i/o on X - "Our movies now reflect America's arrested development and spiritual emptiness: They're filled with comic book heroes and consumer fantasies and meaningless frenetic special effects, unconnected to the most interesting aspects of the human condition."
Eric Daugherty on X - "#NEW FINAL national poll - Muslim voters ๐ข Stein: 42.3% ๐ต Harris: 41% ๐ด Trump: 9.8% ๐ก Not voting. 5.4% CAIR | 10/30-31 | N=1,449RV"
i/o on X - "It's a poll by CAIR, so I doubt it's entirely credible, but even if it's only directionally correct it shows just how much of a single-issue group Muslims in the US become when there's an insult or threat to their co-religionists anywhere in the world. Which is very revealing."
Hunter๐๐๐ on X - "The decline of American life expectancy that started in 2015 and accelerated due to COVID is over. While America's life expectancy is still lower than most other developed countries, it's at the highest point in our history."
Matthew Yglesias on X - "A classic of negativity bias is that the complete reversal of the bad trend receives only a tiny fraction of the attention that was paid to the bad trend while it was happening"
Thread by @GaryWinslett on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "A small but great example of this is how there’s was this huge freak out out the bee population declining but then next to no one heard about the new population recovery. The reason this example is on my mind is I was at a housing policy meeting recently and there was this environmentalist citing bees as why we can’t allow new neighborhoods and so I showed her charts about the bee pop recovering. You’d think she’d have loved that news but… She was actually mad about it. And I think it was because I was implicitly arguing against her worldview. That’s where I think there’s a bigger lesson. Negativity bias breeds NIMBYism. If every change is bad, why allow change? If modernity sucks, why lean into the future? If you want to encourage a culture of progress, you have to point out over and over again that we have it great today compared to the past (and there are hundreds, if not thousands of examples of that). And people in 2070 will have it even better than we do."
Jake ๐บ๐ธ on X - "Doomers hate to hear good news about their favorite end-of-the-world scenarios. Just this summer someone was telling me how the bees are almost all gone. Turns out we're actually in the middle of a bee boom. ๐งต"
This explains climate change hysteria too
Meme - iamyesyouareno @iamyesyouareno: "They always find the sweetest and most innocent pictures to use. Disinformation tactics. He was a career criminal."
"Intruder, 21, is mauled to DEATH by two pit bulls while trying to break into Georgia home: Homeowner finds his body on the porch the next morning"
Snappie @Snappiememes: "They wuz good boys, they din do nuffin. *2 soyjaks pointing but with 2 pitbulls pointing at criminal*"
Intruder, 21, is MAULED to death by DOGS after trying to break into Georgia home - "Abraha, who grew up in Worthington, Minnesota, had several active warrants in Fulton County at the time of his death"
arctotherium on X - "It's common knowledge that Asian science is full of fraud. Less common knowledge is that Asian scientists in the US also commit a lot of fraud vs their white peers. For instance, as of 2022 19/29 researchers sanctioned by the ORI are of Asian origin."
Meme - Praying Mantis 1 mounting Praying Mantis 2: "How can I be sure you won't eat me after this?"
Praying Mantis 2: "Don't worry, only females do that."
Praying Mantis 1: "..."
Meme - "Yay me! I passed my driving test even though I never used my turn signal and ran over a curb... He took me down a super bumpy road but I did fine! *busty Mercedes Blanche*"
Meme - "If "my eyes are up here, was a person *Sanna Meira*"
What is Pittsburgh-style pizza? (and where can you find it?) - "Pittsburgh boasts the second highest pizzeria-per-capita rate in the country with 9.9 pizzerias per 10,000 residents, according to a national study. New York City – known as the country’s pizza capital – didn’t even make the top ten. The oversized crust of New York-style pizza has touched every corner of the world, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a Pittsburgh-style pizzeria in your neck of the woods. Or, for that matter, anyone who’s heard of such a thing. Even some of yinz in Pittsburgh aren’t sure if Steel City truly has a pizza style to call its own. “I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never heard of a Pittsburgh-style pizza,” said Slice GM Jeff Sigal... some would point to the cold-cheese pizza popularized by Beto’s as the city’s true calling card. Beto’s has been a Pittsburgh mainstay since the 1950s, but those oven-fresh rectangles topped with mountains of fridge-fresh provolone remain exclusive to them. Meanwhile, many of Pittsburgh’s other hotspots are churning out pizzas with thick crusts designed to support ludicrous amounts of cheese. The bread isn’t just there to stick to your ribs during a brutal winter – a lesser crust would collapse under the weight of all that melty goodness and erode under the rivers of its glorious grease."
