Linkfest 2021-10-15: The Limits of Chaos
DarwinCatholic: War, Mobilization, and the Nation State
Friend of the blog DarwinCatholic looks at a concept we discuss here often, the capacity of the nation state to mobilize and organize its people for grand proejcts.
DarwinCatholic: Soldier Cultures, Warrior Cultures
In a follow-up to the above, DarwinCatholic looks at the kind of military culture that accompanies the power of the state to mobilize the citizenry.
Misha Burnett: Meat & Potatoes Fiction
Misha Burnett argues the basic purpose of fiction is to allow the reader to experience vicariously events that lead to positive mental and emotional growth:
I think it’s a good litmus test for fiction–“If I had been in the situation that these characters were in, and I behaved as they did, would I feel good about myself?”
Evidence has been accumulating that people lived in the Americas a very long time ago, as much as 20 or 30 thousand years before now, but this has broken into the mainstream science press with the relatively high certainty carbon dating of the footprints at White Sands. Razib Khan takes a comprehensive look at the state of the science.
West Hunter: Footprints in the Sands of Time
Greg Cochran takes a victory lap about predicting the presence of a population in the Americas before the arrival of the people who were the ancestors of today’s Native Americans.
Razib Khan: G Allele At Rs10774671 Protects Against Severe COVID-19
Geographic differences in the course of COVID-19 have been huge. Razib looks at a gene that is associated with risk of severe COVID.
While the war was on, there were opportunities for guys who wanted out of the military, but weren’t done being soldiers to do so. Now that the US has shifted strategies, I expect we might see more of this kind of freelance soldier of fortune type stuff.
The inventor of the Roomba points out the inherent shortcomings of the current AI work.
John Daker: The Keep on the Borderlands is Full of Awesome
John Daker rightly pokes fun at an attempt to insert “gray” morality into Keep on the Borderlands, which is a pure distillation of Law versus Chaos as exists in D&D.
As DNA is by nature digital, this is to be expected.
Ryan Williamson has been playing around on Twitter with updated covers for his novel The Widow’s Son.
The Long View: The Hour of the Laity
One of John J. Reilly's talents was illustrating his ideas with short stories. Some of his most evocative ideas are to be found in these stories, although I cannot say for certain how seriously he intended them to be taken. My best guess is "not very", but said with a twinkle in his eye.
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