pH

Editor posting on architecture, housing, design, marketing, retail, and, more recently, rare and collectible books.

[Pub @PubWanghaf]

ME AT THE START: the hat seems a bit performative

ME AFTER THE SECOND LINE: the hat isn’t hardly big enough

[pH @pHammerbeck]

The after life of the World Trade Center is everywhere. There are 1,800 September 11 memorials scattered across the world that use steel from the Twin Towers, through a program aimed at giving rubble from the national tragedy a second life. https://t.co/cEc7nf5qDJ

[pH @pHammerbeck]

Memory eternal to the great Wendell Berry…

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

JUST IN: Ford rehires more than 300 veteran human engineers after it says AI failed to deliver the same level of expertise.

[ArchaeoHistories @histories_arch]

When German soldiers finally reached the Louvre, they found the most impressive collection of empty frames ever assembled. Even the Venus de Milo on display was a plaster copy.

This is the evacuation of the Louvre's collection in 1939, organized by Jacques Jaujard, director of France's national museums, who saw the war coming before most people did. On August 25, 1939, he closed the Louvre for three days, officially for repairs. For three days and nights, staff, art students, and workers borrowed from a nearby department store packed paintings, statues, and treasures into wooden crates, marked by color according to importance: yellow for valuable, green for major works, red for world treasures. The Mona Lisa's crate got three red circles.

On August 28, a convoy of more than 200 trucks carrying close to 1,900 crates left Paris for the Château de Chambord in the Loire Valley. Some pieces were too large to crate at all. The Raft of the Medusa had to be covered with a blanket and hauled on an open truck, and when it brushed a power line passing through Versailles en route, it knocked out electricity across the entire town.

That was just the beginning of the journey. As German forces advanced, the most valuable works kept moving to stay ahead of them. The Mona Lisa alone was relocated five separate times, from Chambord to Louvigny, then an abbey, then a museum in Montauban, then a château in the Lot, always one step ahead of the front line.

Before Allied forces moved to retake France, Jaujard had smuggled the hiding locations to them, confirmed through a coded message read aloud on BBC radio: "La Joconde a le sourire," the Mona Lisa is smiling. Curators painted enormous "Musée du Louvre" signs onto the grounds of the châteaux so pilots overhead would know not to bomb them.

In total, roughly 4,000 works from the Louvre, plus pieces from 200 other French museums, spent the war scattered across more than 70 hiding places. Every single one eventually made it home.

© Forever Paris

#archaeohistories

[Anthropic @AnthropicAI]

The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees.

The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance.

Access to all other Claude models is not affected.

We apologize for this disruption to our customers. We believe this is a misunderstanding and are working to restore access as soon as possible.

Read our full statement: https://t.co/bwn0sximKZ

[Reuters Business @ReutersBiz]

Chris Olah, co-founder of AI company Anthropic, said artificial intelligence development cannot be left solely to tech companies, calling for greater oversight from religious leaders, governments and civil society. Read: https://t.co/FHGOlSw0Fj

[pH @pHammerbeck]

@malmesburyman A Soldier of the Great War, Mark
Helprin

[pH @pHammerbeck]

In its entirety. Stop, and settle in for an exceptional commencement speech …

[Scott Fowler @scott_fowler]

Eric Church is an NC treasure. I finally watched his whole UNC commencement speech instead of just the clips I had seen online, and it is fantastic.

[Goshawk Trades @GoshawkTrades]

Ken Griffin on the single factor he looks for when hiring at Citadel:

"show me an athlete who did well academically."

"an athlete because they know what it takes to win and they've had to experience loss."

talent is everywhere. what's rare is someone who knows how to lose, recover, and still perform at a high level.

same thing separates profitable traders from everyone else.

[Charlie Bilello @charliebilello]

Americans spent over $109 billion on lottery tickets last year, which is more than they spent on movies, books, concerts and sports tickets - combined.

[Culture Crave 🍿 @CultureCrave]

JetBlue deletes tweet after they were accused of surveillance pricing ✈️

A company rep says the post was an 'error'

[pH @pHammerbeck]

The great David Lynch on “It’s a Wonderful Life”

[pH @pHammerbeck]

Burning the prairie to save it. How a “green glacier” of trees is steadily taking over native grasslands. And why landowners are banding together to treat the problem with fire.
https://t.co/HhwHTGFy1I

[pH @pHammerbeck]

@exjon ICXC NIKA

[Fast Company @FastCompany]

Board games are quietly thriving in 2025—and Hasbro’s earnings just proved it. https://t.co/sDaMwyzw6y

[Eugene Kaspersky @e_kaspersky]

Researchers (not ours) have uncovered 57 dodgy Chrome extensions lurking in Google’s official Web Store that have around six million users and pretty crazy permissions. No hard proof of actual criminal activity – but they sure look like spyware or data stealers. More here: https://t.co/BeSr04g5Io. Stay safe!

[Robert Greene @RobertGreene]

Skills are like gold in the modern era.

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

🚨#BREAKING: Marco Rozenbroek, a Swannanoa NC resident, has confirmed he planted over 8,000 tulips, daffodils, hyacinth and other flowers across destroyed public parks in Western North Carolina.

This week, for the first time, they began to all fully bloom.

HERO!!!

[pH @pHammerbeck]

Shopify tells teams to consider AI before their next hire…

[tobi lutke @tobi]

I heard this internal memo of mine is being leaked right now, so here it is: