#Putin my hole

[zekejaegerchoked]

I need Vladimir Putin to suffer and die in the worst way possible

[i-am-the-oyster]

The total insanity of the Mills years and their immediate fallout is highly underrated - possibly Paul's most unhinged period, or second-most after 1968. Engagement ring hurling. Putin! Sporadic relationship cuteness that results in some certified bops but overall incredibly bizarre vibes. Celebrity Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? still completely blows my mind. He is charming, competitive, and viscerally uncomfortable with the whole enterprise. David Blaine being a cunt in a box!! Agreeing to aver on her website that it is 100% his own decision to dye his hair and that nothing has ever been HM's fault ever in her entire life. Unsatisfactory office space!! Paul randomly whipping For No One, Fixing a Hole, and Too Many People out of the vault while touring in '05! Whatever the fuck was going on with Riding to Vanity Fair!! Arguing about seal pups with the premier of Newfoundland on Larry King Live and then almost immediately afterwards bailing on the Entire Marriage!! Alleged Paul inexplicably being annoyed about breast-feeding. (Don't buy that one - largely bc I think Linda would have punted him directly into the sun if he'd tried that shit with her and it seems weird that he'd Forget how such things worked.) Alleged wine bottle shiv. (Again, I don't believe that actually happened, but Insane notwithstanding!!) That summer in the Hamptons when he got together with Nancy but first apparently shagged - or at least dated - every other available woman there. Rosanna Arquette clearly not holding anything against him for this, so I guess that ended well. HM's total meltdown live on British television that happens to coincide with the Nancy relationship getting serious, though no one put that together at the time. The mysterious "box of evidence" whose existence fluctuates, seemingly, with HM's moods. The entire divorce judgment (not a self-plug I swear it). HM attempting to defraud MPL via phony mortgage??? Exorbitant flower budgets!! HM insisting she only guest-hosted Larry King Live once and trying to gaslight me specifically, I guess!! (It was three times. I swear to god it was three. I watched them all out of an attempt at loyalty.) Lavatory Lil suddenly manifesting a decade later!!

It was relentlessly cuckoo bananas! No one remembers it! No one talks about it! I alone, seemingly, must bear all this cursed knowledge!!

Ahem. Sorry. The Fidelity advert triggered something in me. I'll hush now, lol.

This poetry requires no additions from me.

[accessible-tumbling]

Video description: The Quora site is displayed and the narrator, who has a British accent and is speaking quickly and excitedly, opens by reading from it: "My MacBook Air weighs 2.3 pounds. If I download more files on it, will it make it heavier?

"This is Quora," he continues. "A place where once grand intellectual questions would be mused over. But if you recall, 2 years ago we sadly bid farewell to our friend, Yahoo Answers, a place where those sorts of questions didn't happen, and in that time it seems many Yahoo users have made Quora their new home.

"Do chimpanzees get pregnant? Does anyone live on the sun? How high do planes fly when landing? What percentage of people are going to die? Do lesbians get periods?"

(A response to that question is read in a gruff tone:) "Oh, come on! Where the hell are you getting that question?"

"You are sleeping with your partner and suddenly realize that he/she is a ghost. What would you do? Are there werewolves in Texas? Why does the sausage have two ends? What happens to the time it takes to actually time travel into the past/future? Which hole does an actress push out a baby in a birth sense?"

(Another answer is read:) "She doesn't. She acts."

"I heard that in the Middle Ages, nobles used to wipe their butts with ducklings. Is that right?"

(Response, gruffly:) "No!"

"Is it true that pregnant women should not sleep during a lunar or solar eclipse as it may cause harm to the unborn?"

(Response:) "No. That's the dumbest thing I ever heard."

"Can I sue Germany for putting my grandfather in prison for 7 years in the second world war?"

(Response:) "No, no, no, no, no!"

"Can you think of a sentence that contains the words 'book' and 'crabs'?"

(Response:) "Well, yes, I can."

"Why does the 'bros' abbreviation for 'brothers' end in 's' instead of 'th'?"

(Response:) "Because that would spell 'broth'."

"Do rich people get embarrassed that their servants know what their stuff in the toilet looks like?"

(Response:) "This is a very weird question."

"What happens when we wash vessel and use it with water in which a lizard was dead? Is it poisonous? What can we do?"

(Response:) "Uhh..."

"Why does the United States promote homosexuality and not consider what happened in the petrified village of Pompeii?"

(Response:) "Wha…?"

"How can I have sex with Asia?"

(Response:) "Pretty sure you mean an Asian girl."

"Is Israel on the world map? Are the Irish really from Ireland? My son speaks Arabic. (in a panicked, shouting tone:) What do I do? Does India have airports?"

(Response:) "Putin came to India in 2014 swimming in the ocean. I have a photo to prove." (A flash of a picture of Putin swimming can be seen briefly at this point in the video.)

"Where do animals live? Why are things? What is my date of birth? Do you know a microscope? Real mathematicians (in all caps): I have 5 live cows and then I multiply them by 0. How then do you come and tell me that I end up with 0? Where did the 5 go? Which is larger: 0 or 2+7? Math math what is angle?

(Narrator comment: "I do believe this Quora user was intending to ask 'what are the names of the most powerful angels?' but…) What are the names of moist powerful angles? I'm an atheist who believes in God. What should I do? Why do atheists watch fiction movies? During airplane turbulence, how do atheists keep calm?"

(Narrator comment: "This question I could only find an old link for, even Quora went nowhere, not even, that is way too stupid:) How do atheists know what foods are 'sweet' versus 'sour' or 'bitter'?

"I am 11 and stand at 5 foot 2. Am I obese? Do celebrities fart? What's the meaning of a single white egg left at my door? (narrator's comment: that is weird.)

"My mom slapped her own bum in front of me what does that mean? Is this correct, 'similarvgbhujkljhgtyhujk'? Why is Zelda so 'thicc' in Breath of the Wild? Do demons always say 'I am a demon' when they are introduced? Is it possible to balance your entire body on your penis?"

