> “This provides a new perspective on how Phoenician culture spread—not through large-scale mass migration, but through a dynamic process of cultural transmission and assimilation.”
> “At each site, people were highly variable in their ancestry, with the largest genetic source being people similar to contemporary people of Sicily and the Aegean, and many people with significant North African associated ancestry as well.”
They say "cultural exchange" but is this a euphemism that includes things like warfare and slavery? Like the way Alexander the Great spread Greek culture?
It seems like the main hypothesis they're ruling out is migration.
Phoenicians were a low war civilization. The fact that you had to name a macedonian general to illustrate is telling: the general public barely know phoenician kings or generals despite lasting more than a thousand years through all Mediterraneum, unless we focus on later Carthage which were more belligerant.
As of slaves, of course they had them! It was a normal thing back then.
But the point here is that Phoenicians were traders, not warriors. They built settlements all over the Mediterraneum and then moved goods and culture between them. They were also avid consumers of foreign culture, for example they liked egyptian dead culture so they just copied it.
I'd suspect less "euphemism" and more "jargon". It's probably relatively hard to identify whether the culture was carried by means we currently think positively vs negatively about, so it's useful to have a word that doesn't rely on having a way to measure that distinction.
The Aegean and Sicily were full of greeks and we would've heard if the phoenicians were trying to build an empire there. Instead, we know that phoenicians were name after the purple dye they were selling. What's more, according to legend, Carthage was established after the Levant was conquered by the assyrians.
You can train yourself with every book at any library. You can also train yourself on a large number of movies and TV shows for a small monthly fee.
Where your analogy goes wrong is you're saying you want to "[Circumvent] payment to obtain copyright material for training" to use Workaccount2's words.
So Meta borrowed every book from a library and paid to obtain all of the movies and TV shows? They kept only one copy of every book at any time on their system?
Because I'm certainly not allowed to photocopy a library book in its entirety. And I guarantee you a Netflix subscription doesn't allow me to keep a copy of a movie on my hard drive and use it for training man or machine.
Depends on where you live. In Sweden you can make a few copies of almost anything without violating copyright. There are a few exceptions. Copying entire books was added as an exception in 2005. You can still copy parts of a book. How large parts? I don't know, but I once asked for a copy from a library and they said that a few chapters was fine, so maybe that much (I am not a lawyer).
Yeah I thought this was possible too that's one of the reasons I asked
I checked to see if that pun occurs elsewhere and didn't see it. Someone who doesn't have English as a first language may not know the more obscure usage of check since you don't use it much these days other than as part of phrases and idioms like "checks and balances", which is 18th century English
I am stating the obvious to clarify: cheques without balances is an overdraft. You give a piece of paper that can't be exchanged for money when promised.
I don’t think that the saying has anything to do with money. It’s about power, oversight and preventing overreach. Of course, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t used in reference to money by the OP.
Mein Kampf is just the most stark example of a book that is forbidden, but very significant to read if you want to understand WWII history. Uncle Tom's Cabin is another example of a book you wont see but is another piece of literature you should read if you want to understand the ideology of a given time period. You don't have to agree with a book to read it.
Another commenter pointed out the anarchist's cookbook, which is another great book to read.
Incidentally Mein Kampf often is available in libraries in Germany (in a commented version, here for example https://www.provinzialbibliothek-amberg.de/discovery/fulldis...), and was never banned in the sense that people understand banned. You could always own and sell old versions however, printing and distributing new uncommented versions could be deemed Volksverhetzung.
It's also a crappy text and definitely not necessary to understand WWII, there are better texts.
I’ve only read excerpts from it, and frankly, you don’t need to read it to understand WWII history. The important bits are well covered in any decent book on the subject and you won’t get any deeper insight by reading the source material.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Read the Dalton translation. Reading excerpts is borderline useless because so much builds upon earlier chapters.
>> As far as I know, it's never been banned in the US
The question is not if it is banned.
The question is if it is general circulation in public libraries.
This is motte and bailey. If a school library decides not to include a book in their library, that's curation, if it is a book you don't like. If it is a book you do like, it is censorship.
If you walk into your public library and browse the shelves, is the Anarchist Cookbook there? Mein Kampf? If they're not, does that mean they are banned?
I go to my public library quite often, and the books I am interested in are most often not on the shelves there, and the books that are on the shelves there have a political slant towards a politics that I detest. Librarians are in fact dangerous.
Now, that doesn't mean the books I want to read are banned, I have to put a hold on them from the stacks at central and they will ship them over, but they will never be on display at my local library.
They're not banned. But the books on display at my local branch library are curated by dangerous librarians I want nothing to do with.
At my local public library, I could request books to be bought and put on the shelves. I was allowed to host open mic nights in middle school where I and other friends would read poetry and whatever else, free of censorship. Civil engagement through the library was easier than a lot of other public institutions, because while librarians curate, they also have the job of catering to their audience, and respecting requests.
