Cheese Ends, 2026-05-04

Let’s see if I can do this without depressing myself.

 

(Picture from here.)

 

Neanderthals have been prominent in my fiction since the very beginning. In fact, one of my first stories, A Capella, involved Neanderthal and human interaction at the very late end of Neanderthal occupation of Europe. 

 

This came from a lecture by a docent at the Museum of Science in Boston. He was talking about the cave paintings at Lascaux in France. “Who made these paintings?” he said. Then, he held up a Neanderthal skull. “Not Neanderthals.” He said it in such a contemptuous way I went home and wrote the story.

 

This is the thing about humans: we always want to be the best of the best. It’s not enough that we’ve taken over the world. We have to have always been the best. We were in Neanderthal Country and they died out? Clearly because we outcompeted them. 

 

Rizza. Razza.

 

Anyway, Neanderthals have gotten a bum rap for well over a century. 

 

This started to change as more and more evidence started to show up saying it ain’t necessarily so. 

 

They had glue. They carved objects of arts. They had rope. They used ochre. Like humans, they ate anything.

 

And, of course, they interbred with us. That, by itself, was enough for us to elevate their standing.

 

The final nail in this particular coffin was a recent study comparing brain casts. These casts fit nicely within the human range. There was, some time back, an attempt to determine brain organization from such casts and the conclusion was that Neanderthals were stupid. It was not the case.

 

Neanderthals and modern humans are hypothesized to derive from Homo heidelbergensis. Neanderthals lived from 400 thousand years ago to about 40 thousand years ago. Evidence suggests the lineages diverged somewhere between 650 and 500 thousand years ago. 

 

It’s my opinion that they must have shared a lot of traits including big brains when they split. Otherwise, we’re in the position of trying to explain two organisms evolving essentially the same brain mass separately. I think that’s a stretch.

 

It’s been gratifying over the last forty years or so to see the world to come around to my point of view.

 

However, I will point out that Neanderthals coexisted with megafauna for a couple of hundred thousand years. The megafauna didn’t last 10k once humans came on the scene. And we wonder why Neanderthals disappeared.

 

Speaking of megafauna, there’s a new apex predator on the late Cretaceous block. One that had guts but no backbone.

 

Enter Nanaimoteuthis haggerti, a 19-meter (62 feet) octopus that swam with the mosasaurs.

 

What makes this interesting to me is that you’d think that an octopus this big would be a good meal for something like a mosasaur. But it’s just too damned big.

 

Consider sperm whales whose favorite meal is giant squids. Sperm whales top out at 16 meters (52 feet.) Giant squids top out at 5 meters (16 feet.) That’s a rough whale/squid ratio of 3/1. Sperm whales often show significant wounds from the squids showing it wasn’t just a clambake for them. 

 

So, with our 19-meter octopus, and our completely speculative pseudoscientific analysis, we’d have to have a 57-meter predator to reliably prey on it. Not bloody likely.

 

Coupled with the idea that an octopus is really, really smart. A very big, strong, fast, smart predator with the octopus ability to camouflage itself. Okay. Yeah. I can see the apex predator. 

 

Something a little sad: Voyager 1 has had to shut off another instrument to conserve power.

 

Voyager 1 has been the little spacecraft that could. Since it would never be able to generate enough solar power in the outer solar system, it uses three small nuclear generators to keep going. These used plutonium-238’s fission to produce heat and from that electricity. But fission comes from degradation of the material and the plutonium is producing less and less heat over time. Which means less and less power. The half life of Pu238 is about 87 years and Voyager 1 has been out there for 49 years. We’re coming up on the Pu 238 having exhausted half its power.

 

NASA has suggested Voyager 1 will no longer be able to power any instruments after 2027. After that, it will still send us a signal until, finally, in 2036 they will be out of signal range. 

 

Goodbye little prince.

 

Staying in space, the Roman telescope is now ready for launch. 

 

That doesn’t mean it’s on a launch vehicle with the countdown commencing. It means it’s been assembled and tested and is ready for its September launch. Of course, these days, it’s not launched until it’s launched. And even then, at any moment, funding could be pulled to monitor it. 

 

Which brings us to the Orange Voldemort firing the entire National Science Board. The fact that the members were planning to release a report that the US was ceding its scientific leadership to China (It is. No. He is.) had nothing to do with it. It’s not enough that he is trying to stymie the most efficient energy resources (losing this in court) or illegally keeping less efficient power plants in operation. No criticism is too small to be overlooked, no action too petty not to be indulged in.

 

Remember Project 2025? The guidance OV said he knew nothing about and instantly tried to implement the moment he took office? Factcheck.org put together a status report on how much he’s actually managed to ram down our throats. See here. 

 

Completely unsurprising and worse than I could possibly have imagined.