If you want a great example of this not-so-new theory of efficient nepotism, there's an excellent sociology book by Peter Bearman, published in 2005, about New York doormen.
The idea is that nepotism can work remarkably well as a method of recruitment for this type of job. These are jobs that require real skill to be done properly. It’s crucial to be very reliable, able to handle pressure and tension, and capable of finding solutions in unexpected situations. But these are informal skills — there’s no diploma for being a cool-headed, practical, and dependable guy. You can't really prove these qualities on a CV. That’s why recruitment through social (in this case, ethnic) networks makes sense: if you know someone personally, you can assess whether they have the necessary skills to do the job well. And if you recommend someone who turns out to be unsuitable, the people who ultimately have the final say in hiring (who generally aren't part of the social network and feel no particular loyalty to it) will simply stop relying on you to refer your ethnic peers.
Overall, it’s a very nice book that highlights the value of serious and ambitious qualitative empirical work — a type of research that tends to be, sadly, quite undervalued in our rationalist, quantitative oriented circles. It’s not only about how recruitment works, but that’s clearly a significant part of it. It’s also quite short and way easier to read than Distinction.
The first solution to the name problem for my luddite brain is to copy paste it into a text document and make use of Find and Replace but that also would almost certainly be more trouble than it's worth.
Premarin is some of the most accessible pharmacy lore, the source is right there in the name! PREgnant MARe's urINe.
Yeah, find and replace definitely won't work because there's way too much contextual ambiguity, and would require me to manually find all the variants.
9: A summary of Hanson's reply: the problem is discussed as an example of "decision selection bias" (his terminology), and in his post on that topic, he considers the case where information (as he defines it) is uniformly distributed in ovals, and says that with that assumption, the problem you describe is rare (but not nonexistent). The he discusses attempts to solve it, which don't seem airtight.
You could potentially make progress by showing that the problem is not so rare if you have differently distributed information. A bimodal distribution was implicit in your example.
It's understandable that you don't want to: his response doesn't engage with what you wrote, as one of his commenters pointed out.
Yeah, he makes some interesting points, and I feel like we haven't really found the central points of disagreement. But I don't see how to do continue the conversation productively if he's not willing to address any of the details of my argument. I can't even tell if he actually disagrees with anything I said, or if he just thinks it's not a big deal. He seems to be refuting some claim about equivalence to "simple statistical analyses", but I'm not sure how—if at all—that relates to what I said.
Anyway, my plan at this point is to wait for some empirical evidence from the prediction market!
Re: Tolstoy, currently reading Anna Karenina and struggled with the same thing initially, but after a few repeated mentions my brain successfully melded them into one (to the extent that I forgot that I even had this problem). Maybe there are just fewer characters to track in AK, or fewer aliases per character or something.
I wonder if it's a translation question, too—I don't remember having many problems with the names when I read AK and W&P a few years ago, but a lot of people I know have. So I can't rule out the possibility that my beloved Constance Garnett simplified the naming scheme some before they reached me.
Don't neglect the obvious explanation that the difference might be in the capabilities of our brains! (Seriously.) Or it could just be a preference: I feel like I can mostly get used to it, but it feels like unnecessary "friction".
"The purpose of those elongated pupils is to allow them to scan the horizon for possible predators."
Note that the comments on that linked page found that statement wrong (ie, not aligning with current scientific knowledge) way back in 2010, referring to an article written already in 2005.
Here is a relevant comment, summing things up:
"Well, it looks like everyone is right about the pupil shape matter -- for the time at which it was posited. Sir David (who I adore) gave the current hypothesis for slit pupils in diurnal hoofed mammals in Life of Mammals in 2003; the work demonstrating slit pupils as an adaptation to correct for chromatic aberration in multifocal lenses came about in 2005. So everyone comes out of this intact. Science is wonderfully self-correcting."
There is also a link to the referred article (which I have not yet read) in another comment there.
