society

The World's Happiest Cities This chart comes from the Happy City Index. Based on 64 indicators across six dimensions, the Index highlights cities that combine quality of life, sustainability and long-term development strategies. It covers 251 cities in developed countries. In the world...

Association between intelligence quotient and violence perpetration in the English general population A 2019 study published in Psychological Medicine examined the relationship between intelligence and violence perpetration in the general English population. Conducted by Louis Jacob, Josep...

A team of researchers from the Center for AI Safety and Scale AI has published a groundbreaking study exposing a troubling gap in how we evaluate AI trustworthiness. Their benchmark, called MASK (Model Alignment between Statements and Knowledge), reveals that most leading AI models will readily...

We've all suspected it. Now there's peer-reviewed evidence. A study published in Science — co-authored by researchers at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon — found that today's most popular AI assistants systematically validate users, even when those users are clearly wrong. The paper, led by PhD...

I asked the AI if among prominent historical feminists, be it writers, activists, or even politicians, a significant percentage of them ended up childless after their childbearing years? Answer : Based on a biographical analysis of 48 prominent historical feminists — spanning proto-feminist...

One thing that distinguishes Muslim societies from non-Muslim ones is the prevalence of cousin marriages. These are especially common in countries that apply the Sharia law or have an Islamist government. Ethnicity also appears to be a factor. Cousin marriage is much more prevalent in North...

I have created maps of traffic-related deaths per 100,000 inhabitants for the Unites States and Europe. When looking at the statistics per country from Wikipedia, I noticed that the US states with the worst road fatality rates were way above anything observed in other developed countries and...

Americans like to think that they live in the freest country in the world. While it is not even close to being the case, as I've explained here, there is one thing for which the US may be the freest country in the world and that is freedom of speech. I found this video that explains the...

Another very interesting video. What is your opinion of gated communities? I can understand their popularity around Los Angeles where a lot of celebrities live and want to keep away from potential stalkers. But this is a much wider phenomenon. About 15 million Americans now live in gated...

Here is another great video by Ashton. She has an MA and a PhD in human geography, environmental studies, urban planning and architecture, so this is exactly her field of specialisation and it shows.

One of the things I've heard the most times from the mouths of Americans about their country is that they live in the freest country in the world. That may have been true when the US became independent in 1776, but that is no longer the case. For example the Freedom in the World Index for 2024...

Most of the news coming from the UK in the last few years has been rather depressing. Obviously the countries suffering from Brexit, but not only. Brexit has exacerbated all previous underlying problems, like the lack of housing and the inefficient NHS. The UK now looks like the sick man of...

It may sound like a strange question. Many Westerners still have an image of Sub-Saharan Africa as an underdeveloped place where people live in huts and hunt with spears like in the early 20th century. But even if some tribes of hunter-gatherers survive in isolated parts of the continent, this...

About 9% of global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by the methane emitted from cattle flatulence. Additionally, large swathes of the Amazon rainforest are being destroyed (usually burned) to expand cattle ranching. Tropical deforestation itself is responsible for 10% of global warming, and...

It may be due to the Covid-19 effect or just the economy catching up, but in only two years many countries have seen their percentage of Internet users rise quite a lot, as can be seen on the two maps below. If data is correct, the share of Internet users dropped in a few countries though...

I have just updated the map of modern slavery based on the Global Slavery Index. There are some interesting evolutions. In 2018, slavery was almost completely absent from Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and Austria. However in 2023, that was only the case of Norway. The other...

As everyone knows France sucks. It's a horrible country that nobody wants to visit except for 90 million tourists per year. :kidding: And of course people from neighbouring countries know that well and try to avoid setting foot in France if they can help it. For example official statistics show...

When comparing countries and cultures, few people think of the fact that the frequency of basic emotions can vary widely depending on the society where one lives. Using Gallup's State of the Global Workplace: 2022 Report I created maps showing the percentage of respondents that felt anger...

I have been re-reading Bill Bryson's Notes from a Big Country. Bill Bryson is an American (from Iowa) who moved to the UK. After 20 years of living in England with his English wife (and 4 kids) he moved with his family to New Hampshire for a few years. This book is a collection of articles he...

I have recently come across the concept of spiral dynamics, a model of eight levels of increasingly complex human value systems (or vMemes) consisting of sets of world views, preferences, and purposes. Each level represent a new evolution in the way people interact within a society. The...