Earliest known writing dates back over 40,000 years

For what it’s worth, I don’t have any tattoos. . . God forbid recycling teenager and blogger trying to be funny

As a kid I remember distinctly being told by adults how awful it was that kids in the Soviet Union couldn't learn real history, they could only learn state sanctioned propaganda. These exact same people are now advocating for banning books and history in the US...

Critical thinking

HISTORY:  Earliest known writing dates back over 40,000 years

How to raise children. “It’s wild to me that we parent our children to fit into society, then get together with our friends and talk about how broken society is.”

Writer Lauren Groff on how she works. “After she completes a first draft, she puts it in a bankers box — and never reads it again.” And: “We all need to fill ourselves with the ghosts of other writers.” Her new book is out 

Just dropped this morning: the trailer for the final season of For All Mankind. When season four’s teaser trailer came out, I caught some flack for suggesting that “if you tilt your head and squint…you see For All Mankind as a prequel/origin story for The Expanse”. It looks like we’re heading even more in that direction in season five, which begins airing March 27.

Andor Creator Tony Gilroy Is Free to Speak About Fascism Now

Early on in the promotional period for season two of Andor, a series explicitly about fascism that depicted a genocide, Disney asked creator Tony Gilroy not to use the words “fascism” and “genocide”. Now that promotional period has passed and he can speak freely. Here’s Gilroy’s recent interview with Hollywood Reporter. They asked him about the prescience of the show given current events, especially those in Minnesota, and his response is spot-on:

The simplest answer to the strange synchronicity of all of this is really on them, the outside forces. We were pretty much doing a story about authoritarianism and fascism, and the Empire is very clearly a great example of that. It’s a great place to deal with those issues, and as we’ve discussed many times before, we had this wide open canvas to deal with it. 

So you get out your Fascism for Dummies book for the 15 things you do, and we tried to include as many of them as we could in the most artful way possible. How were we supposed to know that this clown car in Washington was going to basically use the same book that we used? So I don’t think it’s prescience so much as the sad familiarity of fascism and the karaoke menu of things that you go through to do it. You could list them from the show, or you could list them from the newspaper. 

In the beginning, it was very confusing. People were like, “Oh, you’re psychic,” or, “The show is prescient.” But in the rear-view mirror, it’s really a much sadder explanation than that.

Gilroy also mentions a book that’s coming out this summer: The Art of Star Wars: Andor(Amazon). He says: “Every page has ideas that we talked about over the course of a million meetings, and it’s just so good.”

A Hymn to Life by Gisèle Pelicot review – a unique memoir by a figure of astonishing power

The Guardian: “It is a mark of the power and honesty of Gisèle Pelicot’s memoir, A Hymn to Life – a seemingly impossible writing project in which the author must reconcile herself with horrors of which she has no recollection – that in the first 40 pages, the person I felt most angry towards was Pelicot herself. Her ex-husband, Dominique, who will almost certainly be in jail for the rest of his life for drugging and raping his wife and recruiting 50 men over the internet to do likewise, takes his place among the monsters of our age. In his absence, the reader may experience a version of what happened in Gisèle Pelicot’s own family – namely, the misdirection of anger towards her…

A Hymn to Life is alive with the kind of detail that wouldn’t look out of place in a good novel, but it’s the expression it gives to something glimpsed at during the trial that makes it so singular; namely, the transformation of Gisèle Pelicot from a self-avowedly ordinary woman, “content with my little life”, into a figure of astonishing power. After her husband’s arrest, she moved from Mazan to the Île de Ré, where in an effort to share her state of mind with new friends she told them she’d “been struck head-on by a high speed train”. (In a moment of grim humour, one neighbour took her literally and remarked, “the surgeon who had rebuilt my face had done an excellent job”.) Detailing what it took to emerge from this state to become a national – if not global – icon is the unsparing mission of the book…”

See also The New Yorker – The Trial of Gisèle Pelicot’s Rapists United France and Fractured Her Family. After fifty-one men were convicted, Pelicot became a feminist hero. But additional accusations left her children struggling to accept her new 

Garden designer Isabel Bannerman: ‘Romance has to be worked at’

As her and her husband Julian’s new online course goes live on Create Academy, the designer shares lessons from a lifetime of cultivation

The garden my husband, Julian, and I have here in Somerset is romantic in the broadest sense. It is an assemblage of what we like, of favourite and fitting plants such as daphnes and mock oranges, spaces, objects, vistas, shelters and places to work. Practicality is paramount; romance, after all, is not just fantasy, it has to be worked at, and unlike gardens we have designed to be open to the public — such as Arundel Castle or Asthall Manor — here it has to work with not very much help. Of course, rules apply, gardening is a craft and very hard work; to achieve beauty, usefulness and a relaxed comfort in the garden is not easy.

