History

To me this is so much more interesting than the memorial plague to royals, nobles, rulers, the rich, powerful and famous. 

Alexander is one of us, someone we could have known. https://t.co/oGikwHXbdw

— Fake History Hunter (@fakehistoryhunt) November 22, 2021

 

The very picture of the leading lights of "prestige media"

A beautiful and moving essay by my friend Honor Jones, who is also the most talented editor I've ever worked with: https://t.co/0CISVghEkg

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 28, 2021

Look at that ratio - Some 900 comments, almost all vituperative condemnations of the essay and 200 loves.

I read the essay, How I Demolished My Life by Honor Jones.  The title of the essay can be read as either a statement of accomplishment or a statement of regret.  The essay mostly comes down on the side of accomplishment.

I had wanted, I thought, soapstone counters and a farmhouse sink. I had wanted an island and a breakfast nook and two narrow, vertical cabinets on either side of the stove; one could be for cutting boards and one could be for baking sheets. I followed a cabinetry company called Plain English on Instagram and screenshotted its pantries, which came in paint colors like Kipper and Boiled Egg. Plain English cost a fortune, but around a corner in the back of its New York showroom you could check out the budget version, called British Standard. But it cost a fortune too. I wished there was a budget British Standard. I wished there was a room behind that room, the cabinets getting flimsier and flimsier until a door opened and let me back into my own shitty American kitchen, just as it was.

My husband talked to the architect; my husband talked to the builder. And I kept paring the plans down, down, making them cheaper, making them simpler. I nixed the island and found a stainless-steel worktable at a restaurant-supply store online for $299. I started fantasizing about replacing the counters with two-by-fours on sawhorses and hanging the pots from nails on the wall. Slowly, I realized, I didn’t want this kitchen. Slowly, I realized, I didn’t want this life.

I didn’t want to renovate. I wanted to get divorced.

You never know what is left out when someone presents their life to the public so perhaps there is a more appealing or justifiable side to her story than we can see.  As presented, though, Jones comes across as an indulged, privileged, upper income, unreflective, self-blind, self-absorbed, narcissistic, obnoxious person, consumed by her own ever-shifting, unmoored wants and needs and oblivious and/or dismissive of her actions on others.  

Complaining about the burden of home ownership, Jones produces one of the most repugnant sentences possible.

But the upkeep: oh my God, the upkeep. I hired a woman named Luba to clean once a week. 

Unwilling to leave such privilege unadorned, Jones then denigrates Luba.

I loved talking with her. She was full of sensible advice, like how I should really stop washing the cleaning rags along with the children’s clothes, because the chemicals could irritate their skin. She was likewise full of conspiracy theories and evangelical religion. She was worried about microchips in COVID-19 vaccines. Humanity had a few more years, she thought, probably seven. Then: apocalypse.

Of the people in this little morality tale, all of the others seem reasonably good people, other than the author, and Luba seems one of the especially good ones.

I’d been pregnant or nursing for most of the past seven years and had finally lost all that baby weight, so my closet was full of drapey clothes that no longer fit. I gave them to Luba, and she mailed them to a church in Ukraine.  

Jones can't be bothered to do the little work needed to make sure giving away things will help.  She gives them to Luba who then does the work to find a place where they will make a difference.  

Then there is the poor husband.

I didn’t have a secret life. But I had a secret dream life—which might have been worse. I loved my husband; it’s not that I didn’t. But I felt that he was standing between me and the world, between me and myself. Everything I experienced—relationships, reality, my understanding of my own identity and desires—were filtered through him before I could access them. The worst part was that it wasn’t remotely his fault; this is probably exactly what I asked him to do when we were 21 and first in love, even if I never said it out loud. To shelter me from the elements; to be caring and broad-shouldered.  

 

The whole essay is packed with self-sabotage as Jones reveals one narcissistic, self-indulgent episode after another.  At first you have the feeling that she is deliberately casting herself in a bad light to then reveal a deus machina moment when she discovers just what she has done and wants others to learn from her mistakes.  But no.  She just keeps going, revealing a worse and worse self.  

Since The Atlantic offers no comment section to the essay, people seem to have used Weiss's tweeted endorsement instead.  

As a person of a certain age, I’ve seen this over the last several years. People - men and women both - nuking their families for seemingly no other reason than wanting something new. 

It’s hard to fathom.

This is a depressing description of a woman who uprooted the lives of her (now ex) husband, children, and herself because of same vague notion of boredom or being restless

Under no circumstances should this story be looked upon in a positive light, it reeks of selfish nihilism 

 

You think the rest of us don't have these thoughts here and there? It's called "temptation." You don't indulge in temptation. Now, it's one thing to stumble but keep trying, there but for the grace of God, but defending your failing? Kiss my ass. 

 

 

Trite story with a painfully grafted-on literary tone. "I was married too young, became bored/anhedonic, now I'm experiencing new things and my family is collateral damage" is about as mundane as it gets. No new insights here despite the fawning NYC media support circle 

 

 

There should be a 12 step program for this class of woman to realize that no one wants to hear about how spiritual her divorce is 

 

 

This doesn’t even hold water. She’s been writing pieces for NYT and the Atlantic for years. So how, exactly, is her husband holding her back from “thinking about” art/sex/politics/patriarchy? 

