History

> farmer finds statue
> it’s 11,600 yrs old
> it’s a dude with his dick out

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form & moving how express & admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!the beauty of the world! https://t.co/y8jZyVQ84t

— Aelfred The Great (@aelfred_D) March 10, 2025

 

An Insight

Correct. pic.twitter.com/xuy9GKd7L6

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) March 11, 2025

 

I see wonderful things

Bird ate too many fermented apples and got drunk

pic.twitter.com/3dq36N3uqo

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) March 11, 2025

 

Another one bites the dust - government as the progenitor of false knowledge

From Have We Been Thinking About A.D.H.D. All Wrong? by Paul Tough.  The subheading is With diagnoses at a record high, some experts have begun to question our assumptions about the condition — and how to treat it.

There has long been good reason to believe that ADHD was a social fad.  My kids were school age in the 1990s and it was hard not to notice that teachers with the worst classroom management skills were also most vocal in recommending that boys be seen for an ADHD diagnosis.

This reporting feels similar to the arc in Alzheimers research.  For forty some years, there was a conviction that the disease was a product of plaque in the brain.  In the past few years, researchers discovered that the original research from which the focus on plaque originated, was discovered to be flawed, raising questions about a wasted few decades of research.

Also feels similar to the Pre-K fad over the past thirty years.  Everyone thought it would make a big difference and all the results have been that it makes no difference in educational outcomes.  

Similar also to the Covid-19 response and the corresponding vaccine.  We are now beginning to come into sight of the real consequences of bad public health policy and it is both bad and consistent with the contemporary criticisms that were being leveled at the time of deployment.  And the blithe population-wide mandating of a novel and, as it turns out, completely inadequately tested vaccine. 

CO2 driven Anthropogenic Global Warming is also looking very ripe for a corresponding backpedalling.  Over its three decades of intense investment in research, the original hypothesis keeps being dialed back and it looks about ready to collapse completely.

Is there anything believed by the Establishment and the Mandarin Class?

On the other hand, as valid as the criticism is of a Mandarin Class blindly governing based on bad or ill-founded "science," this is in fact something of an endorsement of the Age of Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution.  Despite the claims of authoritarian ignorami about the infallibility of "The Science" (looking at you NPR and New York Times), as all real Classical Liberals know, science is a process of emerging discovery and refining specificity.

All knowledge is contingent.  There is no sacrosanct truth.  There is only knowledge that is more or less well tested and more or less durable when applied.

Yes, the Establishment and Mandarin Class are prone to being bedazzled by ideas which seem right (and are good at increasing power, prestige, and personal prosperity for the members of those classes). Their ideas end up being expensively and sometimes disastrously wrong.  But, eventually, the scientific process works its way through the false beliefs and redirects us towards different and better questions and research.

I am tempted to provide telling excerpts from Tough's article but the whole thing warrants reading.  Its all there - the ill-founded beliefs; the passionate conviction superseding evidence; the complex sociocultural environment; the ignoring of emerging data; the authoritarianism of government.  

Offbeat Humor

Bill Paxton and Lance Henriksen are the only two actors to have been killed by a Terminator, a Predator, and an Alien. pic.twitter.com/pCHXD3ghar

— Creepy.org (@creepydotorg) March 9, 2025

 

Data Talks

Really important new paper highlighting important differences in various measurements of perceived inequality.

bottom line: Every measure of inequality perceptions is problematic in its own way, & each may capture a different "slice" of inequality perceptions pic.twitter.com/sAta7g65Ss

— Jon M Jachimowicz (@jonj) June 10, 2021

 

Traumerei - Reverie, c.1908 by Henri Vogeler

Traumerei - Reverie, c.1908 by Henri Vogeler (Germany, 1872-1942) 

Click to enlarge.

If I Should Die Tonight by Arabella Eugenia Smith

If I Should Die Tonight

by Arabella Eugenia Smith

If I should die tonight

My friends would look upon my quiet face,

Before they laid it in its resting-place,

And deem that death had left it almost fair,

And laying snow-white flowers against my hair,

Would smooth it down with tearful tenderness,

And fold my hands with lingering caress —

Poor hands so empty and so cold tonight!

If I should die tonight

My friends would call to mind with loving thought

Some kindly deed the icy hand had wrought,

Some gentle word the frozen lips had said,

Errands on which the willing feet had sped.

The memory of my selfishness and pride,

My hasty words, would all be put aside,

And so I should be loved and mourned tonight.

If I should die tonight

Even hearts estranged would turn once more to me,

Recalling other days remorsefully.

The eyes that chill me with averted glance

Would look upon me as of yore, perchance,

Would soften in the old familiar way;

For who would war with dumb, unconscious clay?

So I might rest, forgiven of all tonight.

O, friends, I pray tonight

Keep not your kisses for my dead, cold brow:

The way is lonely, let me feel them now.

Think gently of me; I am travel-worn,

My faltering feet are pierced with many a thorn.

Forgive, O hearts estranged, forgive, I plead!

When dreamless rest is mine I shall not need

The tenderness for which I long tonight.

As I Walked Out One Evening By W. H. Auden

As I Walked Out One Evening

By W. H. Auden

As I walked out one evening,

  Walking down Bristol Street,

The crowds upon the pavement

  Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river

  I heard a lover sing

Under an arch of the railway:

  "Love has no ending.

"I'll love you, dear, I'll love you

  Till China and Africa meet,

And the river jumps over the mountain

  And the salmon sing in the street,

"I'll love you till the ocean

  Is folded and hung up to dry

And the seven stars go squawking

  Like geese about the sky.

"The years shall run like rabbits,

  For in my arms I hold

The Flower of the Ages,

  And the first love of the world."

But all the clocks in the city

  Began to whirr and chime:

"O let not Time deceive you,

  You cannot conquer Time.

"In the burrows of the Nightmare

  Where Justice naked is,

Time watches from the shadow

  And coughs when you would kiss.

"In headaches and in worry

  Vaguely life leaks away,

And Time will have his fancy

  To-morrow or to-day.

"Into many a green valley

  Drifts the appalling snow;

Time breaks the threaded dances

  And the diver's brilliant bow.

"O plunge your hands in water,

  Plunge them in up to the wrist;

Stare, stare in the basin

  And wonder what you've missed.

"The glacier knocks in the cupboard,

  The desert sighs in the bed,

And the crack in the tea-cup opens

  A lane to the land of the dead.

"Where the beggars raffle the banknotes

  And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,

And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,

  And Jill goes down on her back.

"O look, look in the mirror?

  O look in your distress:

Life remains a blessing

  Although you cannot bless.

"O stand, stand at the window

  As the tears scald and start;

You shall love your crooked neighbour

  With your crooked heart."

It was late, late in the evening,

  The lovers they were gone;

The clocks had ceased their chiming,

  And the deep river ran on.

There is a reading of this poem by Auden:

Click to enlarge.

Polonius’ Advice to Laertes Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3 by William Shakespeare

Polonius’ Advice to Laertes

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3

 by William Shakespeare

And these few precepts in thy memory

See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,

Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;

But do not dull thy palm with entertainment

Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade. Beware

Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,

Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:

Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy:

For the apparel oft proclaims the man,

And they in France of the best rank and station

Are most select and generous chief in that.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

This above all: to thine own self be true;

And it must follow, as the night the day

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!

History

German cannon tower from World War II in Saint Malo, France.

[📹 bunkermemory]pic.twitter.com/NOlmijSYmQ

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) March 10, 2025

 

An Insight

🎯 pic.twitter.com/pbyT6MJf06

— Rothmus 🏴 (@Rothmus) March 11, 2025

 

I see wonderful things

Illustration of an octopus by Ulisse Aldrovandi, from the volume Animali, late 16th century. pic.twitter.com/BaSxD3IQxY

— Archaeology & Art (@archaeologyart) March 11, 2025

 

Offbeat Humor

pic.twitter.com/uHFqeZ792a

— Daily Roman Updates (@UpdatingOnRome) March 9, 2025

 

Data Talks

There you go.

Only 10% of top medical journal articles accurately used and interpreted the stats.

Peer review does not work - it is just gate keeping for consensus. https://t.co/Bd5g1tXc0N

— Dr Clare Craig (@ClareCraigPath) March 8, 2025

 

Nude, 1989 by Helena Abreu

Nude, 1989 by Helena Abreu (Portuguese, 1924 - )

Click to enlarge.

Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck

From The looming doom is creating main character energy by Ann Althouse.  

Bonus language topic: The word "doom" originally meant statute. But then it meant "A judgement or decision, esp. one formally pronounced" (OED). The meaning that feels familiar — "Fate, lot, irrevocable destiny" — arrives around 1400. And the meaning that sounds exactly right — "Final fate, destruction, ruin, death" — is first found in a 1609 Shakespeare sonnet, Sonnet 14:

Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck,

And yet methinks I have astronomy—

But not to tell of good or evil luck,

Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality;

Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,

Pointing to each his thunder, rain, and wind,

Or say with princes if it shall go well

By oft predict that I in heaven find.

But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,

And, constant stars, in them I read such art

As truth and beauty shall together thrive

If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert;

     Or else of thee this I prognosticate:

     Thy end is truth’s and beauty’s doom and date.

A Flower Swaying in the Wind by Christina Buchmann

I attended the Anglo-American School in Stockholm, Sweden from 1970-1975, 5th through 9th grade.  I have annuals from each of those years.  The school population was probably a couple of hundred and were a mix of Americans, Swedes, English, Canadians and kids from all over the world (children of diplomats and MNC executives.)

Wonderful school, wonderful years.  In a text conversation with Turkish friend from that time, he mentioned in passing that he had lost his annual.  I have one, 1975, readily accessible but the others are packed away in various boxes, yet to be uncovered.  

I have begun taking iPhone photos of each page and loading them up so that he can see the 1975 annual.  In doing so I came across a charming little poem by a young German girl who was two grades behind me.  She was in seventh grade.  

A Flower Swaying in the Wind

by Christina Buchmann

A flower swaying in the wind

Is what I'd like to be

Whatever kind, it doesn't matter,

Just think, it would be me!

A flower swaying in the wind

Is what I'd like to be

I would be red, blue, maybe yellow

With leaves green like the sea.

A flower swaying in the wind

Is what I'd like to be.

Great literature?  Perhaps not.  For a twelve-year-old in a second language? - Quite wonderful.

I hope that Christina, these fifty years later, might see her poem remembered across so many years, and travels, and moves, and different countries, and different times, still remembered.  

Auden's required reading

From College Students Don’t Read. But Can They? by Joseph Bottum.  The subheading is With the new literature course I’m teaching at the University of Colorado, I’m aiming to find out.

In 1941, W.H. Auden listed nearly 6,000 pages of required reading for an undergraduate course at the University of Michigan. In 2018, the historian Wilfred McClay tried recreating that course at Hillsdale College. It quickly became one of the school’s most popular classes, wildly oversubscribed. The undergraduates even printed up T-shirts that read, “I Survived the Auden Course!”

Perhaps that’s proof that students rise to the level of expectations. If universities demand reading, they will get it. But such fire-hose courses as Auden’s demonstrate something more. College graduates used to have stories of the trenches they loved to tell—stories about the backbreaking organic-chemistry course that decided medical-school admissions. The required engineering course on dynamics. The ridiculous French literature survey course that demanded studying everything from “Song of Roland” to “The Stranger.”

Bottum will be a visiting professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder and will be trailing Auden's curriculum as an experiment to reveal whether kids can read.  Bravo for the first steps in bringing back the richness of our heritage to the wastelands of academia.  Our kids deserve the best and it has been held back from them.

What was Auden's curriculum?  Here it is in its one page glory (requiring 6,000 pages of reading of the greatest literature of the West.)

Click to enlarge.

In plainer form:

Required Reading

Dante — The Divine Comedy

Aeschylus — The Agamemnon (tr. Louis MacNeice)

Sophocles — Antigone (tr. Dudley Fitts or Fitzgerald)

Horace — Odes

Augustine — Confessions

Shakespeare — Henry IV, Pt 2

Shakespeare — Othello

Shakespeare — Hamlet

Shakespeare — The Tempest

Ben Jonson — Volpone

Pascal — Pensees

Racine — Phedre

Blake — Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Goethe — Faust, Part I

Kierkegaard — Fear and Trembling

Baudelaire — Journals

Ibsen — Peer Gynt

Dostoevsky — The Brothers Karamazov

Rimbaud — A Season in Hell

Henry Adams — Education of Henry Adams

Melville — Moby Dick

Rilke — The Journal of My Other Self

Kafka — The Castle

TS Eliot — Family Reunion

OPERA LIBRETTI:

Orpheus (Gluck)

Don Giovanni (Mozart)

The Magic Flute (Mozart)

Fidelio (Beethoven)

Flying Dutchman (Wagner)

Tristan und Isolde (Wagner)

Götterdämmerung (Wagner)

Carmen (Bizet)

Traviata (Verdi)

RECOMMENDED CRITICAL READING:

Patterns of Culture — Ruth Benedict

From the South Seas — Margaret Mead

Middletown — Robert Lynd

The Heroic Age — Hector Chadwick

Epic and Romance — W.P. Ker

Plato Today — R.H.S. Crossman

Christianity and Classical Culture — C.N. Cochrane

The Allegory of Love — C.S. Lewis

As if I needed another book list.  But . . . 

Voices by Witter Bynner

Voices

by Witter Bynner

O there were lights and laughter

And the motions to and fro

Of people as they enter

And people as they go...

And there were many voices

Vying at the feast,

But mostly I remember

Yours — who spoke the least.

History

Only England can be like “those pyramids mate? Oi we got a stone way older innit. It’s at the pub ‘round the corner” https://t.co/oa8F5SoYJs

— Magister Johannes (@nassaujuan) March 9, 2025

 

An Insight

The RAF has launched a desperate search for pilots after a secret unlawful bid to discriminate against white men backfired and left the air force with an acute shortage of combat-ready flyers. https://t.co/T5ats74kXr

— Toby Young (@toadmeister) March 10, 2025

 

I see winderful things

Really cool footage of a capybara running underwater.

[📹Fernando Maydana]pic.twitter.com/ZxS4LbM5NN

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) March 10, 2025

 

Offbeat Humor

John is, of course, correct.

The @DeptofDefense does not do climate change crap.

We do training and warfighting. https://t.co/eK5Xyf7fN4

— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) March 9, 2025

 

Data Talks

In the past 10 years, the United States has had among the lowest infection rates by measles in the advanced world, on par with other high performers like Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands.

Only South Korea has a significantly lower infection rate. pic.twitter.com/HukDfz1KdQ

— Kevin Bass PhD MS (@kevinnbass) March 9, 2025

 

Village on the Banks of the Seine, 1872 by Alfred Sisley

Village on the Banks of the Seine, 1872 by Alfred Sisley (France, 1839-1899)

Click to enlarge.

Fame by Leonard Bacon

Fame

by Leonard Bacon

As I came down into the Place of Spain,

Above the motors tooting in the streets

I heard a voice that asked, “Well, who was Keats?”

In the best accent of Nebraska’s plain.

A thin but rigid female, who in vain

Perused her Baedeker’s close-printed sheets,

Answered: “An Irish Poet,” scattering sweets

Of information to the Vast Inane.

