Bungalow Bill

“I got diagnosed with PTSD within 48 hours. I got put on trauma leave, not because I think of the shooting, but because you could — you saw it in the eyes, the reaction of the people. They were coming for us,” MacFarlane continued to quiver. “If he didn’t jump up with his fist, they were going to come kill us.” CBS Reporter Scott MacFarlane about being present at the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.

The Beatles were on this years ago.

The children asked him if to kill was not a sin

"Not when he looked so fierce" his Mummy butted in

"If looks could kill it would have been us instead of him."

 

In War (or Even Political Argument)

As regards his more general attitude to the war, you must not rely too much on those feelings of hatred which the humans are so fond of discussing in Christian, or anti-Christian, periodicals. In his anguish, the patient can, of course, be encouraged to revenge himself by some vindictive feelings directed towards the German leaders, and that is good so far as it goes. But it is usually a sort of melodramatic or mythical hatred directed against imaginary scapegoats. He has never met these people in real life—they are lay figures modeled on what he gets from newspapers. The results of such fanciful hatred are often most disappointing.  (C. S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters, Ch 6) (Italics mine)

Now let the names drift by you. 

Trump...Putin...Biden...Khamenei...Zelenskyy...Netanyahu...Starmer...Musk...Harris...

Thompson, blog

I haven't been over to David Thompson's site for months, and the first entry did not disappoint.  He rescued some impressive bits from the archives.

Feeling Puckish

Is quilting an art or a craft?

What do you think the gender breakdown would be on the answer? 

Linear Pottery Culture (LBK)

 

"The LBK might be named after it's pottery, but they'd be better-defined by their buildings."

I had not run into this prehistory channel before, but have liked the other offerings I have tried as well. Dan Davis History. 

The "1939 Project?"

I had not heard of this, not even informally with no name. I have heard rumblings, and throughout my postliberal days have run into anti-Israel conservatives. But this new development is alarming.   

I will make some distinctions right off the bat, because this is an area where people of good will might misunderstand each other, largely because people who are not of good will are shoving them into corners. There is an entirely reasonable point of view that says Israel is one nation among many, whose objectives sometimes coincide with ours and sometimes do not, but American policy favors them more than is strictly necessary for our own interests. My objection to this is not to the idea itself, but to the reality of listening to a large percentage of these people who rapidly reveal that there's something they just don't like about Jews. Whether they are lying to themselves or to me is not something I am going to get into here, I only note that it shows up in surprising places. 

The first clue is they regard those who disagree with them as having been bamboozled by Jewish interests, by Jewish media influence and Jewish propaganda. Whatever facts you counter with, they remain convinced that no rational person could want America to favor Israel's position in the Middle-East unless they had been tricked.  It becomes a circular argument, where every point is dismissed because its source is poisoned, and we know the source is poisoned because their facts are wrong. There are sites on my sidebar that have regular commenters who believe this.

Let me assure you that if your default is to regard me as someone who has been fooled you are going to have to marshal a good deal of evidence on the point, not merely accuse me smugly. There is an evangelical/fundamentalist core of support for Israel that is founded on end-times and prophecy theologies, that Israel is about to become the center of the final conflict and we had best be on the side of God's Chosen.  One can disagree with that theology, but it wasn't given to them by Jews.  In fact, lots of Jews are uncomfortable with it. It is also counterbalanced by an opposing tradition of antisemitism among American evangelicals and fundamentalists.  Think Jimmy Carter.

As for media influence, American Jews have had a lot of intelligent writers.  It's called persuasion. If you think their persuasion is overrepresented in media, then write your own counterpersuasion, don't just accuse me of having been fooled or not seeing the obvious reality. It may just be uncomfortable for you to acknowledge that your arguments just aren't that good.  The pro-Israel Americans assert that they are deserving of our allegiance because they are the most stable, reasonable, and Western nation in the Middle-East. The counter is often that they aren't that great, they are deceptive with us at times, and there are other considerations, such as oil, positioning, territory, and waterways that should influence us to favor other nations at times on a case-by-case basis.

If Israel were in the middle of Europe I would say that is spot on. The French or Italians sometimes deceive us, or each other, and we them. Nations do not always play straight with each other and we balance that in our considerations.  But Israel does not border Switzerland.  It sits among tribal, aggressive low-IQ nations that found oil and have shipping lanes. This is not a tirade against Islam, BTW.  I think that area remains essentially tribal and Islam has had some unifying moral effect. However, there is still too much shame culture that it's not wrong if you don't get caught and loyalty to clan transcends any permanent moral claim. A lot of the 70's evangelicals who became pro-Israel because of Hal Lindsey remained pro-Israel because their basic sense of of decency and fair play was activated when they paid attention. 

I will again say that if you are one who says "But it's gone too far.  Israel does terrible things as well and its enemies have some valid complaints," then we can weigh one thing against another in our discussion of American interests.  You might move me to your point of view and remind me of things I should have remembered.  Make your case. Just be ready for the counter that your own arguments sometimes betray more of your real intent than you are willing to admit. The door swings both ways.

The Icelandic Phallological Museum

The promotional video has only women in the museum, often giggling. It's a serious scientific endeavor, though.

Car Talk

Just for nostalgia. Both these guys went to MIT, and their first business was creating a space with tools where you could come in and work on your own car for a fee. That is very useful in the city.

 

 Is this real, or is this an excellent storyteller?  Either way.

Negotiations

 I still read DeepNewz and prefer it. Every time I go to the page I see more about Trump threatening to do A or B, interspersed with stories that he is now willing to negotiate C and D. The complaints that one day he says this thing and the next day he says that seem to fundamentally misunderstand that this is all part of the negotiation. 

He likes negotiating.  He is sure he is very good at it.  Is he very good at it? We will never know until later. But do not look at this as a strategy on his part so much as something he just likes doing, and so easily talks himself into the idea that he is good at it.  Obama had something similar: he liked getting everyone together so that he could listen to them all and then make a decision.  If people didn't go along, he made them do it anyway, by any means necessary.  In his mind they had their say and now it was his turn - even when other branches of government had a role, he didn't care. But it wasn't a strategy on his part as much as he just liked it. He liked getting everyone together to talk, then going off and doing what he damn well pleased.

George Bush thought he could reason with everyone.  Was he good at it? Meh.  Sometimes. But the point is that he liked trying to solve problems by reasoning with people. You can have a try at every president on this. Reagan liked persuading people with the golden generalisation. Clinton liked giving the person in front of him what they wanted and tricking his way out of the contradictions.  I don't know what Biden liked doing, other than getting up and talking about things and taking credit while other people did the work.  I think he was like that before becoming demented. The dementia just accentuated it. You might have different descriptions of what all of them did, and your assessments might be better than mine.

