HorikBrun

It’s physically painful. Decades before diagnosis, tho, I found I could sometimes gaze at the bridge of someone’s nose. Seems to pacify most people. Not easy to keep looking at one spot more than a few seconds tho.

Appreciate this. I’ll read whatever is going thru others’ minds. It’s kind of like parallel play, just “hearing” other people talk about what’s got their attention atm

In archaeology, you can peg the beginning of an empire’s end when it stops building public architecture, whether it’s art or infrastructure (equal to spending on the public). Once the government stops giving back to the populace, it’s over.

Separate and complex discussion defining “empire” in archaeology without written records, so I am just referring to a particular geographic center exerting cultural and economic influence on its neighbors.

Stop public spending. People move out. Economy declines. Some other political center rises to prominence.

Obviously there are a ton of other factors affecting this, but it’s a broad-brush pattern seen repeated over thousands of years.