Acquitted on German hate speech charges in January, American playwright CJ Hopkins is being charged again for the same offense. He has a scary message for Americans
Even in the confines of Missouri v. Biden, the censorship encompasses nearly every 'big' issue of the day. The 2020 election, as well as the 2022 midterms. Vaccines, the origin of covid, as well as data of the virus itself. IT WAS ALL CENSORED. After that we saw censorship of Ukraine/Russia. It's extremely likely that issues are being censored right now and we're simply not aware of it.
It's not for your safety. It's not to ensure you have the 'right' information. It's not because Big Brother loves you.*
It's the product of a weak government -- by weak I just mean without any internal accountability. Instead of the governmental people being held responsible, we pay the price. When we complain about paying the price, they shut us up.
Essentially: if you act justly, then you don't have to shut people up. It's as simple as that.
It's the product of a failing system and people will run it into the ground because they're unwilling to stop and just ask whether or not the actions even achieve the results they claim they should. Again and again people are shown to be incompetent and this is their way of hanging onto their jobs rather than admitting they were wrong and maybe someone else could do a better job.
Just a simple fact to back up your statement- no one in the government has been fired or held accountable for the deaths of our 13 marines killed at Abbey Gate and what happened as we left Afghanistan. The directives for that day are lost on confidential papers that may never be discovered…we don’t DESERVE to know anything.
Absolutely! None of this is being done to protect us. They can say whatever they want about "dangerous" covid info, but the most dangerous event was to endanger us all by saying it came from a fucking pengolin! If the world knew it was about a 50-50, pangolin v bio weapon, I believe things would've been much different.
At some point we won’t ever be aware of it because if will be the only “news.” But as Winston Smith in 1984 recognized it wasn’t news - it was bulletins that made no sense and no one cared anymore. They had been trained not to question authority and to trudge on without complaint
Yup. Back when that was the order of things, I didn’t include myself in a binary, “anarchist” is the closest I came to a label, I thought of the Left as allies. The Right was pro government, pro corporate absolutism and that evolved into the corporatism that rotted out the whole game. The new Left aligned itself with that power structure thinking it can use it and is now a hostage/prostitute/sick in the head from getting food close to the noxious fumes. Both Right and Left depend on each other. Always have, which is how come I didn’t see the point of “joining”. It’s really important people wake up to the bankruptcy of labels. That bankruptcy has never been clearer than today so I am hopeful, although not about the near future. Power will not be relinquished voluntarily, as is obvious in CJ’s case.
Hans - are we the baddies? Shameful that MSM ignores critical stories about free speech. It’s up to all of us to cover them and support brave people like CJ.
Absolutely! As Benjamin Franklin said during the American Revolution, “We must all hang together—or, most assuredly, we will all hang separately.” Martin Niemöller’s famous comment about the early Nazi era is apposite as well. We all must stand up for CJ Hopkins and all the growing number of victims of government repression.
This is the “one world order”. I swear I used to hear this from what I thought was “crazy” people and now with this being so widespread I have to start believing something else. I don’t do social media. I had a Facebook account that I closed over a decade ago. Never Twitter and anything that has been created since hasn’t been even a thought. I don’t watch network newscasts anymore but will concede to reading newspapers with the NY Post daily and even that lately is getting to be a joke as they are pushing another narrative. I found Substack and Matt has been beyond refreshing. I give him big kudos for the monster brass ones he swings everyday. I guess we will be handing out underground newspapers soon. Better invest in an old printing press so I can do my part.
Loved mimeograph when I was in school we would get them hit off the presses and they would be wet with the chemical that it uses and every student would bring the paper up and smell it. It was a unique chemical scent and I heard you could supposedly get a “high” that was similar to what we called “locker room” or “head rush” basically the early form of huffing but it didn’t last more than 30 seconds. Oh. The old days.
It's certainly 'one world' in that it's coming from US based unipolarity, hegemony and tech companies on their West coast aka the military industrial petroleum pharma and media complex who want us afraid of a faceless NWO of control and depopulation rather than realising it is in fact their share holders dividends that are leading to us being manipulated and to info and opinions that they don't want us to see being buried.
Fortunately China and Russia are now Great Powers too and are starting to uphold International law over the Rules Based Order.
I make no comment on who is 'bad' and who is 'worse'. Merely that the unipolar moment is over and that there are now guys strong enough for people to listen to who want the rule of law, the UN and decisions such as to immediately cease committing a genocide to be enforced rather than for the US hegemony and its vassal states to continue to think and act as though they are above the law.
