True, but some sites, especially the smaller ones, make fun artistic AI images in a certain style with some quirky elements thrown in. It's not drawn by a human, but the prompt for good images that I personally like (or tolerate, at least) is usually way more creative than the search query for the boring stock image ever was. If the stock image was a judge's gavel, the AI image would, for example, be a judge's gavel threatening the hidden accomplices of the accused that the article is trying to allude to. It may be in an 8-bit style if it's for cybercrime perpetrated by a nation state. Just a random example that I haven't seen, but it's much more fun than a shitty stock photo. Useless, of course, but gets a "hah" from me once in a while. And it makes stock photo companies die.
This article positions as something invented between the USA and the USSR... But, just looking into wikiepdia:
"One such solution was a method proposed in 1809 by the French pastry chef Nicolas François Appert, which involved long-cooking meat or vegetables (approximately 1-2 hours) and pasteurizing the finished product in a brine solution. Appert received a personal award for this invention from Napoleon."
Yes, as far as I understand, canned meat was not so popular among civilians in the USSR before tushonka. And tushonka is usually referred specifically to canned stewed meat, not ham or vegetables.
Old tushonkka was tasty but many of those sold in stores now, especially the cheap ones, are not so tasty and good-quality.
It wasn't a whole book, it was cartonnage: scrap paper from discarded books and documents, assembled and glued together like papier-mâché. The cartonnage was used to make funerary masks and some other parts of the mummification apparatus.
There is a whole subfield of archaeology that deals with deciphering and identifying book fragments found in the form of scrap paper in Greco-Roman era Egyptian mummies.
I find it interesting how uncommon it is for this to yield new works.
It seems like it's always the same handful of texts. Ancient readers liked what they liked and weren't out for variety it seems.
At the same time, Juvenal has a whole satire about how everyone is trying their hand at writing books and mentions in another how booksellers are always getting new volumes.
I spend way too much time pining for the chance to read the other parts of the Trojan Cycle, even though the ancient said they were much lower quality. Like your favorite show getting canceled.
You are falling victim to frequency bias. Popular books are popular – and especially before mass printing technologies, really popular. A lot of people may have tried to write books doesn't mean they're writing books good enough to dedicate an actual person's time towards copying them down.
Also, Juvenal was a poet. He most likely knew other poets, or aspiring poets, or at least people who liked writing. Your average, generally functionally illiterate, individual at the time is not trying their hand at writing books.
Many cultures bury their dead with objects that the person enjoyed during their lifetime.
This is present even today, I saw a burial in Eastern Europe where the parents put a game of chess and toys in the coffin. While it will do no good to the deceased my theory is that it is a way for the living to deal with the loss.
I wonder now and then about the extent of dissent and cynicism in ancient Egypt. This is a vague question, I know, not least because the scope covers thousands of years. But officially, everybody gets grave goods in proportion to their status, especially their closeness to royalty, and these are provided so that they can have chairs and games and sports and clothes and food and so on in the next world, to make approximately four out of their eight forms of soul feel comfortable. Then these grave goods are often immediately stolen, probably by the same priestly officials who organized the burial. I wonder if ancient Egyptians silently thought their own religion ridiculous.
"I wonder if ancient Egyptians silently thought their own religion ridiculous."
The more who believed that, the less power their religion had at holding the empire together until it transcended into becoming a vassal and later out of existing.
Religion was the foundation of the empire, but judging from the many artifacts we have, at least some did take it very seriously.
The religiously faithful would disagree somewhat, but not I.
I wonder, however, why such Christians (for example) think a prayer for the soul of the deceased would alter God's plan in any way. "Gee," he says to Michael, who happens to be flying nearby, "John Doe was a dirtbag sinner, but that was a really nice funeral mass... Screw what I said in Scripture; let him in!"
> This is present even today, I saw a burial in Eastern Europe where the parents put a game of chess and toys in the coffin. While it will do no good to the deceased my theory is that it is a way for the living to deal with the loss.
Spoiler: they do that so that future grave robbers and archaeologists will know all about the dead person's lifestyle. Surely that kind of everlasting glory has to be worth something to the deceased, one would think?
While the collection is now termed by modern scholars as "Book 2 of the Iliad", there was no such thing as a "book" as we know it, in those times; there were codices and scrolls and manuscripts, etc., and everyone's favorite: the palimpsest!
"Book" has been used to translate the Latin word "liber", which is the word used by the Ancient Romans for the parts of a bigger document, each of which would have been written on a different scroll.
Latin "liber" was used to translate the Greek words "biblion" or "byblos", which are thus the oldest source of the word "book". "Byblos" originally meant papyrus in Greek, but later it was also used for the parts of a big document. A later form of this word, which was more specialized with the meaning of "material for writing" or "book", is "biblion" (a diminutive), having the plural "ta biblia" = "the books", which is the source of English "bible".
It's actually a modern innovation, AFAIK. Common people were stripped and wrapped in linens (or equivalent). Obviously, mummy wrapping would be the extreme example of it, but wills often designated who would inherit "my best tunic", because the clothes were quite valuable if still wearable.
I'm speaking of the common people; kings and bishops were buried in finery. And it's not universal by any means. In times of disaster or plague bodies were buried quickly in their current clothes. This leads to some interesting finds, as when all that remains of an entire outfit is the silk stitching and things like metal buttons.
I would point out that in 45 years ago, in 1981, the typewriter as a product was over 100 years old (first sold 1874). There was a lot of time to standardize by 1981. And there probably haven't been a lot of serviceable pre-1900s typewriters for quite a while.
The first Kindle came out in 2007. Who knows what an e-reader will be like in 2107?
I got it. And I've played a 1905 Martin and you can still plug a 1950s telecaster into a 1950s amp in turn plugged into wall power and everything works. Just saying, that is not the consumer electronics world in 2026.
The amp would only be working if it had repairs multiple times by now though. Capacitors don't last 75 years, and tubes last much shorter than capacitors.
A replacement set of tubes for a 1950s Fender amp costs $200-$400 today, just for parts. A lot more than a new Kindle. A Kindle might even be less e-waste than a set of tubes too.
The problem is that organizations providing infrastructure (such as message exchange, money exchange, physical entities exchange) are allowed by law to manipulate the stream, heavily advertise, provide credit etc all kind of scum. Depriving children from writing a message to parents and friends is nonsense. Exposing them to these for-profit organizations is questionable. But that is also questionable with the grown ups.
Yes, and sometimes they are very different. I was surprised to see the German Wikipedia had a couple of articles on Scottish history that were better than the English language one!
None? It is not certain any country will benefit. Countries built their infrastructure and population centers according to the weather of the location. If the weather changes probably every country will have to adjust.
If you are asking which area will benefit from climate change I would say Siberia as it will become increasingly important due to the northern corridor remaining ice free and because a lot of people will be displaced by weather/sea level. And that place is empty. Additionally, it has nice farming soil which right now is not used since there are easier places to farm but in a warming world this could change
Why in this story students use GPT and professors don't?
If you are an expert -- sit down and start working with GPT on your own. See what it can and what it can not do. See where it helps. See where it hands down lose.
You are right - this is a new activity professors have to pick up. A latent point in my previous comment was that maybe some professors have not as much expertise as may be required. Now that this expertise is sort of democratised there's more pressure on professors to get better.
I sure does use it to prepare exams etc. Problem is students don’t seem to see the reason for not using GPT to solve them ;) for me it perfectly makes sense to prepare exams and labs with some AI help… but this questions both my role and the role of in-person education.
Yeah I agree! I use GPTs (Gemini 2 series and o3 etc.) and they are excellent! But even they sometimes don't quite get the nuance of things or subtly misses the point! There are certain "meta-cognitive" limitations ... I would never bet against the AGI industry and I can only assume that these issues will eventually be solved after we build planets of computronium and force every word and thought any human ever utters to be recorded and trained on. But for now there remain some limitations.
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