Since COVID, one of the things I've lost is the ability to go to in-person Trivia Mafia events with friends a few nights a month. Instead, Trivia Mafia sends a daily email with five questions, and it's probably the most consistently positive part of my day. (You can get the emails too... and support TM on Patreon here if you're so moved.)
One question in the past few days was:
What precious stone brought doom to all of its owners from the time it was stolen from an Indian temple in 1642, until it was brought to the Smithsonian in 1958?
The answer (which was given in the next day's email) was the Hope Diamond.
That date, 1958, caught my attention because by coincidence I had just recently seen a tweet by someone who expressed the opinion that our country took a turn toward its current direction after John Kennedy was elected.
I usually pin the decline toward our current state on Ronald Reagan, and I still think there's a good case to be made for that, but if you just look at something like the decrease in taxation rates and therefore funding of infrastructure and public goods, it's true that the change started with JFK, so maybe that was the beginning.
And maybe it's all because of the curse of the Hope Diamond.
Imagine if fixing [gestures wildly] all of this were as simple as sending a piece of carbon back to India.
Wouldn't that be nice?
No comments:
Post a Comment