You should read this for 11/16/2019:
Art, music, and Film
H/T John Gruber: Disney+ Version of Star Wars: A New Hope Alters Greedo Scene Yet Again For a better history see The version of Star Wars on Disney+ changes the canon once again
The Internet Archive Is Digitizing & Preserving Over 100,000 Vinyl Records: Hear 750 Full Albums Now Vinyl recordings preserved and available for download.
Books, Writing, and Language
Giant Publisher Macmillan Goes To War Against Libraries
We’ve seen this before. Publishers have massively jacked up the prices of lendable ebooks (note the $60 price above), they’ve built in “expiring” licenses so that those expensive purchases can only be loaned out a limited number of times. And now they’re limiting how many licenses can be purchased by a single library.
This is an attack on libraries for no good reason, other than publishers hating the concept of “free” access to books.
Via BoingBoingDog has learned to “speak” with a soundboard: “Outside. Come now.”
Education
The Growing Partisan Divide in Views of Higher Education See also this Twitter thread
Food and Drink
Angel Hair Pasta with Shrimp and Parmesan Lemon Cream Sauce I added some capers.
History and Archaeology
Many imperial Romans had roots in the Middle East, genetic history shows
Two thousand years ago, the streets of Rome bustled with people from all over the ancient world. The empire’s trade routes stretched from North Africa to Asia, and new immigrants poured in every day, both by choice and by force. Now, an ancient DNA study has shown those far-flung connections were written in the genomes of the Romans.
People from the city’s earliest eras and from after the Western empire’s decline in the fourth century C.E. genetically resembled other Western Europeans. But during the imperial period most sampled residents had Eastern Mediterranean or Middle Eastern ancestry. At that time, “Rome was like New York City … a concentration of people of different origins joining together,” says Guido Barbujani, a population geneticist at the University of Ferrara in Italy who wasn’t involved in the study. “This is the kind of cutting-edge work that’s starting to fill in the details [of history],” adds Kyle Harper, a Roman historian at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.
The University of Leicester found 83 skeletons in a Roman graveyard dating back as early as the 2nd Century.
Six with possible African ancestry is the first evidence of migrants from the continent in the city, experts said.
Again, despite what some ahistoric newts want you to believe, Europe in the Middle Ages was not White People Land. It just wasn’t. We know there were people of African descent in Roman Britain
Science and Nature
A “mouse-deer,” seen once in the last century, has now been caught on film
Sasquatch or Wendigo? Mysterious howls in Canadian wilderness spark confusion
Technology
Via John Gruber: @jelenawoehr on Twitter: Every Horse Emoji, Ranked
Women’s Work
Why Trump Attacked Marie Yovanovitch He can’t help but go after women, even when doing so hurts his cause.
It was almost as if the president found himself triggered by Yovanovitch, the 61-year-old career diplomat. But why was the president’s response so different to witnesses that were roughly saying the same thing? What was the big difference between Kent and Taylor and Yovanovitch? All three are career diplomats, all three are Ivy League graduates, all three have worked in the state department, all three are experts in Ukraine. But only one of them is a woman. Could that be why the president singled out Yovanovich? It’s almost as if the president is unable to control his rage against women. It’s almost as if the president thinks he can bully women and silence them.
💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰
Who is Rudy Giuliani’s friend “Charles”? An accidental text may have outed his identity
Two days after publication, on the evening he attended a Yankees playoff game with Alan Dershowitz, Giuliani — President Donald Trump’s 75-year-old informal cybersecurity adviser — accidentally texted me what appeared to be a password: Eight characters, beginning with the name of a networking company and including a capital letter, a special character, and a number. Multiple IT experts confirmed it could be nothing else, and, given the iPhone’s messaging setup, impossible to type with your butt or in any other unwitting way.
Pay It Forward and Make It Better
Why You Should Keep Old Blankets and Coats in Your Car
H/T Kira Cee: Villagers knit jumpers for Indian elephants to protect the large mammals from near-freezing temperatures
Elephants in India are sporting colourful woollen jumpers after villagers knitted the super-size garments to protect the animals from near-freezing temperatures.
