Discovering Ocomtun
Ancient Maya city discovered in Mexican jungle
MEXICO CITY, June 20 (Reuters) – A previously unknown ancient Maya city has been discovered in the jungles of southern Mexico, the country’s anthropology institute said on Tuesday, adding it was likely an important center more than a thousand years ago.
The city includes large pyramid-like buildings, stone columns, three plazas with “imposing buildings” and other structures arranged in almost-concentric circles, the INAH institute said.
INAH said the city, which it has named Ocomtun – meaning “stone column” in the Yucatec Maya language – would have been an important center for the peninsula’s central lowland region between 250 and 1000 AD.
It is located in the Balamku ecological reserve on the country’s Yucatan Peninsula and was discovered during a search of a largely unexplored stretch of jungle larger than Luxembourg. The search took place between March and June using aerial laser mapping (LiDAR) technology.
Shitplants
Ready for your crapsule? Faecal transplants could play a huge role in future medicine
An effective treatment for a whole raft of diseases, from irritable bowel syndrome to arthritis and even Alzheimer’s, comes from the most unlikely of sources – human poo. James Kinross explains the role gut biomes play in our health
by James Kinross
As a nation, we British are obsessed with our gut function, largely because it has never been unhealthier. I spend large parts of my working day talking to patients about their bowel habits, and many of them want to talk about little else. There is also a deeper, more fundamental fascination with the digestive system; the colon is a national source of comedy that has kept us going through every crisis since the beginning of time.
“Shit” is a crucial and ubiquitous word that serves as a noun, a verb and an adjective, propping up the entire English language. This wondrous word is both a profanity and a term used to denote an item of high quality, and it is liberally sprinkled into the daily chatter of our lives.
The sense of revulsion we feel when we’re faced with human excrement (or even just the thought of it) is, in part, a response to the way it looks and smells. But that revulsion is also a psychological reflex, ingrained by potty training and social stigma. This aversion is an important safety mechanism: handwashing and sewer systems prevent the spread of diseases that have killed millions.
But what if I told you that faeces was not toxic waste and that it contained the secret to human health? Would you eat it, if your life depended on it? What if it was rebranded as a faecal microbiota transplant (FMT) or, more accurately, a faecal milkshake given through a tube that passes through the nose into the stomach? You could even take it in the form of a capsule – or “crapsule” – if you wanted.
Rusty Nails and Bakelite
Cat-and-mouse world of art fraud revealed in London show
London (AFP) – Some of the most notorious art forgeries form the centre-piece of a new London show, which reveals a cat-and-mouse world of intrigue, deception and painstaking detective work.
The exhibition, which opens at the Courtauld in Somerset House on Saturday, features around 25 drawings and seven paintings, as well as sculpture and decorative art from the renowned gallery’s collection.
Armed with magnifying glasses, visitors can scrutinise purported masterpieces by Sandro Botticelli, John Constable, and Auguste Rodin.
Visitors will learn how they were created, the methods of the most infamous forgers and the increasingly sophisticated methods used to detect them.
“Forgeries have always existed in the history of art and have a place in our study,” Rachel Hapoienu, drawings cataloguer at the gallery, told AFP.
Subtitle Society
Why Is Everyone Watching TV With the Subtitles On?
It’s not just you.
By Devin Gordon
The first time it happened, I assumed it was a Millennial thing. Our younger neighbors had come over with their kids and a projector for backyard movie night—Clueless, I think, or maybe The Goonies.
“Oh,” I said as the opening scene began, “you left the subtitles on.”
“Oh,” the husband said, “we always leave the subtitles on.”
Now, I don’t like to think of myself as a snob—snobs never do—but in that moment, I felt something gurgling up my windpipe that can only be described as snobbery, a need to express my aesthetic horror at the needless gashing of all those scenes. All that came out, though, was: Why? They don’t like missing any of the dialogue, he said, and sometimes it’s hard to hear, or someone is trying to sleep, or they’re only half paying attention, and the subtitles are right there waiting to be flipped on, so … why not?
Resurrect Glen Canyon Now
‘A portion of paradise’: how the drought is bringing a lost US canyon back to life
Record dryness has restored an ecosystem under Lake Powell, the country’s second-largest reservoir. Is it time to see it as ‘a national park rather than a storage tank’?
