1. Google’s three secrets for a perfect conversation.
2. The rate of return to yakuza is falling.
3. Flamingos are more stable on one leg than two.
4. Life through radiolysis? Paper here.
Saturday assorted links
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6. Yep, after thousands of years, these are the end times.
#6,
Was this article written in AD 800?
1. What an amazingly unreflective piece of writing. Almost as if written by a chatbot.
I can attest to the progress that the technology has made, however: it used to be I would have to repeat “Go …. yourself” 3-4 times before she would politely disconnect the “conversation”, now it’s just once.
“A few years ago, I gave a talk to the OBOD Summer Gathering about the role of young people in Druidry. I began by pointing out that the average lifespan for an adult during the Iron Age was about 30 years – even if the sky-high rates of infant mortality were excluded. Today, we tend to think of elderhood as something reserved for those over 65; but to our ancestors, anyone over 30 would have been looked upon as an invaluable source of wisdom and experience. ”
That’s nonsense. Exclude the sky-high rates of infant mortality and it’s well over 30 years.
The guy describes himself as a “leftist anthropologist by training” a good example of how little anthropologists actually know about human history.
It wouldn’t surprise me if neopaganism were declining. It’s largely LARPing as a reaction to the dominance of Christianity, as Christianity is no longer dominant, it loses its justification.
Neopaganism has always been a sort of spiritualistic cosplay, and it’s no surprise that it’s losing out to cosplay genres with more engaging and colorful characters.
True. I doubt there was a big increase in adult life expectancy between the Iron Age and the writing of Psalms. “Three score years and ten,” anyone?
What figure would you place on it ?
For someone with a casual interest (ten minutes of google…) it’s quite difficult to come up with a convincing answer. There seems to have been a significant drop after the Neolithic in adult life expectancy as a result of early urbanisation, and then a recovery, with later Iron Age average adult life expectancy seemingly somewhere between 35 and 40 years. Those are just tentative impressions, though.
Is that about right, and is there a comprehensive and authoritative source available somewhere ?
5. But the writing is far worse than you can imagine.
Agreed.
And another prediction that looks about right. In 2008, I was at a beach in Japan and mentioned to an American friend who had also lived there a long time that “The yakuza will have very little influence in 10 years, 2018.” I listed the reasons mentioned in the article but also knew the influence of the yakuza had already been on the decline for many years so just extrapolated the trend.
He thought that was nuts and said “Let’s ask him, he’s yakuza!”
I knew yakuza worked at times for restaurants on the beach and told my friend “No! Don’t bother him with that!” He asked anyway and the young yakuza said “About ten years.”
At least I got to grin and say “See?”
3. Didn’t they consider whether flamingos stand on the right or stand on the left. Being pink, I’d guess they stand on the left. But one can never underestimate the deception of those who stand on the right.
“But when Woden returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith?”
Odin, matey. Splitter!
He who is not with Woden is against Woden, and he who does not gather with Woden scatters.
3. Ed writes the most interesting articles. A nice break from politics. He wrote about scientists interactions with the TSA. That moment when you have to explain your profession to a layman. Very funny.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/05/that-time-the-tsa-found-a-scientists-3d-printed-mouse-penis/527673/
5. Jupiter has always been interesting. The magnetic fields, the red storm, and it’s sheer size captured my attention at a young age.
Tyler’s “you” is not a universal “you”. Jupiter qua Jupiter may not be all that interesting – a few thousand trillion easily measurable units of matter halfway through the life of a 30 billion year old universe, doing the 2nd year calculus things “we” expect and lots of 3rd, 4th, and 200th year calculus stuff too, which we do not expect, at least not with any specificity (shoutout to the teenage Go master’s recent quote when faced with AI Go – – ‘people do not understand so much of Go’ – more eloquent in the original Ryukuyan, of course). In context, though, I have always found Jupiter quite interesting, even with my very limited calculus skills.So like you I am not designated in Tyler’s “you”, and he never said we were, he is not a rude person at all, I think. Did you know how easy it would be, if silicon sciences and other material sciences progress at the same rate for the next 100 years as they have for the last hundred, to use Jupiter as a perfectly distilled homeworld for exegenically comfortable forward-looking non-stochastic data storage of, at a minimum, fairly constant incremental interest? Of course you did! “thou art not he or she; they are not they”. (Waugh, on a good day).
