"Ancient Near East" by @atelier_dna
ANE history and Biblical scholarship
It is the strong majority view of scholars that the concept of creation ex nihilo is a development of the second century CE & that is not articulated or implied anywhere in the Bible. Ancient Egyptian & Babylonian texts also identify various gods as creators of “all that exists.”
I agree that the word create does not mean create out of nothing most of the time. However, if you say create all things, then that implies creation ex nihilo because if you had pre-existing stuff that you then formed into other things, then you don’t create all things; there was something or perhaps many things you didn’t create.
And it’s not unfair to say that in Mormonism God doesn’t create all things since not only does Mormonism explicitly reject creation ex nihilo, but they posit a rainforest ontology of eternals souls, laws that even God must obey, time and space, perhaps mathematical objects (though that’s less clear).
That’s said, if you restrict creation to things that are createable and say that things like space and time, souls, etc are untreatable, then you can say that God created all things…but it does make God more of artisan and raises the question of why God is worthy of worship; after all you don’t depend upon God for your existence and conservation, so you wonder why even posit God. Seems an unnecessary hypothesis.
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Jeffrey Kotyk retweeted
In Japan, the dark marks on the moon have been likened to a rabbit pounding mochi (rice cakes). What do they look like to you? #ndldigital
dl.ndl.go.jp/en/pid/2569342/…
ALT Illustration of a rabbit pounding mochi on the moon from Kinmozui.
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Scott D. Haddow retweeted
Archaeologists working at Inkaya Cave in northwestern Türkiye are preparing to use environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis on sediment from layers associated with human activity dating back as far as 86,000 years.
turkiyetoday.com/culture/env…
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Flint Dibble 🍖🏺 retweeted
Drexel U is suddenly shutting down the Academy of Natural Sciences (the oldest natural history museum in the Americas) and moving it's enormous and important collections. This is malevolent and should halt. Here's Miniminuteman's coverage piped.video/nxyfBfCrbDw?is=xoO3…
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Jon Hawke 🏛️🏺 retweeted
Blowing their panpipes for Friday!🎉
One of a pair of silver dishes from the Mildenhall Treasure; decorated with figures of Pan, a nymph and other mythological creatures, ring foot on underside; inscribed 'EVATTPLOY' on the base
#FindsFriday #Archaeology #History #music
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It took less than three minutes to get Grok to convert two dozen line drawings from .jpeg to .svg. My book has A LOT of illustrations, so this just saved me a lot of time and effort.
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Academic publications aren't always the easiest to track down if you don't know where to look, but the shift away from the "temple" narrative began to appear in print around 2020 (possibly earlier). This one also mentions the burial found in 2017. publications.dainst.org/jour…
“You people” ? Jackass, from 2017~2025 Anywhere you looked publicly, it was a temple. Despite in the background MANY things were aware until just recently admitted publicly. Arguably the greatest archeological discovery in the last century and they are documented to be withholding information.
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It's taken time for this new understanding to reach the public, but this is less about archaeologists "withholding information" and more to do with the way new research is reported in the pop science media venues. They don't always get it right.
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LJ Trafford retweeted
Amazing artefacts from Roman Durobrivae/ Water Newton in ace @PboroMuseum ! Love the gladiator vase!!! @romanarchaeouk @DariusAryaDigs @Ritterton @pete_savin @WittsPat @chapps @romanhistory1
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Dan McClellan retweeted
🧵New digital resources for Masoretic studies: a megathread. We're living in a golden age of digital tools for the study of the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible. This thread compiles recent resources, several of which have launched just this year.
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I think your post conflates the two, but you need the plausible deniability. You still assert they’re true events, but on what grounds do you assert that if several narratives were written centuries later by people who weren’t around to witness them & got a bunch of facts wrong?>
Actually, Dan, I’m talking about the 400 year gap between the EVENTS described in the Old and New Testaments. I’m not taking about the dates of COMPOSITION for the books. The context of my post makes that clear.
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Actually, Dan, I’m talking about the 400 year gap between the EVENTS described in the Old and New Testaments. I’m not taking about the dates of COMPOSITION for the books. The context of my post makes that clear.
Not true. Several Hebrew Bible books were not written until after 400 BCE. Large portions of Daniel weren't even written until the 160s BCE. This just presupposes every word of the Bible & traditional authorship & dating are all true & leveraging that as evidence it's all true.
