Here’s a neat bit of terminology coined by Garett Jones: the ‘Everest regression’. I’m going to assume you’ve come across the term ‘regression analysis’ before, but if you haven’t, it’s a way of estimating the relationships between a set of variables; finding out what happens to Y if we increase X by a little bit, Read More
This is a radical. This is a nested radical. This is an infinitely nested radical; it goes on, and on, repeating itself. You may now be asking yourself two obvious questions: (a) what has this got to do with me, and (b) is this going to end up in a joke about political radicals saying Read More
Over on Twitter, the excellent Tom Chivers (find his book here) is curious about how the human brain works: “Is there a specific name for the cognitive bias that makes us remember weather forecasts the few times they’re wrong… but not all the times when it’s right?” Good question, and one I embarrassingly can’t think Read More
Until relatively recently, you may have been under the misapprehension that preventing people from breaking the law was somehow part of the job of a police officer. If current events had not quite managed to disabuse you of this notion, then you can ask Chief Constable Ben-Julian Harrington: officers at Black Lives Matter rallies dedicated Read More
I have no intention of explaining how I obtained this letter; suffice it to say that circumspect investigations have confirmed its authenticity, and the identity of the correspondents. My dear Wormwood, I read your latest letter with great trepidation. You may well feel that things with your patient are proceeding marvellously; he has been persuaded, Read More
Once again, Tom Holland has put it best: “Whenever people steeped in Christian assumptions experience a particular upsurge of moral fervour, iconoclasm has rarely been far behind.” With the police watching politely from the sidelines, enterprising mobs across Britain and America are taking matters into their own hands; monuments to the old ways must fall, Read More
Over at Reaction: using evolutionary game theory as a framework for understanding the rise of wokeness. “I think if we want to understand what’s happening here, the best place to look is China. From the Song dynasty to the early 20th century, the practice of footbinding was widespread among all Chinese families other than those where women Read More
We should always evaluate the risks and benefits of efforts to control the virus. In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus. — Jennifer Nuzzo If I could offer one piece of advice to a profession fighting its greatest Read More
As protesters crammed themselves into Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park, as they screamed “hands up don’t shoot” at unarmed British police officers, and as they threw objects and grapple with the same — some of whom had just taken a knee in solidarity with George Floyd — all I could think was how fortunate it Read More
It is unconscionable that @StarWars has not yet tweeted the words #BlackLivesMatter — Chris Taylor A Bugman is your typical big left leaning city dweller… Everything about his personality and life is not defined by who he is, but by what he buys and his consumerist tendencies — Urban Dictionary Businesses don’t make money by Read More