Nature-Fakers, and Beast Fable
The Superhero Trump may be falling into this in using the Guard to police cities. Extreme measures pick off the low hanging fruit, but the success tricks us into doubling down hoping to catch the same amount with the next escalation. Mission creep.
Double-Spacing WF Buckley reported that if he wrote something foolish about foreign affairs he received a dozen letters about it. But if he made a grammatical error he got hundreds
Whether foster care benefits children over remaining with the family is understudied. People have strong opinions, but these are often based on anecdote. One recent study shows that foster care does reduce subsequent arrests, by comparing children at the margin of whether they will be placed or remain with the family. The study showed that many foster children were able to return to their families in a year or two, and that in the interim the parents improved and had fewer arrests after a child was placed. This somewhat fit the pattern of our three as far as we know. The first was adopted to Massachusetts, and we don't know what happened after. The second went back to her mother and was occasionally placed after that, but developed a solid relationship with her over the years and they live together up north. The third left to live with a sister and at least finished high school. She sent us a prom picture.
I am going to guess that the mechanism is not only the parents getting a break and smartening up because of the threat of permanent loss of the child, though I will bet those help. More likely, the parents are young, disorganised, and irresponsible and they develop over 1-2 years as would be natural, but with added accountability. I would further like to know if there is data whether the familial support the parents have is part of this. If a little more development and social pressure improves things, then community support might make a difference, especially in marginal cases.
Maggie's Farm has Roger de Hautville subbing in to provide links, so I don't think I need do it anymore. This will be the last unless (until?) MF goes down again.
Neo-Gnosticism and Nihilism Today - Father Dwight Longnecker, who has an interesting backstory
The Free Press has the debate about Whether RFK/MAHA is making us healthier or not. Multiple POVs. My view remains the same. Even when disruption is needed, not all disruption is the same, and not all disruption is good.
Via Grim. If you don't want to be thought of guilty, you shouldn't act suspiciously.
Mamdani has privately lamented... and yet it has somehow been leaked to the press. My, my.
Squirrel AI - 40M kids educated, largely in Asia. Worth looking at.
Twin studies and adoption studies have recently come in for criticism as being far less useful than we have though. Scott Alexander has gotten involved with the discussion with Sasha Gusev and others, and seems to be partly convinced by this. He continues to see value in the hereditarian side and is his usual scrupulous self in saying "here are the arguments. Here are the objections. Here are the objections to the objections. Here is another possible explanation. I think you have to be a professional, or at least much smarter than I am, to get the arguments here. I have an added bias because Gusev quickly becomes dismissive and insulting with people who don't agree with him. That puts me off, but that often happens in the history of science. I quote the ACX paragraphs here with links included in case you want to get into this.
Lots more good discussion about missing heritability. Sasha Gusev argues that twin studies might be a poor guide to anything else if there are many gene-gene interactions. That is, if we take the difference between identical twins (who share 100% of their genes and therefore 100% of their interactions) and fraternal twins (who share 50% of their genes and therefore fewer than 50% of their interactions), and incorrectly extrapolate it to other differences using a model that assumes there are no interactions, we will overestimate the size of (non-interaction) genetic effects. Most studies find that there are few gene x gene interactions, but commenters convinced me last time that this might be an artifact of the studies being bad.
And Unboxing Politics argues (against me in particular) that although it superficially looks like adoption and twin studies sort of agree, when you adjust out their known biases, it moves twin studies further up and adoption studies further down, such that now they disagree again (the objection I would have made is their Objection 2, which I think they at least somewhat refute). This is a good argument; without spending several hours checking all of their claims, my only weak partial objection is that I don’t think assortative mating can play quite the role they expect, because there seem to be the same twin/RDR differences even on traits where believing in assortative mating is absurd (like kidney function). But if you replaced it with Sasha’s argument above, you might have a pretty good case!
On the pro-hereditarian side, East Hunter takes aim at gene x environment correlations, comes down somewhere in the middle, and Sebastian Jensen continues banging the drum of how most objections to twin studies don’t work. I think these are good attempts to buttress existing research but don’t fundamentally change anything or respond to the novel arguments above.
