Cities aren’t what they used to be. “The role of infrastructure is also different. We are also used to cities as the center-point lynch-pins of infrastructure networks – roads, rail, sea routes, fiber-optic cable, etc. That isn’t false when applied… Read More »Collections: The Lonely City, Part I: The Ideal City
Is it talent tough or some stuff from earlier in life? Some basics missed? “I tend to think of social norms as contracts bargained between different groups. In the case of attitudes towards intelligence, those two groups are smart people… Read More »The Parable Of The Talents
Bad money. https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
“Smartphones grab our attention so powerfully that if they merely vibrate in our pockets for a tenth of a second, many of us will interrupt a face-to-face conversation, just in case the phone is bringing us an important update.“ https://whathappenedin2007.com
No, we are not working more than in the middle ages. “So on the one hand the work hours are somewhat flexible. On the other hand as functionally anyone who has ever worked on a farm or spoken with someone… Read More »Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part IVb: Working Days
How to save in middle ages? “Some amount of moveable property might be worth keeping safe as security against catastrophe or as a supply for payments – fabric was a good option for this, being immediately useful, valuable and portable… Read More »Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part IVa: Subsistence and a Little More
People had less children in history than you thought. “Our model Egyptian woman, married at 17, experiences nine live births and four (or three, depending on when menopause arrives) miscarriages. With nine live births and a 55% child mortality rate,… Read More »Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part IIIb: Children and Childrearing
Better is not always better. “There are several problems with these assertions. Yes, the Tiger tank was formidable in terms of armor and firepower. Yet its weight, fuel consumption, maintenance burden, and mechanical unreliability rendered it strategically inferior” https://secretaryrofdefenserock.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-allied-technological
Marriage in the past looked different that I thought. “these societies are substantially less individualist than most modern societies: they understand individuals primarily as filling a role within a larger community, as parts of a whole, gears in a machine… Read More »Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part IIIa: Family Formation
I have no idea what to think about this. “As I ate dinner one night at the Ritz-Carlton, in a Chinese restaurant overlooking the indoor swimming pool, I reflected that the promise of a five-star hotel is insulation, a cocoon… Read More »How Many Comedians Does It Take to Change a Country?