Just to jump off of the painting, The Lady of Shallott is is a lovely poem which, I daresay, was improved by Loreena McKennitt’s arrangement into a song.

It certainly seems promising, and I am like a moth to a flame with anything involving recovering lost texts, but I feel like we’ve done some interesting reporting on the horse before checking to see if the cart has anything in it. :-)

No need to shit on dreams, yet, though. I really do hope this leads to a breakthrough, because I believe the previous scanning methods relied on actual physical differences (e.g. tiny stylus scratches) rather than the ink. This could be a huge shortcut.

Sounds promising, but it didn’t seem clear from the article whether there is any particular reason to expect to find much lead or another metal in the Vesuvius scrolls’ ink. I guess somebody found one fragment that had some, which is not nothing, but fingers crossed that it was common.

Usually about 11 or 12.

We in Scotland take no responsibility for this crime against humanity.

Fried Mars bars have a lot of heavy lifting to do to make up for this one.

Never trust anything the British came up with during rationing.