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Study confirms Egyptians likely used hallucinogens in rituals
Special concoction also contained honey, sesame seeds, pine nuts, licorice, and grapes to make it look like blood.
Last year we reported on preliminary research suggesting that ancient Egyptians may have used hallucinogens in their religious rituals, based on the presence of a few key chemical signatures taken from a ceremonial mug. Now those researchers have extended their analysis and fully identified the chemical components of those samples, confirming those preliminary findings, according to a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports.
There is ample evidence that humans in many cultures throughout history used various hallucinogenic substances in religious ceremonies or shamanic rituals. That includes not just ancient Egypt but also ancient Greek, Vedic, Maya, Inca, and Aztec cultures. The Urarina people who live in the Peruvian Amazon Basin still use a psychoactive brew called ayahuasca in their rituals, and Westerners seeking their own brand of enlightenment have also been known to participate.
Last year, David Tanasi, of the University of South Florida, posted a preprint on his preliminary analysis of a ceremonial mug decorated with the head of Bes, a popular deity believed to confer protection on households, especially mothers and children. So unlike most other Egyptian deities, images of Bes were quite common in Egyptian homes. There were even special chambers built to honor Bes and his wife, Beset, at the Saqqara site near Cairo, which Egyptologists think could have been used for fertility or healing rituals, although their exact purpose is not certain (Bes was an ancient Egyptian deity of protection, fertility, healing, and purification). The mug is part of the collection of the Tampa Museum of Art.
Silo S2 expands its dystopian world
Ars chats with cinematographer Baz Irvine about creating a fresh look for the sophomore season.
The second season of Silo, Apple TV’s dystopian sc-fi drama, is off to a powerful start with yesterday’s premiere. Based on the trilogy by novelist Hugh Howey, was one of the more refreshing surprises on streaming television in 2023: a twist-filled combination of political thriller and police procedural set in a post-apocalyptic world. It looks like S2 will be leaning more heavily into sci-fi thriller territory, expanding its storytelling—and its striking cinematography—beyond the original silo.
(Spoilers for S1 below as well as first five minutes of S2 premiere.)
As previously reported, Silo is set in a self-sustaining underground city inhabited by a community whose recorded history only goes back 140 years, generations after the silo was built by the founders. Outside is a toxic hellscape that is only visible on big screens in the silo’s topmost level. Inside, 10,000 people live together under a pact: Anyone who says they want to “go out” is immediately granted that wish—cast outside in an environment suit on a one-way trip to clean the cameras. But those who make that choice inevitably die soon after because of the toxic environment.
These are the lasting things that Half-Life 2 gave us, besides headcrabs and crowbars
Beyond the game itself (which rocks), Half-Life 2 had a big impact on PC gaming.
It’s Half-Life 2 week at Ars Technica! This Saturday, November 16, is the 20th anniversary of the release of Half-Life 2—a game of historical importance for the artistic medium and technology of computer games. Each day up through the 16th, we’ll be running a new article looking back at the game and its impact.
“Well, I just hate the idea that our games might waste people’s time. Why spend four years of your life building something that isn’t innovative and is basically pointless?”
Valve software founder Gabe Newell is quoted by Geoff Keighley—yes, the Game Awards guy, back then a GameSpot writer—as saying this in June 1999, six months after the original Half-Life launched. Newell gave his team no real budget or deadline, only the assignment to “follow up the best PC game of all time” and redefine the genre.
A lot of people are mistaking Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites for UAPs
“We were able to assess that they were all in those cases looking at Starlink flares.”
SpaceX’s Starlink Internet satellites are responsible for more and more public reports of unexplained anomalous phenomena (UAPs), but most recent cases remain unsolved, according to a US government report released Thursday.
Starlinks often move across the sky in “trains” that appear like gleaming gems in the blackness of space. They are particularly visible to the naked eye shortly after each Starlink launch.
In recent years, leaks and disclosures from government officials have revitalized open discussion about mysterious lights and objects, some of which move in, to put it bluntly, unquestionably weird ways. Some of these images, particularly those from sophisticated instruments on military fighter jets, have made their way into the national discourse. The New Yorker, Ars’ sister publication, has a thorough report on how UAPs—you might know them better as UFOs—became mainstream.
Citing “decreasing” launch opportunities, ABL Space will pivot to missile defense
“Our path to making a big contribution as a commercial launch company narrowed considerably.”
A 7-year-old launch company that has yet to have a rocket successfully lift off announced a radical pivot on Thursday. Its new plan? Focusing on missile defense.
The founder and president of ABL Space Systems, Dan Piemont, announced the decision on LinkedIn, adding, “We’re consolidating our operational footprint and parting ways with some talented members of our team.” He said companies interested in hiring great people in Los Angeles or Mojave, California, should reach out.
A bright beginning
With a background in economics and physics, Piemont founded ABL in 2017 with the aim of developing a ship-and-shoot rocket. The idea was to set up mobile ground systems in remote locations on short notice and launch on demand for the US military and other customers.
