All right, today I have discovered a series of graphic novels that I thought would be a treat to read. Turned out, they are also a trip. And this is amazing.

Written by the French writer Benoît Peeters and drawn by the Belgian artist François Schuiten (ultimate francophone creative duo), these graphic novels (or comics, if you prefer this term - I personally do not) take place in a parallel universe, on a huge planet with one continent. In the first book we follow Franz who got a mission to find out what the fuck is happening in Samaris - a city quite far away from his native Xhystos. He is not the first to go, because other people sent there never returned. 

If the annotation sounds good, please read it. If you can’t find the book, use this page - it is the first part of in-depth review from 2011 by Julius Darius and a piece of art in itself

Alas, spoilers, sorry, need to get it out of my chest. And no "click here to read", because it is my messy way of life. You are warned.

Mary Mother of Jesus, this was awesome! 

First of all - architecture is a hallmark of entire world-building, visually and linguistically. For example, Xhystos - native city of Franz, is probably derived from architectural term xystus - a covered portico. This whole city is based on art nouveau/art deco at its finest which also concerns the societal mores of the applicable historical period. On the other hand, Samaris is not a city per se, but a simulacrum, a huge machine, that includes people performing same parts daily. Windows are walls, walls are breakable construction material, streets are the Golden ratio of sameness. 

What happens to Franz is called "Samaris fever" - he ends up feeling strange and upon learning the "real" Samaris, escapes it only to find out, that his native city has gone far away in time. This fever describes the space-time confusion and I find it a genuinely complex and beautiful idea. The last thing we as readers see is a page from a book, where Samaris is pictured as an eye of a vortex - I bet you a chocolate bar, that this is a time-vortex and has something to do with a) the machine as the city, b) the size of the planet or c) something that will come up in later stories. Won’t be surprised if the authors found inspiration in Einstein’s relativity. 

Another thing that struck me was Xhystos - it resembles Vienna of 19th century in terms of bureaucracy. It is a simulacrum itself, because after getting back with Franz (a very Viennese name by the way), we see that the Council - ruling body, are not real people, but cardboard figures, well, at least one we are shown, and it is not clear wether this is objective truth, or subjective hallucination of Franz. No wonder he founds it all vexing and leaves for Samaris again, saying he should have never left. Vortex.

I am sorry if it all sounds chaotic, but this story is just mind-blowing. I have read it in the original French just now and can’t wait to start the next book!

Some people use horoscopes or magic balls or dice to decide on something they don’t want to decide themselves. I have been relying on "probability" in the sense of using the first picker wheel google has suggested. For years.

Today I used my spider-tingling autistic pattern recognition curse talent to decide on something very scary and important. The default set of outcomes is 4 on this website, look what happens:

See the pattern? If we started on the specific field in the even cases, we land on exactly the same cases.

I tired the odd numbers, the opposite happens - start with no, end on yes and vice versa.

To sort-of quote my new favourite mini-series "The Other Bennet" on BBC: happiness is in our own hands.

I do have a funny feeling some evil rules of combinatorics are at play, but this is not my part of math, I am more of an Analysis girlie, so the mystery remains mysterious.

P.S. It will look like a disaster if imported, because all those shades of grey are actually red, blue, green, etc. 😂

So, last week I managed to read and thoroughly enjoy my first Astérix in the original French. It is another story how this enterprise became possible, now I just want to share some linguistic treasures from this book:

1) les romains y perdent leur latin: don’t worry, they were just baffled, they did not loose their Latin

2) the opposite: faire sursauter, to startle somebody

3) marmite: I was asking myself, why not chaudron or something, till I stumbled upon the wikipedia article on marmite - like, the content of marmite was supposed to be a secret 😏

4) instead of red lines the ancient people were crossing les bornes

5) quès acco = qu'es aco = késaco = What is this?! - a latinised play of words/languages

6) air - tune

7) Kaï! Kaï! Kaï! - woofing by a small dog

8) avoir un poil dans la main - to be lazy

There is a whole thesaurus of hair jokes in this scene, and somehow, it is not even necessary to catch the meaning, just see a word related to hair and laughing out loud is guaranteed

9) goinfre - a word for pig used to describe somebody greedy

Reading this was sooo much fun! I have already bought the next three books, so give me any sort of sign if anybody is interested in such short lists of curiosities. If not, I will post anyway <3

I have had the most stressful evening today. After trying to purchase a case for an upcoming delivery of a very special e-ink tablet, amazon has decided to have some beef with me.

