Codex Callistius, A 12th Century “travel Guide” To Santiago Di Compostela. 

                                                         Michel Ney

                                                  Marshal of France

                                                First Duc d'Elchingen

                                           First Prince de la Moskowa

                                 (January 10, 1769 – January 10, 2016)

                                              Happy 247th birthday!

At first glance this seemed pretty outrageous to me. It just so happens that it was at the intersection of two of my great passions, computer science and manuscript studies (one of which I have a career in), so I was super interested to read the study being referenced. After having done so this seems like a pretty standard case of "scientists propose new methodology and speculate on possible results, media reports those possible results as fact, everyone yells at scientists".

(Turns out I have a lot of Feelings about this, so, uh... here’s a read more?)

Nowhere in the study to the researchers make any claim at having cracked Voynich. All they conclude is that, "The application of our methods to the Voynich manuscript suggests that it may represent Hebrew, or another abjad script, with the letters rearranged to follow a fixed order". They're super clear about the fact that all they found was a suggestion, open to interpretation - "The results presented in this section could be interpreted either as tantalizing clues for Hebrew as the source language of the VMS, or simply as artifacts of the combinatorial power of anagramming and language models".

These researchers are computer scientists, and the study is about computer science. It is mostly an examination of the accuracy of various algorithms, with a section on what happened when they applied the method to Voynich. Getting into a discussion of Medieval Hebrew is outside of their scope (and probably the scope of their funding), so they pass their results on to other experts, saying, "In any case, the output of an algorithmic decipherment of a noisy input can only be a starting point for scholars that are well-versed in the given language and historical period."

This is where lines from the linked Times of Israel like, "Why the Canadians didn’t tap a Hebrew linguist to shore up their claims is confounding to many in academia" really seem off base. First of all, they didn't make any claims, they suggested a possibility. And passing their results on to let experts in other fields run with them is a great way to do science.

And lines like "Like others before them, I think the authors have gone public too early. You can’t declare victory when your proposal, one, isn’t reproducible and, two, doesn’t result in a decryption that makes sense" seem to straight up undermine what I think is a really cool way for academia to function. Skipping over the statement about declaring victory, going public is a great thing to do! It lets other people be inspired by your work and take it in new directions. Jealously hoarding research is really bad for everyone.

I get that "New Methodology in Deciphering Unknown Scripts Proposed" is way less interesting than "Scientists Crack Famous Medival Enigma Using Google Translate Instead of a Medieval Hebrew Scholar". But these researchers did really interesting work and were diligently scientific. We owe them the same when responding. Instead it seems like no one responding even bothered to read the study.

And honestly? This misses all the really interesting stuff that was in the study! Their algorithim is actually really cool and exciting! They managed to get really good results decoding texts where they didn't know the language or the script. And then they did that on texts where they didn't know if there were vowels! AND THEN they did that on texts where they letters might have been scrambled! Friends, that is so cool and exciting!! It makes me want to go try their methods on Linear A RIGHT NOW!

To bring this back to manuscript studies, this is a great example of how important primary sources are. If you read the responses to this study you get a wildly different picture (presented with confidence) than if you consult the text. This is part of why I get so excited about manuscript digitization - not having to rely on transcriptions and commentaries is really important (plus manuscripts are pretty!).

And on a broader scale, this way that the media commonly reports on scientific studies as unequivocal facts scares me. When you remove all the uncertainty and proposals for further research from these findings, they naturally seem absurd and contradictory. I worry that this can undermine people's confidence in what science can tell us. We can change how science is reported on with our responses.

Using AI to uncover the mystery of the Voynich manuscript - Medievalists.net

Modern scientific methods help decipher language and meaning of medieval manuscript.

Yeah man it's a huge fucking waste! Rain falling on me and waterlogging all my pretty feathers when I'm just trying to live my little life. The worst and most wasteful part? The fucking seagulls don't even mind! Those smug fucking bullies flap about and get the good garbage while I'm huddling under this tree, the saddest crow that ever lived. At least the fucking owls, may all their flight feathers fall out, take it much worse than I do and are forced to reveal their hideous inner and outer selves to the world. Rain should fall on them but not me. Huge waste tbh.

You Are Not Wasting Time; It Was Given To You As A Gift, Freely and Generously; Is Rain Wasted Because It Falls On Gardens, Grass, Disgruntled Birds, and Umbrellas All The Same?

New to the WNBA, I'll tell *you* who to root for

I noticed a bunch of posts, especially on reddit, from new fans to the league looking for advice on who to support. Luckily I already have years of experience forming snap judgements and comitting to spite and adoration at the drop of a hat, so instead I thought I'd tell you about the teams from the view point of someone who as seen every game this season but also had never seen basketball before last friday. I knows 0 things but I have Opinions. Buckle up ya knuckle puck chuckle fucks let's feel some fucking feelings!!

Villains

Las Vegas Aces: The players for the Aces seem pretty cool and I like how they let the other team have some success in the 1st quarter before they crush them. But STAND UUUUUUP ALL VICTIMS OF OPREEEEEESION FOR THE TYRANTS FEAR YOUR MIGHT! DON'T CLIIIIING SO HARD TO YOUR POSEEEEEESIONS FOR YOU HAVE NOTHING IF YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS!!!. There's no coming back from violating labour protections, you're a cartoonish villain now.

