Photo credits: odz

 

I was originally thinking about writing a comprehensive description of what my ideal realistic «home», or maybe my ideal fictitious «home», or maybe both would be… but… well…, I guess I might not have enough time for that. I’m not even sure that I would know how, and I doubt that I would have any clear answers. So, even though I really like this challenge, I will constrain myself to writing in short, about a few thoughts and images that crossed my mind, at first, and later on, while pondering and imagining the feeling of being at home. Well, for starters, not having enough time is certainly not a quality I’d wish for my «at home». Spoiler: thinking of «at home», will unavoidably not be related solely to the physical-architectural world, but it will encompass many of the things that I think I would wish for the «place» where I would «choose» to live. And this time, there will be fewer references, as much of it will be plucked from personal experiences. Even so, if anyone is interested, I am willing to dissect and exchange… Just saying.

 

I tried letting my mind go free while imagining this, and then, to somehow write everything down, but as I did so, despite it not being the first time, I still got «scared» by the results. So in the end, I suppose there will be some sort of formal order to the text, and unfortunately within the thoughts as well. Creating disorder also takes time, sometimes being more tedious than creating order. Or maybe, not only creating the disorder, but moreover so, recording the disorder that was created, so that it can be «read» by others. It would seem that I still need a lot of practice with my «ordered chaos approach».

 

What is the purpose of all this, some might ask? Well, define «purpose»? Purpose for whom? Tell me what is the purpose of everything else you choose instead, and why that purpose is a better choice! Etc., etc. Maybe I am curious of what «at home» would mean to me, and especially what it would look like when I would try to put it down onto paper. Maybe I am curious of what «at home» would mean to others, especially the ideal one, curious of what are others doing in order to get «home», of what are others doing in order to find «home». Maybe this could be a clumsy way of starting a conversation. You might think that this has been done so many times before, yet… I cannot help but find many of those trials to be scared, refrained, superficial, formal and most importantly highly limited and non-imaginative. It’s like nobody wants anything and everyone has everything they ever wanted. Well, I don’t expect this one to be any different, nor do I expect anyone to have «time» for this, but…, so what?!

 

A few of the things that go through my mind when thinking about feeling «at home» are, in no particular order: unlimited toys for the mind, immense diversity (not really immeasurable, but still really large), a googolplexian bits of information, the whole sum of my experiences (past, present and future), the places, things and life forms that most allow and aid me in accomplishing my hopefully ever-changing goals, wherever my feet take me, the sum of all the places where harm will not come upon me, anywhere, lots of collaboration and cooperation, endless curiosity, unlimited observation, perpetual progress, goals, values, constructive competition, helping the best become better, perfect informational and physical accessibility and connectivity…

 

And in a relative order:
I want neighbors, loads and loads of them. Because at least with regard to my home, I think that size does matter, a huge population is a must. I will not engage now into a description of the many ways in which (I think) I know it matters. There should also be a wide span of densities, but probably ranging between high, higher and extremely high with pockets of low. Probably, a metropolitan area. Probably, one with let’s say… a minimum of… 10 million people?! Nah, that’s too scanty! A minimum of 20 or even 30 million people sound more appropriate. New York seems appealing, or maybe Lagos…, or… New Delhi, Dhaka, or… one of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, they seemed nice…, Mexico City, São Paulo, or perhaps Jakarta, or… Tokyo, or… hmmm… Tokyo…?!Yup! Probably, Tokyo! The approx. 40 million inhabitants of the Greater Tokyo Area should count for something. Though I certainly wouldn’t mind it being even bigger. Having access to that amount of «heads» and «hands», it means that even if only 0.001% of the 40 million population is engaged in an activity, you still get 40,000 people doing that activity in that small area of cca. 100 x 100 km. That is to say, if uniformly distributed, you would have one person every approx. 600 m practicing that activity, so, after walking for 15–20 minutes you should find at least three people doing a given activity. I’m oversimplifying, but the odds are certainly higher than in a place like Bucharest. And Tokyo is really not a dense city! But again, it’s probably a good start. Yup, this feels closer to «home» already.

