It's interesting to read about Stefan Zweig. He deeply influenced Wes Anderson as the later wrote The Grand Budapest Hotel-

I thought about the film as I started reading The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. I found the book when I read Sarah Bakewell's additions to the recent 100 best novels of all time list that The Guardian collated. The list was gathered by results from asking critics and authors of their best novels. This past weekend, the Guardian released the 100 best novels all-time list as gathered by readers. The Magic Mountain is #42 on the author list, #50 on the reader list.

The book sucked me in even when I felt guarded against just that. Fuck me. So far I've read 14%. Mann's greatness is obvious even just ten pages into the book. The book seems to often be described as 'philosophical'. There are plenty of philosophical concepts in the book, but those are in the eyes of the beholder; Mann simply holds up a mirror to the human.

About Sweden, I've read about how Swedish 'christian democrat' Alice Theodorescu Måwe has accepted around 100,000 USD as a 'side income' which she failed to report. Lobbyists are going to lobby. In other Tidö-party-related news, the extremist right-wing xenophobic, homophobic, and anti-pedophile party Sverigedemokraterna had a government representative leave the party due to child-pornography charges. Don't get me wrong: sexual disorder doesn't care about political-party affiliations. It's just astonishing to see how Sverigedemokraterna treat their own once they've done something 'wrong'; see how William Petzäll was driven to his death.

Swedish TV have a humour show on. A guest star in an episode is Nick Alinia, a conspiracy-theorist nazi sympathiser. Nice. Contestants have chosen to leave the show.

This weekend, I learned that the CIA used 'vampires' to fight communism in the Philippines. They've done worse, apart from some things.

I really like Spatial, No Problem. by Mouse on Mars and Lee “Scratch” Perry. Of course, Perry is dead, but he recorded so much with so many people that I think and hope it will take decades until the well runs dry. The album is wondrous. I love the playful lyrics, not least the ones made with Bob Marley and the ones against Chris “Vampire” Blackwell.

Gary Marcus has written an article named Slop, productivity and why the AI-fueled world is going nowhere mighty fast. Even the graphs say a lot.

If you need more fresh reasons to hate big AI companies, read Ed Zitron's article The Hater's Guide To The AI Bubble 3.0.

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