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
The real origin story of Easter hot cross buns
https://www.the-independent.com/life-style/food-and-drink/hot-cross-bun-recipe-origin-b2735299.html
Early Christians started marking bread with a cross for two reasons
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
boosted
May your days be filled with ripe figs and all such delicious delights! This #FrescoFriday we celebrate this very tempting bowl of figs that was part of a fresco from the Villa of Poppaea in Oplontis.
The Villa Poppaea was preserved in the aftermath of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE. Oplontis was very close and just to the north-west of Pompeii. Finds from the site suggest the villa may have been connected with Nero’s wife Poppaea Sabina. If so, this may explain the exceptional frescoes and mosaics discovered there.
🇦🇺 
**Why Australia’s Miracle Economy Is Failing**
Bloomberg Originals
“_The country’s GDP per capita fell for 21 consecutive months. Household disposable income is going down, while household debt is going up. The cost of living crisis will likely be front-and-center in federal elections._”
#Video length: nine minutes and thirty-six seconds.
🇬🇧 🇮🇳 **Company-State at Home: The East India Company and the Fiscal System in Eighteenth-Century Britain**
“_This article shows that fiscal capacity was not created only by government bureaucracies: the ‘company-state at home’ model presented here complements the narrative of the ‘fiscal-military state’ by showing that much fiscal revenue from trade was realized through the action of the English East India Company (EIC). Lacking the capacity to enact exhaustive laws, carry out complex calculations, or effectively manage a large bureaucracy, the English state relied on the administrative capacity of the EIC to collect customs on the East Indies trade._”
Karolina Hutková, Ernesto Dal Bó, Lukas Leucht, Noam Yuchtman, Company-State at Home: The East India Company and the Fiscal System in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Past & Present, 2025;, gtaf009, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtaf009.
#OpenAccess #OA #Article #DOI #History #Histodon #Histodons #UK #UnitedKingdom #Britain #India #EastIndiaCompany #C18th #Academia #Academics @histodon @histodons
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
boosted
Meta is set to train its AI models with Europeans' public data, and you can stop it doing so
https://www.techradar.com/computing/cyber-security/meta-is-set-to-train-its-ai-models-with-europeans-public-data-and-you-can-stop-it-doing-so?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Technology (UK Edition) @technology-uk-edition-FlipboardUK
💻 📸 📱 **Tools like Apple’s photo Clean Up are yet another nail in the coffin for being able to trust our eyes **
T.J. Thomson
“_The tool uses generative artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse the scene and suggest elements that might be distracting. You can see those highlighted in the screenshot below._
_You can then tap the suggested element to remove it or circle elements to delete them. The device then uses generative AI to try to create a logical replacement based on the surrounding area._”
#ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Apple #Photography #Photo #Smartphones #Technology @ai
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
boosted
Most #LLMs over-generalized scientific results beyond the original articles
...even when explicitly prompted for accuracy!
The #AI was 5x worse than humans, on average!
Newer models were the worst.🤦♂️
🔓 Accepted in #RoyalSociety Open #Science: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2504.00025
📉 **5 Charts from a Volatile 2 Weeks**
Phil Mackintosh
_“The past two weeks have been busy for markets. Volatility spiked and a number of new trading records were hit.”_
🔗 https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/5-charts-volatile-2-weeks.
**Publicly accessible digital tool for data on trans-Atlantic slave trade will be supported by Hutchins Center, Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative**
Christy DeSmith
_“Today, its multisource dataset, currently housed at Rice University, features information on more than 30,000 slaving vessels that traversed the Atlantic between the 16th and 19th centuries. Also documented are details on nearly 221,000 individuals involved with the trans-Atlantic slave trade, including ship captains and the humans they trafficked.”_
🔗 https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/04/slavevoyages-finds-new-home-at-harvard/.
#History #Histodon #Histodons #Slavery #Digital #Data #Harvard @histodon @histodons
🗞️ 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 **250 Years Ago: News of the Battles of Lexington and Concord**
#History #Histodon #Histodons #UK #UnitedKingdom #USA #US #UnitedStates @histodon @histodons
✝️ **The Greco-Roman Origins of the Eucharist**
ReligionForBreakfast
#Video length: thirty-three minutes and forty-eight seconds.
🇬🇧 **Extreme drought contributed to barbarian invasion of late Roman Britain, tree-ring study reveals**
“_Researchers argue that Picts, Scotti and Saxons took advantage of famine and societal breakdown caused by an extreme period of drought to inflict crushing blows on weakened Roman defences in 367 CE. While Rome eventually restored order, some historians argue that the province never fully recovered._”
#History #Histodon #Histodons #Romans #RomanEmpire #Britain #UK #UnitedKingdom #Drought @histodon @histodons
🖋️ **Are all writing systems equally easy / hard?**
💻 📈 **These four charts sum up the state of AI and energy**
🔗 https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/17/1115320/four-charts-ai-energy/.
#Graphs #Charts #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Technology #Tech #Energy #FossilFuels @ai
🗺️ **A Usefully Useless Projection**
_“Friends, I’m excited to share that I have just completed a world physical map, in my new asymmetric monstrosity projection.”_
🔗 https://somethingaboutmaps.wordpress.com/2025/04/10/a-usefully-useless-projection/.
🇬🇧 🇪🇺 **Brits banned from bringing back cheese and meat from EU**
Channel 4 News
“_British tourists will no longer be able to bring back cheese or meat products from the European Union - even a sandwich or products from duty free._”
#Video length: twenty seconds.
🔗 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re6l7dVXIrA.
#News #UK #UnitedKingdom #EU #Europe #EuropeanUnion #Cheese #Meat
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
boosted
Seems bad.
"Half the World’s People Depend on Rice. New Research Says Climate Change Will Make it Toxic"
🌡️ 🌍 **OBSERVER: Europe’s Warmest Year on Record—Striking Climate Contrasts in 2024**
_“2024 was the warmest year on record for Europe. We observed the longest heatwave in southeastern Europe and record glacier mass loss in Scandinavia and Svalbard. But 2024 was also a year of marked climate contrasts between eastern and western Europe, said C3S Director Carlo Buontempo.”
#Europe #Climate #Report #ClimateChange #Environment @climatechange
**Drowning in junk science: Is there any hope at all?**
🔗 https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/04/17/drowning-in-junk-science-is-there-any-hope-at-all/.
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
boosted
Average US rate on a 30-year mortgage climbs to 6.83%, highest level since late February
https://apnews.com/article/mortgage-rates-housing-interest-financing-home-7cba4383c29508111817ad0280d419ac?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Business and Finance @business-and-finance-AssociatedPress
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
