SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
You guys know how many civil wars the Romans had?
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+492|3422
dilbert evidently doesn't.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
[Neanderthals] are not a failed version of us, and the trajectory from them to us is not teleological: the fact that we are here and they are not is not the point and purpose of her story, or indeed of history. And yet, and yet ... the fact is that we are here and they aren’t, and although that is not the punchline of evolution, the question of why and how this happened is still interesting.

The first thing to note is that something changed in H. sapiens around 70 ka. At that point our material culture is not self-evidently on a different level from that of the Neanderthals. We had probably mastered the skill of sailing, though not necessarily out of the sight of land; that would certainly explain how we had got as far as we did around the coasts of Asia. But there is nothing to suggest a mastery of complex and symbolic thought. The oldest drawings that have been found are abstract patterns in a South African cave, and date from 73 ka. The oldest recognisable figurative art was found in caves on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi; it dates from 44 ka. These drawings are immediately and obviously something new in human history. We can argue about their purpose and whether they are ‘art’ in any meaningful contemporary sense, but really the question doesn’t matter: what they clearly are is evidence of a new kind of cognition. Something happened to human consciousness: a ‘light-bulb’ moment. For the first time in its 4.5 billion-year history, Earth was populated by people with minds like ours, who think the way we do. From that point onwards, the record of our material culture grows more and more complex and our creative imagination begins to leave famous traces such as the Lion-man of the Hohlenstein-Stadel at 35-40 ka, the Venus of Willendorf at 30 ka, the cave paintings of Chauvet at 30 ka and of Lascaux at 17 ka.
art and creativity, thinking creatively and symbolically, were present in both neanderthals and early homo sapiens; but we really took off with it.

By​ that point the Neanderthals had disappeared. They vanish from the archaeological record with shocking abruptness around 40 ka. H. sapiens had by that point spread all through Africa, Asia and Australia, but had not yet made significant inroads into the part of Europe settled by H. neanderthalensis. Then, suddenly, we’re everywhere, and the Neanderthals are gone. So, what happened? For a long time it has been thought that the possibilities boil down to three. The first and most lurid is the idea that there was full-scale genocidal war between the two species of human. A recent article at BBC Future spelled out the idea under the heading: ‘Did Neanderthals go to war with our ancestors?’ There is no evidence for this, and the theory fits into patterns of thinking that see the archaeological record in terms of racial hierarchies and contests for dominance. Wragg Sykes thinks these ideas are culturally determined and of limited utility, and she is probably right.

The second possibility is that we did not defeat the Neanderthals, but simply outcompeted them. The climate was getting colder fast at 40 ka, and (contrary to the stereotype) the Neanderthals did not love the cold. They were shorter than us, heavy-set and strong, and they had extraordinarily high energy requirements: some seven thousand calories a day. For a band of 25, that’s a reindeer a day, every day, all year round. In a climate changing faster than it had in the memory of any living individual, that might have been impossible to sustain. There is also evidence that Neanderthal genetic diversity was weakening and bands growing smaller and sparser. All of this would have been happening as H. sapiens was for the first time making significant inroads into Europe, increasing competition for resources at an already difficult moment. Wragg Sykes thinks some version of that is what did for the Neanderthals – though she notes that ‘finishing this book in the late spring of 2020, it’s impossible not to wonder if a terrible contagion might have been added into the mix, jumping from us to them.’

The third theory is that we didn’t fight them or outcompete them but interbred with them: that we are not archaic H. sapiens but a hybrid of sapiens and neanderthalensis. To general amazement, in 2010 it turned out that this theory is at least partly correct. Neanderthal DNA was sequenced and compared with H. sapiens DNA, and it was found that all surviving humans outside Africa have between 1.8 and 2.6 per cent Neanderthal DNA; sub-Saharan Africans have less, thought to be the result of later reintroduction after the initial exodus from Africa. Western Europeans have less Neanderthal DNA than Asians, Oceanians and Indigenous Americans. Although no individual has more than 2.6 per cent Neanderthal DNA, a large part of the Neanderthal genome still exists: most sources give a figure of 20 per cent, but Wragg Sykes says ‘perhaps as much as a half’. (She doesn’t give a source for that, which is a pity, because it is a very striking number; this is a rare instance where her reader-friendly policy of not footnoting everything to death is regrettable.) In other words, the Neanderthals are still here; we are at least partly them, in the very synapses that fire as I write these words and you read them. It is an amazing thought.

As the DNA evidence has continued to come in, the story of our relationship with our relatives has got more and more complicated, as stories about relatives tend to do. In 2018, the Denisova Cave remains that were first DNA-sequenced for mitochondrial female-line DNA were retested with new technology that allowed the examination of nuclear DNA. To widespread astonishment, it was found that D11 (known as ‘Denny’) had a Denisovan father and a Neanderthal mother: she was a first-generation hybrid human. This strongly suggests that interbreeding between human species was common. As the DNA evidence continues to come in, it is becoming apparent that H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis had multiple patches of interbreeding across multiple thousands of years. The idea of inter-species sex was once seen as one of Jean M. Auel’s wilder and pervier fantasies about early man. We now know that she was completely right.
read and educate yourself.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
Reading 'the Forgotten Soldier"
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b3/Forgotten_Soldier.jpg
The Forgotten Soldier (1965), originally published in French as Le soldat oublié, is an account by Guy Sajer (pseudonym of Guy Mouminoux) of his experiences as a German soldier on the Eastern Front during World War II. With reference to the author's ambiguous relationship to war, the book has been called "the account of a disastrous love affair with war and with the army that, of all modern armies, most loved war", being written with the "admiration of a semi-outsider".
DesertFox, and Dilbert, did either of you read this or heard of it?
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
DesertFox-
The very model of a modern major general
+794|6654|United States of America
I don't go in for reading WWII things, really. I'd have no more chance of hearing of or reading it than anyone else here.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
desertfox keeps it to nazi kink tranny porn, he doesn't actually read WWII history.
DesertFox-
The very model of a modern major general
+794|6654|United States of America
I think Mac would be better able to speak if that's a thing than I would.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
nazi BDSM is most definitely a genre.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6741|PNW

