Links 19 May 2023

Remains of a pair of Roman hobnailed shoes, France

As soon as the photograph was invented, people began writing stories about falling in love with a photographic image. "The trope was so common that Harper’s spoofed the emerging genre in an 1855 satire in which two daguerreotypes fall in love."

Fascinating article on the languages of the Andaman Islands, where the grammar is based on the human body. For example, the word for "blood" changes based on what part of the body it comes from, and words for many things change depending on what part of the body is relating to them.

Ancient Egyptian art depicts returning soldiers gifting the Pharoah with the severed hands of their enemies; now the practice has been confirmed by discovery of a collection of severed hands buried in a temple. (Original article, NY Times)

Many German politicians worried in public that a cutoff of natural gas supplies from Russia would wreck their economy and throw thousands out of work. When some economists released a study suggesting otherwise, the Chancellor mocked them, said they knew nothing about the real world. But the economists were right, because it really was possible to substitute for most of that gas and shift the impacts to the least valuable parts of the economy. Alex Tabarrok explains the economics of substition here.

Ancient Egyptian statues found in Poland turn out to be from a modern collection hidden during World War II.

The Nazi plan to turn Berlin into the megacity of Germania.

Scott Siskind on eugenics, slippery slopes, and morality in general.

Archaeology of the Batavia shipwreck in western Australia, not a happy story.

Very detailed 3D digital model of the Titanic.

Grave of a teenage indentured servant from the 1600s found in Maryland, looks like he was thrown into the ground with little ceremony. Quite likely he died within a few months of arriving, during his "seasoning" period.

Review of Martin Pulcher's new book on the history of human culture, with an emphasis on borrowing and mixing.

Feature on the most beautiful post offices in the world. They were built in 1910, 1880s, 1907, 1937, 1907-1919, 1970, 1877, 1912, 1938, 1700s, 1864, and 1936. So that's ten built in the 74 years from 1864 to 1938 and only one in the 85 years since. Truly we live in a dismal era of architecture.

MidJourney AI creates pictures of professors by department, very amusing.

British Museum post on caring for the world's only kakapo-feather cloak.

1.3 gigapixel image of the moon.

Twitter thread on the Turkish election by an anti-Erdogan Turk.

The Paris drug scene of the 1890s, focusing on ether and chloroform.

Really depressing NPR story from December about Tunisia, the only place where the Arab Spring led to an actual democratic government, now drifting into authoritarianism and economic doldrums. Many young people are fleeing, and hundreds have died trying to cross the Mediterranean to Italy.

Modern archaeologists like to work out the exact ways Vesuvius killed various people in Pompeii: earthquake, pumice fall, pyroclastic flow.

The Rijksmuseum acquires a remarkable red glass goblet made by alchemist Johann Kunckel. His patron, Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg, provided him with a private island where he could pursue his researches in secret.

Short article on the Air Force's NGAD (Next Generation Air Dominance) program, which is moving ahead with amazing speed considering the sci-fi level of stuff they are asking this plane to do. Good 15-minute video here explains the concept of the program in a more general way.

In two important decisions, the Supreme Court finds that Google and Twitter are not liable for every act of terrorism committed by people who use their services. (Vox, NY Times, NPR) The desire of many people to blame tech companies for the evil that resides in humanity simply baffles me. It isn't them, it's us.

This week's random past post: Nelson Mandela, George Washington, and Timothy McVeigh, 2013.

Ukraine Links

The War Zone has some context on the Patriot batteries and the attacks on them, says they were always going to become "missile magnets" and "every weapon fired at the Patriot battery is one less weapon Russia can use to hit other targets."

And a good, more skeptical thread by Arms Control Wonk, which however endorses the War Zone post linked above.

LPR volunteer Murz explains that Ukraine can launch a very successful offensive by first tying down all of Russia's very limited forces with attacks in many places, so there is nothing to meet their main thrust. Recent attacks on Bakhmut, he says, were the first step. (Part 1, Part 2; or off Twitter here)

The FighterBomber Telegram (a well-informed Russian outfit) says the loss of four Russian aircraft in a few minutes was likely caused by a failure of their Identify-Friend-or-Foe system, which is total junk anyway.

On the 300-km-range Storm Shadow missiles Britain has supplied to Ukraine: German blogger Tendar, Igor Girkin. As Girkin notes, NATO has hundreds of these, so quite a few could be delivered to Ukraine.

Thomas Theiner explains why NATO probably can't give Ukraine more Patriot batteries any time soon: only one variant (PAC-3 CRI) is both suitable for their needs and available for export to non-NATO countries, and there just aren't very many in the world. If the US wants to send more we will likely have to convert some PAC-2 batteries to PAC-3, which costs around $67 million and takes months. 

The Biden administration says it won't block the export of F-16s to Ukraine. Also "Defense officials and congressional staffers told CNN that Ukrainian troops have in recent weeks used the US-made Patriot air defense system to shoot down at least one faraway Russian fighter jet." (CNN)