astroboy's posterior

Wittiness is a trait that provides an excellent platform for replacing physical aggression with verbal behaviour and cognitive contest

It could never have been anticipated that the power to charm the female has been in some few instances more important than the power to conquer the other males in battle.

Selection for physical fitness, and selection for friendliness/groupishness, while both relevant for human evolution to some extent, do not begin to capture the essence of what it means to be human, specifically in relation to language. We may appreciate physical strength in our mates, and we may appreciate their friendly demeanor, but these are not necessarily traits that have to do with language directly, nor are these traits unique to humans.

The view of human evolution as the “survival of the wittiest” offers more explanatory power and a more comprehensive approach than does the “survival of the friendliest.”

The crucial milestone in human evolution, both linguistic and cognitive, was the emergence and entrenchment of the earliest forms of grammar, which unleashed a host of attributes that will turn out to be uniquely human, including increasingly more complex grammars and vast vocabularies, largely enabled by metaphorical extension, the flair for humor and quick-wittedness, and the means to replace physical aggression with cognitive contest.

https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/5/3/pgag052/8559600

Cycling levels in NYC, London, Paris, and Berlin increased over the three decades prior to COVID (1990–2019). As a percentage of daily trips, bike mode share rose from 0.6% to 2.2% in New York, from 1.2% to 3.7% in London, from 0.4% to 5% in Paris, and from 7% to 18% in Berlin. Cycling rates have continued to increase since COVID. By 2023, bike mode shares had risen further to 3% in NYC, 4.5% in London, 11% in Paris, and 19% in Berlin.

Cycling became safer in all four cities over the period 2005 to 2023, with declining per-trip fatality and injury rates. More and better cycling infrastructure has been a cornerstone of pro-cycling efforts, especially cycleways separated from motor vehicle traffic (protected bike lanes).

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15568318.2026.2649315#abstract

Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired.

Executives at their customers were saying absurd things about achieving 100x productivity, and this meant that if any executive at the vendor said that these gains were not plausible, it would undermine the credibility of the customer’s executive, be perceived as an attack (or heresy), and possibly result in an enterprise contract cancellation.

If they could all admit the truth at once there might be some hope, but there is no way to coordinate that event.

https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/ai-mania-is-eviscerating-global-decision-making

Where the citizen is sovereign and the official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign — the people — should possess intelligence.

The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.

It’s so brave to feel your feelings; some people live their whole lives without being able to do that.
I’m proud of you.

the Pope is the ultimate character witness for seriousness of moral purpose. The message of the visit was simple. We know this technology is consequential. We know there are moral questions here we cannot answer with code. We are taking it seriously enough to seek counsel from the institution that has thought about human dignity longer than any other. We are not reckless. We are humble.

That is the confessional cosplay elevated to its highest theatrical register.

Every significant deployment of mythos shares the same features. It operates in a domain where evidence is unavailable or inconvenient. It names things so the answer is already inside the word. Manifest. Divine. Destiny. Mythos. It requires an inside and an outside, the trusted and the untrusted, the believers and the skeptics. That is not a security policy. That is a priesthood.

https://om.co/2026/06/07/the-myth-the-mythos-and-the-man/

“I thought of the resistless passion which drives men to undertake terrific scrambles. No example can deter them . . . a peak can exercise the same irresistible power of attraction as an abyss.”

– Théophile Gautier, 1868

Every time someone finds out how amazing she is at math I say it’s because she had extra vaccines and tons of fluoride.

The rich pretended it makes you autistic, it doesn’t it makes you smarter. They want their kids to be the ones getting top jobs while poor people are stuck in manual labor.

Smart people know I’m being an ass, antivaxers look startled. Logic isn’t working I figured I’d just try my own disinformation campaign.

1. Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich.
2. Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a living.
3. Tell the truth to those who want to be lied to, and you’ll go broke.

The rest is commentary.

https://jasonzweig.com/three-ways-to-get-paid/