Andrew Curry
@spoke32.bsky.social
7.6K followers 1.6K following 620 posts
Journalist covering archaeology, science, culture, politics, business, and cycling. When not on my bike, I'm found most often in Science, National Geographic & Archaeology. WahlBerliner, on Signal at andrewcurry.01 More at andrewcurry.com
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
spoke32.bsky.social
This seems like the precise definition of "penny wise, pound foolish."
kashhill.bsky.social
This is absolutely wild. I’m on a cross country flight. We are being diverted midway through to Denver. The reason? Some dude is sitting in the exit row who didn’t pay the $155 fee and he refuses to move back to his seat.
spoke32.bsky.social
That's a pretty core!
spoke32.bsky.social
I wrote about the recovery of the Bronze Age Peebles Hoard a few years ago, which from the outside at least seemed like a best-case scenario. Maybe because the guy who found it (and then spent two weeks sleeping next to it in the rain) was Polish? www.popsci.com/science/scot...
How Scotland forged a rare alliance between amateur treasure hunters and archaeologists
When amateur treasure hunters uncovered a Bronze Age bounty in Scotland, what they did next sets an example for conservationists everywhere.
www.popsci.com
spoke32.bsky.social
And, in Germany's case at least, that's a few decades with a booming post-war economy and high government spending, neither of which are guaranteed for the U.S. in the decades to come.
spoke32.bsky.social
As a resident of a non-North American continent, I regret not being eligible to receive squid facts via text message.
spoke32.bsky.social
Just got my absentee ballot for Prop. 50 here in Berlin (California likes to make it easy for all Californians to vote, so weird and small-d democratic). Will definitely be sending this one home ASAP.
Absentee ballot for California's Proposition 50.
Reposted by Andrew Curry
spoke32.bsky.social
In a hunt more than 200,000 years ago, Neanderthals wielding wooden spears slaughtered horses on the shores of an ancient lake. Geneticists @unituebingen.bsky.social just sequenced DNA from the now-extinct equid species. It's the oldest yet recovered from an open-air site. @science.org
Ancient DNA from horses slaughtered by Neanderthals sheds light on equine evolution
200,000-year-old genes are oldest ever recovered from open-air site
www.science.org
Reposted by Andrew Curry
spoke32.bsky.social
If you cut the top off a mountain, is it still the top of the mountain? Or is it just a rock with an interesting back story?
fakehistoryhunter.net
If you want to see the top of the Mont Blanc, you have to come to the Netherlands, we have it in a museum here.
Horace Bénédict de Saussure cut it off in 1787 and his son sold it to the cloggies in 1802.
It's at the Teylers Museum, one of the most gorgeous museums ever.
spoke32.bsky.social
I mean, it's a mosaic, so they're probably quite "puzzled" as well.
spoke32.bsky.social
If you cut the top off a mountain, is it still the top of the mountain? Or is it just a rock with an interesting back story?
fakehistoryhunter.net
If you want to see the top of the Mont Blanc, you have to come to the Netherlands, we have it in a museum here.
Horace Bénédict de Saussure cut it off in 1787 and his son sold it to the cloggies in 1802.
It's at the Teylers Museum, one of the most gorgeous museums ever.
spoke32.bsky.social
Now nearing Berlin, only 4 hours late!
Reposted by Andrew Curry
andrewjweinstein.com
ICE admits that up to 50% of arrests in its Chicago raids are "collateral.” These aren't statistics. They are parents taken from their children, neighbors taken from our communities. When does a "collateral" U.S. citizen child's trauma matter? This isn't law enforcement; it's a campaign of terror.
spoke32.bsky.social
Yeah, I know Germany and Denmark are different countries but a 40 minute flight is the definition of domestic – basically landing and takeoff plus a little bit in the middle to run through the aisle and hand out water. (And although it's much further, the Zurich-Berlin trip SHOULD take 8.5 hours.)
spoke32.bsky.social
It is ... not a good station these days.
spoke32.bsky.social
It's the end of a long weekend, so the trains are particularly packed. I'm sure per person it's still a fraction of the energy of a flight, no matter how long it takes. (Most of the energy use is forward motion, so a stopped train is pretty efficient...)
spoke32.bsky.social
"Stuck outside of Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe with those Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe blues again..."

(An "unauthorized person" is on the tracks somewhere ahead. That seems like a good reason not to move forward, actually.)
Reposted by Andrew Curry
charlescmann.bsky.social
So at the university football game I sat next to a cheerful student from Japan who was telling me how much she liked the "colorful traditional costumes" and the "old folk music" and asking about the "dances," and I realized she was talking about the marching band and that she was, well, spot-on.
Reposted by Andrew Curry
doctorwaffle.substack.com
In honor of National Poetry Day, the greatest parody rewrite of all time:
Screen cap of parodic version of William Blake's "The Tyger" that begins:
Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright
(Not sure if I spelled that right) 
What immortal hand or eye
Could fashion such a stripy guy? 
What the hammer that hath hewn it 
Into such a chonky unit?
Did who made the lamb make thee, 
Or an external franchisee?
spoke32.bsky.social
Update: 7 hours since the journey started, 3.5 of that is delay. At some point a conductor announced "Stuttgart has been cancelled." I asked if that meant our train wasn't stopping in Stuttgart or Stuttgart's train station was entirely out of order. He couldn't tell me. (Stuttgart exists, barely.)
spoke32.bsky.social
I should have known the last day of a 3-day weekend was a bad time to board @deutschebahn.com. I've been on the train for 1 1/2 hours and we are already 50 minutes delayed.

At least I didn't bring my bike.
Delay notifications from Deutsche Bahn.
spoke32.bsky.social
Don't forget the humble Wiener
spoke32.bsky.social
Oh, for sure -- ants would enthusiastically eat me with or without the yogurt.