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It’s not a happenstance or some sad mistake that, barring a surprise, Americans will go to the polls in November to vote for one of two distinctly ancient men, now 77 and 81, both of whom have clearly exhibited language and thought problems for a significant period of time. To put this in perspective, remember for a moment that, until Ronald Reagan entered his second term in office in 1985 (during which he would get dementia before leaving the White House at age 77), the oldest president was Dwight D. Eisenhower and he was 70 (yes, 70!) not on entering the Oval Office but on leaving it after his second term in 1961. Of course, that was another America in another... Read more
Source: The Decline and Fall of Presidential America appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
Been There, Smelled That explores the aromas of places around the world. Travel writer Maggie Downs investigates some of the world’s most potent smells, looks at how odor cultivates a connection to place, and presents how humans engage with smells, from scents that have endured generations to the latest innovations in aroma-making.
On my first full day in Addis Ababa, I head to the basement of the National Museum of Ethiopia, where I spend the morning with the fossilized remains of early hominids.
The attraction here is Lucy, a 3.2 million-year-old ancestor to humans. Her Ethiopian name is Dinkinesh, which means “you are marvelous” in Amharic, but she’s commonly known as “Lucy” because “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” played on a cassette tape while paleontologists excavated her bones from the dirt.
“Readers weigh in on Biden: Please go, Joe. Most don’t think he can win again and wish he’d make a graceful exit.” — Headline from op-ed in the Boston Globe, 7/17/24
Once upon a time, there was a marvelous king. Well, “marvelous” may be an overstatement, but most reasonable people agreed that he’d done a decent job, considering the pragmatic impossibility of ruling his fractious land and the low bar set by many previous kings. More importantly, four years earlier, he had earned the people’s eternal gratitude by slaying a dragon that had seized the throne and terrorized them.
But now the dragon had come back to life, resurrected by its cowardly minions who could have kept it dead but, tired of putting out numerous fires it had set around the countryside, basically decided it was easier not to. Now, the dragon’s tail itched to smite those who had dared cross it, and flames of the deepest orange spewed out of its puckered maw.
- by Aeon Video
- by Samantha Rose Hill
