- The Sticky History of Baklava | Travel| Smithsonian Magazine
A brief history of baklava, a Mediterranean pastry made of layers of phyllo dough filled with nuts and syrup, tracing its origins to ancient Persia. - Was Richard III a Bad King? | History Today
Child-murderer, arch villain, failed monarch,‘northern’. Have efforts to redeem Richard III succeeded or is he still one of history’s worst kings? - ALIENS (1986) Audio Description
A review of the audio description for the movie Aliens (1986), discussing its effectiveness and impact on visually impaired viewers. - Why did people in the past look so much older? |Dazed
There’s a meme that makes the rounds every so often. It’s a group shot of the cast of 80s sitcom Cheers, with the ages of each actor displayed on the image. Every time it comes back around, people express surprise and disbelief that this group of what looks to be middle-aged folk are actually in their twenties and thirties. - Naomi Wu and the Silence That Speaks Volumes
When China’s prodigious tech influencer, Naomi Wu, found herself silenced, it wasn’t just the machinery of a surveillance state at play. Instead, it was a confluence of state repression and the sometimes capricious attention of a Western audience that, as she asserts, often views Chinese activists more as ideological tokens than as genuine human beings. - Long live the King… of Kings! Accession ritual in ancient Persia | BritishMuseum
Explore the ancient Persian ritual of kings’ accession and its significance in maintaining royal power and legitimizing the ruler’s authority. - Twelve Books at Herculaneum That Could Change History • Richard Carrier
There is a fabulous ancient treasure still buried at Herculaneum in the Bay of Naples. It is an actual ancient library that has been locked under a veritable rock of volcanic ash since 79 A.D. It likely contains thousands of scrolls, comprising hundreds of books. As I’ll explain shortly, a few hundred were recovered in the 19th century. But many are probably still sitting there—waiting to be excavated. - How climate change could irreversibly alter Earth’secosystems
Bevattelijke samengevat. Ook griezelig. :/ - Language trees with sampled ancestors support a hybrid model for the origin of Indo-European languages | Science
Inthis study, we tested between the time-depth predictions of the Anatolian and Steppe hypotheses, directly from language data. We report a new framework for the chronology and divergence sequence of Indo-European, using Bayesian phylogenetic methods applied to an extensive new dataset of core vocabulary across 161 Indo-European languages. - Remains found in China may belong to third human lineage
Scientists discovered a 400,000-year-old early human lineage in China, indicating a more complex human evolution. - Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny – Blood Knife
Even background extras are good-looking, or at least inoffensively bland. No one is ugly. No one is really fat. Everyone is beautiful.
And yet, no one is horny. Even when they have sex, no one is horny. No one is attracted to anyone else. No one is hungry for anyone else. - Death Metal English
A fascinating article exploring the unique use of English in death metal lyrics, examining linguistic and cultural aspects.
Normal English: “Commuting to work”
Death Metal English: “TRANSPORTATION OF THE WAGEBOUND UNTO THE NEXUS OF PERPETUAL QUOTIDIAN ENSLAVEMENT” - GitHub – psb1558/Elstob-font: A variable font for medievalists
The Elstob font (named for the eighteenth-century Anglo-Saxonist Elizabeth Elstob) is based on the Double Pica commissioned by Bishop John Fell in the seventeenth century. - The Tantalizing, Lonely Search for Alien Life | The New Republic
A book review of Jaime Green’s ‘The Possibility of Life’ explores the search for extraterrestrial life and its philosophical implications. - A Partial Decipherment of the Unknown Kushan Script* – Bonmann – Transactions of the Philological Society – Wiley OnlineLibrary
Several dozen inscriptions in an unknown writing system have been discovered in an area stretching geographically from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to southern Afghanistan. Most inscriptions can be dated to the period from the 2nd century BCE to the 3rd century CE, yet all attempts at decipherment have so far been unsuccessful. The recent discovery of previously unknown inscriptions near the Almosi gorge, Tajikistan, however, allows for a renewed attempt at decipherment. - On Personal Relations As A Manager
Qt the end of the day, as a manager, you will have to deal with shit situations. You will have to give feedback that the receiver doesn’t want (but needs to hear). You will have to ask someone to shut up and do it anyways. You will have to not promote/give a raise to someone and tell them why. You will have to fire someone who under-performs. You will have to distribute some of the blame. And worst of all, as is happening to the friend I mentioned, you will have to lay-off people who don’t deserve to be fired. - How the design of Disney parks affects our perspective – Disney Cicerone
The layout of the Disney parks may not be something you think about except for at the end of the day when your feet are aching and sitting feels like the best ride ever. Or when you’re hiking around the Epcot World Showcase in the blazing sun and afternoon heat. But the ways the Imagineers have creatively designed the parks influence your experience more than you think, and in ways you might not have considered before. - Africa’s Merchant Kings – Archaeology Magazine
Two recent projects, at the sites of Beta Samati in Ethiopia and the ancient port of Adulis in Eritrea, have revealed what life was like in the empire more than 1,700 years ago. These excavations have highlighted the Aksumites’ sophisticated building techniques, drawn attention to the important role that Christianity played in their culture, and, above all, underscored the existence of the trade networks that were the kingdom’s lifeblood and key to its rarely paralleled success. - LilyPond – Music notation for everyone
LilyPond is a music engraving program, devoted to producing the highest-quality sheet music possible. It brings the aesthetics of traditionally engraved music to computer printouts. LilyPond is free software and part of the GNU Project. - Meet Microsoft Office’s new default font: Aptos – The Verge
Microsoft is replacing its Calibri default font with Aptos, a new sans-serif typeface that’s inspired by mid-20th-century Swiss typography. Previously known as Bierstadt, Microsoft has been on the hunt for its new Aptos default font over the past couple of years. The software giant commissioned five new custom fonts for Office in 2021, and the Aptos font was picked as the default after years of feedback.
Tales of Drudgery & Boredom.