What puzzles me rather is that people are concerned about not jetting away for their holiday and never giving a thought to whether they'd be able to get back.
It’s a known issue for our travelling son. One way ticket to Almaty today, no return ticket and planning to come home in a couple of months. If the planes are grounded by then, it’s what? Buses and trains to Shanghai then a packet steamer home?
Perhaps you're in a position to help his finances if his journey turns out to be longer than his funds. Lots of people going on holiday abroad don't have any fallback options. It would terrify me.
Yes, and Central Asia is quite cheap. In practice he’d just extend his trip.
I remember at the time of Eyjafjallajokull so many people embarking on overland odysseys to get home by hook or by crook, at great expense. Best in almost all circumstances to hunker down and stay out until travel normalises.
ISTR during covid the media reporting on people trapped abroad who in quite terrible plight.
I recall an (Indian?) couple trapped on their honeymoon...
Reform has taken on a sort of Christian/religious politics that I really don’t want to see in this country
Except without any of the teachings of Jesus about loving thy fellow man, or any of that liberal, woke "sermon on the Mount" type stuff.
Remember, Christ came with a sword as much as the word. He would likely have machine gunned the dinghies
That's right: no way did he advocate for people to "turn the other cheek".
Turning the other cheek was actually a sign of resistance.
The other cheek being the one that would be struck if you were the equal of the one doing the striking, rather than being their inferior. </>
How do you get that from the Sermon on the Mount?
Based on cultural norms in the society in which Jesus was living.
My mate who has studied this stuff can explain it much better than I can.
Well that wouldn't be hard based on your response so far.
Here you go:
In Jesus’ day, hitting a person on the cheek was a forceful insult, but it was not considered a violent assault. Here, Jesus is specifying a strike on the right cheek, which implies a back-handed slap. Striking someone with the back of the hand (3) could demand a doubled fine because it was “the severest public affront to a person’s dignity.” (4)
But Jesus is not suggesting that his followers should stand around and take abuse. First, turning the left cheek was a bold rejection of the insult itself. Second, it challenged the aggressor to repeat the offense, while requiring that they now strike with the palm of their hand, something done not to a lesser but to an equal. In other words, turning the other cheek strongly declares that the opposer holds no power for condescending shame because the victim’s honor is not dependent on human approval—it comes from somewhere else. (5) This kind of action reshapes the relationship, pushing the adversary to either back down or to treat them as an equal.
Uhuh. And that fits subsequent sentences how exactly?
"And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you."
Read the whole article. It explains 5he passive resistance in those acts too.
Christ, I'm the fecking atheist - I shouldn't be giving bible study classes.
It doesn't fit well either with the rest of the Sermon on the Mount.
I appreciate that there has been lots of sophistry and casuistry to twist Jesus's words to support resistance to Roman rule, but it really doesn't fit the Gospels. Jesus went deliberately to his death and told his disciples not to resist his arrest.
His kingdom is not of this world. Render unto Caesar etc.
You’ve missed out the bit where Jesus said:
“Man’s greatest joy is to slaughter his enemies. To crush them and drive them before him, and to listen to the lamentations of the women.”
That;s Genghis Khan.
The signs area all there if you take the time to look. Genghis Khan was the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Bit less of the peace and love the second time around. Maybe he was not as forgiving about that crucifixation business as he seemed at the time.
The Heavenly King, whose body count was 20-30 m, believed himself to be Jesus’ brother.
“Stilgar,” Paul said, “you urgently need a sense of balance which can come only from an understanding of long-term effects. What little information we have about the old times, the pittance of data which the Butlerians left us, Korba has brought it for you. Start with the Genghis Khan.” “Genghis … Khan? Was he of the Sardaukar, m’Lord?” “Oh, long before that. He killed … perhaps four million.” “He must’ve had formidable weaponry to kill that many, Sire. Lasbeams, perhaps, or …” “He didn’t kill them himself, Stil. He killed the way I kill, by sending out his legions. There’s another emperor I want you to note in passing—a Hitler. He killed more than six million. Pretty good for those days.” “Killed … by his legions?” Stilgar asked. “Yes.” “Not very impressive statistics, m’Lord.” “Very good, Stil.” Paul glanced at the reels in Korba’s hands. Korba stood with them as though he wished he could drop them and flee. “Statistics: at a conservative estimate, I’ve killed sixty-one billion, sterilized ninety planets, completely demoralized five hundred others. I’ve wiped out the followers of forty religions which had existed since—” “Unbelievers!” Korba protested. “Unbelievers all!” “No,” Paul said. “Believers.” “No,” Paul said. “Believers.” “My Liege makes a joke,” Korba said, voice trembling. “The Jihad has brought ten thousand worlds into the shining light of—” “Into the darkness,” Paul said. “We’ll be a hundred generations recovering from Muad’Dib’s Jihad. I find it hard to imagine that anyone will ever surpass this.” A barking laugh erupted from his throat. “What amuses Muad’Dib?” Stilgar asked. “I am not amused. I merely had a sudden vision of the Emperor Hitler saying something similar. No doubt he did.”
I look forward to seeing some of these lines in Dune Part III this year. As I've noted before some of the more casual viewers I observed after Dune Part II did not appear to realise what was about to happen.
I think it needs to be shown, not told.
I've not really paid attention to the trailers, so I'm assuming it will be mostly Dune Messiah, with added details of the jihad in flashback and dream sequences to flesh things out for those expecting an immediate sequel.
But perhaps it will pick up right where the last left off.
The second series of "Dune: Prophecy" should be with us soon. I quite liked series one. Though I was comparing it to the Apple TV hot mess of 'Foundation' so I might have been being generous to it.
Anyone who, unhappily, had had to deal with demented relative or friend will recognise the startling loss of inhibitions about profanities as a symptom
Fake news. My father, with very advanced dementia, retained pretty good manners until then end.
It would be surprising if people who never much used profanities throughout their life suddenly started using them when they got dementia. Just a theory.
Prepare to be shocked, there's plenty of studies showing people who never/hardly swore who then began swearing when they had Alzheimer's/dementia.
People with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias may experience significant changes in behavior, and using foul language and swearing is a common one. This behavior change can be extremely baffling and disturbing, particularly if this type of language had never previously been heard from the mouth of the dementia patient. Understanding why this shift in behavior occurs as one progresses through the stages of Alzheimer’s disease can help loved ones accept this unwanted behavior.
There are two sides of the brain, the right side and the left side, and both play a role in language skills. The left side controls formal language, while the ride side is responsible for automatic speech, swearing, and singing. With Alzheimer’s disease, an unfortunate reality is one’s language skills controlled by the left side of the brain fail before those controlled by the right side of the brain.
Think of it this way, as a young child, one learns swear words, and somewhere along the line, he or she is told not to use those words because doing so is wrong. That being said, simply because one stops saying the words out loud does not mean that the “naughty” words don’t still come to mind. For instance, say you slam your finger in the door. The first word that likely comes to your mind is a swear word. However, rather than blurt out the word that you know you shouldn’t say, you find a substitution word from the left side of your brain, one that is considered appropriate.
With Alzheimer’s disease, not only is impulse control lost, so is the ability to find replacement words for the foul ones that come to mind. Therefore, when your loved one searches for another word to say, there is nothing but the swear word to grasp, and this is what comes out verbally.
All of this makes sense. Brain damage of any kind - from head injuries, strokes, dementia or mental illness, can result in emotional dysregulation and/or a loss of impulse control. The brains of these people have undergone changes that they had no control over, so making a moral claim about their underlying psychology based on it makes no sense to me. As an aside a large proportion of prisoners in the US - around 60% if I remember right - have underlying traumatic brain injuries, and as we've discussed frontotemporal dementia can result in completely whacky and socially inapprapropriate behaviour.
There are even fun claims to be made that countries removing the lead from petrol experience drops in violent crime over the subsequent decades but we know about correlation and causation.
Anyone who, unhappily, had had to deal with demented relative or friend will recognise the startling loss of inhibitions about profanities as a symptom
Fake news. My father, with very advanced dementia, retained pretty good manners until then end.
It would be surprising if people who never much used profanities throughout their life suddenly started using them when they got dementia. Just a theory.
