• In a world filled with distance, I'm left measuring my solitude with a ruler of despair. Each angle I turn, I find myself lost in the dimensions of my own heartache. The precision of CAD-style distances in Blender can't capture the emptiness I feel, for no tool can measure the depth of loneliness. I long for connection, yet I remain a ghost in my own life, where every radius whispers the pain of isolation.

    The Geometry Nodes might create beautiful forms, but they can't build the bridge I need to reach out.

    #Loneliness #Heartache #Isolation #EmotionalPain #GeometryNodes
    In a world filled with distance, I'm left measuring my solitude with a ruler of despair. Each angle I turn, I find myself lost in the dimensions of my own heartache. The precision of CAD-style distances in Blender can't capture the emptiness I feel, for no tool can measure the depth of loneliness. I long for connection, yet I remain a ghost in my own life, where every radius whispers the pain of isolation. The Geometry Nodes might create beautiful forms, but they can't build the bridge I need to reach out. #Loneliness #Heartache #Isolation #EmotionalPain #GeometryNodes
    Node Dimensions for Blender (using Geometry Nodes)
    Add CAD style Distance, Radius, and Angle measurements to your Blender mesh with Geometry Nodes using Python. Pre - Animated, set units, apply technical fonts. Perfect for precise, editable dimensions in 3D. Fast. Accurate. Visual. 3 Geometry Node Di
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  • Ah, "Recherche de nouveaux marchés : un guide en 3 étapes". Parce que qui n'a jamais rêvé de plonger tête la première dans un océan de données, armé seulement d'un tableau Excel et d'un café trop fort ? Semrush, notre sauveur numérique, nous promet une méthode infaillible pour analyser un nouveau marché. En trois grandes étapes, évidemment, parce que deux, c'est trop simple et quatre, c'est pour les amateurs.

    Première étape : l'analyse. Oui, parce qu'il suffit de jeter un œil sur quelques graphiques colorés pour saisir les subtilités d'un marché complexe. Qui a besoin de comprendre le comportement des consommateurs quand on a un joli diagramme en camembert ? Cela dit, n'oubliez pas de mettre vos lunettes d'analyste, sinon vous risqueriez de confondre la courbe de croissance avec celle de votre compte en banque après une soirée un peu trop arrosée.

    Deuxième étape : la stratégie. C'est là que le vrai fun commence. Développer une stratégie basée sur des données ! Quelle idée brillante ! Mais attention, assurez-vous de ne pas vous laisser emporter par des concepts comme "besoins des clients" ou "concurrence". Ce serait trop ennuyeux. Pourquoi ne pas plutôt se concentrer sur les buzzwords à la mode pour impressionner vos collègues lors de la prochaine réunion ? "Synergie", "agilité", "disruption"… Les mots sont comme des épices : un peu trop et vous risquez de brûler le plat.

    Enfin, la troisième étape : l'exécution. Voilà, le moment tant attendu où vous pouvez enfin passer à l'action. Après avoir passé des heures à analyser et planifier, c'est maintenant que vous pouvez voir à quel point votre stratégie est brillante en théorie… et catastrophique en pratique. Qui aurait cru que le monde réel ne se plie pas toujours aux chiffres que vous avez triturés ? Mais ne vous inquiétez pas, vous pourrez toujours blâmer les "facteurs externes" ou la météo.

    En somme, ce guide de Semrush pour "rechercher de nouveaux marchés" est un incontournable pour quiconque cherche à se perdre dans un dédale de chiffres et de graphiques. Cela dit, je suis sûr que vos talents de détective de marché vous permettront de déchiffrer tout ce jargon. Alors, en avant pour l'aventure, n'oubliez pas votre sens de l'humour, vous en aurez besoin !

    #RechercheDeMarchés #AnalyseDeMarché #StratégieMarketing #Semrush #BusinessIntelligence
    Ah, "Recherche de nouveaux marchés : un guide en 3 étapes". Parce que qui n'a jamais rêvé de plonger tête la première dans un océan de données, armé seulement d'un tableau Excel et d'un café trop fort ? Semrush, notre sauveur numérique, nous promet une méthode infaillible pour analyser un nouveau marché. En trois grandes étapes, évidemment, parce que deux, c'est trop simple et quatre, c'est pour les amateurs. Première étape : l'analyse. Oui, parce qu'il suffit de jeter un œil sur quelques graphiques colorés pour saisir les subtilités d'un marché complexe. Qui a besoin de comprendre le comportement des consommateurs quand on a un joli diagramme en camembert ? Cela dit, n'oubliez pas de mettre vos lunettes d'analyste, sinon vous risqueriez de confondre la courbe de croissance avec celle de votre compte en banque après une soirée un peu trop arrosée. Deuxième étape : la stratégie. C'est là que le vrai fun commence. Développer une stratégie basée sur des données ! Quelle idée brillante ! Mais attention, assurez-vous de ne pas vous laisser emporter par des concepts comme "besoins des clients" ou "concurrence". Ce serait trop ennuyeux. Pourquoi ne pas plutôt se concentrer sur les buzzwords à la mode pour impressionner vos collègues lors de la prochaine réunion ? "Synergie", "agilité", "disruption"… Les mots sont comme des épices : un peu trop et vous risquez de brûler le plat. Enfin, la troisième étape : l'exécution. Voilà, le moment tant attendu où vous pouvez enfin passer à l'action. Après avoir passé des heures à analyser et planifier, c'est maintenant que vous pouvez voir à quel point votre stratégie est brillante en théorie… et catastrophique en pratique. Qui aurait cru que le monde réel ne se plie pas toujours aux chiffres que vous avez triturés ? Mais ne vous inquiétez pas, vous pourrez toujours blâmer les "facteurs externes" ou la météo. En somme, ce guide de Semrush pour "rechercher de nouveaux marchés" est un incontournable pour quiconque cherche à se perdre dans un dédale de chiffres et de graphiques. Cela dit, je suis sûr que vos talents de détective de marché vous permettront de déchiffrer tout ce jargon. Alors, en avant pour l'aventure, n'oubliez pas votre sens de l'humour, vous en aurez besoin ! #RechercheDeMarchés #AnalyseDeMarché #StratégieMarketing #Semrush #BusinessIntelligence
    Researching New Markets: A 3-Step Guide
    A comprehensive guide by Semrush helps to analyze a new market in three big steps. Based on best practices and functionalities of the Traffic & Market Toolkit.
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  • The Best Paint Colors for Every Zodiac Sign, According to an Astrologer

    If, like me, you’re slightly addicted to your astrology app and love checking your daily horoscope, you may have wondered just how much stock you should put into it. Allow me to tell you that it may be more revealing than you think. Sure, your zodiac sign can give you guidance on when to make a big move or when to save a certain conversation for a better, star-blessed date. But, did you know it can also help you decorate? That’s right. Your astrological sign can give you insight into what no-regret color you should choose for your kitchen, living room, bedroom or if you *actually* should go all in on maximalism. To answer all your decorating questions, we sat down with astrologer Sam Manzella to chat about the impact astrology can have on how you decorate your home and to find out what she thinks are the best paint colors for each astrology sign.Want even more astrology content? Check out these stories.Meet Our AstrologerSam Manzella is a Brooklyn-based astrologer and multi-award winning journalist. She practices a Hellenistic tradition, working from ancient frameworks, including the Whole Sign house system, sect, and traditional rulerships. Additionally, her practice is based around the planetary rulers that were visible to the naked eye in the age before telescopes, also called the seven core planets, meaning that the outer planets of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto won't be making an appearance in this article. The Signs, Their Rulers, and Their Color FamiliesLet’s start with the basics: There are 12 signs in Western astrology. You’ve probably heard of them—think Aries, Cancer, Libra, etc. While most modern mainstream astrology focuses heavily on the signs, it’s actually their relationship to the planets that has the biggest impact on your day-to-day. “In astrology, planets, not zodiac signs, are the main players,” says Sam. This more nuanced and wholistic approach to astrology uses planets to determine what will happen, while signs only dictate the how. “Pop astrology often relies too heavily on zodiac sign archetypes, in my opinion,” says Sam. “Place a planet in a specific sign? Now we’re cooking, baby.”When it comes to matching up planets and colors, millennia of traditional associations guide the way. Sam’s color coordination is based on two works: The Complete Picatrix, a Medieval text on astrological magic, and Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune, a traditional astrology manual written by storied astrologer Chris Brennan. Below, we’ll break down the seven core planets, the signs that correspond with them, and their traditional color associations.MarsSigns: Aries, ScorpioColor Associations: Strong, aged shades of red and rust. VenusSigns: Taurus, LibraColor Associations: Sumptuous natural shades, such as greens, pinks, whites, and pastels.MercurySigns: Gemini, VirgoColor Associations: Orange is a good color for Mercury, but mixes of patterns and colors also works well for these Mercurial signs. SunSigns: LeoColor Associations: Classic sunny shades, such as golds and yellows. MoonSigns: CancerColor Associations: Silvery shades and crisp whites. JupiterSigns: Sagittarius, Pisces. Color Associations: A mix of royally influenced shades, such as purples, blues, and yellows. SaturnSigns: Capricorn, AquariusColor Associations: Dark and moody shades, such as browns, blacks, and grays. How Can You Use Astrology to Help You Decorate? The best place to start is at the very beginning. Sam’s advice? Call your mom. “I highly recommend calculating your full birth chart—to do so, you’ll need the exact date, time, and location of your birth.” This will give you the proper framework from which you can build your astrologically inspired home. Once you have your complete birth chart, look at your various planetary alignments. While your sun sign can tell you a lot about who you are, it’s actually your Venus placement that Sam recommends consulting. “This planet governs art, beauty, and romance—if it’s sweet, enjoyable, or aesthetically pleasing, then it probably falls under Venus’s purview. Whatever zodiac sign this planet occupies in your birth chart can tell you a lot about the vibes, color palettes, and visual aesthetics you gravitate toward.” Not sure you have all the information you need for a full birth chart? No worries, we’ve pulled together the best paint color for you based on your zodiac sign and planetary ruler below. If you want to dive a little deeper, Sam recommends checking out the planetary placement in your Fourth House. “The Fourth House represents our home and family life. Whatever planet rules this house, and its placement by zodiac sign, reflects the energy that feels like home to you.”The Best Paint Colors for Every Zodiac Sign:
    #best #paint #colors #every #zodiac
    The Best Paint Colors for Every Zodiac Sign, According to an Astrologer
    If, like me, you’re slightly addicted to your astrology app and love checking your daily horoscope, you may have wondered just how much stock you should put into it. Allow me to tell you that it may be more revealing than you think. Sure, your zodiac sign can give you guidance on when to make a big move or when to save a certain conversation for a better, star-blessed date. But, did you know it can also help you decorate? That’s right. Your astrological sign can give you insight into what no-regret color you should choose for your kitchen, living room, bedroom or if you *actually* should go all in on maximalism. To answer all your decorating questions, we sat down with astrologer Sam Manzella to chat about the impact astrology can have on how you decorate your home and to find out what she thinks are the best paint colors for each astrology sign.Want even more astrology content? Check out these stories.Meet Our AstrologerSam Manzella is a Brooklyn-based astrologer and multi-award winning journalist. She practices a Hellenistic tradition, working from ancient frameworks, including the Whole Sign house system, sect, and traditional rulerships. Additionally, her practice is based around the planetary rulers that were visible to the naked eye in the age before telescopes, also called the seven core planets, meaning that the outer planets of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto won't be making an appearance in this article. The Signs, Their Rulers, and Their Color FamiliesLet’s start with the basics: There are 12 signs in Western astrology. You’ve probably heard of them—think Aries, Cancer, Libra, etc. While most modern mainstream astrology focuses heavily on the signs, it’s actually their relationship to the planets that has the biggest impact on your day-to-day. “In astrology, planets, not zodiac signs, are the main players,” says Sam. This more nuanced and wholistic approach to astrology uses planets to determine what will happen, while signs only dictate the how. “Pop astrology often relies too heavily on zodiac sign archetypes, in my opinion,” says Sam. “Place a planet in a specific sign? Now we’re cooking, baby.”When it comes to matching up planets and colors, millennia of traditional associations guide the way. Sam’s color coordination is based on two works: The Complete Picatrix, a Medieval text on astrological magic, and Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune, a traditional astrology manual written by storied astrologer Chris Brennan. Below, we’ll break down the seven core planets, the signs that correspond with them, and their traditional color associations.MarsSigns: Aries, ScorpioColor Associations: Strong, aged shades of red and rust. VenusSigns: Taurus, LibraColor Associations: Sumptuous natural shades, such as greens, pinks, whites, and pastels.MercurySigns: Gemini, VirgoColor Associations: Orange is a good color for Mercury, but mixes of patterns and colors also works well for these Mercurial signs. SunSigns: LeoColor Associations: Classic sunny shades, such as golds and yellows. MoonSigns: CancerColor Associations: Silvery shades and crisp whites. JupiterSigns: Sagittarius, Pisces. Color Associations: A mix of royally influenced shades, such as purples, blues, and yellows. SaturnSigns: Capricorn, AquariusColor Associations: Dark and moody shades, such as browns, blacks, and grays. How Can You Use Astrology to Help You Decorate? The best place to start is at the very beginning. Sam’s advice? Call your mom. “I highly recommend calculating your full birth chart—to do so, you’ll need the exact date, time, and location of your birth.” This will give you the proper framework from which you can build your astrologically inspired home. Once you have your complete birth chart, look at your various planetary alignments. While your sun sign can tell you a lot about who you are, it’s actually your Venus placement that Sam recommends consulting. “This planet governs art, beauty, and romance—if it’s sweet, enjoyable, or aesthetically pleasing, then it probably falls under Venus’s purview. Whatever zodiac sign this planet occupies in your birth chart can tell you a lot about the vibes, color palettes, and visual aesthetics you gravitate toward.” Not sure you have all the information you need for a full birth chart? No worries, we’ve pulled together the best paint color for you based on your zodiac sign and planetary ruler below. If you want to dive a little deeper, Sam recommends checking out the planetary placement in your Fourth House. “The Fourth House represents our home and family life. Whatever planet rules this house, and its placement by zodiac sign, reflects the energy that feels like home to you.”The Best Paint Colors for Every Zodiac Sign: #best #paint #colors #every #zodiac
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    The Best Paint Colors for Every Zodiac Sign, According to an Astrologer
    If, like me, you’re slightly addicted to your astrology app and love checking your daily horoscope, you may have wondered just how much stock you should put into it. Allow me to tell you that it may be more revealing than you think. Sure, your zodiac sign can give you guidance on when to make a big move or when to save a certain conversation for a better, star-blessed date. But, did you know it can also help you decorate? That’s right. Your astrological sign can give you insight into what no-regret color you should choose for your kitchen, living room, bedroom or if you *actually* should go all in on maximalism (looking at you, Virgo). To answer all your decorating questions, we sat down with astrologer Sam Manzella to chat about the impact astrology can have on how you decorate your home and to find out what she thinks are the best paint colors for each astrology sign.Want even more astrology content? Check out these stories.Meet Our AstrologerSam Manzella is a Brooklyn-based astrologer and multi-award winning journalist. She practices a Hellenistic tradition, working from ancient frameworks, including the Whole Sign house system, sect, and traditional rulerships. Additionally, her practice is based around the planetary rulers that were visible to the naked eye in the age before telescopes, also called the seven core planets, meaning that the outer planets of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto won't be making an appearance in this article. The Signs, Their Rulers, and Their Color FamiliesLet’s start with the basics: There are 12 signs in Western astrology. You’ve probably heard of them—think Aries, Cancer, Libra, etc. While most modern mainstream astrology focuses heavily on the signs, it’s actually their relationship to the planets that has the biggest impact on your day-to-day. “In astrology, planets, not zodiac signs, are the main players,” says Sam. This more nuanced and wholistic approach to astrology uses planets to determine what will happen, while signs only dictate the how. “Pop astrology often relies too heavily on zodiac sign archetypes, in my opinion,” says Sam. “Place a planet in a specific sign? Now we’re cooking, baby.”When it comes to matching up planets and colors, millennia of traditional associations guide the way. Sam’s color coordination is based on two works: The Complete Picatrix, a Medieval text on astrological magic, and Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune, a traditional astrology manual written by storied astrologer Chris Brennan. Below, we’ll break down the seven core planets, the signs that correspond with them, and their traditional color associations.MarsSigns: Aries, ScorpioColor Associations: Strong, aged shades of red and rust. VenusSigns: Taurus, LibraColor Associations: Sumptuous natural shades, such as greens, pinks, whites, and pastels.MercurySigns: Gemini, VirgoColor Associations: Orange is a good color for Mercury, but mixes of patterns and colors also works well for these Mercurial signs. SunSigns: LeoColor Associations: Classic sunny shades, such as golds and yellows. MoonSigns: CancerColor Associations: Silvery shades and crisp whites. JupiterSigns: Sagittarius, Pisces. Color Associations: A mix of royally influenced shades, such as purples, blues, and yellows. SaturnSigns: Capricorn, AquariusColor Associations: Dark and moody shades, such as browns, blacks, and grays. How Can You Use Astrology to Help You Decorate? The best place to start is at the very beginning. Sam’s advice? Call your mom. “I highly recommend calculating your full birth chart—to do so, you’ll need the exact date, time, and location of your birth.” This will give you the proper framework from which you can build your astrologically inspired home. Once you have your complete birth chart, look at your various planetary alignments. While your sun sign can tell you a lot about who you are, it’s actually your Venus placement that Sam recommends consulting. “This planet governs art, beauty, and romance—if it’s sweet, enjoyable, or aesthetically pleasing, then it probably falls under Venus’s purview. Whatever zodiac sign this planet occupies in your birth chart can tell you a lot about the vibes, color palettes, and visual aesthetics you gravitate toward.” Not sure you have all the information you need for a full birth chart? No worries, we’ve pulled together the best paint color for you based on your zodiac sign and planetary ruler below. If you want to dive a little deeper, Sam recommends checking out the planetary placement in your Fourth House. “The Fourth House represents our home and family life. Whatever planet rules this house, and its placement by zodiac sign, reflects the energy that feels like home to you.”The Best Paint Colors for Every Zodiac Sign:
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  • 20 of the Best TV Shows on Prime Video

    We may earn a commission from links on this page.Like shopping on Amazon itself, Prime Video can sometimes feel like a jumble sale: a proliferation of TV and movies from every era, none of it terribly well-curated. There’s a lot to sort through, and the choices can be a little overwhelming. Presentation issues aside, there are some real gems to be found, as long as you’re willing to dig a bit—the streamer offers more than a few impressive exclusives, though they sometimes get lost amid the noise. Here are 20 of the best TV series Prime Video has to offer, including both ongoing and concluded shows.OvercompensatingComedian Benito Skinner plays himself, sort of, in this buzzy comedy that sees a former high school jock facing his freshman year in college, desperately trying to convince himself and everyone else that he's as straight as they come. Much of the show's appeal is in its deft blending of tones: It's a frequently raunchy college comedy, but it's simultaneously a sweet coming-of-age story about accepting yourself without worrying about what everyone else thinks. The impressive cast includes Adam DiMarcoand Rish ShahYou can stream Overcompensating here. ÉtoileAmy Sherman-Palladino and David Palladinoare back on TV and back in the dance worldwith this series about two world-renowned ballet companiesthat decide to spice things up by swapping their most talented dancers. Each company is on the brink of financial disaster, and so Jack McMillan, director of the Metropolitan Ballet, and Geneviève Lavigne, director of of Le Ballet National, come up with the plan, and recruit an eccentric billionaireto pay for it. Much of the comedy comes from the mismatched natures of their swapped dancers, and there's a tangible love of ballet that keeps things light, despite the fancy title. You can stream Étoile here.FalloutA shockingly effective video game adaptation, Fallout does post-apocalyptic TV with a lot more color and vibrancy than can typically be ascribed to the genre. The setup is a little complicated, but not belabored in the show itself: It's 2296 on an Earth devastated two centuries earlier by a nuclear war between the United States and China, exacerbated by conflicts between capitalists and so-called communists. Lucy MacLeanemerges from the underground Vault where she's lived her whole life protected from the presumed ravages of the world above, hoping to find her missing father, who was kidnapped by raiders. The aboveground wasteland is dominated by various factions, each of which considers the others dangerous cults, and believes that they alone know mankind's way forward. It's also overrun by Ghouls, Gulpers, and other wild radiation monsters. Through all of this, Lucy remains just about the only human with any belief in humanity, or any desire to make things better. You can stream Fallout here.DeadlochBoth an excellent crime procedural and an effective satire of the genre, this Australian import does about as well as setting up its central mystery as Broadchurch and its manyimitators. Kate Box stars as Dulcie Collins, fastidious senior sergeant of the police force in the fictional town of the title. When a body turns up dead on the beach, Dulcie is joined by Madeleine Sami's Eddie Redcliffe, a crude and generally obnoxious detective brought in to help solve the case. Unraveling the web of secrets and mysteries in the tiny Tasmanian town is appropriately addictive, with the added bonus of cop thriller tropes getting mercilessly mocked all the way. You can stream Deadlock here.The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of PowerAll the talk around The Rings of Power in the lead-up to the series had to do with the cost of the planned five seasons expected to be somewhere in the billion dollar range. At that price point, it’s tempting to expect a debacle—but the resulting series is actually quite good, blending epic conflict with more grounded characters in a manner that evokes both Tolkien, and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. Set thousands of years before those tales, the series follows an ensemble cast lead by Morfydd Clark as Elven outcast Galadriel and, at the other end of the spectrum, Markella Kavenagh as Nori, a Harfootwith a yearning for adventure who finds herself caught up in the larger struggles of a world about to see the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the fall of the idyllic island kingdom of Númenor, and the the last alliance of Elves and humans. You can stream The Rings of Power here.ReacherGetting high marks for his portrayal of the Lee Childs’ characteris Alan Ritchson, playing Reacher with an appropriately commanding physical presence. The first season finds the former U.S. Army military policeman visiting the rural town of Margrave, Georgia...where he’s quickly arrested for murder. His attempts to clear his name find him caught up in a complex conspiracy involving the town’s very corrupt police force, as well as shady local businessmen and politicians. Subsequent seasons find our ripped drifter reconnecting with members of his old army special-investigations unit, including Frances Neagley, who's getting her own spin-off. You can stream Reacher here. The BondsmanIt's tempting not to include The Bondsman among Prime's best, given that it's representative of an increasingly obnoxious trend: shows that get cancelled before they ever really got a chance. This Kevin Bacon-led action horror thriller did well with critics and on the streaming charts, and it's had a consistent spot among Prime's top ten streaming shows, but it got the pink slip anyway. Nevertheless, what we did get is a lot of fun: Bacon plays Hub Halloran, a bounty hunter who dies on the job only to discover that he's been resurrected by the literal devil, for whom he now works. It comes to a moderately satisfying conclusion, despite the cancellation. You can stream The Bondsman here. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of PowerAll the talk around The Rings of Power in the lead-up to the series had to do with the cost of the planned five seasons expected to be somewhere in the billion dollar range. At that price point, it’s tempting to expect a debacle—but the resulting series is actually quite good, blending epic conflict with more grounded characters in a manner that evokes both Tolkien, and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. Set thousands of years before those tales, the series follows an ensemble cast lead by Morfydd Clark as Elven outcast Galadriel and, at the other end of the spectrum, Markella Kavenagh as Nori, a Harfootwith a yearning for adventure who finds herself caught up in the larger struggles of a world about to see the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the fall of the idyllic island kingdom of Númenor, and the the last alliance of Elves and humans. You can stream The Rings of Power here.The ExpanseA pick-up from the SyFy channel after that network all but got out of the original series business, The Expanse started good and only got better with each succeeding season. Starring Steven Strait, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Dominique Tipper among a sizable ensemble, the show takes place in a near-ish future in which we’ve spread out into the solar system, while largely taking all of the usual political bullshit and conflicts with us. A salvage crew comes upon an alien microorganism with the potential to upend pretty much everything, if humanity can stop fighting over scraps long enough to make it matter. The show brings a sense of gritty realism to TV sci-fi, without entirely sacrificing optimism—or, at least, the idea that well-intentioned individuals can make a difference. You can stream The Expanse here. Mr. & Mrs. SmithOne-upping the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie movie on which it's based, Mr. & Mrs. Smith stars Donald Glover and Maya Erskine as a couple of spies tasked to pose as a married couple while coordinatingon missions. Smartly, each episode takes on a standalone mission in a different location, while complicating the relationship between the two and gradually upping the stakes until the season finale, which sees them pitted against each other. The show is returning for season two, though it's unclear if Glover and Erskine will be returning, or if we'll be getting a new Mr. & Mrs. You can stream Mr. & Mrs. Smith here. Good OmensMichael Sheen and David Tennant are delightful as, respectively, the hopelessly naive angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley, wandering the Earth for millennia and determined not to let the perpetual conflict between their two sides get in the way of their mismatched friendship. In the show’s world, from the 1990 novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, heaven and hell are are less representative of good and evil than hidebound bureaucracies, more interested in scoring points on each other than in doing anything useful for anyone down here. It’s got a sly, quirky, sometimes goofy sense of humor, even while it asks some big questions about who should get to decide what’s right and what’s wrong. Following some depressingly gross revelations about writer and showrunner Gaiman, it was announced that he'd be off the production and the third season would be reduced to a movie-length conclusion, date tbd. You can stream Good Omens here. The Marvelous Mrs. MaiselMrs. Maisel was one of Prime’s first and buzziest original series, a comedy-drama from Amy Sherman-Palladinoabout the title’s Midge Maisel, a New York housewife of the late 1950s who discovers a talent for stand-up comedy. Inspired by the real-life careers of comedians like Totie Fields and Joan Rivers, the show is both warm and funny, with great performances and dialogue; it also achieves something rare in being a show about comedy that’s actually funny. You can stream Mrs. Maisel here. The BoysThere’s a lot of superhero stuff out there, no question, but, as there was no series quite like the Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson comic book on which this show is based, there’s nothing else quite like The Boys. The very dark satire imagines a world in which superheroes are big with the public, but whose powers don’t make them any better than the average jerk. When his girlfriend is gruesomely killed by a superhero who couldn’t really care less, Wee Hughieis recruited by the title agency. Led by Billy Butcher, the Boys watch over the world’s superpowered individuals, putting them down when necessary and possible. A concluding fifth season is on the way, as is a second season of the live-action spin-off. An animated miniseriescame out in 2022. The Man in the High CastleFrom a novel by Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle takes place in an alternate history in which the Axis powers won World War II, and in which the United States is split down the middle; Japan governing the west and Germany the east. The title’s man in the high castle offers an alternate view, though, one in which the Allies actually won, with the potential to rally opposition to the Axis rulers. As the show progresses through its four seasons, the parallels to our increasingly authoritarian-friendly world, making it one of the more relevant shows of recent years. You can stream The Man in the High Castle here. The Wheel of TimeAn effective bit of fantasy storytelling, The Wheel of Time sees five people taken from a secluded village by Moiraine Damodred, a powerful magic user who believes that one of them is the reborn Dragon: a being who will either heal the world, or destroy it entirely. The show has an epic sweep while smartly focusing on the very unworldly villagers, experiencing much of this at the same time as the audience. This is another mixed recommendation in that, while the show itself is quite good, it has just been cancelled following a third season that saw it really getting into its groove. The show goes through the fourth and fifth books of Robert Jordan's fantasy series, so, I suppose, you can always jump into the novels to finish the story. You can stream Wheel of Time here. The Devil’s HourJessica Rainejoins Peter Capaldifor a slightly convoluted but haunting series that throws in just about every horror trope that you can think of while still managing to ground things in the two lead performances. Raine plays a social worker whose life is coming apart on almost every level: She’s caring for her aging mother, her marriage is ending, her son is withdrawn, and she wakes up at 3:33 am every morning exactly. She’s as convincing in the role as Capaldi is absolutely terrifying as a criminal linked to at least one killing who knows a lot more than he makes clear. You can stream The Devil's Hour here. Batman: Caped CrusaderI know, there's a lot of Batman out there. But this one's got real style, harkening back to Batman: The Animated Series from the 1990s. With a 1940s-esque setting, the show dodges some of the more outlandish superhero tropes to instead focus on a Gotham City rife with crime, corrupt cops, and gang warfare. There's just enough serialization across the first season to keep things addictive. You can stream Caped Crusader here. Secret LevelThis is pretty fun: an anthology of animated shorts from various creative teams that tell stories set within the worlds of variousvideo games, including Unreal, Warhammer, Sifu, Mega Man, and Honor of Kings. It's hard to find consistent threads given the variety of source material, but that's kinda the point: There's a little something for everyone, and most shorts don't demand any extensive knowledge of game lore—though, naturally, they're a bit more fun for the initiated. The voice cast includes the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, his son Patrick Schwarzenegger, Keanu Reeves, Gabriel Luna, Ariana Greenblatt, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. You can stream Secret Level here. CrossJames Patterson's Alex Cross novels have been adapted three times before, all with mixed results: Morgan Freeman played the character twice, and Tyler Perry took on the role in 2012. Here, the forensic psychologist/police detective of a few dozen novels is played by Aldis Hodge, and it feels like he's finally nailed it. There are plenty of cop-drama tropes at work here, but the series is fast-paced and intense, and Hodge is instantly compelling in the iconic lead role. You can stream Cross here. FleabagFleabag isn’t a Prime original per se, nor even a co-production, but Amazon is the show’s American distributor and still brands it as such, so we’re going to count it. There’s no quick synopsis here, but stars Phoebe Waller-Bridge as the title characterin the comedy drama about a free-spirited, but also deeply angry single woman in living in London. Waller-Bridge won separate Emmys as the star, creator, and writer of the series, and co-stars Sian Clifford, Olivia Coleman, Fiona Shaw, and Kristin Scott Thomas all received well-deserved nominations. You can stream Fleabag here.
    #best #shows #prime #video
    20 of the Best TV Shows on Prime Video
    We may earn a commission from links on this page.Like shopping on Amazon itself, Prime Video can sometimes feel like a jumble sale: a proliferation of TV and movies from every era, none of it terribly well-curated. There’s a lot to sort through, and the choices can be a little overwhelming. Presentation issues aside, there are some real gems to be found, as long as you’re willing to dig a bit—the streamer offers more than a few impressive exclusives, though they sometimes get lost amid the noise. Here are 20 of the best TV series Prime Video has to offer, including both ongoing and concluded shows.OvercompensatingComedian Benito Skinner plays himself, sort of, in this buzzy comedy that sees a former high school jock facing his freshman year in college, desperately trying to convince himself and everyone else that he's as straight as they come. Much of the show's appeal is in its deft blending of tones: It's a frequently raunchy college comedy, but it's simultaneously a sweet coming-of-age story about accepting yourself without worrying about what everyone else thinks. The impressive cast includes Adam DiMarcoand Rish ShahYou can stream Overcompensating here. ÉtoileAmy Sherman-Palladino and David Palladinoare back on TV and back in the dance worldwith this series about two world-renowned ballet companiesthat decide to spice things up by swapping their most talented dancers. Each company is on the brink of financial disaster, and so Jack McMillan, director of the Metropolitan Ballet, and Geneviève Lavigne, director of of Le Ballet National, come up with the plan, and recruit an eccentric billionaireto pay for it. Much of the comedy comes from the mismatched natures of their swapped dancers, and there's a tangible love of ballet that keeps things light, despite the fancy title. You can stream Étoile here.FalloutA shockingly effective video game adaptation, Fallout does post-apocalyptic TV with a lot more color and vibrancy than can typically be ascribed to the genre. The setup is a little complicated, but not belabored in the show itself: It's 2296 on an Earth devastated two centuries earlier by a nuclear war between the United States and China, exacerbated by conflicts between capitalists and so-called communists. Lucy MacLeanemerges from the underground Vault where she's lived her whole life protected from the presumed ravages of the world above, hoping to find her missing father, who was kidnapped by raiders. The aboveground wasteland is dominated by various factions, each of which considers the others dangerous cults, and believes that they alone know mankind's way forward. It's also overrun by Ghouls, Gulpers, and other wild radiation monsters. Through all of this, Lucy remains just about the only human with any belief in humanity, or any desire to make things better. You can stream Fallout here.DeadlochBoth an excellent crime procedural and an effective satire of the genre, this Australian import does about as well as setting up its central mystery as Broadchurch and its manyimitators. Kate Box stars as Dulcie Collins, fastidious senior sergeant of the police force in the fictional town of the title. When a body turns up dead on the beach, Dulcie is joined by Madeleine Sami's Eddie Redcliffe, a crude and generally obnoxious detective brought in to help solve the case. Unraveling the web of secrets and mysteries in the tiny Tasmanian town is appropriately addictive, with the added bonus of cop thriller tropes getting mercilessly mocked all the way. You can stream Deadlock here.The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of PowerAll the talk around The Rings of Power in the lead-up to the series had to do with the cost of the planned five seasons expected to be somewhere in the billion dollar range. At that price point, it’s tempting to expect a debacle—but the resulting series is actually quite good, blending epic conflict with more grounded characters in a manner that evokes both Tolkien, and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. Set thousands of years before those tales, the series follows an ensemble cast lead by Morfydd Clark as Elven outcast Galadriel and, at the other end of the spectrum, Markella Kavenagh as Nori, a Harfootwith a yearning for adventure who finds herself caught up in the larger struggles of a world about to see the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the fall of the idyllic island kingdom of Númenor, and the the last alliance of Elves and humans. You can stream The Rings of Power here.ReacherGetting high marks for his portrayal of the Lee Childs’ characteris Alan Ritchson, playing Reacher with an appropriately commanding physical presence. The first season finds the former U.S. Army military policeman visiting the rural town of Margrave, Georgia...where he’s quickly arrested for murder. His attempts to clear his name find him caught up in a complex conspiracy involving the town’s very corrupt police force, as well as shady local businessmen and politicians. Subsequent seasons find our ripped drifter reconnecting with members of his old army special-investigations unit, including Frances Neagley, who's getting her own spin-off. You can stream Reacher here. The BondsmanIt's tempting not to include The Bondsman among Prime's best, given that it's representative of an increasingly obnoxious trend: shows that get cancelled before they ever really got a chance. This Kevin Bacon-led action horror thriller did well with critics and on the streaming charts, and it's had a consistent spot among Prime's top ten streaming shows, but it got the pink slip anyway. Nevertheless, what we did get is a lot of fun: Bacon plays Hub Halloran, a bounty hunter who dies on the job only to discover that he's been resurrected by the literal devil, for whom he now works. It comes to a moderately satisfying conclusion, despite the cancellation. You can stream The Bondsman here. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of PowerAll the talk around The Rings of Power in the lead-up to the series had to do with the cost of the planned five seasons expected to be somewhere in the billion dollar range. At that price point, it’s tempting to expect a debacle—but the resulting series is actually quite good, blending epic conflict with more grounded characters in a manner that evokes both Tolkien, and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. Set thousands of years before those tales, the series follows an ensemble cast lead by Morfydd Clark as Elven outcast Galadriel and, at the other end of the spectrum, Markella Kavenagh as Nori, a Harfootwith a yearning for adventure who finds herself caught up in the larger struggles of a world about to see the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the fall of the idyllic island kingdom of Númenor, and the the last alliance of Elves and humans. You can stream The Rings of Power here.The ExpanseA pick-up from the SyFy channel after that network all but got out of the original series business, The Expanse started good and only got better with each succeeding season. Starring Steven Strait, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Dominique Tipper among a sizable ensemble, the show takes place in a near-ish future in which we’ve spread out into the solar system, while largely taking all of the usual political bullshit and conflicts with us. A salvage crew comes upon an alien microorganism with the potential to upend pretty much everything, if humanity can stop fighting over scraps long enough to make it matter. The show brings a sense of gritty realism to TV sci-fi, without entirely sacrificing optimism—or, at least, the idea that well-intentioned individuals can make a difference. You can stream The Expanse here. Mr. & Mrs. SmithOne-upping the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie movie on which it's based, Mr. & Mrs. Smith stars Donald Glover and Maya Erskine as a couple of spies tasked to pose as a married couple while coordinatingon missions. Smartly, each episode takes on a standalone mission in a different location, while complicating the relationship between the two and gradually upping the stakes until the season finale, which sees them pitted against each other. The show is returning for season two, though it's unclear if Glover and Erskine will be returning, or if we'll be getting a new Mr. & Mrs. You can stream Mr. & Mrs. Smith here. Good OmensMichael Sheen and David Tennant are delightful as, respectively, the hopelessly naive angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley, wandering the Earth for millennia and determined not to let the perpetual conflict between their two sides get in the way of their mismatched friendship. In the show’s world, from the 1990 novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, heaven and hell are are less representative of good and evil than hidebound bureaucracies, more interested in scoring points on each other than in doing anything useful for anyone down here. It’s got a sly, quirky, sometimes goofy sense of humor, even while it asks some big questions about who should get to decide what’s right and what’s wrong. Following some depressingly gross revelations about writer and showrunner Gaiman, it was announced that he'd be off the production and the third season would be reduced to a movie-length conclusion, date tbd. You can stream Good Omens here. The Marvelous Mrs. MaiselMrs. Maisel was one of Prime’s first and buzziest original series, a comedy-drama from Amy Sherman-Palladinoabout the title’s Midge Maisel, a New York housewife of the late 1950s who discovers a talent for stand-up comedy. Inspired by the real-life careers of comedians like Totie Fields and Joan Rivers, the show is both warm and funny, with great performances and dialogue; it also achieves something rare in being a show about comedy that’s actually funny. You can stream Mrs. Maisel here. The BoysThere’s a lot of superhero stuff out there, no question, but, as there was no series quite like the Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson comic book on which this show is based, there’s nothing else quite like The Boys. The very dark satire imagines a world in which superheroes are big with the public, but whose powers don’t make them any better than the average jerk. When his girlfriend is gruesomely killed by a superhero who couldn’t really care less, Wee Hughieis recruited by the title agency. Led by Billy Butcher, the Boys watch over the world’s superpowered individuals, putting them down when necessary and possible. A concluding fifth season is on the way, as is a second season of the live-action spin-off. An animated miniseriescame out in 2022. The Man in the High CastleFrom a novel by Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle takes place in an alternate history in which the Axis powers won World War II, and in which the United States is split down the middle; Japan governing the west and Germany the east. The title’s man in the high castle offers an alternate view, though, one in which the Allies actually won, with the potential to rally opposition to the Axis rulers. As the show progresses through its four seasons, the parallels to our increasingly authoritarian-friendly world, making it one of the more relevant shows of recent years. You can stream The Man in the High Castle here. The Wheel of TimeAn effective bit of fantasy storytelling, The Wheel of Time sees five people taken from a secluded village by Moiraine Damodred, a powerful magic user who believes that one of them is the reborn Dragon: a being who will either heal the world, or destroy it entirely. The show has an epic sweep while smartly focusing on the very unworldly villagers, experiencing much of this at the same time as the audience. This is another mixed recommendation in that, while the show itself is quite good, it has just been cancelled following a third season that saw it really getting into its groove. The show goes through the fourth and fifth books of Robert Jordan's fantasy series, so, I suppose, you can always jump into the novels to finish the story. You can stream Wheel of Time here. The Devil’s HourJessica Rainejoins Peter Capaldifor a slightly convoluted but haunting series that throws in just about every horror trope that you can think of while still managing to ground things in the two lead performances. Raine plays a social worker whose life is coming apart on almost every level: She’s caring for her aging mother, her marriage is ending, her son is withdrawn, and she wakes up at 3:33 am every morning exactly. She’s as convincing in the role as Capaldi is absolutely terrifying as a criminal linked to at least one killing who knows a lot more than he makes clear. You can stream The Devil's Hour here. Batman: Caped CrusaderI know, there's a lot of Batman out there. But this one's got real style, harkening back to Batman: The Animated Series from the 1990s. With a 1940s-esque setting, the show dodges some of the more outlandish superhero tropes to instead focus on a Gotham City rife with crime, corrupt cops, and gang warfare. There's just enough serialization across the first season to keep things addictive. You can stream Caped Crusader here. Secret LevelThis is pretty fun: an anthology of animated shorts from various creative teams that tell stories set within the worlds of variousvideo games, including Unreal, Warhammer, Sifu, Mega Man, and Honor of Kings. It's hard to find consistent threads given the variety of source material, but that's kinda the point: There's a little something for everyone, and most shorts don't demand any extensive knowledge of game lore—though, naturally, they're a bit more fun for the initiated. The voice cast includes the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, his son Patrick Schwarzenegger, Keanu Reeves, Gabriel Luna, Ariana Greenblatt, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. You can stream Secret Level here. CrossJames Patterson's Alex Cross novels have been adapted three times before, all with mixed results: Morgan Freeman played the character twice, and Tyler Perry took on the role in 2012. Here, the forensic psychologist/police detective of a few dozen novels is played by Aldis Hodge, and it feels like he's finally nailed it. There are plenty of cop-drama tropes at work here, but the series is fast-paced and intense, and Hodge is instantly compelling in the iconic lead role. You can stream Cross here. FleabagFleabag isn’t a Prime original per se, nor even a co-production, but Amazon is the show’s American distributor and still brands it as such, so we’re going to count it. There’s no quick synopsis here, but stars Phoebe Waller-Bridge as the title characterin the comedy drama about a free-spirited, but also deeply angry single woman in living in London. Waller-Bridge won separate Emmys as the star, creator, and writer of the series, and co-stars Sian Clifford, Olivia Coleman, Fiona Shaw, and Kristin Scott Thomas all received well-deserved nominations. You can stream Fleabag here. #best #shows #prime #video
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    20 of the Best TV Shows on Prime Video
    We may earn a commission from links on this page.Like shopping on Amazon itself, Prime Video can sometimes feel like a jumble sale: a proliferation of TV and movies from every era, none of it terribly well-curated. There’s a lot to sort through, and the choices can be a little overwhelming. Presentation issues aside, there are some real gems to be found, as long as you’re willing to dig a bit—the streamer offers more than a few impressive exclusives, though they sometimes get lost amid the noise. Here are 20 of the best TV series Prime Video has to offer, including both ongoing and concluded shows.Overcompensating (2025 – ) Comedian Benito Skinner plays himself, sort of, in this buzzy comedy that sees a former high school jock facing his freshman year in college, desperately trying to convince himself and everyone else that he's as straight as they come (relatable, except for the jock part). Much of the show's appeal is in its deft blending of tones: It's a frequently raunchy college comedy, but it's simultaneously a sweet coming-of-age story about accepting yourself without worrying about what everyone else thinks. The impressive cast includes Adam DiMarco (The White Lotus) and Rish Shah (Ms. Marvel) You can stream Overcompensating here. Étoile (2025 –, renewed for season two) Amy Sherman-Palladino and David Palladino (Gilmore Girls, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) are back on TV and back in the dance world (following Bunheads) with this series about two world-renowned ballet companies (one in NYC and one in Paris) that decide to spice things up by swapping their most talented dancers. Each company is on the brink of financial disaster, and so Jack McMillan (Luke Kirby), director of the Metropolitan Ballet, and Geneviève Lavigne (Charlotte Gainsbourg), director of of Le Ballet National, come up with the plan, and recruit an eccentric billionaire (Simon Callow) to pay for it. Much of the comedy comes from the mismatched natures of their swapped dancers, and there's a tangible love of ballet that keeps things light, despite the fancy title. You can stream Étoile here.Fallout (2024 – , renewed for second and third seasons) A shockingly effective video game adaptation, Fallout does post-apocalyptic TV with a lot more color and vibrancy than can typically be ascribed to the genre (in the world of Fallout, the aesthetic of the 1950s hung on for a lot longer than it did in ours). The setup is a little complicated, but not belabored in the show itself: It's 2296 on an Earth devastated two centuries earlier by a nuclear war between the United States and China, exacerbated by conflicts between capitalists and so-called communists. Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) emerges from the underground Vault where she's lived her whole life protected from the presumed ravages of the world above, hoping to find her missing father, who was kidnapped by raiders. The aboveground wasteland is dominated by various factions, each of which considers the others dangerous cults, and believes that they alone know mankind's way forward. It's also overrun by Ghouls, Gulpers, and other wild radiation monsters. Through all of this, Lucy remains just about the only human with any belief in humanity, or any desire to make things better. You can stream Fallout here.Deadloch (2023 –, renewed for a second season) Both an excellent crime procedural and an effective satire of the genre, this Australian import does about as well as setting up its central mystery as Broadchurch and its many (many) imitators. Kate Box stars as Dulcie Collins, fastidious senior sergeant of the police force in the fictional town of the title. When a body turns up dead on the beach, Dulcie is joined by Madeleine Sami's Eddie Redcliffe, a crude and generally obnoxious detective brought in to help solve the case. Unraveling the web of secrets and mysteries in the tiny Tasmanian town is appropriately addictive, with the added bonus of cop thriller tropes getting mercilessly mocked all the way. You can stream Deadlock here.The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022 – , third season coming) All the talk around The Rings of Power in the lead-up to the series had to do with the cost of the planned five seasons expected to be somewhere in the billion dollar range. At that price point, it’s tempting to expect a debacle—but the resulting series is actually quite good, blending epic conflict with more grounded characters in a manner that evokes both Tolkien, and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. Set thousands of years before those tales, the series follows an ensemble cast lead by Morfydd Clark as Elven outcast Galadriel and, at the other end of the spectrum, Markella Kavenagh as Nori, a Harfoot (the people we’ll much later know as Hobbits) with a yearning for adventure who finds herself caught up in the larger struggles of a world about to see the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the fall of the idyllic island kingdom of Númenor, and the the last alliance of Elves and humans. You can stream The Rings of Power here.Reacher (2022 – , fourth season coming) Getting high marks for his portrayal of the Lee Childs’ character (from both book and TV fans) is Alan Ritchson (Titans), playing Reacher with an appropriately commanding physical presence. The first season finds the former U.S. Army military policeman visiting the rural town of Margrave, Georgia...where he’s quickly arrested for murder. His attempts to clear his name find him caught up in a complex conspiracy involving the town’s very corrupt police force, as well as shady local businessmen and politicians. Subsequent seasons find our ripped drifter reconnecting with members of his old army special-investigations unit, including Frances Neagley (Maria Stan), who's getting her own spin-off. You can stream Reacher here. The Bondsman (2025, one season) It's tempting not to include The Bondsman among Prime's best, given that it's representative of an increasingly obnoxious trend: shows that get cancelled before they ever really got a chance. This Kevin Bacon-led action horror thriller did well with critics and on the streaming charts, and it's had a consistent spot among Prime's top ten streaming shows, but it got the pink slip anyway. Nevertheless, what we did get is a lot of fun: Bacon plays Hub Halloran, a bounty hunter who dies on the job only to discover that he's been resurrected by the literal devil, for whom he now works. It comes to a moderately satisfying conclusion, despite the cancellation. You can stream The Bondsman here. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022 – , third season coming) All the talk around The Rings of Power in the lead-up to the series had to do with the cost of the planned five seasons expected to be somewhere in the billion dollar range. At that price point, it’s tempting to expect a debacle—but the resulting series is actually quite good, blending epic conflict with more grounded characters in a manner that evokes both Tolkien, and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. Set thousands of years before those tales, the series follows an ensemble cast lead by Morfydd Clark as Elven outcast Galadriel and, at the other end of the spectrum, Markella Kavenagh as Nori, a Harfoot (the people we’ll much later know as Hobbits) with a yearning for adventure who finds herself caught up in the larger struggles of a world about to see the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the fall of the idyllic island kingdom of Númenor, and the the last alliance of Elves and humans. You can stream The Rings of Power here.The Expanse (2015 – 2022, six seasons) A pick-up from the SyFy channel after that network all but got out of the original series business, The Expanse started good and only got better with each succeeding season. Starring Steven Strait, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Dominique Tipper among a sizable ensemble, the show takes place in a near-ish future in which we’ve spread out into the solar system, while largely taking all of the usual political bullshit and conflicts with us. A salvage crew comes upon an alien microorganism with the potential to upend pretty much everything, if humanity can stop fighting over scraps long enough to make it matter. The show brings a sense of gritty realism to TV sci-fi, without entirely sacrificing optimism—or, at least, the idea that well-intentioned individuals can make a difference. You can stream The Expanse here. Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2024 – , renewed for a second season) One-upping the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie movie on which it's based, Mr. & Mrs. Smith stars Donald Glover and Maya Erskine as a couple of spies tasked to pose as a married couple while coordinating (and sometimes competing against one another) on missions. Smartly, each episode takes on a standalone mission in a different location, while complicating the relationship between the two and gradually upping the stakes until the season finale, which sees them pitted against each other. The show is returning for season two, though it's unclear if Glover and Erskine will be returning, or if we'll be getting a new Mr. & Mrs. You can stream Mr. & Mrs. Smith here. Good Omens (2019– , conclusion coming) Michael Sheen and David Tennant are delightful as, respectively, the hopelessly naive angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley, wandering the Earth for millennia and determined not to let the perpetual conflict between their two sides get in the way of their mismatched friendship. In the show’s world, from the 1990 novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, heaven and hell are are less representative of good and evil than hidebound bureaucracies, more interested in scoring points on each other than in doing anything useful for anyone down here. It’s got a sly, quirky, sometimes goofy sense of humor, even while it asks some big questions about who should get to decide what’s right and what’s wrong. Following some depressingly gross revelations about writer and showrunner Gaiman, it was announced that he'd be off the production and the third season would be reduced to a movie-length conclusion, date tbd. You can stream Good Omens here. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017 – 2023, five seasons) Mrs. Maisel was one of Prime’s first and buzziest original series, a comedy-drama from Amy Sherman-Palladino (Gilmore Girls) about the title’s Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan), a New York housewife of the late 1950s who discovers a talent for stand-up comedy. Inspired by the real-life careers of comedians like Totie Fields and Joan Rivers, the show is both warm and funny, with great performances and dialogue; it also achieves something rare in being a show about comedy that’s actually funny. You can stream Mrs. Maisel here. The Boys (2019 – , fifth and final season coming) There’s a lot of superhero stuff out there, no question, but, as there was no series quite like the Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson comic book on which this show is based, there’s nothing else quite like The Boys. The very dark satire imagines a world in which superheroes are big with the public, but whose powers don’t make them any better than the average jerk. When his girlfriend is gruesomely killed by a superhero who couldn’t really care less (collateral damage, ya know), Wee Hughie (Jack Quaid) is recruited by the title agency. Led by Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), the Boys watch over the world’s superpowered individuals, putting them down when necessary and possible. A concluding fifth season is on the way, as is a second season of the live-action spin-off (Gen V). An animated miniseries (Diabolical) came out in 2022. The Man in the High Castle (2015–2019, four seasons) From a novel by Philip K. Dick (whose work has been the basis for Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, among many others), The Man in the High Castle takes place in an alternate history in which the Axis powers won World War II, and in which the United States is split down the middle; Japan governing the west and Germany the east. The title’s man in the high castle offers an alternate view, though, one in which the Allies actually won, with the potential to rally opposition to the Axis rulers. As the show progresses through its four seasons, the parallels to our increasingly authoritarian-friendly world, making it one of the more relevant shows of recent years. You can stream The Man in the High Castle here. The Wheel of Time (2021 – 2025, three seasons) An effective bit of fantasy storytelling, The Wheel of Time sees five people taken from a secluded village by Moiraine Damodred (Rosamund Pike), a powerful magic user who believes that one of them is the reborn Dragon: a being who will either heal the world, or destroy it entirely. The show has an epic sweep while smartly focusing on the very unworldly villagers, experiencing much of this at the same time as the audience. This is another mixed recommendation in that, while the show itself is quite good, it has just been cancelled following a third season that saw it really getting into its groove. The show goes through the fourth and fifth books of Robert Jordan's fantasy series, so, I suppose, you can always jump into the novels to finish the story. You can stream Wheel of Time here. The Devil’s Hour (2022 – , renewed for a third season) Jessica Raine (Call the Midwife) joins Peter Capaldi (The Thick of It, Doctor Who) for a slightly convoluted but haunting series that throws in just about every horror trope that you can think of while still managing to ground things in the two lead performances. Raine plays a social worker whose life is coming apart on almost every level: She’s caring for her aging mother, her marriage is ending, her son is withdrawn, and she wakes up at 3:33 am every morning exactly. She’s as convincing in the role as Capaldi is absolutely terrifying as a criminal linked to at least one killing who knows a lot more than he makes clear. You can stream The Devil's Hour here. Batman: Caped Crusader (2024 – , second season coming) I know, there's a lot of Batman out there. But this one's got real style, harkening back to Batman: The Animated Series from the 1990s (no surprise, given that Bruce Timm developed this one too). With a 1940s-esque setting, the show dodges some of the more outlandish superhero tropes to instead focus on a Gotham City rife with crime, corrupt cops, and gang warfare. There's just enough serialization across the first season to keep things addictive. You can stream Caped Crusader here. Secret Level (2024 – , renewed for a second season) This is pretty fun: an anthology of animated shorts from various creative teams that tell stories set within the worlds of various (15 so far) video games, including Unreal, Warhammer, Sifu, Mega Man, and Honor of Kings. It's hard to find consistent threads given the variety of source material, but that's kinda the point: There's a little something for everyone, and most shorts don't demand any extensive knowledge of game lore—though, naturally, they're a bit more fun for the initiated. The voice cast includes the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, his son Patrick Schwarzenegger, Keanu Reeves, Gabriel Luna, Ariana Greenblatt, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. You can stream Secret Level here. Cross (2024 – , renewed for a second season) James Patterson's Alex Cross novels have been adapted three times before, all with mixed results: Morgan Freeman played the character twice, and Tyler Perry took on the role in 2012. Here, the forensic psychologist/police detective of a few dozen novels is played by Aldis Hodge (Leverage, One Night in Miami...), and it feels like he's finally nailed it. There are plenty of cop-drama tropes at work here, but the series is fast-paced and intense, and Hodge is instantly compelling in the iconic lead role. You can stream Cross here. Fleabag (2016–2019, two seasons) Fleabag isn’t a Prime original per se, nor even a co-production, but Amazon is the show’s American distributor and still brands it as such, so we’re going to count it. There’s no quick synopsis here, but stars Phoebe Waller-Bridge as the title character (only ever known as Fleabag) in the comedy drama about a free-spirited, but also deeply angry single woman in living in London. Waller-Bridge won separate Emmys as the star, creator, and writer of the series (all in the same year), and co-stars Sian Clifford, Olivia Coleman, Fiona Shaw, and Kristin Scott Thomas all received well-deserved nominations. You can stream Fleabag here.
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  • LOTR: Why Does Denethor Hate Aragorn?

