Filing this one under "warnings from history", although the warning has clearly had little effect on some.

How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days

Ricky Hale on the US media's response to the Brian Thompson murder. His critique of course applies equally to sections of the UK media as well.

"The correct moral position is that violence is wrong, but if you’re pushing the message that violence is fine when its against people you don’t care about, you can’t act surprised when we don’t care that a killer on your team is killed. You can’t even act surprised when some people cheer it on. This is the climate you created!"

No, supporters of Luigi Mangione are not monsters, no matter how much you insist otherwise

Another quote, this one from comedian Josh Johnson, taken from the video embedded on the above page:

"I don’t want anybody to die, I don’t celebrate death in any way, but I will say if you feel in the wake of this thing happening, that you [CEOs] have to scrub all mention of you, all knowledge of your existence off the internet, then maybe, just maybe, take a look at how you do business…"

The Seikilos epitaph is a haunting and IMO 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 who Zitron is critiquing now controls the algorithms that govern who sees what on one of the world's most influential social media platforms.