caesar novus

Retirees may find an arbitrage opportunity for mainland vs Honolulu real estate. The former high vs the latter maybe impacted by China's real estate crash. I know someone who did this during Japan's crash a couple decades ago. Wealthy Chinese invested in various Honolulu luxury towers just for asset hiding; rarely actually occupied I believe. Desperation sales may arise, but often for units intended for transient time shares with the associated fees. But U.S. mainlanders rarely last more than a few years in Hawaii, which has unique flavors of dysfunction yet strives to adopt California type dysfunction.

I understood that they first used conventional approach to virtually unwrap and examine, as done for the dead sea scrolls. Then let the contestants try to find still elusive words: That was from skimming the Nature article; maybe I missed something from the videos which are too linear for my patience. The news article may have oversold/clickbaited the AI angle.

I wonder if they can make an estimate of how accurate their AI results are. Pattern matching approaches may be biased to find known stereotypes. Maybe they can calibrate by running against remains of an old Torah vs. modern, which I gather doesn't change even punctuation marks for ages. I had involvement in early AI approaches, which were quite elegant in tracking degree of certainty and could even explain it's reasoning. But sometimes this approach hits a wall, and fuzzy pattern matching approaches became popular, which I didn't respect much. An example of the difference is innocence vs reasonable doubt of guilt (= not guilty). An exact AI system may flail forever trying to determine innocence with uncertainty of alibis etc. A pattern matcher can step back and rule not guilty if the perp looks anywhere from 0 to 98% guilty (with 99-100% being guilty). BTW I hate those "innocence projects" that crow about tiny adjustments of reasonable doubt. Wikipedia unexpectedly has a very lucid description of various current AI approaches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence which puts me more at ease that more than just pattern matching is used. The sloppy AI narrations common on youtube probably shouldn't blacken the reputation of AI in general.

I'm still clinging to the hard c approach, as claimed in wiki: Italian: [bruˈsketta]. Once an effete waitress on Oxford campus condescendingly corrected me with the sh sound, and regardless of her Nobel prizes I want to think my way was closer to correct. Otherwise my only claim to worldly distinction was once being asked directions by a UPS man in my first few minutes in London. I may have been helpful since I memorize maps of new places rather than use anything digital. We were one magnitude short of looting in the streets, which happens with extended power outages even among gentle acculturated people. The issue of structural safety is more slow-burn, with tension cables stealthily snapping within concrete. Takes a few years to catastrophically fail... or be found and fixed. Tension cables seem a nasty invention less forgiving than rebar.

Ciao is supposed to retain it's intimate origin by not being used with strangers by Italians according to https://italyexplained.com/the-history-of-the-word-ciao-why-you-shouldnt-say-it-in-italy/ . Sort of like another hello/goodbye word aloha. But the foreign enthusiasm for the word detached from it's origin may seep into Italy. I am surprised foreigners properly pronounce the Italian i as h (ciao=chow) and (lasagna=lazonya) and (pizza=peetsa). But they don't remain true to phonetic rules to harden the ch in bruschetta or silence the first i in Gianni. Word origins may sometimes carry almost no meaning except as a random seed for a utilitarian word or phrase. The most annoying of such is to reward a sloppy malignant sneezer with a blessing which happens in several languages as a vacuous placeholder according to video below. I propose the sneeze response instead to demand accountability, as in "can't you spare a penny for your allergy with an antihistamine?" or "don't you ever wash your hands?" or "wear a dustmask when you vacuum, knucklehead!". P.S. this post was composed during a 5.7 magnitude earthquake, but power is still up...

Roman Philadelphia, now with historical captions defaulted to "on" based on my urging. This one is a little spread out so you may want to increase the playback speed. Have you neglected to use captions on Prowalk's umpteen other Roman site walkthrus? No, the below isn't another diversity rant on how princess Snow White was in reality a Kalahari Bushwomen:

Roman marines and maritime aspects of that special exhibit:

The Historian's Craft is a high quality channel often dipping into late Roman times. The graphics are excellent and most notable are the high quality comments, such as wisdom of Rome representing fractions in base 12 rather than 10.

I almost forgot about this blog section due to not seeing entries flagged in the activity section. Anyway, aren't we allowed one over-the-top-purchase to assuage a mid life crisis? I was proud of myself for not being tempted by motorcycles which are not only stylized nowadays to juvenile tastes, but I've already tasted asphalt from a car ramming me on a motorbike. I may have dodged a bullet due to not having parking space for a speedy stripped down Alfa Romeo sportscar which was almost affordable. So I did make a decision or three, but I beg the privilege to revise. First I bought a series small sailing dinghies. Most had high tech twists that weren't really practical, so I sold them. Next I ordered something so edgy that I am embarrassed to admit what. While waiting months for supply chain or whatever issues, I had buyers remorse but assumed I couldn't cancel it due to extensive customization. Unexpectedly I finally managed to negotiate a cancellation refund. My next candidate was urgent rebuild of home plumbing, the extravagant cost of which was about covered by the credit card refund for above. For a while I tried to call this my midlife diversion, but of course it was too practical. So now I have been unleashing bigger budgets for cooking ingredients. I've been austerely frugal in the past (vegan), but now most food is pricey so why not apply those past savings to carefree eating? We will see if I can stick to this plan addressing my problematic lifetime milestone - yum!.

