Heliosynchronous

Today I learnt that a satellite can be positioned over a planet such that it always faces its sun, almost but not quite polar. This is used for always-illuminated satellites such as are observing, in fact, the Sun -

- or, we just didn't add batteries for cargo. It's being planned for data-centres.

This is possible where the planet is oblate. Earth is oblate; so is Mars. The wider middle perturbs the orbit. (Slowly-rotating Venus is too global, so has no heliosynchronous altitude. So this is not joining my many many Venuspoasts.)

Earth's altitudes for that, for easy access and low Van Allen, trend 600–800 km and 98° (so a bit retrograde, like Uranus' actual orbit). Cockamamie data-centre ideas aside, such orbit is a thing. That's actually a problem with the ideas: satellites are already using these bands. Also with always-on solar, cometh solar panels (inbound) and heat-radiators (outbound). It's getting crowded up there. The energy demands will force wide panels and wide radiators, increasing the likelihood of Kessler-messler.

I think this might be best for between the two Van Allen belts. Or just ship some batteries bro.

That inheritance trouble again

Jared Diamond cannot stop from taking L's. In lieu of WestHunter telling everyone he (and Harpending - and Nicholas Wade) told us so, David Reich's lab is telling us so: northwest European genes are under selection for IQ (summary).

But his heart's in the right place. This is a thesis in need of testing. Diamond's published output aligns with the goals of a globalist slaver caste. See also Yuval Harari. I do not think Diamond is on the level. Also not on the level is Scientific American... since 1995.

The paper fingers the Neolithic, best it can (it goes only as far as 7000 BC - more on that below). I expect similar to be found for east Asia, and for central Asia up to our Middle Ages. Add also: Mesoamerica, and the Andes - and Iron Age Africa. Maybe also for New Guinea but the farming may be so much easier there that the selection-pressure plateaued early.

Also here is negative-selection for schizophrenia, which @MuseZack Stentz is relating to Julian Jaymes' "bicameral mind". Vridar would pipe-in that Prophets lingered in farm-society although, yeah, they didn't breed (for one who did marry, read Hosea).

GK Chesterton's Orthodoxy delivers an array of assertions, which overlap here. I still haven't read through all of it. Chesterton considers madness a form of autism, the mathematician's need for certainty. Epistemic closure, as an earlier meme went. On this much his instinct might be right. Neander genes trend these ways - we observe, even their settled enclaves never entered the Neolithic.

Less happily, Chesterton sneers at "Evolutionists" and "Darwinists", on account evolution doesn't have a direction. He also sneers at "Progress", on account their direction never ends. To that: we find here that Europeans have intelligently-designed themselves. Most meritocrats would have seen this and argued for this in the 1900s. Chesterton has a point with Progress(iv)ism; but his "Evolutionism" is straw. Overall Chesterton was a 34 year old sophist.

As to the arxiv preprint, we're hearing from @jonatanpallesen that Reich is ungenerous. That uncited paper by Piffer and Kirkegaard digs earlier than 7000 BC. Having read Who We Are And How We Got Here, on Watson; I share that doubt that Reich will be citing Piffer-Kirkegaard - unless Reich be shamed into it.

"Abû Qays Sirma" did not exist

In continuing with Prof. Lindstedt's ongoing project to (re?)habilitate Abû Qays Sirma, once again I must demur.

At this point I cannot take seriously Prof. Lindstedt on the topic of early Arabic verse. He hasn't the mental tools to evaluate one text in relation to another; either that, or he's lazy (it took me, what, two days to find a Sirma/Hassân parallel, earlier, and I'd never even read Hassân before looking). If Lindstedt's aim were to bolster the historicity of Sîra by the personalities mentioned in it (and I don't know why any infidel would so aim), he is accomplishing the opposite.

He can regain that respect but he'll need to work on it.

Neṣḥānā redated

Last week, Corinne Jouanno reviewed Muriel Dubié's Alexandre le Grand en syriaque. It starts with a romantic novel in Greek ascribed to Callisthenes. The delta version - now lost so "*δ" - is what got translated into Edessene Syriac, probably AD sixth-century / AG ninth-. This (also-lost) translation spawned a wide literature of not!Alexander, retroactively converted to Oriental Orthodoxy, all over that Christendom. The same version entered Miaphysite Sinjar, which "Pseudo-Methodius" apocalypse subsequently conquered the West.