 

Despite the number of inhabitants and the amazing and in some ways rich and rare culture (personal opinion, willing to debate), in some other ways, Japan does not really host such a huge cultural diversity. Nor do most of the European countries, for that matter. Yup! Happy us! We are the lucky plants, living in such a stable and uniform «mono-culture home». Bad idea! I think I’m certain that my «home» should also host easy accessibility to a huge cultural diversity. So, in other words, the neighbors should not only be many, but also diverse. In some ways, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and other countries in Southeast Asia, and many countries of Equatorial Africa, are among the richest culturally (1, 2). Can you imagine that in Papua New Guinea, a country less than twice the size of Romania, with a population of only 8 million people, there are approx. 851 languages spoken today? That is languages, not dialects (3)! I’m getting cozier and cozier. This is a beautiful addition to my home. But I’m going to be spoiled and say that this is still far from sufficient. These cultures are not really that different, after all they have evolved on the same (half of the) island (kind of). That is despite it being the world’s second-largest island, and one of the most bio-divers places on earth. I would much rather go for a mix of more contrastingly different cultures, like those which can be found in certain international university cities (college towns), or in certain tourist / travel facilities like certain hostels etc. Maybe this could be achieved by sheer size: i.e. New Delhi’s «Indira Gandhi» National Open University has more than 4,000,000 enrolled students (4); or by percentage of the total population: Aix-en-Provence has a total population of around 150,000, of which 40,000–80,000 are students, many of which are internationals. That is almost 50% of the population of a town the size of Pitești. Still, you would probably lose a good few hundred languages there, but the remainder will be more divers / less closely related. I would be very curious of the results of studies on these topics of cultural and lingual diversity in such places. So, I should live in a hostel! I’m kidding! Though I wouldn’t really mind it. It depends. And again, I also would not mind living in some University Campuses. Those can be amazing places. In any case, the point to take home is: I love huge cultural and unavoidably linguistic diversity with as many representatives as possible. It’s getting more and more fictional, but why not?! Just for comparison, good luck finding many speakers of a given (non-Romanian) language in Romania (not to say that Romania is such a bad example, because it’s not, but it’s also not a good one).

 

Not to overdo things, I admit that at some point in time, I might want to have the option of having no neighbours. Nooo… no, no, no! That’s not true. I’m biting my tongue now. Be careful what you wish for! What I meant was that at some «special» time in my too often irrational life I might crave for a little apparent solitude, for which, the short temporary impression or illusion of not having any neighbours will do just fine. Let me exemplify: I have a recollection (maybe it was a dream) of me living together with 16 Japanese people, a Nepalese boy and occasionally a European guy / gal, in one 80 sqm room, for let’s say… three months, in Tokyo. And I don’t mean a room + a hallway + a kitchen + a living room etc. There was a 1 sqm bathroom separated by a curtain, which had a timed-coin-payed-hot water dispenser (100 JPY/3 min of hot water – this was nice); a 1 sqm WC with the sink over the toilet cistern (also nice); and everything else was… well… The Room (which I must say, was surprisingly cosy). One of the funny things (and I mean funny in the most kind and appreciative way) was never knowing if there’s anybody home, much less so, how many and which people are actually in the room at any given time. Everybody was so careful and discrete (and again, I mean it in the most appreciative way) that you could not make the difference between being alone and being surrounded by 14–18 people. Don’t get me wrong, I know this might sound crazy impossible, at least it did to me, so I’m sorry if I’m underestimating you and you get it, but I’ll continue wow-ing for a little while longer. The room was full of activity: there was a «kitchen space» where people were cooking; there was a «TV space» with a couch where people were watching silly – «noisy» Japanese TV shows; there was a central «kotatsu space» where people were gathering to relax, «socialize», work; there were 20 box beds where people held all of their belongings and slept; there was a depository of books, because one of the roommates was a bookkeeper and every day he would choose the books that seemed the most appropriate to be taken out from storage to be taken to the shop… and this is just a small part of the daily routine.

 

And still you couldn’t say if anyone was present. Many of the «home-mates» were living there for some years now. Also, they were all different, all ages, all walks of life, all sorts of dreams and ambitions…, yet there was one thing they all had in common… they were Japanese (and the rest were slowly appropriating the behavior).

 

Even our non-human roommate, Mr. Mouse, and yes, I do mean a «free and wild» mouse, was only occasionally politely making its presence known, which I must add, made for a very enjoyable company. I will disrespectfully and humbly cut this memory short (which is certainly unfair towards the participants to that experience), and I will return to the subject at hand. And what a better place to continue from, other than Mr. Mouse? As I said, he was a very enjoyable «home-mate». But then again, why stop there? Why only one? Why only one Mr. Mouse? Why not more, many… many others? How about having a Graham’s number (5) (figuratively speaking) other life forms sharing your home?!

 

Well, for starters, to some extent, this is already happening, but few of us are actually aware of it. So, first, one needs to meet his «neighbors». Thus, I embarked on «expedition after expedition» in search of my «home-mates», and at the same time, without realizing it, in search of «home». It’s not like anything was hidden, yet I could have easily looked at a T-Rex sitting in the middle of the road and I wouldn’t have noticed it. You know, «the elephant in the room….». My brain was highly trained to ignore this sort of things. Other living things I mean. «He» functioned as a great photo editor, removing from any picture all the information that he alone deemed irrelevant. And apparently there were many irrelevant things to remove. I clearly needed the right «pair of glasses». Going on these «journeys» has proven to be very entertaining, a good training and one of the greatest uncloggers of the mind. It was like a game of spot the hidden objects, but as I said, they weren’t really hidden.

 

I explored «at home», a relatively small area (not «The Home», but just… «home», at least what I once considered «home»). I heard of one study that found an average of more than 100 different species of arthropod – the group of animals that includes insects, spiders, myriapods, crustaceans etc., living in the average American home. ‹100 species is a «very conservative» list […] since that’s a measurement of what are called «morphospecies», which can be distinguished by individuals without extensive training. Plus, the researchers only looked in rooms. There’s no telling what might be hidden in between the walls and under the floors›. «In some cases, more than 200 arthropod species were found in single homes». «Urban ecology has been very neglected, but we are beginning to see that species diversity in our cities is quite high and also very important […]» (6). It is funny how horrified the home owners usually are, despite this being normal and most often actually beneficial. People are profoundly unaware of what is around them, what shares the place they call «home» with them, though it profoundly depends on the culture and on the context. Well, I can happily say that in some of the few homes I’ve looked into, I’ve found quite a bit more. Even just lazily sitting at home I could watch with awe and delight as flocks of Great White Pelicans, Common Cranes, Common Buzzards and other migratory birds flew over my home; or as groups of thousands of Painted Ladies made a stop in my Lime…, or actually… my home’s Lime trees, on their fascinating multigenerational – up to 15,000 km migrations. I looked at as many things that are conventionally considered alive as I could, and not only.

 

I explored a little way away from home, looking at those who have a harder time putting up with me and «my home». The conclusion was that I am a highly difficult creature, as there were many who would rather not share home with me or with my already established «home-mates». I’m kind of kidding. I discovered how close «those others» live from «my home» and how willing they actually are to share «my resources». I also discovered how willing I and my «home-mates» are to share «our resources». It is silly in so many ways, the ownership web. I found things that I only knew from books, documentaries, or never even knew, which was not really that hard, as I knew very little. I never would have imagined (I wander if anyone could have) that I had so many and such amazing «home-mates»/«neighbours». It all seemed quite surreal. Flamingo’s on a lake 60 km from Bucharest or even in the middle of Pitești city. Hedgehogs, foxes, snakes, tortoises, etc. patrolling the city. Deer, roe deer, wild boars, martens, weevils just outside the city. Amazing. Normal, but at that time, for me, amazing.

 

I explored further, wandering more and more away from «home» (temporary «base camp» would probably be a more appropriate word) and continued to expand my views and feelings of «at home». I went to see the home of others (humans and non-humans) which «choose» to live similarly or very differently compared to me. I looked at migratory life forms as they went and came. I went with them, and for a while, I could see them only come (somewhat like seeing multiple sunsets or sunrises at Burj Khalifa). I looked at sedentary life forms going through the seasons. Each in and on its own way. Some, quite a few in my way.

 

Surprisingly soon after starting to «look» more carefully, automation started to take hold. I did not have to think about it, it became sort of a given. For example, the different sounds creatures make now carry meaning. From the simple or complex meanings coded in their intraspecific or interspecific communication, to local weather patterns, the time of the day, the phase of the moon, the approximate date, the change of seasons etc. Everything carries meaning. Smells, sights, sounds, textures. You only have to train your brain not to ignore them. And it’s not really all that energy consuming, or at least I hope it’s not. I haven’t measured it yet (7).

 

And then… I went and explored at the tropics! Wow! What have I done all my life?! Where have I lived?! Why?! Who cares about «home»?! «Home» is everywhere! This last one was a feeling (subjective rational and at the same time rationally subjective) that I was starting to have for a long time now. Wow, again! That’s a different ball game altogether.