Guy sayeth: How about ancient egyptian in name only? Actually Sam below retired from "rock" to be a motivational speaker and has a sweet eccentric philosophical vlog series on https://www.youtube.com/@samtheshamvideos.

Oh, I just meant the principle of an elevated viewpoint to any tall vertical (or horizontal) surface . Actually that column is supposed to be viewed as almost a wall. Scholars say you don't follow the spiral but view narrative from the bottom to top from 2 nearly opposed sides. Maybe that is why I found the unraveled spiral casts at the EUR museum unsatisfying. Anyway new answers and questions from:

I thought until recently it was affixed to an external brick wall, but that was probably from a Mussolini era re-imagining. Whether horizontal or vertical, it could have had elevated viewing platforms, like for Trajan's Column or a mosaic floor in Anacapri:

Not so much listening but watching performance theatrics of classic rock. Not the 98% of contrived over the top antics, but natural conviction and ability (Jagger took after his famous physical fitness guru father):

Stanford has the 1000+ fragments crisply digitized even in 3d, so maybe you can look for signs of sandal abrasion vs vertical weathering: http://formaurbis.stanford.edu/ They also show 87 lost fragments from Renaissance drawings of them! Furthermore Stanford has a project that maps transport networks throughout Roman empire: https://orbis.stanford.edu/

Besides the "map" superimposed on a 300 year old map of Rome, they are refurbishing it's whole dilapidated historic property including walkable grounds with archeo fragments. Hopefully this will extend the foot traffic on kind of the "wrong" shadeless desolate side of the coliseum, and bridge to onward attractions like Baths of Caracalla / St John Lateran / Via Appia. I love walking the continuous fabric of a city instead of being abruptly plunked at spots, although the shade of a few more umbrella pines there would help. Maybe can't dig a hole for a root ball without unearthing a zeroth-century vomitorium? Anyway, even Ostia Appia seems closer using a nearby train station. https://www.finestresullarte.info/en/archaeology/rome-caelian-archaeological-park-opens-to-the-public-with-new-forma-urbis-museum May be some risk to the proliferation of niche museums in Rome, showing this new restoration and that. Often they are relatively expensive and you can see everything twice in 20 or 30 minutes. Then on to the next 5 niche mu$eum$ that day, some of which require inflexible appointments and weren't what you expected. They tend to have low attendance and are hard to staff. A normal medium or giant museum has diversity so a few disappointments are balanced by unexpected things that ring your bell. I knocked a ton of these small museums off on a "free museum" week they have around April, and got quite a perspective.

The Pantheon sometimes opens interesting back rooms in a structure that was meant to reinforce an area developing cracks early on. There are even a couple of external flying buttresses there. I speculate that the huge front portico must be pressing the drum structure to the rear (no cracks on it's sides). Anyway this vid shows exhibits there including nice decorative fragments: By the way, here is how decorative elements can be robo-sculpted now in case you want some Corinthian topped columns:

Good work. This one seemed to address my concerns on an earlier one - probably because they were obvious. But just in case of someone listening I will try to suggest refinements. Mainly I think the roofs are too look-alike as if they had the exact same roofer and materials with the exact same amount of weathering (say 40 years). It's nice the facades are weathered with hints of staining, but still a bit uniform, without a peppering of new construction. Nice that the colors are muted like their mineral colorants, and mostly confined to highlights seems plausible. Nice localized smoke and mist, although I would like to see more dappled light due to cloud patches. Is there something stagey about the people, like lack of kids, dogs, or ragamuffins?

Oh no, Maritime museum is closed for renovation except for a small annex. Arsenale is nearby but not sure how much is open; I actually never found an entrance. To east is spacious area to wander since Napoleon had a canal converted to a wide boulevard with parks and uncrowded benches to eat snacks etc. https://www.marina.difesa.it/EN/history/museums/Pagine/museostoriconavale.aspx If it is in season, drink plenty of fresh squeezed arancia rossa which is like rasberries. I just scored a bag of these and am in the afterglow of first taste in a while:

https://www.thebyzantinelegacy.com/ven-byzantine- sez (embolded by me): I am a Venice fanatic but not so much the Byz angle (St Mark etc) so may be a contra-indicator for you. I found Murano and Torcello islands painfully blah. Pay attention to ferry schedule for Torcello; you may have to commit to a very short or long wait for the return. Stopover in Burano which is super cute, if well over the top. They have/had coin bathrooms with no change made at the time. Mosto and Turchi facades go by fast on a waterbus, so maybe look for viewpoints from other side of canal. One is a hotel and the other a zoolog museum, so visiting may have complications. I normally love museums, but in Venice I only find the huge Maritime museum inspiring. Nobody visits there, and the staff tries to herd everyone out way before the 1:30 closing, but you may find Byz cannons or whatever. Consider a quick excursion to Padua for mosaics, etc. The charming neighborhoods in Venice are Dorsoduro (SW) and Castello (NE). The famous walk of train station - Rialto bridge - San Marco is a cattle drive horror show punctuated by pigeon poop. To get from west to east walk the alternate route of bus station - Academy bridge and onward; that's what Italian commuters do. Venice has the worst food in Italy since it has negligible Italian customers. Instead of tourist gelato which tastes like shaving cream with food coloring, get sorbetto tailored to more refined taste. Instead of stockpiled wet cardboard pizza slices, order a whole pie with gourmet ingredients they have to prepare for you. Above all, wander around at dawn and night when daytripper hordes are gone.