Kevin van Bladel will be interested in the "Mimro" (which as oriental should be Memrā) ascribed to Jacob of Serugh, and in the "Exploit" which is the Neṣḥānā (or plural Neṣḥānë if syame). These contributed to sura 18 and enjoyed Arabic translations of their own. He'd assumed that the Neṣḥānā was Heraclius' propaganda and perhaps that Memrā was a reaction against that. This wouldn't leave much time for sura 18 to react to either; hence why van Bladel's thesis got so much notoriety. Keeping in mind: Pseudo-Methodius' own ink won't get much drying-time before getting out into Armenian, Greek, and Latin.

If I am reading the review correctly - it is in French - Dubié is arguing that both belong to an Iran under that Hunnish threat. So they're sixth-century, not seventh. The outremer Christians hope for an Alexander to rescue them - Justinian or Maurice, perhaps. That this rescue did in fact come (sort of) is an irony of history, one of the few vaticini which came true.

Roman India

A few days ago - I'd missed this - Vridar pointed to "India" as economically tied with Rome at its coin-productive peak. Maybe Antonius Pius, the boring one of the Five Good Ones. (I'd prepend Vespasian, Titus, and the underrated Domitian; GK Chesterton - whom I'm now reading - would subtract Marcus Aurelius.)

The map with the orange dots is quite illuminating: Ireland's coast and deep Pictland are economic dependents, as are all Germans and (for the amber) Balts, even Slavs. We don't get hoards at the Fezzan; these might have been uprooted in antiquity by fleeing Garamantes. There's a bit of Saba' and the Ge'ez part of Ethiopia. Before running into the Indian Ocean.

Ireland and Yemen hosted Roman embassies, as (more seriously) the Crimea. What's most-interesting here is south India.

I cannot but be reminded of differing definitions of "India" in the postHellenistic era. Iranians and, I think, Greeks defined "India" as, basically, the Sanskrit Sindh - that is, the Indus river. This was a land definition. I understand from Arabian studies that west-Arabians and Romans had a sea definition. They even considered their own Yemen-Oman strip in "India".

With that in mind, we can talk of a Roman India: Dravidian rather than Indic, Krishna and even Buddha rather than the Vedas (famously "Indo-Iranian"). Sanskrit civilisation might not yet be Persianate but it is at least paraIranian.

I don't know if the Romans had an embassy at Sri Lanka but Rome was certainly sending (a lot) more money over there than to, say, Ireland. The coins don't lie. Hence why Pius needed a post in Yemen.

As Vridar goes: the peak of Dravidian-Roman interconnexion will be that second century AD. When Christianity is really getting started. The language of this commerce although Roman won't be Latin; it will be Greek and Aramaic.

Rapa Nui 1, Jared Diamond 0

Saraceni is linking a study about Rapa Nui genetics. It's really a replication-paper; not-all-that-modern geneticists were already saying that "Easter" Islanders have some American-coast genes. Like... years ago. Honestly Thor Heyerdahl had got this (one) thing right generations before.

Aaron Ragdale points out that, yes, we already knew. But replication is in crisis: so confirming 2020-era genetics from modern samples, with 2024-era ancient samples, means we can trust the 2020s methods elsewhere, where ancient samples aren't so easy to find. Like elsewhere in the preColombian Americas. Like in Africa, or India.

One amusing finding is that Rapa Nui did not "collapse" because of environmental failure, contra Jared Diamond; it did not collapse at all. Well... until the Peruvians conquered and enslaved everybody, like Maori, or for that matter Huari.

Higher-bandwidth LEO

It is perhaps a paradox of profitable space - mostly low-orbit space - that technology makes it obsolete. Noted just here recently is that we can have more ruthenium - from nuclear waste and stray neutrons - without mining it off asteroids. So here is an attempt to convince regulators we don't need the Starlink constellation.

I assume they're right. Simpler, smaller, and better satellites would be nice for telescopes down here.

I still want my asteroid mines tho'.

BACKDATE 9/14.

Mousterian misanthropes

The news from postEemian Mousterian Europe is that, of those who saw the warm period end 105Mya / 103kBC, a population in France hunkered and... didn't interact with anyone else. That's Mandrin Cave, on the Riviera (hence Italianish grotte, not cro).

I guess these are the coastal folk who kicked one group of our kin upriver. Where 52kBC that group up and left again.

Kuiper's Kirkwood

The second Kuiper is confirmed. There's a gap spanning the 60s AU; New Horizons is presently at the hither edge of this boundary. Around 70-75 AU the iceballs reäppear before tapering-off with the Subaru's decreasing ability to see 'em.

I'm interested in the gap itself. This is not the obvious Neptunian (164.8-year) Kirkwood which should be 47.7 AU - with plenty of KBOs. The year out at 64 AU = √(64*64*64) = 512 Earth years. This would be in 2:1 resonance, instead, with something 1024 years; 32768 AU.

That is... a lot. Other resonances are of course possible, but Hilda's 3:2 should be fine as long as they're offset by eccentricity and angle.

So they're not talking about some "Planet Nine" at least not here. The nebula just formed like this; like other T Tauri's do.

Can we stop talking about Darryl Cooper now?

I am not averse to a little bit of historical revisionism, even WW2 revision. But when you've lost the grand master of revisionism, David Cole\Stein...

Those interested in the @martyrmade / Buchanan thesis might also check out Victor Hanson. Or, you know... McMeekin (who has another book out). At least Cooper and Carlson still have, er, Kevin MacDonald. And Vox Day to the extent they're even different people.

One comment, if by Thomas Dalton one of the Kampf translators, is worth raising to some of the mob: that @martyrmade's most-commented excerpt dealt with POWs (which included Jews) and not Osteuropan Jewry en banc. But. To this, given that Himmler was still in the cabinet, we have to add the word "yet".

Tucker Carlson took a big L by hosting this crank.

The crooked path of Arius

Castalia House is serialising the old Cambridge Medieval History. This series was envisioned by that genius JB Bury before the Wars; the first volume came out after several years in 1911. Archive.org for all their caterwauling still has it; you can start the "Arianism" chapter by Henry M. Gwatkin. (I prefer Eunomian or Anomoean.)

I have looked into Ephrem the Syrian, active in the decades most-involved, AD 330-70. I can verify that whatever "Mar" Ephrem was preaching, it was Eunomian and - also - lies.

Theodore Beale has a take. It is likely the correct take. Excepting that the Creed actually posted at Nicaea is what allowed this voodoo-Christianity, Aurelianism under the shell, to take over the Empire. And that's the creed which Beale supports; not the Theodosian creed affirmed at Chalcedon.

We Christians must keep a watch out for such online "Orthodox" as don't fulfil Orthodoxy. I can but quote Master Cernovich on this one:

A lot of men who couldn’t cut it as political commentators have rebranded as “Orthodox Christians.” Their timelines are full of poison. Jew hate. Repeal the 19th. Holocaust denial. They don’t do charity. Nothing productive. Toxic waste. Fakers.

Some women too I reckon.

TOI-1408

Don’t get attached to this system; it’s a F8V, already 2.7 Gy. It’ll redgiant before anything good evolves here. The paper announces a c, inbound of already-hot b. They are almost but not quite 2:1 resonance – they librate. Like that HD. Luminosity is 2.96, so a comfy (91% Earth) insolation could be had at 1.8 AU. It would have been cooler earlier but, as noted, the star is on the outs.

And there’s an outer:

?2530/365.256
6.9266487066605347
?Math.Pow(6.9266487066605347*6.9266487066605347*1.31, 1.0/3.0)
3.9759343688051021

Which we could round to 3.976 AU. 0.35 eccentricity means perihelion 2.584 AU. The 14.6 jove mass is a lower bound. But I do not know its inclination. It is hard to see how it could have got there naturally.

