https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-population-shrinks-first-time-since-1961-2023-01-17/

«Much of the demographic downturn is the result of China’s one-child policy imposed between 1980 and 2015 as well as sky-high education costs that have put many Chinese off having more than one child or even having any at all.»

35 years of OCP plus… why are education costs so high in China?

Hmmm…

«Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground….»

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1857-frederick-douglass-if-there-no-struggle-there-no-progress/

“The Pennsylvania GOP is trying to figure out what went so horribly wrong in 2022.” https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/15/pennsylvania-elections-republicans-postmortem-00077986#:~:text=The%20Pennsylvania%20GOP%20is%20trying%20to%20figure%20out%20what%20went%20so%20horribly%20wrong%20in%202022.

Ok, I’m stopping here. I don’t think there’s any content to this news story.

A columnist regarded to be a reasonable conservative at a major newspaper wrote this:

«For the House G.O.P. today, an equivalent escape is imaginable. Its majority could be used to pass a series of messaging bills on issues where conservatives have, or might have, an advantage with the public: a crime bill, a border security bill, a bill highlighting issues with military recruitment and readiness, reforms to academic funding and tax breaks and school standards that aim to weaken the elite-college cartel and influence the educational culture wars, some version of the pro-family policies that pro-life groups have pushed for in the wake of Dobbs. In each case the goal would be to position the party on ground where the concerns of activists and independent voters might overlap and set the G.O.P. up for success in 2024.»

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/01/12/keenan-anderson-police-taser-death-los-angeles/

(1) I’ve seen videos of people getting tazed in training or playing around. It looks excruciating for just 2 or 3 seconds. How does a police officer taze somebody for 30 seconds?

(2) How many people get tazed like this as part of business as usual without making it into the news?

Update, Jan 15: well, there’s this, buried in the story:

«The incident in Los Angeles joins a long list involving police use of Tasers in recent years. A 2017 Reuters investigation found that more than 1,000 people in the United States had died after they were shocked with Tasers or other stun guns by police. In 2021, two former Oklahoma police officers were convicted of murder for using their Tasers more than 50 times on an unarmed man who died in 2019.»

Welp… learned a new word today. “Agnotogenesis” (and “agnotology”) which is fanciness and dignification of the old “FUD” concept (less the fear, I guess).

It’s the intentional creation of doubt, the “just asking questions” of right-wing media. I guess it’s a real thing in epistemology.

@ct_bergstrom 🔗 https://fediscience.org/users/ct_bergstrom/statuses/109679731373424542 – «I’ve always appreciated Bostrom for what I thought was a brilliant if challenging book he wrote on observation selection effects. But his non-apology for his racist post is appalling. Most of the letter focuses on the motives of those who would hold him accountable or throws up low key smokescreens with claims of unsettled science—agnotogenesis—around the statements he had been making in the first place. http://www.nickbostrom.com/oldemail.pdf »

(Bergstrom is the author of Calling Bullshit, which I have yet to read.)

13-year-old blog post that seems to be still right on target (except Douthat now seems to be one of those who doesn’t realize the true thrust of “conservatism” since 1964): https://crookedtimber.org/2010/05/08/ignorance-is-strength/