Read it.

A few weeks ago, we looked at myths to do with ploughing over cities and salting the earth. Today we’re looking at a kind of companion myth. The basic idea is that Roman soldiers were paid in salt, or received an allowance of ‘salt money’.

Read it.

China has spent millennia exploring the culinary possibilities of soybean curds. The West has barely scratched the surface.

I regard that as a feature, not a bug.

Most Turd World Food is poverty food, stuff people eat because they can’t afford better. Part of being W.E.I.R.D. is the we can live high on the hog, so to speak.

If I can go through life never having to eat, say, Mexican food, I will regard myself as a success. Go thou and do likewise.

Read it.

Since time immemorial, men have carried weapons. They have done so—if they were real men—not to pick fights or unnecessarily injure other men, but in response to the heavy burden of walking life’s path in this world as a protector. Only a few centuries ago, a gentleman would wear a smallsword or spadroon just in case the need arose to defend his good name, as well as all those who shared in that name. As the smallsword was increasingly regulated by the law of the land, and gentlemen relied more on the State or, if it came to that, the courts, to settle their affairs, gentlemen nonetheless carried canes—around which sprang the martial art made famous by Sherlock Holmes: Bartitsu.

I have always carried a pocketknife (well, these days, a multitool) and probably always will. Every American male I know does the same.

Read it.

New York City is moving forward with several climate policies which are likely to make everyday life even more costly for the middle class in one of the country’s most expensive cities.

The New Yorker.

Paying extra for service has inspired rebellions, swivelling iPads, and irritation from Trotsky and Larry David. Post-pandemic, the practice has entered a new stage.

Curtis Yarvin (Mencius Moldbug)

Are you a techno-optimist? This is a serious condition—as common as prediabetes. Don’t laugh. You can treat your prediabetes—and your techno-optimism, too.

30% of Americans are prediabetic. All Americans are prediabetic, in a sense—we all have access to hot and cold-running corn syrup. It comes out of the tap. In 50 years as an American, statistics show, I have ingested a literal ton of corn syrup—a long ton. An imperial ton! I believe that major organs of my body, for example the pancreas, are this point primarily made from corn syrup.

It’s just the same with techno-optimism. As Americans—and we are all Americans now; location, even birth location, is just a detail—we are all techno-optimists. The American idea is the idea of techne, man-made order, creating a “city on a hill” in a new wild continent. As John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts, said: “a city on a hill cannot be hid.” San Francisco is on a hill, or several, and it cannot be hid. Although sometimes we wish it could. (To be fair, the hills are the best part—“crime don’t climb,” as they say. Try pushing a shopping cart from the Castro to the Haight.) Technical and moral progress have always been equated in the American philosophy.

And how did that work out? How is that working out—for us Americans? Quite well, at first! But of late—well, opinions vary.

Read it.

Parking, quite literally, has a death grip on America: each year a handful of Americans are tragically killed by their fellow citizens over parking spots. But even when we don’t resort to violence, we routinely do ridiculous things for parking, contorting our professional, social, and financial lives to get a spot. In the century since the advent of the car, we have deformed—and in some cases demolished—our homes and our cities in a quest for cheap and convenient car storage. As a result, much of the nation’s most valuable real estate is now devoted exclusively to empty and idle vehicles, even as so many Americans struggle to find affordable housing. Parking determines the design of new buildings and the fate of old ones, patterns of traffic and the viability of transit, neighborhood politics and municipal finance, the quality of public space, and even the course of floodwaters. Can this really be the best use of our finite resources and space? Is parking really more important than anything else?

Yes. Automobiles mean freedom.

Read it.

Non-fungible tokens promised to revolutionise the concept of ownership using the blockchain technology behind bitcoin, but the market seems to have all but collapsed.

So young, and already a Democrat….

Steve Sailer.

So, Canadian colleges get to privatize the handing out of lifelong permanent resident visas, which ought to be the possession of the Canadian citizenry as a whole, for an increment of about $13,000 per year for a few years.

