When the girls were younger, we had a rule in the house that it was not okay to use the word “can’t”. If you were struggling, you could say “I’m having a hard time, can you please help me?”, but … Continue reading →

Jazz Chisholm's fate with the Yankees seems to be decided.

I’m a teacher at Chicago’s Under the Gun Theater. My job is to demystify improv so it’s easier to perform. The “game” style of improv has really taken off in the last few years and that’s our focus at Under the Gun, so here’s a basic overview of the component parts to this type of scene. BASE REALITY This refers to the basic knowledge required to play a scene. You already do some version of this, no matter where you play. As the scene begins, who are you? Where are you? What activity are you doing? You must establish this quickly and efficiently. Think of it as setting the dinner table. You need cups and utensils and plates and napkins before you can think about throwing the food down. Take a line or two to let your scene partner (and the audience!) know the basics of the scene. If you don’t have the base reality established, don’t go any further. FIRST UNUSUAL THING After setting the base reality, you will present an unusual idea. If you don’t have one, simply continue exploring the base reality until something unusual naturally occurs. The unusual thing is an idea or character trait or feature in the world that does not fit what you would normally expect in the base reality. A kindergarten class is a normal place. Arnold Schwarzenegger teaching a kindergarten class is unusual. A motivational speaker talking to a family is normal. A motivational speaker who is 35 years old, thrice divorced and living in a van down by the river is unusual. A teenager in high school is normal. A teenager in his parents’ high school 30 years in the past in order to help them fall in love is unusual. FRAMING When one performer introduces the unusual idea, the other performer should “frame” it. Repeating the unusual thing or simply asking, “What?” is a good way to let everyone know that this is the idea you’re going to explore. This step is optional, but helpful in focusing attention. IF, THEN If the unusual thing is true, then what else must be true? This is your opportunity to explore the idea. If one person espouses a crazy philosophy, you could question them on it and they could explain exactly why it makes sense. In my class the other day, two students did a scene about firefighters who were so lazy, they always left the scene of the fire. Two firefighters hanging out? Normal. Two firefighters hanging out because they ditched the scene of a fire? Unusual. If you have two firefighters willing to skip out on work, then how else are they lazy or negligent? The rest of the scene should be greater and greater instances of lazy/negligent firefighting. An easy way to crystallize this is to look at popular movies. The first act (20 minutes or so in a 90-minute film) introduces us to the characters and the location. Once we know that, something unusual happens. After the unusual thing happens, repercussions must be dealt with until the third act resolution. Most third acts suck, which is fine because we don’t need things to resolve in a comedy scene. We’re mainly concerned with the fun of the second act. Let’s try this out. Big BASE REALITY: Josh and Billy are friends. They’re kids. Josh gets humiliated when he can’t go on a carnival ride because he’s too short. He goes to the Zoltar machine and wishes he were “big.” FIRST UNUSUAL THING: Josh wakes up as a fully-grown man. IF, THEN: Because Josh’s mom doesn’t recognize him, he flees to New York, enlists Billy’s help, gets a job at a toy company, falls in love and realizes being a grown-up comes with a lot of baggage. Mrs. Doubtfire BASE REALITY: Daniel is a voiceover actor going through a divorce with his wife, Miranda. This bums his kids out. FIRST UNUSUAL THING: Daniel disguises himself as an older woman and applies to be his own children’s nanny so he can spend more time with them. IF, THEN: Numerous close-calls where Daniel’s true identity is nearly exposed. He must double-down on the lie so he doesn’t get caught. He also has to cope with his ex-wife dating a handsome guy right in front of “Mrs. Doubtfire.” The Little Mermaid BASE REALITY: Ariel is a mermaid who wishes she could live on land and pursue the hunky Prince Eric. (Even though a mermaid is unusual, this is a world where mermaids exist. Base realities can be heightened or exotic, as long as they are consistent. The unusual thing breaks the normal day-to-day routine of a world.) FIRST UNUSUAL THING: The sea witch Ursula gives Ariel human legs in exchange for her voice. IF, THEN: Ariel pursues Eric, but finds it difficult without her voice. Ursula takes human form and vies for Eric’s attention, using Ariel’s voice to boot! Karate Kid BASE REALITY: Daniel is the new kid in town. He doesn’t have any friends, but he is interested in a girl. Local karate bullies try to beat him up. FIRST UNUSUAL THING: The handyman at Daniel’s apartment complex is secretly a karate master! He beats up the karate thugs. IF, THEN: Daniel now wants to learn karate from Mr. Miyagi. But because Miyagi is not your average karate master, Daniel must paint the fence, wax-on and wax-off and sand the floor. It pays off when those chores are revealed as secret karate moves. Daniel gets a chance to fight back and win the girl with his newfound knowledge. It’s a Wonderful Life BASE REALITY: George Bailey is the nicest guy ever. He’s helped out tons of people in Bedford Falls, unlike the greedy Mr. Potter. All is well until George’s forgetful uncle loses $8,000, threatening the building and loan. George is heartbroken and heads to a bridge to contemplate suicide. (All of this takes 99 minutes, but the slow exploration of George’s inherent decency is key to making the rest of the film work.) FIRST UNUSUAL THING: George wishes he were never born and his guardian angel grants that wish. IF, THEN: The angel shows George what Bedford Falls would look like if he didn’t exist. George revisits all the important moments in his life, only to see a dark, twisted version of the world without him. Note that in all of these examples, the first unusual thing is something that radically alters the base reality. There’s no turning back after that point. That point where routine gets wrecked is where the fun part of the movie begins. In an improv scene, we don’t have 99 minutes or even ten minutes to lay a foundation. We want to do it in one or two lines of dialogue. The person initiating should take the lead in establishing the base reality. The initiator also usually introduces the unusual thing. Alternately, the scene partners can discover the unusual thing organically. As you practice these initiations, you will become better at establishing a base reality and an unusual thing more efficiently. Here are some examples of initiating lines that contain a full premise: “We can’t go to Disney World, honey. They closed forever because of how naughty you’ve been.” “I’m sorry. I can’t operate on you. I’m gluten-free.” “In an effort to improve community relations, all you police officers must turn in your guns. From now on, you’ll be armed with live cobras disguised in cans of peanut brittle.” In each case, a seemingly normal conversation gets hijacked by an idea that conflicts with our expectations. With any of those three initiations, can you see where the scene might go? A really great initiation gives your scene partner and the audience a glimpse of where this thing might be headed. We don’t know how you’re going to justify your idea, but we know it’s going to be fun watching you try. That’s the game: Defending/exploring the absurd or unusual idea that would never occur in the confines of normal life. One of my favorite examples is this scene from the Upright Citizens Brigade themselves. The base reality? Two brothers on a golf course. One is nervous about an upcoming presentation. The first unusual thing? Well, I’ll let you pick that out. Then watch as the brothers go back and forth, debating the merits of this terrible idea. That’s the game. As you watch virtually any sketch comedy, pay attention to the component parts. You will almost always see 30-60 seconds laying the groundwork of a normal world before it gets hijacked by an unusual idea. Watch as the unusual idea is repeated, modified, heightened and justified. Now, you might be saying that entering a scene with that much initiation is cheating. It’s not. The audience and your fellow performers will thank you for coming in with a clear idea. Which partner would you rather play with: one who calls you “Captain” and informs you that your potato submarine has been hit by a torpedo and is flooding with gravy? Or one who walks on stage and says, “Hey, man. What’s up?” When playing this style, it’s also important for the non-initiator to listen and offer polite support until it’s clear what the initiator is bringing to the table. If the initiator says, “Johnson, come into my office,” you shouldn’t throw out too much in reply. It seems like there’s more where that came from. So your line shouldn’t be, “Wow, your office is a giant fiberglass taco!” Give the initiator some time, nail down your base reality and if the initiator never brings up anything unusual, look for a natural opening to discover one. To learn more about this style of play, pick up the Upright Citizens Brigade Manual and join my class so I can guide you through the process! I’m teaching Monday nights beginning in March. It’s just $25 per class, which is ridiculously cheap for Chicago. Got questions about this or anything else in comedy? Hit me up at boilingpointimprov[at]gmail.com.

