Alan Lee, Merlin
The seaborn trade between Rome and India was almost certainly much more important than any overland "silk road" between Rome and China.
Open AI releases "strawberry" aka o1, which is supposed to do complex reasoning. Marginal Revolutions has a bunch of links.
Demographic oblivion in the Balkans.
The cool thing about the internet: somebody just randomly asked, "Wow, why does everyone on this French talk show look so good?" and in reply got this amazing thread about how the lighting is done. One trick is to seat the guests around a white table that reflects light up at them.
Wildlife photographer of the year contest: contest gallery, selection at My Modern Met.
More evidence that you should never trust charismatic founders of organizations: accusations that anti-trafficking hero Tim Ballard is a sexual predator. (NY Times, Rolling Stone, Yahoo)
Today's random line: "Her optimism is rare and sails against the winds of contemporary culture." So, there you have it, after a lifetime of thinking of myself as a rather boring, middle-of-the road person I suddenly find myself sailing against the winds. Stand together, bold outsider rebels, and insist that things are better than ever before!
The chats betwen Russian agent Aleksandr Ionov and his FSB handlers, released by US authorities. Among other things Ionov claimed to be supporting the California independence movement. There's a serious threat to US stability.
Study finds that the effect of placebos on patients with mental health problems varies a lot depending on what their condition is: "Patients with major depressive disorder experienced the greatest improvement, followed by those with generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, social phobia, mania, and OCD, while patients with schizophrenia benefited the least."
"Over the 10-year period from 2013 to 2022, the homicide conviction rate in Texas for illegal immigrants was 2.2 per 100,000, compared to 3.0 per 100,000 for native-born Americans. The homicide conviction rate for legal immigrants in Texas was 1.2 per 100,000." Source.
And here Matt Yglesias fact checks Elon Musk's latest conspiracy theory about why crime rates are really rising despite the FBI saying otherwise. Same point from Jeremy "adjusted for inflation" Horpedahl.
On Twitter/X, Andrew Neil's farewell to The Spectator. As chairman Neil made The Spectator into a financial success while keeping it true to its snobbish British roots, a real accomplishment, but its owners went bankrupt and sold it to the highest bidder, and after one look at the new owners Neil decided it was time to retire.
Park Ranger explains the environmental impact of a single Cheetos bag dropped in Carlsbad Caverns.
Green energy news: "The U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Monday issued final decisions approving NV Energy’s Greenlink West transmission project and Arevia Power’s $2.3 billion, 700-MW solar project."
Collection of photos showing how much some US presidents aged while in office.
The potentially far-reaching consequences of the UK's Equality Act, which requires firms to pay equally for jobs that a board decides are equally demanding.
According to this (obnoxious) post, there are 4.1 million OnlyFans "creators" and 305 million paying accounts. If each of those accounts represents a person, then about 4% of humanity subscribes to OnlyFans. Via Marginal Revolutions.
Interesting David Brooks essay (NY Times) on "the struggle between what you might call the forces of indignation and the forces of exhaustion." Says that like Biden Harris is benefitting from many people being tired of all the drama and the conflict.
The rock-cut architecture of Madagascar.
The current surge in historical fiction.
An economist argues that Russia's economy is now so focused on the war that they can't afford either to win or lose but need the stalement to go on indefinitely. YouTuber Perun says essentially the same thing in this one-hour video; Russia's economy is sustaining the war effort by spending all of its capital and risking its future, and the picture for after the war ends looks grim. He also notes that Russia's current budgets assume military spending will fall by a lot next year.
Low-tech solutions to high-tech problems: Russian soldier knocks down a small drone by throwing his rifle at it.
Russian war correspondent films himself being hunted by a drone inside an abandoned factory. Horror movies of the future.
Visually confirmed losses of Russian armored vehicles have topped 10,000, including 3,371 tanks. That doesn't include 831 self-propelled artillery pieces, 415 rocket launchers (MLRS), 273 surface-to-air missile systems, 128 jet aircraft, and 144 helicopters, etc., to a total of nearly 18,000 systems. If you had tried to tell me in 2022 that Russia would end up losing so much I would not have believed you.
>i>The seaborn trade between Rome and India was almost certainly much more important than any overland "silk road" between Rome and China.
ReplyDeleteImportant in what sense? In terms of goods moved and profit made? Because there's more to things than just money - cultural exchange and the movement of technologies matter much more to history than cargo counts.
By the same token, important for whom? The sea route to India necessarily excludes everyone who isn't situated on or near the sea, and doesn't extend all the way to China. In contrast, the Silk Road directly linked Beijing and Hangzhou with Constantinople and Cairo, and serviced everywhere in between.
Also, why are we talking about Rome? The Silk Road persisted long after the Empire fell and sea trade to Asia declined - indeed, it's perhaps most famous for its associations with figures like Marco Polo in the 13th century, and thus its contribution to the development of the Renaissance, and the transformation of European thought. The Romans only cared about trading with places like India in terms of making money, but to Renaissance Europeans, the value of the Silk Road was that it helped change their understanding of the world on a fundamental level, and helped create and cement a broader global mindset unlike anything that had existed previously.