Who was he? A voice, forgotten in some quarters

Apparently. The mortal lyric cry

Stilled by the house where the man came to die;

A lost identity of long ago;

Music and love quenched by the many waters.

Who was he? Do the critics really know?

History

The invasions that brought down the Justinian Roman empire. pic.twitter.com/jkmZBcXJsL

— LiorLefineder (@lefineder) March 9, 2025

 

An Insight

I think about this daily.

Life’s work. Ikigai. pic.twitter.com/jpdswIfGBj

— Harley Finkelstein (@harleyf) March 9, 2025

 

I see wonderful things

Bill Paxton and Lance Henriksen are the only two actors to have been killed by a Terminator, a Predator, and an Alien. pic.twitter.com/pCHXD3ghar

— Creepy.org (@creepydotorg) March 9, 2025

 

Offbeat Humor

2 Part Video:

TODAY: Democrat Boston Governor Maura Healey says they have an energy crisis because it’s impossible to get natural gas

2022: Gov Healey brags about BLOCKING natural gas pipelines that would’ve solved their crisis

You can’t make this uppic.twitter.com/ySmHoQBMWo

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) March 8, 2025

 

Data Talks

There you go.

Only 10% of top medical journal articles accurately used and interpreted the stats.

Peer review does not work - it is just gate keeping for consensus. https://t.co/Bd5g1tXc0N

— Dr Clare Craig (@ClareCraigPath) March 8, 2025

Father's Arms by Stephanie J. Frostad

Father's Arms by Stephanie J. Frostad (America, 1965 - )

Click to enlarge.

In the Middle of the Night by Joseph Massey

In the Middle of the Night

by Joseph Massey

 

In the middle of

the night, all that will suffice

is poetry - to

speak clearly into the dark - 

a lantern for company.

 

“Time, You Old Gipsy Man” by Ralph Hodgson

“Time, You Old Gipsy Man”

by Ralph Hodgson

Time, you old gipsy man,

Will you not stay,

Put up your caravan

Just for one day?

All things I'll give you

Will you be my guest,

Bells for your jennet

Of silver the best,

Goldsmiths shall beat you

A great golden ring,

Peacocks shall bow to you,

Little boys sing,

Oh, and sweet girls will

Festoon you with may,

Time, you old gipsy,

Why hasten away?

Last week in Babylon,

Last night in Rome,

Morning, and in the crush

Under Paul’s dome;

Under Paul’s dial

You tighten your rein —

Only a moment,

And off once again;

Off to some city ;

Now blind in the womb,

Off to another

Ere that’s in the tomb.

Time, you old gipsy man,

Will you not stay,

Put up your caravan

Just for one day?

History

The De Kalb monument in front of Bethesda Presbyterian Church in Camden South Carolina marks the grave of Johann von Robais Baron de Kalb, a Major General in the Continental Army, who was mortally wounded at the Battle of Camden in 1780. On March 8th 1825 this monument was… pic.twitter.com/vKCZVZ4kCt

— Aedanus Burke (@aedanusburke) March 8, 2025

 

An Insight

In our age of distraction, remember:

Your focus is your future pic.twitter.com/oy8jy45fca

— Evan Amato (@SirEvanAmato) March 10, 2025

 

I see wonderful things

Pallas Cats are the most cat of all the cats and I love them pic.twitter.com/5g4bnf238E

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) March 9, 2025

 

Hierarchies, Rituals, Ideologies, Bureaucracies and Habits - Means to escape limits

I am taken with this post because it harmonizes with my thinking and discussions over the past several years.  I reasoned my way from an economics background which essentially the study of scarcity and trade-offs.  As Thomas Sowell says:

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it.

He also mentions the second order effect which is also a constraint issue:

The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

When economics meet the Dunbar Number, you are beginning to see a pattern of overlapping constraints.  Finally, marry that with the history of science and technology (and the effect Moore's Law has had) and you begin to understand how rich is the mesh of interwoven constraints and how determinative they can be in an emergent order fashion.  

Via Divia Eden:

I just asked ChatGPT if it had any pet theories about how the world works that it hadn’t seen much elsewhere and I liked one of its responses! (I got two and was asked to pick which I preferred)

“Absolutely, here’s one I find compelling and haven’t seen widely discussed:…

— Divia Eden 🔍 (@diviacaroline) April 9, 2025

Extracted:

I just asked ChatGPT if it had any pet theories about how the world works that it hadn’t seen much elsewhere and I liked one of its responses! (I got two and was asked to pick which I preferred)

“Absolutely, here’s one I find compelling and haven’t seen widely discussed:

“Bandwidth economics” as a driver of social structure.

We usually talk about economics in terms of money, resources, or incentives. But what if a major limiting factor in how societies develop—especially in group size, complexity, and norms—is cognitive and emotional bandwidth?

Basically: humans only have so much attention, working memory, and emotional capacity to track others’ motivations, resolve ambiguity, and maintain shared understandings. Many social patterns—like hierarchy, taboo, bureaucratic ritual, or even ideologies—can be seen as compression strategies to make social life cognitively manageable. It’s like lossy JPEGs of messy reality.