The people making the decisions about who get to be the next generation of Canadian residents are utterly obscure public college bureaucrats trying to fend off budget cuts.

Read it.

The tribe’s fight against Rome-based Enel began in 2011 and is the longest-running legal battle over wind energy in American history.

Read it.

A friend asked me to recommend a book about Whittaker Chambers as a Christmas gift for her smartly conservative daughter several years ago. Chambers stands at the center of an incredible drama and several fantastic books about him. There is still much to be learned from him and his case. Here I revisit and expand the list with a little help from the eminent historian Harvey Klehr:

If you have never read WITNESS, you need to do that.

Read it.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott continued his controversial practice of having his state pay for migrants to relocate to northern cities by flying about 100 to Chicago this week.

I wish he were in charge of our foreign policy.

Read it.

To summarize Goddek’s list, he noted that the extraction process for vegetable oils like canola, soybean, and corn oil involves unnatural methods such as high heat and chemical solvents, leading to oxidation and trans fats. These oils, a modern dietary phenomenon, have seen tremendous use since the early 1990s, paralleling the increase in chronic health issues.

He pointed out that Omega-6 fatty acids can cause chronic inflammation and are linked to autoimmune diseases due to an imbalance with Omega-3. Studies link diets high in vegetable oils to oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, genetic damage, and an increased risk of cancer and heart disease.

LifeHacker

The thought of someone secretly living in your house and silently waiting in the closet for you to go to work so they can eat your food and pet your cat is terrifying, but it apparently happens often enough to have a name. It’s called “phrogging” and it differs from home invasion and robbery mainly in intent.

The phrog isn’t trying to steal your jewelry like a common burglar; they want to secretly live in your place for a few days before hopping off to someone else’s pad. It’s a risk-heavy but rent-free lifestyle, perfect for amoral thrill-seekers.

Read it.

Elon Musk’s revolutionary satellite internet service, Starlink, is spreading across Africa, flying in the face of repressive and corrupt regimes that are trying to block it.

Young Democrats.

Read it.

France will consider reintroducing uniforms in state schools following a worrying rise in harassment and violence, and the growing number of controversies surrounding the wearing of the Islamic abaya. The measure has received strong support from the French public, as well as from some teachers. A number of schools are to carry out experiments before the scheme is extended.

There are many well-known arguments in favour of the return of uniforms: an end to competition between children over clothing, and the associated bullying; the disappearance of social differences; making life easier for parents; and an end to demands from different religious communities.

The subject of wearing uniforms regularly crops up in French politics, but until now, no education minister has taken the plunge and put it into practice. The return of the uniform was, for example, part of Éric Zemmour’s programme, but he believes that it should be “imposed” rather than “experimented with.” Les Républicains party chairman Éric Ciotti was also in favour. In January, the Rassemblement National put forward a bill to reintroduce uniforms, arguing that they would solve two problems: “Brand competition and pressure from Islamists on children attending school.” The bill was rejected because it was proposed by Marine Le Pen’s party. The President’s wife, Brigitte Macron, explained that she was in favour too. Today, it is someone close to Emmanuel Macron who has decided to break the taboo and support the wearing of uniforms.

Read it.

For decades, statins have been heralded as the reliable heroes in the battle against heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States and globally. However, this seemingly flawless reputation has been called into question.

A new expert review suggests that long-term use of statins may be inadvertently aiding the enemy by accelerating coronary artery calcification instead of providing protection.

As is common in modern medicine, the commonly-accepted treatment merely makes things worse. Read The Clot Thickens: The Enduring Mystery of Heart Disease.

Read it.

LGBT groups were quick to rejoice in Strasbourg Thursday as an overwhelming majority of MEPs backed a hotly contested law establishing a new “ European Parenthood Certificate” and enforcing liberal surrogacy laws and gay adoption across the bloc.

While the legislation still requires the consent of individual member states at an EU Council level, the legislation would require states to grant recognition to families “irrespective of how a child was conceived, born or the type of family they have.”

