Delos been mostly uninhabited for centuries, but its status as the mythological birthplace of Apollo and Artemis made it an important holy site for almost a thousand years leading up to the first century BC. In 478 BC, it became the neutral capital of the Athens-dominated Delian League. Although it traded hands a few times, it prospered as a port and slave-trading center for hundreds of years, making it very wealthy indeed.
A series of pirate attacks culminated in 69 BC with a thorough sacking and looting. As trade routes shifted, people moved away. As worship of Apollo faded, people moved away. It simply didn’t matter any more. It’s been an archaeological site since 1872. What’s there is stunning: an entire town reduced to its crumbling walls, an enormous theater, faded mosaics of Dionysus in banquet rooms that undoubtedly hosted epic orgies. A number of key statues have been moved for preservation and replaced with replicas, including the melted-looking Naxian Lions and a famous depiction of Aphrodite smilingly beating Pan with a shoe. What’s missing is more significant: all the metal. All the wood. All the cloth. Even a lot of the stone. There’s a giant marble plinth with notes about the enormous statue of Apollo that it used to hold. The British Museum has a foot, the Athens Museum a hand. The head is long since stolen and lost. A lot of the body was apparently chopped up and used in other sculptures or buildings.
In other words, the entire place is a monument to hubris and a reminder of the fragility of empire and stone and everything we build or do.
And after a few hours of being humbled by ancient ruins, we turned around and got back on the ferry to Mykonos, with its new port served by cruise ships and its old port served by mega-yachts, the water coming up just to the edge of the charming bars and restaurants of Little Venice. And its adorable street cats. Not long after that, we got on a plane and flew halfway around the world, spewing carbon dioxide all the way. So today I feel humbled, and hypocritcal, and troubled by the rhymes of history.
(Coincidentally, the song “Mykonos” by Fleet Foxes is about someone failing to get sober after a trip to rehab in Mykonos. I don’t know why anyone would attempt rehab there. Mykonos seems like it would be one of the worst possible places in the world to get sober. Our hotel’s welcome book actually included a brochure for an IV rehydration hangover treatment.)
The collapse approaches
Climate change is shifting wine regions around.
Climate migration has begun to appear in the US, although it’s still more notable in Siberia.
Your context sets your expectation, which is why the climate apocalypse seems totally normal. (There are roughly half as many birds as there were just a hundred years ago…)
A second example: one Key Largo neighborhood, already used to intermittent fall flooding, has been substantially flooded for more than 40 days. “For us now, this is normal life,” one resident says.
Most maps of Louisiana are inaccurate; subsidence, erosion, and rising sea levels are shrinking the coastline faster than maps can keep up.
California’s blackouts are another glimpse into the climate change future. So are preparations for the Tokyo Olympics, where a badly timed heatwave would potentially kill spectators and athletes alike.
And also
A map of concentration camps in America.
Searing short memoir/long blog post about family, abuse, internalized racism, and redpill toxicity.
Fun
Not from The Onion: Fire sparks mass explosion of semen at cattle breeding centre.
This is just super cool.
Secretly Ironic 