Tootfinder

Long; central Massachusetts colonial history
Today on a whim I visited a site in Massachusetts marked as "Huguenot Fort Ruins" on OpenStreetMaps. I drove out with my 4-year-old through increasingly rural central Massachusetts forests & fields to end up on a narrow street near the top of a hill beside a small field. The neighboring houses had huge lawns, some with tractors.
Appropriately for this day and this moment in history, the history of the site turns out to be a microcosm of America. Across the field beyond a cross-shaped stone memorial stood an info board with a few diagrams and some text. The text of the main sign (including typos/misspellings) read:
"""
Town Is Formed
Early in the 1680's, interest began to generate to develop a town in the area west of Natick in the south central part of the Commonwealth that would be suitable for a settlement. A Mr. Hugh Campbell, a Scotch merchant of Boston petitioned the court for land for a colony. At about the same time, Joseph Dudley and William Stoughton also were desirous of obtaining land for a settlement. A claim was made for all lands west of the Blackstone River to the southern land of Massachusetts to a point northerly of the Springfield Road then running southwesterly until it joined the southern line of Massachusetts.
Associated with Dudley and Stoughton was Robert Thompson of London, England, Dr. Daniel Cox and John Blackwell, both of London and Thomas Freak of Hannington, Wiltshire, as proprietors. A stipulation in the acquisition of this land being that within four years thirty families and an orthodox minister settle in the area. An extension of this stipulation was granted at the end of the four years when no group large enough seemed to be willing to take up the opportunity.
In 1686, Robert Thompson met Gabriel Bernor and learned that he was seeking an area where his countrymen, who had fled their native France because of the Edict of Nantes, were desirous of a place to live. Their main concern was to settle in a place that would allow them freedom of worship. New Oxford, as it was the so-named, at that time included the larger part of Charlton, one-fourth of Auburn, one-fifth of Dudley and several square miles of the northeast portion of Southbridge as well as the easterly ares now known as Webster.
Joseph Dudley's assessment that the area was capable of a good settlement probably was based on the idea of the meadows already established along with the plains, ponds, brooks and rivers. Meadows were a necessity as they provided hay for animal feed and other uses by the settlers. The French River tributary books and streams provided a good source for fishing and hunting. There were open areas on the plains as customarily in November of each year, the Indians burnt over areas to keep them free of underwood and brush. It appeared then that this area was ready for settling.
The first seventy-five years of the settling of the Town of Oxford originally known as Manchaug, embraced three different cultures. The Indians were known to be here about 1656 when the Missionary, John Eliott and his partner Daniel Gookin visited in the praying towns. Thirty years later, in 1686, the Huguenots walked here from Boston under the guidance of their leader Isaac Bertrand DuTuffeau. The Huguenot's that arrived were not peasants, but were acknowledged to be the best Agriculturist, Wine Growers, Merchant's, and Manufacter's in France. There were 30 families consisting of 52 people. At the time of their first departure (10 years), due to Indian insurrection, there were 80 people in the group, and near their Meetinghouse/Church was a Cemetery that held 20 bodies. In 1699, 8 to 10 familie's made a second attempt to re-settle, failing after only four years, with the village being completely abandoned in 1704.
The English colonist made their way here in 1713 and established what has become a permanent settlement.
"""
All that was left of the fort was a crumbling stone wall that would have been the base of a higher wooden wall according to a picture of a model (I didn't think to get a shot of that myself). Only trees and brush remain where the multi-story main wooden building was.
This story has so many echoes in the present:
- The rich colonialists from Boston & London agree to settle the land, buying/taking land "rights" from the colonial British court that claimed jurisdiction without actually having control of the land. Whether the sponsors ever actually visited the land themselves I don't know. They surely profited somehow, whether from selling on the land rights later or collecting taxes/rent or whatever, by they needed poor laborers to actually do the work of developing the land (& driving out the original inhabitants, who had no say in the machinations of the Boston court).
- The land deal was on condition that there capital-holders who stood to profit would find settlers to actually do the work of colonizing. The British crown wanted more territory to be controlled in practice not just in theory, but they weren't going to be the ones to do the hard work.
- The capital-holders actually failed to find enough poor suckers to do their dirty work for 4 years, until the Huguenots, fleeing religious persecution in France, were desperate enough to accept their terms.
- Of course, the land was only so ripe for settlement because of careful tending over centuries by the natives who were eventually driven off, and whose land management practices are abandoned today. Given the mention of praying towns (& dates), this was after King Phillip's war, which resulted in at least some forced resettlement of native tribes around the area, but the descendants of those "Indians" mentioned in this sign are still around. For example, this is the site of one local band of Nipmuck, whose namesake lake is about 5 miles south of the fort site: #LandBack.

