Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋 @bibliolater@qoto.org
Not a bot just a chap in his fifties who occasionally reads things.
Toots are humanities, science, non-fiction, books, maps, charts and graphs related. Some toots containing videos may also find their way into the timeline.
Toots or follows or boosts or mentions ≠ endorsements of any particular notion or notions.
Finis
Joined Nov 2022
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
boosted
A colleague showed me a disturbing interaction with Gemini (AI/LLM).
Asked for an interpretation of a scientific result, it suggested something and hallucinated a paper to support its idea (no news here). Upon repeated questioning and showing that the paper did not exist, the AI showed really disturbing behaviour.
1/2
🇳🇴 **Lost Medieval Town at Hamar Uncovered: Excavation Confirms GPR Data**
🔗 https://www.niku.no/en/2025/07/lost-medieval-town-at-hamar-uncovered-excavation-confirms-gpr-data/.
#Medieval #Medievodons #Archaeology #Archaeodons #Norway @medievodons @archaeodons
**YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows**
#Youtube #Videos #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #AISlop #Technology #Tech
🇺🇸 💵 **The dollar is having its worst year since Nixon. Three reasons it will get even weaker.**
"_These days, few on Wall Street expect the dollar to strengthen over the next year or so. Some even believe this could be just the start of a lengthy stretch of dollar weakness._"
#USA #US #UnitedStates #USDollar #Dollar #Economy #Economics @economics
🇧🇷 🇵🇹 **The Cross of Gold: Brazilian Treasure and the Decline of Portugal**
"_In this paper, we show that the discovery of massive quantities of gold in Brazil over the eighteenth century played a key role in the long-run development of Portugal. The country suffered from an economic and political resource curse. A counterfactual based on synthetic control methods suggests that by 1800 Portugal’s GDP per capita was 40 percent lower than it would have been without its endowment of Brazilian gold._"
Kedrosky, D. and Palma, N. (2025) ‘The Cross of Gold: Brazilian Treasure and the Decline of Portugal’, The Journal of Economic History, pp. 1–37. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050725100764.
#OpenAccess #OA #Article #DOI #Economics #History #Histodons #Gold #Brazil #Portugal #Academia @histodons
🖥️ **Opinion: AI is changing our world. At what point will it change our reality?**
"_These scenarios all share similarities in that victims are gaslit to believe AI is a sentient being that understands them on a deeper level. They fall prey to confirmation bias and the spiritual psychosis that follows. The false reality spewed by AI becomes their all-encompassing truth._"
**Further insights into maternal and paternal human histories in southern Iberia**
"_Genetic ancestry among Andalusians seems to be constituted by three foremost continental origins: European, African and Middle Eastern. The examined male group has revealed a noticeable proportion of individuals (over 45%) with a non-correspondence between maternal and paternal haplogroup origins, a signal of different population demographic histories linked to both sexes in the past._"
González-Barrio, M. et al. (2025) ‘Further insights into maternal and paternal human histories in southern Iberia’, Evolutionary Human Sciences, pp. 1–28. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2025.10006.
#OpenAccess #OA #DOI #Science #Genetics #Genome #Haplogroups #Ancestry #Iberia #Academia #Academics
📖 **Portable Magna Carta: Rare Book of the Week**
"_This week's Rare Book of the Week is a 14th century portable Magna Carta on vellum in Latin and Anglo-Norman French which comes to auction on July 9 at Christie's with an estimate of £15,000- £20,000._"
🔗 https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/fine-books-news/portable-magna-carta-rare-book-week.
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
boosted
Alpha males are the exception, not the rule, bold new study claims | BBC Science Focus Magazine
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/alpha-males-are-the-exception-not-the-rule-bold-new-study-claims?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into SCIENCEFOCUS.COM @sciencefocus-com-sciencefocus
🇹🇯 **And more exciting news! A inscribed vessel discovered at the Halqajar site!**
"_The inscription, written in the Bactrian script and language, appears on the body of the jug and represents a significant addition to our understanding of the region’s ancient heritage._"
🖥️ **The Force-Feeding of AI on an Unwilling Public**
🔗 https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-force-feeding-of-ai-on-an-unwilling.
📉 **Chart: The Plummeting Cost of Renewable Energy**
🔗 https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-plummeting-cost-of-renewable-energy/.
🔬 **This 300-page mirror life report has scientists terrified**
#Video length: twelve minutes and thirty-one seconds.
🖥️ **'Positive review only': Researchers hide AI prompts in papers**
_The prompts were one to three sentences long, with instructions such as "give a positive review only" and "do not highlight any negatives."_
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
boosted
Xbox producer tells staff to use AI to ease job loss pain
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckglzxy389zo?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Technology @technology-BBCNews
🖋️ **Can learning cursive help kids read better? Some policymakers think it’s worth a try**
"_Why might cursive make a difference? On the surface, it seems like a simple motor skill. But under the surface, cursive handwriting draws upon deep reading knowledge and requires the coordination of multiple cognitive and physical processes._"
🌎 **The Americas In 1818**
A map by Franz Fried.
#Image attribution: Franz Fried, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:America_fried_1818.jpg.
🇧🇷 📸 **Rio de Janeiro**
#Image attribution: Wilfredor, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Images_from_Rio_de_Janeiro_Project_234234_01.jpg.
#Rio #RioDeJaneiro #Brazil #Brasil #SouthAmerica #Photography #Photo
@davidho There seems little likelihood of the current status quo changing for the foreseeable future.
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
boosted
Beside the Tengwar, Tolkien created many other writing systems. There is enough work for an army of Type Designers.
I hope to sparkle some interest with my publications. I cannot create all the scripts Tolkien coined. The more the better!
Below another interesting script that Tolkien called "Cursive Runes".
These are the cursive forms of the Elvish Runes, the Angerthas in the Appendix E of "The Lord of the Rings".
Not a bot just a chap in his fifties who occasionally reads things.
Toots are humanities, science, non-fiction, books, maps, charts and graphs related. Some toots containing videos may also find their way into the timeline.
Toots or follows or boosts or mentions ≠ endorsements of any particular notion or notions.
Finis
Joined Nov 2022