Kronos and Rhea thought Jupiter to be a fascinating child, back in the day – I remember an old Anglo-Irish play (not Shaw) where the parents looked at him (as a toddler) and wondered out loud: “why if it isn’t that old faker Baby Jupiter! ” Rhea was not cooking that day – it was a moretum day (short o long e) … “what’s cooking, Baby Jupiter” one of them said, laughing … W.C. Fields remembered and echoed the comment, that is how I know how it sounds. Good times, but so long ago that even nostalgia goes not that far, except every once in a long while, watching an old scenario on almost just as old celluloid of a passage of Fields. Most of my comments are too long this one is too short. Poor Kronos, poor Rhea, poor little Jupiter, poor Bill!
revisions – ” I sometimes think I remember” , not ” I remember” (the sometimes is a way of associating the reader with the writer – when we say “I think” there is no reason to think we are not thinking alone and apart, but when we throw in a “sometimes” we remind each other of each other and it seems nicer and more sociable (right word?)) and I wrote “scenario” where I meant “routine.” I forgot the word routine is used for those guys – the Hardys and the Marxes and the Laurels and the Field(s) and Marjorie White and Jane Wyman and Annette Henshaw. That’s all! (Too long again, sorry).
It’s pretty esoteric to think that Paganism survived, even in enclaves like Anglesey, into the Middle Ages.
So no, it isn’t dying out. It’s long dead. This article refers to romanticised neopaganism i.e. tree hugging together with pretending that Stonehenge was used by Druids.
Correct. When you’re wearing skins, hunting in forests and streams for the calories to keep you alive, wondering at the source of water and snow from the sky and the procession of equinoxes, then you’re a pagan. After that, “The one God arrives to drive out the many.”
6. Trump is a pagan but I don’t believe his supporters identify as pagans. Indeed, many of his supporters identify as “Christian”. Perhaps there are more pagans in America than in Britain.
He is not pagan. Nobody in his family is pagan. I have had a better life than him and nobody who has had a worse life than me is still pagan if they are older than me.
He is older than me but his wife is not. Both nice people in many ways. Like every celebrity, he has not made everyone he knows happy, and has been rude – one wishes he had always been polite, but, nevertheless, he is an angel of light compared to Johnson and Roosevelt and even compared to more good-hearted presidents like Nixon and Eisenhower. Let us not let jealousy and resentment rule in our hearts, Rayward. “I don’t believe his supporters identify as pagans” well it was no better when Leo – the selfish but not all that brave James Bond of his day – Tolstoy criticized adulterers and philanderers, after he paid for sex with dozens of women from families with no extra money. Sad, isn’t it? He, too, would often talk of “Christians” in a judgmental fashion. Let us not err in that way! “I don’t believe his supporters identify as pagans.” We were not given rhetorical skills to do that. Is that what you will put on your sign in those future days when you protest outside abortion clinics? Yes or just maybe? No, Trump is not pagan – he will never marry any daughter of mine, but he is not pagan. i realize, Rayward, you are unconvinced. Well you are a smart guy and have a right to be unconvinced or convinced whenever you want. This world is full of good people. More than I can count. That being said, I have had a better life than Trump and nobody who has had a worse life than me is still pagan if they are older than me. Seriously, “I don’t believe his supporters identify as pagans” would not look bad on a sign, honestly carried in the right place. Let us not let jealousy and resentment rule in our hearts.
Trump is not a pagan and is visibly prioritizing Judaism and Christianity in the public sphere. What definition of “pagan” are you working with?
3. At the Atlantic, found this fascinating cover story.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-story/524490/
Yes, I read the story back when it first went out. Alex Tizon is a great example of a slimy, hypocritical Leftist, the kind of man they reward with a Pulitzer prize, a man eager to criticize America and White people for the real and imagined crimes of their ancestors while never mentioning his family’s history of slaveholding until he was close to death. Better late than never, I guess.
Hail Trump.
It is always better late than never, no need to guess.
Until I realised it had none, I was having a great deal of fun attempting to figure out what your linked article had to do with flamingoes.
I would draw a distinction between reconstructionist paganism and Wiccan/druid/New Age stuff. This guy does not even mention the former. I would enjoy hearing from someone in the know on it.
What’s the difference?
Reconstructionists try to practice the religion as it actually was, before Christianity. Theyre often rightwing. Other pagan groups, not so much.
5. But the writing is far worse than you can imagine. :3