Democratic incumbent Congresswoman Dina Titus has won reelection for Nevada's 1st Congressional District, defeating Republican candidate Carrie Buck.

If you have followed my blog for a long time you will know my love hate feelings about Social Media. I was on the verge of letting WordPress go when my subscription is up but one thing I love about WordPress is the lack of trolls bots and trouble makes ! I make a post on here and get positive feedback or a discussion takes place with mutual respect. On YouTube it takes seconds for the clowns to arrive. I just hide there comments. The funny thing is every positive post on YouTube never has any follow up but as soon as you get a negative comment there is always a thumbs up with it. So the negative person must like their own post ! It’s actually quite funny that you are called useless, angry, negative, stupid, today I was accused of projecting my photography failings on the younger generation !! It just makes me laugh ! I retired at 55 so don’t really consider I failed ! I have had exhibitions including one in Paternoster Square London by the Stock Exchange. One in Liverpool, two in Hull and been featured in books and magazines around the world ! My stock photography has been used in millions of places and I have been in books etc and that’s without being a Fujifilm ambassador and trainer and keynote speaker. I feel I achieved quite a lot financially and personally, one thing is for sure I am happily retired. Personally I have not finished yet but have plenty of time for more projects. I love how one video calling out the Lazy Gits in the world produces so much negativity ! It absolutely confirms all I say and write. I think one of the reasons I got rid of my first YouTube channel is becuse it becomes a full time job hiding comments from people who have faceless accounts who have nothing better to do all day but write bollox online ! Bold St I have just had a look at Threads on instagram some of it is the same shit that’s on Twitter and Facebook and that is why I don’t use either anymore. But if I can work out how to get Threads to show me great artists then it could be a good little project platform. I doubt the algorithms will be that kind ! One of the funny things about trying to teach and inspire people is exactly what my post and video was about yesterday ! The lazy useless people are so Jealous of other people who are better than them they have to try and spoil it for everyone else. Lucky I am immune to it ! After teaching real in person I know that in 1 in 10 people on average I used to teach is only there to put people down to make themselves feel better ! This is the world of social media spilling out into society It’s sad but true ! Bold Street Edinburgh Grass Market

Between online predators, cyberbullying, harassment, sextortion, deepfakes and artificial intelligence, the risks continue to evolve.

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Presenting the most recent addition to my now very long-running series of inscriptions in various ancient writing systems in cake form: a cake version of an inscription from Pompeii, written not in Latin, but in a closely-related language called Oscan. Oscan building inscription, Pompeii, 3rd-2nd century BCE, in the form of a lemon-poppyseed traybake. Photo by author (and baker). Though Latin would eventually spread across not only the whole of Italy but also much further afield, originally it was just one of a whole family of related languages (known as Italic) spoken across the Italian peninsula. The map below is only approximate, since it’s very difficult to fully map exactly where different languages were spoken, especially since many people and places will have been multilingual, but it gives an idea of where Oscan was primarily found, along with other related Italic languages (e.g. Latin, Umbrian, Venetic) and others like Greek or Etruscan. By Dbachmann, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons Although the Oscan language is closely related to Latin, you might have noticed that the cake inscription above doesn’t look quite like the Roman alphabet – some letters are pretty similar, but others are totally different, and the whole thing is also written right-to-left. In fact, the two alphabets are also quite closely related, as both were derived from the alphabet used to write the Etruscan language – a language spoken and written widely across the northern part of the Italian peninsula, not actually related to the Italic family, or for that matter any other known family. The Etruscan alphabet, however, was the source of many of the alphabets used to write other languages of the Italian peninsula (the other main one was the Greek alphabet – itself the original source of the Etruscan alphabet; Oscan was in fact written with both its own alphabet and with a version of the Greek alphabet). The Oscan alphabet, by Katherine McDonald As you can see from the alphabet above, some of the differences with the Roman alphabet are just because Oscan is written right-to-left, so the letters’ orientation is reversed – but others involve more radical differences of shape (in particular, what looks like an R is actually /d/, and what looks like D is an /r/) or additions of new letters needed to write the Oscan language (the three at the end of the alphabet). I’ll transcribe and translate the cake inscription below, but you could have a go first at transcribing it yourself using this alphabet if you want! The Bay of Naples, where Pompeii is located, is in an area on the map marked as Greek-speaking, but was actually one of those multilingual areas: both Greek and Oscan were in widespread use until the city was incorporated into the expanding area of Roman control and Latin became the language of official business, after which use of Oscan gradually declined here as across the peninsula (the last known Oscan inscriptions date to about 50 BCE, though it’s likely that the language continued to be spoken for some period of time after this before eventually dying out). However, in Pompeii, a range of Oscan inscriptions from the period when this language was still in regular use survived long enough that they were preserved when the whole city was buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE. This particular inscription was put up to commemorate a building being put up by a Pompeiian official, though we don’t know what that building was because the stone was later re-used in building one of the city’s gates. Here’s the inscription transcribed, then transcribed with abbreviations expanded, and then translated (| = a line-break): v · púpidiis · v | med · túv | aamanaffed | ísídu | prúfatted v(ibis) · púpidiis · v(ibieís) | med(dís) · túv(tíks) | aamanaffed | ísídu | prúfatted Vibius Popidius, son of Vibius | chief magistrate | built | the same man | approved i.e. “Vibius Popidius, son of Vibius, chief magistrate, built this building and the same man also approved it” Oh, and the red colour of the icing is not just because I got bored of using grey or black for my ancient inscription cakes – many ancient inscriptions, both Oscan and Latin, had red-painted letters for greater visibility, traces of which sometimes survive to allow a reconstruction of the original colour. You can see this on the British Museum’s photograph of the actual inscription, where the red colour has been repainted in modern times: The original Oscan inscription. BM 1867,0508.76 © The Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) The excuse for making this cake – and the venue for eating it – was provided by my colleague Katherine McDonald organising an Oscan reading group to introduce us to the language, the alphabet, and a few of the inscriptions: you can find an online version of this on Katherine’s website if you’d like to have a go at reading some Oscan yourself!

