the fisherman of halicarnassus

it was august of 1856. the pickaxes of miners clearing out a limestone cave deep inside the rocky neander valley near düsseldorf snagged on some strange humanlike bones. the earth wasn't actually showing us the face of our forgotten brother for the first time, similar skulls with thick bones and heavy brow ridges had surfaced before in belgium and gibraltar, but the elites of the era had brushed them aside, calling them "misshapen deformities of modern man." this time, though, the bones reached the hands of johann carl fuhlrott, a local schoolteacher and naturalist, and fuhlrott became the first person to sense the ancient truth behind that flattened skull. what stood before us wasn't a modern human who'd suffered rickets, but another species of human left behind in the depths of history. the scientific world officially named this new species "homo neanderthalensis," but naming something, of course, isn't the same as understanding it.

to this species we had probably been neighbors with for thousands of years, we committed one of history's greatest injustices over the century following the day we rediscovered its existence.

the racist, colonial arrogance of victorian europe had framed evolution as a linear ladder, starting at the very bottom and climbing inevitably up to the white man. since the neanderthals had gone extinct, they could only have been "failures," crude, lumbering, incapable of speech, half-savage creatures barely a step above apes.

sloppy work like the famous flawed reconstruction the paleontologist marcellin boule commissioned in 1911, based on the skeleton of an elderly neanderthal, ruthlessly carved the cliche of a caveman into modern minds, knees bent, neck hunched forward, standing more like a gorilla than a human. yet boule had completely ignored the fact that the skeleton he was working on belonged to an elderly individual whose spine had been bent by arthritis. this caricature was really a mirror reflecting the warped mentality of our own species, the one we scramble to portray as flawless and noble, a mentality that inevitably comes to light today. we made them savage to hide our own savagery; we declared them mute to sanctify our own tongue.

but of course, the truth has a way of eventually coming out, even from beneath the soil. by the time the 1950s arrived, new studies being carried out in many parts of the world began to shake the rigid template surrounding the neanderthals.

in 1957, the anatomists william l. straus and a. j. e. cave reexamined the "la chapelle-aux-saints" skeleton that marcellin boule had used as the basis for his 1911 "apelike freak of nature" model, and they laid out evidence that the skeleton's owner was simply an elderly patient suffering from severe arthritis (osteoarthritis), and that neanderthals had in fact stood and walked completely upright, just like modern humans. the evidence was so striking that these two scientists were bold enough to claim that a neanderthal, shaved and dressed in modern clothes, wouldn't raise an eyebrow from anyone if he boarded the new york subway.

but the real turning point came with the excavations the american anthropologist ralph solecki carried out at shanidar cave in northern iraq between 1957 and 1960. solecki presented his examinations of the skeletons he found there to the world in 1971 with his book "shanidar: the first flower people." the work, with the new findings it laid out, argued that the neanderthals weren't crude brutes but instead possessed deep social bonds and compassion.

in his excavations at shanidar cave, located in the zagros mountains of northern iraq, ralph solecki had found skeletal remains belonging to neanderthals who lived roughly 45,000 to 60,000 years ago. according to him, two specific findings among these skeletons offered evidence that would fundamentally change the way we see neanderthals:

solecki determined that an elderly neanderthal male, whose skeleton was found in the cave, had his right arm amputated as a result of severe blows taken at a young age, had gone blind in one eye, and had trouble walking, and he demonstrated that this individual's ability to live for years with these grave disabilities was only possible thanks to being cared for, protected, and fed by the other members of the group. this was the first major piece of evidence for human behavior that shattered the "primitive savage" image.

the same excavations also showed that neanderthals buried their dead. but what was far more intriguing was that the pollen samples taken from the soil of another neanderthal buried in a funerary position suggested that this individual had been buried with healing, colorful wildflowers like yarrow, st. john's wort, and hollyhock deliberately laid over him. (even though this finding has been reopened to debate in recent years, the impact it created at the time was enormous.)

with the book "shanidar: the first flower people," published in 1971, ralph solecki announced to the world that neanderthals weren't the "gorilla-like savages" that figures like marcellin boule had claimed, but on the contrary possessed deep emotions, an aesthetic sensibility, compassion, and an advanced soul. even the book's title, by alluding to the era's "flower children" (hippie) movement, positioned neanderthals as peaceful and sensitive beings.

solecki's book had been published in a climate where the era's flower children movement and the humanist, anti-vietnam-war wave were at their peak. in presenting his findings, solecki was no doubt influenced by the social headlines and this peaceful atmosphere, and by naming his book "the first flower people" outright, he practically positioned neanderthals as the peaceful hippies of ages past. under the conditions of the time, bending the scales the other way, toward extreme romanticism, in order to tear down the "savage monster" portrayal marcellin boule had created worked strategically, but scientific objectivity eventually filed down some of these claims.