Overall this couple is the interesting part of the system – for its dynamics. I don’t know that these two could have migrated together. This suggests they formed here. Which has implications for other hot Jupiters. In particular if a hot Jupiter could form, and have a smaller planet beneath it; there could exist smaller planets still in-situ above it, as far as HZ, especially given the width of the HZ band.

But here the (probable) superplanet “d” could be sweeping the HZ of livable matter if an even bigger von Zeipel perturbator is out at “e”.

Honduras is not your playpen

X hosted a fairly good, if slanted, take on what's happening to that ancap utopia on one of those Mosquito Coasts: @GarrisonLovely re Próspera. Someone been readin' the Bard of Avon.

Back in 2009 Honduras had a Leftist President, Zelaya, who was consolidating power to himself in violation against some Forever-Clauses in Honduras' own Constitution. The Honduran Supreme Court and Army - without any help from the American government which itself was one-party Left at the time - threw out Zelaya.

Aside: this is where I quit paying attention to an important Latin American country. I allow this as an oversight on my part. I take solace in how @GarrisonLovely has - also mistakenly, one hopes - omitted any of that.

The new government, Constitutional in origin if not much supported by Hondurans, then did some extraConstitutional activities of its own. Namely, they gave up some territory to "Próspera", headed by Andreessen Horowitz among others. (Razib Khan's X is telling me that Andreessen Horowitz recently took another L at Miami; they're closing that two-year-old office.) We're talking potentially a third of the land. Honduras' new President Xiomara Castro, who is Leftist but pretends not to be Zelaya, wants this land back.

I say "pretends" because X.C. is using blood-and-soil demagoguery... like a Chavez or Maduro. This is clearly an emotive appeal to populism. On the other hand... Texans might not like an "ancap" colony at, oh, Freeport which just-so-happened to be entirely led by Chinese nationals. Certainly one could "ask a Mexican" about how it works when thousands of yanquis move in and take over the economy; they had a whole revolución about it.

Próspera is suing for 2/3 of Honduras' budget. The court is obviously not Honduran; a takeback would be post facto but you know how LatAm courts are. Nah; this is going to the CAFTA-DR treaty court and, we hear, on trade issues the Biden Administration sits to the Obama Administration's Right (and - credit is due - to Trump's Right). In this court, Próspera might win - the judgement would bankrupt Honduras. Why might they win? I suspect because they've sunk a lot of money in infrastructure, and also because X.C.'s rhetoric is annoying the courts. Zelaya had done that at home and look what happened to him.

Much as I distrust X.C., I cannot affirm any more trust in this Próspera adventure. Marc Andreessen and his boys should take the L at Honduras as they have at Miami, and bug out. Honduras is not your lab for "effective altruism" experiments. Improving Honduras has to be done by Hondurans, like El Salvador is best-improved by a Salvadorean.

Durak

David Sacks has X'ed a tantrum; Mike Cernovich has relayed this to his followers, such as we are. Overall it appears that Gizmodo's hit has hit the target. TENET Media is Russian-funded, as Sacks has conceded.

I am not a TENET subscriber; but one can hardly avoid Tim Pool and Lauren Southern, neither violets being precisely shrinking.

TENET is not a Trump outlet; but yes, it is Russian, and it is appealing to an audience as might be Trump-inclined. Overall, Sacks' take is that the Russians don't want the audience to vote Trump. One strategy, perhaps an effective strategy, has been to amplify extreme anti-abortion voices like Lauren Chen's. Mike Pence is out there too as is the Catholic University of America, donors to Pence and to Harris too. (Please do not contribute to CUA's second-collections after Mass.)

Gizmodo avers: The indictment made clear that Pool, Rubin, Johnson, and the rest didn’t know that they were being sponsored by the Russians. And so they say for themselves: they're just durak. Still: their commentary has attracted the Russians. Gizmodo could not keep itself from reviewing Benny Johnson's commentary against the Harris ticket: a "low-effort rant". If the money ain't in it, your heart ain't in it.

Jack Posobiec is defending Pool (and Johnson, whoever he is). Other X's are whaddaboudding China and Qatar. Elsewhere we might inquire into the motives - and funding - of Tucker Carlson and @martyrmade.

