Gary Bergeron

@Strega, I agree with you on ‘Fracture’. It has a clever plot with a decent twist to it.  He is one of those actors you are compelled to focus on, whatever his role in any specific scene is, even when he is silent.

Antony Hopkins aficionados – there’s a 2007 movie called Fracture, which is brilliant, twisted and showcases Antony’s best talents.  Please watch it, if you haven’t already.

(I have to admit, once again I found myself rooting for the villain)

🦹‍♂️

Enco, loved your explanation of your edits.

As a youngster I had a massive crush on Antony Hopkins, having watched him play Pierre in  a BBC TV series adaptation of War & Peace.

The best part of the SOTL movie was the fact I wanted Hannibal to win, even with the atrocities he’d carried out.  The movie WAS the villain.

He must be 90 by now, but…[Read more]

That Dasein won’t last forever 😉

I wonder what he has on the members of his own party. I find it difficult to reconcile how so many Republicans are allowing themselves to turn their backs on almost everything the Republican Party used to stand for. Do they not get it that he is mesmerized by Putin? It does not really matter why but ‘all of a sudden’ they are standing up for…[Read more]

And one more that a friend has borrowed called The Irrational Ape, by an Irish science writer.

@jakelafort

I do read the majority of the books I list on Sunday School!! Here are a few more I would recommend.

@Strega – Yes, I was thinking of that when I read it.

“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.”

Reg

With reference to Russia now blaming Europe…

The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.
George Orwell, 1984

A farmer would have to be stupid to have only one revenue stream and one customer.

I am in agreement that one revenue stream is not wise. Unless they keep hens where I guess having all their eggs in one basket would be very profitable at the moment. However it should have been scaled down and not just stopped. It is not the farmers that are being…[Read more]

In an interview on Russian state television on Sunday, Mr. Lavrov listed the ills that Europe — not America — had brought upon the world. The United States, in his telling, had gone from evil mastermind to innocent bystander.

“Colonization, wars, crusaders, the Crimean War, Napoleon, World War I, Hitler,” Mr. Lavrov said. “If we look at history i…[Read more]

@Jakelafort – Once upon a midnight dreary, when your mind is bright and cheery, I shall wait to hear your musings—ponder well and share them more.

However, I wouldn’t sweat over loss of USAID to American farmers and agricultural research.

Well if I was a “real” farmer I might sweat a little. It is the immediate cut-off of all USAID that is the problem.  There was no sliding scale to zero over a few years to allow contingency plans to be put in place. Given that USAID constituted about 0.…[Read more]

@jakelafort – Feel free to add to this post, if you want.

I have recently read both of these books and I would recommend them:

The Knowledge Machine – Michael Strevens. Link.

and

Free Thinking – Simon McCarthy Jones. Link.

Recent cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have significantly affected American farmers. In January 2025, the Trump administration ordered a near-total freeze on foreign aid, leading to a halt in USAID’s procurement of U.S.-grown crops for international food assistance programs. This abrupt cessation has disrupted a vital…[Read more]