wdbbdw

I saw her sing once with Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth) playing guitar, and it a transcendent experience for me, personally. I'd heard her singing before on a recording and I'd found it irritating, but seeing it live was something else. So primal and beautiful. However, even though it brought me to literal tears, half of the audience were walking away and shaking their heads, which, I don't know, seems like a win for avant-garde art to me.

I think it was less the original Zelda than it was Link's Awakening that had the Lynch influence, specifically influence by Twin Peaks

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/12/feature_how_david_...

I dunno, go look at Barack Obama, then look at pictures of his parents, and tell me which group he belongs to.

As others have mentioned, Bing now shows some results for 'tank man' with tanks and men but no Tiananmen square photo (DDG had the same image results, btw). 'Tank man China' had no results on Bing

I'm not one of your friends, and I'm hardly a musician, but I agree that Miles' second quintet is indeed unrivaled in jazz. All of the music they made is sublime, but my favorites are the albums Filles de Kilimanjaro, Sorcerer, Water Babies, Nefertiti, and of course In A Silent Way (featuring late great Chick Corea).

I took all of the anti-fb steps (removed the app, deleted IG account, logged out of the fb app on my phone and desktop browsers), but I couldn't bring myself to actually delete my account. I still haven't deleted it, but last fall I got a new phone and my google authenticator app (for 2fa) lost all of my accounts (i.e. google and fb). Luckily I was able to login to my google account, but FB requires that I send them a photo of my drivers license. I know that I wouldn't be sending them any information that they don't already have, but something about that act just offends me. I haven't been able to log in since September and now I've pretty much forgotten about it.

I won't pretend to understand the answer well enough to give a clear answer. Instead I'll highly recommend an illustrated version of Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time to dig deeper into this question. I personally find that big questions like this really do require more than an article or video.

I'm confused about how you got to your first point. You cited figures from the survey paper that show a spike at 0% genetic (meaning that a bunch of the people surveyed think there's a very low genetic influence on intelligence), but then you say "the view that IQ is hereditary is well represented among experts - moreso than the opposite." Doesn't the figure you cite contradict your conclusion?

The HN post you referred to supporting the idea of "race" included a link to a paper [0] where these are the final 2 lines of the abstract: "Respondents educated in Western Europe, physical anthropologists, and middle-aged persons reject race more frequently than respondents educated in Eastern Europe, people in other branches of science, and those from both younger and older generations. The survey shows that the views of anthropologists on race are sociopolitically (ideologically) influenced and highly dependent on education."

I wouldn't call that scientific support for the notion of race as a meaningful category.

Ever since the idea of "white" people was invented, groups which have at one time or another been considered non-white include the Germans, Greeks, white Hispanics, Arabs, Iranians, Afghans, Irish, Italians, Jews, Slavs and Spaniards. [1][2]

I agree with you about the video I linked to cherry picking that quote from Murray about heritability. That section was taken from a critique [3] of The Bell Curve, and the paragraph it was pulled from ends with this: "The Bell Curve itself does not make these embarrassing mistakes. Herrnstein, the late co-author, was a professional on these topics. But the upshot of part of this essay is that the book's main argument depends for some of its persuasive force on a more subtle conflation of heritability and genetic determination. And Murray's confusion serves to underscore just how difficult these concepts can be, even for someone so numerate as Murray."

It doesn't seem like we will be convincing each other of anything here. For me, it's just about impossible to be schooled on the history of America and the incredible multifaceted assault on people that aren't white, which is still very much ongoing, and then argue that there's any way to say that there isn't an overwhelming environmental cause for disparities in socioeconomic status/IQ/incarcaration rates/etc between blacks and whites. Just falling back on ockham's razor, which seems more likely:

A - After humans migrated out of Africa and spread out over the globe, there was selection for genes that generated differing amounts of melanin in reaction to different amounts of sunlight at different latitudes. For some reason, genes linked with intelligence shifted as well so that there is now a strong correlation between skin pigmentation levels and intelligence despite a lack of any obvious reason for these things to be linked.

or

B - Africans, being better adept at surviving the malarial load of the new world due to a genetic predisposition [4] were recruited en masse for the trans-atlantic slave trade. The people running this slave trade, having at least a modicum of morality and most likely Christian, invented a theory of race that placed Africans below Europeans so that it became less morally repugnant to maintain the chattel slavery system. This theory of race pitted all of the poor people against each other, allowing people in power to maintain their positions. This theory of race also allowed for a prolonged (and ongoing) withholding of resources from an entire population of people (defined by having dark skin), and this deprivation is having a direct effect on the success of dark-skinned people in many different measurements.

For me, it's B all the way.

[0] https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/current-views-...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_people#United_States

[2] https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/ylj/vol109/iss4/4/

[3] https://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/Her...

[4] https://www.nps.gov/ethnography/aah/aaheritage/lowCountry_fu...

