All The Young Dudes

I had not known it was written by David Bowie

 

Friday Links

 Four Hands Good, Two Feet Better We did not have four feet and stood up, allowing two feet to become hands.  We were in the trees with four hands and came down. 

The Opposite of Chesterton's Fence Some fun comments

Graphs About Religion Fascinating site.  Here are two:

    Mainline female clergy are 71% Democrat, 5% Republican Female laity 47% and 44%

    Mainline clergy is much more liberal than laity   It's nice to have numbers to back that up

Lyman Stone debunks Elena Bridges, who thinks everything is about birth intervals 

1948 Olympic 100M

Contrast how varied the starts were then compared to the near uniformity of how everyone gets out now. I suspect it is coaching, film, and repetition. 

 

I loved reading the history of track and field for some reason growing up in the 60s.  I recognised the story of Dillard not qualifying for his specialty in the 110M hurdles, but likely hadn't thought of it in over 60 years.

Brisk Substack Quotes

Casual Calumny - Jesse Singal. I have certainly done this myself, especially commenting.

Unions I once enjoyed Hanania, now I find him puzzling and often disagree. I have a mixed reaction to this one, at best.  And this.   This doesn't affect me. It's none of my business.

You Will Always Have Conflicting Pressures Justin Ross.  These twin pressures on women are an excellent example in our era.

You have to know that for Fair Play Cards, there is one card for getting home goods & supplies, which is equal to the one card for home maintenance. Drunk Wisconsin has a question about this.

Cremieux on the misclassification of Hispanics in crime statistics

Thursday Links

Our cognitive genetic changes were not caused by the Industrial Revolution, they preceded and caused it, starting at least as far back as 1350 (Black Death was 1346-53, remember)  The Genetic Evolution of the Human Race and Its Consequences for the Industrial Revolution Before steam engines transformed the world, the human population that built them was already changing genetically.   

Adam Mastroianni at Experimental History on The Decline of Deviance. Where did the weirdness go since the 70s? (podcast available)

Britain's Wealth Was Not Built on Slavery 

Not All Non-Monagamy is the Same  Great comments.  The substacker Drunk Wisconsin merely wrote "clarity." 

Norway's Wealth Tax Unchains A Capital Exodus  It reduced yearly tax revenues by $448M instead of raising them by $146M as projected.  (I think the photo is Bergen harbor)

Howlin' Wolf

Didn't like this genre when I was younger

 

You Cannot Destroy The Elite

You Cannot Destroy The Elite Noah Carl at Aporia.  Carl gives examples from truly draconian attempts to eliminate the elites in The Societ Union and Mao's China, and even teases out information from records of which Japanese-Americans were interned in WWII to show that their children and grandchildren were more prosperous and educated than their peers anyway. 

I wonder if anyone has done a study on the wealth and success of the grandchildren of lottery winners? 

Attractive Nuisance - Scrolling

As I move to links of various kinds I see this results from my scrolling of various sites.  Scrolling is one of the things considered a time-waster and fairly mindless these days, and here I am, encouraging you to do more of it. 

I should be sorry, but I'm not. 

At least it is still a legitimate human being doing this to you, not an algorithm.  

Directions

I always enjoy running across these.  I read or heard years ago that crossing a river, as here, is the most common place for these.   Route Something/SomethingA runs on either side of the river, and where they cross this necessarily happens. However, I don't know how you would measures that easily.  I suppose AI could find out just that sort of thing for you now. I always associate this North-South contradiction with different route numbers in town centers. 

 For locals, this is Queen City Bridge

Different Post-Liberalism

 On Becoming Less Left-Wing by Dan Williams at Conspicuous Cognition. He focuses on the economic understanding and the myths liberals believe. My own journey from the left, now decades ago, focused more on the data around social issues. Liberals believed myths, not only about the issues, but about themselves and their opponents. I came out from among them and worked almost entirely with them throughout my career. Many lovely people, fun to talk to and earnest about wanting to do good. But I had grown entirely suspicious of my own motives from reading CS Lewis, who stresses that self-deception is one of the main drivers of sin and unbelief, and easily heard and saw the same things in these others.  I had not seen it especially before. We saw ourselves as The Nice People, buoyed by the knowledge that our opponents were the stupid, evil people. Much of this was social, that they just didn't Get It - about music and arts, about the horrors of conformity, loving guns and the military because they were afraid - all the usual. 

