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Ideas Roadshow @ideasroadshow.bsky.social · 3h

🎲 💯 Let's play! A well-preserved boardgame with exquisite decorations!

As long as there’ve been human societies, games have played a significant role in how people interact w/ each other & how we live our lives.

🎬 A Cultural Exploration: ideasroadshow.com/chess/

🏺 #archaeology 🗃️ #arthistory

Alison Fisk @alisonfisk.bsky.social · 1d

The Royal Game of Ur is the world’s oldest playable boardgame!

Played by Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia about 4,500 years ago!

It is a two-player race game, the rules of which have been deciphered from a cuneiform tablet.

Game from the Royal Cemetery of Ur. 📷 British Museum

#Archaeology

British Museum photo showing a two-player board game with gaming counters known as the Royal Game of Ur. Dated c. 2,500 BC.

The game board is composed of a hollow box made of wood adorned with shell plaques. There is a drawer at one end for storing game pieces and dice. The top of the board is covered with twenty square-shaped off-white shell plaques, each bordered with dark-blue lapis lazuli. The shell squares are intricately decorated with blue inlaid patterns including dots inside circles and eye-shapes. Five squares are inlaid with flower-shaped rosettes with red limestone and blue lapis lazuli petals.

The game board is roughly rectangular in shape. Viewed from above in the photo, on the left side of the board is a block of 12 squares made up of 4 across by 3 down. On the right side of the board is a block of 6 squares made up of 2 across by 3 down. The two blocks are joined by two squares extending between the second square down on the end row of the left block and the second square down on the first row of the second block.

Dimensions H: 2.40 cm, L: 30.10 cm, W: 11 cm, (W 5.70 cm at narrowest part)

Beneath the board are 14 disc-shaped gaming counters. On the left are 7 white pieces, inlaid with 5 spots of blue lapis lazuli. On the right are 7 black pieces inlaid with five white spots.

Between the game pieces are three tetrahedron-shaped dice. L to R: Dark blue, brown, cream.

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callthistea.bsky.social @callthistea.bsky.social · 3h

Here! At @filiacharity.bsky.social. Amazing to see so many women gathering together. Sad to see misogynistic terrorists ‘Bash Back’ attacking the venue last night - spray paint, smashed windows. Well done lads. #FiLiA2025

#FiLiA2025 welcome screen at Brighton Centre

Venue damage by arsehole misogynist terrorists Bash Back - venue damage with graffitied and smashed windows. Well done lads

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Lillard's Maximum Perception Control @junipersbird.bsky.social · 5h

And?

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Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 7h

Picture how big the Hoover Dam is. An absolute unit. The Hoover Dam has a power capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW).

The solar farm that the Admin just cancelled could have produces 6.2 GW of power. That's more than 3 Hoover Dams.

jael holzman @jael.bsky.social · 7h

SCOOP: The Bureau of Land Management says the largest solar project in Nevada — the Esmeralda 7 mega-farm — has been canceled

The news was quietly dropped via a sudden website update with no public word from any of the companies involved or a statement from the agency

@heatmap.news

Esmeralda 7 Solar Project Has Been Canceled, BLM Says

It would have delivered a gargantuan 6.2 gigawatts of power.

heatmap.news

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Olga Nesterova @onestpress.onestnetwork.com · 6h

The Nobel Peace Prize announcement for 2025 is scheduled for Friday, October 10, at 11:00 am local time in Oslo, Norway, which is 5:00 am ET.

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Patrick De Klotz @patdeklotz.bsky.social · 7h

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southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 9h

No money flowing to USAID and hardly any to PEPFAR despite their duly enacted funding; well north of twenty billion dollars being deployed for other weird hair autocrats. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

The U.S. just bailed out Argentina, treasury secretary confirms

The U.S. Treasury has finalized a financial rescue of Argentina, including a currency swap arrangement with the country’s central bank.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 12h

Every single AI data center is a toxic investment, with most of its value tied up in GPUs that will be multiple generations behind by the time these things turn on - and then die in 3-5 years.

