Week Eleven Course Update

Some Items That Caught Our Attention

– HALLOWEEN SPECIAL EDITION

Ghosts are Rational: “This paper provides research to show that ghosts are indeed rational actors and, as such, refrain from the practice of killing living entities. The paper concludes by discussing the impact that this result could have on the housing market”

Facts About Ghosting: “13–23% of adults have been ghosted by a romantic partner. Add in friends, and we’re talking 72% of people reporting they’ve been ghosted at least once. 20–40% have either been ghosted or done the ghosting.” More here. Should there be a tax on ghosting? Solve for that equilibrium.

Tricked: Living standards during wars were worse than the data tell us.

The Devil’s Path (in the Catskills) makes the list of America’s Most Haunted Hikes

WitchTok and Winemaking: “Future 40 Tastemaker Nancy Ulloa, the self-described “wine witch” behind Ulloa Cellars, infuses her bottlings with “metaphysical and spiritual methods.” She gives offerings to the vineyards prior to harvesting her grapes. She uses crystals and recites affirmations during the fermentation and aging process.”  

In rural villages, broomsticks were also often used as a form of signage by alewives, who would place them outside their cottages to show that ale was for sale within. Somehow, this innocuous object found its way into stories of witchcraft.

First There Was Al Capone, then the Cubs, Now … “Where are all these pumpkins coming from? From right here in Illinois, which grows far more pumpkins than any other state, and it’s not even close. In a recent year, Illinois grew 634 million pounds of pumpkins, making it a $200 million industry in the state. In second place? Indiana, with 161 million pounds.

“We are not only No. 1 in production, we are about three times as big as those other states,” says Mohammed Babadoost, a plant pathology professor at the University of Illinois, and the state’s leading pumpkin expert. “We are truly the pumpkin state.”

In the 80s it was razor blades … today? “A police department in Michigan issued a warning to community members after uncovering counterfeit candy and snacks containing THC and hallucinogenic mushroom products while executing a search warrant at a local residence.”

Haunted (Affordable) House: “Despite its name, it’s often not particularly affordable to build: California affordable housing costs 1.5x as much to build as market-rate housing. Partly this is because of the various hoops the government requires affordable housing developers to jump through. In Chicago, apparently developers are required to provide records showing if they’ve ever “invested in or profited from slavery”

We May Love Pumpkins Now. A history of the Pumpkin in the US … “"It really did not take long for it to develop this figurative use," she says, adding that by 1680, pumpkin was "applied contemptuously to a person who's a bit conceited or self-important or stupid."

Are You a Dark Coper? “The third, "Dark Copers", saw it as a way of dealing with real life. They reported watching horror films to explore how violent the world is, for instance, and to remind themselves of how safe their own lives were in comparison to the gore on screen. Some even saw the onscreen action as a way of managing their anxiety or depression. It was a way of testing their bravery.“ More on the paradox of horror films.

The key question is not whether you’d buy one, but whether you’d get it at a premium or a discount! Americans would consider buying a haunted house.

Dress Up as a Knight > Dressing Up as a Samurai?

“Reports of demonic possession were popular. Before his ascension to the English throne, King James VI of Scotland published a literary treatise on demonology in 1597. He argues that “assaultes of Sathan are most certainly practized” and “detestable slaves of the Devill” live among us. Demon vs. Ghosts.

Dressing Up Prob and Stats

Do 55% of Your Calories Really Come from Ultra Processed Foods?

Not Playing Dress Up (or as MR would say, “Those New Service Sector Jobs, but not quite”): “Giles has cleaned in rooms containing skeletons in beds and armchairs, skeletons wearing leather belts, leather shoes, all that remains of someone’s clothing after a decade or more of undisturbed decay. He has dug out hoarders who’ve accidentally interred themselves, dying like pharaohs inside mausoleums of boxes, videotapes, magazines. He once collected hundreds of used needles from an abandoned train depot in Bath. Towards the end of that job, working in the dark, one of his colleagues disturbed an addict, who promptly added another needle to the total before wandering off. When a truck driver misjudged a hill in Devon, Giles’s office got the call to pick up hundreds of oily, slippery pig skins from the road.”

How do we handle the data of the deceased?

Unlike nihilism, with which cosmicism shares some similarities, the focus is on how small and incidental humanity is. Lovecraft’s characters are often placed in situations where they come face-to-face with the cold, uncaring vastness of the Universe, their inability to affect change in any meaningful way, or aliens so bizarre that their minds cannot comprehend them or integrate them into a coherent worldview.  

“I Got ADHD in my Bag”: The practice of medicine relies on accurate diagnosis. However, the diagnosis of many medical conditions involves assessments that invite varying degrees of subjectivity. External and arbitrary factors can influence physicians’ diagnostic assessments in conditions ranging from heart attacks to neurodevelopmental conditions like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Quantifying this subjectivity is challenging, however, particularly for neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions where subjective assessments of behavior are common and important. Halloween, a holiday characterized by excitement among children, could present a natural experiment to study subjectivity in diagnosis, if any ensuing behavioral changes influence diagnosis rates of ADHD. Using data on over 100 million physician office visits, we compared ADHD diagnosis rates, by day, among children seen by physicians in the 10 weekdays surrounding seven Halloween holidays. The rate of new ADHD dia! gnosis was 62.7 per 10,000 child-visits on Halloween, compared with 55.1 during surrounding weekdays, a 14% increase. There were no increases in diagnoses of several neuropsychiatric disorders with diagnostic criteria that are less focused on hyperactive behavior. Our findings highlight subjectivity in ADHD diagnosis and support the need to consider external factors that may influence diagnosis

Outfoxed, Rambo Edition: “Until then, eradicating predators in an enclosed area, while difficult, was a standard process. But Rambo was not a standard fox. It’s believed he became incredibly wary after losing his mother to a trap and his sibling to poison bait. Over four and a half years, he evaded 10,400 traps, 3,500 poison baits, 73 stakeouts, and 55 days of scent-tracking dogs. This was more than just an animal’s struggle for survival; it was a victory of wits and instinct over technology. Rambo’s impact was much bigger than just his own survival. This single fox single-handedly delayed a multi-million dollar conservation project for years. Because of him, scientists had to change their plans and create a smaller, second safe zone inside the main area. He wasn’t just a predator; he had become a strategist dictating the project’s terms.”

DING DONG THE CLIMATE CATASTROPHE WITCH IS DEAD:

Ding Dong, Climate Change Costs Fall Again: India’s monsoon season was unusual this year, but many farmers there had new AI weather-forecasting tools to help them ride out the storms. Google’s open-source artificial intelligence model NeuralGCM and the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts’s AI systems are making sophisticated and granular forecasting data available to even the smallest farms in poor areas. Thanks to the open-source AI, and decades of rainfall data, the Indian government sent out forecasts to 38 million farmers to warn them about looming monsoons.”

Ding Dong, Climate Change Costs Fall Again: “New Earth-mapping satellite captures North Dakota farmland and Maine's coast in detail; the joint US-India mission will track shifts in land and ice to help forecasters and first responders address natural disasters”

Ding Dong the cost of climate change has fallen again: “Three cities in Colombia saw a dramatic fall in the incidence of dengue in the years following the introduction of mosquitoes carrying Wolbachia, a bacterium that prevents the insect from transmitting viruses. In neighbourhoods where the Wolbachia mosquitoes were well established, dengue incidence dropped by 94–97%”

The Cost of Climate Change Has Fallen Again: Mosquito edition.

The Cost of Climate Change Has Fallen Again, Part 2: Mosquito edition part two