To achieve beauty, usefulness and a relaxed comfort in the garden is not easy

Everyone who had the luck of knowing and playing outdoors when young, in granny’s garden or an allotment, carries inside their heads a prelapsarian enchanted world. This was enhanced by the books we read, Great Expectations or The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, where “lost” worlds of innocence and immortality were safely girdled and emotionally entangled.

Abandonment in these spaces is key, and we long to go back to a place, where nature is untrammelled, turned up to 11. This belies our lordly intentions of course; as gardeners we can never resist the urge to imprint the garden with the essence of “us”.

A yew avenue leads to the 13th-century church, with rosemary blocks and borders of Dutch irises, roses and peonies © Gerry Quick

‘Plants are allowed to wander and colonise the paths’: Dutch irises, pinks, verbascum, Rosa ‘Night Owl’ and fennel © Rebecca Goddard for Create Academy

But our own aim is to get away with something which is not beholden to fashion, or hidebound by comparison with others, and if we are honest, not too tidy, because we don’t have much time. So, we plant things we love such as Salvia uliginosa or Alcalthaea suffrutescens ‘Parkallee’, plants we know will “do” and maybe cause one to say “ooh” — the giant cardiocrinum lily perhaps. And we nurture, but we also let it “do” its thing. For this is so often full of delight and surprise. Plants are better planters than we are, and that is why years of toil have taught us to love the simpler things, to encourage what works, and, in our case, usually lots of it. You don’t need rarity for romance. Honesty, Lunaria annua, is a most romantic, ruralist plant.

When we moved to Ashington Manor six years ago, leaving a ruined castle in Cornwall we swamped with rambling roses, it had not been lived in for more than a decade, let alone gardened. A huge sprawl of modern farm buildings had been razed; it was a flat landscape with few trees. The former you cannot alter, and the latter only with time. On the upside, we found deep soil and a bit of a microclimate that seemed to add sunshine to the already honeyed gothic of the Ham stone walls of the house and the little church that overlooks the garden. A cider orchard sold the place, to me at least.

The back lawn is lined with yew beehives, with borders of lavender bushes and roses © Gerry Quick

And what did we do with this unprepossessing set-up? Before we put forward an offer, we agreed that we would set aside a fund for the purchase of mature plants and trees. At this stage of life (I’m 63 and Julian is 74), we don’t have all that much time, and we wanted to make some instant marks on the canvas. As for the rest — the pictures here give a clue. 

Confusingly, while we call for letting go, we surreptitiously love a formal plan. We planned the garden round the north/south axis to the ancient church bell coop and two perpendicular paths out from the house that take you west to the orchard. Within that grid, we carved two places to sit and eat: the corner under an old wisteria and beside the house where the last sun rays hit. Repetition, rectangles and quadrangles linked by portals, paths and topiary, stitching and tethering the whole, leading the eye where we want it to go. The manipulations of “romance” are devious and many.

Green oak Bomarzo urn, with Parrotia persica and Martagon lilies © Rebecca Goddard for Create Academy

‘We love abundant saturated colour’: Salvia ‘Royal Bumble’ with Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’ and ‘Red Dragon’ © Rebecca Goddard for Create Academy

This intense burgeoning garden around the house is girdled with increasingly wilder long grass, bulbs, wildflowers, wild plum. Here flourish birds, bugs, amphibians, voles and moles, essential to the “romance” of a place. We are less keen on rabbits, deer (not a problem here) and hateful grey squirrels, because they destroy one’s tree planting efforts.

The writer Raffaella Barker said of our garden that it was where she would imagine a proposal scene in a film or a novel

In the flower gardens we embrace a “live-and-let-live” ethos that shortage of time and labour necessitate, allowing plants to wander and colonise the paths. People who come seem to find the freedom of the planting (and the smell bath of the whole thing) relaxing, mood-altering. Our friend the writer Raffaella Barker said of our garden that it was where she would imagine a proposal scene in a film or a novel. That is quite old-fashioned, but maybe that’s key to that nostalgia?

