There is no “authentic” culture
The New York Times publishes a lot of strange op-eds today. Yesterday I saw one titled “The Spectacle of Latinx Colorism”. The use of the term “Latinx” is a cue […]
Open Thread – 08/01/2021 – GNXP
Patrick Wyman’s The Verge is out. I quite like it. And that’s pretty clear in my review for National Review, Europe on the Verge of a Revolutionary Breakthrough. I assume […]
Italian genetics in the Bronze Age
A new paper on Italian Bronze Age and Iron Age genomics, Ancient genomes reveal structural shifts after the arrival of Steppe-related ancestry in the Italian Peninsula. The abstract: Across Europe, […]
T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us
Carole Hooven has a new book, T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us. I’ll be honest and admit I was only vaguely aware of the […]
RKUL: a little light reading, June-July 2021
a sampler of recent paid posts (with follow-up notes)
Antiblackness and British South Asians – some cultures are to be judged, but others are not
BP-emeritus Zach posted this piece on Twitter, ‘I’m Bengali, my boyfriend was black – and my mum freaked out’. The piece highlights the reality that anti-black prejudice, in particular, is pervasive among South Asians (Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, etc.). I’m not super invested in the idea that this is due to colonialism, as I doubt it …
Europe on the Verge of a Revolutionary Breakthrough
Patrick Wyman’s book is a compelling historical narrative of Europe from 1490 to 1530, shot through with colorful stories about people and politics.
Jason Munshi-Smith: rats and evolution
Listen now (63 min) | A biologist who studies the genomics and ecology of brown rats
Linda Avey: genomics from 23 to 100
First, I want to mention that readers of Unsupervised Learning may hear the doorbell from Duke (from “Duke Tales”) mid-recording. While he usually visits me evenings, Duke made a special afternoon stop, perhaps thanks to the appearance of a Tesla in th…
Do genes determine intelligence?
Both conservatives and liberals are ignoring the realities of biology
Nebula Genomics, 12-hour sale
It looks like Nebula Genomics has a 12-hour sale (as of this posting). This means you can get medical-grade 30x sequencing for $299. I do not recommend 100x because that […]
Alex Mesoudi: the origins of cultural evolution
In this conversation, I discuss “cultural evolution” with Alex Mesoudi. The very term can be confusing and perplexing to some. After all, it seems intuitive that culture evolves and changes. But here Mesoudi and I discuss the science of cultural evolut…
Beyond Finn-baiting
Over at my Substack, I have a six-part series that dropped relating to the people and history of Finland. Part one: Duke Tales: shades of Finnish cultural weirdness in my […]
Karl Smith: inflation, the debt crisis, China and the American tripartite class system
Listen now (60 min) | A Bloomberg columnist and economist helps us navigate the data stream
Standing athwart history and pushing it back
Recently The New Yorker had a long feature on the German social experiment from the 1970’s to early 2000’s which placed homeless boys in foster care with pedophiles. The whole […]
Patrick Wyman: Luther, Columbus and Gutenberg
Today on this bonus episode of Unsupervised Learning I’m excited to talk to Patrick Wyman about his new book, The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World. Full disclosure, I enjoyed The Verge, and a review will be posted f…
Patrick Wyman: Luther, Columbus and Gutenberg
Listen now (75 min) | We talk about the new book, The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World
More and more evidence for ‘complex demography’ in archaic ancestry
An ancestral recombination graph of human, Neanderthal, and Denisovan genomes: We note that our estimated TMRCA to Neanderthal within Neanderthal-introgressed segments in all non-African populations is recent, ~74 ka ago, […]
Finnish brains, baiting and bottlenecks
A history of Finnish genes and culture: part 6 of 6