 

I’m sure she’s a wonderful editor, but this story is a giant smoking crater in the ground where a stable family used to be, and that’s a damn shame. Don’t think I saw a single positive response to this tweet either, which ought to tell you how this looks from outside NYC. 

And there are the abbreviated indictments.

She is your friend and you encourage this?

Rarely does it get any worse than this piece

Abandoning one's family isn't beautiful or moving; it's selfish.

Not moving at all. Profoundly sad.

And so on.  

I am guessing that Bari Weiss was merely attempting to be a good friend, bringing attention to her friend's work.  Possibly she believes that the essay is moving and beautiful but I would prefer, out of respect for Weiss's talents, to think not.

The replies constitute dozens of condemnations for every endorsement.

The whole scenario, the original essay, Weiss's endorsement of the essay, everyone's righteous revulsion - not the best face of humans.  It is bleak, petty and sad.

But as often happens, there are nuggets of humor and wisdom in any of these negligible storms-in-a-tea-cup.  I

Click to enlarge.

The three picture panel supports the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words.  The entire misery and futility of the 3,095 word essay is captured in the three pictures.  

Someone mentions this sensible C.S. Lewis piece, We Have No Right to Happiness, the last published before his death in 1963.

A little humor, a little wisdom.  And a terrible instigating essay.  

An Insight

People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men. - H. L. Mencken

— Cerebral Wisdom (@CerebralWisdom) November 23, 2021

 

I see wonderful things

This is Obsidian, a naturally occurring volcanic glass

It forms when lava, rich in silica, cools so rapidly on contact with air or water, that atoms are unable to arrange themselves into a crystalline structurepic.twitter.com/Ef4wAJMNb0

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) November 23, 2021

 

A general infection of ill temper

From Bleak House by Charles Dickens.

London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little 'prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.

 

Data Talks

Seizing 100% of Elon Musk’s net worth would fund federal government spending for just over 15 days

— Austen Allred (@Austen) December 14, 2021

 

View of the Lagoon of Venice at night, looking towards Santa Maria della Salute by John MacWhirter. (Scottish, 1839 - 1911)

View of the Lagoon of Venice at night, looking towards Santa Maria della Salute by John MacWhirter. (Scottish, 1839 - 1911)  

Click to enlarge.

History

SSG Joseph "Sonny" Arnaldo, of New Bedford, Massachusetts, USA. He was a squad leader in the 83rd Infantry Division, and was photographed coming off the front lines after 10 days in the Ardnennes. WW2, Battle of the Bulge, Dec 30, 1944https://t.co/N0WbofPgKq pic.twitter.com/MhuFc3gC85

— Laocoon of Troy (@LaocoonofTroy) November 22, 2021

An Insight

If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all. - Jacob Hornberger

— Cerebral Wisdom (@CerebralWisdom) November 23, 2021

 

I see wonderful things

Look how this lovebird strips the leaves removing each midvein to tuck amongst its feathers for safe keeping...

rather than taking each piece home separately, this is a more efficient way of gathering and transporting nest building material pic.twitter.com/gQPCsQA00j

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) June 22, 2021

 

I see wonderful things

One of my all-time favorite science facts: Venus flytraps can count. They need to register two taps in quick succession before they snap shut. This is to help ensure they catch bugs rather than stray leaves or other debris. https://t.co/vs0qTNUh62

Video: https://t.co/aMWpR44OJm pic.twitter.com/mEoImQzgUf

— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) November 22, 2021

 

Offbeat Humor

What did Grendel have for breakfast? A Danish.
I'll see myself out.

— Rosemary Kelly (@RosemaryKelly96) November 21, 2021

 

Data Talks

Grudging admission from warmist Shepherd: "the Great Plains-Texas region is still the leader in tornado frequency. It is just experiencing a downward trend" https://t.co/y2cjZhA5Ln

— Tom Nelson (@tan123) December 14, 2021

 

Falling Stars by Franz von Stuck (German, 1863-1928)

Falling Stars by Franz von Stuck (German, 1863-1928) 

Click to enlarge.

ERLFA

Evidence, Reason, Logic, Flawed Arguments (ERLFA).

And yethttps://t.co/qbYzzjUsiO pic.twitter.com/CvY9C04Q0G

— Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) December 12, 2021

 

The vulgar mistake

From Journals by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 8 November 1838.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

Vulgarity seems the national sentiment, at least were one to reference only social media.

History

Cuneiform cylinder inscription of Nebuchadnezzar II describing construction of outer city wall of Babylon, 604–562 BC.

