#russian apt.

[hometoursandotherstuff]

This apt. in Russia has an epoxy floor that imitates the ocean, dolphins, starfish, seashells and other marine life. It was on the market for 27,499,000 rubles / €332,780.68 / $352,631.05.

Look at how it looks like the ocean is going right up to the sand. I like the pink & blue color scheme of the apt.

The kitchen is the best room. Love the curving cabinetry and the dolphin. 

The theme is completely throughout the whole apt.

Even the hallway has the whole nautical theme.

https://www.20minutos.es/gonzoo/noticia/4897148/0/el-increible-apartamento-que-simula-el-oceano-esta-en-rusia-y-cuesta-300-000-euros

[scavengerssuccotash]

How does Clint end up meeting the Russian murder fam?

Heyo! Another controversial take incoming! Apologies!

I have a real big gripe with how the whole Natasha has another family was handled in the Black Widow movie. I generally dislike how the movie handled her character, set up legacy characters like Yelena, and its treatment of the Red Room and its imminent threat.

I appreciate what it was trying to do but I think on the whole for me personally it fell flat on its face.

(Which is why I started writing Sightline in the first place! So, I guess I mist give it props for inciting enough of an emotional reaction to start writing.)

Cannon wise Clint only meets Yelena.

Non-canon I can make up my own shit wise, said Russian murder family does not exist with the notable exception of Yelena. However my treatment of her is far closer to her comic origin and motivation than what was portrayed in the movie.

With that said, after the dust has settled, allegiances changed and hearts mended I think Yelena and Clint would get on fairly well. Clint’s got that whole lost puppy savior complex going on that I enjoy playing with and I think Yelena would love to met the man that helped her sister out so much. She definitely finds his dad jokes obnoxious and oh so American, but she warms up to him eventually.

Anyway thank you for asking, I apologize that the Black Widow movie is a bit of a sore spot for me. I definitely consider myself the black sheep of the fandom in this regard. I don’t actively bash it, I just think it could’ve been executed much much better. But hey that’s just my opinion, as my friend always said writers have two things opinions and plot holes!

[roaringheat]

I was really productive today and i'm trying to be proud of myself but theres nothing like being reminded by my family that they consider me lesser and an after thought to kill my mood and motivation

[roseband]

uhhhhhhhhh there may be a rent stabilized 2 bed opening in my building bro??!!

[matan4il]

Ahead of Eurovision 2024

I was listening to Eden Golan's song, Hurricane.

At first, it didn't seem to me like it stands out. I'm one of the people who prefers my Eurovision song less on the power ballad side of things, so this being in that genre...

But then I found myself haunted by the lyrics. By specific lines. Singing them to myself quietly, over and over again. I had to listen to the song again.

And it got to me, it really did, I haven't stopped listening to or singing it since, so I guess I needed to share a bit.

There's more than one hint that this is a song about mourning and survival. Lines like, "someone stole the moon tonight, took my light" can be interpreted in more than one way. But they become less ambiguous when combined with ones like, "holding on in this mysterious ride," when the mysterious ride we're all on is life itself. It makes it clearer that this isn't just a break up song. Then it becomes even more explicit with, "we shall pass, but love will never die."

The imagery in the videoclip is also telling, that ending when Eden is looking up, much like many do when talking to or thinking about a loved one that we have lost.

But the line that gets to me the most, the first one that took over my brain? "I'm still broken from this hurricane."

We all get what this song is about, in the wake of what happened here in October 2023, and since. And I am broken. So many Jews and Israelis are. As one survivor said (his words have haunted me first, then I heard them echoed in this song): "We are broken, but strong." That's exactly what the song is about, deeply feeling the pain and the tragedy, the loss, this impossible to accept grief, and still trying to find a way to live with it, to survive not just the horrors of a massacre, but the trauma that follows it as well.

The other line that affects me the most is directly related to this, "baby, promise me you'll hold me again." Because I have spent the last 5 months watching the news, seeing the funerals, and hearing people breaking down, as they say a variation of this to their loved ones, who are gone. Asking for a promise that can't be made, or fulfilled, and knowing that it can't, even as the request is being uttered. I hear their voices breaking around their words, whenever I listen to or sing this line.

