When I get busy and don’t post open threads you guys start leaving comments elsewhere (which is fine, since the articles/papers are usually pretty good). I’ll be better about posting, but from now on I’ll just “pin” the open thread post too… So page down if you don’t use an RSS feed.
The Birth of the West: Rome, Germany, France, and the Creation of Europe in the Tenth Century has a lot of citations of John Julius Norwich. If that doesn’t say something to you, basically there is a lot of personal biography. The title may seem to promise a deep structural understanding of what happened in the 10th century, but the book is mostly a detailed diplomatic history. People, battles, and treaties. There’s more structural/social stuff at the end. Save the best for last?
I much prefer something like Chris Wickham’s Medieval Europe. All that being said, The Birth of the West pulls off narrative description well, and of course, I found out more about the “pornocracy“. Always exciting!
In relation to the “book club”, I’ve made a final decision. I’m reading two books.
– Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War
– Not Born Yesterday: The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe
I’ll be reading the prologue/first chapter for both by next Friday and putting up blog posts. Interestingly, both books have 16 chapters. I’m going to combine chapter 1 and prologue, and the last chapter and epilogue. This means that the reading will run to the end of January 2021. Hopefully, we’ll have good vaccine news by then. My plan is to post every Friday on both books. Obviously, you can read both, or just one. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom is about twice as long as Not Born Yesterday, but my experience is cognitive science books are more difficult to read, so if you pick one, keep that in mind (depending on the interest I may do a Livestream discussion now and then that I’ll post on Patreon).
In case you want a bookmark, I created an “event” page for the Book Club. As the posts come up I plan to link to each chapter review.
The Advisor and the Slack Channel That (Sort Of) Singlehandedly Destroyed an NYU Newsroom. This is from Jezebel, and it looks like older Millennials aren’t down with some of the poses struck by Zoomers. Do a “close reading.” The future is a joke.
The Return of Indoor Dining in New York City Doesn’t Mean Business as Usual. The world has changed, hasn’t it?
Ruchi in China. Sometimes I watch YouTube channels of foreigners living in China to see how “normal” their lives are now. This channel is hosted by an Indian woman who married a North Chinese man who lives in Guandong with their son. It’s pretty interesting insofar as it’s an unselfconscious ethnography of Chinese culture from the perspective of an outsider (e.g., when visiting her in-laws in Jilin she explains that they eat a lot of meat and drink a lot of alcohol because it gets so cold there; she’s from Rajasthan which is the most vegetarian state in India).
Academic acceleration in gifted youth and fruitless concerns regarding psychological well-being: A 35-year longitudinal study. Common sense. But not our experience as parents. The focus in America is on the 10%. The bottom 10%.
Population dynamics of GC-changing mutations in humans and great apes.
Detecting adaptive introgression in human evolution using convolutional neural networks.
Sensational discovery of a 250,000 year old milk tooth found inside the Denisova Cave in Siberia.
The history and evolution of the Denisovan-EPAS1 haplotype in Tibetans.
Tesla Quarterly Deliveries Hit Record as Car Maker’s Pandemic Recovery Speeds Up. Don’t bet against Elon! I have a friend from my Bay Area days around ~2010 who would go on massive anti-Tesla rants. Very persuasive he was. Ten years on, here we are…
Eusociality through conflict dissolution via maternal reproductive specialization.
Fitness dependence preserves selection for recombination across diverse mixed mating systems.
When I first began reading Brandon Sanderson 12 years ago I thought he was somewhat silly. A self-described Mormon “boy scout” he writes novels very different from the “grimdark” that was in vogue in the 2000s. But in this age and time perhaps a bit of boy scout perspective is necessary? To my surprise, Sanderson is coming out with his 4th volume in ten years of the Stormlight Chronicles, Rhythm of War. This is projected to be a ten-volume series. I was skeptical he could do this, but now I think he’ll hit his targets.
It would be a lot easier for you to post Open Threads on GNXP if you did them like you do on Brown Pundits, i.e no content
BTW: “Sensational discovery of a 250,000 year old milk tooth found inside the Denisova Cave in Siberia” The link is to: https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B07Y5R6DBK/geneexpressio-20
Which is the book reviewed by the article at the previous link.
good point. but would anyone comment?
link fixed
no way! i like looking for good links in the open thread. got both books and i’ll start on them this week
here is a nice baby stoat https://youtu.be/HESe9voNWXs for everyone’s amusement
About the “academic accelaration” paper:
“Academic acceleration of intellectually precocious youth is believed to harm overall psychological well-being (…)Concerns about long-term social/emotional effects of acceleration for high-potential students (…)”
There is really that “belief”, that academic acceleration is bad for psychological well-being? My impression is that the widely shared belief (in popular culture, at least) is that what is bad for psychological well-being is being intellectually precocious, point (independently of academic accelaration or not).
