The most expensive wine ever sold is a bottle of 1945 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, which fetched an astonishing $558,000 at an auction in 2018. This vintage Burgundy wine is pure legend, only 600 bottles were produced that year, and it was also the last vintage made from the vineyard’s old vines before they were replanted.
Second on the current list of exceptionally overpriced wines is a six-liter, imperial bottle of 1992 Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon that sold for a cool half million dollars at a Napa Valley charity auction in 2000. 1992 was the first vintage produced at winery and since that time Screaming Eagle has become synonymous with a very expensive wine lovers cult.
Somewhere on the list of expensive wines is the auction of several bottles of 1787 Chateau Lafitte (old spelling) sold in 1985 for $400,000. The wine was supposedly from Thomas Jefferson’s personal cellar. The actual provenance was questioned at the time of the sale, but that knowledge was suppressed. It was later revealed that the bottles were forgeries but everyone that mentions that is sued into oblivion.
White holes, theoretical counterparts to black holes, might be two sides of a cosmic coin. Black holes devour matter with relentless gravity; white holes expel it, hurling energy, particles, and possibly time into the universe. Both stem from Einstein’s general relativity, which predicts black holes, proven by solid evidence, while white holes remain elusive, perhaps lurking beyond our Earthly senses.
To see their link, rethink black holes’ strangest feature and flaw: the singularity. General relativity paints it as a point where spacetime crushes so tight that physics breaks, a bug, not a feature. Exotic matter, with odd traits like negative energy, was once the fix. But the University of Barcelona’s Pablo Bueno and team ditched it, tweaking gravity with higher-curvature corrections to erase singularities. This needs extra dimensions beyond our four, turning black holes from traps into dynamic zones.
The University of Sheffield adds a twist: the event horizon isn’t sharp. Quantum gravity blurs it into a fuzzy gateway where spacetime bends, not breaks. In 4D, black holes are sinkholes, matter vanishes. In higher dimensions, it slips through, heading elsewhere. Sheffield’s take ties this to dark energy, the universe’s expansion driver. Here, it’s the power plant: quantum fluctuations, fueled by dark energy, replace the singularity with a bounce, flipping spacetime to a white hole.
Enter white holes, Janus-like transitions, Roman god of gates and duality. Black holes vacuum everything; white holes, linked via higher dimensions, spit it out, maybe far off. Picture Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way’s core black hole, channeling matter 25,000 light-years to the Orion Nebula’s arm. Unseen, white holes might hide in dimensions we can’t touch.
This hints at a cosmic cycle, like Earth’s water cycle: evaporate, rain, repeat. Black holes swallow, dark energy and quantum gravity bounce it through higher dimensions, and white holes release it back. Barcelona and Sheffield suggest no endpoints, just a recycling of cosmic raw materials across realms we’re barely capable of understanding.
Source: Black Hole Singularity, Gielen and Menendez-Pidal, University of Sheffield, 2025. Regular Black Holes…by Bueno, P. et al, Physics Letter B, February 2025. Graphic: Black Hole Rendering.
“The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice.” — Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes saw human nature as a cauldron of chaos. In his state of nature, life is “nasty, brutish, and short,” a “war of all against all” where self-preservation is the only natural law. Shaped by Thucydides’ tales of strife and Machiavelli’s ruthless pragmatism, Hobbes cast man’s self-interest as a destructive force that casts morality aside. His remedy to avert chaos: a towering sovereign, ideally a monarch, to crush anarchy with an iron fist. The social contract trades liberty for security, forging laws as human tools to bind the beast within. Yet Hobbes stumbled: he failed to grasp power’s seductive pull. He assumed his Leviathan, though human, would rise above the self-interest he despised, wielding authority without buckling to its corruption.
“Reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind…that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.” — Second Treatise of Government by John Locke
John Locke painted a gentler portrait of man than did Hobbes. He rooted natural law in reason and divine will, granting all people inherent rights to life, liberty, and property. His state of nature is peaceful yet imperfect, marred by the “want of a common judge with authority,” leaving it vulnerable to human bias and external threats. Optimistic, Locke envisioned a social contract built on the consent of the governed, protecting these rights through mutual respect and laying the groundwork for constitutional rule. Where Hobbes saw a void to be filled with control, Locke trusted reason to elevate humanity, crafting government as a shield, not a shackle.
