Interesting Links for 13-11-2022

[andrewducker]

1. A material normally only found in meteorites has now been made artificially, and may solve our issues with some rare earth metals

(tags:materials meteor space technology viaSwampers )

2. German transphobe also a Holocaust denier

(tags:Holocaust transgender Germany viaSwampers LGBT )

3. Iran Votes to Execute Protesters (there are 15,000 in prison right now)

(tags:Iran protest death_penalty OhForFucksSake )

4. English people encounter pizza for the first time

(tags:pizza history )

5. Discovery of bronze statue rewrites Italy's Etruscan-Roman history

(tags:history archeology Italy )

6. Why do so few women excel at maths? Sexism, of course

(tags:sexism women mathematics )

7. Major ad firm Omnicom recommends clients pause Twitter ad spend (clients include Apple and McDonalds, and 5,000 more)

(tags:Twitter advertising Doom )

8. How "Wordle editor" became a real job at The New York Times

(tags:games language )

Comments

[simont]

4. A friend of mine used to have (may still have) a recipe book from around the '40s which had a section on pizza, with the subheading "(Italian Tomato Pie)".

[calimac]

4) I've had pizza in England, several times at different places, and it was uniformly vile. (Can't speak to Scotland.) It appears you have to go to Italy to get good pizza. (Or America, where the pizza is unlike Italian but can also be very good.)

[cmcmck]

2. Well.....being a trans woman of Latvian Jewish descent what can I say?.........

[wildeabandon]

2. I would not characterise saying that the Nazi's didn't target trans people as Holocaust denial, nor do I think that's how the term is commonly understood.

[hairyears]

(1) is kinda disappointing as an article: it has a lot to say about rare-earth metals, which this particular meteoric metal isn't...

...And next-to nothing about tetrataenite, which is *fascinating*, and the actual subject of the article.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrataenite

2

[danieldwilliam]

I'm asking this question with my lawyer's hat on, has Marie-Luise Vollbrecht actually been convicted of Holocaust Denial? The article mentions a couple of times denial of Nazi crimes. Which might be what we call in English Holocaust Denial or might be something similar to but different from Holocaust Denial?

Anyway, perhaps a distinction without a difference. I was mulling over the distinction between genocide and persecuting people because of their sexuality or how they experience gender or their politics and then was reminded of the times I studied Nazi jurisprudence during Jurisprudence and then Civil Liberties classes. It was mostly gibberish designed to put a veneer on the Nazi's main creed that they were going to kill some people because they didn't like them and they could and also because the Nazis had become powerful by telling one group of people it was entirely the fault of some other groups of people that they were having a difficult time and they couldn't back of out of that once they were in charge.

Also reminded of the words of AJP Taylor I think - you have to remember that they were mad.

So I'm not 100% convinced that delving in to the intentions of the Nazis when thinking about their crimes is helpful.

(My mum and I had been having a slow conversation about Natural Law and the differences between crimes against humanity and crimes against peace and war crimes. Sadly she was a German Legal Postivist about this sort of thing. There's no helping some people.)

Discovery of bronze statue rewrites Italy's Etruscan-Roman history

[anef]

Well, no, it doesn't. Current thinking is that Etruscan culture merged into Roman culture, with the Romans adopting many of the Etruscans' customs and practices, from how they built their temples, foretold the future (through augury) and possibly even gladiatorial games. A number of Roman family names were of Etruscan origin.
So the idea that Roman and Etruscan gods were worshipped together is completely unsurprising.

[jducoeur]

3 - I'm behind on the news, so perhaps events have passed me by, but a cynical part of me looks at this as a ploy so that Khamenei can show how magnanimous he is by ordering that their executions be commuted in exchange for, oh, a mere ten-year prison sentence...