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☆ Lost Silk Road cities mapped using LiDAR remote sensing
▼ + stars: | 2024-10-23 | by ( Katie Hunt | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

CNN —Lost for centuries, two cities lay buried, nearly 5 kilometers (3 miles) apart, underneath grassy pastures in the mountains of Uzbekistan. “It’s a really different environment up there,” Frachetti said of the newly discovered Silk Road settlements. However, the newfound highland cities were too big to simply be trading posts or Silk Road stopovers, Frachetti and his colleagues believe. The research marked the first time that light detection and ranging (LiDAR) equipment had been used in the region for archaeological purposes. Using drone-borne light detection and ranging equipment, archaeologists have mapped two abandoned cities in the mountains of Uzbekistan.

Persons: Michael Frachetti, Tugunbulak, ”, Frachetti, “, ” Frachetti, Michael Frachetti “, Farhod Maksudov, Zachary Silvia, ” Silvia, Tashbulak, It’s Organizations: CNN, Washington University, —, National, of Archeology, Academy of Sciences of, Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology, Brown University Locations: Uzbekistan, —, It’s, St . Louis, Machu Picchu, Peru, Republic of Uzbekistan, ”, Tugunbulak, Tashbulak, Central America, Rhode Island, Samarkand, Kashgar, China

☆ Ramboy: A Family Farm in Ireland Prevails - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-28 | by ( Matthias Joulaud | Lucien Roux | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

We both come from families with farming roots but grew up in the city. This enthusiasm brought us to Achill Island, off the west coast of Ireland, where sheep graze over the grassland. Come by!” they shout in turn at a dog that appears to be out of control. This documentary captures the patience and tenderness required to learn and pass on a craft from one generation to the next. Lucien Roux and Matthias Joulaud are both filmmakers from Grenoble, a city in the Alps region in France.

Persons: we’ve, pastoralism, Martin, Lucien Roux, Matthias Joulaud Locations: Ireland, Grenoble, France

☆ Opinion | The Subtlety of J.R.R. Tolkien
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-08 | by ( Ross Douthat | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +7 min

The devil appears to some people as Lucifer the light-bringer, yes — but his darker visage finds worshipers as well. Ours is no longer the world in which Tolkien grew up, nor even the one in which he spent his last years. Tolkien himself was very careful to note that the Shire is not self-sustaining, dependent as it is on outsiders for security. I obviously endorse this point, but I think the last line undersells how much Tolkien subjected his own pastoral nostalgia to critique. Because Tolkien is a reactionary, the solution to that sickness is the return of a king of ancient lineage.

Persons: Tolkien, Soviet Union didn’t, Adolf Hitler’s, Joseph Stalin, Hitler, Lucifer, unrealism —, Tolkien’s, Philip Larkin, “, King Charles III’s, Niall Gooch, Hobbitism, Bilbo, It’s, Gondor, Anárion, that’s Organizations: Gorgoroth, Jackson Locations: Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, England, Tolkien’s, Isengard, Shire, Britain

☆ ChatGPT Secret Training Data: the Top 50 Books AI Bots Are Reading
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-30 | by ( Adam Rogers | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

To figure out what GPT-4 has read, they quizzed it on its knowledge of various books, as if it were a high-school English student. One way to answer the question is to look for information that could have come from only one place. Genre — sci-fi, mystery, romance, horror — is, broadly speaking, more interesting, partially because these books have plots where things actually happen. Bamman's GPT-4 list is a Borgesian library of episodic connections, cliffhangers, third-act complications, and characters taking arms against seas of troubles (and whales). See what a bot makes of Gene Wolfe's "The Book of the New Sun," maybe, or Sheri Tepper's "Grass."

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