For context - they have been denying the purchases of ebooks recently and today they kicked me out of logged devices and apps - kindle and audible included. Then came a request to change password, which I obliged to, but it turned out that all my downloaded books were not downloaded anymore. The same with audiobooks. And dictionaries.

I quickly turned Viwoods AIPaper mini into an offline back up for everything, so I won’t loose my library, at least. The 4 ebook preorders-orders for the year were all cancelled without notification. 

Such a nice situation, eh. The reason might be me not being the perfect customer - I only subscribe to prime once or twice a year for a month and this May they have charged for the new cycle with this thing actually being cancelled three weeks before. 

For the past couple of months, I have been using other sources for ebooks - numilog for French (the app is horrible, though) and ebooks.com, but still the biggest chunk of my digital library came from Bezos. Well, not anymore. The Universe has spoken and I don’t want to wait till these guys close my account. I have more than 150 books in total, many used for re-referencing stuff, so these licences are important to behold. As it is not possible to calibre the fuck out of kindle books anymore, there was no choice other than to "brick" a whole device (which is actually good for the battery, won’t lie).

The story with the case is interesting, though - I found it on another website for more than half the price. So it all made me think a bit harder and come to a decision to avoid amazon for good. 

It used to be cheaper and more convenient, but not anymore. 

There is a whole other level of unethical and barbaric working conditions, which I tried to ignore and now am ashamed of. Should have purged it all earlier.

P.S. the guys on Reddit have been most helpful and suggested some other cool resources for ebooks, merci beaucoup ☺️ 

P.P.S. Asterix stuff had to wait, hopefully, tomorrow will be a bit more merciful in terms of time.

Again, this overview would not be possible without the press my library provides online <3

Guardian x2: How Europe’s translators are fighting against the rise of AI and That sinking feeling, a.k.a The unloved European leaders.

The first article concerns the use of AI in translation, the correct term would be machine translation btw. How it has sort of improved in the last years, but still not up to the task. The change of translators’ jobs is tragic indeed: instead of translating the text from scratch, some of them need to spend the same amount of time on correcting the machine version while being paid half of what they got before. 

I have been around book industry for a while now and the question of using generative AI has been hot ever since. My take? Screw AI. I have learnt Machine and Deep Learning and still see those as very useful tools, but generative trash is not welcomed in my life. I even argue weekly with my parents, who have eagerly embraced this abomination. If you are curious, this blog contains 0% of AI content, not even spell-checks. I own my mistakes. 

(There is another adjacent article in the New Yorker of “automated writing”, like it is nothing new. It is definitely nothing new, my only question concerns motivation - it is easy to see why automating a useless e-mail can be fair, but why on earth some people are outsourcing creative writing?)

As a dessert, a machine translation of a sentence from another piece of media featured this week with a small dictionary entry to clarify the situation. Again, abomination.

The second article is a funny and a sad one at the same time - most of the political leaders, be it prime ministers or presidents, are very deeply unloved by their people. The writer tries to soften the blow by saying that the times are unprecedented, which is very nice and true, but it doesn’t justify the incompetence of some of the mentioned politicians (I am looking at you, F.M.) and the mere inability to state and communicate goals. Let me be naive here for a sec - it does seem like these elected people in power have no idea what they are doing. And instead of being open and sincere, they fake it till they don’t make it. 

Dear European leaders, people are not stupid and/or have kindergarten level of understanding the world. You get what you give us (I am still looking at you, F.M., I’ll be looking at you until Vertaruensfrage). 

