One thought is that this represents some sort of an increase in religiosity compared to the old faiths.
— LiorLefineder (@lefineder) August 6, 2024
When Herodotus mentions that the Egyptians worshiped cats, it seems to us that this couldn't have been taken fully seriously, but it was.https://t.co/ZaFqiQSGsu
"UNRWA is not 100% terrorists, just 50%", according to the @nytimes 🙄 https://t.co/zXLtT8mU06
— Leslie Kajomovitz (@lkajomovitz) August 5, 2024
What do you notice about the average American woman? pic.twitter.com/cQbpNlnTPC
— Matt Wallace (@MattWallace888) July 29, 2024
"They hit 160% harder." - Olympian @sharrond62 MBE explains the staggering difference between male and female athletes. pic.twitter.com/kSB1ndMsyB
— TRIGGERnometry (@triggerpod) August 5, 2024
One of the more inexplicable historical patterns is the gradual worldwide disappearance of pagan traditional beliefs to "book" religions, Christianity, Islam, Manichaeism, and Buddhism.
— LiorLefineder (@lefineder) August 6, 2024
Never heard a good theory for why that would be so.
I worked retail when Obama care became law and before I could work OT as much as I wanted but when it passed it meant my hours got restricted to 34 a week so they didn’t have to give me full benefits. So I didn’t get healthcare and my paychecks were smaller. https://t.co/yL6zUktJbf
— memetic_sisyphus (@memeticsisyphus) August 5, 2024
The elegance of the Greek change of guard 🇬🇷
— I Find This Interesting! (@Interesting_000) July 28, 2024
pic.twitter.com/3mfi9EoQoc
When your dog hears a bag of treats being opened. #MosaicMonday #ClassicsTwitter #Archaeology pic.twitter.com/S4bZZKTSbB
— Angela O'Brien (@GrecianGirly) July 29, 2024
I wrote about the urban family exodus.
— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) August 5, 2024
America's biggest and richest cities are losing children at an alarming rate.
From 2020 to 2023, the number of kids under 5 declined by
- almost 20% in NYC
- about 15% in LA, SF, Chicago, and St Louis
- >10% in NoLA, Philly, Honolulu pic.twitter.com/QlMvT4TxCw
The wonderful Art Deco "Egyptian Theatre" from 1929, DeKalb, Illinois, U.S.
— ArtNouveauDeco (@NouveauDeco) August 4, 2024
After the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922 in Egypt, there were over 100 theatres in the U.S. in "Egyptian style".
Today only six remain. pic.twitter.com/LF6vcMOlmx
This is, like, one of the most-retold chapters in the Bible! They made a musical about it!
— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) August 5, 2024
If you are secular or near-secular, and you are going to write something about a faith, you should ask someone who actively practices it to look it over for these sorts of errors. https://t.co/ynGpDZ578a
Sheep dog puppy's first day on the job pic.twitter.com/FWnmM2qT9V
— B&S (@_B___S) July 29, 2024
To creatively insult without actually swearing, just use this Shakespearean Insult Kit. Combine one word from each column, & preface it with “Thou”, to create satisfyingly impolite abuse such as “Thou beslubbering, pottle-deep clotpole” https://t.co/qOzOQmsARQ pic.twitter.com/y7XpOPusLs
— Journal of Art in Society (@artinsociety) July 30, 2024
The U-shaped relationship between Money & Fertility you may have seen on Twitter.
— Brad Wilcox (@BradWilcoxIFS) August 29, 2024
Doesn’t exist in the real world.
