[y66]

From Sam Sifton who edits NYT's cooking newletter:

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We’re coming up on Valentine’s Day and of course we have recipes for that night, and for some heartwarming cocktails to go along with it, at least if you’re not heading out to a restaurant for too-sweet Champagne and too many chocolates after the oysters and filet mignon. I’ll pass, cook my Valentines some pasta with scallops, burst cherry tomatoes and lots of herbs, spoon out ice cream for dessert and recite Shakespeare:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

I’ll say that, and go walk the dog. Or not! It may come to delivery pizza and frozen fruit bars from the deli. The course of family life never did run smooth.

[y66]

From We have a new global tally of the insect apocalypse. It’s alarming. by Brian Resnick at Vox:

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The pace of modern insect extinctions surpasses that of vertebrates by a large margin,” write the authors of an alarming new review in Biological Conservation of the scientific literature on insect populations published in the past 40 years. The state of insect biodiversity, they write, is “dreadful.” And their biomass — the estimated weight of all insects on Earth combined — is dropping by an estimated 2.5 percent every year.

In all, the researchers conclude that as much as 40 percent of all insect species may be endangered over the next several decades. (Caveat: Most of the data was obtained from studies conducted in Europe and North America.) And around 41 percent of all insect species on record have seen population declines in the past decade.

“We estimate the current proportion of insect species in decline ... to be twice as high as that of vertebrates, and the pace of local species extinction ... eight times higher,” the authors write. “It is evident that we are witnessing the largest [insect] extinction event on Earth since the late Permian and Cretaceous periods.”

[y66]

How Do I Love Thee? A Mathematician and a Psychologist Count the Ways at WSJ:

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Nearly 30 years ago, a mathematician and a psychologist teamed up to explore one of life’s enduring mysteries: What makes some marriages happy and some miserable?

The psychologist, John Gottman, wanted to craft a tool to help him better counsel troubled couples. The mathematician, James Murray, specialized in modeling biological processes.

It was a match made in heaven.

The pair decided to create a mathematical model to quantify how couples interact and influence each other during an argument. The results helped Dr. Gottman visualize the dynamics of a marriage and measure the impact of therapy.

The approach also proved to be shockingly accurate at predicting which couples would divorce.

“We got actual numbers we could compute,” Dr. Gottman said. “We could see how the partners influence each other.”

Their subjects initially included 130 couples who had applied for marriage licenses in King County, where, at the time, the professors taught at the University of Washington in Seattle. Some of the couples were newlyweds, others were about to be married, and each pair was videotaped for three 15-minute conversations.

In one exchange, the couples were instructed to talk about their day. In another they were told to talk about something positive. And in the third, they were asked to talk about something contentious. The topic didn’t matter—it could be about money, sex, food, in-laws or anything else—as long as they disagreed.

The contentious exchange proved to be the most predictive.

The couple’s interactions were scored by two independent observers who rated every emotion in the exchange.

Altogether, 16 different emotions were coded. At one end of the spectrum, contempt, the most corrosive emotion, according to Dr. Gottman, was scored -4. At the other end, shared humor, one of the best ways to defuse tension, he said, was scored +4.

“They both have to be laughing together,” Dr. Gottman said. “A lot of contempt happens with one person laughing and the other person looking stunned. That’s a minus 4.”

The scores for the various emotions expressed during each exchange were summed, and the researchers plotted the scores for each subsequent exchange as a time series on a graph.

Once the emotions were scored and plotted, the researchers found that the positive and negative progression of the exchanges eventually settled down and didn’t change very much.

That steady state, they concluded, described how a couple resolves conflicts.

“It’s like a Dow Jones curve,” Dr. Murray said. “The ones that went continuously down, it was clear they found it very, very difficult to appreciate what the other one was thinking. That’s what made it clear the marriage wasn’t going to last.”

For low-risk couples, the ratio of positive to negative responses was approximately 5 to 1. For high-risk couples, the ratio was about 1 to 1, and based on their observations, the researchers were able to predict divorce with 94% accuracy.

The researchers followed the couples for a decade, and in that time, all of the pairs they predicted would divorce did, most within four years. A few other couples they predicted would remain married, though unhappily, also divorced, lowering their overall accuracy.

Marriages, they found, fell into five categories: validating, volatile, conflict–avoiding, hostile and hostile–detached (a significantly more negative pairing). Only three—validating, volatile and conflict–avoiding—are stable, they write in their book, but a volatile marriage, though passionate, risks dissolving into endless bickering.

Notably, they also found that as the years passed, each couple’s style of communication changed very little from that initial videotaped contentious exchange.

“We found about 80% stability in couples’ interaction over time,” Dr. Gottman said, a result that was based on bringing the couples back to the lab for additional scored discussions, usually at three-year intervals.

Dr. Gottman and Dr. Murray have since published their work in the book “The Mathematics of Marriage: Dynamic Nonlinear Models.”

But if they were to boil down their work to one simple strategy for couples, it might be this: Face each other when talking. And acknowledge your role in the dispute.

“If they listen to each other,” said Dr. Murray, who’s been married for 60 years, “they might have a different future.”

[Winstonm]

Here is why I don't automatically support all of our troops:

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Feb 14 (Reuters) - A white man who killed a black man with a sword in the hopes of starting a race war was sentenced to life in prison without parole Wednesday in New York, multiple media accounts said.

James Jackson, 30, a former U.S. Army specialist, apologized for the slaying, before the State Supreme Court Justice Laura A. Ward sentenced him to the maximum allowed under the law, the New York Times reported.

Last month, Jackson plead guilty to first-degree murder in furtherance of an act of terrorism, in the March 2017 death of Timothy Caughman, 66.

Why this type of individual was allowed to serve is beyond me. I don't support that decision.

[Winstonm]

Quote

An Alabama newspaper has called “for the Ku Klux Klan to night ride again” and hang Democrats with hemp ropes. In a shocking editorial, the Democrat-Reporter in Linden states that the KKK “would be welcome to raid the gated communities” in Washington, D.C., referring to the residences of Democrats and “Democrats in the Republican Party.” The editorial, written by Publisher Goodloe Sutton, expressed anger at both parties for “plotting to raise taxes in Alabama.” When contacted by the Montgomery Advertiser, Goodloe doubled down on his call for action, saying: “If we could get the Klan to go up there and clean out D.C., we’d all been better off... We’ll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them.” He denied calling for the lynching of Americans, saying: “These are socialist-communists we’re talking about.” Lawmakers from the state have urged Sutton to resign.

Free speech has limits - even for rabid fools.

[y66]

The 8 Most Common 2019 Tax Return Questions, Answered by Experts

[Winstonm]

What is wrong with these people?

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Pro-Russian Coast Guard lieutenant arrested with hit list of liberal senators wanted to establish ‘a white homeland’

[Winstonm]

Is it time to rethink this all-volunteer army?

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It is not uncommon for white nationalists to seek weapons and combat training through the military. Last year ProPublica exposed an active-duty Marine as a white supremacist with ties to Atomwaffen Division, a secretive neo-Nazi group whose members fantasize about a race war in the U.S. Atomwaffen deliberately recruits U.S. military personnel because of their training and access to weapons, a former group member told law enforcement officials.

[Winstonm]

A golf clap for this Republican.

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Republican Mark Harris said he believes a new election should be called amid ongoing scrutiny over absentee ballot activity in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District.

“I believe new election should be called,” the candidate told the North Carolina State Board of Elections during public testimony Thursday. “It’s become clear to me the public’s confidence in the 9th District seat general election has been undermined to an extent that a new election is warranted.”

Of course, his change of heart might be more about trying to stay out of prison for perjury.

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Earlier Thursday, Harris said he knew nothing of an alleged ballot-tampering scheme led by an operative he hired to work in his 2108 campaign.


Harris’s testimony came the day after his son, John Harris, a federal prosecutor, testified about the warnings he offered his father in phone calls and emails that he believed the operative had broken the law in a previous election.

[Winstonm]

Inversion alert: the 6 month treasury is yielding more today than the 2,3, and 5 year. Recession is in the air.

[Winstonm]

More bad news on the treasury inversion front. Today we had a 3-month/3-year inversion which is significant as the average recession lasts about 18 months. Looks like money is moving into mid-length treasuries in expectations of at least a significant slow down over the next 2-3 years.

[y66]

From Tyler Cowen's conversation with venture capitalist Sam Altman:

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COWEN: Young Napoleon shows up. What do you think after 5 minutes?

ALTMAN: How young? Like 18-year-old Napoleon or 5-year-old?

Quote

COWEN: Why has the tech world found education so hard to crack?

ALTMAN: Why can the tech world not convince parents to love and prioritize their children?

COWEN: Say a little more.

ALTMAN: There’s a lot of things technology can’t do. There are a lot of things that require human connection. There are a lot of things that require people. Technology can do some things, but I don’t think the biggest problem with our educational system is a technology one.

COWEN: It’s the human one?

ALTMAN: For sure.

I enjoyed Altman's observations about the network effect and what he would do if given $200 million to help St. Louis.

[kenberg]

 y66, on 2019-February-27, 11:56, said:

From Tyler Cowen's conversation with venture capitalist Sam Altman:



I enjoyed Altman's observations about the network effect and what he would do if given $200 million to help St. Louis.

That is one fascinating interview!

[y66]

Copy edit this!

The Times’s standards editor, Philip B. Corbett, invites readers to correct grammatical errors in recent New York Times articles.

