Wednesday, July 31, 2024

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On The Beach by Sidney Goodman (American, 1936-2013)

On The Beach by Sidney Goodman (American, 1936-2013)



















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Tuesday, July 30, 2024

Modern Diomedes and Glaukos

X/Twitter is often useful but sometimes it is a delight.
The reference is to Iliad, Book VI:119-211.  Glaucus meets Diomedes on the battlefield and tells his lineage.  

Now Diomedes and Glaucus, son of Hippolochus, met in the space between the armies, eager for the fight. When they had come within range, the son of Tydeus, he of the loud war-cry, called: ‘What mighty man are you, among mortals? I have never seen you on the field of honour before today, yet facing my long-shadowed spear, you show greater daring than all the rest. Unhappy are those whose sons meet my fury. But if you be one of the gods from heaven, I will not fight with the immortals. Not even mighty Lycurgus, son of Dryas, survived his war with the gods for long. He chased the nymphs, who nursed frenzied Dionysus, through the sacred hills of Nysa, and struck by the murderous man’s ox-goad their holy wands fell from their hands. But Dionysus fleeing, plunged beneath the waves, trembling and terrified by the man’s loud cries, and Thetis took him to her breast. Then the gods who take their ease were angered by Lycurgus, and Zeus blinded him. So that, hated by the immortals, he soon died. No way then would I wish to oppose the blessed gods. But if you are mortal, and eat the food men grow, come on, and meet the toils of fate the sooner.’

‘Brave Diomedes’, Hippolochus’ son replied, ‘why ask my lineage? Like the generations of leaves are those of men. The wind blows and one year’s leaves are scattered on the ground, but the trees bud and fresh leaves open when spring comes again. So a generation of men is born as another passes away. Still if you wish to know my lineage, listen well to what others know already. There’s a town called Ephyre in a corner of Argos, the horse-pasture, and a man lived there called Sisyphus, the craftiest of men, a son of Aeolus. He had a son called Glaucus, and Glaucus was father of peerless Bellerophon, to whom the gods gave beauty and every manly grace. But Zeus made him subject to King Proetus, who was stronger and plotted against him, and drove him from Argive lands. Now Proetus’ wife, the fair Anteia, longed madly for Bellerephon, and begged him to lie with her in secret, but wise Bellerephon was a righteous man and could not be persuaded. So she wove a web of deceit, and said to King Proetus: ‘Kill this Bellerephon, who tried to take me by force, or die in the doing of it.’ The king was angered by her words. He would not kill Bellerephon, as his heart shrank from murder, but he packed him off to Lycia, and scratching many deadly signs on a folded tablet, gave him that fatal token, and told him to hand it to the Lycian king, his father-in-law, so to engineer his death. Bellerephon went to Lycia escorted by peerless gods, and when he reached the streams of Xanthus the king of great Lycia welcomed him with honour, entertaining him for nine days, and sacrificing nine oxen. But when rosy-fingered Dawn lit the tenth day his host questioned him, and asked what token he brought him from his son-in-law Proetus.

On first deciphering the fatal message, he ordered Bellerephon to kill the monstrous Chimaera, spawned by gods and not men, that had a lion’s head, goat’s body and serpent’s tail, and breathed out deadly blasts of scorching fire. But Bellerephon slew her, guided by the gods. Next he was sent against the notorious Solymi, and fought, he said, the mightiest battle he ever fought. Then thirdly he slaughtered the Amazons, women the equal of men. The king planned a deadly ruse for his return, staging an ambush by the pick of the Lycian warriors. But not one of them returned: the peerless Bellerephon killed them all. The king then realised he was a true son of the gods, and offered him his daughter and half of his kingdom, to stay. The Lycians moreover marked out for him an estate of the first rank, with tracts of orchards and plough-land for his delight.

The lady bore Bellerephon, that warlike man, three children, Isander, Hippolochus and Laodameia. Zeus the Counsellor slept with Laodameia and she bore godlike Sarpedon, now a bronze-clad warrior. But the time came when Bellerephon too was loathed by the gods, and wandered off alone over the Aleian plain, eating his heart away and shunning the ways of men. Ares, unwearied by war, killed his son Isander, battling with the glorious Solymi; and Laodameia was slain in anger by Artemis of the Golden Reins. Hippolochus remained and fathered me, and from him I claim descent. He sent me here to Troy and charged me earnestly to be the best and bravest, and not bring shame on my ancestors the best men in Ephyre and all broad Lycia. Such is my lineage, from that blood am I sprung.’

