Charlemagne never quite managed to learn to write. Blade Runner marries Brave New World. If that’s right, there was a dark age in concrete senses …, 2. 3) “How to Rescue Main Street From Coronavirus Before It’s Too Late,” by Adam Ozimek and John Lettieri for the Economic Innovation Group. "I understand why you're upset, but I didn't have a lot of options. A reoccurring fact of the era is how local populations defected to the barbarian tribes massively. User avatar uploaded successfuly and waiting for moderation. He brushed his fingers through her soft blonde hair. In 1992, Santa Clara County (the heart of Silicon Valley) received more defense prime contract funding per capita than any county in the nation. He covered his roof (and maybe his manger’s roof as well) in mass-produced roof tiles. The library invited a traveling program from Wichita. More mail ahead, with a different range of views. The stable Roman civitas crumbled, quickly in some places (Britain) and more slowly in others (Gaul). "The fact that you reduced the number of fleets in that armada from seven to three is astonishing, but you also managed to delay them for hours. "What's up?" The result is something that’s neither, on one extreme, a detailed, step-by-step “white paper”-style report on media improvement—nor, on the other, just an op-ed-scale lament. As for her appearance... shedding scales, reducing mass, modifying her skeletal structure; altering Tamolith's posture and aesthetics shouldn't be an insurmountable task." A portrait statue of Edward Gibbon, author of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," in the Library of Congress in Washington. I'll head up to the Bridge, set a course for Genthalas, and join you as soon as I'm done." That is a vaguely neutral sounding term, but that is shorthand for murder, rape, starvation, and disease. Several hundred years after the fall of Rome, new forms and new states began to take shape amid the ruins, and by the 12th century, western Europe was again thriving. "John, the Kintark fleet commander wanted to speak with you. Maybe we’re at the point where risk-taking is the most prudent course—a grab to activate the emerging demographic majority before Republicans manage to suppress democracy altogether. 2. The Hartford Public Library in Connecticut has moved their immigrant services online, including providing legal help to complete citizenship applications and prepare for citizenship interviews. He looked around the table at the group. This is creating a legion of people who no longer need to fear getting sick, and are desperate to return to “normal” life. The full report, in PDF, is here. They began shifting regular programming online; distributing stockpiles of mobile technology to the digitally needy; strengthening partnerships with schools and food donation sites; activating their maker-technology to produce PPE; helping prepare the homeless population with alternatives for shelter; and more. …. It also planted in me the idea that there were different ways of achieving a quality of life outside of the major metropolitan areas. A small price compared to loss of a loved one, or the economic pain that will sure to be revisited upon our most vulnerable population. The greatest threat we face is not from a rogue president, but from ourselves. Thanks to these authors, innovators, and other civic patriots. From a reader in the Midwest: 1) My takeaway from decades-ago reading was that European technology, commerce, wealth surpassed Roman levels around 1100 or so. Pick-up and drop-off services are emerging. Think if Huey Long had been successful in the 1930s. Calara exploded, stabbing a finger at the holographic map. Alyssa was sitting in the XO's chair and she gracefully descended from the Command Podium to greet the new arrivals. In the fifth-century present, Christianity (and Judaism and the various forms of Paganism) was as much part and parcel of social cornerstones as the ideology of the “American dream,” “intersectionality,” and “MAGA” is today …. Once you accept that a book is as good as it is going to be, and as finished as you can stand to make it, the miasma lifts and you can move on—to the next writing project! There are many reasons for that; the institution of slavery, the degradation and corruption of civic institutions and services, the turbulent switch from a multireligious Empire to a monotheist and rigidly orthodox quasi-Theocracy. I said: What about the time after Rome fell? Apart from the tactical issue that the subject plays on the Right’s turf, there are fundamental objections. Many school systems and the libraries that work with them have identified the gaps in how schools deliver their distance learning to their students. In Erie, Dessy is already working on a 60-day reopening plan. Even before librarians closed their doors against the pandemic, they started moving fast to keep their work going. Combos Include Regular Side, Biscuit, & Small Drink. The Billings, Montana, public library is 3-D printing face masks for health care workers. The Columbus, Ohio, library informs the community about blood drives by one of their partners, the American Red Cross. During the summer months in Minnesota, floating libraries lend books in watertight bags to boaters who boat by. The librarian showed me among other holdings, the registry of the jail that recorded when MLK was booked into the jail. A $1 million investment obviously won’t fill the multibillion-dollar hole left by the collapse of local print- and broadcast-advertising budgets. Inside the Linn-Henley Research Library of the Birmingham Alabama’s Central Library, the walls are painted with murals by Ezra Winter. "If you do manage to compress her down that much, I wonder if it'll affect her muscle density?" "Do you think you'll enjoy Betrixa's company for the rest of eternity, Master?" The Post-pandemic Future of Libraries A statue of Olympic marathon gold medalist Joan Benoit Samuelson wears a mask outside … In Arlington, Virginia, the public library has already published several online issues of Quaranzine, a community-sourced collection of artwork, poetry, photos, and stories about life during the pandemic. It was a major reason my wife and I started to look outside of [an East Coast metropolis] for where our next chapter could take place. No electricity versus Wi-Fi and rechargeable batteries; no telephones/movies/radios versus watching reality TV on your cellphone, etc., etc. The upcoming theme in this space will be on-the-ground reports on the way the economic, civic, and medical dramas are playing out. As the first state-sponsored civil rights museum in the country, the museum is unflinching in its presentation of history. 2) “Countering America’s regional economic disparities is going to take more than hope,” from Mark Muro and Robert Atkinson, via AEI. Are you going to turn into a giant and actually fuck Tamolith?" In Colorado, the Poudre River business librarians have been helping the State Office of Economic Development and International Trade answer calls from small-business owners about a myriad of issues around the pandemic. 7. (“Media have been ‘disrupted’ like the Hindenburg was ‘disrupted.’ A three-century-old mass-media model has been blown to smithereens, and the surviving journalistic fragments are not only too poor to adequately watchdog the government, but also algorithmically segregated from huge swaths of the electorate. It acts as a psychic catalyst that gives you unprecedented control over body manipulation... but it will also apply the Thrall template on a female until she adheres to that shape. One of the reasons the Roman empire fell was not because of physical overextension by the state (which is true), but by its people taking for granted what the Roman empire had done for the modern world …, Is it any coincidence many of the founding era sought to emulate Roman law and antiquity as they established the republican virtues and culture of the 1780s to the 1820s? “Here we are again,” he wrote me in an email, “and it strikes me that this pandemic will be an interesting story in the history of libraries in the United States.”. For democracy and civil society to survive after our Second Gilded Age, something comparable is necessary now. the rediscovery of the lost knowledge of Greece and Rome (not to mention the Islamic world) that kindled the Renaissance and Enlightenment; the reemergence of something resembling “globalization”; and. But people did complain when the Danes debuted a kids’ animated series in January featuring a protagonist with an absurdly long, prehensile penis. I was glad to have read American Manifesto, and I think most media- or politics-minded people will be too. But, they say, it can be nudged, encouraged, and steered in that direction. Reopening: In Pennsylvania, the Department of Education is working on a framework to help local libraries plan their re-openings. Gaul, Italy, Moesia (in today’s Bulgaria) went over the Barbarians in some cases as fast as a generation. The report gives details about these localities: This past week, Muro, Whiton, and Robert Maxim, of Brookings, did a report on the metro areas where the pandemic shutdown was likely to be most destructive. Thanks again for the erudition and tone of these letters; A lot of  the reaction is to the headline itself—“Wasn’t That Bad.” A minor point about headlines is that article-writers, including me, usually don’t write them and often have no idea what they’re going to be. Suddenly concerned, John glanced at Alyssa. Finally, on the question of if this time is different compared with other times due to change! Betrixa stood on tiptoe to kiss John on the cheek, then bounded down the ramp to take her place at the Pilot's Station. Seeing the Fall/Transition of the Roman empire as anything other than a human catastrophe is an interesting academic exercise, but let’s keep it at that. So were the generations who fought for and against Prohibition, slavery, and Unionization (and for Odoacer as well, arguably). Brown v. Board took 40 years of small litigation steps—not to mention dramatic changes throughout society, including the integration of the armed forces during and after WWII, just as the massive mobilizations of the peasantry in the Napoleonic Wars led eventually to the democratization of Europe. The Winston-Salem public library is renowned for its art collection and its South Carolina room. His teeth chattered. 