Getty images.

Dear Commons Community,

Michelle Goldberg in her New York Times column on Sunday, entitled, “The Massacre in Israel and the Need for a Decent Left” called out those on the left who glamorized the Hamas attack on Israel last week.

Here is an excerpt:  

“Many progressive Jews have been profoundly shaken by the way some on the left are treating the terrorist mass murder of civilians as noble acts of anticolonial resistance. These are Jews who share the left’s abhorrence of the occupation of Gaza and of the enormities inflicted on it, which are only going to get worse if and when Israel invades. But the way keyboard radicals have condoned war crimes against Israelis has left many progressive Jews alienated from political communities they thought were their own.

By now, you’ve probably seen examples. There was the giddy message put out by the national committee of Students for Justice in Palestine, which proclaimed, “Today, we witness a historic win for the Palestinian resistance: across land, air and sea.” New York’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America promoted a rally where speakers applauded the attacks, and the Connecticut D.S.A. enthused, “Yesterday, the Palestinian resistance launched an unprecedented anticolonial struggle.” The president of N.Y.U.’s student bar association wrote in its newsletter, “I will not condemn Palestinian resistance,” leading to the withdrawal of a job offer. Over the otherwise benign slogan “I stand with Palestine,” Black Lives Matter Chicago posted a photo of a figure in a paraglider like those Hamas used to descend on a desert rave and turn it into a killing field.

“I think what surprised me most was the indifference to human suffering,” said Joshua Leifer, a contributing editor at the left-wing magazine Jewish Currents and a member of the editorial board at the progressive publication Dissent.

“I’m trying to hold on, personally, to my commitments, my values, which now feel in conflict, in a way, with the political community that I lived alongside in the United States for basically my whole adult life,” he said. “It certainly has begun to feel like a breaking point.”

Conservatives reading this might take a jaundiced satisfaction in what some surely view as naïve progressives getting their comeuppance. But part of what makes the depravity of the edgelord anti-imperialists so tragic is that a decent and functional left has rarely been more necessary. As I write this, Israel has imposed what the Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant, called a “complete siege” of Gaza’s two million people, about half of whom are under 18. “No electricity, no food, no water, no gas — it’s all closed,” said Gallant. “We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.” Such collective punishment is, like the mass killing of civilians in Israel, a war crime.”

Her conclusion:

“By valorizing terrorism, these voices on the left are effectively choosing to stop contending for power in a serious way — a slow and grinding process rife with setbacks — and indulge instead in messianic projection. There was a time not long ago when the D.S.A. seemed to be emerging as a political force, with several of its members, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman, ascending to Congress. Now it has made itself an embarrassment to most politicians associated with it. On Wednesday, Representative Shri Thanedar of Michigan, a former member of the D.S.A., renounced the group. Ocasio-Cortez disavowed the group’s endorsement of a pro-Hamas rally in Times Square, telling Politico, “It should not be hard to shut down hatred and antisemitism where we see it. That is a core tenet of solidarity.”

It’s too early to know how the left’s widespread failure of solidarity will change our politics, but I suspect some sort of fracture is coming. Part of me thinks this could be a moment like after the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, which, coupled with revelations about the evils of Stalinism, led many left intellectuals to break with communism. Though perhaps that’s too grandiose an analogy for an amorphous campus-bred left-wing tendency that communicates in hashtags and sound bites. On social media, some scholars and activists are repeating the line “Decolonization is not a metaphor,” suggesting that the homicidal spree we just saw in Israel is not a departure from their ideology but the embodiment of it. I suspect they will come to regret it if people take them at their word.”

Her entire column is an important read!

Tony

Stella Terra’s Solar-Powered SUV. STE/Bart van Overbeek

Dear Commons Community,

Stella Terra has developed an SUV that uses solar panels on its sloping roof to charge its electric battery, meaning it can drive long distances powered entirely by the sun. As reported by CNN.

Built by a team of students at Eindhoven University of Technology (TUE) in the Netherlands, “the world’s first off-road solar-powered vehicle” could help connect remote areas “where roads are less developed and energy grids are not as reliable,” and assist with emergency aid and deliveries, says Thieme Bosman, a manager for the team. 

