Links for July, 2024
Criminal Cults, Drone War, Old History, Don Knotts, Mike Baron
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Crime and Religion
The religious composition of South America is changing, with Evangelism gaining ground and Catholicism losing it. This is playing out in the underworld as well. In Rio de Janeiro, a Pentecostal drug lord is acting like a small-time Charlamagne — only it’s the Catholic church playing the role of the pagan Saxons:
Claims emerged in the Brazilian press over the weekend that Álvaro Malaquias Santa Rosa – a notorious gang boss known as Peixão (Big Fish) – had determined that three places of worship should shut down in and around the agglomeration of favelas that he controls in northern Rio.
Since Peixão – whose nickname comes from the ichthys “Jesus” fish – took power in 2016 of five favelas that have become known as the Complexo de Israel, an allusion to the evangelical belief that the return of Jews to the Holy Land is a step towards the second coming of Christ and Armageddon.
….In the past, Peixão’s troops have been accused of ransacking Afro-Brazilian temples and banning Afro-Brazilian celebrations in the Complex of Israel, where more than 100,000 people live. But this week’s reports were the first relating to Catholic places of worship.
….Experts say the backdrop to the rise of narco-pentecostalism is the breakneck spread of evangelical churches through Brazil in the almost four decades since 37-year-old Peixão was born in Rio’s dilapidated northern suburbs.
Since then, Brazil’s evangelical community has exploded, from less than 7% of the population in 1980 to 22% in 2010 and about 30% today. The Catholic congregation, meanwhile, has shrunk dramatically. In 1991, 83% of Brazilians identified as Catholic, compared with about 50% today.
Speaking of crime, religion, and Brazil, this one is crazy:
Social media influencer and life coach Kat Torres, after some success as a health and spiritual guru, was convicted of using her position to traffic and enslave Brazilian women. Supposedly Torres got her start as a sugar baby living off rich men and “started going off the deep end” after one of her Hollywood boyfriends turned her onto the hallucinogen ayahuasca. She used her guru status to groom women who admired her into personal slaves:
Torres’ wellness website and subscription service promised customers: “Love, money and self-esteem that you always dreamed of.” Self-help videos offered advice on relationships, wellness, business success and spirituality - including hypnosis, meditation and exercise programmes.
For an extra $150 (£120) clients could unlock exclusive one-to-one video consultations with Torres during which she would claim to solve any of their problems.
….But it appears that advice had a dark side. Ana, Amanda, and other former followers say they found themselves becoming increasingly psychologically isolated from friends and family and willing to do anything Torres suggested.
….Repeating the pattern she had begun with Ana, Torres had targeted her most dedicated followers, trying to recruit them to come and work for her. In return, she had promised to help them achieve their dreams, capitalising on the intimate personal details they had shared with her during life-coaching sessions.
What makes it even more cultish is that Torres claimed to have supernatural powers, and her followers believed her:
Within weeks, Desirrê says Torres pressured her into working at a local strip club, saying if she did not comply Desirrê would have to repay all the money she had spent on her: flights, accommodation, furniture for her room, and even the “witchcraft” Torres had performed. Desirrê says not only she did not have this money, she also believed at the time in the spiritual powers Torres claimed to have, so when Torres threatened to curse her for not following orders she was terrified.
Of course, since it’s Brazilian women, it’s the best-looking cult you’ve ever seen.
Tattoo Redux
I mentioned tattooing in my last links roundup, so sociologist Dan Boches pointed me to this article on tattoos in Victorian England. One conclusion:
Prisoners’ tattoos weren’t symbols of criminal affiliation, or “bad repute” as commonly thought…. Instead, the designs “expressed a surprisingly wide range of positive and indeed fashionable sentiments.”
I guess they’re arguing against a Victorian idea that tattoos mostly marked gang affiliation. But it seems silly to me to be surprised by “positive” and “fashionable” statements. Even bad men profess love of mom, country, and Jesus.
I was surprised to learn that tattoos were found among other social classes. Supposedly, there was even a Victorian tattoo craze:
In 1902, a British magazine touted the “slight pricking” of the tattoo needle as so painless that “even the most delicate ladies make no complaint.” By the turn of the 20th century, unskilled workers, engineers and royals alike were all sporting body art…. the future George V got a tattoo of a blue-and-red dragon during an 1881 trip to Japan, and his father, Edward VII, commissioned a tattoo of a Jerusalem Cross during a pilgrimage.
My light Googling to see if there really was a craze just turned up a half dozen more versions of this exact same article, but all published in different outlets. These tattoo researchers are good at public relations!
The Real Don
My last roundup also mentioned the Andy Griffith Show. Coincidentally, Morgantown recently celebrated the centennial of actor Don Knotts’s birthday. According to Wiki, his early life was harsh: “His father, who had schizophrenia and alcoholism, sometimes terrorized him with a knife, causing him to turn inward at an early age.” He later served in World War II and was a West Virginia University alumnus (BA in education).
Knotts got his start is start in stand-up comedy before landing a film role in No Time for Sergeants. I liked watching that one as a kid, and you can see it for free on Archive.org. I also have fond memories of Knotts’s films Incredible Mr. Limpet (free with ads on Youtube) and The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (Archive.org).
Future Tech
There’s been some futuristic technology in the news of late. Researchers in China have supposedly carried out a test on a meltdown-proof nuclear reactor. From Singularity Hub:
In a paper in Joule, they describe a test in which they cut power to a live nuclear plant—and the plant was able to passively cool itself.
The researchers from Tsinghua University carried out the test on the 200-megawatt High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor Pebble-Bed Module (HTR-PM) in Shandong, which became commercially operational last December. The plant’s novel design replaces the fuel rods found in conventional reactor designs with a large number of “pebbles.” Each of these is a couple of inches across and made up of graphite with a small amount of uranium fuel inside.
A paper in Nature claims to have discovered a new method for gene editing. I’m not competent to understand or evaluate the details, but the gist seems to be that they demonstrated this method in E. coli bacteria and that it can do things CRISPR cannot. (Pointer from Scott Alexander’s monthly links roundup.) We’ll see what new things shake out of it.
Probably the coolest “we’re in the future, baby!” news was that a paraplegic was able to carry the Olympic torch thanks to a powered exoskeleton.
I thought maybe this was a one-time stunt with a prototype, but it seems like these things are coming into general use. A paralyzed lady in the San Francisco Bay area recently became the first person to have her insurance pay for one. And a writer at Fast Company gives a product review for an exoskeleton meant to assist hikers:
Called MO/GO (short for mountain goat), it may very well be the world’s most accessible exoskeleton when it goes on sale later this year for $4,500….MO/GO is one-part robot, one-part technical pants. Its creators call it an “ebike for hiking,” and it’s hard to come up with a better metaphor. MO/GO lets you hike farther, with more ease….
I like the idea that if Sigourney Weaver has trouble walking in her old age, she can get a real powerloader.
There’s also a video going around of some sort of flying quadcopter motorcycle developed in China. Looking into it, I saw that there’s something of a race between multiple companies to develop a marketable flying motorcycle. Only one of these has switched to the grimmer but surer market for military drones:
According to the company, the Razor is powered by four gimbaled jet turbine engines with vectored thrust that can burn any heavy fuel and can be refueled in minutes – giving it a considerable advantage over electric-propelled equivalents.
The drone market is booming as the war in Ukraine has rapidly accelerated the shift to drone warfare. According to Defense News:
The proliferation of drones on the battlefield is rising. For example, Ukraine is losing 10,000 per month while defending itself from Russian invaders, according to the Royal United Services Institute think tank. Flooding the battlefield with a large number of drones, especially those able to fly in a coordinated fashion, is a threat the U.S. military is still trying to address.
The demand for drones is such that, according to this piece from Reuters, Russia is supplementing it’s Iranian-designed attack drones with ultra-cheap drones that act as decoys to soak up anti-drone fire and reveal enemy positions:
The two new types of drone, which Russia has used in five drone attacks in the last two to three weeks including an overnight strike on Thursday, are produced from materials like foam plastic and plywood, the official told Reuters.
.…Because it is virtually indistinguishable from a regular attack drone from the ground, it still needs to be shot down, revealing where Ukraine's air defense systems are located.
It’s like the bit in the novel Starship Troopers about the need to not waste ammo on bug workers, who cannot fight, and save it for similar-looking bug warriors, who cannot surrender.
I’ve seen some writers on the naval beat point out China’s shipbuilding capability has now far eclipsed America’s. The difference in industrial capacity would certainly matter if the nations came to non-nuclear blows, but I wonder if surface ships themselves still matter so much. I picture the future of naval war being swarms of small drone ships, much like the swarms in the skies above Ukraine.
On the domestic side, US law enforcement agencies are increasingly using drones for surveillance.
Modern surveillance drones, which look similar in size and form-factor to the kinds used by hobbyists and photographers, can use thermal imagery, break through glass, and in some cases, even open doors and fly inside of buildings. Pairing these fast-flying mobile security cameras with other more advanced detection tech like license-plate-readers or even facial recognition algorithms can give law enforcement far more advanced mobile surveillance.
The arms race of military technology also brings new countermeasures. Thus South Korea recently announced a new system of anti-drone laser weapons.
Once active, the strategy, developed by Hanwha Aerospace (Hanwha), will cost around $1.45 (2,000 won) per shot. In a move called “game-changing,” the new defense systems will be silent and deadly for enemy drones.
Apparently, several other countries have similar systems in the works.
Technological change happens so quickly that it’s hard to know what society will look like in forty years. But it will certainly look different. At Compact, Jon Askonas says that the relentless march of technology is why social conservatism fails: “A technological society can have no traditions.”
Campus Trends
Criminologist Brendan Dooley has a piece in Minding the Campus analyzing the safetyism and incoherence of this year’s campus protests.
