#Vesuvius scrolls

[womenclature]

What is the evidence that they don’t have the required training? These DOGE employees aren’t just your random average coders. They’re some of the best and brightest analytical minds of their generation. Why should they not be able to understand the government’s computer software systems and properly analyze their data? In some ways, these employees have handled far more complex projects in the past… I think the post shown here is not really being fair or taking enough information into account before forming an opinion. I think OP *wants* to believe that anything having to do with Trump is evil, and will therefore ignore evidence to the contrary.

The DOGE Team

Here are some excerpts from an article that shares more about the team.

"Edward Coristine [19] ... is a college student at Northeastern University in Boston. He’s already interned at Musk’s Neuralink and is seen as an expert in his field. “

"Akash Bobba [21] … previously interned at Meta and Palantir, and his background in investment engineering and data analysis makes him a valuable asset in streamlining government operations.” (Akash is also Indian.)

"Ethan Shaotran [22] is the founder of Energize AI, an AI-driven startup, and a senior at Harvard University. With a background in computing and autonomous vehicles, he’s a perfect fit… ...having participated in the xAI hackathon.”

"Luke Farritor [23] is no stranger to high-pressure problem-solving. A former intern at SpaceX … Luke’s AI skills were on full display when he helped decipher ancient Vesuvius scrolls” Please allow me to add something here about that Vesuvius Challenge. Source Farritor figured out how to read these extremely fragile burnt scrolls without unrolling them. He solved a problem that experts has been puzzling over for years.

"Contestants had until the end of 2023 to decipher one of around 1,000 Herculaneum Papyri scrolls recovered from the library of the Villa dei Papyri, which was decimated by the same 79 CE eruption of Mount Vesuvius that froze the city of Pompeii in time. Discovered in the eighteenth century, the excavated scrolls have been sitting in museums and universities around Europe, unable to be touched “without them turning to ash,” Farritor said.”

“Left: the scroll read by the winners. Right: result of an attempt to physically unroll a scroll. (Vesuvius Challenge)” "Farritor explained to me that his AI program took the image of the scroll and chopped it up into “tiny bits of 100 pixels by 100 pixels. And then the machine learning algorithm looks at each one and it asks itself, do I think there’s ink here? Or do I think there’s no ink here?” By compiling these tiles, the AI program can do what was impossible only a few years ago: read the scroll.”

Moving on… (Back to our prior article.)

5. "Gautier Cole Killian [24] … brings his expertise from the high-frequency trading world, where he worked at Jump Trading. … Gautier’s background in algorithms and financial markets positions him to make big changes in how government funds are managed."

6. "Gavin Kliger [25] ... the oldest of the group, has a unique role in DOGE, having made waves by sending a controversial email that shook up the USAID staff. A graduate of Berkeley, Gavin’s no stranger to big decisions and leadership roles. His willingness to leave a seven-figure salary to join Musk’s mission underscores his dedication to reforming government systems.”

My Point

As we can see, all of these young men are quite capable. I think that many posts on Tumblr, like the ones shown in the original post above, oversimplify and misconstrue the actual facts in favor of supporting a more shocking and upsetting narrative. Please take time to review some of the information related to the claims you’re seeing. Take a little time to decide whether you actually want to incorporate a claim into your worldview. Don’t blindly accept anything.

“But these boys are too young!”

-In 1777, when Alexander Hamilton was (at most) 22 years old, "he had captured the attention of the army’s commander-in-chief, General George Washington, who gave him a position on his staff.” (Source) -In 1797, when Gauss was only 20, his "doctoral thesis of 1797 gave a proof of the fundamental theorem of algebra.” (Source) -In 1773, when Mozart was just 17, he had already composed his very famous Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183 (Youtube video link if you’d like to listen).

-Évariste Galois only made it to 20 y.o., but he had already made groundbreaking contributions to mathematics by the time he died in a pistol duel in 1832. "While still in his teens, he was able to determine a necessary and sufficient condition for a polynomial to be solvable by radicals, thereby solving a problem that had been open for 350 years. His work laid the foundations for Galois theory and group theory, two major branches of abstract algebra.” [Wikipedia] -Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) Wrote the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine, making her the world’s first computer programmer at the age of 25 (working with Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine).

-By the age of 25, Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE) had already conquered most of the known world, including Persia and Egypt, creating one of the largest empires in history.

-By the time he was 25, Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) had developed his laws of planetary motion, which were foundational in understanding how planets orbit the sun.