Because of my life choices good and bad I found myself regarded as an outsider among my own people and I saw them for who they were. I also learned that the stupid, evil people were far less stupid and evil than I had imagined. I learned that the liberals in human services were in fact quite controlling of their charges. But mostly, I learned that a lot of these obviously great ideas didn't um, you know, work.

But back to Dan Williams, who saw something similar but not identical in left-wing economics. He summarises well and dismisses the pieties efficiently. Be suspicious who give their own good motives as the reason their beliefs must be true.  

His seven basics are worth listing.  He expands on each of these.

First, standard left-wing critiques of mainstream economics are biased and low-quality. 

Second, incentives really matter. 

Third, poverty is the default state of humanity. 

Fourth, you cannot solve poverty or create wealth by redistribution alone.

Fifth, although free markets are subject to well-known market failures, governments are run by people, not angels, who are subject to the same kinds of incentives and constraints as those in the private sector.

Sixth, there are no solutions, only trade-offs, and unintended consequences are inevitable in political decision-making. 

Seven, even win-win cooperation is inherently challenging.  

So though he describes himself as still liberal in many ways, you can see he is the sort you could ave a conversation that was not infuriating at every turn.

Wild Kingdom

They didn't actually need that stirring background music to make it more exciting.

 

Tuesday Links

They Have Learned Nothing 

The Gods Were the Good Guys All Along "Norse mythology is not an open-source fantasy system designed for entertainment studios to generate franchise material. It’s a collection of ancient stories that reflect an ancient belief system. While the stories themselves can be entertaining, the belief system did not exist solely for entertainment purposes. It existed for the same reason all religions do: to provide a framework for understanding and interacting with the world."

The War on Sex Differences Part II 

Eadric Streona The villain meets a fitting end. The question is why did Edmund keep trusting this guy?  Fool me twice, etc.  The word gemot near the end is related to Moot, if that gives it away for you. 

 Gerrymandering?  On the one hand, Utah is about 2:1 Republican overall, so however one draws the districts is likely to result in GOP majorities.  OTOH, They have four House seats and you could draw a majority Democratic district around SLC, which is not an unreasonable way to envision the state. 

Why the Developing World Needs Wider Streets  Cities are the engines of growth and gridlock screws them up

 

 

 

2013 Links

My unit was Never Crazier than that week

Hidden Data, or perhaps Invisible Data.  Opportunity Cost would be an example

The Bicycle Rider We have since learned that his only child, my grandmother, had a child that even my father never heard about his entire life. Not the most respectable side of the family, but I trust I got at least a few good genes from him.  

CS Lewis on Pride , the worst of traits

Everything is still High School, based on a Steve Sailer essay 

Substack Genius

Isabel Cowles Murphy @ The Noble Try 

The genius of substack is how much time it encourages me to spend online reading about getting offline. 

Socially Liberal Europe?

Europeans Aren't Nearly as Socially Liberal as the American Left Thinks The actual numbers on what European and other international laws and opinions are on abortion, transgender rights, vaccine hesitancy, and immigration. 

 I am not writing this in an attempt to establish which viewpoints are “correct” or “moral,” but merely as part of my broader ongoing unpaid mission from G-d to educate American progressives, a cohort of people who often fancy themselves uniquely knowledgeable but who in reality are frequently operating from a place of total ignorance. They are often the fools who don’t know what they don’t know and that makes them potentially dangerous. I want them, and everyone else, to be aware of reality so that we can have real discussions about the real world as it actually exists.

Every kid in Europe has a pony, don't they? 