One night in May 2003, I found myself in search of a disappearing lake.
A friend and I had ventured to the Hite Marina on Lake Powell to see what America’s second-largest reservoir looked like after three years of record drought. In search of a camping spot, we drove down a boat ramp that just a few years earlier was bustling with boaters. Now it sat eerily on a dry lakebed.
Donning headlamps, we walked past marooned docks and stranded buoys, drawn toward a strange roaring sound I thought was wind or a boat motor. Instead, it was something I never thought I’d witness.
“It’s the Colorado River!” my friend shouted in disbelief at how far the reservoir had already withdrawn. “It’s flowing!”
This resurrection of a river that had been dammed to create the reservoir was a beautiful yet unsettling sight. The climate crisis was exposing flaws in a water system that – after years of denial – western states have finally been forced to confront. Over the following decade, I returned to Lake Powell many times to hike the slot canyons and tributaries emerging as drought shrunk the lake, watching a world long thought buried coming back to life.
DWA
Kids TV From Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro: How Dreamworks Animation TV Changed Children’s Programming
Ten years ago, the studio set out to change the kids and family landscape, and with auteur partnerships, preschool franchises and gateway horror, they have.
BY ABBEY WHITE
In February 2013, Dreamworks Animation Television teamed with Netflix on its first-ever children’s and family series, Turbo Fast. Just four months later, the studio and streamer would unveil a multiyear content deal — 300 hours of exclusive original, first-run content.
The pact was the official beginning of the television animation studio and at that time, the largest content deal in the streamer’s history. One of the most significant signs of the rise and permanence of the streaming era, the deal heralded a new age for the kids and family content industry.
Dreamworks Animation TV and current DWA president Margie Cohn’s team would spend the next decade steering the studio through that and an NBC Universal acquisition, producing more than 2,100 episodes of animated programming across 43 series and partnering with Netflix, Apple TV+, Hulu, Peacock, Amazon and free-to-air broadcasters around the globe.
Books Are Healthy
A Healthy Culture Remains In Dialogue With The Past
By Lee Oser
I take a “healthy culture” to mean one in which the relationship between books enjoys a certain autonomy. In the minds of readers, books enter conversation with each other in many languages and many ways. Such conversations go beyond the question of “influence.” The relationship between “Hamlet” and “Don Quixote” is not one of influence. Nor does it boil down to one or two key ingredients, for instance, “madness” or “the Fool.” We may choose to compare Hamlet’s madness to Quixote’s, and we will find much to discover, from the old humoral psychology (remember Galen?) to skeins of biblical allusion to the early modern self. The history of Europe underlies “Hamlet” and “Don Quixote,” both published early in the seventeenth century. Coincidentally, Shakespeare and Cervantes died in the same year, 1616. It is likely that Shakespeare read the 1612 English translation of “Don Quixote” (Part One), though at such a late date it cannot have had much impact on his career.
In its subtler aspects, though, the relationship between Hamlet and Don Quixote goes “off the grid.” It cannot be grasped in terms of historical circumstances. The facts of scholarship are helpful, but only as guides operating under strict limitations, like Dante’s Virgil. In this sense, the relationship between “Hamlet” and “Don Quixote” is representative of great literature in any genre or discipline: it leads the attentive reader to startling new insights, to the moment where the usual critical machinery falters. For serious readers, this relationship proves too fine for the mental mills by which we gaze on contemporary art and life. It leads us, individually and socially, into dialogue with ourselves.
Pokémon Pilfery
A Pokémon-Card Crime Spree Jolts Japan
The birthplace of Pokémon battles a frenzy for characters such as Squirtle the turtle
By Miho Inada
TOKYO—The brazen thieves hacked through the shutters of a shop in the suburbs here, smashed glass showcases and nabbed valuables before fleeing into the darkness of the wee hours. Their loot? Pieces of cardboard adorned with cute Japanese cartoon characters including Pikachu, a chubby mouse-like fellow, and Squirtle, a water-squirting turtle.
“I thought I was finished,” recalls Kenta Hosaka, the 33-year-old owner of the shop who says his most expensive cards, together worth about $58,000, were all gone.
Japan has been staggered by a Pokémon crime spree. Stores are now paying for banklike security to ward off villains who go to extraordinary lengths, even rappelling down the side of buildings, to plunder Pokémon.
