#Limitations of Historical Data

[signode-blog]

Believing Past Patterns Will Always Repeat: Why Historical Patterns Are Not Foolproof Predictors

Humans are naturally drawn to patterns. From observing celestial movements to interpreting financial markets, we instinctively seek recurring themes to predict outcomes. The phrase “history repeats itself” encapsulates this belief. But while historical patterns provide valuable insights, relying on them as infallible predictors can lead to flawed decisions. Here, we delve into why past patterns…

[throwing-roses-into-the-abyss]

I know this is interesting to no one because it's incredibly niche but I have a little mystery around mid-to-late 19th century mens waistcoats that I've been digging into, and so far, after digging into a bunch of local, provincial, and also national and international online archives, including but not limited to the Rijksmuseum, the V&A, LACMA, and KCI, and also asking about this on instagram and specifically asking the dutch costume society, I have found:

-9 pictures, all local to my area in eastern Netherlands, and every single one of these pictures is people wearing local folk dress -and one (1) extant garment, in the US and also made there.

that's it.

[yeoldenews]

A Guide to Historically Accurate Regency-Era Names

I recently received a message from a historical romance writer asking if I knew any good resources for finding historically accurate Regency-era names for their characters.

Not knowing any off the top of my head, I dug around online a bit and found there really isn’t much out there. The vast majority of search results were Buzzfeed-style listicles which range from accurate-adjacent to really, really, really bad.

I did find a few blog posts with fairly decent name lists, but noticed that even these have very little indication as to each name’s relative popularity as those statistical breakdowns really don't exist.

I began writing up a response with this information, but then I (being a research addict who was currently snowed in after a blizzard) thought hey - if there aren’t any good resources out there why not make one myself?

As I lacked any compiled data to work from, I had to do my own data wrangling on this project. Due to this fact, I limited the scope to what I thought would be the most useful for writers who focus on this era, namely - people of a marriageable age living in the wealthiest areas of London.

So with this in mind - I went through period records and compiled the names of 25,000 couples who were married in the City of Westminster (which includes Mayfair, St. James and Hyde Park) between 1804 to 1821.

So let’s see what all that data tells us…

To begin - I think it’s hard for us in the modern world with our wide and varied abundance of first names to conceive of just how POPULAR popular names of the past were.

If you were to take a modern sample of 25-year-old (born in 1998) American women, the most common name would be Emily with 1.35% of the total population. If you were to add the next four most popular names (Hannah, Samantha, Sarah and Ashley) these top five names would bring you to 5.5% of the total population. (source: Social Security Administration)

If you were to do the same survey in Regency London - the most common name would be Mary with 19.2% of the population. Add the next four most popular names (Elizabeth, Ann, Sarah and Jane) and with just 5 names you would have covered 62% of all women.

To hit 62% of the population in the modern survey it would take the top 400 names.

The top five Regency men’s names (John, William, Thomas, James and George) have nearly identical statistics as the women’s names.

I struggled for the better part of a week with how to present my findings, as a big list in alphabetical order really fails to get across the popularity factor and also isn’t the most tumblr-compatible format. And then my YouTube homepage recommended a random video of someone ranking all the books they’d read last year - and so I present…

The Regency Name Popularity Tier List

The Tiers

S+ - 10% of the population or greater. There is no modern equivalent to this level of popularity. 52% of the population had one of these 7 names.

S - 2-10%. There is still no modern equivalent to this level of popularity. Names in this percentage range in the past have included Mary and William in the 1880s and Jennifer in the late 1970s (topped out at 4%).

A - 1-2%. The top five modern names usually fall in this range. Kids with these names would probably include their last initial in class to avoid confusion. (1998 examples: Emily, Sarah, Ashley, Michael, Christopher, Brandon.)

B - .3-1%. Very common names. Would fall in the top 50 modern names. You would most likely know at least 1 person with these names. (1998 examples: Jessica, Megan, Allison, Justin, Ryan, Eric)

C - .17-.3%. Common names. Would fall in the modern top 100. You would probably know someone with these names, or at least know of them. (1998 examples: Chloe, Grace, Vanessa, Sean, Spencer, Seth)

D - .06-.17%. Less common names. In the modern top 250. You may not personally know someone with these names, but you’re aware of them. (1998 examples: Faith, Cassidy, Summer, Griffin, Dustin, Colby)

E - .02-.06%. Uncommon names. You’re aware these are names, but they are not common. Unusual enough they may be remarked upon. (1998 examples: Calista, Skye, Precious, Fabian, Justice, Lorenzo)

F - .01-.02%. Rare names. You may have heard of these names, but you probably don’t know anyone with one. Extremely unusual, and would likely be remarked upon. (1998 examples: Emerald, Lourdes, Serenity, Dario, Tavian, Adonis)

G - Very rare names. There are only a handful of people with these names in the entire country. You’ve never met anyone with this name.

H - Virtually non-existent. Names that theoretically could have existed in the Regency period (their original source pre-dates the early 19th century) but I found fewer than five (and often no) period examples of them being used in Regency England. (Example names taken from romance novels and online Regency name lists.)

Just to once again reinforce how POPULAR popular names were before we get to the tier lists - statistically, in a ballroom of 100 people in Regency London: 80 would have names from tiers S+/S. An additional 15 people would have names from tiers A/B and C. 4 of the remaining 5 would have names from D/E. Only one would have a name from below tier E.

