The boring documents are often the most important. “it is difficult to overstate the value of the papyri we do recover from Egypt. Documents containing census and tax information can give us important clues about the structure of ancient households… Read More »Collections: Why Roman Egypt Was Such a Strange Province
2 and 3 work great if you are wrong. “there are three ways to approach a problem: Move the world towards the desired state Change your perception of the current state Change your desired state” https://andreasfragner.com/writing/three-ways-to-solve-problems
Evolution, murder and rap.
One of the best TED talks still.
Measuring stuff is hard. “Microwave ovens run at roughly one horsepower. This sounds like nonsense unless you’re familiar with math, energy, work, dimensional analysis, electromagnetism, radiation, dielectric heating, magnetron design, and thermodynamics.Well, it sounds like nonsense until you microwave your… Read More »100,000,000 CROWPOWER and no horses on the moon
Let’s get weird. “Science requires deviant thinking. So it’s no wonder that, as we see a decline in deviance everywhere else, we’re also seeing a decline in the rate of scientific progress. New ideas are less and less likely to… Read More »The Decline of Deviance
People do not change that fast. “How we view the past has a tremendous influence on what we think about the present. In particular, the tendency to view the distant past as a time of unrestrained barbarism provides us with… Read More »New Acquisitions: How It Wasn’t: Game of Thrones and the Middle Ages, Part I
It was worse than in the movie. “This is perhaps the most glaring way that 300 sugar-coats the agoge. In the film, Leonidas graduates by slaying a wolf that was hunting him. But it is almost certain that the real… Read More »Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part I: Spartan School
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