13 Comments

Listening to "the Lost history of Christianity" now.

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"presents a somewhat tendentious position, at least to many of a progressive bent, that genetics must be considered when we design a liberal order"

tell me about it

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Just finished _By Steppe, Desert and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia_ by Barry Cunliffe and recommend it if you haven't read it. Excellent guide to further reading at the end of the book.

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yes, i got it, halfway through

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Despite being pre-literate, your kid claimed to be able to read & write. Well, you know what they say: fake it until you make it.

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he's confident

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“The omnigenic model and polygenic prediction of complex traits. Kind of a depressing paper, but worth reading.”

Seems to be behind a paywall. Any chance of discussing the paper and what it means in a future podcast or substack post?

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probably gnxp post

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Been looking at things not behind a paywall. Does this paper basically say that prediction for polygenic traits will be extremely culturally, geographically, and temporally limited?

Basically polygenic predictor school ability for a white guy in 2021 in the US will NOT transfer well to Indian woman in 2030?

Must say I’m not surprised by this if so. Seems like so many genes in play and so much pleiotropy that statistical methods will be super opaque.

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Roger that. Looking forward to it

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“… or what I really should be writing for you, please weigh in.”

So many readings, books and podcasts are based on history. So many things in old history (ancient and 1st millennia) is falsified. For e.g. above-mentioned Patrick Wyman said something as “everything what have you learnt in school about the fall of Rome, just forget”. It doesn’t matter what would be his new version of the events related to this fall, the fact is that the current version is falsified. It amazes me how almost all readers are ignorant, some irritated when someone mention this and easily refer that Ustasha were maybe good guys or, at the mildest, that you are a chauvinistic nonsense pig. If you say that Goths were no Germanic, that should be (if truthful) a world sensation. However, no one here is prepared to confirm or negate this no-nonsense assertion, and all push their heads into sand. Before, it was a case with Aryans and SA history. So, let’s see, from now on, I will be waiting to see who will first point on any official history falsification. Time!

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"Are Syrian Jews Arabs? Our History Detective columnist traces the story of Syrian Jews, and Jews from Syria. Read it if you don’t know much about Sephardic and “Sephardic” Jews."

I know a fair amount, and I have some personal experience. I thought the article was just plain confusing.

The logical problem is that Syria, like most other modern Middle Eastern Country was a creation of Europeans. Look at this map: It reflects more accurately the ethnic and cultural boundaries:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_the_Ottoman_Empire#/media/File:French_Mandate_for_Syria_and_the_Lebanon_map_en.svg

So, there was no Syria before the end of WWI, nor was there ever a Syrian Ethnicity. The Jews who lived in that area were urban and mercantile, so they were not spread out across the landscape, but mostly concentrated in urban areas like Damascus and Aleppo, which were not part of the same cultural area.

Their descendants no longer live in what is now Syria. They left for Israel and points west like New Jersey, after WWII and the creation of Israel.

The Wikipedia article seems to be less confusing and pretty accurate:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Jews

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At Instapundit.com, John Tierney links your review of Murray's new book:

INCONVENIENT TRUTHS: Charles Murray’s ‘Facing Reality’ — A Review. Razib Khan reviews and summarizes Murray’s unwelcome findings regarding “systemic racism.” [quote snipped] Read the whole thing — and Murray’s book. [links deleted]

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/inconvenient-truths-charles-murrays-facing-reality-a-review-razib-khan-reviews-and-summarizes/

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