Diomedes, of the loud war-cry rejoiced at these words. Planting his spear in the fertile earth, he spoke to the Lycian general courteously: ‘You are, then, a friend of long-standing to my father’s house, since noble Oeneus once entertained peerless Bellerephon in his palace, and kept him there twenty days. Moreover they exchanged fine friendship gifts. Oeneus gave him a bright scarlet belt, and Bellerephon replied with a two-handled gold cup, which was there in the palace when I came away. But Tydeus my father I scarce remember, since I was a little child when he left, when the Achaean warriors died at Thebes. So I will be your good friend at home in Argos, and you will be mine in Lycia, should I come to visit. Let us avoid each other’s spear in the battle, there are plenty more Trojans and their worthy allies for me to slay, if a god lets my feet overtake them, and many Greeks for you to kill, if you can. Let us exchange our armour then, that those around may know that our grandfather’s friendship makes us two friends.’

At this, the two leapt down from their chariots, and clasped each other’s hands as a pledge of their good faith. 

It is also one of the early uses, among many instances, of the metaphor of men as leaves, one generation succeeding the other.   It is a beautiful metaphor and beautifully rendered here and it echoes down the generations of literature.

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Home Port by Nick Patten

 Home Port by Nick Patten































Click to enlarge.

Heh

 

Monday, July 29, 2024

History

 

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Sur la route d’Anacapri (On the Way to Anacapri), 1922 by Gerda Wegener (Danish, 1885-1940)

Sur la route d’Anacapri (On the Way to Anacapri), 1922 by Gerda Wegener (Danish, 1885-1940)



























Click to enlarge.

Sunday, July 28, 2024

You can only know that which they allow you to know

From internet memory holes by el gato malo.  The subheading is this issue looks to extend beyond just google

He starts with the discovery:




























Google apparently was not returning anything in its autofill which you would expect given the event two weeks ago, such as 'assassination attempt on Trump.'

The bad cat tries other search engines and none of them autosuggest Trump.

Evil search engines and massive conspiracy to suppress knowledge?

this is not just google. it’s one big memory hole. i know some of the people who run these engines. some (like bendan eich) are longtime gatopals™.

they are not part of a shadowy cabal to erase the trump shooting.

i think this is something deeper and it’s at the media level, not the search engine level.

i think the most parsimonious explanation is not coordinated search engine meddling but rather the fact that there is nothing for which to search.

you simply do not see these words, “assassination” and “attempt” in the news stories to which things are linked.

you can find them in social media, but they are basically absent in media media.

they simply refused to call it that.

Then, even as he is writing his post, one of the search engine begins to autosuggest Trump. 

So it looks like a search engine conspiracy but it might instead be a media conspiracy.  And maybe it is only a matter of timing.  Eventually the legacy media (whose content heavily influences searches) begins to at least incorporate some of the more timely and curious knowledge turned up in blogs and social media.

We'll just have to see but it is most curious.

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Unknown title by Nick Alm (Sweden)

 Unknown title by Nick Alm (Sweden)

















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Saturday, July 27, 2024

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Danish India

From Links for July 2024 from Astral Codex Ten. 

Slightly related: history of Danish India.

Slight means vestigially.  

But Danish colonies in India?  I knew of Greenland, Faroe Islands, Iceland and the Caribbean Islands now known as the US Virgin Islands.  But I don't think I knew that Denmark had possessions in India.  For some 200 years apparently.  Denmark was also a joint kingdom with Norway for many years.  

The three Indian territories included

the town of Tharangambadi in present-day Tamil Nadu state, Serampore in present-day West Bengal, and the Nicobar Islands, currently part of India's union territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. 

The Nicobar Islands were a notoriously dangerous set of islands for mariners since the beginning of the modern era (1500) with an aversion for castaways and an affinity for cannibalism.  They were apparently pretty hard to colonize as well.

Organised European colonisation on the islands began with the Danish East India Company in 1754/56. During this time they were administered from Tranquebar (in continental Danish India) under the name of Frederiksøerne. Missionaries from the Moravian Church Brethren's settlement in Tranquebar attempted a settlement on Nancowry and died in great numbers from disease. The islands were repeatedly abandoned due to outbreaks of malaria: 1784–1807/09, 1830–1834, and finally from 1848 gradually for good. 

Any other Danish colonies that I lost track of or overlooked?

Several trading stations in the vicinity of modern Ghana.  I do recall these.

And of course,  St. Thomas, and St. Jan (now St. John), and St. Croix in the Caribbean.  I knew about these as well but hadn't thought of them in a long while.

So no other novel colonies that I can spot.  Which doesn't mean there isn't the odd trading station or two that I am overlooking.  I remember how surprised I was many years ago to find that the Netherlands had, back in the seventeenth century, once had some colonies in the area now known as Brazil.  

The Parthenon, 1939 by Alex Kalderach (German, 1880-1965)

The Parthenon, 1939 by Alex Kalderach (German, 1880-1965)




















Click to enlarge.

Friday, July 26, 2024

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Although he wasn’t Jewish, he was so angry that his local country club banned Jews that he applied to join the Jewish country club instead.

From Links for July 2024 from Astral Codex Ten.  See original for links.  

When Warren Buffet was just a young early-career businessman, he wanted to join a country club. Although he wasn’t Jewish, he was so angry that his local country club banned Jews that he applied to join the Jewish country club instead. The Jewish country club wasn’t sure they accepted non-Jews, but local rabbi Myer Kripke spoke in Buffett’s favor and he was eventually accepted. Buffett repaid the rabbi’s kindness by helping him invest his money. He turned Rabbi Kripke’s life savings of $70,000, into $25 million, helping the rabbi and his wife become two of America’s leading Jewish philanthropists. Extra bonus facts: Rabbi Kripke was the father of Saul Kripke, sometimes considered the greatest modern philosopher, and the second cousin of Eric Kripke, showrunner for The Boys.

Once upon a time in Kamizierz- series, 2014 by Richard Tuschman

Once upon a time in Kamizierz- series, 2014 by Richard Tuschman






























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Trench Rat by Rachel Fleming

Trench Rat
by Rachel Fleming

A battered Woodbine is a precious thing.  
If you can light the bugger, better still.

Inhale the harsh, uplifting, acrid smoke   
and, for a fleeting moment, you’re a King.
   
Dear old King George can keep his best cigars
and damn Lloyd George, may that sly bastard choke. 

It’s him and and not the Hun I’d choose to kill
to end this bloody war to end all wars.

Thursday, July 25, 2024

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That meaner democratic formula

From Links for July 2024 from Astral Codex Ten.  

Mind and Mythos essay club looks at GK Chesterton’s Defense of Heraldry. Key quotes:

When the great trumpet of equality was blown, almost immediately afterwards was made one of the greatest blunders in the history of mankind. For all this pride and vivacity, all these towering symbols and flamboyant colours, should have been extended to mankind. The tobacconist should have had a crest, and the cheesemonger a war-cry … Instead of doing this, the democrats made the appalling mistake—a mistake at the root of the whole modern malady—of decreasing the human magnificence of the past instead of increasing it. They did not say, as they should have done, to the common citizen, 'You are as good as the Duke of Norfolk,' but used that meaner democratic formula, 'The Duke of Norfolk is no better than you are.'
 

Slaithwaite by Chris Cyprus

Slaithwaite by Chris Cyprus

























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Wednesday, July 24, 2024

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They didn’t hold a grudge either

From Links for July 2024 from Astral Codex Ten.  

William “Wild Bill” Langer was governor of North Dakota in the 1930s. He’s best known for his corruption trial; after receiving a guilty verdict, he “signed a Declaration of Independence of North Dakota, declared martial law in Bismarck, and barricaded himself in the governor's mansion”. The North Dakotans didn’t go along with it, but they didn’t hold a grudge either - they re-elected him two years later.

Bus Stop, Mile End, 1983 by Doreen Fletcher

Bus Stop, Mile End, 1983 by Doreen Fletcher




















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Tuesday, July 23, 2024

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To the Yellow Door by Nick Patten

To the Yellow Door by Nick Patten

























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Monday, July 22, 2024

Cash transfers and health - We can rule out even very small improvements in physical health

From Does Income Affect Health? Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial of a Guaranteed Income by Sarah Miller, et al.  From the Abstract:
 
This paper provides new evidence on the causal relationship between income and health by
studying a randomized experiment in which 1,000 low-income adults in the United States received $1,000 per month for three years, with 2,000 control participants receiving $50 over that same period. The cash transfer resulted in large but short-lived improvements in stress and food security, greater use of hospital and emergency department care, and increased medical spending of about $20 per month in the treatment relative to the control group. Our results also suggest that the use of other office-based care—particularly dental care—may have increased as a result of the transfer. However, we find no effect of the transfer across several measures of physical health as captured by multiple well-validated survey measures and biomarkers derived from blood draws. We can rule out even very small improvements in physical health and the effect that would be implied by the cross-sectional correlation between income and health lies well outside our confidence intervals. We also find that the transfer did not improve mental health after the first year and by year 2 we can again reject very small improvements. We also find precise null effects on self-reported access to health care, physical activity, sleep, and several other measures related to preventive care and health behaviors. Our results imply that more targeted interventions may be more effective at reducing health inequality between high- and low-income individuals, at least for the population and time frame that we study.  

Short answer - Cash transfers make people feel better and less anxious in the first year but not longer than that.  Transfers do not improve health outcomes.  

Good effort here on a complex issue which is expensive to research.  Broadly similar findings as I have seen in related research elsewhere.  More to be done but it reinforces that there are unlikely to be any silver-bullet solutions.  At least not in terms of cash transfers.

Can you shout fire in a crowded theater?

Double click to enlarge.

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Madame Caillebotte, 2017 by Axel Krause (German)

Madame Caillebotte, 2017 by Axel Krause (German)


















Click to enlarge.

Sunday, July 21, 2024

History

 

It is an unsolvable problem just like all the other unsolvable problems we have solved.

From Are people too flawed, ignorant, and tribal for open societies? by Dan Williams.  The subheading is A deep dive into four factors that prevent members of open societies from understanding political reality: complexity, invisibility, incentives, and politically motivated cognition.  He discussing the epistemic challenges for individuals in a large, complex, evolving attention economy where the rewards of deceit can be large, and the probability of punishment is small.  

It used to be that institutions (Church, Guilds, Associations, Political Parties, Cultural Norms, Social Norms, etc.) functioned as epistemic stabilizers but that has eroded.  Technology has exacerbated the problem but the decline in epistemic functionality of institutions has made the problem far worse.

This has an important implication: In ordinary social life (and in the small-scale societies that characterise almost all of human evolution), humans can typically check what people tell them against reality. That is, although our species has always depended on communication and social trust, we can often test people’s trustworthiness. If Harry tells me that Sally is dull, and I learn firsthand that she is exciting and interesting, I will decrease my trust in Harry.

Nothing like this is true in democratic politics. We can rarely directly verify the information we acquire from others. We can cross-check it against the competing testimony of others, but we cannot directly verify that testimony either. This complicates the optimistic vision of a “marketplace of ideas.”

Williams is markedly pessimistic about how the challenge might be resolved.

I am less despondent.  We are humans.  The value of knowledge and wisdom is increasing.  Our old mechanisms for creating and transmitting knowledge and wisdom have eroded due to global prosperity, integration, and ideological assault.  Hayek's The Knowledge Problem is ever more real.

But we are humans, we do respond to incentives, and our responses are often innovative.

Yes, it is easy to see the existing degradation.

Yes, it is hard to see how we restore epistemic functionality as we once had.

But I am confident we will find better ways of creating and transmitting knowledge and wisdom.  In ways we don't yet anticipate.

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The Little Ships at Dunkirk: June 1940 by Norman Wilkinson

The Little Ships at Dunkirk: June 1940 by Norman Wilkinson





















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Saturday, July 20, 2024

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Corner Shop, Canning Town, 1994 by Doreen Fletcher

Corner Shop, Canning Town, 1994 by Doreen Fletcher


















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Friday, July 19, 2024

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Sunrise in Åsgårdstrand, 1893-94 by Edvard Munch

Sunrise in Åsgårdstrand, 1893-94 by Edvard Munch



















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Thursday, July 18, 2024

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The Kiss, 1966 by Pablo Picasso

The Kiss, 1966 by Pablo Picasso




























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Wednesday, July 17, 2024

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The Golden Hour, 1875 by Thomas Moran

The Golden Hour, 1875 by Thomas Moran


















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Vase with Flowers, 1700 by Rachel Ruysch (Dutch 1664-1750)

Vase with Flowers, 1700 by Rachel Ruysch (Dutch 1664-1750)
































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Tuesday, July 16, 2024

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For Conversation by Nick Patten

For Conversation by Nick Patten





























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Monday, July 15, 2024

History

 

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I see wonderful things

 

Offbeat Humor