The team tested the vehicle in Morocco earlier this month, driving more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) between the country’s northern coast and the Sahara Desert in the south.

“Morocco has a huge variety of landscapes and different surfaces in quite a short distance,” says Bosman, adding that the car was tested “on every type of surface that a car like this could encounter.”

The road-legal car has a top speed of 145 kilometers (90 miles) per hour. On a sunny day, its battery range is around 710 kilometers (441 miles) on roads, and around 550 kilometers (342 miles) off-road, depending on the surface. In cloudy conditions, the team estimates the range could be 50 kilometers less.

Bosman noted that the vehicle had proved to be one-third more efficient than expected on the trip, and that its lightweight design made it less liable to get stuck on rugged terrain, and put less stress on its suspension.

Electric SUVs are heavier than standard electric vehicles, and require bigger, heavier batteries to power them.

“Where the SUV market currently innovates on the previous models, we really start from scratch and design everything ourselves,” says Bosman. Minimizing the vehicle’s weight was essential, and the team of 22 students focused on making every element ultra-efficient. At just 2,645 pounds (1,200 kilograms), Stella Terra weighs around 25% less than the average mid-sized SUV.

The aerodynamic design also reduces drag and uses “lightweight and robust” composite materials to cut weight, says Bob van Ginkel, technical manager for Stella Terra.

“(One of) the benefits of the solar panels on top is that we can have a much smaller battery because we are charging while driving,” van Ginkel adds.

Able to travel off-road, and with no need for charging points, drivers of a solar-powered SUV are liberated to go where they please, says van Ginkel. The only restriction, he says, is “what are you going to do when you want to sleep?”

To answer that question, Stella Terra builds on the idea of the solar-powered campervan produced previously at the university, and the designers made elements of the SUV livable for long-distance, multi-day journeys: for example, the car’s seats fully recline to create a bed. When the car is stationary, the solar panels can be extended to maximize charging, while doubling as an awning for shade.

Bosman says the team also designed highly efficient solar panel converters, which he hopes could be beneficial to the wider solar industry.

After unveiling a prototype of the SUV in September, the team traveled to Morocco to test the car on a range of off-road terrains.

Starting in Tangier, the team passed through the rugged Rif mountain range, where the rapid ascents and descents tested Stella Terra in its first off-road challenge.

Heading south through Fes, the team tested the car on the mountain trails of Midelt — one of Morocco’s highest towns — and ended their trip in the Sahara Desert, challenging Stella Terra on looser, sandy tracks.

Early in the journey they suffered a setback when the steering system broke, but they were able to find new parts and repair the vehicle in a local workshop.

Bosman said that the highlight of the trip was “the huge range of landscapes and surfaces that we’ve been on. Every hour of driving has been completely different. That really allowed us to test a lot, but for the team it has also been an incredible journey coming here.”

The trip was unaffected by the massive earthquake that hit Morocco in early September, but because of the huge impact the disaster had on the country, the Stella Terra team decided to join forces with The Red Cross on a crowdfunding campaign to help those affected.

TUE’s automotive innovation lab has been experimenting with solar-powered vehicles for over a decade, producing concept cars that are typically “five to 10 years ahead of the market,” says Bosman.

A major challenge is turning the concept car into one that can be mass-produced. Alumni from the first TUE Solar program student team announced in 2022 that their company Lightyear was beginning production of a car fitted with solar panels. Earlier this year, the company filed for bankruptcy, before relaunching months later to focus on a new, cheaper model.

Bosman and his peers hope their concept SUV could be mass produced in the near future. “We aim to also inspire not only everyday people, but also the automotive industry, the Ford and Chryslers of the world, to think again about their designs and to innovate faster than they currently do,” says Bosman.

“It’s up to the market now, who have the resources and the power to make this change and the switch to more sustainable vehicles.”

Interesting idea! 

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

‘We know Leonardo da Vinci as a famed Italian painter, but what about da Vinci as a chemist? New research into the Mona Lisa shows that da Vinci may very well have crafted a new type of paint mixture that then endured as the norm for centuries.

