May you come to the attention of powerful people May you live in interesting timesThanks for reading Lost Tempo! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. May all your wishes come true - Ancient* Chinese** Curse “In our ministry, there’s little work for me to do. Therefore, I spend most of my time on Twitter. We’re connected to speedy Wi-Fi and internet. Many mujahedin, including me, are addicted to the internet, especially Twitter.”
You’re on fire. Reminds me of one of my favourite pratchett quotes - “build a man a fire and he’s warm for a day, set fire to him and he’s warm for the rest of his life.” Building things is always harder than tearing them down. You can learn this in the building industry where a 20 tonne excavator can completely remove any sign that a house was ever there in about 4 hours if you’re not too picky about how your wrecked timber and glass is commingled with your wrecked masonry. Then it takes 3 to 6 months to build anything that someone wants to live in. There’s probably a useful ratio that can be extrapolated from that anecdote to figure out how long and hard the road the Taliban have ahead of them is. Every half day of destruction requires 3 months of building, how much time did they spend destroying things?
You’re on fire. Reminds me of one of my favourite pratchett quotes - “build a man a fire and he’s warm for a day, set fire to him and he’s warm for the rest of his life.” Building things is always harder than tearing them down. You can learn this in the building industry where a 20 tonne excavator can completely remove any sign that a house was ever there in about 4 hours if you’re not too picky about how your wrecked timber and glass is commingled with your wrecked masonry. Then it takes 3 to 6 months to build anything that someone wants to live in. There’s probably a useful ratio that can be extrapolated from that anecdote to figure out how long and hard the road the Taliban have ahead of them is. Every half day of destruction requires 3 months of building, how much time did they spend destroying things?