In July 1717, a commission established by Orléans to adjudicate the issue had emphatically denied the successoral claims of the two brothers, and the Regent declared himself in a state of ‘happy powerlessness to alienate the crown's domain’.

(The Plastisphere is one of the many industrial-natural ecosystems that characterize the Anthropocene.) Cleaning ocean plastics, even if it were technologically possible on a scale that would make a difference, would disrupt and destroy the life we would be trying to save in the first place.

The census remained incomplete, due in some cases to lack of private transportation or the nonaccompaniment of a military government representative.

a victim of his own pride; a victim of her own incompetence