By analyzing a minuscule spec of paint culled from the top right corner of the painting, a team of researchers were able to reveal the chemical makeup of the substance. In the resulting paper, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the team describes a “singular mixture of strongly saponified oil with high lead content and a cerussite-depleted lead white pigment.”The real eye-catcher, though, was the presence of plumbonacrite—a rare compound stable found only in an alkaline environment. “Leonardo probably endeavored to prepare a thick paint suitable for covering the wooden panel of the Mona Lisa by treating the oil with a high load of lead II oxide, PbO,” the study states.

It’s the lead that has everyone’s attention. “Plumbonacrite is really a fingerprint of his recipe,” Victor Gonzalez, the study’s lead author and a chemist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, told the Associated Press. “It’s the first time we can actually chemically confirm it.”

The team employed “high-angular resolution synchrotron X-ray diffraction and micro-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy” to suss out the combination. The synchrotron machine accelerates particles, which allows researchers to use an X-ray to pinpoint the chemical make-up.

The fleck of paint comes from a tiny spot the diameter of a human hair in the work’s base layer.

Gonzalez says that Leonardo likely dissolved the orange-colored lead oxide powder with heat in either linseed or walnut oil. That would have resulted in a thicker paint mixture that also dried quickly. “What you will obtain is an oil that has a very nice golden color,” he told the AP. “It flows more like honey.”

By using different paint mixtures for varying works of art, Gonzalez believes Leonardo was able to show a modern approach to the craft. “He was someone who loved to experiment, and each of his paintings is completely different technically,” Gonzalez tells the AP. “In this case, it’s interesting to see that indeed there is a specific technique for the ground layer of Mona Lisa.”

The use of this lead oxide powder to thicken and dry the Mona Lisa’s base layer was likely a fresh approach to painting in the early 1500s, but one that became common practice. Gonzalez says that Rembrandt paintings show the use of plumbonacrite into the 17^th century. “It tells us also that those recipes were passed on for centuries,” he says. “It was a very good recipe.”

Leonardo da Vinci keeps giving!

Tony

President Claudine Gay

Dear Commons Community,

More than 350 faculty members at Harvard University signed an open letter to President Claudine Gay  in response to a student statement that was “nothing less than condoning the mass murder” of over a thousand Israelis, adding the administration’s response “fell short.”

In the letter to President Gay, the Harvard faculty members said they were “deeply concerned about the events in the Middle East, as well as the safety of our students here on campus.

“The leaders of the major democratic countries united in saying that ‘the terrorist actions of Hamas have no justification, no legitimacy, and must be universally condemned’ and that Israel should be supported “in its efforts to defend itself and its people against such atrocities.

“In contrast, while terrorists were still killing Israelis in their homes, 35 Harvard student organizations wrote that they hold ‘the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,’ with not a single word denouncing the horrific acts by Hamas.”

That statement from the student groups was released the evening of Oct. 8, a day after the attacks that resulted in the deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust. it said Hamas’ killing, torture and kidnapping of Israelis “did not occur in a vacuum.”

“The apartheid regime is the only one to blame,” the statement said, indicating the organizations believed Israel was responsible for the horrific attacks.

“In the context of the unfolding events, this statement can be seen as nothing less than condoning the mass murder of civilians based only on their nationality,” the faculty letter states. “We’ve heard reports of even worse instances, with Harvard students celebrating the ‘victory’ or ‘resistance’ on social media.”

The faculty added it could have been a “teaching moment and an opportunity to remind our students that beyond our political debates, some acts such as war crimes are simply wrong.”

President Gay issued a statement three days after the attacks, noting that the views of 30 student groups do not reflect the views of the university and condemned “terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas.”

The faculty argued that her statement “fell short.”

“While justly denouncing Hamas, it still contributed to the false equivalency between attacks on noncombatants and self-defense against those atrocities,” the faculty wrote. “Furthermore, the statement failed to condemn the justifications for violence that come from our own campus, nor to make it clear to the world that the statement endorsed by these organizations does not represent the values of the Harvard community.

