• Manjushri@piefed.social
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    11 hours ago

    This gives me hope that my plan to teach local ravens to say “Target acquired” will someday be successful.

  • PugJesus@piefed.socialOPM
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    11 hours ago

    Explanation: The Romans were very fond of omens, and wise merchants could take advantage of that fact. When the Emperor Augustus returned from one of his harder-fought battles, he was met by a man who had a raven - which immediately greeted Augustus with ‘Hail Caesar, victorious commander!’ Augustus was tickled pink by this, and probably regarded it, as any upstanding Roman would, as a good omen to be greeted by such a trained bird (Romans LOVED taking any odd occurrence as an omen), and paid 5,000 denarii for the bird - the equivalent of over 20 years’ pay for a common soldier! (one might compare it to $400,000 in the modern day)

    Obviously this was a VERY CIVILIZED BIRD! AVE CAESAR!

    • Ininewcrow@piefed.ca
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      9 hours ago

      Business idea … train a dozen ravens to say … ‘Heil Hitler!’ … sell them for $50,000 each to neo-nazis

      If these idiots are this dumb … it’s an easy way to make money

      • PugJesus@piefed.socialOPM
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        9 hours ago

        I was going to say “You’ll have to first train the neo-nazis to have a superstitious veneration for coincidence resembling pre-modern societies that don’t understand weather patterns”, but then I remembered they’re neonazis, and that’s probably a checkbox they already have filled.