Conclusion

To quote Akash Bobba at his UC Berkeley graduation in 2021: "We live in an age where simplicity reigns supreme, where 30-second TikToks and 280-character tweets come to define our identities,” he then said. “This increasing willingness to simplify even the most complex narratives into sensational tidbits, perpetuates misinformation and in the process divides the communities, families, and relationships we cherish. What’s the solution, you might ask? Seek discomfort.”

It's a heist. Elon is the fraud. DOGE is the fraud. The coders destroying databases are the waste.

[grandhotelabyss]

What do you think will happen if they uncover new Plato and Homer and stuff in those vesuvius scrolls? Obviously doubtful we'll have Renaissance 2 but will it just sink beneath the waves among all the other stuff on the timeline?

Funny, my first thought was, "If they find Aristotle's treatise on comedy, it might change everything!" A selfish thought, because I've made my peace more and more with the idea that the novel is a comic form, in both the narrow and the broad senses of "comedy" (i.e., that it should both be funny and have a regenerative ending), but always in the back of my mind is the nagging thought that tragedy remains the higher form. Some have said that the lack of Aristotle's poetics of comedy (leaving this aside as both uncertain in its provenance and un-influential) may well be a source of this general bias toward the tragic in modern western high culture, since modern western high culture, being founded upon "Renaissance 1," takes its lead from extant Greek poetry and philosophy, with its primarily tragic emphasis, rather than Christianity's divine comedy.

The effects have been widespread. It's not the only reason, but it is one reason that, for example, we tend to read Romeo and Juliet or Julius Caesar or Macbeth in high school, and not Much Ado about Nothing or As You Like It or Twelfth Night, or why we tend to elevate the tragic 19th-century Russian novelists over the comic 19th-century English novelists.

(Another, better reason, however, is that comedy is more time- and culture-bound than tragedy, often satirizing the news of the day or relying on wordplay that doesn't translate to other contexts. An exception that proves the rule: the most popular Shakespearean comedy is the timeless fantasy A Midsummer Night's Dream.)

So there are missing texts from antiquity that I do think would have an effect on the world. Maybe not an immediate effect felt on the timeline, but an effect on people to whom such things matter, and from them outward to a broader change in our culture over the years.

(I assume we're mainly talking about philosophy and poetry here, not definitive evidence that, e.g., The Da Vinci Code is real. That kind of thing would make a huge impact on the TL!)

[reasonsforhope]

"In the 1750s, an Italian farmer digging a well stumbled upon a lavish villa in the ruins of Herculaneum. Inside was a sprawling library with hundreds of scrolls, untouched since Mount Vesuvius’ eruption in 79 C.E. Some of them were still neatly tucked away on the shelves.

This staggering discovery was the only complete library from antiquity ever found. But when 18th-century scholars tried to unroll the charred papyrus, the scrolls crumbled to pieces. They became resigned to the fact that the text hidden inside wouldn’t be revealed during their lifetimes.

In recent years, however, researchers realized that they were living in the generation that would finally solve the puzzle. Using artificial intelligence, they’ve developed methods to peer inside the Herculaneum scrolls without damaging them, revealing short passages of ancient text.

This month, researchers announced a new breakthrough. While analyzing a scroll known as PHerc. 172, they determined its title: On Vices. Based on other works, they think the full title is On Vices and Their Opposite Virtues and in Whom They Are and About What.

“We are thrilled to share that the written title of this scroll has been recovered from deep inside its carbonized folds of papyrus,” the Vesuvius Challenge, which is leading efforts to decipher the scrolls, says in a statement. “This is the first time the title of a still-rolled Herculaneum scroll has ever been recovered noninvasively.”

On Vices was written by Philodemus, a Greek philosopher who lived in Herculaneum more than a century before Vesuvius’ eruption. Born around 110 B.C.E., Philodemus studied at a school in Athens founded several centuries earlier by the influential philosopher Epicurus, who believed in achieving happiness by pursuing certain specific forms of pleasure.

“This will be a great opportunity to learn more about Philodemus’ ethical views and to get a better view of the On Vices as a whole,” Michael McOsker, a papyrologist at University College London who is working with the Vesuvius Challenge, tells CNN’s Catherine Nicholls.

When it launched in 2023, the Vesuvius Challenge offered more than $1 million in prize money to citizen scientists around the world who could use A.I. to help decipher scans of the Herculaneum scrolls. 

