A chain of hopeful suppositions.

From Shakespeare The World as Stage by Bill Bryson.  Chapter 7 page 145.

It is an appealing scenario but one based on nothing but a chain of hopeful suppositions. 

History

“We cannot understand modern marriage unless we grasp this central fact: The women getting, and staying, married are the most economically independent women in the history of the nation.” https://t.co/WU4kgguEvd

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) March 22, 2022

 

An Insight

"Russia" is essentially the Moscow citystate. All of the oil money goes to build this playground for the elites and the ruling class. Even St. Petersburg, half a million live in communal apartments.https://t.co/ZMxGdCpJdY

— Andrei Taranchenko (@andrenaleen) April 9, 2022

 

An Insight

Intimate acquaintance with the facts is important but systematic observation can start only after problems have arisen. Until we have definite questions to ask we cannot employ our intellect and questions presuppose that we have formed some provisional theory about the events. FH

— Hayek_Quotes (@HayekQuotes1) March 20, 2022

 

Exaggerated charges probably overrode winnable technicalities

It is hard to keep track of the fate of all the politically charged legal investigations of former president Trump.  Many of them seemed facially specious and solely based on the politics of revenge.  Some seemed so baseless that it appeared that there was an effort to make the legal process the punishment even if no laws had been broken.

On the other hand, he made his financial fortune in real estate in Manhattan, a financial and ethical environment of dubious purity.  From his very first serious runs for president in 2015, I assumed there was a more than non-zero chance that he would come a cropper on at least some legal technicality.

His opponents were ravenously motivated.  If there was anything serious to be found, they would find it.  However, the more frequently and continuously that those legal attacks failed to bear fruit, the more it felt like there was no legal merit to any of them.  

All this is prompted by the headlines yesterday, from one of Trump's more powerful political opponents, The New York Times and among those most motivated to curtail his political future, Likelihood of Trump Indictment in Manhattan Fades as Grand Jury Wraps Up.  The NYT had three reporters writing up this conclusion, Ben Protess, Jonah E. Bromwich, William K. Rashbaum and Lananh Nguyen.  The subheading is The Manhattan district attorney is continuing to investigate Donald J. Trump, but knowledgeable people say charges are unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future, if ever.

Reading the article, it seems far more like a certainty that no charges will be brought than a mere likelihood, but that is a judgment call.

The two Congressional investigations to impeach him foundered.  The Robert Mueller investigation came back without charges and substantially an exoneration of the serious charges.  I think, at this point, the FBI has cleared him of any of the January 6th charges.  It seems like there were other investigations that have faded away.  The New York DA appears to be abandoning their case.  The New York Attorney General is still pursuing civil charges equivalent to the criminal charges pursued by Manhattan DA.  It is unclear the extent that that might succeed if the criminal charges fail.

The congressional committee pursuing further charges against Trump rocks along but that has always been purely political and seemed much more of a fishing expedition than a real legal investigation.  I have not seen much pertinent evidence arise from them that was not already known.  It seems that it also will end up being a damp squib as well.  Especially if Republicans end up retaking Congress at the mid-term elections.

Trump has always been a magnet for controversy and later in his political life a magnet for politically motivated lawsuits.  A priori there appeared reason to believe that there would almost have to be some legal irregularity which would trip him up, having made his fortune in New York real estate.

But all these many years later, there is still nothing.  Possibly that is due to excellent lawyering.  Possibly he is more innocent than Caesar's wife.  It seems most likely though, that the legal process has been abused for political gain and that there was never any there there.  And while while his political opponents were swinging for the legal bleachers with extravagant and exaggerated overcharging, they probably gave up the opportunity to catch him on more minor technicalities which might have done him some actual political harm.  

Just a guess.

UPDATE:  Is Trump the cleanest real estate developer and the cleanest politician in America? by Neo.  On the same issue and with interesting comments.

I see wonderful things

Watching the FT get printed pic.twitter.com/FrYpcLvcDo

— Alice Ross (@aliceemross) March 23, 2022

 

Offbeat Humor

This is everything i needed to see from the internet today 🤣 pic.twitter.com/6TSBqTGdM4

— Theo (@TheoWAGMI) March 23, 2022

 

Three enemies, the social environment, yourself, and the irresponsible chattering class

From No One Expects Young Men To Do Anything and They Are Responding By Doing Nothing by Rob Henderson.  The subheading is Garbage in garbage out. 

If you come from poverty and chaos, you are up against 3 enemies:

1. Dysfunction and deprivation

2. Yourself, as a result of what that environment does to you

3. The upper class, who wants to keep you mired in it

The people with the most money and education—the class most responsible for shaping politics and culture and customs—ensure that their children are raised in stable homes.

But actively undermine the norm for everyone else. 

I agree and the whole article is worth reading.  

I think this tragic situation is in part due to the difference between the Classical Liberal mind (order emerges from systems of influence) and the totalitarian mind (believing that you can plan societal outcomes via mechanistic tactics).  

It is also the consequence of emotional incontinence and the compelling desire to avoid the obvious truth that there is a hierarchy of social norms which are more or less contributive to personal and familial productivity and prosperity, health (mental and physical), and social effectiveness/status.  Nobody likes to say that someone else is doing something which is unlikely to be beneficial to them.  We don't want to insult them by pointing out the blindingly obvious.  We would much rather let others sink in the mire of dysfunction than take the responsibility of sharing what we know works.

Shame on us for lacking the courage and for allowing the evil of totalitarian thinking so dominate the marketplace of ideas.

Data Talks

There's a set of liberal market democracies that have the majority of world GDP on their own, and act in unison much of the time.