Hobbes and Locke clash at the fault line of power. Hobbes’s sovereign, meant to tame chaos, reflects the rulers’ thirst for dominance, but his naivety about power’s effect cracks his foundation. Locke’s ideals, morality, reason, rights, empower the ruled, who yearn for liberty after security sours. Hobbes missed the flaw: rulers, driven by the same self-interest he feared, bend laws to their will, spawning a dual reality—one code for the governed, another for the governors. Locke’s vision of freedom and limited government inspires their soul, while Hobbes’s call for order fortifies their bones with courts, police, and laws of men. The U.S. Constitution marries both, yet scandals tip the scales: power corrupts, and liberty frays as safeguards buckle under the rulers’ grip.
Hobbes and Locke both accept the imperfection of man but take different paths to mitigate that imperfection with workable safeguards. Hobbes insists on the rule by law but drafted by imperfect man and applied with a Machiavellian indifference with no solution for absolute powers corrupting influence. Locke also chooses to rule by law but guided by morality, God and the will to depose of despots.
Sources: Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes; Second Treatise of Government, John Locke. Graphic:Original Leviathan frontispiece, a king composed of subjects, designed with Hobbes’s input.
Aromas of black fruits, herbs and spice; medium bodied, semi-dry, moderately light tannins with a smooth finish. Will pair well aged cheese, and pasta.
A very good table wine off the beaten path but overpriced. If you can find it for $10-12 you wouldn’t go wrong picking up a few bottles.
Great art is the interpretation of great beauty. Art without aesthetic is something rawer, more fleeting, an attempt to conjure emotions that challenge the intellect but not necessarily feed the soul. Picasso and Pollock jolted the mind, often with a visceral, nihilistic force. Alfred Sisley, though, honored the soul, developing and refining an impressionistic palette of light and color on landscapes that captured nature’s beauty and humanity’s place in it throughout his career.
Alfred Sisley was born in Paris in 1839 to a prosperous English expatriate family. At 20, in 1859, he left for London to study business, prepping to succeed his aging father, then 58. But over four years there, he skipped lectures, haunting museums instead, captivated by art. Back in Paris by 1862, his parents relented, letting him trade commerce for canvas. Soon after, he met Monet, Renoir, and Bazille, and together they took to painting ‘en plein air’, in the open air, chasing light, color, and atmosphere over precision. From these outings, Impressionism took root.
Sisley found inspiration and tranquility in the rural Seine Valley, just tens of miles from Paris, where he painted some of his most enduring landscapes. In The Terrace at Saint-Germain, Spring (1875), near his home, he bathes the valley in a tender, radiant light, blending nature and humanity into a soul-soothing vista. His works, unwavering in their beauty, stand as a testament to art’s power to nourish the spirit, a tribute to life’s grace.
Source: Sisley by Cogniat, translated by Sachs, 1979. Graphic: The Terrace at Saint-Germain, Spring by Sisley, 1875. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.
Mikhail Bulgakov’s White Guard, set during the Ukrainian War of Independence (1917–1921) amid the Russian Civil War, captures Kyiv in an existential power struggle against varied forces: Ukrainian nationalists allied with German troops, the White Guard clinging to Tsarist dreams, Lenin’s Bolsheviks closing in, plus Poles and Romanians. Against this bloody backdrop, Bulgakov crafts a semi-autobiographical tale of loss and fatalism, culminating in a nihilistic realization of humanity’s purpose: “But this isn’t frightening.All this will pass. The sufferings, agonies, blood, hunger, and wholesale death. The sword will go away, but these stars will remain… So why are we reluctant to turn our gaze to them? Why?”
