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"hard times create strong men. strong men create good times. good times create weak men. and weak men create hard times."

that quote pretty much captures social cycle theory in one sentence.

the idea is that societies rarely move in a straight line. they rise, stabilize, prosper, get comfortable, fracture, decline, and eventually rebuild into something new.

you can see versions of this throughout history. rome went from republic to empire to fragmentation. chinese dynasties repeatedly went through unification, prosperity, corruption, rebellion, and replacement. even modern societies seem to swing between periods of stability, crisis, reform, and backlash.

history obviously isn't this neat or predictable, but that's what makes the theory interesting. civilizations separated by thousands of miles and hundreds of years somehow keep falling into strangely familiar patterns.

the gym’s way of asking how attached you are to breathing normally.

(see: electoral autocracy)

apple will now let you lease your next iphone, apple watch or mac instead of buying it apple.com

expo is a framework that makes deeply native app development feel surprisingly practical.

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lego.

since i haven't read the book, i'll comment on the show. first off, i'm a sucker for period dramas set in old istanbul, so it satisfied me on that front. the acting is quite good and the netflix production quality shows. coming back to the story, while the first half of the show is a pretty nice, enjoyable love story, the second half felt quite stifling and boring to me. honestly, in the second half i found myself thinking let's just get this over with.

also, on my first trip to turkey with my american wife, this museum was the first place we went.

we had a ton of them, box after box, when i was a kid, and my older brother would build magnificent things and not let me touch them, or i wouldn't dare touch them next to the stuff he'd made. as time went by, at 34, i started building with a gift from my dear wife and realized how much i love it. it's incredible therapy for me. image image image image

dozens of rural nevada mail ballots discovered after primary ap news

huge respect to folarin balogun for honoring the suspension and not playing tonight*

(see: postponement of folarin balogun's card suspension)

my wife’s world cup.

donald trump's involvement and impact are scandalous and disgusting. image

the best lake on earth. imageimage