On the 27th, we bought two more horses, and two miles upstream from the mouth of the Oualla-Oualla, we encountered a band of Indians camped there for the night. This river is 180 feet wide and rises in the same mountains as the Oumatalla; beavers, otters, and deer frequent its vicinity. The nation that gives it its name lives near its confluence with the Columbia; these Indians are quite gentle, but do not know the art of hunting fur-bearing animals; their number is 200. The inhabitants of these townships have, compared to those near the falls, few means of subsistence, because their land is poorly endowed with suitable fishing grounds, and fishing is not plentiful there. They are therefore forced to subsist, for most of the year, on a small quantity of game and roots, which they have great difficulty obtaining; so that those who find this way of life too arduous hasten to the falls. It is with scoundrels of this kind that the most famous fishing spots are populated; and, for this reason, they can be called, like our large cities, the capitals of depravity (17 m.).

In response to increased military skirmishes and souring relations, indigenous Quechan and Kumeyaay bands responded by raiding ranchos, an attack on San Diego in June 1842, and cutting off all overland lines of trade and communication between the former Alta California and the rest of Mexico through a blockade from the Colorado River to the Pacific Ocean along what is today the California-Baja California border,[57] which would come to fuel miscommunication in Northern California.

Blossom was hulked as a lazarette at Sheerness in January 1833

Far as the eye could see on every side high rugged Peaks arose covered with Eternal snow turning to the East the frozen waste extending rough and desolate beyond the boundaries of vision warned me to return. Below the deep Rocky ravines resounded with immense Cascades and waterfalls where the melting snow and ice was fast hastening to the fertile Plain. The sight in its extended range embraced no living being except it caught a transient glimpse of my little party awaiting my return in the snows below. It was indeed a freezing desolation and one which I thought should keep a man from wandering. I thought of home and all its neglected enjoyments of the cherfull fireside of my father house of the Plenteous harvest of my native land and visions of flowing fields of green and wide spread Prairaes of joyous bustle and of busy life thronged in my mind to make me feel more strongly the utter desolateness of my situation. And is it possible thought I that we are creatures of choice and that we follow fortune through such paths as these. Home with contented industry could give us all that is attainable and fortune could do no more.

When I left the Courier I took leave of my friend Capt Cunningham. Should chance ever throw this in his way he will perhaps be gratified to find that I have not forgotten his name or his friendship. That I recollect with the most grateful feelings his kind offices in times that made them doubly valuable and in a country to which he had traveled by the unmarked and perilous paths of the Ocean while my way had been through an unknown Land over mountains and parched inhospitable plains. Meeting in a distant country by routes so different gave an instance of that restless enterprise that has lead and is now leading our countrymen to all parts of the world that has made them travellers on every ocean until it can now be said there is not a breeze of heaven but spreads an american flag.

The vivid language and intimate details of the poems often look autobiographical[6][7] yet it is known, on the authority of Aristotle, that Archilochus sometimes role-played

Investigators have processed 150 forensic samples related to the crime, from the scene and from objects the thieves left behind. All three people who were arrested already had their DNA on file because of their criminal histories, mostly for theft.

One category of religion which is negatively correlated with positive social outcomes is polytheism. Polytheism is highly conducive to all sorts of unpleasant behaviors. Most notably, child sacrifice and bestiality are only to be found in polytheistic religions, but not in monotheistic ones. Why?

YC doesn't explicitly tell founders that with growth rate "you get out what you put in," but it's not far from the truth. And if growth rate were proportional to performance, then the reward for performance p over time t would be proportional to pt

According to this theory, the gods may be ideas created by the mind, or they may be actual people existing in the recesses of the mind, to represent such immortal superorganismic interests. That is, they could be “people” of the unconscious mind just as real as “you” are of the conscious mind.

Saint Catherine's Monastery on the foot of Mount Sinai was constructed by order of the Emperor Justinian between 527 and 565. Most of the Sinai Peninsula became part of the province of Palaestina Salutaris in the 6th century.

Religious and ethnic norms obviously select for the types you care about and want, but only weakly, because you actually care about them being high-iq and having a soul, which isn't 1:1 to religion or race. To solve this, I believe that all immigrants should be chained together and hunted for sport to test prosociality and fitness. The survivors would be wreathed in petals and considered probationary whites after a tour of duty invading and killing their former countrymen to cut all ties with their former lives. New names would be chosen for them by the state, and on alternating full moons they would be allowed to eat their origin culture's delicacies while shrouded in fuligin cloth for modesty's sake.

Ἀπολλόδωρος, ο ὐ περιμένεις

Census officials traveled throughout the empire, assessed the value of labor and land for each landowner, and joined the landowners' totals together to make citywide totals of capita and iuga

A Trajanic temple on the island of Philae

Building on third-century trends towards absolutism, he styled himself an autocrat, elevating himself above the empire's masses with imposing forms of court ceremonies and architecture. Bureaucratic and military growth, constant campaigning, and construction projects increased the state's expenditures and necessitated a comprehensive tax reform.

The advantage of the Marxist hypothesis is that it is testable: if the Second Cold War really is observed, it is proved. The Postmodern theory refuted, by logic, any possibility of a Second Cold War ever happening.

In my opinion, there’s still a way to “save” Marxist History and disprove Postmodernism. If the Marxist theory of History is correct, then the period that started in 1991 is just an interwar period between the First and the coming Second Cold Wars, a la the 1920s-1930s. If this theory is correct, then the End of History was just a small interregnum, characterized by an unprecedented euphoria by the capitalist elites and their middle class managers. In my opinion, this End of History era ended in September 2008, with the great catastrophic financial crisis of New York.

Since the end of the (1st) Cold War (1945-1989/1991), we’re observing the rise of the so-called Postmodern school/method in History. Postmodernism states that we’re in the End of History in the sense that there is no more “long duration” events, that is, “totalitarianism” (Marxism, Nazifascism, Positivism, any idea of progress etc. etc.) is decisively defeated. History is thus proven to be just a pure random succession of micro-events, done by fully independent individuals who interact with each other by pure accident (i.e. there is no “fate” in History). Postmodern historians value biographies above all genres of History, and claim tiny events have the same value as the “big” events. They consider History to be a form of literature and not a science, purely relativistic (no hierarchy between events).

