BC CULTURE
Saved by @Alex1Powell

Thread of the best papers and books I read in 2020, roughly in order.

 1. Lewin & Cachanosky, "The Average Period of Production: History and Rehabilitation of an Idea"

Good fisking & constructive replacement of the idea of 'roundaboutness' in capital theory. Even though I think they can go further. ↓ https://t.co/LgxNclt1g2 https://t.co/7yI5eVRuWQ
2. O'Hear, "Popperian Individualism Today"

Good, concise statement of an important point: https://t.co/tVaVBTDVwk
3. Zero HP Lovecraft - "God Shaped Hole"

I enjoyed last year's "The Gig Economy" better, but this still lives up to the idea of Lovecraftian cosmic horror better than anything the actual Lovecraft ever wrote. https://t.co/8cSIyuZ6lk
4. Keane, "Sincerity, Modernity, and the Protestants"

Interesting case study of the W.E.I.R.D.ification of a south pacific tribe and how the Protestant converts, unlike the Catholic ones, fundamentally change their relationship to ritual. https://t.co/vYTgufbrU1
5. Okasha - "Evolution and the Levels of Selection"

A framework for thinking about when you're looking at group-selected adaptations, and by extension, what counts as "really" rational at any given level (gene, individual, group, etc). https://t.co/vmAUtEd8YV
6. Frank Herbert - "Dune"

Didn't realize the movie was coming out when I picked it up. Lots of interesting ideas, e.g. on infohazards and institutional evolution. https://t.co/gauakeiBJC
7. Boehm - "The Evolutionary Development of Morality as an Effect of Dominance Behavior and Conflict Interference"

Talks about human morality as a negotiation between evolved dominance and submission strategies. https://t.co/ANwOc9paA7
In that sense Boehm's paper similar in spirit to my & @hiltonroot's "Feudal Origins" paper that also came out earlier this year, but for primate evolution instead of institutional evolution. https://t.co/QoPZOoeY1b
8. Grüne-Yanoff - "Evolutionary game theory, interpersonal comparisons and natural selection"

A good warning not to casually mix classical and evolutionary game theory, as many cultural-evolutionary models do. https://t.co/7S2XCqS9eG
9. Arthur - "Complexity and the Economy"

This is how you criticize neoclassical econ right: sympathetically, and without just going "BuT iT's CoMpLeX". Ok—so what do we do with that? https://t.co/jQ6Ov7zgQy

I wish SFI had hewed closer to this ethos! https://t.co/lcAEeyODos
10. Heiner - "The Origin of Predictable Behavior", which I did a thread on recently. https://t.co/ajYF8QjoDS
11. Knight, "Puzzles and mysteries in the origins of language"

Similar to his earlier v good paper, emphasizing the reliability problem in signals, but with lots more connections to other lits, e.g. animal signaling. https://t.co/jiSB0RC9wg https://t.co/GaahKU8RxT
(I should note since the first tweet is ambiguous: this is in chronological order, not rank order!)

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Let me talk about something
I consider myself qualified to discuss: a film director, Oliver Stone. OS is a great political director & a very clever man, one of the best in the industry. My view is that he did not simply take the Russian vx because he didn't want to wait for US 1

He's a very clever man, he made a judgement for his own life, for his family, & he chose the Russian vx instead of any of the Western ones, because he wanted the vx & considers Sputnik V the safest one.

I can see the logic:
1 No accountability for any of the Western vx, nobody can sue for any damage etc.
2 Those who made Sputnik V know they are always personally accountable to Vladimir Putin
3 S5 is based on a pre-existing vx with minimal changes so safety tried for many years

So if the Russians could find a safe way to adapt a tried & tested technology & only alter what is required, using adenovirus vectors, a technology in use for 50 years, experimented on for vx since the 1980s, why were Western Big Pharma so keen on something completely new: mRNA?

That is the question that Oliver Stone is indirectly asking us all to look into & answer: why were Western Big Pharma all at once suddenly so keen on using mRNA when there were much safer & tested directions available (adenovirus vectors), what is it that Western Big Pharma want?
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@AdamSmithWorks
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Today we start the last book of #AdamSmith's #WealthOfNations.

Allons-y!

#WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets


Book Five of #WealthOfNations is all about the duties of the sovereign and how to pay for them. In this first part of chapter 1, we’re talking about the cost of defense. (V.i.a) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets


The sovereign's duty to protect the country can only be done through military force, but how you get the money to pay for that military varies according to time, place, and circumstance. (V.i.a.1) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

In a hunter/gatherer society, everyone is always already a warrior, and since there isn’t really a sovereign or nation, no expense is required to maintain defense. Much the same is true of shepherding cultures. (V.i.a.2) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

Armies of hunters are limited in size to a few hundred men (as they have to sustain themselves through the available game). Shepherds can muster larger forces because they bring their sustenance in the form of flocks. (V.i.a.3–5) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets
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The answer is artist Will Hulsey...


Will Hulsey was the undisputed king of the animal attack pulp cover. You name it, he'd paint it attacking you in a pool of stagnant water.


Very little is known about Will Hulsey, but he worked on a number of men's pulp magazines in the 1950s and early 1960s including Man's Life, True Men, Guilty, Trapped and Peril.


Their audience was ex-GIs: during WWII the US Council of Books in Wartime had given away over 122 million books to American servicemen to read; this led to a post-war surge in paperback and magazine sales amongst these newly enthusiastic readers.


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@AdamSmithWorks
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OK. Chapter 7 of Book 4 of #WealthOfNations is tough going. It's long. It's serious. It's all about colonies.

We can take comfort, though, in knowing that the chapter #AdamSmith says is about colonies is, in fact, about colonies. (IV.vii) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets


Colonies were a vexed subject when #AdamSmith was writing, and they’re even more complicated now. So, before we even get to the tweeting, here’s a link to that thread on Smith and “savage nations.” (IV.vii) #WealthOfTweets


The reason for the ancient Greeks and Romans to settle colonies was straightforward: they didn’t have enough space for their growing populations. Their colonies were treated as “emancipated children”—connected but independent. (IV.vii.a.2) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

(Both these things are in contrast to the European colonies, as we'll see.) (IV.vii.a.2) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

Ancient Greeks and Romans needed more space because the land was owned by an increasingly small number of citizens and farming and nearly all trades and arts were performed by slaves. It was hard for a poor freeman to improve his life. (IV.vii.a.3) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets
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62nd anniversary of The Day The Music Died.


Some shots from that final show at the Surf Ballroom. That's Waylon Jennings playing bass for both Buddy Holly and Richie Valens. He didn't ride on the plane because he lost a coin flip.


correction - it was Buddy Holly's guitarist Tommy Allsup who lost the plane ride coin flip to Richie Valens; Waylon Jennings reluctantly gave up his seat on the plane to JR "The Big Bopper" Richardson because Richardson had the flu.

In their last conversation, Buddy Holly kidded Jennings for 'chickening out' of the plane ride, and joked "I hope your damn bus freezes up again."

Jennings, joking back, told Holly "I hope your ol' plane crashes." That joke haunted Jennings for decades.

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