The above video is from Eurovision. A bunch of 20-something Italians doing rock music is pretty weird, since rock is dead for all practical purposes in the USA.I’ve been setting up some Amazon book lists. So here is one for population genetics. I also set them up for the steppe, Roman Empire, and the origins of Islam. I’ll be adding more lists and fleshing them out.
Lots of content on my Substack. I assume most readers of this weblog are on the e-list, but who knows? Perhaps of note, two posts on the Romani. Also check out my interview with J. P. Mallory.
The ungated podcast site has more than two dozen podcasts now. If you haven’t posted a review on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher, please do so.
The media’s lab leak fiasco. Matt Yglesias does a forensic analysis of what happened.
I’m reading Peace, Poverty and Betrayal for a review at UnHerd.
I’ve been corresponding with a reader who is of English Romanichal background, and my supposition that they have less South Asian ancestry than Roma and Iberian Romani seems correct. Closer to 10-15% than 20-30%. A lot of the ancestry (from Ancestry/Family Tree DNA) is assigned as British, so that indicates the dilution may have happened in the United Kingdom.
E. O. Wilson’s Social Conquest of the Earth is now $2.99 on Kindle (don’t know how long this will last).
The “noble lie” on masks probably wasn’t a lie: Why Western public health went all-in on a campaign against masks. Basically, they didn’t know what they were talking about, but their authority is based on the premise that they do. Also, the evidence in favor of masks isn’t really that strong, just like it wasn’t strong against them. People have polarized this issue in a way that’s crazy.
Deciphering signatures of natural selection via deep learning.
Transposable elements drive the evolution of genome streamlining.
Please, Think Critically About College Admissions: you can’t help the disadvantaged by refusing to engage in critical thinking. This is nothing new to readers of this weblog, but the wave of mainstream-media propaganda around this issue is reading going to go into overdrive soon, so it is best to have the literature familiar to you (also, read A Year Without Miles).
What shall become of Charles Darwin?
Should be Prof. Jay, but I was never one for fancy titles, and it is irrelevant here, so John will do fine.
You mean you’re a Banana Bender? Damn.
On the Substack, I presented a simple methodology which can be used very efficiently, especially as new trend of using fuzzy logic is becoming popular. At BP, we used it to solve the 200 years old dilemma – who were Aryans? Similarly, it can be used in the undergoing sc. ‘Indo-European’ debate, especially, because the mainstream shyly asserts that these two terms are equivalent. So, before I apply for its patenting, I would like some inputs from devil advocates to challenge its soundness.
So, let see if, for example, the suspect group ‘S’ (I will not disclose the name of this group) were Aryans. I will use very conservative figures and arbitrarily put 5% as the minimum for either, individual certainty or uncertainty.
For e.g. the genetics says that there is a 90% certainty that this group were Aryans and 10% it is uncertain.
Let’s analyse this 10% uncertainty portion. For e.g. linguistics says that the certainty that Aryan language was the language of this group is 80%. It means that, so far, we have 98% certainty that this group were Aryans and 2% it is uncertain.
Mythology says, for e.g, that there is 50% certainty that this group were Aryans. So far, there is 99% certainty that this group were Aryans.
Toponyms (based on, for e.g, 500-1000 examples) says that there is a 95% certainty that this groups were Aryans. It means that we are, in this specific case, 99.95% certain that this group were Aryans and the uncertainty is 0.05%.
If more realistic figures are used the result would be 99.98% certainty and 0.02% uncertainty. The inclusion of other disciplines (e.g. anthropology, archaeology) can further improve this methodology.
Doc is for docker, Jay is for J., Cabbage Patcher, Roach or Gum Sucker, in any case – the Wise Man from the East.
I give up.
You didn’t answer iffen’s question.
You didn’t answer iffen’s question.
Speaking of questions, I wonder what St. Paul saw in Macedonia that caused him to write “For the love of money is the root of all evil …”?