Richard Harper

This!! What almost all educators miss. It isn't so much about 'practicing recall' as encoding, chunking, 'turning on the memory-maker' (hippocampus) during the process of forming what is to be recalled later. (HSAM's, chess expertise, passions, many things make this clear.)

The most interesting response to Trump's Tweet of four denunciations. Jimmy Dore show youtube.com/watch?v=LJfjiC… ..

@gmiller @BeverlyHallberg Unsure how often this happens, a bright and attractive woman with potential gets a Ph.D. and shortly after 'marries up' and maybe two-thirds of the time drops out of academics. Does a Ph.D. now act as kind of a 'finishing school' for some fraction of women? idk

Serious question: How much total time, energy, and money did these women invest in finding a good husband, versus getting degrees and pursuing their careers? If they've gone to college & worked full-time for 20 years, they've invested about 40,000 hours in degrees and career. Did they invest more than 40,000 hours in finding a husband? Or more like 10% that much? (4,000 hours)? Or 2% as much? (800 hours)? I'd be very, very surprised if their 'revealed preferences' actually revealed that they're prioritized finding a husband over pursuing their career.

I’m 46 and have worked in DC for 26 years. During that time, I’ve met and befriended many women in high-level careers. Not one has ever told me she chose her career over marriage. In fact, all of them were trying to find a husband. The idea that Millennial or Gen X women broadly chose careers over marriage—at least anecdotally—just isn’t true.

Praise God!