The links between $ and total fertility rate vary a lot by race, ethnicity, & nativity, per new @lymanstoneky @FamStudies:https://t.co/Yg38jU3xVj pic.twitter.com/UW9ym0Tvcp
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homo fabernoun
ho·mo fa·ber ¦hō(ˌ)mōˈfäbə(r), -ˌbe(ə)r; -fābə-1: the human being as the maker or creator
2: in Bergsonism : the human being as engaged in transforming both the self morally and material things —contrasted with homo sapiens
Changing of the guard, Indian-Pakistan border pic.twitter.com/JcnyZj09NV
— Historic Vids (@historyinmemes) July 28, 2024
If she wanted to write about Trump and Project 2025 - if that was the real topic - she should have written about that. Instead she hammered about not being able to cope with a bat and somehow turned it into an allegory about Trump. Things like this are why he gets votes. https://t.co/VjJesdUu16
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) August 5, 2024
Located in Tokyo, the Capybara Café is a place where you can experience capybaras up close and enjoy a moment of relax with them.pic.twitter.com/jYq00LNVzN
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) July 29, 2024
Penny farthing race in 1928. This should be brought back for the next Olympics. It’s brilliantly bonkers. 🚴🥇pic.twitter.com/iWRDAbPHCn
— James Melville 🚜 (@JamesMelville) July 29, 2024
The 1946 Italian Institutional referendum, following the close of the Second World War the reconstruction of Italy was set to be needed—herein, the people of Italy needed to decide what form of government they wished for, either retain a monarchy, or switch over to a republic. pic.twitter.com/q8aSy3N7ZB
— Sage of Time🇵🇷🌴 (@SageOfTime1) August 30, 2024
So good. Anyone know this guy?? So good! pic.twitter.com/hdRBg2pKaP
— Hillel Fuld (@HilzFuld) July 29, 2024
Progressives have a family problem.
— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) August 5, 2024
It's not the "childless cat lady" problem that Vance etc want to talk about. It's an urban policy.
Progressives preside over counties that young families are leaving. And that's bad.https://t.co/iNm1q4aGad
Eudocima phalonia is also known as the common fruit-piercing moth,
— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) July 29, 2024
in its caterpillar stage it looks like a galaxy
📸 Arabinda Pal: iG arabinda_pal pic.twitter.com/f7UUHOD9iw
Gentle parenting people confused by your white-people meetings. https://t.co/gdtgurLV5O pic.twitter.com/lw3UZuetyq
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) July 30, 2024
Buses and bicycles, ramblers and rucksacks. Sights and scenes and the timeless beauty of the English city of Winchester in the 1950s. pic.twitter.com/hvEbkAfyif
— Bobbie (@bo66ie29) July 29, 2024
Just a reminder: AC is completely sustainable. Nearly all energy for it can be generated by solar at peak generation times.
— Matthew Chapman (@fawfulfan) September 2, 2024
*Heating* is the big household emissions problem, not cooling. https://t.co/YWudMVLW5L
Cats in watercolorpic.twitter.com/JQhyiUQZjV
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) July 30, 2024
By tomorrow afternoon, Harris will have repudiated everything she said she believed while serving in the Senate and while running for president in 2019. Or to put it another way: On policy, she has decided to be unburdened by what has been.
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) July 29, 2024
Oregon has made hard drugs illegal again.
— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) September 2, 2024
This experiment's repeated failure in recent years plus the harsh impacts of sports gambling legalization have convinced many of my friends and colleagues to be less libertarian and more paternalistic. pic.twitter.com/RYnJhYXw4f
A 4,900-year-old baking peel. It was found in the pile dwelling site of Olzreute-Enzisholz and is made of maple. Dating around 2897 BC.
— Nina Willburger (@DrNWillburger) July 30, 2024
The waterlogged, anaerobic environment provided ideal conditions for the preservation of the peel and other organic finds.
📷@ALM_BaWue pic.twitter.com/EOVKGQElrE
“The greatest service I can still render to my fellow men would be that I could make the speakers and writers among them thoroughly ashamed ever again to employ the term ‘social justice.’”
— F. A. Hayek Quotes (@FAHayekSays) September 1, 2024
— Friedrich Hayek
AI imagines classic art to life …
— Figen (@TheFigen_) July 28, 2024
pic.twitter.com/ZDBO60fQXx
To creatively insult without actually swearing, just use this Shakespearean Insult Kit. Combine one word from each column, & preface it with “Thou”, to create satisfyingly impolite abuse such as “Thou beslubbering, pottle-deep clotpole” https://t.co/qOzOQmsARQ pic.twitter.com/y7XpOPusLs
— Journal of Art in Society (@artinsociety) July 30, 2024
Adjusted average teacher salary, taking into account cost of living.
