That's a lot of special equipment & artillery. I wonder if they're doing a combined push & interdiction campaign in the south and how that would work.
Haven't really made many mistakes in my life, so.... red door!
Back to the interdiction campaign?
Miletos was a Greek city in the area that was called Ionia in antiquity, and which is today part of Turkey. The ruins can be visited near the village of Balat, which lies approximately halfway between the holiday islands of Samos and Rhodes.
Like so many other cities in the area, Miletos was founded in prehistoric times, when the Greek tribe called the Ionians colonized the area around 1000 BC. The period from around 1100 BC to 800 BC is often called "The Greek Dark Ages" - and it was indeed a dark time following the total collapse of the Mycenaean civilization.
But after darkness comes light, and from 800 BC and henceforth the Greek cities of Anatolia were very successful in at least one thing; they had children and the children survived. It is believed that the population increased by a minimum of 4% each year.
All those people needed a place to live, and for the Greeks the solution was clear; colonization. From the 8th to the 6th century BC the Greek peoples - the Ionians, Dorians, Achaeans & Aeolians - founded thousands of cities around the Mediterranean (Fig. 1).
More city-states means more trade, and with more trade comes prosperity. And with prosperity comes the energy and time for other pursuits than toiling for your daily bread.
And so, in Miletos around 624 BC, Thales was born - a man who can without exaggeration be called one of the most important people who ever lived.
You see, Thales had a theory:
Everything - EVERYTHING - is made of water!
The earth obviously floats on water, and earthquakes are when the earth is moved by waves. Blood is water, and without blood you die, trees are water, because they grow when they are watered. If you burn off gas, it turns into water, and fog condenses into water. Metal is also a type of water, because when it is heated it melts, and water can clearly condense into earth - you could see this in real time when you looked at the river Meander and how the water over the years condensed and created new earth.
To our modern minds, it seems absurd, of course.
But you need to understand that Thales is the first (at least in the Western tradition) to even consider explaining nature without referring to gods and mythology. Who tried to explain nature with nature, so to speak. And he attempted to do this without having a single scientific or philosophical concept at his disposal.
What an intellectual effort
In that sense, he is the first philosopher - and the first scientist. And by the way, he is also considered to be the first Greek mathematician.
The coin here is a small 9mm silver coin from Miletos, a diobol, with a roaring lion on the front and a sort of star pattern on the back. It weighs only 1.16 grams.
Obverse: Forepart of lion left, head to right
Reverse: Stellate pattern within incuse square
It was struck somewhere between the end of the 6th and the beginning of the 5th century BC. - that is, while Thales was alive.
SNG Kayhan 462-75
I do most of my macro photography with a Nikon d3300 and an old manual lens, a 55/f3.5 Micro-Nikkor P Auto from 1972.
I love it. It will join my repertoire of obnoxious food opinions, like 'a hotdog is a a sandwich' and 'cereal is a cold soup'.
Currently on holiday with the family in France, came across a coin shop and went in to ask if they had ancient coins (not many do). To my delight they did, although in a fairly middle quality.
Still, it was priced fairly and to reward the guy for pulling out the stuff for me I bought this Philip I antoninianus with a victory reverse for 30 euro.
No story today :) Just the coin:
Obverse: Radiate head of Helios facing slightly right
Reverse: APTEMΩN / P-O, rose with bud to right, hook to left; all within incuse square.
Struck 170-150 BC in Rhodes. Struck to the so-called Plinthophoric standard, under the magistrate Artemon.
13.1mm, 1.16g.
Jenkins 50; SNG Helsinki 658. VF
Life and knowing girls?
While it may have its military use, this type of munition will main and kill Ukrainian children for decades after the war.
Things have been super smooth lately, thanks for all the work!
I love this update. Thank you for the effort!
People expect a lucky breakthrough like the Kharkiv offensive, but war at this scale is largely maths and to me it also looks like Ukraine are following their strategy. Many people are so accustomed to conflicts where one power has air superiority that they can't parse what happens when this is not the case.
I'm afraid you're stuck with elitist pricks like me now :p
When I joined reddit more than a decade ago we also had frequent periods of instability, I think this was around the time digg users fled to reddit.
I am confident it'll all be sorted out along the way.
Putting feet there like it's a totally vanilla thing 😐