I agree with your point. I'll just add that in my country, at least, the facade of democracy seemed to provide society with infectious glimmers of hope. The hope is fading quickly, and the general mood is both sour and bitter, straining interpersonal relationships.
Anyway, I'm not sure how democracy can really work in huge super-complex societies. This is why we have the "iron law of oligarchy".
If time permits, this is a good era to learn guitar if you haven't already. Or some sort of creative brain or muscle hobby where screens aren't the central focus.
I never cared for the "learning how to learn" line. We start from infancy and learn to walk and talk, albeit in that very special way. We are always learning, every day.
For me personally, earning by bachelor's and master's degree was a continuation of K-12 and I made sure to be a top performer. The looming debt was the underlying, motivating factor.
Looking back, I learned most outside after K-12 was done for the day and I was free to explore and get hurt.
Those around me just write a lot more slowly, writing in print (they don’t connect the letters like in cursive, they can’t easily read my very-clean cursive either, which gives a feeling that my cursive is a sort of superpower)
So often I watch/read various excavations with resulting museum/institutional acquisitions and I think to myself, “things may have been undiscovered, but now that they’re discovered these artifacts are on borrowed time, long-long term.”
That particular illustration is an artistic interpretation of another older illustration. I wish I could place a link for reference right now but I’m using my phone and that’s no fun.
There’s a YouTube video somewhere that explains all of this and shows a more accurate physical model (or as accurate as can be reasonably expected) that is located somewhere in Bologna, which suggests that there were quite a few towers but not that many and not that tall as shown here. In any case it still had an impressive skyline for its day.
If I remember to do so, I’ll come back here and post a link.
I see one right now near the bottom limb (observing from North America). It's been slowly moving to right the last few days as the sun rotates. I'm using cheap eclipse glasses.
The Times, at least a few years back, had a quite frequent habit of using phrases such as "sources say" or "according to sources" or "people familiar with the matter." It wasn't always like that.
Some of that is fine as people sometimes would like to remain anonymous and have the trust of the publication, journalist, and readers. Sure, many touchy stories are important and people can give quotes on background. But that can't become a consistent habit without, at some point, providing better attribution when a string of stories bear some relation.
I've cut back on the Times for the most part due to my issues with "sources say," but maybe they've improved.
They may be a monopoly, but fans are willing to pay to see LiveNation concerts. Acts and venues go with it. I’ve found there so many other options out there for entertainment lately that I haven’t gone to a concert in 20 years! In a way I kind of like what Ticketmaster is doing, I wish I could get a cut.
(Seriously though, we have so many olig/monopolies I’ve lost count. Sad.)
There's a lot of exuberance lately in areas that benefit from low interest rates; housing (again), corporate debt (this one is huge), and sovereign debt (another big one).
Over the last few decades, we seem to have a boom-bust debt cycle of sorts, and it doesn't seem to be abating at the moment given what we're seeing with the Fed, yields, and debt.