
Pliny the Elder May Have Been Found 2,000 Years Later - Cozumel
http://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/1.809751
======
bambax
I visited Pompei just last week! What an amazing place.

Most of the paintings and mosaics and other findings have been removed from
the houses and are in a museum in Naples, but still, it's extraordinary.

There had been a big earthquake in 62 AD that had shaken the whole region, and
Pompei was still under active reconstruction in 79 AD when the eruption buried
it.

(It is said that during the 62 earthquake, Nero was singing in Naples in front
of 5000 people he had forced to come listen to him, and that when the earth
trembled he explained it was because it was touched by his singing. Spectators
were not allowed to leave the theater until he finished. The theater is no
more, but the houses later built on top of it clearly follow its path
[https://goo.gl/maps/AsMRjEm9sj82](https://goo.gl/maps/AsMRjEm9sj82)).

In Pompei there were small houses, big houses (some over 3000 sq. m. with an
entrance in the town, and a terrasse with a view of the sea); there was, at
Herculanum, a nearby town, a huge villa (Villa of the Papyri:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_of_the_Papyri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_of_the_Papyri))
overlooking the bay of Naples.

None of that mattered. The eruption destroyed everything.

~~~
simplicio
Herculanum is really neat. The crowds (at least 5 years ago) were pretty thin,
and most of the area isn't roped off, so you can just sort of wander around a
semi-intact Roman city.

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seibelj
They need $10,000 to do the test and are looking for donors. C'mon one of you
HN tech millionaires - pick up the phone and cut them a check.

~~~
melling
...or 10,000 people could donate a $1. Not sure why we’re always looking for
rich people to solve problems. There’s a lot more the rest of us could do.

~~~
jacquesm
Transaction costs on 10K payments of $1 are a lot higher than one payment of
10K.

The optimum is probably somewhere in the middle.

~~~
melling
so, you get my point? The pendant HN crowd never lets you down. Rather than
turn this into a pointless debate about the optimal amount to give...

So, I’ll ask that in addition to stop being cheap, maybe we can solve the
micropayment problem.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayment](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayment)

~~~
jacquesm
> The pendant HN crowd

Oh the temptation ;)

~~~
melling
yeah, I should just blog my response so I don’t have to quickly, with typos,
post this point again. I feel like we’ve had this same conversation before
about crowdfunding and micro-transactions.

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eponeponepon
I was under the impression his body was recovered a couple of days after the
eruption - have I got that wrong?

~~~
romanhn
Indeed, the Wikipedia says on the matter: "On their return three days later
(26 August) after the plume had dispersed, his body was found under the pumice
with no apparent external injuries." Odd that the article doesn't address this
at all.

~~~
kijin
Huh, so who does this skull belong to? Maybe it's one of the friends he was
trying to rescue?

Come to think of it, I wouldn't be surprised if there were multiple men
running around with gold jewelry and swords back then. If the Bay Area were
hit by a major earthquake today and everyone got buried in the rubble, we
would find a lot of bodies clutching iPhones and Tesla car keys.

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megafounder
Link to donate? Can't find it

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zinckiwi
Alan Davies will be thrilled.

~~~
bobognib
For the uninitiated, he's a member of the QI panel, a British comedy quiz
show. There are quite a few episodes where they talk about Pliny the Elder on
that show, its quite funny.

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eecc
Pathetic that the Italian State cannot cough up 10k to get to the bottom of
this. 10k is less than the monthly benefit of an Italian member of
Parliament...

What a failed state, what a shame on us!

~~~
ziotom78
Agreed. However, being a researcher in an Italian university, I fully
understand their difficulty in finding this sum…

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santaclaus
I can't be the only one who immediately thought what, they had IPAs 2000 years
ago?

~~~
bbarn
I have friends whose dog is named Pliny. He convinced his wife they were
naming the dog after a great historical figure, but really it's just his
favorite beer. It's pretty high on my list when I visit CA to see if I can
find it.

~~~
_asummers
He needs to get another one so he can have Pliny the Elder and Pliny the
Younger.

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PaulRobinson
This article is now basically an excuse for a ton of pop-overs and pop-unders
that make the site unusable. It seems that the publisher has decided to
maximise their revenue from the HN hug.

Shame.

~~~
Practicality
At first, I only saw one ad when I went there (just now). I forgot I had my
adblocker on. Then, I tried to load the page again and saw "Haaretz.com is now
inaccessible to visitors using ad blockers"

Wow, someone is actively working to squeeze the incoming traffic.

~~~
yuvadam
Haaretz is pretty much the only remaining media outlet in Israel that
continues to pursue actual journalism. To that end I support them endlessly.

However, they are also the only media outlet that has paywalls, and I'd be
fine with that if it ended there - high quality investigative journalism has a
price.

The problem is that they also have a shit ton of third-party malware networks
embedded on their pages, and even if you pay for a digital subscription you
still get tracked and bombarded with ads. Then to add further insult, they
block ad-blockers.

The solution is two fold: the Hebrew EasyList [1] blocks the anti ad-block
elements allowing you to continue to view Haaretz without ads and without
blocking. Second, if you want to jump over the paywall, there's an addon for
that [2].

[1] -
[https://github.com/easylist/EasyListHebrew](https://github.com/easylist/EasyListHebrew)

[2] - [https://github.com/yuvadm/free-haaretz](https://github.com/yuvadm/free-
haaretz)

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SubiculumCode
I admit that I thought this was about beer. A very very fine beer that I have
not yet had the pleasure of enjoying. Pliny the Younger is still quite a nice
beer that I've had on multiple occasions from the tap, and is generally more
available if you are at the right establishment on the right night.

~~~
jmspring
I had the same expectation. That said, in the Bay Area, the hype for Pliny is
greater than it should be. Personally, I find Blind Pug from Russian River as
good or better.

~~~
SubiculumCode
I still need to visit the actual Russian River brewery