US + EU + Japan + SK + UK AU CA NZ = ~$54 trillion GDP.

All other countries combined: ~$31 trillion.

— Alan Cole (@AlanMCole) March 20, 2022

 

Romulus, Remus, and their Nursemaid, 1805 by Jacques Laurent Agasse

Romulus, Remus, and their Nursemaid, 1805 by Jacques Laurent Agasse

Click to enlarge.

No Place to Go, 1935 by Maynard Dixon (1875-1946 )

No Place to Go, 1935 by Maynard Dixon (1875-1946 )

Click to enlarge.

And the audience rioted

From Shakespeare The World as Stage by Bill Bryson.  Chapter 7 page 138.

In the same year that Shakespeare’s mother died, the King’s Men finally secured permission to open the Blackfriars Theatre. The Blackfriars became the template from which all subsequent indoor theaters evolved, and so ultimately was more important to posterity than the Globe. It held only about six hundred people, but it was more profitable than the Globe because the price of admission was high: sixpence for even the cheapest seat. This was good news for Shakespeare, who had a one-sixth interest in the operation. The smaller theater also permitted a greater intimacy in voice and even in music—strings and woodwinds rather than trumpet blasts.

Windows admitted some light, but candles provided most of the illumination. Spectators could, for an additional fee, sit on the stage—something not permitted at the Globe. With stage seating, audience members could show off their finery to maximum effect, and the practice was lucrative; but it contained an obvious risk of distraction. Stephen Greenblatt relates an occasion in which a nobleman who had secured a perch on the stage spied a friend entering across the way and strode through the performance to greet him. When rebuked by an actor for his thoughtlessness, the nobleman slapped the impertinent fellow and the audience rioted.

History

Lenin was sent into Russia by the Germans in the same way that you might send a phial containing a culture of typhoid or cholera to be poured into the water supply of a great city, and it worked with amazing accuracy. - Winston Churchill

— Cerebral Wisdom (@CerebralWisdom) March 22, 2022

 

An Insight

@JavierGoya7 @Partisan_O @braxton_mccoy @ChestyPullerGst @DempMcgee pic.twitter.com/iSWt13pibJ

— MT_Heathen (@mt_heathen) March 22, 2022

 

An Insight

we lack concepts/vocab for
complex causality & emergence

lots of causal logic doesn't
boil down into a number on
a causal structure diagramhttps://t.co/gIHd87ndjM
ht @WiringTheBrain https://t.co/FW8kJouYvi

— Jag Bhalla…Idea Trader/Plumber…Exotericist (@hangingnoodles) April 8, 2022

 

I see wonderful things

A Roman soldier’s frying pan with folding handle (3rd century AD), belonging to a soldier of the II Legion Augusta based at Roman Isca (modern Caerleon, Wales). Shown with a US Army mess tin for comparison. Caerleon Legionary Museum pic.twitter.com/hzKkxKgxrj

— Gareth Harney (@OptimoPrincipi) March 23, 2022

 

Offbeat Humor

Fed 2007: Subprime is contained
Fed 2008: OMFG
Fed 2021: Inflation is transitory
Fed 2022: OMFG

— Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) March 22, 2022

 

Data Talks

Just took the kids to the Museum of Science in Boston for the first time in ages, and look what we found? Notice any differences? How long until they take this down? pic.twitter.com/SPatmlQ2Of

— Boston Mom (@paulanoukas) March 23, 2022

 

Europa auf dem Stier, Ca. 1910 by Ferdinand Leeke

Europa auf dem Stier, Ca. 1910 by Ferdinand Leeke

Click to enlarge.

Shakespeare, a man pathologically averse to paying taxes

From Shakespeare The World as Stage by Bill Bryson.  Chapter 7 page 137.

Though Shakespeare was increasingly a person of means, and now one of the most conspicuous men of property in Stratford, surviving evidence shows that in London he continued to live frugally. He remained in lodgings, and the value of his worldly goods away from Stratford was assessed by tax inspectors at a modest £5. (But a man as pathologically averse to paying taxes as Shakespeare no doubt took steps to minimize any appearance of wealth.)

History

6th century mosaic of a child playing chariot racing from the Great Palace at Constantinople. Pushing wheels on sticks represents the chariot and four horses. Part of the collections at the Great Palace Mosaic Museum in Istanbul. #MosaicMonday pic.twitter.com/irlpuJHD5r

— Kevin Wilbraham (@KPW1453) March 21, 2022

 

An Insight

Interesting discussion of why philosophy professors—who spend decades reading texts from the 'wisdom traditions'—do not seem to be any wiser than people in other highly educated white collar professions https://t.co/YxKgNInMG7 pic.twitter.com/bfs8L6umBf

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) March 21, 2022

 

I see wonderful things

NOW - Multi-vortex tornado rips through parts of New Orleans.pic.twitter.com/FWghdRqX7N

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) March 23, 2022

 

Offbeat Humor

Expectations not often meet the reality pic.twitter.com/cghXBPoABD

— Rimantas Zukaitis (@RimasZuk) March 19, 2022

 

Data Talks

U.S. States Scaled By Moose Population. Full credit to @Climatologist49 pic.twitter.com/29UwrPLlch

— Brilliant Maps (@BrilliantMaps) March 23, 2022

 

Windsor Plantation by Felix Kelly (1914-1994)

Windsor Plantation by Felix Kelly (1914-1994)

Click to enlarge.

Whatever else he was, James was a generous patron of drama.

From Shakespeare The World as Stage by Bill Bryson.  Chapter 7 page 134.

