June 16
Exact replicas of the Parthenon marbles
This team went guerilla-style into the British Museum to create exact replicas of the Parthenon marbles. This archaeologist and his team had a simple plan — take 3D scans of the Parthenon marbles and recreate them for the British Museum so the originals could be returned to Greece. When the museum said no, they went in anyway, guerilla-style.
The basic urge is surprisingly complex
To most people, pulling into a highway rest stop is a profoundly mundane experience. But not to neuroscientist Rita Valentino, who has studied how the brain senses, interprets and acts on the bladder’s signals. She’s fascinated by the brain’s ability to take in sensations from the bladder, combine them with signals from outside of the body, like the sights and sounds of the road, then use that information to act—in this scenario, to find a safe, socially appropriate place to pee. “To me, it’s really an example of one of the beautiful things that the brain does,” she says. from How Do We Know When to Pee? [Smithsonian; ungated]
“The whole place feels like wildfire.”
The Lonely, Resolute Path of Oklahoma Lesiglator Mauree Turner (slWaPo) "Being the nation’s first Black, Muslim, nonbinary state lawmaker, let alone the first in Oklahoma, was never going to be easy."
Probably X but Possibly O
Probabilistic Tic-Tac-Toe – The rules are the same as normal tic-tac-toe, but each square has a different probability of a good (smiley face), neutral (meh face), or bad (frowny face) event happening when selected. [more inside]
Good News: Cancer Edition
13 year old Lucas Jemeljanova becomes first person to be cured of DIPG, a mostly fatal pediatric brain cancer, after traveling to France to participate in a study on the effectiveness of 3 cancer drugs. The same mRNA technology that brought us the COVID-19 vaccine could also be used to create a vaccine for cancer. Microrobots made of algae can carry chemo directly to lung tumors, improving cancer treatment. The American Society of Clinical Oncology met this year to share their latest findings on ways to treat cancer: from “melting away” tumors, to more accurate cancer screenings, and clinical trials for promising cancer vaccines.
Excavation of a stone palace complex on the Tintagel peninsula
English Heritage’s Properties Curator, Win Scutt said: “These finds reveal a fascinating insight into the lives of those at Tintagel Castle more than 1,500 years ago. It is easy to assume that the fall of the Roman Empire threw Britain into obscurity, but here on this dramatic Cornish cliff top they built substantial stone buildings, used fine table wares from Turkey, drank from decorated Spanish glassware and feasted on pork, fish and oysters." 2016 excavations report. Guardian article about a truly extraordinary window ledge inscription from the 7th century. More about Tintagel for folks who've never heard of it. [more inside]
Dentist Discovers Human-Like Jawbone and Teeth in a Floor Tile
Dentist Discovers Human-Like Jawbone and Teeth in a Floor Tile at His Parents' Home. Scientists are planning to study the specimen, embedded in travertine from western Turkey, in hopes of dating and identifying it. He found the jawbone in a tile made of travertine, a type of limestone that typically forms near hot springs. This specific tile came from a quarry in the Denizli Basin of western Turkey. The travertine excavated there formed between 0.7 million and 1.8 million years ago, which suggests the mandible did not come from a person who died recently.
To see beauty in limitation is not an easy thing
In our technological age people are often caught between two worlds, forced to choose between what is pleasurable and what is beyond pleasurable. Activity A may be a genuinely enjoyable activity, but as an ordinary pleasure it comes with certain discomforts and limitations. Activity B, on the other hand, promises to move past those limitations, satiating our desire for maximal pleasure. Who wouldn’t want to choose Activity B, then, when the option is presented so readily? from The Rise of Hyperpleasures by Samuel C. Heard (Mere Orthodoxy; ungated)
June 15
}🖼️{
This volume thus builds upon growing art historical, anthropological, and historical literature that argues that “art” is far from a natural category of human endeavor, but instead represents a historically specific idea and practice emerging in Europe from the Enlightenment and its aftermath [:] the radical and unprecedented bifrucation of the artist, as the genius who produces things of beauty, from the skilled artisan or crafts[person] who produces useful objects. [what’s the use of art?] [more inside]
Q: Is this site comprehensive and complete? A: Heavens no.
