This is a terrific summary of what sounds like a stunningly comprehensive treatment of the material history of Europe and its effect on society.

A good starting point might be what is left out: politics, wars, dynasties, religion, ideology, peoples. The index of maps & graphs gives the reader a taste of what is to come: “Budget of a mason’s family in Berlin about 1800”; “Bread weights and grain prices in Venice at the end of the sixteenth century”; “French Merchants registered as living in Antwerp, 1450-1585”.

Reading Braudel one gets the impression of an infinite curiosity at work for decades, mining every source for the tiniest piece of data, and then magisterially combining everything together. Despite fairly brutal editing these notes are still way too long, and yet they struggle to capture even a tiny part of the detail and depth that the book contains.

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Vol. I: The Structures of Everyday Life

The first volume aims to illuminate every aspect of material life: agriculture, food, dress, housing, towns, cities, energy, metals, machines, animals, transportation, money. Braudel’s goal is not simply to examine each of these in isolation, but to show how all the elements of material life interact to form cultures, economies, systems of governance, power structures, long-term cycles or trends. He comes remarkably close to achieving this absurdly ambitious task. For people into worldbuilding this tome is pure gold. The first volume also has the greatest general appeal: unlike the other two which are somewhat esoteric, I think this is a book everyone will love.

Reading notes: Civilization & Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol. I: The Structures of Everyday Life
byu/lunaranus inslatestarcodex

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34039054

This is how my brain has worked as long as I can remember. It’s neat to learn that there’s finally some research on the subject 🙂

And here’s a well-written first-hand account of aphantasia (although the author’s experience differs from mine; I have plenty of mental audio, and to some extent other senses):

https://m.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-feels-to-be-blind-in-your-mind/10156834777480504/

I have never visualized anything in my entire life. I can’t “see” my father’s face or a bouncing blue ball, my childhood bedroom or the run I went on ten minutes ago. I thought “counting sheep” was a metaphor. I’m 30 years old and I never knew a human could do any of this. And it is blowing my goddamned mind.

If you tell me to imagine a beach, I ruminate on the “concept” of a beach. I know there’s sand. I know there’s water. I know there’s a sun, maybe a lifeguard. I know facts about beaches. I know a beach when I see it, and I can do verbal gymnastics with the word itself.

But I cannot flash to beaches I’ve visited…I have no capacity to create any kind of mental image of a beach, whether I close my eyes or open them, whether I’m reading the word in a book or concentrating on the idea for hours at a time—or whether I’m standing on the beach itself.

View at Medium.com

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Hi! I’ve been staying the hell away from Facebook for the last month or so, and feeling the itch to share things again. Which in the absence of FB means sharing here, which is a much saner place to share stuff anyway 🙂

Lots more info, and interactive charts, at this excellent blog post on the subject.

Pretty gorgeous 🙂

A Mixture of Paint, Soap, and Oil Form an Eye-Opening Galaxy of Aqueous Visuals

This is by far the most accessible in-depth article I’ve seen on the almost unimaginable power of gene drives created with CRISPR: the power to transform an entire species in the span of a human lifetime.

Source: How DNA Editing Could Change Life on Earth