And the decline of the hegemonic US economy relative to the rising economies of China, India and East Asia has increased.

But as forpetroleum, it may be that the lakes from which we are drawingare constantly renewed from invisible reservoirs.

The Towns were strictly enforcing a no-digital policy, or as they liked to say “LowTech IT”. After AIs became commonplace everywhere in society starting in the mid twenties (just when J was born by the way, her parents sometimes talked about the “before” times, not before J, but before AI, which had and still was doing nasty things to human society and culture), some people decided that they wanted nothing to do with it, and so the Town movement was born.

Infact, ever since the human race submitted to the servitude of civilization,freedom has been the most frequent and most insistent demand of rebels andrevolutionaries throughout the ages.2�5

The yearning for freedom, attachment to nature, courage, honor,honesty, morality, friendship, love and all of the other social instincts . . . evenfree will itself: all of these human qualities, valued in the highest degreefrom the dawn of the human race, evolved through the millennia becausethey were appropriate and useful in the primitive circumstances in whichpeople lived. But today, so-called "progress" is changing the circumstancesof human life to such an extent that these formerly advantageous qualitiesare becoming obsolete and useless. Consequently, they will disappear orwill be transformed into something totally different and to us alien. Thisphenomenon can already be observed: Among the American middle class,the concept of honor has practically vanished, courage is little valued,friendship almost always lacks depth, honesty is decaying,19J and freedomseems to be identified, in the opinion of some people, with obedience to therules. And bear in mind that this is only the beginning of the beginning.

modern technology is in the process ofbringing about the most profound changes in human society as well as in itsphysical and biological environment. That the consequences of such changesare unpredictable has been demonstrated not only theoretically, but alsothrough experience. For example, no one could have predicted in advancethat modern changes, through mechanisms that still have not been definitelydetermined, would lead to an epidemic of allergies.

It is my opinion that we have now reached the end of the era in which democratic systems were the most vigorous ones economically and technologically. If that is true, then we can expect democracy to be gradually replaced by systems of a more authoritarian type, though the external forms of democratic government will probably be retained because of their utility for propaganda purposes.

The Indians got around these problems by putting the nuts into a mortar and pounding them into tiny bits, shells, meats, and all. Then they would boil the mixture and put it aside to cool. The fragments of shell would settle to the bottom of the pot while the pulverized meats would settle in a layer above the shells; thus the meats could be separated from the shells.

one of the most common tactics critics use to argue against race is to transform it from a reasonable classificatory construct into an implausible Platonic essence

The Americo-Liberian settlers did not relate well to the indigenous peoples they encountered, especially those living in the more isolated interior. Colonial settlements were raided by the Kru and Grebo from their inland chiefdoms. Americo-Liberians promoted religious organizations to set up missions and schools to educate the native populace.[11] Americo-Liberians formed into a small elite that held disproportionate political power; indigenous Africans were excluded from birthright citizenship in their own land until 1904

Motto: Domine Dirige Nos ("O Lord direct us")

Historically, the term was used in the Age of Discovery to refer to the coasts of the landmasses comprising the Indian subcontinent and the Indochinese Peninsula along with the Malay Archipelago

At least 400 farms have been identified by archaeologists.

God Almighty in his most holy and wise providence hath so disposed of the condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in subjection.

Back in the day in Russia, Kirlian photography was used medically, as a diagnosis tool. It was a said that it could also predict health problems before they manifested.

Post COVID-19 infection was not associated with either myocarditis (aHR 1.08; 95% CI 0.45 to 2.56) or pericarditis (aHR 0.53; 95% CI 0.25 to 1.13). We did not observe an increased incidence of neither pericarditis nor myocarditis in adult patients recovering from COVID-19 infection.

President Xiomara Castro celebrated the repeal, saying Honduras was “recovering its sovereignty.” Castro won the presidential election in November 2021 on a manifesto that included shutting down ZEDEs in response to growing outrage over the jurisdictions.

The itako and ichiko are blind women who train to become spiritual mediums, traditionally in Japan's northern Tohoku region.[372] Itako train under other itako from childhood, memorialising sacred texts and prayers, fasting, and undertaking acts of severe asceticism, through which they are believed to cultivate supernatural powers.[372] In an initiation ceremony, a kami is believed to possess the young woman, and the two are then ritually "married". After this, the kami becomes her tutelary spirit and she will henceforth be able to call upon it, and a range of other spirits, in the future.

Kamidana often enshrine the kami of a nearby public shrine as well as a tutelary kami associated with the house's occupants or their profession

Some individuals visit the shrines daily, often on their morning route to work;[254] they typically take only a few minutes.[254] Usually, a worshipper will approach the honden, placing a monetary offering in a box and then ringing a bell to call the kami's attention.

Schopenhauer's analysis holds that Kant misused argument by analogy to connect abstract reasoning to empirical perception

In order to maintain their purity following initiation and ritual, Orphics attempted to live an ascetic life free of spiritual contamination, most notably by adhering to a strict vegetarian diet that also excluded broad beans.

No societies are capitalist, because capitalists never rule, never can rule, never will rule.

After Wernher von Braun retired, American rockets went steadily downhill, implementing that same basic design, but less and less well.

There is not going to be a financial crash in China.  That’s because the government controls the financial levers of power: the central bank, the big four state-owned commercial banks which are the largest banks in the world, and the so-called ‘bad banks’, which absorb bad loans, big asset managers, most of the largest companies. The government can order the big four banks to exchange defaulted loans for equity stakes and forget them. It can tell the central bank, the People’s Bank of China, to do whatever it takes.

Until the age of 16, Alexander was tutored by Aristotle

Alexander was welcomed by the Egyptians as a liberator and took the country without a battle.