Safetyism is most clearly found in the varied efforts to protect students from negative consequences. Unlike the civil rights protests, no one is asked to risk life, limb, or lunch…. Princeton University students thankfully invented the new locution of a “rotating hunger strike” rather than press toward the inevitable.
Also note the protestors expect the authorities to assist their protest, such that their demands include catering. Dooley argues that the protestors lack a coherent mission: Demands to administrators range from tenable (divestment) to far-fetched (ceasefire) to having nothing to do with the war (more underprivileged housing in NYC) to just personal goods and camping equipment.
One thing driving change in higher education is that the average IQ of the student body has declined substantially over time. A trio of researchers at Mount Royal University document the change: Since the 1960s, student IQs declined from around 115 down to 102, just above the average for the population as a whole.
Obviously, there’s a lot of variation across institutions and majors. I’d imagine a lot of the decline was driven by less selective institutions and the growth of what one of my old students called “football player majors.”
More selective schools have the related effect of giving their students access to a more selective pool of friends and mates. Rob Henderson argues that modern college functions much like matchmaking systems in premodern societies, and getting access to better potential partners is a big part of the benefit.
On educational endogamy, a college friend told me years ago, “Don’t worry, you’ll find someone. Probably another professor, since that seems to be the way it works.” Indeed, I did wind up marrying another professor.
History
An article in History of the Family argues against “three myths about old age before modernity.” The authors focus on Nordic countries prior to 1850. Old age wasn’t as uncommon in those days as one might think:
In 1763…there were 284 people aged over 80 in the Swedish capital. When we use 60 as the threshold for old age, between 6% and 8% of Stockholm’s population can be classified as ‘old’. Elsewhere in Sweden, the share of old adults was even greater: during the first Swedish census of 1750, no fewer than 171,949 Swedes older than 60 were counted, accounting for 9.6% of the total population.
Academic scholarship incentivizes setting up a foil that the authors can contradict, and so I suspect that the clash between “myth” and reality might be less extreme than it’s made out to be. In any case: The first myth is that old people used to work until they dropped — rather, in an era where much work was hard physical labor, plenty of people aged out of full-time work well before they died.
The second myth is that unproductive oldsters were cared for by family — the reality is, well, not necessarily. Here’s the part where I think they strain the evidence, both in exaggerating the myth (who really thinks there was no poor spinsters or widows or old beggars in those days?) and exaggerating the reality (just because people tended to live in nuclear households doesn’t mean they didn’t look after their parents).
The third myth is that pensions didn’t exist: The earliest true pensions cropped up in the 17th century.
From beliefs about history to the history of beliefs: Stone Age Herbalist has a post on “Atheism in the Ancient World.” In my view there’s two senses of atheism.
In one sense, the entire society lacks theism. While all societies have some sort of supernatural beliefs and practices, not all have spirits that are powerful or personified enough you’d count them as gods. The Piraha, for instance, constantly feel themselves to be possessed by spirits, but have no creation myth or creator god. There’s no particular entity that’s the target of worship, sacrifice, or prayer.
The other sense is more familiar to moderns, in that it denotes someone who disbelieves in a society where theism is more or less the default. Think of a classical Greek denying the gods of Olympus. The latter seems more mysterious: There’s ancient Greek writers who complain about the danger of atheism, implying it existed, but we don’t know much about it or who these atheists were.
As for all else, Carthago delenda est: Here’s History Bro and Sargon of Akkad discussing the feats of Carthaginian general Hannibal. Also good is their discussion of Xenophon’s famous march out of Persia.
Odds and Ends
Inspired by my post “Essential Sociology,” Arnold Kling gives us “Essential Readings in Economics.”
If you haven’t yet seen this Wikipedia article that’s been making the rounds, do read the whole thing: Disappearing Polymorph. I think there’s some sociological analogies.
Years ago, I wrote a paper on what I call “Aggressive Suicide.” On X, @RogueWPA pointed me toward this Free Press story about "A Wife's Revenge from Beyond the Grave." It involves a woman who committed medically assisted suicide in as part of a campaign to destroy her ex-husband. I may do a longer piece on this sometime.
On a more positive note, John A. Cuddeback at the Institute for Family Studies suggests some “’Ordinary’ Family Activities” to combat summer boredom.
And on a wilder note: Having recently ordered comic writer Mike Baron’s Goodyng: The Polymath, I was curious to learn more about his other indie work. Poking around his web site I found a crazy story about the time he caught himself in a trap:
I built a house in Madison. I also designed it, with the help of an architect. I didn't have a budget for a secret room, so I decided to put a trap door in the floor of my bedroom closet with a ladder going down into the basement. I could astonish guests by going upstairs and emerging from the basement. Few were astonished. One night I was there with a woman I was dating. We were drinking and doing coke.
Things go downhill from there. Literally. With an appearance by Harlan Ellison!
Thanks for reading!
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