Hi Steve, I’m a fabulously wealthy trader over on Manifold, so if you’re ever taking a look and want help getting started, let me know. It would be great to have you!

You’ll be pleased to hear Scott Alexander has been covering for you in your abscence: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/what-caused-the-2020-homicide-spike

Canada already has tried this, letting in many millions of migrants over the last few decades, with virtually none of them becoming sod-busters

Now that’s just not true! In fact, I could swear I remember reading about a family of immigrant blueberry farmers in the news not so long ago. Ah, here we go:

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/jassi-sidhu-the-tragedy-of-a-forbidden-love

What’s the Griffith Observatory theory?

Oh, the Rice example was from a commenter, not Steve. Okay, pretend I said Botham Jean instead.

Scott Alexander had a piece on this question. (“The Toxoplasma of Rage”)

He argues that a case needs to be flawed to capture the national conversation. It’s counterarguments and counter-counterarguments which keep a story in the news. If conservatives just say “yup. looks pretty bad,” liberals would get bored quick and move on. Big stories need a feedback loop of mutual rage to fuel them.

A related element is signalling. Libs want to show how committed to racial justice they are and an open and shut case doesn’t further that. Talking about Tamar Rice doesn’t demonstrate your anti-racist credentials: everyone agrees that was horrible. Even Steve freaking Sailer says so!

The middle class liberals of America seem extremely competent to me. Wokeness took over because they backed it. The military is in decline because they’re disinterested in it.

If they perceived external enemies, rather than dedicating all their energies to fighting the Americans they don’t like, I think they could rapidly inject a lot of effectiveness into American actions.

This is an iStevey question – is intelligence inherited more from the mother than the father, as I’ve seen alleged?

It’s going to be almost exactly 50/50.

The math is pretty easy. Child’s intelligence is sampled randomly from a bell curve centered on the mean of the parents’ intelligences (after adjusting for regression to the mean, as necessary).

The only other wrinkle is that the bell curve has a slightly fatter left tail, since there’s a lot that can go horribly wrong, but not much that can go dramatically right.

In practical terms, why isn’t Armenia able to mobilize its diaspora more effectively? The only Armenian I know is posting incessantly on Facebook, and it’s amazing to see her this bloodthirsty, but it all amounts to “Sign this petition” and “Pressure your local politican.”

Presumably the Amenian diaspora has enough money to put the Azeri spending advantage in the dust, and although my sample size is 1, it seems like they feel strongly enough about this to put it on the line, but I don’t see any effort to like, buy drones and send them to Armenia. (or just send the money, as that would presumably be illegal)

So what’s the stumbling block that I’m missing? Legal barriers? Lack of passion? Lack of infrastructure? Lack of money? Lack of ingenuity?

It’s nice to see someone poking fun at the Woke crowd, but as others have pointed out, the fact that you can only attack the Left if you do it from even further Left is how we got into this mess in the first place.

I wondered about this when the news broke. In India hysterectomies are considered a routine procedure and are pushed on women all the time.

I really don’t mind this business about deathbed wishes, as long as the Democrats still respect them when Thomas wills for his Supreme Court seat to go to someone just as conservative as him, and not exceeding thirty years of age.

I’ve lately noticed that my browser’s address bar will no longer autocomplete/suggest “unz.com/isteve”, so i have to type it in manually every time i visit.

I’m on an android phone.

In India, the stereotype is that Bollywood actors are all aspiring to “make it to the big leagues” and transition to Hollywood roles. Then again, this has only happened once or twice, so I wonder if it’s true.

I’m amazed to see the NYT unashamedly describing violent protestors as “rowdy.” That euphemism is a cliché of biased journalism.

We know Cleopatra’s entire family tree. All the inbreeding makes it easier: not a lot to know. It’s on Wikipedia for anyone to see. She was Greek, not even Egyptian.

That’s what makes the Black Cleopatra “controversy” so farcical.

IIRC she’s some proportion local egyptian, but even the locals weren’t Black. We know from Greek writings what the Egyptians of their day looked like.

@Cortes, inheritance laws weren’t as rigid in Ptolmaic Egypt. The inbreeding was something more like an attempt to maintain their eliteness and exclusivity, as a dynasty of foreign conquerors, descended from one of Alexander the Great’s generals.

I know an Indian couple who are renouncing their Indian citizenship… so they can get Nepali citizenship… so that their immigration applications will be subject to a less crowded quota.