Black List Blackout
Black List Suspends Studio Memberships, Lowers Scribes’ Fees In Support Of WGA Strike
EXCLUSIVE: The skies are cloudy over LA and still thick over NYC today, but for over 1,000 studio and “struck companies” staffers their Black List membership just went dark.
In support of the Writers Guild of America’s over one-month long strike, the Franklin Leonard founded platform has suspended the access that approximately 1,300 have to its services. In addition, the nearly 20-year-old script curation organization has slashed material fees for writers until their battle with the studios and streamers is resolved with a new deal.
“Writers remain the most undervalued constituents of the film and television ecosystem, and it should be unsurprising that the Black List backs them in their pursuit of equitable pay and protections reflecting their vital and economically significant contributions to the industry,” Leonard told Deadline today. “When writers win, the entire industry wins.
The Iron Sheik Gone
The Iron Sheik Dies: Wrestling Star Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri Was 81
By Greg Evans
The man born Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri but known to millions of pre wrestling fans as The Iron Sheik has died. He was 81.
His death was announced on his official Twitter page. “It is with great sadness that we share the news of the passing of The Iron Sheik,” the announcement reads, “but we also take solace unknowing that he departed this world peacefully, leaving behind a legacy that will endure for generations to come.”
A cause of death was not disclosed.
Fight For Your Rights
from The Los Angeles Times via MSN
Editorial: A Hollywood mess: Writers are striking, and actors may too, over the future of the industry
Opinion by The Times Editorial Board
After six weeks on the picket line, Hollywood writers could soon be joined by actors, whose union, SAG-AFTRA, voted to authorize a walkout if it can’t reach a deal with studios by the end of the month.
A work stoppage by two major Hollywood unions would be a serious blow to the industry — and to Los Angeles County, where film and television are an important economic engine.
To make matters worse, the strike — or strikes — could carry on for weeks or months, observers suggest, because the issues being hashed out are challenging and existential for the industry. The digital revolution has significantly changed the business model, particularly for television shows. The arrival of artificial intelligence could upend things again, if software takes over acting and writing work.
Writers and actors see their careers at stake and have been steadfast in demanding contract terms that protect their income and ensure that there are good jobs for the next generation of creators and performers. Media companies are also still learning to navigate the world of streaming. After going on a spending spree in recent years to launch services with prestige shows and movies, few companies have managed to turn a profit on streaming and are under pressure from shareholders to cut costs and figure out a business model that works.
Negotiations begin Wednesday between SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which includes Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney, Discovery-Warner, NBC Universal and Sony. The Directors Guild of America reached a deal with the alliance over the weekend, with increased pay and streaming compensation.
The Writers Guild of America and the studios have not returned to the bargaining table since the strike started May 2, which is disappointing considering how much is at stake for the industry and the people who rely on it for their livelihood.
Freestyle Yamamoto
Vanishing Victor
Don’t Kill ‘Frankenstein’ With Real Frankensteins at Large
by Maureen Dowd
By the time I took off my mortarboard two weeks ago, my degree in English literature was de trop. Instead of a Master of Arts, I should have gotten a Master of Algorithms.
As I was pushing the rock up a hill, mastering Donne, Milton, Shakespeare, Dickens, Joyce and Mary Shelley, I failed to notice that the humanities had fallen off the cliff.
t was as if the bottle of great wine I saved to celebrate my degree was bouchonné.
The New Yorker ran an obit declaring “The End of the English Major.” One English professor flatly told Nathan Heller, the writer of the 10,000-plus-word magazine piece, that “the Age of Anglophilia is over.”
The Harvard English department handed out tote bags with slogans like “Currently reading” and dropped its poetry requirement for an English degree. But it was too late for such pandering. Students were fleeing to the hotter fields of tech and science.
“Assigning ‘Middlemarch’ in that climate was like trying to land a 747 on a small rural airstrip,” Heller wrote.
Trustees at Marymount University in Virginia voted unanimously in February to phase out majors such as English, history, art, philosophy and sociology.