The problem as I see it is the bureaucrats and other government officials suffer no retribution for their actions. They are quite untouchable in the traditional sense. Were that not the case I feel certain such deeds would be few and far between.
I suspect the current censorship wave IS about Trump in the US, as it is about Brexit in Europe. But Trump and Brexit just brought to the surface, and legitimized in the eyes of the center-left elites, an inclination already deep in the DNA of the security states. Having surfaced with approbation, it will not end where it started, but will metastasize--and I use that word advisedly.
I agree. I think the Establishment needs the "disinformation" theater - the idea that "bad information" produces persuasion upon exposure that leads to "bad choices" (like voting for Trump) - to build a political world that makes sense, and to explain Brexit/Trump and the loss of faith in the decaying institutions of the West.
My thoughts are that we are in a period that the leaders of western nations have encountered problems they have no solutions to, or what they come up with are law-breaking solutions because they can’t keep themselves within the boundaries the laws provide anymore. Judges deciding they used the wrong statute to imprison people, but the answer is just to add more time to the misdemeanor offenses, national leaders signing on to the UN IOM agreement. What could go wrong? And sooner rather than later they find that much can go wrong, but there is no answer.
Re: the swastika, it’s like it’s only legal if you’re witty and people get it. If the populace doesn’t get it, you’re screwed.
Interesting piece from Tablet on the state of German politics, and how lawfare attempts to ban right-wing political parties, a la Trump, are backfiring around the globe:
But did you see the subversive smurf video? Those little blue freaks painted THE ENTIRE COUNTRY BLUE! That's DOMESTIC TERRORISM and WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.
It isn't just the fact that the government has sought to pressure social media companies to censor things, it is also that the pressure was applied through channels not immediately open to the public that is worthy of condemnation.
If the government has a good faith belief that something someone posted on social media could cause serious harm to those who are unaware, then it should state its objections or concerns publicly, transparently. Any communication from the government to a social media company, as has been shown to have occurred before, that is not simultaneously made public, should be treated as a violation of the law.
Fascism is sweeping the world, and the world loves it, loves bullying the rest of us. We'll soon be "too harmful" to be out in public, and will be put in "re-learning centers, to save us.
The headline says it all. The left and many on the right hate Trump, and they feel ANYTHING justifies getting rid of him. Even stepping all over our constitutional rights. It doesn't matter -- Trump is evil, Trump is a threat to democracy, Trump must be squashed by any means necessary. And they don't see that it can happen to anyone.
Right, I agree with him -- I'm just thinking HERE in the US so many people just think anything is justified because of Trump without thinking that they are willfully giving up their rights. But you're right -- it doesn't matter the issue, if you're on the opposite side of the government.
What is it about politicians? They always have a crowd of people around them when they make some announcement at a lectern. The clown from Canada has 12 people. Even the best quarterback in the world does not get that many! Does this add gravitas to the announcement or what?
That's probably the highlight of that staffer's whole day. They do the grunt work all day just to have the hand puppet in the pressed suit get all the credit.
No argument from me on your comment. But most of the time they look very glum. Maybe they have to stay after hours to be in the photo. One of life's mysteries, I guess.
The thing that really pisses me off is that this species of humanoids live among us. They are our neighbors. Their kids attend the same schools we send our kids too (assuming it is private schools). The ONLY thing different appear to be the college they attended and maybe their degree program.
I have said it before and I will say it again... it isn't the media that is the root cause of the problem... the state of the media is a symptom of a problem. The root cause is the collectivist garbage that has infested Western education. Why the hell do you think Ron DeSantis is such a focused threat of theirs?
If we want to save the world from this parasitic toxic mind virus of illiberal wokeism, we need to take the fight to the education system and weed out the garbage. Then it will take a generation or two to filter out the indoctrinated enemies of liberal democracy.
Let's start in the US and show the rest of the world the way.
When an extension of the British Empire our newspapers were either pro King or pro Colony. President Adams gave us the 1798 Sedition Act which made it a crime for American citizens to "print, utter, or publish...any false, scandalous, and malicious writing" about the government. The laws were directed against Democratic-Republicans, the party typically favored by new citizens. The only journalists prosecuted under the Sedition Act were editors of Democratic-Republican newspapers.
