I thought you'd be interested. You're welcome.

Btw, what was the book you suggested as an alternative version of guns germs and steel?

@govols

"Why the West Rules for Now" Ian Morris

[amazon.com]

I think I have the Kindle addition. I think I can loan it.

I especially like his social development score. He admits it's not scientific but numbers are a useful ways of imagining exactly what an author means when comparing something. Besides time and space are numerical in nature if you are going to graph something it has to be numerical.

@wolfhnd

I honestly prefer to pay the author. I'll get the Kindle sample and test out the flavor. Thanks!

@wolfhnd

I'm reading the introduction and he has a pleasant and rather compelling style of story telling prose. I'm also working through one called The 10,000 Year Explosion that's sort approaching the same sorts of questions through genetics and population trait characteristics.

The rabbit holes of my 30s and 40s are making the intellectual pursuits of middle ever so much more interesting than they might have been. Blessings can be found even here in clown world.

@govols

I haven't been doing any reading to speak of. Guess I'm kinda of depressed by the state of the world.

One of the problems with being informed is you learn how poorly informed the people around you are. If they are not poorly informed they are extremely biased. If not biased cynical and indifferent. It's not that I'm passionate about politics. Actually the opposite, you have to be fairly passive when analyzing politics because politics effect you in just about everything from your finances to your since of purpose.

Until 2016 I had little interest in politics but Hillary Clinton changed that. They finally put up someone who was an existential threat. Since then I find I have been sucked into the dystopian nightmare that we are evolving into. I never thought it could happen so fast. I thought that people would see that Obama was purposefully trying to break the country because of some insane idea of decolonizing the world. Most people however are still in denial about the objectives of Obama and his Marxist buddies. The idea that you can fix things by breaking them seems to not bother a lot of people. It's an observation that Jordan Peterson has made. People like to break things just to see what will happen.

I still have some specific questions about topics that have always fascinated me but can't get interested in expending the intellectual energy.

That's interesting.
I'm sure it's being considered in cloisters but won't be discussed publicly "until we're ready."
I used to live in a place where ideas weren't the enemy.

It looks like they noticed during the winter spike in cases after the holidays, that deaths weren't spiking to nearly the degree that they were in winter/spring and later summer spike of 2020. It says the parer was revised 4-22-2021, accepted 5-19-2021, and quickly published on 5-22-2021. The article that I finally hit the right search terms to bring up was dated 6-7-2021. It's been available for a few months, but I haven't seen it reported in the course of typical covid coverage.

Maybe it'll hit twitter or facebook and pop into more mainstream awareness.

@govols

It's fair to say they were waiting for data but I noticed evidence from Japan in January. I have another thread talking about mediocrousy. How careerism and bureaucracy is killing liberal society. It's the midwits not the stupid people that are killing our culture. You have to be exceptionally bright for the most part to realize how stupid you are.

Japan also showed that immunity was impossible to achieve by January. 45 percent exposure and no change in infection rate. So while the mask theory may be reasonable it's importance is questionable.

Once again Trump was right. Don't worry about that which you have no control over. Just get on with your life and focus on recovery not preventing infection. His animal intuition is uncanny.