The videoclip is also infused with imagery that's related to the massacre of over 360 people at the Nova music festival (and the kidnapping of 40 more from that scene), which is in a way very apt for music lovers. The images show dancers in what looks a lot like a nature party, just like Nova, and since the massacre happened when the music festival was meant to reach its peak, a long night of music and dancing climaxing around sunrise, that's exactly what we see, a move from the "moon light" throughout most of the videoclip, to the "sunrise" at the end.

But in the case of this "sunrise," Eden can smile, she can find comfort, she can sing a few words in Hebrew that reflect hope, about that little light that's left even when the moon's been stolen.

She's bringing the song to a beautiful, emotional closure.

Obviously, it can't be ignored that this is a re-write. The original song (which was called October Rain) was disqualified as "political."

You can read the original lyrics here. They're almost identical. I heard an interview with the song writers, who said they weren't even told what got their song disqualified, so they had to guess what the Eurovision Broadcasting Union had in mind, when they called an expression of our pain, and our strength at the face of that, "political."

I admit, I find it very hard to accept this disqualification. It's not like there isn't precendent for countries at the Eurovision expressing pain (including the kind originating from political circumstances) through their songs.

If you take the wildly popular Ukraine 2007 entry, the singer was quite obviously singing "Russia goodbye," with allusions to Russian interference in Ukrainian elections while wearing outfits reminiscent of Soviet uniforms. And that wasn't called political, because "Russia goodbye" was changed into gibberish that still sounds like it (and in recent performances, it was blatantly sang like that).

If you take the much talked about Croatia 2023 entry, it was about the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and also criticized Belarus' tyrant kissing Russia's tyrant's ass, by referencing the tractor that Lukashenko bought for Putin, while the band members played with military weapons and uniforms on stage. And that wasn't disqualified for being political.

If you take the Ukraine 2016 entry, that was explicitly singing about their pain over what the Russians did to the Tatar population in Crimea in 1944, with clear allusions to what Russians did when they invaded Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in 2014. And that wasn't called "political" either.

Even this year, we have the entry from The Netherlands being political, with both the lyrics and videoclip referencing the borderless Europe (which IS a political issue, as Brexit, if nothing else, had made clear). I've seen people pointing out online that the song isn't political, because the whole borderless Europe thing is a metaphor for the singer's grief for his father/parents. I have no problem with that reading, but let's acknowledge that there could have been many metaphors for that, and he chose a political one.

So why is Jewish pain treated differently? Why is our pain labeled "political," when the metaphors for it in the songs aren't that, there are no specific political mentions of people or organizations in the song (unlike the Georgia 2009 entry, which slipped Putin's name into the song's title) in either version, when there are no political statements being made in the song, there's just expressing our pain, and trying to find a way to cope with it?

This WAS the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and expecting Jews not to write about it, not to sing about it, not to try to process it through art... Our pain is not political. It's human. When Ukraine won in 2022 with a song that wasn't originally political, but became one, as it was adopted by Ukrainians suffering from a war that they did not choose, but had to fight, singing it wherever they were displaced (I remember the winners, Kalush Orchestra, coming to Israel to sing it for and with Ukrainian refugees who found shelter here), I thought it was quite obvious, even for people who don't like politics at Eurovision, why the song won, and why everyone overlooked the fact that it was only partly based on its qualities as a Eurovision song. I don't expect Israel to win, I very much expect that, even as Israelis embrace this song about our pain during a war, that we didn't choose, but have to fight, and while hundreds of thousands of us are still displaced, we will get a lot of hatred, instead of understanding and sympathy. But I still have to speak up. I still have to point out that treating Israeli or Jewish pain differently is wrong.

(as a footnote, I wanna get ahead of the usual, "Why is Israel allowed to participate in Eurovision to begin with? It's not in Europe!" comments, while I haven't come across the same ritual for certain other Eurovision participants, like North African Morocco, just-as-Asian-as-Israel Lebanon, transcontinental {despite some of these countries only being considered European culturally, while geographically speaking, they're fully Asian} Georgia, Russia, Cyprus, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Armenia, and the one that's a continent all on its own, Australia. They all have the right to participate, because they all belong to the European Broadcasting Union. Just like Israel)

[stylo-90]

Tamil Linguistics thread (bc nobody cares but me)

but really, if you are interested in linguistics at all, give this post a read, because this shit really blew my mind ...

have been reading the following paper: https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/public/h_sch_9a.pdf

"The Tamil Case System" (2003) written by Harold F. Schiffman, Professor Emeritus of Dravidian Linguistics and Culture, University of Pennsylvania

Tamil is one of the oldest continuously-spoken languages in the world, dating back to at least 500 BCE, with nearly 80 million native speakers in South India and elsewhere, and possessed of several interesting characteristics:

a non-Indo-European language family (the Dravidian languages, which include other languages in South India - Malayalam being the most closely related major language - and one in Pakistan)

through the above, speculative ties to the Indus Valley Civilization, one of the first major human civilizations (you can read more about that here)

an agglutinative language, similar to German and others (so while German has Unabhängigkeitserklärungen, and Finnish has istahtaisinkohankaan, in Tamil you can say pōkamuṭiyātavarkaḷukkāka - "for the sake of those who cannot go")

an exclusively head-final language, like Japanese - the main element of a sentence always coming at the end.

a high degree of diglossia between its spoken variant (ST) and formal/literary variant (LT)

cool retroflex consonants (including the retroflex plosives ʈ and ɖ) and a variety of liquid consonants (three L's, two R's)

and a complex case system, similar to Latin, Finnish, or Russian. German has 4 cases, Russian has at least 6, Latin has 6-7, Finnish has 15, and Tamil has... well, that's the focus of Dr. Schiffman's paper.

per most scholars, Tamil has 7-8 cases - coincidentally the same number as Sanskrit. The French wikipedia page for "Tamoul" has 7:

Dr. Schiffman quotes another scholar (Arden 1942) giving 8 cases for modern LT, as in common in "native and missionary grammars", i.e. those written by native Tamil speakers or Christian missionaries. It's the list from above, plus the Vocative case (which is used to address people, think of the KJV Bible's O ye of little faith! for an English vocative)

... but hold on, the English wiki for "Tamil grammar" has 10 cases:

OK, so each page adds a few more. But hold on, why are there multiple suffix entries for each case? Why would you use -otu vs. -utan, or -il vs -ininru vs -ilirintu? How many cases are there actually?

Dr. Schiffman explains why it isn't that easy:

The problem with such a rigid classification is that it fails in a number of important ways ... it is neither an accurate description of the number and shape of the morphemes involved in the system, nor of the syntactic behavior of those morphemes ... It is based on an assumption that there is a clear and unerring way to distinguish between case and postpositional morphemes in the language, when in fact there is no clear distinction.

In other words, Tamil being an agglutinative language, you can stick a bunch of different sounds onto the end of a word, each shifting the meaning, and there is no clear way to call some of those sounds "cases" and other sounds "postpositions".

Schiffman asserts that this system of 7-8 cases was originally developed for Sanskrit (the literary language of North Indian civilizations, of similar antiquity to Tamil, and the liturgical language of Vedic Hinduism) but then tacked onto Tamil post-facto, despite the languages being from completely different families with different grammars.

Schiffman goes through a variety of examples of the incoherence of this model, one of my favorites quoted from Arden 1942 again:

There is no rule as to which ending should be used ... Westerners are apt to use the wrong one. There are no rules but you can still break the rules. Make it make sense!!

Instead of sticking to this system of 7-8 cases which fails the slightest scrutiny, Dr. Schiffman instead proposes that we throw out the whole system and consider every single postposition in the language as a potential case ending:

Having made the claim that there is no clear cut distinction between case and postpositions in Tamil except for the criterion of bound vs. unbound morphology, we are forced to examine all the postpositions as possible candidates for membership in the system. Actually this is probably going too far in the other direction ... since then almost any verb in the language can be advanced to candidacy as a postposition. [!!]

What Schiffman does next is really cool, from a language nerd point of view. He sorts through the various postpositions of the language, and for each area of divergence, uses his understanding of LT and ST to attempt to describe what shades of meaning are being connoted by each suffix. I wouldn't blame you for skipping through this but it is pretty interesting to see him try to figure out the rules behind something that (eg. per Arden 1942) has "no rule".

On the "extended dative", which connotates something like "on the behalf of" or "for the sake of":

I especially find his analysis of the suffix -kitte fascinating, because Schiffman uncovers a potential case ending in Spoken Tamil that connotes something about the directness or indirectness of an action, separate from the politeness with which the person is speaking to their interlocutor.

