The Seikilos epitaph is a haunting and beautiful piece music that dates from the second century CE. It is the oldest surviving complete musical composition that includes musical notation (source).

It's commonly assumed to be a lament to the composer's dead wife, although there's a less romantic hypothesis, namely that the stone on which the musical score and lyrics are carved might instead have been erected by the composer as a monument to his own talent.

Regardless of the reasons it was written, the song gives us an entrancing insight to the sensory world of the Greco-Roman culture of Tralles in the second century CE.

There are many versions of the song available online. To me they're all haunting and moving, but I've selected the following two for this post.

The first version recreates the simple original, without (as far as I can tell) any modern embellishments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm1aPxOORrs

The next, performed live by the "YK Band", also starts with the original but then builds to a more elaborate, very beautiful contemporary version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNLEFz9wwz8

Phew. Does anyone have a tissue? I seem to have something in my eye...

A spot of Google Street View tourism makes clear that the modern town of Aydin gives little sense of the environment that would have existed when the song was composed. Although the mountains in this panoramic photograph must be virtually unchanged since Seikilos himself gazed upon them.

Re-upping this 2018 tweet by climate scientist, Katharine Hayhoe.

The original tweet can be seen here. Nearly six years later the thread in which it occurs is still well worth a bookmark. It's packed with resources, both in the main thread and dispensed during the course of answering the questions of many of those replying.

The thread also provides a glimpse of some of the nonsense that climate scientists are subjected to on social media. People replying with no relevant qualifications, little understanding of the topic, and no desire or capacity to learn, but who nevertheless have a direct line to experts in their field which they can use to be disrespectful, dismissive and abusive.

NB. Prof Hayhoe makes a typo in that thread. She states that on average "all geologic activity put together, emits only about 10% of the heat-trapping gases that humans do". She later corrects that to 1% [sic].

A delightful post in the North East Bylines from teacher and smallholder, Melody Bird.

As the digging went on, we made cross curricular links to the Battle of the Somme and sang ‘mud, mud glorious mud’. The clart was all encompassing. Accident prone Pupil H looked like the creature from the black lagoon by the end of the afternoon, but I think he was still smiling. The children keep referring to soil as dirt and so I keep correcting them. 6 inches of it and rain water means we can survive on earth. Yet it hardly gets a mention in the curriculum as I think I’ve mentioned before. For life on earth soil is more precious than gold… yet kids don’t see it as valuable as most of their food comes off a supermarket shelf. We really need to launch new campaign “Just Top Soil”.

Excerpts from the diary of a teacher on the verge of climate breakdown Week 9: Potatoes

While hatchet jobs on the rich and famous are a penny a dozen, this Ed Zitron piece resonated with me, not least because it reinforces many of the observations I've made about Musk in recent years.

The Descent of Elon Musk

You'll need to watch Don Lemon's interview with Musk to understand some of utterances and demeanor that Ed Zitron is referring to, although with that interview clocking in at over an hour, this might stretch the interest and patience of many.

Some will no doubt dismiss Zitron's post as just another ad hom heavy attack piece. But the rambling multi-billionaire Zitron is critiquing now controls the algorithms that govern who sees what on one of the world's most influential social media platforms.

I stumbled across the official story behind the famous "Earthrise" photograph taken during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968. Not only was it humanity’s first view of Earth from another planetary body, but it also played an important role in the growing environmental awareness in the late 1960s and '70s. The image was used as the cover photograph for the Spring 1969 issue of the Whole Earth Catalog and US Nature photographer Galen Rowell later described it as "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken". [¹][²]

The Wikipedia entry contains additional information, including interesting details about the camera and film development process used as well as the image's impact and legacy.

Fifty years later, Bill Anders, the astronaut who took the photograph, observed "We set out to explore the moon and instead discovered the Earth."

Technologies and tools that further erode citizens' privacy and ability to organise, protest, dissent and to engage in civil disobedience.

Surveillance as a Service: The Global Impact of Israeli “Defense” Technologies on Privacy and Human Rights