Calvin’s solution was to welcome poor people who had embraced the Biblical faith to come to Geneva with a guarantee of work by which every man would be able to provide for himself and his family – and until this type of equity was achieved, Calvin himself (out of his own pockets and the public coffers) provided for these people so they could have basic necessities of life until the nascent industries of the ‘new Geneva’ became profitable. Concomitant with this, Calvin dictated that people should learn to forego luxury items and services – as these things were no longer particularly viable as craftsmen were being supplanted by the early application of industry to productive processes, and because he viewed it as Godly for men to use their wealth to invest in new and better capital that would allow more people to benefit from labor and production and thus alleviate poverty. Luxury, thus, to good Protestants was viewed as a decadent and superfluous interest that didn’t benefit anybody in any appreciable way.

And yet how can anybody claim that the mature ‘consumer-led’ economies of the G7 have been successful in achieving steady and fast economic growth, or that real wages and consumption growth have been stronger there?  Indeed, in the G7 capitalist economies consumption has failed to drive economic growth and wages have stagnated in real terms over the last ten years, while real wages in China have shot up.

The FT’s Keynesian guru, Martin Wolf reckoned Xi’s continuation in power would ‘dangerous’ for China and the world. “It is dangerous for both. It would be dangerous even if he had proven himself a ruler of matchless competence.

Age of Gemini 6450 BCE 4300 BCE Invention of writing, "increased trade"

Modern genetic studies of Northwestern Cameroonian Chadic-speaking populations have observed high frequencies of the Y-Chromosome Haplogroup R1b in these populations (the R1b-V88[3] variant).

Haplogroup R-M269 is the sub-clade of human Y-chromosome haplogroup R1b that is defined by the SNP marker M269

The voyage of Pytheas has come down to us from several writers. Notably, these include Timaeus, Eratosthenes, Pliny the Elder, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, and Polybius. These last two writers, however, were openly hostile to the very idea of such a voyage. The geographer Strabo (63 BCE - 24 CE), for example, claimed in his famous work Geography that Pytheas was 'the worst possible liar' and that the majority of his writings were mere 'fabrications ' (Roseman, 24). Despite this, Strabo is a major source for Pytheas; he quotes the Greek explorer on a number of occasions in Geography, though most of these are presented in such a manner so as to discredit Pytheas and cast doubt on the validity of his voyage.

Diodorus based on Pytheas reported that Britain is cold and subject to frosts, being "too much subject to the Bear

The Celts also expanded down the Danube river and its tributaries. One of the most influential tribes, the Scordisci, established their capital at Singidunum (present-day Belgrade, Serbia) in the 3rd century BC. The concentration of hill-forts and cemeteries shows a dense population in the Tisza valley of modern-day Vojvodina, Serbia, Hungary and into Ukraine.

Modern scholarship, however, has clearly proven that Celtic presence and influences were most substantial in what is today Spain and Portugal (with perhaps the highest settlement saturation in Western Europe), particularly in the central, western and northern regions

As he explains, “the frequency of the 2R variant is too low to analyze. In the future we’ll need extremely large samples to have enough males with 2R to study.”

As he points out, the white kids in the sample were also poor, but they lived in low-income suburban communities, not in densely concentrated inner cities. The suburbs pose less of a risk than urban communities for group delinquent behavior

Daniel Choe, a developmental psychologist, and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh investigated the effects of punitive discipline on antisocial behavior in young white and African American men [23]. The researchers examined 189 young, low-income white and African American males with both low- and high-expression MAOA genes. As the researchers predicted, punitive discipline was associated with increased antisocial behavior only in men with the low-activity 3R variant. This pattern held for both white and black males. There was no relationship between harsh punishment and antisocial behavior in men carrying 4R, the high-activity version of MAOA

The association between 2R and committing a shooting or stabbing crime was statistically significant. Based on Beaver’s evidence, 2R appears to increase the risk of shooting or stabbing a victim during adolescence or adulthood [6]. For some commentators in the public arena, MAOA-2R has become a symbol of a new era in behavioral genetics research — an era that has reintroduced race into the nature versus nurture debate over the source of ethnic behavioral differences

In the Add Health database, 5.5% of African American men, 0.9% of Caucasian men, and 0.00067% of Asian men have 2R

Interestingly, the press ignored studies indicating that the 3R variant occurred in 61% of Taiwanese males [15] and 56% of Chinese males

MAOA-3R — the “original warrior gene” — was the first gene linked with antisocial characteristics. But Maori were not the only ethnic group with a high frequency of this variant. It turned out that while 3R was found in 56% of Maori males, it occurred in 58% of African American males and 34% of European males

Caspi’s team reported that adults with the low-expression MAOA who were mistreated as children were more prone to developing antisocial problems later in life. But maltreated children with the high-activity variant were less likely to engage in delinquent or criminal activities. It seems low-activity MAOA variants make people more responsive to abuse

understood behavioral differences between peoples as largely separate from and unaffected by innate predispositions stemming from human biology

The use of "Mughal" and "Moghul" derived from the Arabic and Persian corruption of "Mongol", and it emphasised the Mongol origins of the Timurid dynasty

a shroud of language that narrates what cannot be directly understood. It is simultaneously something that must be remembered, indefinitely, so that its horrors may not repeat. However, at the same time, it is considered as a singularly unique event

But Dionysius, who had made many enemies during his reign, arranged that a sword should hang above the throne, held at the pommel only by a single hair of a horse's tail to evoke the sense of what it is like to be king: though having much fortune, always having to watch in fear and anxiety against dangers that might try to overtake him. Damocles finally begged the king that he be allowed to depart because he no longer wanted to be so fortunate, realizing that with great power comes great responsibility

OECD reckons the world economy is slipping into recession driven by high energy prices, rising interest rates and China’s slowdown. The OECD now forecasts just 2.2% global growth next year and as 4% is needed to keep pace with rising global population, that will mean a fall in per capita growth.

“The credit system appears as the main lever of over-production and over-speculation in commerce solely because the reproduction process, which is elastic by nature, is here forced to its extreme limits, …. the self-expansion of capital based on the contradictory nature of capitalist production permits an actual free development only up to a certain point, so that in fact it constitutes an immanent fetter and barrier to production, which are continually broken through by the credit system.”

The US 10-year treasury yield, a key benchmark for global borrowing costs, has surged to more than 4 per cent from 3.2 per cent at the end of August, leaving it set for the biggest monthly rise since 2003. It is on track for its sharpest ever annual rise. The two-year yield, more sensitive to fluctuations in US monetary policy, has leapt 3.55 percentage points this year, which would also mark an historic increase.

al-kīmiyāʾ may be derived from the greek "χημία", which is derived from the ancient Egyptian name of Egypt, khem or khm, khame, or khmi, meaning "blackness", i.e., the rich dark soil of the Nile river valley. Therefore, alchemy can be seen as the "Egyptian art" or the "black art".

Origen sold the small library of Greek literary works which he had inherited from his father for a sum which netted him a daily income of four obols.[44][41][42] He used this money to continue his study of the Bible and of philosophy.[44][41] Origen studied at numerous schools throughout Alexandria,[44] including the Platonic Academy of Alexandria,[45][44] where he was a student of Ammonius Saccas.

very house- hold has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose. The more powerful in- dividuals in the society have several shrines in their houses and, in fact, the opulence of a house is often referred to in terms of the number of such ritual centers it possesses

It’s all about knocking over applecarts to gather other people’s apples. Well, there are always going to be people with a lot more apples than the rest of us, and those without so many apples are going to envy and resent them for it. Leftism taps into this power. It’s not just a set of memes that happened to be lying around when the holiness spiral started; it’s a set of memes that justifies and harnesses envy on a mass scale. It’s an extremely powerful and well-adapted memeplex, a miracle of evolution; only the great world religions come close.

Putin, a former KGB officer, promised to establish stability and prosperity with reforms. He restored discipline and order to the government; made the State Duma—Russia’s parliament—subordinate to his will; ended elections of regional governors and turned them into appointed officials, centralising authority; seized control of the media; and cracked down on any resistant oligarchs, exiling or imprisoning many of them.

The pro-capitalist hero Yeltsin quickly launched what has become called a ‘shock therapy’ introduction of markets and private capital.  Prices were ‘liberalised’ and rapid privatisation began—all by presidential decree without any democratic mandate from the Russian people.  Yeltsin pushed through a constitution which enshrined a powerful president with strong decree and veto powers.  When price controls were lifted, the prices for basic foodstuffs like bread and butter skyrocketed by as much as 500 percent in a matter of days.

This is a problem for privacy and fungibility, but what is really biting is scalability, the sheer size of the thing. Every full peer has to download every transaction that anyone ever did, evaluate that transaction for validity, and store it forever. And we are running hard into the physical limits of that. Every full peer on the blockchain has to know every transaction and every output of every transaction that ever there was. As someone said when Satoshi first proposed what became bitcoin: “it does not seem to scale to the required size.” And here we are now, fourteen years later, at rather close to that scaling limit. And for fourteen years, very smart people have been looking for a way to scale without limits.

And in Eastern Europe, the farmers ran into nomadic herders that were too technologically advanced to exterminate and replace. So, to make peace, they traded hostages and women, an event recorded in the Norse legends of the Æsir and the Vanir. These guys were ancestor worshipers, and at least some of the Norse Gods were remembered as originally human ancestors all the way to the beginning of recorded history. The conflict is also remembered as Cain murdering Abel.

Women want to be owned by a man, but they resist ownership with great vigor, because they want to be owned by a sufficiently strong man. This resistance is a shit test, which is difficult to pass because the state puts its thumb on the scales, giving women social superweapons, allowing women to capriciously threaten men with arbitrary imprisonment or loss of job, property, and children.

But this price cap has rocketed from under £1000 a year in 2021 to £3549 in October and then is forecast to reach an eye-watering £6600 by summer next year.

Will this price cap weapon work?  There are many holes in it.  Russia could refuse to export oil at the lower price, though that would not only reduce one of its few sources of external revenue, it also would require shutting down oil wells that aren’t easily restarted. An extended shutdown of Russian oil wells could do severe and lasting damage to its production capacity.  But Russia could continue to export oil to countries that refuse to abide by the G7 price cap, eg China and India. Indeed, before the invasion, India imported almost no Russian oil. By July it was importing close to 1mn b/d of Russian crude (heavily discounted), or about 1 percent of global supply. 

This outcome is a stark and depressing condemnation of American capitalism in the 21st century. “The stagnation in life expectancy reflects deep societal challenges — not just in our health system but also in our economic and political systems,” said Dave Chokshi, a physician and former NYC health commissioner.

This is why Schmitt made the point, emphatically, that dictatorship is NOT legitimate if it exists as a"commisarial" dictatorship that purports to 'preserve' the Constitutional order. Dictatorship islegitimate in a state of emergency as a mechanism of decision to create a new Constitutional orderin which territorial peace can once again be realized.

the semanticists tried to make thought more effective and contact with fact more immediate by introducing the irrationality, dynamism, and vagueness of the external world into the mental processes. They were satisfied that the best way to deal with the mess we call the world would be to introduce this messiness into the mind. Their arguments for doing this, always based on persuasive everyday evidence, were convincing to those who had never heard of epistemology. Aristotelian logic says, “night is not day and day is not night.” The semanticists answer, “what is twilight?” and we are expected to abandon Aristotelian logic. If Aristotelian logic says, “male is not female and vice-versa,” the semanticists say, “what about homosexuals?” and we are expected to give up Aristotelian logic.

Neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, Arianism, Manichaeism, Catharism and others were overcome or driven underground, ultimately, if we can believe Denis de Rougement, to take refuge under the disguise of the troubadours’ romantic poetry.

In speaking to the Greek polytheists of his time, St. Justin called uponthe testimony of the pre-Christian Greek philosophers and poets who, likeLao Tzu, taught that there are not many gods, but only one God: theUncreated Cause and Creator of the universe, omnipotent, eternal, andinfinite.

Though Rose was described by one biographer as a "natural athlete" in his youth, he did not engage seriously in sport. Baptized in a Methodist church when he was 14 years old, Rose later rejected Christianity for atheism.

