Nautilus Magazine: Mapping Gay-Friendly Cities Through History

What separates Ptolemy’s survey from simple jingoism, however, is his attempt to ascribe the ethnic differences he perceived to a set of rational principles. On this account, the Tetrabiblos is one of the earliest examples of what’s sometimes called anthropological ethnology. And unlike the blood-based racial theories which became especially pernicious in America and Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, Ptolemy’s ethnology is entirely geographical. This makes the Tetrabiblos rightfully the great-grandfather of what’s surely the most famous modern work of geographic anthropology, Jared Diamond’s best-selling Guns, Germs, and Steel. But let’s not be coy here. What really makes Ptolemy’s whirlwind world tour so entertaining is all the sex—or, rather, how candidly Ptolemy discusses the sexual habits of the peoples he describes. [...]

Ptolemy’s assertion that acceptance of homosexuality decreases along a line running from London to Riyadh agrees pretty well with what I imagine is the current conventional wisdom on the matter. Could he be on to something? To add a quantitative veneer to this question, we can use that favorite tool of data analysts everywhere: a linear regression. [...]

It’s no secret, for instance, that northwestern Europe historically, and even quite recently, was not especially welcoming toward homosexuals. Indeed, when the great Victorian explorer Richard Burton developed his own theory of geographically-influenced sexuality, the Middle East was explicitly included, and England excluded, from his map of what he termed the “Sotadic Zone”—a region where homosexuality was supposedly natural, accepted, and common. Were Figure 2 to be redrawn with data from 150 years ago, it’s altogether likely that the best-fit regression line would have entirely the opposite slope. Yet a correlation that shifts from one moment to the next undermines any argument that there’s a fixed principle at work. Instead, perhaps the only constant uniting Ptolemy’s and Burton’s theories is that each imagined the sexual mores of faraway lands to be radically different from what he knew back home, and each projected his disgust or desire accordingly. That’s hardly the story you would get if the only information you had was the cold and context-free data of Figure 2. Trying to figure out which story, if any, is hiding in your data is challenging expressly because there are usually multiple stories which can be crafted, and deciding which one to emphasize rarely has anything to do with the data itself.

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Social Europe: What’s at stake in the Democratic primaries

For example, with regard to health care, all the candidates support moving beyond the reforms introduced under Barack Obama’s presidency towards universal coverage. Where they differ is on how to get there: Sanders and Warren favour a rapid transition to a ‘single-payer’, public (‘Medicare for all’) system, while the moderates favour gradual change, beginning with the expansion of a public option (Medicare) to those lacking private insurance.

Similarly, all the candidates advocate higher taxes on the wealthy, fighting inequality, more business regulation, increased spending on social programmes and infrastructure, making college more affordable, and devoting greater attention to environmental issues and climate change. As with health care, on these issues the candidates differ more on how they favour achieving these goals than on the goals themselves. [...]

On the other side of the electability debate are those who believe the path to victory lies not in trying to attract independent and wavering voters but in mobilising the party’s base. Supporters of this strategy point to research arguing that voters generally don’t know much about policy and the intense polarisation of the American electorate, which makes them care even less. In this view, Democrats and Republicans are so committed to their own ‘team’—technically, ‘negative partisanship’ has become so strong—that they will vote for any candidate their party puts up.

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UnHerd: ‘Cultural Christian’ is an empty idea

But what, in practice, are the new social conservatives seeking to conserve? Calls for a revival of cultural conservatism, many in the name of Christian values, seem often on closer examination oddly insubstantial. In 2017, UKIP’s leader-for-that-week Stephen Crowther said that the UK is a Christian country, “and we intend to stay that way”. [...]

Elsewhere in Europe, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbàn describes his brand of authoritarian, identity-oriented politics as “Christian democracy”. Only a minority of Hungarians go to church every week – only 12% attends church regularly, although around three in four identity as Catholic or Protestant — but the identifier “Christian” has nonetheless become central to Orbàn’s politics.

Much as Crowther did, the Orbàn-supporting Bishop of Szeged, László Kiss-Rigó, bridges this gap with a vague, cultural definition of what actually constitutes a Christian: “In Europe, even an atheist is a Christian”, he said. It turns out that being “Christian” is less about prayer or doctrine than values, for as he puts it: “We are very happy that there are a few politicians like Orbán and Trump who really represent those values which we Christians believe to be important.” [...]

Having come unmoored from its roots either in the past, the divine, or the popular will, McManus suggests that this postmodern conservatism has warped a Burkean belief in tradition into a kind of moral cosplay whose main purpose is less seeking the good life than making a noisy defence of whichever identities its sworn enemies attack. As the postmodern liberal-left demonises heterosexual white males, so postmodern conservatism sets out to defend them; and so on.

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TLDR Explains: Johnson's 30 Mile Bridge: Connecting Scotland and N. Ireland

For a while now Johnson has been talking about building a 30 mile bridge from Scotland to Northern Ireland. This rather out there plan might be possible, if the UK is willing to spend enough money to make it happen. In this video we discuss the viability of the plan and why Johnson wants to do it at all.

