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caesar novus

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Everything posted by caesar novus

  1. caesar novus

    Live webcams of Roman ruins?

    I will make a few comments on what is on view. The Rome camera has frozen panning and just now switched to infrared. Anyway, when you get the view of big white king monument on upper left, look at the brick ruins under the trees (currently lit with single spotlight). This is a friggen 5 story ancient Roman apartment building! Well, the top story is gone and bottom is underground, but I will post a photo of insula dell'Ara Coeli: To the right under the bell tower is Capitoline museum (world's first) with full Roman sculptural content: And more hidden stuff back when panning worked. BTW I tweaked my webcam playlist so it doesn't get jammed by African camera downtime so easily.
  2. I'm looking for one on Roman north Africa, in case you see a quality history. Want to post corrections to some travelogue stereotyping of Romans. But my insomnia remedy is less educational, consisting of cooking a decadent meal then sinking into lullaby land. Bad for the waistband, wallet, and health but hard to resist.
  3. caesar novus

    Portion of Via Flaminia uncovered

    Smoother than long exposed via Appia, and maybe less wheel traffic
  4. caesar novus

    What Song Are You Listening to Now?

    The premium version of my Cuban post above appears to be at https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=onwoLbL2OZY&feature=share but I suspect it often gets downshifted into regular version. When the stars align right it can sound like each player is swinging on a separate pendulum overhead. The Indian one in particular rises from tame to sparkling on a high end laptop (or maybe headphones?). On my nearly high end laptop it sounds tame and flat. I wish we could sort out a common youtube strategy for using their music mode or radio mode. I get these for no (extra) cost but others maybe cannot. I can't even figure out music.youtube terminology, which seems changeable anyway, so someone more knowledgeable is welcome to advise.
  5. caesar novus

    English as essentially Viking in deep structure

    This video illuminates so many issues of regional dialect, beyond the banal one of pronouncing tomato. Like how the Canadian oo sound and backwater regions of UK are actually retaining what used to be mainstream pronunciation. How some weird spellings are actually phonetic according to older english. And how Shakespeare was on the cusp of writing in a distinctly different language. It seemed so cruel to be graded on comprehending such mysteries in school, probably now replaced with something readable but bad. It used to be that in at least coastal US the A sound was ridiculously nasal and was kind of considered dialect 30 years ago. But I observed this was primarily from females, often young, and thus a faddish affectation. Kind of like how young Japanese females adopt a baby talk affectation. Thank goodness that annoyance lessened. By the way, more evidence seems to pile up that english is stealth viking. English is said to borrow heavily from French, but often not Parisian French. More like Norman French. Nor-man. North men. Danish vikings that raided then settled in Normandy. They only superficially adapted to local language, giving what has been depicted as a bizarre dialect in one of the highest-grossing French films of all time (really funny). PPS. The eyeshadow of this man reminds me of a factoid in a lecture I have buried in long audio form. While localized darkening varies with ethnicity, it tends to signal a B vitamin deficiency. I forget which one, and even a B complex pill leaves out some, but is a worthwhile precaution. I used to have the flippant attitude that no pills were needed with a varied diet, then suffered critically from low b12. Be pragmatic; you need what you need, and the whole framework of what is a vitamin is garbled due to historical mistakes of which ones are or are not true vitamins. Not a fan of mindless consumption of multivitamins tho. PPPS. for extra credit see related Italian super popular funny films https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JtQfHPPGS8 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocSf8m2xWiI
  6. caesar novus

    List Version: Favorite Archeo. Tour Videos

    Saepinum 4 min from Italy4Real
  7. caesar novus

    Colosseum TV series doesn't suck?!

    I had ignored the history channel new Colosseum series as not likely worthy, but some channel surfing indicates it may be pretty good. It even looks like you can stream episodes after a while for free at https://www.history.com/shows/colosseum . Where is that old forum spirit of critiquing popular media representations of Rome? I can understand avoiding TV due to spewage of woke commercials, but use that fast forward button. They even revive having real expert commentators instead of the trend towards slangy pierced woke figureheads mouthing scripts they don't understand. I'm a little embarrassed about Romans love of such games and would prefer to follow their more popular horseracing, but this series apparently redeems itself with wider context.
  8. caesar novus

    What Song Are You Listening to Now?

    Cuban music = afro beat + euro glide If you can switch into "youtube music premium" mode, this Indian piece rises to ethereal levels. Oops, maybe that triggers a month free trial. P.S. Here is the premium version https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=jmxtgU7--ps&feature=share
  9. Webcam: I still don't recommend this port over other spots in the Med, but others seem to like it...
  10. caesar novus

    English as essentially Viking in deep structure

    Here is an interesting English series with a Roman/Latin episode. Medieval scholars sabotaged perfectly phonetic english spellings to reflect Latin root words. So douBt or receiPt picked up silent letters that weren't even in the French roots of the English words. P.S. See his episode on names for military ranks, which has quite comical roots. But no, there is no known reason why Brits put a f in LeFtenent. I more and more often hear UK content by amateurs who furthermore use F instead of TH, like I Fought for I THought. Didn't TH originate from Vikings, but even Scandinavians tend to replace it with T or D.
  11. caesar novus

    No self portraits among cave paintings?

    Maybe craftspeople but probably unlike modern aesthetic or representational artists. The ancient mind seems to have been about 98% concerned about mythology and supernatural religion if my anthropology studies were correct. It was so disappointing when I studied precontact west Africa and meso America and found few insights applicable to real life; I so expected to find useful alternative mindsets. But their world was one of dealing with uncertainty and powerlessness, and I think the few representational depictions they made were aimed at superstitious concerns. I love a cartoon that showed "vegetarian" cavemen drawing big luscious carrots! And I have beat to death the theme of how wonderful realistic Roman sculpture is, often with meditative "warts and all" realism instead of vainglory. Human representational sculpture can be hard to find in very ancient worlds. Semi-representational stuff can be so weird that must have some other function other than "art". The "archaic" phase of Greek sculpture seems even more stereotyped than Egyptian, but I guess the Hellenistic phase gave over the top expressive art.
  12. caesar novus

    What Song Are You Listening to Now?

    A film on how the Stones produced "Sympathy for the Devil" has reappeared at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rohaZ8mB1zE . I think it was taken down due to objecting to the traffic generated here from my thumbnail, so I omit thumbnail this time. It seems one of the best re-edits of a famous flawed documentary. Consider how the group there is navigating towards a $1billion net worth, instead of the usual bankruptcy from agents or management. Jagger is from a media savvy family, as can be seen from his young appearance on his father's TV show below. Note on the documentary how he gently but firmly substitutes two group members who can't get their job done on that song. P.S.Here is newly higher resolution Roman songs Miles Gloriosus and Comedy Tonight
  13. I've been impressed by recent authors using geography and demography to explain past, present, and future events. Like the brief cogent videos in https://www.youtube.com/c/ZeihanonGeopolitics/videos . Supposedly the pax Americana allowed globalized trade and prosperity, but this altruistic policing of oceans to be pirate-free for instance may recede and leave deglobalized nations to face cruel realities of geography, demography, and war. One of the more zany spokesmen for this (new world econ) extended it to relate to pax Romana, and I thought it could be an entertaining introduction for here. I guess he is the face of millennial scholardom: smart, wise, informed, but with a style that sounds like puffin da weed in his underwear: "Like, like, y'know, um, [explicative], like y'know". The Roman angle can be found if you drop in late here, bookended with a few scraps of Argentina and China that hopefully tempts you to restart full video https://youtu.be/5ZGnE4ZpUkM?t=1575 . China is particularly considered fragile in geography and demographics, and has only held together due to recent trade-friendly bubble they say. Drop in here for how it can collapse in a matter of weeks if the US navy switches from protecting it's trade lifelines to sanctioning them https://youtu.be/KSa8096YBXw?t=1076 . For demographic trajectories threatening most developed countries soon, drop in https://youtu.be/jVYvx67lOJA?t=1861 (US) or https://youtu.be/KSa8096YBXw?t=354 (China). I have a little trouble with assumption that ocean/river/canal trade determines all. What about railroads, and so much is moving by air cargo now like even the 150 pound a/c I just replaced. North America comes out charmed in both war-preventing geography and good demographics IF you consider Mexico part of same economy with youthful, inexpensive workers and consumers. Britain is charmed, at least if the Scots and their oil don't depart. France is a close-run case with it's Belgium border open for invasions, and Portugal being a fortress that can prevent the French Navy consolidating Med and Atlantic halves in a crises. Forgot to mention assumption that prosperity thrives in fertile lands with navigable waterways for internal trade, unchallenged by invaders due to formidable borders. Over time, wars still statistically arise where opportune.
  14. I prolong a bit more because my casual research shows Italy having a historic opportunity to get western Europe out of projected energy/food deadlock from the coming winter onward. Italy seems to be the Saudi Arabia of easily tapped shale oil/gas reserves. In western Europe only Estonia has a fraction of what is primarily in economically depressed and outward migrating Sicily. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale_reserves#Europe I suppose this geographic feature may be an extension of Libyan fields, and some nearby Italian islands (Lampedusa etc) could be a base for horizontal drilling and fracking, if only for vital chemical and fertilizer production. I read this could be established in a couple months, but of course has little chance under eco-religious regimes for now. But in a coal burning and fertilizer-lacking near future, look for Sicily coming to the rescue for both humanitarian and eco benefits.
  15. caesar novus