Sedition Act trials, along with the Senate's use of its contempt powers to suppress dissent, set off a firestorm of criticism against the Federalists and contributed to their defeat in the election of 1800, after which the acts were repealed or allowed to expire. The controversies surrounding them, however, provided for some of the first tests of the limits of freedom of speech and press.
The Sedition Act of 1918 was an Act of Congress that extended the Espionage Act of 1917 to cover a broader range of offenses, notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds.
While much of the debate focused on the law's precise language, there was considerable opposition in the Senate, almost entirely from Republicans, especially Henry Cabot Lodge and Hiram Johnson. Johnson defended free speech and Lodge complained the administration had failed to use the laws already in place. Former President Theodore Roosevelt voiced opposition as well.
The U.S. Supreme Court UPHELD the Sedition Act in Abrams v. United States (1919), as applied to people urging curtailment of production of essential war materiel. Oliver Wendell Holmes used his dissenting opinion to make a commentary on what has come to be known as "the marketplace of ideas".
Subsequent Supreme Court decisions, such as Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), make it unlikely that similar legislation would be considered constitutional today.
The USG no longer needs legislation to do what it wants. It has the Robes to back it up.
“Unhip” or so pathologically bound to be followers (of extremist people or rules) that they cannot allow anything that even vaguely threatens the almighty rules. Humor is often founded on breaking some rule, so of course humor is out.
I did a postdoc in Germany. One night I was leaving the lab very late (as the American post-docs were apt to doing) and I saw a local standing on the corner. Not only could you not see any traffic at 1 AM, you could not hear any traffic. Yet, he stood there dutifully waiting for the walk signal before crossing.
I have thought about that image many times since, and I marvel at that commitment to rules.
In Greece pedestrians cross the street whenever they think they can manage to get across without getting run over, regardless what the color the light or walk signal happens to be. We have to readjust whenever we're in Germany or the U.S.
Well, I suppose the Greeks are a bit crazy, but as Nikos Kazantzakis wrote, "Madness . . . is the salt which prevents good sense from rotting."
are you a New Yorker? Homeland of Jaywalkers! I remember my first visit to DC and being shocked at people waiting for the light when there was NO traffic! (I'm sure it's not that way now, but at one time...)
The doing the work yourself so you had three authors instead of twelve authors wasn't atypical of Americans. But as a postdoc, you're not really "living" yet. And as a German, there's always time for cake and coffee. (I have come to realize they had it right.)
Even in the confines of Missouri v. Biden, the censorship encompasses nearly every 'big' issue of the day. The 2020 election, as well as the 2022 midterms. Vaccines, the origin of covid, as well as data of the virus itself. IT WAS ALL CENSORED. After that we saw censorship of Ukraine/Russia. It's extremely likely that issues are being censored right now and we're simply not aware of it.
It's not for your safety. It's not to ensure you have the 'right' information. It's not because Big Brother loves you.*
It's about control.
*-https://twitter.com/ajlamesa/status/1769846947504967726
It's the product of a weak government -- by weak I just mean without any internal accountability. Instead of the governmental people being held responsible, we pay the price. When we complain about paying the price, they shut us up.
Essentially: if you act justly, then you don't have to shut people up. It's as simple as that.
It's the product of a failing system and people will run it into the ground because they're unwilling to stop and just ask whether or not the actions even achieve the results they claim they should. Again and again people are shown to be incompetent and this is their way of hanging onto their jobs rather than admitting they were wrong and maybe someone else could do a better job.
Just a simple fact to back up your statement- no one in the government has been fired or held accountable for the deaths of our 13 marines killed at Abbey Gate and what happened as we left Afghanistan. The directives for that day are lost on confidential papers that may never be discovered…we don’t DESERVE to know anything.
Absolutely! None of this is being done to protect us. They can say whatever they want about "dangerous" covid info, but the most dangerous event was to endanger us all by saying it came from a fucking pengolin! If the world knew it was about a 50-50, pangolin v bio weapon, I believe things would've been much different.
exactly, which was just as insulting (eating pangolins) to the Chinese people as Trump was by calling it the Kung Flu.
worse! At least Trump was funny!!
There is nothing more offensive to the humorless than a joke.
At some point we won’t ever be aware of it because if will be the only “news.” But as Winston Smith in 1984 recognized it wasn’t news - it was bulletins that made no sense and no one cared anymore. They had been trained not to question authority and to trudge on without complaint
.
Great news -- the chocolate ration is going up to 1/3 again!
Haha after being reduced by 1/2
Exactly... that’s how the Biden administration is defining the reduction of inflation.
Exactly.
