Diary (April 7, 2021)
Online diary of Karl Jones for Wednesday April 7, 2021.
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Diary
Sexual blackmail
Sexual blackmail is a well-established practice since ancient times.
We would be naive to not consider the possibility that any given high-ranking official has been corrupted.
Find a man's forbidden fruit, and give it to him.
The long, long reach of this lesson should be fresh in our minds from the staged suicide of sexual blackmailer and alleged billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.
Sane people on the Internet
The Prestige
Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige".
― Christopher Priest, The Prestige
- The Prestige @ Goodreads