timelets

“...your Russki is insecure, wants to be respected, to be feared like the old Soviet Union. They need recognition, and they hate their second-tier status in the superpower stakes. That’s why Putin’s putting together USSR 2.0, and no one is going to stand in his way.

...as the chain-wrapped corpse of the Soviet was exhumed, hauled dripping out of the swamp, and its heart was started again, and the old prisons were filled anew..."

Red Sparrow, by Jason Matthews.

The president later Tuesday signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to refer to the technology as “super intelligence,” an effort to counter the increasingly negative public perceptions of AI.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-29/trump-set-to-host-nvidia-anthropic-ceos-to-discuss-ai-risks

Idleness is the enemy of the soul; and therefore the brethren ought to be employed in manual labor at certain times, at others, in devout reading.

Above all, let one or two of the seniors be appointed to go about the monastery during the time that the brethren devote to reading and take notice, lest perhaps a slothful brother be found who giveth himself up to idleness or vain talk, and doth not attend to his reading, and is unprofitable, not only to himself, but disturbeth also others. If such a one be found (which God forbid), let him be punished once and again. If he doth not amend, let him come under the correction of the Rule in such a way that others may fear. And let not brother join brother at undue times.

The Holy Rule of St. Benedict, aprox. 530 AD.
https://e-benedictine.com/rule/#ch48

Eupeithes stood up and addressed them, since unforgettable
sorrow was stored away in his heart for the sake of Antinoös,
his son, who was the first to be killed by noble Odysseus.


‘Friends, this man's will worked great evil upon the Achaians.

First he took many excellent men away in the vessels

with him, and lost the hollow ships, and lost all the people,

and then returning killed the best men of the Kephallenians.

...
Then Medon, full of prudent thoughts, spoke forth and addressed them:
‘Hear me now, you men of Ithaka; for Odysseus
devised what he did, not without the consent of immortal
gods. I myself saw an immortal god who was standing
beside Odysseus. In every way it resembled Mentor.
An immortal god was seen, at one time in front of Odysseus
urging him on, and then next time he would rout the suitors,
and dash about the hall, while they fell one after another.’


-- Richmond Lattimore (translator). The Odyssey of Homer, Book XXIV.

“When he was finally assassinated in 96 CE, the Roman aristocracy exhaled in relief. Many among them, foremost the courageous, had fallen victim to “that most savage beast,” as a contemporaneous writer described him. Especially during the last years of his regime, he had stifled life in the capital of the far-flung Roman Empire. Survival was bought with submissiveness and silence, enforced by informers who abolished any free exchange of thought and speech. After fifteen years of fear—a time span during which “young men had reached old age, old men almost the end of their days”—even survivors were mere shadows of their former selves, as if “they had survived themselves.”

--- Christopher B. Krebs. “A Most Dangerous Book.”