kriddius retweeted
The British Empire was the greatest work of human civilisation this world has ever seen. It outlawed the slave trade and then hunted it to extinction across every ocean on earth. It put the rule of law on six continents. It built the railway, the telegraph, the modern world. And when it left, India, Canada, Australia and fifty more kept the lot. That is not conquest. That is inheritance.
A quarter of the land on earth. A quarter of the people. Run from one wet island. Now ask what it did with that reach. Not what it took. What it built.
It built the law. Around a third of the world's people live under legal systems descended from English common law. The presumption of innocence. Trial by jury. A judge who can rule against the government and keep his job.
It built the machine age. The first intercity railway. The cable that joined Europe and America. By 1902 a telegraph ring circled the entire world, landing only on British soil.
It built the knowledge. Newton. Darwin. Faraday. Turing. Berners-Lee. The machine you are reading this on is, from the physics up, a British invention with foreign parts.
And it built a war on the slave trade. No great power had ever made war on the trade — until Britain did. Sixty years. Around 1,600 ships seized. Around 150,000 Africans freed. Around 2,000 British sailors dead doing it.
Then the thing that proves the case. Every empire before it ended in fire. This one chose to go — and the nations it freed kept the lot. The courts. The parliaments. The language. Then they formed a club with the country that had ruled them. Fifty-six members. Four of them were never British at all. Former French and Portuguese colonies asked to join.
Nobody applies to join the empire of a tyrant.
Was it perfect? No empire is. Fine. Now name the empire that did better. Name the one that bled for sixty years to end the slave trade. Name the one whose former subjects kept its courts. Name the one that packed up and went home.
There is one.
Nobody keeps the chains of a master. They keep the gifts of a builder. Fifty-six nations kept them. That is the verdict — and it was not ours. It was theirs.
Others apologise for our history. I tell it — properly, from the record, without the guilt. If that's what you want more of, stand with me: thestoicenglish.com/guardian…
#history #britishempire
kriddius retweeted
Ten million people have watched a comedian destroy the TED talk format in six minutes.
Will Stephen was invited to give a real TEDx talk in New York in 2014. He had nothing to say, so he decided to prove the whole thing is just a costume anyone can put on.
He did every trick the format uses: opened with a question anyone can answer, told a mildly embarrassing personal story,
pointed to a random scientist on a slide, flashed a chart of meaningless numbers, and gestured with both hands the whole time. There was zero actual content.
Speaking coaches charge thousands to teach people how to do exactly this. Stephen did it on purpose and admitted it on stage.
He later said that if you watched him with the sound off, you would think he was a genius.
The talk is still free on YouTube. Most of the ten million people who watched it still nod along at empty slides.
kriddius retweeted
I just found the most brilliant bit by @JohnCleese
He explains Leftism better in 90 seconds, than you could learn from any academic in 20 years.
kriddius retweeted
If Lindsay Clancy is found innocent because hormones made her emotionally unstable, women better be very careful celebrating that verdict.
Because the law loves PRECEDENT.
From that day forward, every job application is going to have a new question:
“Are you currently hormonal?”
“Well, I’m a woman.”
“Thank you. I think we’ll be going in another direction.”
You can’t carry a weapon anymore. No female police officers. Sorry, but we cannot hand a loaded gun to somebody whose legal defense might eventually be, “My hormones were acting up.”
No more high-stress jobs, either. No air-traffic controllers. No surgeons. No nuclear-launch codes. One bad hot flash and boom 💥 Canada is glowing.
And women definitely can’t be judges. How can you decide whether somebody else is emotionally stable when your own gender just established in court that hormones can make you kill three people?
No female politicians, either. You can’t be trusted to run the country if, according to your own argument, your endocrine system occasionally takes over the government.
And custody hearings are going to change overnight.
The judge will say, “Ordinarily, children belong with their mother. However, according to the Lindsay Clancy precedent, she may be only one hormone away from a Netflix documentary. The children go with Dad.”
Dad doesn’t know their shoe sizes, the pediatrician’s name or which one is allergic to peanuts, but his testosterone has never been successfully used as an insanity defense.
Feminists spent a hundred years saying women are not hysterical, irrational creatures controlled by their biology and one defense attorney walks into court and says, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury… have you considered the uterus?”
You cannot demand equal authority and then ask for discounted accountability.