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I think your post conflates the two, but you need the plausible deniability. You still assert they’re true events, but on what grounds do you assert that if several narratives were written centuries later by people who weren’t around to witness them & got a bunch of facts wrong?>
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This account is run by someone who doesn’t even begin to have the first clue what they’re talking about when it comes to exegesis. They’re just blithely asserting their own dogmas & failing miserably to substantiate them. Observe:
piped.video/XVb4NUoQU6U
Numbers 31:17-19 spares the girls as captives (servants), not sex slaves. Text never mentions rape/sex. Deut. 21:10-14 requires mourning then marriage only; forbids treating captives as sex objects/slaves. Rape is condemned elsewhere. They were innocent of Peor’s sins.
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The scans show none of those things. Non-specialists are just telling you they should be interpreted as suggesting those things. Scholars never said the Hittites or Pilate didn’t exist. David’s another story, but this tweet is based on misinformation & suggestion, not data.
The Bible told us where Noah's Ark landed. 4,000 years later, they're drilling right there.
Genesis 8:4: "The ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat."
This week, scientists started drilling into a 515-foot, boat-shaped formation in the mountains of Ararat in eastern Turkey. Radar scans show angular walls, a central corridor, and three levels underground. Genesis 6:16 says the ark had three decks.
The right place. The right shape. The right size. The right number of decks.
Skeptics said the Hittites never existed, until their capital was dug up. They said Pontius Pilate was a legend, until his name turned up carved in stone. They said King David was a myth, until an ancient inscription named "the house of David."
Every time, the ground ends up agreeing with the Bible.
The Ark was real. The Flood was real. God's Word was always true.
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“It’s all true” is also just a theory that lacks direct evidence but also requires we wave away the majority view, ignore all the evidence that does exist & replace it with fabricated scenarios that we gin up to fill in the gaps & try to explain away the errors & contradictions.>
It’s just a theory that Daniel was written by a 2nd-century author pseudonymously as a 6th-century exile. No direct evidence—all is circumstantial. It’s weighing competing interpretations. Stop trying to look superior; simply talk to people. You’ll get further that way.@maklelan
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Gareth Harney retweeted
#PortraitThursday – The extraordinary Antinous Mondragone, a colossal 95 cm-high marble head of the deified Antinous, created shortly after his death in AD 130. Its smooth, idealised features and elaborate centre-parted hair recall Hellenistic images of Dionysus and Apollo.
The head was part of a colossal acrolithic cult statue made for the worship of Antinous as a god. 31 holes were drilled into the hair to attach a metal headdress, possibly a lotus flower or uraeus, while the original inlaid eyes, of metal, ivory or coloured stone, are also lost.
Recorded in the Borghese collection at Villa Mondragone near Frascati, the portrait was greatly admired by Winckelmann and acquired for Napoleon, along with much of the Borghese collection, in 1807. It is now in the Musée du Louvre.
📷 Photographed in 2016 at the exhibition Marguerite Yourcenar et l’empereur Hadrien, une réécriture de l’Antiquité, Bavay, France.
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This ivory male head, on display at the Archaeological Museum of Mycenae, was excavated from the "Room with the Fresco" in the Cult Center of Mycenae and dates to the Late Helladic III B period (roughly 1250–1180 BC). It measures about 2.67 in (6.8 cm) tall and features wide inlaid or carved eyes, a prominent nose, and stylized hair beneath a headband.
This piece was carved from the solid central portion of an elephant tusk, a luxury material that, along with hippopotamus ivory, Mycenaeans imported into mainland Greece through trade networks reaching Egypt and the Levant.
📸 by me.
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New study hack: practice writing a dead language and converse back and forth using Grok. I've got it running Middle Chinese (Tang period), roleplaying a conversation in a tavern.
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THERE it finally is, the Festschrift for my Doktorvater, Sten Hidal, edited by Blazenka Scheuer and yours truly, and featuring contributions by scholars such as David Davage , Anders Piltz, Katarina Pålsson and others (including the editors, of course :-) ).
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Dr. Peter J Brand retweeted
The tomb of Sety I is one of the longest, deepest, and most beautifully decorated tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Sety I (1294–1279 BC) was the second king of the Nineteenth Dynasty, and father of Ramesses II (the Great). His tomb, number 17 in the Valley of the Kings, is sometimes called “Belzoni’s tomb” after its discoverer.
