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Life Got You Down? Time to Read The Master and Margarita

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Re: Life Got You Down? Time to Read The Master and Margarita

#81

Post by pbhjpbhj »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #39
kemitchell wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be a law in Russia that if a novel is considered great enough, it should never be assigned involuntarily to schoolchildren ever again. Making 15-year-olds read a novel is a wonderful way to ensure they will not really appreciate anything in it or related to it until at least age 35, if indeed they still read by then. On a related-unlrelated note, it has been too many years since I was in country. Which i…

I believe many of us will say that such a law should also be passed in our own countries. It's just sad how the school system destroys great works, just by virtue of making them assigned reading.

Seems I'm in the minority but I loved the literature we read in school - still remember Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, The Merchant of Venice, ... with great affection many years later.

I was already a prolific reader though; perhaps I had good teachers (I don't remember them as such, not bad, but not great).

Re: Life Got You Down? Time to Read The Master and Margarita

#82

Post by herghost »

aleyan wrote: post #6

Life got you down? Take a piece of advice from another of Bulgakov's (author of Master and Margarita) novels and stop reading the news. There is nothing actionable in the news; next to no utility. News is simply a time sink that depress your spirit. So take the good doctor's words from Heart of a Dog: "If you care about your digestion, my advice is [sic] never read soviet newspapers before dinner" and generalize it t…

I agree, but struggle slightly:

In the past I've cut out the news and felt much better fairly quickly. However, it gets to a point where there's something that happens that I should be aware of - like the annual budget speech, or something related to my industry that's hit a headline.

I guess I need a means of separating the 99% outrage-inducing, unactionable mainstay from the 1% of things that I genuinely need to know about.

First, I started by stopping reading daily news; stopping refreshing the headlines every time I had a few minutes; stopping getting alerts; avoiding 'news 24/7' channels like the plague.

Then I stopped reading weekly news - what was the point? Whilst it's less of a burden that daily/hourly/minutely news, it's still unactionable for me - it has no utility, as you say.

But then it's been months and things have happened that I should know about, and the only option I have is to go back to getting alerts and 'triaging' my interest in them - except that this means that I have to process each headline again, and I'm basically back where I started.

Re: Life Got You Down? Time to Read The Master and Margarita

#83

Post by ragequitta »

circlefavshape wrote: post #57
ragequitta wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case I've been publicly shamed once or twice because I'm not up on what the latest generation finds offensive. Maybe that's just what getting old is though. Apparently we're not allowed to say 'that one chick from the alien films' or 'miss/ms' enternamehere without deeply offending some of the population to the point of being yelled at. There are many other examples of this I'm sure, but I don't get out much. I…

What part of the above is offensive? I'm afraid to talk to young people or Americans these days lest someone get mad at me. Were we the same with our parents I wonder?

Apparently with 'chick' it dehumanizes women, and with ms/miss it's something to do with the fact that you're implying they're young and/or a mistress? I honestly have no idea where people come up with this stuff. It's absurd.

Re: Life Got You Down? Time to Read The Master and Margarita

#85

Post by Kurtz79 »

aleyan wrote: post #6

Life got you down? Take a piece of advice from another of Bulgakov's (author of Master and Margarita) novels and stop reading the news. There is nothing actionable in the news; next to no utility. News is simply a time sink that depress your spirit. So take the good doctor's words from Heart of a Dog: "If you care about your digestion, my advice is [sic] never read soviet newspapers before dinner" and generalize it t…

"There is nothing actionable in the news; next to no utility. News is simply a time sink that depress your spirit."

I largely agree with the statement, but as naive it might sound I still consider being aware and forming an opinion of what is happening in the world and my country as a civic duty, as unpleasant as it is.

Re: Life Got You Down? Time to Read The Master and Margarita

#86

Post by netcan »

aleyan wrote: post #6

Life got you down? Take a piece of advice from another of Bulgakov's (author of Master and Margarita) novels and stop reading the news. There is nothing actionable in the news; next to no utility. News is simply a time sink that depress your spirit. So take the good doctor's words from Heart of a Dog: "If you care about your digestion, my advice is [sic] never read soviet newspapers before dinner" and generalize it t…

On news being not actionable, this is what Douglas Adams had to say

we don't have to go very far back in our history until we find that all the information that reached us was relevant to us and therefore anything that happened, any news, whether it was about something that's actually happened to us, in the next house, or in the next village, within the boundary or within our horizon, it happened in our world and if we reacted to it the world reacted back. It was all relevant to us, so for example, if somebody had a terrible accident we could crowd round and really help. Nowadays, because of the plethora of one-to-many communication we have, if a plane crashes in India we may get terribly anxious about it but our anxiety doesn't have any impact. We're not very well able to distinguish between a terrible emergency that's happened to somebody a world away and something that's happened to someone round the corner. We can't really distinguish between them any more, which is why we get terribly upset by something that has happened to somebody in a soap opera that comes out of Hollywood and maybe less concerned when it's happened to our sister. We've all become twisted and disconnected and it's not surprising that we feel very stressed and alienated in the world because the world impacts on us but we don't impact the world.

From the most brilliant stream of consciousness I have ever read: http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams

Re: Life Got You Down? Time to Read The Master and Margarita

#87

Post by efskap »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #46
fivre wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prime Video has it with English subtitles: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071PF4WCM The official Lenfilm YouTube account has it also, but for some reason only with French subtitles. It looks like less of their catalogue there is English subbed, compared to Mosfilm, which has English subs for basically everything.

You'd think Youtube would put auto-translated subtitles everywhere by now, the technology is here. They have automatic text-to-speech for some videos too, which isn't perfect but if there's good French subtitles there's no reason to not use that for other languages. If only to get the gist of it.

When it comes to Russian->English translation, the technology is most definitely not here.

Re: Life Got You Down? Time to Read The Master and Margarita

#88

Post by rlayton2 »

Kurtz79 wrote: post #85
aleyan wrote: post #6

Life got you down? Take a piece of advice from another of Bulgakov's (author of Master and Margarita) novels and stop reading the news. There is nothing actionable in the news; next to no utility. News is simply a time sink that depress your spirit. So take the good doctor's words from Heart of a Dog: "If you care about your digestion, my advice is [sic] never read soviet newspapers before dinner" and generalize it t…

"There is nothing actionable in the news; next to no utility. News is simply a time sink that depress your spirit." I largely agree with the statement, but as naive it might sound I still consider being aware and forming an opinion of what is happening in the world and my country as a civic duty, as unpleasant as it is.

Look for a slower news source in your region. The 24 hour news cycle produces mostly low-quality content, where you want to be more aware of the big things that happen that have more impact.

Re: Life Got You Down? Time to Read The Master and Margarita

#89

Post by JackFr »

EliRivers wrote: post #79
Y_Y wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an honest question, how well does this apply to Hackernews? I know that BBC News is bad for my health and does nothing for my career. Holistically I'm not sure about hn.

On HN, generally avoid reading the comments. Some very interesting things occasionally come up in the comments, true, but its just not worth the time sink and the effect on your psyche to dig through the dross and find them. Let this be the last HN comment you ever read...

Keep writing them though -- it's still a great outlet for one's own negativity and psychoses...

Re: Life Got You Down? Time to Read The Master and Margarita

#90

Post by bananarepdev »

aleyan wrote: post #6

Life got you down? Take a piece of advice from another of Bulgakov's (author of Master and Margarita) novels and stop reading the news. There is nothing actionable in the news; next to no utility. News is simply a time sink that depress your spirit. So take the good doctor's words from Heart of a Dog: "If you care about your digestion, my advice is [sic] never read soviet newspapers before dinner" and generalize it t…

Unless they are Hacker News, which are sometimes actionable and lift my spirit every morning.
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