#Russian abc

[vanmarkus]

I was wondering the same about gerrard calling him buck that one time - and also the "godspeed, diaz"? Did he accidentally care for a second? Was he...worried?

yeah we are dangerously circling the edge of "Gerrard is an actual human being who feels responsible for the people serving under him and about saving lives" territory, which we'll probably see more of after this whole accident with Buck in 8x01, if what Tim said is anything to go by...

and frankly, i just don't know if the fandom is ready to find out that dickhead bigots are actual humans...

[secretsofthewilde]

Thinking about how Pamela Rabe was told that her character in Bay of Fires was written specifically for and inspired by her, and she just made a joke about not knowing how to feel about the giant pet pig -- but absolutely no comment about being cast as another lesbian born in Russia????

[crynwr-drwg]

When ideology gets in the way of solidarity

>>>What follows below is, in my opinion, a very critical read for the Anarchist movement. If you are an Anarchist, I hope that you take a moment to read this statement by our Black Cross comrades in Belarus.<<<

In the 15 years of our collective’s existence, we have gone through several major political crises. During elections, protests, and political repression, the Belarusan anarchist movement has not met with isolation from its comrades. People from all over the world showed solidarity in the struggle against the Belarusan dictatorship and for a just and free society: from Los Angeles to Hong Kong. During this period, we only rarely encountered people who tried to explain to us that the Belarusan regime is not really that bad, and that all the horrors are just liberal propaganda. Since 2014, we have met anti-fascists or anarchists abroad who somehow believed Russian propaganda about the LDNR. But until 2022, we rarely met “experts” on Eastern Europe who confidently told us about a reality that existed only in the realm of political propaganda. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the situation changed very dramatically. Suddenly, within the anarchist and anti-fascist movements, there appeared “specialists” of Eastern European realities who completely denied the facts in favor of a simplistic model of the world. Many discussions of the war as a conflict between NATO and Russia or the fascist regime in Kiev fundamentally ignore objective facts. In this text we would like to discuss how this attitude affects the development of international solidarity and how some anarchists choose to distort reality in the struggle for ideological supremacy.

International of Anarchist Federations (IFA)

In eastern Europe, few people have heard of the IFA, an international anarchist organization founded in 1968 in Italy. At the time of this writing, the federation consisted of groups from Europe, Asia, Central and South America. At one point it even included organizations from the former Soviet Union, including Belarus. With the decline of the Federation of Anarchists of Belarus (FAB), our group became the IFA contact organization in the country. For many years we worked closely together: we visited comrades in different regions and together with other organizations we held infotours in separate countries. Up until 2022, we hardly had any serious political conflicts with IFA member organizations. The invasion of Ukraine has greatly changed the attitude of many International members towards our group. One of the reasons lies in our initiative to hold informal online meetings with International members on the war in Ukraine: the main goal at that stage was to convey objective information about what was happening and to actively combat Russian disinformation. Such meetings were to take place every two weeks. Already at the second meeting, we encountered serious problems when some of the International’s participants started repeating Russian propaganda about NATO, fascism in Ukraine, and so on, almost word for word. The series of online meetings ended rather quickly. On the one hand, the unwillingness of many anarchists to accept objective facts hindered them. On the other hand, some of the International’s participants insisted on formalizing such meetings, which we regarded as a blatant attempt to “bureaucratize” inconvenient information. We encountered the problem of “selective bureaucracy” a year later, when at one of the formal meetings of the International we proposed to invite comrades from Ukraine and Russia to explain the situation in these regions and the possibility of interacting directly with local activists, rather than with information from social networks and dubious groups. The participation of anarchists from Ukraine and Russia was blocked, and after several months of constant attempts to exclude people from Belarus, Ukraine and Russia from discussions of the war in Ukraine, we decided to withdraw from the International.

This situation was the first in a long line of building barriers around the topic of the war in Ukraine by certain “expert” groups that prefer the same simplistic picture of the world. Unfortunately, in some countries, our former internationalist comrades play an active role in maintaining the myth of “NATO against Russia”. The conflict within the IFA has shown us how fragile international ties are in the face of government disinformation programs, ideological dogmatism, and the unwillingness of many anarchists to understand complex international conflicts.

Book Fair and Congress

In the summer of 2023, we applied to participate in the Ljubljana Anarchist Book Fair, where we gave a presentation about repression in Belarus, with a separate block discussing how the war in Ukraine affects anarchists’ political struggles. When we saw the “no war propaganda” signs, our collective members were somewhat confused, knowing that the position of the organizers of the book fair on the war is ambiguous. We never realized who the posters were aimed at, although at one point we were worried that we would be told to remove brochures with interviews about the war from various anarchists in Ukraine and Russia. At the event we met, among others, comrades who had previously organized benefit events and presentations for ABC. Some of them refused to talk to us at all, while others preferred to communicate in the format of political statements rather than dialog. At the anarchist congress in St. Imier we began to speak openly about our fears that our political position on the war in Ukraine was affecting solidarity with repressed comrades inside Belarus: the more we try to question positions that do not take into account the situation in the region, the more “untouchable” we become in certain branches of the anarchist movement, which used to be ready to provide diverse support to comrades from the BUR (Belarus, Ukraine, Russia). In Switzerland we also became aware that we started to be considered as militarists and supporters of the war in Ukraine, although nobody directly expressed it to us. We learned about this perception almost a year after our trip to Switzerland.

