And one day when we flee
From our sweet misery
And shed our human costumes then
Revealing somewhat smaller men
Go off to work and then back again

In authoritarian societies, restricting education serves a purpose as a sort of anesthesia for the minds of the people. Solzhenitsyn, describing the few years just before the Great Terror of 1937 started in the Soviet Union, mostly from the perspective of a political prisoner (from Volume II, Chapter 4 of the “Gulag Archipelago” which can be found in its entirety on the web, in The Archive):

And the clock of history was striking. […] The Great Leader (having already in mind, no doubt, how many he would soon have to do away with) declared that the withering away of the state (which had been awaited virtually from 1920 on) would arrive via, believe it or not, the maximum intensification of state power! This was so unexpectedly brilliant that it was not given to every little mind to grasp it, but Vyshinsky, ever the loyal apprentice, immediately picked it up: “And this means the maximum strengthening of corrective-labor institutions.” […] And this was not some satirical magazine cracking a joke either, but was said by the Prosecutor General. […] All this was printed in black on white, but we still didn’t know how to read.¹ The year 1937 was publicly predicted and provided with a foundation.
And the hairy hand² tossed out all the frills and gewgaws too. Labor collectives? Prohibited! […] Professional and technical courses for prisoners? Dissolve them! […] Graphs, diagrams? Tear them off the wall and whitewash the walls.

1 My take: The author and his peers most definitely knew how to read, but they could not fully comprehend what was being published because of its, at that time, unparalleled egregiousness.
2 Certainly the one of Stalin.

Tangentially related, he once said: “I had a German tell me one time, he said, the two pillars for us are NATO and the EU. NATO is for life, EU is for quality of life.” I wonder how that’ll play out in the near future.
EDIT: corrected link.

From the depths of history, Vasily Grossman once again:

One of the most astonishing human traits that came to light at this time was obedience. There were cases of huge queues being formed by people awaiting execution – and it was the victims themselves who regulated the movement of these queues. […] And it wasn’t merely tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, but hundreds of millions of people who were the obedient witnesses of this slaughter of the innocent. Nor were they merely obedient witnesses: when ordered to, they gave their support to this slaughter, voting in favor of it amid a hubbub of voices. […] What does this tell us? That a new trait has suddenly appeared in human nature? No, this obedience bears witness to a new force acting on human beings. The extreme violence of totalitarian social systems proved able to paralyze the human spirit throughout whole continents. A man who has placed his soul in the service of Fascism declares an evil and dangerous slavery to be the only true good. Rather than overtly renouncing human feelings, he declares the crimes committed by Fascism to be the highest form of humanitarianism; he agrees to divide people up into the pure and worthy and the impure and unworthy. The instinct for self-preservation is supported by the hypnotic power of world ideologies. These call people to carry out any sacrifice, to accept any means, in order to achieve the highest of ends: the future greatness of the motherland, world progress, the future happiness of mankind, of a nation, of a class. […] The violence of a totalitarian State is so great as to be no longer a means to an end; it becomes an object of mystical worship and adoration. […] Another fact that allowed Fascism to gain power over men was their blindness. A man cannot believe that he is about to be destroyed. The optimism of people standing on the edge of the grave is astounding.

No, I’ve been afraid before.

🎶 What’s love but a second hand in motion. 🎶

Very difficult to immerse yourself into these, though, because of their density being about 2x that of the human body.

You’ll completely float on mercury, and cesium does no good to your body. Like, at all.

At least early Christianity is in many ways socialism. Remember the feeding of the 5000 with “five loaves” and “two fish”?
The true meaning is that there will be plenty if everyone shares. That’s the real miracle.

When the true king’s murderers are allowed to roam free, a thousand magicians arise in the land.
Where are the feast we are promised?

(Jim Morrison, An American Prayer)

Kinda like H2S, I guess. You can sense its putrid smell it in the range of 0.47 ppb to 100 ppm, then your olfactory nerve becomes paralyzed. Just when you think the gas is gone, there’s a 50% chance of you dying at 800 ppm. Years ago, I read about a “mysterious deaths” case in which H2S was the main suspect because of this stealthy property.

Moving rapidly, more like.

Thank you for the clarification, SatansMaggotyCumFart.

W.T.F.

I agree with everything you wrote, but I don’t think they carved up only Ukraine in that phone call. At least all of Europe, possibly the entire world.

Amazing book, btw. Like one long fever dream.

Kind of like coprolites, don’t they?

• Your former school teachers die. At this point, I think the majority of mine is gone.
• Your gum recedes, and there’s nothing you can do about it except to stop smoking. On a larger scale, your circulation gets worse because your erythrocytes become less elastic, for reasons still unknown. Add to this the most damaging impact of UV light and our atmosphere’s oxygen - an objectively very aggressive chemical - and you start shriveling, just withering away from the outside. Molecular bonds are simply getting broken faster than they get repaired. Your insides last a bit longer, but their days are numbered, too.
• On the plus side, you’ll get to learn new words for body parts you didn’t even know you had.

Ain’t it brutal? They say if you haven’t started balding at age 40, you probably never will, but I’ve known several people with a full head of lush hair at 40, and in their early fifties, it’s all gone to hell.

Someone needs bigger pants.