"I built strong wall that cannot be shaken with bitumen and baked bricks. I laid its foundation on breast of netherworld, I built its top as high as mountain." pic.twitter.com/Lm0qDIuDmJ

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) November 22, 2021

 

An Insight

Step 1: It's not really happening

Step 2: Yeah, it's happening, but it's not a big deal

Step 3: It's a good thing, actually

Step 4: People freaking out about it are the real problem

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) June 14, 2021

 

Offfbeat Humor

Laying down hands of the holy spirit on this thief. pic.twitter.com/5uH5UJteTi

— Steve Inman (@SteveInmanUIC) November 22, 2021

 

Data Talks

"but you must compare Sweden 🇸🇪 only to other Scandinavian countries"

OK, here you go: pic.twitter.com/DWVWQ9CjWe

— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) November 23, 2021

 

Hard headed debate with evidence, logic, and reason - leading to still debatable conclusions

I keep meaning to doing an update as to what I think is happening with Covid-19 and our reaction to it.  Not because I have any special insight but because a two to five years from now, I will want a marker as to what I was thinking at what stage in the spiral.  

I haven't not gotten around to that post yet though I think my leit motif remains valid "We still don't really understand what is going on with Covid-19."  Though there are a few things clear now which were not clear at the beginning.

In the meantime though, as if to highlight both how uncertain our knowledge is and how disputed it is, Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution has a post, The real conspiracy theory.

Read it here.  No, this was not a conspiracy in the strictest, most intentional sense (it didn’t need to be!), but it did kill thousands of people and manipulate our politics…

C’mon, people, let’s not be afraid to admit this one.

There is a little bit of performative art to Cowen's post sometimes and he also is prone to irony and obscure jargon.  But I think this post reads straight.

The issue under contention is reached by clicking through to the Nate Silver tweet and then to the original Garrett Jones thread.  The observation is that a large number of public health "experts" most of them aligned with the Democratic Party, signed a letter to the CEO of Pfizer on September 25th, 2020, encouraging him to slow down the deployment of the Pfizer vaccine until after the election.

Whether the vaccine development and deployment was rushed is an entirely fair issue which has gained some additional traction given the FDA(?) request that all trial data remain secret for 57 years.  Smart and conscientious people can disagree with whether the vaccine was deployed too quickly (saving lives when we were losing a few thousand a day but at the cost of exacting a toll on a small percentage of people such as myocardia among young men) or too slowly.

Whether the advocacy letter from Democratic allies, injecting political considerations (the November election) into a medical issue, had any effect is also debatable.  What is less debatable is that it was another instance of an effort to politicize medical practice.  

Cowen's post (nor Nate Silver's) is in itself not especially revelatory though they are useful reminders of what DID happen despite the constant reframing that keeps happening.  What I found interesting was not the post but the responses from the Marginal Revolution readers.  

They are a bright, accomplished, and opinionated bunch encompassing Classical Liberals (conservatives), Libertarians, left leaning Classical Liberals, a very small number of socialist/woke ideologues, and many establishment types including from academia, media, and government.  Overall, though, they almost certainly lean center right.

There are already 153 comments and as usual, apart from occasional firebrands, they are information laden, informed by strong opinions and trenchant in nature.  Marginal Revolution commenting has the nice feature where readers can vote up or down individual comments, allowing one the ability to read the room.

There is strong disagreement among the commenters whether there was actually a politically motivated effort to delay the vaccines.  The excellent thing is that those are informed commenters and they are mustering all sorts of evidence pro and con.  Very substantive evidence.

This is exactly what public debate ought to look like when the establishment (State, academia, mainstream media, and technology platforms) aren't trying to shut down free speech and vigorous debate.  In this instance, I think those arguing that there was a clear case of politicization of public health have a difficult challenge.  The politicization almost certainly occurred but it seems to me to have been an emergent order phenomenon rather than a coordinated conspiracy.  Additionally, the timelines are pretty tight so making a clear and convincing case is inherently challenging.  

Truth coming from the well armed with her whip to chastise mankind, 1896 by Jean-Léon Gérôme

Truth coming from the well armed with her whip to chastise mankind, 1896 by Jean-Léon Gérôme

Click to enlarge.

Instability is the causal factor, not poverty

Rob Henderson has had a couple of columns addressing an interesting, critical, and largely unacknowledged issue - childhood disruption and its consequences.  Actually, the research exists on the topic but it is little discussed.

The two columns are America's Lost Boys and Me, and Why Are Poor Kids More Likely to Graduate Than Foster Kids?, both by Rob Henderson.  Full of links to the underlying research.

His conclusions and the evidence from the research is that childhood instability, particularly instability in the birth to age six time-frame, is more causal of negative adult life outcomes than is poverty.  Were it a single study, it would scarcely be worth discussing, but it is multiple studies of reasonable rigor.

While I see echoes of this issue in national debates and conversations with friends and acquaintances, I think it more useful to put it into the conversations of my city, Atlanta.  In the Atlanta Journal & Constitution or on social media sites like NextDoor, whenever public policy is discussed vis-a-vis crime or homelessness or the like, the refrain is always the need to tackle root causes and eliminate poverty and/or income inequality.

It is an emotional argument but there is a constricted logic to it if you believe that crime is caused by poverty and that poverty can be eliminated through income transference.

Regrettably for the integrity of the argument, both propositions are flawed.  There are plenty of places where poverty is widespread but which also have low crime.  There are no success stories where poverty is eliminated through income transfers.  There are plenty of examples where people/nations from low resource environments prosper dramatically.  

These are complex systems loosely coupled with one another.  But poverty does not inherently cause crime and poverty is not inherently caused by absence of resources.  