And Emil Kirkegaard points out that the observed SNP heritability of facial features is only 23%. He argues that since it seems like facial features are extremely heritable, this reinforces the argument that SNP heritability numbers are too low (and therefore twin study numbers are more likely defensible). But should we be sure that facial features are more than 23% heritable? His argument is that identical twins have identical faces, but this might be vulnerable to Gusev’s point about interactions. Maybe a better argument would be that it seems very hard for shared environment to affect facial features (with a few exceptions like fetal alcohol syndrome), and facial features seem more than 23% heritable just by normal “he looks like his brother” common-sense observation?
One interesting potential consequence of this research: if we ever fully understand how genes affect faces, then embryo selection companies could show people what each of their potential future kids might look like. I suggest they not do this: it might spook me into becoming pro-life.
Please come back, Bird Dog. Update: Sort of back.
The Navajo Nation's Spiritual Battle for the Moon.
How "Unready" was Aethelred? This series of podcasts of about 15 min each has been largely about kings, wars, and bishops. I usually prefer cultural history: economics, religious practice, laws, slaves and peasants, technology, and movement of people. However, because we know so little about the period due to the lack of documents, we know less about England in that period than before or after. Also Kearns is now working in more "history from below."
The greatest polo horse was cloned, and now lots of players are trying to get one. The legal issue of patenting genetic material keeps taking odd turns.
Scott Alexander: I am always nervous when a good person who I like starts engaging on Twitter, since it elevates the discourse there but also gradually turns their brain into mush - but Ruxandra has made the leap and is doing a great job not just on bio related topics but also (for example) countering Curtis Yarvin on the history of her native Romania.
Building In the World of Flesh Needs Transparency. by Ruxandra Teslo (above). Some details on drug development and trials and why China is now much faster than even our FDA fast-track drugs
A passing reference in discussion of Universal Basic Income that I will try and track down. In an online argument about a different design study that as always showed "disappointing" results, opposing parties nonetheless agreed that this was a First World phenomenon. Studies in Third World countries consistently show that "just giving people money" works better than targeted giving. This makes sense to me. The poor in the Third World are very poor, and not irresponsible people who have drugged away their opportunities*. They are people whose entire societies are not working well, with less control over their fates. When you are lacking very basic things you know what you need and you buy food, medicine, fuel.
*I am not claiming that all who are poor in America fit that description. It is just even more true in other countries.
If you grew up evangelical in the 1980s you likely heard Psalty - and Psaltina, Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, and Charity Churchmouse. I was looking for the recording where Charity says "I don't want to be a servant. I want to have servants!" but it eludes me. Best line in the series.
Three stages of religious decline. Seems plausible
First Things ties embryo screening into overall attidtudes toward "perfect parenting." (The one wise thing that Werner Erhard of est said was "Your children will grow up to be what they want and blame you for it.")
LLMs will be like Ozempic for Golf. Ethan Strauss is consistently excellent on the interaction between sports and culture. For some reason AI has turned out to be spectacular at golf coaching.
Jewish Themes in the Revelation to John. from Wind off the Hilltop. Also it will be Rosh Hashanah in a couple of weeks, so why not.
Six More Myths About Gender, Race, and Inequality Unfortunately only two without a subscription
Beat Any Escape Room We've done a very few and did one with the family last night. We win, but not (yet) spectacularly.
I have been looking for a shortcut definition of empathy for use in popular discussion. I have settled on Empathy = identifying with someone. In the first place, it gets people off the idea that it equals compassion, or sympathy, or kindness, or just being a decent chap. Secondly, it includes the idea that is an impression or feeling, not a kind action. Identifying is often partial, and we don't always pick the good bits of who we are identifying with. And it also highlights that it might not always be a positive.
Do I repeat myself? Very well, I repeat myself. I don't always remember that half of
disagreements boils down to agreeing about the definition of terms. This is where my
contention that I may not know as much as recognized experts about a subject and not
be fit to comment on who is wrong and who's right, but I can be pretty good at who is
fighting fair and who isn't . Redefining terms is something that cults do.
