A Sorceress’s Kit Was Discovered in the Ashes of Pompeii | Smart News | Smithsonian
Seems like a bit of a leap to Sorceress’s Kit.
Category: Science and Stuff,
DNA Support the Idea That Viking Women Were Sometimes Powerful Warriors
Legends of ferocious female warriors appear in Scandinavian lore and poetry from the Middle Ages. Stories of similar warriors have been told in the modern era too, for example Lagertha on the HISTORY series Vikings, but the existence of warrior women in Viking culture has consistently been challenged in official histories, with women often relegated to non-combatant roles.
…This isn’t the first Viking grave to contain both weapons and female remains, the study explains. It is, however, the first to present overwhelming evidence that the weapons and paraphernalia found beside a skeleton belonged to the woman who occupied the grave.
DNA Proves Viking Women Were Powerful Warriors – HISTORY
hmm
How the female Viking warrior was written out of history
Hedenstierna-Jonson et al. do not equivocate in their statements that, for over a century, this individual was mis-identified as male because archaeologists, acculturated in a western society with strictly defined gender roles, view men alone as warriors, or soldiers, or wielders of violence. A warrior, like warfare itself, is a cultural construct, practices and professions created by human societies to fulfill specific desires. To assume uncritically that men alone are warriors leads to a cascade of other assumptions about human behaviors that renders our attempt to understand those behaviors somewhat moot.
…Assumptions regarding gender roles dilute our understanding of past societies and the enormous complexity of human achievements and activities.
…The genomics is fairly certain- these are the remains of a woman who genetically was part of the Viking world, and who was interred in a Viking tomb with Viking material culture, specifically material culture associated with combat and warfare. It continues to be a challenge for some people to reconcile those variables. But those same people are missing the larger implications of the genomics study. The real questions, the interesting questions: what does it mean that Bj 581 was a female? What does this tell us about how Viking society was structured? Was Bj 581 unique, or did she represent a category of women that has been largely relegated to mythology? And what can this tell us about how violent conflict was viewed and experienced?
How the female Viking warrior was written out of history | Science | The Guardian
hmmm
Smartphone and speaker voice assistants can be hacked using lasers
these devices will also accept “signal injection” commands sent to them using pulses of laser light over distances of a hundred metres or more.
Hitherto, hacking such systems has been about sending them audible commands without their owner’s knowledge. Now the research confirms that it’s possible to achieve the same result over considerable distances in ways that might allow attackers to unlock “smartlock-protected front doors, open garage doors, shop on e-commerce websites at the target’s expense, or even locate, unlock and start various vehicles” that are connected to the victim’s Google account.
…Currently, the stock microphones that receive voice commands perform no authentication beyond checking wake phrases such as “OK Google” are in the owner’s voice and even this can be spoofed using voice synthesis.
The authentication problem could be mitigated in different ways – for example, by requiring that more than one microphone detect the same command simultaneously, something a laser attack would find difficult to overcome.
Smartphone and speaker voice assistants can be hacked using lasers – Naked Security
hmmmm
Mexico mammoths: Human-built woolly mammoth traps found in Tultepec
Archaeologists thought early humans only killed mammoths if the animals were trapped or hurt.
[They did? And so what, all of those images of early human working together to chase large animals into vulnerable situations to make them easier to hunt were what, simply ignored?
Mexico mammoths: Human-built woolly mammoth traps found in Tultepec – BBC News
n/t
NYTimes apparently got pitched this story by Big Stryofoam
In the Sea, Not All Plastic Lasts Forever – The New York Times
So styrofoam takes hundreds of years or -at best decades- to break down instead of never breaking down. A few thoughts…
Did anyone really think they stuff wouldn’t weather over the course of hundreds of years?
So it can still last hundreds of years and supposedly that is supposed to make environmentalists feel better about using it? On what planet would this be soothing info?
What about off-gassing? So-called scientists apparently glossed over that one, didn’t they?
Anychance the fact checkers at the GRey Lady might be motivated to point out that there is no “missing” plastic. Microplastic is just harder to see.
This article stinks to high heaven with bad research, misleading and outright deceptive statements and wholesale denial of contextual facts.
The peanut gallery hopes the New York Times got paid handsomely for running this advertisement for the polystyrene industry.
