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7 Old-School Hacks to Help You Stay Cool all Summer

Whether it’s Chinese medicine or your great grandmother, those who came before us (and before A/C) had some powerful techniques to help them stay cool when the temps started to rise.

‘So what, we all have air conditioning now?!’ you may be saying.

Well, hold on. Not everyone has regular access to A/C or even loves using it. For some, it can worsen dryness and allergies, plus most units are incredibly noisy. And?it’s not so great for the environment.

Sometimes, it’s preferable?to cool off the old-school ways. So whether you have an air conditioner?or not, here are some tried-and-true traditional techniques to help you make it through the hottest, stickiest part of the summer.

1. Eat watermelon and aloe vera.

In Ayurvedic tradition, watermelon and aloe are cooling foods, which means they help to release heat from the body. Munch on watermelon and mint salads when you’re looking for a refreshing, hydrating snack or try this?refreshing Aloe Vera Detox Drink recipe.

2. Close and open windows strategically.

Whatever you do, do not open your windows in hot weather. In fact, you should even close your blinds during really hot days to keep your house cool and shaded.

If the outdoor temperature?cools down at night, open up all the windows to allow for some refreshing?airflow. Batten the hatches again in the morning.

Repeat daily.

3. Try this analog fan hack. ???

Long before air conditioning, people used to place bowls filled with ice in front of fans. As the fan blows, it picks up the cool air surrounding the ice and circulates it around the room.

Not only is this an environmentally friendly way to mimic A/C, but it is really effective. Enjoy this?blissfully cool breeze on the most muggy, sticky, stagnant summer days.

4. Sleep with damp cotton sheets.

This may sound weird and pretty uncomfortable, but in a sweltering evening, it can be a sleep-saver.

Use a spray bottle to spritz your cotton sheet with water so that it is slightly damp. The idea is, as you sleep, the damp sheet actively draws heat away from your body, keeping you cool and snoozing soundly.

If you’re not into damp bedding, you could try?popping your dry cotton sheets and pajamas into the freezer to give them a deep chill before you snuggle in at bedtime.

5. Take a cold shower.

Sometimes the issue isn’t your room. Sometimes the issue is you. Releasing?the excess heat in your body can make your time spent in a room sans air conditioning much more tolerable.

Spend five minutes under some cool water, and you’ll come out the other side feeling enlightened and relaxed!

6. Stop using your stove during the day.

If you can use a grill, go for it. Otherwise, either do all your cooking in the morning, well before the heat of the day, or opt for a slow cooker or Instant Pot, which don’t put off much heat.

And whatever you do, don’t even think about turning on your oven!

7. Put a cold pack on your pulse points. ?

Your wrists, ankles, groin, and neck are all prime areas for temperature biohacking. These are locations where the skin is thin, and large blood vessels are relatively close to the skin.

By putting an ice pack on these points, you’re effectively cooling down your blood and letting that coolness flow through your entire body. It’s like internal air conditioning!

Air conditioning isn’t the be-all end-all of summer. People have survived for millennia in the heat without A/C. With a few tried and true techniques, you can, too.

Related on Care2

8 Vegan Foods that Support a Frisky Sex Life
5 Essential Tips for Turning a Bad Mood Around in a Jiffy
IKEA is Upping its Sustainability Game

Images via Thinkstock.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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7 Old-School Hacks to Help You Stay Cool all Summer

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Der Spiegel Just Published the Minutes From Trump’s Contentious Meeting With G7 Leaders

Mother Jones

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German magazine Der Spiegel has been given access to minutes from a contentious meeting of G7 leaders in Taormina, Sicily, at the end of May, in which they applied last-ditch pressure on President Donald Trump to stay in the Paris climate agreement.

The meeting came toward the end of Trump’s first trip abroad as president—and became an opportunity for world leaders to intensely lobby the American president before Trump’s final decision on whether the United States would leave the historic climate accord.

The leaders told Trump in no uncertain terms that if the United States abandoned the agreement, China would be the direct beneficiary.

“Climate change is real and it affects the poorest countries,” said Emmanuel Macron, the newly elected French president, at the outset of the private conversation.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau then told Trump that the success of repairing the ozone layer proved that industry could be persuaded to act on harmful emissions, according to the account.

