We are about to witness the dissolution of the British Museum, over the next thirty years. Indeed, I wonder if the very concept of a western museum, of global civilisation, is at an end
1) If Britain wants to be a global player going one to one with other countries, we may have to ameliorate the diplomatic tension by giving back some of the stuff we stole from them and 2) we did steal that stuff from them, so we don't really have a leg to stand on. Imagine if 100-150 years ago the French nicked Stonehenge from us and now just had it in a museum - I think people here would be clamouring for it back.
I don't think someone who encourages the Houthis to sink ships in the Red Sea is really interested in Britain being a 'global player'.
We are about to witness the dissolution of the British Museum, over the next thirty years. Indeed, I wonder if the very concept of a western museum, of global civilisation, is at an end
1) If Britain wants to be a global player going one to one with other countries, we may have to ameliorate the diplomatic tension by giving back some of the stuff we stole from them and 2) we did steal that stuff from them, so we don't really have a leg to stand on. Imagine if 100-150 years ago the French nicked Stonehenge from us and now just had it in a museum - I think people here would be clamouring for it back.
It's just an international way of showing you're a cuck.
All it will do is generate new demands. I doubt anyone gives a shit about long lost irrelevant objects in the UK anyway, they're doing it for the headline of bringing Blighty to heel.
We are about to witness the dissolution of the British Museum, over the next thirty years. Indeed, I wonder if the very concept of a western museum, of global civilisation, is at an end
1) If Britain wants to be a global player going one to one with other countries, we may have to ameliorate the diplomatic tension by giving back some of the stuff we stole from them and 2) we did steal that stuff from them, so we don't really have a leg to stand on. Imagine if 100-150 years ago the French nicked Stonehenge from us and now just had it in a museum - I think people here would be clamouring for it back.
I don't think someone who encourages the Houthis to sink ships in the Red Sea is really interested in Britain being a 'global player'.
You're right, I'm not. But others are.
So perhaps your advice is best left ignored? It's like taking advice from the sort of people who stone gays.
"The analysis also indicated that large mammals, such as deer or llamas, made up most of the meat in the diet, rather than smaller mammals such as birds or fish."
Who could have guessed that primitive pre-farming people living ten thousand fucking feet up a bloody mountain, "didn't eat a lot of fish"
"smaller mammals such as birds"????
hahah
I completely missed that, it is so egregious. Jesus, sack that journalist
Actually worse than that. "smaller mammals such as birds or fish..."
Pretty sure that wasn't the archeologist. I'm embarrassed to say I missed it too when I skimmed the piece.
They used to have these weird people - sub-editors - who didn't miss this stuff.
All long gone as far as one can tell.
Well it's been called the Grauniad for as long as I can remember, so I'm not sure things have changed all that much.
It's always been a mixture of very good and tendentious reporting, and of variable competence. The opinion stuff I rarely bother with.
We are about to witness the dissolution of the British Museum, over the next thirty years. Indeed, I wonder if the very concept of a western museum, of global civilisation, is at an end
1) If Britain wants to be a global player going one to one with other countries, we may have to ameliorate the diplomatic tension by giving back some of the stuff we stole from them and 2) we did steal that stuff from them, so we don't really have a leg to stand on. Imagine if 100-150 years ago the French nicked Stonehenge from us and now just had it in a museum - I think people here would be clamouring for it back.
It's just an international way of showing you're a cuck.
All it will do is generate new demands. I doubt anyone gives a shit about long lost irrelevant objects in the UK anyway, they're doing it for the headline of bringing Blighty to heel.
Ignore them.
A cuck? Have you been watching too many Andrew Tate videos?
One site, from 6500 years ago, with 24 skeletons in a fairly unique location - up in the Andes - does not prove "Early human hunter-gatherers ate mostly plants and vegetables"
How can a self respecting science journalist write this drivel? Is it Woke nonsense, or is she just stupid?
There could be any number of reasons why this one unusual site produces 24 skeletons of people who liked carrots. I mean, they are half way up a fucking mountain, maybe there wasn't that much meat. So they ate leaves
Have they considered that?
Absolutely laughable
Two sites, actually. And they merely say 'it suggests', not 'proves'.
As they point out, firm evidence for the actual balance of human diet going back that far is scant.
One thing it does show pretty conclusively is the power of the headline over the rest of the text.
To quote someone wittier than myself "there aren't any cave paintings of salads".
In 1971 humans were driving an electric vehicle around the moon having a great a time,53 years later a robot lands on the moon and takes a picture and it's considered awesome.
In 1971 humans were driving an electric vehicle around the moon having a great a time,53 years later a robot lands on the moon and takes a picture and it's considered awesome.
In 1971 the US was still spending a large percentage of its GDP to get there. 53 years later a private company in Japan has done so, for peanuts.
Loads of the bloody things round here. It isn't exactly a hotbed of Socialism in our street!
IIRC they are notorious for being the car of choice for people who use the most extreme car financing products to buy them.
@rcs1000 probably has a good view of that industry, but it's my understanding that the more fun car finance is looking really shakey - products being withdrawn, and companies losing a lot of money. I've heard suggestions that a major collapse is quite possible.
We are about to witness the dissolution of the British Museum, over the next thirty years. Indeed, I wonder if the very concept of a western museum, of global civilisation, is at an end
You’re going to get wet, out there with your placard today.
Or at least you would, were you here.
Happily, I am sitting in my swanky new 4 star serviced apartment, with gleaming pool, gym, and sauna, feeling the soft douce breeze of the Kampuchean afternoon, contemplating a cocktail in a couple of tropical hours
The place costs £25 a night. Insane
I honestly don't know how you can live like that, away from family and friends, in yet another sterile hotel room, in yet another strange city. Your life of travelling obviously suits you, but it would make me really miserable. People are very different.
In 1971 humans were driving an electric vehicle around the moon having a great a time,53 years later a robot lands on the moon and takes a picture and it's considered awesome.
It is, for a whole variety of reasons. And that does not take anything away from the people who got man onto the Moon fifty years ago.
For one thing, it highlights how accessible space is becoming, despite the difficulties in getting there, and operating.
Why can't things just be AWESOME without people being so negative?
Phnom Penh in January has a peculiarly European vibe. It's like a Meditteranean city in June or September, like Trieste, or Split. Seville maybe. Languid, warm, palmy, dulcet
I would guess it must be the French colonial thing, except you DON'T get this vibe in Vietnam (nor in Thailand, Malaysia, Laos)
Phnom Penh in January has a peculiarly European vibe. It's like a Meditteranean city in June or September, like Trieste, or Split. Seville maybe. Languid, warm, palmy, dulcet
I would guess it must be the French colonial thing, except you DON'T get this vibe in Vietnam (nor in Thailand, Malaysia, Laos)
I’ve little experience of Laos, but Luang Prabang seemed pretty laid back to me.
Phnom Penh in January has a peculiarly European vibe. It's like a Meditteranean city in June or September, like Trieste, or Split. Seville maybe. Languid, warm, palmy, dulcet
I would guess it must be the French colonial thing, except you DON'T get this vibe in Vietnam (nor in Thailand, Malaysia, Laos)
I’ve little experience of Laos, but Luang Prabang seemed pretty laid back to me.
Yes, Luang Prabang is closer, or Chiang Mai thirty years ago
But that still doesn't quite capture it. I think it must be the mix of wide European boulevards plus dainty little side streets, plus the intense and pleasant languor, and a lazy half-arsed hedonism
And the setting. Where two mighty rivers meet: the Mekong and the Tonle Sap. That gives it a feeling of being near the sea (even if it isn't), and also cooling riverine breezes, that temper the heat
It was once known as "the Pearl of South East Asia", I can see why
In 1971 humans were driving an electric vehicle around the moon having a great a time,53 years later a robot lands on the moon and takes a picture and it's considered awesome.
It is, for a whole variety of reasons. And that does not take anything away from the people who got man onto the Moon fifty years ago.
For one thing, it highlights how accessible space is becoming, despite the difficulties in getting there, and operating.
Why can't things just be AWESOME without people being so negative?
The gap is down to the method that was chosen to get there. Build a skyscraper out of exotic materials and chemicals, and throw it away. To get 2 people there and back.
Then the space program went down a rabbit hole and ended up in a spiral of insane "space inflation" (caused by politicians pork schemes) and less and less result.
We are looking at a replacement for the said skyscraper being launched this year. Price $90 million dollars per example (estimated) - instead of a noticeable fraction of US GDP. And eventually reusable.
Those complaining (quite fairly) about Labour not saying much about what it will do in government should be saying the same about the current government.
Despite possessing the vastly greater resources of government to plan, and being the actual government, it has published no departmental spending plans beyond the current year.
To expand on this, the government does have fiscal plans for the next five years - but absent US style 5% growth rates (which seems a bit unlikely), those plans imply very large departmental real terms spending cuts. And they have published zero departmental forecasts that far ahead.
If Hunt cuts taxes in the budget, then the implied cuts will be more severe still.
Labour isn't being dishonest when it says it is costing all its policy promises - but that is only for their proposed changes to current government plans. So they aren't addressing those implied departmental cuts, either.
One site, from 6500 years ago, with 24 skeletons in a fairly unique location - up in the Andes - does not prove "Early human hunter-gatherers ate mostly plants and vegetables"
How can a self respecting science journalist write this drivel? Is it Woke nonsense, or is she just stupid?
There could be any number of reasons why this one unusual site produces 24 skeletons of people who liked carrots. I mean, they are half way up a fucking mountain, maybe there wasn't that much meat. So they ate leaves
Have they considered that?
Absolutely laughable
Two sites, actually. And they merely say 'it suggests', not 'proves'.
As they point out, firm evidence for the actual balance of human diet going back that far is scant.
One thing it does show pretty conclusively is the power of the headline over the rest of the text.
To quote someone wittier than myself "there aren't any cave paintings of salads".
One site, from 6500 years ago, with 24 skeletons in a fairly unique location - up in the Andes - does not prove "Early human hunter-gatherers ate mostly plants and vegetables"
How can a self respecting science journalist write this drivel? Is it Woke nonsense, or is she just stupid?
There could be any number of reasons why this one unusual site produces 24 skeletons of people who liked carrots. I mean, they are half way up a fucking mountain, maybe there wasn't that much meat. So they ate leaves
Have they considered that?
Absolutely laughable
Two sites, actually. And they merely say 'it suggests', not 'proves'.
As they point out, firm evidence for the actual balance of human diet going back that far is scant.
One thing it does show pretty conclusively is the power of the headline over the rest of the text.
To quote someone wittier than myself "there aren't any cave paintings of salads".
One site, from 6500 years ago, with 24 skeletons in a fairly unique location - up in the Andes - does not prove "Early human hunter-gatherers ate mostly plants and vegetables"
How can a self respecting science journalist write this drivel? Is it Woke nonsense, or is she just stupid?
There could be any number of reasons why this one unusual site produces 24 skeletons of people who liked carrots. I mean, they are half way up a fucking mountain, maybe there wasn't that much meat. So they ate leaves
Have they considered that?
Absolutely laughable
Two sites, actually. And they merely say 'it suggests', not 'proves'.
As they point out, firm evidence for the actual balance of human diet going back that far is scant.
One thing it does show pretty conclusively is the power of the headline over the rest of the text.
What it does suggest, surely, is that human beings are pretty adaptable. they will find food wherever they are. I’m not sure how long people have lived in the Arctic, but if you found graves from 10,000 years ago, you might well find that they were meat eaters!
Indeed, but "Live like an Inuit of old in a snow house without fitted plumbing" isn't a great advertising slogan for the Meat Marketing Board or those of us who can't quite cotton on to the idea that eating 5 meat meals a day might, erm, erase the entire Inuit way of life!
I must say that I have sometimes wondered why the Inuit chose the way of life they did!
There are theories about this, some of them tantalisingly provocative
eg One of the now-extinct Inuit communities in Greenland formed the Dorset Culture
The art of the Dorset culture is notoriously crazy and sinister, even by Inuit standards. Anthropologists and archeaologists who dug it up, in the last century, used to have nightmares about it, and some became traumatised
Why was it so freaky? One theory is that the Dorset Inuit were a very late arrival in north America, and, basically, they found that the only place left, uninhabited, was Greenland. After a few generations they realised they were in a kind of beautiful hellscape, a place so difficult and dangerous it is not worth the effort to exist, so they spent 50 years making art to expres their existential horror, then they all died out deliberately, commiting a kind of national suicide
Here is a Dorset skull I photographed near Ilullisat
They all died out deliberately? An inspiration to the rest of us then.
"The FT had only nice things to say about Mussolini in 1933: “Fascism’s gift of order and progress”...The 1930s should have buried the idea that business is a bulwark against autocracy. Today's US offers a reminder." Me on Wall Street's Trumpian bargain. https://twitter.com/EdwardGLuce/status/1750129824021061939
Interesting article, but I'm unconvinced by the premise of Trump being good for US business overall.
"The FT had only nice things to say about Mussolini in 1933: “Fascism’s gift of order and progress”...The 1930s should have buried the idea that business is a bulwark against autocracy. Today's US offers a reminder." Me on Wall Street's Trumpian bargain. https://twitter.com/EdwardGLuce/status/1750129824021061939
Interesting article, but I'm unconvinced by the premise of Trump being good for US business overall.
Italy itself was full of Mussolini-supporting businessmen.
As was Germany over the course of the 1930's. The moderate right first underestimated and thought it got use Hitler, then got on board the train. Arguably only the Social Democrats and Communists did not, often ending up in camps for their troubles.
One site, from 6500 years ago, with 24 skeletons in a fairly unique location - up in the Andes - does not prove "Early human hunter-gatherers ate mostly plants and vegetables"
How can a self respecting science journalist write this drivel? Is it Woke nonsense, or is she just stupid?
There could be any number of reasons why this one unusual site produces 24 skeletons of people who liked carrots. I mean, they are half way up a fucking mountain, maybe there wasn't that much meat. So they ate leaves
Have they considered that?
