To Scheme the Improbable Scheme!

[rain_gryphon]

An example of an ancient civilization that wasn't based around a river. I've grown up accepting the orthodox view that a year-round river is a necessary prerequisite for a city-state to arise. This is getting surprisingly little notice in the news at large. I'm sure you'll see the fallout in fantasy and SF stories soon enough.

*****

Interestingly, the people in Mosul are putting up anti-ISIS propaganda in English. I have to believe that this is aimed at an Anglo-American audience, rather than at ISIS itself. Quite unexpected, regardless.

*****

Buddhist monks lighting themselves on fire. Just like old times!

Comments

[loganberrybunny]

The thing about the Indus civilisation did make the news over here, but it got pushed out of most of the bulletins by the usual Brexit/Trump things. Wolverhampton (where I was born) isn't a river city either, though it isn't quite that old!

[rain_gryphon]

Yeah, here it's all about who made "unwanted sexual advances" (and I have never, for the life of me, been able to work out how one can tell whether or not an advance is wanted without making it). I'd be remiss if I didn't note that, despite my general disapproval of witchhunts, I'm amused to see this whole thing exploding in Al Franken's face. For whatever reason, I strongly, strongly, distrust that man.

I'm honestly not entirely sure that I have a valid perspective on the news media as a whole anymore anyway. Since Google changed their desktop news aggregator to look prettier and contain less information at a glance, I've pretty much been going directly to the BBC and Fox News websites. I still use Google News on my phone, but no longer on the desktop.

*****

I grew up in Huntingburg, in Indiana. We had no river as well, but the town was situated at the junction of both a prominent east-west and a lesser north-south path through the hills that initially attracted foot and hoof traffic, then later the railroad, and eventually the highway. We had enough flat space too that we ended up as a maintenance and marshalling yard for the curiously-named (to 20th C. eyes) Airline Railway, which was later absorbed by Southern, which is now, apparently, Norfolk/Southern.