Like the other tombs in the Valley of the Kings, the tomb of Sety I is decorated with various funerary texts, the aim of which was to ensure his successful transition to the afterlife. The tomb of Sety I was the first tomb in the Valley of the Kings to be entirely decorated. The elegant painted scenes and reliefs are of the exquisite quality that the reign of Sety I is so well known for. The funerary texts attested there are the Litany of Re, Amduat, and Book of Gates, in addition to the Book of the Divine Cow and gorgeous astronomical scenes decorating the ceiling of his burial chamber, simulating the night sky.
Architecturally, the tomb of Sety I falls under the “joggled axis” type characteristic of his period. The first series of corridors and descending passageways terminate into the first pillared room, where, in the facing wall, but off-axis, another series of descending passageways cut into the floor of the room lead to the burial chamber. The tomb does feature a number of new and unique characteristics. Along the same axis of the first series of corridors and descending passageways, a doorway leads into a single room. This may have been intended to lead intruders to believe that this was the actual burial chamber. The tomb of Sety I is also the first tomb to possess a burial chamber with a vaulted ceiling. Perhaps most interesting of all is that the passage begins on the floor of the burial chamber, descending even further, deep into the earth. It is believed that this was intended to ritually connect the tomb of Sety I with the primeval and regenerative powers of the underworld.
In 1821, painted recreations of several rooms from the tomb of Sety I were displayed in the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly in London. This exhibition, put together by the discoverer of the tomb, Giovanni Battista Belzoni, made an ancient Egyptian tomb available to various members of the public. It captured people’s imagination, and is one of the first monuments responsible for attracting popular attention to ancient Egypt.
#archaeohistories
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Seeing that stupid geologic formation that a handful of creationists (not even the main groups) believe is a remnant of Noah’s ark. It’s worth remembering that a global flood would have generated enough heat to melt the crust of the Earth and boil the oceans and atmosphere.
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Core drilling already took place almost 40 years ago & the scientists who thought it was the ark had to conclude it was just a natural geologic formation.
piped.video/_yaGFzt_wSc
'Darwinism will be dismantled': Core drilling at the suspected site of Noah's ark has begun dlvr.it/TVcZgv
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I've seen these claims repeated a number of times & every time I've asked for some kind of substantiation of their accuracy. Far short of substantiating them, no one even pretended they thought critically about them for a single moment. You gonna be the one to break that streak?
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I visited the Sternberg during a cross country road trip in 2021. Iwanted to visit since I read the "Oceans of Kansas" website as a kid. I found a very innovative paleontology museum, one of the best I've seen.
Now, FHSU is trying to quietly close it.
hayspost.com/posts/f383336f-…
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The fossil collections of the Sternberg are incredible. It's a museum dedicated to the Cretaceous-period Western Interior Seaway. The possibility that this collection could be broken up would be catastrophic.
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Robyn Faith Walsh (@zafulotus.bsky.social) retweeted
Rediscovery of Antinous, Delphi 1893.
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Not true. Several Hebrew Bible books were not written until after 400 BCE. Large portions of Daniel weren't even written until the 160s BCE. This just presupposes every word of the Bible & traditional authorship & dating are all true & leveraging that as evidence it's all true.
Did you know that there is a 400 year gap between the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures?
The Hebrew Scriptures are what Jesus preached from. He didn’t have any Christian Scriptures, as he was the subject of them, and they were all written in the decades following his crucifixion.
The Hebrew Scriptures—the Old Testament—begin the historical narrative with Abraham around 2,000 B.C. and come to an end with the reconstruction of Jerusalem and the temple around 400 B.C.
The New Testament, written in the first century A.D., covers the period from Jesus’ birth around 4 B.C to the early Christian movement around 50 A.D.
The 400 year gap between the Old and New Testaments is called the Intertestamental Period.
Biblical archaeology deepens our understanding of the Bible by grounding it historically.
The Bible isn’t merely a collection of parables or morality tales but it is also a narrative that covers real people and true events involving multiple nations over 2,000 years.
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Did writing even exist in Moses’s day?
#maklelan3473
piped.video/gJiFPw42W8M
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On the social foundations of religion's benefits.
I created two indexes of religious behavior.
One is private acts like reading holy texts, reading devotionals, watching services online.
The other is social acts like attending in person worship, attending small groups, and speaking to others about religion.
No matter how high one scores on the private dimension, happiness doesn't change at all.
But as social religious behavior increases, so does self-reported happiness.
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As expected, the Minab school strike was the result of letting AI pick targets that no human double checked.
The military was literally just asking a computer where to bomb and launching missiles at those places.
Bloomberg just dropped the most disturbing investigation I have read this year, and every AI builder should read it and take it seriously.
On February 28, two Tomahawk missiles hit an elementary school in Minab, a small town in southern Iran. 156 people died. At least 123 were children. The Pentagon knew within hours that it had bombed a school.
The school had its own website. It was labeled on Google Maps. You could see the soccer pitch from a satellite view. You could see the brightly painted walls. Any 12-year-old with a browser could tell what the building was.
The AI system could not.
Inside US Central Command, personnel were using Palantir's Maven Smart System. It is an AI targeting platform running on a $1.3 billion Pentagon contract, and embedded inside it is Anthropic's Claude.
On day one of the war, more than 1,000 targets went through it in 24 hours. Work that used to take a team hours per target got compressed into minutes.
The satellite imagery Maven was pulling from was seven years old. The site was still tagged in the database as an Islamic Revolutionary Guard facility.
The system spat it out as a recommended day-one target. Humans signed off. The first missile flew. Then a second one landed minutes later to hit the people who came to help.
Investigators later found that some Central Command staff had assumed Maven would flag stale intelligence for them. It did not. Nobody had told it to.
Palantir told Bloomberg the government is responsible for the underlying data. The Pentagon's civilian harm mitigation team, the people whose actual job is to catch a target like this, had been cut back before the war started.
This is not AI going rogue. This is the opposite.
This is AI doing exactly what it was built to do at exactly the speed it was built to do it. And a school full of little girls got vaporized because the humans in the loop trusted the machine more than they trusted their own eyes.
I keep thinking about the version of this story that comes next. What happens when the system is faster. When the target list is not 1,000 in a day but 10,000. When "review" becomes a button the operator has three seconds to hit before the next target loads. When there is no human left slow enough to notice that a soccer pitch is not a helipad.
We are not talking about a spam filter mislabeling an email. We are talking about a system that turned a seven-year-old database entry into two cruise missiles landing on children in the middle of a morning class.
A UN-backed panel has now called it a potential war crime.
In terms of children killed, it is the deadliest American targeting error of the entire 21st century. And according to Bloomberg, some of Defense Secretary Hegseth's own advisors are worried that too much public scrutiny of Maven might slow down its adoption inside the Pentagon.
Read that last line again.
If you build this stuff, you own what it does. You do not get to hide behind "the government owns the data." The whole pitch of your product is that speed and integration save lives. When it takes them instead, that is also on you.
I am not against AI in defense. I am against AI in a hurry. Speed is the entire mechanism that made Minab possible. Every guardrail we already know how to build takes time, and time is exactly what the system was designed to eliminate.
So here is the question I have not been able to stop asking, and I genuinely want to know what you think.
If a piece of software helped kill 123 children in a single morning while behaving exactly as designed, what does "responsible AI" even mean anymore?
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Been given unsolicited advice to not talk about my health issues on twitter in case it prejudices my long term career prospects if I apply for new jobs
This on the same social media site that says those with health problems are lazily work shy
Ironymeter just exploded
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I've always been open about my Parkinsons with employers & I've not had any difficulty securing new jobs. It feels important to speak up with honesty because it's abundantly clear on social media how little people understand the daily reality of disability.
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What everyone was worried about: Turkey or Saudi Arabia buying F-35, Russian and Chinese air defense techs getting a look at it.
What no one was worried about: The Royal Australian Air Force mailing classified F-35 components to China.
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Flint Dibble 🍖🏺 retweeted
I have a new piece out in Nature today on the record-breaking 2026/2027 El Niño, what impacts we should expect, and how governments can prepare. The Niño3.4 region is currently running more than 1C hotter than any prior event on record, and we remain months away from the peak.
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Scott D. Haddow retweeted
The Only Democracy In The Middle East™
🚨🇮🇱 NEW: Israel’s election body has voted to ban all Arab parties from running in the upcoming general election
[@haaretzcom]
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Scott D. Haddow retweeted
Humans are far more prone to degenerative skeletal diseases than other apes. Our new @Nature paper uncovers the genetic changes that shaped our skeleton and uncovers a major clue to why it is so vulnerable to degeneration.🧵👇
nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
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I finally read "Last Stand of the Wreckers" (by Roberts and Roche), after having put it off for many years. And yes, it is quite as good as advertised. And as brutal, and sad. It's really excellent, but I found it quite emotionally draining, to be honest. Yeah.
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Core drilling already took place 38 years ago & they had to conclude it was a natural geologic formation. If this team doesn’t conclude the same they’ll most likely just make claims that aren’t peer reviewed that they support with selectively released data they interpret for you.
We are 100% sure that the Daily Mail will come under fire for this headline.
But knowing what we know now, we are also 100% sure that they are not going to have to issue a retraction.
We will be releasing more information soon.
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No, it’s still not a boat. This is just gonna repeat the same results from the team almost 40 years ago that found anomalies with ground-penetrating radar & then did core drilling only to be forced to conclude it’s a natural geologic formation.
piped.video/_yaGFzt_wSc
We’ve now moved past the “it’s not a boat” stage to
“okay so it’s a boat, but that doesn’t mean it’s Noah’s Ark!”
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Jon Hawke 🏛️🏺 retweeted
#London, Mithraic relief.
Found close to the site later identified as a #temple of #Mithras. This piece was carved for the benefit of Ulpius Silvanus, #veteran of II Augusta, who may have joined the cult at #Orange (Arausio) in #Gaul
#RomanArmy
#RomanBritain #roman #Archaeology
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It won’t turn out to be a boat. It’s just a natural geologic formation.
piped.video/_yaGFzt_wSc
If this turns out to be the remains of an ancient boat—300 cubits long, just like the Bible says, located in the mountains of Ararat, where the Bible reports the ark rested—it would create a worldwide sensation!
@noahsarkscans @LaurenWitzkeDE
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Dan McClellan retweeted
My new (and best) book is published!
Download and read it for free here:
viewer.content-select.com/pd…
@mohr_religion
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Jon Hawke 🏛️🏺 retweeted
A roar of loneliness. For #ReliefWednesday, this beautiful late C4 BCE #Etruscan terracotta askos. Its deeply modelled mane echoes the frescoes of the #François Tomb where it was found. The tomb's dispersion proves that scattering a collection destroys its context.
ALT ZOOMORPHIC LION ASKOS FROM THE FRANÇOIS TOMB, LATE C4 BCE. VILLA GIULIA, ROME A terracotta vessel shaped like a crouching and snarling lion, resting on a narrow black-glazed base decorated with a wavy pattern. The surface combines painted and heavily modelled relief-like decoration, featuring deep tongue-shaped locks forming the mane and short hatched brown brushstrokes indicating the hide. The open mouth ingeniously serves as a secondary pouring spout. Discovered in 1857 in Vulci, this beautiful object is currently on loan from the British Museum, serving as a stark reminder of the tragic dispersion of the grave goods of the François Tomb. While the famous C4 BCE frescoes were stripped from the tufa walls, objects like this askos were scattered through sales to foreign collectors and institutions. This permanent dismemberment of a unified context is the curse of Italian cultural patrimony.
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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux retweeted
Not to put too fine a point on it: THEN WHY ARE WE AT WAR WITH IRAN?
U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker on how Washington ranks its strategic priorities:
"Number one is the homeland.
Number two is our own hemisphere.
Number three is the Pacific.
Number four is Europe. It doesn't mean we're abandoning Europe. We're just asking Europeans to step forward and equalize."
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I was invited to comment on the new paper by Julia Gresky and @drleeclare regarding the intact burials discovered at Göbekli Tepe. A very interesting study that helps situate the site within the broader context of the Neolithic period in SW Asia science.org/content/article/…
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Such a bad idea and also such a bald play for the midterms, "here is our short-term probably-won't-work bandaid to the problem we caused which just so happens to cover the next election but not much farther."
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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux retweeted
I wrote a little about Onslaught, which I enjoyed, but which resorts to pastiche and imitation to a degree I find worryingly emblematic. Link in bio and below
ALT newsletter title page: Onslaught Illustrates The Gravitational Pull of Pastiche, by Peter Raleigh. Includes a screenshot from Onslaught (2026) showing three fog-shrouded figures carrying weapons
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Folks, if you are on Instagram, I'd really appreciate it if you stop by visualsoftheancients and drop a follow! Yours truly is trying to get to 10k 🤝🫡
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New discoveries related to Noah’s Ark!