Spearheaded by Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky, the team scanned several of the scrolls and uploaded the data for anyone to use. To earn the prize money, participants competed to be the first to reach a series of milestones.

Reading the papyrus involves solving several difficult problems. After the rolled-up scrolls are scanned, their many layers need to be separated out and flattened into two-dimensional segments. At that point, the carbon-based ink usually isn’t visible in the scans, so machine-learning models are necessary to identify the inked sections.

In late 2023, a computer science student revealed the first word on an unopened scroll: “porphyras,” an ancient Greek term for “purple.” Months later, participants worked out 2,000 characters of text, which discussed pleasures such as music and food.

But PHerc. 172 is different from these earlier scrolls. When researchers scanned it last summer, they realized that some of the ink was visible in the images. They aren’t sure why this scroll is so much more legible, though they hypothesize it’s because the ink contains a denser contaminant such as lead, according to the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries, which houses the scroll.

In early May, the Vesuvius Challenge announced that contestants Marcel Roth and Micha Nowak, computer scientists at Germany’s University of Würzburg, would receive $60,000 for deciphering the title. Sean Johnson, a researcher with the Vesuvius Challenge, had independently identified the title around the same time.

Researchers are anticipating many more breakthroughs on the horizon. In the past three months alone, they’ve already scanned dozens of new scrolls.

“The pace is ramping up very quickly,” McOsker tells the Guardian’s Ian Sample. “All of the technological progress that’s been made on this has been in the last three to five years—and on the timescales of classicists, that’s unbelievable.”"

-via Smithsonian, May 16, 2025

[whatareyoureallyafraidof]

[ancientstuff]

This is pretty great.

[blueiscoool]

Scientists Digitally 'Unroll' 2,000-Year-Old Scroll Scorched by Mount Vesuvius

he Herculaneum scrolls have remained one of the many tantalizing mysteries of the ancient world for almost 2,000 years. Burnt to a crisp by lava from Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, the reams of rolled-up papyrus were discovered in a mansion in Herculaneum — an ancient Roman town near Pompeii — in the mid-18th century. Both towns were decimated by the Vesuvius eruption, and most of the scrolls were so badly charred they were impossible to open.

Over the next two and a half centuries, attempts were made to unfurl some of the hundreds of scrolls using everything from rose water and mercury to vegetable gas and papyrus juice, according to the New Yorker.

The few that could be opened were philosophical texts written in ancient Greek. But most of the scrolls were so badly damaged, they were considered illegible. More recently, researchers managed to decipher some select words using artificial intelligence, X-ray and CT scans to distinguish ink from the papyrus it was printed on.

The mystery is still unravelling, and on Wednesday, a major breakthrough was announced. Researchers say they've now managed to digitally unroll and start reading one of the ancient scrolls. The scroll in question, known as PHerc. 172, is one of three stored at the University of Oxford's Bodleian Libraries in England.]

A team involved in the Vesuvius Challenge, a competition offering prize money to anyone who can help unlock the delicate scrolls, says it has virtually unwrapped the papyrus to reveal columns of text that Oxford scholars have already started working to decipher.

"This scroll contains more recoverable text than we have ever seen in a scanned Herculaneum scroll," said Brent Seales, one of the co-founders of the challenge.

"We're confident we will be able to read pretty much the whole scroll in its entirety, and it's the first time we've really been able to say that with high confidence," project lead Stephen Parsons told CBS News' partner network BBC News. "Now we can work on making it show up more clearly. We're going to go from a handful of words to really substantial passages."

The breakthrough came when the team at the Bodleian Libraries brought the blackened scroll to the Diamond Light Source research facility in nearby Oxfordshire, where technicians used a massive machine called a synchrotron to create a powerful X-ray beam that was able to peer into the fragile relic without damaging it.

Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum

"It can see things on the scale of a few thousandths of a millimeter," Adrian Mancuso, the facility's director of physical sciences, told the BBC. "We have to work out which layer is different from the next layer so we can unroll that digitally."

Last year, the Vesuvius Challenge announced that three young students had won its $700,000 grand prize for using AI to help researchers read about 5% of another scroll, the subject of which was Greek Epicurean philosophy.

The scroll that the team at the Bodleian Libraries recently unfurled is assumed to be on the same subject.