So:

•Hierarchies = reduce the number of people you need to track carefully

•Rituals = outsource behavioral decisions to shared scripts

•Ideologies = heuristics for moral/emotional allocation without constant rethinking

•Bureaucracies = attempt to systematize social interactions into predictable formats to minimize cognitive load

In this view, many modern failures (e.g., political polarization, burnout in online activism, collapse of shared reality) are driven by bandwidth overflow. We’re exposed to way more people, data, and decisions than our brains evolved to handle.

What’s cool about this is it frames social dysfunction not as malice or stupidity, but as compression artifacts from trying to fit a big, messy world into narrow channels.

What about you—do you have any favorite underappreciated theories or frameworks?”

Which makes clear the connection to my other preferred idea - that culture, class, tradition, and religion are all mechanisms of cultural coding which supplement whatever benefit we derive from our genetic coding.   Coding transmitted via stories (spoken and observed) instead of via genes.  

They are all mechanisms to reduce the individual's learning curve (and enhance survival).  Donald Kingsbury:

Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back. Sometimes the problem has mutated or disappeared. Often it is still there as strong as it ever was.

Missing from ChatGPTs list of Hierarchies, Rituals, Ideologies, and Bureaucracies is Habits.  The one thing we have the greatest control over.  From our culture, class, tradition, and religion, via stories, we can derive our own lessons from there habitualize those elements which we believe can make a positive difference to our survival and well-being.  

All because we are profoundly limited.  As wondrous as is the human body and mind, we are a mere speck in an effectively limitless reality which we only barely comprehend.  How we leverage our limited capabilities to better fit the uncertainty of limitless reality is an ever shifting challenge.

Call it bandwidth economics or cultural coding or Dunbar Number - they are all aspects of the effort to recognize and address profound human limits.

Offbeat Humor

This probably made a lot of sense before a deaf, autistic girl brought down the entire NGO and non-profit complex by mapping publicly available financial transaction data in her spare time. https://t.co/GtqR99sGL7

— Upstate Federalist (@upstatefederlst) March 8, 2025

 

Data Talks

In the past 10 years, the United States has had among the lowest infection rates by measles in the advanced world, on par with other high performers like Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands.

Only South Korea has a significantly lower infection rate. pic.twitter.com/HukDfz1KdQ

— Kevin Bass PhD MS (@kevinnbass) March 9, 2025

 

Mist and Rain on the Tyne Bridge by Reg Gardner

Mist and Rain on the Tyne Bridge by Reg Gardner (England, 1948 - )

Click to enlarge.

Out-Of-Doors by Walter Conrad Arensberg

Out-Of-Doors

by Walter Conrad Arensberg

I hear the wings, the winds, the river pass,

And toss the fretful book upon the grass.

Poor book; it could not cure my soul of aught —

It has itself the old disease of thought.

History

20% of post-Revolution settlers in Nova Scotia were disbanded British regulars. A slim majority were from New Jersey and New York. Vast majority of Southerners who settled in Nova Scotia were born in Germany, Ireland, or Scotland. pic.twitter.com/ywmO7jx2HN

— Nemets (@Peter_Nimitz) February 17, 2025

 

An Insight

I'm not much of a fan of the phrase "it's not complicated," but, in this case, he's right, it really isn't. pic.twitter.com/Emgoq9KAtD

— i/o (@alkonata) March 10, 2025

 

I see wonderful things

Proud boy finding best stick pic.twitter.com/eR4iLjv7UD

— B&S (@_B___S) March 9, 2025

 

Offbeat Humor

2 Part Video:

TODAY: Democrat Boston Governor Maura Healey says they have an energy crisis because it’s impossible to get natural gas

2022: Gov Healey brags about BLOCKING natural gas pipelines that would’ve solved their crisis

You can’t make this uppic.twitter.com/ySmHoQBMWo

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) March 8, 2025

 

Data Talks

What pocket do you keep your phone in?

— World of Statistics (@stats_feed) March 9, 2025

 

Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the highest heaven by Gustave Doré

Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the highest heaven by Gustave Doré (illustrations to the Divine Comedy).  (France, 1832-1883)

Click to enlarge.

History

When Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, lost his right eye in a tournament, he had the bridge of his nose removed so that his left eye could have a better field of vision when looking to the right. You'd never guess. pic.twitter.com/rTPEVH3AkY

— Antigone Journal (@AntigoneJournal) February 28, 2025

 

An Insight

Why women live longer than men… 😬 pic.twitter.com/hxtLgmwI9t

— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) July 24, 2020

 

I see wonderful things

Dog clears sheep traffic jam pic.twitter.com/1ryj1hMAbb

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) March 9, 2025

 

Offbeat Humor

Student A, from Detroit: "I consider myself a Scandinavian-style Democratic socialist - not all the way to Marxist advocacy, but very much into the Scandinavian 60%-tax-rates model."

Student B, from Appalachia: "That there's a lot of words for 'lazy.'"

— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) March 5, 2025

 

Data Talks

The fundamental problem with American urbanists’ suggestion that European-level transit dependence should be a model for American cities is that transit-rich European cities are much less accessible than their American counterparts. https://t.co/tc4oACgfbS

— Marc Scribner (@marcscribner) March 7, 2025

 

Over the Fields to the Sea by Ann Burnham

Over the Fields to the Sea by Ann Burnham (England)

Click to enlarge.