But today's insight is that these things are strategies primarily because the presidents are comfortable solving things a particular way and feel on weaker ground doing it any other way.  They are going to go back to what they believe is their strong suit.  At this point in their career, whether they succeed or fail at that method doesn't matter to them very much.  They will revert to form. 

Reunions

Brief observation from back-to-back reunions: when people are asked to give a summary of what they have done, it is further schooling, careers, (current) spouses, and number of children, in no particular order. When you speak with them live, it is children, where do you live now, and "do you remember?" Careers were seldom mentioned at one, not at all at the other.

Who Knows Where The Time Goes

 

I had completely forgotten that it was Sandy Denny who wrote this.  A female singer at my college mentioned it when she sang it herself one night at Uncle Morris Coffee House.  I thought it was very cool that the Fairport Convention girl had written it, and filed it away for later - like 52 years later.

Armenian Script Revisited

I went back to the cemetery for unrelated reasons and but took the time to locate the headstone with Armenian Script again. There were Armenian names on the surrounding stones, but nothing on the back of the one I saw.  However, lying flat behind the stone and to the left was this stone

So it was a T, not an R.  I had only said vowels, not diphthongs for letters 2, 3, 5, & 6, but if you had forced me to choose I would have said I, not O, which looked too impossible, so I evaded the issue. So... Tootoonjian, Charles M 1858-1933. There are some Tootoonjians in NH who look to be one and two generations later, and two in Massachusetts as well. There are Tutunjians on Long Island who may have simply had a different recorder at Ellis Island or something. If I remember it while I am the city library sometime, I will look them up and see the street addresses for the three. I am betting it will be South Manchester. 

For those who like this sort of old Manchester history, Charles is not far from Milton and Plato Canotas, who started the Puritan restaurants, some of the centers of old Manchester culture, and still prominent, even though I never run into people there like I used to.  

Empathy Revisited

It seems to be the flavor of the month, or perhaps the season, on the internet at present. As disagreements often are, this is about the meaning of words. When people are coming out against "empathy," they are not coming out against compassion, but they are being treated as such. It may even be true of some of the accused - there are still some social darwinists among us.

I can't tell you what everyone means.  I can tell you what I mean.  Empathy is dangerous because it is an imitation of compassion and generosity. Putting yourself in another chap's shoes might be a spur to helping him, and expressing your understanding to him might help him to feel less isolated and forgotten. Those are good things. But just feeling someone else's feelings is not actual help. For one thing, you may have it wrong.  You may think you understand when you actually don't. I am remembering the anti-war people who identified with the Middle-easterners hating Bush (or whoever) because they hated him too. Except Americans like Michael Moore hated him for unrelated reasons of their own, that the Middle-easterners were barely aware of.  He empathised, but it was false.

Then also, what if the material help is never produced? What if empathy just stops at the feeling? James 2:16 You shouldn't just say, "I hope all goes well for you. I hope you will be warm and have plenty to eat." What good is it to say this, unless you do something to help? Those I hear insisting on empathy seem also to be insisting that this must mean political response they prefer, else you are no Christian. Does that seem an unfair accusation, that I think that might happen?  It already has happened. A lot of energy from one side of that argument is spent in loudly condemning the other side as heartless and uncharitable. "You saw me hungry and naked, and cold, yet you did nothing." "But Lord!  Didn't we tell those others that they were hypocrites?  Didn't we tell 'em and tell 'em and tell 'em at the top of our voices that they were unworthy of you?"  "Yes, but they gave more than you. You spent your energy on self-righteousness."

There are those who will argue that private charity is not enough, we must influence those we can to behave toward the poor as they should, because it feeds more people.  It is more efficient. That is not a terrible argument, and I have some sympathy with it.  Justice in a land is important. Forced generosity and mercy is a bit trickier, as it involves giving away other people's treasure (like citizenship, a not inconsiderable treasure that belongs to the people to bestow). Yet even that might be worked around, compromised on, hammered out among those who disagree. I admire efficiency, and I admire us all be in this together. Yet if you are so big on the bare fact o feeding more people, isn't the free market the best engine we have yet discovered? It is imperfect and always will be, but is anything its match? The countries that have robust safety nets, such as the Scandinavians, are not especially socialist in all things. They make their money with strong work-ethic capitalism abroad and distribute that to their cousins back home. 

Balancing that can be a fruitful discussion. Bring it on. The US is already quite redistributative. How to target that, modify that, improve that is on the table. But if one side cannot acknowledge any good on the other side - and I have heard that in Sunday School classes and private conversations, it's not just the most extreme people on Instagram or YouTube - then they are clearly interested in something other than helping the poor. I think I know what that is, but leave that off for the moment. It is enough to point out that the phenomenon is there. If you reject some proven solutions out of hand, then something other that fixing things is your primary objective. 

Empathy is a way of convincing ourselves that feeling good is enough, because it focuses on what we feel, not what the other person needs.
 

The Undercurrent

Natasha Burge writes at The Undercurrent on Substack.  I liked this as it went by on a feed and went over to read her.  She seems to be a British Catholic feminist writer in her 30s with a PhD who describes herself as a rogue academic currently living in Saudi Arabia. I liked her stuff 

 

I Can't Grow Peaches On A Cherry Tree

 I have sung this one to myself for many years.

 

Recent Links

 The Return of Trade-Offs. Not just in economics.  Trade-offs apply in everything. Also, you can't always fix things.  Trading up is sometimes the best you can do.  And that's fine.

Mass democracy does not create prosperity. In each case, political liberalization came only after state institutions had been established, the economy had become diversified and a broad middle class had emerged. Democracy was not the engine of development. It was the outcome. Something similar happened with gun laws. Europe's homicide rate declined long before the restrictive gun measures came in. 

 Everything is Palestine to the European left.

Physics demonstrates that increasing greenhouse gases cannot cause dangerous warming, extreme weather, or any harm.   Lindzen of MIT has been saying this for years, Happer of Princeton I had not heard of.  I don't have the chops to tell you whether they are completely right, partly right, marginally right, or complete cranks. I only point out that they exist, they have excellent credentials, and to my generalist brain their arguments seems coherent. Related: We can't really think in climate scale, but we talk as if we do. 

Aging

 A young friend thought I might say something like this.  He knows me well. 

 

Part III - But could something just as bad be true?

I now move off the area where I have some experience in sorting through the scientific claims about whether some newfangled thing that we haven't fully thought through is going to cause some people to lose contact with reality. (Answer, for those who haven't read Part I and Part II: I would bet heavily against this. We've been down this road many times before and are only at the "horrible anecdotes" stage.) Whether there will be some other psychological danger from ChatGPT and its cousins I have no special insight into.  I do have the general Assistant Village Idiot card of looking at the obvious and seeing if we have checked that out thoroughly. 

