I’m a sucker for the aesthetics of Norden. Why? I wonder if part of it is that the fringe of Northern Europe is a science fictional setting. The long dark nights during the cold winter, and the twilight during midsummer. The sun may be bright, it never gets too high in the sky. The 13th Warrior wasn’t the best movie, but it was evocative. One of the problems with the film depiction of the Lord of the Rings trilogy is that New Zealand seems too bright and airy (and also not decayed enough).
Because of the SMBE meeting I haven’t made much progress on The Enigma of Reason. Much of it has been reviewing the literature in cognitive psychology and reasoning which I’m familiar with (system 1 vs. system 2, Wason reasoning task, etc.). Though it is leading me up to the main thesis.
I remember years ago Matthew Yglesias mentioned he was going to do a bit more reading of books, as opposed to news, to differentiate himself from other pundits. Today he admitted he wasn’t going to make a show of having an informed opinion about the Frankfurt School. I suggested he take time out to read The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950. The modern campus Red Guards don’t know anything about Adorno, Marcuse, or Horkheimer. But the outlines of contemporary project toward cultural revolution and exaltation of the marginalized are all there. Rather than being the origin modern radical movements, I suspect that the Frankfurt School simply provides a useful tool and framework to go about its project.
I do know that some politically moderate scientists who read The Dialectical Imagination, and saw campus politics in a totally different, and more intelligible, light.
Joe Pickrell’s new company, Gencove, Improving ancestry estimates in South Asia.
I said on Twitter that “easiest way to make housing affordable for non-rich is to build more houses for the rich so they won’t buy houses built for non-rich.” What do I mean? It’s all about supply. The well-off will always be first in line for any supply of housing. If you allow for copious development, vertically and horizontally, then the rich can purchase the luxury condos and mansions that they crave, while the middle class and lower class can buy up the more normal housing stock.
The Austin skyline, then and now.
Yazidi sex slave had to choose between son and escape from Isis.
Bangladeshi students test into elite schools. This story is about the entrance examinations for the elite public high schools of New York City. In 2010 the average Bangladeshi family in New York City had a household income of $37,000. I believe in the near future the entrance exams will not be the only criterion for gaining admission. The reality is that Asian American students lack “leadership” and are not “well rounded,” and all the Asian American applicants “look the same.”
Racism Is Everywhere, So Why Not Move South? This article is written in the context of black Americans. But the insights are general. Houston has a cost of living that’s at the national average. It’s the fourth largest city in the United States, and there is a lot of good phở because of the large Vietnamese community.
Per capita income in the provinces of the Roman Empire in AD 14. pic.twitter.com/WhUjrjg7h6
— Byzantine Ambassador (@byzantinepower) July 7, 2017
Patrick Wyman, who sometimes comments on this blog, has a great Fall of Rome podcast.
The Sad, Sexist Past of Bengali Cuisine. Really upper caste Bengali Hindu cuisine.
Utilities fighting against rooftop solar are only hastening their own doom. Not surprised. I have been following Ramez Naam’s commentary on this for years. He’s been on this.
Islamophobes are attacking me because I’m their worst nightmare. Linda Sarsour.
I thought Hillary would win the election. But I told a long-time reader of this weblog who is a Democratic operative that BLM activists getting in Bernie Sanders’ face did not presage well for the direction of the party. Linda Sarsour as the face of progressivism is a massive boon for the Right and Republicans.
Sarsour has left a trail of obnoxious and offensive comments on Twitter. So have many people. For me personally the biggest issue is possible solidarity with Rasmea Odeh. The PFLP is the literal definition of a terrorist organization (though a Marxist, not Islamic, one). But the reality is that her enemies on the Right know that she and her compatriots in the “woke” movement would never exhibit charity toward their political opponents, so they are attempting to destroy her because they know she would do the same to them. That’s where we are in American politics today. You destroy your enemies, or they destroy you. Let’s have fun until the last battle though!
A combined analysis of genetically correlated traits identifies 107 loci associated with intelligence. I guess I’ll start paying attention to when they can explain ~25% of outgroup sample variance. They’re already further than the 7% in this preprint, though that will take a little longer to publish.
Procedures for enumerating and uniformly sampling transmission trees for a known phylogeny.