L’Obs: Moi, Souleymane, diplômé, en CDI, sous OQTF

Before we dive in: 

CDI: Contrat à durée indéterminée, employment contract without the end-date, unbefristed for my fellow Germans 

OQTF: Obligation de Quitter le Territoire Français, obligation to leave France

Mon Dieu, this was too much. 

All right, Natacha Tati writes about a specific case of a specific person who is being ordered to leave France despite having his whole life there. She also paints a very grim picture of bureaucracy and motivation behind this whole enterprise. 

As a naturalised person, I feel any of such stories too close to heart. If you have never been an immigrant anywhere, you’re just unable to comprehend this existential dread.  

Souleymane, a man in his 30s, has been through a lot to get where he is now, but it is still not enough - the judges, sympathetic listeners, still deliver a horrible punch in his gut. 

The word kafkaesque was mentioned in the article and there is no better alternative to describe this circus (well, this is an alternative). I notice that governments talk about migrants more when they are threatened with any kind of voting, but the apparatus they have built in the recent years is beyond comprehension. An army of civil servants of all kinds, lawyers preying on people in distress, sorry, I cannot. This tendency becomes worse every year, but, please, notice, who are concerned in this discourse. The main character in the article is not a Sven from Sweden (apologies to any Svens offended by this remark). 

My last take is a personal anecdote: my family is very racist. Unbearably so. Growing up it is inevitable that children, at least in the beginning, share views they are brought up with. So imagine my surprise as an 6-year-old, who learns from an encyclopedia about Great Migration ca. 300 CE in Europe. The rabbit hole was deep. How the fuck can anyone be against migration, while we are all descendants of migrants? If you feel your status quo threatened by incomers, then your status quo, pardon my French, is merde. 

t.a.z.: Weg mit den Bundesländern!

This is a funny coincidence - this week I was fuming while doing the dishes, that there is no sense in living in Europe and not having access to TV in other European languages (VPN helps, but the situation is still comical). And here writes the t.a.z. about this being a nice idea, along with the dismantling federal system in Germany. 

If we are being serious, German federalism is not an invention of 1949, nothing has practically changed since the Middle Ages, with a couple if unsuccessful historical hiccups we need to learn from.

Hard enterprise, because then the politician and civil servants will loose their jobs, so they don’t want it, but, according to history, nothing is permanent. 

But yes, once you move from Berlin to any other place, it feels like a new land, which is annoying. I do miss NRW, though.

Cherry on top: You Are Living In An Economic Fairy Tale by Barry’s Economics on YouTube

This video-essay made me sob. 

In short, Barry talks about how children animation has already given us the orientation in who the bad guys are. But we grow up and participate in an unfair system and accept it as it is. 

Don’t want to spoil anything, this video is worth your time, please watch it!

P.S. Tomorrow comes another piece of media, that requires a separate post - I have read my first Asterix in French and there are some interesting nerdy linguistic things I’d like to share. Now this was an accomplishment! 

Sounds a bit dramatic.

Yesterday I had to go into town to take care of some papers. For context - I recently left my 9 to 5, so there is plenty of time to eat oneself with future prospects or with the lack of those. I took the opportunity to visit Modulor -  a famous art supply shop in Berlin - to buy some paper for letters. After finding the right size and colour there was nothing to stop me from wandering around and looking at nice things. In the “Textbook” section there lay the last copy of a book on graphic novels - an old passion of mine. I took it, looked through it, put it back, went around other tables, got back, took it again, looked at the price, put it back, went to the markers’ wall, got back, took it for the last time and went to the cash desk. 

Today I have been flipping through the pages, looking at some french BD online (there is a post coming in a couple of months about two of those) and thinking, how cool is it to be able to tell stories visually. My head has been bursting with ideas since I quit antidepressants couple of months ago. Long story short, I have started googling the courses on illustration. Found one. Started one. The last several hours I have been researching the material necessary for the plot. 

My head is fuzzy. Heartbeat elevated. I smoke one rolled cigarette after another. Go back to the internet to learn more about graphic novels. My room is in mess of papers and books I have adjacent to the theme. More books ordered. Following advice from the course, moodboard is saved online. 