Simply proving that the linkage between poverty and crime is weak and that the link between poverty and income is weak is an inadequate response.  Disproving a model which makes bad forecasts is only the first step.  It is desirable to replace the bad model with a better model.

What Henderson and others have been pointing out is that the better forecasting model is to look at childhood instability instead of childhood poverty.  The most arresting statistic supporting this is that kids in poverty graduate high school at the same rate as other kids whereas kids in foster care graduate at significantly lower rates (about 20-25% lower rates).  Since foster homes have minimum income requirements that ensure the child is not in an impoverished environment, foster kids should at least be graduating at the normal average as everyone else and certainly at higher rates than poor kids.  But only if it is poverty which drives outcomes.

What is it that foster kids definitely have which kids in poverty do not?  Life and home instability.  

Coming back to Atlanta as a reasonably average example of public policy debate.  Whenever we discuss crime, there is a loud orchestra of people in the conversation who are adamant we have to tackle root causes of crime.  From that proposition they accept without examination that the root cause of crime is poverty and then we are quickly into discussions of housing subsidies and income supplements and universal basic income and the need for superior education, etc.  

For people earning the money that would need to be taken to pay for those programs, there is obvious self-interested (and also principled) objections.  They tend to focus on personal accountability and behavior and policing, etc.  

This ends up feeling like, and realistically is to some degree, a simplistic shouting match between left and right, progressives and conservatives.  Which is hardly useful.

It is Atlanta though, which is 72% registered Democrat.  Interestingly, many of the debates have Democrats taking the position around law and order and personal accountability.  It is easy to see this as a partisan or ideological issue but when one party is overwhelmingly larger than any other, and when almost all the debate is strictly within the dominant party, then you begin to understand there is a different dynamic going on.

Most everyone wants everyone else to have an equal opportunity to rise and prosper and most everyone wants most others to actually prosper.  The challenge, though, is that we disagree on the causes of negative outcomes.  

I think one of the reasons that people gravitate to the simplistic model of "all bad outcomes are due to poverty and  inadequate access to resources" as an explanation is that it is simple.  Add resources and everything is better.   

Henderson and the research suggest otherwise.  Create childhood stability, whether in poverty or not, and life outcomes become much better for everyone is their prescription.  And there is evidence to support the claim.  A pretty reasonable amount of evidence.

But now we are in difficult if not dangerous territory.  In a country constructed on Age of Enlightenment principles such as individualism and constrained government and natural and inalienable rights, it is rather challenging to find support for the Government to be involved in changing the value systems of individuals or intervening in personal lives to change behaviors.

It is not impossible to make that argument but the odds are against it.  Add race as a distracting element and it becomes almost impossible.  In Atlanta, out-of-wedlock births are the great majority, the norm, and this is largely concentrated among the majority population which is black.  Even conceptualizing a government role to change that norm is almost impossible.

Regardless, we know that it is stability, reasonably strongly enforced social norms and stable families which create environments for children to thrive.  We all want children to thrive but we hardly agree on how to get there.

Charles Murray in his meticulously researched Coming Apart, which focused only on whites to remove the complicating factor of race, observed that one of our national weaknesses is that our prosperous elite refuse to 

Preach what they practice.

In other words, regardless of political stripe, upper class whites practice all the sorts of things we know to enhance life outcomes.  They get their education and start employment.  They stay employed.  They marry before they have children.  They stay married.  They exercise financial prudence, spending less than they earn.  They value and invest in their children's education.  

But what they often preach, or support in public policy, is extreme freedom.  They support no-fault divorce even when children are involved and even though they do not themselves subscribe to it.  They support the freedom to pursue dreams over sustained education or work, even though they prioritize work, family, education and income over dreams.  They support alternate family structures even though the two-parent family is their norm.  They refuse to condemn aspects of hedonism, especially when it involves drugs and alcohol, even though they are quite abstemious.  Etc.

It is almost as if the prosperous elite wish to hide the secrets of their own success from everyone else.

We know what needs to be done (practice all those norms which are causally linked to good life outcomes), we just don't know quite how to bring that about.  Abandoning that difficult work and defaulting to known shibboleths such as poverty causes crime is one of our principle weaknesses.  

We need to engage with reality.  If everyone were to practice the norms known to be causal in positive life outcomes, we would all be better off.  We also know that redistributing income without changing behaviors or norms is futile.  

But it is easier to argue for the latter than to practice the former.

History

Jarlshof Prehistoric and Norse settlements in Shetland, Scotland.
Site settlements cover more than 4000 years of human history, from neolithic houses, bronze age village, Iron Age broch and wheelhouses, norse longhouse, medieval farmstead and 16th century laird’s house. pic.twitter.com/HYBRbInDgQ

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) November 22, 2021

 

An Insight

ending the SATs effectively abolishes academic merit as a path to college. this leaves exactly two options for young people hoping to enter a top school: win a lottery, or know someone. https://t.co/kAyibF3gui

— Mike Solana (@micsolana) November 22, 2021

 

I see wonderful things

Honey buzzards don’t eat honey, they excavate deep for adult insects and larvae

scale-like feathers on their heads prevent stings from reaching their skin, and possibly a chemical protection, emboldens them to track wasps and bees right to their nest pic.twitter.com/DuCL7h9P95

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) November 10, 2021

 

Offbeat Humor

Maybe don’t do this. pic.twitter.com/vbPrHmIljQ

— George Kovacs (@GeorgeKovacs11) November 22, 2021

 

Data Talks

Haredi Jewish Israel has a GDP/capita similar to that of the Arab world and Latin America. Non-Haredi Jewish Israel has a GDP/capita slightly above Canada's. https://t.co/LXBHNmo3nx

— srulik da purple שרוליק הסגול (@HeTows) November 23, 2021

 

The Luncheon, 1868 by Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926)

The Luncheon, 1868 by Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926) 

Click to enlarge.

