Weekend Reading

Long reads for the end of Summer

“Archaeologists have identified the first ancient Egyptian astronomical observatory on record, which they say is the ‘first and largest’ of its kind, according to a translated statement from the country's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. An Egyptian archaeological team discovered the remains of the sixth-century-B.C. structure three years ago during excavations at an archaeological site in the ancient city of Buto, now called Tell Al-Faraeen, in Egypt's Kafr El-Sheikh governorate. ‘Everything we found shattered our expectations,’ Hossam Ghonim, director general of Kafr El-Sheikh Antiquities and head of the Egyptian archaeological mission, told Live Science. The team uncovered the ruins of an L-shaped mud-brick building spanning over 9,150 square feet (850 square meters). Its east-facing entrance, marked by a traditional gateway known as a pylon, leads to a spot where sunlight would have illuminated where the sky observer — known as 'smn pe' and who was usually a priest — stood to track the sun and stars, Ghonim said. The structure still has a carving of smn pe facing the rising sun. This figure symbolizes the ancient Egyptians' connection to the cosmos, Ghonim said. At first, the team thought they had discovered a temple. Yet, as the excavation progressed, they uncovered artifacts and inscribed symbols, such as Chen, Cenet and Benu, that related to time and astronomy, Ghonim said. But it was the discovery of a huge sundial — along with several inscriptions, artifacts and the layout of the building — that led researchers to make the new announcement that this structure was an observatory, Ghonim explained.” (Reham Atya /LiveScience)

“Inside the building, the team found construction features that also suggested alignments with the sun. Three stone blocks on the ground, for example, were used to ‘take measurements of the sun's location.’ Another set of five flat limestone blocks mounted on long (16-foot, or 4.8 m) slabs had inclined lines ‘used to measure the inclinations of the sun and shadow, and to monitor the movement of the sun during daylight hours,’ the ministry wrote. Also found was a possible observatory tower built of stone, a stone platform in a large hall with inscriptions of sunrises and sunsets, and miscellaneous inscription measurements ‘indicating time and astronomy,’ the statement said. The hall was also festooned with images of deities linked with the sky. For example, Horus (as a falcon) typically has a right eye symbolizing either the sun or the ‘morning star’ Venus, while his left eye symbolizes the moon or "evening star" (also Venus, in its setting phase), according to Britannica. Horus is the son of Wadjet, the protector goddess of Lower Egypt after whom the temple is named, according to Britannica. Sometimes Wadjet and the deity Nekhbet, who represents Upper Egypt, are represented as an ensemble on the pharaonic jeweled crown or diadem, symbolizing how the pharaoh united both Upper and Lower Egypt.” (Elizabeth Howell/Space.com)

“(Robert) Kennedy originally entered the race in April of 2023 as a Democrat, but, after it became clear he wouldn’t perform well in the primary, he launched an Independent bid, instead, which required him to gather signatures for petitions to get his name on the ballot in each state. That proved to be an expensive mission, particularly given that the campaign faced multiple legal challenges filed by Democratic groups. A few months ago, the Kennedy campaign’s financial filings showed an operation struggling with debt. Days after his bear reveal, Kennedy was in court in New York State, dealing with a challenge to his residency that would endanger his place on the state’s ballot. Kennedy, who moved to California a decade ago, when he married his third wife, the actor Cheryl Hines, had claimed that he maintained a New York State residence—a room he rented in a friend’s home. Kennedy had lived in New York for years, and his father was a senator from the state, so his reasons for claiming it as his official home were perhaps nostalgic. But there may also have been a more practical consideration: the Twelfth Amendment prohibits a President and Vice-President from the same state to receive that state’s electoral votes. Nicole Shanahan, Kennedy’s billionaire running mate and the ex-wife of the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, lives in California. The judge ruled against Kennedy, calling it ‘a ‘sham’ address that he assumed for the purpose of maintaining his voter registration and furthering his own political aspirations in this State.’ As the residency case unfolded, the Washington Post reported that Kennedy’s team had made overtures to the Harris campaign to discuss the possibility of his serving as a member of her Cabinet. According to the article, the Hollywood mogul Ari Emanuel and the director Rob Reiner both made entreaties to Democrats on Kennedy’s behalf, though nothing ever came of their efforts. (Emanuel is the agent of Hines’s ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ co-star Larry David, and Hines once worked as a personal assistant to Reiner.) Kennedy’s team had already entertained talks with the Trump campaign about a similar deal during the week of the Republican National Convention, in July—despite the fact that Kennedy had told one person in a text message that Trump is ‘a terrible human being. The worse president ever and barely human. He is probably a sociopath.’” (Claire Malone/TNY)

“China is pouring resources into nuclear fusion research, spending an estimated $1.5 billion — double the US government’s figure. Beijing has ‘built itself up from being a non-player 25 years ago to having world-class capabilities,’ one nuclear scientist told Nature, with ambitious timelines: It hopes to build a one-gigawatt test reactor in the 2030s and a prototype power plant within a few decades after that. ITER, the huge multinational fusion collaboration based in France to which China contributes, will not begin experiments until 2039, 19 years behind schedule. China’s rapid expansion is also pushing global science forwards, say advocates, who hope fusion will one day provide limitless green energy.” (Mizy Clifton and Tom Chivers/SEMAFOR)

