*banned 4 MarkDown love* @design_RG@qoto.org

@shibaprasad @metapsyche

I find Alzheimers one of the most worrisome prospects of old age. Have seen people in nursing homes, and how they have lost so much of their minds.

Scary, no cure, and just an expensive prospect to give the person care until the inevitable happen.

An early exit, voluntarily, seems preferable. We had a case here in Canada, where a lady in BC did that and left posts documenting her choice and why. Great reading, they made perfect sense to me.

@11112011 Ah, very nice, I saw the buildings and backgrounds with classical architecture.

Neat. 👍

@11112011 Great photos, Blitz. A museum visit?

@p @moonshine@freespeechextremist.com The space seems so tight I thought they might want to use it with knees facing the back.

But P might have it, anti-theft as it's so weird.

@Absinthe ㊗️ Well done, once again. 👍

@shibaprasad Vivaldi is a Good Browser. The team developing it used to be from the Opera project, if I am not mistaken.

Opera was a leading edge, innovative and cool browser for a long time. The one the techies and the cool kids used. 😜

Nowadays, Opera is still around, has switched to using the underlying framework of Chromium project (as others, including Microsoft, have done), runs really well, has a free built in VPN option.

But... is under control of a Chinese entity, and some people do have concerns about possible espionage might happen. Chinese state has a ton of power, and can force companies into cooperating for state security reasons anytime they want.

Vivaldi also has a good free email service (which is NOT Google property), and a free blog option I have just started experimenting with.

The blog is built as a full WordPress site, so it's full featured and takes some learning, just starting on the process myself.

Don't have Vivaldi installed, as I am happy with Waterfox. Do have Opera and use it on ocassion, even the VPN, until now, when I discovered a much nicer and free VPN service.

@maison_faim Thank you.

@drabard I am just starting on it, drabard, and there's only a basic, Hello World kind of post there now.

But - I was inspired by some great writing I caught this morning, and participated in.

That lead me to remember some of my own experiences, and I got off the fediverse, into a plain Text editor and wrote what I consider will be a nice blog post sometime soon.

For now, it's here in fedi, mastodon thread. This one: https://qoto.org/@design_RG/103261667157165272

Additional info and links, notes:

- Archeological Museum, Lisbon, Portugal is at : https://www.lisbon.net/archaeology-museum and wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Archaeology_Museum,_Portugal

- a beautiful ancient map of Iberia : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Atlas_Van_der_Hagen-KW1049B12_017-PORTUGALLIAE_et_ALGARBIAE_REGNA.jpeg

- the city of Loulé region on Bing maps : https://binged.it/2RqlQz2

- Amphorae page at Wiki with many examples : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphora

- Lusitania, Roman period Iberia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusitania

- Roman Empire map, 3rd Century : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Spain#/media/File:Prima_tetrarchia_Diocletianus.PNG

- Baetica information : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispania_Baetica

- Al Andalus : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Andalus

- Moorish Period : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Portugal#Moorish_rule_and_the_Reconquista_(711%E2%80%931249)

- And finally, Wikipedia's full series on History of Portugal : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Portugal

The original thread mentioned as inspiring this writing was created by @anarchiv and can be found here : https://todon.nl/@anarchiv/103260707759534544

With my thanks for the inspiration for this! :smile:

I should point out that I am not a Historian, but a curious man, fascinated by glimpsing the past and being able to understand a bit of how they lived, by seeing such a nice exposition and the numerous Historical buildings, sites and ancient settlements commonly found in Europe. So, my writing probably has factual errors, which I apologize for, the intent being to jot down those and share with others who might find them intriguing, hopefully.

The collection on display was all dug on sites around the modern city of Loulé. Besides these wonderful Roman and pre-Roman era artifacts, they also had later, Moorish period ones, with beautiful ceramics and metal work.

After visiting Europe for the first time a few years ago, I was so impressed and pleased by all these cultural artifacts and History around everywhere that traveling here in my home region, in North America pales in comparison.

