Closing my tabs – 2025 05 04 – Dispatches from Dallas

Archaeology Magazine: New Study Suggests Antikythera Mechanism Had Design Flaws. Apparently it could only simulate the movements of celestial bodies up to four months ahead because of mechanical flaws. Or maybe it worked better before the millennia of corrosion set in.
NY Times: Were You Raised in a Church That Fears the World or Loves Its Neighbors? As a person with no religious leanings, other than away from religion, who was raised around a lot of churches that fear the world, I found this opinion piece fascinating.
Artsy: Why Tamara de Lempicka’s Glamorous Portraits Transfix Contemporary Audiences. I’ve loved her work for years and recently got to see the big travelling exhibit of her art in context in Houston, so I’m always eager to learn more about de Lempicka.
Troy Hunt: A Sneaky Phish Just Grabbed my Mailchimp Mailing List. Fascinating dive into some email security nerdery. This is the guy who runs Have I Been Pwned, so it’s good stuff.
Smithsonian Magazine: ‘Better Babies’ Contests Pushed for Much-Needed Infant Health but Also Played Into the Eugenics Movement. Somebody at the Smithsonian is going to get fired over how this article talks about eugenics. We’re supposed to think it’s good again.
Upworthy: 6th grader’s science experiment answers, ‘Do cat buttholes touch every surface they sit on?’ The good news is, not if they’re hairy. Good to know science is going after the important questions.
The Flytrap: Why the Youths Are Choosing Avocado Toast Over Marriage. If I were in my 20s or 30s, I’d be super picky about which dude I wanted to marry too. There are too many awful men in my generation and the ones behind me are worse!
The Guardian: ‘You can let go now’: inside the hospital where staff treat fear of death as well as physical pain. A really lovely piece about hospice care in Denmark. I wish my mom had had this kind of care before her death and I hope I do, for that matter.
Reactor: Daredevil: Born Again Offers a Much-Needed Corrective to Relentless Copaganda. I don’t watch MCU movies very often, and other than Hawkeye, have completely avoided the TV shows. But positioning superheroics as a counter to copaganda as opposed to a support to it is fascinating as a cultural turn.
Houston Press: Houston 101: The Assassination of O.P. Dewalt, Black Leader and Lincoln Theatre Manager. Another piece of Black history from my hometown that I didn’t know about.
The Fighting Temeraire: Why JMW Turner’s greatest painting is so misunderstood. I learned quite a bit from this analysis of the master’s work. Also his 250th birthday has just passed in the last week of April.