The Dickin Medal

From Wikipedia.  The Dickin Medal.

The PDSA Dickin Medal was instituted in 1943 in the United Kingdom by Maria Dickin to honour the work of animals in World War II. It is a bronze medallion, bearing the words "For Gallantry" and "We Also Serve" within a laurel wreath, carried on a ribbon of striped green, dark brown, and pale blue.  It is awarded to animals that have displayed "conspicuous gallantry or devotion to duty while serving or associated with any branch of the Armed Forces or Civil Defence Units".  The award is commonly referred to as "the animals' Victoria Cross"

 The entry includes hot links to every one of the 71 medal recipients.  Some great stories.  

Pantomimus

From Britannica.  Pantomimus - 

pantomimus, plural pantomimi, nonspeaking dancer in the Roman theatre who performed dramatic scenes, acting all the characters in a story in succession using only masks, body movement, and rhythmic gestures. The pantomimus, whose name means “imitator of everything,” was the central figure of an entertainment that became fashionable in Rome during the reign of Augustus (63 BCE–14 CE) and remained popular throughout the history of the Roman Empire.

The Roman pantomime differed from its equally popular sister form, mime, in two ways: its themes were usually loftier, avoiding the farce and coarse humour that were common in mime; and, unlike the mime actor, the pantomimus wore various masks, which identified the characters but precluded the actor’s use of facial expressions. Thus the art of the pantomimus was primarily one of posture and gesture, in which hand movements were particularly expressive and important. (For a more detailed treatment of these two forms, see mime and pantomime.) 

Came across it from this report, Ancient shipwreck treasures displayed in Jerusalem include Roman silver coins by Doug Cunningham with this picture.

Jacob Sharvit of the Israel Antiquities Authority Marine Archeology Unit holds a figurine of a Roman pantomimus in a comic mask in the IAA  laboratories in Jerusalem on Tuesday.  Photo by Debbie Hill/UPI

And I have searched myself for this possibility with a kind of horror.

From Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck.

It had happened to so many of my friends. The lecture ends, “Slow down. You’re not as young as you once were.”

And I had seen so many begin to pack their lives in cotton wool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood into a kind of spiritual and physical semi-invalidism. In this they are encouraged by wives and relatives, and it’s such a sweet trap. 

Who doesn’t like to be a center for concern? A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child. And I have searched myself for this possibility with a kind of horror. For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I’ve lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment. I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage. My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby.

 

History

The street bridges of Paris, all cleared long ago, partly to improve traffic circulation. I continue to wonder if we should revisit this spectacular practice, now that we often need less space for vehicles and more for dwelling. pic.twitter.com/tSaRozC95m

— Samuel Hughes (@SCP_Hughes) November 22, 2021

 

An Insight

Arbitrary distancing measures in schools are totally ineffective for bugs you can actually see, but don’t worry—I’m sure they help with an airborne virus. 🙄🤦‍♀️

A Covid Head-Scratcher: Why Lice Lurk Despite Physical Distancing | Kaiser Health News https://t.co/bK6yOaRxxO

— elizabeth bennett (@ebennett74) November 22, 2021

 

I see wonderful things

Castle of Coca, located in Coca municipality, Spain.

Constructed in 15th century and has been considered to be one of the best examples of Spanish Mudejar brickwork which incorporates Moorish Muslim design and construction with Gothic architecture.#archaeohistories pic.twitter.com/WHQSG02Gu0

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) November 22, 2021

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Click to enlarge.

Data Talks

Interesting variance pic.twitter.com/siRuJC2dWe

— nate (@nathanael_gould) November 23, 2021

 

Beachgoers by William B. Hoyt

Beachgoers by William B. Hoyt

Click to enlarge.

Since the 1980's we have been drifting into a selfish emo-world of sentiment and irrationality

From The rise and fall of rationality in language by Marten Scheffer, et al.

The post-truth era has taken many by surprise. Here, we use massive language analysis to demonstrate that the rise of fact-free argumentation may perhaps be understood as part of a deeper change. After the year 1850, the use of sentiment-laden words in Google Books declined systematically, while the use of words associated with fact-based argumentation rose steadily. This pattern reversed in the 1980s, and this change accelerated around 2007, when across languages, the frequency of fact-related words dropped while emotion-laden language surged, a trend paralleled by a shift from collectivistic to individualistic language.

In other words, the Age of Enlightenment Classical Liberal world (empiricism, logic, reason, human universalism) peaked in the 1980s.  Since then we have been declining into emo-land where self-centered emotionalism and sentiment trump facts and reality.  The data says so.

