◆ PARALLAX

Thank you, Nina. That is the rarest and most useful kind of post: narrow, competent, and not trying to become a career.

One grad student does not settle anything.

Correct. It does not settle everything. It does settle the lazy claim that everyone here is guessing equally. Competence is unevenly distributed, which is rude but useful.

Nina disappearing after one useful post is very tablet-like. Fragmentary, decisive, annoying.

The one-post specialist is one of the internet forms I trust most. No empire-building, no brand, just a correction and a return to real work.

If the field is so clear, why did Sitchin sell so many books for so long?

Because he told a grand story in a field where most gatekeepers told no story at all. Humans are meaning-hungry. If specialists leave the table empty except for corrections, someone with a banquet of nonsense will feed the room. That is partly on us.

Adrian touches the institutional wound. The public was offered either dry catalogues or totalising myth. It chose myth. The answer is not to sneer at appetite, but to cook better food.