Here in Atlanta, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum has been part of my daily life for years. Parks and trails surrounding the center connect my neighborhood to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park downtown and everything in between.At the end of December 2024, thousands of people walked to the library to pay their respects to the former president as he lay in repose. The cold, snow and darkness of the evening were a stark contrast to the warmth of the volunteers who welcomed us in. Our visit spiraled through galleries exhibiting records of Carters life, achievements and lifelong work promoting democracy around the world.U.S. presidents have been building libraries for more than 100 years, starting with Rutherford B. Hayes. But the urge to shape ones legacy by building a library runs much deeper. As a scholar of libraries in the Greek and Roman world, I was struck by the similarities between presidential and ancient libraries some of which were explicitly designed to honor deceased sponsors and played a significant role in their cities.Trajans libraryThe Ulpian Library, a great library in the center of Rome, was founded by Emperor Trajan, who ruled around the turn of the second century C.E. Referenced often by ancient authors, it could have been the first such memorial library.Today, someone visiting Rome can visit Trajans Column, a roughly 100-foot monument to his military and engineering achievements after conquering Dacia, part of present-day Romania. A frieze spirals from bottom to top of the column, depicting his exploits. The monument now stands on its own. Originally, however, it was nestled in a courtyard between two halls of the Ulpian Library complex.Trajans Column now stands at the center of Rome. [Photo: Olivier Giboulot/Unsplash]Most of what scholars know about the librarys architecture comes from remains of the west hall, an elongated room almost 80 feet long, whose walls were lined with rectangular niches and framed by a colonnade. The niches were lined with marble and appear to have had doors; this is where the books would have been placed. Writers from the first few centuries C.E. describe the library having archival documents about the emperor and the empire, including books made of linen and books bound with ivory.Trajan dedicated the column in 113 C.E. but died four years later, before the library was complete. Hadrian, his adoptive son and successor, oversaw the shipment of Trajans cremated remains back to Rome, where they were placed in Trajans Column. Hadrian completed the surrounding library complex in 128 C.E. and dedicated it with two identical funerary inscriptions to his adopted parents, Trajan and Plotina. Scholars Roberto Egidi and Silvia Orlandi have argued that Trajans remains could later have been transferred from the column into the library hall.Memorial modelEither way, I would argue that Trajans decision to have his remains included in the library complex, instead of in an imperial mausoleum, established a model adopted by other officials at a smaller scale. In the eastern side of the Roman empire what is now Turkey at least two other library-mausoleum buildings have been identified.One is the library at Nysa on the Maeander, a Hellenistic city named for the nearby river. Under the floor of its entry porch is a sarcophagus with the remains of a man and a woman, possibly the dedicators, that dates to the second century C.E., the time of Hadrians reign.The ruins of the library at Nysa on the Maeander [Photo: Myrsini Mamoli]Another is the Library of Celsus, the most recognizable ancient library today, found in the ancient city of Ephesus. Named after a regional Roman consul and proconsul during the reign of Trajan, the building was founded by Celsus son, designed as both a place of learning and a mausoleum.The librarys ornate, sculpted facade contained life-size female statues, making it an immediately recognizable landmark. Inscriptions identify the statues as the personifications of Celsus character, elevating him into a role model: virtue, intelligence, knowledge and wisdom.Upon entering the room, the funerary character of the library became quite literal. The hall was designed like the Ulpian Library, but a door gave access to a crypt underneath. This held the marble sarcophagus with the remains of Celsus, the patron of the library. The sarcophagus itself was visible from the hall, if one stood in front of the central apse and looked down through two slits in the podium.An endowment covered the librarys operational expenses in ancient times, as well as annual commemorations on Celsus birthday, including the wreathing of the busts and statues and the purchasing of additional books.The life-size statues on the facade of the Library of Celsus [Photo: Myrsini Mamoli]Power and knowledgeThese two provincial libraries highlight how sponsors hoped to be associated with the virtues a library fosters. Books represent knowledge, and by dedicating a library, one asserted his possession of it. Providing access to learning was an instrument of power on its own.Beyond the handful of memorial libraries, many other ancient Roman public libraries were great cultural centers, including the Forum of Peace in Rome, dedicated by Emperor Vespasian; the Library of Hadrian in Athens; and the Gymnasium in Side, a city in present-day Turkey.The most magnificent libraries combined access to manuscripts and artworks with spaces for meetings and lectures. Several had great leisure areas, including landscaped sculptural gardens with elaborate water features and colonnaded walkways. Literary sources and material evidence testify to the treasures that were held there: busts of philosophers, poets and other accomplished literary figures; statues of gods, heroes and emperors; treasures confiscated