Talking about "white male perspectives" doesn’t really have a context if we’re talking aboutEuropean clergymen of diverse backgrounds. Its on the order of when sub-par and banalacademics talk about "black Egypt", the inference being that some Angolan derived slave-descendant living in Detroit is part of the same "race" as an Ethiopian emperor of Classicalantiquity.What we’re really dealing with here is a "rich white woman" conceptual bias - extrapolatingpeculiar features of flyover America (a semi-homogenous "white" demographic, shaped byhistorical events such as the Protestant ascendancy) to the rest of the world and applying thesediscreet features to historical phenomenon.You can’t talk about "white males" anymore than you can talk about "brown people", in historicalterms.

Remember, there were so many gays in the city, they were so visible, and some of the men were so outrageously gay--the gay parade, for instance, with its transvestites and so on--that it turned off an awful lot of the heterosexual community that wouldn't have been too bothered by the presence of gays if there hadn't been so many and they hadn't been so aggressively "out."

With Rousseau, Robespierre considered the "volonté générale" or the general will of the people as the basis of political legitimacy

He also studied the works of the Genevan philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau and was attracted to many ideas, written in his Contrat Social

it is easy to see why a powerful banking dynasty like the Medicis would be interested in promoting Hermeticism generally, and protecting Pico particularly. If one pursues the logical implications of these doctrines to their ultimate conclusions, as did Bruno, the necessity for Catholicism, or, for that matter, Protestantism, and their priestly or clerical elites and sacramental systems disappears. It is, in other words, a covert way of challenging the power of the Roman Church, and gaining significant “maneuvering room” for the emerging financial-political classes of northern Italy.

In Bruno’s hands, this vast system of memory, magic, and philosophical reflection on the meaning and implications of the topological metaphor was transformed into an extraordinary program of a kind of Hermetic ecumenism, by which he hoped to resolve and supplant the divided Christianity of Europe with a new religion based on the reasonable implications of that metaphor.

in the forming and reforming of the inventor’s images in accordance with the forming and reforming of the astral images on the central wheel, the whole history of man would be remembered from above, as it were, all his discoveries, thoughts, philosophies, productions? Such a memory would be the memory of a divine man, of a Magus with divine powers through his imagination harnessed in the workings of the cosmic powers. And such an attempt would rest on the Hermetic assumption that man’s (mind) is divine, related in its origin to the star-governors of the world, able both to reflect and to control the universe.

for Bruno, such mathematical magic is expression of all the “derivative and differentiated No-things,” and is a kind of “reverse engineering” of the process of derivations from the initial No-thing, or Ø: … (Magicians) take it as axiomatic that, in all the panorama before our eyes, God acts on the gods; the gods act on the celestial or astral bodies, which are divine bodies; these act on the spirits who reside in and control the stars, one of which is the earth; the spirits act on the elements, the elements on the compounds, the compounds on the senses; the senses on the soul, and the soul on the whole animal. This is the descending scale.77

Bruno, in other words, is advocating the very revolutionary principle of the sovereignty of the individual person

the political—and therefore, the financial—vision that Bruno embodies in The Expulsion is: a society in which the natural religion of the Egyptians, in its purest sense, and the speculative intellect of the Greeks would coincide in a sociopolitical structure patterned after that of the Roman Republic. The source of the state, which Bruno conceives of as “an ethical substance,” is God, “the absolute reality, or reality which is the principle of all realities.” The state envisaged by the philosopher would be one containing a unity of law and religion, rather than a separation of “the divine from law and civil life.”

The source of the myths shared by the Greeks with the Hebrews, he insists, is not Hebrew but Egyptian. Egypt, indeed, is for Bruno the source of all the myths and fables of the Mediterranean world, all being poetical representations of events dating back to the dawn of Western civilization.

in the “Explanatory Epistle” of the work, Bruno boldly declares that man is “a citizen and servant of the world,

What Professor Frank discovered is as startling now as it was in his own day, for what he found was that “during the period between the Republic and the final emergence of the empire,” the population of Roman Italy was by and large “not Roman or Latin at all, but—in a word and without much exaggeration—Babylonian.”6

Organized crime operates on a small scale. Drug trafficking, petty theft, and home burglary rings typify organized crime, which is often associated within immigrant youth communities or transiting criminal rings from outside of Norway

they always cast aside agriculture again when they could, because they understood and felt that living as hunter-gatherers was better

researchers also noted that the chromatophores in their skin preparations expanded in response to light touch as well as to light, and their antibody staining experiments revealed that they are expressed in the neurons that are sensitive to mechanical pressure.

These primitive creatures continue to avoid light after being decapitated, suggesting that the opsins found outside their brain are indeed involved in sensing light.

Conversely, the costly, full-length toga seems to have been a rather awkward mark of distinction when worn by "the wrong sort". The poet Horace writes "of a rich ex-slave 'parading from end to end of the Sacred Way in a toga three yards long' to show off his new status and wealth."

Appian's history of Rome finds its strife-torn Late Republic tottering at the edge of chaos; most seem to dress as they like, not as they ought: "For now the Roman people are much mixed with foreigners, there is equal citizenship for freedmen, and slaves dress like their masters. With the exception of the Senators, free citizens and slaves wear the same costume."[68] The Augustan Principate brought peace, and declared its intent as the restoration of true Republican order, morality and tradition.

Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to a change in its velocity.

Jesus replied, “Do what you came for, friend.”

How it responds to the challenge posed by Orbán and Kaczyński will determine whether it survives as an open society true to the values upon which it was founded.

He is going out of his way to deprive Budapest of financial resources, vetoing the city’s application to borrow money from the European Investment Bank to buy new mass transportation equipment amenable to social distancing

Orbán is now permanently removing these assets from the public domain

Being of Hungarian Jewish origin, I am particularly concerned with the situation in Hungary, where I have been active as a philanthropist for more than 30 years.