Loopin’ Alive
Classic Tracks: The Bee Gees ‘Stayin’ Alive’
Producers: The Bee Gees, Albhy Galuten, Karl Richardson • Engineer: Karl Richardson
By Richard Buskin
Disco was an American phenomenon, but its greatest hits were recorded in France by an English band who were trying to play R&B…
Years after the ’70s disco fad and subsequent backlash had subsided, Maurice Gibb told an interviewer that he’d like to dress up the Saturday Night Fever album in a white suit and gold medallion and set the whole thing on fire, such was the stigma that had been attached to him and his brothers Barry and Robin by press and public alike. One minute, they were the purveyors of ‘blue-eyed soul’, melding their pop roots, trademark harmonies and Barry’s newly discovered falsetto with their love of early ’70s Philadelphia funk, crafting heavily rhythmic dance music that was finding its way onto black American radio stations. The next, thanks to a soundtrack album that sold a then-record 25 million copies worldwide and topped the US charts for 24 weeks — where it spawned four number one singles, three of them their own — they were the Kings of Disco and all that encompassed, reaping the rewards and then the brickbats.
Still, as Barry later asserted, it did put food on the table, while the Saturday Night Fever album was a significant moment in the annals of pop culture; a moment when a trio of white Englishmen almost single-handely ignited a widespread mania for the disco music that had previously been the domain of the black and gay sub-cultures in America, and had been superseded by punk in Europe. In addition to the Bee Gees’ recordings of ‘Stayin’ Alive’, ‘How Deep Is Your Love’, ‘Night Fever’, ‘More Than A Woman’, ‘Jive Talkin’ and ‘You Should Be Dancing’, the two-LP set contained their compositions being covered by the Tavares (‘More Than A Woman’) and Yvonne Elliman (‘If I Can’t Have You’), alongside lesser material by the likes of Walter Murphy, David Shire, Ralph MacDonald, MFSB, the Trammps, Kool & the Gang, and KC & the Sunshine Band. Yet it is ‘Stayin’ Alive’, which played over the movie’s opening credits while John Travolta’s Tony Manero strutted down the New York streets in his polyester suit, that best evokes the era and its promotion of sex, drugs and breathless boogying as some form of decadent compensation for a humdrum daily existence.
Return of the Ham
No cellphone? No problem! The vintage radio enthusiasts prepping for disaster
Ham radio users, from teenagers to eightysomethings, are ready to communicate in the next crisis – be it a wildfire, pandemic or ‘the big one’
by Amanda Ulrich in Palm Springs
There’s an ancient fable that Glenn Morrison, a pony-tailed, 75-year-old who lives in the California desert, likes to tell to prove a point. As the lesson goes, one industrious ant readies for winter by stocking up on food and supplies, while an aimless grasshopper wastes time and doesn’t plan ahead. When the cold weather finally arrives, the ant is “fat and happy”, but the grasshopper starves.
In this telling, Morrison is the ant, and those who don’t brace themselves for future emergencies – they’re the grasshoppers.
Morrison is in the business of being prepared. He’s the president of the Desert Rats (or the Radio Amateur Transmitting Society), a club based in Palm Springs that’s dedicated to everything ham radio.
The old-school technology has been around for more than a century. In lieu of smartphones and laptops, ham radio operators use handheld or larger “base station” radios to communicate over radio frequencies. The retro devices can range from the size of a walkie-talkie to the heft of a boxy, 20th-century VCR.
Generations after its invention, one of ham radio’s biggest draws for hobbyists is its usefulness in an emergency – think wildfires, earthquakes or another pandemic. If disaster strikes and internet or cellular networks fail, radio operators could spring into action and help with emergency response communications, and be able to keep in contact with their own networks.
Return of The Scout
Volkswagen Bets an Old SUV Can Help It Win Over Americans
Scout chief Scott Keogh is banking on pure Americana for VW to finally break through in the key market
BERLIN—After decades of trying to sell German engineering to Americans only to end up with a tiny slice of the world’s most profitable car market, Volkswagen VOW 4.85%increase; green up pointing triangle has a new strategy: Pretend it is American.
Inspired by electric-truck startups like Rivian and the buzz around Tesla’s planned pickup, the European car giant is about to relaunch the defunct Scout brand as an off-road electric vehicle made to Americans’ tastes.
VW is hoping that the combination of a U.S. brand, a marketing message heavy on Americana, and a foray into SUVs and pickup trucks—the biggest and most profitable segment of the U.S. car market—can finally boost its presence in the country.
