Rag Doll

My son in Norway has a Rag Doll cat. I am not up on cats and had never heard of it. But I sent him and his fiancee this cover of the Four Seasons songs.

 

Best Choice

When asked what book he’d select if he was to be stranded on a desert island, G.K. Chesterton famously quipped: Thomas’s Guide to Practical Shipbuilding.

Golden Age of Jazz

 The 1958 Esquire Photo Shoot in Harlem.  I am not knowledgeable. Less than half the names in the photos were known to me, including none of the women. But it was still fun to poke around with it.

Accuracy Vs Sycophancy

 Training Language Models to be Warm can Reduce Accuracy and Increase Sycophancy. Nature, via Gurwinder. 

 Artificial intelligence developers are increasingly building language models with warm and friendly personas that millions of people now use for advice, therapy and companionship1. Here we show how this can create a significant trade-off: optimizing language models for warmth can undermine their performance, especially when users express vulnerability. 

Well that's ugly.  Although maybe as I get older I will want more and more sycophancy. 

Update: There are ways to adjust the settings to stress accuracy at the expense of friendliness. Just like with people.

The Lament of the Sole Survivor

Colin Gurrie has done a moving adaptation/translation of 40 lines of Beowulf that occur about three-quarters of the way through. The old man is not named, nor mentioned in any other part of the poem, but Gurrie thinks the lament is the key to understanding the main theme: strength inevitably declines into nothingness.

He’s lived too long. He’s sure of that now.

Sea spray flecks his cheek. He’s close to where he found the barrow. Just one mile more, although a mile for an old man bearing a heavy load is no small distance.

He utters no word of complaint — who would he say it to, anyway? — and keeps going.

It wasn’t always like this. Once it was good. He was young and the world seemed to be young with him. The hoofbeat of horses, the screech of hawks flying overhead, the sound of the harp, he can hear them all still when he closes his eyes.

And then there is nothing. Not even the servants who used to polish his armour. They’re all gone now. Taken by death, or bloody battle.

And yet some things still remain. The golden cups, the sword that once won him glory. Things. Just things. There’s no one left to swing the sword, no one to carry the cup.

He has lived too long. A warrior is not meant to walk bent with age. He should have died before, a good death on the field of battle. And yet he lived, when better men did not.

He carries his bag to the barrow. The mound is empty now, but he will fill it. He’ll fill it with a lifetime of treasure, an immense inheritance he would sooner bequeath to his son or his sister-son. But they are gone, so it goes to the earth, the mother of us all.

He stands before the mound, and places the sack down. He takes out a single cup and holds it up before the barrow, as if he were drinking her health. Then he speaks his word of bequest.

“Hold these treasures, Earth, now that men no longer can.” He looks at the cup, and down at the treasures. “These things once came from you. So have them again. The bright helm will tarnish. The sword will grow dull. The coat of mail that even iron could not bite will be, at last, devoured by rust.”

He places each item carefully in the barrow, giving each its place of honour. And, as he sets them carefully down under the earth, he says the names of the friends who once carried them, of those who lived not nearly long enough.

The wind carries his words into the far distance. Whether anyone heard them, not even a wise man can say.

The essay about reading Beowulf also links back to something of the mythic part of its origin-story, the Ash-lad (cf the name Cinderella, a female variant of the story), the unnoticed, uninspiring, often third son who goes on to great deeds. The modern poet Robert Bly took up the theme in Iron John, explaining why this still appeals in our culture, whether about males of females. It is about coming-of-age, whether one is Harry Potter, Anne-of-Green Gables, or a Disney Princess. We are all the orphan or third son making our way in the world when we start out. Let's see what we might make of ourselves.

The Beowulf poet sees it all as a long decline, but we still must take up the task. The Giants will defeat the Gods in the Gotterdammerung, yet I am still on the side of the gods and will fight on.

Electric Fish Treatment

They are apparently good for treating pain, even chronic pain, and this was know to some civilisations thousands of years ago.

Anteros, a freed slave of the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus, had decided it was a good day for a walk on the beach. Damp sand stuck to his bare feet as he walked, probably deep in great thoughts about matters that continue to remain a mystery, when he felt shock travel from his foot to the rest of his body, knocking him out of breath. The source of the shock, upon close inspection, was a live torpedo ray.

“Although he initially suffered an excruciating cramp, the pain he had long endured from what might have been gout miraculously disappeared,”

Migraine and epilepsy were also treated with it. 

You're Gonna Have to Serve Somebody

See Christopher B's first comment under my recent post Can you control your own beliefs? 

Everyone is putting up their Bob Dylan posts this week, so I suppose I should have a run at it too. Simple and profound. Though some of your will may be free, you will obey forces without thinking about it. You will serve somebody. It is best to at least be aware who that is rather than kidding yourself.

 

Volunteering For Auschwitz

Mark Stoler over at Things Have Changed updates and reposts the story of Captain Witold Pilecki , who volunteered to go to Auschwitz when it first opened in 1940 to learn what it was and gather intelligence for the Polish Home Army. He was there for two-and-a-half years coming close to death twice, before deciding to escape and bringing out his plan for liberating the camp.

It took four months for Pilecki to cautiously make his way across Poland, finally reaching Warsaw and the Home Army.  To his bitter disappointment, the proposal for the attack was not endorsed by the Home Army leadership which did not have the arms, ammunition and transport to carry it out.  The Poles made an attempt to gain logistical support for the operation from the British, including bombers and planes to carry airborne troops.  They sent Pilecki's 11 page report to the British who dismissed it, believing the report to be a gross exaggeration, and declining to help. 