It is a great mistake to suppose that the Greeks were happy and careless children of the sun, who only wanted to lounge in the porticoes of the cities and gaze at the magnificent works of art or at the achievements of their athletes. They were very conscious of the dark side of our existence on this planet, for against the background of sun and joy they saw the uncertainty and insecurity of man's life, the certainty of death, the darkness of the future. "The best for man were not to have been born and not to have seen the light of the sun; but, if once born (the second best for him is) to pass through the gates of death as speedily as may be," declares Theognis,​7 reminding us of the words of Calderón (so dear to Schopenhauer), "El mayor delito del hombre, Es haber nacido." And the words of Theognis are re‑echoed in the words of Sophocles  p18 in the Oedipus Coloneus, "Not to have been born exceeds every reckoning"

ESG funds rarely vote in favor of environmentally and socially conscious shareholder resolutions.11 Researchers assessed 593 equity funds with over $265 billion in total net assets that specifically used ESG- and climate-related key words in their marketing. They discovered that 421 of the funds, or 71 percent, have a negative “Port­folio Paris Alignment” score, indicating that the companies within their portfolios are misaligned from global carbon reduction targets.

Does not Plutarch  p45 make a character say: "I see the Stoic conflagration spreading over the poems of Hesiod, just as it does over the writings of Heraclitus and the verses of Orpheus"?

the world is "an ever-living Fire, with measures of it kindling and measures going out."​19 So if Fire takes from things, transforming into itself by kindling, it also gives as much as it takes. "All things are an exchange for Fire, and Fire for all things, even as wares for gold and gold for  p42 wares."​

"We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being and pass away through strife,"

Heraclitus' original contribution to philosophy is  p40 to be found elsewhere: it consists in the conception of unity in diversity, difference in unity. In the philosophy of Anaximander, as we have seen, the opposites are regarded as encroaching on one another, and then as paying in turn the penalty for this act of injustice. Anaximenes regards the war of the opposites as something disorderly, something that ought not to be, something that mars the purity of the One. Heraclitus, however, does not adopt this point of view. For him the conflict of opposites, so far from being a blot on the unity of the One, is essential to the being of the One. In fact, the One only exists in the tension of opposites: this tension is essential to the unity of the One.

He was, we gather, a melancholy man, of aloof and solitary temperament, who expressed his contempt for the common herd of citizens, as also for the eminent men of the past. "The Ephesians," he said of the citizens of his own city, "would do well to hang themselves, every grown man of them, and leave the city to beardless lads; for they have cast out Hermodorus, the best man among them, saying, "We will have none who is best among us; if there be any such, let him be so elsewhere and among others.

For what intelligence or understanding have they? They believe in thebards of the people and use the mass as teacher, not knowing that, “Manyare bad, few are good.

Heraclitus reveals his arrogance inthese statements by showing his contempt for Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xeno-phanes, Hecateus, Homer, and Archilochus. The reason for his contemptis given in citation 3: all these men have fallen short of the Heracliteanstandard of true wisdom.9 To Heraclitus, true wisdom, which guides theuniverse, lies in understanding knowledge and not merely possessing it.

The word worship is derived from the West Saxon dialect noun weorðscipe 'condition of being worthy'

Stress (even anxiety-induced hyperventilation) produces alkalosis, and alkalosis favors increased collagen synthesis, while lower pH inhibits it (Frick, et al., 1997).

The increased energy cost of this "isotonic contraction" of the cell filaments requires more energy to sustain, and will tend to create lactic acid, the way intense muscle contraction does, while consuming oxygen at a higher rate. The increased lactic acid and decreased oxygen availability stimulate the synthesis of more collagen, the growth of new blood vessels, expression of enzymes for increasing the stiffness of the collagen, and other processes associated with inflammation, aging, and cancer

The tissue hardness that allows oncologists to diagnose cancer (Huang and Ingber, 2005) is ignored when choosing treatments, which isn't surprising, since treatments that destroy cancer cells increase the production of collagen.

Political and social problems that are culturally determined may follow rules similar to those of organic brain disease.

Mathematics has its value in representing certain relationships or patterns, but the rationalistic illusion that the meaning is independently contained and fulfilled by the “algorithm,” has led many people into dogmatisms and serious errors. “Coefficients of reality” are often neglected. In practice, you are not very likely to be mistaken if you assume that mathematical descriptions of physical states are always erroneous.

Incidentally, the word “concrete” derives from the roots “grown” and “together,” so it is very close in its core meaning to “synthesis.” A well constructed generalization can be concrete, and a seemingly simple term, such as “electron,” can be “abstract.” (Blake said that a line, no matter how finely divided, was still a line; a line exists in our imaginative synthesis of the world, and it is only a denial of that synthesis that can divide its unity into “infinitesimals.”)

In the 1960s, many textbooks were published that claimed to use scientific language theory to improve the instruction of English, from grade school level to college level. They didn't work, and at the time they were being published they appeared fraudulent to people who didn't subscribe to the incipient cults of “Generative Grammar” and “Artificial Intelligence” that later developed into “Cognitive Science.”

Our brain grows into our culture, and the culture lives in our nervous system. If a person grows up without hearing people speak, he will have grown a special kind of brain, making it difficult to learn to speak. (Genie, wolf boy, Kaspar Hauser, for example.) When we ask a question and find an answer, we are changed. Thinking with learning is a developmental process. But many people learn at an early age not to question. This changes the nature of subsequent learning and brain development.

When any part of a living organism is injured, for example by x-rays or surgery, the emitted substances affect the endocrine and nervous systems, activating processes that change metabolism and behavior. The injured tissue takes on new functions, for example by locally synthesizing estrogen, cortisol (Vukelic, et al., 2011), and other hormones, as well as stimulating the normal endocrine glands to secrete them. These interactions have been generally disregarded in cancer treatment, because of the gene centered theory of cancer, but they are essential for understanding the "malignancy" of tumors, that property that makes them likely to return after the tumor has been destroyed, and to spread to other tissues. Has anyone ever heard of a radiologist or surgeon who measured estrogen or the various mediators of inflammation before, during, and after their treatments? Long range survival after breast cancer surgery is affected by the time in the menstrual cycle when the surgery is done

Supplements of thyroid and progesterone are proven to be generally protective against the cholinergic threats, but there are many other factors that can be adjusted according to particular needs. Niacinamide, like progesterone, inhibits the production of nitric oxide, and also like progesterone, it improves recovery from brain injury (Hoane, et al., 2008). In genetically altered mice with an Alzheimer's trait, niacinamide corrects the defect

Possibly the most toxic component of our environment is the way the society has been designed, to eliminate meaningful choices for most people. In the experiment of Freund, et al., some mice became more exploratory because of the choices they made, while others' lives became more routinized and limited. Our culture reinforces routinized living. In the absence of opportunities to vary the way you work and live to accord with new knowledge that you gain, the nutritional, hormonal and physical factors have special importance.

Bright light can reverse the cholinergic effects of inescapable stress

DHEA, like progesterone, increases the activity of cholinesterase, and is brain protective

Cephalopods do not likely have this last ability, but it is difficult to test as they are mostly solitary and insensitive to cues about conspecifics, and also are not highly dependent on vision. However, adult male cuttlefish treated the image of themselves in a reflective surface as a conspecific and gave it agonistic displays (Wood, personal communication), thus failing the simple mirror test.

researchers found that if Octopus vulgaris were trained to make a discrimination with one eye, they initially only recalled it if they were tested with the same eye. With extended training the octopuses could recall the discrimination when tested with the other eye (and note that Remy & Watanabe, 1993; found that birds could never make this transfer)

For Shang Yang individual citizens had to be weakened and tied to the land in order to strengthen the state as an emergent entity, on the basis that an army of weak-but-compliant individuals will - over time - be more effective in the field than one composed of strong self-directed fighters. 

The Mafia arose in Sicily during the late Middle Ages, where it possibly began as a secret organization dedicated to overthrowing the rule of the various foreign conquerors of the island—e.g., Saracens, Normans, and Spaniards.

The aristocracy of the Qin were largely similar in their culture and daily life. Regional variations in culture were considered a symbol of the lower classes.

For instance: why isn’t Crimea, one of the world’s jewels of real estate, dotted with charter cities full of global nomads? Crimea could be like California, but with police. Instead, so far as I know, it is a half-ruined backwater ruled by some petty local thug.

Know that it’s normal to feel anxious or stressed.

In past years, Rogers has published many pro-authenticity papers in various pro-authenticity and pseudoscientific journals, symposia, and websites devoted to the Shroud of Turin, and the public press justifiably took no notice, since private publishing outlets for UFOs, astrology, creationism, and other pseudoscientific topics are numerous (and fill supermarket newsstands and pseudoscience conference book tables).

Kiev has long proclaimed a strategic course on joining NATO. Indeed, each country is entitled to pick its own security system and enter into military alliances. There would be no problem with that, if it were not for one “but.”

It is not surprising that Ukrainian society was faced with the rise of far-right nationalism, which rapidly developed into aggressive Russophobia and neo-Nazism. This resulted in the participation of Ukrainian nationalists and neo-Nazis in the terrorist groups in the North Caucasus and the increasingly loud territorial claims to Russia.

furze (gorse)

Most opponents of the Inca in the region were poorly organized and after breaking formation would perform mass frontal charges. The Inca army, by contrast, was so well disciplined that it very rarely broke formation and was able to effectively repel ambushes in the jungle, desert, mountain and swamp terrains.

In the early stages of the Incan Empire, the army was mainly formed of ethnic Inca troops. Later on, however, only the officers and imperial guards were Incas (the Incas were 40,000[11] to 100,000[12] strong, and they ruled an empire of 10 to 15 million[13]).

Taxpayers – male heads of household of a certain age range – were organized into corvée labor units (often doubling as military units) that formed the state's muscle as part of mit'a service. Each unit of more than 100 tax-payers were headed by a kuraka, while smaller units were headed by a kamayuq, a lower, non-hereditary status. However, while kuraka status was hereditary and typically served for life, the position of a kuraka in the hierarchy was subject to change based on the privileges of superiors in the hierarchy; a pachaka kuraka could be appointed to the position by a waranqa kuraka. Furthermore, one kuraka in each decimal level could serve as the head of one of the nine groups at a lower level, so that a pachaka kuraka might also be a waranqa kuraka, in effect directly responsible for one unit of 100 tax-payers and less directly responsible for nine other such units

he Inca had three moral precepts that governed their behavior: Ama sua: Do not steal Ama llulla: Do not lie Ama quella: Do not be lazy

The Incas performed child sacrifices around important events

Unlike the coming of age ceremony, the celebration of maturity signified the child's sexual potency. This celebration of puberty was called warachikuy for boys and qikuchikuy for girls. The warachikuy ceremony included dancing, fasting, tasks to display strength, and family ceremonies. The boy would also be given new clothes and taught how to act as an unmarried man. The qikuchikuy signified the onset of menstruation, upon which the girl would go into the forest alone and return only once the bleeding had ended. In the forest she would fast, and, once returned, the girl would be given a new name, adult clothing, and advice. This "folly" stage of life was the time young adults were allowed to have sex without being a parent.

Although "defeat" often implies an unwanted loss in battle, many of the diverse ethnic groups ruled by the Inca "welcomed the Spanish invaders as liberators and willingly settled down with them to share rule of Andean farmers and miners."

Four gateways led into Cusco. At each gate was a sacred place where travelers would wash their hands, feet, and face while praying and asking permission to enter. Even today, Native people will pause a moment before entering Cusco.

In seasons when too much mountain snow melted, the floodwaters were carried to huge masonry reservoirs for storage, channeling water to their cities and religious centers.

Towns and cities should be connected to make it more likely that people can find a nearby group for whatever their niche interests are. Ideally we have trains connecting most of the towns and cities in this country, making it possible to venture 3 or 4 towns over in <1 hour to meet up with friends.

Last year Microsoft’s billionaire founder Bill Gates donated $1million to an organisation called Equitable Math which aimed to “dismantle racism in mathematics”.

The Spanish colonists built the Convent of Santo Domingo on the site, demolishing the temple

In 1964, the government of the Republic of Korea became aware of the significant results achieved in Peru, and sent a commission to meet with the Peruvian government. The commission studied the methodology and organization of the Peruvian labor tribute institution and the feasibility of applying it to the Republic of Korea. After a few months in Peru, the commission returned to South Korea and rolled out their own modern version of the Incan mit'a to Korean production systems, including the manufacturing industry. The results obtained in Korea were even more positive than those obtained in Peru due to a different development approach.

