BC SOCIETY
Saved by @jacobhtml

1/OK, data mystery time.

This New York Times feature shows China with a Gini Index of less than 30, which would make it more equal than Canada, France, or the Netherlands. https://t.co/g3Sv6DZTDE

That's weird. Income inequality in China is legendary.

Let's check this number.

 2/The New York Times cites the World Bank's recent report, "Fair Progress? Economic Mobility across Generations Around the World".

The report is available here: https://t.co/mrvWz1IzIe
3/The World Bank report has a graph in which it appears to show the same value for China's Gini - under 0.3.

The graph cites the World Development Indicators as its source for the income inequality data.
4/The World Development Indicators are available at the World Bank's website.

Here's the Gini index: https://t.co/MvylQzpX6A

It looks as if the latest estimate for China's Gini is 42.2.

That estimate is from 2012.
5/A Gini of 42.2 would put China in the same neighborhood as the U.S., whose Gini was estimated at 41 in 2013.

I can't find the <30 number anywhere. The only other estimate in the tables for China is from 2008, when it was estimated at 42.8.
6/FRED, which gets its Gini estimates from the World Bank, shows the same numbers: https://t.co/1y911qazo9

Everyone except the "Fair Progress?" report, and the New York Times feature, seems to agree that the World Bank's most recent estimate of China's Gini is 42.2.
7/It appears that China's own estimate of its Gini was 46.5 in 2016: https://t.co/dG58kH3LiS
8/So where the heck is the "Fair Progress?" report getting its super-low China Gini number? It seems like it's NOT from the World Bank's World Development Indicators, which is what the report cites.
9/I notice that in the "Fair Progress?" report cited by the NYT, the U.S. Gini is also a bit fishy. It's less than 40, when the World Development Indicators say it's a bit over 40.
10/The only other source the "Fair Progress?" report cites is the World Bank's Global Database on Intergenerational Mobility: https://t.co/95RnPYxMsB

But the GDIM doesn't have income GINIs. So that can't be where these weird numbers were from (unless the data was mislabeled).
11/Anyway I've been searching high and low for where the "Fair Progress?" report and the NYT got these weird Gini numbers, and I just can't find it. If anyone else can help me find where this comes from, I'd appreciate it.
12/As of right now, it's looking like the New York Times used some bad data for an incredibly widely read report, thus convincing a ton of people (incorrectly) that China is a far more economically equal place than the United States.

https://t.co/vmzz57YeFf
13/But if someone finds a reliable source for these Gini numbers, then please let me know!

(end...for now)
14/UPDATE: The mystery has been solved! https://t.co/Qw9aB7Qg9D

The Gini number the NYT used was from the 1980s. It was not labeled as such.
15/The people who wrote the New York Times story appeared not to realize this. Here's the caption and graph from their piece:
16/The NYT seems to have just made a mistake, and should change the text and the graph to reflect that these numbers are from the 1980s, not current.

(end)

More from Noah Smith

Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
When Republicans started to believe in racial bloc voting - when they stopped believing that nonwhite people could ever be persuaded to vote Republican - they started to see immigration as an invasion.

This explains why immigration is now at the center of partisan conflict.


Of course, the belief in ethnic bloc voting becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When a slight Dem tilt among Hispanics and Asians caused the GOP to turn against them, Hispanics and Asians shifted more toward the Dems. Etc. etc. A self-reinforcing cycle.

Bush's 2006 amnesty attempt, and the 2013 intra-GOP fight over immigration reform, were two moments when the GOP could have turned back to the approach of Reagan, and courted Hispanics and Asians.

But they decided against this, and...here we are.

What will disrupt this bad equilibrium, and save American politics from being an eternal race war?

Either:
A) More white voters will grow disgusted with the GOP approach and defect, or
B) The GOP will find some non-immigration-related issues to attract more Hispanics and Asians.

As long as both parties see elections in terms of racial bloc voting - where the only way to win is to increase turnout among your own racial blocs or suppress turnout by the other party's racial blocs - American politics will not improve, and the country will decline.

(end)
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Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
1/Lately I've been reading a ton of books about immigration and diversity. The most recent one is "Americanism in the Twenty-First Century", by @debbiejsr.

https://t.co/neqzyYVaYS

What did I learn?

2/This book is not very "pop". It's a dry political science book that's basically a concatenation of several research papers, all based on one big survey that was done in 2004.

3/The survey, the 21-CAS, asks people about how they define their own identity - race, national origin, and/or "American".

It also asks them about what they think being an "American" entails.

4/Basically, the survey asks people about 5 types of "Americanism":
1. Feeling like an American
2. Believing traditional American values like freedom
3. Civic participation (voting, etc.)
4. Multiculturalism vs. blending in
5. Being white and/or Christian

5/I edited out a few others (e.g. being born in America, being a citizen, speaking English). Anyway.

