Vox: Psychologists surveyed hundreds of alt-right supporters. The results are unsettling.

A lot of the findings align with what we intuit about the alt-right: This group is supportive of social hierarchies that favor whites at the top. It’s distrustful of mainstream media and strongly opposed to Black Lives Matter. Respondents were highly supportive of statements like, “There are good reasons to have organization that look out for the interests of white people.” And when they look at other groups — like black Americans, Muslims, feminists, and journalists — they’re willing to admit they see these people as “less evolved.” [...]

There was a time when psychologists feared that “social desirability bias” — people unwilling to admit they’re prejudiced, for fear of being shamed — would prevent people from answering such questions about prejudice truthfully. But this survey shows people will readily admit to believing all sorts of vile things. And researchers don’t need to use implicit or subliminal measures to suss it all out. [...]

On average, they rated Muslims at a 55.4 (again, out of 100), Democrats at 60.4, black people at 64.7, Mexicans at 67.7, journalists at 58.6, Jews at 73, and feminists at 57. These groups appear as subhumans to those taking the survey. And what about white people? They were scored at a noble 91.8. (You can look through all the data here.) [...]

Among the measures where the alt-right and comparison groups don’t look much different in the survey results is closeness and relationships with other people. The alt-righters reported having about equal levels of close friends, which means these aren’t necessarily isolated, lonely people. They’re members of a community.

Also important: Alt-righters in the sample aren’t all that concerned about the economy. The survey used a common set of Pew question that asks about the current state of the economy, and about whether participants feel like things are going to improve for them. Here, both groups reported about the same levels of confidence in the economy.

read the article

The Atlantic: Can Humans Understand Chimps?

During the experiment, volunteers see 20 videos of chimpanzees and bonobos, each of which contains a single gesture. You see the action once in real time, and again in slow motion. Your job is to choose from four possible interpretations, and to rate how confident you are in your guess. In case it’s hard to work out what is happening, each video is accompanied by charming illustrations to show you what to look out for. (Graham, who did the stylized blocky drawings, calls them Bonobobots.)[...]

But chimp gestures are complicated, in much the same way human words are. Humans have successfully trained famous apes, like Koko the gorilla or Nim Chimpsky the chimp, to use sign language with us, but apes naturally use gestures to communicate with each other. In many ways, these actions are far closer to human language than the sounds coming from the animals’ mouths. The calls of great apes are typically emotive, like screaming in pain, whining in hunger, or hooting in happiness. Very rarely do such calls signal any meaning, and very rarely are they directed at a specific listener. [...]

In the 1980s, scientists began documenting a few dozen gestures by studying chimps in zoos. But captive animals turned out to have tiny vocabularies, as Hobaiter showed by tracking wild chimps in Uganda’s Budongo Forest Reserve. To do so, she had to keep pace with fast-moving, tree-living animals from the ground, while filming often subtle movements from weird angles and through obscuring foliage. And after that hard work, she had to pore over the footage, again and again, to note what the apes are doing and how their peers responded. [...]

Human gestures vary considerably between cultures, but ape gestures do not. Every individual uses the same gestures in the same ways, with apparently no room for idiosyncrasy. What’s more, different species of great apes use the same signals. While Hobaiter was watching chimps, Graham and other members of Richard Byrne’s team were observing bonobos, orangutans, and gorillas. And even though these animals have very different hands and styles of moving, they seem to share a common set of gestures. It seems likely that they inherited this repertoire from their common ancestor—and that we did too.

read the article

Vox: Debating the liberal case against identity politics

Since 1980, movement politics has been dead. What has really changed the country is the electoral strategy of the Republican Party and conservatives, along with conservative media. A focus on groups, a focus on ourselves, and a focus on social movements rather than winning elections in out-of-the-way places, combined with campus politics and Hollywood politics, simply turned off a good part of this country. [...]

The word “capitulation” is the problem. That's movement politics thinking. People in movement politics are very worried about getting their aprons dirty, and I am sick and tired of noble defeats. We have to get dirty. This is a struggle for power. This is not a seminar. This is not a therapy session. We are out there struggling for the future of this country.

So yes, we have to emphasize certain things and not emphasize other things. We compromise. We try to remain silent on things that will be too contentious. It's not about being morally pure. It is about seizing power so you can help the people you care about. That's all that matters right now. [...]

The left has lost the ability to do that for the reasons we've been talking about, because we think of people in terms of groups. We also think of ourselves very much as self-determining individuals. We get to define who we are. Everything is malleable. Our identities are malleable, and so we don't talk about what we share, and we don't talk about what it is to be a citizen and what it is to have duties.

read the article 

Haaretz: More Israelis Left Israel Than Moved Back in Six Year Record

After years of a decline in the numbers of Israelis leaving the country for an extended period, the trend reversed itself in 2015 and for the first time since 2009 the number of leavers grew.

Approximately 16,700 Israelis left the country to live overseas on a long-term basis in 2015, mostly with their families, while only about 8,500 returned after living abroad for at least a year, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported on Monday. [...]

The year 2015 also saw the lowest number of Israelis returning home any time in the past 12 years. The numbers of those returning has been steadily decreasing since 2012.

Among those leaving, in 2015 the average age was 27.6 years and 53% were male. Among returnees, the average age was a slightly older 29.8 and 55% were male. Nearly two thirds of the returnees had been abroad for no more than three years. [...]

Around 95% of those leaving were Jews, who account for 80% of the overall population. However,  54% were born outside Israel and had immigrated to Israel from Europe (64%), or America and Australia (25%), while 11% moved to Israel from African or Asian countries.

read the article 

Financial Times: Trump and the corporate backlash | World