Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, skeptic, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, boardgamer, geocacher and father of two.
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400 thoughts on “Open Thread For October”
OK, whose job was it to tell me yesterday was only Friday 21?
A reading suggestion for Swedish language readers.
Virusvarning (by Ennart & von Hall)
Released in 2022 it has incorporated the latest up-to date information at the time of publishing.
It follows the pandemic step by step and also follows up detections of closely reated virii years before, and in the months before the official outbreak.
It takes a very complex subject and manages to break it down to the level of lay readers without dumbing it down.
One factoid: the molecules of the virus interact with an infected human cell in more than 300 ways.
The Blue Eyed Beast chalked up another 2 goals against Brighton, and it could have been more.
Watch from 2.08, where the defender tries to physically knock Haaland off the ball, but the Ice Monster just shoulders him aside and keeps running with the ball as if nothing has happened, while the defender is left (justifiably) sprawling on his face.
That is classic Erling, he’s 6’5″ and 88 kg, lightning fast, his strength and endurance training programme is amazing, and he’s going to do that every time, shrug off one, two or three defenders at one time as if they are not there. That is why, barring serious injury, he is going to break the English Premier League goal scoring record with ease this season. And probably win the Champions League for Manchester City as well, which is why they recruited him. They were already champions of England without him, but they want to be champions of Europe.
I just can’t get enough of watching him. He’s pure entertainment. And I’m not even a Manchester City fan. I don’t care – a phenomenon like him, whether it’s a soccer player or a racehorse, only comes along once in a generation.
Boris Johnson has just pulled out of the leadership race.
.
I have read a third of the virus book and expect to have to re-read it several times to understand all the issues brought up in it. Complex things are complex.
Example of details revealed by geomagnetic studies; in Palestine /Israel parts of the southern kingdom escaped the destruction from the Babylonians but were shorrly afterwards wiped out by the Edomites, confirming the Middle East has a stable tradition of mayhem.
“Geomagnetic field reveal the truth behind some Biblical narratives ” https://phys.org/news/2022-10-geomagnetic-fields-reveal-truth-biblical.html
Next step : Strawberry field reveal the truth behind the sixties.
Spell check keeps harassing me.
I wrote to some people Umeå is not a ‘big’ town.
It came out as not a bit town. It escaped being munched on by the great Godzilla rampage of the 1980s.
UK’s oldest human DNA obtained, revealing two distinct paleolithic populations. https://phys.org/news/2022-10-uk-oldest-human-dna-revealing.html
Not only are the English descended from a mixture of anglo-saxons and celts (who in turn had migrated from Spain after first migrating from the steppes) even at the very beginning there was a mixture of peoples, presumably fighting over mammoth hunting grounds.
Yours Birger Johansson
“As well as genetically, the two groups were found to be culturally distinct, with differences in what they ate and how they buried their dead.
Study co-author Dr. Rhiannon Stevens (UCL Institute of Archaeology) said, “Chemical analyses of the bones showed that the individuals from Kendrick’s Cave ate a lot of marine and freshwater foods, including large marine mammals.
“Humans at Gough’s Cave, however, showed no evidence of eating marine and freshwater foods, and primarily ate terrestrial herbivores such as red deer, bovids (such as wild cattle called aurochs) and horses.” ”
They might scarcely if ever have encountered one another (as evidenced by stark cultural differences) and did not compete for resources.
So, no mammoths, and no evidence for intergroup violence.
[They might scarcely if ever have encountered one another] – they were also two genetically distinct groups of hunter gatherers – yet more evidence that they had little to no interaction.
Further thought – a population turnover does not necessarily mean that one group kills off the other.
In the case of two groups of hunter gatherers exploiting different food resources, as in this case with one group exploiting marine and fresh water resources, and the other group hunting land animals and gathering terrestrial food sources, it is entirely possible for one group to thrive and increase, while the other group goes extinct, without any of either group even setting eyes on each other.
Britain is not the world’s largest island, but by the standards of the Late Paleolithic it was a big and ecologically very varied area.
The business associated with creationist and dishonest grifter Kent Hovind gets creepier. How creepy? Take the words “religion” and “children” and try guessing.
I would place her in the box “swimmer”. I am notoriously bad at judging visual cues for things like age, so I will not attempt a guess.
Most people named Siobhan would be Scottish, and scots are descendants of indo-Europeans who first arrived to Britain after a detour to the Pyreneean peninsula (where they exterminated most of the preceding male population).
So people named Siobhan are… oily little spaniards (to quote Monthy Python describing bull fighters) and taking long siestas? People regarding the inquisition as a valid career choice? Do people expect mobs of swimmers to turn up when you live in Glasgow?
No, I simply can’t tolerate leaving this load of fabricated bullshit here without correcting it.
The name Siobhan is overwhelmingly Irish. There is a Scottish form of it, but it occurs very rarely.
The name Siobhan derives from the Anglo-Norman name Jehane (which became the modern French name Jeanne) – in effect the Irish ‘gaelified’ it. It did not appear anywhere in Ireland before the 14th Century.