(Response:) " Yes, but I'm scared of heights."

"I saw the cop the gay eating a raw bird in my backyard. What should I do?" (Narrator comment: "I became a bit obsessed with this question, it's so indecipherable and googled it for clues to find apparently there was much debate on the site about whether this was a weird autocorrect from 'cat'. Which word was supposed to be cat?")

"Can deaf people laugh out loud? Can deaf people do surfing? How do def people know what facial expressions look like and how they're used outside of American Sign Language (ASL)? If so, how do they learn about them if there's no way to see someone else make that face?" (Narrator comment: "I mean, I don't think there's any intelligent questions actually left on this site, is there? Who's asking 'Can music cause candle to light?' Obviously, no!")

"Do people still eat mashed potatoes? (Yes!) Can semen travel up your foot? (No,, it cannot.) Is the word 'stay asleep' alwasy spelled 'J'? (I don't even know what that means.) Do lobsters pee from their faces? (Uh, ugh, are you mad? Obviously no!)"

(Response:) "Yes, as others have pointed out, many crustaceans have two different types of excretory organs, both near the head. Usually only one is used, depending on the age of the animal. Lobsters and crabs, etc, use their urine smell like cats, to mark territory, warn rivals, etc." (Uh..oh.)"

The screen goes white and the scene transitions to footage of the narrator walking up to a door. He places an egg on the mat, then runs away.

End video description.

[beardedmrbean]

Maria Kalesnikava became a symbol of defiance in Belarus when President Alexander Lukashenko used the full force of his security apparatus to smash mass pro-democracy demonstrations in 2020.

Now she's starving in prison and being held incommunicado in a tiny, stinking cell where the toilet is a hole in the floor, according to her sister, Tatsiana Khomich.

Her weight has dropped to just 99 pounds though she's five foot nine, Khomich said, putting her life at risk.

The Belarus interior ministry did not respond to a request for comment on her conditions.

"During the last year and a half, my sister Maria is isolated. She’s kept incommunicado - there are no calls, there are no letters, no visits of relatives or lawyers. And I just must maybe remind that Maria had surgery at the end of 2022 on a perforated ulcer. So she needs now special diet, special food which she cannot receive actually and we know that she cannot eat much from the prison menu."

Kalesnikava gained further renown when masked officers snatched her from the street to deport her to Ukraine.

She tore her passport into tiny pieces at the border so they couldn't.

At her trial, she smiled and danced in a courtroom cage.

She was sentenced to 11 years on charges including conspiracy to seize power.

Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, denied this week that there are political prisoners in Belarus.

Since early July, he has released 78 people convicted for protest activity, out of around 1,400 designated by human rights groups as political prisoners.

But all the leading pro-democracy figures, like Kalesnikava, languish behind bars and Lukashenko's critics say they see no real change.

Khomich said Kalesnikava was last allowed to write to her family in February last year.

"She also asked about letters and packages, the answer she got was, like, ‘Everyone has forgotten about you’. We know that also that some women saw that the administration brought her some letters from outside but they didn’t give it to her, they just tore it up in front of Maria."

"They torture her, basically. It's psychological, but also physical torture as well."

For Lukashenko the mass demonstrations of 2020, triggered by an election that the opposition and the West accused him of stealing, marked a watershed in three decades of authoritarian rule.

Some analysts believe that by crushing them, he burned bridges with the West and became beholden to Putin – a dependence they say could be making him uneasy, and prompting the so-far limited prisoner releases.

[cesperanza]

As someone whose opinion I respect, can you please explain to me why the internet is suddenly obsessed with that hot piece of Cold War garbage? Cybill Shepherd's "Russian" is about as convincing as ScarJo's in the MCU (which is to say it kind of makes me want to claw my eardrums out); Hackman, as much as I love him in things like Under Suspicion, is CLEARLY phoning it in for the paycheck (though I guess he sounds vaguely like a drunk uncle of mine, so I guess I can forgive him for at least working with a dialect coach); and it's 2022, so can we not with that Russian femme fatale bullshit already? As an immigrant and a child of immigrants, I had to grow up with that secret squirrel Boris and Natasha bullshit and am honestly really kind of tired how the only points of reference for whatever bits of my heritage communism hasn't destroyed are Bond's usually murderous flavor of the week, genocidal autocrats like Putin and Stalin, and, now, apparently this. I mean, I guess I can appreciate Robert Duvall's uncredited cameo, but that's kind of the only positive thing I can say about this movie.

Because everything new is old again, nonnie! :D And you know that fandom always likes an underdog--a cult classic, a cancelled TV series, a canon that's a hot mess with plot holes to be filled. And Goncharov is all holes! But seeing Goncharov trending in the year of our lord 2022 takes me back to the years of self-hosted websites and slash zines under the table--I probably have an old Goncharov zine lying around here somewhere if I could only lay my hands on it. I wonder if the old Clock Tower archive ever made it onto the AO3?

Tl;dr let people have their fun, nonnie--don't like, don't read!

[nientary-1832]

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil”

On February 16th spiteful old rat Putin killed my hero Alexei Navalny.

It’s been 10 days, and acceptance won’t seem to come. I’m still switching from crushed to bloodthirsty to dissociating to bawling my eyes out.

Alexei was hope. Hope for change, peace and freedom. For a future where our own country would treat us as citizens, not mud under gestapo boots.

He was also a wonderful human being: loving and funny, unyielding and untiring, headstrong and absolutely fearless. Against him Putin’s dogs were no more than rats fighting a Greek mythology hero. The million fingered fascist machine was not able to break him or even wipe the smile off his face. This is why he was murdered.

I don't know how to live with this hole in my chest. This feels like the second end of the world, at least the world I knew and wanted to be in. This one’s going to hell at full speed, and no one’s even trying to fix it.

