LifeItself

I hope that the face of this boy being arrested in Moscow for demonstrating against the regime is the symbol of the future Russia. Getting detained at the ripe age of 10 or 11 must have been a defining moment in the life of this young man. To me, it does not look like he was soaking in the constant barrage of propaganda that became much worse by January 2022.  Most internet links between Russia and the world are now severed, and over 80% of all Russians get their daily propaganda poison pills from state TV.  No independent media outlets are left in this Soviet Union 2.0 Putin is erecting. Narodonst ' (the little people or "Prols" in the "1984" nomenclature.) must now march in lockstep, as they have had to for the last eight centuries, starting from the Mongols, and with a short, unhappy pause in the 1990s. Let me then take you back to the old Soviet Union 1.0 and its vassal state, the communist Poland that controlled most of my life prior to 1981.  Here are the ...

Many people ask me how can I be happy writing and thinking about so many sad and desperate things? Well, let me explain. Happiness is the fleeting rush of dopamine I feel seeing my little grandson, my wife or children.  As good as it might feel, it comes and goes. Think, please, about the happiness you purchase by sharing with your "friends" on Facebook a picture of a new pair of pink sneakers. Or think of the happiness you bring to your partner by giving her/him a bouquet of roses on the Valentine day. You probably never pay attention to over a billion roses  which are imported that day for your bouquet.  They are flown refrigerated on transport flights from Columbia, Ecuador and Mexico.  Once these cold roses land in Miami, they are rushed to other refrigerated planes and trucks, so that you can get them from a store refrigerator anywhere in the US.  The energy cost of your bouquet is absolutely ginormous, but it is worth another minute or two of dopamine r...