New York's wonderful lost tribute to baths of Caracalla is well summarized in first 5 minutes here: To go beyond the simple sad narrative of Roman style monuments lost, take a look at one of the most engaging architect historian ever on a longer riff on that Penn Station. He ties it together with so many fascinating developments (fine art, engineering, finance) that makes it seem a miracle that the things worked out at least briefly. https://www.c-span.org/video/?309730-1/history-york-citys-penn-station That professor Barry Lewis can talk about most any architecture history in a way that gets exponentially more interesting as the clock moves on, and can be found not on youtube but at: https://www.c-span.org/search/?searchtype=Videos&sort=Newest&personid[]=9278702

I thought I would pass on some Roman smuggling info from TV series. They aren't worth a separate topic and I will only mention once since I have stopped watching these 7 or so series. There are actually 2 series covering Spain, which seems to be inundated by South American drug traffickers. It's kind of interesting how their law enforcers seem to be small and ageing vs the violators who may be large and aggressive. Anyway the Roman connection is that their coast guard checks underwater wrecks about once a month with divers to see if looting takes place. Expensive operation which might attract notice from bad actors. There are series for just about every country in South America which has interesting no-nonsense enforcement styles, but a Roman connection appeared in the US based one. They found huge real mosaics in storage along with tons of loose ancient tile which they were using to "enhance" the mosaics. We saw a familiar Roman scholar from Yale or whatever value these for a jillion dollars. The perpetrator was dead and I forget the result, but they may have been waiting to see what country to return it to. The US style is depicted as a bit more clumsy and bureaucratic than other countries, and super eager to repatriate things unasked with skimpy evidence.

Great point. While the above examples seem justified, there are others with little proof of wrongdoing snagged up in a recent massive witchhunt. Most of this seems to be from one NY prosecutor for whom we have noted gets pushback from museums. And this isn't due to selfishness of museums, which are mostly woke and would be proud to give stuff away except when there is no justification. In an enlightened world, different regions should have displays of each others artifacts. Instead we gravitate toward fortress mentality where nobody is allowed to export artifacts, museums are underpatronized since they just show local stuff, and entire classes of artifacts are subject to wipeout from disasters like earthquakes, floods, war.

Actually the legacy CATV Smithsonian channel is showing 2 high quality series on Aerial Italy and Aerial Greece, playing Dec 27 am (here anyway). Better than earlier series with the same exact name or a close name, it seems to give a fresh look and has me often saying "wow, I didn't know that". Ancient architecture seems well covered along with beautiful settings, and remember some of the Greek monuments were commissioned by Rome. The Greek series shows up on the internet (Paramount+), and I will post episode 1 from youtube which oddly is not scheduled for Dec 27, just 4 other episodes each. Rome has other online aerial view videos, but with spotty quality. For once the mandatory "platinum" level of CATV that I am forced to pay for reaps benefits re: Rome.

I only proposed stand-rowing in an aside, for modern pleasure rowing. For competition, the magic element is a sliding seat. Nowdays you can combine facing forward with sliding seat and pulling the oar handles. Rowing is fine for a sprint, but I can't imagine doing it all day like ancient mariners (if no favorable winds for sailing). So hard on backbones over time.

The first Punic war was a clash of 700 ships trying to ram one another in maneuvers like: Rome's success has been attributed to the relative skill of it's mariners. https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/rome-vs-carthage.html sez: Apparently Rome considered it worthwhile to pay 300 sailors each year about 100x the cost of each ship, with this making it a savings-in-disguise if the ship sinks. Sounds like the practice in olden US where the Irish were preferred for dangerous work, since their death cost nothing vs. a steep loss for a slave. Also it must help to have a motivated crew during crunch time. This is covered along with a lot more in: Some sources say slaves were used in a crunch, but normally lower class ram-fodder were plentiful. Maybe the rowers had to have sail handling skills as well. Probably sometimes had to assist repelling boarders. With no sliding seat for Romans, the muscle set is substantially reduced. Furthermore with suboptimum placement of seating vs oarlock geometry for at least some of those crowded 300, you are further degraded. I have had 3 sailing dinghys with wonkey oars for backup. They're excruciating to row far, and for the last 2 I get along better rowing on my knees facing forward. Gondolas are (inefficiently) sculled, not rowed. And maybe Asian style yuloh oars kind of bridge the scull-row continum. Seated backward may still be the most powerful, but get a load of these oar-pushing forward-facing racers (not on thumbnail), like I did on my first trip to Venice: