Prostitution In Ancient Greece And Rome

The oldest profession had a strong presence in ancient Greece and Rome. Here is everything you need to know about professional courtesans in the classical world.

Although the so-called oldest profession has long been a taboo subject, and is only recently beginning to emerge into open conversation, intercourse has always been for sale in human societies. It is a hugely complex issue, with a wide range of social, personal, political and even economic repercussions. Could looking at the carnal practices of the ancient Greeks and Romans help to open our eyes to new perspectives on the oldest profession?

- The Collector

 

Incursion dans le monde de l'Opus Dei

Un homme qui se présente sous une fausse identité contacte l’équipe d’Enquête. Il veut dénoncer ce qu’il a vécu au sein de l’Opus Dei pendant 30 ans, mais il est craintif. Une peur irrationnelle, un peu paranoïaque, admet-il, qui lui vient de ces années dans cette organisation catholique.

L’Opus Dei veut dire l’œuvre de Dieu. Le groupe est fondé par Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer en 1928 en Espagne. Il a séduit le Vatican par son côté novateur, par cette idée que des laïcs peuvent atteindre la sainteté dans le travail et la vie de tous les jours.

- Radio Canada

 

Fear not

You might think that horror movies are a delicious, trashy pleasure. But watching them has surprisingly wholesome effects. 

- Aeon

 

Weird And Wonderful Illustrated Letters From A 16th Century Songbook

The Songbook of Zeghere van Male contains local and international 500 year old songs and motets. Made in 1542, the 1200-page long book is rich in illuminations, depicting ornamental and historiated initials and interlinear drawings not necessarily related to its content.

Also known by its call number MS 125-128 in Cambrai’s Mediathèque Municipale, the late Medieval work consists of four complementary part-books: Superius, Altus, Tenor, & Bass. And each part features bizarre, amusing and scatological illustrated letters.

- Flashbak

 

Tout ce que vous avez toujours voulu savoir sur Sade (et plus encore)

Autant admiré que controversé, Sade est un personnage doublement sulfureux : par ses actes et par ses écrits, véritables catalogues de perversions sexuelles. Emprisonné au XVIIIe siècle, vilipendé, condamné aux éditions clandestines, "le divin marquis" est devenu synonyme d’une pratique sexuelle réprouvée : le sadisme. Sade sera pourtant partiellement réhabilité, influencera largement les intellectuels français et sera porté aux nues par les plus grands : de Baudelaire à Giacometti, de Pasolini à Simone de Beauvoir. Aujourd’hui, certains vont même jusqu’à faire de Sade une figure féministe. A l’occasion de l’entrée du manuscrit des "120 journées de Sodome" dans les collections de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, "Le Doc Stupéfiant" propose un portait inédit d’un libertin sans limite.

- PileFace.com

 

The Truck Stop Killer

He was methodical, he rode the highways, and he preyed on teenage girls. Girls who'd run away. Girls no one would miss. In the summer of 1985, the author was such a girl. One night on I-95, she hitched a ride from a stranger and endured the most terrifying moments of her life. Now, years later, she returns to the scenes of her fugitive youth looking for clues to that terror—and the girls who lost their lives to it.

- GQ

 

How to Deal With Living in a State of Perpetual Crisis

At this moment, it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by the state of the world. We are facing an unprecedented climate disaster, the impact of which is already causing droughts, famine, flooding, wildfires, and mass extinction events. The political situation on the national and global level feels perpetually tenuous. And we continue to suffer through a seemingly unending pandemic, one that has thus far killed more than 680,000 Americans and 4.5 million people across the globe. To put it mildly, things are not going great.

- lifehacker

 

The Secrets of The World’s Greatest Freediver

With only a single breath, Alexey Molchanov, history’s most daring freediver, is reaching improbable depths—and discovering a new kind of enlightenment as he conquers one of the world’s wildest sports.

For all the complex techniques required to succeed, the objective is remarkably simple: Go as deep as you can go on one breath and return to the surface without passing out or dying.

This is the point of freediving. At least the competitive point. And here in the Bahamas, 42 divers from around the world have gathered, like filings to a magnet, at a geological marvel called a blue hole, in this case a 660-foot elevator shaft of ocean water, to see how many stories they can plunge themselves down.

- GQ

Etienne Daho - If (duo avec Charlotte Gainsbourg) - Clip officiel

 

Des naturistes font les vendanges

Au Portugal, des adeptes du naturisme se sont essayés dimanche aux vendanges dans le plus simple appareil pour cueillir les raisins d’un domaine situé à une centaine de kilomètres au sud de Lisbonne.

- La Presse

 

The Last Glimpses of California's Vanishing Hippie Utopias

Half a century ago, a legion of idealists dropped out of society and went back to the land, creating a patchwork of utopian communes across Northern California. Here, the last of those rogue souls offer a glimpse of their otherworldly residences—and the tail end of a grand social experiment.

- GQ

 

Wet Hot Parisian Summer: A Lost 1930s Nudist Utopia

In Physiopolis, life was better in the buff. Or at least in a bikini, which was as close as one could legally get to public nudity in 1930s Paris. It was here, on an isolated sun-baked island on the Seine, that a titillating new naturiste-nudiste (naturalist and nude) movement sprang forth. Gone were the days of staying indoors to achieve a porcelain complexion like an Edwardian era prude. “The colour of health,” declared the founders of Physiopolis, was henceforth “found in shades of bronze,” and perfected through diet and exercise regimens to stimulate mind, body and soul…

- Messy Nessy Chic

When Americans Dreamed of Kitchen Computers

The ultimate appliance turned out to be expensive and impractical.

This is a question many American families find themselves asking daily. It’s not a new question, either. Generations have debated the delegation of kitchen duties, often touching on class, race, and especially gender. Most frequently, women have taken on home cooking, which often means hard work for little or no pay. Proposed solutions have ranged from equitable sharing of household labor between all family members, buying pre-made foods, and even kitchen-less homes and communal cooking.

However, one solution to the cooking dilemma has remained in the American cultural imagination: a kitchen computer, one capable of preparing a family’s every meal. Though it might seem like something straight out of The Jetsons, there was a brief period where the kitchen computer was very real indeed.

- Atlas Obscura