The area around Stonehenge has a gift for surprising the experts, not to mention the armchair prehistory fans, and it’s delivered a new surprise lately: the remains of a pre-Stonehenge system of tracking the summer and winter solstice. The newly discovered system’s smaller, simpler, and some 500 years older than Stonehenge itself, meaning it was built 5,000 years before noon yesterday. Its use would’ve coincided with the earthworks phase of the Stonehenge site, and it was made of two posts dug into the ground in exactly the positions you’d need to track the solstices. (They move around a bit; even solstices get bored.)
Did the same people build and use both sites? Possibly. The older site was–and still is, amazingly enough–3 miles from Stonehenge. The henge builders could easily have lived or gathered seasonally at the more modest site while working on the pre-Stonehenge earthworks, and trash pits around the smaller site do show that people either lived there or gathered there seasonally. Linking the two crosses the line into speculation, but the senior research manager at Wessex Archaeology considers it “plausible.”
Stonehenge. Photo by Madeline Herzog, couresy of Wikimedia.
“What we’re seeing here,” he said, “is the religion of the stone age made manifest in the ground. Obviously we have no understanding of precisely what any of it meant, but the fact that time and again over thousands of years, people are coming back [here] to build and re-build and mark and re-mark this set of substantial events–it gives us an indication that this is religion. This is how they are understanding their place in the cosmos, what their deities are.”
What earth-shaking news can the rest of the world offer?
Vatican City: You–or at least I–don’t think of popes as having to wrestle with bank accounts and their bureaucracies, but when Leo was be-poped he had to change the address and phone number on his bank account, just the way ordinary mortals do.
No problem. He called the customer service line, got through the security questions, and explained what he wanted.
“Oh, I’m sorry, sir. It says here you have to come in person,” the bank’s representative said–or at least that’s the sparkling bit of dialogue that’s been passed down to us and is now fourteenth hand.
That was a problem, he explained–or so I imagine. The article I’m relying on simply says he begged and pleaded.
Eventually he said, “Would it matter to you if I told you I’m Pope Leo?”
The woman on the other end of the line hung up on him.
I can’t help thinking she turned to the call-center worker next to her and said, “Now I’ve heard it all.”
And they had a short, knowing, and mildly hysterical laugh.
South Africa: In April, South Africa opened a draft AI policy for public discussion, which is admirably democratic. The goal was for South Africa to lead the continent in tackling the ethical, social, and economic issues that artificial intelligence raises.
Then they withdrew it. It turned out, it–or parts of it–had been written by artificial intelligence. Which had tossed in its standard quota of nonexistent sources.
Everywhere: If innocence was ever alive, it’s now dead. You know that game where people search for Pokemon figures out in the real world, then capture them on their phones? I don’t know what good it does them, but I do know people who’ve gotten pretty worked up about it.
Harmless, right? The captures are virtual and the critters aren’t real.
Sorry, nothing’s harmless. A 2021 update (the original game was released in 2016) gave users in-game goodies for scanning their real-world locations. They had to sign in to get the new version, but hey, in-game goodies, you know? Who could turn ‘em down, and how many of us read the fine print anyway when we sign up for something? In the early days of online check-the-box-that-says-you-read-the-terms-and-conditions, someone did an experiment asking people to sign away their first-born child and agree to several other things that are generally frowned upon, and they signed. Of course they signed. For all I know I did too. Life’s too short to read that shit, and trust me, none of it is written in a way that begs to be read.
So what happened to the data of people who wanted Pokemon’s in-game goodies?
Initially, nothing. The company collected it and sat on it. Then the gaming division went into a partnership with Vantor, “a company that specialises in spatial detection software for drones, including those used by some militaries,” according to the article I’m leaning on. There was a sale in there somewhere but it doesn’t seem to matter particularly.
“The partnership addresses a critical vulnerability in modern operations.” according to the company. “GPS unavailability, spoofing, interference, and jamming. When satellite signals are compromised, autonomous systems and field teams lose their ability to orient, coordinate or maintain accurate situational awareness.”
I’ll take a guess at translating that: our drones lose their ability to kill people, but with this new technology they can find their own way. Isn’t progress wonderful?
To be fair, they may do stuff other than kill people, but once I get “kill people” in my head, it’s hard to focus on the smaller stuff.
It all gets more than a little creepy, given that we started out with kids virtually capturing cartoon creatures that were invisible in the real world and we end up with–again, this is my guess–bombs falling on real people.
But it’s okay, because “AR Scans collected through Pokémon Go were submitted voluntarily by players who opted into the feature and were subject to the applicable Terms of Service and Privacy Policy at the time.”