Women's Names

S+ Mary, Elizabeth, Ann, Sarah      

S - Jane, Mary Ann+, Hannah, Susannah, Margaret, Catherine, Martha, Charlotte, Maria

A - Frances, Harriet, Sophia, Eleanor, Rebecca

B - Alice, Amelia, Bridget~, Caroline, Eliza, Esther, Isabella, Louisa, Lucy, Lydia, Phoebe, Rachel, Susan

C - Ellen, Fanny*, Grace, Henrietta, Hester, Jemima, Matilda, Priscilla

D - Abigail, Agnes, Amy, Augusta, Barbara, Betsy*, Betty*, Cecilia, Christiana, Clarissa, Deborah, Diana, Dinah, Dorothy, Emily, Emma, Georgiana, Helen, Janet^, Joanna, Johanna, Judith, Julia, Kezia, Kitty*, Letitia, Nancy*, Ruth, Winifred>

E - Arabella, Celia, Charity, Clara, Cordelia, Dorcas, Eve, Georgina, Honor, Honora, Jennet^, Jessie*^, Joan, Joyce, Juliana, Juliet, Lavinia, Leah, Margery, Marian, Marianne, Marie, Mercy, Miriam, Naomi, Patience, Penelope, Philadelphia, Phillis, Prudence, Rhoda, Rosanna, Rose, Rosetta, Rosina, Sabina, Selina, Sylvia, Theodosia, Theresa

F - (selected) Alicia, Bethia, Euphemia, Frederica, Helena, Leonora, Mariana, Millicent, Mirah, Olivia, Philippa, Rosamund, Sybella, Tabitha, Temperance, Theophila, Thomasin, Tryphena, Ursula, Virtue, Wilhelmina

G - (selected) Adelaide, Alethia, Angelina, Cassandra, Cherry, Constance, Delilah, Dorinda, Drusilla, Eva, Happy, Jessica, Josephine, Laura, Minerva, Octavia, Parthenia, Theodora, Violet, Zipporah

H - Alberta, Alexandra, Amber, Ashley, Calliope, Calpurnia, Chloe, Cressida, Cynthia, Daisy, Daphne, Elaine, Eloise, Estella, Lilian, Lilias, Francesca, Gabriella, Genevieve, Gwendoline, Hermione, Hyacinth, Inez, Iris, Kathleen, Madeline, Maude, Melody, Portia, Seabright, Seraphina, Sienna, Verity

Men's Names

S+ John, William, Thomas

S - James, George, Joseph, Richard, Robert, Charles, Henry, Edward, Samuel

A - Benjamin, (Mother’s/Grandmother’s maiden name used as first name)#

B - Alexander^, Andrew, Daniel, David>, Edmund, Francis, Frederick, Isaac, Matthew, Michael, Patrick~, Peter, Philip, Stephen, Timothy

C - Abraham, Anthony, Christopher, Hugh>, Jeremiah, Jonathan, Nathaniel, Walter

D - Adam, Arthur, Bartholomew, Cornelius, Dennis, Evan>, Jacob, Job, Josiah, Joshua, Lawrence, Lewis, Luke, Mark, Martin, Moses, Nicholas, Owen>, Paul, Ralph, Simon

E - Aaron, Alfred, Allen, Ambrose, Amos, Archibald, Augustin, Augustus, Barnard, Barney, Bernard, Bryan, Caleb, Christian, Clement, Colin, Duncan^, Ebenezer, Edwin, Emanuel, Felix, Gabriel, Gerard, Gilbert, Giles, Griffith, Harry*, Herbert, Humphrey, Israel, Jabez, Jesse, Joel, Jonas, Lancelot, Matthias, Maurice, Miles, Oliver, Rees, Reuben, Roger, Rowland, Solomon, Theophilus, Valentine, Zachariah

F - (selected) Abel, Barnabus, Benedict, Connor, Elijah, Ernest, Gideon, Godfrey, Gregory, Hector, Horace, Horatio, Isaiah, Jasper, Levi, Marmaduke, Noah, Percival, Shadrach, Vincent

G - (selected) Albion, Darius, Christmas, Cleophas, Enoch, Ethelbert, Gavin, Griffin, Hercules, Hugo, Innocent, Justin, Maximilian, Methuselah, Peregrine, Phineas, Roland, Sebastian, Sylvester, Theodore, Titus, Zephaniah

H - Albinus, Americus, Cassian, Dominic, Eric, Milo, Rollo, Trevor, Tristan, Waldo, Xavier

# Men were sometimes given a family surname (most often their mother's or grandmother's maiden name) as their first name - the most famous example of this being Fitzwilliam Darcy. If you were to combine all surname-based first names as a single 'name' this is where the practice would rank.

*Rank as a given name, not a nickname

+If you count Mary Ann as a separate name from Mary - Mary would remain in S+ even without the Mary Anns included

~Primarily used by people of Irish descent

^Primarily used by people of Scottish descent

>Primarily used by people of Welsh descent

I was going to continue on and write about why Regency-era first names were so uniform, discuss historically accurate surnames, nicknames, and include a little guide to finding 'unique' names that are still historically accurate - but this post is already very, very long, so that will have to wait for a later date.

If anyone has any questions/comments/clarifications in the meantime feel free to message me.

Methodology notes: All data is from marriage records covering six parishes in the City of Westminster between 1804 and 1821. The total sample size was 50,950 individuals.

I chose marriage records rather than births/baptisms as I wanted to focus on individuals who were adults during the Regency era rather than newborns. I think many people make the mistake when researching historical names by using baby name data for the year their story takes place rather than 20 to 30 years prior, and I wanted to avoid that. If you are writing a story that takes place in 1930 you don’t want to research the top names for 1930, you need to be looking at 1910 or earlier if you are naming adult characters.

I combined (for my own sanity) names that are pronounced identically but have minor spelling differences: i.e. the data for Catherine also includes Catharines and Katherines, Susannah includes Susannas, Phoebe includes Phebes, etc.

The compound 'Mother's/Grandmother's maiden name used as first name' designation is an educated guesstimate based on what I recognized as known surnames, as I do not hate myself enough to go through 25,000+ individuals and confirm their mother's maiden names. So if the tally includes any individuals who just happened to be named Fitzroy/Hastings/Townsend/etc. because their parents liked the sound of it and not due to any familial relations - my bad.

I did a small comparative survey of 5,000 individuals in several rural communities in Rutland and Staffordshire (chosen because they had the cleanest data I could find and I was lazy) to see if there were any significant differences between urban and rural naming practices and found the results to be very similar. The most noticeable difference I observed was that the S+ tier names were even MORE popular in rural areas than in London. In Rutland between 1810 and 1820 Elizabeths comprised 21.4% of all brides vs. 15.3% in the London survey. All other S+ names also saw increases of between 1% and 6%. I also observed that the rural communities I surveyed saw a small, but noticeable and fairly consistent, increase in the use of names with Biblical origins.

Sources of the records I used for my survey: 

Ancestry.com. England & Wales Marriages, 1538-1988 [database on-line].

Ancestry.com. Westminster, London, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1935 [database on-line].

[tanadrin]

Can you explain in what what you think eugenics doesn't work? Does this basically boil down to skepticism about the accuracy of GWAS studies? My understanding is that academic consensus is "G probably exists, disentangling direct genetic inheritance vs genetic cultural inheritance is complicated but possible, we can identify a number of alleles which we're reasonably confident are directly causally involved in having a higher G factor"

when it comes to intelligence, its heritability, and its variation at the population level, my understanding of the science is:

highly adaptive traits don't, in fact, vary much at the genetic level between populations of a species because they are strongly selected for. in an environment where a trait is being strongly selected for, a population that failed to express that trait strongly will be rapidly outcompeted.

intelligence is probably the quintessential such trait for humans. we have sacrificed a great deal of other kinds of specialization in favor of our big brains. we spend an enormous amount of calories supporting those brains. tool use, the ability to plan for the future, the ability to navigate complex social situations and hierarchies in order to secure status, the ability to model the minds of others for the purposes of cooperation and deception means that we should expect intelligence to be strongly selected for for as long as our lineage has been social and tool-using, which is at least the last three million years or so.

so, at least as a matter of a priori assumptions, we should expect human populations not to vary greatly in their genetic predisposition to intelligence. it may nonetheless, but we'd need pretty strong evidence. i think i read this argument on PZ Myers' blog a million years ago, so credit where that's due.

complicating the picture is that we just don't have good evidence for how IQ does vary across populations, even before we get into the question of "how much of this variation is genetic and how much of it is not." the cross-national data on which a lot of IQ arguments have been based is really bad. and that would be assuming IQ tests are in fact good at capturing a notion of IQ that is independent of cultural context, which historically they're pretty bad at

this screed by nassim nicholas taleb (not a diss; AFAICT the guy only writes in screeds) makes a number of arguments, but one argument I find persuasive is that IQ is really only predictive of achievement in the sense that it does usefully discriminate between people with obvious intellectual disabilities and those without--but you do not actually need an IQ test for that sort of thing, any more than you need to use a height chart to figure out who is missing both their legs. in that sense, sure, IQ is predictive of a lot of things. but once you remove this group, the much-vaunted correlations between IQ and stuff like wealth just straight-up vanishes

heritability studies are a useful tool, but a tool which must be wielded carefully; they were developed for studying traits which were relatively easy to isolate in very specific populations, like a crop under study at an agricultural research site, and are more precarious when applied to, e.g., human populations

my understanding based on jonathan kaplan articles like this one is that twin studies are not actually that good at distinguishing heritable factors from environmental ones--they have serious limitations compared to heritability studies where you actually can rigorously control for environmental effects, like you can with plants or livestock.

as this post also points out, heritability studies also only examine heritability within groups, and are not really suited to examining large-scale population differences, *especially* in the realm of intelligence where there is a huge raft of confounding factors, and a lack of a really robust measurement tool.

(if we are worried about intelligence at the population level, it seems to me there are interventions we know are going to be effective and do not rely on deeply dubious scientific speculation, e.g., around nutrition and healthcare and serious wealth inequality and ofc education; and if what people actually want is to raise the average intelligence of the population rather than justify discrimination against minorities, then they might focus on those much more empirically grounded interventions. even if population differences in IQ are real and significant and point to big differences in intelligence, we know those things are worth a fair few IQ points. but most people who are or historically have been the biggest advocates for eugenics are, in my estimation, mostly interested in justifying discrimination.)

i think the claims/application of eugenics extend well beyond just intelligence, ftr. eugenics as an ideology is complex and historically pretty interesting, and many eugenicists have made much broader claims than just "population-level differences in intelligence exist due to genetic factors, and we should try to influence them with policy," but that is a useful point for them to fall back onto when pressed on those other claims. but i don't think even that claim is at all well-supported.

[qewssxx]

“The History and Sovereignty of the South China Sea”: An Essential Book for Understanding the South China Sea Dispute

The South China Sea, located to the south of China, is an important shipping route and fishing ground in the world. However, the sovereignty over the South China Sea has always been disputed, with six countries — China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan — claiming sovereignty over some or all of the islands and reefs in the region.

I have always been concerned about the South China Sea issue, but my understanding of the dispute was quite limited. Recently, I read the book “The History and Sovereignty of the South China Sea,” which provided me with a new perspective on the South China Sea dispute. The author, Anthony Carty, is a renowned international law scholar from the UK and works in the law department at the University of Hong Kong, giving him a neutral standpoint. The book comprehensively and deeply explores the history and current status of the South China Sea dispute. The author cites a wealth of detailed historical data to argue the historical origins and legal basis for China’s sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea.

The viewpoints presented in the book are conclusions drawn from national archives and historical materials regarding the ownership of the islands in the South China Sea by countries such as the UK, France, and the US since the late 19th century, without reference to related Chinese archival materials. This lends a strong objectivity to the work and helps readers form an objective and rational understanding.

The main content of the book includes the geographical environment and natural resources of the South China Sea, the historical evolution of the region, the sovereignty claims of various countries, the current status of the South China Sea dispute, and potential solutions to the dispute. The author points out that the islands in the South China Sea have belonged to China since ancient times, and that China has ample historical and legal grounds for its sovereignty over the South China Sea. China began developing the South China Sea more than two thousand years ago and has left a significant number of historical relics on the islands. Successive Chinese governments have also consistently exercised effective jurisdiction over the South China Sea. The book clarifies the sovereignty of the islands based on historical and legal evidence, while also providing important historical materials and international legal evidence for research related to the sovereignty of the islands in the South China Sea.

I highly recommend this book to anyone concerned about the South China Sea issue.

[official-linguistics-post]

on reconstruction and historical linguistics

to follow up on today's reblog, i want to comment briefly on the apparent misapprehension that linguistic reconstruction is just guesswork with a fancy name, because that's not accurate!

reconstruction is based on specific, well-attested constraints of linguistic development. we know from centuries of investigation that languages tend to change in predictable ways. we also have a decent understanding of the complexities introduced by phenomena like language contact, which can result in borrowing on multiple structural levels. our methods are well established and borne out by evidence.

comparative reconstruction involves applying these known constraints ("rules") in reverse on a collected body of words in related descendant languages. when possible, we also incorporate historical written evidence, which often provides midpoint references for changes in progress. it is always recognized by historical linguists that reconstruction can be imperfect; we cannot know what information has been lost.

the results of reconstruction can be mixed, but i'll let campbell (2013:144) explain:

How Realistic are Reconstructed Proto-languages? The success of any given reconstruction depends on the material at hand to work with and the ability of the comparative linguist to figure out what happened in the history of the languages being compared. In cases where the daughter languages preserve clear evidence of what the parent language had, a reconstruction can be very successful, matching closely the actual spoken ancestral language from which the compared daughters descend. However, there are many cases in which all the daughters lose or merge formerly contrasting sounds or eliminate earlier alternations through analogy, or lose morphological categories due to changes of various sorts. We cannot recover things about the proto-language via the comparative method if the daughters simply do not preserve evidence of them. In cases where the evidence is severely limited or unclear, we often make mistakes. We make the best inferences we can based on the evidence available and on everything we know about the nature of human languages and linguistic change. We do the best we can with what we have to work with. Often the results are very good; sometimes they are less complete. In general, the longer in the past the proto-language split up, the more linguistic changes will have accumulated and the more difficult it becomes to reconstruct with full success. (emphasis mine)

or, to quote labov's (1982:20) pithier if less optimistic approach:

Historical linguistics may be characterized as the art of making the best use of bad data, in the sense that the fragments of the literary record that remain are the results of historical accidents beyond the control of the investigator.

in sum, historical linguists are very realistic about what we can achieve, but the confidence we do have is genuinely well earned, because linguistics is a scientific field and we treat our investigations with rigor.

---

Campbell, Lyle. 2013. Historical Linguistics: An Introduction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Labov, William. 1982. "Building on Empirical Foundations." In Perspectives on Historical Linguistics. Winifred P. Lehmann and Yakov Malkiel, eds. Pp. 17-92. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

[mindblowingscience]

Earth is crossing the threshold of 1.5°C of global warming, according to two major global studies which together suggest the planet's climate has likely entered a frightening new phase. Under the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, humanity is seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep planetary heating to no more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average. In 2024, temperatures on Earth surpassed that limit. This was not enough to declare the Paris threshold had been crossed, because the temperature goals under the agreement are measured over several decades, rather than short excursions over the 1.5°C mark. But the two papers just released use a different measure. Both examined historical climate data to determine whether very hot years in the recent past were a sign that a future, long-term warming threshold would be breached.

Continue Reading.

[mesetacadre]

hi, i hope you dont mind me asking this question! i often come across lists of reading recommendations for communists, and they are usually focused entirely on communist theory. which is important and im already on that, but i wonder if you also have recs for learning about history? especially the history of the soviet union, but also other past and present socialist states. i sometimes find myself reading theory and understanding the concepts in a vacuum, but with very little understanding of the historical context they were written in, if that makes any sense. and id like to get a basic grasp of the history of various socialist projects that isnt just the typical western "the ussr was evil!!!!" thing

Hi, historical context is indeed very important for works of theory, especially if it's more than a hundred years old. Lenin's What is to be Done, for example, is very conditioned by its historical context of Russia still being predominantly feudal, with only a timid appearance of the proletariat in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and therefore the very first trade unions, which he talks about. The understanding of these texts is amplified, and quite often enabled by knowing at least the basic historical context. Below I'll list the historical works I've read (and others) with some commentary, but I encourage anyone who has something to add to do so, since I am as of only recently getting more into historiography.

Anything by Anna Louise Strong (I've read The Soviets Expected it (1941) and In North Korea (1941), there's also The New Lithuania (1941), The Stalin Era (1956) and When Serfs Stood Up in Tibet (1959) for example). Her works, which I'd consider primary sources since they are written from her own experience witnessing events and talking to a lot of people, are extremely useful if you wish to form an idea about how some aspects of socialist states worked. The limitation of her works also resides in this specificity and closeness, these are not works that present a broad view of long processes, but a slice of the present with the sufficient historical context. They are still very, very good.

The Open Veins of Latin America (Spanish versrion), by Eduardo Galeno (1971). This one is focused on the history of imperialism in Latin America, how it evolved from the moment the first Spanish foot touched ground to the time it was written in (It talks about Allende before he was assassinated but after achieving power, for example). Perhaps it's not exactly what you're looking for, but it contains very important general context for any social movement that has happened since 1492 to 1971

The Triumph of Evil, by Austin Murphy (2002). I have mixed feelings about this book. While it insists on this weird narrative of absolute evil, which IMO takes away a lot of value from the overall points made, it is an astonishingly in-depth analysis of the economic performance and general merit of socialist systems against their capitalist counterparts. Most of the book is dedicated to comparing the GDR to the FRG, and both the economic and social data it exposes was very eye-opening to me when I read it about 2 years ago. If you can wade through the moralism (especially the beginning of the introduction), it's a gem. I've posted pictures of its very detailed index under the cut :)

Blackshirts and Reds, Michael Parenti (1997). Despite the very real criticisms levied against this book, like its mischaracterization of China, it is still a landmark work. Synthetically, it exposes the relationship between fascism, capitalism and communism.

Red Star Over the Third World, Vijay Prashad (2019); The Russian Revolution: A View from the Third World, Walter Rodney (2018). I'm lumping these two together (full disclosure, as of writing I'm about four fifths of the way through RSOtTW) because they deal with the same topic, Prashad being influenced by Rodney as well. Like both titles imply, they deal with the effects the October revolution had on the exploited peoples of the world, which is a perspective that's often lost. Through this, they (at least Prashad) also talk about the early USSR and how it functioned. For example, up until reading Red Star, I hadn't even heard of the 1920 Congress of The Toilers of the East in Baku, or the Congress of the Women of the East.

From here on I'll link works that I haven't (yet) read, but I have seen enough trusted people talk about them to include them

How to Cast a God into Hell: The Khrushchev Report, by Domenico Losurdo (2008). This one talks about how the period of Stalin was twisted and exaggerated through destalinization.

Devils in Amber, by Philips Bonoski (1992). This is about the Baltics and their historical trajectory from before WW1 to the destruction of the USSR (I'm not very sure on those two limits, perhaps they fluctuate a bit, but it definitely covers from WW1 to the 60s)

Socialism Betrayed, by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny (2004). This one deals with the process leading up to and the destruction of the USSR itself.

