"The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
A dog rules a farm.
A fox rules a bush.
A wolf rules a forest.
A lion rules a jungle.
A fish rules a pond.
A crocodile rules a river.
A shark rules a sea.
A whale rules an ocean.
Matshona Dhliwayo
This is cool: Maria Popova & indie bookstore chain McNally Jackson are collaborating on publishing a selection of “forgotten masterworks that deserve a second life”
Archaeologists uncover 7,000-year-old settlement near Prague during road construction
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The murex snail was once the most
valuable resource in the world. Over 3,600 years ago, Phoenicians
(ancient Lebanese) from Tyre discovered that boiling parts of sea snails
yielded a dye known as Tyrian purple. The result was magic. Unlike other
colours, Tyrian purple intensified with wear—a quality so remarkable that
only the highest born (think Cleopatra and Caesar) were deemed fit to
‘wear the purple.’ Tens of thousands of snails were crushed to stain a
single swatch of fabric—a slaughter so all-encompassing that the murex
vanished from the Mediterranean shore. The Phoenicians killed their
golden goose. Tyre never recovered the wealth and status it had once
enjoyed.
Many businesses today make the same mistake. Like the Roman emperor who
never thought of the snail behind his rarefied cloak, they fail to
internalise the lesson that long-term prosperity depends on
well-functioning ecosystems. Everything we produce—from chocolate to
microchips—relies on the health of the air, soil, water, plants and
animals hiding in plain sight.
"Our young people are shaping the future. Do we want them to be afraid to express their ideas? Do we want them to be afraid to explore, to invent, to challenge the status quo? Do we want them to be afraid of being who they are?"
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