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Anglo-Saxons

I completely agree. If I lived in the US, I would also socialise with people with the same political values. My point was that in countries where there is little political polarisation like Belgium it's very hard for people to viciously argue with one another as most parties and most of the...

What Is This Weird Reflex? If you've ever stepped out of a dark tunnel into bright sunlight and suddenly sneezed, or felt that tickle in your nose when you look up at the sun, you're one of them. You're a photic sneezer. The photic sneeze reflex (also called ACHOO syndrome—Autosomal Dominant...

A Bloomberg Economics analysis of the ramge of estimates on Brexit damage.

Here is an excerpt from the book Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, by Robert M. Sapolsky. It's about the link between lying for monetary gain and corruption. "The human capacity for deception is enormous. We have the most complex innervation of facial muscles and use massive...

The political situation in the United States is very unusual for a developed country in that there are only two major parties. In this setting it is easy for polarisation to take place. As soon as the Democrats and Republicans lost their moderate Centre, it became a case of Us versus Them, and...

A new study found that young Americans tend to reject potential partners from opposing political parties much more strongly than they prefer those who share their own political views. I recently posted a map of political polarisation and it won't surprise anyone to see that US society is...

I've selected a few interesting excerpts from the remarkable book Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, by Robert M. Sapolsky. These are all from chapter 12: Hierarchy, Obedience and Resistance. Foundation of Morality Affective psychological differences Implicit Factors...

I have been re-reading Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, by Robert M. Sapolsky, one of the most interesting books I have read. I thought I'd share a few passages from chapter 11 "Us versus Them" as I found it very illuminating in humans think, feel and behave towards people...

If that were the case, what would have prompted them to migrate thousands of kilometers away without apparently settling anywhere in between?

This other chart is also interesting. It shows the 5 main nationalities among foreigners in 19 EU/EEA countries. On the left is the foreigners by citizenship. On the right is the people born abroad, including those who were later naturalised. In many countries non-EU immigrants tend to get...

I didn't make the chart. It's from Eurostat. Apparently they only listed 14 countries, maybe those with the highest increase in foreign-born population. This other chart from Eurostat shows the percentage of the population born abroad in all EU countries. They even separate those born in...

France already had a huge immigrant population before 2001. It has the largest Muslim population and the largest black population of any European country. France was also one of the first countries to have a far-right anti-immigration political party (the National Front, founded in 1972, now...

I started this thread 12 years ago, and as far as I know, I was the first person who argued that the bell beaker was a cultural phenomenon and not an ethnic culture. This was confirmed by many genetic studies. Someone created a map of the Bell Beaker complex showing the Y-DNA frequency in each...

Yes. There is little relationship between the employment rate and unemployment rate. The latter only includes people officially looking for a job. Women who stay at home are not officially looking for a job, but are also not officially part of the workforce. In countries where more women stay at...

This chart is the working hours per worker. The one I posted is the working hours per adult (including people who do not work for any reason). Italy has the lowest employment rate in the EU at 62.5% of the working-age population. That's why the working hours per adult are so low. Italy's...

People in middle-income developing countries tend to work the longest hours. The richer a country becomes, the less people work so that they can enjoy their life. A good example of this is Italy, where the current average is 15 hours per week per worker. In the U.S. people still work like the...

You reach for your morning coffee not just for the caffeine kick, but because something about that first cup just feels good. New research published in Nature Communications has finally uncovered what's really happening: your coffee is reshaping your gut microbiome, which in turn is talking...

The data is from Eurostat (Jan 2001 → Jan 2025). Unfortunately, they do not differentiate between European and non-European immigrants. So in some countries the change may be due in great part to increased mobility within the European Union. For example, 51% of the population of Luxembourg is...

As the Economic LongWave, puts it “When a society confuses debt-fueled asset inflation with genuine wealth creation.” The latest data shows that property prices in Canada have already fallen by 40% since the bubble's peak in 2022.