DrawingMachines.org attempts to simultaneously be scholarly, technical, engaging, inspirational, and, most of all, useful. Every attempt is made to satisfy the academic art historian, the artist, the designer, the tinkerer and the student. If you are looking for historical or technical information, this site aims to satisfy both. This is a reference site, but aimed at different audiences interested in drawing.
Parliamentarians helped foreign interference in Canadian elections
On March 8, 2024, the Canadian National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) provided Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with the Special Report on Foreign Interference in Canada’s Democratic Processes and Institutions (redacted pdf). On June 3, NSICOP tabled the report in Parliament. The document alleges that while "parliamentarians were unaware they were the target of foreign interference", others have been "wittingly assisting foreign state actors," though maybe not anybody currently in Parliament. [more inside]
All Shook Up
The search for the mysterious company behind a scheme to steal Elvis Presley’s Graceland estate ended last week, not in Nigeria--where initial clues seemed to lead--but at the front door of "a grandmother in Branson, Missouri, a con woman with a decades long rap sheet of romance scams, forged checks and bank fraud totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, for which she did time in state and federal prison."
Can I pet the d... ... eel...?
Cop Rot
A Washington Post investigation found hundreds of law enforcement officers in the United States have sexually exploited kids. Many avoid prison time. From the various LinkMe requests over here, because there are a lot of bad cop stories this week. Sigh. [more inside]
Christian nationalists in the court system
Justice Alito Caught on Tape Discussing How Battle for America 'Can't Be Compromised' [ungated] - "In a new, secret recording, the Supreme Court justice says he 'agrees' that the U.S. should return to a place of godliness." [more inside]
Just the facts, ma'am/man
There are a variety of "low-carbon" or "bandwidth-friendly" variants of news sites out there that load headlines with little styling and no images, such as CBC Lite, and much, much more. [more inside]
The Art of Translation
See how a translator carries a book from one language to another, line by line. Much like a crossword, a translation isn’t finished until all the answers are present and correct, with each conditioning the others. But when it comes to literature, there is rarely ever just one solution, and my job is to test as many as possible. A word can be a perfect fit until something I try in the next clause introduces a clumsy repetition or infelicitous echo. Meaning, connotation and subtext all matter, but so does style. Below are two attempts to show the thought processes involved in the kind of translation I do.
Sophie Hughes for the New York Times.
This outback property is home to 37 species found nowhere else
This outback property is home to 37 species found nowhere else in the world, many hiding in springs for millennia.
Unique species of fish, snails, and crustaceans have existed on this isolated property in Western Queensland since the dinosaur age when it was deep under water as part of the Eromanga Sea.
A watershed, not a holiday
We might now be on the cusp of a similar sea change, with American policymakers, especially Democrats and the broader center-Left, beginning to craft a new industrial policy and seeking to decouple economically from China. This decoupling is accompanied by an ersatz new Cold War with China—reminding us of how an earlier era of more activist liberal government required the Cold War to legitimate and underpin it. Whether such efforts will take hold is, for now, unclear. But understanding what these efforts are designed to overturn requires returning to the pivotal years of America in the 1990s. from What the 1990s Did to America [Public Books]
June 14
This Famicom bootleg game costs $5000
In which youtuber f4mi talks famiclones, bootleg software, and demake ports of popular games, long after the West had given up on the NES, with a focus on one very special demake in particular... [SLYT]
Shit's on Fire, Yo!
