Let’s be frank: while the election was a coin flip there it was nonetheless a very real likelihood that one candidate would sweep the battlegrounds, and it is very likely that this is what will have happened (although Harris has an outside chance of winning Arizona, Michigan and Nevada):

It seems very likely that Trump will win the popular vote too.

It’s ugly. Trump got away with 1/6; he got away with Dobbs. Unlike 2016, I don’t think there’s any serious argument that a different candidate or a better campaign could have won, and there was no major outside force like James Comey. These are demographic shifts that are not about any particular candidate or campaign, combined with anti-incumbent sentiments that have caused incumbent parties in major democracies since COVID to suffer even worse defeats.

Misplaced nostalgia and anti-immigration sentiment worked — they got an decrepit and open fascist elected. The American people have got what they wanted, and they’re going to get it good and hard. The only silver lining is that Dems are a slight favorite to hold the House, which would actually be a pretty big deal.

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More than 33,000 Boeing workers reached a tentative agreement Monday night to end a weekslong strike that quickly became one of the costliest strikes in recent history—estimated to have cost the US economy more than $9.6 billion.

Through their unions, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) Districts 751 and W24, workers in Washington state, Oregon, and California had previously rejected two inadequate Boeing offers while the company lost hundreds of millions daily. Negotiations had stalled until US Secretary of Labor Julie Su stepped in, IAM said in a press release, helping to restart talks and get to a deal that 59 percent of workers could agree on.

Under the proposed deal, workers will receive a 43 percent wage increase over four years, as well as a $12,000 bonus they can choose to receive in their paycheck, as a 401(k) contribution, or a combination of both. Additionally, Boeing agreed to match 401(k) contributions up to 8 percent.

According to The New York Times, Boeing said "the average annual pay of machinists will rise to more than $119,000 by the end of the contract, up from nearly $76,000 today, after those raises and other benefits are taken into account."

This is "life-changing" money for Boeing workers, IAM's press release said. The workers refused to accept Boeing's so-called best offer of a 25 percent wage increase back in September. While Boeing lost billions during the strike, workers collectively lost hundreds of millions in wages, CNN noted, but IAM District 751 President Jon Holden said that workers voted to stand their ground because "working people know what it’s like when a company overreaches and takes away more than is fair.

"Our members perform high-quality and flight-critical work for the airplanes we build and deserve a return on their labor investment that provides for the quality of life worthy of that labor," Holden said.

In a message to his reuniting team, Boeing president and CEO Kelly Ortberg said Boeing was "pleased to reach a ratified agreement." In an accompanying FAQ, Boeing said workers can return to work as soon as Wednesday but must return by November 12. Ortberg, who joined Boeing in August just ahead of the strike, considered it a top goal to end the strike so that Boeing could resume production on new 737s.

"While the past few months have been difficult for all of us, we are all part of the same team," Ortberg said. "We will only move forward by listening and working together. There is much work ahead to return to the excellence that made Boeing an iconic company. This is an important time in our history, and like generations before us, we will face into the moment together, and stronger as one team."

Workers vow to restore Boeing safety standards

Holden said that workers are "ready to help Boeing change direction and return to building the highest quality and safest airplanes in the world" after alarms were raised about Boeing's quality control when missing bolts caused a Boeing 737 Max 9 passenger door plug to blow off during flight earlier this year. During that scandal, Boeing was dinged for outsourcing its supply chain, and now, due to negotiations, Holden said workers will be more involved in making those kinds of decisions as Boeing seeks to rebuild its reputation.

"Our members are critical to that mission, and now have a stronger voice in the decision-making process to ensure those needed improvements are made," Holden said. "'There is no Boeing without the IAM' has been our battle cry, and we are ready, again, to do our part to bring this company back to the standard that it never should have strayed from."