Then, German Chancellor Angela Merkel brought up China: “If the world’s largest economic power were to pull out, the field would be left to the Chinese,” she said. According to Der Spiegel, Merkel added that Chinese President Xi Jinping was preparing to take advantage of the vacuum left by America’s exit. Even Saudi Arabia, she added, was preparing for a world without oil.

Trump was unmoved. “For me,” the president reportedly said, “it’s easier to stay in than step out,” adding that green regulations were killing American jobs.

As it became clear Trump would not budge, Macron admitted defeat, according to this account.

“Now China leads,” he said.

The account adds fresh details to the president’s fraught European trip. Following the meeting, the G7 broke with tradition to release a statement where six nations reaffirmed the Paris climate agreement, without the United States. The president also caused a diplomatic scuffle in Italy after accusing Germany of being “very bad” on trade and appeared to literally shove aside a leader of a NATO ally.

In a Rose Garden ceremony last Thursday, Trump announced that the United States would leave the historic Paris climate agreement—promising to “begin negotiations to reenter either the Paris accord or an entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States.”

In response to the president’s announcement, President Macron of France released a video statement, saying, “If we do nothing, our children will know a world of migrations, of wars, of shortage. A dangerous world.”

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Der Spiegel Just Published the Minutes From Trump’s Contentious Meeting With G7 Leaders

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What Should Democrats Say About Jobs?

Mother Jones

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Greg Sargent reports today on work by Priorities USA to figure out why so many people who voted for Obama in 2012 turned around and voted for Trump in 2016:

One finding from the polling stands out: A shockingly large percentage of these Obama-Trump voters said Democrats’ economic policies will favor the wealthy — twice the percentage that said the same about Trump. I was also permitted to view video of some focus group activity, which showed Obama-Trump voters offering sharp criticism of Democrats on the economy.

….The poll found that Obama-Trump voters, many of whom are working-class whites and were pivotal to Trump’s victory, are economically losing ground and are skeptical of Democratic solutions to their problems.

I’m afraid I can’t find this very interesting without answers to a few questions:

How many voters switched from Obama to Trump? Are we talking 5 percent? 1 percent? Less?1
How does this compare to other years? Is it unusually high?
How does this compare to other years after a party has held the White House for eight years?

That said, let’s assume this is a problem. What should Democrats do about it? Here’s my take: above all, these folks want steady, secure jobs. Health care is great. Free college is great. Childcare is great. All that stuff is great, but it’s not fundamentally what drives the votes of these party switchers. What they want to hear about is jobs. They want their old-time good jobs back.

Trump had a good message on jobs: the Chinese stole them from you and I’ll get them back. This is not an especially correct message, but it’s both plausible and galvanizing. It works.

So what should the Democrats’ message be? What policy would plausibly and directly impact the likelihood of these “left behind” folks getting good, steady jobs again? There’s trade, of course, which Bernie Sanders raised in the primaries, but I think Trump has that one covered. It needs to be something else. But what?

If it takes more than a sentence or so to explain, it’s no good. If it’s couched in liberalese, it’s no good. If it’s not viscerally plausible, it’s no good. If it’s about “retraining,” it’s no good. If it’s gobbledegook about the changing world, it’s no good. If it’s not directly focused on getting a good job, it’s no good.

Any ideas?

1Please note my admirable restraint in not mentioning that if it weren’t for James Comey, Hillary Clinton would have won and the number of vote switchers would probably have been minuscule.

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What Should Democrats Say About Jobs?

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State Department Pulls Post Gushing About Mar-a-Lago

Mother Jones

After drawing sharp criticism on Monday, the State Department deleted a web article that showcased the President’s Mar-a-Lago estate and private club. The post, which had been available on the department’s ShareAmerica site since April 4, highlighted the compound’s “style and taste” while noting the central role the oceanside property has played in Trump’s presidency, having hosted state visits by Chinese president Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The post‘s tone was questioned after it gained wide notice on social media. “This reads almost as if it’s an advertisement for the private club,” says Jordan Libowitz, Communications Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). “This makes you question whether there were ulterior motives in mind.”

