#Azeri man

[dadsinsuits]

Ilham Aliyev

[wizardyke]

if you're armenian and youre reading this i love you ♥︎

[birasizgece]

Mənim xəzinəm

Sənin gözəlliyini dünya-dünya gəzirəm

Yalandan gülümsəyirəm, guya deyil heç vecimə

Olmayıb heç nə

Olmayıb heç nə, mən yaxşıyam

[thursdayg1rl]

I literally need to complain abt everything on here or I’ll die

[harminuya]

Armenian fiction books that I wish had English translations so more foreigners could read them.

1. The Killed Dove by Nar-Dos.

The action takes place in the 1890s in Tiflis (Georgia). The story is written from Mikael's point of view. At midnight, his friend Garegin visits him with the news that he's getting married to a woman named Sara and that he'll be the groomsman. After meeting Sara, he quickly finds out that she is not enthusiastic about being married as her fiance, in fact she acts quite distant from him. After some time, when he has heard nothing from Garegin, another friend of his, Ruben, who dropped out of university and is now writing a book, "The Killed Dove", in which he tells how he went hunting with a girl. During the hunt he kills a dove and the girl starts crying and comparing herself to it. I don't want to give away all the plot points (hopefully you'll read it one day), but the stories of all the characters mentioned are connected. Some time later, Garegin appears and tells Mikael that Sara is obsessed with "revenge".

But what I like about this book is not just the plot, but the way Sara is portrayed, despite being morally ambiguous, she is still tragic and easy to sympathise with. Also, the book actively acknowledges the misogyny in Armenian society.

2. Blooming Barbered Wire/ Barbered Wire in Bloom (not sure which translation is better) by Gurgen Mahari

A book of autobiographical nature that was actually banned in the USSR. G. Mahari is sentenced to 10 years in the gulag and exile. It doesn't have a plot like A to B, but you get to know the life of the prisoners, what they eat, how they try to escape but fail, the love story of a Jewish woman artist with a high education and an average Azeri man. Although the situation is not the happiest, there are still funny references and sarcasm.

3. Unwitting Travelers by Vardges Kalantaryan.

Bunch of boys and girls travelling through woods and have to stay in rocks (its children's literature). I remember it as very adventurous and funny. In the second part, the characters are young adults.

There are actually more but I'm alredy tired.

[radykalny-feminizm]

No one has been rlly paying attention to Azeri-Turk violence Artsakh Armenians have recently faced this September. Like thousands had to flee in exodus bc the enemy troops r v violently indoctrinated to hate Armenians, even if they r civilians. An example that is haunting is that an Azeri youtuber killed an older (?) Armenian civilian n he was celebrated for it. Armenians with an Armenian Passport r not even allowed in Azerbaijan without "special embassy clearance". I remember a few yrs back, the Azeri government even hired Syrian mercenaries to kill Armenians. Turkey has been doing similar things in Cyprus, although I suppose you could argue it's more "islamization of the culture" agenda than full out slaughter of the population.

The tragic experiences of Armenians throughout history are something that still receives too little attention, and I really wonder why. Perhaps the political climate of recent decades has made it less trendy to really care about the terrible fate of fair-skinned Christians than that of dark-skinned muslims. Just look at the disproportion between the number of random, ordinary people who support Palestine versus the number of people speaking about Armenians. It's probably another controversial opinion for which I’ll receive criticism, but I don’t care.

I remember working with an Azerbaijani muslim man who openly called for the killing of Armenians and shared Grey Wolves slogans on his social media. At the same time, he claimed that the Armenian genocide was fake news 🤡 It was disgusting. No one reacted accordingly when I reported his behavior to our employer, and it was a large international corporation that put a lot of emphasis on diversity and tolerance.

I'll leave the conclusions to you all.

[collapsedsquid]

A while ago I watched this documentary series (I think from ~2005) that included an episode on Nagarno-Karabakh. In addition to visiting N-K they also visited Azerbaijan and were given an official tour to visit some Azeris who were kicked out. The crew were shown these sympathetic poor Azeris who were kicked out by monsterous Armenian aggression, poverty-stricken in their refugee camps ... wait what??? It's been 15 years man, can Azerbaijan not get these people some apartments and jobs? What the fuck are they still doing in refugee camps?

[sevaghves]

HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

For over 230 days, 120,000 people in the unrecognized Republic of Artsakh (Karabakh) including 30,000 children have been under blockade. For the last 30 days, no humanitarian aid has been allowed to pass. These 120,000 people are being terrorized by the fascist state of Azerbaijan. Despite calls from the international community and the ruling of International Court of Justice, Azerbaijan refuses to lift the blockade and open Lachin corridor, the only road connecting these 120,000 people to the world.

Azerbaijan cut the gas and electricity supply. The water reservoir if Artsakh has dried up. Pregnant women are undernourished, one recently suffered miscarriage. A 68y.o man has been kidnapped while being transported to Armenia for treatment by Red Cross. Russian peacekeepers deployed to Lachin corridor to ensure safe passage allow Azeris to do anything they want.

You hear about Putin's fascism and war crimes on the news. You should know about those of Azerbaijani president Aliyev too. Azerbaijan launched 3 wars against Artsakh and Armenia in the last 3 decades.

LEARN ABOUT THIS. TELL OTHERS.

[mariacallous]

AGDAM, AZERBAIJAN—In a clearing between overgrown grasses, Khalid Zulfugarov opens a stack of wooden crates, each filled with bright chunks of metal that glint in the winter sun. There are shells, anti-tank mines, and cluster bombs with tail fins. Nearby, next to a crater blown in the earth, a 20-liter water jug is filled with thousands of bullet casings, piled together like spare change, the collected relics of a conflict that has ravaged this land for 30 years.

Zulfugarov, the head of an Azerbaijani mine disposal team, is picking through his contaminated homeland, sifting through the soil with sniffer dogs and metal detectors to find each tiny, potentially deadly fragment. As he does so, his memories of Karabakh rush back.

“This is where I was born. I studied here; I fought with my friends,” he says.

