One of the most frequently asked questions in alternate history discussions concerns whether China could have been first to the Industrial Revolution had Europe also – or instead – been conquered by the Mongols. Answer: It’s sort of a moot question. It seems to be quite unlikely that the Mongols were capable of conquering Europe in principle. In
Lazy Glossophiliac used to be a commenter at my blog. He contributed more than 1,000 comments to my blog between 2010-2017, and used to have a rather high opinion of my work: He was a good commenter and I appreciated having him around, even if towards the end he did start becoming more and more of a
It has now been three years since I moved to the Unz Review, and ten years since I started blogging. Retrospective here. There is a more complete account of my writing history, including lists of my best posts, at this page. My main hope for 2018 is to wrap up my Russia watching career –
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD RATING: 8/10. (Please note my ratings system is harsh and virtually no films get a 10). In 2011, American sci-fi giant Neal Stephenson bewailed the pessimism prevalent in the genre and called for writers to start thinking more positively about the possibilities of technology in order to inspire new generations to “get big stuff
Civilization V (2010) ★★ I think it’s by far the worst of the series. This is “Civilization for Dummies,” so to speak (as one reviewed called it). Consider: 1. The AI is primitive, as if it’s actually going backwards rather than forwards with time. Difficulty levels are determined by artificially giving the computer controlled civs
Tomorrow the Russian Reaction blog at https://akarlin.com/ will go live, so please reorient your bookmarks and feed subscriptions. The Unz Review is a webzine dedicated to publishing “interesting, important, and controversial perspectives that are largely excluded from the American mainstream media.” You may know Ron Unz, its owner and chief editor, from my old discussions with him at this blog about
Basically a summary of the yarowrath “emergence” ideology as taken from his Facebook (h/t Mike Dodd for preserving it). Tristan is my favourite Facebook friend, because he is very sensitive. So, he provides more high-res map for navigating nuances of American culture than Sia and Korman, who are more reserved. BTW, Tristan, have you seen
“The Paleo Manifesto” by John Durant, published in 2013. Rating: 5/5. Most books on the paleo diet follow a set pattern: An inspirational story about how the author wrecked his health with junk food or vegetarianism before the caveman came riding on a white horse to the rescue; an explanation of why, contrary to the
I have managed to find 3 polls querying people on their attitudes towards radical life extension. By far the most comprehensive one is PEW’s August 2013 Living to 120 and Beyond project. The other two are a poll of CARP members, a Canadian pro-elderly advocacy group, and by Russia’s Levada Center. While PEW and Levada polled a representative sample
This conference is organized by brain health and IQ researcher Hank Pellissier, and its aim is to bring all kinds of quirky and visionary folks – “Biohackers, Neuro-Optimists, Extreme Futurists, Philosophers, Immortalist Artists, Steal-the-Singularitarians” – together in one place and have them give speeches and interact with each other and the interested public. One of the lecturers is
As you can see the site has had a major redesign, and new blog posts will start appearing as of this Monday. Here are the major changes: (1) Back to self-hosted, after a year and a half at WordPress.com. There will be no repeat of the pharma hack that torpedoed the old Sublime Oblivion. My
Is summarized below for each state (source) – and it shows some very interesting patterns. The average life expectancy of Asian-Americans (86.5 years) is 4 years higher than in Japan – the longest-lived big East Asian country. Taiwan and South Korea are at around 80; Hong Kong is at 83; Singapore is at 81. The
This Sunday I had the pleasure of meeting up with Hank Pellissier, who used to work for the IEET, a futurist/transhumanist institute, and is now a blogger-journalist and amateur researcher at the Brighter Brains blog. As one may glean from the title of that blog, his current area of major interest lies in IQ and how you
What striking about Syria is how so many people insist on speaking about it in profoundly moralistic, Manichaean terms. This is complete nonsense, given that its civil war isn’t a showdown between democracy and dictatorship, but an ethnic and religious conflict. Here’s a more realistic guide: The Assad regime The rhetoric: He kills his own people!