#maklelan3472
piped.video/_yaGFzt_wSc
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John Coltrane was born on this day 100 years ago. What better reason do I need to post this awesome track? piped.video/watch?v=qUSMON8e…
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Thank you to our friends at @AP_GMS
Foreign Affairs & Defense Correspondent @nickschifrin reporting from the United Nations for @NewsHour
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.@BoardOfPeace unveils a new Gaza recovery plan: from a $71 billion reconstruction estimate, $2.45 billion over 6 months for 66 programs, from humanitarian shelter to police mobilization.
I asked @nmladenov whether Israel was blocking progress by stopping Palestinian police from going to Cairo for training, and by not ceasing fire in Gaza. His answer: "Our discussions with Israel right now are not easy because of the elections there. Everything is a little bit more emotional, a little bit more politically sensitive. But I must say that this is the very beginning of this process... I think it's in everybody's interest that we have vetted security force that is able to work with the National Committee to ensure that rule of law is implemented across all of Gaza, as decommissioning takes place and as the new civilian authority moves in."
@jaredkushner said later, "Hopefully this will show the Israelis that there is hope for peace and coexistence."
I asked International Stabilization Force Commander Gen. Jeffers whether storage of Hamas weapons meant neutralizing or destroying. His answer: "It's intent based. There is going to be parts of this that we're going to--weapons that will be able to be moved, there will be weapons that won't be able to be moved. The intent is to neutralize and decommission, and we're building a plan to do that."
I asked NCAG Chief Commissioner whether the rebuilding would be inside or outside Yellow Line. His answer: "The National Committee for the Administration of Gaza is luckily color blind. And we don't separate the green zone from the red zone, the yellow line from the orange line. For instance, the UAE City that is designed to be built as built in Rafah is in the Green Zone. However, all our plans ... cover the 365 kilometer square of the Gaza Strip."
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Teaching about the Mycenaeans in class today (hence the lapel pin with the “Agamemnon” mask) plus giving a free online lecture on “Homer, Hollywood, and Historical Context” for the AIA at 8:00 pm EST tonight (hence the “Trojan War” tie). 1/2
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Registration is still open and a recording will be made for those who want to watch it later: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi…
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Jeffrey Kotyk retweeted
In ancient times, Japan was called Wakoku 倭國, although this was more of a territorial designation for disparate polities in the Japanese archipelago. Sometime around 660 CE, the name Nippon 日本 appears in Chinese and Korean diplomatic records. After this time, Japan increasingly adopted many aspects of Chinese culture and a centralized state. There are some extant Chinese illustrations of visitors from Wakoku.
蕭繹（傳）職貢圖, 唐閻立本王會圖, 五代南唐顧德謙摹梁元帝番客入朝圖.
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Scott D. Haddow retweeted
Explore insights on #archaeology, its working conditions, professional development and practice in a new collection from @saaorg journal 'Advances'.
🔗 cup.org/4ySzgW5
ALT An orange background with the text "Work and Labor in Archaeology" in white.
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Scott D. Haddow retweeted
US threatened to annihilate 93 million Iranians - children, moms, dads, grammas, thousands of Canadian Iranians who live in Iran - and Canada is ok with it according to Carney. So let's not pretend we respect intl law or humanity at this point.
Reporter: But do you think that Mr. Trump goes too far when he says he is considering destroying Iran?
Mark Carney: Well, there is a war underway, and he's speaking the language of war.
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Our @newshour story from @potus’ speech an UNGA, including an Iran threat, a Greenland Denmark deal, a @antonioguterres warning, and an A.I. debate
President Trump took his “America First” foreign policy to the world stage, using his address to the U.N. General Assembly to defend the war with Iran and issue a stark warning to Iran's leadership.
Trump said a deal could come after the midterm elections and that the alternative was to “annihilate the Islamic Republic.” @nickschifrin reports.
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Scott D. Haddow retweeted
Aesthetically my favourite thing about Take Five is that they all look like Belgian EEC bureaucrats who have just negotiated the first round of tariff cuts amongst the six member states beginning the core integration of the economic community.
67 years ago today, ‘Take Five’ by Dave Brubeck Quartet was released as a single.
It went on to become the best-selling jazz single of the 20th century.
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I always wait until the 2nd interview because I've won them round with my experience & skills by that point and they are likely keen on me.
I note their reaction to my disclosure because I don't want to work for an employer that is going to find my condition a problem.
People really hate accommodating employees with disabilities which is why so many people are scared to disclose in the first place 🙄
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Scott D. Haddow retweeted
New publication on the human burials excavated at #Göbeklitepe.
The burials presented in this study provide important insights into the many human bone fragments found in the fill of the Special Buildings. The evidence suggests that these fragments derive from displaced burials originally located higher up on the mound.
Another piece in the puzzle of how the site developed and was transformed over time.
journals.plos.org/plosone/ar…
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Jackson Wheat retweeted
Dapper Dinosaur is going live with Jackson Wheat in 1 hour, at 8PM CDT, 1AM UTC.
Twitter
@JacksonWheat1
Bluesky
@dapper-dinosaur.bsky.social
@jacksonwheat1.bsky.social
Evolution Is Still Here | Jackson with Jackson 56 - YouTube
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.@POTUS UNGA speech excerpts:
"While others have talked, I have acted. While others have spoken of peace, I have made it. While others have ignored threats, I have confronted them. While others have talked of courage, America has shown it. While others have promised strength, I have used it to make America the most powerful country in the world."
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"In America, we just marked the 25th anniversary of the worst terror attack in history, September 11th, which killed 3,000 people a few miles from here. In two weeks, we will mark the third anniversary of the October 7th attack in Israel, where terrorists funded by Iran tortured, mutilated, and killed 1,200 innocent civilians, including dozens of Americans. Iran’s Supreme Leader celebrated that massacre and called it a “service to humanity.” The same regime slaughtered over 72,000 of its own citizens this year. Just imagine if such a vile regime were ever empowered to carry out large-scale terror attacks from behind a nuclear shield. This was the reality we had to confront—a reality that far too many preferred to ignore."
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"I want to thank the U.N. Security Council for voting overwhelmingly to pass a resolution condemning Iran’s despicable terrorist attacks on commercial shipping. That resolution—I am pleased to say—received more co-sponsors from U.N. member nations than any Security Council Resolution in history."
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"The United States will no longer permit threats to America to gain a foothold anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. And if necessary, we will use our unmatched military might to secure the vital national interests of the United States."
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"The cartels are the ISIS of the Western Hemisphere. They are enemies at war with civilization—using murder, rape, torture, and extortion as instruments of terror."
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"The Cuban regime has also spent decades coordinating with left-wing radicals and Communist networks here in the United States. As our State Department has detailed, they have cultivated ties to subversive and radical groups such as the Communist Party USA, Antifa, and the Dumocrat Socialists of America."
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"There is no global government, and while I am President, there will be NO GLOBAL TAXES."
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"Freedom was not a gift that Americans won easily, and after 250 years, it is not one we will ever surrender.
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White House official preview of @POTUS UNGA address:
- In his speech to the United Nations today, President Trump will lay out a clear case for how he is using American Power to confront longstanding challenges and reshape the world to America’s benefit.
- From the Iranian nuclear threat, to cartel violence, to securing American interests in Greenland, while others have talked, President Trump has acted. The result will be a much safer and more prosperous world for the American People—and a much more powerful America.
- President Trump will highlight his administration’s strategy for ending decades of violence, instability, and foreign interference in the Western Hemisphere.
- He will also discuss the Trump administration’s efforts to prevent the U.N. and other globalist institutions from infringing on American sovereignty or imposing a radical-left wing agenda on the American People.
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What we're watching for as UNGA begins:
POTUS on the World Stage: POTUS will address world leaders at a tumultuous moment.
Greenland Deal: POTUS signs the Greenland deal at 1100, in which the U.S. will open 2 more military bases, but Greenland keeps its sovereignty and bans Russian and Chinese investment. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said last night, “we have reached a good agreement”--a "win-win" culmination of POTUS’ threats.
Iran/Yemen/GCC: POTUS meets the GCC at 1445, as the Houthis try to expand their assault eastward, and Reuters reports that Saudi Arabia restarted the East-West Pipeline--even as it’s exporting more through the Strait. Iranian President Pezeshkian just left Tehran and an Iranian official says he will not meet POTUS in New York.
Ukraine: POTUS meets Zelensky at 115p. Zelensky says he will bring up the possibility of truces on energy infrastructure and Black Sea attacks, and ask for more domestic air defense production. Ukraine will also raise starvation in the blockaded town of Oleshky.
A.I.: After yesterday’s U.N. warnings on A.I., tomorrow’s A.I. Security Council briefing will include OpenAI, Anthropic and Chinese DeepSeek. Burnham will announce a US-UK A.I. defense agreement.