"I just love that connection with whoever collected them, whoever wrote them, whoever rolled those scrolls up and put them on the shelves," Nicole Gilroy, head of book conservation at the Bodleian Libraries, told the BBC. "There's a real human aspect to it that I just think is really precious."

By Frank Andrews.

[mindblowingscience]

The great libraries of the ancient classical world are legendary. From Alexandria to Rome to Athens, Baghdad, and Constantinople, these vast archives of times gone by are said to have contained stacks of texts on religion, politics, philosophy, poetry, literature, and the sciences. Only one's collection has survived to the present day, and we can now start reading its contents.

Continue Reading.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

[frogshunnedshadows]

How to train algorithms to read illegible, carbonized, ancient scrolls.

[catilinas]

THEY FUCKING DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

[drifting-knightjar]

Reblog and put in the tags what tabs you have open rn to learn from later

"open link in new tab" is my favourite button in the whole wide world

[lostinhistory]

Heritage News of the Week

Discoveries!

A runic inscription on one of the Galloway hoard’s elaborately decorated arm rings has been deciphered

Carbon dating puts Saskatchewan Indigenous archaeological site at almost 11,000 years old

A piece of charcoal unearthed at a Saskatchewan archaeological site and tested in a lab suggests the site is 11,000 years old and was likely used as a long-term settlement by Indigenous people.

World's largest-ever bead stash found in 5,000-year-old 'Ivory Lady' tomb in Spain

More than a quarter million beads found in a tomb with female skeletons were used to decorate the women's ceremonial dresses, suggesting they were powerful leaders five millennia ago.

Painted tomb uncovered in Etruscan necropolis

Inside the tomb are frescoes depicting scenes of dancing and ancient workshops, which archaeologists have dated to the mid-5th century BC.

Fragments of the world’s oldest known rune stone discovered in Norway

Archaeologists have found fragments of the world’s oldest known rune stone at the Svingerud burial field in Norway and fitted them together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Researchers get a peek inside another Herculaneum scroll that survived Vesuvius’s eruption

Researchers have been able to generate an image of text from inside a scroll that was buried in ash with the ancient city of Herculaneum by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that also destroyed Pompeii—a major breakthrough in deciphering its contents. The first word found on the scroll is "disgust."

Carbonized scroll from Herculaneum really capturing the mood

Fresco reveals Islamic tent in medieval Christian worship

A 13th-century fresco in Ferrara, Italy, provides a rare example of medieval churches using Islamic tents to veil high altars.

7,000-year-old bone holds 3 arrowheads with mixed poisons — the oldest of their kind on record

This is the oldest confirmed use of a mixture comprising two or more plant toxins specifically applied to arrowheads.

Excavations planned in the ancient city of Sebastopolis

The latest excavations are currently focused on two main structures: a Roman Bath and a Byzantine Church, however previously unearthed inscriptions indicate other significant public buildings yet to be discovered.

1,500-year-old stained glass and mosaics discovered at Harran Cathedral excavation in Türkiye

Recent excavations at the historic Harran archaeological site have yielded rare mosaic tiles and stained glass fragments that are conjecturally dated to the fifth century, positioning them among the oldest known examples in the region.

Evidence of ancient cultural cannibalism practices uncovered in Poland

In a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports, a taphonomic analysis of 63 human bone fragments from Maszycka Cave has identified cut marks and intentional fractures linked to the extraction of muscle tissue, brain matter, and bone marrow – all indicative of human consumption.

Ancient Tamil Nadu’s metalworking legacy traced back to 3300 BCE

Recent archaeological research has uncovered compelling evidence that Tamil Nadu’s metalworking traditions date back to at least 3300 BCE, highlighting the region’s early advancements in metallurgy.

Dog sacrifices found near ancient royal palace

The Korea Heritage Service announced the discovery of a circular structure with dog bones and various artefacts on the outskirts of an ancient village southwest of the palace.

Discovery of a monumental longhouse from the 3rd century in Norway

Archaeologists have made a groundbreaking discovery at Øvre Eiker near Oslo, Norway, unearthing a longhouse with an astonishing width of 16 meters and a central nave spanning 9 meters between its roof-supporting columns.

Traces of a British fort found in Florida

Soil stains left behind by an eighteenth-century British fort have been uncovered in the Lincolnville neighborhood of St. Augustine

2,500-year-old caravan tombs discovered in the Negev

Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority have uncovered tombs near Tlalim Junction in the Negev Highlands, revealing trade connections with Yemen, Phoenicia, and Egypt.

