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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one of the things i like about Batman is that it's fundamentally about being orphaned, and being an orphan — how this guy stays tethered to the world in his own weird, abstract, extrajudicial way when he feels that his link to it has been violently severed

Batman does this by permanently recapitulating his own trauma: solving crimes for other people, protecting them. But that's actually just the beginning; he also recapitulates his own experience of orphanness by essentially raising several orphans

Dick is an orphan in the traditional sense: dead parents. Batman sees it happen. Jason, less so: missing dad, known mom who eventually dies. Tim, even less so: parents are around a while, and involved, before both dying. Carrie, even less than that: negligent parents.

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A thread of images from a Japanese illustrated history of America from 1861.

Here is George Washington (with bow and arrow) pictured alongside the Goddess of America. 1/


Here is Christopher Columbus (seated at center) reporting his discovery of America to Queen Isabella of Spain.

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Well, folks, the reason I haven’t been sharing many short clips from my morning readings lately is that, well, I’m in chapters 11-17 of Ezekiel. They involve complicated visions that don’t lend themselves to Twitter threads. But at the end of my reading today in Ezek 17,

God delivered a word to the prophet depicting a theme that may be uncomfortable but it’s not incomprehensible.

“I bring down the tall tree and make the low tree tall. I cause the green tree to wither and make the withered tree thrive. I, the Lord, have spoken and I will do it.”

God’s got this thing about pride. He does not let it go unchecked. When his people continue in arrogance after multiple warnings, he is going to bring them down. He will turn the tables. That which has been high will be brought low. This is why we are told by both James and Peter

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My (probably) last co-authorship paper from grad school is out!!

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First, some background.

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Mike Brown & Konstantin Batygin originally set out to DISPROVE the new planet hypothesis!

But instead, their simulations suggested a new planet, & even predicted its properties!

The resulting paper set off the biggest planetary debate of the century since Pluto's demotion.


What's the debate?

Well, the argument for the last five years has all centered around the fact that you find objects where you look in the sky.

No surprise there, right?

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We only find them when they're closest to the Sun, when they're at their brightest.
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Welcome back to #Y4SJBookClub

Today we are going through Chapter 1 of "Sexing the Caribbean" by Kerala Kempadoo

Please share widely and contribute your own thoughts about the chapter.

The convention is:

No brackets are paraphrases from the book (brackets is tweeter opinion)


Global media often portrays the Caribbean as exotic and "backward"

A sex crazed and not advanced society.

This book aims at undoing this Colonial view of the Caribbean.

(some Caribbean people share that colonial view 😒)

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As Frantz Fanon (we should be reading his work soon as well) said:

"Colonial Discourses are deeply embedded in the psyche and behaviour of the colonised"

(we see this frequently in how we police women like its the early 20th century still)

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Caribbean sexuality is of significance to understanding the past, present and future of the Caribbean

(one YSJ member highlighted how 🇹🇹 has not done a proper post colonial introspection. Hopefully works like this help)

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The book uses the broadest definition of the Caribbean as possible, but indicates that some sections would only apply to sub definitions of the Caribbean.

For this book
Caribbean = all the islands plus Belize, Suriname, Guyana and French Guiana

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Let’s talk about the organization of the coup first. Seeing some people insist that the coup must have been highly planned and coordinated.

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