Wednesday Links

1. The end of human civilization, viewed through the lens of a hipster "cereal cafe" in East London--a mostly true tale, told with wit and verve by blogger Sam Kriss. (From 2014, but news to me.)

2. Quran fragments recently found in a UK library are among the oldest known.

3. Two recent studies have found DNA evidence linking indigenous people from South America to populations in Australia and Oceania. The researchers differ as to how people from Australia or Oceania got to South America: one group suggests travel via land bridge across the Bering Strait, the other evidently suggests travel across the Pacific Ocean.

4. Mountain Dew or Mountain Don't? (Ahem.) More evidence linking sweet beverages to Type 2 diabetes.

5. An oldie but a goody: "If you want to be taken seriously, use the font Baskerville."

6. "The mobile web sucks." (Via marginalrevolution.com.)

7. Scientific studies on the illusion of knowledge.

8. "The evils of capitalism exposed in one powerful meme."

Pictures of People Dressing Up as a Mummified Girl from the Nordic Bronze Age

The remains of a teenage girl from the Nordic Bronze Age were discovered near Egtved, Denmark in 1921, and nicknamed "Egtved Girl". 

A google image search revealed that, for some reason, lots of people have dressed up as her over the years. Here are some of them.

The Original Meaning of "Know Thyself"

The famous saying inscribed over the south entrance of Eno Hall at Princeton University.

"Know your place" is perhaps a fitting motto for the Ivy League.

According to this piece by Elizabeth Cady, the original meaning of the famous Greek saying gnothi seauthon was actually "Know your place," and it was intended to warn entrants of the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi to avoid the sin of hubris. Socrates seems to have imaginatively reinterpreted the motto when he used it to express the ideal of the examined life.

Saturday Links

1. A competitive sword fighter born in New Zealand goes by the name of Samantha Swords. She has a tumbler page.

2. Famed record producer Kim Foley publicly raped Runaways bass guitarist Jackie Fuchs and was never held accountable. Long-form investigative journalism at (surprise) the Huffington Post.

3. The one-year shopping ban. How to live more with less.

4. A cat video for gamers and fantasy fans: The official video for Mastodon's "Asleep in the Deep."

5. The BBC has produced a series of animated video shorts about the history of ideas, which includes pieces on famous philosophers such as Sartre, Hobbes, and Descartes.

6. Fallacy Ref: A series of memes perfect for all informal fallacy-related situations.

7. Harvard Business School graduate Ren Lu You will pay $10,000 to the person who can hook him up with a steady girlfriend.

8. Trailer for "Bartkira": the Simpsons/Akira mash-up we've all been waiting for.

9. Things that go better together: Donald Trump and Philip Glass. 

10. A recent study shows that drones do decrease terror attacks. (Via slatestarcodex.com.)

11. The making of Sylvan Esso's song "Coffee."

12. Is Nana really burning in Hell right now?

In Decline: Today's Libraries

The stacks are being downsized or eliminated, and to add insult to injury, more acquisition funds are being spent on fewer e-books because of current pricing models:

In evolving, librarians are steering tight acquisition budgets to e-books, which are more expensive than print because, among other reasons, publishers fear large databases of free e-books will hurt their business.

Also, as a disappointed library user, I have noticed that most e-books' user interface sucks compared to print books. No doubt one day it will all be fixed, but how many years will we have to wait for the publishers and libraries to get their acts together?

The Latest from Tony Zhou's "Every Frame a Painting": Chuck Jones

Tony Zhou is a professional film editor who has an outstanding series of YouTube videos about the art of editing, called "Every Frame a Painting."

Monday Links

1. Hiddenpassageway.com.

2. Informative review of recent editions of Tales of the Brothers Grimm--effectively, a mini-course in folklore studies.

3. A brief history of the use of lithium to treat mental illness, interwoven with the author's personal history with (and without) the drug.

