Jeff Russell

Now I can truly say "it is done!" I put together an overview of my thoughts on The Seed of Yggdrasill, both to synthesize what I put in my chapter-by-chapter reviews for my own thinking, and to make something a little more friendly for those who just want to get a feel for whether the book would be worth their time.

Even more than usual, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for coming on this journey with me!

I took a bit of time off from The Seed of Yggdrasill before tackling the last, fairly long chapter in order to read a book I thought might help me in my Heathen Rosary project: Spellcraft by Robin Skelton.

Though I mentioned it last time, I wanted to give a full post to the boast I am making for 2024.

Happy New Year, everybody!

We are getting so very, very close to the end of Seed of Yggdrasill, and I'm pretty glad about that. I know, I know, I likely carry on too much about how much of a slog it is, especially since I found some good stuff in this antepenultimate chapter. Some mostly repetitive good stuff, but good stuff nonetheless. Check it out and let me know what you think.

My sister in law got married yesterday, in Stockholm, so I am in the midst of some whirlwind international travel (we just got here the night before last and we're heading home early tomorrow morning). I'm also recovering from a properly festive, and late, evening, but I did take advantage of an unexpectedly long layover on the way here to knock out a quick post on a fairly short chapter of The Seed of Yggdrasill: The Way of the Wand Witch.

Since things for me will be literally up in the air the next day or so, I may take a minute to respond to any comments, but they're as welcome as always.

Tree of Woe's great posts on strategy have been very interesting and worth reading. Going through them has called to mind my own thoughts on strategy, which you can find here.

As we return to glorious standard time, where the sun actually reflects what time of day it is at this time of year, I have found myself with a nagging sinus headache all day, which hot compresses, eye drops, and copious hydration have done little to help. I blame Daylight Savings, and that brings me to the topic for this short placeholder post: Daylight Savings Delenda Est.

For those who were not the beneficiaries of a classical education, that is a play on Carthago Delenda Est, which is a shortening of Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam, a quote that means "Furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed," which was something Cato the Elder used to end every single speech he gave in the senate between the end of the Second Punic War and the beginning of the Third.

Anyway, I doubt I feel as strongly about Daylight Savings as Cato felt about the Punic Wars (or about anything - dude was intense), but I do think it's actually, legitimately bad and harmful. When it starts, kids have to walk to school or wait for buses in the dark. The shock of losing an hour of sleep and hard rebooting your circadian rhythm apparently causes all kinds of health problems, including a not-proven-to-be-causal correlation with an increase in heart attacks. Perhaps most importantly, but least directly, the very idea that we can and should unmoor time from the rhythms of the sun on which it is based is technocratic, modernist hubris of the worst kind.

All that being said, I'm a reasonable man. While my preference is definitely for eliminating Daylight Savings and going back to having standard time all year round, I am willing to settle for any solution that eliminates the time changes back and forth. If there's more political will around making it Daylight Savings year round and eliminating Standard Time, fine, I won't fight you too hard. Let's just get back to where the association of clock time and amount of daylight changes the way it should - slowly, day-by-day, as the seasons turn.

And so, Daylight Savings Delenda Est!

After a rather busy weekend featuring two children's parties, one adult party, pet care, and watching the kids for a girls' night out, I am again late in getting my post up this (now past) week, but here it is, my take on the next chapter of Kvilhaug's Seed of Yggdrasill.

Tomorrow's the fifth anniversary of my mom dying, and I thought I'd share some thoughts on who she was and what she meant to me.

If you've ever bumped up against the Church of the Subgenius, then you know "slack." I give my own take on what it means to me in my latest post.