EO

10/10/2026

👑 The Diadems of Puabi — Royal Cemetery of Ur, c. 2450 BCE

More than 4,400 years ago, these elaborate ornaments were created for Puabi, one of the most famous individuals discovered in the Royal Cemetery at ancient Ur in modern-day Iraq.

Made from gold, silver, bitumen, carnelian, and lapis lazuli, the diadems demonstrate the extraordinary wealth and craftsmanship of Early Dynastic Mesopotamia. The use of lapis lazuli is particularly striking—the prized blue stone had to reach Mesopotamia through long-distance trade networks extending toward Central Asia.

Puabi's richly furnished burial, designated PG 800, was uncovered during excavations of the Royal Cemetery of Ur led by archaeologist Leonard Woolley in the 1920s.

A remarkable glimpse into the wealth, artistry, and international connections of Sumer nearly 4,500 years ago.

10/10/2026

Give a man a fish and he eats for one day: teach the man how to fish and he will eat forever…
EO

In 2011, Somali pirates attacked 237 ships and were holding hundreds of sailors hostage at a time, waiting for ransoms in the millions.

Most Americans knew the problem from one incident — the 2009 hijacking of the Maersk Alabama and its captain, Richard Phillips, which ended with Navy SEAL snipers and became the Tom Hanks movie Captain Phillips.

Two years later, warships from the US, EU, NATO, China, India and Japan were patrolling the Gulf of Aden, and none of it had stopped the attacks.

Then a sushi restaurant owner from Tokyo went to the coast to talk to the pirates.

His name is Kiyoshi Kimura, owner of the Sushi Zanmai chain — the man Japan calls the Tuna King, who paid a record $3.2 million for one bluefin this January.

According to his own account, he went around 2012 and concluded the pirates were out-of-work fishermen whose waters had been emptied by foreign trawlers.

So he says he gave them four fishing boats, taught them to catch yellowfin tuna, built freezers to hold the catch, and promised to buy every fish.

"They didn't even like pirating," he said. "I suggested that they catch tuna instead, and make a proud living for their families."

Somali attacks fell from 237 in 2011 to 15 in 2013, and by 2015 the hijackings had stopped.

The International Maritime Bureau credits navies, armed guards, hardened ships and Somalia's government.

Kimura's name is not on that list, and no one outside his own interviews has measured what four boats on one stretch of coast actually did.

Which is how a sushi man from Tokyo came to be credited, online and forever, with "single-handedly ending Somali piracy."

10/10/2026

October energy read by Lee Harris: as a min map. Love me a good mind map!

Take a deeper look into the themes of the October fro...

10/10/2026

Another time saver

Image source: University of Pennsylvania Library, Codex 724, 191r

10/10/2026

Bang on 😊💖🌸🙌

10/10/2026

Rise of the Feminine (endless)… EO

Her father had just blinded and castrated his own nephew.

That was the world Tamar of Georgia inherited.

In 1178, King George III named his daughter co-ruler, seating her beside him on the throne of a kingdom that had never been governed by a woman. The nobles watched. The church watched. Everyone waited to see how long it would last.

George III died in 1184. Tamar, barely past twenty, was alone at the top.

The barons moved almost immediately. A council of nobles demanded she take a husband of their choosing, submit decisions to a new assembly, and accept limits no Georgian king had ever accepted. The message was plain: rule through us, or not at all.

Tamar listened. She negotiated. She accepted a husband, Yuri, a prince from the Rus, and then, when the marriage collapsed and Yuri returned in arms against her, she defeated him in the field and let him go.

She let him go.

In a feudal world where the standard answer to rebellion was a blinding, a mutilation, an example made in public, Tamar pardoned her enemies. Not once. Repeatedly. She turned the clemency itself into a political instrument, building loyalty through survival rather than fear.

It worked.

Under her reign Georgia expanded to its greatest medieval extent, holding territory from the Black Sea into what is now northwestern Iran. She patronized literature, funded churches, and assembled a court that later Georgians would call their golden age.

She ruled for roughly thirty-five years in total. She died around 1213. The Georgians eventually canonized her, Saint Tamar, Equal to the Apostles.

Her father had cleared the path with a blade.

She held it without one.

10/10/2026

So. There. EO

Shop The Book by Hungry Minds. A hand drawn luxury coffee table book, the ultimate guide to rebuilding civilization. A unique gift for women and men.

09/10/2026

Uh oh…

"About time we leave adobe for good." https://trib.al/rTI5ngD

07/10/2026

Post-apocalyptic pastoral. EO

Vela, 37 - Works full time as a freelance textile archivist specializing in recovering discarded fabrics from upstate estate sales and turning them into outfits that challenge the concept of seasonality. “I wholeheartedly believe in wearing what you want when you want. Pastel colors shouldn’t just be regulated to Spring. With the right layering it can be worn whenever.” Spends her commute researching obscure 1970s designers, curating playlists for people who don’t ask, and refusing to wear anything that could reasonably be described as new. Hosts a clothing swap out of her Bushwick apartment every third weekend where the dress code is post apocalyptic pastoral.
📷: 𝙅𝙐𝙇𝙄𝘼 𝙎𝙄𝙉𝙀𝙇𝙉𝙄𝙆𝙊𝙑𝘼

06/10/2026

Well then. EO

In September 2015, a woman later identified in a published medical case study only by the initials CB reached for what she believed was co***ne and instead snorted roughly 55 milligrams of pure L*D, about 550 times a typical recreational dose. She vomited for the next 12 hours, drifting in and out of awareness with her eyes rolled back, unable to hold a conversation. Around the ten hour mark she came back to herself, and for the rest of the day described feeling pleasantly high. Within 24 hours she was functionally normal again.

What researchers couldn't fully explain came next. CB had lived with chronic foot pain from Lyme disease for a decade, managing it with 40 to 60 milligrams of morphine daily. The morning after the overdose, the pain was gone. She went five days without any morphine and experienced no withdrawal symptoms at all, a result doctors called nearly unheard of after ten years of daily opioid use.

She never returned to her old dose. Over the following years she tapered down further, began microdosing L*D instead, and by January 2018 had stopped using morphine entirely. Her case was published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs in 2020.