The library became a sanctuary for me after school as it meant I could avoid abuse back home and have a less surveilled access to information such as books, wikis, news, protest music, games, etc. which I was able to later take back home or to other places and consume without fear of reprimand. It was also a third place, where I could meet people, gather people and engage with my community.
> They're not banned. But the books on display at my local branch library are curated by dangerous librarians I want nothing to do with.
Did you persistently try to civically engage with your local library over time and form a personal, positive relationship with the librarians? If so, and if denied, did you seek restitution in city hall or by contacting local congressmen? Or are you just complaining?
A public library is a third space where ideas can be accessed and exchanged, and a focal point where the community can civically engage. In the past, that has mostly meant books, which have been a great way of archiving things, but many public libraries also have rooms for listening to music, watching films, or at least renting them to take home.
Many public libraries also welcome and encourage open mics if they have space to host them without affecting others. In my case, it was a small library in a small town, so I hosted the open mic after hours with the grace of the librarians who worked there, who were more than happy to encourage literacy through poetry.
Yes, and I'm trying to enlighten you on the historical purpose of the institution so that you have a better understanding of what a library is, instead of just relying on a personal feeling or opinion.
I would much rather have a person who has gone to school to study childhood education and library science choosing books for the library, than randos trying to force their religion on everybody else's kids.
For your public library, if they get requests for books, they get the books. Lots of people want to read fantasy romance, so those are the books they buy. Hardly anybody requests the anarchist's cookbook, so they rely on interlibrary loan to get it when someone wants it. They buy the books that are popular. This isn't rocket science.
Just about any book you want is going to be available. This is what libraries do.
>> Just about any book you want is going to be available. This is what libraries do
There's a difference between the books that are available and the books that are on display.
I can make a request and put a hold and get a book from the stacks at the central library. That's not something the typical browser of books on a library shelf is going to do. I do it now, I never did growing up. What was on the shelves was the Overton window for me growing up. I break windows now, now I can consider any viewpoints I choose. Go get me the book from the stacks, librarian.
What librarians do today is to promote propaganda for a certain cause. It's just so self destructive of them to do that, but that's what they do.
> Another commenter pointed out the anarchist's cookbook, which is another great book to read.
Again why is it a good example, it's not banned in any meaningful sense of the word. I can get onto Amazon and buy it right now.
Calling it a good book to read is quite a stretch as well. It's a poorly written assembly of instructions for bomb and drug making (written by a 19 year old). Many of the instructions being outright dangerous, so much so that it has been suggested that the book was actually a plant by the CIA, FBI... (not that this is a very credible conspiracy theory). If you want to learn about bomb making better just pick up a chemistry textbook.
I'm pretty sure nobody commenting here actually wants Mein Kampf in particular. It's just a well-known example of a book that most people would agree to restrict. (The Anarchist Cookbook would probably be better if we need to pick a single work.)
... and since it's well known, its presence can get improperly used as a proxy for "this library is uncensored", when in fact the less-known books get restricted anyway.
The Anarchist Cookbook is a great example. I had to acquire that from the internet.
The people responding here mainly just come across as either ignorant or intentionally obtuse, thinking that if they can prove that in some cases the school administration overruled our teachers and librarians on the most egregious texts (as they constantly did), then the entire idea of "banned book week" is performative and not useful
No one here seems to have actually made a real point, just looking for "gotchas".
> It's just a well-known example of a book that most people would agree to restrict.
That's just completely wrong. In America it's a book most libraries would keep around as a visible indicator that they're not censoring books, and a book the letter-writing busybodies who want to censor books would not prioritize because there's no sex in it.
Mein Kampf has been available at every school I've been at. It's not part of the curriculum but why would it be? Libraries usually have it because they have robust collections on authoritarianism for obvious reasons.
The Anarchist Cookbook not so much. But neither are terrorist training manuals or other guides for making improvised weapons.
> It's just a well-known example of a book that most people would agree to restrict.
I don't think most reasonable people would agree to restrict such an impactful piece of history. It's shocking to me that people think something they disagree with should be entirely censored.
My guess is there are forums somewhere where people complain a lot about librarians not giving access to Nazi material and how it's a crime against free speech absolutism.
The main difference is that people often think they share a fate as a startup. They all have the same lottery tickets (in varying amounts) that pay out under the same conditions. After all, that's how managers often motivate the early employees.
But since there are different classes of lottery tickets, the payouts can change arbitrarily at the last minute depending on the specifics of the deals.
So even after accounting for the fact that most lottery tickets don't pay out, you need to account for the fact that some within the same startup might pay out while yours don't. And there's no perfect way of knowing ahead of time.
At a big company I worked for, GPL licenses were strictly forbidden. But I got the vibe that was more about not wanting to wind up in a giant court case because of engineers not being careful in how they combined code.
I'd be super curious if there are explicit intentional acts that people generally think are okay under GPL but where lawyers feel the risk is too high.
Linking against GPL code on a backend server which is never distributed - neither in code or binary form. (Because what might happen tomorrow? Maybe now you want to allow enterprise on prem.)
Seems like the court system may not be the best way to compete
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