"I Link, Therefore I Spam" Edition
Hello,
Obligatory shilling. This week I wrote for UnHerd about the violence perpetrated against critics of Islam.
I wrote for the Spectator about the opportunistic response to Simone Biles' departure from the Olympics.
I wrote for the Spectator World about the intellectual attempts of the 60s and 70s to normalise paedophilia.
I wrote for my paying subscribers about motivational clichés. I also wrote for my subscribers about how much of the left and right switched sides on coronavirus. Finally, I wrote for my subscribers about the odd case of the businessman, the porn star and the dead drug dealers. Yes, we like to get eclectic here at THE ZONE. Do consider subscribing if you have the spare cash and the inclination.
Devil's advocate. Tom Chivers reviews a book that criticises overheated climate change activism:
…if the Catholic Church was able to stomach someone advocating for the Devil, then climate science should be able to stomach one doing it for the sceptics.
I do not know enough about climate change to judge. Still, I think there is a tendency to think that exaggerating civilisational risks is forgivable because being overprepared is better than its opposite. As a pessimist I am sympathetic. But this ignores the scale - indeed, the existence - of externalities. Everything has a cost and costs must be weighed.
Razib reviews. I'm not sure how Razib Khan finds the time to sleep. The erudite and energetic science writer has had a brace of substantial reviews published this week on books related to genetics: one covering Paige Harden's social justice-infused offering and one covering Charles Murray's cold-eyed, generally ignored case for hereditarianism.
The mother tongue. People often think that Polish spelling and pronunciation must be the most difficult aspects of the language to learn. Actually, they are the easiest. Once you grasp that “cz” is equivalent to “ch”, “sz” is equivalent to “sh” and “ł” is equivalent to “w” you're on the right track. As Arika Okrent writes for Aeon, English spelling is pretty damn bizarre:
English spelling is ridiculous. Sew and new don’t rhyme. Kernel and colonel do. When you see an ough, you might need to read it out as ‘aw’ (thought), ‘ow’ (drought), ‘uff’ (tough), ‘off’ (cough), ‘oo’ (through), or ‘oh’ (though). The ea vowel is usually pronounced ‘ee’ (weak, please, seal, beam) but can also be ‘eh’ (bread, head, wealth, feather). Those two options cover most of it - except for a handful of cases, where it’s ‘ay’ (break, steak, great). Oh wait, one more… there’s earth. No wait, there’s also heart.
God bless it!
Home front. Last week I went to Katowice to pick up my new permanent residency card. I gained permanent residency in 2020 but Brexit meant that I had to repeat the process. What luck! It's like being able to eat the same doughnut twice!
In all seriousness, it is a great honour to have the right to live and work here - and, as I become a fretful soul when I have to deal with bureaucracy, a great relief. Now I believe I can stay here as long as I do not do something appalling like a commit a violent crime, which should be simple enough as long as no one does something heinous like slander my family name or compare Coldplay and Radiohead.
Covid quagmire. Richard Hanania asks if the hygiene theatre will ever end:
For a society that focuses so much on “mental health,” particularly when resulting from prejudice or socioeconomic deprivation, there seems to be remarkably little interest in what the overreactions to school shootings and COVID-19 are doing to children.
It's time to move on. Will the unvaccinated continue to get sick? Yes, as will smokers and drinkers. Will some vaccinated people also get sick? Yes, and drivers who stick to the speed limit and wear seatbelts get killed every day. Could more dangerous variants emerge? Yes, but it could be on the other side of the world. That could always happen. It is almost entirely out of our control, and vaccines, if one believes the science, can be updated.
A novel problem. Scott Alexander reflects on AI risk:
The problem isn’t just that it makes evildoing more efficient. It’s that it creates an entirely new class of actor, whose ethics we have only partial control over. Humans misusing technology is as old as dirt; technology misusing itself is a novel problem.
There might be very good technical arguments against conceiving of AI as an existential risk. My problem is when people lazily dismiss it as a sci fi fantasy. One can easily imagine someone saying in the 1800s, “Bombs destroying cities? A craft that takes one to the moon? A little box through which one can talk to anybody in the world? Sheer fantasy.”
Walking to Byzantium. A fun Leigh Fermoresque account of youthful travelling from the irrepressible Henry Hopwood-Phillips:
I’d never been dehydrated before. Struggling to remain captain of my own cockpit, I swooned before sputtering images and mirages as if in flu’s delirium. After miles of solitude, despair set in. Nothing was funny, but I took refuge in laughter. What a silly little man I was, exactly the sort I’d deplore. I’d die like this, not shrouded in mystery, glamour or Byronic heroism, but a relic of absurdity. I’d perish a mile from an ice-cream stand.
Have a lovely week,
Ben