Links 31 March 2023

Bruno Liljefors, Winter Landscape with Bullfinches, c. 1930

This study says the lifespans of the northern European elite began rising in the late 1300s and had actually risen quite a bit before everyone else's lifespans began increasing in the 1700s.  "In England and Wales, for example, the average age at death of noble adults increased from 48 for those born 800–1400, to 54 for 1400–1650, and then 56 for 1650–1800." Decline in deaths in battle was one cause; in 800-1550, around 30% of documented noble men died in battle, but after 1550 it was 5% or less. Many infant deaths are probably missing from the sample, because they weren't recorded, but that problem should be less bad in more recent cases.

More on the Japanese people who "disappear", becoming "jouhatsu-sha" or "evaporated people."

The "Ides of March" gold coin that Brutus had struck to celebrate the assassination of Julius Caesar, sold last year for $3.5 million, turns out to have been looted from Greece; it has been seized and repatriated and the dealer who sold it is under arrest.

Nice photo set from a virtual tour of Pompeii; Part 1, Part 2.

The weirdness of the world's largest model airport, with planes that "fly." Four-minute video.

Sabine Hosenfelder reviews about a dozen fusion start-up companies and their approaches in this 30-minute video. Interesting that a poll of scientists involved in the industry found that most expect working fusion power in the 2030s. Hosenfelder is a curmudgeon, but she says that after looking into all these companies she is more optimistic that at least one of their approaches will work.

Israeli scientists claim to have developed a very effective vaccine against bubonic plague using mRNA technology.

Kevin Drum on how GPT-4 will be used in medicine.

Amazing short video, shot in ultra slow motion, shows lightning reaching upward from a lightning rod to meet lightning coming down from the sky. (NY Times, Explorersweb)

Minor mysteries: who bulldozed a 2-mile long image of an Aboriginal man into the Australian desert?

Manhattan's streets include markers noting all the people who have received ticker-tape parades from the city. That includes two Frenchmen –Marshall Philippe Pétain and Premier Pierre Laval – who were honored for their leadership in World War I but later became Nazi collaborators. Should their markers be removed? Or would that be a whitewashing of America's own political history, given that the markers just record that the parades happened? (NY Times)

Charming illuminated landscapes by Rune Guneriussen.

Interesting portraits by Rosso Emerald Crimson.

Ukraine Links

Russian troops make a video protesting being sent to the slaughter in Vodyane. They say that out of 161 men in their unit, only "a few dozens" are left.

This analyst calculates that despite their massive effort to refit older tanks and make them combat ready, plus manufacturing around 250 new tanks a year, Russia has 1,000 fewer usable tanks now than at the start of the war.

UK MOD says Russia's 3rd Army Corps has suffered heavy losses in clumsy attacks near Avdiivka, including many armored vehicles. (Twitter, web article)

The Ukrainian Parliament tries once again to restructure UkrOboronProm, the state-owned defense conglomerate that includes all their Soviet-era defense plants. The firm has been a stew of corruption since Ukraine became a country (or maybe before), and a series of reform plans have failed to resolve the problem.

The Ukrainian MOD claims that Russia has launched a multi-pronged propaganda campaign aimed at making Ukrainians mistrust their own government's decisions and statements about the fighting in Bakhmut.

Ukraine claims it now has a surplus of electricity and can resume electricity exports to the EU. So much for fantasies of knocking out a power grid with a few bombs or bullets.

These guys argue that instead of providing billions in aid the EU should just pay Russian soldiers to defect, offering them citizenship in the EU nation of their choice.

 New report on the lessons of the war from the Royal United Services Institute. Says Russia saw their invasion as the culmination of an 8-year clandestine campaign to undermine the Ukrainian state. They thought their spies had thoroughly prepared the way for their army; this, the RUSI says, explains much of the weirdness of Russia's initial invasion. "Lessons" drawn from the failure of that attack, like, that tanks are obsolete, may not apply to an army that doesn't think it's rolling down a red carpet already laid by unconventional means.

Besides being a monster, Wagner Group boss Prigozhin is quite a clever troll.