Taft

AskSN

For me, it's kinda like this:

>Freedom comes when you stop needing the approval of others. I’ve seen so many people lose themselves in trying to be accepted, in their need to be liked by everyone.

>But the truth is, no matter how much you try, there will always be someone who doesn’t like you. So instead of trying to please everyone, learn to please yourself.

>Live your life with the awareness that you don’t owe explanations to anyone—only to your own conscience.”

— Anthony Hopkins


I learned it the hard way...
The more I tried to please everyone, the more lost and trapped I felt. 

What about you?

What does true freedom mean to you?

ideasfromtheedge

The sky was a palette and the sunset was mixing every shade between red and orange. Across from me, a woman under a beach umbrella took out her phone. She was trying to catch the fire in the sky. I looked further and saw three, maybe four others doing the same.

Facebook culture, I thought. Instead of living the stillness, they rushed to capture it — to pass it on. Some, maybe, were moved by kindness: let distant friends enjoy it too, those stuck in hot, dusty cities.

Others had different reasons. Some wanted to say: *look at me, how deeply I feel the world, how beautifully I freeze it in a frame.* And others — well, they wanted to show they were *someone*. 

Reasons vary. But one thing is certain: a sunset over the sea, on a quiet summer evening like this, holds something that brushes the edge of the magical.

Maybe it’s the colors — dozens of warm shades born from the playful mix of red and orange and gold. Then it spreads, reflected on the water, setting it all ablaze. But more than that, it gives the moment a beauty, a gentleness — like two lovers sitting quietly, in perfect accord.

And it stands out. All day, the sky had been plain. No change, no story. Just a summer sky. But now dusk was moving through, dragging shadows between the trees, brushing the ground with a deep blue — nearly black — that made the fire above stand even brighter.

Perhaps the spell lies in the symbols. Sunset is the end of day. But in your mind, it becomes more. The end of everything. Dying, leaving. And still — it’s a soft goodbye. A beautiful one. One full of space and tinged with longing. And it promises return. Morning will come. And you wish this kind of ending for yourself, and for all those you love.

Still, the magic of sunset may have little to do with ideas. It may not come from the mind at all. Maybe it rises from the body, not the brain. From feeling, not thought.

Because the sunset brings a moment when reason slows down. When thinking fades into sensing. When you feel you are slipping out of yourself, melting into the world. When the beyond feels close.

To escape the tyranny of logic and rest in the stillness of feeling — that, perhaps, is the real crossing over.


Why don't people just chill and watch the sunset?

What great advice do you give that you yourself don't follow?

k00b

I have a bit of a talent for painting (at least that's what people who know about art have told me after seeing a few things I've painted), and I keep telling myself that I should take it seriously and work on it every day—but I just don't follow my own advice...

> when I am bored at night

Me too. I've been telling myself for three months that I need to stop eating sweets, but I still haven't managed to do it

In my modest opinion, one of the greatest pains a person can experience isn’t hunger, poverty, or even death, but to love in a world that doesn’t recognize it. To give your heart fully, only to find emptiness and silence in return.

Humans carry a big contradiction within them: they seek love even as they fear it; they long for closeness yet run from it; they adore another yet grow resentful toward them. 

I wonder:
Is love a test of our strength or a scandal of our weakness?
Is the loneliness we flee from simply the natural consequence of unrequited love?

What is the deepest kind of pain a human being can endure?

For me, it's wasting my precious time in this world on meaningless things. 

As I get older, I realize that wasting time on dumb stuff is a huge waste, and I regret it.

It's hurting more and more each day. 

What about you? 

What do you believe is the most tragic form of waste in your life?

BooksAndArticles

Last night I started watching ***One Hundred Years of Solitude*** on Netflix, a Colombian series based on the homonymous novel by Márquez. I watched the first two episodes, but I’m not sure if I’ll continue. Why? The experience feels far too faint compared to what the novel stirred in me decades ago.

There could be a number of reasons for this. First of all, it might be the difference in rhythm between reading and watching a film. Reading allows for a personal pace, letting you pause, imagine, reflect. This flexibility creates space for deeper exploration and enables more vivid emotional experience. In contrast, a film unfolds at a predetermined pace, which often leaves little time for meditation or immersion — and as a result, you can end up skimming the surface.

There seems to be another factor at play. Literature enables you, the reader, to be a co-creator — allowing you to form your own images and grasp messages in your own way. This personal contribution enhances emotional resonance and your connection to the world of the novel. In film, although visual images can create a powerful atmosphere, they also limit the viewer’s imaginative engagement, since the director’s vision is imposed — often reducing the space for individual interpretation.

