The unintentional humor of the Eric Adams indictment. And Richard Hanania on the MAGA conspiracy theories that say Adams is a victim of the Deep State. On Twitter/X: "My view is corruption is bad and MAGA should stop defending it as a matter of principle."
Stem Cell Therapy Achieves First-Ever Cure for Type 2 Diabetes.
Some remarkably well-preserved Viking skeletons.
Broad-based tariffs don't necessarily help domestic manufacturers, since many American manufacturers use imported parts or materials.
Returning to college in modern America: I give you the "Hot Mom Dropoff" at Florida State University.
Kevin Drum reminds us that whatever problems young men have in America, they still earn more money than young women.
Jeremy Horpedahl goes after J.D. Vance on the price of refrigerators over the past 40 years (Twitter/X). The upshot is that fridges now cost way less in inflation-adjusted terms and use half as much electricity; the question of whether they last longer is complicated but it seems they may be a little less reliable.
Scott Sumner on greatness in art, mannerism, and opportunity: "The key is to understand the difference between artistic talent, which is not uncommon, and artistic greatness, which requires talent and a very special set of circumstances." This seems to be true, but I find the causality very mysterious. Why do artists need a certain, rare set of circumstances to create beautiful, powerful art? Why does catching the wave of a new style matter so much? Why do artists keep abandoning successful, beautiful styles in favor of the weird and ugly?
The man with 38 medieval graves in his basement.
Noah Smith explains once again that imports do not subtract from GDP. The number of people who think they know something about economics but don't grasp this simple equation is downright baffling.
What if a local government lies about a supposed "public use" when they seize land via eminent domain? Seizing black-owned land for "public parks" used to be a common dodge, although that would probably not pass judicial muster now. But what about seizing land for a "park" solely to prevent the construction of a business the mayor opposes?
Follow up to the bogus frenzy about thousands of unmarked graves at Indian schools in Canada: no human remains have been found. The eagerness of most liberals in the US and Canada to believe these lies is telling.
Contemplating a sloppy online poll that says young people are getting fired more, Kevin Drum wonders why we have no official data on firing.
Lots of new Nazca lines and figures discovered with the help of an AI system. Those people were busy.
Having attempted two different books on Edmund Burke and his thought and failed to make any headway with either, I recommend that others with an interest try this 44-minute lecture from Michael Sugrue of Princeton. In fact I recommend Sugrue on almost any western thinker; he covers about forty in lectures available on YouTube.
Complete 3D diagram of all 140,000 neurons in a fruit fly brain (NY Times, Guardian, one-minute video on YouTube, original article) Here is where I see a major role for AI in science: maybe a computer can make something of a pattern just too big and complex for a human brain to grasp.
Swedish firm makes steel at industrial scale without carbon emissions.
One of the many losses to Hurricane Helene was a monument to beloved pets. I continue to find pet-keeping to be one of humanity's weirdest evolutionary quirks.
Oz Katerji hopes Israel's weakening of Hezbollah might give the Lebanese state the chance to regain control of its own country, but doubts there is enough of Lebanon left to achieve that. (Twitter/X) And Lebanese Christians celebrating Nasrallah's death in the streets.
Longish essay on the institutional basis of Russian dictatorship.
Debating failures by western analysts at the start of the Ukraine war. Philips O'Brien and Eliot Cohen say people who thought Ukraine would fall quickly are idiots who should pay a price for their idiocy. (Atlantic article, which is free for now, and a report from the CSIS) Ok, O'Brien was right that Russia would fail to take Kyiv quickly, but on the other hand Russia has kept the war going for more than a year after he said they were "on the verge of collapse."
Crazy short video on Twitter/X of the ballistic missile engagement over Jordan on October 1.
2 comments:
One of the many losses to Hurricane Helene was a monument to beloved pets. I continue to find pet-keeping to be one of humanity's weirdest evolutionary quirks.
The only thing weird about it is that we developed to a point where we had enough spare food / time / resources to be able to take on pets regularly.
We've seen animals in captivity take on animals of other species as pets; famously Koko the gorilla and her pet kitten, but also many far lower profile cases of the common household variety. But we've ALSO seen animals in the wild do the same thing - we've seen capuchin monkeys taking in marmosets and feeding and caring for them, in their native habitat.
Of course, some people mince hairs and insist on referring to such behavior as "adoption" and claim that's somehow distinct from keeping pets, but what is having a pet if not adopting an animal? It's the primary word we use to refer to the process of taking on such an animal! We "adopt" pets!
In turns out that social animals have instincts toward sociality. Obviously! And just because another animal is of another species doesn't mean those instincts can't be focused toward said animal. Dogs are the classic example - there's no shortage of videos and stories about dogs adopting and caring for other common domesticated animals like cats, pigs, barnyard fowl, etc. It's pretty obvious that an animal which has a powerful inborn drive toward altruistic social behavior (even if that drive was selected for artificially by humans) is going to regularly act upon that drive, even across differences in species. No one should be remotely surprised by this.
I’m intrigued on the weirdiness of keeping pets….
Post a Comment