KrISS feed 8.23
- A simple and smart (or stupid) feed reader. By
Tontof
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May 06
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Arnon Grunberg (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Importance
1896
On the gruesomeness – Gordon A. Craig in NY Books in 1982:
‘From the time he was a schoolboy in Lübeck until his death in Zurich in 1955, Thomas Mann kept a diary. Its purpose in the early years seems to have been to serve as a repository for stylistic exercises, drafts of stories, and copies of letters, but we have no exact knowledge of its contents because he burned all of the early volumes in 1896.’
(…)
‘Perhaps most of all, the literary importance of the diaries lies in th
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May 06
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Arnon Grunberg (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Oblivion
Blue Angel
On the brothers – David Blackbourn in LRB (in 1998):
“Twenty years ago Nigel Hamilton wrote a double biography of the literary Brothers Mann, giving equal billing to the celebrated Thomas and the neglected Heinrich. It was certainly time to look again at Heinrich, whose importance as a public and literary figure had been taken for granted by an earlier generation of writers. Gottfried Benn called him ‘one of my gods’; Lion Feuchtwanger thought him the greatest of the writer
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May 05
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Arnon Grunberg (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Contenders
Alluring
On spiritual hunger -- Charles Foster in TLS:
‘This view of reality would doubtless be alluring to Abi Millar, a successful, secular thirtysomething journalist who has rejected the evangelical Christianity of her childhood, but “feels a spiritual hunger very acutely”, though she struggles “to define what that hunger represents”. She hasn’t “signed up to living a life devoid of purpose”, but wants “to define that purpose in [her] own terms”. She knows that spirituality is “her
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May 04
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Arnon Grunberg (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Soul
Governments
On a soul – Daniella Peled in Haaretz:
‘A public letter critical of Israel's war in Gaza signed by dozens of members of the representative body of British Jewry has exposed deep fissures in the community over Israel.Community representatives say the furor goes to the heart of who genuinely represents Anglo-Jewry, with time-honored lines of communication between Israel and mainstream Jewish organizations now being bypassed.Published in the Financial Times on April 16 and si
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May 03
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Arnon Grunberg (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Injunctions
Sensations
On Etty Hillesum - Neal Ascherson in 1984 in NYRB:
‘Etty Hillesum was a young woman, a Dutch Jew, who lived in Amsterdam. She was twenty-six when the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands took place. In the spring of 1942, the mass deportations of the Jews began, at first to the huge transit camp of Westerbork in eastern Holland.’
(…)
‘Etty Hillesum was an intellectual who wanted to be a writer. She kept a diary from 1941 onward, but the diary is at first hardly at all and l
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May 02
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Arnon Grunberg (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Citizens
Tumult
On change - The Economist:
‘Having long relied on China’s market for growth, Russian gas to fuel its industry and American military heft for security, the eu has been rocked by three years of war in Ukraine and three months of Donald Trump’s agressive transactionalism in America. Amid the tumult that reigns in the world, Europe must embrace change.’
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‘Europe is a shrinking force in the global economy. It is a luxury to pretend otherwise.’
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‘One particularly decadent t
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May 01
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Arnon Grunberg (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Things
Without
On expulsion – Peter Beinart in NYT (thanks to my friend P):
‘On April 29, 2024, Tess Segal, a 20-year-old sophomore at the University of Florida, joined her fellow activists at a prominent plaza on campus calling on the university to divest from weapons manufacturers and boycott academic institutions in Israel. Some protesters studied or played cards. Later they read obituaries of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip.Then law enforcement moved in. And although Ms. Segal says
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April 29
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Arnon Grunberg (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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War
Committee
On Ajax – Uzi Dann in Haaretz:
‘Since the '50s, the Dutch government and the Amsterdam municipality have commemorated the Dutch Jews who were deported and murdered. But Ajax never held a memorial for the club's former staff and players, including youth players, who were killed in the Holocaust. In fact, Ajax didn't even take part in the building of the national soccer federation's monument to the Dutch soccer players who were killed in the war.Four years ago, two members of
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April 28
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Arnon Grunberg (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Wagner
Council
On steady decline – James Butler in LRB:
“In the background were two other problems: a steady decline in churchgoing and the legacy of the Second Vatican Council – a vast exercise in reform, which reshaped every aspect of Catholic practice, streamlining the Mass and permitting its celebration in languages other than Latin. John XXIII, the pope who initiated the council in 1962, described it as an aggiornamento, a ‘bringing up to date’, an attempt to ‘throw open the windows of
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April 27
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Arnon Grunberg (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Long
Shortfall
On fertility rates - Michelle Goldberg in NYT:
‘Long before Donald Trump said he wanted to be known as the “fertilization president,” Hungary was trying mightily to promote traditional families and raise its lagging birthrate. “We are living in times when fewer and fewer children are being born throughout Europe,” its prime minister, Viktor Orban, said in 2019. Immigration, he argued, was no answer to this demographic shortfall. “We do not need numbers, but Hungarian childre
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April 26
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Arnon Grunberg (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Talkshow
Dinner
On being likeable – Dee Jefferson in The Guardian:
‘Bill Maher has responded to Larry David’s satirical essay in the New York Times that compared Maher’s glowing account of having dinner with Donald Trump to dining with Adolf Hitler.Maher, a vocal critic of Trump in the past, had dinner with the US president and a group of his high-profile supporters, including their mutual friend Kid Rock, on 31 March. On an episode of his talkshow Real Time on 11 April, Maher described Trump
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April 25
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Arnon Grunberg (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Arrest
Citizens
On an arrest warrant – Grace Livingstone in TLS:
‘A few hours earlier, in Madrid, a Spanish judge had received a fax from Scotland Yard informing him that Pinochet was leaving London the next day. It was now or never. Baltasar Garzón sat alone in his office and wrote an arrest warrant. “By hand, on a sheet of paper with a pen. I did everything from memory. I assumed the effort could fail, but I had to try.” Pinochet had overthrown the elected government of Chile in 1973 and p
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April 24
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Arnon Grunberg (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Years
Comments
On a pailful conversation – Isaac Chotiner interviewing Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt in The New Yorker:
‘I recently spoke by phone with Lipstadt. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed whether the Trump Administration really cares about antisemitism, why she wanted to keep some of her comments off the record, and the problem with “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”’
(…)
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Are you pleased that the Trump Administration is talking
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April 23
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Arnon Grunberg (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Merz
Rule
On the law – Muriel Kalisch interviewing Theodor Meron in Der Spiegel:
‘DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Meron, last November, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Friedrich Merz, soon to become Germany’s chancellor, announced that he would still allow Netanyahu to visit Germany. What do you think about that statement?
Meron: If Mr. Merz wants to avoid the embarrassment of arresting individuals for whom warrants have bee
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April 22
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Arnon Grunberg (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Agency
Claims
On a blot – Yossi Verter in Haaretz:
‘Bar described a dystopian situation in which the prime minister is acting like a dictator or the head of a criminal organization. He demanded that Bar extricate him from his criminal trial by making false claims of a security risk. He demanded that Bar take action against the people protesting against him in the streets.He protected employees of his office who are up to their necks in ties with Qatar, Hamas' funder. He ousted Bar from the
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April 21
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Arnon Grunberg (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Pretty
Face
On the Mafia – Harel in Haaretz:
‘The current offer that Yanovsky reported is a completely different story: Netanyahu is essentially telling Bar, "If you value the Shin Bet, take a step back. If you do, you can even influence the identity of your replacement." The mafia would have phrased it a little differently – "Be a shame if something happened to that pretty face of yours."’
Read the article here.
The Mafia-principle reigns. In Israel, in the US, and elsewhere.
The jungle
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April 20
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Arnon Grunberg (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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OnlyFans
Simulacrum
On pessimism and BookTok – Ross Douthat in NYT:
‘BookTok is to literature as OnlyFans is to great romantic love.’
(…)
‘Pornography is worse than sex, but it gives you a simulacrum of anything you want, whenever you want it, without any negotiation with another human being’s needs.’
