Read it.

I know that they do something, I’m just not entirely sure what it is, and I don’t really miss them when I run out. Yet I keep buying them, because this what humans that cook do. They buy bay leaves and put them in things.

Read it.

An ingroup is a social group that a person identifies as being a part of, based on factors like nationality, race, religion, socioeconomic status, or political affiliation.

An outgroup is a social group that a person does not identify with, based on similar factors as would cause that person to identify with an ingroup (e.g., nationality and religion).

For example, a religious person might view members of their religion as being a part of their ingroup, while viewing members of other religions as being a part of their outgroup.

The concept of ingroups and outgroups has important implications in a wide range of contexts, so it’s important to understand it. As such, in the following article you will learn more about this aspect of social identity, understand the psychology behind it, and see what you can do to account for it in practice.

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The man had never met Ma’lokyattsik’i, but he hardly hesitated as he drove a pickaxe through her heart and toted away her salt. Also known as the Salt Woman or Salt Mother, Ma’lokyattsik’i lived in the form of a salt lake and had long attracted visitors from the pueblos of Zuni, Hopi, Acoma, Laguna, and beyond. These visitors came with care, carrying prayer plumes and gracious sentiments. Puebloan peoples even agreed among one another to leave behind weapons and warfare at their camps and villages whenever they needed salt. Puebloan peoples have long seen the Salt Woman as an animate part of their world. But the man with the pickaxe—a Spanish soldier led by Captain Marcos Farfán de los Godos—saw her as little more than an extractable resource, one that might justify imperial investment and colonial settlement in the continental southwest.

Vox.

I think there are a few reasons that parking makes people really upset, but perhaps the most obvious is that in almost every place in this country, it is obligatory to have a car, and there is almost nothing that you can do without a car. So to the extent that you are able to hold down a job or go to a restaurant or pick your kids up from school, you have to drive, and parking becomes the link between driving and whatever else you want to do with your life. And so naturally, there’s a great deal of importance placed on having a good parking space.’

… we have just catastrophically mismanaged the way we provide parking in this country, in a way that actually doesn’t make things better for people who are driving and parking. Parking is not shared, and it’s not properly priced. We have acquiesced to the idea that parking on city streets has to be a total free-for-all.

…

The first person to be killed in New York City this year was actually killed over a parking space. I estimate that it happens several dozen times a year in US cities.

Wired.

For nearly three days after a sperm meets an egg, the human embryo (a tiny, eight-cell blob) is managed by the egg’s genes. On day three, the embryo strips its entire genome naked, freeing itself of maternal control and exposing its genes for activation. Then, says computational biologist Manu Singh, “the army of the dead invades on day four.”

Steve Sailer.

Mays is probably the least unreasonable choice you could make as the greatest baseball player of all time. A majority of expert observers would likely disagree that he was the best ever, but absolutely none would scoff at your choice.

But, as is common knowledge, Steve Sailer is a notorious racist and white supremacist, so what does he know?

Read it.

MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, awarded a $2 million grant to a Philadelphia-based community fund with ties to the Philly Palestine Coalition, the radical activist group behind the anti-Israel encampment at the University of Pennsylvania.

The billionaire divorcée announced the grant to Bread & Roses Community Fund on March 19, lauding the group and other grantees as “vital agents of change” that have overcome “discrimination and other systemic obstacles.” Just weeks later, in May, Bread & Roses honored the Philly Palestine Coalition with its “Victory is Ours Award,” which the fund gives to a local group that has “advanced moments for racial and economic justice.”

It’s hard to maintain the fiction that Republicans are ‘the party of the rich’ when most billionaires (and their former wives) are Democrats–or worse.

The Spectator.

Liberal democracy is endangered more by its friends than by its enemies. Neither Moscow nor Beijing lured the United States into strategic humiliations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor was the rise of China to the rank of a great power brought about by Westerners sympathetic to Beijing’s communist system. If liberal parties and movements in the United States and Europe seem to be losing ground to populists, this is not thanks to Facebook ads purchased by Vladimir Putin in support of Donald Trump or Brexit. Liberals themselves sabotaged liberal democracy by prioritizing liberalism over democratic legitimacy for three decades after the Cold War — on fundamental issues ranging from trade and foreign policy to immigration and national values.

The Spectator.

Japan has become another piece of fodder for the West’s culture wars. After a recent visit with his family, talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel praised the country for its clean toilets and lack of litter, only to be lambasted by right-wing pundits such as Ben Shapiro, who accused the comedian of having leftist beliefs that are completely at odds with what makes Japanese society so safe and orderly. Namely, Shapiro argued, Japan is a closed-off nation, unpersuaded by arguments to allow mass migration, and its homogeneity and “unique culture,” along with a strict legal system, help sustain this “package deal.”

