I’ve been reading The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann before I go to sleep. Not sure I would recommend this, as the author, Ananyo Bhattacharya, does get a bit into the mathematical questions von Neumann explored in his early life. But overall, very readable, and so far von Neumann is sketched out as a very human individual (he was mediocre at chess, for example).
I talked about immigration (US) and migration with regards to Ukraine in particular with Alex Nowrasteh. It was a good conversation, in part because we are friendly with each other off the interwebs. I plan on posting a discussion with someone less amenable to “open borders” in the near future (stay tuned!).
The von Neumann book has made me push A Dominant Character: How J. B. S. Haldane Transformed Genetics, Became a Communist, and Risked His Neck for Science: The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J. B. S. Haldane up my stack. Despite Haldane’s political radicalism, I do want to note that on the science he was very much aligned with the conservative, R. A. Fisher.
I read the review of the von Neumann book at WSJ.com, and I bought it for my DiL as her birthday present. The math is not a problem for her as she has a B.S. in Math and M.S. in Comp. Sci. She and my son (Ph.D. Math) named their dog Jancsi (Hungarian for Johnny) after von Neumann.
Yes, please bring a more immigration skeptical guest.
richwine
so the mixed-race queen in bridgerton is based on queen charlotte, who is supposed to be black. this was made up by an independent historian, and is based on her descent from a black branch of the Portuguese royal family dating to the 13th-century. it turns out that the black branch might have been moorish i think?
anyway, it is clearly made up, but i’m seeing online explainers either claim it’s true or “we’ll never know.” soon enough queen charlotte is going to be black in the public mind isn’t she?
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.07.414037v3 – “Detection of ancestry-derived variants of modern Japanese revealed the formation process of regional gradations of the current Japanese archipelago population”
Identifies variants in Japanese specifically associated with Jomon (through a particular strategy of Linkage Disequilibrium), then identifies this indicates slightly varying proportions of Jomon ancestry through Japan.
New – https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2120786119 – “Ancient DNA gives new insights into a Norman Neolithic monumental cemetery dedicated to male elites”
“Abstract – The Middle Neolithic in western Europe is characterized by monumental funerary structures, known as megaliths, along the Atlantic façade. The first manifestations of this phenomenon occurred in modern-day France with the long mounds of the Cerny culture. Here, we present genome-wide data from the fifth-millennium BCE site of Fleury-sur-Orne in Normandy (France), famous for its impressively long monuments built for selected individuals. The site encompasses 32 monuments of variable sizes, containing the burials of 19 individuals from the Neolithic period. To address who was buried at the site, we generated genome-wide data for 14 individuals, of whom 13 are males, completing previously published data [M. Rivollat et al., Sci. Adv. 6, eaaz5344 (2020)]. Population genetic and Y chromosome analyses show that the Fleury-sur-Orne group fits within western European Neolithic genetic diversity and that the arrival of a new group is detected after 4,000 calibrated BCE. The results of analyzing uniparentally inherited markers and an overall low number of long runs of homozygosity suggest a patrilineal group practicing female exogamy. We find two pairs of individuals to be father and son, buried together in the same monument/grave. No other biological relationship can link monuments together, suggesting that each monument was dedicated to a genetically independent lineage. The combined data and documented father–son line of descent suggest a male-mediated transmission of sociopolitical authority. However, a single female buried with an arrowhead, otherwise considered a symbol of power of the male elite of the Cerny culture, questions a strictly biological sex bias in the burial rites of this otherwise “masculine” monumental cemetery.”
More genomes of megaliths. More elite male lineages.
(CF also
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04241-4 – Fowler et al 2021 – Hazleton Long Cairn in Britain – “Patrilineal descent was key in determining who was buried in the tomb, as all 15 intergenerational transmissions were through men.”
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2021/repository/preview.php?Abstract=3000 – upcoming, Rivollat et al – “We observed a strong patrilocal and patrilineal system with a single male lineage for the main family.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2378-6 – Cassidy 2020 – “We identify relatives of this individual within two other major complexes of passage tombs 150 km to the west of Newgrange, as well as dietary differences and fine-scale haplotypic structure (which is unprecedented in resolution for a prehistoric population) between passage tomb samples and the larger dataset, which together imply hierarchy.”
The overall impression is not of megalithic construction in NW Europe being linked to communal building across and egalitarian community..)