Interesting review of Agnes Callard's new book about Socrates. From Henry Oliver, who reads widely and posts numerous reviews.
Still uploading chapters of The Voice from the Darkness at Royal Road.
Grizzly finds at a Bronze Age burial site in Scotland.
Paul Krugman on "Trump's Manufacturing Misfire."
Fairburn Tower, a 16th-century Scottish tower house turned into a modern vacation home. (2-minute video, article, property web site, detailed 43-minute video about the restoration)
Freddie deBoer gripes that negative criticism of pop culture seems to be disappearing before trashing the latest season of Stranger Things: "Nerds are not marginalized in 2025! We live under the thumb of the ever-growing nerd empire!"
The Harvard Crimson has a great piece on what happened to the Harvard Salient, a student-run conservative magazine that collapsed after their board saw conversations in which writers defended quoting Hitler, called for mass execution of immigrants, defended the Spanish Inquisition, and so on.
Focus group with conservative young men does not find them upset about the economy or their own prospects. (TwitterX)
Metal detectorists find five Anglo-Saxon jewels in Lincolnshire, quite lovely.
The Roman mosaic dubbed the "flowered carpet", which was reburied after excavation to preserve it, has been uncovered again.
Summary of what happened when St. Paul enacted rent control but Minneapolis did not. (Twitter/X)
Beachy Head Woman, a skeleton from Roman Britain, was thought to be from sub-Saharan Africa based on skull measurements, but now DNA says she was British. DNA has made conclusions from skeleton measurements even more questionable, including conclusions about sex. I think we should stop paying any attention to them.
Did Asgard archaea gave rise to eukaryotes?
French boys named "Kevin" and the populist right. (Twitter/X)
Study of caste discrimination by foreign multinationals hiring in India. Most of it occurs at the interview level. (Paper, summary on TwitterX) There is lots of data out there showing that interviews are useless. I would say that is because most interviewers have no idea what to ask, but I allow the possibility that I don't, either.
Against "Heritage Americans": "The idea that we should respect someone more because of what their ancestor 12 generations ago did is part of what we fought a revolution against." Sean Trende on Twitter/X.
The secret laboratory in Tuxedo Park, New York where financier Alfred Loomis did cutting edge scientific research in his spare time.
Book carving is back.
One of the most interesting parties in America seems to be the annual Surreal Salon hosted by Baton Rouge Galleries. 2025, 2026, article at This is Colossal.
The rock crystal jar from the Galloway hoard is all cleaned up and on display.
The War Zone on Trump's battleships, notes that the Navy has been floating concepts for an "arsenal ship" since the 90s. And Sandboxx with an interesting 30-minute video.
Are large ground armies obsolete in the age of drones? (15-minute video)
Requiem for the stage: "the last great Broadway season was 1957-1958".
Magyar's Birds, the top Ukrainian drone unit, posts a claim that when the Russians attacked with armored vehicles, plus numerous ATVs and motorcycles, they knocked out 29 armored vehicles and stopped the attack "within 100 minutes." The front lines in Ukraine are a brutal hellscape where nothing that makes itself visible survives for long.
5 comments:
Freddie deBoer gripes that negative criticism of pop culture seems to be disappearing before trashing the latest season of Stranger Things: "Nerds are not marginalized in 2025! We live under the thumb of the ever-growing nerd empire!"
There's plenty of negative criticism of pop culture, it's just not at the mainstream level. And why WOULD it come from the mainstream? Corporations want to squeeze every dollar they can out of the "content" they churn out, so of course they're not going to support negative views about their own products. That would cost them sales!
If you want negative criticisms, you need to find the small, independent reviewers - typically the ones who are crowdfunded by their fanbases, rather than being reliant on Youtube revenue or similar, so they don't care about the algorithm suppressing them for being negative and can actually speak their minds freely.
Obviously, it's harder to find said reviewers, but there are plenty out there to choose from. Be sure to directly support the ones you find and like, because otherwise they are at the whims of whatever corporation owns the platform they post to.
The Harvard Crimson has a great piece on what happened to the Harvard Salient, a student-run conservative magazine that collapsed after their board saw conversations in which writers defended quoting Hitler, called for mass execution of immigrants, defended the Spanish Inquisition, and so on.
The shock! The amazement! The complete disbelief! /s
I get that not everyone knows every possible meaning of every word in the English language, but... who at HARVARD is seeing the name The Harvard Salient and thinking to themselves "Aha! Salient like relevant! They must cover topical issues on campus!", and not instead immediately leaping instead to "The Ypres Salient" or "The Verdun Salient" and growing immediately concerned by that obviously intended imagery?
Focus group with conservative young men does not find them upset about the economy or their own prospects.
Not surprising, given that Conservatism, by its very definition and nature, appeals to people who are satisfied with the status quo...
Selection bias in action. If one political party champions leaving the economy alone, and the other party champions making reforms to help the struggling poor... those who don't see themselves as the struggling poor will be drawn to the former, while those who do will be drawn to the latter.
French boys named "Kevin" and the populist right. (Twitter/X)
The first thing I do when I encounter these kinds of maps is compare to a population map. If they match up fairly well, then you can probably discount whatever argument is being made entirely.
In this case, they do not match up. Or rather, they match up in some areas (and thus you can discount the effect somewhat in those particular regions), but it other areas they deviate substantially. Many of the areas which have more Kevins and more Fascists are largely the opposite of a population map - they are more rural and suburban area with low population density, stretched out in between cities.
The War Zone on Trump's battleships, notes that the Navy has been floating concepts for an "arsenal ship" since the 90s. And Sandboxx with an interesting 30-minute video.
I can only imagine it'll never be built. This would be at least a decade long project, Trump will be gone in three years at most.
The top brass aren't idiots, if they don't actually believe in this concept they know they just need to give Trump the impression that they're playing ball for now, dedicate only a minimum amount of resources to the project (mock-ups, blueprints, and boardroom "progress" reports are extremely cheap to drip feed to Trump), and then they can just quietly cancel the whole thing once he's gone.
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