There is first the problem with the certainty that the Bible says what you want it to. Before we even get to discussion of any serious topic, we have the danger of forging God's signature under our ideas. Reflections on the Second Commandment. We notice how God hates hypocrisy, taking revenge, oppressing the poor, and being arrogant, but what really seems to set Him off is false prophecy. People get killed for it in the Old Testament and it seems central to the Second Coming at the end of times. We are called to teach, but teachers are under double scrutiny. We must move with all caution when telling others that God wants them to do X. It is too easy to expand our interpretations into God's commands without noticing it.
This is behind my recent post Stuart the Just. "I only asked what time dinner was and she goes into a tempter." No you weren't only asking and she knew it. "She's just asking how her daughter's boyfriend likes his job." No, there's a world you hope to uncover by just asking. And now "It's just what the Bible says." No it's not just what's in the Bible and we know it. You quote the verse and then bend the terms.
I have been listening to this for a long time.
From the 60s and 70s. God cares about the city. Yes, he cares about the people in the city. Does that mean he doesn't care about the rural areas? (This was before there was this big move of New Yorkers to Vermont.) Do you think he doesn't care about the suburbs? No, but churches are abandoning the cities to got to the rich, soulless suburbs.
No, you care about the city. The further conclusions you draw from God's love of people in general are indirect, and suspect.
From the 70s and 80s. God cares what Christians do politically. So those monks, communes, and people too busy with ministry have got it wrong? No, you care about what Christians do politically. Jesus mentions it little. Jesus cares about the downstream effects of all our actions, yes. Don't push it. And especially, don't tell me what God's Politics are. 2nd Commandment. How do you even dare?
God cares about the family. Well, sure. Nurture and admonition of the Lord. Mary and John at the foot of the cross. Sure. But didn't God say something about remaining single if you could? So what do you mean by "cares?" About the institution?
God cares about America. Albania not so much? No, you care about America and are bringing God into it without checking.
My denomination had a 5th grade series on the Ten Commandments. The one about not stealing stressed the need for a minimum wage.
God cares about sexual sin. Yes. Your point?
God loves the Outcast, the Rejected, and the Scorned. Today we would use the word marginalised. Well, yes. Everyone else hates them, but Jesus made a point of welcoming them. Does that mean he likes them better?
It is not only annoying to me personally. Heck, a lot of things are annoying to me personally, including the belief that Shadeur Sanders is ready to be an NFL starting quarterback.
*******
Welcome the stranger. The Old Testament and the New both record it so it must mean something. There was a fair-dealing, welcoming sort of thing that people weren't doing; both Moses and Jesus thought it was important enough to mention. So most likely, we aren't doing it either and need to change our ways. Next up: Who does this mean and what is our welcome? There are two Hebrew words, one meaning temporary visitor and another with shades of meaning between sojourner, foreigner, stranger. Missing are the direct meanings of migrant, refugee, or settlers. This is not to say that these groups were excluded, because Joseph and his sons came to trade in desperation and stayed. What category is that? What about conquered people who stayed, or frequent traders who stayed?
Leviticus 19 just says to treat them like your own people. This verse gets quoted a lot by people who oppose the current policy of deporting illegals. (To be fair, they quote Jesus as well. We'll get to that.) My own denomination put up a FB post that uses this verse in a commanding way - and expands it to the meaning migrants.
See? See? That's what the Bible says. It doesn't differentiate between legal and illegal. Yes, Leviticus 19, that also tells us not to get tattoos or cut our hair, and to rise in the presence of older people. Oh now wait. You have to understand those verses in context...
Oh now you want context. Yes by all means, I'm in favor of context. A couple of years ago it was taking more refugees. Are you saying the the Jews were supposed to welcome the Philistines? The Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans? Biblical borders
Those were invaders. That's different. Are you sure? You were pretty certain it was all-encompassing just a couple of minutes ago. Well but the people today are more like people just coming here to live. True, true. We could call them settlers, then. Were the Natives supposed to welcome the Europeans?
Jesus and the NT emphasise the spiritual rather than physical stranger, noting that we ourselves are strangers in this world and encouraging the welcome of Gentiles and Samaritans into the new covenant people. We already know the command in Matthew 25 (sheep and goats) means something, and likely means something uncomfortable and expensive for us. But yet again, we have context. Israel was occupied territory. No group was moving in without Roman permission. The movement of of free individuals was quite free, but they were only a minority of the populace. There was an imperial backstop if 10% of the Syrians suddenly thought that living in Israel was the thing to do.