After I long look I would put her as “mixed.” Though, at a glance I would tend to say “East Asian.” This tendency would be due to being from a society in which the form of racism puts a lot of emphasis on dividing the world into ‘white” and “non-white.” The old hypo-descent one drop rule.
I may be changing with the times, Haley Alexis, a mixed American YouTuber living in Germany, stumps me. I fail to place her as anything but “human female, rather brown-skinned” (and quite good looking).
I’m going to give you top marks. You grew up surrounded by whites with a lot of blacks in a society that labels anyone not 100% European (in the racial sense) as a POC, and I imagine few East Asians, so you have done well. People’s perceptions are heavily influenced by their previous life experience.
Like a lot of mixed people Siobhán is a bit of a shape-shifter of the ‘might be, might not be’ type – at different times she looks like she could be one, the other or a bit of both.
Her father is Irish, her mother Chinese, born and raised in Hong Kong and, aside from attending university in the USA, has never lived anywhere else.
Greatly appreciated. Though many of the adult women in these clips fall short of the JLo ideal. My preference in that area may be an example of the sociobiological concept of imprinting. After all the teen years are a critical period and I went to Junior High and High school with a lot of African descended girls, so I may have been imprinted by, you know.
Do you want to know the *really* irritating thing about my oxygen cannula?
After arranging to get O2 supply at home so I could escape from the Gulag last Thursday, I now find (by Tuesday afternoon) that I no longer need the bloody thing.
In the DN newspaper Alex Schulman writes about how politicians try to reinvent themselves when they get a minister post.
För instance Tobias Billström who had a nearly Trumpesque twitter style is a new person after he became a foreign minister. When he declares Turkey is a democracy he is polite and uses words with several syllables. Or as Schulman calls it “he lies in a different way”.
A question to politicians and sociologists in Sweden- do the Rom here still practice marriages for 15-year-old girls to a major extent? Because if that issue has still not been adressed, their integration will be screwed.
.
The conservatives in a town in Sweden had a political alliance with the far-right SD.
This alliance broke up after the last election… and the conservatives found themselves in the focus of an online hate campaign, and threatening phone calls, the whole shebang.
You know, the thing “digital warriors” paid by the SD have been doing since forever to social democrats, center party members and green party members.
The conservatives were taken aback over the SD doing to them what SD is doing to everyone else.
Not only in the municipality of Sölvesborg that you mention, Birger! The most common local government in Sweden after the recent election is Labour + Conservatives. Because everyone including the Neo-Fascists themselves know that they are not fit to govern.
In Laxå municipality they got three seats on the municipal council, but they only had one guy, and he quit. So that’s three empty seats and no Neo-Fascist influence.
Canadian actor Michael Kopsa has died at 66.
He played Rick Culver in The X-Files, captain Windmark in Fringe , Paul Kline in Watchmen and many other roles.
Laxå (salmon stream/river) – it brings me back to a song from the late sixties. An American song mentioned the town Jackson in the chorus. No one here knew about that town so in the Swedish translation they sang about Laxå.
Mass murderer from Finland who wiped out an entire family in Sweden in the 1980s attempted to escape from the prison in Finland yet again. He was fortunately caught in no time. His long career of crime indicates he is a quite stupid narcissist and psychopath.
The Dagens Nyheter “ledare” has a scathing analysis of the mentality of SD that regards a willingness to compromise a sign of “weakness” when it really is a condition for a democratic society to function.
(jag har vidarebefordrat en länk till Martin)
I can save people from having to watch some idiots in a 2.5 hour video by simply telling everyone that the human brain is hard wired for religion. There, it’s done.
So there are two independent elements involved – hard wiring (which varies along a range of variation) and logical deduction. These are *independent* of one another, but one can over-ride the other.
On average, more intelligent people tend to be less religious than less intelligent people, but there’s variation. Some very intelligent people are also very religious.
Like I would never try to persuade this girl (who has the most astonishingly beautiful facial profile) that her Hindu beliefs are all rubbish; because if she believed me she would stop dancing, and the world would be a less beautiful place because of that.
I am sorry for the long delayed post, but I have been sleeping very poorly and that has reduced my energy. Also, since it takes so much longer to compose these posts from notes that has led to delays. I have considered making additional posts of my raw dictated notes as they might prove amusing and others might figure out what I was saying in indecipherable sections! As I have even skipped walking a few days posts will be slow and spotty until the sleep issue is resolved.
