#car czar

[giantkillerjack]

Anastasia the Musical sucks so bad. They really said "We're gonna cut the best song from the movie - just axe the absolute banger that is 'In the Dark of the Night' - because we are being SERIOUS and GROWN-UP now. We are A Big Historical Realism Musical Now. This is FOR REAL, okay!? We don't have a SILLY villain like Rasputin! We have Gleb! [Please Just Clap.] We are HISTORICALLY GROUNDED. -- Anyway, here's a musical unironically glorifying the Russian monarchy~~ 💖😌💖😌💖😌💖"

[dwampyverse-tournaments]

Dr. Zone vs. Safety Tsar vs. Windowless Van

[witekspicsbanknotes]

2014 artist project / art - Putin as Czar Vladimir I, CCCP rubliej /rubels.

[siriuslyobsessedwithfiction]

How Shadow and Bone trilogy should've ended

The most popular solution in fantasy genre to an evil monarch seems to be replacing them with a less evil monarch and having trust that they will make things right. We accept this easily since the story is usually set in medieval times and the idea of forming a government seems unrealistic given the setting. But Leigh Bardugo lost the right to use that excuse when she decided to set Grishaverse in late nineteenth century/early twentieth century.

The setting

Leigh Bardugo was inspired by imperial Russia and decided to make it more edgy, giving it the nickname "tsarpunk" (God give me strength). The time period or the year is never mentioned in Grishaverse, but since it's closely based on the real world, I'll draw conclusions from the text. She might've specified in interviews, but most people never read all the declarations an author makes, so she should've made things more clear in the books. The world-building is frankly, rather flimsy, even for YA.

Most fans seem to think the story takes place in 17th/18th century. It does not. Even though the technological advancements can't be measured the same as in the real world since the Grisha are primary reason for it, cars and tanks already exist in Grishaverse. Even this doesn't make any sense because according to the text, Fjerdans invented tanks first, cars second and submarines third. In reality, the order of the events is the opposite: submarines (1620), cars (1886), tanks (1915).

The events in Shadow and Bone trilogy seem to be very loosely based on the death of Czar Alexander the third (1894), reign of Czar Nicholas the second (1896-1917), Rasputin's murder (1916) and the February revolution (1917) which ended monarchy in Russia.

2. The fictional world setting

Besides barely mentioned Wandering Isle and saints-know-whose Southern Colonies, we have Fjerda and Shu-Han with absolute monarchies, and then we have Kerch and Novyi Zem, which are framed as more "progressive" countries by the narrative. We don't know much about Novyi Zem, except that it's a newly established country with growing economy and doesn't have monarchy. Kerch is ruled by the merchant council (*cough* oligarchs *cough*) - also doesn't have monarchy. So why is it such an outlandish idea for Ravka to abolish absolute monarchy? It isn't.

3. The monarchy is only as good as the monarch

Monarchy had been causing more damage to Ravka than the Fold. Incompetent Kings waged and lost countless wars, emptied royal coffers and made a significant amount of soldiers desert the first army. Regular people lived in poverty, lack of education made them prejudiced and easily controlled, and no effort whatsoever had been made to integrate Grisha in regular people's lives. The Kings preferred them bunched up in one place in the Little Palace to better keep an eye on them (it's canon, the little palace was patrolled) or on the front lines.

"I’ve always cared about good work. Polnya’s had a line of good kings. They’ve served their people, built libraries and roads, raised up the University, and been good enough at war to keep their enemies from overrunning them and smashing everything. They’ve been worthy tools. I might leave, if they grew wicked and bad."

-Uprooted, Naomi Novik.

Ravkan Kings haven't been doing any of those things. But it's okay to keep the outdated tradition that does more harm than good because Nikolai is charming and better than his rapist father(who he gave a nice retirement and more servants to rape, btw)? What about his descendants?

Since it's always been that way, it should continue to be that way? Why is the change in status quo perceived as something bad?

