vox--2020-01-14--The state of the 2020 Democratic race before the final pre-Iowa debate, explained

With the Iowa caucuses now less than three weeks away , the top Democratic presidential candidates will meet Tuesday in Des Moines for their only remaining debate before then — just as the race has been getting increasingly nasty .
( The debate kicks off at 9 pm ET ) .
Former Vice President Joe Biden continues to lead national polls , as he has for the past year .
But because there ’ s no national primary , candidates are battling to gain the advantage in the first two states to vote : Iowa and New Hampshire .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ muddled .
Neither Iowa nor New Hampshire has a candidate clearly in the lead .
And though Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders lead the latest polling averages in both states , the top four candidates overall — those two plus Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former South Bend , Indiana , Mayor Pete Buttigieg — are all within a few points of each other .
Any of those four still has a clear shot at winning either state .
But Sanders , Warren , and Buttigieg seem to need strong performances in at least @ @ @ @ @ @ @ race where Biden still has the overall advantage .
So do the other candidates who will be onstage Tuesday night — Sen. Amy Klobuchar and billionaire Tom Steyer — and those who missed the cut , such as entrepreneur Andrew Yang .
( Only one candidate is pursuing a sharply different strategy : Michael Bloomberg , who ’ s skipping the early states , and who also won ’ t be onstage at Tuesday ’ s debate . )
But the extraordinary importance of Iowa and New Hampshire helps explain the sharp tensions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Warren , Buttigieg and Warren , and Klobuchar and Buttigieg .
Simply put , Biden ’ s campaign thinks he can survive a mediocre showing in the early states .
But Sanders , Warren , Buttigieg , and Klobuchar all think they can ’ t .
So they ’ re bitterly battling one another , each with the hope that they ’ ll emerge as the main alternative to Biden .
The risk there is that their focus on each other may just let Biden cruise to victory .
The bigger picture is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up their minds on two major questions : Whose vision of the country do they find most appealing ?
And who is most likely to beat President Trump ?
The candidates are battling to be the alternative to Biden In recent months , it ’ s been easy to predict which of the leading Democratic candidates would take the most heat from their rivals — it ’ s whoever seems to be emerging as the most likely alternative to Joe Biden , particularly in Iowa .
Around October and November , that was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iowa and tied Biden in national polls , later faced criticism over her health care plan , and then declined .
Around December , it was Pete Buttigieg — who led Iowa polls for a month , faced criticism over his high-dollar fundraisers and lack of experience , and then declined .
And now it ’ s Bernie Sanders ’ s turn in the barrel .
Sanders , who began the campaign as the clear second-place contender behind Biden , appears to have regained that mantle , and has posted a set of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He led the most recent Des Moines Register Iowa poll , albeit narrowly , and has also posted strong results in New Hampshire .
All this is because if Sanders proves to be the breakout candidate in Iowa or New Hampshire , that ’ s probably the end for Warren , Buttigieg , and Klobuchar , who are all hinging their hopes on those early states .
To put it simply : The weaker your position is in other states , the more you need a strong performance in either Iowa or New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a surprising showing in one or both will boost your numbers elsewhere .
Iowa and New Hampshire have a paltry number of delegates but a tremendous impact on the political world ’ s perceptions of the race , and on who the top contenders are believed to be .
So these few weeks — and this last pre-Iowa debate — may be several candidates ’ final chance to make it happen .
Things have been getting tense Now , this weekend , Sanders appeared to be shifting his focus toward the frontrunner : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ saying Biden “ still refuses to admit he was dead wrong on the Iraq War.
” And Sanders campaign co-chair Nina Turner wrote an op-ed saying Biden had repeatedly let down black voters in the South Carolina newspaper the State .
But this was soon swamped by a media frenzy over a different spat — that between Sanders and Warren .
Sanders and Warren are the two most progressive candidates remaining in the race , and both have faced criticism from the rest of the field for being too far left to win @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through 2019 .
And the pair , who have had friendly relations during their Senate careers , continued to be amicable during the campaign , even when some of their online supporters weren ’ t .
Yet things took a turn this weekend .
The spat kicked off on Saturday , when Politico ’ s Alex Thompson and Holly Otterbein obtained a script given to Sanders campaign volunteers , listing suggested responses to offer people who said they supported various other candidates .
For Warren backers , the suggested response was to praise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mainly “ highly-educated ” solid Democrats , and question whether she could “ turn out disaffected working class voters.
” Warren characterized this as Sanders “ sending his volunteers out to trash me ” and said she was “ disappointed.
” Things escalated on Monday , when CNN ’ s MJ Lee cited four anonymous sources describing a private comment Sanders purportedly made when meeting Warren in late 2018 — that , in his view , a woman couldn ’ t beat Trump in 2020 .
Sanders claims he never said that , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ a sexist , a racist and a liar who would weaponize whatever he could.
” That evening , Warren released a statement confirming the anonymous sources ’ version but insisting that she and Sanders were still “ friends and allies.
” The topic is sure to be revisited at Tuesday ’ s debate .
But the upshot has been that the two most left-leaning candidates have been feuding while Biden , a much less progressive candidate , continues to lead national polling .
Biden , Sanders , Warren , and Buttigieg all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of this is unfolding as the outcome in the first state to vote looks genuinely uncertain .
The results of three most recent polls in Iowa are : The point is it ’ s very close .
These are small overall amounts of support and small margins , with relatively little separation among the top candidates .
No one has built a breakaway lead .
And Iowa is particularly difficult to poll because of its unusual caucus system — it ’ s tough to model what turnout will be and who exactly will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if a candidate falls below 15 percent support in individual caucus sites , his or her supporters get to switch their votes to a different candidate .
But while any of the four candidates seems to have a real shot at winning Iowa , they don ’ t all equally need Iowa .
Biden is best positioned to survive a mediocre showing in Iowa and New Hampshire — it could damage him , but it wouldn ’ t quickly end his campaign ( barring a sudden , catastrophic collapse in support ) .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ lead national polls and in most states , and has a particularly large lead in South Carolina , the last state to vote before Super Tuesday .
It ’ s the other candidates who really need to do well early on , because they ’ re hoping to shake up the dynamics of a race where Biden continues to hold the advantage .
That goes for Sanders , Warren , and Buttigieg , as well as for other candidates with a less clear path to victory , like Klobuchar and Yang .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , though the Democratic field has lost a former Cabinet secretary , a senator , and a spiritual guru this month , there are still two billionaires around spending enormous amounts on advertising — and it ’ s started to pay off in the polls , at least a little bit .
First there ’ s Tom Steyer , the Democratic megadonor who entered the race in July .
Steyer has spent more than $ 100 million on campaign advertising .
And while it hasn ’ t seemed to help him much in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s been getting some surprisingly good results in the third and fourth states to vote , Nevada and South Carolina ( where other candidates haven ’ t spent very much on ads yet ) .
Recent Fox News polls showed Steyer tied for third place with 12 percent support in Nevada , and in second place with 15 percent support in South Carolina .
Those are currently still outliers — but there ’ s been little polling in either state lately , and the Morning Consult “ early states ” poll has often @ @ @ @ @ @ @ problem for Steyer will be what happens if he finished poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire , and after other candidates finally start focusing on Nevada and South Carolina .
Second , and also running with a more unusual strategy , is Michael Bloomberg .
The former New York City mayor is skipping all four early states in hopes that a massively expensive ad campaign can propel him to a surprising win in Super Tuesday ’ s March 3 primaries .
And though Bloomberg and Steyer are both billionaires , Bloomberg is far @ @ @ @ @ @ @ far reflects that .
Though he ’ s only been in the race since November , he ’ s already doubled Steyer ’ s ad spending , shelling out more than $ 200 million .
( He will , however , be absent from the debate stage because the DNC requires candidates to get a certain number of donors to qualify , and Bloomberg isn ’ t accepting donations . )
As a result of his spending , Bloomberg has risen to fifth place in national polls , with about 6 percent of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not seem impressive , yet his strategic decision to skip the early states means he ’ ll be waiting in the wings for whoever emerges there .
And while skipping Iowa and New Hampshire hasn ’ t worked before for presidential candidates , none of those candidates have had as much money to burn as Bloomberg .