 

If I were to say that, let’s say… Doi Inthanon was my / our home, or Doi Suthep, or Taman Negara, or Khao Yai, then the things that would be living with me / us would be straight out of the realm of fantasy. Never in my whole life have I seen as many, as large, as colorful, as strange butterflies as I have seen in one hour spent in a place like that.

 

Even though they are only somewhere between 50 and 150 km from some of the largest and most «interesting» human cities in the world (this is worth developing in a few hundred pages), these places are also some of the most «interesting» (this is again worth developing in a few hundred pages) and complex non-human cities in the world. My brain is begging for access to that immense, apparently chaotic yet thoroughly organized flow of information. And you thought the internet was BIG!? One could easily argue that it’s not.

 

It feels amazing to live in a truly complex human city (futuristic and primordial) and at the same time be a mere 50 km from the truly complex, labyrinthic home of flying squirrels, flying snakes, flying geckos, flying lizards, flying elephants, flying tigers, flying unicorns and many more other «crazy» creatures. It’s impossibly difficult to imagine how awe-inspiring this is (unless you’re totally insensible, which is certainly not hard to do). If I’m underestimating you again, I’m sorry, but you do NOT HAVE ANY IDEA! And nor do I, but I’m working on it, albeit slower than the flowing drop of pitch. Someone once said: «these are places where every rock and every pebble have a jungle growing on them, and it’s a jungle full of flying elephants». And someone else (or not) once said: «Everything was inspired by such a space and place».

 

Imagine living in a city where you have signs in the street saying «beware of cobras» like in multiple cities of Thailand, or «beware of kites» like in New Delhi or Kamakura etc. What do signs in Europe say? «Beware of pigeons»? I would certainly not mind occasionally sharing my home with a local family of cobras, or with an Asian Lancehead looking for Tokay Geckos, looking for face-sized Huntsman Spiders, looking for House Geckos, looking for… the chain goes on and on for a while. I am certain that for most this makes no difference, and for some this might be highly off-putting, but for me… this sounds lovely. Well, one thing is certain. My home should have great accessibility to considerable biodiversity.

 

Fortunately, unfortunately, biodiversity, like everything else, is certainly not uniformly distributed (8). A good funny illustration of this is what Erin said: «Sure, they’re common and people in Bangkok must see them all the time, but it’s a GIANT lizard! Maybe I am a little more awestruck because there is only one lizard species in Ontario (the Five-lined Skink), and you don’t see it in the big cities» (9). The GIANT lizard she was referring to is the 1,5–2 m long Asian Water Monitor that is abundantly roaming freely in the green spaces and canals of Bangkok (a superbly modern city, by the way). The funny and for some sad thing is that Canada only has cca. 60 species of reptiles in its cca. 10,000,000 sq km territory, while Thailand has considerably more than 400 species of reptiles in its only cca. 500,000 sq. km territory (Canada/20, Romania x 2). Romania by the way has a little less than 30 species. If Canada would be the size of Thailand, it would have only three species, and vice versa, if Thailand would be the size of Canada it would have a whopping 8,000 species. Of course, this is only a numbers game and there are many more factors involved, but it’s a colorful illustration. And that is only reptiles!

 

I wander… does biodiversity have any connection to human diversity? What is that? These are awfully stated questions, but it’s a subject worth developing! Touching on how are all of the things that make up my «at home» so far connected, how they should be connected, is not yet my goal. It will be, but not on this occasion. I suspect though that they are intricately connected and that the connection is significantly important!

 

Going back to the Greater Tokyo Area: good population size, decent density (though somewhat low), poor cultural diversity (though immensely valuable culture), poor biodiversity (though amazing connection between human and non-human cultures). On top of all that, though certainly not «flat», this «city» is also not really all that morphologically divers either. Again, someone once said hearing a conversation about Tokyo: «ah… the city where everything is the same». That is obviously an exaggeration, but comparatively, in some ways, in terms of morpho-diversity, this seems to be correct. On the other hand this is getting to be more and more the case for many cities from around the world. Loosing anthropic morpho-diversity is comparably bad to loosing bio-diversity (my opinion). And that is very very, very bad! I connot stress this enough. Simplifying too much again: loosing diversity regardless of what kind is BAD!