"- Who invented this vehicle? The Frenchman asked between laughs, pointing to the postcart on which the sleepy "yamshtchik" was stupidly nodding. - The Russians, I answered. - I imagine nobody is likely to dispute the honour with them. I pity you to be forced to addle your brain and shake up your stomach on a thing like that.

- What's to be done? If the whole of Russia travels in this manner, why should I complain?

-That's why Russia doesn't advance more rapidly. God give you a safe journey. As for me, I tell you frankly I would not risk my life by getting into it."

-Ilia Chavchavadze, Notes of a Journey from Vladikavkaz to Tiflis.

4. Abolishing the monarchy would actually solve problems

If Nikolai really wanted what's best for Ravka, instead of putting himself and then an impulsive living nuke with anger issues on the throne, he would create a parliament, a council of sorts, where he would still be the head figure as the King, since the nation wouldn't immediately take the change well , and the members would be the Triumvirate and the nobles he trusted, like Count Karigan. Over the years, the flow of power would pass more to the council, and eventually the monarchy would be abolished and Nikolai's children wouldn't take the throne. Regular people would be given an opportunity to have an education and later, the otkazatsya part of council wouldn't consist of just nobleborns. A part of the council would always have to consist of Grisha, which would bridge the division between them and otkazatsya.

But no, who wants progress and democracy when we can have a cool slay queen dragon (an emotionally unstable vessel for an ancient being).

[trashmenace]

Doc Savage: Czar of Fear by Lester Dent

Doc Savage Czar of Fear by Lester Dent November 1933

Doc is accused of murder while facing the hooded Green Bell, who is destroying the industry of a small town. The kind of case Doc can face in his sleep, and the added element of him being a fugitive just meant he had to duck down in his car a couple times.

From Amazon

[wheelsgoroundincircles]

Plymouth Reliant

In this Aug. 7, 1980, file photo, Chrysler Corp. Chairman Lee Iacocca with the first K Car, a Plymouth Reliant, in Detroit. Former Chrysler CEO Iacocca became a folk hero for rescuing the company. Lee Iacocca and Joe Czar (Production Manager at right) drove the first K Car offline at the Chrysler Jefferson Plant. The Chrysler K platform was developed just as the company faltered in the market, at first underpinning a modest range of compact/mid-size sedans and wagons—and eventually underpinning nearly fifty different models, including all-wheel drive variants. The right car at the right time. They were initially very profitable, and Iacocca credited them with allowing the company to pay off its bankruptcy loans early.

Following the 1973 oil crisis, compounded by the 1979 energy crisis, American consumers began to buy fuel-efficient, low-cost automobiles built in Japan. With the market for large V-8 engined cars declining, American domestic auto manufacturers found themselves trying to develop compact vehicles that could compete with the Japanese imports of Toyota, Honda, and Nissan in price and finish. The K-cars (Dodge Aries, Plymouth Reliant, Chrysler LeBaron, Dodge 400, and, in Mexico, Dodge Dart) sold over 2 million vehicles from 1981 to 1988

[sportsbianism]

bored at home, drove to gfs, gf not home yet. hanging out in my truck out at the curb listening to my russian history podcast drinking a beer cause i am loathe to go inside and have to interact with my least favorite of her roommates whose car i see in the driveway. the czar has finally abdicated the throne and i have a lot of pork rinds to eat before my lover arrives

[darkmaga-retard]

What could possibly go wrong?  (Car crashes, forcing school buses off the road leading to death of a student, killing and eating ducks from public ponds, squatting, defecating, and trashing in peoples’ yards, harassing the locals, overwhelming the welfare sign-up lines . . .)

[xadnem]

When I am made Traffic Czar, I'll rule these roads with an iron fist. Fully draconian. Unnecessary use of high beams? Lose your license. Spent too long at an intersection because you didn't notice the light turned green while you were texting? Lose your license. 20 under the speed limit in the fast lane? 30 days in prison, since you clearly have nowhere you need to be urgently or anything, and lose your license. Fucked with your exhaust to make your car loud like an asshole? Lose your license and anyone who robs you gets off with a "stern warning" for the next two years.

