Sometimes friends ask me about history books (usually scientists). For early modern Europe, Tim Blanning’s The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe: 1648-1815 is excellent. Read it!
One of the reasons I stay on Twitter is direct-messages (DMs). In many ways, it is superior to emails. But over the last few days, I’ve tried an experiment: I’ve stopped Tweeting and responding to people.
The DMs keep flowing. To be frank, this is a positive mental development. The public space on Twitter is dominated by self-righteous sociopaths. There’s no point in fighting because there are so few willing to step out and battle against sociopathic behavior, which is encouraged. This is endemic in political and journalistic Twitter, but it’s common on science-Twitter now as well.
It. is. done.
I’m going to start using Pinboard again for my bookmarks.
Podcast you should listen to this week, Two Psychologists Four Beers, with Brent Roberts.
I’m actually mildly excited about the Game of Thrones prequels since they are set so much earlier. Just enough familiarity to anchor, but not so much that there’s a connection between the earlier series and the newer one.
Would you recommend something that a non-specialist can understand and that explains how Neanderthal/Denisovan DNA in the human genome is identified or distinguished from that of anatomically modern humans (or other types of homo sapiens)?
Thanks
The tweets were a very useful feed on science developments. After a while many of the same topics show up in threads, but the immediacy was cool
i think my tweets were a positive externality. i was operating in good faith.
but sociopathic assholes really dominate twitter, so what’s the point in me being unselfish? i have other platforms….
Would you recommend something that a non-specialist can understand and that explains how Neanderthal/Denisovan DNA in the human genome is identified or distinguished from that of anatomically modern humans (or other types of homo sapiens)?
the easiest way to see if segments of the genome match in the ancient genomes.
https://phys.org/news/2019-05-river-valleys-current-genetic-landscape.html – “River valleys helped shape current genetic landscape of Han Chinese” – “Interestingly, the highest proportion of among-group variance (0.06%)” mtdna “was observed when classifying Han Chinese into seven groups according to river valleys, much higher than that between north and south (0.03%) or between different dialect groups (0.02%),” said Kong.”.
I’m a bit skeptical of using modern mtdna to tell us much of anything, but it’s interesting (although probably not novel to many others) for me to see suggestions of a separate Pearl River group that contributed to the Chinese pool of ancestors and to East Asian diversity (comparing to the model from Reich’s book that estimates two way combination of Yellow River and Yangtze – https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DZcXs9BVMAE0CnO.jpg).
the easiest way to see if segments of the genome match in the ancient genomes.
How (much) does the existence of different alleles complicate this?
somewhat. but with haplotypes you are looking at a sequence of alleles, so that compensates. the problem tho is a lot of these segments are two small, so they use other patterns, like looking for markers which are ancestral in eurasians and derived in africans at higher freq (using chimps as a reference).
https://pinboard.in/u:gnxp/
I used Pinboard for a while, but then switched to throwing all the bookmarks into OneNote. Probably not a good long-term strategy on my part.
1) ..”i think my tweets were a positive externality. i was operating in good faith.”
Your repeated (obsessive?) summonings of Sullolini having been performed in good faith? =}
2) You recently posted your Readership Survey for 2019 inputs, but I don’t see where you have, as of yet, posted results of said survey. I do see instead your post “The end of the universal Western civilization”.
Coincidence? =}
3) I somehow ended up as a Brown Pundits patreon, which is fine, but I would prefer to support your entire output (quality of which I predict will rise now that you have (hopefully entirely) quit smokin’ that twitter crack.) Please advise for one-stop Razib support.
Keep plugging; as long as you actively self-monitor and refuse to ossify with crankish rejectionisms, you are undoubtedly gaining ever-more valuable perspective as the years roll on.
4) I’d be interested to hear where in particular you feel you diverge from Elizabeth Warren’s prescriptions.
5) One last about Twitter: Yours has been the only window into that shark-infested fjord that I allowed myself. Agree with commenter Dx, above, about the value of seeing your science re-tweets as they come in. Or as you re-post those links in Open Thread, as you wish. But the RTs were a good way to view into an often pretty qualified-agent discussion for a few mintutes and learn easily, plus they have for me been enlivening morsels sprinkled throughout the week.
