The Conversation: Five reasons why we (eventually) become happier as we get olde

Happiness has become a modern obsession. Searching for it, holding on to it, and wishing it on our loved ones have all become motivating forces for how we live our lives.

We also use happiness as a measuring stick for life decisions. If a job doesn’t make us happy, we quit it. If a relationship stops making us happy, we leave it.

Happiness has lodged itself at the centre of our lives and we make some drastic choices desperately trying to reach it. This is especially true for people in their 30s and 40s, who are at the highest risk of using antidepressants and developing mood disorders than any other age group. [...]

So, if we are feeling unhappy today, can we hope for a better tomorrow? Fortunately, research suggests that we can, because regardless of our individual differences, we go through some natural changes in life that influence our happiness. These changes allow us to experience relatively high levels of happiness in our 20s, which then begin to tumble, reaching their lowest point in the late 30s and early 40s – when they start to climb again.

There are five reasons for this natural upturn.

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Motherboard: New Research Suggests Our Faces Evolved to Function Like Chimpanzees' Red Asses

Researchers out of Leiden University and Kyoto University used experiments based on the “inversion effect” for facial recognition. When chimpanzees are experts at recognizing something, such as other chimp-faces or human faces, they’re able to pick it out even if it’s flipped upside-down. Previous recognition studies, they write in their study published in PLOS, have examined every body part “except the most obvious one,” the butt. Obviously!“

The findings suggest an evolutionary shift in socio-sexual signaling function from behinds to faces, two hairless, symmetrical and attractive body parts, which might have attuned the human brain to process faces, and the human face to become more behind-like.” Our faces, our asses, our selves. [...]

As we evolved, faces, especially in females, grew to have redder, thicker lips and fattier cheeks. Our faces even blush as a signal for emotional or hormonal response, and can be interpreted as a socio-sexual cue.

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Vox: The bizarre political scandal that just led to the impeachment of South Korea's president

The country’s leader, Park Geun-hye, has been mired in a scandal so strange it sounds like something out of a comic book. Whereas most politicians fall from grace due to banal things like corruption or marital infidelity, the fall of South Korea’s first female president has resulted from her relationship with a shadowy figure from an obscure religious cult that critics have derided as a “shaman fortuneteller” with sinister, Rasputin-like influence over Park. [...]

Choi reportedly communicated regularly with the president’s staff, provided input on top political appointments, and received presidential briefings, and, by Park’s own admission, was allowed to edit a number of Park’s major policy speeches. She even apparently controlled the president’s wardrobe, dictating which colors to wear on which days. [...]

Students and faculty at the super-competitive women’s private school finally got fed up with all the preferential treatment Chung was getting and in October of this year began holding public demonstrations on campus, eventually pushing the university’s president to resign.

Media coverage of the university scandal quickly began to shift, though, focusing on the much juicier story of Chung’s mother, Choi Soon-sil, and her disturbingly close relationship with the South Korean president, prompting Choi to flee to Germany to escape the increasingly intense media scrutiny.

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The Conversation: Friday essay: what is it about Versailles?

When the triumphant Donald Trump welcomed Nigel Farage to his $100 million penthouse apartment in Trump Tower on 13 November, the two posed in his lift of gleaming gold. Trump’s hyper-bling apartment is his Versailles fantasy, where the oversized mirrors, picture-frames and furnishings speak of the wealth and power of America’s new Sun King. Despite the massive scale of his apartment, however, the furnishings are garish rather than exquisite, cluttered and over-large rather than inviting. But he is keen for us to take a virtual tour of his temple of tawdriness: [...]

The timing is perfect for the National Gallery of Australia’s “blockbuster” exhibition Versailles, Treasures from the Palace, opening today. The exhibition of more than 130 pieces is a stunning array of brilliant craftsmanship, almost all from the Museum of Versailles itself and from the Louvre. The objects in the exhibition have not left France – or even Versailles – before. It is a triumph for the NGA and for its Director Gerard Vaughan. [...]

The final cost of the palace, with its 700 rooms, 1,250 fireplaces and garden façade of 575 metres is impossible to ascertain, since much of the manual labour was done by soldiers when not at war. But it was certainly several billions in today’s terms – and as much again has been spent on restoration since 1950.

The palace was redolent of the might of a monarch with absolute powers – responsible to God alone for the wellbeing of his people. The Sun King’s successors – Louis XV (1715-74) and Louis XVI (1774-93) – continued the awe-inspiring display of majesty. By 1789, there were about 60,000 inhabitants, and 10 per cent of the monarchy’s annual tax revenues were spent on the palace and its surrounds.

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VICE: “Film is my tool”

This December, several hundred film fans from around the world are expected to gather in Kampala, Uganda. There will be no red carpet, no palm trees, and no billboards, just a series of text messages directing the guests to a series of otherwise undisclosed locations. Welcome to the Queer Kampala International Film Festival, the only gay film festival organized in a country where homosexuality is illegal. [...]

Kamoga Hassan is the lead organizer of the festival and one of a committed core of LGBTQ activists who dare to make their voices heard in one of the world’s riskiest places to be gay or lesbian. A 2014 Amnesty International report found that openly gay Ugandans have faced arbitrary arrest and sexual harassment, including when reporting crimes. Local NGO Sexual Minorities Uganda reported more than 260 “acts of intimidation” aimed at LGBTQ people in 2014 and 2015, of which 35 were violent vigilante attacks and 73 concerned loss of property or job loss. When openly gay or lesbian Ugandans organize public events, arrests are a regular occurrence. A 2014 anti-homosexuality act proposed the death penalty for gay men under certain circumstances. It was later nullified on procedural grounds, but human rights groups warn that vigilante groups continue to use the law to justify arbitrary violence. Under British colonial laws that have remained on the books, LGBTQ Ugandans still face a minimum two-year prison sentence for openly expressing their identity. [...]

I’ve been doing this work for almost six years now. I wanted to start earlier than that, but I felt it was too risky. In 2011, David Kato, who we consider the father of our gay rights movement, was killed. The entire community was shocked. Everyone was in fear; we didn’t know what to do. Should we run away and leave our country or should we stay behind and fight on? Then there was another incident where a guy working for an advertising company was outed — his photos and contact details were put in the newspapers. He lost his job and he was kicked out of the place he was renting… and then he was killed. They said he was a motorbike thief, but we think someone who knew about his sexuality used that excuse to justify that barbarity. That was when I decided to make my first [LGBTQ-related] film, “Outed,” based on his story. [...]

When you look at Uganda, it’s a very Christian country, 90 percent of the population, and it’s a poor country. We have a problem with radical evangelical pastors who come from outside Uganda, from countries like the U.S. They can’t pass antigay legislation in their own countries, so they’re doing it here, through our local religious leaders. It’s easier, because in a country where people are poor, people can be used. And a lot of people in the LGBT movement don’t have anything to fight back with.

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