The western leaders are either malicious or impotent or out of touch. Can’t you see what’s happening? Can’t you see the pure flaunting evil in front of you? Can’t you feel what’s coming next? Don’t you remember history? Do you think evil stops spreading once it’s sated?

There’s only one way to stop it: FUCKING. HELP. UKRAINE. NOW. With weapons, not words. Are you afraid of rats? Are you waiting for them to grow?

I see so many people on Twitter calling Russians “genetic slaves”, poking fun at our fear and helplessness. I will admit, I am a coward. I’m not Navalny. Yet here I am, saying things I might very well get jailed for and, honestly, feeling slightly less pathetic than the US government, paralyzed by assholes on Putin’s payroll.

P.S. I don’t hate real rats.

[fritzmonorail]

I’m watching the United States presidential debate. This shits funnier than anything I’ve seen all week. It’s especially funny if you lie to yourself and pretend that the future isn’t a rapidly approaching black hole.

There’s no fact checker. there’s less moderation than a twitch stream. They just let them ramble on and on and then try to redirect them to the question they actually asked. At one point Trump just started yapping about hamas and how it’s all Biden’s fault and they were just like “once again the question is do you agree with Putin stance on the conflict in Ukraine?”

I’m losing my Mcfucking mind.

Vote for Vermin Supreme

[dasha-aibo]

Man, I know we're not supposed to talk about problems of Russians during this war, but like...

I'm Russian, so I'm gonna talk about the problems of Russians.

This mobilization effort is fucking mental.

They're literally sending untrained IT guys and lawyers who never held a rifle in their life with 10 (TEN!) days of training during which they don't even shoot to the front lines. Where they die without doing anything to the professional and well-equipped Ukrainian soldiers.

People are reading up instructions on how to use grenade launchers while they're riding to the combat zone.

Men, young and old, who never had proper combat training, let alone the taste of real combat are sent within range of artillery with no proper fucking support, their APCs and tanks are low in numbers and get destroyed on the way there and they're left to fight with no equipment, no support, no proper medical equipment NOTHING.

People are told to buy their own underwear, helmets, armored vests and fucking tampons to plug the bullet holes.

All of that while Ukrainians are suffering minimal casualties.

This is not a smart military move by any metric. Putin is literally attempting to drown Ukrainians in meat and blood of his own people, MY people.

And all for what?

To stop gender ideology and "the satanic West". Over some land that never belonged to him.

Do you fucking understand what's wrong with this regime yet?

Do you truly think this man cares about the people of Russia or anything but staying in power?

[mariacallous]

THROWING KYIV UNDER THE TRACTOR: In a major cave-in to Europe’s farming lobby, EU countries overnight agreed to impose restrictions on Ukrainian agricultural sales, dealing a significant blow to its exports.

Less revenue for Kyiv: This retreat ahead of this week’s EU leaders’ summit (for which farmers are descending on Brussels again) paves the way for a deal with the European Parliament today to partly roll back Kyiv’s trade benefits, officials and diplomats told Playbook. That’s expected to result in a revenue loss of more than €1 billion a year for the war-struck country.

Masks off: At last night’s meeting of the 27 government envoys, France came out in support of Poland, asking for a limit on imports of Ukrainian poultry, eggs, sugar and wheat, according to two people briefed on the discussion.

Strategic yogurt, revisited: Just as Macron stressed France’s no-holds-barred support for Ukraine, the pitchfork-wielding farmers have blown a hole into his “whatever it takes” soufflé.

Signal to Russia: Vladimir Putin can rely on European agri-food groups to do his lobbying for him. Russia’s full supermarket shelves — heaving with EU products — have been one of the regime’s go-to arguments to show Russia is winning the war.

Contradictory policy: This isn’t the first time the EU bowed to its agri sector when it comes to Russia’s war on Ukraine. While Russian-flagged ships are banned from EU ports, there’s an exemption for those carrying Russian fertilizers and pesticides. In previous decisions, the EU also rolled back asset freezes against Russian oligarchs involved in the agri-food trade.

The argument, back then, was that tougher restrictions on Russian fertilizers would lead to higher food prices in Europe. But that’s exactly what restrictions on imports from Ukraine will also do.

HAPPENING TODAY: The Belgian Council presidency and MEPs will meet this evening for negotiations on the new restrictions. Parliament has also asked for a lower ceiling at which the restrictions will kick in, as my colleagues Camille Gijs and Bartosz Brzeziński report in this must-read.

WINNERS AND LOSERS: Take a moment to appreciate the farming lobby’s political feat. Sky-high energy prices, a narrowly averted winter heating crisis, an influx of millions of refugees and Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling didn’t undermine EU will to support Ukraine — but farmers successfully convinced leaders to U-turn on policies aimed at supporting Kyiv’s income.

Winners: EU agricultural groups, who get to have their cake and eat it. After a host of measures meant to lower their production costs (such as derogations from environmental rules and the reintroduction of fossil fuel subsidies), they will now get measures to shield them from competition and increase their sales prices.

Also a winner: Russia. Today’s decision doesn’t just mean a revenue loss for Ukraine; it proves that EU leaders’ support for Ukraine caves under interest group pressure.

Losers: Ukrainian farmers, who look set to forgo some €1.2 billion a year in sales to the EU. And European consumers, who will get even less supply and choice, which could again drive up food price inflation.

BLAME IT ON THE ELECTION YEAR: Asked why they caved in, senior officials blamed their leaders’ fear that the farmers’ protests could fuel new populist parties, such as the BBB in the Netherlands.

But there are other ways to placate them: As some EU officials stressed, countries could help the majority of farmers simply by distributing subsidies more fairly. Some 80 percent of the EU’s direct farm subsidies go to the 20 percent biggest farms, according to the Commission.

[redjaybathood]

I expect Putin did the math and is just shoving men at Ukraine. Same as Stalin. Ukraine has better weapons and tactics, though.

I don't know how to respond to you, anon, without depressing the hell out of you. Yes, he is just using people to fill in a hole on a giant sinking ship.

Thing is, he can afford it. 140 million people.

I won't go into the weapons and tactics - I have no idea besides the basics, only that they also are learning. And there is still what some European countries sold him since 2014, and what other dictatorships sell him now, like Iran's Shaheeds. Some countries still not-so-secretly playing on their team, sabotaging weapons supply to Ukraine, or helping Russia to circumvent sanctions. Some people continue to spread their propaganda, both far left and far right. West and East and Global South. Nobody is immune.

So Ukraine still needs the support of the world. Both in regards to weapons and ammunition, and with sanctions, and with battling Russian propaganda in any form it comes, and with refugees. And we are deeply thankful to countries and people who are doing the right thing.

This was in my drafts for a while. Like a year, for a while. I guess I wrote it and didn't want to post it. Too depressing for a foreign reader, I thought. And I am sorry. It probably is. Don't lose hope in Ukraine though. We can do it. We can win. If we have the means to do so.

Unfortunately, there is that thing that Ukraine isn't a hot conversational topic anymore, and the West doesn't give a shit. Even your regular people, outside of the pretty small pro-Ukrainian bubble, don't give a shit anymore - if they ever had. Like, I see so many reblogs on Gaza going around from any kind of blogs, a fandom-only blog too, and you go there, and you search Ukraine, and you come up with nothing or like, one Feb 2022 post.

And it's good that people support Palestine (if it's done without the usual antisemitism, spreading misinformation, and veiled calls to genocide - of Jews, this time (again)). But it kinda sucks that they never did the same with Ukraine, or did once and stopped. What sucks more is that posts badmouthing Ukraine and calling to deprioritize it still get a lot more hits than posts calling to support Ukraine. Now, though, it's coated in things like "western hypocrisy" (water's wet; how come you throw us under the bus for it? although it's not even particularly true in relation to Ukraine but, doesn't matter) or "they get aid as it is" (i wish). and that's not tankies even. It's like. the normies.

Anyway. If you donate to Come Back Alive and any other fund in my bio, it would be cool of you. Subscribe to Ukrainian newspapers like Kyiv Independent or online resources such as Ukrainer and Crimean Platform, or tik-tok creators who talk about news in Ukraine. For example, yeewleva is a Ukrainian who's commenting on news, what's going on in Ukraine and the world in relations to Ukraine. karistocracy is not Ukrainian but she is a journalist that lived in Ukraine for a while, and she gets most of the things right, and can simplify complicated concepts for general western/english-speaking public pretty good.

on youtube, I recommend Ukrainian Toronto Television (despite the name, 100% Ukrainian). especially a hard rec for Americans, Beau of the Fifth Column is a commentator who - now posting mostly about Gaza and US election - still has some good insights into Ukraine.

on twitter, I would give a follow to @cybersoroka, @maksymeristavi, who are Ukrainians but write a lot in English. among non-Ukrainians, @terrelljstarr as a reporter who lived in Ukraine prior to the invasion, and @TimothyDSnyder, he studied Ukraine - and russian imperialism - academically.

I'm adding non-Ukrainians so you will not be like - oh no, you're recommending biased Ukrainian sources only! so yeah.

If you hear about a pro-Ukrainian rally in your city, go, it will be much appreciated. We need weapons and we need more sanctions on Russia/stricter control over them. Be wary of anyone who asks for Ukraine to capitulate like Code Pink, Grayzone, etc. Those are not Ukrainian friends. (i mean, it's obvious who knows even a bit of Ukrainian context, but I'm adding this in case the post leaves the bubble; which - unlikely, things being what they are).

[thelostdreamsthings]

Understanding the NATO summit:

The steam for the US proxy war in Ukraine is running out. No commitment is given to Ukraine to obtain NATO membership because the West has come to realize that they can’t win a war against Russia and that peace will only be possible with a neutral Ukraine.

Ukraine will never be a member of NATO. Zelenskyy has realized this and is fuming in Vilnius, attacking NATO as disrespectful and calling the conditions absurd. In a moment of clarity he acknowledged what’s really going on:

"It seems there is no readiness neither to invite Ukraine to NATO nor to make it a member of the Alliance. This means a window of opportunity is being left to bargain Ukraine’s membership in NATO in negotiations with Russia."

That’s exactly right. NATO has lost this war. Biden has lost this war. The lunatic Democrats have lost this war. The uni-party warmongers have lost this war. The EU has lost this war. Ukraine and Zelensky have lost this war.

Russia wins and rightfully so because everything that happened in Ukraine was a fraud against the Ukrainian people perpetrated by a failing US empire in its final stand against a rising multipolar world.

Zelenskyy was never a leader who did what’s best for his people. He will be remembered as a US puppet and actor for foreign interests. 350,000 Ukrainians dead because of him and his puppet masters in the US. He lost $12.7 trillion worth of land and resources to Russia because he did not sign the reasonable peace agreement that Russia had proposed to him. Instead he fell for empty promises from Biden that the US will support Ukraine until victory. What a fool.

The good news is this war may be over soon. The West has lost its appetite to throw more money into the Ukrainian black hole. With the US and EU entering recession they have enough problems at home. Protests and riots will become regular news. Biden wouldn’t stand a chance in the next election. His brain is Swiss cheese and the only alternative for the Democrats is Kennedy.

Trump will use the fatal mistake in Ukraine and the dire economic outlook of the US to run a successful campaign. Kennedy, who says all the right things, would be his only real obstacle but the Democrats have messed their country up so royally that Trump seems like the only choice.

The reality is that it doesn’t matter who the next US president is. The insurmountable debt burden combined with de-dollarization in global trade and the rise of BRICS+ are going to send the US into a decade long depression with unseen levels of poverty and violence.

