nudge

New data has been coming in and wow - this is highly unusual from what we'd expect from a celestial body Never seen anything like this...

Meh. Still sounds like a lawn mower.

This can't be real?...

Horrendous.

Our biology teacher used to have a turtle and let it walk around on the floor during the class. I don't know how old it was because my mother, my elder sister and me all went to the same school (obviously not at the same time haha) and that turtle was there from the very beginning Considering it survived three generations of stupid teenagers I reckon it would do just fine on a bear hunt as well

I find Tolstoy tedious and War and Peace is just torture haha. Didn't care for Anna Karenina either. Dostoyevsky is 'meh' for me; I appreciate the insights into the human psyche but his writing style is not great and for me it all feels too theatrical and too dramatic (for a lack of better word). Russian literature classics are usually just too dramatic and melancholic for my liking overall but that's just a part of the "Russian soul" hehe. Bulgakov is the only one I truly enjoy. Also liked Mikhail Sholokhov's And Quiet Flows the Don as well as Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novels. That said, outside of those "big books", soviet sci-fi and fantasy used to be really good as well as their action/adventure/spy/detective novels and travelogues.

10 days to go until winter testing starts!!!

Mikhail Bulgakov is by far the best Russian author and The Master and Margarita is the best Russian novel of all time.

Found a nice little text-based adventure game of interstellar exploration and settlement called Seedship and created by sci-fi writer John Ayliff . The player takes control of the Seedship AI, an interstellar vessel designed to find a new home for humanity. Apart from scanning planets to determine their suitability, the AI must make constant choices to ensure the survival of the human race - some of those choices not so easy. Would you rather continue traveling through the cosmos hopefully finding a suitable planet before random events happen and damages your ship? Or will you settle on this not so ideal planet with no atmosphere, extreme gravity, extreme temperatures and no water whatsoever? There are always tradeoffs: a world with breathable air and charming wildlife may guarantee comfort, but without resources will end in a genteel return to the stone age. A barren world rich in minerals and alien ruins means advancing human technology and culture, but at the cost of being enslaved to whoever owns the water generation plants. Some of you might also enjoy it! https://philome.la/johnayliff/seedship/play

He's fine... I should try to get him back on here hehe but he doesn't seem to have much interest in participating in the forum lately.

Tibetan Buddhism is quite different though as it's based on Vajrayana tradition; too esoteric and mystical for my liking personally. I appreciate Thich Nhat Hanh's writings for their accessibility to everyone and he certainly has a very unique, anti-dogmatic approach but his style just doesn't resonate with me much. All that said, my interest in Buddhism is purely academic. I definitely have a soft spot for it based on the philosophy at its core, the fact that originally it encourages the search for answers personally instead of mindlessly following the dogma, and its compatibility with science, but as every other religion, it turns away from what it preaches in many cases in practice when it's followed by the masses. That and also I'm just not made for religious/spiritual practices altogether haha.

You're into Eastern philosophy lately? We read The Bhagavad Gita as part of Mahabharata at school. Epic poems are really not my thing so meh... The Dhammapada is an important read in Pali Tipitaka but it failed to make a lasting impression on me - and that's coming from someone who has a soft spot for Buddhism... If you ever want to continue reading on it I would highly recommend The Path of the Elders: A Modern Exposition of Ancient Buddhism by Ernest Erle Power (if you can still get a copy - I gifted mine to Panflute a while ago and it's not that easy to come across another one anymore...). That was by far the best explanation and analysis of the core of the Theravada Buddhism that I ever read.

Haha

ExoMars rover has a name!

This is the old car with the new front wing, right? Would love the black & gold colour scheme but it looks a bit messy with the team name in white and that atrocious "PEAK" thing on the side of the rear wing. Otherwise it reminds me of Lotus!

Of course it is, that's why books like this that try to clear existing misconceptions and challenge false paradigms with new archaeological facts and discoveries are important. The thing is, even without political meddling with the past, we still don't know many things about the world and cultures that lived centuries ago and many numbers related to that time are just rough estimates so I don't think the word "imagined" is so wrong here. It's one thing to understand that the image of the Americas being largely uninhabited mass of land with just a few wandering savages is just plainly wrong and was used to justify the means for political goals and expansion etc, but it's a different thing altogether to try and accurately estimate the actual size of native populations in cities and settlements at that that time. I mean we are still digging up "new" cities with estimated population of millions and extended trade networks that we didn't know even existed. New evidence is being added to what we know continuously so previously held views are being challenged one way or another as the overall pool of knowledge grows.

How about you read the actual book instead of nitpicking on the words used in the description of it?...

So many idiots around, we're running out of villages.

Good for him but what does it have to do with any of this? the book I'm reading is not a discussion on who discovered or theoretically hypothesised the existence of the Americas; it's an anthropological study of indigenous people revealing that the level of cultural advancement and the settlement range was higher and broader than previously imagined, as opposed to the widely spread view that the natives were primitive savages living in wilderness.

Just watched the pilot episode of Hanna, a TV show remake of the movie of the same name... Full series coming out in March. I enjoyed the movie so gave the pilot episode a go and am looking forward to the rest now!

Haas will be the first team to reveal their new livery tomorrow!

Worth mentioning that she originally overstayed her visa by almost 6 months, refused to pay the fine, and then insulted and slapped immigration officials for doing their job. Oh and then she failed to appear in court, and started insulting and kicking officers again. What a silly entitled cow.

Finished both now. Absolutely loved Kimi's book; the only complain is that it's too short haha. Great read. Chasing New Horizons is a very good read as well. Very informative and gives a unique insider insight into the Pluto mission. Currently listening to an audiobook: Currently reading: Been recommended it quite a long time ago; finally got it and started reading it today... In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492. Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man’s first feat of genetic engineering. Indeed, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.

Not my cup of tea but you go ahead and enjoy it...

Happy birthday Bob Marley