General

After many years, my view of Carnival has completely changed. Perhaps a few strands of gray hair and a ton of wisdom have helped in the process, as it has been many years since I last enjoyed it as a young person. Here, I divide the subject into two parts, which are very different yet…

“Kauffman began playing with simple mathematical games designed to mimic the interaction of molecules of different kinds on the early Earth, and he made an intriguing discovery. Some molecules act as catalysts—that is, they act to speed up the chemical interactions between others. Molecules of type A, for example, might greatly enhance the rate at…

After starting to read Ubiquity by Mark Buchanan, I came across this reference in the very first chapter to Paul Kennedy’s work on The Rise and Fall of Great Powers: In the very same year that Bak, Tang, and Weisenfeld invented their game, the historian Paul Kennedy published The Rise and Fall of the Great…

Chapter summary of the book – Marx vs Bakunin – “The Ideas of Karl Marx” – Alan Woods — The conflict between Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin within the First International reflects fundamental differences between Marxism and anarchism. While Marx advocated for the centralization of the political struggle and the creation of a workers’ party…

The flourishing of capitalism occurred initially in the Netherlands and Northern Italy due to various geographical, commercial, political, and technical factors, ultimately surpassing the feudal mode of production of the time within a few centuries. Before the advent of capitalism, feudalism was the prevailing system, which had replaced slavery and lasted approximately from the 15th…

According to Oxfam’s most recent report, the fortune of billionaires grew by a total of $2 trillion in 2024, a rate three times faster than in 2023, equivalent to roughly $5.7 billion a day, while there was neither an increase nor a decrease in the global poor population [1]. This last part requires a more…

It should come as no surprise that the firefighters in Los Angeles received a direction to focus their efforts on the homes of the wealthy and famous. It’s likely that some of them questioned why they weren’t helping their fellow citizens. Based on my research, the American fire department has a military-like hierarchy very similar…

An interesting curiosity about Leonardo da Vinci and other great Renaissance artists is the way they produced their works. Often, we are led to believe that these artists were superhuman individuals who, in a burst of creativity, created their works alone. In fact, art production at that time was deeply conditioned by the means of…