Fire gutted Brazil’s most important museum yesterday, destroying 200 years of the nation’s history.  According to news reports, the government had been starving the National Museum for years, allowing it to fall into disrepair. This paragraph stopped me cold:

At the scene, several indigenous people gathered and criticised the fact that the museum containing their most precious artefacts has burned down seemingly because there was no money for maintenance of hydrants, yet the city had recently managed to find a huge budget to build a brand new museum of tomorrow.

Now there’s a metaphor for our time.

UPDATE: From a Brazilian: