Fine Weekend Reading
Discover more from Common Sense and Whiskey
On Fridays I suggest worthwhile weekend reading that’s guaranteed to improve your posture, your online dating prospects, and make you an all around better person. Read a dozen articles, lose five pounds.
First though, our weekly photo quiz. Where is this place? OK, granted, this first photo could be most anyplace across a wide swath of the world just south of Europe:
So what if we add this? Does it clarify matters?
The answer is down at the end of this post.
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Now, on to your weekend reading:
South of Oslo, along a highway lined with pine and birch trees, a shiny fueling station offers a glimpse of a future, where electric vehicles rule. Chargers far outnumber gasoline pumps at the service area operated by Circle K. During summer weekends, when Oslo residents flee to country cottages, the line to recharge sometimes backs up down the off-ramp. In Norway, the electric vehicle future has already arrived
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What Americans eat, what they don’t, why it all costs so much, and who is profiting The Reality of Food Costs and Consumption in 5 Charts
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Archaeologists can detect simple and complex clothes in the Paleolithic record because they entail different technologies. Tools to scrape hides indicate the existence of simple clothes. Hominins with hide scrapers occupied what is today northern China during a warm phase 800,000 years ago. My Search for the Origins of Clothing
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The backyard swing was a ritual instrument of healing, punishment and transformation. There may be more obscure histories than the history of the swing. Maybe. Disorient Yourself
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The government of Latvia now demands a language test from the 20,000 people in the country holding Russian passports, mostly elderly and female, as the loyalty of Russian citizens is a worry, said Dmitrijs Trofimovs, state secretary at the Interior Ministry. Russians take language test to avoid expulsion from Latvia
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“They teach them to hate their parents” How Russian authorities forcibly deport and ‘re-educate’ Ukrainian children
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One day before his formal inauguration, on May 6, 2000, Russian President Putin signed a directive that would begin the reconsolidation of Russia’s top revenue-generating industries. But Putin’s first target wasn’t oil or natural gas, or diamonds or gold or nickel. It was vodka. Russia Has a Vodka Addiction. So Does Vladimir Putin – But Not the Same Way
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It was the National Geographic calling, and no one turned down Big Yellow. Not because the prose was great—it wasn’t—but because the money was, and they sent you places you would otherwise never go.
How nature is revealed when you are most helpless. Encountering the High Arctic
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Arctic cooperation between Russia and its Nordic neighbors was long shielded from the consequences of Russia’s various military campaigns. The 2022 invasion of Ukraine led to a halt of regional cooperation. Careful about resuming it. Russia has a track record of covertly using cooperation formats to advance its own geopolitical interests. High North, High Tension: The End of Arctic Illusions
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This is fun: The Museum of Endangered Sounds
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“In my experience, the only moment when a Chinese intellectual or official should be taken literally is when he or she is walking a guest to the car. With no one around and no time to add any commentary, a single sentence can speak volumes.”
A world society seemed to be advancing. But then the civilization state struck back. The Attack Of The Civilization State
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The answer to this week’s photo quiz? The top photo is Fez at dawn, this one is a village below the Atlas Mountains, and the country is Morocco. See more photos in the Morocco Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.
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It has been a big news week in the United States. The leading Republican presidential candidate became a convicted sex abuser, the executive and legislative branches had their first meeting tête-à-tête in a danse macabre toward default, and, on Thursday, a Trump-era immigration measure that the Biden administration found handy enough to keep, expired. Tomorrow we’ll talk things over.
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