The stakes couldn’t be higher for VW, which has become reliant on China for almost half its sales. As it loses ground there to nimbler homegrown EV startups, it is under pressure to increase its presence in other markets, and the U.S. is where it has the most headroom.
Senator Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey could replace Dianne Feinstein in Senate, report says
by Eric Ting
Among the many plot lines in the Dianne Feinstein saga is Gov. Gavin Newsom’s pledge to appoint a Black woman to replace the 89-year-old should a vacancy arise before her term expires in January 2025.
He made that promise during his 2021 anti-recall campaign, and a new article from the Associated Press’ Michael R. Blood conveys the extent to which the governor may have boxed himself in. While many Black Democrats expect the governor to follow through on his pledge, the two candidates who seemed the most likely at the time of the pledge — Reps. Barbara Lee and Karen Bass — may no longer be options. Lee is running against Rep. Adam Schiff to succeed Feinstein, so Newsom may want to avoid tilting the scales in that race. Meanwhile, Bass just began her tenure as mayor of Los Angeles.
That leaves the “caretaker” route, in which Newsom appoints someone who doesn’t enter the Senate race, and the Associated Press story provided just one name that has been “floated in California circles” as a caretaker pick: celebrity talk show host Oprah Winfrey.
Lighthouses For Sale
Always wanted a lighthouse? US is giving some away, selling others at auction
By MARK PRATT
BOSTON (AP) — Ten lighthouses that for generations have stood like sentinels along America’s shorelines protecting mariners from peril and guiding them to safety are being given away at no cost or sold at auction by the federal government.
The aim of the program run by the General Services Administration is to preserve the properties, most of which are more than a century old.
The development of modern technology, including GPS, means lighthouses are no longer essential for navigation, said John Kelly of the GSA’s office of real property disposition. And while the Coast Guard often maintains aids to navigation at or near lighthouses, the structures themselves are often no longer mission critical.
Yet the public remains fascinated by the beacons, which are popular tourist attractions and the subject of countless photographers and artists.
Vanishing Vincent
The Mystery of the Disappearing van Gogh
The bidding for Lot 17 started at $23 million.
By Michael Forsythe, Isabelle Qian, Muyi Xiao and Vivian Wang
In the packed room at Sotheby’s in Manhattan, the price quickly climbed: $32 million, $42 million, $48 million. Then a new prospective buyer, calling from China, made it a contest between just two people.
On the block that evening in November 2014 were works by Impressionist painters and Modernist sculptors that would make the auction the most successful yet in the firm’s history. But one painting drew particular attention: “Still Life, Vase with Daisies and Poppies,” completed by Vincent van Gogh weeks before his death.
Pushing the price to almost $62 million, the Chinese caller prevailed. His offer was the highest ever for a van Gogh still life at auction.
In the discreet world of high-end art, buyers often remain anonymous. But the winning bidder, a prominent movie producer, would proclaim in interview after interview that he was the painting’s new owner.
Kauai Dawn Patrol
Hawaii’s Feral Chickens Are Out of Control
Polynesians brought chickens’ wild ancestors to the islands. Europeans brought domestic chickens. Now they’ve mixed, and are everywhere.
On the island of Kauai, wherever humans go, chickens go too. Hens and chicks kick around in grocery-store parking lots and parks. They’re visitors to cookouts and picnics. On popular hikes, many people are rewarded at the end of the trail with a picturesque view of the island and a small flock of chickens. The birds kick up newly planted condo landscaping and community gardens. Restaurants hand-paint signs asking patrons not to feed the fowl.
These are not your average chickens. Descended from birds brought to the island in centuries past, they are now feral, surviving on their own, which suits them just fine. The hens are drab and blend into the bushes. The roosters are a mixture of orange, mahogany red, and iridescent black. At night they roost in trees for safety. In the morning, roosters begin calling long before dawn—and continue all day long. All roosters do this, but these ones live among people instead of in industrial barns. Even so, tourists seem to love them. When I was there a few years ago, I saw souvenir shops full of T-shirts and caps that referred to the roosters as Kauai Dawn Patrol.
Kenneth Anger Gone
Kenneth Anger Dies: Groundbreaking Experimental Filmmaker And ‘Hollywood Babylon’ Author Was 96
By Greg Evans
Kenneth Anger, the experimental filmmaker and author whose work was groundbreaking in its exploration of gay themes and erotica, has died. He was 96.
