Lessons from History

Mother Theresa has caused a lot of pain and suffering. She would get world class medical treatment, while people would be dying in severe pain in her hospice and she would tell them some bs about suffering making them great. They also had poor sanitary practices at the hospices and would contract HIV. She is very much NOT a saint. https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-dark-side-of-mother-teresa…

"Percy Shelley, a famous poet from the Romantic Era, was the first to advocate for peaceful protests and he inspired Gandhi to adopt non-violent resistance. Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violent resistance influenced Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama. They had all followed Shelley’s philosophy and it helped create a new world. When Gandhi read Shelley’s poem, “The Masque of Anarchy” he was instantly captivated by its message for freedom through peace. It is known that Gandhi would often quote various passages from the poem to vast audiences during the campaign for India’s independence." https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/how-a-romantic-poet-inspired-g…

I think it is a point of historical interest that Stalin was a bank robber at one point, with his takings being used to fuel the revolution in Russia. https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/joseph-stalin-was-russias-grea… (I'm not suggesting that these thieves are a part of a revolution of any kind)

I probably didn't understand you original point well, and I not sure I understand it still. The point was that competition between states spurred innovation. But of course if all those states are constantly on the verge of collapse then I agree not much will happen. I would argue that in the later medieval period most European states had achieved a lot of stability which helped prosperity grow. Yet in relative terms, I would say Europe was still embroiled in a lot more wars than China even during the industrial revolution. Think of the 7-years war, Napoleonic wars, American war of independence. Why the industrial revolution happened in Britain is of course a big topic onto itself. I have argued before that it could in fact ONLY have happened in Britain due to the geography, resources and climate of Britain: https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/why-england-industrialized-fir… 1. France and the Netherlands lacked the coal and iron. 2. Germany didn't have the right kind of coal, and no as ideal conditions to dig canals and utilize water power as Great Britain. If you sort of go over a checklist of needed prerequisites, you are pretty much left with Britain. Sure it could have happened elsewhere but then only after a number of other innovation had happened. At the technological level the world existing in in the mid 1700s, Britain was really the only candidate. Internal stability is of course always good, but Italy, Spain, France, Greece etc could not…

It's almost poetic in a frightful kind of way: "city materials (concrete, iron and aluminum alloys, industrial glass and soil) were vaporized and mixed with sand, Ota River water and the atmosphere to produce the various glasses" Edit, related - how do elements get created: https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-six-billion-year-story-of-…

Scientific American publishes nonsense in the guise of science. They are not a reliably publication anymore. https://michaelshermer.substack.com/p/scientific-american-goes-woke https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6202 https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-shameful-decline-of-scient…

> a lot of his concerns seem entirely commonplace today Because a lot of his concerns dealt with the human condition. That will never change. Other things that were commonplace in roman times - graffiti and dick jokes... https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-lewd-graffiti-of-ancient-r… Nihil novum sub sole.

https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/bonhoeffers-theory-of-stupidit… FULL TEXT

Note that the linked video has a computer-generated voice-over, and is reading a direct transcript of a Medium post [1]. The medium post also links to a more complete source article [2] from War History Online. [1] https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/when-a-german-fighter-escorted… [2] https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/german-pilot-in-wwii…

Can't mention the history of the Lawn Chair without bringing up the first recorded Lawn Chair flight. https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-strange-sad-odyssey-of-law…

> Recent research has hypothesized that the earliest evidence of human lip kissing originated in a very specific geographical location in South Asia 3,500 years ago, from where it may have spread to other regions, simultaneously accelerating the spread of the herpes simplex virus 1. I find the implied thought process here hilarious: the first stone tool industry is three million years old [1], modern humans 300,000 years old, fire 50,000, and agriculture about 10,000 years old. But kissing? Yeah that’s gotta be high tech invented 4,500 years ago, a hundred years before the Egyptians gods invented felatio [2]. Yeah that tracks. At what point can we say without concrete scientific evidence that the likeliest scenario is that we were too busy making out for tens of thousands of years to record the invention of kissing? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan [2] https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/worlds-first-documented-blowjo…

Scientific American is already scraping the bottom of the barrel. You can’t trust any publication to be written in good faith. > Scientific American has hit rock bottom with this new op-ed that is nothing more than a hit piece on Ed Wilson, basically calling him a racist. > It is written by someone who apparently has no training in evolutionary biology, though she says she “intimately familiarized [herself] with Wilson’s work and his dangerous ideas on what factors influence human behavior.” https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/12/30/scientific-american-does-an-… https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-shameful-decline-of-scient… > Scientific American just did a hit job on one of America’s leading biologists and conservationists. All that, right after his passing. This marks a shameful low point in a steep decline of the magazine in recent years. > Scientific American is the oldest magazine in the US dealing with science. Continuously in print since 1845, it is known for being full of articles by world-class scientists on different topics. According to its About page, over 200 Nobel Prize winners have contributed to it.

You can't claim that taxation is a complex subject, yet begin by asking simplistic questions about it. Even then the concept is easy to understand, and expected rational behavior: the wealthy evade taxes because they like money and use their considerable resources to get it done. It's a fact that has thousands of years of historical precedent.[1] It's a pattern of behavior well documented in books, documentaries, and research on the subject. It's even part of the backdrop for dramas based on historical events, like the French Revolution. It doesn't require any conspiracy, only self interest. Even then, the wealthy do have yearly economic summits where tax policy is discussed. Why would you assume it's about how to raise their own taxes instead of the opposite? > Can you provide a year-by-year (or close enough) summary of the progression of this design and how it met your stated purpose? There's a fairly good summary at Brookings.[2] > I'll add my own observation to this: No, the US tax code is not designed to benefit the wealthy. It is based on incentivizing behavior through tax breaks/credits. Yes it is. Even narrowing the focus to their personal income tax after it's loopholed through corporate tax shelters, the extremely wealthy pay have a lower tax rate than workers earning $45k.[3] Workers who make $140k pay as much into social security as the richest people on earth who also have US citizenship. What's the benefit to society having less money for shared…