The term "BDSM" itself sounds like an abbreviation for a mouthful of German words.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
masochism is named after a german aristocrat, Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch, so you're a little bit right.
KEN-JENNINGS
I am all that is MOD!
+2,973|6601|949

And the "sado" part of sado-masochism is named after the famous soul singer, Sade. Her song "No Ordinary Love" was embraced by the counterculture kink movement in San Francisco during the early 1990's.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6741|PNW

https://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/feature/3660/difficulty_doom.png
uziq
Member
+492|3422

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

And the "sado" part of sado-masochism is named after the famous soul singer, Sade. Her song "No Ordinary Love" was embraced by the counterculture kink movement in San Francisco during the early 1990's.
speaking of ... check the death thread.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6075|eXtreme to the maX

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Reading 'the Forgotten Soldier"
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b3/Forgotten_Soldier.jpg
The Forgotten Soldier (1965), originally published in French as Le soldat oublié, is an account by Guy Sajer (pseudonym of Guy Mouminoux) of his experiences as a German soldier on the Eastern Front during World War II. With reference to the author's ambiguous relationship to war, the book has been called "the account of a disastrous love affair with war and with the army that, of all modern armies, most loved war", being written with the "admiration of a semi-outsider".
DesertFox, and Dilbert, did either of you read this or heard of it?
No, I only read pro-war stuff.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6075|eXtreme to the maX
https://i.imgur.com/Z56TT28.jpg
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
it’s a good scheme and lots of book stores encourage it here. it’s not such an inconvenience if you can make it a regular thing.

plus, much like record stores, you can get to know the staff and they can give you sometimes better recommendations than the generic algorithm spew.

brick and mortar bookstores need all the help they can get thesedays for sure.

Last edited by uziq (2021-01-20 01:42:55)

unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6741|PNW

I seem to remember you giving me shit sometime back for shopping at a nearby B&N's brick and mortar bookstore. Maybe it's because you were in the middle of blowing up at me over Amazon, and got confused.

My favorite, rickety small-town bookstore for browsing is 100 miles out. Stopping by there often would be quite unreasonable. Another's still a city over. We don't like to waste too much gas, so it's B&N. Sorry.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
B&N are 'brick and mortar' but that's hardly the point. it's a giant retail chain. yes, them and amazon are responsible for pricing independent stores out of business.
Larssen
Member
+99|1857
Like his shoes, uziq prefers to buy from a french artisanal bookbinder who uses real leather to expertly assemble his books. Only €100 per order, well worth it.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6741|PNW

I used to have smaller book stores within reasonable distance but those were also chain stores, and shut down before Amazon was a household name. Seattle has some good stuff but that is not a reasonable drive unless I have business-business there. A place closer than the one a city over isn't interested in ordering, and eyeballs you like you plan to rob the place. There's a Goodwill and sometimes the library has sales events. One is hit and miss, the other doesn't happen very often. That pretty much leaves the grocery stores and whatever paltry stock of bestsellers they have to offer.

I've bought stuff from publishers practically operating out of their living rooms, so I think I can get some slack cut for shopping in-person at a slightly bigger brick & mortar middleman than uzique is comfortable with, and occasionally ebooks and such from the internet oligopoly.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
i’m not making any pronouncements. it’s safe to say that buying books is probably better than pirating ebooks or not buying any at all.

barnes and noble and other retail giants, like any large fortune 1000 company with tonnes of shareholder or venture capital behind them, are probably not the best thing for authors and mom and pops, ultimately, but there we are. even if you’re buying from a B&N you’re probably paying the salary of someone in your local area, contributing to local tax, etc, which is a helluva lot more than amazon can speak for.
RTHKI
mmmf mmmf mmmf
+1,736|6707|Oxferd Ohire
Get laughed at for buying ebooks or get yelled at for pirating them
https://i.imgur.com/tMvdWFG.png
Larssen
Member
+99|1857
Honestly though uziq this is the trend in literally every industry. The only local stuff that survives are those that specialise in really high quality goods. The local store around the corner is getting outcompeted, whether it be a butcher, baker, bookstore, pharmacy, jeweler etc. etc.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
I know small book shop owners aren't really the vampiric Republican middlemen that make up the small business owner stereotype that lives in the nightmares of liberals. But I am just going to throw out the fact that small business owners are still capitalist and supporting small capital is no more a virtue than supporting big capital. Big capital started as small capital after all.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+492|3422

Larssen wrote:

Like his shoes, uziq prefers to buy from a french artisanal bookbinder who uses real leather to expertly assemble his books. Only €100 per order, well worth it.
those shoes are really not expensive or exceptional. i feel bad for you, honestly.

there's about 4-5 independent bookstores within 10 minutes' walking distance of my apartment. none of them 'artisanal', although one is a rare books dealer. i don't buy rare books, fyi. i get a good number of my books from charity shops, i.e. used. i like the accidental and serendipitous nature of it. i've had some great seasons of reading spent with books/authors i was only brought to because they jumped out at me from a dusty 2nd hand shelf.

you really don't have to spend a fortune or be an elitist to go to a bookstore. i honestly feel bad for you.

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