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Redstone's Mark Alexander on NPLs, Greek recovery and debt to GDP ratio

The First Automatic Robot of Humanity | The Automatic Servant Of Philomenas (3RD C. B.C.)| When the visitor placed an up in the palm of her left hand, she automatically poured windle, initially l, and then she poured water into the cup mixing it when desired

in case of creative writers & trolls I can easily determine my exact BANNED position and legal liability in an international game 👉you are doomed normal 🇬🇷✍️🇦🇲ΚΟΥ ΚΟΥ!

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possibly is the only existing guy with whom I could work it out yeah another published book of mine not so I guess 🇬🇷✍️🇬🇷Ο Ιβαν Σαββιδης ειναι ο μονος Ποντιος με τον οποιο θα μπορουσα να τα βρω! Οι αλλοι βρωμανε!

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We’ve dropped off at already this morning with and their Students who are off to for a field trip... Have a great time everyone! 👌🏽

Make Monday VIP. In Rodos Palace private transfers are provided to and from the airport, the port or the city centre, as well as sightseeing & island tours.

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Auch der Balkan läuft nur bis an’s Schwarze Meer

Etappe: Sofia - Sithonia (408 km), von Bulgarien 🇧🇬 nach Griechenland 🇬🇷

Highlights: begeisternde Neobyzantinische Architektur und das Kühle Nass

…mehr dazu:

Begeisternde neobyzantinische Architektur: Auf meiner Tour durch Sofia (1,2 Mio. Einwohner) entdecke ich die Alexander-Newski-Kathedrale, die Kathedrale des bulgarischen Patriarchen. Ansonsten gibt es eine schöne Fußgängerzone und viele schlechte Straßen.

Das kühle Nass: von Sofia fahre ich gen Süden und erreiche nach zwei Stunden auf einer super neuen Autobahn Griechenland. Nochmals vier Stunden und viele Staus später komme ich an - am Meer.

Erkenntnis: nach Polen 🇵🇱, Slowakei 🇸🇰, Ungarn 🇭🇺, Serbien 🇷🇸 und Bulgarien 🇧🇬 freue ich mich nun in Griechenland 🇬🇷 angekommen zu sein. Mein Gefühl ist anders: westlich aufgeschlossen, Euro-Zone… irgendwie anders. Ein Systemwechsel (ehemals Kommunismus zur Demokratie) vollzieht sich nicht in zwei bis drei Dekaden - vor allem nicht in meinem Kopf…🤔

Überraschung: Sowohl Bulgarien als auch Griechenland sind in der EU. Dennoch gibt es auf beiden Seiten nich Grenzkontrollen. Diese sind zwar lasch, aber finden nich statt. Wahrscheinlich lieb gewonnene Gewohnheit.

Musik 🎵 des Tages:




1. How did Ancient Greeks portray themselves?

Ancient Greek concepts of beauty were quite similar through time and they were based on gender.

In Ancient Greece there was a pretty clear  IDEAL of beauty. What’s an ideal? an ADJECTIVE which can mean:

  • 1. satisfying one’s conception of what is perfect; most suitable.
  • 2, existing only in the imagination; desirable or perfect but not likely to become a reality.
  • 3. existing only in the imagination; desirable or perfect but not likely to become a reality.

FOR WOMEN: was being light skinned, fair hair, not too skinny body. All these traits were associated to aristocracy and luxury (ideal of perfection). Why? Because in Ancient Greece women were expected to spend most of their time working at home while men worked outside home. The public spaces were reserved for men. Only women who were rich or middle classes could afford staying at home, poor women had to go out and work (where they would probably get tanned). Also, being too skinny was associated with poverty. Discrimination against women back then even reached the amounts of food, women were feed badly in comparisson to men. EXAMPLE: if you pay attention to Aphrodite statues you can see belly rolls, rounded face, not big breasts, kinda chubby arms and other traits that today would are totally body shamed. Remember Aphrodite was the goddess of beauty, therefore she represented the highest expectation of what beautiful women were.

FOR MEN: Men were expected to have tanned skin, beige-brown hues like polished bronze. That showed they were working hard and were trained to be great warriors.

Real Greeks examples: Kostas Martakis (Greek actor-singer-model) or Panos Mouzourakis (Greek singer-actor) from not-tanned to tanned. They can look super white/light skinned, or have that bronze hue.

WAS THAT REALITY? Did all people look like this? Not really.

We have different sources about:

  • How some Greek women used makeup to lighten up their skins. We have different interpretations for that: i) a beige-brown skinned woman using make up to look paler, ii) already light skinned women using make up to look literally white like snow (like geishas, we could speculate on that from Minoan frescoes).
  • Sources were men describe women distinguishing if they are pale or not, dark or not, having big hips or not, etc.
  • Not all people get tanned. So obviously there were men who could train and spend all day outside and never get tanned at all. Same for women, some could be outside and skin remains the same. 

Agriculture related work was done mostly by men but as I said above women, specially the poor ones, had to work outside their homes (lselling their weavings, selling flower garlands, etc). Most of Ancient Greek population were farmers so you can have an idea with that.  

Also there were slaves, and slaves could be either Greek people or foreigners. Please note that some slaves were described as “red haired and white” like the Thracians slaves. Also again, don’t think of slaves as “non-Greek people” only because Ancient Greeks slaved their own fellows.

REALITY VS ART: Also, it is important to consider that the ideals of beauty described above were not exclusive for aristocracy. It’s not like only aristrocrats wanted to be blonde and light skinned, while poor people didn’t like that imagery. An example: Homer’s audience was the aristocracy meanwhile Hesiod (a farmer who ranted a lot against social injustice, praised the farmers, etc…) described all gods with the very same beauty ideal as Homer. So the ideal aesthetics were pretty common for rich and poor authors. **There were some differences though between cities! For example: in Sparta women were better fed and could excercise, so they looked different than average Greek women.

2. Were gods and humans portrayals the same?

Most of time when we think of Greek gods we imagine “real humans”, but the descriptions in literature and art give us some hints that, despite the 
anthropomorphism, Gods were superior to humans, even in their appearance.

We are told that Gods were very tall (even taller than a tall human), very shiny (a room could get filled with their light) and that they were stunningly beautiful.

They could disguise themselves and look more similar to humans (look less tall, skip the shinny skin and lights, etc), like Athena does in the Odyssey to help Odysseus. But their “usual” appearance was always considered something very high and beautiful.

3. Does art reflect reality? 

Here at the top you have an example of Chilean advertising picture (”aesthetic ideals”) VS the picture of Michelle Bachelet (Chilean ex President) with a group of Chilean kids. Chile is a country in South America that was discovered by Spain in 1520. It was colonized by Spain and since then it received lots of immigration, native tribes -which weren’t killed- got mixed with the Europeans, etc… We are a multicultural country. Obviously my country’s story is very short (1520-2019) compared to Ancient Greece (several thousand years). The migrations were pretty different. People from all over the world have arrived Chile, which didn’t happen in Ancient Greece. But there were still migrations and exchange of cultures obviously, so at different periods of Ancient Greek history it could be more or less diverse. 

When you see advertisings in Chilean television or magazines people are usually shown as very white skinned, blonde haired and blue eyed when of most of Chilean population does not look like that. If someone just saw the advertising picture would think there is no diversity in my country, but that is not the case.

So maybe there is a chance that when we see Ancient Greek art we are seeing the ideals of beauty and not always a true representation. That’s why we must compare with other sources.

4) How diverse was Ancient Greece? Were Ancient Greeks different from modern Greeks?

ANSWER IN PROGRESS. Remember again that “Ancient Greece” covers a long period of time (nearly 4000 years) and geographically it was a lot bigger than modern Greece. Also let’s remember that Ancient Greeks had a strong sense of the otherness (women, slaves, foreigners were “the other” in society). They could be awfully xenophobic. Xenophobia is a better word than racism, because they didn’t focus on “race” but the “otherness” as I said. Ancient Greeks had a very “me VS the others” way of viewing the world (which is a huge topic that I can’t summarize that well here).

But so far I can tell that modern Greeks are not different from the Ancient ones. There are DNA studies about it and Greece population has not changed that much until 2019. (My Greek friend made a post about that) Obviously today there are no differences between men and women, people feed well, etc and a lot of improvements… But it’s not like you had X population in Ancient Greece and they disappeared and Modern Greece is 100% people from other countries. Modern Greeks descend from the Ancients (they have suffered wars from other countries, had mixed with other countries, etc.. but still they are linked to their ancestors).

Also… There is a misconception though because a lot of people (USA mostly) say “Greeks/Mediterraneans are dark/ olive skinned”. I really have no idea where that comes from… Most of Greeks, like Italians or Spanish people, have a beige hue skin, not “dark olive”. Some -not all- get tanned like the pics above, others don’t. THIS DOESN’T MEAN white or light skinned is better PLEASE. But a lot of people act like “eww Greeks are not white, Greeks can’t be light skinned and blonde!!” but they are. I encourage you to watch Greek actors, singers, politicians and Greek people to realize how they look like. I am not saying either that there are no brown, black or dark skinned Greeks. There are, but overall population looks like the average mediterranean.

So if you want references for how Ancient Greeks looked like, watch the modern Greeks. And listen to them when they ask for representation. And here a BONUS:

Above: Modern Greeks playing Ancient Greek plays.

Κράτα μου το χέρι και πήγαινε με μια βόλτα όπου θες εσύ, μου αρκεί να είσαι ‘κεί.