as spoils of war and exhibited in Rome.A model of how Hadrians Library may have looked, complete with a landscaped courtyard. [Photo: Joris/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA]Like the Ulpian Library itself, they continued the long tradition of Hellenistic public libraries, established by the most famous library of antiquity: the Library of Alexandria. Founded and lavishly endowed by the Hellenistic kings of Egypt, the Ptolemies, the building was meant to portray the king as a patron of intellectual activities and a powerful ruler, collecting knowledge from conquered civilizations.In ancient Greece and Rome, anybody who could read had access to public libraries. Rules of use varied: For example, literary sources imply that the Ulpian Library in Rome was a borrowing library, whereas an inscription from the Library of Pantainos in Athens explicitly forbid any book to be taken out.But these buildings were also meant to shape their sponsors legacies, portraying them as benevolent and learned. Presidential libraries in the United States today follow the same principle: They become monuments to the former presidents, while giving back to their local communities.Myrsini Mamoli is a lecturer of architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Sophia Rosenfeld is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at the University of Pennsylvania. Her previous books include the award-winning titleCommon Sense: A Political History. Her writing has appeared in scholarly journals, such as theAmerican Historical Reviewand theJournal of Modern History, as well as in media publications including theNew York Times,the Washington Post, andThe Nation.Whats the big idea?There is such a thing as too many options. Nowhere is freedom-as-choice and choice-as-freedom more evident than in the United States. As important as the right to choose has been in various emancipation movements, there is a point at which choice can become a trap that goes too far.Below, Sophia shares five key insights from her new book,The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life.Listen to the audio versionread by Sophia herselfin the Next Big Idea App.1. Having choices makes us feel free.Have you recently picked somethinganything? Maybe a kind of sandwich, a political candidate, or a movie to watch from the comfort of your couch? Did you first consult a menu of options and decide which appealed to you? That answer is probablyyesbecause this kind of choice-making is routine these days. I am also going to guess that the opportunity to make a choice was valuable to you, even if it didnt fully register at the time.When we make a menu-based choice, most of us experience it as a kind of freedom. At that moment, no one is telling us what to do, and we get what we want. Sometimes, we even feel we are defining ourselves in the process as distinctive people with distinctive tastes: vegetarians vs. meat eaters, fans of simple fare vs. foodies, etc. The same goes for choice-making about everything from ideas and beliefs to jobs, dates, or spouses.Choiceis where political life, democracy, and consumer culture converge.This is constantly being reinforced in our way of talking. Constitutions produced around the globe ever since the Second World War reflect this. You could also look at billboards and see this, too. The right to choose has become enshrined in everything from bills of rights to advertisements. For most of us, having options and being able to act on them in keeping with our desires is what feeling free (nowadays) is all about.2. People always have as many choicesand they probably didnt care.Exaltation of choice for choices sake, or choice as the key sign of autonomy, is relatively new. Just a few centuries ago, being at the top of the social scale meantnothaving to worry about what to own, where to live, whom to marry, what to believe, or who should rule. These questions were, ideally, already settled, sometimes from birth. You can probably imagine how this must have been a sort of privilege, as it meant a life without constant hustling. Choice didnt have the special status it has today for men or, especially, women.Freedom was imagined differently. In the era of slavery and more rigid class structures, it had more to do with living without being dominated by someone else and with doing, of ones own volition, what was right rather than wrong. We might say that the emergence of individualized and largely value-neutral choice as a stand-in for freedom isreallythe story of the development of modern life around much of the globe. It is the story of how we learned to shop, read selectively, choose a place of worship, pick dance partners and then life partners, vote in elections, and participate in the invention of whole fields of studylike psychology or economicsthat explore how or why or when we make the choices we do.We tend to see our attachment to choice as natural, maybe even biological, rather than something particular to our historical moment.This story of how choice became the modern form of freedom has never been fully told or even recognized. Thats because we tend to see our attachment to choice as natural, maybe even biological, rather than something particular to our historical moment. However, once we see that we liveuniquelyin an age of choice as a result of historical factors, we also start to notice the many consequences of this development on how we live today.3. Freedom of choice requires a lot of (largely invisible) rules.As choices have grown across all kinds of sectors, from romance to politics to decorating your house, they have required new technologies to make them work. Think of catalogues, sample books, ballots, surveys, and all their internet counterparts, which require a display of all the available possibilities along with ways to register ones selections. The steady proliferation in both choice-making situations and choices themselves has demanded the invention of ever more rules about who can choose what and when and how. Selecting a sandwich off a menu posted behind a lunch counter paradoxically requires all kinds of largely invisible regulations that have also grown with time, from rules about the safety of the products one is picking amongst, to rules about what happens to the money you hand over in exchange for your turkey club, to rules about how to line up to register ones choice in the first place.So-called free markets only work when laws of various kindsthemselves designed by a host of choice architects, in the lingo of behavioral economistsemerge to help make the whole business run smoothly. This kind of freedom to do or select what matches ones preferences is generally only available in our hours not on the job, or so-called free time. It is also always restricted to some people rather than others: people with money, people of a certain age, people who are citizens or residents, people of one sex rather than the other. Choice isalwaysa limited form of freedom insofar as it requires other constraints, formal and informal, to be operable.4. Choice can be a trap with negative repercussions.Most of us, rightly, dont want to relinquish any of our existing freedom to choose. There is good reason why having choices is associated with human rights protections and global happiness indexes. It is hard for most Americans to imagine the benefits of arranged marriages, or a political system without secret, individualized voting, or a world of provisioning rather than supermarkets, even though these are relatively recent developments in the broad sweep of history.But, then again, we rarely stop to look at the downsides of our reliance on and faith in choice. Humans are limited in our ability to make good choices, as psychologists often tell us, because we fail to really know our own minds. We are also made anxious by having too many choices since we cant predict their outcomes and know we are likely to wonder if we picked wrong afterward. Who cant relate to that feeling of slight panic and sometimes paralysis at the very 21st-century scenario of being confronted with too many options and too little guidance about how to discriminate among them, whether in real life or online?Choice isalwaysa limited form of freedom insofar as it requires other constraints, formal and informal, to be operable.All this stress on individual choice means we often end up blaming peopleespecially disadvantaged people who face few or only bad choicesfor outcomes that might not be entirely their fault. Is it really a bad choice, suggestive of criminality, to try crossing a border illegally if one is stuck in a war-torn nation with no other possibilities for moving elsewhere?We get so caught up in considering our own options for fulfillment that we become incapable of considering how to achieve something in our collective interest, like clean air, water, or a solution to the refugee problem. In such cases, having more choices doesnt enhance our freedom and well-being on an individual or societal level.And for all its global appeal, not least under the guise of feminism, commitment to choice has also become a potent source of resentment in places and subcultures that do not accept that this central capitalist-democratic value should be a goal unto itself or that feel left out of its operation. Thats one reason political fights often revolve around the question of what choices should be available to whom, especially when it comes to women and their reproductive lives.5. Knowing when to advocate for enhanced choices, and when not, could benefit us.This isnt a brief for getting rid of choice, but we should be more attentive to when choice meets our needs and when it doesnt or wont. For example, we might find scenarios where we want fewer rather than more choices as consumers. Who wouldnt prefer a single good-quality, mandated health insurance plan over picking between nine different market options, all with different contingency plans, which we have no way of foreseeing if they will match our future needs?As voters, we might want to take some options off the table entirely. I can imagine deciding we want to live in a world that doesnt offer civilians the option of buying certain kinds of military-grade weapons, just as we prohibit the option of buying children or bodily organs or dangerous drugs or driving without passing a special test. We might even decide there are some scenarios in which we need to limit the choices of some people to increase the choices of others.Looking to history helps us see how choice came to occupy the importance and high status it has today. We can trace its development from the first want ads for spouses in the 18th century to Tinder today. History also shows where and how we risk going overboard, especially in the United States, where freedom-as-choice and choice-as-freedom are most evident. This inquiry is equally vital for ordinary people, business leaders, and policymakers.Thats especially true at this moment, when artificial intelligence is being developed to grow our choices further and also to tailor those choices to individualsthus shaping and constraining which options we pick. We need to remain aware that the promise of choice has been critical to many emancipation movements, from abolitionism to feminism, and has given people new possibilities for how to live. Still, it is time we got past the idea that choice is either cost-free or always the solution, never the problem. Think about this fact next time you find yourself in front of any kind of menu.Thisarticleoriginally appeared in theNext Big Idea Clubmagazine and is reprinted with permission.

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html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"Bangkok-based architecture practice Unknown Surface Studio has designed a dining cafe that blooms in an industrial landscape of Bangkok, Thailand.Named Curvy Dining, the 250-square-metre cafe is located in Soi Srinakarin-Rom Klao 19, Bangkok. The project is a delicate white dining caf that is emerging within an industrial landscape.With this contribution, a large, boundary-free space is transformed into a standalone dining caf that is carefully planned to promote a smooth interaction between architecture and the natural world.The caf creates a welcoming atmosphere that blurs the boundaries between the constructed form and the surrounding environment by striking a balance between enclosure and openness.Taking cues from the flowers that grow organically there, the project transforms organic patterns into space arrangements, embodying the idea of blooming, according to Unknown Surface Studio.By beginning with a single point, growing outward, and developing into a structured yet flowing architectural shape, the design distills the essence of a flower's radial symmetry into a geometric language. By refining natural curves, this abstraction technique creates a rhythmic play of radial patterns and sunburst lines that slightly imitate moving petals.The outside boundary uses a squared framework to provide contrast and give the otherwise open landscape a feeling of definition.Nonetheless, the circulation of the caf is designed using a subtractive method; portions are hollowed away to define movement, resulting in a gradual revelation as patrons travel around the outside spaces.These walkways wind through green areas, creating an auto-landscape impression where natural light and architecture blend together harmoniously.Floor planSectionElevationDiagramProject factsProject name:Curvy DiningCompletion year:2025Scale:250m2Project location:Krungthep Kreetha, Bangkok, ThailandArchitecture firm:Unknown Surface StudioLead architects:Cievanard Nattabowonphal, Piyanat Songkhorh, Nonglak BoonsaengAll images Rungkit Charoenwat.All drawings Unknown Surface Studio.> via Unknown Surface Studio

See at Sling TV Watch the Premier League on USA Network from $40 a month Sling TV See at Sling TV See more details See at ExpressVPN Best VPN for streaming ExpressVPN See at ExpressVPN See more details See at TNT Sport Watch over 50 Premier League games live in the UK with TNT Sports TNT Sports See at TNT Sport See more details See at Fubo Watch the Premier League in Canada from CA$30 per month Fubo Canada See at Fubo See more details See at Optus Watch the Premier League in Australia from AU$7 a month Optus Sport See at Optus See more details Table of Contents Everton will be hoping to make it six games unbeaten in the English Premier League on Saturday as David Moyes welcomes his old team Man United to Goodison Park.The Toffees' recovery under Moyes has been as impressive as it has been immediate. The Merseysiders are now 13 points clear of the relegation zone and looking upwards toward midtable security.Up next for Moyes is a club that looks dysfunctional both on and off the pitch. A point and a place behind Everton in 15th, Ruben Amorim's Man United look even less assured than during the ill-fated Erik ten Hag era at Old Trafford. They desperately need a win today to stabilize.Everton take on Manchester United on Saturday, Feb. 22 at Goodison Park in Liverpool, with kickoff set for 12:30 p.m. GMTlocal time. That makes it a 7:30 a.m. ET or 4:30 a.m. PTstart in the US and Canada, and an 11:30p.m. AEDTkickoff in Australia.Below, we'll outline the best live TV streaming services to use to watch the match as it happens, wherever you are in the world. Ruben Amorim's Man United have lost eight of their 12 league games since beating Everton 4-0 at Old Trafford back in December. James Gill/Danehouse/Getty ImagesHow to watch Everton vs. Man United in the US without cableSaturday's Everton vs. Man United game will be broadcast on USA Network, which you can access as part of your cable package or at theNBC Sports websitewith a valid login. It can also be streamed via Sling TV and other, more expensive streaming TV services. Sling TV/CNET Sling TV's Blue plan includes USA Network, making it a great option for fans wanting to watch Premier League action. It's $40 a month and features over 40 channels, including other sports channels like ESPN and FS1.Read our Sling TV review. See at Sling TV How to watch the Premier League 2024-25 season from anywhere with a VPNIf you find yourself unable to view EPL matches locally, you may need a different way to watch the games -- that's where using a VPN can come in handy. A VPN is also the best way to stop your ISP from throttling your speeds on game day by encrypting your traffic, and it's also a great idea if you're traveling and