Greg

when in doubt, take the back door out

[Spencer Askew @spencer_askew]

The discourse around Achilles the last week has made it clear how difficult it is to climb into a pre-Christian mind, even for non-Christians.

He is strong, concerned with honor, unmatched in battle, loyal to his comrades, and driven to a fault. He relents in his anger when Priam approaches him for mercy.

He is also petty and cruel. He sulks in his tent while his friends die because Agamemnon bruised his honor. His longing for personal fame and glory was elevated above everything else.

To the pre-Christian mind, this made him more heroic, not less. Flaws like wrath or pettiness didn’t disqualify a hero. In fact, they were part of the package. Achilles embodies the Homeric ideal of the warrior.

Christian ethics, however, elevated self-sacrifice and humility as the true marks of integrity. Christianity was a reset to the cultural moral imagination.

So for many, Achilles feels quite alien. Magnificent in some ways, repellent in others. We have much to learn from him, but it isn’t all good.

[Megalithic Mysteries @Megalithic12000]

🚨 MASSIVE NEWS: A second Sphinx may have just been detected beneath the Giza Plateau.

🔹Team claims 80% confidence
🔹Buried under 180ft of hardened sand
🔹Italian researchers used satellite radar
🔹Dream Stele depicts two sphinx figures
🔹Vertical shafts match the original Sphinx
🔹Scans show a structure mirroring the Sphinx

Filippo Biondi says the alignment from Khafre's Pyramid to the known Sphinx creates a geometric mirror line pointing to the buried location.

Preliminary scans reveal passageways and dense vertical walls consistent with underground shafts.

Beyond the second Sphinx, the team believes they're measuring something even larger. An underground megastructure beneath the entire plateau.

Zahi Hawass dismissed this years ago, claiming the area has been dug by too many archaeologists. But satellite radar sees what shovels never could.

If there really is a twin guardian buried under 180 feet of solidified sand, what else is down there?

[Daily Mail US @Daily_MailUS]

BREAKING: A SECOND Sphinx detected in Egypt as scans hint at 'underground megastructure'

[Patrick Bet-David @patrickbetdavid]

Whether you support the war with Iran or not, let’s be honest about one thing:

No one knows how this ends.

No expert.
No analyst.
No politician.

I know this personally.

I lived in Tehran during the Iran–Iraq war (1980–1988). Eight years of uncertainty. Eight years of fear.

There’s a sound from that time that has never left my mind.

A voice over the loudspeaker saying:

“Tavajoh, tavajoh, alāmate ghermez.”
توجه توجه، علامت قرمز

Attention. Attention. Red alert.

Signaling that enemy aircraft or missiles have been detected.

As a child, that was the most terrifying voice imaginable.

I wouldn’t wish that sound on my worst enemy.

War destroys everything in its path:

• Lives
• Economies
• Families
• Mental and emotional health
• And it creates generations seeking revenge for loved ones lost

It’s ugly. It’s unpredictable. And it rarely ends the way anyone expects.

Emotions are high right now. Everyone has an opinion.

But beyond politics and social media debates, one truth remains:

War is hell.

I pray this ends as quickly as possible with the fewest casualties possible.

I pray that our leaders make wise decisions that don’t escalate this into something bigger than it already is.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

I’m hopeful all matters will be considered while making decisions the next few days and for it to not escalate into something that we may regret.

Thank you God!

[New York Post @nypost]

South Korean scientists create life-saving spray to stop bleeding instantly https://t.co/OlPeIu7kV2

[DiscussingFilm @DiscussingFilm]

Apple has landed the rights to turn ‘MISTBORN’ into a film franchise & ‘THE STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE’ into a TV series.

Brandon Sanderson will write, produce and consult on all projects.

(Source: https://t.co/Ka6RvxmT3S)

[doomer @uncledoomer]

we need his entire body of work and research backed up on like 100 drives right now

whoever killed him must have thought he was on the verge of some kind of breakthrough

[Brad Lander @bradlander]

Extraordinary courage from Ahmed El Ahmad, a Muslim, 43-year-old father of two, who bravely risked his life to save his neighbors celebrating Hanukkah.