Partner organizations

Before touching on our “commitment to militarism”, we would like to briefly discuss how Western anarchists and leftists find “alternative” partners in the region to confirm their political views. In the situation with Ukraine, the main partner of the antimilitarists was the odious media group “Assembly” from Kharkiv, which prefers to disassociate itself from the rest of the anarchist movement and actively cooperates with the group of Vadim Damye, a Russian historian who has been spreading the myth of a fascist Ukraine since 2014. If you want to know more about the “Assembly”, ask Ukrainian anarchists. In the case of Belarus, the situation became quite strange, as anti-militarists and pacifists suddenly started working with the controversial Olga Karach, a “professional” NGO activist with a dubious background, which was already entrenched before the events of 2020. People familiar with the political environment of Belarus have heard about Karach, and understand the danger of political interaction with this person: disinformation for Olga serves as one of the tools for building political power and raising money. It turns out that the organization “Our House”, which Olga leads, is actively involved in creating a myth about a mass movement of deserters inside Belarus, who want to leave the country in an attempt to avoid mobilization. In November 2022, there were allegedly already tens of thousands of such evaders [2]. How many such souls Karach sold to the Western left remains a mystery to this day. Using the example of the above-mentioned organization, it becomes obvious that in their search for new “partners” in Eastern Europe, leftists and anti-authoritarians are ready to work with dubious figures, as long as they confirm the facts necessary for their picture of the world. The criterion of trust becomes not an attempt to understand the real situation in the region and a desire to support the struggle, but rather interaction with those who confirm already existing misconceptions. With this approach, some activist groups risk falling into the trap of fraudsters primarily interested in the money side of things. The inability or unwillingness to delve into certain issues makes anarchists easy prey for those who traditionally “dipshit” liberal and center-left political forces.

Does ABC-Belarus support the war in Ukraine?

A few months ago, ABC-Belarus applied to participate in a book fair in Berlin with an info table and/or presentation [3]. The organizers of the fair stated that they planned to pay much attention to the issue of the war in Ukraine. The response to our inquiry came categorically negative and contained the following wording: “…You are in favor of the war in Ukraine, so we have nothing more to say…” And it is obvious that this perception of anarchists from the BUR resisting Russian imperialism continues to strengthen in the minds of a part of the anarchist movement. Instead of critical analysis and attempts to build a dialog, we again and again run into a wall of blatant political ignorance. As a result, ABC-Belarus will not go to the fair in Berlin (our last talk in the city concerning the situation with repression in the country happened before the full-scale invasion began), and the organizers of the event will be able to conduct debates in an atmosphere of general “consent”, having secured themselves from the opposition of people who directly carry out activities in the BUR region. As the war in Ukraine continues and Western activists become “tired” of the topic, we expect this approach to our collective to only increase, and “weeds” of misinformation and outright lies to grow in the place of solidarity. We will not knock on the closed rooms of social centers in the west and try to tell the story of our struggle or repression against our comrades. We have plenty of room to direct our energies as it is. But do the people who censor solidarity groups realize that they would then have to take it upon themselves to support the repressed comrades with their own forces, if they are really committed to the ideas of internationalism and anarchism? It is then also the responsibility of such groups to inform the broader anarchist movement about the repression and to raise money for basic support for those who continue the struggle in prison. In turn, we want to express our gratitude to those who are still supporting our collective and our comrades in Belarus, in Ukraine and in other Eastern European countries. Despite all challenges and obstacles, it is you who show an example of international solidarity and readiness to stand shoulder to shoulder in the most difficult moments of our struggle, no matter how many kilometers and walls separate us!

[macgoogles]

(911 on FOX 2018-)

A little bit from my tick tok

[wine-porn]

Riviera Blossoms

Have you ever drank a Chardonnay at 65° or 70°? Have you ever waved off the ice-bucket to a bewildered waiter, “Nah… we’re good.” Have you ever said, “Do you have one not in the fridge?” I know I harp on this a bit much but LOTS of chard NEEDS to be enjoyed at low-room-temp or hi-cellar. It’s an amazing experience which will blow your mind. The fruit and buttery body comes through so much better…

[infiniteglitterfall]

OMG, COULD EVERYONE PLEASE STOP IMMEDIATELY BELIEVING AND REPEATING DISINFORMATION?!

