Recommended readings:
How to Think Like a Roman Emperor
If you have anger issues, this one is a great tool (h/t mindyourbusiness)
This weekâs book:
Senecaâs Letters from a Stoic
Disclaimer: Iâm not your Supervisor. These are my opinions after reading through these books a few times.
Picking up where I left off with Senecaâs letters to his friend and student, Lucilius Junior, an official in Sicily.
Following is a paragraph-by-paragraph discussion of the letter. Seneca’s text appears in bold, my replies are in normal text.
ON MASTER AND SLAVE
Iâm glad to hear, from these people whoâve been visiting you, that you live on friendly terms with your slaves. It is just what one expects of an enlightened, cultivated person like yourself. âTheyâre slaves,â people say. No. Theyâre human beings. âTheyâre slaves.â But they share the same roof as ourselves. âTheyâre slaves.â No, theyâre friends, humble friends. âTheyâre slaves.â Strictly speaking theyâre our fellow-slaves, if you once reflect that fortune has as much power over us as over them.
Slave holding was ubiquitous in the Roman Empire at the time Seneca was alive (4 BC â AD 65). I am sure there were many levels of hell in the life a slave could live. Even though there are no slaves in present day America, it is a good reminder that we are all humans regardless of our present circumstances. It is also true that all people are slaves to forces outside of our control and could very easily have our fortunes reversed, no matter how careful we are.
This is why I laugh at those people who think it degrading for a man to eat with his slave. Why do they think it degrading? Only because the most arrogant of conventions has decreed that the master of the house be surrounded at his dinner by a crowd of slaves, who have to stand around while he eats more than he can hold, loading an already distended belly in his monstrous greed until it proves incapable any longer of performing the function of a belly, at which point he expends more effort in vomiting everything up than he did in forcing it down. And all this time the poor slaves are forbidden to move their lips to speak, let alone to eat. The slightest murmur is checked with a stick; not even accidental sounds like a cough, or a sneeze, or a hiccup are let off a beating. All night long they go on standing about, dumb and hungry, paying grievously for any interruption.
Some Romans would do this to their slaves as a way to show off their power. I can see how people could do this to others, there are worse things they did and that continue to be done today. It seems as though enjoying the meal is a secondary consideration to wielding power over the slaves.
The result is that slaves who cannot talk before his face talk about him behind his back. The slaves of former days, however, whose mouths were not sealed up like this, who were able to make conversation not only in the presence of their master but actually with him, were ready to bare their necks to the executioner for him, to divert on to themselves
any danger that threatened him; they talked at dinner but under torture they kept their mouths shut. It is just this highhanded treatment which is responsible for the frequently heard saying, âYouâve as many enemies as youâve slaves.â They are not our enemies when we acquire them; we make them so.
There are many accounts of slaves in Rome assisting their master in suicide after a defeat to prevent capture and then killing themselves. There are also accounts of slaves fighting to save their master and even jumping in front of attackers to take the killing blow instead. There are also stories of the slave killing the master to gain revenge or plotting against them. I can imagine mistreating a slave could make an enemy for life. I do not understand the actions of the slaves to protect their masters, but with slavery being such a fact of life, maybe they accepted their lot and learned to love a good master, especially compared to a bad one.
For the moment I pass over other instances of our harsh and inhuman behavior, the way we abuse them as if they were beasts of burden instead of human beings, the way for example, from the time we take our places on the dinner couches, one of them mops up the spittle and another stationed at the foot of the couch collects up the âleavingsâ of the drunken diners. Another carves the costly game birds, slicing off choice pieces from the breast and rump with the unerring strokes of a trained hand â unhappy man, to exist for the one and only purpose of carving a fat bird in the proper style â although the person who learns the technique from sheer necessity is not quite so much to be pitied as the person who gives demonstrations of it for pleasureâs sake.
The reason slavery was such a constant was the fact that there were no machines so everything had to be moved by hand. The slaves were also used in many other ways at dinner parties, it must have been degrading to wipe the mouth of your master as he ate.