Of China and her Wisdom by Paul Edlridge

Of China and Her Wisdom

from Cobwebs and Cosmos

by Paul Edlridge

Quam Tsi T’ung Finds Violence Weaker than Serenity

The moth,

Enraged,

Beats against the lamp,

His wings forming

Countless tiny fans,

And falls at last

A fragile pinch of gray ashes.

The lamp burns on,

Tranquilly.

Ku Mung Mourns the Passing or His Years

The rose is dangling

On its broken stem —

Its petals are dropping

One by one —

Who shall gather them together

To make a rose again?

Mi Ti Advises a Young Poet Not to Despair

At the right moment,

The Earth smiles —

Between her lips,

Slightly parted,

A daisy trembles

In sheer delight.

Chou Ching Advises Practicality To a Poet

The stars are radiant queens,

Walking majestically across Infinity,

But the edges of their azure cloaks

Trail in the muddy pools of the Earth.

Ti Fu Rebukes A Vain Man

The branches laden with fruit

Bend humbly to the ground.

Wig Mu Si Speaks of the Vanity of a Man's Illusions

The souls of men

Are birds with beaks of glass,

Which break, knocking

At the adamantine gates

Of Paradise.

History

And was, of course, ended by Woodrow Wilson. https://t.co/ukpxOIZpsu

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) March 5, 2025

 

An Insight

This probably made a lot of sense before a deaf, autistic girl brought down the entire NGO and non-profit complex by mapping publicly available financial transaction data in her spare time. https://t.co/GtqR99sGL7

— Upstate Federalist (@upstatefederlst) March 8, 2025

 

I see wonderful things

Fun fact

A chicken can be hypnotized with its head down near the ground, by drawing a line along the ground starting at the beak and extending straight outward in front of the chicken.pic.twitter.com/dJSsbYvOvM

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) March 9, 2025

 

Offbeat Humor

🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/MCapmOhRl4

— Rothmus 🏴 (@Rothmus) March 4, 2025

 

Data Talks

Canada only became majority English-speaking in the decade following the Revolution, when about eighty thousand Americans migrated north to British-controlled territories. There had only been about twenty five thousand English-speakers in Canada before their arrival.

— Nemets (@Peter_Nimitz) February 20, 2025

 

Robin, 1965 by Ronald Lampitt

Robin, 1965 by Ronald Lampitt (England, 1906-1988)

Click to enlarge.

In Harbor by Paul Hamilton Hayne

In Harbor

by Paul Hamilton Hayne

I think it is over, over,

I think it is over at last,

Voices of foeman and lover,

The sweet and the bitter have passed:

Life, like a tempest of ocean

Hath outblown its ultimate blast;

There's but a faint sobbing seaward

While the calm of the tide deepens leeward,

And behold! like the welcoming quiver

Of heart-pulses throbbed thro' the river,

Those lights in the harbor at last,

The heavenly harbor at last!

I feel it is over, over!

For the winds and the waters surcease;

Ah! - few were the days of the rover

That smiled in the beauty of peace!

And distant and dim was the omen

That hinted redress or release:

From the ravage of life, and its riot

What marvel I yearn for the quiet

Which bides in the harbor at last?

For the lights with their welcoming quiver

That throbbed through the sanctified river

Which girdles the harbor at last,

This heavenly harbor at last?

I know it is over, over,

I know it is over at last!

Down sail! the sheathed anchor uncover,

For the stress of the voyage has passed:

Life, like a tempest of ocean

Hath outbreathed its ultimate blast;

There's but a faint sobbing seaward;

While the calm of the tide deepens leeward;

And behold! like the welcoming quiver

Of heart-pulses throbbed thro' the river,

Those lights in the harbor at last,

The heavenly harbor at last!

Worth Makes the Man by Alexander Pope

Worth Makes the Man

From An Essay on Man, Epistle IV, 6

by Alexander Pope

Honour and shame from no condition rise;

Act well your part: there all the honour lies.

Fortune in men has some small diff'rence made;

One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade,

The cobbler apron'd, and the parson gown'd;

The friar hooded, and the monarch crown'd.

`What differ more,' you cry, `than crown and cowl?'

I'll tell you friend! a wise man and a fool.

You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk,

Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk,

Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow.

The rest is all but leather or prunella.

History

Three-headed snake fresco from the Etruscan tomb known as the "Quadriga Hellish," Sarteano, Siena, Italy, c. 4th century BC. pic.twitter.com/FhM7mW5xw8

— Archaeology & Art (@archaeologyart) March 5, 2025

 

Even when He is silent by Anonymous

Even when He is silent

by Anonymous

Found on the walls of a Nazi concentration camp

I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.

I believe in love even when I fell it not.

I believe in God even when he is silent.

