th century, and especially in its later years, snacking in cemeteries happened across the United States. It wasn’t just apple-munching alongside the winding avenues of graveyards. Since many municipalities still lacked proper recreational areas, many people had full-blown picnics in their local cemeteries. The tombstone-laden fields were the closest things, then, to modern-day public parks. [...]

One of the reasons why eating in cemeteries become a “fad,” as some reporters called it, was that epidemics were raging across the country: Yellow fever and cholera flourished, children passed away before turning 10, women died during childbirth. Death was a constant visitor for many families, and in cemeteries, people could “talk” and break bread with family and friends, both living and deceased.[...]

The picnic-and-relaxation trend can also be understood as the flowering of the rural cemetery movement. Whereas American and European graveyards had long been austere places on Church grounds, full of memento mori and reminders not to sin, the new cemeteries were located outside of city centers and designed like gardens for relaxation and beauty. Flower motifs replaced skulls and crossbones, and the public was welcomed to enjoy the grounds.

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IFLScience: These Are The Drugs That Are Most Commonly Used With Sex

Based on the responses of 22,000 people who took part in the Global Drug Survey, the study reveals that the druggiest sex currently occurs in the UK, where one in five people reported having slept with someone while high on MDMA, and 13 percent said they’d combined sex with cocaine.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, alcohol was found to be the drug most likely to get things moving in the boudoir, with 60 percent of people worldwide having had drunken sex. This was followed by cannabis, which expedited the seduction of 37 percent of men and 26 percent of women. [...]

Interestingly, though, the study does reveal some distinct differences between groups when it comes to chemical courtship. For instance, gay men were around 60 percent more likely to use drugs to improve sexual experience and function than heterosexual men. Additionally, while one in 10 homosexual men reported using GHB (sometimes referred to as ‘chemsex’), only 0.7 percent of straight males claimed to have used this particular drug when having sex.

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