The city where children will Halloween trick-or-treat for the first time since 1938 - "For the first time since 1938, the children of a US city will join the rest of the country and trick-or-treat on Halloween. Going door-to-door for candy on All Hallows’ Eve has long been commonplace throughout the country. But not Iowa’s capital of Des Moines, where the city took a different approach more than seven decades ago. Instead, Des Moines children don their costumes on Beggars’ Night, typically the day before Halloween. And besides screaming, “Trick-or-Treat,” children are expected to tell a joke before receiving a treat. The original plan was put in place in hopes of tamping down on so-called hooliganism. The city started its unusual custom at the suggestion of a former city parks director as a way to reduce vandalism and promote more wholesome fun for the city’s kids. Initially, children were encouraged to sing a song, recite poetry and offer some other kind of entertainment, but over time a joke became the most common and preferred offering. Beggar’s Night also has limited hours, typically running from 6pm to 8pm. This year, Beggars' Night was set for Wednesday, but because of expected heavy rain and thunderstorms, officials were forced to delay trick-or-treating until Thursday, which to the rest of the country is the normal Halloween."
Vitamin supplements show no health benefits, study reveals - "overall, multivitamins were found to increase mortality by 4 percent."
Great conclusion. Post-hoc, ergo propter hoc
Lupita Nyong’o says she cried herself to sleep after losing Kenyan accent in bid for Hollywood roles
Time for her to quit Hollywood and for foreigners to be banned from Hollywood to protect them from structural violence, racism and xenophobia
Picky eating is a 'largely genetic trait', study finds - "Scientists from University College London (UCL) studied food preferences in more than 2,400 pairs of identical and non-identical twins. Their findings indicate that genetics account for 60 per cent of how fussy a child is at 16 months. And the role of genetics actually increases as children get older, accounting for 74 per cent of fussiness between ages three and 13 years."
Clearly, the parents are always to blame for raising their kids wrongly
Bathroom bacteriophages: Unlocking potential in medical research - "The team of scientists collected samples from 92 showerheads and 36 toothbrushes in the bathrooms of people living in the United States. Through DNA sequencing, researchers discovered more than 600 types of bacteriophages — viruses that infect bacteria — on these surfaces. Interestingly, the vast majority were found on toothbrushes. Almost every tested toothbrush served as a habitat for different viruses. Bacteriophages are viruses that specifically target bacteria but are harmless to humans. They employ two mechanisms: they can take control of bacteria to replicate and subsequently kill the host, or integrate into the bacteria's genome, altering their behaviour. Scientists believe studying bacteriophages could lead to new ways of combating antibiotic-resistant bacteria... while microbes are widespread, they rarely cause diseases. Overusing disinfectants may encourage resistance development in bacteria and other pathogens, complicating treatment with antibiotics, which poses an increasing challenge to medicine."
Meme - Niall Stanage: "Cardi B is like a case study in how people confuse social-class codes with intelligence. If you listen to what Cardi says, it's very obvious she's highly intelligent. But a lot of people, to their discredit, don't hear it because of a bias against the argot she uses."
Cardi B @iamcardib: "I wonder how pee taste like ?"
Meme - Defiant L's @DefiantLs: "Has Harry met Hillary Clinton? Stacey Abrams?"
Harry Sisson: "Notice how Democrats are accepting the results of the election and not crying fraud and cheating? Democrats won't storm the Capitol on January 6th. Just pay attention to that difference today."
"TRUMP CHEATED. 291k posts. Trending in Political figures"
Rolf Degen on X - "Almost everywhere in Europe, conservative individuals have more children and grandchildren on average than liberals, and the proportion of conservatives increases from generation to generation. https://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19485565.2024.2419075#abstract The aim of this paper is to examine whether changing fertility patterns along the political spectrum can have an impact on overall political attitudes in subsequent generations, using the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (a total of 66,188 participants from 15 European countries) and the European Gender and Generation Survey (a total of 121,248 participants from 12 countries. We found that in most of the countries analyzed, right-wing (conservative) individuals have, on average, more children and grandchildren than left-wing (liberal) individuals. We also found that the proportion of right-wing individuals increases from generation to generation. Our data further suggest that the “reproductive advantage” of right-wing individuals has emerged relatively recently, as seems to be the case in the US. Placing importance on personal freedom and individual autonomy, an attitude which is more common among left-wing individuals, eventually leads to disenchantment with institutions, including marriage and family. Since political attitudes are presumably evolved traits that are socially and genetically transmitted from one generation to the next, these findings may suggest that demographic differences can lead to shifts in prevailing political attitudes. Overall, our findings suggest that demographic differentiation can lead to a shift in prevailing political attitudes. Our results suggest that many, though not all, of the societies we studied are becoming more conservative, at least in part due to a higher fertility rate among right-wing than left-wing individuals. This probability is further increased by assortative mating, which means that spouses have an above-average probability of having similar attitudes."
Demography leads to more conservative European societies
‘The first thing I did was poke it’: Canada beach blobs mystery solved by chemists - "For more than a month, residents of Canada’s easternmost province have tried to understand the source of hundreds of the pale, gooey masses which resemble the dough used to make toutons, a Newfoundland fried delicacy. Some of the blobs were as large as dinner plates... the material was most likely a butyl rubber PVA composite, used in the oil and gas industry to clean out the pipes that feed oil into tankers."
I'm Writing in Gary Johnson on X - "The only significant difference between right wing and left wing disinformation and lies is that the latter gets no pushback and embraced by powerful institutions. All of American society is fucked if our institutions don't change."
I'm Writing in Gary Johnson on X - "In my real life, I encounter far more Democrats than Republicans, and it's not just how ignorant and uninformed they are that is infuriating. It's how much more self-righteous and confident they are in both their ignorant bigotries and indisputably factually incorrect beliefs."
Meme - saila @sailaunderscore: "I’m actually completely convinced that the reason videogames (and particularly grindy, open-world ones) are so addicting is because they provide a sense of progression and agency that is missing for so many people."
grief seed oil disrespecter @softminus: "Engineer in state of nature never plays Factorio, but in captivity he does, wat does this mean?"
"Engineer in state of nature never plays Factorio, but in captivity he does, wat does this mean? In state of nature he's too busy, to put plainly. He is concerned with mastering space: solving problems of technology, mastering what tools he can, mastering mathematics and craft in the jockeying for power and status. Deprived of this drive to development and self-increase he devolves to pointless masturbation, in captivity, where he senses he is in owned space and therefore the futility of all his efforts and all his actions."
wanye on X - "I’ll admit to something that I think is pretty common and explains a lot of dumb political discourse. When everybody first started talking about John Fetterman‘s sartorial deficits, I was definitely on the side that was annoyed by it. But then he started saying stuff I really agree with about Israel and suddenly I just didn’t mind that much that he dresses like a slob. I still believe everything I said then. They weren’t lies. He should dress appropriately for the Senate. It’s kind of embarrassing that he doesn’t. But it lost all emotional salience. I noticed that I just didn’t care that much. There is a concept in professional sports fandom of the player you love when he’s on your team that you know you’d hate if he weren’t. I think it’s a pretty ordinary kind of double standard and explains why some kinds of debates are intractable in a kind of stupid way that’s not really that important."
Marc Andreessen ๐บ๐ธ on X - "Government funding of NGO's and nonprofits should be entirely illegal. ๐ซฃ"
Colin Wright on X - "It's likely one of the biggest sources of government waste. They're incentivized to make any problem they're tasked with fixing stay broken."
Why Some People Are Always Running Late - " In 2001, Jeff Conte, a psychology professor at San Diego State University ran a study in which he separated participants into Type A people (ambitious, competitive) and Type B (creative, reflective, explorative). He asked them to judge, without clocks, how long it took for one minute to elapse. Type A people felt a minute had gone by when roughly 58 seconds had passed. Type B participants felt a minute had gone by after 77 seconds. Late people often have a “bizarre compulsion to defeat themselves,” wrote self-proclaimed late person and TED speaker Tim Urban in 2015. He gave these poor souls a name: CLIPs, Chronically Late Insane People."
Meme - "Mom: turn off the computer, let it rest
Fridge that has been working since the breakup of Yugoslavia:"
Thread by @liegentapp on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "We're still reeling from the implications of our library's latest addition. Let's dig in. As the world's staunchest defender of democracy nears Election Day, Amy Chua's "World on Fire" is the perfect contemplation on why Western democracy is more a unicorn than the standard. 20+ years after publishing, as intellectuals everywhere still tout the democratic salve, it's clear not enough people were listening. The Yale professor who popularized the "Tiger mom" archetype gifts us a lesser-known and arguably meatier concept: "market-dominant minorities"
Across the developing world, ethnic minorities control most wealth while majorities live in poverty. These ethnic minorities disproportionately profit from free markets, only to face persecution on the heels of democracy. How did we get here? In short: Western ethnocentrism. Developing countries were urged (when not coerced) to first adopt free markets. When this naturally led to market-dominant minorities and civil unrest, democracy was hastily implemented. Indeed, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.Pressure mounts and eventually explodes, usually into 3 kinds of backlash: the majority uses their votes for revenge, the minority allies with dictators for protection, or violence erupts. Democracy + market concentration = dangerous cocktail.