His ancestral village is Nuzgar, which is located 50 miles south of Agdam, the area that he is currently clearing. It was once a bucolic settlement on the fertile lowlands of the southern Caucasus, mostly home to farmers who tended the rich, arable land. During Soviet times, it was part of the Nagorno-Karabakh oblast, home to ethnic Armenians and Azeris such as Zulfugarov, as well as the vineyards that produced the Soviet Union’s best-known cheap wine.

But when communism collapsed, so did the peace in Karabakh. Newly independent Armenia and Azerbaijan fought over the territory. Neighbors became enemies, and as Armenian paramilitaries gained control, Karabakh’s entire population of 700,000 Azeris fled.

For the next three decades, Nagorno-Karabakh was governed by an ethnic Armenian administration as the Republic of Artsakh, an unrecognized country. Its shrunken, monoethnic population lived up on the mountains at its heart. Down on the plains, the abandoned Azeri towns and villages were looted and closed off to the world, becoming a buffer zone between Artsakh and Azerbaijan. A de facto 185-mile border was carved into the landscape with berms, barbed wire, and land mines. What was once vineyards became a barren no-man’s land.

In 1993, Zulfugarov, then a 19-year-old Azerbaijani conscript, fled Karabakh to Azerbaijan proper. There, he worked in construction before joining the national demining agency. For the past three years, he has been clearing the land just miles away from his home village of Nuzgar, yet he is still unable to return.

In 2020, after 26 years of relatively frozen conflict, Karabakh’s war reignited. Azerbaijan had turned into a gas-rich autocracy, and grievances over its loss of Karabakh had become central to its national story. Baku wagered that the geopolitical timing was right, and over the first nine months of 2020, it pumped up its military arsenal with $123 million of Turkish-made defense and aviation equipment. On Sept. 27, Baku launched a surprise offensive and recaptured the lowlands. Three years later, it launched a second offensive and seized the main city, Stepanakert, too. Nearly all of the region’s entire ethnically Armenian population fled, just as the Azeris had three decades earlier.

On Jan. 1 of this year, the Republic of Artsakh officially ceased to exist. The land that was once Nagorno-Karabakh is now fully controlled by Azerbaijan.

War and occupation have stripped the landscape of life and color; the ruins of Azeri villages are now the same beige-grey as the scrubby undergrowth, the once-fertile soil riddled with metal from tanks, shells, and bullets. The pomegranate trees are among the few things that survived from the old times, bearing yearly fruit that hangs unpicked until it bursts blood-red.

The area remains closed to the public, but Foreign Policy was granted access by the Azerbaijani government. (We were not given permission to visit some areas we requested, and Stepanakert is currently closed to foreign media.) We spent five days in the region, being escorted through a huge reconstruction project unfolding behind a curtain of checkpoints: demining sites, new villages, roads and airports, and reforestation projects, all being readied for former residents to return.

The fighting in Karabakh is now over, and the Republic of Artsakh is no more. But a new conflict—this time, centered on the region’s landscape and the scars that war has inflicted on it—is now underway.

Since the beginning, nature has been both a victim to and a weapon of Karabakh’s conflict.

Nagorno-Karabakh is the water source for much of the southern Caucasus. Tributaries of the major Aras, Kura, and Tatar rivers run through the region’s mountains and down to the plains of Azerbaijan. The Soviet-built Sarsang reservoir—once the biggest in the region—fell under the control of Artsakh in 1993. In September 2013, Baku filed a case with the Council of Europe, complaining that Artsakh was misusing Sarsang and intentionally depriving 400,000 people in Azerbaijan’s border regions of water. Baku’s case succeeded: In January 2016, the council called for Armenian forces to withdraw from the area around Sarsang to allow international teams to assess and repair critical infrastructure.

When Karabakh’s hot war reignited in September 2020, the landscape quickly became a focus of misinformation. Huge forest fires broke out on the front lines in the far north and southwest of the territory and close to Stepanakert. Fires are common in conflict, but these blazes were immediately weaponized. Azeri social media accounts accused Armenians of torching the trees as they fled the advancing Azerbaijani army. Armenian accounts accused Azerbaijani forces of starting the fires with incendiary weapons to provide cover for their offensive.

“Nowhere else has environmental misinformation been used at this level. It’s just off the scale,” said Eoghan Darbyshire, a researcher at the U.K.-based Conflict and Environment Observatory. He analyzed open-source satellite imagery and climate data and found that while the fires were almost certainly related to the conflict, proving who had started them and how was far stickier than the absolutist social media posts suggested.

By November 2020, Azerbaijan had recaptured the Karabakh plains, and Artsakh conceded the loss. Stepanakert remained in Armenian hands, while the rest of the territory was left with Azerbaijan. Russian and Turkish peacekeepers monitored the cease-fire. Although combat was over, the environmental dispute only intensified.

Following the cease-fire, Azeris began trickling back to the Karabakh plains to visit their homes for the first time in three decades, only to realize that the whole area had changed. The lush hilltop forests had been hacked away, and the water in the once-clear streams smelled putrid. Agdam’s ancient Oriental plane trees, which had been protected as state monuments since Soviet times, had been felled, and their roots were scorched. Azerbaijani officials say that Artsakh’s government caused the destruction—through some combination of pillaging Karabakh’s hardwood forests, opening a gold mine that leached pollutants into the water, and simple vandalism.

In March 2022, Azerbaijan’s government invited the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to assess the Karabakh plains. The UNEP documented 2,000-year-old trees felled, once-cultivated farmland abandoned, 52 new quarries or mines opened under Armenian administration, and extremely high levels of heavy metals in the Okhchuchay River, which flows from Karabakh to Azerbaijan.

The report that the program produced was meant to be for internal use only, but the Azerbaijani government released it publicly, using it as the basis for a new legal challenge. In January 2023, Azerbaijan announced that it would be filing another case against Armenia with the Council of Europe, this time alleging breaches of the Bern Convention, which governs the conservation of European natural habitats and wildlife.