Absolutely laughable
Two sites, actually. And they merely say 'it suggests', not 'proves'.
As they point out, firm evidence for the actual balance of human diet going back that far is scant.
One thing it does show pretty conclusively is the power of the headline over the rest of the text.
To quote someone wittier than myself "there aren't any cave paintings of salads".
Unlike the buffalo hunt, the carrot hunt was to exhausting to draw .
FWIW I disagree with this thread. I expect Biden to win the popular vote handily.
Unemployment in the US is at a 50 year low. Biden’s administration has created 14m jobs including 1m manufacturing jobs as he promised. Real wages, which have been flat, are now rising strongly. For the first time in decades US growth is matching or even exceeding China.
It is a terrific record and his low polling numbers are a reflection of the bias in the right wing media calling everything awful. As the population focuses on this I expect Biden’s numbers to improve sharply and some of the Trump court cases to damage his.
Not only do I see this as a poor bet, if I am right trading opportunities are likely to be poor because the Republican vote is not likely to be as good as it is now again.
Totally disagree (although I guess that is to be expected) and I think @Quincel has written a very good post and raises what could be an interesting opportunity.
I'll tackle some of your broader points first though. If the US is matching China's growth rate, it is because China is having a mare of a 2023 and looks like 2024, and its rate is falling, not that the US has turbocharged growth. The jobs Biden 'created' are really a bounceback from the pandemic and of the measures both Administrations took. As for the 'right-wing' media, could you list out the publications please? I get Fox, the NY Post and the WSJ and Mail Online. Against that, you have the NYT, WP, LAT, Chicago Tribune etc, plus most of the other major networks who have, to put it charitably, a centre-left bias. The mass of the media is not right-wing.
But never mind that. Here is what could make the bet interesting. Quincel raises the very good point re 2022 pointing to the polls being wrong. That could play against the bet.
But one thing increasingly clear is that the Democrats have become the beneficiaries of lower turnout in the mid-terms rather than the Republicans - which historically has been the case - as graduates and suburbanites become more of their base. Yet even in that election, on the House popular vote, the Republicans won by 2-3 points. True, some seats were uncontested but, in 2024 with more low-propensity voters, you would expect the Republicans to benefit.
There is also the fact that there are anecdotal signs Republicans are also gaining in heavily Democrat areas. Hochul only defeated Zeldin by 5+ points in the NY Governorship race and Murphy only won the NJ vote by 2. No-one imagines the situation has got better for the Democrats in those states. CA will never go Republican but, for the purposes of this bet, the Republicans only have to make modest voting inroads, which it looks like they are.
So, actually, Quincel has identified an opportunity.
For comparison, the last time a Dem president was up for reelection in 2012 he won the popular vote by 3.9%. In the previous midterms 2010 Republicans won the House popular vote by 6.8% - a turnaround of 10.7%.
So on balance Republicans winning the House vote by 2%ish (after deducting for the higher number of seats Dems didn't contest) would if anything point to Democrats winning the popular vote narrowly in the 2024 presidential election.
However, I think it's too early to say much about who is going to win the popular vote, but Biden's net approval ratings are worse than Trump's were at this point in his presidency according to this: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/ Actually worse than any president since the second world war, so Republicans popular vote is probably value at 10/3. It's probably better value than the 10/11 or so available Republicans winning the presidency - I think people are maybe overestimating the advantage the Republicans will have in the Electoral College this time.
One site, from 6500 years ago, with 24 skeletons in a fairly unique location - up in the Andes - does not prove "Early human hunter-gatherers ate mostly plants and vegetables"
How can a self respecting science journalist write this drivel? Is it Woke nonsense, or is she just stupid?
There could be any number of reasons why this one unusual site produces 24 skeletons of people who liked carrots. I mean, they are half way up a fucking mountain, maybe there wasn't that much meat. So they ate leaves
Have they considered that?
Absolutely laughable
Two sites, actually. And they merely say 'it suggests', not 'proves'.
As they point out, firm evidence for the actual balance of human diet going back that far is scant.
One thing it does show pretty conclusively is the power of the headline over the rest of the text.
To quote someone wittier than myself "there aren't any cave paintings of salads".
Unlike the buffalo hunt, the carrot hunt was to exhausting to draw .
In the UK at least, there *are* quite a lot of animal bones at prehistoric sites. But there are a heck of a lot more roasted hazelnut shells. Most prehistoric communities were also littoral - and there's evidence for a lot of shellfish in the diet (again more in the "gather" than the "hunter" end of things).
We are about to witness the dissolution of the British Museum, over the next thirty years. Indeed, I wonder if the very concept of a western museum, of global civilisation, is at an end
You’re going to get wet, out there with your placard today.
Or at least you would, were you here.
Happily, I am sitting in my swanky new 4 star serviced apartment, with gleaming pool, gym, and sauna, feeling the soft douce breeze of the Kampuchean afternoon, contemplating a cocktail in a couple of tropical hours
The place costs £25 a night. Insane
I honestly don't know how you can live like that, away from family and friends, in yet another sterile hotel room, in yet another strange city. Your life of travelling obviously suits you, but it would make me really miserable. People are very different.
Let's hear about your fantastic life for comparison purposes and to set the benchmark for happiness.
As doltish a comment as one poster berating another for spending so much time on PB.
In 1971 humans were driving an electric vehicle around the moon having a great a time,53 years later a robot lands on the moon and takes a picture and it's considered awesome.
It is, for a whole variety of reasons. And that does not take anything away from the people who got man onto the Moon fifty years ago.
For one thing, it highlights how accessible space is becoming, despite the difficulties in getting there, and operating.
Why can't things just be AWESOME without people being so negative?
The gap is down to the method that was chosen to get there. Build a skyscraper out of exotic materials and chemicals, and throw it away. To get 2 people there and back.
Then the space program went down a rabbit hole and ended up in a spiral of insane "space inflation" (caused by politicians pork schemes) and less and less result.
We are looking at a replacement for the said skyscraper being launched this year. Price $90 million dollars per example (estimated) - instead of a noticeable fraction of US GDP. And eventually reusable.
That's wrong. SH/SS is *not* a replacement for Saturn V / Apollo.
SH/SS is a brilliant architecture optimised to get large amounts of mass to Mars. To get to the Moon, it will require a vastly complex program architecture involving multiple refuellings and dockings - and also requires SLS.
Saturn V / Apollo was a single stack to the Moon. Vastly different, and much more highly optimised.
We are about to witness the dissolution of the British Museum, over the next thirty years. Indeed, I wonder if the very concept of a western museum, of global civilisation, is at an end
You’re going to get wet, out there with your placard today.
Or at least you would, were you here.
Happily, I am sitting in my swanky new 4 star serviced apartment, with gleaming pool, gym, and sauna, feeling the soft douce breeze of the Kampuchean afternoon, contemplating a cocktail in a couple of tropical hours
The place costs £25 a night. Insane
I honestly don't know how you can live like that, away from family and friends, in yet another sterile hotel room, in yet another strange city. Your life of travelling obviously suits you, but it would make me really miserable. People are very different.
Let's hear about your fantastic life for comparison purposes and to set the benchmark for happiness.
As doltish a comment as one poster berating another for spending so much time on PB.
Isn't the benchmark that anyone who has made more posts than oneself spends too much time on PB?
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) is calling on President Biden to take control of the Texas National Guard if the state defies a Supreme Court ruling that allows U.S. Border Patrol officers to take down the border barriers. “Governor Greg Abbott is using the Texas National Guard to obstruct and create chaos at the border. If Abbott is defying yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling, @POTUS needs to establish sole federal control of the Texas National Guard now,”
Castro wrote in a Tuesday post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has been engaged in a months-long feud with the Biden administration over the situation at the border. Abbott has maintained that Biden is not doing enough to address border security, while the Biden administration has said Texas does not have the authority to erect razor wire barriers.
…
The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on Monday to allow U.S. Border Patrol agents to remove the razor wire on the border wall placed by Texas law enforcement. The ruling came as tensions between Texas and the federal government continued to rise in recent weeks.
Despite the ruling, Abbott has said that the Texas National Guard will continue to install the razor wire along the border in a post on X. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) also urged Texas to ignore the Supreme Court ruling earlier this week. “Texas’ razor wire is an effective deterrent against the illegal border crossings encouraged by Biden’s open border policies. We continue to deploy this razor wire to repel illegal immigration,” Abbott said.
Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) criticized Abbott for ordering more razor wire to be installed after the ruling. “Greg Abbott’s latest stunt after yesterday’s Supreme Court order is malicious, unconstitutional, & against Texas values. Our country needs Congress to create a safer, humane, & more orderly immigration system — not razor wire to cut innocent people or laws that attack families,” he wrote on X.
The Texas National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety earlier this month installed fences and razor wire in a riverside park in Eagle Pass, Texas, which state law enforcement also prevented Border Patrol officers from accessing.
If that isn’t contempt of court, I don’t know what is.
Could Abbott end up in prison himself? That would be quite funny.
Although Dan Patrick is just as off the wall.
The weird thing in all this, is that Abbott is trying to enforce federal law.
What has happened in that Congress (in the sense of both houses) has passed a lot of legislation on immigration. Which Obama and Biden disagreed with, completely. So Obama started the policy of ordering Federal agencies to *not enforce* the laws that he didn't like. Then various states tried enforcing Federal law themselves. This went to the Supreme Court - which said the Federal government had the last say on enforcing Federal law.
Biden followed on the practice from Obama, on immigration law.
So you have a situation where the Federal government is suing a State government for enforcing Federal laws. And a State government saying that they will enforce Federal laws - even if enforcing the Federal law is judged illegal by the Federal government.
In 1971 humans were driving an electric vehicle around the moon having a great a time,53 years later a robot lands on the moon and takes a picture and it's considered awesome.
It is, for a whole variety of reasons. And that does not take anything away from the people who got man onto the Moon fifty years ago.
For one thing, it highlights how accessible space is becoming, despite the difficulties in getting there, and operating.
Why can't things just be AWESOME without people being so negative?
Im just confused by space travel. Look at this picture taken in 1971:
Who could have imagined in 1971 that 53 years later with all the incredible technology that exists that we have not even repeated this achievement yet alone bettered it. Only being able to send a robot to the moon in 2024 after what we achieved between 1969-1972 is just bizarre. Another starnge fact is just how many attempts to land on the moon by robots over the last 30 years have failed.
Labour 47 Tories 20 Reform 13 (!!!) LibDems 8 Greens 6 SNP 4
Well if the Tories managed to entice all of those ReFukers to vote Conservative, then Labour's lead would be down to a wafer-thin 14%.
Inteesting how those reform and Tory votes add up to around the Tory core vote, of 32-34%. Some sort of pact or merger with Reform may be imminent, as with the Brexit Party in 2019.
The Right in Britain has distinguioshed itself by being consistently better at being purposefully and pragmatically united than the left.
We are about to witness the dissolution of the British Museum, over the next thirty years. Indeed, I wonder if the very concept of a western museum, of global civilisation, is at an end
You’re going to get wet, out there with your placard today.
Or at least you would, were you here.
Happily, I am sitting in my swanky new 4 star serviced apartment, with gleaming pool, gym, and sauna, feeling the soft douce breeze of the Kampuchean afternoon, contemplating a cocktail in a couple of tropical hours
The place costs £25 a night. Insane
I honestly don't know how you can live like that, away from family and friends, in yet another sterile hotel room, in yet another strange city. Your life of travelling obviously suits you, but it would make me really miserable. People are very different.
Let's hear about your fantastic life for comparison purposes and to set the benchmark for happiness.
As doltish a comment as one poster berating another for spending so much time on PB.
Isn't the benchmark that anyone who has made more posts than oneself spends too much time on PB?
You have to divide posts by likes to see who is really wasting their fucking time.
In 1971 humans were driving an electric vehicle around the moon having a great a time,53 years later a robot lands on the moon and takes a picture and it's considered awesome.
It is, for a whole variety of reasons. And that does not take anything away from the people who got man onto the Moon fifty years ago.
For one thing, it highlights how accessible space is becoming, despite the difficulties in getting there, and operating.
Why can't things just be AWESOME without people being so negative?
Im just confused by space travel. Look at this picture taken in 1971:
Who could have imagined in 1971 that 53 years later with all the incredible technology that exists that we have not even repeated this achievement yet alone bettered it. Only being able to send a robot to the moon in 2024 after what we achieved between 1969-1972 is just bizarre. Another starnge fact is just how many attempts to land on the moon by robots over the last 30 years have failed.
Those Chavs whizzing about on quad bikes get everywhere.
I'm sure they are far better engineered than when I worked there.
A guy in the village has a 23 plate L460 and the pano roof is stuck open. He has had to put in my barn, so it doesn't fill up with rain and become a 110 grand mobile aquarium, until JLR can be arsed to try to fix it.
The non-leather vegan interior is very well executed though, I'll give them that.
They used to get the leather from Australia. Used to send people over there two weeks at a time. Nice work if you can get it.
I usually ended up at black country metal bashers.
I had the pleasure of working on aftermarket products for L405, L494 and L550 as well as some heap of shit Jaguar, X761 I think it was.
I can see the JLR quality culture is still alive and well.
We are about to witness the dissolution of the British Museum, over the next thirty years. Indeed, I wonder if the very concept of a western museum, of global civilisation, is at an end
You’re going to get wet, out there with your placard today.
Or at least you would, were you here.
Happily, I am sitting in my swanky new 4 star serviced apartment, with gleaming pool, gym, and sauna, feeling the soft douce breeze of the Kampuchean afternoon, contemplating a cocktail in a couple of tropical hours
The place costs £25 a night. Insane
I honestly don't know how you can live like that, away from family and friends, in yet another sterile hotel room, in yet another strange city. Your life of travelling obviously suits you, but it would make me really miserable. People are very different.
Let's hear about your fantastic life for comparison purposes and to set the benchmark for happiness.
As doltish a comment as one poster berating another for spending so much time on PB.
I wasn't remotely insulted, I talk about my lifestyle a fair amount, especially the travel, and I post pics. If people want to comment in response that's fair; nor was he accusing me of some moral failing (as others have done) in deserting the country or whatever
And he's right, it can be solitary - and PB helps that - but it is a solitary life anyway I do it: I work alone, crafting
And over decades I've learned that if I spend Jan and Feb in the indochinese tropics working damn hard (and I do), then that really frees up the rest of the year. It is in the perfect time zone, apart from anything else. When I wake at 10am it is 3am in London and 4am in Europe, and late in NYC, there is no one to talk to online, nothing to distract, so I work
By the time I am done for the day, you guys are all waking up, my colleagues are at their London desks, I can spend the soft afternoons doing admin and swapping gossip, then cocktails, then wine, then sleep, then repeat
If anyone needs a holiday where they will feel like they are on another planet, in a different universe, go to Greenland. Go, specifically, to Ilulissat and Disko Bay
Flights are pricey but once you are there it is not so expensive, and it is sublime, in the true sense. Spectacular with an element of danger
I've never understood why people buy Range Rovers. Buying a t shirt with "I am a c***" written on it would achieve the same effect at a fraction of the price.
1980s joke:
What's the difference between a Range Rover and a hedgehog ?
One site, from 6500 years ago, with 24 skeletons in a fairly unique location - up in the Andes - does not prove "Early human hunter-gatherers ate mostly plants and vegetables"
How can a self respecting science journalist write this drivel? Is it Woke nonsense, or is she just stupid?
There could be any number of reasons why this one unusual site produces 24 skeletons of people who liked carrots. I mean, they are half way up a fucking mountain, maybe there wasn't that much meat. So they ate leaves
Have they considered that?
Absolutely laughable
Two sites, actually. And they merely say 'it suggests', not 'proves'.
As they point out, firm evidence for the actual balance of human diet going back that far is scant.
One thing it does show pretty conclusively is the power of the headline over the rest of the text.
To quote someone wittier than myself "there aren't any cave paintings of salads".
Unlike the buffalo hunt, the carrot hunt was to exhausting to draw .
In the UK at least, there *are* quite a lot of animal bones at prehistoric sites. But there are a heck of a lot more roasted hazelnut shells. Most prehistoric communities were also littoral - and there's evidence for a lot of shellfish in the diet (again more in the "gather" than the "hunter" end of things).
Archaeology is woke now. Facts are woke.
In fairness, I think the article is a quite horrible misrepresentation of the actual findings and conclusions, which look sound enough to me (fwiw I have a BSc and MA in archaeology, albeit a long time ago now), by (being generous to the journo here) implying that the findings apply to hunter gatherers in general, which they do not.
There is a general point about misrepresentation of the adaptability and variety of hunter-gatherer lifestyles, which as @mwadams here illustrates will reflect the environment. Thus in an environment where edible, nutritious plant life is abundant it may well be the major part of the diet. In other places - the most obvious example being extremely cold environments - animals will be the staple. And it is true that the 'man the hunter, woman the gatherer' trope is (to be extremely generous now) fairly tenuously evidenced and certainly not a universal (and by implication, innate) trait.
One of the keys to the success and dominance of humans isn't just intelligence, it's the versatility too. We can live pretty much purely on plants, or purely on animals.
One site, from 6500 years ago, with 24 skeletons in a fairly unique location - up in the Andes - does not prove "Early human hunter-gatherers ate mostly plants and vegetables"
How can a self respecting science journalist write this drivel? Is it Woke nonsense, or is she just stupid?
There could be any number of reasons why this one unusual site produces 24 skeletons of people who liked carrots. I mean, they are half way up a fucking mountain, maybe there wasn't that much meat. So they ate leaves
Have they considered that?
Absolutely laughable
Two sites, actually. And they merely say 'it suggests', not 'proves'.
As they point out, firm evidence for the actual balance of human diet going back that far is scant.
One thing it does show pretty conclusively is the power of the headline over the rest of the text.
To quote someone wittier than myself "there aren't any cave paintings of salads".
Unlike the buffalo hunt, the carrot hunt was to exhausting to draw .
In the UK at least, there *are* quite a lot of animal bones at prehistoric sites. But there are a heck of a lot more roasted hazelnut shells. Most prehistoric communities were also littoral - and there's evidence for a lot of shellfish in the diet (again more in the "gather" than the "hunter" end of things).
They can run, those oysters. And if there enough of them they can turn very aggressive!
In 1971 humans were driving an electric vehicle around the moon having a great a time,53 years later a robot lands on the moon and takes a picture and it's considered awesome.
It is, for a whole variety of reasons. And that does not take anything away from the people who got man onto the Moon fifty years ago.
For one thing, it highlights how accessible space is becoming, despite the difficulties in getting there, and operating.
Why can't things just be AWESOME without people being so negative?
The gap is down to the method that was chosen to get there. Build a skyscraper out of exotic materials and chemicals, and throw it away. To get 2 people there and back.
Then the space program went down a rabbit hole and ended up in a spiral of insane "space inflation" (caused by politicians pork schemes) and less and less result.
We are looking at a replacement for the said skyscraper being launched this year. Price $90 million dollars per example (estimated) - instead of a noticeable fraction of US GDP. And eventually reusable.
That's wrong. SH/SS is *not* a replacement for Saturn V / Apollo.
SH/SS is a brilliant architecture optimised to get large amounts of mass to Mars. To get to the Moon, it will require a vastly complex program architecture involving multiple refuellings and dockings - and also requires SLS.
Saturn V / Apollo was a single stack to the Moon. Vastly different, and much more highly optimised.
If you wanted to recreate Apollo using a single SH/SS, you could do it in expendable mode, using an orbital tug as a third stage. Current estimates for expendable payload to orbit are 200 tons. You might be able to do it in reusable mode.
And https://www.impulsespace.com (CEO Tom Mueller) are testing their first, smaller tugs, right now. They've already given presentations on a tug sized for Starship. And given in Mueller I'm not betting against them.
If anyone needs a holiday where they will feel like they are on another planet, in a different universe, go to Greenland. Go, specifically, to Ilulissat and Disko Bay
Flights are pricey but once you are there it is not so expensive, and it is sublime, in the true sense. Spectacular with an element of danger
IS the booze cheap ?
IIRC it's a lot cheaper than Iceland (which is insane). So, I wouldn't say cheap. but it is not crazy expensive
Labour 47 Tories 20 Reform 13 (!!!) LibDems 8 Greens 6 SNP 4
A lot closer to a one-party system than to a two-party system now.
I've been actively abstaining [spoiled ballot], or lending my vote to Labour for nearly a decade now, hoping that the Tories will sort themselves out. Post 2019, I have been saying that they need an absolute monstering for that to happen. But I think I have now given up hope. The grass roots are too far gone to be the basis from which to rebuild.
But FPP's tendency to the status quo means that they probably will come away with 150+ MPs, and get their questions every week at PMQs and be treated like a Serious Party; which they are not.
We are about to witness the dissolution of the British Museum, over the next thirty years. Indeed, I wonder if the very concept of a western museum, of global civilisation, is at an end
1) If Britain wants to be a global player going one to one with other countries, we may have to ameliorate the diplomatic tension by giving back some of the stuff we stole from them and 2) we did steal that stuff from them, so we don't really have a leg to stand on. Imagine if 100-150 years ago the French nicked Stonehenge from us and now just had it in a museum - I think people here would be clamouring for it back.
I don't think someone who encourages the Houthis to sink ships in the Red Sea is really interested in Britain being a 'global player'.
You're right, I'm not. But others are.
So perhaps your advice is best left ignored? It's like taking advice from the sort of people who stone gays.
It wasn't advice as much as a comment on the situation. I'm glad that it's fine to support the mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians without this level of vitriol, but remarking that the bad people (Houthis) have done a good thing (blockade the Red Sea to attempt to stop that) is considered akin to stoning gay people to death. It's also great to see the great continued tradition of threatening queer people by proxy; of course you would never threaten to stone me to death for my same sex relationships, you just happen to really enjoy using that imagery as a violent fantasy to warn me about how bad other people are.
We are about to witness the dissolution of the British Museum, over the next thirty years. Indeed, I wonder if the very concept of a western museum, of global civilisation, is at an end
1) If Britain wants to be a global player going one to one with other countries, we may have to ameliorate the diplomatic tension by giving back some of the stuff we stole from them and 2) we did steal that stuff from them, so we don't really have a leg to stand on. Imagine if 100-150 years ago the French nicked Stonehenge from us and now just had it in a museum - I think people here would be clamouring for it back.
It's just an international way of showing you're a cuck.
All it will do is generate new demands. I doubt anyone gives a shit about long lost irrelevant objects in the UK anyway, they're doing it for the headline of bringing Blighty to heel.
Ignore them.
I mean, if the political desire of other countries is to humiliate the British state - and you view this as doing that - I think that's fine. Good political aim, good political outcome.
In 1971 humans were driving an electric vehicle around the moon having a great a time,53 years later a robot lands on the moon and takes a picture and it's considered awesome.
It is, for a whole variety of reasons. And that does not take anything away from the people who got man onto the Moon fifty years ago.
For one thing, it highlights how accessible space is becoming, despite the difficulties in getting there, and operating.
Why can't things just be AWESOME without people being so negative?
The gap is down to the method that was chosen to get there. Build a skyscraper out of exotic materials and chemicals, and throw it away. To get 2 people there and back.
Then the space program went down a rabbit hole and ended up in a spiral of insane "space inflation" (caused by politicians pork schemes) and less and less result.
We are looking at a replacement for the said skyscraper being launched this year. Price $90 million dollars per example (estimated) - instead of a noticeable fraction of US GDP. And eventually reusable.
That's wrong. SH/SS is *not* a replacement for Saturn V / Apollo.
SH/SS is a brilliant architecture optimised to get large amounts of mass to Mars. To get to the Moon, it will require a vastly complex program architecture involving multiple refuellings and dockings - and also requires SLS.
Saturn V / Apollo was a single stack to the Moon. Vastly different, and much more highly optimised.
If you wanted to recreate Apollo using a single SH/SS, you could do it in expendable mode, using an orbital tug as a third stage. Current estimates for expendable payload to orbit are 200 tons. You might be able to do it in reusable mode.
And https://www.impulsespace.com (CEO Tom Mueller) are testing their first, smaller tugs, right now. They've already given presentations on a tug sized for Starship. And given in Mueller I'm not betting against them.
And Blue Origin are working on a tug as well. It's not all SpaceX, you know. But that's all handwavium: the system as being developed is *not* a replacement for Saturn V / Apollo. SH/SS are brilliant, but it's very much a system designed to do one job that's being used for another. In addition, good luck in getting SS crew-rated anytime in the near future...
(Incidentally, have you seen the pics of the stage1+stage2 New Glenn stack?)
One site, from 6500 years ago, with 24 skeletons in a fairly unique location - up in the Andes - does not prove "Early human hunter-gatherers ate mostly plants and vegetables"
How can a self respecting science journalist write this drivel? Is it Woke nonsense, or is she just stupid?
There could be any number of reasons why this one unusual site produces 24 skeletons of people who liked carrots. I mean, they are half way up a fucking mountain, maybe there wasn't that much meat. So they ate leaves
Have they considered that?
Absolutely laughable
Two sites, actually. And they merely say 'it suggests', not 'proves'.
As they point out, firm evidence for the actual balance of human diet going back that far is scant.
One thing it does show pretty conclusively is the power of the headline over the rest of the text.
To quote someone wittier than myself "there aren't any cave paintings of salads".
Unlike the buffalo hunt, the carrot hunt was to exhausting to draw .
In the UK at least, there *are* quite a lot of animal bones at prehistoric sites. But there are a heck of a lot more roasted hazelnut shells. Most prehistoric communities were also littoral - and there's evidence for a lot of shellfish in the diet (again more in the "gather" than the "hunter" end of things).
Archaeology is woke now. Facts are woke.
In fairness, I think the article is a quite horrible misrepresentation of the actual findings and conclusions, which look sound enough to me (fwiw I have a BSc and MA in archaeology, albeit a long time ago now), by (being generous to the journo here) implying that the findings apply to hunter gatherers in general, which they do not.
There is a general point about misrepresentation of the adaptability and variety of hunter-gatherer lifestyles, which as @mwadams here illustrates will reflect the environment. Thus in an environment where edible, nutritious plant life is abundant it may well be the major part of the diet. In other places - the most obvious example being extremely cold environments - animals will be the staple. And it is true that the 'man the hunter, woman the gatherer' trope is (to be extremely generous now) fairly tenuously evidenced and certainly not a universal (and by implication, innate) trait.
One of the keys to the success and dominance of humans isn't just intelligence, it's the versatility too. We can live pretty much purely on plants, or purely on animals.
The hunter gatherer civilisation of the Tas Tepeler (Gobekli Tepe etc) seems, from what we have learmed so far, to be extremely macho, phallocratic, dominated by male values, and also obsessed with hunting, and prey animals, and la chasse. Also there is evidence of brutal human sacrifice
It is quite contrary to the idea we all lived on gathered mushrooms and wild roots worshipped a nice mother Goddess, and did peaceful knitting in harmony with nature absent any conflict, which I am sure the Guardian would like us to believe
Great header Q. Yes I'm on this @ 4.7 on the exchange. It's value imo and also a nice contra to my Big Short on Trump for president. If I'm wrong I'm quite likely to be very wrong in which case this will pay against my loss. Plus I could win on both if Trump wins the PV but loses the EC, which is possible. Course I could lose on both too - but that's risk, that's betting, that's life.
In 1971 humans were driving an electric vehicle around the moon having a great a time,53 years later a robot lands on the moon and takes a picture and it's considered awesome.
It is, for a whole variety of reasons. And that does not take anything away from the people who got man onto the Moon fifty years ago.
