Dateline 1348: The vast majority of the Holy Roman Empire towns established flagellant parades, because something had to be done.
Situation status: MONITORED
Situation update:
The object was protected, but no one could predict that someone would use Star Trek tier technology to get in.
Fire in Pardubice: They forcibly entered the building using a hammer and an axe
You can say it like that, but of course we don't underestimate the issue of security. And in the media everything revolves around the fence.
Securing these objects is not just about fencing. Of course, fencing is an obstacle, but it is not a roadblock. This means that if I want to overcome the fence, I will always overcome it.
For me, it is important that the buildings located there are secured by electrical security systems, camera systems, and various detectors.
They got over the fence, but at the moment when there was entry, unauthorized entry into those buildings - I would like to emphasize here that the entry was forcibly made using a large hammer and an axe
Not ordinary hammer, but large assault hammer (probably painted black). Obviously, all resistance was futile.
The damage seems to be substantial.
The Pardubice hall that caught fire must be demolished
Hundreds of millions. Zbrojovka estimated the damage after the arson attack
Hundreds of millions in local money. 100M CZK ~ 4,7M USD right now. Do the maffs.
Cost of operation: train tickets, few hammers, axes and cans of gasoline, about half dozen activists.
Good ROI? Certainly better than throwing soup at paintings, chaining yourself to road or releasing rats in fast food restaurant.
Now, the question is: how many activists are there, and can the recruiting pipeline deliver new ones faster than the existing are hunted down? If the answer to the later question is yes, get ready for spicy times.
With so many sci-fi fantasies filling up the horizon, why not kill yourself and wait awhile?
In the best case scenario, if you are revived in legit Star Trek utopian future, you end up as rare specimen of primitive ape man living in comfortable zoo. You are living in your cage, all your needs are provided for, all you have to do is to beat your chest, grumble and grunt while the people of the future whizz around in their flying cars and gawk at you.
Paradisical life compared to what you have now, but you will not be participating in any sci-fi fantasy wonders.
Update: Cancellation of Cesar Chavez proceeds with lightning speed.
It is so urgent that there is no time to call stone workers to grind away his name from marble.
When Gray Lady is speaking, everyone is listening. News about death of traditional press turned out to be way, way premature.
Another news, another habbening, concerning this time both Eastern European and Middle Eastern situations.
A radical anti-Israeli group set fire to a drone manufacturing plant in Pardubice, Czechia.
Looks like continuation and escalation of previous actions, looks as Edinburgh January 2026 action except this time with more competency.
(competency as: use gasoline instead of spray paint and hammers, and do not wait to be arrested, GTFO to fight another day)
Group calling itself "The Earthquake Faction" was never heard about before, and the plant was manufacturing drones for Ukraine, not Israel.
It is rather clear what is going on - even FSB/GRU are learning, and instead of trying to derail European war effort with exploding dildos, found out how to redirect pro-Palestine useful idiots on more fruitful targets.
The perpetrators are very unlikely to be locals - in Czechia, as in whole post-Soviet Central/Eastern Europe, opinions on Middle Eastern situation range from "GO ISRAEL GO! SMASH BURN DESTROY!" to "Pox on the whole sand box". Sympathy for Palestine is extremely rare even among local woke folx, pro-Palestine protests are pathetic affairs with few dozens attending at best.
Situation still developing, keep monitoring.
edit: links links links
(Hopefully this post, containing only links concerning one current event, is according to The Rules(TM) )
Not the first time it happened.
Oordinary oops? Final Iranian desperate move to incite Spirit of Jihad(TM)? Israeli false flag, in preparation to finally remove these obstreperous buildings to make space for Third Temple?
Reminder that really spicy times hadn't began yet.
Or, another possibility is when Al-Aqsa gets destroyed for real, nothing really happens. The Ummah, tired of lifetime of fruitless rage, just shrugs their collective shoulders. "We have enough mosques at home".
Mother of all anti-climatic endings ensues.
Just stay calm and keep monitoring the situation.
edit: links linked
If Iranian authorities want to kill someone, they do not need to fabricate evidence (including CCTV footage) against him. They can just do it.
If Saleh Mohammadi is really heroic freedom fighter who sacrificed his life for democracy, are you sure you want to insult him by calling him innocent victim who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time?
To understand the RCC scandals and their handling fully, you need to understand that the "environment of the late twentieth century RCC" was environment of severe priest shortage.
In developed world, class of dirt poor pious peasantry, where becoming badly paid celibate priest was major win for the whole family, died out. All people how had much better options, and the church was unable/unwilling to make priest career more attractive.
The alternative to bad priest was often no priest at all, and since in Catholicism priests are indispensable for sacraments, tough choices had to be made.
Neighbor A: Good day, neighbor!
Neighbor B: You too, neighbor!