Another, the one who serves the wine, is got up like a girl and engaged in a struggle with his years; he cannot get away from his boyhood, but is dragged back to it all the time; although he already has the figure of a soldier, he is kept free of hair by having it rubbed away or pulled out by the roots. His sleepless night is divided between his masterâs drunkenness and sexual pleasures, boy at the table, man in the bedroom. Another, who has the privilege of rating each guestâs character, has to go on standing where he is, poor fellow, and watch to see whose powers of flattery and absence of restraint in appetite or speech are to secure them an invitation for the following day. Add to these the caterers with their highly developed knowledge of their masterâs palate, the men who know the flavours that will sharpen his appetite, know what will appeal to his eyes, what novelties can tempt his stomach when it is becoming queasy, what dishes he will push aside with the eventual coming of sheer satiety, what he will have a craving for on that particular day.
I keep coming back to what a horrible existence these slaves must have had. I remember reading that being a beautiful slave was not a good thing and the same would apply to men in a time period where rape was normal and the master had the power of life and death over you. Imagine growing to adulthood and the only skill you had were knowing what type of people your master liked to invite for feasts and what his favorite foods were.
These are the people with whom a master cannot tolerate the thought of taking his dinner, assuming that to sit down at the same table with one of his slaves would seriously impair his dignity. âThe very idea!â he says. Yet have a look at the number of masters he has from the ranks of these very slaves.
Although some of the Romans looked down on their slaves, there were many cases of a slave being successful enough to buy his own freedom.
Take Callistusâ one-time master. I saw him once actually standing waiting at Callistusâ door and refused admission while others were going inside, the very master who had attached a price-ticket to the man and put him up for sale along with other rejects from his household staff. Thereâs a slave who has paid his master back â one who was pushed into the first lot, too, the batch on which the auctioneer is merely trying out his voice! Now it was the slaveâs turn to strike his master off his list, to decide that heâs not the sort of person he wants in his house. Callistusâ master sold him, yes, and look how much it cost him!
That’s a good turn around to go from an unwanted slave to a freeman that refuses to let your former master into your feast. Just because someone is in a bad circumstance, that doesn’t mean they are not worthwhile people. If Seneca can see this in slaves in his time, I should be able to see it today.
How about reflecting that the person you call your slave traces his origin back to the same stock as yourself, has the same good sky above him, breathes as you do, lives as you do, dies as you do? It is as easy for you to see in him a free-born man as for him to see a slave in you. Remember the Varus disaster: many a man of the most distinguished ancestry, who was doing his military service as the first step on the road to a seat in the Senate, was brought low by fortune, condemned by her to look after a steading, for example, or a flock of sheep. Now think contemptuously of these peopleâs lot in life, in whose very place, for all your contempt, you could suddenly find yourself.
The Varus disaster was an ambush of Roman Legions by a group of Germanic tribes. Many Officers that were important people in Rome were either killed or taken as slaves. Never forget that you are not guaranteed any level of prosperity and realize it could all disappear tomorrow. Although it is easy to dismiss less fortunate people, it is also easy to join them.
I donât want to involve myself in an endless topic of debate by discussing the treatment of slaves, towards whom we Romans are exceptionally arrogant, harsh and insulting. But the essence of the advice Iâd like to give is this: treat your inferiors in the way in which you would like to be treated by your own superiors. And whenever it strikes you how much power you have over your slave, let it also strike you that your own master has just as much power over you. âI havenât got a master,â you say. Youâre young yet; thereâs always the chance that youâll have one. Have you forgotten the age at which Hecuba became a slave, or Croesus, or the mother of Darius, or Plato, or Diogenes? Be kind and courteous in your dealings with a slave; bring him into your discussions and conversations and your company generally. And if at this point all those people who have been spoilt by luxury raise an outcry protesting, as they will, âThere couldnât be anything more degrading, anything more disgracefulâ, let me just say that these are the very persons I will catch on occasion kissing the hand of someone elseâs slave.