ShareAmerica, a State Department public diplomacy project that creates social media friendly stories about US politics, culture, and places, characterizes itself as a “platform for sharing compelling stories and images that spark discussion and debate on important topics like democracy, freedom of expression, innovation, entrepreneurship, education, and the role of civil society.” The Mar-a-Lago article was shared by the U.S. Embassy in London’s website, and promoted by the Facebook page of the State Department’s Bureau of Economic & Business Affairs.

The post drew the ire of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon):

“It’s somewhat out of the ordinary for government websites to be talking about current businesses of the sitting president. That’s not a situation we’ve really seen before,” says Libowitz.

A State Department official provided Mother Jones a short statement after deleting the post late on Monday: “The intention of the article was to inform the public about where the President has been hosting world leaders. We regret any misperception and have removed the post.”

Since his inauguration, Trump has spent 25 days at the club at a hefty cost to taxpayers and local residents. Mar-a-Lago’s initiation fee jumped to $200,000 around the same time that Trump entered office.

The ShareAmerica article included an outline of the estate’s history, noting that the original owner—the cereal titan Marjorie Merriweather Post—willed her Palm Beach, Florida compound to the US government, hoping it would be used as a presidential retreat. At the time, the 114-room mansion was rejected as being unsuitable. In 1985, Trump purchased the residence, refurbished it, and reopened it as a private club in 1995. The now-deleted ShareAmerica post frames Trump’s 2016 election victory as fulfilling the original owner’s plan: “Post’s dream of a winter White House came true with Trump’s election in 2016.”

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State Department Pulls Post Gushing About Mar-a-Lago

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Gene Luen Yang’s Resistance Reading

Mother Jones

We asked a range of authors, artists, and poets to name books that bring solace and/or understanding in this age of rancor. Two dozen or so responded. Here are the recommendations from the acclaimed graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang, a repeat National Book Award finalist who, by the way, reinvented Superman.

Illustration by Allegra Lockstadt

Latest book: Superman and Secret Coders book series
Also known for: American Born Chinese
Reading recommendations: The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt, was a revelation to me when I read it a few years ago. Professor Haidt is a social psychologist. His book helped me understand folks who think differently from me just a little bit better. Silence, by Shusaku Endo, is probably my favorite fiction book of all time. It’s about a Catholic missionary to 17th century Japan who eventually loses his faith. The story reminds me that grace can be found even when things are horribly broken.
_______

So far in this series: Kwame Alexander, Margaret Atwood, W. Kamau Bell, Jeff Chang, T Cooper, Dave Eggers, Reza Farazmand, Piper Kerman, Bill McKibben, Rabbi Jack Moline, Karen Russell, Tracy K. Smith, Gene Luen Yang. (New posts daily.)

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Gene Luen Yang’s Resistance Reading

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Trump Brags About Eating the "Most Beautiful" Chocolate Cake During Syrian Missile Strike Decision

Mother Jones

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Recounting details about his decision to launch missile strikes on a Syrian air base last week, President Donald Trump took several moments during a Fox Business interview that aired Wednesday morning to enthuse about the “most beautiful” chocolate cake he enjoyed at his Palm Beach resort with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump was entertaining the Chinese leader at Mar-a-Lago when he ordered the military strike.

“I was sitting at the table, we had finished dinner,” Trump told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo. “We’re now having dessert—and we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen—and President Xi was enjoying it.”

Bartiromo then said it was “brilliant” that the missiles were “unmanned.”

“It’s so incredible. It’s brilliant,” Trump agreed.

Then Trump appeared to momentarily forget which country the United States had attacked last week, naming Iraq instead of Syria.

“So what happens is I said, ‘We’ve just launched 59 missiles heading to Iraq, and I wanted you to know this,'” Trump said in the interview. “And he was eating his cake. And he was silent.”

“Syria?” Bartiromo corrected.

“Yes, heading toward Syria,” Trump said. He followed up by mentioning Xi finished his dessert.