Hopefully humanity dodged a bullet and nuclear war is no longer imminent. At least that is my read of the situation right now. But things could flare up again if peace negotiations fail. Russia may be tempted to take Odessa and turn Ukraine into rump state without access to the sea. Russia is holding all the cards. Let’s see how Putin plays them.

Putin’s ONLY mistake is not starting the Ukraine special military operation sooner than he did.

Zelensky is not just angry because he's short, has no friends and was rejected by NATO..

He's also angry because Putin currently controls 100,000 sq km of Ukrainian territory.

[athis333]

The changes I saw on television, I ached to witness on the ground: activists pushing against dictatorships in Belarus and Central Asia, national movements rising in the Caucasus, religious communities coalescing in Siberia. I wanted to learn about China’s new business interests in the far east of Russia, and to meet the shaman with six fingers on one hand who worshipped on the shores of Lake Baikal. Some KGB archives opened: The country was learning about its past crimes. One could so easily fall into the trap of believing that Russia was free.

And so my family and I moved to Russia from the United States in 2005. We saw no sign of Russia’s impending catastrophe. The capital was alive with tourists, artists, and businessmen from all over the world. At the opening of a basement theater for plays with political themes, I saw actors mock Putin without fear.

But all was not really quiet during those years. Chechnya was rebuilding from ruins after a decade-long war with the Russian army that killed thousands of people. As a correspondent for Newsweek, I covered terrorist attacks, armed conflicts, and KGB-style repression in the post-Soviet democracies. Still, in Moscow, the word stukach, or “informer,” sounded like a relic of an earlier time. Russia was awake, voting, protesting.

As a reporter, I wanted to get behind the country’s polished facade and look into what Russians call glubinkas, or “little depths”—the remote and miserable corners of a country’s life. I covered neo-Nazi groups, asbestos mines, provincial youth facing unemployment, and the temptations of a life in crime. I went to the Arctic, to the border with China, to places that many in Moscow considered godforsaken in their obscurity; but on coming back to Moscow, I began to bear witness to the gathering of a much worse darkness still.

Journalists often walk the paths where good is losing to evil. I stepped along those byways, saw victims, and reported on crimes against ordinary people. Some were my friends. Natalia Estemirova, or simply Natasha, lived in Grozny. She was an investigative reporter and a human-rights defender, as well as a single mother of a 15-year-old girl. During the Second Chechen War, I stayed at her house, its walls pocked with holes from shrapnel, the two of us talking late into the night. She told me about the dozens of abductions she had documented in what she described as a growing epidemic, crimes for which no one was held accountable.

On July 15, 2009, Natasha was herself abducted in broad daylight in front of her house. The men who pushed her into an unmarked Lada have never been identified or prosecuted. A few hours later, her bullet-riddled body was found on the side of the road. Together with a small group of journalists and human-rights defenders, I went to Chechnya to accompany her hearse along Vladimir Putin Avenue, Grozny’s sinisterly named central boulevard. Perhaps the people she’d helped during the war were too afraid of Chechnya’s brutal leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, to join us. Or were they indifferent? That day, one of Kadyrov’s aides told me that if I didn’t leave Chechnya immediately, I, too, would be made to disappear.

During Putin’s first two terms in office, we journalists often went to such funerals for our assassinated colleagues: Anna Politkovskaya, Stanislav Markelov, Anastasia Baburova, and others. These were restive years, especially 2011 and 2012. Russia had seen enough of Putin, his war in Georgia, his penchant for repression that smacked of an earlier era. Protesters ventured into city squares; Muscovites sought out sources of independent news on paper and television. But activists and their leaders started to be arrested, and statues of Felix Dzerzhinsky and Stalin sprang up around the country. I remember a feeling of suffocation, as if somebody were pumping the oxygen away. That feeling was one I had experienced as a child.

“This city has clogged pores, this city has shut up mouths, telephone calls are like confessions of mutiny,” my father wrote in a 1979 poem about my hometown. Now all of Russia began to seem that way, as though it were heading back to the 1970s. The number of informers was rapidly growing: People called “hotlines” to report on their neighbors to authorities. I sometimes felt that we told the truth only at the funerals of our assassinated friends. And I questioned my past nostalgia: Was this what Russia had been all along?

Then Boris Nemtsov, a democratic politician, one of the very best Russia had, with my last name but who was no relation, was shot in the back on a sidewalk within sight of the Kremlin walls.

[dollarbin]

Dollar Bin #25:

Stephen Stills' Manassas

Okay, I'm afraid it's finally time to listen to some Stephen Stills. As I've previously mentioned, my famous brother claims that Manassas is Stills' masterpiece and that after listening to it I'll make a pilgrimage to the shrine of all things Stephen, make penance on bended knee and then be forced to invent a new villain for this blog.

But I refuse to believe it. First of all, excoriating Stills makes me happy, so why would I ever stop doing so? All the other potential villains I can think of are fictional beings (you know, Sauran, the Ewoks), or are actually evil and therefore not fun making fun of (you know, Putin, Trump) or are too obscure to continually mock (Danny Kortchmire, destroyer of potentially great records by Neil Young, Linda Ronstadt, Don Hendley and Carole King, comes to mind).

But it's not fair to not give poor Steve, and my famous brother, a chance: objectivity rules in the Dollar Bin, yes? And so I must submit to my famous brother's advice and, as George Michael instructs me, listen without prejudice to Stills' double album of dog droppings.

So, let's do this: Manassas, Stills' substitute-supergroup-screw-you to C,N and Y from 72 (C, N and Y collectively shrugged and made better music without Stills). Someone get me about 16 beers and a punching bag so as to periodically take out my anger.

Song of Love opens Side 1 and, despite the fact that Neil Young probably has sixteen different unreleased songs coming out on Archives 7 in 2048 with that same sucky name, this song doesn't suck as much as we expect it to, at least at first.