Leaving my apartment I first heard the noise of the dumpster pick up truck arriving. I saw the charming first Yellowjacket of the fall, the little m-effers were momentarily all around me. The dumpster truck driver got out and was putting bags of trash into the dumpster. A leaf hit me in the back while I continued to hear no birds. The sky was mostly clear with a few tattered clouds and the temperature was moderate. After the truck left I started walking and finally heard a few robins calling left and right. As I left the complex I was walking pain-free for the first time in quite a while. Relative silence continued. There was a bit of a cool north wind; it will be cold tonight. The tabby cat was on his porch eating from his dish. I heard a few distant bird calls on the left as I crested the hill and began to descend. I heard a few birds calling and a probable mockingbird singing, then one calling angrily. There were blue jays calling to the left and ahead. I heard a bird calling to my right but couldn’t quite identify it. There were robins to my left in the wooded area and a number of obscure calls. I heard a robin call again to my left and a bird to my right that BirdNET identified as a Swamp Sparrow. Then I heard a mockingbird singing.
Approaching the Notre Dame football practice field I saw a car, I don’t know why it was there at this hour of the day. There was then a mockingbird singing. The school’s lot was full, everyone is back from fall break. I heard birds chirping. Approaching the Congregationalist church there was a mockingbird singing to my right, traffic noise was fairly high as it’s still rush hour, a little after nine in the morning. A mockingbird sang out near the Spiritual Director’s house, where they are cutting down the tree in front on the Glenwood Drive side. The arborist is climbing the tree to cut off the branches as they are not using a crane to avoid blocking the street.
Returning the noise of tree cutting dominated the air with chainsaw and wood chipper sounds, which were originating on the other side of the house. I’ve had to slow down as my knee is giving me a twinge, I’ll take longer than usual to get home. The mockingbird is still singing, but to my left now, persistent bird. Someone has left Notre Dame but I can’t see who is in the jeep. I have to remind myself to slow down to take pressure off my left knee. I saw the tree the mockingbird is singing in to my left by the school parking lot. I then heard the caw of a crow in the distance. Crows then called to my right across the baseball field. I heard bluejays and crows calling up ahead and bluejays across the ball field. Bluejay calls were ongoing across the practice field as I turned toward the wooded area. They’re very excited about something. I heard a probable robin across the practice field and an irate mockingbird to my left near the wooded area. There was an unusual loud call but I could not figure out what it was. BirdNET tentatively identified it as a Palm Warbler. There was a mockingbird singing to my right, towhees to my left, and a brief unspecified bird song on my right.
Ascending the hill there was a call to right that BirdNET identified as a Northern Flicker. Distant bird calls were ongoing. I heard robins up ahead. I am walking fast now as my knee is bothering me less, which is always good. There were angry mockingbirds up ahead. There were robins to my left and an angry mockingbird to my right. Cresting the hill there were more irritable mockingbirds having a discussion to my right. High on my right there was a mockingbird perched in the bare upper branches of an oak tree. He is clearly upset and yelling about something. I heard a bird call to my right that BirdNET couldn’t identify. There was an unknown bird call and bluejays in the distance. As I reached the complex area there was a squirrel by the parking area which soon took shelter under a car. A bird called to the left that BirdNET identified as an Eastern Phoebe. Perhaps that is the small gray flycatcher I see from my kitchen instead of or in addition to the Wood Pewees. Heading in I heard an unidentified bird to my right. Someone has two jack-o’-lanterns on the front porch of my building, which is the first time there have been such in the ten years I have lived here. I was walking with minimal pain which made for a much better experience. It continues to be cool and it will be winter-like for the next couple of days.
The celebrity Sir Vääs (Sir Hiss) the big King Cobra that broke out of a zoo has been located to a part of the building. They are using some kind of x-ray equipment from the Customs to look through walls.
I left my apartment a little after 2:00 this day. I initially heard nothing but traffic noise; it was partly cloudy, cool, and windy. I was dressed for it. I eventually heard robins, some to my right. There was then a mockingbird singing to my left. As I left the complex area he was singing nearby on the left, but I could not spot him. I guess they like to hide some of the time. A fairly strong wind from the north was cold. The dang little school bus passed me quite close on my right. The tabby was on his porch with his back to me. Cresting the hill I heard no bird sounds. There was the sound of a wood chipper up the ridge on my right. Descending the hill a bird to the right continued calling. There were bluejays in the distance and also on my right. They continued calling as I approached the wooded area. The loss of leaves on the trees is becoming quite noticeable. There are robins to the left and various birds calling to the right, including cardinals. Bluejays sounded to my left again, their calls soon attenuated down to a gentle sound. Bluejay calls continued to my rear as I departed the wooded area.
A bird called across the football practice field. There are a few people coming and going from Notre Dame, getting ready for the end of the school day. There was a mockingbird singing on the school’s athletic center. There were more people leaving Notre Dame, some students must leave a little early. A mockingbird flew across the street from the corner of the baseball field. Approaching the Congregationalist church I heard no sounds from the avifauna. I think windy days discourage them from singing and calling due to the ambient noise. The landscaping crew has thoroughly cleared off the property at the Spiritual Director’s house, I don’t know if they’re planning to sell it or something else. In addition to taking down the tree in the front yard they have removed the hedges and foundation plantings, the latter were overgrown or rotted anyway. The traffic is fairly heavy, the usual Memorial Hospital afternoon activity.