With the Iowa caucuses now less than three weeks away, the top Democratic presidential candidates will meet Tuesday in Des Moines for their only remaining debate before then — just as the race has been getting increasingly nasty. (The debate kicks off at 9 pm ET).
Former Vice President Joe Biden continues to lead national polls, as he has for the past year. But because there’s no national primary, candidates are battling to gain the advantage in the first two states to vote: Iowa and New Hampshire. And there, the situation is far more muddled.
Neither Iowa nor New Hampshire has a candidate clearly in the lead. And though Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders lead the latest polling averages in both states, the top four candidates overall — those two plus Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg — are all within a few points of each other.
Any of those four still has a clear shot at winning either state. But Sanders, Warren, and Buttigieg seem to need strong performances in at least one early state to shake up a race where Biden still has the overall advantage. So do the other candidates who will be onstage Tuesday night — Sen. Amy Klobuchar and billionaire Tom Steyer — and those who missed the cut, such as entrepreneur Andrew Yang. (Only one candidate is pursuing a sharply different strategy: Michael Bloomberg, who’s skipping the early states, and who also won’t be onstage at Tuesday’s debate.)
But the extraordinary importance of Iowa and New Hampshire helps explain the sharp tensions between, for instance, Sanders and Warren, Buttigieg and Warren, and Klobuchar and Buttigieg.
Simply put, Biden’s campaign thinks he can survive a mediocre showing in the early states. But Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar all think they can’t. So they’re bitterly battling one another, each with the hope that they’ll emerge as the main alternative to Biden. The risk there is that their focus on each other may just let Biden cruise to victory.
The bigger picture is that Democratic voters are trying to make up their minds on two major questions: Whose vision of the country do they find most appealing? And who is most likely to beat President Trump?
The candidates are battling to be the alternative to Biden
In recent months, it’s been easy to predict which of the leading Democratic candidates would take the most heat from their rivals — it’s whoever seems to be emerging as the most likely alternative to Joe Biden, particularly in Iowa.
Around October and November, that was Elizabeth Warren — who briefly led in Iowa and tied Biden in national polls, later faced criticism over her health care plan, and then declined.
Around December, it was Pete Buttigieg — who led Iowa polls for a month, faced criticism over his high-dollar fundraisers and lack of experience, and then declined.
And now it’s Bernie Sanders’s turn in the barrel.
Sanders, who began the campaign as the clear second-place contender behind Biden, appears to have regained that mantle, and has posted a set of strong poll results in early states. He led the most recent Des Moines Register Iowa poll, albeit narrowly, and has also posted strong results in New Hampshire.
All this is because if Sanders proves to be the breakout candidate in Iowa or New Hampshire, that’s probably the end for Warren, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar, who are all hinging their hopes on those early states.
To put it simply: The weaker your position is in other states, the more you need a strong performance in either Iowa or New Hampshire — because you’re hoping a surprising showing in one or both will boost your numbers elsewhere. Iowa and New Hampshire have a paltry number of delegates but a tremendous impact on the political world’s perceptions of the race, and on who the top contenders are believed to be.
So these few weeks — and this last pre-Iowa debate — may be several candidates’ final chance to make it happen.
Things have been getting tense
Now, this weekend, Sanders appeared to be shifting his focus toward the frontrunner: Biden. His campaign released a statement saying Biden “still refuses to admit he was dead wrong on the Iraq War.” And Sanders campaign co-chair Nina Turner wrote an op-ed saying Biden had repeatedly let down black voters in the South Carolina newspaper the State.
But this was soon swamped by a media frenzy over a different spat — that between Sanders and Warren.
Sanders and Warren are the two most progressive candidates remaining in the race, and both have faced criticism from the rest of the field for being too far left to win. But they performed well in polls through 2019. And the pair, who have had friendly relations during their Senate careers, continued to be amicable during the campaign, even when some of their online supporters weren’t.
Yet things took a turn this weekend.
The spat kicked off on Saturday, when Politico’s Alex Thompson and Holly Otterbein obtained a script given to Sanders campaign volunteers, listing suggested responses to offer people who said they supported various other candidates. For Warren backers, the suggested response was to praise her but say that her supporters were mainly “highly-educated” solid Democrats, and question whether she could “turn out disaffected working class voters.” Warren characterized this as Sanders “sending his volunteers out to trash me” and said she was “disappointed.”
Things escalated on Monday, when CNN’s MJ Lee cited four anonymous sources describing a private comment Sanders purportedly made when meeting Warren in late 2018 — that, in his view, a woman couldn’t beat Trump in 2020. Sanders claims he never said that, but that he did say Trump was “a sexist, a racist and a liar who would weaponize whatever he could.” That evening, Warren released a statement confirming the anonymous sources’ version but insisting that she and Sanders were still “friends and allies.”
The topic is sure to be revisited at Tuesday’s debate. But the upshot has been that the two most left-leaning candidates have been feuding while Biden, a much less progressive candidate, continues to lead national polling.
Biden, Sanders, Warren, and Buttigieg all have a shot to win Iowa
All of this is unfolding as the outcome in the first state to vote looks genuinely uncertain. The results of three most recent polls in Iowa are:
Des Moines Register/CNN: Sanders 20 percent, Warren 17 percent, Buttigieg 16 percent, Biden 15 percent
Monmouth: Biden 24 percent, Sanders 18 percent, Buttigieg 17 percent, Warren 15 percent
CBS News/YouGov: Biden/Sanders/Buttigieg 23 percent each, Warren 16 percent
The point is it’s very close. These are small overall amounts of support and small margins, with relatively little separation among the top candidates. No one has built a breakaway lead.
And Iowa is particularly difficult to poll because of its unusual caucus system — it’s tough to model what turnout will be and who exactly will turn out. Another wrinkle is that if a candidate falls below 15 percent support in individual caucus sites, his or her supporters get to switch their votes to a different candidate.
But while any of the four candidates seems to have a real shot at winning Iowa, they don’t all equally need Iowa.
Biden is best positioned to survive a mediocre showing in Iowa and New Hampshire — it could damage him, but it wouldn’t quickly end his campaign (barring a sudden, catastrophic collapse in support). That’s because he continues to lead national polls and in most states, and has a particularly large lead in South Carolina, the last state to vote before Super Tuesday.
It’s the other candidates who really need to do well early on, because they’re hoping to shake up the dynamics of a race where Biden continues to hold the advantage. That goes for Sanders, Warren, and Buttigieg, as well as for other candidates with a less clear path to victory, like Klobuchar and Yang.
The billionaires are spending tons of money
Finally, though the Democratic field has lost a former Cabinet secretary, a senator, and a spiritual guru this month, there are still two billionaires around spending enormous amounts on advertising — and it’s started to pay off in the polls, at least a little bit.
First there’s Tom Steyer, the Democratic megadonor who entered the race in July. Steyer has spent more than $100 million on campaign advertising. And while it hasn’t seemed to help him much in Iowa or New Hampshire, he’s been getting some surprisingly good results in the third and fourth states to vote, Nevada and South Carolina (where other candidates haven’t spent very much on ads yet).
Recent Fox News polls showed Steyer tied for third place with 12 percent support in Nevada, and in second place with 15 percent support in South Carolina. Those are currently still outliers — but there’s been little polling in either state lately, and the Morning Consult “early states” poll has often shown Steyer with double-digit support. The problem for Steyer will be what happens if he finished poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire, and after other candidates finally start focusing on Nevada and South Carolina.
Second, and also running with a more unusual strategy, is Michael Bloomberg. The former New York City mayor is skipping all four early states in hopes that a massively expensive ad campaign can propel him to a surprising win in Super Tuesday’s March 3 primaries.
And though Bloomberg and Steyer are both billionaires, Bloomberg is far richer — and his ad spending so far reflects that. Though he’s only been in the race since November, he’s already doubled Steyer’s ad spending, shelling out more than $200 million. (He will, however, be absent from the debate stage because the DNC requires candidates to get a certain number of donors to qualify, and Bloomberg isn’t accepting donations.)
As a result of his spending, Bloomberg has risen to fifth place in national polls, with about 6 percent of the vote on average. That may not seem impressive, yet his strategic decision to skip the early states means he’ll be waiting in the wings for whoever emerges there. And while skipping Iowa and New Hampshire hasn’t worked before for presidential candidates, none of those candidates have had as much money to burn as Bloomberg.


vox--2020-01-14--January 2020 Democratic debate

January 2020 Democratic debate

Six candidates will take the stage in Des Moines for the last time before voting begins early in February .
With 20 days to go until the Iowa caucuses and no clear leader in the polls , the seventh Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential election will take place in Des Moines , Iowa , this Tuesday , January 14 .
Twelve candidates are still vying for the nomination , but only six will be on stage at Drake University when the debate gets underway at 9 pm ET .
The debate will be moderated by CNN and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ live on the CNN website and app , as well as on the Des Moines Register site .
Former Vice President Joe Biden ; Sens .
Elizabeth Warren , Bernie Sanders , and Amy Klobuchar ; former South Bend , Indiana , Mayor Pete Buttigieg ; and billionaire Tom Steyer all qualified for the debate on the strength of either their early-state or national polling numbers .
Entrepreneur Andrew Yang , who made the stage last month in Los Angeles , failed to qualify .
The DNC required that candidates receive at least @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percent support in four national polls or 7 percent in two early-state polls to participate in the debate .
Follow along below for Vox ’ s debate coverage , including how to watch , breaking news updates , analysis , and more .

Six candidates will take the stage in Des Moines for the last time before voting begins early in February.
With 20 days to go until the Iowa caucuses and no clear leader in the polls, the seventh Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential election will take place in Des Moines, Iowa, this Tuesday, January 14. Twelve candidates are still vying for the nomination, but only six will be on stage at Drake University when the debate gets underway at 9 pm ET.
The debate will be moderated by CNN and the Des Moines Register; it will stream live on the CNN website and app, as well as on the Des Moines Register site.
Former Vice President Joe Biden; Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Amy Klobuchar; former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg; and billionaire Tom Steyer all qualified for the debate on the strength of either their early-state or national polling numbers. Entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who made the stage last month in Los Angeles, failed to qualify.
The DNC required that candidates receive at least 225,000 donations and achieve at least 5 percent support in four national polls or 7 percent in two early-state polls to participate in the debate.
Follow along below for Vox’s debate coverage, including how to watch, breaking news updates, analysis, and more.


vox--2020-01-14--Are Australia’s koalas going extinct? We asked an ecologist.

This fire season has been one of the worst on record in Australia .
So far , an area the size of Portugal has burned , and 1 billion animals are estimated to have died — among them , the koala .
Slow-moving and dependent on the forest , koalas have been especially hard hit , with an estimated 8,000 lost in New South Wales alone .
Koalas were already threatened before these fires broke out .
For decades , humans have hunted koalas for their pelts and destroyed their habitats through deforestation .
As a result , the population @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2010 , the koala population in Australia decreased by 95 percent .
But after this year ’ s fire season , experts believe koalas are now in danger of extinction — unless policy changes are put in place to save them .
Watch the video above the learn more about the status of the koala after this season ’ s destructive fires .
You can find this video and all of Vox ’ s videos on YouTube .
And if you ’ re interested in supporting our video journalism , you can become @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on YouTube .

This fire season has been one of the worst on record in Australia. So far, an area the size of Portugal has burned, and 1 billion animals are estimated to have died — among them, the koala. Slow-moving and dependent on the forest, koalas have been especially hard hit, with an estimated 8,000 lost in New South Wales alone.
Koalas were already threatened before these fires broke out. For decades, humans have hunted koalas for their pelts and destroyed their habitats through deforestation. As a result, the population has dropped dramatically. Between 1788 and 2010, the koala population in Australia decreased by 95 percent. But after this year’s fire season, experts believe koalas are now in danger of extinction — unless policy changes are put in place to save them.
Watch the video above the learn more about the status of the koala after this season’s destructive fires.
You can find this video and all of Vox’s videos on YouTube. And if you’re interested in supporting our video journalism, you can become a member of the Vox Video Lab on YouTube.


vox--2020-01-14--If our governments won’t stop climate change, should we revolt? Extinction Rebellion says yes.

They ’ ve glued themselves to trains , blockaded major bridges , and chained themselves to government buildings .
They ’ ve launched street protests that brought parts of London and New York and Sydney to a standstill .
And they ’ ve purposely gotten arrested — thousands of them — all in the name of saving our climate .
Extinction Rebellion , or XR for short , is the movement behind some of the boldest climate protests around .
It burst onto the scene in the UK in 2018 , demanding that the British government achieve net-zero greenhouse gas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ behind it , and soon , thousands of activists around the globe did too .
XR has spread to dozens of countries , including the US .
XR ’ s cofounder , the longtime British climate activist Roger Hallam , has a new book out explaining the rationale behind this global rebellion .
In Common Sense for the 21st Century , Hallam argues that nonviolent civil disobedience is our only shot at countering the climate emergency .
That means breaking the law by blocking roads and disrupting transit , and getting arrested en @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up its game on fighting climate change .
And if it doesn ’ t agree ?
Then topple the government , Hallam says .
The idea of rebelling against the government might seem silly or extreme .
So might Hallam ’ s plan to replace the government with a Citizens ’ Assembly , a group of randomly selected citizens , which he argues would be more democratic and more responsive to the climate crisis than the status quo .
But the idea of a Citizens ’ Assembly is gaining ground in some quarters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whereby it doesn ’ t replace the government ) .
French President Emmanuel Macron just promised to give 150 randomly chosen people the power to set the policy agenda on cutting carbon emissions .
In the UK , 110 people will take part in an assembly to decide on policies for achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 .
It ’ s worth noting that Hallam ’ s theory of social change is based on academic research , particularly the work of Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth .
At King ’ s College London @ @ @ @ @ @ @ PhD on how people use civil disobedience to achieve social change .
I spoke to Hallam about his new book , the exact nature of the rebellion he ’ s envisioning , and what happens once the revolution is over .
A transcript of our conversation , lightly edited for length and clarity , follows .
An underlying premise of your book and of XR is that we can no longer rely on incremental reforms , like those advocated by most environmental nonprofits .
Can you explain why you think a full-on rebellion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s happening with the climate is no big shakes , then obviously it may sound a bit ridiculous to be suggesting a rebellion against the government .
You ’ ve got to understand , it ’ s like we ’ ve gone to the doctor and he ’ s told us we ’ ve got terminal cancer .
We need to reduce carbon emissions in a matter of months and years , not decades .
We need to change governments ’ actions very quickly .
The most effective way to change society @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , nonviolent civil disobedience .
We need lots of people going to their capital city and blocking the roads until the government substantially bends to the demands or collapses .
“ If we ’ d just done a few nice marches , you probably wouldn ’ t be on this call with me.
” Tell me about the social science research that inspires you and XR .
One scholar you cite frequently is the political scientist Erica Chenoweth .
What findings do you think we should take from her research and apply in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ based on her research , though it ’ s not slavishly following it .
The core point is that it ’ s a no-brainer that mass civil disobedience works .
There ’ s ample historical evidence for it , not least Gandhi and Martin Luther King .
Just sending letters and emails is not going to work because there ’ s no cost to the opposition .
What Chenoweth ’ s research shows is that you need to have a lot of people engaging in a low level of civil disobedience — breaking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thousands of people sitting down in the road in the middle of the city .
Basically , you get the authorities to a point where they can ’ t cope and then they ’ ll engage in negotiations .
Obviously this doesn ’ t work all the time .
But it has a substantial probability relative to the other options .
XR ’ s stated goal is “ mobilizing 3.5 percent of the population to achieve system change.
” That figure comes from Chenoweth ’ s finding that if you want to achieve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 3.5 percent of the population into the streets , right ?
Yes , 3.5 percent is the average of what we ’ ve needed in uprisings since 1900 .
But sometimes major change starts with a lot less than that .
It ’ s not a linear process where you build up 3.5 percent of the population and then suddenly everything changes .
You might get 50,000 and the authorities can ’ t cope and they start arresting people and that creates a backfire effect — it creates more sympathy for the cause @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the amount of people come into the street .
In September , the global climate strikes spearheaded by Greta Thunberg brought an estimated 6 million people into the streets .
But that didn ’ t cause structural change .
Why not ?
Is it because that ’ s nowhere close to 3.5 percent of the global population ?
Well , it ’ s a simple equation : the number of people times the degree of disruption .
If you have millions of people but they don ’ t create any disruption , you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
You need lots of people causing a reasonable amount of disruption .
And the main rubric there is whether they break the law or not .
I ’ m not trying to be unpleasant toward Greta or [ her climate strike movement ] Fridays for Future .
This is too important for it to be about political ideology or ego .
But people have been doing climate marches for more than 30 years .
It doesn ’ t work because no one is losing money or reputation .
The most effective way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and going to prison .
In two XR rebellion events in the UK , 3,000 people have already been arrested .
That ’ s changed the conversation in the UK .
Climate has become a major issue because the politicians are being forced to consider the topic .
And the reason you ’ re talking to me now is because we broke the law .
If we ’ d just done a few nice marches , you probably wouldn ’ t be on this call with me .
What can we learn from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has not worked ?
You have to keep it nonviolent .
We train people so they can role-play being dragged off by police and practice maintaining nonviolent discipline .
Even more important is to be proactively respectful to the authorities , because that enables the police to save face [ when the time comes for negotiations ] , or allows them to defect .
Plus , the second you start getting violent , you lose moral authority .
I want to clarify something : Is your goal necessarily to topple the government and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it to do that only if the government keeps refusing to enact needed climate measures ?
XR and a lot of civil disobedience movements around the world are obviously trying to influence the government in order to enact legislation .
What I argue is that that ’ s not going to happen unless you change the whole system .
That basically means bringing down the government and replacing it with a new form of democracy that isn ’ t corrupted by the elites .
That form of democracy involves Citizens ’ Assemblies .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( as you know , in America , that works to preserve the rich ) , you select citizens randomly from the population to take part in an Assembly .
So you ’ ll get refuse collectors from Virginia and computer programmers from California — a cross-section .
For the first time ever , black people , gay people , poor people will be represented in proportion to their population .
They would then take in evidence on the climate catastrophe .
What makes you confident that the people who make up the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ susceptible to the same things politicians are — corruption , bribery , vested business interests of their own , or simply not caring about the climate crisis ?
I ’ d say the big game-changer here is chance .
No one will be able to influence in any meaningful way who is selected to join the Assembly .
If there were human agency , there ’ d be corruptibility — someone could pay someone to select whoever they want for the Assembly .
But if this is done properly — it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; it happens all the time with jury trials — then you don ’ t just get the rich and powerful , which you do in a normal corrupted democracy .
You said that people will see the objective evidence and not want their children to die .
But we know that human beings ’ decision-making is often not rational .
Even when we ’ re confronted with all the evidence , there are all kinds of cognitive biases and emotional reasons why we might resist .
You ’ re perfectly right .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But I think what you ’ ve said assumes people get their information in small bites and are distracted by other concerns and influences .
When people go into a deliberative space , all those things no longer apply .
The social context largely determines the outcome .
Just to take one recent example , abortion in Ireland was a massively divisive issue .
A lot of conservative Catholics said no way .
Then people went into this deliberative Citizens ’ Assembly and after looking at the objective facts about what happens @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have abortions , they came out with transformed attitudes .
They said to the Irish nation , “ In our collective opinion , abortion should be legal.
” They had a referendum and the debate was resolved democratically .
One common critique of XR is that it ’ s not diverse enough .
Too white , too middle-class .
Not welcoming enough to political conservatives .
What can XR groups do around the world to ensure that everyone feels welcome ?
Many people on the right will think it ’ s terrible and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a lot of people on the left won ’ t like it either .
But what we ’ re looking for is 3.5 percent of the population .
And the easiest way to get that is to welcome people from many different backgrounds .
The first people who are going to suffer most from the climate collapse are people of color and minorities .
So it ’ s in their direct interest to support a methodology of change that is most likely to succeed , which happens to be mass civil disobedience .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ having a regenerative culture .
People are mobilized when they feel welcomed , supported .
It ’ s small things : like when people come to meetings , they ’ re welcomed into the room — not judged — and they ’ re engaged in small talk .
You split people into small groups so everyone participates and talks about their concerns and shares their grief .
Are you worried that by delaying people ’ s commutes , XR pisses them off and risks alienating them ?
It ’ s worth remembering that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get civil rights , many Americans thought he was a terrible man because he was disrupting their nice comfortable racist lives .
The process of political change involves people getting pissed off .
So the key issue is not whether they get pissed off , it ’ s whether them getting pissed off leads to attitude change .
The two determinants of that are whether the issue is just and whether it ’ s done with respect .
Also — and there ’ s evidence on this from sales theory — if you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s almost impossible for them to continue being aggressive to you .
I did about 15 roadblocks in London , and in the first five or so people got out of the cars and got angry at us .
Then we started a system of having all the old ladies and respectable people going along the cars handing out cake and apologizing for the delay .
After that we didn ’ t have anyone getting out of their cars and shouting at us .
The first principle of XR is “ tell the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the truth about the prospects for XR itself .
What chance do you think XR has of succeeding ?
My honest opinion is that the likelihood is very slight , because of the difficulty of bringing about change .
But this is the paradox of mobilization : The more people engage in it with an outcome-oriented motivation structure , the less likely it is to happen , because they ’ ll get disappointed more quickly .
The guys who get the goods are the people who don ’ t care if they get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ activity as an end in itself , because they think it ’ s immoral or outrageous not to do so .
Even if XR fails to achieve its stated goals , could it still succeed by having a radical flank effect — where radical groups make the issue impossible to ignore , so authorities end up working on it with more moderate groups ?
The radical flank effect is a very effective political mechanism .
That ’ s the rationale behind doing civil disobedience and telling the truth .
If you can close @ @ @ @ @ @ @ move the Overton window and everyone actually starts talking about climate change .
Succeeding is a continuum .
I ’ m pushing it along as far as I can .
Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter .
Twice a week , you ’ ll get a roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling our biggest challenges : improving public health , decreasing human and animal suffering , easing catastrophic risks , and — to put it simply — getting better at doing good .