Meanwhile, in December 2022, Azerbaijani eco-activists began blockading Stepanakert with pickets on the Lachin Corridor, the sole road running from the rump state of Artsakh to Armenia proper. Their complaints were the same as those made by the government: that Artsakh was illegally destroying Karabakh’s habitats. Baku said the protests were independently organized, and media organizations connected to the Azerbaijani state invited journalists in to report. Baku also engaged public relations firms to spread the news of the Bern arbitration.

In April 2023, Azerbaijan built a permanent military checkpoint on Lachin, cutting off all traffic in and out of Stepanakert—as well as the city’s gas and electricity cables. For nine months, Artsakh relied solely on the Sarsang dam to generate electricity. As a result, the reservoir, which feeds springs to the Tatar River and supports migratory birds, dropped to critically low levels.

Foreign Policy requested but was not granted access to the reservoir, but photographs shared with FP show the reservoir’s decline over the course of 2023. Steppes of brown banks drop sharply to the new water level, some 20 meters (65 feet) below what it was before the blockade. The ground left behind is sticky and infertile.

Karabakh’s environment is now a cornerstone of Azerbaijan’s image campaign as it pushes to reconstruct and repopulate the region as quickly as possible. At the COP28 U.N. climate conference in Dubai in November 2023, Baku showcased its plans for the reconstruction of Karabakh from a display in its wood-trimmed pavilion, decorated with pictures of tranquil lakes and mountains.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has promised that new hydroelectric dams in the region will be generating 270 megawatts by the end of this year, and that a solar farm capable of generating 240 megawatts will soon begin construction. New houses are being fitted with solar panels, and dams and climate-monitoring stations are undergoing restoration. Huge replantation projects are already underway to regrow lost forests, and native species, such as the Eurasian gazelle, are being reintroduced after decades of localized extinction. Baku has pledged to prioritize environmental and climate concerns during this process and has committed to a net-zero carbon emissions target in Karabakh by 2050, when the reconstruction is expected to be completed. Eventually, Aliyev says, Karabakh will turn Azerbaijan into an exporter of green energy.

“The great return will be a green return. We want to focus on the future, what we can improve,” Umayra Taghiyeva, Azerbaijan’s deputy minister for ecology and natural resources, told Foreign Policy.

In reality, Azerbaijan’s environmental imperatives are clashing with political and economic ones. On the ground, the region is mostly a construction site as new villages and towns, thousands of miles of roads and railways, and even two new airports are being built from scratch. Convoys of diggers chug through the ever-expanding arteries of this newly disturbed land, kicking up dust and petrol fumes.

In Agdam, they are starting to claw down the pomegranate trees to make way for the newly laid-out city. According to UNEP reports, waste from the demolition of old buildings is being poured into landfills, and the construction of new roads is destroying even more of Karabakh’s forests.

Much of what has been built already is Potemkin-like. Brand-new buildings, conference halls, and village squares are silent and underused—a jarring sight against the ruins of the old settlements. The first batch of former residents who have returned and resettled have been willing to withstand a strange isolation for the prize of coming home. Their rebuilt villages lie at the end of the ruler-straight new highways, about a four hours’ drive from Baku. The populations are still tiny—in the thousands overall. Most places, however, are still mined; independent experts and the Azerbaijani government have estimated that more than 1 million mines have been laid in the area. As of April 2023, only 7 percent of the contaminated land had been cleared.

The only commercial flights into the new airports thus far are transporting delegations from Turkey—one of Aliyev’s biggest allies—whose constructors have won major contracts in Karabakh. The construction company Kalyon, which is controlled by in-laws of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is building roads, while another in-law has won the contract to build an agropark—part of Baku’s ambitions to turn the once-agricultural region into a high-tech farming hub.

Baku will ramp up its green public relations drive later this year when it hosts COP29—a bid that it won with Armenian backing. Unsurprisingly, given that Azerbaijan is also a major petrochemicals producer, some see this public commitment to sustainability as little more than lip service. Its ambitious promises in Karabakh will undoubtedly be scrutinized under the spotlight.

“It is one of the more powerful examples of state greenwashing. In a different world they could create a new national park, and create employment through environmental projects and tourism,” Darbyshire said.

Aliyev has gained popularity from his victory in Karabakh and its reconstruction; many of the region’s newly returned residents proudly showed Foreign Policy their photos with the president. Today, however, there is almost no political opposition left in Azerbaijan, and critics of the war tend to live abroad in exile. But in less guarded moments, many Azeris working in Karabakh raise an amused eyebrow at the stark differences between the old land and the new.

Demining is expected to take decades, and full reconstruction—let alone rehabilitating the landscape—will take longer still. By the time the region is a fully functioning part of Azerbaijan, it will likely be unrecognizable from the idyllic place where Zulfugarov grew up. Reconstruction is yet to start in Nuzgar, which is still inaccessible, but he is certain that he will move back someday.

“I don’t think of what happened here, I think of what it will become,” he says, gesturing to the diggers working on the horizon. “In five or 10 years, this can be one of the most beautiful places.”

[dadsinsuits]

Celal Bal

[wizardyke]

honestly the live action sonic franchise is so disappointing and its honestly disheartening to see so many people invested/actively hyping up the new releases. not only is it filled to the brim with zionist propaganda & zionist actors, but it just sucks.

i tried to sit through the first movie but turned it off after the US official characters talk about how great their international intervention team (or something) is, and brings up the coup in pakistan, another -stan country and then "azerbaijanistan" in which the straightman US officeer says thats not a country. see the average viewer would think the joke is "lol a bunch of gibberish with the -stan suffix lollll" and not "azerbaijan is a country, not azerbaijanistan" and of course thats extremely minor in comparison to literal pro genocide & idf apologia in a kids franchise, but it still as an azeri it pissed me off so much i turned it off

even tho i havent seen sonic movie 1 or 2, i was really hype for the 3rd one because i love shadow and sa2, and was gonna see it with friends as well but with the news of keanu playing shadow and james marsden signing a stand w israel petition and the zionist propaganda in the knuckles show it deflated any hype i had. which is such a shame bc man its literally colourful animals that go fast?? like okayy...... . ..... how evil do u have to be to promote genocide (full stop) but ALSO promote it in a kids show of a very beloved 30+ years old character. can you imagine spongebob on live TV saying "remember kids, iraq is hiding weapons of mass destruction!' like??

anyways, just rewatch the sonic x anime and like. play the sonic flash game

[badgersprite]

My 2024 Eurovision Top 37!!!

