It looks like it’s supposed to be more greek, since the romans weren’t known for fighting naked, whereas we think ‘greek’ and we think shirtless. Also romans weren’t involved in egypt in any serious way till much later. Whereas the ‘sea peoples’ seem to come from roughly the sphere of mycenean influence, even if they don’t all seem ‘greek’.

Not in the late bronze age.

The Mycenian Greeks probably wrestled control of Crete from the Minoans ~300 before the late bronze age collapse of greek and hittite power structures.

Cultural elements and settlements of these “Eteocretans” remained, but I don’t think the Minoans were in any place to halt anything at that point. During the period we call collapse they seem to have been doing a lot of fleeing into the mountains.

Yeah wow that’s incredible. That dog looks very alone and scared, I could see how people say drowning. Cresting a hill was my first thought.

I was just having a discussion with my family about recent union wins in the US, and when something good is a sign of how bad things must be. I suggested that there must be a german word for it, and my sister suggested maybe a chinese saying.

If you like the category of ‘things that sound like german has a word for it’, look into the 4-character chinese sayings called chengyu. One of my favourites is ‘Melon Patch, Under Plum’, meaning something that is completely innocent but should be avoided because it looks really sketchy. Don’t tie your shoes in a melon patch or fix your hat under a plum tree.

In case anyone missed the reference, this is based on a work found painted on the walls of Fransisco Goya’s dining room after he died. You’ll often hear it called “Saturn Devouring His Son”, but the work was never titled or displayed publicly. There’s really no good reason to believe that the devourer is Chronos/Saturn, that the devouree is even a child, or that either body is male.

I personally like to think of it as Untitled (Dining Room).

I read an article years ago, maybe like a decade ago, of some game industry person saying it was a cycle:

Incredible new graphics come out and people will buy the shiny regardless of anything else, then slowly they have to start making actually good games with those graphics to sell, then incredible new graphics come out and you don’t need to bother with story for a while.

There was a greek-australian comedian who was standing in front of the parthenon and said something like, “You can tell this house is greek cause of all the pillars”.

Front row center is a stone cold fox. Just to the left of them - that grin? That’s game. And the person just behind and between them has such a kind face, I bet they’d be a generous lover.

Part of the problem is hyperactive agency detection - the same biological bug/feature that fuels belief in the divine.

If a twig snaps, it could be nothing or someone. If it’s nothing and we react as if it was someone, no biggie. If it was someone and we react as if it was nothing, potential biggie. So our brains are bias towards assuming agency where there is none, to keep us alive.

In my family we always end this kind of recitation of woe with “and I wanted to see a snake”.

We saw a kid have a meltdown at an animal refuge when the meet-a-surprise-reptile was a blue tongue lizard. He wailed that he was tired, hungry, hot and - most of all - he wanted to see a snake.

Hey Ester, since miles has your bag, are you now Bag Hitch Ester?

Jealous! My sister lived in that area and we went squirrel walking a few times on visits but I was never so lucky as to have one crawl over me.

That walking up to you and standing up behavior - I’ve started to see that at a cemetery here in Portland that we walk around, but so far all the squirrels have waited a short distance away for food to be thrown to them.

Squirrels are just the best. If anyone goes to visit Taiwan - which I certainly recommend as strongly as possible - there’s a park in the capital Taipei called 2/28 Memorial Peace Park (二二八和平紀念公園).

There are these gorgeous squirrels with red bellies that will eat nuts right out of your hand. They’ll come up to you, take a nut and then run off about midway up a tree. Using their back legs to hold onto the bark, they dangle head-down against the trunk, eating with their front paws. Then you look around and all the trees have these vertical furry tree-slug looking squirrels dangling against them. Just cuting it up cutefully.

Red-bellied plumpers is what my wife and I called them. They’re just the best.

I personally believe that preserving a false and misleading picture of reality designed to trumpet a deranged cult that is working to make the world objectively worse for everyone including themselves is not acceptable.

I would say, “Look mum I love you more than anything in the world but preserving some of these movies crosses an ethical line for me.”

Of course I grew up in a house of atheist jewish academics, so making and justifying personal ethical stances that contravene wider group stances is expected behavior in my family. And we take document preservation fairly seriously.

I agree with you pretty much everything you said, I just think that drawing a strong distinction between any one species and every other one mischaracterizes the situation. Evil is a human construct that applies as poorly to human behaviour as to the behaviour of every other animal, for the same reasons.

If you’ll excuse me simplifying your point, “They’re animals of course they do that, evil doesn’t come into it” is not quite as accurate as “We’re all animals, evil doesn’t come into it”, to my mind at least. Because OP didn’t just misunderstand an aspect of non-human animals, they misunderstood an aspect of how life works.

They can do those things because they’ve been beneficial

That describes human behavior just as well.

We’re animals. Like all social animals we have behavioral norms and individuals who violate them in circumstances that benefit them.

Many animals display empathy, both in their behavior and neurology. Many animals understand, remember and display reciprocity. Many animals mourn. Many animals show strong evidence of forming assessments of individuals from other species.

Our actions are determined by the sum total of our genetics, experience and social expectations, same as any other social animal.

Lindsey Graham and Matt Gaetz types

Openly closetted gay and child sex trafficker types?

Imagine going through the soul crushing hell of being a committed and earnest election worker in a failing 21st century democracy and then the clouds part and in one shining moment you can tell boris you have no idea who he is, but he’ll need ID.

Like seriously consider it. Do you say “on your bike son”? Can you resist flipping him off? The joy he gave that one person might be the single act of good in johnson’s entire life.