I HAVE MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE: Hinduism lasted nine hours. And for the first time in two weeks, the mistake wasn't converting. The mistake was reading too much. Last night I was on the floor. Incense burning. Ryann's good lavender incense, the fourteen dollar one. I was deep in the Bhagavad Gita. Krishna is explaining to Arjuna that the self is eternal, that death is an illusion, that attachment to outcomes is the source of suffering. And I'm sitting there nodding like I understand Sanskrit. Then I hit chapter two, verse 47. "You have a right to perform your duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions." I read it again. Then again. Then I set the book down and stared at the wall for about twenty minutes. Because that's Buddhism. That's basically Buddhism. The guy who FOUNDED Buddhism was Hindu. Siddhartha Gautama was born Hindu, raised Hindu, trained in Hindu philosophy, and then one day sat under a tree and said "what if we kept the reincarnation part but dropped all the gods?" Buddhism is Hinduism's breakup album. I have been sitting on this floor burning incense for nine hours worshipping thousands of gods and the entire time the answer was to worship NONE of them. The Buddha looked at the same tradition I just discovered and said "the gods aren't the point. The suffering is the point. Stop chasing. Stop attaching. Stop converting to a new religion every eleven hours, Derek." He didn't say that last part. But he meant it. I can feel it. I blew out the incense. I closed the Bhagavad Gita. I sat in silence. No gods. No statues. No clay tablets. No ankhs. No wine. No fire. No hammer. No incense. No costume. Nothing. Just me sitting on the floor in the dark doing absolutely nothing for the first time in two weeks. It was terrifying. Ryann came downstairs at 5am. She's used to finding me in various states of religious crisis at this hour. She looked at me. No incense this time. No book. No statue. No costume. Just me sitting in the dark. She said "what happened to Hinduism?" I said "I let it go." She said "you let it go?" I said "Ryann, the Buddha taught that attachment is the root of all suffering. I have been attaching to a new religion every day for two weeks. I have been the living embodiment of attachment. The Buddha would look at me and use me as a teaching example of what NOT to do." She sat down next to me. She said "so what are you now?" I said "nothing." She was quiet for a very long time. Then she said "Derek, this is either the most profound or the most concerning thing you've said in two weeks." I said "I think it might be both." She said "are you okay?" I said "I don't know. But I think not knowing might be the point." She put her hand on my shoulder. She said "this is my favorite religion so far." I said "it's not a religion, Ryann. It's the absence of one." She said "exactly." Then she said "does this one have a costume?" I said "no." She said "does it have incense?" I said "no." She said "does it require me to buy anything, replace anything, reassemble anything, or explain anything to a second grade teacher?" I said "no." She said "I'm in." Ryann just converted faster than I did. Two weeks of resistance and the religion with no gods, no costumes, and no purchases is the one that got her. I called Hugo Mendez. He picked up and just waited. I said "Buddhist." He said "Derek, a man who spent two weeks chasing gods was always going to end up at the religion that says stop chasing. That's not a prediction. That's a diagnosis." I said "but I'm here." He said "you're here the way a man who falls down a flight of stairs is at the bottom. Technically correct. Stylistically catastrophic." I can't even argue. Andrew Henry update: the thread is quiet for the first time in two weeks. Andrew texted: "Nobody is betting. Hugo predicted it but refused to take money. He said 'this one felt inevitable, not clever.' Goodacre said 'I think he's actually landing.' Tabor said 'the boy is finally tired.' Richard Miller said nothing. Then thirty minutes later he sent a single message: 'This is the first defensible position he's held all week.'" RICHARD MILLER CALLED ME DEFENSIBLE WITHOUT A QUALIFIER. No "more defensible." No "the bar is on the floor." Just defensible. I am framing that text. I called Joseph A.P. Wilson. I said "Joe, I went from Hindu to Buddhist." He said "of course you did. Buddhism emerged from the same Indian philosophical tradition. Siddhartha didn't invent a new religion. He pruned the existing one. Kept the meditation. Kept the reincarnation framework. Removed the gods and the caste system. It's the same tree, Derek. You just moved from the branches to the trunk." I said "Joe, am I ever going to stop finding the same tree?" He said "no. Because there's only one tree. You've been climbing around on it for two weeks thinking each branch was a different forest." I said "that is the most devastating thing anyone has said to me including Richard Miller and his arts and crafts comment." He said "you're welcome." Neal texted: "Buddhist." Then silence. No link. No "I did a video on this." Nothing. I waited a full minute. I said "Neal?" He said "I don't have a video on Buddhism." I said "I'm sorry, what?" He said "I don't have a video on Buddhism." I screenshot that text. I am printing it. I am framing it next to Trent Horn's cease and desist and Richard Miller's passing grade. In thirteen religions over twelve days, through Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, Greece, Scandinavia, and India, Neal Sendlak has had a video on EVERYTHING. Buddhism broke him. I said "Neal, how does it feel?" He said "how does what feel?" I said "to not have a video." He said "I'm already scripting one. You've got about six hours before I catch up." I said "FOR ONCE IN THIS ENTIRE SERIES I AM AHEAD OF YOU." He said "enjoy it. I type fast." Justin from Deconstruction Zone called and said "the casseroles were samsara, Derek. I was trapped in a cycle of casseroles. The Gita freed me. The Buddha showed me the door." I said "WHAT DOOR?" He said "the one where you stop making casseroles." This man went from Methodist potlucks to Buddhist enlightenment in two weeks and the casserole was his bodhi tree. Michael Jones texted just three words: "No god, Derek?" I said "none." He said "what do you do when the silence doesn't answer back?" I said "you sit with it." He said "I sit with someone." I said "Michael, I just dropped every god in human history." He said "and yet you're still texting me about it. Sounds like someone's still looking." I didn't respond. Because he might be right. Trent Horn update: twelfth email. emptiness.is.form@gmail.com. "Trent, I've let go of all gods. Including yours. The Buddha says attachment is suffering. I was attached to emailing you. I'm letting that go too. This is my last email. Namaste." I'm lying. It's not my last email. But it felt like the most Buddhist thing to say. Wes Huff: still on read. Thirteen religions. Twelve days. I have now worshipped every major religious tradition in human history and Wes Huff has not responded to a single text. The man's silence is more disciplined than my meditation. The channel is now MythNothing. First video: "I Dropped Every God and Here's What Happened." Second video: "The Buddha Was a Hindu Who Quit: A Love Story." Ryann left a note. But this one was different. No count. No list. No complaints. Just: "The house is quiet. The incense is out. The costumes are piled in the corner. You're sitting on the floor doing nothing and somehow it's the first time in two weeks I feel like you're actually here. Whatever this is, stay a little longer." I'm staying. The floor is enough. The silence is enough. The nothing is enough. Or it will be. For about eleven hours. Until I Google something else at midnight.

@DerekPodcast Alexander. Your next stage? Ushered in the Hellenistic Age. Redefined what it meant to be Greek. (No longer tracing paternal lineage to Iliad. Respect Gr gods; Gr education; Gr language; Participate in a polis; Etc.) Christianity founded by Hellenized Jews. Syncretism.