It's that time of year again! That time where I give my opinions on Eurovision that nobody asked for!

Is this an especially strong year for Eurovision? Eh. Yes and no. There's a lot of songs I don't like, more than there probably has been in any recent years, but there's also lots of songs I really like and would be happy if they won.

I think this is shaping up to be a very interesting year. I would argue that there is no clear and obvious frontrunner. Any winner is really probably going to feel like a "surprise", and most likely a pleasant one at that. There's a lot of songs here that feel like they'd be deserving winners, with no one really so clearly ahead of the pack to where it would feel like they were "robbed" if they lost.

But anyway, we're counting down, in reverse order, below the cut!

XX. ISRAEL - EDEN GOLAN - Hurricane

Ok, full disclosure, this is why I was kind of late to post my top. I haven't listened to this song. Frankly, I don't feel comfortable listening to this song. I don't know if I ever will. So, accordingly, I will not be giving it a rating, review, or ranking. I wish to make no further comment and please respect my decision.

Sorry for the downer start, but that's just how I feel.

36. SWITZERLAND - NEMO - The Code

I'm starting off controversial. I have no idea why this song is so popular in the community. I do not know what other people hear in this. To me, this just sounds like an annoying, disjointed mess.

35. LATVIA - DONS - Hollow

This song is a slow, dirgey wall of sludge. Sorry to this man, but I don't come to Eurovision to feel like I'm at a funeral.

34. BELGIUM - MUSTII - Before The Party's Over

This song is a slightly less slow, dirgey wall of sludge. I don't know, it feels like it's trying really hard to be artsy and ~important~

33. ICELAND - HERA BJÖRK - Scared of Heights

"I'm not one to take risks."

Yeah, Hera. We can tell. Jesus Christ. This song is so safe it feels like getting a lecture on abstinence at a Christian private school.

32. MOLDOVA - NATALIA BARBU - In The Middle

I like the chorus. Shame about literally everything else in this song.

31. ALBANIA - BESA - Titan

What's with the random banjos? Albania in its Folklore era.

30. AZERBAIJAN - FAHREE & ILKIN DOVLATOV - Özünlə Apar

As much as I want to give Azerbaijan bonus points for finally sending something partially in Azeri, I literally cannot remember a single note from this song and I relistened to it about an hour ago.

29. FRANCE - SLIMANE - Mon Amour

Every year at Eurovision be like

Eurovision: "Hey, France, how French do you want to make your entry this year?"

France: "Oui."

He's got a great voice but to me this is just a run of the mill, paint by numbers Eurovision ballad that is also French and mentions Paris.

28. GERMANY - ISAAK - Always on the Run

Okay I actually don't really care for this song at all, it sounds like the kind of generic, inoffensive, slight hint of country so they don't alienate the flyover states kind of song they make American Idol winners sing. He's only this high because I really like his voice.

27. MALTA - SARAH BONNICI - Loop

This is an average Eurovision song.

26. LUXEMBOURG - TALI - Fighter

This is an average Eurovision song.

25. GEORGIA - NUTSA BUZALADZE - Firefighter

By the time this song gets going, it really comes together. It finishes really strong. The problem is the first...half or so? It's a disjointed mess. But the fact that I like at least PART of this song so much is what puts it above all these other songs that are insta-skips.

24. LITHUANIA - SILVESTER BELT - Luktelk

Probably my next most controversial pick. I don't get the hype for this song? I mean, don't get me wrong, it's fine. I like it. But it's just, like...an average song in this genre? It's nothing special.

23. PORTUGAL - IOLANDA - Grito

This is probably a case where it's not the song so much as it's me not getting it. To my ears it sounds pleasant but dated. And slower songs are often fighting an uphill battle with me at Eurovision anyway so.

22. ARMENIA - LADANIVA - Jako

I really like this, it's the fun folk throwback of this year. The only problem with it is, it's basically just straight up folk instrumentation. It sounds very small as a result. It could have used just a bit more modern production to give it that real OOMPH factor.

21. NETHERLANDS - JOOST KLEIN - Europapa

I probably would have liked this song a lot more if I hadn't heard Finland first. Spoilers for later. Also maybe I'm just too Australian and not European enough to really be able to relate to this song.

20. UNITED KINGDOM - OLLY ALEXANDER - Dizzy

This song feels like a throwback to a lot of the kind of British pop music that would cross over onto the Australian charts here when I was a kid. Like, remember when Billie Piper was a pop singer? Remember Craig David? This song doesn't sound like either of those per se but it does sound like the kind of song that would be on like one of these albums that I have in a box in my garage somewhere

19. AUSTRALIA - ELECTRIC FIELDS - One Milkali (One Blood)

Listen, I love Electric Fields. I've seen them live, and they were great. And I love this song. It's very meditative, it gives some good kind of spiritual advice that I vibe with. I think the song is only this low because, well, the video is meh, and this kind of feels like a "safe" Electric Fields energy? It feels like they could have done more.

18. SERBIA - TEYA DORA - Ramonda

See even though this song is a slow ballad, it avoids being a dirgey wall of sludge because it actually has like dynamic range to it. It's mostly quiet and gentle, and it builds to a big high point. It doesn't just feel like a wall of melancholy sound slowly drowning me.

17. GREECE - MARINA SATTI - Zari

I think I'm not hip enough for this. I feel like I'm going to come back to this later and like it a lot more than I already do. And I do like this. It feels kind of like a Greek Russian Woman in terms of vibe, and I mean that as a compliment. This is really good. It just may be a bit too weird, too out there, and too current to really land at Eurovision. Like this song definitely feels like it belongs on the internet. This song has iPhone face.

16. SPAIN - NEBULOSSA - Zorra

I love her lack of energy, go girl give us nothing!