To disclose, this here blog the Baghestan is funded by nobody but its proprietor... and by Google/Alphabet, inasmuch as they run Blogspot now. Alphabet is #neverTrump. Alphabet might want to consider if they want to stay on the Russians' side.

Overall I'm going with Sacks as an admission-against-interest. And I tend to agree that China's investment, being that it's going to (effectively) the Shadow Vice President, is more dangerous than Russia's, being that that's going ... also toward that Sh.V.P.'s interests. But we're going to hear only "Russia!" and "Trump's audience!", meaning: yet another impeachment in 2027 after the Swamp scuppers Congress again. With Putin's gleeful endorsement.

The Internet Archive does not deserve support

Recently-published books as are not in public-domain used to be available on the Internet Archive. The publisher Hachette - whose name I'd first heard, in a tiff with Amazon - has taken 500k of these books off this platform.

You can read the Archive's case, on the petition they want us to sign. I'm interested in #2; my underlines:

Equity and Accessibility: The Internet Archive democratizes access to knowledge. By restricting access to these books, you have made it harder for the most vulnerable people in our society to read and learn. Not everyone has a local library, can afford to travel to one, feels safe accessing the information they need in public, or can ignore the potentially life-altering repercussions when tech platforms collect data on their reading habits. Your removal of more than 500,000 books from public access is a serious blow to lower-income families, people with disabilities, rural communities, and LGBTQ+ people, among many others.

It is a "tell" that this petition is on change.org; which has an editorial bias of its own. Would it host a petition on Hachette's side?

I suspect that "tech platforms" will, exactly, be "collecting data" anyway - where in service to Equity, in alliance with the Internet Archive. If you trust the Internet Archive otherwise, good luck to you. One might observe that the Internet Archive's position is to facilitate the next Audrey Hales. That way, such atomised souls lacking supervision would be finding this stuff on their 'phones.

Since change.org and Internet Archive won't tell you, I will: Hachette would say it is protecting publishers and authors. As well as, you know... kids.

In sum, I won't join this latest change.org SIGN NOW OR YOU'RE WEIRD! bandwagon. Furthermore, this blog and any other online content associated had not, up to now, taken a side on Hachette's disputes; now I have to assume Hachette are the Good Guys, unless and until I'm shown otherwise.

Ganymede, stricken

The Galileian moon Ganymede got hit, barely 500 My after forming. This rolled it around and changed its spin; said spin has since changed to tidal lock, like most moons.

The grand-tacking of Jupiter would indeed have brought its system in contact with the outer asteroids. They say the impactor was twenty times Chicxulub although I know not how they're calculating its velocity. If the 300 km diameter holds up, that's larger than 3 Juno (admittedly small for its time of discovery).

The Europa Clipper won't be visiting this one, and if it owns a 'scope to see Ganymede that'll only be his Jove-face. The Juno orbiter is more an Amalthea visitant. (My proposal of some 4:3:2 Laplacian would also only ever see the Jove-face.) The JUICE is the one that's supposed to be looking at Ganymede all over.

Sintashta eclipse?

Here I am breaking mine own rule about affixing questionmarks to a title. But: Rig Veda Samahita mentions some eclipses, which are now taken semiseriously. One reference describes the vernal equinox as occurring in Orion, and another has it occurring in the Pleiades. That's 4500 BC and 2230 BC respectively.

The eclipse in the vernal age of Orion is that exciting these astrohistorians. The eclipse occurred three days before the autumnal equinox; the compiler, it seems, marked the year from the vernal.

The ex silentio is evoked inasmuch as the eclipses are not related to such Vedic-era Indian mythology as Rahu and Ketu. So this mythology is either preHindu or paraHindu. Historically Hindu nationalists tend to consider the Indus as the home of the Vedas (which it is; excepting Samahita), and they don't place mythical river Sarasvati at Arachosia as they should. Thus also, the dissimilarity principle.

Given the language and recent genetics, the most-likely origin of outside influence would be Central Asia. The paper makes the maths work out there 22 October 4202 BC and 19 October 3811 BC.

