Stellar Development Foundation proposes to disable inflation mechanism from its protocol – The Block Crypto

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The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), the non-profit organization that supports thedevelopment of the Stellar blockchain network, has proposed to disable the inflation mechanism from its protocol.

The foundation announced the proposal Monday, saying that it is a good idea as inflation is not benefiting projects building on the Stellar network. In the networks inflation mechanism, new lumens (XLM) tokens are added to the network at the rate of 1% each year. Each week, the protocol distributes these tokens to any account that gets over 0.05% of the votes from other accounts in the network that hold a balance of at least 100 XLM.

A few Stellar ecosystem projects receive enough votes to qualify for inflation, but the good people who vote for those projects are essentially opting out of inflation pools. Theyre choosing to make a donation, the foundation said.

It stressed that it is just a proposal and that Stellar validators will have to vote on it. The foundation has already disabled the inflation mechanism in its version 12 of the Stellar core network and asked validators to decide if they would accept the release. But it "encourages" validators to vote to accept it.

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Stellar Development Foundation proposes to disable inflation mechanism from its protocol - The Block Crypto

MineRP to partner with Karuschain to adopt blockchain platform – Mining Technology

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Mining software and consultations provider MineRP has signed a letter of intent (LoI) to partner with blockchain platform Karuschain.

As part of the signing, MineRP will adopt Karuschains blockchain platform creating a path for data immutability and traceability in the mining and precious metals industry.

The proposed partnership aims at creating an opportunity for further transparency, as well as ensuring the secure management and tracking of crucial data throughout the mining and precious metals supply chain.

MineRP has been working with Karuschains executive and technical crew to partner on an integrated blockchain solution that meets the demands of the companys customers.

Karuschains blockchain platform is modular by design, and improves a range of existing industry technologies and software systems by offering customisable, scalable and interoperable solutions.

By applying this technology to MineRPs existing systems, Karuschain will enable seamless traceability and audit reports through simple user-friendly dashboards. It also enables tracking of processes with a digital signature, from extraction to the final consumer.

This proposed partnership represents the way in which digitalisation is transforming the mining and metals industries.

According to an analysis conducted by the World Economic Forum, approximately $425bn of value is said to be generated from the digitalisation of the mining and metals industry by 2025.

Karuschain CEO and founder Richard Verkley said: I have been involved in some incredible growth businesses in my time, but I have never witnessed the synergy between two companies like this before.

This relationship is creating a new-world software solution that truly will become a leading industry force driving dramatic cost benefits, enhanced security, information innovations, and an opportunity for next-generation compliance.

MineRP operates five offices across four continents, and has partnerships with SAP, Deloitte, IBM and GE, while Karuschain provides end-to-end traceability and tracking for the global precious metals industry.

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Vontobel to offer structured product using blockchain technology – Investment Europe

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Vontobel becomes the first issuer worldwide to offer a classic structured product for trading and custody using blockchain technology by means of a Smart Contract.

Vontobel, together with Lienhardt & Partner Privatbank Zrich AG as the first partner, adds another product to the digital financial ecosystem that is based on Blockchain technology.

The structured product is a tracker certificate based on the successful Vontobel Swiss Research Basket. Smart Contracts are able to map all the functionalities of contracts - or in this case financial products - and make the transaction chain unalterable.

The Swiss private bank is consistently pursuing its strategy in the blockchain segment, which began in 2016 with the launch of the first tracker certificate on Bitcoin. This was initially followed by the option of storing digital assets in the Digital Asset Vault. Today, the next step is the issuance of a structured product in the form of a smart contract. The product can be traded between Vontobel and financial intermediaries without having to make any technological adjustments.

"The mapping of structured products to so-called Smart Contracts is a logical further development that rounds off our range of digital assets. By distributing financial products on the blockchain, we are able to offer a cycle of services based on this technology and at the same time open up new distribution channels and trading platforms," said Roger Studer, head of Vontobel Investment Banking.

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Vontobel to offer structured product using blockchain technology - Investment Europe

Could Blockchain Revolutionize the Real Estate Industry? – RisMedia.com

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(Above) John Heithaus, Heithaus Properties LLC, and Chao Cheng-Shorland, ShelterZoom, discuss How Blockchain May Change the Future of Real Estate at RISMedias 2019 Real Estate CEO Exchange. (Credit: Korin Krossber of PlanOmatic)

Blockchain has become a buzzword in recent years, and according to two real estate industry experts, the tech phenomenon is worthy of the buzz.

John L. Heithaus, principal of Heithaus Properties, LLC, and Chao Cheng-Shorland, co-founder and CEO of ShelterZoom, discussed this innovative technology at RISMedias 2019 Real Estate CEO Exchange in New York City last week.

During a session titled, How Blockchain May Change the Future of Real Estate, Heithaus noted blockchain is making substantive changes in many other industries, including financial services, healthcare and homeland security. Now, he said, its the real estate industrys turn.

Heithaus suggested the home-buying and -selling process is still too complicated and slow, and it needs to evolve to accommodate todays consumers, who are used to an increasingly fast-paced, technologically driven world.

Theres been a tremendous amount of innovation in our business, Heithaus acknowledged. Zillow, Trulia, Homes.com and others have done a great job of revolutionizing the searching experience. Yet when it comes to actually buying or selling property, the process needs improvement. We must do better.

He said blockchain adoption could go a long way toward streamlining real estate transactions.

So, what is blockchain technology? If you search online, youll find a definition similar to this one from Harvard Business Review: Blockchain is an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way. Depending on where you search, the explanation can get much more complex from there.

Fortunately, according to Heithaus, the beauty of blockchain is that you dont necessarily need to understand how it works in order to benefit from it. For example, he said consumers dont know the inner workings of an automated teller machine, yet they still know how to grab cash from an ATM on the go quickly and easily.

You dont need a user manual, you dont have to sit in a training classyou just go up and push the buttons and the darn things work, Heithaus said of ATMs. He emphasized that the key to blockchain adoption in the real estate industry is to ensure that blockchain-based solutions are as transparent and straightforward as possible for the user.

Cheng-Shorland agreed, adding that ShelterZoom, a developer of blockchain-based solutions for real estate professionals, aims to ensure that users dont worry about whats underneath the surface.

You just need to understand the benefits it can give you, she said.

John Heithaus, Heithaus Properties LLC, and Chao Cheng-Shorland, ShelterZoom, discuss How Blockchain May Change the Future of Real Estate at RISMedias 2019 Real Estate CEO Exchange. (Credit: Korin Krossber of PlanOmatic)

As for those potential benefits, Cheng-Shorland said blockchain enables interconnectivity, speed, trust and security throughout the entire real estate transaction process.

One of the first things I observed about the real estate industry, Cheng-Shorland said, was that it is truly fragmented. She suggested that the buying and selling of homes can take months, in large part, because theres no interconnectivity between all the contracts, the forms, the people.

According to Cheng-Shorland, blockchain technology could provide the necessary interconnectivity and interoperability, enabling real estate transactions to be done digitally and allowing documents and data, all in one place, to talk to each other. It could help eliminate paperwork, manage offers and negotiations, and ultimately save a significant amount of time.

Blockchain is very much built around agents to help them streamline their operations, cut down huge costs and speed up their process, she said. Speed is your friend. If you have the speed, youll have more listings, youll get more sales done and youll get more commission checks.

Cheng-Shorland pointed out that the iBuyer business model is growing popular among industry stakeholders and consumers due to its expediency, but she claimed in order to really enhance that model, you need the blockchain because it enables that speed, which other traditional technology does not have.

Cheng-Shorland said blockchain could also help real estate professionals build trust with clients and colleagues because everything is self-governed and the technology enables instant communication. Furthermore, she said blockchain is a secure transaction platform that allows users to hold onto their own data.

Even we, as a service provider, dont see any data going through your system, she added.

Cheng-Shorland said the fragmentation issue across the whole real estate transaction process is the immediate problem were trying to solve. It is a big task to tackle.

For its part, ShelterZoom has developed a suite of blockchain-based solutions to help spur interconnectivity in the industry. Most recently, the tech company announced its Contract of Things (CoT), designed to transform forms, documents and contracts into fully digital and interoperable assets.

Because its relatively newand rather complicatedblockchain may be confusing or seem intimidating. But during the CEO Exchange session, Heithaus reminded the 300-plus attendees about another once-mysterious tech innovation people were wary of: the internet.

Heithaus showed a slide displaying Coldwell Bankers very first website. He explained that the site was launched back in 1998. With its bland colors and clunky layout, it looked like a technological relic in 2019.

Heithaus told the crowd, Part of my job was to go around the country and convince all the directors we worked with that this internet thing was a good thing.

They chased me out of there with pitchforks, he quipped. Now fast-forward almost 25 years later, imagine an agent, a team, a brokerage without a website.

Will blockchain change the future of real estate? Only time will tell. Meanwhile, Heithaus urged anyone interested in blockchain to reach out to Cheng-Shorland and ShelterZoom for more in-depth information.

For CEO Exchange continuing coverage, visitRISMedia.com.

Joe Bebon is RISMedias associate editor. Email him your real estate news ideas at jbebon@rismedia.com.

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Cross Reality And Blockchain – A New Era Of The VR Industry – Forbes

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According to theVirtual Reality Market Forecast to 2024, published on the worlds largest market research store, the VR industry is about to face a 35% annual growth in the upcoming years.

With peoples interest in VR headsets growing, the industry is headed toward a stable path of development. Naturally, with such rapid growth comes the need for improvement.

Competitors in the VR industry are adopting new technologies and techniques to offer the best virtual reality experience the world has ever seen. One of these improvements includes the integration of blockchain as a solution for cross-reality platforms.

Cross Reality

What Is Cross Reality

There are several ways to define cross reality:

Cross reality and the VR technology in general are most popular in the entertainment industry. However, such technology has applications in numerous industries from engineering and medicine to TV, film, and marketing.

How Is Blockchain Integrated in Cross Reality

Competitors in the VR industry saw plenty of potential in blockchain as a decentralized system that could revolutionize virtual reality.

A blockchain can be useful in the virtual reality space in multiple ways:

The No Borders Corporation used blockchain to connect the virtual and the real world with their recently-formed startup calledAngeliumwhichis essentially a cross reality platform that offers an interactive lifestyle where users can communicate and offer services within a virtual world. The platform is based on unique blockchain technology that a blend of both worlds.

Founded by Rio Takeshi Kubo, the platform is going to allow users to use tokens from the virtual world in the real world, as well as sell real physical items in the virtual world.Rio also created the Angelium Wallet, which serves as a passport that connects the two worlds. His main goal is to turn Angelium into a global standard as a blockchain-based cross-reality platform.

The Future of the VR Industry

The complex technology packed under the term virtual reality is seen as the future of our digital world. VR started out as a gaming trend but this widely applicable technology quickly exceeded expectations.

Virtual reality and X reality allow users to create new experiences and immerse themselves into a new world. With blockchain at its core, cross reality will allow people to go as far as opening virtual businesses, attending events, shopping, or even selling goods or services.

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Cross Reality And Blockchain - A New Era Of The VR Industry - Forbes

Take a look around the brand new hotels Thomas Cook customers will never get to stay in – MyLondon

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Last week saw thousands of holidaymakers stranded abroad when tour operator Thomas Cook went into liquidation.

A huge repatriation programme is still ongoing to bring people home but it's not just the company's customers who have been hit.

Thomas Cook owned a worldwide collection of hotel brands and resorts including Sentido, Sunwing, Sunprime and Smartline.

The latest hotel brand to open under the same umbrella was Cook's Club, a design-led but affordable hotel group aimed at the millennial generation, reports the MEN.

Recognising a change in appetites among young people, Thomas Cook retired its Club 18-30 brand late last year and switched the focus from hedonism to health.

Gone are fishbowl cocktails and all-night parties, replaced with vegetable smoothies and properly crafted drinks.

Hotel spaces are designed to be as beautiful, and as Instagram-friendly, as possible, down to the unicorn inflatables scattered across the surface of the swimming pools.

It was a huge overhaul and, on the surface of things, seemed to be successful.

The first to open in June 2018 was Cooks Club Hersonissos, on the Greek island of Crete, with seven new hotels opening under the brand in little more than a year.

Cook's Clubs can be found in Gambia, Turkey, Mallorca, Bulgaria, Greece and Egypt.

The latest was Cook's Club El Gouna, located on the water's edge of a luxurious man-made lagoon just north of Hurghada.

This hotel, on Egypt's Red Sea coast, only opened its doors in August, and only had its launch party two weeks ago - the Thomas Cook yellow heart above the door got to oversee that, but won't see the hotel filled with guests.

On a very recent trip to the hotel, I found an understated decor of brushed concrete, Bedouin-style floor cushions, palm trees and wooden decks.

The muted grey and brown colours chosen for the hotel contrasted sharply against the piercing blue of the swimming pool, and the murky blue-green of the lagoon beyond.

Grey sunbeds around the water's edge were as comfortable as real beds, with matching bean bag chairs scattered beneath the shade of umbrellas.

A variety of food stations, from wood-fired pizzas to fresh grilled meats to salads and burgers, were built into the 'Cantina' to feed guests on either a bed and breakfast or half-board basis.

Even the fitness facilities were gorgeous, dumbbells and benches carved from polished wood and presented beneath a bamboo canopy.

It's a real looker of a hotel, and as someone sitting nicely within the target demographic of 20 to 35 years old, the appeal was obvious.

With virtually round-the-clock DJs stationed at the poolside, it was common on my trip to see the young and beautiful people of Egypt (as well as holidaymakers mostly from Germany) draped over fruit-shaped inflatables sipping on Aperol spritzes.

A huge sign at the poolside had light-hearted messages such as: "Keep your fluids - in certain circumstances, the exchange of body fluids may be a good idea but... spit, snot and pee do not belong in the pool!"

El Gouna itself is a network of 36 twisting and interconnected islands, all made by hand only three decades ago by construction company Orascom.

The desert was carved away to entice the ocean in, and now the resort boasts three huge marinas, two golf courses, 11 spas and around 2600 hotel rooms - all under a blanket of year-round sunshine.

Tuk tuks crawl over the resort like colourful bugs, whisking visitors around for a mere 15 Egyptian pounds (around 1 sterling) per person per trip.

Popular restaurants include Morgan's Beach Restaurant, where all-you-can-eat seafood buffets showcase some of the best seafood in the region, and Captain's Inn Steak House, where dishes are presented sizzling.

Day trips to the uninhabited island of Mahmya, where pristine coral reefs are surrounded by dusty mountains, are plentiful and worthwhile.

Boats frequently make trips to 'Dolphin House' too, a patch of the Red Sea where dolphins swim alongside snorkellers and effortlessly overtake luxury yachts.

All of these trips and more were arranged easily and quickly in typical package holiday style by a Thomas Cook rep, popping up at the hotel in his sunny yellow uniform and speaking proudly of the 178-year-old company he worked for.

Due to open in El Gouna this November was Casa Cook, another Thomas Cook-owned hotel brand with a similar design aesthetic but an even more luxurious travel experience.

Though both properties in El Gouna will remain operational, bumpered from the liquidation by Orsascom, it's not certain who will save the other properties around the globe.

Cook's Club El Gouna and Casa Cook El Gouna will be renamed and franchised out to an alternative, yet-to-be-confirmed tour operator.

The arrival of these two brands gave Thomas Cook a 21st century update - though it appears to have been too little, too late to save the travel giant.

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Take a look around the brand new hotels Thomas Cook customers will never get to stay in - MyLondon

Hear Pitbull, Blake Shelton Cut Loose in New Collaboration Get Ready – Rolling Stone

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Country singer and Voice coach Blake Shelton joins rapper Pitbull on Get Ready, a party-friendly track from the Florida-based artists newly released album Libertad 548.

Built on top of a stomping, four-on-the-floor beat and a hard-rock guitar riff, Get Ready features Shelton singing a hook nicked from Ram Jams update of the traditional song Black Betty. Whoa-oh, get ready/Bam-ba-lam, he sings. Get ready to ride. Mr. Worldwide, meanwhile, marinates in nonstop-party hedonism during his verses: Wildin out, fill my cup to the tip/Ridin out to Atlantic City, he intones at one point.

Libertad 548 was released on Friday and its title honors Pitbulls father, who was involved in the 1980 Mariel Boatlift that transported many Cuban refugees to the U.S. mainland. Other collaborators on the album include Daddy Yankee, Lil Jon, Becky G and Ne-Yo. Get Ready isnt Pitbulls first collision with country music, either he appeared on Keith Urbans Sun Dont Let Me Down from 2016s Ripcord, as well as with Kesha on the hit single Timber, which blended elements of country and dance music.

Shelton just kicked off his 17th season of The Voice and is now the NBC shows longest-tenured coach. On December 13th, hell release Fully Loaded: Gods Country, a collection of recent hits and new tracks. His latest single is Hell Right, a collaboration with Trace Adkins.

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Hear Pitbull, Blake Shelton Cut Loose in New Collaboration Get Ready - Rolling Stone

The 2019 Porsche Speedster Might Be The Last Supercar That Actually Feels Good With A Manual Transmission – Jalopnik

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The Porsche 911 Speedster turns anywhere it stops into a postcard scene. Looking at it is fun; sitting inside is spectacular. Then you step on the gas, and die, drowned in a sense of pure heroism and hedonism. It is nothing short of glorious and youll never forget it.

(Full Disclosure: Porsche flew me to Europe, allowed access to its museum and a small fleet of its finest current cars for a few days.)

We got the comically decadent task of road testing the artful 911 Speedster, extreme 911 GT3 RS and winged superhero 911 GT2 RS Weissach on a trip from the companys HQ in Stuttgart to the site of the 24 Hours of Spa endurance race in Belgium. The short story is, the cars are good.

Now, doing shakedown trips with new cars is a pretty routine and regulated experience, usually. Take the machine to speed. Take it back down. Maybe theres a track component. Take it around town and pull over for some photos while your coffees refreshed. At the end of the day, notes are compared and faults are weighed against features for an unbiased analysis.

But on a sun-soaked backroad trip through woodsy Germany and out onto the unrestricted Autobahn, the Speedster would allow no such thing. I intentionally waited a few weeks to write about this car after driving it, in hopes that its spell would wear off and I could rattle off a remotely objective report, but its pointless to fight it.

The new Speedsters not an instant classic just because it looks goodthough, I mean, come on, its pretty enough to make you want to dig into a thesaurus for something like... pulchritudinous.

But theres backstory too. The O.G. Speedster hit American asphalt in 1954, per Porsches historical record, as the cheap Porsche. Back then, people typically paid less money for fewer comforts; the idea of spending more for a stripped-out performance variant that weve fully embraced in 2019 was not a thing back then.

Automobile importer Max Hoffmann, who was basically Porsches entire U.S. dealership network in the 50s, convinced the Germans to send him something he could sell for less than $3,000. The result was an ultra-lean sports car made to look extra lithe with a raked windshield to appeal to folks who appreciated speed and European style over everything. James Dean famously copped an early Speedster, and more importantly, it helped establish the driving purist branding for the company. (A Speedster was not the car Dean fatally crashed in, by the waythat was a 550 Spyder.)

An inflation calculator tells us $3,000 in 1954 is about $29,000 in todays money. The 2019 Speedster retails for over a quarter-million bucks.

In between, there have been a few other iterations of the Speedster. You can comb through the specifics on Porsches site, but basically the concept has stayed the same while also completely changing.

Every Speedster has been a fast convertible with a uniquely sleek design and minimal luxury features. But the cars designation has evolved from stripped-down bargain-basement special to limited production collectors item, because guess which is more profitable for Porsche?

The new Speedster costs more than four 718 Boxsters but, in defense of its asking price, theres more to it than just 911 plus low windshield and scalloped hood.

The 2019 Porsche Speedster has the flat-six cylinder engine from the GT3 with the individual throttle body system from the GT3 R racing car. A silencer system Porsche describes as very special on the outlet side helps the car pass emissions.

You may have seen a BMW or a Honda once that had weird little tube things sprouting from one side

Individual throttle bodies are known in racing for throttle response, performance, better part-load throttle behavior, more torque in the mid-range, and simply faster reaction to changes, Andreas Preuninger of Porsche Motorsport told Road & Track when the Speedster came out.

The Speedsters tuned fuel injectors and a stainless steel exhaust also help dial the 4.0-liter GT3 engine to a 502 claimed horsepower hooked up to a three-pedal manual transmission in a package that weighs in at a Porsche-posted 3,230 pounds.

If you can shift fast enough, the Speedster can allegedly carry you from a stop to 60 mph in 3.8 seconds and, if youre brave enough, on to a top speed of 192 mph.

Even with weeks, months to cool on me, Speedsters still got me hopelessly seduced. Its near faultless. Its marvelous.

Its uniquely engaging without being too hard to drive, it stands out without making you look like an asshole, and its physically impossible to walk away from without looking back at over your shoulder.

Entering a Speedster is like climbing aboard any other car, except when the doors open and you drop yourself into the seat, youre falling about twice as far as you expect to and land in a little bucket with as much cushioning as a cake fork.

Ow, I said to Kevin McCauley; photographer, air-cooled 911 owner and avowed Porschephile who had already installed himself in the right seat. He laughed. A nervous laugh, like the two of us had been asked to take the Mona Lisa off the wall at the Louvre and Id just almost dropped it.

We burbled out of Porsches museum parking lot in Stuttgart and plunged into traffic briefly before finding ourselves in the countryside. The industrial city where Porsches and Mercedes-Benzes are built melts away to grassy fields and idyllic villages surprisingly quickly, even if youre respectful of the speed limit.

Too quickly to learn anything about the cars nature, except for one thing: if we wanted to run the rest of the day with the top down (obviously, we did) we were going to need some sunscreen.

Our $274,500 art piece on wheels landed in a grocery store parking lot, and after being briefly distracted by a two-door third-generation Mitsubishi Pajero sitting near us (neat!) I began rummaging through the shelves before realizing store aisles were labeled in German and English is not the universal language Id been raised to believe it was.

Sprek-en English? I asked the cashier, attempting to veil my boorishness with the politest tone I could contrive. She shook her head. Undeterred, I lifted the bottle Id plucked from within the shop. Sunscreen? Again with the head shaking, this time accompanied by a look of ominous concern.

Eventually, another customer led me to a red canister, which I bought, brought back out to the car, presented triumphantly to McCauley, and proceeded to shake up and dump onto my skin.

Out squired a thick dollop of white goo the size of a baseball with the consistency of shaving cream and an overwhelming scent of watermelon. Now my co-driver was laughing for real.

Huh, I said, re-examining the canister, tilting it with the hand that wasnt coated in an unsettling stickiness. I mean, it says SPF 15. Lets just run it and get the hell out of here.

After slathering ourselves in the frothy mystery gel we were pretty sure had some UV-protective qualities, I cranked the left-hand key to start the flat engine behind our heads and we Speedstered off into the forest smelling like tropical fruit.

The convertible was happy to settle into a canter through Germanys little roads among big trees. The car never felt like it was struggling against restraints, or provoking us with the snorts and ticks coming from the powerplant behind us.

Functionally, the most memorable element of this car is its manual shifter. Every gear change feels like that last move in a chess game, filling you with the satisfaction of a decisive victory. Click-click-click. Lever throws are a short-medium length and the clutch has some heft. Automatic throttle blipping could make a mediocre driver look like an expert, and it makes any driver feel comfortable in no time.

The Speedsters greatest accomplishment isnt flat-out speed, though Porsche claims it can do almost 200 mph. The best thing about this car is not even its cornering abilities, despite a suite of handling hardware and traction control tech that can keep it planted and predictable through wild driving.

What really stuck with me, and still has me looking wistfully back on my photograph of this trip, is just how well this car sells soul. It lives in a perfect middle ground between exceptional and accessible, where theres an intensity to casual driving but in a sense thats invigorating rather than draining.

Theres plenty of driver-assistance and infotainment tech onboard, but the steering wheels spokes are naked of annoying buttons or switches. The soft top requires some manual operation, but it clicks and cinches effortlessly.

The car feels alive without being untamable, its intense without being intimidating. The Speedster might be able to hang near 200 mph, but its still exciting at 20 because of everything you interface with inside feels well-weighted and purposeful.

A fast, athletic and elegant GT car might not be the best choice for every application, but if it were, this thing would be perfect.

Wind noise a bit bothersome above 150 mph

A car as artful as it is characterful

502 HP 346 LB-FT

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The 2019 Porsche Speedster Might Be The Last Supercar That Actually Feels Good With A Manual Transmission - Jalopnik

Royal romancer: Which royal had the most mistresses? The biggest Lotherio revealed – Express

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Kings and Queens throughout history have often been attractive propositions for royal mistresses and misters. These extramarital paramours have long been considered to hold considerable power given their choice of mate and the influence they sometimes have over the monarch with whom they are connected. Out of the British Royal Family, which royal monarch has been the biggest lothario?

Royal marriages were historically made for political purposes and kings often found love with a mistress.

Many of these mistresses led scintillating lives, mothered illegitimate children and carried out huge influence over their royal lover.

The names of these mistresses throughout history have become synonymous with notoriety and scandal, but which royal stud had the biggest public track record with mistresses?

Two kings are known for having at least six mistresses during their lives.

The first of these monarchs is King George IV, who reigned from January 1820 to June 1830.

King George IV led an extravagant lifestyle and was plunged into exorbitant debt as a result of his hedonism.

Before he ascended the throne, his father refused to help him with his debts unless he married his cousin Princess Caroline of Brunswick.

The Prince agreed and married her in April 1795, but the pair were ill-matched and the couple formally separated after the birth of their only child Princess Charlotte.

After that time, he met Maria Fitzherbert, who he remained close to throughout his life, despite several periods of estrangement.

Georges mistresses included Mary Robinson, who was offered 20,000 to become his mistress and was later paid off with a generous pension when she threatened to sell his letters to the newspapers when the affair ended in 1781.

He also saw Grace Elliott in 1782, the divorced wife of a physician, with whom he had an illegitimate daughter named Georgina Seymour.

His affair with Frances Villiers, Countess of Jersey, began in 1793, after which she, aged 40 and a grandmother and mother of ten, dominated his life for some years.

In his later life, his mistresses were the Marchioness of Hertford, who used her influence turn the Prince towards the Tories, before her relationship with him ended in 1819.

The last mistress of King George IV was Marchioness Conyngham, who reportedly decided in 1806 to become his mistress but did not succeed until he became king in 1820.

Their relationship came to an end with Georges sudden death in 1830.

The other lothario king known for his liaisons was King Edward VII.

Edward VII was King of Great Britain and Ireland from January 1901 until his death in 1910.

Before Prince Charles, he was the longest-serving heir apparent to the British throne.

He married Alexandra of Denmark in 1863 but had several affairs throughout his life.

His first mistress was Sarah Bernhardt, who frequently attended her London and Paris performances and once, as a prank, played the part of a cadaver in one of her plays.

When he was King, he travelled on the royal yacht to visit her at her summer home on Belle-le.

Lady Randolph Churchill, an American socialite and the mother of British prime minister Winston Churchill, was the second mistress to Edward VII.

Celia Lee who wrote a biography about the Churchills, wrote of Lady Randolph: It was not a love affair between Jennie and the Prince but a matter of sexual convenience for both of them.

The way the Prince wrote to her, asking her to serve him tea in her geisha dress would have been a totally inappropriate way to address a woman, married, widowed or single.

This, and the amount of time they spent together, marks her out as having a sexual relationship with him.

Edward VIIs third affair was British-American socialite, actress and producer Lillie Langtry who the Prince met in 1877 at a dinner party given by Sir Allen Young.

The Prince became infatuated with Langtry, and she soon became his mistress.

The relationship lasted until June 1880 when she became pregnant with a daughter named Jeanne Marie, born in March 1881.

Daisy Greville, the Countess of Warwick, was the fourth mistress of the Prince, mistress to Edward VII having met him through her membership of the Marlborough House Set which was headed by the royal.

The next mistress of King Edward VII was Alice Keppel, who is the great-grandmother of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.

The pair met in 1898, when Ms Keppel, 29 and the Prince of Wales, 56, became lovers.

The couple met regularly and their relationship lasted until his death in 1910.

Reportedly, Ms Keppell was one of the few people in Edward VIIs circle who was able to smooth his strange mood swings.

The final mistress of Edward VII was Agnes Keyser, a longtime mistress who was the most accepted within royal circles, potentially in light of their relationship which remained a more private affair than a public one.

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Royal romancer: Which royal had the most mistresses? The biggest Lotherio revealed - Express

Ten of the Best Cult Films to Watch on Netflix – AnOther Magazine

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September 27, 2019

What is a cult classic? Re-watched and over-quoted films almost always get this title. Some are B-movies, beloved with irony. Others are rejected masterpieces, reclaimed in outrage. Others still are cult in tone: if a movie is surreal, if it satirises, leans hard into genre or refuses to be classified, if its visuals are campy or interrupt tradition, sometimes we deem it cult, then, just for the feeling it gifts us. The sense that something is off delightfully, perhaps knowingly so.

Below are some of our all-time favourites on Netflix, the classics that keep us on our toes, rewatch after rewatch.

Whats unexpected about American Psycho is how funny it is. How much obvious pleasure it takes in ketchup-viscous blood and tonal dissonance. Christian Bales career-making Patrick Bateman, the high-powered, primly OCD 80s investment banker with a secretthirst for blood, giddily parodied the unchecked hedonism, misogyny, and moral bankruptcy of the American financial sector. Have you ever noticed that everymanat Pierce & Pierce has a card that reads Vice President? Or that when Bateman ushers a nosy detective out of his office, he mentions a lunch meeting with Cliff Huxtable? Inanity abounds on Wall Street; stylisation merely helps.

Boyz n the Hood was not exactly overlooked it received nominations for John Singletons screenplay and directing but was, in many ways for mainstream white Hollywood, ahead of its time. Its portrait of young men in South Central Los Angeles is both heartbreaking and hopeful, the nuanced work of a writer-director who lived the landscape. Characters speak sometimes in structural critiques (Either they dont know, dont show, or dont care about whats going on in the hood), but also in unexceptional teen remarks, the business of dating and SAT prep. Singletons balance, pathos, and complexity is staggering, still, and worth many revisits.

Blue Velvet is, by nearly every imaginable definition, cult. It garnered mixed critical reception and a loyal base with its Lynchian fever-dream sensibility it is unfathomably dark, surreal, abrupt, and occasionally completely impenetrable, with imagery that sticks nonetheless. You cant forget that underbelly universe of beetles, writhing beneath Lumbertons pristine suburban lawns. Or the sound of those fabric scissors, chomping with chilling rapidity through the air. Blue Velvet continues to frustrate more than 30 years after its release, but remains essential cult cinema viewing. As Jeffrey asks Sandy on the night they meet: Its a strange world, isnt it?

The original Carrie is horror simply doing what horror should do, which is to draw social anxieties out to their logical conclusion. The bullied and abused Carrie White finds secret sanctuary in her telekinesis, a power that serves, for much of this Stephen King story, as a heavy-handed but not unwelcome metaphor for a teenage girls fledgling sexuality and self-possession. People remember Carrie for its eventual prom-night reckoning, but the best of this 70s classic is its build-up. The increasing sense detectable in Sissy Spaceks over-wide eyes that the centre in Chamberlain, Maine cannot hold. Something must snap.

Linklaters third film meanders; it follows 70s-era Texas high schoolers after the bell as they kind of... drive around. Some get stoned and decide George Washington farmed weed at Mount Vernon. Ben Affleck beats up freshmen for sport. Matthew McConaughey, in his breakout role as recent graduate Wooderson, leers at girls. None of which sounds particularly sweet or engaging, but Dazed and Confused is both: its a snapshot of average kids doing average things, a listless two hours not unlike being high, or growing up. You just gotta keep livin, man, Wooderson declares in final-act half-summary. L-I-V-I-N.

Something salient about the premise of Girl, Interrupted in the late 60s, a teen is lazily diagnosed with Borderline-Personality Disorder after she swallows a bottle of aspirin, leading to her institutionalisation is that women are misdiagnosed by the psychiatric community still, their symptoms misunderstood or simply dismissed. This film does pose some interesting questions about mental illness and gendered experience, though its mostly worth a rewatch for its performances: Winona Ryder is an anchor as Susanna, and Angelina Jolie is an Oscar-winning powerhouse as Lisa, the combative but alluring sociopath (A word of advice: dont point your fucking finger at crazy people.).

Box-office success and three Oscars should doubly disqualify Moonstruck from cult status, but something about its quirky, appropriately moon-eyed sensibility keeps it just off-centre enough. It is impossible not to grin at this films winking use of Thats Amore; at its intentionally operatic speeches in the snow; at the over-clear sky hanging above its over-enchanting Brooklyn; or at its big, broad dialogue. Ronny isnt just tormented by his brothers betrayal, hes gonna cut his throat about it. Loretta doesnt just love Ronny, she loves him awful. Everything is slightly too much, and too much is sometimes that much better.

Tom Shone estimates that Tarantino hit his peak influence around 1994, when California cafs teemed with aspiring screenwriters bashing out talky, violent, blackly comic shoot-em-ups on their typewriters. That analysis places Reservoir Dogs a chatty, blood-soaked, men-in-suits heist-gone-awry story told largely through flashbacks at the very centre of the cult of Tarantino. His feature debut is more reserved than his later works (however unbelievably, he pans away in this film as an ear is severed from its head), but its Tarantinos world nonetheless, a sunny Los Angeles that speaks in witticisms and runs on hyper-machismo.

Another early 90s classic, for a very different cult. Thelma & Louise is maybe the best film about female friendship, feminine sexual reclamation, and the rejection of compulsory heterosexual institutions ever made. When the titular best friends kill an attempted rapist in self-defence, they take to the sanctuary of the open road, racing with famously clasped hands away from subjugation and towards the Grand Canyon. This is a Western through-and-through its got the stiff-blue denim, the guns, the stirring vistas but feminist catharsis is its real lifeblood, and its American dream is a very particular one. Just out-of-reach, over some horizon.

On quotability alone, The Princess Bride is one of the cultiest movies of all time. Its a bedtime story told with a Monty Python-esque sense of humour, one that billed itself Not Just Your Basic, Average, Everyday, Ordinary, Run-of-the Mill, Ho-Hum Fairytale. There are the requisite tropes princess, castle, adventure, swashbuckling but also a gleeful sense that were messing with something longstanding, partaking in the witty rewriting of tradition. Well never survive! Princess Buttercup cries, facing some medieval danger or another. Nonsense, replies Westley, her farm-boy love. Youre only saying that because no one ever has.

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Ten of the Best Cult Films to Watch on Netflix - AnOther Magazine

The fitness industry is overwhelmingly white and that needs to change – Metro.co.uk

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Whenever I go to a spin class or a HIIT class Im struck by the fact that the women in the room and its almost always 90% women all look the same.

And Im right there with them. Im wearing the same Sweaty Betty leggings, the same Lululemon tank, Im around the same age, I have a similar body type. But there is one notable difference. Im more often than not the only non-white person in the room.

While I dont need to be surrounded by people who look exactly like me in order to get an effective workout, the overwhelming homogeneity of these spaces can send a message that if you dont fit the mould youre not welcome.

The fitness world is booming. Hedonism is out and wellness is in, as more of us prefer to spend our weekends breaking a sweat in the new Soul Cycle studio before heading out for green juice and vegan brunch.

Its a tired millennial stereotype, but there is truth in it. We are collectively becoming more health-conscious than we have ever been and the fitness industry is benefiting in a big way.

Gym memberships in the UK grew by 4.7% to 10.4 million this year, according to an annual industry report. Fitness is a 5bn industry, and with more people seeking a social experience from their workouts, boutique classes are flourishing.

So how can an industry that is growing year-on-year, and making so much money, get away with such a stark lack of diversity? And why is this problem being perpetuated?

One of the reasons has to be the cost. These boutique fitness classes are not cheap just ask my bank balance and that consistently high price point is fueling elitism and exclusivity.

According to the Money Advice Service, the average gym membership is 40 per month, but in London, where everything is more expensive, it can be 100 or more. Individual classes cost between 15-25 for an hour. Five HIIT classes at Barrys Bootcamp (just over one per week) will cost you 105 for a month. 10 spinning classes at Boom Cycle costs 160.

So is it any wonder that minority groups who are more likely to earn less or live in deprived areas are being pushed out?

Matilda Egere-Cooper thinks it comes down to who these gyms and studios are trying to attract.

Boutique fitness studios have a core target market, notably those with disposable incomes, she explains. This explicitly points to the wider inequalities that exist within society, where class, jobs, incomes, and opportunities are concerned.

Matilda is the founder of the Fly Girl Collective a running and fitness community inspiring black and brown women to get active. She thinks the problem runs deeper than simple economics, its also about representation.

Even if a studio happens to be affordable, theres a question around whos represented in the marketing, and whether the instructors and in-house staff are genuinely diverse and not just a tick-box exercise, says Matilda.

This is important. Black and Asian women are the least physically active social groups, and a significant barrier to their participation is a lack of role models.

Where the trainers and staff are disproportionately white, it sends a message to black and other ethnic minorities that the space hasnt been created with diversity in mind, explains Matilda.

The industry, particularly in a diverse city like London, should intentionally represent the world around them in their marketing, be accessible and employ a more diverse range of people at all levels.

Everyone should be inspired to pursue a healthy, fit lifestyle, but its hard to be what you cant see.

Sharlene Gandhi loves yoga, but as an Asian woman, she is increasingly concerned by the whitewashing of the industry, and the effect it is having on the integrity of the ancient Indian practice.

If I go to a class run by white folks which is most of them in the city then the class is normally, massively white, Sharlene tells Metro.co.uk.

There is such a market for white-washed yoga. Right down to the music that is played when you come into a studio, to the Namaste at the end all of it is disastrously white.

I dont necessarily feel out of place because, if anything, I know that I am closer to some of the asanas and techniques than most people in the room are.

Sharlene completed a diploma in Bharathanatyam, an ancient Indian classical dance form that has the same roots as yoga. She says it gave her a nuanced understanding of some of the psychology behind the physiology.

I think that is something which is increasingly missed out in quick-fix yoga, she explains.

I worry more about the dilution of an ancient practice, one that was well thought and planned out to fit in with an otherwise holistic and healthy lifestyle, into something that now is essentially an exercise routine.

Sharlene gets frustrated by the erasure of the people who created yoga but she has her own little ways to fight back.

I deliberately do not say Namaste at the end of a class, especially if its a white-washed class, or led by a white teacher. Im sure nobody notices, but it is my tiny rebellion, she says.

Ive only ever been to one class where the teacher deliberately counted in Sanskrit as you would do in a normal yoga class to keep the breathing steady. I found that super soothing and revolutionary.

The class was of course, run by a South Asian woman.

The effect of this wide-scale whitewashing of the fitness industry is that it creates a spiral. If you dont feel welcome in a space, youre not going to go there, which in turn prevents other people like you from going there for the exact same reason.

Whats needed is a fundamental shake-up of the industry from the top-down.

Hannah Lanel is the founder of The Fore a new fitness space that prides itself on inclusivity. Hannah is white and acknowledges that fitness has a serious diversity problem, but she is determined to do things differently. She says it has to start with recruitment.

Since launching The Fore in June weve done everything we can to break down the barriers to fitness and well-being, Hannah tells Metro.co.uk.

Our classes are designed to welcome amateurs and athletes alike and we actively seek out instructors who dont fit the mould in terms of both ethnicity, appearance and background.

Hannah says this helps them to attract a diverse audience who come to class and take whatever they need from it.

Inclusivity is at the very heart of our business and we are proud to unite a community of both trainers and clients that dismantles socioeconomic, religious and political divides to foster meaningful relationships that celebrate people of colour, of all shapes, sizes, and backgrounds.

Thats a big claim for a gym to make is it really that deep?

Matilda thinks it is. Her ethos is that the battle can only really be won if inequality is eradicated from every aspect of life including fitness and well-being. She doesnt want to sit back and allow another industry to thrive off the back of exclusion.

To take this point further, Matilda trains with her Fly Girl Collective squad at a boutique fitness studio at least once a month.

It can be tricky because of costs, but by being there, were sending the message that fitness is for everyone even black women from all walks of life, she explains.

Although the general reaction to us being there is positive, we do get a few side glances and stares, so I think theres still some work to be done to normalise diversity in these spaces.

But it starts with studios being willing to recognise the issues, have challenging conversations and working proactively to move things in the right direction.

Despite the boom in wellness, overall obesity levels are still on the rise and obesity-related hospital admissions rose by 15% last year.

The inference is that the growing fitness industry is only benefiting a privileged minority of the population. For everyone else, the gentrification of fitness is actually pushing them out and may even be making it harder to be active.

Dora Atim is a 27-year-old black trainer at The Fore, and she knows just how important it is to improve the accessibility of fitness resources.

In terms of instructors, we are only just beginning to see a marginal improvement in diversity being taken seriously, says Dora, but studios have no hope of attracting a truly varied audience unless they first address their marketing.

Thin, white and rich is still overwhelmingly used as the ideal to attract clients with the top five boutiques in London showing a disappointing lack of diversity in their marketing campaigns.

Its not until we stop breeding this idea that there is some kind of perfect homogeneous ideal that we will see boutiques open themselves up to a wider marketplace.

Mel is a mixed-race personal trainer based in Birmingham, and she agrees with Dora. She says targeting a more diverse customer base isnt rocket science.

We need more diverse images with a broad range of ethnicities used in their marketing, she suggests. They should also use targeted ads to appeal to areas where the population has a high percentage of BAME groups.

I understand the need to be niche, but businesses need to be careful that they are not alienating an entire demographic through poor advertising.

It is that sense of alienation that can be the most damaging.

The fitness industry is elitist in more ways than one. Women are expected to be a certain age, a certain size and conform to certain societal norms in order to be an accepted part of the community.

But women, and men, of all ages, sizes and races can be fit, strong and can smash a HIIT class just like anyone else. The industry may be growing, but there will always be a limit to that growth unless fitness finds a way to embrace different kinds of bodies.

MORE: Instagram has changed the way we eat

MORE: Woman opens BAME childrens talent agency to improve diversity on screen

MORE: What is unconscious name bias and why is it so damaging?

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The fitness industry is overwhelmingly white and that needs to change - Metro.co.uk

Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn Film Review: 2019s Second Cohn Documentary Flails in Too Many Directions – TheWrap

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The amoral legacy of closeted gay political operator Roy Cohn has come back to life in two films of the moment: Matt Tyrnauers Wheres My Roy Cohn? and now this more personal documentary directed by Ivy Meeropol, granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were prosecuted by Cohn and executed for treason in 1953.

Meeropol previously covered the story of her grandparents in her 2004 documentary Heir to an Execution, and she sketches out the basics of the case against them at the beginning of her film on Cohn, starting off with footage of herself as a girl talking to her father about what happened to Julius and Ethel. She then cuts to footage of Cohn, who always signals, I am evil for the camera, as if he were very conscious of the part he was trying to play.

The Story of Roy Cohn tries to establish a balance between Cohn and the Rosenberg family, but this is shaky from the start. Meeropol returns to her family history and jumps between a very brief explanation of communism in the United States (and its basis in the anti-Nazism of the 1930s) and interviews with Tony Kushner and Nathan Lane about the way Kushner wrote the Cohn character for his play Angels in America. The structure here is haphazard, to say the least, and there is a serious lack of concentration and follow-through. Too much ground is covered too quickly, and often confusingly.

Watch Video: 'Where's My Roy Cohn?' Director Explains How McCarthy's Counsel and Trump Are 'Cut From the Same Cloth'

It is unsurprising that Meeropol would lack the objective distance needed to deal with the part of this story that is personal to her, but her attempt midway through the film to contrast her fathers taste for folk music with Cohns lust for the disco hits at Studio 54 backfires; the leftist sing-a-longs described here sound far less attractive than the hedonism at that club. Then again, the devil has the ability to assume pleasing shapes.

When she is not trying to set up a good guy/bad guy dynamic between Cohn and her father, Meeropol jumps all over the place, trying to cram in too many stories and pieces of information, many of which lead to dead ends. Some of these stories, of course, are fascinating even in short doses. But Meeropol fumbles the connection between Cohn and Donald Trump, telling us so little about their initial contact on a court case that you have to search online later for what actually happened.

Also Read: 'Where's My Roy Cohn?' Earns Top Average During 'Downton Abbey'-Fueled Indie Box Office

The inconvenient fact for Meeropol is that her grandfather Julius was guilty of treason. Alan Dershowitz relates here that Cohn told him he framed guilty people in the Rosenberg case. This movie asserts that Ethel was entirely innocent (which is debatable) and that she was framed so that Julius would out some of his comrades. Julius refused to do this, and so Ethel was executed along with him. This is morally messy in a way that does not lend itself to the easier answers Meeropol would understandably prefer.

Cohn was a Shakespearean character like Richard III: His hand was in so many dirty deals of the last century, and there are so many ironies involved in these stories, that they clearly need their own movies, or their own episodes in a series. He is such an intriguing and also obvious camera subject that it is possible to trace the panicked way he reacts during the HUAC hearings in the 1950s when fairies are derisively mentioned to the same flare of panic in his would-be cold eyes when he denied on television in the 1980s that he had HIV. For all his reputation as a master manipulator, Cohn had various tells in his behavior that signaled his insecurity: a tightening of the mouth, a wincing urge to squirm away.

Also Read: 'Studio 54' Film Review: Disco Doc Skims the Surface Like Club Owners Skimming Profits

The somewhat awkward full title of this movie comes from the panel that Cohn was given on the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which Meeropol and her father saw right away when they visited it. The temptation with Cohn is to see him as he presented himself, as some kind of villain who had supernatural staying power even from beyond the grave. Yet when we hear him speak about dying in the last part of this movie, he says that some people will see him as an S.O.B. and some people will see him as a tough fighter and a good guy.

Did Cohn actually see himself as a tough fighter and a good guy? Maybe in his most confident moments. But even though he told so many lies with such boldness, Cohn could not shield himself from certain truths, which is why he is, finally, more a character for a dramatist like Tony Kushner than for a documentarian.

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Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn Film Review: 2019s Second Cohn Documentary Flails in Too Many Directions - TheWrap

Impossible to Love: The Reality of the Impossible Whopper – Forbes

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Okay.I caved. I gave into the hype, the pumped-up curiosity, and the supposed alchemy behind this act of rooftop-heralded gustatory bravado.For the first time in probably half a decade I walked into a Burger King, ordered an Impossible Whopper, and ate the damned thing.

NEW YORK, NY - AUGUST 8: In this photo illustration, the new Impossible Whopper sits on a table on ... [+] August 8, 2019 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. On Thursday, Burger King is launching its soy-based Impossible Whopper at locations nationwide. The meatless patties are produced by California tech startup Impossible Foods. A single Impossible Whopper sandwich costs $5.99. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

And the only thing I find impossible is why the hell I would ever eat another one.

No, its not a lie.Does the Impossible tastes just like a Whopper?You bet it does.Its just as bland, flat and dry-mouth inducing as the real thing.And if this is your standard for satisfying dining, knock yourself out. Buy two.Obviously, Im not a fan of fast food; first of all, I dont believe in eating fast, on the run, or using plastic silverware, but what really bugs me is the unshakeable belief that fast foods surreptitious goal is seducing you into picking up a salt shaker and eventually devouring soda by the mini-bucket.

Wheres the hosanna in recreating mediocrity?If you think youre eating healthier, youre nuts.Theres no reason to waste time here in supplying the chemical breakdown and production on an Impossible Burger because its composition is easily available online.It offers nearly the same nutritional value and calories as the main attraction.Its cheap and you get what you pay for.

But, cmon, who chows down on a hamburger because its healthy?However, a truly great burger glorious sensual indulgence, and when theyre glistening with the perfect chopped blends of Pat Le Freida chuck and sirloin, or Wagyu beef, short ribs, bloody jeweled bursts from Black Angus beef, surrounded by brioche buns, jalapeo jam, stout mustard, sherry vinegar-soaked pickles, the sensation is some of the most fun you can have with your clothes on.

25 degrees closeup of small wagyu hamburger and fried onions, over wood board, including pickle and ... [+] mustard

A great burger is epic unapologetic hedonism, like two pieces of Schaffenbergers That Chocolate Cake, or a Cher concert.You can sense it even before you experience it and the fulfillment of that anticipation is everything that makes life at first bite perfect.

The Impossible Burger is a stunt, except only the publicity is juicy.Worse still, its origins are rooted in foolhardy hypocrisy.Years ago, due to a serious medical condition, I was required to follow a macrobiotic diet for nearly two years, a process that manifested a rack of cookbooks, each determined to do its damnedest to make tofu and seitan take like chicken steak, turkey, or bacon.Not one recipe succeeded to pull off the ruse.The point was, why bother to induce such a scam?Seitan doesnt look, feel, handle or cook like steak. It looks like shaved elbow patches.In fact, it was easier to deal with it when you just realized exactly what it was.

Close-up of roasted cauliflower steaks with herbs and spices on baking sheet , top view

And yet, we are still perpetuating this kind of three-card monte cuisine, like demonizing potatoes and pretending mash cauliflower is just as delicious, or, calling it steak on a menu when its sliced thick and broiled, or diet plans that pretend you cant tell cauliflower flour from real pizza dough.Try that one out at New Yorks San Gennaro festival and youll get pelted with old zeppoles.

Elevating the Impossible Burger to its current level of admiration comes close to the ultimate perverse switcheroo, which was fashions one-time obsession with creating amazingly lifelike dead fake fur.Not fun fur, the stuff that is obviously not trying to imitate a slain skin but is just soft, silly, cuddly and all over the Burlington Coat Factory and Target.No, I mean the lengths to which certain designers, whose life-long veganism I was happy to be respected and laud, to create a four-figure-priced product that is a near-perfect approximation of a garment whose aesthetic is derived by a process they find brutal and repellent.All that skill and effort to duplicitously imitate what you ethically and morally despise. If you hate fur, banish it from your life.

And if you want to avoid meat, then just dont eat it.There are now so many chain restaurants nationwide, such as Sweetgreen, Panera, Pret-a-Manger, Noodles & Co, Tender Greens, each serving nourishing, flavorful sustainable food that isnt trying to be anything than what it says on the swipe-able bar code.

You want to know an Impossible Burger?Fine.I promise you wont be able to tell the difference.How comforting to know that there is such consistency in mediocracy.Just remember to buy a really big Coke.Youll need it to wash it down.

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Impossible to Love: The Reality of the Impossible Whopper - Forbes

Political correctness in acting could mean Poirot can only be played by a Belgian, David Suchet warns – The Telegraph

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Hercule Poirot may soon have to be played only by a Belgian actor, David Suchet has suggested, as he warns the pendulum of political correctness can swing too much the other way.

Suchet, the British actor known for his portrayal of Agatha Christies detective, said there must be limits to the modern demands placed on actors to play parts only similar to themselves.

Speaking of his own career, which saw him black up to play Caliban in a 1978 stage production of The Tempest, he said it was right that the world had moved on but suggested the industry risked going too far.

The world has changed, he told the Mail on Sunday. It has to change. It's not my world. I'm trying to catch up with it.

But I think there are limits. How much do you change of a play - dialogue or character-wise - to suit political correctness?

I'm a character actor. I don't want who I can play to become small because of political correctness.

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Political correctness in acting could mean Poirot can only be played by a Belgian, David Suchet warns - The Telegraph

Bill Maher on the Perils of Political Correctness – The New York Times

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Deeply caustic and supremely confident, Bill Maher is the kind of satirist who causes even his many admirers his HBO talk show Real Time draws more than four million viewers per episode to throw up their hands now and again. Avoiding the public comfort of a party line, Maher lights into the political excesses and orthodoxies of the left as well as the right, on an anti-P.C., antihypocrisy crusade that skewers Democrats and Republicans alike. My whole career, Maher says, has been this battle: Why cant I talk on TV the way I talk at home or with my friends? My goal was to take that gap, which on most shows you can drive a truck through, and close it to nothing.

Most late-night hosts dont criticize both the right and the left as much as you do. Why do you think that is? Its hard to answer that question without sounding self-serving. I will say this: Our studio audience is not representative of liberals across the country. Your paper and The Atlantic had long articles1 in the last year saying that 80 percent of Americans think this politically correct BS has gone too far. But the people on Twitter are the people who control the media a lot. Theyre the millennials who probably grew up with helicopter parents who afforded them a sense of entitlement. They are certainly more fragile than previous generations. Trigger warnings. Safe spaces. Crying rooms. Microaggressions. That crowd feels like anything that upsets their tender sensibilities is completely out of line.

Isnt it important to distinguish between the fundamental arguments being made in favor of those sensibilities and the people being loudest on social media about them? Yes. The most important thing that the Democrats can do to win the next election is to broom this element out of their party and stand up to the Twitter mob and the ultrawoke. And I dont like the term woke, because it implies I am asleep. I was woke before some of these people were born. I grew up in a household with two liberal parents who were ahead of their time.2 My father and mother told me about civil rights. I knew what the right thing was. The difference is that liberals protect people, and P.C. people protect feelings. They dont do anything. Theyre pointing at other people who are somehow falling short of their standards, which could have changed three weeks ago. Theyre constantly moving the goalposts so they can go, Gotcha! For example, when I was growing up, the most liberal thing you could do is not see color. Well, thats wrong now. You see color, always, so you can register your white privilege. But I grew up in the Martin Luther King era: Judge by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. I still think thats the best way to do it. Not see it.

But we do see color, and no one is arguing that people shouldnt be judged by their character. So what problem is being caused by the shift you just described? If someone walks in the room, after a minute, I should not be thinking about color. And I am not. Thats how I have always been. I have actual black friends. I dont think they want me to be always thinking: Black person. Black person. Im talking to a black person. Look, I tried to drive a stake through political correctness in the 90s.3 I obviously failed dismally. Its worse than ever.

Youve talked about the negative effects of the Twitter mob on your show, but youve also talked about how most people dont care whats on Twitter. If people dont care about the Twitter conversation, why bother railing against it? Because the Twitter-mob mentality has an effect on the rest of the world. Everyone fears the wrath of the Twitter mob and the social justice warriors and the P.C. police. Religions always talk about the one true religion. Now on the left we have the one true opinion. If you go against that, you do so at your peril. Thats why the air on the left is becoming stale. I railed for years against the Fox News bubble, and that is as strong as ever, but I didnt think it would get this bad on the left. Comedians are afraid to make jokes in clubs, because somebody will tape it and send it out on Twitter and get the mob after you.

Thats a concern we often hear from comedians these days. How much of that fear is coming from comedians still adjusting to the reality of there being possible consequences for their material? You can still make whatever joke you want. The difference is that more people are calling you out if they find it offensive. Thats nave. You can make the joke if you dont mind giving up your career or being fired. Come on. The politically correct people are not concerned about social justice. They care about putting scalps on the wall. Liam Neeson. Remember that?4 Are we at this place where we cant admit that weve ever had bad thoughts and gotten over them and become a better person? You cant judge today by yesterday. We evolve.

Lets take the Liam Neeson thing. Who I dont even like, by the way.

Whats your problem with Liam Neeson? Hes for horse-drawn carriages in Central Park. And Im a PETA board member.

I didnt know that. But the controversy around him was a story for a day, and then the world moved on. His career is fine, isnt it? The world doesnt move on for Megyn Kelly5 and Roseanne,6 and Aziz Ansari7 had to fly below the radar for a year. I think youre downplaying how serious this stuff is. We live in an age where people want to cancel other people and disappear them. Whos going to be left?

Youve had two big controversies during your career. The first was in 2001 when you said that the 9/11 hijackers were not cowards.8 The second was two years ago, when you made that joke using the N-word.9 Did it feel different to be at the center of a controversy during the social media era? Controversies are never pleasant to go through. On the second controversy, Im saving an in-depth discussion for my memoirs. If we were living in a country that could handle nuance, Id be happy to talk about it, but were no longer in that country. Theres no winning there. Youre going to have to read my memoirs. We live in an era where I dont think peoples main focus is the truth and/or sussing out something valuable or teachable. We live in a time in which people are more concerned with scalps and clicks.

Did the discussion that happened after you made that joke reveal anything new to you about our cultures or your own understanding of that language? I just think theres no way to have that conversation with you, David. Im sorry, I dont blame you for trying. Its a shame, because there is lots of learning that can be happening. As I said at the time, anytime someone is hurt by a word like that you have my sincere apology. But thats the beginning of a discussion, and its too bad that we dont live in a place where you can have the end of it.

Well, so my next question is related to the 9/11 controversy. Youve always been critical of all religions, but is there something distinct about your criticism of Islam? Fairly or not, youve been called an Islamophobe a few times over the years. Its ridiculous to label criticism of a religion as a phobia of a religion. Im going to criticize any person or group that violates liberal principles, and so should you. Almost all religions, by their nature, are intolerant and supremacist. At any time in history one religion will be the most fundamentalist. At this moment I think its pretty evident that religion is Islam. Of course, intolerance exists everywhere, but the places where, lets say, human rights workers have their work cut out for them the most are probably traditional Islamic societies. To conflate thinking that with Islamophobia is a facile and unconvincing trick.

I do wonder if, at least in the past, youve done some conflating of your own as far as, for example, treating theocracies or dictators as exemplars of Islamic rank and file. I think you have it backwards. The government of Pakistan is more liberal than the people. Their senate recently passed legislation to end child marriages and local police forces have intervened. Yes, we have things in our country that are at odds with liberal values, but someone once said that, at some point, a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind. Its frustrating for me. I know that people who ask me these questions actually agree with me, and yet theyre like, Are you crazy? Its like, Can I just be real?

It could be that there are complexities that your criticisms of Islam dont address. There are many factors, none of which Ive ever denied. Poverty has been shown to have little to do with terrorism. You can always bring in a million things to make this look like a phobia. But what about white supremacy? Also a bad thing! Never said it wasnt. Its interesting to me that even the people who criticize me about this sometimes have used the word cancer. As in, Islamism is a cancer upon Islam. And to those who say, when I mention instances of Islamism, But its not everywhere, I say, If a doctor tells you you have cancer, do you go, Yeah, but its not everywhere?

Do you see any way out of this cultural and political tailspin were in right now, in which everyones default stance is If you dont agree with me, then screw you? You have to find a way to begin with what you share and then explore why you differ so vehemently on other issues, and thats what we seem to have lost the ability to do. I dont see a lot of desire for people to talk to each other, to accept that, O.K., this person doesnt agree with me on a lot of stuff, but I dont have to think hes a monster. We want to beat our chests and vanquish the other side. Compromise seems like a dead concept.

On the Real Time anniversary special last year, the things people were saying about why they like you especially your fearlessness about saying what you really think reminded me of the things people say about why they like President Trump, whom youre no fan of.10 Is there any way to productively channel peoples enthusiasm for those qualities? So much of it seems like its mostly about the pleasure we get from seeing our opponents insulted. During the second year of Politically Incorrect we had a contest: Politically incorrect or just stupid? We were trying to make the point that saying something thats contrary is not necessarily politically incorrect. Its sometimes just stupid. I define political correctness as the elevation of sensitivity over truth. Thats my beef with it. Were not getting to the truth, because were too sensitive.

Let me totally switch subjects. I went and read your novel.11 Im verklempt. Thats something no interviewer has ever said to me.

It has this lovingly detailed evocation of a very particular time in the comedy world, back when the boom was starting to happen in the late 70s, and how that was a real moment of change for comedians and their work. Have you seen any similar sea changes since? Im probably not the best one to ask, because it has been a long time since I was in the comedy clubs. I do hear a lot of complaints that comedians are frustrated that they cant freely try out new bits. When I was coming up, the great thing about the comedy clubs was that they were laboratories for our experimentation. That was the deal. They didnt pay us, and we didnt have to be good and werent but thats how we honed our craft. Now people are afraid, and comedy does not function well in that atmosphere of fear. We want to be saying whatever, especially if its funny, and it hurts us that the audience wont trust us. Do you really think Im on the side of the bad people? Chris Rock, Larry the Cable Guy and Jerry Seinfeld a few years ago all were talking about the fact that they dont work campuses anymore. Jerry Seinfeld is too out there? His act is so clean it whitens teeth. Comedy is about saying those true things that everyone else isnt saying. Thats where the fun is.

You mentioned colleges. Students are another group that you talk a lot about on the show. There has been no time over the last 50 or so years when people havent been criticizing college kids social and political ideas. But isnt that a reaction to the fact that college is a place where students are pushing hard and figuring out their ideas about the world? Isnt that what these kids are supposed to be doing at that age and in that setting? I dont think someone whos at Harvard is a child, and I do think they should know that everybody in America gets a lawyer. Yet they did not understand that.12

The students at Harvard werent saying Harvey Weinstein wasnt entitled to a lawyer. They were objecting to a residential dean being his lawyer. Thats different. Well, thats wrong, too. Everybody gets the lawyer that they want. Harvard doesnt understand the very basis of the Sixth Amendment? I dont think a lot of us who are criticizing that are criticizing the kids as much as the administrators.

Who you think are spineless. Very spineless. The way parents have been spineless in disciplining their kids. When I was growing up you could never drive a wedge between your parents and the teacher. Now the parents always back their precious darlings, and thats why you have grade inflation and kids who leave school without knowing anything. Its not the kids fault that he doesnt know anything. Its the teachers fault. Thats not helping our country. Being brought up this way is going to lead these kids to ruin. Of course, theyre not all brought up the same way. I dont think in the middle of the country theyre raising their kids like that. I saw Mario Lopez got in trouble, did you see that?

I didnt. I saw this headline: Mario Lopez Apologizes. It was this groveling apology to the L.G.B.T.Q. community. You know what the problem was? They asked him about this trend in Hollywood of letting your 3-year-old decide their gender and Mario Lopez said maybe 3 is a little young for that decision.13 Monster!

This is making me think of when you had Dr. Debra Soh14 on the show talking about gender dysphoria, and you were pointing to what you see as the problem of parental permissiveness towards gender identification and transitioning. You were saying that parents let their kids gender reidentify because its easier than telling them not to. That seemed pretty glib. It was.

Its a bit hard to imagine that parents who support a childs transitioning are doing it because they think its the easier path. Thats not true. I know people whove done it, and that is exactly what it is. They never discipline their kids. They think theyre making it easier by giving the kid what they want. I mean, youre right, what I said was glib, but I am serving many masters. Real Time is an entertainment show on an entertainment network, and Im a comedian. Not everything I say can stand up to the scrutiny of the ultimate fact-check. But I think that there is some truth to this. There are kids and this is what Dr. Soh was saying and I wasnt disagreeing with who have transitioned who were really just gay. I dont think its the worst thing in the world to wait a few years to find out whats going on. Im not a doctor. Im not a scientist. But if I had a kid I would tell them: As long as youre living under my roof youre not cutting anything off. Until youre 18. Then you cut off whatever you want. Here I am, being glib again.

Whats something encouraging to you about millennials? And whats the most disappointing thing about your own generation? Aside from ruining the world environmentally. Weve left a dark, stinking husk of a planet, havent we? My generation started this mess. The Baby Boomers were the first Me generation. They were the first spoiled kids. There definitely was more discipline, but there was also more indulgence, and that seemed to continue on and on. So I think we have to look in the mirror as to when that trend started. As for the most encouraging thing about millennials, its idealism. You need people to look at anything with a fresh pair of eyes. That sort of idealism is essential to temper the necessary cynicism.

And you dont see any idealism in the identity politics of younger people? I dont know how thats connected to idealism. What Im complaining about is fragility. What Im complaining about is people who were overindulged as children and somehow believe that they should not have to endure even the slightest measure of discomfort.

Im sure Im overly Pollyanna-ish about all this, and obviously not everyone is arguing these issues in good faith, but isnt the root of what youre identifying just peoples attempt to figure out how to get through life with more dignity and less pain? But there are negative repercussions. People get disappeared. When I was a young person the conservatives were the ones who I dont know what youd call it.

Drew hard lines about what was or wasnt culturally acceptable? Thank you, yes. Now its reversed, and I feel like thats backwards. Young people should be the free ones pushing the boundaries and not the ones inhibiting us. Well, Im not a woman, so I could not possibly know that experience. Im not a person of color, so I cant speak about that. Professors are afraid to speak, because what they say, even if its science, might go against the politically correct notion. This is pernicious. Im sorry, but I have to lay that at the doorstep of the far left and the younger generation. Its not the worst thing in the world to hear something you find somewhat offensive. You can turn the channel. Look at something else. Go to a puppet show; youll never be offended.

Im curious about how your own comedy has evolved. Back when you were doing Politically Incorrect you used to do a lot more hubba hubba jokes about women. Its funny you mention that. When I turned 50, I had a talk with my writers and I said, no more Im-in-the-hot-tub-with-twins jokes. Back in the 90s it was a different point of view to say, Im single, and that is not a bad choice. I stood up for that idea and it was not well accepted at the time that you can have children, thats fine, but I do not want them. I was a bit of a militant single person. But when I was 50, I said, Im too old to be doing these jokes. At a certain point its not funny anymore. Its creepy. I never did those kind of jokes again.

Do you still have a stripper pole in your house? Its not in my house.

Guest house? Well, yes. I bought my house in 2001, and in 2004 my next-door neighbor was selling his bachelor pad. He had a small house he lived in, and there was this other little bungalow on the property that I use if I have a party. I dont know how you knew that I had a stripper pole put in.

Let me ask you a nonpolitics, noncomedy question. I know that youre a big Beatles fan. In one of your books you said you could probably do a better job interviewing them than anybody has yet. I definitely could.

So if you could snap your fingers and have Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr on your show, what would you ask them? I would love to present my theory as to why the Beatles really broke up. Which is that John Lennon could not keep up in the battle for A-sides. Imagine writing a song as great as Revolution and it loses out to Hey Jude. Thats, I think, why John Lennon didnt want to continue going with the Beatles. I dont think he liked losing. Paul McCartney would never admit that, by the way.

Well, there you go. O.K., back to your work! For more than 25 years youve been going on TV and making jokes about Republicans being hypocritical and corrupt and Democrats being too PC and lacking backbone. Does it ever feel like youre banging your head against a wall? These people dont change. Yes but I never thought that people would hear my jokes and go: Hes right! Ive got to amend my behavior right now. But Im very fortunate as a standup comedian who still goes on the road a lot, because Im always given new material. I had John Boehner jokes, and now I have Mitch McConnell jokes.

I wonder if you could get away with Mad-Libbing your material. Just swap new names into old jokes. I have repurposed junk. I think I had one about Newt Gingrich having the moral compass of an opportunistic infection. Who doesnt that apply to? I have a plethora of material, but if an old joke perfectly fits somewhere Im not above repurposing. You know, John Lennon wrote a song called Child of Nature, and it was a great tune. He repurposed it with different lyrics a few years later as Jealous Guy. Artists are blue jays. We find little scraps here and there and build a nest. Were shameless about it.

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Bill Maher on the Perils of Political Correctness - The New York Times

Eddie Murphy shows you can evolve, apologise and still be funny – The Guardian

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Comedy is dying and political correctness is killing it. Nobody can joke about anything any more without triggered liberals screaming racism and cancelling them.

Ill stop there because Im sure you have heard this screed before. Conservatives love complaining about how millennial snowflakes cant take a joke and dont understand edgy humour. In September, for example, the comedian Shane Gillis was dropped from Saturday Night Live after footage surfaced of him making racist, homophobic and misogynistic gags. Gillis responded to the outrage with a non-apology in which he explained that he pushes boundaries and takes risks.

Comedians should obviously push boundaries and take risks. But punching down has never been remotely risky or funny. This isnt a development of our woke era; its a principle the worlds best comics have always acknowledged. Just look at the 30-year-old video of George Carlin that recently went viral. In the clip Carlin criticises bigoted jokes made by his fellow standup Andrew Dice Clay. Comedy has traditionally picked on people in power, Carlin says. Women and gays and immigrants, to my way of thinking, are underdogs. He adds: I think [Clays] core audience is young, white males who are threatened by these groups.

Around the same time that Carlins comments were going viral, the New York Times published a new interview with Eddie Murphy, who is returning to standup. Murphy, 58, told the Times he isnt afraid of current controversies over humour, pointing out that he was picketed for homophobic jokes he made in the 1980s. It took Murphy a long time to apologise for those jokes and the backlash was partly why he stopped doing standup for years. But you know what? He still has a career. Whats more, he says he cringes when he thinks of his old, ignorant material.

So there you are: Murphy is living proof that political correctness hasnt killed comedy. He shows that its perfectly possible to apologise and evolve, even if it takes a while. I hope Gillis is paying attention.

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Eddie Murphy shows you can evolve, apologise and still be funny - The Guardian

Live to debate another day not having easy answers is a liberal asset, not a moral failing – The German Times Online

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Jeremiads about the state of liberal democracy and its institutions have been the dissonant theme of 2019. The West as a whole is in decline; NATO is obsolete; once proud and powerful parliaments and congresses have been rendered superfluous. Autocratic rulers like Russias Vladimir Putin, Chinas Xi Jinping and North Koreas Kim Jong-un seize the day while Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Jair Bolsonaro seem more inclined to emulate their governance than to stand up for the idea and the practice of liberty and a pluralistic society.

In Germany, the parties at the center are struggling to deal with the growing appeal of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is less a political body than the manifestation of a hodgepodge of racism, resentment and radical right-wing ideas. The party, barely six years old, has made considerable gains in recent regional elections, finishing second in two states (see page 1) without offering any coherent ideas of how to govern. Their slogans follow the drumbeat of most international far-right movements; they target immigrants and perceived elites while railing against what they refer to as the establishments tyranny of political correctness.

The AfD is built on the cult of the strongman, the crude longing for an authentic leader able and willing to put an end to the tedious game of politics and all the never-ending debating, negotiating and countervailing. They want their followers to believe that politics, the ever-muddy practice of true democracy, is practically and morally depraved and should be replaced by the dogged determination of a chosen one.

Sure enough, the dualistic conception of politics as either a game of eternally bound-to-fail compromise (played by those driven by the desire to debate another day) or ruling by fiat and forever is not an autocratic fad of 2019.

This dualist view of politics is reflected in Samuel Johnsons Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1759, which describes politics as the Science of Government, the art or practice of administering public affairs. Elsewhere in the dictionary, Johnson describes the politician not as an artist but one who is cunning and a man of artifice.

The contemporary German philosopher and political scientist Wolfgang Fach takes a modern view of Johnsons dichotomy. The contrast couldnt be greater: there the divine action, here the devilish actors, he writes in his treatise titled The Disappearance of Politics. Fach denotes the difference as POLITICS (in all caps, because of its quasi-divine nature), understood as the transcendent care of and for the entirety; on the other hand, common politics, engaged in by self-appointed Machiavellian men, whose thinking is engulfed by immoral haggling without prospects.

Fach diagnoses this tendency in all people, no matter their political affiliations: we want to believe in POLITICS, yet we despise the rigmarole of politics and find ever-new ways of forgetting or suppressing the latter, without acknowledging the intertwined nature of the two concepts. We are blinded, Fach notes, by the magic effect of the otherworldly promise.

In this vein, countries long proud of their mature democracies, including Germany since 1949, may be said to be witnessing a rather vulgar re-enchantment of the great political idea by a faction of strongmen in the last 10 years. The promise of transcendence through political action is increasingly secularized. The aspiration to lift up every citizen not to mention refugees from war and poverty around the world is discarded in favor of a more particular promise of salvation. Or, as Adam Gopnik writes in his recent book on the moral adventure of liberalism, A Thousand Small Sanities, everywhere we look, throughout Europe as much as in America, patriotism is being replaced with nationalism, pluralism by tribalism, impersonal justice by the tyrannical whim of autocrats who think only to punish their enemies and reward their hitmen.

Deprived of its universal claim, something once upheld by both liberal and conservative notions of democratic politics, todays strongman politics has embraced and indeed relies on simplistic concepts.

This is not just the ordinary argument for the necessity of expertise, impact analysis and inclusion of a plethora of perceptions in policymaking. The tax code, environmental regulation and government programs of all stripes rarely fit neatly into even the traditional categories of left and right, let alone the cruder ones of good and evil.

Nor is it the assertion that politics just happens to be a complicated technical affair better left to the elites and their dabblings in obscure jargon. The disapproval of political huskers and industry proxies rigging the game for the various 0.1-percenters can be spot-on; look no further than the global financial crisis of 2008, which was brought on by too much deregulation and unsound safeguarding by the state.

What appears to be perplexing about the electoral success of the strongmen is that few of their supporters actually believe their proposed policy ideas will help make their lives better. They share the oft-repeated grievances, the feeling of neglect, the perceived slights by proverbial liberal elites, the assumption that immigrants and minorities have been moved ahead of them to the top of the queue a version of this story is told in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and elsewhere.

The proposed countermeasures, if there are any, like walls, mass deportation or no-deal Brexit, are too expensive, impractical or sometimes even counterproductive.

And yet todays autocratic appeal, following Wolfgang Fachs theory, lies not in the actual substance, and not even in symbolic meaning that is, owning the libs or any other right-wing armchair battle cry.

In 2018, the historical anthropologist Thomas Bauer published a short yet weighty essay on the loss of ambiguity and diversity, The Disambiguation of the World. He traces the story of how modern societies lost their will and their ability to handle or even tolerate pluralist meanings from religion to the arts and politics. In many areas of life, the most attractive spiritual offerings are those promising release from the unnavigable ambiguity of the world. Bauer notes all the impersonal factors for this tendency: bureaucratization, technical advancements, mass-market consumer culture. But he also sees an express will of people to live in a more conclusive world.

Translated back into the world of democratic politics, it becomes clearer why a growing segment of the electorate in Western societies chooses to deny or obfuscate the science of climate change, the fact that minorities still face discrimination or that a strong government must level the playing field of the so-called open market in myriad ways.

In other words, whats needed is the normal, untidy and always tentative business of democracy. Democratic decision-making cannot claim to embody the sole truth such a claim would be counterintuitive to the essence of its undertaking. It is a series of temporary fixes, good only for as long as a new and hopefully better solution doesnt come along.

Compromise is not a sign of the collapse of ones moral conscience. It is a sign of its strength, for there is nothing more necessary to a moral conscience than the recognition that other people have one, too, writes Adam Gopnik. A compromise is a knot tied tight between competing decencies.

On the face of it, this version of democracy will always be less sexy than the siren songs of the strongman. In the struggle for democracy one might say the idea of the republic there is no reverse-engineering the transcendent act of turning politics into POLITICS. Democracys advocates politicians, voters and citizens can only engage in the conciliatory manner that has been lying at the core of the concept since its inception.

Lutz Lichtenbergeris senior editor of The German Times.

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Live to debate another day not having easy answers is a liberal asset, not a moral failing - The German Times Online

University of Minnesota College Republicans’ mural is vandalized for fourth year in a row – City Pages

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This year, the universitys chapter of the College Republicans painted a sort-of homage to Pink Floyd: a grid of brown bricks captioned Donald Trump: The Wall. Each brick contained a reference to one of Trumps accomplishments, such as fighting political correctness, appointed SC Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, undoing Obamas mistakes, and safer borders.

To top it off, the panel also included a small illustration of what appears to be the 9/11 terrorist attacks, an oft-maligned partial quote from Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (Some people did something,) and the phrase Keep America Great.

The College Republicans completed their panel on Friday. Almost immediately after they left, it had been tampered with. A picture posted to Reddit shows the panel besmirched with a crude drawing of someone flipping the bird and the caption Fuck shits. Mere hours later, it was completely covered in red and black spray paint, the word BORDERS crossed out, and the caption, White supremacy kills.

This marks the fourth year in a row that the Republican panel has been vandalized. The Minnesota Daily catalogues the years-long tradition, giving a post-mortem on panels containing everything from the slogan, Build the wall to The [universitys] proposed pronoun policy mocks real social issues. One year, during a joint panel between the College Republicans and Turning Point USA, someone called conservatives the least popular minority on campus. Several conservative groups panels got painted over that year.

By all accounts, theyd seen this coming. This year, theyd even painted a second panel with the caption, Please vandalize this panel and NOT our other panel. It was decorated with saccharine hearts and smiley faces and the phrase, This is a safe space.

College Republicans invited potential vandals to focus on this mural rather than their "wall" tribute. Twitter

While we are obviously upset about this situation, we are not surprised, the groups newsletter said. This sort of thing happens every year, but what was special about this year was that they had the gall to do this in broad daylight in front of hundreds of people.

Chapter Chair Nathan Harman wrote a lettercondemning what he saw as the ugliest type of disagreement and closed-minded thinking: one that equates dissent to sin and that seeks censorship over discourse.

The group was a little glibber on Twitter.

Reactions on social media werent exactly sympathetic.

Thoughts and prayers, one Reddit user said.

Womp womp, someone added helpfully on Twitter.

Keep putting it up itll keep getting vandalized, another Twitter user said.

Other commenters were confused about what the College Republicans were expecting or what they thought they were accomplishing in the first place.

When will you all get it? one Twitter user asked. Your opinions arent valid or welcome, especially when you endorse and defend the racist rhetoric of your party and do nothing to speak to the concerns of students. Like, what do you people think youre doing?

I cant imagine being 21, seeing the modern Republican party and going, yeah, this is for me, one Reddit user said.

Its true Democrats by and large have a bigger claim over millennials by the numbers, and the up-and-coming Gen Z has proven to be similar. In 2017, the Pew Research Center determined that 59 percent of millennials whod registered to vote leaned left, while 32 percent leaned right. Both Gen X and the Boomers tend to be more split down the middle.

Harman gets it, to a degree. He understands there is a burning distaste on campus for the president and the current trajectory of the party, and even agrees that some of the things Trump has done such as brag about grabbing women by the pussy should not be excused.

I dont want to defend Donald Trump on the same panel where we criticize Ilhan Omar, because hes said some awful things, he says. What he wants is for people to think about why they believe what they believe, and where their facts are coming from.

When asked about what he and others see in the party these days, he talks about a potential future for the GOP. Younger Republicans, he says, are not like their conservative grandparents some are pro-choice, or queer, or anti-Trump. His hope is that the party is going to trend in a more socially-conscious, inclusive direction while still maintaining its fiscally responsible roots.

Even though today it is hard sometimes to talk over some of the more populist members of the party, hes hopeful cooler heads will win out in the end.

But when students walked by the mural, they didnt see a hopeful spectrum of socially progressive Republicans. All they saw was the Omar quote, a drawing of a plane sailing toward the Twin Towers, and a list of some things Trump has done. Student Nick Knighton, one of the protesters sitting by the mural pre-vandalization, told the Daily he saw rhetoric that fuels acts of white supremacy and violence across the country.

The story has since been picked up by conservative outlets like the College Fix and Breitbart, where commenters called the vandals fascists and vile animals, and asserted the left is the enemy.

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University of Minnesota College Republicans' mural is vandalized for fourth year in a row - City Pages

Down with Green hypocrisy and other commentary – New York Post

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Climate desk: Down With Green Hypocrisy & Hype

From politicians who fly in private jets but tell the rest of us to consider a world without planes to activists preaching that America has to cripple our economy while posting on their iPhones made in China, its clear that the climate-change movement is full of hypocrites, fumes Scott Walker at The Washington Examiner. But what about their hyped claims? Relax: The world is not going to end in 12 years, even though hypocrites like Al Gore will keep using massive amounts of energy. What the greens really want is to change the nature of the entire economy, as a former AOC staffer all but admitted. Keep that in mind the next time you see a climate-change protest in the news.

Economy watch: NY Feds Flawed Wage Report

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently published a report pooh-poohing the impact of Gov. Cuomos 2013-2018 minimum-wage hikes on employment in Empire State counties bordering Pennsylvania. But those findings were deeply flawed, argues the Empire Centers E.J. McMahon. In fact, the regions job numbers were inflated by major job-creating casinos in two of those counties and by the inclusion of prosperous Big Apple exurb of Orange County, which differs greatly from nearby counties in both states. Allowing for these factors, job losses in the New York counties relative to the Pennsylvania ones were worse than painted. Far from a slam-dunk case for raising the minimum wage, the study was a quickie and all too simplistic. The report itself noted, Longer-term effects, if any, remain to be seen.

Conservative: Impeachers Beclown Themselves

In general, muses Roger Kimball at American Greatness, one tends to admire perseverance. But Democrats led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Get-Trump media edging toward impeachment are making fools of themselves. After all, they spent nearly three years pushing wall-to-wall lies about Donald Trump colluding with the Russians to no avail. They tried the same thing, twice, against Brett Kavanaugh. Again, nothing. Now they are back to trying to unseat a duly elected president again in vain, since voters know the score: A sliver of the population the antifa thugs, the Hollywood brats, the media sissies, the beautiful people with expensive degrees and, of course, the radical fringe of the Democratic Party all refused to accept the results of the last election. Still, Kimball concludes, to recognize their impotence isnt to play down the threat these forces pose to what we used to be able to call, without irony, the American dream.

Iconoclast: Shall We Impeach Trump?

The Weeks Matthew Walther recounts an old Northumbrian joke involving jurors debating the meanings of the words will and shall in the cry of a drowning man: I will drown, and nobody shall save me! Only one juror, McTavish, wonders why nobody bothered rescuing the poor fellow. The case for impeaching Trump may likewise turn, in part, on a grammatical curiosity. At a House hearing last week, Democrats grilled Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire over his supposed failure to submit a whistleblower report to Congress. The relevant whistleblower law says that the DNI shall submit his findings to Congress. But does shall here imply futurity with an additional element of promise or intention, or is it denoting plain old facts about the future? Depending on the legal authority you consult, shall in statutory language could mean may or must. Walther shrugs: We need a McTavish.

Culture beat: Who Killed the Sitcom?

A recent Slate piece examined the current state of comedy, and somehow the author came to the conclusion that were much, much funnier than we used to be, guffaws Mitchell Blue at the Federalist. In fact, Todays sitcoms, which feature political correctness or flashy costume design instead of humor, are simply not as funny as past sitcoms as Netflix and other streaming services that are paying about a half a billion dollars to air old shows know. But why? The biggest culprit is cancel culture, exemplified by SNLs firing of comedian Shane Gillis before hed started on the show because his humor included racial stereotypes. Perhaps people will find out how to be funny again one day, but for now, it sure seems like everyone is afraid to try.

Compiled by Karl Salzmann and Sohrab Ahmari

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Down with Green hypocrisy and other commentary - New York Post

BARD: In Whitewashing Islamism, Some K-12 Programs Advance Jihad – The Daily Wire

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You may have read about the proposed ethnic studies curriculum developed for California public high schools, which caused an uproar because of its biased treatment of Jews and Israel, support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel, and fear that it fomented anti-Semitism. That is one of many battles over curricula as Islamists attempt to rewrite history and erase any mention of Islamic extremism.

The Islamophobia industry is engaged in a systemic effort to whitewash the history of Islam and perpetuate the myth that Islam has always been nothing but peaceful toward non-adherents. These propagandists seek to silence and smear their critics as Islamophobic.

We have seen this effort across college campuses, which have received nearly $3 billion since 2012 from Arab/Muslim states and individuals who hope to influence the next generation of Americans to adopt their view of Middle East geopolitics. These investments have paid off via the hiring of apologists for Islamist terror who teach, write textbooks, and serve as sources for the media.

Historian Martin Kramer has noted how American scholars have made a deliberate effort to turn Islam into a pacifist faith a kind of oriental Quakerism.

Equally disturbing, as I wrote in my book The Arab Lobby, is an increasing effort to shape the views of children from kindergarten through high school. The 9/11 terror attacks provoked fear and misunderstanding about Muslims and Islam, while political correctness allowed the lobby to present its sanitized version of events aimed at downplaying Arab/Muslim distinctions, ignoring differences in values and interests, and dismissing links between radical Islam and terror.

U.S. taxpayers underwrite some of these efforts through government-funded Title VI Middle East Studies centers at major universities. Todays Islamophobia lobby has an exponential impact through these centers, whose mandate is to educate teachers about the region. As Ive documented, as part of their obligation to engage in outreach, these Title VI-affiliated centers often produce materials that reflect the lobbys views. Teachers then pass on these views to their students.

Advancing the same politicized agenda that rules academia, Islamist organizations have allied with left-wing interest groups and pressured publishers to revise textbooks to better reflect multicultural ideologies. The result is a reluctance to discuss negative aspects of sharia law (such as the discriminatory treatment of non-believers, women, and gays), the role of radical Islam in pervading terrorism, and the Islamist animus toward the United States, Israel, and the West. A 2008 study by Gary Tobin and Dennis Ybarra concluded:

Discovering in our schools a pervasive set of erroneous beliefs about such a vital topic should alarm every taxpayer, every parent, and every school official. To allow biased textbooks and outright propaganda in supplemental materials into the schools is to pervert the very purpose of public education and a misuse of our democratic system.

One such battle occurring in Virginias Loudoun County centers around the misrepresentation of the meaning of jihad. Loudouns presentation of jihad and Islamic terrorism were criticized for bias. While it is understandable that American Muslims would not want their religion associated with radicalism, teaching that jihad is a wholly benign concept related to a believers internal struggle distorts the terms meaning by ignoring its relationship to extremism, even as terrorist organizations such as Palestine Islamic Jihad use the very word itself to convey their malignant mission.

As Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis once explained: Conventionally translated holy war, [jihad] has the literal meaning of striving in the path of God (fi sabil Allah). Some Muslim theologians have interpreted the duty of striving in the path of God in a spiritual and moral sense. The overwhelming majority of early authorities discuss jihad in military terms.

The Islamophobia lobby could veto Lewis, a Jew smeared by critics as a Western-oriented propagandist. But textbook authors could also cite the medieval Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun, who wrote: In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the (Muslim) mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.

Students can find a more contemporary definition in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, where Emile Tyan wrote: Jihad consists of military action with the object of the expansion of Islam.

Learning the meaning of jihad is also key for students to understand the Middle East today, where the commitment to jihad by terrorist organizations such as Palestine Islamic Jihad and Hamas perpetuates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Students should learn, for example, that Palestine Islamic Jihad considers jihad the only way to liberate Palestine. A Tel Aviv University analysis explains how the group believes that a Muslim victory and the elimination of Israel are foreordained by Gods words in the Quran.

By reading primary documents, students can see for themselves the true meaning of jihad. To understand the ideology of Hamas, teachers can direct them to the groups charter, which states that [t]here is no solution for the Palestine question except through jihad and calls on Muslims to raise the banner of jihad to rid the land and the people of their uncleanliness, vileness and evils.

American public schools could also use material taught about Islam in Muslim schools. A study of Saudi textbooks, for example, found that many encourage both violent and non-violent jihad against non-believers.

A Palestinian textbook for eleventh graders offered a definition of jihad very different from the one proposed for Loudoun school children: Jihad is an Islamic term that equates to the term war in other nations. The difference is that jihad has noble goals and lofty aims and is carried out only for the sake of Allah and for His glory.

Unquestionably, students should learn more about Islam. But they should learn it from unbiased sources, not from apologists for Islamism. It is a disservice, and intellectually dishonest, to teach them a sanitized version of history that whitewashes the extremist elements of the religion. If the Islamophobia lobby has its way, the next generation will grow up unaware and unprepared to face the danger from Islamists who threaten American lives, values, and interests.

Mitchell Bard, a Campus Watch Fellowwith the Middle East Forum,is the author/editor of 22 books, including the 2017 edition of Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict,The Arab Lobby,and the novel After Anatevka: Tevye in Palestine.

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BARD: In Whitewashing Islamism, Some K-12 Programs Advance Jihad - The Daily Wire