7 ms·
“I fell down a bit of a ruins research rabbit-hole”
- DC-3 9y agoInteresting stuff, but is there a more obnoxious way to tell a story than in a twitter thread? I was hoping that Medium was starting to solve this problem, but clearly not everyone has adopted it.
- cholantesh 9y agoFor a second, I thought the problem in question was 'finding a more obnoxious way to tell a story than in a twitter thread'.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y agoI look at it glass half full. I found one of the few Twitter accounts worth following.
- cholantesh 9y agoGood one. And revisiting it now, I think it makes sense, and it must have taken some doing to post, considering he'd have to do it in reverse chronological order.
- aw3c2 9y agoThis is much more readable than Medium's 5 lines per page style for me.
- notatoad 9y agoi don't see the problem. the content is there, it's linear, and i don't have to deal with all medium's obnoxious popups and desperate pleas to install their app or create an account.
- lostlogin 9y agoAt least it wasn’t the email from a relative that’s been forwarded so many times you can’t read the subject and the content is indented 86 times. THOUGHT YOUD LIKE THIS ONE.
- supermdguy 9y agoTry it in Thread Reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/933753595174031361 https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/933753595174031361
- DC-3 9y agoThanks for this.
- mikeash 9y agoWhat does Medium do that the million other blog services don't in this respect?
- api 9y agoNot look like crap?
- levesque 9y agoIt annoys the crap out of non-logged in users!
- WillPostForFood 9y agoYes, Medium starts with a modal nag screen, then has a sticky header and footer which breaks paging (Mac/Chrome). Medium has totally lost any claim to being better for readability.
- eitland 9y agoAlso they still haven't figured out consistent urls.
- jamesmp98 9y agoand users who don't pay
- aalleavitch 9y agoGets used by people whose articles I want to read, mostly.
- snakeboy 9y agoUsually I hate this format, but given the ratio of text to images, I don't really think the "tweetstorm" style got in the way. Each tweet was atomized to reveal a bit more of his story in a well-paced manner.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- CharlesMerriam2 9y agoThis shows the joy of our profession; find a loose thread and pull it.
- lostlogin 9y agoWhich profession is that? In the last week I’ve read great posts by a pilot, a beekeeper, an HVAC engineer, a programmer and someone who does something with economic forecasting.
- arthurcolle 9y agoInternet person
- ant6n 9y ago...the pay is terrible. I've barely gotten any retweets/karma/clicks in days.
- mistermann 9y agohttp://knowyourmeme.com/memes/dont-worry-im-from-the-internet http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/dont-worry-im-from-the-interne...
- ChuckMcM 9y agoFascinating story and a reminder o how poor a fit Twitter is for long form writing. I would love to read the atlasobscura version of that thread.
- weberc2 9y agoI'm glad it was condensed and terse. I dislike skimming through long-form writing to get at the interesting bits.
- agumonkey 9y agocant recall what's the website to turn a list of tweet into a semblance of paragraphs .. google save of the day: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/933753595174031361 https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/933753595174031361
- exodust 9y agoI thought Twitter "Moments" was for this purpose? Maybe he doesn't know about that, or doesn't care. I agree, separate Tweets doesn't work that well, and ends up cluttered. Edit.. the threadreader link in next comment works well.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoWriter notices that a 1800s picture of the temple of Jupiter at Olympus had an addition above the pillars that isn't there in other images nor in the temple reproductions. Turns out it was a dwelling for Christian ascetics, the dwelling being censored from some images and removed to return the ruins to their "original". Think that's about it, from a scan through.
- StavrosK 9y agoIt's Zeus, not Jupiter, and it's in Athens, not Olympus.
- fiatjaf 9y agoSo how do these people got on the top of these pillars? What did they do there all day?
