caesar novus

Excellent Longer Version

Seems cramped. Alternatively the baths of Caracalla has a grandiose opera festival all summer, as well as additional new forum venue at Basilica of Maxentius. Amphitheaters in Verona, Taomina, Pula, etc also often host musical events.

Below is more dna evidence that seems to allow for, if not suggest, that humanity migrated from Australia to Africa. Physical evidence shows humans in northern OZ 60k years ago, yet present aborigine dna shows mixing with neanderthals 50k years ago around the middle east. Nobody is concluding this, but it just seems to me a crazy possibility that isn't ruled out.

The British School in Rome youtube channel has long lecture videos that calculate challenging logistics of feeding these fires in Ostia and I guess Rome/Pompeii. In order to heat such volume of water it takes an exact huge amount of firewood carted in every night (deliveries forbidden by day). Only a few wider roads can support cart traffic and turn around requirements, and they therefore thunder by something like every 3 minutes IIRC. By dawn farmers come in and collect animal and human night soil which was highly prized and not flushed away. For Ostia they only included local deliveries, not the massive transhipments to Rome, so maybe even the above villa created such nocturnal traffic jams. Also they calculate the exact required human porters to support wine and olive oil consumption which I think also had to move at night. The wine amphorae were the perfect weight for humans of that era to carry without undue strain door to door, and such human dexterity simplified loading/unloading issues over pack animals or carts. Olive oil came in huge containers which were too big for single humans or pack animals; once you counterbalanced on both sides you can't get thru narrow streets. I think the oil (used around baths for scraper cleaning?) must have been suspended by a pole between 2 porters. The scholars calculate how many porters and animals pass thru each street per hour, and debate things like do cart ruts imply one way traffic patterns (probably not). While listening, youtube recommended a video advertising a British school in Rome for sale, so I won't look up exact legacy channel name. It now might be found under something like "Chairman Mao Memorial School in Rome" or "Comrade Trotsky Memorial School in Rome"?

Too bad the oft praised Marcus Aurelius didn't have a sidegig of psychology, or might not appointed his psychopathic son Commodus as co-emperor. By the way there is a flurry of videos by pilot doctors on recent fatal air crashes that are bringing attention to mental pathology causes. Like the recent Air India crash which strongly appears to be suicide, even tho blowhards claimed that only racists blame it on anybody but Boeing. This highly qualified pilot and shrink shows it's mental health evidence and how every airline should have a "how ya doin aircrew - really?" on preflight checklists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD64uYK926o . Here is an EMS aircrew on how a recent medivac crash was falsely attributed to a trace of antihistamines, while the pilot was suffering more from anxiety episodes transitioning to a helicopter where blades rotated opposite to his long experience: https://youtu.be/KqTs7qHvPoI?si=qwOQjYbJCBdnafAf

I've seen the world's finest and hard to visit collection of amazing Scythian goldwork. It took me about an hour to find this single video doing some justice, since the other hundred videos have to do with recent ownership battles and actual warfare. I wonder how soft gold could survive nomadic life and amateur archeology; some seem to have a glint of silver which might be a hardening component.

While grinding thru quality educational Roman videos on Kanopy, I've just got to make mention of their classic movie "Le Corniaud" (The Sucker). One of my lifetime favorite comedies; wiki sez "most popular film at the French box office in 1965." and "still one of the 25 most watched films in France" and "won the yearly award for the foreign film that best served the beauty of Italy". Even the trailer hardly does it justice. A well meaning French tourist is tricked by mobsters into driving a Cadillac packed with contraband from Naples to Rome, car chase to Tivoli, spectacular shootout in those gardens at night, and so on thru France. Sometimes every 20 seconds has a surprising gag in the screwball tradition. Time travel to when Italy was less crowded and frenetic, and apparently had German lady hitch hikers.

If you let it build for a while you can see why "Oh Happy Day" was a big crossover hit. I heard many of those Hawkins family members sing in one of the worst neighborhoods in LA; like the Jackson family they were super charismatic. More often I attended r&b gospel in bad NYC neighborhoods.

Kanopy really streams enormous Roman content; just try a search for "rom" there. Be prepared for it presenting lectures as singles, but if you choose it you get the whole series of a dozen or so lectures. Our library gives you a certain amount of free viewing per month (at home), but choosing a lecture eats a lot of your ration because it includes the whole series. No need for lectures, there are all kinds of documentaries and shows. BTW the saying now is that behind every successful producer of a documentary is a rich spouse. Basically that documentaries are a dead moneypit genre except as vanity projects, so enjoy what was once possible. I elsewhere lamented the lack of Roman stuff on popular free streaming Tubi. I got ParamountPlus free thru my cable affiliation, so can confirm lack of Roman stuff there. Just a side note that they carry the best sitcom of the last 10 years, 26 episodes of "Corporate", an absurdist nihilist tribute to "The Office" with the usual no laugh track: And Youtube remains the giant for Roman content. There seems to be a focus on Roman "shorts" now which range from annoying AI creations to heartfelt mythbusting by Italians. P.S. One of the best mythbusting of US perceptions of Italy is from "How to Italy" channel from an Italian history professor: https://www.youtube.com/@HowtoItaly-2004/videos

