Neat explanation. I’m going to add “energy is conserved” to this; we expect people to know that and make the connection to calories, but better safe than sorry.

Good for you! How long ago was that, and did you gain it back? That’s usually the really hard part.

I mean, that is what you’d expect if were hormone-based.

Tribalism is ancient for sure. As is cultural bigotry. Hating people primarily do to skin colour and related features is a thing that specifically developed 1500-1700, as the trans-Atlantic slave trade got going (and needed to be rationalised).

When the Romans or Mesopotamians hated on their neighbors, it was over food preferences, language and customs. If they ascribed anything biological to it, the prevailing theory was more about response to the local climate than heredity. Then, once monotheism got going deviation from religious orthodoxy became the most popular way to hate. It’s not a coincidence that “Slav” and “slave” sound similar, because pagan Slavic people were a major source of slave labour in medieval Europe. It drove the crusades, and it had a role in the early stages of expansion into the new world.

The first slave ship came to English North America in 1619, but the passengers were treated as normal indentures, and at least some became free later on. They kept coming, though, and by 1700 or so black people had to be slaves and that was pretty much it. (Colonial Spain had their own, somewhat divergent system a bit earlier)

The Romans had emperors drawn from Africa and the Middle East, and had conflict with Germanic and Celtic people that could easily have been Latin by appearance. The first sub-Saharan African in Japan was made a Samurai, and now there’s a videogame about it. That’s not to say the difference in appearance wasn’t noticed or remarked upon (they tried to wash the dark off of Yasuke, and Heterodotus makes special note of the woolly hair and stature of the distant Africans) but in every pre-modern story I can think of it was gotten over quickly compared to other, behavioral things.

Anyway, I guess the point is just that there’s been steps backwards as well. There would have to be, otherwise ignorance would have gone extinct over the millennia, right? Maybe it still will; we live in a totally transformed world now, but it’s going to require continuous effort. Hate is always shifting and changing and evolving from things that might even have started off as harmless or positive (Jesus is less controversial than later Christians).

What do you mean? Almost everyone wants more, and will gladly take it if they have an opportunity. That’s why lotteries exist, right?

Big history is full of open questions, but there’s counterexamples. Short-lived republics are a dime a dozen, while Egypt lasted for thousands of years. There are known cases where inequality actually increases with the end of an empire, like how Roman Britain with it’s public bathhouses directly gives way to dark ages Britain with feudal lords and manors. In some cases, a disenfranchised group getting a bit of power is destabilising.

Community, status and not being economically punished are way bigger motivators than being abstractly correct, right? Nobody really goes looking for inconvenient truths. Unless those naturally nice, understanding conservatives start meeting a lot of very different people, like if they move, the worldview will probably stay put.

To be a little more doomer than you, I’d actually say there’s lots of people that go the other way as well, and go looking for a cult to join as an outlet for whatever nastiness is inside of them. Consider that in the grand scheme of things, monotheism and racism are both new.

Interesting! Thank you.

They do exist in places where it’s just the default politics. One has to suspect that if they seriously learned and thought about things, they’d move left.

Do you prefer visual porn, or written erotica/smutty novels?

I don’t ask this both because of the obvious privateness, and because I don’t want to put anyone on the spot if their choice doesn’t align with what’s typical for their gender identity, but I do wonder.

What did they teach about the Trump stuff? A lot of things are happening, or not happening but widely believed to be happening, that aren’t supposed to. Did they discuss the possibility that traditional system of government might not survive?

Yeah, “people used to be better” has been a popular sentiment since Socrates, at least.

Nah, Muslims are just slightly remixed Christians.

The same scene played out across many continents last century.

So, a timeframe isn’t given here, and it’s not even clear who’s being interviewed (Alain Herzog is the photographer), but it doesn’t sound too out there. That’s a 200% increase, given Switzerland’s current use, and it’s specifically renewable capacity to overcome variability. If you provide some kind of V2G or grid storage, or something more responsive like nuclear, that’s going to go down, because the figure is essentially what’s needed to avoid disruption on a hot day that’s also very cloudy.

it’s happening NOW.

Oh, so it’s over a moment from NOW?

Nah, it’s slowly and continuously happening. It has been for decades, although with greater rate as we’ve ignored it.

buildout all the grid you can, it won’t be enough for everyone, and when it collapses, everyone’s fucked.

We’ll need X amount of power. If the grid can supply that, we won’t directly cook. It’s more than now, but not massively more.

Did your parents have any children that lived? I bet they regret that.

No u.

Yes, and there’s also bog or ice mummies that are preserved totally different ways. The Egyptian ones that are filled with preservatives and dehydrated probably do just need air that’s super dry.

This was before that - Avodah Zarah is the one I actually read through.

Like, you can’t leave a barrel of mashed grapes too long, because it’s then assumed a pagan broke in, danced on it and left, turning it into pagan wine which is the same as doing idolatry yourself, somehow. And it goes on.

There’s other examples as well, of course. Puritans got worked up about Catholic-seeming practices within the Church of England, although I don’t remember which ones, off the top of my head.

Really? I was assuming you’d need pretty significant climate control. Although it probably varies by type.

I have seen mummies stored like under a bench FWIW.

Was that correct, or was that one of those OMG moments?

That seems likely, zealots love a good dividing line. I’m reminded of all the weird obsessing in the Mishnah about wine because the non-Jews of the period used it in sacrifices.

Ticks, you bet. Rainforests have massive biodiversity, and that includes the parasites. There’s even terrestrial leeches that will latch on to you!

Yes, I gather that Stalin was the iron fist type, rising though pure ruthlessness,

That gives him too much credit. Stalin was relatively inconsequential in the rise and initial rule of the Bolsheviks, which happened under Lenin with Trotsky as a strong second in command. He just managed to palace intrigue his way to the top after Lenin died.

He did keep his power by purging everyone all the time, which is another thing that seems to work better on humans than pure rationality would suggest it should. People were never risk-tolerant enough to stop him, but also never risk-averse enough to avoid working for him, probably out of hubris.

I’m currently working with a German guy, and am trying to.figure out how to broach the subject of how did common, decent people become so indoctrinated to an extreme right ideology.

I’m going to recommend Ordinary Men, which is a book cataloging and analysing accounts of members of one of the battalions responsible for machine gunning people into ditches.

A random German won’t necessarily be super into history. A random Israeli is liable to say it had nothing to do with fascism and everyone is always against the Jews specifically. History is still going on there, and there’s no objectivity.