There is a strange new kind of silence spreading across the web, and it doesn’t sound like censorship. It doesn’t come with warning banners, deleted pages, or officials knocking at the door. It is quieter than that, almost polite. You publish. The post exists. The link works. Nothing stops you. And yet the world passes by as if your words are a streetlight in daylight—still on, still burning electricity, no … Read the rest
I don’t enjoy writing this kind of essay. It is the intellectual equivalent of cleaning a greasy kitchen: necessary, unpleasant, and guaranteed to offend the people who insist the smell is “authentic tradition.” But if we’re going to talk honestly about political extremes, you don’t get to treat one side as a dangerous cult and the other as a quirky hobby. Extremes are not philosophies. They are stress reactions with … Read the rest
When I was a young lad long ago in the bland, faceless, smugly prosperous America of the 1950s, I had an itch to be somewhere else. As I heard the expression put first on the TV series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, I would indulge myself regularly in a game called “Anywhere but Here.” The Germans have a beautiful word for it: Wanderlust.
But … Read the rest
Content advisory 16+ Back in the days when bottled water first appeared en masse in America, I recall that a lot of people just shook their heads and mused: “What will be next? They’ll start selling us air?” And everyone would nod in amusement at such a preposterous notion.
Well, muse and smile and nod no more. IT’S HERE !! So, today, as a follow-up to my blog posted Friday … Read the rest
Контент 18+ No doubt social media have discussed and dissected all aspects of the latest government act of censorship, in this case, the satirical film “The Death of Stalin.” So there is no sense in my following redundancy with more redundancy. I will limit myself therefore to what I hope will be a few more or less original thoughts.
First, I guess it is good that in Russia people still … Read the rest
