Andy Panther

[Merriam-Webster @MerriamWebster]

'Supposably' is a word.

supposably = “as may be conceived or imagined”

supposedly = "allegedly"

[Andy Panther @panther_andy]

The 85-million-year timeline of human evolution - New Scientist https://t.co/Fie2NuTxZs

[Night Sky Now @NightSkyNow]

🚨 James Webb Space Telescope has captured the Sombrero Galaxy in extraordinary detail.

[Brilliant Maps @BrilliantMaps]

Declassified 1993 Caucasus Ethnoreligious Map Created By The CIA

This 1993 ethnolinguistic map of the Caucasus is a revealing post-Dissolution of the Soviet Union regional intelligence-style maps.

It visually explains why the Caucasus became one of the most volatile regions of the former Soviet space in the early 1990s.

The map captures the extraordinary fragmentation of peoples across:

Georgia
Armenia
Azerbaijan
and the North Caucasus republics within Russia.

What makes it so striking is the density of tiny ethnolinguistic enclaves, especially in:

Dagestan
Chechnya
Ingushetia
Kabardino-Balkaria
and Karachay-Cherkessia.

The map divides populations into major linguistic/cultural families:

Caucasian peoples:
Georgians
Chechens
Ingush
Circassian groups
Dagestani peoples like Avars, Lezgins, Dargins, and Laks
Indo-European peoples:
Armenians
Ossetians
Kurds
Russians
Altaic/Turkic peoples:
Azeris
Kumyks
Karachays
Balkars
Nogays

This was an exceptionally consequential moment to publish such a map.

By 1993:

the USSR had collapsed,
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was raging,
War in Abkhazia was underway,
South Ossetia was unstable,
and Chechen separatism was escalating toward the First Chechen War.

The map essentially visualizes fault lines.

Several especially important regions stand out:

Nagorno-Karabakh appears as an Armenian-majority enclave inside Azerbaijan.
Abkhazia is shown as ethnically mixed rather than purely Georgian.
South Ossetia appears embedded inside Georgia but populated by Ossetians related to North Ossetians across the Russian border.
Dagestan appears as perhaps the most fragmented ethnolinguistic region on Earth.

The map is also important because it demonstrates how Soviet internal borders often ignored ethnic geography. Many autonomous republics contained multiple rival populations, creating instability once centralized Soviet control disappeared.

Cartographically, this is classic early-1990s strategic ethnographic mapping:

heavy use of color coding,
simplified terrain,
emphasis on administrative boundaries,
and highly compressed ethnic detail.

One of the most fascinating aspects is how accurate many of its implied tensions proved to be:

Chechnya erupted into war in 1994,
Nagorno-Karabakh remained contested for decades,
Russia later intervened in Georgia in 2008,
and ethnic fragmentation continues to shape Caucasus geopolitics today.

In many ways, this map is a visual forecast of the post-Soviet Caucasus conflicts that followed.

More Declassified 1990s CIA Maps: https://t.co/XgUBDSeiS5

[Drew Pierson @drewpiers0n]

circles growing in place

[Steve Stewart-Williams @SteveStuWill]

This photo of the sun might not seem too impressive… until you realize it was taken at night - not by looking up but by looking down, straight through the entire Earth, using neutrinos rather than light. Amazing! https://t.co/B11FRgpkkg

[The Babylon Bee @TheBabylonBee]

Science Pleads The 5th
https://t.co/3Ry6yTqSve

[MAZE @mazemoore]

November, 2020. Chris Cuomo rails against Dr. Scott Atlas, saying that Atlas should be hunted down and made to answer for advising people not to spend Thanksgiving alone.

Cuomo was a Fauci stooge. Cuomo said they talked every day during the pandemic.

[doomer @uncledoomer]

single women, single men, and married women earn roughly the same, and it's just married men that out earn everybody else. insane. what could possibly cause a married man to want to earn more money so badly he will do anything to make it happen? it makes no sense.

[Steve Stewart-Williams @SteveStuWill]

A common sex difference in humans and other animals: For a range of traits, males are more variable than females.

The Greater Male Variability Hypothesis: An excerpt from my book, A Billion Years of Sex Differences.

https://t.co/8JruB6zMQ5 [No paywall]

[Tymofiy Mylovanov @Mylovanov]

Zelenskyy: Three big threats we're tracking.

First, North Korea will send Russia 30,000 soldiers.

Second, Iran is sending Russia ballistic missiles.

Third, and biggest: China is helping Russia with satellites and targeting tech, to strike us more precisely. 1/

[Blake Burge @blakeaburge]

Major cheat code for life: Assume good things are still ahead. You are not behind. You are not too late. You are not disqualified by your past. One new season can change the entire story. Keep showing up with belief. The best chapters are often written after the hardest ones.

[Adam Grant @AdamMGrant]

It's sad that women's success is a threat to marriages.

544k couples, 29 countries: Separation is 36% more likely when women outearn their partners. The risk goes up further if they have children.

A woman's prosperity should be a source of pride, not relationship conflict.

[arctotherium @arctotherium42]

This is generically true - across almost all rich countries, women are 2-2.5x as likely to work for the state as men.

[Paul Weston @PWestoff]

Elon @elonmusk believes civil-war is coming to Britain. @zannymb mocks him. But Musk's neurological thinking is that of a cold-blooded computer operating on data, logic and pattern recognition. Zany Zanny's neurological thinking is emotional, data-free, and illogical. Musk succeeds so spectacularly because he grasps the reality of reality, be it science, engineering, or what will be political/social history tomorrow. The Zany creature's misplaced arrogance prevents her from recognising Musk's "Reality Genius" and shows in real time her acute affliction of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.