Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Midgewater

Tom Holland is discussing blood sucking parasites in Scotland. No, not Scots...

I read up on the Mosquito (a bit) in 2001 - that it served no purpose to any other life and were better expurgated like the Variola. I cannot remember the name of the book. I did take in that another book, Carson's Silent Spring, was evil. DDT for the win, baby.

This insect ranged to English-Speaking lands; the Bad Air which they bring was rife in Somerset, during the Saxon times which John RR Tolkien made his study.

The Southwest Saxons did not name these bugs with a Spanish name - obviously. Tolkien never approved the Spaniards' name for them. And I think he's right, that when a Saxon squished a biting mosquito - mosquita, to be technical - he rated her a Stechmücke. A midge-ette.

I think that is why Prof T. even bothered with a "midge water" pond, just set between the Shire and the riven dell, with no geological reason to exist there. Tollers was just making a point, that we Anglo Saxons should return to monke basics. Tolkien was good for that. He should probably be sainted.

Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Governor Abbott goes Tallyrand

Greg Abbott is moving toward changing the Texan energy market, as well as moving more to fossil-fuels and nuclear. Wind and solar, which failed so hard during the last freeze, will no longer be incentivised.

Greg's quit screwing around, is the basic takeaway. Pace Casey although I do hope batteries will be part of the solution UPDATE 1/5/22 nah, Casey's stupid.

This is a tad late for Abbott to catch up with DeSantis and (the supply part of) it is certainly in response to the uproar from his Right. But I'll take "doing the right thing after exhausting the alternatives" over "doing it wrong". Abbott could easily be a Bush or a Cornyn (or a Lee Bailey Hutchison, back in the day); there's money in that, and fame, of a sort.

Now, as to the trade part of it, which puts those proverbial fetters upon free-trade in energy. We all know that more regulation is not always better regulation, and much depends on who's regulating. But clearly insuffient regulation is insufficient: taking electricity away from one group of payers whilst running up thousand-dollar bills for other (poor) payers is a great way to end up with your head in the National Window. We'll see how this (forced) populist turn works next winter, we suppose.

Monday, July 26, 2021

China got thorium

News and David Fishman's commentary: China's progress toward a molten salt thorium reactor.

I'd thought that the reactor was U-233 as opposed to U-235, and that the point of the thorium was to "breed" the Th-232 into U-233... like getting Pu-239 out of U-238. I'm learning that this is first-generation thinking. (NuScale, for all its merit, is first-generation.)

The Chinese think they can use the uranium (or plutonium... or curium) to spark a reaction (antimatter aside) but then let it carry on with the fertile thorium. That's (per Fishman) why the molten-salt: 1970s-era Rankine RBMK water does slow neutrons, salt does fast ones for this faster generation. Fast neutrons breed the thorium.

That would certainly be a lot cheaper than my idea! And they won't need to create a lot of U-233 and store it and (most worrisome-ly) guard it. And noted in the commentary, not all countries are as lucky as the US in their uranium reserve; China and India are richer in thorium. (As, indeed, is our own Moon.) So they'll need this for their supply-chain.

It is still a (very) large reactor, not a NuScale you just buy for your local community. The reaction still makes U-233 as the process... proceeds; but the Chinese believe they can guard this since it's, you know, being used, in the middle of a reactor. Nobody but an idiot is going to rob the heart of Core-Chan.

Saturday, July 24, 2021

The Northeasternised Hosk

I spent Saturday creating the Taladas content for 1d4chan. I could not resist my urge to extend the Steamwall. Now I'm going back to my proposed extension of the map.

My northern extension is... hideous. It looks like the conehead from that first The Hills Have Eyes (the 2006 was better, really), or Weird Science. Ugggh.

Better idea, to follow: expand Minotaur territory northwest. Their border remains the Tiderun, which we run northwest instead of due west. This pushes Tamire[-Panak] to the north which I've expanded already; but it's a steppe, supposed to be east-west.

The Steamwall (also expanded) gets that bit more territory, here the Fianawar side of it, but we can live with that. The Ilquar goblins lose that territory but, again, we're fine with that. The best of this correction: we can extend Tamire[-Panak] eastward.

I don't mind for game-balance that the Minos get more turf. In my other expansions, I'd expanded Thenol's Lebensraum, and the elves'. Potentially, anyway. As ever (and probably with Aurim herself), empires can claim all the area they want. Such empires cannot always tax all that area.

The east-expanded Tamire[-Panak] might butt into the Rainwards but, who's been campaigning all the way over there anyway? The fun stuff is west with a touch of Old Aurim.

An aside on the [-Panak]: it sucks. (Like "Blackmoor" sucked for Greyhawk.) I call that Taladas doesn't need it. If we must have the people, they're fisherfolk visiting from a northern, frigid island or archipelago without much in the way of trees. An Iceland, a Greenland, a Svalbard, a Novaya Zemlya... all the above; as long as none rival the size of Taladas.

BACKDATE 7/27

Friday, July 23, 2021

When the state keeps the price down

...the state is the owner. Some Coloradans are learning that. I'm learning it too, so, thanks Jon Caldara for teaching me.

I am naturally averse to government schemes, and (like Supertramp did) I detest words that end Ibble. So I assumed there was a Catch somewhere. Caldara tells us: "Affordability" in a nonperishable widget means the widget is sold outside the market. And what you did not buy through the market, you may not sell through the market.

To the extent said market still exists, it is distorted: your housing stock isn't in the pool of supply. (You aren't in the demand-pool either but, since you couldn't afford it, you never were.) Everybody else now has to pay that bit more, which Colorado at least sequesters to your neighbours.

Vouchers and - let's be honest - loans would distort that market too. But, depending on restrictions, not nearly as much. You might be permitted to resell. Then you've got Equity: your home is an asset and the market (probably) works in your benefit. With an ibble-house, you sell "your" "$150k" home for $175k whilst your neighbour sells his $250k home for $750k. Sucks to be you!

All this wonkery stated, I ... still don't care.

If the State of Colorado owns this asset it can raise some cash by buying the home for $175k - because that was the deal, and it's the State; taking it off the Ibble programme, and selling it for real. A few dozen flips like this and Colorado just took in a few more millions. Oldest trick in the book, the book George Plunkett wrote about Tammany Hall. Except here the revenue goes to CO. (Ideally.)

Boiled down, this whole programme is a tax on new-home buyers (as opposed to buyers of existent stock) and developers of same. In the meantime, some people get to live in, basically, rentals, but at a fixed rate. As Front Range boondoggles go, this doesn't rank for me. The worst effect I can think of is the ibble homeowner whom some nu-Plunkett allows to sell at market-price if she kicks back some percentage to Totally Not Plunkett PAC. But now we've diverged from the merits of the Ibble programme and have entered the libertarian critique of programmes as such; the Waste-'n-Fraud is worse in Medicaid, nu?

Meanwhile Caldara performatively weeps for the sucker who squatted in a middle-class subdivision for years paying less than the rest of us did, probably not keeping up the place as much (because, again, the house wasn't hers). Because waaaah she didn't knooow. If it sounds like I'm calling shenanigans on Caldara's tears that's because - I am. Caldara cares for his own home and so do his readers; they just don't admit it.

