James

I’m a simple man making his way through the galaxy. He/Him

[Strix @strixperegrinus]

Gregg Wallace? The historical filmmaker?

[Pulp Librarian @PulpLibrarian]

Postman Pat in Japanese. Very relaxing...

[Shmegmoid Johnson @shmegmoid]

Now hold the fuck on pimp

[💒 Reverend Pickle 💒 @TheIrishPickle]

ITS THAT TIME AGAIN

[Sharon Bitchell-Watts 🇵🇸🇱🇧 @comagirlx]

My childfree autistic ass explaining my weekend plans to the actual adults in my job x

[Mint Blitz @MintBlitz]

HALO 3 16 PLAYER CAMPAIGN IS WILDDDDDDDDDDD
We're entering the Halo Renaissance

[nick usen @nickusen]

It’s fine to eat the popcorn that rises above the top of the bag before the movie starts, that’s the Baron’s Delight. But you must be weary of digging too greedily into the popcorn inside the bag before the previews even end, that is the Duke’s Lament

[Daily Mail @DailyMail]

CIA accused of using Ancestry and 23andMe to 'hunt down' alien bloodlines in millions of DNA tests https://t.co/yh9QbMtWUL

[Rex 🎃🖊️ @RexRobotdude]

HOW DO YOU LOSE KOJIMA

[EVM1885 @evm1885]

Mr. Wiskers is doing some damn good biscuits. Sometimes he drops some ash but it's ok.

[Neb | 🏳️‍🌈 @NebsGoodTakes]

best part of every witcher 3 quest is when geralt realizes what monster he's dealing with this time and goes "ah fuck"

[Flonc @FloncLive]

I've made some english versions of my info graphics to help you prepare for the innevetable Pokémon Bank shutdown on the 26th February 2027.

Get your Pokémon and Shinys on Home before its to late!

Please share and repost!

[Girth Brooks @crackawdajuice]

If smurfs and minions were real I would incite a race war between them

[fag daughter🐦‍⬛𓅨 @fag_daughter]

basically the way electronics works is, you summon a demon to do your work for you. and it wants nothing more than to return underground (to hell, where it belongs), and you're tricking it into running through mazes to perform calculations and actuate motors, BUT—

[James @WarsmithJames]

@foliosociety @Jedlar @Tobess__

[aimée 🇮🇪🇵🇸 @sapphyreblayze]

It's actually crazy how well she nails both the style of singing and the 'fittest bird on the council estate' aesthetic.

[James @WarsmithJames]

Her full name is Zendaya is Meechee

[★☆★☆★ @5sta_reze]

Robert Pattinson reveals he does not know Zendaya’s full name… then he gave it a try

Zendaya: “Okay… what’s my full name?”

Robert Pattinson: “Oh God damn”

“oh no you have a middle name too… oh fuck that i have no idea”

Zendaya: “I have a name and two last names technically”

Robert Pattinson: “i know you’re not…”

Zendaya: “What, do you no know my last name?”

Robert Pattinson: “I’m gonna take a pass on that one”

Zendaya: “It is Googleable, but it is not something that i just go out and tell people”

Robert Pattinson: “Zendaya Coleman Domingo”

Zendaya: “Coleman Domingo is perfect, yes.”

[James @WarsmithJames]

Calcite?

[ArchaeoHistories @histories_arch]

For over a thousand years, historians thought the Viking "sunstone" was nothing more than a myth, until the ocean gave up its secret...

The Norse sagas repeatedly referenced a mysterious object called a "sólarsteinn" or sunstone, a navigational tool so powerful that Viking sailors could locate the exact position of the sun even on the most overcast and cloudy days. For centuries, scholars debated whether this was real technology or simply folklore embellished over generations of retelling. Most assumed it was legend. They were wrong.

In 2013, marine archaeologists excavating a British warship that sank near the Channel Islands in 1592 made a stunning discovery buried among the wreckage. Alongside navigational instruments including a pair of dividers and a slate, they found a rectangular chunk of translucent crystal. Testing confirmed it was Iceland spar, a remarkably pure form of calcite with extraordinary optical properties. The fact that it was found stored alongside other precision navigation tools was not a coincidence.

Iceland spar possesses a property called birefringence, meaning it splits a single beam of light entering the crystal into two separate beams. When you hold the crystal up toward the sky and slowly rotate it, the two beams will vary in brightness independently until, at one specific angle of rotation, they become perfectly equal in intensity. That precise angle points directly toward the sun, regardless of whether the sun is visible to the naked eye. Cloud cover, fog, and even twilight conditions cannot defeat it.

Researchers from the University of Rennes in France conducted extensive testing and published their findings in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A. Their experiments demonstrated that Iceland spar could locate the sun's position with an accuracy of within one degree, even under completely overcast skies. For Viking navigators crossing the North Atlantic toward Iceland, Greenland, and eventually North America, this accuracy would have meant the difference between a successful voyage and sailing hopelessly off course into open ocean.

The Viking Age spanned roughly 793 to 1066 AD, and during this period Norse sailors were completing oceanic crossings that would not be replicated by other European cultures for another 400 years. Historians had long puzzled over how they achieved such consistent navigational precision without magnetic compasses, which did not reach Europe until the 12th century. The sunstone appears to be a significant part of that answer.

What makes the Channel Islands find especially compelling is that the 1592 shipwreck is far outside the traditional Viking era, suggesting that knowledge of this navigational technique survived and was still being used by European sailors centuries after the Viking Age officially ended. The crystal was not a relic or a curiosity on that ship. It was working equipment.

The sagas specifically describe King Olaf consulting a sunstone on a cloudy day to verify the position of the sun, with a separate observation then confirming the stone's accuracy. For generations this was dismissed as poetic invention. Science has now confirmed that every element of that description is physically possible and practically achievable with a simple piece of Icelandic calcite.

The Vikings were not lucky explorers stumbling across new lands by accident. They were sophisticated navigators armed with technology so elegant and effective that it required no moving parts, no maintenance, and no power source beyond the sky itself.

📷 : the original calcite crystal alongside Elizabethan navigation dividers next to a cannon

Alderney Museum

#archaeohistories