[Winstonm]

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During a Senate Health Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) criticized the idea that parents should be required to vaccinate their children and perpetuated the notion that vaccines themselves could cause harm.

You would hope at some point morons like Rand Paul would be held accountable for his words - criminally accountable.

March 5, 2019

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A new decade-long study of more than half a million people found that the measles vaccine does not increase the risk of autism, further reinforcing what the medical community has long been saying about preventative shots.

Researchers from Denmark looked at a Danish population registry of 657,461 children, some that were vaccinated with the mumps, measles, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and some who were not. After over a decade of follow-up, 6,517 were diagnosed with autism. There was no increased risk of autism in children who had the MMR vaccine and no evidence that it triggered autism in susceptible children.

Source: USA Today

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Since 2003, there have been nine CDC-funded or conducted studies Cdc-pdf[PDF – 357 KB] that have found no link between thimerosal-containing vaccines and ASD, as well as no link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and ASD in children.

Source: CDC

[y66]

From Pritzker Prize Goes to Arata Isozaki, Designer for a Postwar World by Amy Qin at NYT:

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While his best known projects are in cities, Mr. Isozaki said last week that he was “more nostalgic about the rural projects.” Asked to pick a favorite, he named the Domus Museum (1993-1995) in A Coruña, Spain. Built atop a rocky outcrop by the Bay of Riazor, the museum features a curved slate-clad facade that resembles a sail billowing in the wind.

“Mr. Isozaki’s is an architecture that thrusts aside the shopworn debate between modernism and postmodernism, for it is both modern and postmodern,” the critic Paul Goldberger wrote in The Times in 1986. “Modern in its reliance on strong, self-assured abstraction, postmodern in the degree to which it feels connected to the larger stream of history.”

In 2017, Mr. Isozaki donated his vast collection of books and quietly moved with his partner, Misa Shin, from Tokyo to Okinawa in search of warmer climes. The couple rented a nondescript apartment with a view of the sea in a peaceful residential neighborhood. The neighbors have no idea that living in the peach-colored walk-up is a bona fide starchitect.

Despite having moved to what might be called the “Florida of Japan,” Mr. Isozaki said he has no immediate plans to retire. Recent building booms in the Middle East and Asia — and China, in particular — have allowed the architect to finally realize ideas for urban planning that he first conceptualized in his unbuilt project “City in the Air” (1962), which envisioned a multilayered city hovering above the traditional city. The opportunities were exciting.

Mr. Isozaki cited a poem he wrote early in his career called “Incubation Process” (1962), describing it as his first architectural work. The poem was raw and unrefined, he said, but after 60 years, he still holds onto its essential ideas.

“Urban planning which doesn’t include the idea of destruction,” the poem reads in part, “should be carried out in nursing homes.”

[Winstonm]

3 month treasuries: 2.47
3 year: 2.49
5 year: 2.49

This is getting serious. Lots of someones think hard times are coming.

[y66]

From A Word With Ian McShane by Kathryn Shattuck at NYT:

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Before he landed the role of Mr. Wednesday in “American Gods,” Ian McShane hadn’t read Neil Gaiman’s fantastical 2001 novel. Then he picked it up and, four readings later and counting, still hasn’t put it down.

“It’s not my preferred genre, as they say, but there was something rather thrilling about it,” he recalled. “It seemed like a perfect blueprint for a TV series because of all the ‘coming to America’ stories. You could go wherever you wanted within that world.”

“American Gods,” the book and series, presumes a world where deities are real — and walk among us. There are the old gods (like Loki, Bilquis and Anansi), who came to America through the beliefs of immigrants, and the new (Technical Boy and Media), who ascended through contemporary fixations.

And in the first season, the show’s creators, Bryan Fuller and Michael Green, trailed Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle), an aimless ex-con, and Mr. Wednesday, an eccentric grifter, on a serpentine cross-country road trip to visit the increasingly irrelevant old gods — and make the case for war against the upstarts trying to usurp their power.

Mr. Wednesday was eventually revealed to be no less than Odin, the omnipotent Norse all-father. Season 2 — returning to Starz on March 10 after a 21-month hiatus, during which Fuller and Green left the show — finds him preparing his ancient troops for an epic battle.

His fierce charm intact at 76, McShane is burning up the screen this spring, with “American Gods” followed by four films in April and May: “Hellboy,” “Bolden,” “John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum” and “Deadwood,” the long-gestating follow-up to the popular HBO cult western that ended in 2006, in which he’ll reprise his brutal Dakota Territory pimp and saloonkeeper, Al Swearengen. In a phone interview from Los Angeles, he recounted his own “coming to America” story and revealed which god he’d want to be.

Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.

A lot happened between Seasons 1 and 2 of “American Gods,” with the departure of the original showrunners and Gillian Anderson and Kristin Chenoweth. How has this whirlwind left you feeling?

