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Events always fade from history - yet it seems that people are always forgeting this. I'd previously written up Is the Holocaust fading from memory? to which the answer was of course yes, but probably less than a lot of other historical events. Been thinking of this again recently, prompted by this tweet:

this is always the context in which you have to take 'these Chinese kids have never heard of the Tiananmen square massacre' - like, the majority of people everywhere are unaware of major events that occurred before they were adults. https://t.co/Ikf3m1Wfs9

— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) October 13, 2019

Here's another recent example from my twitter feed:

WTF from the classroom: today gave a lecture on the white supremacist systems of Jim Crow & Apartheid. Showed a docu which featured a young Nelson Mandela, I paused & asked if they knew him, no one did. I revealed he was Nelson Mandela & half the class hadn’t heard of him. Laawd!

— Blues and Abstract Truth (@barnor_hesse) October 24, 2019

(The original tweet here also isn't the only time that that tweet about people having forgotten Abu Ghraib got retweeted into my feed recently).

More Art Than Science

"When I hear someone say “it’s more art than science,” what I really hear is “it’s at least as much luck as skill.”"

U.S. Jews are more likely than Christians to say Trump favors the Israelis too much

One of the things I've come to expect in polling data which people tend not to think.

The Surprising Preference for Hiring Formerly Incarcerated Blacks in Oakland

"blacks with a criminal record appear more likely to be called by a potential employer than whites with a criminal record and blacks without a criminal record."

When Male Runners Lose to Women

"Longer than the 42.16 kilometres of a marathon, ultramarathons mercilessly have no upper limit ... these long-distance races have led to a reexamination of gender limits in racing: female competitors have begun outrunning their male counterparts with greater frequency—and by large margins."

From Male, Female or Both? Reactions to Intersex Americans Through History

In the early to mid-19th century, doctors began to record and discuss encounters with intersex people in medical journals. One of these people was Levi Suydam, a 23-year-old white man and property owner in Connecticut who tried to register to vote in 1843. When someone challenged Suydam’s application on the grounds that he was more female than male and therefore couldn’t vote, a doctor from Hartford named William James Barry stepped in to examine him.

Based on the presence of some male sex organs, Barry decided Suydam was “a male citizen, and consequently entitled to all the privileges of a freeman,” as he wrote in The New York Journal of Medicine. That spring, Suydam was able to cast the deciding vote for the Whig party in a local election. Yet afterwards, Barry wondered whether he’d been wrong. He and another doctor found out Suydam menstruated and lacked facial hair. They also realized Suydam was sexually attracted to men, a characteristic the doctors considered inherently female.

Barry didn’t record how his follow-up examinations affected Suydam, so we don’t know if he ended up losing his right to vote.

Moral Memories and the Belief in the Good Self

"First, there is a tendency for people to willfully and actively forget details about their own moral transgressions but not about their own morally praiseworthy deeds. Second, when past moral transgressions are not forgotten, people strategically compare their more recent unethical behaviors with their more distant unethical behaviors to foster a perception of personal moral improvement over time."

Harvard falls to the diversocrats

Previous clients of the lawyer who lost his position at dean of one of Harvard's residential college after choosing to represent Harvey Weinstein: "it isn’t unusual for Professor Sullivan to represent unpopular clients. In the past, he has represented Aaron Hernandez, the former New England Patriots player accused of a double murder, and the family of Usaamah Rahim, a man accused of being a terrorist who was shot by the Boston Police. But his decision to represent the man at the centre of the #MeToo scandal proved too much for some radical students". Power in society and who holds it is often better examined by observation rather than claims highlighted in the media as to who holds it.

Hot Sauce in Oatmeal Makes Cold Weather More Bearable

Western breakfasts tend to be sweet - but there are a lot of other approaches you can take. Been experimenting with a few alternatives of late. (Relatedly, I'm not sure that I've ever seen a pho restaurant in the West open during breakfast hours, but it's the most popular breakfast in Vietnam.