They’ve glued themselves to trains, blockaded major bridges, and chained themselves to government buildings. They’ve launched street protests that brought parts of London and New York and Sydney to a standstill. And they’ve purposely gotten arrested — thousands of them — all in the name of saving our climate.
Extinction Rebellion, or XR for short, is the movement behind some of the boldest climate protests around. It burst onto the scene in the UK in 2018, demanding that the British government achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. Greta Thunberg rallied behind it, and soon, thousands of activists around the globe did too. XR has spread to dozens of countries, including the US.
XR’s cofounder, the longtime British climate activist Roger Hallam, has a new book out explaining the rationale behind this global rebellion. In Common Sense for the 21st Century, Hallam argues that nonviolent civil disobedience is our only shot at countering the climate emergency. That means breaking the law by blocking roads and disrupting transit, and getting arrested en masse, until the government agrees to up its game on fighting climate change. And if it doesn’t agree? Then topple the government, Hallam says.
The idea of rebelling against the government might seem silly or extreme. So might Hallam’s plan to replace the government with a Citizens’ Assembly, a group of randomly selected citizens, which he argues would be more democratic and more responsive to the climate crisis than the status quo.
But the idea of a Citizens’ Assembly is gaining ground in some quarters (though in a less radical form whereby it doesn’t replace the government). French President Emmanuel Macron just promised to give 150 randomly chosen people the power to set the policy agenda on cutting carbon emissions. In the UK, 110 people will take part in an assembly to decide on policies for achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
It’s worth noting that Hallam’s theory of social change is based on academic research, particularly the work of Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth. At King’s College London, Hallam is currently working toward a PhD on how people use civil disobedience to achieve social change.
I spoke to Hallam about his new book, the exact nature of the rebellion he’s envisioning, and what happens once the revolution is over. A transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows.
Sigal Samuel
An underlying premise of your book and of XR is that we can no longer rely on incremental reforms, like those advocated by most environmental nonprofits. Can you explain why you think a full-on rebellion is necessary?
Roger Hallam
If people think what’s happening with the climate is no big shakes, then obviously it may sound a bit ridiculous to be suggesting a rebellion against the government. You’ve got to understand, it’s like we’ve gone to the doctor and he’s told us we’ve got terminal cancer. We need to reduce carbon emissions in a matter of months and years, not decades. We need to change governments’ actions very quickly.
The most effective way to change society in a rapid way is through mass, nonviolent civil disobedience. We need lots of people going to their capital city and blocking the roads until the government substantially bends to the demands or collapses.
“If we’d just done a few nice marches, you probably wouldn’t be on this call with me.”
Sigal Samuel
Tell me about the social science research that inspires you and XR. One scholar you cite frequently is the political scientist Erica Chenoweth. What findings do you think we should take from her research and apply in the climate context?
Roger Hallam
XR is broadly based on her research, though it’s not slavishly following it. The core point is that it’s a no-brainer that mass civil disobedience works. There’s ample historical evidence for it, not least Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
Just sending letters and emails is not going to work because there’s no cost to the opposition. What Chenoweth’s research shows is that you need to have a lot of people engaging in a low level of civil disobedience — breaking the law — say, tens of thousands of people sitting down in the road in the middle of the city.
Basically, you get the authorities to a point where they can’t cope and then they’ll engage in negotiations. Obviously this doesn’t work all the time. But it has a substantial probability relative to the other options.
Sigal Samuel
XR’s stated goal is “mobilizing 3.5 percent of the population to achieve system change.” That figure comes from Chenoweth’s finding that if you want to achieve system change, you need to get 3.5 percent of the population into the streets, right?
Roger Hallam
Yes, 3.5 percent is the average of what we’ve needed in uprisings since 1900. But sometimes major change starts with a lot less than that. It’s not a linear process where you build up 3.5 percent of the population and then suddenly everything changes. You might get 50,000 and the authorities can’t cope and they start arresting people and that creates a backfire effect — it creates more sympathy for the cause, so next time, 10 times the amount of people come into the street.
Sigal Samuel
In September, the global climate strikes spearheaded by Greta Thunberg brought an estimated 6 million people into the streets. But that didn’t cause structural change. Why not? Is it because that’s nowhere close to 3.5 percent of the global population?
Roger Hallam
Well, it’s a simple equation: the number of people times the degree of disruption. If you have millions of people but they don’t create any disruption, you’re going to have minimal outcome. You need lots of people causing a reasonable amount of disruption. And the main rubric there is whether they break the law or not.
I’m not trying to be unpleasant toward Greta or [her climate strike movement] Fridays for Future. This is too important for it to be about political ideology or ego. But people have been doing climate marches for more than 30 years. It doesn’t work because no one is losing money or reputation. The most effective way to do that is breaking the law and going to prison.
In two XR rebellion events in the UK, 3,000 people have already been arrested. That’s changed the conversation in the UK. Climate has become a major issue because the politicians are being forced to consider the topic. And the reason you’re talking to me now is because we broke the law. If we’d just done a few nice marches, you probably wouldn’t be on this call with me.
Sigal Samuel
What can we learn from times in the past when civil disobedience has not worked?
Roger Hallam
You have to keep it nonviolent. We train people so they can role-play being dragged off by police and practice maintaining nonviolent discipline. Even more important is to be proactively respectful to the authorities, because that enables the police to save face [when the time comes for negotiations], or allows them to defect.