This person is super convincing. It has me questioning my entire life.

This week, @ICAJournal published a major article by @Herasight scientists (@_twolfram et al.) on using "polygenic scores" (scores based on a person's DNA, abbreviated PGS) to predict intelligence, health diagnoses, and life outcomes. Here's a quick summary of their findings: ✅The PGS predicted intelligence pretty well: r = .45. (To put this in perspective, socioeconomic status usually predicts IQ at r ≈ .20 to .30). ✅Higher PGSs for IQ also predicted better higher occupational prestige (2nd image) and better mental health outcomes (3rd image). ✅The PGSs were less predictive for people with non-European ancestry (especially African Americans), which is expected. ✅The PGSs were equally predictive across the range of socioeconomic statuses (4th image), which is evidence against the Scarr-Rowe effect that predicts that genes will have a weaker influence in low-SES individuals than middle- and upper-class individuals. These findings have major practical and theoretical implications. From a practical perspective, Herasight is an embryo selection company. This study means that when their customers select the smartest embryo during in vitro fertilization, they are also generally picking a future child that has better mental health and a more prestigious occupation as an adult. It sounds like sci-fi, but it is reality today. From a theoretical perspective, this study reveals a lot about the genetic architecture of the psychological traits: generally, the same genes that make a brain smarter also make it less susceptible to mental health diagnoses. Read the full article (with no paywall) here: icajournal.scholasticahq.com/article/158459…

I was thirty-something years old when Iranian students dragged me into a room and told me I wasn't going anywhere. Four hundred and forty-four days later, I walked out. I've spent the decades since trying to make sense of what happened — and what keeps happening — between our two countries. So don't talk to me about Iran like it's an abstraction. I lived inside that confrontation. I felt it. Which is why I'm not ready to write off this ceasefire, even though everything about it is maddening. Negotiations in Pakistan may produce nothing. The talks could collapse before they get started. I've seen American diplomacy with Iran fail more times than I can count, and usually for the same reasons — too much pride, too little patience, and Israel holding a match in the corner of the room. But here's what I know in my bones: another war won't break Iran. We just tried. It didn't work. Iran doesn't break — it absorbs, it adapts, and it waits. I watched that stubbornness up close for 444 days. What bothers me most isn't that Iran is winning this moment — it's that we handed it to them. Tehran's framework is running these negotiations. Iran still controls the Strait of Hormuz. Still collecting tolls. Trump looked at their proposal and called it workable. I never thought I'd see the day, but here we are. Iran wants everything on the table — sanctions, enrichment rights, American troops out, and a deal that covers what's happening in Lebanon and Gaza too. That's a lot to swallow. And Israel, which wasn't invited to this conversation, is already making clear it has no intention of being constrained by it. That's the part that worries me the most. Because if Israel keeps bombing and Washington can't or won't stop it, none of this holds. And yet — and I say this as someone who has every reason to distrust Tehran — I don't think we go back to all-out war. Not because anyone has suddenly gotten wise, but because the math doesn't work. A second round ends the same way. Iran still controls the Strait. The global economy still flinches when Tehran flexes. What we're heading toward isn't peace. It's something smaller and more precarious — two countries silently agreeing not to destroy each other today, with no paperwork and no guarantees. I know what it's like to survive on something that fragile. For 444 days, that's all I had.

In cities where states are weak, Toughness becomes defensively necessary, habitual and even glorified. Young men may project dominance to gain respect, deter attacks and avoid humiliation

@zoom_earth As too with sunspots on the Sun.

A perfect example of the Coriolis effect at work. Twin cyclones, one in each hemisphere, spinning in opposite directions, and prevented from crossing the equator.

