A weekly collection of links to interesting things curated by Colin Wright.
The Curious Ways Your Skin Shapes Your Health
But one of the most striking findings confirmed what people had long suspected: how youthful you look is an impressively accurate expression of your inner health. By 1982, those men who had been assessed as looking particularly old for their age at the beginning of the study, 20 years earlier, were more likely to be dead. This is backed up by more recent research, which found that, of patients who were judged to look at least 10 years older than they should, 99% had health problems.
A Buried Ancient Egyptian Port Reveals the Hidden Connections Between Distant Civilizations
The stele is just one of a series of remarkable finds that have specialists scrambling to reassess their understanding of Rome’s connections to the Eastern world. Others include a magnificent Buddha statue, carved from Mediterranean marble and mixing Indian and Roman-Egyptian features, the first ever found anywhere in the ancient Western world. A second stele features a carved Greco-Roman arch that frames a triad of early Indian gods. Nothing like these objects, with their unmistakable blend of Eastern and Western styles, has ever been seen in the Roman world. Peter Stewart, a historian of classical art at the University of Oxford, described himself as “flabbergasted” by them. Shailendra Bhandare, an expert in ancient India at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, said that when he heard about the Indic triad, “I fell off my chair.”
Whataburger App Becomes Unlikely Power Outage Map After Houston Hurricane
Fast-food chain Whataburger’s app has gone viral in the wake of Hurricane Beryl, which left around 1.8 million utility customers in Houston, Texas without power. Hundreds of thousands of those people may remain without power for days as Houston anticipates a heat wave, with temperatures climbing into the mid-90s.
Amid frustrations with the local utility company CenterPoint Energy, which doesn’t offer an app, some Houstonians got creative with their attempts to track the power outages. They turned to the Whataburger app instead.
Governing for the Planet
Beyond political disputes over finance mechanisms, the equitable distribution of vaccines and treatments, and intellectual property rights, the reason for the failure to reach a global pandemic agreement boils down to the core conceptual feature of the contemporary international system: state sovereignty. Though the draft treaty is adamant in its respect for national sovereignty – it both reaffirms ‘the principle of the sovereignty of States in addressing public health matters’ and recognises ‘the sovereign right of States over their biological resources’ – nation-states have baulked at granting new authority to the WHO. Republicans in the United States Senate have demanded that the US President Joe Biden’s administration oppose the pandemic treaty, claiming it would ‘constitute intolerable infringements upon US sovereignty’. The United Kingdom government, likewise, has said it will support the treaty only if it ‘respects national sovereignty’.
I Am Using AI to Automatically Drop Hats Outside My Window Onto New Yorkers
I have extremely high foot traffic outside my window. I see a sea of uncovered heads in the sun. I believe DropofaHat.zone will become the first of many window based stores. Here a busy New Yorker can book a 5 minute time slot, pay for a hat, stand in a spot under my window for 3 seconds, have a hat put on their head, and get on with their extremely important, extremely busy day all within a single New York minute.
The Secret Battle for the Future of the Murdoch Empire
Rupert Murdoch is locked in a secret legal battle against three of his children over the future of the family’s media empire, as he moves to preserve it as a conservative political force after his death, according to a sealed court document obtained by The New York Times.
Robert Strati’s Delicate Scenes in Ink Burst from Shattered Porcelain Plates
We often associate objects with memories—a stuffed bear reminds us of childhood playtime or a family heirloom of a beloved ancestor—but for Robert Strati, certain items also contain narratives of their own accord. The artist draws elaborate scenes that appear to burst from shattered porcelain plates as part of his Fragmented series. Perfectly matching ink to the design on the dinnerware, Strati expands the story within the vessel to the paper below, rendering large-scale, monochromatic scenes that seem to emanate from the original composition.
