DataDaoDe

> IQ scores in most of the Western world began reversing sometime from the 90s to early 00s. [1] That link is for the US but similar stuff has also been observed in most of every Western/OECD nation.

I wonder to what extent demographic shifts account for the observed reversal? It would be interesting to tease out what happens where composition remains constant, i.e. Poland. Though I doubt this explains the entire effect.

> By contrast they're still rapidly increasing in the 'Global South'.

seems like the Flynn effect doing its thing just as it did in western countries in the 20th century.

This. If there is one thing I've learned it is certainly not that you can generalize from yourself to others, especially for medication and its side-effects and withdrawal effects. I get so sick from taking novalgin that its a medical emergency (Agranulocytosis). Apparently, this occurs in like 1 case in a million. Conversely, I've heard of horrible side-effects or withdrawals from other medications where I experienced absolutely none of them.

To be fair I didn't understand the author's statements as looking down on people who dislike poems that don't rhyme. Regardless, I think, and hopefully we could both agree, that we shouldn't look down on people for any reason. Humans have inherit value and worth that does not depend on laws, leaders or their views on any topic.

I will say, I am always impressed, if some time has gone by and I pick up some Chaucer, Keats, Byron, Shakespeare again. Interestingly, now that I am reflecting on it, one of the most impressive and dense, at least to me, is Milton, who writes in blank verse in Paradise Lost, which itself provides a counterpoint to the notion that non-rhyming poems are less impressive.

I think I still agree with you though that ceteris paribus, Paradise Lost with rhyme would be even more impressive, though I do wonder if it would have the same impact.

I agree. And I would remove the basically. I give it five years before essentially just a few very senior people are managing the whole cycle. Downward pressure on wages is just gonna keep ratcheting up.

My thoughts exactly

Vonnegut is great.

I'd be interested to know what everyone's favorite opening lines of all time are. (bonus - to see how much of it you can quote without looking :)

For me, its: Whann that aprill with hir shoures soote, The drought of march hath perced to the roote, And zepherus eek with his sweete breath, inspired hath in every holt and heth, the tendre cropes, and the sonne hath in the ram, hir halve cours ironne, Than preketh hem natur in hir courages, and longon folk to gon on pilgrimages.

Somehow that has always stuck with me, I'm sure I'm missing parts, but from the first time I ever heard these lines the just imprinted themselves like a song to me.

No reason to be sorry, that sounds like this is even better news then :)

I'm no expert, and don't know if it applies in this case, but for a cancer I had (lymphoma) I was told that aggressive can often be easier to treat or "cure" (as defined by survival rates, etc.) since it also can often be hit more brutally by the treatments.

Anyway, since many in my family have died from this horrible cancer, its fantastic news to hear of any improvements there.

This. Its also great for finding out all the ways you are wrong or discovering the views, data, perspectives you are missing. I use it for this as well.

Category theory is all about relationships and structural patterns. so its useful when you want to interoperability and composition between systems i.e. invariants under transformations, etc.

Without reading too much into what this framework does, I'd say category theory could be useful for some ML problems (i.e. layer composition, gradient propagation, etc.) - but I'd think it would be more useful as an analytical tool than as actual lib/code structures.

apparently its the font used in Edward Tufte's books. Its on github: https://edwardtufte.github.io/et-book/

Sadly this is true and lesson anyone who has worked freelance has probably learned - either that or I'd wager they no longer do freelance.

Its easy to say don't be afraid to lose business, but when you're starting out, the economy is rough or all you have are the one or two clients, that's a different matter entirely.

One thing I've learned is that you always have to do the leg work, you can't assume someone will do the right thing or keep their word.

Develop a system where even bad clients, can't do too much damage i.e. upfront deposits, milestone-based payments. You have to control cash flow risks, if you are gonna take risks know what risks you're taking and when to get out.

This is just cool. Nice job!

Tengo un Plan - deep discussions with experts on various topics

Lifters (Ivan Llamarazares) - short weight lifting and training tips

Sozusagen - interesting stories and etymologies of words

The Reinsurance Podcast - name sums itself up pretty good

Clicking on this link just reminded me again that science (like all such restricted access journals) is an operation that relies heavily on publicly funded research and unpaid academic labor.

And yet their access restriction not only removes the public from consuming the fruits of their labor, but it also systematically harms less well-resourced institutions, independent scholars and impedes the spread of knowledge (particularly in areas of the world that need it most).

I wish we could reach a point where we wouldn't allow this anymore.

This is such a fun experience! The music is fantastic and really throwing me back to another time :)

We'd probably agree on this: people respond to incentives created by system design. One example that comes to mind is how London's Congestion Charge and how it has changed traffic behavior over the years depending on how the rules change.

There is nothing inherent about fast, large-scale, or user-friendly communication that forces spam, scams, or propaganda. Its just that those outcomes emerge when things like engagement, attention, or "reach" are rewarded without being aligned to quality, truth, or mutual cooperation.

This is a well-studied problem in economics, but also behavioral science and psychology: change the incentive and feedback structure, and behavior reliably changes.

Based on the studies I've read in and around this topic, I think harmful dynamics are not inevitable properties of communication, but really contingent on how each system rewards actions taken by participants. The solution is not slowness or barriers, but better incentive alignment and feedback loops.

Plato's works surrounding Socrates' death: Phaedo, Crito, Euthyphro, The Apology.

Its fascinating to discover how many thoughts and ideas they had which are still relevant in our societies today. Also, they are incredibly readable, its like taking part in on a conversation among friends.

> The internet we rely on today is a chain of single points of failure. Cut the undersea cable, and a continent goes dark. Shut down the power grid, and the cloud evaporates. Deprioritize the "wrong" traffic, and the flow of information is strangled.

The deep brokenness of the current internet, specifically what has become the "cloud" is something I've been thinking about a lot over the past few years. (now I'm working on trying to solve some of this - well, at least build alternatives for people).

and this:

> The way you build a system determines how it will be used. If you build a system optimized for mass surveillance, you will get a panopticon. If you build a system optimized for centralized control, you will get a dictatorship. If you build a system optimized for extraction, you will get a parasite.

Seems to be implying (as well as in other places) that this was all coordinated or planned in some way, but I've looked into how it came to be this way and I grew up with it, and for me, I think a lot of it stemmed from good intentions (the ethos that information should be free, etc.)

I made a short video recently on how we got to a centralized and broken internet, so here's a shameless plug if anyone is interested: https://youtu.be/4fYSTvOPHQs

Here's mine: https://johnfaucett.com/articles/2025/12-31-aphorisms

I haven't looked but I'd imagine they are not so unique and others have come up with similar things before. Personally, I did like this one though:

"The question is the only animal which gives birth to itself."

Short morning self meditation each day where I reflect on my outlook and goals for myself to be about helping other people and being kind.

ja, aber Wachsamkeit ist Pflicht. Wer Freiheit für Sicherheit aufgibt, verliert am Ende beides - das haben wir mehrfach erlebt.

> The different political labels are interesting but also deeply frustrating because it paints people at odds when they're not.

I agree.

I don't necessarily think the two baskets analogy is even the right framework tbh. The important issues imho are transparency, corruption, incentive alignment, feedback loops, it doesn't really matter to me - and I think probably most people - if its in the government or business space.

What matters, at least to me, is how decisions are made, how information flows, and how citizens (or employees) can see whats going on, influence and hold accountable the decision-makers.

interesting. I agree that governmental power should be stoppable in a functioning democratic republic. At least, we have some such examples. However, I would think, at least in the examples that come to my mind, it is far easier to end corporate abuse, although I will admit often the two are tightly intertwined with governmental overreach working hand-in-hand with private corporations so its quite commonly a blurred line.

There are many lessons to be learned from history. One of them is that you should never trust your government to not abuse its power. Even the most progressive welfare states like Sweden end up doing horrible things (see how Sweden sterilized thousands based on eugenics policies (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319507778_Eugenics_...).

If you want some recent examples for Switzerland (beyond the dozens upon dozens the further you go back in History) look up, Verdingkinder, Swiss eugenics after 1945, Holocaust Assets (Volcker Commission Report), Post-War Forced Labor and Slaver Switzerland, Secret Police and Surveillance (Swiss Federal Parliamentary Report of 1990), etc, etc.

Some level of trust is required for a functioning society, but there are so many natural factors (human psychology, evolution, national security, crisis situations, elite capture, economic incentives, legitimizing narratives, etc.) which all lead to the abuse of power and the violation thereof that IMHO you can never limit and check it too much.

I used math academy for several months. I was curious and wanted to try it out since it’s a problem I’ve also worked on in the past. Th system is good, the fractional spaced repetition is a nice system and really reduces the spaced repetition overhead. Still IMHO, it provides nowhere near the value of the $50 a month pricing. But again I also know a lot of higher level mathematics and can work my way through a topology book on my own, so I’m probably not in the target audience. Still, I would think that even for people wanting to get into math or high school students this would still be a very steep price.

Just put your kids outside. You don't need anything as a kid to start playing. We used sticks and mud and built ourselves houses and towns and had wars and put on plays and did everything under the sun without toys or anything.

Some trees and dirt will take you a long way providing thousands of hours of fun. As kids we found these big black horned beetles and started a beetle gladiator arena that kept us preoccupied for months at a time feeding and training our biggest beetles. Kids are very creative if you let them be.

That’s wild. The last time I had that experience with Python must have been more than 10 years ago. I’ll admit a decade ago you definitely did need to know way to many details about way too many tools from virtualenvs to setuotools to wheels, etc. to get things working from somebody else’s project, but imho, poetry and uv have really changed all that.

Python has done an impressive job over the years of making steady robust improvements. The typing and tooling has just gotten better and better. There are still plenty of problems though, imho async is still a much bigger pain than it should be (compared to other runtimes with a very nice experience like go or elixir, even dotnet has been less pain in my experience). Overall I like python, but it mainly boils down to the robust libraries for things I do (ML, Data munching/analysis)