So I bought this mystery antique dog skull a while back and as I’ve been studying it I was trying to figure out what breed it could be. I figured it’d be some common breed/mixed breed since most mystery dogs are, but the more I looked at the shape of the cranium the more I saw that it couldn’t be something like a lab or shepherd. It didn’t have the right kind of shape of any common breed. That’s when I noticed the skull had a downward slope to it, and then it hit me.
The skull is around 100 years old, so the breed prolly looked different then it does now.
The skull has the look and feel of a thicker, sturdy dog.
The muzzle structure is facing downward.
It’s an antique bull terrier! The structure is nearly identical to the 1931 example.
I’ve wanted to get a bull terrier for a while now and it turned out I already had one lol.
Late night pic but here’s the profile. This is being held level to how the skull would sit in a normal position. The muzzle is angled downwards, though not as extreme as the current look of the breed. It’s the right size, density, and the size of the teeth also match what I’ve seen with bull terriers today, and I can’t really think of another breed with these same features. Doesn’t mean the animal was purebred, but still, it matches the 1915-1930s examples, which would also be around the time the skull was cleaned. It would also make sense for a breed like this to be cleaned as a study skull? This looks to be professionally cleaned, which wouldn’t be as common practice 100 years ago and would prolly be reserved for more interesting breeds at the time (speculation, but I’m just trying to reason things out).
Either way it’s really fun to guess and figure stuff like this out. It’s one of the many reasons I love collecting because you NEVER know what you may come accross, and that’s really exciting.
This wooden coffin bears decoration related to Chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead on its long sides. On one side Anubis can be seen mummifying the body of Osiris (with whom the deceased is now identified), while Isis and Nephthys kneel at either side. Khonsu and his wife observe in the form of human-headed birds. Two lions can be seen above, with the sun-disc rising over the horizon between them.
On the opposite side of the coffin, a black-skinned god represents the fertility of the Nile Valley, while Khonsu and his wife sit within a booth in the register below. At either end of the coffin the goddesses Isis, Nephthys, Serket and Neith can be seen.
This coffin was found in the tomb of Sennedjem (TT1), Khonsu’s father, at Deir el-Medina.
New Kingdom, 19th Dynasty, ca. 1292-1189 BC.
Now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. JE 27302
A very detailed report illustrating Turkey’s continued support of Daesh/ISIS fascists, which it’s now integrating into the ranks of the “Free Syrian Army” as cannon fodder in its campaign to wipe Rojava of the Kurds living there off the map.
(via )
Amazon’s surveillance doorbell marketers help cops get warrantless access to video footage from peoples’ homes
Every time I write about the unfolding scandal of Amazon’s secret partnerships with hundreds of US police departments
who get free merch and access to Ring surveillance doorbell footage in
exchange for acting as a guerrilla marketing street-team for Ring, I get
an affronted email from Amazon PR, implying that I got it all wrong,
but unwilling to enter into detailed discussions of what’s actually
going on (the PR flacks also usually ask to be quoted officially but
anonymously, something I never agree to).
For example, when I published this story,
an Amazon PR person wrote to tell me that the statement that “Amazon
provides their local law enforcement with comprehensive dossiers on
everyone who activates a Ring doorbell, including ‘where they live, the
MAC addresses of each of their devices, and how to reach them by email
or phone’” was incorrect, but could not explain why a public records
request showed that the cops had all that information. At first, they
said that the Ring owners must have provided it voluntarily to law
enforcement, but when I asked if they really believed that someone had
found the MAC address for their surveillance doorbells and painstakingly
entered the long hexadecimal number into a website or dictated it over
the phone, they said “We defer to law enforcement for questions about
their process and operations.”
One common thread in the PR spin I get on this story is that any access
that law enforcement gets to Ring footage is a result of the cops asking
– via Amazon – whether Ring customer will voluntarily provide it.
They do not mention that if a Ring customer refuses a law-enforcement
request, the cops can just tell Amazon that they need it for their investigation and obtain it that way.
But they also don’t mention that Amazon has a whole program devoted to
helping cops convince Ring owners to be part of a public-private
surveillance grid, and that providing law-enforcement with warrantless
access to surveillance footage is a form of civic virtue.
A newly released tranche of public records
– from Maywood and Bloomfield, New Jersey – show that Ring’s internal
product team devotes substantial effort to coaching the cops in how to
prime their communities to provide warrantless access to surveillance
footage. These “Partner Success Associates” help cops spin a message
encouraging Ring owners and others sign up for Amazon’s “Neighbors” app
(which streams terrifying messages about local crimes, ganked from 911
dispatch calls, which Amazon secretly does deals to obtain), and then they use the app, and other social media, to normalize the idea of turning over video to the cops without a warrant.
This program shows how Amazon has constructed a business that rewards
cops for promoting its products: you sell Ring doorbells, we’ll get you
surveillance footage without your having to convince a judge that you
really need it.
