What's something that has fascinated you recently?

I dunno but when I'm walking around in public And I feel like people are looking at me and judging me, I pretend to be fascinated by something up and to the left so if anyone looks at me, it redirects their attention to something else. ⭐ Social Anxiety Life Pro Tip ⭐

That Herodotus mentions two datable features to his identification of the Pharoh who received Helen of Troy and kept her in Egypt for over a decade.

One was that he built the temple of Astarte in Memphis, which there's unsourced claims online was Amenhotep III and in legit sources very likely occurred in the 18th dynasty as that's when her worship becomes popular in Egypt, and the other was that the Pharoh was born in Memphis, which during the 18th dynasty was only Amenhotep II.

Herodotus wasn't that great with referring to the 1st, 2nd, etc mentions of a Pharoh's name, so maybe he was mixing up his Amenhoteps?

A few quick details about Helen:

her name seems to be related to the name of the Greek sun deity (the literal sun) Helios
her early cultic worship has features of a solar cult
allegedly kidnapped as a child by Theseus she was raised by his mother and sister as her family who accompany her leaving Greece
she was apparently a badass who was capable in combat
in a Greek play about Helen in Egypt the plot has the son of the Pharoh wanting to marry her

So did a Pharoh named Amenhotep have anyone show up in their court with similar features to any of the above?

Well, Amenhotep III does.

In fact, his son married a mysterious figure who was literally named "beautiful woman who arrived."

Her only recorded family was a woman recorded as her wet nurse and a sister.

While married to her, that son suddenly began worshipping the literal sun, the solar disk god, who was previously worshipped by "beautiful woman who arrived" (who continued to directly commune with the god without the Pharoh - very taboo in Egypt at the time). In fact, when he builds an entirely new city in honor of the sun god in the dedication he both acknowledged that his wife got everything she asked for but assured the reader that it was the sun god that told him to build the city there and not his wife (which means people thought his wife told him to build the city there that he needed to deny it).

They eventually outlaw worship of any gods other than the sun disk.

"Beautiful woman who arrived" was the only woman in the history of Egypt to be depicted in the smiting pose about to kill one of Egypt's captured enemies.

She had six daughters in a row, which is only a 1% chance of happening naturally.

And Egyptologists have been confused by the fact that after her husband's reign ended there's a brief period of a Pharoh who seems to have no connection to the royal family other than being married to her first born daughter.

And while Helen in Herodotus leaves Egypt after many years, "beautiful woman who arrived" just sort of disappears and it seems may not have been buried in Egypt as a number of Tut's burial goods appear to have initially been intended for her burial but were then repurposed for his.

So you have this Egyptian account of a sort of Greek mythological figure claiming she was in Egypt the whole time, Herodotus gives indicators that could place it to an Amenhotep in the 18th dynasty, and then the son of an Amenhotep of the 18th dynasty married "beautiful woman who arrived" who is at the center of one of the most bizarre periods of Egyptian history as a total badass who just so happens to have a number of additional features and family relations paralleling the mythical figure.

And while we have no idea what Helen's "face that launched 1,000 ships" might have really looked like, the face of "beautiful woman who arrived" has been on the covers of our magazines for years now.

Fascinating, for sure. Thanks for sharing, I thoroughly enjoyed this comment.
Great read! Loved the flourish at the end.

All the gnarly experimental vehicles designed by Soviet engineers during WW2 and the cold war. Multi-turreted tanks, flying aircraft carriers, ekranoplans, etc.

Most of it ended up being wildly impractical and never put into mass production, but damn was it cool as hell.

I agree. I highly recommend the Youtube channel Mustard if you haven't already. They specialize in making videos about transportation vehicles and military vehicles. They also have several videos about Soviet aircraft.

Cow hoof trimming and various restoration videos.

I found the Hoof GP like... a week ago? And haven't stopped watching his videos

Nate the hoof guy has really good videos aswell
- I've seen his stuff as well! HGP has a vibe I really like, plus the banter between him and Craig is wonderful
I have his stuff in my feed all the time and I don't know why. Never watched it. Never watched pimple poppers or car detailers or pulling the film off new electronics or any of that content designed to give a rush from cleaning some gross or dirty things up.

Tell me why, Algorithm!?!?
- I ended up finding him while scrolling the shorts, I guess I just like his vibe?? It's a lot of educational content

African wildlife live cams. Nautilus Live is on the off season, so I turned to the Namib Desert for my background watching. I just watched a Hyena piss in a watering hole to fuck with a jackal. An hour later a gemsbok shows up, sniffs the water, and runs away at full speed.

https://www.youtube.com/live/ydYDqZQpim8

https://nautiluslive.org/

The British show Taskmaster! One of the only hyperfixations my sibling has that finally wiggled into my brain. Now I've been binging it. It's quite funny! Love that the seasons have had new people for new insanity!

The British show Taskmaster!

Damn do I love me some Greg Davies. He's also a riot on Would I Lie To You?
The New Zealand version is also hilarious
I got into that during covid and watched the whole thing. It's all on Youtube for free which is crazy to me

Usenet archives on telehack.com. Its like a time capsule. I get to read all these interesting posts from the arpanet as if it was still up today. If you browse long enough you suddenly be surprised to find some famous person's casual post about whatever topic was on their mind at the time. Like I found one of ken thompson's post on the world chess championship match.

I get to read all these interesting posts from the arpanet

I connected to Arpanet with my Texas Instruments TI 99/4A for like 5 minutes and got a pretty angry parent with a large phone bill back in the day.

Arpanet was the original silk road.

The debate on AI killing us all when most AI is just predictability algorithms and it has no actual thoughts or ideas.

Not only that, but the debate completely distracts from the way AI has already harmed people. The most recent implementations of AI were produced with white collar workers in third world countries who worked long hours and with poor working conditions to train the AI.
I am more afraid of what humans will use it for than what the AI will do of its own accord. eg. compromised education from cheating/reliance on AI, mass production of deep fakes and propaganda, companies replacing creative talent and customer service roles etc.

I went down a cave diving rabbit hole on YouTube and just watched a hour long video on how rebreather works.

Pubnixes. Or more specifically the tildeverse. I thought these things were long gone but no, there is still a community of passionate computer nerds sharing common servers and colloborating in the community.

If you are interested: https://tildeverse.org/

Lately Ive been interested in the sort of terrain I can make in my minecraft mod pack. Forests, floating islands, a surface version of hell, Mars based on real NASA photos of rock and ice etc.