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In rural China, calling someone a 'witch' has serious social consequences

Population structured by witchcraft beliefs (DOI: 10.1038/s41562-017-0271-6) (DX)

Anthropologists have long argued that fear of victimization through witchcraft accusations promotes cooperation in small-scale societies. Others have argued that witchcraft beliefs undermine trust and therefore reduce social cohesion. However, there are very few, if any, quantified empirical examples demonstrating how witchcraft labels can structure cooperation in real human communities. Here we show a case from a farming community in China where people labelled zhu were thought capable of supernatural activity, particularly poisoning food. The label was usually applied to adult women heads of household and often inherited down the female line. We found that those in zhu households were less likely to give or receive gifts or farm help to or from non-zhu households; nor did they have sexual partnerships or children with those in non-zhu households. However, those in zhu households did preferentially help and reproduce with each other. Although the tag is common knowledge to other villagers and used in cooperative and reproductive partner choice, we found no evidence that this assortment was based on cooperativeness or quality. We favour the explanation that stigmatization originally arose as a mechanism to harm female competitors. Once established, fear that the trait is transmissible may help explain the persistence of this deep-rooted cultural belief.

How 'wi-fi' connects human brains and explains why people have 'gut feelings'

vs.

What Is A Coffee Enema? Goop Is Facing Backlash For Linking To This Potentially Dangerous Cleanse

Folks, we're saying "Merry Christmas" again. To our wonderful Orthodox Christians, it's Christmas now. Or around now. Sunday. Let's celebrate the miracle of Christmas again! Let's remember the story of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph that began more than 2,000 years ago. As the book of Isaiah tells us, for to us a child is born, to us a son is given and the government will be on his shoulders and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. This good news is the greatest Christmas gift of all, the reason for our joy and the true source of our hope. I am proud to have led the charge against the assault of our cherished and beautiful phrase. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Also, our thoughts and prayers are with the family of Prophet Monson, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His message was one of optimism, forgiveness, and faith. pic.twitter.com/0VjzLEeHTl

Fire at home of Moore accuser being investigated for arson

Roy Moore accuser's Gadsden home burns; arson investigation underway

Tina Johnson.

Everybody who has stocks should be thanking me. Because our Dow 30 hit a beautiful 25,000 today. Just like I said it would. If the Dems (Crooked Hillary) got elected, your stocks would be down 50% from values on Election Day. Now they have a great future -- and just beginning! We're going to grab and grab and grab the money. 💰 Grab and grab and grab for America! We’re going to bring in so much money and so much everything. We’re going to Make America Great Again, folks.🇺🇸

Donald Trump Didn’t Want to Be President (long excerpt)

Trump Bannon row: 11 explosive claims from new book

Trump Bannon row: Lawyers seek to halt book's release

Read the excerpt at New York Magazine. It seems entirely believable.

I saw a post on the PostgreSQL hackers mailing list that measured the performance impact of the Linux kernel page table isolation. https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/20180102222354.qikjmf7dvnjgbkxe@alap3.anarazel.de

pti is the workaroud, page table isolation, which can be
enabled/disabled via boot parameters. nopcid disables the use of the
hardware feature that reduces the impact of workaround. PCID support

readonly pgbench (tpch-like), 16 clients, i7-6820HQ CPU (skylake):

pti=off:
tps = 236629.778328

pti=on:
tps = 220791.228297 (~0.93x)

pti=on, nopcid:
tps = 198959.801459 (~0.84x)

To get closer to the worst case, I've also measured:

pgbench SELECT 1, 16 clients, i7-6820HQ CPU (skylake):

pti=off:
tps = 420490.162391

pti=on:
tps = 350746.065039 (~0.83x)

pti=on, nopcid:
tps = 324269.903152 (~0.77x)

Note that real-world scenarios probably will see somewhat smaller
impact, as this was measured over a loopback unix sockets which'll have
smaller overhead itself than proper TCP sockets + actual network.

Gretchen Carlson named chair of Miss America organization

Former Fox News Channel anchor and 1989 Miss America Gretchen Carlson was named chairwoman of the Miss America Organization's board of directors Monday, and three other past pageant winners will join her on the board.

The new leadership comes less than two weeks after leaked emails surfaced showing CEO Sam Haskell and others disparaging the appearance, intellect and sex lives of former Miss Americas. Haskell resigned Dec. 23, along with two other top leaders.

The selection of Carlson marks the first time a former pageant winner has served as the leader of the nearly 100-year-old organization. The organization also announced the appointments of three other past Miss Americas: 2012 winner Laura Kaeppeler Fleiss, 2000 winner Heather French Henry and Kate Shindle, who won in 1998 and now serves as president of the Actors' Equity Association. Their appointments take effect immediately, as does Carlson's.

Previously: Miss America on Life Support

Thoughts & prayers with all who are suffering today because of alcohol & drug abuse! Those who were killed or badly hurt in the many, many accidents our drivers always have around New Year's Eve, those in their families, and those who are addicted and just can't control themselves.

Also, thoughts & prayers with the wonderful people of Iran, who have suffered far too long under their TERRIBLE government. Especially, thoughts & prayers with the ones who are exercising their precious, precious right to protest. We are with you!

I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim this the year 2018. Except in Saipan and Guam. Maybe, probably, in Saipan and Guam, I think they have to wait a little. And maybe Little Rocket Man will send them a special firework. He's very foolish if he does. Very foolish. Because I will rain down fire & fury on him like nobody's business. Like nothing this world has ever seen. And it's seen a lot, hasn't it? Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they're going to be a joke. People will laugh about them after I do what I'm going to do to North Korea.

It's going to be a fantastic year, folks. 2016 was a good year. You elected me, overwhelmingly. 2017 was better. Because I started Making America Great Again. But 2018 is going to be amazing! We're starting to get our Supreme Court in shape, we have the tremendous Neil Gorsuch in there, we passed our beautiful Tax Cut, it's going to be a full year of Making America Great. Starting now. Merry Christmas! Maybe, probably, I'm the first guy to wish you a Merry Christmas for 2018. Which is sad. We don't say MERRY CHRISTMAS enough, folks. Not nearly enough. There's a war on Christmas, it's very sad. Wish somebody Merry Christmas today. And every day. And tell them to thank me. They should be thanking me. For signing the most massive Tax Cut this world has ever seen. So every day is like Christmas. I'm giving you a big gift every day, a big Tax Cut. Which is making our economy EXPLODE! And, folks, you should thank our guys in Congress, they worked on that for years. For years. Not the Dems, where were the Dems? Where were Chuck & Nancy? Empty seats, folks! No ideas, they do nothing but obstruct. And they'd love to raise taxes. DISGRACEFUL! No thanks to them, this is going to be the best year ever. Very money! 🍾 🎉 💰