— Hunter📈🌈📊 (@StatisticUrban) September 2, 2024
There's much less variability here, except for the extreme outlier of Hawaii, which is incredibly expensive and doesn't have great salaries. Low-CoL midwestern states do well. https://t.co/UIlfcYYxQX pic.twitter.com/vVLjnZfhSA
An illustration of the Old London Bridge was the longest inhabited bridge in Europe. It was completed in 1209 AD, and stood for over 600 years.
— ArchaeoHistories (@histories_arch) July 29, 2024
It was considered a wonder of the world and it had 138 shops, houses, churches & gatehouses built on it.
© Exploring GB… pic.twitter.com/Ap43B4JobI
Comet NEOWISE seen from ISS pic.twitter.com/ybvZKxqR65
— Curiosity (@MAstronomers) July 27, 2024
Penny farthing race in 1928. This should be brought back for the next Olympics. It’s brilliantly bonkers. 🚴🥇pic.twitter.com/iWRDAbPHCn
— James Melville 🚜 (@JamesMelville) July 29, 2024
Positions on which Kamala Harris has supposedly reversed herself:
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) July 30, 2024
Banning fracking ❌
Assault weapons mandatory buyback ❌
Ending private health insurance ❌
Decriminalizing illegal border crossings ❌
Bailing out rioters ❌
Defunding the police ❌
Jailing marijuana offenders ❌…
Around 900 years ago, a Maya scribe made Códice Maya de México, a sacred book that tracked and predicted the movements of the planet Venus. Today it is the oldest book of the Americas, one of only four surviving Maya manuscripts that predate the arrival of Europeans...
— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) July 28, 2024
Maya… pic.twitter.com/cuEUuH2Z2m
Ziza Todd's new church assignment lands her in Quarryville, an incestuous town full of quirky characters and deep, dark secrets. While running the church youth program, Ziza is thrust into a murder investigation when one of her model students turns up dead in a meadow and another body is discovered in an old warehouse not long afterward.Ziza's search for the killer leads her to a bizarre collection of suspects whose only apparent link is the scenic waterfront property that they'd do anything to get their hands on.
This is just an insane level of gaslighting.
— AG (@AGHamilton29) July 30, 2024
A small state-connected minority controlling most of a nation’s wealth is an exact description of what every communist country looks like. That’s not a mistake, it’s how the system works. https://t.co/aRD5G1u6lI
Picture of an Osprey taken the moment before diving in pic.twitter.com/yUW81252TA
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) July 28, 2024
Gentle parenting people confused by your white-people meetings. https://t.co/gdtgurLV5O pic.twitter.com/lw3UZuetyq
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) July 30, 2024
If you want to know the difference between Milton Friedman and Joseph Stiglitz, I present to you 4 countries with a GDP per capita of about $15,000 in 1998 (Poland being a bit poorer back then).
— Charles Lajoie 🗽🔰 (@lemechantneolib) August 19, 2024
The first one, Estonia, reformed its way out of socialism through shock therapy.… https://t.co/HAWSCdTDiP pic.twitter.com/Hfyuv1mNKB
The stone spheres depicted here are not a scene from a sci-fi movie; they are real and located in a remote area of Costa Rica. Some are perfect spheres. The mystery lies in who made them and why. Like the Pyramids and the Sphinx, these spheres cannot be dated using the C14… pic.twitter.com/4MXjXZgFkA
— ArchaeoHistories (@histories_arch) July 29, 2024
Here is a charming time-lapse video of a toddler in discover mode. His "secure base" is not far, so he makes a long and varied off-base excursion, to find and try out new things. https://t.co/0ox88ls77X
— Jonathan Haidt (@JonHaidt) July 30, 2024
Pluto's mighty ice mountains, deep frozen plains and layers of atmospheric haze backlit by a distant sun, as seen by the the NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.pic.twitter.com/AQF4RiQAuA
— Curiosity (@MAstronomers) July 28, 2024
Located in Tokyo, the Capybara Café is a place where you can experience capybaras up close and enjoy a moment of relax with them.pic.twitter.com/jYq00LNVzN
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) July 29, 2024
Given that @nytimes has some difficulty understanding the difference between socialism and capitalism, here are some charts explaining the two and their outcomes. pic.twitter.com/LAo5exTR6H
— Marian L Tupy (@Marian_L_Tupy) July 29, 2024
The king was arrested in the French Revolution
— Jash Dholani (@oldbooksguy) July 29, 2024
1 man volunteered to be his lawyer
With the king, he was beheaded too
Decades later, the lawyer's grandson wrote a book on the DARK SIDE of democracy, equality, & liberalism
His name: Tocqueville. Book became a classic. A thread: pic.twitter.com/gZnjWVgp7q
I love that the emerging defense of Harris is “Everything she said in 2020 was a lie”.
— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) July 29, 2024
If you think dragons are just imaginary creatures look at this draco lizard. While it's certainly smaller than you probably expect, it's nothing short of impressive.pic.twitter.com/RuqL0WEqh1
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) July 28, 2024
Brutal capitalism in action. pic.twitter.com/W6JUHPHu4L
— John W Lettieri (@LettieriDC) July 30, 2024
After the violence among the striking tailors on Sunday, August 2, Theodore Roosevelt toured the precinct houses of the area. Newspapers singled out his Sunday saloon-closing crusade as the reason for the violence. Had the police not been preoccupied rousting Sunday drinkers, a larger police presence among New York’s laboring class might have kept the peace. Roosevelt, however, saw the Sunday closing law as in labor’s best interest.Years before, Roosevelt had urged labor to make “war on the saloons that yearly swallow so incredibly large a proportion” of workers’ wages. Yet New York labor largely resented Roosevelt’s crusade against the saloons. The previous summer the Commercial Advertiser had noted that at a meeting of the Central Labor Union, the attitude was, “The workingman wants his beer on Sunday, and what are we here for if not to benefit the workingman?” The American Federation of Labor may have believed that if saloons were “not permitted to adjoin the mansions of the wealthy neither shall they be permitted to intrude upon the wage earners’ precincts.” But trade unionists in New York did not agree and focused much of their resentment on Roosevelt personally. Labor leaders noted that while there had been over 8,000 arrests annually for excise violations under Roosevelt, there were only 104 arrests for violations of the factory law in 1895 and only 21 arrests for violation of the law in 1896. Roosevelt might say he was acting in labor’s best interest, but the slight enforcement of a law prohibiting minors from working more than sixty hours a week, and stopping children under thirteen from working in factories, seemed to show otherwise.
Spectacular octopus from the floor of the women’s changing room at the Central Baths in ancient Herculaneum.
— Alison Fisk (@AlisonFisk) July 29, 2024
This magnificent #Roman monochrome mosaic makes quite an impact!
📷 my own#MosaicMonday#Archaeology pic.twitter.com/OHaaGqv5Db
Obviously it’s extremely sinister, but the Biden-Harris court “reforms” are also funny, in a darkly humorous sort of way. The Court makes up a bunch of nonsense for decades and they love it; then it starts doing its job for, what, four years?, and they try to blow it up. Amazing.
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) July 29, 2024
One of the nicer things about Twitter is like every day I see some geographic feature or weird animal I never heard of and say, “That can’t be real.” But it is. https://t.co/YQkuEri6yE
— Frank J. Fleming (@IMAO_) July 26, 2024
*insert laughing hyena noises* pic.twitter.com/xyy2akF9Kb
— Muh Freedom memes (@MuhFreedomMemes) August 5, 2024
People who go to religious services more often are less likely to identify as liberal.
— Ryan Burge 📊 (@ryanburge) July 29, 2024
This is a fundamental fact of American religion and politics.
It's not just white people.
It's every single racial group. Higher attendance = less liberal. pic.twitter.com/K1ZRiEuvvc
During heat waves, humidity is one of heat’s deadliest accomplices. When a person’s blood is heated above 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, a body can dissipate the heat in various ways, such as varying the rate of blood circulation, panting, and especially sweating. Sweating cools the body through evaporation, but high humidity retards evaporation, leaving the body unable to cool itself.As body heat begins to rise, heat-related illnesses and disorders develop. A body’s temperature can rise to 106 degrees in ten or fifteen minutes, but it only takes a rise above 103 degrees to cause hyperthermia, more commonly known as heat stroke. Red, hot, and dry skin, a rapid pulse, throbbing headache, dizziness, nausea, confusion, and unconsciousness are all warning signs. If the body’s temperature is not immediately lowered, namely by placing the victim in a cool bath or shower, permanent disability or death can occur. Even survivors of heatstroke can suffer serious permanent damage, such as loss of independent function and organ failure.The temperature a body feels when the effects of heat and humidity are combined would later be called the heat index. An 85-degree air temperature with 85 percent humidity will feel like 100 degrees. Small increases in either temperature or humidity will have dramatic effects on the heat index. Only a 5-degree temperature increase will produce a heat index of 118. A 90-degree air temperature with 90 percent humidity will feel like 122 degrees. A temperature of 94 degrees with 90 percent humidity feels like over 140 degrees. After only two days of exposure to temperatures like this, the body’s defenses start to break down, and heat prostration strikes.This is what began to occur on Tuesday, as several people in Manhattan and Brooklyn were admitted to hospitals. Although the month began fairly mild, with the official high temperature on Saturday the first of August reaching only 71, temperatures now rose to the high 80s, accompanied by 90 percent humidity.Based on the official temperatures recorded by the United States Weather Bureau that day, the high temperature for New York City was 87 degrees. With 90 percent humidity this created a heat index of nearly 110 degrees. Yet as would be noted by New Yorkers virtually every day of the heat wave, the official temperatures for the city were recorded high above street level, where a thermometer was free of much of the urban heat island effect and able to catch at least some small amount of breeze. Down on the street, thermometers regularly recorded temperatures ten degrees higher than the official record indicated, while temperatures inside the brick tenements of the Lower East Side easily reached 120 degrees. This would be the general condition for the next ten days.The elderly are at great risk during heat waves, and they were the first victims in this case. Sixty-five-year-old Annie Kelly fell victim to the heat on the street not far from her home on West Twentieth Street and was taken to New York Hospital. Fifty-nine-year-old Patrick Murray was overcome on the Upper East Side and was taken to Flower Hospital at Sixty-Third Street. Lersen Present, sixty-three, suffered heat stroke downtown on East Broadway.In addition to the elderly, New York’s many laborers risked serious injury by working and sweating all day in the sun. Even the healthiest could easily fall victim if undertaking strenuous labor during the heat wave. This was evidenced by an Italian worker named Rolis, who suffered heat stroke and was hospitalized. He was only twenty-two years old.
The stunning portrait depicts a daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. It was unearthed in Akhetaten/Tell el-Amarna. This city was established by Pharaoh Akhenaten as a new capital.
— Nina Willburger (@DrNWillburger) July 28, 2024
Dating around 1345 BC.
On display at Neues Museum Berlin
📷 taken by me pic.twitter.com/dtQZ74FuWB
Educate the children and it won't be necessary to punish the men.
— Physics In History (@PhysInHistory) July 26, 2024
- Pythagoras (c. 570 BC – c. 496 BC) pic.twitter.com/Kwq2YfTuUQ
Iranian gardens are among the best examples of architecture worldwide because they combine history, architecture, and nature, and the principles of architecture have been intelligently used in all of them.
— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) July 27, 2024
This uniqueness is so impressive that even after hundreds of years, the… https://t.co/jjfOEwkkA1
When he published Napoleon and his Marshals in 1934, A. G. Macdonell didn't bother with footnotes, he just wrote a brief note that basically said "don't worry about sources, all you need to know is that everything I wrote definitely comes from some book I have read" 😂 pic.twitter.com/JLz7aaXpFl
— Philippe Lemoine (@phl43) July 29, 2024
Have you ever wished to view the world from a completely new perspective? This thread on cool maps is here to blow your mind
— Epic Maps 🗺️ (@Locati0ns) August 18, 2024
1. Population Density in China pic.twitter.com/wbwH1ESATV
For freedom's battle, once begun,Bequeath'd by bleeding sire to son,Though baffled oft, is ever won.
No man is an island,Entire of itself;Every man is a piece of the continent,A part of the main.If a clod be washed away by the sea,Europe is the less,As well as if a promontory were:As well as if a manor of thy friend'sOr of thine own were.Any man's death diminishes me,Because I am involved in mankind.And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;It tolls for thee.
Are You Sitting ComfortablyThe Moody BluesTake another sip my love and see what you will see,A fleet of golden galleons, on a crystal sea.Are you sitting comfortably?Let Merlin cast his spell.Ride along the winds of time and see where we have been,The glorious age of Camelot, when Guinevere was Queen.It all unfolds before your eyesAs Merlin casts his spell.The seven wonders of the world he'll lay before your feet,In far-off lands, on distant shores, so many friends to meet.Are you sitting comfortably?Let Merlin cast his spell.
After more than a year of trying to make the New York City police a serious crime-fighting organization, Theodore Roosevelt could not have been happy to read such a comical account of his men. Roosevelt had a good relationship with the newspapers, having befriended journalists like Jacob Riis and Lincoln Steffens. And early on, the press had given Roosevelt rave reviews as he made his midnight inspections around the city.But now even the press had turned against Roosevelt and his police. The fight to close saloons on Sunday, the resulting Republican losses at the polls, and the shabby dispute with Parker on the police commission had soured the fourth estate on “the biggest man in New York,” as one Chicago paper had called him. Roosevelt was dangerously close to leaving the New York police department a laughingstock.Always aware of the power of the press and public opinion, Roosevelt had made a great effort to explain his actions and motivations. When at the beginning of his Sunday Excise crusade the New York Sun had questioned why Roosevelt would act against public sentiment, Roosevelt had replied with a statement that began, “I do not deal with public sentiment. I deal with the law.” Roosevelt also pointed out that lax enforcement resulted in a system in which saloon keepers bribed policemen or hid behind political influence. For Roosevelt the problem was having a law “which is not strictly enforced, which certain people are allowed to violate with impunity for corrupt reasons, while other offenders who lack their political influence are mercilessly harassed. All our resources will be strained to prevent any such discrimination and to secure the equal punishment of all offenders.”Equal enforcement of the law, and equal treatment of all citizens by the government, was a hallmark of Roosevelt’s thought. It underlay many of his beliefs about good government, the evils of the spoils system, the need for an American civil service based solely on merit, and police promotions based on meritorious service rather than political influence.Years later in 1903, after becoming president, Roosevelt gave a speech at the New York State Fair in Syracuse that described what became known as the “Square Deal.” “We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man,” Roosevelt told the crowd. “We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less. Finally we must keep ever in mind that a republic such as ours can exist only by virtue of the orderly liberty which comes through equal domination of the law over all men alike, and through its administration in such resolute and fearless fashion as shall teach all that no man is above it all and no man below it.” “Orderly liberty which comes through equal domination of the law” might have been Roosevelt’s motto for his time on the police commission and his crusade against Sunday liquor selling.
If you're wondering what's going on, watch this 1984 video from former KGB defector, Yuri Bezmenov.
— Beff – e/acc (@BasedBeffJezos) July 27, 2024
We cannot let the "situation normalize" pic.twitter.com/1NTgYC5stF
Linguists estimate that it takes about 1,000 years for a language to change enough that people at the beginning and end of the 1,000-year period can't at all understand each other. This holds with English—if you went back to the year 1024 AD and walked around England, you…
— Tim Urban (@waitbutwhy) July 25, 2024
Can you believe that this is happening while we are sleeping
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) July 26, 2024
[📹 connorpatonphotos]pic.twitter.com/cFCRR3308q
Flock of lost sheep trots behind confused runner as she accidentally becomes their leader.