>Goats, like most hoofed mammals, have horizontal pupils. The purpose of those elongated pupils is to allow them to scan the horizon for possible predators.
Wouldn't vertical pupils be better for horizontal vision? because of the pinhole camera effect - if you have horizontal pupils light from one side of the horizon is going to be displayed smeared across your retina just like light from the other side. But only light from above would pass through to hit the bottom of the retina and only light from below would hit the top of the retina, giving clear vertical vision.
iirc that's why cats have vertical pupils and are much better at spotting horizontal movements (a mouse running) than vertical movements (a ball bouncing)
Not an expert, but I think it's a trade-off. Horizontal pupils give you a wider horizontal field of view, which I guess is worth the worse detail resolution and depth perception?
I have not, but it was very impressive, thanks! I found it a bit hard to understand what was happening, but this earlier version is also very effective:
That's pure red in the circle, surrounded by a mixture of green and blue outside. So I guess when you move your head back, all the red cones are desensitized, so what you experience is something like the experience of only green cones firing? It is indeed "a blue-green of unprecedented saturation" so maybe it really is something like what people experience with the lasers...
2, the human colour gamut) I used to date a synesthete and I notice now (though I didn't think anything of it at the time) that she often had difficulty in describing the colours she saw: I wonder whether this suggests out-of-gamut colours?
6, hyperlinks to in-page text) Suuuuper-useful - thanks most awfully indeed! I also absolutely loved "(from my cold dead hands)"!
11, colour-coding War and Peace)
[EDIT: "It's AIs all the way down": rather than the below, I wonder whether it'd be possible to have the AI do everything for you: obtain an API key for an AI, then have another AI write a script to iterate through W&P a chapter at a time, calling the first AI via its API each time. If I were doing this I'd have the script maintain a growing list of dramatis personae and all their pseudonyms that would feature into the prompt for each API call, and I'd probably manually tune the prompt for the API call too rather than just have the second AI write it. The script-writing AI wouldn't need to be the same "species" as the W&P-parsing AI (f'rinstance if one AI is better at coding and another is better at reading comprehension).]
Re the War and Peace colorized names: it depends on the work in question, but this does have the potential failure mode where a character that has multiple aliases would be "outed" to the reader by the colors matching up.
Damn, you're right! (Fight Club, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Prestige) Though in at least some of those cases, I guess you could let the different colors continue.
It looks like there were around 60,000 IVF births in 2009. And from other statistics, it looks like there are 4 million total births. So that's maybe 1.5% of all births by IVF. But given that twins were 0.94% to 1.67% of all births, and surely only a small fraction of IVF births are twins, it doesn't seem like IVF could be responsible for more than a small fraction of twins.
Possibly. In the first few decades of IVF it was common to transfer 2 embryos at a time because of low implantation rates, so IVF was associated with more twins (or even "octo-mom" in a case of malpractice). But I don't think there were enough births by IVF for this to impact the rate as a whole.
However flawed, it's much better than the recent Hollywood movie about Napoleon. (My mental image of Napoleon is forever based on the Napoleon in the Soviet film.)
Regarding "War and Peace": Leo Tolstoy's wife, Sofia Tolstaya, assisted him with his writing. Tolstoy had poor handwriting and would constantly revise his work. Sofia would take his rough drafts and create clean, legible copies. For "War and Peace", Sofia copied the massive novel at least twice completely, and possibly more times for different drafts and revisions. And she did this while managing their household and raising their children.
The whole history of the writing process is pretty amazing, e.g. how he sought out written records to figure out what domestic life was like at the time. And apparently he wrote the first version in less than a year, but then spent six years revising it?
(Also, I wonder if the Sofia in the book is an homage to his wife?)
If you want a great example of this not-so-new theory of efficient nepotism, there's an excellent sociology book by Peter Bearman, published in 2005, about New York doormen.
The idea is that nepotism can work remarkably well as a method of recruitment for this type of job. These are jobs that require real skill to be done properly. It’s crucial to be very reliable, able to handle pressure and tension, and capable of finding solutions in unexpected situations. But these are informal skills — there’s no diploma for being a cool-headed, practical, and dependable guy. You can't really prove these qualities on a CV. That’s why recruitment through social (in this case, ethnic) networks makes sense: if you know someone personally, you can assess whether they have the necessary skills to do the job well. And if you recommend someone who turns out to be unsuitable, the people who ultimately have the final say in hiring (who generally aren't part of the social network and feel no particular loyalty to it) will simply stop relying on you to refer your ethnic peers.
Overall, it’s a very nice book that highlights the value of serious and ambitious qualitative empirical work — a type of research that tends to be, sadly, quite undervalued in our rationalist, quantitative oriented circles. It’s not only about how recruitment works, but that’s clearly a significant part of it. It’s also quite short and way easier to read than Distinction.
Glad to be able to be the one to say this: Human can rotate their eyeballs too! To some degree. Steve mould made a video about it: https://youtu.be/DkaJ6iK2CJc?si=8GSMkWNvdtB7cYhO
Someone pointed this out on bluesky as well. It seems like we mostly do it to maintain fixations, I guess since we have round pupils?
The first solution to the name problem for my luddite brain is to copy paste it into a text document and make use of Find and Replace but that also would almost certainly be more trouble than it's worth.
Premarin is some of the most accessible pharmacy lore, the source is right there in the name! PREgnant MARe's urINe.
Yeah, find and replace definitely won't work because there's way too much contextual ambiguity, and would require me to manually find all the variants.
> PREgnant MARe's urINe.
Ho-lee-shit.
9: A summary of Hanson's reply: the problem is discussed as an example of "decision selection bias" (his terminology), and in his post on that topic, he considers the case where information (as he defines it) is uniformly distributed in ovals, and says that with that assumption, the problem you describe is rare (but not nonexistent). The he discusses attempts to solve it, which don't seem airtight.
You could potentially make progress by showing that the problem is not so rare if you have differently distributed information. A bimodal distribution was implicit in your example.
It's understandable that you don't want to: his response doesn't engage with what you wrote, as one of his commenters pointed out.
Yeah, he makes some interesting points, and I feel like we haven't really found the central points of disagreement. But I don't see how to do continue the conversation productively if he's not willing to address any of the details of my argument. I can't even tell if he actually disagrees with anything I said, or if he just thinks it's not a big deal. He seems to be refuting some claim about equivalence to "simple statistical analyses", but I'm not sure how—if at all—that relates to what I said.
Anyway, my plan at this point is to wait for some empirical evidence from the prediction market!
I'm annoyed that you didn't mention what the flag was for fragment links in Firefox. Took me a few minutes to find it.
dom.text_fragments.create_text_fragment.enabled
I actually did for the main post, but I used an expandy-box which email (and substack) don't support: https://dynomight.net/links-3/#:~:text=In%20Firefox
(Many posts have extra content that's only viewable at dynomight.net)
Thanks for including me in your links! You are my hero.
TIL: text fragment links, that’s pretty cool, thanks!
Also, the link to PDF page doesn’t work in mobile Brave.
Re: Tolstoy, currently reading Anna Karenina and struggled with the same thing initially, but after a few repeated mentions my brain successfully melded them into one (to the extent that I forgot that I even had this problem). Maybe there are just fewer characters to track in AK, or fewer aliases per character or something.
I wonder if it's a translation question, too—I don't remember having many problems with the names when I read AK and W&P a few years ago, but a lot of people I know have. So I can't rule out the possibility that my beloved Constance Garnett simplified the naming scheme some before they reached me.
Don't neglect the obvious explanation that the difference might be in the capabilities of our brains! (Seriously.) Or it could just be a preference: I feel like I can mostly get used to it, but it feels like unnecessary "friction".
"The purpose of those elongated pupils is to allow them to scan the horizon for possible predators."
Note that the comments on that linked page found that statement wrong (ie, not aligning with current scientific knowledge) way back in 2010, referring to an article written already in 2005.
