Thread on Twitter/X looking into why Korea has such bad gender relations and what that has to do with their very low birth rate. Argues that one cause is a pronounced "male bubble;" at one point Korea had 115 male babies for 100 female, and the children of that era are now mainly aged 25 to 40.
The FBI says far right news outlet The Epoch Times was a money-laundering operation (CNN, Fox News).
Norwegian ship burial dated to c. 700 AD, by far the earliest example in Norway.
Remarkable numbers of sea lions have been crowding the piers in San Francisco. Apparently they have been feeding on a huge school of anchovies in the Bay and are resting up before they head south for mating season. (YouTube, NY Times)
Videos of that volcano in Iceland erupting again, for the fifth time this year. Some geologists say it could go on erupting at intervals for years or even decades.
This Old House post from 2018 noting that the "Beverly House," a 1926 mansion in Beverly Hills, California, where JFK and Jackie spent part of their honeymoon, was on the market for $135 million. Quite amazing. It was eventully bought by Nicolas Berggruen. More on the property here.
Remarkable new nomad tomb excavated in Kazakhstan.
Crazy stormchaser video of a big tornado in Iowa last month that looks more like a demon than any I ever saw. Amazing the way a glancing blow just crumples a huge wind turbine.
Chess pieces from the 11th or 12th century found in Germany.
The FBI still has the "missing cryptoqueen", Ruja Ignatova, on the Ten Most Wanted list for her role in the $4.5 billion cryptocurrency fraud known as OneCoin, but most people the BBC talked to think she is already dead, killed by the Bulgarian gangsters she paid to protect her.
Complete skull of 2-meter tall extinct Austrialian bird found, looks a lot like a goose. Does that make Genyornis newtoni less scary, or add to your trepidation around geese? Imagine a 2-meter-tall goose charging at you.
Great discoveries at Pompeii, Regio 9, a grand house in the block known as Insula 10. Eight-minute BBC video about Insula 10 on YouTube. Short video of the Blue Room on Twitter/X, and a post on the Blue Room from The History Blog.
People say they're terrified to climate change, but then keep blocking experimentation on ways to fight it. Now Alameda, California has voted to ban an test of "cloud brightening." (NY Times, Alameda Post) This story explains the objections brought by environmental groups: "Marine Cloud Brightening would not reverse the climate crisis, and instead create a different climate change potentially exacerbating droughts, hurricanes, and flooding." Which might be true, but I don't know how they can argue that when nobody has ever tested the technology.
Harvard announces that their Faculty of Arts and Sciences will no longer require DEI statements for faculty positions. (Crimson, Reason)
Danish mortgages come with a built-in insurance mechanism against properties declining in value.
Successful sub-orbital test flight of the SpaceX Starship heavy lift vehicle, 12-minute video, and a 20-minute analytical video.
Scott Sumner argues that modern architecture is stripped down and simplified because everything about modern life is stripped down and simplified: "If it is really true that in architecture the old fashioned is beautiful and the modern is ugly, why doesn’t this also apply to women’s fashions? Did Le Corbusier also force women to discard richly ornamented outfits and replace them with simple black dresses?"
Vox feature on making friends as an adult.
French archaeologists find a necropolis for stillborn and very young babies, 1st to 3rd centuries AD.
Kevin Drum rates the eight people the Washington Post says are Trump's VP finalists.
Insanely detailed mushroom sculptures made from paper. But is it art?
Building a stilt-house hotel, a form invented for tropical lagoons, in an abandoned Portuguese salt works. Design seems pedestrian but I love adaptive reuse.
From Binkov's Battlegrounds, an update on the US Air Force's drone fighter program, aka "loyal wingmen." Says the Pentagon originally expected to buy comparatively few high-end stealthy drones but after wargaming various drone scenarios they say more, cheaper drones are better, and they are urgently rushing new, low-end drone fighter designs into production (20-minute video). It seems like current US wargames are finding that the side with the most drones wins.
And another Binkov video on Russia's "turtle tanks": what are they for, and how successful have they been? Says they are a product of a particular situation, the period when Ukraine was getting little artillery ammunition or anti-tank missiles from the west and so came to rely very heavily on small drones to stop armored advances; in that environment they were quite effective.
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