Cosmos, languages, genetics, history, Russian literature, maps, physics, religion, Neanderthals, bronze age collapse, Roman empire, Istanbul, Balkans
Joined December 2014
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Human voices, casually chatting in different languages, looking over man made equipment, in space.
Maybe having coffee, simultaneous sip even.
We are in the future that I always wanted to be in. Perfect Sunday.
Curious Citizen of the World retweeted
Cette dame, qui n'est pas née sur notre sol, incarne 100 fois plus l'idée que je me fais de la France (entreprenante, créative, démerde) que cette petite bourgeasse à qui la vie à tout donné et qui s'invente une vie de révolutionnaire pour enfin réussir à ressentir quelque chose.
🔥 QUELLE LEÇON MAGISTRALE infligée à Lola, étudiante et militante d’extrême gauche, qui tente de justifier les pillages et les saccages des commerces !
🗣️ « Vous vous rendez pas compte de la chance que vous avez. Vous avez des choses à perdre. Les gens qui sont dans ces manifestations, nous, nous n’avons rien à perdre. »
Avant d’ajouter, avec un mépris sidérant :
« Vos boutiques, c’est bien mignon, super, OK, les Foot Locker qui ont été pillés, mais en fait il y a une réalité, une vraie souffrance des Français. »
💥 La réponse bouleversante d’une entrepreneuse, arrivée en France à seulement 9 ans après avoir quitté la République démocratique du Congo, qui emploie aujourd’hui régulièrement 130 personnes :
🗣️ « Quand je suis arrivée ici, j’avais le choix, d’accord, de subir une situation ou de me relever. »
Et de lui répondre avec une émotion immense :
« Vous êtes en train de me parler de la misère, vous êtes en train de me dire : Je pleure parce que ma vitrine est cassée, mais c’est ma vie, Lola. C’est ma vie. J’ai des enfants. »
« Moi, j’ai des salariés qui sont terrorisés. Quelle réponse leur apporter ? »
D’un côté, une militante qui invoque la souffrance sociale pour relativiser les pillages. De l’autre, une femme qui a quitté son pays, construit son entreprise, créé des emplois et voit le fruit de son travail détruit.
La détresse sociale ne donne aucun droit de piller, de saccager ou de détruire le travail des autres.
Une véritable leçon de courage, de dignité et de responsabilité. 🇫🇷
#LaGrandeConfrontation #LCI
Curious Citizen of the World retweeted
On a enfin la vidéo de la panthère rose j’suis morttt 🤣🤣😭
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Cette vidéo n'est pas un enregistrement réel mais générée par IA. Des images similaires ont été vérifiées comme des faux basés sur une photo de 2015 à Erevan.
newtral.es/pantera-rosa-p…
sicnoticias.pt/sicverifica/20…
youtube.com/watch?v=CxTT1c…
themoscowtimes.com/archive/armeni…
Curious Citizen of the World retweeted
Most people in ancient Rome lived in rented apartments.
Today, a 1,900-YEAR-OLD Roman apartment block is still standing in Rome, at the foot of the Capitoline Hill.
Records from the 4th century say the city had about 46,000 apartment blocks, called “insulae.” In comparison, there were fewer than 2,000 private houses.
Some of these buildings were so tall that Augustus banned anything higher than 70 Roman feet (about 20 meters). Later, Emperor Trajan lowered the limit to 60 Roman feet.
The floors worked the opposite way from today. Shops were on the ground floor, and rich tenants lived on the first floor. The higher you went, the cheaper the rent and the worse the living conditions: there was no running water, there were fewer windows, and there were a lot of stairs to climb.
Curious Citizen of the World retweeted
when Rome was sacked, most people living in the Roman Empire didn't notice much of a difference in their daily lives
the farmers kept farming, the merchants kept trading, the normies kept norming. life went on
Rome still fell
the fact that you can walk down your street and get a croissant doesn't tell you much about the state of your civilization
but it tells a lot about you
Logical fallacies:
Anecdotal evidence: personal days of calm in Paris are treated as proof that reported riots are minor or nonexistent.
Hasty generalization: limited observations imply any unrest is confined to one side street, dismissing wider evidence.
The novel Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman is set in 1348, during the height of the Black Death (the bubonic plague) in 14th-century medieval France
#History #map shows the spread of the Black Death in Europe 700 years ago. This was actually taught in my history class back in Munich in great detail. I think this is why I’m a big fan of vaccinations. Source: buff.ly/2uN1AxY
Curious Citizen of the World retweeted
#History #map shows the spread of the Black Death in Europe 700 years ago. This was actually taught in my history class back in Munich in great detail. I think this is why I’m a big fan of vaccinations. Source: buff.ly/2uN1AxY
Full of logical fallacies.
Anecdotal fallacy and hasty generalization: personal sights in Aix and a few cities during limited time do not refute documented nationwide arson, looting, 1,200+ arrests and police injuries on the peak day.
Straw man: framing reports as pure "raging extremist violence" from favored scapegoats, when coverage notes mostly peaceful marches with violent fringes.
Cherry-picking: selects only calm local scenes while dismissing multi-city reports of arson (Limoges town hall destroyed), widespread looting and 1,200-1,800 arrests.
False dichotomy: frames coverage as pure “raging violence” or total psyop, ignoring the documented mix of mostly peaceful marches plus violent fringes.
Special pleading: treats limited personal observations as superior to official stats and independent multi-source reporting.
Composition fallacy: assumes the character of one calm square represents the nationwide events.
I see the protests in France are trending.
Since I just spent 10 days there during the heart of them, I figured I'd chime in with what's actually going on.
The news and clickbait accounts on X will show you the outlier events: burning buildings, raging violence and everything that triggers you.
I was in the heart of Aix en Provence during the biggest protest day and filmed the center where it was happening. (See below)
This is right the University, across from the church, dead center of town.
The students are dancing, singing, kicking soccer balls and have comically barricaded the entrance doors to force the school to close.
I visited many cities in France during the protest period, and saw zero violence or malpractice of any kind.
More broadly, I spent more than a month this year in France across 3 trips and 10+ cities, including Paris, Bordeaux, Aix en Provence, Nice, Antibes, Biarritz, and others, and it's incredibly safe, charming, peaceful and beautiful.
Every city I visited is nicer than almost every American city, and there's zero comparison.
So much that it wouldn't even be insulting to France to try, because nobody who has spent significant time in both countries would take this comparison seriously.
I spoke with the students at length about their views. I also spoke with waiters, drivers, merchants, staff and whoever.
They were all civil, well articulated and genuinely wanted to see change.
We can disagree about their reasoning, logic or whatever, and it's true that France has fiscal problems, but to chalk up the France protests to raging extremist violence from "pick your favorite group to blame", is a laughable misrepresentation of what's actually going on.
If you exclusively watch the news and believe the top 1% extreme situations, you have likely been psyoped.
Anecdotal evidence.
The tweet leans on anecdotal evidence: one person's lack of local awareness in Paris does not disprove the scale of documented riots, fires, looting and 1,200+ arrests across the city and France. It also involves hasty generalization from a single limited observation.
False analogy
The tweet relies on a false analogy. Equating a partner admitting casual gym attraction to saying "I fantasize about your mom" treats two cases with sharply different taboo levels, personal stakes, and emotional impact as equivalent. The mom example is far more extreme and incest-adjacent, so the comparison does not hold. It also assumes Aella's own preferences without evidence.
Curious Citizen of the World retweeted
Imagine wearing a piece of gold art in your hair—not just jewellery, but a statement of wealth, beauty and status.
This elaborate Greek hairnet from Hellenistic Egypt dates to around 200–150 BCE. Made from 24-karat gold, it features delicate filigree, tiny gold beads and a central medallion depicting a maenad, a female follower of Dionysus.
What fascinates me most is the engineering behind its beauty. The linked chains and spool-shaped beads helped secure the hair, while the hanging ornaments added movement and elegance.
To me, this object reveals something remarkable: ancient craftsmanship wasn't merely about decoration. It combined practical design, mythology and personal identity in a single piece of jewellery.
More than 2,000 years later, its details still feel astonishingly sophisticated.
Curious Citizen of the World retweeted
The cross-section of an upper-class Victorian townhouse.
The morning room vs the parlour
In a grand Victorian townhouse, the bright morning room served as a casual, sunlit family space for writing letters and managing household affairs, while the opulent parlour was a formal, street-facing showroom designed to impress guests during afternoon visits. Together, they balanced private family comfort with public etiquette.
Curious Citizen of the World retweeted
engineering or dark magic?
honestly still not convinced
metal 3d printing is out right sorcery
Curious Citizen of the World retweeted
Persians were storing ice in the desert 2,400 years ago without electricity or refrigerators.
Meet the Yakhchāl, an ingenious ancient Persian ice house that turned extreme heat into an engineering challenge.
But how did it work?
Its thick, domed walls helped reduce heat gain, while deep underground chambers used the earth’s natural insulation to keep stored ice cool. In winter, water was frozen in shallow pools, and the resulting ice blocks were stored for use during scorching summer months.
The secret also lay in sarooj, a traditional, water-resistant mortar made from materials such as clay, lime, sand and ash.
Some surviving yakhchāls still amaze architects and historians today.
No electricity. No compressors. Just a remarkable understanding of materials, climate and thermodynamics.
Ancient Persian engineers didn’t fight the desert they designed around it.
At the time that this painting portrays, somewhere near, 200 km/124 miles east-southeast, in Florence, Niccolò Machiavelli wrote The Prince (Il Principe) around 1513, published 1532.
A controversial political treatise on power and leadership in Renaissance Italy.
And in London, Utopia by Sir Thomas More was published, in 1516: A socio-political satire describing an ideal, imaginary island society.
