If you're curious about the Roman cult of Mithras, I recommend this 38-minute video.
Photographs of "tree huts" in Epping Forest, London, which look exactly like the equivalent constructions in North America. In my experience they are built by children; sometimes with adult help, but it is children who are fascinated by this concept.
Noah Smith asks what will superintelligence actually do for us? So far the world has not been transformed.
The case of the out-of-control security team at EBay is finally settled, for $56 million. (NY Times, Wired, CBS News)
Scott Siskind, more July links, lots of AI stuff.
Why are Europe's wildfires so bad? Because the shift away from farming has led to a huge resurgence of forests, and just as in the western US, dry forests burn regularly no matter what you do. (NY Times) Climate change is a small factor compared to the enormous regrowth of trees.
Two tiny birds carved from mammoth ivory found in a German cave.
Site of a Roman battle of 39 BC found in Spain.
Great little AI film showing what the Odyssey might have looked like as a German silent film of the 1920s. This is what AI is good for. (Twitter/X)
No surprise that Bronze Age Pervert did not like Nolan's Odyssey, but his take is amusing and reminds us how weird BAP's actual devotion to a violent, aristocratic ethos is in our time.
I have, over the course of my long life, come to despise the Endangered Species Act. Whereas other environmental laws try to balance environmental and other goals, the ESA is absolutist and sometimes requires things I regard as absurd. The current focus on threatened bat populations is driving my clients crazy. Here, via Marginal Revolution, is an argument that the ESA prevents housing construction, and I believe it.
Cool 10-second video showing how smoke from Canadian wildfires crossed the US.
From a review of a new, left-wing biography of Mario Vargas Llosa: "He traces the path of a novelist who began by dissecting oligarchy with surgical precision and ended happily dining among its ranks, completing one of literary history’s most spectacular political migrations – from the hard left to the hard right, over the course of half a century."
Never, ever develop positive feelings toward a writer you admire: Patrick O'Brian of "Master & Commander" was a lying fraud who faked his whole biography, abandoned his family, and probably never went to sea. Sensible advice: "Read the novels and forget everything else."
Why do people write, or read, biographies of literary characters?
Update on Russian officers killed in the Ukraine war, all confirmed by Russian sources: 5 lieutenant generals, 8 major generals, 122 colonels, 369 lieutenant colonels, 768 majors, 1276 captains, 2118 senior lieutenants, 1897 lieutenants, 1146 other (mostly reserve officers with police ranks), total 8595. Putin has wrecked his army's future with the loss of these leaders. Elite special forces soldiers have also suffered very high losses. There is a lot of blaph out there about Russia recovering quickly after the Ukraine war ends and threatening Europe, but you can't quickly replace losses like these, especially not in a demographically shrinking country. Russian drones and missiles might be a future threat, but Russian ground forces are crippled.
No comments:
Post a Comment