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Post by carllove on Jul 1, 2021 22:37:00 GMT
My results from the dichotomy tests:
60.0% spiritualism over materialism 62.8% asceticism over hedonism 65.0% moralism over nihilism 57.8% romanticism over rationalism 59.8% altruism over egoism 50.0% for absolutism and skepticism 51.6% idealism over pragmatism
Sort of surprised by the first one, but then again, if I had stayed married to either of my first two husbands, I’d be set for life, but miserable.
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Post by B.E. on Jul 5, 2021 1:21:54 GMT
Here is a fantastic American history YouTube video. It's one history channel (Vlogging Through History) reacting to another's (Atun-Shei Films) video on President Lincoln and the Civil War. I believe I have recommended Atun-Shei Films in the past, but the dynamic of having another expert scrutinize the details, and add more of their own, is really interesting and informative. I couldn't recommend this video more highly! If you have any interest in American history, I think you will get something out of it. And, it's NOT dry. The video being reviewed is acted out (a union soldier debating a confederate soldier). It's very entertaining. (I wouldn't be shocked if I actually shared the Atun-Shei Film video being reviewed here before, but Vlogging Through History's contributions are worthwhile. He states that he's conservative at the start of the video, by the way, which I think makes the reaction a little more interesting, as well.)
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Post by Kapitan on Jul 7, 2021 12:05:13 GMT
Did you know Iceland has reduced the hours for most workers without cutting their pay (and is pleased with the results)? Here is a story.
First, Iceland completed a pair of multiyear trials reducing workers' hours from about 40 to about 35 with no change in pay from 2015-19. The studies included about 1% of the workforce. Results showed no drop in productivity but increased work/life balance and personal satisfaction.
Since then, 86% of the workforce has either moved to a similar situation or is able to negotiate the ability to do so.
What do you think of such an experiment? Could it work in your industry / business?
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Post by Kapitan on Aug 2, 2021 20:45:44 GMT
This video was recommended to me, a short documentary (without narration) of a woman making a meal in her family's home in Dagestan, a Russian republic on the Caspian Sea, near Georgia and Azerbaijan. I was enthralled watching, partly because I love to cook and so was watching what she did; partly because the environment (scratch made food cooked in a coal-fired oven!?); and partly her kids are adorable!
I would devour that savory pie (which looks to include meat--lamb?--onions and potatoes).
The video is brief, only about 9 minutes. It's quite interesting.
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Post by Kapitan on Aug 23, 2021 12:03:22 GMT
America's tallest man, 7-8 Igor Vovkovinskiy, died of heart disease at age 38. A Ukranian immigrant, he has has lived in Rochester, MN, since 1989 because that city's medical facilities would help mitigate and treat his various health problems. His height was the result of a tumor pressing against his pituitary gland.
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Post by Kapitan on Sept 7, 2021 12:51:31 GMT
Billionaire (and new Timberwolves co-owner) Marc Lore has proposed a new city "with the cleanliness of Tokyo, the diversity of New York, and the social services of Scandinavia." It is to be built from scratch somewhere--the deserts of the West or somewhere in Appalachia have been scouted--and eventually be home to 5 million people.
Consider me skeptical.
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Post by B.E. on Sept 10, 2021 3:37:27 GMT
I'm not vouching for the service, but I saw an ad for it and I thought the concept was very cool. It basically allows anyone to be a music producer...from home. www.musiversal.com/
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Post by Kapitan on Sept 10, 2021 12:11:33 GMT
That is an interesting business idea.
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Post by Kapitan on Sept 21, 2021 12:04:05 GMT
The U.S. is returning a 3,500-year-old clay tablet containing parts of the epic of Gilgamesh to Iraq, from which it was looted during the '90 Gulf War and eventually sold to the Hobby Lobby group for its (academically questionable and ideologically driven) Museum of the Bible.
While that is the headline, the article notes that another 17,000 artifacts will be returned by the U.S. to Iraq.
The politically correct stance is that such artifacts indeed belong in the countries of their origin, with countless artifacts filling Western museums having been taken either illegally or immorally over the centuries from their homelands.
However, I would add that I hope Iraq (and other regional homelands of such items) can maintain the funding, the expertise, the priorities, and frankly the general stability to keep these items in good condition and on display for humanity. Because first and foremost, I believe they belong to humanity, not the state of Iraq (which of course did not exist until a century ago, much less 3,500 years ago, when nation-states were smaller and more loosely defined). If the rightful king of Sumer steps up to claim it, by all means...
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Post by Kapitan on Sept 21, 2021 12:26:59 GMT
Another interesting bit of ancient history: a new study finds (seemingly conclusive) evidence that an "airburst" similar to the one that leveled so much Siberian forest in 1908 demolished a Bronze-Age city near the Dead Sea around 1650 BC, ending for several centuries what had been 3000 years of continuous flourishing civilization in the immediate vicinity.
The remains of the city at Tell el-Hammamm are coated by a layer of rock and debris that had melted in the explosion, and perhaps most interesting to ancient mythology and religion students is a massive dispersal of salt over the area, which made agriculture impossible and led to the depopulation of the region for several hundred years. This, it seems, could be a historical event that inspired or somehow became the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. The time and place both roughly correspond to that story, and the idea of a fiery end that depopulates the region and leaves salt (e.g. Lot's wife became a pillar of salt) is extremely curious.
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 29, 2021 22:07:38 GMT
For some of us who don't live in the Arctic, and so don't usually see the aurora borealis, seems this weekend could be interesting viewing in the sky.
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Post by Kapitan on Nov 2, 2021 17:01:08 GMT
I love this kind of stuff.
The heads of statues of two Greek gods--Dionysus and Aphrodite--were found in a creek bed in western modern-day Turkey. They date from about 3000 BC. The bodies had been found previously in a separate location (which is interesting in and of itself). They also found the body (but not the head) of another Greek goddess's statue, Hygieia.
The below-linked article quotes the hypothesis that the ancient city (Aizanoi) held a statue workshop.
I'd just speculate also that considering the destruction or defacing of "gods" (e.g. statues of local gods) was a common thing ancient people did when conquering them. In fact, we still see it today sometimes, as we did with the Taliban in Afghanistan during their first reign, and with ISIS throughout their former territory in places such as Palmyra (in Syria). Early Christians were also known for it, destroying Roman and other gods as they took control in the early centuries of the last millennium.
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Post by Kapitan on Nov 24, 2021 19:25:11 GMT
I came across this recent video discussion (and Q&A) by a couple of "public intellectuals" whose books and talks I've heard in the past and enjoyed, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari and American social scientist Jonathan Haidt. The discussion is basically about change, and the rate of change especially, in modern society, and how we are dealing with it or might deal with it. Very interesting.
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Post by Kapitan on Nov 27, 2021 13:39:47 GMT
While bread lines are a common reference point for Soviet-era life in Russia and the USSR, you don't--or at least I don't--often think much beyond that in terms of what those citizens' lives were like in terms of cooking and eating. This article is a very interesting summary of some aspects of it, including how the soviet economic planning failed citizens, how sieging Nazis effected severe measures, and even how the Soviet government promoted its culinary tradition...even as nobody could obtain the ingredients in the dishes. Even as the strict state controls were pulled back and market dynamics were allowed some room as decades went on, things were very different.
(Reason magazine is a libertarian publication, so the editorial slant is strongly toward free markets, and thus against communism. So you're getting that ideology in the article, in addition to the facts.)
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Dec 21, 2021 4:08:13 GMT
Can YOU tell the difference?
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