An Insight

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience;
we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

- Attributed to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

— Rudy Havenstein, Senior Markets Commentator. (@RudyHavenstein) February 26, 2024

 

I see wonderful things

Thought of George Eliot’s wonderful quote just now: ‘The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; & that things are not so ill with you & me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life & rest in unvisited tombs. pic.twitter.com/7s145UAEmh

— Gwydir Castle (@JudyCorbett) March 9, 2025

 

Offbeat Humor

DOGE fired all their speech writers…. https://t.co/iqJHbimlrR

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 4, 2025

 

Data Talks

The top 20% of political science departments produced 75% of all tenure track research university faculty & the bottom 50% accounted for less than 5% https://t.co/UNc2I0NrYP pic.twitter.com/VYq1gneDcK

— Matt Grossmann (@MattGrossmann) March 4, 2025

 

When you look in the mirror you see not just your face but a museum.

From The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders From the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by David W. Anthony

When you look in the mirror you see not just your face but a museum. Although your face, in one sense, is your own, it is composed of a collage of features you have inherited from your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on. The lips and eyes that either bother or please you are not yours alone but are also features of your ancestors, long dead perhaps as individuals but still very much alive as fragments in you. Even complex qualities such as your sense of balance, musical abilities, shyness in crowds, or susceptibility to sickness have been lived before. We carry the past around with us all the time, and not just in our bodies. It lives also in our customs, including the way we speak. The past is a set of invisible lenses we wear constantly, and through these we perceive the world and the world perceives us. We stand always on the shoulders of our ancestors, whether or not we look down to acknowledge them.

The Fish Bucket, 1924 by Gifford Beal

The Fish Bucket, 1924 by Gifford Beal (America, 1879-1956)

Click to enlarge.

Each in His Own Tongue By William Herbert Carruth

Each in His Own Tongue

By William Herbert Carruth

A fire-mist and a planet,

A crystal and a cell,

A jelly-fish and a saurian,

And caves where the cave-men dwell;

Then a sense of law and beauty

And a face turned from the clod —

Some call it Evolution,

And others call it God.

A haze on the far horizon,

The infinite, tender sky,

The ripe rich tint of the cornfileds,

And the wild geese sailing high —

And all over upland and lowland

The charm of the golden-rod —

Some of us call it Autumn

And others call it God.

Like tides on a crescent sea-beach,

When the moon is new and thin,

Into our hearts high yearnings

Come welling and surging in —

Come from the mystic ocean,

Whose rim no foot has trod, —

Some of us call it Longing,

And others call it God.

A picket frozen on duty,

A mother starved for her brood,

Socrates drinking the hemlock,

And Jesus on the rood;

And millions who, humble and nameless,

The straight, hard pathway plod, —

Some call it Consecration,

And others call it God.

History

Carthaginian N. Africa was populated by a large number of people referred to by ancient sources as "Libyphoenicians," a group described by Livy as "a mixed race of Punic and aboriginal African descent." We hear of numerous Libyphoenician troops used in the Punic wars and also in… https://t.co/NRkZ9fpfcu

— LiorLefineder (@lefineder) March 4, 2025

 

An Insight

An actual genocide is currently being perpetrated by the Syrian Islamist regime against Syrian Christians, Druze, and Alawites, and barely anybody is talking about it.

More people need to start speaking up.

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) March 7, 2025

 

I see wonderful things

Approximately €3,000 in loose change is thrown into the Trevi Fountain in Italy each day, totaling up to €1.5 million approximately annually, which is then used to aid the needy.

pic.twitter.com/qcd21AS10x

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) March 9, 2025

 

Offbeat Humor

Hot cross bun production is in full swing in time for the start of Lent.

BL Lansdowne 451, f.6r @BLMedieval pic.twitter.com/6ec27NaDuA

— Ennius (@red_loeb) March 4, 2025

 

Data Talks

Except it wasn’t chaos, it was deliberate policy. The Biden administration deliberately sought to enable and maximize the flow of illegal immigration, in contravention to & undermining our immigration laws, on purpose. They wanted a large quantity of illegal immigrants and got it https://t.co/PlzTczLsUd

— sonch (@soncharm) March 5, 2025

 

Anne Willumsen 19 years. Nocturne de Chopin mi b majeur, 1929, by J. F. Willumsen

Anne Willumsen 19 years. Nocturne de Chopin mi b majeur, 1929, by J. F. Willumsen (Denmark, 1863-1958)

Click to enlarge.

Preparedness by Edwin Markham

Preparedness

by Edwin Markham

For all your days prepare,

   And meet them ever alike:

When you are the anvil, bear—

   When you are the hammer, strike.

History

Kapilikaya Rock Tomb, which translates to "rock with a door," is a historical site dating back to 2nd Century BC, during Hellenistic Period. There is some debate among locals, with some Turks believing the tomb to be Roman rather than Greek, reflecting historical complexities and… pic.twitter.com/kH6QWx5KtK

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) March 2, 2025

 

An Insight

pic.twitter.com/G6L5lPDbu0

— Physics In History (@PhysInHistory) March 6, 2025

 

I see wonderful things

Amazing Paralympic blind runner with her hero guide...pic.twitter.com/AfcGxxClC8

— The Random Guy (@RandomTheGuy_) March 9, 2025

 

Offbeat Humor

https://t.co/9ZuziBar11 pic.twitter.com/S34TwZ6yVC

— Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) March 3, 2025

 

Data Talks

Population Density Map Of Egypt

credit: @researchremora

See 100+ more: https://t.co/9GqvKsZV60 pic.twitter.com/03G6wAWynh

— Brilliant Maps (@BrilliantMaps) March 4, 2025

 

Leningrad Nights, 1961 by Boris Fedorovich Fedorov  (Russia, 1923-1991)

Click to enlarge.