Here is a relevant comment, summing things up:
"Well, it looks like everyone is right about the pupil shape matter -- for the time at which it was posited. Sir David (who I adore) gave the current hypothesis for slit pupils in diurnal hoofed mammals in Life of Mammals in 2003; the work demonstrating slit pupils as an adaptation to correct for chromatic aberration in multifocal lenses came about in 2005. So everyone comes out of this intact. Science is wonderfully self-correcting."
There is also a link to the referred article (which I have not yet read) in another comment there.
Sincere thanks for the interesting link though!
I don't have the expertise to judge this, so I just shortened the quote to remove the controversial part. Thank you!
>Goats, like most hoofed mammals, have horizontal pupils. The purpose of those elongated pupils is to allow them to scan the horizon for possible predators.
Wouldn't vertical pupils be better for horizontal vision? because of the pinhole camera effect - if you have horizontal pupils light from one side of the horizon is going to be displayed smeared across your retina just like light from the other side. But only light from above would pass through to hit the bottom of the retina and only light from below would hit the top of the retina, giving clear vertical vision.
iirc that's why cats have vertical pupils and are much better at spotting horizontal movements (a mouse running) than vertical movements (a ball bouncing)
Not an expert, but I think it's a trade-off. Horizontal pupils give you a wider horizontal field of view, which I guess is worth the worse detail resolution and depth perception?
About seeing unusual colours, I suppose you’ve see these? No lasers required.
https://www.skytopia.com/project/illusion/ipage-et.html
I have not, but it was very impressive, thanks! I found it a bit hard to understand what was happening, but this earlier version is also very effective:
https://www.skytopia.com/project/illusion/eclipsemars.png
That's pure red in the circle, surrounded by a mixture of green and blue outside. So I guess when you move your head back, all the red cones are desensitized, so what you experience is something like the experience of only green cones firing? It is indeed "a blue-green of unprecedented saturation" so maybe it really is something like what people experience with the lasers...
2, the human colour gamut) I used to date a synesthete and I notice now (though I didn't think anything of it at the time) that she often had difficulty in describing the colours she saw: I wonder whether this suggests out-of-gamut colours?
6, hyperlinks to in-page text) Suuuuper-useful - thanks most awfully indeed! I also absolutely loved "(from my cold dead hands)"!
11, colour-coding War and Peace)
[EDIT: "It's AIs all the way down": rather than the below, I wonder whether it'd be possible to have the AI do everything for you: obtain an API key for an AI, then have another AI write a script to iterate through W&P a chapter at a time, calling the first AI via its API each time. If I were doing this I'd have the script maintain a growing list of dramatis personae and all their pseudonyms that would feature into the prompt for each API call, and I'd probably manually tune the prompt for the API call too rather than just have the second AI write it. The script-writing AI wouldn't need to be the same "species" as the W&P-parsing AI (f'rinstance if one AI is better at coding and another is better at reading comprehension).]