Caldara did perform a valuable service, in his rantyness, by entertaining as he was explaining. So his article wasn't a waste of my time like (say) the average Richard Spencer article.

YEAH, HE'S STUPID 7/29: Forgot to mention that it's PJM drone Stephen Green trying to make Caldara happen, which should have been a clue. Hat-tip to that one, here's Caldara supporting the primary system in Colorado - you know, the one which failed. Read Ron Hawks instead.

Thursday, July 22, 2021

Quit trolling, dude

Last week we Catholics got word from On High that bishops have "the option" of refusing a Latin Mass, which means (per That Hideous Strength) they'd better refuse it if they want to get anywhere in this Curia. Richard Spencer is not a Christian but butted in anyway, the next day. To that end, he did a doody in the baptismal-font and, today, is calling us to look at it again.

Spencer (as usual) sprinkles some disturbing truths in his ramble, in this case - the Church exists as a hierarchy as well as a faith, and the hierarchy has made its peace with Modernity, which Modernity Spencer (purportedly) abhors. If that was all there was, I'd have nothing to poast about. Sadly:

The main claim here is “Traditionalist Catholics” are horrified by the notion that they might have to receive the religion they’ve devoted their lives to in a language they actually understand. To disclose: I am not a "Trad" whatever that means; I just go to (Anglo) Mass. Although I do know some basic Latin. And I know what Transubstantiation means. Most "Trads", I dare say, know both, and know it better than I do. Between the two, I further dare say I know better, at least, than Spencer.

It isn't just scurrilous to say that "Trads" don't know and don't want to know. If I am any guide, and I repeat I am less conversant than are most "Trads", they absolutely love the experience in communing with the Saints in (most of) those Saints' own language. Which means Spencer is relaying a falsehood, to the extent the best we can say is that the man doesn't know what he's talking about.

And any Mass in its (more) original form inspires the best of us (once more: not including me) to learn that language such as to follow along. Which - for those in that tradition - allows that congregation entry into thousands of years of their own tradition and history. Latin, Greek, Old Church Slavonic, Coptic, whatever.

OnePeterFive on behalf of the Romania has been running the table on the backstory, since then. I think they're right that Duh TRADZz will be looking seriously into Orthodoxy. The "Eastern Rite" would be another option - I might even consider this myself since, you know, Syriac. But we all have to consider the vast majority of Western Catholics who aren't ancestrally Semitic and/or don't care as much about that (to them) alien Oriental tradition. Most Catholics feel more attuned with Latin and, why shouldn't they? Wasn't that Spencer's own selling-point, five years ago, that we're to live up to who we are...?

Call it a "LARP" if you want, but it's our LARP. Spencer's got his own. I know which one I prefer.

Cobia

Dr Brytney Cobia in Alabama went to al.com (two-digit URL, niiice) to offer her perspective, which she'd posted on Facebook. This got touted by both sides: Richard Spencer on the [national-]social-ish side, and of course Denninger on the sort-of other side. Either way it's certainly (((our fault))).

Denninger takes the high road by demanding the nurse's job for Public-Health Disinformatsiya, along with ten years in the pen and the loss of her children to the foster system. His evidence for the malfeasance is that drr nobody died.

Indeed: last day of record is 20 July, and nobody died since this surge began 23 June(ish). What I see, pace the fools, is a spike on 20 July: 999 new cases 7/15 to 3023 new cases 7/20 (with the usual dip in between because people weren't coming in to be tested). That is a tripling.

Dr Cobia, I admit, triggers the "and for no reason at all..." reflex on account she marvels at how come Alabamians don't Trust The Medical System. Well maybe because of stunts like this, wherein social-distancing was NOT observed nor recommended for, you know, anti-police rioters. Cobia is too slick with the Party-approved language to be entirely trusted in what edicts she delivers in this language. Still.

Not to be a ghoul, but deaths follow hospitalisations follow symptomatic cases. It was like that all year, and the srrvatives were saying exactly what they are saying now, and were just as (evilly) wrong then. Cobia reveals that Alabama is deep in the "hospitalisation" zone - in fact, the intubation zone. This will get worse.

Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Venus by night

Japan is looking at the dark side... of Venus. The article is scheduled tomorrow but ScienceDaily has brought it to our hemisphere, tonight!

What the Japanese are teaching us is that... well, you know the Meridional winds blowing from equator to the pole, that this blog was talking about Before TwennyTwenny? They reverse at night.

That's good news for keeping cloud-cities at 50°, especially north where I'd had 'em. They might drift to the polar vortex over the day, but then at night they'll drift back. Less energy needed to keep them there.

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

The PJMedia hustle

Revolver is out to explain how Black Rifle Coffee got big.

I bought some of those (looks it up) Keurig cups from a Weld County outfitter in early 2018. The box had an image of that eponymous sooper scary rifle and "INGREDIENTS: COFFEE". I admit, I smiled a bit, but I still wanted to know whence the coffee: Sumatra, Honduras, what. Then I drank some. Better than Starbucks; not as good as Peets and Verona. I didn't buy more.

Then came the Kyle Rittenhouse fracas, where the young man defended himself from a mob of, I'm sorry, paedarasts and thugs. Seriously. Some of the assailants died; none of them will be missed. One assailant backed off and did not get shot.

So: what side did Black Rifle choose, on this clear-cut event of someone using a rifle for the purpose for which it was designed? The mob's side. Of Course.

And if you still wanted any evidence of what side PJMedia are on, that phony Matt Margolis posted this buncombe, to which the execrable warmonger Stephen Green linked.

[7/21 Yes, Green linked Kruiser, but Green's heart isn't in it and - I'll say it - neither is Kruiser's. The correct take is not "lol BR trusted NYT". That's just how BR got caught. BR was always on the NYT's side.]

For the correct take, start with that Black Rifle Coffee is a grift - which we already know, so that's only the start. Rather - here follows a more correct take: PJMedia is a grift. All the writers on PJMedia, from Margolis to Kruiser, at best, think we are living in a game called "The News Cycle". The rules of the game are: get money from rubes who read blogs. If the wrong blog reports on your hustle then OOPS! FOUL! Lose five points for that NYT piece, LOL!

NPC MEDIA 7/23: Bryan Preston plays defence. Told you, man: it's the whole site.

Monday, July 19, 2021

We got the wrong Muwatta

Students of Islamic law, and of ʿUmarid tradition, rely upon "The Muwatta" by Imam Malik bin Anas of al-Madina. If we're moderately intelligent, we know that there survive several recensions of this text; two have been translated into English, that by Yahya bin Yahya al-Laythi and that by Muhammad al-Shaybani in Iraq.

Shaybani's version isn't Maliki. It is a retort to Malik's teachings during his life, and may even have induced Malik himself to edit his material. Al-Laythi's version ended up Qurân II for the Malikiya in Spain so most Malikis in the English-speaking countries - which, here, include India / Pakistan, where they're better in English than in Arabic - default to him.

If you are lucky enough to be conversant in Arabic, you also know of Abu Muṣʿab al-Zuhri (a fellow Madinese), whose transmission is quite close to Laythi's. But (1) it's not as popular as Laythi's (2) it's not always exactly the same as Laythi's and (3) nobody's translated it. Ibn Bukayr is out there too, from Egypt.

Enter Ahmed al-Shamsy. He's looking in on Shafiʿi - an Iraqi who came to Egypt, where was Ibn Bukayr and (more to the point) the Hakimi family who'd produced a famous history of the Muslims there. Shafiʿi is the founding father of the Shafiʿite sunna and also of the Hanbalites, who'd translated Laythi in India. According to Shamsy, Shafiʿi transmitted a good bit of the Muwatta into his own books, later compiled into the Kitab al-Umm. And not just as stray traditions; they're in the context of Malik's notes, which he had standardised post-Shaybani.

Shafiʿi agrees with Abu Muṣʿab against Laythi. Laythi is revealed as a second-hand transmitter who'd made mistakes, as compared with Abu Muṣʿab. With Ibn Bukayr too.

If I read Shamsy right, Malik himself might not have desired there be one singular Muwatta. When Shafiʿi met Malik, Malik tried to fob him off on one of his students. (Malik likely knew Shaybani was out there; I'm talking about his real students.) Overall I think Malik knew there would be different emphasis in the safe Madina than in a border zone like northern Syria or some tribal no-man-land like the Sahara. Hence the organisational differences (not just textual) between the recensions. I was pondering titling this post, "we got the Muwatta wrong".

Still. Whatever Muwatta we choose for baseline, and Malikis at least do need some baseline: that baseline ain't Laythi. Laythi needs to go down to the critical-text footnotes. As to the baseline itself, Abu Mus'ab will do as well as any.

Sunday, July 18, 2021

Joe

Laurent Guyénot eight days ago put out a piece on Old Joe K. His title is a twist on Christ's beatitude.

Joseph Patrick Kennedy was in the Peace Party in the 1930s. Guyénot would, I think, trace his own lineage from this faction, by way of AJP Taylor; he agrees with McMeekin these days. There has been a charge that these guys hate the Jews, which animus Guyénot tries to lift from his subject Kennedy. I have heard charges that Kennedy hated the English - which Guyénot doesn't look at, I think rightly, because Kennedy had no problem with Englishmen with whom he agreed, like Neville Chamberlain.

Kennedy however also didn't love Jews, instead asking the British Tories to find space for us in African colonies. South Africa, mostly, I'd imagine; that's our climate. North Africa was out of the question pace Achcar.

I am unsure how far Guyénot has relieved Joseph Kennedy of his headstone, [UPDATE as 11/7] "American Fascist". Guyénot may or may not care about the label; but he should care that Kennedy was wrong: wrong about democracy's resilience against foreign fascism and communism, and wrong about his own role as Roosevelt's man in London (here skating the edge of treason). We shall meet this man again - at the end of his life - in the movie Chappaquiddick, one final time protecting his legacy.

This article does open a curtain on John Podhoretz, the epitome of the Beltway stooge; in a piece J-Pud had published before the neocons amongst us knew he was a stooge, which I'd set around the Weinerama over Memorial Day Weekend 2011. But... that was over a decade after the offending piece, and some years before the Ace Of Spades commentariat was yet ready to hear it.

Guyénot also might illustrate where, during the John Kennedy murder 1963, the media's initial focus on Dallas "city of hate" comes from. To the extent there remained a Joseph Kennedy faction in the Democrat Party, this was a Catholic faction, hostile to American Jewry. Someone was out there holding a Chamberlainesque umbrella to heckle the Kennedys (again, Joe wasn't yet dead).

This the Bagestan's stance is Bugliosi's. Note, he's another peacemonger and he really hated George Dubya. Perhaps despite himself, in 2007 Bugsy had to conclude in Reclaiming History that, yeah, someone wholly uninvolved in the Kennedy past had done the deed. Not Nazis, not THE JOOS; not even Goldwater Republicans. Just a standard commie, Lee Oswald. (Someone else did Case Closed - four years earlier, apparently unsuccessfully given Bugsy's need to do it again.)

Overall, let's not pin 1963 on the Elders of Zion. Anymore than we should pin it on Dallas Hate.

Saturday, July 17, 2021

Ivermectin: guess what

The latest excuse srrvatives have been giving for not getting Deh VAXX is ivermectin. It used to be hydrochloro-something and zinc; the srrvatives gave up on that, apparently because that didn't work (to disclose, I still think at least zinc does pretty well as a prophylactic and even as a "morning after pill" but, no substitute for Pfizer).

As of this week, ivermectin is a big neeevermind. That's the Grauniad, running its own cope soon to be debunked; but in this case they're reporting on another journal which either did or did not retract a study. Spoiler: Research Square retracted it.

The original study was from the Benha Medical Journal... in Egypt. Concocted by Ahmed Elgazzar... who publishes that journal. LOL!

Now we incidentally know that Research Square serves as a laundry for bad research, so its BREAKING NEWS may be ignored in future (or at least allowed to simmer for six months). No worries as long we still got Colorado Herald, Anonymous Conservative, Karl Denninger, True Defender, and other psykers to tell us what to think.

As for srrvatives, I gave up on their bluster over a year ago. All they are doing is reminding us to thank our elites for stealing the election away from them. Keep it up and our masters won't need to steal 2022.

MORE 8/11: McMaster University, conducted in Brasil.

Friday, July 16, 2021

Pardon the interruption

Since I was not raised in Judaism in any meaningful sense, much of that liturgy is opaque to me. But as we have lectionaries in Christianity, so they have analogues in Judaism; and as our priests have guidebooks and calendars and the Synaxarion, the Jews have analogues. So: Pesikta de-Rav Kahana.

This "Pesikta" is a Midrash... sort of. Arnon Atzmon warns it's not organised like a commentary on Numbers. It's a commentary on a lectionary, best I can tell; on the Biblical readings that get read throughout the Jewish (lunar-solar) year. The sections are termed "pisqa'ôt": a "pisqa'ah" seems to mean "interruption". The notion was to interrupt the usual weekly Shabbos reading on the occasion of certain holidays. Rosh Hashana the new year, Chanukkah, stuff like that.

Atzmon is trying to figure out when this liturgical calendar starts. Rosh Hashana would be a decent choice, for sure. There's manuscript support: MS Oxford Bodleian Library Opp. Add. Qu 128 1ℵ. Bernard Mandelbaum, who generally knew what he was talking about, offered some decent third-party witnesses especially in the Sephardic West. So that's the critical text... presently.

But - Atzmon points out - 1ℵ is the only direct support. Other MSS (plural) start with Chanukkah; still more with the haftarôt. Atzmon comes around to seeing the Chanukkah-starting version as the original. One of these MSS derive from Egypt, another AD 13th-century "Germany" which I'm guessing means Rheinland. (Good job dodging the Crusade.)

If so, the next question has to be - why, since Chanukkah is not the new year. It's not the new year for saecular calendars either, like the Seleucid reckoning. Being November / December Hanukkah usually strikes in the Christian Advent which is when we start our liturgical year. Verhelst for his part had looked to the Georgians, never straying far from Greek Dyotheletism, whose Mravaltavi starts with "Mary's holy day". I have little idea what that is, for old Iberia; Atzmon is vague. But for us Latins that can mean either the Immaculate Conception (8 December); or the Octave of Christmastide (1 January) which date although marking Jesus' circumcision is consecrated to Mary.

Atzmon further notes that the Chanukkah-first order agrees with Megillah 3:4-5. So that's Atzmon's rationale. I wonder, though. Is it sufficient rationale to oust the freakin' New Year? - or is that just Hebrew cope? And you'll note that in at least one tradition, it didn't oust the freakin' New Year.

Propose instead a Zionist text.

Suppose nationalists who figured their new year to start with their semi-successful resistance to the Seleucia. Now, I am not saying that the Pesikta is a Maccabean text. What I am saying is that it is pro-Maccabean. The Sasanian occupation of "Palaestina" now Judaea II, we know, inspired much literature among the Jews, mainly in apocalyptic. If the text was composed earlier, it would at least have been copied under Nehemiah ben Hushiel. Absent this evidence I'll call it a neo-Maccabean construction, done in the AD 600s. UPDATE 12/15/23 Like Al HaNissim.

Thursday, July 15, 2021

The Thai space programme

Yes, Thailand is getting one. Here's Bangkok Post.

Equatorial countries are best situated to send stuff into stable orbits. Thailand is... almost equatorial. Also Narathiwat (6 °) doesn't have too much land east of it. Sarawak, Brunei, and Mindanao being the lands of concern.

Another, more serious concern is that this latitude is Muslim, which Bangkok isn't. I can easily see provincial shakedown artists screwing with the launches. Like how Hawaiians muck up astronomy on Mauna Kea.

Australia of course has been doing British, Canadian, and American space stuff for decades.

On topic, I do wonder where Indonesia is getting in on this. Since (I hear) they're shifting operations to the eastern shores of their isles already. There is/was a Bahasa NASA, if you will; but last I heard they were folding that into some "Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional". UPDATE 7/16: Ah, they are building spaceports: Biak and Morotai.

Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Policies of envy and malice

I haven't talked politics much of late (for good reason) but we cannot pass this up: James Thompson, "Social Justice or Malicious Envy?". He's summarising Chien-An Lin and Timothy C. Bates, over at Edinburgh.

They take PJ O'Rourke's tack - taxation is involuntary, which means if you don't pay it you go to prison. Either way, you're getting punished until you cough up. It is torture, to be frank. On this assumption I too supported Enhanced Interrogation back in the Cheney years - I cannot see the difference between one punishment or the next, to achieve a given result, except maybe speed. A decade-plus ago I came around to thinking - if you don't want Enhanced Interrogation, don't start a war. But I am going off topic.

Lin and Bates, apud Thompson, then ask, what sort of person would resort to torture? which they boil down to character-traits. Top of the list is malicious envy. Then there is "instrumental harm" which I had trouble with, but it seems to derive from incidental harm: tolerance of an injustice (i.e. hurting an innocent) if by it, from the dragnet, you stop a criminal (by definition, someone else) from doing harm to others. We are all guilty of the latter as long as we accept a justice system of humans, note. Self-interest is third. Last is "communal fairness" which of course doesn't apply to those outside the commune, like a heretic or a racist or something.

So: CoVID Mitigation, usually lumped in as THE LOCKDOWN. All the mitigation options are imposed on others. Even Fauci had to admit your mask saves others, not you; your vaccine helps herd-immunity although it also saves you. Consider taking the tack of Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, Dreddful Justice Roberts as some might call him: It's A Tax.

If we who supported mitigation look into our own souls, have we been innocent of these charges? Certainly we accepted a few myocard patients, as long as herd-immunity was attained. We also saved our own skins, lungs anyway.

Were we envious of the loud MAGA-hats who mocked us, and didn't follow the guidelines? In part - I think we were. Mostly, though, it stung when the MAGA-hats were calling us sheep and/or Karens.

This, I think, should be factored into the regression-analysis of support for/against a tax policy. "If you support this tax, you are going to be insulted by group X." If we had come to the conclusion that we needed the tax, in good faith; this little prophetic nugget would, I think, harden our position. We wouldn't be looking at The Mask or The Vaxx anymore - we'd be looking to punish group X. By The Lockdown, that is, to be imposed upon X by preference; to which I'll aver - I NEVER SUPPORTED PREFERENCE. "By preference" means the authorities allow group not-X to riot.

Tuesday, July 13, 2021

Jerubbaal

I hope this tiny text is real. Seriously.

Jerubbaal may be the most interesting figure in the Book of Judges, a book already filled with larger-than-lifes. Unlike Joshua (in that book's present, badly corrupt form) Jerubbaal's exploits seem real - at least to me. Literally a Man Who Would Be King, he even named his heir-apparent "Abî Malek". You barely even need be a Semite to know what that means, on mine own authority as a barely-Semite.

Judges associates Jerubbaal with Gideon. This book comes to us from a line of heroic poetry and song, and questionable lines of textual transmission. So we need some external attribution.

The Good Book says, although Jerubbaal did hold sway over the hills and maybe even the coastal plain north of the Philistines; that was all by force of his personality, cunning, and heroism. His son Abimelech inherited none of these attributes and failed in his bid to be Israel's mlk. Hence why we'll not likely see an inscription with this kid's name on it.

And I really do hope that this inscription of the 1100s BC is real, and that other inscriptions will be found near it. If not real then, sigh, another Bible Museum froggery. Gettin' a li'l tired of these.

Monday, July 12, 2021

Be assimilated

Jillian Banfield directs us to BORG: a strange foreign entity, neither alive nor dead, that assimilates and shares important genes... A floating toolbox, likely full of blueprints, some that we may one day harness, like CRISPR. [h/t hbdchick.]

The new retrovirus. Seems like.

I wonder if these para-organisms, like retroviri, are already infecting people and swapping DNA / RNA we don't want swapped. Can these be stopped?

Sunday, July 11, 2021

Congratulations to Richard Branson

If you consider altitude 88 km to be "space", then Richard Branson has earned his NASA wings. Tasting his own dogfood, as engineers put it.

I think the fifty-mile threshold is an American holdover from the 1950s when NASA was more an aeronautical concern, and space an afterthought. Branson is, I believe, British but he did this test in New Mexico rather than in Australia. To be an international spaceman he needs to exceed 100 km.

100 km what Jeff Bezos hopes to achieve, from Texas. As for Elon - I think he's still focusing on reusable heavy-freight rockets.

And we must all appreciate Branson (and Bezos) working on reliability and safety in no-atmosphere flight. It starts with tourism; it becomes commonplace travel and shipping. There is the "room" to read.

Saturday, July 10, 2021

Pope Damian the First (of Egypt)

Phil Booth has an excellent piece teasing out how Egypt got her own Pope, a Miaphysite Pope. It wasn't inevitable!