Sorry, I just. Was just on Twitter, and I snapped.

I literally haven't seen one true statement about Israel on social media in MONTHS.

It's gotten to the point that I'm seriously considering starting a sideblog fact-checking all of it.

PLEASE STOP BEING GARFIELD I AM BEGGING ALL OF YOU

BE NERMAL FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

I've written at least one really long post about fact-checking things before. I have another saved as a draft somewhere.

But all you really have to do at this point is GO LOOK AT AN ACTUAL NEWS SOURCE.

What do I mean by an Actual News Source?

An actual news source will tell you where it's getting its information.

Basically: Wikipedia rules apply at all times. Citation. Fucking. Needed.

Except with news articles, I don't mean a detailed footnote.

I mean, if they say, "Rosco Flubberish reported seeing a pig fly across Whatever Place. 'It was a flying pig,' he said," they're fine.

If they say, "Sources close to the President reported that the Department of Farmland Creatures launched a pig into the air this afternoon," they're fine.

If they say, "There have also been reports that pigs flew," they are purely making shit up.

Just check CNN or something. CNN checks their shit, and they're very quick on the draw.

NBC has been very reliable too, in my experience. So have ABC, Newsweek, the Jerusalem Post, the Guardian, the New York Times, the AP, PBS, the Washington Post, and Reuters.

You can break through most paywalls by putting archive.is or 12ft.io before the https:// of the URL. Or just go to either of those sites and paste the URL in the box.

Nobody is perfect. I've seen some articles from all of the above that were accurate, but left things out that I personally thought were important.

Journalists are humans, humans fuck up.

(Also, NONE OF THIS APPLIES TO OPINION PIECES ON ANY TOPIC. Opinion pieces are exactly that: opinions. They don't seem to be fact-checked anywhere, as far as I can tell. They range from super-accurate and informative to complete nonsense.)

(Surprisingly unreliable sources in my experience: Democracy Now, Jacobin, Workers World Party. The latter two act like news sites but are basically running nothing but opinion pieces; Democracy Now can do important deep dives, but I've also seen news coverage from it that was wildly misinformed in that same way.

On the flip side, Slate and the Atlantic are largely opinion -- the Atlantic more than Slate, maybe -- but they often have really well-researched analysis of political situations. Ditto Teen Vogue, and sometimes Vox.)

You don't have to read CNN or the NYT or whateverfor fun. You don't have to make it one of your news sources.

Just. Do a quick check on Google News before you assume anything is true, and then run it through a bullshit filter as described above.

You are being actively lied to, all the time. So am I. We all are.

And people will believe and repeat literally anything that sounds about right.

That's just human nature.

That is WHY none of us are immune to propaganda.

if you want my personal shortlist of Bad Sources, as in Sources That Consistently Publish Absolute Falsehoods:

Any and all state-owned or state-controlled media. For example:

Al Jazeera is owned by the Qatari government, and so are a bunch of other news sites.

Mehr News, the Tehran Times, Al-Quds TV, and Al-Alam are owned by the dictatorship of Iran.

Oops. Looks like every form of broadcast Iranian news media is owned by the dictatorship of Iran, which has a monopoly.

Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, Palestinian News and Info Agency, and Al-Hayat Al-Jadida are owned by the government of Palestine (the Palestinian Authority)

Al-Aqsa TV and Felesteen are owned by Hamas.

TASS / Russia News Agency, Russia Today, and a fuckton of others are owned by the Russian government.

State Media Monitor seems to do a pretty great job of tracking and listing these things. Check out your own country there!

I specifically listed those ones because some of them (especially Al Jazeera, Mehr News, and TASS) are sites I've seen come up frequently on Tumblr, or in my attempts to fact-check what people are saying here and on Twitter. The rest are just more examples from the same governments.

Al Jazeera deserves special notice because it's become a very popular leftist news source. Believe me, I used to read it all the time too.

It can be reliable and accurate sometimes. But:

It consistently tweets things that are unsourced, never appear anywhere else, and that would be big news you'd expect it to follow up on if they were true. It seems to be following a strategy of "tweet every rumor you hear in case it's true, so you can get the scoop."

It also does this with its liveblogs of the war. And ALL its coverage of the war at this point is liveblogs. So things that are verifiably true will run right next to things that are complete hearsay, but are too long to just tweet.

This is especially dangerous because as far as I can tell, Al Jazeera doesn't delete anything that turns out to be false.

I've also seen regular news articles in Al Jazeera, on multiple topics, that veer from Absolutely True Statements to Wildly Exaggerated Numbers and Speculation. Stuff you wouldn't expect a source on, like statistics or descriptions. And there's no way to tell the difference unless you already know a topic really well, or are fact-checking them while you read.

One especially terrible example, from Gazan activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib:

Al Jazeera has never posted or published a correction.

