History

Ancient Rome was the the first city to reach a population of 1 million people in 133BC. London, England reached the mark in 1810. pic.twitter.com/paTvMXcNA8

— Roman History (@romanhistory1) December 27, 2022

 

An Insight

July 8: “Buttigieg pledges to diversify aviation workforce”

July 11: Buttigieg says pilots must retire at 65

Sept 13: “The Airline Pilot Shortage is Worse Than You Think” pic.twitter.com/PeeSaEjR3r

— John Hasson (@SonofHas) December 27, 2022

 

I see wonderful things

Tigers live in lush tropical jungles with lots of wide rivers. They can have territories as large as 100 square km and being able to swim across rivers is a big evolutionary advantage

[read more: https://t.co/YrPQ2kUeGz]
[📹 https://t.co/plGrvQMCtG]pic.twitter.com/qFtMrkWELm

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) December 24, 2022

 

Offbeat Humor

preparing to commit an act of falcon based violence pic.twitter.com/n3pu2SywPp

— weird medieval guys (@WeirdMedieval) December 27, 2022

 

Mrs. Piggott was reputed to take trouble with her soups

From Cover Her Face by P.D. James.   An Adam Dalgliesh mystery written in 1962.  Dalgliesh is temporarily ensconced in the local Inn and James is describing the fare.

They had been assured that Mrs. Piggott who, with her husband, kept the inn, was noted for her good plain cooking and plenty of it. The expression had struck ominously on the ears of men whose travels had inured them to most of the vagaries of good plain English fare. It is probable that Martin suffered most. His war service in France and Italy had given him a taste for continental food which he had been indulging ever since on holidays abroad. Most of his spare time and all of his spare money was spent in this way. He and his cheerful, enterprising wife were enthusiastic and unsophisticated travelers, confident of their ability to be understood, tolerated and well fed in almost any corner of Europe. So far, strangely enough, they had never been disappointed.  Sitting in deep abdominal distress Martin let his mind rumble on cassoulet de Toulouse and remembered with yearning the poularde en vessu he had first eaten in a modest hotel in the Ardeche.  Dalgleish's needs were at once simpler and more exacting. He merely craved simple English food properly cooked.  Mrs. Piggott was reputed to take trouble with her soups. This was true in so far as the packaged ingredients had been sufficiently well mixed to exclude lumps.  She had even experimented with flavours and today's mixture of tomato (orange) and oxtail (reddish brown), thick enough to support the spoon unaided, was as startling to the palate as to the eye. Soup had been followed by a couple of mutton chops nestling artistically against a mound of potato and flanked with tinned peas larger and shinier than any peas which had ever seen pod. They tasted of soya flour.  A green dye which bore little resemblance to the color of any known vegetable seeped from them and mingled disagreeably with the gravy. An apple and black-currant pie had followed in which neither of the fruits had met each other nor the pastry until they had been arranged on the plate by Mrs. Piggott's careful hand and liberally blanketed with synthetic custard.

Mrs. Piggott's cooking reminds me of the institutional fare I experienced in England from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s first in state school in lower grades and then in boarding school in 10th grade.

I remember in particular those "tinned peas larger and shinier than any peas which had ever seen pod."  

In 1966, this was the first time we lived in England and this was my first exposure to English state school.  As any third culture kid can testify, landing in a new place, with new culture, different clothes and weather, different foods, and different customs is in turns taxing, alarming, startling, discomforting, bewildering and refreshing.

Lunch at a state school in England in 1966 was daunting.  I was accustomed to food from home, both plentiful and palatable.  England in 1966 was still climbing out from the effects of the Second World War.  Incomes were low, choices narrow, times lean.

I quickly discovered that the food was bland-to-off-putting (liver) and that you had to eat whatever you were served.  Even if you had not requested it or wanted it.

Next most alarming after the liver was the great green mushy peas.  James has their number:

They tasted of soya flour.  A green dye which bore little resemblance to the color of any known vegetable seeped from them and mingled disagreeably with the gravy. 

Those state school lunchtime peas put me off peas for at least two decades.  It was only as an adult that I discovered regular peas and petits pois - both not just edible but enjoyable.  And no botanical kin to the monstrosities mushily glopped onto our trays way back long ago.

I can smell them, I can see them dissolving into the mashed potatoes.  I can feel the squishy, pasty texture of way over cooked peas.

James' description almost suggests that English peas in this period might have been a manufactured, reconstituted pea substitute.  I google.  Perhaps they were a synthetic substitute but apparently not.  

They sound like they were marrowfat peas.

Marrowfat peas are green mature peas (Pisum sativum L. or Pisum sativum var. medullare) that have been allowed to dry out naturally in the field, rather than being harvested while still young like the normal garden pea. They are starchy, and are used to make mushy peas. Marrowfat peas with a good green colour are exported from the UK to Japan for the snack food market, while paler peas are used for canning. Those with thin skins and a soft texture are ideal for making mushy peas.

The accompanying photo looks right.

Click to enlarge.

And mushy peas?  Oh, English cuisine.

Mushy peas are dried marrowfat peas which are first soaked overnight in water with sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), and then rinsed in fresh water, after which the peas are gathered in a saucepan, covered with water, and brought to a boil, and then simmered until the peas are softened. The mush is seasoned with salt and pepper.

Throughout the British Isles (Northern England and the Midlands in particular) they are a traditional accompaniment to fish and chips. In Northern England they are also commonly served as part of a popular snack called pie and peas (akin to the South Australian pie floater; but instead of the thick pea soup of the floater, in pie and peas it is mushy peas which accompany the meat pie) and are considered to be a part of traditional British cuisine. They are sometimes also packed into a ball, dipped in batter, deep-fried, and served as a pea fritter. Mushy peas can also be bought ready-prepared in tin cans.

Oh, the horror.  Oh, the humanity.

