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While our country looks like it might be coming apart at the seams, it’s good to revisit, every once in a while, moments when it did work. And that’s not so that we can feel nostalgic about a lost time, but so that we can remind ourselves how, given the right conditions, things could work […]
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” So holds the third and most famous of the “three laws” originally articulated by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. Even when it was first published in the late nineteen-sixties, Clarke’s third law would have felt true to any resident of the developed world, surrounded by and […]
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kuFyuH6tvOjqf-ugVZ1RXulJtFUqnDPz0Video can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Satie: Discoveries (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kuFyuH6tvOjqf-ugVZ1RXulJtFUqnDPz0) If asked to name our favorite French composer of the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, most of us would reach straight for Erik Satie, being able to bring to mind only his most famous pieces, the Gymnopédies and perhaps the Gnossiennes. We may […]
Several years ago, we brought you a transcription and a couple of audio interpretations of the oldest known song in the world, discovered in the ancient Syrian city of Ugarit and dating back to the 14th century B.C.E.. Likely performed on an instrument resembling an ancient lyre, the so-called “Hurrian Cult Song” or “Hurrian Hymn […]
Given the dominance YouTube has achieved over large swathes of world culture, we’d all expect to remember the first video we watched there. Yet many or most of us don’t: rather, we simply realized, one day in the mid-to-late two-thousands, that we’d developed a daily YouTube habit. Like as not, your own introduction to the […]
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Plato’s Last Word to Dionysius JamesHoare Tue, 07/01/2025 - 08:00
We grow accustomed to the Dark — When Light is put away — As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp To witness her Good bye — Emily Dickinson They say that the glow of the sky you see at night isn’t starlight but leftover light from the Big Bang. Light is ancient and magical. Away … Continue reading "From Dusk Til Dawn: 29 Found Photos Taken In Changing Light" The post From Dusk Til Dawn: 29 Found Photos Taken In Changing Light appeared first on Flashbak.
They may be largely unknown in the modern world but in their time the Sogdians were exceptionally influential. The Sogdians were an Iranian-speaking people who originated from Central Asia (modern-day Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) and were at the center of the Silk Road trade. Their rich, vibrant culture which abounded in Sogdian towns along trade […]
Entering the Raphael Rooms is like stepping through a portal to the heart of the Italian Renaissance. In the early 16th century, at the peak of the storied art movement, Raphael and his workshop painted a spectacular suite of papal apartments in the Vatican. The resulting frescoes exemplify the artistic achievement and aesthetic […]
