Read With Kacper

As December started, so did the reflections on what we've achieved this passing year, opportunities we missed, mistakes we made, and whether we are happy with how we live our time here on Earth. Just like every twelfth  month of the year. But not until now have I realised how the time slips through my hand without me noticing it. I, and most likely not just I, live an active life, doing my best to prepare for the future, learn at school, on extracurricular classes, at home. In free time I watch some entertaining things, or read, but basically it all comes down to a four-word summary: Always busy with something. I dare say it might be a motto of modern times, we scarcely sit down and catch up with the important things, like real-world friendship, reflecting upon your actions, thinking them over. We always think we'll still have time for that in the future. But the problem is the future we're expecting might never come if you don't let it start in the present. Period.

Yesterday I read a book from the genre pointed in the headline, by a polish author with a chilly sounding surname :) It was the third and last part of a trilogy, which was meant to represent a fictional polish politics, and indeed it is such, but what made me wonder is how many parallels you could draw between it, and real world. With this in mind I start to wonder, how dark, sinister, and rotten on the inside is the top level politics in Poland, not to mention the one in US for instance...  I hope I'll never in my life be forced to come anywhere near this sphere.

In recent days, as we are nearing the shortest day of the year, and the night falls quicker and quicker, I couldn't help but wonder about how strong are our lives tied to daylight. Every year when the day gets shorter, we get lazier, less productive, less active in general. I observe this on the example of myself, but not only. As we get to this time, when it's 4pm and it's already dark outside everybody thinks of the same - when at this time in summer we were just heading off the beach, or going out to spend some time on fresh air. It doesn't matter that we no longer have to rely on daylight, as we have artificial light, because the need for sunlight is so deeply embedded in our nature as humans we cannot bypass it.

The election of Bolsonaro marks next milestone in sad chapter of world’s swing to the political right. This trend worldwide has very different reasons, but I do believe that one of the key ones might be mass-media induced misinformation and spread of fake news, which fuel the rising tensions between native inhabitants of countries and the immigrants to those countries - no matter of what background. We’ve seen this before Trump’s election, before Polish general election 3 years ago, before Brexit referendum, before French presidential election (luckily lost by Marine Le Pen’s National Front), and I wouldn’t be surprised if it also was a case before Brasilian elections. These misleading campaigns, teamed up with micro targeting on social networks resulted in many people being convinced slyly that the central-liberal/cosmopolitan views can only lead to chaos, ,devastation and despair. Now those people often regret voting for alt-right options as it can be seen during demonstrat...

Today's reflection will be on advertising, and some extremes of it that I recently found while browsing the depths of internet. To start, the ad, that made me reflect on this topic was by a Polish tech e-shop called "x-kom". They were made popular for their campaign advertising left-hand profiled computer mouses. Sounds dull, right? Nothing abnormal. Yes, indeed. However, it gets weirder when you find out, that those ads were displayed on the main page of porn site... Often visited porn site, to be honest. A coincidence? I doubt so... And here my question arises, why do advertisers tend to do weirder and weirder ads, just to draw public attention? Why can't they go for advertise their products in a way that makes people think highly of them, just like a polish pop singer, Dawid Podsiadło did? He set up a newsagents' stand in the centre of Warsaw, where you could go and be sold the new album by the artist himself. This action made all youth (and youth in soul :P ) ...

Today the thought that has been stuck in my mind is how much there is to the saying that you can never really appreciate someone’s work unless you do it yourself. I got to experience this by myself by being in quite little time both teaching somebody, and being taught English. Not until I started teaching my sister this language I could truly understand how astonishingly hard it is to direct a good, interesting lesson, and establish a connection with your student(s). Of course I always thought highly of all my teachers seeing how much effort they put into trying to teach us both English, and some important life lessons at a time, but there always came moments when I’ve been critical of their work or materials they prepared. Now, my point of view has changed drastically, because every time I even try to think this way, I immediately see how would I feel in they position, because I know now how much effort, time and energy it takes to conduct even the most boring lesson, which has any p...

This week we’ve been really into politics, so it’s also a thing I’d like to reflect on today. The other day, I found myself watching yet another time “Last Week Tonight” with John Olivier, only to switch later to “The Daily Show” with Trevor Noah, and later to yet another domestic TV programme, which summarises national politics in a satiric way. And at some point I saw the peculiar truth, that, the modern day politics is for me unbearable in a raw form. The satirical take on it is the only way I’m able to process it without losing my temper. I guess that’s because the amount of hypocrisy and lies in it is unfortunately only suitable to either distaste or mockery, of which the second one is less harmful and thus more common.