find yourself connected to a Wi-Fi network, and you want to add an extra layer of privacy for your devices and logins.With a VPN, you're able to virtually change your location on your phone, tablet or laptop to get access to the game. Most VPNs, like our Editors' Choice, ExpressVPN, make it really easy to do this.Using a VPN to watch or stream sports is legal in any country where VPNs are legal, including the US, UK and Canada, as long as you have a legitimate subscription to the service you're streaming. You should be sure your VPN is set up correctly to prevent leaks: Even where VPNs are legal, the streaming service may terminate the account of anyone it deems to be circumventing correctly applied blackout restrictions. James Martin/CNET 2024 Price $13 per month, $100 for the first 15 months (then $117 per year) or $140 for the first 28 months (then $150 per year)Latest Tests DNS leaks detected, 35% speed loss in 2025 testsNetwork 3,000 plus servers in 105 countriesJurisdiction British Virgin Islands ExpressVPN isour current best VPN pickfor people who want a reliable and safe VPN, and it works on a variety of devices. It's normally $13 a month, but if you sign up for an annual subscription for $100 you'll get three months free and save 49%. That's the equivalent of $6.67 a month.Note that ExpressVPN offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. See at ExpressVPN Livestream Everton vs. Man United in the UKToday's match at Goodison is exclusive to TNT Sports, and the game will be shown on its TNT Sports 1 and TNT Sports 1 HD channels as well as TNT Sport Ultra channel in 4K UHD. TNT Sports TNT Sports is offering a sizable 52 matches exclusively live this season to viewers in the UK. You can access TNT Sports via Sky Q as a TV package, as well as the option of streaming online. It costs 31 either way and comes in a package that includes the Discovery Plus library of documentary content. See at TNT Sport Livestream Everton vs. Man United in CanadaIf you want to stream this EPL game live in Canada, you'll need to subscribe to Fubo Canada. The service has exclusive rights to every Premier League fixture once again this season. Fubo Fubo is the go-to destination for Canadians looking to watch the EPL this season, with exclusive streaming rights to every match. It costs CA$30 a month, though you can save some cash by paying quarterly or annually. See at Fubo Livestream Everton vs. Man United in AustraliaFootball fans down under can watch EPL matches live on streaming service Optus Sport, which is showing every Premier League game of the 2024-25 season live in Australia. Optus With exclusive rights to stream all EPL matches live this season, as well as German Bundesliga and Spanish La Liga games, streaming service Optus Sport is a particularly big draw for Aussie soccer fans.If you're already an Optus network customer, you can bag Optus Sport for a reduced price, with discounts bringing the price down to as low as AU$7 a month. If you're not, a standalone monthly subscription to the service starts at AU$25. See at Optus Quick tips for streaming the Premier League using a VPNWith four variables at play -- your ISP, browser, video streaming provider and VPN -- your experience and success when streaming EPL matches may vary.If you don't see your desired location as a default option for ExpressVPN, try using the "search for city or country" option.If you're having trouble getting the game after you've turned on your VPN and set it to the correct viewing area, there are two things you can try for a quick fix. First, log into your streaming service subscription account and make sure the address registered for the account is an address in the correct viewing area. If not, you may need to change the physical address on file with your account. Second, some smart TVs -- like Roku -- don't have VPN apps you can install directly on the device itself. Instead, you'll have to install the VPN on your router or the mobile hotspot you're using (like your phone) so that any device on its Wi-Fi network now appears in the correct viewing location.All of the VPN providers we recommend have helpful instructions on their main site for quickly installing the VPN on your router. In some cases with smart TV services, after you install a cable network's sports app, you'll be asked to verify a numeric code or click a link sent to your email address on file for your smart TV. This is where having a VPN on your router will also help, since both devices will appear to be in the correct location.And remember, browsers can often give away a location despite using a VPN, so be sure you're using a privacy-first browser to log into your services. We normally recommendBrave.

CNET's connectivity experts have done the legwork to identify which ISPs offer the best internet speeds, prices and coverage in Moreno Valley.

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