Returning, the landscape service has a truck that, from its color, appears to be an old ASPLUNH vehicle, repainted with a new logo. They are sitting in the church parking lot with their engine running, getting ready to depart. I heard bluejays to my left. The sun has come out and I’m feeling warm. There’s a Bobcat in the church parking lot backing up a trailer and towing it around so it can load up as they are finished with the scalping at the Spiritual Director’s house. I started feeling overwhelmed by heat in front of Notre Dame and unzipped my coat. There were no bird calls. As I turned towards the wooded area there was another arrival at the school’s main driveway entrance. I heard what sounded like faint bluejay calls ahead at the wooded area and there was a mockingbird singing as usual at the corner of the baseball diamond. He started making bluejay-like calls, I suppose his were the calls I thought I heard from the wooded area. I then caught mockingbird song both ahead and to my rear in the wooded area. I heard several upset bluejays calling. A flicker flew above the road, perched on a branch, and flew away.
Ascending the hill I heard a bluejay call in a tree overhead. I had to stop for a few minutes to rest my back. Bluejay calls continued to my right. Cresting the hill their calls went on to my rear. There was mockingbird song on my right. Ground up acorns were underfoot. Another mockingbird sung to my right. As I approached the complex bluejays were heard ahead. The mockingbird continued to the right and there were alarm calls to my left. I heard a woodpecker to my left and mockingbird song to the left and right. Plenty of leaves are off the trees and they’re accumulating next to the parking area. The city will get them eventually. As I approached my apartment mockingbird song continued. The drought situation is no better, I don’t know when we’ll get any real rain around here. It sure felt warm in my heated apartment. My old shoulder injury was bothering me a little, I guess it was from sitting on the couch typing on the iPhone, now an athletic event for me
Epicanthic folds are a trait that just happens – I don’t think you can conclude anything about ancestry just from one inconsequential trait like that. What about single eyelids? Khoisan didn’t have those, but a high percentage of Chinese and a really high percentage of Koreans do.
Aside from steatopygia, there is a very odd trait that Khoisan women have that doesn’t occur among any other groups, as far as I know. I’m not going to reveal what it is – if you already know, fine.
Subsequent reading has revealed that the second trait, which I have not named, occurs only among Khoi-Khoi women (who from memory are cattle herders, not hunter-gatherers) and that it is induced, not naturally occurring – it’s a form of self-mutilation but it reportedly comes with benefits. Well, good for them, may they long enjoy their benefits, and I can scratch that one from my physiological oddities book.
It seems they were fooled – it’s genital mutilation encouraged by mothers among their daughters, and its purpose is enhancement of the women’s pleasure during sex (so by regularly repeated pulling; it’s sort of the opposite of labiaplasty).
The practice of deliberately elongating the labia minora has spread to some other tribes including Bantu tribes, thereby demonstrating that it is a deliberate practice, and that elongated labia minora are not a natural trait in Khoisan women.
Aardvarchaeology - by Dr. Martin Rundkvist 
OK, whose job was it to tell me yesterday was only Friday 21?
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It’s OK, I’ll get everything figured out in a month or so.
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A reading suggestion for Swedish language readers.
Virusvarning (by Ennart & von Hall)
Released in 2022 it has incorporated the latest up-to date information at the time of publishing.
It follows the pandemic step by step and also follows up detections of closely reated virii years before, and in the months before the official outbreak.
It takes a very complex subject and manages to break it down to the level of lay readers without dumbing it down.
One factoid: the molecules of the virus interact with an infected human cell in more than 300 ways.
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What if the effect comes before the cause?
Retrocausality: effect comes before the cause.
Retrocasuality: You travel back in time and kill your grandfather.
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Will someone please tell that woman to get a better set of teeth?
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Trump just keeps ignoring his lawyers.
Also, water is wet.
.
A teenager in Las Vegas has died from a brain-eating amoeba.
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For your baboon mate, I would prefer Fournier gangrene.
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The Blue Eyed Beast chalked up another 2 goals against Brighton, and it could have been more.
Watch from 2.08, where the defender tries to physically knock Haaland off the ball, but the Ice Monster just shoulders him aside and keeps running with the ball as if nothing has happened, while the defender is left (justifiably) sprawling on his face.
That is classic Erling, he’s 6’5″ and 88 kg, lightning fast, his strength and endurance training programme is amazing, and he’s going to do that every time, shrug off one, two or three defenders at one time as if they are not there. That is why, barring serious injury, he is going to break the English Premier League goal scoring record with ease this season. And probably win the Champions League for Manchester City as well, which is why they recruited him. They were already champions of England without him, but they want to be champions of Europe.
I just can’t get enough of watching him. He’s pure entertainment. And I’m not even a Manchester City fan. I don’t care – a phenomenon like him, whether it’s a soccer player or a racehorse, only comes along once in a generation.
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That was working last night. Find it yourself.
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Try this.
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Mock the Week just had its last episode, after 17 years.
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And to celebrate the end of a very uninspiring load of shit, here is today’s baboon’s arse.
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“Boris Johnson struggling for leadership support”
BoJo back in government? YES! YES! PLEASE! Watching the final suicide of the tory party will be better than cocaine.
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Boris Johnson has just pulled out of the leadership race.
.
I have read a third of the virus book and expect to have to re-read it several times to understand all the issues brought up in it. Complex things are complex.
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Rare gibbon.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202210/19/WS634fc2e9a310fd2b29e7d6a4_1.html
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A rare Haughey.
She’s ours and we’re keeping her, so hands off.
https://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking-news/section/8/196236/Siobhan-Haughey-crowned-overall-champ-with-three-golds-at-Fina-World-Cup-in-Berlin
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Example of details revealed by geomagnetic studies; in Palestine /Israel parts of the southern kingdom escaped the destruction from the Babylonians but were shorrly afterwards wiped out by the Edomites, confirming the Middle East has a stable tradition of mayhem.
“Geomagnetic field reveal the truth behind some Biblical narratives ”
https://phys.org/news/2022-10-geomagnetic-fields-reveal-truth-biblical.html
Next step : Strawberry field reveal the truth behind the sixties.
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Spell check keeps harassing me.
I wrote to some people Umeå is not a ‘big’ town.
It came out as not a bit town. It escaped being munched on by the great Godzilla rampage of the 1980s.
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UK’s oldest human DNA obtained, revealing two distinct paleolithic populations.
https://phys.org/news/2022-10-uk-oldest-human-dna-revealing.html
Not only are the English descended from a mixture of anglo-saxons and celts (who in turn had migrated from Spain after first migrating from the steppes) even at the very beginning there was a mixture of peoples, presumably fighting over mammoth hunting grounds.
Yours Birger Johansson
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“As well as genetically, the two groups were found to be culturally distinct, with differences in what they ate and how they buried their dead.
Study co-author Dr. Rhiannon Stevens (UCL Institute of Archaeology) said, “Chemical analyses of the bones showed that the individuals from Kendrick’s Cave ate a lot of marine and freshwater foods, including large marine mammals.
“Humans at Gough’s Cave, however, showed no evidence of eating marine and freshwater foods, and primarily ate terrestrial herbivores such as red deer, bovids (such as wild cattle called aurochs) and horses.” ”
They might scarcely if ever have encountered one another (as evidenced by stark cultural differences) and did not compete for resources.
So, no mammoths, and no evidence for intergroup violence.
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[They might scarcely if ever have encountered one another] – they were also two genetically distinct groups of hunter gatherers – yet more evidence that they had little to no interaction.
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Further thought – a population turnover does not necessarily mean that one group kills off the other.
In the case of two groups of hunter gatherers exploiting different food resources, as in this case with one group exploiting marine and fresh water resources, and the other group hunting land animals and gathering terrestrial food sources, it is entirely possible for one group to thrive and increase, while the other group goes extinct, without any of either group even setting eyes on each other.
Britain is not the world’s largest island, but by the standards of the Late Paleolithic it was a big and ecologically very varied area.
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With much of the sea water locked up in the inland ice, the English Channel and Dogger Bank were dry land and the UK was a peninsula.
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About the forgotten Czech, Polish, Canadian and other foreign pilots in the Battle of Britain
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The business associated with creationist and dishonest grifter Kent Hovind gets creepier. How creepy? Take the words “religion” and “children” and try guessing.
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Same story, different photo.
https://www.thestandard.com.hk/section-news/section/4/246698/Berlin-treble-for-Haughey
Genuine question to any genuine, objective and relatively unexposed judges like Charles, Lassi, and Pip is she’s zooming around –
Where would you place Siobhan racially? Which ‘race box’ would you put her in? I have bona fide reasons for asking.
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I would place her in the box “swimmer”. I am notoriously bad at judging visual cues for things like age, so I will not attempt a guess.
Most people named Siobhan would be Scottish, and scots are descendants of indo-Europeans who first arrived to Britain after a detour to the Pyreneean peninsula (where they exterminated most of the preceding male population).
So people named Siobhan are… oily little spaniards (to quote Monthy Python describing bull fighters) and taking long siestas? People regarding the inquisition as a valid career choice? Do people expect mobs of swimmers to turn up when you live in Glasgow?
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I don’t see why my response should have been censored, when Birger got so much so abysmally wrong and contains offensive language besides.
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I haven’t deleted or redacted any comments in over a year?
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Well, it was there, and then it was gone.
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No, I simply can’t tolerate leaving this load of fabricated bullshit here without correcting it.
The name Siobhan is overwhelmingly Irish. There is a Scottish form of it, but it occurs very rarely.
The name Siobhan derives from the Anglo-Norman name Jehane (which became the modern French name Jeanne) – in effect the Irish ‘gaelified’ it. It did not appear anywhere in Ireland before the 14th Century.
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After I long look I would put her as “mixed.” Though, at a glance I would tend to say “East Asian.” This tendency would be due to being from a society in which the form of racism puts a lot of emphasis on dividing the world into ‘white” and “non-white.” The old hypo-descent one drop rule.