Yet there is no doubt that there was a certain measure of differentness about him, particularly with regard to sexual comportment. Almost from the outset he excited dismay at court by nibbling handsome young men while hearing the presentations of his ministers. Yet he was also dutiful enough to produce eight children by his wife, Queen Anne. Simon Thurley notes how in 1606 James and his brother-in-law, King Christian IV of Denmark, undertook a “drunken and orgiastic progress” through the stately homes of the Thames Valley, with Christian at one point collapsing “smeared in jelly and cream.” A day or two later, however, both were to be found sitting circumspectly watching Macbeth.

Whatever else he was, James was a generous patron of drama. One of his first acts as king was to award Shakespeare and his colleagues a royal patent, making them the King’s Men. For a theatrical troupe, honors came no higher. The move made them Grooms of the Chamber and gave them the right, among other privileges, to deck themselves out in four and a half yards of scarlet cloth provided by the Crown. James remained a generous supporter of Shakespeare’s company, using them often and paying them well. In the thirteen years between his accession and Shakespeare’s death, they would perform before the king 187 times, more than all other acting troupes put together.

 

History

Americans read their political divisions back in time, and assume that conservatism was always associated with states' rights and small government. In reality, the party in early America most opposed to revolutionary upheaval was the one pushing for a stronger central government. https://t.co/SH201alOeJ

— Stilicho (@StilichoReads) March 20, 2022

 

An Insight

“Many have discovered an argument hack. You don’t need to argue that something is false. You just need to show that it’s associated with low status. You don’t need to argue that something is true. You just need to show it’s associated with high status." https://t.co/EQjAYtjOyF

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) March 21, 2022

 

I see wonderful things

Welcome to Diamond Beach in Iceland 🇮🇸, where giant chunks of ice have washed ashore and sparkle like diamonds on the black sand..🧊✨

🎥 IG: bradenstanley pic.twitter.com/OnAxHOrGfq

— 💥 Best Videos & Content 🎥💥 (@ClickFollowBOOM) March 22, 2022

 

Offbeat Humor

Bloomberg article on inflation be like pic.twitter.com/0ZZiitFSTN

— Michael A. Gayed, CFA (@leadlagreport) March 21, 2022

 

Data Talks

The latest housing affordability statistics are out and it is impossible to overstate what a horrifying, generationally traumatising shitshow they are. Here is the situation in 1997 vs 2021 https://t.co/QgYWaBlmUw pic.twitter.com/Qf3whnAg7l

— Robert Colvile (@rcolvile) March 23, 2022

 

After the Storm, 1819 by Heinrich Reinhold (1788–1825)

After the Storm, 1819 by Heinrich Reinhold (1788–1825)

Click to enlarge.

James was not, by all accounts, the most visually appealing of fellows.

From Shakespeare The World as Stage by Bill Bryson.  Chapter 7 page 133.

To the joy of nearly everyone, she was uneventfully succeeded by her northern kinsman James, son of Mary, Queen of Scots. He was thirty-six years old and married to a Danish Catholic, but devotedly Protestant himself. In Scotland he was James VI, but in England he became James I. He had ruled in Scotland for twenty years already and would reign in England for twenty-two more.

James was not, by all accounts, the most visually appealing of fellows. He was graceless in motion, with a strange lurching gait, and had a disconcerting habit, indulged more or less constantly, of playing with his codpiece. His tongue appeared to be too large for his mouth. It “made him drink very uncomely,” wrote one contemporary, “as if eating his drink.” His only concession to hygiene, it was reported, was to daub his fingertips from time to time with a little water. It was said that one could identify all his meals since becoming king from the stains and gravy scabs on his clothing, which he wore “to very rags.” His odd shape and distinctive waddle were exaggerated by his practice of wearing extravagantly padded jackets and pantaloons to protect himself from assassins’ daggers.

 

History

Ancient Greek askos, carved from solid agate, with gold mountings. 2nd c.BC. Ptolemaic period. Cleveland Museum. pic.twitter.com/BNxzJksvMK

— Ioannis Tz (@tzoumio) March 21, 2022

 

An Insight

Arguably the worst day in the history of the New York Times. pic.twitter.com/sY9PJGrAot

— Tom Watson (@tomwatson) March 18, 2022

 

I see wonderful things

Your moment of calm 🐺 pic.twitter.com/sPa0pFjqMu

— Wolf Conservation Center (@nywolforg) March 21, 2022

 

Offbeat Humor

Bloomberg: let them eat lentils

Lentils: https://t.co/V7kyrTwVIz

— maggie battles (@maggiebattlesxo) March 20, 2022

 

Data Talks

Our leaders behaved as if the lockdowns were so super easy to do (remember: "stay the fuck home!") and would have no consequences. They did. https://t.co/jqKI7tOzwz

— Karol Markowicz (@karol) March 22, 2022

 

The victim is not to blame, no matter how unwise they might have been

From On Ukraine: what course others may take by The New Neo.  She makes an observation that is wholly independent of the Ukraine situation.

Sometimes people get confused about the assignment of responsibility for some bad result. For example, I don’t go out walking at night in a high-crime area. But if I did, and if I were to become the victim of a crime there, the person who committed that crime is 100% responsible. I bear no responsibility at all. No one forced him (it would probably be a “him”) to break the law and attack or rob me. The fact that my decision could be considered somewhat risky and not all that smart has nothing to do with the fact that he has total responsibility for his own crime and I have none. The fact that the crime would not have been committed – at least, not on me – had I not gone walking there that evening is utterly irrelevant to the apportionment of responsibility.

Indeed.  It is a tricky point and she doesn't fully develop it.  I would expand her observation.

