Links - 2022-06-20

Highly Linkable - links you need and deserve

One of the many myths that are perpetrated by communists/socialists including Marx himself as a somehow natural justification for their cause is that primitive societies were communist/socialist. Writing in AEON, Manvir Singh shows how quite wrong this thesis is. (HT: Alex Tabarrok)

Kevin Kelly recently turned 70 and used the occasion to post 103 bits of wisdom (bits of advice he wished he had known sooner).

The Resident Contrarian did a deep dive on SMTM’s very long Chemical Hunger series that speculates that chemical contaminants are causing us to be fat. His analysis is great and parallels many points I considered when reading the piece even though I too am sympathetic to the speculation SMTM put forth.

Something dear to my heart is the Wikipedia List of Common Misconceptions. There are so many of these that I knew and so many more I did not. It is one reason I now disdain the chain newsletters and email forwards I used to love that spout so much mythical folk history. (HT: Jason Feifer’s podcast Build for Tomorrow - Ep. 53: All the Fun Facts You Have Wrong!)

Pierre Lemiux does a great explanatory post on the confusion about energy prices and inflation. Whenever you hear things like, “Rising energy prices may stoke inflation,” run away. That person or publication has a contagious case of idiocy.