    It’s not that hard to explain why, in The Lord of the Rings, Denethor, the steward of Gondor who ruled the realm in the absence of the king, would hate Aragorn. The latter was the rightful king after all, and could anytime supplant Denethor as the ruler of Gondor. Furthermore, Aragorn was part of the Fellowship that, in a twisted way, led to Denethor’s beloved son, Boromir’s death. So what’s not to hate? But what if there was more? A jealousy born long before the events of the Fellowship or before the true lineage of Aragorn was revealed?
    #lotr #why #does #denethor #hate
    LOTR: Why Does Denethor Hate Aragorn?
    It’s not that hard to explain why, in The Lord of the Rings, Denethor, the steward of Gondor who ruled the realm in the absence of the king, would hate Aragorn. The latter was the rightful king after all, and could anytime supplant Denethor as the ruler of Gondor. Furthermore, Aragorn was part of the Fellowship that, in a twisted way, led to Denethor’s beloved son, Boromir’s death. So what’s not to hate? But what if there was more? A jealousy born long before the events of the Fellowship or before the true lineage of Aragorn was revealed? #lotr #why #does #denethor #hate
    GAMERANT.COM
    LOTR: Why Does Denethor Hate Aragorn?
    It’s not that hard to explain why, in The Lord of the Rings, Denethor, the steward of Gondor who ruled the realm in the absence of the king, would hate Aragorn. The latter was the rightful king after all, and could anytime supplant Denethor as the ruler of Gondor. Furthermore, Aragorn was part of the Fellowship that, in a twisted way, led to Denethor’s beloved son, Boromir’s death. So what’s not to hate? But what if there was more? A jealousy born long before the events of the Fellowship or before the true lineage of Aragorn was revealed?
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  • Are we reading Machiavelli wrong?

    There are very few philosophers who become part of popular culture, and often, if their ideas become influential, people don’t know where they came from.Niccolò Machiavelli, the great 16th-century diplomat and writer, is an exception.I don’t know how many people have actually read Machiavelli, but almost everyone knows the name, and almost everyone thinks they know what the word “Machiavellian” means. It’s someone who’s cunning and shrewd and manipulative. Or as one famous philosopher called him, “the teacher of evil.”But is this fair to Machiavelli, or has he been misunderstood? And if he has been, what are we missing in his work?Erica Benner is a political philosopher and the author of numerous books about Machiavelli including my favorite, Be Like the Fox, which offers a different interpretation of Machiavelli’s most famous work, The Prince.For centuries, The Prince has been popularly viewed as a how-to manual for tyrants. But Benner disagrees. She says it’s actually a veiled, almost satirical critique of authoritarian power. And she argues that Machiavelli is more timely than you might imagine. He wrote about why democracies get sick and die, about the dangers of inequality and partisanship, and even about why appearance and perception matter far more than truth and facts.In another of his seminal works, Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli is also distinctly not authoritarian. In fact, he espouses a deep belief in republicanism.I invited Benner onto The Gray Area to talk about what Machiavelli was up to and why he’s very much a philosopher for our times. As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you find podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
    The popular view of Machiavelli is that he wanted to draw this neat line between morality and politics and that he celebrated ruthless pragmatism. What’s incomplete or wrong about that view?What is true is that he often criticizes the hyper-Christian morality that puts moral judgments into the hands of priests and popes and some abstract kind of God that he may or may not believe in, but in any case doesn’t think is something we can access as humans. If we want to think about morality both on a personal level and in politics, we’ve got to go back to basics. What is the behavior of human beings? What is human nature? What are the drives that propel human beings to do the stuff that we call good or bad? He wants to say that we should see human beings not as fundamentally good or evil. We shouldn’t think that human beings can ever be angels, and we shouldn’t see them as devils when they behave badly.But the basic point is if you want to develop a human morality, you study yourself, you study other humans, you don’t put yourself above other humans because you’re one, too. And then you ask, What kind of politics is going to make such people coexist?I take it you think his most famous book, The Prince, is not well understood?I used to have to teach Machiavelli and I would just say, It’s a handbook for tyrants. But he wrote the Discourses, which is a very, very republican book. So that’s the first thing that sets people off and makes you think, How could he have switched so quickly from writing The Prince to being a super-republican writing the Discourses? So that’s a warning sign. When I started seeing some of the earliest readers of Machiavelli and the earliest comments you get from republican authors, they all see Machiavelli as an ally and they say it. They say he’s a moral writer. Rousseau says, “He has only had superficial and corrupt readers until now.” If you ever pick up The Prince and you read the first four chapters, and most people don’t read them that carefully because they’re kind of boring, the exciting ones are the ones in the middle about morality and immorality and then you come to chapter five, which is about freedom.And up to chapter four, it sounds like a pretty cruel, cold analysis of what you should do. Then you get to chapter five and it’s like, Wow! It’s about how republics fight back, and the whole tone changes. Suddenly republics are fighting back and the prince has to be on his toes because he’s probably not going to survive the wrath of these fiery republics that do not give up.So who is he talking to in the book? Is he counseling future princes or warning future citizens?It’s complicated. You have to remember that he was kicked out of his job and had a big family to support. He had a lot of kids. And he loved his job and was passionate about the republic. He was tortured. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. He’s absolutely gutted that Florence’s republican experiment has failed and he can’t speak freely. So what does a guy with a history of writing dramas and satire do to make himself feel better? It’s taking the piss out of the people who have made you and a lot of your friends very miserable, in a low-key way because you can’t be too brutally satirical about it. But I think he’s really writing to expose the ways of tyrants.Would you say that Machiavelli has something like an ideology or is he just a clear-eyed pragmatist?He’s a republican. And again, this is something that, if you just read The Prince, you’re not going to get. But if you read the Discourses, which was written around the same time as The Prince, it’s very, very similar in almost every way except that it praises republics and criticizes tyrants very openly. Whereas The Prince never once uses the words “tyrant” or “tyranny.” So if there’s a guiding political view, whether you call it “ideology” or not, it’s republicanism. And that’s an ideology of shared power. It’s all the people in a city, all the male people in this case. Machiavelli was quite egalitarian. He clearly wanted as broad of a section of the male population to be citizens as possible. He says very clearly, The key to stabilizing your power is to change the constitution and to give everyone their share. Everyone has to have their share. You might want to speak a little bit more for yourself and the rich guys, but in the end, everyone’s got to have a share.Should we treat Machiavelli like a democratic theorist? Do you think of him as someone who would defend what we call democracy today?If you think the main principle of democracy is that power should be shared equally, which is how I understand democracy, then yes. He’d totally agree with that. What kind of institutions would he say a democracy has to have? He’s pretty clear in the Discourses. He says you don’t want a long-term executive. You need to always check power. I realize we exist in a very different world than Machiavelli, but is he a useful guide to understanding contemporary politics, particularly American politics?This is a really Machiavellian moment. If you read The Prince and look not just for those provocative quotes but for the criticisms, and sometimes they’re very subtle, you start to see that he’s exposing a lot of the stuff that we’re seeing today. Chapter nine of The Prince is where he talks about how you can rise to be the ruler of a republic and how much resistance you might face, and he says that people might be quite passive at first and not do very much. But at some point, when they see you start to attack the courts and the magistrates, that’s when you’re going to clash. And he says, That’s when you as a leader — and he’s playing like he’s on the leader’s side — that’s when you’ve got to decide if you’re going to get really, really tough, or are you going to have to find other ways to soften things up a bit?What would he make of Trump?He would put Trump in two categories. He’s got different classifications of princes. He’s got the prince of fortune, somebody who relies on wealth and money and big impressions to get ahead. He would say that Trump has a lot of those qualities, but he’d also call him this word “astutia” — astuteness, which doesn’t really translate in English because we think of that as a good quality, but he means calculating shrewdness. Somebody whose great talent is being able to shrewdly manipulate and find little holes where he can exploit people’s weaknesses and dissatisfactions.This is what he thought the Medici were good at. And his analysis of that is that it can cover you for a long time. People will see the good appearances and hope that you can deliver, but in the long run, people who do that don’t know how to build a solid state. That’s what he would say on a domestic front. I think there’s an unsophisticated way to look at Trump as Machiavellian. There are these lines in The Prince about knowing how to deploy cruelty and knowing when to be ruthless. But to your deeper point, I don’t think Machiavelli ever endorses cruelty for cruelty’s sake, and with Trump — and this is my personal opinion — cruelty is often the point, and that’s not really Machiavellian.Exactly. I wouldn’t say Trump is Machiavellian. Quite honestly, since the beginning of the Trump administration, I’ve often felt like he’s getting advice from people who haven’t really read Machiavelli or put Machiavelli into ChatGPT and got all the wrong pointers, because the ones that they’re picking out are just so crude. But they sound Machiavellian. You’re absolutely right, though. Machiavelli is very, very clear in The Prince that cruelty is not going to get you anywhere in the long term. You’re going to get pure hate. So if you think it’s ever instrumentally useful to be super cruel, think again.This obviously isn’t an endorsement of Trump, but I will say that something I hear often from people is that the system is so broken that we need someone to smash it up in order to save it. We need political dynamite. I bring that up because Machiavelli says repeatedly that politics requires flexibility and maybe even a little practical ruthlessness in order to preserve the republic. Do you think he would say that there’s real danger in clinging to procedural purity if you reach a point where the system seems to have failed?This is a great question. And again, this is one he does address in the Discourses quite a lot. He talks about how the Romans, when their republic started slipping, had “great men” coming up and saying, “I’ll save you,” and there were a lot before Julius Caesar finally “saved” them and then it all went to hell. And Machiavelli says that there are procedures that have to sometimes be wiped out — you have to reform institutions and add new ones. The Romans added new ones, they subtracted some, they changed the terms. He was very, very keen on shortening the terms of various excessively long offices. He also wanted to create emergency institutions where, if you really faced an emergency, that institution gives somebody more power to take executive action to solve the problem. But that institution, the dictatorship as it was called in Rome, it wasn’t as though a random person could come along and do whatever he wanted. The idea was that this dictator would have special executive powers, but he is under strict oversight, very strict oversight, by the Senate and the plebians, so that if he takes one wrong step, there would be serious punishment. So he was very adamant about punishing leaders who took these responsibilities and then abused them.Listen to the rest of the conversation and be sure to follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you listen to podcasts.See More:
    #are #reading #machiavelli #wrong
    Are we reading Machiavelli wrong?
    There are very few philosophers who become part of popular culture, and often, if their ideas become influential, people don’t know where they came from.Niccolò Machiavelli, the great 16th-century diplomat and writer, is an exception.I don’t know how many people have actually read Machiavelli, but almost everyone knows the name, and almost everyone thinks they know what the word “Machiavellian” means. It’s someone who’s cunning and shrewd and manipulative. Or as one famous philosopher called him, “the teacher of evil.”But is this fair to Machiavelli, or has he been misunderstood? And if he has been, what are we missing in his work?Erica Benner is a political philosopher and the author of numerous books about Machiavelli including my favorite, Be Like the Fox, which offers a different interpretation of Machiavelli’s most famous work, The Prince.For centuries, The Prince has been popularly viewed as a how-to manual for tyrants. But Benner disagrees. She says it’s actually a veiled, almost satirical critique of authoritarian power. And she argues that Machiavelli is more timely than you might imagine. He wrote about why democracies get sick and die, about the dangers of inequality and partisanship, and even about why appearance and perception matter far more than truth and facts.In another of his seminal works, Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli is also distinctly not authoritarian. In fact, he espouses a deep belief in republicanism.I invited Benner onto The Gray Area to talk about what Machiavelli was up to and why he’s very much a philosopher for our times. As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you find podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.This interview has been edited for length and clarity. The popular view of Machiavelli is that he wanted to draw this neat line between morality and politics and that he celebrated ruthless pragmatism. What’s incomplete or wrong about that view?What is true is that he often criticizes the hyper-Christian morality that puts moral judgments into the hands of priests and popes and some abstract kind of God that he may or may not believe in, but in any case doesn’t think is something we can access as humans. If we want to think about morality both on a personal level and in politics, we’ve got to go back to basics. What is the behavior of human beings? What is human nature? What are the drives that propel human beings to do the stuff that we call good or bad? He wants to say that we should see human beings not as fundamentally good or evil. We shouldn’t think that human beings can ever be angels, and we shouldn’t see them as devils when they behave badly.But the basic point is if you want to develop a human morality, you study yourself, you study other humans, you don’t put yourself above other humans because you’re one, too. And then you ask, What kind of politics is going to make such people coexist?I take it you think his most famous book, The Prince, is not well understood?I used to have to teach Machiavelli and I would just say, It’s a handbook for tyrants. But he wrote the Discourses, which is a very, very republican book. So that’s the first thing that sets people off and makes you think, How could he have switched so quickly from writing The Prince to being a super-republican writing the Discourses? So that’s a warning sign. When I started seeing some of the earliest readers of Machiavelli and the earliest comments you get from republican authors, they all see Machiavelli as an ally and they say it. They say he’s a moral writer. Rousseau says, “He has only had superficial and corrupt readers until now.” If you ever pick up The Prince and you read the first four chapters, and most people don’t read them that carefully because they’re kind of boring, the exciting ones are the ones in the middle about morality and immorality and then you come to chapter five, which is about freedom.And up to chapter four, it sounds like a pretty cruel, cold analysis of what you should do. Then you get to chapter five and it’s like, Wow! It’s about how republics fight back, and the whole tone changes. Suddenly republics are fighting back and the prince has to be on his toes because he’s probably not going to survive the wrath of these fiery republics that do not give up.So who is he talking to in the book? Is he counseling future princes or warning future citizens?It’s complicated. You have to remember that he was kicked out of his job and had a big family to support. He had a lot of kids. And he loved his job and was passionate about the republic. He was tortured. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. He’s absolutely gutted that Florence’s republican experiment has failed and he can’t speak freely. So what does a guy with a history of writing dramas and satire do to make himself feel better? It’s taking the piss out of the people who have made you and a lot of your friends very miserable, in a low-key way because you can’t be too brutally satirical about it. But I think he’s really writing to expose the ways of tyrants.Would you say that Machiavelli has something like an ideology or is he just a clear-eyed pragmatist?He’s a republican. And again, this is something that, if you just read The Prince, you’re not going to get. But if you read the Discourses, which was written around the same time as The Prince, it’s very, very similar in almost every way except that it praises republics and criticizes tyrants very openly. Whereas The Prince never once uses the words “tyrant” or “tyranny.” So if there’s a guiding political view, whether you call it “ideology” or not, it’s republicanism. And that’s an ideology of shared power. It’s all the people in a city, all the male people in this case. Machiavelli was quite egalitarian. He clearly wanted as broad of a section of the male population to be citizens as possible. He says very clearly, The key to stabilizing your power is to change the constitution and to give everyone their share. Everyone has to have their share. You might want to speak a little bit more for yourself and the rich guys, but in the end, everyone’s got to have a share.Should we treat Machiavelli like a democratic theorist? Do you think of him as someone who would defend what we call democracy today?If you think the main principle of democracy is that power should be shared equally, which is how I understand democracy, then yes. He’d totally agree with that. What kind of institutions would he say a democracy has to have? He’s pretty clear in the Discourses. He says you don’t want a long-term executive. You need to always check power. I realize we exist in a very different world than Machiavelli, but is he a useful guide to understanding contemporary politics, particularly American politics?This is a really Machiavellian moment. If you read The Prince and look not just for those provocative quotes but for the criticisms, and sometimes they’re very subtle, you start to see that he’s exposing a lot of the stuff that we’re seeing today. Chapter nine of The Prince is where he talks about how you can rise to be the ruler of a republic and how much resistance you might face, and he says that people might be quite passive at first and not do very much. But at some point, when they see you start to attack the courts and the magistrates, that’s when you’re going to clash. And he says, That’s when you as a leader — and he’s playing like he’s on the leader’s side — that’s when you’ve got to decide if you’re going to get really, really tough, or are you going to have to find other ways to soften things up a bit?What would he make of Trump?He would put Trump in two categories. He’s got different classifications of princes. He’s got the prince of fortune, somebody who relies on wealth and money and big impressions to get ahead. He would say that Trump has a lot of those qualities, but he’d also call him this word “astutia” — astuteness, which doesn’t really translate in English because we think of that as a good quality, but he means calculating shrewdness. Somebody whose great talent is being able to shrewdly manipulate and find little holes where he can exploit people’s weaknesses and dissatisfactions.This is what he thought the Medici were good at. And his analysis of that is that it can cover you for a long time. People will see the good appearances and hope that you can deliver, but in the long run, people who do that don’t know how to build a solid state. That’s what he would say on a domestic front. I think there’s an unsophisticated way to look at Trump as Machiavellian. There are these lines in The Prince about knowing how to deploy cruelty and knowing when to be ruthless. But to your deeper point, I don’t think Machiavelli ever endorses cruelty for cruelty’s sake, and with Trump — and this is my personal opinion — cruelty is often the point, and that’s not really Machiavellian.Exactly. I wouldn’t say Trump is Machiavellian. Quite honestly, since the beginning of the Trump administration, I’ve often felt like he’s getting advice from people who haven’t really read Machiavelli or put Machiavelli into ChatGPT and got all the wrong pointers, because the ones that they’re picking out are just so crude. But they sound Machiavellian. You’re absolutely right, though. Machiavelli is very, very clear in The Prince that cruelty is not going to get you anywhere in the long term. You’re going to get pure hate. So if you think it’s ever instrumentally useful to be super cruel, think again.This obviously isn’t an endorsement of Trump, but I will say that something I hear often from people is that the system is so broken that we need someone to smash it up in order to save it. We need political dynamite. I bring that up because Machiavelli says repeatedly that politics requires flexibility and maybe even a little practical ruthlessness in order to preserve the republic. Do you think he would say that there’s real danger in clinging to procedural purity if you reach a point where the system seems to have failed?This is a great question. And again, this is one he does address in the Discourses quite a lot. He talks about how the Romans, when their republic started slipping, had “great men” coming up and saying, “I’ll save you,” and there were a lot before Julius Caesar finally “saved” them and then it all went to hell. And Machiavelli says that there are procedures that have to sometimes be wiped out — you have to reform institutions and add new ones. The Romans added new ones, they subtracted some, they changed the terms. He was very, very keen on shortening the terms of various excessively long offices. He also wanted to create emergency institutions where, if you really faced an emergency, that institution gives somebody more power to take executive action to solve the problem. But that institution, the dictatorship as it was called in Rome, it wasn’t as though a random person could come along and do whatever he wanted. The idea was that this dictator would have special executive powers, but he is under strict oversight, very strict oversight, by the Senate and the plebians, so that if he takes one wrong step, there would be serious punishment. So he was very adamant about punishing leaders who took these responsibilities and then abused them.Listen to the rest of the conversation and be sure to follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you listen to podcasts.See More: #are #reading #machiavelli #wrong
    WWW.VOX.COM
    Are we reading Machiavelli wrong?
    There are very few philosophers who become part of popular culture, and often, if their ideas become influential, people don’t know where they came from.Niccolò Machiavelli, the great 16th-century diplomat and writer, is an exception.I don’t know how many people have actually read Machiavelli, but almost everyone knows the name, and almost everyone thinks they know what the word “Machiavellian” means. It’s someone who’s cunning and shrewd and manipulative. Or as one famous philosopher called him, “the teacher of evil.”But is this fair to Machiavelli, or has he been misunderstood? And if he has been, what are we missing in his work?Erica Benner is a political philosopher and the author of numerous books about Machiavelli including my favorite, Be Like the Fox, which offers a different interpretation of Machiavelli’s most famous work, The Prince.For centuries, The Prince has been popularly viewed as a how-to manual for tyrants. But Benner disagrees. She says it’s actually a veiled, almost satirical critique of authoritarian power. And she argues that Machiavelli is more timely than you might imagine. He wrote about why democracies get sick and die, about the dangers of inequality and partisanship, and even about why appearance and perception matter far more than truth and facts.In another of his seminal works, Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli is also distinctly not authoritarian. In fact, he espouses a deep belief in republicanism (the lowercase-r kind, which affirms representative government).I invited Benner onto The Gray Area to talk about what Machiavelli was up to and why he’s very much a philosopher for our times. As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you find podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.This interview has been edited for length and clarity. The popular view of Machiavelli is that he wanted to draw this neat line between morality and politics and that he celebrated ruthless pragmatism. What’s incomplete or wrong about that view?What is true is that he often criticizes the hyper-Christian morality that puts moral judgments into the hands of priests and popes and some abstract kind of God that he may or may not believe in, but in any case doesn’t think is something we can access as humans. If we want to think about morality both on a personal level and in politics, we’ve got to go back to basics. What is the behavior of human beings? What is human nature? What are the drives that propel human beings to do the stuff that we call good or bad? He wants to say that we should see human beings not as fundamentally good or evil. We shouldn’t think that human beings can ever be angels, and we shouldn’t see them as devils when they behave badly.But the basic point is if you want to develop a human morality, you study yourself, you study other humans, you don’t put yourself above other humans because you’re one, too. And then you ask, What kind of politics is going to make such people coexist?I take it you think his most famous book, The Prince, is not well understood?I used to have to teach Machiavelli and I would just say, It’s a handbook for tyrants. But he wrote the Discourses, which is a very, very republican book. So that’s the first thing that sets people off and makes you think, How could he have switched so quickly from writing The Prince to being a super-republican writing the Discourses? So that’s a warning sign. When I started seeing some of the earliest readers of Machiavelli and the earliest comments you get from republican authors, they all see Machiavelli as an ally and they say it. They say he’s a moral writer. Rousseau says, “He has only had superficial and corrupt readers until now.” If you ever pick up The Prince and you read the first four chapters, and most people don’t read them that carefully because they’re kind of boring, the exciting ones are the ones in the middle about morality and immorality and then you come to chapter five, which is about freedom.And up to chapter four, it sounds like a pretty cruel, cold analysis of what you should do. Then you get to chapter five and it’s like, Wow! It’s about how republics fight back, and the whole tone changes. Suddenly republics are fighting back and the prince has to be on his toes because he’s probably not going to survive the wrath of these fiery republics that do not give up.So who is he talking to in the book? Is he counseling future princes or warning future citizens?It’s complicated. You have to remember that he was kicked out of his job and had a big family to support. He had a lot of kids. And he loved his job and was passionate about the republic. He was tortured. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. He’s absolutely gutted that Florence’s republican experiment has failed and he can’t speak freely. So what does a guy with a history of writing dramas and satire do to make himself feel better? It’s taking the piss out of the people who have made you and a lot of your friends very miserable, in a low-key way because you can’t be too brutally satirical about it. But I think he’s really writing to expose the ways of tyrants.Would you say that Machiavelli has something like an ideology or is he just a clear-eyed pragmatist?He’s a republican. And again, this is something that, if you just read The Prince, you’re not going to get. But if you read the Discourses, which was written around the same time as The Prince, it’s very, very similar in almost every way except that it praises republics and criticizes tyrants very openly. Whereas The Prince never once uses the words “tyrant” or “tyranny.” So if there’s a guiding political view, whether you call it “ideology” or not, it’s republicanism. And that’s an ideology of shared power. It’s all the people in a city, all the male people in this case. Machiavelli was quite egalitarian. He clearly wanted as broad of a section of the male population to be citizens as possible. He says very clearly, The key to stabilizing your power is to change the constitution and to give everyone their share. Everyone has to have their share. You might want to speak a little bit more for yourself and the rich guys, but in the end, everyone’s got to have a share.Should we treat Machiavelli like a democratic theorist? Do you think of him as someone who would defend what we call democracy today?If you think the main principle of democracy is that power should be shared equally, which is how I understand democracy, then yes. He’d totally agree with that. What kind of institutions would he say a democracy has to have? He’s pretty clear in the Discourses. He says you don’t want a long-term executive. You need to always check power. I realize we exist in a very different world than Machiavelli, but is he a useful guide to understanding contemporary politics, particularly American politics?This is a really Machiavellian moment. If you read The Prince and look not just for those provocative quotes but for the criticisms, and sometimes they’re very subtle, you start to see that he’s exposing a lot of the stuff that we’re seeing today. Chapter nine of The Prince is where he talks about how you can rise to be the ruler of a republic and how much resistance you might face, and he says that people might be quite passive at first and not do very much. But at some point, when they see you start to attack the courts and the magistrates, that’s when you’re going to clash. And he says, That’s when you as a leader — and he’s playing like he’s on the leader’s side — that’s when you’ve got to decide if you’re going to get really, really tough, or are you going to have to find other ways to soften things up a bit?What would he make of Trump?He would put Trump in two categories. He’s got different classifications of princes. He’s got the prince of fortune, somebody who relies on wealth and money and big impressions to get ahead. He would say that Trump has a lot of those qualities, but he’d also call him this word “astutia” — astuteness, which doesn’t really translate in English because we think of that as a good quality, but he means calculating shrewdness. Somebody whose great talent is being able to shrewdly manipulate and find little holes where he can exploit people’s weaknesses and dissatisfactions.This is what he thought the Medici were good at. And his analysis of that is that it can cover you for a long time. People will see the good appearances and hope that you can deliver, but in the long run, people who do that don’t know how to build a solid state. That’s what he would say on a domestic front. I think there’s an unsophisticated way to look at Trump as Machiavellian. There are these lines in The Prince about knowing how to deploy cruelty and knowing when to be ruthless. But to your deeper point, I don’t think Machiavelli ever endorses cruelty for cruelty’s sake, and with Trump — and this is my personal opinion — cruelty is often the point, and that’s not really Machiavellian.Exactly. I wouldn’t say Trump is Machiavellian. Quite honestly, since the beginning of the Trump administration, I’ve often felt like he’s getting advice from people who haven’t really read Machiavelli or put Machiavelli into ChatGPT and got all the wrong pointers, because the ones that they’re picking out are just so crude. But they sound Machiavellian. You’re absolutely right, though. Machiavelli is very, very clear in The Prince that cruelty is not going to get you anywhere in the long term. You’re going to get pure hate. So if you think it’s ever instrumentally useful to be super cruel, think again.This obviously isn’t an endorsement of Trump, but I will say that something I hear often from people is that the system is so broken that we need someone to smash it up in order to save it. We need political dynamite. I bring that up because Machiavelli says repeatedly that politics requires flexibility and maybe even a little practical ruthlessness in order to preserve the republic. Do you think he would say that there’s real danger in clinging to procedural purity if you reach a point where the system seems to have failed?This is a great question. And again, this is one he does address in the Discourses quite a lot. He talks about how the Romans, when their republic started slipping, had “great men” coming up and saying, “I’ll save you,” and there were a lot before Julius Caesar finally “saved” them and then it all went to hell. And Machiavelli says that there are procedures that have to sometimes be wiped out — you have to reform institutions and add new ones. The Romans added new ones, they subtracted some, they changed the terms. He was very, very keen on shortening the terms of various excessively long offices. He also wanted to create emergency institutions where, if you really faced an emergency, that institution gives somebody more power to take executive action to solve the problem. But that institution, the dictatorship as it was called in Rome, it wasn’t as though a random person could come along and do whatever he wanted. The idea was that this dictator would have special executive powers, but he is under strict oversight, very strict oversight, by the Senate and the plebians, so that if he takes one wrong step, there would be serious punishment. So he was very adamant about punishing leaders who took these responsibilities and then abused them.Listen to the rest of the conversation and be sure to follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you listen to podcasts.See More:
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  • On this day: May 31

    May 31: Dragon Boat Festival in China and Taiwan; World No Tobacco Day

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    455 – Petronius Maximus, the ruler of the Western Roman Empire, was stoned to death by a mob as he fled Rome ahead of the arrival of a Vandal force that sacked the city.
    1223 – Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus': Mongol forces defeated a Kievan Rus' army at the Battle of the Kalka River in present-day Ukraine.
    1468 – Cardinal Bessarionannounced his donation of 746 Greek and Latin codices to the Republic of Venice, forming the Biblioteca Marciana.
    1935 – A magnitude-7.7 earthquake struck Balochistan in British India, now part of Pakistan, killing between 30,000 and 60,000 people.
    2013 – A tornado struck Central Oklahoma, killing eight people and injuring more than 150 others.
    Albertino MussatoJoseph GrimaldiDina BoluarteMbaye DiagneMore anniversaries:
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    On this day: May 31
    May 31: Dragon Boat Festival in China and Taiwan; World No Tobacco Day Bessarion 455 – Petronius Maximus, the ruler of the Western Roman Empire, was stoned to death by a mob as he fled Rome ahead of the arrival of a Vandal force that sacked the city. 1223 – Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus': Mongol forces defeated a Kievan Rus' army at the Battle of the Kalka River in present-day Ukraine. 1468 – Cardinal Bessarionannounced his donation of 746 Greek and Latin codices to the Republic of Venice, forming the Biblioteca Marciana. 1935 – A magnitude-7.7 earthquake struck Balochistan in British India, now part of Pakistan, killing between 30,000 and 60,000 people. 2013 – A tornado struck Central Oklahoma, killing eight people and injuring more than 150 others. Albertino MussatoJoseph GrimaldiDina BoluarteMbaye DiagneMore anniversaries: May 30 May 31 June 1 Archive By email List of days of the year About #this #day
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    On this day: May 31
    May 31: Dragon Boat Festival in China and Taiwan (2025); World No Tobacco Day Bessarion 455 – Petronius Maximus, the ruler of the Western Roman Empire, was stoned to death by a mob as he fled Rome ahead of the arrival of a Vandal force that sacked the city. 1223 – Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus': Mongol forces defeated a Kievan Rus' army at the Battle of the Kalka River in present-day Ukraine. 1468 – Cardinal Bessarion (pictured) announced his donation of 746 Greek and Latin codices to the Republic of Venice, forming the Biblioteca Marciana. 1935 – A magnitude-7.7 earthquake struck Balochistan in British India, now part of Pakistan, killing between 30,000 and 60,000 people. 2013 – A tornado struck Central Oklahoma, killing eight people and injuring more than 150 others. Albertino Mussato (d. 1329)Joseph Grimaldi (d. 1837)Dina Boluarte (b. 1962)Mbaye Diagne (d. 1994) More anniversaries: May 30 May 31 June 1 Archive By email List of days of the year About
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  • 14 of the most significant archaeological sites in the US

    The US is less than 250 years old, but some of its most important archaeological sites are older than the Viking seafarers, the Roman Empire, and the pyramids.Many help tell the story of how the first humans came to North America. It's still a mystery exactly how and when people arrived, though it's widely believed they crossed the Bering Strait at least 15,000 years ago."As we get further back in time, as we get populations that are smaller and smaller, finding these places and interpreting them becomes increasingly difficult," archaeologist Kenneth Feder told Business Insider. He's the author of "Ancient America: Fifty Archaeological Sites to See for Yourself."Some sites, like White Sands and Cooper's Ferry, have skeptics about the accuracy of their age. Still, they contribute to our understanding of some of the earliest Americans.Others are more recent and highlight the different cultures that were spreading around the country, with complex buildings and illuminating pictographs.Many of these places are open to the public, so you can see the US' ancient history for yourself.

    White Sands National Park, New Mexico

    Footprints at White Sands.

    National Park Service

    Prehistoric camels, mammoths, and giant sloths once roamed what's now New Mexico, when it was greener and damper.As the climate warmed around 11,000 years ago, the water of Lake Otero receded, revealing footprints of humans who lived among these extinct animals. Some even seemed to be following a sloth, offering a rare glimpse into ancient hunters' behavior.Recent research puts some of these fossilized footprints at between 21,000 and 23,000 years old. If the dates are accurate, the prints would predate other archaeological sites in the US, raising intriguing questions about who these people were and how they arrived in the Southwestern state."Where are they coming from?" Feder said. "They're not parachute dropping in New Mexico. They must have come from somewhere else, which means there are even older sites." Archaeologists simply haven't found them yet.While visitors can soak in the sight of the eponymous white sands, the footprints are currently off-limits.

    Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pennsylvania

    The archeological dig at the Meadowcroft National Historic Site in 2013.

    AP Photo/Keith Srakocic

    In the 1970s, archaeologist James M. Adovasio sparked a controversy when he and his colleagues suggested stone tools and other artifacts found in southwestern Pennsylvania belonged to humans who had lived in the area 16,000 years ago.For decades, scientists had been finding evidence of human habitation that all seemed to be around 12,000 to 13,000 years old, belonging to the Clovis culture. They were long believed to have been the first to cross the Bering land bridge. Humans who arrived in North America before this group are often referred to as pre-Clovis.At the time, skeptics said that the radiocarbon dating evidence was flawed, AP News reported in 2016. In the years since, more sites that appear older than 13,000 years have been found across the US.Feder said Adovasio meticulously excavated the site, but there's still no clear consensus about the age of the oldest artifacts. Still, he said, "that site is absolutely a major, important, significant site." It helped archaeologists realize humans started arriving on the continent before the Clovis people.The dig itself is on display at the Heinz History Center, allowing visitors to see an excavation in person.

    Cooper's Ferry, Idaho

    Excavators at Cooper's Ferry in 2013.

    Loren Davis/Oregon State University

    One site that's added intriguing evidence to the pre-Clovis theory is located in western Idaho. Humans living there left stone tools and charred bones in a hearth between 14,000 and 16,000 years ago, according to radiocarbon dating. Other researchers put the dates closer to 11,500 years ago.These stemmed tools are different from the Clovis fluted projectiles, researchers wrote in a 2019 Science Advances paper.Some scientists think humans may have been traveling along the West Coast at this time, when huge ice sheets covered Alaska and Canada. "People using boats, using canoes could hop along that coast and end up in North America long before those glacial ice bodies decoupled," Feder said.Cooper's Ferry is located on traditional Nez Perce land, which the Bureau of Land Management holds in public ownership.

    Page-Ladson, Florida

    Divers search in the sediment at the Page-Ladson site.

    Texas A&M University via Getty Images

    In the early 1980s, former Navy SEAL Buddy Page alerted paleontologists and archaeologists to a sinkhole nicknamed "Booger Hole" in the Aucilla River. There, the researchers found mammoth and mastodon bones and stone tools.They also discovered a mastodon tusk with what appeared to be cut marks believed to be made by a tool. Other scientists have returned to the site more recently, bringing up more bones and tools. They used radiocarbon dating, which established the site as pre-Clovis."The stone tools and faunal remains at the site show that at 14,550 years ago, people knew how to find game, fresh water and material for making tools," Michael Waters, one of the researchers, said in a statement in 2016. "These people were well-adapted to this environment."Since the site is both underwater and on private property, it's not open to visitors.

    Paisley Caves, Oregon

    One of the Paisley Caves near Paisley, Oregon.

    AP Photo/Jeff Barnard

    Scientists study coprolites, or fossilized poop, to learn about the diets of long-dead animals. Mineralized waste can also reveal much more. In 2020, archaeologist Dennis Jenkins published a paper on coprolites from an Oregon cave that were over 14,000 years old.Radiocarbon dating gave the trace fossils' age, and genetic tests suggested they belonged to humans. Further analysis of coprolites added additional evidence that a group had been on the West Coast 1,000 years before the Clovis people arrived.Located in southcentral Oregon, the caves appear to be a piece of the puzzle indicating how humans spread throughout the continent thousands of years ago.The federal Bureau of Land Management owns the land where the caves are found, and they are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

    Swan Point, Alaska

    Excavators working at the Swan Point site in June 2016.

    Charles Holmes/University of Alaska, Fairbanks

    Whenever people arrived in the Americas, they crossed from Siberia into Beringia, an area of land and sea between Russia and Canada and Alaska. Now it's covered in water, but there was once a land bridge connecting them.The site in Alaska with the oldest evidence of human habitation is Swan Point, in the state's eastern-central region. In addition to tools and hearths dating back 14,000 years, mammoth bones have been found there.Researchers think this area was a kind of seasonal hunting camp. As mammoths returned during certain times of the years, humans would track them and kill them, providing plentiful food for the hunter-gatherers.While Alaska may have a wealth of archaeological evidence of early Americans, it's also a difficult place to excavate. "Your digging season is very narrow, and it's expensive," Feder said. Some require a helicopter to reach, for example.

    Blackwater Draw, New Mexico

    A palaeontologist excavating a mammoth in Portales, New Mexico, circa 1960.

    Dick Kent/FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images

    In 1929, 19-year-old James Ridgley Whiteman found mammoth bones along with fluted projectile points near Clovis, New Mexico. The Clovis people who made these tools were named for this site.Researchers studying the site began to realize the artifacts found at the site belonged to different cultures. Clovis points are typically larger than Folsom flutes, which were first found at another archaeological site in New Mexico.For decades after Whiteman's discovery, experts thought the Clovis people were the first to cross the Bering land bridge from Asia around 13,000 years ago. Estimates for humans' arrival is now thought to be at least 15,000 years ago.Eastern New Mexico University's Blackwater Draw Museum grants access to the archaeological site between April and October.

    Upper Sun River, Alaska

    Excavations at the Upward Sun River, Alaska.

    Ben Potter/University of Alaska, Fairbanks

    One reason the dates of human occupation in North America is so contentious is that very few ancient remains have been found. Among the oldest is a child from Upward Sun River, or Xaasaa Na', in Central Alaska.Archaeologists found the bones of the child in 2013. Local indigenous groups refer to her as Xach'itee'aanenh t'eede gay, or Sunrise Girl-Child. Genetic testing revealed the 11,300-year-old infant belonged to a previously unknown Native American population, the Ancient Beringians.Based on the child's genetic information, researchers learned that she was related to modern Native Americans but not directly. Their common ancestors started becoming genetically isolated 25,000 years ago before dividing into two groups after a few thousand years: the Ancient Berignians and the ancestors of modern Native Americans.According to this research, it's possible humans reached Alaska roughly 20,000 years ago.

    Poverty Point National Monument, Louisiana

    Poverty Point in Louisiana.

    National Park Service

    Stretching over 80 feet long and 5 feet tall, the rows of curved mounds of Poverty Point are a marvel when viewed from above. Over 3,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers constructed them out of tons of soil. Scientists aren't sure exactly why people built them, whether they were ceremonial or a display of status.The artifacts various groups left behind indicate the site was used off and on for hundreds of years and was a meeting point for trading. People brought tools and rocks from as far as 800 miles away. Remains of deer, fish, frogs, alligators, nuts, grapes, and other food have given archaeologists insights into their diets and daily lives.You can see the World Heritage Site for yourself year-round.

    Horseshoe Canyon, Utah

    The Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon.

    Neal Herbert/National Park Service

    Though remote, the multicolored walls of Horseshoe Canyon have long attracted visitors. Some of its artifacts date back to between 9,000 and 7,000 BCE, but its pictographs are more recent. Some tests date certain sections to around 2,000 to 900 years ago.The four galleries contain life-sized images of anthropomorphic figures and animals in what's known as the Barrier Canyon style. Much of this art is found in Utah, produced by the Desert Archaic culture.The pictographs may have spiritual and practical significance but also help capture a time when groups were meeting and mixing, according to the Natural History Museum of Utah.It's a difficult trek to get to the pictographsbut are amazing to view in person, Feder said. "These are creative geniuses," he said of the artists.

    Canyon de Chelly, Arizona

    The Antelope House at Canyon de Chelly National Monument.

    Michael Denson/National Park Service

    Situated in the Navajo Nation, Canyon de Chelly has gorgeous desert views and thousands of years of human history. Centuries ago, Ancestral Pueblo and Hopi groups planted crops, created pictographs, and built cliff dwellings.Over 900 years ago, Puebloan people constructed the White House, named for the hue of its clay. Its upper floors sit on a sandstone cliff, with a sheer drop outside the windows.Navajo people, also known as Diné, still live in Canyon de Chelly. Diné journalist Alastair Lee Bitsóí recently wrote about visiting some of the sacred and taboo areas. They include Tsé Yaa Kin, where archaeologists found human remains.In the 1860s, the US government forced 8,000 Navajo to relocate to Fort Sumner in New Mexico. The deadly journey is known as the "Long Walk." Eventually, they were able to return, though their homes and crops were destroyed.A hike to the White House is the only one open to the public without a Navajo guide or NPS ranger.

    Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado

    Visitors line up at Mesa Verde National Park.

    Shutterstock/Don Mammoser

    In the early 1900s, two women formed the Colorado Cliff Dwelling Association, hoping to preserve the ruins in the state's southwestern region. A few years later, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a bill designating Mesa Verde as the first national park meant to "preserve the works of man."Mesa Verde National Park holds hundreds of dwellings, including the sprawling Cliff Palace. It has over 100 rooms and nearly two dozen kivas, or ceremonial spaces.Using dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating, archaeologists learned when Ancestral Pueblo people built some of these structures and that they migrated out of the area by the 1300s.Feder said it's his favorite archaeological site he's visited. "You don't want to leave because you can't believe it's real," he said.Tourists can view many of these dwellings from the road, but some are also accessible after a bit of a hike. Some require extra tickets and can get crowded, Feder said.

    Cahokia, Illinois

    A mound at Cahokia in Illinois.

    Matt Gush/Shutterstock

    Cahokia has been called one of North America's first cities. Not far from present-day St. Louis, an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people lived in dense settlements roughly 1,000 years ago. Important buildings sat atop large mounds, which the Mississippians built by hand, The Guardian reported.At the time, it was thriving with hunters, farmers, and artisans. "It's an agricultural civilization," Feder said. "It's a place where raw materials from a thousand miles away are coming in." Researchers have also found mass graves, potentially from human sacrifices.The inhabitants built circles of posts, which one archaeologist later referred to as "woodhenges," as a kind of calendar. At the solstices, the sun would rise or set aligned with different mounds.After a few hundred years, Cahokia's population declined and disappeared by 1350. Its largest mound remains, and some aspects have been reconstructed.While Cahokia is typically open to the public, parts are currently closed for renovations.

    Montezuma Castle, Arizona

    Montezuma Castle, a cliff dwelling, in Arizona.

    MyLoupe/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

    Perched on a limestone cliff in Camp Verde, Arizona, this site is an apartment, not a castle, and is unrelated to the Aztec ruler Montezuma.The Sinagua people engineered the five-story, 20-room building around 1100. It curves to follow the natural line of the cliff, which would have been more difficult than simply making a straight building, Feder said."These people were architects," he said. "They had a sense of beauty."The inhabitants were also practical, figuring out irrigation systems and construction techniques, like thick walls and shady spots, to help them survive the hot, dry climate.Feder said the dwelling is fairly accessible, with a short walk along a trail to view it, though visitors can't go inside the building itself.
    #most #significant #archaeological #sites
    14 of the most significant archaeological sites in the US
    The US is less than 250 years old, but some of its most important archaeological sites are older than the Viking seafarers, the Roman Empire, and the pyramids.Many help tell the story of how the first humans came to North America. It's still a mystery exactly how and when people arrived, though it's widely believed they crossed the Bering Strait at least 15,000 years ago."As we get further back in time, as we get populations that are smaller and smaller, finding these places and interpreting them becomes increasingly difficult," archaeologist Kenneth Feder told Business Insider. He's the author of "Ancient America: Fifty Archaeological Sites to See for Yourself."Some sites, like White Sands and Cooper's Ferry, have skeptics about the accuracy of their age. Still, they contribute to our understanding of some of the earliest Americans.Others are more recent and highlight the different cultures that were spreading around the country, with complex buildings and illuminating pictographs.Many of these places are open to the public, so you can see the US' ancient history for yourself. White Sands National Park, New Mexico Footprints at White Sands. National Park Service Prehistoric camels, mammoths, and giant sloths once roamed what's now New Mexico, when it was greener and damper.As the climate warmed around 11,000 years ago, the water of Lake Otero receded, revealing footprints of humans who lived among these extinct animals. Some even seemed to be following a sloth, offering a rare glimpse into ancient hunters' behavior.Recent research puts some of these fossilized footprints at between 21,000 and 23,000 years old. If the dates are accurate, the prints would predate other archaeological sites in the US, raising intriguing questions about who these people were and how they arrived in the Southwestern state."Where are they coming from?" Feder said. "They're not parachute dropping in New Mexico. They must have come from somewhere else, which means there are even older sites." Archaeologists simply haven't found them yet.While visitors can soak in the sight of the eponymous white sands, the footprints are currently off-limits. Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pennsylvania The archeological dig at the Meadowcroft National Historic Site in 2013. AP Photo/Keith Srakocic In the 1970s, archaeologist James M. Adovasio sparked a controversy when he and his colleagues suggested stone tools and other artifacts found in southwestern Pennsylvania belonged to humans who had lived in the area 16,000 years ago.For decades, scientists had been finding evidence of human habitation that all seemed to be around 12,000 to 13,000 years old, belonging to the Clovis culture. They were long believed to have been the first to cross the Bering land bridge. Humans who arrived in North America before this group are often referred to as pre-Clovis.At the time, skeptics said that the radiocarbon dating evidence was flawed, AP News reported in 2016. In the years since, more sites that appear older than 13,000 years have been found across the US.Feder said Adovasio meticulously excavated the site, but there's still no clear consensus about the age of the oldest artifacts. Still, he said, "that site is absolutely a major, important, significant site." It helped archaeologists realize humans started arriving on the continent before the Clovis people.The dig itself is on display at the Heinz History Center, allowing visitors to see an excavation in person. Cooper's Ferry, Idaho Excavators at Cooper's Ferry in 2013. Loren Davis/Oregon State University One site that's added intriguing evidence to the pre-Clovis theory is located in western Idaho. Humans living there left stone tools and charred bones in a hearth between 14,000 and 16,000 years ago, according to radiocarbon dating. Other researchers put the dates closer to 11,500 years ago.These stemmed tools are different from the Clovis fluted projectiles, researchers wrote in a 2019 Science Advances paper.Some scientists think humans may have been traveling along the West Coast at this time, when huge ice sheets covered Alaska and Canada. "People using boats, using canoes could hop along that coast and end up in North America long before those glacial ice bodies decoupled," Feder said.Cooper's Ferry is located on traditional Nez Perce land, which the Bureau of Land Management holds in public ownership. Page-Ladson, Florida Divers search in the sediment at the Page-Ladson site. Texas A&M University via Getty Images In the early 1980s, former Navy SEAL Buddy Page alerted paleontologists and archaeologists to a sinkhole nicknamed "Booger Hole" in the Aucilla River. There, the researchers found mammoth and mastodon bones and stone tools.They also discovered a mastodon tusk with what appeared to be cut marks believed to be made by a tool. Other scientists have returned to the site more recently, bringing up more bones and tools. They used radiocarbon dating, which established the site as pre-Clovis."The stone tools and faunal remains at the site show that at 14,550 years ago, people knew how to find game, fresh water and material for making tools," Michael Waters, one of the researchers, said in a statement in 2016. "These people were well-adapted to this environment."Since the site is both underwater and on private property, it's not open to visitors. Paisley Caves, Oregon One of the Paisley Caves near Paisley, Oregon. AP Photo/Jeff Barnard Scientists study coprolites, or fossilized poop, to learn about the diets of long-dead animals. Mineralized waste can also reveal much more. In 2020, archaeologist Dennis Jenkins published a paper on coprolites from an Oregon cave that were over 14,000 years old.Radiocarbon dating gave the trace fossils' age, and genetic tests suggested they belonged to humans. Further analysis of coprolites added additional evidence that a group had been on the West Coast 1,000 years before the Clovis people arrived.Located in southcentral Oregon, the caves appear to be a piece of the puzzle indicating how humans spread throughout the continent thousands of years ago.The federal Bureau of Land Management owns the land where the caves are found, and they are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Swan Point, Alaska Excavators working at the Swan Point site in June 2016. Charles Holmes/University of Alaska, Fairbanks Whenever people arrived in the Americas, they crossed from Siberia into Beringia, an area of land and sea between Russia and Canada and Alaska. Now it's covered in water, but there was once a land bridge connecting them.The site in Alaska with the oldest evidence of human habitation is Swan Point, in the state's eastern-central region. In addition to tools and hearths dating back 14,000 years, mammoth bones have been found there.Researchers think this area was a kind of seasonal hunting camp. As mammoths returned during certain times of the years, humans would track them and kill them, providing plentiful food for the hunter-gatherers.While Alaska may have a wealth of archaeological evidence of early Americans, it's also a difficult place to excavate. "Your digging season is very narrow, and it's expensive," Feder said. Some require a helicopter to reach, for example. Blackwater Draw, New Mexico A palaeontologist excavating a mammoth in Portales, New Mexico, circa 1960. Dick Kent/FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images In 1929, 19-year-old James Ridgley Whiteman found mammoth bones along with fluted projectile points near Clovis, New Mexico. The Clovis people who made these tools were named for this site.Researchers studying the site began to realize the artifacts found at the site belonged to different cultures. Clovis points are typically larger than Folsom flutes, which were first found at another archaeological site in New Mexico.For decades after Whiteman's discovery, experts thought the Clovis people were the first to cross the Bering land bridge from Asia around 13,000 years ago. Estimates for humans' arrival is now thought to be at least 15,000 years ago.Eastern New Mexico University's Blackwater Draw Museum grants access to the archaeological site between April and October. Upper Sun River, Alaska Excavations at the Upward Sun River, Alaska. Ben Potter/University of Alaska, Fairbanks One reason the dates of human occupation in North America is so contentious is that very few ancient remains have been found. Among the oldest is a child from Upward Sun River, or Xaasaa Na', in Central Alaska.Archaeologists found the bones of the child in 2013. Local indigenous groups refer to her as Xach'itee'aanenh t'eede gay, or Sunrise Girl-Child. Genetic testing revealed the 11,300-year-old infant belonged to a previously unknown Native American population, the Ancient Beringians.Based on the child's genetic information, researchers learned that she was related to modern Native Americans but not directly. Their common ancestors started becoming genetically isolated 25,000 years ago before dividing into two groups after a few thousand years: the Ancient Berignians and the ancestors of modern Native Americans.According to this research, it's possible humans reached Alaska roughly 20,000 years ago. Poverty Point National Monument, Louisiana Poverty Point in Louisiana. National Park Service Stretching over 80 feet long and 5 feet tall, the rows of curved mounds of Poverty Point are a marvel when viewed from above. Over 3,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers constructed them out of tons of soil. Scientists aren't sure exactly why people built them, whether they were ceremonial or a display of status.The artifacts various groups left behind indicate the site was used off and on for hundreds of years and was a meeting point for trading. People brought tools and rocks from as far as 800 miles away. Remains of deer, fish, frogs, alligators, nuts, grapes, and other food have given archaeologists insights into their diets and daily lives.You can see the World Heritage Site for yourself year-round. Horseshoe Canyon, Utah The Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon. Neal Herbert/National Park Service Though remote, the multicolored walls of Horseshoe Canyon have long attracted visitors. Some of its artifacts date back to between 9,000 and 7,000 BCE, but its pictographs are more recent. Some tests date certain sections to around 2,000 to 900 years ago.The four galleries contain life-sized images of anthropomorphic figures and animals in what's known as the Barrier Canyon style. Much of this art is found in Utah, produced by the Desert Archaic culture.The pictographs may have spiritual and practical significance but also help capture a time when groups were meeting and mixing, according to the Natural History Museum of Utah.It's a difficult trek to get to the pictographsbut are amazing to view in person, Feder said. "These are creative geniuses," he said of the artists. Canyon de Chelly, Arizona The Antelope House at Canyon de Chelly National Monument. Michael Denson/National Park Service Situated in the Navajo Nation, Canyon de Chelly has gorgeous desert views and thousands of years of human history. Centuries ago, Ancestral Pueblo and Hopi groups planted crops, created pictographs, and built cliff dwellings.Over 900 years ago, Puebloan people constructed the White House, named for the hue of its clay. Its upper floors sit on a sandstone cliff, with a sheer drop outside the windows.Navajo people, also known as Diné, still live in Canyon de Chelly. Diné journalist Alastair Lee Bitsóí recently wrote about visiting some of the sacred and taboo areas. They include Tsé Yaa Kin, where archaeologists found human remains.In the 1860s, the US government forced 8,000 Navajo to relocate to Fort Sumner in New Mexico. The deadly journey is known as the "Long Walk." Eventually, they were able to return, though their homes and crops were destroyed.A hike to the White House is the only one open to the public without a Navajo guide or NPS ranger. Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado Visitors line up at Mesa Verde National Park. Shutterstock/Don Mammoser In the early 1900s, two women formed the Colorado Cliff Dwelling Association, hoping to preserve the ruins in the state's southwestern region. A few years later, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a bill designating Mesa Verde as the first national park meant to "preserve the works of man."Mesa Verde National Park holds hundreds of dwellings, including the sprawling Cliff Palace. It has over 100 rooms and nearly two dozen kivas, or ceremonial spaces.Using dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating, archaeologists learned when Ancestral Pueblo people built some of these structures and that they migrated out of the area by the 1300s.Feder said it's his favorite archaeological site he's visited. "You don't want to leave because you can't believe it's real," he said.Tourists can view many of these dwellings from the road, but some are also accessible after a bit of a hike. Some require extra tickets and can get crowded, Feder said. Cahokia, Illinois A mound at Cahokia in Illinois. Matt Gush/Shutterstock Cahokia has been called one of North America's first cities. Not far from present-day St. Louis, an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people lived in dense settlements roughly 1,000 years ago. Important buildings sat atop large mounds, which the Mississippians built by hand, The Guardian reported.At the time, it was thriving with hunters, farmers, and artisans. "It's an agricultural civilization," Feder said. "It's a place where raw materials from a thousand miles away are coming in." Researchers have also found mass graves, potentially from human sacrifices.The inhabitants built circles of posts, which one archaeologist later referred to as "woodhenges," as a kind of calendar. At the solstices, the sun would rise or set aligned with different mounds.After a few hundred years, Cahokia's population declined and disappeared by 1350. Its largest mound remains, and some aspects have been reconstructed.While Cahokia is typically open to the public, parts are currently closed for renovations. Montezuma Castle, Arizona Montezuma Castle, a cliff dwelling, in Arizona. MyLoupe/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Perched on a limestone cliff in Camp Verde, Arizona, this site is an apartment, not a castle, and is unrelated to the Aztec ruler Montezuma.The Sinagua people engineered the five-story, 20-room building around 1100. It curves to follow the natural line of the cliff, which would have been more difficult than simply making a straight building, Feder said."These people were architects," he said. "They had a sense of beauty."The inhabitants were also practical, figuring out irrigation systems and construction techniques, like thick walls and shady spots, to help them survive the hot, dry climate.Feder said the dwelling is fairly accessible, with a short walk along a trail to view it, though visitors can't go inside the building itself. #most #significant #archaeological #sites
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    14 of the most significant archaeological sites in the US
    The US is less than 250 years old, but some of its most important archaeological sites are older than the Viking seafarers, the Roman Empire, and the pyramids.Many help tell the story of how the first humans came to North America. It's still a mystery exactly how and when people arrived, though it's widely believed they crossed the Bering Strait at least 15,000 years ago."As we get further back in time, as we get populations that are smaller and smaller, finding these places and interpreting them becomes increasingly difficult," archaeologist Kenneth Feder told Business Insider. He's the author of "Ancient America: Fifty Archaeological Sites to See for Yourself."Some sites, like White Sands and Cooper's Ferry, have skeptics about the accuracy of their age. Still, they contribute to our understanding of some of the earliest Americans.Others are more recent and highlight the different cultures that were spreading around the country, with complex buildings and illuminating pictographs.Many of these places are open to the public, so you can see the US' ancient history for yourself. White Sands National Park, New Mexico Footprints at White Sands. National Park Service Prehistoric camels, mammoths, and giant sloths once roamed what's now New Mexico, when it was greener and damper.As the climate warmed around 11,000 years ago, the water of Lake Otero receded, revealing footprints of humans who lived among these extinct animals. Some even seemed to be following a sloth, offering a rare glimpse into ancient hunters' behavior.Recent research puts some of these fossilized footprints at between 21,000 and 23,000 years old. If the dates are accurate, the prints would predate other archaeological sites in the US, raising intriguing questions about who these people were and how they arrived in the Southwestern state."Where are they coming from?" Feder said. "They're not parachute dropping in New Mexico. They must have come from somewhere else, which means there are even older sites." Archaeologists simply haven't found them yet.While visitors can soak in the sight of the eponymous white sands, the footprints are currently off-limits. Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pennsylvania The archeological dig at the Meadowcroft National Historic Site in 2013. AP Photo/Keith Srakocic In the 1970s, archaeologist James M. Adovasio sparked a controversy when he and his colleagues suggested stone tools and other artifacts found in southwestern Pennsylvania belonged to humans who had lived in the area 16,000 years ago.For decades, scientists had been finding evidence of human habitation that all seemed to be around 12,000 to 13,000 years old, belonging to the Clovis culture. They were long believed to have been the first to cross the Bering land bridge. Humans who arrived in North America before this group are often referred to as pre-Clovis.At the time, skeptics said that the radiocarbon dating evidence was flawed, AP News reported in 2016. In the years since, more sites that appear older than 13,000 years have been found across the US.Feder said Adovasio meticulously excavated the site, but there's still no clear consensus about the age of the oldest artifacts. Still, he said, "that site is absolutely a major, important, significant site." It helped archaeologists realize humans started arriving on the continent before the Clovis people.The dig itself is on display at the Heinz History Center, allowing visitors to see an excavation in person. Cooper's Ferry, Idaho Excavators at Cooper's Ferry in 2013. Loren Davis/Oregon State University One site that's added intriguing evidence to the pre-Clovis theory is located in western Idaho. Humans living there left stone tools and charred bones in a hearth between 14,000 and 16,000 years ago, according to radiocarbon dating. Other researchers put the dates closer to 11,500 years ago.These stemmed tools are different from the Clovis fluted projectiles, researchers wrote in a 2019 Science Advances paper.Some scientists think humans may have been traveling along the West Coast at this time, when huge ice sheets covered Alaska and Canada. "People using boats, using canoes could hop along that coast and end up in North America long before those glacial ice bodies decoupled," Feder said.Cooper's Ferry is located on traditional Nez Perce land, which the Bureau of Land Management holds in public ownership. Page-Ladson, Florida Divers search in the sediment at the Page-Ladson site. Texas A&M University via Getty Images In the early 1980s, former Navy SEAL Buddy Page alerted paleontologists and archaeologists to a sinkhole nicknamed "Booger Hole" in the Aucilla River. There, the researchers found mammoth and mastodon bones and stone tools.They also discovered a mastodon tusk with what appeared to be cut marks believed to be made by a tool. Other scientists have returned to the site more recently, bringing up more bones and tools. They used radiocarbon dating, which established the site as pre-Clovis."The stone tools and faunal remains at the site show that at 14,550 years ago, people knew how to find game, fresh water and material for making tools," Michael Waters, one of the researchers, said in a statement in 2016. "These people were well-adapted to this environment."Since the site is both underwater and on private property, it's not open to visitors. Paisley Caves, Oregon One of the Paisley Caves near Paisley, Oregon. AP Photo/Jeff Barnard Scientists study coprolites, or fossilized poop, to learn about the diets of long-dead animals. Mineralized waste can also reveal much more. In 2020, archaeologist Dennis Jenkins published a paper on coprolites from an Oregon cave that were over 14,000 years old.Radiocarbon dating gave the trace fossils' age, and genetic tests suggested they belonged to humans. Further analysis of coprolites added additional evidence that a group had been on the West Coast 1,000 years before the Clovis people arrived.Located in southcentral Oregon, the caves appear to be a piece of the puzzle indicating how humans spread throughout the continent thousands of years ago.The federal Bureau of Land Management owns the land where the caves are found, and they are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Swan Point, Alaska Excavators working at the Swan Point site in June 2016. Charles Holmes/University of Alaska, Fairbanks Whenever people arrived in the Americas, they crossed from Siberia into Beringia, an area of land and sea between Russia and Canada and Alaska. Now it's covered in water, but there was once a land bridge connecting them.The site in Alaska with the oldest evidence of human habitation is Swan Point, in the state's eastern-central region. In addition to tools and hearths dating back 14,000 years, mammoth bones have been found there.Researchers think this area was a kind of seasonal hunting camp. As mammoths returned during certain times of the years, humans would track them and kill them, providing plentiful food for the hunter-gatherers.While Alaska may have a wealth of archaeological evidence of early Americans, it's also a difficult place to excavate. "Your digging season is very narrow, and it's expensive," Feder said. Some require a helicopter to reach, for example. Blackwater Draw, New Mexico A palaeontologist excavating a mammoth in Portales, New Mexico, circa 1960. Dick Kent/FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images In 1929, 19-year-old James Ridgley Whiteman found mammoth bones along with fluted projectile points near Clovis, New Mexico. The Clovis people who made these tools were named for this site.Researchers studying the site began to realize the artifacts found at the site belonged to different cultures. Clovis points are typically larger than Folsom flutes, which were first found at another archaeological site in New Mexico.For decades after Whiteman's discovery, experts thought the Clovis people were the first to cross the Bering land bridge from Asia around 13,000 years ago. Estimates for humans' arrival is now thought to be at least 15,000 years ago.Eastern New Mexico University's Blackwater Draw Museum grants access to the archaeological site between April and October. Upper Sun River, Alaska Excavations at the Upward Sun River, Alaska. Ben Potter/University of Alaska, Fairbanks One reason the dates of human occupation in North America is so contentious is that very few ancient remains have been found. Among the oldest is a child from Upward Sun River, or Xaasaa Na', in Central Alaska.Archaeologists found the bones of the child in 2013. Local indigenous groups refer to her as Xach'itee'aanenh t'eede gay, or Sunrise Girl-Child. Genetic testing revealed the 11,300-year-old infant belonged to a previously unknown Native American population, the Ancient Beringians.Based on the child's genetic information, researchers learned that she was related to modern Native Americans but not directly. Their common ancestors started becoming genetically isolated 25,000 years ago before dividing into two groups after a few thousand years: the Ancient Berignians and the ancestors of modern Native Americans.According to this research, it's possible humans reached Alaska roughly 20,000 years ago. Poverty Point National Monument, Louisiana Poverty Point in Louisiana. National Park Service Stretching over 80 feet long and 5 feet tall, the rows of curved mounds of Poverty Point are a marvel when viewed from above. Over 3,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers constructed them out of tons of soil. Scientists aren't sure exactly why people built them, whether they were ceremonial or a display of status.The artifacts various groups left behind indicate the site was used off and on for hundreds of years and was a meeting point for trading. People brought tools and rocks from as far as 800 miles away. Remains of deer, fish, frogs, alligators, nuts, grapes, and other food have given archaeologists insights into their diets and daily lives.You can see the World Heritage Site for yourself year-round. Horseshoe Canyon, Utah The Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon. Neal Herbert/National Park Service Though remote, the multicolored walls of Horseshoe Canyon have long attracted visitors. Some of its artifacts date back to between 9,000 and 7,000 BCE, but its pictographs are more recent. Some tests date certain sections to around 2,000 to 900 years ago.The four galleries contain life-sized images of anthropomorphic figures and animals in what's known as the Barrier Canyon style. Much of this art is found in Utah, produced by the Desert Archaic culture.The pictographs may have spiritual and practical significance but also help capture a time when groups were meeting and mixing, according to the Natural History Museum of Utah.It's a difficult trek to get to the pictographs (and the NPS warns it can be dangerously hot in summer) but are amazing to view in person, Feder said. "These are creative geniuses," he said of the artists. Canyon de Chelly, Arizona The Antelope House at Canyon de Chelly National Monument. Michael Denson/National Park Service Situated in the Navajo Nation, Canyon de Chelly has gorgeous desert views and thousands of years of human history. Centuries ago, Ancestral Pueblo and Hopi groups planted crops, created pictographs, and built cliff dwellings.Over 900 years ago, Puebloan people constructed the White House, named for the hue of its clay. Its upper floors sit on a sandstone cliff, with a sheer drop outside the windows.Navajo people, also known as Diné, still live in Canyon de Chelly. Diné journalist Alastair Lee Bitsóí recently wrote about visiting some of the sacred and taboo areas. They include Tsé Yaa Kin, where archaeologists found human remains.In the 1860s, the US government forced 8,000 Navajo to relocate to Fort Sumner in New Mexico. The deadly journey is known as the "Long Walk." Eventually, they were able to return, though their homes and crops were destroyed.A hike to the White House is the only one open to the public without a Navajo guide or NPS ranger. Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado Visitors line up at Mesa Verde National Park. Shutterstock/Don Mammoser In the early 1900s, two women formed the Colorado Cliff Dwelling Association, hoping to preserve the ruins in the state's southwestern region. A few years later, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a bill designating Mesa Verde as the first national park meant to "preserve the works of man."Mesa Verde National Park holds hundreds of dwellings, including the sprawling Cliff Palace. It has over 100 rooms and nearly two dozen kivas, or ceremonial spaces.Using dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating, archaeologists learned when Ancestral Pueblo people built some of these structures and that they migrated out of the area by the 1300s.Feder said it's his favorite archaeological site he's visited. "You don't want to leave because you can't believe it's real," he said.Tourists can view many of these dwellings from the road, but some are also accessible after a bit of a hike. Some require extra tickets and can get crowded, Feder said. Cahokia, Illinois A mound at Cahokia in Illinois. Matt Gush/Shutterstock Cahokia has been called one of North America's first cities. Not far from present-day St. Louis, an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people lived in dense settlements roughly 1,000 years ago. Important buildings sat atop large mounds, which the Mississippians built by hand, The Guardian reported.At the time, it was thriving with hunters, farmers, and artisans. "It's an agricultural civilization," Feder said. "It's a place where raw materials from a thousand miles away are coming in." Researchers have also found mass graves, potentially from human sacrifices.The inhabitants built circles of posts, which one archaeologist later referred to as "woodhenges," as a kind of calendar. At the solstices, the sun would rise or set aligned with different mounds.After a few hundred years, Cahokia's population declined and disappeared by 1350. Its largest mound remains, and some aspects have been reconstructed.While Cahokia is typically open to the public, parts are currently closed for renovations. Montezuma Castle, Arizona Montezuma Castle, a cliff dwelling, in Arizona. MyLoupe/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Perched on a limestone cliff in Camp Verde, Arizona, this site is an apartment, not a castle, and is unrelated to the Aztec ruler Montezuma.The Sinagua people engineered the five-story, 20-room building around 1100. It curves to follow the natural line of the cliff, which would have been more difficult than simply making a straight building, Feder said."These people were architects," he said. "They had a sense of beauty."The inhabitants were also practical, figuring out irrigation systems and construction techniques, like thick walls and shady spots, to help them survive the hot, dry climate.Feder said the dwelling is fairly accessible, with a short walk along a trail to view it, though visitors can't go inside the building itself.
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  • These photos are literally saving jaguars