When a crime is committed, there are three parties involved.  The victim, the perpetrator, and any authority responsible for the rule of law.  The latter is usually the State, whether federal, state or local in the American context.  

I am responsible for my own personal safety.  I can make better or worse decisions with regards to the effectiveness of achieving personal safety.  

For example, I need to engage with life above some minimal level.  Sitting on the sofa in my den ad infinitum eating potato chips has a set of long term dangers, mostly associated with mental and physical decline.  On the other hand, going outside to drive recklessly, drink hard, and play hard has a different set of dangers.  

As Hesiod said some 2,700 years ago

Observe due measure; moderation is best in all things.

I am responsible for determining that happy but uncertain median between too little danger and too much.  I bear responsibility to myself for those decisions.  If I suffer a rock climbing accident and severe injury, absent other circumstances, it is my decision and my responsibility.  Rock climbing may be inherently dangerous but it is not obviously unwise.

The perpetrator is entirely responsible for his or her decisions as well.  If they commit some crime against my person, then they are entirely and solely responsible for that crime.  

There is always an inclination to blame the victim - the argument is that they were doing something to bring the calamity down upon themselves.  As long as what they were doing was neither unlawful nor obviously self-destructive, then they are not to blame for someone else's crimes.  

Walking on a street at night in a bad neighborhood might not be a wise decision for an individual but it is their decision to make.  It is not their fault if someone attacks them.

Likewise, it is entirely and solely the responsibility of the person committing the crime.  It doesn't matter what their background or circumstances might be.  They decide whether or not to commit a crime and they bear the consequences of having done so.

The part that New Neo leaves out is the role of the State.  We all live, to a greater or lesser degree, in a State.  The State takes on certain responsibilities and powers ceded by us as citizens to accomplish certain outcomes upon which we all agree.  One the most common responsibilities of the State, across different nations, is the imposition of The Rule of Law, and certainly in the US, with equality before the law.

Thus, independent of the victim and the perpetrator, there is the State, tasked with establishing and maintaining order through the rule of law.  It is the State's responsibility to establish and maintain some minimal level of acceptable security.  It is never total because a) total security is not achievable and 2) complete responsibility for all security to everyone is an inherent self-destructive model.  When the State has enough to protect everyone from everything all the time, there is no longer any freedom or liberty which make that security worthwhile.

The victim gets to make any decision within the law and cannot be held responsible for the decisions of others.  The State is responsible for establishing the rule of law and maintaining it through security services, judicial services, legal services, and systems of punishment.

The victim of a crime may hold themselves responsible for bad decision-making but that is not a judgment that others can impose.  We don't want a system where victims are responsible for punishing perpetrators as that undermines the rule of law.  At the same time, we need the State to bear its responsibility for the totality of security in the sense of 1) policing, 2) justice, and punishment.  

The victim of a crime has three parties to blame.  Themselves, the perpetrator and the State.  While they may not have been wise to walk abroad in the dark of night, it is their right and it is the responsibility of the State to provide security within its own limits but also to ensure that there is justice and, where appropriate, punishment of perpetrators.  

There is a certain modern academic sensibility which relieves perpetrators of responsibilities, blames victims for decisions they did not make, and relieves the State of accountability for failures to provide policing, judicial services and punishment.

These are existential failures.

Abandoned Female Nude, 1953 by José Manuel Capuletti

Abandoned Female Nude, 1953 by José Manuel Capuletti

Click to enlarge.

Grief fills the room up of my absent child

From Shakespeare The World as Stage by Bill Bryson.  Chapter 6 page 119.

For Shakespeare there was a personal dimension to the gloom of the decade. In August 1596 his son, Hamnet, aged eleven, died in Stratford of causes unknown. We have no idea how Shakespeare bore this loss, but if ever there was a moment when we can glimpse Shakespeare the man in his plays, surely it is in these lines, written for King John probably in that year:

 

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,

Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,

Remembers me of all his gracious parts,

Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form.

History

An ancient Egyptian Ring with Two ducks, Gold, Ramesses IV, New Kingdom Egypt, now in Louvre pic.twitter.com/I7EM9oozSE

— History Defined (@historydefined) March 20, 2022

 

An Insight

OMG, don't these "scientists" even know the difference between climate and weather?! https://t.co/rYeq0wj1Cl

— Tom Nelson (@tan123) March 21, 2022

 

I see wonderful things

Detail of One of the Lewis Chessmen, late 12th century.

They were found on the Isle of Lewis, made of walrus ivory and are Scandinavian in origin.

National Museum of Scotland. #MedievalMonday pic.twitter.com/BJPp91HCKo

— Digital Maps of the Ancient World (@DigitalMapsAW) March 21, 2022

 

Offbeat Humor

Was a “Normal Person” 50 years ago so very different from one today? @jmhorp checks out the prevailing beliefs, then and now, about some key social themes: https://t.co/V02mxQT1h8 pic.twitter.com/ggi9pl01Kx

— Koenfucius (@koenfucius) March 23, 2022

 

Data Talks

That's why Russian army is increasingly turning into the army of minorities. Yes, it has always been the army of country folk. But in the past they were mostly ethnic Russian. Nowadays however, there is not so much youth left in ethnic Russian countryside pic.twitter.com/GxTzB0DK1I

— Kamil Galeev (@kamilkazani) March 23, 2022

 

Istanbul by Pierpaolo Rovero

Istanbul by Pierpaolo Rovero

Click to enlarge.

The Bodleian Library in Oxford in 1605 possessed almost six thousand books. Of these, just thirty-six were in English.

From Shakespeare The World as Stage by Bill Bryson.  Chapter 5 page 115.