Hey, that’s what happens in life. A little turmoil never hurt anybody as long as it came out slightly more creative in the end, and I think it maybe has.

In what way?

Where they are, where they’re going to, is to get back to Gaiman’s book a little more than the first season, which I thought was excellent and provocative and a lot of startling good things but tended to [stray] from the book. Season 2 is more about asking questions of Shadow, because he’s got to become more proactive, and concentrating on the gods themselves. And also bringing the new gods into it more, because they tended to be just too shadowy toward the end. So yeah, I think it’s quite a thrilling year.

You’re British but live mostly in Los Angeles. What’s your own “coming to America” story?

I first came back in ’75 and I’ve lived here now mostly permanently for the past 17 years while I work. It’s very odd what’s going on in America. I still think it’s a wonderful, wonderful country. It’s just strange times.

The series touches on immigration, racism, xenophobia and gun control. Did you have any idea how prescient it would be?

Well, it was very interesting what was happening when we did the first season of “American Gods.” The country has taken a serious lurch to the right, as much as they’d love to say it’s taken a serious lurch to the left. I don’t think America would know a socialist if they fell over him. They think it’s somebody who lives in a garret in Russia and has no telephone and no refrigerator. But that’s due to their lack of education. America’s been dumbed down over the years, which is a shame. It’s wonderful to see Congress now with a rainbow color, if you like, of immigrants and nationalities and people who love this country. They’re talking about it in a different way.

Let’s talk about your upcoming films, starting with “Deadwood.”

“Deadwood” was like being on an acid trip, like being transported back 15 years ago. People you’ve loved and known, some you’ve seen, some you haven’t — but you have a good time with them when you walk on that set, doing great work, loving the work you’re doing and hoping that people, when it comes out, will enjoy it.

Can you hint at the story line?

I can say it’s 10 years later, South Dakota just got statehood and [Gerald] McRaney is coming back as a senator — he plays George Hearst, who is sort of the villain of the piece — and it all connects in a strange, great way to the last episode when we left.

How has Al held up?

Ten years will make a difference, especially if you drink that much. But that’s life.

And I’m guessing his language is an obscenely poetic as ever?

Yeah, he may have the propensity for swearing but every swear word was written by David Milch. If you put a [expletive] in the wrong place you’re [expletive] because it was all rhythm. It was a deliberate attempt to shock.

What about “John Wick: Chapter 3”?

That will be big and that will be good.

Your character, Winston — the owner of the Continental hotel, neutral territory for assassins — let John get away at the end of Chapter 2. Will there be payback?

Well, the High Table doesn’t like anybody stepping out of line so maybe they’ll take me to task, giving John an out, even. And you’ve got Laurence Fishburne and me, and maybe we get together, maybe we’re unvirtuous. Who knows? Because nothing is the same.

I’ve heard that you aren’t going to be part of “The Continental,” the Starz spinoff.

I may give them a voice-over. You never know.

But you are in the reboot of “Hellboy.”

Hellboy, yeah! I think that’s going to surprise a lot of people. David [Harbour of “Stranger Things”] is a marvelous actor. He just fills out the role. It was nice and bittersweet taking over [Professor Bruttenholm] from a dear old friend of mine, John Hurt. But it’s not Part 3. It’s a complete reboot of [Guillermo del Toro’s] “Hellboy,” and I think they picked the right guy in David. It was a pleasure to work with him and be in Bulgaria for three weeks, a country I’ve never been to before. Greatest fresh vegetables I’ve ever tasted. And the scripts are funny and smart and bright, and the action is fantastic, and I have grandkids who love all that. They can’t wait.

Last question: The heart of “American Gods” is faith and belief. Are you a believer? And if so, who is your god?

I believe Jesus Christ is a great guy, absolutely, and if he came back again they’d kill him, absolutely. And not just because he was Jewish, either. They’d kill him because in this day and age, if you talk about anything you’re misinterpreted into something else. So if I was a god, I’d be the god of tolerance. Not a vengeful god — no. I’d be the god of tolerance and understanding and say, “Everybody is worth it.”

[johnu]

A humorous take on modern culture:

He Was Mad His Photo Was Used To Show All Hipsters Look Alike, But It Wasn’t Him

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A man threatened to sue a technology publication for using his image in a story about how all hipsters look alike, only to find out that the picture was of a different person.

Last week, MIT Technology Review posted an article titled “The Hipster Effect: Why Anti-conformists Always End Up Looking The Same,” which discussed a Brandeis University study about “the hipster effect,” or how nonconformists often end up conforming to counterculture conventions.

[kenberg]

Watching the story yesterday about bribes to get kids into "elite colleges", my first reaction was "My parents were better than that". But then I began to wonder if the young woman whose parents spent 15K in bribes feels unloved after learning that another parent spent 500K.. To say that I do not understand this severely understates the matter.