Stills doesn't sound too much like a dope as he opens his pie hole to honor Song of Love's lousy lyrics, and there's space in the mix for the keyboards, bass and drums to hold their own. But then we get to the guitar solo, which could be pretty sweet - after all there's a worthwhile surprise in it as Stills unexpectedly climbs the flagpole of his own enormous ego then greases his way back to down in a flourish - but in Stills' coked-up, record mixing, hands his solo glides around the stereo space: check me out! Stills brags; I'm in your right ear now; but watch while I slide the mix over the right side - and back again! Hey everyone, Stephen brags, I learned how to spin a dial: aren't I a very stable genius?

Even so, if the rest of Manassas is as good as this song, I'm gonna have to eat some meaty crow dropped by an Amazon drone. It'll be yet another gift from my famous brother.

Next up, after a pretentiously teensy song gap, comes a song called Rock and Roll Crazies. Nice title, Stills. Come to think of it, all his titles on this record suck (seriously: there's a song called Blues Man; another is called The Love Gangster. Someone Get Me a Bucket is not a song title from the record, rather it's a request I am now making because I already need something to puke in. Apparently there is no Stills' penned number on this album entitled I'm A Giant Dickhead; that must be an outtake.)

This song sucks. Stills is dispensing advice on how to avoid being stuck up should you become, like him, a Rock and Roll God; meanwhile his rhythm section, led by the from-this-point-forward forever intolerable Joe Lala, justifies its existence by beating on its entire wall of cowbells at once. I'm a devoted pacifist. And yet I already want to punch Stills in the face.

But it gets worse! Rock and Roll Crazies is apparently part one in a medley of musical torture. After covering us with peanut butter and inviting over a whole school of starving rats in Rock and Roll Crazies, Stills crushes us into jelly with an elephant ass called Cuban Bluegrass. 51 years later Cubans everywhere are still shaking their fists at Stills in rage.

And then it gets even worse! What circle of hell are we now in? This thing claims to be a three part medley but there are at least 7 different jams stacked up. Imagine Guided By Voices's Alien Lanes reissued as a double album, but the never before heard Sides 3 and 4 completely undercut every wonderful bit of the frantic, drunken, homemade colleague that is the original record. That's what's happening in my ears. Stills apparently spent days and days in the studio making this crap up without ever sleeping. I wish he'd taken a goddamn nap.

Currently he's telling me he is part of the Jet Set. It sounds like everyone in the band has their shirt off and is flexing while hired ladies shave their chests and pay them false compliments. I don't own any Jimmy Buffet records dedicated entirely to covering Santana because this is what I imagine them sounding like.

At the end of Side 1 the bongos go nuts and there's actually some pretty cool guitar and keyboard in Anyway and especially in the somewhat hummable Both of Us. Someone/s other than Stills sings too, which is a relief. Much of the time it's probably Chris Hillman, who, after giving up on Gram Parsons, made a career of riding the coattails of increasingly annoying people, from Stills to Crosby to disco era McGuinn. Joe Lala owes me an apology for everything that's happened in this experience so far. Stephen Stills owes me another beer. Go get it Steve!

Before we flip to Side 2 I want to introduce a few big picture reasons why all of us should hate this record/band/Stephen Stills. Many more will follow later in the post and for as long as I continue to write this nonsense:

Stills claims credit for his "compositions" on this record. Dude, you made this swaggering nonsense up on the spot, and then made us listen to it. You didn't "compose" anything. I teach English for a living, so here, Steve, is an example of a composition: Dear Stephen Still, You Suck. Sincerely, The Dollar Bin. Now, someone, take away Stevie's composer baton before he accidentally puts out Joe Lala's eye.

There is no clear order of the sides. The records (remember, this is a double album, so get comfortable as I probably have 6,000 more words of anger left to spill before this is over) say that Song of Love opens Side 1, but the back of the cover says that's the start of Side 3; the inside gatefold muddles things even further. But who am I kidding, no one really gives a flying fugelhorn, because I'm the only person on earth who currently listens to this record. But still, Dear Stills, decide on a song order and stick to it. Or tempt my wrath further!

And what's the name of this band anyway? Stephen Stills is on the spine. Manassas is the name of the album. But that's the band's name too. What the hell is happening here? And who let Stills name his band after a Confederate victory? If there's a statue of Stills anywhere on earth it too needs to come down, pronto.

Okay, it's time to listen, with a very open and marginally sober mind, to Side 2.

Fallen Eagle opens. But wait. I should note before I go any further that all of Side 1 had its own subtitle, The Raven. Aside from pretension, there is absolutely no explanation or excuse for this title, let alone any title, for what we just sat through on Side 1. As near as I could tell the songs were about either nothing or about being a rock and roll star. I trust that Edgar Allen Poe's descendants sued Stills' ass.

But where were we? Ah yes, Side 2. This one gets an equally pretentious subtitle, The Wilderness. Apparently Stills wants us to travel with him into the country, where he will reveal his mastery of yet another musical form. We're down home with Stills and crew now. There are nutty fiddles and more dull lyrics. Yee-haw.

Next up Stills has thoughts on Jesus Christ. Jesus, he tells us, Gave His Love Away For Free. Thanks for the homily Father Steve. The piano here is lovely though. There is a piano player in the band, Paul Harris, but Stills lists himself as another pianist generally so we never know who's responsible for any given note. This is reason #648 for why I hate this crap.

The third song is one of Stills' best: I admit it, he has a few good songs. But that does not lose me the bet, not by a mile, famous brother. But I'll play nice and let you all give a listen to the first thing on this record that's worth your time, Colorado.

All the vocals are tasteful, the piano and steel guitar are lovely. But is it the best song with that title from this era? Of course not! Everything one of the six good things Stills has ever done is second fiddle to all the truly good things in life. So, let's take a deep breath here and listen to Linda Ronstadt's Colorado instead:

Wow, that was a nice break. Back to work:

The song that follows Stills' Colorado, So Begins the Task, is also perfectly nice; indeed it's pretty good. Both songs would have been reasonable inclusions on Deja Vu. The fact that Stills was capable of making music this straight-forwardly enjoyable but chose instead to write songs like Rock and Roll Crazies is making me crazy.