All to build for AI demand that doesn't exist.
edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo...

Actually, wait - how long do GPUs last, exactly? Four years for training? Three years? The A100 GPU started shipping in May 2020, and the H100 (and the Hopper GPU generation) entered full production in September 2022, meaning that we’re hurtling at speed toward the time in which we’re going to start seeing a remarkable amount of chips start wearing down, which should be a concern for companies like Microsoft, who bought 150,000 Hopper GPUs in 2023 and 485,000 of them in 2024.
Alright, let me just be blunt: the entire economy of debt around GPUs is insane.
Assuming these things don’t die within five years (their warranties generally end in three), their value absolutely will, as NVIDIA has committed to releasing a new AI chip every single year, likely with significant increases to power and power efficiency. At the end of the five year period, the Special Purpose Vehicle will be the proud owner of five-year-old chips that nobody is going to want to rent at the price that Elon Musk has been paying for the last five years. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the rental prices for H100 GPUs that went from $8-an-hour in 2023 to $2-an-hour in 2024, or the Silicon Data Indexes (aggregated realtime indexes of hourly prices) that show H100 rentals at around $2.14-an-hour and A100 rentals at a dollar-an-hour, with Vast.AI offering them at as little as $0.67 an hour.
This is, by the way, a problem that faces literally every data center being built in the world, and I feel insane talking about it. It feels like nobody is talking about how impossible and ridiculous all of this is - it’s one thing that OpenAI has promised one trillion dollars to people - it’s another that large swaths of that will be spent on hardware that will, by the end of these agreements, be half-obsolete and generating less revenue than ever.
Think about it - let’s assume we live in a fantasy land where OpenAI is somehow able to pay Oracle $300 billion over 5 years. Said money is paying for access to Blackwell…

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Thinky Parts @thinkyparts.bsky.social · 7h

So fun.

The Oregonian @oregonian.com · 7h

Things are happening at Portland's ICE facility tonight.

Read more of our protest coverage here: www.oregonlive.com/crime/2025/1...

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Jose Pagliery @josepagliery.bsky.social · 7h

Lost amid the revenge indictment shuffle today:

Rep. Jamie Raskin has launched a congressional investigation into that classified DOJ OLC memo authorizing Trump government killings in Caribbean waters.

www.notus.org/congress/ras...

Top Judiciary Democrat Wants Congress to See Secret DOJ Memo Green-Lighting Caribbean Boat Strikes

Trump “does not have the power to assassinate civilians on his say-so,” Rep. Jamie Raskin wrote to the DOJ.

www.notus.org

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Alan Taylor @kokogiak.bsky.social · 9h

A remarkable video clip from astronaut Don Pettit (@astro_Pettit on X), showing his "best sighting of a Starlink satellite 'train' from orbit!" - x.com/astro_Pettit...

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NewsCurrentNow @newscurrentnow.com · 13h

Gavin Newsom: “Masked men. Jumping out of unmarked vehicles. People disappearing. No due process. No oversight. No accountability. People say I’m being hyperbolic. Bullshit. This is happening in America today.”

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Lillard's Maximum Perception Control @junipersbird.bsky.social · 8h

Aaaaaaaand SCENE.

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Abigail Spanberger @abigailspanberger.com · 8h

As Governor, make no mistake — I will make lowering everyday costs across Virginia my top priority.

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Christopher Hale @christopherjhale.bsky.social · 8h

One of Pope Leo’s top allies in the United States thinks that Catholics can no longer work for ICE in good conscience.

"Category 4 Storm" — Top US Bishop Says Catholics May Not Be Able to Work for ICE Anymore

As ICE ramps up inhumane actions, a leading bishop says some Catholics may soon have to say, “In conscience, I can’t do this.”

open.substack.com

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Alex Wayne @aawayne.bsky.social · 17h

“Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.”

The Republican chair of the National Governors Association breaks with Trump.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/u...

Oklahoma’s Republican Governor Criticizes National Guard Deployment in Chicago

www.nytimes.com

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Ed Belongia MD @belongia.bsky.social · 10h

CDCs demand to break up MMR vax into separate monovalent shots is public health malpractice.
These vax are widely used worldwide. The 2 manufacturers (Merck & GSK) could easily decide to abandon the US market rather than take a big financial risk on clinical development & licensure of separate shots

HELLody SchreiBOO @melodyschreiber.com · 16h

Andrew Wakefield claimed without evidence in a retracted study that there was a link between autism and the combination MMR vaccine -- but not separate shots.

Wakefield filed a patent for his own separate shots the year before the study was published.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Alarm as CDC calls for separate MMR vaccines despite measles outbreak

Concerns that three separate shots would be more costly and time-consuming, and keep kids from being vaccinated

www.theguardian.com

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Habu @flyinghabu.bsky.social · 19h

Two nights of 3:45am alarms, blazing full moon lighting the sky like daytime and washing out the light of everything else, comet included. Then two days of post-processing battles, as comet processing is maddeningly tricky.

But I finally pulled it off: here is C/2025 A6 Lemmon. 🔭

#Astrophotography

Comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon taken from my backyard

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Jess Piper @piperformissouri.bsky.social · 17h

I feel like a broken record, but I have to keep saying it over and over again: a farmer bailout won’t do much of anything because the market is gone. There will be no incentive to plant next year.

The bailout will help payoff farmer debt to the banks. That’s all.

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Lillard's Maximum Perception Control @junipersbird.bsky.social · 9h

He's got to be drunk.

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bitemedeluxe.bsky.social @bitemedeluxe.bsky.social · 10h

This administration is perverts, grifters, and perverted grifters, all the way down.

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Quinta Jurecic @qjurecic.bsky.social · 10h

the me too administration www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 10h

"30-year-old conservative lawyer and activist who is Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, which deals with federal employee whistleblower complaints and discrimination" cancelled his colleague's hotel room so she would be forced to stay with him.
www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

In late July, Paul Ingrassia, the White House liaison for the Department of Homeland Security, arrived at a Ritz-Carlton in Orlando with a lower-ranking female colleague and others from their department. When the group reached the front desk, the woman learned she didn’t have a hotel room.

Ingrassia then informed her that she would be staying with him, according to five administration officials familiar with the episode. Eventually the woman discovered that Ingrassia had arranged ahead of time to have her hotel room canceled so she would have to stay with him, three of those officials said.

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Philip Mai @philipmai.com · 1d

"Top US researchers rush to relocate to Europe. U.S.-based applicants to a prestigious EU research scheme have increased five-fold." 🤔 www.politico.eu/article/euro...

Top US researchers rush to relocate to Europe

U.S.-based applicants to a prestigious EU research scheme have increased five-fold.

www.politico.eu

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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 10h

"School of AI" blech

Matthew Noe @noethematt.bsky.social · 14h

Hey, this sucks. Like... a lot. 📚

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UNC schools of data science and information science to merge, forming unnamed ‘School of AI’

www.dailytarheel.com/article/univ...

UNC schools of data science and information science to merge, forming unnamed ‘School of AI’

SDSS Dean Stanley Ahalt will be made dean of the new school while SILS Dean Jeffrey Bardzell will stand as the University’s Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer and Vice Provost for AI.

www.dailytarheel.com

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Josh Sternberg @joshsternberg.com · 10h

In an intellectually honest world, all the people and pundits lauding Kirk would apologize for being wrong. They would say, “I’m sorry for falling for bad faith arguments. I believed them without listening to others. I was a rube.”

But we don’t live in an intellectually honest world.

David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 12h

Are we great yet?

Mark Bray, a Rutgers University professor and expert on anti-fascist groups, is fleeing to Spain with his family due to death threats that stem from a campaign by Turning Point USA and other conservative groups to get him fired, falsely labeling him as an antifa member.

Antifa expert at Rutgers University says he is moving to Spain because of death threats

An expert on anti-fascist groups who teaches at New Jersey’s flagship state university is moving his family overseas.

apnews.com

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