Chua offers a litany of case studies. From the Chinese in Indonesia and Burma, to the Lebanese in Sierra Leone and Tutsi in Rwanda, to Jewsish oligarchs in Russia — themes persist: market dominance, asset seizure, violence, and economic depression. Like in Rwanda, elite minorities aren't necessarily foreign. Relatedly, the significant admixture from European colonialism in Latin America manifests as a "pigmentocracy" today, where lighter-skinned elites rule. Ethnic divisions more closely follow class than heritage. There is an exception, although its methods questionable. Thailand opted to forcibly assimilate its elite Chinese minority through banning schools & businesses. But, it's pertinent to note that shared heritage likely helped, and stability is not guaranteed.
It's fascinating to evaluate the theory's predictive power. At publication, Zimbabwe had seized white-owned farms. After agricultural collapse, hyperinflation, and food shortages, the once-breadbasket of Africa is now inviting back those same farmers with 99-year leases. The Israel-Palestine escalation also resonates. Chua explains how Israel is a regional market-dominant minority, and the Middle East is a prime example of the democratic fallacy — monarchies often prove more moderate than their anti-Israel fundamentalist populations. Not mentioned by Chua but remarkably applicable is another market-dominant minority created by policy — but not free markets. In Islamic societies, the Jizya tax pushed poorer Christians to convert, inadvertently selecting for a wealthy Christian elite.
The West is by no means exempt. In Post-Civil War USA, the South saw whites restrict voting of the black majority. In impoverished Weimar Germany, a disproportionately successful Jewish 1% was used by Nazi ideology to ultimately enact the horrors of the Holocaust. America is now the world's market-dominant minority, with 4% of the population and an astronomical share of wealth & power. When McDonalds is in 114 countries but half the world lives on $2/day, that gap breeds anger. 9/11 wasn't just about poverty - it was about humiliation.
Democracy in the West didn't develop overnight. It took centuries of evolution and growing pains along the way. The solution isn't obvious. While distribution plays a role, voluntary wealth sharing may be the most direct method of countering resentment. But what about the zero-sum fallacy? Zimbabwe exemplifies how elite gain doesn't necessitate majority loss. But as with Latin America, these matters are perspective. And based on Thailand, homogeneity lessens these embittered perceptions. Perception becomes reality.
The iPhone didn't exist in 2002. Today's social media creates a global consciousness unimaginable back then. We've even survived a global pandemic. How do perceptions of inequality change when one corner of the world is constantly connected to the other? Increasing immigration is also shifting Western demographics, particularly in Europe. Chua's thesis seems unequipped for this scenario. Can Western democracy survive an indigenous market-dominant minority, as is the trajectory in parts of Europe? It is a unicorn after all.
"World on Fire" is a rare work for its indirect probe into virtually every area of policy relevant today. Chua's ability to approach sensitive topics with honesty and objectivity is unmatched, and makes you wonder what we could achieve if more people followed suit."
Left wingers only love minorities who are unsuccessful because they fetishise and celebrate weakness and failure, and hate strength and success
Meme - Frank DeScushin @FrankDeScushin: "A new survey of American high schoolers shows they value the money college can make you more than the education it gives you. This aligns with Joe Sobran’s quote from decades ago."
"The purpose of a college education is to give you the correct view of minorities, and the means to live as far away from them as possible." - Joseph Sobran
Thread by @wanyeburkett on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "What’s going on with me politically is that my views are overall fairly liberal, but if you sorted them into two piles labeled, “foundational, defining propositions“ and, “other stuff that’s nice to have“ the things the Republican Party wants to attack are in the latter category and the things the Democrats want to attack are in the former.
Examples of the first category: free enterprise, free speech, private property.
Examples of the latter category: abortion access, Medicaid, food stamps.
The United States is still the United States if it has free enterprise, free speech, private property, but no right to abortion, no Medicaid, and no food stamps. I think that describes a world that’s worse than the one we live in now, but it’s recognizable. The United States is no longer the United States if we have sufficiently chipped away at free enterprise, free speech, and private property, but the social programs are robust."
Alexander on X - "The servant-cycle of employment in Europe is often overlooked when people remember the roles of men and women from the late Middle Ages to the late 1890s. A large class of men and women existed who left home at a young age and worked as servants. This article says aged 16 to 24, but even 14 wasn’t an uncommon age to leave and people might remain servants into their 30s. The lifestyle of artisans and apprentices was similar to this. They might leave home young and not finish their apprenticeships until their 30s. This also changed the dynamics of mate selection and marriage. For one, if contributed to the European pattern of fairly late marriages (Europeans mostly did not marry as teens, nor have top-down arranged marriages like you might see in India). It also reduced parental supervision further. This is also likely part of why we see high assortative mating across the eras. Who were servants likely to meet or intersect with? Other servants. And artisans, other artisans. Anyway, this was another common pattern of life. People sometimes nostalgically think of rural farm and cottage life. It looks sort of like a kind of independent homesteader fantasy: married early, raising the kids on your cute little farm. Actually you may have been sleeping in the barn of another family miles away and raising their kids."
