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Jan 7, 19.
47 Notes.

'They raped every German female from eight to 80'

Antony Beevor on the rape of Germany:

“Red Army soldiers don’t believe in ‘individual liaisons’ with German women,” wrote the playwright Zakhar Agranenko in his diary when serving as an officer of marine infantry in East Prussia. “Nine, ten, twelve men at a time - they rape them on a collective basis.”
…
Drink of every variety, including dangerous chemicals seized from laboratories and workshops, was a major factor in the violence. It seems as if Soviet soldiers needed alcoholic courage to attack a woman. But then, all too often, they drank too much and, unable to complete the act, used the bottle instead with appalling effect. A number of victims were mutilated obscenely.
…
Women soon learned to disappear during the “hunting hours” of the evening. Young daughters were hidden in storage lofts for days on end. Mothers emerged into the street to fetch water only in the early morning when Soviet soldiers were sleeping off the alcohol from the night before. Sometimes the greatest danger came from one mother giving away the hiding place of other girls in a desperate bid to save her own daughter. Older Berliners still remember the screams every night. It was impossible not to hear them because all the windows had been blown in.
Estimates of rape victims from the city’s two main hospitals ranged from 95,000 to 130,000. One doctor deduced that out of approximately 100,000 women raped in the city, some 10,000 died as a result, mostly from suicide. The death rate was thought to have been much higher among the 1.4 million estimated victims in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia. Altogether at least two million German women are thought to have been raped, and a substantial minority, if not a majority, appear to have suffered multiple rape.

#history #ww2 #red army #communism #ussr

Jan 6, 19.
1 Notes.

The migrants I spoke to passionately debated where to settle once they made it to mainland Europe, almost like a family weighing up various vacation destinations. Finland was ‘too cold, and they don’t pay much welfare’, said one. Switzerland was too expensive. And by picking Europe, the men had ruled out other destinations. Oz, for example, was out of the question: they had heard that Australian authorities divert illegals to Papua New Guinea, and you could end up ‘having to share a hot cell with a darky’. A consensus formed around Britain, mainly because most of them spoke at least a little English. But they also knew the Channel crossing was no easy feat. In reality, most of them would end up in Germany or Sweden.

Sohrab Ahmari, Iran’s boat people — and why they’re coming to Britain

#immigration #illegal immigration

Jan 6, 19.
2 Notes.

https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2019/01/04/taleb/

The greatest blog post ever

#nassim taleb

Jan 5, 19.
1 Notes.

Spinning the Superweb | Not Even Wrong

Oswaldo Zapata is a young string theorist who recently got his Ph.D. in the subject in Rome. He recently wrote to me to tell me about some essays on the history of superstring theory that he has written, which he is starting to put up on a web-site he calls Spinning the Superweb. I’ll be interested to follow the rest of the essays. He has also posted the first of these on the arXiv.
Zapata’s history is largely concerned with the question of how string theory has achieved acceptance in certain circles despite its failure to satisfy the conventional criteria normally demanded of a successful scientific theory. Reading him, you might initially get the idea he is a string theory skeptic unhappy with what has happened …

#physics #string theory

Jan 3, 19. 56 Notes.	slartibartfastibast: (Source: youzicha)

Jan 3, 19.
5 Notes.

fluoride-bomb replied to your post:

My dad read antifragile and really likes taleb

It’s not that everything Taleb says is wrong, it’s more that he’s arrogant and convinced of his own genius. If you want a serious appraisal, check out Falkenblog’s posts on Taleb. He really wants to be a rebel and a maverick and so will make it seem like finance professors aren’t aware of the issues he raises, e.g. fat tailed distributions. Other times he’s just wrong. And his IQ article is an outrageous case of him not knowing what he’s talking about.

Doolittle on the other hand is far worse. About 30% of what Doolittle says is wrong, the remaining 70% is completely meaningless. He has accumulated fans simply by a kind of confidence trick in which people think “Even though I don’t understand what he’s saying, there’s no way someone who doesn’t understand anything could talk so confidently. No person could possibly be such a complete fraud.” But yes way.

#curt doolittle #nassim taleb

Jan 3, 19. 86 Notes.	romebyzantium: Icon of the Archangel Gabriel, St Catherine Monastery, #Sinai, #Egypt, 13th century. @ByzantineLegacy

Jan 3, 19. 15 Notes.	Nassim Taleb has written an atrociously bad article attacking IQ research. Curt Doolittle, someone who could be charitably described as pseudointellectual, has offered to come on Freedomain Radio to “debunk” it. If Molyneux accepts this could seriously not be worse.
#iq #nassim taleb

Dec 31, 18.
15 Notes.

Whenever I speak with non-economists, they almost always seem more enthusiastic when the discussion comes around to behavioral economics. “That’s what economists should focus on!” They all seem to think that economists assume too much rationality, and that we should switch to a more behavioral approach. But here’s the problem. Non-economists also tend to reject the central ideas of basic economics, and for reasons that are not well justified. For the economics profession, our “value added” comes not from spoon feeding behavioral theories that the public is already inclined to accept, rather it is in teaching well-established basic principles of which the public is highly skeptical.

Scott Sumner, Let’s not emphasise behavioural economics

#economics

Dec 31, 18.
5 Notes.

Anonymous asked: What are your goals for 2019?

(1) make gains, (2) make fundamental contributions to mathematics

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