    What Song Are You Listening to Now?

    A bit new-agey upbeat, but hard to resist once they get in the groove:
  16. caesar novus

    What Song Are You Listening to Now?

    Since this "Guantanamera" has as much visual as audio appeal, may I point out that mobile youtube allows passing videos to TV's on the same wifi network. Instead of a phone I use a tiny $50 tablet that nicely bypasses the menu clutter on wifi enabled TV. Maybe I am the last to find that out... P.S. It offers subtitles with lyric translation
  17. I only beat this topic to death due to the possibility of bringing it full circle back to Romans, and a possible revival of their imperial type of economy. This is my own extrapolation of the Zeihan explanatory framework, like my digression into progressive poo politics, so blame me rather than denigrate his framework. Caveat is I haven't viewed several videos by toldinstone about the Roman economy, so will have to defer to others for that knowledge. So given how the world gained much wealth in the cold war period where trade flourished as if geography offered few limitations, this created 2 ticking time bomb effects. Firstly wealthier folks have few babies, and many economies are on the cliff of massive retirements and few taxpaying young worker/consumers. We indulge in denial now because current older workers are more skilled and productive than young until the switch is flipped and they become expensive drags in retirement. Secondly, the expanding economy soothed the rough edges of capitalism, euro/canadian socialism, and even corporation fascism (= China now and even S. Korea in past). Now a shrinking pie will really stress out losers which will be most folks in these regimes. Internal conflict and external war may return as geography issues becomes more important. Zeihan sees old ideas revived to address this, like communism and especially imperialism. I've spared the "why" details but offer a new "what". Maybe the Roman Imperial type of economy will be a least-bad fit and be revived at least as an inspiration! P.S. here is a substitute agricultural video for the one withdrawn above:
  18. Case study of organic farming in Sri Lanka leading to starvation, from foreignpolicy.com: Rajapaksa's palace has just been stormed and his resignation announced:
  19. caesar novus