This is made possible I think by recent acceptance of indigenous lore in Australia, the Pacific Northwest, and Crater Lake.

I am unsure what we do with this lore, if it be lore.

The origins and fate of the Tang

h/t turtle: an ethnography of the Tang as seen through its diehards out in Dunhuang (pdf).

The Tang are about my favourite of the regimes ruling the Middle Kingdom. Many such rulers have been foreign: the Yuan of course (Mongol) and Qiang (Manchu). I'd thought the Tang were indigenous. Sanping Chen here is looking into Dunhuang's history after that An Loshan / An Shi mess.

As "An Lushan", this rebel attracted a bit of attention a decade back when John Derbyshire, whose wife is Han, transmitted Pinker's musings that he was the worst rebel in human history. In recent years it seems the bodycount was revised downward. It was still a mess for the Tang: the Tibetans rallied the Tangs' enemies, which included the Qiang interestingly and also the Tanggut, to encircle and extort Dunhuang, Comanche-style. Then they simply took it.

"Simply" rather oversimplifies the matter given that a pro-Tang revolt broke out, throwing off the Tibetan yoke. Sanping Chen notes that the faction proudly proclaimed the Tang lineage as "Tuoba" - even Tabγač. That is a Turkic name. This would be like an inner-mongolian outpost of Chinese waving a Manchu flag. I mean, at least they're not Mongols, right?

I find an irony in that the Tang are most famed, for Central-Asian / Iranian historians, for smashing, in fact, the Turks. This is what opened the (northern) Silk Road and led to Dunhuang's seventh-century prosperity. Admittedly making it a plum target for Tangguts and Tibetans later.

BACKDATE 9/4

Jeru/Zalem

Alita, which was not a bad movie, is based off an anime. I hadn't looked at the worldbuilding. Apparently there is some.

What this place offers is an orbital ring, which can use the high-tensile compound of your choice; in Paul Birch's day that was just kevlar. We've been talking about that here for years. Nah: the fun part is how to get from the ring into space. Because the ring orbits. It is a moving platform.

So here on 4chan (sorry) is a hopefully-fair-use screencap (jpg). Tiphares is 3 km above... the equator, I assume; so hop on over from the Andes bro. Keep in mind that Tiphares is hanging from the magnetic field generated from the ring, not attached to its orbiting components.

You then take the lift to the sky hook - that is, to the ring - for 600 km, a reasonable LEO without too much exosphere interference. 120 km/hour would take five hours which is a little boring but no problem for a Texan driver. Personally I'd ponder more that 600 km is thermopause; Skylab at 440ish km died because our atmo had an unscheduled bump out there. There's 2000 km to play with before the Van Allens start messing with the superconductors from the upper side.

Anyway Jeru seems to be on Tiphares. I'd be reluctant to host a full city there; tensile strength will be an engineering nightmare. And its mass will drag the orbital ring.

The fun really starts above the ring. Ketheres is out at, yes, 1200 km. Best I can tell Ketheres is not in its own orbit, but also hanging from the ring... aaaand here the diagram makes less sense. "Centrifugal force" is keeping Ketheres in its higher state: so, Ketheres is physically tethered, to the moving parts of the ring, therefore should not line up with the levitating lower cord... excepting when the orbit allows. The diagram must assume timetables so that anyone wanting a direct Tiphares-Ketheres trip can have one. That's fine with me. Less fine with me: shouldn't Ketheres be trailing diagonally...?

Ketheres further hosts the city Jeru. Wild. I wonder if this force is enough to keep a pseudogravity on the space-facing side. Again: tensile, and dragging the orbit of the ring.

I am despite-this liking that this spinning cable is not a GEO-to-Earth solution, with "nanocarbon" handwavium. Because those don't exist and probably never will.

All this will be much easier if above thermopause and using adequate radiators. In fact the temperature-differential between earth and space is a major source of energy for Tiphares. So not only would the ring be keeping sunlight off of Earth but what warmth is left on Earth is being radiated to space. Brrr!

Next question: we can't drop a cable from GEO right to Earth's atmo. But can we drop one just as far as Ketheres?