Obviously there’s a proxy war between russia and the west in ukraine, but I don’t think the US wants a long attritional war.

They could have done more to not end up in one, but I think escalation management really is driving a lot of decisions in washington.

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.

Bauxite is the obvious one. Bringing bauxite to Australia. How could you forget about bauxite?

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.

There’s a great Mac game from 1997 called Harry the Handsome Executive, where you zoom around on an office chair and weild a staple gun. The first level is you looking for a window so you can experience natural light again.

Yeah, it’s one of my favourites too. So immediately striking. I don’t think it would’ve occurred to me to read up on it - what’s to read about? There’s just the figures and the act, nothing else. But then you find out that it’s somehow even more goth.

Did this person depict lots of mythological figures?

Nope! It’s been a few decades since my art history lectures but my memory is (and wikipedia agrees) that he did a lot of portraits and battle scenes. IIRC his battle paintings inspired Picasso’s. His late work is especially dark - madness and horror type stuff. Sinister distorted figures. They’re often called The Black Paintings.

if this is common knowledge

Quite the opposite. This painting was used in a slide in my greek mythology class during the lecture about the titans and chronos. Then in an art history class I learned the context, which I feel is much less known.

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 generally recoil from comparing biden to putin but this really requires russian levels of post-truth politics.

Israel is committing war crimes like trump commits all his crimes - openly, in public and shielded by US elites.

As long as you remember to turn off the lights.

an 8 hour PowerPoint presentation on light switch waste awareness.

You don’t need an 8 hour PowerPoint. Instead try the best ad I’ve ever seen. It’s from legendary estonian animator Priit Pärn:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=NkCuh8K4L8s

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.

A milkshake will work too.

But Hamas won, they completely control the ‘unity’ government and Fatah have vastly less power. If divide and conquer was the goal Netanyahu would have been funneling resources to Fatah and not Hamas. But he has consistently empowered Hamas because the international community can’t accept a Hamas-led state.

That ended over 15 years ago.

I am guessing their calculation is that losing support of Israel lobby is 100% loss?

Yeah, I’ve been presuming that’s a significant part of it. That and the importance of a dependent and dependable ally to help anchor US security architecture in a vital region. Israel needs US imperial presence in the region. Saudi just benefits from it.

US support for Israel continuing the current conflict or US support for Israel in general? If really forced into it, maybe the Democrats can withdraw their blessing for the current conflict, but I don’t see how they could end support for Israel. If Putin wins the US election who knows what could happen but short of that Israel is just too important to the US empire and they know it. I mostly believe the official line from Washington that they don’t have that much leverage against Israel - in the sense that Bibi&co have enough counter levers to make acting against them more costly than it’s worth for the Democrats.

Hence the bullshit antisemitism law, the brutalizing of campus protests, etc. Democrats are even willing to drive down turn out among their base in one of the most important elections in US history over this - I just don’t see them doing that if they had a better card to play.

I doubt it will change even if the US withdraws support, but I’m a cynical depressive type.