An Insight

1 in 6 people would raise taxes on the rich even if they knew it would also hurt the poor to do so.

Why?

In a word: Envy.https://t.co/LV1vZv0eGd

— Human Progress (@HumanProgress) September 3, 2023

 

An Insight

"Indicators of country-level happiness...Low happiness is, above all, predicted by a history of communist rule...Communist history not only predicts lower happiness for everyone, but this effect is stronger for women than men" https://t.co/esNy3uYIEv pic.twitter.com/6AtKYrmKJe

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) September 30, 2023

 

I see wonderful things

Tigers are proficient swimmers and have been observed crossing rivers as wide 7 km (4.3 miles).pic.twitter.com/nUqqsdk6MG

— Wonder of Science (@wonderofscience) September 5, 2023

 

Offbeat Humor

 

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Data Talk

Since the 1960s, Singapore has upheld low taxes, avoided red tape, and encouraged skilled immigration.

That has increased the city state’s GDP per capita 17-fold since 1950—from poorer than Mexico twice as wealthy as Canada.https://t.co/HjCrXCu6fZ

— Human Progress (@HumanProgress) September 3, 2023

 

The tragedies we choose to consider versus the ones we choose to ignore.

From Sunday West 42 by Ed West.  The subheading is The return of the War on Terror era

Christopher Caldwell on the scale of the migration crisis.

The number of migrants who arrived in the UK in boats last year – 46,000 – looks like small potatoes in comparison with refugee flows in the Mediterranean. What is going on in Lampedusa now is a civilisational rather than a conjunctural problem. It is tied up in the West’s misplaced priorities and warped threat assessments.

Lampedusa was once an imperial frontier, a place where the free world and the third world were in communication. It used to be an asset for the free world; now that is less certain. Viewed by posterity, the invasion of Libya launched by Barack Obama, Nicholas Sarkozy and David Cameron in 2011, which opened a corridor for the large-scale trafficking of migrants, will probably be seen to have posed a larger threat to the ‘European way of life’ than the invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin last year.

I’ve long come around to the idea that the overthrow of Gaddafi was a foreign-policy error of gigantic proportions, worse even than the disastrous invasion of Iraq.

The evidence of the strategic catastrophe that was the overthrow of Gaddafi has been curiously under-discussed in American news.  I don't know whether it is because the architects were Obama and Hillary Clinton, because virtually none of the negative consequences affect Americans, or because it is so far away, or some other reason, but I don't know.  

It is, however, curious because the evidence for the magnitude of the human tragedy out of Libya, for both Europe and Africa/Middle East has been accumulating for years.   Some reasonably sizable blog periodically points a sharp ironical jest at the Democrats for having restored the slave trade and slave markets in Northern Africa after having spent three centuries stamping them out.  

I occasionally wonder speculatively whether Iraq or Libya was the greater human catastrophe were one to tote up all the dead, the wounded, and the lost prosperity of a nation.  The answer would seem to obviously be Iraq.  But was it?  Immense losses no doubt, but in a somewhat constrained time frame.  Is it possible that Iraq is, at this remove, better off than it was under Hussein.  I am not certain, but possibly.  Violence and tragedy rumble along at a low level and the economic damage is still there.  But is it better?  And separately, might it in some ways have been worth it?  I don't know.  Yet.

For context, the Iraq War totaled perhaps 60,000 killed among combatants and maybe 120,000 among civilians.  Numbers which are both very infirm and eye-watering.  

But the fate of Libya is both clearer and murkier.  Murky because, since its collapse in 2011, it has remained collapsed.  There is an on-going low level civil war.  There are various catastrophes because there is essentially little or no central government.  It is a smaller country so the absolute numbers are smaller.  But the danger, and damage have been greater and for a much more sustained and prolonged period of time.  How many illegal migrants transiting the Mediterranean via Libya drown each year?  5,000?  10,000?  15,000?  

For 12 years.  Maybe a couple of hundred thousand?  And those are just the ones for whom we have some visibility.  And just at sea.  How many die en route across the desert or in the slave markets?  

We don't know and the American clerisy don't care.  But from a humanitarian perspective, it is quite possible that the overthrow of Qaddafi was a far greater strategic and humanitarian catastrophe than was the defeat of Hussein.  

Five minutes with internet and social media versus five minutes with the mainstream media - accuracy and speed of signal

An interesting observation.  From a couple of weeks ago when Hamas invaded Israel.

Twitter has become terrible.

But the depressing truth of it is that anyone who spends five minutes of here gets a basic sense of the barbarity of what just happened in Israel.

Anyone who spends five minutes browsing the headlines of NYT, WaPo, WSJ and Guardian has no idea.

— Yascha Mounk (@Yascha_Mounk) October 7, 2023

Interesting, in part, because it is true.

Twitter specifically, and the internet generally, are faster at reporting anything.  But the signal strength and quality are highly variable.  You have to know how to tune the signal and refine it.  In the early days of telegraph, an antecedent of the internet, telegraph operators could famously recognize the hand of some someone sending the Morse code.  Yes, it was all dots and dashes, but the speed and cadence of an individual was recognizable.

So with Twitter and the internet (blogs and substack and specialty platforms), you know to elevate or discount some signal generators over others; you know to elevate or discount some of their individual signals based on their history, orientation and context.

You have to work harder to read the signal but ultimately you get a better signal faster from the new sources over the old mainstream media.  

Twilight, 1950 by Edwin Holgate (Canadian, 1892-1977)

Twilight, 1950 by Edwin Holgate (Canadian, 1892-1977)

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3 consistent requirements to achieve the status of manhood in various societies around the world

Research to follow-up on at some point.  From Understanding the Young Male Syndrome by Rob Henderson.  

Of course, there are many ways of understanding what being man is about, and there are many valid ways to be a man. However, regardless of how it is expressed, it usually has something to do with strength and toughness and productivity.

In his cross-cultural research, the psychologist Martin J. Seager has found 3 consistent requirements to achieve the status of manhood in various societies around the world.

First, the individual must be a fighter and a winner.

Second, he must be a provider and protector.

And third, he must maintain mastery and control of himself at all times.

Across cultures, there seems to be an implicit understanding of what being a man is.

Sweet Song For Nancy and Jane

Sweet Song For Nancy and Jane

by Vernon Scannell

This is the sweet song,

Song of all the sweets,

Caramel and butterscotch,

Bulls-eyes, raspberry treats;

Treacle toffee, acid drops, 

Pastilles, crystal fruits,

Bubble gum and liquorice sticks 

As black as new gumboots;

Peppermint creams and aniseed balls, 

Tiny sweets and whoppers,

Dolly mixtures, chocolate drops, 

Gigantic gobstoppers;

Lemon sherbets, jelly babies, 

Chocolate cream and flake, 

Nougat, fudge, and sweets that give 

You tooth and belly ache.

But the sweets I end my song with 

Could never give me pain

In tooth or tummy — anywhere. 

One’s Nancy; one is Jane.

My goodness this brings back memories of a childhood in England in the 1960s.  I could not have recalled all these delights unprompted but reading the list I recognize virtually all of them.  What a set of evoked taste memories.