The disastrous effects of the mass migration of millions of Muslims into Europe has demonstrated that the ideology of Islam retains its hold on the minds of the indoctrinated even after they move to civilised countries. Being taught from infancy, and continuing to believe in adulthood, that the sum and summit of all knowledge is a book compiled by an illiterate Arab warlord and paedophile in a cave up a mountain in Saudi Arabia in the early-Seventh Century clearly impairs the cognitive development of Muslim children. 49 of the 50 Muslim-majority countries (the exception is Malaysia on 90.92) have an average IQ score below 90. Of these, 25 countries have an average IQ score between 80 and 89, indicating difficulty in learning skills or graduating from a UK secondary school or only doing so with low grades. 12, a quarter of all Muslim countries, have an average score between 70 and 79, indicating cognitive impairment, difficulty with learning and abstract thinking. And 12 more Muslim countries have an average score below 70, indicating what in the West is categorised as an intellectual disability. Britain has an average IQ of 100. Subjecting half the population (female children and adult women) from the moment they are born to barbaric religious interdictions that, in the most orthodox regimes — Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran — ban them from education, employment and travel, and in all Muslim-majority countries confine them to the home as child-bearers and home-keepers, is another way in which IQ is driven down. So does raising Muslim men in a culture of male chauvinism, misogyny, sexual violence, rape and educational and professional underachievement. Muslim men are overwhelmingly uneducated, unskilled and financially poor compared to the native male populations in Europe. Indeed, Muslim men in Britain have the lowest employment rate, by far the lowest median salary, the smallest proportion with degrees in higher education and by far the least household wealth of any religious group. Even the few who actually work in unskilled and low-skilled jobs earn less than the Muslim women who are in employment So does the suppression of thought and cultural freedom within the limits proscribed by a medieval religion that have been written into the legal framework of the country as Sharia law. And so does normalising and promoting marriage between first cousins and even siblings in order to keep wealth within families and clans, resulting in a higher likelihood that children from such marriages will have recessive genetic disorders compared to the general population. The 28 countries across the world with the highest rates of first-cousin marriages are all Muslim-majority countries. These include 7 of the 8 countries that are Islamic States, led, most concerningly for Britain, by the Islamic State of Pakistan, a military dictatorship that is the model on which Britain is being Islamised, and in which the average IQ is 83.43. So while poverty, poor nutrition and poor education all play a part in a nation’s low average IQ scores, there is no ideology that has done more than Islam to suppress the cognitive development of its citizens, intellectually and biologically, and in doing so to create and sustain their poverty, poor nutrition and poor education. Islam, in other words, is a vicious cycle of cognitive impairment, intellectual repression and cultural censorship. If you want to rule over a materially impoverished, socially repressed, culturally dead and intellectually stunted population that embraces its own submission as obedience to the will of an unquestionable divine authority, Islam is the ideology of choice. This is the reason why, of the 50 Muslim-majority countries in the world, only 3 (Indonesia, Turkey and Lebanon) could be described as something other than a dictatorship, and the more they fall under Islamic rule the more they fall back into the dictatorships they were in the past From this we can conclude that one of the purposes of Islamising Britain is to reduce the IQ of British children and all that means for their intellectual, cultural and political development to that of Muslims. Indeed, the Islamisation of Britain must be seen as a programme of both social and genetic engineering. If you don’t want to see your daughters grow up muffled in a burqa and confined to the home because they’ll be raped by Muslim men if they leave it; or see your sons reduced to dhimmis (subject peoples) in their former homeland, employed in unskilled and servile jobs while forced to pay jiza to fund their demographic replacement; and you want to know what we, their fathers and mothers, can do to stop this happening, please consider purchasing a copy of my book, The Great Replacement and the Islamisation of Britain. The link is below. architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk/2026/02/26/the…

Meridionally consistent decline in the observed western boundary contribution to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

AMOC collapse, just saw this paper, April 8th, "Model-based estimates and proxy reconstructions suggest that the AMOC is already in decline and could be at or near a critical tipping point..", (They oc avoid specific predictions.) Link in Reply. (h/t S.O.)

Mosques get £18000 pounds each from the government for security. Churches get £199 each. Never forget how much our political elites hate you.

The ideology of the one-world authoritarian government movement bases it's legitimacy around mythologies about racism, religious persecution, apocalyptic climate change, and apocalyptic overpopulation.

Years ago I read about how the world's leading expert on the Anasazi tribe — which had been adopted by hippie leftists as a symbol of spiritual nobility and peacefulness — discovered that the tribe had in fact been vicious warmongers who ate their enemies. When he published his research, he received death threats from those hippie leftists.