I, sadly, had to stop reading Sanderson. I can’t for the life of me recall any of his characters that were memorable. His books aren’t bad, and I loved The Way of Kings, but they aren’t the sort that has you (or at least me) slobbering to return.
sanderson is great at plotting and pace. but his characters are all practicing mormons 🙂 so yeah, not memorable.
Razib, do you know of any upcoming ancient DNA from south Asia? I know that some thing Keezhadi has been sent to be analyzed but that is only 2600 or so years old and I am not expecting anything new from it (though I am willing to be surprised by a near 100% AASI result). Do you know of any others?
i don’t know.
Anti-Tesla Rant: Overpriced golf carts. Tesla has succeeded in becoming a fashion item. I live in a neighborhood with a lot of really wealthy people. They now all have “Black Lives Matter” signs in front of their houses, and Teslas in their driveways. It is all posturing.
“good point. but would anyone comment?”
It is not a problem at BP is it?
“Eusociality through conflict dissolution via maternal reproductive specialization.”
You made me look. I could not make any sense of the abstract. The individual words are, for the most part, recognizable words in the English language, but the combinations thereof are so antic as to defy comprehension. I would wager a modest sum that they are product of a Google Translate of material written in one of the more obscure languages such as Kinyarwanda.
It maybe the case that it is really about insects.
Time will tell on Musk. I think he’s exceptionally skilled at garnering subsidies from the chumps at various governments and raising capital from investors. That’s what you want from the CEO of a startup. A regular operating company, on the other hand … time will tell.
The Prophet of the Revolt
Martin Gurri and the ungovernable public
https://pullrequest.substack.com/p/the-prophet-of-the-revolt?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo2NSwicG9zdF9pZCI6MTczMDEzNiwiXyI6Ik55ZTlRIiwiaWF0IjoxNjAxMTM3NTk2LCJleHAiOjE2MDExNDExOTYsImlzcyI6InB1Yi00NzE4Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.Q3WkHbdPK_hSediyRqxVHGfvitRLt-uRp2NqW_JQRBc
I learned that lesson too. Musk’s two big companies rarely hit their rather optimistic deadlines, but they usually do get where they want to be (not so much the smaller Musk startups – Solar City basically got absorbed into Tesla to avoid an embarrassing failure, and the Boring Company stuff has gotten less and less ambitious over time).
GRRM could learn a thing or two from Sanderson. #stillwaiting
Really enjoying listening to all the episodes of the Insitome podcast (the last episode with Brian Hare was fascinating). One thing I was wondering though is if the one on what genetics say about the pre-history of Australia is scheduled to come out soon?
On Twitter there was a tweet to be coming out soon last May (https://twitter.com/insitome/status/1258830106501369858), but have not noticed it since, and think it is the only major region not yet covered.
Also here are a few other topics for some future podcast episodes that may be possibly interesting and fun to do (if not already been done in a past episode of course).
What ancient DNA is discovering about evolution and biogeography in non-human species?
What genetics is discovering about local adaptations of populations (including both humans and other animals)?
Genetics in elite sport (why certain regions can dominate certain events, and other topics such as future potential of gene doping etc).
The microbiome and how that fits into genetics and evolution.
China’s investment in genetic research and how this could impact the shape of global politics in the future.
The top 5 predictions on the field that seemed crazily futuristic back about 15-20 years ago that have come true, and the top 5 somewhat futuristic type predictions that could plausibly happen in 20-25 years in future?
Also finally perhaps a series of episodes (possibly in a format similar to the “In Our Time” programmes) discussing the history up to the present day of the field of evolution and genetics, looking at the lives of the major characters and their discoveries and what they got wrong, and looking back at the broader social attitudes, environment, and past controversies and fights around it. (Probably ground you know extremely well but would be interested as a non-expert to hear more about this).
I bought both books- looking forward to any kind of livestream discussion, if possible.
Thanks Razib
So I read the “Can hierarchies be rescued?” article expecting it to be interesting, but instead my reaction was basically, this doesn’t mean anything. The word “hierarchy” (and, conversely, “equality”) is a heavily overloaded term (with, I think, people often not realizing this and just conflating it all into one concept), and if you don’t state what you mean by it, then talking about it is useless. I think there’s a lot of interesting things to say about different things called “hierarchy”, but first you have to start by deconflating them.
What Sniffnoy said.
Tyler could say that the National Basketball Association is a hierarchy. People roughly agree who is better and who is worse, and the better get paid more.
Or Alex could say the NBA is a meritocracy. Everyone gets a chance to show what they can do, and those who do best get hired. Then those who contribute most to their team get paid the most.
They would both be right.
Re, Tesla:
Automobiles in substance are basically commodities. The only way to differentiate yourself is through branding. If Musk has succeeded in making his brand a status symbol, then he is halfway there to beat his competitors. All he has to do is keep up with the battery technology and not ruin his brand’s image in the eye of consumers.