Seriously though, this song is for the girls and the gays. And as I am a girl and a gay, I can appreciate it. This song is about, no matter what you do, people are going to call you a bitch and try and drag you down. So she's like, OK, fuck you, I'm going to go take on the world, be an empowered woman, and be successful, and if that makes me a bitch then fine, I'm the best bitch here. And I think that's a good message, and I support it. Women shouldn't have to make themselves smaller so as to not threaten your insecurities.

15. CYPRUS - SILIA KAPSIS - Liar

There is just something absolutely FILTHY about this beat that makes me want to throw it back. Fortunately for everybody, I am incapable of throwing it back, so you don't have to be subjected to that. But, like, I feel it in this song. This beat does dirty things to me.

14. ESTONIA - 5MIINUST & PUULUUP - (Nendest) Narkootikumidest Ei Tea Me (Küll) Midagi

Every time this song comes on, I can't resist the urge to get up and start dancing to it, so it must be doing something right. But also fuck you for making me write a title that long.

13. SWEDEN - MARCUS & MARTINUS - Unforgettable

Swedes are too OP at pop. Like this song is basically perfect. Fortunately, I am too much of a lesbian to be nostalgic for boy band music. If I had been into the Backstreet Boys or N*Sync back in the day, this song would make me super nostalgic, and it would probably be my number one. But as it is I'm nostalgic for different things, and it's all those songs that are in my top ten this year. As you'll see.

12. UKRAINE - ALYONA ALYONA & JERRY HEIL - Teresa & Maria

Ukraine doesn't miss at Eurovision. If the Vidbir staging had like...any budget at all, this would probably be higher. That's really all that's holding it back. I love this song. It's great.

11. CROATIA - BABY LASAGNA - Rim Tim Tagi Dim

This was hard. I went back and forth with this and other songs in my top 10 so many times. If you ask me to make this list again five minutes from now, this is probably there. If this song wins Eurovision, I'll be happy. I love it. If there's anything holding this back in comparison to the songs in my top, it's: I'm more nostalgic for other genres apparently; there's no real vocal moment in this song; the production kind of sounds like this was made in Garageband? Don't take any of this to mean I don't like the song. I do. But I like this a roughly equal amount to like half of my top ten and I had to split hairs.

10. SLOVENIA - RAIVEN - Veronika

This is art, mama. This was the first Eurovision song I heard this year and it really started everything off on a good note. The insane vocal moment at the end is what kept this in my top 10 above Croatia. I cannot wait to see the staging because this has a vision.

9. NORWAY - GÅTE - Ulveham

This feels weird having it this low. It was my number four for the longest time. Like, until I made this list today. I think it's the verses holding it back for me. The verses are a little bit nothing. It's just a lot of "this happened, and then this happened". And that's the one thing that docks an execution point from this otherwise excellent song. But it's lovely hearing Norwegian at Eurovision for the first time in forever

8. AUSTRIA - KALEEN - We Will Rave

Things Badger is nostalgic for, entry #1 - Cascada, apparently. This is taking me back to playing fucking DDR at the Time Zone outside of Hoyts at Hornsby Westfield when I was like 15. This was one of the songs I was juggling with whether to keep in my top ten, asking myself "Do I really like this song as much as I thought I did the last time I played it?" So then I'd play it again, and every time I played it...I'd get this feeling. And every time we kiss, I swear I could fly.

Wait.

7. ITALY - ANGELINA MANGO - La Noia

OK, full disclosure, if I were ranking the songs "objectively" in terms of which one is the best, like if I were taking personal taste out of this and just telling you what song I think will or should win Eurovision, this would be my pick. This is by far the hippest thing Italy has ever sent to Eurovision. It's great. It's fun. It's fresh. It's vocally challenging but executed with unbelievable ease. Angelina Mango is style, she is fashion, she is an icon, she is the moment. She's everything. Also, BUSINESS PRINCESS. What more can you want?

6. CZECHIA - AIKO - Pedestal

Things Badger is nostalgic for entry #2 - late 80s/early 90s girl grunge rockers. This song is stuck in my head all the time, and it's awesome. You just want to scream out the chorus. Because, you know what, I relate to this. I am currently going through a phase of loving me more, loving me more than your bullshit. And it feels great. It's empowering. It's a good message. Sometimes we do need to learn to put ourselves first, and learn what self-love actually means.

5. DENMARK - SABA - Sand

This is Scandinavian pop perfection. And I am not immune to Scandi-pop. Far from it. It's a well-known weakness of mine. I apologise if it makes me boring, but I fucking love this. I love every single second of this song. I'm probably going to vote for it in the Grand Final. If this wins the Jury I will be the one person who was like yeah I told you.

4. POLAND - LUNA - The Tower

OK, I initially had this lower. This was always in my Top 10. I always loved this song. But I always kind of had it in my mind of like, oh yeah, this is a really great song, but I like other songs more.

But, do I, though? Because, other than my #1 song, this is the song I've listened to more than any other song this year. And, as I was putting together this list, I kept thinking, oh yeah, The Tower is going to be the song that I listen to the most (other than my number 1) after this contest, it's going to be on all my playlists.

And then I stopped and thought, wait, hang on. If I keep wanting to listen to this song more than all the others, and I'm already looking forward to listening to this song for years to come...doesn't that mean I like it a hell of a lot more than I keep thinking I do? And, yeah. The answer is yes. I really love this song. I think the reason I kept underrating it is because it's just a great song all the way through with no real big epic Eurovision moment, right? But this list isn't what song I think will win Eurovision, it's what songs I like best. And I like this song almost the best. This is the kind of music I listen to.

3. FINLAND - WINDOWS95MAN - No Rules!

Things Badger is nostalgic for entry #3 - Y2K era Eurodance. This is basically just Planet of the Bass with only slightly less irony. And I love literally everything about it. Eurodance is a fundamental, defining characteristic of who I am. The first album I ever owned was Aqua's Aquarium. This shit just speaks to my soul, OK?