The upshot is that except for being white/Christian, most of these definitions of "American" get broad endorsement from all groups of people surveyed.
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Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
This is so dumb and incorrect and wrong it's unbelievable.


Facts.


Facts!!


FACTS FACTS

Moar
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We need 3 million vaccinations a day \U0001f407
We need 3 million vacc...
@Noahpinion
1/Today in @bopinion, I discuss why America has been producing too many PhDs in recent years, and what we need to do to solve the

2/First of all, many people don't realize just how many PhDs we produce! More than almost any other rich country.


3/And we've kept ramping this number up and up.


4/But the problem begins when PhDs start looking for (usually academic) jobs.

5/The U.S. built a ton of universities and then we stopped.

Professors have tenure.

That means there are just going to be fewer new tenure-track jobs than before. Everyone in academia already knows this well.
SOCIETY
Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
Today's @bopinion post is a review of the excellent new book "The Gift of Global Talent: How Migration Shapes Business, Economy & Society", by

This is an excellent, short, highly readable, very important book. Every business executive and politician should have a copy.

Why are skilled immigrants so good, and so important?

Because they're the backbone of high-value industries where the U.S. has a dominant position.


If we don't bring skilled immigrants to the United States, high-value industries will migrate to other countries, and America will lose industrial dominance and be a poorer country.


Contrary to popular belief, skilled immigrants - including H-1b workers - RAISE wages for native-born skilled workers.

Why?

Because downward wage pressure from competition is more than canceled out by the upward wage pressure from CLUSTERING.
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More from Society

What The Trans!?
What The Trans!?
@WhatTheTrans
A thread on how absurd the UK is on transgender issues and how the UK got so transphobic

In 2015 Parliament held an inquiry looking into the state of Transgender equality. Trans people of all stripes outlined many different problems across many, many different areas.

As a result Parliament created a list of recommendations including legal recognition for non binary people, gender recognition act reform, allowing 16 year olds to change their legal gender and reform of NHS gender identity services.

The government under Theresa May ignored everything that was recommended except for Gender recognition act reform. This act came into law in 2003 and gave trans men and women (but not non-binary people) the ability to legally change their gender on their birth certificates.

The process at that time to change your birth certificate under the GRA was to make an application to a panel of cisgender people who would decide if you were sufficiently trans based on your payslips, photo ID and bank statements. You would not get the option to speak to them.

(Also this process cost £140 which is just a tax on being trans)
SOCIETY
Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
Remember: Just because an idea is old doesn't mean it's good.

Knowing whether old ideas are more likely to be good requires understanding whether conditions have changed in important ways.

Horse archery was an amazing method of warfare for over a thousand years...then people invented guns, and suddenly this great idea that had stood the test of time became obsolete.

Then again, when underlying conditions don't change much, tried-and-true approaches are probably better.

"Learning the lessons of history" usually just means assuming ergodicity and stationarity in an informal time-series model...

(end)
SOCIETY
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wikipedia “seasonal ha...
@eveewing
I’m contemplating leaving @twitter. The platform has proven to be instrumental in harming people with marginalized identities, which normally I wouldn’t blame a media platform for except that @jack has demonstrated negative interest in doing anything about it.

in the past when I’ve thought about this I’ve thought about it from the perspective of my own safety/comfort. And I’m good on that front; I can handle it. But now I’m thinking about it differently: thinking about the people who tell me they join or stay on twitter because of me.

Every time someone in the press refers to me as a “twitter celebrity” (actual phrase that I don’t fully understand or subscribe to but this is what people say) it means that my presence and voice are adding social cachet to a company that I find to be quite terrible.

People tell me that they learn a lot from what I have to say here, and sometimes that it’s their first or only exposure to certain ideas, histories, perspectives, etc. and I have to weigh that too. But I could post that stuff elsewhere.

We’ll see. I’m just thinking aloud for now but I’m watching closely to see what @twitter and @jack do in the coming days and how they respond to what we now know about Cesar Sayoc (beyond one really stupid tweet). Because we know it’s not just him. Big changes need to happen.
SOCIETY
Youyang Gu
Youyang Gu
@youyanggu
I've seen many news articles cite that "the UK variant could be the dominant strain by March". This is emphasized by @CDCDirector.

While this will likely to be the case, this should not be an automatic cause for concern. Cases could still remain contained.

Here's how: 🧵

One of @CDCgov's own models has tracked the true decline in cases quite accurately thus far.

Their projection shows that the B.1.1.7 variant will become the dominant variant in March. But interestingly... there's no fourth wave. Cases simply level out:

https://t.co/tDce0MwO61


Just because a variant becomes the dominant strain does not automatically mean we will see a repeat of Fall 2020.

Let's look at UK and South Africa, where cases have been falling for the past month, in unison with the US (albeit with tougher restrictions):


Furthermore, the claim that the "variant is doubling every 10 days" is false. It's the *proportion of the variant* that is doubling every 10 days.