I hope you enjoyed this narrative, and welcome your comments and follow ups. Thank you.

Roman estates in the Andalucia region, then called Baetica, produced fine Olive Oil, another staple of the Mediterranean diet. They sold and exported this widely, quality bringing in demand and profits to traders, farmers and landholders. Baetica was 'next door' to the Algarvians, so trade flowed easily between them.

As documented by the various amphorae, either whole or in fragments, on display at this Museum exhibit. The notes pointed out how many Baetican amphorae had been found in the Algarve, testimony of vigorous trade. Algarvians had income and could purchase finer goods - their own region produces olive oil and wines to this day, but the Museum had fragments which had been manufactured in Baetica, and even in mainland Italy, Rome's homelands.

Algarvian amphorae fragments had cruder handles and rougher surface texture. The Baetican ones were finer and prettier ceramics. Past contents of these vessels could still be determined by analysis of residues in some of them.

The Museum showed photos of the larger artifacts, like these stone vaults, carved into natural rock. They showed site maps with pointers of what each part was intended to do. Once you have a product, and an eager market, things will work to get it supplied.

How do we carry this out? The Museum showed many Amphorae, large earthenware/ceramic vessels which were built to store and carry various products around, locally, regionally and along longer routes to Rome and Beyond.

During the Roman era, there were thriving colonies not only in Lusitania, today's Portugal, but also in the Southern region of today's Spain now called Andalucia, which came from the Moorish era name - Al Andalus.

In the Algarve, Phoenicians, Romans set up colonies. The Romans saw the abundance of fish and built an industry of processing then into a preserve, the "Garum" fish sauce which was popular in their cuisine. Garum produced in the region was high quality, and had a demand from various regions of the Empire, including the Capital, Rome itself.

Garum was created by cutting up the fish and placing them into stone vaults cut into the local bedrock. Salt was added as a condiment but primarily as a preservative agent. The salty fish mix was left on the stone vats to cure for some time, months possibly. And once finished, it provided a concentrated sauce with protein and a flavour judged exquisite by the people.

Quality brings demand, and demand attracts traders; there's money to be made and livelihoods could focus on supplying it.

The Algarve is the most Southern part of Portugal, the warmest and sunniest. Trees, fruit, grapes grow well there. Fish in the seas are plenty. It was good land for settlements.

And they came, different peoples over different eras. Phoenicians, traders at heart, created outposts to explore the land and it's products, while also supporting passing seafarers going to farther places. Some of their mariners came from the homeland in modern day Middle East, traversed the whole Mediterranean, and went past the Columns of Hercules, now Gibraltar, into the open Atlantic.

Wild ocean waters, for people with small ships, but brave they were; and the profits from trading moved them. From home, via this route, into the Bay of Biscay, always a dangerous passage, and on to Cornwall for the Tin metal so demanded by the Bronze Age technology. Tin was plentiful there, and provided profitable mining for thousands of years. Traders came from far an apart to purchase the ore and bring it home for resale.

Reminiscing of a visit to the Archeology Museum, in Lisbon, Portugal.

It started this morning, the thread. And over short posts, someone told a story. Of a Greek man, who lived in antiquity, by the Mediterranean side; in a city whose name is still preserved, and today is written "Marseille".

This series of posts was interesting, I caught one flying by the Local feed, about halfway down his sequence, liked it and went to the top to find the rest.

Enjoying his post, I remembered similar thoughts, of History, and how things worked, how small bits and pieces came to me as I visited an exposition, at the Archeological Museum, in Lisbon.

Stopping at each display, I would read and examine the artifacts. All of them had came from the same region, countryside around today's city of Loulé, in the Algarve, Southern Portugal.

The region has been inhabited for thousands of years, and the exhibit had pieces from pre-historic, Phoenician, Roman, Moorish and more modern times.

@anarchiv

@maison_faim When I posted the ManyBooks.net search results for Cory Doctorow above, the link shows broken - by a space in the name not taken as part of the URL.

Retry -- https://manybooks.net/search-book?search=%22Cory%20Doctorow%22