[collapsedsquid]

Much of my disillusionment owes to what wasn't done, rather than what was. GOP populists complained loudly of Big Tech, yet it was progressive congressional staffers like Lina Khan who took the lead on the most serious probes and reform proposals (work Khan has since put to effect as President Biden's competition czar). Trumpians irritably gestured at Wall Street, yet it's Warren who introduced a bill to check the corrosion of the economy by asset-strippers. One cause of this is the dearth of conservative personnel in Washington actually committed to carrying out a populist economic agenda. But the most important obstacle is also the most intractable and difficult to discuss: Small and regional capital—think of the car dealer toasting the self-made man at rubber-chicken dinners—forms the Republicans' real power base, even as more working-class people gravitate to the party. Stressed by the topsy-turvy of the market, small entrepreneurs rage against government-linked privileges enjoyed by larger market actors (now recast as "woke neo-Marxists" at ... BlackRock and Meta). They aren't wrong about corporate privilege, yet their political imagination has been limited to smashing the few regulatory structures that still bring the market system under a semblance of political control. For the small-time rich, moreover, the legitimately aggrieved "worker" is largely a cultural (and sometimes racialized) signifier: more likely a self-employed roofer than a wage-earning customer-service representative and still much less, say, a Filipina-American employed in hospitality.

This is from the guy who probably is responsible for the current panic over trans people

[phaeton-flier]

Back of the envelope check: suppose you're made the Transport Czar, with the goal of fixing US public transport from the car-worshipping mess it is. You're given unlimited Eminent Domain and the $30 Billion a year currently given to farm subsidies. Presuming you need to only spend that amount on "just compensation" and that you don't need to worry about lawsuits, is that a reasonable amount to fix the problem over ~20 years?

[mswyrr]

We are currently getting a terrifying preview of what all this would look like in practice. Trump has never shied away from admitting – from promising – that his mass deportation “will be a bloody story.” And the leaders on the Right are currently doing their best to ensure that there will be blood long before the election.

On September 9, J.D. Vance used his social media to rail against “Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio.” He added: “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country. Where is our border czar?”

Vance was leaning into a long-established racist trope used to vilify immigrant communities since at least the late nineteenth century: They are eating our pets! He wasn’t the only one to focus on immigrants from Haiti in Springfield, Ohio: Neo-Nazi groups have been targeting them for quite some time – it is not surprising, although it remains shocking, that Vance, who is extremely in tune with those circles, thought it was a good idea to join them. And as soon as Vance gave them a target, leading Republicans echoed his baseless claims, and the rightwing activist sphere went all in.

Over the next few days, Vance kept doubling down. On September 10, he claimed a child had been murdered by “a Haitian immigrant who had no right to be here.” The senator from Ohio did not care that the child’s parents begged him to stop using their boy, who was killed in a car accident, to demonize immigrants.

Vance even admitted on television that his claims did not stand up to scrutiny. And yet, he felt completely justified in spreading vile lies. In a CNN interview, he said: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people then that’s what I’m going to do.” Vance does not feel bound by facts – his allegiance is to a Higher Truth, one defined by the blood-and-soil project: The homeland is under siege, overrun with enemies who “poison the blood.” This tale of decline and peril overrides petty facts and superficial reality.

Donald Trump, never one to be burdened by truth and honesty, has joined Vance in trying to incite a pogrom. In a speech in Tuscon, Arizona on September 13, Trump declared: “We will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio, large deportations. We’re going to get these people out, we’re bringing them back to Venezuela.” (Yes, Venezuela, for some reason.) According to Trump, “illegal Haitian migrants have descended upon a town of 58,000 people destroying their way of life.” The day before, also in Tuscon, Trump had raged: “I am angry about young American girls being raped and sodomized and murdered by savage alien criminals.”

This vile propaganda has had its desired effect. Already on September 12, City Hall, schools, and the DMV in Springfield had to be evacuated because of bomb threats from people raging against the Haitian immigrants. Acts of vandalism against the Haitian community followed. More threats against elementary and middle schools as well as against public officials on September 13. On September 14 and 15, hospitals had to be evacuated – so did universities, as someone threatened to shoot members of the Haitian community on campus. Ohio State Troopers now sweep every building in every school in Springfield Ohio, every morning before the start of classes, looking for explosives, because the bomb threats keep coming. Meanwhile, neo-Nazis are marching through town – the Proud Boys, and a group called Blood Tribe. Life in Springfield, Ohio upended. All based on a lie.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

#15yrsago Obama adminstration brings back the Freedom of Information Act and transparency in government https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/01/on-day-one-obama-https://www.tumblr.com/edit/mostlysignssomeportents/739957959453556736demands-open-government

#15yrsago Man arrested for shouting complaints about “Arab types” on Turkish Airlines flight https://nypost.com/2009/01/21/plane-crazy/

#15yrsago Net-based pressure forces UK government to cancel plans to make MPs’ expenses secret https://www.mysociety.org/2009/01/21/blimey-it-looks-like-the-internets-won/

#10yrsago Lunar panorama stitched from Chinese Chang’e lander images https://www.360cities.net/image/lunar-panorama-change-3-lander

#10yrsago Jo Walton’s What Makes This Book So Great https://memex.craphound.com/2014/01/21/jo-waltons-what-makes-this-book-so-great/

#5yrsago Agency: William Gibson’s followup to The Peripheral turns Neuromancer on its head https://memex.craphound.com/2019/01/21/agency-william-gibsons-followup-to-the-peripheral-turns-neuromancer-on-its-head/

#5yrsago Latvia opens up its KGB files and names 4,000+ “informants,” many of whom claim they were framed https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/18/world/europe/latvia-kgb-informants.html

#5yrsago The EU’s ambitious, fearless antitrust czar is unlikely to win another term https://memex.craphound.com/2019/01/21/the-eus-ambitious-fearless-antitrust-czar-is-unlikely-to-win-another-term/

#5yrsago “Capitalism has outlived its usefulness” -Martin Luther King, Jr https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/1/16/1621178/-Dr-King-the-greatest-purveyor-of-violence-in-the-world-today-my-own-government

#5yrsago CES-goer says his camera was killed by a self-driving car’s LIDAR https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/01/man-says-ces-lidars-laser-was-so-powerful-it-wrecked-his-1998-camera/

#1yrago Tiktok's enshittification https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

[beardedmrbean]

“1916 showed us the way!” didn’t it lead to multiple Eastern Europeans leaving their home countries to escape communism? And iirc in the 80’s ussr had to ban a American movie because Russians were surprised that even the poorest Americans could have their own car.

Hmm what happened to the Romanovs? Oh yeah after their murders they are heavily romanticize (heh) and later became saints. That usually happens when the next leaders are worse than the last.

I can say more but Jesus Christ commies are dumb, can someone make Liberty Prime already?

Ya some of the most hokey jerry rigged contraptions in history were made by smart people who were trying to escape their communist utopia.

Also you're thinking of "The Grapes Of Wrath (1940)" staring Henry Fonda, only thing good that ever came from a John Steinbeck novel imho. The Grapes of Wrath (film) - Wikipedia

Although Steinbeck avoided a call from the House of Un-American Activities Committee, the film based on his book, which subtly (many would say openly) criticizes capitalism during the Great Depression by following a family of sharecroppers, received significant backlash from the public.

In the times of the so-called “Red Scare”, such criticism was perceived as “socialist”, “Marxist” and above all ― un-American.

John Carradine and Henry Fonda In ‘The Grapes Of Wrath’

Therefore, when the film was given the “Red Label”, the USSR felt that it was time to step on the stage.

Stalin himself considered that if The Grapes of Wrath managed to annoy the U.S. government so much, perhaps it could be used as a propaganda tool in the country which he governed with an iron fist.

He approved the film to be released in the USSR in 1948, at the time when the Cold War was just “heating” up. This wasn’t a common sight at the time, as cinemas only promoted domestic productions.

Stalin, who had the final say on pretty much everything that was going on in the country, was highly suspicious of foreign movies, which he considered to be “subversive”.

However, in this case, Uncle Joe thought that a film which the Americans label as “socialist” must be heaven-sent in the largest and most influential socialist state of the time.

This was a sound conclusion given that the main subjects of the story ― the Joad family ― are suffering from poverty after losing their farm due to the recession which forces them to become migrant workers.

However, after the film was released, Stalin’s idea completely backfired. In the film, it appeared as though even the poorest owned an automobile ― a luxury that was off limits to an ordinary Soviet citizen at the time. Instead of evoking anti-capitalist sentiment among the common folk, it was as though the only thing the viewers could see was the difference between being poor in the USA, compared to their own experience in the USSR.

While the USSR boasted itself as the country that belongs to the peasants and the workers, Stalin had, in fact, canceled many of the privileges that were gained during the country’s first years. ___________________

Romanov's suffered from blue blood, but yes they were absolutely slaughtered, SOP for royalty generally speaking.

Last Czar of Bulgaria, Simeon Borisov von Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (you may recognize some of those names at the end, they're all related to each other) is still alive and served as Prime Minister there for 4 years so don't always get murdered.

Another fun bit with the commies is they blame capitalism for their own failures too, 'US didn't trade with them so they didn't have enough food' kind of thing.

hunger makes you dumb, we should have a give a snickers to a commie day, might help

[juliuscabaron05]

TRAVELOGUE

Tando Beach in

Infanta, Quezon

Every time summer comes, me and my family go to infanta quezon province because of the heat we want to swim in. So that we can bond even if the commute is far away it's fine because it's beautiful here, the scenery here is beautiful and I also saw many different types of fish and I also saw a star fish for the first time in my life. Tando Beach is such a beautiful place to go plus the entrance fee is cheap and the cottage is also beautiful like a big house. At night it is very cold and you can hear the chirping of the birds. I went to the end because there were many people there and I saw them catching fish, there were many different fish in the net and it was amazing to see. Every time the wave comes, I go along with its waterfall because I'm rising because it's also scary because I'm going a little deep but it's very fun, you just have to be careful. We also play volleyball and basketball, because the white sand there is fine, so even if I trip and slip, it's okay because it doesn't hurt.

It feels very light because it's nature, there are no noisy cars and no pollution the people who live there are also kind, it's just that other goods are expensive because the town is far from them. There are Horses and Cows also wandering in the sea and they are fun to see. And at night, my nephews and I hunted umang and crabs because it was night and the waves were strong and they went to the shore of the sea, the crabs are tight, so we should be quick to catch them, there are a lot of them and it's good to chase them, just in case it's not allowed to go to the sea because we might drown and it's dangerous at night. I also saw a sunrise there and it was very beautiful to see I really enjoyed my experience here at Tando beach and I will definitely come back here.

JULIUS CZAR S.A CABARON

HUMSS-12-01

CNF

[snekatiemmlpnf]

ever since i was hall monitor

and wore that safety vest all the other kids in school were jealous said i was obsessed but what you see is what you get nothing more to go on with me its safety first and second third and forth and so on im no friend to careless living im dangers biggest enemy im a soldier in the war on accidental injury hes the caution king hes the safety czar im the being careful superstar hes an advocate for living hazard free thats me so when it comes to cautious living theres a lot of free advice im giving got a non slip flame retardant high reflective shatter proof philosophy if youre looking for a safet czar thats me if youre looking for a safety czar just think of me like lifes pace car if youre looking for a safety czar elliot decker you are destined to become the greatest middle school safety inspector in the world beep beep beep beep beep