Hasta La Gadget!

This flying car looks pretty damn cool in both flight and road modes, but especially when it opens up like a transformer. After being certified by the Slovak Federation of Ultra-Light Flying, the AeroMobil 3.0 has started final regular flight-testing this month.

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Flash mobs are magical spontaneous experiences for those participating and for those unsuspecting onlookers caught in the midst of them. It is a revolutionary act to dance, laugh, and celebrate in the face of all the worlds’ troubles. Peace is not the absence of war it is a creative, joyous expression of gratitude for the gift of life and a desire to share the love.

This kind of inspiration is contagious as Peter Sharp and the people of Good Vibrations Barcelona are fully aware of the untapped resource called social joy. On their youtube channel you can see all sorts of beautiful, heart-warming, and playful videos that easily remind you that humanity is full of kindness and love. What creative and unabashed silliness might you dream up in order to break the chaotic cries of gloom with a giggle? Peaceful actions speak louder than words.

Is humanity ready for more acts of peace, love and kindness? This experiment tests the idea by giving peaceful acts to strangers to find out! Share this message if you want the world to live in peace. Much love to The Liberators, Sustainable Human, Unify & MasterPeace for inspiring the work. Music; 1. Let Me Clear My Throat – Dj Kool, 2. The Relate – The Friend Within, 3. Forever (Extended Mix) – Snakehips

**Article originally appeared on Culture Collective**

Here we go again… another headline raving about the endless allure of dressing “Parisian Chic.” I’ve more than noticed that there has been an influx of headlines reading, “How to Dress Like a French Woman” and “10 Style Tips from a French woman.” You can see examples here, here and here. Admittedly, I clicked on these headlines because like many ladies in my generation, I loved the Madeline illustrations and the dreamy world of Paris as a kiddo. Add to the mix my eternal adoration for Coco Chanel and her plight for pants-clad women circa 1920, and it’s easy arithmetic for style. However, this madness has been going on for far too long, and I’m so sick of seeing the same redundant headlines that I’ve built up a major case for why my wardrobe won’t be characterized as French (the style — not the condiment).

So, I decided to email a small group of friends regarding my current mindset. The subject line was: “How do you feel about dressing French? Yes, or Nah?” I didn’t know if I was looking to validate my current mood, but I was genuinely curious as to what my small sample size had to say about the headlines currently flooding the fashion community, and if they were truly alluring. I received a mix of responses, ranging from “No, it’s annoying. New York women do it better” to “I’m secretly obsessed with anything French” to “It’s too proper, and I’m not a prim bitch.” Although admittedly a little too sassy, it does say something about what women are really inspired by, as well as serving as a catalyst to further my research to why these headlines are so fixated on French culture.

One of my friends had pointed out that the French economy is at an all-time low, and after doing my research, I stumbled upon an article written by Economist Paul Krugman in the New York Times which confirms this. Despite using the Euro, France’s current economy means that jobs are far and few in between, and a French woman I met at in a hostel confirmed this (I can barely remember what she was wearing). This woman revealed that her style was actually a result of her lack of funds, and the few decades-worth of clothes that she did own were collected during her more exciting years prior to losing her job due to Chinese manufacturing. Perhaps, you could call this French style? Being picky, living on a budget, savoring a few silks, washing out your knickers, going makeup free, repeating your favorite jeans? As you know, style is a result of your environment. Does dressing French equate to dressing with a snobby mentality (as one email response suggested)?

Could one pull this off with today’s offerings from retail? Cue J.Crew, H&M, Gap. Or to better the question, do you want to pull this current mentality off in your everyday look? A fellow colleague insisted that her boots were better quality because she got them in her hometown somewhere on the countryside of France. I curiously asked her if she knew the type of leather, but she couldn’t tell me. Nor could she recall the designer. To my dismay, I really wanted to know so I too could confidently stand by the quality of my shoes.

If the difference lies on the manufacturing of how American clothes are made versus French clothing, than the lines may be more blurry than I thought. Carrie Mantha, Founder and CEO of Indira, a US clothing company which adopts French style techniques, claims that there’s only a slight difference in French ready-to-wear clothing since the whole trickle-down effect starts with the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, which is officially regulated by members of the Fédération Française de la Couture.

Unofficially though, the rest of the fashion industry in France does its best to maintain certain techniques within small-scale businesses. Once the production level becomes too big to run in a small studio space, to China the designs go for larger profits and influence. Similarly, the same scenario occurs within US manufacturing, leaving space for what Carrie says more “heritage-based” ready to wear clothing like sweaters and children’s clothing made “locally.” That’s why her business, focused on eveningwear with French techniques, may be one of the reasonable exceptions where French customs are actually beneficial in achieving “attainable couture” for special occasions.

But these how-to guides aren’t special. If anything, these headlines as a call to action, digestible for only the cool kids, are perceived to be arrogant. Furthermore, as one of my survey respondents so passionately put it, these headlines suggest that dressing alike is to say you are a step above the rest, as well as disguised as something less obvious. We live in a culture where style isn’t exclusive to one vertical, where classy doesn’t mean French and furthermore, where speaking a language doesn’t default to pristine culture. Berets or nah?

Michael Che made headlines earlier in the week after comparing, in an Instagram post, women being catcalled to him being recognized as a celebrity in public. Che understandably received some backlash and offered a sarcastic apology Wednesday.

In a HuffPost Live interview Friday, comedian and fellow “Daily Show” colleague Aasif Mandvi backed Che, saying that sometimes being edgy goes a little far and Che meant no harm.

“I know Michael, he’s a good guy,” Mandvi told host Marc Lamont Hill. “I think he’s probably just pushing the envelope of comedy.”

Mandvi is set to return to the “Daily Show” soon, while Che just left his post there to become a co-anchor on “Weekend Update.”

“When you’re a standup comic, you get up and you try stuff, and you’re always kind of seeing how far you can push things. And I think he did say something where he said, ‘I was making fun of things that … other people might consider sacred in some way,’ or words to that effect, which then gave me an insight into what he was, I think, attempting to do, which was be a comic and talk about things in a way maybe the culture at large is uncomfortable with,” Mandvi continued. “You do want to talk about things people are uncomfortable talking about, or it’s too sacred or religion or whatever, and you want to push that envelope, so maybe he was doing that and his audience gave him the response that he got.”

Watch the rest of the clip above, and catch the full HuffPost Live conversation here.

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My 15-year-old son is a smart, responsible kid with a very strong sense of right and wrong. But he groans when I remind him to toss his empty can in the recycling, and he rolls his eyes when he hears people talk about climate change.

Given that I’ve spent much of the past decade thinking about the environment (and, because I have children, thinking especially about climate change) his dismissiveness baffled me until I asked him: “Do you think taking care of the environment is stupid?”

“No,” he answered. “I think taking care of the environment is really important. What’s stupid is how people talk about it.”

Oh, right. That.

Like my son, many of us seem to think one way about the environment and feel another. That is, we think safeguarding the environment is important but we often feel alienated by the way other people talk about it. And so we don’t get as engaged as we otherwise might, which-especially at a time when public opinion is essential to breaking through the political deadlock on climate change-has significant consequences.

So what are the traps, and how do we avoid them? Here are three that emerged in my conversations with hundreds of Americans about climate change in recent years:

Trap #1: Being sanctimonious. There are two ways in which people who speak out about climate change (and the environment more generally) can be perceived as sanctimonious: One is by conveying a sense that they are better than other people; the other is by suggesting that their issue is more important than other issues.

The latter is an easy trap to fall into, given the ways in which climate change has the potential to change life on Earth as we know it. But is climate change truly more important than Ebola, Alzheimer’s or cancer? Is it more important than an equitable economy? Or a functional and representative government?

Opinions may vary but this much seems clear: Suggesting that climate change (or any issue) is more important than all others is simply not helpful. It invites argument. It belies the fact that all big issues are complex and, in many ways, connected. And, perhaps most importantly, it fails to reflect how human beings experience life, which is on a much more immediate and personal level. Last year, for example, when my mother was dying, climate change became a complete abstraction to me. When I’ve been out of work, making money has been the most important thing. When I’ve been sick, getting healthy trumped everything. And people have these kinds experiences every day, which means that every time someone says climate change is the most important issue of the day, they run smack into the objection (repeatedly affirmed by polls) that says: Not to me. At least, not to me right now.

So if you want to avoid the sanctimonious trap, refrain from saying that climate change (or whatever your issue) is the most important issue of our day. Call it important; or better yet, say it concerns you for whatever personal reason it does — and whatever reason you think might be shared by the person you are talking to. Avoid implying that you know better, or in any way are better than others because of what you understand or do about the environment (even if it makes you nervous that they “don’t get it.”) And do not act as if you know best what other people should do. As one Bay Area Democrat told me: “I don’t even care if they’re right. I hate when other people try to tell me what I must do.”

Trap #2. Being negative. Many environmentalists are, at heart, drawn to what they do out of love for the natural world. Yet what many other people perceive is a primary focus on the negative: that is, on all that is wrong with the natural world, or more precisely with what people are doing to the natural world. And this raises a host of negative triggers, such as defensiveness, fear and anxiety, which people naturally want to distance themselves from.

What is the antidote? Certainly not being positive if one thinks of that in terms of smacking a happy, cheerful face on the issue. The seriousness of climate change demands authetnicity-I would suggest, just a more full-bodied authenticity than we have been giving it. I am thinking of the kind of authenticity that makes room for reflection of the good as well as the bad in today’s natural world-and above all, in human nature itself.

Trap #3: Being alarmist. To be fair to my son, I have, on occasion, reacted to his throwing recycling in the trash as if the health of the world depended upon that one action. I have, in other words, been alarmist, which tends to emerge from the tremendous mismatch between the scope of the global threats we face and the seeming insignificance of what we, as individuals, can do about them. What we know we can control, in other words, is whether the paper and plastic end up in recycling-and so, for some of us, some of the time, those small actions are going to come with an outsized emotional force that will seem alarmist to others. (Likewise, our talk about climate change and other issues will have an edge of intensity to it.) But as we know from when we’ve been on the other side, there is also a natural predisposition to recoil from alarmist talk.

As Rory McVeigh, director of Center for the Study of Social Movement at Notre Dame University, observed: “In conventional wisdom about social movements — about what works and what doesn’t — it seems there are two things competing against each other in the climate change movement.” One is a sense of urgency, and the other is a sense of efficacy. In other words, when social movements succeed, it is often because there is a sense of urgency and efficacy. But in today’s climate movement, a sense of efficacy is lagging behind the sense of urgency. As a result, a big focus on the urgency of the issue feels uncomfortably like alarmism to many.

Avoiding this trap can be more challenging than the other two, as it requires a sense of patience that can be difficult to access, especially in the early days of becoming deeply aware of our environmental challenges. But then again, cultivating patience as the antidote to alarmism is deeply rewarding in itself, as I will explore in a future blog post.

Thoughts? I’d love to hear from you.

(A slightly modified version of this post appeared on my blog.)