If women want equal rights, great. But equal rights come with equal wrongs.
Otherwise, that glass ceiling is about to become a padded ceiling.
kriddius retweeted
Why are so many women sooo angry? They won. They got everything they wanted. Men have never been doing this badly, and women have never been doing this well. They make more, they have the majority of jobs, they are the majority of college graduates, (UCLA undergrad is 60% female), they make more money, have much lower rates of suicide, addiction, and alcoholism, and live longer. They won: they took over all men-only spaces, they took over the Boy Scouts, they ended men’s bathrooms, they can fly fighter planes and be in combat. Marriage is optional, divorce is no-fault, they win 99% of the custody battles, they can control fertility at will, and they can’t get drafted. We are all living in the female future they promised.
Wishing @_Silvervale_ a Happy Birthday!
Look at this goofy little munchkin
Look at her!
AAAAA!!
kriddius retweeted
Spot on!! 🎯😎😆
I can’t wait for the comments!!
Nicklas Nilsson explains the difference between right-wing and left-wing people in spot-on text on Facebook:
"If a right-wing person is gay, then he is, and he doesn't care what others think.
If a left-winger is gay, then he demands legal changes, protests against everything and everyone, and turns it into a political struggle.
If a right-winger is vegan, then he simply doesn't eat meat.
If a left-winger is vegan, then he wants to ban meat, halt food production, and protest outside farms and chicken farms.
If a right-winger doesn't like guns, then he just doesn't buy any.
If a left-winger doesn't like guns, then he tries to ban them, prevent everyone else from owning one, and hates those who do.
If a right-winger is worried about the climate, then he flies less, drives an electric car if it suits him, and sorts his waste.
If a left-winger is worried about the climate, then he wants to ban fossil fuel cars, air travel, and meat for everyone else, protest outside factories, and demand that the state forces the change.
If a right-winger wants to give his children a good education, then he moves to an area with good schools, or chooses a private school, or gets involved himself.
If a left-winger wants to give his children a good education, then he demands more tax money from everyone, equal results for all, a ban on charter schools, and protests against every inequality.
If a right-winger complains about his job or workplace.. he doesn't. He changes jobs or starts his own business.
If a left-winger complains about his job – then it's the boss, the company, or the colleagues who are at fault. He demands collective agreements, strikes, changes for the whole community, and protests against the company so that it suits him.
If a right-winger is dissatisfied with his housing or rent, then he moves, renovates, or buys something else.
If a left-winger is dissatisfied with his housing or rent, then he demands rent freezes, more subsidies, regulations for everyone, and protests against landlords and politicians.
If a right-winger fails with a business or an investment that goes wrong, then he gets up, dusts himself off, and tries again tomorrow.
If a left-winger runs out of money on the 24th, then he blames the rich for having too much and needing to contribute more, blames the lottery win that didn't come home last week, and mutters that he has such damn bad luck.
If a right-winger sees this – then he sends it to a few friends for a good laugh.
If a left-winger sees this – then he tries to argue against it, get it removed, and delete me from Facebook."
kriddius retweeted
"This is Marcus, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Fallujah from 2007 to 2009. Home eight years, he still gets night terrors every single night - waking up screaming three to four times before sunrise. His girlfriend moved into the spare bedroom two years ago out of safety.
His VA therapist recommended a trained PTSD service dog. The waitlist: four years. The cost: $35,000 he didn't have. So six months ago, Marcus adopted Duke, a five-year-old chocolate Lab, from the county shelter - surrendered because his last owner said he was "too needy at night."
The first week Duke came home, Marcus had a 3 AM nightmare. Duke jumped onto the bed unasked and laid his full 90 pounds across Marcus's chest - deep pressure therapy.
Marcus woke up without screaming for the first time in years, found Duke staring at him, and cried holding him.
Now Duke does this automatically, every single night, the moment Marcus shows the first signs. His therapist reviewed the bedroom camera footage and said: "Duke is performing textbook deep pressure therapy for nightmare interruption. That's exactly what we train $35,000 service dogs to do. He's doing it instinctively."
The "too needy" behavior that got Duke returned to the shelter is the exact trait saving Marcus's life every night. One shelter's reject is one veteran's lifeline.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The story is a fictionalized narrative commonly shared on social media, though rooted in real PTSD treatment challenges. x.com/LSF4Life1981/s…