Your repeated (obsessive?) summonings of Sullolini having been performed in good faith? =}
sure. i’m bearish on the current order. the sulla posts are a good way to signal to those who have the knowledge-set to evaluate what i think might be the near future (hope?).
2) You recently posted your Readership Survey for 2019 inputs, but I don’t see where you have, as of yet, posted results of said survey. I do see instead your post “The end of the universal Western civilization”.
this is due to podcasts/conversations on BP. it’s pretty clear how much more marginal USA/europe (especially europe) is in discussions in 2019 than 1999. i don’t think white people have really internalized it, and there’s some ‘cultural overhang.’
4) I’d be interested to hear where in particular you feel you diverge from Elizabeth Warren’s prescriptions.
tbh a lot of the economic stuff i agree with the diagnosis. not sure if i agree with the prescription, but don’t have a strong view.
basically i support whichever side won’t put me in a reeducation camp and allows for freedom of thought. right now that’s the Right. but i’m open to updating.
p.s. i started the patreon for gnxp since someone wanted to donate/support that way. the main reason i flog it as a BP thing is that i don’t get that much out of spending time editing the podcasts so at least it compensates me a bit of that.
Since I listen to the podcasts asynchronously and long after they have been posted, I want to pass on a couple of comments to ones I listened to recently:
First: Season 2, Episode 11: Cultural Evolution Jan 23
https://blog.insito.me/the-insight-show-notes-season-2-episode-11-cultural-evolution-6ba8049c3ccf
As a Hayekian/Burkean Conservative I was thrilled with this presentation, particularly with the last segment on cultural knowledge. This is very Hayekian. No one knows how to make a pencil. Did you cite Burke, or was I thinking about him when you discussed generational knowledge?
Season 2, Episode 13: Is the FBI Watching Your DNA? February 6.
https://blog.insito.me/the-insight-show-notes-season-2-episode-13-is-the-fbi-watching-your-dna-571c92f9fc3
I am a not yet disbarred lawyer. I thought that neither of the guests was very well informed or very helpful. The one who claimed to be a legal academic really fell down by failing to layout the baseline of the law:
First: No one has the right to withhold evidence, except in very limited circumstances. The circumstances are known as privileges. The most common are: lawyer & client, physician & patient, priest & penitent, and husband & wife. They are narrowly construed, so that the baseline rule wins.
Second: The 4th Amendment does not prevent the police from gathering evidence. It restricts “unreasonable” searches and seizures. It requires warrants to be restricted to particular items and be issued supported by a sworn affidavit setting forth probable cause.
The police must often get warrants and subpoenas (the court orders that are often spoken of), but their issuance is usually a formality and they are very seldom successfully resisted.
Third: Privacy is not well understood. From the viewpoint of the law, something is only private, when it is private, Once you have told one person who is not under the seal of privilege (see above) it is not private anymore. Information you have posted on the internet is not private. Even if the website is restricted to a limited group of unprivileged users, that will not save you.
Fourth: If you want your DNA to be sequenced and you don’t want to have the authorities to be able access it, your best shot is to have your doctor send in the sample with a cryptic identifier and discuss the results only with him. If you post it on a family tree website, the game is over.
burke/hayek connection is pretty obv. i generally try to avoid mentioning it since that would make it more ‘political’ than i want it to be 😉
in graeme wood’s book lindh clearly held radical sympathies (refused to bad-mouth isis) https://www.wsj.com/articles/american-taliban-john-walker-lindh-set-for-release-after-17-years-11558581077?mod=hp_listb_pos2
The future of gene therapy is here, but it is not cheap.
“At $2 Million, New Novartis Drug Is Priciest Ever: Newly approved gene therapy aims to cure a rare muscle-wasting disease that can kill young children” By Denise Roland May 24, 2019
https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-2-million-new-novartis-drug-is-priciest-ever-11558731506
“The world’s most expensive medicine is about to hit the market. A one-time treatment for a devastating infant muscle-wasting disease won approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Friday. Its maker Novartis AG says the gene therapy will cost $2.125 million.”