Ostensibly meant to close legal loopholes in family law caused by the Ukrainian refugee crisis, the legislation has been lambasted by Catholic groups in particular as a direct legislative assault on the traditional family at the same time as opening the door to liberal surrogacy laws.

Read it.

There may be around a 1 in 10 chance that Pfizer mRNA COVID-19 vaccines will not generate spike proteins but something else, a new Cambridge study finds, raising concerns about autoimmune response among experts.

The study authors found that 8 percent of the time, Pfizer mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are mistranslated, leading to the formation of unintended proteins.

“Our work presents both a concern and a solution for this new type of medicine,” said leading author Anne Willis in the study’s press release.

Read it.

San Francisco Democrat Mayor London Breed cut the funding for the city’s first-ever Office of Reparations due to a massive budget deficit, the San Francisco Examiner reported.

Read it.

Another COP, another call to have meat removed from our diet. The further we depart from what we evolved to do, as individuals and as a society, the less efficient we become. We didn’t evolve to be vegetarian. Quite the contrary, humans are one of the most carnivorous animals on the planet, surprisingly so.

Eating meat is more efficient. Carnivores spend less time feeding than similar-sized herbivores. For example, one of our primate relatives, baboons (Papio cynocephalus), devote almost all their daylight hours to feeding while adult males of hunter-gatherer Ache (eastern Paraguay) and Hadza (northern Tanzania) tribes spend only a third of the day in food acquisition, preparation and feeding. Acquiring and consuming medium-size animals, at a return rate in the range of tens of thousands of calories per hour, is an order of magnitude more time-efficient than plant-gathering.  In nature, for humans, plant-sourced calories cost ten times the price of meat if it is available.

Read it.

After run­ning out of socks one day, I re­flected on how or­di­nary tasks get ne­glected. Anec­do­tally and in 3 on­line sur­veys, peo­ple re­port often not hav­ing enough socks, a prob­lem which cor­re­lates with rar­ity of sock pur­chases and de­mo­graphic vari­ables, con­sis­tent with a ne­glect/pro­cras­ti­na­tion in­ter­pre­ta­tion: be­cause there is no spe­cific time or trig­ger­ing fac­tor to re­plen­ish a shrink­ing sock stock­pile, it is easy to run out.

Read it.

role in the early history of the English Church, was black, despite the fact that there is no record of him being black at all.

The Telegraph reports “The Dark Age abbot St Hadrian of Canterbury has been referred to as a ‘black scholar’ in primary school teaching material, despite the holy man being of north African origin and not black.”

Read it.

If conservatives wish to live lives that have meaning and purpose, bound to family life and a local community, and situated within a religious and ethical apprehension of the world, to whom should they turn? Where can one turn for a humane conservatism? To these questions, it seems obvious to me that Russell Kirk and Sir Roger Scruton are two giants from whom we can seek answers.

Zman does a deep dive.

Belief is probably why democracy ends in disaster. The point of democracy is to have policies that reflect the general will of the people. In theory this means figuring out what most people will accept. You cannot make everyone happy, even in a small group ordering in lunch, but you can make most people happy and those outliers happy enough so they do not revolt. In theory, democracy is ordering pizza for lunch because no one hates it and most people like it.

In reality, democracy quickly turns into a game of convincing the majority to go along with whatever benefits the few. If you and your conspirators can get fifty percent plus one to agree to your scheme, it will be very good for you. Of course, others have their schemes so that democracy quickly moves from understanding the will of the people to persuading the majority. In reality, democracy is ordering Chinese after having convinced the majority that it is the right choice.

That phrase “right choice” is critical. It is never about facts and reason, but about the morally correct choice. Democracy rests on the assertion that the morally correct choice is that which satisfies the needs and demands of most people. Therefore, the way to persuade someone is to convince them that the majority already believes whatever it is you are pitching. In practice, democracy is telling each person that everyone really wants Chinese, except those troublemakers in the pizza party.