Bulgakov, a doctor of venereal diseases like the book’s protagonist Alexei Turbin, knew hopelessness. In 1918, syphilis was a scourge, often incurable, leading to madness, mirroring the war’s societal decay. Alexei volunteers for the White Guard, tending to horrors he can’t heal, his efforts dissolving in a dream: “shadows galloped past…Turbin was dying in his sleep.” War becomes a disease, resistance futile. Yet Bulgakov’s lens widens. Sergeant Zhilin dreams of Revelation, “And God shall wipe away all tears…and there shall be no more death,” finding humility in cosmic indifference. Petka, an innocent, dreams simply of a sunlit ball, untouched by great powers. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).
Then, out of dreamland into the light: “All this will pass.” The stars endure, wars fade. Writing in the 1920s after the White defeat, Bulgakov channels Russian fatalism—Dostoevsky’s inescapable will, Chekhov’s quiet surrender. But he’s not fully broken. His “Why?” pleads, mocks, resists. Why not look up? Survival is luck, death equalizes, yet fighting a losing battle confronts our nothingness. Kyiv falls, the Bolsheviks threaten, the White Guard vanishes, still, Bulgakov continues to ask. Why?
He blends despair with irony, a doctor mocking death as the stars watch. The German expulsion of the Reds in 1918 briefly eased bloodshed, but 1919 brought worse, “Great was the year and terrible the Year of Our Lord 1918, but more terrible still was 1919.” History moves on; stars don’t care. Bulgakov’s question lingers: Why? To fight is to live, fate be damned.
Source: White Guard, Mikhail Bulgakov, trans. Marian Schwartz. Graphic: Ukrainian Soldiers circa 1918.
During the Italian Renaissance, a cultural rebirth fueled optimism and propelled civilization to new heights. Yet, in stark contrast, werewolf and witch trials, often culminating in gruesome executions, cast a superstitious shadow over the cold, rugged rural regions of France and Germany from the 14th to 17th centuries.
One notorious case revolves around Peter Stumpp, dubbed the “Werewolf of Bedburg.” In 1589, near Cologne in what is now Germany, Stumpp faced accusations of lycanthropy during a spree of brutal murders and livestock killings. Under torture, he confessed to striking a pact with the devil, who allegedly provided a magical wolf-skin belt that allowed him to transform into a wolf. He admitted murdering and cannibalizing numerous victims, including children. Stumpp’s punishment was as horrifying as his alleged crimes: he was beheaded and burned, alongside his daughter and mistress, who were also implicated. His severed head was later mounted on a pole as a grim public warning.
In a striking counterexample, a case from 1692 in present-day Latvia and Estonia challenges the typical narrative. An 80-year-old man named Thiess of Kaltenbrun confessed to being a werewolf, not to wreak havoc, but to protect his community. He claimed he and other “werewolves” battled witches, even journeying to Hell and back to secure the region’s grain supply. The court, skeptical of his tale and possibly viewing him as delusional (perhaps an early case of clinical lycanthropy), rejected the death penalty and sentenced him to flogging instead.
These trials often hinged on confessions extracted through torture, blurring the lines between truth, projection, vengeance, and superstition. Historians still debate the reality behind the accused: Were they serial killers, convenient scapegoats for unsolved crimes, or individuals afflicted by psychological conditions like lycanthropy—a disorder marked by the delusion of transforming into an animal? In his 1865 work, The Book of Were-Wolves, Sabine Baring-Gould analyzed cases like Stumpp’s, arguing that while superstition inflated their legend, they may have been rooted in real incidents: gruesome murders or societal fears run amok.
Source: The Book of Werewolves by Baring-Gould. Werewolf Trials by Beck, History, 2021. Graphic: Werewolf Groc 3.
Ever wondered who’s behind that perfectly paired wine at your favorite (very expensive) restaurant? Meet the sommeliers, roughly 20,000 certified professionals worldwide who bring their expertise to fine dining rooms, luxury resorts, cruise lines, wineries, importers, retail shops, and even culinary schools. It’s a career fueled by passion, though it’s not exactly a fast track to financial independence. Most certified sommeliers earn a median salary of $65,000 annually, while those climbing to the “advanced” level pull in around $90,000. At the pinnacle, Master Sommeliers, the big corks, command between $150,000 and $160,000 a year. Not bad for something most lovers of wine will do for free.