— The Best (@ThebestFigen) July 29, 2024
pic.twitter.com/mKah61dtJK
One kind of progress that isn't getting picked up in standard cost of living measures is that cars last a lot longer than they used to. This reduces the user cost, but doesn't show up as a quality adjustment unless it's a change tied to a specific increased cost of production. pic.twitter.com/dLSgfvbDe0
— Adam Ozimek (@ModeledBehavior) August 14, 2024
In urban and industrial centers like New York by the end of the nineteenth century, human disasters appeared to have largely replaced natural disasters. Few New Yorkers could remember the massive death tolls that had accompanied the cholera epidemics in the 1830s, ’40s, and ’50s. The Great Fire of 1835, which had destroyed over six hundred buildings, was a distant memory. More recently, the Blizzard of 1888 had killed hundreds of people all along the eastern seaboard, from Maryland to Maine. But no one in New York expected another two-foot snowfall in March anytime soon, while the last cholera epidemic of 1892 appeared to prove that that disease had been defeated for all time.Modern, scientific, industrial people had evidently conquered the natural disaster. Science and germ theory had certainly ended cholera epidemics, and by the summer of 1896 the city’s Board of Health and Department of Sanitation were together making great progress stamping out dysentery and other infectious diseases. Science had even seemed to overcome weather itself. True, in May a great tornado had twisted its way through St. Louis and East St. Louis. Yet in the end it caused mainly property damage, and only about 250 people died. New York’s own man in the U.S. Weather Bureau, William “Prophet” Dunn, noted that the St. Louis tornado had been “predicted” by E. B. Garriott of the Chicago Bureau, allowing precautions to be taken and countless lives to be saved. The St. Louis “disaster” was so mild, in fact, that it could not even delay the Republican National Convention to be held there the very next month.Human-made disasters like the New Jersey rail accident now seemed the norm. Recent events had demonstrated iron and steel’s greater capacity to kill and maim on a massive scale than mere water or wind, fire or ice. Indeed, most Americans marked their lives by the still recent Civil War. If anything, that human-made disaster put nature to shame. What hurricane could have killed 600,000 with such efficiency and cold-bloodedness? What fire could have found fuel for four long years?Even on a smaller and more local scale new inventions seemed to turn on their creators with frightening regularity. In 1871 the boiler on the Staten Island Ferry exploded, killing 125. In 1876 a fire begun by a kerosene lamp tore through the stage scenery of the Brooklyn Theatre, killing 276. Trains crashed. Ships sank. Dams broke. The above-ground horse-drawn railway trolleys that plied New York streets would regularly clip an unfortunate pedestrian, taking a toe or an entire foot. And as America industrialized, the dangers to the industrial worker increased: Smelters exploded, chains broke, sparks flew, pulleys snapped, and blades slipped.
They demanded that Biden commit to only selecting a woman of color as VP, which he did, and now when somebody mentions that Kamala Harris was chosen because she is a woman of color, they claim racism. pic.twitter.com/vGafcjk94X
— MAZE (@mazemoore) July 26, 2024
There has now been created a world in which the success of others is a grievance, rather than an example.
— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) July 26, 2024
A spectacular example of ground-to-cloud lightning in Wichita, Kansas.
— Wonder of Science (@wonderofscience) July 26, 2024
📽: Taylor Vonfeldt pic.twitter.com/1AxRqAsqor
“You okay? I hate it when they fight.” - 1st half of the 13th century, Rochester Bestiary, British Library, Royal MS 12 F XIII, f. 42v pic.twitter.com/j8KFv2GQmZ
— Medieval Military Medicine (@MedMilMedicine) July 27, 2024
More than 40% of young population (aged 25-34) in the EU has completed tertiary education. Pretty unbelievable. https://t.co/PZTMurE3dl pic.twitter.com/UKcYR80Vvs
— Marcin Piatkowski 🇪🇺 (@mmpiatkowski) September 22, 2020
“By August 1, all of New York was talking about the disaster. “HALF A HUNDRED DEAD,” screamed the front-page headline in the New York Times. “HOSPITALS ARE FILLED,” read another. “PITIFUL SCENES IN THE MORGUE.” At the latest count, forty-seven people had died, and of the seventy or so injured, many were expected to perish, victims of one of the most common, yet horrific, tragedies of late-nineteenth-century urban America: colliding trains.The story was familiar. Two evenings before at 6:45 P.M., the West Jersey and Seashore excursion train had left Atlantic City, driven by engineer John Greiner with fireman Morris Newell stoking the engine. Only minutes later Greiner saw the Reading express train on a perpendicular track flying toward the same crossing he was approaching. Since his train had the white flag, which meant the Reading train had the “stop” signal, Greiner assumed he had a clear track ahead of him. But as the Reading train continued to thunder toward the crossing, Greiner shouted to his fireman, “My God, Morris, he’s not going to stop!” With a collision imminent, Greiner ran to the engine’s steps and prepared to jump. For a moment he stood on the steps and watched the ground rush by. Then, with a change of heart, he returned to his duties in the cab.A