Bookworm, podcast obsessive and #Bitcoin enthusiast. Norwegian.Used to live in USA. Today Scotland is my home 🇳🇴🇺🇸🏴
Glasgow, Scotland
Joined May 2014
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Em Lofgren retweeted
It will never stop amazing me that people who consider themselves pro refugee, pro immigrant and general Pro Good Guys Of the Left sneeringly describe the half-dead Holocaust survivors who went to Israel after having been so failed by Europe as “settler colonialists”
The Green Party (England and Wales) just voted 1,022 to 813 to call Zionism racism and back one state "throughout historic Palestine." For the avoidance of doubt, that does not signal support for Palestine. That signals support for ending Israel as a Jewish state and... 🧵
Over 190 nations have a state. The Jews have one, smaller than Wales. Calling that alone "racism" isn't anti-racism...Orwell would surely classify this is a clear case of language corrupted for political ends. 🧵
Em Lofgren retweeted
reasons to read old books:
1. definitely not written by AI
2. written by people who were NOT doomscrolling
3. written for readers who were expected to have long attention spans
4. will give you useful points-of-view that have been forgotten
5. vetted by time
6. will give you access to words, arguments, and ideas that are unavailable in the current discourse
7. will give you a panoramic historical view of what changes across time, and what does not
8. if you're an artist, old books will enrich your set of creative references
9. old books free you from the gravitational pull of the Current Thing
"There are more gears in my hands now, but fewer rhythms in my heart."
Em Lofgren retweeted
Most of what young people blame on “capitalism” is actually the result of statism: big government; monetary debasement; regulation that blocks housing supply; taxes that punish work and investment; and political privilege that protects insiders.
Young people are not victims of free markets. They are victims of a big government system in which political spending rules, central banks subsidize debt instead of promoting price stability, savings, and prudent investment, and bureaucrats decide who gets opportunities.
More government will not solve any of it.
dlacalle.com/en/this-is-a-sl…
This guy makes X worth it 😂
My neighbor was leaving for vacation and said, "Hey, hold down the fort while I'm gone."
I did not know this was a figure of speech.
I am a samurai.
A fort is a fort.
I made a perimeter map.
I checked the fence line twice a day, at dawn and at dusk.
I memorized the delivery truck's schedule.
I identified the enemy. It was a raccoon.
We engaged three times. I will not say who won.
On the fourth night, a storm came.
A fort is weakest in a storm.
So I stood watch on his porch from 9 PM to 2 AM, in the rain.
His security camera saw me.
His wife, who had not left yet, called my phone. "What are you doing?"
"Holding down the fort," I said.
There was a long silence.
"Do you... want a flashlight?"
She brought me a flashlight and a thermos of coffee.
She did not laugh.
She said, "The fort thanks you."
When my neighbor came home, I handed him a full report.
Fence secure. Deliveries normal. Raccoon situation ongoing.
He read the whole report standing in his driveway.
Then he straightened his back, looked me in the eye, and said:
"Well held, soldier."
Now, whenever anyone on our street goes on vacation, they come to me first.
They say the words formally, like a transfer of command.
"The fort is yours."
I accept.
I have held down eleven forts.
Last week, I found a badge in my mailbox.
The neighborhood had made it for me.
It says FORT COMMANDER.
I did not ask for this rank.
I will not give it back.
I wear it on patrol.
Em Lofgren retweeted
⚡️Children remember the moments when the family becomes fully alive.
That is the core. Vacation is just the common vessel.
A child does not encode childhood as a spreadsheet of responsible parenting.
They encode atmosphere.
They remember the motel pool, the gas station stop, the smell of sunscreen, the weird restaurant, the long drive, the sunset, the parents laughing differently, the feeling that normal life cracked open and something larger appeared.
That is why ages 5 to 10 hit so hard. The child is old enough to form durable narrative memory and young enough for the world to remain enchanted. Parents still feel mythic. A beach, cabin, lake, theme park, road trip, or even a cheap rented house can become sacred geography.
The real mechanism is interruption of routine plus emotional safety.
Ordinary life teaches stability. Trips create myth. The family leaves the repeating loop of school, work, chores, screens, exhaustion, and time pressure. For a few days, the child experiences parents outside their normal roles. Mom and dad are no longer just managers of homework, food, discipline, bedtime, and logistics. They become companions inside an adventure.
That imprints.
The money matters far less than parents think. Luxury is mostly adult vanity. Children remember intensity, freedom, attention, surprise, and togetherness. A $200 trip can beat a $10,000 trip if the child feels wonder and the parents are emotionally present.
Many adults are starved because their childhood had no sacred interruptions. Everything was duty, stress, survival, noise, pressure, or emotional absence. No mythic family scenes. No private homeland in memory. No recurring proof that life could be warm and strange and alive.
That matters for the adult psyche. People draw from childhood memories during loneliness, fear, ambition, loss, and love. Those memories become inner architecture.
Deepest compression: a good childhood is not built only by protection. It is built by unforgettable shared worlds.
Take the kid somewhere. Break the loop.
Make the ordinary world disappear for a few days.
That becomes part of them forever.
Em Lofgren retweeted
I will mock vegans and vegetarians relentlessly for believing “plant-based diets” are healthier for humans, but I will never mock them for insisting factory farming is an abomination that cries out to the heavens for redress.
Sows are kept in gestation crates where they’re artificially inseminated, then moved into farrowing crates to nurse their babies. 🐖
For both stages they’re given barely more space than their own bodies. Unable to turn around, unable to comfort their piglets, unable to move freely. 😣
This is outrageous 💔
#pigs #pigfarming #animalrights
Em Lofgren retweeted
C. S. Lewis and Dorothy Sayers and Ray Bradbury aren’t here to defend literature and the arts, so I’m afraid it’s up to us. I’m hereby enlisting you in the war to save the humanities.
Em Lofgren retweeted
the wealth gap isn't widening because of capitalism
it's widening because asset owners benefit from monetary expansion while wage earners suffer from currency debasement
the cantillon effect isn't a market failure, it's a policy feature