Yet curiously English was still struggling to gain respectability. Latin was still the language of official documents and of serious works of literature and learning. Thomas More’s Utopia, Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum, and Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica were all in Latin. The Bodleian Library in Oxford in 1605 possessed almost six thousand books. Of these, just thirty-six were in English. Attachment to Latin was such that in 1568 when one Thomas Smith produced the first textbook on the English language, he wrote it in Latin.

Thanks in no small measure to the work of Shakespeare and his fellows, English was at last rising to preeminence in the country of its creation. “It is telling,” observes Stanley Wells, “that William Shakespeare’s birth is recorded in Latin but that he dies in English, as ‘William Shakespeare, gentleman.’”

History

Sculpture of a chicken-headed man. China, Tang dynasty, 7th-10th century AD. Photo Credit: © Virtual Collection of Asian Masterpieces. pic.twitter.com/4DXPdQf8hr

— Archaeology & Art (@archaeologyart) March 21, 2022

 

An Insight

A transgender 4 year old is like a vegan cat. We all know who's making the lifestyle choices.

— Blaire White (@MsBlaireWhite) March 21, 2022

 

I see wonderful things

Wow amazing pic.twitter.com/5CmAXb45vV

— More awesome (@just_awesome25) March 15, 2022

 

Offbeat Humor

Thank you for the 300 followers! pic.twitter.com/gXnw8KVnBR

— Traditional Art (@art_tradi) March 22, 2022

 

Data Talks

The real iron curtain (living with your parents into your 30s) pic.twitter.com/BiVsbuPEVY

— Luka Ivan Jukic (@lijukic) March 22, 2022

 

After the bath, 1875 by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

After the bath, 1875 by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Click to enlarge.

These findings do not support the existence of a systematic price premium

From Investigating the Pink Tax: Evidence Against a Systematic Price Premium for Women in CPG by Sarah Moshary, Anna Tuchman, Natasha Bhatia.  From the Abstract.

This paper provides evidence on price disparities for personal care products targeted at different genders using a national dataset of grocery, convenience, drugstore, and mass merchandiser sales. We find that women’s products are more expensive in some categories (e.g., deodorant) but less expensive in others (e.g., razors). Further, in an apples-to-apples comparison of women’s and men’s products with similar ingredients, the women’s variant is less expensive in three out of five categories. Our results call into question the need for and efficacy of recently proposed and enacted legislation mandating price parity across gendered products.

From the paper itself.

We find that the pink gap is often negative; men’s products command higher per-product prices in six of nine categories that we study and higher unit prices in three of nine categories. We then estimate the pink tax via a comparison of products manufactured by the same firm and comprising the same leading ingredients. Men’s products are more expensive in three of five categories when we control for ingredients. These findings do not support the existence of a systematic price premium for women’s products, but our results do reveal that gender segmentation in personal care is pervasive and operates through product differentiation. A back-of-the-envelope calculation implies that the average household would save 1% by switching to substantially similar products targeted to a different gender.

I don't hear the pink tax referenced all that often anymore but it certainly has been around a long, long time and generally accepted as true.  And perhaps I simply don't travel in the right circles where I would see it discussed.  

Good to see someone testing it.  Always sounded vaguely plausible but also, believing in competitive markets, vaguely implausible as well.  

One more article of victimhood faith up in smoke.

Shakespeare produced roughly one-tenth of all the most quotable utterances written or spoken in English since its inception

From Shakespeare The World as Stage by Bill Bryson.  Chapter 5 page 114.

His real gift was as a phrasemaker. “Shakespeare’s language,” says Stanley Wells, “has a quality, difficult to define, of memorability that has caused many phrases to enter the common language.” Among them: one fell swoop, vanish into thin air, bag and baggage, play fast and loose, go down the primrose path, be in a pickle, budge an inch, the milk of human kindness, more sinned against than sinning, remembrance of things past, beggar all description, cold comfort, to thine own self be true, more in sorrow than in anger, the wish is father to the thought, salad days, flesh and blood, foul play, tower of strength, be cruel to be kind, blinking idiot, with bated breath, tower of strength, pomp and circumstance, foregone conclusion—and many others so repetitiously irresistible that we have debased them into clichés. He was so prolific that he could (in Hamlet) put two in a single sentence: “Though I am native here and to the manner born, it is a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance.”

If we take the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations as our guide, then Shakespeare produced roughly one-tenth of all the most quotable utterances written or spoken in English since its inception—a clearly remarkable proportion.

History

A collection of various rings, ca. 1295-1070 B.C.E, 19th Dynasty (Ramesside period), New Kingdom. pic.twitter.com/1WELZNsjvK

— Archaeology & Art (@archaeologyart) March 20, 2022

 

An Insight

"in narcissistic people...Good qualities in other people evoke a sense of humiliation and inferiority, and feelings of envy are warded off by devaluing or avoiding such people or by trying to destroy whatever good comes from them to protect self-esteem and maintain superiority." pic.twitter.com/JgipnhczUl

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) March 21, 2022

 

I see wonderful things

This is a mummy shrew and her whisker of baby shrews.

Shrews have poor eyesight and these babies are nearly blind. To get about they form a conga. Each adorable animal biting the tail of the one in frontpic.twitter.com/EKbRm1K634

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) March 21, 2022

 

Offbeat Humor

Kierkagaard could not have said it better. https://t.co/aXJ0ovzei0

— Jeffrey A Tucker (@jeffreyatucker) March 21, 2022

 

Data Talks

It is not a coincidence that the drop in uptake of essential childhood vaccinations coincides with a period of maximal covid vaccine coercion.