Sigal Samuel
Plus, the second you start getting violent, you lose moral authority.
I want to clarify something: Is your goal necessarily to topple the government and take power from it? Or is it to do that only if the government keeps refusing to enact needed climate measures?
Roger Hallam
XR and a lot of civil disobedience movements around the world are obviously trying to influence the government in order to enact legislation. What I argue is that that’s not going to happen unless you change the whole system. That basically means bringing down the government and replacing it with a new form of democracy that isn’t corrupted by the elites. That form of democracy involves Citizens’ Assemblies.
Instead of having people voted into power (as you know, in America, that works to preserve the rich), you select citizens randomly from the population to take part in an Assembly. So you’ll get refuse collectors from Virginia and computer programmers from California — a cross-section. For the first time ever, black people, gay people, poor people will be represented in proportion to their population. They would then take in evidence on the climate catastrophe.
Sigal Samuel
What makes you confident that the people who make up the Citizens’ Assembly won’t be susceptible to the same things politicians are — corruption, bribery, vested business interests of their own, or simply not caring about the climate crisis?
Roger Hallam
I’d say the big game-changer here is chance. No one will be able to influence in any meaningful way who is selected to join the Assembly. If there were human agency, there’d be corruptibility — someone could pay someone to select whoever they want for the Assembly. But if this is done properly — it’s not that complicated with a computer program; it happens all the time with jury trials — then you don’t just get the rich and powerful, which you do in a normal corrupted democracy.
Sigal Samuel
You said that people will see the objective evidence and not want their children to die. But we know that human beings’ decision-making is often not rational. Even when we’re confronted with all the evidence, there are all kinds of cognitive biases and emotional reasons why we might resist.
Roger Hallam
You’re perfectly right. Human nature is extremely susceptible to pressure. But I think what you’ve said assumes people get their information in small bites and are distracted by other concerns and influences. When people go into a deliberative space, all those things no longer apply. The social context largely determines the outcome.
Just to take one recent example, abortion in Ireland was a massively divisive issue. A lot of conservative Catholics said no way. Then people went into this deliberative Citizens’ Assembly and after looking at the objective facts about what happens to women who are forced not to have abortions, they came out with transformed attitudes. They said to the Irish nation, “In our collective opinion, abortion should be legal.” They had a referendum and the debate was resolved democratically.
Sigal Samuel
One common critique of XR is that it’s not diverse enough. Too white, too middle-class. Not welcoming enough to political conservatives. What can XR groups do around the world to ensure that everyone feels welcome?
Roger Hallam
Many people on the right will think it’s terrible and are not going to join — and a lot of people on the left won’t like it either. But what we’re looking for is 3.5 percent of the population. And the easiest way to get that is to welcome people from many different backgrounds.
The first people who are going to suffer most from the climate collapse are people of color and minorities. So it’s in their direct interest to support a methodology of change that is most likely to succeed, which happens to be mass civil disobedience.
What’s central to XR is having a regenerative culture. People are mobilized when they feel welcomed, supported. It’s small things: like when people come to meetings, they’re welcomed into the room — not judged — and they’re engaged in small talk. You split people into small groups so everyone participates and talks about their concerns and shares their grief.
Sigal Samuel
Are you worried that by delaying people’s commutes, XR pisses them off and risks alienating them?
Roger Hallam
It’s worth remembering that when MLK was closing down Birmingham to get civil rights, many Americans thought he was a terrible man because he was disrupting their nice comfortable racist lives. The process of political change involves people getting pissed off. So the key issue is not whether they get pissed off, it’s whether them getting pissed off leads to attitude change. The two determinants of that are whether the issue is just and whether it’s done with respect.
Also — and there’s evidence on this from sales theory — if you give something to someone, it’s almost impossible for them to continue being aggressive to you. I did about 15 roadblocks in London, and in the first five or so people got out of the cars and got angry at us. Then we started a system of having all the old ladies and respectable people going along the cars handing out cake and apologizing for the delay. After that we didn’t have anyone getting out of their cars and shouting at us.
Sigal Samuel
The first principle of XR is “tell the truth.” So let’s tell the truth about the prospects for XR itself. What chance do you think XR has of succeeding?
Roger Hallam
My honest opinion is that the likelihood is very slight, because of the difficulty of bringing about change. But this is the paradox of mobilization: The more people engage in it with an outcome-oriented motivation structure, the less likely it is to happen, because they’ll get disappointed more quickly.
The guys who get the goods are the people who don’t care if they get the goods … who engage in rebellious activity as an end in itself, because they think it’s immoral or outrageous not to do so.
Sigal Samuel
Even if XR fails to achieve its stated goals, could it still succeed by having a radical flank effect — where radical groups make the issue impossible to ignore, so authorities end up working on it with more moderate groups?
Roger Hallam
The radical flank effect is a very effective political mechanism. That’s the rationale behind doing civil disobedience and telling the truth. If you can close down Washington for two weeks, you move the Overton window and everyone actually starts talking about climate change.
Succeeding is a continuum. I’m pushing it along as far as I can.
Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter. Twice a week, you’ll get a roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling our biggest challenges: improving public health, decreasing human and animal suffering, easing catastrophic risks, and — to put it simply — getting better at doing good.


vox--2020-01-15--Why are so many brands pivoting to coziness?

Every season has its Instagram bait , and in winter it is blankets .
Right now , every online influencer is nestled in a big chunky throw that ’ s probably beige and maybe hand-knit , clutching a mug of whatever while the weather outside descends into an increasingly frigid hell .
Blankets , though ?
Blankets are nice .
Blankets are , both physically and psychically , cozy .
Blankets are also a very lucrative business right now .
Even beyond the skyrocketing popularity of weighted blankets , which are sometimes used to treat people with anxiety , autism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ roughly a dozen hip bedding startups that have popped up in the last few years , from Brooklinen to Parachute , Buffy , and Snowe .
In winter , urban public transit is populated by miserable commuters in various stages of head colds while its walls are lined with high-contrast ads featuring gorgeous couples cuddling in $ 200 sheet sets , as if we didn ’ t already wish we were still in bed .
The bedding and sleep industry is now estimated to be worth between $ 30 and $ 40 billion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ easy when you ’ re selling blankets .
But over the past few years cool , aspirational brands — Hims vitamins , Madewell tote bags , Glossier skin care — have been marketed with the same aesthetic of homey comfort , with retro photography , adorable founder backstories , or Instagram memes about staying home surrounded with your candles on a Friday night .
This isn ’ t some paradigm-altering concept ; people have been using beautiful domestic spaces in ad campaigns since branding immemorial .
What does feel new is the marketing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their desire for it .
Self-care , hygge , and newer terms like “ domestic cozy ” are all means of marketing to a group of cool young people who , even when they ’ re not at home , want to feel like it .
For Helena and Woody Hambrecht , the husband and wife co-founders of the aperitif brand Haus , the coziness came first .
They were living in a hundred-year-old redwood cabin in northern California at the time , the kind of life suited for a career in aspirational @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a winemaking family , which drew them to the world of trendy world of low-alcohol spirits .
The product , Haus , is chief among a new wave of direct-to-consumer spirits brands sold online , and with an aesthetic that screams domestic bliss .
Or rather , calls it out softly .
Helena , whose background is in commercial production , organized a photo shoot in a snug New York apartment with a real group of friends making dinner for each other .
The resulting images are warm-hued and retro-flecked , and sit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brand ’ s cozy-cool ethos , a conscious pushback against the sterile photography and sans-serif block letters that DTC brands have become synonymous with .
While Haus is marketed as something to drink at home , it will also soon be available in bars — the cozy aesthetic was a distinct choice .
“ Before what was soothing was a house with white walls and no furniture and modern construction , and now what ’ s soothing is a house from the 1840s with dark paintings on the walls , ” she says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on our computers in our modern apartments for the last 10 years and we ’ re all miserable .
It seems like there ’ s this metashift happening from cool , minimal , and internet-y to in-person , maximalist , and cozy.
” Michael Janiak , the founder of branding agency Pattern , says he ’ s noticed a huge increase in digital companies looking to project a homier , cozy aesthetic over the past few years , as reflected in the shift away from cool tones and towards warmer ones .
There @ @ @ @ @ @ @ easily explainable reason for this : “ Right now it ’ s working because people just want to feel safe , ” he says .
“ The world ’ s kind of fucked up and it feels crazy .
When that happens people tend to pull in , pull their social circle in and retreat into their homes a little bit , and it affects consumer behavior and perception.
” Entire business models have emerged from this shift in consumption habits .
In a piece for The Goods about what she calls the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ notes that on-demand food and alcohol , skincare as a moral quest , and Etsy T-shirts boasting one ’ s plans to “ Namast ’ ay in bed ” are all examples .
Brands aren ’ t just developing products to cater to homebodies , they ’ re using the aesthetics of home to sell products that have little to do with it .
The coziness projected by brands is twofold : The selling point is that this product will make you feel calm and safe , but the experience of using it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for other people to see .
This is the paradox that brands have to contend with when marketing to the customer who has the kind of job to afford fancy liquor and $ 100 ballet flats but who also feels the world is sort of awful , and it ’ d be much more pleasant to just stay at home .
When Michael ’ s agency Pattern worked with the women ’ s footwear company Birdies , the team had to walk that balance : “ With Birdies , it was ‘ cozy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ says .
“ We didn ’ t want [ the branding ] to be too cozy .
If you ’ re too comfortable , you ’ re never going to get off your ass and change the world ; that [ was the message ] they wanted to be sending.
” There ’ s a clear backlash brewing to the idea that all of our time needs to be allotted for — evidence lies in Anne Helen Peterson ’ s viral essay about millennial burnout and Erin Griffith ’ s New York Times @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We ’ ve heard that the perfectly crafted lifestyle account is dead , that young people are rejecting the pressure to catalog their lives in the most algorithmically optimizable way possible .
Last year , Venkatesh Rao of Ribbonfarm , a blog devoted to “ unusual takes , ” came up with a term for all of it : “ domestic cozy.
” He argues it ’ s a defining quality of younger millennials and Gen Z who care less in some ways about performing for society at large and instead prioritize @ @ @ @ @ @ @ opposition to “ premium mediocre , ” which he uses to describe older millennials concerned with neurotically crafting an aspirational self-image .
“ Instagram , Tinder , kale salads , and Urban Outfitters are premium mediocre .
Minecraft , YouTube , cooking at home , and knitting are domestic cozy , ” he writes .
“ Premium mediocrity expends enormous energy preserving the illusion of normalcy .
Domestic cozy slouches into the weirdness and simply ignores it.
” Obviously , these are rather abstract concepts and precarious ways of describing entire generations made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a way to understand marketing , they can be useful .
If twee and hipster culture was a backlash to the bling and brand names of the aughts , domestic cozy is a rejection of the aspirational lifestyle aesthetic and the monetization of every hour of the day .
Rao told Vox that he expects brands to start capitalizing on the tenants of domestic cozy in the next six months or so , but clearly many of them already have : The advertising company that helped make household names of startup culture @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cookware brand that seeks to “ raise awareness of burnout caused by work culture and the attention economy.
” Clothing brands like Off Hours make $ 300 streetwear-inspired bathrobes called “ homecoats ; ” CBD-infused seltzer brand Recess ’ cans are visual ASMR , designed to make drinkers feel “ calm cool collected ” even though CBD doesn ’ t do any of those things .
If it happens to go truly viral , “ domestic cozy ” will most certainly fall into the trap that terms like “ self-care ” and “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years , which is to say that it will cease to mean much beyond a means of selling something .
Self-care , as Audre Lorde wrote , was a radical act of self-preservation in a world that ’ s hostile to queer people , people of color , and women , but today is mostly something you ’ ll see on advertisements for face masks .
Hygge , an omnipresent cornerstone of Danish culture , was essentially rebranded by the British publishing industry as a catch-all term for anything remotely pleasant .
All @ @ @ @ @ @ @ roughly the same thing — as the Denmark-raised Laura Byager wrote in Mashable , “ Hygge is effortless comfort ; it has no element of performance .
It is absent of all pretense and worry ” — which is partly why we keep hearing them recycled every few years in advertising that ’ s straining for authenticity .
Lexicographer Jane Solomon says that these ideas are particularly attractive to brands because they allow for the possibility of a purchase .
“ They give people more incentive to buy items than other trends that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she tells Vox .
“ For example , ‘ lagom , ’ the Swedish concept of having just the right amount , doesn ’ t encourage consumerism in the way ‘ hygge ’ might when taken out of its original context .
They also have broader applications than something like ‘ kalsarikänni , ’ a Finnish word for getting drunk at home alone in your underwear.
” Of course , once marketers co-opt terms they think will help their brand appear more authentic , the terms themselves no longer mean much at all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rebranding of the universal desire to stay home and drink wine with your friends .
Why does everything look cozy all the time now ?
The simple answer is the same one it always is : Things are bad , and people are anxious about whatever ongoing horrors are metabolizing in geopolitics , the environment , and capitalism .
The other answer is that we ’ ve had a decade of white-walled minimalism and now everyone ’ s sick of it .
Another truth is that coziness is one of life ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sex supposedly does , it sells .
We all , of course , play a role in performing coziness to each other .
Matching pajamas for the entire family are now a social media rite of passage ; photogenic sheet bakes and cheese plates that look ready to serve at small dinner parties are some of the internet ’ s biggest food trends .
Adorable yurts are popping up in trendy bars across the country .
On TikTok , the hashtag # cottagecore , where users show images of their cute rural homes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ For the past few months , for instance , I almost exclusively posted photos to my Instagram story that had been pre-cozified by the VSCO app ’ s C1 filter , which make everything blue-green as if it were candlelit at the prettiest time of evening .
I shared photos of lit-up trees and fireplaces and snowy backyards and mulled wine and buffalo print button-ups just like everybody else on my Instagram feed in December , not only because that ’ s what we do this time of year but also because this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ end anymore .
Outside is always inhospitable now , not just in the winter months .
Inside , at least , there are blankets .
Sign up for The Goods ’ newsletter .
Twice a week , we ’ ll send you the best Goods stories exploring what we buy , why we buy it , and why it matters .