Being a certified sommelier already puts you in an exclusive club, but reaching the rank of Master Sommelier? That’s a whole different beast. As of March 2025, only about 275 people worldwide hold this coveted title, earned through the grueling gauntlet through the Court of Master Sommeliers. This isn’t a casual weekend course. The journey begins with the Introductory Sommelier Course, a two-day crash course in wine basics, followed by the Certified Sommelier Exam—a one-day test of theory, tasting, and service. From there, it’s onto the Advanced Sommelier level, a multi-day ordeal that weeds out all but the most dedicated. The peak level, Master Sommelier Diploma Examination, held just twice a year—once in North America, once in Asia.
The Master exam is a triathlon of will and mind. First, an oral theory test demands encyclopedic knowledge of wine regions, grape varieties, vintages, and even obscure spirits. Next, a blind tasting challenges candidates to identify six wines down to their region, vintage, and quirks—all in 25 minutes. Finally, a service exam puts their hospitality skills under a microscope, mimicking the high-stakes elegance of a Michelin-starred restaurant. Pass the theory, and you’ve got three years to conquer the tasting and service sections. And to let you know there is absolutely no pressure only 10% make it through. It’s no wonder Master Sommeliers are expected to blend technical wizardry, the poise of a French maître d’, and the charisma of a seasoned storyteller.
The rewards, though, go beyond the paycheck. Masters wield influence—consulting for top wineries, judging competitions, or shaping dining experiences at the world’s best tables. But the road is brutal. Years of study, countless bottles tasted (it’s a job), and a relentless pursuit of perfection define the path. For many, it’s less about money and more about prestige and the thrill of mastery.
Trivia: of those 275 Master Sommeliers, only about 28 are women—roughly 10%. That’s striking when you consider research showing women often perform men in wine evaluation. Studies suggest women of reproductive age, have a heightened sense of smell and taste. They’re wired to detect subtle aromas, like the faint floral note in a Riesling or the earthy undertone of a Pinot Noir and articulate them with stunning clarity.
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” — Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist
For centuries, we’ve assumed consciousness resides in the brain. Yet, despite decades of slicing, mapping, and probing, its precise location remains elusive. Dr. Wilder Penfield, a neurosurgeon who charted the brain’s sensory and motor regions in the mid-20th century, wrestled with what we might call “self and memory.” While he pinpointed areas tied to movement and sensation, he couldn’t locate the “seat” of consciousness. By the 1960s, this led him to a bold hypothesis: the mind might not be fully reducible to brain activity. In his view, brain and mind could be distinct, with the mind perhaps holding a non-physical dimension—a whisper of something beyond neurons and synapses.
Fast forward to today, and researchers like Michael Levin at Tufts University are pushing this question further, though differently. Levin doesn’t dismiss the brain’s role in consciousness but argues cognition isn’t confined there. He proposes that intelligence and goal-directed behavior arise across the body’s cells and tissues. The brain, in this model, acts as a hub for processing and storing information—not the sole architect of the mind. Levin’s team explores how systems beyond the brain—from cellular networks to synthetic constructs—display mind-like traits: agency, problem-solving, and the pursuit of goals.
At the heart of Levin’s work is bioelectricity, the electrical signaling that guides cells from the zygote’s first spark to a fully formed organism. He sees it as a blueprint, directing how cells collaborate toward a larger purpose, much like ants hauling food to their colony. Each contributes to a collective intelligence, shaped by bioelectric cues that drive development and behavior. Levin stays rooted in empirical science, mapping the “how” without chasing the “why”—hinting at a distributed mind but avoiding a single source or controller.