UnHerd: Sex-obsessed conservatives are wrong about families

Having little historical imagination, the moral majority movement of the Eighties fetishised this very particular notion of the family — one that only flourished within some very particular economic conditions during the post-war period. But this iteration was only a blip during the long transition from large, extended kinship groups to the ‘chosen’, ‘blended’ family that begun to emerge within the gay community at precisely same the time Jerry Falwell and Ronald Regan were insisting that nuclear was the only proper way for families to be. For these two reactionaries, the nuclear family was the all-American redoubt against the twin threats of communism and homosexuality. The family was nuclear not just in the sense of being a nucleus, but also, as the premier expression of resistance to the nuclear threat of Communism. Family, God and country became “the holy trinity of American traditionalism”. [...]

One way of telling the story of the Biblical narrative about the family is as an arc that begins with the association of family life – and particularly procreation – with patriotic duty, and then gradually subjects this position to ever increasing scepticism. For a fledgling community intent on nation building, the production of children was essential to communal survival. Thus the suspicion of all those who do not contribute to the expansion of the population – eunuchs, homosexuals, unfertile “barren” women. The problem here is not about sex, it’s about children. This is what modern sex-obsessed conservatives miss about the argument that is going on within the pages of the Bible. The charge against homosexuality is not that people shouldn’t have sex this way, the charge is a lack of patriotism. [...]

It is very peculiar how religious conservatives have sought to construct an apologia for the nuclear family from the Bible. Broadly speaking, the Old Testament is perfectly relaxed about its heroes having multiple wives — Solomon had 700 of them. In contrast, the heroes of the New Testament are mostly single men, with little interest in the domestic duties and pleasures of a settled family life. St Paul even advised that it was “good for a man not to marry” (1 Corinthians, 7). To say the least, it is very hard work indeed to try and find a secure theological model of the nuclear family within the pages of Holy Scripture. [...]

Yes, like the nuclear family, this family has also been thinned out by the community dissolving properties of contemporary capitalism. But as a model, it is far more deeply rooted in the Christian witness than the nuclear family ever has been. Which makes the church’s continued obsession with policing the biological mechanics of love-making so thoroughly depressing.

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CNN: How changing aircraft altitude could cut flight's climate impact in half

By changing the flying altitude by just couple of thousand feet on fewer than 2% of all scheduled flights, a study by a team of scientists at Imperial College London concludes that aviation's damage to the climate could be reduced by as much as 59%. [...]

"So if we were to stop producing contrails, the effect of contrails would go away the next day," says Marc Stettler, who worked on the new study. "It's a way that the aviation industry can really quickly address its impact on climate change." [...]

Andrew Heymsfield, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, tells CNN Travel that the findings make sense, but questions how they could be employed in everyday aviation scenarios. [...]

While the change, if adopted, would have lead to some reduction in emissions, it's unlikely to assuage climate campaigners who want the aviation sector to drastically reduce its carbon footprint. Air travel currently contributes to between 2-3% of all global CO2 emissions and this would remain an issue even if airplanes were flying at different altitudes.

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Quartz: America’s most controversial office-lobby mural has been resurrected

In 1933, an office mural caused an uprising in New York City. Man at the Crossroads, a large fresco by celebrated Mexican painter Diego Rivera, was meant for the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, but a rogue figure in the composition caused the entire mural to be censored and eventually destroyed.[...]

Haskell’s excitement is understandable. Flanking Rivera’s impressive 5 ft x 15 ft, three-panel painting are two original sketches which are being shown publicly in the US for the first time. The sketches show how Rivera, a member of the Communist party, almost imperceptibly yet radically altered his proposal, by slyly adding a portrait of Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin to the right of the central figure. [...]

“The interesting thing about the commission is that both the Rockefellers and Rivera came into the project with misconception,” explains Haskell. The Rockefellers relied on Rivera’s track record of producing murals for other capitalist enterprises with little controversy. Rivera, who was heralded as the “star of the Mexican school” and world-renowned at that point, thought his corporate patrons would cede to his artistic whim.

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Advocate: Gay People Have Happier Marriages Than Straight People Inbox x Jadzia x Leonardo Bruni x Sudeep x

Women in different-sex marriages reported the highest level of stress, noted the report from authors Michael A. Garcia and Debra Umberson. Meanwhile, men in different-sex marriages and women in same-sex marriages fell in the middle. [...]

There are a number of potential reasons for this distressing disparity, and most relate to traditional expectations of gender. Historically, women were expected to perform the lion's share of the household chores — an expectation that still impacts different-sex marriages today. [...]

There's also good justification for The Kids Are All Right. Couples in same-sex marriages spend more time with their children, in part because they have a far lower percentage of children who are unintended or unwanted. The Times piece cited a 2011 study reporting that 45 percent of pregnancies in the United States were unintended, and 18 percent were unwanted.

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