We don't know.  There's nothing obvious yet. We don't even have a consensus about harms of social media in general, even though every fifth-grader has had a device for fifteen years.  I do not neglect the possibility that this could be the one.  The world has to end somehow, and maybe this is The Beast, somehow, though I'm not seeing the connection to the Revelation to John just yet. I worry all the time that we are all going to be that stupid, missing the most important event ever through distraction. I just know I have worried that twenty-leven times before.

Yet do not despair. I have the arts and culture card to play.  I might see something that is being overlooked.

Why does this idea keep arising among us? In fantasy and science fiction, the more usual process of something outside you taking you over is slow, even centuries. Poul Anderson had 1950's sci-fi story "Call Me Joe" about disabled people controlling distant powerful monsters and eventually having their personalities absorbed by them.  Elrond warns It is perilous to study too deeply in the arts of the enemy, referring to Saruman in The Fellowship of the Ring, the Mouth of Sauron has been a tool of Sauron for so long he has forgotten his own name, and the Ring itself exercises a horrible influence of the owner of whoever possesses it. Many characters in The Great Divorce have slowly given over control of their personalities for years, as did Scrooge, Milton's Satan, 

Yet we see such unravelings happening quickly in literature as well.  Eustace sleeps a single night on a dragon's hoard, Merlin's coinherence is immediate in That Hideous Strength. It does not take long in "Hamlet" for Ophelia to weep "What a noble mind is here o'erthrown." It is perhaps the time constraints of plays and movies that dictate the speed, but the idea that we have brief contact with something and our personalities are destroyed is common.

We see in the NT that demons can go out quickly and see Jesus sending them rapidly into the pigs, so we assume that they must enter us quickly as well, which is why we get nervous about Hallowe'en or Ouija boards. Are there examples in scripture of the long road of destruction happening to individuals?  That is usually reserved for groups of people who persist in disobedience.

We are ready to believe that personality destruction can happen slowly or quickly. Joining a cult, pornography, or role-playing games, we are quite flexible in whether those will take us down quickly or slowly.  Some of the slow-working ones we do not blame on the subject at all, but only on the person who has chosen the monomania. No one says "we have to regulate the study of WWII becomes so many are obsessed." Becoming obsessed with physical fitness, or collections, or train is on you. In those cases we would be sure that it is the vulnerable personality seeking a target. We suspect they were already OCD, or schizotypal, or schizoid.

The scriptures do say wherever your treasure lies, there will you find your heart. In the OT other gods mean deities, but in the NT Jesus expands it to Mammon and shortly after, the early church to greed for anything. (This can be back-traced into the prophets as well, mostly for groups, but the individuals are also noted.  It is now common in Christian circles to regard many things as little gods that we give our hearts to.  

I only mention this, I preach no sermon on it. For today, I am wondering whether there is something unusual about interacting with AI. I have read (about) studies which show that humans prefer AI therapists to live ones. More generally, we begin to prefer AI for information and slowly, slowly, prefer it for conversation. This is unlikely to unravel us quickly (see Parts I & II). But the long road of distraction that Screwtape reminds Wormwood of just as much a part of our imagination, and likely for good historical reasons.

British Accent

I learned today from John McWhorter at Lexicon Valley that British and American accents were indistinguishable during the Revolution. The American Accent Came First.  This seems impossible to me, given how different British accents are from each other, as far back as we can trace. So perhaps it means the type of British people who ruled and policed America up until 1775.  But colonists speaking to each other about the possibility of spies note often that they can't tell whether someone is British or American by listening to them. The British accent distinct from American did not start differentiating until after 1800.

Wouldn't the Scots-Irish and English Borderers in Appalachia sound different?  Oh wait, if the coastal accents of both countries were that similar, then people on the frontier would detect even less difference between them. I do recall hearing that the coastal colonial accent was consistent up and down the Eastern Seaboard.  I trust McWhorter, but I'm having a hard time getting my head around this one. 

Carol Burnett

 She did this a lot with her audiences, and was very good at it.

ChatGPT Psychosis - Part II

The story was originally published in Futurism People Are Being Involuntarily Committed... on 6/28/2025 a followup on an article they had run on 6/10/2025, People Are Becoming Obsessed with ChatGPT and Spiraling into Severe Delusions. It is a publication of the World Future Society which has been focused for decades on making us into a better society able to handle our technological progress. Like, um, all those other civilisations there are in the universe  They believe in measuring planets by the Kardashev Scale, made popular(?) by Carl Sagan.  So yes, they are cranks, but intelligent ones, and mostly harmless. It is a fun rabbit hole. We have not even made it to being a Type I civilisation yet, measuring out at a Type 0.72 planet.

Other publications that jumped on this quickly include Mad in America, an alt-psychology publication that is very much on the anti-medication side of things and written by people who disagree with the diagnoses and/or treatments they have received in the past; Public Health Policy Journal, a general anti-vaxx site; Entangled States, a physicist who is now Episcopal Bishop of Rhode Island; Drudge has it; and then of course there is NIK from Part I. 

Such sources are the yeast of society. They are only occasionally food in themselves, but we need them to make the actual food work right. They believe many things that are highly speculative on inflated evidence, but sometimes they are right. At least they are right enough that we should be following those lines of thought. 

The supermarket tabloids are still out there, the National Enquirer, the National Examiner, the Star, the Sun, the Globe. These sources aren't those. But it pays to remember that these sorts of news outlets have existed for a long time whenever we get worried about how much worse this is today "with all that chatbot and AI and Lord knows what else those young people are doing today." 

Another parallel before I look at this particular claim of ChatGPT causing psychosis. We said this about social media, though more about depression and anxiety than psychosis. Before that we worried about video games stealing the lives of children and otherwise healthy adults. Easily accessible porn, Dungeons and Dragons, TV, Hollywood, and comic books have been blamed for much.  Romances have been ruining women for so long that we should probably just write all women off as unreliable at this point, right? All of these destructors have done evil on us, both as individuals and a society. None of them are as innocent as we pretend and they have sucked some life out of us. Yet none of them were as bad as feared, either. 

Something like the five paragraphs above goes through my head whenever some new thing comes along that threatens to o'erthrow us. Human beings have persevered through many terrible things that have done damage to our personalities but have not caused us to become untethered from reality. Is this worse than being invaded, watching your family killed before you? Is this worse than an unexplained disease that kills 90% of the village? I had patients who had been kidnapped for a year as a child, grown up with psychotic parents, or suddenly gone blind or paralyzed and they were indeed mentally damaged by these.  Yet not this. Not psychotic. Drugs or head injury might do it, directly attacking the brain, or some virus or combination of genes and prenatal effects, but not experiences.

Reading the above article it follows a familiar pattern. There is a frightening anecdote that would seem to have no other explanation but the theory that the reporter is putting forward. He was fine until this came along. He held a responsible job, she was a loving mother and talented artist, his twin didn't turn out like this at all. We are told that therapists and mental health professionals all over the country are suddenly seeing lots of cases like this - but no research numbers are included. Just lots and lots, though.  People are concerned and some politicians have gotten involved and are working on legislation for this. And here's another anecdote.  This could be you. 