I have been drawing sporadically since childhood, mostly cartoonish character. Never learnt the anatomy or perspective or light. I have zero pencils at home, only a tablet with Procreate. Can my idea potentially be monetised? Don’t think so. Is there a way to actually draw something, tell a huge story and find the audience? Don’t really care. What I have realised, is that I want to study graphic novels academically. For the last five years it was clear, that I’ll have to get back to university one day, but I wanted to find something meaningful, not like the last time, when the acceptance in the uni was the most important factor (after 4 wasted years I have lost my English and cannot for the love of God call myself a proper linguist, we did nothing of this science there). I have already found the right program and was just thinking about what it is I really want to explore. Turns out, the visit yesterday solved this problem. I know what I want to study academically now. Not in the bachelor years, of course, however, who knows. But as a proper nerd, I cannot allow myself to go for the theory alone. I would love to first try the practical aspect to understand what one has to look for, how these works are created. Get the hands dirty, so to speak.

Looking at the watch, it is time to drink some herbal tea and go to sleep, if this is manageable in such an animated state. 

P.S. I am still reading "The History of Christianity", but as the classical planning fallacy demands, the thematic quarter will be longer than expected. Still infuriatingly interesting topic!

*Huge amount of thanks goes to Olly who featured my post about media in his blog <3*

There are many people who have stable and healthy relationship with tracking their data. I am not one of them.

And exactly the tracking lies in the heart of both Goodreads (to be honest, in any comparable application/website) and smartwatches. They allow one to look back on personal performances be it number of pages read or hours slept. This drove me mad.

I had been using Garmin for years solely for sleep&sport stuff, like steps done, km ridden, calories burnt, stages of sleep. The more sport I did, the more anxiety I got from all this data. There was even no need to compare the stats with other people, my own numbers had made me feel quite inadequate. The anecdote goes, that once you wake up in a good mood and then look at your watch, that aggressively says your sleep was garbage, you believe it. At least, I did. And this small thing could ruin the whole day. And it did it way too often.

The same goes for Goodreads. Pressure to read more, and now due to gamification and challenges to read specific books, can quickly spiral one down. I generally dislike social media, but the one with embedded competition is a nightmare. The quality of books made way for the quantity and this is a known problem. People want to hit their reading goal, tis natural. At one point it is highly likely that it becomes the sole purpose, though. You read to complete or compete and not to enjoy. 

Data in general can be abused for flexing. There are no tangible metrics for things like humour and kindness, but there are numbers of watts while pedalling or how many book you can finish in a month. This gives feeling of accomplishment and worthiness, while we all forget that the numbers give us only the part of the part of the part of the jumbled puzzle. There are instances where a good Garmin is necessary for serious training, or a reading statistics helping to maintain personal archive. These things are not inherently bad but neither are they good. These are tools. 

One of the problems of our society’s that tools change their role and become ubiquitous. I bet you cannot imagine, how people used to live without smartphones. Or how they rode bikes without GPS. Or how they stayed fit without knowing HRV. I asked myself these questions and got some funny insight - sometimes we invent problems to sell solutions. Is it really nice to have a gimmick on your wrist that bullies you to move? Yes, but the trade in is losing the ability to hear one’s own body. Does having a proof of reading 100 books/year elevate your social status? On the platform itself and social media probably yes as well. But is boosting your ego constantly seriously makes your life better? After being stuck in this situation, my answer is no, those are not long-term benefits. 

Do I suggest that you ditch your Garmin for a Casio as I did it? Nope 🙃

Is the aim of the article to make you delete your Goodreads account? Again, nope 🙈

But I wish that more people could genuinely ask themselves, why they use this or that thing. What does it bring? And if one notices stress and rising anxiety, that they could pinpoint the stuff that sips the fun out of life. For me it was all kind of stats. The only number I am a slave to is my salary, and it is more than enough in this timeline.