- paganel 9y ago> What did they do there all day? From the wiki page on Simeon Stylites, the most famous of these type of saints (and I think the first one who chose to live on top of a pillar) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simeon_Stylites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simeon_Stylites): > Even on the highest of his columns, Simeon was not withdrawn from the world.[citation needed] If anything, the new pillar attracted even more people, both pilgrims who had earlier visited him and sightseers as well. Simeon was available each afternoon to talk with visitors. By means of a ladder, visitors were able to ascend within speaking distance. It is known that he wrote letters, the text of some of which have survived to this day, that he instructed disciples, and that he also lectured to those assembled beneath.[9] He especially preached against profanity and usury. In contrast to the extreme austerity that he practiced, his preaching conveyed temperance and compassion, and was marked with common sense and freedom from fanaticism. Interestingly enough there is a similar character in season 2 of the HBO TV-show "The Leftovers", which I highly recommend (the show, that is). Here's its IMDB page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2699128/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2699128/
- bhaak 9y agoAlso interesting is that the reason given in the Wikipedia article why he lived on top of a pillar was not to be closer to God but to be further away from people that would otherwise disturb his daily routine.
- fiatjaf 9y agoThat to be on pillar would put him closer to God is a stupid idea only anti-Christians would think of.
- rz2k 9y agoMark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) has a lot of fun with irreverence toward hermits, especially one on a 60-ft pillar: > His stand was a pillar sixty feet high, with a broad platform on the top of it. He was now doing what he had been doing every day for twenty years up there—bowing his body ceaselessly and rapidly almost to his feet. It was his way of praying. I timed him with a stop watch, and he made 1,244 revolutions in 24 minutes and 46 seconds. It seemed a pity to have all this power going to waste. It was one of the most useful motions in mechanics, the pedal movement; so I made a note in my memorandum book, purposing some day to apply a system of elastic cords to him and run a sewing machine with it. I afterward carried out that scheme, and got five years’ good service out of him; in which time he turned out upward of eighteen thousand first-rate tow-linen shirts, which was ten a day. I worked him Sundays and all; he was going, Sundays, the same as week days, and it was no use to waste the power. These shirts cost me nothing but just the mere trifle for the materials—I furnished those myself, it would not have been right to make him do that—and they sold like smoke to pilgrims at a dollar and a half apiece, which was the price of fifty cows or a blooded race horse in Arthurdom. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/86/86-h/86-h.htm#c22 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/86/86-h/86-h.htm#c22
- agumonkey 9y agoreadable version https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/933753595174031361 https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/933753595174031361
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- JoeDaDude 9y agoTom Cahill, in his book "Mysteries of the Middle Ages" [1] explains explains how in ancient times, people had very different attitudes towards hermits, stylites, and anchorites: "Though often represented as a period of repression... the Middle Ages offered - at least in religious roles - more options than now allowed. ...in the Middle Ages such social oddities were welcomed and assigned a place of honor. While the rest of us went about our worried lives, they prayed for us continually, speaking to God on our behalf." [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=_vikHFhqIwIC&source=gbs_navlinks_s https://books.google.com/books?id=_vikHFhqIwIC&source=gbs_na...
- incompatible 9y agoIt's surprising that any part of the temple survived at all, given the early Christians' destruction of "pagan" temples.
- moomin 9y agoThat’s a vast oversimplification. Go to Egypt and you’ll find a large number of Egyptian temples adapted to Christian use.
- bhaak 9y agoGiven that even old pagan temples got repurposed (like for example the Pantheon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome ), I don't think that statement holds in a general sense. There might have been local destruction by Christians but not a systematic destruction lead by the church. Often, old buildings were used as resource for new buildings as the common people didn't regard those old buildings as anything else than a quarry.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoA question for any passer-by historians: how did they deal with urination and defecation? Was there a secondary bucket system for that? Or do you just know to not approach the north side of the pillar?
- oh_sigh 9y agoI can't speak authoritatively, but most likely have a bucket which is lowered every now and then. These guys weren't claiming to be foodless, waterless, shitless divine beings.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- freddie_mercury 9y agoFor those looking to see more on this kind of thing.... Simon of the Desert is a famous 1965 foreign film by a famous director (Luis Bunuel) that is loosely based on the life of one of these Stylite ascetics. It is a product of both the 1960s and Mexican magical realism (like Juan Rulfo) so expect it to be weird and you won't be disappointed.
- jpster 9y agoI'm impressed by the way he used Twitter as a table of contents to his own writing. https://twitter.com/PaulMMCooper/status/915959278028148736 https://twitter.com/PaulMMCooper/status/915959278028148736
- sn9 9y agoMonty Python would have had a field day with this.