This updates a Jean Maspero project; Gaston Maspero being both hero and villain of nineteenth-century hypotheses. Jean for his part was a pleine hero; he would die in the trenches 1915. Allowing for the sources young Jean had, which weren't much, he was impressive as a scholar as well. Booth is here to bring in findings and translations since the War.

After the vaunted Founding Of The Miaphysite Church as against Chalcedon, it turns out (now) that Egypt's Miaphysites... collapsed. (Sometimes, pace, Maspero, absence of evidence can imply evidence of absence.) Empress Theodora was a Miaphysite herself but she was also a Byzantine political loyalist, and her husband was Emperor Justinian I. That court was keen there be a second. They needed unity for that, and ... this was Byzantium. Where couldn't be theological unity there must at least be hierarchical unity.

The Miaphysite dissidents in Egypt were no match for Justinian, so the hierarchy there acclaimed Chalcedon. The dissidents went off to monasteries and to churches in the butt-end of nowhere (and there's a lot of nowhere in Sahara). I'll observe, for this reign: BLA syr 17202 didn't talk Egypt. Under Justin II, some Nile dissidents attempted to organise a new church but they failed.

Alas for Chalcedon in Egypt, Justin went loopy and starting AD 574ish, the Tiberius II - Maurice junta took over. (I forget which, but that régime saw off the challenge of that "Justinian II" claimant.) These two weren't keen to suppress whatever the Miaphysites were up to in Egypt, as long as the grain kept flowing.

This deliberate neglect from the Greeks and, perhaps, better leadership among the Miaphysites allowed the latter to (re)organise under the Greeks' noses. The Coptic (I presume, Sahidic) language sparked up, up the Nile; thus, this church became the National Church of Keme.

Peter IV and then Damian, the leaders of this faction, appointed eighty(!) bishops. Booth points out that this isn't an exaggeration since we have documentation for most of these, including many names. This many bishops implies a parallel hierarchy on account (per Booth) Justinian and Justin were hardly about to leave the bulk of Egypt bereft of oversight. Parallel, in theology, means rival.

John of Ephesus, from the Syriac side, thought Damian was going overboard. Jacob Bar Addai had not gone this far among the Syrians. But one cannot argue with results.

BACKDATE 7/14

Friday, July 9, 2021

The 89 kilotonne dumbbell

I finally got some time to read Pekka Janhunen's shielded dumbbell colony proposal. This is suggested for "L5", meaning Terra-Luna Trailing Libration Halo. (Janhunen said "point" but a halo is not a point.)

For two hundred inhabitants, which I take as a maximum, Janhunen proposes target mass 89000 tonnes (= megagrams), 89 gigagrams. This is over two hundred times / tenscore ISS at 419.7 Mg. Janhunen is hoping if LEO launch costs drop below ~ $300/kg. Falcon 9 is $3000 but Starship is looking at $30.

Mostly the worry is radiation and, in Earth's orbit on out, the worst radiation is cosmic. As we get nigh to the Sun I think solar takes a higher share, especially during flares.

Something like this dumbbell - or several such somethings - could also be at STL4 and STL5 because halo, and wider halo at that. Such would have to await a larger human presence off the Earth's well; we start close to home.

DEIMOS LIBRATION 6/26/22: My last para here is now its own post. PURPOSE 8/18-19/23: I've moved another para on what this thing is for, here: it's a shuttle. For asteroidal work, see Jensen.

UPDATES 8/19/23: Janhunen doesn't actually need the iron he's hoping for, if anhydrous glass will do it. For outside-shielding, aluminium might block radiation. And his greenhouse-between-weights is less-efficient than acetate in the dark although, it may be that he's simply run out of room. He might be able to grow these in any gravity.

Thursday, July 8, 2021

The creator's hand

Back in 2011, I am now told, the solar oxygen was measured and found to differ from the oxygen found on Mars, the Moon, Earth, and maybe what's streaming back from Venus. The solution: an ultraviolet surge when the rocky planets were formed. New problem: whence?

The sun was weaker earlier on, not stronger (usually). The inner planets' orbits have changed a bit (the further in, the more an adjustment matters, at the inverse-square principle) but all that much. The Sun's T Tauri stage could explain some of it but, it seems, not enough of it.

From 1990, enter the meteorite Acfer 094. This was born "4.6" Bya by which I think they mean it's the milestone that marks our whole solar-system 4567 Mya. It still has symplectite, a mix of iron rusts, both oxygen and sulfate.

So now they measured the sulfur isotopes. This shows the UV radiation from deep space. It cannot have been solar. It was an O and B star near enough it shone like the full moon.

First off, lucky for us this solar-system ducked out before that monster went Type II. I am pretty sure we'd have a record of a supernova like that in Acfer 094. Tho' I think we'd like more meteorites like it, to make that call.

Also, I wonder if having this much energy beamed at us in our first years had some effect on drying out our inner system. Mercury was the Sun's b!tch, sure. Further out, though, Venus is famously hydrogen-poor and even the hydrogen in Earth's mantle came from comets, plastic meteors, and Theia. The inner planets lost so many lighter gases up front that we stayed, also, less massive and weren't swimming in hydrogen treacle. So they didn't migrate further in, becoming those super-Earths seen in almost every other system.

The lithium shortage

Besides that we're low on lithium here on Earth, cosmologists are aware that the whole universe has less than it "should".

Couple articles are explaining that. First, the Big Bang nucleosynthesis as actually simulated turns out not to produce the amount of 7Li as the initial models had claimed. Since then, present classical novae - like recent V5669 Sgr - sometimes don't produce as much as, say, V339 Del.

Aristotle was right. Mathematical theory is all well and good, but no substitute for experiment and observation (respectively). Time to rethink those equations.

Wednesday, July 7, 2021

Winter is here

...over Venus. The ecliptic-north, I assume; we tend to go with Earth, since north is where most of our land is. Keeping in mind that defining "north" is problematic on a retrograde planet.

Whilst we're at it, ProjectRho links Pekka Janhunen's Shielded dumbbell [TL]L5 settlement (him again) which I wish I'd had April 2020 when it came out. I scanned it; haven't read it, will concentrate on its Venus-relevant material here.

[UPDATE 7/9: Finally - read it. I note Janhunen doesn't worry about solar radiation at 1 AU, about which Venus and Mercury and all our Earth-crossing asteroids must worry.]

Venus' insolation is 1.91 times Earth's. That might, however, be good - because this keeps out Galactic Cosmic Rays better (pdf). Mind, then you must deal with the Sun's occasional flares.

One comment: although SVL2 is (much) better sheltered than most of what we're discussing here (which this blog compares to Vesta), we will need to get all that material over there. Earth/Venus Hohmann takes 0.4 of a year. Assuming 20 mSv/year at a solar minimum at Earth, this is a 8 mSv ceiling, truly "not great, not terrible". CT scans allow it, and nuclear workers and NASA allow up to 50 mSv/year.

So - detachable shields, I expect. The shields can be the heavy solar-panels which we'll put in orbit around the main SVL2 station. This, to balance the expected stationkeeping.