3-D printing of PPEs and PPE collections: Many libraries are putting the 3-D printers from their makerspaces into use. He shared a look with Jade, who was listening to his thoughts. They are global cities now, earning their living from the global economy. Their ground assault on Kinta had been successful from a strategic point of view, but the tragic fate that had befallen Tamolith's family had taken a heavy toll on everyone. "Don't you mean: stay with this gorgeous hunk of manliness?" As soon as the emperor moved, law, order and good administration collapsed. If the U.S. federal government continues its descent it will probably take malign forms that will suffocate or actively crush effective local government and other cultural capital …. ], Given what is already well known about how the U.S. so-called Founding Fathers (itself an egregious simplification of the revolutionary generation) understood the transition of republican Rome into the empire, before we sink our teeth into late-antique history, it might be worth remembering that our understanding of the past, especially the more distant past, is ALWAYS (and has always been) subject to the political machinations of the present, and even historians’ own careers aren’t guided so much by how well they interpret the past, but by how well their interpretations suit the sensibilities of the times in which they happen to be writing …, [JF note: Leaving out point No. "Yeah, but Alyssa is Terran, which is very closely related to a thrall species," John countered. I’m talking about “theme”or “argument” books that address a current issue—as opposed to, say, biographies, which can be at their best when long and meandering, or narratives or histories, which are designed to immerse you in the details of another time and place. Popular Stories. And all know where they stand on the global supply chain. This could enhance basic services at the subnational level … On the other hand, it may create the equivalent of seven proconsuls competing among themselves to follow Rome’s decline into empire …, What seems more likely to me to occur over the next 50 years, and something that I oppose, is a rift, with sovereign-individual stance married to the corporatization of society …. So we were lied to. Pulling back from Tashana, the Maliri hacker nodded. The blonde rubbed his arm fondly. Local is where most people always choose to get involved: It’s not just the current dysfunctionality that channels most people into school-board meetings instead of seeking to draft new national legislation. The federal government also had a major hand in the development of North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park …. "She adored her children and I wasn't able to save them." Sure, you can talk about the growth of monasteries and universities in the Dark Ages as a wonderful thing, but (a) what we really mean by that is how wonderful it is that there were islands of light in what was otherwise a sea of darkness, (b) that darkness went on a long time, (c) what came out of it, which you/we now celebrate as the result, was essentially: What I actually find more interesting is what your piece says about where we’re headed, which is what I’ve been focusing on, lo! He groaned as they headed down in the grav-tube. she asked curiously. But by the end of the month, McCarthy was traveling hat in hand to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump. Colonizing the red planet is a ridiculous way to help humanity. TIP-INS Raptors: Pascal Siakam got his fourth foul with 1:18 left in the half, after Miami successfully used its challenge to overturn a blocking call that became a charge. In the years of the Empire, Rome imported so much olive oil that the 53 million decommissioned amphorae now form the hill of Monte Testaccio. And it is the only actually reliable guide to studying the past that we have ever truly innovated since the time of Marcus Aurelius. Similarly: One more tree that is planted, or habitat area that is preserved, won’t address the full range of global sustainability crises. Here’s one in the main Brownsville, Texas, library. It’s a state with a low graduation rate that continues to produce a record-breaking number of writers … "They murdered thousands of defenceless civilians for no reason! I read stories about the homeless problem in major U.S. cities, how drug addiction and tolerance of theft are literally robbing thriving communities of their once-proud fortitude of citizenship. It wasn’t pretty. When researching the Raymond M. Blasco Memorial Library’s history for the upcoming annual report, Blane Dessy, the new director of the Erie, Pennsylvania, library, came across the annual report from 1918, documenting that the library had shuttered before—during the influenza pandemic. And we have room to complain that America sucks? The big events are the capstones—they are always driven and made possible by small-scale, localized innovations that eventually flow together into what is by then an inevitable deluge. Together they are raising two young children in Jackson. Side effects are a natural part of the vaccination process, as my colleague Sarah Zhang has written. 