Friend of the blog ExFatLoss beats obesity:

In honor of this accomplishment, we present the Wikimedia chart of milk products and production relationships, including butter. Beware, the mark of the British is present: “soured cream”.

Adam Mastroianni: Declining trust in Zeus is a technology

To us, coin flips are random (“Heads: I go first. Tails: you go first.”). But to an ancient human, coin flips aren’t random at all—they reveal the will of the gods (“Heads: Zeus wants me to go first. Tails: Zeus wants you to go first”). In the Bible, for instance, people are always casting lots to figure out what God wants them to do: which goat to kill, who should get each tract of land, when to start a genocide, etc. 

This is, of course, a big problem for running RCTs. If you think that the outcome of a coin flip is meaningful rather than meaningless, you can’t use it to produce two equivalent groups, and you can’t study the impact of doing something to one group and not the other. You can only run a ZCT—a Zeus controlled trial.

Also Adam Mastroianni: “I’m running a prototype Science House this summer! It’s a great opportunity for anyone looking to do research outside academia. No application, just do some science, post it on the internet, and send me the link.” Full details for the science house can be found here.

Redditor u/ParadoxicallySweet asks r/NoStupidQuestions, “Why do my husband and I experience severe flatulence after visiting his parents?” Theories quickly settle on the idea that there might be something in the in-laws’ water. Most recent update is that their water is unusually high pH and unusually hard. Keep an eye on this one!

you need to see this one to understand it

Malcolm Ocean: ​​Towardsness & Awayness Motivation are fundamentally asymmetric. Psychology used to make a big deal about the difference between “approach” and “avoid”, this kind of calls back to that idea.

Hyperstimuli are Understimulating 

​​“It’s hilarious that one of the first things the allies did with the Nuremberg defendants was give them IQ tests. Herr Goering, please rotate this rhombus on its diagonal axis.” Claimed scores and other documentation are here.

AT&T gets a solid B+ on predicting the future: “You Will” Commercials (high quality) YouTube comments have it: “These are absolutely amazing. The only thing they got wrong is ‘The company to bring it to you, AT&T’.”

“State of nuclear disarmament today: it is actually likely that the easiest path is to build a 1,000 km circumference accelerator with the power requirements of Great Britain that shoots neutrino beams through the earth to make nuclear bombs lightly explode, making them useless.” Paper is here. On the one hand this seems good in terms of preventing nuclear annihilation. On the other hand, no mutually assured destruction might mean a return to the bad old days of lots of regional wars and occasional wars between the superpowers.  

Lies, Damned Lies, and Manometer Readings

Niko McCarty: “Every Sunday, I am going to try and post a short ‘screenshot essay.’ These are short essays that present ideas. They are meant to be engaging and opinionated. I hope that you will read them. I hope they will trigger more healthy discussions.” We like this. Aside from memes, we feel that images are vastly underrated. Here’s the first one: