Sep & Oct '22

An introduction to current theories of consciousness.

Britain is in trouble because its elite is so engrossed with the US.

It is the culmination of decades of (unreciprocated) US focus in a Robert Caro-hooked Westminster. You would think from British public discourse that Earth has two sovereign nations. If the NHS is fairer than the US healthcare model, it is the world’s best. If Elizabeth II was better than Donald Trump, monarchy beats republicanism tout court. People who can’t name a cabinet member in Paris or Berlin (where so much that affects Britain, from migrant flows to energy, is settled) will follow the US midterms in November.

80% of the French earn less than €3k a month.

Lost prison interview with Hermann Goering.

I believe Hitler was convinced that as a result of the Japanese attack, the main brunt of the United States force would be brought to bear on the Far East and would not constitute such a danger for Germany. Although he never expressed it in words, it was perhaps inexpressibly bitter to him that the main force of the United States was in fact turned against Europe.

Lack of shipping had prevented us from invading England, but, before the difficulties with Russia, we could have carried out the Gibraltar Plan, with 20 divisions in West Africa, 10 in North Africa and 20 against the Suez Canal, still leaving 100 divisions in France. The entire Italian army, which was unfit for a major war, could have been used for occupation forces. The loss of Gibraltar might have induced England to sue for peace. Failure to carry out the plan was one of the major mistakes of the war.

Why is China so obsessed with food security?

The grandchildren of China’s pre-revolutionary elite are unusually rich.

Born without a left temporal lobe.

Why was the second atomic bomb (on Nagasaki) dropped so soon after the first?

A method to soothe and promote sleep in crying infants.

English’s formal version of ‘you’ was actually ‘you’ and its informal - ‘thou’.

How mathematics changed me.

The despotism of Isaias Afewerki.

How modernity swallowed Islamism.

In this respect, Islamist parties, despite their “moderation” or perhaps because of it, fell into the old populist trap of defining themselves in opposition to something real but failing to articulate a distinctive vision of what the state could be. The rest of us, as observers, may judge that this was for the best: If they didn’t know what they wanted, they would not succeed in altering the state and its foundations. For Islamists, however, this lack of vision would prove to be their Achilles heel. They would be feared and disliked for who they were, regardless of what—or how little—they did. It was the worst of both worlds. They were different enough to be hated by their opponents, but not different enough to follow through on their promise, however inchoate, of providing a ­genuine alternative to liberalism and the world liberalism built.

Pentagon opens sweeping review of clandestine psychological operations.

In 2020, officers at Facebook and Twitter contacted the Pentagon to raise concerns about the phony accounts they were having to remove, suspicious they were associated with the military. That summer, David Agranovich, Facebook’s director for global threat disruption, spoke to Christopher C. Miller, then assistant director for Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict, which oversees influence operations policy, warning him that if Facebook could sniff them out, so could U.S. adversaries, several people familiar with the conversation said.

“His point‚” one person said, “was ‘Guys, you got caught. That’s a problem.’ ”

How do fireflies flash in sync?

The abundance, biomass, and distribution of ants on Earth.

We conservatively estimate 20 × 10¹⁵ (20 quadrillion) ants on Earth, with a total biomass of 12 megatons of dry carbon.

Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching.

When education is in-person, attractive students receive higher grades in non-quantitative subjects, in which teachers tend to interact more with students compared to quantitative courses. This finding holds both for males and females. When instruction moved online during the COVID-19 pandemic, the grades of attractive female students deteriorated in non-quantitative subjects. However, the beauty premium persisted for males, suggesting that discrimination is a salient factor in explaining the grade beauty premium for females only.

Sex differences on the progressive matrices.

There is no difference among children aged 6–14 years, but that males obtain higher means from the age of 15 through to old age. Among adults, the male advantage is 0.33d equivalent to 5 IQ points. These results disconfirm the frequent assertion than there are no sex differences on the progressive matrices and support a developmental theory that a male advantage appears from the age of 15 years.

Britain ‘secretly backed’ Mussolini’s march on Rome.

Chat log exhibits from Twitter v. Musk case.

Parag: You are free to tweet “is Twitter dying?” or anything else about Twitter - but it’s my responsibility to tell you that it’s not helping me make Twitter better in the current context. Next time we speak, I’d like to you provide you perspective on the level of internal distraction right now and how it hurting our ability to do work. I hope the AMA will help people get to know you, to understand why you believe in Twitter, and to trust you -and I’d like the company to get to a place where we are more resilient and don’t get distracted, but we aren’t there right now.

Elon: What did you get done this week?

Elon: I’m not joining the board. This is a waste of time.

Elon: Will make an offer to take Twitter private.

Parag: Can we talk?

Things that increase female reproductive lifespan.

Universal daycare in Quebec led to much greater aggression and antisocial behavior in boys.

How Brian Eno created “Ambient 1: Music For Airports”.

90% certain that honey works against coughing.

Someone improved my code by 40,832,277,770%.

Mosquito attraction to humans is associated with skin-derived carboxylic acid levels.

Why boys fall behind.

The bottom line is that Finland’s internationally acclaimed educational performance is entirely explained by the stunning performance of Finnish girls. (In fact, American boys do just as well as Finnish boys do on the Pisa reading test.)

The cerebellum, for example, reaches full size at the age of 11 for girls, but not until age 15 for boys. The correct answer to the question so many teenage boys hear, ‘Why can’t you be more like your sister?’ is something like, ‘Because, Mum, there are sexually dimorphic trajectories for cortical and subcortical gray matter!’.