John Cox

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euronews

Roman revelation: Biggest ancient monumental wall mosaic unveiled after 2,000 years | Euronews

Rome has opened a newly restored museum showcasing what is believed to be the largest fresco and mosaic complex from ancient Rome, discovered underground during 1990s excavations at the Baths of Trajan near the Colosseum. The "Painted City" fresco and the monumental "Great Mosaic" feature first-century A.D. depictions of maritime cities rendered in still-vivid blues and terracotta, with the mosaic's multiple levels showing both intimate theatrical scenes and bird's-eye views of a harbor layout. To preserve these artworks, visits are being restricted to small guided groups at limited times, starting with weekends-only access in September before expanding to Friday-Sunday slots in October.

Permalink arthistorymonumentarchaeology

The 5 W's

ClearList

ClearList — Sell Your Stuff Fast | AI Resale Manager

ClearList is an AI-powered resale platform that automatically generates complete listings (titles, descriptions, prices, dimensions) from photos, eliminating the manual work of pricing research and cross-posting to multiple platforms. Instead of managing endless messages asking "is this still available?", buyers queue up on a shared sale page, select time slots for pickup, and your address is only revealed to confirmed buyers—reducing the weekend chaos of selling used items to under two minutes of work.

Permalink productivityaishoppingautomation

www.nytimes.com

Best Movies of 2024 - The New York Times

This New York Times year-end list by chief critic Manohla Dargis opens by arguing that the mainstream conversation about a dying movie industry overlooks the far wider world of worthwhile films beyond big American studio releases. It then offers a ranked top 10, beginning with Payal Kapadia's "All We Imagine as Light," a tender drama about two nurses and a cook in Mumbai. The page is mostly cluttered with interface text (a "watch list" widget and access-verification notices), so the critic's framing and the opening pick are the parts worth keeping.

Permalink filmrecommendationsreviewsmovies

9/11: The National Geographic Video Archive

Search Engine Land

11 new social media platforms in 2026

This article surveys 11 emerging social networks launched between 2017 and 2024, ranging from niche platforms like Noplace (a Gen Z-focused Twitter/MySpace hybrid) and BeReal (daily unfiltered photo-sharing) to better-established alternatives like Bluesky and Threads. Each entry includes basic data on the platform's release date, headquarters, user count, and core functionality, positioning them as responses to dissatisfaction with existing social media giants. The list captures a diverse ecosystem focused on specific demographics and use cases—from anonymous college networks (Fizz, Yik Yak) to voice messaging (Ten Ten) to disposable camera aesthetics (Lapse).

Permalink social mediatechnologynews2020s

Church Life Journal

You're a Slave to Money, Then You Die | Church Life Journal | University of Notre Dame

This essay traces neoliberalism from its origins in 1920s anti-democratic theory through its ascendance under Thatcher and Reagan to its current dominance as a comprehensive worldview—arguing that it functions not merely as economic policy but as a quasi-religious metaphysics in which the Market replaces God as the organizing principle of reality. Drawing on thinkers like Hayek and Mises, the author demonstrates how neoliberals deliberately obscured the market's artificial construction behind mystifications of "spontaneous order," used state power to suppress democratic constraints on capital, and cultivated technologies of the self (social media, personal debt, the "entrepreneurial self") that internalize market logic into every aspect of human identity and relationships. The essay concludes by suggesting that imagining genuine alternatives to neoliberal capitalism requires recovering a theological vision of human dignity—that we are creatures of infinite, not market-determined, worth.

Permalink philosophypolitics

Craig Mod

Looking Closely is Everything — by Craig Mod

The author argues that close, attentive observation—from examining woodblock prints to watching cells divide to reading poetry—is both a learnable skill and a path to deeper understanding and wonder. Drawing examples from Hiroshige's Tōkaidō prints, Hokusai's landscapes, essays on snowball fights and chip-eating, and Russian short stories, he shows how precise description and focused attention reveal previously invisible details and meaning across scales from the personal to the universal. He proposes meditation as a practical training ground for attention itself, suggesting that the pandemic's enforced stillness offered an opportunity to cultivate this "close looking" as a radical act of noticing that recognizes the worth and complexity in everything, including the humble and overlooked.

Permalink artphotographytravelmindfulness

Louder

Eric Burdon: the hellraiser who had it all and then lost it | Louder

Eric Burdon's career spanned from leading The Animals through their British Invasion hits in the mid-1960s to fronting the funk band War and enduring a tumultuous solo career marked by legal disputes, band feuds, and personal tragedy. The piece chronicles his immersion in 1960s counterculture—his acid use, friendships with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, and role as a cultural intermediary between British and American music scenes—while documenting how mismanagement, contractual disputes, and internal conflict fractured his various projects and left him bitter for decades. By 2013, after a back operation and creative renewal, Burdon had achieved a measure of peace with his chaotic past and recognized his luck in having witnessed and participated in the transformative moments of postwar popular music.

Permalink musicrock

Bob Vila

The 25 Best Plants for Hanging Baskets

This is a comprehensive guide to 25 plants suitable for hanging baskets, with specific care instructions for each. The article begins with general care tips for hanging plants—including frequent watering, regular fertilizing, pruning, proper positioning, and companion plant selection—before detailing individual plants ranging from petunias and lobelias to succulents and ferns. Each plant entry includes its scientific name, visual description, specific light and water requirements, and any special considerations for optimal growth.

Permalink gardeningplants

Top Gear

Most Reliable Cars 2021| Top Gear

This Top Gear-style list makes a case that a surprising range of cars, from Toyota workhorses and the Land Cruiser to Volvo's P1800, Mercedes W123 and air-cooled Porsche 911, can sail past 300,000 miles, with anecdotes of owners who ran them to a million or more. Its tone is jokey and hyperbolic, but beneath the banter it is a practical argument that conservative engineering, mechanical sympathy and robust design, rather than luck, explain why certain models outlast nearly everything else on the road.

Permalink reviewscars

the Guardian

The sleeping x eating secret: 15 ways to better rest, a healthier diet – and a happier life | Food | The Guardian

Recent research confirms that diet significantly influences sleep quality, with a Mediterranean-style diet—rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and healthy fats—offering the most comprehensive benefits, likely through anti-inflammatory compounds and gut-brain communication. Key sleep-promoting foods include nuts, seeds, tropical fruits, and tryptophan-rich proteins, while ultra-processed foods, high-glycemic-index carbohydrates, caffeine after midday, and alcohol (which disrupts REM sleep) all worsen rest. The relationship between sleep and eating is bidirectional: poor sleep alters hunger hormones to increase appetite the next day, particularly affecting men's ghrelin levels and women's leptin suppression, leading to an average 385 extra calories consumed and a preference for high-fat, high-carbohydrate foods.

Permalink nutritionhealthwellnesssleep

sixcolors.com

Migrate to Apple Passwords from your current secret-keeper – Six Colors

Apple's Passwords app has matured to feature parity with third-party managers for core password functions, but migrating to it requires careful planning because it doesn't support tags, structured data storage, or access for legacy contacts, and it only works across Apple devices and Windows (not Android or Linux). The migration process involves pruning old entries, exporting securely via iPhone/iPad to preserve passkeys, manually adding payment cards and identity information to separate Apple systems, and potentially using a secondary app like Strongbox to retain structured data like driver licenses or memberships that Passwords can't handle.

Permalink productivitytechnologysecurityapple

HuffPost

Everything You Need To Know About The New COVID Vaccine | HuffPost Life

Updated COVID-19 vaccines targeting the JN.1 variant are now available at pharmacies nationwide at no cost under most insurance plans, with professional medical organizations recommending vaccination for older adults (65+), people with chronic conditions, pregnant women, young children, and those under 65 without underlying conditions who want protection. The CDC has not issued updated guidance this year due to the disbanding of its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, but major medical organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases Society of America have released similar recommendations, with doctors suggesting vaccination in mid-to-late September or October to build immunity before the winter surge, and noting that side effects should be mild and temporary.

Permalink healthadvicenewscovid-19

Film Focus Online

'The Death of Robin Hood' Review: A Cold, Edgy and Try-hard Deconstruction of the Legend - Film Focus Online

Michael Sarnoski's Robin Hood film stars Hugh Jackman as a remorseless mass murderer attempting a revisionist deconstruction of the legend, opening with extreme gore before settling into a tedious meditation on regret and atonement. The film is technically accomplished in its cinematography and practical violence but collapses under its self-serious grimness, accidentally veering into comedy with lines like "I've killed so many children, I've lost count," while stripping away any traditional pleasures of the Robin Hood story in favor of inaccessible artiness. Despite strong craft and a capable cast, the film fails to generate either entertainment value or genuine profundity, landing instead as a joyless, audience-hostile exercise in self-indulgence.

Permalink filmreviewsclassicsdystopia

Apple Podcasts

This Is Why People Hate the Government

The Ezra Klein Show

This Is Why People Hate the Government

25 August 2026 · 1h 17m

Plays from the show's own host. Nothing is loaded from them until you press play.

Americans waste roughly 12 billion hours annually—$430 billion in uncompensated labor—navigating unnecessarily complex government bureaucracy, a burden that stems not from incompetence but from deliberate policy choices designed to deter access to social programs and tax compliance. Programs like Social Security and Medicare demonstrate that government can be both complex administratively and user-friendly in practice, suggesting that when accessing benefits requires exhausting effort, it reflects intentional design rather than inevitable inefficiency. Lowrey argues that this "time tax" disproportionately harms the poor and that demanding simpler, more accessible government services is a matter of political choice and accountability.

Permalink productivitypolitics