“We recognize that Harvard has students and community members from all regions, including from the Gaza Strip. These are not easy times, and we pray for the safety of all our members and their families. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has a long and complex history. We hold varying opinions, but none of us endorses all of Israel’s past actions.

“However, the events of this week are not complicated. Sometimes there is such a thing as evil, and it is incumbent upon educators and leaders to call it out, as they have with school shootings and terrorist attacks.

“It is imperative that our academic leadership, whose good faith we do not doubt, state this clearly and unequivocally. Further, while individuals’ free speech should be protected, our leaders should make it clear that our community rejects any statements that excuse terrorist acts,” they added.

Gay posted a video Thursday addressing the backlash and further distanced the university from the students’ statement, saying, “People have asked me where we stand. So let me be clear. Our university rejects terrorism. That includes the barbaric atrocities perpetrated by Hamas. Our university rejects hate.

“Hate of Jews. Hate of Muslims. Hate of any group of people based on their faith, their national origin or any aspect of their identity. Our university rejects the harassment or intimidation of individuals based on their beliefs.”

Lawrence H. Summers, president emeritus of Harvard, earlier this week was outspoken in criticism of Gay for a “delayed statement fails to meet the needs of the moment.”

“Why can’t we find anything approaching the moral clarity of Harvard statements after George Floyd’s death or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when terrorists kill, rape and take hostage hundreds of Israelis attending a music festival?” Summers, who served in senior leadership posts under presidents Clinton and Obama, asked in a post Tuesday on X, formerly Twitter.

But Summers, who co-signed the faculty letter, said Thursday he is “very glad that President Gay has now denounced Hamas terrorism and distanced the university from the appalling student group statement.”

Tony

(AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)

Dear Commons Community,

The major U.S. pharmacy chain Rite Aid said yesterday that it has filed for bankruptcy and obtained $3.45 billion in fresh financing as it carries out a restructuring plan while coping with falling sales and opioid-related lawsuits.

In 2022, Rite Aid settled for up to $30 million to resolve lawsuits alleging pharmacies contributed to an oversupply of prescription opioids. It said it had reached an agreement with its creditors on a financial restructuring plan to cut its debt and position itself for future growth and that the bankruptcy filing was part of that process. As reported by the Associated Press.

The plan will “significantly reduce the company’s debt” while helping to “resolve litigation claims in an equitable manner,” Rite Aid said.

In March, the Justice Department filed a complaint against Rite Aid, alleging it knowingly filled hundreds of thousands of unlawful prescriptions for controlled substances from May 2014-June 2019. It also accused pharmacists and the company of ignoring “red flags” indicating the prescriptions were illegal.

The Justice Department acted after three whistleblowers who had worked at Rite Aid pharmacies filed a complaint.

Jeffrey Stein, who heads a financial advisory firm, was appointed Rite Aid’s CEO as of Sunday, replacing Elizabeth Burr, who was interim CEO and remains on Rite Aid’s board.

Earlier this month, Rite Aid notified the New York Stock Exchange that it was not in compliance with listing standards. During a grace period, the company’s stock continues to be listed and traded.

The bankruptcy filing in New Jersey and noncompliance with listing standards would not affect the company’s business operations or its U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reporting requirements, it said.

Rite Aid said it was arranging for payment of wages and other costs as usual, though some “underperforming” stores among its more than 2,100 pharmacies in 17 states will be closed.

It earlier reported that its revenue fell to $5.7 billion in the fiscal quarter that ended June 3, down from $6.0 billion a year earlier, logging a net loss of $306.7 million.

This is a surprise!

Tony

Palestinians flee to the southern Gaza Strip after the Israeli army issued an evacuation warning to a population of over 1 million in northern Gaza and Gaza City to seek refuge in the south ahead of a possible Israeli ground invasion. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)

Dear Commons Community,

Desperate Palestinians scrambled for escape from northern Gaza yesterday, as Israel intensified warnings of an imminent offensive by air, ground and sea following Hamas militants’ deadly rampage in Israel a week ago.

Israel dropped leaflets from the air and redoubled warnings on social media for more than 1 million Gaza residents to move south.

The military says it is trying to clear away civilians ahead of a concentrated campaign against Hamas militants in the north, including in what it said were underground hideouts in Gaza City. Hamas urged people to stay in their homes.

The U.N. and aid groups say such a rapid exodus along with Israel’s siege of the territory would cause untold human suffering. The World Health Organization said the evacuation “could be tantamount to a death sentence” for the more than 2,000 patients in northern hospitals, including newborns in incubators and people in intensive care.

Gaza’s humanitarian crisis already was mounting Saturday amid a growing shortage of water and medical supplies under a week-old Israeli blockade, which has also forced electrical plants to shut down without fuel.

In Gaza City, Haifa Khamis al-Shurafa crowded into a car with six family members, fleeing to the south in the darkness.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“We don’t deserve this,” Shurafa said, before leaving her home city. “We didn’t kill anyone.”

The evacuation directive covers an area of 1.1 million residents, or about half the territory’s population. The Israeli military said “hundreds of thousands” of Palestinians had heeded the warning and headed south. It gave Palestinians a six-hour window that ended Saturday afternoon to travel safely within Gaza along two main routes.

In Israel, meanwhile, workers at a miIitary base received special rabbinical approval to continue identifying bodies of the more than 1,300 people, most civilians, killed by Hamas. Work is normally halted on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Be’eri and Kfar Azza, two southern border communities where Hamas militants slaughtered dozens of Israelis, to meet with soldiers and tour the ruins of bloodied homes. Netanyahu has faced criticism that his government has not done enough to meet with relatives of the victims.

Hundreds of relatives of the scores of Israelis and foreigners captured by Hamas and taken to Gaza gathered outside the Israeli Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, demanding their release.

“This is my cry out to the world: Please help bring my family, my wife and three kids,” said Avihai Brodtz of Kfar Azza. Many expressed anger toward the government, saying they still have no information about their loved ones.

In a nationally broadcast address Saturday night, Israel’s chief military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, accused Hamas of trying to use civilians as human shields and issued a new appeal to Gaza residents to move south.

“We are going to attack Gaza City very broadly soon,” he said, without giving a timetable for the attack against the 40-kilometer-long (25-mile-long) territory.

“The Palestinian civilians in Gaza are not our enemies,” an Israeli military spokesman, John Conricus, said. “We don’t assess them as such, and we don’t target them as such. We are trying to do the right thing.”

Israel has called up some 360,000 military reserves and massed troops and tanks along the border with Gaza. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said late Saturday that the U.S. was moving in a second carrier strike group, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, as a deterrence to any regional actors seeking to widen the war.

Palestinian militants have fired more than 5,500 rockets into Israel since the fighting erupted, the Israeli military said.

Hamas remained defiant. In a televised speech Saturday, Ismail Haniyeh, a top official, said that “all the massacres” will not break the Palestinian people.

Fighting continued in the run-up to the expected offensive, with Hamas launching rockets into Israel and Israel carrying out strikes in Gaza.

An Israeli airstrike near the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza killed at least 27 people and wounded another 80, Gaza health authorities said.

Most of the victims were women and children, the authorities said. Doctors from Kamal Edwan Hospital shared chaotic footage of charred and disfigured bodies.

It was not clear how many Palestinians remained in northern Gaza by Saturday afternoon, said Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. An estimated 1 million people have been displaced in Gaza in one week, she said.

At Gaza City’s main hospital, al-Shifa, a crowd of men, women and children that medical officials estimated at 35,000 crammed into bloodied hallways and on hospital grounds, sitting under trees as well as inside the building’s lobby, hoping to be protected from the fighting.

“People think this is the only safe space after their homes were destroyed and they were forced to flee,” said Dr. Medhat Abbas, a Health Ministry official.

Basic necessities like food, fuel and drinking water were running out because of the complete Israeli siege.

Water has stopped coming out of taps across the territory. Amal Abu Yahia, a 25-year-old pregnant mother in the Jabaliya refugee camp, said she waited anxiously for the few minutes when contaminated water trickles from the pipes in her basement. She rations it, prioritizing her 5-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter. She said she is drinking so little herself, she only urinates every other day.

Near the coast, the only tap water is contaminated with Mediterranean Sea water because of the lack of sanitation facilities. Mohammed Ibrahim, 28, said his neighbors in Gaza City have taken to drinking the salt water.

The Israeli military’s evacuation order demands the territory’s entire population cram into the southern half of Gaza as Israel continues strikes, including in the south.

Rami Swailem said he and at least five families in his building decided to stay put in his apartment near Gaza City. “We are rooted in our lands,” he said. “We prefer to die in dignity and face our destiny.”

Others were looking desperately for ways to evacuate. “We need a number for drivers from Gaza to the south, it is necessary #help,” read a post on social media.

The U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians expressed concern for those who could not leave, “particularly pregnant women, children, older persons and persons with disabilities,” saying they must be protected. The agency also called for Israel to not target civilians, hospitals, schools, clinics and U.N. locations.

Al-Shifa hospital was receiving hundreds of wounded every hour and had used up 95% of its medical supplies, hospital director Mohammad Abu Selim said. Water is scarce and the fuel powering its generators is dwindling.

“The situation inside the hospital is miserable in every sense of the word,” he said. “The operating rooms don’t stop.”

Thousands of people crammed into U.N.-run schools across Gaza.

“I came here with my children. We slept on the ground. We don’t have a mattress, or clothes,” said Howeida al-Zaaneen, 63, from the northern town of Beit Hanoun. “I want to go back to my home, even if it is destroyed.”

The Gaza Health Ministry said Saturday that over 2,200 people have been killed in the territory, including 724 children and 458 women. The Hamas communications office said Israel has destroyed over 7,000 housing units so far.

At Gaza’s Rafah crossing into Egypt, announcement of an agreement to briefly open the closed crossing to allow foreigners to escape brought hopeful crowds to the gates Saturday. But any deal appeared to have fallen through, with the crossing yet to open by nightfall.

Some 1,500 people in Gaza are estimated to hold Western passports, including about 500 Americans, along with citizens from other parts of the world.

A ground assault in densely populated Gaza would likely bring even higher casualties on both sides in brutal house-to-house fighting.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan in Riyadh on Saturday, and both called for Israel to protect civilians in Gaza.

“As Israel pursues its legitimate right to defend its people and to trying to ensure that this never happens again, it is vitally important that all of us look out for civilians,” Blinken said.

Oh what human suffering!

Tony

One of the Bække-Læborg Runestones.  The stone is 236cm or 7.7 feet tall (photograph by Roberto Fortuna, National Museum of Denmark).

Dear Commons Community,

More than 1,000 years ago, carvers in what is now Denmark set their chisels to rock to etch runestones — monuments to Viking leaders naming their deeds and achievements. Two groups of runestones mention a woman named Thyra, and new analysis of the carvings suggests that the runes on both sets of stones were inscribed by the same artisan and refer to the same woman: a Viking queen of considerable power.

Researchers from Denmark and Sweden used 3D scans to analyze carvings on the runestones, finding telltale clues that marked the individual style of the person who carved them. That carver’s repeated mention of Thyra’s name — a rare occurrence for Viking-era women — suggested that Thyra was a powerful sovereign who likely played a pivotal role in the birth of the Danish realm, the scientists reported Wednesday in the journal Antiquity. 

“To learn more about the rune-carver and those named on the stone is fascinating,” said Dr. Katherine Cross, a lecturer at York St. John University in the UK who researches and teaches the history of early medieval northern Europe. She was not involved in the study.

“We can only understand early medieval sources once we can think about who made them and why,” Cross told CNN in an email.

One set of runes came from a pair of monuments known as the Jelling stones, erected in the town of Jelling around 965. The larger Jelling stone is often referred to as “Denmark’s birth certificate,” as it’s the first monument to name the land as its people pivoted to Christianity, according to the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen.