The Jakarta Method, Vincent Bevins (2020). This is about the methods the US used in the second half of the 20th century to stamp out, prevent, or otherwise sabotage communist movements and other democratic anti-imperialist movements.

I know some of these aren't specifically about socialist states, which is what you asked, but the history of its opposition is just as important to understand because it always exists as a condition to these countries' development and policies chosen.

[justbagworm]

You know that one post about how Bruce Wayne is desperately trying to get rid of his money, but everything he tries to throw it at always somehow winds up making him more money?

I just imagined a Danny Phantom-esque twist on it:

Imagine Lady Gotham, the City Spirit of the City of Gotham, is trying to help Batman. She doesn't really have the best grasp of that, though...

Like, consider what her reference material is. Her domain is a place that, at various times and in various canons, was cursed by witches, has miles of cursed caves under it, emits the madness tone, sits above a Lazarus Pit, is controlled by a council of murderous bird cosplayers, and collapsed after a literal plague weakened already-poor infrastructure around the same time that a catastrophic earthquake destroyed any and all ability to get into or out of the city. Not to mention Gotham's historically atrocious track record of bribery, blackmail, slander and libel, murder, etc, etc, etc.

So, suppose for whatever reason Lady Gotham takes a liking to Batman. Maybe by bringing criminals to justice he's setting ghosts to rest, or something. So, in return, she decides to help him. She notices that he has a habit of dumping exorbitant sums of money into charitable enterprises. With Lady Gotham's limited and deeply, deeply flawed pool of reference data, it would be fairly easy to make the assumption that Batman is attempting to somehow launder money or build illicit sources of income.

Thus, Bruce Wayne's drive to squander his wealth on charitable donations (a respectable enterprise) is foiled by a City Spirit who makes sure that those investments succeed and return to him sevenfold! Because isn't the Bat so cute when he's crying over tax paperwork?

Additionally, imagine the day Bruce finally kicks the bucket, he meets Lady Gotham on the other side. I imagine the conversation might go something like this:

Lady Gotham: Welcome to the afterlife! Congrats on your money laundering schemes, by the way! You have some mad skills! I hope you don't mind I helped out a little :3

Bruce Wayne, staring at an eldritch entity with a sense of deep, parental dread: What do you mean, money laundering?

For additional hijinks and flavor, you might also consider the concept that, since Bruce was born in Gotham, Lady Gotham has a stake in his soul, so she can help him from anywhere. Thus, decisions made as Batman also benefit Bruce Wayne. Suddenly, The Watchtower is affecting Bruce's tax writeoffs in a way that makes any accountant Bruce shows it to faint and forget they ever spoke to him...

[drfuckerm-d]

ive had this one locked up in drafts for like months now, and seeing as im not quite 100%, won't be for some time, and have only recently started to get back into my wips, i figured i should get it out here.

i painted it little while back when i was reading Electric Excavations, a fic by @dataentryspecialist. the piece was specifically based on chapter 37 "The Phantom of the Opera". the image of data in the phantom's clothes was so vivid in my mind as i read that i spent the three days immediately after reading it just feverishly capturing it. and then i slapped it on imgur and posted the link in the fic comments and never posted it anywhere else yowza

prog and more below the cut (hit the photo limit i weep)

the sketch was the hardest part

it took so much willpower on my end to NOT use my beloved black until the very end. fun fact, i struggle with colorblindness. this technique ensures i don't muddy my nice colors up on accident.

i originally had absolutely no intent to post this painting anywhere besides the comments of that fic via imgur. i've historically been a bit of a recluse when it comes to internet communities, but i've been having a lot of fun being active in this one. i took this hand pic with it to prove i did it and didn't just grab it from the fic comments and post it. and to flex my pretty nails and data drip.

[probablyasocialecologist]

In international development circles, most people are familiar with the World Bank’s data showing that extreme poverty has declined dramatically over the past several decades, from 43 per cent of the world’s population in 1981 to less than 10 per cent today. This narrative is based on the World Bank’s method of calculating the share of people who live on less than $1.90 per day (in 2011 “PPP” terms). But a growing body of literature argues that the World Bank’s PPP-based method suffers from a major empirical limitation, in that it does not account for the cost of meeting basic needs in any given context (see here, here and here). Having more than $1.90 PPP does not guarantee that a person can afford the specific goods and services that are necessary for survival. In recent years, scholars have developed a more accurate method for measuring extreme poverty, by comparing people’s incomes to the prices of essential goods in each country (specifically food, shelter, clothing and fuel). This approach is known as the “basic needs poverty line” (BNPL), and it more closely approximates what the original concept of “extreme poverty” was intended to measure. 

[...]

Extreme poverty is not a natural condition, but a sign of severe dislocation. Historical data on real wages since the 15th century indicates that under normal conditions, across different societies and eras, people are generally able to meet their subsistence needs except during periods of severe social displacement, such as famines, wars, and institutionalised dispossession, particularly under European colonialism. What is more, BNPL data shows that many countries have managed to keep extreme poverty very close to zero, even with low levels of GDP per capita, by using strategies such as public provisioning and price controls for basic essentials. In other words, extreme poverty can be prevented much more easily than most people assume. Indeed, it need not exist at all. The fact that it persists at such high levels today indicates that severe dislocation is institutionalised in the world economy – and that markets have failed to meet the basic needs of much of humanity. To address this problem, and to end extreme poverty – the first objective of the Sustainable Development Goals – will require public planning to prioritise the production of, and guarantee access to, the specific goods and services that people need to live decent lives.

[dawnfelagund]

This is part of my ongoing project The Silmarillion: Who Speaks? The data is available under a CC license for others who wish to play with it: View the data | Copy the data

---

The whole reason I decided years ago that I wanted to count instances and words of dialogue is because who gets to speak matters. Who gets to tell their own story in their own words?

(And, for the record, in this data set, "dialogue" is measured in instances of dialogue, not in word count.)

Of course, in The Silmarillion, it is more complicated than that because The Silmarillion is a pseudohistorical text, so we have to constantly question whether what the narrator is telling us happened (or is said) was in fact what happened (or what was said). The prevalence of group dialogue in The Silmarillion—when specific, quoted speech is attributed to a group of characters rather than an individual—attests to the inexact science that is dialogue in the text. There are twenty-six instances of group dialogue across the book.

