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Wednesday, April 01, 2020

In the Coronavirus Pornography of Horror Workers Are More Valuable Than CEOs

The Heart of April First Darkness has never been so dark. 

 Countries threaten jail for April Fools' Day jokes about coronavirus

 (Communists) They kill our fathers, our brothers, our friends. And now they’re killing our women. And here we sit, resigned, waiting our turn.
We cast the shadows of our emotions on others and they theirs on us. Sometimes we threaten to choke on them. But without them there would be no light in our lives.
~ Ancient Armenian grave inscription


It is also, or can be, a way to better understand ourselves. And toward the end she cites Kafka’s often quoted view that:

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?...We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more that ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”

 “A boring job can bring out the best in a person…Go onto automatic pilot, and let your brain keep ticking over.  When he developed the theory of relativity, Einstein was working in a patent office.  Boll was a census gatherer, and Bulgakov a country doctor…Borges was a librarian… Give an imaginative man a dull, repetitive job that puts him in contact with others…and there’s a strong possibility you’ll produce a Nobel Prize winner.”—Massimo Viviani, owner-bartender of the Bar Lume.

“Nowadays the devil no longer has horns, nor a two-sided cape, he no linger smells of sulfur, he doesn’t frighten us with his facade, but rather he does everything he can to make himself seem helpful and agreeable.  He doesn’t have, as one might think, the look of a huckster, nor of an eye-winking panderer, nor that of a jolly good fellow with an inexhaustible repertoire of spicy stories.  His appearance is always well-groomed, he wears double-breasted suits, his speech is refined…”


 Six months in jail, $11,000 fine for leaving home without a 'reasonable excuse’

The public health order gives police sweeping power to enforce the latest round of coronavirus restrictions.


Big Brother may keep watching when coronavirus pandemic passes


The very strategies that can help fight a plague can also be abused once it's over.



Actors Are Also Out Of A Job – All Of Their Many Jobs At Once

So what are they doing instead of booking, acting, producing, and bartending? Hosting livestreamed music classes for kids in the morning and asking watchers to donate $5 if they have it; building creative communities; and, well, kicking up the “coronavirus content” subgenre. – The Atlantic 


Let us remember their sacrifice a century ago


 Because if we don’t, who will? I consider myself quite well versed in history, and I am certainly disposed to honour those killed while fighting Communism, yet even I had barely heard of the Soviet-Polish war of 1920. I had not thought of it for years until reminded by a post by Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit:


       At nippon.com they profile Writer Ogawa Yōko's Stories of Memory and Loss -- mainly about the recently translated (but twenty-five-year-old ...) The Memory Police and the new (but not yet translated ...) 小箱 ('Little Boxes'). 
       And while there's an enormous backlog of works not yet translated into English we can (hopefully) look forward to, it's also good to hear about her next plans:
“Next I’d like to write a novel set in a theater.” As well as her enjoyment of plays, Ogawa notes that in the industry a theater is known as a hako, or “box,” and is isolated from the outside world with no movement between the stage and audience. “In the end, I always imagine the same kind of place,” she laughs. “I can write with a sense of reassurance about a space with a clear outline. I can’t write an adventure where characters break out beyond that.”

Epic trolling by the Czechs!


 · Eastern Europe · Russia

Prague renames square in front of Russian embassy after slain Putin critic Boris Nemtsov
Ok, that is pretty damn good. But this…
The Russian embassy in Prague did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the Russian Foreign Ministry comment on the move. Hřib said the embassy had not responded to an invitation to attend the renaming ceremony.

Emergency Nation: It’s only an emergency when the elites say it isSecurity Policy Reform Institute

 Viral Inequality Project Syndicate

‘White-Collar Quarantine’ Over Virus Spotlights Class Divide NYT. “‘This is a white-collar quarantine,’ said Howard Barbanel, a Miami-based entrepreneur who owns a wine company. ‘Average working people are bagging and delivering goods, driving trucks, working for local government.'” But it won’t be a white-collar pandemic, will it? Thread from Chris Arnade:


Account Vice. Oh.

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