Could memory bridge consciousness to the self, and perhaps beyond? For Penfield, electrical jolts to the brain summoned vivid past moments—smells, voices—yet the “I” reliving them remained elusive, suggesting a unity beyond the physical. Levin offers a twist: if memory isn’t just locked in the brain but woven into the body’s bioelectric web, consciousness and self might emerge together, shared across every cell. Each recalls its role, its history, to pursue a shared aim—like ants rebuilding their hill. Memory, then, isn’t merely a record but the thread weaving awareness into identity, maybe even purpose. Yet, does bioelectricity simply reflect life’s mechanics, a benign dance of physics and biology? Or does it hint at a deeper force—a directionality we’ve long named “lifeforce” or “soul”? Levin’s inductive lens echoes Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”—proving existence through awareness but leaving purpose a shadow on the horizon. Science maps the signals; their origin remains unanswered.
Sources: Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere… by Levin and Resnik, 2025, OSF Preprints; Ingressing Minds… by Michael Levin, 2025, PsyArXiv Preprints. Graphic: Molecular Thoughts by Agsandrew, iStock, Licensed.
On 12 March 1664, King Charles II, eager to expand the English empire and reward his loyal brother James, Duke of York, granted him a vast swath of North American territory. This prize included New Netherland—stretching roughly from the Delaware River to the Connecticut River—plus scraps of modern Maine and islands like Long Island, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket along the Atlantic coast. Whether Charles saw the Dutch, who currently claimed and occupied most of this land, as a mere obstacle to be swept aside or a challenge for a later Machiavellian showdown isn’t entirely clear in today’s histories. But that’s a story for a later post. What’s certain is that on September 8, 1664, some 300 British troops under Colonel Richard Nicolls peacefully seized New Netherland, renaming its heart, New Amsterdam, as New York.
The conquest raised a question: what to do with the Dutch, French, Walloons, and other non-English settlers now under British rule? The Articles of Capitulation, signed that day, were generous: these residents could keep their property, trade rights, and personal liberties. They weren’t forced out or stripped of their livelihoods—a pragmatic move to avoid rebellion in a colony where the Dutch outnumbered their new overlords. But this deal had limits. Without British citizenship, they owed no loyalty to the Crown, couldn’t pass property seamlessly under English law, and lacked full access to British markets. Enter the curiously dated Naturalization Act of 12 March 1664—more on that head-scratching date in a moment.
This act offered foreign-born settlers a path to English subjecthood. By swearing allegiance to the Crown and paying a fee—described by some as modest, by others as steep—they could gain the rights and privileges of English subjects. The exact fee is lost to time, but it was likely hefty enough to filter out the poor while drawing in merchants and landowners eager for legal and economic benefits. The act aimed to stabilize the colony’s economy, secure political control, encourage growth, and align local realities with British common law.
In mid-17th-century England, citizenship hinged on jus sanguinis—citizenship by blood. Only children of British parents were natural subjects; foreign-born adults, like New York’s Dutch settlers, needed a legal workaround to join the fold and fully participate in colonial life. The act filled that gap, promising a unified British colony over time.
History pegs this Naturalization Act to 12 March 1664—the same day Charles granted James the land—yet the English didn’t hold New Netherland until September. A citizenship act before possession seems nonsensical. One plausible explanation? It’s a backdated fiction. The real policy likely emerged post-conquest, perhaps in late 1664 or 1665, as Nicolls integrated the Dutch population. Linking it to March 12 could’ve been a deliberate move to dress up the original grant as lawful and inevitable—a tidy origin story for English New York. The Articles handled the surrender’s chaos; naturalization was the long-term glue, and pinning it to the charter’s date cast the shift from Dutch to British rule as seamless and legitimate.
Addendum: The Evolution of British Citizenship
British subjecthood didn’t stay rooted in jus sanguinis. Between 1664 and the mid-18th century, it gradually shifted toward jus soli—citizenship by soil. By the time Sir William Blackstone penned his Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769), anyone born in the Crown’s dominions was a natural-born subject, regardless of parentage. This held until the British Nationality Act of 1981, which dialed back unconditional jus soli. Now, a child born in the UK needs at least one parent to be a British citizen or a settled legal resident to claim citizenship—leaving others out of the fold.
Sources: America’s Best History; discussions with Grok 3. Graphic: Landing of the English at New Amsterdam, 1664, produced 1899, public domain.
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