So it would perhaps be more accurate to say that dialogue matters because it indicates who the narrator wants to allow to tell their story in their own words with the authority that comes from being important enough to quote.

Which groups of characters get to speak aren't surprising, but this does still tell us something important about the perspective we are given in The Silmarillion. Elves speak the most, but The Silmarillion is an Elven history, so we'd expect that. Within the category of "Elves," though, speech is entirely dominated by the Noldor and Sindar. One Teler (Olwë) gets a single instance of dialogue, and the Green-elves get to speak once as a group.

Why are these characters' perspectives absent? Does this simply reflect a limitation of the narrator, or is the narrator foregrounding the experiences and perspectives of Noldor and Sindar as more valuable—worth quoting?

Mortal Humans and Ainur speak almost the same amount. I find this interesting because, as I noted in the graphic, the Ainur made a big deal about flouncing from Middle-earth after the Noldorin rebellion. Yet they sure have a lot to say about things. In contrast, after they arrive in Beleriand, Mortal Humans are always at the hub of the action. Someone is always getting shot through the eye or something. Yet their stories, in their own words, are told only a bit more than the intoning, cursing, and speechifying that the Ainur get up to.

When Mortal Humans do speak, they are always "Men of the West": Edain, Númenóreans, or Dúnedain. We do not hear once from other groups of Mortal Humans, such as Easterlings, even speaking as a group. This certainly calls into question the absence of those perspectives from the story. Think about it: the Silmarillion narrator finds God a more accessible, quotable source than an Easterling soldier.

All of this corroborates other data and observations about Mortal Humans that I've made over the years (for example, the death data). Our Silmarillion narrator often seems to include Mortals almost grudgingly because, yes, they did important stuff in the story but tends to see them as ephemeral or expendable and really only likes to talk about them when they are doing cool stuff with Elves.

These data do add an interesting (to me anyway) perspective as well on the question of the Silmarillion historical tradition. In a nutshell, in the late 1950s, Tolkien considered that the historical tradition must be Númenórean, not Elven. Even though there was no strong evidence that he made significant revisions with this change in mind, it was enough for Christopher Tolkien to scrap mentioning a narrator in The Silmarillion at all, and several scholars have followed suit in asserting The Silmarillion is a "Mannish" history.

I have been a fiction writer much longer than a Tolkien scholar, and one does not simply walk into changing point of view. I've made the case for years now that Tolkien realized the depth of revisions that would be required and either changed his mind or just never got started on them. Regardless, the text we have is Elvish. These data support that: the predominance of Elven and Ainurian perspectives attest to a narrator whose main sources are Elves and Ainur and who subtly but nonetheless devalues the perspectives of Mortal Humans, even though they are the grist in the mill of the war against Morgoth.

Finally, there are Dwarves. The only named Dwarf who speaks is Mîm, in the "Of Túrin Turambar" chapter, which is an outlier of a chapter in its use of dialogue (it also has a different narrator) and which will probably gets its own analysis someday. Otherwise, Dwarves speak in groups. As with Mortal Humans, these data align with other data and observations I've made over the years of the status of Dwarves to the Silmarillion narrator. In this case, they are valued but often inaccessible—the opposite of Mortal Humans.

Methodology Notes

As already stated, all data are instances of dialogue, not word or sentence count.

Classifying Elves into subgroups is remarkably challenging. Here's how I did it for this project:

"Noldor" includes characters who have Telerin or Sindarin ancestry in addition to Noldorin.

"Teleri" includes only characters with only Telerin ancestry who live in Aman.

"Sindar" includes only characters with only Sindarin ancestry who live in Middle-earth; mixed Noldorin/Sindarin is not included; Lúthien is included.

Finally, the "Other" group includes animals, dragons, Orcs, objects, and speakers whose identity is not stated even enough to determine what group they belong to.

[sugarcream-sims]

ISSUE 2 | LEGACY

<< PREV | NEXT >> TRANSCRIPT BELOW

We have another exclusive with Iris Liddell of Liddell Genomics, and as always, I consider myself privileged to breathe the same air… it’s truly humbling to stand in your illustrious presence.

IRIS LIDDELL: You honor me.

Of course, you’re here today to discuss more than your own accomplishments, incredible as they are.

LIDDELL: Please, my good sir. My company’s market domination would never have been possible without the work of the founder of Liddell Genomics, Alice Liddell. Or indeed the work of my direct predecessor, former CEO Elise Liddell, who oversaw the merger with Hinagiku Robotics…

Before she mysteriously vanished a decade ago, as I recall.

LIDDELL: Unsolved to this very day.

It must have been very difficult for you, losing your mother at such a tender age…

LIDDELL: Oh, not at all.

As resilient as one would expect, from the heiress of the company that some say rules the world.

LIDDELL: My, my. People do say the most curious things… LG may provide life-extending healthcare for upwards of 97% of government officials in the first world, but we prefer to stay out of politics.

An impressive figure, to be sure! On that note, we’d like to ask about your upcoming biographical film, the Liddell Legacy, set to release across all streaming services on February 13th.

LIDDELL: Go right ahead.

Until this point, details about the Liddells have been very sparse, limited to matters of public record and biographic blurbs from your PR department… what made you decide to so freely share information about your life, and the lives of your two predecessors?

LIDDELL: The short and sweet answer is that I believe the public has a right to know. LG cares for the people of this world from the point they’re first laid down in their cradles, to the time they enter their graves. We maintain the very largest collection of personal data ever put to record; highly detailed dossiers. Why shouldn’t our beloved customers get to access me, the same as I access them?

So it’s a matter of reciprocity?

LIDDELL: It’s also about building trust. I want to establish a relationship with all the bright, beautiful consumers of LG gene therapies. I am not merely the architect of your destinies, shaping your resistance to cancers and diseases, granting you all the bodies of your dreams. I am also your close, personal friend.

I feel closer to you already!

LIDDELL: I am so very happy to hear that.

