we change them and we are changed

csen: Stop With the Historical Analogs, It's Always Different This Time »

There’s a lot of debate right now about whether this is a 1995-like relentless bull market, a 1999 or 2007-type rally before the crash, or even an early 1980’s-type early stage bull market. It’s none of those.

If there’s one chart that sums up the post-2008 world, which could last another 20…

Good analysis, although I’m not so sure about his conclusion.

victusinveritas:

Antarctic (Endurance expedition) and World War I photography of Frank Hurley.

colchrishadfield:

San Francisco and California wine country - a favourite place on Earth.

Virgil Texas' Good Time Internet Readery: I’ve been storifying up a whole mess of stories on my storify account... »

virgiltexas:

I’ve been storifying up a whole mess of stories on my storify account lately:

Brendle and Virgil Pitch the History Channel The incomparable Brendle and I draft some reality TV show pitches

White Wednesday: goofin on bitcoins Just some classic raggin’ on Bitcoins with a bonus exchange…

Thus the plutocracy, in a democratic state, tends inevitably, despite its theoretical infamy, to take the place of the missing aristocracy, and even to be mistaken for it. It is, of course, something quite different. It lacks all the essential characters of a true aristocracy: a clean tradition, culture, public spirit, honesty, honor, courage — above all, courage. It stands under no bond of obligation to the state; it has no public duty; it is transient and lacks a goal. Its most puissant dignitaries of today came out of the mob only yesterday — and from the mob they bring all its peculiar ignobilities … The plutocracy is comprehensible to the mob because its aspirations are essentially those of inferior men: it is not by accident that Christianity, a mob religion, paves heaven with gold and precious stones, i.e., with money. There are, of course, reactions against this ignoble ideal among men of more civilized tastes, even in democratic states, and sometimes they arouse the mob to a transient distrust of certain of the plutocratic pretensions. But that distrust seldom arises above mere envy, and the polemic which engenders it is seldom sound in logic or impeccable in motive.

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—	H.L. Mencken, “A Glance Ahead,” 1926 In which Mencken considers that democracy might be a “self-limiting disease, as civilization itself seems to be.” (via willystaley)

inexpressibleisland:

Sentimental stained glass panels to celebrate gallant British heros: Scenes - Departure to South Pole, South Pole disappointment, Oates leaving tent, and cairn of Scott, Wilson and Bowers. Binton Church, Warwickshire. Photos: Philip Halling Glass: Kempe

arcticmuseum:

Collectible cigarette cards celebrating polar exploration in 1915. Maybe we need to develop a modern version, celebrating polar scientists, perhaps? but not in cigarette packages…

kateoplis:

Today in Ecuador

colchrishadfield:

A heraldic Spring dragon of ice roars rampant off the coast of Newfoundland.

futurejournalismproject:

Distraction Free Thinking Cap, 1925 Edition

Consider this the anti-Google Glass.

Via Pacific Standard:

Decades before Twitter, Snapchat, and viral cat videos, inventor Hugo Gernsback bemoaned the difficulty of concentrating on desk work. Even back in the 1920s, noise from the street and the frequency with which “a telephone bell or a door bell rings somewhere … is sufficient, in nearly all cases, to stop the flow of thoughts,” he wrote. Even more perniciously: “You are your own disturber practically 50 percent of the time,” always willing to be distracted by the wallpaper’s pattern or a buzzing fly, he warned.

Gernsback’s solution, presented in the July 1925 edition of Science and Invention magazine, was elegant in its simplicity, if not its design: the Isolator, a head-enveloping helmet that sealed out external sounds and sights. Narrow eye slits would prevent the wearer from seeing anything but a piece of paper directly in front of his or her face.

As Pacific Standard points out, an oxygen tube was provided to help ward off drowsiness.

Image: The Isolator, via Pacific Standard.