Taylor Energy wants to walk away from 70,000 gallon a day spill in the Gulf
Taylor Energy’s Mississippi Canyon site, about 19 miles off the southeast coast of Louisiana, was toppled by Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and has since been releasing upwards of 70,000 gallons of crude oil a day, recent estimates show.
One of about 3,000 oil platforms in the western Gulf of Mexico, it’s dumped more oil into the Gulf than did the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon, and the impacts are still being tallied.
…”You’re seeing a lot of resiliency in the system but there’s still long-term issues with the sea grass and oysters,” said Daniel Andrews, with Captains for Clean Water.
…The company says it has done everything possible to stem the flow of oil and that it should no longer be held accountable for the leak.
Costs are extreme, and the technology needed to fix the massive leak does not yet exist, the company has argued in court. [Um, tough shit? They caused the mess and they are 100% responsible for cleaning it up.]
…The federal government says it could take 100 years for the leak to dissipate on its own.
But the Coast Guard, in recent months, has capped at least part of the leak, according to Renaud.
“I think right now they’re (the Coast Guard) taking a moment to celebrate that they’re containing oil that’s been spilling for 14 years,” Renaud said. “At the end of the day (the work being done now) isn’t a permanent solution, so they’re going to have to drill relief wells. “
…”We have 10 years of evidence that’s there’s way more oil than they’ve been reporting for years,” Renaud said of Taylor Energy. “It’s really a runaway situation that should have been remedied a long time ago. Either they’re really confused or their science just wasn’t very good, or they’re just trying to avoid the penalty of law.”
…The offshore oil drilling industry is largely self-regulated when it comes to recording and reporting leaks.
If a company has a leak, it must report some number to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, or BSEE, which accepts the number as being a true representation of what’s occurring in the Gulf of Mexico.
This arm of the Coast Guard tracks all spills greater than 1 barrel, or 42 gallons, and reports spills larger than 50 barrels, about 2,100 gallons.
Taylor Energy wants to walk away from 30,000 gallon a day spill in the Gulf
hmmm
California wildfires: Trump threatens to cut funding to fight fires
“Every year, as the fire’s rage & California burns, it is the same thing-and then he comes to the Federal Government for $$$ help,” Trump said. “No more. Get your act together Governor. You don’t see close to the level of burn in other states.”
Newsom responded on Twitter that, since Trump does not believe in climate change, he is “excused from this conversation.”
California wildfires: Trump threatens to cut funding to fight fires
hmmmm
Keystone pipeline leaks oil in northeastern North Dakota
State regulators were on the scene Wednesday afternoon, and they estimated that the area of the spill was 1,500 feet long by 15 feet wide. Glatt said some wetlands were affected.
…The company was still working to contain the spill Wednesday afternoon.
…It has experienced problems with spills in the past, including one in 2011 of more than 14,000 gallons of oil in southeastern North Dakota, near the South Dakota border.
In 2017, the pipeline leaked an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil onto agricultural land in northeastern South Dakota, in a rural area near the North Dakota border.
Keystone pipeline leaks oil in northeastern North Dakota – StarTribune.com
hmmm
Trump wrongly tells female astronauts they’re first women to spacewalk
“This is the first time for a woman outside of the space station,” Trump, who appeared to be reading from a script, said on the phone call. “They’re conducting the first-ever female spacewalk.”
In fact, the first woman walked in space in 1984 — the cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya holds that record. The NASA astronaut Kathryn Sullivan became the first American woman to do so later the same year.
…”We don’t want to take too much credit because there have been many other female spacewalkers before us,” Meir, who was doing her first-ever spacewalk, said. “This is just the first time that there have been two women outside at the same time, and it’s really interesting for us. We’ve talked a lot about it up here, you know, for us, this is really just us doing our jobs. It’s something we’ve been training for for six years.”
Trump wrongly tells female astronauts they’re first women to spacewalk – Business Insider
mmmhmm
Robots aren’t taking warehouse employees’ jobs, they’re making their work harder
The report shows how technologies are modifying the day-to-day work of people who organize, store, and package physical goods in warehouses. It found that technology and automation can help workers by reducing the “monotonous and physically strenuous activities” of, say, lifting heavy packages. But it also could affect workers’ health, safety, and morale, and accelerate the rate at which employees are replaced. That’s because tools like self-driving shelving carts, body sensors, and AI-powered management systems are putting pressure on workers to work harder, faster, and under more scrutiny. This is helping boost productivity but could be bad for workers, the report argues.
