Yes, and there’s also bog or ice mummies that are preserved totally different ways. The Egyptian ones that are filled with preservatives and dehydrated probably do just need air that’s super dry.

Who’s we? Reminder that a good third of the population strongly prefers the Conservatives, and another third don’t care.

This was before that - Avodah Zarah is the one I actually read through.

Like, you can’t leave a barrel of mashed grapes too long, because it’s then assumed a pagan broke in, danced on it and left, turning it into pagan wine which is the same as doing idolatry yourself, somehow. And it goes on.

There’s other examples as well, of course. Puritans got worked up about Catholic-seeming practices within the Church of England, although I don’t remember which ones, off the top of my head.

Really? I was assuming you’d need pretty significant climate control. Although it probably varies by type.

I have seen mummies stored like under a bench FWIW.

Was that correct, or was that one of those OMG moments?

That seems likely, zealots love a good dividing line. I’m reminded of all the weird obsessing in the Mishnah about wine because the non-Jews of the period used it in sacrifices.

I feel the need to point out that multiparty systems are all over and not all that different, in terms of labour rights.

Good to know about the conductors!

Looks like the flight attendants are just going straight to a wildcat strike, lol.

Ticks, you bet. Rainforests have massive biodiversity, and that includes the parasites. There’s even terrestrial leeches that will latch on to you!

Yes, I gather that Stalin was the iron fist type, rising though pure ruthlessness,

That gives him too much credit. Stalin was relatively inconsequential in the rise and initial rule of the Bolsheviks, which happened under Lenin with Trotsky as a strong second in command. He just managed to palace intrigue his way to the top after Lenin died.

He did keep his power by purging everyone all the time, which is another thing that seems to work better on humans than pure rationality would suggest it should. People were never risk-tolerant enough to stop him, but also never risk-averse enough to avoid working for him, probably out of hubris.

I’m currently working with a German guy, and am trying to.figure out how to broach the subject of how did common, decent people become so indoctrinated to an extreme right ideology.

I’m going to recommend Ordinary Men, which is a book cataloging and analysing accounts of members of one of the battalions responsible for machine gunning people into ditches.

A random German won’t necessarily be super into history. A random Israeli is liable to say it had nothing to do with fascism and everyone is always against the Jews specifically. History is still going on there, and there’s no objectivity.