Click to enlarge.

MSM and academia has the right to be honest but apparently they don't have the ability.

From Was COVID a top cause of death for children? by Mary Pat Campbell.  The subheading is Specifically, in the period August 1, 2021 - July 31, 2022

She is outraged at public health researchers who play numbers games to get the answers they want rather than investigate the data to find out what it is saying.  In this instance, a paper which generated the headline "Covid-19 is a leading cause of death for children in the US, despite relatively low mortality rate."

Campbell points out that they commit two data sins - 1) they strategically select the time frame most conducive to the conclusion they wish to draw even though it is unrepresentative, and 2) they play fast and loose with definitions.  

Campbel points out that infants and children are distinct categories with completely different data profiles.  While very low in absolute terms, the first year of life, i.e. infants, have an all causes death rate 10-20 times any other year before young adulthood.  

Similarly, the further you move into adulthood, the higher is your death rate (while still low).  So if you are a researcher who wants to maximize the impression of elevated levels of childhood death, you want to include both infants and young adults.  Not because they are representative of children but because they juice the numbers.

So now you can see why young adults and infants were included. They could have gotten the ranking they wanted with COVID with just 1-17-year-olds (that is, children), but they would not have gotten the total number of deaths up to something close to 800.

Instead of 829 COVID deaths, which is what I got for ages 0-19 for August 2021 - July 2022, if I had restricted it to ages 1-17 years, which are the ages I look at when I look at child mortality, I would have seen: 476 COVID deaths.

That’s quite a different number.

The age where COVID constituted the highest percentage of deaths for that period was age 9, which is where one finds the lowest mortality rate in general. It was 6% of the deaths. For the other ages, it was about 3% of deaths.

So, it is interesting that at the worst of the pandemic, even for the group where COVID deaths were the highest percentage of deaths, it was only 6% of the deaths. Accidents were still the highest-ranked cause of death in that age group.

[snip]

Oh, and to answer the title: yes, it was a top ten cause of death for children, where children were defined as age 1-17 years old, for the period Aug 1, 2021 - July 31, 2022, using rankable causes of death for underlying cause of death as defined by the CDC.

In fact, it ranked #6 instead of #8, but only 476 deaths, about the same number as heart disease, which was 455 for the same period.

While Covid is Number 6 on the ranking, it is only roughly 10% of the number one killer, Accidents.  

Between mainstream media, academia and vested interests, it feels like deception is endemic.  As Justice Roberts might put it, "The best way to rebuild trust is to stop deceiving."  

Alternatively, as Ron White says:

I had the right to remain silent... but I didn't have the ability. 

MSM and academia has the right to be honest but apparently they don't have the ability.

Data Talks

It's neat to visually see "The Current Thing" pic.twitter.com/R3fFR5UIKb

— Neville Medhora (@nevmed) December 22, 2022

 

Winter Pastoral by S. R. Badmin

Winter Pastoral by S. R. Badmin

Click to enlarge.

You think theft is bad in the cities, just take a look at Federal government looting via monetary and tax policy

Reader Loki makes an observation.

Re your similarities post the other day and raising taxes, I don’t hear it often discussed how inflationary policies are effectively a secret tax. Prices rise, wages rise, tax brackets stay the same.

He is referencing Similarities between the loony left and the British Crown in 1770.  I point out that while the British taxation proposals made perfect sense and were seemingly fair from the perspective of the British, they could be, and were, seen as existentially malign in the American colonies.  The British government was seeking to deliberately reduce not only the degree of freedom in the colonies but also their physical and financial well-being.

My first thought to Loki's comment is, we took care of that in the 1980s when we collapsed the number of brackets down to three which took a lot of the bite out of inflating into higher brackets.  

However, the observation is a good prompt to update priors.  Under Reagan, the tax system was radically reformed, lowering tax rates while widening the pool of people being taxed.  It was intended to be revenue neutral though it did shift the burden somewhat towards corporations.  

My recollection, which I cannot confirm on a quick search, was that part of the restructuring was the collapse of some dozen or so tax brackets down into just three brackets.

Which, if my memory is correct, addresses part of Loki's observation.  

Multiple tax brackets does very much encourage, indirectly, a tolerance of high inflation.  Or, rather, it creates the incentive for the Federal government to allow higher inflation so that people rise into higher tax rate brackets.  Peoples' nominal incomes go up, they land in higher brackets and pay a higher rate in  taxes.

By eliminating brackets, you dampen the incentive to run higher inflation.

So where do we stand now?  How many brackets do we currently have?  Every major reform is followed by a decades worth of backroom interests recapturing the advantages they used to have.

And the simplicity of fewer brackets comes at a price.  At the extreme, imagine there is a single tax bracket.  For purposes of discussion, let's say it is a flat tax of 15% on any income greater than $20,000.  This has the huge benefit of being clear and simple.  Take your total income, subtract $20,000, send a check for 15% of the balance to the Treasury.  Don't need much time to make that calculation and don't have to spend inordinate amounts on tax accountants.   

But a single tax bracket is extraordinarily regressive.  If the bare minimum of a decent standard of living is $20,000, then the ordinary person is paying 15% of anything earned above that.  That is a fierce bite out of income.

If you earn $2,000,000, you are far away from the bare minimum of the decent standard of living.  No, you don't want to give away 15% in taxes, but you can certainly afford it (viewed strictly from a bare minimum perspective.)

Which is why we have only flirted with flat taxes in the past.  Well, that and the fact that in the 1800s it was hard to collect the theoretical returns on those flat taxes when we tried it before.

So a single bracket has negative outcomes.  Too many brackets rewards government by collecting more  tax as people inflate into higher brackets with higher inflation.  The implication is that we want more than a single flat tax and less than many brackets.  What is the magic number?

