A most suffocating heatwave swept through the country last week, but it broke over the last couple days and a most pleasant breeze—cool and minty—is making its way through the studio this morning.
Plumbing and electric work are finally done, as is all the wall and floor fixups they necessitated (although, a couple more wall touchups would be ideal but I'm just way too drained to deal with them). Next up: the actual fucking kitchen.
“An empire that cannot sustain a blow and remain standing is not really an empire. Yet even the Romans found it hard to stomach the news arriving from northern Iberia in the middle of the second century BC. A small, insignificant mountain town called Numantia, inhabited by the peninsula's native Celts, had dared to throw off the Roman yoke. Rome at the time was the unquestioned master of the entire Mediterranean basin, having vanquished the Macedonian and Seleucid empires, subjugated the proud people of Greece, and turned Carthage into a smouldering ruin. The Numantians had nothing on their side but their fierce love of freedom and their inhospitable terrain. Yet they forced legion after legion to surrender or retreat in shame.”
From Yuval Noah Harari's SAPIENS.
“Eventually, in 134 BC, Roman patience snapped. The Senate decided to send Scipio Aemilianus, Rome's foremost general and the man who had levelled Carthage, to take care of the Numantians. He was given a massive army of more than 30,000 soldiers. Scipio, who respected the fighting spirit and martial skill of the Numantians, preferred not to waste his soldiers in unnecessary combat. Instead, he encircled Numantia with a line of fortifications, blocking the town's contact with the outside world. Hunger did his work for him. After more than a year, the food supply ran out. When the Numantians realized that all hope was lost, they burned down their home; according to Roman accounts, most of them killed themselves so as not to become Roman slaves.”
Can we say hardcore?
History helps us see our present in new light, and perhaps make considerations for our future. We might therefore regard our modern day Numantians to be the people of Cuba and Palestine, both having endured blockades not for a mere year, but for decades.
Live TV Wall: Live TV from across the globe, all on one screen.
Marginalia Search: Discover surprising, content-rich websites from the less commercial, obscure corners of the internet.
Ya Old Blogroll: Curated list of active blogs (where I just discovered Ganzeer.Today just so happens to be listed).
“With time, the 'wheat bargain' became more and more burdensome. Children died in droves, and adults ate bread by the sweat of their brows. The average person in Jericho of 8500 BC lived a harder life than the average person in Jericho of 9500 BC or 13,000 BC. But nobody realised what was happening. Every generation continued to live like the previous generation, making only small improvements here and there in the way things were done. Paradoxically, a series of 'improvements', each of which was meant to make life easier, added up a millstone around the necks of these farmers.”
From Yuval Noah Harari's SAPIENS.
“The pursuit of an easier life resulted in much hardship, and not for the last time. It happens to us today. How many young college graduates have taken demanding jobs in high-powered firms, vowing that they will work hard to earn money that will enable them to retire and pursue their real interests when they are thirty-five? But by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children to school, houses in the suburbs that necessitate at least two cars per family, and a sense that life is not worth living without really good wine and expensive holidays abroad. What are they supposed to do, go back to digging up roots? No, they double their efforts and keep slaving away.
“One of history's few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.”
GENOCIDE BAD by Sim Kern, the book for which I designed the cover, published by Interlink Publishing, just hit the NYT bestseller list.
Here's a picture of it in the wild (courtesy of @possiblefuturesbooks on Instagram):
The deluxe hardback edition, available only directly from Interlink Publishing, is even prettier.
Debris cleanup was a full 3-day process after electrician tore into walls. I'm starting to believe that the vast majority of Cairo dust is really the result of construction debris. There's so much across the city and it never ends.
Will no longer look down on drywall. Perhaps there are some benefits to using it after all.