I played Half-Life 2 for the first time this year—here’s how it went
Wake up and smell the ashes, Ms. Washenko.
It’s Half-Life 2 week at Ars Technica! This Saturday, November 16, is the 20th anniversary of the release of Half-Life 2—a game of historical importance for the artistic medium and technology of computer games. Each day up through the 16th, we’ll be running a new article looking back at the game and its impact.
The time has finally come to close one of the most notable gaps in my gaming history. Despite more than a decade of writing about video games and even more years enjoying them, I never got around to playing Half-Life 2.
Not only have I not played it, but I’ve managed to keep myself in the dark about pretty much everything to do with it. I always assumed that one day I would get around to playing this classic, and I wanted the experience to be as close as possible to it would have been back in 2004. So my only knowledge about Half-Life 2 before starting this project was 1) the game is set in the same universe as Portal, a game I love, 2) the silent protagonist is named Gordon Freeman, and he looks uncannily like a silent, spectacled young Hugh Laurie, and 3) there’s something called the Gravity Gun.
OpenAI accused of trying to profit off AI model inspection in court
How do you get an AI model to confess what’s inside?
Since ChatGPT became an instant hit roughly two years ago, tech companies around the world have rushed to release AI products while the public is still in awe of AI’s seemingly radical potential to enhance their daily lives.
But at the same time, governments globally have warned it can be hard to predict how rapidly popularizing AI can harm society. Novel uses could suddenly debut and displace workers, fuel disinformation, stifle competition, or threaten national security—and those are just some of the obvious potential harms.
While governments scramble to establish systems to detect harmful applications—ideally before AI models are deployed—some of the earliest lawsuits over ChatGPT show just how hard it is for the public to crack open an AI model and find evidence of harms once a model is released into the wild. That task is seemingly only made harder by an increasingly thirsty AI industry intent on shielding models from competitors to maximize profits from emerging capabilities.
Review: Amazon’s 2024 Kindle Paperwhite makes the best e-reader a little better
If you use any Kindle other than the 2021 Paperwhite, this is a huge upgrade.
I’ve never particularly loved Amazon, either as a retail behemoth or as a hardware and software company, but despite that I still probably get more excited about new Kindle releases than I do about most other gadgets at this point.
Some of that is because I rely on my Kindle for distraction-free reading and because I’m constantly highlighting things and taking notes, so even minor improvements have a major impact on my day-to-day experience. And some of it is because the Kindle’s relatively limited tech has left it without a lot of headroom to shove additional ads or other paid add-ons; they include lockscreen ads and “special offers,” but they can be permanently turned off with a nominal $20 fee, and even when you don’t turn them off, they don’t degrade the device’s performance or intrude on the actual reading experience. This isn’t to say that Kindles are perfect, just that it’s rare that I am roughly the same amount of annoyed by a software platform’s ads and tracking than I was a decade ago.
Enter the new 12th-generation $160 Kindle Paperwhite, which like most Paperwhites is the Kindle that most people should buy.
Trump team puts EV tax credit on the block, Tesla is on board: Report
Elon Musk is on record as saying it would hurt competitors more than Tesla.
Some electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids are set to get less affordable from next year, it seems. As expected, the incoming Trump administration has set its sights on killing off the IRS clean vehicle tax credit, according to a report in Reuters this afternoon.
The clean vehicle tax credit was overhauled as part of President Joe Biden’s signature climate legislation. Until then, the size of a plug-in vehicle’s tax credit was based on its battery capacity, with a credit of up to $7,500 available. But from 2023 the rules changed, requiring a certain amount of domestic production to qualify, as well as adding price and income caps to address criticism that the tax credit mostly subsidized the already-wealthy.
Far fewer vehicles are now eligible for the rebate at time of purchase, particularly after the US Treasury Department got tougher about Chinese content, although a loophole means that none of these conditions apply to leased EVs.
Microsoft finally releases generic install ISOs for the Arm version of Windows
Generic install media brings Arm PCs closer to feeling like any old x86 PC.
For some PC buyers, doing a clean install of Windows right out of the box is part of the setup ritual. But for Arm-based PCs, including the Copilot+ PCs with Snapdragon X Plus and Elite chips in them, it hasn’t been possible in the same way. Microsoft (mostly) hasn’t offered generic install media that can be used to reinstall Windows on an Arm PC from scratch.
Microsoft is fixing that today—the company finally has a download page for the official Arm release of Windows 11, linked to but separate from the ISOs for the x86 versions of Windows. These are useful not just for because-I-feel-like-it clean installs, but for reinstalling Windows after you’ve upgraded your SSD and setting up Windows virtual machines on Arm-based PCs and Macs.
Previously, Microsoft did offer install media for some Windows Insider Preview Arm builds, though these are for beta versions of Windows that may or may not be feature-complete or stable. Various apps, scripts, and websites also exist to grab files from Microsoft’s servers and build “unofficial” ISOs for the Arm version of Windows, though obviously this is more complicated than just downloading a single file directly.