You don’t understand. The right people are in charge. The old rules were for when the wrong people were in charge.
Yup. Back when that was the order of things, I didn’t include myself in a binary, “anarchist” is the closest I came to a label, I thought of the Left as allies. The Right was pro government, pro corporate absolutism and that evolved into the corporatism that rotted out the whole game. The new Left aligned itself with that power structure thinking it can use it and is now a hostage/prostitute/sick in the head from getting food close to the noxious fumes. Both Right and Left depend on each other. Always have, which is how come I didn’t see the point of “joining”. It’s really important people wake up to the bankruptcy of labels. That bankruptcy has never been clearer than today so I am hopeful, although not about the near future. Power will not be relinquished voluntarily, as is obvious in CJ’s case.
Really ?
Hans - are we the baddies? Shameful that MSM ignores critical stories about free speech. It’s up to all of us to cover them and support brave people like CJ.
Absolutely! As Benjamin Franklin said during the American Revolution, “We must all hang together—or, most assuredly, we will all hang separately.” Martin Niemöller’s famous comment about the early Nazi era is apposite as well. We all must stand up for CJ Hopkins and all the growing number of victims of government repression.
The baddies would have skulls on their hats or something..........
*awkward silence*
"Why skulls???" If you haven't seen the Mitchell and Webb sketch, I recommend it.
You can't suggest that and not link it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY
Great laugh! Thank you!
"Hans - are we the baddies?"
Yes.
This is the “one world order”. I swear I used to hear this from what I thought was “crazy” people and now with this being so widespread I have to start believing something else. I don’t do social media. I had a Facebook account that I closed over a decade ago. Never Twitter and anything that has been created since hasn’t been even a thought. I don’t watch network newscasts anymore but will concede to reading newspapers with the NY Post daily and even that lately is getting to be a joke as they are pushing another narrative. I found Substack and Matt has been beyond refreshing. I give him big kudos for the monster brass ones he swings everyday. I guess we will be handing out underground newspapers soon. Better invest in an old printing press so I can do my part.
I had exactly the same thought yesterday...except it was mimeograph equipment!
Loved mimeograph when I was in school we would get them hit off the presses and they would be wet with the chemical that it uses and every student would bring the paper up and smell it. It was a unique chemical scent and I heard you could supposedly get a “high” that was similar to what we called “locker room” or “head rush” basically the early form of huffing but it didn’t last more than 30 seconds. Oh. The old days.
The aroma of knowledge!
Samizdat! It might have to become a thing again. Harder to surveille.
It's certainly 'one world' in that it's coming from US based unipolarity, hegemony and tech companies on their West coast aka the military industrial petroleum pharma and media complex who want us afraid of a faceless NWO of control and depopulation rather than realising it is in fact their share holders dividends that are leading to us being manipulated and to info and opinions that they don't want us to see being buried.
Fortunately China and Russia are now Great Powers too and are starting to uphold International law over the Rules Based Order.
Jo Waller — This is a common fallacy: that because one side is bad guys, the other side must be good guys.
In this case, China and Russia are “worse guys”.
I make no comment on who is 'bad' and who is 'worse'. Merely that the unipolar moment is over and that there are now guys strong enough for people to listen to who want the rule of law, the UN and decisions such as to immediately cease committing a genocide to be enforced rather than for the US hegemony and its vassal states to continue to think and act as though they are above the law.
Lol, monster brass ones he swings each day! No argument here! We’re lucky to have Taibbi in our corner.
The problem as I see it is the bureaucrats and other government officials suffer no retribution for their actions. They are quite untouchable in the traditional sense. Were that not the case I feel certain such deeds would be few and far between.
I suspect the current censorship wave IS about Trump in the US, as it is about Brexit in Europe. But Trump and Brexit just brought to the surface, and legitimized in the eyes of the center-left elites, an inclination already deep in the DNA of the security states. Having surfaced with approbation, it will not end where it started, but will metastasize--and I use that word advisedly.
I agree. I think the Establishment needs the "disinformation" theater - the idea that "bad information" produces persuasion upon exposure that leads to "bad choices" (like voting for Trump) - to build a political world that makes sense, and to explain Brexit/Trump and the loss of faith in the decaying institutions of the West.
My thoughts are that we are in a period that the leaders of western nations have encountered problems they have no solutions to, or what they come up with are law-breaking solutions because they can’t keep themselves within the boundaries the laws provide anymore. Judges deciding they used the wrong statute to imprison people, but the answer is just to add more time to the misdemeanor offenses, national leaders signing on to the UN IOM agreement. What could go wrong? And sooner rather than later they find that much can go wrong, but there is no answer.