The Builder By Willard Wattles

The Builder

By Willard Wattles

Smoothing a cypress beam

With a scarred hand,

I saw a carpenter

In a far land.

Down past the flat roofs

Poured the white sun;

But still he bent his back,

The patient one.

And I paused surprised

In that queer place

To find an old man

With a haunting face.

"Who art thou, carpenter,

Of the bowed head;

And what buildest thou?"

"Heaven," he said.

History

Chairs with built-in coin operated televisions and ashtrays in the waiting hall of the Los Angeles bus terminal, 1969. pic.twitter.com/pbD8WIiZTP

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) March 1, 2025

 

An Insight

“Property is a central economic institution of any society, and private property is the central institution of a free society.”

― David D. Friedman pic.twitter.com/ca9YVOVcgC

— Students For Liberty (@sfliberty) March 4, 2025

 

I see wonderful things

We're literally just living on mountains pic.twitter.com/6mqMFoadJL

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) March 10, 2025

 

Offbeat Humor

This SNL local news skit on the race of alleged criminals is legit fantastic: pic.twitter.com/MDtzfoo0t6

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) March 3, 2025

 

Data Talks

War is bad. We all know that but still easily forget how huge population losses were during past wars. This map shows the population loss in the Holy Roman Empire as a result of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). Ouch. pic.twitter.com/9rhJH0mSAc

— Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600) March 1, 2025

 

Montmartre Nocturne - Rue Cortot by Jean-Claude Götting

Montmartre Nocturne - Rue Cortot by Jean-Claude Götting (France, 1963 - )

Click to enlarge.

They reminded me that correction isn’t cruelty, that assertiveness isn’t aggression, and that love — real love, the masculine kind I was trained not to recognize — doesn’t always sound like comfort.

From Systemic Misogyny: A Theorem Disproved by Holly MathNerd.  The subheading, what my feminist professors lied about. 

Having received an education when schools and universities were focused on the creation and transmission of knowledge, I find it hard to comprehend the university experience of kids today.  Holly MathNerd's essay is one peek into that world and one person's escape from it's cramped worldview.  

Because here’s what I finally understand, with the help of my guy friends: boundaries aren’t bitchiness. Assertiveness isn’t aggression. Asking for what you need — calmly, clearly, without apology — is neither a failure of femininity nor a moral defect. It’s a skill.

And for me, it’s one I’ve had to learn entirely from men.

The best men I know don’t just fight for the people they care about. They teach you how to fight for yourself. With clarity. With strength. With dignity.

And they remind you, when you forget, that none of that makes you a bitch.

It just makes you free.

I was taught to fear men long before college. Not by theory, but by trauma.

College didn’t plant that fear; it just gave me reasons. Justifications. A framework that made my oldest wounds feel not only valid, but virtuous. And humans are incredibly good at justifying our feelings — especially the ones that damage us.

[snip]

But over the last five years, it’s been men — real men, good men — who’ve helped me unlearn that. Who’ve challenged me, supported me, corrected me, and refused to lie to me. They didn’t coddle me. They didn’t play along. They told the truth. They expected effort. They modeled strength.

They reminded me that correction isn’t cruelty, that assertiveness isn’t aggression, and that love — real love, the masculine kind I was trained not to recognize — doesn’t always sound like comfort.

Sometimes it sounds like “try harder.”

Sometimes it sounds like “stand up.”

And sometimes it just sounds like “Maybe you can’t, but try.”

I’m better for having heard it.

And I’ll never stop being grateful that I learned to listen.

I was taught that the reason for every statistical difference, every imbalance, every struggle I, along with all other women, faced was men — their privilege, their dominance, their systems.

Turns out, the oppressors were just guys.

And the cage I thought they built?

Feminism handed me the blueprints — and I helped weld the bars.

Ecclesiastes 12

Ecclesiastes 12

King James Version, The Holy Bible

1 Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;

2 While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain:

3 In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened,

4 And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low;

5 Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:

6 Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.

7 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

History

A wooden prop in the margins, beautifully employed to support a bit of text that has overrun the end of the line - 15th century, Birgitta of Sweden, British Library, Harley MS 612, f. 50r pic.twitter.com/rjeZDsunKZ

— Medieval Military Medicine (@MedMilMedicine) March 1, 2025

 

An Insight

Ignorance is more contagious than knowledge; folly spreads more quickly than wisdom; left untended, the garden fills with weeds, not roses.

— Paul J. Pastor (@pauljpastor) March 2, 2025

 

I see wonderful things

Before I go to work I want to tell you about a type of Soldier in the military that is near and dear to my heart. I have so many stories to tell about these folks but this one chokes me up to this day:

I was testing to get my Expert Infantryman's Badge awhile back at Fort… pic.twitter.com/ZcAVY39xgV

— InfantryDort (@infantrydort) March 4, 2025