https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/links-for-september

[Remember, I haven’t independently verified each link. On average, commenters will end up spotting evidence that around two or three of the links in each links post are wrong or misleading. I correct these as I see them, and will highlight important corrections later, but I can’t guarantee I will have caught them all by the time you read this.]

1: My parents’ and grandparents’ generations had lots of weird rules about fashion like “never wear white after Labor Day”. I’d always been baffled by this kind of stuff - why not? What would happen if you did? In 1922, someone wore a straw hat after official stop-wearing-straw-hats date September 15, leading to the week-long Straw Hat Riot in New York and several hospitalizations.

2: The Story Of Adrenochrome: QAnon believes that elites are addicted to adrenochrome, a drug synthesized from the glands of tortured children. Where did this theory come from? The short version is “Hunter S Thompson made it up for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”. But read the long version for, among other things, explanations for why it shows up in Dune and A Clockwork Orange.

3: While the Aztecs were sacrificing prisoners to the gods, their neighbors in the Tlaxcala were “a republic ruled by an assembly of commoners and nobles”.

4: Contra speculation, there is no link between knowledge of the Tuskegee experiment and black people’s unwillingness to take the COVID vaccine.