Venezuela: POTUS’ meeting tonight at 7pm with Delcy Rodriguez will be the first meeting between and American President and Venezuela leader in more than a decade.
U.N.: The U.S. recently paid some of its bill, but experts say it's in “permanent crisis.”
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Scott D. Haddow retweeted
AI is distorting archaeology and flattening Indigenous knowledge phys.org/news/2026-09-ai-dis… via @physorg_com
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This is a purely dogmatic statement that can’t be supported with any data. A close look at the history of the development of the canon shows its boundaries changing as debates progressed & institutional authorities developed to assert different canonical preferences.
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To say scripture cannot contradict scripture is to put oneself over scripture, not only because it imposes a standard nowhere articulated in scripture, but because it makes us the referee in negotiating between different authors & determine which positions to elevate & to alter.
Scripture cannot contradict Scripture.
Salvation by faith alone in Christ alone is taught repeatedly and explicitly. One verse does not get to cancel that.
1 Peter 3:21 must be read in harmony with Paul, not against him. It cannot be the driving engine of biblical soteriology.
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Assistant or Associate Prof. of New Testament Studies, McAfee School of Theology, Mercer University, Atlanta GA. FT/TT, deadline Nov 1. nt4ox.link/Mercer27
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The associations between specific stones and planets given in a Greco-Egyptian papyrus. Open Access volume (p. 50): escholarship.org/uc/item/965…
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You can’t even bite back at @si_rubinstein about this since for all his faults (shit haircut) he can write quite well.
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Postdoctoral Fellowship (research & teaching) in New Testament, University of Salzburg, Austria. Permanent contract. Needs English & German. Deadline 14 October, start March 2027. nt4ox.link/PDF-Salzburg27
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Jon Hawke 🏛️🏺 retweeted
We are starting the week with the Great Mosaic on the #Oppian for #MosaicMonday. These late C1 CE wall mosaics from beneath the #BathsofTrajan show elite #Roman maritime villas. But they look like ghosts, because #Trajan's engineers despoiled the tesserae of the glass ocean.
ALT MOSAIC OF A MARITIME VILLA, 64-98 CE. MUSEO DELLE TERME DI TRAIANO This is part of the lower register of the Great Mosaic, one of a row depicting maritime villas, seemingly floating on a rough, blank mortar background. The structure features long colonnaded porticoes extending into the sea on two moles, terminating in tower like pavilions known as diaetae. This architectural pincer enclosed a private harbour, creating a protected mooring that displays the extreme luxury of the C1 rich. The villa appears to float in empty white space because the original background was destroyed. The ocean and sky were likely made of expensive glass paste tesseræ. These were picked out for recycling by Trajan's demolition crews, a state-sanctioned salvage operation also evident in the Polyphemus mosaic of the Domus Aurea. Only the less valuable stone and terracotta pieces forming the architecture were left behind before the hall was walled up to serve as foundations for the Baths of Trajan.
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Scott D. Haddow retweeted
サッカラのウナス王のピラミッドの玄室の石棺傍の両壁面に斜光で光を当てるとギザの大ピラミッドの建造者クフ王の姿がうっすらと現れます。クフ王の王名も認められています。これらので石材はギザのクフ王のピラミッドコンプレックスから運ばれて表面を研磨した後に再利用されたと考えられています。
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Nick Schifrin retweeted
It’s past 10 p.m. in New York, and French President Emmanuel Macron is meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Macron met with President Trump earlier today. Zelensky is set to meet with Trump on Tuesday at 1:15 p.m.
Zelensky walked to Macron’s residence.
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Nick Schifrin retweeted
SPOTTED in @playbookdc:
Assistant Secretary of State for Global Public Affairs Dylan Johnson hosted a press reception at The Kimberly Hotel in Midtown New York last night to kick off the UNGA High-level week. Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered off-the-cuff remarks and mingled with the media.
The attendees included reporters from CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO, the outlets just banned from the White House.
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Visuals of the Ancients retweeted
The Empire that Refused to Die
For thousand of year after the fall of the West, Roman Empire remained the beacon of civilization
Light in the darkness. And when the candle finally went dim, it sparkled the Rennaisance, ushering Europe (and the world) into the early modern age. nitter.net/simongerman600/status/…
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I just want you to stop saying odd sh*t #maklelan3470
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