Alkhatib has also blamed it for destabilizing the region, although he's exaggerating about it being Hamas's official propaganda outlet:

TL;DR: If you see a Tumblr post making any kind of factual news statement without a link, at this point you need to assume it is absolutely not true. And either scroll on past, or go check Google News.

If there IS a link, you need to click through to see what it's from and what it actually says.

(Honestly, you need to do that with Wikipedia too. I've repeatedly clicked through on citations that absolutely did not say what the article implied they did.)

And pro tip: on mobile, you can just smack a button to sort Google's news results by most recent, and it helps A LOT. There's gotta be a way to do the same on desktop, but if there is, it's not immediately visible, which sucks.

[fortheb0ys]

FORGET ABOUT CHOOSING ABC

LISTEN VIRGIN (OR UNEXPERIMCED)ANDREI NOLAN , BULKY MALE READER AND SAFEWORD aka Andrei dont know that is shouldnt hurt

like fucking Andrei(for the first time) in doggy or just from behind as he hides his face in pillow. And reader being like"damn this guy is very good streached because it goes so fucking smooth" but in reality Andrei just never have a long time relactionship and think that anal must hurt (+ANDREI HAVE SWOLLEN HOLE AND YOU WONT CHANGE MY MIND) and that our favorite russian decided to shut the fuckup and hide his face while he litelary cries . And then reader grabs his chin for little sloppy kisses and see Andreis face covered in tears. And stoping all actions with his huge ass dick to comfort andrei when he confess that it Hurts so fucking much. And getting dingdong out and giving Andrei best aftercare of his life(and eating him out) and explaining to him what safeword and why its so important

I WILL RUN EXTRA MILE JUST TO GIVE MY SWEET BOY AFTERCARE, fuck fucking , aftercare is the best part , just like my tentacles>🐙🐙🐙

I dont believe in sleep, i believe in being horny tentacle monster

I'd feel so bad😭 Just smother him in kisses. Tell him he did good, that you can always try another day. Run a bath for his sore muscles and treat him like a doll.

I feel like he'd be a bit scared to try again and you'll have to be patient with him. You never push though. If he gets hurt again, you could never forgive yourself.

For the first while, he has to face you. You have to see if he's in any discomfort. The once painful look replaced with one of pure pleasure. Andrei had no idea how it went from feeling like he was being ripped in half to what felt like pure heaven.

He definitely takes cock like a champ with some practice🙏

[slackville]

60 years ago today, June 27, 1964, the final episode of The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show (known as Rocky & His Friends during the first two seasons and as The Bullwinkle Show for the last three seasons) aired.

It originally aired from November 19, 1959, to June 27, 1964, on the ABC and NBC television networks. Produced by Jay Ward Productions, the series is structured as a variety show, with the main feature being the serialized adventures of the two title characters, the anthropomorphic moose Bullwinkle and flying squirrel Rocky. The main adversaries in most of their adventures are the Russian-like spies Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale. Supporting segments include Dudley Do-Right (a parody of old-time melodrama), Peabody's Improbable History (a dog and his pet boy Sherman traveling through time), and Fractured Fairy Tales (classic fairy tales retold in comic fashion), among others.

Rocky & Bullwinkle is known for quality writing and wry humor. Mixing puns, cultural and topical satire, and self-referential humor, it appealed to adults as well as children. It was also one of the first cartoons whose animation was outsourced; storyboards were shipped to Gamma Productions, a Mexican studio also employed by Total Television. The art has a choppy, unpolished look and the animation is extremely limited even by television animation standards at the time. Yet the series has long been held in high esteem by those who have seen it; some critics described the series as a well-written radio program with pictures.

The show was shuffled around several times (airing in afternoon, prime time, and Saturday morning time slots), but was influential to other animated series from The Simpsons to Rocko's Modern Life. Segments from the series were later recycled in the Hoppity Hooper show.

There have been numerous feature film adaptations of the series' various segments, such as the 2000 film The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle which blended live-action and computer animation and the 1999 live-action film Dudley Do-Right, which both received poor reviews and were financially unsuccessful. By contrast, an animated feature film adaptation of the "Peabody's Improbable History" segment, Mr. Peabody & Sherman, was released to good reviews in 2014.

Rocky and His Friends and The Bullwinkle Show were ranked the sixth Greatest TV Cartoon of All Time by TV Guide.

source:

Classic Retrovision Milestones (fb)

[sovietpostcards]

ABC (Alphabet) postcard set (1996)

Vintage set of 30 postcards. Artist A. Vasilyev. Each has the letter on it and a picture of something that begins with the letter. The back of the cards is blank. The set had 33 cards originally (each letter of the Russian alphabet), but 3 are missing: Ж, Х, Ы.

