Interesting. We have visited Roman ruins in the UK in several locations. They are being preserved now. One we have visited over the past 30 years and can see the changes made by further research. The Hypocaust system used to heat the homes is something to see. We have even walked what is left of a Roman Road in the wilds of the Yorkshire Dales. And of course Hadrian’s Wall has been visited too. The Roman forts being excavated over the years are fascinating.
We visited Split a few years ago. Amazing. And the day before, we had stayed in a small village northwest of Split, where we took a walk through Roman ruins to an amphitheater, walls mostly intact, where some of Diocletian’s Christian victims were killed.
A fascinating thing about the ruins of petra the seat of the nabateans (it was a mausoleum)
Yeah, but do they have indoor plumbing, electric lights, air conditioning and gas appliances?
Some months ago I saw previews of ChatGPT-type technology and pulled the fire alarm. It was plain to me that artificial intelligence could now pass the Turing Test for generating text responses indistinguishable from a human’s.
True. However, I overestimated its power. This is not HAL from “2001” in some sense conscious as we are. It’s a trick by which AI can filter through vast amounts of human text and cobble together more human-like text. It is refining and reflecting our minds back at us.
Nonetheless, it is a big deal, as well as an astonishing achievement. It will be quite disruptive and possibly dangerous. I’m glad to see Jordan Peterson is on the case:
________________________
Interviewer: What’s your position on artificial intelligence potentials, positive and negative outcomes, and general sense of what it will mean for Humanity?
Jordan Peterson: My position basically is we better get our act together before the Giants show up and they’re like knocking at the door right now.
So you better build your Ark, folks, and get on your adventure because we’re whipping up some things in the lab that will make everything that’s come so far look like nothing’s happened at all yet.
And that’s not like next year, that’s tomorrow, that’s now.
Just another open-thread comment about something I read.
Yesterday, at “Inside Hook,” which is somehow connected to “Real Clear Politics,” there was an article published about musicians who’ve referenced Leonard Cohen. If I remember correctly, quite a few of Neo’s readers, as well as Neo herself, are fans of Leonard Cohen. Anyway, I thought it was a fun read.
The article includes YouTube links for all the songs cited by the author.
That was a delightful video.
As a side note, those houses are not the only ancient relic still functioning today: our political situation is looking extremely similar to the late Roman period of the “Decline and Fall” persuasion.
Not an original observation.
For LDS “insiders,” the similarity to the rise of the Gadianton Robbers and the fall of the Nephite civilization into tribal barbarity is also inescapable.
Open Thread Sunday, so Russo-Ukrainian War analysis. This week western fast movers.
The Ukraine Air War – The Russian campaign & does Ukraine need Western jets? – Perun
Timestamps:
00:00:00 — The Ukraine Air War & The Need For Western Jets
00:01:30 — What Am I Talking About?
00:02:30 — Sponsor: Private Internet Access
00:04:01 — Doctrine & History
00:09:52 — The VKS (Russian Aerospace Forces)
00:15:35 — The Ukrainian Air Force
00:17:20 — The Early War
00:21:08 — Airspace Denied
00:28:06 — Current Employment
00:34:43 — Technology, Energy & Dominance
00:39:15 — Casualties And Attrition
00:48:34 — Resupply & The Western Jet Problem
00:54:01 — Capability Over Platforms
00:58:15 — Contesting Vks Operations
01:03:55 — Mass And Multi-role
01:05:36 — Standoff And Escalation
01:11:01 — Observations & Warnings
01:13:17 — Conclusions
01:14:30 — Channel Update
I expect at least one objection, besides cost: ‘but, but, but, they are offensive weapons worse than tanks, missiles, arty, or ammunition (or anything)!
would our structures last 2000 years or longer, what of permanence, have we erected, the ending of the planet of the apes, suggests little but the statue but why would it be buried in the rock,
These Roman structures which survive were built with stone. In England, pre-Norman structures are gone because the Saxons built with wood. Roman stone ruins, and Norman stone castles and churches, survive. My house, frame with hardiplank exterior, will not be here centuries from now.
