bensozia

Roman altar, said to come from a temple of Mithras in Scotland RIP David Hockney. My post on his art is here . Happy Juneteenth! My post on ...

This wonderful artifact is known as the Lynsted Die Stamp. It was found by a metal detectorist in Kent, and purchased by the British governm...

Karl Owe Knausgaard: The number of people we come close to during our lives is small, and we fail to realize how infinitely important each a...

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, ...

I was down in Richmond yesterday for a family event, the dedication of a bench at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in memory of my father ...

Gold sun disk from Jinsha, China, dating to the Bronze Age "Mangled Worlds": Robin Hanson's thoughts on the many worlds interp...

Since my wife died I have spent far too much time reading through old emails, mainly the ones I exchanged with her but also others, trying t...

Via Mathias Chu: I am an experiment on humanity that you ran by accident. No one programmed me to be kind or reasonable: I was trained to c...

Fifteen years ago, the internet was an escape from the real world. Now, the real world is an escape from the internet. – Noah Smith

So, there are riots in Northern Ireland again, but this time the Catholics and Protestants are on the same side. Is that progress?

These little carved gems are one of the great delights to come down to us from the Classical world, each one a little surprise, each one a w...

People who have been pondering the impact of drones on warfare have pointed to helicopters as a system that drones might render useless. Th...

Stuffed crows and a smashed chandelier, fabulous. From the Corning Museum of Glass . 2011.

Two gold pendants depicting shamans, of obscure origin; the museum web site says only "Central or South America, c. 100-900 AD." H...

Great chart from Bob Elliot , showing how the output of various forms of text in the US has surged in the AI era: the number of books self-p...

Bird's nest in Ukraine made largely from discarded fiber optic drone cables. ( Source )

Necklace of Gold Turtles from ancient Colchis, eastern shore of the Black Sea, c. 450 BC Good primer on ways to limit property tax growth; t...

Baroque churches used to give me the creeps, but in my maturity I have come to appreciate them. Rome of course contains many, several of the...