Adivasis are just like everyone else…sort of…but not
My previous post on Adivasis was not totally clear. So I’m going to try in shorter fragments and outline things so I’m more clear. I am not 100% correct with the model below (we’ll know more later), but this is my best current conception. 10,000 BC, end of the Ice Age, NW quadrant of the … Continue reading Adivasis are just like everyone else…sort of…but not
Adivasis are not really more indigenous than most other Indians; they are marginalized
Periodically I get questions about whether the Adivasi are the “indigenous” people of the Indian subcontinent. The short answer is that they are not distinctive or more indigenous than most of their non-Adivasi neighbors. The President of India is from a Munda-speaking community, and these populations are arguably more culturally intrusive than Indo-Aryan or Dravidian-speaking … Continue reading Adivasis are not really more indigenous than most other Indians; they are marginalized
Hinduism will die, and Hinduism will live
Sometimes in these comments or on social media, I see Hindus bemoan the passivity and weakness of their religion in the face of faiths with greater vigor and asabiyyah. This is such a common occurrence that I don’t often comment on it. But I have to say ironically that these sorts of comments exhibit a … Continue reading Hinduism will die, and Hinduism will live
RKUL: Time Well Spent 11/11/2022
Fall back edition
Cody Moser: universal baby talk
Listen now (63 min) | Why do babies and adults talk to each other in the same way across all cultures?
Cody Moser: universal baby talk
Listen now (63 min) | Why do babies and adults talk to each other in the same way across all cultures?
What is Islamophobia?
One of the problems with “traditional” familial and cultural systems is the level of depravity they can mask. This is not a “slam dunk” argument against them, but it is a real thing. The suppression of the evidence of clear sexual abuse in a certain community in the UK in the service of preventing negative … Continue reading What is Islamophobia?
Bangladesh and West Bengal genetics
I got a few more samples with provenance. The Bengali Brahmins are shifte the way you would expect. The Bangladesh Kayastha (someone from a Hindu background) is in the cluster with generic Bangladeshis from Dhaka. The West Bengali Kayastha is far less East Asian. My current model right now is that the Kayasthas are basically … Continue reading Bangladesh and West Bengal genetics
Usha Vance “hit piece”
The New York Times has a quasi-hit piece out on Usha Vance, From Yale to Newsmax, Usha Vance Has Helped J.D. Vance Chart His Path – The Ohio Senate candidate’s wife, an accomplished lawyer, remains ensconced in the milieu he now rails against. I say quasi because there’s nothing bad they could really find except … Continue reading Usha Vance “hit piece”
The critics of Shorism are myopic
Politico has a story up about infighting in Democratic party politics, Drinking Enemies: Two Cocktail Parties that Reveal the Schism in the Millennial Left. It’s pretty interesting. On the merits, […]
Erik Hoel: neuroscience is dead, long live neuroscience!
Today, on the Unsupervised Learning podcast Razib talks to Erik Hoel, author of the novel The Revelations, and host of The Intrinsic Perspective Substack. Hoel is a neuroscientist at Tufts who is interested in the problem of consciousness. Hoel admits…
Nikolai Yakovenko: a Twitter engineer on machine learning and his former company’s prospects
Listen now (78 min) | Deep neural networks, why do they matter for social media?
Being anti-Brown is anti-Hindu
In one section of the Washington Post piece Cal State banned caste discrimination. Two Hindu professors sued an activist professor states: Sundaram, who supports making caste a protected characteristic, said critiquing Hinduism — even in a country where Hindus are a minority — is not akin to promoting Hinduphobia. She said most discrimination against Hindus … Continue reading Being anti-Brown is anti-Hindu
Open Thread – 10/31/2022 – Gene Expression
Reading two books this month in prep for two podcasts, The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move To a Lot Like the Ones They Left and Don’t […]
Caste and California: the lawsuits are in!
Cal State banned caste discrimination. Two Hindu professors sued: Two Hindu professors are suing the head of their university system to oppose the addition of caste to an anti-discrimination policy amid a broader battle over whether colleges should explicitly call out caste-based bias. The California State University System professors argue that naming caste as a … Continue reading Caste and California: the lawsuits are in!
The two Pleistocene people of Europe
Dual ancestries and ecologies of the Late Glacial Palaeolithic in Britain: Genetic investigations of Upper Palaeolithic Europe have revealed a complex and transformative history of human population movements and ancestries, […]
The Turkification of Anatolia: tales of Rome’s last conquerors
1,000 years on the western frontier of the Turkic world
Jonathan Haidt: Social media kills the internet utopia
Jonathan Haidt is the author of The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion and The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding…
Anatolia over 10,000 years
Listen now (60 min) | From first farmers to the Turks