Quotations

"I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, ‘The Beatles did."

Kurt Vonnegut


“I don’t have fun. Actually, I had fun once, in 1962. I drank a whole bottle of Robitussin cough medicine and went in the back of a 1961 powder-blue Lincoln Continental to a James Brown concert with some Mexican friends of mine. I haven’t had fun since. It’s just not a word I like. It’s like Volkswagens or bellbottoms, or patchouli oil or bean sprouts. It rubs me up the wrong way. I might go out and have an educational and entertaining evening, but I don’t have fun.”

Tom Waits

“Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace.”

Eugene O'Neill

“You've got to bear it in mind that nobody that ever lived is specially privileged; the axe can fall at any moment, on any neck, without any warning or any regard for justice. You've got to keep your mind off pitying your own rotten luck and setting up any kind of a howl about it. You've got to remember that things as bad as this and a hell of a lot worse have happened to millions of people before and that they've come through it and that you will too.”

James Rufus Agee

"Our unwillingness to see our own faults and the projection of them onto others is the source of most quarrels, and the strongest guarantee that injustice, animosity, and persecution will not easily die out."

Carl Jung

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Without magnetism we should never have discovered America; to which we are indebted for nothing but evil; diseases in the worst forms that can afflict humanity, and slavery in the worst form in which slavery can exist. The Old World had the sugar-cane and the cotton-plant, though it did not so misuse them. Then, what good have we got from America? What good of any kind, from the whole continent and its islands, from the Esquimaux to Patagonia?
Mr. Gryll. Newfoundland salt fish, Doctor.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. That is something, but it does not turn the scale.

Thomas Love Peacock's Gryll Grange (1860)

Tom Gallagher's reading of the Romanian election

Tom Gallagher, the leading historian of modern Romania, published this an hour ago on Twitter/X.

In Romania twenty years of presidential elections show you are doomed if you win the first round.

The success of the underdog, Nicusor Dan, with no party affiliation, and fighting a David v - Goliath battle as mayor of Bucharest, rested on the fear of city-dwellers that his uncouth opponent would wreck everything.

The main city in counties won by George Simion - Arges, Braila, Botosani, Neamt, Tulcea, Vilcea etc swung behind his moderate opponent because of the fear that material progress of the last few decades would disappear in an era of international confrontation and domestic strife .

Romanians are fed up and definitely keen to punish rulers who stole systematically and neglected to fix elementary problems. But they are also keenly aware how fragile their economic well-being is.

Simion's failure to speak about economics showed him to be dangerously unreliable among hardheaded voters who liked all or some of his nationalist message.

His zest for travelling up and down, and across Europe during the campaign, showed the super-patriot to be bored by the condition of the country.

This was an electrifying moment for Romania after 35 years of mainly stagnation by politicians, the kindest word to describe them being insipid.

A real debate about the direction of the country and what should be the priorities to focus on in troubled times and a war-torn part of Europe ensued this spring .

Behind his gentle demeanour, President Dan is a tough cookie, stubborn and resourceful.

He needs to bury the sense of betrayal left by his predecessor, the parasitic Saxon from Sibiu, Mr Iohannis and use his powerful office as an engine of renewal.

Otherwise, the ultras will soon be back, next time with a performer far more slicker and dangerous than the wretched Mr Simion.

The ultras will be certainly be back with someone better. Their time will come but it has not come yet.

I posted Tom's remarks on Facebook. The reply that impressed me was this from a young Romanian novelist.

Nicușor isn't an underdog, a tough cookie nor an independent. He's the puppet of the establishment. The elections are illegitimate after the December '24 cancellation. He represents the fiercely pro war EU establishment, and acts upon his commands obediently. He's also been an exceptionally bad mayor of the capital city.

I agree with most of that but also with most of the comments of Tom (who is fiercely pro the Ukrainian war although fiercely anti EU). 

I know nothing about what sort of man Nicusor Dan is.

I do know that the presidency is not usually very important but it is now, when the Prime Minister has resigned and the President has to arrange a new coalition government.

 

Romanian presidential election

By 7 p.m. local time 610,000 Romanians abroad had voted, almost double the number at the same time during the first round. 100,000 (sic!) have voted in the United Kingdom and almost that number in Germany.

This makes me think Dan Nicușor will win. Most voters who want Simion voted last time.

Quotations

"At what point will Israel say their revenge is complete?" Ha'aretz journalist Nir Hasson yesterday, while tweeting a censored image of a man holding a limb of a child in the aftermath of an attack in Gaza. Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz is very much more critical of the IDF than any Western mainstream paper 


"The administration is working on a plan to permanently relocate up to 1 million Palestinians from Gaza to Libya...for which the US would potentially release to Libya billions of dollars that the US froze over a decade ago." NBC news item


"Ukrainian intelligence officials said Russia appears to be gearing up for a larger offensive, moving forces to key hotspots on the battlefield..." Financial Times four days ago

"Most men die at 27, we just bury them at 72." Mark Twain
William James thought people become old fogeys at 26 but I think intelligent people aged between 28 and 30 are what make every country.

"If your government invites people in who are dangerous, or makes no effort to distinguish between the dangerous and the safe, doesn’t that show that they don’t care about you in the least?" Kathy Gyngell

"To be alive at all is to have scars." John Steinbeck

"'Praeposti sumus, et servi sumus; praesumus, sed si prosumus.' We are put in charge and we are servants; we possess authority, but only if we serve. There is no room in Augustine's concept of authority for one who is self-seeking and in search of power over others." 30 year old Fr. Prevost's doctoral thesis

“Only as a man surrenders himself to Divine Love may he hope for salvation, and salvation is open to all who surrender themselves.” Dante Alighieri


"All in all, the Romanian situation exposes a terrifying truth at work in European politics today: democracy is celebrated only when it produces the "correct" results. When voters choose candidates deemed unacceptable by the political establishment, suddenly the democratic process itself becomes suspect, allegedly compromised by "foreign interference" or other conveniently vague threats." Arnaud Bertrand talking about Romania


"Netanyahu wanted to attend Pope Leo XIV's inauguration ceremony but decided against it due to concerns over enforcement of the arrest warrant issued against him by the ICC." Ynet, Israeli news site

“A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying — to others and to yourself.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Conversation

FischerKing

@FischerKing64

·

May 13

Modern popular novels have less description of natural surroundings. They don’t describe travels through terrain of ‘jagged rock and pointed crags.’ They focus more on the minds of characters in humdrum activity and describe modern homes. Interacting with older novels (19th century and before) will get harder as people can’t personally relate to naive relations with natural surroundings. These books will become harder to read not because they’re complex - but because they describe something so divorced from modern life.

73K

Steve Sailer

@Steve_Sailer

Jerry Pournelle talked about this: his readers already have all the images they could want, whereas Tolstoy's readers wanted him to conjure up images in their minds' eye because they couldn't afford real pictures.