Ecclesiasticus44 on X - "Jesse Singal is such a good case study of Gell-Mann amnesia. “Every topic I take a deep dive on I find liberals to be hysterical self-deluded liars, but I’m sure they’re shooting straight on everything else.”"
Paul Novosad on X - "A new India-China fact (to me): The Chinese state prioritized primary education over secondary/tertiary, while the Indian state did the opposite. Chinese primary enrollment rate passed India in 1950, secondary 1975, and tertiary only in 2000!
India still produces more Master degrees (but China more doctorates)...
Striking differences in what kind of bachelors degree people are getting from the Chinese and Indian education systems. India: Humanities, Law and Business dominate, Science and Engineering are only recent. China: Engineering, Engineering, and Engineering"
Japan tosses plan to woo Tokyo women into rural marriages for cash - "A widely ridiculed Japanese government idea to lure Tokyo women into marrying men in rural areas by offering cash payouts and train tickets to matchmaking events has been scrapped, officials said Friday. Bureaucrats had envisioned payments of up to 600,000 yen ($4,140) for women who got married and settled outside of Tokyo as part of efforts to reduce a yawning countryside gender gap, local media reported... More than 40 percent of Japanese municipalities are at "risk of disappearing" due to the expected drop in the number of women in their 20s and 30s, a study by a private-sector expert panel suggested in April."
Fukuoka: The Japanese city that dominates street food - "Fukuoka, Japan’s sixth largest city by population, has more open-air food stalls than the rest of the country combined. These stalls are called yatais, and they’re an indelible part of what makes Fukuoka’s food scene so special... “Yatai is the best place to make friends,” says Nick Szasz, a Canadian-born longtime resident of Japan who runs the English-language website Fukuoka Now. “Especially in the winter.” Most carts can only fit between 6-10 people, who are encouraged to squeeze in together on shared benches or closely crammed stools. During the cold season, many yatais keep customers warm by enclosing their benches in thick curtains, making the experience even more cozy. While the Japanese sometimes have a reputation for polite formality, Szasz explains that it’s considered good manners to chitchat with strangers while crammed in together at a yatai. Some carts even have the option to buy drinks for other diners – or the chef! – as a menu item. Had Fukuoka gone in another direction, yatai might have become a thing of the past. The loose, unaffiliated system of carts was unregulated and varied wildly in safety and quality. Enter Sลichirล Takashima, who has been the mayor of Fukuoka since 2010. When elected, he was just 36, the youngest mayor in Fukuoka’s history and one of the youngest in all of Japan. Japan has the “grayest” population in the world, with at least one in 10 residents over the age of 80. But Fukuoka, the largest city on the island of Kyushu, is bucking that trend. Takashima’s administration has wooed recent college graduates and young entrepreneurs from around the country with small-business loans, affordable rent and co-working spaces. One of the big initiatives pushed by the mayor – who was reelected to a fourth term in 2022 – was an overhaul of the yatais. Though the city has always been dotted with these food carts, Takashima’s administration set up a committee to regulate them and make sure they’d remain a vital part of the city. The committee established some baseline rules for yatais, such as a maximum of 120 carts (there are currently 96 registered), a requirement that prices be displayed in an obvious place, and a ban on raw foods – so, if you want to try Fukuoka’s famously fresh sashimi, you’ll need to head to a brick-and-mortar restaurant. But rather than restrict the yatai community, the industry cleanup has led to a new, younger generation of yatai operators who are trying out new styles and flavors to keep locals coming back. At Telas & Mico, Kensuke Kubota – who trained at London’s Zuma before moving back to Japan – serves Italian-style bruschetta topped with mentaiko, a spicy cod roe that is Fukuoka’s most ubiquitous condiment... Some have even stopped selling food entirely, becoming bars that cater to yatai-hoppers looking for a final stop on the way home. Fukuoka’s local tourism authority has made an English-language website with yatai maps and tips. The website notes that yatais, despite all the new rules, can still be unpredictable – an owner may decide not to bother opening one night if there’s bad weather, or if a chef is ill. But the element of surprise is one of the things that makes street food so much fun, and that goes double in Fukuoka."
