Other links

Here are some links that have nothing to do with decadence.

1. "Withersdale Church is an important and historic church and there is a box pew in the church for use by the owners of Thorpe Hall." That comes from the particulars of a house for sale in Suffolk. I did not know that that sort of thing is still allowed. I suppose I would have thought it quite wrong in the days when churches were full, but now I think it is charming. It says something that it is worth mentioning to potential buyers.

2. Everything you thought you guessed about the BBC is true: "A whiteboard would be marked up with a clumsy grid system. The grid would revolve around a set of key identities such as “woman”, “northern” or “poc” (person of colour). These would then be cross-categorised with political stances such as “Brexiteer”, “Tory” or “progressive”. Our task would then be to ensure that any proposed panel contained a complete balance of all these attributes. ... There is an understandable nervousness about criticising these sorts of editorial practices since it might provide material for the reactionary commentariat who have no desire to see any diverse voices in journalism at all.  ... Off-camera, a highly influential Westminster social circle revolves around trips to various holiday homes in continental Europe, where various MPs and the journalists who are supposed to report on them have long been playing just as hard as they work." Heaven forbid that the BBC provide material for the "reactionary commentariat". And does the BBC think that only "reactionaries" consider it utterly stupid to try to find a brown-skinned northern Remainer to balance a gay southern female Leaver or what have you?

3. Did you know that African Americans are much less likely to support the Democrats when no-one is watching? There are basically loads of shy black Tories in the US. Of course, having a darker skin and being right-wing in this country opens one up to all sorts of attacks from the left.

4. Fascinating article on how odd Germany is (economically).

5. I don't talk much about football. But you will want to see the worst 20 seconds of football ever played. You will also want to see the time when Donald Trump helped Saint and Greavsie to draw the teams for the Rumbelows Cup. That and Home Alone 2 as well: the Presidency will probably not take up much space in his biographies.

6. Babies. "The Left-leaning IPPR think-tank has addressed the “baby gap” — the difference between the number of children wanted by women and those they actually had — which is running at about 100,000 a year [in the UK]. ...  A Guardian survey in 2014 found a third of couples would have more children were they not so expensive; indeed if British women had all the babies they wanted, our birth rate would be above replacement level. In the US, which has seen huge falls in fertility in the past decade, 40% of women do not have all the children they wish." More here. If you have all the children you want in your family then you are a lucky person, and you are quite possibly very rich. This series of tweets, which has enjoyed some prominence, is relevant too: "Some might say: that's absurd, of course a family can't cover an entire health insurance premium, a 3-bed house, and college for two kids on a single worker's salary, that's not how anyone lives. But ... in the past a family COULD do that. Just not anymore." And so is this, from the BBC, about a chap in Seattle who decided to pay everyone $70k: ""Before the $70,000 minimum wage, we were having between zero and two babies born per year amongst the team," he says. "And since the announcement - and it's been only about four-and-a-half years - we've had more than 40 babies."" That is a demonstration of what economists refer to as the theory of revealed preferences.

7. Bad data visualisations with a big Indian (and therefore cricket) focus.

8. This is a rather specialised kind of humour, but I liked it. Abstract: "In recent years, a number of prominent computer scientists, along with academics in fields such as philosophy and physics, have lent credence to the notion that machines may one day become as large as humans. Many have further argued that machines could even come to exceed human size by a significant margin. However, there are at least seven distinct arguments that preclude this outcome. We show that it is not only implausible that machines will ever exceed human size, but in fact impossible". You might have spotted what it is really about.

9. Losing Taiwan means losing Japan.

Decadence?

I am afraid that my linkage of the links below is rather contrived, but each link is itself recommended.

1. Douthat on decadence. And Thiel on Douthat on decadence. And Sixsmith on Douthat on decadence. (One of Sixsmith's better ones, I think: "In our lazier moments we are not opposing decadence but merely providing a soundtrack.")

2. Douthat says "A society that generates a lot of bad movies need not be decadent; a society that makes the same movies over and over again might be." Well, there are just 10 types of film - judging by their posters.

3. Douthat also tells us that, "Under decadence, Barzun wrote, “The forms of art as of life seem exhausted, the stages of development have been run through. ..."." Decadence is consistent with the highest levels of technical achievement - which brings me to Happy Birthday in the Styles of 10 Classical Composers. This really is incredibly good, if you like that sort of thing.

4. Another great Silicon Valley nanny job advert: "strategically think through vacation options based on the developmental levels of the kids and the need for the mom to relax";"Conduct research into domestic and global vacation options based on criteria, populate information into a simple Excel spreadsheet, recommend and book vacations, track vacation expenses in Excel including track vacation home deposits getting returned"; "Family eats organic and is allergic to cow and goat dairy, chicken eggs, green beans and watermelon" (you knew there'd be allergies, but did you guess watermelon?); "'Mom is a CEO and needs to relax on weekends". And here's an interview with the CEO Mom herself. What does Douthat say? Just that "... the promise of Silicon Valley [is] as much an article of faith for those of us watching from the outside as for its insiders; ... the one place where American innovation was clearly still alive."

5. Douthat talks about politics and economics. Starting with economics, here is Ryan Avent: "I have lived most of my adult life—and certainly the years since I began writing for The Economist—within the sphere of wonky technocrats, the quote-unquote reality-based community, people who live and breathe white papers and cost-benefit analyses and who feel certain that we can engineer our way to a better society if only we listen closely to the experts and the data. But in the years since the onset of the financial crisis, and for a number of reasons, a rift has opened within this world. On the one side stand those whose faith in the wonk worldview was not particularly shaken by the events of the past 13 years or so. [...] On the other side of the rift are those who have begun to suspect that some of the assumptions embedded in neoliberal policies were faulty." Frankly, if you haven't at least entertained the idea that the global financial crisis - and the reactions to it by those in power - should alter your worldview then you can't claim to be quote-unquote reality-based at all: "What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what Donald Trump and Nigel Farage said would happen has come to pass", as Lord Melbourne almost said.

6. ... which brings us onto the more purely political. "Both populism and socialism, Trump and Bernie Sanders, represent expressions of discontent with decadence ...". On this side of the Atlantic, we have Brexit and so I can seamless segue into Tom McTague, who continues his run as one of the consistently best writers on British politics by writing about Brexit here, and Matthew Goodwin, who also continues his good run here, echoing a point I made in the series of posts that I started here: "The story of how Brexit happened is likely to be one of those political stories that "everyone knows", even if what everyone knows might not quite be right." Leavers are, as Goodwin points out, quite nice really. But Remainers will write the history books and teach our children. The 1066 And All Thats of the future will no doubt describe the Leavers as Wrong and Repulsive. (Until the revisionist / Buzzfeed historians of the 2300s tell us that Everything You Thought You Knew About Brexit is Wrong!!!)

7. Douthat's NY Times piece does not mention universities, although I'm sure his book does. Anyway, here is a shocking article on how odd US universities are becoming.

8. And as for relations between the sexes and family life .... "I will try and explain what happens when mating meets politics using a speculative and overgeneralized model. This is a descriptive account of what I think is actually happening, not a moral sermon. There will be charts, and memes, and dating stories." If that's your sort of thing, then you will like this.

9. Next is an aspect of decadence not in Douthat's article: pornography. This is well worth a read: "For anyone born since 1995, it is not necessary to ask how they became aware of sex. It was by watching PornHub on a friend’s smartphone at the age of 13." And so is this (although be aware that (a) it is long - to make the obvious comment, you might want to skip to the good bits, (b) I have no idea if the science is at all accurate and (c) it describes some disgusting things that you might prefer not to know about).

10. Finally, last but by no means least, John Bercow discussed here, as is only right and proper.

Social conservatives and cultural conservatives

This is John Gray on John Gray-ish form (i.e. well worth reading) telling us Why the Left Keeps Losing.

There is a lot of good stuff in the piece, but for this post I just want to talk about this bit:

"A Blue Labour takeover along the lines of that mounted by Blair cannot occur when the mass membership recruited by Corbyn is made up overwhelmingly of progressives. Even if a takeover was feasible it is doubtful whether voters would support a programme of moral conservatism, which Blue Labour also proposes. The resistance to progressivism in social matters is focused chiefly on law and order and immigration. There is no detectable enthusiasm for the restoration of traditional family structures or sexual mores. Working-class voters want security and respect, not a wholly different form of life."

This is completely true. And it is an important point for the future of the Left - and the future of the Right. More below.