tingilinde

a historian on the 'biden's too old' story

Thomas Zimmer has a few thoughts

snip

...

There is, ultimately, a self-serving dimension to these “Biden too old” takes coming from the center to conservative non-MAGA Right. They are preemptively assigning blame – for a possible, maybe even expected Trump return to power – to those who have annoyed them and with whom they have disagreed for some time: the Democratic Party and its liberal enablers and cheerleaders in the media and elsewhere. As the whole center-Left and all the Liberals are supposedly losing their minds, they tell us that they are the only rational actors in the game who are still willing to acknowledge what is so evidently true. And when Trump wins in November, they can say “We told you so.” I can’t help but think of this as a form of resigning oneself to an outcome they claim they are trying to prevent. A particular kind of accommodation even.

...

 

the evolution of alterism

Janna Levin is the new co-host on the Joy of Why ..  she interviews Stephanie Preston on where it comes from and why it survives.  Transcript and audio (I go for the audio with this podcast)

snip

...

LEVIN: Some of this sounds contradictory to the classical notion of evolutionary biology where everything is just about selfish survival. I think you’ve explained well why there would be evolutionary pressure in the longer term to have this kind of evolution to be altruistic and protect the young. Do you see a distinction between the kind of old-guard ideas about selfishness in evolutionary theory and yours?

PRESTON: Yeah, I think they have known for a long time that things like being related to the individual makes altruism sensible and that can occur across species, or that it can be sensible to give to one when you can receive a gift back. They call that reciprocity. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is something that works in the animal kingdom and in people.

But I think what’s unique here is that these features are coming together in a way that promotes behaviors toward total strangers. Let’s take an example of a heroic rescue. If you see a burning building, or somebody falls in rushing waters, it takes great risk to your personal fitness to get involved, and we call them heroes almost specifically because they helped a stranger.

...

 

 

trump and an abortion ban

Apparently he's telling people he's all in on a 16 week national ban.

 

the koch brothers

Not exactly into democracy

snip

...

The war on liberals was so effective that practically everyone reacted to it: from the New York Times, which hired ex-Nixon speechwriter Bill Safire to “balance” its op-ed page, to the Ford Foundation, which gave $300,000 to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in 1972. The impact was cumulative: almost four decades later, Barack Obama was astonished by one of the first questions asked to him, by a New York Times reporter, after he became president: “Are you a socialist?”

The AEI was one of dozens of the new thinktanks bankrolled by hundreds of millions from the Kochs and their allies. Sold to the public as quasi-scholarly organizations, their real function was to legitimize the right to pollute for oil, gas and coal companies, and to argue for ever more tax cuts for the people who created them. Richard Scaife, an heir to the Mellon fortune, gave $23m over 23 years to the Heritage Foundation, after having been the largest single donor to AEI.

Next, the right turned its sights on American campuses. John M Olin founded the Olin Foudation, and spent nearly $200m promoting “free-market ideology and other conservative ideas on the country’s campuses”. It bankrolled a whole new approach to jurisprudence called “law and economics”, Mayer writes, giving $10m to Harvard, $7m to Yale and Chicago, and over $2m to Columbia, Cornell, Georgetown and the University of Virginia.

...

a tip of the hat to Jim

adding to the issue of rising oceans

The East Coast is sinking (partly thanks to over-pumping ground water)

snip

...

Researchers say a dominant cause for subsidence is groundwater depletion. A layer cake of overlapping aquifers extends from New Jersey to Florida along the coast, providing a reliable source of water for drinking, irrigation and industrial uses. Though the region gets regular rainfall, deeper aquifers below clay or bedrock can take hundreds or thousands of years to recharge once water is pumped out. Surface aquifers can be prone to pollution and saltwater intrusion.

Once water is removed, soils can compress and collapse, causing the land surface to sink. Cities built on drained marshland or fill are especially vulnerable to compaction.

Other forces can also influence vertical land movement: Sediments can build up at river deltas and naturally compress under their own weight. And as the weight of enormous glaciers that once extended down to New Jersey lifted after the last ice age, a seesaw effect is causing bedrock across the mid-Atlantic and South to sink by about 1 millimeter per year.

...

 

rewilding

There are too many golf courses - rewilding is good for nature and people in many dimensions.

 

 

on trump's mischaracterization of nato

How NATO funding works

a tip of the hat to Sukie

A plausible explanation of Trump's hate of NATO and his support of Putin's expansionist dreams is that Trump is one of Putin's puppets.

 

the balanas sisters

The Latvian duo offers a violin and cello only interpretation of the third movement of Vivaldi's Summer.  The fun part is watching their interaction.  Margarita, the cellist, is also a conductor of an orchestra. 

john wlliams 90th birthday party

exercise and depression

It turns out exercise is an excellent medicine.  From the BMJ

 

Effect of exercise for depression: systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials

 

Michael Noetel, senior lecturer1, Taren Sanders, senior research fellow2, Daniel Gallardo-Gómez, doctoral student3, Paul Taylor, deputy head of school4, Borja del Pozo Cruz, associate professor56, Daniel van den Hoek, senior lecturer7, Jordan J Smith, senior lecturer8, John Mahoney, senior lecturer9, Jemima Spathis, senior lecturer9, Mark Moresi, lecturer4, Rebecca Pagano, senior lecturer10, Lisa Pagano, postdoctoral fellow11, Roberta Vasconcellos, doctoral student2, Hugh Arnott, masters student2, Benjamin Varley, doctoral student12, Philip Parker, pro vice chancellor research13, Stuart Biddle, professor1415, Chris Lonsdale, deputy provost13

Conclusions Exercise is an effective treatment for depression, with walking or jogging, yoga, and strength training more effective than other exercises, particularly when intense. Yoga and strength training were well tolerated compared with other treatments. Exercise appeared equally effective for people with and without comorbidities and with different baseline levels of depression. To mitigate expectancy effects, future studies could aim to blind participants and staff. These forms of exercise could be considered alongside psychotherapy and antidepressants as core treatments for depression.