 

Unfortunately, there are very few (gravitating towards none) studies that address this subject of morphological diversity (geographical, geological, natural and anthropical) at the scale of the city. Also, despite it being very important, there is almost no taxonomical, classifying work related to this. I know only of a few papers concerning this topic and they are all, for good reason, slow going work in progress. Yet, most of us live in cities and as our numbers will keep increasing (which I do not think is fundamentally a bad thing, on the contrary, I think I’m kind of glad) cities will probably keep on growing – whatever «city» might mean in its many and highly divers forms from around the world, now and in the future. Most of us know very few types of homes, usually our own and that of our at some point «home-mates». We are typically just as ignorant of human «at home» diversity as we are of non-human «at home» diversity, sometimes even more.

 

For reference, currently, on Earth, there are 195 countries. As for cities… well, actually, we don’t really know. It’s not that straight forward. Or it is? But who keeps count? We first need to agree on a definition, which will be hard. Then we actually need data, which unfortunately, is also hard. But, I guess it doesn’t really even matter that much. We can always play a little instead, theoretically.

 

We talked fugitively about biodiversity, but what about urbo-diversity? Why not talk about taxonomy and species richness there? Just thinking… relatively randomly, wandering… relatively aimlessly:
How many cities of over 1,000,000 human inhabitants are there? How many of these have you seen? How many have I seen?
How many cities of over 2,000,000 human inhabitants are there (larger than Bucharest)? How many of these have you seen? How many have I seen?
How many cities of over 5,000,000 human inhabitants are there? How many of these have you seen? We have seen… We will try to see…
How many cities of over 10,000,000 human inhabitants are there? How many of these have you seen? We have seen… We will try to see…
How many cities of over 20,000,000 human inhabitants are there? How many of these have you seen? We have seen… We will try to see…
How many cities of over 30,000,000 human inhabitants are there? How many of these have you seen? We have seen… We will try to see…
How many cities of over 35,000,000 human inhabitants are there? How many of these have you seen? We have seen… We will try to see…
How would you further categorize them? So what? So what, so what?

 

Ok, now I want at least a few answers. Let’s play with the most «optimistic» scenario, that of 10,000,000,000 people on earth. – If you’d want cities to contain at least 10,000 inhabitants => you would get a maximum of 1,000,000 very small cities on Earth. That is a big number, but not really. Or… 2,000,000 village type cities of only 5,000 inhabitants. Still a big number, but not really. 1 year = pi x 107 seconds. 2,000,000 = 2 x 106. So, in only one year you could allocate 15.7 sec to each city on the Globe. That is inconveniently fast. How many cities in total have you seen so far? Going further… – If you would rather have 50,000 inhabitants cities => you would get a maximum of 200,000 cities. And for 100,000 you would get 100,000. This is getting scarier and scarier; – Let’s inflate things a little and say that we would wish for cities of 1,000,000 people, this is beginning to sound reasonable => there would be 10,000 cities. Hm…; – Only 1,000 cities could exist of 10,000,000 people; yikes!… – And just for fun, we could only have 76 cities of 100,000,000 inhabitants; – In other words, at the moment, we could only have roughly 190 Greater Tokyo Areas. This is really a small number. Many of us have already seen a considerably larger number of cities in only the last 10 years of our lives. And I am not one who travels all that much.

 

More precisely, but still roughly (I’ve manipulated the numbers a little to get more easy to remember results): (100 * 100 km, 38,000,000)/Greater Tokyo Area; 7,600,000,000 people/Earth. If all the Earth’s population would live in Greater Tokyo Area sized groups of people, only 200 such areas could be formed before running out of people. Again, 200 is a frightening small number, and the Greater Tokyo Area is «fricking amazing», but not really close to unimaginably big and complex (hard, difficult but not impossible). Furthermore, 200 such areas would only occupy an area of about 1,414 km x 1,414 km. That is just about 2,000, 000 sq km. And that, by the way, is 20% of Canada. And that is the entire world!

 

I find it very educational, to play around with these numbers and get a feel for scale, a «real» one, one that can be approached from as many angles as possible. See what fits? How much of anything would fit? How much more space, place would be needed? And so on, and so on!

 

Usually, when there’s not enough of something for everyone, you get more of that something to satisfy the demand. For me, this is also the case for our 100,000,000 inhabitants cities. There are not enough of them. Oh wait, there’s none… yup! Not enough! I mean why shouldn’t every single one of us have its own 100,000,000 city?

