Wednesday Whimsy For The Holidays

It’s the end of the year, and I thought I’d highlight some articles I loved and have been saving. There isn’t a real theme, like finance or travel, just pieces I found interesting, and hope you will too.

Consider it my present to you, the reader. Happy Holidays!

The phrase, all roads lead to Rome, gets special treatment in this article from Smithsonian Magazine. We get illustrations of all the roads to Rome, and also some interesting maps looking at the roads to various other capitols.

Staying in Rome, this article from The Verge highlights amazing depictions of Roman emperors. A modern artist transformed old busts and statues, using various computer programs, to generate quite realistic pictures of these long gone men.

Emperors wore the purple, but over the centuries, learning to paint with the color became challenging. Periwinkle, the Color of Poison, Modernism, and Dusk comes from The Paris Review, and is a dreamy tour of art, and colors, and more.

This picture wouldn’t be the same without purple.

Why You Never See Your Friends Anymore, talks about how our work culture is making it harder to stay connected. It appeared in The Atlantic before the pandemic; I wonder what an update from the Zoom pandemic age would look like.

Lastly, I thought this article on The Versailles of Belarus, from The Daily Beast, was a fascinating look at a forgotten (nearly erased) history spanning centuries from the Easternmost parts of Europe.