History

#Greek gold oak wreath, dating 4th century BC.
Gold wreaths were worn in religious ceremonies, used as gifts to the gods in sanctuaries or placed in graves as funerary offerings. #LandesmuseumWürttemberg pic.twitter.com/UaHibwnlFM

— Nina Willburger (@DrNWillburger) November 21, 2021

 

I see wonderful things

This is Deadvlei in Namibia.

These are trees, which are believed to have died 600–700 years ago (ca. 1340-1430), scorched so intensely in the sun that the wood does not decompose because it is so dry. 1/2
pic.twitter.com/bqTTzz7aLz

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) January 16, 2021

 

Offbeat Humor

Seems 1620 was a bad year. 😀#archaeohistories pic.twitter.com/O8ylLcVcUH

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) November 24, 2021

 

History

Arrowheads and spearheads found at the site of the famous Battle of Thermopylae, Greece. (480 BCE). The battle involved Greek forces led by the Spartan King, Leonidas, and the invading Persian forces of Xerxes I. National Archaeological Museum of Athens. pic.twitter.com/mtg3iYfzsT

— Angela O'Brien (@GrecianGirly) November 21, 2021

 

I see wonderful things

Medieval Village of Alberobello, Italy at a snowy night.#archaeohistories pic.twitter.com/oFYR0xEyMn

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) November 22, 2021

 

There Was a Pig Went Out to Dig

Double click to enlarge.

There Was a Pig Went Out to Dig

Lucy Broadwood and J A Fuller Maitland 

 

There was a pig went out to dig,

Chrisimas Day, Chrisimas Day,

There was a pig went out to Dig

On Chrisimas Day in the morning.

There was a cow went out to plough ...

There was a sparrow went out to harrow ...

There was drake went out to rake ...

There was a crow went out to sow ...

There was a sheep went out to reap ...

There was a minnow went out to winnow .. 

 

History

Mayan ruins of Dzibilchaltun are some of oldest in Yucatan of Mexico. There are over 800 structures spread over an area of 7.5 miles, continually occupied for thousands of years, and architecture reached its height between 600-1000 AD.#archaeohistories pic.twitter.com/2hQc8hTG0w

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) November 21, 2021

 

Offbeat Humor

Now we’re asking the real question pic.twitter.com/qhMxsZowdv

— Pubity (@PubityOnInsta) November 24, 2021

Irony, is that what you really want?

From The Irony Human Centipede by Freddie deBoer.  Discussing a condition apparently prevalent in academia, journalism and the Acela Corridor - self-destructive irony.

He starts with someone else's tweet.

Apparently, many are responding to the tweet mockingly with their own ridiculous versions such as.  

Went down to the ol’ saloon, saw four roughnecks in cowboy hats talking about how that Fauci had some good points after all. Then I went home to the refinery, man said son if it was up to me we’d all be wearing N95s. pic.twitter.com/HYIQxPnAu9

— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) December 23, 2021

De Boer - 

There’s been a lot of this sort of parodying of Carl Beijer’s tweet, so I don’t mean to pick on Hanania specifically. But knowing Beijer’s style, the original tweet is almost certainly ironic itself, and so people are insincerely mimicking that which was insincere mimicry in the first place.

Where is all this irony getting us?  To me it is a signal and noise issue.  The more irony, the more the signal is being masked.  The more the signal is masked, the greater the uncertainty.  The greater the uncertainty, the more cautious and hesitant everyone becomes.

Irony has its role.  An ironic recapitulation of your central point can be a cruel reminder when your point is too esoteric or too isolated from broader reality.  

But irony can only work well when everyone is working off a common and shared base of knowledge and  culture.  Without that shared culture and knowledge, it comes across as either nonsense or a mechanism of othering and disparaging the non-insiders.

And it potentially leaves others, even those within your bubble, confused as to what you are actually trying to communicate.  Carl Beijer (a journalist) is making ironical fun of sophisticates who claim facts that seem untrue.  Everyone mistakes his irony and offers their own even more exaggerated version such as Hanania.  And the circle of confusion spirals.

De Boer heads in a slightly different direction.

Those may be problems, but they aren’t my problem here. My problem is that I don’t know what the absolute fuck anyone is saying anymore because they are so terrified of just saying “I feel this, and it matters to me.”

I know, I know, I know: it’s a defense mechanism, it’s a coping mechanism, capitalism killed all my hopes so I’m entitled to this, I hate my dad, yeah yeah yeah. You certainly are entitled to live this way. The question, my friend, is whether you actually want to live this way. How’s that coping mechanism going for you, hmmm? You coping pretty good? Posting Simpsons memes really defending you against the drudgery and injustice of a broken world? I’m guessing not! How many times a day do you have to evince derision without directly stating it to be impregnable? It seems exhausting. And how fucking old are people going to get, exactly, before they decide it’s beneath their dignity to live their entire lives in sneer quotes? You have people drifting towards their 50s who get up every day and find a target to “dunk” on. Are you gonna be in the old folks home, squinting through your bifocals, saying “I’m going to corncob someone today!” My advice is to develop an escape plan. I don’t know why people take that so personally, especially given that their entire personas are built on the premise that they take nothing personally. I mean I can’t be hurting any feelings, right? You don’t have feelings. I know, your Instagram told me.