Although I don’t have slaves, I have always tried to be polite to people that serve me. Whether this is my waitress, cashier, or anyone else that I deal with, I have never seen the point in being condescending to them. Just because I am currently owned by no man, that could change. Plato was sold into slavery at around 40 years old, there is no way to know what the future holds for me. People would kiss the hand of important people’s slaves when they were delivering messages on behalf of their master. This was even done by those who were too far above their own slaves to treat them humanely.
Donât you notice, too, how our ancestors took away all odium from the masterâs position and all that seemed insulting or degrading in the lot of the slave by calling the master âfather of the householdâ and speaking of the slaves as âmembers of the householdâ (something which survives to this day in the mime)? They instituted, too, a holiday on which master and slave were to eat together, not as the only day this could happen, of course, but as one on which it was always to happen. And in the household they allowed the slaves to hold official positions and to exercise some jurisdiction in it; in fact they regarded the household as a miniature republic.
In the Republic before the reign of Emperors, it seems that treatment of slaves was better than in Seneca’s time.
âDo you mean to say,â comes the retort, âthat Iâm to have each and everyone of my slaves sitting at the table with me?â Not at all, any more than youâre to invite to it everybody who isnât a slave. Youâre quite mistaken, though, if you imagine that Iâd bar from the table certain slaves on the grounds of the relatively menial or dirty nature of their work â that
muleteer, for example, or that cowhand. I propose to value them according to their character, not their jobs. Each man has a character of his own choosing; it is chance or fate that decides his choice of job. Have some of them dine with you because they deserve it, others in order to make them so deserving. For if thereâs anything typical of the slave about them as a result of the low company theyâre used to living in, it will be rubbed off through association with men of better breeding.
No matter what a person does for a living they have a choice in their actions towards others. I used to have many more friends than I do now and although we were all lowly carpenters, there were some truly good guys in the group. Of course there was also one guy that would disappear for three days and then come back to work after he snorted all his money. Once I joined the Marines as a married man, I always tried to be a good role model for other married Marines and show them that you could have fun on deployment without being a dirtbag.
You neednât, my dear Lucilius, look for friends only in the City or the Senate; if you keep your eyes open, youâll find them in your own home. Good material often lies idle for want of someone to make use of it; just give it a trial. A man who examines the saddle and bridle and not the animal itself when he is out to buy a horse is a fool; similarly, only an absolute fool values a man according to his clothes, or according to his social position, which after all is only something that we wear like clothing.
A good person is a good person, regardless of their standing in life. I do not hang out with other people anymore, but I try to ensure anyone I deal with is treated fairly and courteously. It is too easy to make snap judgements on a solely superficial level.
âHeâs a slave.â But he may have the spirit of a free man. âHeâs a slave.â But is that really to count against him? Show me a man who isnât a slave; one is a slave to sex, another to money, another to ambition; all are slaves to hope or fear. I could show you a man who has been a Consul who is a slave to his âlittle old womanâ, a millionaire who is the slave of a little girl in domestic service. I could show you some highly aristocratic young men who are utter slaves to stage artistes. And thereâs no state of slavery more disgraceful than one which is self-imposed. So you neednât allow yourself to be deterred by the snobbish people Iâve been talking about from showing good humour towards your slaves instead of adopting an attitude of arrogant superiority towards them. Have them respect you rather than fear you.
Everyone is a slave on some level. I am a slave to my job and the government. I try not to have any exterior vices that control me and have been successful at avoiding that particular slavery. I generally treat others the way I would like to be treated if our roles were reversed. This goes from waiters to when I was a section chief in the Marines and even now when I do my inspections for work.
Here, just because Iâve said they âshould respect a master rather than fear himâ, someone will tell us that Iâm now inviting slaves to proclaim their freedom and bringing about their employersâ overthrow. âAre slaves to pay their ârespectsâ like dependent followers or early morning callers? Thatâs what he means, I suppose.â Anyone saying this forgets that what
is enough for a god, in the shape of worship, cannot be too little for a master. To be really respected is to be loved; and love and fear will not mix. Thatâs why I think youâre absolutely right in not wishing to be feared by your slaves, and in confining your lashings to verbal ones; as instruments of correction, beatings are for animals only. Besides, what annoys us does not necessarily do us any harm; but we masters are apt to be robbed of our senses by mere passing fancies, to the point where our anger is called out by anything which fails to answer to our will. We assume the mental attitudes of tyrants. For they too forget their own strength and the helplessness of others and grow white-hot with fury as if they had received an injury, when all the time they are quite immune from any such danger through the sheer exaltedness of their position. Nor indeed are they unaware of this; but it does not stop them seizing an opportunity of finding fault with an inferior and maltreating him for it; they receive an injury by way of excuse to do one themselves.
I need to be cognizant of my moods, although he is talking about taking passing anger out on slaves, it is easy to take my anger out on myself when something sets me off. I know there have been times when I was hungry and waiting for my order to show up that I was short with the waitstaff. I am 100 times better than I used to be, but the urge is still there sometimes and if I am aware of it, it is easier to control.
But I wonât keep you any longer; you donât need exhortation. It is a mark of a good way of life that, among other things, it satisfies and abides; bad behaviour, constantly changing, not for the better, simply into different forms, has none of this stability.
â ⢠â
Music is again from Eluveitie.
I am probably the only one on this site that listens to them, but their show Saturday was phenomenal.
I was in the second row on the floor with no spacer between us and the band. I have been listening to them non-stop all week. Most of their stuff is heavy, but they also have 2 acoustic albums.
All of these are written in the extinct Gaulish language.
Acoustic, but still a good headbanger.
This is a prayer to Epona, their goddess of horses and horsemen asking for strength in battle.
I always wonder about the woman that wrote the curse. There are 8 people listed and either she lives in a village where everyone is horrible, or she is the asshole.
This talks about how everyone is starving so you need to eat your anger and swallow your hunger
I will stick with my Firsticism.
What is going on with these Tennessee legislators?
I have not been motivated enough to read up on it, but at a superficial level it seems ridiculous. Anyone have a good synopsis or reference?
As I understand it, there were rules about legislators demonstrating on floor of the state house, which is what they did. (Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.) Still seems extreme, although a censure would certainly be in order. Ousting the two blacks but not the white legislator was NOT a good look, however.
Side A will tell you they were just standing up for their constituents and raising their voices on the floor. Side B will tell you they broke standing rules for house proceedings.
From an outside view…at least one thought rules don’t apply and he should hold the floor in a rude manner with a bullhorn and demand action. The other two I am not sure of as they seem to be supporting actors in all this.
So Rule of Law but now once again it doesn’t mean this….we mean only when we want to. Even Obama stepped on that one and threw in “ok if for the children”
From what I can gather, they disrupted a session with bullhorns from the floor and were disrespectful towards the sergeant at arms who presumably told them to knock that shit off. These both violate the rules of the legislature, so the rest are procedding to have them thrown out.
This is pieced together from multiple sources which don’t individually do that great a job at explaining events.
A few people in favor of the state wielding power bitched and moaned when the state wielded power over them. Good riddance to trash.
This. Fuck them.
I was still posting on the links thread I will OT repost this here cause stuff lie this tests ones inclination towards stoicism.
Neil deGrasse Tyson on Why Certain Medical Experts Were Silenced During the COVID Pandemic
âIâm not interested in medical pedigree. Iâm interested in medical consensus and scientific consensusâŚThe individual scientist does not matter.â
https://twitter.com/TheChiefNerd/status/1644107524797345793
what a piece of shit.
Idiot who claims to be a scientist thinks science is done by consensus.
Also fails to understand that communication and debate are part of the foundation of the scientific process.
Dude has spent far too much time getting his ego stroked for being able to explain simple space science concepts to lay people.
That Mark Twain quote about it being better to remain silent comes to mind.
IT’S BECAUSE HE’S BLACK.
HE’S FAMOUS BECAUSE HE’S BLACK.
Yeah, he’s not even wrong. He doesn’t even understand where the tension is.
I had to spot listening to him on Rogan after a similar tirade. He began talking about an area he knows well (astrophysics) and outlines how the process of experimentation and hypothesis tesing works, later he starts talking about credentialism and consensus as soon as the discussion went to COVID (an area he is ignorant about).