[two hours, SLYT] From a talk presented at https://cackalackycon.org/, professional physical pentester Deviant Ollam explains fire codes and fire safety systems (such as fire doors and sprinkler systems). [more inside]
The Imaginary Town of an Unconscious Architect
100 years of Haskell's House
Edward Hopper - Haskell's House - 1924. The house IRL. Haskell's House at Hopperhead. Haskell's House for the Hopper fan. Hopper previously.
Exuberantly undisciplined
But this isn’t really about the software. It’s about what software promises us—that it will help us become who we want to be, living the lives we find most meaningful and fulfilling. The idea of research as leisure activity has stayed with me because it seems to describe a kind of intellectual inquiry that comes from idiosyncratic passion and interest. It’s not about the formal credentials. It’s fundamentally about play. It seems to describe a life where it’s just fun to be reading, learning, writing, and collaborating on ideas. from research as leisure activity by Celine Nguyen [Personal Canon]
“I hope my manager allows me to play next week”
GQ: “It’s happening very fast,” said Saurabh Netravalkar, the Team USA cricket player with the world-famous LinkedIn profile ... Several fans in attendance held up signs calling Kohli a god; one held up a sign asking Netravalkar for a job reference. Guardian: As it happened: USA beat Pakistan. The Athletic: So, for a son of Mumbai to inflict such a humiliating defeat on the old enemy was a case of Netravalkar - in the words of his younger sister Nidhi on social media - “making two countries happy”. Times of India: Balancing his dual roles as a cricketer and a software engineer at Oracle, Netravalkar manages his demanding career alongside his sports commitments. Interviewed in cricbuzz: “I filed for a patent. It was an innovation algorithm that we had.” [more inside]
"Every single day we’ve got to show up and cook."
An Ode to Luby's and the Southern Cafeteria (The Bitter Southerner)
Thanks.
Reuters: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic 'The U.S. military launched a clandestine program [that started under former President Donald Trump and continued months into Joe Biden’s presidency] amid the COVID crisis to discredit China’s Sinovac inoculation – payback for Beijing’s efforts to blame Washington for the pandemic. One target: the Filipino public. Health experts say the gambit was indefensible and put innocent lives at risk.' (ungated)
Oh no, consequences
Romance Writers of America continues its slow crawl towards oblivion, filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy, blaming 'disputes concerning diversity, equity, and inclusion issues between some members of a prior RWA board and others in the larger romance writing community'. Meanwhile author Courtney Milan continues to live her best life, organizing the next round of the Romancing the Vote fundraiser, self-publishing (extremely well reviewed) historical romances featuring diverse characters, and writing a chatty weekly newsletter about tea for her fans. [more inside]
The war on truth
Casey Newton & Zoe Schiffer report that The Stanford Internet Observatory is being dismantled. The Observatory "was created to learn about the abuse of the internet in real time, to develop a novel curriculum on trust and safety that is a first in computer science, and to translate our research discoveries into training and policy innovations for the public good."
SIO and its researchers have been sued three times by conservative groups alleging that its researchers colluded illegally with the federal government to censor speech, forcing Stanford to spend millions of dollars to defend its staff and students.[more inside]
The push to stamp out galling ethnic name bias on phones and computers
Is autocorrect racist? The push to stamp out galling ethnic name bias on phones and computers.
A new campaign — called I Am Not A Typo — is urging tech companies to fix ethnic bias in their algorithms to stop autocorrect mangling so many people's names.
Robber barons in the food system
The Grab: "a riveting new documentary which outlines, with startling clarity, the move by national governments, financial investors and private security forces to snap up food and water resources." [more inside]
Pride month small press books roundup
When you love a man, don’t spoil everything by marrying him
For those who have started down the road of matrimony and remain on it. For others who left, came back, and found themselves broken, free, or enlightened. And for the many who dream of what marriage is or curse what they imagine it to be. This one's for you.
"My face is leaking."
Sailing The Arachnosphere
The biggest horror movie at the time, and they saw none of the success.
