GAVNet Collaborative Curation

There aren't many books out there these days by revolutionary communists who are into the genetics of intelligence. But then there aren't many writers like Freddie DeBoer. He's an insistently quirky thinker who has managed to resist the snark, cynicism and moral preening of so many others in his generation - and write from his often-broken heart. And the core of his new book, "The Cult of Smart," is a moral case for those with less natural intelligence than others - the ultimate losers in our democratic meritocracy, a system both the mainstream right and left have defended for decades now, and that, DeBoer argues, gives short shrift to far too many.

In a new book from Cambridge University Press, Lance Taylor reveals that wage repression - far more than monopoly power, offshoring or technological change - is driving rising inequality

In this Review, we outline the history and evolution of the burning embers and associated reasons for concern framework, focusing on the methodological approaches and advances. While the assessment framework and figure design have been broadly retained over time, refinements in methodology have occurred, including the consideration of different risks, use of confidence statements, more formalized protocols and standardized metrics. Comparison across reports reveals that the risk level at a given temperature has generally increased with each assessment cycle, reflecting accumulating scientific evidence. For future assessments, an explicit, transparent and systematic process of expert elicitation is needed to enhance comparability, quality and credibility of burning embers.

New geologic findings about the makeup of the Earth's mantle are helping scientists better understand long-term climate stability and even how seismic waves move through the planet's layers.

A team of researchers from the U.K., China, and Italy has found evidence that suggests oxygen depletion in the world's oceans led to the end-Triassic mass extinction. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their study of ancient rocks found in multiple locations around the world.

Covid-19 has heightened our perception of danger so that every day is a series of finely balanced calculations. How do we decide which are the risks worth taking, asks Sarah Perry

The collapse of China's prosperous Ming dynasty, one of the most stable in Chinese history, has been attributed, in part, to the 1641 eruption of a volcano thousands of kilometres from the imperial capital in Beijing.