The fact that Márquez’s novel belongs to the genre of magical realism perhaps makes it even harder to adapt to the screen. With words, one can more easily and effectively blend the real with the fantastical — something that’s harder to do with film images, or at least not always done successfully.

This leads to another point: between Márquez’s genius and the director’s (and their team's) capabilities, there seems to be a wide — perhaps even natural — gap.

The reason? Either geniuses of Gabriel García Márquez’s stature appear only rarely — or good directors are becoming rarer and rarer.


Márquez deserved better — Or is that just nostalgia talking?

Albert Camus writes:

The Christ came to solve two principal problems, evil and death, which are essentially the problems of rebels. His solution consisted first of all in taking on their condition. The God‑Man suffers also with patience. Evil and death are no longer absolutely imputable to him inasmuch as he suffers and dies. The night on Golgotha has so great an importance in the history of men only because the divinity, ostensibly abandoning its traditional privileges, lived through to the end the anguish of death and of despair.


This quote does not imply that Camus believed Jesus was God who became man. But in context, it is understood that if the story of the New Testament is taken as credible, then — according to Camus — Christianity would have provided a sufficient answer to human agony and suffering.

As someone who believes in the story of the New Testament, I believe Camus summed it up well.

What are your thoughts? 

Christ’s answer to the Camus's rebel questions

Politics_And_Law

The Israeli-American strike against Iran’s ayatollahs ended much faster than expected. This is good news—ceasefires and peace have almost always proven to be far better solutions than war. But the news gets even better: day by day, it becomes clearer that this short war has indeed damaged, to some extent, Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

Still, it turns out this wasn’t just a short war—it was also a strange one: there were only winners, and no losers. At least on the propaganda front, all three warring parties have, over the past few days, crafted their own victorious narrative.

1. Iran’s Narrative

Iran claims the ceasefire came as a direct consequence of its strike on the largest American base in the region. It’s a classic peacock-style claim, puffed up far beyond the reality. The aim is to tell the Iranian people that the ayatollahs’ regime is strong enough to stand up to powerful armies and nations, forcing them to abandon war and make peace.

But when you put this delusional claim side by side with reality, you’ll see far more feathers than flesh—in the end, the propaganda peacock is reduced to a mere chicken leg. The strike on the Al Udeid airbase—the largest in the region—was more symbolic than strategic. In fact, reliable sources report that Iran had warned the Americans beforehand, allowing them to evacuate soldiers and military equipment in time.

Despite its obvious propagandistic nature, the ayatollahs' narrative seems to be working in their favor: it has sparked a wave of near-universal nationalism, strong enough to somewhat dampen the widespread dissatisfaction with the regime.

2. Israel’s Narrative

Israel has also released its own victorious narrative. To be fair, Israel may indeed be the actual winner of this war. After weakening Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Iranian allies in the region over a two-year period, it carried out aerial strikes against Iran that damaged, at least partially, its nuclear infrastructure and killed a significant number of high-ranking military officials and scientists involved in uranium enrichment. And as the cherry on top, Netanyahu managed to draw the Americans into the operation.

Still, Israel’s narrative also contains more feathers than flesh—more propaganda than reality. The damage to Iran’s nuclear infrastructure isn’t as extensive as Tel Aviv claims. Moreover, Israel’s air defense systems didn’t live up to the myth long constructed around them. As a result of Iran’s missile attacks, Israel suffered considerable damage to its infrastructure and civilian casualties.

Nevertheless, the carefully crafted winner’s narrative coming out of Tel Aviv serves some very deliberate purposes. A war “won” in 12 days helps Israel retouch, to some extent, the humiliation of October 7th, when its military and intelligence services were caught off guard by Hamas, which killed 1,200 Israelis and abducted 250 more.

The moral and logistical support Israel received from France, the UK, and other Western nations during Iran’s air raids was used to deflect some of the international criticism of its inhumane treatment of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The 12-day war also served as a distraction from Gaza’s atrocities. Over 100 Palestinian civilians were killed during that period near food distribution centers by Israeli forces, but media attention was focused on the skies—on rockets, jets, and drones.

3. The American Narrative

The lightning-fast airstrikes by American bombers on three of Iran’s uranium-processing centers—followed by an immediate ceasefire accepted by both Iran and Israel—are being presented as a major foreign policy victory for President Trump. However, even this narrative is heavily loaded with propaganda and, in some segments, seriously distorts the truth.

“We have completely and totally destroyed Iran’s nuclear program,” declared Trump right after the strikes. But early reports from the Pentagon, U.S. intelligence services, and now European agencies suggest otherwise: Iran appears to have managed to relocate and thus save 400 kg of uranium enriched to 60%. If this reserve is further enriched to 90%, it would be enough to produce around 10 nuclear warheads.

Experts say the Iranian nuclear program has not been “completely and totally destroyed”—only delayed by about five months. Meanwhile, some political analysts warn that the American strikes may push Iran’s nuclear activity deeper underground, beyond the oversight of international experts, as has been the case until now. If this proves true, the strikes may have caused more harm than good.

Trump’s hyperbolic exaggeration of the bombing’s success is meant to partially compensate for broken campaign promises—to end the war in Ukraine in a single day, to bring peace to the Middle East, and so on. Naturally, the image of a spectacular victory also serves to divert American public attention from concerns that the ongoing trade war could end up hitting their own pockets.

If you take the statements of Khamenei, Netanyahu, and Trump at face value, it seems the 12-day war had only winners. But this mirage-like image recalls the words of the ancient Greek who said: the first casualty of every war is the truth.

Iran–Israel War: Victory narratives and the peacock

U.S. isn’t at war with Iran, ‘we’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program,

siggy47

>Only a Yale law graduate can seriously think this bullshit is persuasive.

When I read the title of your post, I clicked, intending to say the same thing because I thought you agreed with him. Then, I saw your statement, and I thought, 'Yes, Siggy can't agree with such idiotic arguments.'   

Hey, stackers, are you scared about the American attack against Iran? 

Do you see this as the prelude to WW3? Or will diplomacy prevail again, and some peace be restored in the world? 

Personally, I'm a bit scared and disappointed by today's global leaders. We are lacking wise leaders with moral and personal integrity. 

How about you? 

Are you optimistic that life will eventually triumph again over death and destruction? 

Life vs death-destruction

Photography

![](https://m.stacker.news/96314)

This iconic 1957 photograph was taken in Rimini, one of Italy’s most popular coastal cities, and captures a moment that today seems almost unbelievable: a police officer issuing a fine to a woman for wearing a bikini on a public beach.

In the 1950s, although the bikini had been officially introduced in 1946 by French designer Louis Réard, wearing one was often considered scandalous or inappropriate by authorities, especially in places where social norms were still rooted in more conservative values.

1950s Italy was still a society in transition after World War II, where the influence of the Catholic Church and traditional moral standards remained strong.

The bikini was seen as a threat to public order, and in some seaside towns, there were regulations prohibiting excessive exposure of the body.

In such cases, police officers were authorized to issue warnings or even fines for attire deemed “indecent.”

Incidents like this also occurred in other European countries, and even in the United States, until the late 1950s.

The time when women were fined for wearing bikinis

Stacker Saloon

saloon

> Who the fuck steals water?

Someone that was desperately thirsty... 😁😁

Some time ago, I followed the controversy sparked by the Dutch translation of the poem *The Hill We Climb*, written by Amanda Gorman, likely at the request of Joe Biden.  

A patriotic poem with Whitmanesque tones, it also includes references to the Bible. The Dutch publisher Meulenhoff assigned the translation to Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, a highly talented young writer. However, journalist Janice Deul, who, like Amanda Gorman (the poem’s author), is African American, protested (before the translation was even published), questioning why a white person should translate a Black poet. According to Deul, Gorman was raised by a single mother and faced many difficulties in her childhood, which inevitably shaped her identity and creativity—something a white translator could never fully understand.  

The controversy spread widely, but I’d like to focus on the response of André Markowicz, a self-described "secular Jew" of Russian origin, and undoubtedly, in my view, one of the most brilliant translators of our time. I recall his translations of Dostoevsky’s complete works, for which he argued that previous translations were flawed. According to Markowicz, Dostoevsky despised elegance, especially the French kind. Dostoevsky, he claimed, wrote insistently, disregarding syntax and frequent repetitions. Markowicz preserved this very aspect, and his work has been highly praised by experts.  

In his *Tribune* article, Markowicz appears somewhat tense. He remarks that Janice Deul’s arguments remind him of a Russian critic’s comment that his Dostoevsky translations were questionable because he was not Orthodox. The underlying argument was that a Jew, even if Russian, could never grasp the "Russian soul."  

He asserts that dividing translation rights based on skin color is the absolute antithesis of what translation represents.  

