Bo 🕳️

Yapping about wine, NBA, music, cocktail culture, tennis, concerts..

[Bo 🕳️ @Splavski]

https://t.co/WNSKglgG2k

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

In 2022 a team of Czech and Montenegrin anthropologists published the most comprehensive height survey ever conducted in the Western Balkans. They measured 47,158 people across Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, and Kosovo.

The result overturned an assumption that had stood for fifty years. The tallest 18-year-olds in the world are not Dutch.

They are from Montenegro. The average 18-year-old male in Montenegro is 182.9 cm. In Dalmatia, 183.7 cm. There is a continuous belt running from the Adriatic coast through Herzegovina into central Montenegro where average male height exceeds 184 cm. In some towns it is over 187 cm.

This is the highest mean stature ever documented in any human population.

The strange part is that the Balkans are not rich. GDP per capita in Montenegro is roughly a fifth of the Netherlands. Protein intake is well below Western European levels. By every conventional metric, the Western Balkans should be producing average heights similar to Bulgaria or Romania.

Instead they are producing the tallest men on earth.

The explanation is genetic. Y-chromosome haplogroup I-M170, present in over 70% of men in Herzegovina, correlates with male height across all 55 European and Near Eastern populations the researchers tested. Wherever the haplogroup is common, the men are tall.

The haplogroup is descended from the Gravettian culture of the Upper Palaeolithic. The Gravettians were big-game hunters. They specialised, for roughly 15,000 years, in killing mammoth, bison, reindeer, and aurochs across Europe. They ate, in caloric terms, almost exclusively animal products. The most meat-heavy diet documented in the European archaeological record. Hundreds of generations of selection pressure for converting animal protein into skeletal stature.

When the megafauna disappeared, most Gravettian populations dispersed and intermarried with incoming farmers from the Near East, who carried different haplogroups associated with shorter stature. The Western Balkans, isolated by the Dinaric Alps, retained an unusually high proportion of the original hunter genetics.

The men of Herzegovina are the genetic descendants of mammoth hunters who spent the Ice Age eating fat and meat in quantities no modern population approaches.

They are still tall, on a sub-optimal modern diet, because the genes were selected for height by 15,000 years of animal-based eating.

If their nutrition reaches Northern European levels, the prediction is that average male height in central Herzegovina will reach 190 cm within two generations. Six foot three. As an average.

The Dutch built their height in 150 years on dairy.

The men of the Dinaric Alps built theirs over 15,000 years on mammoth.

And the variable, in both cases, was the animal.

[Physics & Astronomy Zone @zone_astronomy]

The highest quality video of the moon was just released… this is so beautiful.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

If you're under 53 years old, you have never once been alive while a human was farther than 250 miles from Earth. Tonight, four astronauts are heading 252,000 miles out. That's a thousand times farther than any person has gone in your lifetime.

The 250-mile ceiling is where the International Space Station floats. Every astronaut since December 1972 has been stuck in that zone. Spacewalks, science experiments, cool photos from orbit, sure. But nobody left the neighborhood.

The last crew to go farther was Apollo 17. December 1972. Nixon was president. The internet didn't exist. Cell phones were 11 years away. The youngest member of that crew is now 90 years old.

The farthest any human has ever been from Earth is 248,655 miles. The Apollo 13 crew set that number in 1970, and they didn't mean to. Their oxygen tank blew up, and the emergency route home took them farther out than anyone before or since. Tonight's crew will break that record on purpose.

And the crew itself. Victor Glover becomes the first Black astronaut to leave Earth's neighborhood. Christina Koch becomes the first woman. Jeremy Hansen, a Canadian fighter pilot, becomes the first non-American to do so. When they come home, they'll slam into the atmosphere at 25,000 mph, faster than any human has ever traveled.

The Moon's south pole has ice. Water ice, sitting in craters so deep that sunlight hasn't hit them in billions of years. A 2024 NASA study found way more of it than anyone expected. You can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which gives you rocket fuel, breathable air, and drinking water, all made on the Moon instead of hauled up from Earth. George Sowers at Colorado School of Mines calculated that Moon-made fuel could shave $12 billion off a single trip to Mars. The Moon is a gas station on the road to Mars.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced last week a $20 billion plan to build a permanent base at the South Pole over the next seven years, with landings every six months. China is developing its own lunar lander and spacesuit, aiming for a crewed landing by 2030. The Artemis program has burned through $93 billion so far, and the first actual surface landing is penciled in for 2028. There's a real question of who gets there first this time around.

Harrison Schmitt walked on the Moon in December 1972 as part of Apollo 17. He's 90. Asked about it this week, he sounded pretty relaxed. "Mars is attainable," he said. "We're humans. That's what we've always done."

[Steve Krakauer @SteveKrak]

There was consensus that 2024 was the "podcast election," where Trump's interviews on non-political shows with huge audiences like Joe Rogan, Theo Von, Andrew Schulz, and Shawn Ryan moved the needle in gaining the support of non-MAGA types.

Now these same voices are ardently against Trump's Iran war actions, and there are absurd efforts to attempt to diminish the influence and impact of these same shows.

The reason Trump's 2024 strategy worked was not to convince MAGA hat wearers to vote for him - those obviously were in already. The reason he went on Rogan and Von and Ryan was to expand the universe of support. Trying to reach independents... and non-political types to get off their couches.

Those voices clearly still have massive power, and now they are driving support against Trump and Iran with their large audiences.

This focus on "MAGA Republican" support - represented by around 15% of all Americans - is a red herring. These individuals will support Trump no matter what. A key question is whether the coalition that won him 2024 is drifting from Trump over Iran, ahead of crucial 2026 midterms.

[Fascinating @fasc1nate]

A great way to see Van Gogh's "Starry Night" is to stare at the center of the spiral for 20 seconds and then look at the painting.

Why Starry Night was so famous: https://t.co/P8BvRGohvu

[Bo 🕳️ @Splavski]

@MichaelKarvelis @FlyByKnite @stanverrett @PabloTorre 🤮🤮

[NO CONTEXT HUMANS @HumansNoContext]

Does your country receive many tourists?

[user @user84829272]

When your dog gets fat you feed them less and walk them more. When you get fat you start on a peating keto carnivore intermittent fasting diet while standing on a vibrational plate and taking an esoteric vitamin stack + Chinese peptides.

[Pepsi @pepsi]

We were going to post something inspirational, but then we remembered we’re a beverage.

[Caleb Watney @calebwatney]

Crazy that the second verse of Jingle Bells is mainly about roasting an emaciated horse

[The New York Times @nytimes]

From @TheAthleticFC: Which nation is most likely to win the 2026 World Cup? We ranked all 64 teams. https://t.co/NoJt9huyno

[emini tic @TicTocTick]

For the first time ever in human history, Christmas is on 25/25/25.

This phenomenon will never happen again.

[Bo 🕳️ @Splavski]

@TomerAzarly Pathetic

[alcaraz archive @alcarchive]

This picture is incredible.

[Bo 🕳️ @Splavski]

@Steven_Hyden Nice. Was not aware of LA Friday and Live at Wiltern’s existance. (Sticky Fingers live at Fonda not bad either)

[Bo 🕳️ @Splavski]

@MattWelch I’m from originally from Croatia, and for sure named many of pet bathtub Carps myself as a kid. RIP

[Bo 🕳️ @Splavski]

Down but never out, indefatigable Dodgers are back-to-back World Series champs #worldseries https://t.co/JRMwUpEax7