The Enemy of Mine... Isn't He of Your Kind?

Roman portable sundial in the shape of a cured ham. The whimsical yet precision-crafted bronze timepiece was unearthed in Herculaneum in 1760 and quickly identified as a rare pocket sundial by its grid markings. The exact workings of the 'pork clock' have, however, only recently come to light thanks to new research.

Historians at Wesleyan University created an exact 3D-printed replica of the sundial, complete with its lost gnomon (the part of a sundial that casts a shadow) which was described by an 18th-century museum curator as having been in the shape of a pig’s tail.

Outdoor experimentation with the sundial confirmed that the device would be hung from a chain with the sun on its left side, allowing the pig tail to cast its shadow across the grid. Vertical lines on the grid represent the months of the year, while the horizontal lines indicate the number of hours past sunrise or before sunset.

The Roman user aligned the tip of the tail's shadow to fall on the vertical column of the current month. They then counted the number of horizontal lines from the top of the grid to the tip of the shadow, to reveal the hour of the day.

Mynydd Drumau, Wales

*Mr. Collins self-importantly bragging to everyone that he is the one personally responsible for decapitating  Lady Catherine de Bourgh  should she fall victim to the devil’s touch and become a zombie, and that she specifically ordered her head to be burned in the grand fireplace at Rosings. 

*The ambiguity as to whether or not Catherine’s pale, sickly daughter is in fact a zombie herself, but Mr. Darcy is expected to marry her anyway for the sake of family and keeping up appearances. 

Clones taking up Mandalorian religion, pragmatic and focused on the present

Clones abandon religion altogether, because they believe that any deity who would allow the suffering they see in the galaxy isn’t one they would follow

Clones learning about the religions of the residents of planets they save and taking bits of it with them into the stars

Clones who worship one deity, many deities, no deities, but following spiritual paths

Clones who carry icons or talismans tucked into their armor, who paint the names of gods over their heart for protection

Clones with sigils tattooed into their skin, tracing the lines as they pray for a safe return

Clones who pray together in different languages, to different deities, but united in belief

Clones who believe in nothing after death, because their purpose is done

Clones reciting the Remembrance together after all the lights are off, different names in the same voice, because life after death is only possible as long as your name is remembered

Clones who scoff at the idea of religion for themselves, but will fight to defend their brothers’ beliefs, because it gives them peace, and that’s good enough

Clones holding onto the thought of seeing lost brothers when they die

Clones who believe in a warrior’s afterlife, a place of celebration of battles past

I have usually thought of Darth Sidious as kinda the one “happy” sith, the only one who isn’t just digging himself deeper and deeper into misery. That he truly enjoys his life, because he is just that evil. 

But yesterday it struck me that I while I think Palpatine had his own wicked version of fun during the clone wars, pulling off this entire centuries-in-the-making-plot to overthrow the Republic, he is bored as the emperor.

There are some good Lucas quotes on how the dark side of the force is very focused on transient pleasure, contrasted by the joy of the light side:

“The dark side is pleasure, biological and temporary and easy to achieve. The light side is joy, everlasting and difficult to achieve.”

“Pleasure is short lived. It lasts an hour, it lasts a minute, it lasts a month. It peaks and then it goes down–it peaks very high, but the next time you want to get that same peak you have to do it twice as much. It’s like drugs, you have to keep doing it because it insulates itself. No matter what it is, whether you’re shopping or you’re engaged in any other kind of pleasure. It all has the same quality about it.  (…) “People who get the pleasure they keep saying, ‘Well, if I can just get richer and get more cars–!’ You’ll never relive the moment you got your first car, that’s it, that’s the highest peak. Yes, you could get three Ferraris and a new gulf stream jet and maybe you’ll get close. But you have to keep going and eventually you’ll run out.  You just can’t do it, it doesn’t work.”

Palpatine hit peak pleasure in establishing his empire and murdering the Jedi. There is just no way to top that. He is bored out of his mind during his time as empreror. Oh, he gets a few more glimpses of amusement out of messing with Vader but that must have grown old quickly, as would inflicting systematic and personal pain on the galaxy (not that he would stop doing either, but that it just wouldn’t give the same satisfaction anymore). He can’t reach those same heights again. I also think Palpatine enjoyed the entire game of pre-empire, but now that he has won there is no need or space for that.

Luke showing up is probably the best thing to have happened for him in up to a decade. It’s a new way of causing Vader pain and he has one last Jedi to pull down into the dark (attempting to re-live his old victory).