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Mar 11, 2024

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 @Noahpinion Iran is overdue for a Zoroastrian revival! Quote Marginal Revolution @MargRev · Feb 25 Claims about Iran (from the comments) http://dlvr.it/T3Czhh I’ve chatted with a lot of Iranians online in the past few years (they’re in Iran). Some of their takes (always subject to the “plural of anecdote is not “data”)… 1. Islam is seen by younger people as the doctrine of a failed government staffed by a bunch of crooks. 2. And it’s a foreign, Arab imposition, while the “real Iran” – the Achaenemids – were Zoroastrians, but quite willing to allow non-judgemental religious pluralism. 3. The IRGC is staffed by redneck losers, or by non-Iranians. (Iran has a separate “regular army” that all Iranian men must join as conscripts.) 4. There is a rather vast city-country divide, with people in the big Iranian cities largely non-religious or dabbling in Zoroastrianism, with the last stronghold of Islam being rural areas, particularly near Afghanistan (and around some of the religious cities). 5. The Iranian government is surprisingly weak in places like universities, where numerous people are openly hostile to it. 6. It also is pretty weak in its ability to control the Internet; it shuts down the entire Internet occasionally, but it doesn’t have much of a “great Chinese firewall” in place to selectively filter. 7. Many younger Iranians can read and write – and often speak – quite a lot of English, and they have access to Western websites. 8. Booze and drugs are highly available in Iran. My impression from my chats with them is Iran is far from the Islamic North Korea it’s often made out to be. — (src)(cached)

This seems plausible, although of course it's very hard to work off of anecdotes like this. From another article, there's some evidence that Iran is willing to end it's Cold War with the Saudis, which would make the Middle East much more peaceful.

jossfong 2d a roundup like this once a month would be an incredible resource - well done hank youtube.com/watch… I Believed These Four Lies youtube.com I Believed These Four Lies — (src)

This was a great video, and I really like the idea of posting times you've been wrong.

1d Biomedical innovation is miraculous — (src)

He goes on, quoting givewell: "To a first approximation, the economic value of increases in longevity in the last hundred years is about as large as the value of measured growth in non-health goods and services", here's the article about Cystic Fibrosis treatment.

scottstoyanovich 1d Fellas, I’m telling you, I gotta have more of that spice. — (src)

Longer Reads

• Thread of explanations of the various reasons a TikTok divesveture/ban is moving forward so fast. I had not heard about the content differences targeting kids from the Chinese version. The switch in position among top Republicans after recent donations have been crazy fast. They've also been taking stock away from current/former employees who say negative things about the company. I don't think other tech companies do that! Finally, Bytedance has declared they'd rather shut down TikTok than sell it is perhaps evidence that it's not a normal profit-driven company.

Flotsam and Jetsam

– The southern US has much better forest management than the western US. (src)(cached)
– Daily weed smoking associated with a 25% increase in heart attack risk and 42% increase in stroke risk. Weekly also shows some increase in risk. Here's the journal article. (src)(cached)
– China's military spending is way way up, maybe there won't be war, but they're definitely preparing for one. (src)(cached)
– Communists persecuted intellectuals, but they and their children are still more successful today. (src)(cached)
– Covert communication devices found on Chinese-manufactured cranes. (src)(cached)
– Speculation of whether Musk believes the insane right-wing stuff he's saying continues. Some of it he must know is bullshit, he’s getting Community Note’d. (src)(cached)
– Great video from Vox on why first past the post "the person with the most votes wins" systems result in two parties, as well as ways the US could change that gradually. (src)
– Apple still has access to the Chinese market, but that looks like it's changing fast. (src)(cached)

Tugboat for Today

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