Old questions

I'm reading Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands and it is not easy. One chapter a day is about all that I can handle. I've read a good bit of 20th-century European history, but the bottomless brutality-insanity is still dizzying. Which is worse the murderous sadists or the indifferent murderers? In any event, there were plenty of both.

And then there is this for much-needed uplift. (H/T Tom) Where would we be without people like Alice -- and her music? How do we get people like that (the ones who write the music and the ones who perform it)? Are they really from the same gene pool as the murderers Snyder writes about?