New study: more evidence of very low human capital in Africa.

Basic numeracy mostly unchanged from 1950 to 1990 birth cohorts, despite much more schooling.

NB: basic numeracy is very, very basic = people know their own age, don't round it up or down (called "age heaping".) Some exceptions. Basic numeracy in Ghana has trended upwards

It's false that Africa's states and borders are arbitrary. But it is a useful lie: blames Europeans for African political problems.

Colonies often followed precolonial states, as is visible below.

Because African rulers signed protectorate agreements. The northern border of Nigeria follows the Sokoto Caliphate boundary.

Rwanda and Burundi were separate precolonial states.

Most borders in Africa are not straight lines. Those that are straight are mostly in deserts.

Yesterday, once again the challenge: define wokeism!

It's not hard to do.

Finnish scholars have a 7-item scale for assessing wokeness.
It boils down to 2 points:
1. Extreme anti-racism.
2. Extreme transgenderism.
Plus hostility to free speech.

https://twitter.com/whyvert/status/1879528038087704745

The Finnish scholars also have an 11-item scale of woke attitudes.
It also boils down to two factors: extreme anti-racism and extreme transgenderism, with restricting free speech a weapon.
Anti-woke has to refute extreme anti-racism and transgenderism and support free speech.

Norway: the Progress Party forced Statistics Norway to release ethnic crime data.

Almost half of young Somali men in Oslo (483 out of 1000) got caught and charged with violent crime.

Prosecution rate for violent crime in Oslo among men age 15-24, 2021-23. Similar story for drug crimes:
Somalis 441 per 1000
Ethiopians 371 per 1000
Iraqis 342 per 1000

Between a third and half of Iraqi, Ethiopian, and Somali young men in Oslo got caught and charged with drug offenses.

How well did academia address the rape gang child sex slave issue?
From @knrd_z thread below, looks like:
1. Used scare quotes to imply it is a fake thing.
2. Insinuated Muslims are the real victims.
There should be an inquiry into anti-white racism in academia.

https://twitter.com/knrd_z/status/1876140522127204462

3. Feminists write a vast amount on "rape culture". But faced with a real gang rape and child sex slave culture, they were largely silent.

Countries with high rates of consanguineous marriage.

Pakistan 57.9%
Sudan 49.5%
Libya 48.4%
Kuwait 48.2%
Mauritania 47.2%
Afghanistan 46.2%
Iran 38.6%
Saudi Arabia 33.6%
Yemen 33.9%
Iraq 33.0%

(Note that these numbers are in reality estimates.) Source.

Interesting new paper!

1520-1720 elite human capital became obsessed with religion (and likely high in religiosity) then 200 years later suddenly changed to be less religious.

As shown by density of the words God, Jesus, and Christ (vernacular and Latin) in books. After 1720, elite human capital becomes much more interested in science (and probably more secular in outlook).

As shown by the prevalence in books of these words: medicine, astronomy, mathematics, geometry, philosophy, hypothesis, logic, experiment (vernacular and Latin)

Third Worldist ideology reflects the character of the Third World itself:

-resent rich ethnic minorities both globally (whites) and within their countries

-ethnic favoritism: demand favors for their own ethnic group

-low in both human capital and prosociality

https://twitter.com/jacksonhinklle/status/1857469279710622177

The ideology has gone by various names such as
"Third Worldism"
"nonaligned movement"
"South-South solidarity"
"multipolarism"
"BRICS perspective"

Most wars seem to be irrational.

Some generally agreed causes of war reflect underlying low rationality: 🧵

1. Leaders insulated from the costs of violence will be more likely to start wars.

But, rational people will make leaders accountable. 2. It is generally agreed, groups that desire vengeance, dominance, imposing Allah's will, or revolution will be more likely to start wars.

Yet, more intelligent and rational groups will realize that other desires are better pursued.

Books below on ethnicity and nationality. But they only give a Blank Slate view.

Here's a contrast of Evo vs Blank Slate: 🧵

1. Evo says there are naturally evolved desires for ethnic affiliation. Blank Slate says any such desires are constructed or fabricated or invented.

https://twitter.com/GerardoMunck/status/1841078107559862324

2. Evo says the desire for ethnic affiliation keeps popping up throughout history. Ethnies rarely had their own states (nation-states) because of violent imperialism: small states either got smashed or (if victors) became the core ethnie of an bigger empire.

Why is the world turning into a circus sideshow?

Visibly tattooed people used to be a freak show attraction.

(In the past, respectable people sometimes had discreet hidden tattoos.)

"The Tattooed Greek Prince" captured by Chinese Tartars and tattooed against his will: 1. Decline of paternalism.

Elites used to be more paternalist, outlawing things like gambling and tattoo shops that people with low self-control are tempted by.

New York City had a ban on tattoo shops. Now there are hundreds of them.

New study. In Norway, variation in class/status outcomes among twins is due to
—Genetics: 35-45%
—Shared environment (inc. social origins, THE cause according to sociologists/leftists): 10-15%
—Unexplained variance (measurement error, random chance, individual choice): 45-50% Norway is a great place to study why class-status outcomes vary among people.
—Generous welfare state equalizes opportunity.
—Large registry of twins.
—An administrative register keeps track of everyone's annual earnings, education levels, occupational codes.

A survey in 30 countries asking over 6000 people how heritable they think are four traits:
(1) Intelligence
People in most countries say around 60%. Pretty good guess (2) Personality
People in most countries guess around 50% heritable. Again, not too bad.

What gives life meaning?

Pew asked in 17 nations "what gives you meaning in life?":

There's a big difference between Westerners and East Asians.

1. East Asians get less meaning from family and children than Westerners 2. Nobody gets much meaning from having romantic partners, but almost zero East Asians do

A new survey (carried out in March-April 2024) of people in EU countries asked:
"Do you think your country takes in too many immigrants?"
On average about 70% agree. El Pais (Spanish newspaper):
"Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants"
english.elpais.com/international/…

We keep failing to take seriously the ideas sincerely believed by devout Muslims.

Article on the ideas of Sinwar and other leaders of Hamas:

They frequently talked of implementing "the last promise" - the day when all will submit to Islam, or be killed. They planned the implementation of "the last promise."

Hamas divided Israel into cantons for the day after the conquest and prepared a list of who will rule each one.

(The quotes are from Gazans in Cairo, those who could afford bribes to get across the border into Egypt.)

Remarkable and high-quality Swedish study:

If men win the lottery, they marry and have children.

If women win the lottery, their fertility does not rise. (Indeed, low-income women get divorced.)

You might think more resources means more kids. Yes with men, not with women. Maybe we need a society, as was the case in the baby boom, where men have sufficient resources to marry and reproduce.

Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" asks why Eurasia became more advanced than other areas of pre-modern farming (New Guinea, Africa, the Americas).

3 factors:

1. East-West orientation of Eurasia meant technologies could diffuse more easily (appears to be unsupported).

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1758185908220936260

Eurasia is ecologically heterogeneous, so diffusion would not be more easy then elsewhere.

E.g. the river valley ecologies of early Civs are very different from most of the rest of Eurasia

Rich countries don't have revolts, color revolutions, socialist revolutions, coups, civil wars, regime changes.
They keep what regime they have, democratic or autocratic.
Below: the World Bank's high income countries. Last time any had a regime change was when they were poor. The rich Arab states were immune as revolts, revolutions, civil wars, and regime changes of the Arab Spring after 2011 affected the poorer ones.

(Libya was an edge case, fairly rich but had a revolt and civil war.)

Red is high income.

Canada is a fascinating experiment in high immigration.

Non-homeowners have suffered greatly from rising rent.
Income per person is stagnating. Canada's unprecedented population growth

Settler colonialism is trending.
Some current examples. 🧵

1. China. Settled loyal Han in disloyal Xinjiang (from 90s). Settled 1m loyal mainlanders in disloyal Hong Kong.

A road across Xinjiang's Taklamakan desert China built to entice settlers. 2. Indonesia. Settled about 300k loyal Javanese in West Papua. Many around the giant Grasberg gold and copper mine, which had been a target of attacks by Papuan independence activists.