caesar novus

Wow, I thought visiting Venice was a guilty interlude of non-Roman pleasures, but it turns out much decor was physically looted from Constantinople. Looting being a rescue sometimes, since many of the source edifices in Constantinople demolished now (with that city full of it's own loot, er, rescues of foreign stuff).

These all are on quite a hot streak now but I wanted to comment on one from the middle channel (which confusingly has a somewhat different name when the "at" sign is used or not). This tour of ongoing reconstruction amazes me for two reasons. One, the unassuming pile was once a bold, towering construct with spiral staircase and all, which even partial rebuilding will now give an idea of. Two, this may bring NW Rome back to life for ancient enthusiasts. It was kind of sparse with mainly the emperor's prissy maybe hypocritical peace temple nearby. I'm not charmed by near highlights of Spanish steps, Borghese park and museum, and the Via del Corso shopping. They plan to create a piazza down at original mausoleum ground level. This gives intimate views but may be a gamble. People are willing to walk up to a viewpoint then don't mind the easy walk down, like at the Capitoline Hill area. But will they meander down into a limited viewpoint, hang out, then trudge back up even when not entering the structure (with entrance fee)? It's sort of a dead end pedestrian flow that might become a hangout for graffiti writers and vagrants.

That outrageous sounding giveaway may be the very bribe that Cleopatra used in order to have Antony influenced against everyone's better judgement: There may be a parallel to today's world of politics. Some claim that in modern democracies the elite team up with the poor, with tax loopholes for the rich combined with increasing freebies for the poor so that the tax load mainly crushes the election-losing middle class.

I am listening to this "new" Stones track that has more vitality than you would expect from these geezers resembling wispy dandelions gone to seed and ready to blow away. Supposedly from album recently put together but some of the music and video includes a dead member and a long retired member (Wyman now amateur archeologist). Maybe someone can comment on whether depicted cars are contemporary. Surely the video depicts band members looking a score or two years younger playing this song - done by AI or was this song old and unreleased? Song is "Angry" from "Hackney Diamonds" which is slang for the pile of glass shards from vandalized car windows:

I will earn few "likes" for honestly riffing on the subject of Ozzie museum quality, which generally seems a waste of time. Australia excels in outdoor sights, including urban, but seems quite amateurish indoors even compared to similarly low population countries. Even a medium size city like mine focuses limited budget into museums that can do a reasonable job for a specialty. Australia seems to aim high but attain mostly mediocrity. If that sounds mean, it comes from wasting precious museum time giving numerous chances after spending much to get there. I haven't been to the museum of the story, but most of the famous ones in Canberra, Sydney, and I forget about Melbourne. They seem to prefer 500 mundane exhibits instead of 50 quality ones, and visitor counts can be abysmal. A similar Uni classics museum in Sydney had an "interpreter" so bored from no visitors that she desperately detained me with endless small talk. I encountered one spectacular museum which is the War one in the capital. Maybe their lengthy record of givebacks can convince them to rely less on bargain hunting. The country's most famous building, Sydney Opera, is a metaphor for this indoor/outdoor dichotomy. The outside is ultimate world class, but they threw away the architect's blueprints for indoors over a money spat. Instead the inside is like elementary school auditorium caliber. One other area of disappointment I have occasionally encountered are small city museums in England. They can be super amateurish cheerleader type affairs, having for example exhibits of vintage postcards.

Thanks, but as your pictures and the article show it was underground (2ad gymnasium)

istanbulMuseum

https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/venice-international-travel-hotspot-charge-daily-tourists-fee-next-year

My memory of that area is of shambles just before the Sorrento train dives into tunnels, so looked up status in wiki. I guess they are still digging and even offer free admission to some modest ruins. From satellite view it kind of looks like poorly rebuilt WW2 damage, but wiki sez ancient baths were demolished in 1956 and the ambitious restoral ran out of money. There is a vacant shipping port clinging to sea cliffs; maybe a Eurozone funded boondoggle.

Not long ago I doubled my historic collection by getting a free Roman coin with a (multiyear?) subscription to Minerva magazine, kind of a posh museum magazine that seemed unlikely to promote a scam. On another forum we identified it's likely emperor and provenance (shady ex officials from Yugoslavia?). My other old coin is Czarist. I used to have a mounted collection of coins from most countries of the world. Also I had a lot of loose coins from long ago travels that I wish I saved, like Chinese coins from their stone age period 45 years ago. They all turn funny colors with sort of a shellac of aging hand grease, but probably easily cleaned. I innocently tried to spend legacy coins in countries that switched to Euro, and was warned that was a crime. So I half buried a hoard in a bank deposit case near a homeless camp; maybe they will be savvy enough to benefit.

55 years after release and performance, this song came out with a new official video. Maybe I find it strangely enticing because nothing like that was heard on the radio where I grew up, just bubblegum pop and cornball country:

I really like this UC Davis AHI 173 Roman Art and Architecture course by a young, unusually non-Romanphobic California professor. I suppose it went to video due to wu-flu. Here is a sample (playlist above):

Caesarea ruins seem to have a weather-beaten look as if the salty/sandy onshore winds have done their worst. Most of the remains are sawed off quite low, as if the area was dug out somewhat recently and the originally exposed part was ground completely off by the elements. On the other hand Israel's Beit Shean ruins way to the east looks spectacular, and further east just over Jordan's border is another dazzling Roman ruins of Jerash. And there is even an east-west road connection, one of the few over the border and appears to include winding hill scenery thru Jordan. I'm sure the logistics would be hard, but I was told to make plans when there is bad news because the way things cycle it will be the opposite by the time you arrive.

Holy moley, check out the channel content of The British School at Rome https://www.youtube.com/@BritishSchoolatRome/videos . Endless hours of lectures on ancient Rome, and considerable racy and eye popping nuggets that you will miss by shunning it's dry appearance. Find the panels of Romans getting tortured by enemy women, and Romans torturing enemy assassins in their Trajan column video:

That channel rebrand from hole digging to surface delights is going great and proves worthy of subscribing to. Latest subject is climbing the spiral staircase carved INSIDE length of Trajan's column https://youtu.be/iSVvEA4al5U Instead of video thumbnails of things you may already be subscribed to, I will include a reconstructed picture and note another video interviewing Darya about the column with various flaws but fairly unique content: https://youtu.be/vWe4CWwFJNU

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Just to close that issue, I call this as an apparent wild success too. I never have been a sunscreen user, so tried using retinol on some blemished sun-fatigued areas. At first it makes the blemishes look a lot worse, then they mostly crumble off. Instead of the widespread pricey tiny containers, I used a cheap giant pump-tub from sams club about twice a week for a month. I guess the mechanism is vit A promoting growth of healthy skin; I hope the effect is lasting.

Photos of Rome almost 200 years ago! I advise you to double the playback speed and mute the distracting audio, instead reading it's youtube description page for info: