Tint

Me mum sent me this last week: Mark A Hollands, Boris T Gänsicke, Pier-Emmanuel Tremblay, Detlev Koester "Any colour you like: the diverse chromaticities of white dwarfs". This alludes to, and reverses, the famous Model T quote: most of these stars-in-retirement are white, median #F9F5FF to be precise. That would correspond to 6504 K / D65 white point.

That #FF is indeed in the B part of RGB, but they deem the blue negligible, correcting most textbooks. I take it that the blue stars are simply the brighter ones we've historically seen from further away.

Most white dwarf stars fall on a boring logarithmic-like curve by temperature, as one might expect. Sabine is saying our own Sun would be on the green side but all that yellow-to-red swamps it out.

However: outliers exist. These are metal-polluted. I don't find overlap between the two papers. Something like 080843.15 + 464028.64 should be WD J0808+4640, la?

Which is a pity. The "metals" here seem to skew toward lithium and stellar gas, not rocky planet mantles.

WD J1330+6435 is the one making the news at #DDFFB8. That #FF is in the G part of RGB. When I was a kid I asked my dad if green was possible in stars and he said that some elements look green in a fire.

Since then, uh. The Starflight game had some green stars but, by that age, I knew better. There was also Alastair Reynolds with his "green-fly" Dyson swarm, turning some stars green. Mind, both were main-sequence.

So, at last, this paper illustrates what my dad was trying to say, with an example he didn't have on-hand, because none of us did. (Green stars'd make more sense in the Starflight sequel which happens where the solar flares already happened.)

Other outliers are such as might look blue but are cooler than 6000 K. WD J2356–2054 in Draco shines only 4000 K. Here is strong Na[trium] (sodium) pollution.

Don't vote for Vivek

Mr Vivek Ramaswamy (hence, "Vivek" - because it's shorter) has mooted an advert although as far as I know not yet in television syndication, bringing Dr/Mrs Amy née-Stearns Acton's mother Donna Stearns-then-Arthur to testify against Amy.

Yeah. Her own daughter. This gon' get ugly.

Ms Laura Loomer is gung-ho on Vivek's side. Loomer is generally pro-Indian and pro-Republican, in this year's races anyway. I can understand being pro-both: seriously, despite this guy and his razixweeterz. I have long been unsure that Vivek is the right Indian or the right Republican to be daring a statewide race - anywhere, in the US or in India. But here we are discussing his opponent. Whom Vivek through surrogates down to mommy-dearest is accusing of dishonesty.

Scouting around the place, the accusation against Amy Acton's stepfather came from Amy Acton's biologic father. He leveled a charge of molestation against Mr Cledith Arthur, the non-biologic. Arthur got arrested and a grand jury found this to be credible. Arthur then fled Ohio taking the missus in tow, alighting in Pennsylvania. Ohio's legal system subsequently put Amy into the custody of her biologic father.

This brouhaha has, as of poasting, united both National Review (which at heart has been a pro-immigration rag, so aligned with V.R.) and the Huffington Post.

Ohio didn't forget the Arthur family and attempted to toss some warrants into Pennsylvania in 1981 and even in 1987, they say. That Arthur remained - per Ms Loomer - never convicted and never stood trial is indeed the best kind of correct... for Arthur.

Amy Acton's brother Mr Philip Stearns (note: no "Mr Arthur") is siding with Dr Acton. Other snippets of evidence include that Acton has suffered some slips into drunkenness and anger, which most healthy women might not suffer.

This all smells like Philip and Amy have honest memories of what happened, at least that Amy suffered something horrid at a too-young age from someone. Donna failed to protect from this to the extent she lost custody. What directly caused the damage? - at the time, Mr Arthur had a low estimation of his abilities to win his case in court. Also nobody was questioning Amy's story in 2019. It follows that Philip and Amy are honestly pinpointing the culprit, specifically.

At the very least Vivek's team was extremely unwise to dig this dirt into the media. So's Loomer. Stephen "Vodkapundit" Green is simply exercising tactical cowardice, like Vivek himself. Can't speak highly of Ace. And as of now I'm seeing at least seven Instacommenters raising the false-flag (as usual, it's not, if it were, Vivek would have disavowed this by now).

If you are an Ohio conservative, and we know from election results many of these exist, I suggest going downballot but putting the Constitution candidate for governor. Like I did here in Colorado, stuck with another terrible Republican who doesn't deserve a political career.

Joel's Zionism

This blog hasn't much looked in on the prophetic oracles of Joel - directly. It is in CBH excepting six examples of the "LBH" second-Temple cant of the Chronicler. It may or may not cite 'Abd-JehovahObadiah. To this end, John Dunne may offer a helpful project, looking in on the synopsis with Amos (pdf).

Joel looks forward to a new Eden, flowing with wine, focused upon Zion and her Temple. Amos, which is an elder text, has about the same except here the focus is on David's tent. Now: Amos is assuredly a northern text with Amos 6 being in dialect. But "David" as totem shows up in the words of outside opponents: in the north (Dan stele, of Hazael) and against the north (Moab stele, of Mesha). Tents, we should note, are mobile. Also Dunne argues that Amos bears real eyewitness reports of the earthquake in Jeroboam II's time.

We're not really here for Amos. We're just placing him early. He was a popular prophet in the CBH-speaking world, Isaiah and Jeremiah both using his work as to apply to the Jerusalem area. Dunne would add to that list, Joel; as another citer of Amos.

The Old Greek order of Prophets follows that scheme, where Joel "reflects" back on Amos. The MT has rather the order Joel-Amos; so promoting Joel as the prequel, if you like. (Also the Greek merges MT Joel 2+3.) For those who deem 4 Ezra to be originally Hebrew (and based on its connexion with the Pseudo-Philo, I'm one of those): the MT order seems debatable up to Bar Kokhba.

In Old Greek also, Amos himself was interpreted, where David's tent is David's σκηνή which is "built", comparable to Moloch's σκηνή earlier in that book and also to the LXX-Torah tabernacle. In the Greek Tobit 13:10/11 also-also, the Lord has a σκηνή to be "built". I've suspected the Greek project to translate the Prophets was generally a priestly project, in Isaiah's case by exiled dissidents and in Ezekiel's case by Zadokites. Tobit had been composed in the first place by the "Aramaic Levi" crew, which stands to reason would be translated by sympathisers.

Dunne contrasts Joel, Greek-Amos, and Greek-Tobit on the one side; with the late-antique Targum on the other. On the latter side, Amos was still read as referring to David's dynasty. The Damascus Document, in the same lineage as Aramaic Levi and the Zadokite version of Ezekiel, and a citer of Joel 2, takes a third path: that David's tent is now the qahal - soon to become the Qumran yahad community. (On this much, I'll ding Dunne, because his footnote does not support that this be regal, especially given how equivocally Qumran understands "messianism".)

For Dunne, Joel should be read alongside this Greek priestly translation project before the Damascus Document. Dunne would stick this composition before all of that. Since here he doesn't argue the point, I'll give it a go: it was not "back-"translated from Greek to Hebrew, and it's low in the "LBH". Early second-Temple seems safest, like 2 Isaiah.

Queerying Harry Tanner's book

Dr Harry Tanner published something in a London press, on hate versus love. Tanner is on the side of love (just ask him); if you disagree that homosexuality counts, you are hate.

Lest you think I am being harsh: here is (or, yesterday... was) a published review, from one Eleni Avdoulou at the University of Pisa. That reviewer is on Tanner's side such that I really can't see her misinterpreting Tanner's point. Avdoulou's publisher? - Bryn Mawr, an semi-femme university in the US (they bundle up with Haverford). I see today the whole site is down, so uh. I'll be adding links to other reviews.

I find failures up and down this entire asânid chain. Tanner has a bias, against basic biology and the need for a society - British in his case - to propagate itself. His publisher Bloomsbury did not call him on this bias. His reviewer Avdoulou didn't either; and by extension neither did Bryn Mawr. So now we gotta do it.

Just look at all this cant from the review: The chapter concludes by arguing that Cleon’s anti-gay agenda and the increasingly homophobic climate in Athens prompted prominent queers such as Euripides and Agathon to seek refuge.... We can accept this from, oh, Bent Spines (or from Lobo or whatever). From a purported university press all three words need flagging as ingroup-jargon. Especially since Tanner trades on his PhD.

More: 'phobia medicalises an opposition likely political in nature (even then). As Donald Kagan reports, Cleon was a leader of Athens (we'll leave aside how effective for now). It is likely that Cleon from 450 BC to his death in battle had specific targets in mind. And Cleon wasn't acting alone, given that Pericles was hardly a "queer" (Tanner and Avdoulou demand we use this term) himself.

Tanner is a midwit who does not understand, say, Judaism outside his Christian filter. I suspect his dim view of Cleon likewise depends upon university (read: midwit) acceptance of Thucydides in the canon. Thucydides - writing after the war, as something of a revisionist - made Cleon out as the great villain. It happens that after Pericles' death, Thucydides and Cleon fell into rival factions. Even then I don't see Thucydides objecting to Cleon's social programme; only to his military grand-strategy (Kagan would interject here, Cleon was winning until his death). Neither, I think, did Pericles object.

Tanner and Avdoulou read like Christian apologists finding a figure that their caste hates because their professor told them they need to be hated. For Tapscott it's Darwin; for Ravi Zacharias it was Nietzsche. This makes further difficult to take Tanner seriously that opposition to homosexuality be an outgrowth of the Gini Coëfficient. Tanner doesn't buck the midwit wisdom that Greek homosexuality was an aristocratic pastime with clear Top and Bottom roles - rather undercutting that chapter of his thesis. I doubt that Tanner even knows what Gini is.

Tanner, I get. He wants to keep chasing after cute young boys like when he was a young boy (the Kirkus reviewer makes this clear... citing Tanner's own book). Avdoulou seems less like a natural ally than like a university drone. Can't risk tenure.

Offworld Resources Workshop, 4

Space Twitter is dribbling out the results of a "workshop" last week at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA. The fourth such held by that Agency.

Some releases are out, like this one from Pulsar Helium (perhaps distinct from the Sunbird guys). It's restricted, although I don't know how. Nor - since the interdicted regions include Australia and Japan - why. (South Africa, I could grok.)

The report notes the supply / demand curve for Helium-3. Demand is set to spike due to quantum computing, operating at the centiKelvins; even leaving aside the Sunbird roggets. Presently the supply is decay of tritium which is had at the DoE's Savannah River. It turns out He-3 can also be extracted from certain natural-gas deposits. Most-accessible to Americans is one "Topaz" field in rocky Minnesota, the "Jetstream #1" well. We just haven't much tried said extraxion, by this point. I expect the Australians and South Africans, owning Minnesota-like geology, would love so to try.

Another company, Lunar He-3 Mining, has a technology for extracting this gas. Despite the name, the tech isn't just for the moon.

The Inca started earlier

The Quechua-speaking Huari had an empire, and Tiahuanaco a kingdom; both failed. From these ashes, new kingdoms arose. One came from Cuzco, near the Titicaca. Their incas became emperors. We're mainly quibbling over dates, also spelling because nowadays the sorts of idiot talking about ancestral-wisdom make a point of rejecting Spain's spelling.

We owe our account of events to Miguel Cabello de Balboa. By "we" I mean John Rowe in the 1940s. Radiocarbon wasn't a thing then; and, as we all know, radio-all-of-it got (badly) adulterated after those late 1940s - 1960s radiation bursts. Rowe was still adamantly pro-de-Balboa up to 1997, when radiocarbon recalibration started to work against him.

Frankly I don't consider Rowe to be in the same rank, in archaeological hell, as Thompson for the Maya. Rowe had every right to question radiocarbon. I do that here on this blog all'a-time.

"Lizzie" Wade is relaying that our calibrations have been getting better, even for the understudied Southern Hemisphere. Dendrochronology is coming online. It can peg New Zealand eruptions with world-spanning Carrington events. The Incas had access to vast quantities of wood from the upper Amazon and their northern and southern trade-partners.

Also, I'll have to concede here, de Balboa's account of events reads a lot like Livy. Rah-rah, our people fought these people, we won; on to the next battle. Also it is north-focused. The Spaniards could appreciate this on account those are the provinces they reached, first; also those regions had the most-recent experience with the Inca. The main languages up there were Quechua dialects. Cuzco - the Inca hometown - is about where begins another language, of the Aymara.

One large difference here is that South America didn't really have a Tlaxcala, or even a Texcoco, to record rival versions of events. Also - as Wade notes - nobody could write over there (can't really say "down there" for an Andean society); Mesoamerica was intensely literate.

Rowe, I think, could have stood to shown (if that's grammatic) more humility. He had no reason to defend the honour of de Balboa, which was really the honour of the Inca court; save inertia. If anything Rowe was too solicitous of ancestral-wisdom. Wade is pointing out that the incas were colonialists too, just like the Mexica "Aztec" hoped to be.

The new map has the Inca concentrating south of Titicaca. A rampage occurred in the south over the last decades AD 1300s: the far south, as in present Santiago. Then, the Inca turned north: around ~1400 (same time as Chincha), they hit Saqsaywaman. They did major construction at an exact date 1418 (dendro?). That's about when serious Inca remains also make serious inroads into the old Tiahuanaco environs. Over the ensuing 1400s the Inca faced a stubborn resistance at (southern) Copiapó, which - Wade says - got resolved when the Inca took the copper-mines and left alone the villages. The northern push against old Huari / Quechua homelands did happen, but (to me) that looks like it happened over the 1440s.

From 1450 on, I suppose the Tahuantinsuyu was being consolidated, in particular a new focus on Quito. Perhaps, as Bayes might suggest, the Spaniards found peoples who indeed had only recently joined the Inca Empire. That made easier to peel them off.

I have to admit, I find the new map difficult to interpret. Warrior-caste of Aymara hardened at the Mapuche frontier? Summoning the old Tiahuanacis out of caves?

Out Of Israel

With the h/t to Moldbug (for the title): David Reich floats a hypothesis. Not co-written unless he used AI, which I suspect he didn't. This claims a strong modern-human presence in the Levant that never ventured east, but led to 3%-7% of the resultant Neander genes found not only in Iberia but also in the Neanders they'd replace.

Because it was that early: 300kya. That'd be the long downslope from the MIS 9 Purfleet peak before MIS 8's false subpeak. I'd assumed some modern humans mixed n' mingled but, if Reich is right, they did this well before Eemian MIS 5.

This wasn't intuitive to me. We are aware of Neanders roaming the Levant before the modern-human expansions of the 60s kya (and the contemporary Iberian Neander expansion). Reich's conclusion implies all the Neanders would have pushed into the Levant since MIS 8 (and Eemian).

I don't know how this accounts for the ghost lineage of "modern" Eurasians which avoided all Neander contact until finally reuniting with their modern kin (us). Said modern kin meanwhile subsumed the Neanders of the Levant.

But most of Reich' conjucture seems to be cluster the 300kya horizon. When we hear of modern-modern humans (including subsaharans) being 80/20: the 80% - for Reich - is east Africa ("Kush"), Nile, and north Africa. That's what spilled into the elder Neanders. The 20% was... erectus, pretty-much.

There may have been a green-sahara at the Purfleet peak. This would have dried out pushing the hunter-gatherers there southward, maybe northeast too.