A: I see this old bike you have on your yard, could I have it? It is lying there for a long time, you are not riding it, but I can use it.
B: You can borrow it and ride it at any time, if you want, we are neighbors, after all.
A: I would pay you for the bike good money, I really want it for myself.
B: It's my grandpa's bike, it is our family heirloom. Sorry, but it is not for sale, but as I said, you can borrow it.
A: See this, nerd? This is a gun. I could shoot you at any time and take this shitty bike, if I wanted so, but I offered you money because I am good and generous neighbor.
Think about this offer, nerd, until it lasts.
B: ... thinking for myself ...
This neighbor gives me some bad vibes. Maybe I should ask my other neighbor, who has gun too, to help me.
And, maybe, i should get together with another neighbor and get guns for ourselves too.
What is long term plan for Gaza, Syria and Lebanon? The bombing goes on and can go on ... not forever, nothing lasts forever... but for a long time until there is anything to bomb.
Context: Saleh Mohammadi was executed for demanding democracy by way of killing police officers.
It is understandable that US media downplay this aspect, they do not want to remind #AbolishThePolice folx that they are just LARPers. This would make them very sad.
OK, my apology. If such content is unwelcome there, I will not post such links here any more.
Many things are habbening at once, here are for some more random culture war (and culture war by other means) news for the second part of the week.
Middle Eastern habbenings are already sufficiently covered elsewhere, things are going interesting even outside this part of the world.
1/Cancel culture files
Canceling machine is still running in overdrive mode, and it is coming for Cesar Chavez.
It turned out that "Moses of his people" routinely raped underage girls including another famous activist Dolores Huerta.
This is bad. Imagine if it came out that MLK raped Rosa Parks. That bad.
Many streets, schools, libraries, parks etc. are to be renamed soon.
2/Dukes, princes and kings of hazard files
Gambling is getting normalized and spreads all over the world.
Not only betting on sports for plebes, but betting on world habbenings for sophisticated situation monitorers.
This sort of gambling, in addition to ruining people's finances and lives, adds another element of chaos to already spicy world's situations. With few clicks, anyone in even middling military/govt positions can personally greatly profit from insider info.
And if you are in high, decision making position ... another source of income opens, faster and more lucrative than old timey corruption and theft.
No suprise that tensions are running high.
A war correspondent just received death threats from online gamblers who wanted him to change his reporting on an Iranian missile strike so they could collect a payout. One bettor had $900,000 riding on the outcome.
3/US gun politics files
Illinois wants track all ammo and mandate microstamping of serial numbers to all ammunition.
Even if they could make it work, there is so much ammo already manufactured, you could say. This is no way to protect Black lives from gun violence!
This is the point. You cannot get the evil white gun hoarders for their guns (yet), but you can send them to prison for unserialized ammo.
4/Democracy files
In suprising news, Kim Jong-un wins North Korea’s parliamentary elections with 99.93% of the vote.
This was not something anyone could predict.
In 2023, Kim oversaw his party's WORST election results in 60 years, winning just 99.63% of votes.
But "to give up" is not in Kim Jong-un's dictionary.
He persisted.
He fought and regained trust of the people. May this tale of true grit and determination inspire all of us.
5/Woke culture files
You’re not hallucinating the great weirding of America
You’re in a small town in Wisconsin.
The transgender assistant manager at CVS has a septum piercing, a wolf cut, and a nametag that reads “Finn.”
TL;DR: Wokeness is not dead yet. It might be wobbling at the top, but it is marching triumphantly across America.
Dinergoth is the aesthetic of ruined suburbia and dying small towns.
They are the mainstream now, they are not weird anymore. You are the weirdo.
6/Space invader files
Third recorded interstellar object at 16th March crossed the orbit of Jupiter and is now on the way out of Solar system.
So far, three interstellar objects were detected.
Number Two looked and behaved like ordinary snowy mudball, numbers One and Three were, in comparison to Solar system objects, very strange.
Either we live on rather busy interstellar highway, or interstellar objects are not at all like Solar system ones.
Alien starship monitoring community breathed in relief (and disappointment).
Close encounter with Jupiter was the opportunity for space battleship to rev up her engines and use Jupiter's gravity for course correction straight to Earth.
Previously, we had doubt about object origin. Now, we are certain that crew of 3I/Atlas is made of highly intelligent beings who saw nothing worth conquering on this monkey planet.
7/Cryptid files
The famous Patterson–Gimlin film was, for 59 years, known as the best evidence for existence of Bigfoot/Sasquatch.
Now, new documentary shows it all as "incredible hoax". Not only straight confession of Patterson's son Clint, but another 16mm film reel showing Bigfoot costume.
But, at the end, it doesn't matter.