The article does raise the question of whether this is mentally ill people seeking out AI Chat functions, and predictably, finds an expert to say "It's probably some of both." But that is only true in a small way. ChatGPT might turn out to be bad for us, and any extra strain on an unstable mind might be the thing that pushes it over. There are likely people on the margin who would not have descended into psychosis but for some unfortunately-timed or unfortunately-constructed incident.  There may also may be some of us who just escaped one of the few things that might have brought us down. Those with autism, or anxiety, or a fondness for weed might be more terribly susceptible than we anticipated.  But usually not. The circumstances surrounding a person's schizophrenia seem of key importance to the family. When that girl broke up with him it just destroyed him and he was never the same. Not He was becoming psychotic, so she left him.  

Part III will be But What if Something Just as Bad Were True? Science fiction and fantasy will be mentioned.

Teach This In Highschool

 ...and no one will forget it.  It's a good start.

 

Counteraccusations

I do not have all the facts and I am no expert. But I am wondering what we expect the people at the National Weather Service to do.  The first complaints I saw were that Trump's cuts had impaired their ability to respond. Then it quickly came out that no, they had extra people, and working extra hours. Their warnings were questioned.  No, they had major warnings twelve hours before and three hours before. Now the complaint is that they cry wolf so many times that people ignore them. So we want them to know a few days before that this is going to be the one where the river rises with unbelievable speed, and don't tell us about the others.

People in Florida ignore evacuation orders, or defy them, and even tell others "Oh, they always say that. I'm sick of evacuations. Did you know that sometimes people put themselves in more danger..." Up here, people make trips during blizzard warnings.  I've done it myself. Heck, I'm resourceful (not really). I can size things up in the moment pretty well. (Maybe average.) Tornadoes. High seas. So some people are always going to resist acting.  Others are going to panic and evacuate too easily.  Some are going to get sick of the warnings, some are going to insist they were never properly warned. Different people respond to different warning signals.  What is the warning schedule when the range of results is wide and people hear the same message differently?

What on earth do we expect them to do? 

ChatGPT Psychosis - Part I

 A friend sent the following tweet from NIK on X, wondering what my take was on the whole topic. I started small. 

NIK

@ns123abc

CHATGPT IS A SYCOPHANT CAUSING USERS TO SPIRAL INTO PSYCHOSIS  

"ChatGPT psychosis" 

> users are spiralling into sever mental health crises 

> paranoia delusions and psychosis 

> ChatGPT has led to loss of jobs and become homeless 

>and caused the breakup of marriages and families

> "And every time I'm looking at what's going on the screen, it just sounds like a bunch of affirming, sycophantic bullsh*t."

NIK's X account is mostly about what can go wrong with AI - how the CEO's are power-hungry jerks who haven't thought things through, how their decisions are going awry, how the whole enterprise is more dangerous than we suspect. As you can imagine, there's plenty of material out there for him to draw from. So I went looking for where NIK gets his news, and that led me to fields I used to wander in years ago but had mostly forgotten. 

The short version is that AI may turn out to have terrible effects on us, individually, as societies, and even as a species. It may be the downfall of us all. But it's not going to have this particular effect. 

Crow

 

Keffiyeh Fashion

 Why the Keffiyah is a Timeless Accessory from Al-Aniq.  Okay, everyone's gotta make a living, right?  I shouldn't be so critical.

The keffiyeh/shemagh is a must-have for your wardrobe, as it can be effortlessly styled with everything. It will always stay in fashion and is easy to maintain. It will elevate your outfit and make you stand out in style.

BC/AD; BCE/CE

I got into an argument that Jews and Jewish scholars, however much they may have resented the preference in Western society for BC/AD, it was now more an issue mostly for secular academics who did not want as strong a religious foundation for our dating system. The issue is now that it is religious, not that its use is perceived as antisemitic. I based this on both online and live discussions, with both everyday and academic Jews, who tended to shrug off BC/AD. They do not regard it as antisemitic.  They likely would if someone were to make a big deal about it, such as if Donald Trump were to declare that all government documents, no matter the context, were required to be in the old form. That would arouse suspicions.  I am guessing about that, but I think it likely.

My disputant stated that BC/AD was considered antisemitic among Jewish academics.  The argument went to related places but we did not go much longer on that in specific. I felt he was not understanding a distinction I was making, but no matter.  That bears on this discussion only slightly.  He is an academic and knows more Jewish academics than I do, and it would come up in his specialty.  I know psychology researchers, med school researchers, and online I have heard academics in genetics, history, literature and other liberal arts. His numbers would be greater.  

Yet it occurs to me that even outside of the cross-understanding, I may have been wrong in my original premise.  What do you know from your own experience.  Granted that it may have been Jewish scholars who originally pushed for the change and both secular and practicing Christians who led the acceptance, what is the situation in 2025?  Is there any energy in popular intellectual or academic discussion on the topic now? 

 

I kept thinking of the ban on Brown Bag Lunches because they were supposedly offensive to black people because of the exclusive clubs where you had to be lighter than a brown bag to get in decades ago.  No black people actually made that association, it was white people showing off. I may be imposing that fraud on this unfairly. 

Armenian Script

Before I research it myself, I wanted to put this out there in case any of you already knew the answers. We were at the cemetery today and because we entered by a different gate, took different routes to get to our 6 sites (13 relatives) to plant flowers. This brought us by headstones we had never seen before.  A large mill-city cemetery is interesting as it exposes you to previous names and burial customs from groups you know little about. 

We saw this and neither of us recognised the script.  At first glance I suspect it is not how it would have been written on paper, but based on letters made more angular for ease of carving. It is not Greek but I wonder if it is related. Latin seems farther away. I know that Cyrillic is related to Greek letters, but this looks farther away.  I know there is a Coptic alphabet, but I can't recall ever seeing it, and this Armenian alphabet does not look Arabic to me. I guess that fits the geography and the trading routes pretty well. 

Take your guesses, and if you actually know something, so much the better.

Best rabbit hole so far: The Zok language. The Caucasus has an unusual concentration of languages, largely because it is mountainous and here are so many adjoining valleys that have little contact across the ridges.  They go downstream to larger communities to trade, and have contact there, but are just as likely to trade with someone from the city, or any of the other valleys that flow into it. Though descended from related languages, they are isolated from each other and do not influence each other much, becoming unintelligible to each other over time. 

The above may be in the Armeno-Turkish script, daughter to Armenian.  The last three letters could be "-yan" and -ian is a common ending for Armenian surnames, so that fits. The letters before that might be the -dz- sound, which would fit with the cymbal makers Zil-djian, who were Armenian. Work in progress.

