It’s something I have seen becoming the norm nowadays. Articles about art or photographs without a single image. Political articles about borders without a single map. Articles about some thing some scientist has done, maybe with a picture of the scientist, but not of the actual thing. And it’s not a technical limitation of the medium; most articles will have numerous (but irrelevant) images.
I suspect that SEO measurement has told people that it doesn’t matter what images an article has, as long as it has some images, optimally interspersed with the text. Spending any money on getting relevant images thus becomes an unnecessary expense. Readers will still click on the article (because of the click-bait headline), and will still read (or at least scroll through) the article if the text is broken up by images by an optimal amount.
I've always wondered how mosaics were made, like, how could they know where to put which stone? Did they prepare a sketch on papyrus first and then put stones to match it? I'm having a lot of difficulty conceptualizing how it could be done.
It's not known for certain how it was done and we've never found a sketch as far as I know, but some form of master plan is generally suspected for figure mosaics. The customers purchasing the mosaics to be constructed would have selected the images and motifs depicted beforehand and would have lacked the skills of the artists to imagine them in tile. Some of the fancier mosaics also involved custom tiles that had to be manufactured beforehand, and knowing how many are required is valuable.
It seems likely that some simpler mosaics and patterns were done straight from the artist's mind though.
Related — this isn't the only map the Romans made that has survived.
https://formaurbis.stanford.edu/
I wonder who would write this type of article without including the images.
https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/baths-of-trajan
It’s something I have seen becoming the norm nowadays. Articles about art or photographs without a single image. Political articles about borders without a single map. Articles about some thing some scientist has done, maybe with a picture of the scientist, but not of the actual thing. And it’s not a technical limitation of the medium; most articles will have numerous (but irrelevant) images.
I suspect that SEO measurement has told people that it doesn’t matter what images an article has, as long as it has some images, optimally interspersed with the text. Spending any money on getting relevant images thus becomes an unnecessary expense. Readers will still click on the article (because of the click-bait headline), and will still read (or at least scroll through) the article if the text is broken up by images by an optimal amount.
(Repost from three years ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37167492>)
Thanks, I was thinking the same! This also has some good photos
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/09/08/archaeolog...
Smallest picture possible for the largest mosaic. I guess they don't want to pay licensing fees for a useful amount of pictures.
Pictures in this article:
https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/76901
I've always wondered how mosaics were made, like, how could they know where to put which stone? Did they prepare a sketch on papyrus first and then put stones to match it? I'm having a lot of difficulty conceptualizing how it could be done.
It's not known for certain how it was done and we've never found a sketch as far as I know, but some form of master plan is generally suspected for figure mosaics. The customers purchasing the mosaics to be constructed would have selected the images and motifs depicted beforehand and would have lacked the skills of the artists to imagine them in tile. Some of the fancier mosaics also involved custom tiles that had to be manufactured beforehand, and knowing how many are required is valuable.
It seems likely that some simpler mosaics and patterns were done straight from the artist's mind though.
I'm wondering how they collected and organized all those fragments of such precise hues.
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