Real or not, Bigfoot lives in our hearts. For forever.
are you saying the rule is "if any member of X group hurts you, you have a reason to hate X group"? Does that apply to all groups, or just men?
Blind hatred leads to nowhere. Before you start hating, do your research whether your enemy is representative of X, or just one bad apple.
People who argued: "The end is near! No time for sentimentality, we must pile up pyramids of skulls to save the world!" were in recorded history always proven wrong.
But this time it is different!
For all history (until rise of Prussia from swamp backwater to great power in 18th century) Germans were stereotyped as lazy bums interested only in eating and drinking. The French had well deserved reputation of heroism, honor and war mongering.
(the infamous surrender monkey memes came from GWOT times)
I remember 18th century graphic depicting stereotypical ways to die for each European nation - Englishman dies at sea, Frenchman dies by sword, Italian dies of love, German dies of drink (can't find it anymore).
Correction and apology, belief in reincarnation seems to be a thing in some streams of Orthodox Judaism. Doubt that many Reform Jews would adhere to this idea.
Anyway, I also doubt that there is any Buddhist school that believes in collective karma.
"The bad things happening to you? You deserve it. Not due to your bad deeds in you current or previous lives, but because king of your country did bad thing 100 years ago."
Congress has the power to declare war (a point I agree on), but do the people? Should we hold a referendum before we attack our enemies?
This is exactly what "democracy" meant, when it was meant seriously.
Current breaking news arrive that Athens and Sparta are at war again. The men of the city gather at the agora, debate the recent habbening, and vote whether the city joins with Athens against Sparta or the other way around.
Democracy requires informed citizenry with skin in the game, which was the case in these times. Everyone knew basic geography and political situation, everyone roughly knew where is Athens, where is Sparta and where is their city, and how strong they are. Everyone knew from direct experience how war looks like, and what will happen to you and your loved ones if you pick the wrong side.
Now, pollsters asking populace "Should we bomb Iraq, Iran, both or neither?" is akin asking five years old "When you grow up, do you want to be astronaut, accountant or garbage truck driver?"
Gracchus.
Gracchi brothers, whatever their faults were, were not known for their ostentatious wealth (by ancient standards) and neither for war mongering and promise breaking(again by ancient standards).
Strange you picked them as comparison, and not the other famous ancient character, whose story Donaldus Maximus seems to be intent to repeat step by step.
Maybe because the tale ends in real downer?
edit: links linked
make-women-property-again
And now we are going extinct.
As I pointed out in my top post, inspired by recent demise of Paul Ehrlich
The overpopulation panic was used to justify respectable tally of atrocities all over the world. It turned to be, even if you disregard any humanist soy crap about "value" of human life and well being, at best unnecessary, at worst counterproductive.
Now, the depopulation doomers salivate at the chance of running killing fields of their own. Nothing changes, no one ever learns anything.
Yea. One can go full John Hagee style Christian Zionist and find in the Bible proof texts showing that Jews are forever chosen people and God will bless forever everyone who blesses Israel.
bad karma
To use religious arguments based on Buddhism or Hinduism to support Israel is rather ... unorthodox.
This is the ultimate black pill.
Not that few thousands people (at most) are playing Russian roulette with gun pressed to the collective head of all mankind, but that the mankind as a whole DNGAF.
This is not like fossil fuel industry, that is absolute necessity or like AI that promises unlimited knowledge, wealth, power and control.
With gain of function, only thing it gains are some papers and articles published in prestigious journals no one will ever read.
And no one, including the most rich and powerful, sees problem with it, even when they could perish together with billions of plebes when the next oops happens.
It would not take much to end it. Imagine, for example, if someone close to Putin and trusted by him (yea, there is probably few such people, if any) explained to Vladimir Vladimirovich what is gain of function research and what it does.
It would be hard, VVP is Soviet boomer raised to worship science and experts, but he is legit most powerful individual in the world (or maybe second most powerful, no one knows what checks and balances actually exist in Chinese politburo. There are effectively none in Russia).
And VVP really does not want to die, not in nuclear war and even less while coughing his lungs off. It would not take more than few dozen scientists worldwide meeting unlucky accidents for the rest to give up and find some other work.
JVN was very cheerful, outgoing and sociable person enjoying parties and company, as far as possible from stereotypical shut in nerd.
If there were 1000 of them, they would organize and work together to bring order to this planet of apes, whether the apes like it or not.
When you're destitute and without perspectives, having and raising children is the only activity that will accord you social status and respect
Does not work this way in post-Soviet sphere. When the place was reduced from dirt poverty to total destitution, birth rates crashed instead of exploding.
I find it somewhat odd that it's Yugoslavia that you mentioned
Not odd, when the whole unfortunate episode began in Sarajevo, not Prague, Cracow or Riga.

Watch Caspian sea ports.
Any substantial support would have to go through there.
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