2019. In this first roundup, I’ll highlight only critical ones. It’s also a place that in 2016 passed “one of the most restrictive antigay laws in the country”—the same month it welcomed my family with more warmth and generosity than any city has ever offered … "Of course, how could I forget." Or, rather, not long before, with the rise of the Gracchi—the increasing economic inequality, the increasing political polarization, the total eclipse of “the greater good” by what we’d call “special interests,” the turn toward political violence, all of which led eventually to the spiral of destructive civil war, the collapse of democracy (such as it was), and the wholesale replacement of the system with the imperial dictatorship: Looks a lot like the present moment to me …. Where I perhaps share a bit of your optimism is that I don’t. One key observation: in the 4th century, an impoverished Italian shepherd ate his dinner on imported tableware, drank imported wine and seasoned his salad with imported oil. I’ll bet that the majority of people who lived under Roman rule and were not rich by their historic standards would argue that after Rome’s fall most of everything went to the crapper. I’ve seen it in myself and like-minded peers who went into law to change the world and discovered, by the time we got out of law school, that the court system is reactionary and basically always has been that way, except for about six years; the idea that the Supreme Court is the great instrument for social advance that gets us around the parochial-ness of our politics has it exactly backwards. Since presumably people don’t actually vanish, this suggests strongly that there was a period of starvation, disease, and generalized violence that caused the decline in population and the local populaces to simply focus on staying alive, rather than having a relatively rich society able to indulge in luxuries like the theater, writing, and grand monument construction. "See... no panties!" It follows this Fourth of July post, about Eric Liu’s argument for a revival of “civic religion,” and this post by Deb Fallows, on our increasing effort to connect, compare, combine, and in other ways “biggify” the multiple, dispersed examples of local renewal around the country. On top of the first round of responses—which were variations on “Actually, the Dark Ages were pretty dark”—here is a stand-alone. As Christian Groes, an anthropologist at Denmark’s Roskilde University, told me, Danish children’s television is not unlike an LSD trip: “Everything is possible in that universe,” he said, loosely quoting a friend, “and people won’t complain about it.”. The mood was uncharacteristically sombre, with all the girls from the ground team looking subdued. Thanks once again to all who have weighed in. "If I was given the choice of going through the Change again, I'd say yes in a heartbeat. The library already oversees the Lincoln Shrine, an entire building of a nationally-renowned collection of Lincolniana, just across the lawn from the Smiley library. The book, published in 1994, was Sagan’s response to the famous image of Earth as a tiny speck of light floating in a sunbeam—a shot he’d begged NASA to have the Voyager 1 spacecraft take in 1990 as it sailed into space, 3.7 billion miles from Earth. This may sound quite Marxist, but that’s because it is. "This was your bright idea. "Because it made no fucking sense!" "If it makes it any easier, Tamolith going through the Change isn't going to be quite the reward you think it is." Should Baseball Fix Its Pacing Issues By Limiting Visits To The In-Laws During Games? He notes the plexiglass, and he observes the processes and standards for health and safety for what that means for the future of the Seattle libraries. Shoring up and expanding collaborations: Libraries have always been great collaborators. she blurted out indignantly. Looking back to the present and future: The old-school telephone is back. Bill and Melinda Gates visited some 20 years ago as a kick-off to their philanthropic donations of computers to public libraries. What follows is a long but highly condensed version of his note. It was put together by a young librarian who grew up across the street from the library. "I thought we were done fighting for today?" People joined the Goths, the Lombards, the Franks and even the Huns in their wars against their own country! John pulled out a chair for both Alyssa and Jade, then took his seat at the head of the table. That worked for a while in some places (like France), but in time trade shrank, education declined, government services passed away, and instability increased. As the Roman society disintegrated, government did become ever more localized. But in L.A., no one’s direct enough to tell you you’re acting like a fool. "That would be my professional opinion as well," John said, leaning back in his seat. You remember what Larn'kelnar was like; he instigated wars that slaughtered millions of people, just for his sick entertainment. No one in the 1980s would have dreamed that crime in the U.S. would go into major remission; maybe mysterious forces will dissipate extreme polarization—and we’ll build new defenses against fake news/brainwashing in free societies. Someone in the last couple of years wrote up a vision of a kind of soft U.S. breakup via extended regional pacts. But it’s hard to get too cheery about compensations for a functioning federal government. It’s always hard to tell what ills are cyclical and which ones are one-way streets. The Vandals were not really that vandalous …. I’d suggest that rather than being “not that bad”, the conditions for the average Roman citizen and their immediate descendants in the centuries after the collapse of Roman rule were apocalyptic; more like Mad Max than Renaissance Italy.
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