If we could sum up our gardening ethos, it is simply to do what you like with gusto and passion, follow your heart and a few rules. There are underlying laws, horticultural science cannot be ignored, design too, but we wish to remain anarchists, and not to pressurise ourselves or others. Do the thing you like with conviction, and it is bound to work in the garden.

Ancient box trees frame the church, with philadelphus and roses © Gerry Quick

‘The chatty corner is somewhere to sit with a drink and a friend’: philadelphus, Lupinus ‘My Castle’, verbascum, Eryngium bourgatii, irises, pinks and Erigeron karvinskianus © Gerry Quick

My kind of romance is immediate, intense, intimate, and heightened by smells. Essential is the “chatty corner”, somewhere to sit with a drink and a friend. Sadly the word “chat” has becomes dangerously associated with “bot”, but language, like gardens, changes and runs away from us to good and bad effect. The garden is a story, with luck it will take you out of yourself and to happier places.

We love abundant saturated colour, for which we have no rules, no colour “theories”. This is not to say we don’t have our prejudices. While we cannot cope with purple leaves of any sort, we like ferns and dark yews, dank mysterious places garlanded with rambling roses, which are not demanding. Roses like ‘La Mortola’, ‘The Garland’, ‘Sir Cedric Morris’ and Rosa moschata autumnalis, which flowers later and lovelier than all the rest. Roses up trees and bushes, roses over gates, and roses such as Rosa californica Plena and Rosa spinosissima ‘Single Cherry’ in long grass.

Gardens are about times of year and times of day. When in July the gloaming brings the moths to the phlox, stocks, lilies and narcotic Brugmansias in pots, and the Himalayan cow parsley shines like the Milky Way, then we idle, work done, in the perfumed lagoon of our English country garden.

Creating a Romantic English Country Garden with Isabel & Julian Bannerman, an online course, is available on createacademy.com 

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Raineri of Five Punj Dock

Home Really Is Where the Heart Is Nautilus

US NEWS YOU CAN USE:  The most famous local sandwich from every state

Raineri of Five Punj Dock  - Shop came first, everything else second’: The man behind Sydney’s viral $15 sandwich store dies

Long before block-long queues formed for a viral focaccia, Peter Raineri spent his Saturday mornings navigating a different kind of crowd. Before TikTok and Instagram, customers lined the counter of his Five Dock continental deli, shoulder-to-shoulder, arguing over who was next in line.

When the Raineris floated the idea of a ticket system to manage the rush, regulars revolted. They threatened to boycott the shop – the “Saturday morning stoush” was half the fun.

That communal energy sustained the family-run Raineri’s for decades. Peter, who opened P&R Raineri’s Continental Deli on Great North Road in 1981, died last Saturday, aged 90.

“My mum and dad decided to get into the deli business, which was very popular among the Italian community back then,” Peter’s son, Sam, said.

“They started in the small shop, and it expanded from there. It got really popular over time … people just love to come and see us and have a chat.”

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• Sandwich watch

I lined up for 65 minutes for this $15 sandwich, and I’d do it again

Raineri’s has long been a sanctuary for Italian Australians, stacked with chargrilled eggplant, prosciutto, wood-fired breads and enormous wheels of cheese. It also catered to customers seeking the specific staples of their home provinces. The Herald previously reported on Peter’s understanding of those loyalties: Sicilians drink Torissi, Calabrese drink Mauro, and Neapolitans drink Kimbo.

Peter’s presence at the deli was a main reason customers kept returning, Sam says. He still hears stories about his father decades on.

“My dad was always open to everybody,” Sam said. “Because he treated everyone equally, we got this generational thing. Families, their kids coming in, and it’s like, ‘I remember your dad gave me a panino for free when I was six,’ and now they’re married with kids.”

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More recently, Raineri’s became known for its sandwiches. Social media brought a new audience, drawing customers from across Sydney who line up outside for focaccia filled with cut-to-order cured meats, cheeses, and marinated eggplant and capsicum.

Despite their generous sizes, the sandwiches are $15, no matter what goes on them. Peter was determined to keep his panini affordable.

Peter’s sons, Joseph and Sam, will keep Raineri’s going, having taken over day-to-day operations when their father, then 86, stepped back to tend to his garden. For the four decades before that, Sam said, his father practically lived at the deli.

Even his death did not stop the doors from opening. Sam said they considered closing for a day, but it wouldn’t have been in his father’s spirit.

“We’re going to close on the day of the funeral, but that’s it,” Sam said. “My dad, he’d always send my mum to people’s funerals. He’d always be at the shop because he was so in love with the shop. That was his life, that was his old mentality – the shop came first, and everything else came second.”

While still coming to terms with his father’s passing, Sam said he is beginning to see those traits in himself.

Sam Raineri, son of Peter and Rosaria, took over running the deli with his brother, Joseph.JANIE BARRETT

Longevity influencers are curiously silent about a core driver of unhealthy aging. Why? Synergies

Follow the Changes: 9 Ways Web Archives are Used in Digital Investigations

Internet Archive Blogs: “Digital journalists increasingly turn to web archives like the Wayback Machine to follow how things on the Internet break, change or disappear – from deleted posts to quietly edited pages. The web has become not only a source of informationbut also the subject of media investigations, prompting journalists, researchers and activists to use digital archives to reconstruct timelines, verify claims, uncover hidden connections and hold powerful actors to account. 

As online materials grow more fragile and prone to disappearance, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has been critical in making “lost” web pages available – recently celebrating archiving over a trillion pages. As we’ve previously written about on this blog, the Wayback Machine is an important resource for our work as media researchers, helping us to trace histories of digital media objects (for example, changes in ad tracker signatures of viral “fake news” sites over time). We are also interested in how others use web archives across fields, and what we can learn from each other.

 In this piece we draw on the Internet Archive’s News Stories collection to surface practices and use cultures of the Wayback Machine amongst journalists and media organisations. We analysed a dataset of about 8,600 news articles, assembled by the IA via daily Google News keyword searches since 2018. Drawing on a combination of digital methods, machine learning and lots of reading – we surfaced nine ways that journalists use the Wayback Machine in their reporting…” [h/t Barclay Walsh]

Why Have You Started This War, Mr. President?

 “We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.”

― Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Isaevich

Iran coverage

The world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. 

And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same... 

~Marjane Satrapi, Iranian-French graphic novelist

Why Have You Started This War, Mr. President?

US, ISRAEL ATTACK IRAN, START REGIONAL WAR; IRAN RETALIATES AGAINST ISRAEL, US BASES IN BAHRAIN, SAUDI ARABIA, QATAR. UPDATE: ISRAEL TV REPORTS IRAN BLOCKS STRAIT OF HORMUZ

The US and Israel have launched a war against Iran. A great empire will fall. 

Trump Says He’s ‘Entitled’ to Illegal Third Term as Allies Draft Voter Suppression Decree

Will Trump try to use the war just launched with Iran as part of a scheme to stay in office for another term?

Trump’s extraordinary confession, says his Iran strategy is based on luck Janta Ka Reporter, YouTube. The Trump clip starts at 2:58. Also has Hannah Spencer’s full acceptance speech at 8:

CODA:

Elite Doctors Served Jeffrey Epstein While Treating His ‘Girls’

A small stable of doctors gave V.I.P. medical services to the sex offender and the women around him. Some doctors bent or broke the ethical rules of their profession.

The big new controversy over the Epstein files, explained 

 Vinegar as a natural weed killer

Man accidentally gains control of 7,000 robot vacuums Popular Science

Can you detect an AI generated face? Most people get around 11 out of 20

Most people get around 11 out of 20. “In a research paper published in the British Journal of Psychology, researchers from UNSW and the ANU recruited 125 participants – including 36 people with exceptional face-recognition ability, known as super recognisers, and 89 control participants – to complete an online test in which they were shown a series of faces and asked to judge whether each image was real or AI-generated.

 Obvious visual flaws were screened out beforehand. “What we saw was that people with average face-recognition ability performed only slightly better than chance,” Dr Dunn says.

 “And while super-recognisers performed better than other participants, it was only by a slim margin. What was consistent was people’s confidence in their ability to spot an AI-generated face – even when that confidence wasn’t matched by their actual performance.”

Why this matters? AI-generated faces are becoming increasingly realistic and widely accessible. These synthetic images are now used in social media profiles, marketing materials, political messaging, and even fraudulent schemes. While some uses are harmless, others can contribute to identity deception, misinformation, financial scams, and the manipulation of public opinion. 

As the technology improves, it becomes harder to distinguish real faces from artificial ones. We created this test to show how hard this task has become. The average person does no better than guessing when distinguish real from AI, but some people are super-AI-detectors. 

By studying individual differences in detecting AI-generated faces, we hope to understand who is most vulnerable to deception and how to design tools and educational strategies that strengthen digital resilience. Take the Demo & Learn More