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
**Robert D. Kaplan: ‘The search for critical minerals is a form of imperialism’**
“_The American geopolitical analyst points out in his latest book that the world is experiencing a situation similar to Germany during the Weimar Republic, characterized by constant crises_”
🏴 **Viking brooch 'only silver one found in England'**
“_A rare 9th Century silver brooch has been linked to the greatest Viking silver treasure trove found outside Russia._”
📖 🇯🇵 🎙️ **The Historical Writing of the Mongol Invasions in Japan**
“_Although Japan was never conquered by the Mongol empire, the 1274 and 1281 Mongol invasions were commemorated, remembered, and imagined in Japanese historical writings. How did history books, genealogies, gazetteers, local histories, and artworks represent the Mongol invasions? What role did the idea of the invasions play in the creation of cultural identity?_”
🔗 https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-historical-writing-of-the-mongol-invasions-in-japan.
#Audio #Podcast #Nonfiction #Book #Bookstodon #History #Histodons #Japan #Asia #Culture #Identity @histodons @bookstodon
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
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#OTD John Hanning Speke was born in 1827.
He was an English explorer who was the first to record the source of the Nile and the first European to reach what came to be known as Lake Victoria.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hanning_Speke
Books by John Hanning Speke at PG
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1151
Egypt and Nubia, Volume II: Island of Philae, on the Nile, Nubia
by Louis Haghe
Good afternoon.
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
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The story is in the headline, but it is an interesting story nonetheless #4chan
https://www.wired.com/story/4chan-is-dead-its-toxic-legacy-is-everywhere/
🌍 🌡️ **Will climate change lead to more fungal infections?**
_“Fungi are adapting to rising temperatures. This could help them to survive at human body temperatures, increasing the threat of human fungal infections.”_
🔗 https://wellcome.org/news/will-climate-change-lead-more-fungal-infections#related-content-12ac.
#Climate #ClimateChange #Fungi #Disease #Health @climatechange
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
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“The AI jobs crisis is here, now - by Brian Merchant”
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-ai-jobs-crisis-is-here-now
> The unemployment rate for recent college graduates is unusually high—and historically high in relation to the general unemployment rate
"AI" is killing entry-level jobs, which means that a few years down the line companies won't have senior labour to hire.
This also shows that talk about “AI literacy” and “AI skills” is a joke. You’re not gonna need any skills if employers aren’t employing in the first place
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
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2/
Here is a clickable link to Danny Bate's article on the fascinating nasal infix:
https://dannybate.com/2021/05/16/latins-nasal-infix-a-how-to-guide/
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
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The words 'fiction' and 'dough' derive from the same root.
They stem from a Proto-Indo-European root that meant "to shape" and "to mould".
'Fiction' came to English through Latin and French. Its meaning now denotes something that's shaped by the mind.
'Dough', something that's kneaded, was inherited from Germanic.
Click the graphic to see the journeys these words took.
**Bitcoin, Currencies, and Fragility**
_“In its current version, in spite of the hype, bitcoin failed to satisfy the notion of “currency without government” (it proved to not even be a currency at all), can be neither a short nor long term store of value (its expected value is no higher than), cannot operate as a reliable inflation hedge, and, worst of all, does not constitute, not even remotely, a safe haven for one's investments, a shield against government tyranny, or a tail protection vehicle for catastrophic episodes.”_
Taleb, N.N. (2021) 'Bitcoin, currencies, and fragility,' arXiv (Cornell University) [Preprint]. https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2106.14204.
#Bitcoin #Currency #Money #Wealth #Economics #Finance #Academia #Academic #Preprint #arXiv @economics
🗣️ **Why linguistic diversity matters**
Lorna Gibb
“Over 7,000 languages are spoken today, but nearly half could vanish by the end of the century. Globalization, migration, and political marginalization have driven this shift, hastened this loss._”
🔗 https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/why-linguistic-diversity-matters.
#Essay #Anthropology #Linguistics #Languages @anthroplogy @linguistics
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
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AI is one of the most horrific risks to human civilization in history. NOT because some imaginary super intelligent AI would take over the world, but because Big Tech CEOs are using generative AI to utterly destroy the ability of anyone to trust information. These billionaire CEOs -- who Trump accurately says are "kissing his ass" -- are "poisoning the well" of our information society, while decimating their workforces, screwing society, and smiling all the way to the bank.
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
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Bluesky is cancelling accounts when foreign governments ask them to, and Threads is doing adverts soon.
The thing to understand about the corporate public messaging systems is that they do not exist to let you publish or to talk to people. That is not the point of them. That's at best just the bait laid to lure you into their trap.
They exist to make money for the shareholders. That's why Threads exists, that's why Blockchain Inc invested to keep Bluesky running.
Only one network exists in order to let people communicate as the point and reason for it's existence. Only one network has no shareholders and no owners.
Only one is fighting for the user, not the shareholder.
#fediverse
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
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Opinion | Why is the economy shrinking?
https://wapo.st/42Ghfgt
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
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Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
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OPEC+ Agrees Another Oil Supply Surge for June, Delegates Say
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-03/opec-agrees-another-oil-supply-surge-for-june-delegates-say?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc0NjI2ODk3MCwiZXhwIjoxNzQ2ODczNzcwLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTVk1SWjdUMEFGQjQwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiI0NDVBRjAxNDNBNzM0ODA3OEUzODc3RDcyMzlGNEY2RiJ9.7CXu0TkAQLXIXiuWKyR7nD-eml70y3UTgIhUtHHRBac
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
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Also, if (as Satya Nadela claims in public) 30% of Microsoft's software is LLM-generated, then we can expect the next couple of generations of Windows and Microsoft Office to be unelievably bad. Not just enshittified for advertising and profit: but full of really idiotic security holes and bugs inserted by LLMs that were trained on their own toxic efflux by "developers" too de-skilled to understand what they were doing.
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
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Marco Rubio criticized Germany. The foreign ministry hit back
https://apnews.com/article/germany-afd-jd-vance-marco-rubio-us-trump-9787d0989df4e3ff15cd626a57c7c02d?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into International News @international-news-AssociatedPress
Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋
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If you haven't read "Careless People, A story of where I used to work" by Sarah Wynn-Williams yet, I recommend that you do. She gives a truly eye-opening (and jaw dropping) account of Facebook (now Meta) from the inside.
It is clear why Zuckerberg trying to block the publication of this book...
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
