World's oldest loaf of bread found at Çatalhöyük. It's roll-sized, made of barley, wheat and peas, and had been left out to absorb wild yeast and ferment for some time before a house fire aborted its trip to the oven.
Amusing street art by Frankey.
Spectacular gold-filled tomb excavated in Panama.
The phrase "late capitalism" was coined in 1902 and has meant several different things since then.
Fascinating review of a new book on text-based amulets in medieval England.
Armies worldwide are equipping their elite infantry with special computerized gun sights that are supposed to let them shoot down small drones with rifle fire.
Remarkable Neolithic village site found in France with a large cemetery, wonderful. English at The History Blog, French original at INRAP.
Today's headline: Georgia Men Plotted to Have ‘Large Python’ Eat Woman’s Daughter, Feds Say.
NY Times headline about the upcoming election: A Nation Craving Change Gets More of the Same. As I have noted here before, the endless desire of Americans for some nebulous "change" never ceases to amaze me. I cannot recall any candidate ever saying, "Things are pretty good and I want to keep them that way."
Kevin Drum: We Are Living in a Golden Age of Light Bulbs
The brightest object yet observed in the universe is a quasar that shines 500 trillion times more brightly than our sun.
Sabine Hossenfelder on one of the most exciting ideas in recent physics, Postquantum Gravity, 7-minute video. And Hossenfelder tries to bury String Theory, 25-minute video. Trenchant and amusing.
In 1940 Walter Benjamin committed suicide while fleeing from the Nazis. But he put off his flight from Paris until he had finished this 8-page manuscript, On the Concept of History. Benjamin was a key progenitor of the "woke" view that history is nothing but oppression, progress is a lie, and this should make us sad. Incidentally Marxist thinkers do not agree on what attitude Benjamin took here to "historical materialism," but it is certainly complex and not a clear endorsement.
Quick summary on Twitter/X of what is in the new AI Act just passed by the European Parliament.
The Squamish Nation owns a lot of valuable land in Vancouver. After years of protecting it from development, they have decided to partner with a major real estate developer to build a bunch of tall apartment towers. Because it's their land, the local planning authority has no say, and neither do the citizens of Vancouver, some of whom are shocked by this departure from their notion of native values. Via Alex Tabarrok.
Emanuel Macron on French TV, Thursday: "If Ukraine falls, our security will be at risk. If Russia continues to escalate, if the situation worsens, we must be ready, and we will be ready. . . . we will make the necessary decisions to ensure that Russia never wins." Macron is one of several senior European officials to have said lately that Russia is preparing for war with NATO. That seems crazy to me but then so did invading Ukraine.
Ukraine's naval drones have basically closed the Black Sea to Russian military shipping.
Armies worldwide are equipping their elite infantry with special computerized gun sights that are supposed to let them shoot down small drones with rifle fire.
ReplyDeleteI would think it'd be a lot cheaper and easier to just issue shotguns (either as entire weapons or as miniaturized under-barrel attachments for rifles).
Shotguns have been extensively shown to excel at taking down small drones, and wouldn't need to be limited to "elite infantry" like paratroopers, but could be issued to more or less everyone, without need for specialized training, or the risk of computerized sights being damaged or otherwise failing.