Open thread – more warfare national defense stuff: cdrsalamander Midrats:
These Roman structures which survive were built with stone. In England, pre-Norman structures are gone because the Saxons built with wood.
Kate:
Was anyone building with straw? 🙂
huxley, thatched roofs! 🙂 Actually, an uncle of mine lived in a straw house. It was built with thick frame walls and the usual interior and exterior siding materials, but filled with bales of straw. The insulation value was excellent; in southern Ohio, they barely used any heating and needed no air conditioning.
Kate:
The exception to the rule: there are a few very, very old wooden buildings in Scandanavia IIRC. Outliers to be sure. Not sure how old Japanese wooden structeres (pagodas?) are, in earthquake terrane it pays to be flexible (but flammable).
Hot Air had this on the egregious election fraud that LBJ orchestrated to steal the senate seat in 1948. Robert Caro’s third volume of his LBJ opus goes into the details of the fraud in great detail. Anyone who wants to get a feel for just how outrageous the Democrats have been on election fraud should read it. The Democrats have a culture of election fraud that goes back to their founding.
And once one fully understands just how corrupt Texas was in 1948, the likelihood that the same fraud was used in 1960 for the JFK and LBJ ticket becomes apparent. JFK stole Illinois and Texas to win the presidency. Even hard core lefties (and Nixon haters) like Tom Wicker believed it. Wicker, a NY Times opinion columnist, once wrote that the only good thing he could say about Nixon was that he didn’t seek justice after JFK stole the election because Nixon felt it would damage the country in the midst of the Cold War.
meanwhile Russia is in charge of the security council this months, fwiw,
and opec cuts 1.6 million barrels, we’re in the best possible hands,
miguel, speaking of building for permanence, I’ve sometimes wondered how the Empire State Plaza will look as ruins when that time comes.
@miguel:meanwhile Russia is in charge of the security council this months, fwiw,
The UN does from time to time put foxes in charge of henhouses, doesn’t it? I guess the only thing I can think of in defense of that, is that from the beginning they knew there was going to be bad guys in the UN, and the whole point was to have them in there so there was a forum to work things out without wars. (Churchill, FDR, and Stalin were not idiots.)
That’s why they kicked Taiwan out and gave the Security Council seat to the People’s Republic of China. If the big bad nations are shut out, the UN is pointless. It’s not and never was intended to be a club for saints and angels, it was intended to be a place where powerful nations talked things out.
However, including the big bad nations, while necessary, has not been sufficient to give the UN a point or even make it a net positive in world affairs, if you ask me.
Fun fact: The reason Ukraine was included in the UN in 1945, despite not being sovereign and independent then, is because the Soviet Union said it wasn’t fair for the Dominions and Great Britain to all be members and it was like Britain had five votes, which was of course hogwash, but Ukraine’s membership was a necessary compromise for Soviet participation.
Another insane thing about French…
In French the adjective goes before or after the noun. But how does one decide? For that we have the handy BAGS mnemonic!
The adjective goes goes after the noun unless it relates to:
Beauty
Age
Goodness
Size
BAGS!
Unless — you knew exceptions were coming, didn’t you? — the adjective is “ugly” or “wicked”.
Don’t ask me; I only work here.
huxley–
Don’t you love the fact that unlike English, which uses the qualifier “in-law” to describe a relative by marriage, French uses the gender-appropriate form of “beautiful/handsome”? For example, one’s father-in-law in England is one’s beau-père across the Channel, and one’s mother-in-law is similarly one’s belle-mère— which goes a long way toward stifling mother-in-law jokes.
I also recall the importance of referring to my former dissertation director as mon ancien professeur and not mon professeur ancien— even though he would have chuckled in that case, as he was close to retirement when I finally finished up.
Frankly, German is a bit more logical (IOW, like English) when it comes to adjective placement.