Update:  Nothing much to add. The first letter might be a T, but there is also a related script where it's an R.  I learned a lot about Armenian scripts and headstones, but nothing further about the two together.  Before WWII, most Armenians coming to America came to the northeastern cities, especially NYC, Philadelphia, and around Boston. In Massachusetts they spread to other mill towns.  After WWII Los Angeles became the destination of choice. 

Update: The letter that occurs 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th is the same vowel. It does not seem to be a dipthong. 

When I go back I will have to find it again and look at the other side rather than just stopping by the road.  There may be other Armenian stones nearby that give a clue.  I have seen occasional Armenian names growing up here, but never the old script.

Graph Paper Diaries

Bsking's blog has been inactive for three years, in which time I have taken it off my sidebar. She has a new post up comparing wait times and health outcomes under the medical systems of English-speaking countries.  Some NHS thoughts on the 4th of July. She has a great deal more information on the subject and I hope she will continue along these lines. If so, back on the sidebar she goes.

I am also hoping she will weigh in on the Karen Read case - she sent me the link I just posted, and one of her commenters has already asked for a COVID stats retrospective now that the dust has settled. We'll see if she nibbles at either one.

Varied Links Again

 Would you be nervous if your son were dating a girl who reads so much of this?

Karen Read Did It.  "What I want to do in this last post is explain, comprehensively and for posterity, why Karen Read is one of those lucky 10 guilty people who gets to go free." It is long and very thorough.  The interesting question is why so many originally uninvolved middle-aged women supported her vehemently, frequently mentioning how pretty she is.

The Hit Job  The NYT covers Skrmetti and gender transitioning clinics for children.

Orwell on Gandhi  I must have seen parts of this, as a few sentences seemed familiar.  But I am quite certain I had not seen the whole thing.

 

"Prioritising Moral Posturing"

From Aporia, by Bert Parlee and Keith Thompson  Communal Narcissism. 

A great deal of this resonated for me from what I saw working in Human Services since 1976. There is a brash, obvious narcissism which grates on nearly everyone, but there is an equal and opposite narcissism that is certain it is not narcissistic at all, because its self aggrandisement is more subtle.  In some individuals it is not at all apparent because it is suave, it does not need to raise its voice, its rudeness is condescension and disdain. 

Of course, the pathological aspects of the new condition announce themselves in markedly different words and gestures. It had previously been assumed that these characteristics were healthy—unlike the well-known characteristics of overt narcissism so readily apparent in people like Trump. Remarkably, the experts nearly missed telltale signs of what they would go on to characterize as communal narcissism (“communal” indicating that individuals seek validation and admiration through their perceived contributions to social groups or communities, rather than through personal achievements). To our surprise, and that of the researchers themselves, communal narcissism turns out to be the equal and opposite variant of the self-centered overt type in which individuals boast about being “the best”. 

Many of the cultural figures, including politicians, who are regarded as humble, tolerant, and welcoming grate on me worse than Trump. Donald is the kid you wanted to smack in hall in high school, boisterously challenging and insulting others.  These others are the ones who cut you effectively in front of your prom date while smiling, because they were hoping to get into her pants. 

Life Isn't Fair

 From tonight's pub night.

 

Empathy Continued

The comments under the previous entries have been good, but I want to bring the topic out into the light, beyond just a few of us advocating our positions, so I when a new piece occurred to me, I elected to make it a new post.

 Most cultures have beast fables, such as Anansi in West Africa and the Caribbean, Chanticleer in medieval France, Panchantantra  in Sanskrit, Aesop in Greece. But the design of these stories is not to tell us what animals feel like, but to use animal characteristics to teach us something about humans. Even in the time of Lewis Carrol the White Rabbit and the Cheshire Cat are disguised humans.  

Yet in the present day the animals in stories are in movies, and we are increasingly imposing human characteristics back onto them, so that we believe we understand what their lives are like, and are encouraged to sympathise with them via empathy. Fish don't really have family lives and go on adventures, but they have been expanded from one-dimensional lesson examples to beloved friends. Many animals are still just animals in Snow White.  All animals in modern Disney films are fully conversational and emotive, even literate. 

We think we know what their lives are like, but it is all projection. I suggest that this relates to Grim's worry about empathy leading us astray in dealing with humans.  We think we know because we have feelings about the lives of others, based on identification rather than sympathy. 

I should mention, not for the first time, that much of this underlies environmentalism, as opposed to conservation. 

The (Not Very) Good Old Days of Education

From 2012 - I had had strong opinions about education before this, but doing the remembering, research, and more than anything thinking bout the topic then crystalised my approach.  I have added much to this over the years, like ornaments on a Christmas tree, but this remains the foundation.

Part I - (Regarding the CCC in the 1930s. Italics mine.) Approximately 55% of enrollees were from rural communities, a majority of which were non-farm; 45% came from urban. Level of education for the enrollee averaged 3% illiterate, 38% less than eight years of school, 48% did not complete high school, 11% were high school graduates. At the time of entry, 70% of enrollees were malnourished and poorly clothed. Few had work experience beyond occasional odd jobs. 9 comments

Part II - No, we had hours of penmanship drills – not very useful even then.  We copied things a lot, and not always as punishment. A “beautiful hand” was much admired, and usually harder to read than the ugly writing, as anyone who has tried to read archival records can attest.  And we learned recitations – often the same one for everyone, and had to get up in front of the class and say it, one after another.  That’s useful.  And maps to color after labeling, and children in ethnic costumes to color, and lots of natural science to color.  Shop Class and Home Ec.  We scrubbed our desks.  We lined up and waited a lot, and sometimes marched to music.  We diagrammed sentences – kinda fun, sometimes, but not as helpful in composition as one might think.  We learned grammar, much of which turned out to be wrong, and most of which was not focused on improving our writing, but in shaming us out of using slang.  Spelling drills. Somewhat useful – not huge. 4 comments

Part III - My younger brother had a special program in elementary school - they put his desk in the hall.  In the tracked classes he was put in the bottom track of 17.  He wasn't badly ADD, but it was compounded by being only three weeks short of the age cutoff for his class, and his poor fine-motor skills.  He went on to teach college, after a long and winding road. 4 comments 

Cursed Film

Story at The Hard Times: Everyone who worked on the film "Nosferatu" has died.

 

Varied Links

 Spider Robots for Surgical Interventions.

Empire State of Mind. 

America's Incarceration Rate is About To Fall of a Cliff.  Very interesting numbers, but I wonder about dynamic effects.

"Dog" is a weird word.  It appears out of nowhere about 1200. I am going to go lose some time on this website.

Cremieux knows how to revive America's dying malls. 