I think when Bill Nye latched onto him (or might have been other way around) is when I realized he is just not that smart.
Dude is proud of his Gell-Mann amnesia.
… it must have been degrading to wipe the mouth of your master as he ate.
Or to wipe his ass later…
I’m sure there were worse things than that going on.
Maybe the slave had an adult diaper fetish.
that you live on friendly terms with your slaves – friends with benefits đ ?
The reason slavery was such a constant was the fact that there were no machines so everything had to be moved by hand – then again this varied among societies with no machines
A good person is a good person, regardless of their standing in life – unless their taste in coffee/wine/beer is the wrong one
Everyone is a slave on some level. I am a slave to my job and the government. – I mean not really
Unless all the taxes you are paying are purely voluntary, you are a slave to your government, as that government is forcing you to labor on its behalf.
What’s a little rape between friends?
I don’t drink coffee or wine, for beer I like Irish reds and porters with some non-grapefruit IPA’s thrown in, so I’m sure that’s all wrong.
On a certain level, absolutely.
They take a large chunk of my income without my consent on the condition of violence.
I donât drink coffee or wine, for beer I like Irish reds and porters with some non-grapefruit IPAâs thrown in, so Iâm sure thatâs all wrong.
It’s so wrong it’s not even wrong. It’s like saying 2+2 = banana. :-p
(Says the guy who drinks coffee and wine and doesn’t like carbonated beverages.)
Their now, its just you’re opinion.
Can Elon Musk buy Star Wars?
Why would he? Disney has completely destroyed its value.
I don’t know, he somehow made Twitter entertaining.
BUY LOW.
Aproppos
Kathleen Kennedy has ruined Star Wars, for sure, but let’s be honest – Star Wars wasn’t all that incredible a story to begin with. The Star Wars universe was good for about 2.5 movies. After that, shit was gonna fall off no matter who was at the helm…
The setting is a better fit for a video game than a film.
Except there were some decent stories done in the universe through video games (and from what people have said, the novels). I think it was a terrible idea to stay in the same what… 50 years of story for all of the movies.
Maybe if the first movie in all three trilogies wasn’t the same exact movie in all three cases?
Only done worse each time.
Andor says you’re wrong.
It should have been a rich world for story telling.
I was a huge fan of the original 3, one of my earliest memories is seeing A New Hope in the drive in as a 7 year old. I thought the storm troopers were robots and was confused when Luke put the uniform on.
After taking my kids to see The Force Awakens we left there confused and not impressed.
I haven’t seen any Star Wars since and I don’t think that will change.
Idiot who claims to be a scientist thinks science is done by consensus.
“I’d rather be wrong than not sit at the cool kids’ table.”
4 out of 5 astrophysicists suck government cock.
That few?
This is a particularly good one. The themes seem to be empathy, and the golden rule, which seem to have gone out the window for too many people lately.
To expand a little, we have a political class that sees the rest of us as slaves, and they’re all behaving like the shitty masters he’s talking about.
^This They really think they are the masters and the nobility and we are the slaves and serfs. And they don’t even try to hide it.
I almost skipped it because slavery gives me the heebee geebees, but I was glad I didn’t once I got started.
Slavery in Rome was an interesting dynamic that I have not read much about. It seems to be closer to the servant class and serfdom in Europe, but with less agency. Also you could be come a slave by a variety of circumstances, not just by being born into it.
Seneca seemed to recognize and accept that slavery exists and will always exist in some respects. So treating your slave as a human and not an object is critical to society as well as yourself.
Without machinery and automation the world only had muscle and bone that they could call on to build civilization. The loss of technology would likely revert man back to this existence faster than most would like to acknowledge.
Hell, it wouldn’t even necessitate the loss of technology.
Being able to throw cheap labor at something is often an easy substitute for capital investment. You could spend millions on mining equipment to develop the open pit deposit, or if you’re the Congo, just throw more bodies at the ground, the Cobalt comes out either way.
Agreed,
The example you provided is how things work when automation is less cost effective, when you have essentially free labor. Mines, mills, and diamond mines in poor developing countries have so much cheap labor that they can use what the west would call “pseudo” slave labor. The reason this works is the alternative to being a cobalt miner is farming in just as harsh conditions for less pay, stealing, begging, or starving. There are few opportunities other than your body when you are uneducated, from a country without the rule of law, or private property ownership. There are few opportunities other than labor in most developed countries if you have no education and are on the low end of the IQ curve.
The loss of fuel would do it. Farming, mining, commercial fishing rely on cheap energy – take away the energy and it’s just backbreaking labor.
đđđ
Oil is the most important market in the world, and we have malicious morons trying to destroy it.
Slavery in Rome was an interesting dynamic that I have not read much about. It seems to be closer to the servant class and serfdom in Europe, but with less agency. Also you could be come a slave by a variety of circumstances, not just by being born into it.
It doesn’t really compare because Roman slave roles varied widely, anywhere from laboring in the mines under a de facto death sentence, to skilled office workers and bureaucrats who were paid and also had side hustles going.
Doesn’t get taught in school because everyone would quickly realize that everyone of European descent is descended from slaves and slave-owners. So they might also trying to place guilt on people for slavery based on race is just manipulation of the ignorant.
10-30% of medieval Europeans were slaves, but you’d never know it from our history classes, or the vast majority of historical movies and TV shows.
I think the commonality of it gave it a different flavor than what we think of today.
we have a political class that sees the rest of us as slaves, and theyâre all behaving like the shitty masters heâs talking about.
They spend a tremendous amount of money and effort to keep us at bay.
Using our money to boot! Would be less evil if they at least raided other country’s treasuries to do it.
Certainly explains the uniparty’s attitude towards immigration.
And thereâs no state of slavery more disgraceful than one which is self-imposed.
This cuts uncomfortably close.
It is a mark of a good way of life that, among other things, it satisfies and abides; bad behaviour, constantly changing, not for the better, simply into different forms, has none of this stability.
Simple and true.
Thanks, Ron. Interesting letter today.
And Folk Metal is a genre I’d not ever listened to. Good stuff!
Glad you liked it.(the letter and the music)
Slavery in the Roman Empire is a fascinating topic.
Slaves could have very important and even powerful administrative jobs. And freed slaves could rise to prominence.
On the other hand, slaves picked to row a galley or dig in the mines often had short unpleasant lives.
As the empire was collapsing, taxes rose beyond the ability for the average working man to pay. Since slaves and patricians were exempt from taxes, many people sought out the kind of fair-minded patrician Seneca describes above and sold themselves into slavery in order to stay out of debt and support a family. By the Third Century, this was morphing into serfdom.
There is a huge difference in being the slave of a rich landholder and being a slave sent to the mines.
Seneca acknowledged that he skipped the labor slaves and was talking about the house slaves.
A good person is a good person, regardless of their standing in life.
Yes!
Thanks Ron!
No no no no no…
You need credentials to be a good person. And a consensus!
Or a blue check mark…
Has anybody else noticed how much Burns has been involved in diplomatic efforts? It’s almost as if Blinken is such a fuckup that they’ve de facto replaced him.
https://news.antiwar.com/2023/04/06/cia-director-tells-saudis-the-us-was-blindsided-by-iran-normalization/
Maybe it’s just Burns’ turn to get told to “shove-it”. The Saudis and Chinese both seem to really despise Biden personally, his policies, and the endless rainbow empire preaching, There is no sweet-talking them out of the big decisions they are making.
Yeah, but he’s been doing the backchannel diplomacy with Turkey as well. Seems odd to have the CIA Director performing that function.
Come to think of it, they’ve had Yellen and Milley out there as well doing similar things.
They must not want the embarrassment of canning Blinken and Sullivan.
It’s fuckups all the way down.
You almost have to admire the brazenness.
First comment is right – they left $billions not millions. His lying seems to be getting more obvious.
The lie isn’t about the dollar amount of equipment we left. The lie is that all of the weapons we left in Afghanistan were intentionally left there. I’m sure the Afghan army had lots of stuff we left for them, but our own bases were overrun and our troops were forced to airports. I’m sure there billions of dollars of our own stuff that had to be abandoned in country.