Older liberal journalists are being hunted to extinction by a ravenous woke army.
“But what about biology?” they plead as they are ripped apart and eaten.
Best say nothing of that unless you want to be next on the menu.
Inside baseball: they are murdering the heretics inside their house with Louisville sluggers. Only the true and pure will remain.
Thats intriguing i imagine glass wouldnt last as long as stone and concrete will l
Re: beau-père — father-in-law
PA+Cat:
Actually I didn’t know that. I’d run into beau-père in British fiction, and figured from context it was some kind of father, or male at least, but otherwise it went into my mental sack labeled “French Things I Don’t Understand.”
Likewise “au pair,” which seemed to be a young woman, usually foreign, who helped take care of a family’s children. Since pairs come in twos, I always wondered where the other “au pair” was.
Google Translate is a big help. It translates “au pair” into English as … “au pair.” Wiki is more helpful. “Au pair” means “at par” and goes back to a line from Balzac.
Then there’s “Je ne sais quoi” which from context seemed to mean “mysterious, exotic” but I didn’t know what.
Finally I looked it up and “Je ne sais quoi” means “I don’t know what.”
Rimshot!
Or as the French say for emphasis at the end of a sentence:
Interesting. We have visited Roman ruins in the UK in several locations. They are being preserved now. One we have visited over the past 30 years and can see the changes made by further research. The Hypocaust system used to heat the homes is something to see. We have even walked what is left of a Roman Road in the wilds of the Yorkshire Dales. And of course Hadrian’s Wall has been visited too. The Roman forts being excavated over the years are fascinating.
We visited Split a few years ago. Amazing. And the day before, we had stayed in a small village northwest of Split, where we took a walk through Roman ruins to an amphitheater, walls mostly intact, where some of Diocletian’s Christian victims were killed.
A fascinating thing about the ruins of petra the seat of the nabateans (it was a mausoleum)
Yeah, but do they have indoor plumbing, electric lights, air conditioning and gas appliances?
Some of them had indoor plumbing, surprisingly.
Remember these men this night:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7n1b3qLyns
Some months ago I saw previews of ChatGPT-type technology and pulled the fire alarm. It was plain to me that artificial intelligence could now pass the Turing Test for generating text responses indistinguishable from a human’s.
True. However, I overestimated its power. This is not HAL from “2001” in some sense conscious as we are. It’s a trick by which AI can filter through vast amounts of human text and cobble together more human-like text. It is refining and reflecting our minds back at us.
Nonetheless, it is a big deal, as well as an astonishing achievement. It will be quite disruptive and possibly dangerous. I’m glad to see Jordan Peterson is on the case:
________________________
Interviewer: What’s your position on artificial intelligence potentials, positive and negative outcomes, and general sense of what it will mean for Humanity?
Jordan Peterson: My position basically is we better get our act together before the Giants show up and they’re like knocking at the door right now.
So you better build your Ark, folks, and get on your adventure because we’re whipping up some things in the lab that will make everything that’s come so far look like nothing’s happened at all yet.
And that’s not like next year, that’s tomorrow, that’s now.
–“How AI Is Reshaping Society and What Jordan Peterson Has To Say About It”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh0WQWACCDg
Just another open-thread comment about something I read.
Yesterday, at “Inside Hook,” which is somehow connected to “Real Clear Politics,” there was an article published about musicians who’ve referenced Leonard Cohen. If I remember correctly, quite a few of Neo’s readers, as well as Neo herself, are fans of Leonard Cohen. Anyway, I thought it was a fun read.
The article includes YouTube links for all the songs cited by the author.
Here’s the URL:
https://www.insidehook.com/article/music/songs-reference-leonard-cohen
That was a delightful video.
As a side note, those houses are not the only ancient relic still functioning today: our political situation is looking extremely similar to the late Roman period of the “Decline and Fall” persuasion.
Not an original observation.
