Open Thread: International Solidarity

One of the things I find interesting about the online community I find myself more-or-less in (that is, you guys who comment here, the folks who link to me and their commentators, folks on Twitter, etc.,) is the sense of, shall we say, international solidarity.

This is all rather novel for me.

Those of us in America have been expressing concern about events unfolding in Britain and even Sweden. I have received (for the first time in my life!) kind words about America from from French people. And I like to think that with Trump’s election, the Russian people have been reassured that not all Americans want to go to war with them. (Just Hillary Clinton.)

One of my long-standing issues with the left is the sheer negativity; they don’t call it a circular firing squad for nothing. “Call-out culture” is very toxic, cultish, and poisonous. (How exactly SJW ideology functions like a cult is a long post for another day, but it does.) So here we have, on what, the right? an emerging belief that one’s culture is unique and worth having and respecting the fact that other people love their own cultures and want to preserve them, too, without going down that path where Americans end up attacking confused Japanese women for wearing kimonos at an art exhibit about kimonos.

I don’t know enough about foreign politics to comment much at all on it. I don’t know who would be the best leader for this or that country. But that doesn’t stop me from appreciating other countries and wishing the best for their people.

Hrm, on to the (hopefully) interesting links section of this post:

Iberian Bell Beaker teaser (Roth 2016) :

Before we get to chew on the Bell Beaker behemoth, probably early next year if not sooner, here’s an appetizer on a similar topic…

Genome-wide analyses for personality traits identify six genomic loci and show correlations with psychiatric disorders:

The first genetic dimension separated personality traits and psychiatric disorders, except that neuroticism and openness to experience were clustered with the disorders. High genetic correlations were found between extraversion and attention-deficit–hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and between openness and schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

*ahem*

I hear Anomie, Anime, and the Alt-Right is good, though I haven’t read it yet.

The Genetic History of Horses:

The oldest successfully extracted DNA came from the skeleton of a wild horse that lived in the Yukon between 560,000 – 780,000 years ago. Such samples are especially important because there are very few wild horses left alive, and modern horse breeding practices have obscured the genomic signature of early domestication qualities like geography. Thanks to data from ancient DNA, geneticists have learned that a previously unknown group of now-extinct wild horses were also ancestors to modern horses.

Remarkably, the majority of Y-chromosomes carried by modern domestic horses can be traced back to just a few stallions. This could be because only a few males were originally used in domestication, but it could also result from carefully controlled modern breeding practices where a single male sires a huge number of offspring. The ultimate cause of this very low Y-linked diversity is still debated, but strict selective breeding has almost certainly contributed. In contrast, a much larger number of females than males contributed ancestry to domestic horses. According to Librado and colleagues, it seems that wild mares were continuously introduced into human-controlled herds throughout the process of domestication.

And a map of Roman Londinium around 200 AD

Comment of the week goes to N8 N3K:

“How do you get states to start forming so that criminals can be punished and revenge spirals halted?”

Criminals compete with each other. Everything some other criminal steals is something you can’t steal yourself. And the theft discourages production in general. So it might make sense for a gang of criminals to eradicate all others and to fund a state to protect their monopoly on violence. …

and Sam J:

Here’s a video made in 1922, American silent documentary film by Robert J. Flaherty about the Eskimos and their way of life. I liked it. Might interest your kids.

Nanook of the North

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoUafjAH0cg …

And now I’m opening up the floor to all of you. What’s everyone thinking about today?