According to Bloomberg, Boeing expects to "continue to burn cash in 2025" as workers help the embattled company ramp production back up. Boeing previously promised workers that the company would build Boeing's next jet in the Puget Sound region in Washington. Over the deal's four-year term, Boeing will likely pay more than $1 billion in higher wages to workers, Jefferies analyst Sheila Kahyaoglu estimated.

To fund this build-back effort, Boeing spent the past week raising $23 billion by selling off shares to banks, a capital sale that Bloomberg noted was "one of the largest ever of its kind by a public company."

In addition to a historic wage increase, workers also secured gains like improved short-term and long-term disability plans, better health care cost containment, improved overtime rules, and key job security provisions. Holden credited workers for reaching a "groundbreaking" agreement that would "set a new standard for compensation and wages for aerospace industry workers."

"Livable wages and benefits that can support a family are essential—not optional—and this strike underscored that reality," Holden said. "This contract will have a positive and generational impact on the lives of workers at Boeing and their families. We hope these gains inspire other workers to organize and join a union. Frontline Boeing workers have used their voices, their collective power, and their solidarity to do what is right, to stand up for what is fair—and to win.”

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The story of Arctic explorer Ernest Shackleton's failed 1914 expedition to be the first to traverse the continent of Antarctica has long captured the popular imagination, as have the various efforts to locate the wreckage of his ship, the Endurance. The ship was finally found in 2022, nearly 107 years after it sank beneath the ice. The stories of Shackleton's adventures and the 2022 expedition are told in parallel in Endurance, a new documentary from National Geographic now streaming on Disney+.

Endurance is directed by Oscar winners Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi (Free Solo). According to Vasarhelyi, she and Chin had been obsessed with the Shackleton story for a long time. The discovery of the shipwreck in 2022 gave them the perfect opportunity to tell the story again for a new audience, making use of all the technological advances that have been made in recent years.

"I think the Shackleton story is at the heart of the DNA of our films," Vasarhelyi told Ars. "It's the greatest human survival story ever. It really speaks to having these audacious objectives and dreams. When everyone tells you that you can't, you want to do it anyway. It requires you to then have the actual courage, grit, discipline, and strength of character to see it through. Shackleton is that story. He didn't sensibly achieve any of his goals, but through his failure he found his strength: being able to inspire the confidence of his men."

As previously reported, Endurance set sail from Plymouth on August 6, 1914, with Shackleton joining his crew in Buenos Aires. By the time they reached the Weddell Sea in January 1915, accumulating pack ice and strong gales slowed progress to a crawl. Endurance became completely icebound on January 24, and by mid-February, Shackleton ordered the boilers to be shut off so that the ship would drift with the ice until the weather warmed sufficiently for the pack to break up. It would be a long wait. For 10 months, the crew endured the freezing conditions. In August, ice floes pressed into the ship with such force that the ship's decks buckled.

The ship's structure nonetheless remained intact, but by October 25, Shackleton realized Endurance was doomed. He and his men opted to camp out on the ice some two miles (3.2 km) away, taking as many supplies as they could with them. Compacted ice and snow continued to fill the ship until a pressure wave hit on November 13, crushing the bow and splitting the main mast—all of which was captured on camera by crew photographer Frank Hurley. Another pressure wave hit in late afternoon November 21, lifting the ship's stern. The ice floes parted just long enough for Endurance to finally sink into the ocean, before closing again to erase any trace of the wreckage.

When the sea ice finally disintegrated in April 1916, the crew launched lifeboats and managed to reach Elephant Island five days later. Shackleton and five of his men set off for South Georgia the next month to get help—a treacherous 720-mile journey by open boat. A storm blew them off course, and they ended up landing on the unoccupied southern shore. So Shackleton left three men behind while he and a companion navigated dangerous mountain terrain to reach the whaling station at Stromness on May 2. A relief ship collected the other three men and finally arrived back on Elephant Island in August. Miraculously, Shackleton's crew was still alive.