"""
In melancholy, the spirits are carried away by an agitation, but a weak agitation that lacks power or violence, a sort of impotent upset that follows neither a particular path nor the aperta opercula [open ways], but traverses the cerebral matter constantly creating new pores. Yet the spirits do not wander far on the new paths they create, and their agitation dies down rapidly, as their strength is quickly spent and motion comes to a halt: ‘non longe perveniunt’ [they do not reach far]. A trouble of this nature, common to all delirium, does not have the power to produce on the surface of the body the violent movements or the cries to be observed in mania and frenzy. Melancholy never attains frenzy; it is a madness always at the limits of its own impotence. That paradox is explained by the secret alterations in the spirits. Ordinarily, they travel with the speed and instantaneous transparency of rays of light, but in melancholy they become weighed down with night, becoming ‘obscure, thick and dark’, and the images of things that they bring before consciousness are ‘in a shadow, or covered with darkness’. As a result they move more slowly, and are more like a dark, chemical vapour than pure light. This chemical vapour is acid in nature, rather than sulphurous or alcoholic, for in acid vapours the particles are mobile and incapable of repose, but their activity is weak and without consequence. When they are distilled, all that remains in the still is a kind of insipid phlegm. Acid vapours, therefore, are taken to have the same properties as melancholy, whereas alcoholic vapours, which are always ready to burst into flames, are more related to frenzy, and sulphurous vapours bring on mania, as they are agitated by continuous, violent movement. If the ‘formal reason and causes’ of melancholy were to be sought, it made sense to look for them in the vapours that rose up from the blood to the head, and which had degenerated into ‘an acetous or sharp distillation’. A cursory glance seems to indicate that a melancholy of spirits and a whole chemistry of humours lies behind Willis’ analyses, but in fact his guiding principle mostly reflects the immediate qualities of the melancholic illness: an impotent disorder, and the shadow that comes over the spirit with an acrid acidity that slowly corrodes the heart and the mind. The chemistry of acids is not an explanation of the symptoms, but a qualitative option: a whole phenomenology of melancholic experience.
"""
(Michel Foucault, History of Madness)

Already, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act places Trump and the Republicans at odds with their base and with swing voters.
According to a Wall Street Journal poll, 70% of the US believes the act benefits the rich.
Beyond that, the tax plan is underwater with the public, 42-52,
and is disfavored by a majority of independents.
Practically speaking, the Congressional Budget Office projected in June that nearly 8 million people would lose their insurance under the Trump-ba…

Chinese startups and tech giants are racing to create AI agents for both local and global consumers, following the popularity of Butterfly Effect's Manus (Caiwei Chen/MIT Technology Review)
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/06/05/1117958/china-ai-a…

Manus has kick-started an AI agent boom in China
A stampede of contenders and copycats has followed the launch of the general AI agent, but China’s internet restrictions have so far made it easier to cater to overseas users.

Favorable modifications of Scrape-Off Layer (SOL) heat flux width through pulsed fuelling in ADITYA-U Tokamak
SK Injamul Hoque (Institute for Plasma Research, Gandhinagar, India, Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai, India), Harshita Raj (Institute for Plasma Research, Gandhinagar, India, Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai, India), Ritu Dey (Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati, Yerpedu, India), Soumitra Banerjee (Institute for Plasma Research, Gandhinag…

Favorable modifications of Scrape-Off Layer (SOL) heat flux width through pulsed fuelling in ADITYA-U Tokamak
Enhancement of the scrape-off layer (SOL) heat flux width has been observed in the ADITYA-U Tokamak following the injection of short fuel gas pulses. A notable reduction in parallel heat flux near the last closed flux surface (LCFS) is observed after each pulse. Comparative analysis indicates that pulsed fuelling is more effective in mitigating heat flux with improved core confinement than continuous gas feeding via real-time density control. Analytical and simulation works are also carried out…

It's very amusing to read this piece by @… , "Harvard considered as a long-lived biological organism", examine the section "Harvard's defenses", and see how they seem so strong in normal times and are failing right now—as a bellwether of our times.

@… Just wanted to let you know that Captain Hikaru Sulu is currently making a guest appearance in our Lost Era Star Trek TTRPG. He came up as one of three persons, unusually interested in the ongoings of the court-martial for following orders (read: being framed) of the First Officer of our unit, the USS Sato. 😀

Stability analysis of thermodiffusively unstable counterflow lean premixed hydrogen flames
Alessandro Porcarelli, Pasquale Eduardo Lapenna, Francesco Creta, Ivan Langella
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.04197

Stability analysis of thermodiffusively unstable counterflow lean premixed hydrogen flames
This study investigates the effect of increasing strain rate on thermodiffusively unstable, lean premixed hydrogen flames in a 2D counterflow configuration through detailed-chemistry numerical simulations for the first time. The analysis of transient flame dynamics without imposed perturbations reveals that a steady-state flame front is achieved only when the strain rate exceeds a certain threshold. Below this threshold, the flame exhibits unstable oscillatory behavior. When subjected to a rang…

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/romanian-national-pleads-guilty-bank-fraud-involving-over-500000-ebt-funds-illegal
Marian obtained EBT cards numbers by using skimmer devices on ATM and point of sale mac…

Romanian National Pleads Guilty To Bank Fraud Involving Over $500,000 In EBT Funds, Illegal Reentry, And Asylum Fraud
OAKLAND – Marius Marian pleaded guilty in federal court today to fraudulently obtaining over $500,000 in Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) funds, illegally reentering the United States following an aggravated felony conviction, and making false statements on his asylum application