LinkFest 2016-11-06
This LinkFest has been delayed three weeks. I had better publish it before the election and everything gets falsified!
A great piece on how Americans are divided by their attachments to hearth and home, or the lack thereof. Fascinating to me, since by education and career, I ought to be a member of what the author calls "the front row kids" who run the country, but I have chosen to live and work in the same small town I grew up in, much like Steve Jobs.
Is there a dietary treatment for multiple sclerosis?
It wouldn't be that hard to design a double-blind RCT on this if you wanted to. You could put everyone on the vegan+fish diet and then supplement animal fats in pill form. If the IRB balked, you might then suspect they secretly believed it might work.
Everyone agrees they don't like it, but no one has produced a lasting reform.
How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind
Cracked continues to impress me. Companion piece: Divided by meaning
Is there a dietary treatment for multiple sclerosis?
A really good look at the incentives that push medicine towards pharmaceuticals and away from other kinds of therapies. Related reading: Lions, Tigers, and Bears. Is the placebo powerless?
Revealed: Nearly Half The Adults In Britain And Europe Hold Extremist Views
There is no end to the humor in this, but I find the commitment to democracy kind of sweet and endearing in people who are otherwise horrified when they find out what average people really think. Can you imagine the headline if one were able to conduct the same survey world-wide?
Why Tokyo is the land of rising home construction but not rising prices
Because they almost always tear down old houses and build new ones instead of just moving into them. There are a variety of interesting cultural and practical reasons for this, but one that doesn't appear in the article is the way the Yakuza use construction as their legitimate front. A lot of blue collar work in NYC works much the same way.
How Democrats killed their populist soul
Part of my on-going series of how the Economic Right and the Cultural Left are currently dominant in the West. Until I read this, I hadn't appreciated how the economic theories of Right and Left alike had turned against trust-busting and monopoly prevention.
A bit more about anti-trust laws as applied to intellectual property.
Mergers raise prices not efficiency
Since I have worked in manufacturing for my entire career, I don't find this surprising at all. The idea that mergers allow for standardization looks a lot easier on paper than in reality. Supply chains and manufacturing lines can't change with a memo.
Definitely one of the best things I have read about the alt-right. What is going on in the US has a lot of ties to what is going on in Europe.
On the reality of race and the abhorrence of racism
Bo Winegard, Ben Winegard, and Brian Boutwell point out that studying race doesn't make you deplorable.
The ruthlessly effective rebranding of Europe's new far-Right
I said what I read above from Scott McConnell was the best thing about the alt-right, but you really need this one as background.
The election that forgot about the future
In John's review of The Fourth Turning, one of the things that Strauss and Howe said made the Civil War worse than it could have been was the failure of the aging Transcendentalists to step aside and let someone else solve new problems. According to Strauss and Howe's model, the Baby Boomers are currently filling the same role in the United States. And you might note, one of two aging Baby Boomers is about to win the Presidency in a bitterly contested election.
Mel Gibson makes another great war movie, about a guy who would not carry a gun.
Comments ()