 

But if that would happen we would be 100,000,000 of us/city sharing the city. Wouldn’t it be nice if each one of us of the 100,000,000 who are sharing the city would have a 100,000, 000 city just for ourselves? Something isn’t adding up here. In this case the obvious but funny / interesting thing is that no matter how many pieces of these goods you get there will always be the same exact amount of users per good, because the number of users is part of the goods themselves. It’s funny the way we talk about my book, my apple, my car, my wife, my house, «my home». They are all mine and only mine. Try saying that about your 100,000,000 human inhabitants’ city.

 

I mean, it would sound something like this: «This is my 100,000,000 human inhabitants’ city. It’s mine, not yours».The only way in which I can get to live in a 100,000,000 inhabitants city is by simply being one of them, and together with the rest of 99,999,999, enjoying, profiting from the gathering.

 

Private or public spaces. I do not think that is really where our happiness or our prosperity or our productivity lie. These things depend much more on those things that cannot be fitted inside of any private, personal, individual, or small collective «at home». They can only appertain to the biggest «at homes» of the biggest number of home-mates. All the most amazing things are the least private ones, at least in the sense that private could not exist independently of public. The more private something is, the bigger the «at home» in its context needs to be.

 

I also do like my countries and any other fictitiously and randomly delimitated territories to be divers. 148,940,000 sq. km of land mass on Earth (to smooth the commitment to memory we’ll use 150,000,000 sq. km – the same number as the distance to the Sun in km) => 1) when 10 million will be the total, 0.015000 sq. km/person = 15,000 sq. m (1,5 ha)/person – 122 x 122 m/person. I certainly wouldn’t mind more, I also certainly wouldn’t mind less; 2) 195 countries => 763,794 sq. km/country. Ha! That’s almost exactly 3 x Romania. Given the right geography, geology, climate, positioning on the planet, context, etc. that could be enough to do something in your country; 3) if all countries would be the size of Romania, there would be enough room for approx. 600 countries on this planet.

 

In conclusion, another characteristic of my ideal «at home» would be: having a huge geo-diversity and morpho-diversity at every scale. Bucharest is not that bad of, with regard to this subject, but, unfortunately for it, again, size does matter, as I do not wish for a relative diversity, but a «more absolute» one.

 

So, in a way, a summary of what I went over so far concerning what I want «my at home» to «own» could be:
Huge numbers of human life forms;
Huge human-bio-diversity;
Huge human-cultural-diversity (though, depending on how you look at it, it’s included in the above);
Huge human-generated, non-living morphological diversity;
And, though I do not really view them as separate, maybe it will be easier to follow if I present them separately, take the above mentioned and apply them to non-humans:
Huge numbers of non-human life forms;
Huge non-human-bio-diversity;
Huge non-human-cultural-diversity (though, depending on how you look at it, it’s included in the above);
Huge non-human-generated, non-living morphological diversity;
And finally:
Huge informational and physical accessibility and connectivity;
Huge hope for the best. 🙂 Again, to cite someone: «and I would like to do anything that does that for me».

 

And then there are some more questions:
Would any of these be possible? Which ones and to what extent? What would be the compromises required in order to make this happen? What about the «dream homes» of others? Would they all fit? Whose should we renounce? What will happen to the homeless? What will happen to the homes?

 

In the end, this is, as it was bound to happen so far away from home, where there is so very little time available, a hugely small and jumbled series of nostalgic and «humble» questioning fantasies of home. Exactly as I was fearing, I ran out of time before completing what I would have liked to transmit. Far from it, unfortunately. But I do have to go exploring again. There are only so many chances, there is only so much time. Wondrous places, here we come again. I really don’t know for whom all of this was. I suppose that for those for who do not crave for these pieces of home, this might seem quite meaningless; and for those who search for these pieces, this will seem disappointingly superficial. Well, this was awkward. I guess it came out more chaotic than ordered after all. Not exactly the chaos I had in mind. Better luck next time, I guess. Certainly to be continued. Anyway, after all this rumbling and rolling around and about, I’m getting tired. I think I’m going to go «home» now! Down the rabbit (Brachyura, you know because of the short tail) hole* we go!

 

Notes:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_diversity_index
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Papua_New_Guinea
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_universities_and_university_networks_by_enrollment
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%27s_number, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_numbers, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTeJ64KD5cg
6. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dozens-insects-and-spiders-may-live-every-room-your-house-180957853/, https://www.newscientist.com/article/2073729-your-home-is-a-jungle-inhabited-by-100-different-species/
7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnpsMG0PWRY
8. https://phys.org/news/2017-10-scientists-puzzle-life-earth.html
9. http://lichenandlayovers.com/asian-water-monitor-varanus-salvator/