I may be changing with the times, Haley Alexis, a mixed American YouTuber living in Germany, stumps me. I fail to place her as anything but “human female, rather brown-skinned” (and quite good looking).
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I’m going to give you top marks. You grew up surrounded by whites with a lot of blacks in a society that labels anyone not 100% European (in the racial sense) as a POC, and I imagine few East Asians, so you have done well. People’s perceptions are heavily influenced by their previous life experience.
Like a lot of mixed people Siobhán is a bit of a shape-shifter of the ‘might be, might not be’ type – at different times she looks like she could be one, the other or a bit of both.
Her father is Irish, her mother Chinese, born and raised in Hong Kong and, aside from attending university in the USA, has never lived anywhere else.
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Evolution of immune genes is associated with the Black Death.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05349-x
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Now I know how a dog on a leash feels – being tethered by my cannula tubing is just plain fucking annoying.
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One for Charles, I think – a bit o’ dat big azz action.
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Greatly appreciated. Though many of the adult women in these clips fall short of the JLo ideal. My preference in that area may be an example of the sociobiological concept of imprinting. After all the teen years are a critical period and I went to Junior High and High school with a lot of African descended girls, so I may have been imprinted by, you know.
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I too am an adherent of the wisdom of Sir Mixalot! 😀
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And in honour of Britannia getting its first Hindu boss:
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https://stuartritchie.substack.com/p/growth-mindset-decline
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Do you want to know the *really* irritating thing about my oxygen cannula?
After arranging to get O2 supply at home so I could escape from the Gulag last Thursday, I now find (by Tuesday afternoon) that I no longer need the bloody thing.
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In the DN newspaper Alex Schulman writes about how politicians try to reinvent themselves when they get a minister post.
För instance Tobias Billström who had a nearly Trumpesque twitter style is a new person after he became a foreign minister. When he declares Turkey is a democracy he is polite and uses words with several syllables. Or as Schulman calls it “he lies in a different way”.
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A question to politicians and sociologists in Sweden- do the Rom here still practice marriages for 15-year-old girls to a major extent? Because if that issue has still not been adressed, their integration will be screwed.
.
The conservatives in a town in Sweden had a political alliance with the far-right SD.
This alliance broke up after the last election… and the conservatives found themselves in the focus of an online hate campaign, and threatening phone calls, the whole shebang.
You know, the thing “digital warriors” paid by the SD have been doing since forever to social democrats, center party members and green party members.
The conservatives were taken aback over the SD doing to them what SD is doing to everyone else.
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The difference with the Roma is that they marry children to children, not female children to adult men.
And I don’t know about Sweden (and probably neither do you), but in Romania they marry the kids off at 13 to 14, and sometimes even as young as 12.
Yes, it is one of numerous stumbling blocks to the Roma being integrated into mainstream society.
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Not only in the municipality of Sölvesborg that you mention, Birger! The most common local government in Sweden after the recent election is Labour + Conservatives. Because everyone including the Neo-Fascists themselves know that they are not fit to govern.
In Laxå municipality they got three seats on the municipal council, but they only had one guy, and he quit. So that’s three empty seats and no Neo-Fascist influence.
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Canadian actor Michael Kopsa has died at 66.
He played Rick Culver in The X-Files, captain Windmark in Fringe , Paul Kline in Watchmen and many other roles.
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Laxå (salmon stream/river) – it brings me back to a song from the late sixties. An American song mentioned the town Jackson in the chorus. No one here knew about that town so in the Swedish translation they sang about Laxå.
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Mass murderer from Finland who wiped out an entire family in Sweden in the 1980s attempted to escape from the prison in Finland yet again. He was fortunately caught in no time. His long career of crime indicates he is a quite stupid narcissist and psychopath.
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…and here is Johnny Cash and June Carter singing Jackson.
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Laxå! (not quite Johnny Cash level)
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The Dagens Nyheter “ledare” has a scathing analysis of the mentality of SD that regards a willingness to compromise a sign of “weakness” when it really is a condition for a democratic society to function.
(jag har vidarebefordrat en länk till Martin)
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I’d like a society please where intelligence and expertise are more important than strength.
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Asperitas clouds- the rarest cloud type.
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The stone with the longest known rhunic inscription.
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Book: ” The Phantom God; What Neuroscience reveals about the compulsion to believe, by John Watley ”
Religion as a side effect of how our brains are wired.
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I can save people from having to watch some idiots in a 2.5 hour video by simply telling everyone that the human brain is hard wired for religion. There, it’s done.
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Oh no, then my brain is abnormal!
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Like with all human traits, there’s a range of variation. You’re just close to one end of the range.
Plus, as with things like superstitions, beliefs in witchcraft, etc., it can be over-ridden by logical deduction.
That’s why a lot of kids ‘lose their religion’ typically in their early to mid teens – they think it through and decide it can’t be true.
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Conversely, for someone closer to the other end of the range, no amount of logic will persuade them – because they are incapable of being persuaded.
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So there are two independent elements involved – hard wiring (which varies along a range of variation) and logical deduction. These are *independent* of one another, but one can over-ride the other.
On average, more intelligent people tend to be less religious than less intelligent people, but there’s variation. Some very intelligent people are also very religious.
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Síbeal Cassidy believes in all kinds of magic and gobbledegook, but I would never try to persuade her otherwise – it might stop her singing.
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Like I would never try to persuade this girl (who has the most astonishingly beautiful facial profile) that her Hindu beliefs are all rubbish; because if she believed me she would stop dancing, and the world would be a less beautiful place because of that.
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The diverse genetic origins of a Classical period Greek army.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2205272119
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10/17/2022
I am sorry for the long delayed post, but I have been sleeping very poorly and that has reduced my energy. Also, since it takes so much longer to compose these posts from notes that has led to delays. I have considered making additional posts of my raw dictated notes as they might prove amusing and others might figure out what I was saying in indecipherable sections! As I have even skipped walking a few days posts will be slow and spotty until the sleep issue is resolved.
Leaving my apartment I first heard the noise of the dumpster pick up truck arriving. I saw the charming first Yellowjacket of the fall, the little m-effers were momentarily all around me. The dumpster truck driver got out and was putting bags of trash into the dumpster. A leaf hit me in the back while I continued to hear no birds. The sky was mostly clear with a few tattered clouds and the temperature was moderate. After the truck left I started walking and finally heard a few robins calling left and right. As I left the complex I was walking pain-free for the first time in quite a while. Relative silence continued. There was a bit of a cool north wind; it will be cold tonight. The tabby cat was on his porch eating from his dish. I heard a few distant bird calls on the left as I crested the hill and began to descend. I heard a few birds calling and a probable mockingbird singing, then one calling angrily. There were blue jays calling to the left and ahead. I heard a bird calling to my right but couldn’t quite identify it. There were robins to my left in the wooded area and a number of obscure calls. I heard a robin call again to my left and a bird to my right that BirdNET identified as a Swamp Sparrow. Then I heard a mockingbird singing.
Approaching the Notre Dame football practice field I saw a car, I don’t know why it was there at this hour of the day. There was then a mockingbird singing. The school’s lot was full, everyone is back from fall break. I heard birds chirping. Approaching the Congregationalist church there was a mockingbird singing to my right, traffic noise was fairly high as it’s still rush hour, a little after nine in the morning. A mockingbird sang out near the Spiritual Director’s house, where they are cutting down the tree in front on the Glenwood Drive side. The arborist is climbing the tree to cut off the branches as they are not using a crane to avoid blocking the street.
Returning the noise of tree cutting dominated the air with chainsaw and wood chipper sounds, which were originating on the other side of the house. I’ve had to slow down as my knee is giving me a twinge, I’ll take longer than usual to get home. The mockingbird is still singing, but to my left now, persistent bird. Someone has left Notre Dame but I can’t see who is in the jeep. I have to remind myself to slow down to take pressure off my left knee. I saw the tree the mockingbird is singing in to my left by the school parking lot. I then heard the caw of a crow in the distance. Crows then called to my right across the baseball field. I heard bluejays and crows calling up ahead and bluejays across the ball field. Bluejay calls were ongoing across the practice field as I turned toward the wooded area. They’re very excited about something. I heard a probable robin across the practice field and an irate mockingbird to my left near the wooded area. There was an unusual loud call but I could not figure out what it was. BirdNET tentatively identified it as a Palm Warbler. There was a mockingbird singing to my right, towhees to my left, and a brief unspecified bird song on my right.
Ascending the hill there was a call to right that BirdNET identified as a Northern Flicker. Distant bird calls were ongoing. I heard robins up ahead. I am walking fast now as my knee is bothering me less, which is always good. There were angry mockingbirds up ahead. There were robins to my left and an angry mockingbird to my right. Cresting the hill there were more irritable mockingbirds having a discussion to my right. High on my right there was a mockingbird perched in the bare upper branches of an oak tree. He is clearly upset and yelling about something. I heard a bird call to my right that BirdNET couldn’t identify. There was an unknown bird call and bluejays in the distance. As I reached the complex area there was a squirrel by the parking area which soon took shelter under a car. A bird called to the left that BirdNET identified as an Eastern Phoebe. Perhaps that is the small gray flycatcher I see from my kitchen instead of or in addition to the Wood Pewees. Heading in I heard an unidentified bird to my right. Someone has two jack-o’-lanterns on the front porch of my building, which is the first time there have been such in the ten years I have lived here. I was walking with minimal pain which made for a much better experience. It continues to be cool and it will be winter-like for the next couple of days.
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The celebrity Sir Vääs (Sir Hiss) the big King Cobra that broke out of a zoo has been located to a part of the building. They are using some kind of x-ray equipment from the Customs to look through walls.
