Matthew Selheimer, PhD

Adapted from Axelsson et al. 2013 Fig 2c: Histogram showing the distribution of diploid amylase copy number in wolf (n=35, blue) and dog (n=136, red). Dogs carry more copies of the starch-digesting gene AMY2B than wolves. Additional copies make dogs better than wolves at digesting starchy foods like grains & vegetables.

Dogs evolved to eat your leftovers! Comparing dog & wolf genomes revealed dogs have up to 30 EXTRA copies of the amylase gene (AMY2B) that helps digest starch. This is a key genomic signature of living alongside humans & table scraps for thousands of years 🐕 www.nature.com/articles/nat... #2026MMM

No way! 😂🤣🔥🔥🔥👇

You might say it’s the beginning of the end, or perhaps it’s the end of the beginning. Some things are still beginning, others are about to end. Of that I am mostly sure. For now. Ok, Let’s start over. Today’s no good. Tomorrow looks better. Yeah, that’s a good day. But not as good as yesterday.

And yet we keep doing it, year after year.

My photo shows a museum display with colourful Minoan pottery cups arranged on three clear shelves, one above the other. These cups, known as Kamares Ware, are from Phaistos, Crete. They were made in palace workshops, c. 1800-1700 BC. The cups range in shape and size from conic and cylindrical cups (top and middle shelves) to hemispherical and carinated shaped cups (bottom shelf). They are decorated with multi-coloured geometric motifs; with spirals and swirls painted in red and white pigment on black.

Sipping my coffee ☕️ and thinking about these marvellous Minoan cups!

They look so modern it’s incredible to think they were made during the Bronze Age some 3,800 years ago!

Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Crete. 📷 by me

#Archaeology

I’ve competed twice in the Division II US National Fencing (Epee) Championship tournament.

UK Businesses told to brace cyber defenses amid Iran conflict risk NCSC urges all to review posture as escalating tensions increase risk of indirect digital spillover The UK's cybersecurity agency is warning British organizations to brace for potential digital blowback as the Middle East conflict spills further into the online world.…

FYI: UK Businesses told to brace cyber defenses amid Iran conflict risk

Pompeii's Forum (southwest corner) looking through the double colonnade into the Basilica. Note the walking surface of the forum would have been covered entirely with large marble paving stones, while only some remain today. Also note the Doric first order and Ionic second order of the capitals.

Bronze Age swords and arrowheads dating back almost 4,000 years are seized by CBP in Philly

Considered cultural artifacts, the items were imported into the United States without proper permitting, and were likely the product of “illicit excavations of burial sites,” federal officials said.

I see this regularly in the clients I work with. “Do AI” mandates with little to no training or budget support and no projects / tasks taken off of workers’ plates. That’s a recipe for continued failed pilots and production use case risks.

AIs are happy to launch nukes in simulated combat scenarios : Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini all had different personalities and reasoning tactics, but the endgame was the same

And the response will be unfettered use of Musk’s Grok from xAI. What could go wrong?

www.theregister.com/2026/02/25/a...

Truly a struggle since personal email data is now openly sold for marketers. Set up a rule for emails that contain “unsubscribe” to move to a separate folder you can review if/when you have time. This can help a lot while allowing order/shipment emails from vendors since they don’t have unsubscribe.

Wise words.

There's still time to register for tomorrow's Archaeology Hour lecture at 8pm ET! Join the AIA for a virtual trip to West Africa as Akin Ogundiran delivers "Metropolitan Walls of the Ọyọ Empire."

📅 Feb 25, 2026 I 8pm ET
Register & get the recording: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Many people don't know about Ostia Antica, ancient Rome's port city - close to Fiumicino airport and 30-minute ride from the city center. The excavated area as large as Pompeii, beach clubs nearby for lunch, a swim, and sunset view over the Tyrrhenian Sea. Makes for a lovely day if you are in Rome.

Whenever I worry about the negative effects of AI and how those could grow, I think about the fact that auto-correct still can't figure out what I'm trying to type a lot of the time and both ChatGPT and Copilot regularly hallucinate on stuff you'd think they shouldn't...and then I get more worried.

Rooster on Vieques, Puerto Rico

“Roe and his co-author, archaeobotanist Amaia Arranz-Otaegui, were surprised to find that many early crop ancestors appear to have been concentrated in the Mediterranean coast of the Levant, suggesting this area acted as a ‘refugium’ during the rather extreme climate of the late Ice Age.”

My photo shows two Roman gold-band mosaic glass bottles on display at the Met Museum. Made of mosaic patterned translucent cobalt blue, turquoise green, and opaque white glass, together with gold leaf encased in colourless glass. Both bottles have round bodies, flat bases, and cyclindrical necks with horizontal everted rims. The larger bottle on the left is 10.5 cm tall, the smaller bottle on the right is 4.8 cm tall. They are displayed on a clear glass shelf against a light beige background. According to the museum label: “Gold-band cast glass was a particularly opulent type of early Roman glassware. It combines canes of brightly colored translucent and opaque glass with strips of gold leaf encased between layers of colorless glass. Only a limited number of vessel shapes were made in this way, and some of the most common are small globular or carinated bottles such as these. They were presumably used to store expensive cosmetics and perfumes”.

Luxury Roman scent bottles made of gold-band mosaic glass. 1st century AD.

This opulent glass was made by encasing strips of gold leaf between layers of colourless glass.

Beautiful example of the skill of ancient glassmakers some 2,000 years ago!

The Met. 📷 by me

#Archaeology

Students unearth remains in possible execution pit on training dig The discovery was made at Wandlebury Country Park near Cambridge

📰 Students uncover a medieval mass grave in Cambridgeshire, possibly a site of execution from clashes between Saxons and Vikings during the 9th century AD

🏺 #ArchaeologyNews via @the-independent.com

www.independent.co.uk/news/science...

This also translates to burning $700 every minute or about $11 every second. For 693 years!!!

Yes, but only marginally well despite 30 years of practice…

Got a new fuzz petal for my guitar setup this weekend. Having fun reliving Smashing Pumpkins tunes from the 90s.

Led Zeppelin - Moby Dick (Official Audio) YouTube video by Led Zeppelin

Or listening to the awesome Zeppelin tune by the same name: youtu.be/2N_xP67utPk

What is meant by year two — Is that a second year of a two year study?

Nice to catch this touring exhibition with loans from Rome, Ostia, Naples/Pompeii, and more.

Last time I was in the Hilton Union Square Sky Bar was before the Salesforce tower was constructed. Has an even better view now. #blastfromthepast #whatsoldisnew