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Trump Brags About Eating the "Most Beautiful" Chocolate Cake During Syrian Missile Strike Decision

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After Silent Treatment, Trump Caves In To Chinese

Mother Jones

Behold the greatest negotiator our nation has ever seen:

President Donald J. Trump and President Xi Jinping of China had a lengthy telephone conversation on Thursday evening. The two leaders discussed numerous topics and President Trump agreed, at the request of President Xi, to honor our “one China” policy.

That’s a readout from the White House Thursday evening. Here’s the backstory:

December 2: Breaking tradition, Trump “risks China’s wrath” by speaking on the phone with the president of Taiwan.

December 12: Trump goes on Fox News Sunday to poke China further: “I fully understand the ‘one China’ policy, but I don’t know why we have to be bound by a ‘one China’ policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade.”

December through February: China gives Trump the silent treatment. “Stung by an earlier, and unorthodox, telephone call between Mr. Trump and the president of Taiwan, Mr. Xi had not spoken to the American leader since Nov. 14, the week after he was elected….Relations between Washington and Beijing had been frozen since December.”

February 8: Apparently uneasy over Xi shutting him out, Trump finally sends Xi a letter wishing him a happy Chinese New Year. The letter was hand delivered by Mike Flynn: “As a gesture of conciliation, Flynn and his deputy, K.T. McFarland, hand-delivered the letter to China’s ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai. Trump wrote that he wished ‘the Chinese people a happy Lantern Festival and prosperous Year of the Rooster.’ He also said he ‘looks forward to working with President Xi to develop a constructive relationship that benefits both the United States and China.'”

February 8: A Chinese surveillance plane “inadvertently” buzzes an American P-3C Orion in the vicinity of the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea.

February 9: Trump caves in and agrees to honor the One China policy.

It’s worth noting that this was not just something that “came up” in the phone call. Xi would not have agreed to talk unless Trump explicitly promised beforehand that he would affirm the One China policy and do so publicly. Delivering that promise was probably the real point of Flynn’s meeting with the Chinese ambassador, and it’s why it was specifically mentioned in the readout. A single sentence in a late-night readout was the least humiliating way Trump’s aides could think of for publicly knuckling under to China. God knows, Trump would probably go to war before he’d be willing to personally back down in front of the TV cameras.

In any case, Trump really showed them, didn’t he? No matter what kind of spin the White House puts on this, China now knows that Trump’s threats and bluster are entirely hollow. That should do wonders for our negotiations with China on trade issues. And everyone else too.

POSTSCRIPT: Can anyone point me to any great deal that Trump has ever negotiated? I can think of plenty of disasters (Trump Air, the Plaza Hotel, his Atlantic City casinos, etc.), and I can think of plenty of ordinary deals he’s closed (all of his golf courses). But have there been any that were really spectacular? None come to mind, unless you count his ability to talk his bankers into sparing him personal bankruptcy after his businesses went bust in 1990. Or maybe the way he snookered all the poor schmoes who bought stock in his entertainment company when he took it public in 1995.

But how about a straightforward real estate deal where he negotiated a bargain price and made out like a bandit? Are there any?

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After Silent Treatment, Trump Caves In To Chinese

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Social Media Is Best Used for Distraction, Not Argument

Mother Jones

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The Chinese government is the acknowledged expert at authoritarian use of social media to promote party goals. So how do they do it? Alex Tabarrok points today to a new paper that engaged in a ton of ground-level research to come to a conclusion that shouldn’t surprise anyone. They don’t waste their time trying to change minds:

We estimate that the government fabricates and posts about 448 million social media comments a year. In contrast to prior claims, we show that the Chinese regime’s strategy is to avoid arguing with skeptics of the party and the government, and to not even discuss controversial issues. We infer that the goal of this massive secretive operation is instead to distract the public and change the subject, as most of the these posts involve cheerleading for China, the revolutionary history of the Communist Party, or other symbols of the regime.

As the chart at the top of this post shows, the government’s social media army leaps into action at all the appropriate times, but instead of defending the party or the government, they just spend their time distracting attention onto other subjects.

I hardly need to mention that this strategy should remind you of someone.

