Complex Numbers

Catstory

Today's link is ancient (2007), but short and about cats.

A Brief History of House Cats  
It may be that “nobody owns a cat,” but scientists now say the popular pet has lived with people for 12,000 years

It's possible that new science has come out on the subject since then, but who cares when the illustration is a kitty with a ball of yarn?

Speaking of science, that picture reminded me of string theory: The Universe is a big ball of string, and God is a cat.

Cats were first domesticated in the Near East, and some of the study authors speculate that the process began up to 12,000 years ago.

Headline: 12,000 years. Body text: "speculation." And online journalism has only gotten worse since the noughties.

While 12,000 years ago might seem a bold estimate—nearly 3,000 before the date of the Cyprus tomb's cat—it actually is a perfectly logical one, since that is precisely when the first agricultural societies began to flourish in the Middle East's Fertile Crescent.

Sure, I get the logic behind it, but it's still speculative.

Cats, on the other hand, only became useful to people when we began to settle down, till the earth and—crucially—store surplus crops. With grain stores came mice, and when the first wild cats wandered into town, the stage was set for what the Science study authors call "one of the more successful 'biological experiments' ever undertaken." The cats were delighted by the abundance of prey in the storehouses; people were delighted by the pest control.

I still don't know why everyone who writes about cats have to defend their "usefulness." How "useful" are the paintings in the Sistine Chapel? How "useful" is a ballet? Cats are living art, and they don't need to justify their existence.

Of course, sometimes they're living art that pukes on the couch, but still.

Anyway, worth reading the article, but I wanted to get on with my movie review.

One-Sentence Movie Review: Spider-Man: No Way Home

It is not easy to write a review that does this movie justice without spoiling the best surprises; all I can really say is that if you're already a fan you'll love it, and if you're not, you'll have no idea what's going on, but if that's the case you're not going to a comics-adapted movie anyway, and you should probably go see Licorice Pizza instead (which I haven't seen yet but looks artsy as hell).

Rating: 5/5