Read it.

Inquiring minds want to know.

The truth about Mexican food.

Read it.

I find it delicately amusing how many “white collar” people are incapable of admitting that they are bureaucrats. Call it being a clerk, a functionary or a bureaucrat; if you have a job which says “management” and involves people reporting to you, and you reporting what they tell you to other people, you are a bureaucratic brick in a pyramid. Most “software engineers” dealing in protocols, technical debt, the JVM, operations …. are also bureaucrats. Such people are not engineers in any normal definition of the word; they’re dealing with plumbing and protocol and social problems which come about from large groups of people. The fact that such people have to do their work with a programming language simply indicates that they are a low level bureaucrat. This is analogous to working as a policeman; a policeman is a sort of low level bureaucrat within the legal system who might get his hands dirty. Low level bureaucrats have to deal with real problems, but just as a policeman is not a peace engineer or social scientist, but more of a low level bureaucrat craftsman of applied psychology, the low level bureaucrat software developer is a low level bureaucrat craftsman dealing with programming uncertainty.

Read it.

It turns out that the “smart homes of the future” cannot run on Wi-Fi alone thanks to the materials we’ve been using to construct our homes cheaply and quickly for decades. Over the last several years, more engineering and architecture firms have started including ethernet wiring in their building plans, but that’s as far as the digital infrastructure of a home usually goes. What’s forgotten is not only where the pre-built internet hub is placed inside the building but also what materials are used for construction.

IRS gonna be on his ass.

Read it.

This father has been using spaced repetition (Anki) to teach his children how to read several years earlier than average.

Michael Nielsen and Gwern1 tweeted about the interesting case of a reddit user, u/caffeine314 (henceforth dubbed “CoffeePie”), who has been using spaced repetition with his daughter from a very young age.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

A fate worse than death.

ZMan wanders abroad.

The subtext to the improbable election of Javier Milei revolves around a question that has haunted Argentina for generations. Why is this country such a mess? For as long as anyone can recall, Argentina has been synonymous with South American disfunction, to the point where the name of the country is often used as an epithet to criticize first world countries. There was even a Broadway play based on the life of a famous Argentine lunatic named Eva Perón.

The first place to start is the ruling elite. If you do an image search of “Argentine leaders” you get a collection of images that would answers the same question if you replaced Argentina with Italy or Spain. Like most South American countries, the ruling elite looks like the colonial elite that founded these countries. In some of these countries, they have been ruled by a small set of families since the 16th century when their ancestors arrived from Spain.

In other words, you do not see the Venezuela problem. In some of the more dysfunctional countries in the region, you have indigenous leaders rising up to claim some power, which always ends in disaster. They tend to be Marxists, but the illiterate sort that just understand the theft and violence parts. Venezuela is a rich country in terms of natural resources and location, but the smart fraction was chased off long ago by indigenous lunatics, so it is a basket case.

The universe has been ghosting me for about forty years now….

ZMan cuts to the chase.

The first question for every human organization is “Who are we?” This is the most basic and if not the most important question. The answer could be something mundane and temporary like a sporting event, but this is an answer that assumes the gathering of people is intended to be for the mundane and temporary. A more lasting answer is one that provides the members with a reason to continue working together. A fraternal organization, for example, has an answer that is timeless.

That answer will then be linked to the second question, “To what end?” The people at a ball game come together to see the game and to cheer on the team. Since the founding answer is expected to be short-lived, the second answer is as well. The group that assembles near the old railway station with the password “sic semper tyrannis” for the purpose of organizing a rebellion has a longer-term point of their organizations, so the answers to these two big questions have a longer view.

The final and most important question that all human organizations must answer is the one of authority, “Who says?” The answer to this question is usually assumed, but rarely considered in the open. The people at the ball game do not talk about who says it is a good idea for them to come together and cheer for the team. Similarly, when the civil authority banned public gatherings during Covid, everyone just accepted that they had the authority to do so. The state is usually the answer here.