During the height of the Syrian refugee crisis nearly a decade ago, amid intense international criticism, Japan refused to accept asylum seekers from the Middle East. Last year, its government recognized only 303 refugees, still a record high. Japan has been more generous in regard to the war in Ukraine, with around 2,600 individuals classified as “evacuees” accepted as of February 2024, but most do not hold official asylum status. Roughly 2,000 currently remain in the country, with the majority hoping to eventually return to Ukraine.

Tyler Cowen.

In this conversation, Tyler and David discuss ways in which Orthodox Christianity is not so millenarian, how theological patience shapes the polities of Orthodox Christian nations, how Heidegger deepened his understanding of Christian Orthodoxy, who played left field for the Baltimore Orioles in 1970, the simplest way to explain how Orthodoxy diverges from Catholicism, the future of the American Orthodox Church, what he thinks of the Book of Mormon, whether theological arguments are ultimately based on reason or faith, what he makes of reincarnation and near-death experiences, gnosticism in movies and TV, why he dislikes Sarah Ruden’s translation of the New Testament, the most difficult word to translate, a tally of the 15+ languages he knows, what he’ll work on next, and more.

Read it.

A new measurement of the strong nuclear force, which binds protons and neutrons together, confirms previous hints of an uncomfortable truth: We still don’t have a solid theoretical grasp of even the simplest nuclear systems.

To test the strong nuclear force, physicists turned to the helium-4 nucleus, which has two protons and two neutrons. When helium nuclei are excited, they grow like an inflating balloon until one of the protons pops off. Surprisingly, in a recent experiment, helium nuclei didn’t swell according to plan: They ballooned more than expected before they burst. A measurement describing that expansion, called the form factor, is twice as large as theoretical predictions.

“The theory should work,” said Sonia Bacca, a theoretical physicist at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and an author of the paper describing the discrepancy, which was published in Physical Review Letters. “We’re puzzled.”

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Mental illness has been an enigma and point of confusion for many researchers and scientists. Despite medical advances, the root cause of mental illness has remained unknown.

However, a recent breakthrough in psychiatry may be the missing piece to this mysterious puzzle.

Dr. Christopher Palmer, a Harvard professor of psychiatry, has been connecting the dots of thousands of research articles regarding the relationship between mental illness and mitochondrial dysfunction.

According to Palmer, this collective research raises concerns about the current treatments used for mental disorders.

Read it. Or watch the video.

Desalination, or the removal of salt from seawater, is one of those technologies that has always seemed right on the horizon. It might surprise you to learn that there are more than 18,000 desalination plants operating across the globe. But, those plants provide less than a percent of global water needs even though they consume a quarter of all the energy used by the water industry.

Read it.

And it will serve you right.

Quillette.

We are witnessing the transition from “college is for everybody” to “college is unnecessary and often useless.” Going to college “to be able to get a better job” is likely to fade away as the primary reason students attend. And the institutions themselves—universities and colleges of various types—will have to accept a much less prominent role in our social and economic systems. They are in danger of becoming cultural relics.

To be sure, a large majority of American parents still believe that their children must attain a college degree for their welfare and happiness. Almost always, those parents are applying both their understanding of how the world works and their recollection of their own time in college. College as they knew it was the on-ramp to prosperous adulthood. But that outcome is steadily becoming less likely.

The American Mind.

No one stops you when driving across the border from Nogales, Arizona, into Nogales, Mexico; crossing the other way is a different story. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers often interrogate drivers and search vehicles inside and out, using drug-sniffing dogs, x-ray scanners, handheld chemical analyzers, and trained detectives. One reason is that Nogales, Mexico, is now the world’s epicenter of illegal fentanyl trafficking, and Arizona’s southern border is the primary point of entry for illegal fentanyl entering the U.S.

Read it.

A math geek reviews a math geek book. Both are worth reading.

The Guardian.

ince the sequencing of the human genome in 2003, genetics has become one of the key frameworks for how we all think about ourselves. From fretting about our health to debating how schools can accommodate non-neurotypical pupils, we reach for the idea that genes deliver answers to intimate questions about people’s outcomes and identities.

Recent research backs this up, showing that complex traits such as temperament, longevity, resilience to mental ill-health and even ideological leanings are all, to some extent, “hardwired”. Environment matters too for these qualities, of course. Our education and life experiences interact with genetic factors to create a fantastically complex matrix of influence.

But what if the question of genetic inheritance were even more nuanced? What if the old polarised debate about the competing influences of nature and nurture was due a 21st-century upgrade?