The fiddles return for the side's fourth track, Hide it So Deep. This song is not as good as the previous two songs, but it's not atrocious . If someone were singing this at a farmer's market with their case open for tips I'd give them a buck and a nod, but I wouldn't stick around.

The Wilderness wraps up with what sounds like an International Submarine Band outtake, Don't Look at My Shadow. Stills returns to his favorite lyrical topic: describing how hard it is being as famously awesome as he is. I guess that's why he understands Jesus...

Anyway, Stevie Nonwonder wants us to know that after playing for 20k adoring LA fans a handsome man like him craves a little me-time. Poor Steve, it's such a hard life he has as a young, physically fit, white, male celebrity. Don't worry Stevie, we won't look at your shadow, or you, ever again as soon as this record is over.

Here at the 1/2 way point I want to complain about the album's lousy aesthetics. The album's two pull out sleeves have identical photos of Stills on all four sides. Steve, if you wanna be a big deal 70's artist and splurge for sleeves that aren't blank, or are adverts for other artists on the label, or that encourage us to send $1.99 for Loss Leader collections, then use your investment to make your record cooler. Please ask Neil Young to show you his pull outs for Live Rust as a sweet example, Steve. (And please note, dear George Lucas, who I'm sure is among my legion of followers, those are Roadeyes, not Jawas, on stage with Neil; there is no connection whatsoever between the two hooded beings, at least according to Young and his legal representatives.)

Thanks for checking in with Neil on how to do pull out sleeves right Steve-O. And while you're at it, please tell Neil that I'm sorry I spent a whole afternoon listening to your music instead of his.

But there are more complaints to be registered about the pull out's. Stills's two Manassas sleeves a) have an identical bad concert photo of Steve on all four sides and b) that bad photo is a straight up rip off image from Dylan's cover from Greatest Hits Volume 2, which had come out six months earlier. Proof displayed:

Stephen, Stephen, Stephen: you are not, and have never been, a peer to Dylan. If you're looking for a peer, track down my old next door neighbor Ken. His front yard was full of broken toilets.

Stills could have put his "supergroup" bandmates on these pull outs or given us something interesting to look at, like, for example, every one of Stills' guitars and football jerseys in a beautifully flaming heap, or Stills' cat giving him a dirty look. But instead he uses the pull outs as further proof of his own suckyness.

(A quick note on the term "Supergroup": adding Chis Hillman and Joe Lala to his lineup does not qualify Stills' group to supergroup status. Supergroups do indeed exist. The Traveling Wilburies come to mind, as does Yo La Tengo, or, say, The Beatles; each is made up of people who could be a huge deal on their own but set aside their egos (at least for a moment) to elevate one another as equals. My famous brother is in an actual Supergroup as we speak. When he records his next record with me, Fuzzy Samuels and Stills my famous brother will not call it a Supergroup; he'll call it a pity project.)

Don't pawn the record's artistic ineptitude off onto someone else: alongside every other credit he dreams up for himself on this record Steve also says he's the Art Department. Every photo on the entire album, except, incongruously, two little shots of his, surely furious, engineers, are out of focus, lame and self-obsessed. Stills is as bad at making art as he is at making music.

Okay, Side 3 is called Consider. I'm considering the use of a lot of four letter words I swore I'd never use in this blog at this point; Stills is busy trembling in his Velveeta Castle (which is surely Steve's favorite kinda cheese), sure I will at last hurl such invectives at him.

It Doesn't Matter is better than the average Stills track, and once again there's pretty good guitar solo, but saying "better than the average Stills track" is like saying better than my average episode of flatulence.

I've already spent time on the second song, Johnny's Garden, and unlike Stills, I'm not a plagiarist, even of my own writing, so go reread my recent Ringo piece if you really want to hear my analysis a Stills song that rhymes "shine my shoes" with "singin' the blues." The song does have some nice guitar picking, I guess. Steve's probably better than me at picking... his nose. Ha! Even my humor is currently descending down to Stills' level at this point. Next thing you know I'll be claiming responsibility for my own art department.

Bound to Fall is a cool change of pace. Stills didn't write it or sing it, so that helps. And there's a sweet Moog thing going on. Stills takes credit for playing the Moog, of course. He's probably telling someone right now that he invented the internet too.

How Far... Move Around... do you really need me to write about these songs? They're fine: Stills sings about nothing and everyone knows how to play their assigned instrument. Move Around is actually sorta pretty with the Moog again swerving about. I hope I never hear either of these songs ever again.

But we've gotta spend a moment on The Love Gangster, which ends Side 3. The perpetually grumpy Bill Wyman, bass player for the Stones, showed up to help write it. Stills and Wyman are great peers for one another: both were forever whining about having to share the stage with bandmates who made them look special (Neil Young and Jagger/Richards, respectively). Plus, both Stills and Wyman eventually ditched their masterful peers, sure that their solo greatness would be instantly recognized, George Harrison style. But instead, to no one's surprise except their own, both men sucked solo. Both dudes are still with us; they should start a band. Eric Clapton could play lead guitar, Stan Lynch would handle drums. They could open for Jay Farrar. We'd call the whole thing Comeuppance.

The Love Gangster, in case you care, is a wandering mess. Whoever sings with Stills (it's gotta by Joe Lala) is an even more atrocious singer than he is. Thanks for stopping by and making this all even worse Wyman!

And while we are on the subject of Wyman, we need to just stop everything for a moment and read this excerpt from his Wikipedia page. Feel free to drop your jaw in advance:

In 1993, Wyman's son Stephen Wyman married Patsy Smith, the 46-year-old mother of Bill's ex-wife Mandy Smith (with whom Wyman had begun a sexual relationship a few years before, when she was 14 and he was 48; they eventually married, then divorced). Stephen was 30 years old at the time. Therefore, the ex-Rolling Stone became his own son's ex-son-in-law, the father-in-law of his ex-mother-in-law, as well as the stepgrandfather of his ex-wife.