2. IRELAND - BAMBIE THUG - Doomsday Blue

*stands and applauds* You did it. You fucking did it, Ireland. You sent something interesting. Thank God. And, like, OK, interesting in and of itself does not equal good. This song is a stylistically experimental mishmash of different genres that could very easily be an unlistenable messy clusterfuck, but it's not. It's unironically actually very good and...oddly coherent? It's honestly bizarre how well these stylistic shifts that should be jarring just flow seamlessly. Or at least to me they do.

Is there maybe a part of this song that is trying a little too hard to be different and edgy? Yeah, sure, maybe. But I was once a teenager trying too hard to be different and edgy, and maybe this song speaks to that part of me that I haven't accessed in a while.

1. SAN MARINO - MEGARA - 11:11

Man, it sucks that this is going to go out in the semi-finals because I REALLY love this song, and I don't get why other people don't.

But apparently it's because...Thing Badger is nostalgic for, entry #4, mid-2000s electronic rock, which was absolutely fucking huge in Australia at the time. This song reminds me so much of that time in my life when I was listening to, like, The Rogue Traders, The Veronicas, TV Rock, The Presets, The Potbelleez, Sneaky Sound System. I could keep going. Apparently I was hugely nostalgic for this exact sound and I had no idea until I heard this song. But apparently this is also an experience entirely unique to me because it seems like nobody else likes this song, or cares about it at all.

Whatever, it will always have a fan in me.

OK HAPPY END

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 5.12 (after 1900)

1926 – The Italian-built airship Norge becomes the first vessel to fly over the North Pole. 1926 – The 1926 United Kingdom general strike ends. 1932 – Ten weeks after his abduction, Charles Jr., the infant son of Charles Lindbergh, is found dead near Hopewell, New Jersey, just a few miles from the Lindberghs' home. 1933 – The Agricultural Adjustment Act, which restricts agricultural production through government purchase of livestock for slaughter and paying subsidies to farmers when they remove land from planting, is signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 1933 – President Roosevelt signs legislation creating the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the predecessor of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 1937 – The Duke and Duchess of York are crowned as King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom in Westminster Abbey. 1941 – Konrad Zuse presents the Z3, the world's first working programmable, fully automatic computer, in Berlin. 1942 – World War II: Second Battle of Kharkov: In eastern Ukraine, Red Army forces under Marshal Semyon Timoshenko launch a major offensive from the Izium bridgehead, only to be encircled and destroyed by the troops of Army Group South two weeks later. 1942 – World War II: The U.S. tanker SS Virginia is torpedoed in the mouth of the Mississippi River by the German submarine U-507. 1948 – Wilhelmina, Queen regnant of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, cedes the throne to her daughter Juliana. 1949 – Cold War: The Soviet Union lifts its blockade of Berlin. 1965 – The Soviet spacecraft Luna 5 crashes on the Moon. 1968 – Vietnam War: North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces attack Australian troops defending Fire Support Base Coral. 1975 – Indochina Wars: Democratic Kampuchea naval forces capture the SS Mayaguez. 1978 – In Zaire, rebels occupy the city of Kolwezi, the mining center of the province of Shaba (now known as Katanga); the local government asks the US, France and Belgium to restore order. 1982 – During a procession outside the shrine of the Virgin Mary in Fátima, Portugal, security guards overpower Juan María Fernández y Krohn before he can attack Pope John Paul II with a bayonet. 1989 – The San Bernardino train disaster kills four people, only to be followed a week later by an underground gasoline pipeline explosion, which kills two more people. 1998 – Four students are shot at Trisakti University, leading to widespread riots and the fall of Suharto. 2002 – Former US President Jimmy Carter arrives in Cuba for a five-day visit with Fidel Castro, becoming the first President of the United States, in or out of office, to visit the island since the Cuban Revolution. 2003 – The Riyadh compound bombings in Saudi Arabia, carried out by al-Qaeda, kill 39 people. 2006 – Mass unrest by the Primeiro Comando da Capital begins in São Paulo (Brazil), leaving at least 150 dead. 2006 – Iranian Azeris interpret a cartoon published in an Iranian magazine as insulting, resulting in massive riots throughout the country. 2008 – An earthquake (measuring around 8.0 magnitude) occurs in Sichuan, China, killing over 69,000 people. 2008 – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducts the largest-ever raid of a workplace in Postville, Iowa, arresting nearly 400 immigrants for identity theft and document fraud. 2010 – Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 crashes on final approach to Tripoli International Airport in Tripoli, Libya, killing 103 out of the 104 people on board. 2015 – A train derailment in Philadelphia kills eight people and injures more than 200. 2015 – Massive Nepal earthquake kills 218 people and injures more than 3,500. 2017 – The WannaCry ransomware attack impacts over 400,000 computers worldwide, targeting computers of the United Kingdom's National Health Services and Telefónica computers. 2018 – Paris knife attack: A man is fatally shot by police in Paris after killing one and injuring several others.

[fredborges98]

Não importa sua estatura física, o que realmente importa é sua estatura e postura moral!É que no fim ou final te faz a menor particula física ou metafísica ou o maior SER entre os SEUS!

Por: Fred Borges

Dedicado ao PERDÃO ao SENHOR,ao MISERERE*, as menores e maiores partículas do mundo, aos detalhes, aos simples e pequenos detalhes, muitas vezes desprezados, ignorados,anulados, mistificados, fanatizados, difamados ou distorcidos.

Deus, nosso Senhor está na nossa palma da mão e no coração, mente, em estado físico ( Bíblia) e metafísico ( Fé ou Esperança)!

Aos pedidos de perdão em todas ou nas que encontrei as línguas:

" Ainda que eu falasse a língua dos homens

E falasse a língua dos anjos, sem amor eu nada seria"Monte castelo

Canção de Legião Urbana

Pedido de desculpas em todas as línguas.

Sei que errei, "pardonare" Senhor, e agora tudo que me resta é pedir o seu perdão.

Como prova do meu arrependimento, peço desculpas não uma vez, mas várias e em todas as línguas que encontrei.

Afrikaans: "Jammer"

Albaneses: "Unë jam i keq"

Alemão: "Es tut mir leid"

Amharic: "Aznallehu."

Árabe: "Aasef".

Arménio: "Ts'avum yem."

Avar: "Tʼasałuha"

Azeri: "Üzgünüm"

Basco: "Sentitzen dut"

Lower Saxon: "Nix för ungood"

Bengali: "Āmi duḥkhita"

Bhojpuri: "hamake maf kara".

Bielorrusso: "Mnie vieĺmi škada"

Bósnio: "Oprostita".

Bretão "Eskuzit ac'hanon"

Búlgaro: "Sŭzhalyavam"

Catalão: "Em sap greu"

Cebuano: "Ikasubo ko"

Chamorro: "Dispensa yo' ".

Chinês (Mandarim): " Duìbùqǐ "

Chinês (Xangai): "Tevéchi".

Coreano: "Mian haeyo"

Crioulo haitiano: "Mwen regrèt"

Croata: "'Ao mi je"

Dinamarquês: "Jeg er ked af det"

Espanhol: "Perdón"

Esperanto: "Mi pardonpetas"

Estónio: "Mul on kahju"

Finlandês: "Olen pahoillani"

Frisiano (Norte): "Fertrüt me"

Frisian (Oeste): "Desculpe."

Friulian: "Scuse"

Gaélico da Escócia: "Gabh mo leisgeul"

Gaélico da Irlanda: "Gabh mo leiscéal"

Galego: "Síntoo"

Galês: "Mae'n ddrwg gen i"

Georgiano: "Me ukats 'ravad'"

Grego: "Lypámai"

Gujarati: "Huṁ dilagīra chuṁ"

Hebraico: "Slicha"

Hindi: "Mujhe maph kardo"

Húngaro: "Sajnálom"

Islandeses: "Fyrirgefðu"

Ilocano: "Pakawan"

Indonésio: "Maafkan aku "

Inglês: "I'm sorry"

Inuktitut: "Iikuluk"

Italiano: "Mi dispiace".

Japonês: "Gomen'nasai"

Kannada: "Kṣamisi"

Cazaquistão: " Keşiriñiz "

Lao: "Khony khoothdnoa"

Latim: "Ignosce mihi"

Letão: "Man žēl"

Lituano: "Atsiprašau"

Luxemburguesa: "Perdão".

Macedónio: "'al mi e"

Malaio: "Ma'af"

Malayalam:"KshamikyNum"

Maltês: "Skużani"

Manx: "S'doogh lhiam"

Maori: "Arohaina mai"

Mongol: "Uuchlaarai".

Navajo: "Dooládó' dooda da".

Holandês: "Het spijt me"

Norueguês: "Beklager"

Occitano: "Perdon"

Urdou : " Māf karna "

Uzbequistão: "Afu eting"

Papiamento: "Sori".

Pashto: "Zeh mutaasif yum."

Persa: "Moteassefam."

Filipino: "Ako ng paumanhin"

Polaco: "Przepraszam"

Romanche: "I ma displacha"

Romeno: "Îmi pare rău" ou "Scuzați-mă"

Russo: "Prastite"

Samoan: "Malie lou loto"

Sardenha: " Mi dispraghidu "

Sérvio: "'ao mi je" ou "Izvinite"

Sesotho: "Ntshwarele."

Shona: "Ndineurombo."

Siciliano: " Mi scusassi "

Sinhala: "Mata samāvenna"

Em eslovaco: "Je mi a ľúto"

Esloveno: "Oprostite"

Somali: "Waan ka xumahay"

Sueco: 'Förlåt' ou 'Jag är ledsen'

Suíço-alemão: "Es duet mr leid"

Swahili: "Samahani."

Tagalog: "Paumanhin".

Tamil: "Enna maniichudunga"

Tcheco: "Je mi to líto"

Telugu: "Maa kshamaapanalu"

Tetum: " Deskulpa "

Tailandês: "Kŏr tôht"

Tibetano: "Gawn-da."

Tigrinya: " Yiqreta "

Tonga: "Fakamolemole."

Tswana: "Ke kopa tshwarelo."

Turco: "Pardon"

Ucraniano: "Vybačte"

Veneza: "Scuxéme"

Võro: "Andis".

Yiddish: "Zay moykhl."

Xhosa: " Ndicela uxolo "

Yorùbá: " Pẹlẹ "

Yucatec Maya: "Ma'taali 'teeni'"

Zazaki: "Qusır de seyr meke "

Zulu: "Uxolo

E claro, mais uma vez, minhas mais sinceras desculpas.

"Podemos ser qualquer um, desde que não sejamos nós mesmos!"

O Algoritmo de Deus e dos Nódulos Coronariano e Pulmonares.

Perdão Senhor!

Estamos a maltratar nossos irmãos, a enfiar a faca no ventre de possíveis homens bons,bons de natureza, bons para natureza, bons por cultivar e alimentar a Terra.

Perdão Senhor!

Estamos a conduzir nossos seres-instituições ou organizações como se não tivessem vida, não tivessem gente, dentro e fora, pacientes com paciência, clientes, homens, mulheres e crianças, idosos como se não houvesse para todos o amanhã.

Perdão Senhor!

Por termos estabelecido em todas as épocas da história da civilização a escravidão, a negação da vida, da liberdade, da individuação, da socialização e da própria humanização.

Perdão Senhor!

Por ter elevado a carne acima do próprio espírito, por não valorizarmos a espiritualização, a reza, a oração, a meditação, a salvação, a renúncia, a resignação, o perdão, a indulgência,deixado dominar a carnificina, a morte da alma, a morte da calma.

Perdão Senhor!

Por colocar ideologias, doutrinas, dogmas, religiões, partidos, organizações secretas acima de vós, dos nós dos embarcados e embarcações, acima dos laços dos eternizados pelo amor, pela família, pela total ou parcial falta de senso e sensibilidade.

Perdão Senhor!

Por distorcer a matemática do algoritmo de vós e não oferecer possível solução, mas problemas e mais problemas, e isto ferir, maltratar, criar nódulos, enrijecer coronária, perdermos nossa identidade, nossa origem, nossa razão de ser- Servir.