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Jerry Lee Lewis has died.
He was the last of the Elvis- and Johnny Cash- era pop music stars.
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10/18/2022
I left my apartment a little after 2:00 this day. I initially heard nothing but traffic noise; it was partly cloudy, cool, and windy. I was dressed for it. I eventually heard robins, some to my right. There was then a mockingbird singing to my left. As I left the complex area he was singing nearby on the left, but I could not spot him. I guess they like to hide some of the time. A fairly strong wind from the north was cold. The dang little school bus passed me quite close on my right. The tabby was on his porch with his back to me. Cresting the hill I heard no bird sounds. There was the sound of a wood chipper up the ridge on my right. Descending the hill a bird to the right continued calling. There were bluejays in the distance and also on my right. They continued calling as I approached the wooded area. The loss of leaves on the trees is becoming quite noticeable. There are robins to the left and various birds calling to the right, including cardinals. Bluejays sounded to my left again, their calls soon attenuated down to a gentle sound. Bluejay calls continued to my rear as I departed the wooded area.
A bird called across the football practice field. There are a few people coming and going from Notre Dame, getting ready for the end of the school day. There was a mockingbird singing on the school’s athletic center. There were more people leaving Notre Dame, some students must leave a little early. A mockingbird flew across the street from the corner of the baseball field. Approaching the Congregationalist church I heard no sounds from the avifauna. I think windy days discourage them from singing and calling due to the ambient noise. The landscaping crew has thoroughly cleared off the property at the Spiritual Director’s house, I don’t know if they’re planning to sell it or something else. In addition to taking down the tree in the front yard they have removed the hedges and foundation plantings, the latter were overgrown or rotted anyway. The traffic is fairly heavy, the usual Memorial Hospital afternoon activity.
Returning, the landscape service has a truck that, from its color, appears to be an old ASPLUNH vehicle, repainted with a new logo. They are sitting in the church parking lot with their engine running, getting ready to depart. I heard bluejays to my left. The sun has come out and I’m feeling warm. There’s a Bobcat in the church parking lot backing up a trailer and towing it around so it can load up as they are finished with the scalping at the Spiritual Director’s house. I started feeling overwhelmed by heat in front of Notre Dame and unzipped my coat. There were no bird calls. As I turned towards the wooded area there was another arrival at the school’s main driveway entrance. I heard what sounded like faint bluejay calls ahead at the wooded area and there was a mockingbird singing as usual at the corner of the baseball diamond. He started making bluejay-like calls, I suppose his were the calls I thought I heard from the wooded area. I then caught mockingbird song both ahead and to my rear in the wooded area. I heard several upset bluejays calling. A flicker flew above the road, perched on a branch, and flew away.
Ascending the hill I heard a bluejay call in a tree overhead. I had to stop for a few minutes to rest my back. Bluejay calls continued to my right. Cresting the hill their calls went on to my rear. There was mockingbird song on my right. Ground up acorns were underfoot. Another mockingbird sung to my right. As I approached the complex bluejays were heard ahead. The mockingbird continued to the right and there were alarm calls to my left. I heard a woodpecker to my left and mockingbird song to the left and right. Plenty of leaves are off the trees and they’re accumulating next to the parking area. The city will get them eventually. As I approached my apartment mockingbird song continued. The drought situation is no better, I don’t know when we’ll get any real rain around here. It sure felt warm in my heated apartment. My old shoulder injury was bothering me a little, I guess it was from sitting on the couch typing on the iPhone, now an athletic event for me
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Compulsory viewing :
“Frankie Boyles new world order ”
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LOL. Definitely gaga.
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This is so up to date it won’t happen yet for another two days – either that or the ugly little Physicist with the bad teeth has been around again.
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Epicanthic folds are a trait that just happens – I don’t think you can conclude anything about ancestry just from one inconsequential trait like that. What about single eyelids? Khoisan didn’t have those, but a high percentage of Chinese and a really high percentage of Koreans do.
Aside from steatopygia, there is a very odd trait that Khoisan women have that doesn’t occur among any other groups, as far as I know. I’m not going to reveal what it is – if you already know, fine.
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Subsequent reading has revealed that the second trait, which I have not named, occurs only among Khoi-Khoi women (who from memory are cattle herders, not hunter-gatherers) and that it is induced, not naturally occurring – it’s a form of self-mutilation but it reportedly comes with benefits. Well, good for them, may they long enjoy their benefits, and I can scratch that one from my physiological oddities book.
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One or two of S.J. Gould’s better essays cover the intense interest that racial researchers paid to African women’s lady bits.
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It seems they were fooled – it’s genital mutilation encouraged by mothers among their daughters, and its purpose is enhancement of the women’s pleasure during sex (so by regularly repeated pulling; it’s sort of the opposite of labiaplasty).
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The practice of deliberately elongating the labia minora has spread to some other tribes including Bantu tribes, thereby demonstrating that it is a deliberate practice, and that elongated labia minora are not a natural trait in Khoisan women.
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