second later the crash came. The Reading train struck Greiner’s excursion train in the middle of the second of its six coaches, killing over forty people instantly. The engine of the Reading express was smashed to pieces, and its engineer, Edward Farr, was killed on the spot. While most of the excursion train’s cars derailed, the engine continued untroubled along its track for several hundred feet, after it was severed from the rest of the train. Greiner jumped from his cab and ran back to the rest of the train. “When I got back to the scene of the accident,” he recounted, “the sight which met my eyes was appalling. Dead bodies were strewn about everywhere, and the cries of the dying and injured filled the air. It was a heartrending spectacle.”Survivors later described to journalists the horror inside the train. Charles Seeds was sitting with his wife in the fourth car of Greiner’s train when the front part of his car “was smashed to kindling wood.” Seeds called to his wife to follow him, and jumped out the car’s window. He hurt his leg when he hit the ground, and as he looked around, he could not see his wife anywhere. When he jumped back up into the window, smoke filling the car blinded him. Through the gloom inside, Seeds saw a glittering object. He reached out and picked up his wife’s gold pocket watch, its chain broken by a piece of heavy timber that had just grazed her. Now finding his wife alive nearby, Seeds grabbed her by the hair and pulled her through the window to safety.In the late-nineteenth century police did not use “Do Not Cross” tape, and within hours, thousands of spectators surrounded the wrecks. People continued to flock to the site for days. In Atlantic City, the usual greeting of “Are you going to the boardwalk?” gave way to “Are you going to the wreck today?” And as one newspaper affirmed, “Everyone went.” The dead were wrapped at the scene in blankets and sacks, then placed in another train car for return to the station, to be stored temporarily in the baggage room. Visiting the site, though popular, was traumatic. Benjamin Maull, a veteran of the Civil War, said seeing the wreck affected him more than any scene of carnage he had witnessed during his four years of service.
Less than two days later, speculation was rife among newspapers that Farr, the driver of the Reading train that ran the signal, had a friend in his cab at the time of the accident. “That raises the suspicion that he may have been more occupied in conversation than in watching signals,” the editors of the New York Tribune noted.The paper also sought to comment on the tragedy of the accident’s many victims. Men who died on the battlefield, the paper believed, earned a measure of glory in the process. “Tornadoes and earthquakes and fire and flood kill thousands, but man bows submissive to the resistless elements. There is “even something grand in being a victim of Nature. But to meet death from the blind fury of a Frankenstein, to suffer and be crushed by the misbehavior of one’s own creations, to go out for pleasure trusting in the perfection of civilization and have that civilization turn and rend one, is to fall without any compensation.” Industrial and technological developments such as trains—the “perfection of civilization”—had conquered the vast distances of the nation, but at a price. In the modern era people faced new and horrible agents of death.
Emperor John Tzimiskes “was one of the best military strategists in the empire’s history…” The way he defeated the Rus/Bulgarian coalition & won a “titanic war” was impressive. He deserves just as much credit as Nikephoros Phokas or Basil II for the pinnacle of Roman power
— ShadowsOfConstantinople (@RomeInTheEast) July 27, 2024
The… pic.twitter.com/5gpxMEu3HL
This giraffe noticing a gazelle having trouble with a tree branch stuck in its horn, helping remove itpic.twitter.com/eh4dzPYLB1
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) July 27, 2024
Governments throughout Africa are facing the same dilemma.The continent’s foreign debt reached more than $1.1 trillion at the end of last year. More than two dozen countries have excessive debt or are at high risk of it, according to the African Development Bank Group. And roughly 900 million people live in countries that spend more on interest payments than on health care or education.
Outsize debt has been a familiar problem in the developing world, but the current crisis is considered the worst yet because of the amounts owed as well as the huge increase in the number and type of foreign creditors.
And in Africa, a continent pulsating with potential and peril, debt overshadows nearly everything that happens.
If nothing is done to help countries manage the financial crunch, “a wave of destabilizing debt defaults will end up severely undermining progress on the green transition, with catastrophic implications for the entire world,” warned a new report from the Finance for Development Lab at the Paris School for Economics and Columbia University’s Initiative for Policy Dialogue.At the same time, economic stagnation in combination with government corruption and mismanagement has left many African countries more vulnerable to brutal wars, military coups and antigovernment riots.
The debt overhang leaves countries unable to make the kind of investments that could put their economies on stable footing, which would enable them to repay their loans.
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