For LDS “insiders,” the similarity to the rise of the Gadianton Robbers and the fall of the Nephite civilization into tribal barbarity is also inescapable.
Open Thread Sunday, so Russo-Ukrainian War analysis. This week western fast movers.
The Ukraine Air War – The Russian campaign & does Ukraine need Western jets? – Perun
https://youtu.be/-PCg-ba9tRI
Timestamps:
00:00:00 — The Ukraine Air War & The Need For Western Jets
00:01:30 — What Am I Talking About?
00:02:30 — Sponsor: Private Internet Access
00:04:01 — Doctrine & History
00:09:52 — The VKS (Russian Aerospace Forces)
00:15:35 — The Ukrainian Air Force
00:17:20 — The Early War
00:21:08 — Airspace Denied
00:28:06 — Current Employment
00:34:43 — Technology, Energy & Dominance
00:39:15 — Casualties And Attrition
00:48:34 — Resupply & The Western Jet Problem
00:54:01 — Capability Over Platforms
00:58:15 — Contesting Vks Operations
01:03:55 — Mass And Multi-role
01:05:36 — Standoff And Escalation
01:11:01 — Observations & Warnings
01:13:17 — Conclusions
01:14:30 — Channel Update
I expect at least one objection, besides cost: ‘but, but, but, they are offensive weapons worse than tanks, missiles, arty, or ammunition (or anything)!
would our structures last 2000 years or longer, what of permanence, have we erected, the ending of the planet of the apes, suggests little but the statue but why would it be buried in the rock,
These Roman structures which survive were built with stone. In England, pre-Norman structures are gone because the Saxons built with wood. Roman stone ruins, and Norman stone castles and churches, survive. My house, frame with hardiplank exterior, will not be here centuries from now.
Open thread – more warfare national defense stuff: cdrsalamander Midrats:
If it flies, it dies.
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/if-it-flies-it-dies-with-tom-karako?publication_id=247761&post_id=112148351&isFreemail=true
These Roman structures which survive were built with stone. In England, pre-Norman structures are gone because the Saxons built with wood.
Kate:
Was anyone building with straw? 🙂
huxley, thatched roofs! 🙂 Actually, an uncle of mine lived in a straw house. It was built with thick frame walls and the usual interior and exterior siding materials, but filled with bales of straw. The insulation value was excellent; in southern Ohio, they barely used any heating and needed no air conditioning.
Kate:
The exception to the rule: there are a few very, very old wooden buildings in Scandanavia IIRC. Outliers to be sure. Not sure how old Japanese wooden structeres (pagodas?) are, in earthquake terrane it pays to be flexible (but flammable).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=CJxpKlTID2Q&embeds_euri=https%3A%2F%2Falthouse.blogspot.com%2F&feature=emb_logo
https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2023/04/01/lbjs-stolen-election-n540925
Hot Air had this on the egregious election fraud that LBJ orchestrated to steal the senate seat in 1948. Robert Caro’s third volume of his LBJ opus goes into the details of the fraud in great detail. Anyone who wants to get a feel for just how outrageous the Democrats have been on election fraud should read it. The Democrats have a culture of election fraud that goes back to their founding.
And once one fully understands just how corrupt Texas was in 1948, the likelihood that the same fraud was used in 1960 for the JFK and LBJ ticket becomes apparent. JFK stole Illinois and Texas to win the presidency. Even hard core lefties (and Nixon haters) like Tom Wicker believed it. Wicker, a NY Times opinion columnist, once wrote that the only good thing he could say about Nixon was that he didn’t seek justice after JFK stole the election because Nixon felt it would damage the country in the midst of the Cold War.
meanwhile Russia is in charge of the security council this months, fwiw,
and opec cuts 1.6 million barrels, we’re in the best possible hands,
miguel, speaking of building for permanence, I’ve sometimes wondered how the Empire State Plaza will look as ruins when that time comes.