N̶o̶t̶ ̶e̶x̶a̶c̶t̶l̶y̶ ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶'̶r̶e̶ ̶l̶o̶o̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶-̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶h̶e̶l̶p̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶"̶t̶h̶r̶e̶e̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶n̶c̶e̶s̶s̶e̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶r̶o̶o̶m̶"̶ ̶s̶i̶t̶u̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶,̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶r̶t̶ ̶-̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶f̶i̶r̶s̶t̶-̶p̶a̶s̶s̶ ̶a̶p̶p̶r̶o̶a̶c̶h̶:̶
̶i̶)̶ ̶H̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶A̶I̶ ̶l̶i̶s̶t̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶r̶y̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶r̶a̶c̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶W̶&̶P̶ ̶a̶l̶o̶n̶g̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶r̶y̶ ̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶n̶a̶m̶e̶,̶ ̶n̶i̶c̶k̶n̶a̶m̶e̶,̶ ̶t̶i̶t̶l̶e̶,̶ ̶p̶s̶e̶u̶d̶o̶n̶y̶m̶,̶ ̶a̶l̶t̶e̶r̶n̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶l̶l̶i̶n̶g̶,̶ ̶e̶t̶c̶.̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶r̶a̶c̶t̶e̶r̶.̶ ̶G̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶a̶m̶e̶s̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶P̶r̶i̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶A̶n̶d̶r̶é̶y̶ ̶l̶i̶s̶t̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶r̶t̶i̶n̶g̶-̶p̶o̶i̶n̶t̶/̶e̶x̶a̶m̶p̶l̶e̶.̶ ̶(̶P̶r̶o̶b̶a̶b̶l̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶A̶I̶s̶ ̶b̶a̶s̶i̶c̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶k̶n̶o̶w̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶u̶l̶l̶ ̶d̶r̶a̶m̶a̶t̶i̶s̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶s̶o̶n̶a̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶W̶a̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶P̶e̶a̶c̶e̶ ̶a̶l̶r̶e̶a̶d̶y̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶n̶e̶e̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶r̶y̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶u̶p̶l̶o̶a̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶e̶x̶t̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶o̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶t̶e̶x̶t̶-̶w̶i̶n̶d̶o̶w̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶b̶l̶e̶m̶s̶)̶
̶i̶i̶)̶ ̶D̶o̶w̶n̶l̶o̶a̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶m̶a̶n̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶t̶u̶n̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶l̶i̶s̶t̶ ̶(̶s̶o̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶e̶x̶a̶m̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶m̶o̶v̶e̶ ̶"̶T̶h̶e̶ ̶P̶r̶i̶n̶c̶e̶s̶s̶"̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶a̶p̶p̶e̶a̶r̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶r̶a̶c̶t̶e̶r̶)̶.̶ ̶I̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶o̶ ̶m̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶r̶a̶c̶t̶e̶r̶s̶,̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶A̶I̶ ̶t̶u̶n̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶l̶i̶s̶t̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶m̶a̶n̶n̶e̶r̶.̶
̶i̶i̶i̶)̶ ̶P̶r̶o̶m̶p̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶u̶n̶e̶d̶ ̶l̶i̶s̶t̶,̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶A̶I̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶t̶e̶x̶t̶ ̶f̶i̶l̶e̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶m̶a̶t̶ ̶"̶a̶ ̶r̶a̶n̶d̶o̶m̶ ̶H̶T̶M̶L̶ ̶c̶o̶l̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶c̶o̶d̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶m̶a̶-̶s̶e̶p̶a̶r̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶l̶i̶s̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶a̶m̶e̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶r̶a̶c̶t̶e̶r̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶e̶x̶t̶ ̶l̶i̶n̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶r̶a̶n̶d̶o̶m̶ ̶H̶T̶M̶L̶ ̶c̶o̶l̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶c̶o̶d̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶a̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶m̶a̶-̶s̶e̶p̶a̶r̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶l̶i̶s̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶a̶m̶e̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶r̶a̶c̶t̶e̶r̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶s̶o̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶r̶a̶c̶t̶e̶r̶s̶"̶.̶ ̶S̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶t̶e̶x̶t̶ ̶f̶i̶l̶e̶.̶
