The title calling this a "material" is disingenuous. One would assume that they somehow tested a "bulk" material coupon even if just a few mm^2. But the image in the article shows them testing a single knot.
Economically mass producing microchips is only possible because they are 100s of square millimeters in size and very valuable per square mm. Any bigger than that and error rates in the fab process start to destroy the yield.
These fibers are used in much bigger applications like body armor or mechanical composite parts where the surface area is on the order of square meters, not millimeters.
Modern panel fabs use fine masking over like 10sq. meters with precision on the same order of this (~dozens of micrometers), and people have successfully shown lithography over similar panel sizes by separate exposures.
Older processes are cheaper, but 5nm node costs something like $25,000 per square foot (with around 0.1 defects per square cm, which may result in waste) and doesn't do pieces larger than about 1 foot. That's pretty bad as far as textiles go.
Funny thing is the article mentions machine learning as one of the consumers of the digitized books. Maybe some of the money going to machine learning now may actually contribute to preserving original source material.
In archaeological terms, they could be discovering stuff like microscopic grain husks embedded into the clay of the containers. Though they could have found whole chicken skeletons or fossilized garlic or something else too... I searched for a moment but couldn't find more details from this dig about the food specifically.
They describe the modern technique in the UPenn announcement...
Rather than digging according to architectural construction phases, the Lagash Archaeological Project is using an approach championed by Pisa’s Pizzimenti, who excavates by microstratigraphic layers, thin lens by thin lens horizontally, across a wide swath, “like doing very careful surgery,” Pittman says. “Just 50 centimeters down, we were able to capture all of this. We were happily astounded.”
That's a refinement of practices that are decades old. Comment I responded to seemed to imply we got evidence of this tavern due to some recent breakthrough, while before we'd be doing mostly work on temples and translation. Which is false, we have slice of life findings since the beginning of archeology, and ongoing efforts on prominent buildings and bodies of text.
Sounds like you haven't had children. It's pretty universal. It's incredibly draining literally every minute that they're awake. You have no time nor mental power left at the end of the day. For years.
I think it's very indivildual. My daughter is 9 months old now and only first 1-2 months were pretty draining. But then you just get used to it. Note that I'm working from home (for 4 years now). So it's not like I was rushing to an office asap every day.
This may be different if you have more that one kid or a different family situation of course.
My first was daughter was very quiet and I thought I somehow had got something right on first try. The next four of my kids has not been even though they share both parents.
I think I should be happy for this: If they'd all been as harmonic as my first one I could easily ended up giving well meant parenting advice telling others "just do as I did, be kind and careful and encouraging and it will sort itself out".
Exactly my thought. A well-sleeping kid who stays where you put them is not that much work for now. But when they start being mobile and explore the world on their own, you will need to keep an eye on them forever.
No judgement here - I’m a parent who continues to make mistakes.
But it doesn’t matter if you’re building software or raising a family - it doesn’t have to be draining. In fact your best work will never show up when it is.
We have two kids under 4, and among our friends, what amazes me is how different children are - and, therefore, the parenthood experience can be.
One of my girls is the sweetest, calmest, most peaceful bundle of hugs. The other is a low-sleep, hyper-energetic, demanding chatterbox. She is unyielding and relentless from 5am, every day, and raising her is draining.
I don’t mean “resentful” - we chose this experience and chose not to outsource them to childcare. But some kids are absolutely more work: if your every day is packed 5am-7pm with sales, negotiating, customer service, and all-team workshops, if you get little sleep and no weekends or half-days, year after year, you will be tired. I bootstrapped a software business to 7 figures ARR solo, and raising her is more draining. And more rewarding.
I never cease to be amazed at how many people aren't aware that there are difficult children to raise. They seem to think that how you feel about life is determined entirely by how well you Jedi mind trick your attitude into always being positive.
Life is hard for some people! Sorry you have to hear about it in public, but if it's that annoying for you to just hear it, imagine living it!