@miguel:meanwhile Russia is in charge of the security council this months, fwiw,
The UN does from time to time put foxes in charge of henhouses, doesn’t it? I guess the only thing I can think of in defense of that, is that from the beginning they knew there was going to be bad guys in the UN, and the whole point was to have them in there so there was a forum to work things out without wars. (Churchill, FDR, and Stalin were not idiots.)
That’s why they kicked Taiwan out and gave the Security Council seat to the People’s Republic of China. If the big bad nations are shut out, the UN is pointless. It’s not and never was intended to be a club for saints and angels, it was intended to be a place where powerful nations talked things out.
However, including the big bad nations, while necessary, has not been sufficient to give the UN a point or even make it a net positive in world affairs, if you ask me.
Fun fact: The reason Ukraine was included in the UN in 1945, despite not being sovereign and independent then, is because the Soviet Union said it wasn’t fair for the Dominions and Great Britain to all be members and it was like Britain had five votes, which was of course hogwash, but Ukraine’s membership was a necessary compromise for Soviet participation.
Another insane thing about French…
In French the adjective goes before or after the noun. But how does one decide? For that we have the handy BAGS mnemonic!
The adjective goes goes after the noun unless it relates to:
Beauty
Age
Goodness
Size
BAGS!
Unless — you knew exceptions were coming, didn’t you? — the adjective is “ugly” or “wicked”.
Don’t ask me; I only work here.
huxley–
Don’t you love the fact that unlike English, which uses the qualifier “in-law” to describe a relative by marriage, French uses the gender-appropriate form of “beautiful/handsome”? For example, one’s father-in-law in England is one’s beau-père across the Channel, and one’s mother-in-law is similarly one’s belle-mère— which goes a long way toward stifling mother-in-law jokes.
I also recall the importance of referring to my former dissertation director as mon ancien professeur and not mon professeur ancien— even though he would have chuckled in that case, as he was close to retirement when I finally finished up.
Frankly, German is a bit more logical (IOW, like English) when it comes to adjective placement.
Older liberal journalists are being hunted to extinction by a ravenous woke army.
“But what about biology?” they plead as they are ripped apart and eaten.
Best say nothing of that unless you want to be next on the menu.
Inside the Guardian’s civil war over trans coverage
Inside baseball: they are murdering the heretics inside their house with Louisville sluggers. Only the true and pure will remain.
Thats intriguing i imagine glass wouldnt last as long as stone and concrete will l
Re: beau-père — father-in-law
PA+Cat:
Actually I didn’t know that. I’d run into beau-père in British fiction, and figured from context it was some kind of father, or male at least, but otherwise it went into my mental sack labeled “French Things I Don’t Understand.”
Likewise “au pair,” which seemed to be a young woman, usually foreign, who helped take care of a family’s children. Since pairs come in twos, I always wondered where the other “au pair” was.
Google Translate is a big help. It translates “au pair” into English as … “au pair.” Wiki is more helpful. “Au pair” means “at par” and goes back to a line from Balzac.
Then there’s “Je ne sais quoi” which from context seemed to mean “mysterious, exotic” but I didn’t know what.
Finally I looked it up and “Je ne sais quoi” means “I don’t know what.”
Rimshot!
Or as the French say for emphasis at the end of a sentence:
Quoi!
https://theothermccain.com/2023/04/03/brain-damaged-john-fetterman-gets-democrat-helper-served-by-cbs-news/#disqus_thread
==
Robert Stacy McCain offers a discussion of how Jane Pauley’s crew edited the tape to give the impression that John Fetterman is lucid.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/03/finland-election-progressive-prime-minister-marin-loses-out-on-second-term.html
Yes in spanish its one word cunada with the mark over the n
Miguel cervantes:
These days to get those weird diacritical marks one can change the control panel keyboard setting to “US-International Keyboard.”
For ñ: type “~” + “n”
However, Windows 10 has an epically brain-damaged path to make that setting happen.
For the right price I’ll explain all.