Tag Archives: opinion

“либерализм” vs. “либертарианство”

Фактът, че либерализм и либертарианство са две напълно различни политически понятия, все още не се разпространил в България – поне не сред политическите партии, които се наричат “либерални” …

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014-7. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

A new Bulgarian movie: Gasoline (Бензин)

No, I will not become a customer of Bulbank, no I will not drink Spetema coffee, no I will never ever eat at McDonald’s. And no, I am not recommending the movie Gasoline (Бензин).

Benzin, Bulgaria 2017, 110′, directed by Assen Blatechki and Katerina Goranova, written by Alexey Kozhuharov, with Assen Blatechki, Snejana Makaveeva, Veselin Kalanovski, Kalin Vrachanski, Liliana Stanailova, Plamen Manassiev, Vasil Banov, Michael Madsen

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014-7. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Wie man in Berlin mit dem Poetik-Preisträger Eugen Gomringer umgeht

Berlin ist eine bemerkenswerte Stadt. Eine Stadt, in der man seit vielen Jahren unter Vernichtung von Milliarden an Steuermitteln vergeblich versucht, einen Flughafen zu bauen. Eine Stadt auch, in der es eine Hochschule gibt, die den Dichter Eugen Gomringer erst mit einem Poetik-Preis auszeichnet und die danach das so ausgezeichnete Gedicht von der Fassade der Hochschulfassade, wo es zu lesen war, wieder entfernen lässt, und zwar mit einer geradezu absurden, den Preisträger und sein Werk verhöhnenden Begründung.

Wenn die Leute vom Asta der Alice-Salomon-Hochschule repräsentativ für ihre Kommilitonen sind, muss man leider befürchten, dass da eine Generation verklemmter und bornierter Spiessbürger an deutschen Unis heranwächst, die sich in ihrer Dummheit und Selbstgefälligkeit nur schwer ertragen lässt. Hauptqualifikation: Unfähigkeit, verständig lesen zu können in Kombination mit pseudomoralischer Überheblichkeit. Früher hiess das “gesundes Volksempfinden”, und es war nichts anderes als die Diktatur derjenigen, die sich immer und überall beleidigt und provoziert fühlten – durch die Intelligenteren, besser Ausgebildeten, Erfolgreicheren, Schöneren, Weltgewandteren, Begabteren. 

“Nichts gibt so sehr das Gefühl der Unendlichkeit als wie Dummheit.” (Ödön von Horvath) 

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014-7. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

An important improvement

While the quality of the coffee in most restaurants and coffee shops in Sofia is improving only very slowly according to my impression, there is a considerable improvement to be felt recently in another coffee-related issue. The quality of the късметче, those small rolled paper clips that are supposed to bring good luck and frequently contain a piece of folk wisdom or a supposedly thoughtful quote by a famous person has definitely changed to the better in a short time. Today I got “любов” (love), “здраве” (health), and “време ви е за купон” (it’s time for a party), while a few months ago chances would have been very high that I would have had quotes by authors that regularly made me spill my coffee in anger all over the place, such as Hitler, Ayn Rand, and Paulo Coelho…

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014-7. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Asymmetry

One reads often about the so-called swarm intelligence. The opposite phenomenon, swarm stupidity, is in reality much more often to observe, but remains a strangely unexplored occurrence in media and public discussion. 

Discuss!

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014-7. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Един ден…

Един ден ще гласувам за “DADA, България”…

 

Disclaimer: This is not a political statement.

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014-7. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

“The 21st Century Greatest Novels”

The BBC asked a number of well-known literary critics to name “The 21st Century greatest novels”. And just as I imagined it: all the 12 books on the top of the list are written in English!
 
That says little about “The 21st Century greatest novels”, but a lot about the state of (mono-) culture in the English-speaking countries, where hardly three percent of the published books are works translated from other languages.
© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014-7. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

“Expats”

FB Groups/Forums – most of them seem to be rather futile efforts. I just left a group called “Foreigners in Sofia & Friends” which “has the goal to connect all the expats in Sofia and their friends and aims to be a self-help Community where members are supporting each other.”

I left because:

– I am not an expat – I am a migrant. (Many of the smug “expats” will not understand that remark, I am rather sure.)

– I am already well connected with my wonderful Bulgarian and a few other migrant friends, and don’t have the particular wish to connect “with all expats in Sofia.”

– I don’t find it very appealing that on the few occasions I wrote a comment to a post in this group, I was verbally abused by a number of hardcore resident expat trolls for no obvious reason.

– I don’t find it very appealing to read in too many threads that Bulgarians are dumb and rude.

– I don’t find the overwhelming number of posts appealing that could have easily be answered by using a simple search engine.

– I don’t find it particularly appealing that the vast majority of posts are questions like “where can I find an English-speaking N.N. in Sofia?”

– I don’t find it very appealing when simple questions such as “can someone recommend me a Latin American restaurant in Sofia” are almost exclusively answered by people who haven’t obviously read or understood the question (or why would they recommend Iranian, Iraqi, Chinese restaurants instead of answering the question?)

– I am tired of reading again and again how terrible Sofia and Bulgaria are. If you feel like that, what are you doing here? A practical lesson in masochism?

No big deal. It’s just: these kind of forums are nor for me.

They are for – “expats”!

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014-7. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The Curse of Social Media

The curse of “Social Media“:

People talk and gossip endlessly about each other and communicate very little with each other.

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014-7. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

#trumpspeak

Lies are now called “alternative facts“.

#trumpspeak

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014-7. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.