̶i̶v̶)̶ ̶H̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶A̶I̶ ̶w̶r̶i̶t̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶p̶u̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶g̶r̶a̶m̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶i̶t̶e̶r̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ ̶a̶ ̶v̶e̶r̶y̶ ̶l̶a̶r̶g̶e̶ ̶t̶e̶x̶t̶ ̶f̶i̶l̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶a̶p̶p̶e̶n̶d̶ ̶H̶T̶M̶L̶ ̶c̶o̶l̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶t̶a̶g̶s̶ ̶(̶o̶r̶ ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶e̶v̶e̶r̶)̶ ̶a̶r̶o̶u̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶m̶a̶ ̶s̶e̶p̶a̶r̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶n̶a̶m̶e̶s̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶f̶i̶n̶d̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶e̶p̶a̶r̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶t̶e̶x̶t̶ ̶f̶i̶l̶e̶,̶ ̶s̶u̶c̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶n̶a̶m̶e̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶l̶i̶n̶e̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶l̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶r̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶l̶i̶n̶e̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶n̶a̶m̶e̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶e̶x̶t̶ ̶l̶i̶n̶e̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶l̶i̶n̶e̶'̶s̶ ̶c̶o̶l̶o̶u̶r̶,̶ ̶e̶t̶c̶.̶
̶v̶)̶ ̶R̶u̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶p̶u̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶g̶r̶a̶m̶ ̶e̶i̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶l̶o̶c̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶e̶l̶s̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶A̶I̶-̶w̶e̶b̶-̶e̶n̶v̶r̶i̶o̶n̶m̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶o̶l̶ ̶(̶I̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶k̶ ̶G̶e̶m̶i̶n̶i̶ ̶h̶a̶s̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶?̶)̶,̶ ̶p̶a̶s̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶W̶&̶P̶ ̶f̶i̶l̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶n̶a̶m̶e̶s̶-̶l̶i̶s̶t̶ ̶t̶e̶x̶t̶ ̶f̶i̶l̶e̶
Re the War and Peace colorized names: it depends on the work in question, but this does have the potential failure mode where a character that has multiple aliases would be "outed" to the reader by the colors matching up.
Damn, you're right! (Fight Club, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Prestige) Though in at least some of those cases, I guess you could let the different colors continue.
>The human twin birth rate in the United States rose 76% from 1980 through 2009, from 9.4 to 16.7 twin sets (18.8 to 33.3 twins) per 1,000 births.
I suspect this is due to an increase in obesity causing an increase in polycystic ovary syndrome (which greatly increases the chance of having twins). see: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2025.1514250/full (though this focuses on global PCOS rates rather than US rates)
I wonder if IVF might also be a factor? From this:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/02/18/279035110/ivf-baby-boom-births-from-fertility-procedure-hit-new-high
It looks like there were around 60,000 IVF births in 2009. And from other statistics, it looks like there are 4 million total births. So that's maybe 1.5% of all births by IVF. But given that twins were 0.94% to 1.67% of all births, and surely only a small fraction of IVF births are twins, it doesn't seem like IVF could be responsible for more than a small fraction of twins.
Possibly. In the first few decades of IVF it was common to transfer 2 embryos at a time because of low implantation rates, so IVF was associated with more twins (or even "octo-mom" in a case of malpractice). But I don't think there were enough births by IVF for this to impact the rate as a whole.
Yeah. I guess what I was trying to say is that IVF was only ~1.5% of all births, which seems insufficient to explain a ~1.3% increase in twins.
The Soviet movie is a quite a masterpiece. If you don't have time to read the book (I read it in Russian).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_and_Peace_(film_series)
And very interesting later piece The Kreutzer Sonata a much shorter novel.
A friend pointed out to me that this is currently (for whatever reason) available on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIij-KQ0jYU
(Though I'll wait to watch it until I've finished the book.)
I have high hopes! I'm a fan of the Soviet film Waterloo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo_(1970_film)
However flawed, it's much better than the recent Hollywood movie about Napoleon. (My mental image of Napoleon is forever based on the Napoleon in the Soviet film.)
Regarding "War and Peace": Leo Tolstoy's wife, Sofia Tolstaya, assisted him with his writing. Tolstoy had poor handwriting and would constantly revise his work. Sofia would take his rough drafts and create clean, legible copies. For "War and Peace", Sofia copied the massive novel at least twice completely, and possibly more times for different drafts and revisions. And she did this while managing their household and raising their children.
The whole history of the writing process is pretty amazing, e.g. how he sought out written records to figure out what domestic life was like at the time. And apparently he wrote the first version in less than a year, but then spent six years revising it?
(Also, I wonder if the Sofia in the book is an homage to his wife?)