Re: the swastika, it’s like it’s only legal if you’re witty and people get it. If the populace doesn’t get it, you’re screwed.
Interesting piece from Tablet on the state of German politics, and how lawfare attempts to ban right-wing political parties, a la Trump, are backfiring around the globe:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/germany-far-right-stopped-afd-jeremy-stern
But did you see the subversive smurf video? Those little blue freaks painted THE ENTIRE COUNTRY BLUE! That's DOMESTIC TERRORISM and WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.
Quite the stretch…
It isn't just the fact that the government has sought to pressure social media companies to censor things, it is also that the pressure was applied through channels not immediately open to the public that is worthy of condemnation.
If the government has a good faith belief that something someone posted on social media could cause serious harm to those who are unaware, then it should state its objections or concerns publicly, transparently. Any communication from the government to a social media company, as has been shown to have occurred before, that is not simultaneously made public, should be treated as a violation of the law.
Unless you understand that our government is stating its opinion is never a suggestion to anyone.
Fascism is sweeping the world, and the world loves it, loves bullying the rest of us. We'll soon be "too harmful" to be out in public, and will be put in "re-learning centers, to save us.
Hillary already suggested that
That’s why she was so deplorable.
I hope some brave movie producers make a film about her to expose her evilness.
There'll be at least one less person to re-learn if it comes to that. Maybe two.
Kathy Mogul is awaiting approval for the Covid concentration camps. Anything is possible.
Damn spellcheck. I mean the current governor of New York.
I like "Kathy Mogul" better.
Those Covid camps already existed in Australia. People literally escaped from them.
Saw film of them. It's my recollection that escapees the were hunted down and re-interred.
That's right, I remember reading that as well. Australia was hard core on their methods of trying to remain COVID free.
Yes, but gay rights. That makes it okay!
Weed, alphabet stuff, and the holy sacrament of abortion are the only true liberties.
The headline says it all. The left and many on the right hate Trump, and they feel ANYTHING justifies getting rid of him. Even stepping all over our constitutional rights. It doesn't matter -- Trump is evil, Trump is a threat to democracy, Trump must be squashed by any means necessary. And they don't see that it can happen to anyone.
My friend, you don’t know enough people. Many long for competence in the Oval Office again.
Right, I agree with him -- I'm just thinking HERE in the US so many people just think anything is justified because of Trump without thinking that they are willfully giving up their rights. But you're right -- it doesn't matter the issue, if you're on the opposite side of the government.
Excellent point.
Those countries are getting away with their authoritarianism because of what they DON'T have (namely a 1st Amendment or something similar)
I think the Japanese Americans discovered exactly how much the Constitution was worth.
An employee of mine who is Native American has a poster in her office "Sure you can trust the government. Just ask an Indian!"
In response to your last 3 words; Understatement
The Germans (AKA nazi's) banned this. I suspect the current government are secretly Nazi's and will ban this again:
Die Gedanken sind frei (my thoughts are free)
We kann sie erraten (who can guess them)
Si fliehen wor bei (they continue on)
Wie nachtlichen schatten (like nocturnal shadows)
Kein mensch kann sie wissen (no one can know them)
Kein gager erschiessen (no hunter can shoot them)
Ich bliebe da bei (I believe it by)
Die Gedanken sind frei (My thoughts are free)
Things are not looking good... but thanks for keeping us abreast Matt.
What is it about politicians? They always have a crowd of people around them when they make some announcement at a lectern. The clown from Canada has 12 people. Even the best quarterback in the world does not get that many! Does this add gravitas to the announcement or what?
That's probably the highlight of that staffer's whole day. They do the grunt work all day just to have the hand puppet in the pressed suit get all the credit.
No argument from me on your comment. But most of the time they look very glum. Maybe they have to stay after hours to be in the photo. One of life's mysteries, I guess.
The thing that really pisses me off is that this species of humanoids live among us. They are our neighbors. Their kids attend the same schools we send our kids too (assuming it is private schools). The ONLY thing different appear to be the college they attended and maybe their degree program.
I have said it before and I will say it again... it isn't the media that is the root cause of the problem... the state of the media is a symptom of a problem. The root cause is the collectivist garbage that has infested Western education. Why the hell do you think Ron DeSantis is such a focused threat of theirs?
