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I fucking hate golf courses so much stupid ecologically dead wastes of water and land just for the pleasure of rich losers

Scythian Pectoral (4th century BCE)

Museum of Historical Treasures of Ukraine, Kyiv

The pectoral is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of Scythian goldsmithing and one of the most important archaeological discoveries in Ukraine. Its artistic sophistication demonstrates the close interaction between Scythian and Greek craftsmanship in the Northern Black Sea region during the 4th century BCE.

Place of origin: Northern Black Sea region

Findspot: Tovsta Mohyla kurgan (Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Ukraine), discovered by Borys Mozolevskyi (1971)

Materials: Gold

Techniques: Enameling, casting, repoussé, stamping, forging, wire drawing, inlay, soldering

Decoration: The ornament is crescent-shaped and divided by four twisted torques into three horizontal registers, each filled with sculptural scenes. The pectoral consists of more than 160 individual elements

“Capitalism has defined ‘health’ itself as a capacity to submit oneself to labor.” ― Beatrice Adler-Bolton & Artie Vierkant, Health Communism3

Now the sermons arrive through self-help podcasts, hustle culture, billionaire morning routines, “discipline over motivation” posts, and endless narratives about personal responsibility.

Even wellness culture often mirrors this logic, framing the body as something to optimize endlessly through regimen and self-control. The ideal person under capitalism is tireless, independent, resilient, endlessly capable of overriding their own limits in service of output. You may be severely injured and anemic but don’t you dare skip gym day.

When you become chronically ill or disabled, you begin to understand how deeply this ideology has embedded itself into the psyche. The shame of no longer being able to work consistently feels personal. As though my body’s inability to keep pace with capitalism says something fundamental about who I am.

It’s there every time you meet someone new and one of their first questions is, “What do you do?” They’re not asking about your passions, your hobbies, or the mundane human tasks that take up most of your time. They’re asking how you make money. How you turn yourself into income.

Imagine being Shakespeares plug

He's a Mdium-sized Rez Dog which is to say he's mostly sighthound and pointer but he's a perfectly classically shaped hunting dog. He looks like he modeled the dogs on grecian pottery or hopped out of one of those 1700's paintings of stags at bay that would hang in the smoking rooms of the guys that funded the pillaging of the Americas but I digress. Sometimes I feel bad that I can't indulge him in what he was bred to do, because he loves scent-tracking and flushing geese and he damn near got me arrested in Grand Teton National park after he chewed through his leash and went haring off after a pronghorn antelope for half a mile at roughly mach fuck before the damn thing finally crossed a river and I was able to grab Charlie because he doesn't like getting his feetsies wet.

But today, we were on a walk in the local open space on a moderately muddy trail with fresh horse tracks in it. As in, we parked next to the horse trailer. The horse itself is actually perfecty visible about half a mile ahead of us.

But Charlie saw the tracks and went "I'm gonna scent-track this shit. I'm gonna hunt this motherfucking ungulate down by smell alone. I am truly the Nimrod of Dogs."

Full Instinct takeover happens. Head down, nose to the ground, pulling on his martingale hard enough that I could have hooked him up to a sled, stopping and dramatically pointing at road apples and bits of nibbled grass until I acknowledge that he has Identified An Article. He is having a GREAT time doing this, so I'm just there, looking at the horse that we are slowly catching up to and going. "Yeah! You got it! Good Job!"

But I'm also walking Herschel, who is a Corgi and he loves Activities, so he sees his big brother doing this and goes "OH BOY! AN ACTIVITY!!" and is trying his darndest to copy what Charlie's doing. Except he doesn't have a damn clue what is happening so he's slapping his livestock-bullying instincts on these horse tracks as hard as he can and just. Barking at horse shit to alert me to it's existence. Stalk-posing at the gras Charlie is pointing at, in case it jumps up and tries to run off. I think he thought perhaps they were herding an Invisible Cow and BY GOD it wasn't gonna run lose on his watch. Wherever it was.

Eventually, we get to about 100 feet behind the horse, which is an older Pinto out for a nice stroll and some fresh air and at this distance, Charlie decides that we're probably close enough for my dumb, relatively sensorily deprived human ass to see the horse, but just to make sure, he POINTS.

He's so fucking good at pointing. Perfectly still. Perfectly straight back and tail. Head up and ears forward. Front paw up and at the ready. Little diamond shape of back hackles up in excitement. Determined, unblinking lazer-eyed stare at the target. He looks like a very carnivorous hood ornament, the distilled essence of Hunting Dog, in a perfect scuptural pose. It's downright artistic. Inspiring even

Herschel is DELIGHTED, because he might not understand scent-tracking but he DID learn how to Point from Charlie and copies his pose exactly.

It has almost exactly the opposite emotional effect.

A Pointing Corgi is the most canine clownshoes nonsense possible. Herschel's pose is flawless of course, he learned from the Master, but the perfectly straight back looks funny as hell with a perfectly straight nub of a tail. His head is up and his gaze is locked but instead of predatory intent his face is EXTREMELY excited about this new Giant Friend and thier giant ankles he can barely wait to launch himself at and his face is about 80% Big Dumb Corgi Grin. Instead of Charlie's minute, even delicate hackles, Herschel has a full-body length doggy mowhawk, which is a good three inches long at the peaks over his shoulders and hips, ruining the sleek image and making him look like he just came out of the dryer and is still full of static electricity.

And, of course.

The Paw.

The Front Paw is up and at the ready- he and Charlie are both right-pawed apparently- and on his little stubby Corgi legs it looks like a toddler trying to use a smartphone. He thinks he's doing exactly what the Big Dogs do, but he only has these tiny feets.

US climate with equivalent cities from around the world.

And was like, uh, are you missing something there, buddy? Like all that red in northern Africa? Because that's a lot of red.

And I was going to give them the benefit of doubt, since I don't know much about the climate in Northern Africa, aside from Morroco and Egypt, which seem like really hot places, so you know, maybe it's normal there?

But nope, that's not the case:

Some selections from the article:

"The region has been experiencing some of the most intense heat waves in recent years, but in many cases they’ve been under-reported due to misconceptions about Africans’ ability to withstand them.

“Africa is seen as a sunny and hot continent,” said Amadou Thierno Gaye, a research scientist and professor at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. “People think we are used to heat, but we are having high temperatures for a longer duration. Nobody is used to this.”

Are you going to come out of it with a Klein-level work? No. Dude was bonkers skilled. But I am here to tell you that if you've ever gone to Home Depot and shuffled through paint chips and been like "God, this is such a gorgeous color, I fucking love this color" and then immediately been like "...but I can't imagine painting a wall with it." and bought a can of soul-killing eggshell off-white or what the fuck ever, you absolutely can go pick up a $10 canvas from a craftstore and a $5 sample of that color and just hang 6 square feet of it on a wall and enjoy the fuck out of it.

This is awesome, we should build it.