“‘If the Black Death caused the Renaissance will the COVID
pandemic cause a golden age?’ You see the problems with the question now: the
Black Death didn’t cause the Renaissance, not by itself, and the Renaissance was
not a golden age, at least not the kind that you would want to live in, or to
see your children live in.”
posted 8/26/2022 8:00pm ∞
“Not a single century passed in which this spot was not being used and
transformed, and every transformation is still here. And all that time, from
the first sacred spring, to the Mithraism, to today’s Irish Dominicans, this
spot has been sacred.”
Ada Palmer ,
The Shape of Rome
(August 15, 2013 )
posted 4/10/2021 9:22pm ∞
“They didn’t give a shit about journalism; they just wanted prime real estate
that they could develop. And news organizations had it in the form of buildings
in the middle of town. So financiers squeezed the news orgs until there was no
money to be squeezed and then they hung them out to dry.”
posted 12/7/2022 8:28pm ∞
“[W]hile the rest of the world’s smart phone adoption began with the iPhone,
Japan was years ahead — but alone. The result was that Japan’s smart phone
culture evolved separately from the rest of the world. There was less emphasis
on large pictures and text was more acceptable since it had been the norm since
the early days.”
posted 12/2/2022 8:00pm ∞
“[O]ctopuses can alter the coloration of their skin, with darker colors
typically being indicative of aggression. The authors found that octopuses with
dark coloration threw debris more forcefully and were more likely to hit another
octopus.”
posted 11/26/2022 8:00pm ∞