Every season has its Instagram bait, and in winter it is blankets. Right now, every online influencer is nestled in a big chunky throw that’s probably beige and maybe hand-knit, clutching a mug of whatever while the weather outside descends into an increasingly frigid hell. Blankets, though? Blankets are nice. Blankets are, both physically and psychically, cozy.
Blankets are also a very lucrative business right now. Even beyond the skyrocketing popularity of weighted blankets, which are sometimes used to treat people with anxiety, autism, or other disorders, there are roughly a dozen hip bedding startups that have popped up in the last few years, from Brooklinen to Parachute, Buffy, and Snowe.
In winter, urban public transit is populated by miserable commuters in various stages of head colds while its walls are lined with high-contrast ads featuring gorgeous couples cuddling in $200 sheet sets, as if we didn’t already wish we were still in bed. The bedding and sleep industry is now estimated to be worth between $30 and $40 billion.
Selling the idea of coziness is easy when you’re selling blankets. But over the past few years cool, aspirational brands — Hims vitamins, Madewell tote bags, Glossier skin care — have been marketed with the same aesthetic of homey comfort, with retro photography, adorable founder backstories, or Instagram memes about staying home surrounded with your candles on a Friday night.
This isn’t some paradigm-altering concept; people have been using beautiful domestic spaces in ad campaigns since branding immemorial. What does feel new is the marketing of coziness to a generation defined by their desire for it. Self-care, hygge, and newer terms like “domestic cozy” are all means of marketing to a group of cool young people who, even when they’re not at home, want to feel like it.
For Helena and Woody Hambrecht, the husband and wife co-founders of the aperitif brand Haus, the coziness came first. They were living in a hundred-year-old redwood cabin in northern California at the time, the kind of life suited for a career in aspirational online self-presentation. But Woody came from a winemaking family, which drew them to the world of trendy world of low-alcohol spirits.
The product, Haus, is chief among a new wave of direct-to-consumer spirits brands sold online, and with an aesthetic that screams domestic bliss. Or rather, calls it out softly. Helena, whose background is in commercial production, organized a photo shoot in a snug New York apartment with a real group of friends making dinner for each other.
The resulting images are warm-hued and retro-flecked, and sit next to a curvy font describing the brand’s cozy-cool ethos, a conscious pushback against the sterile photography and sans-serif block letters that DTC brands have become synonymous with. While Haus is marketed as something to drink at home, it will also soon be available in bars — the cozy aesthetic was a distinct choice.
“Before what was soothing was a house with white walls and no furniture and modern construction, and now what’s soothing is a house from the 1840s with dark paintings on the walls,” she says. “We’ve been sitting on our computers in our modern apartments for the last 10 years and we’re all miserable. It seems like there’s this metashift happening from cool, minimal, and internet-y to in-person, maximalist, and cozy.”
Michael Janiak, the founder of branding agency Pattern, says he’s noticed a huge increase in digital companies looking to project a homier, cozy aesthetic over the past few years, as reflected in the shift away from cool tones and towards warmer ones. There is, obviously, a broad and easily explainable reason for this: “Right now it’s working because people just want to feel safe,” he says. “The world’s kind of fucked up and it feels crazy. When that happens people tend to pull in, pull their social circle in and retreat into their homes a little bit, and it affects consumer behavior and perception.”
Entire business models have emerged from this shift in consumption habits. In a piece for The Goods about what she calls the “homebody economy,” Kaitlyn Tiffany notes that on-demand food and alcohol, skincare as a moral quest, and Etsy T-shirts boasting one’s plans to “Namast’ay in bed” are all examples.
Brands aren’t just developing products to cater to homebodies, they’re using the aesthetics of home to sell products that have little to do with it. The coziness projected by brands is twofold: The selling point is that this product will make you feel calm and safe, but the experience of using it is still supposed to look good enough for other people to see.
This is the paradox that brands have to contend with when marketing to the customer who has the kind of job to afford fancy liquor and $100 ballet flats but who also feels the world is sort of awful, and it’d be much more pleasant to just stay at home. When Michael’s agency Pattern worked with the women’s footwear company Birdies, the team had to walk that balance: “With Birdies, it was ‘cozy, but elevated,’” he says. “We didn’t want [the branding] to be too cozy. If you’re too comfortable, you’re never going to get off your ass and change the world; that [was the message] they wanted to be sending.”
There’s a clear backlash brewing to the idea that all of our time needs to be allotted for — evidence lies in Anne Helen Peterson’s viral essay about millennial burnout and Erin Griffith’s New York Times piece on the problem with hustle culture. We’ve heard that the perfectly crafted lifestyle account is dead, that young people are rejecting the pressure to catalog their lives in the most algorithmically optimizable way possible.
Last year, Venkatesh Rao of Ribbonfarm, a blog devoted to “unusual takes,” came up with a term for all of it: “domestic cozy.” He argues it’s a defining quality of younger millennials and Gen Z who care less in some ways about performing for society at large and instead prioritize their own comfort. This, in opposition to “premium mediocre,” which he uses to describe older millennials concerned with neurotically crafting an aspirational self-image.
“Instagram, Tinder, kale salads, and Urban Outfitters are premium mediocre. Minecraft, YouTube, cooking at home, and knitting are domestic cozy,” he writes. “Premium mediocrity expends enormous energy preserving the illusion of normalcy. Domestic cozy slouches into the weirdness and simply ignores it.”
Obviously, these are rather abstract concepts and precarious ways of describing entire generations made up of millions of people, but as a way to understand marketing, they can be useful. If twee and hipster culture was a backlash to the bling and brand names of the aughts, domestic cozy is a rejection of the aspirational lifestyle aesthetic and the monetization of every hour of the day.
Rao told Vox that he expects brands to start capitalizing on the tenants of domestic cozy in the next six months or so, but clearly many of them already have: The advertising company that helped make household names of startup culture standbys Sweetgreen and Everlane pivoted to a cookware brand that seeks to “raise awareness of burnout caused by work culture and the attention economy.” Clothing brands like Off Hours make $300 streetwear-inspired bathrobes called “homecoats;” CBD-infused seltzer brand Recess’ cans are visual ASMR, designed to make drinkers feel “calm cool collected” even though CBD doesn’t do any of those things.
If it happens to go truly viral, “domestic cozy” will most certainly fall into the trap that terms like “self-care” and “hygge” have over the past few years, which is to say that it will cease to mean much beyond a means of selling something. Self-care, as Audre Lorde wrote, was a radical act of self-preservation in a world that’s hostile to queer people, people of color, and women, but today is mostly something you’ll see on advertisements for face masks. Hygge, an omnipresent cornerstone of Danish culture, was essentially rebranded by the British publishing industry as a catch-all term for anything remotely pleasant.
All of these words are supposed to signify roughly the same thing — as the Denmark-raised Laura Byager wrote in Mashable, “Hygge is effortless comfort; it has no element of performance. It is absent of all pretense and worry” — which is partly why we keep hearing them recycled every few years in advertising that’s straining for authenticity.
Lexicographer Jane Solomon says that these ideas are particularly attractive to brands because they allow for the possibility of a purchase. “They give people more incentive to buy items than other trends that have recently hit English-speaking countries,” she tells Vox.
“For example, ‘lagom,’ the Swedish concept of having just the right amount, doesn’t encourage consumerism in the way ‘hygge’ might when taken out of its original context. They also have broader applications than something like ‘kalsarikänni,’ a Finnish word for getting drunk at home alone in your underwear.” Of course, once marketers co-opt terms they think will help their brand appear more authentic, the terms themselves no longer mean much at all — hence the need for the constant rebranding of the universal desire to stay home and drink wine with your friends.
Why does everything look cozy all the time now? The simple answer is the same one it always is: Things are bad, and people are anxious about whatever ongoing horrors are metabolizing in geopolitics, the environment, and capitalism. The other answer is that we’ve had a decade of white-walled minimalism and now everyone’s sick of it. Another truth is that coziness is one of life’s most perfect feelings, and much like sex supposedly does, it sells.
We all, of course, play a role in performing coziness to each other. Matching pajamas for the entire family are now a social media rite of passage; photogenic sheet bakes and cheese plates that look ready to serve at small dinner parties are some of the internet’s biggest food trends. Adorable yurts are popping up in trendy bars across the country. On TikTok, the hashtag #cottagecore, where users show images of their cute rural homes, has nearly four million views.
For the past few months, for instance, I almost exclusively posted photos to my Instagram story that had been pre-cozified by the VSCO app’s C1 filter, which make everything blue-green as if it were candlelit at the prettiest time of evening. I shared photos of lit-up trees and fireplaces and snowy backyards and mulled wine and buffalo print button-ups just like everybody else on my Instagram feed in December, not only because that’s what we do this time of year but also because this time of year never really seems to end anymore. Outside is always inhospitable now, not just in the winter months. Inside, at least, there are blankets.
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