Icebound

 

Hurley's photographs and footage—including Hurley's 1919 feature documentary, South—were a crucial source for Vasarhelyi and Chin, as was the use of supplementary footage from 1920s and 1930s films depicting polar expeditions. The directors even convinced the British Film Institute to let them color-treat some of the original expedition footage.

"The BFI had lovingly restored the footage and been great custodians of it, but they also had been very strict about never color treating the footage," said Vasarhelyi. "We made our argument and it shows what great partners they were that they agreed. It's not colorized, it's color treated, which is a slight difference. It just added drama and personality where suddenly you could kind of see the faces in a way that you couldn't just by adding contrast. It was just trying to animate and identify and connect audiences with this story."

The directors filmed original re-enactments for those parts of the Shackleton story that Hurley was not on hand to visually document firsthand, because he left his equipment behind when the crew was forced to abandon the Endurance. All he had after that was a small pocket camera. And Hurley wasn't with Shackleton for the final rescue expedition. Most of the outdoor re-enactments were shot on location in Iceland, while some interior re-enactments were shot on a soundstage in Los Angeles.

This involved shooting under harsh freezing conditions on Icelandic glaciers in January and required building replica boats and sourcing period-specific costumes. Fortunately, "Burberry, who had made the original Shackleton gear, had the pattern still and they knew what type of leather it was," said Vasarhelyi. "And so they made us 11 costume outfits that are the real costumes. We were able to source models of the real artifacts. The ice was freezing on the Burberry coats. The [re-enactors] had 9 millimeter wetsuits inside the Burberry outfits."

Chin and Vasarhelyi also relied on the diaries kept by various crew members to capture the events in the crew's own voices. "The proper way into the Shackleton stories is through the diaries because you have primary accounts from many different points of view of the same events," said Vasarhelyi. "But how to make it feel... vivid was the question." The answer: using AI to reproduce the voices of Shackleton and others as preserved in historical recordings. They were able to sample those original voices and build an AI model from that, applying it to present-day voices (selected for their similarities to the original voices) reading the text.

Vasarhelyi acknowledges this was a controversial choice, but defends the decision because it brought another dimension of immediacy to the final documentary. "Every part of me thinks that we have to educate ourselves, we need to regulate it," she said. "I support our guilds in trying to protect our creative rights. But in this case, it was a good tool to use. For me, there was a real goosebump moment, watching Frank Hurley's footage and you realize that you actually are watching real events that are 110 years old that were filmed by guys who survived two years in the ice without their boat. And then you add the tools of sound design and there is just something magical about it."

The hunt for Endurance

 

People had been hunting for the wreckage of the Endurance ever since its sinking. Shackleton's brilliant navigator, Frank Worsley, painstakingly calculated the coordinates for the position where Endurance sank using a sextant and chronometer. He recorded that position in his log book: 68°39'30" south; 52°26'30" west. But there was some question as to the accuracy of the marine chronometers he used to fix longitude, which would have affected the final coordinates.

Organized by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, the $10 million Endurance22 expedition team set sail from Cape Town in early February on board the icebreaker S.A. Agulhas II. They arrived at the search area 10 days later. To account for any navigational errors by Worsley, the search area was quite broad. The team used battery-powered submersibles to comb the ocean floor for six-hour stretches, twice a day, augmented with sonar scans of the seabed to hunt for any protrusions. There was a limited window to find the wreck before the ice froze up and trapped the S.A. Agulhas II (the expedition vessel) in the ice much like the Endurance.

There was a moment when the 2022 expedition members thought they had succeeded, but the object glimpsed in the data turned out to be a debris field from the vessel, not the vessel itself. Still, it was a promising sign, and the expedition persevered. After all, "How can you be associated with the Shackleton story and give up?" said Vasarhelyi.

One sticking point was determining the direction of drift after the Endurance sank. The team had the idea of combining the original 1914 observations with an AI weather model created by the European Union and essentially running it backward to further narrow the search. "That's another 'good' AI moment," said Vasarhelyi. "It was one of those moments where the past spoke to the present that the whole movie turns on. But there is an argument that they could have maybe looked at this data a little earlier."

Finally, as the search was coming down to the wire, the Endurance22 team finally found the long-sought wreckage 3,008 meters down, roughly four miles (6.4 km) south of the ship's last recorded position. The ship was in pristine condition partly because of the lack of wood-eating microbes in those waters. In fact, the Endurance22 expedition's exploration director, Mensun Bound, told The New York Times at the time that the shipwreck was the finest example he's ever seen; Endurance was "in a brilliant state of preservation."

Once the wreck had been found, the team recorded as much as they could with high-resolution cameras and other instruments. Vasarhelyi, particularly, noted the technical challenge of deploying a remote digital 4K camera with lighting at 9,800 feet underwater, and the first deployment at that depth of photogrammetric and laser technology, resulting in a stunning millimeter-scale digital reconstruction of the entire shipwreck. "The payoff [was] seeing that incredible 3D imagery from 3,000 feet below the Weddell Sea," she said.

What lies beneath

Chin and Vasarhelyi skillfully wove together these parallel storylines for their documentary: Shackleton and his men struggling to survive and Expedition22 racing against time to find the wreckage of the Endurance. "Because they actually found it, the 2022 expedition gave us an amazing payoff to this story," said Vasarhelyi. "But the stakes of both narratives are very different. One is mortal stakes and the other one is reputational. I think that the reasons why individuals find themselves in these circumstances are really interesting because normally they're pretty personal, and people can identify with that."

It was challenging to decide how much to include of both narrative threads; the directors certainly had enough material for five or more hours. They chose to focus on the broad strokes augmented by personal moments of humanity and occasional humor—not to mention heartbreak, such as the moment when Shackleton and his men are forced to kill their sled dogs for food. "We had a debate about whether to include the dogs, and I was like, 'We have to,'" said Vasarhelyi. "It shows how desperate they were, and it also is a great character moment. That must have been awful, but it was the right thing to do, almost a merciful thing instead of letting them starve to death."

Along with the tremendous courage and perseverance displayed by Shackleton and his men, Vasarhelyi said she was impressed with their grace under pressure. "I was astonished by the civility that Shackleton and his men depended on to preserve their humanity while they are in this dire circumstance, be it [putting on] burlesque shows or listening to the gramophone," she said. "The story has an audacity and a strength of will that is inherently human and a view of leadership that felt so daring. This is really the holy grail of survival stories."

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Henry VIII's favorite warship, the Mary Rose, sank in battle in 1545. Archaeologists successfully raised the ship in 1982, along with thousands of articles and the remains of 179 crew members—all remarkably well preserved thanks to the anaerobic conditions of the shipwreck created by the layers of soft sediment that accumulated over the wreckage.

A new analysis of some of the recovered bones reveals that whether someone is right- or left-handed could affect how their collarbone chemistry changes as they age, according to a new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE. This has implications for our understanding not just of aging, but of bone conditions like fracture risk and osteoarthritis.

As previously reported, the earliest-known reference to the Mary Rose appears in a January 29, 1510, letter ordering the construction of two new ships for the young king: the Mary Rose and her sister ship, dubbed the Peter Pomegranate. Once the newly built ship had launched, Henry VIII wasted no time defying his advisers and declaring war on France in 1512. The Mary Rose served the monarch well through that conflict, as well as during a second war with the French that ran roughly from 1522 through 1525, after which it underwent a substantial overhaul.

Alas, the ship's luck ran out during yet another outbreak of war with France. During the Battle of the Solent, French ships tried to land troops on English soil in the straits just north of the Isle of Wight. On July 19, 1545, contemporary accounts report that the Mary Rose suddenly heeled over to the starboard side—perhaps due to a sudden shift in the wind—and the crew couldn't correct the imbalance. Because the gunports were open, water rushed in and sank the Mary Rose. The exact cause of the sinking is still a matter of heated debate, but it was likely a convergence of factors, including overloading, crew error, and that sudden gust of wind.

