Matt, I'm currently listening to "Rubicon" by Tom Holland (on the Roman republic), and it's pretty good! You seem to enjoy Roman history a lot; are there some books you've really enjoyed?
I might have a few others to recommend if you're interested as well. There are plenty of analogues with today's world and Rome, to be sure.
Most of what I remember is from the classics courses I took in college (not enough!). Read a few pop culture books but always looking for more. Need to checkout Rubicon for sure.
Pop culture books are the best. I really love a good overview, and as weird as it seems, I need to read (or listen to, more likely these days) at least 5 or 6 different summaries of Rome to even start to get an idea of the thing. That was a few years back, and I am slowly filling in the gaps over time.
Given the greater context, I want to go back to Florence and Rome now and think about these things in a new light.
It's probably easy to overreach and apply the idea of "enshittification" everywhere even when it is a stretch, but it clearly seems true with the Meta family of products. Facebook and Instagram used to be decent and occasionally useful platforms, even with all the boomers and political BS. But in the past couple years they really jumped the shark and clogged the feed to the point that I rarely even see anything from friends and family, it's all a mix of ads, terrible "suggested for you" content and Reels; I can't spend more than a minute or so before I get annoyed and close out. The fact that they chose to rebrand their core product to a speculative moonshot really just shows how toxic their identity had become.
Its easy to forget whats important when all your objectives, visions and missions seem to be less important than investor ROIs, self promotion, and other money related goals.
Balancíng requirements, powers, interests and aligning these towards a real objective, seems like too much for a single person.
Matt, I'm currently listening to "Rubicon" by Tom Holland (on the Roman republic), and it's pretty good! You seem to enjoy Roman history a lot; are there some books you've really enjoyed?
I might have a few others to recommend if you're interested as well. There are plenty of analogues with today's world and Rome, to be sure.
Most of what I remember is from the classics courses I took in college (not enough!). Read a few pop culture books but always looking for more. Need to checkout Rubicon for sure.
Pop culture books are the best. I really love a good overview, and as weird as it seems, I need to read (or listen to, more likely these days) at least 5 or 6 different summaries of Rome to even start to get an idea of the thing. That was a few years back, and I am slowly filling in the gaps over time.
Given the greater context, I want to go back to Florence and Rome now and think about these things in a new light.
It's probably easy to overreach and apply the idea of "enshittification" everywhere even when it is a stretch, but it clearly seems true with the Meta family of products. Facebook and Instagram used to be decent and occasionally useful platforms, even with all the boomers and political BS. But in the past couple years they really jumped the shark and clogged the feed to the point that I rarely even see anything from friends and family, it's all a mix of ads, terrible "suggested for you" content and Reels; I can't spend more than a minute or so before I get annoyed and close out. The fact that they chose to rebrand their core product to a speculative moonshot really just shows how toxic their identity had become.
Its easy to forget whats important when all your objectives, visions and missions seem to be less important than investor ROIs, self promotion, and other money related goals.
Balancíng requirements, powers, interests and aligning these towards a real objective, seems like too much for a single person.