Minnesota Lynx: The Aces were the easy choice for villain, but I've decided based on an inadequate sample size that I don't care for the coach of the Lynx. Spending all your time screaming at the refs instead of talking to your team is gross to me. Especially satisfying to cheer against because her coaching isn't exactly leading to victories.

You could do better

New York Liberty: Such fun basketball to watch but their home court is grey with seafoam accents that screams through the screen into the itchy parts of my brain.

Seattle Storm: The Storm play by play announcer seems like he's watching a stats feed through an old timey teletype instead of being in the same room as people doing shit that's rad as hell. Perhaps he's a mermaid and simulates human speech through sound clips of other boring cis het white dude announcers. The firefox tab I was streaming in warned me about AI generated content every time he spoke.

Respectable Choices

Indiana Fever: Aliyah Boston is cute as a button and good as heck. The Fever seem so young and full of dreams and optimism. A great team to root for if hope still lives in your heart. Sadly I'm a recovering Oilers fan so it's medically inadvisable for me to get invested, but I want nothing but the best for this team.

Chicago Sky: The Chicago Sky sure are a basketball team. I don't have a lot of strong feelings except for Courtney Williams, whom I adore. I do also love Marina Mabrey and the focus faces she makes.

Washington Mystics: I really enjoyed their home opener. They were so coordinated and used the power of friendship to beat a super team. I personally don't love the home fans booing every free throw - then it's less special when you boo a player you really hate or a bad foul call!

Atlanta Dream: This is the team that ousted an openly racist owner. I didn't think it was possible to get justice against ownership like that until they did it, and I will always be pulling for them. Rhyne Howard leading their come back against the Aces was so exciting even if they fell short. Also their home PA sometimes plays the smoothest music I've ever heard in an areana while they're on offence.

LA Sparks: Solid contender for best all around graphic design. The little stars on their shorts! Clarendon will steal your heart and while you're distracted Canada (the player, not the country) will steal the ball and go zoooom.

Dallas Wings: Arike Ogunbowale is small but zooms around the court and then defiantly sinks 3s. It's so fun to watch and her superfan brother agrees. Dangerfield is even tinier and Sabally scores with poise. Super fun to watch.

RIDE OR DIE

Connecticut Sun: I don't know the difference between Connecticut and Cincinatti (Americans please don't explain it to me), but I love this team with all the best parts of my heart. I have actually teared up about the stretch passes between DeWanna Bonner and Alyssa Thomas. The whole team has a deeply endearing earnestness. I have an emotional journey watching them every time.

Phoenix Mercury: I love this team with all the best and worst parts of my heart. It is grounding any time someone else is angry about the same things as you, and healing when they do dope basketball with that anger. Britney Griner is an electrifying prescence and can make me laugh of cry at the drop of a hat. Diana Tuarasi is fun like Arike Ogunbowale except she traded up from being fast to being old. They build a defiant energy that means I hardly notice when they lose because it feels like a victory.

- American conspiracy theorist trying to talk me out of bottom surgery

people who don't wear glasses are so weird like you just wake up and your eyes are pussy fresh??

Unfortunately for safety planners (but fortunately for arson fantasies) not all of the ISS is expected to vaporize in orbit. From NASA's ISS end of life FAQ:

Most station hardware is expected to burn up or vaporize during the intense heating associated with atmospheric re-entry, whereas some denser or heat-resistant components like truss sections are expected to survive re-entry and splash down within an uninhabited region of the ocean.  

What is left of the surviving components will be very hot and could certainly burn down the goat if placed next to it. The trouble here is that this scrap does not have predictable aerodynamic qualities and the atmosphere is a chaotic place. The debris field when the Russian station MIR was deorbited was 1500 km long and 100km wide. The American Skylab missed the target of the Pacific Ocean and dropped debris on Australia as a little whoopsie doodle. So hitting a target the size of the goat would sadly be imposible.

As for missing a target the size of a goat, NASA has concerns:

...a random re-entry cannot ensure that any surviving debris lands in a remote, unpopulated area. The risks to the population associated with an uncontrolled re-entry for space station are not acceptable.

They're still a little twitchy from the media response to that time they dropped debris on Australia I think.

theoretically if we convinced NASA to deorbit the international space station into gavle that would probably light the goat on fire

Wouldn't it burn up in the atmosphere?

I love algorithms. I'm passionately fascinated by them. But it's always good to remember that no matter how clever they are, they have no judgement. This leads to things like this, where Google's top suggested story about the women's 800m Olympic final is a thread from the utterly repugnant Roosh V forums (I don't recommend reading it). This is why supervision and human intervention are so important. It's very helpful for companies like Google when people report this kind of inappropriate content. I reported this a few hours ago, but at the time of posting it's still up. If you want to help out, it's pretty easy. There doesn't seem to be a feedback link inside the little Olympics applet, but if you just search "800m athletics Rio 2016" and then scroll to the bottom of the page, there should be a feedback button.

My Christmas card from @goddamnshinyrock just arrived and I’m so happy omg

This joke also plays on the fact that in soccer removing your shirt is explicitly banned in the FIFA rules and is penalized with a yellow card =D

English added by me :)