If we want to save the world from this parasitic toxic mind virus of illiberal wokeism, we need to take the fight to the education system and weed out the garbage. Then it will take a generation or two to filter out the indoctrinated enemies of liberal democracy.
Let's start in the US and show the rest of the world the way.
Fair enough Frank but I think climate is telling us that we may not
have another generation at this rate. Just sayin.
Mother Nature doing the culling. Happened before, no reason not to expect it to happen again.
When an extension of the British Empire our newspapers were either pro King or pro Colony. President Adams gave us the 1798 Sedition Act which made it a crime for American citizens to "print, utter, or publish...any false, scandalous, and malicious writing" about the government. The laws were directed against Democratic-Republicans, the party typically favored by new citizens. The only journalists prosecuted under the Sedition Act were editors of Democratic-Republican newspapers.
Sedition Act trials, along with the Senate's use of its contempt powers to suppress dissent, set off a firestorm of criticism against the Federalists and contributed to their defeat in the election of 1800, after which the acts were repealed or allowed to expire. The controversies surrounding them, however, provided for some of the first tests of the limits of freedom of speech and press.
The Sedition Act of 1918 was an Act of Congress that extended the Espionage Act of 1917 to cover a broader range of offenses, notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds.
While much of the debate focused on the law's precise language, there was considerable opposition in the Senate, almost entirely from Republicans, especially Henry Cabot Lodge and Hiram Johnson. Johnson defended free speech and Lodge complained the administration had failed to use the laws already in place. Former President Theodore Roosevelt voiced opposition as well.
The U.S. Supreme Court UPHELD the Sedition Act in Abrams v. United States (1919), as applied to people urging curtailment of production of essential war materiel. Oliver Wendell Holmes used his dissenting opinion to make a commentary on what has come to be known as "the marketplace of ideas".
Subsequent Supreme Court decisions, such as Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), make it unlikely that similar legislation would be considered constitutional today.
The USG no longer needs legislation to do what it wants. It has the Robes to back it up.
"it would make comedy or even sharp commentary impossible"
That has always been impossible for Germans. They are tragically, genetically unhip.
This reminded me of a joke, a version of which follows:
"Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks are French, the mechanics German, the lovers Italian and it's all organised by the Swiss."
"Hell is where the chefs are British, the mechanics French, the lover's Swiss, the police German and it's all organised by the Italians."
That's hilarious.
“Unhip” or so pathologically bound to be followers (of extremist people or rules) that they cannot allow anything that even vaguely threatens the almighty rules. Humor is often founded on breaking some rule, so of course humor is out.
I did a postdoc in Germany. One night I was leaving the lab very late (as the American post-docs were apt to doing) and I saw a local standing on the corner. Not only could you not see any traffic at 1 AM, you could not hear any traffic. Yet, he stood there dutifully waiting for the walk signal before crossing.
I have thought about that image many times since, and I marvel at that commitment to rules.
In Greece pedestrians cross the street whenever they think they can manage to get across without getting run over, regardless what the color the light or walk signal happens to be. We have to readjust whenever we're in Germany or the U.S.
Well, I suppose the Greeks are a bit crazy, but as Nikos Kazantzakis wrote, "Madness . . . is the salt which prevents good sense from rotting."
are you a New Yorker? Homeland of Jaywalkers! I remember my first visit to DC and being shocked at people waiting for the light when there was NO traffic! (I'm sure it's not that way now, but at one time...)
When a rule takes precedence over common sense you are officially an automaton.
That wasn't atypical of Germans. The living to work isn't atypical of Americans either.
The doing the work yourself so you had three authors instead of twelve authors wasn't atypical of Americans. But as a postdoc, you're not really "living" yet. And as a German, there's always time for cake and coffee. (I have come to realize they had it right.)
I worked for a german firm for some years.
Germans are obedient little rule-followers.
Ah, so this explains Techno!
Join us next time on Sprockets when we dance!
Most of the ones I’ve met are entirely humorless. It’s so common, it’s downright spooky. German comedians… prove us wrong.
Mel-- I've had some lovely humor-full German friends, but they were all artists/musicians/outsiders. The general culture can be repressive!
https://youtu.be/WYskoA5l3Dk?si=Yh-NLjzuLgr3cnDW
Or you can make funny jokes about it!!
We read Eugene Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros” in 11th grade at my HS in Queens. I thought it was the craziest, stupidest thing I’d read. Now I’m like, “😲” Oh.