I get all my articles via local library on Libby or PressReader. As a press junkie, those sources are a blessing, VÖBB, I love you 🤟 

The Old Guard by Samuel Moyn (Harper’s)

There is a common problem in politics - too many old men in power. It shouldn’t be necessarily the government, though it is, but also the voters and those who have amassed a certain amount of wealth and thus gatekeeps change. The article focuses on the USA, but the same situation can be seen around the world. I have observed it in Germany many times. Quite scary, actually.  The people who run the show they have no stakes in anymore (sorry if it sounds harsh) are, unfortunately, not allowing younger people into decision-making. Look out of the window to notice the consequences. 

Celebs’ irritating book clubs (The Economist)

Long story short - famous faces sell. Parasocial relationships are real and we somehow tend to trust the celebrities, like Dua Lipa, to tell us which books are good. And they turn a solitary hobby into a social one.

Sorry, I did not like this article, as I don’t understand the hype behind celebrities trying so hard to carve themselves the status of intellectuals. Well, now I sort of understand, but still cannot accept it. 

En Bretagne, suivez le druide by Guillame Tion (Liberation) ❤️

What promised some serious beef with people who abuse RSA (welfare system in France) turned out to be a very deep and fascinating dive into contemporary Druid culture. Yes, there is such a thing!

On the first look, these people do not fit into a neoliberal order we all suffer from right now, but as I always say in recent years, the worth of a person should not be determined by productivity.  These druids create a community free of charge, but the price is honesty and devotion to the cause. 

Was really happy to read this one!

Le big bang du diagnostic tardif by Cécile Deffontaines (L’Obs)

Topic that has hit home - last year I was diagnosed with autism at the age of 29. The article focuses on people above 40, but we all have the same problems. Having it hard to fit in even in one’s own family, not knowing what is wrong, seeking answers - been there, absolute hell. Something tells me, that the more common diagnostics can become, the more people will find out, that they are neuroatypical. Can’t wait for the discourse to shift, because the contemporary status quo of the world leaves us overboard. 

Guardian writes about cars being not a good thing for anybody.

Instead of the article, I can wholeheartedly recommend the YouTube channel of CGN - Cycling global Network. They have already made several reportages (I’d rather call them documentaries) about this problem with a particular stress on bikes vs cars. I have also found a book on this topic: “Life after cars” by Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon. Haven’t had the chance to read it, but looks promising. Fuck cars (with exceptions, of course, I am not naive).

GCN 1 and 2 videos

Eurovision 2026 🎶

You can hate it as much as you want, but I have been a ESC aficionado since 2004. I was bloody 8 year old back then. Yes, most of the songs are that bad. Yes, it is political. Both things have always been there. I am there for the show and music, as some songs live in my playlist rent-free ever since I heard them during the finale. I never watch the semis and never listen to the songs before, this is a tradition. And yes, I might sleep on 31.12, but I will never sleep on the Eurovision night. 

Not ashamed of it, even proud. So let’s move to some observations (man, I even made notes this year!!):

Vienna is a very rich city in terms of culture, so it wasn’t surpising to see the orchestra. Plus with the recent scandal when a young prominent Hollywood actor said something stupid and everybody took it out of context, there were many instances with opera clearly influencing the songs (take France or Romania plus several overs). Music in the Postcard section was a piece of art and I’d love to find it!

All in all, this year wasn’t particularly strong, some entrances were decent in terms of choreography, some had strong vocals (Poland!) and refreshing messages (UK). My problem is, that many songs overall are being created to become torn up by TikTok edits, so that they do not sound coherently anymore. But this is Grandma in me speaking, it is just a new form of culture, which is inevitable. 

A good thing: more and more countries decide to ditch singing in English and it works perfectly! Albanian number and lyrics made me cry, that hasn’t happened for a while. This is the diversity I personally ask for:

The presenters:

M: talks about rules in French

S: I couldn’t have said it better!

M: Si!

Eurovision, apart from huge problems, is about a night full of partying and legacy. 70 years of it. You can boycott it, you can snobbishly say, that the composers of 19th century would have had a heart attack, but Eurovision is still there. There are still people like me, who Shake It once a year in May. It is emotional and I want it to stay this way.

