The New York Times: X-Ray Specs for the World’s Oldest, Sealed Letters A team of historians, scientists and engineers has built a portable X-ray scanner that can read 4,000-year-old letters without breaking open the clay envelopes they were sealed in. More than half a million cuneiform artefacts have been found across the Middle East, but many went unstudied […]
links: 20.06.2026
PBS / PolitiFact: Comparing the mood of America’s 250th anniversary with its 200th in 1976 As the US approaches its 250th anniversary, historians compare the national mood with the bicentennial of 1976 and see eerie parallels — international conflict, high inflation and gas prices, culture wars and low presidential approval. The key difference: society is far more polarised […]
links: 19.06.2026
Wired: How the Peter Thiel-Linked Dialog Club Secretly Ranks Its Members WIRED has obtained internal data from Dialog, the private club co-founded by Peter Thiel — dossiers on nearly 200 prominent people, complete with home addresses, private phone numbers, dates of birth and even food allergies. It turns out the club secretly grades its members by wealth and […]