On this day:
539 BC
Cyrus the Great marches into the city of Babylon, releasing the Jews from almost 70 years of exile. Cyrus allows the Jews to return to Yehud Medinata and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.
1346
Battle of Neville’s Cross: King David II of Scotland is captured by Edward III of England near Durham, and imprisoned in the Tower of London for eleven years.
1448
Second Battle of Kosovo, where the mainly Hungarian army led by John Hunyadi is defeated by an Ottoman army led by Sultan Murad II.
1604
Kepler’s Star: German astronomer Johannes Kepler observes a supernova in the constellation Ophiuchus.
1660
Nine Regicides, the men who signed the death warrant of Charles I, are hanged, drawn, and quartered.
1777
American Revolutionary War: British General John Burgoyne surrenders his army at Saratoga, New York.
1781
American Revolutionary War: British General Lord Charles Cornwallis surrenders at the Siege of Yorktown.
1907
Guglielmo Marconi’s company begins the first commercial transatlantic wireless service between Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada and Clifden, Ireland.
1961
Scores of Algerian protesters (some claim up to 400) are massacred by the Paris police at the instigation of Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, then chief of the Prefecture of Police.
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If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin. -Samuel Adams, revolutionary
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Re Zacharia: When was it decided that not becoming a lawyer was a bad thing?
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Jack Clark, a co-founder of Anthropic, now thinks AI that can build its own successor is more likely to arrive in 2027 than 2028. I’ve followed Jack for years, and I think he’s right. If anything, he might be understating it. You think AI is improving quickly now? Just wait… this is going to accelerate things even further.
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Lewis's Moneyball was about baseball talent evaluation. There was a history of subtle subjectivity, the belief in a baseball physiognomy, an American 'baseball face.' The jury's out, but talent from DR and Venezuela may require a little fine-tuning.
That said, what do you think were the factors in Katie Zacharia's appointment?
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Dyson, on the prehistoric brain: "It was not helpful to have brains questioning whether the stories were true." That is an extremely provocative idea and directly opposes the aims of the Enlightenment.
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SatStats
Sudan’s artisanal gold mining sector employs about two million people.
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Analysis of 857 Chinese open model releases between September 2021 and September 2026, including 741 product models and 116 research models. Of that pool, only 31 models, or about 3.6%, had safety reports attached, and only 9 of them were available at or before release.
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The U.S. arrested two Americans accused of helping North Korea run a tech worker impostor scheme.
The scheme touched more than 70 U.S. employers and made about $3 million for the fake workers.
Fake workers?
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The proportion of people unable to "use mathematical reasoning when reviewing and evaluating the validity of statements" (which includes logic skills, not just arithmetic) has risen by 25% worldwide. But it's up by 35% in the U.S.
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Space:
For the Earth to become a black hole, it would have to be condensed down to about the radius of an olive.
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For every one of the roughly 436 quadrillion seconds since the Big Bang, there are roughly 160,000 stars. There are roughly 1.6X as many planets as stars. For that reason alone, it’s highly improbable that we are alone in the universe.
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Normal matter only accounts for around 5% of the contents of the Universe. Around 25% is Dark Matter — we can’t see it (ie it has no interaction with light), but we can see its indirect gravitational effects. And the rest is Dark Energy, completely unrelated to Dark Matter; that is the term we use for what is causing the expansion of the Universe to accelerate.
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At the speed of light to Proxima Centauri it would take 4.24 years for someone watching from Earth. For you, it would be instant. Time stops at the speed of light
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There are more stars in the observable universe than there have been seconds since the Big Bang.
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A 'magnetar' is a highly magnetized neutron star. It is the ultra-dense core left behind when a massive star collapses whose magnetic field decays by emitting high-energy electromagnetic radiation, particularly X-rays and gamma rays.
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95% of stars that have, or ever will be born, have already been born. We are at the end of the age of star formation.
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95% of all the stars/galaxies we can see are forever unreachable, even if we could travel at the speed of light, due to the expansion of space.
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95% of all the mass-energy in the universe is dark. All the light from all the stars and galaxies we see only makes up 5 percent of the universe.
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The nearest star is so far away that if the Voyager II (the fastest and farthest ship we have) were headed to it, it would take 82 THOUSAND years to get there.
*
The proportion of people unable to "use mathematical reasoning when reviewing and evaluating the validity of statements" (which includes logic skills, not just arithmetic) has risen by 25% worldwide. But it's up by 35% in the U.S.
*
Space:
For the Earth to become a black hole, it would have to be condensed down to about the radius of an olive.
*
For every one of the roughly 436 quadrillion seconds since the Big Bang, there are roughly 160,000 stars. There are roughly 1.6X as many planets as stars. For that reason alone, it’s highly improbable that we are alone in the universe.
*
Normal matter only accounts for around 5% of the contents of the Universe. Around 25% is Dark Matter — we can’t see it (ie it has no interaction with light), but we can see its indirect gravitational effects. And the rest is Dark Energy, completely unrelated to Dark Matter; that is the term we use for what is causing the expansion of the Universe to accelerate.
*
At the speed of light to Proxima Centauri it would take 4.24 years for someone watching from Earth. For you, it would be instant. Time stops at the speed of light
*
There are more stars in the observable universe than there have been seconds since the Big Bang.
*
A 'magnetar' is a highly magnetized neutron star. It is the ultra-dense core left behind when a massive star collapses whose magnetic field decays by emitting high-energy electromagnetic radiation, particularly X-rays and gamma rays.
*
95% of stars that have, or ever will be born, have already been born. We are at the end of the age of star formation.
*
95% of all the stars/galaxies we can see are forever unreachable, even if we could travel at the speed of light, due to the expansion of space.
*
95% of all the mass-energy in the universe is dark. All the light from all the stars and galaxies we see only makes up 5 percent of the universe.
*
The nearest star is so far away that if the Voyager II (the fastest and farthest ship we have) were headed to it, it would take 82 THOUSAND years to get there.
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