Various web links I found to be of interest recently.
In fact, there was no evidence that introverts enjoyed solitude
more than extraverts. Rather, the most important trait related
to liking one's own company was having strong "dispositional
autonomy". This is a concept from
self-determination theory
and
the researchers, led by Thuy-vy T. Nguyen at the University of
Rochester, said that people strong in this trait have alignment
between their behaviour, values and interests, are "resistant to
pressure from others", and "are interested in learning more about
their personal experiences and emotions". High scorers in autonomy
enjoyed solitude more than others and sought it out for its own sake.
...
Savouring solitude seems to be more associated with being the kind
of person who feels free and in control of their life and who finds
pleasure in reflecting on their inner experiences - and among both
introverts and extraverts there will be those who do and do not
fit this description.
Many people say explicitly that not having sex is a big thing. And that sounds plausible to me of course because I've sometimes had less than at other times. And that was a big thing for me. And of course, sex is a huge part of literature and common conversation. So it's obviously a big thing to people. One question is how big, perhaps. But note, for the structure of my argument, I don't need to claim that sex is as important or more important than income. I just need to say that it's in the ballpark, comparable. That it's the sort of thing you might consider. So you don't actually have to choose between dealing with income inequality and sex inequality. You could be trying to deal with both, even if one is smaller than the other. To me the interesting point is that many people are all over and into income redistribution. And those people seem hostile to the idea of sex redistribution. And on the other side, the people interested in sex redistribution don't seem to be very interested in income redistribution. And that's an interesting phenomenon and puzzle.
A Yale philosopher (Jason Stanley) on fascism, truth, and Donald Trump.
Freedom requires truth, and so to smash freedom you must smash truth
...
Part of what fascist politics does is get people to disassociate from
reality. You get them to sign on to this fantasy version of reality,
usually a nationalist narrative about the decline of the country
and the need for a strong leader to return it to greatness, and from
then on their anchor isn't the world around them - it's the leader.
...
Again, I wouldn't claim - not yet, at least - that Trump is presiding
over a fascist government, but he is very clearly using fascist
techniques to excite his base and erode liberal democratic institutions,
and that's very troubling.
When public sector employees end up working for the private firms which they monitored, regulated, and even disciplined, a clear conflict of interest arises. However, little is known about the the scale and scope of this 'revolving door' problem. This column presents evidence from patent examiners employed by the US Patent and Trademark Office, and shows that examiners grant considerably more patents to the firms that ultimately hire them, and that the most likely explanation is that examiners are 'captured'. This leniency lowers the quality of patents coming out of the agency.
How demographic change and YouTube's algorithms are building a new right.
I think most of this rant about guilt by association is nonsense, but check it out if you want to know Ezra Klein's view of the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW). For the Rebecca Lewis report mentioned see Alternative Influence.
Night 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jey_CzIOfYE
Night 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRJ91lVQyRA&t=1889s
Each debate is over 2 hour long. They discussed topics including meaning, the value and limits of reason, the utility of religion, and the nature of truth. IMO this is a good summary which can save you time and effort.