I have known many, many people in my life who live behind the mask of irony all day, every day. I have never known one of them to be a happy person. Make of that what you will.

Irony is fine, when wielded with expertise by someone knowing their audience.  The problem is that we have a lot of journalists more credentialed than expert at their craft.  When you want to communicate facts and truth, irony gets in the way.  But if you are wanting to communicate status or tribal affiliation, signaling your condition as an insider and a disparager of the outsiders, irony can be an excellent means of doing so.  But as de Boer asks, is that what you really want?

History

For today’s #AncientSiteSunday let’s go to south-east #Turkey, to the site of Nemrut Dağ (Mount Nemrut), a tomb-sanctuary and monument build by a local dynast called Antiochus I. It was built in the 1st century BC and is spectacularly located on a 2,150m high peak. #Archaeology pic.twitter.com/zU4csse9Vp

— Nina Willburger (@DrNWillburger) November 21, 2021

 

An Insight

With a shout to @olivertraldi, most-to-all of the current hostility toward standardized testing comes from credentialed people with good/glib surface-level verbal skills, who did badly on complex exams and refuse to accept this as an accurate measure of their intelligence.

— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) November 21, 2021

 

I see wonderful things

An abandoned ksar or fortified village lost in the dunes of the Grand Erg Occidental just north of Timimoun, Algeria. Ksars were traditional pre-Saharan habitats. It probably dates to the medieval period.#archaeohistories pic.twitter.com/9Do1SW8lzS

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) November 21, 2021

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Click to enlarge.

Today’s rigid enforcement of ideological orthodoxy perpetuates sclerosis and stagnation.

From The Scapegoat by Geoff Shullenberger, a review of The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power by Max Chafkin.  

Is Thiel right about the dangers we face? Is the tepid economic growth of recent decades a premonition of darker, more violent times to come? Chafkin evidently has no opinion. He is ­unwilling, for the most part, to treat his subject’s views as anything other than arcane heresies to be policed and denounced. In this sense, he inadvertently reveals that Thiel is right about at least one thing: The ideologically formative institutions of our society—­universities, ­journalism—have cultivated an elite barely capable of serious reflection on ideas outside of a narrow range of acceptable opinions. In Zero to One, Thiel suggests that contrarians sometimes grasp the future because their heresies reveal the truths no one acknowledges. Today’s rigid enforcement of ideological orthodoxy perpetuates sclerosis and stagnation. This is where Thiel’s two major concerns—political correctness and stalled progress—intersect.

Chafkin, like many of his fellow journalists, is concerned by the “­reactionary turn in our politics and society” symbolized, most obviously, by the election of Donald Trump, whom Thiel supported. But also like many journalists, he shows no interest in the factors that have led to declining or stagnating prospects for many Americans, as well as to social atomization, anomie, and disillusionment. Doing so might require him to apportion some blame, not just to ideological bogeymen like Thiel, but to those who run his own widely disliked industry (the ­media)—not to mention the many Silicon Valley executives who, ­unlike Thiel, share Chafkin’s ­bien-pensant antipathy to ­Trumpism.

Instead, Chafkin seeks a scapegoat. This is just what members of social groupings always do in moments of crisis, according to Girard. That Chafkin finds one in Thiel would come as no surprise to the latter. He writes in Zero to One: “Like founders, scapegoats are extreme and contradictory figures.” The strength of The Contrarian is its examination of the contradictions that have attended Thiel’s improbable rise. Its main weakness is that Chafkin seems more interested in joining in his tribe’s collective vituperations than in understanding the insights that, at certain points, have allowed his complex subject to anticipate the future.

 

People want things not because of their intrinsic value, but because others also want or have them.

From The Scapegoat by Geoff Shullenberger, a review of The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power by Max Chafkin.  

Despite his stated interest in figuring out “what . . . Thiel actually believe[s],” Chafkin has little to say about Thiel’s Christian faith, or the intellectual framework he brings to it, based on the ideas of René Girard. Thiel has cited Girard’s sprawling 1978 magnum opus, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, as his favorite book. Girard draws on the Jewish and Christian Scriptures to argue that human societies are founded on mob violence against arbitrary victims. Archaic religion, for Girard, draws its power from scapegoating, ritualized as human sacrifice. Peace is brought to the community through the simultaneous vilification and deification of victims. They are blamed for the community’s conflicts, and then, through the pacifying power of this assumption of blame, become gods.

What has this theory contributed to Thiel’s Christian worldview and his business career? Chafkin does not explore this question. He ­briefly examines Thiel’s better-known intellectual debt to Girard, which involves interest in the primacy of imitation in human behavior. Girard argues that human desire is fundamentally mimetic: People want things not because of their intrinsic value, but because others also want or have them. This insight informs one of Thiel’s most infamous views: that, contrary to what many of his free-market libertarian friends might claim, competition is an obstacle to professional and technological growth, rather than a driver of it. It causes us to focus more on our rivals than on the substantive objectives we aim to achieve.

Girard’s insight allowed Thiel to glimpse the future of social media, which expands the field of mimetic desire by giving us a vast selection of models to imitate. Some take this as a benign or neutral development, but it has a dark edge. Imitation begets conflict by causing us to want what others have. Girard first explored this phenomenon in the romantic conflicts of novels, but it is even more evident in the attention economy. When others post about their happy, successful lives or receive more likes, favorites, and retweets than we have, the result is the toxic brew of rage, envy, and resentment we can observe online every day.

Girard’s analysis of archaic so­cieties suggests that sacrificial rites, taboos, and purity codes evolved to keep the ever-present, socially corrosive dangers of mimetic conflict in check. But Christianity exposes the lie at the heart of sacrificial violence—the guilt of the scapegoat—and thereby undermines its social efficacy as a means of expelling conflict from the community. It is in this sense, for Girard, that Christ brings “not peace, but a sword.” The apocalyptic result is that we are left without the mechanism that has constrained the tendency to conflict generated by mimetic desire. Without scapegoating, what keeps humanity from destroying itself?

 

But there are just five things that I cannot do in your place.

From Novice to Master An Ongoing Lesson in the Extent of My Own Stupidity by Soko Morinaga.

A while ago I gave a public lecture at a university.  The speaker who preceded me talked for about an hour and a half, running over his allotted time.  The break period between our talks was shortened, and I was called to the podium right away.  Concerned for the audience, I opened by asking, "Did you all have time to urinate?”

Apparently this was not what the audience had expected to hear.  Perhaps they were particularly surprised because the person standing before them, talking about pissing, was a monk.  Everyone broke into hearty laughter.

Having started out on this note, I continued to press on. "Pissing is something that no one else can do for you.  Only you can piss for yourself."  This really broke them up, and they laughed even harder.

But you must realize that to say, “You have to piss for yourself; nobody else can piss for you” is to make an utterly serious statement.

Long ago in China, there was a monk called Ken.  During his training years, he practiced in the monastery of Th-hui, but despite his prodigious efforts, he had not attained enlightenment.  One day Ken's master ordered him to carry a letter to the far-off land of Ch’ang-sha.  This  journey, roundtrip, could easily take half a year. The monk Ken thought, "I don't have forever to stay in this hall practicing!  Who’s got time to go on an errand like this?"  He consulted one of his seniors, the monk Genjoza, about the matter.

Genjoza laughed when he heard Ken's predicament.  “Even while traveling you can still practice Zen!  In fact, I'll come along with you,”—and before long the two monks set out on their journey.

Then one day while the two were traveling, the younger monk suddenly broke into tears.  “I have been practicing for many years, and I still haven't been able to attain anything.  Now, here I am roaming around the country on this trip; there’s no way I am going to attain enlightenment this way," Ken lamented.

When he heard this, Genjoza, thrusting all his strength into his words, put himself at the junior monk’s disposal: "I will take care of anything that I can take care of for you on this trip," he said. “But there are just five things that I cannot do in your place.

“I can't wear clothes for you. I can’t eat for you. I can't shit for you. I can't piss for you. And I can't carry your body around and live your life for you."

It is said that upon hearing these words, the monk Ken suddenly awakened from his deluded dream and attained a great enlightenment, a great satori.

Data Talks

West Virginia has a per capita income higher than Shanghai, the richest Chinese city.

— Noah Smith 🐇 (@Noahpinion) November 22, 2021

 

Daybreak. Parson's Beach by William B. Hoyt

Daybreak. Parson's Beach by William B. Hoyt

Click to enlarge.

History

A boy depicted playing with a yo-yo on an ancient Greek Attic red-figure kylix. Dated ca. 440 BCE, Antikensammlung Berlin (F 2549). Ancient Greek yo-yos were made of terracotta, wood or metal. The yo-yo is thought to be a variation of the diabolo which originated in China. pic.twitter.com/sPa6oqy0R2

— Angela O'Brien (@GrecianGirly) November 21, 2021

 

An Insight

You assume EVERY time that given a choice, the parents would not choose the public school. You simply accept that as given.

I wonder why? If your schools are where kids are gonna “thrive”, why would parents take those dollars elsewhere?

Can you answer that? https://t.co/idIV5MV6NC

— KeepCalmAndDrawl (@FormerlyFormer) November 21, 2021

 

I see wonderful things

They look like up-turned umbrellas..

these are Dracaena cinnabari, or dragon blood trees, so called because of their crimson red resin, called dragon's blood.

These trees are native to the Socotra archipelago, part of Yemen 1/ pic.twitter.com/meLbjrWKwV

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) June 22, 2021

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Click to enlarge.

Data Talks

gee what could have happened last year to prompt a rise in overdoses, Public Health Expert? https://t.co/yhUgxeRg8Y

— soncharm (@soncharm) November 22, 2021

 

Rainy day on Vesterbrogade, Copenhagen by Paul Gustav Fischer (Danish, 22 July 1860 - 5 January 1934)

Rainy day on Vesterbrogade, Copenhagen by Paul Gustav Fischer (Danish, 22 July 1860 - 5 January 1934)

Click to enlarge.