No, I did not make any of that up. Stills has had three wives, not to mention his affair with Rita Coolidge which led to the first of CSN&Y's many breakups, but none of his relationships were straight up criminal. Apparently we need to list Wyman alongside Trump in the "too evil to mock" category for this blog. And "The Love Gangster" must also be the non-tongue-in-cheek title of Wyman's biography. Let's not read it.

Ready for Side 4 of this monstrosity? It's called Rock & Roll Is Here To Stay and I'm frankly tempted to lie and say I listened to it already and just wind things up right here. But, like the poor lady in Julie and Julia who had to eventually cook all those gelatinous meat molds, I need to finish this terrible task.

Let's get Side 4 over with in one sentence shall we? What To Do is another piece of anthem rock crap; Right Now involves guitar slides that can surely only be performed while in spandex (Stills must have invented spandex too); The Treasure (Take One) may be better than takes 2-96 of the song and involve some sweet piano licks underneath the pomposity but it sounds like donkey testicles falling onto your dinner plate and involves wackachicka guitar moves a full five years before disco, plus the rhythm shifts make we wanna shift my own status to dead; and the last song is called Blues Man: Stills wrote it about himself and performs it solo so I'll just let you imagine the horror, the horror.

There, I did it: I listened to Manassas.

I'll see my famous brother next at Christmas. I'm already carving him a piece of coal in the shape of Still's terrifying goatee.

[beardedmrbean]

The poland missile was definitely an accident. The pictures show the trailer destroyed but the tractor (relatively) intact, despite the huge hole the projectile left. For what could supposedly been a "long range" missile that's remarkably little damage and the whole thing tells me the projectile was unlikely to have an armed warhead when it hit, or at the very least not one made for a ground impact.

My guess is one of the Ukranian S-300 missiles they launched against the (actual) Russian missile attack missed but failed to self-destruct, and followed a ballistic trajectory after its fuel ran out. By horrible coincidence, the polish granary was the area it came down in.

I didn't see enough of it to be able to make that much of an assessment, but I couldn't see a single situation where putin would send something off to Poland not just a singular one missile at least, if he wanted to start shit he'd try another blitzkrieg like the one his army shit itself on going into Ukraine

And then I can only see that as him drumming up and excuse to pull out the nukes, at which point I think before he can push the button some of his "friends" might finally be fed up and pull a rasputin on him.

But start with turning him into swiss cheese instead of all the other crap with poison.

[extemporaneousmusings]

14/6/23

Today I:

-didn’t oversleep, so I had time to chill for a bit before getting ready and going to campus early for writing group

-plugged the the last substantial holes in the draft! I only have a few sentences of political situating left to write, which I will get to next week after I do some lovely light reading on Putin

-got encouraging comments on my final chapter from my favorite committee member

-finally sat down and recorded my intro lecture for sports. I think I need to make a few tweaks and re-record one or two slides, but at least the bulk of the work is done

-am going to cook a very tasty meal of pan fried polenta and veggies on arugula, even though I’m not hungry, because I definitely still need to eat, and I promised E I’d bring them food at work

-finally am going to break the seal and listen to Janelle Monáe’s album. Sooooo excited

[the-jam-to-the-unicorn]

I just need to get this off my chest:

Just a convo with an old friend of mine and it turns out he is a full blown german putin apologist. And I cannot for the life of me understand why. He himself was born in Ukraine, he's a jew, he is a decent person - why why why?!? The f**** might of this f**** russian propaganda machine is so terrible. I don't think our relationsship will ever be the same again, it makes me so angry and sad at the same time. Like, he literally said invading Ukraine was necessary and that Ze was a currupt a*hole and on and on. I told him he had inhaled too much russian propaganda, then he told me I was repeating "western bullshit". I had to break off the convo at some point, just couldn't handle it anymore.

Please nobody get mad at me, I don't mean to compare my experiences with those of Ukrainians of course.

But I just realized how much this war also affects my own personal life and I just wanna cry.

Sorry for bringing this here, I just didn't know where else to put my story who might understand me :(

Thanks for listening and for running this soul comforting blog Jam!

No need to be sorry!!!

This is a place for all kind of stuff, including ranting and getting things off your chest (heart). :)

And thank you! I'll try my best to provide with my blog something for everyone! :) ♥

And don't worry. I'm sure nobody will get mad at you. And I think it's obvious to everyone reading this that you're not comparing your situations to Ukrainians and that these are two total different things that can co-existent and both things are valid experiences and feelings.

And yes, of course, it also effects everyones life, even if the majority of people who will read this will sit in a safe home, far away from war. But doesn't mean a global thing like this doesn't affect us - no matter if we talk about energy crisis, refugees, having first hand experiences with anti-Ukraine people,... .

And I feel the pain. While, thankfully, the important people in my life support Ukraine, I also know several putin lovers / apologists and / or people who condemn russia but believe the Russian Propaganda.

I can also not understand why, so I feel you.

I know, that Propaganda is very strong and works hard to make sure people believe it and considering for how long the whole world was (and still is) exposed to RP, it of course makes sense that it's now hard to fight against it.

But still...with all the things russia does...I don't get it how people can side with them or just don't see it or won't listen to Ukrainians.

I actually discussed this with @realiv0 when we talk about Propaganda and I think it was her, who mentioned that these people are lost without hope. And, unfortunately, there is some truth to that statement.

Conspiracy theories are most of the times pretty convincing, especially if you already believe other things. They just get more real, every time you read it and people show you "proof". Also, people tend to look for explanations why something happens. And since the real life is often pretty complicated or hard to understand they turn to explanations that seem pretty easy and understandable.