As I say, my recollection is that we got it down to three brackets with a healthy bump in rate as you crossed each bracket.  I see from a quick search that that progress has been subsequently eroded and we are now back up to seven brackets.  So the reward to government from inflating people into higher brackets remains real.

There is an interesting corollary though.

Around the time of the tax reforms in the 1980s, there was a rising awareness that beneficiary programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid etc. should be indexed to inflation so that people who paid in have some prospect of getting something out.  Otherwise, every program obligation such as Social Security can be, theoretically, inflated away.   

Consequently, we are now in a challenging position.

51% of Federal spending is now transfer payments.  The obligations are locked in and the obligations increase with inflation.

Only 49% of Federal spending is theoretically touched by oversight of spending on hard goods and services such as the military, transportation infrastructure, education, etc.

You can argue about the effectiveness of that spending, but it at least should be under the control of Congress (though it isn't owing to agency autonomy).  But half the spending is locked in and never reviewed and always escalating with inflation.

Again, trade-offs.  The income transfer programs do serve a useful purpose of keeping people out of poverty and reasonably healthy, etc.  They are aren't efficient or effective but their purpose is important.

A further issue is one we are seeing in states such as California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Illinois.  These are states which are generally enthusiastic about extracting revenue from residents and increasing state spending.  

However, residents don't generally like to be taxed more.  Politicians in those states have generally skirted this challenge by having brackets and in particular by having a low income for the top rate and a high tax rate above that income threshold.  As a made-up example, the top bracket might start as low as $400,000 but might be a 7.5% state income tax rate on everything above that threshold.  

If your tax base prosperity is highly dependent on a small umber of industries with very significant network effects (Tech in northern California, Hollywood in southern California, and Finance in the northeast) then you can get away with this for awhile.  The centi-millionaires and the billionaires cannot easily extract themselves from the lucrative industry networks by physically relocating.

But when push comes to shove, anything is possible.  And this particular taxing strategy leaves states especially vulnerable to two scenarios.

The first is an excess dependency for state revenues on individuals in particular industries.  At the time of the Great Recession under Obama, my recollection is that New Jersey derived some 50% of its state income tax revenue from a dozen or so of the very wealthy.  When the finance and real estate sectors crashed, so did the incomes of those individuals and consequently so did the tax revenues to the affected States.  Since states have to run balanced budgets, such variability in annual income tax revenues can be catastrophic.

The other vulnerability is longer lasting.  The centi-millionaires and billionaires find ways that allow them to extract value from the geographical network effects without having to be geographically colocated.  They up and leave.  This actually introduces a theoretical third vulnerability which I don't think we have seen yet but could happen.  A tax migration cascade.  Once one billionaire lightens their burden simply by relocating, knowledge transfer and the envious eyes of their fellow billionaires could create a sudden cascade of tax relocations.  It is certainly happening in slow motion, but it could theoretically take on a faster rate.

It is a bedrock principle in economics and finance that the easiest way to get out from under a heavy financial obligation is for inflation to inflate it away, whether at Weimar, Venezuela, and Argentina catastrophic rates in short time frames or just at persistently moderately high rates over years as in the late seventies and early eighties in the US.  

You can take on too big a load of federal debt and then erode it away with inflation.  Which also increases your revenues by bumping more people into higher rate bands as Loki points out.

So citizens end up with a transfer of wealth from the private sector to the government; they end up with lower real incomes; they end up paying higher effective taxes.  Loki is right.  Citizens ought to be looking at the political class as American patriots regarded the King and Parliament.  

And as Loki observes, all that is happening now and no-one seems to be interested in talking about it.  

There is no such thing as "Hate Speech" other than as a category of speech suppressed by authoritarians

I have always been angered by the attempt to create a category of "Hate Speech" which can then be demonized.  Indeed, in some ignorant quarters, there have been attempts to legislate such speech out of existence, despite the First Amendment.  

You can spot an authoritarian based on their attitude towards speech.  If they want to suppress, outlaw, or forbid speech, even "Hate Speech," then you are dealing with an illiberal authoritarian.  

Dawkins pokes fun at the issue and mockery is a useful antidote to reactionary ideas like a belief in "Hate Speech."

I disagree with what you said. Therefore what you said is hate speech.

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) January 8, 2023

The late Christopher Hitchens goes to the heart of the matter.  To believe in "Hate Speech," one has to delegate the authority to determine what constitutes such "Hate Speech."  There is speech and there is suppressed speech.  There is no such thing as "Hate Speech" other than that class of ideas which are repugnant to authoritarians.

"To whom do you award the right to decide which speech is harmful, or who is the harmful speaker? [...] To whom would you delegate the task of deciding for you what you could read - to relieve you of hearing what you might have to hear? To whom would you give this job?" pic.twitter.com/WW2xiylFRD

— Christopher Hitchens (@Hitch_Slapping) January 7, 2023

Russell E. Dunham

8 Jan 1945: While wounded, U.S. Tech Sgt Russell Dunham took 3 German machine gun nests, killed 9 German soldiers, wounded 7 and took 2 as prisoners near #Kaysersberg, France. He earned the U.S. Medal of Honor for his bravery. #WWII #hero #MedalOfHonor #ad https://t.co/hCZTHYxa7W pic.twitter.com/dHlMWb4KDk

— Today In History (@URDailyHistory) January 8, 2023

From Wikipedia:  Russell E. Dunham. 

History

Bronze bust of Lucius Caecilius Jucundus (some believe it maybe Lucius Caecilius Felix). C. Jucundus was a prominent Roman banker from Pompeii. The remains of his beautiful house can still be seen on the Via Stabiae, Pompeii. Image source: https://t.co/774uGYXWox pic.twitter.com/YvGh9uWAkP

— Angela O'Brien (@GrecianGirly) December 27, 2022

 

An Insight

In this map the shifting of the center of the global economy is visualized using a North Pole -centric stereographic projection. The return to the east is beautifully visible. Source: https://t.co/uUwMAg2Ol2 pic.twitter.com/UdQxrCBRYw

— Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600) December 23, 2022

 

My name, “Gerard Van der Leun,” is an unusual one.

The author, photographer, journalist, blogger Gerard Van der Leun has passed away.  His pinned final post is a tribute to his namesake uncle from 2003 and is incredibly moving.  

On Living with the Loss of a Son in Wartime. Written and first published on Memorial Day, 2003

My name, “Gerard Van der Leun,” is an unusual one. So unusual, I’ve never met anyone else with the same name. I know about one other man with my name, but we’ve never met. I’ve seen his name in an unusual place. This is the story of how that happened.

It was an August Sunday in New York City in 1975. I’d decided to bicycle from my apartment on East 86th and York to Battery Park at the southern tip of the island. I had nothing else to do and, since I hadn’t been to the park since moving to the city in 1974, it seemed like a destination that would be interesting. Just how interesting, I had no way of knowing when I left.

 

Within a few more paragraphs he has you emotionally committed to the whole piece.

I see wonderful things

Stockholm, Sweden 🇸🇪 pic.twitter.com/CyidEJ3d0f

— Architecture & Tradition (@archi_tradition) December 23, 2022

 

No Hard Feelings by the Avett Brothers

Double click to enlarge.

No Hard Feelings 

by the Avett Brothers

When my body won’t hold me anymore

And it finally lets me free

Will I be ready?

When my feet won’t walk another mile

And my lips give their last kiss goodbye

Will my hands be steady when I lay down my fears, my hopes, and my doubts?

The rings on my fingers, and the keys to my house

With no hard feelings

When the sun hangs low in the west

And the light in my chest won’t be kept held at bay any longer

When the jealousy fades away

And it’s ash and dust for cash and lust

And it’s just hallelujah

And love in thought, love in the words

Love in the songs they sing in the church

And no hard feelings

Lord knows, they haven’t done much good for anyone

Kept me afraid and cold

With so much to have and hold

When my body won’t hold me anymore

And it finally lets me free

Where will I go?

Will the trade winds take me south through Georgia grain?

Or tropical rain?

Or snow from the heavens?

Will I join with the ocean blue?

Or run into a savior true?

And shake hands laughing

And walk through the night, straight to the light

Holding the love I’ve known in my life

And no hard feelings

Lord knows they haven’t done much good for anyone

Kept me afraid and cold

With so much to have and hold

Under the curving sky

I’m finally learning why

It matters for me and you

To say it and mean it too

For life and its loveliness

And all of its ugliness

Good as it’s been to me

I have no enemies

I have no enemies

I have no enemies

I have no enemies

Offbeat Humor

Xerxes: Come, Leonidas, let us reason together. It would be a regrettable waste—nothing short of madness for you and your valiant troops to perish. There is much our cultures could share.

Leonidas: Haven't you noticed? We've been sharing our culture with you all morning. pic.twitter.com/T8T6AEk0ny

— The Chivalry Guild (@ChivalryGuild) December 26, 2022

 

Data Talks

An analysis of 1.1 million links to scholarly articles posted on Twitter found that 50% of those posts drew zero clicks to the underlying research, whereas 22% received only 1 or 2 clicks.

In short, 72% received virtually no real engagement. https://t.co/bR8TNf6VlI pic.twitter.com/BNXvNowfnW

— Jay Van Bavel (@jayvanbavel) December 21, 2022

 

Considerable Falls of Snow, 1938 by Eric Ravilious

Considerable Falls of Snow, 1938 by Eric Ravilious

Click to enlarge.

They may break our bodies but they need not dominate our minds.

From On Living in an Atomic Age by C. S. Lewis (1898–1963).  It was first published in 1948. 

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors — anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

The whole essay warrants reading.

 

History

They came, they saw, they left no trace..., by @razibkhan https://t.co/5O6UPefQ8n

— Charles Bayless (@CharlesBayless) December 26, 2022

An Insight

Effectiveness vs. Efficiency

Effectiveness: Doing the right things—getting the result you intend.

Efficiency: Doing things right—working with minimal waste of time and effort.

To achieve more, you must be both effective & efficient, but effectiveness should come first. pic.twitter.com/aE1pTOimj3

— Alex Brogan (@_alexbrogan) December 22, 2022

 

I see wonderful things

Unbelievable footage captured by tourists. Avalanche from the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan… pic.twitter.com/A5bILYO0iA

— Tansu YEĞEN (@TansuYegen) December 22, 2022

 

Offbeat Humor

Click to enlarge.

Data Talks

The Fed has never raised rates faster

We are all test subjects in a massive economic experiment pic.twitter.com/n3Bz6VG1GE

— Genevieve Roch-Decter, CFA (@GRDecter) December 22, 2022

 

The Lane, 1931 by Wharton Esherick

The Lane, 1931 by Wharton Esherick

 

Click to enlarge.

History

A 16th Century CE, Mourning Ring; traditionally gifted by close friends and family to the bereaved. This one is inscribed “John Thompson Mar 1643″.

MET Museum#archaeohistories pic.twitter.com/KuRgZunoYu

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) December 23, 2022

 

An Insight

"US spending of 5.6% of its defense budget to destroy nearly half of Russia’s conventional military capability seems like an absolutely incredible investment." https://t.co/iPGPzLmewj

— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) December 22, 2022

 

So jealous was he of every moment lost.

From Pliny the Younger to Baebius Macer.  In this letter, Pliny the Younger lists the works of his uncle, Pliny the Elder, and describes his work ethic.  From Book 3 Pliny the Younger Letters, translated by J.B. Younger.  It is such a common pattern - those who accomplish much work extraordinarily hard.  

[5] L   To Baebius Macer.