If overall prevalence drops during the studied time period, the true doubling time of the variant is actually much longer 10 days.

Simple example:

Day 0: 10 variant / 100 cases -> 10% variant
Day 10: 15 variant / 75 cases -> 20% variant
Day 20: 20 variant / 50 cases -> 40% variant

1) Proportion of variant doubles every 10 days
2) Doubling time of variant is actually 20 days
3) Total cases still drop by 50%
SOCIETY
Jo Luehmann
Jo Luehmann
@JoLuehmann
We live in a society that misunderstands boundaries and consent. Most people think the former is about just saying no, and the latter is about sex. And while that’s a part of it, they are about agency, autonomy, respect and interpersonal relationships.

1/

Unsolicited advice without consent is crossing a person’s boundaries. Even if the advice is good advice, even if the person giving the advice is a pastor or a parent, even if the advice is important. Most people aren’t talking about their life so that we may solve it.

2/

It is an honor to be trusted with someone’s life story*, with their thoughts and their challenges, with their struggles and their musings. But it is not an open invitation to try and solve their problems, control their behavior, tell them what to do.

3/

For a group of people that speak often of free will and claim to follow Jesus, Christians are some of the worst at boundaries and consent in general, and advice giving in particular. Think about how many sermons are not sharing spiritual truths, but just giving advice.

4/

Think about how much pastoral counseling is just advice giving. Think about the many books that tell you how to parent, how to be a good wife, how to be a good Christian, how to... and how much of it is general advice as though our lives were interchangeable?

5/
SOCIETY

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While main deity is Shiva as Kapartheeswarar, the kshetram is famous for Ganesha, known as Swetha/Vellai Vinayagar (white Vinayak)

During samudra manthan, Vasuki snake (used as rope) started spewing venom.


Unable to bear the intense heat, Devas rushed to Siva. He told them that this was because the task was started without getting Ganesha’s approval.
So the Devas created a Ganesha murti from white sea foam and worshipped it.
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He kept the murti down and vanished. Indra could not lift it again and a divine voice told him to let Vinayagar stay there and visit every Ganesh Chaturthi to pray.
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The YouTube algorithm that I helped build in 2011 still recommends the flat earth theory by the *hundreds of millions*. This investigation by @RawStory shows some of the real-life consequences of this badly designed AI.


This spring at SxSW, @SusanWojcicki promised "Wikipedia snippets" on debated videos. But they didn't put them on flat earth videos, and instead @YouTube is promoting merchandising such as "NASA lies - Never Trust a Snake". 2/


A few example of flat earth videos that were promoted by YouTube #today:
https://t.co/TumQiX2tlj 3/

https://t.co/uAORIJ5BYX 4/

https://t.co/yOGZ0pLfHG 5/
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TYPES OF SINS(PAAP) AS PER SKAND PURAN.

There are three types of Adharma- Sthool, Sukshma and Ati Sukshma. The group of Sins in the Sthul section carries you to Narak. These sins are committed through your thoughts, words and deeds.


It is of four types.

1)First is the sin committed by your mental state-
Thinking about woman other then your spouse.

A)Resolution to amass wealth from others.

B)Thinking ill about others.

C)Thinking of doing a forbidden or unworthy deed.

2)Second is the sin that you commit through your words :-

A)Talking irrelevant things.

B)Telling a lie.

C)Speaking harshly.

D)Talking ill about others.

3)Third type of sin is committed through your body actions-

A)Eating food not prescribed to you or forbidden.

B)Violence.

C)Eating fancier food.

D)Acquiring other's wealth.

So these twelve types of sins.

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1)One not bowing his head in front of a temple.

2)Never praise Shiva.

3)People who behave untowardly way in front of Ishwar.

4)People who do not show respect to Ishwar, guru or one who are undignified.

5)One who do not behave properly.

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Below is the list of sins which people may commit.

1)One who does not help a needy person or a person in pain,
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It was Ved Vyas who edited the eighteen thousand shlokas of Bhagwat. This book destroys all your sins. It has twelve parts which are like kalpvraksh.

In the first skandh, the importance of Vedvyas


and characters of Pandavas are described by the dialogues between Suutji and Shaunakji. Then there is the story of Parikshit.
Next there is a Brahm Narad dialogue describing the avtaar of Bhagwan. Then the characteristics of Puraan are mentioned.

It also discusses the evolution of universe.( https://t.co/2aK1AZSC79 )

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Thiruvairanikulam Mahadeva Temple
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Temple is known as Sabarimala of Women

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Legend is that 👇


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Devi blessed him and told that she will be present here 12 days in a year. Thus the period which begins from Thiruvathirai Day in Dhanu is known as the Nadathurappu festival.
Temple Nada opens today night.
Picture credit: Google.
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