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Social Media Is Best Used for Distraction, Not Argument

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Trump Somehow Found Time Today to Meet With Monsanto Execs

Mother Jones

Amid the furor surrounding allegations of covert ties with Russian intelligence figures as well as his first press conference since winning the election, President-elect Donald Trump found time in his hectic Wednesday schedule to meet with two towering figures in the agriculture world, reports Fox Business Daily. But the main conversation topic wasn’t the job opening atop the US Department of Agriculture, the sole cabinet spot awaiting an appointment from Trump.

Rather, the meeting involved German chemical giant Bayer’s $66 billion buyout of US seed/agrichemical giant Monsanto—a deal that will have to pass antitrust muster with Trump’s Department of Justice (more on that here). Fox reports that Bayer CEO Werner Baumann and his Monsanto counterpart Hugh Grant met with the incoming president at Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan to promote the merger. In an email to the news organization, a Monsanto spokesperson confirmed that the two execs “had a productive meeting with President-Elect Trump and his team to share their views on the future of the agriculture industry and its need for innovation.”

Baumann and Grant have plenty to be concerned about regarding possible antitrust obstacles to their mega-deal. As I’ve reported before, a combined Bayer-Monsanto would own 29 percent of the global seed market, and 25 percent of the global pesticide market. And if the pending merger between agribiz goliaths Dow and DuPont also wins approval, three enormous companies—the above two combined firms, plus Syngenta (itself recently taken over by a Chinese chemical conglomerate)—would sell about 59 percent of the globe’s seeds and 64 percent of its pesticides. In this post, I tease out how such concentrated power can harm farmers and consumers alike.

And as The Wall Street Journal reports, opposition to these mergers has arisen even in rival agribusiness circles, including among the motley crew of execs and aligned GOP farm-state pols who served on Trump’s rural advisory committee during the campaign. Iowa corn, pork, and ethanol magnate Bruce Rastetter, a member of that committee and a leading candidate for the USDA post, told The Journal he “plans to raise his concerns about the mergers directly with Mr. Trump in the near future.” Rastetter is tightly aligned with Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, whom Trump has picked to serve as ambassador to China.

As with everything else he does, Trump seems intent on plunging these momentous decisions—on both the future of the seed market and the leadership of the USDA—into a swirling sea of chaos and drama.

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Trump Somehow Found Time Today to Meet With Monsanto Execs

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Trump Doesn’t Deny Contact Between His Team and Russia During Campaign

Mother Jones

In his first press conference in half a year, Donald Trump came close to acknowledging the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia had meddled in the election to benefit him, saying, “I think it was Russia.” But he quickly added that others are always trying to hack US targets and downplayed the Russian hack, asking why it received so much more attention than a Chinese cyber-attack on the US government several years ago. And when Trump was given a chance to rebut claims that his campaign team had been in communication with Russian intermediaries during the campaign, he did not deny those allegations.

At the end of the nearly hour-long press conference, Trump ignored a question from a reporter about contacts between people associated with him and Russians. The reporter asked, “Can you stand here today, once and for all, and say that no one connected to you or your campaign had any contact with Russia leading up to or during the presidential campaign? And if you do indeed believe that Russia was behind the hacking, what is your message to Vladimir Putin right now?”

But Trump chose only to answer the second part of the journalist’s query. “Russia will have much greater respect for our country when I’m leading it than when other people have led it,” he said. “You will see that. Russia will respect our country. He shouldn’t have done it, I don’t believe he’ll be doing it more now, we have to work something out. But it’s not just Russia.”

The press conference comes one day after CNN reported that the heads of the major US intelligence agencies had briefed Trump and President Barack Obama about claims that Moscow had mounted a secret operation to co-opt or cultivate Trump, that there were extensive communications between people close to Trump and Russians during the presidential campaign, and that Russia had collected compromising material on Trump during his travels to the country. After CNN’s story went live, BuzzFeed published a raw “dossier” of information used for that briefing, prompting a furious response from Trump during his press conference.

Both stories came months after Mother Jones first reported that a former spy working for a Western country had sent the FBI memos containing the Russian allegations.

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Trump Doesn’t Deny Contact Between His Team and Russia During Campaign

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