Tuesday, July 6, 2021

In-situ peroxide

In other supply-chain news Brooks Hays at UPI offers a press-release on a new disinfectant. In fact it is an old disinfectant - Hydrogen Peroxide - but, this time, they don't have to make it elsewhere and ship it to the processing-plant. They just use gold and palladium as a catalyst, making sufficient peroxide to disinfect the water right there.

Once they've killed the germs, I suppose they're left with some peroxide and whatever it's reacted with. But they don't have chlorine. Thus freeing up our chlorine stores for other uses - which is nice, because I hear we're short on that as, indeed, are asteroids (read: Venus).

Mars, by the way, won't need this on account their ice is locked up in chlorine salts already. I dunno about our Moon.

The hydroponic revolution

... is here. The NYT is looking at the pros and cons; I got this from DNYUZ.

The pros are - it works anywhere you got the land, including bad land. This article was filed from Kentucky where, indeed, are plenty of hilltops nobody wants to live on (some scraped by bad mining-practices). It uses (much) less land than a flat plain of dirt. Much less water too since it is all in-house whence they recapture the transpiration. That means - it can grow next to you; which lowers shipping-costs too, and the rigs on the road. The boosters say it should even work on Antarctica or the Moon. I'd add Venus.

The main con (which I'll concede): it uses energy. They don't always have solar on the Moon. (Antarctica is a special case where they do always have solar... until they don't. So: grow a LOT and store it.)

I hope energy shouldn't be too hard to get.

As for the Real Organic Project so-called: they are worried about their (literal) rice-bowl. I hear a lot of muh-safety from them: no one yet knows what kind of long-term health impact fruits and vegetables grown without soil will have. Ayn Rand had their number.

ODD BEDFELLOWS 7/7: Consider fake meat. Expect the soil-only "organic" people to make common cause with the "It's What's For Dinner" crew. (I'd like fake meat to compete with real meat someday, but that day is not today. I get the feeling that the day of hydroponic vegetables is today, by contrast...)

ODDER BEDFELLOWS 7/8: I've my differences with Buck Throckmorton over at Ace's, but he does at least know what the "supply chain" is. Jayne Cobb would say it's the chain your supplier goes and beats you with when you don't have an alternative supplier on hand. Makes Buck more internally-consistent than the average Tennessee lawyer, anyway (do hydroponics work, or don't they, Professor?).

Monday, July 5, 2021

Where east didn't meet west

MS 17202 and then John may have been the first Westerners to write church-history in Syriac, as opposed to translating Eusebius and such.

Yes yes, MS 17202 had adapted Zacharias the Rhetor - infamously. Hey man, jury's still out on whether John's own first volume was Eusebian pastiche...

Recently argued elsewhere is a lively Syriac historiography under the later Sasanians. This political divide rendered literary contact, difficult. The confessional divides made friendly contact even more difficult.

Accordingly for John's third book, the only Oriental information I find is the Armenian Catholicos-in-exile's report from the late sixth century which, I assume, was delivered to the court in Greek. For the second book I do read Zuqnîn dropping a lot of names about this or that Easterner who'd been "famous". Although: is that John, or is it a collection of library-notes from the Syriana newly re-united under Islam?

Amida and Ephesus

This blog has run across British Library Add MS 17202 twice now, so - let's dedicate a post to that.

MS 17202 is a Syriac miscellany. Many parts in it bear dates, such as anno graecae 866 meaning AD 555.

We've been told here and there that John of Ephesus (b. AD 507) was the first ecclesiastic historian in Syriac for those who followed the Councils of Ephesus, and not Chalcedon. The Church of the East, of course, had adopted Syriac as of AD 410 and owned her own historiography. But MS 17202 is of Amid/a and Ephesus. Like John.

Hartmut Leppin wrote concerning John that he wrote after this miscellany, no earlier than AD 588. Leppin also wrote on the history of the Ephesians in Amida: that the Romans exiled them AD 521-30 and again 536-40ish. Leppin thinks that John was at Amida during all this, and then drifted west.

Now, the third part of John's book starts AD 571 so, I do not expect many points in contact with MS 17202 (besides some ethnography). I do however wonder about the second part, which covers from Anastasius to Justinian, and which the "PseudoDionysius" of Zuqnîn would later adapt. Given that John as opposed to (says Leppin) Theodoret wrote concerning what he'd experienced himself, and given that Zuqnîn would bear a strong interest in Amida: John would be looking to the second half of the MS, where Zacharias gives way to Pseudo-Zacharias.

Over the Reign of "the serene king of our day" Justinian, MS 17202 book 10 is BADLY fragmented. The MS promises to tell of Bar Khali (a Chalcedonian, whom John hated) in chapter 2 but his name (Abraham) is all we got. And it promises a famine in chapter 14, assigned to Justinian 9-10 (546-7); Zuqnîn concurs, thus kicking off AG 855-8 (placed AG 858, there). But the MS cuts out before that chapter. Other MS (Brooks: JAC. EDESS. L.C.; MICH. FOL. 185 V; GREG. P. 81) do tell of the famine in the East, but not of the ensuing plague of madness (ergot?).

MS 17202 is missing book 11 entirely. Book 12 has chapters 4-7 extant, covering the late AD 550s (AG 860s-early 870s). Sadly by this point John has abandoned interest in Amida.

MS 17202's book 9 makes clear its author rejected Chalcedon. Still: the MS was compromised, being so loyal to Justinian.

All this said, Leppin needs to be qualified: we have in MS 17202 a Justinian-loyal, but also Severan, historian in Syriac contemporary with John but writing before him. John followed this lead if not its content. John may have been an eyewitness to Amidene events so didn't need that content.

Alexander's lesson

Among the warnings by which Simocatta's avatar warns "Maurice", is a lesson from Alexander. The great king once coveted Libya and threatened India. Stephanos Efthymiadis thinks the intentional-irony here is to 'Amr bin al-'As in Egypt, and Sa'd bin Abî Waqqâs' rampage across Iran. He's wrong.

It is a commonplace in (saecular) Islamic studies that there existed no unified Qurân until 30/650 (at least), and that we should be taking about "Arabs" until then. And indeed: Simocatta has nothing on the Arabs' religion - yet. I do worry the later we set Simocatta, the more deafening his silence on protoIslam - the name "Mahmet", the desecration of crosses, the warcry "Allâh is Lord!". Also, the retreating Sasanians found a shah - Yazdegird III - over the 10s / 630s. Where he at?

Further to be noted is that Simocatta's lesson from Alexander is not, in fact, on how he ended the Achaemenids. It's about what happened next. Namely, that his generals carved up the empire. So... the last years of 'Uthman and the ensuing Shi'ite fitna? Err...

I propose that Simocatta's irony instead be pointing to the Neshané (an early target of Syriac dissidents). If Persia be conquered and occupied by "New Alexander", civil war is the result. The King is asked not to extend his writ beyond what his armies can hold whilst remaining loyal.

Although, in a slight irony directed here to Efthymiadis, in this case Hoyland seems at last right that here is the irony against Simocatta. Simocatta did not know that the Diadochi drama was going to play out again ... among the Arabs. He did not know that he was warning the wrong amir.

