milliarium aureum

Via the always marvellous Nag on the Lake, were treated to the draughts- manship of Sasha Trubetskoy who has depicted the historic road network of the Roman Empire, circa second century, in the style of the (often imitated) schematic transport map of the London Underground. The map is made of up named roads such as Via Appia and Via Flavia as well as some logical liberties, whose license is perfectly justified as many European and north African highways follow these same routes. Be sure to check out Trubetskoy’s website for more captivating cartographic projects.

amplifying random noise

Via Kottke, this take by Randall Munroe of the web-comic xkcd fame (previously here and here) on those viral maps of the USA circulating on the internet made us grin.

this is water

Opening with a parable similar to the one of the puddle, Big Think contributor Philip Perry revisits the 2005 commencement speech (EN/DE) by author David Foster Wallace (*1962 †2008) that may contain a bit of needed antidote for the toxic-levels of polarisation that the world is currently experiencing.
This atmosphere of hyper-nationalism and equally rabid opposition means more than stalemates and pyrrhic victories and disdain for one’s antagonists means that all institutions and experts become subjective, fraud becomes easier to overlook and bigots and bullies few validated. It is an incredibly, almost super-human task to step outside of one’s self and all the trappings of acculturation and personal pride that reinforce the belief in our infallibility, but choosing to ease out of a narrow-minded, doctrinaire attitude can cultivate a critical awareness of our own limiting biases. Sympathetic that empathy and an outward outlook is a challenge even when all other needs are secured, relations, health, and security, Wallace’s delivery acknowledges that so many things that make people feel insecure and precarious in their lives have multiplied whilst the remedies have become staid and perhaps less potent, but no matter how poor, frustrated or bleak things seem we can still afford ourselves the luxury of realising that other ways of seeing are possible and knowing that choices are important and have consequence.

luftwaffenstützpunkt

Having been repeatedly denied access to visit service members stationed at the NATO airbase in İncirlik, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said that his country has been left with no choice other than withdraw troops and materiel and re-station them elsewhere.
Turkish authorities have blocked visits by government officials since last summer’s questionable coup d’etat and Germany’s refusal to extradite political asylum-seekers caught up in the swift and subsequent purge. Relations further degraded thereafter. Defence Minister von der Leyen offered that the some two-hundred fifty personnel and Tornado fighter jets now at the base in southern Turkey (where the US also has a presence of around five-thousand soldiers and airmen with their families and fifty or so nuclear warheads) could be re-deployed to an installation in Jordan but the transition would be costly and hamper joint efforts in the fight against the Cosplay Caliphate.