“The therapy, called Zolgensma, treats an inherited disease called spinal muscular atrophy, or SMA, whose victims typically die before the age of two if untreated. It is the latest gene therapy—a technique that introduces new DNA into the body to correct a faulty gene—to win approval.”
I put a lot more details at this post a couple of weeks ago:
https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2019/05/05/open-thread-05-05-2019/#comment-13011
https://phys.org/news/2019-05-professor-debut-tracks-china-girls.html – a hypothesis that China’s “missing girls” issue predominantly hit urban residents, since rural residents were more able to evade fines for second children by not declaring “second girls” and declaring only “first girls” and “second boys” (since policy change in ’80s was to impose fines on second children only if first child was male). The suggestion is that this is more practical in rural areas because bureaucrats were more embedded into the local societies and would look the other way (and the Mountains Are High And The Chairman Is Far Away).
May or may not be true, but made me think about some of the limits of centrally managed bureaucracy in pre-modern, predominantly rural societies. (I believe the Chinese Empire tried to solve that by posting bureaucrats away from their community of origin, but this was limited in the scale at which this could be done (beyond the limits already imposed by the tax base), as paying to move large numbers of individuals across the country to non-native communities would have bankrupted the government, if there were that many willing to sign up for it, and if they were able to command the respect of local people and not succumb to graft.)
I thought you might be interested in this Razib:
“At the Spelling Bee, a New Word Is M-O-N-E-Y: Elite spellers now can pay to get a spot in the national event. For this generation of zealous competitors, it just means another chance to shine.” by Shalini Shankar May 24, 2019
https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-the-spelling-bee-a-new-word-is-m-o-n-e-y-11558702800
Until last year, winning a regional spelling bee was the only way that children from across the U.S. could be invited to—and win—the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, an iconic scholastic competition held since 1925.
Then, 14-year-old Karthik Nemmani won the 2018 Bee, correctly spelling the word koinonia for the championship. Karthik’s path to the national event was different. He was part of the bee’s first-ever class of “invited” spellers: kids who lost at regionals but whose parents agreed to pay an entry fee of $750 and fund their family’s own travel and lodging, potentially thousands of dollars more.
This new pay-to-play option, called “RSVBee,” nearly doubled the number of young people vying for the championship to more than 500. It also changed, with one stroke, what it takes to access this high-prestige contest, adding significant money to the mix. For this year’s event, which takes place next week, Scripps has raised the fee to $1,500, getting even more takers. Now, the paying contestants will outnumber those who got there the traditional way.
* * *
The National Spelling Bee began to be televised in 1994 and upped the stakes in 2011 with a new made-for-TV stage for a live prime-time ESPN broadcast. To shine on this national platform, elite competitors start to develop spelling careers as early as age 6, with the hopes of achieving great things by 14, when most age out. They are not interested in trophies for participating, many have told me; they want recognition for winning. By high school, former elite spellers are becoming spelling bee coaches; tutoring firms are charging up to $200 an hour for their services.
An extra factor driving the stakes for this generation of spellers is a concerted effort by non-U.S.-born parents, particularly Indian-Americans, to make a mark on the competition. In 1985, Balu Natarajan was the first child of immigrants to win the Scripps bee. Of the 33 contests since then, fellow Indian-Americans have won 17 more, including the last 11 straight.
Indian-Americans, just 1% of the U.S. population, have established their own minor-league spelling bee circuit which lengthens “bee season” and provides further opportunities to hone on-stage spelling performance. They have led the way in paying for coaching, buying or developing proprietary study software and traveling around the country to participate in more bees.
Dr. Shankar is the author of “Beeline: What Spelling Bees Reveal about Generation Z’s Path to Success.” She is Professor of Anthropology and Asian American Studies at Northwestern University.
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https://www.anthropology.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/shankar.html
Shankar’s first book, Desi Land: Teen Culture, Class, and Success in Silicon Valley (Duke University Press, 2008), focuses on Desi (South Asian American) youth in socieconomically and racially diverse high schools and analyzes how their everyday cultural and linguistic practices intersect with their immigration history and class status to impact their educational and career paths.
Maybe you should interview her on BP.