26 Comments
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Andrew Cutler's avatar

Recent interest has been Ancient North Eurasians. Their genetic relation to contemporary Europeans, Asians, and Native Americans. As well as their memetic relation to the whole world. They domesticated the dogs and Hell Hounds are a widely spread trope in myths, possibly diffusing from the ANE. Consider this a vote that you give them the Razib treatment

Looks like you last wrote about dogs in 2011: https://www.razib.com/wordpress/category/dogs/

Philip's avatar

"This Post Will Not Go: Viral Elon Musk, X and the end of tweeted articles."

Ethan doesn't realize (or is pretending not to) that most virality was bot farms which have been progressively hobbled since Elon took over.

Dylan Alexander's avatar

I don't know how to prove this is true, but it seems universally and frequently claimed by publication insiders that those old viral articles didn't actually drive meaningful traffic, so I suppose that's some evidence in support.

marcel proust's avatar

A rather critical review of Turchin's <i>End Times</i> from a humanist perspective.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/history-fast-and-slow

marcel proust's avatar

Is the Roberts & Westad book mentioned above the basis for the Mel Brooks movie (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082517/)?

I guess what I'm asking is this: Having seen the movie by Mel Brooks, would reading the book by Roberts and Westad be time well spent?

Polynices's avatar

Substack really needs to copy more Twitter features. Need a mute/block options so I never need see any reminder that certain people exist.

I said this on another post (I think), but thanks for continuing to recommend The Horse, The Wheel, and Language. It’s great and I am glad I finally got around to reading it.

Kathleen Lowrey's avatar

That photo is gorgeous. Where is it?

Razib Khan's avatar

it's austin in fall as imagined by midjourney :)

Kathleen Lowrey's avatar

now I feel unsettled instead of charmed! But thanks!

David Roberts's avatar

For a wide ranging American history book, I suggest "These Truths" by Jill Lepore. She looks at American history through the lens of marginalized citizens and makes no claim that her perspective is comprehensive.

She writes beautifully and puts many of our current cultural issues in an historical context. It was the best survey history book I've read in a very long time.

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Sep 9, 2023
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Martin Greenwald, M.D.'s avatar

The idea that autism didn't exist until the 1930's is just plain nuts.

Ryno's avatar

Just because the word didn't exist doesn't mean the condition didn't. We see plenty of examples of odd humans throughout time, so it would be for you to prove that it didn't exist prior to some date.

TGGP (on GNXP)'s avatar

I call bull on the "vaccine reactions".

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Sep 10, 2023
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TGGP (on GNXP)'s avatar

I see that aside from COVID substacks you read the "Concrete Conspiracy" newsletter, which claims that the "Satanic Panic" was not merely a panic but driven by an actual epidemic of Satanic ritual abuse. If you're going to believe something as debunked as vaccines being the cause of autism, I guess you might as well add that. At this point I wouldn't believe any of your claims about your family either.

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Sep 10, 2023
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TGGP (on GNXP)'s avatar

I haven't seen Sound of Freedom, but belief in Pizzagate is another indication to me of someone being an inverse weathervane. You just believe in all sorts of nonsense, rather than trying to be radical in a narrow way https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/how_to_be_radichtml

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Sep 10, 2023
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