While the quote you pulled from that survey seems to contradict what Dr. Collins said in his statement, the two sentences before that one seem more problematic for the idea that there's even a difference in IQ that can be attributed to race:

"There was little to no support for separate subgroup norms for different racial, ethnic, or social groups or for people with different nationalities (natives vs. immigrants), with the percentage of experts favoring separate norms below 25%.

There was no clear position among experts regarding environmental and genetic factors in the US Black-White difference in intelligence."

Maybe Dr. Collins rubs shoulders with experts other than those surveyed here, who knows.

Looking at the SD in the survey responses suggests that the position of the researchers polled in this survey wasn't accurately represented by the quote you posted.

The example you use to critique the video I posted is also not very generous, and is a pretty lame rebuttal to what was a very extensive attack on the ideas presented in "The Bell Curve". Do you have any critiques on the more relevant points that the video actually makes? E.g. what is intelligence anyway and how can it be measured, if at all? Or, presuming that IQ is an accurate measure of intelligence, then how to square the supposition the Bell Curve makes about an idiocracy-style drop in IQ points with the Flynn effect?

Another relevant question is what exactly is the scientific support for "race" as anything other than a meaningless label[0]? For example, in the interview of Charles Murray conducted by Sam Harris for his podcast, Murray used Barack Obama as an example of a typical black man, saying that, and I'm paraphrasing, even supposing that there is a difference in IQ between the races, it wouldn't justify denying a job to someone like Barack Obama if he came in applying for one. But, like, why is Obama black and not white? Have you seen a picture of Obama's mom? She's the whitest white lady from Kansas. I was recently working on some cancer project and I had a spreadsheet of the subjects' self-reported race, as well as genetic ancestry results showing the percentage of African ancestry and European ancestry. Some of the respondents who self-reported as African American had 97% European ancestry.

[0] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/race-gen...

'Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, said that most experts on intelligence “consider any black-white differences in I.Q. testing to arise primarily from environmental, not genetic, differences.”

Dr. Collins said he was unaware of any credible research on which Dr. Watson’s “profoundly unfortunate" statement would be based.' [0]

I think this video [1], does a good job of attacking a lot of race science and intelligence, though at 2.5 hours long it may be a bit too thorough.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/01/science/watson-dna-geneti...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo

edited for formatting

He never actually sold it [0]; a billionaire just paid him some cash instead and Watson got to keep his prize.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/dec/09/russian-bill...

Uh, oops, right. I hadn't read tfa.

I dunno, after having had a front row seat to more than one vaginal birth I'd say that it's implausible to suggest that microbes aren't being transferred (via "vagina juice" and the proverbial "microbial organ", i.e. poop) from mother to baby. Also, having dabbled in microbial ecology in my professional life, I'd say that it's unlikely that said microbial transfer is inconsequential for the gut health of the baby. Doctors don't know everything, and I'd venture that effectively no research on the effects of a cesarian on the baby's gut health was done before the procedure became widespread.

Conflating microbiome interests with antivax mania doesn't make any sense to me, and I agree that "crunchy Karen" is a dismissive sexist tropE, especially in this context. Do any of you have even a passing familiarity with modern microbiome research? It's super fascinating and I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it.

Michael Pollan wrote [1] about an evolutionary biologist who did this exact thing after his daughter was born via cesarian.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/magazine/say-hello-to-the...

Instead of wipes, I take a small bunch of tp and just wet it from the faucet before going into the stall. Not as problematic as the wipe, flushable, and cleans better than the dry tp by itself.

That's his brand, but I am not convinced that he lives up to that standard. Dude lacks intellectual humility big time, and seems to support scientific racism[0].

[0]: https://samharris.org/ezra-klein-editor-chief/

Chicago

1: Segregation. The black and brown people are all concentrated in the South and West sides, along with most of the violent crime. Despicable and sad.

2: Lack of nature nearby. The city has some nice parks, especially the public lake front, but there isn't any decent camping within a 3 or 4 hour drive.

3: Weather. I've lived here my whole life, and I am becoming less tolerant of the winters as I age.

The traffic is pretty bad too, but I bike commute so I don't really feel that part too much. Finally, and this is a more pernicious problem, but the state's fiscal situation is terrible. It doesn't seem like such an issue now (especially for a fairly affluent white guy like me), but the future will almost certainly include service reductions combined with higher taxes.

I went to Gorongosa for a field biology course in 2016, and it was absolutely amazing. Greg Carr gave a talk to us about the park and it's mission, and it seems like they're really working hard to incorporate the park into the surrounding communities so that the locals have a sense of ownership over their park.

The megafauna are recovering at a good clip, and there's thriving bird and bug biodiversity if you're into that kind of thing (seeing Oecophylla nests was a particular highlight for me, but I'm probably in the minority there.) National Geographic did a video series about the park's recovery that I highly recommend[1], and last I heard they're working on a sequel.

[1] http://www.pbs.org/gorongosa/home/

I'd recommend reading the novel; it's a wonderful read. Clarke wrote it alongside the screenplay (which he cowrote with Kubrick), and it helps clarify some of the more mystical happenings at both the beginning and the end of the film.

Kubrick, via wikipedia[1]: "There are a number of differences between the book and the movie. The novel, for example, attempts to explain things much more explicitly than the film does, which is inevitable in a verbal medium. The novel came about after we did a 130-page prose treatment of the film at the very outset. This initial treatment was subsequently changed in the screenplay, and the screenplay in turn was altered during the making of the film. But Arthur took all the existing material, plus an impression of some of the rushes, and wrote the novel. As a result, there's a difference between the novel and the film ... I think that the divergences between the two works are interesting."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film)

If you're going to defend this congressman and Equifax, at least lose the weasel words prepending your defense. Getting some slimy congressman to introduce legislation to preemptively cap the restitution people can get when Equifax messes up isn't "reasonable protection under the law", it's an attempt at stripping away of the rights of individuals to the great benefit of the corporation. Gross.

In the last six months I've moved to a new apartment in another part of town, I changed jobs, and I graduated from grad school. My social life has been severely disrupted! The change in work was maybe the most dramatic since I moved from a highly social environment to being isolated in an office by myself (and on a floor with taciturn colleagues). It's only been a few months, but I already see some mild forms of the symptoms described in the parent comment.

Now, being in grad school, working full time and having a toddler did a lot of the work in atrophying my social connections over the last three years, but this spring delivered a knock-out blow. Luckily, I'm attentive to my mental health and generally a proactive person, so I've outlined steps to try and at least get into another job (Cracking the Coding Interview... groan). I've also started scouring the internet looking for ideas to start developing my community ties:

  - Our local YMCA has programs for families that we'll be taking advantage of, including free babysitting once a month(!!!)
  - There's a local collective of volunteer "civic hackers" that I'll start hanging out with after summer's over.  
  - I just saw, somewhere above in this comment thread, a mention of meetup.com. It's now open in another tab.  
  - I'm even leaving comments on the internet, such as this!

Anyway, just wanted to share (edit: formatting).

Not only are viruses a cool (if somewhat nefarious) DNA-delivery system (though, HIV being a retrovirus probably means that it delivered RNA instead of DNA), but it can be targeted. HIV viral particles attack human immune cells, which just happen to be the general cell type that needs to be treated in this case! Using something like hepatitis or HPV probably would do the trick here since those viruses wouldn't have the keys to unlock the doors to get inside of the T cells.

Test of n = 1: ("Random article") -> Yūyūki -> 1989 in video gaming -> Golden Joystick Awards -> Video game -> Electronic game -> Game -> Play (activity) -> Psychology -> Behavior -> American English -> Variety (linguistics) -> Sociolinguistics -> Society -> Social group -> Social science -> Discipline (academia) -> Knowledge -> Fact -> Verificationism -> Philosophy

That was fun!

Absolutely! I'm in Chicago, where the weather is decidedly not mediterranean, but the biggest challenge for me is finding a safe enough route to ride on. The most direct route for me puts me on some pretty busy streets with a "shared lane" (i.e. an image of a bike painted on the road), but by adding about 5 minutes each way to my ride I'm able to spend 2/3s of it completely off of the streets thanks to our elevated 606 path and the lakefront trail. I often fantasize about some dystopian scenario that renders all motorized vehicles inoperable, leading to a utopian world where streets are safe to use for cyclists. Chicago gets a glimpse of such a world once a year on the "bike the drive" event where lake shore drive is closed to car traffic for a few hours and is filled with cyclists.

I absolutely loathe working out in the gym. I hate the stale air, the incessant cable news shows on the TVs, and the thought of contracting MRSA or something like it from lying on a bench. Also, I hate commuting in a car (boooooooring!) or train (gross!). The only exercise I get nowadays is my bike commute, but that seems to be enough. I have to ride 9 miles each way, 5 days a week. I live in Chicago, so the weather can be disagreeable, but I've gotten more and more tolerant of things like that (I ride unless it's below 20F, above 100F, or if there's snow on the ground). Not only does the bike commute save me from having to go to the gym, but it also saves me from sitting in car traffic during my commute! It really helps that my employer supports bike commuters by hosting a secure bike cage and showers.

Also, just throwing this out there, but having a healthy diet is just as important, if not more important, both for losing weight and for just general health. I've taken a nerdy approach by considering the microbes in my poop and the ecology that I establish for them. I hate to get all pseudosciency, but essentially I feel like the more bad food you eat, the more you microbial community will be composed of microbes that feed off of that crap food, perpetuating a cycle of increasingly unhealthy eating habits. Eat lots of fiber! It'll make your crap factory hum like a well-tuned machine, while also helping you lose weight! Roast veggies (chop 'em to about thumb-size, toss 'em with olive oil and salt, then put 'em in the oven @ ~400F for like half an hour or more, flipping them every ten minutes or so), eat lots of raw veggies with hummus, whole grain bread, fresh fruits, and drink lots of water. I also try to stay away from sugar and alcohol, but that's not so easy for me. I try to replace alcohol with weed, but that just increases my sugar consumption, of course.