    Vespasian: Emperor with a sense of humor

    I have never agreed with the modernized portraits; they don't capture the demeanor at all especially around the mouth. Mouth areas tend to be super expressive of a persons life history and life focus, unless they live a soft life unlike an emperor who knows he won't die peacefully. These pictures tend to show vapid banal modern expressions vs the glorious sculptures. Have you ever seen a person you know well freshly dead, with no cosmetics done? In my experience the entire personality was gone like turning into a generic person, something you don't see from just sleep. Have you seen a military officer with that distant look of a fighter pilot - they have to have insane foresight even apart from combat and have a signature 20 mile stare. You can look at another variation and say, oh that is probably a high performance helicopter pilot with a very alert 2 mile stare. It's people shaped by highly unforgiving environments, not any joe six pack who flies piston airplanes or helicopters. It used to be very noticable before globalization that you could see a different demeanor even in parts of Europe that was just plain impossible in a same-ethnic American. Even now, you might see that from mountain villages say in Albania. The Roman demeanor in realistic sculpture is just wow to me, and I hate to see it dumbed down.
  20. I just heard spokesman from the Anuvia company speak about their new product turning manure etc including that from humans into fertilizer. Remember typically "Around the globe, natural gas is used as a raw material as well as fuel for nitrogen fertilizer production. In some countries such as China, coal is gasified into ammonia and used for manufacturing fertilizers." I mention human because there may be a lot less animal manure available. If food scarcity trends continue and given that meat production is 9 times less efficient to produce than vegetarian fare, then our poo might ameliorate dire situations in the warm colored countries seen below:
  21. Whoops, that audiobook posting was unauthorized and got flushed, although the fascinating map/graphic link endures. The timing was unfortunate because the book starts out slow and digressive, then as it passes 2 hours it transcends into an engrossing explanatory system for our last 100 turbulent years and obvious future prospects. If instead the beginning had the sparkle, he would have hooked more folks like me to buy and finish it. Well I have it, but will refer to his more digestible video shorts for reflection. I've been thinking how under his scheme the direction of progressive politics should change to reduce rather than worsen the dire consequences of de-globalization. Globalization emerged 50 years ago due to freak and temporary circumstances that led to massive betterment of world standards of living and a resulting crash in birth rates. Only a handful of countries now have enough young to sustain population and economic growth, altho many are burdened supporting legacy of many old folks. So will progressives promote childbirth? It is almost too late unless done very aggressively. Large areas of the earth have poor soils that only recently were made productive by petrochemical fertilizer and GMO breeding (sometimes disguised by being naturally bred copycats of GMO). With fertilizer trade and petro availability breaking down, will progressives decouple from this "buy local organic foods" mantra, maybe in the face of famine? The only way to sustain that seems to be reverting to using human waste for fertilizer. I visited China in 1980 when even in a city of multimillions, you would encounter women with 2 huge nightsoil pots at either end of a bamboo pole on her shoulders. It had a vile smell that you also encountered walking by a garden or field... OR IN YOUR BOWL OF VEGGIES at the dinnertable. Well, progressives could do it better now. Related to this I love how these root causes explain a lot. For instance in our beginnings of food transport involved phasing out New England as the breadbasket for Boston, NYC, etc. It was a good thing because new england has mediocre soils compared to the emerging midwest. Vermont for instance was razed flat like a moonscape for resources - I've seen the pictures. Then more remote trade allowed it to reforest and take up more value add trades and mfg. BTW I hate the gushy admiration of NE forests where I grew up. It's mostly trashy stunted second growth not yet recovered from being razed for newspaper pulp, dairies, etc. Another big reversal area for progressives is their religious zeal for unsustainable green energy. Like the below video describes, just the carbon footprint of building green generators is bigger than any possible savings in much of the cloudy non windy world. It also depends on exotic minerals that are becoming un sourceable. None of this means anything to a greenie, which is why it is a religion that needs to transform to rationality and maybe acceptance of modern safe forms of nuclear. So those are some examples on how progressives can and maybe eventually will be more pragmatic if this plays out. Alternatively a conservative wait-and-see approach with flexible free market response will be workable. The worst approach is delusional gov't intervention like what turned Zimbabwe and Venezuela into catastrophes. From https://www.youtube.com/c/ZeihanonGeopolitics/videos :
  22. Is the below item in my Ruins playlist representative of how they protect Ephesus, crown jewel Roman site? Unsupervised at opening time and selfies past the "do not pass" line; hopefully they had surveillance cameras for more serious hanky panky:
  23. This appears to be near the key Roman city of Antioch, sadly erased in 1268. I'm trying to avoid a chore so will riff a few half baked observations. Wiki sez in 1268: "The people of Antioch fought fiercely, but the Muslims scaled the walls by the mountain near the citadel and came down into the city. The people fled to the citadel, and the Muslim troops started to plunder, kill and take prisoners. Every man in the city was put to the sword – they numbered more than a hundred thousand." Another source is cited with surrender, lower death toll, yet physical destruction. Is Turkey able to protect it's digs? There seem to be a mixed record, and Turkey appears increasingly on edge. BTW thanks for not toadying up to the recent dictatorial "rebranding" to "Turkiye" which even the CIA country factbook does. As english speakers we name things as we like, not what propagandists propose. I called Leningrad as St Petersburg even when visiting at a time there was no expectation yet of returning to that traditional name. I haven't switched to the new tinpot dictator name for Burma and am undecided about Bombay. Just anecdotally, I thought the pattern was that digs and especially underwater sites couldn't be protected against looters or development. Eg. Eurasianet said threatened “Allianoi is as significant as the Roman baths at Baden-Baden in Germany, Bath in England, and some big baths in Italy, but it was the only one that was very well preserved,” he said. “We couldn’t make the government understand this significance.” Although the Ministry of Culture designated Allianoi as a protected archaeological dig in 2000, the government’s support for the dam project never wavered." Although what protection can even a well intentioned gov't do with devastating inflation? The Guardian recently said about Turkey: "independent economists showed consumer prices had risen by 175% in June compared with a year earlier. ENAG said prices had risen by 71.4% since the start of 2022." ... "and caused the lira to plunge to a record low, pushing up costs in a country that is dependent on imported materials, especially energy." Our family fortune was wiped out by a mere 20% inflation in the 70's as a century of frugal enterprise and investment went up in smoke. CIA factbook sez "increasing poverty and unemployment; endemic corruption;" ... "three credit ratings agencies downgraded Turkey’s sovereign credit ratings, citing concerns about the rule of law and the pace of economic reforms." UNESCO sez "deeply regrets the lack of dialogue and information" on protected Roman monument "conversion of the Hagia Sophia and <> to mosques come as Erdogan tries to muster nationalist supporters in the midst of an economic crisis created by the pandemic." On the optimistic side, Turkey seems to be balancing the east/west conflict surprisingly well. While it gives refuge to targeted Russian superyachts, it provides high tech drones to Ukraine. It keeps to the letter of the treaty about who can pass their strait to Black Sea and apparently just refused passage to a Russian shipment of stolen grain, as well as warships from the west. It seems to have mixed feelings about NATO, but this affiliation led to teflon treatment from Russia who carefully avoided bombing some Turkish assets in Ukraine. And I included my longest video in a Roman museum playlist for one of Antalya Turkey. If I have this cued up right, you can navigate thru this list on a laptop with shift+N or P (something like 2 finger touch for mobile):
  24. His last short one has an "I told you so" moment since China just announced not 4 or 6 but 5 years of supply chain disruption. If not health issues for this predicted timeframe, they have other issues. For me this has impact on a few boys toys I cherish that are only made in China. I just sold most that I could part with since buyers recognize their replacement value and scarcity is up. And soaring shipping prices for new stuff can be avoided. However my one must-have toy that wore out years ago is looking possibly not replaceable until I am too old to enjoy it. I hate selling things to skeptical tire kickers, so advertised on Craigslist then kind of criticized my items to folks who showed interest. It worked in the sense of repelling time wasters, but some told me I would have found bigger spenders on facebook marketplace.
  25. caesar novus

    Carthage’s foundation

    https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-01-23-ancient-carthaginians-really-did-sacrifice-their-children
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