Prepare to be shocked, there's plenty of studies showing people who never/hardly swore who then began swearing when they had Alzheimer's/dementia.
People with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias may experience significant changes in behavior, and using foul language and swearing is a common one. This behavior change can be extremely baffling and disturbing, particularly if this type of language had never previously been heard from the mouth of the dementia patient. Understanding why this shift in behavior occurs as one progresses through the stages of Alzheimer’s disease can help loved ones accept this unwanted behavior.
There are two sides of the brain, the right side and the left side, and both play a role in language skills. The left side controls formal language, while the ride side is responsible for automatic speech, swearing, and singing. With Alzheimer’s disease, an unfortunate reality is one’s language skills controlled by the left side of the brain fail before those controlled by the right side of the brain.
Think of it this way, as a young child, one learns swear words, and somewhere along the line, he or she is told not to use those words because doing so is wrong. That being said, simply because one stops saying the words out loud does not mean that the “naughty” words don’t still come to mind. For instance, say you slam your finger in the door. The first word that likely comes to your mind is a swear word. However, rather than blurt out the word that you know you shouldn’t say, you find a substitution word from the left side of your brain, one that is considered appropriate.
With Alzheimer’s disease, not only is impulse control lost, so is the ability to find replacement words for the foul ones that come to mind. Therefore, when your loved one searches for another word to say, there is nothing but the swear word to grasp, and this is what comes out verbally.
Interesting but I still stand by what I thought originally, which is that people whose normal response to shutting their finger in the door when young is more likely to be something along the lines of "ouch" rather than a profanity (unless you count ouch as a profanity), are less likely to use them later on. I might not have expressed that clearly enough originally.
Anyone who, unhappily, had had to deal with demented relative or friend will recognise the startling loss of inhibitions about profanities as a symptom
My brother has worked for years with people with dementia and has said this for a long time. I don't know that I can fully believe it, but he does seem to be escalating all of his traditional behaviours.
The best description that I heard was that dementia simply eliminates the control/filter that most people have in order to function in society and thereby reveals the underlying person in all their glory
Anyone who, unhappily, had had to deal with demented relative or friend will recognise the startling loss of inhibitions about profanities as a symptom
Fake news. My father, with very advanced dementia, retained pretty good manners until then end.
It would be surprising if people who never much used profanities throughout their life suddenly started using them when they got dementia. Just a theory.
Prepare to be shocked, there's plenty of studies showing people who never/hardly swore who then began swearing when they had Alzheimer's/dementia.
People with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias may experience significant changes in behavior, and using foul language and swearing is a common one. This behavior change can be extremely baffling and disturbing, particularly if this type of language had never previously been heard from the mouth of the dementia patient. Understanding why this shift in behavior occurs as one progresses through the stages of Alzheimer’s disease can help loved ones accept this unwanted behavior.
There are two sides of the brain, the right side and the left side, and both play a role in language skills. The left side controls formal language, while the ride side is responsible for automatic speech, swearing, and singing. With Alzheimer’s disease, an unfortunate reality is one’s language skills controlled by the left side of the brain fail before those controlled by the right side of the brain.
Think of it this way, as a young child, one learns swear words, and somewhere along the line, he or she is told not to use those words because doing so is wrong. That being said, simply because one stops saying the words out loud does not mean that the “naughty” words don’t still come to mind. For instance, say you slam your finger in the door. The first word that likely comes to your mind is a swear word. However, rather than blurt out the word that you know you shouldn’t say, you find a substitution word from the left side of your brain, one that is considered appropriate.
With Alzheimer’s disease, not only is impulse control lost, so is the ability to find replacement words for the foul ones that come to mind. Therefore, when your loved one searches for another word to say, there is nothing but the swear word to grasp, and this is what comes out verbally.
Interesting but I still stand by what I thought originally, which is that people whose normal response to shutting their finger in the door when young is more likely to be something along the lines of "ouch" rather than a profanity (unless you count ouch as a profanity), are less likely to use them later on. I might not have expressed that clearly enough originally.
"Interesting information, but I'll go back to the pre-information position"
Anyone who, unhappily, had had to deal with demented relative or friend will recognise the startling loss of inhibitions about profanities as a symptom
My brother has worked for years with people with dementia and has said this for a long time. I don't know that I can fully believe it, but he does seem to be escalating all of his traditional behaviours.