Hypothesis: Many covid-recovered parents who lost their jobs because of the anti-scientific mandates lost their trust in public health. https://t.co/A5ctT7umjk

— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) March 21, 2022

 

Portrait of a Young Woman (1912) by Leo van Gestel (Dutch, 1881-1941)

Portrait of a Young Woman (1912) by Leo van Gestel (Dutch, 1881-1941)

Click to enlarge.

A simple model

From Keeping Up With the FITs, 4/23 by Arnold Kling.

I keep thinking of Bryan Caplan’s simple model that the left hates markets and the right hates the left. In that sense, the right is a big tent, which is bound to include some clowns and weird acts. Too many of them also hate markets, unfortunately.

I like markets, free speech, and processes that reward talent and effort. To the extent that the left opposes those things, I hate the left. To the extent that the right is afraid of those things, I distrust the right.

 

Shakespeare maintained a lifelong attachment to thou in preference to you

From Shakespeare The World as Stage by Bill Bryson.  Chapter 5 page 112.

In many ways the language Shakespeare used was quite modern. He never employed the old-fashioned seeth but rather used the racier, more modern sees, and much preferred spoke to spake, cleft to clave, and goes to goeth. The new King James Bible, by contrast, opted for the older forms in each instance. At the same time Shakespeare maintained a lifelong attachment to thou in preference to you even though by the end of the sixteenth century thou was quaint and “dated. Ben Jonson used it hardly at all. He was also greatly attached to, and remarkably unself-conscious about, provincialisms, many of which became established in English thanks to his influence (among them cranny, forefathers, and aggravate), but initially grated on the ears of sophisticates.

He coined—or, to be more carefully precise, made the first recorded use of—2,035 words, and interestingly he indulged the practice from the very outset of his career. Titus Andronicus and Love’s Labour’s Lost, two of his earliest works, have 140 new words between them.

History

Detail from an ancient Egyptian papyrus, depicting a lion playing the board game of senet against a gazelle. The scene is one of multiple satiric vignettes of animals behaving like humans. ca. 1250 BC. pic.twitter.com/LHveCSgb4r

— Archaeology & Art (@archaeologyart) March 21, 2022

 

An Insight

Still one of the better things posted on this site, by the inimitable @EerikNKross. pic.twitter.com/56C3vF7gli

— Michael Weiss 🌻🇺🇸🇮🇪 (@michaeldweiss) March 21, 2022

I see wonderful things

🏛 The 5th century BCE temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion, Attica, Greece. 📷 © Stefanos Addimando pic.twitter.com/PMw9WF7Hk6

— Angela O'Brien (@GrecianGirly) March 21, 2022

 

Offbeat Humor

 

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Beach Walk, 1994 by Timothy Easton (British, b. 1943)

Beach Walk, 1994 by Timothy Easton (British, b. 1943) 

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After 1606 profanities were subject to hefty fines and so largely vanished.

From Shakespeare The World as Stage by Bill Bryson.  Chapter 5 page 112.

Much of the language Shakespeare used is lost to us now without external guidance. In an experiment in 2005, the Globe in London staged a production of Troilus and Cressida in “Early Modern English” or “Original Pronunciation.” The critic John Lahr, writing in the New Yorker, estimated that he could understand only about 30 percent of what was said. Even with modern pronunciations, meanings will often be missed. Few modern listeners would realize that in Henry V when the French princess Catherine mispronounces the English “neck” as “nick,” she has perpetrated a gross (and to a Shakespearean audience hugely comical) obscenity—though Shakespeare’s language on the whole was actually quite clean, indeed almost prudish. Where Ben Jonson manured his plays, as it were, with frequent interjections of “turd i’ your teeth,” “shit o’ your head,” and “I fart at thee,” Shakespeare’s audiences had to be content with a very occasional “a pox on’t,” “God’s bread,” and one “whoreson jackanapes.” (After 1606 profanities were subject to hefty fines and so largely vanished.)

History

A charming little statue of an elephant, found in the #Roman necropolis at Carmona (Spain). The statue was found in a structure now known as the 'Tomb of the Elephant' - but what the elephant was meant to symbolise is unknown 🐘 (📷 Conjunto Arqueológico de Carmona) pic.twitter.com/g9Dd3DZrdS

— Dr Jo Ball (@DrJEBall) March 20, 2022

 

An Insight

Men will literally buy a cavalry regiment and command it instead of going to therapy

— 🐘 Sirsfurther 🐘 (@sirsfurther) March 20, 2022

 

Twitter - where the "Improbably true" sneaks in among the flood of "Probably untrue"

File under "Things I can't imagine to be true but apparently are."

Amber Heard was once the ACLU's "Ambassador for women’s rights, with a focus on gender-based violence." https://t.co/q9OrpZ0RfZ

— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) April 20, 2022

And

CIA Torture Queen Now A Beauty And Life Coach

The news man tells me the CIA's "Queen of Torture" now runs a life and beauty coaching business which helps midlife women “look good, feel good, and do good.”https://t.co/58AUYxmkxx

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) April 21, 2022

I am a systematizer.  I like to create categories of knowledge and look for parallels, analogies, correlations, etc.  

I don't quite know what to do with this information.

Error correcting the mainstream media is the very definition of Sisyphean

Interesting.  A couple of days ago, videos were circulating of passengers cheering on airplanes in mid-flight when it was announced that the mask requirement had been deemed illegal.  Passengers cheering, flight attendants singing - lots of happiness.

Then, yesterday, a poll comes out showing that the American public is still largely in support of masking while traveling on planes, trains, and buses.  As so often happens, I saw the headline, thought, "That seems improbable.  I wonder if I should click through."  

And of course did not.  This is the epistemic dilemma when the press is unreliable in its commitment to accurate reporting.  You ignore that which seems improbable at the peril of succumbing to confirmation bias.

If you click through, you spend ten minutes finding the errors.  I don't have the time to error check all the errors in the mainstream media.  A Sisyphean task if there ever was one.  All I need to know is whether the report is usefully true and you statistically are more likely to be correct by assuming that the report is erroneous.

Fortunately, today, someone posts their dig into the poll behind the 56% support masks on airplanes headline.  I was correct to assume that the headline was not usefully true.

This AP poll, predictably ballyhooed by the mask-loving press today, "feels" wrong based on anecdotes from around the nation this week. Well, digging into the numbers and methodology, it very likely IS wrong, or at the least unreliable. I dug in a bit. It's suspect. 🧵 https://t.co/Et25Rh6EAu

— Matt, Pre-School Diploma 😀 (@statomattic) April 21, 2022

 

I see wonderful things

The Pont du Gard Roman aqueduct bridge, towering 50-metres over the Gardon River - the tallest aqueduct bridge surviving from the ancient world. Carrying 200,000 m3 of water a day to the Roman city of Nemausus, the water channel descends by just 17-metres over its 31-mile length. pic.twitter.com/yKOiWGXVnX

— Gareth Harney (@OptimoPrincipi) March 21, 2022

 

Offbeat Humor

pic.twitter.com/P3obMHQYTW

— Orwell & Goode (@OrwellNGoode) March 20, 2022

 

Data Talks

Generally I'm silent about IPCC issues, but the last assessment WG2 seems to be an entirely political document, opposed to the more science-based WG1.

And that's bad, very bad! How to take IPCC seriously if it contradicts itself on the same assessment run? https://t.co/HLRVUnNeM8

— Leandro Cardoso (@siegnant) March 22, 2022

 

Sketches of Animals and Landscapes by Albrecht Dürer

Sketches of Animals and Landscapes by Albrecht Dürer

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A Table Alphabeticall of Hard Words, spelled “words” two ways on the title page.

From Shakespeare The World as Stage by Bill Bryson.  Chapter 5 page 110.

And there was never a better time to delve for pleasure in language than the sixteenth century, when novelty blew through English like a spring breeze. Some twelve thousand words, a phenomenal number, entered the language between 1500 and 1650, about half of them still in use today, and old words were employed in ways that had not been tried before. Nouns became verbs and adverbs; adverbs became adjectives. Expressions that could not grammatically have existed before—such as “breathing one’s last” and “backing a horse,” both coined by Shakespeare—were suddenly popping up everywhere. Double negatives and double superlatives—“the most unkindest cut of all”—troubled no one and allowed an additional degree of emphasis that has since been lost.

Spelling was luxuriantly variable, too. You could write “St Paul’s” or “St Powles” and no one seemed to notice or care. Gracechurch Street was sometimes “Gracious Steet,” sometimes “Grass Street”; Stratford-upon-Avon became at times “Stratford upon Haven.” People could be extraordinarily casual even with their own names. Christopher Marlowe signed himself “Cristofer Marley” in his one surviving autograph and was registered at Cambridge as “Christopher Marlen.” Elsewhere he is recorded as “Morley” and “Merlin,” among others. In like manner the impresario Philip Henslowe indifferently wrote “Henslowe” or “Hensley” when signing his name, and others made it Hinshley, Hinchlow, Hensclow, Hynchlowes, Inclow, Hinchloe, and a half dozen more. More than eighty spellings of Shakespeare’s name have been recorded, from “Shappere” to “Shaxberd.” (It is perhaps worth noting that the spelling we all use is not the one endorsed by the Oxford English Dictionary, which prefers “Shakspere.”) Perhaps nothing speaks more eloquently of the variability of spelling in the age than the fact that a dictionary published in 1604, A Table Alphabeticall of Hard Words, spelled “words” two ways on the title page.

Pronunciations, too, were often very different from today’s. We know from Shakespeare that knees, grease, grass, and grace all rhymed (at least “ more or less), and that he could pun reason with raisin and Rome with room. The first hundred or so lines of Venus and Adonis offer such striking rhyme pairs as satiety and variety, fast and haste, bone and gone, entreats and frets, swears and tears, heat and get. Elsewhere plague is rhymed with wage, grapes with mishaps, Calais with challice. (The name of the French town was often spelled “Callis” or “Callice.”)

History

The oldest crown in England. Crown of White Princess originally belonged to Queen Anne of Bohemia, wife of Richard II of England, 14th century. pic.twitter.com/gZrpISFsJx

— History Defined (@historydefined) March 20, 2022

 

An Insight

Overheard in Silicon Valley: "The modern university is a political madrassa married to a trade school married to a hedge fund married to a sports team married to an adult day care center married to a visa law firm."

— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) March 21, 2022

 

I see wonderful things

Amazing nature... Bees don't fly in the dark! pic.twitter.com/V56WU9TCq6

— More awesome (@just_awesome25) March 15, 2022

 

Offbeat Humor

My wife and I's friend booked us a table at a restaurant called The Manhattan Project and I'M the bad guy for asking if it's a fusion restaurant? That's a 10/10 joke

— Pete Stegemeyer (@itspeterj) March 19, 2022

 

Data Talks

Most people see the image on the left as a woman and the image on the right as a man. But the only difference between them is skin tone. https://t.co/wdPAHxpExm pic.twitter.com/vNUCzEWlr7

— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) March 21, 2022

 

The Game of the Vestals by Ulpiano Checa Sanz (Spanish, 1860–1916)

The Game of the Vestals by Ulpiano Checa Sanz (Spanish, 1860–1916)

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Dangerous, ineffective, ill-founded, and failing to achieve stated goals

From Vinay Prasad.