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Here the long-awaited results. Pretty much as expected, with no major surprises. About 2/3rds Black, 1/4 White, 1/12th Asian. The only unexpected things are in my Asian ancestry. Apparently, contrary to what I have been told, I have no South Asian ancestry. Also, of my East Asian ancestry, half appears to be Southeast Asian, rather than Chinese. My Chinese component is relatively small. Also, my paternal haplogroup is G-M342. My maternal haplogroup is L2a-d.

Editor's note: This article has been updated to correct the location in which Sticker Mule is based. Sticker company CEO Anthony Constantino (R) is projected to win Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R-N.Y.) open House seat, according to Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ), The Hill’s partner. Constantino, who was endorsed by President Trump, defeated Democrat Blake Gendebien and...

[Complaint] (1)

Poking around Reddit, I found a post asking if someone could explain the concept of heightening. This is one of those terms that gets thrown around a lot but it’s difficult to define. Here’s a great example from a 1993 episode of SNL: watch this, assuming Lorne’s copyright monkeys haven’t stricken it yet. If the video is down, here’s a transcript. I’ll wait. If you want to analyze this scene with the UCB style, let’s start with the base reality. Because this is TV, it’s easy to convey: you’ve got an old man working a low-level job at a supermarket. What’s the first unusual thing? The supermarket clerk tells a customer she can steal apples. There’s our game: Supermarket employee assumes higher status and violates rules. How do we heighten this? You want to give Bag Boy multiple opportunities to take higher status. The violations of his job must get larger and larger. This scene does that beautifully. Let’s chart each interaction… Customer 1: Melanie Hutsell, who wants to know if the apples are fresh. Violation: Bag Boy tells her to steal them. Employee on Loudspeaker 1: Price check on a 6 oz. can of peaches. Violation: Bag Boy gives an incorrect price and says they’re $3.89. Manager Interaction 1: Phil Hartman tells Bag Boy that the peaches are 69 cents. (This affirms the price check violation.) Hartman supplies further base reality by explaining that Bag Boy has worked at the supermarket for 42 years. The manager suggests he might fire Bag Boy. Violation: Bag Boy casually mentions a story he read about a man who got fired and came back to kill his boss. That’s a significant jump in status. Can the scene continue heightening or have they gone too far? Customer 2: Julia Sweeney and her “son” say hello. Violation: Without prompting, Bag Boy rips open a box of cereal, hands the kid a toy, and dumps the cereal on the floor. See how this is a more aggressive high-status move than suggesting a woman pocket a few apples? Employee on Loudspeaker 2: Price check on a head of lettuce. Violation: Bag Boy says they’re $16. That’s a more outrageous price than the one he gave for peaches. Manager Interaction 2: Hartman is even angrier about the wrong price. Violation: Bag Boy passive-aggressively suggests he’ll murder Hartman with a shovel. It’s a more direct threat than the first. Customer(s) 3: Adam Sandler and David Spade show up to talk trash to Bag Boy. How will he react? We already know he goes high status. But this is the most openly hostile threat he’s faced. Violation: Bag Boy tells a “joke” about chopping off Sandler’s and Spade’s heads, complete with the finger motion across their necks. Seems like we’re tapped out, right? How do you heighten from there? Increase the stakes, increase the violation. Employee on Loudspeaker 3: Eggs have been spilled in Aisle 3. Violation: Bag Boy blows it off. It’s the most nakedly aggressive high-status move yet. A flagrant disregard of his position. Manager Interaction 3: Hartman, fed up, suggests that Bag Boy should retire. Violation: Bag Boy launches into a hypothetical description of what he’d do with his free time. And this is gold. “There’s another hobby I was thinking of taking up, but, only if I had enough time on my hands. You know, the funny thing is, this one involves you. Yeah, yeah. I was gonna see how loud I could get you to scream, but… not by using the pliers on you, but on the ones you love the best. Ohhh, I’ll bet we can get it so the screams echo off the walls of that remote tool shed for years!“ Dear God. That’s how you heighten a threat of murder. You threaten torture. And not against a person directly, but against their loved ones. It’s insane. It’s brilliant. It’s beyond any measure of good taste. And that’s how you know we’ve heightened to the maximum. The scene must end. And so it does. Hartman backs down. Employee on Loudspeaker 4: One final price check. A 12-pound honey-glazed ham. Violation: “Two for a nickel.” It’s one more final crazy price, and the sketch ends. If we were witnessing this in an improv show, I would hope the team would edit right after Bag Boy threatens his boss with the torture of his loved ones. That’s about as far as you can heighten this idea. A TV sketch show can’t end there, but an improv show (or scene) definitely can. What’s lovely about this scene is that it juggles three different ways to prove out Bag Boy’s status. The price checks alone would be a boring scene. The customers alone could be interesting, but it would get repetitive. The boss vs. employee scene could also become boring. As soon as Bag Boy proves his status, we cycle to the next interaction. This keeps the scene from getting stagnant. It’s not an endless tag run of customers. It changes but still maintains a pattern. When you think about heightening, I find it’s helpful to think about making things worse. Imagine a date at a picnic. If the date goes well, that’s probably not interesting. If bad things happen, we’ll be interested. The key to heightening is to start relatively small and give yourself room to grow. So if we’re at a picnic, the first bad thing could be that the guy forgot to bring utensils. It’s a clear problem, an unusual thing, and it suggests the direction to go forward. What’s worse than forgetting cutlery? That’s your next discovery. Maybe the guy made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but the girl has a peanut allergy. What’s worse than that? There’s your next move. Remember that heightening is not hitting the exact same thing over and over again. Bag Boy doesn’t tell each customer to steal a larger and larger thing. If you’re doing that, you’re focusing too narrowly on the unusual thing. Step back. If we watched the picnic scene and the guy forgot cutlery, then explains he forgot food, it’s too close to the original unusual thing. Step back. “Things are going wrong at the picnic.” Those things should be bigger and bigger until they can’t get any bigger. And they need to be different enough that we’re not hitting the exact same note. Where does the picnic scene end? You could also think of a heightening scene like the NBA dunk contest. In the first round, you need safe enough scores to move on, but you also need to top your competitors. The game is dunking in more and more unusual ways. By the end of the contest, you’ve got people dunking blindfolded and jumping over teammates and leaping cars. You wouldn’t start the contest with your craziest stunt because there’s nowhere to go but down. So start your scene with a nice safe dunk, then top it. Take the idea of that first unusual thing and push it to its extreme. Then pray that your teammates edit when you’re out of gas.

Nevada voters have elected Democratic Rep. Susie Lee to another two-year term in Congress, defeating Republican challenger Marty O'Donnell in the state's 3rd Congressional District.

[Complaint] (1)

In 2006, I attended an improv show at the old iO Chicago on Clark Street. I watched Noah Gregoropolous in a scene where he played a door. Yes, a door. I don’t remember why it was necessary for him to be there, but he was. And he stood there silently and waited patiently. At just the right moment, the door spoke: “Everything has its time. I used to be an oak tree.” The next week, Noah became my teacher. As the longtime guardian of iO’s Level 5B, every aspiring performer had to successfully navigate his class to have a shot at landing on a Harold team. He had a deep voice and the kind of deliberate manner that stood in stark contrast to the 20-and-30-somethings dripping with flop sweat in search of laughs. Looking back at the notes from one of our classes, I see Noah said simply, “Stop. This is terrible.” I’m sure it was. When Noah played, he rarely made the flashy choice, but his characters were wise, and he often elevated the scenes with impeccable support. He played waiters and customers waiting in line to flesh out a scene. He played with integrity and an incredible reference level. More often than not, Noah was the oldest person on the stage at iO. It never seemed to phase him. He was there to do the work. He was there to honor the choices of his scene partners. He was there to do the unglamorous support that younger players overlooked. He was often the anchor of a show, tethering scenes to reality before they could spin off into oblivion. I was always impressed by how Noah took his time. Many of us race in search of laughs, but Noah was smart enough to let the comedy come to him. You never saw him trying very hard, which is an exceptionally difficult thing to master. His brain was always working as he considered how to help the show. He would wait for his moment, and he would strike. You may not know Noah, but his impact was immeasurable on thousands of performers who graduated iO over the years. The comedy world owes him a debt. I share the following notes from Noah Gregoropolous’ 5B iO class: Be grounded and patient at the top of a Harold so at the end, you can rip through. Bringing back a scene creates a contract with the audience that they will see scenes more than once. Stepping past your fear is a gift to your scene partner. Open up to each other. We don’t want to see a lie on stage. Pay attention to any emotion spike, then deal with it. When at an impasse, create vulnerability to let us care. If your ship is sinking, don’t talk about it. Talk about each other. Boldness is a gift. When the audience laughs, it can signal a possibility. If you find yourself in a fight, lose it. Be careful of the automatic negative response to a strong initiation. That’s fear. There are no small choices. If a character doesn’t care, make them not care to the point of being active. (Regarding object work) Things aren’t always handy. They come from somewhere specific. You don’t always need to wrap things up. Sometimes we do that at our peril. Sometimes, patterns are more satisfying than plot. The audience can project plot on there. When you’re off-balance you have a tendency to attack. You need to be okay being off-balance. There’s a difference between a strong initiation and trying to control a scene. Never show contempt for your characters. You’ll get further satirically if you live in that person’s world. The unspoken joke is your friend. (Regarding scenic variety) If you hear a lot of brass, where are the piccolos? Patience gives you speed. Speed gives you stagnancy. Noah Gregoropolous died yesterday. He was an oak tree. Lessons from the Masters: Michael Gellman – TJ Jagodowski 1 – TJ Jagodowski 2 – Mick Napier – Mark Sutton

A new meta-analysis has dropped that sought to answer the question of whether childhood maltreatment leads to later mental health problems. This study is different from typical in that it tried to address the ever-pervasive problem of genetic confounding.Old-school readers of my blog know what I’m talking about: the overwhelming majority of studies in human science, both medical and psychological, are flawed because they don’t take genetically-caused individual variation into account: https://t.co/I3yIE0cP1a pic.twitter.com/EcwUzsBXhr— Confounded Picard (@ConfoundedP) September 5, 2020 One great example is the association between income and IQ. People from impoverished backgrounds have lower IQs, on average, than people from wealthier backgrounds. Modern Western conventional wisdom assumes that poverty causes low IQ, when the reality is in fact the other way around: lower IQ people are less able, on average, to accumulate and generate wealth and (since IQ is highly heritable) more likely to come from families with lower wealth. There are numerous such associations, so much so that it led Emil Kirkegaard to coin fifth law of behavioral genetics. As veteran readers and my Twitter ( https://twitter.com/JayMan471) followers know, I have long maintained that parenting and family influence has little to no effect on eventual adult behavioral traits. See my Behavioral Genetics Page for more. This derives from twin, adoption, and other behavioral genetic studies, which find that the role of family influence is minimal in most behavioral traits. The central role that parenting and upbringing is assumed to play turns out to be overblown. Yet, despite this, many of the usual genetically confounded studies continue to be done. One caveat I have mentioned previously is the case of severe abuse and neglect. Obviously, malnutrition or severe injury (say brain damage) may just be able to have an effect. (However, I have stated here and on Twitter that the effect of many these may also be overblown.) Enter a recent study by Jessie Baldwin et al (Childhood Maltreatment and Mental Health Problems: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Quasi-Experimental Studies, 2023) that tried to study just that. To their credit, the authors did try to address the genetic confounding problem: Sounds great, and certainly light-years ahead of most social science, even in the Current Year. So what did they find? After quasi experimental adjustment, a small association between childhood maltreatment and mental health problems remained (Cohen’s d=0.31, 95% CI=0.24, 0.37). This adjusted association between childhood maltreatment and mental health was consistent across different quasi-experimental methods, and generalized across different psychiatric disorders.Conclusions: These findings are consistent with a small causal contribution of childhood maltreatment to mental health problems. Furthermore, the findings suggest that part of the overall risk of mental health problems in individuals exposed to maltreatment is due to wider genetic and environmental risk factors. They offer a very nice tabulation of the data: They were also diligent to check for publication bias and all those other things that are known to screw-up meta analyses. So case closed, right? Looks like there is a residual effect that remains after you adjust for confounding. As they put it: Regarding confounding, we found that the association between childhood maltreatment and mental health in quasi experimental adjusted models was substantially (45%) smaller than in unadjusted models. Of note, the unadjusted association was moderate in magnitude, with a Cohen’s d of 0.56, which is similar to effect sizes reported in previous meta-analyses of non-quasi-experimental studies (see Table S10 in the online supplement). This reduction in effect size after quasi-experimental adjustment suggests that a large part of the overall relationship between childhood maltreatment and mental health is confounded by preexisting risk factors for psychopathology. Research is needed to identify the specific factors that elevate risk of psychopathology in maltreated children, which might include environmental adversities (e.g., socioeconomic disadvantage (9)) and genetic liability It would only make sense, wouldn’t it? Maybe you can’t grow a better flower by watering it more but you can certainly grow a worse flower if you don’t water it all or give it junk. So am I going to concede this point on childhood maltreatment? Nope.I read through the paper and the supplements and it seems that there is one more confound that they didn’t address: child-to-parent effects. Troubled adults are quite often difficult, troubled children. Such children are more likely to elicit harsher treatment from caregivers. This would even be in play even if you looked at identical twins (and old-schools readers know I have been critical of inferring positive effects from twin-control studies for similar reasons). Hence, the small residual seemingly causal association between childhood maltreatment and eventual adult mental health could be due to this. Now, the authors did also look at studies looking at institutional maltreatment (e.g., the infamous Romanian orphanages) and found a similar magnitude effect. Although child-to-caregiver effects are still a concern, the genetic confound also rears it head there, since there is a racial component to orphaned children there–more likely to be ethnic Romani, for example (a group with lower average IQ than ethnic Romanians). So I don’t if we can call this study a win for the nurture assumption, yet. We should oppose childhood maltreatment on moral grounds–because it’s a rotten thing to do children–and not because we think it will “damage” them, particularly mentally. That belief, to me, seems like a crappy motivation to be nice to your children than being nice to them for it’s own sake. This is the first blog post I’ve made in literally years. It’s too soon to say if JayMan is back for good–but who knows, maybe you’ll hear more of me in the future. I am opening the tip jar for anyone who has enjoyed my work, past and present. I could use a few cents right now and any little bit really does help.For new readers, if you want a review of some of work I’ve done, much of which has aged pretty damned will in the years since I’ve written it, here’s a review:There’s my introduction to those new to the topic of Human Bio Diversity (HBD), my thorough (but soft) introduction to the matter that I’ve written: JayMan’s Race, Inheritance, and IQ F.A.Q. (F.R.B.) This will get you started. Of course, there was my interview by Robert Stark (of The Stark Truth). That interview is up as a podcast here: Robert Stark interviews Jayman – The Stark Truth With Robert Stark Mainstream discourse, including the media (and a good part of the scientific establishment itself) spreads false information. Whether it be on IQ, race, heredity, parenting, diet, health, lifestyle, or homosexuality, complete rubbish rules the day. I have attempted to remedy this here. To learn about me, please see my About Me page. There I talk a little about my background as well as provide a roadmap to my earlier publications, including the key pieces new readers should see. Your first reading after that should be this. The foundation of HBD and indeed all human biological research is behavioral genetics. This has produced four (well, five) laws that are fundamental, the first of which is the plain statement that Did you know that parenting (beyond ensuring your children are healthy and safe and have basic human interaction) has no real impact on how children turn out as adults? That’s right. Read all about it: The Behavioral Genetics Page My earlier posting 100 Blog Posts – Reflection on HBD Blogging and What Lies Ahead reviews the topics I’ve talked about in the beginning, including fertility trends, and health and lifestyle wisdom. My post 200 Blog Posts – Everything You Need to Know (To Start) is just that. Here I review the topics I’ve discussed in the preceding 100 posts, including the matter of guns and violence, the American Nations (the regional ethno/cultural/political divides across North America), and the problems with some of the people who talk about this topic. A key thing is my series on clannishness, discussing HBD Chick’s work: Clannishness – the Series: Zigzag Lightning in the Brain Clannishness – the Series: How It Happened Clannishness – the Series: A Finer-Grained Look at How It Happened — And about those American Nations, my page American Nations Series indexes the posts I’ve written based on the books American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard and Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer. Did you know that most health and lifestyle knowledge is worthless, and probably won’t have much impact on your health or lifespan? See: IQ and DeathTrans Fat Hysteria and the Mystery of Heart Disease On health and lifestyle, there is a lot of nonsense fluff on the matter of obesity. See: Obesity Facts And, there’s my critical look at mental health, and a misunderstanding of the role in human evolution in behavioral phenotypes, some of which are not valued by contemporary society Features and Bugs In the above post, I discuss homosexuality. The mainstream, accepted explanation for all manner of human behavioral variation, including individual and group differences, is some sort of social conditional or some sort of “environmental” effect. The one exception is sexual orientation, where we’re assured that it is 100% inborn and genetically inherited. Well, it turns out that that is not true. Indeed, this hard to reconcile with the fact that male twins are discordant for sexual orientation at least 75% of the time. See: Greg Cochran’s “Gay Germ” Hypothesis – An Exercise in the Power of Germs Also, you may want to see some of my other postings, like on the facts that “Ethnic Genetic Interests” Do Not Exist (Neither Does Group Selection) or about on the non-existence of free will: No, You Don’t Have Free Will, and This Is Why Or my post on the heritability (and hence intractability) of religious belief: The Atheist Narrative If you have liked my stuff, and want to help me through this crisis, please donate. If you prefer, I will also take Bitcoins. My wallet is 1DjjhBGxoRVfdjYo2QgSteMYLuXNVg3DiJ I appreciate all your help!Music track for this post: the return of JayMan. To think that this particular theme for the Rock is 20 years old next month! Holy cow!

