An adage dating at least from my adolescence: “You either use it or lose it.” This bit of folk wisdom, which refers principally – or so I understand – to the male procreative organ, has always been considered so obvious as to hardly need stating. Thus the recent discovery that the same principle goes for another human organ – the brain – should not surprise anyone.
The year 2024 marks the centenary of Vladimir Lenin’s death. In April of that year, the consummate communist, having blighted as many lives as he could, finally shuffled off his mortal coil, aged fifty-three.“That was young,” you may say. But I reply, “Not nearly young enough.” As we embark on what is sure to be an eventful year, it is worth pausing to remember the hideous legacy of that ice-cold totalitarian. What I have in mind is not so much Lenin’s butcher’s bill as his more general modus operandi. Estimates of the number of people Lenin had tortured, maimed and murdered vary, but are always well into the millions. But what is somehow even creepier is his model of government.
The fight between the far-left and the far-right has spilled over to a new battleground: Lego-themed social media quote accounts. This latest online trend has led to the creation of a dozen Lego-themed quote accounts which spread the wisdom of philosophical and political figures along with related pictures of Lego toy brick scenes. The fad seems to have started with the left-wing Ethics in Bricks account, which posts quotes from the likes of Karl Marx, Martin Luther King, David Hogg, Angela Merkel, and Jean-Paul Sartre to an audience of over 25,000 people across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. https://twitter.com/EthicsInBricks/status/1125005005457645568 https://twitter.com/EthicsInBricks/status/1134564760547205120 https://twitter.