    Haga clic aquí para leer esta historia en español.SONORA, Mexico — This landscape didn’t seem like a place to find jaguars, the world’s most famous jungle cat. The ground was parched and rocky and mostly brown, other than the occasional cactus or palm tree. It was so hot and dry that even some of the prickly nopales were wilting.Yet there it was — in the playback screen of a motion-sensing camera, strapped to an oak tree near a dry stream bed. Less than a week earlier, a large jaguar had walked exactly where I was now standing. Even from the small camera display, the cat looked imposing, with its oversized paws and a wide, skull-crushing jaw. The Northern Jaguar Reserve is nestled in the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains in the northern Mexican state of Sonora. During our visit in April, the dry season, there was little green vegetation other than desert plants like organ pipe cactuses and agave. Ash Ponders for VoxIt was a blistering afternoon in April, and I was in the Northern Jaguar Reserve, a protected area in Sonora about 125 miles south of the US border in Arizona. The reserve and the region around it are home to the world’s northernmost population of jaguars, the largest cats in the Western Hemisphere, as well as three other species of wild felines: ocelots, bobcats, and mountain lions, or pumas.The cat on the screen was named El Guapo. He’s the largest of five or six resident jaguars in the reserve and has likely fathered a handful of kittens, Miguel Gómez Ramírez, the reserve manager, told me.El Guapo has a bold personality: While some of the park’s jaguars get spooked by the flash or sound of motion cameras scattered through the reserve, jumping in the air like surprised house cats, El Guapo doesn’t seem to care. It’s as if he knows he’s at the top of the food chain. 1/4El Guapo. Courtesy of the Northern Jaguar ProjectWhile jaguars are often associated with the tropics, they once ranged as far north as Southern California, the Grand Canyon, and possibly even Louisiana. The US had jaguars! Then they were gone. By the mid-1900s, ranchers and hunters had exterminated these felines, largely because they were seen — like many other wild predators — as a threat to cattle. Jaguars do occasionally kill cows, though few cases of livestock predation in the US have actually been verified. Over the last few decades, several male jaguars have been spotted in their historic territory in the American Southwest — most recently, in December 2023. The extraordinary sightings give environmental advocates hope that jaguars could one day return to the US, fixing a broken food chain and recovering an important missing piece of Indigenous culture in the southern borderlands.A jaguar pelt is on display at the Ecological Center of Sonora, a zoo in the state capital of Hermosillo. Ash Ponders for VoxThose cats all came from northern Mexico. They came from the region where I was now standing, slipping through some of the last remaining gaps in the border wall. That means any chance that jaguars now have of returning to the US depends on maintaining openings in the wall — and on an ample reserve of cats in northern Mexico. Jaguars can only reestablish in their northern range if they’re sufficiently abundant in Mexico, where they’re endangered. And like in the US, ranchers in Sonora have a long history of killing felines for their perceived, and occasionally real, threat to cattle. While the Northern Jaguar Reserve helps protect wild cats in Sonora, what had ultimately brought me to Mexico was a project to conserve jaguars that extends far beyond the park’s boundary. For many years, a small group of scientists and advocates have been working to cast Sonora’s jaguars in a different light — to turn them from beef-hungry villains to important features of the ecosystem that can bring ranchers financial reward. Those efforts appear to be paying off: The population of jaguars in the reserve and the ranching region around it is stable, if not growing, offering hope that people can live harmoniously with the predators they once loathed.The Northern Jaguar Reserve is, without exaggerating, in the middle of nowhere.I traveled there last month with Roberto Wolf, a veterinarian who leads the Northern Jaguar Project, an American nonprofit that oversees the refuge. After crossing the border south of Tucson, we drove another four hours or so to a charming ranch town called Sahuaripa, where the narrow streets were lined with brightly colored homes and full of stray dogs.Homes in the town of Sahuaripa are brightly painted and often have crosses mounted on their front doors. Ash Ponders for VoxA man named Don Francisco sells warm tortillas at dawn in Sahuaripa. Ash Ponders for VoxA one-armed statue of Jesus overlooks the town of Sahuaripa. The other arm, I was told, fell off in a lightning storm. Ash Ponders for VoxFrom there it was another few hours on to the reserve, largely on rugged dirt roads.Some time after entering the reserve we stopped by a log on the side of the road. It was covered in scratch marks, like the arm of a couch in a home filled with cats. That was the work of a mountain lion marking its territory, said Gómez, who met us in the park. He pointed out a motion camera nearby that had previously captured the behavior. Right before arriving at our campsite, a skunk ran across the front of the car, did a handstand, and then disappeared into the scrub. The next morning, which was cloudless and crisp, we hiked to a place called La Hielería — the spot where the trail cam had recently spotted El Guapo. Large winged shadows crossed our paths, cast by vultures hunting for carcasses. On the drive from Arizona to Sahuaripa, we crossed the Yaqui River, just west of the Northern Jaguar Reserve. It cuts through the foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains. Ash Ponders for VoxDozens of motion-detecting trail cameras are scattered throughout the reserve. Here, the display shows a mountain lion that walked by several days earlier. Ash Ponders for VoxLa Hielería, once part of a cattle ranch, has an important place in cat conservation. In the late 1990s, when jaguars were reappearing in the US, a team of researchers began exploring northern Mexico to find out where they were coming from. As part of that work, a biologist named Gustavo Pablo Lorenzana Piña set up a motion camera by a stream bed in La Hielería. The camera captured, as expected, cow after cow after cow. But then, as Lorenzana kept clicking through, he saw it: a jaguar, “the undisputed ruler of the neotropical forests, captured in a beautiful shot with shrubs and cacti in the background,” he said. The image, taken in early 2000, was the first ever photo of a live jaguar in Sonora. It was a female, later named Gus, in honor of Gustavo.The first ever photo taken of a live jaguar in Sonora. GP Lorenzana/CA López-GonzálezHer story ended — as most other jaguar tales do — at the hands of humans. The animal was pursued and killed for allegedly harming cattle, Lorenzana told me. Although it’s technically illegal to kill jaguars in Mexico, hunting them for real or perceived harm to livestock was once a common practice. And it’s still a threat today. In the late 20th century, at least five animals were killed on average per year in the state, according to the book Borderland Jaguars by David Brown and NJP co-founder Carlos López González.One man I met, in his 70s, told me he’d killed six jaguars on a ranch that is now part of the reserve.Ranch owners would pay around 5,000 Mexican pesos — worth around in today’s US dollars, and nearly double that in the early 2000s — per slain jaguar. Heraclio “Laco” Duarte Robles killed several jaguars when he worked for a ranch in what is now the reserve. Now Laco is employed by the Northern Jaguar Project, where he helps keep the cats alive. Ash Ponders for VoxJaguars do occasionally kill calves, though they prefer to feed on wild prey, such as deer or javelina, a small, fierce peccary that looks like a pig. In Sonora, jaguars and pumas might each kill a few calves per year, which typically amounts to only a fraction of a rancher’s production.While Gus was on the losing side of encounters between ranchers and cats, she left a lasting conservation legacy. By showing up on a trail cam in La Hielería, she helped prove that Sonora was home to a breeding population of jaguars. That spurred an effort to buy up ranches — including the one comprising La Hielería — and turn them into a reserve. NJP purchased its first ranch in 2003, and has since added several more. Together they cover more than 56,000 acres. Today the Northern Jaguar Reserve has a small yet healthy population of five or six jaguars, according to Carmina Gutiérrez González, a biologist at NJP. Motion cameras have spotted another 10 or so jaguars passing through the region, said Gutiérrez, who identifies individuals by their unique patterns of spots. Our only in-person encounter with a jaguar was at the Ecological Center of Sonora, a zoo within a half-day’s drive from the reserve. Ash Ponders for VoxAfter seeing El Guapo on the camera in La Hielería I wandered down the dry stream bed, where I stumbled upon a pile of feces. Jaguar feces, Gómez suspected. I’ve never been so excited to find a pile of shit in my life. People like Gómez who have spent more than a decade in the reserve have never seen jaguars face to face. My chance was close to zero. So poop? I’ll take it.The reserve is essential though insufficient — it’s relatively small, covering less than 3 percent of the area of Yellowstone, for example. Jaguars in Sonora, meanwhile, have incredibly large home ranges, and can travel as much as 10 miles a day, Gómez said. Protecting them in one small area isn’t enough in a region where hunting still occurs. So the Northern Jaguar Project had came up with another solution.One morning, after a few nights in the reserve, we drove to a cattle ranch just beyond the boundary. We parked our dusty 4Runner next to a handful of cows and their calves, who froze and stared at us as if they had never seen humans before. Uriel Villarreal Peña on his ranch, Saucito, near the Northern Jaguar Reserve. Ash Ponders for VoxA rancher named Uriel Villarreal Peña, who owns the property, came out to greet us, trailed by two dogs. As we sat around his outdoor table, under the shade of a tin roof, he told us he owns a little more than 100 cattle — each worth several hundred dollars — that he sells in Sahuaripa to be exported to the US.For more than a decade, Villarreal, who wore a ball cap, jeans, and a button-down shirt, has been part of a program called Viviendo con Felinos. The program, launched by NJP in 2007, works with ranchers to place motion cameras on their land. When those cameras detect a wild cat — a jaguar, puma, ocelot, or bobcat — the nonprofit pays the rancher from a pool of funds they’ve raised from donors. The idea, Wolf told me, is “to make living wild animals more valuable than dead ones.”Photos of jaguars are worth 5,000 pesos each, which is similar to what hunters might make for killing them. Photos of ocelots earn 1,500 pesos, pumas 1,000 pesos, and bobcats 5,000 pesos. Each rancher can earn a max of 20,000 pesosa month for their photos — more than double the minimum monthly wage in Mexico. By joining Viviendo con Felinos, ranchers also agree not to kill any wild animals on their ranch, including deer and javelina. Roberto Wolf rests for a moment on our hike in La Hielería. Ash Ponders for VoxVillarreal told me he joined the NJP program partly for the money. Cat photos taken on his ranch earn him a few thousand dollars each year, he said, which amounts to about 10 to 15 percent of his annual income from the ranch. But he also just likes jaguars. “I’m interested in seeing animals, in preserving animals because they look pretty,” he said. It helps that jaguars haven’t caused him many problems. When he was young, Villarreal thought wild cats were bad because they ate cattle, a rancher’s livelihood. But over time he learned that predators will avoid calves as long as they have plenty of deer and javelina to eat. After sampling a bit of Villarreal’s homemade Bacanora — an agave-based liquor, similar to mezcal; my job is hard, I swear! — he took us to see one of his motion cameras. It was “nearby,” though getting there involved a short drive, a half-hour hike in the sun, and a run-in with a road runner, a manic-looking ground bird that always seems to be in a rush.Wolf and NJP field technician Heraclio “Laqui” Duarte López show us a map at an overlook on our way to the reserve. Ash Ponders for VoxHiking in the reserve takes you across volcanic rocks and scrubland, often in the blistering heat. Ash Ponders for VoxA cattle skull on the outskirts of Peña’s ranch. Ash Ponders for VoxA vermilion flycatcher takes wing across the bank of the Aros River in the reserve. Ash Ponders for VoxStrapped to a wooden post, the camera was plastic, colored in camo, and roughly the size of a brick. We opened it up and clicked through the recent photos. Me approaching. Rabbit. Deer. Fox. A raccoon-like creature called a ringtail. Coati. Ocelot. Javelina. Javelina. Javelina. Javelina. Javelina.And more javelina. I asked Villarreal what he thinks when he sees a wild cat on the camera. “1,500!” he joked, referring to the money in Mexican pesos he earns from each picture of an ocelot. He then added, more seriously: “It feels good to be able to say that they do exist.”To date, 21 ranchers near the reserve have joined Viviendo con Felinos. And together, their land comprises 126,000 acres — an area more than twice the size of the actual reserve. The program has in effect expanded the area across which jaguars and their prey are protected. What’s more, it’s so popular among ranchers that there’s actually an informal waitlist to join, Wolf said. NJP has been slowly growing the program, but adding more ranches — and all of the photos they may take — is expensive, Wolf noted. Between fall 2023 and fall 2024, NJP spent well over on photo awards alone. That doesn’t include staff time or the cost of cameras, which run around each. And those cameras often need to be replaced because, of all things, woodpeckers occasionally hammer out the lenses and sensors, Gómez told me.Viviendo con Felinos has given jaguars in Sonora more space to roam, and that alone is huge. But these iconic animals are also benefiting from a more fundamental shift in the region — a shift in its culture and customs. After our visit with Villarreal, we stopped at his neighbor’s property, a large ranch owned by Agustín Hurtado Aguayo. Hurtado, now in his 80s, is the former president of the state’s livestock association and a sizable figure in Sonora’s ranching community. Several years ago, “I hated felines,” he told me at his home in the city of Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora, a few hours west of Sahuaripa. Cowboy hats and a pair of bull horns hung from the wall. “I had a very bad image of them,” Hurtado said. Agustín Hurtado Aguayo at his home in Hermosillo. Ash Ponders for VoxRanch-life photos and a longhorn bull mount line the wall of Hurtado’s home. Ash Ponders for VoxHunting wild cats was a practice that older generations passed on, he said, and it stemmed from the belief that cats hurt production. “That’s the training we had,” he told me. It was also normal for cowboys to hunt and eat deer, he said, which diminished an important food source for predators.After Villarreal joined Viviendo con Felinos, Hurtado grew curious about the program. He liked the cat photos from his neighbor’s ranch. “When I began to see photos from the cameras, I began to appreciate the animals,” he said, showing me his iPhone wallpaper of a mountain lion. “Little by little, my vision of wild cats began to change.”Hurtado, who later also joined the program, realized that by limiting the number of cattle on his ranch, his cows would be healthier and there’d be more grass left over for deer. If he had more deer — and his workers refrained from hunting them — wild cats would kill fewer of his animals. These ideas are becoming increasingly common among ranchers in Sonora who have joined the program.“If we as ranchers or as owners of property preserve the normal food chain, we have no problem,” said Jose de la Cruz Coronado Aguayo, another rancher in Viviendo con Felinos. There are other ways, too, to protect cattle from predators, such as by making sure calves don’t roam the mountains alone. In other regions of the world, installing predator deterrents, such as electric fences, alarms, and flashing lights, is also effective in preventing predation. “Cats can really coexist with livestock,” Hurtado told me.The reserve is surrounded by cattle ranches that mostly sell calves for meat. Ash Ponders for VoxWhile it’s clear how photos of jaguars might make someone fall in love with wild cats, that doesn’t explain how ranchers like Hurtado learned how to farm in such a way that protects both felines and cattle. Wolf, of NJP, says it often comes down to individual experiences. Ranchers learn over time that by leaving deer alone or creating new water sources for animals, fewer livestock go missing. What’s also crucial, he said, is that by earning money for photos of cats, people in the program become more tolerant of their presence — and more open to compromise and finding ways to live with them. Before we left his home, Hurtado took out his laptop and showed us photos from the motion cameras on his ranch. They were spectacular: a mountain lion, close to the camera and wearing a look of surprise. An ocelot with what looks like a mouse in its mouth. And several jaguars, including the image below, taken in 2023 — which he had set as his desktop background. 1/3Photos from motion cameras on Hurtado’s ranch. Courtesy of the Northern Jaguar ProjectNot everyone in Sonora suddenly loves cats. Ranchers still blame jaguars when their calves disappear or turn up dead. And some jaguars are still killed discreetly. One rancher who’s not part of Viviendo con Felinos told me that since November he’s lost more than a dozen of his calves, and he suspects that wild cats are behind the damage. He says the reserve should be fenced in for the benefit of ranchers.Tension in the region boiled over earlier this year, when a mountain lion apparently entered the house where a ranch worker was staying and attacked his dog. The worker, a man named Ricardo Vazquez Paredes, says he hit the cat with a pipe and the lion ran away, but not before injuring his dog, Blaki. While Wolf and some of the other ranchers I spoke to suspect his account might be exaggerated — it’s rare for mountain lions to go near human dwellings — the story raised concerns around Sahuaripa about jaguars and efforts to protect them. Climate change might also worsen conflict in the region. Ranchers I spoke to say Sonora is getting drier, meaning there will be less and less grass for cattle — and for animals like deer that wild cats eat. That could make cows weaker and more likely to starve and jaguars hungrier and more likely to attack. Research suggests that jaguars kill more calves when it’s dry. In 2023, a rancher in Viviendo con Felinos named Diego Ezrre Romero lost a calf to a jaguar. “The most critical thing on my ranch is water,” Ezrre told me. “There are few deer because of the conditions.”Diego Ezrre Romero, a rancher in the Viviendo con Felinos program, in the verdant courtyard of his home in Sahuaripa. Ash Ponders for VoxThis is to say: Conflict in Sonora isn’t about to disappear altogether. Yet Viviendo con Felinos appears to be helping. Along with NJP’s other efforts to engage the community — education programs, for example, and painting murals that depict the iconic cats in Sahuaripa and other towns — the group is making ranchers in jaguar territory more tolerant to cats. And thanks to payments, more tolerant to losses that they may cause. “Without themthere wouldn’t even be a jaguar here right now,” said Fausto Lorenzo, a rancher near Sahuaripa who’s not affiliated with the reserve. “All the ranchers would have killed them because that was the custom.”From Hurtado’s home in Hermosillo, we drove back toward Arizona. The highway cut through fields of saguaro cactuses. Dust devils spun in the distance, moving like flying whirlpools across the scrubland.The sun sets behind the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains near the reserve. Ash Ponders for VoxThe success that NJP has had in Mexico ultimately bodes well for efforts to restore jaguars to the US. The number of jaguars in the reserve is stable, Gutiérrez says, but motion cameras suggest that year-over-year more individuals are passing through the region. That’s more individuals that could potentially spill into the US.One big problem, however, remains. As we neared the US border, the wall came into focus. It was metal and brown and rose 18 feet above the desert. Now stretching hundreds of miles across the Southwest, the wall has made the border largely impassive to wildlife — including jaguars. And it’s still expanding. The Trump administration is now planning to complete one of the last unwalled sections of the border, a 25-mile stretch in the San Rafael Valley, about 150 miles northwest of the refuge, where jaguars have crossed into the US. The future for Sonora’s jaguars appears promising regardless of whether Trump finishes his wall. NJP and other organizations have given these animals more space to live and helped lessen the threats they face. The real loss will be felt in the US. And not just among environmentalists and other wildcat advocates. Jaguars have lived in the US long before any of us. They’re part of the country’s nature heritage — of the ecosystems that are truly American — and their absence leaves our landscapes impaired. Ranchers in Sonora teach us that we can live alongside the continent’s great predators. We just have to choose to. Update, May 20, 11:25 am ET: This piece was originally published on May 20 and updated to include both peso and dollar amounts where applicable.See More:
    #these #photos #are #literally #saving
    These photos are literally saving jaguars
    Haga clic aquí para leer esta historia en español.SONORA, Mexico — This landscape didn’t seem like a place to find jaguars, the world’s most famous jungle cat. The ground was parched and rocky and mostly brown, other than the occasional cactus or palm tree. It was so hot and dry that even some of the prickly nopales were wilting.Yet there it was — in the playback screen of a motion-sensing camera, strapped to an oak tree near a dry stream bed. Less than a week earlier, a large jaguar had walked exactly where I was now standing. Even from the small camera display, the cat looked imposing, with its oversized paws and a wide, skull-crushing jaw. The Northern Jaguar Reserve is nestled in the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains in the northern Mexican state of Sonora. During our visit in April, the dry season, there was little green vegetation other than desert plants like organ pipe cactuses and agave. Ash Ponders for VoxIt was a blistering afternoon in April, and I was in the Northern Jaguar Reserve, a protected area in Sonora about 125 miles south of the US border in Arizona. The reserve and the region around it are home to the world’s northernmost population of jaguars, the largest cats in the Western Hemisphere, as well as three other species of wild felines: ocelots, bobcats, and mountain lions, or pumas.The cat on the screen was named El Guapo. He’s the largest of five or six resident jaguars in the reserve and has likely fathered a handful of kittens, Miguel Gómez Ramírez, the reserve manager, told me.El Guapo has a bold personality: While some of the park’s jaguars get spooked by the flash or sound of motion cameras scattered through the reserve, jumping in the air like surprised house cats, El Guapo doesn’t seem to care. It’s as if he knows he’s at the top of the food chain. 1/4El Guapo. Courtesy of the Northern Jaguar ProjectWhile jaguars are often associated with the tropics, they once ranged as far north as Southern California, the Grand Canyon, and possibly even Louisiana. The US had jaguars! Then they were gone. By the mid-1900s, ranchers and hunters had exterminated these felines, largely because they were seen — like many other wild predators — as a threat to cattle. Jaguars do occasionally kill cows, though few cases of livestock predation in the US have actually been verified. Over the last few decades, several male jaguars have been spotted in their historic territory in the American Southwest — most recently, in December 2023. The extraordinary sightings give environmental advocates hope that jaguars could one day return to the US, fixing a broken food chain and recovering an important missing piece of Indigenous culture in the southern borderlands.A jaguar pelt is on display at the Ecological Center of Sonora, a zoo in the state capital of Hermosillo. Ash Ponders for VoxThose cats all came from northern Mexico. They came from the region where I was now standing, slipping through some of the last remaining gaps in the border wall. That means any chance that jaguars now have of returning to the US depends on maintaining openings in the wall — and on an ample reserve of cats in northern Mexico. Jaguars can only reestablish in their northern range if they’re sufficiently abundant in Mexico, where they’re endangered. And like in the US, ranchers in Sonora have a long history of killing felines for their perceived, and occasionally real, threat to cattle. While the Northern Jaguar Reserve helps protect wild cats in Sonora, what had ultimately brought me to Mexico was a project to conserve jaguars that extends far beyond the park’s boundary. For many years, a small group of scientists and advocates have been working to cast Sonora’s jaguars in a different light — to turn them from beef-hungry villains to important features of the ecosystem that can bring ranchers financial reward. Those efforts appear to be paying off: The population of jaguars in the reserve and the ranching region around it is stable, if not growing, offering hope that people can live harmoniously with the predators they once loathed.The Northern Jaguar Reserve is, without exaggerating, in the middle of nowhere.I traveled there last month with Roberto Wolf, a veterinarian who leads the Northern Jaguar Project, an American nonprofit that oversees the refuge. After crossing the border south of Tucson, we drove another four hours or so to a charming ranch town called Sahuaripa, where the narrow streets were lined with brightly colored homes and full of stray dogs.Homes in the town of Sahuaripa are brightly painted and often have crosses mounted on their front doors. Ash Ponders for VoxA man named Don Francisco sells warm tortillas at dawn in Sahuaripa. Ash Ponders for VoxA one-armed statue of Jesus overlooks the town of Sahuaripa. The other arm, I was told, fell off in a lightning storm. Ash Ponders for VoxFrom there it was another few hours on to the reserve, largely on rugged dirt roads.Some time after entering the reserve we stopped by a log on the side of the road. It was covered in scratch marks, like the arm of a couch in a home filled with cats. That was the work of a mountain lion marking its territory, said Gómez, who met us in the park. He pointed out a motion camera nearby that had previously captured the behavior. Right before arriving at our campsite, a skunk ran across the front of the car, did a handstand, and then disappeared into the scrub. The next morning, which was cloudless and crisp, we hiked to a place called La Hielería — the spot where the trail cam had recently spotted El Guapo. Large winged shadows crossed our paths, cast by vultures hunting for carcasses. On the drive from Arizona to Sahuaripa, we crossed the Yaqui River, just west of the Northern Jaguar Reserve. It cuts through the foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains. Ash Ponders for VoxDozens of motion-detecting trail cameras are scattered throughout the reserve. Here, the display shows a mountain lion that walked by several days earlier. Ash Ponders for VoxLa Hielería, once part of a cattle ranch, has an important place in cat conservation. In the late 1990s, when jaguars were reappearing in the US, a team of researchers began exploring northern Mexico to find out where they were coming from. As part of that work, a biologist named Gustavo Pablo Lorenzana Piña set up a motion camera by a stream bed in La Hielería. The camera captured, as expected, cow after cow after cow. But then, as Lorenzana kept clicking through, he saw it: a jaguar, “the undisputed ruler of the neotropical forests, captured in a beautiful shot with shrubs and cacti in the background,” he said. The image, taken in early 2000, was the first ever photo of a live jaguar in Sonora. It was a female, later named Gus, in honor of Gustavo.The first ever photo taken of a live jaguar in Sonora. GP Lorenzana/CA López-GonzálezHer story ended — as most other jaguar tales do — at the hands of humans. The animal was pursued and killed for allegedly harming cattle, Lorenzana told me. Although it’s technically illegal to kill jaguars in Mexico, hunting them for real or perceived harm to livestock was once a common practice. And it’s still a threat today. In the late 20th century, at least five animals were killed on average per year in the state, according to the book Borderland Jaguars by David Brown and NJP co-founder Carlos López González.One man I met, in his 70s, told me he’d killed six jaguars on a ranch that is now part of the reserve.Ranch owners would pay around 5,000 Mexican pesos — worth around in today’s US dollars, and nearly double that in the early 2000s — per slain jaguar. Heraclio “Laco” Duarte Robles killed several jaguars when he worked for a ranch in what is now the reserve. Now Laco is employed by the Northern Jaguar Project, where he helps keep the cats alive. Ash Ponders for VoxJaguars do occasionally kill calves, though they prefer to feed on wild prey, such as deer or javelina, a small, fierce peccary that looks like a pig. In Sonora, jaguars and pumas might each kill a few calves per year, which typically amounts to only a fraction of a rancher’s production.While Gus was on the losing side of encounters between ranchers and cats, she left a lasting conservation legacy. By showing up on a trail cam in La Hielería, she helped prove that Sonora was home to a breeding population of jaguars. That spurred an effort to buy up ranches — including the one comprising La Hielería — and turn them into a reserve. NJP purchased its first ranch in 2003, and has since added several more. Together they cover more than 56,000 acres. Today the Northern Jaguar Reserve has a small yet healthy population of five or six jaguars, according to Carmina Gutiérrez González, a biologist at NJP. Motion cameras have spotted another 10 or so jaguars passing through the region, said Gutiérrez, who identifies individuals by their unique patterns of spots. Our only in-person encounter with a jaguar was at the Ecological Center of Sonora, a zoo within a half-day’s drive from the reserve. Ash Ponders for VoxAfter seeing El Guapo on the camera in La Hielería I wandered down the dry stream bed, where I stumbled upon a pile of feces. Jaguar feces, Gómez suspected. I’ve never been so excited to find a pile of shit in my life. People like Gómez who have spent more than a decade in the reserve have never seen jaguars face to face. My chance was close to zero. So poop? I’ll take it.The reserve is essential though insufficient — it’s relatively small, covering less than 3 percent of the area of Yellowstone, for example. Jaguars in Sonora, meanwhile, have incredibly large home ranges, and can travel as much as 10 miles a day, Gómez said. Protecting them in one small area isn’t enough in a region where hunting still occurs. So the Northern Jaguar Project had came up with another solution.One morning, after a few nights in the reserve, we drove to a cattle ranch just beyond the boundary. We parked our dusty 4Runner next to a handful of cows and their calves, who froze and stared at us as if they had never seen humans before. Uriel Villarreal Peña on his ranch, Saucito, near the Northern Jaguar Reserve. Ash Ponders for VoxA rancher named Uriel Villarreal Peña, who owns the property, came out to greet us, trailed by two dogs. As we sat around his outdoor table, under the shade of a tin roof, he told us he owns a little more than 100 cattle — each worth several hundred dollars — that he sells in Sahuaripa to be exported to the US.For more than a decade, Villarreal, who wore a ball cap, jeans, and a button-down shirt, has been part of a program called Viviendo con Felinos. The program, launched by NJP in 2007, works with ranchers to place motion cameras on their land. When those cameras detect a wild cat — a jaguar, puma, ocelot, or bobcat — the nonprofit pays the rancher from a pool of funds they’ve raised from donors. The idea, Wolf told me, is “to make living wild animals more valuable than dead ones.”Photos of jaguars are worth 5,000 pesos each, which is similar to what hunters might make for killing them. Photos of ocelots earn 1,500 pesos, pumas 1,000 pesos, and bobcats 5,000 pesos. Each rancher can earn a max of 20,000 pesosa month for their photos — more than double the minimum monthly wage in Mexico. By joining Viviendo con Felinos, ranchers also agree not to kill any wild animals on their ranch, including deer and javelina. Roberto Wolf rests for a moment on our hike in La Hielería. Ash Ponders for VoxVillarreal told me he joined the NJP program partly for the money. Cat photos taken on his ranch earn him a few thousand dollars each year, he said, which amounts to about 10 to 15 percent of his annual income from the ranch. But he also just likes jaguars. “I’m interested in seeing animals, in preserving animals because they look pretty,” he said. It helps that jaguars haven’t caused him many problems. When he was young, Villarreal thought wild cats were bad because they ate cattle, a rancher’s livelihood. But over time he learned that predators will avoid calves as long as they have plenty of deer and javelina to eat. After sampling a bit of Villarreal’s homemade Bacanora — an agave-based liquor, similar to mezcal; my job is hard, I swear! — he took us to see one of his motion cameras. It was “nearby,” though getting there involved a short drive, a half-hour hike in the sun, and a run-in with a road runner, a manic-looking ground bird that always seems to be in a rush.Wolf and NJP field technician Heraclio “Laqui” Duarte López show us a map at an overlook on our way to the reserve. Ash Ponders for VoxHiking in the reserve takes you across volcanic rocks and scrubland, often in the blistering heat. Ash Ponders for VoxA cattle skull on the outskirts of Peña’s ranch. Ash Ponders for VoxA vermilion flycatcher takes wing across the bank of the Aros River in the reserve. Ash Ponders for VoxStrapped to a wooden post, the camera was plastic, colored in camo, and roughly the size of a brick. We opened it up and clicked through the recent photos. Me approaching. Rabbit. Deer. Fox. A raccoon-like creature called a ringtail. Coati. Ocelot. Javelina. Javelina. Javelina. Javelina. Javelina.And more javelina. I asked Villarreal what he thinks when he sees a wild cat on the camera. “1,500!” he joked, referring to the money in Mexican pesos he earns from each picture of an ocelot. He then added, more seriously: “It feels good to be able to say that they do exist.”To date, 21 ranchers near the reserve have joined Viviendo con Felinos. And together, their land comprises 126,000 acres — an area more than twice the size of the actual reserve. The program has in effect expanded the area across which jaguars and their prey are protected. What’s more, it’s so popular among ranchers that there’s actually an informal waitlist to join, Wolf said. NJP has been slowly growing the program, but adding more ranches — and all of the photos they may take — is expensive, Wolf noted. Between fall 2023 and fall 2024, NJP spent well over on photo awards alone. That doesn’t include staff time or the cost of cameras, which run around each. And those cameras often need to be replaced because, of all things, woodpeckers occasionally hammer out the lenses and sensors, Gómez told me.Viviendo con Felinos has given jaguars in Sonora more space to roam, and that alone is huge. But these iconic animals are also benefiting from a more fundamental shift in the region — a shift in its culture and customs. After our visit with Villarreal, we stopped at his neighbor’s property, a large ranch owned by Agustín Hurtado Aguayo. Hurtado, now in his 80s, is the former president of the state’s livestock association and a sizable figure in Sonora’s ranching community. Several years ago, “I hated felines,” he told me at his home in the city of Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora, a few hours west of Sahuaripa. Cowboy hats and a pair of bull horns hung from the wall. “I had a very bad image of them,” Hurtado said. Agustín Hurtado Aguayo at his home in Hermosillo. Ash Ponders for VoxRanch-life photos and a longhorn bull mount line the wall of Hurtado’s home. Ash Ponders for VoxHunting wild cats was a practice that older generations passed on, he said, and it stemmed from the belief that cats hurt production. “That’s the training we had,” he told me. It was also normal for cowboys to hunt and eat deer, he said, which diminished an important food source for predators.After Villarreal joined Viviendo con Felinos, Hurtado grew curious about the program. He liked the cat photos from his neighbor’s ranch. “When I began to see photos from the cameras, I began to appreciate the animals,” he said, showing me his iPhone wallpaper of a mountain lion. “Little by little, my vision of wild cats began to change.”Hurtado, who later also joined the program, realized that by limiting the number of cattle on his ranch, his cows would be healthier and there’d be more grass left over for deer. If he had more deer — and his workers refrained from hunting them — wild cats would kill fewer of his animals. These ideas are becoming increasingly common among ranchers in Sonora who have joined the program.“If we as ranchers or as owners of property preserve the normal food chain, we have no problem,” said Jose de la Cruz Coronado Aguayo, another rancher in Viviendo con Felinos. There are other ways, too, to protect cattle from predators, such as by making sure calves don’t roam the mountains alone. In other regions of the world, installing predator deterrents, such as electric fences, alarms, and flashing lights, is also effective in preventing predation. “Cats can really coexist with livestock,” Hurtado told me.The reserve is surrounded by cattle ranches that mostly sell calves for meat. Ash Ponders for VoxWhile it’s clear how photos of jaguars might make someone fall in love with wild cats, that doesn’t explain how ranchers like Hurtado learned how to farm in such a way that protects both felines and cattle. Wolf, of NJP, says it often comes down to individual experiences. Ranchers learn over time that by leaving deer alone or creating new water sources for animals, fewer livestock go missing. What’s also crucial, he said, is that by earning money for photos of cats, people in the program become more tolerant of their presence — and more open to compromise and finding ways to live with them. Before we left his home, Hurtado took out his laptop and showed us photos from the motion cameras on his ranch. They were spectacular: a mountain lion, close to the camera and wearing a look of surprise. An ocelot with what looks like a mouse in its mouth. And several jaguars, including the image below, taken in 2023 — which he had set as his desktop background. 1/3Photos from motion cameras on Hurtado’s ranch. Courtesy of the Northern Jaguar ProjectNot everyone in Sonora suddenly loves cats. Ranchers still blame jaguars when their calves disappear or turn up dead. And some jaguars are still killed discreetly. One rancher who’s not part of Viviendo con Felinos told me that since November he’s lost more than a dozen of his calves, and he suspects that wild cats are behind the damage. He says the reserve should be fenced in for the benefit of ranchers.Tension in the region boiled over earlier this year, when a mountain lion apparently entered the house where a ranch worker was staying and attacked his dog. The worker, a man named Ricardo Vazquez Paredes, says he hit the cat with a pipe and the lion ran away, but not before injuring his dog, Blaki. While Wolf and some of the other ranchers I spoke to suspect his account might be exaggerated — it’s rare for mountain lions to go near human dwellings — the story raised concerns around Sahuaripa about jaguars and efforts to protect them. Climate change might also worsen conflict in the region. Ranchers I spoke to say Sonora is getting drier, meaning there will be less and less grass for cattle — and for animals like deer that wild cats eat. That could make cows weaker and more likely to starve and jaguars hungrier and more likely to attack. Research suggests that jaguars kill more calves when it’s dry. In 2023, a rancher in Viviendo con Felinos named Diego Ezrre Romero lost a calf to a jaguar. “The most critical thing on my ranch is water,” Ezrre told me. “There are few deer because of the conditions.”Diego Ezrre Romero, a rancher in the Viviendo con Felinos program, in the verdant courtyard of his home in Sahuaripa. Ash Ponders for VoxThis is to say: Conflict in Sonora isn’t about to disappear altogether. Yet Viviendo con Felinos appears to be helping. Along with NJP’s other efforts to engage the community — education programs, for example, and painting murals that depict the iconic cats in Sahuaripa and other towns — the group is making ranchers in jaguar territory more tolerant to cats. And thanks to payments, more tolerant to losses that they may cause. “Without themthere wouldn’t even be a jaguar here right now,” said Fausto Lorenzo, a rancher near Sahuaripa who’s not affiliated with the reserve. “All the ranchers would have killed them because that was the custom.”From Hurtado’s home in Hermosillo, we drove back toward Arizona. The highway cut through fields of saguaro cactuses. Dust devils spun in the distance, moving like flying whirlpools across the scrubland.The sun sets behind the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains near the reserve. Ash Ponders for VoxThe success that NJP has had in Mexico ultimately bodes well for efforts to restore jaguars to the US. The number of jaguars in the reserve is stable, Gutiérrez says, but motion cameras suggest that year-over-year more individuals are passing through the region. That’s more individuals that could potentially spill into the US.One big problem, however, remains. As we neared the US border, the wall came into focus. It was metal and brown and rose 18 feet above the desert. Now stretching hundreds of miles across the Southwest, the wall has made the border largely impassive to wildlife — including jaguars. And it’s still expanding. The Trump administration is now planning to complete one of the last unwalled sections of the border, a 25-mile stretch in the San Rafael Valley, about 150 miles northwest of the refuge, where jaguars have crossed into the US. The future for Sonora’s jaguars appears promising regardless of whether Trump finishes his wall. NJP and other organizations have given these animals more space to live and helped lessen the threats they face. The real loss will be felt in the US. And not just among environmentalists and other wildcat advocates. Jaguars have lived in the US long before any of us. They’re part of the country’s nature heritage — of the ecosystems that are truly American — and their absence leaves our landscapes impaired. Ranchers in Sonora teach us that we can live alongside the continent’s great predators. We just have to choose to. Update, May 20, 11:25 am ET: This piece was originally published on May 20 and updated to include both peso and dollar amounts where applicable.See More: #these #photos #are #literally #saving
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    These photos are literally saving jaguars
    Haga clic aquí para leer esta historia en español.SONORA, Mexico — This landscape didn’t seem like a place to find jaguars, the world’s most famous jungle cat. The ground was parched and rocky and mostly brown, other than the occasional cactus or palm tree. It was so hot and dry that even some of the prickly nopales were wilting.Yet there it was — in the playback screen of a motion-sensing camera, strapped to an oak tree near a dry stream bed. Less than a week earlier, a large jaguar had walked exactly where I was now standing. Even from the small camera display, the cat looked imposing, with its oversized paws and a wide, skull-crushing jaw. The Northern Jaguar Reserve is nestled in the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains in the northern Mexican state of Sonora. During our visit in April, the dry season, there was little green vegetation other than desert plants like organ pipe cactuses and agave. Ash Ponders for VoxIt was a blistering afternoon in April, and I was in the Northern Jaguar Reserve, a protected area in Sonora about 125 miles south of the US border in Arizona. The reserve and the region around it are home to the world’s northernmost population of jaguars, the largest cats in the Western Hemisphere, as well as three other species of wild felines: ocelots, bobcats, and mountain lions, or pumas.The cat on the screen was named El Guapo. He’s the largest of five or six resident jaguars in the reserve and has likely fathered a handful of kittens, Miguel Gómez Ramírez, the reserve manager, told me.El Guapo has a bold personality: While some of the park’s jaguars get spooked by the flash or sound of motion cameras scattered through the reserve, jumping in the air like surprised house cats, El Guapo doesn’t seem to care. It’s as if he knows he’s at the top of the food chain. 1/4El Guapo. Courtesy of the Northern Jaguar ProjectWhile jaguars are often associated with the tropics, they once ranged as far north as Southern California, the Grand Canyon, and possibly even Louisiana. The US had jaguars! Then they were gone. By the mid-1900s, ranchers and hunters had exterminated these felines, largely because they were seen — like many other wild predators — as a threat to cattle. Jaguars do occasionally kill cows, though few cases of livestock predation in the US have actually been verified. Over the last few decades, several male jaguars have been spotted in their historic territory in the American Southwest — most recently, in December 2023. The extraordinary sightings give environmental advocates hope that jaguars could one day return to the US, fixing a broken food chain and recovering an important missing piece of Indigenous culture in the southern borderlands.A jaguar pelt is on display at the Ecological Center of Sonora, a zoo in the state capital of Hermosillo. Ash Ponders for VoxThose cats all came from northern Mexico. They came from the region where I was now standing, slipping through some of the last remaining gaps in the border wall. That means any chance that jaguars now have of returning to the US depends on maintaining openings in the wall — and on an ample reserve of cats in northern Mexico. Jaguars can only reestablish in their northern range if they’re sufficiently abundant in Mexico, where they’re endangered. And like in the US, ranchers in Sonora have a long history of killing felines for their perceived, and occasionally real, threat to cattle. While the Northern Jaguar Reserve helps protect wild cats in Sonora, what had ultimately brought me to Mexico was a project to conserve jaguars that extends far beyond the park’s boundary. For many years, a small group of scientists and advocates have been working to cast Sonora’s jaguars in a different light — to turn them from beef-hungry villains to important features of the ecosystem that can bring ranchers financial reward. Those efforts appear to be paying off: The population of jaguars in the reserve and the ranching region around it is stable, if not growing, offering hope that people can live harmoniously with the predators they once loathed.The Northern Jaguar Reserve is, without exaggerating, in the middle of nowhere.I traveled there last month with Roberto Wolf, a veterinarian who leads the Northern Jaguar Project (NJP), an American nonprofit that oversees the refuge. After crossing the border south of Tucson, we drove another four hours or so to a charming ranch town called Sahuaripa, where the narrow streets were lined with brightly colored homes and full of stray dogs.Homes in the town of Sahuaripa are brightly painted and often have crosses mounted on their front doors. Ash Ponders for VoxA man named Don Francisco sells warm tortillas at dawn in Sahuaripa. Ash Ponders for VoxA one-armed statue of Jesus overlooks the town of Sahuaripa. The other arm, I was told, fell off in a lightning storm. Ash Ponders for VoxFrom there it was another few hours on to the reserve, largely on rugged dirt roads. (I felt like we were in one of those car commercials for all-terrain vehicles that are only useful in this exact scenario.)Some time after entering the reserve we stopped by a log on the side of the road. It was covered in scratch marks, like the arm of a couch in a home filled with cats. That was the work of a mountain lion marking its territory, said Gómez, who met us in the park. He pointed out a motion camera nearby that had previously captured the behavior. Right before arriving at our campsite, a skunk ran across the front of the car, did a handstand, and then disappeared into the scrub. The next morning, which was cloudless and crisp, we hiked to a place called La Hielería — the spot where the trail cam had recently spotted El Guapo. Large winged shadows crossed our paths, cast by vultures hunting for carcasses. On the drive from Arizona to Sahuaripa, we crossed the Yaqui River, just west of the Northern Jaguar Reserve. It cuts through the foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains. Ash Ponders for VoxDozens of motion-detecting trail cameras are scattered throughout the reserve. Here, the display shows a mountain lion that walked by several days earlier. Ash Ponders for VoxLa Hielería, once part of a cattle ranch, has an important place in cat conservation. In the late 1990s, when jaguars were reappearing in the US, a team of researchers began exploring northern Mexico to find out where they were coming from. As part of that work, a biologist named Gustavo Pablo Lorenzana Piña set up a motion camera by a stream bed in La Hielería. The camera captured, as expected, cow after cow after cow. But then, as Lorenzana kept clicking through, he saw it: a jaguar, “the undisputed ruler of the neotropical forests, captured in a beautiful shot with shrubs and cacti in the background,” he said. The image, taken in early 2000, was the first ever photo of a live jaguar in Sonora. It was a female, later named Gus, in honor of Gustavo.The first ever photo taken of a live jaguar in Sonora. GP Lorenzana/CA López-GonzálezHer story ended — as most other jaguar tales do — at the hands of humans. The animal was pursued and killed for allegedly harming cattle, Lorenzana told me. Although it’s technically illegal to kill jaguars in Mexico, hunting them for real or perceived harm to livestock was once a common practice. And it’s still a threat today. In the late 20th century, at least five animals were killed on average per year in the state, according to the book Borderland Jaguars by David Brown and NJP co-founder Carlos López González.One man I met, in his 70s, told me he’d killed six jaguars on a ranch that is now part of the reserve. (He’d typically use dogs to track down the cats and chase them into a cave or a tree. Then he’d shoot them.) Ranch owners would pay around 5,000 Mexican pesos — worth around $260 in today’s US dollars, and nearly double that in the early 2000s — per slain jaguar. Heraclio “Laco” Duarte Robles killed several jaguars when he worked for a ranch in what is now the reserve. Now Laco is employed by the Northern Jaguar Project, where he helps keep the cats alive. Ash Ponders for VoxJaguars do occasionally kill calves, though they prefer to feed on wild prey, such as deer or javelina, a small, fierce peccary that looks like a pig. In Sonora, jaguars and pumas might each kill a few calves per year, which typically amounts to only a fraction of a rancher’s production.While Gus was on the losing side of encounters between ranchers and cats, she left a lasting conservation legacy. By showing up on a trail cam in La Hielería, she helped prove that Sonora was home to a breeding population of jaguars. That spurred an effort to buy up ranches — including the one comprising La Hielería — and turn them into a reserve. NJP purchased its first ranch in 2003, and has since added several more. Together they cover more than 56,000 acres. Today the Northern Jaguar Reserve has a small yet healthy population of five or six jaguars, according to Carmina Gutiérrez González, a biologist at NJP. Motion cameras have spotted another 10 or so jaguars passing through the region, said Gutiérrez, who identifies individuals by their unique patterns of spots. Our only in-person encounter with a jaguar was at the Ecological Center of Sonora, a zoo within a half-day’s drive from the reserve. Ash Ponders for VoxAfter seeing El Guapo on the camera in La Hielería I wandered down the dry stream bed, where I stumbled upon a pile of feces. Jaguar feces, Gómez suspected. I’ve never been so excited to find a pile of shit in my life. People like Gómez who have spent more than a decade in the reserve have never seen jaguars face to face. My chance was close to zero. So poop? I’ll take it.The reserve is essential though insufficient — it’s relatively small, covering less than 3 percent of the area of Yellowstone, for example. Jaguars in Sonora, meanwhile, have incredibly large home ranges, and can travel as much as 10 miles a day, Gómez said. Protecting them in one small area isn’t enough in a region where hunting still occurs. So the Northern Jaguar Project had came up with another solution.One morning, after a few nights in the reserve, we drove to a cattle ranch just beyond the boundary. We parked our dusty 4Runner next to a handful of cows and their calves, who froze and stared at us as if they had never seen humans before. Uriel Villarreal Peña on his ranch, Saucito, near the Northern Jaguar Reserve. Ash Ponders for VoxA rancher named Uriel Villarreal Peña, who owns the property, came out to greet us, trailed by two dogs. As we sat around his outdoor table, under the shade of a tin roof, he told us he owns a little more than 100 cattle — each worth several hundred dollars — that he sells in Sahuaripa to be exported to the US.For more than a decade, Villarreal, who wore a ball cap, jeans, and a button-down shirt, has been part of a program called Viviendo con Felinos. The program, launched by NJP in 2007, works with ranchers to place motion cameras on their land. When those cameras detect a wild cat — a jaguar, puma, ocelot, or bobcat — the nonprofit pays the rancher from a pool of funds they’ve raised from donors. The idea, Wolf told me, is “to make living wild animals more valuable than dead ones.”Photos of jaguars are worth 5,000 pesos each (~$260), which is similar to what hunters might make for killing them. Photos of ocelots earn 1,500 pesos (~$78), pumas 1,000 pesos (~$52), and bobcats 5,000 pesos (~$26). Each rancher can earn a max of 20,000 pesos (~$1,038) a month for their photos — more than double the minimum monthly wage in Mexico. By joining Viviendo con Felinos, ranchers also agree not to kill any wild animals on their ranch, including deer and javelina. Roberto Wolf rests for a moment on our hike in La Hielería. Ash Ponders for Vox(Mexico has another, unrelated program run by its national livestock confederation that partially reimburses ranchers for cattle killed by wild predators. Ranchers complain that these funds, which are similarly meant to reduce hunting, are hard to access and inadequate.)Villarreal told me he joined the NJP program partly for the money. Cat photos taken on his ranch earn him a few thousand dollars each year, he said, which amounts to about 10 to 15 percent of his annual income from the ranch. But he also just likes jaguars. “I’m interested in seeing animals, in preserving animals because they look pretty,” he said. It helps that jaguars haven’t caused him many problems. When he was young, Villarreal thought wild cats were bad because they ate cattle, a rancher’s livelihood. But over time he learned that predators will avoid calves as long as they have plenty of deer and javelina to eat. After sampling a bit of Villarreal’s homemade Bacanora — an agave-based liquor, similar to mezcal; my job is hard, I swear! — he took us to see one of his motion cameras. It was “nearby,” though getting there involved a short drive, a half-hour hike in the sun, and a run-in with a road runner, a manic-looking ground bird that always seems to be in a rush.Wolf and NJP field technician Heraclio “Laqui” Duarte López show us a map at an overlook on our way to the reserve. Ash Ponders for VoxHiking in the reserve takes you across volcanic rocks and scrubland, often in the blistering heat. Ash Ponders for VoxA cattle skull on the outskirts of Peña’s ranch. Ash Ponders for VoxA vermilion flycatcher takes wing across the bank of the Aros River in the reserve. Ash Ponders for VoxStrapped to a wooden post, the camera was plastic, colored in camo, and roughly the size of a brick. We opened it up and clicked through the recent photos. Me approaching. Rabbit. Deer. Fox. A raccoon-like creature called a ringtail. Coati. Ocelot. Javelina. Javelina. Javelina. Javelina. Javelina.And more javelina. I asked Villarreal what he thinks when he sees a wild cat on the camera. “1,500!” he joked, referring to the money in Mexican pesos he earns from each picture of an ocelot. He then added, more seriously: “It feels good to be able to say that they do exist.”To date, 21 ranchers near the reserve have joined Viviendo con Felinos. And together, their land comprises 126,000 acres — an area more than twice the size of the actual reserve. The program has in effect expanded the area across which jaguars and their prey are protected. What’s more, it’s so popular among ranchers that there’s actually an informal waitlist to join, Wolf said. NJP has been slowly growing the program, but adding more ranches — and all of the photos they may take — is expensive, Wolf noted. Between fall 2023 and fall 2024, NJP spent well over $100,000 on photo awards alone. That doesn’t include staff time or the cost of cameras, which run around $150 each. And those cameras often need to be replaced because, of all things, woodpeckers occasionally hammer out the lenses and sensors, Gómez told me.Viviendo con Felinos has given jaguars in Sonora more space to roam, and that alone is huge. But these iconic animals are also benefiting from a more fundamental shift in the region — a shift in its culture and customs. After our visit with Villarreal, we stopped at his neighbor’s property, a large ranch owned by Agustín Hurtado Aguayo. Hurtado, now in his 80s, is the former president of the state’s livestock association and a sizable figure in Sonora’s ranching community. Several years ago, “I hated felines,” he told me at his home in the city of Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora, a few hours west of Sahuaripa. Cowboy hats and a pair of bull horns hung from the wall. “I had a very bad image of them,” Hurtado said. Agustín Hurtado Aguayo at his home in Hermosillo. Ash Ponders for VoxRanch-life photos and a longhorn bull mount line the wall of Hurtado’s home. Ash Ponders for VoxHunting wild cats was a practice that older generations passed on, he said, and it stemmed from the belief that cats hurt production. “That’s the training we had,” he told me. It was also normal for cowboys to hunt and eat deer, he said, which diminished an important food source for predators.After Villarreal joined Viviendo con Felinos, Hurtado grew curious about the program. He liked the cat photos from his neighbor’s ranch. “When I began to see photos from the cameras, I began to appreciate the animals,” he said, showing me his iPhone wallpaper of a mountain lion. “Little by little, my vision of wild cats began to change.”Hurtado, who later also joined the program, realized that by limiting the number of cattle on his ranch, his cows would be healthier and there’d be more grass left over for deer. If he had more deer — and his workers refrained from hunting them — wild cats would kill fewer of his animals. These ideas are becoming increasingly common among ranchers in Sonora who have joined the program.“If we as ranchers or as owners of property preserve the normal food chain, we have no problem,” said Jose de la Cruz Coronado Aguayo, another rancher in Viviendo con Felinos. There are other ways, too, to protect cattle from predators, such as by making sure calves don’t roam the mountains alone. In other regions of the world, installing predator deterrents, such as electric fences, alarms, and flashing lights, is also effective in preventing predation. “Cats can really coexist with livestock,” Hurtado told me.The reserve is surrounded by cattle ranches that mostly sell calves for meat. Ash Ponders for VoxWhile it’s clear how photos of jaguars might make someone fall in love with wild cats, that doesn’t explain how ranchers like Hurtado learned how to farm in such a way that protects both felines and cattle. Wolf, of NJP, says it often comes down to individual experiences. Ranchers learn over time that by leaving deer alone or creating new water sources for animals, fewer livestock go missing. What’s also crucial, he said, is that by earning money for photos of cats, people in the program become more tolerant of their presence — and more open to compromise and finding ways to live with them. Before we left his home, Hurtado took out his laptop and showed us photos from the motion cameras on his ranch. They were spectacular: a mountain lion, close to the camera and wearing a look of surprise. An ocelot with what looks like a mouse in its mouth. And several jaguars, including the image below, taken in 2023 — which he had set as his desktop background. 1/3Photos from motion cameras on Hurtado’s ranch. Courtesy of the Northern Jaguar ProjectNot everyone in Sonora suddenly loves cats. Ranchers still blame jaguars when their calves disappear or turn up dead. And some jaguars are still killed discreetly. One rancher who’s not part of Viviendo con Felinos told me that since November he’s lost more than a dozen of his calves, and he suspects that wild cats are behind the damage. He says the reserve should be fenced in for the benefit of ranchers. (There’s no evidence that mountain lions or jaguars killed his calves, Wolf said.)Tension in the region boiled over earlier this year, when a mountain lion apparently entered the house where a ranch worker was staying and attacked his dog. The worker, a man named Ricardo Vazquez Paredes, says he hit the cat with a pipe and the lion ran away, but not before injuring his dog, Blaki. While Wolf and some of the other ranchers I spoke to suspect his account might be exaggerated — it’s rare for mountain lions to go near human dwellings — the story raised concerns around Sahuaripa about jaguars and efforts to protect them. Climate change might also worsen conflict in the region. Ranchers I spoke to say Sonora is getting drier, meaning there will be less and less grass for cattle — and for animals like deer that wild cats eat. That could make cows weaker and more likely to starve and jaguars hungrier and more likely to attack. Research suggests that jaguars kill more calves when it’s dry. In 2023, a rancher in Viviendo con Felinos named Diego Ezrre Romero lost a calf to a jaguar. “The most critical thing on my ranch is water,” Ezrre told me. “There are few deer because of the conditions.”Diego Ezrre Romero, a rancher in the Viviendo con Felinos program, in the verdant courtyard of his home in Sahuaripa. Ash Ponders for VoxThis is to say: Conflict in Sonora isn’t about to disappear altogether. Yet Viviendo con Felinos appears to be helping. Along with NJP’s other efforts to engage the community — education programs, for example, and painting murals that depict the iconic cats in Sahuaripa and other towns — the group is making ranchers in jaguar territory more tolerant to cats. And thanks to payments, more tolerant to losses that they may cause. “Without them [NJP] there wouldn’t even be a jaguar here right now,” said Fausto Lorenzo, a rancher near Sahuaripa who’s not affiliated with the reserve. “All the ranchers would have killed them because that was the custom.”From Hurtado’s home in Hermosillo, we drove back toward Arizona. The highway cut through fields of saguaro cactuses. Dust devils spun in the distance, moving like flying whirlpools across the scrubland.The sun sets behind the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains near the reserve. Ash Ponders for VoxThe success that NJP has had in Mexico ultimately bodes well for efforts to restore jaguars to the US. The number of jaguars in the reserve is stable, Gutiérrez says, but motion cameras suggest that year-over-year more individuals are passing through the region. That’s more individuals that could potentially spill into the US.One big problem, however, remains. As we neared the US border, the wall came into focus. It was metal and brown and rose 18 feet above the desert. Now stretching hundreds of miles across the Southwest, the wall has made the border largely impassive to wildlife — including jaguars. And it’s still expanding. The Trump administration is now planning to complete one of the last unwalled sections of the border, a 25-mile stretch in the San Rafael Valley, about 150 miles northwest of the refuge, where jaguars have crossed into the US. The future for Sonora’s jaguars appears promising regardless of whether Trump finishes his wall. NJP and other organizations have given these animals more space to live and helped lessen the threats they face. The real loss will be felt in the US. And not just among environmentalists and other wildcat advocates. Jaguars have lived in the US long before any of us. They’re part of the country’s nature heritage — of the ecosystems that are truly American — and their absence leaves our landscapes impaired. Ranchers in Sonora teach us that we can live alongside the continent’s great predators. We just have to choose to. Update, May 20, 11:25 am ET: This piece was originally published on May 20 and updated to include both peso and dollar amounts where applicable.See More:
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  • Microsoft is testing redesigned Office icons, and you can already download them

    When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

    Microsoft is testing redesigned Office icons, and you can already download them

    Taras Buria

    Neowin
    @TarasBuria ·

    May 18, 2025 17:56 EDT

    In April, news emerged that Microsoft was asking users to share their thoughts about a set of redesigned Office icons, the first remake in seven years. While we were waiting for more details from Microsoft, someone decided to take the matter into their own hands and make a pack of high-res icons that Microsoft shared with users for feedback.
    Reddit user u/Thunder_Ruler0 posted their creation on the r/Windows11. Of course, these icons are not from Microsoft, and they are not pixel-perfect. According to the poster, they were made by cleaning up the "leaked icons," downscaling them, upscaling, and re-generating with DALLE-3. In total, the pack took about two hours to make, and the author claims they are not going to spend more time on that.
    Overall, the project is for the impatient users who cannot wait for Microsoft to drop the new icon pack. However, since there has been no announcement from Microsoft yet, chances are that we will never see it rolling out to all users. Alternatively, Microsoft might ship it in a slightly or fully reworked variant. Therefore, this unofficial icon pack could be a unique piece of customization.

    It is also worth noting that the pack has the Outlook icon yellow, a tribute to the original Microsoft Outlook icon, which, with time, evolved into a blue envelope. Many users in the comments agree that the yellow variant suits Outlook better than the blue one.
    You can download the entire pack using this Google Drive link. Note that you will have to convert PNG to ICO in order to set those logos as app icons.
    What do you think about the new Office icons? Would you like to see Microsoft shipping them to all users? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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    Microsoft is testing redesigned Office icons, and you can already download them
    When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Microsoft is testing redesigned Office icons, and you can already download them Taras Buria Neowin @TarasBuria · May 18, 2025 17:56 EDT In April, news emerged that Microsoft was asking users to share their thoughts about a set of redesigned Office icons, the first remake in seven years. While we were waiting for more details from Microsoft, someone decided to take the matter into their own hands and make a pack of high-res icons that Microsoft shared with users for feedback. Reddit user u/Thunder_Ruler0 posted their creation on the r/Windows11. Of course, these icons are not from Microsoft, and they are not pixel-perfect. According to the poster, they were made by cleaning up the "leaked icons," downscaling them, upscaling, and re-generating with DALLE-3. In total, the pack took about two hours to make, and the author claims they are not going to spend more time on that. Overall, the project is for the impatient users who cannot wait for Microsoft to drop the new icon pack. However, since there has been no announcement from Microsoft yet, chances are that we will never see it rolling out to all users. Alternatively, Microsoft might ship it in a slightly or fully reworked variant. Therefore, this unofficial icon pack could be a unique piece of customization. It is also worth noting that the pack has the Outlook icon yellow, a tribute to the original Microsoft Outlook icon, which, with time, evolved into a blue envelope. Many users in the comments agree that the yellow variant suits Outlook better than the blue one. You can download the entire pack using this Google Drive link. Note that you will have to convert PNG to ICO in order to set those logos as app icons. What do you think about the new Office icons? Would you like to see Microsoft shipping them to all users? Share your thoughts in the comments. Tags Report a problem with article Follow @NeowinFeed #microsoft #testing #redesigned #office #icons
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    Microsoft is testing redesigned Office icons, and you can already download them
    When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Microsoft is testing redesigned Office icons, and you can already download them Taras Buria Neowin @TarasBuria · May 18, 2025 17:56 EDT In April, news emerged that Microsoft was asking users to share their thoughts about a set of redesigned Office icons, the first remake in seven years (the last redesign was in late 2018). While we were waiting for more details from Microsoft, someone decided to take the matter into their own hands and make a pack of high-res icons that Microsoft shared with users for feedback. Reddit user u/Thunder_Ruler0 posted their creation on the r/Windows11. Of course, these icons are not from Microsoft, and they are not pixel-perfect. According to the poster, they were made by cleaning up the "leaked icons," downscaling them, upscaling, and re-generating with DALLE-3. In total, the pack took about two hours to make, and the author claims they are not going to spend more time on that. Overall, the project is for the impatient users who cannot wait for Microsoft to drop the new icon pack. However, since there has been no announcement from Microsoft yet, chances are that we will never see it rolling out to all users. Alternatively, Microsoft might ship it in a slightly or fully reworked variant. Therefore, this unofficial icon pack could be a unique piece of customization. It is also worth noting that the pack has the Outlook icon yellow, a tribute to the original Microsoft Outlook icon, which, with time, evolved into a blue envelope. Many users in the comments agree that the yellow variant suits Outlook better than the blue one. You can download the entire pack using this Google Drive link. Note that you will have to convert PNG to ICO in order to set those logos as app icons. What do you think about the new Office icons? Would you like to see Microsoft shipping them to all users? Share your thoughts in the comments. Tags Report a problem with article Follow @NeowinFeed
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