Alan Bickley

propertyandfreedom.org/2026/… @propfreedom @GabbSean

I have long believed that all this focus on screen time, blue lights, distraction from cell phones, whining about people taking their computers etc. on vacations is just silly. I prefer my books on my computer partly because I can take a lot with me and search and copy and paste, useful as I actually read a lot and use and reference the material. All the people whining about screen time, being connected to your boss on vacation, getting "addicted" to social media or "doom scrolling," I just don't get it. This is all silly. Nothing wrong with reading on a computer instead of a paper book. So I agree with the recent LA column "In Defence of Reading from a Screen" ... although not sure why it needs a "defense." Who cares what the chittering masses thing. It doesn't need a "defense" or "justification" anymore than Objectivists need to bend over backwards to concoct tortured attempts to explain why it's ... okay ... to be ... nice to people. People need to stop the handwringing and resist the urge to "defend" normal practices one find's useful and natural just because scolds and bluenoses are always chittering away in the background like malevolent locusts. Ignore them. Be Roark. stephankinsella.com/2010/03/… "Objectivists on Benevolence" libertarianism.uk/2026/09/28… @GabbSean

unz.com/article/chronologica… libertarianism.uk/2026/05/31… Fascinating. Almost makes me wish I had done one of the softer humanities degrees like history instead of engineering or law. Naah. Not really. You can always read up on it. @GabbSean "There is a particular kind of intellectual temperament that finds established chronology almost impossible to leave alone. I touched on this in my earlier article on historical dating and the construction of chronology. Once you realise how much of ancient and medieval dating was assembled retrospectively—from regnal lists, synchronisms, king lists, astronomical observations, scattered inscriptions, and later harmonisation projects—it becomes difficult not to wonder whether the whole thing might shift under pressure. Historical chronology can look less like a finished cathedral than a giant scaffold erected over many centuries. Some people see this and become cautious. Others become intoxicated. The temptation is understandable. If chronology is assembled rather than handed down complete, then perhaps the assembly went wrong, or was even made wrong. Perhaps centuries have been duplicated. Perhaps whole civilisations have been displaced in time. Once that suspicion takes hold, every coincidence begins to look like evidence and every gap begins to look deliberate. The imagination starts to race ahead of the evidence. This impulse has a long history. One sees it in Isaac Newton’s attempts to compress ancient chronology. One sees it later in Nikolai Morozov and, in a much more extravagant form, in Anatoly Fomenko, who virtually dissolved Antiquity into the Middle Ages. Gunnar Heinsohn shortened whole civilisations into overlapping strata. Heribert Illig erased centuries entirely. The pattern is often similar. A real anomaly is noticed. A genuine difficulty is identified. Then, instead of treating it as a local problem, it becomes the key that supposedly unlocks all history. Laurent Guyénot belongs within this tradition, though perhaps now with increasing reluctance. His earlier work moved into some very radical territory indeed. Alexander and Caesar were treated as potentially fictional; Rome and Constantinople seemed capable of changing places in history; the first millennium itself looked unstable. Yet unlike many revisionists, he appears willing to retreat when evidence pushes back. He now accepts that Late Antiquity possesses a genuine chronological sequence and that some of his earlier ideas simply do not work."

Feud for thought from 25 years ago: “New Israel: A Win-Win-Win Proposal,” LewRockwell com (October 1, 2001) stephankinsella.com/2003/04/… recently: A Liberal Israeli Considers an Impossible Peace libertarianism.uk/2026/05/28… Israel v Palestine: Peace Through Compromise? libertarianism.uk/2025/07/31… nb @GabbSean

propertyandfreedom.org/2026/… @GabbSean @propfreedom