CityLab: City vs. State: The Story So Far

The “Fight For 15” movement is really about cities. By November 2016, Riverstone-Newell writes that nearly forty cities and counties had agreed to local increases in the minimum wage ranging from $8.50 to $15.75 an hour in states such as Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, New Mexico, Maryland, Washington, and Maine (plus Washington, D.C.). Right now, 29 states set a higher minimum wage than the federal government and Arizona, Colorado, Maine, and Washington passed statewide raises in 2016. [...]

The fight over sanctuary cities has pitted federal, state, and city officials against each other and is about to come to a head this year as federal funding is in jeopardy. The most prominent example of preemption might be Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott has already blocked $1.8 million in grant funding to Travis County over its sanctuary policy and signed a “super preemption” law last month aimed at punishing local officials who do not cooperate with immigration authorities. It is set to go into effect in September. A Florida bill would impose a $5,000 per day fine on sanctuary cities (and Miami-Dade County has already voted to end its status as a sanctuary city) and North Carolina has a bill pending to strip cities of a variety of revenue sources if they operate as a sanctuary city. Other states that enacted restrictions this year include Mississippi, Georgia, and Indiana. [...]

Cities are up against more than Trump. The GOP controls 33 governorships and both chambers in 32 state legislatures. State preemption laws seek to strip cities of their abilities not just to oppose the White House agenda but to forge policies that reflect the desires, beliefs and concerns of their own residents. State legislatures in the U.S. have long had an anti-urban bias—in 2013, a study I wrote about in CityLab found that bills sponsored by legislators from small or medium-sized cities were overall twice as likely to pass as those that originated in big cities like Chicago or New York.

Another hurdle for cities is the constitutional challenge that they are legally considered “creatures of the state.” Republicans narrowly advocate for states’ rights in the face of federal power, arguing that cities don’t have the right to challenge the state. But this misremembers the origin of rights—they belong to people. Here’s how an Ohio Republican state senator summed up his opposition to Cleveland’s minimum wage hike: “[W]hen we talk about local control, we mean state control.”

read the article 

Mental Floss: How the Rainbow Became Associated with Gay Rights

In 1976, Baker noticed a proliferation of American flags around San Francisco—a celebration of the country’s bicentennial. "I thought, a flag is different than any other form of art. It’s not a painting, it’s not just cloth, it is not a just logo—it functions in so many different ways," Baker told the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). "I thought that we needed that kind of symbol, that we needed as a people something that everyone instantly understands. … It was necessary to have the Rainbow Flag because up until that we had the pink triangle from the Nazis—it was the symbol that they would use [to denote gay people]."

His reason for choosing a rainbow was simple: "We needed something beautiful, something from us. The rainbow is so perfect because it really fits our diversity in terms of race, gender, ages, all of those things. Plus, it's a natural flag—it's from the sky!" [...]

Baker’s design became popular pretty quickly, but demand for the flag skyrocketed after Harvey Milk was assassinated five months later, on November 27, 1978. As more and more people wanted to show their support for Milk and the LGBT community, it became harder to keep the supply of custom-created eight-striped rainbow banners up; Baker switched to premade rainbow-colored fabric even though it lacked the hot pink stripe. (The dye also had a tendency to run on cotton, so they switched to nylon. "The nylon caught on for two reasons: first of all, it’s very durable, and second, it lights beautifully," Baker told MoMA. "Dupont puts out a great product just for flags, it’s called Oxford Weave and it lights rather like stained glass and in some of the photographs you’ll see the sunlight coming through and it makes a rainbow on the pavement. That’s something that I think really captured the public’s imagination.")

read the article 

Quartz: The philosophical strategy underlying Emmanuel Macron’s favorite phrase

One clear marker of Ricoeur’s influence is a phrase Macron often uses: “et en même temps” (“and at the same time”). In a recent interview with the Irish Times, Eileen Brennan, a philosophy lecturer at Dublin City University, observes that Macron is prone to repeating the phrase when “he announces plans to do two seemingly incompatible things such as liberalising the labour market and protecting those in the most insecure positions.” (Brennan credits French philosopher Olivier Abel for noting the connection.) [...]

Macron has a similarly practical approach, Stiver notes. “He’s careful about not being too unrealistic in making promises that he can’t deliver, and trying at the same time to be imaginative about the future and thinking about things that can be done,” he says, adding, “The problem is, in politics, you often have competing truths. You have to make a decision about which way to lean when you have different ethical impulses pulling in different directions.” [...]

And that’s the approach Macron seems to be taking with his centrist political views. He’s shown a willingness to ask others for advice on what to do, to work with both left- and right-wing cabinet ministers, and to reconcile seemingly contradictory ideas. Unlike populist leaders on the left and right today, Macron isn’t a fervent idealist. Instead, he’s happy to compromise.

read the article 

Al Jazeera: Forces loyal to Libya's Haftar 'burn 6,000 books'

Forces loyal to renegade Libyan general Khalifa Haftar have been accused of burning more than 6,000 books, including works on religion, politics, poetry and philosophy.

According to a video posted on Facebook by Al Manara, a Libyan media platform, more than 6,000 books - including reported biographies of the Prophet Muhammad - were destroyed by a police force in the eastern city of Benghazi on Saturday.

The video showed a police officer claiming that the seized literature was promoting the ideas of "Daesh" (the Arabic term for Islamic State of Iraq and Levant or ISIL), as he sat behind a desk covered with books, including classical Islamic works.

The officer said the books "promoted violence" and the "ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood", which has been banned by UAE and Egypt.

In January, more than 100 Libyan writers and intellectuals, including renowned Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho, condemned a seizure of books deemed "erotic" or anti-Islamic by authorities in eastern Libya.

read the article 

IFLScience: So Coconut Oil Is Actually Really, Really Bad For You

According to a key advisory notice published in the journal Circulation – one which looks at all kinds of fats and their links to cardiovascular disease – coconut oil is packed with saturated fats. In fact, 82 percent of coconut oil is comprised of saturated fats, far more than in regular butter (63), olive oil (14), peanut oil (17), and sunflower oil (10). [...]

“Because coconut oil increases [bad] cholesterol, a cause of cardiovascular disease, and has no known offsetting favorable effects, we advise against the use of coconut oil,” the AHA conclude. In essence, there is nothing to gain and everything to lose by using coconut oil in cooking.

If you already have high bad cholesterol levels, then coconut oil is potentially quite dangerous to consume or use in acts of culinary creations. Swapping it out for olive oil, according to the AHA, will reduce your cholesterol levels as much as cutting-edge, cholesterol-lowering drugs.

read the article