Long Now Foundation

> civboot.org I'm guessing you are already familiar with the Long Now Foundation? Visiting their social hub (it's a bar with weekly talks) in SF, called The Interval, is lovely for many reasons, one of them being their Manual of Civilization[1], a curated library of books whose aim is to collate all the information necessary to build civilization back to where it is now in the event of some catastrophic disruption. [1] https://medium.com/the-long-now-foundation/manual-for-civilization/hom…

Perhaps I’m misinterpreting, but the article seems to claim Milanovitch cycles are based on eccentricity only instead of “ variations in eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession.” [0] That precession is more prominent seems to refine not repudiate Milanovitch. A fun factlet is that precession is the artistic topic of a sculpture at the Hoover Dam: While Polaris is our North Star, Hansen’s terrazzo floor points out that the North Star of the ancient Egyptians, as they built the great pyramids, was Thuban. And in about 12,000 years, our North Star will be Vega. [1] 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles 1. https://medium.com/the-long-now-foundation/the-26-000-year-astronomica…

You need a centralized, cohesive entity with a distributed storage footprint for the time spans you’re interested in (100+ years) imho. The distributed nature creates geographic resiliency while the cohesion provides motivation for durability. “How do you get people to care and keep caring.” Bit of a cybernetics governance problem, as it relates to institutions that are public goods. You need both the infrastructure the archive sits on, and the people who care to curate and custodian the archive, and those people will change over lifetimes like the Ship of Theseus. Do they have the tools they need? Do you have the right people for the job? How will you find new people over time interested in continuing to solve this problem? Think in systems. https://longnow.org/talks/02011-kahle/ https://medium.com/the-long-now-foundation/the-permanent-legacy-founda… > “The goal is for the endowment to provide, at the very minimum, permanent storage of users’ materials and the capability to download these materials at any time,” Friedman says. “But it’s not just the cost of storage — these fees also support an organization committed to protecting, migrating, and maintaining access to user content for all time.”

Doesn't mention north stars at all sadly. While we all (should) know that the Earth rotates on its axis, not as many people know that the axis is 'wobbly', kind of like a children's top as it slows down a bit. So a line that goes through the North and South Poles points differently over time: currently it points roughly to Polaris, but go back a while—e.g., Ancient Egypt—and it pointed to Thuban (and other starts between then and now): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_star * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuban See also two related stars for the Egyptians: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Indestructibles The current idea is that they used those star(s) to align the pyramids: * https://www.astronomy.com/science/are-the-egyptian-pyramids-aligned-wi… * https://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/thuban-past-north-star/ * https://www.science.org/content/article/stars-date-egyptian-pyramids If anyone is traveling/visiting the Western US, and can drop by the Hoover Dam, a similar astronomical design element is present: > On the western flank of the Hoover Dam stands a little-understood monument, commissioned by the US Bureau of Reclamation when construction of the dam began in 01931. The most noticeable parts of this corner of the dam, now known as Monument Plaza, are the massive winged bronze sculptures and central flagpole which are often photographed by visitors. The most amazing feature of this plaza, however, is…

The book The Light Ages by Seb Falk: > In The Light Ages, Cambridge science historian Seb Falk takes us on an immersive tour of medieval science through the story of one fourteenth-century monk, John of Westwyk. From multiplying Roman numerals to navigating by the stars, curing disease, and telling time with an ancient astrolabe, we learn emerging science alongside Westwyk, while following the gripping story of the struggles and successes of an ordinary man in a precarious world. An enlightening history that argues that these times weren’t so dark after all, The Light Ages shows how medieval ideas continue to color how we see the world today. * https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/50489364-the-light-ages * https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324002932 Has a chapter or two of keeping the calendar: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liturgical_year and actual time for daily services: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liturgy_of_the_Hours It should also be noted that for time periods measured over millennia, one may also keep in mind that there are subtle changes in the night sky because of the wobbling of the Earth on its axis of spin: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_precession So that (e.g.) the North Star that we have today (Polaris) is not what not the same as in the past, and will change in the future: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_star The Hoover Dam in the US actually makes use of this astronomical fact in a monument to indicate to possible future…