u/PointyPython

So I listen to classical/academic music a lot, generally, but solo piano is my favourite subgenre, as I also play the instrument. I've long listened to and played a few of Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne Wörter, and they're wonderful, generally quite accesible music. Today I wanted to check out his sonatas, and honestly I'm finding them quite mediocre.

Did he compose most of them early in his career? Why do they seem so behind and the melodies so much less inspired than in the LoW?

So there's this girl I know from uni that's a (fairly recent) Muslim convert. We are all in a group chat where we discuss politics and I see her in some get-togethers from time to time. She's a political scientist and works in some security policy think tank. Some years ago she began dating this older guy who's of Syrian descent and a Middle East studies scholar. The guy doesn't seem like some sort of strict Muslim, but to some extent he follows the religion.

It's an extremely Western thing, she's like 26 and she's dating this 40 year old guy who's actually divorced and has two kids, they live together. Fairly normal stuff, they're not part of some Wahabbi mosque or anything, and I've seen the guy eat bacon, shrimp and drink wine so clearly he isn't the strictest.

Anyway I usually avoid talking to her because she has always been prone to making fairly insane statements or generally just having thoroughly incomprenhensible views. I generally dislike debating with people with confused or weird schizoid beliefs, it feels like running on quicksand. She seems weirdly conservative on some issues, but then she'll talk like a third-worldist anti imperialist.

So today she posted on her instagram story this question box about something relating to Muslim women and wearing a veil (which the last time I even saw her in person six months back, she didn't even consider herself one, she would literally say "My boyfriend is Muslim, I'm Catholic but I know the religion because of him"), and I responded something to the effect that Muslim women in the West to a large extent enjoyed a freedom of religion and of bodily autonomy made possible by secular, non-Muslim societies and laws. And that the subject was a completely separate discussion (or it wouldn't be a discussion at all, really) if we were in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iran.

Her answer was that I was being prejudiced and ignorant and that I had no idea what Islam was actually like, that it actually provided for strong protections for women and gave them complete and absolute autonomy whether to wear a veil, how much of their body to show, etc. Here's the point where it reminded me of what other Muslims in the West tend to tell you, how it's such a beautiful, pure and humanistic religion, and that the ugliest most extreme versions we see in Saudi Arabia, Iran or Afghanistan are because of the bad politicians in those countries. They never seem to point out how exactly one would counteract Wahabbism, or the fact that some of the most renowned clerics in Islam today (including those guarding Mecca) wholeheartedly agree with conservative Sunni Islam.

This little debate with this girl never went anywhere, she just kept equivocating and suggesting that there was so much I couldn't possibly understand from my Western liberal perch. I came out of it fairly Houllebecquinized, thinking damn I'm glad these lunatics are this tiny minority (in my country at least) that has to play nice, pretend they aren't medieval lunatics, and just sort of have their little hobby in the comfort of their Western lives

I was drinking this Syrah/Malbec blend today, and it showed some distinct notes of orange peel, kumquat, candied citrus, all next to fairly typical notes spice, tobacco box, etc. It made me realize that I had had red wines before with aromas (especially primary aromas) that felt more at home in a white wine, but I wondered if anyone else had other cases in mind.