Read it.

When I was around eight years old, my baby-sitter let me watch a documentary on nuclear war. Unsurprisingly, it shook me to the core. It’s kind of hard to know what went on in her head, but those images of nuclear detonations never left my head. Looking back at it now, this ‘incident’ starts to make sense, kind of. This is because over the decades I’ve read a lot on nuclear deterrence and on nuclear war simulations. I have had this graving to understand nuclear warfare and deterrence basically throughout my adult-life.

Read it.

Created for US insurance firms during a period of devastating fires across the 19th and 20th centuries, the Sanborn maps blaze with detail — shops, homes, churches, brothels, and opium dens were equally noted by the company’s cartographers. Tobiah Black explores the history and afterlife of these maps, which have been reclaimed by historians and genealogists seeking proof of the vanished past.

I love maps. Always have.

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The Baltimore City Police Department is investigating a “possible chemical agent” released at a Pride event Saturday evening in the downtown area that sparked a “mass exodus.”

Local media outlet Capital Gazette said a “possible chemical agent” and fireworks were released during the Baltimore Pride parade around 830 pm local time.

Baltimore Police has yet to confirm the type of chemical agent that was released. The combination of the chemical agent and fireworks caused the large crowd to panic, scattering in different directions and resulting in several injuries.

Sounds as if the worm is definitely turning.

Read it.

Next step: Claiming that the Japanese, like the ancient Egyptians, were actually black.

Ka-ching!

Read it.

Ever since the start of Joe Biden’s presidency, curbing climate change has been a fundamental component of his energy policy agenda.

During the spring, for example, the Biden administration issued a power plant rule­­, imposing strict emissions reductions regarding the use of fossil-fuel power plants. There have been many other rules proposed as well, including regulating cars, stoves, dishwashers, water heaters, and even microwaves.

All of these rules are predicated on concerns about the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on global temperatures and climate change. If greenhouse gas emissions drive climate change, then curbing the use of sources of energy that emit them (such as coal, oil, and natural gas) should in theory curb these increases in global temperature.

Read it.

A massive, yearslong study shows the overwhelming majority of young people who identify as transgender will grow out of the diagnosis within five years.

Forbes.

“Where are all the genetic cures?” asks Denis Noble, a frustrated biophysicist, Royal Society fellow and pioneer of the field of systems biology. “They don’t exist. Where will they be? They won’t exist.” Since mapping the human genome in 2003, research priorities and funding shifted significantly towards genetics. The investment improved disease detection and management but failed to deliver on its promise of cures for our most common deadly diseases like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s and most cancers. Compounding the issue, a large-scale, 2023 study concluded that genetic risk scores perform poorly at predicting who’s going to develop common diseases. For Noble, the billions invested annually in genetic research represents less of a strategy and more of a scientific confusion—that we are our genes.

Read it.

I still tend to think in 24-hour terms.

Zman’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

One of the many frustrations of people in outsider politics is that the people inside conventional politics, especially in the conservative wing, never respond to what is going on outside of Washington. After every election, regardless of the result, they continue doing what they were doing before the election. We saw this most clearly after 2016 where Conservative Inc rallied against Trump.

The reason for that is conservatism is not just an institution or even a collection of institutions, but rather an ecosystem that provides total care for the people who are allowed to take up a place in it. If you manage to slither inside one of the institutions, you no longer live outside of your political existence. To the contrary, your entire life is now defined by your place in the political ecosystem.

The reason for that is the enormity of institutional conservatism. What it lacks in popular support it more than makes up for in financial support. That money is used to build a network of institutions that are linked together to provide a lifestyle to the people inside them that they could never achieve in the dreaded private sector. As a result, everyone inside is deeply loyal to the system.

Watch it.

Hoe_math explains why promiscuity is a Bad Thing.

Read it.

Nearly 1 million American citizens living abroad are considering renouncing their citizenship due to U.S. tax filing requirements, according to 1040 Abroad, a tax filing firm for expatriates.

There is a YouTube channel called Nomad Capitalist that specializes in such things. It’s motto is “Go Where You’re Treated Best”. Apparently the U.S. ain’t it.

Read it.