Perdão Senhor!

Por podermos ser e não sermos, perdermos nosso senso de coletividade, coletivismo, de sermos e estarmos embarcados num mesmo barco rumo ao horizonte e acharmos que a terra é plana e a cortarmos com uma plaina.

Perdão Senhor!

Por esquecermos as nossas origens, por não valorizarmos pai e mãe, por não sermos gratos aos nossos antepassados, por não valorizarmos a essência e deixarmos nos guiar pelas dúvida, pelo ceticismo, egoísmo, egocentrismo, por não sabermos diferenciar preço de apreço ou valor e fazermos do fim um fim em si mesmo e não valorizarmos o durante, o meio, os eternos segundos de qualquer convivência, vivência, vividos, viventes, vigorados vigente, colunas e vigas, vicissitudes da vida em mim, em nós, em cada,em casa, no lar, no mar, nos rios, no micro, no nano mundo,universo inverso, reverso, paralelo, tangente, intangível, atingível ou inatingível, compreensível e incompreensível, visível ou invisível dos nossos destinos e desatinos, da nossa interpretação ardilosa,maliciosa, tendenciosa, nada científica, nada racional, eminentemente emocional.

Perdão Senhor!

Por não sermos autênticos, intensos, dedicados, disciplinados e ao mesmo tempo flexíveis, enquanto o humano estiver acima das coisas, coisas materiais,e tudo acima de vós Senhor, nada valerá a pena, apenados estaremos, apenados morreremos.

Enfim perdão Senhor,

Por não fazer a VIDA VALER!

Por não estar o tempo inteiro contigo,pois se estivéssemos estaríamos protegidos, amados, abençoados, acolhidos, completos,íntegros, inteiros, não fragmentados, com nódulos, noduas, vazios, angústias, depressões,cremações infernais,ansiedades, pois se temos a vós Senhor, temos o Universo, as cores, e a fotos preto e branco,não precisariam ser preto no branco ou branco no preto de Sebastião Salgado, e não revelaria a rotina da escravidão antiga, moderna, contemporânea,ele foto revelada e atual, e no seus lugares, do preto e branco,estaria sempre no seu reino Senhor de cores, amores, fé, esperança, júbilo das almas, de almas lavadas, leves, levitando sobre a Terra numa era sem Apocalipse ou Armagedom ou Abadom**, enfim em PAZ!

*Miserere, também conhecido como Miserere mei, Deus (em latim: "Tende misericórdia de mim, Deus") é uma versão musicada a cappella do Salmo 51 (50) feita pelo compositor italiano Gregorio Allegri, durante o papado de Urbano VIII, provavelmente durante a década de 1630.

**Abadom (em hebraico: אֲבַדּוֹן, 'Ǎḇaddōn) é um termo hebraico que tem o significado de “destruição” ou "destruidor".

Na Bíblia hebraica, o termo figura seis vezes, todas elas na literatura de sabedoria em Jó 26:6, Jó 28:22, Jó 31:12, Salmo 88:11, Provérbios 15:11, Provérbios 27:20.

No Novo Testamento a palavra é aplicada apenas em Apocalipse 9:11.

Na Bíblia Hebraica, abaddon é usado como referência a um abismo sem fim, geralmente próximo a sheol (שאול).

No Novo Testamento, em Apocalipse 9, um anjo chamado Abadom é descrito como o rei do abismo sem fim de onde emerge um exército de gafanhotos (Apocalipse 9:11).

[boozybunch]

My boy Raf sitting in an azeri cafe and just casually admitting he hates azeri. Least self-aware man in the empire and I love him for it.

[mariacallous]

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili has condemned the alleged use of ethnic minorities to manipulate elections after a video surfaced showing a man dropping multiple ballots in a city largely populated by ethnic Azeris.

On Saturday, Georgians cast their votes in a parliamentary election depicted by both sides as an existential battle that will determine whether the country integrates closely with the West or leans back towards Moscow. The vote pits the ruling Georgian Dream party, in power since 2012, against four main blocs representing the pro-Western opposition. The incident, mentioned by Zourabichvili, reportedly took place in Marneuli, a southern Georgian city predominantly inhabited by Azeris. “...Very immoral to use an ethnic minority to rig the elections,” Zourabichvili wrote on X, sharing a video that shows a man dropping a handful of ballots into a ballot box.

Voting at the polling station was subsequently halted, reported Georgia’s private news agency, the InterpressNews.

The Central Election Commission said that the Ministry of Internal Affairs has initiated an investigation into the matter.

According to media reports, the polling station in Marneuli did not employ electronic vote counting.

For the first time this year, 90% of votes cast in Georgian parliamentary elections will be counted electronically.

At the close of the election, devices will print preliminary voting results. Votes will also be counted manually, and the final results will be based on these manual counts.

As of noon (GMT 0800) the voter turnout stood at 22%.

Polling stations will remain open until 8 p.m. local time (GMT 1600).

Reports of violence

Observers have also reported additional incidents and violations at polling stations, including instances of physical violence.

Commenting on such reports, Zourabichvili said: “Violence is occurring at various locations, journalists’ equipment has been broken. Groups have gathered to escalate the situation.”

The president urged the interior ministry to ensure that police respond more swiftly and effectively, adding that such tensions at polling stations cannot be allowed.

She also said that she was unable to get in touch with the interior minister.

Crackdown on foreign journalists

On Saturday, Swiss photojournalist Stephan Goss, who had arrived to cover the parliamentary elections, was denied entrance on arrival at the Tbilisi airport, and subsequently deported to Dubai.

Following the incident, Goss, who is accredited by the International Federation of Journalists, wrote on X: “On arrival my passport had clearly been flagged. They took it, I waited for 1.5h and then got paperwork saying I was denied entry and was being deported.”

Earlier this week, Georgian authorities also denied entry to Czech journalist Ray Baseley, who, after 34 hours of illegal detention at Tbilisi airport, flew to Warsaw on Thursday.