For one thing, it highlights how accessible space is becoming, despite the difficulties in getting there, and operating.
Why can't things just be AWESOME without people being so negative?
Im just confused by space travel. Look at this picture taken in 1971:
Who could have imagined in 1971 that 53 years later with all the incredible technology that exists that we have not even repeated this achievement yet alone bettered it. Only being able to send a robot to the moon in 2024 after what we achieved between 1969-1972 is just bizarre. Another starnge fact is just how many attempts to land on the moon by robots over the last 30 years have failed.
I think there's a misunderstanding that sending a robot is the "only" part; being able to send a robot to e.g. the moon, (or more interestingly, Mars) and then run missions there for *years* is an amazing advance in technology over what was possible in 1971. It's not that we *couldn't* send people if we wanted to spend the money, it's that it is so much better to send a robot!
FWIW I disagree with this thread. I expect Biden to win the popular vote handily.
Unemployment in the US is at a 50 year low. Biden’s administration has created 14m jobs including 1m manufacturing jobs as he promised. Real wages, which have been flat, are now rising strongly. For the first time in decades US growth is matching or even exceeding China.
It is a terrific record and his low polling numbers are a reflection of the bias in the right wing media calling everything awful. As the population focuses on this I expect Biden’s numbers to improve sharply and some of the Trump court cases to damage his.
Not only do I see this as a poor bet, if I am right trading opportunities are likely to be poor because the Republican vote is not likely to be as good as it is now again.
Totally disagree (although I guess that is to be expected) and I think @Quincel has written a very good post and raises what could be an interesting opportunity.
I'll tackle some of your broader points first though. If the US is matching China's growth rate, it is because China is having a mare of a 2023 and looks like 2024, and its rate is falling, not that the US has turbocharged growth. The jobs Biden 'created' are really a bounceback from the pandemic and of the measures both Administrations took. As for the 'right-wing' media, could you list out the publications please? I get Fox, the NY Post and the WSJ and Mail Online. Against that, you have the NYT, WP, LAT, Chicago Tribune etc, plus most of the other major networks who have, to put it charitably, a centre-left bias. The mass of the media is not right-wing.
But never mind that. Here is what could make the bet interesting. Quincel raises the very good point re 2022 pointing to the polls being wrong. That could play against the bet.
But one thing increasingly clear is that the Democrats have become the beneficiaries of lower turnout in the mid-terms rather than the Republicans - which historically has been the case - as graduates and suburbanites become more of their base. Yet even in that election, on the House popular vote, the Republicans won by 2-3 points. True, some seats were uncontested but, in 2024 with more low-propensity voters, you would expect the Republicans to benefit.
There is also the fact that there are anecdotal signs Republicans are also gaining in heavily Democrat areas. Hochul only defeated Zeldin by 5+ points in the NY Governorship race and Murphy only won the NJ vote by 2. No-one imagines the situation has got better for the Democrats in those states. CA will never go Republican but, for the purposes of this bet, the Republicans only have to make modest voting inroads, which it looks like they are.
So, actually, Quincel has identified an opportunity.
For comparison, the last time a Dem president was up for reelection in 2012 he won the popular vote by 3.9%. In the previous midterms 2010 Republicans won the House popular vote by 6.8% - a turnaround of 10.7%.
So on balance Republicans winning the House vote by 2%ish (after deducting for the higher number of seats Dems didn't contest) would if anything point to Democrats winning the popular vote narrowly in the 2024 presidential election.
However, I think it's too early to say much about who is going to win the popular vote, but Biden's net approval ratings are worse than Trump's were at this point in his presidency according to this: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/ Actually worse than any president since the second world war, so Republicans popular vote is probably value at 10/3. It's probably better value than the 10/11 or so available Republicans winning the presidency - I think people are maybe overestimating the advantage the Republicans will have in the Electoral College this time.
That is a fair point re 2-3 points in 2022 not necessarily being a big lead historically. The (part) counter-argument would be that Democrats were energised by Roe v Wade which boosted their usual turnout.
Re the timing, yes, I am in the camp of thinking it is too early to bet but, for me, I don't see how Biden gets out of this situation. The economy will improve but I do not see how the immigration situation does if only because of the pressure from the activist base and the concerns over his age will only get worse and probably intensify as he campaigns and so is more publicly out there. I also think Bibi has decided that Trump would suit him better than Biden, and so I suspect he will drag out the conflict v Hamas knowing that this causes significant problems for Biden within the Democrats. Which is why I have bet on Biden being shunted out of the way and the Democrats to go into November with someone who is not Biden or Harris.
Another interesting question, if the Tories merge with Reform, is whether there are enough more moderate Tory MP's left for the Parliamentary party to split, or whether a new party will simply emerge, separately.
There are very large gaps opening up on the Centre-Right, and Left, of British politics.
One site, from 6500 years ago, with 24 skeletons in a fairly unique location - up in the Andes - does not prove "Early human hunter-gatherers ate mostly plants and vegetables"
How can a self respecting science journalist write this drivel? Is it Woke nonsense, or is she just stupid?
There could be any number of reasons why this one unusual site produces 24 skeletons of people who liked carrots. I mean, they are half way up a fucking mountain, maybe there wasn't that much meat. So they ate leaves
Have they considered that?
Absolutely laughable
Two sites, actually. And they merely say 'it suggests', not 'proves'.
As they point out, firm evidence for the actual balance of human diet going back that far is scant.
One thing it does show pretty conclusively is the power of the headline over the rest of the text.
To quote someone wittier than myself "there aren't any cave paintings of salads".
Unlike the buffalo hunt, the carrot hunt was to exhausting to draw .
In the UK at least, there *are* quite a lot of animal bones at prehistoric sites. But there are a heck of a lot more roasted hazelnut shells. Most prehistoric communities were also littoral - and there's evidence for a lot of shellfish in the diet (again more in the "gather" than the "hunter" end of things).
Archaeology is woke now. Facts are woke.
In fairness, I think the article is a quite horrible misrepresentation of the actual findings and conclusions, which look sound enough to me (fwiw I have a BSc and MA in archaeology, albeit a long time ago now), by (being generous to the journo here) implying that the findings apply to hunter gatherers in general, which they do not.
There is a general point about misrepresentation of the adaptability and variety of hunter-gatherer lifestyles, which as @mwadams here illustrates will reflect the environment. Thus in an environment where edible, nutritious plant life is abundant it may well be the major part of the diet. In other places - the most obvious example being extremely cold environments - animals will be the staple. And it is true that the 'man the hunter, woman the gatherer' trope is (to be extremely generous now) fairly tenuously evidenced and certainly not a universal (and by implication, innate) trait.
One of the keys to the success and dominance of humans isn't just intelligence, it's the versatility too. We can live pretty much purely on plants, or purely on animals.
I did post a link to the paper itself upthread. One of the more interesting points was the isotope analysis giving some idea of the balance of diet in broad term between plants, meat and fish. Which is probably more reliable than artefact evidence.
One site, from 6500 years ago, with 24 skeletons in a fairly unique location - up in the Andes - does not prove "Early human hunter-gatherers ate mostly plants and vegetables"
How can a self respecting science journalist write this drivel? Is it Woke nonsense, or is she just stupid?
There could be any number of reasons why this one unusual site produces 24 skeletons of people who liked carrots. I mean, they are half way up a fucking mountain, maybe there wasn't that much meat. So they ate leaves
Have they considered that?
Absolutely laughable
Two sites, actually. And they merely say 'it suggests', not 'proves'.
As they point out, firm evidence for the actual balance of human diet going back that far is scant.
One thing it does show pretty conclusively is the power of the headline over the rest of the text.
To quote someone wittier than myself "there aren't any cave paintings of salads".
Unlike the buffalo hunt, the carrot hunt was to exhausting to draw .
In the UK at least, there *are* quite a lot of animal bones at prehistoric sites. But there are a heck of a lot more roasted hazelnut shells. Most prehistoric communities were also littoral - and there's evidence for a lot of shellfish in the diet (again more in the "gather" than the "hunter" end of things).
Archaeology is woke now. Facts are woke.
In fairness, I think the article is a quite horrible misrepresentation of the actual findings and conclusions, which look sound enough to me (fwiw I have a BSc and MA in archaeology, albeit a long time ago now), by (being generous to the journo here) implying that the findings apply to hunter gatherers in general, which they do not.
There is a general point about misrepresentation of the adaptability and variety of hunter-gatherer lifestyles, which as @mwadams here illustrates will reflect the environment. Thus in an environment where edible, nutritious plant life is abundant it may well be the major part of the diet. In other places - the most obvious example being extremely cold environments - animals will be the staple. And it is true that the 'man the hunter, woman the gatherer' trope is (to be extremely generous now) fairly tenuously evidenced and certainly not a universal (and by implication, innate) trait.
One of the keys to the success and dominance of humans isn't just intelligence, it's the versatility too. We can live pretty much purely on plants, or purely on animals.
The hunter gatherer civilisation of the Tas Tepeler (Gobekli Tepe etc) seems, from what we have learmed so far, to be extremely macho, phallocratic, dominated by male values, and also obsessed with hunting, and prey animals, and la chasse. Also there is evidence of brutal human sacrifice
It is quite contrary to the idea we all lived on gathered mushrooms and wild roots worshipped a nice mother Goddess, and did peaceful knitting in harmony with nature absent any conflict, which I am sure the Guardian would like us to believe
Ah, now that's something else again. We can have a cult site for Formula 1 drivers, selling toy cars, posters etc. but it doesn't mean everyone drives formula one cars.
And yes, it is equally preposterous to suggest that everyone peaceably ate the mushrooms while whittling statues of women with spectacular embonpoint.
ETA: I am not implying that Formula 1 drivers by extension demand brutal human sacrifice; but I am not ruling it out.
One site, from 6500 years ago, with 24 skeletons in a fairly unique location - up in the Andes - does not prove "Early human hunter-gatherers ate mostly plants and vegetables"
How can a self respecting science journalist write this drivel? Is it Woke nonsense, or is she just stupid?
There could be any number of reasons why this one unusual site produces 24 skeletons of people who liked carrots. I mean, they are half way up a fucking mountain, maybe there wasn't that much meat. So they ate leaves
Have they considered that?
Absolutely laughable
Two sites, actually. And they merely say 'it suggests', not 'proves'.
As they point out, firm evidence for the actual balance of human diet going back that far is scant.
One thing it does show pretty conclusively is the power of the headline over the rest of the text.
To quote someone wittier than myself "there aren't any cave paintings of salads".
Unlike the buffalo hunt, the carrot hunt was to exhausting to draw .
In the UK at least, there *are* quite a lot of animal bones at prehistoric sites. But there are a heck of a lot more roasted hazelnut shells. Most prehistoric communities were also littoral - and there's evidence for a lot of shellfish in the diet (again more in the "gather" than the "hunter" end of things).
Archaeology is woke now. Facts are woke.
In fairness, I think the article is a quite horrible misrepresentation of the actual findings and conclusions, which look sound enough to me (fwiw I have a BSc and MA in archaeology, albeit a long time ago now), by (being generous to the journo here) implying that the findings apply to hunter gatherers in general, which they do not.
There is a general point about misrepresentation of the adaptability and variety of hunter-gatherer lifestyles, which as @mwadams here illustrates will reflect the environment. Thus in an environment where edible, nutritious plant life is abundant it may well be the major part of the diet. In other places - the most obvious example being extremely cold environments - animals will be the staple. And it is true that the 'man the hunter, woman the gatherer' trope is (to be extremely generous now) fairly tenuously evidenced and certainly not a universal (and by implication, innate) trait.
One of the keys to the success and dominance of humans isn't just intelligence, it's the versatility too. We can live pretty much purely on plants, or purely on animals.
The hunter gatherer civilisation of the Tas Tepeler (Gobekli Tepe etc) seems, from what we have learmed so far, to be extremely macho, phallocratic, dominated by male values, and also obsessed with hunting, and prey animals, and la chasse. Also there is evidence of brutal human sacrifice
It is quite contrary to the idea we all lived on gathered mushrooms and wild roots worshipped a nice mother Goddess, and did peaceful knitting in harmony with nature absent any conflict, which I am sure the Guardian would like us to believe
Yes. But that is one society, in one place, over one period. It is foolish to take any single example of the enormous variety of human cultures and say that it is somehow the ur-culture from which everything else is a deviation.
Great header Q. Yes I'm on this @ 4.7 on the exchange. It's value imo and also a nice contra to my Big Short on Trump for president. If I'm wrong I'm quite likely to be very wrong in which case this will pay against my loss. Plus I could win on both if Trump wins the PV but loses the EC, which is possible. Course I could lose on both too - but that's risk, that's betting, that's life.
4.7. Nice...
I may be hoisted rather high by my petard here (given the stakes I've done in for), but I think my odds are still serious value. So 4.7, very nice...
Still, I don't have to outrun everyone in the market. Just enough of it.
One site, from 6500 years ago, with 24 skeletons in a fairly unique location - up in the Andes - does not prove "Early human hunter-gatherers ate mostly plants and vegetables"
How can a self respecting science journalist write this drivel? Is it Woke nonsense, or is she just stupid?
There could be any number of reasons why this one unusual site produces 24 skeletons of people who liked carrots. I mean, they are half way up a fucking mountain, maybe there wasn't that much meat. So they ate leaves
Have they considered that?
Absolutely laughable
Two sites, actually. And they merely say 'it suggests', not 'proves'.
As they point out, firm evidence for the actual balance of human diet going back that far is scant.
One thing it does show pretty conclusively is the power of the headline over the rest of the text.
To quote someone wittier than myself "there aren't any cave paintings of salads".
Unlike the buffalo hunt, the carrot hunt was to exhausting to draw .
In the UK at least, there *are* quite a lot of animal bones at prehistoric sites. But there are a heck of a lot more roasted hazelnut shells. Most prehistoric communities were also littoral - and there's evidence for a lot of shellfish in the diet (again more in the "gather" than the "hunter" end of things).
Archaeology is woke now. Facts are woke.
In fairness, I think the article is a quite horrible misrepresentation of the actual findings and conclusions, which look sound enough to me (fwiw I have a BSc and MA in archaeology, albeit a long time ago now), by (being generous to the journo here) implying that the findings apply to hunter gatherers in general, which they do not.
There is a general point about misrepresentation of the adaptability and variety of hunter-gatherer lifestyles, which as @mwadams here illustrates will reflect the environment. Thus in an environment where edible, nutritious plant life is abundant it may well be the major part of the diet. In other places - the most obvious example being extremely cold environments - animals will be the staple. And it is true that the 'man the hunter, woman the gatherer' trope is (to be extremely generous now) fairly tenuously evidenced and certainly not a universal (and by implication, innate) trait.
One of the keys to the success and dominance of humans isn't just intelligence, it's the versatility too. We can live pretty much purely on plants, or purely on animals.
I did post a link to the paper itself upthread. One of the more interesting points was the isotope analysis giving some idea of the balance of diet in broad term between plants, meat and fish. Which is probably more reliable than artefact evidence.
no one is arguing with the original research
My complaint, which started this debate, was that the journalism ABOUT the study was utterly shoddy, with a ridiculous headline, preposterous exaggerations, and howling errors - "fish are mammals"
And I am right. It's shite. It is really low grade journalism and quite shocking to see it in Guardian; the Daily Mail does science far better than this, for example
In 1971 humans were driving an electric vehicle around the moon having a great a time,53 years later a robot lands on the moon and takes a picture and it's considered awesome.
It is, for a whole variety of reasons. And that does not take anything away from the people who got man onto the Moon fifty years ago.
For one thing, it highlights how accessible space is becoming, despite the difficulties in getting there, and operating.
Why can't things just be AWESOME without people being so negative?
The gap is down to the method that was chosen to get there. Build a skyscraper out of exotic materials and chemicals, and throw it away. To get 2 people there and back.
Then the space program went down a rabbit hole and ended up in a spiral of insane "space inflation" (caused by politicians pork schemes) and less and less result.
We are looking at a replacement for the said skyscraper being launched this year. Price $90 million dollars per example (estimated) - instead of a noticeable fraction of US GDP. And eventually reusable.
That's wrong. SH/SS is *not* a replacement for Saturn V / Apollo.
SH/SS is a brilliant architecture optimised to get large amounts of mass to Mars. To get to the Moon, it will require a vastly complex program architecture involving multiple refuellings and dockings - and also requires SLS.
Saturn V / Apollo was a single stack to the Moon. Vastly different, and much more highly optimised.
If you wanted to recreate Apollo using a single SH/SS, you could do it in expendable mode, using an orbital tug as a third stage. Current estimates for expendable payload to orbit are 200 tons. You might be able to do it in reusable mode.
And https://www.impulsespace.com (CEO Tom Mueller) are testing their first, smaller tugs, right now. They've already given presentations on a tug sized for Starship. And given in Mueller I'm not betting against them.
And Blue Origin are working on a tug as well. It's not all SpaceX, you know. But that's all handwavium: the system as being developed is *not* a replacement for Saturn V / Apollo. SH/SS are brilliant, but it's very much a system designed to do one job that's being used for another. In addition, good luck in getting SS crew-rated anytime in the near future...
(Incidentally, have you seen the pics of the stage1+stage2 New Glenn stack?)
Yup - they are getting closer. Though the interstage is non-flight, IIRC. The betting on when their first flight will be is open... I'm going for Q1 2025.
Impulse are moving very fast - not surprising, given the CEO. Along with Stoke, they are ones to watch.
FWIW I disagree with this thread. I expect Biden to win the popular vote handily.
Unemployment in the US is at a 50 year low. Biden’s administration has created 14m jobs including 1m manufacturing jobs as he promised. Real wages, which have been flat, are now rising strongly. For the first time in decades US growth is matching or even exceeding China.
It is a terrific record and his low polling numbers are a reflection of the bias in the right wing media calling everything awful. As the population focuses on this I expect Biden’s numbers to improve sharply and some of the Trump court cases to damage his.
Not only do I see this as a poor bet, if I am right trading opportunities are likely to be poor because the Republican vote is not likely to be as good as it is now again.
That's an argument for why you think he should win the popular vote, not whether he will or not as indicated by the evidence.
Indeed. I actually think Biden is rather unfairly judged by a lot of people, but that's not something I can change when I bet. As well as people being too down on his first term record in my view, I think it's particularly harsh to be so negative about his age and mental sharpness given he has gotten a surprising amount through Congress and is running against a man almost as old and at least as declined.
But that's my view. And the bet is on the view of 350m people.
We are about to witness the dissolution of the British Museum, over the next thirty years. Indeed, I wonder if the very concept of a western museum, of global civilisation, is at an end
1) If Britain wants to be a global player going one to one with other countries, we may have to ameliorate the diplomatic tension by giving back some of the stuff we stole from them and 2) we did steal that stuff from them, so we don't really have a leg to stand on. Imagine if 100-150 years ago the French nicked Stonehenge from us and now just had it in a museum - I think people here would be clamouring for it back.
I don't think someone who encourages the Houthis to sink ships in the Red Sea is really interested in Britain being a 'global player'.
You're right, I'm not. But others are.
So perhaps your advice is best left ignored? It's like taking advice from the sort of people who stone gays.
It wasn't advice as much as a comment on the situation. I'm glad that it's fine to support the mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians without this level of vitriol, but remarking that the bad people (Houthis) have done a good thing (blockade the Red Sea to attempt to stop that) is considered akin to stoning gay people to death. It's also great to see the great continued tradition of threatening queer people by proxy; of course you would never threaten to stone me to death for my same sex relationships, you just happen to really enjoy using that imagery as a violent fantasy to warn me about how bad other people are.
You make several mistakes. The first is believing that the Houthis are doing this. They are not; the Iranians are doing it via the Houthis; the Houthis are proxies. The second is that the attacks on Red Sea shipping are in any way to do with what's happened since October; it is not, which is why the Houthis have been doing this since 2016.
You are siding with the Houthis and Iran; people who execute people for homosexuality. These are the people you support. The Houthis have killed thousands of people; it'd be good if you showed similar concern for them as you do for the Palestinian victims of Israeli aggression.
IMV it's not exactly wrong of me to point that out.
In 1971 humans were driving an electric vehicle around the moon having a great a time,53 years later a robot lands on the moon and takes a picture and it's considered awesome.
It is, for a whole variety of reasons. And that does not take anything away from the people who got man onto the Moon fifty years ago.
For one thing, it highlights how accessible space is becoming, despite the difficulties in getting there, and operating.
Why can't things just be AWESOME without people being so negative?
Im just confused by space travel. Look at this picture taken in 1971:
Who could have imagined in 1971 that 53 years later with all the incredible technology that exists that we have not even repeated this achievement yet alone bettered it. Only being able to send a robot to the moon in 2024 after what we achieved between 1969-1972 is just bizarre. Another starnge fact is just how many attempts to land on the moon by robots over the last 30 years have failed.
I think there's a misunderstanding that sending a robot is the "only" part; being able to send a robot to e.g. the moon, (or more interestingly, Mars) and then run missions there for *years* is an amazing advance in technology over what was possible in 1971. It's not that we *couldn't* send people if we wanted to spend the money, it's that it is so much better to send a robot!
Robots only make sense when people are very, very expensive.
As one of the NASA rover team admins pointed out - the Apollo astronauts did more in a few hours than the robots can do in years.
I've never understood why people buy Range Rovers. Buying a t shirt with "I am a c***" written on it would achieve the same effect at a fraction of the price.
1980s joke:
What's the difference between a Range Rover and a hedgehog ?
The hedgehog has the pricks on the outside.
I will have to check with my mate who helps look after the laughter guzzler, Bob Monkhouse's, estate.
He kept and catalogued many many jokes over his long and glittering career.
I am sure a top quality gag like that would have made it in there.
We are about to witness the dissolution of the British Museum, over the next thirty years. Indeed, I wonder if the very concept of a western museum, of global civilisation, is at an end
You’re going to get wet, out there with your placard today.
Or at least you would, were you here.
Happily, I am sitting in my swanky new 4 star serviced apartment, with gleaming pool, gym, and sauna, feeling the soft douce breeze of the Kampuchean afternoon, contemplating a cocktail in a couple of tropical hours
Labour 47 Tories 20 Reform 13 (!!!) LibDems 8 Greens 6 SNP 4
Post Office & Ed Davey effect on LibDems?
Maybe. My guess is that the impact will be fleeting. There are too many culpable people in all parties for anyone to make an electoral issue of PO.
I think you are right. It already feels like it is dissipating. He didn't cover himself with glory at the time and handled the subsequent questioning poorly but it seems to be past now.
May be dragged up at the GE but cannot see it affecting him.
One site, from 6500 years ago, with 24 skeletons in a fairly unique location - up in the Andes - does not prove "Early human hunter-gatherers ate mostly plants and vegetables"
How can a self respecting science journalist write this drivel? Is it Woke nonsense, or is she just stupid?
There could be any number of reasons why this one unusual site produces 24 skeletons of people who liked carrots. I mean, they are half way up a fucking mountain, maybe there wasn't that much meat. So they ate leaves
Have they considered that?
Absolutely laughable
Two sites, actually. And they merely say 'it suggests', not 'proves'.
As they point out, firm evidence for the actual balance of human diet going back that far is scant.
One thing it does show pretty conclusively is the power of the headline over the rest of the text.
To quote someone wittier than myself "there aren't any cave paintings of salads".
Unlike the buffalo hunt, the carrot hunt was to exhausting to draw .
In the UK at least, there *are* quite a lot of animal bones at prehistoric sites. But there are a heck of a lot more roasted hazelnut shells. Most prehistoric communities were also littoral - and there's evidence for a lot of shellfish in the diet (again more in the "gather" than the "hunter" end of things).
Archaeology is woke now. Facts are woke.
In fairness, I think the article is a quite horrible misrepresentation of the actual findings and conclusions, which look sound enough to me (fwiw I have a BSc and MA in archaeology, albeit a long time ago now), by (being generous to the journo here) implying that the findings apply to hunter gatherers in general, which they do not.
There is a general point about misrepresentation of the adaptability and variety of hunter-gatherer lifestyles, which as @mwadams here illustrates will reflect the environment. Thus in an environment where edible, nutritious plant life is abundant it may well be the major part of the diet. In other places - the most obvious example being extremely cold environments - animals will be the staple. And it is true that the 'man the hunter, woman the gatherer' trope is (to be extremely generous now) fairly tenuously evidenced and certainly not a universal (and by implication, innate) trait.
One of the keys to the success and dominance of humans isn't just intelligence, it's the versatility too. We can live pretty much purely on plants, or purely on animals.
The hunter gatherer civilisation of the Tas Tepeler (Gobekli Tepe etc) seems, from what we have learmed so far, to be extremely macho, phallocratic, dominated by male values, and also obsessed with hunting, and prey animals, and la chasse. Also there is evidence of brutal human sacrifice
It is quite contrary to the idea we all lived on gathered mushrooms and wild roots worshipped a nice mother Goddess, and did peaceful knitting in harmony with nature absent any conflict, which I am sure the Guardian would like us to believe
Ah, now that's something else again. We can have a cult site for Formula 1 drivers, selling toy cars, posters etc. but it doesn't mean everyone drives formula one cars.
And yes, it is equally preposterous to suggest that everyone peaceably ate the mushrooms while whittling statues of women with spectacular embonpoint.
ETA: I am not implying that Formula 1 drivers by extension demand brutal human sacrifice; but I am not ruling it out.
A good number of people - including some academic anthropologists - pointed out that the early F1 racing scene *was* a system of ritual sacrifice. They noted the high death rate among the drivers and reaction of the crowds to deaths and crashes.
Loads of the bloody things round here. It isn't exactly a hotbed of Socialism in our street!
IIRC they are notorious for being the car of choice for people who use the most extreme car financing products to buy them.
@rcs1000 probably has a good view of that industry, but it's my understanding that the more fun car finance is looking really shakey - products being withdrawn, and companies losing a lot of money. I've heard suggestions that a major collapse is quite possible.
Very Telegraph article, by the person who has the rantalong hat today.
For the current middle-aged, middle-class generation there are three main signs that you’ve “made it”, according to one observant Telegraph reader. Apparently, the list is as follows: a house with bifold doors, a Rolex on your wrist, and the pièce de résistance, a Range Rover parked on the drive.
How to tell people you're a wanker without telling them you're a wanker .
With - TBH - not many apologies to any owners; the things are a 99% unnecessary menace just for themselves, without even taking into account the behaviour and consequences they facilitate.
(Good morning all. I'm sure TSE is not just stirring !)
The good news is that the Telegraph writer thinks they are becoming uninsurable in London; a start.
In 1971 humans were driving an electric vehicle around the moon having a great a time,53 years later a robot lands on the moon and takes a picture and it's considered awesome.
It is, for a whole variety of reasons. And that does not take anything away from the people who got man onto the Moon fifty years ago.
For one thing, it highlights how accessible space is becoming, despite the difficulties in getting there, and operating.
Why can't things just be AWESOME without people being so negative?
Im just confused by space travel. Look at this picture taken in 1971:
Who could have imagined in 1971 that 53 years later with all the incredible technology that exists that we have not even repeated this achievement yet alone bettered it. Only being able to send a robot to the moon in 2024 after what we achieved between 1969-1972 is just bizarre. Another starnge fact is just how many attempts to land on the moon by robots over the last 30 years have failed.
I think there's a misunderstanding that sending a robot is the "only" part; being able to send a robot to e.g. the moon, (or more interestingly, Mars) and then run missions there for *years* is an amazing advance in technology over what was possible in 1971. It's not that we *couldn't* send people if we wanted to spend the money, it's that it is so much better to send a robot!