For this exercise I am not taking a position on deportations, illegals, refugees, or overall migration. I have telegraphed that my current position is to welcome legal immigrants but discourage illegals. We have resettled refugees. We still support a Sudanese church. I volunteer at a food charity that serves lots of immigrants and doesn't ask if they are legal or illegal. As discouraging illegals is difficult I don't know how many resources I want the country to devote that discouragement. I see that as moveable. I will note that my immigrant sons take about the same view. The one who then immigrated to Norway is really annoyed at the gypsies coming in on buses not wanting to work and harassing the women as soon as they get off. Illegals suck up the jobs of the disadvantaged citizens. Bernie Sanders used to rail about how too much immigration hurt black people.
It is a violation of the Second Commandment for people to take verses and expand their meaning to insist that God is opposed to our current deportation policy. If some group were insisting that the Bible commands that we take in no further immigrants I would say the same thing. Don't forge God's signature.
I know, I know. You were only saying... No you weren't You were saying much more.
You will notice that a lot of my links are from Rob Henderson, ACX, and Substack notes. Expect this to continue.
Ask Not, from Lexicon Valley. Two liberals who admire Kennedy's Inaugural learn some uncomfortable truths about the context. They are almost honest about it. John McWhorter is no longer doing Lexicon Valley and I may delete it from the sidebar. We'll see.
Losing My Religion Children lose their religion over a few generations rather than just one. This is the opposite of the anecdotes we tend to hear, and I can think of some dramatic examples in my lifelong acquaintances, but I will bet this is true.
A detective's guide to English place-names, from Dead Language Society
Place names are like this: what seems strange for an outsider is simply part of the scenery for a local, despite the fact that many place names are, indeed, very strange or mysterious. And nowhere is this truer than in England, where a commuter might pass by seven mysteries, four references to wars of conquest, and one well-disguised obscenity on their way into the office.1
The Sex Binary is not "High-School Biology."
You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Ann Althouse headlines what the NYT buries in paragraph 8 and doesn't mention again. There is a fair point here. Maybe there have been too many emergencies recently that could have been handled differently. But there were lots of emergencies under Obama's "one," and changing Senate rules for the ACA or ordering air strikes in seven countries would seem to qualify.
We passed a small house with many lawn ornaments in Concord on the way to the Escape Room tonight. It had a whiteboard sign such as you might see outside a restaurant.
TODAY'S SONG
The Planets
Gustav Holst
That seemed good to me.
My father-in-law used to joke that his mother called him Stuart the Just, because he was always saying "But I was just...But I was just..." We have variations in English: "We were only..." "She was merely..." "All I asked was..." When people use these phrases, they are often hiding something. No, Stuart you weren't just looking in your sister's toybox to see what was there. No, she wasn't only dropping by to chat. No, you weren't merely looking on her phone to see if her mother had called yet.
I have been on a run for motte-and-bailey arguments lately. I have a few more coming. This is mostly because I am currently alert to them, but I suspect I hope to perform some instructive service along the way, saturating the summer of 2025 with examples and commentary.
I don't want to get too bogged down in the castles themselves, though this is an attractive picture that's fun to spend some time on. Analogies break down if you stretch them too far, but this illustration allows us to extend the idea just a bit. The motte is the most defensible place. It was often built first on an elevated area, which provides in itself some defensive advantage. In some descriptions the motte is the mound itself, and the keep is the fortified area.
Once the motte is in place it makes sense to live near it in case of emergencies. Outbuildings would spring up for stables, work areas, and housing. These in turn would be fortified as time and resources allowed. In the illustration above, there is an expanding series of baileys, and outside the moat there are plenty of fields for pasture and planting. The motte is extending its influence over an entire area. The whole enterprise expanded in stages and can be defended in stages.