P.S. the memes on Reddit rose to the occasion before the livestream was ended :D

P.P.S. Had more time this week and watched the French adaptation of Monte-Christo (2024) - they have changed things that did not age well and left the rest with love alone. Highly recommended!

So, after testing this idea for a week, I can assure you that we are sticking to it.

Idea: read books on specific topic for 3 months (a quarter of a year, fiscally speaking) 

I have amassed a number of books on Christianity because of curiosity. My English tutor did his job very well and “converted” me to atheism at the tender age of 12. The culprit was the book “Gadfly”. The train of thought was simple: if the institution was so evil, then the idea behind it (the religion) is meaningless. I have developed a more profound understanding of this world-view since, but curiosity remained. Nothing to justify or to defend, but the cultural and societal impact of Christianity is enormous to this day. 

Thus I have decided to pick several books on this topic and read only those in the upcoming months. As a classical mood reader, this is quite a challenge. On the picture you might notice “I”, as the first thematic quarter, but perfectionism is not welcomed here, so we’ll see, how it works long-term, will there be a "II"? Plus 3 months are arbitrary, I don’t really care how long it might take. This is a passion project, not a prison sentence. 

I started with the general overview by Diarmaid MacCulloch (thank God - pun intended - this is a blog and not a YouTube channel, as I have no idea how to pronounce the name of this really formidable scholar) and have managed to read through the first 3 chapters this week: the impact of Antiquity, the impact of Judaism and the story of Jesus. This non-fiction is a piece of art, I am laughing out loud when the author allows jokes. But the scope is mind-blowing, though it is clear, that if one wants to go deeper, one needs to read additional literature. So it happens that my ebook hoarding finally bears fruit. 

There are two particular areas that are of great interest for me: Papacy and History&Culture. Can’t explain how it happened. 

Anyway, will continue reading and sharing progress here, stay tuned, if you want :)

P.S. Upon googling the pronunciation of Diarmaid MacCulloch‘s name, I stumbled upon his BBC documentaries. It will be cheating to watch them now, so I’ll finish his book first. But hey, I now know how to say his name correctly!

I almost never buy physical books anymore. The only exception: they are not available as ebooks, which mostly concerns literature in my mothertongue. What's more, some of those books are written and published by "enemies of the state". In this case, I never think twice:

And, as a rule of thumb, it is preferable to buy indie, so I order such precious paper bricks at Babel Books Berlin. The hand-written card is always there and it makes me believe in humanity again, such small and nice gesture!

The book on the left is the second updated edition of a non-fiction by an iranist about Iran. I read the first one a couple of years ago and want to see how much has changed. The one on the right is about British fantasy, once my special interest at high school. This book is visually absolutely stunning, no regrets that it has no ebook format.

This "haul" stands no comparison with those done on booktok and booktube, but it has indescribable value.

Late to the party, but I have just catch up with the second trailer for the upcoming myth adaptation and it looks like they have decided to h&m everything. Visually bland; casting with their American accents is, I do beg you pardon, generic; the snippets of writing in the trailer sounds more like a ChatGPT trying too hard. If you have recently (in the last 10-15 years) been to H&M or any fast fashion shop or website, you might have noticed many shades of beige and grey with façons being copy-pasted across market.

Original Odyssey is fun. Odyssey is adventure. Odyssey is gods being gods and humans being humans, and sometimes gods being like humans, too. If you have never read Homer, I highly recommend the audiobook by Stephen Fry, he did it justice. His whole quadrilogy did Ancient Greece justice. In comparison, I doubt that Nolan will include the part where Odysseus had to wear a dress of a princess. The audacity of the probability of skipping it, but I just don’t have the faith anymore. Heroes in dresses and the long faces do not go hand in hand, unfortunately.

