Researchers discovered hundreds of butterflies that had died or were dying in January 2024 near an overwintering site, where insects spend winter months. The butterflies were found twitching or dead in piles, which are common signs of neurotoxic pesticide poisoning, researchers wrote.
Testing of 10 of the insects revealed an average of seven pesticides in each, and at levels that researchers suspect were lethal. Proving that pesticides kill butterflies in the wild is a challenge because it is difficult to find and test them soon after they die. Though the sample size is limited, the authors wrote, the findings provide “meaningful insight” into the die-off and broader population decline.
Interesting. With a little luck, the impending global economic disruptions might slow down the global goliath just enough here and there to buy us some time to start solving a couple of problems.
“After the fall of Rome, people actually got taller and healthier,” he says.
There’s no question the rise of Rome actually came at the expense of countless people, but I don’t think it’s at all accurate to view its fall simply as a burden being lifted from them either.
Honestly, this is a very interesting debate of large-scale historical studies - whether or not “civilization” is all it’s cracked up to be… The going wisdom for much of the modern era of historical study was that large-scale civilizations were a net win for humanity and with it, life is nasty, brutish, and short…but in more recent years, there has been push back on that bit of “common sense” wisdom. This guy has certainly taken the maximalist position in the other direction (I’m guessing he probably cites David Graeber at least once in that book, since his work leans in that direction).
Personally, I’m of the mind that large-scale societies aren’t necessarily oppressive, but there is a strong case to be made that they often are oppressive.
As for the fall of Rome, I heard something about it on the radio or on a youtube video recently (can’t remember where) that noted that it did not just end… that people only realized it ended (in the west, anyway, as the eastern empire carried on in one form or another until the end of the ottomans, I’d argue) later, as it was a slowish kind of decline over several centuries vs. a quick end. And I’d guess that the health and height of Roman subjects fluctuated over the length of the empire, and depending on who you were within the class system of the empire…
The series I linked goes into a little of that. How many of the changes were actually things that happened over centuries and how much continuity there actually was. Even so, the population of urban centers definitely ended up collapsing and it does not look like it was because everyone became happy farmers.
Whether the benefits that Rome brought people were worth the cost is a different question. Obviously they weren’t for people like the Eburones.
