The Guardian: Three reasons remainers should stop calling for a second referendum on Brexit

Opinion polls certainly show a small but clear majority for remain, and disappointment among Brexit voters too over issues including the fact that the NHS will not benefit from that promised £350m a week. But there needs to be a decent interval between the original and any new referendum. The general election massively qualified the plebiscite result. The British Election Study’s survey of 30,000 voters showed more than a third switching to vote Labour in protest at Theresa May’s initial choice of a Ukip-style hard Brexit and the way she refused to reach out to the 48% of voters who were not persuaded by the propaganda of the leave camp. [...]

In February 2014, Swiss voters decided to back EU immigration quotas. Their leaders bided their time and let the consequences of such a move sink in. More than a quarter of the Swiss population is foreign born, mainly from EU member states. The Swiss economy would collapse without access to European workers. Gradually a consensus emerged in the Swiss parliament to find a way of managing immigration with internal labour market controls that avoided direct discrimination against EU workers. This was acceptable to the European commission, and the status quo prior to the referendum was restored.

If the Swiss, with their quasi-religious belief in direct democracy, can allow their parliament quietly to sideline a populist vote so clearly against the national interest, at some stage the House of Commons can move away from the current veneration of a referendum result based mainly on lies as the final word on Britain’s relations with the EU27.

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Quartz: Why do Indians hate going to the gym?

Through a recent survey of 1.06 million people aged 20-35 years in Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Hyderabad, fitness aggregator Gympik found that only 30% reported having a gym or fitness centre membership. And even in this group, a mere 11% was regular for more than six months. [...]

For Ojha, this is because gyms are well aware that sticking to a fitness routine isn’t easy. On average, he said, only 15% of the people who have enrolled actually turn up to a gym. “Keeping this in mind, gyms over-subscribe their membership,” he explained, noting that a space that can handle 200 members a day would likely enroll 2,000 of them. [...]

But Gympik’s study reveals that a number of Indians now find hiring personal trainers a better alternative, despite the cost. Many others prefer convenient home workout videos. Moreover, a sizeable proportion is taking to other forms of exercise such as walking (30%), running (24%), cycling (11%), swimming (18%), and sports (18%).

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National Public Radio: 5 Truths About Trump Displayed In His Phoenix Rally

President Trump led an incendiary rally at which he ripped at cultural divides, played to white grievance, defended himself by stretching the truth or leaving out key facts, attacked members of his own party and the media, played the victim and threatened apocalyptic political consequences — all the while doing so by ignoring political norms and sensitivities. [...]

Played to white grievance. "They're trying to take away our culture," Trump said of activists calling for the removal of Confederate statues. "They're trying to take away our history. And our weak leaders, they do it overnight. These things have been there for 150 years, for 100 years. You go back to a university, and it's gone. Weak, weak people." [...]

Consider: There has been a usual pattern. Here's how it has gone — Trump says something attention-grabbing, outrageous or controversial. He gets lots of negative attention and criticism for it. Then, he adjusts and does something more on-script. The criticism dies down and people think maybe he is changing ("pivoting") and becoming more "presidential." And then he undercuts that with a tweet or rally soon after. [...]

Not loyal, except maybe to his family. Trump is all about Trump. Look at how he has dealt with his White House and administration. He nearly threw Attorney General Jeff Sessions under the bus, for example, threatening his job on Twitter — and Sessions was one of Trump's earliest supporters and was behind Trump when no one else in the Senate would back him.

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Quartz: Researchers have shown that politicians don’t let facts get in the way of their beliefs

Julian Christensen, a political science researcher at Aarhus University in Denmark, wasn’t particularly surprised to find that a politician’s prior belief affects how they interpret factual information—that much has been shown before. But he was taken back when he saw that politicians doubled down when they were given even more evidence that goes against their prior beliefs. “That was a surprise for us,” he says, adding, “It’s also kind of depressing.”

For the study, Christensen and a group of Danish researchers enrolled 954 Danish politicians from local government to participate in a series of experiments. At the heart of the study was a particularly thorny political debate: The role the private sector should play in the delivery of public services. While some politicians maintain that the public sector is the best supplier of public services, others argue that private contractors deliver services more efficiently. The politicians were randomly assigned to different groups. [...]

Despite this, the findings showed that when politicians were asked to evaluate the information, around 84% to 98% of politicians that received information that fit their prior belief interpreted the information they were given correctly. However, politicians who received information at odds with their beliefs correctly interpreted the information correctly only 38% to 61% of the time.

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Vox: Pope Francis is becoming the voice of compassion for the world's refugees

Monday the Vatican released a comprehensive policy document urging countries around the world to ban “arbitrary and collective expulsions” of refugees or migrants, and to expand the number of “safe and legal pathways” for migration.

The policy document, “Responding to Refugees and Migrants: Twenty Action Points,” was released by the Vatican’s section on Migrants and Refugees, a small department within the Vatican that Francis directly oversees. The document comes in anticipation of talks on immigration and migration at the United Nations scheduled for next year.

The memo also highlighted the importance of social and economic justice for those who have already migrated, including guaranteeing equal access to education for children. It also calls to prohibit “exploitation, forced labor, or trafficking” and guaranteeing the rights of undocumented workers who need to report abusive employers. Such stipulations reflect Francis’s well documented concern for workers’ issues more broadly.

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