Don’t know about you, but I would like to see colour, passion, remarkable characters instead of another reincarnation of Game of Thrones in its last-seasons-dying-agony. Sometimes art is not about pretentiousness, like the more serious something is, the more credibility it deserves. NO. Bronze Age was distinct - just go and check any suitable museum’s archive. Homer‘s (or whoever actually did it) story will live on, while this movie will be forgotten by the end of summer.

Rant over, thank you for your time!

There has been an idea going on in my head for some time: what if instead of just consuming media, I collect it and write about in on Sunday. Let’s try.

die Zeit (🇩🇪)

There is a very interesting interview with Paolo Benanti, the technological advisor to the Pope. The main idea is quite simple: the technology is fine, but the abuse of it by people needs to be addressed. The premise was, who could have thought, the American president and his misuse of AI-generated pictures, that have long crossed the border of blasphemy (this guy will be mentioned later once again, sorry).

As a hardcore atheist, I can’t help but have some interest in what has been happening in Vatican. A side-note: the comparison in media of the first year of Pope Leo and the first year of Friedrich Merz’s chancellory is a subject in itself. Go, Pope, I guess at this point. Tomorrow I am starting a 3-month project about reading everything I have on Christianity. Again, I am an atheist albeit a curious and an open-minded one. 

the Guardian (🇬🇧)

A very funny article on the visit of King Charles III to the former colonies. The bell from HMS Trump as a gift and the “And should you ever need to get hold of us, well, just give us a ring”. Pure British humour, and I mean it as the highest compliment. 

How come that the world made such a turn, that a monarch (Guardian spares no criticism btw) has to talk about democracy in a manner of a school headmaster. But it can happen in a timeline, where an elected leader thinks himself a king/emperor/God. Trump has no respect for anybody, we know that much, but his childish adoration for an institution where choice of participants is based on pure luck and genetics is astounding. That reminds me of how post-soviet boomer generation has undying love either for Stalin’s dictatorship or the tsars themselves. Not a single critical thought - pure emotion. 

The stark difference between the reception in the White House and the mood in New York further dives into the contemporary ideological divide. TikTok star (I do like his videos) and the Mayor of New York holds true to the principles of the Fathers of the American Constitution, by telling that if have had a chance, he would have asked Charles to return Koh-i-noor diamond from the Tower of London to India. I imagine such conversation being potentially rather awkward for some of the party. But hey, despite Charles being not that bad, the times have changed, maybe one day the diamond will be returned at last.

In the end the author of the article David Smith (the most British name ever, ironically) had to deliver the final punch in the face of Trump that was pure joy to read.

YouTube: Meduza (rus: there is no emoji with a white-blue-white colour)

An interview about social media with a developer who worked on the mobile side of aforementioned platform. Logically, he was in between of pride and shame. On the one hand, back in 2007 nobody could predict how algorithms on mobile platforms will turn us into slaves. On the other hand, he noticed very (and I mean it - VERY) early, how dangerous it is for the children to be left alone with tech unsupervised, just because parents are tired. 

Don’t know what to think there, the history will judge the big tech later, though the first glimpses of condemnation are started to appear.

📚: “London Falling” by Patrick Radden Keefe

I do not like true crime more because of the ethical uncertainty about being curious of gory stories, but this book is different. We all have seen the meme with the guy and the red threads suggesting a conspiracy. Well, justifiably, there is sort of one surrounding the death of a 19-year-old young Londoner. I have no desire to spoil anything from the book, just know, that is is an extremely deep dive into the milieu of con-artists and the influence we have from the ultra-wealthy and from damned social media. It might sound like a salad of topics, but it is immensely well-written. You might want to save time and read the original article in The New Yorker, but this book is definitely worth your attention.

I adore how she makes everything herself! The atmosphere of darkness and tragedy, the light, the poses, she is amazing! Her initial idea was the collar and somebody wrote that they see Elizabeth I, which is undeniable. However, I cannot unsee something of the Mary Queen of Scots, so for me it might be both in the end.

Hence, the blood.

Could not resist to draw, but that doesn’t do this lady justice

p.s. No AI, just Procreate and a bunch of True Grit brushes