Blades again!

 Every time I see the phrase "Viking sword" I think of the rare and costly +Ulfberh+t.

This time: yep, that was the one. Enjoy this piece from The History Blog.

Collection

It's been a bit of a while, but I've been collecting ALL sorts of links to share and not gotten around to posting them on Spoutible, my sole social home now on Teh Intarwebs.

My apologies, by the way, for the formatting. I literally am collecting these from a zillion sources, it's late, and my head is pounding. So - here goes...

German museum weirdly asks Italy to give back the Discobolus

The implicit bias problem won’t be solved by training alone | Aeon Essays

"Eugene Ofosu, asked whether same-sex marriage legalisation was associated with reduced anti-gay implicit biases across US states. His team studied US IAT scores between 2005 and 2016, and what they found was striking. While the implicit anti-gay bias for each state, on average, decreased at a steady rate before same-sex marriage legislation, these biases decreased at a sharper rate following legalisation, even after controlling for demographic variables such as participants’ age and gender, as well as state-level factors such as education and income."

Development hell (nature.com) 

"the story may have been less about idiot male techs and more about the NASA approach of solving all problems with more equipment. ...if you want to hear about NASA engineers not understanding female anatomy, better options are available ..."

What To Do When Your Period Comes… In Space ‹ Literary Hub (lithub.com)

Indigenous people wrestle with Buffy Sainte-Marie false identity claims - The Washington Post 

I've spoken for years about what I call Colonizer #Trek (lookin' at you, #TNG). Here is an interesting look at the questions of ethics, resources, private and public management, and financial and disability access as well as other barriers to participation in space - and what the heck's going on already. "The popular narrative that space is a bottomless reservoir of resources does not fit the facts." ... "(W)e are at step zero." Please enjoy this well-written essay.

As space gets more commercial, how can it be governed ethically? | Aeon Essays

Meet the absentee gods and nefarious spirits of ancient Mesopotamia | Aeon Videos

Cats have nearly 300 facial expressions | Science | AAAS

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/16/fox-news-violent-crime/ 

Perception Census | Welcome (dreamachine.world)

FBI: Killings fell 6 percent in 2022, violent crime declined - The Washington Post

In post-communist Europe, economics is laden with morality | Aeon Essays

In France, workers build a castle from scratch the 13th century way : NPR

Alien life might not be something science can ever ‘discover’ | Aeon Essays

For socialism and freedom: the life of Eugene Debs | Aeon Essays

Reviving Virginia’s historic Black cemeteries after decades of neglect - The Henrico Citizen

The deeper I’ve fallen down this rainbow-colored rabbit hole, the more I’ve come to understand that my shock at the breadth of queerness in nature is a symptom of a horrible miseducation, of centuries of science bullying the abundance of queerness off the record.
Orion Magazine - A Work of Love

Also, Biological Exuberance may be #MyNewDragName

Native Americans are building their own solar farms (bbc.com)
Native Americans are building their own solar farms
For decades, Native Americans were reliant on the US government to bring them power. Now, that may be changing


The last 2 are gift links - no paywall:

https://wapo.st/3tdrl9I

Jubilation and high expectations as Poland marks end of right-wing rule

Donald Tusk as prime minister will face challenges fixing relations with the E.U., restoring independence to courts and media and loosening abortion restrictions.

We will keep finding ways to Karen up the place. Pee-yew.
https://wapo.st/3RbTS7u
First-time author loses book deal for ‘review bombing’ authors on Goodreads
Cait Corrain, the author of the sci-fi fantasy novel “Crown of Starlight,” has faced backlash for “review bombing” fellow authors for months through fake Goodreads accounts.

TrekSantis?

I've been doing a re-watch of Star Trek: Enterprise of late; in the mornings, I like to play background noise that tells me a story I basically already know and thus don't have to particularly watch. Since it'd been a while, I started using Enterprise some time back, and it's fine. It provides a sort of timer for my morning routine, and the background noise.

One of the things that keeps hitting me in the brain is its 9/11-infused xenophobia, and its supposedly-"throwback" sexism. (IYKYK: sexism like that never went away; it only seemed, to some, to be briefly out of fashion.) The much-discussed theme song is full of grievance and white man wannabe-oppression. "Oh, they're not going to hold me back this time, no they're not gonna change my mind." Given that a major theme from the start, in ENT, is how the Vulcans held humanity back from galactic exploration, and the way Vulcans are portrayed generally as cold jerks and emotional rapists/victims, it's pretty hard not to hear those lyrics and understand it as "The pointy-ears were mean to us and we're gonna 'rise above' them."

It all sounds pretty grievance-supremacist to me. "Mommy (and the culture as a whole) told me I was *special*, and I've got Christo-fascist faith of the heart. I'll show those aliens, who in every other series are seen as complex, and allies--they're really just meanies, keeping me from flying my daddy's warp drive and taking over the universe! Man, I wanna be oppressed so bad!"

...

So, this morning, seeing a photo of a sign for DeathSantis' freshly glitch-launched "campaign"...

... I mean, of course. It's practically a lyric out of that theme song. No one's going to bend or break me, darn Vulcans, coming over the border and--oh, wait...