IQ is real in real life

I want to talk about the scale of what’s coming for the UK over the next three months. Because I don’t think many people have joined the dots yet. The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed for over five weeks. Before this war, 135 ships passed through it every day. Now it’s 5 to 7. Over 600 vessels are still stranded. Iran has mined the strait, is charging tolls, and controlling who passes. The CEO of Abu Dhabi’s national oil company said it this week: “The Strait of Hormuz is not open. Access is being restricted, conditioned and controlled. That is coercion.” Two thirds of Gulf crude has no alternative route. 14 million barrels a day behind a 21-mile chokepoint. Energy bills are forecast to jump 20% in July. From £1,641 to nearly £2,000. The second major energy shock in four years. Petrol up over 15%. Diesel up nearly 30%. Wholesale gas rose 75% in under four weeks. Food inflation could hit 8% by June and 9% by December. Academics advising DEFRA say it could reach 12%. UK food prices are already 38% higher than before Covid. We’re only 62% self-sufficient in food. We import 60% of our nitrogen fertiliser. Red diesel for farming has surged 60%. Average arable farm income has fallen to £17,000, the lowest in over 20 years. Yesterday, China announced it’s halting all sulphuric acid exports from May. Sulphuric acid is essential for phosphate fertilisers, copper mining, oil refining, and battery manufacturing. A third of the world’s sulphur was already blocked by the Hormuz closure. Now the world’s largest exporter has pulled the other lever at the same time. The fertiliser crisis just got significantly worse, heading straight into planting season. Before the war, markets expected rate cuts. Now they’ve priced in two rate rises. Over 1,500 mortgage products have been pulled. Two year fixes have jumped from 4.8% to 5.5%. Nearly £1,000 a year extra on a £200k mortgage. Gone in weeks. Flights are next. A quarter of UK jet fuel comes from Kuwait, behind the strait. In early April, major carriers said they had five to six weeks of reserves. That clock is running. Ryanair’s CEO has warned 5-10% of summer flights could be cancelled. Iran’s strike on Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG complex, which handles 30% of the world’s helium, is estimated to take 3 to 5 years to repair. Helium is critical for semiconductors and MRI machines. That’s not a disruption. That’s structural damage. Chemical and steel manufacturers are imposing surcharges of up to 30%. Analysts are warning of permanent deindustrialisation. European gas storage was at just 30% after a harsh winter. If the strait stays restricted through summer, Europe can’t refill for next winter. In Ireland, fuel protests shut down Dublin for four days. The army was deployed. Over 100 fuel stations ran dry, with warnings of 500 by end of the week. Downing Street has held talks on the potential for mass protests here. The OECD has downgraded the UK more than any other G7 nation. Growth slashed from 1.2% to 0.7%. Inflation forecast nearly doubled to 4%, with some saying it could breach 5%. Starmer and Trump spoke this week about military options to reopen the strait. The UK is leading a 30+ nation coalition. But the ceasefire is already fracturing. Iran re-closed the strait over Israeli strikes on Lebanon. Reeves is boxed in by fiscal rules. Higher gilt yields are eating her headroom. And I haven’t heard a credible plan from anyone in Westminster. Energy. Food. Fertiliser. Aviation fuel. Mortgages. Industrial chemicals. Semiconductors. Shipping. Government borrowing. Political stability. All under stress. All compounding. This country imports 44% of its energy. Has almost no gas storage. Imports most of its food and fertiliser. Gets a quarter of its jet fuel from behind a mined strait. Every structural weakness built up over 20 years is being stress tested at once. The next three months aren’t going to be uncomfortable. They’re going to be defining

ISLAMIFICATION: Sweden reports over 6,000% more rapes per 100,000 people than Poland and over 600% more than El Salvador. They invited 1.1 million Islamic migrants into the country - more than 20% of the population is now foreign-born. They’re now offering Islamic migrants $37,000 to return home. Good luck.

Renewable-energy wood chips: When the AMOC collapses in five years or so and NW Europe climate becomes more like Greenland than the Azores burning wood chips probably won't seem like having been such a bad idea.

Did genetically smarter populations climb the civilization ladder earlier (e.g. Stone Age to Neolithic, BA to IA)? Using ancient DNA, I found that educational-attainment polygenic scores track not just time, but civilization stage itself. davidepiffer.com/p/educational-…