A couple of important points.  While he is emphasizing the important issue that many of the most authoritarian Covid interventions (lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, etc.) were on shaky ground, I think his other point is perhaps even greater.

Yes, the administration's whole response was unconstitutionally authoritarian, stripping people of many of their constitutional rights (body integrity, property, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, etc.). 

Equally important on a different dimension is the fact that virtually all the interventions were 1) unsupported by current facts and knowledge and indeed went against well established pre-Covid pandemic policies, and 2) the CDC and FDA never sought to establish an empirical knowledge base which would justify the imposed policies or confirm their efficacy.

It is one thing to be unconstitutional and effective in achieving outcomes.  It is another thing to be unconstitutional AND pursue bad policy inconsistent with the known facts AND ineffective in achieving the stated outcomes.  

The US government achieved the latter - unconstitutional actions with no empirical basis for those actions and no effective intervention achievement.  Vaccines faded unexpectedly quickly, side effects to MRNA were greater than anticipated, interventions had no impact on spread, and economic and health damages were greater than anticipated.  

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A positive and palpable appreciation of the transfixing power of language

From Shakespeare The World as Stage by Bill Bryson.  Chapter 5 page 109.

Much has been written about the size of Shakespeare’s vocabulary. It is actually impossible to say how many words Shakespeare knew, and in any case attempting to do so would be a fairly meaningless undertaking. Marvin Spevack in his magnificent and hefty concordance—the most scrupulous, not to say obsessive, assessment of Shakespearean idiom ever undertaken—counts 29,066 different words in Shakespeare, but that rather generously includes inflected forms and contractions. If instead you treat all the variant forms of a word—for example, take, takes, taketh, taking, tak’n, taken, tak’st, tak’t, took, tooke, took’st, and tookst—as a single word (or “lexeme,” to use the scholarly term), which is the normal practice, his vocabulary falls back to about 20,000 words, not a terribly impressive number. The average person today, it is thought, knows probably 50,000 words. That isn’t because people today are more articulate or imaginatively expressive but simply because we have at our disposal thousands of common words—television, sandwich, seatbelt, chardonnay, cinematographer—that Shakespeare couldn’t know because they didn’t yet exist.

Anyway, and obviously, it wasn’t so much a matter of how many words he used, but what he did with them—and no one has ever done more. It is often said that what sets Shakespeare apart is his ability to illuminate the workings of the soul and so on, and he does that superbly, goodness knows, but what really characterizes his work—every bit of it, in poems and plays and even dedications, throughout every portion of his career—is a positive and palpable appreciation of the transfixing power of language. A Midsummer Night’s Dream remains an enchanting work after four hundred years, but few would argue that it cuts to the very heart of human behavior. What it does do is take, and give, a positive satisfaction in the joyous possibilities of verbal expression.

 

History

Bronze mask of Dionysos originally appliqué of a situla. Made and found in Greece. 2nd c.BC. British Museum. pic.twitter.com/x41u0EUl4l

— Ioannis Tz (@tzoumio) March 20, 2022

 

Credentialism is just ad-hominem

From We are doomed: attacks on Leana Wen and Monica Gandhi by Vinay Prasad.

Recently a junior person told me about a stupid, zero covid policy in her hospital that blocked visitors. She wanted to speak out against it, but ultimately felt it wasn’t worth it. “it is crazy we can’t even say obvious things.”

What she meant was: in the current climate of lunacy, you cannot even point out flawed, illogical, pointless covid policies without being victim of a mob of fellow doctors. In fact, just yesterday, some such physicians were furious with dropping the cloth mask mandate (when not eating) rule on airplanes. Some tweeted that dropping the cloth mask requirement on airplanes would result in babies dying. This hyperbolic rhetoric lacks empirical support— there is no evidence a cloth mask mandate saves babies. But moreover, is illogical: by their own logic, eating pretzels on the flight meant babies die (as you lower your mask to eat them), and yet they were silent. No pretzel is worth the life of a child! Where was the outrage over that?

Recently, peak criticism has fallen on the shoulders of Leana Wen and Monica Gandhi. Not a day goes by where I don’t see a fellow doctor attacking these two professionals. Let me be clear. They don’t attack the policy ideas espoused by the two; they often name them directly and target their attacks on them personally. Often using the screenshot tool, and luring their own merry band of trolls to attack.

One doctor faulted Dr. Wen for lacking credentials. But she was the former Baltimore public health commissioner! Surely she is more than qualified to comment on public health policy! But even if she didn’t hold this post, why not focus on her argument? Credentialism is just ad-hominem.

An Insight

"People who demonstrate knowledge, abilities, and skills are more likely to be sought as partners and group members...because their skills benefit others, other people desire the rewards of their achievements, or because others wish to be associated with successful people." pic.twitter.com/7I6PUCyEKT

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) March 21, 2022

 

I see wonderful things

This is us pic.twitter.com/nlKg3PZEx6

— Rizoma Field School (@RizomaSchool) March 21, 2022

Offbeat Humor

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Data Talks

States created by Normans in 1130!

The final results of their martial skills and adventurous spirit. They defeated many imposing armies that stood on their way to achieve this. pic.twitter.com/5mBdkYB1eQ

— Aristocratic Fury (@LandsknechtPike) March 20, 2022

 

Breakfast, 1882 by Gustav Wentzel

Breakfast, 1882 by Gustav Wentzel

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