Alessandro

@poli.sisti.ca

667 Followers 623 Following

Posts on public policy (in 🇨🇦 or abroad), humanities, classical music, altruism effective and ineffective. Many silly posts. Toronto-adjacent.

Screenshot of text: The Roman Empire set the stage for an efflorescence of historic proportions. Already in the late republic, Italy experienced precocious leaps forward in social development. To a certain extent, the prosperity of Italy might be written off as the result of sheer takings, naked political rents seized as the fruits of conquest. But underneath this veneer of extracted wealth, real growth was afoot. This growth not only continued after the military expansion had reached its outer bounds—it now diffused throughout the conquered lands. The Romans did not merely rule territory, transferring some margin of surplus from periphery to center. The integration of the empire was catalytic. Slowly but steadily, Roman rule changed the face of the societies under its dominion. Commerce, markets, technology, urbanization: the empire and its many peoples seized the levers of development. For more than a century and a half, on a broad geographical scale, the empire writ large enjoyed both intensive and extensive growth. The Roman Empire both staved off Malthusian reckoning and earned uncalculated political capital.
Two cemeteries outside Munich in southern Germany, at Aschheim and Altenerding, have yielded paleomolecular evidence for Y. pestis. The cemetery at Aschheim was in use across the sixth and seventh centuries. It humbly served a settlement of less than a hundred residents. The unusual frequency of multiple interments, datable to the middle decades of the sixth century, looked suspiciously like an episode of crisis mortality. DNA extracted from the dead has conclusively determined that these victims died of Y. pestis. The beast was here. It is hard to overstate the ramifications of finding the plague in a remote, rural outpost in the west. If the plague was here, it must have been in many other places which lie in the dark zones on our map.
Map 12, Indications of the Plague of Cyprian. There are dots in Tunisia, Italy, Greece, Hungary, Turkey, Egypt, and around Jordan/Palestine.
3. Beyond general mortality, the Empire experienced three major pandemics. Harper says the earliest of these (the Antonine Plague, in the 2nd century) was the first pandemic. What enabled this, and why this hadn't happened before, was a very feature of Roman strength: good transportation networks.
Screenshot of text: There are strong grounds to be reserved in our optimism. The sewers of Rome, while massive, have not been held in esteem by modern experts. They were more storm culverts than waste disposal systems. The ingenuity of the monumental public toilet seems to have been summoned for the sake of imperial or civic vanity, rather than practical motives of hygiene. The more important system of private waste disposal registers as a befuddling missed opportunity. Domestic toilets were often not linked to sewer lines: the gaseous backflow, risk of flooding, and invitation to vermin outweighed the benefits. For the wealthy hilltop mansions, this situation may have been tolerable. For the rest of humanity, it meant being surrounded by the effluvia of the crowd. Internal cesspit toilets dominated in Roman houses, and chamber pots never went out of style. Private toilets were often built next to the kitchen. The Romans apparently used (and re-used) sponge sticks for the purposes we employ toilet paper. In the words of one classicist, "The hygienic implications of using such an implement are again at best dubious."
Lines showing an index of mortality of different age groups throughout the year. People under 50 have a mortality peak in September, and those over 50 (most vulnerable to respiratory infection) have highest mortality between December and February.
Cover of "The Fate of Rome: climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire".
Screenshot of the title, authors, and author affiliations of the paper "Complete virtual unwrapping and reading of a rolled Herculaneum papyrus". First authors are Giorgio Angelotti, Stephen Parsons, and Federica Nicolardi.
Screenshot of post: "Harari vs. Henrich: What science actually says about human evolution".
Screenshot of Google search result for the question "How many P's are in Google?" The result says: There are 2 "P"s in the word "Google". In result then breaks this down in two bullets. In the first bullet, the word "Google" is split letter by letter and highlights the second G. In the second bullet, the AI spells "Goople" and highlights the P, then comments "(not the word)".
Screenshot of the first paragraph of letter 113 from volume 2 of collected letters. Caroline an Humboldt [Paris], 30. Oktober 1804 Ich nehme mit Zittern die Feder, mein Wilhelm, und doch kann ich und darf ich nicht länger gegen Dich schweigen. Ach, wie blutet mein Herz über den Kummer, den ich dem Deinen bereite! Wilhelm, mein teures Leben, wir haben aufs neue ein geliebtes Kind verloren, und der tiefste Schmerz des Lebens kann sich erneuern. Louise ist uns entrissen, und schon vorigen Montag, wo ich Dir schrieb, war sie nicht mehr im Licht dieser irdischen Sonne. Ach, ich vermochte nur nicht, es Dir zu schreiben und zu dem Schmerz um den Verlust des schönen Kindes noch die Unruhe für meine Gesundheit bei diesem gewaltsamen Aufhören des Stillens hinzuzufügen. Wenigstens kann ich Dich heute über meinen physischen Zustand beruhigen und Dir die heilige Versicherung geben, daß alles für mich getan worden ist und daß ich leidlich wohl bin.
The significance of Claude Mythos Preview for cybersecurity During our testing, we found that Mythos Preview is capable of identifying and then exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities in every major operating system and every major web browser when directed by a user to do so. The vulnerabilities it finds are often subtle or difficult to detect. Many of them are ten or twenty years old, with the oldest we have found so far being a now-patched 27-year-old bug in OpenBSD—an operating system known primarily for its security. The exploits it constructs are not just run-of-the-mill stack-smashing exploits (though as we’ll show, it can do those too). In one case, Mythos Preview wrote a web browser exploit that chained together four vulnerabilities, writing a complex JIT heap spray that escaped both renderer and OS sandboxes. It autonomously obtained local privilege escalation exploits on Linux and other operating systems by exploiting subtle race conditions and KASLR-bypasses. And it autonomously wrote a remote code execution exploit on FreeBSD’s NFS server that granted full root access to unauthenticated users by splitting a 20-gadget ROP chain over multiple packets. Non-experts can also leverage Mythos Preview to find and exploit sophisticated vulnerabilities. Engineers at Anthropic with no formal security training have asked Mythos Preview to find remote code execution vulnerabilities overnight, and woken up the following morning to a complete, working exploit. In other cases, we’ve had researchers develop scaffolds that allow Mythos Preview to turn vulnerabilities into exploits without any human intervention.
Screenshot of status.claude.com, showing less than 99 percent uptime for claude.ai and Claude Code.
Post by Andy Masley on Twitter: Effective Altruism DC will be organizing a large EA conference in DC on May 2nd and 3rd. While I won't be directing the org anymore I'll be extremely excited to attend. The conference will bring together the large network of people working in EA cause areas in DC as well as people from around the world, and will welcome everyone from very active EAs to EA skeptics working in related fields. EA is more topical than ever in DC. If you'd like to connect more to the general EA network here this is the best way to do it. Apply here!
Screenshot of text: LLM writing often puffs up the importance of the subject matter by adding statements about how arbitrary aspects of the topic represent or contribute to a broader topic. There is a distinct and easily identifiable repertoire of ways that it writes these statements. There follow quoted blocks of text where highlights include these phrases: "marking a pivotal moment"; "represented a significant shift"; "was part of a broader movement"; "an important center".
Galileo's drawings of the moon in various states of fullness.
A full sauce pot is shown cooking, next to two jars of strained tomatoes and two emptied cans of whole peeled tomatoes.
The story of the horn in Austro-Bohemia begins with Count von Spork, a Bohemian nobleman whose two greatest passions were hunting and music. On a visit to France, the Count, intrigued by the chasse a courre, had two members of his entourage instructed in the art of playing this instrument.
Mass female departures from X represent yet another instance of women being forced to modify their behaviour to accommodate dangerous men. We already avoid walking alone after dark. We already walk home at night with keys clenched in our hands. We already cover our drinks in clubs. Why, then, should we be the ones forced to leave X? Shouldn't we be removing the predators instead?
Picture from the Wikipedia article for gnus.
Novo Nordisk is preparing to launch new drugs that are medically identical to Ozempic and Wegovy, but sold under new names and likely at a lower price. Kate Hanna, a spokeswoman for the company’s Canadian branch, told The Globe and Mail on Monday that it is considering competing in the generic market with versions of semaglutide called Plosbrio and Poviztra. Health Canada approved the new brand names for semaglutide on Dec. 22. Mark Johnson, a spokesman for Health Canada, said the only difference between the old and new versions is in the products’ name and packaging. “To be clear, these are not generic semaglutide products and have no connection to Health Canada’s review of the generic semaglutide submissions,” Mr. Johnson said by e-mail.
Extract from the article for Joseph Leutgeb, in the section on his relationship with Mozart. Highlighted is the text, "In one place, [Mozart] marks the orchestra part 'Allegro' and the solo part 'Adagio', perhaps mocking the tendency of horn notes to come in late, dragging the tempo." The full extract reads as follows: Leutgeb was most likely Mozart's favorite horn player, as a number of the composer's works were written for him. These include the Horn Concertos K. 417, K. 495 and K. 412/386b (514) and "probably"[4] the Horn Quintet K. 407/386c. These date from Mozart's years in Vienna after his move there in 1781. The concertos are at the core of the solo horn literature and are widely performed today. These works were written for natural horn, the valved instrument not being invented until after 1814 when Heinrich Stölzel invented the valve, patented in 1818. Leutgeb thus needed to exercise great lip control, as well as using the hand-stopping technique (hand in bell) to play chromatic notes. Mozart had a curious joking relationship with Leutgeb, seen for instance in the mocking comments he placed in Leutgeb's horn parts. K. 417 bears the mock dedication: "Wolfgang Amadé Mozart takes pity on Leutgeb, ass, ox, and simpleton, at Vienna, 27 March 1783". In one place he marks the orchestra part "Allegro" and the solo part "Adagio", perhaps mocking the tendency of horn notes to come in late, dragging the tempo. For another possible instance, see K. 412. The multicolored inks in K. 495 are often taken to be a kind of joke, though Mozart biographer Konrad Küster has claimed they had a purpose, specifically "to make some musical suggestions to the interpreters."
What’s next for Ozempic? The new year may bring cheaper versions of Ozempic to Canadians. Health Canada has approved Ozempic to treat diabetes but it’s often prescribed off-label for obesity. In Canada, the patent for the semaglutide will expire in January, and six companies are clamouring for Health Canada’s approval to manufacture and sell the generic version. Due to a backlog at Health Canada it’s unlikely the cheaper medication will hit the shelves until late spring or early summer. No one knows exactly how much cheaper the generic drugs will be because that depends on how many companies get approved. Ozempic currently costs between $200 and $400 per month. If three companies end up manufacturing the medication, the base price could drop to between $75 and $100 per month, according to Mina Tadrous, pharmacy professor at the University of Toronto.
Captain Holt displays a copy of Reed it and Weep Mouth Exercises, by oboist John William Weichselbraun.
The style most commonly referred to as the stovepipe was popularized in the United States by Abraham Lincoln during his presidency; though it is postulated that he may never have called it stovepipe himself, but merely a silk hat or a plug hat. Lincoln often carried documents and letters inside the hat.
Newspaper article entitled "Asks Time to Consider Prize Award Disposal".
James D. Havens, c. 1921, sitting in a hospital bed.
Elizabeth Hughes c. 1923, looking healthy. The photograph is signed "Gratefully yours, Elizabeth E. Hughes."
Book cover, in the Special Centenary Edition with a forward by Alison Li.
Email from the University of Toronto welcoming Alessandro to U of T Lectures on Demand.
In 1803 the Society for Superseding the Necessity of Climbing Boys (SSNCB) was founded to promote a technological replacement for child labour in sweeping chimneys. To meet the challenge, by 1805 Smart applied his interlocking hollow poles to design a ‘scandiscope’. A sweep could sit in safety at the hearth, assembling the poles while pushing them up the chimney shaft. Once the contraption reached the top, a cord running down the middle of the tubes was pulled, opening brushes to pull the soot back down with it. A skilled sweep could use it to clean a chimney in as little as 9 minutes, and, with a wet rag over the brush, it could put out house fires starting in the flue. In recognition of his achievement, the Society of Arts awarded Smart its gold medal in 1805 and 1807, and he received a premium from the SSNCB in 1805. By keeping his prices low, and with the SSNCB's backing, Smart's scandiscope spread rapidly throughout London. By 1807 the prince of Wales had adopted the technology for use at his residences. It met more resistance in other cities, but finally armed with a viable alternative to climbing boys (with later improvements to the device in 1828 by Joseph Glass), the SSNCB turned its attention to lobbying for legislation to force the scandiscope's adoption, with eventual success.
Screenshot of CBC News article: "Errors happen. Made-up citations are a totally different thing where you essentially demolish the trustworthiness of the material," said Josh Lepawsky, the former president of the Memorial University Faculty Association who resigned from the report's advisory board last January, citing a "deeply flawed process" leading to "top-down" recommendations. The 418-page Education Accord NL report took 18 months to complete and was unveiled Aug. 28 by its co-chairs Anne Burke and Karen Goodnough, both professors at Memorial's Faculty of Education. The pair released the report alongside Education Minister Bernard Davis. "We are investigating and checking references, so I cannot respond to this at the moment," wrote Goodnough in an email declining an interview Thursday. Davis also declined an interview request.
Three cracked eggs in a bowl have yolks arranged in a way vaguely resembling to face.
Screenshot of text: Never before had a congressional hearing been described as “UPROARIOUS,” until master magician and escape artist Harry Houdini provided expert testimony in which he delivered a lively and compelling case against the supernatural. For years, Houdini had worked tirelessly to debunk spirit mediums who claimed to communicate with the dead. He viewed them as “ghost racketeers,” charlatans conning grieving and vulnerable people out of money. The “mysterious entertainer” and his network of undercover investigators visited mediums and attended seances in disguise to expose the parlor tricks and deception they witnessed. During the early 1920s, Houdini lectured about spiritualism across the U.S., recreating the tricks that mediums used to dupe the public. He claimed to have collected one of the largest libraries in the world on psychic phenomena and even published his own book on the subject, A Magician Among the Spirits (1924). It was this extensive background that led Houdini to testify in February and May of 1926 as a central witness at congressional hearings for a bill to regulate fortune telling in Washington before the Subcommittee on the Judiciary of the Committee on the District of Columbia. As a dedicated psychic investigator intent on exposing all mediums as frauds, Houdini testified before his toughest audience yet as the room was packed with local fortune tellers, astrologers, mediums, and spiritualists. Ever the consummate performer, Houdini testified with skill and dramatic flair. He demonstrated the slate trick and produced a message from Benjamin Franklin from beyond the grave. He presented a “sucker list” of those who lost their fortunes to mediums, and called devoted spiritualist and famed creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “one of the greatest dupes.”