Like gold, cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin is mined. Gold becomes harder and harder to find as it is mined. In the same way, as the supply of a cryptocurrency increases, computers have to solve harder and harder problems to be awarded cryptocurrency. Staking is a is a new approach that replaces mining and reduce costs. How does it work? Adam Read More › Source

This was the bit I hated ! Without going in to all the details Editing was my all time hate in my Photography journey ! When I was a kid I used to use cheap film that was sent away and I would first get a contact sheet choose the prints I wanted and order them. As I got older and better I used to use better Labs and develop black and white at home and print black and white at home. My colour work used to be slide film and always sent away. My Parents My effort and enjoyment was being out with a camera. As time went on and digital cameras came along I had to spend a year creating a black and white style for myself and learn to edit and I enjoyed the process and learned a lot. However I hated the amount of time I had to sit at a computer screen. I know some Wedding Photographers that spend hundreds of hours editing and it drives them insane. Water of Leith Walk As a working pro I actually relished the day I was getting paid to write and talk as this took me away from editing!! Over time I shot less and less and edited less and less up until I retired. I bit the bullet about 3 years ago and stopped paying for Lightroom and Photoshop and just started using the Apple Software and Snapseed to edit all my work with a few other free Apps if required. It was a learning curve again but I have got what I need now. I also don’t shoot for clients anymore and just for myself so I can go out and shoot and edit on my iPad as soon as I get home. It’s just bliss ! Me and Friends Whitby Abby My love of photography is returning mainly because I can shoot and edit super fast and don’t have to spend any time at a desk !! It was always the plan after retirement as 99% of my hobbies became jobs and when I gave up the jobs the hobbies went !!!! I did not want this to happen with my photography so have now got the balance right I hope ! I can now this year start to focus on my projects Journals and my Art !! I just need to learn of to draw faster !! Me ! The Mechanic Me ! The Gardner