Simon Devlin @SimonTDevlin

Learn geography terms visually

Modelo 3D do Sistema Solar, considerando a atração gravitacional que o Sol exerce. 🎞️ cpge_2024/IG.

A towering updraft seen from a developing multicellular thunderstorm cluster over Swindon from Earley on Tuesday afternoon.

Sizes of subatomic particles

What I wouldn't give for a Black Hole or a Death Ray right now.

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Smartphones are not the explanation for the recent decline in fertility. Instead, they are an accelerator of deeper forces already at work. Let’s start with the facts. Fertility is falling almost everywhere: in rich, middle-income, and poor countries; in secular and religious countries; and in countries with high and low levels of gender equality. The decline accelerated around 2014. So, no country-specific explanation will work unless you are willing to believe that 200 distinct country-specific explanations arrived at roughly the same time. Smartphones look like the obvious candidate: the first iPhone was released in 2007, and global adoption has been astonishingly fast. Economists understand the first major decline in fertility in advanced economies, from 6 or 7 children per woman throughout most of human history to about 1.8, that occurred between the early 1800s and roughly 1970, well before smartphones. The main drivers were a sharp fall in child mortality (effective fertility was rarely above 3 and often close to 2) and the shift from a low-skill, rural agrarian economy to a high-skill, urban industrial one. We have quantitative models that fit these facts well. Country-specific factors mattered too, of course. Proximity to low-fertility neighbors accelerated Hungary’s decline, while fragmented landowning structures accelerated France’s. But these were second-order mechanisms. This is also why most economists long considered Paul Ehrlich’s doom scenarios implausible. We forecast that fertility in middle- and low-income economies would follow the same path as in the rich, probably faster, because reductions in child mortality reached India or Africa at lower income levels (medical technology is nearly universal, and most gains come from handwashing and cheap antibiotics, not Mayo Clinic-level care). Much of what we see in Africa or parts of Latin America today is still that old story. But in the 1980s, a new pattern appeared. Japan and Italy fell below 1.8, the level we had thought was the new floor. By 1990, Japan was at 1.54 and Italy at 1.36. This second fertility decline began in Japan and Italy earlier than elsewhere, driven by country-specific factors, but the underlying dynamics were widespread: secularization, an education arms race, expensive housing, the dissolution of old social networks, and the shift to a service economy in which women’s bargaining power within the household is higher. The U.S. lagged because secularization came later, suburban housing remained relatively cheap, and African American fertility was still high. U.S. demographic patterns are exceptional and skew how academics (most of whom are in the U.S.) and the New York Times see the world. My best guess is that, without smartphones, Italy’s 2025 fertility rate would be about 1.24 rather than 1.14. I doubt anyone will document an effect larger than 0.1-0.2. Italy was at 1.19 in 1995, not far from today’s 1.14. The TFR is cyclical due to tempo effects, so I do not read too much into the rise between 1995 and 2007 or the decline from 1.27 in 2019 to 1.14 today. The direct effect of smartphones is not zero, but it is not, by itself, that large. Where social media, in general, and smartphones, in particular, matter is in the diffusion of social norms. What would have taken 25 years now happens in 10. Social media are not the cause of fertility decline; modernity is. But they are a very fast accelerator. That is why social media are a major part of the story behind Guatemala (yes, Guatemala) going from 3.8 children per woman in 2005 to 1.9 in 2025. Without them, Guatemala would also have reached 1.9, just 20 years later. Modernity, in its current form, is incompatible with replacement-level fertility. By modernity, I do not mean capitalism: fertility fell earlier and faster in socialist economies than in market economies. Socialist Hungary fell below replacement in 1960, and socialist Czechoslovakia in 1966 (both experienced small, short-lived baby booms in the mid-1970s). By modernity, I mean a society organized around rational, large-scale systems and formalized knowledge. Countries will not converge to the same fertility rate. East Asia is likely stuck near 1, possibly below, given its unbalanced gender norms and toxic education systems. Latin America faces the same gender problem plus weak growth prospects, so I expect something around 1.2. Northern Europe has more egalitarian family structures and might hold near 1.5. The very religious societies are probably the only ones that will sustain 1.8. All of this could change with AI or changes in population composition. We will see. But on the current evidence, deep sub-replacement fertility is the “new new normal.” Unless we reorganize our societies, better learn to handle it as best we can.

عندك مشروع ولازم تسلمه بأقرب وقت البرنامج اللي تستخدمه

British royal family tree traced back to the 9th century

Somebody found not 1, not 2, but 25 Prowlers in a parking garage in Maranello, Italy

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Still true, and probably always will be! 😍

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Bosnians: I wanna swim Croatia: No

Wait, there is also an English version: correctiv.org/en/europe/2026…

"I present you the Soviet Ballistic Missile Submarine Red October" - A line from a superb movie. In reality the CIA knew far more about the Soviet TYPHOON class from the mid 1970s than Clancy could have guessed. Thread on the CIA, Typhoons and spying on the Soviets...

You can't spell discovery without "disco" 50 years ago today, NASA launched a 2-foot (60-cm) ball that transformed studies of Earth’s shape, rotation, and gravity field. It has no sensors, no batteries, no electronics… just 426 retroreflectors that allow scientists to make extremely precise distance measurements using lasers. LAGEOS is still orbiting Earth, and is expected to remain in its very stable orbit for millions of years!

Ben J, 'Deep in the Woods' artstation.com/artwork/1N0dNG

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Q: How many Ukrainians does it take to change a light bulb? A: None.

#Top10 People Whose Names Are Palindromes @Independent independent.co.uk/voices/top-10-…

Smoke break on the set of "The Empire Strikes Back."

The first simulated image of a black hole, calculated with an IBM 7040 computer using 1960 punch cards and hand-plotted by French astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Luminet in 1978.