His death was announced by his gallery, Sprueth Magers.
“It is with deep sadness that we mourn the passing of visionary filmmaker, artist and author Kenneth Anger (1927–2023),” the gallery posted on social media. “Kenneth was a trailblazer. His cinematic genius and influence will live on and continue to transform all those who encounter his films, words and vision.”
Anger’s films include the 1947 Fireworks, a legendary cinematic achievement in the history of American gay culture and film. He also wrote and published Hollywood Babylon in 1959, a book that popularized scandals and pieces of film-land gossip that, while largely discredited over the years, have remained part of Hollywood lore.
Graydon Rocks
Cannes: Graydon Carter Pulls Off the Party of the Festival with Holy Trinity of Leo, Marty, and De Niro, Plus Sting, and Even Boy George, for Warner Bros. 100th Anniversary
No question, hands down, Graydon Carter bested everyone in Cannes party land last night.
The owner and editor in chief of AirMail.com put his old magazine, Vanity Fair, to shame with a star studded list of guests at the Hotel du Cap Eden Roc.
Carter grabbed the Holy Trinity of stars with Leonardo di Caprio, Martin Scorsese, and Robert De Niro celebrating their huge success with “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
Carter co-hosted the party with Warner Discovery owner and chief David Zaslav. The pair welcomed Sting and his activist-actress-stunner wife Trudie Styler, plus Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, Lily Rose Depp, Jason Statham and even Boy George turned up!
Tina Turner Gone
Legendary Singer Tina Turner Dead at 83
Music icon Tina Turner has died at the age of 83, her rep confirmed on May 24: “All our heartfelt compassion goes out to her family.”
By JESS COHEN
The music world has a lost a beloved artist.
Legendary singer Tina Turner has died at the age of 83, her team confirmed in a statement on May 24.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Tina Turner,” the statement, posted to her social media pages, read. “With her music and her boundless passion for life, she enchanted millions of fans around the world and inspired the stars of tomorrow. Today we say goodbye to a dear friend who leaves us all her greatest work: her music. All our heartfelt compassion goes out to her family. Tina, we will miss you dearly.”
El Popo Spewing
Huge swathes of Mexico are blanketed in dust as Popocatépetl volcano continues to spew ash and dust, with 3M ordered to prepare for evacuation
Around three million people have been ordered to evacuate as huge swathes of Mexico were blanketed in dust by the Popocatépetl volcano, which has also delayed flights and caused schools to close.
The country’s National Civil Protection Coordination increased its threat level to ‘yellow phase 3’ which ordered the evacuations and warned people nearby to prepare for the possibility of leaving the area.
The next step, a red alert, triggers mandatory evacuations, and dozens of shelters have already been opened in areas surrounding the crater as a precaution.
Approximately 25 million people live within 60 miles of the Popocatépetl volcano, just 45 miles southeast of Mexico City.
For more than a week, the 17,797-foot mountain – known affectionately as ‘El Popo’ – has been increasingly explosive, spewing great plumes of gas, ash and incandescent rock into the air.
Maya Revisited
from The Washington Post via MSN
Long-hidden ruins of vast network of Maya cities could recast history
by Charlotte Lytton
Beneath 1,350 square miles of dense jungle in northern Guatemala, scientists have discovered 417 cities that date back to circa 1000 B.C. and that are connected by nearly 110 miles of “superhighways” — a network of what researchers called “the first freeway system in the world.”
Scientist say this extensive road-and-city network, along with sophisticated ceremonial complexes, hydraulic systems and agricultural infrastructure, suggests that the ancient Maya civilization, which stretched through what is now Central America, was far more advanced than previously thought.
Mapping the area since 2015 using lidar technology — an advanced type of radar that reveals things hidden by dense vegetation and the tree canopy — researchers have found what they say is evidence of a well-organized economic, political and social system operating some two millennia ago.
The discovery is sparking a rethinking of the accepted idea that the people of the mid- to late-Preclassic Maya civilization (1000 B.C. to A.D. 250) would have been only hunter-gatherers, “roving bands of nomads, planting corn,” says Richard Hansen, the lead author of a study about the finding that was published in January and an affiliate research professor of archaeology at the University of Idaho.