solecki's most popular thesis in particular, the "shanidar iv, flower burial" hypothesis, took serious hits in later years from the work of developing micro-archaeology and palynologists (pollen scientists). when solecki saw the pollen of healing plants like yarrow, st. john's wort, and hollyhock concentrated in the grave soil, he took it as evidence of an aesthetic and medicinal respect for the dead. but later analyses showed that this pollen might have been carried there by the activities of rodents like the "persian jird" (meriones persicus), which are very common in that region and dig deep tunnels into cave floors. these rodents pulled whole plants of this kind underground to insulate their burrows and to feed. in other words, that romantic funeral ritual was most likely nothing more than a prehistoric rodent stocking up for winter.
then again, it wouldn't be fair to say solecki was completely wrong either, because the anatomical facts on the "shanidar 1" skeleton (the elderly, disabled individual) in that same cave were too concrete to romanticize away.

the severe bone damage in the left eye socket clearly proved that the elderly neanderthal had been blind for many long years, that the trauma to his head had probably paralyzed his right side, and that his right arm had been amputated below the elbow and healed while he was still alive.

under the harsh ice age conditions the neanderthals lived in, it would have been impossible for a paralyzed individual who couldn't hunt, who couldn't even protect himself with his one arm, to survive more than ten years with these injuries. the thesis that the other members of the group brought him food and protected him from predators isn't a romantic embellishment but a scientific finding that still holds up today.
in the end, solecki, in the process of restoring the neanderthals' good name, had no doubt gotten swept up in the spirit of the times and dressed the story up in language that was too poetic. today's archaeology sees neanderthals neither as the peaceful "flower children" solecki claimed nor as the crude "gorillas" the old century claimed. they too, probably just like us, were a species of human that came up with pragmatic solutions to survive, that cared for its wounded when the moment called for it, that resorted to violence when the moment called for it, that could think abstractly but above all was pragmatic and extremely realistic.

even so, the paleogenetics and modern archaeology methods of the 21st century keep on demolishing the arrogant narrative solecki struck the first blow against. today we know for certain that neanderthals were complex beings who survived for hundreds of thousands of years with resilience and grace in the brutal world of the ice age. they could think abstractly, they drew geometric symbols on cave walls with red pigments, they made beads out of seashells and hung them around their necks. they didn't just bury their dead in the ground, they perhaps sent them off into the unknown by leaving flowers and gifts beside them. they didn't abandon their sick and wounded; through social cooperation, they kept them alive for years.

today, one of the most stunning and current pieces of evidence for neanderthal sophistication lies in a 59,000-year-old molar from the chagyrskaya cave in siberia. according to the results of microscopic analyses led by dr. alisa zubova, a senior researcher at the peter the great museum of anthropology and ethnography (kunstkamera) under the russian academy of sciences (ras), a deep cavity in this tooth may show signs of having been drilled out and cleaned with stone tools at millimeter precision, with a rotating motion.
if this thesis is correct, it would be the oldest known invasive dental procedure in human history. what's more, the smoothed-over walls of the cavity carry evidence suggesting this neanderthal survived despite that terrible pain and kept chewing with that tooth for years. all of this, like it or not, points to the manual skill needed to perform an operation that painful, the knowledge of healing plants to ease that pain, and a sense of community to care for that individual after the surgery.

then, when the gene maps were spread out before us, we saw to our great astonishment that they hadn't completely disappeared after all. even today, a 1 to 2 percent neanderthal legacy circulates in the dna of every modern human outside of africa. the neanderthal wasn't just our cousin, he was also our ancestor.

so how did a species this adaptable, strong, resilient, and intelligent end up withdrawing from the stage of history? and at the same time, how did it manage to preserve its existence in our genetic legacy?

the first thing that came to mind had been "genocide" theories. but this bloody thesis, grounded in the cruelty of our species, is gradually giving way in the scientific world to a far more tragic and sorrowful truth. we didn't wipe them out with a systematic massacre. we assimilated them.

new findings show that around 40,000 years ago, while europe's climate was fluctuating at an unpredictable pace, the homo sapiens population arriving in waves from africa vastly outnumbered the neanderthals. the neanderthals were already living in small, scattered groups. the large crowds of sapiens narrowed their hunting grounds, depleted their resources, and pushed them to the edges of the map, toward gibraltar. but this wasn't a war, it was a melting away.

sapiens mixed with the neanderthals they encountered and had children. the neanderthals slowly dissolved into the enormous gene pool of our numerically superior species, melting away inside us.

this species, which had managed to survive for hundreds of thousands of years under the harsh conditions of the ice age, had adapted physically to the cold to perfection. but around 40,000 years ago, sudden and extreme fluctuations occurred in europe's climate (very rapid warming periods followed by extreme cooling). this turned the wooded hunting grounds they were used to into open steppe. while homo sapiens, with their higher technological and social flexibility, adapted much more quickly to the changing ecosystem, the new environmental conditions may have contributed to the process that brought about the end of the neanderthals.

homo sapiens, setting out from africa, may also have carried into europe tropical diseases and pathogens that neanderthals had never encountered and developed no immunity to. these epidemics may have rapidly drained the already fragile neanderthal population.
as sapiens mixed with the increasingly shrinking neanderthal population that remained, they must have absorbed the neanderthal gene pool into themselves. so, as we said, maybe we didn't slaughter them en masse, but we assimilated them within our own population. the 1 to 2 percent neanderthal legacy living on today in the genes of people outside of africa is the most concrete proof of this.
what we see today when we turn around and look back isn't a primitive, shapeless freak of nature, but merely a version of humanity that could have been a good alternative but vanished, unable to keep pace with the new conditions.

as for the neanderthals' sorrowful story, it's trying to tell us this: there wasn't just one way to be human in this world. and the option that existed alongside us may have been offering something more human than today's humanity, an alternative that adapted without throwing off nature's balance, and most importantly, one that was far more peaceful. we sapiens, meanwhile, while spreading across the world with our organizational ability to mobilize masses, probably ended up responsible for the disappearance of this brother species of ours that had ruled the european continent for thousands of years, and in doing so we laid the groundwork for the conditions that will, before too long, bring about the total disappearance of humankind in general too.

in 1900, john d. rockefeller controlled roughly 90% of all oil refineries in the united states. by some estimates, he was the richest private individual who ever lived.

he had a problem. scientists were discovering that compounds derived from coal tar, a byproduct of petroleum processing, could be used as synthetic medicines. aspirin derived from coal tar was commercialized by bayer in 1899. what rockefeller had previously treated as industrial waste could now be sold back to the public as medicine at profit margins approaching 10,000%.

he had another problem too. american medicine in 1900 was a competitive ecosystem of homeopaths, herbalists, naturopaths, osteopaths, midwives, and traditional doctors who used food, plants, water, and lifestyle as the primary tools of healing. nearly half of all american medical schools taught some form of natural or alternative medicine.

rockefeller invested heavily in the german pharmaceutical industry and eventually gained major interests connected to the ig farben consortium, which included bayer, basf, and hoechst. then a report was commissioned.

the report was written by abraham flexner, an educator with no medical degree. funded by the rockefeller and carnegie foundations, it was published in 1910. the report declared natural and alternative medicine schools to be unscientific quackery. it recommended shutting down more than half of all american medical schools and standardizing the remaining institutions around medicine based on synthetic patented drugs.

congress acted. within a decade, more than half of american medical schools were closed. the remaining schools accepted rockefeller and carnegie funding on the condition that they restructure their curricula around pharmaceutical treatment. nutrition was removed. herbal medicine was removed. lifestyle intervention was removed. the role of the doctor was redefined: diagnose the symptom, prescribe the drug.

the drugs were petroleum derived. the petroleum came from rockefeller controlled refineries. the medical schools were funded by rockefeller. the journals were funded by rockefeller. the american medical association was backed by rockefeller. hospitals were funded by rockefeller.

by 1925, the american medical system had effectively become a vertically integrated extension of the oil industry operating under the marketing slogan of “scientific medicine.”

this is the system that still exists today.

the pharmaceutical industry now generates around $1.5 trillion annually. although the united states makes up about 4% of the world’s population, it consumes roughly 50% of all pharmaceuticals produced globally.

the system was not designed to make people healthy. it was designed to manage symptoms in ways that create lifelong customers. a healthy patient is a lost customer. a managed patient taking pills every day for the rest of their life is recurring revenue.

the goal has always been to keep you profitable in that corridor between healthy and dead.

healthy enough to keep buying for as long as possible. not healthy enough to stop.

the doctor telling you to fix your metabolism by changing your diet is, from the system’s perspective, a defective product. the doctor prescribing statins, metformin, antidepressants, and lifelong blood pressure medication is functioning exactly as designed.

the system was designed by an oil baron who needed a market for the waste products of his refineries.

and more than a century after the flexner report, it still operates almost exactly the way it was intended to.

you are the customer.

the corridor is where you live.

fenerbahce got eliminated by benfica in the champions league qualifiers;

the manager went to benfica.

benfica got eliminated by real madrid in the champions league round of 16;

the manager is now on his way to real madrid.

and all of this happens within a single year.

the world's population declining is already something many people want. with limited resources, it could be a positive development for the future if there are fewer people to support.

on the other hand, the fact that birth rates are lower in developed countries while much higher in underdeveloped countries could end up pushing humanity backward in terms of overall progress and quality of life.

it's a painting so small in size that seeing it in person for the first time gives you that "meeting up with a girl you matched with online and finding out she's way shorter than expected" feeling. image

the live version, lasting at least six minutes, featured on elvis presley's 1970 las vegas-recorded album "that's the way it is," has somehow surpassed all other interpretations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1g5tVGZhfk

you explain in plain language what you want to do in your excel sheet, and it writes the formula for you. it currently supports excel, google sheets, and apple numbers. https://reviso.net/formula-generator

probably half of what you see on the internet, maybe even most of it… isn't real.

according to the theory, the internet effectively "died" after 2016. the vast majority of the content you see is produced by bots, ais, and corporate/state operations. the things real people write are either made invisible or drowned out by algorithms.

think about it:
– the same template comments are constantly recycled on twitter/x, instagram, tiktok, etc.
– news sites are exact copies of each other, same headlines, same sentences.
– forums and blogs have collapsed; independent content is almost nonexistent.
– posts from small accounts don't reach anyone, while big accounts and sponsored content are pushed to the front.
– the debates circulating on social media feel like they're part of a pre-written script.

who's behind all this? according to the theory, big tech companies (meta, google, x, etc.) and governments are working hand in hand. the goal is clear: shaping public opinion, psychological operations, and creating an artificial ecosystem driven entirely by money.

you might say "you're exaggerating," but no one knows the exact ratio of bot accounts. some say 15-20%, others say 70%. on top of that, chatgpt and its derivatives came out and turned the internet into an ai dumpster. it's now become impossible to tell which content is produced by an actual human.

personally, there's a massive gulf between the internet of the early 2010s and the internet today. people used to produce; today, algorithms and bots pump out content. is the internet still alive, or is it dead? in my opinion, it's pretty much become a zombie.

"there is one disadvantage to loneliness that is not as easy to recognize as the others. this disadvantage is that, due to constantly staying indoors, our bodies become so sensitive to external influences that we fall ill at the slightest draft. because of being perpetually withdrawn into our corner, our mental state becomes so sensitive that the most trivial events, words, and even mere gestures unsettle us, make us ill, or wound us. whereas someone who is constantly among crowds doesn't even take notice of these things."

so said arthur schopenhauer.

as someone who believes education should always start with love and that people who work alongside loving colleagues in the workplace will perform better in a more peaceful environment, i was glad to see that even though the devil still wears prada, she can no longer be as (d)evil as before, even if only out of necessity (and for show).

we owe this much, at least, to gen z. nobody puts up with employers/bosses/managers/teachers who treat them like dogs anymore. and anyone who does is now ostracized. if wokeness played a part in this, thanks to that too.

it didn't flow as smoothly as the first film. that might just be my shrinking attention span, i don't know, but the colors, the atmosphere, and the music were lovely. anne hathaway doesn't age.

even the most malignant people are forced to soften with age. meryl streep is a phenomenal actress. it was nice to witness the character grow older and lower her standards over the course of the film series.

working yourself into oblivion can seem appealing when you're young, but real life unfortunately isn't like that. just like the streets of new york…

fashion is murder. i couldn't bring myself to feel sorry that her magazines no longer sell, because i've never encountered genuine morality anywhere people are judged by their appearance and clothing.

america isn't really a capitalist country anymore. that’s ancient history. nowadays, it’s an oligarchy. every single industry is dominated by three to five major players who hold almost the entire market share. they just keep steamrolling ahead by gobbling up and absorbing any competitor that crosses their path.

laws have allowed this ever since the reagan era. the whole logic of "you can merge as long as you don't hike prices" has made these massive acquisitions possible. just look at disney buying fox, or the rumors about warner bros potentially getting scooped up by netflix or paramount.

microsoft was the one that really kicked off this trend. whenever a rival challenged their software, microsoft would either crush them with a copycat product or just buy them out outright. meta and google are doing the exact same thing—acquiring platforms like instagram, whatsapp, and youtube to keep their momentum. these companies have made hundreds of acquisitions like this. it’s basically "squashing the competition while it’s still small."