Praying for his full & speedy recovery.

And so deeply inspired by his example.

[𝐍𝐢𝐨𝐡 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐠 🇮🇷 ✡︎ @NiohBerg]

This was the final post from Polish student Klaudia Karkowska, before she was brutally violated and fatally wounded by a Venezuelan migrant.

She suffered for two weeks before dying.

When you ask why Poland fiercely protects its borders, this is why.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This strange square 👇 is undoubtedly the most extraordinary work of literature in human history. Yet, unfortunately, barely anyone in the West has ever heard of it.

There was this woman poet in 4th century China called Su Hui (蘇蕙), a child genius who had reportedly mastered Chinese characters by age 3.

At 21 years old, heartbroken by her husband who left her for another woman, she decided to encode her feelings in a structure so intricate, so beautiful, so intellectually staggering that it still baffles scholars to this day.

Came to be known as the Xuanji Tu (璇璣圖) - the "Star Gauge" or "Map of the Armillary Sphere" - it's a 29 by 29 grid of 841 characters that can produce over 4,000 different poems.

Read it forward. Read it backward. Read it horizontally, vertically, diagonally. Read it spiraling outward from the center. Read it in circles around the outer edge. Each path through the grid produces a different poem - all of them coherent, all of them beautiful, all of them rhyming, all of them expressing variations on the same themes of longing, betrayal, regret, and undying love.

The outer ring of 112 characters forms a single circular poem - believed to be both the first and longest of its kind ever written. The interior grid produces 2,848 different four-line poems of seven characters each. In addition, there are hundreds of other smaller and longer poems, depending on the reading method.

At the center a single character she left implied but unwritten: 心 (xin) - "heart." Later copyists would add it explicitly, but in Su Hui's original the meaning was even more beautiful: 4,000 poems, all orbiting the space where her heart used to be.

Take for instance the outer red grid of the Star Gauge. Starting from the top right corner and reading down, you get this seven-character quatrain:
仁智懷德聖虞唐，
貞志篤終誓穹蒼，
欽所感想妄淫荒，
心憂增慕懷慘傷。

In pinyin, it is:
Rén zhì huái dé shèng yú táng,
zhēnzhì dǔ zhōng shì qióng cāng,
qīn suǒ gǎnxiǎng wàng yín huāng,
xīn yōu zēng mù huái cǎn shāng.

Notice how it rhymes? táng / cāng / huāng / shāng

The rough translation in English is: "The benevolent and wise cherish virtue, like the sage-kings Yao and Shun, With steadfast will I swear to the heavens above, What I revere and feel - how could it be wanton or dissolute? My heart's sorrow grows, longing brings only grief."

Now read it from the bottom to the top and you get this entirely different seven-character quatrain:
傷慘懷慕增憂心，
荒淫妄想感所欽，
蒼穹誓終篤志貞，
唐虞聖德懷智仁。

The pinyin:
Shāng cǎn huái mù zēng yōu xīn,
huāngyín wàngxiǎng gǎn suǒ qīn,
cāngqióng shì zhōng dǔzhì zhēn,
táng yúshèngdé huái zhì rén.

It rhymes too: xīn and qīn, zhēn and rén

And the meaning is just as beautiful and coherent: "Grief and sorrow, longing fills my worried heart, Wanton and dissolute fantasies - is that what you revere? I swear to the heavens my constancy is true, May we embody the sage-kings' virtue, wisdom, and benevolence."

That's just 2 poems out of the over 4,000 you can construct from the Xuanji Tu!

At the very center of the grid, the 8 red characters wrapped around the central heart, she "signed" her poem with a hidden message:

詩圖璇玑，始平蘇氏。 "The poem-picture of the Armillary Sphere, by Su of Shiping."

Or reversed:
蘇氏詩圖，璇玑始平。 "Su's poem-picture - the Armillary Sphere begins in peace."

Many scholars, and even emperors, throughout Chinese history have been completely obsessed by Su Hui's puzzle.

For instance, in the Ming dynasty, a scholar named Kang Wanmin (康萬民) devoted his entire life to the poems (https://t.co/4exP9zpqbc), ending up documenting twelve different reading methods - forward, backward, diagonal, radiating, corner-to-corner, spiraling - and extracting 4,206 poems. His book on the subject ("Reading Methods for the Xuanji Tu Poems", 璇璣圖詩讀法) runs to hundreds of pages.

Empress Wu Zetian herself, the legendary woman emperor of the Tang dynasty, wrote a preface to the Xuanji Tu around 692 CE (https://t.co/yW7aR73MPc).

Incredibly, there's even far more complexity to the Xuanji Tu than just the poems:

- The name 璇玑 (Xuanji) - Armillary Sphere - is astronomical in meaning and the way the poems can be read mirrors the way celestial bodies orbit around a fixed center. It's a model of the heavens.

- Her original work, with the characters woven on silk brocade, was in five colors (red, black, blue/green, purple, and yellow) which correspond to the Five Elements (五行) - the foundational Chinese philosophical system that explains how the universe operates. So it's also a model of the entire cosmic order according to ancient Chinese philosophy.

- It's also of course deeply mathematical with this 29 x 29 perfect square grid, with sub-squares, lines and rectangles, and a structure which allows for symmetrical reading patterns in all directions

- Last but not least, the content of the poems themselves contain multiple registers. On top of expressing her personal grief and longing for her husband, it's also filled with accusations against the concubine (Zhao Yangtai) he left her for, reflections on politics (with many references to sage-kings) and philosophical reflections.

So the Star Gauge is simultaneously:
- A love letter (expressing personal longing)
- A legal brief (arguing her case against her rival)
- A cosmological model (structured like the heavens)
- A Five Element diagram (encoding the fundamental structure of the world according to ancient Chinese philosophy)
- A mathematical construction with perfect symmetry and precision

And yet, for all this complexity, we should not forget this was all ultimately in service of the simplest human message imaginable: a 21-year-old woman asking the love of her life "come back to me".

Her husband did, eventually. According to what empress Wu Zetian herself wrote in her preface to the Xuanji Tu, when he received Su's brocade he was so "moved by its supreme beauty" that he sent away his concubine and returned to his wife. As the story goes, they lived together until old age.

The heart at the center was filled after all.

[Dean @ideanoc17]

this is what you get when you invest in fucking nuclear

[Ron Wyden @RonWyden]

EPSTEIN BOMBSHELL: my staff is releasing a new report showing JPMorgan Chase executives – all the way to the top – enabled Epstein's sex trafficking operation. You're going to want to read this. https://t.co/vFS6o6lA10

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

Ok, I looked into this because sometimes claims that "China invents Y" can be somewhat exaggerated. But this is real, and completely insane.

This technology called "Bone 02" (inspired by the well-known "502 glue" in China) has been developed for the past 9 years by a team of orthopedic surgeons in Zhejiang province. The team leads are Professor Fan Shunwu (范顺武, Director of the Orthopedics Department at Zhejiang University) and Lin Xianfeng (https://t.co/IERBHn5xPa).

It's inspired by oysters because the researchers noticed their extraordinary ability to firmly attach themselves in harsh underwater environment by secreting a special adhesive known as bio-cement, which creates a strong chemical interaction with surfaces and hardens quickly.

The properties of the glue are almost miraculous (sources: https://t.co/Lw5PYmPKeN and https://t.co/16Dxe8TXFZ):
- Nearly instant adhesion in blood-soaked wet physiological environments (it just takes 2-3 minutes)
- Extremely strong adhesive properties (bonding tensile force of over 400 pounds - over 181 kg)
- Complete biodegradability that naturally absorbs after about 6 months as the bone heals (no need for secondary surgery previously required in conventional treatments)
- Vast reduction of infection risks related to the traditional metal plates and screws normally needed for bone surgery
- Minimally invasive and rapid surgery since you just need a small opening large enough to apply the glue (as opposed to a complex surgery attaching metal fixations)

This glue could be especially useful for fractures with small bone fragments which are very difficult to fix with metal plates and screws.