Classified Discord
A Global Scavenger Hunt for Classified Documents Pits Gamers vs. U.S.
The government secrets leaked on Discord have become fodder for users seeking fun and attention
Videogame enthusiasts are scouring popular social-media platforms in the hope of finding classified U.S. military documents, turning the recent national-security crisis over leaked secrets into a global scavenger hunt.
The competition pits online users eager to see secrets against the U.S. government, which wants to keep those secrets off the internet.
At issue are a cache of sensitive military documents that the Justice Department alleges Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, posted on Discord, a platform that allows gamers to gather and communicate online. The documents first began showing up last year on a Discord group—known as a server—and remained unnoticed for months until some of them were reposted to other larger servers and platforms, eventually finding their way to the media, garnering public and U.S. government attention.
3D Titanic
Titanic: First ever full-sized scans reveal wreck as never seen before
By Rebecca Morelle and Alison Francis
The world’s most famous shipwreck has been revealed as never seen before.
The first full-sized digital scan of the Titanic, which lies 3,800m (12,500ft) down in the Atlantic, has been created using deep-sea mapping.
It provides a unique 3D view of the entire ship, enabling it to be seen as if the water has been drained away.
The hope is that this will shed new light on exactly what happened to the liner, which sank in 1912.
More than 1,500 people died when the ship struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York.
“There are still questions, basic questions, that need to be answered about the ship,” Parks Stephenson, a Titanic analyst, told BBC News.
He said the model was “one of the first major steps to driving the Titanic story towards evidence-based research – and not speculation.”
First Kiss
Ancient kiss-tory: First evidence of smooching took place in Middle East 4,500 years ago
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — The origins of kissing date back 4,500 years, a discovery that’s giving researchers insight into disease transmission instead of romance! Researchers in Denmark say the earliest documented evidence of a human kiss comes from Mesopotamia, the historical area that now encompasses present-day Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Syria, and Turkey.
Earlier studies proposed that the first evidence of human lip kissing began specifically in South Asia about 3,500 years ago. From there, it was thought to have spread to other regions, potentially expediting the spread of the herpes simplex virus in the process.
However, this new research, conducted by scholars from the University of Oxford and the University of Copenhagen, suggests that kissing was a cultural practice in the ancient Middle East at least 1,000 years earlier. Based on various written sources from the earliest Mesopotamian societies, Dr. Troels Pank Arbøll and Dr. Sophie Lund Rasmussen discovered that kissing was already a well-established practice 4,500 years ago in the Middle East.
Moonbai
Dubai’s next big thing? Perhaps a $5 billion man-made ‘moon’ as the city’s real estate market booms
By NICK EL HAJJ
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Who says you cannot reach for the moon? A proposed $5 billion real estate project wants to take skyscraper-studded Dubai to new heights — by bringing a symbol of the heavens down to Earth.
Canadian entrepreneur Michael Henderson envisions building a 274-meter (900-foot) replica of the moon atop a 30-meter (100-foot) building in Dubai, already home to the world’s tallest building and other architectural wonders.
Henderson’s project, dubbed MOON, may sound out of this world, but it could easily fit in this futuristic city-state. Dubai already has a red-hot real estate market, fueled by the wealthy who fled restrictions imposed in their home countries during the coronavirus pandemic and Russians seeking refuge amid Moscow’s war on Ukraine.
Amnesianet
from The Washington Post via MSN
The internet’s memory is fading in front of us. Preserve what you can.
by Chris Velazco
I signed up for Facebook in my senior year of high school, just as the service was branching out from its college campus confines. And even then, in those early days, the message from my teachers, my parents, and those talking heads on TV was the same: don’t put anything on the internet that you don’t want floating around forever.
To this day, that’s good advice. But it’s also clear the internet’s memory isn’t exactly the steel trap we were all told it was.
In (what else?) a tweet posted last week, Twitter CEO Elon Musk said the social media service would be “purging” user accounts if they lay dormant for long enough.
The period of inactivity that would prompt an account deletion is pretty long — Musk said the move would apply to accounts that have gone unused for “several years,” and that accounts would be “archived” in some way. But the lack of clarity around what “archiving” means is little comfort to, say, people who continue to seek a sense of closeness with Twitter-using friends and loved ones who have died or are incarcerated.