…“Technology has led to workers being pushed harder and also their privacy getting violated.”
…Even though some new technologies “promise to alleviate the most arduous activities” for workers, they can also contribute to an overall greater workload and more intense supervision.
…The report says technology can intensify warehouse work in two main ways. The first is by limiting the amount of human interaction, including in cases where employees can help each other. The second is by allowing the “micromanagement of work tasks at an unprecedented scale.”
That’s because many of these new machines are dissecting workers’ every move — like sensors that measure the time it takes a worker to reach a location where they can pick up an item, scan a label, select a product, and place it in a bin.
…“The assumption that streamlining processes leads in a linear fashion to greater efficiencies, and thus cost reductions, may be fundamentally flawed,” the report states. “Gains could be counteracted by new health and safety hazards as well as increased employee turnover due to overwork and burnout.”
There are also questions about data privacy and whether workers have a right to know how the data being collected on them on the job is being used — including if it’s being used to feed the AI behind new autonomous warehouse machines. If that’s happening, it would mean that workers may unwittingly train their own replacements.
Robots aren’t taking warehouse employees’ jobs, they’re making their work harder – Vox
hmmm
PG&E Paid Out Stock Dividends Instead of Trimming Trees
At a probation hearing related to the utility’s deadly 2010 gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, Judge William Alsup said the embattled utility hasn’t done enough to prevent wildfires through tree trimming and other maintenance work — even while its shareholders made millions.
“PG&E pumped out $4.5 billion in dividends and let the tree budget wither,” Alsup said.
But the judge declined to impose more sweeping changes that he’d earlier floated, including requiring PG&E to inspect its entire electrical grid.
…State fire investigators also blamed PG&E for 18 of the more than 170 wildfires that swept Northern California in October 2017. And the utility has acknowledged that its equipment likely started the 2018 Camp Fire in Butte County, which destroyed nearly 14,000 homes in the town of Paradise and killed 85 people.
…On Tuesday, the judge also directed a federal monitor to conduct random inspections of the tree-trimming program.
Judge: PG&E Paid Out Stock Dividends Instead of Trimming Trees | The California Report | KQED News
hmmmm
Medieval Scottish Man Who Died 600 Years Ago Was Short and Balding, with Bad Teeth and Back Problems
…Found during excavation work to expand the Aberdeen Art Gallery in 2015. The building was constructed in 1885 on the site of a friary and a church, both built in the 13th century and destroyed in 1560, council representatives said.
…Workers digging outside the art gallery uncovered a charnel house made of red brick containing three Victorian coffins that held hundreds of human bones. Further excavation inside the gallery uncovered 60 skeletons in individual graves, the oldest of which — including SK125 — dated to between 1050 and 1410, according to the statement.
“The disarticulated remains found in the red brick charnel house were redeposited during the late 19th century,”
Da Vinci’s Forgotten Design for the Longest Bridge in the World
In the early 16th century, da Vinci designed a lesser-known structure: a bridge for the Ottoman Empire that would have been the longest bridge of its time.
…The group built a replica of the bridge, after taking into consideration the materials and construction equipment available 500 years ago and the geological conditions of the Golden Horn, a freshwater estuary in the Bosphorus Sea over which the bridge would’ve been built.
…The only material available at the time, that wouldn’t have collapsed under large loads on such a long bridge, would have been stone. …The researchers also hypothesized that such a bridge would have stood on its own without any paste or material to hold the stone together.
…The da Vinci bridge …would have been the longest of its time.
…Most bridge supports at the time were designed as a semicircular arch and would have required 10 or more piers to support that length of bridge, according to the statement. But da Vinci’s design was a single arch, flattened at the top, that would have been tall enough to allow sailboats to pass underneath.
…Da Vinci’s design and the MIT scientists’ model also included structures called abutments that extended outward on both sides of the ends of the bridge to stabilize it against side-to-side movements, likely because da Vinci knew the region was prone to earthquakes.
wild!
Fructose worsens the effect of high fat diets
“Fructose makes the liver accumulate fat,” says senior study author C. Ronald Kahn, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA. “It acts almost like adding more fat to the diet,” he continues.
“This contrasts the effect of adding more glucose to the diet, which promotes the liver’s ability to burn fat, and, therefore, actually makes for a healthier metabolism,” he adds.
Is this how fructose worsens the effect of high fat diets?
hmmmm
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