From an evolutionary perspective, the gods facilitate social bonds required for survival by raising the stakes of misconduct. Having a cosmic Wyatt Earp on the beat aids survival and reproduction by curbing others’ banditry. If you’re tempted to steal from someone, but know that God cares and has the power to do something about it, you might think twice. If God knows your thoughts, perhaps you wouldn’t even think twice. The Abrahamic God appears to be a punitive, paranoia-inducing Big Brother always watching and concerned with our crimes.
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Arabic ring in Viking grave
the 13th warrior is real
A finger ring discovered in Birka in the grave of a woman dating to around 850 A.D is the only ring with an Arabic inscription ever found at a Scandinavian archaeological site.
Boko Haram
Mike Smith’s Boko Haram: Inside Nigeria’s Unholy War is a brilliant attempt to fill this void. It is the first comprehensive book to be written about Boko Haram and offers an excellent anatomy of the group, its emergence, its activities and the havoc it has wrought on the lives of Nigerians. The book also unpacks the dysfunctional nature of President Goodluck Jonathan’s regime. The current president’s predecessors are not spared either – nor is the country’s colonial past, the legacy of which is, in part, to blame for the fractured society from which Boko Haram emerged.
Kindle Cover Disasters
Real Time transit data increases ridership
could be much higher if it wasn’t so janky, plus more reliable.
A new study of a real-time bus arrival program in New York City offers an encouraging (if qualified) answer: it does generate new trips, though mostly for high-traffic routes. Candace Brakewood of the City College of New York and collaborators analyzed ridership patterns following the city’s roll-out of its Bus Time website. In a new paper they report a 2% in ridership that works out to upwards of $6.3M in new revenue over the 3-year study period:
Not yet Peak Kale
Kale is unfortunately still going strong. there’s a new boss:
lollipop kale, a cross between Russian red kale leaves and Brussels sprouts
Becoming Gluten Intolerant
important info for all y’all.
White Fetish
heh
A visual Turing test
this is very timely now that imagenet is “solved” to a first approximation.
We think it’s time to think about how to do something deeper — something more at the level of human understanding of an image
The Brain Hates Slowpokes
In the 2000s, psychologist Richard Wiseman found worldwide walking speeds had gone up by 10%.
The pace of our lives is linked to culture. Researchers have shown society’s accelerating pace is shredding our patience. In tests, psychologists and economists have asked subjects if they would prefer a little bit of something now or a lot of it later; say, $10 today versus $100 in a year, or 2 pieces of food now versus 6 pieces in 10 seconds.
Subjects—both human and other animals—often go for the now, even when it’s not optimal. 1 study showed that exposing people to “the ultimate symbols of impatience culture”—fast-food symbols like McDonald’s golden arches—increases their reading speed and preference for time-saving products, and makes them more likely to opt for small rewards now over larger ones later.
Our rejection of slowness is especially apparent when it comes to technology. “Everything is so efficient nowadays,. We’re less and less able to wait patiently.” We now practically insist that Web pages load in a 0.25 seconds, when we had no problem with 2 seconds in 2009 and 4 seconds in 2006. As of 2012, videos that didn’t load in 2 seconds had little hope of going viral.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 