When Finland had to surrender the Karelian isthmus after the end of the Winter War to the USSR, 12% of the total population of Finland lived there, ~500,000 people. They were offered Soviet citizenship.

They all declined.

The Night (2020), dir. Kourosh Ahari

“Nobody up to now has examined the value of that most famous of all medicines, called morality. The first step would be, for once, to question it.”

—The Gay Science, §345 (edited excerpt).

Renée Vivien, tr. by Jeanette H. Foster, from “A Woman Appeared To Me,”

“What makes one heroic? Going out to meet at the same time one’s highest suffering and one’s highest hope.”

—The Gay Science, §268.

Dark Storm on Neptune Reverses Direction by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

“There is a certain high point in life. Once we have reached that, we are, for all our freedom, once more in the greatest danger of spiritual unfreedom.”

—The Gay Science, §277 (excerpt).

An Opium Den, Paris, 1932.

Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.

— Vincent Van Gogh