4.  Tolkien, Lewis, and friends--the story of the Inklings.

5. Why did hunter-gatherers and nomads settle down and start practicing agriculture multiple times in human history, given that it led to lower average height and more toil?

6. New York Times profile of Bernie Sanders.

The Latest from Amelia Meath

The latest from Sylvan Esso's Amelia Meath--a side project with Phil Cook's Southland Revue, which includes the following track, "Northeast Texas Women".

Soul and Sorcery

News to me: an American black author named Charles R. Saunders is generally regarded as the inventor of the "soul and sorcery" subgenre of fantasy fiction. Starting in the late 1970s, Saunders wrote fantasy adventure stories used African myth and history as his inspiration, to provide an alternative to the more familiar swords and sorcery inspired by Western myth and history--the early examples of which often contained frankly racist and ignorant portrayals of Africans and pseudo-Africans.

Night on Bald Mountain Live Action Film

"Disney is turning Fantasia's Night on Bald Mountain into a live-action movie."

Wednesday Links

Lello Bookstore in Porto, Portugal (see #4)

1.  A philosopher talks "dirty tricks" for presentations of academic papers--really, an extended commentary on the culture surrounding colloquia or seminars in philosophy.

2. The intersection of the set of blog posts about the podcast "Econtalk" and the set of blog posts about tabletop RPG's is no longer empty.

3. More gut-wrenching insights from Slate Star Codex regarding political ideology, SJW / anti-SJW, in-group / out-group bias, etc. Required reading for all humans.

4. In praise of Porto, Portugal.

5. The surprisingly fascinating story of how discarded clothes from the West are recast and recycled in India.

6. Philosophers' break up letters.

7. Why did Europe conquer the world? The title of a new book by economic historian Philip T. Hoffman.

8. A world without work.

9. How lighting the city streets at night transformed London's nightlife and led to the development of a new form of literature (the nocturnal picaresque).

New Evidence on the History and Ancestry of Europeans

New DNA evidence for a large-scale Bronze Age migration of the Yamnaya people from southern Russia into Central and Northern Europe. They brought with them genes for lactose tolerance and innovations in material culture.

This evidence also bears on the debate about the early spread of Indo-European languages. Some say it shows that Indo-European languages spread from the Russian steppes to Europe, but another possibility is that there were two waves and two routes of transmission: one from the Near East, through Anatolia, and another via the southern Russian steppe.

The Connection between Over- and Under-Policing

An article in New York Magazine discusses the making of a documentary film about "Grim Sleeper" serial killer Lonnie Franklin, Jr. The end of this article is noteworthy, for it raises the issue of the connection between over- and under-policing. Apparently, a lot of black neighborhoods are victims of both; police are overly zealous when it comes to handing out revenue-generating tickets for speeding and other infractions, but insufficiently zealous in investigating murders of low-status members of the community.

Wednesday Links

1. Claims about posture: J-shaped spine > S-shaped spine.

2. The medieval origins of modern science. (Via David D. Friedman.)

3. Philosophy of science issues at the "edge" of physics.

4. Violent crime spikes in Baltimore following an apparent decline in policing. (Via Slate Star Codex.)

5. Charles Murray, appealing to David Hackett Fischer's "Albion's Seed" theory, argues that cultural diversity in the United States goes back to the very origin of the country, in which four culturally distinct groups of Britons settled in different parts of the British colonies in North America. Murray also argues that Americans should not fear cultural diversity today, in particular the diversity caused by immigration of Latinos.

6. Nevada's experiment with school choice. The program allows parents to use money for other education-related expenses in addition to school tuition (thus providing more flexibility and hopefully stimulating innovation), and allows funds not spent one year to be rolled over to the next (which will hopefully encourage schools and education firms to compete on price).

7. Kalief Browder commits suicide, after having spent years in jail without a trial.

8. "In praise of passivity": Bryan Caplan explains Michael Huemer's argument against government intervention.