🕹️
To get a sense of the scale here, video games are worth more than the film industry. And the music industry. In fact, the video game industry is bigger than both of those industries combined. That’s staggeringly big. The immense size and economic power of the industry, which is largely nonunionized, creates regulatory gaps, leading to inevitable dysfunction and exploitation. This makes life miserable for employees and consumers alike, both in the workplace and beyond. [Jacobin]
Caught in a giant strange attractor
There are two elements in all this that seem to be at odds with each other. On the one hand, things like a proverb, a symbol, or—as in Borges' story—a novel have some sort of universality. They transcend the ages and remain applicable in different contexts. On the other hand, they acquire a unique flavor every time, dependent on the specifics of the people and times involved. This is not a paradox, though, but a typical result of chaotic processes. from Borges on Chaos Theory [Aether Mug]
Comment te dire adieu?
Françoise Hardy, icône de la culture pop, est morte. BBC obit. When we were all young, she was a bit of a heart-throb for Jagger, Bowie and Dylan. And a person in her own right! Comment te dire adieu? - Tous les garçons et les filles. Chapeau!
June 13
Caravaggio masterpiece considered lost for centuries to be unveiled
Caravaggio masterpiece considered lost for centuries to be unveiled. The painting is one of only 60 known Caravaggio pieces in existence and is considered one of the most valuable old master artworks in the world.
“It’s all poets, now”
When, last year, I saw in my prose that falseness and false formality, I wondered where it had come from. I seemed to be a few minutes away from using whence. I seemed to be searching for a rhythm that wouldn’t come, and reading over tatters of drafts later, I realized I was attempting to write prose in what was basically iambic pentameter, as if this classic formal constraint contained within it the key, the one key, to a sense of writing well, a sense so rare that year for me to find at all. From whence this sense of language-pressed-through-sieve? from I Cannot by Lucy Schiller [The Paris Review; ungated]
ChatGPT is bullshit
Using bullshit as a term of art (as defined by Harry G. Frankfurt), ChatGPT and its various LLM cohort can best be described as bullshit machines. [more inside]
I remember now... These are "quaternions!"
Imaginary Numbers are Matrices [Japanese with English captions] – If you would like to have imaginary numbers and quaternions explained in the form of a dialogue between anthropomorphized vocal synthesizers, then Zundamon and Metan are here to oblige you. Zundamon's Theorem is a channel with more of these mathematically enriching conversations.
You know what your life needs more of?
Tasmanian devils off to the US
Tasmanian devils off to the US. Tequila, Tabasco, Mouse and Mozza and four other Tasmanian devils will soon board a long haul flight to the US, where they'll settle into four zoos as part of Tasmania's ambassador program.
Challenge: Failed
This just in: the Supreme Court has issued their opinion (.pdf) on FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, and it's unanimous. The plaintiffs lack the standing to challenge the FDA on the abortion medication drug mifepristone. Previously.
A little bit of swing
Inspired by JaneBrown's comment in a LinkFilter thread [⇔ Linked], I went looking for more music by vocalist Edythe Wright. Jackpot, here's The complete Edythe Wright compilation via YouTube (90 minutes)! [more inside]
Fancy lawyer gets angry about evictions, does something about it
Mark Melton nearly single handedly has created a system for providing representation to people facing eviction in Dallas When tenants don’t have legal representation, landlords win 79% of the time. With legal representation that drops to 10%. In Texas, eviction courts are handled by justices of the peace and defendants are not entitled to legal representation. Simply enforcing due process has made a dramatic difference in people’s lives. [more inside]
There's never been a better time to get into storytelling board games
"Storytelling has been a social activity since the dawn of time. Board games can add another level to it with nuanced strategies for decision-making and objectives with epic stakes." [more inside]
You can see the future first in San Francisco.
People are flipping out over Leopold Aschenbrenner's gargantuan look at the current and future state of AI in Situational Awareness [PDF]. Is it the start of the world? Is it the end of the world? When? 2027! Summary by ChatGPT. [more inside]