The Bacchae

Angelo Plume and Joey Jo Jo Cochran would like to quell some of the Christian outrage over the Olympics. Bedfellows indeed; not so strange however, inasmuch as Counter-Currents and Patheos agree on Gaza and on "the JQ" generally.

Joey Jo Jo would pretend that this outrage is "evangelical", not knowing or (more likely) erasing the bishops' response in France. Following a common trope over on Patheos, it's not the story that's the story; it's how icky proles react to the story. See also, the child slave trade; Augustine, for Patheos, had expended his last years in vain.

If someone complains about the content without visual proof, that someone would - rightly - be suspected as making stuff up. But if proof is provided, this is "voyeuristic". Joey Jo Jo won't address that this blasphemy was intended as a "New Gay Testament".

Not our first coup

Kamala Harris is Acting President; ousting out the old triumvirate of Joe, Hunter, and Jill. There was no Constitutional process for this. There's talk this coup was permitted because the 25th Amendment was raised; which as Ace notes means everyone in the chain-of-command knew that it should be raised.

But we are all going along with Acting President Harris, anyway. Hollywood wills, Hollywood's will be done. I recall Harris posters in science-fiction from maybe ten years ago. Hollywood has willed Harris for some time now.

It may pain my readers to read this, but Harris' coup enjoys some precedent. "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too!" became "you're getting John Tyler" scant weeks into the Tippecanoe Presidency. There was no succession-mechanic in William Henry Harrison's Constitution; Tyler just slipped in, gave orders, and dared anyone to say different. Neither South Carolina nor Massachusetts said different.

Tyler's regime had more legitimacy than Edith Wilson did, anyway.

Ultima Hawaiki

One interesting point (of many) in Thompson's book, is the term "Hawaiki". This is the homeland of all the Polynesian peoples, who all remember they were not from wherever Europeans found them.

This implies that the state we call "Hawaii" should probably be considered New Hawaiki or East Hawaiki. Best, Ultima Hawaiki.

Although the people could still be called "Hawayicans" - after their origin. Thompson herself has been witness to a "brother" discount provided by Hawaiians to her husband a Maori.

BACKDATE 31 July

Europeans as indigenous islanders

This weekend I picked up Christina Thompson, Sea People. Which has the alt-title "Puzzle of Polynesia". Before I finish this, I take issue with the Polynesians as the last people to settle lands outside their own.

We would be dismissing Barbados and the Azores as found by people who then lost those lands - Arawaks and Vikings respectively - alongside all those uncounted Pacific atolls. Fine. We are still left with the Gálapagos, São Tomé, Bermuda, Saint-Helena, the Falklands, Kerguelen... actually pretty much all the islands south of Tasman's, and one whole continent (if a chilly continent).

I think that Europeans should count also as "people".

BACKDATE end-o'July.

Constraining Gliese 1002 b

I stumbled onto Kosmo's youtube on K-452, which we've met last year as a possible photosynthetic. This particular vlog didn't offer anything new so - to fill opportunity for youtube ads I guess - burbled a bit on... GJ 1002, which we've also met, the year before that. Kosmo claimed estimates on mass and even on volume. I found that of interest because last I looked, we had only a minimum mass and no volume. This isn't a transit or some εIndi which we can actually look at. The best I could do was Hill Spheres, for masses.

As of this month I would, myself, impose some constraints on composition as well.

GJ 1002, although like GJ 12 not terribly flarey, has a wide Alfvén. Unless we're looking at these planets face-on so dealing with a superearth or two, b has no air - so no surface liquid. It's a barren rock. I figured it as a "huronian" so it could pile up some nice glaciers 'round the back but nobody's living on this thing.

Same goes for Wolf 1069.

The better Bruno

TheTorah.com has a fine article by Mordechai Cohen on Bruno and Solomon "Rashi" ben Meir, saint-scholars each in our traditions.

By the eleventh century A.D., it appears that the "Antiochene School" had more-or-less died in the West as long before in Egypt. Ephrem survived here only in name, via pseudepigraphs; the (relative) moderate Nestorius was condemned. Bruno revived the plain sense of scripture, which Syrians would call peshitta. (Jews had a similar word, pishut, whether cognate or loan.)

Bruno is mostly forgotten today - I literally needed a Jew to teach me. But that seems mostly because he's been overshadowed, by students like Thomas Aquinas then Duns Scotus (Cohen brings Nicholas of Lyra). Bruno was certainly widely-read at the time. One might consider Salieri's influence on Beethoven and Liszt. Now Rav/Prof Cohen would add Rashi to Bruno's students, if backhanded.

Maghrebi/Andalusi and Byzantine Jews existed and had been composing their own commentaries, preceding Rashi. But Rashi did not read Arabic nor Greek, so used none of these. Rashi didn't have Latin either... exactly. He did have Old French however, which wasn't yet as far from Vulgar Latin as it is now. I see that Rashi says פשוטו של מקרא rather than construct-state. The man has to be reading this like a Frenchman or Aramaean would, peshuto de miqra.

Cohen further claims that Latin Christians held to the Psalter more than to Torah. I don't know if that is true but it is assuredly possible; the Psalter was clearly the prime influence of the poetic memra genre among the Syrians, together arguably preceding actual-Bible to the Late Antique Araby. Either way, Bruno took more interest in the Psalter, composing a painstaking commentary upon that.

You already tested in prod

NASA still can't bring the boys home. Well, so they say; they know the Dragon Capsule will work. But apparently they want to use the Starliner. Boeing think they know what went wrong but then they'd have to figure out how to fix it before breaking something else.

In Boeing's defence the Starliner technically worked. It just didn't work very well. So it looks like they're in a poor parameter space where they don't know if it will work going-forward.

Ah Boeing, the Crowdstrike of space.