I was delighted to find that you are so zealous a student of my uncle's books that you would like to possess copies of them all, and that you ask me to give you a complete list of them. I will play the part of an index for you, and tell you, moreover, the order in which they were written, for this is a point that students are interested to know.

"Throwing the Javelin from Horseback," one volume; this was composed, with considerable ingenuity and research, when he was on active service as a cavalry lieutenant {praefectus alae}. 

 

"The Life of Pomponius Secundus," two volumes; - Pomponius was remarkably attached to my uncle, who, so to speak, composed this book to his friend's memory in payment of his debt of gratitude. 

 

"The German Wars," twenty volumes; - this comprises an account of all the wars we have waged with the German races. He commenced it, while on service in Germany, in obedience to the warning of a dream, for, while he was asleep, the shade of Drusus Nero, who had won sweeping victories in that country and died there, appeared to him and kept on entrusting his fame to my uncle, beseeching him to rescue his name from ill-deserved oblivion. 

 

"The Student," three volumes, afterwards split up into six on account of their length; - in this he showed the proper training and equipment of an orator from his cradle up.

"Ambiguity in Language," in eight volumes, was written in the last years of Nero's reign when tyranny had made it dangerous to write any book, no matter the subject, in anything like a free and candid style. 

 

"A Continuation of the History of Aufidius Bassus," in thirty-one books. 

 

"Natural History," in thirty-seven books; - a comprehensive and learned work, covering as wide a field as Nature herself.

Does it surprise you that a busy man found time to finish so many volumes, many of which deal with such minute details? You will wonder the more when I tell you that he for many years pleaded in the law courts, that he died in his fifty-seventh year, and that in the interval his time was taken up and his studies were hindered by the important offices he held and the duties arising out of his friendship with the Emperors. But he possessed a keen intellect; he had a marvellous capacity for work, and his powers of application were enormous. He used to begin to study at night on the Festival of Vulcan, *   not for luck but from his love of study, long before dawn; in winter he would commence at the seventh hour or at the eighth at the very latest, and often at the sixth. He could sleep at call, and it would come upon him and leave him in the middle of his work. Before daybreak he would go to Vespasian - for he too was a night-worker - and then set about his official duties. On his return home he would again give to study any time that he had free. Often in summer after taking a meal, which with him, as in the old days, was always a simple and light one, he would lie in the sun if he had any time to spare, and a book would be read aloud, from which he would take notes and extracts. For he never read without taking extracts, and used to say that there never was a book so bad that it was not good in some passage or another. After his sun bath he usually bathed in cold water, then he took a snack and a brief nap, and subsequently, as though another day had begun, he would study till dinner-time. After dinner a book would be read aloud, and he would take notes in a cursory way. I remember that one of his friends, when the reader pronounced a word wrongly, checked him and made him read it again, and my uncle said to him, "Did you not catch the meaning?" When his friend said "yes," he remarked, "Why then did you make him turn back? We have lost more than ten lines through your interruption." So jealous was he of every moment lost.

I see wonderful things

Apples are generally red, green, yellow, but if the right geographical conditions are met, they can apparently grow dark purple, almost black, as well. These rare apples are called Black Diamond and they are currently only grown in the mountains of Tibet https://t.co/NcvdTkCAPs pic.twitter.com/s9rytcN7vM

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) December 22, 2022

 

Offbeat Humor

The Benny Hill Show 🤣 pic.twitter.com/FkdRgcVnwd

— I❤️Nostalgia (@il0venostalgia) December 23, 2022

 

Data Talks

How it started. How it’s going. pic.twitter.com/qXjdYRiCm0

— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) December 21, 2022

 

As the Crow Flies by Jo Grundy

As the Crow Flies by Jo Grundy

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It was as pointlessly presumptuous to try to change them as it was impertinent to pity them.

From Unnatural Causes by P.D. James.  

One thing was certain. If she did later talk about Sylvia Kedge she wouldn't indulge in sentimental regrets of "If only we had known! If only we could have helped her!" To Jane Dalgliesh people were as they were. It was as pointlessly presumptuous to try to change them as it was impertinent to pity them. Never before had his aunt's uninvolvement struck him so forcibly; never be-fore had it seemed so frightening.

Some ideas are so stupid that only ideological intellectuals believe them.

Yesterday I complained about dysfunctional public intellectuals.  I offered two documented examples of mainstream media/pundits holding untenable positions.

Electing a woman as Prime Minister is admirable but rejecting her for her failed policies is sexism.   ASHG wants to avoid advocacy agendas but enthusiastically supports a specific advocacy agenda.  Universities support free speech but not speech of which they disapprove.

And the tide of news today brings in a fresh batch of examples of public intellectuals being demonstratively stupid.  The two examples are The New York Times and Mt. Sinai Medical School.  In both cases, they are advocating that anyone who wishes to maintain a healthy diet and avoid obesity is a practicing racist.  

From NYTimes is now Pro-Obesity & Mt Sinai Med School Says Weight Loss is Racist: Medicine is Drowning in Deranged Ideas. by Vinay Prasad.  The subheading is We need to stand up for common sense in medicine. 

This week, I read two things that are emblematic of just how common sense is in a decline in American medicine. They are both on the topic of obesity. First, let’s remind ourselves that obesity is a problem that is rapidly getting worse in America. We are fatter than ever before.

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[snip]

Medicine is suffering from a brain parasite: the ideas expressed in both these essays. Trying to lower weight among those with unhealthy weight is a racist goal, and we should be happy with surge in obesity among children—- These are clearly ridiculous ideas that are being presented as if they are fact with little push back.

Its as if these people are actively trying to convince the public that we should no longer listen to them

Mainstream media manufacture the news they want to report

From Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New King of Media Fraud by Matt Taibbi.  The subheading is The Twitter Files reveal that one of the most common news sources of the Trump era was a scam, making ordinary American political conversations look like Russian spywork.  