So the argument is that the US didnât leave billions of military equipment behind. We gave title to it to the Afghan government who gave it to the Taliban in the days after we left.
In a very narrow legal sense I suppose itâs true but it doesnât change the facts that the withdrawal was a clusterfuck and was the fault of piss poor planning by the DOD and Biden administration.
WTF is the goddam CIA director doing anywhere near this issue?
I’m enjoying watching a LIV player leading the Masters right now.
Yo, RC Dean – CDNN is blowing out VP9s right now under $600 with night sights and extra mags. Only 2 days left though.
https://www.cdnnsports.com/hk-vp9-9mm-midnight-bronze-night-sights-3-mags.html
Oh, FFS. I do not have the cash right now.
But that is a smokinâ deal.
They are right about the trigger. It is pretty decent right out of the box.
According to the Journal, Burns told Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that the US âhas felt blindsidedâ by Riyadhâs rapprochement with Iran as well as Syria, two nations under crippling US economic sanctions.
That’s funny. Just a day or two ago I was reading about how “Biden administration sources” were saying the new Saudi-Iran alliance and China’s newfound diplomatic stature in the Middle East were no big deal.
LOL. That was a straight-up lie.
The Biden administration as the worst in American history for sheer incompetence and arrogance.
I think I a word or two.
A slave is a valuable asset. Why would you not properly care for and maintain it, and put it to its best and most beneficial use?
What if my slave’s best and most beneficial use is to be impaled on a sharpened tree trunk, so I have something to listen to over dinner?
That sounds like something from an Assyrian stele.
Do you even Brazil bro?
Doesnât get taught in school because everyone would quickly realize that everyone of European descent is descended from slaves and slave-owners. So they might also trying to place guilt on people for slavery based on race is just manipulation of the ignorant.
I am descended from Celts enslaved by the Romans. Where’s my check?
â
Your people were stripping themselves naked and painting themselves blue before the Romans got there. You might owe them money.
Ron, got another book that might be helpful. Stumbled across Stoicism and the Art of Happiness by Donald Robertson. It goes into detail on the key points of Stoic philosophy and offers some worthwhile insights from other philosophies.
Thanks, I’ll check it out.
Ho. Lee. Shit.
You know that “brave whistleblower” who righteously tells righteous lies to righteously #resist against DeSatan? Oh, and who has to keep the sharp objects in her house locked up and has a wannabe school shooter as a son?
It turns out that her kid is NOT the crazy one in that household. She wrote a THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY-TWO PAGE screed about an ex (that she was arrested for cyberstalking btw.)
https://rebekahjonesmanifesto.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/image_orders-2-1.pdf
I made it four paragraphs in before the excess levels of crazypants started to cause spots to form in front of my eyes as a self-defense mechanism.
Jeeminy criminy! đł How did you happen to find that? Just a search for her name?
…not sure exactly. I started off with an article debunking her claims of “Desantis kidnapped my poor autistic son!” and wound up there.
Itâs so bad it made my phone crash but Iâll take your word for it. She does seem like a real piece of work.
Victim Mentality: The Rebekah Jones Story, now on Lifetime Movie Network.
After the advice of Glibs, I ordered some shoes from San Antonio Shoes.
While they’re ugly, they are more comfortable out of the box than the battered pair I took off. We’ll see how I feel after wearing them for a while.
Yes, they are horrendously ugly. Also extremely popular with waiters and nurses. I lost my air to the leather-eating mold that lives here.
And, if you like feel-good stories about employers, when I lived in Bryan, TX (so before 2004) SAS had some big event (don’t remember what). As part of that event, there were bonuses given out:
For employees that had worked there between 6-12 months: $500
For employees that had worked a year or longer, $1000 per year of employment.
There was some little old Mexican lady that had been sewing shoes there over 40 years.
I’ll take your word that they’re ugly, but are they dumb? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uYZPQV2FfJA
https://www.sasshoes.com/mens-guardian-non-slip-lace-up-shoe/211001360140.html
That’s a perfectly cromulent shoe!
Iâm not getting the ugly . Looks perfectly fine to me.