The Perry Index is a widely used index of “Aesop’s Fables” or “Aesopica”, the fables credited to Aesop, the storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC. Modern scholarship takes the view that Aesop probably did not compose all of the fables attributed to him indeed, a few are known to have first been used before Aesop lived, while the first record we have of many others is from well over a millennium after his time. Traditionally, Aesop’s fables were arranged alphabetically, which is not helpful to the reader. B. E. Perry listed them by language (Greek then Latin), chronologically, by source, and then alphabetically

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Index

The Wagner group “is not a classic private contractor; it is … an unofficial arm of the Defense Ministry,” said Ruslan Leviev, whose Conflict Intelligence Team studied the clandestine Russian deployment in Syria. He said Prigozhin was the right person to take up the task,” compared to any other oligarch of Putin’s.” Evro Polis, a company linked to Prigozhin, signed an agreement with Syria’s state-owned General Petroleum Corp., which gives the Russian company 25 percent of the proceeds from oil and gas production at fields its contractors capture and secure.

The Russian mercenaries fighting in Syria said they are not in the country for the money or to help Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “[Syrians] can’t stand Assad,” one Russian mercenary commander told RFE/RL in March 2018. “Really. Only a tiny percentage of the population there supports him and the rest oppose him. Only [Russian President Vladimir] Putin supports him. Russia supports him — no one else.” There is a bigger motivation, the mercenary claimed. “If you are fighting under a Russian flag, with a Russian weapon, even if you are eating moldy food and are 10,000 kilometers from home, you are nonetheless fighting for Russia,” he said. “There is no Syrian war,” he added. “There is no Ukrainian war. There is only a war between the Russian Federation and the United States.”

https://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/russia/vagner.htm

n neoteny (/niːˈɒtᵻni/ /niːˈɒtni/ or /niːˈɒtəni/, also called juvenilization), the physiological (or somatic) development of an organism (typically an animal) is slowed or delayed. Neoteny is found in modern humans.

This site has been sat here, sadly still-born, for the last two years. Like all new years ambition it’s success is subject to perseverance over time so we shall see how this pans out.