Per Ahlberg

Butlerian Jihad

“safeguarding”

A cow could work too. Where's Daedalus when you need him? Pasiphaë has a job for you...

How do you dispose of the bodies?

The leaf begs to differ: it is definitely a leaf, nothing else, and so not worthy of your attention. Nothing to see here. Please move along.

Spring watch in the garden, post 1: there’s still ice on the pond, but snowdrops are starting to flower. And our Cyclamen coum has survived its first winter! Two small, tentative flower buds are showing.

No, of course not. But why should that change my position? Morality is not determined by who has the most money.

OK, I will put an alternative perspective to you, one that doesn't challenge your evaluation of its performance but, shall we say, recontextualises it:

I think this is satanically evil. An abomination so fundamental that words fail me when I try to express my abhorrence.

Are you sure he’s alive? He looks like he’s wandered out of a Sam Raimi movie. “Day of the Living Dead Politicians”. Obviously looking for fresh brains as his own has been consumed by that worm.

A physical, paper, week-to-view pocket calendar. No, I will NOT synch with your electronic calendar: I will write down our appointment in ballpoint pen, thank you very much.

As we say in Swedish: "Det analoga levererar när det digitala fallerar!" ("Analogue delivers when digital falters!")

Your analysis seems uncannily accurate.

He earned my first block of the week.

There’s one final layer even below that one:

“Defeat is no refutation”

If you fight for what’s right and go down fighting, well, your legacy is that you fought for what was right. A good legacy even if nobody remembers.

Updating Krasnov’s instructions.

Well, that was an analysis! And a very cogent one. Puts its finger on the features that make the US so distinctive within the family of ‘western countries’. All have their own problems and structural injustices, but the US is an odd outlier with issues all of its own.

You should not remain unconvinced. Melanie During has worked there personally, she herself collected the fish fossils used in her study. Yes, there are a LOT of problems with some of the claims that have been made about other finds, but the site itself is legit.

It’s weird to think what Rome must have looked like in the early Middle Ages, with so much Imperial stuff ruinous but still standing and in fairly good shape. Not the stripped-down, despoiled brick and concrete cores that remain today.

Do you think they used chopped-up Roman spolia? That’s quite a chunk of porphyry they managed to source from somewhere.

Cosmati brothers?

The next moment the trapdoor opens and drops them all into the crocodile pit below.

True that, but apparently the real Baron actually lived there for really real in real life.

social differences between the US and, say, Germany tell us a great deal about what these societies value. And WE DECIDE WHAT WE VALUE. Social progress is possible. Never listen to someone who tells you there's no alternative to their way of doing things, they're always trying to disempower you.

This matters because it shows that the differences are rooted in nothing but differential application of the human imagination. Social differences between the US and a very poor country like, I dunno, Burkina Faso, are not very informative because the wealth difference overshadows everything; but

I realize, and it wasn't my intention to rub your noses in it. What I think is important, however, is to see how in some respects very similar countries (wealthy, capitalist, high-tech, beneficiaries of the industrial revolution etc. etc.) can arrive at quite differently social constructs.

social safety net for the unemployed, chronically ill and disabled so that nobody starves in the street? That's the deal here in Sweden, and many other countries offer similar packages. Sure, it's not perfect, people still get hurt sometimes, but the system is set up to allow you a livable life.

Seen from the perspective of Europe, and indeed most of the rest of the Free World, the US position is off-the-scale extremist. Ever heard of legal protection against unfair dismissal? 5 weeks or more paid holidays each year? Paid sick leave and parental leave? Tax-funded medical care? A reasonable

I once had the weirdest experience while doing palaeontological fieldwork in Latvia. I was driving along a country road with a Latvian colleague, miles from anywhere, when he suddenly pointed to a turning we were passing and said "That's where Baron Münchhausen used to live!"

And, as a companion piece, this extraordinary animation made in 2015 to accompany Black Sabbath's 'War Pigs'. No further comment necessary I think. We are living this.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQUX...

Did Fico not attend?

You should have turned off the toaster first.