Which makes it okay.
Notes from the U.K. 
The Stonehenge parts were interesting, in a real world way/ Then I got stuck wondering if Pope Leo was finally able to get his bank account straightened out. But then I got to Pokemon and AI and drones and my brain went into screen saver…I’ll have to come back later and r4ear all the comments to bring things back to Earth 1.
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Thanks for making me laugh this morning. Shape the world’s in, I needed that. I’m hoping your brain doesn’t get stuck in screen saver mode.
The pope only managed to sort out his banking with the intervention of a friend, a fellow cleric, who know someone who knew someone who knew the head of the bank. If, following what I think is the English custom of calling priests divines, that was divine intervention.
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The pope makes his own customer service calls?
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Apparently this one does. Maybe after that experience, he’ll wait for divine intervention instead.
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If the US is anything like the UK, unless one has a prearrangement with the company, only lying will get you through the “data protection”, “only interact with the account holder in person” stuff on the phone. I used to lie when sorting things for my Mum, who couldn’t cope with the speed of the agent’s speech (among other issues), my friend impersonates her disabled daughter and, where possible, I try to set up accounts in both my and my husband’s names. Not always allowed! While I approve of safeguards in principle (there are some nasty crooks out there), it seems the companies are just covering themselves against claims as it’s pretty simple to get round their protocols, especially as in Mum’s case I set up the accounts, so I knew the security question answers.
One of my pet peeves is that companies can’t or won’t train their staff simply to speak more slowly when dealing with the public. Often the complaints about accents and quiet speech would be resolved if that happened. Asking them to slow down works for about two sentences, then they’re off gabbling again. It’s similar to going abroad and trying to pick up stuff in a foreign language. My French isn’t bad when I’m reading it but listening is a whole different challenge.
Jeannie
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And that’s if you can even get to a human being. I spent a fair amount of time with I can’t remember what company repeating “Speak to a human being” (“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you. Did you want to soak your automobile in lye?”) before being, at last, transfered to one.
I’m sure you’re right about the companies being more interested in insulating themselves against lawsuits than in preventing fraud. And I have the same problem in foreign languages. I’ve heard countless people say it’s easier to understand than to speak where my problem’s the reverse. I can say all sorts of things. It’s the other side of the conversation I struggle with. What a relief to find someone else who has the same problem. Especially with French, which is a liquid instead of a solid.
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“a liquid instead of a solid,” a perfect description!
Annoyingly, I often find it easier to understand the robots’ speech. It’s usually well modulated and distinct. If only there was intelligence guiding their utterances…
Jeannie
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That’s either encouraging or depressing. Or possibly both. My battles with foreign languages have been pre-robot-speech, so I can’t add much to the conversation. Which, as you know, won’t stop me.
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I have been attempting log-in/register with a Govt.Dept. The short version is: having entered my regn. # and then my PIN I got a message telling me that my information will never be shared with anyone else, but the site is unavailable at the present time.
Probably due to a major power outage in a storm, but I wonder if Papal interaction might have been invoked…
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That really is a good news/bad news situation, isn’t it? You’re registered (that much of the site, presumably, is working) but beyond that nothing exists. And Papal intervention’s proved itself pretty useless in these situations. Hmmm. I’m at a loss here. If there’s a country somewhere that hasn’t gone digital, immigration might prove simpler.
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Thanks…but I’m too old to fight it! :) And this is my too-old fight against it!
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I forgot to say that I love your solution of simply lying to them. I do that regularly when the eye clinic my partner goes to regularly texts (for reasons to complicated to explain, to my phone), asking me to press one if I’m her. I press one. They ask for the year of my birth. I enter hers. Wheeee. Aren’t we getting away with something here!
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One should never completely rule out the possibility of a divine intervention.
This Stonehenge thing is not alone in the world, serious stone circles sprung up in other parts of the world too : here.
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Interesting link. Thanks. As for divine intervention, I maintain the right to joke about it. Beyond that, I have yet to see any indication that it’s real. If it is, I could make up a long list in a short time of horrors that need divine intervention–enough to keep a supreme being busy for quite a while and my list would be far from complete.
Not that the aforesaid being would be likely to want my advice.
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A solstice sunrise
Ancient posts greet the same dawn
Time circles again.
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Nice one.
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Yeah?
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Well, I thought so. It left me with a sense of peacefulness.
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Good.
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I wonder if once everything is known about everyone, It will all come crashing down. Then we’ll have to start over with paper
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That’s not beyond the reach of imagination. In fact, it would drive an sf novel pretty effectively.
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