Emperors, Life, Other
Another good post by Medium superstar writer Ayodeji Awosika: 10 Signs Your Life is Probably Better Than You Think It Is. Number One: "You're alive.
He bolsters his selection with a quote from Nassim Taleb: “We are quick to forget that just being alive is an extraordinary piece of good luck, a remote event, a chance occurrence of monstrous proportions.”
Later in the article, he invokes Thomas Sowell: “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
Flattery. It's a bad thing: "Next to hating their enemies, men are most inclined to flatter them." Alexis de Tocqueville. "A man flatters the land he fears, but not the land he loves." G.K. Chesterton But at times it might be necessary: At full moon, Caligula would invite the moon goddess to his bed. One night he demanded of Aulus Vitellius, "Did you not see her?" Vitellius replied, "No, only you gods can see one another."
Vitellius would later become emperor. (In the year of the four emperors: Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian (69 AD, following Nero the Fiddler.))
First, my enemy, the close talker, was vanquished by COVID. Now, another enemy is under attack by COVID: "Loud speech can leave coronavirus in air for up to 14 minutes - study."
Unlike the close talker, I don't loathe the loud talker, especially younger people. But my patience for loud talkers starts to wear thin once the person reaches, say, 35 years old. After that age, you need to have an overwhelmingly charming personality to pull off loud talking without coming off as obnoxious, stupid, or both. And for women over age 35? I'm not sure I've ever met a loud one with a winning personality. I'm sure they're out there, but they've eluded me.