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‘The result is a landscape where national politics seems incredibly important and local politics irrelevant; where English can seem like the only language worth knowing and an American pr
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April 19
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Arnon Grunberg (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Roof
Tea
On medical equipment in Gaza - Clayton Dalton in The New Yorker:
‘On January 29th, two weeks after Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire, I crossed into Gaza as part of a twelve-person medical mission. After traversing southern Israel in a U.N. convoy, we followed an Israeli military escort through a maze of concrete barriers. Then we got out of our vehicles and lugged suitcases full of essentials—gauze, antibiotics, catheters, trauma shears—through a metal blast door. We passed
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April 18
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Arnon Grunberg (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Sides
Primaries
On the nationalists - Adam Sutcliffe in TLS:
‘Israel has always struggled to find friends in the formerly colonized world, but since October 2023 the politics of the Middle East conflict have, Mishra argues, become more starkly racialized. Western leaders have been far more responsive to the suffering of Ukrainians than that of Gazans. In the American congressional primaries last year, pro-Israel organizations spent more than $25 million on campaign adverts to bring down Jam
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April 16
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Arnon Grunberg - Blog (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Government
Movement
On a cult – Yossi Melman in Haaretz:
‘The protest movement against Benjamin Netanyahu's government, which subsided after Hamas invaded Israel on October 7th, 2023 is surging once again and this time, it's spreading to more and more parts of Israel's military and intelligence services.This new protest movement was launched by Israeli air force pilots, navigators, and ground crews. Air force personnel were also the spearhead of the previous wave of protests, which began after N
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April 15
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Arnon Grunberg - Blog (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Foreign criminals
Love
On Switzerland – Tony Judt in NY Books (in 2010):
‘One is not supposed to love Switzerland. Expressing affection for the Swiss or their country is akin to confessing nostalgia for cigarette smoking or The Brady Bunch. It immediately brands you as someone at once unforgivably ignorant of the developments of the past thirty years and incurably conventional in the worst way. Whenever I blurt out my weakness for the place the young yawn politely, liberal colleagues look askance (“Don
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April 14
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Arnon Grunberg - Blog (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Petition
Database
On naturalization – Etan Nechin and Ben Samuels in Haaretz:
‘Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian graduate student at Columbia University and former co-president of Columbia's Palestinian Students Union, was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Monday during what was supposed to be a naturalization interview in Burlington, Vermont.The arrest is documented in an ICE detainee database and a habeas corpus petition filed in federal court.’
(…)
‘A source close
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April 13
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Arnon Grunberg - Blog (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Officials
Stomach
On havoc – The Economist:
‘In 1990s japan the worst days of a market crisis brought about a “triple yasu” loss: a fall in stockmarkets, a rise in bond yields and a declining currency. It is now America that must stomach this noxious combination. Although President Donald Trump’s tariff pause provided a brief respite, the triple yasu has made an unwelcome return. Most alarming lately have been movements in the bond and currency markets. In total since April 1st the dollar has f
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April 12
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Arnon Grunberg - Blog (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Trippenhuis
Fogs
On Amsterdam – Pablo Scheffer in TLS:
‘To Albert Camus, Amsterdam’s concentric waterways resembled the circles of hell. His protagonist in The Fall (1956), a “judge- penitent” who whiles away his days in a seedy sailors’ bar on the Zeedijk, unkindly describes the city’s “little space of houses and canals, hemmed in by fogs” as an enfer bourgeois.’
(…)
‘Coates writes, for instance, that Amsterdam’s canal houses are narrow because of the cost of drilling into the marshy ground th
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April 11
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Arnon Grunberg - Blog (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Brigade
Territory
On Schrödinger Brigade – Harel in Haaretz:
‘The secret, which has still been kept relatively well, is that there is almost no fighting going on in the Gaza Strip. Israel may have ended the cease-fire in practice, with the aerial attacks on March 18 that cost the lives of some 400 Palestinians, including senior Hamas officials and hundreds of women and children – but since then, the two sides have not really returned to battle.The Israel Defense Forces operates three division
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April 11
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Arnon Grunberg - Blog (info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg))
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Basis
Public
On beef – Alexander Hurst in The Guardian:
‘When markets dump $10tn in three days and then gain trillions back in a single afternoon on the erratic decisions of one deeply corrupt person, you can be sure that a small number of people have made immense sums of money out of that volatility. Were the people responsible for abnormal spikes buying into the markets (including call options on various indexes and exchange-traded funds) on Wednesday morning – and again, 20 minutes befor
