Links 2021/05/29

Musicians Algorithmically Generate Every Possible Melody, Release Them to Public Domain - https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/wxepzw/musicians-algorithmically-generate-every-possible-melody-release-them-to-public-domain

Passports started as a "temporary" war measure - https://fee.org/articles/passports-were-a-temporary-war-measure/

"There is one thing that the extreme pro- and anti-abortion people can agree upon: that the issue is intellectually trivial, the correct answer blindingly obvious. They just disagree about which position is blindingly obvious and which stupidly evil. I disagree, though. I think the issue of abortion is difficult. In fact, if you think the issue is easy, then I would say you’re irrational" - http://fakenous.net/?p=392

Models that predict a decline in human population due to declining birth rates fail to account for whether fertility is heritable. If it is, then what we'll really see if a temporary drop, where the ability to choose your family size starts replacing people who don't want more children with those who do. - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513817302799

Over time, kids are getting better at delayed gratification. - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289620300295

In every social science, the scientists are, on average, left-wing. But economists are the ones who are least left-wing. - https://t.co/Bf9e2pFMOx

According to John Ehrlichman who worked for Nixon: "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." - https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/

Right-wing political correctness - https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/right-has-its-own-version-political-correctness-its-just-stifling

Young people have about the same level of debt and home ownership as 2 decades ago - https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/06/millennial-debt-is-actually-quite-low/

Instead of being separate conditions, many mental health problems appear to share an underlying cause - https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24532660-500-a-radical-idea-suggests-mental-health-conditions-have-a-single-cause/

"white officers use force 60 percent more than black officers, and use gun force twice as often... while white and black officers use gun force at similar rates in white and racially mixed neighborhoods, white officers are five times as likely to use gun force in predominantly black neighborhoods." - https://www.nber.org/papers/w26774

The NRA used to be "at the forefront of legislative efforts to enact gun control", plus other weird facts about the history of gun control - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/

"Republican district attorneys lead to a 18-21% increase in new prison admissions in the two years following their election... there are no significant effects on local crime or arrest rates" - https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/11/the-effect-of-district-attourneys-on-criminal-justice-outcomes.html

The ways Texas and California Republicans took different paths on immigration in the past, and how it seemed to change who voted for them - https://www.cato.org/blog/proposition-187-turned-california-blue

Missing moods - https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/01/the_invisible_t.html

The majority of Republicans say that college has an overall negative impact on the U.S. - https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/08/19/the-growing-partisan-divide-in-views-of-higher-education-2/

"Liberals, relative to conservatives, express greater moral concern toward friends relative to family, and the world relative to the nation." - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12227-0