Things are quieter these days at Cahokia, now a placid Unesco site. But towering, earthen mounds there hint at the legacy of the largest pre-Columbian city north of Mexico. A cosmopolitan whir of language, art and spiritual ferment, Cahokia’s population may have swelled to 30,000 people at its 1050 AD peak, making it larger, at the time, than Paris.
It’s what Cahokia didn’t have that’s startling, writes Annalee Newitz in their recent book Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age. The massive city lacked a permanent marketplace, confounding old assumptions that trade is the organising principle behind all urbanisation.
“Cahokia was really a cultural centre rather than a trade centre. It still boggles my mind. I keep wondering ‘Where were they trading? Who was making money?’,” Newitz said. “The answer is they weren’t. That wasn’t why they built the space.”
It’s just as possible that the trading wasn’t done in a “marketplace”, but in a gathering of stalls that were broken down when the traders left. Who can tell the ren faire was there once all of the trailers and tents have left the cornfield?
Home office setup with built-in boiling water tap for tea and coffee without getting up is a monument to deskcess
This is my favorite thing I’ve read all weekend. Thank you!
Though I am kind of surprised it took them so long to figure it out, but then again, the oceans are vast and mysterious.
Food Trucks. It is obvious the Cahokians were hipsters. Their culture disappeared because no one wanted to pay $15 for Korean Lobster Burritos.
Watched the documentary on the telly this evening actually just part of it, and my jaw dropped at this.
While I’m not thrilled that drones have allowed advertisers to plaster the sky, if I’m being honest I’d be sorely tempted to choreograph a Borg cube.
Micheline Maurel was a well-noted academic who had achieved a measure of recognition before the advent of the Second World War, she was appointed Professeur de Lettres at Lyon 1941-1942 in the Nazi-Occupied zone of France. However, by night, she was a clandestine member of the French resistance, acting as a courier and gatherer of intelligence; she was arrested in 1943 by the Gestapo and deported to Neubrandenburg, part of the Ravensbruck concentration camp complex. Through iron will she survived the torture, starvation, beatings and degradations of the SS for a horrendous twenty months. Even after the Russians liberated the camp the sufferings of the inmates were not over as they were forced marched and mistreated by their supposed liberators. In this stark memoir she recounts the inhumanity of the hell that was in her words "e;An Ordinary Camp"e;."e;The savage and sadistic clamoring for expression inside each human heart."e;-N.Y. Herald Tribune"e;A revelation of degradation and deliberate corruption. But it is also a noble affirmation of the human spirit."e;-San Francisco Call Bulletin"e;The most systematic horror ever imposed on women"e;-Nashville Tennessean"e;Bestial and terrible…shocking and beautiful"e;-Chicago Tribune"e;A magnificent memoir"e;-Baltimore Sun"e;Better than THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK"e;-Readers Syndicate
WTF is Readers Syndicate anyway?
https://www.discogs.com/artist/3318253-Micheline-Maurel
An Ordinary Camp AKA The Slave.
I was expecting stalag fiction.
Where to start?
Hah!
I’m going to guess that she broke her arms first, then came up with a theory such that her own lived experience could be used as proof.
"Grade 8 student Kaitlyn Homan researched water towers for her project, which included a replica of the Ingersoll water tower.
“I was kind of interested on how water towers work, so I decided to do that for my science fair project,” she said. “I studied a bit on it and I built a model to show other people how it works.”
Homan was surprised to discover how water towers work.
“I thought they would be used on a pump, but I guess it’s by how high they are up in the air,” she said. “They work by pressure, so that pressure brings the water up it, but it does have an additional pump to help it.”
She had no idea about water towers before she started the project, but Homan was eager to learn about something new.
“I was just driving by one when we had to think about what we had to do our project on, so I thought ‘I’m going to learn how it works,’ ” she said."
Cool kid!
Well, I had some of the best Split Pea Soup that I have ever had across the street / canal from the AF Museum in Amsterdam.
But I digress.
From Strong Bad’s Science Fair Project
Mmmmm Mmmmmm
‘There was no one driving that vehicle’: Texas cops suspect Autopilot involved after two men killed in Tesla crash
[…]
Neither of the two unnamed victims – born in 1962 and 1951 – were in the driver’s seat at the time of the accident, according to Sgt Cynthia Umanzor of the Harris County Constable Precinct 4, who spoke to local TV station Khou-TV (geo-restricted).
[…]