The tragic court

The AD sixth-century hosted perhaps the greatest historians since the Classical era, at least among the Greeks. Procopius needs no introduction; he was succeeded by the equally-excellent Agathias and then Menander Protector. (Slightly marred in that Agathias didn't get to finish his work and that Menander didn't get copied after the Crusade.) The earliest seventh-century saw a ... different approach to the epic events of that time. Stephen Euthymiades is here to discuss "Theophylaktos Simokatta" the Egyptian. Which itself barely survived: Vaticanus graecus 977 is all we got.

I know: I am teasing Stephanos a bit. I am, after all, a Latin. I will say, though, that Efthymiadis' approach to this (presumed) historian seems plausible.

Simocatta is not well-loved today. That, say Efthymiadis' early footnotes, is because modern historians are coming off their Agathias (and maybe Menander) high, so expect more from this time's historians. Efthymiadis suggests we quit treating Simocatta as An Historian. That one's "oecumenical history" is, rather, The Tragedy Of Maurice. It reads as a Tragedy For Almost Everybody, Hamlet-style.

I believe what is happening here is that Justin II - meaning, Tiberius II - and Maurice patronised actual historians. Where those Emperors wanted propaganda, they commissioned epigrams. Heraclius was a different beast. I have been (most) unkind to James Howard-Johnston but where (I think) he nails it, is in describing the deluge of ink Heraclius expended upon literary pageantry. Hence, George of Pisidia and (in the victory lap) the Alexander Neshané. Some might even wonder about sura 30.

This inspired a counter-literature. The Syriac Christendom produced another Alexander legend - where the great king failed, in a Gilgamesh-like quest for the eternal life macguffin.

In Heraclius' circle and counter-circle, Efthymiadis proposes, is where we'd see The Tragedy Of Maurice. Tiberius II represents the good old days, but he falls prematurely ill. All he can do for Maurice, at the end, is to deliver some Mirror For Princes advice. Maurice fails to heed it, losing his kingdom and his life to Phocas' tyranny. The Sasanians, called "Persians" here, are mired in violence and tyranny as well (again: Simocatta is no Procopius or Agathias, he has no real interest in Iran).

Vg 977 has a preamble. This casts the post-Phocas régime, descendents of Heraclius the Elder, as (what else) the new Heraclids. Debate sputters on (well, as of AD 2010) about whether Simocatta intended this juxtaposition. In this manuscript (tradition?), it reads as classic "glory to God and to His Emperor" that is, as humbug; to (astro)glide the path before comes the... well, you know. Brace yourself, Herry!

So, I got no problem surmising that Simocatta wrote both - although I'll concede separately, maybe the opening panegyric first. Procopius had earlier proven that the same man as wrote an On Buildings could also write an Anecdota.

As a Tragedy set in the past, Simocatta has comments about his present. Here and there appear prophecies of the future, and not just about Zoroastrian Iran which, as Simocatta "predicted", had no future. Additional debate swirls around when Simocatta was writing. Robert Hoyland quoted that the Persians made an apologia to "Maurice" - meaning, to any Emperor who'd hear it - for the continued existence of Persian authority over the eastern border. After all, what profit would devolve upon the Romans should the Persians be bereft of power, and transmit mastery to another phylos?

Hoyland saw an "irony" here; as contrast to other predictions placed in the past, as in apocalyptic. Hoyland didn't think Simocatta - constantly warning the Roman king - could be warning the king now. Efthymiadis disagrees: it's Simocatta's tragedy, whose irony is deliberate. The Tragedy #8.12.13 knew that Khusro II Aparvez had been killed. Efthymiadis thinks that Kovad II Shiroë had died too, and that Simocatta is bringing the irony again.

Sunday, July 4, 2021

Across the Gates of Magog

One account in the Post-Zachariah Amidene Miscellany #12.7 gives me pause - an account of the evangelism toward the Huns, during Justinian's reign. Justinian was (by the AD 550s) friendly to Miaphysites so the Christians out northeast were friendly to him.

Kardutsat, bishop of Arran [=Albania] heard of some captives of "the Huns" across the Darband. So he went up there - the mad lad - with some priests to ransom them back. When they came back, with the captives, the "witnesses" told that they'd got some books translated into Hunnic and that many Huns had become Christian.

First, the good news: there's an anchoring event. This is Kavad's hit "over five decades back" which, from AG 866 / AD 555, indeed checks out: AD 503, against Amida. After chillin' heels in Irani gaol for a bit, those witnesses get sent to the Huns where they live for 34 years. So this story starts around AD 538.

One aspect I noticed, however - rather, didn't notice. Where's any account of what the Huns were like before AD 538?

Compare Movses Dashkurantsi. He's got a similar account, of Albanian bishop Israyel. This is not the same guy - Movses places these events under Varaz Trdat son of the late Juanshir. This account, though, says quite a lot about Hunnic religion and culture. They venerate a tree to Aspandiat, sacrificing horses to this. "Aspandiat" is an Iranian concept: Spenta Armaiti, in the Avesta. Fertility and farming.

Yes yes the Avesta is "problematic" for reconstructing early Zoroastrianism but, keep in mind - past the Gates. We're looking at Iranian superstition. Not the freakin' Denkard.

The Hun khagan (if he is a khan) is Alp' Ilit'uer. "Ilit'uer" is a title, we later learn; it's bestowed upon the loyal retinue, like an earl or a carl among the Germans. "Alp" looks like the Turkish word for "courageous"; as I look around the latter word could be il-teber for a prince. As for the religion, this smells like something Turks might pick up from semi-settled Ossetes along the woodland.

On topic of Movses he has much to report about the Albanian patriarch / catholicos Abas (AD 532-576) - starting Khusro's second year - especially as Abas' tenure coincides with John II (AD 557-74). You'd think there'd be something in Abas' tenure about his underling Kardutsat. What I read instead is what happened before AD 532: the Khazars invaded Albania and burned churches and gospels. (I assume the Udi took the brunt of that.) Afterward the narrative simply skips to the next Khusro, in the AD 600s.

Anyway, Movses has something we can check. For semi-settled Huns in the general Ossetic territory, this something might even check out. Post-Zachariah #12.7, not so much. To me it just smells... bad.

The two Armenias

One Movses Dashkurantsi wrote a "history of the Caucasian Albanians" whose manuscripts survive in classical Armenian, the so-called Grabar. Why is Movses writing in Grabar?

James Howard-Johnston brought Movses to our attention (and maybe to Robert Hoyland's) in 1999 when he annotated the translation of an actual Armenian (hayk'), the historian we call Pseudo-Sebeos. Sebeos in turn gets a lot of press for writing an account of the Arabic incursions starting with a capsule-bio of Mahmet their prophet. Dowsett had done a translation of Movses long before; Robert Bedrosian, that legend, then raised up a lot of it for us in 2010.

Movses, it turns out, also transmitted an account. This account doesn't get quite as much press since it is buried in a mediaeval history, but within it is a lengthy biography of Juanshir the lord of Albania (aluank') over the 40s AH / 660s AD. This excerpt is considered contemporary, or near-enough, with his own reign. And there's a eulogy. In acrostic.

"Acrostic" means it follows the alphabet. That is... hardly easy to do, if translated from some other language. So the paean to Juanshir was composed in Armenian. Certainly the preceding biography was, as well. Which brings us back to - why. Weren't we just told that Juanshir was an "Albanian"? The "Albanians" in the northeast Caucasus had a script of their own which they used to copy Biblical lectionaries in. And a language of their own, which in the middle 1990s was ascertained to be Udi.

When I realised that the poem was an acrostic, which was... later than I care to admit, I decided that no, Juanshir was not an "Albanian". There might not even be such an animal - it just means "mountain man", just like it does for the Balkans. Juanshir just ruled Albanians. Those include (what has become) the Udi. But also those included (then) leftover Azeri Iranians, after the retreating Sasanians stranded them up there. 'Tis a mountainous place, the Caucasus; lots of ethnicities linger around.

Blah bladdity blah blah, today I am alerted to the latest by famous Iranian-historian Touraj Daryaee: "Armenia and Iran". Daryaee cites Zachary called the Rhetor, bishop of Mytilene. He means that miscellany in British Library Add MS 17202, which we've met last year for Aseneth.

Herein #12.7 is pertinent: that the Caucasia hosted several dialects in this nearby author's time, AG 866 (= AD 555). Which are named and situated!

An aside, pace Darayee. EW Brooks himself done tol' all us that alethio-Zachary covers only chapters 3-6 here; chapter 12 is someone else. Probably an "Amidene", as Brooks put it. Bad Touraj, bad! Call your source "Pseudo-". Moving on . . .

One language was spoken around Lake Sevan, "Sisagan". The other was spoken west of the Gelam highland. The former was partly Christian, partly still "heathen"; the latter was all Christian. The classical Grabar, which is the Christian Grabar, was certainly the latter. As for the Sevanian language, it is distinguished from "Arran" meaning, Albanian certainly meaning Udi. Daryaee considers Sevanian a para-Armenian.

Note firstly the persistent East / West divide in Armenian dialects to this day, rather (tragically) until the Young Turks' day. If it happens now, it happened then. I don't see reason to doubt Pseudo-Zachary of Amida nor (despite himself) Daryaee's interpretation of same. Do go read him.

Anyway, Juansher's homilists might have composed their works in that eastern Sevanian dialect. I have no real inkling of what it looked like nor, really, of any Armenian dialect. Movses later on lived in a Christian Armenian system where everyone was conversing in Grabar like so many twelfth-century Frenchmen and Germans talking in Latin. So even if his sources were Siunik', Movses would never be taken seriously if he'd transmitted them wholesale - see how Robert Burns is sometimes treated by English poets. And Movses was allll about being taken seriously as a literate Armenian.

So: I don't know. I hope someone who can into Armenian might produce a study on that.

Saturday, July 3, 2021

More scholia upon the great northwest

I went to the gym and back, giving me more time to think about Nu-Pallembor. Actually I'd gone to the gym and back twice: I failed in my duty as Gentleman Explorer and left my water-bottle at home, first time . . .

To give my seminomads a place to go when that prairie ain't safe, the more-or-less permanent denizens have winter quarters. A strip of sheltered land along the south would get the job done. This land is mostly barren so, like the prairie, is unfit for a large population; but for the off-season, there is at least a lot of stone and clay (and water), so can be used to store supplies. Also where bamboo grows, so do cereals. One should think.

Here and there are badlands, which can provide shelter from the off-season, although not scalable to house all the seminomads here. Here are monasteries consecrated mostly to Vekik the runelord. Some are grynloc; others are lir and mojh.

One adventure-idea, for high-level adventurers: a great salt flat à la the Dasht-e Lut. I said there weren't permanent cities here. Suppose... there used to be? There was once upon a LONG time, an Aral Sea expie, and a Choresmia civilisation to go with it, but it has dried out. This land can be filled with undead now, mostly [para-]mummies. Since it is of The Dark, decent caravans do not truck with them - but the rhodin might. The Diamond Throne sort-of has this theme already, I admit, in Verdune; except that, here, the Dark is king and there is nobody who even dares push back on it.

Friday, July 2, 2021

Adventures along / above the great road

Let's collect my feedback of Arcana Evolved to design a leadin for the overhaul. That is: how would a party native to the rewritten northwest, start out adventuring in that northwest?

As a first step this "Pallembor" is closer to the Dragon. Second step: here is where the Runes are at. Absent, from here, are the Magisters; the mages trend Runethane.

I get a generally low-civilisation vibe from the region. (I am tempted to do away with the Warmain, also.) But being low-civ has its drawbacks: starting with, what's the economy? Once you've looted the tomb, where are you spending the loot?

For that, here I note that my proposal has expanded the northwest. If I have expanded it enough, I have room for that old-school Silk Road. How about: seasonal cities, that disperse in advance of the Bad Time. Maybe this land is like Sogdiana or North Dakota where nobody wants to be here in winter. The Bad Time can be made even worse by magic. If there is no (say) Aral Sea then there is no Choresmia, and no permanent university staff, so - no Magister Academy. Just the occasional tower here-and-there with its reclusive senpai.

The common AU races here are litorians and humans. (And mojh.) Radont herds are common; I should add, from Legacy, squamous lir and grynlocs. The bandits are predominantly rhodin thus, banned from decent caravanserai. Bandits trade their ill-gotten-gains in parallel, piratical bartertowns. A bandit when caught in a "good" caravanserai tends to be crucified, hanged, impaled and/or gibbeted.

One major feature here is flight. The walking-distances are prohibitive, horse-management is frowned upon, and I don't think this world got camels. Besides - we are closer to the Dragon which I want to foreshadow - and I think Monte did too, given "Castles Of The Sky" here. I even wonder if we can have literal aeroplanes and zeppelins out here. DaVinci Eilmer of Malmesbury, bitchez! The aircraft would be made of papier-maché and balsa (not Balsam, lol), all powered by magic - obviously. In season along the Road these craft are safe-enough but, they are not good in storms, and no match for a wyvern or a flying Magister - or for T'kraam from BoEM3. Hence why these craft aren't used in the lands of the Diamond Throne beyond the odd hot-air balloon.

Where does all the wood and leather come from? Propose: that is a feature of the steppe, that it is thick with grassy plants in the papyrus / bamboo / balsa species. Adding to the importance of not being out here in the fire season.

Essential viewing for the ambience: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, except the structures look even more temporary, because they are.

UPDATE 8/28: Big tip o' the hat to O'Neill for de Malmesbury.

Thursday, July 1, 2021

The metastable white dwarf

White dwarfs form from dead stars' cores under a solar-like mass; not beyond the Type II (or electron-capture) limit. This constrains how big they can be when they first form. So, when you see one 1.35 sols, it probably came from additional mass. As in, it merged into some other star and (somehow) didn't go Type I nova.

So Caltech presents ZTF J1901+1458. Caltech say this ain't stable. It is, indeed, running close to Chandrasekhar's 1.4. Maybe its high spin is keeping it from imploding (further).

What would the bang look like if it did implode? This looks like it would go to a neutron-star and shed a lot of outer layers. A belated Type II.