“For me, separate finances felt like a way to keep myself from being a burden — and from being left. As a kid, I’d watched my mom die slowly over nine years, and even at a young age, I could sense how much the costs of her care burdened my father. She had become disabled by a brain injury from a car accident when I was 7, prompting a lawsuit about which insurer was responsible for covering her care. Four years later, my dad placed her in a for-profit adult foster-care home willing to take her on for free until the lawsuit was settled. We won the lawsuit, but when the insurance company appealed it, the home’s willingness to wait ended. ‘I got a letter from the care company saying, ‘You need to get her out of here,’ my dad told me last March. ‘That’s how we ended up doing it with Medicaid and getting divorced.’ In February 1990, my grandparents became my mom’s conservator; my dad filed for divorce; and my mother, now destitute, moved into a nursing home that accepted Medicaid. That summer, state officials cited the home for providing inadequate care after a dementia patient choked to death during lunch. In November, my dad married one of my mother’s close friends. By the time I was dating Matthew, I had mindlessly absorbed the lesson my dad seemed to offer: ‘Love’ was a financial exchange in my mind, and a gendered one. Women were to offer affection, support, and validation. In exchange, we would receive money from men. If I didn’t keep up my end of that bargain, I had no right to complain. I should be prepared for whatever punishment a man — whether father or suitor — might decide I deserved, including abandonment.” (Tracie McMillan/NYMag)

”Something unusual is happening in France. President Emmanuel Macron is not talking, the country has no government and the French people are not complaining. At least not yet. In June, Macron launched an ill-fated gamble to call snap parliamentary elections to ‘clarify’ the outcome of European parliament elections that produced a victory for the French far right. However, clarity is more elusive than ever. With no majority in parliament, no prime minister able to survive a vote of no confidence and no possibility of calling a new election for another year, Macron has fallen silent while still looking for a way out of a crisis of his own making. As for the leaders of the political parties he has been consulting over the past week, they do not seem to have benefited from the spirit of goodwill that took over the country during the Olympics. What makes the situation so complicated is that it has no precedent in the Fifth Republic, governed by a constitution tailor-made for Charles de Gaulle in 1958. The current crisis has exposed the vulnerabilities of the French constitutional regime — a dual executive function paired with a majority voting system — in a fragmented political landscape. The famed ‘cohabitation,’ which on three occasions has forced a president and a prime minister from the opposition to work together, was possible with strong parties on right and left. But that was another era. When he came to power in 2017 by trampling over the moribund traditional parties of left and right, Macron did not imagine that their very weakness would come back to haunt him seven years later. On July 7, French voters mobilised en masse to deny a majority to the far-right Rassemblement National, preventing it from claiming the position of prime minister. That was the good news. The bad news is that they also prevented the two other blocs, the centre and the left, from governing, as none of them now has enough seats in the National Assembly to reach the required majority. French voters clearly stated what they did not want, but did not decide what they wanted.” (Sylvie Kaufman/FT)

“In Russia, Ukraine’s Kursk campaign continues although advances in the past week have been fewer than in the initial part of their post-break through exploitation operations. Russia’s response has gathered momentum. More ground forces have been deployed there, and the Russian Air Force is also in action using its destructive glide bombs against Ukrainian forces in Kursk. While there have been some small advances, the Ukrainian incursion appears to have reached - or is close to reaching - the ‘limit of exploitation’ that I discussed in this article back on 12 August. In that piece, I examined what Ukraine’s options were once that occured. These include defending all terrain seized in Kursk, selecting defendable terrain and withdrawing into that, and withdrawing back into Ukraine altogether. It appears that the second option is most likely at this point. The real question is this: how does Ukraine ensure this military advance and seizure of Russian territory results in political and strategic advantage? While there is an argument that the offensive has seized the initiaitve for Ukraine and changed the status quo of the war, given the tradeoffs they have had to make in defending in the Donbas, the political and strategic returns on the Kursk offensive are yet to fully materialise.” (Mick Ryan)

“Given the many hardships currently buffeting Nigerian households, President Bola Tinubu’s Biya-esque travel to southern France for a few days in a new $100m jet did not make for good optics. His office euphemistically called the trip a ‘work stay,’ which presumably he couldn’t do anywhere in Nigeria. Even worse than Tinubu’s tone-deafness is the lack focus in his administration’s economic reforms. To be fair, the administration deserves significant credit for taking on bold reforms — like liberalizing the naira and unifying the official and parallel market exchange rates, taking on the thorny issue of petrol subsidies (arguably the third rail of Nigerian politics), partially removing electricity subsidies, giving the central bank the leeway to aggressively fight inflation (including via higher rates), and recapitalization of commercial banks to ensure stability in the financial sector (a move that will unlock a new round of bank consolidations). The administration also deserves credit for tightening tax administration and is on course to meet its 2024 revenue target of $12b. A new tax bill that will streamline taxation in Nigeria is in the works. Even oil production is up(!) — even though revenues from the added volume will be gobbled up by terribly unwise petroleum-backed loans. In 2024 the economy is projected to expand by 3.8%. According to a Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) survey businesses expect economic conditions to improve over the next six months. Notably, Tinubu’s policy team has shown a willingness to respond to reality.” (Ken Opalo/The Africanist Perspective)

“From Jesse Jenkins, of Princeton, a detailed look at recent US industrial policy that has worked. Jenkins’s post is on the excellent new climate-related site called Heatmap. The piece is about the the Biden-era ‘industrial policy’ that has emerged from major legislation—the CHIPS act to advance US semiconductor production, the climate policies grouped as the Inflation Reduction Act, and the many projects launched under the major infrastructure bill—plus other executive measures.

As Jenkins sums it up:

Those new laws (and other Biden-Harris Administration actions on trade and tariffs¹) have directed and amplified a megatrend in “reshoring” and driven a huge surge in private sector investments in U.S. manufacturing, creating tens of thousands of good jobs in communities across America. Investment in manufacturing construction has more than doubled since passage of the IRA and CHIPS, and the U.S. has seen nearly 127,000 new jobs created, according to Energy Innovation policy analyst Jack Conness.” (James Fallows)

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