In China, too (1923)
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1923/01/in-china-too/306400/
A comment on generational change in China in the early 20th century
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/10/what-kind-superpower-will-china-be/616580/
Meant to post this too, from today. Not sure if it means much
Razib — I see that you have shortened your pinned open thread with a “Read More” link, but do you think you could shorten it even further (ideally just to the first paragraph)? That way people like me who access your site using a web browser could see if there is new content immediately, without being forced to page down every time we open the main page, while people who want the open thread will also still see it immediately. Win-win!
Who has less bias in the judgment?
Legal system favors ZhangFeng for crispr patent.
Nobel committee decided Jennifer Doudna for the honor of crispr.
My view of Nobel prize is that award is “my mom said I am the best” since I had worked around nobel laureates in my graduate school years. My own professor was not very impressive with them either.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/latest-round-crispr-patent-battle-has-apparent-victor-fight-continues
Dynamic evolution of great ape Y chromosomes
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/10/02/2001749117
Gorilla and Human Y-Chromosomes are more similar to each than Chimp-Human Ys, though Chimp and Humans ostensibly form clade with each other relative to other apes. Possible Gorilla introgression into proto-Humans after the latter split from Chimp, or proto-Human into Gorilla?
Read the first chapter of both club selections. Is it too late to swerve and find a different, 15 chapter science book? (Kidding, kind of.) “Autumn” seems really good, but I don’t know any history-I’ll learn something even though it isn’t dry and scholarly. Curious to hear others’ takes and will definitely finish out the history book and give Not Born Yesterday another chapter or two.
IC, it’s ok to be a little jelly. I find that I can be too much of a hater at times. When that I happens I think to myself, “Don’t hate, congratulate”. And it was Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna who were awarded.
reading “who gets in and why.” Admissions is actually quite boring and practical. not any revelations so far…
Genetics future knowledge after big data question? Let’s say you have an ethnic identifyingpresent population of a few million and have full genomes on say 2 million of them with some clusters within them upwards of 90% others 60% represented.
Assume this ethnic identity was not a farce and shared genetic heritage huge there might be 5% admixture most generations, occasional 20% 40% admixtures in regional fragments of the ethnic group in tramatic eras once per 10 generations, and a complete merger of a previously distinct ethnic group into regional sumsegments a few times 1500 years ago.
With those assumptions and huge data crunching in a genetic super computer suduko , would generations past of nearly full genomes for unamed but shared great(and great great great) aunts and uncles be triangulated?
With those gradually recreated more recent past million people genomes of 100 years ago could data claw backward, aided by some few thousand 200, 400 , 600, 1000 year old + ancient dna to reconstruct a population of individuals of say proto generating groups that merged or were fractured and subsumed say sumerians who split and half moved north, and merged into a another population that became Mitani and half migrated east and south to merge into vedics ( this split would require huge full population genomes of a different modern population to triangulate backward)
So recapping 2 questions,
Assuming immense databases with dense sample rate of dense heredity, will i be able to map back my ancestors dozens of generations and see where individuals intertwined with shared previous ancestors, when say a few vikings raped a few aunts, or how many of them were related to some historic figure?
The second question is whether if not only will we be able to predict ghost populations like Reichs group predicted and was later found in noth asia, but large #s of ghost nearly full genomes reconstructed from present data.. not just a signature of a given male line continum?
Razib (and others),
How do you handle COVID for your kids? Do you let them play with other kids outside with masks? Let them use playgrounds?
They just opened up some park playgrounds near me. I have a toddler. Been letting her share equipment with other masked kids and pulling her away from the unmasked. Also have a 6th grader who’s pretty content inside, but has had a few trips to the beach.
Just don’t know how to handle this, still.
Told my wife it’s nuts. There have been a few days where I could appear in 2 different photos: as one of the dots at a public beach in a look-at-these-Cali-wackos!! stories, then later that night getting mocked in someone’s texts: “check this goober in the gas mask and goggles at Target.”
Razib,
My 2 cents on acceleration at regular public schools. It is not a battle worth fighting since it mostly ends up being extra worksheets. On top of it, othering by teachers and students isn’t worth it. We moved three schools in the first three grades and feel that pain. Home acceleration is great but the boredom during actual class time could be soul crushing depending on how far ahead the kid is.
Life is so much better if you could find gifted kids only school. Acceleration and peer group would both be appropriate. (Luckily we found one in grade 4 with appropriate acceleration in math and language arts).
The next best case is for homeschooling (with COVID that might be a better option all around anyway).
Best of luck to the kid.
Re my long question above, my assumption one could iteravely piece together more and more of individual genomes of assumed individuals of past generations is like if you have my full genome and my brothers and perhaps my fathers there become things you can definitively rule in and out about my mother without any of her dna, and if you have my first cousin you can know things about my mother’s sibling and more about my mothers mother if you also began to piece together information on what my first cousins non related( more distant at least) other parent?
https://phys.org/news/2020-10-argentina-country-genetically-wheat.html
Argentina becomes the first country to approve genetically modified wheat