We identify points of conflict and consensus regarding (a) controversial empirical claims and (b) normative preferences for how controversial scholarship—and scholars—should be treated. In 2021, we conducted qualitative interviews (n = 41) to generate a quantitative survey (N = 470) of U.S. psychology professors’ beliefs and values. Professors strongly disagreed on the truth status of 10 candidate taboo conclusions: For each conclusion, some professors reported 100% certainty in its veracity and others 100% certainty in its falsehood. Professors more confident in the truth of the taboo conclusions reported more self-censorship, a pattern that could bias perceived scientific consensus regarding the inaccuracy of controversial conclusions. Almost all professors worried about social sanctions if they were to express their own empirical beliefs. Tenured professors reported as much self-censorship and as much fear of consequences as untenured professors, including fear of getting fired. Most professors opposed suppressing scholarship and punishing peers on the basis of moral concerns about research conclusions and reported contempt for peers who petition to retract papers on moral grounds. Younger, more left-leaning, and female faculty were generally more opposed to controversial scholarship. These results do not resolve empirical or normative disagreements among psychology professors, but they may provide an empirical context for their discussion.

Read it.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that….

Read it.

The new Conservative New Zealand Coalition Government has cancelled a climate flatulence tax which was due to start in 2025.

Tyler Cowan, an economist at George Mason University in D.C.

The right-wing tendencies are easiest to explain. South Africa is obviously much wealthier than the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, and of course Westerners play a larger role in its history and also in its present. You can put different glosses on that, but a variety of those paths lead to right-wing conclusions. The left-wing lessons are more novel to ponder, here are a few.

Cowan is generally libertarian, and when dealing with libertarians, labels such as ‘right-wing’ or ‘left-wing’ really say more about which Modern Political Tribe one belongs to than it does to the labelee. Generally libertarians tend to be realistic about Noticing, so he’s got that going for him.

Read it.

As the Supreme Court gears up to conclude its decision season by the end of June, several high-stakes cases loom that could significantly alter the nation’s political and social fabric in a crucial election year.

Read it.

When a lot of people think about AI, they think, “Oh, it’s going to fool people into believing stuff that’s not true.” But what it’s really doing is giving people permission to not believe stuff that is true. Because they can say, “Oh, that’s an AI-generated image. AI can generate anything now: video, audio, the entire war zone re-created.” They will use it as an excuse. It’s just easy for them to say.

ZMan lays it out.

One of the criticisms of the paleoconservatives is that they never got around to formulating an explanation for why the managerial state emerged. They did a good job describing it and how it differed from the straightforward administrative bureaucracies that have been a part of society since Diocletian. How the bureaucracy transitioned from instrument of the ruling elite into a ruling elite itself has remained a bit of mystery, with only some stabs here and there at an explanation.

The fault probably lies with Burnham, who was the first guy to create a political theory from observing the emergence of the managerial system. He wrote his most famous book, The Managerial Revolution, during the Second World War when the Nazis were at the peak of their power. Therefore, his understanding of managerialism was shaped by the militant authoritarianism of it. Burnham was still a communist, so this no doubt played a role in his understanding of managerialism.

Burnham: Great insight, boring delivery. Read it if you can. Managerialism is actually an outgrowth and flowering of traditional German cameralism, which has a long history.

Follow the Nomad Capitalist on YouTube.

Watch it.

It’s not what you think.

Read it.

If you are a fan of reading or watching science fiction, you have definitely encountered the concept of curvature propulsion — one of the most fascinating and speculative frontiers in theoretical physics and advanced space travel.

Rooted in Einstein’s general theory of relativity, it proposes innovative methods to manipulate spacetime itself to achieve faster-than-light travel without violating the laws of physics.

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Black Lives Matter cofounder Patrisse Cullors resigned from the embattled charity in 2021, but the charity suffered from the excesses of her tenure well into 2023, according to a copy of its latest tax return obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Under Cullors’s leadership, Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation doled out massive contracts to her friends and family, purchased a $6 million mansion in Los Angeles in 2020, and financed the purchase of an $8 million mansion in Canada in 2021. By the end of its 2023 fiscal year, the tax forms show, Black Lives Matter saw the $80 million windfall it raked in during the George Floyd riots of 2020 diminish to under $29 million as it hemorrhaged cash fulfilling lingering contractual obligations to Cullors’s associates.

Those individuals include Damon Turner, the father of Cullors’s only child, whose art firm Trap Heals received $778,000 from Black Lives Matter in 2023 despite performing no work for the charity that year.

I guess black bucks matter even more.

Watch it.

This is why men think about the Roman empire at least once a week.

Read it.

The giants of the early days of tech, like Bill Gates and Michael Dell, had one thing in common: they were all autodidacts. These computer-geeks turned billionaires were and still are so much more than just gifted — they are self-learners. Early in their careers, they questioned formal paths to success, learned complex information all by themselves (most of them also dropping out of college) even though the information was still mostly inaccessible.

Today, 20 years after Google was founded, technological advancements have changed everything: access to information has improved immensely, freeing us of institutional education’s monopoly of learning.