The glue has already undergone a proper "prospective, multicenter, blinded, randomized, parallel-controlled, non-inferiority clinical trial" with over 150 patients (https://t.co/4dy4hsPxD0). They've announced positive results - the glue "achieved seamless bonding of all fracture fragments" - and will soon publish the peer-reviewed paper in an orthopedics journal detailing full trial data.

They've launched a company for the product called 源囊生物 (Yuannang Bio) which just raised 2 weeks ago RMB100 million in Series A financing (https://t.co/XrBZAa2Gx0).

[Calvin and Hobbes Fan Account @Calvinn_Hobbes]

Publicly decline the invite, privately show up for cookies. Flawless strategy. #CalvinandHobbes

[Wylfċen @wylfcen]

The story of how this was discovered is crazy:

>Be an Egyptian farmer named Muhammad Ali

>Dig for nitrate-rich fertilizer along the Nile

>Strike something hard with your shovel

>It turns out to be a skeleton. Whatevs

>Wait a minute! Next to the skeleton is a large earthenware jar

>“I’d better not open this. What if it contains a genie? Wait! It could also contain gold. Time to find out!”

>“Drat, it’s just a bunch of old books. Oh well, maybe they’re worth something. I’ll tear them apart to split them with the boys”

>Your friends don’t want them, so you wrap them in your turban and store them in a barn with your animals, using some of the pages to start a fire

>Hear that the man who killed your father is sleeping on the side of a road. Hack him to death and eat his heart

>Learn you just killed the son of a local sheriff

>“Oh no! The cops are gonna search my house, where they’ll find my precious books.” Hand the books over to a local Coptic priest for safekeeping

>The priest’s brother-in-law teaches English, and has some inkling of the books’ worth. Naturally, he travels to Cairo to sell them

>The authorities confiscate the books, but eventually allow the priest's brother-in-law to sell them to the highest bidder. This happens to be the Coptic Museum

>A French scholar happens to be visiting the museum — the first person to fully recognize the books’ significance. He tracks down the remaining books in the collection and lends them to UNESCO for study and publication.

[Greg @gregorn102]

Why am I cryin in the club rn

https://t.co/k71cngmxhY

[Greg @gregorn102]

How beautiful a thing

[Colossal Biosciences® @colossal]

SOUND ON. You’re hearing the first howl of a dire wolf in over 10,000 years. Meet Romulus and Remus—the world’s first de-extinct animals, born on October 1, 2024.

The dire wolf has been extinct for over 10,000 years. These two wolves were brought back from extinction using genetic edits derived from a complete dire wolf genome, meticulously reconstructed by Colossal from ancient DNA found in fossils dating back 11,500 and 72,000 years. This moment marks not only a milestone for us as a company but also a leap forward for science, conservation, and humanity. From the beginning, our goal has been clear: “To revolutionize history and be the first company to use CRISPR technology successfully in the de-extinction of previously lost species.” By achieving this, we continue to push forward our broader mission on—accepting humanity’s duty to restore Earth to a healthier state.

But this isn’t just our moment—it’s one for science, our planet, and humankind. All of which we love and are passionate about. Now, close your eyes and listen to that howl once more. Think about what this means for all of us.

[Greg @gregorn102]

The future is now!

[Justine Moore @venturetwins]

New Executive Order: all podcasts must now be Muppet-style.

They are infinitely more watchable and entertaining.

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🚨OZONE HOLE HEALING OVER ANTARCTICA—CLOSURE IN SIGHT BY 2035

The ozone layer above Antarctica is on the mend, with scientists confirming a recovery thanks to slashed CFC use.

First spotted in 1985, the hole—once a UV threat causing cancer and crop damage—is shrinking, potentially closing for good if trends hold, according to a new Nature study.

MIT’s Dr. Susan Solomon:

"There's been a lot of qualitative evidence.

This is really the first study that has quantified confidence in the recovery."

Despite recent warm weather masking some gains, the drop in ozone-depleting chemicals outpaces natural shifts like El Niño.

A global win or a fragile fix? This turnaround proves we can heal our planet.

Source: Daily Mail, Nature, NASA

[Greg @gregorn102]

Freedom of Assembly, Freedom of Speech. First Amendment 🇺🇸🇺🇸

[Krystal Ball @krystalball]

So glad free speech is back