Links 20 September 2024

Marginal Hedgehog from the Hours of Margaret of Orléans, 1426

Spitalfields Life on John Dempsey's London street portraits from the 1820s.

Swedish study of depression among Ph.D. students: higher than normal, but not as bad as some have claimed.

Very interesting review of a new biography of Frantz Fanon. Says the language of Marxist Revolution has become so strange to us that we can hardly grasp what Fanon was trying to say. Says the new biography is different from the last, published in 2000, because in 2000 it was still possible to be caught up in the rhetoric of revolutionary freedom for the Third World, but now we know that "the revolution had failed at the same time as it had succeeded," making the whole story a tragedy. Says what Fanon wrote about race has aged much better than what he wrote about Global Revolution; in our age we are less impressed by grand political solutions and more interested in matters of person and identity.

Interesting NY Times story on college admissions after the end of affirmative action. The numbers have bounced around quite a bit at different schools. One issue is that the number of students refusing to identify a race has gone up, as has the number checking more than one box. The number of Asian students at some schools has gone down, which is probably due to Asian kids skipping the question. One of the ironies of racial policy in America is that we have no legal definition of race and you cannot be forced to declare one, so the numbers we care so much about are based on whatever people happen to say about themselves.

Winners from the Ocean Photographer of the Year 2024.

How kamikaze termites blow themselves up. I think these scientists' terminology is out of date and they should call these insects suicide bomber termites. 

Or Hezbollah pager termites.

Interesting 12-minute video from CNBC on lithium extraction in Arkansas, where companies plan to piggyback on the existing industry that extracts bromine from brine.

Overdose deaths in the US are finally heading downward.

Interesting article on Haitians in small-town Alabama. Via Marginal Revolutions.

Paleogentics suggests that residents of Easter Island have about 10% Native American ancestry, with a mixture date estimated to be AD 1250-1430. Says the collapse in the island's population was caused, not by "ecocide," but by smallpox introduced by Europeans.

New York's Inter-Borough Express, a proposed light rail line through Brooklyn and Queens, and the question of whether it will impact All Faiths Cemetery. My company is doing the environmental impact statement for this project.

NY Times piece on the enduring appeal of wearing all black. I was struck by this: "But above all, black says this: I don’t bother you, don’t bother me."

Phoebe Gates says friends have cut ties to her because of the Covid-19 vaccine conspiracy theories about her father Bill. Maybe those are friends she's better off without? Personally I don't find those tracking-chip-in-the-vaccine theories as weird as the fact that Bill Gates' daughter could head a fashion firm.

The Twitter/X feed of Richard Hanania, a cranky libertarian who got famous for attacking wokeness, is now almost entirely an attack on Trump and his followers, full of accusations that Republicans are getting stupider by the day. "To defend Trump as a person requires a consistent surrendering of one’s dignity." I feel like these defections of smart right-wingers should be hurting Trump but see no evidence that this is so.

In a related note, this NY Times essay on Springfield by Ohio governor Mike DeWine is exactly what you would expect from a responsible Republican who cares about governance, balancing praise for hardworking Haitians with concern about too much immigration. The contrast to Trump and Vance is stark. Yet he says he is supporting them. I suppose that is part of his job as head of the state Republican party but still a sad commentary on where American conservatism has ended up, with the Mike DeWines of the world having to defend the J.D. Vances and Laura Loomers. Come on, guys, if Obama could criticize radical black agitators you can criticize nutcase conservatives. It's what the world expects of you.

Researchers have genetically modified poplar trees to produce tougher wood, achieving the same effect as chemical treatment, without the toxic chemicals.

Francesca Gino's lawsuit against Data Colada for demonstrating that she faked her research has been dismissed. But parts of her lawsuit against Harvard are going forward; one issue is that they seem to have changed their rules regarding research integrity in response to the charges against Gino, then fired her for violating them. Funny that Harvard didn't have rules against faking data.

Small literary magazines are terrified of offending ethno-liberals on social media.

Database listing all the people we know by name from Anglo-Saxon England.

"Can economics come up with truly novel remedies or ideas? Probably not." (Tyler Cowen)

YouGov poll on attitudes toward Rome and other ancient empires.

An eyeliner pencil 8,000 years old.

Chariot burial from a Roman-period necropolis in Bulgaria.

Goats clearing brush at the Rock Creek Golf Course in DC. Why couldn't they have done this before we fought our way through all that vegetation to do their archaeological survey?

Russian media complains that Ukrainian phone scammers are targeting Russians, taking more than a billion dollars a year, 40% of which goes to Ukraine's military. If so, what a supervillain move. Although not quite on the level of exploding pagers.

Mordor skies at Toropets west of Moscow where about 100 Ukrainian drones attacked a Russian missile storage site; the explosions were large enough to register as seismic events. Video here. Damage assessment.

YouTuber Perun thinks attack helicopters are on the way out because they are highly vulnerable on the modern battlefield and drones can do much of their work a lot more cheaply. (one-hour video) 

The "AI Assisted Targeting Revolution is Here," through systems like the US Maven, 16-minute video.

On the Russian economy, Ukrainian intelligence chief Budanov repeats what I posted from economists last week about serious troubles ahead.

News media are reporting on a leaked Ukrainian report that estimates 80,000 of their soldiers have been killed in the war and 400,000 wounded.