The best description that I heard was that dementia simply eliminates the control/filter that most people have in order to function in society and thereby reveals the underlying person in all their glory
Whilst I can believe the removing filter explanation as plausible, I don't really accept the characterisation of it 'revealing' the underlying person.
Sometimes our filters are a loose thing we overlap on top of ourselves to function in certain situations, like not swearing at work, but sometimes these filters are actually core parts of our inherent personalities, like not being a rude arsehole to people. Losing such a filter would not be a reveal of who we actually are, but a change, in my view.
That is, our filters can be a part of who we are, not a disguise that can be cast off.
Anyone who, unhappily, had had to deal with demented relative or friend will recognise the startling loss of inhibitions about profanities as a symptom
My brother has worked for years with people with dementia and has said this for a long time. I don't know that I can fully believe it, but he does seem to be escalating all of his traditional behaviours.
The best description that I heard was that dementia simply eliminates the control/filter that most people have in order to function in society and thereby reveals the underlying person in all their glory
Yes but...
Dementia destroys different things at different times for different people. That filter dementia destroyed... well, it was a part of you.
And if dementia destroys that filter for you, and not for someone else, well... it doesn't mean that the person who didn't get their filter destroyed was good and polite all along, while you were an asshole and now it's exposed.
I mean, surely as a comedian, if you're not able to make enough money by filling auditoriums because your jokes aren't funny enough, the answer is to improve the quality of your jokes, not ask for money from taxpayers? Or am I missing something.
"Waitrose employee sacked after stopping shoplifter from taking Easter eggs Walker Smith, 54, who worked for retailer for 17 years, says he grabbed bag from thief before they escaped"
Anyone who, unhappily, had had to deal with demented relative or friend will recognise the startling loss of inhibitions about profanities as a symptom
Fake news. My father, with very advanced dementia, retained pretty good manners until then end.
It would be surprising if people who never much used profanities throughout their life suddenly started using them when they got dementia. Just a theory.
Likely the case.
I don't think dementia reveals the inner person - way too much is lost for that to be true - but I got the strong impression (from many hours in the care home) that it does reveal stuff that was always there, buried or not.
A lot of those I watched over the course of a few years had their own essential characters, which tended to remain as they deteriorated, even if they might bear little resemblance to what they were before the disease.
My parents had a good friend who had come to Scotland from Vienna on the kindertransport. She was a lovely, friendly and warm woman but after she got dementia became deeply fearful and suspicious of everybody. She lost almost her whole family (apart from her sister who had moved to Israel, who she didn't get on with) in the Holocaust and I think a lot of the feelings of fear from that time that she had been able to bury while she had a happy and thriving life in Scotland were revealed as dementia took its toll. It was very sad.
Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7v0dFCWH7k
"We're getting married / On our own / Starting our journey / On our own
Well I found you, oh / Amongst a billion parts / Well I found you, oh / Against a billion odds
I was leaving / What I own
Till I found you, oh / Amongst a billion parts / And I found you, oh / Against a billion odds"
There are even fun claims to be made that countries removing the lead from petrol experience drops in violent crime over the subsequent decades but we know about correlation and causation.
Sometimes our filters are a loose thing we overlap on top of ourselves to function in certain situations, like not swearing at work, but sometimes these filters are actually core parts of our inherent personalities, like not being a rude arsehole to people. Losing such a filter would not be a reveal of who we actually are, but a change, in my view.
That is, our filters can be a part of who we are, not a disguise that can be cast off.
Dementia destroys different things at different times for different people. That filter dementia destroyed... well, it was a part of you.
And if dementia destroys that filter for you, and not for someone else, well... it doesn't mean that the person who didn't get their filter destroyed was good and polite all along, while you were an asshole and now it's exposed.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y73z94xzeo
THEY MUST BE JOKING!
(bows left, bows right, exeunt)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXxXp7g6fFw
Walker Smith, 54, who worked for retailer for 17 years, says he grabbed bag from thief before they escaped"
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/apr/05/waitrose-employee-sacked-after-stopping-shoplifter-from-taking-easter-eggs