How Many Are There?

One of the new worries that is going to destroy life for all of us is "mankeeping," a form of emotional labor that a Vice writer thinks is at the forefront of women not wanting to have relationships.  Instapundit linked to David Thompson's discussion, which includes a link to the original article. Thompson has a touch of Wodhusian style to his writing. The in-style, or perhaps the suckered-in crowd, has the topic on every lip, or so it seems.  Yet are they really leaving boyfriends and even husbands over this? Women like to read about such things, but that's hardly the same thing. Isn't this rather a buffet of minor resentments where every woman chooses two or three out of the twenty?

It reminded me immediately of the Groypers, or Christian Nationalists, or whatever they are.  People like to read about this.  They also approach this buffet style.  How many real ones are there?  

Are there more women leaving men over mankeeping, or more Groypers?  Show your work. 

Roll Jordan Roll

The bass is Isaac Freeman, who first sang with them in the 1940s. I can get down that low, but no one ever asks me to.

 

Monday Links

 Love Beats Hate in elections.  Even if you are the also most hated, it doesn't matter

Off With Her Hair Women tell attractive women to cut their hair. The study's authors are all female.  I wonder what it is like for women studying female intrasexual competition. Is it harder to get along, or easier? Bethany, you need to get in on researching the women who research women.

One of the papers cited in the Cognitive Dissonance link on Wednesday Nov 12 We've Been Told We Are Living in a Post Truth Age.  Don't Believe it. 

San Francisco Homelessness The slight decrease might be real, but probably isn't.  Getting rid of the tents made people more out-of sight, and thus harder to count. Also, so many people moving out of CA, especially the Bay Area reduced demand, driving down the rents. 

Related:  Did Prisons Replace Mental Hospitals? The graph is so stark and the possibility so intuitively possible that I fell for this long ago.  I did think it was likely only directionally true, because such things are complicated. But it may be even less than that.  It may obscure more than it reveals.

The Age of Toys is Over Comical.  But is it true?

Discovery Bible Study

We tried something new this week Discovery Bible Study It's a group technique.  A short passage is read aloud in full, by three successive people. The others can read along or just listen. We are encouraged to give a try to just listening, to attend more fully to the words and the flow rather than our own stray thoughts.  I gave that a try. Then three others retell the passage in succession without looking at notes. Everyone remembers different details. Then the group discusses the passage, trying to stay with what is said there, rather other connections we might make. When one person noticed that the text said that Jesus heard the voice, she asked if others present heard it. One of the leaders agreed that it did say that here, but in other gospels it included others. I thought that was as far afield as we should go and refrained from going further and mentioning Paul on the road in The Acts of the Apostles.  It is too easy for one such as I to go down such paths. 

The study suggests questions.

We did Mark 1:1-15.  I noticed that these verses highlight the strangeness of the scene for the listener, almost like the beginning of a movie. There is the reminder that this was prophesied centuries ago - that doesn't happen every day, does it?  John is described as a strange, almost storybook character: strange location, strange clothes, strange diet. This alarming figure announces that an even more alarming figure is about to arrive. Heaven is torn open - whatever that means - and something doveish comes into view. God speaks. The second, more alarming figure is baptised and goes out into the wilderness for forty days, with wild animals, angels, and Satan around.  In a very few verses we are told "All bets are off in this story.  Anything might happen. You are now encountering things you never have before, and it's going to get even more weird." 

It was a new way of seeing it for me.  I like this approach.  

12 (x14) Things Everyone Should Know

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Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche refers to itself as N-cubed, which is cute, but I will continue to use NNN.  It has a regular feature of "12 Things Everyone Should Know About..." which includes Violence, Dark Triad, Evolution and eleven others, and counting. The whole series is here. Without a subscription you only get the first one or two of each, but those are often interesting as standalones.  Plus graphs!

The most recent is Conspiracy. Few people endorse even all the conspiracies on their own "side."

But the single strongest personality predictor is narcissism. Narcissists are particularly prone to conspiracy theories because they have a strong need for uniqueness, are prone to paranoia, and can also be remarkably gullible.

He breaks them down into those liberals check the box for and those conservatives do, along a continuum. So I guess I likely have narcissism held in check, because I looked at some of those conspiracies and said "OK, not really true, but hey, based on a true story. There's evidence for some of that!" My sons are forbidden to comment about the narcissism.

QOTD

Social media made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it. Mike Tyson

How Does This Land Now?

 

Gratitude

 Quoted by Mike Woodruff at The Friday Update 

 Several hundred years ago, after 17th-century British Bible commentator Matthew Henry was mugged, he wrote the following in his journal: “Let me be thankful: first, because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse, they did not take my life; third, because although they took all I had, it was not much; and fourth, because it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed.”

Groypers

The is a lot of attention being paid to Rod Dreher's recent discussion of left-right extremism including antisemitism at The Critic," Welcome back to Weimar." This includes a statement that 30 to 40 percent of conservative political and think tank staffers under 30 are followers or fellow travelers of Fuentes. 

Grokipedia has an extended article about Groypers, the decentralised group under Fuentes's America First banner. Whether you read it now or come back to it at the end, I recommend it. 

Meanwhile, look, it's Rod Dreher, Jake. I used to like him, three or four Rod Drehers ago, but he has a long history of enthusiasms, plausibly sounding an alarm but then crashing and burning and embracing some extreme for a year or two. I would describe most of these claims as Based on a True Story, but there are a few here who I know would describe that as too generous.  You are free to weigh in in this space to remind the others of your reasons.  When last I heard of Dreher he was trying to convince us that Hungary was a deeply Catholic country, which faith undergirded its "traditionalism," for which they were unfairly maligned. Maybe based on a true story. But not true.

But, dissident alt right Groypers.  How worried should we be about their numbers and influence?  If you look at Dreher's claim in context it keeps weakening with every return glance.  Conservative staffers under 30.  How many is that? - and that is the group most dedicated to trying to take those jobs to shift things its way. What does "fellow travelers" mean?  We know that in the past lots of real antisemites kept trying to hide behind claiming "no, we're just anti-Zionist," or were "isolationists who thought that Israel received disproportionate attention but didn't claim that the number should be zero." Some of those really meant it even then, though when the chips were down most revealed that they just hated Jews. Yet this is a different generation, farther removed from the Holocaust and so counting it for less. For comparable distance, not many people cared about the Belgian Congo Genocide when I was young. Not quite the same for cultural importance in America, I'll admit.  But it gives an added perspective. At least some of the "fellow travelers" are concerned more about isolationism than anything, because I have heard them. If you look at the amount of military action even antiwar presidents like Clinton, Bush, and Obama have engaged in, you can see why that might be high on their list of expensive things to get rid of. Such people at least give a listen to other versions of isolationism.  Those fellow travelers?

Next, look how much of Dreher's evidence comes from alt-right antisemites in Europe - and even then it's in the form of "I talked to some guys who really know about this, trust me." I wrote about the real story behind "the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe" over a decade ago. Color me unconvinced. He is also worried that they might undermine Vance.

I'm convinced the Groypers are bad enough.  I'm not convinced they are numerous enough. Startup groups are often good at trying to create an impression of bigger numbers than they warrant. Thousands of listeners to a daily show, you say? These noise and disruption tactics might well give them outsize influence, and such things can build. But how many agree with them on an issue or two, not everything? Dreher retreats to the idea that some of the supporters just want to "burn it all down?"  Meaning what, exactly?  Real burning?  Restarting conservative definition from scratch? Getting rid of some Washington insiders pulling strings? 

They can do real damage, especially if they have wealthy backers behind the scenes who want to use them for their own purposes though they don't agree with the goals.  Think Russian and Chinese support for Western environmental groups, or Middle Eastern countries which hate the Palestinians but find them useful tactically.

So tell what you know and what you guess.  How many are there?