Size 10 × 15 cm

Very rare. One the cards (А) is wrinkled - see the last picture. Other cards are in good condition. The set cover has a bent corner.

Price $40 + $11 shipping

Message me! Other items in my shop. I combine shipping. How to buy.

[eugenedebs1920]

When we look back at dictatorships, whether in fascist regimes, communist states, autocratic rule, and totalitarianism, ect. the philosophy’s don’t have all that much in common. One thing they do have in common is a “great leader” or an “emperor”, and more so nowadays a “strongman” who lords over the population with ”an iron fist”, a fancy way of saying they oppress thier people.

Let’s look at WWII. What did Germany’s leader (I heard we weren’t supposed to use the H word but you know who I’m referring to) and the emperor of Japan share in similarities? Not much, if anything at all. After Pearl Harbor America declared war with Japan and as a result of the treaty between Japan and Germany, Germany declared war with America (DUMB!!). What did germanys leader and the emperor of Japan have in common? Did they share any common ground other than the leader was almighty and the subjects were expendable? No. What they had in common is their oppressive rule and the fact that the free countries condemned their style of governance. So whether you have any similarities or not, as an oppressive regime, your only allies are other oppressive regimes. The idiom, your enemies, enemy, is your friend.

Fast forward to now and we don’t have the same style of fascism and dictatorships, in the more developed countries, as back then. Hence it’s not the same kind of harsh oppressive system. More of a soft autocracy. Orban in Hungary and Erdogan in Turkey are a prime example of the “soft autocracy”. Russia is an authoritarian state. Their sham government is a front for the pleasing of the world but, Putin rules Russia as a dictator.

The last thing these authoritarians want is their people to get any wild ideas of individual freedom and liberty. We did screw Russia over good after WWII, and I promise they didn’t forget, but beyond that, they want any democracy to fail. They don’t want their people to see that it is possible to have a thriving free nation. Who is the most power, wealthiest, freest nation on the planet? The United States of America.

China, Russia, Turkey, Hungary, North Korea, they would LOVE to see us destroy ourselves. All that they can do without invoking a military conflict, they will to undermine us, make us seem as if our system of government is feeble, flawed, corrupted, they will, and are. They want to rule over their citizens with fear and divisiveness. Making the population too scared to rise up against them.

This is why, in particular, Russia has been caught meddling in elections all throughout Europe and here in America. It is also why it’s so troubling that Republicans, and Trump in particular, are so keen on people such as Orban and not willing to help a democracy like Ukraine. Trump and Putin being “friends” is not a good thing. Trump is the easiest person to manipulate! All you have to do is complement him or offer him money and he’ll do whatever you want. Orban is an authoritarian! Why is he going and having private meetings with Trump directly after he met with Putin. This isn’t a Sherlock Holmes mystery here! It’s pretty damn easy to see!

Long story shorter than it could be. Russia will be putting out all kinds of misinformation and deepfakes, false stories and made up articles. Check the source! Despite what Trump says, because he only says it due to them being critical of him and covering him appropriately, the established sources, your NBC’s, CBS, ABC, CNN, Washington Post, NY Times, ect. these are credible sources. Are they corporate money making organizations? Yes. Does the press situation in this country need an overhaul? Yes. But these aren’t fake news (I had to laugh while typing that because that’s LITERALLY what Trump calls them) their flawed news but they aren’t social media deepfake, made up, complete fabrications to throw our democracy into turmoil. They will tell you the story as it is happening. The first step in autocratic rule is to limit information to what suits your narrative. Thats why Trump calls them fake. I can’t believe I’m sticking up for the media so much right now but , for reals!…

Check your sources. Know that their is forces that want to see us fail. Want us to be angry and rioting and questioning if democracy works. It does. Trump is a Russian asset, that’s why all this nonsense is amplified the way it is. In 248 years, 60 presidential elections, only the three involving Trump has this whole fraud, stolen election, noncitizen voting bullsh*t ever came up. Just Trump being a traitor. Don’t let the country’s most notorious conman con ya.

[linghxr]

5 years of linghxr 🎂

Today marks 5 years of linghxr! Well, technically Tumblr notified me of my blog’s anniversary 2 days ago. But I didn’t make my first post until July 12th, so I’ve decided to celebrate today instead.

I started learning Mandarin Chinese as a little kid attending weekend Chinese school, and I also took it in high school. I got 认真 about it in college after realizing my Chinese wasn’t even good enough to test out of the 1st year Chinese course. I spent all my free time studying the Chinese Grammar Wiki and successfully placed into 2nd year Chinese!

I started this blog the following summer as I tried not to forget everything before the 3rd year Chinese course, while also studying Russian. Over the past 5-6 years, I have…

…read 3 webnovels and 1 book

…watched 17 cdramas and 25 seasons of variety/reality shows

…posted 282 times on this blog

…made 8313 flashcards in Anki

07/20/24 The contest is closed, and I have contacted the winner.

