The mighty Aurochs, the prehistoric ancestor of taurine cattle. These were primarily forest-dwelling herbivores, and were historically hunted by heroes and nobility into the medieval period (including Sigurd in the Nibelungenlied). The last one went extinct in Poland in 1627.
People in Britain keep messaging me.
They want me to post something.
They cannot post it themselves.
Not because they are wrong.
Because in their country, being right about the wrong topic can end your job, your reputation, your freedom.
So they ask a Japanese account to say it instead.
That is not a small thing.
That is what a country looks like when free speech is already gone.
I will be honest with you: my childhood was filled with the pessimistic litany of “we can’t”.
Every project, every aspiration was met with a reason why it wasn’t feasible. I am not sure why. My parents were and are plucky and handy. Despite this, the world constantly felt like an unchangeable place.
I want my children to see the opposite. I want them to see their imperfect father try things and sometimes fail and try again. I want them to see the hives collapse and hear why we will keep trying. I want them to see they can throw flower seed with abandon and improve and protect their meadow and village and home.
Ultimate, I want them to know they can.
We're banning raves, because we don't want you having fun where we can't watch you. By the way let me tell you about Woodstock.
We're cracking down on underage drinking. It's bad for you. Yeah of course we hit up the pubs at your age it was great.
We're banning smoking, but just for you - the smoking age will go up one year every year. Oh yes of course, we used to be able to smoke inside everywhere, it was great really.
We're banning flavored vapes. We don't have any evidence they're bad for you, you just like them too much.
We're banning dodgeball during recess, someone might get hurt. Yeah we really enjoyed dodgeball too.
We're banning flirting, because it might make the girls uncomfortable.
We're locking you in your room for the next two years. Yes we know you're in no danger from the virus, but we're worried that you'll get us sick. By the way you have to take this needle if you want to leave your room again. Yes, twice. Well there will be boosters too. No, we aren't worried about side effects, that doesn't effect us at all.
We're closing the frat houses, because we don't want you having fun without our permission. Please join these officially sanctioned university clubs instead.
We're bringing in labor from the third world to work the service jobs, so you can't have a summer job.
You need to go to university to get a good job. By the way we're raising the price of tuition. Oh look we're raising it again. Don't worry there are loans. At interest.
Actually we're giving the good jobs to the foreigners we just imported, to make up for our racist past. We are very good people. No of course we aren't sacrificing anything. You just have to take one for the team.
Also, we're giving the foreigners the houses. We needed to increase real estate prices. For our pensions, you see. Sadly no, you'll probably never be able to afford one yourself. By the way don't forget to pay your taxes. Need to support those pensions somehow! Eh? No, we're giving ourselves tax breaks of course. Seniors discount you know.
Oh by the way, that one thing you still have, now that we've banned joy and kicked every ladder out from under you? That social media stuff you kids like? You guessed it! We're banning that too! Just for you though, we're still going to watch AI videos on Facebook. It's for your safety, you see. We've noticed that you're all getting rather irate, and we think it would be better for your mental health if you shut up for a while. Why don't you just go outside?
Eh? No of course we aren't going to stop Ahmed and his twelve illiterate cousins from raping your sister, that would be culturally insensitive, which would make us feel very bad, and we can't have that.
We see the tower of Jesus Christ illuminated for the first time!
The light show, starting from the base up to the illumination of the cross, culminated with a composition of lights guided by drones that traced the figure of Gaudí and the phrase “first love, then technique”.
Absolutamente increíble. Lo que hoy ha hecho Barcelona se recordará mucho tiempo. La Sagrada Familia, Gaudí y los que durante 140 años han creído en ello, lo merecían.
I truly believe that the optimal way forward is embracing a Dark Age Mindset. This means:
- Embracing Decline as Opportunity. When the foundations of familiar institutions are shaken, it's a signal to us to stop investing so much effort and dependence on those things, and create new alternatives that actually serve us as people and communities.
-Cultivating Resilient Character and Faith. The folks who did this before were not weak, fragile, or wishy-washy. Get hard.
-Preserve and Transmit Knowledge. If institutions that have historically been responsible for this (looking at you, media and schools) are failing, then it's another opportunity for us to step into decentralized roles as stewards of cultural patrimony, preserving literacy, classical texts, and traditions and educating our own children with this heritage to ensure continuity in a potentially post-literate or tech-degraded world.
-Pursuing Self-Sufficiency and Simplicity. "Ora et labora" was the motto that drove that age forward and upward. But they showed us that simplicity needn't be minimalist or ugly; some of the most durable and beautiful things ever made came from these times.
-Reject Dooming and Be Proactive. No despair. Instead, simplify your processes, improve your skills, and meet your challenges vigorously.
-Foster Creativity in Adversity. Necessity is the mother of invention. But the human person is not merely mechanical; we need beauty, music, good stories, living rituals, significance... Cultivate these things especially in the face of monopolized artificiality.
-Focus on Local and Subsidiarist Action. Subsidiarity is handling matters at the smallest, most local level possible; create "schools for service" (as Benedict did) that prioritize family, home culture, nature, and education over distant, failing institutions. The more responsibility you take up over all the spheres of your living experience, the more you step into sovereignty.
@sotontimes This is worse than George Floyd, who overdosed.
British men should torch London and stop up every connection to Heathrow and Gatwick and stop up every tube station. The entire economic life of the UK should be halted until justice is rendered. The government is illegitimate.
This was made over 250 years before Achilles slew Hector. Over 1000 years before the publication of Plato’s Republic. Literally an unthinkable level of craftsmanship for the time.
I ordered one pancake in America. The waitress wrote it down and said, "one short stack."
Short. I am a small and humble man. A short stack sounded perfect for me. I waited with a calm heart.
She returned carrying three pancakes, each the size of my face, stacked into a tower, with a block of butter on top sliding down the sides like slow lava.
This was the short one. I did not dare ask what the tall one looked like. Some knowledge a man is not ready for.
I ate for forty minutes. I was not full. I was afraid. The tower did not shrink. I am fairly sure it was growing back faster than I could eat it.
I had to surrender. I left half. In Japan, leaving food is a deep shame. So I leaned in close and apologized to the pancakes directly, in a low voice, one by one.
The waitress asked if I wanted a box. I did not know food could be taken into custody. I declined. I did not want it following me home.
In America, is the short stack truly the small one?
I need time to prepare my spirit before I ever face the tall one.
One day you will ache for a season you are currently rushing through. You will look back like a man watching a ship vanish beyond the gray edge of the sea and realize the days you treated as obstacles were often the very days you would later give almost anything to enter again. That is the strange cruelty of time: it feels rather ordinary while it’s becoming sacred, like a bell tolling far off in the hills while everyone in the village keeps working as though nothing has changed.
This is why you must stop treating ordinary days like disposable things, as though they were scraps falling from the table of a better life that hasn’t yet arrived. Never despise the smallness of the life in front of you. I say that as a hypocrite that has lived long enough to experience the excruciating pain of doing just that.
@Flyboy3520w@TheJeffPutnam You can buy new two prong outlets or put GFCIs in the spots with no ground off you need the third ground hole to plug something in