CS Lewis on Prayer

 

Subtle Slanting

The Free Press writers split fairly evenly 3 ways in the last election, Harris - Trump - 3rdparty/none, according to Bari Weiss. That's encouraging, as it reduces (though does not eliminate) the chance of reading someone on your side or another who is not completely starkers. It always has a few articles about everyone simmering down and trying to be gracious. I am not a subscriber, and you will only see the first few paragraphs, as usual. You Don't Need the Same Politics to Surf Together. The author is trying to be fair, low-key, even affectionate about his brother-in law. Yet look at the choices made and not made in the descriptions. His brother-in-law is described as vaccine skeptical, but he does not describe himself as vaccine obedient.  Perhaps that would be too strong, but it is there. Not even "vaccine advocating." It just sits there that he believes the default, his brother-in-law is the one who is a bit unusual.  He describes the other as Joe Rogan-listening, but does not put forth any similarly controversial or stereotypical figure who he listens to that might allow others to slot him negatively.  He mentions that his brother-in-law is an electrician, fine. He "mentions" that he wrote for the Obama White House (at 24!) and went to Yale.  Not college, mind you, not a political speechwriter, but at the White House.

So are we all, I suppose, and I likely notice it more coming from one direction than another. Yet I think such things are more persuasive in the long run because they slide behind our intellectual awareness to our social sense of who are the best people, the right people, the ones we want to be part of. When I was a child, "batteries not included" was a joke illustrating that we were smart enough to have seen through the advertiser's pitch on TV.  Direct propaganda we defend against more easily. When it is under the radar we are tricked into thinking that we have figured all this out ourselves, that no one has put one over on us.  We are independent thinkers, after all. 

Cosmic Justice

The issue is not whether you think Harvard (or Columbia, Cornell, etc) or Trump is a greater force for good in the grand scheme of things, the issue is whether Harvard broke the law, and if so, how badly and how consciously; and whether Trump is breaking the law in what he is doing to them. The verb tenses are important because one is a determination about a series of set facts that have occurred.  Trump is mercurial and might modify his actions against Harvard a few times before he is done.

I don't write this to call other people stupid.  I have been guilty of focusing on the cosmic justice rather than the actual legal issue a few times in my life.  It's hard to give up the grand cause. 

America Party

Well, if Democrats were worried how they were going to get back in power, Musk forming a new party likely has them relieved. They wouldn't even have to pivot to the center or learn how to talk to young men.

Climate Emotions

Via Instapundit and Just the News*, a study in The Lancet about how worried young people are about climate. This came up in relation to a discussion of Greta Thunberg and her mental health issues. She had a sense of foreboding before she became involved in climate affairs.  She and her parents discovered that her symptoms were reduced when she was allowed to dramatically tell others what to do about climate. As she adopts other limelight causes this becomes more apparent.  If it were not climate, it would be something else.

Climate emotions, thoughts, and plans among US adolescents and young adults: a cross-sectional descriptive survey and analysis by political party identification and self-reported exposure to severe weather events 

I suggest that The Lancet has the arrow of causality reversed.  As with paranoia and depression, anxiety usually precedes its eventual focus.  Feelings of anxiety in response to events is more properly thought of as nervousness. You can see that the once-respected British medical publication has begged the question right at the outset in the abstract.

 Climate change has adverse effects on youth mental health and wellbeing, but limited large-scale data exist globally or in the USA. Understanding the patterns and consequences of climate-related distress among US youth can inform necessary responses at the individual, community, and policy level.

The possibility that they were going to be nervous anyway apparently did not occur to the authors.  It might be an interesting question to ask why young people settled on climate as the thing to be unsettled about. That question would lead us to examining what young people had "emotions" about before. Whether adolescents are more anxious now than they were in 1825 we do not know.  We develop a sense of that from correspondence, diaries, and the arts, but we do not know. My belief is that young people are about equally anxious in all eras.  They quite naturally become more nervous in the face of war, famine, disease, or being orphaned. We are evolutionarily wired for a certain level of anxiety, likely modified by the environment activating programs we already have on disk.

 *As predicted by one of my rules of naming, a site called "Just the News" is going to in fact be highly slanted. I am wary of the word "truth" in a title, or many uses of the word "just" as in We were just trying to educate the public about their right to photograph the police. We were just hanging out near the girls' locker room. The site is indeed slanted rightward. 

Julian Bream - Renaissance Lute

 

Schizophrenia and Gut Biomes

If you had run across this theory and wondered if there were something to it, Scott Alexander explains why he thinks it doesn't hold up. Contra Skolnick on Schizophrenia Microbes.  The usual style at ACX.  Point 1, Point 1A, possible objection considered and answered, Point 2 brief point with promise of later discussion, Point 3 referring to previous post...

Sterphen Skolnick answers in the comments.  Not very effectively, to my eyes, but I admit I was already unsympathetic at that point. 

Track Records

 Karsten Warholm WR 300mH

Nico Young US 5K  

Watch this kid with the memorable name. 17 y/o Gout Gout with the Australian 200m record.  Goes under 20 wind-aided with a tentative start.

Jakob Ingebrigtsen World indoor mile. 

 

Empathy Again

The overall sentiment is true, and important.  "Sparing the wolf is shallow, not deep empathy." But as we have covered here, and Grim covered in some detail, empathy is not the word Musk is looking for. The simple word "kindness" would have been better, and in line with the advice to use a simple word rather than a complicated one. That someone as smart as Musk uses "empathy" in that manner tells me that it is already well on its way to being a mere mild synonym for kindness, fellow-feeling, goodness.  It's a shame when a useful word with distinct meaning gets watered down to a vague approval.  We have plenty of those already.

Other words will rise to take the place of the weak ones. 

Missing Heritability

Once again, I find that I know very little.  Much More Than You Wanted to Know over at ACX. I hope my 20 years of misleading you has been much less than half. It is as long an article as you would predict ACX would devote to it. But as it flips everything up in the air and we are still waiting for the fried goods to come down, it would sort of have to be.  

There is a whole new group of Anti-Hereditarians over the last decade or so, who have applied very strict standards to what we can predict from genes, causing our previous estimates to look much more fragile. 

It seems like we have to accept one of three possibilities:

Either something is wrong with twin studies.

Or something is wrong with Sib-Regression and RDR (and then we can explain away GWAS and GREML by saying they’re missing rare variants).

Or something is wrong with how we’re thinking about this topic and comparing things. 

The hereditarians are fighting back with some compelling evidence that there are some things we do know by gross measurement, even if we are unable to make that more granular. Dr. Alexander gives a good personal example.

 During residency, I spent a few months working in a child psychiatric hospital for the worst of the worst - kids who committed murder or rape or something before age 18. Many of these children had similar stories: they were taken from their parents just after birth because the parents were criminals/drug addicts/in jail/abusing them. Then they were adopted out to some extremely nice Christian family whose church told them that God wanted them to help poor little children in need. Then they promptly proceeded to commit crime / get addicted to drugs / go to jail / abuse people, all while those families’ biological children were goody-goodies who never got so much as a school detention. When I met with the families, they would always be surprised that things had gone so badly, insisting that they’d raised them exactly like their own son/daughter and taught them good Christian morals. I had to resist the urge to shove a pile of twin studies in their face. This has left me convinced that behavioral traits are highly heritable to a level that it would be hard for any study to contradict.