To give back to the langblr community, I am gifting winner’s choice of prize from two resources/platforms I have used myself. They are both digital to make this more accessible.

Prizes

The lucky winner can pick one of these options:

Option 1 - iTalki gift card for $60 of iTalki credits

Option 2 - Pleco Pro Bundle worth $59.99 (see under the cut for bundle content)

Requirements to enter

To enter, all you need to do is like, reblog, or comment on this post. You can do more than one if you like, but please don’t spam the post. Feel free to vote in the poll too, but that’s just for fun 😄

You have one week (until next Friday, July 19th) to enter. Shortly after, I will select a winner at random and message them to coordinate details (make sure your Tumblr settings allow me to message you). If there is no response after 48 hours, I will select someone else. If you are under 18, please get parent or guardian permission.

Thank you for 5 wonderful years of blogging!

Via Pleco, the pro bundle includes:

Our more expensive bundle includes almost every "feature" add-on plus 6 different dictionaries; two English-to-Chinese ones (one smaller one with Pinyin and one larger one without), the massive ABC Chinese-to-English, the bidirectional Oxford Chinese Dictionary, the small-but-example-rich Tuttle Chinese-English, and (to stretch your reading skills a bit) the Chinese-to-Chinese Guifan dictionary.

Bundle contents:

ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary ($19.99)

ABC English-Chinese Dictionary ($9.99)

Xiandai Hanyu Guifan Cidian ($29.99)

New Century English-Chinese Dictionary ($29.99)

Oxford Chinese Dictionary ($19.99)

Tuttle Learner's Chinese-English Dictionary ($9.99)

Enhanced Handwriting Recognizer ($9.99)

Optical Character Recognizer ($9.99)

"Qiang" Mandarin Male Text-to-Speech ($9.99)

Mandarin Audio (male) ($4.99)

Mandarin Audio (female) ($4.99)

Flashcard System ($9.99)

Document Reader ($9.99)

[antifainternational]

Kita is an antifascist in Belarus who was among a dozen people whose homes were raided by police in March 2022. Kita’s trial took place in November 2022 and despite her attorneys making it obvious what a sham of a case the police & prosecutors had cobbled together, the judge still found her guilty and sentenced her to 31 months in prison. More details about Kita's story here.

You can write to Kita (in Belarussian or Russian only) here: Cherenkova Kristina Aleksandrovna SIZO-3, ul. Knizhnaya 1A, Gomel, BELARUS You can also write to Kita in English here (ABC Belarus will translate and forward your message).

You can contribute to support Kita’s legal defence and her family here: Paypal: a.charankova@gmail.com Bank Transfer: Bank Santander IBAN PL 70 1090 1098 0000 0001 3288 5405 (€) PL 64 1090 1098 0000 0001 3725 7206 (US$) PL 1090 1098 0000 0001 4761 8177 (PLN) SWIFT: WBKPPLPP Anastasiya Charankova

[mutant-what-not]

Classic Retrovision Milestones

64 years ago today, November 19, 1959, The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show premiered. (known as Rocky & His Friends during the first two seasons and as The Bullwinkle Show for the last three seasons) It originally aired from November 19, 1959, to June 27, 1964, on the ABC and NBC television networks. Produced by Jay Ward Productions, the series is structured as a variety show, with the main feature being the serialized adventures of the two title characters, the anthropomorphic moose Bullwinkle and flying squirrel Rocky. The main adversaries in most of their adventures are the Russian-like spies Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale. Supporting segments include Dudley Do-Right (a parody of old-time melodrama), Peabody's Improbable History (a dog and his pet boy Sherman traveling through time), and Fractured Fairy Tales (classic fairy tales retold in comic fashion), among others.

Rocky & Bullwinkle is known for quality writing and wry humor. Mixing puns, cultural and topical satire, and self-referential humor, it appealed to adults as well as children. It was also one of the first cartoons whose animation was outsourced; storyboards were shipped to Gamma Productions, a Mexican studio also employed by Total Television. The art has a choppy, unpolished look and the animation is extremely limited even by television animation standards at the time. Yet the series has long been held in high esteem by those who have seen it; some critics described the series as a well-written radio program with pictures.

The show was shuffled around several times (airing in afternoon, prime time, and Saturday morning time slots), but was influential to other animated series from The Simpsons to Rocko's Modern Life. Segments from the series were later recycled in the Hoppity Hooper show.

There have been numerous feature film adaptations of the series' various segments, such as the 2000 film The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle which blended live-action and computer animation and the 1999 live-action film Dudley Do-Right, which both received poor reviews and were financially unsuccessful. By contrast, an animated feature film adaptation of the "Peabody's Improbable History" segment, Mr. Peabody & Sherman, was released to good reviews in 2014.

Mr. Peabody will star in a new reboot series picked up for 13-episodes.

In 2013, Rocky and His Friends and The Bullwinkle Show were ranked the sixth Greatest TV Cartoon of All Time by TV Guide.

[follow-up-news]

Russia has confirmed that Donald Trump sent the Kremlin sample Covid-19 tests in the early days of the pandemic, after revelations in veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s new book raised further questions about the former US president���s relationship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The Trump administration “sent us several samples of test kits,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday, broadly supporting Woodward’s claim. His intervention comes after Trump denied the claims, telling ABC News they were “false.” Legendary reporter Woodward wrote in “War” that Trump “secretly sent Putin a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines for his personal use.” “Please don’t tell anybody you sent these to me,” Putin said to Trump, according to Woodward. “I don’t care,” Trump replied. “Fine.” “No, no,” Putin said. “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me. They don’t care about me.” Peskov did not confirm whether or not those tests were specifically for Putin’s own use, as Woodward writes.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Nick Anderson

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 8, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 08, 2024

“It’s been a tradition for more than half a century that the major party candidates for president sit down with 60 Minutes in October,” host Scott Pelley said to the camera last night before 60 Minutes aired an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. This year, both Harris and Republican nominee former president Donald Trump accepted an invitation for an interview.

“Then a week ago,” Pelley said, “Trump backed out. The campaign offered shifting explanations. First it complained that we would fact-check the interview. We fact-check every story,” Pelley said. “Later, Trump said he needed an apology for his interview in 2020. Trump claims correspondent Leslie Stahl said in that interview that Hunter Biden’s controversial laptop came from Russia. She never said that.

“Trump has said his opponent doesn’t do interviews because she can’t handle them. He had previously declined another debate with Harris, so tonight may have been the largest audience for the candidates between now and election day. Our questions addressed the economy, immigration, reproductive rights, and the wars in the Middle East and Europe. Both campaigns understood this special would go ahead if either candidate backed out.”

And with that, 60 Minutes aired its interview with Vice President Harris.

Trump broke a fifty-year tradition so his false world would not be challenged by reality. He apparently wants to make sure voters cannot base their decisions about the country’s future on facts. Hiding reality is in keeping with his continued refusal to release his tax returns or a medical report—even after the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania—or the video from the incident at Arlington National Cemetery, instead insisting that people take him at his word about what happened. 

If voters trust his disinformation campaign, rather than thinking things through for themselves, who will his policies help? 

A bombshell story from a forthcoming book by veteran journalist Bob Woodward today revealed that in 2020, when he was president, Trump secretly shipped Covid-19 testing equipment to Russian president Vladimir Putin for his own personal use at a time when Americans could not get it.  

A Trump aide told Woodward that Trump and Putin have spoken as many as seven times since Trump left the White House, prompting Edward Luce of the Financial Times to comment: “What possible business could an out-of-office U.S. president have to call Vladimir Putin seven times?” Woodward recounts a moment when Trump told a senior aide to leave the room so “he could have what he said was a private phone call with Russian president Vladimir Putin.” 

The Woodward book also says that when South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham was visiting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS, in March 2024, Graham said “Hey, let’s call Trump.” According to Woodward, an aide brought MBS a bag full of burner phones, one of which was labeled “TRUMP 45.”

This news highlights the fact that Trump retained classified documents when he left the White House, carrying them with him to Mar-a-Lago, where he tried to hide them from federal officials. A grand jury indicted him on 37 felony counts for those actions, but Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed the case in July after concluding that Special Counsel Jack Smith was improperly appointed.  

Trump’s campaign came out swinging after the story broke, with Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung calling Woodward “a total sleazebag who has lost it mentally.”

In contrast to Trump’s disinformation campaign, Vice President Harris is running a normal campaign, offering policy proposals. Today she proposed a plan to permit Medicare to help cover the costs of long-term home health care aides for seniors. Harris announced the plan on ABC’s The View, where she spoke of the so-called sandwich generation, people—mostly women—who are taking care of their elderly parents at the same time they are also taking care of children. “[I]t’s just almost impossible to do it all, especially if they work,” Harris said, adding that many end up having to leave their jobs. She also called for Medicare to cover vision and hearing care to enable seniors to live independently for longer.  

Harris said the money to pay for the new services will come from savings realized through Medicare’s new ability to negotiate drug prices—an ability Republicans are eager to end—and through cracking down on Medicare fraud. A fact sheet about the plan emphasizes that it will enable the government to work with the private sector to expand the home care workforce and provide more access to telehealth. 

Her plan also calls for stopping states from seizing family homes of recently deceased Medicaid beneficiaries to restore funding, a program called “Medicaid estate recovery.” Those seizures particularly hurt rural and minority populations, she noted, preventing them from building wealth. 