Robots only make sense when people are very, very expensive.
As one of the NASA rover team admins pointed out - the Apollo astronauts did more in a few hours than the robots can do in years.
True - hence the "spend the money" point. However, the long-term stay (even if not part of the original mission brief) is a part of the benefit.
One site, from 6500 years ago, with 24 skeletons in a fairly unique location - up in the Andes - does not prove "Early human hunter-gatherers ate mostly plants and vegetables"
How can a self respecting science journalist write this drivel? Is it Woke nonsense, or is she just stupid?
There could be any number of reasons why this one unusual site produces 24 skeletons of people who liked carrots. I mean, they are half way up a fucking mountain, maybe there wasn't that much meat. So they ate leaves
Have they considered that?
Absolutely laughable
Two sites, actually. And they merely say 'it suggests', not 'proves'.
As they point out, firm evidence for the actual balance of human diet going back that far is scant.
One thing it does show pretty conclusively is the power of the headline over the rest of the text.
To quote someone wittier than myself "there aren't any cave paintings of salads".
I've always been a fan of Le Guin's position on this - that obviously the "gatherer" part of hunter gatherer was quite important, but it didn't lend itself to heroism and myth making.
One site, from 6500 years ago, with 24 skeletons in a fairly unique location - up in the Andes - does not prove "Early human hunter-gatherers ate mostly plants and vegetables"
How can a self respecting science journalist write this drivel? Is it Woke nonsense, or is she just stupid?
There could be any number of reasons why this one unusual site produces 24 skeletons of people who liked carrots. I mean, they are half way up a fucking mountain, maybe there wasn't that much meat. So they ate leaves
Have they considered that?
Absolutely laughable
Two sites, actually. And they merely say 'it suggests', not 'proves'.
As they point out, firm evidence for the actual balance of human diet going back that far is scant.
One thing it does show pretty conclusively is the power of the headline over the rest of the text.
To quote someone wittier than myself "there aren't any cave paintings of salads".
Unlike the buffalo hunt, the carrot hunt was to exhausting to draw .
In the UK at least, there *are* quite a lot of animal bones at prehistoric sites. But there are a heck of a lot more roasted hazelnut shells. Most prehistoric communities were also littoral - and there's evidence for a lot of shellfish in the diet (again more in the "gather" than the "hunter" end of things).
Archaeology is woke now. Facts are woke.
In fairness, I think the article is a quite horrible misrepresentation of the actual findings and conclusions, which look sound enough to me (fwiw I have a BSc and MA in archaeology, albeit a long time ago now), by (being generous to the journo here) implying that the findings apply to hunter gatherers in general, which they do not.
There is a general point about misrepresentation of the adaptability and variety of hunter-gatherer lifestyles, which as @mwadams here illustrates will reflect the environment. Thus in an environment where edible, nutritious plant life is abundant it may well be the major part of the diet. In other places - the most obvious example being extremely cold environments - animals will be the staple. And it is true that the 'man the hunter, woman the gatherer' trope is (to be extremely generous now) fairly tenuously evidenced and certainly not a universal (and by implication, innate) trait.
One of the keys to the success and dominance of humans isn't just intelligence, it's the versatility too. We can live pretty much purely on plants, or purely on animals.
The hunter gatherer civilisation of the Tas Tepeler (Gobekli Tepe etc) seems, from what we have learmed so far, to be extremely macho, phallocratic, dominated by male values, and also obsessed with hunting, and prey animals, and la chasse. Also there is evidence of brutal human sacrifice
It is quite contrary to the idea we all lived on gathered mushrooms and wild roots worshipped a nice mother Goddess, and did peaceful knitting in harmony with nature absent any conflict, which I am sure the Guardian would like us to believe
Ah, now that's something else again. We can have a cult site for Formula 1 drivers, selling toy cars, posters etc. but it doesn't mean everyone drives formula one cars.
And yes, it is equally preposterous to suggest that everyone peaceably ate the mushrooms while whittling statues of women with spectacular embonpoint.
ETA: I am not implying that Formula 1 drivers by extension demand brutal human sacrifice; but I am not ruling it out.
Traditionally, it was the sport which sacrificed the drivers.
One site, from 6500 years ago, with 24 skeletons in a fairly unique location - up in the Andes - does not prove "Early human hunter-gatherers ate mostly plants and vegetables"
How can a self respecting science journalist write this drivel? Is it Woke nonsense, or is she just stupid?
There could be any number of reasons why this one unusual site produces 24 skeletons of people who liked carrots. I mean, they are half way up a fucking mountain, maybe there wasn't that much meat. So they ate leaves
Have they considered that?
Absolutely laughable
Two sites, actually. And they merely say 'it suggests', not 'proves'.
As they point out, firm evidence for the actual balance of human diet going back that far is scant.
One thing it does show pretty conclusively is the power of the headline over the rest of the text.
To quote someone wittier than myself "there aren't any cave paintings of salads".
Unlike the buffalo hunt, the carrot hunt was to exhausting to draw .
In the UK at least, there *are* quite a lot of animal bones at prehistoric sites. But there are a heck of a lot more roasted hazelnut shells. Most prehistoric communities were also littoral - and there's evidence for a lot of shellfish in the diet (again more in the "gather" than the "hunter" end of things).
Archaeology is woke now. Facts are woke.
In fairness, I think the article is a quite horrible misrepresentation of the actual findings and conclusions, which look sound enough to me (fwiw I have a BSc and MA in archaeology, albeit a long time ago now), by (being generous to the journo here) implying that the findings apply to hunter gatherers in general, which they do not.
There is a general point about misrepresentation of the adaptability and variety of hunter-gatherer lifestyles, which as @mwadams here illustrates will reflect the environment. Thus in an environment where edible, nutritious plant life is abundant it may well be the major part of the diet. In other places - the most obvious example being extremely cold environments - animals will be the staple. And it is true that the 'man the hunter, woman the gatherer' trope is (to be extremely generous now) fairly tenuously evidenced and certainly not a universal (and by implication, innate) trait.
One of the keys to the success and dominance of humans isn't just intelligence, it's the versatility too. We can live pretty much purely on plants, or purely on animals.
The hunter gatherer civilisation of the Tas Tepeler (Gobekli Tepe etc) seems, from what we have learmed so far, to be extremely macho, phallocratic, dominated by male values, and also obsessed with hunting, and prey animals, and la chasse. Also there is evidence of brutal human sacrifice
It is quite contrary to the idea we all lived on gathered mushrooms and wild roots worshipped a nice mother Goddess, and did peaceful knitting in harmony with nature absent any conflict, which I am sure the Guardian would like us to believe
Yes. But that is one society, in one place, over one period. It is foolish to take any single example of the enormous variety of human cultures and say that it is somehow the ur-culture from which everything else is a deviation.
Sure, but the Tas Tepeler must represent a large "civilisation" of thousands of hunter gatherers over many centuries, as against 24 skeletons up a hill in Peru
Labour 47 Tories 20 Reform 13 (!!!) LibDems 8 Greens 6 SNP 4
Post Office & Ed Davey effect on LibDems?
Maybe. My guess is that the impact will be fleeting. There are too many culpable people in all parties for anyone to make an electoral issue of PO.
A sensible minister, whether that’s before or after the election, might put together a cross-party Bill compensating the SPMs that could pass almost unanimously in Parliament.
Given that the inquiry probably needs to be allowed to conclude and report first, that’s likely to be the next government, but the opportunity is there for political unity.
Labour 47 Tories 20 Reform 13 (!!!) LibDems 8 Greens SNP 4
NPXMP is right. If Farage or Boris assume the leadership of REFUK, they could easily overtake the Tories
It's certainly an interesting question.
Almost everyone you talk to (who is paying any sort of attention, which is increasingly most) is in desperation about this government. About half are now willing to vote Labour to get rid of it.
But there's a decent sized pool of people who, however angry they are with the Tories, will never vote Labour. This is a pool the LibDems are fishing in, although many of these voters will simply stay at home.
There's also a decent sized pool of people who, however angry they are with the Tories, would not vote for a 'lefty' party of any sort. That's the pool that Reform is fishing in.
If the remaining voters mostly stay at home, the Tories are fishing in a puddle of die hard Conservatives. The question is how much less than their current 20% rating is the floor?
One site, from 6500 years ago, with 24 skeletons in a fairly unique location - up in the Andes - does not prove "Early human hunter-gatherers ate mostly plants and vegetables"
How can a self respecting science journalist write this drivel? Is it Woke nonsense, or is she just stupid?
There could be any number of reasons why this one unusual site produces 24 skeletons of people who liked carrots. I mean, they are half way up a fucking mountain, maybe there wasn't that much meat. So they ate leaves
Have they considered that?
Absolutely laughable
Two sites, actually. And they merely say 'it suggests', not 'proves'.
As they point out, firm evidence for the actual balance of human diet going back that far is scant.
One thing it does show pretty conclusively is the power of the headline over the rest of the text.
To quote someone wittier than myself "there aren't any cave paintings of salads".
Unlike the buffalo hunt, the carrot hunt was to exhausting to draw .
In the UK at least, there *are* quite a lot of animal bones at prehistoric sites. But there are a heck of a lot more roasted hazelnut shells. Most prehistoric communities were also littoral - and there's evidence for a lot of shellfish in the diet (again more in the "gather" than the "hunter" end of things).
Archaeology is woke now. Facts are woke.
In fairness, I think the article is a quite horrible misrepresentation of the actual findings and conclusions, which look sound enough to me (fwiw I have a BSc and MA in archaeology, albeit a long time ago now), by (being generous to the journo here) implying that the findings apply to hunter gatherers in general, which they do not.
There is a general point about misrepresentation of the adaptability and variety of hunter-gatherer lifestyles, which as @mwadams here illustrates will reflect the environment. Thus in an environment where edible, nutritious plant life is abundant it may well be the major part of the diet. In other places - the most obvious example being extremely cold environments - animals will be the staple. And it is true that the 'man the hunter, woman the gatherer' trope is (to be extremely generous now) fairly tenuously evidenced and certainly not a universal (and by implication, innate) trait.
One of the keys to the success and dominance of humans isn't just intelligence, it's the versatility too. We can live pretty much purely on plants, or purely on animals.
I did post a link to the paper itself upthread. One of the more interesting points was the isotope analysis giving some idea of the balance of diet in broad term between plants, meat and fish. Which is probably more reliable than artefact evidence.
no one is arguing with the original research
My complaint, which started this debate, was that the journalism ABOUT the study was utterly shoddy, with a ridiculous headline, preposterous exaggerations, and howling errors - "fish are mammals"
And I am right. It's shite. It is really low grade journalism and quite shocking to see it in Guardian; the Daily Mail does science far better than this, for example
Loads of the bloody things round here. It isn't exactly a hotbed of Socialism in our street!
IIRC they are notorious for being the car of choice for people who use the most extreme car financing products to buy them.
@rcs1000 probably has a good view of that industry, but it's my understanding that the more fun car finance is looking really shakey - products being withdrawn, and companies losing a lot of money. I've heard suggestions that a major collapse is quite possible.
Very Telegraph article, by the person who has the rantalong hat today.
For the current middle-aged, middle-class generation there are three main signs that you’ve “made it”, according to one observant Telegraph reader. Apparently, the list is as follows: a house with bifold doors, a Rolex on your wrist, and the pièce de résistance, a Range Rover parked on the drive.
How to tell people you're a wanker without telling them you're a wanker .
With - TBH - not many apologies to any owners; the things are a 99% unnecessary menace just for themselves, without even taking the behaviour of drivers they facilitate.
(Good morning all. I'm sure TSE is not just stirring !)
The good news is that the Telegraph writer thinks they are becoming uninsurable.
Maybe they are becoming uninsurable because they are being driven in large part by arrogant wankers who take massive financial risks in the financing. That sounds like a recipe for bad, aggressive driving.
A friend who worked at Coutts would laugh at that little list. For the truth in it - he had a job, for a while, binning clients from private wealth management who owned about 2% of some nice assets.
The 47.2% Trump is on in the RCP average is not actually much different to the 46.8% he got in 2020.
It is Biden who has plummeted from 51.3% in 2020 to just 44.3% now. So if Biden can win back the voters he got in 2020 who are now undecided he can still win the popular vote and likely the EC too.
Of course it is not impossible Trump wins the popular vote, if many Biden voters in safe states stay home or go 3rd party but Biden still wins the EC if Biden voters all come out in the closest swing states.
Indeed a recent poll has Biden still ahead of Trump in Pennsylvania. Even if Biden lost Arizona and Georgia back to Trump, if he held the states in the West and Virginia Hillary won in 2016 and won all the northern states even Kerry won in 2004 ie all the North East states plus Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin, he would still narrowly win the EC
In 1971 humans were driving an electric vehicle around the moon having a great a time,53 years later a robot lands on the moon and takes a picture and it's considered awesome.
It is, for a whole variety of reasons. And that does not take anything away from the people who got man onto the Moon fifty years ago.
For one thing, it highlights how accessible space is becoming, despite the difficulties in getting there, and operating.
Why can't things just be AWESOME without people being so negative?
Im just confused by space travel. Look at this picture taken in 1971:
Who could have imagined in 1971 that 53 years later with all the incredible technology that exists that we have not even repeated this achievement yet alone bettered it. Only being able to send a robot to the moon in 2024 after what we achieved between 1969-1972 is just bizarre. Another starnge fact is just how many attempts to land on the moon by robots over the last 30 years have failed.
I think there's a misunderstanding that sending a robot is the "only" part; being able to send a robot to e.g. the moon, (or more interestingly, Mars) and then run missions there for *years* is an amazing advance in technology over what was possible in 1971. It's not that we *couldn't* send people if we wanted to spend the money, it's that it is so much better to send a robot!
Robots only make sense when people are very, very expensive.
As one of the NASA rover team admins pointed out - the Apollo astronauts did more in a few hours than the robots can do in years.
True - hence the "spend the money" point. However, the long-term stay (even if not part of the original mission brief) is a part of the benefit.
The cost of manned space flight is dropping. Norway just paid to send their astronaut candidate up via Axiom Space. Sweden and Poland are lined up to do this as well.
We are about to witness the dissolution of the British Museum, over the next thirty years. Indeed, I wonder if the very concept of a western museum, of global civilisation, is at an end
1) If Britain wants to be a global player going one to one with other countries, we may have to ameliorate the diplomatic tension by giving back some of the stuff we stole from them and 2) we did steal that stuff from them, so we don't really have a leg to stand on. Imagine if 100-150 years ago the French nicked Stonehenge from us and now just had it in a museum - I think people here would be clamouring for it back.
I don't think someone who encourages the Houthis to sink ships in the Red Sea is really interested in Britain being a 'global player'.
You're right, I'm not. But others are.
So perhaps your advice is best left ignored? It's like taking advice from the sort of people who stone gays.
It wasn't advice as much as a comment on the situation. I'm glad that it's fine to support the mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians without this level of vitriol, but remarking that the bad people (Houthis) have done a good thing (blockade the Red Sea to attempt to stop that) is considered akin to stoning gay people to death. It's also great to see the great continued tradition of threatening queer people by proxy; of course you would never threaten to stone me to death for my same sex relationships, you just happen to really enjoy using that imagery as a violent fantasy to warn me about how bad other people are.
You make several mistakes. The first is believing that the Houthis are doing this. They are not; the Iranians are doing it via the Houthis; the Houthis are proxies. The second is that the attacks on Red Sea shipping are in any way to do with what's happened since October; it is not, which is why the Houthis have been doing this since 2016.
You are siding with the Houthis and Iran; people who execute people for homosexuality. These are the people you support. The Houthis have killed thousands of people; it'd be good if you showed similar concern for them as you do for the Palestinian victims of Israeli aggression.
IMV it's not exactly wrong of me to point that out.
I mean, I can also say the Russians are goddamn evil for everything they do in their own country and are doing in Ukraine, but they're on the right side when it comes to Israel Palestine (even if they are massive hypocrites whilst doing so). You can point to an action that is good without that being an endorsement of every action they do.
As for when the Houthis started doing this, the data seems to show a pretty clear impact point:
Again, I don't like the Iranian government nor the Houthis in general. But on this issue a blockade is the right thing to do. If Israel was sanctioned, hell if the US just stopped giving them weapons, they wouldn't be able to propagate their genocidal intent. If the actions of the Houthis (whether orchestrated by Iran or not) are pressuring the West and Israel to stop what they're doing - that's good.
Labour 47 Tories 20 Reform 13 (!!!) LibDems 8 Greens SNP 4
NPXMP is right. If Farage or Boris assume the leadership of REFUK, they could easily overtake the Tories
It's certainly an interesting question.
Almost everyone you talk to (who is paying any sort of attention, which is increasingly most) is in desperation about this government. About half are now willing to vote Labour to get rid of it.
But there's a decent sized pool of people who, however angry they are with the Tories, will never vote Labour. This is a pool the LibDems are fishing in, although many of these voters will simply stay at home.
There's also a decent sized pool of people who, however angry they are with the Tories, would not vote for a 'lefty' party of any sort. That's the pool that Reform is fishing in.
If the remaining voters mostly stay at home, the Tories are fishing in a puddle of die hard Conservatives. The question is how much less than their current 20% rating is the floor?
Didn't the Tories drop to about 15% in one Euro election? Might be an indicator of their outright floor
That's if it exists. They could be dying out entirely
Edit to add: with the Tories on 20 and REFUK on 13, it only needs Tories to shed four more points to REFUK and REFUK are ahead: 17 to 16
I can easily see a Boris or Farage REFUK leadership doing that
Loads of the bloody things round here. It isn't exactly a hotbed of Socialism in our street!
IIRC they are notorious for being the car of choice for people who use the most extreme car financing products to buy them.
@rcs1000 probably has a good view of that industry, but it's my understanding that the more fun car finance is looking really shakey - products being withdrawn, and companies losing a lot of money. I've heard suggestions that a major collapse is quite possible.
Very Telegraph article, by the person who has the rantalong hat today.
For the current middle-aged, middle-class generation there are three main signs that you’ve “made it”, according to one observant Telegraph reader. Apparently, the list is as follows: a house with bifold doors, a Rolex on your wrist, and the pièce de résistance, a Range Rover parked on the drive.
How to tell people you're a wanker without telling them you're a wanker .
With - TBH - not many apologies to any owners; the things are a 99% unnecessary menace just for themselves, without even taking into account the behaviour and consequences they facilitate.
(Good morning all. I'm sure TSE is not just stirring !)
The good news is that the Telegraph writer thinks they are becoming uninsurable.
The annoying and frustrating thing about the RR (not the Evoque, Velar, etc which are low-rent crap) is that it has some aspects of a really good product. Even now, none of the manifold competition do the off-road/luxury combination with the quite the same elan. It's just designed with a cost-cutting mania and shoddily built by no-marks who don't give a fuck (see also McLaren). None of that seems to hurt the resale values which are a testament to the power of the brand and defy the crappy execution.
I'm looking forward to @kinabalu 's response to that header.
Just done it!
In essence: my Big Short derives from my judgement of America and the American people. That it and they are not so far 'gone' - ie infantilized and corrupted - as to re-elect Donald Trump in the face of all that's known about him.
I still think this. I'm not too fussed about what the polls say right now. I think they'll change as the election nears and minds focus. I'm confident.
But I could be wrong. I'm not American, don't know many, and I don't live in America. This is intuition (albeit strong intuition) from a distance. And if I am wrong it's got to be very possible that I'm very wrong - hence why I've done this bet @ 4.7. It's value imo, both in itself and in the context of my overall book.
I've never understood why people buy Range Rovers. Buying a t shirt with "I am a c***" written on it would achieve the same effect at a fraction of the price.
My BiL just bought one. I'll tell you why - because he can, because he has made too much money with his firm that he was sweated and toiled to get to where it is over the last 30 years and because he wanted it.
Everyone buys stuff that others would look at and think why.
The audio/conversational interface with GPT4 is getting really good. The delay is shorter, the responses more intuitive, it's vastly superior to Siri, Alexa, Google Home
If GPT5 is "a lot better" than this, and if they can sonewhat un-nerf it, then we are on the cusp of a proper AI friend
More direct evidence of diet. As with differential bone isotope analysis, this sort of stuff is relatively recent compared to abundant artefact evidence collected over many decades. So of course ideas of prehistoric diet are likely to fluctuate.
Metagenomic analysis of Mesolithic chewed pitch reveals poor oral health among stone age individuals https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-48762-6 ..The early Mesolithic sites exhibit a rich material culture (lithics, bone and antler) that has been used to infer demography, mobility, social relations, use of technology, and the subsistence strategies6. While this has provided an understanding of the Early Mesolithic people in Scandinavia, we still don’t have enough molecular data to contextualise their oral microbiome profile, pathogen burden, diet related information, and paleoenvironmental utilisation.
Recently, metagenomic analysis of ancient DNA reads sequenced from ancient human samples have enabled researchers to obtain information about the historical human populations with a great depth. Ancient dental calculus has become the predominately used material to investigate oral microbiome, due to its structural integrity7. Lately, chewed pitch materials are also proved to be useful to access historical oral microbiome8.
Ancient dental calculus studies provide information about the oral microbial species in dental biofilm formation and maturation, and its association with dental health9,10,11. Moreover, changes in the oral microbiome through archaeological time periods can also be investigated. For example, the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to farmers brought a significant increase in human oral health pathologies, which are associated with dietary and lifestyle changes12. Several ancient DNA studies had investigated changes in oral microbiome composition from the Mesolithic period to modern day and their relation to dietary changes and population movements13,14,15,16, as well as pre and post Columbian contact17. It is also possible to identify dietary remains and DNA reads related to the paleoenvironment through ancient DNA and microscopic studies18,19,20.
Another promising source of ancient microbiome DNA investigated here are masticates, or pitch pieces that have been chewed by humans and therefore contain materials from the oral cavity. Previous studies had investigated the oral microbiome and dietary components from 5,700 years old chewed pitch from Denmark and successfully proved the potential usage in ancient DNA research domain5..
We are about to witness the dissolution of the British Museum, over the next thirty years. Indeed, I wonder if the very concept of a western museum, of global civilisation, is at an end
1) If Britain wants to be a global player going one to one with other countries, we may have to ameliorate the diplomatic tension by giving back some of the stuff we stole from them and 2) we did steal that stuff from them, so we don't really have a leg to stand on. Imagine if 100-150 years ago the French nicked Stonehenge from us and now just had it in a museum - I think people here would be clamouring for it back.
I don't think someone who encourages the Houthis to sink ships in the Red Sea is really interested in Britain being a 'global player'.
You're right, I'm not. But others are.
So perhaps your advice is best left ignored? It's like taking advice from the sort of people who stone gays.
It wasn't advice as much as a comment on the situation. I'm glad that it's fine to support the mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians without this level of vitriol, but remarking that the bad people (Houthis) have done a good thing (blockade the Red Sea to attempt to stop that) is considered akin to stoning gay people to death. It's also great to see the great continued tradition of threatening queer people by proxy; of course you would never threaten to stone me to death for my same sex relationships, you just happen to really enjoy using that imagery as a violent fantasy to warn me about how bad other people are.
You make several mistakes. The first is believing that the Houthis are doing this. They are not; the Iranians are doing it via the Houthis; the Houthis are proxies. The second is that the attacks on Red Sea shipping are in any way to do with what's happened since October; it is not, which is why the Houthis have been doing this since 2016.
You are siding with the Houthis and Iran; people who execute people for homosexuality. These are the people you support. The Houthis have killed thousands of people; it'd be good if you showed similar concern for them as you do for the Palestinian victims of Israeli aggression.
IMV it's not exactly wrong of me to point that out.
I mean, I can also say the Russians are goddamn evil for everything they do in their own country and are doing in Ukraine, but they're on the right side when it comes to Israel Palestine (even if they are massive hypocrites whilst doing so). You can point to an action that is good without that being an endorsement of every action they do.
As for when the Houthis started doing this, the data seems to show a pretty clear impact point:
Again, I don't like the Iranian government nor the Houthis in general. But on this issue a blockade is the right thing to do. If Israel was sanctioned, hell if the US just stopped giving them weapons, they wouldn't be able to propagate their genocidal intent. If the actions of the Houthis (whether orchestrated by Iran or not) are pressuring the West and Israel to stop what they're doing - that's good.
Most of the boats attacked haven’t been going to or from Israel. It’s not a blockade of Israel. The most recently attacked ship was going from Saudi Arabia to Kuwait, with a Greek crew.
Loads of the bloody things round here. It isn't exactly a hotbed of Socialism in our street!
IIRC they are notorious for being the car of choice for people who use the most extreme car financing products to buy them.
@rcs1000 probably has a good view of that industry, but it's my understanding that the more fun car finance is looking really shakey - products being withdrawn, and companies losing a lot of money. I've heard suggestions that a major collapse is quite possible.
Very Telegraph article, by the person who has the rantalong hat today.
For the current middle-aged, middle-class generation there are three main signs that you’ve “made it”, according to one observant Telegraph reader. Apparently, the list is as follows: a house with bifold doors, a Rolex on your wrist, and the pièce de résistance, a Range Rover parked on the drive.
How to tell people you're a wanker without telling them you're a wanker .
With - TBH - not many apologies to any owners; the things are a 99% unnecessary menace just for themselves, without even taking into account the behaviour and consequences they facilitate.
(Good morning all. I'm sure TSE is not just stirring !)
The good news is that the Telegraph writer thinks they are becoming uninsurable.
The annoying and frustrating thing about the RR (not the Evoque, Velar, etc which are low-rent crap) is that it has some aspects of a really good product. Even now, none of the manifold competition do the off-road/luxury combination with the quite the same elan. It's just designed with a cost-cutting mania and shoddily built by no-marks who don't give a fuck (see also McLaren). None of that seems to hurt the resale values which are a testament to the power of the brand and defy the crappy execution.
That's partly a 'consumer culture' thing though.
Create an image for something by advertising / promotion, (and yes agree - LR engineering is good) then sell to saps 90%+ of whom who will never need it, and most of whom will leave themselves up sh*t creek if they ever *try* to use it. Their neighbours, and sometimes their families, suffer the externalities.
Comments
All it will do is generate new demands. I doubt anyone gives a shit about long lost irrelevant objects in the UK anyway, they're doing it for the headline of bringing Blighty to heel.
Ignore them.
It's always been a mixture of very good and tendentious reporting, and of variable competence. The opinion stuff I rarely bother with.
Labour 47
Tories 20
Reform 13 (!!!)
LibDems 8
Greens 6
SNP 4
53 years later a private company in Japan has done so, for peanuts.
@rcs1000 probably has a good view of that industry, but it's my understanding that the more fun car finance is looking really shakey - products being withdrawn, and companies losing a lot of money. I've heard suggestions that a major collapse is quite possible.
For one thing, it highlights how accessible space is becoming, despite the difficulties in getting there, and operating.
Why can't things just be AWESOME without people being so negative?
I would guess it must be the French colonial thing, except you DON'T get this vibe in Vietnam (nor in Thailand, Malaysia, Laos)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/cricket/67780789
https://talksport.com/radioplayer/live/talksport2.html?popup=1
But that still doesn't quite capture it. I think it must be the mix of wide European boulevards plus dainty little side streets, plus the intense and pleasant languor, and a lazy half-arsed hedonism
And the setting. Where two mighty rivers meet: the Mekong and the Tonle Sap. That gives it a feeling of being near the sea (even if it isn't), and also cooling riverine breezes, that temper the heat
It was once known as "the Pearl of South East Asia", I can see why
Then the space program went down a rabbit hole and ended up in a spiral of insane "space inflation" (caused by politicians pork schemes) and less and less result.
We are looking at a replacement for the said skyscraper being launched this year. Price $90 million dollars per example (estimated) - instead of a noticeable fraction of US GDP. And eventually reusable.
If Hunt cuts taxes in the budget, then the implied cuts will be more severe still.
Labour isn't being dishonest when it says it is costing all its policy promises - but that is only for their proposed changes to current government plans. So they aren't addressing those implied departmental cuts, either.
Can our young spinners step up ?
https://twitter.com/EdwardGLuce/status/1750129824021061939
Interesting article, but I'm unconvinced by the premise of Trump being good for US business overall.
As was Germany over the course of the 1930's. The moderate right first underestimated and thought it got use Hitler, then got on board the train. Arguably only the Social Democrats and Communists did not, often ending up in camps for their troubles.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13002899/Its-not-mad-controversial-believe-Boris-save-Tories-catastrophe.html
Boris haters should encourage it; this way he could actually be defeated in real polls by the public
"... death hath ten thousand several doors
For men to take their exits"
For example:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/republican-gains-in-2022-midterms-driven-mostly-by-turnout-advantage/
suggests that Republicans still had a turnout advantage in 2022 - though it may well be smaller than in midterms before Trump.
For comparison, the last time a Dem president was up for reelection in 2012 he won the popular vote by 3.9%. In the previous midterms 2010 Republicans won the House popular vote by 6.8% - a turnaround of 10.7%.
So on balance Republicans winning the House vote by 2%ish (after deducting for the higher number of seats Dems didn't contest) would if anything point to Democrats winning the popular vote narrowly in the 2024 presidential election.
However, I think it's too early to say much about who is going to win the popular vote, but Biden's net approval ratings are worse than Trump's were at this point in his presidency according to this:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/
Actually worse than any president since the second world war, so Republicans popular vote is probably value at 10/3. It's probably better value than the 10/11 or so available Republicans winning the presidency - I think people are maybe overestimating the advantage the Republicans will have in the Electoral College this time.
As doltish a comment as one poster berating another for spending so much time on PB.
SH/SS is a brilliant architecture optimised to get large amounts of mass to Mars. To get to the Moon, it will require a vastly complex program architecture involving multiple refuellings and dockings - and also requires SLS.
Saturn V / Apollo was a single stack to the Moon. Vastly different, and much more highly optimised.
They won't feel they have much to lose, for the rebels.
What has happened in that Congress (in the sense of both houses) has passed a lot of legislation on immigration. Which Obama and Biden disagreed with, completely. So Obama started the policy of ordering Federal agencies to *not enforce* the laws that he didn't like. Then various states tried enforcing Federal law themselves. This went to the Supreme Court - which said the Federal government had the last say on enforcing Federal law.
Biden followed on the practice from Obama, on immigration law.
So you have a situation where the Federal government is suing a State government for enforcing Federal laws. And a State government saying that they will enforce Federal laws - even if enforcing the Federal law is judged illegal by the Federal government.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Apollo_16_LM_Orion.jpg
Who could have imagined in 1971 that 53 years later with all the incredible technology that exists that we have not even repeated this achievement yet alone bettered it. Only being able to send a robot to the moon in 2024 after what we achieved between 1969-1972 is just bizarre.
Another starnge fact is just how many attempts to land on the moon by robots over the last 30 years have failed.
Inteesting how those reform and Tory votes add up to around the Tory core vote, of 32-34%.
Some sort of pact or merger with Reform may be imminent, as with the Brexit Party in 2019.
The Right in Britain has distinguioshed itself by being consistently better at being purposefully and pragmatically united than the left.
I usually ended up at black country metal bashers.
I had the pleasure of working on aftermarket products for L405, L494 and L550 as well as some heap of shit Jaguar, X761 I think it was.
I can see the JLR quality culture is still alive and well.
And he's right, it can be solitary - and PB helps that - but it is a solitary life anyway I do it: I work alone, crafting
And over decades I've learned that if I spend Jan and Feb in the indochinese tropics working damn hard (and I do), then that really frees up the rest of the year. It is in the perfect time zone, apart from anything else. When I wake at 10am it is 3am in London and 4am in Europe, and late in NYC, there is no one to talk to online, nothing to distract, so I work
By the time I am done for the day, you guys are all waking up, my colleagues are at their London desks, I can spend the soft afternoons doing admin and swapping gossip, then cocktails, then wine, then sleep, then repeat
What's the difference between a Range Rover and a hedgehog ?
The hedgehog has the pricks on the outside.
In fairness, I think the article is a quite horrible misrepresentation of the actual findings and conclusions, which look sound enough to me (fwiw I have a BSc and MA in archaeology, albeit a long time ago now), by (being generous to the journo here) implying that the findings apply to hunter gatherers in general, which they do not.
There is a general point about misrepresentation of the adaptability and variety of hunter-gatherer lifestyles, which as @mwadams here illustrates will reflect the environment. Thus in an environment where edible, nutritious plant life is abundant it may well be the major part of the diet. In other places - the most obvious example being extremely cold environments - animals will be the staple. And it is true that the 'man the hunter, woman the gatherer' trope is (to be extremely generous now) fairly tenuously evidenced and certainly not a universal (and by implication, innate) trait.
One of the keys to the success and dominance of humans isn't just intelligence, it's the versatility too. We can live pretty much purely on plants, or purely on animals.
And https://www.impulsespace.com (CEO Tom Mueller) are testing their first, smaller tugs, right now. They've already given presentations on a tug sized for Starship. And given in Mueller I'm not betting against them.
But FPP's tendency to the status quo means that they probably will come away with 150+ MPs, and get their questions every week at PMQs and be treated like a Serious Party; which they are not.
(Incidentally, have you seen the pics of the stage1+stage2 New Glenn stack?)
It is quite contrary to the idea we all lived on gathered mushrooms and wild roots worshipped a nice mother Goddess, and did peaceful knitting in harmony with nature absent any conflict, which I am sure the Guardian would like us to believe
Re the timing, yes, I am in the camp of thinking it is too early to bet but, for me, I don't see how Biden gets out of this situation. The economy will improve but I do not see how the immigration situation does if only because of the pressure from the activist base and the concerns over his age will only get worse and probably intensify as he campaigns and so is more publicly out there. I also think Bibi has decided that Trump would suit him better than Biden, and so I suspect he will drag out the conflict v Hamas knowing that this causes significant problems for Biden within the Democrats. Which is why I have bet on Biden being shunted out of the way and the Democrats to go into November with someone who is not Biden or Harris.
There are very large gaps opening up on the Centre-Right, and Left, of British politics.
One of the more interesting points was the isotope analysis giving some idea of the balance of diet in broad term between plants, meat and fish. Which is probably more reliable than artefact evidence.
And yes, it is equally preposterous to suggest that everyone peaceably ate the mushrooms while whittling statues of women with spectacular embonpoint.
ETA: I am not implying that Formula 1 drivers by extension demand brutal human sacrifice; but I am not ruling it out.
I may be hoisted rather high by my petard here (given the stakes I've done in for), but I think my odds are still serious value. So 4.7, very nice...
Still, I don't have to outrun everyone in the market. Just enough of it.
My complaint, which started this debate, was that the journalism ABOUT the study was utterly shoddy, with a ridiculous headline, preposterous exaggerations, and howling errors - "fish are mammals"
And I am right. It's shite. It is really low grade journalism and quite shocking to see it in Guardian; the Daily Mail does science far better than this, for example
Impulse are moving very fast - not surprising, given the CEO. Along with Stoke, they are ones to watch.
But that's my view. And the bet is on the view of 350m people.
You are siding with the Houthis and Iran; people who execute people for homosexuality. These are the people you support. The Houthis have killed thousands of people; it'd be good if you showed similar concern for them as you do for the Palestinian victims of Israeli aggression.
IMV it's not exactly wrong of me to point that out.
As one of the NASA rover team admins pointed out - the Apollo astronauts did more in a few hours than the robots can do in years.
He kept and catalogued many many jokes over his long and glittering career.
I am sure a top quality gag like that would have made it in there.
May be dragged up at the GE but cannot see it affecting him.
For the current middle-aged, middle-class generation there are three main signs that you’ve “made it”, according to one observant Telegraph reader. Apparently, the list is as follows: a house with bifold doors, a Rolex on your wrist, and the pièce de résistance, a Range Rover parked on the drive.
How to tell people you're a wanker without telling them you're a wanker
With - TBH - not many apologies to any owners; the things are a 99% unnecessary menace just for themselves, without even taking into account the behaviour and consequences they facilitate.
(Good morning all. I'm sure TSE is not just stirring !)
The good news is that the Telegraph writer thinks they are becoming uninsurable in London; a start.
https://otherfutures.nl/uploads/documents/le-guin-the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fiction.pdf
I know which is more important evidence
Given that the inquiry probably needs to be allowed to conclude and report first, that’s likely to be the next government, but the opportunity is there for political unity.
Almost everyone you talk to (who is paying any sort of attention, which is increasingly most) is in desperation about this government. About half are now willing to vote Labour to get rid of it.
But there's a decent sized pool of people who, however angry they are with the Tories, will never vote Labour. This is a pool the LibDems are fishing in, although many of these voters will simply stay at home.
There's also a decent sized pool of people who, however angry they are with the Tories, would not vote for a 'lefty' party of any sort. That's the pool that Reform is fishing in.
If the remaining voters mostly stay at home, the Tories are fishing in a puddle of die hard Conservatives. The question is how much less than their current 20% rating is the floor?
A friend who worked at Coutts would laugh at that little list. For the truth in it - he had a job, for a while, binning clients from private wealth management who owned about 2% of some nice assets.
It is Biden who has plummeted from 51.3% in 2020 to just 44.3% now. So if Biden can win back the voters he got in 2020 who are now undecided he can still win the popular vote and likely the EC too.
Of course it is not impossible Trump wins the popular vote, if many Biden voters in safe states stay home or go 3rd party but Biden still wins the EC if Biden voters all come out in the closest swing states.
Indeed a recent poll has Biden still ahead of Trump in Pennsylvania. Even if Biden lost Arizona and Georgia back to Trump, if he held the states in the West and Virginia Hillary won in 2016 and won all the northern states even Kerry won in 2004 ie all the North East states plus Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin, he would still narrowly win the EC
https://www.msnbc.com/way-too-early/watch/trump-trails-biden-in-key-battleground-state-in-new-polling-202830917534
As for when the Houthis started doing this, the data seems to show a pretty clear impact point:
Again, I don't like the Iranian government nor the Houthis in general. But on this issue a blockade is the right thing to do. If Israel was sanctioned, hell if the US just stopped giving them weapons, they wouldn't be able to propagate their genocidal intent. If the actions of the Houthis (whether orchestrated by Iran or not) are pressuring the West and Israel to stop what they're doing - that's good.
That's if it exists. They could be dying out entirely
Edit to add: with the Tories on 20 and REFUK on 13, it only needs Tories to shed four more points to REFUK and REFUK are ahead: 17 to 16
I can easily see a Boris or Farage REFUK leadership doing that
In essence: my Big Short derives from my judgement of America and the American people. That it and they are not so far 'gone' - ie infantilized and corrupted - as to re-elect Donald Trump in the face of all that's known about him.
I still think this. I'm not too fussed about what the polls say right now. I think they'll change as the election nears and minds focus. I'm confident.
But I could be wrong. I'm not American, don't know many, and I don't live in America. This is intuition (albeit strong intuition) from a distance. And if I am wrong it's got to be very possible that I'm very wrong - hence why I've done this bet @ 4.7. It's value imo, both in itself and in the context of my overall book.
Everyone buys stuff that others would look at and think why.
As with differential bone isotope analysis, this sort of stuff is relatively recent compared to abundant artefact evidence collected over many decades. So of course ideas of prehistoric diet are likely to fluctuate.
Metagenomic analysis of Mesolithic chewed pitch reveals poor oral health among stone age individuals
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-48762-6
..The early Mesolithic sites exhibit a rich material culture (lithics, bone and antler) that has been used to infer demography, mobility, social relations, use of technology, and the subsistence strategies6. While this has provided an understanding of the Early Mesolithic people in Scandinavia, we still don’t have enough molecular data to contextualise their oral microbiome profile, pathogen burden, diet related information, and paleoenvironmental utilisation.
Recently, metagenomic analysis of ancient DNA reads sequenced from ancient human samples have enabled researchers to obtain information about the historical human populations with a great depth. Ancient dental calculus has become the predominately used material to investigate oral microbiome, due to its structural integrity7. Lately, chewed pitch materials are also proved to be useful to access historical oral microbiome8.
Ancient dental calculus studies provide information about the oral microbial species in dental biofilm formation and maturation, and its association with dental health9,10,11. Moreover, changes in the oral microbiome through archaeological time periods can also be investigated. For example, the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to farmers brought a significant increase in human oral health pathologies, which are associated with dietary and lifestyle changes12. Several ancient DNA studies had investigated changes in oral microbiome composition from the Mesolithic period to modern day and their relation to dietary changes and population movements13,14,15,16, as well as pre and post Columbian contact17. It is also possible to identify dietary remains and DNA reads related to the paleoenvironment through ancient DNA and microscopic studies18,19,20.
Another promising source of ancient microbiome DNA investigated here are masticates, or pitch pieces that have been chewed by humans and therefore contain materials from the oral cavity. Previous studies had investigated the oral microbiome and dietary components from 5,700 years old chewed pitch from Denmark and successfully proved the potential usage in ancient DNA research domain5..
Create an image for something by advertising / promotion, (and yes agree - LR engineering is good) then sell to saps 90%+ of whom who will never need it, and most of whom will leave themselves up sh*t creek if they ever *try* to use it. Their neighbours, and sometimes their families, suffer the externalities.
The 2020s version of the Marlborough Cowboy.