 (I am a big Cremieux fan, BTW.) 

The Anti-Hereditarians strike back!

 Sib-Regression is a clever way of avoiding most biases. Its independent variable - the degree to which some sibling pairs end up with slightly more shared genes than others - is even more random and exogenous than the difference between fraternal and identical twins. It can sometimes have biases related to assortative mating (which would falsely push heritability down), but otherwise it’s pretty good. RDR has many of the same advantages, and allows more diverse relationships and so larger sample sizes. It’s hard to think of ways these methods could be wildly off.

And the "maybe we are just looking at this all wrong" group has some power in it as well.  Some traits like intelligence (IQ) and educational attainment (EA), where we (think we) can easily see how they must be related, but also can easily see they would have some wild variance may be related just about as much as we have been measuring, but for completely different reasons, so that our further testing is leading us down false paths.

Each of those possibilities would mean we have a lot of humble thinking to do.  So I will start by learning more humility, as that is one thing that is going to clearly be needed.  

The Smell of It

For a moment as she started, I could smell the interior of the guitar.  Unfinished wood. I don't know if it was the appearance, or expectations, or maybe even something about the musician.  I am not usually noted for intensity of sensory experience.  But as I get older I find uncomfortable sensory input such as brightness, echo, and skin irritation* are more noticeable, so perhaps this is related.

 *Autistic children are sometimes upset by the feel of their clothing labels, especially shirts.  I could not recall that ever happening to me as a child.  But recently it has started happening.  I notice the feel of the label on my neck and don't like it. Interesting.

Let's add this one in, because I found it along the way and liked it. 

 

Birthright Citizenship

From Amy Coney Barret's majority opinion:

"JUSTICE JACKSON would do well to heed her own admonition: '[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law.' Ibid. That goes for judges too."

Damage Reports

When it comes to intelligence reports showing up in the media, there are always feints and double-feints. Sometimes the intended audience to be fooled is not the general public but another country's general public, or its intelligence service, or some intricate balancing act many audiences. It causes me to forget my role as the person pointing out the obvious. The chorus in the ancient Greek dramas was usually supposed to represent to what the audience wanted to say, or what the community would wish to ask. It's a useful part of the play.

There are reports that the American bombs destroyed nearly everything of importance at the Iranian nuclear sites. Then there are reports that much of the good stuff was taken away in the nick of time and it was merely a flesh wound. All reports are careful to say that they are being cautious because it's all way underground and it hasn't been analysed yet, then they are not the least bit cautious at all and make some pretty declarative statements. 

It occurs to me that if they weren't destroyed the Israelis would want every one to know that so they could bomb them some more.  Heck, they might want everyone to think they weren't destroyed even if they were, for the same purpose of public opinion about more bombing. Am I just being naive here?

Botswana

 Hot take from Magatte Wade Director of Atlas Network's Center for African Prosperity, at her substack, Africa's Bright Future.

The results speak volumes. 

From one of Africa's poorest countries to middle-income status in a generation. 

Consistent growth while socialist experiments collapsed around them.  

Alpha School

 ACX runs an essay contest every year, not revealing the authors until after the judging. This entry reviews "Alpha School," this year's magic educational fix. He seems both as skeptical as we would be, except he has tried it out on his own children.  He faults the program for not describing what they are doing quite accurately.  He worries that it will not scale up, as other methods have not. It is not only 2 hours a day.  It is not teacher-free.  It does not use AI. However...

…Yet the core claim survives: Since they started in October my children have been marching through and mastering material roughly three times faster than their age‑matched peers (and their own speed prior to the program). I am NOT convinced that an Alpha-like program would work for every child, but I expect, for roughly 30-70% of children it could radically change how fast they learn, and dramatically change their lives and potential.

That would be worth studying with more effort than a lot of things we are studying about education now. 

Horrible to Contemplate

 IDF soldiers ordered to fire upon unarmed Gazans. Much was made of Hamas killing Palestinians coming to humanitarian aid sites of the US-Israeli food outreach. Now it looks like some Israeli officers are ordering the same thing.  I would have more doubt about the story if it came from a Palestinian-favoring site, but this is Haaretz.  The IDF promises to investigate.  Chilling.

 Soldiers quoted in the report called the locations a "killing field," saying commanders authorised the use of heavy machine-guns, grenade launchers, mortars and tank fire rather than non-lethal crowd-control methods. One soldier said between one and five people were killed every day in the sector where he served, an operation informally dubbed "Salted Fish". 

2012 Links - Highly Varied

I must have been reading widely on the Internet that month. 

 Liz Warren's Authentic Cherokee Gefilte Fish.  At No Oil For Pacifists

Supportive Community 

Dave Barry's Best Ever The Story of Roger and Elaine. 

Fairytale - 2009 Eurovision Winner 

Express Lanes  

The Proverbs 31 Woman  Not as well-written as I would like, but the concept holds.

History of Cricket

 Sort of.

 

It was a relief to find this.  I had been bothered all afternoon wondering if Leg Before Wicket was a rule before Lexington and Concord or after.

Erica Rhodes

 Have I posted her before?  I watch female comedians in binges, men intermittently.  I have no explanation why the difference.

 

Trick Question - Update

The Oklahoma City Thunder just won the NBA title.  Would we consider this their first championship or their second? Their precursor Seattle Supersonics won in 1979.  They left Seattle in 2008. 

This is an opinion question, though there are purported official answers.  And it's a setup for me to get snippy. 

Update:  The answer, of course, is no, or even hell, no. This isOKC's first championship, Seattle is irrelevant.  Why, then, do we insist that the five championships of the Minneapolis Lakers count toward LA's total? 

New York Mayoralty

There is a lot of worrying about the corrupt Andrew Cuomo and the socialist empty suit Zohran Mamdani duking it out over the likely mayoralty in NYC. It's mostly the city's problem, though anything that affects the country's and the world's largest economic center does have trickle down effects. And the uniqueness of New York does bring ideas into a cleaner abstract focus for us to discuss. 

If Mamdani were some kind of Northern European socialist I might spring for that. But for everywhere else in the world, the socialist is going to become corrupt anyway, it is only a matter of time (or ability to disguise).  That would bring us to competence.  Cuomo has little, Momdani none known, advantage Cuomo. A practiced corrupt politician can really double down if they get encouraged, as in Joe Biden. Momdani might at least graduate to being a basically honest fool.

The outcome will not be good for NYC.  But what kind of Not Good, and what people learn from it might matter. I haven't a clue about that.

When A Progressive Utopia Burned

This article and the next suggested by Rob Henderson.

When A Progressive Utopia Burned by Johann Kurtz at the wonderfully-named substack Becoming Noble. 