In rhetoric or argument, a set of ideas can extend their influence over wider and wider areas. If you have a constitution and laws, a group can start from something quite basic, quoting "the Constitution says this," and be on safe ground. Not long after, they are saying "the Constitution also means this," expanding the idea out a little farther. If everyone goes along, it becomes a fortified place of its own. The xpansion goes fine until someone says "Hey, this isn't the Duchy of Toulouse anymore. You are encroaching into the Duchy. of Aquitaine. Stop that." If Aquitaine attacks with enough force, Toulouse falls back to an area it thinks it can defend. Unfenced fields are tought to keep enemies out of.
In the motte-and-bailey fallacy, what is usually the problem is the discovery that Toulouse has been encroaching into Aquitaine for a long time. It has been claiming lots of territory that isn't theirs, and Aquitaine quickly acquires some allies who say "Dagnabbit! Toulouse has been cheating. None of this has been theirs and they must be punished." Toulouse goes all the way back to the motte if necessary, saying "THIS IS OURS. You can't accuse us of lying and cheating. We own this."
From here we are going to the situation of "But we we're only quoting what the Bible says," because being deceitful about that "only" is a big deal.
I think I have the history right. A lot of people have covered this song, but I took this earlier one.
About a week ago I had a link to a graph about Estimates of Each Other. It is surprising what things we get wrong. (Though a friend pointed out it is equally surprising what we got right.) Yet maybe it explains a lot of why the younger generation feels they have gotten a bad deal financially. If you think that 20% of the population make a million bucks a year, you might well feel left out, or despairing of ever "succeeding" and feel that the most important thing to do is Change Then System so that the bastards don't keep ripping us off. It also explains why the strategy of taxing the billionaires is so appealing. If you think there are a lot of them out there, who could foot the bill for Everything Nice if we just stopped giving them tax breaks, it makes sense. Only when you realise if we took all of the income from the 1% it would fund the government for about 100 days; if we took all of their wealth - their stocks, their mansions, their businesses and cashed them in - it would fund the federal government for about 9 months. Not to mention that we would destroy the major employers of the rest of us overnight and have a society where no one had any incentive to do anything beyond buying tents and ramen noodles. The number of people who make $1M/year is near 0%. If you raised their income taxes from 35% to 45% it would have no effect on you, except on your feelings. Well, in a dynamic system it would cause more of the to go live in a tax haven, so it would in fact affect you. Badly.
But they are visible, and they feed our primitive urges to break them, because we are sure they must be cheating and stealing or they wouldn't be rich. This upsets us so much because in hunter-gatherer societies having more than twice as much as the average is indeed suspicious. Jobs and roles are similar and interchangeable. If they have nice things, check your pockets. In America if they have nice things so what?
This is also why every generation thinks the previous one had it easy but they have it hard. They are not much moved by reports of cheaper communication, in that a poor person in San Diego can talk for thirty minutes to her mother in Atlanta. That fruits and vegetables are available yer round. That a cancer diagnosis at forty no longer means death even if you are homeless. These mean nothing, because everyone has them. Odd that socialists, who claim to be committed to everyone doing better, stop counting things as wealth once everyone has them. One would think that was the point, and count as a victory.
We have better communication, and think that half the country has more than us even when we are in the top quintile.
We have not stopped homelessness, largely because we have not figured out how to get landlords (or shelters) to operate once the tenants are destroying the place, or keeping the neighbors from sleeping, or molesting the children. The low-hanging fruit has largely been picked in housing. We are looking at fentanyl, dangerous smoking, violence, and sex offenders now. Those aren't easy to solve.
It is with great surprise and joy that I find that a post in 2012 linking to another blog turns up a site that is still operating. Even more amazing, his post for 9/3/25 draws heavily on mine from 9/1/25.
Things Have Changed. It's going up on the Sidebar immediately, so I don't forget. He has a good deal more artwork than I do, and more discussion of popular music. I was entertained by everything I saw, which means I agreed with it at least 75% as well, because I am not good at appreciating the structure or beauty of something that is just plain wrong.
I told a Lie in 2012. Sometimes such things haunt me, but not this one, probably because I was mock-apologising at the time anyway.
Reconsideration. It's about looking back at being Lutheran in 1981. So you get to look back at me looking back. Worse, I was writing the history of the congregation at the time, so today you get to see 2025 looking back at 2012 looking back at 1981 looking back at 1950-1980.
Lyrics We were more sophisticated in the old days.
The International Association of Genocide Scholars, recently quoted by the Washington Post, the Guardian, the BBC, and ABC News Australia, is a fraud. It is a pro-Palestinian mock-up of an organisation.
Antique Bottle and Glass Collector, Sponge-Headed Scienceman, known IRL as Dennis Sasseville, has an article about the intertwining of the history of bottling and history of a mill city, Manchester, NH. Sponge has been mentioned before as a Moxie and NH beverage author and expert.
Weed Is Different Or at least its users think so. I have seen people desperate for opioids, benzos, and other drugs, saying that they need them. But I think this is correct. Cannabis users usually try to convince you that it's actually wonderful. Good for you. Good for them, anyway.
Literally I like when they use the word "literally," because you can relax knowing that it means "not at all." Once you have broken the seal on a word's agreed-upon meaning, it can wander of anywhere. And usually does. It reminded me of relatives guaranteeing the suicide of my patient. That in turn has my theory about hitting squirrels when driving.
Jane and John Psmith review The Ancient City by Numas Denis Fustel de Coulanges. The book is a fascinating discussion of the culture and institutions of Ancient Greece and Rome and the changes wrought by the philosophers and Christianity. I am going tio reread the review again today. Haven't read the book, though.
Reading this book really makes it clear how nearly every aspect of Christianity was like a laser-guided bomb aimed at one or more of the pillars holding up the social order of ancient Mediterranean civilization.
Our group leader made passing reference to the Seven Signs of the Gospel of John in class week before last. I recalled having heard of this years ago and perhaps even hearing a teaching or sermon on it, but not ever having studied it. As is my usual habit, I went googling around to see if I could find something on this that I liked better than the others. There is no guarantee that it is the best, or even in the top 10%. Other articles on this site seem reasonable.
Theological Significance of Signs in the Gospel of John
The Gospel of John meticulously weaves together a narrative where each sign serves as a theological beacon, illuminating the divine nature of Jesus and his mission. These signs are not mere miracles; they are deliberate acts that reveal deeper truths about the relationship between the divine and humanity. By focusing on these signs, John invites readers to look beyond the surface and engage with the spiritual implications of Jesus’ actions.
Maggie's Farm has been down for a week and I thought I would try again to supply some links. Not the same as what they would do, but some overlap. Lots of substacks send me links so I will start there.
Deepnewz, my favorite news site, has not updated for a week. It is a startup, so I am concerned.
Certain words show up more in AI. At the top: delves, delved, underscore, underscores.
The rebranded architecture of fast food, from the slanty, colorful 20th C to the minimalist and boxy 21st C.
Ruxandra Teslo, who calls herself an "anti-cynic," on the growing nihilism of the Online Right, reflexively opposing everything without offering anything. Very Nietzschean, she says slyly. Your newborn is not Hepatits B vaccinated because of wokeness.
When Civilization Control-alt-Deletes: Prehistoric Europe's false dawn and long reboot.
Liberté, égalité, radioactivité France built 40 nuclear reactors.
I drafted Jeanty in one dynasty league on Monday, and probably will tonight in a league where I get to keep fewer players. He is fun to watch. But the point of the video is the new(ish) twist that one college team is trying on punts, to run first and punt only if the run looks blocked off. It is risky, because it is easier to block and any disruption might cause a fumble. But it also injects the element of surprise into the play, a chaos that one team expects and the other does not. A defense can't be everywhere at once.
It is not strictly new. A player can drop-kick from anywhere on the field for a field goal, though that hasn't happened in decades, and Doug Flutie of the Patriots used that a few years ago for an extra point. He and punter Rich Camarillo used to work on a last-second alternative to a Hail Mary when their team was out of field goal range, but three points would win or tie. They tried it both ways, Camarillo passing 20-30 yards down the field to Flutie while the receivers headed to the goal line, bringing the defensive backs and linebackers with them, and Flutie to Camarillo. The passcatcher would then spin and drop kick the ball through the goal posts. They pleaded with Bill Belichick to let them try it in a game, but it never happened.
