I just learned that one of the featured talks in the US Pavilion at Davos (I detest Davos anyway) is titled Did God Take The World’s First Selfie in 33 A.D. It’s about the Shroud of Turin, which some gullible adherents think is a genuine artifact from Jesus’ time, rather than a medieval fake used to gouge money out of Christian pilgrims.
I can’t even.
This is what the United States of America looks like to the rest of the world: a nation of rubes and yokels.
USA House denied entry to Gavin Newsome.
I heard the theory is, Leonardo da Vinci was hired by an Italian duke to make a more believable fake as substitute for an obvious fake that had been in the family’s possession a couple of centuries.
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The method was apparently to use a panopticon to project an image that served as outline for a painting. As a projection on a flat surface induces a distorted image, the lower part of the image is elongated.
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I hope Lionardo or whoever did it got well paid.
David @ 1
It happened two weeks ago, but it is the first time I hear about it. The venue was pressured by the US government to deny him entry – a classic petty Trump move.
The Shroud of Turin was known to be a later work of art a long time ago.
They even took a small part of it for Carbon 14 dating.
There is a small group of cultists who spend a huge amount of effort waving away all the evidence.
IIRC, they are called “Shroudies”.
Davos sucks anyway.
It is a small group of very rich and powerful men who pretend they have something interesting and important to say.
A sign that the US has now reached mediaeval times in its rush back through the ages.
birgerjohansson@3-
The version I heard was that the shroud was likely draped over a model and painted/stained, hence the geometric distortion when the cloth was laid out flat.
Why now? It’s quite a nice town with a very interesting insect fauna in the surrounding mountain streams.
I heard that the proportions of the shroud image do not match what you would get if you draped it over an actual body.
3D analysis reveals Shroud of Turin image likely came from sculpture, not Jesus’ body (August 2025)
Maybe Jesus H. Christ just had a very weird body. Maybe that’s why the Gospel writers never mentioned his physical characteristics, including even hair and eye color.
Christian group plans world’s largest Jesus statue in Spain, based on Shroud of Turin features
This could be even worse than the “caucasian Jesus” traceable to medieval art.