"No one has the right to tell me whom I can or cannot translate. On the contrary, everyone has the right to judge my work—if they have the competence to do so. The real question is whether, through my work, my voice, and my craft, I have succeeded in conveying the voice of another without reducing it to the nature of my own voice."  

He also harshly criticizes the Dutch publisher for withdrawing the translation and issuing an apology to conform to contemporary identity-based demands.  

Finally, I observe the heated debates and criticisms on social media, which, unfortunately, often take on racist overtones. But I’d like to highlight one particularly striking comment:  

"So, what now? Do you have to be a gay, asthmatic Jew to have the right to translate Proust?"

Who has the right to translate?

Europe, meaning the EU, is arming itself. They say this is being done to fill the gap that a potential U.S. withdrawal might leave.

But there’s another perspective. Economists at Goldman Sachs predict that higher defense spending could increase the EU’s GDP by 0.5% over the next two years.

What’s going on?

What’s going on with EU?

Some insane lights tonight

denlillaapan

Waw! All this is just natural phenomenon!? It’s amazing. 🙃

There are certain discoveries that have irreversibly shaped modern and contemporary human society, creating new visions of humanity and society—sometimes with fortunate consequences, other times with unfortunate ones.

The first is the discovery of the thinking "I" by Descartes, followed by Kant, German idealism, and French existentialism—excluding Heideggerian existentialism.

The second is the discovery of homo oeconomicus by Marx, where philosophy and knowledge in general lose their abstract nature and take on a transformative role in society. Philosophy becomes action.

The third discovery is the Freudian unconscious. After this, neither art, literature, nor anthropology could ever avoid engaging with it on any page or in any line.

The fourth discovery is the general theory of relativity by Einstein, which, along with quantum physics, brought a radical shift in hypotheses about the origin of the universe—and beyond. It also redefined humanity’s place in the cosmos.

Any thoughts? 

Discoveries that shaped the society we live in

Don’t be sad, you have me!

Yes, it seemed like a possible answer, but I sensed a subtle discord, a feeling that something more complex was at play. It seemed that these were just a part of the problem she had. I don't know. 

As I was drinking my morning coffee in one of my favourite cafés, with my laptop open to continue translating the book I had started a long time ago — a translation that was progressing very slowly — I overheard a conversation between two elderly people. At first, I thought they were a married couple, but then I realized they were just friends (or maybe something more than friends!?).

The short dialogue I managed to hear went like this:

- My husband has passed away, - said the old lady. - My children have left me alone. Why did God punish me so hard?
- He hasn’t punished you, no. Don’t be sad, you have me.
- But how can I not be sad, my dear? I’m just human.
- God is great. Don’t be sad.
- But I’m human, my dear.
- It’s not your fault. This is life! You cannot do anything about it.
- What a damned life.
- There’s nothing you can do. That’s just how it is.
- But I have no one, my dear. What kind of life is this?
- Don’t you get along with your daughters?
- No, I don’t. Don’t I have the right not to?
- You do, but there’s nothing you can do. It’s not your fault.
- I must be tiring you. Have you finished your coffee?
- Forget the coffee. I just want to sit here with you and take away some of your sadness.
- Thank you.
- God is great! God is great! I don’t know what He can do! I don’t know what to say to you, I don’t know what answer to give because I’m afraid I might say something wrong. I am here for you. You know what I am to you. What am I to you?
- A friend.
- Now you ask me what you are to me.
- What am I to you? – asked the old lady.
- You are my love! - replied the old man, and he reached out his hand and wiped away a tear that had rolled down her cheek

At some point, the old lady turned her head and noticed that I was sitting nearby, just a table away. She lowered her voice. Probably, she was afraid that I might overhear their conversation. I saw her being a bit embarrassed about the fact that I could have heard their conversations. They continued their conversation in hushed tones. The poor lady had tears in her eyes the entire time.

I couldn’t understand what had happened to her or why she was so deeply sad. I never found out why she felt that "God had punished her so harshly." However, the gentleman remained by her side, never taking his eyes off her for a moment.

The scene left an indelible impression on me, one that has stayed in my mind for a long time! At that moment, I had an overwhelming urge to get up and hug them both. But I didn’t do that. I simply continued watching them in silence, with my eyes filled with tears.

food_and_drinks

Why Is the American Diet So Deadly?

![](https://m.stacker.news/80701)

Sculpture by the Danish artist JENS GALSCHIOT.

An obese, lazy, and parasitic justice oppressing emaciated, battered, and desperate people.

No image has ever managed to depict the global judicial system so faithfully. 