2020

All years and months

Indus Valley, Sintashta, and Andamanese ancestry in select grioups

Razib Khan runs qpAdm models for South Asian populations, using Indus, Sintashta and Andamanese ancestry, finding for example that Ror have more of both than Kamboj and Uttar Pradesh Brahmins…

Razib Khan9 February 2020101 comments
National Register of Citizens (NRC) and Citizenship Amendment Act(CAA)

Shares Kushal Mehra’s explanation of the NRC and CAA and asks readers to explain why they are controversial, since the poster does not understand the objections.

AnAn9 February 202073 comments
Open Thread – Brown Pundits

Open thread for general discussion, asking readers to keep other posts on topic, with links to the podcast, Twitter, RSS feed and Patreon.

Razib Khan8 February 202047 comments
Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away with War Crimes

Posts the publisher’s blurb for Phil Miller’s book on Keenie Meenie Services, the British mercenary firm accused of war crimes from Sri Lanka to Nicaragua, with extracts from an Outlook…

sbarrkum8 February 20201 comment
Predictable, enormously surprising

Cross-posted from Zenpundit, links reports on BlackRock, the European Investment Bank and the World Economic Forum, arguing that after climate scientists and the US military, financial risk analysts are now…

Charles Cameron7 February 20200 comments
Poems: climate, impeachment, climate

Three short poems on climate, impeachment and floods and firestorms, which question whether poems about passing politics are worth writing and invoke the Chinese poet Han Shan.

Charles Cameron7 February 20200 comments
Setting the ground straight on the Indian economy

Responding to commenters, the author proposes nominal industrial output as the best starting measure of a national economy, since goods prices vary little by place, and notes Germany’s output is…

Vikram7 February 20200 comments
Brahmin please!

Discussing a study following Swedish families over seven generations, the post notes that ancestors’ status shapes life chances long afterwards despite high mobility, which fits Gregory Clark’s work on persistent…

Razib Khan4 February 202073 comments
One or other, both or neither?

Reposted from Zenpundit, compares Trump’s claim to be the Chosen One with Modi supporters’ ‘Special One’, then turns to the Buddhist catuskoti, or tetralemma, and Nagarjuna’s statements on suchness.

Charles Cameron3 February 20205 comments
Ammar Rashid and the frailty of Pakistan’s state narrative

Defending Ammar Rashid, an Awami Workers Party officeholder, artist and teacher arrested while protesting the detention of PTM leader Manzoor Pashteen, the author argues his case exposes how fragile the…

AbdulMajeed Abid2 February 20203 comments