Kestrel

I joined Turchin and a few others who were establishing a new field—a new way to investigate history. It was called cliodynamics after Clio, the ancient Greek muse of history, and dynamics, the study of how complex systems change over time. Cliodynamics marshals scientific and statistical tools to better understand the past.

The aim is to treat history as a "natural" science, using statistical methods, computational simulations and other tools adapted from evolutionary theory, physics and complexity science to understand why things happened the way that they did.

One of the most common patterns that has jumped out is how extreme inequality shows up in nearly every case of major crisis. When big gaps exist between the haves and have-nots, not just in material wealth but also access to positions of power, this breeds frustration, dissent and turmoil.

"Ages of discord", as Turchin dubbed periods of great social unrest and violence, produce some of history's most devastating events. This includes the US civil war of the 1860s, the early 20th-century Russian Revolution, and the Taiping rebellion against the Chinese Qing dynasty, often said to be the deadliest civil war in history.

All of these cases saw people become frustrated at extreme wealth inequality, along with lack of inclusion in the political process. Frustration bred anger, and eventually erupted into fighting that killed millions and affected many more.

Perhaps one of the most surprising things is that inequality seems to be just as corrosive for the elites themselves. This is because the accumulation of so much wealth and power leads to intense infighting between them, which ripples throughout society.

In the case of Rome, it was the wealthy and powerful senators and military leaders like Julius Caesar who seized on the anger of a disaffected populace and led the violence.

This pattern also appears at other moments, such as the hatred between southern landowners and northern industrialists in the run up to the US civil war and the struggles between the Tsarist rulers and Russia's landed nobility during the late 1800s.

Meanwhile, the 1864 Taiping rebellion was instigated by well educated young men, frustrated at being unable to find prestigious positions in government after years of toiling away at their studies and passing the civil service exams.

What we see time and again is that wealthy and powerful people try to grab bigger shares of the pie to maintain their positions. Rich families become desperate to secure prestigious posts for their children, while those aspiring to join the ranks of the elite scratch and claw their way up. And typically, wealth is related to power, as elites try to secure top positions in political office.

These patterns probably sound familiar. Consider the college admissions scandal in the US in 2019.

Donald Trump is only one recent and fairly extreme version of this motif that pops up time and again during ages of discord

If the past teaches us anything, it is that trying to hold on to systems and policies that refuse to appropriately adapt and respond to changing circumstances—like climate change or growing unrest among a population—usually end in disaster. Those with the means and opportunity to enact change must do so, or at least to not stand in the way when reform is needed.

FYI in 1917 Lenin stormed the ice palace and took it from the snow queen

Let's fucking goooooo

The measure, called Question 3, prompted heated debate in the months leading up to the election. Central Maine Power and Versant Power, the state’s dominant utilities, poured more than $40 million into a campaign opposing the referendum, outspending Pine Tree Power advocates 34 to 1. Political groups funded by the utilities and their parent companies mailed flyers and aired ads on TV, radio, and social media, urging Mainers to reject the measure, which would have effectively put the two companies out of business.

Researchers at Stanford University and UC Berkeley, led by Chan Zuckerberg Biohub San Francisco Investigators, found that gene signatures associated with head development were found in juvenile sea stars, but expression of genes that code for an animal's torso and tail sections were largely missing. The researchers used high-tech molecular and genomic techniques to understand where different genes were expressed during the development and growth of sea stars. They also found that molecular signatures typically associated with the front-most portion of the head were localized to the middle of each of the sea star's arms, with these signatures becoming progressively more posterior moving out towards the arms' edges. The research suggests that over evolutionary time, sea stars lost their bodies to become only heads.

Starfish are basically heads crawling around using their lips. Uhhhhhh

If you've been on the fence about buying a firearm, especially if it's because you're financially constrained, please consider this a heads up:

I have seen in multiple newsletters and as banners on a few gun websites that price increases are coming. Usually this is to be expected going into an election year, as panic buying from chuds drives shortages and price increases. But I haven't seen it broadcast so explicitly before. Prices are definitely lower than they've been in two or three years, and I'm sure this is as low as guns and ammo will go. That said, I can't help but wonder if this is an attempt to further clear out old inventory, or otherwise drive sales. They may end up just making the panic buying worse.

All of that said, now is as good a time as any to stack deep on ammo and magazines, or to buy that first firearm.

Remember those headlines about "90% of snow crabs mysteriously vanish" from a while back?

:desolate:

tl;dr water was too warm which requires more energy (food) for them to sustain themselves, plus too many of them from a previous population boom

Why don't you come over here and shit in my pants?

That's what I thought.

I'm listening to a presentation on a gigantic housing grant my city is applying for. (PRO Grant from HUD, if you're familiar). They're proposing spending millions on regulatory reform to promote missing middle housing, which, ok fine, that's a big task in a major city, but that should already have been done in 2023. Other money would go towards vague stuff like an accelerator program for bipoc affordable developers. After all of that, they're proposing only 120 "deeply affordable" (under 30% ami) units with the grant.

We have a shortfall of tens of thousands of those units in our city, and this multimillion dollar federal grant would fund just 120.

JUST FUCKING BUILD PUBLIC HOUSING CO-OPS

I swear the neoliberal public-private partnership brainworms these people have is beyond terminal. "We have to strategically leverage this potential pot of funding" no you fucking don't

Who is this dumb fckn pigeon

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It is fascism though, plain and simple, and there's literally nothing at all wrong with that.