That is a common story of disbelief in the West, not crediting the reports brought from Germany and especially the Bloodlands of Eastern Europe. There is ample evidence of real information making it to the highest levels of power in Britain and America, especially from the other David Wyman , the Holocaust scholar from UMass Amherst. But whether people "knew" is a slightly different question.  Our ability to not see and not believe what we do not wish to be true is present at every point in our "dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime." The first courage is to see oneself. Pilecki himself wrote in his report "Camp was a proving ground of character. Some - slithered into a moral swamp.  Others - chiseled themselves a character of the finest crystal."

In the Battle for Warsaw Pilecki was captured and sent to a German POW camp.  He was liberated in 1945 but went immediately to the Polish Guard in Italy to fight the communists.  He was secretly executed after a  show trial in 1948. 

... a former prison guard who watched over Witold during his imprisonment approached the Pilecki family, telling them "I want to help you because your father was a saint  . . . Under his influence, I changed my life.  I do not harm anyone anymore." 

 

Stone and Hanania

I have followed the Fertility Crisis a fair bit over the last decade, before it became the hot topic it has become more recently. Thee is a lot of discussion about why women aren't having children, why men aren't getting married, whether it's too expensive, too socially unpopular, with twenty theories for each of these. I have engaged in the discussion and highlighted a few possibilities myself.  It has started to become like the discussions of "what should we do with the schools?" or "why aren't people going to church anymore?" Anyone whoever had an education or was ever in a church thinks they are an expert with a unique perspective which they should feel free to pronounce on.

I don't mean to sound entirely negative about that. There's no obvious answer and the discussion can be interesting.  Also, it's got lots of numbers and graphs.  I think on all such discussions I get quickly exasperated with the people who don't bring their own numbers and graphs or worse, won't look at anyone else's because they have a Theory, dammit. We don't need no steenking graphs.  We have the answers.   

There have been a couple of recent additions to the discussion which have caused me to step back and think "Maybe I have been missing a basic point.  Let's look at this."

Lyman Stone, whom I have have admiration for, thinks there is a huge flaw in the numbers in that the decrease in children per woman measures the number of births rather than the eventual completed family size. There is still a decrease below the level of replacement, but the overall drop is only about half as large, or even a third as large, as historical levels up until very recent times. Babies and young children died a lot before reaching an age at which they could reproduce.* I have linked to him putting forth variations of this for a couple of years now.  He and others (Ruxandra Teslo, Cremieux Recueil) have thus thought that a few moderate solutions might be enough to turn the tidce, rather than trying to find the big societal makeover that is going to fix everything. Stone just updated and discussed with new numbers from Turkey, which has been a controversial discussion in the last decade.

 

Next, I have just read Richard Hanania taking a 30,000-ft view and wondering if there actually is a problem at all.  For what human beings want out of life, not only individuals but entire societies seem to manage their fertility rates moderately well, and have throughout history. Because this is against a background of constant catastrophe, how automatically we do this has been obscured. But one of the things that humans want is some respite, some alone time. In most eras it is hard to afford even a little of it, but as prosperity has increased we can afford to have more - and maybe that's fine. I should point out that I started by liking Hanania, grew tired of him because of his reluctance to engage opposition fairly, but have come back on board a bit this year.  He is quite intelligent and an original thinker.  I just wish...well, never mind.  that should be enough.  I don't have to live with the guy after all. 

*It helps to bear this in mind when we look back (or abroad) at societies where women have children at what we would consider horribly young ages. Life was uncertain for the entire tribe. Catastrophes could reduce population quickly.  When a man had enough resources to support children he was expected to take a wife, or more than one.  When a girl was old enough to conceive, she was expected to. The cultural excuses arrangements for that were varied, but catastrophe was the underlying problem which had to be repeatedly solved. The increased prosperity of Western Europe allowed both sexes to marry later or not at all. (See our old friend the Hajnal Line.) As the rest of the world gets prosperous, they are doing the same.

Can You Control Your Own Beliefs?

A guest post at N3 discusses how much of our belief system is installed at least in broad outline by circumstances and genetics.  I have my suspicions.

Wherever the climate is hot and humid - from Singapore to the DRC - people tend to be both more xenophobic and more conformist than the global average. Why? Because hot and humid climates are rich in pathogens like bacteria, fungi and parasites. The locals’ wariness of strangers comes from a heightened fear they might bring infection. And their learned conformity is a form of behavioural immunity to ensure nobody deviates from the practices they know will keep them safe from contagion.

I'll bet there is something to it, but my reflexive association with conformist is Swedish. People from Appalachia are traditional, but are they conformist? And they are in a different contagion environment than humid port cities of the South anyway.  Is there anything we can legitimatelyn measure, here? I kept thinking of exceptions, and lack of clarity about definitions of things like conservative or religious. So I am bringing it up here as a thought exercise.  What language we learn as a child is entirely circumstance. But what things are fully under our control, or even partly?  We think of ourselves as free agents, and dislike ceding any territory to those who would point to aspects of ourselves we seem to have absorbed without due reflection.

Fifteen years ago I did an extended, nay overextended series May We Believe Our Thoughts? (MWBOT) There are links to research and essays on the topic by people smarter than me if you want a deep dive here.

This seems like the sort of topic where even if you are self-deluded your personal anecdotes are likely to be mines of information for the rest of us. 

Creative Problem Solving

Decades ago I took a once-a-week inservice for 6 weeks on creative problem-solving. I remember little of it, but the one thing that has stuck with me was "Imagine that the problem is ten times worse. Then imagine that it is ten times less. This usually brings clarity."  It did then, as I tried to address a personal problem in that way and hit upon the idea of leaning into something rather than trying to ignore it. Worked.  Usually, when one asks "What if this were only one-tenth as big a problem?  What if my debt were a hundred dollars instead of a thousand?  What if I had to work two hours of mandated overtime instead of twenty?" it is clear we would just ignore it: Yes it's unfair, but not worth my time.  

