Cultural Traditions

~ Clarissa ~ 3 Comments

This is a complete misunderstanding of:

  1. Cultural differences;
  2. Life in small villages in Eastern Europe.

Everybody in the village turns out to mourn when a fellow villager dies. People don’t carry photos of deceased family members. Somebody else in the community carries the photo to show that the entire village perceives the loss as theirs. This is Western Ukraine, and it has its own set of funeral rites hallowed by centuries of tradition. That one boy has the community-approved role of being responsible for carrying the portrait when somebody dies is normal. He’s probably one of the altar boys in the local church. If the deceased soldier had a son, the son’s role is to be next to the mother and take care of younger siblings, if any. Nobody would ask him to leave the mother’s side. It’s just not done.

The reason why family members aren’t asked to carry the portrait is because you don’t give tasks to bereaved relatives. It’s considered extremely rude. The community congeals around the bereaved, and everything you need to get done during the first nine days is done for you. You don’t need to ask. Everybody has their role and fulfills it.

What is even the suggestion here? That there’s no war? That these soldiers didn’t die? It’s been four years. Are we still at the stage of proving to morons of Glen Greenwald’s caliber that the war is real?

Good News

~ Clarissa ~ 20 Comments

Two good pieces of news to start off our day:

  1. The New York Times has officially walked back its support for marijuana legalization.
  2. The government is preparing to revoke the mandate on stop-start engines in cars.

These are great things that should be celebrated.

Grieving for Canada

~ Clarissa ~ 8 Comments

A terrible school shooting took place in British Columbia, Canada. Thirty-five people shot, ten of them died.

What needs to be investigated is what medications the 17-year-old shooter was on so that this entire protocol must be banned. Of course, this will not happen, and all we will hear is that he was “mentally ill.” In the meantime, the same protocol will be prescribed to more people, creating “mental illness” and inflicting the consequences on everybody.

Friendly Overture

~ Clarissa ~ 1 Comment

The new janitor was extremely standoffish. Didn’t respond to any attempts at light-hearted banter.

But then I mocked “two weeks to flatten the curve” and we are now great buddies.

A Sliver of Hope

~ Clarissa ~ 2 Comments

Ukraine got a sliver of a chance when everything seemed really hopeless. Thanks completely to Elon Musk. I’m totally buying a Tesla if I get rich.

A Different Time

~ Clarissa ~ 2 Comments

CΓ©line, of course, wrote this on purpose to give Γ‰dith grounds for divorce. They had already been separated for a while at that time and there was no question of them living together. The letter is a legal trick. The writer’s second marriage to Lucette Almansor was happy. She outlived CΓ©line by decades, dying at the age of 107.

My point is that people don’t know historical realities and draw baseless conclusions. The letter is not evidence of hostility but, to the contrary, a friendly gesture from CΓ©line to his ex.

The Worst of the Worst

~ Clarissa ~ 25 Comments

I am deeply tired of this ridiculous narrative. Who decided that only “the worst of the worst” should be deported? Citizenship doesn’t mean that non-citizens are evil. It means they are non-citizens.

Even in an issue as minor as the running of the classroom, I’m not allowed to have anybody in the classroom who hasn’t officially signed up for the course. Not because we suspect such students of being “the worst of the worst” but simply because they didn’t sign up. This is how it works for pretty much everything. Why shouldn’t it work the same for citizenship?

Why are we spending so much time discussing whether the deportees have criminal records or whether crossing the border illegally means breaking the law? None of this matters. The goal should be to preserve citizenship as a meaningful concept because it’s an important civilizational achievement. Many of the things that we value about our civilized existence become impossible without citizenship.

Let’s discuss concepts and not personalities. Let’s not drown in the individual and instead talk about the collective.

Barren Bunny

~ Clarissa ~ 20 Comments

The problem with Bad Bunny is that he’s not talented. There are crowds of people doing this kind of music who are enormously more talented. Bad Bunny is the remodeled Blue Bar at the Algonquin of the Latin musical scene. He’s the Jaguar rebrand. He’s trying and failing to reproduce what the music is actually like. His corporate-style, soulless performance is barren.

The genre itself is actually pretty great. But have you noticed how it’s always the most mediocre, deracinated, and barren look, feel and sound that get promoted these days?

These are products for people who want to face a cement wall and recite passionate ideological speeches at it. They don’t want to see human faces. They don’t want to have conversations. The new Blue Bar is not a place of sociability. It’s where you sit alone, staring at monthly projections on your screen and ingest alcohol in an industrial, joyless manner.

Another Great Quote

~ Clarissa ~ Leave a comment

Just a bit more Jonathan Shedler and I’ll stop:

When someone begins a comment with β€œAs a therapist…” it’s a safe bet that what follows is not established knowledge in psychology, or about psychology at all.

It’s a linguistic stratagem to claim unearned authorityβ€”usually for a self-serving agenda like self-promotion, virtue signaling, or maneuvering for the upper hand.

Don’t be taken in. β€œTherapist” is not a credential, and actual knowledge speaks for itself. It doesn’t wrap itself in manufactured authority.

Again, it doesn’t have to be solely about therapists. It’s like when you are on Twitter, and somebody says something cute about their pet fish, and somebody else always pipes up with “marine biologist here!” and shits all over the cute fish anecdote. Don’t you hate such people and their credential-waving?