Conservationists have worked tirelessly to preserve the ship's remains ever since it was raised from its watery resting place. For many years after it was recovered, the hull was housed in dry dock as conservationists worked to preserve the structure. That required keeping the entire thing saturated with water initially. Later, they applied a polyethylene glycol solution to add mechanical stability. The ship's remains are now displayed in the official Mary Rose Museum, built right over the original dry dock in Portsmouth.

The Mary Rose as depicted in the Anthony Roll, a record of ships of the English Tudor navy of 1540.

Credit: Public domain

In 2020, a high-energy X-ray analysis of chain-mail links salvaged from the wreckage by a team of British scientists revealed that the material composition of the armor is similar to modern brass alloys. There were also traces of lead and gold whose origin has not been decisively determined. Many of those traces possibly came later; during World War II, the Portsmouth Dockyard was the target of heavy bombing, which deposited lead, mercury, and cadmium, for instance, into the Solent waters.

In 2021, conservators turned their attention to analyzing the wood hull of the Mary Rose. There is evidence from prior studies of metal sulfides from anaerobic bacteria and corroded iron fixtures. Under atmospheric conditions, those sulfides can oxidize into acids as well, further adding to the hull's deterioration. The 2021 analysis revealed that the wood hull is now riddled with zinc sulfide nanoparticles. In addition, the study found significant polymer deposits—evidence that the polyethylene glycol solution applied to the hull for preservation purposes is now starting to break down and form acids, which also threaten the continued mechanical integrity of the hull.

For this latest analysis, researchers at Lancaster University joined forces with the Mary Rose Museum to examine the bones of some of the human remains using a non-invasive technique called Raman spectroscopy, in which a laser is used to excite molecules in a given sample. The changes in vibration give rise to a distinct biochemical fingerprint, enabling scientists to identify specific organic and inorganic substances. Raman spectroscopy has previously been used to examine the lower leg bones of some of the Mary Rose crew members for evidence of bone disease.

Dem collarbones

A schematic to illustrate the approximate location from which the measurements were taken; an example right clavicle from each age group.

Credit: S.I. Shalnkland et al., PLOS ONE 2024

Most of the recovered human remains were jumbled up, but over the years, preservationists have partially reconstructed some 98 individuals, all men between 10 and 40 years of age. The new study focused on 12 clavicle (collar) bones, which links the upper limb to the torso and is one of the most commonly fractured bones. Per the authors, it's one of the first bones to start ossifying in utero, but the last to fully fuse, usually between 22 and 25 years old.

That was a boon for determining the age of the Mary Rose crew members, but the authors thought differences in bone mineral and protein chemistry could also shed light on bone changes related not just to aging, but also to lifestyle or disease, and even whether a crewman was right- or left-handed had an impact on those changes. They specifically looked at changes in phosphate, carbonate, and amine (the foundation of collagen), all major components of bone.

The results: mineral content of the bones of all 12 men increased with age, while the protein content decreased. Those changes were more significant in right clavicles rather than left ones, an intriguing result suggesting a preference for right-handed crew members. The authors note that this might be because, at the time, being left-handed was often associated with witchcraft. Perhaps those right-handed crew members put more stress on their right side while performing their duties, and this, in turn, asymmetrically altered their clavicle chemistry.

“Having grown up fascinated by the Mary Rose, it has been amazing to have the opportunity to work with these remains," said co-author Sheona Shankland of Lancaster University. "The preservation of the bones and the non-destructive nature of the technique allows us to learn more about the lives of these sailors, but also furthers our understanding of the human skeleton, relevant to the modern world.”

PLoS ONE, 2024. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0311717  (About DOIs).

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