Thus it was gratifying to learn from Real Clear Politics that this was a favored strategy of General Eisenhower. (Instapundit CWCID) Whether he applied that as President Eisenhower I don't know, but I do know that the complaint against him was running the country from the golf course - which looks remarkably wise at the moment.  Cal Coolidge and the ten boulders coming down the mountain toward you and all that. Ike probably exaggerated and over-intervened in Suez, but underestimated how much political hay would be made in his second midterms from a brief, shallow recession. That is too limited a data set for me to draw conclusions.

I seldom remember the strategy now, because problems are manageable. Yet it would likely do me good to list them and run the exercise.  

Barocha

I have asked for this to be played as the benediction at my funeral. 

 

Let me know if they forget

Blessed

Blessed are the peace-makers, not the peace-lovers. I am not taking that thought any further, only reminding you that the two are not synonymous and may even be opposed at times. Look first into what it might mean for individual conflicts, tempted by no thoughts of politics. Only then should you very tentatively wonder "How shall we then live" in a corporate and even national sense.

I grew up UCC in the Vietnam era.  I never heard anyone suggest it meant anything but being antiwar. I now think it is a great evil to narrow it that way, suggesting that our clergy was more into feelings and social acceptance among the literary class than Bible application.  I have since lived among those who leaned so far out on the other side of the boat that they fell into the sea there. 

Hilbert Table

James speculates that a Hilbert Table might be just the thing for a banquet in heaven. I knew it must have something to do with David Hilbert the eminent turn-of-the-century mathematician, but had to look it up. 

"...as many dimensions as guests, everybody sitting next to Jesus and kitty-corner with every other guest." 

Gilbert and Sullivan Festival

The New England Gilbert and Sullivan Society will be doing all thirteen operettas September 4-7 in Concord, MA.  Tracy and I will be attending at least one, TBD. We have friends from college whose oldest daughter will be singing.

Tricolon

 The tricolon is a rhetorical device of three parallel words or phrases that express related ideas.  We love them.  They just sound better.  Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The few, the proud, the Marines.

It works in 60s pop music, too

 

How It's Played

As I understand it, Iran is one of those countries that leaks its wish list to compliant media sources, claiming that the US has agreed to those terms.  They can then claim that Trump is backing out of a done deal.  It apparently works very well on the American press. 

Text vs Image in Palestine

Maarten Boudry writes a long, evidence-filled essay about the Gaza Genocide, They Don't Believe It, Either. There are some still pictures with text in them, and some fully-labeled graphs.  The one moving picture is a 90 minute video of a guy talking into a microphone. So the excitement isn't exactly jumping off the page. There must be some of his opponents who would work their way through the whole thing and attempt to answer it in kind, but I'm not recalling any in the popular discussion. 

They are competing on different playing fields. 

Relatedly, there is a world of difference between saying that Israel has done some terrible things and someone should stop it vs claiming that the Jews are responsible for all our problems. Classic Motte-and-Bailey argument.

What We Do With Our Time

I recommend pausing it early and often to look at the categories and absorb them.

Doing nothing

Meeting with friends

Cooking 

 First radio cleared everything else out, then TV.

The Starving Children of Utopia

 The refusal to see or remember the Holodomor  by Elana Gomel

 When I was a child, we lived near the central train station in Kyiv. I love trains, and the station, with its beautiful 19th-century industrial design, was my favorite. But my grandmother seemed to be ambivalent about it, even though we had to take a train to our dacha quite often. When I asked her about it, she said, “I remember the women.”  

Biblical Philologist

 Sent to me moments ago.  I could not wait to share it with you.

 

College Socialism

 Why College Turns People into Socialists.  To be technical, it should be "How" college turns people into socialists, but it's an otherwise accurate essay. I am going to send it out to some people I know for their reactions.

 The subsidization of student clubs poses similar problems: one’s tuition funds all student organizations regardless of that group’s productivity or ideology. When I was enrolled at Columbia, for instance, my tuition money funded “Students for Justice in Palestine”—a group that periodically declared their desire to murder me—and as a tuition-paying student, I had no option to opt out of supporting the group’s atrocities. Similarly, my tuition funded many clubs with little use to the college “society” at large. Several clubs did nothing but throw parties all semester. Under a capitalist system, such defunct or unpopular organizations would not stand a chance, but at a university, all student clubs, kept alive through shared funding, survive regardless of popularity and functionality.

Habits For America in an Age of Disruption

 Ben Sasse's speech this year at the Manhattan Institute's Hamilton Award Dinner

 Americans are going to need better habits than we have right now to help our people, our citizens, and our republic thrive. Because virtue has always been at the heart of what it takes to keep a republic. To borrow Lincoln’s metaphor, it’s the golden apple in the silver frame. Politics, the silver frame, is the stuff we do to secure our rights through ordered liberty, but life—the daily stuff that’s made up of community, affections, and habits—that’s the golden apple at the center.

 It put me in mind of CS Lewis's quote in Mere Christianity 

The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging his own garden--that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time.

Please Mr. Postman

When phones were shared, voicemail was unknown, and calls were expensive, families had 1.2 cars, and your girlfriend was so far away, you really could make your whole day revolve around when the mail came. Daily despair. Has she ceased to love me? Was it something I said?

 

Data Republican Part II

 America250: The "Fourth Founding" Part 2, The Standing Army, Named.

 

I have said before that in the mouths of Democrats, democracy seems to mean "us being in control." If that seems unfair, take this example as evidence. The use in this context is much closer to my newly-recognised definition that to what we were taught in civics class. It is not merely an anti-Trump well-he's-so-horrible attitude either. This has been said as far back as Tom Dewey, and including such figures as Bob Dole and Mitt Romney.

The Strategies:

#1   Enable Responsible Conservatives to Vote for Democracy

#2   Reduce Social Demand from the Right. (means "status")

#3    Engage the Left (What could be more neutral than that?)

#4    Build the Movement (More NGO penetration)

#5    Accountability 

Recent Links

 Where is Teacher's Union Money Going? 

The report, conducted by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), Gevura Fund, and Rutgers University, among others, found that of the NEA’s $450 million annual disbursement budget from fiscal year 2025, less than $46 million, or 10 percent, was spent on activities directly representing the union’s constituents.

Initial impressions reading the Qur'an (instead of about the Qur'an) 

Fifty years ago Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood, by Jo Freeman in Ms. magazine* 

Lyman Stone on declining long-term fertility rate being exaggerated Number of live births was much higher than overall child survival rates until around 1920, when they matched up in the West. So graphs that show only the former give an appearance of decline in family size that is much less than we think. In fact, he thinks the current decline which has everyone so worried is more fixable than we think. This is counter to much I have been reading.

*linked in in a substack article By Helen Dale and Lorenzo Warbythat sees continuing behavioral differences in men and women from the y-chromosome bottleneck 7,000 years ago. Among hunter-gatherers, males and females reproduce in similar numbers.  With the rise in agropastoralism (think herders, Steppes, African cattle raids), the percentage of males reproducing dropped to about 6% that of females. 

 The development of farming and then animal herding greatly increased the number of humans—which continued to have evolutionary consequences for our species—and created productive assets (farms and animal herds) worth fighting over. Successful male teams (typically organised as clans) wiped out unsuccessful male teams and took their women as spoils...This is why young schoolboy sporting teams regularly crush adult women’s national teams in team sports such as soccer. It is not that schoolboys have the strength advantage over women associated with adult men (they are often not particularly advantaged around age 14-15). It’s simply that human males are much more likely to “get” teamwork at a visceral level.

 

Journalism

“I became a journalist partly so that I wouldn’t ever have to rely on the press for my information.” — Christopher Hitchens 

Old Guys At Denny's

 Old Guys At Denny's at 6AM

Having Better Day Than You Could Ever Dream Of

From the Babylon Bee

The closest Denny's is in Nashua, and I have had distressing experiences with the fish at Denny's while traveling. But Denny's is not the point, that's a stand-in for a thousand Chatterbox Cafes and Betty's Diners in the country. 

We have Pub Night at Ollie's, and it's not as great as above (because less than 35 years) and not as elevated as the Inklings (though we did did have a significant harumphing about the filioque clause), but it's got some similar elements. Wives in general may be disparaged, but never in specific. My St. Paul's group, and our 50-year "Bible Study," since we stopped studying the Bible and divided by sexes to talk twenty years ago are similar experiences. 

Start now, guys, to have as many years as possible under your belt when you retire.  

Why Costco Pays $30/hr and Target Doesn't

 Why Costco Pays $30/hr and Target Doesn't  Justin Kuiper explains it.  At least one DIL shops at Costco even though it is over 50 miles RT with tolls. I factor that in as a shopping cost and so have never been, no matter how good the deals are. (But ridiculously, I consider 10 miles RT 5x/week to other grocery stores to be just old-guy entertainment. Gets me out of the house...I was going to the rail trail anyway...I'll combine it with other errands...excuse #4...excuse#5...)

But it's just interesting to know about SKU's and business models and why fewer varieties of ketchup are better.

Data Republican Reports

The Fourth Founding: How the unelecteds plan to rewrite the Constitution. (Part I) 

If people keep adding "national treasure" after her pseudonym, maybe it will become a formal title.

In 2013, 9 Foundations responded to a speech made at the Independent Sector Annual Conference, "Our Common Purpose." The goal: citizens’ dialogues that would produce “a broadly shared agenda of national priorities” by 2016. They didn't do that.  They talked a lot to each other but produced no report. 

In 2018 a Republican billionaire asked the American Academy of Arts and Sciences a question and funded a foundation to answer it. “The Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship was established in the spring of 2018 at the initiative of then Academy President Jonathan Fanton and Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr., Chair of the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation. Mr. Bechtel challenged the Academy to consider what it means to be a good citizen in the twenty-first century.” 

You will notice these two things are not the same. "An agenda of national priorities" is not "what it means to be a good citizen." But the foundations kept giving each other money and people and in 2020 renamed the commission "Our Common Purpose." 

What came out was not a civics pamphlet. The commission produced 31 recommendations including proposed constitutional amendments, expansion of the U.S. House by at least fifty seats, eighteen-year term limits for Supreme Court justices, ranked-choice voting nationwide, and a universal expectation of national service. The question about good citizenship had become a structural blueprint for a different republic. 

A lot of people like one or more of these 31 recommendations, but they cannot in any way be called a broadly shared agenda of national priorities - especially as there had been no "citizen dialogues" to produce it. Rockerfeller Brothers Fund president Stephen Heinitz, who had made the original "Our Common Purpose" speech, was by now president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and saying that "the nation-state system and representative democracy are showing signs of of being obsolete." 

Well, maybe so, but who died and made you king? I find this deeply concerning. 

Update: The foundations are Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Foundation, Kellogg, Open Society Foundations, Carnegie Corporation, Hewlett Foundation, Packard Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and MacArthur Foundation. What did you know about each before this moment?

Rise in Testosterone

I thought I had been hearing for years that testosterone levels in American men were falling dangerously.

I guess not 

Shenandoah

 

The lyrics as I remembered them made no sense. The wide Missouri, tops'ls, I love your daughter...??

Reading up on it explains the variance. There are lots of versions. 

It always reminds me of this, unsurprisingly.

 

Links From 2014

 NPR and Livable Planets.

Your God is Too Small and Meek-and Mild 

The Princess Bride 

NH Book of the Dead  Where the Ghosts Are

On to 2015. 

Recent Links

There is a God, and his name is Trade-off.  This is not at all the essay I would have written on the subject.  But it covers a lot of my points in very different style, so should be valuable.  I did use the word "trade-off" or the phrase trade up a lot in raising my sons.

 Every Dog Has His Daybed If I seem more anti-dog these days, it's because we now have one.

The Part of the Declaration that Nobody Reads Historian Robert Parkinson thinks the grievances are more important than the Preamble.  Let me know if it is paywalled for you.

The Mathematical Insanity of the Build Now Act. Lyman Stone doesn't mince words here.  A good idea that got tortured into a scheme for California and Texas to send money to NYC. Or same author, same subject, put differently, 18 states will lose money so that five will gain, but 90% of the money will go to just two cities.

We Few

 

Grace

 Grace begins only after self-justification ends.  Michael Woodruff.

Robin Dunbar on Friendship

 From Robin Dunbar's book Friends .  

Why Do Friendships Fracture?

One of the seminal studies of relationships and and relationship breakdown was undertaken by the legendary British social psychologist Michael Argyle (with whom, in the 1960s, I had classes as a student). During the 1980s, he and his collaborator Monika Henderson ran an extended series of experimental studies examining the rules that underpin friendships. They identified six rules which were essential for maintaining a stable relationship. They identified: standing up for the friend in their absence; sharing important news with the friend; providing emotional support when needed; trusting and confiding in each other; volunteering help when it is required; and making an effort to make the other person happy. Breaking any of these rules, they suggested, was likely to weaken the relationship, and breaking many was likely to lead to complete relationship breakdown.

Two points.  This is particularly useful in viewing ourselves when we know that the other person broke three of these, which prevents us from noticing the one we broke. Second, there is nothing in here about who did what first.

Algorithms Are Not Always Bad

This judge shows up in my feed a lot because I like him. The internet is a wonderful thing and can be a source of joy.

 

Recent Links

 Two kind of exogamy in Central African tribes.  One tribe insisted on tribal exogamy, the other required males to travel long distances to find a wife.

Reforming Non-Profits with pricing. WRT a diversion program:  Adam is developing workarounds because the system as a whole is very difficult to reform. Here’s one idea: how about asking people in the system what they need? People in the justice system generally can’t vote with their wallets, but that doesn’t mean they can’t get a vote. He has piloted a program in which—gasp!—he asks people what they need to stay out of trouble down the road. If you are going to be released in six months, what do you need to get a job, find a place to live, support yourself? What is your biggest pain point? How can the resources available be used to solve this problem?  

Lisa Britton at the Institute for Family Studies on Girlboss Messaging being a problem in and of itself, hurting working class women who can least afford to live that way. She got exactly the inaccurate pushback you would expect, of people claiming she was saying something else.

The growing acceptance of "snuck" v, "sneaked."  Such things are not unusual in themselves, but this one has a twist. It is based on a Proto-Germanic form that somehow still just sounds right to us

 

 

Suspicions Confirmed

I wondered if people on the pro-Palestinian side of the news got their news more from pictures than from text. I asked Gemini, which thinks that is true, but not even the half of it. Of the many things that jumped out at me, the Social Media Reliance (bolded in section#2) has general relevance. Consumers of social media see those sources as more real, because those people are there, and individual. Text media people prefer somewhat more anonymous, institutional information. The importance of algorithms driving people to preferred sources I should have thought of on my own.

 do pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian sides get their news differently?
Yes, pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian sides generally consume, interpret, and experience news in fundamentally different ways. This divergence isn't just a matter of preferring different TV channels; it spans entirely different media ecosystems, reliance on specific platforms, divergent terminology, and distinct psychological framing.   

The differences manifest across several major areas:

1. Primary Media Ecosystems
Pro-Palestinian News Sources: Audiences sympathetic to the Palestinian cause often look beyond traditional Western media, which they frequently critique as having an institutional pro-Israel bias. Instead, they rely heavily on non-Western international networks like Al Jazeera English, independent outlets (such as +972 Magazine, Mondoweiss, or The Electronic Intifada), and direct first-person accounts from local journalists and citizens on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank.   (Italics mine)

Pro-Israeli News Sources: Audiences sympathetic to Israel frequently consume mainstream Western news outlets (such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, or the BBC) alongside major Israeli publications (like The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, or Haaretz). They also follow updates and briefings directly from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and established political advocacy organizations.

2. The Social Media vs. Legacy Media Divide
The demographic and ideological divide is starkly reflected in where people look for information:

Social Media Reliance: Pro-Palestinian messaging is exceptionally prominent on visual, algorithm-driven social platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Because international journalists face tight restrictions or outright bans on entering conflict zones like Gaza independently, local content creators sharing raw, unfiltered video footage have become primary news sources for millions of younger, pro-Palestinian viewers globally.   

Curated Frameworks: Conversely, the pro-Israel side often relies on more structured reporting environments, emphasizing official state declarations, intelligence briefings, and historical context regarding regional security threats and antisemitism.

3. Terminology and "Linguistic Realities"
Even when watching the exact same event, the vocabulary used by different media outlets fundamentally alters how the news is received. This creates two parallel realities:   

The Pro-Palestinian Lens: News is consumed using an active framework of systemic oppression. Terms like occupation, apartheid, displacement, resistance, and genocide are standard. Military actions by Israel are viewed as systemic aggression, and casualties are reported with an emphasis on the asymmetric nature of the conflict.

The Pro-Israeli Lens: News is framed around national defense and security. Terms like terrorism, counter-terrorism, self-defense, human shields, and existential threat dominate. Military operations are viewed as targeted reactions to hostile acts, with a heavy emphasis on the events of October 7, 2023, hostages, and the actions of groups like Hamas or Hezbollah.

4. Media Bias and Cognitive Framing
Academic and media studies consistently highlight that both sides consume news through distinct psychological frameworks:

The Identifiable Victim Effect: Research indicates a disparity in how human suffering is framed. Pro-Israel news consumers are often presented with deeply individualized portraits of victims (names, hobbies, family histories), which builds intense personal empathy. Conversely, non-Western or independent media focusing on Palestine emphasizes the massive, collective scale of displacement and civilian casualties, which pro-Palestinian audiences view as an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe that mainstream Western media downplays.   

The Passive vs. Active Voice: Media critics note that consumers of different outlets read different versions of accountability. For example, a pro-Palestinian reader will look for headlines that actively attribute blame ("Israeli airstrike kills civilians"), while mainstream Western coverage has frequently used passive phrasing ("Civilians die following explosions"), which critics argue shields Israel from direct accountability.   

Ultimately, these differences create a "filter bubble" effect. Rather than just disagreeing on the solutions to the conflict, pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian sides are often consuming entirely different sets of facts, vocabulary, and visual evidence, making a shared understanding of current events incredibly difficult to reach.

Heredity Simplification

I linked to Razib's interview with Greg Cochran, but let me highlight it further.  I am uncertain about so many things because the experts hedge so much around political issues, and I take people at face value. Cochran is blunt, and thus controversial and one of the naughty researchers. He will call you a loon if you're a loon. He has tried hard to be nice to me when I'm being an idiot, even saying "look, I'm being as nice as I can." He is something of a paleoconservative who insisted that Iraq could not have weapons of mass destruction and we shouldn't even invade, much less stick around. Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute published the pivotal paper in 2015 that we had interbred with Neanderthals, which amazed everyone. Cochran, Harry Harpending, and John Hawks had been saying it for a decade before, purely from genomic data, (still largely) uncredited and ignored. 

If you think I say the quiet part out loud, Greg really says the quiet part out loud.  Steven Pinker eases you into the idea of racial differences, David Reich tells you that we will find racial differences but not to worry, because he will be there to supervise and make sure nothing racist gets out.  Cochran acknowledges that they have to say those things to get funding for their research, but says they are flat out lying - which I suspected but didn't want to say, as it would be a terrible thing to be wrong about.  I worried about Sasha Gusev's ultra-high bar for signing on to heredity, which boils down to "not until absolutely proven." 

Cochran's response is that Gusev needs to try and teach AP Calculus to Australian Aborigines for five years before speaking again.

It's refreshing, if you can take it.  Greg will tell you when he was wrong, which is seldom, and takes no prisoners on the data. Listen to interview to learn what is going on that you are not supposed to hear.

Psalm 22 and 23

 Psalm 23 is much the better known of the two psalms.  It is taught to children because it is short and comforting.  Psalm 22 is mostly known as the one that Jesus starts quoting on the cross "My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?"

The two go together. Psalm 22 is I am abandoned and miserable, please listen to me. Then Even so, I trust you to care for me and rescue me.  Psalm 23 is The Lord has cared for me and rescued me.

There Has to be a Catch

 I don't think I've tried to put up an Instagram before.  We'll see. If it doesn't work, this is the link.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by FunAnimalFacts (@fun.animal.fact)

There is a catch, now that all of you are considering getting a meerkat. Because they are very social, to keep them as pets you need twenty of them, minimum.  

Do Teachers Need Advanced Degrees?

 Probably not. There is some benefit in the hard sciences for high school students. Little else.

 Ladd and Sorensen’s seminal 2015 paper on this topic used administrative data from North Carolina to assess the effects of teachers earnings Master’s degrees with fixed effects for teachers, students, and schools. With these fixed effects, it’s possible to estimate the effect of Master’s degrees after accounting for things that are constant among these groups. Thus, the question from this study is less ‘Do teachers’ Master’s degrees correlate with their success?’ and closer to ‘Does being conferred a Master’s degree make teachers more successful?’ The answer is a resounding ‘no’, with the only effect being on rates of high absenteeism among the kids, for some reason.

Neither Here Nor There

In NH there are "towns" which straddle the border between two towns.  Pinardville is a section of both Manchester and Goffstown; Suncook has the border between Pembroke and Allenstown down the middle of it; Penacook is part Concord, part Boscawen. All three are heavily French-Canadian, or were when they were first founded. It makes for confusion of school districts, fire department coverage, Post Offices, and even telephone exchanges. A medical office will ask me which pharmacy I prefer, and it still offends me to have to say it's Hannaford in Manchester, because it's not in Manchester. It's a mile over the border, firmly in Goffstown in that Pinardville section which French-Canadians settled long after the town centers were built.

I'm not blaming the immigrants from Quebec. That's where the affordable land was and ethnic groups like to cluster together. The Yankees created the situation and have no call to kick about it now. Yet it does make for multiple answers to the question of "where are we, anyway?"

Remembered For the 250th

 

Whether you think rescuing the flag is a big thing or just an above-average thing, Monday's comment at the end is worth keeping in mind. You never know when the moment is going to come. A had a friend who ran back into the house to rescue his 12 year old stepson and a sleepover friend from fire and was permanently scarred himself.  He remembers it had been a boring, rather irritating day before that, no hint that it was going to be the most significant of his life. The best and worst events of our lives often come with no warning even minutes before. 

Simeon didn't know the Messiah would come that morning, nor that it would would be a baby. Simon of Cyrene was a spectaor at the crucifixion but was forced to carry the cross, which was not in his dayplanner that morning.  He was just a visitor from North Africa who happened to be there. He was the father of later disciples Rufus and Alexander. 

Company Destroyed by Wellness Influencers

 This Company Was an American Success Story. Until MAHA Influencers Sank It. by Laurie P. Cohen at the Free Press. 

At Apeel’s peak, 60 percent of the avocados sold in American grocery stores were coated with Apeel. The number is now zero. Almost all of Apeel’s revenue in the U.S. has disappeared, and the company was forced to lay off most of its employees. Rogers was replaced as CEO in 2024.

“I love the product. It’s a pity it’s not out there,” said Debora Langston, a consultant who spent months testing Apeel for Limoneira, comparing it with the wax coating used for decades. Friends in the food industry warned that Apeel was dangerous and could cause cancer. She expected poor results but reached the opposite conclusion. Her customers in Europe still use Apeel...

Robyn Openshaw, a wellness influencer who markets herself as GreenSmoothieGirl, published over 60 anti-Apeel posts on social media and her own website from July 2023 to May 2025. She wrote that Apeel’s coating was made with heavy metals and solvents, including chemicals found in gasoline, and encouraged her “Green Smoothie Girl Army” to protest by phone and email and in person.

In June 2024, Openshaw called Edwards, the Limoneira CEO, on his personal cellphone, asking him if the company was selling Apeel-coated products. He replied by text: “Hi Robyn, We tested Apeel but never sold any products (avocados or lemons) with Apeel on them. We stopped when the market told us it doesn’t want Apeel.” She published a blog post with the headline: “GreenSmoothieGirl Gets Apeel Shut Down at Billion-Dollar Produce Company.” A video on YouTube boasted that she got Limoneira to “quit using Apeel products.” 

I get a lot out of Instapundit, which is mostly pro-MAHA. But they are too pro-MAHA, never giving you both sides of the story. Every mention of it is positive now. 

The Environment Leads the Gene

I think of myself as someone who keeps those who are interested in Indo- Europeans and Ancient DNA up-to-date on developments, and up until a few years ago that was true-ish. But it is all happening and changing so quickly these days that I would have to devote much more of my life to it than I choose to. Yet I still listen and hear interesting things, so I will link to those and bring up some points that intrigued me. 

Dwarkesh Patel has a lengthy interview with David Reich about what has been happening the last few years, in particular a paper headed by Avi Akbari that has been discussed in preprint for three years and now out as a paper in Nature. Why the Bronze Age was an Inflection Point in Human Evolution. I am not symmarising that paper but am drawing from it.  Razib also makes extensive reference to it in his 10,000 years of selection in Western Asia monologue and his interview with Greg Cochran.  I'm reading the new JP Mallory, just read Proto, and I'm no summarising any of those either.  For openers, I'm not sure I understand any of them well enough to get them right. But here are some interesting bits.

You will hear it asserted that there has been very little selection over the last 50,000 years in the human genome, and the differences between us then and now are small.  You will also hear that selection has been intense and recent, creating significant group changes.  Both are true in their way. 98% of the genome isn't moving much. 2% is under intense evolutionary pressure.

Immunity tends to be the area of greatest change.  When groups interbreed, the variants that keep people alive have the biggest effect, withnlittle explanation needed. The genes tend to be fewer, or even individual, such as genes for Down Syndrome, Tay-Sachs, or Cystic Fibrosis. Africans have an enormous number of variants offering partial resistance to malaria and other insect-borne diseases. They would have fullresistance, but the diseases change their chemistry to live off humans, and it is an ongoing competition.  The studies that show the various blood types or those with more Denisovan ancestry having more covid resistance are remnants of those same battles a quarter-million years ago.

Behavioral and psychiatric traits are more polygenic, so while they are also under heavy selection compared to the 98% of the genome, it is less strong than immune selection.  Cognitive ability, height, and BMI are more polygenic still.  There are a thousand places to be a little taller or smarter, and a hundred versions of slight improvement at each place. There is no overall tall gene except for diseases like acromegaly, which kills you early, like Andre the Giant. 

Oddly, the selection for the cognitive traits has not been strongest in the last 2000 years, but the 2000 years before that. The genes which correlate with educational attainment now became more concentrated long before anyone had formal education.  But those genes also correlate with age of first birth for women and value of grave goods for men, which one can see might be associated with better planning and better self-control in both social and financial situations. The biggest changes were 2-4000 y/a, the second biggest 4-6,000 y/a, but our last 2000, which one would think held the big ticket items for cognitive traits, are not as dramatic. There is a lot more than in most of human history, but not as dramatic as the move from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. The researchers expected to see the biggest changes with the beginning of agriculture, but the genetic changes did not happen until well after. There are signals that it was not the beginning of agriculture but the final end of foraging in a society that put the pressure on. The genetic patterns needed for foraging held on in selection long after they disappeared in the skeletal and burial evidence. As long as they were still needed occasionally, they persisted.

We picture tribes moving into a colder place because they have slightly better adaptation to cold, but that is cart before horse. They move first, then adaptations slowly come in. Tribes are likely driven by necessity to keep on milk longer, eat riskier food, or move into the cold before they are ready. Desperation is the driver, not slight advantage. At that point, a hundred tiny improvements might keep one person alive a little longer, and those accumulate over time.  It's not a single big improvement, but a slight one, then a slight improvement in that.