Note that the incident described comes from 1991, not 2024. There was a town destroying fire in California, and a feminist anthropologist is honest but distressed about the reversion of all those progressives to traditional gender roles. Her comments in italics, Kurt's in plaintext. 

With the domicile gone, women on the other hand found themselves thrown into utter domesticity… A constant topic in my women’s group was how to deal with food needs, where to get meals, what to feed the family, how to maintain some semblance of a proper balanced diet.

Hoffman never quite manages to offer an explanation as to why this should be so, resorting to vague abstractions like tasks ‘fell to women’. She seems unwilling to contemplate that these women - most of whom were intelligent, experienced, and successful - sensed that they were better suited to take on these duties; that they might want to take on these roles, finding satisfaction, consolation, and purpose in them.

Men’s rapid psychological recovery from the fire (most returned to work within a week) is presented within a critical frame, as if they were uncaring. There is an implication that their lack of sympathy might underpin the heightened and lasting emotional distress of the women:

…the women, uprooted from or severely diminished in their venues, outwardly suffered more depression and longer recovery periods. The Alameda Health Department tallied a far greater use of health services and recommendations for therapy and therapy groups for women than men…

 

All-Class Therapies

Mental-health lessons in schools sound like a great idea. The trouble is, they don’t work Lucy Foulkes

And from the Guardian, no less!

 I have now reached the conclusion that we should stop these all-class mental-health lessons. My view is that the only information we should teach en masse is where a young person should get help, both inside and outside school, if they’re struggling. That’s it. Then we should focus the time, energy and money on supporting the smaller group of young people who are actually unwell. (Her research at the internal link.)

You're A Grand Old Flag

1906.  I'm not sure about that "never a boast or brag" part

 

Out of Control

I just spent two hours answering a single post over at The Bluestocking. It will affect nothing. I did invite the comment readers over to discuss the issue, and said nice things about all of you.  That last bit will probably have more effect on the universe.

Abstracts, Research, Discussion

The Genetic Lottery Goes To School: Better Schools Compensate for the Effects of Students’ Genetic Differences. The data is getting better. Schools help the students at the bottom improve a bit in reading but not numeracy. 

Superhuman Performance of a Large Language Model on the Reasoning Tasks of a Physician. They said this day was coming soon, and it's here. LLM Diagnostics perform much better than actual physicians.

 Black-White IQ gap sure looks genetic. 

Bicycle Helmets.  Ummm. 

 

Ears to the Ground

 Tell me if you hear or read anyone who actively retracts a previous Trump/Russia position. 

First Salmon of the Season

 Pinay sa Alaska 

W H Auden

 

I increasingly find I cannot even tell the past, let alone the future. But I want to tell both and am trapped between them.

2012 Links

Global Warming Catastrophists. Is the National Wildlife Federation mainstream and respectable enough for you? Because this is from page 1 of their new report, "The Psychological Effects of Global Warming On The United States," and it is flipping insane.

Comparing Mountains Good comments about climbing

Geography Geek. Obama's poor grasp of geography and his general intelligence.  Lots of comments.

Daywalkers vs night shift

Village Closeness in the Balkans

Picnics

On a slide show presentation I saw today, I saw an old ad that showed people having a picnic.  It had a blanket spread on the ground and a picnic basket and bottles. I have never liked picnics, because one sits on an uncomfortable position on the ground made worse by trying to eat at the same time.  It is a little better on a beach, and we have gotten stuck at the occasional picnic, usually for church events.  I have never suggested we go on one.

Today it occurred to me that my picture of what a picnic is is at odds with the reality of picnics, including many picnics I have been to.  One could more comfortably sit up higher and put the food on some sort of platform.  Hence the phrase picnic table. That sounds like a lot more fun.  I told my wife about my decades of false impression and told her we should start looking for places to go and have a picnic.

One More Reason...

 ...to read Niall Ferguson, interviewed by Nathan Gardels of Noema: America is in a Late Republic Stage - Like Rome.  I admit that I am tired of the decades of discussion that America is Rome (which fell, doncha know, so smarten up) but he makes some excellent points here.

 Let’s just break it down briefly. Many people wrongly thought that it would be beneficial to Vladimir Putin if Donald Trump were re-elected. I don’t think this war is going to be ended on Putin’s terms, if it’s going to be ended. Secondly, maximum pressure is now back on Iran. That’s important. Thirdly, tariffs have been increased on China, so the pressure is on China. Little Rocket Man in North Korea is still waiting to get whatever is coming to him, but I don’t think it’s going to be a love letter from the Trump administration.

 I got this from a link from The Free Press.

Virgil Wander

Book club discussed Virgil Wander tonight. I found the discussing of it more enjoyable than the reading of it.  The plot starts slowly, and I could tell that something was important - such as the recurrence of the uncertain boundaries of land, water, and sky/fog intersecting with questions of people who were almost dead or thought to be dead coming back or recovering their lives - but I could not discern what any of it was about at first.  But even I, who hates it when authors toy with me that way with a striptease of a novel, appreciated the layering of it in the end.

If you give it a go, I think I can give you just a few things to think about while you read without giving any spoilers.

I wondered where on the spectrum from mere evocation to allegorical retelling were the names.  Was Virgil supposed to represent Wandering Aeneas in the first half of the Aeneid, have elements of him, or merely evoke something about the continual journeying of man?  Or was this Virgil the guide of Dante in the Inferno, and how strictly? I came up with an answer I liked by the end, but no one was excited by it. Still, there was general agreement that the names were important, especially of the male characters. 

What's with all the fish?

Is Adam Leer an evil character, one who is unlucky and easily blamed, or tragically trapped in having evil occur around him?

One of the discussants thought the book had a lot of understated humor, which I did not pick up but can see now that he mentioned it. 

Now That I've Held Him in My Arms

 

Subsistence Curriculum for This Week in Alaska

 

Looks like quite a week.  I hope Aurora can stop looking at her phone and talking with boys to learn this.

ChatGPT Effect on Student Cognition

I am usually suspicious of such claims.  Dime novels were supposed to ruin youths, as were radio, artificial light, television, rock music, computers, D&D, the internet...anything new was blamed for whatever was wrong with Kids These Days. But all of those things did change society, and change might be good or bad.  So with the natural Bayesian structure of our thinking (though we vary widely in how well we do that), this weights the balance pan slightly in the direction of Concern.

This preprint from MIT uncovers some possible problems for students using ChatGPT Your Brain On ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt When Using an AI assistant for Essay Writing Task 

Across the four-month trial, the ChatGPT group showed the weakest neural connectivity, roughly a 32 % lower cognitive load than peers who wrote unaided, and struggled to recall or summarise their own work. Their essays scored well on grammar and structure but were markedly uniform and short on original insight, according to human graders and automated analysis. When the same writers were later asked to compose without AI, performance lagged behind that of participants who had never used the chatbot.