Ambitious media frauds Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair crippled the reputations of the New Republic and New York Times, respectively, by slipping years of invented news stories into their pages. Thanks to the Twitter Files, we can welcome a new member to their infamous club: Hamilton 68.

If one goes by volume alone, this oft-cited neoliberal think-tank that spawned hundreds of fraudulent headlines and TV news segments may go down as the single greatest case of media fabulism in American history. Virtually every major news organization in America is implicated, including NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and the Washington Post. Mother Jones alone did at least 14 stories pegged to the group’s “research.” Even fact-checking sites like Politifact and Snopes cited Hamilton 68 as sources.

Hamilton 68 was and is a computerized “dashboard” designed to be used by reporters and academics to measure “Russian disinformation”. It was the brainchild of former FBI agent (and current MSNBC “disinformation expert”) Clint Watts, and backed by the German Marshall Fund and the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan think-tank. The latter’s advisory panel includes former acting CIA chief Michael Morell, former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, former Hillary for America chair John Podesta, and onetime Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol.

The secret ingredient in Hamilton 68’s analytic method was a list of 644 accounts supposedly linked “to Russian influence activities online.” It was hidden from the public, but Twitter was in a unique position to recreate Hamilton’s sample by analyzing its Application Program Interface (API) requests, which is how they first “reverse-engineered” Hamilton’s list in late 2017.

I must admit, this reads a little like inside media baseball.  I read continuously and voluminously.  I would not have been able to identify Hamilton 68 as a news provider or content moderator.  I accept that they are, but I suspect you really need to be a mainstream media insider to recognize them.  

Even at Twitter, where there were basically no open conservatives in the email record, it was recognized that Hamilton 68 (and at least two other research institutes using similar methodology) were simply taking organic Trumpish chatter and describing it as Russian scheming.

The site “falsely accuses a bunch of legitimate right-leaning accounts of being Russian bots,” as Roth put it, getting “traction around partisan trends, to assert that any right-leaning content is propagated by Russian bots.”

This was an academic scandal as well, as Harvard, Princeton, Temple, NYU, GWU, and other universities promoted Hamilton 68 as a source. Perhaps most embarrassingly, multiple elected officials promoted the site. Dianne Feinstein, James Lankford, Richard Blumenthal, Adam Schiff, and Mark Warner were among the offenders. Watts, who clearly knew how to play up the melodrama of his role, gave dire warnings to the Senate Intelligence Committee, telling them they should “follow the dead bodies” if they wanted to get to the bottom of the Russian interference problem.

Though it is easy to see how it could be infuriating to be put on such a list — one veteran I spoke with had to leave the room and take a deep breath before coming back to the phone — the broader damage was to society, which was subject to near-daily news reports using this “The Russian Bots Are Coming” format. These stories are still having a huge impact on American culture and politics and played significant roles in the 2018 and 2020 election cycles, placing downward pressure on the Sanders, Trump and Gabbard campaigns while boosting the likes of Joe Biden (frequently depicted as a “target” of Russian bots). In the wake of any online controversy, be it the Colin Kaepernick saga or gun control debates after mass shootings, reporters raced to claim “Russian bots” were trying to “sow division,” often using Hamilton or an outfit like it to bolster their claims.

Worse, the site pioneered a new form of fake news, which reporters at organizations like Mother Jones, the Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC ate up for two reasons. One, they tended to be politically simpatico with the site’s conclusions (the Daily Beast didn’t need a push to claim Russian bots were pushing Trump flash mobs “in 17 cities”). Two, it was easy content.

“Here’s what Russian trolls are promoting today,” read a piece in Mother Jones by Kevin Drum, all but announcing that reporters could make headlines as quickly as instant coffee in the Ham68 age.

By early 2018 — perhaps after a talk with Twitter, whose execs pondered the upside of “educating Clint” — Watts was publicly questioning his own methodology, saying, “I’m not convinced on this bot thing.” Not long after, another key figure associated with Hamilton 68, Jonathon Morgan of the “cyber security firm” New Knowledge, was outed for faking a Russian influence operation in the Alabama Senate Race. He used Hamilton-like tactics to create online chatter about Republican Roy Moore having Russian bot support, got caught, and suffered the indignity of having what he called a “small experiment” described as a “false flag” operation in the New York Times.

Even after his “experiment” was outed, and even after Watts expressed doubts about the “bot thing,” the flood of “Here come the bots” news stories continued. News organizations had fallen in love with a new trick: research institute makes invented bot claims, reporters toss said claims at hated targets like Devin Nunes or Tulsi Gabbard, headlines flow. The scam needed just three elements: credentials of someone like “former FBI agent” Watts, the absence of any semblance of fact-checking, and the silence of companies like Twitter.

If you run a Google Trends search on Hamilton 68 and Russian Collusion, you can how instrumental they were in 2015-2020 in driving that particular propaganda.   

Hamilton 68 was at the center of a coordinated effort by mainstream media, government agents, think tanks and academia to push propaganda about dangers from an almost entirely mythical threat from Russian Collusion, Russian Bots, and Russian Disinformation.   There was disinformation, but it was coming from inside the house.  From mainstream media, from think tanks and academia, and from members of government.

I asked for comment from a huge range of actors — from the Alliance for Securing Democracy to Watts and McFaul and Podesta and Kristol to editors and news directors at MSNBC, Politico, Mother Jones, the Washington Post, Politifact, and others. Not one answered. They’re all going to pretend this didn’t happen. The few reporters who got this right contemporaneously, from Glenn Greenwald to Max Blumenthal to Miriam Elder and Charlie Wurzel of Buzzfeed to sites like Moon Over Alabama, can take a victory lap. Almost every other news organization ran these stories and needs to come clean about it.

The Hamilton 68 tale has no clear analog in media history, which may give mainstream media writers an excuse not to cover it. They will be under heavy pressure to avoid addressing this scandal, since nearly all of them work for organizations guilty of spreading Hamilton’s “bullshit” stories in volume.

This is one of the more significant Twitter Files stories. Each one of these tales explains something new about how companies like Twitter came to lose independence. In the U.S., the door was opened for agencies like the FBI and DHS to press on content moderation after Congress harangued Twitter, Facebook, and Google about Russian “interference,” a phenomenon that had to be seen as an ongoing threat in order to require increased surveillance. “I do very much believe America is under attack,” is how Hamilton 68 co-founder Laura Rosenberger put it, after watching the tweets of Sonya Monsour, David Horowitz, and @holbornlolz.

The Hamilton 68 story shows how the illusion of ongoing “Russian interference” worked. The magic trick was generated via a confluence of interests, between think-tanks, media, and government. Before, we could only speculate. Now we know: the “Russian threat” was, in this case at least, just a bunch of ordinary Americans, dressed up to look like a Red Menace. Jayson Blair had a hell of an imagination, but even he couldn’t have come up with a scheme this obscene. Shame on every news outlet that hasn’t renounced these tales.

 

History

A 800 year old 'Pack Horse Bridge', in Lancashire, England.#archaeohistories pic.twitter.com/oYdQuvPje5

— ArchaeoHistories (@histories_arch) December 22, 2022

 

An Insight

"Snapshot statistics conceal a lot of information. For people with a high school diploma, the divorce rate is above 50 percent, but for college graduates the divorce rate is only 10 percent"

Really enjoyed this conversation with Hafeez Baoku @roommateshtx https://t.co/QcZHDFKE21

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) December 21, 2022

 

I see wonderful things

When owls hunt their prey in the snow, typically leave evidences like this, marking the spot where a small rat or a squirrel has been caught

[source: https://t.co/JRjQb7htH2] pic.twitter.com/XQ5YJGJXMS

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) December 22, 2022

 

Offbeat Humor

 

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Data Talks

I have not confirmed this analysis—but if it’s correct, then Sweden ended up with the lowest percentage of cumulative excess death 2020-2022.

That would be the exact opposite of what Covidian prophets foretold. https://t.co/a3PFD7p6Hk

— Newman Nahas (@NahasNewman) December 21, 2022

 

Night Owl on a Winter Eve Flight by Walter King Stone (1875-1949)

Night Owl on a Winter Eve Flight by Walter King Stone (1875-1949)

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The first question is always whether the alleged phenomenon is real

A couple of days ago, I had a post, A rolling disaster about the possibility that mRNA vaccines might have temporarily or permanently reduced fertility rates.   While I accept this as both a theoretical possibility and the existence of some early studies suggesting that is what is happening, I stated my concern that the data volume and integrity is still too small and too weak to be confident in the hypothesis.

We should pay attention but probably don't need to panic.  Yet.

This morning there is a post from the often excellent Scott Alexander, Declining Sperm Count: Much More Than You Wanted To Know.  Where el gato malo was looking at the recent impact of mRNA on fertility rates around the world, Alexander is looking at the older and long standing debate about whether there is a danger of declining global sperm count and its possible impact on fertility.

The generic empirical response to any alleged phenomenon/problem is to ask the following questions:

1) Is the phenomenon real in a measurable sense?

2) What are the possible causal mechanisms?

3) Which among the causal mechanisms are most demonstrable and

4) Among those, which have the highest effect size?

5) Given the causes and effect size, what are the possible interventions, costs, and

probability of success?

Alexander focuses on the first question and lightly covers the second.

How Sure Are We That This Is Even Real?

Not too sure.

The authors of these studies are well-respected scientists - yes, even the one who wrote the book about imperiling the future of the human race - and they seem to be doing good statistics.

But an argument against might start with this graphic:

Source: Figure 2 here.

Each circle is an individual study examined in Levine’s first meta-analysis. I notice two things:

Yes, okay, that line is pointing very slightly down, and apparently this is statistically significant.

But also, the data are very noisy. Some studies from 2005 show higher sperm counts than most studies from the 1970s. The biggest pre-1980 study shows sperm counts very similar to today’s. 

He goes into a lot of detail.  His investigation is not glib.  

His conclusion is that there is data to support the hypothesis of global reduction in sperm count but that it is weak for many clearly understood reasons.  There is enough data to suggestion that possibly the phenomenon is real but that the evidence is demonstrably weak.  Again, enough evidence to suggest we should keep an eye on the issue but not enough to warrant any sort of five-alarm fire response.

He identifies five popularly ascribed reasons meant to explain the phenomenon which we are uncertain is real:

Plastics

Pesticides

Sunlight and circadian rhythm

Diet and obesity

Porn

IF the phenomenon is real, I would advance a different hypothesis - urbanization.  Two hypotheses in fact.

In 2020, 56% of the world is urbanized.  In 1900 only 14% of the world was urbanized.  

In the fifty or seventy year we are looking at the world has become markedly more urbanized.  Some of the countries with apparently the greatest decline in sperm count are also countries which have urbanized the fastest (e.g. China).  The causal mechanism I would argue is that urban living is stressful and that stress is a known inhibitor of fertility.  

All the other reasons remain candidates but I would suspect the transition from rural living to urban living might be the greatest impact.  If the phenomenon is even real in the first place.  

The second hypothesis is that if there is a real reduction in sperm counts, it might also be explained by demographic aging.  Most of the developed world has been aging for several decades but there are many developing middle income countries such as China which are also aging very rapidly.  

Again, sperm counts fall with age so if you population is aging, you would of course expect a decline in sperm count.  Median age in the world in 1900 was 20 years.  In 2020, it is 31 years.  And again, the countries which have aged the fastest are also the ones with the most notable declines in sperm count.

If there is a real decline in global sperm counts, I would suspect that the great bulk of the explanation lies with urbanization and with demographic aging.  But only if the phenomenon is real.

Dysfunctional public intellectuals

Two instance of the mainstream media being willfully blind.  The first is reported from Why Did New Zealand's PM Call It Quits? by Bari Weiss.

Could there have been a more perfect avatar of Davos-progressivism than New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern? There she was—the youngest woman on the world stage, and pretty to boot. When she brought her three-month-old to the UN General Assembly, the press went wild. 

Outside of New Zealand, the press loved everything Ardern. Her handsome fiance. Her fashion sense. The fact that she was the first Kiwi PM to march in a gay pride parade.

“Lady of the Rings: Jacinda Rules,” declared Maureen Dowd of The New York Times. 

Vogue crowned her the “anti-Trump.” 

But while the leader was beloved by elite Americans, the warm feeling didn’t extend to her own citizens. The most recent polls out of New Zealand saw Ardern’s Labor Party approval ratings in the low thirties.

Facing the prospect of a devastating election in October, Ardern pulled the plug. Last week, she resigned.

“I know there will be much discussion in the aftermath of this decision as to what the so-called ‘real’ reason was,” said Ardern. “I can tell you that what I am sharing today is it.”

The reason? “I know what this job takes, and I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice.”

The Washington Post chalked the whole thing up to sexism. “Sexism dogged Jacinda Ardern’s tenure. Battling it is part of her legacy.”

Never mind that New Zealand implemented some of the most draconian Covid policies in the world outside China. Or that there is growing gang violence in the country. Or that inflation there is at 7.2 percent.

A politician who savages their own citizenry to the widespread dissatisfaction of said citizenry chooses to step down before being rejected by the voters.  It is an old tale.  In fact, it is the very essence of democracy.  Citizens remove politicians for bad results all the time.  For the Washington Post to ascribe this to sexism is incredible.  The citizens of New Zealand were not sexists when they elected her but are now sexists when they reject her demonstrated governance?  

That's not sexism you putz.  That's democratic accountability.  They hoped for more from her and she failed to deliver.  End of story.  Trying to ascribe that to sexism is either illogical or ideological fanaticism or both.

Similarly, there is a second example from You can't make it up by Noah Carl.  

These days, once-great academic institutions are fond of commissioning long reports into their historical “links” with slavery, racism and/or eugenics. When the report inevitably finds that such “links” exist and are very concerning, the institution issues a statement denouncing itself and promising to “do better”.

The latest example of an academic institution partaking in this ritual is the American Society of Human Genetics – publisher of the prestigious American Journal of Human Genetics.

On Tuesday, the ASHG released a lengthy report titled ‘Facing Our History – Building an Equitable Future Initiative’. The report was accompanied by the usual statement in which the institution “acknowledges and apologizes, deeply and sincerely, for the participation of some ASHG founders, past presidents, and other leaders in promoting eugenic ideals that harmed people of minoritized groups”.

Poor black people in inner cities who’re scared to leave their homes because violent criminals roam the streets can finally rest easy: an institution they’ve never heard of issued a statement they’ll never read! These statements aren’t about helping black people, of course. They’re about keeping activists off the backs of scientists, and making work for people with degrees in critical race theory.

Anyway, one paragraph in the statement did catch my eye. It outlines some of the “challenges” facing human genetics, one of which is “denouncing the warping of science for advocacy agendas”. Here, they’re presumably referring to the misuse of science to justify racism and eugenics.

What’s remarkable, though, is that the very same paragraph includes this sentence: “ASHG encourages individual members, peer societies, academic centers, agencies, industry partners, and others to reflect on how everyone’s contributions will help foster inclusive equity agendas.”

Screenshot of the ASHG statement.

So on the one hand, we must denounce the “warping of science for advocacy agendas”. But on the other, we must “help foster inclusive equity agendas”. You can’t make it up! They even managed to use the same word “agenda” in both places.

These are our dysfunctional pundits.

Electing a woman as Prime Minister is admirable but rejecting her for her failed policies is sexism.   ASHG wants to avoid advocacy agendas but enthusiastically supports a specific advocacy agenda.  Universities support free speech but not speech of which they disapprove.

Were we to get rid of all mainstream media reporters and pundits, all academia except those who teach or research in fields that pay above the national average, and all bureaucrats other than those who are accountable directly to Congress - just imagine how efficient, effective, and prosperous this nation would be.  

The great black eyes were skilled in inviting compassion

From Unnatural Causes by P.D. James.  

The room had lost its peace. Dalgliesh reflected that it was extraordinary how much noise seven people could make. There was the usual business of settling Sylvia Kedge into her chair which Miss Calthrop supervised imperiously, although she did nothing active to help. The girl would have been called unusual, perhaps even beautiful, if only one could have forgotten those twisted ugly legs, braced into calipers, the heavy shoulders, the masculine hands distorted by her crutches. Her face was long, brown as a gypsy's and framed by shoulder length black hair brushed straight from a centre parting. It was a face which could have held strength and character but she had imposed on it a look of piteous humility, an air of suffering, meekly and uncomplainingly borne, which sat incongruously on that high brow. The great black eyes were skilled in inviting compassion. She was now adding to the general fluster by asserting that she was perfectly comfortable when she obviously wasn't, suggesting with a deprecating gentleness which had all the force of a command that her crutches should be placed within reach even though this meant propping them insecurely against her knees, and by generally making all present uncomfortably aware of their own undeserved good health. Dalgliesh had watched this play-acting before, but tonight he sensed that her heart wasn't in it, that the routine was almost mechanical. For once the girl looked genuinely ill and in pain. Her eyes were as dull as stones and there were lines running deeply between her nostrils and the corners of her mouth. She looked as if she needed sleep, and when he gave her a glass of sherry he saw that her hand was trembling.