Both Jelling runestones also named a royal figure: Queen Thyra, mother of then-reigning King Harald Bluetooth. The smaller stone was raised in her honor by her husband (and Harald’s father) King Gorm, calling her “Denmark’s strength/salvation” (or “Denmark’s adornment,” depending on the translation, the researchers noted in the study). Harald commissioned the larger stone, to honor both of his royal parents.

In another set of four Viking-era monuments, known collectively as the Bække-Læborg group, two runestones mention a woman named Thyra. Those stones are associated with a carver named Ravnunge-Tue, but experts disagreed on whether that Thyra was Harald’s mother, said lead study author Dr. Lisbeth Imer, a curator and senior researcher at the National Museum of Denmark specializing in the study of runes and ancient inscriptions.

Before the new investigation, it was unknown who had carved the Jelling stones. Confirming that their carver was Ravnunge-Tue would strengthen the connection between the Jelling and Bække-Læborg runestones, Imer told CNN in an email.

“Then it is much more reasonable to suggest that it was in fact the same Thyra,” she said.

Some details in ancient runestones that indicate a carver’s individual style are visible to a trained expert’s eye, such as the language or the basic shape of the runes. Other details are harder to detect, Imer said.

“What you cannot see with the naked eye is the carving technique,” she said.

To get a closer look at the carvings, the researchers took scans of the stones and created 3D digital models, then measured the runes’ grooves with a software tool that weighed variables such as angle, depth and cutting rhythm. Together, these variables can create a unique profile for a carver.

“Every rune carver develops his own motor skill and holds the tools in a certain angle, strikes with a certain strength,” Imer said. “The motor skill is individual and other individuals cannot copy that.”

When the researchers compared runes from Jelling 2 (the larger of the two Jelling stones) and the Læborg stone from the Bække-Læborg group, they found striking similarities, such as height of the runes, straightness of the main staves and length and placement of rune branches.

“In the Læborg and Jelling inscriptions you can follow the cutting rhythm of Ravnunge-Tue as one deep stroke of the chisel followed by two not so deep ones: DAK, dak-dak, DAK, dak-dak,” Imer said via email. “It is ALMOST like hearing the heartbeat of a person that lived so long ago.”

Jelling 1 was more eroded, so its markings were harder to analyze. But if the Læborg runestone was Ravnunge-Tue’s handiwork, Jelling 2 was likely his as well, Imer said. It would mean that the Queen Thyra mentioned twice in the Bække-Læborg group — on Læborg and on the stone Bække 1 — was the same person commemorated on the Jelling stones, the study authors concluded.

In recent years, archaeologists have revised prior interpretations of Viking warrior burials as exclusively male, finding that Viking women were fighters, too. The new findings add to the picture of influential Viking women holding prominent roles in statecraft as well as on the battlefield.

“This research highlights how Viking-Age women wielded power through political authority and patronage, not just violence,” Cross said.

What’s more, the fact that Thyra is mentioned on four runestones offers strong evidence of her importance, Imer added. Fewer than 10 runestones in Denmark from the pre-Christian era mention women at all — and four of those are of Queen Thyra.

“Runestones in Denmark were mostly erected in honour of men, but Thyra is commemorated on more runestones than any other person in Viking Age Denmark,” Imer said. “She must have held extreme power and social position.”

Interesting piece of Danish history!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board said Donald Trump “can’t help himself from making everything about himself,” even amid an escalating humanitarian crisis and an outbreak of war.

In an editorial published Thursday, the conservative newspaper slammed the former president for his rhetoric about the conflict in Israel and Gaza, which erupted on Saturday after Hamas militants massacred hundreds of Israelis in a surprise attack.

At a Wednesday rally in Florida, Trump criticized Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, while calling the Lebanon-based militant organization Hezbollah “very smart.” Hezbollah, like Hamas, is supported by Iran.

The Journal noted that Netanyahu is “an ally [Trump] is supposed to be friendly with” and the leader of “America’s closest friend in the Middle East, which is staring down the worst security crisis in 50 years.”

“At least 27 Americans are dead and more are missing. But Mr. Trump can’t separate this from his personal grievances,” the editors wrote, adding that Trump is “mad” because Netanyahu publicly acknowledged that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.

Since the war broke out, leaving more than 2,800 people dead as of Friday, Trump has boasted that there’s “zero chance” Hamas’ attack would have happened if he were president; shared internet conjecture that Florida governor and GOP presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis wears heels; pushed a bizarre new conspiracy theory about Biden and former President Barack Obama; and complained about falling off the Forbes 400 list.

Trump is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. He has also been indicted four times, facing 91 felony counts for his election subversion efforts, handling of classified documents and alleged falsification of business records.

The Wall Street Journal needs to keep taking these baby steps to show Trump for what he is!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

There’s a growing number of AI tools tackling the world’s problems—and pandemics, it appears, is one of the latest to get a digital assist.

A new AI system named EVEscape can predict alterations likely to occur to viruses as they evolve—potentially forecasting the next concerning COVID variants and mutations, as well as changes to other viruses like the flu and HIV. As reported by Fortune.

Developed by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of Oxford in 2021, the system was detailed in an Oct. 11 article in Nature. Had it been available at the start of the pandemic, EVEscape would have predicted the most frequent mutations and most concerning variants of COVID, its creators contend.

More than two years after the model’s development, its creators say they have amassed a wealth of data to show that such a system “can make surprisingly accurate predictions,” study co-lead authors Sarah Gurev, a Ph.D. student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Nikki Thadani, a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School; and Pascal Notin, a Ph.D. candidate at Oxford, tell Fortune.

Researchers first developed EVE—short for “evolutionary model of variant effect”—in 2020, to predict whether genetic mutations in humans were disease-causing or benign. They soon realized that the same technology might be applied to viruses like COVID, and dubbed the spin-off EVEscape.

EVEscape is currently being used to evaluate up-and-coming COVID variants, assessing which might be the most dangerous. The tool assigns a score to each variant reported to a global database of COVID sequences. The higher the score, the greater the chance of that variant evading immunity from prior infection and vaccination.

It’s no small task. Thousands of new COVID strains are emerging each month, the trio says. The group produces a biweekly report it publishes online and shares with the World Health Organization, among others, to assist in pandemic planning.

Eventually, such data could aid in the tailoring of vaccines and the creation of therapies like monoclonal antibodies—administered in a hospital setting to high-risk patients—and antivirals like Paxlovid.

Even with tools like EVEscape, it’s impossible to say with complete certainty the exact COVID variants will be dominant six months from now—a fact that doesn’t bode well for vaccines as they currently exist.

But systems like it “have great potential to be used by vaccine manufacturers for the design of variant-proof vaccines,” by pointing out target regions of the virus unlikely to mutate in the future—unlike COVID’s continually morphing spike protein.

EVEscape can also be used to play defense in the war against existing viruses with pandemic potential, like Lassa and Nipah, on the WHO’s list of pathogens with pandemic potential. Both start with non-specific ailments not unlike COVID or the flu, but can easily progress to more severe symptoms and death. The Nipah virus, for instance, is fatal in 40% to 75% of cases. COVID’s case fatality rate was 1% to 4%.

Both viruses are vastly understudied, according to the trio. EVEscape will allow researchers to predict immune escape for “every single mutation to these viruses,” allowing them to assemble a “watch list” for changes with the potential to endanger the few therapies that exist.

Good use of AI!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Fox Business’ Neil Cavuto mocked House Republicans ― during an interview with Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) ― over their struggle to find a new speaker after the removal of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from the role.

“Are you worried, though?” Cavuto asked Good on Thursday in a video shared online by Mediaite.

“No offense to you, congressman, but you guys are looking kind of like ‘Keystone Cops’ here,” he added. “You can’t get this done, and it doesn’t bode well for Americans, in their opinion, of you running the House because you can’t seem to run it.”

Good, who backs Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) for the position, argued the same was said following McCarthy’s protracted 15-vote battle to become the speaker in January and that soon after, “nobody cared” how long it had taken.

Cavuto bluntly reminded the Donald Trump-devoted lawmaker exactly how McCarthy’s speakership imploded because of the single motion-vacating deal he cut to obtain power in the first place.

Fox News could use a few more Neil Cavutos!

Tony