sarahconstantin's Shortform

sarahconstantin

links 9/2/25: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/srcpublic/page/09-02-2025

stuff I looked up while reading about Chinese prehistory:
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daxi_culture south-central, on the Yangtze, rice-farming, ancestral to the Hmong
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majiabang_culture southeast, on the Yangtze, rice-farming
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liangzhu_culture southeast, on the Yangtze, rice-farming, built cities and altars, stratified society
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongshan_culture northern, related to modern Mongolians and northern Chinese, millet farming, funky creature jades
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangshao_culture northern, on the Yellow River, related to modern northern Chinese, millet farming, swirly pottery
  - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1817972116 looks like they spoke a Sino-Tibetan language
  - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40597195/ looks like their descendants are Chinese
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peiligang_culture
  - more northern millet farmers
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoabinhian Southeast Asian palaeolithic hunter-gatherers
  - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_Cave_(Thailand) maybe early plant domestication
- https://www.mpg.de/6842535/dna-tianyuan-cave early modern human 40-50 kya shows DNA evidence of relatedness to modern Asians
  - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0702169104
  - https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/2024-02-meeting-dawn-human/ he ate a lot of fish, lived into his 40s/50s, and may have worn shoes
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dali_Man archaic homo sapiens
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhoukoudian_Peking_Man_Site homo erectus-like guys lived near Beijing. caves continuously occupied for 200,000 years
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lantian_Man moar homo erectus in China
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalicotherium extinct giant beast, overlapped with hominids in China
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Ji_(archaeologist) founder of modern Chinese archaeology
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwang-chih_Chang Taiwanese-American archaeologist (& author of my book)
https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/shuten-townlikealice/shuten-townlikealice-01-h.html recommended by a friend
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfriede_Jelinek Nobel-prize-winning author was apparently one of Hans Asperger's patients
https://scottsumner.substack.com/p/the-myths-of-chinese-exceptionalism Scott Sumner says maybe stop using anti-China saber-rattling as an excuse to tell lies in the service of whatever your agenda happens to be?
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0905370 this is the paper where some fraction of people "in comas" actually have locked-in syndrome and can communicate via thinking in an fMRI
https://www.corememory.com/p/the-history-and-future-of-brain-implants-ultrasound-sumner-norman Sumner Norman gives interview on neurotech
https://www.hyperdimensional.co/p/for-all-issues-so-triable thoughts by Dean Ball on that suicide-by-ChatGPT tort law case. to his credit he doesn't minimize the tragedy.
https://www.mantic.com/launch these guys might be the biggest effort towards AI-based superforecasting
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/08/the-history-of-american-corporate-nationalization.html of course Tyler Cowen doesn't like nationalizing corporations but he seems to be gesturing at something more complex here and not willing to say it outright. much to think about.
https://genesynthesisscreening.centerforhealthsecurity.org/for-providers-benchtop-manufacturers/list-of-companies-and-available-tools-to-assist-in-screening-orders there's a short but growing list of companies & tools that will screen DNA synthesis orders to see if they're pathogenic or otherwise dangerous

https://scottsumner.substack.com/p/the-myths-of-chinese-exceptionalism Scott Sumner says maybe stop using anti-China saber-rattling as an excuse to tell lies in the service of whatever your agenda happens to be?

In comments, I find it funny how people disagree on the meaning of "evidence".

Scott: "All the so-called ‘evidence’ [for covid lab leak] has been refuted."

...received a link to ACX article, with quoted "the short version is that they were doing lots of gain of function research [...] The market is unlikely to be the origin of the pandemic, because th... (read more)

sarahconstantin's Shortform

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sarahconstantin's Shortform

8