Reed Abelson and Margot Sanger-Katz of the New York Times note that both expanded home care benefits and drug negotiations are popular. KFF, which conducts health policy research, reports that Medicaid estate recovery has been criticized because it “falls primarily on individuals with limited incomes, raises little revenue, and is applied very unevenly across the states.” 

Deepa Shivaram of NPR noted that a relatively large percentage of middle-aged and older women remain undecided in this race and Harris’s plan speaks to their needs. The plan would also bring more money and care workers into rural towns with aging populations, giving those areas an economic boost.  

In a fact sheet, the Harris-Walz campaign noted that Trump is focused on tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, has repeatedly called for cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, and gave clemency to those abusing the system. As Amy B. Wang and Azi Paybarah explained in the Washington Post: “In his last year in office, Trump commuted the sentences of at least five people who collectively filed nearly $1.6 billion in fraudulent claims through Medicare or Medicaid.”

On The View, Harris said, “In this election, people are ready for a new generation of leadership that’s about fixing problems.” 

The 2020 60 Minutes interview for which Trump demanded an apology last week was the one in which he promised his health care plan was “fully developed,” then angrily walked out. His exit was apparently planned, for shortly after his departure, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany walked up to Stahl with a giant book, saying: “Lesley, the President wanted me to deliver his health care plan. It’s a little heavy.”

Trump and McEnany likely expected that the audience would remember their theatrical move rather than the reality, which was that the book contained no Trump healthcare plan because one didn’t exist. 

Four years later, it still doesn’t. Trump said at the September 10 presidential debate that he has the “concepts of a plan.”

CNN today set a deadline of Thursday for Trump to accept its invitation for an October 23 presidential debate. Harris has already accepted. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

New SpaceTime out Friday

SpaceTime 20241004 Series 27 Episode 120

Planet Earth just got a second moon

Planet Earth just got another second moon – a tiny near Earth asteroid that’s been temporarily caught up in the planet’s gravitational field.

Mars’ missing atmosphere could be hiding in plain sight

A new study claims the missing Martian atmosphere could be hiding in plain sight in the red planet’s crust.

Russian cosmonauts return to Earth after a record stay on the space station

Two Russian cosmonauts have landed safely on the vast wind swept Kazakhstan steppe following a record-breaking 374 day stay aboard the International Space Station.

October Skywatch

The nearest star to the Sun, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, and three meteor showers in a month are among the highlights in the October night skies on Skywatch.

SpaceTime covers the latest news in astronomy & space sciences.

The show is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts (itunes), Stitcher, Google Podcast, Pocketcasts, SoundCloud, Bitez.com, YouTube, your favourite podcast download provider, and from www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com

SpaceTime is also broadcast through the National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio and on both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

SpaceTime daily news blog: http://spacetimewithstuartgary.tumblr.com/

SpaceTime facebook: www.facebook.com/spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime Instagram @spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime twitter feed @stuartgary

SpaceTime YouTube: @SpaceTimewithStuartGary

SpaceTime -- A brief history

SpaceTime is Australia’s most popular and respected astronomy and space science news program – averaging over two million downloads every year. We’re also number five in the United States.  The show reports on the latest stories and discoveries making news in astronomy, space flight, and science.  SpaceTime features weekly interviews with leading Australian scientists about their research.  The show began life in 1995 as ‘StarStuff’ on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) NewsRadio network.  Award winning investigative reporter Stuart Gary created the program during more than fifteen years as NewsRadio’s evening anchor and Science Editor.  Gary’s always loved science. He studied astronomy at university and was invited to undertake a PHD in astrophysics, but instead focused on his career in journalism and radio broadcasting. Gary’s radio career stretches back some 34 years including 26 at the ABC. He worked as an announcer and music DJ in commercial radio, before becoming a journalist and eventually joining ABC News and Current Affairs. He was part of the team that set up ABC NewsRadio and became one of its first on air presenters. When asked to put his science background to use, Gary developed StarStuff which he wrote, produced and hosted, consistently achieving 9 per cent of the national Australian radio audience based on the ABC’s Nielsen ratings survey figures for the five major Australian metro markets: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth.  The StarStuff podcast was published on line by ABC Science -- achieving over 1.3 million downloads annually.  However, after some 20 years, the show finally wrapped up in December 2015 following ABC funding cuts, and a redirection of available finances to increase sports and horse racing coverage.  Rather than continue with the ABC, Gary resigned so that he could keep the show going independently.  StarStuff was rebranded as “SpaceTime”, with the first episode being broadcast in February 2016.  Over the years, SpaceTime has grown, more than doubling its former ABC audience numbers and expanding to include new segments such as the Science Report -- which provides a wrap of general science news, weekly skeptical science features, special reports looking at the latest computer and technology news, and Skywatch – which provides a monthly guide to the night skies. The show is published three times weekly (every Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and available from the United States National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio, and through both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.