A lot of extra material that has nothing to do with cold or dairy comes along as well. If someone has a mutation of slight advantage, when the DNA helix folds on itself, it doesn't do it only at that one spot. a bunch of other genes on either side of it get pulled in as well. It can be tough to tell which of the hundred SNPs in a chunk are the advantageous ones and while are only along for the ride, or even deleterious for some other trait. From a single ancestor, each child and each grandchild will have that helical twist at a different place, but it will still take generations to isolate the one with 1% cold tolerance advantage, and six in the area that increase the likelihood of curly hair will be associated accidentally.

Eh, I'm done for now.  That's only one small point and I've taken forever.  I have just demonstrated by bad example why teachers who can package such things clearly and compactly onto a greenboard or into a single analogy are so valuable.

Whatever isn't clear, ask.  I might be able to answer rather than sending you to the pros to do your own research. 

Punchy Writing

 Paul Shearer: "Short sentences. Punchy. To the point. Sounds like efficiency. Serious. Muscular. Yet. Not saying anything. Not this part either. Still haven't said anything. Nope. Not yet. But they sure are punchy. M&M sentences. Dorito sentences. Pringles sentences. Once you pop. You don't stop."

Secret Medieval Tunnels

In Central Europe there are narrow erdstals estimated to have been carved out between 900-1200AD. We haven't figured out why and Weird Medieval Guys thrive on telling us about this stuff. There are theories, of course, but most are tentative because none cover all the facts.

No theory has yet been able to account for:

    The number and distribution of the erdstall

    The similarities between the many erdstall

    The inconvenience of accessing the erdstall

    The secrecy with which these tunnels were built and guarded

    The complete lack of artefacts found within 

Fun stuff. Great site. We don't know why knights in medieval texts fought so many giant snails, either. 

Surgery

I have rotator cuff surgery tomorrow.  I am not apprehensive, but I am also not all that optimistic.  The most likely outcome is mild improvement in range-of-motion after months of rehab. There is some chance of greater recovery, but there is also some chance of none at all. 
 

Yet a hundred years years ago I would just have been a guy with a bad shoulder for the rest of his life, so this isn't terrible, really. Also, it's my left shoulder, which I use less often anyway.  There are many things like that these days.  Health care is much more expensive now because we can do magic compared to then. Any D&D gamer knows that magic is expensive. My mother died in 2000 of a third diagnosis of cancer and my father a couple of years later because of congestive heart failure. If medicine had been this far along in 1990, both would have probably gotten another decade of life, anyway. As I know the events that occurred until 2010, it's interesting to think of that.

Fanny Brice

 

Closed Captions

My wife has always relied more on context than on my actual spoken words to read me. This seems unusual for a woman who reads more than anyone you know, but there it is. If I say that dinner will be in half an hour, she will ask ten minutes later if dinner is ready - because she sees me setting the table, and that is the stronger cue for her. As I don't expect this to get any better as her hearing gets worse, it occurred to me that a technology which provided closed captions for all our speech might be useful. Women might object to the discomfort of having the words be below their necks, but fine, have what you want.  Having my words be visible as well audible sounds great to me. 

I do see immediate problems. It might be considered rude to turn it on or off at "wrong" times according to some artificial standard imposed on us by teenagers who are the first adopters. But still, I see great possibilities here, especially for my audience friends. 

Kind Vs Wicked

 I had not heard the kind versus wicked distinction between systems  A Hungarian psychologist raised three daughters to priove that any child can become a chess grandmaster through early specialisation. It's a fascinating article, showing that in kind domains, early specialisation works, but in wicked domains (which is most of real life), it stops working after initial success.

 The Polgar experiment is one of the most famous case studies in the history of deliberate practice. Laszlo Polgar wrote a book before his daughters were even born arguing that geniuses are made, not born. He homeschooled all three girls in chess from age four. By their teens, Susan, Sofia, and Judit were dominating tournaments against grown men. Judit became the youngest grandmaster in history at the time, breaking Bobby Fischer's record. The story became the gospel of early specialization. Pick a domain young, drill it hard, and you can manufacture excellence.

There is the usual failure to note that the three daughters all shared the genes of the chess-playing father, but I'm used to that by now.  I just point it out to refute the constant claim of the environmentalists that all the experts acknowledge the influence of heritability on ability and behavior, and even quote them saying over and over that they do take that into consideration.

They don't. 

But the article is still worthwhile for what it is. 

The Shadow Cabinet of Soros

Data Republican is a new treasure, who knows how to find information and convey it. The Shadow Cabinet of Soros confirms what conservatives have long asserted with only partial information and intense suspicions. She puts the names, the dates, and the millions of dollars out for everyone to see. For those who suspected that the Biden presidency was mostly Obama III, for foreign policy, at least, here is the data.  Politicians and operatives working behind the scenes is nothing new, and not necessarily illegal.  But secrecy in such matters is never a good sign. The shadow cabinet of Obama officials oversaw the withdrawal from Afghanistan, just as one example.

National Security Action launched with approximately seventy people (in 2017, funded entirely by Soros)— sixty advisory council members and ten staff. Its advisory council included Tony Blinken, Avril Haines, William Burns, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Denis McDonough, Alejandro Mayorkas, Wendy Sherman, Wally Adeyemo, Kurt Campbell, Colin Kahl, Kathleen Hicks, and Jon Finer. Tom Donilon — Obama’s former national security advisor — served on the advisory council.

Forty-six of seventy roster members — 65.7% — received Biden administration appointments. Sullivan became National Security Advisor. Blinken became Secretary of State. Burns became CIA Director. Haines became Director of National Intelligence. Power ran USAID. Thomas-Greenfield became UN Ambassador. McDonough ran the VA. Mayorkas ran DHS. 

 Ioffe found the same wall of opacity: “Nobody — not even the various comms people working for N.S.A. — would tell me who is on the organization’s board or confirm that the group’s funding comes from Soros.”  

But Data Republican tracked the numbers.