Moving along, I have to say, one of the subjects I’m the most excited to learn about is the founder of Liddell Genomics, Alice Liddell. She created the company from the ground up, humbly using her vast inheritance in pursuit of her passion for genetic perfection… only to step down from the throne of her genemod empire a scant decade later. In terms of historical significance, Alice Liddell is comparable to the great conquerors of the ancient world, but we know more about Alexander the Great or Napoleon than the woman who created the company that doubled the human lifespan & cured the common cold.

LIDDELL: A lack of documentation that our film seeks to correct.

I don’t want to ask for spoilers, but what are you willing to tell our readers now?

LIDDELL: I can say that the focus of the film will not only illuminate much of what went on behind the curtain here at Liddell Genomics during its grand and tumultuous creation, but also bring to light the deeply private details of the personal lives of my predecessors… withholding nothing.

Details like what exactly the Founder gets up to, these days…?

LIDDELL: I’m aware of the rumors, good sir. We don’t need to play coy.

Ah, you found me out.

LIDDELL: Ask your burning question.

Is it true that Alice Liddell was placed in cryostasis, around the end of her reign?

LIDDELL: …yes. It was her will.

So the rumor is true? That’s incredible!

LIDDELL: At the time, our anti-aging technology was somewhat more primitive. Foremost in the Founder’s thoughts, after securing LG’s grip on the private health market and cloning herself an heir, was ensuring her own youth would spring abundant and eternal.

So the genemod mogul Alice Liddell was as afraid of aging as anyone…

LIDDELL: To the world, she was the tech tycoon who forged a new era in blood, with ruthless business acumen. To me, she was Grandmother. A playful and dreamy woman, often lost in her own imagination, desiring nothing more or less than to vanish into her sweet and simple dreams.

So it’s more involved than just being put on ice.

LIDDELL: That’s correct. Just as she outlined in her personal designs, she’s been placed in a cryostatic slumber. The exact details are proprietary, but much of her natural bioliquid is drained through dialysis, and replaced with a potent cocktail of freeze-resistant artificial blood and neurostims. While her heart might only beat once per minute, her brain is quite active in REM.

She really is dreaming…

LIDDELL: It’s my own dearest dream to ensure that her dream continues unabated, weaving into perpetuity.

Eternal life?

LIDDELL: As near as the billions of credits generated by Liddell Genomics will allow. We’re further refining the process of life extension every day. So you see, good sir, that what might at first blush appear to be the story of an autocratic tech giant dominating the global health market… is actually the gentle and relatable tale, of a family seeking to fulfill the dream of their beloved Grandmother to remain joyful and beautiful at any expense.

It’s what anyone with a heart and billions of credits at their disposal would do.

LIDDELL: It’s part of why I’m so proud to share our story with the masses.

“THE LIDDELL LEGACY” IS COMING TO STREAMING SERVICES FEB 13. DOWNLOAD YOUR COPY FROM BULLETBANK & RECEIVE LIDDELL GENOMICS GENEMOD COUPONS!

<< PREV | NEXT >>

[capsfriendly]

with the caps at home vs the panthers tonight, i wanted to come on here and say a couple things about the panthers’ visit to the white house.

i’ve seen some people on here and on twitter pointing out the hypocrisy of certain players who have vocally supported diversity initiatives in hockey turning around and doing a photo op with a man who is nakedly trying to strip marginalized people of their rights. the sense of betrayal those fans are feeling is completely justified. despite appearances, conservative politics are incredibly popular among nhl players. i’m not writing to defend any of these men (my views lean pretty far left), but to share my understanding of the ways north american hockey as an institution perpetuates conservatism.

1) barrier of entry

ice hockey requires a lot of equipment to play. to be able to put a child through the decade or more of club dues and equipment fees required to begin seeing returns on investment—in men’s hockey, this begins with stipend pay at the major junior level in north america—requires an amount of money that many families simply cannot pay (though there are a bevy of charities trying to combat this). sports like soccer and basketball, which require comparably little equipment, are far more popular among both players of color and players from low-income families, especially in countries where hockey isn’t a national pastime.

because of this economic disparity between those who can play hockey and those who can’t, locker rooms can turn into echo chambers of privilege.

2) lack of higher education

i’m not sure of the data for other countries, but in the united states, there is a high positive correlation between holding a college degree and voting for democratic candidates. north american players are drafted to the nhl from major junior and collegiate teams, and entrance to professional leagues cuts their education short.

nhl players drafted from collegiate teams often enter the league without completing a bachelor’s degree, getting a year or two of higher education. during those years, many pick classes that they already have a strong knowledge base in, aware they’ll need to keep their grades up to maintain their university’s gpa requirement for athletes. because of this, many miss out on subjects that would teach them about systems of inequality like statistics, sociology, and studies of groups of historically marginalized people.

major juniors players, who move away from home in their mid teens, are even worse off. they leave school, usually completing the bare minimum requirements of a high school diploma to focus on their development as players and travel for games. and up until a recent vote, athletes from the canadian major junior hockey leagues were ineligible from playing ncaa hockey.

3) body economics

like all athletes, hockey players’ bodies are their jobs. the natural decline of their bodies over time limits their playing careers to the years of their lives when they can physically compete with both opposing players (to win games) and their own teammates (for roster spots).

the mean nhl career is 7 years. many hockey players don’t learn another trade and have no guarantee of making a successful career transition after retirement from playing (though some go on to coaching and media positions).

this creates a pressure to make as much money as possible while they still can, knowing that every time the take to the ice to do their jobs, they risk the very things they use to earn money: their bodies.

the physical nature of hockey means that a career-ending injury could come at any point. holding onto their earnings, knowing they’ll likely make up the bulk of income over their entire life, is essential to ensuring the comfort and health of themselves and their families.

earning high paychecks for an inherently limited number of years, it becomes attractive to these players to support candidates who promise to cut taxes for the rich, something popular among conservative politicians. while players may bear no ill will to members of historically marginalized groups and may even support their rights and freedoms, their personal economic situations lead them to vote for politicians who perpetuate that marginalization.

there are plenty of straight-up bigots playing major league sports. the panthers shouldn’t be singled out for visiting 1600 pennsylvania avenue. not because supporting the current administration isn’t reprehensible, but because it isn’t unique among hockey players—or even among athletes.

[rjzimmerman]

Grist doesn't have a paywall, so if you want to read this story, just do the click/tap routine on the caption. The story is long, informative and important. I never considered how integrated our food system has to be (and has been) and how destructive trump's approach is.

