Oh it gets better.

The statue — which rises 15 feet atop a 7-foot base — was commissioned and bankrolled by a collective of crypto investors seeking to boost visibility for their memecoin, $PATRIOT, according to The Daily Beast.

Sculptor Alan Cottrill told The Times in February that he agreed to create the bronze figure for $300,000 but complained that the investors were slow in paying. In November he proposed coating it in gold leaf.

His suggestion went down like an offering of water “to a person dying of thirst,” he said. “Immediately everybody jumped on board.”

Relevant Mini Fantasy Theater

There is a British comic strip called Buster Gonad and his Unfeasibly Large Testicles. It is an absurd, immature joke about a man with ridiculously enormous spasmojesticles whose titanic sperm factories keep causing him trouble. It’s fun when Star Trek predicts the future; when Viz does so, it makes me want to start liking alcohol.

Here you go

I’m reading The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs by Marc David Baer. One of the numerous things he talks about is attitudes to wine in the Ottoman court, which set the time for all of contemporary Türkiye. Baer compares Turkish attitudes toward wine with similarly positive attitudes in Iran and the Arab nations, also noting that the Ottomans and Safavids both condemned each other as being drunk as good Muslims must never be. (The Ottomans and Safabids were constantly calling each other blasphemous for indulging in the very things they themselves loved doing).

The idea that all alcohol is haram is actually pretty recent. Muslims in the medieval and early modern eras interpreted the Qu’ran as forbidding specific types of fermented beverages rather than banning alcohol altogether, let alone all intoxicants as is generally the case today. Arab, Iranic, and Turkish poets wrote epic paeans to the greatness of wine and waxed lyrical about how it brought one closer to God and so all Muslims should drink it. Christian European diplomats complained that Muslim Turkish dignitaries outdrank them hard, and nobody could put away wine as well as the sultan.

Ever since Muhammad, at least some Muslims have interpreted the Qu’ran as banning any consumption of alcohol, but it’s unclear when this position became the dominant one. I know that wine flowed freely in the Ottoman court into the 17th century, so it was probably only some time in the Modern era.

I’m an emacs -nw kind of guy.

But if I have to pick one of your options, nano

… yes. Why in Earth shouldn’t they be?

We raise our cows in fields.

And if everybody did that, society would utterly collapse as almost no necessary work got done.

I use Linux and I prefer GOG to Steam

A bunch of Protestants think the Pope is the Antichrist, but apparently Vance identifies as Catholic, so yeah, he’s defying God. Catholic doctrine also holds that the Pope is infallible when ruling on theology.

Monarchy.

Basically:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiCl7j9mowk

Rye, barley, oats, and rice are also grasses.

Rye used to be a weed that evolved to resemble wheat so early farmers wouldn’t uproot it. But it evolved to resemble wheat so much that it became an edible crop in its own right.

I bet the Eurasians are the ones spreading the lies. There’s a reason we have always been at war with them.

He’s a massive fan if The Beatles. He has their entire discography on vinyl records in good condition. (He bought them in the 1970s; I don’t know if that is more or less impressive).

He also likes Led Zeppelin, Thin Lizzie, and The Horslips. He has a bunch of their records, too. There’s also some Pink Floyd in there.

I was raised Catholic in Ireland. Catholics, like most Christians, tend to quietly ignore the church teachings they don’t like and emphasise the parts they do.

Cuir na cathaoireacha i gceann a chéile ar críoch an lá, le do thoil

(Irish)

The Phoebus Cartel was objectively terrible, but it turns out there are perfectly good engineering reasons to limit them to 1000 hours. It has to do with the chemistry of tungsten. Those bulbs that last forever give off exceedingly little light, and the 1000 hour rule is from a standard that predates the cartel.