I can't help recalling another pivotal battle on the heel of Italy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taranto

Cellos in Pula Croatia ancient Arena P.S. If you have been flagging music videos with a "like", you can replay the list and shuffle etc. I do this with the youtube music app and really prefer it to the garbage that it may mis recommend for me. I've flagged hundreds of music likes and thousands of video likes over the years (sometimes "youtube music" mixes one up with the other). Youtube music may be a premium only app, but what I like is they haven't obsoleted it as fast as regular youtube on old versions of android. Actually mine gives error msgs but still works on old tablets.

https://www.newsmax.com/thewire/captain-cook-ship-endeavour/2025/06/16/id/1215162/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cook

Roman themed interludes:

This pop ditty by The Association may lack excitement, but I wanted to point out a resource of hundreds of rare interviews with pop/rock stars, often nearing dementia of their 80s. https://www.youtube.com/@discograffitipodcast2872/videos is hosted by an eccentric music industry insider asking artists to rate their every song, but they give him interesting reality checks about their goals, historical context, etc. He must have about 6 hours from The Association and much more from the only surviving Momma/Poppa Michelle Phillips for example.

One could also write an article about supposedly Greek ruins that are really more or less Roman. Rome eventually occupies all, and either initiates or refurbishes sites all over Greece and Italy. I liked Paestum more than Agrigento, the latter seeming more starkly Greek. Both are close to the tourist path but can have travel challenges, especially near day's end when timetables seem to crater. I think there are Roman elements grafted on to the Taormina theater:

So it slowly dawns on me I might find pictures of the overlooking rooftop bars, which I include below. BTW the short video over Minerva piazza with local kids joyously playing soccer reminds me so much of the serendipity of less touristed pockets of Rome.

I always wondered what privileges Darius Arya was using for elevated views of the Pantheon on his channels. Maybe some tycoons apartment; his own apartment househunt was actually televised and landed him in an adjacent neighborhood. It finally dawned on me to check google maps and showed rooftop bars and eateries open to all. First is his most common (restricted) view from the SE, in Piazza della Minerva apparently from Hotel Minerva rooftop bar. Therefore it must be the most welcoming or tasty. It also might be worth checking if you can climb to the rooftop of adjacent Basilica di Santa Maria Sopra Minerva: Better side/frontal view from Piazza della Rotonda appears to be from NE rooftop bar at 3 star (affordable?) Hotel Albergo Senato. They must be less welcoming to lookie-loos because I rarely see it on either of his channels. Check 40 seconds in below:

She Sells Sanctuary (long 1985 version) The Cult

I think the art was not to determine the exact Roman and then Han situation and then compare them, with that bottom line graph that shows a stunning difference. Rather they played around with similar estimation techniques which, if biased, might be biased in a consistent way and thus cancel out in a Rome/Han ratio. Even the mental exercise sheds sidelights, and seems more useful than admitting all is more or less uncertain. Maybe I just have warm feelings for simulations, since I worked on optimizing electronic design thru evolution or monte carlo/annealing simulations. Injecting random mutations or whatever was fun and effective until the Phd folks invented better boring math approaches.

They are labeled simulation results and seem to be precision of the model rather than claimed accuracy of actual history. Often they are ratios ranging only from 0 to 1 or 1 to 3, and a lot of granularity is happening in that range that you wouldn't want to discard. They have a section on uncertainty which is nice to be explicit about, but you may not find it convincing.

Thank you. It's a little hard to see the numbers on similar shaped charts there, but the income per capita is almost double for the Romans. Since they don't calibrate charts with a common zero point, the different offsets are disguised and charts can falsely look alike.

Sorry for my digression, but somebody must be sharing my fate with youtube obsoleting their android apps. I found relief with Amazon's $90 bundle of 2022 (but unused) Fire HD 8 Plus tablet with extremely convenient wireless charger. Beware of cheaper unbundled versions which insert screen ads. Newer versions seem to lack wireless charging; older may have feeble audio. I dunno if it supports forum posting, but after auto system updates it youtubes nicely for the moment. App is not android so maybe youtube will let it age unmolested in obscurity.

That seems refreshingly non marxist, with clever metrics and handling of uncertainty. Lots of nice quotes, like Han fiscal system perhaps better in theory but Roman better in practice. I will try to entice further reading with a quote and a dramatic graph proposing the fatal difference of Han economy: (I can't post their graph, but look for their final fig. 3, just before their massive references section comprising 30% of length)

It looks to me maybe y'all skeptics to above did not take in the posted "times of israel" article and it's video on the unique properties of this tiny site. Or you were making plausible generalities for generic sites or vast areas in general. My observations had been: The compactness of this site, dense with architecture. it might fit in footprint of a modern Walmart store and have had loads of artifacts, recently removed by archeologists. The elevated nature of the site, which appears to comprise the upper half of a 500ish foot hill surrounded by undeveloped apron slope. The downhill foot of the apron was the discovery zone seen, I think, in the last second of their video. The soil looks like classic impermeable dry zone stuff that promotes flash floods, which Israel did experience this winter. Hundred year floods may trap material ground off top of hill towards the foot.

Video implied rich privilege due to direct hookups, but they paid for construction and upkeep so that public access could be free. Another fascinating short vid on Roman hygiene here: