We talked about smuggling back in Year Six, but there’s more to illegal commerce than that.

Laws and policing aren’t only about damage to property or personal safety. There’s a whole subset of the enterprise which is devoted to safeguarding —

Although much of speculative fiction likes to concern itself with continent-spanning empires and colonies orbiting far-distant stars, I want to drag our focus back down

Having raised the specter of imperialism last week, it’s time to talk about the common counterpart to the empire: the colony.

We touched very briefly on empires last week — just long enough to defer the question. Now we’ll look at it in more detail.

In recent years of this Patreon I’ve attempted to achieve some kind of consistency around what terms I use at what times to refer to

When it comes to blood sacrifice — animals or humans — the logic is the unchanged from other forms of the practice. Nothing good comes

One of the most widespread practices in religion, especially in prior ages, is sacrifice.

There’s sanctification, and then there’s being an actual saint.

It’s almost axiomatic that religious things are different from secular ones. Over and over again, we see the dichotomy of the sacred and the profane

We’re nearly done with our discussion of mental health because I’m nearly at the limits of what I can talk about with any kind of

When it comes to looking at the treatment of mental illness and disability throughout history, all too often, the simple answer is “there was none.”