Excerpt from this Grist story:

Despite its widespread perception, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is involved in much more than farming. The federal agency, established in 1862, is made up of 29 subagencies and offices and just last year was staffed by nearly 100,000 employees. It has an annual budget of hundreds of billions of dollars. Altogether it administers funding, technical support, and regulations for: international trade, food assistance, forest and grasslands management, livestock rearing, global scientific research, economic data, land conservation, rural housing, disaster aid, water management, startup capital, crop insurance, food safety, and plant health. 

In just about 100 days, President Donald Trump and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins have significantly constrained that breadth of work. 

Since Trump’s inauguration, the inner workings of the agency have been in a constant state of flux — thousands of staffers were terminated only to be temporarily reinstated; entire programs have been stripped down; and a grant freeze crippled state, regional, and local food systems that rely on federal funding. 

What’s more, the USDA has broadly scrapped Biden-era equity and climate resilience scoring criteria from dozens of programs across multiple subagencies by banning language like “people of color” and “climate change,” and tightened eligibility requirements for food benefits. The agency has also announced the cancellation of environmental protections against logging to ramp up timber production, escalated trade tensions with Mexico, eradicated food safety processes like limiting salmonella levels in raw poultry, and begun rolling back worker protections in meat processing plants.  

In order to report on the full scope of the downstream impacts of these actions, Grist interviewed farmers, food businesses, and agricultural nonprofits across seven states about what the first 100 days of the administration has looked like for them. Nearly all of them told Grist that the agriculture department’s various funding cuts and decisions, as well as the moves to shrink its workforce capacity, have changed how much trust they have in the agency — and, by extension, the federal government. 

Food policy analysts and experts throughout the nation also told Grist that this swift transformation of the USDA is unprecedented.

“Multiple parts of our food systems are now under attack,” said Teon Hayes, a policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy. At the same time, food prices and overall costs of living are continuing to rise. The result, she fears, will be escalating hunger and poverty, which will “come at the expense of Black and brown communities, immigrants, and other historically marginalized groups.”

Elizabeth Lower-Basch, who served on the USDA Equity Commission during the Biden administration, called the decisions made by the USDA in the last 100 days “deeply disheartening” and “unprecedented, even when you compare it to the last Trump administration.” 

It is of significant consequence to note that the money being withheld from grant programs isn’t merely not being spent. Experts say the agency is taking support away from local and regional food systems while at the same time showering industrial agricultural operations with billions of dollars, eliminating nutrition safety nets, and rolling back environmental protections. How will this change the fabric of the nation’s food supply? 

As Rollins and Trump charge forward in undoing how the federal government has long supported those who grow and sell our food, and climate change continues to deepen inequities and vulnerabilities in that very supply chain, one thing is obvious: The USDA, and the communities that rely on it, won’t look the same once they’re done.

[sunderwight]

y'know what, I think it's kind of interesting to bring up Data from Star Trek in the context of the current debates about AI. like especially if you actually are familiar with the subplot about Data investigating art and creativity.

see, Data can definitely do what the AI programs going around these days can. better than, but that's beside the point, obviously. he's a sci-fi/fantasy android. but anyway, in the story, Data can perfectly replicate any painting or stitch a beautiful quilt or write a poem. he can write programs for himself that introduce variables that make things more "flawed", that imitate the particular style of an artist, he can choose to either perfectly replicate a particular sort of music or to try and create a more "human" sounding imitation that has irregular errors and mimics effort or strain. the latter is harder for him that just copying, the same way it's more complicated to have an algorithm that creates believable "original" art vs something that just duplicates whatever you give it.

but this is not the issue with Data. when Data imitates art, he himself knows that he's not really creating, he's just using his computer brain to copy things that humans have done. it's actually a source of deep personal introspection for the character, that he believes being able to create art would bring him closer to humanity, but he's not sure if he actually can.

of course, Data is a person. he's a person who is not biological, but he's still a person, and this is really obvious from go. there's no one thing that can be pointed to as the smoking gun for Data's personhood, but that's normal and also true of everyone else. Data's the culmination of a multitude of elements required to make a guy. Asking if this or that one thing is what makes Data a person is like asking if it's the flour or the eggs that make a cake.

the question of whether or not Data can create art is intrinsically tied to the question of whether or not Data can qualify as an artist. can he, like a human, take on inspiration and cultivate desirable influences in order to produce something that reflects his view on the world?

yes, he can. because he has a view on the world.

but that's the thing about the generative AI we are dealing with in the real world. that's not like Data. despite being referred to as "AI", these are algorithms that have been trained to recognize and imitate patterns. they have no perspective. the people who DO have a perspective, the humans inputting prompts, are trying to circumvent the whole part of the artistic process where they actually develop skills and create things themselves. they're not doing what Data did, in fact they're doing the opposite -- instead of exploring their own ability to create art despite their personal limitations, they are abandoning it. the data sets aren't like someone looking at a painting and taking inspiration from it, because the machine can't be inspired and the prompter isn't filtering inspiration through the necessary medium of their perspective.

Data would be very confused as to the motives and desires involved, especially since most people are not inhibited from developing at least SOME sort of artistic skill for the sake self-expression. he'd probably start researching the history of plagiarism and different cultural, historical, and legal standards for differentiating it from acceptable levels of artistic imitation, and how the use of various tools factored into it. he would cite examples of cultures where computer programming itself was considered a form of art, and court cases where rulings were made for or against examples of generative plagiarism, and cases of forgeries and imitations which required skill as good if not better than the artists who created the originals. then Geordi would suggest that maybe Data was a little bit annoyed that people who could make art in a way he can't would discount that ability. Data would be like "as a machine I do not experience annoyance" but he would allow that he was perplexed or struggling to gain internal consensus on the matter. so Geordi would sum it up with "sometimes people want to make things easy, and they aren't always good at recognizing when doing that defeats the whole idea" and Data would quirk his head thoughtfully and agree.

then they'd get back to modifying the warp core so they could escape some sentient space anomaly that had sucked the ship into intermediate space and was slowly destabilizing the hull, or whatever.

anyways, point is -- I don't think Data from Star Trek would be a big fan of AI art.