there's no way for america to break out of this oligarchic structure now. we're already down to just a handful of players in every sector. broadly speaking, more than half the u.s. economy runs on just 5 to 10 massive corporations. they control the entire infrastructure. as they grow, they don't just outpace their rivals; they outgrow the government itself. and that’s exactly the problem. nothing can stop a corporation that’s more powerful than the state.

modern america doesn't have a capitalist system that says, "let new rivals rise and competition thrive." it has a system that says, "five companies run the show, and everyone else just exists to feed them." this system is so entrenched now that even the government is powerless to change it.

as the name suggests, maladaptive daydreaming is more than just having an active imagination. it can cause someone to lose their social connections and feel disconnected from the world around them. if you are thinking, “i daydream all the time too, i make little music videos in my head,” then this probably is not what you imagine it to be.

people who experience maladaptive daydreaming do not drift into random fantasies every day. their inner worlds follow certain patterns. often they have several ongoing storylines in their minds, each with recurring characters. sometimes a character appears one way in one story and a little different in another. they form deep emotional connections to these imagined people, sometimes stronger than the bonds they have with real ones. there are also characters they dislike. it is not hard to guess that many people with this condition become talented storytellers or writers. it would also not be unreasonable to say that in severe cases, it can resemble schizophrenia.

it is a continuous process, something that does not really end. there is no known cure, but i do not even see it as an illness. to me, it is simply a state of being. when you learn to keep it under control and turn it into a kind of discipline, it can even be seen as a gift.

a roman emperor and philosopher once said,
“a person’s worth is measured by what they devote themselves to.”

first, a bit of motivation:
“if something external upsets you, the pain doesn’t come from the thing itself, it comes from the value you’ve placed on it. and you have the power to change that value at any moment.”

it is called the "flying wing" concept.

in other words, it is essentially one giant wing. not just any wing either, with a wingspan of 52 meters. from an aerodynamic perspective, it is a true engineering masterpiece. the surface is perfectly smooth, with not even the tiniest bump or seam, in order to maintain laminar airflow and stealth capability.

the fuselage is made of carbon composites. it is covered with radar-absorbing paint, special coatings that leave no magnetic signature, and exhaust diffusers that reduce infrared visibility. on radar, the aircraft practically shouts, "i am not here."

it can carry up to 18 tons of bombs, from gps-guided jdams to b61 nuclear bombs.

the cost per plane is 2.1 billion dollars. even if you park it on the ground, it requires constant, around-the-clock maintenance. and this is not ordinary maintenance. even the technicians who apply the coatings are not allowed to touch the surface without gloves. if you pour water on it, it would leave a mark. that is how sensitive it is.

tennessee is that part of america where country music was not just born but given a leather jacket and a guitar. it is a state packed with mountains, rivers, deep history, and the kind of storytelling that can either make you cry or laugh till your ribs hurt. if you picture rolling hills, front porches with rocking chairs, barbecue smoke drifting through the air, and someone somewhere strumming a guitar, you are probably thinking of tennessee without even realizing it.

it officially became a state in 1796, but it has been at the heart of a lot of america's biggest moments. civil war battles, civil rights marches, the birth of rock and roll, moonshine legends, and political giants all left a mark on tennessee soil. the state has this split personality in the best way. in the east, you get the misty great smoky mountains and a lot of outdoor adventure vibes. in the middle, it is nashville, where dreams are chased with a guitar case in one hand and a coffee in the other. and over in the west, memphis hits you with deep blues music, powerful civil rights history, and the ghosts of legends like elvis presley.

nashville is called music city for a reason. it is where singers go to either make it big or spend a few wild years trying. walk down broadway at night and it feels like every single bar has a live band better than half the stuff on the radio. memphis, on the other hand, is where you feel the soul in your bones. it is gritty, proud, and alive. walk beale street and you are standing on the same sidewalks where blues and rock once rewired the world's idea of music.

beyond the fame and neon lights, tennessee is also about stubborn pride and fierce loyalty. people from there will let you joke about their state but only if you are one of them. otherwise, you better mind your mouth. food is serious business too. hot chicken so spicy it makes you question your life choices. barbecue that tastes like someone cooked it with equal parts smoke and love. biscuits and gravy that could fix a bad day.

an interesting detail is that tennessee has this weird mix of old-school manners and wild independent spirit. yes ma'am and no sir roll off tongues naturally, but so does a strong belief in doing your own thing without waiting for permission. it is a state that values tradition but also knows how to throw a party loud enough for three states over to hear it.

in short, tennessee is not just a place you visit. it is a feeling. a messy, musical, slightly stubborn, deeply beautiful feeling that stays with you long after you leave.