Archaeologists uncover gold and silver ritual offerings at a 7th century cult site

Based on the artifacts and postholes, it was determined that the site served as an important cult site during a crucial period of cultural transition on the cusp of the area's Christianization.

Copper Age fortress discovered in Spain

The pentagon-shaped fortress was surrounded by three concentric walls, 25 bastions, and three ditches. Arrowheads, idols, axes, grinding stones, plates, bowls, and loom parts were found inside the structure.

Over 1,000 artefacts found during church excavation

Over 1000 artefacts have been recovered, such as 679 coins and heavily corroded coin fragments, pearls, garment pins, animal bones, ceramics, metal fittings, book clasps, shards of painted glass, iron nails, plant remains, and personal items such as tweezers.

18th-century college dining hall excavated in North Carolina

Archaeologists are excavating the site of Steward’s Hall, the first dining facility on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Nineteen ancient tombs from the 4th century BC unearthed in Padula, Campania

In Padula, located in the Campania region of southern Italy, authorities announced the remarkable discovery of nineteen ancient tombs during archaeological excavations, unearthing a variety of grave goods and artifacts that provide valuable insights into the area’s rich historical and cultural heritage.

Museums

Museums in Canada face several challenges to housing and preserving their collections, let alone displaying those items. And overcrowding is becoming a bigger issue, experts say, from what might be a surprising source — Canadians donating way more fine art and artifacts than the museums can possibly use.

Tiny Nigerian museum marking a forgotten British invasion pushes for recognition

Museum in Koko, Niger Delta, commemorates important exiled merchant prince Nanna Olomu – but it has no cooling and a termite issue

Union decries expected layoffs at Brooklyn Museum

The museum plans to cut staff to address a growing deficit, according to Local 1502, which represents workers including art handlers and curatorial assistants.

Facing $10m budget deficit, Brooklyn Museum will lay off dozens of workers

Museums scramble to grasp impact of Trump’s DEI mandate

Widespread uncertainty pervades as institutions either roll back initiatives or try to determine whether their programs are in compliance.

Closed museum's contents safe, minister tells Senedd

Collections at a major Welsh museum that closed suddenly on Sunday are safe, Wales' minister for culture has said.

Repatriation

The Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts concluded an agreement this week with the Italian culture ministry to return two antiquities from its permanent collection—a black-figure amphora that dates from between 515 BCE and 500 BCE and a black-figure kylix that has been dated to 500 BCE—that had been illegally taken out of Italy.

Heritage at risk

A haul of 50 Roman coins that were unearthed by a metal detectorist is expected to fetch between £1,200 and £1,500 at auction. He said "something told" him to go to the field, which he had visited "numerous times" and after his metal detector picked up a faint signal, he found two Roman coins in the same hole. Mr Dunn, who has been metal detecting for two years, said he went to get the farmer and dug a further two feet (61cm) down where they found 50 coins. Mr Dunn took the coins in a briefcase to his local finds officer, who spent a year offering them to various museums, which did not wish to claim them.

Sixty centimetres down means the coins were in situ. The article shows that this guy used a digger to find these coins. Any context was destroyed. Screw this guy.

After the collapse of the Assad regime, Syrians are working to preserve their country's heritage

After Assad’s regime collapsed, heritage professionals quickly organised, forming a forum with around 200 people on WhatsApp to exchange information in real time and co-ordinate efforts. Teams were dispatched to assess the conditions of museums and sites where they were accessible.

Discussions about making Rubio acting director of National Archives

There have been extensive discussions at the White House about installing Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the acting director of the National Archives, according to a high-level official, who said the talks began shortly after President Trump's inauguration.

Also re: the US National Archives, back in November it was reported that the National Archivist, Colleen Shogan, was sanitizing exhibits in order to avoid offending Republicans. Anyway, despite complying in advance, she has been fired by Trump.

NSA museum covered plaques honoring women and people of color, provoking an uproar

After a photo from the NSA Museum last week showed that they had papered over plaques about women and people of colour, the plaques have now been uncovered, with the museum saying it was a "mistake".

Congress could soon erase Biden rules on archaeology, climate, and the environment

At-risk rules include one to protect archaeological sites on the ocean floor, such as shipwrecks, from oil and gas drilling.

Egyptologists raise concerns of ‘mismanagement’ after viral video of worker chipping stones at Great Pyramid of Giza

After video of a worker using a hammer, chisel, and other tools on the stones of the Great Pyramid of Giza went viral on social media last November, outrage about the incident has grown to include a statement in Egyptian Parliament and one Egyptologist claiming “mismanagement.”

Odds and ends

UNESCO has completed its reconstruction of the Great Mosque of Al‑Nouri, Al-Tahera Church, and Al-Saa’a Convent in Iraq, as part of its Revive the Spirit of Mosul program. The $115 million initiative, called Revive the Spirit of Mosul, was launched in 2018 in response to the widespread destruction inflicted on cultural heritage by the Islamic State in Iraq.

Who owns underwater heritage?

Amid increasing scrutiny of colonial-era restitution, the time is ripe for a fuller appraisal of sunken artifacts.

Lost historic Gaelic manuscripts found after 50 years

Dozens of Gaelic manuscripts have been found and returned to the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh after being missing for more than 50 years.

National Register now lists part of Washington Heights as a ‘Dominican Historic District’

A new Dominican Historic District in Washington Heights is officially on the National Register of Historic Places, despite pushback from parts of the community who say they were left out of the designation process.

Unravelling the mysteries of Skye's Fairy Flag

Framed and mounted on a castle wall are the faded and tattered remains of the Fairy Flag of Dunvegan. Legends tell of mythical creatures giving it as a present to the Clan MacLeod, and that it was imbued with powerful magic that could win battles against rival clans.

Christie’s sale of El Greco painting blocked by Romanian government

El Greco’s Saint Sebastian (ca. 1610–14) has been pulled from auction at Christie’s after intervention from the Romanian government, which has claimed the work as being “unequivocally the property of the Romanian state.”

So, where do we think this falls in The Martyrdom Of Saint Sebastian, In Ascending Order Of Sexiness And Descending Order Of Actual Martyring

I'd put this between 10, a Smiths album, and 11, the one used on the cover of an Anne Rice novel

[do-you-have-a-flag]

The Herculaneum papyri, ancient scrolls housed in the library of a private villa near Pompeii, were buried and carbonized by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. For almost 2,000 years, this lone surviving library from antiquity was buried underground under 20 meters of volcanic mud. In the 1700s, they were excavated, and while they were in some ways preserved by the eruption, they were so fragile that they would turn to dust if mishandled. How do you read a scroll you can’t open? For hundreds of years, this question went unanswered. That is until Luke Farritor, a contestant of the Vesuvius Challenge, became the first person in two millennia to see an entire word from within an unopened scroll this August. Shortly after that, another contestant, Youssef Nader, independently discovered the same word in the same area, with even clearer results — winning the second place prize of $10,000. Indeed, the word held up to scrutiny. “Porphyras” is an exciting word: it means “purple” and is quite rare in ancient texts. One papyrologist noted: “The sequence πορφυ̣ρ̣ας̣ may be πορφύ̣ρ̣ας̣ (noun, purple dye or cloths of purple) or πορφυ̣ρ̣ᾶς̣(adjective, purple). Due to the lack of context it is not possible to exclude πορφύ̣ρ̣α ς̣κ[ or πορφυ̣ρ̣ᾶ ς̣κ[.”

This is so cool, worth the read if you click through!

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

In search of "BigBalls" and the rest of Elon Musk's SpaceX private goon squad.

Akash Bobba: Akash is a student at the University of California, Berkeley, and hails from West Windsor, New Jersey. 

Edward Coristine: Edward, originally from Larchmont, New York, currently works at LesserEvil Snacks.  He previously interned at Neuralink, one of Musk’s ventures, and has been involved in recent projects within government agencies. 

Luke Farritor: Luke is a senior at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, majoring in computer science. He gained international recognition for being the first to decode text from an ancient scroll using AI, winning the grand prize in the Vesuvius Challenge. 

Gautier Cole Killian: Specific information about Gautier is limited. He is mentioned among the group of young engineers associated with Musk’s recent initiatives.

Gavin Kliger: Gavin studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and attended Tesoro High School. He resides in Berkeley, California. 

Ethan Shaotran: Ethan is a senior at Harvard University and the founder of Energize.AI. He has authored several AI books, holds multiple patents, and has conducted research in autonomous systems. Ethan has also been involved in projects within government agencies.

[Robert Scott Horton]

[ancientstuff]

It's more exciting, I think, when human ingenuity does this without AI, but it will go a lot faster with AI involved.