In contrast, the Spanish mita acted as a subsidy to private mining interests and the Spanish nation, which used tax revenues from silver production largely to finance European wars.

The significance of the term mit'a goes beyond that of the system for organizing labor. It contains a certain Andean philosophical concept of eternal repetition. The constellation of the Pleiades, called cabrillas ("little goats") by the Spaniards, were known as unquy (Quechua for "disease", hispanicized oncoy) during the rainy season mit'a, and as qullqa (Quechua for "storehouse") during the season of harvest and abundance. The seasons were divided into the dry mit'a and the rainy mit'a. The day mit'a succeeded the night mit'a in a repetition that reflected an ordering of time that the natives conceptualized as a cyclical organizational system of order and chaos

All labor in the Andean world was performed as a rotational service, whether for maintaining the tampus, roads, bridges or for guarding the storehouses or other such tasks. The craftspeople enjoyed a special status in the Inca state. Although they worked for the state, they did not take part in the agricultural or war mit'a.[4] The agrarian mit'a was distinct from the fishing mit'a, and these labor groups never intervened in each other’s occupations. In the señorio of Chincha, the fishermen numbered ten thousand, and went to sea in turns, the rest of the time enjoying themselves by dancing and drinking. The Spaniard criticized them as lazy drunkards because they did not go to sea daily and all at once. The mining mit'a was also fulfilled at the level of ayllus, of the local lord, and, in the last instance, of the state.

All males starting at the age of fifteen were required to participate in the mit'a to do public services. This remained mandatory until the age of fifty. However, the Inca rule was flexible on the amount of time one could share on the mit'a turn. Overseers were responsible to make sure that a person after fulfilling his duty in the mit'a still had enough time to care for his own land and family.

At a minimum, tambos would contain housing, cooking facilities, and storage silos called qullqas.[4] Beyond this, a considerable amount of variation between different tambos exists. Some tambos were little more than simple inns, while others were essentially cities that provided temporary housing for travelers.

To a "prodigious [extent] unprecedented in the annals of world prehistory" the Incas stored food and other commodities which could be distributed to their armies, officials, conscripted laborers, and, in times of need, to the populace. The uncertainty of agriculture at the high altitudes which comprised most of the Inca Empire was among the factors which probably stimulated the construction of large numbers of qullqas.[3]

The roads were bordered, at intervals, with buildings to allow the most effective usage: at short distance there were relay stations for chasquis, the running messengers; at a one-day walking interval tambos allowed support to the road users and flocks of llama pack animals.

The sailing rafts of Ecuador are of Asiatic design.  The American Indian name for these sailing rafts is derived from ancient Chinese.

First in arriving at the coast of the Gulf of Mexico were the Olmecs, who soon founded Sale, in Tabasco. According to the oral tradition of that culture, their predecessors identified their origin in an island that disappeared, called “A tlan you cu”.

Paulina Zelitsky, using her sonar equipment found the remains of a city under the sea, with great buildings, avenues and wharves made of granite. “These constructions seemed polished, formed by not by limestone as might be expected. The images showed, very great stones, aligned in symmetrical form, very well organized assembly, as if they were the result of city-planning and sitting on a volcanic crystal sediment, very fine, like sand.”The scientists saw, to a side of those constructions, something similar to streets, avenues, bays and structures similar to wharves of some port. They understood that the material of the constructions and the volcanic crystal of the floor could not be formed at this great depth (2,200 feet) under the sea but rather, on the surface, in contact with oxygen

Quite a number of these threads can be found woven into the earliest post-ice age civilisations, specifically Sumer and Egypt. Significantly, we can make the pleasingly wild speculation that just as Hermetic notions of sky/ground dualism are tumble down notions from Dynastic Egypt…The Egyptian versions of this belief may well be tumble downs from antediluvian civilisation. For what is Gobeklitepe if not “As above, so below?

Have you ever been to/looked at Tiahuanaco and thought to yourself “600AD? There are buildings in England older than that. Bullshit.”

Viracocha (Andean) and Quetzalcoatl (Mexican) are both pale-skinned, bearded civilising gods. Viracocha emerged on the island Titicaca (The Island of The Sun) after the flood. Tiahuanaco was his first city.

de la Vega recounted the one time the Spanish witnessed the Incas trying to lift a megalith: twenty thousand of them pulled it up and down mountains by rope, the rope snapped, three thousands of them were crushed.

On his first trip into the Amazon in 1906, he was charged with fixing the border between Brazil and Bolivia. “By then, most of the world had been explored,” Grann writes, “its veil of enchantment lifted, but the Amazon remained as mysterious as the dark side of the moon.” Fawcett emerged nearly a year later, gaunt but exhilarated, with a taste for the forest, its solitude and its menace.

Sufficient remains were reconstructed to depict the form of the Pumapunku andesite building.

So, liberalism has been right in every one of its battles, and conservatives wrong.  Shouldn't we then expect liberals to be fêted gurus, and conservatives laughed out of intellectual life, at least till they had apologized for their errors and revamped their philosophy accordingly?

city on the edge of the Rockies? Minneapolis

The grandeur of deserts derives from their being, in their aridity, the negative of the earth’s surface and of our civilized humours. They are places where humours and fluids become rarefied, where the air is so pure that the influence of the stars descends direct from the constellations. And, with the extermination of the desert Indians, an even earlier stage than that of anthropology became visible: a mineralogy, a geology, a sidereality, an inhuman facticity, an aridity that drives out the artificial scruples of culture, a silence that exists nowhere else

For the mental desert form expands before your very eyes, and this is the purified form of social desertification. Disaffection finds its pure form in the barrenness of speed. All that is cold and dead in desertification or social enucleation rediscovers its contemplative form here in the heat of the desert. Here in the transversality of the desert and the irony of geology, the transpolitical finds its generic, mental space.

There was a Native American population in the valley, but an outbreak of measles during the winter of 1847 killed many.[27] The Shoshone saved the pioneers when they taught them to eat the bulb of the native sego lily