Not to blather on but here's a direct comparison with Finnish, which as stated earlier has 15 cases and not the 7-8 commonly stated of Tamil:

What Schiffman seems to have discovered is that ST, and LT too for that matter, has used existing case endings and in some cases seemingly invented new ones to connote shades of meaning that are lost by the conventional scholar's understanding of Tamil cases. And rather than land on a specific number of cases, he instead says the following, which I find a fascinating concept:

The Tamil Case System is a kind of continuum or polarity, with the “true” case-like morphemes found at one end of the continuum, with less case-like but still bound morphemes next, followed by the commonly recognized postpositions, then finally nominal and verbal expressions that are synonymous with postpositions but not usually recognized as such at the other extreme. This results in a kind of “dendritic” system, with most, but not all, 8 of the basic case nodes capable of being extended in various directions, sometimes overlapping with others, to produce a thicket of branches. The overlap, of course, results from the fact that some postpositions can occur after more than one case, usually with a slight difference in meaning, so that an either-or taxonomy simply does not capture the whole picture.

How many cases does Tamil have? As many as its speakers want, I guess.

[dhmis-autism]

Why do you think there’s such a strong military motif associated with Duck Guy throughout the show? I’ve always thought that it was because he’s the one who cares the most about having a routine/‘order’ in the show (Or at least as close to an order as the surreal world of the show allows them to have). This certainly hit me in the last episode the most where it almost sounds like Duck is nearly brought to tears when Yellow Guy isn’t talking and acting like he typically does. There are other characteristics with Duck that I believe could me closely associated with militaristic ones (Such as his anger and desire to be the center of attention in their lessons), but wanting their world to keep sticking to its routine and not enjoying change at all are the main traits that stuck out to me the most.

OKAY NO INTERESTING QUESTION AND VEEERY INTERESTING TAKE HERE I LOVE ITTT I LOVE THIS ASK I LOVE IT HEREEEE !! OKAY! OKAY!

First of all I do think it’s VERY sweet that Duck sounds like he’s about to cry in episode 6 it’s very sweet and very funny to me.

Second- I’ve seen a lot of takes on his weird little military thing!! The oddest of those takes (TO ME) has been the idea that he somehow served. At some point. In some sort of legitimate puppet war. MY interpretation of his little puppet thing tends to lend a bit closer to what you think!

So, personally, I see all three of them as autistic (big shocker) and his intense military interest (hyperfix maybe...) REALLY reads to me less like someone with actual experience with it, MORE like a violent, weirdo, shut-ins IDEA of what it’s like. Which makes sense to me! It’s a pretty apt combination of a lot of his expressed interests

(violence,

technology,

order/routine thing you pointed out,

repetition,

his recurring thing about respect

it’s like a perfect venn diagram of stuff he would be into! It makes a lot of sense to me, actually. I think he talks about the military the way we talk about the guys tbh like same hat different head type deal. In my head he's like. At his chair like WHO WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT THE RUSSIAN MILITARY BEAR FROM WORLD WAR TWO FOR 45 MINUTES and YG is like YAAAAAAAAAY and RG is like you already. We’ve heard this one. We know how it goes. You don’t have to say it again.

I also think the routine thing is a very autistic thing lol! I know me personally, I like knowing what i Have To Do in a day or else I get kind of restless or aimless and I can’t handle myself well. Like, I’ve gone out before and had plans change on me suddenly and gotten so distraught at just the change in what we were Planning To Do that I almost cried and needed to sit quietly for a minute. From what I can tell it’s a pretty common autism thing!

So to me, the military thing is a hyperfixation for him + the strict adherence/ almost reverence of routine is just an autism thing. But that’s my take! :] Thanks for the message!!

[theculturedmarxist]

War Games

You need to be ready because war between the United States and China is inevitable.

I hate to use the word "inevitable" because it implies that it is preordained, a foregone conclusion irrespective of circumstance or volition. In this instance it is apt because the US has crafted the circumstances and shaped itself internally and externally so that it has no other choice but to engage in conflict.

To fully explain why this is would require a substantially longer post, several posts in fact, at the very least. In summary though, the welfare state created by the New Deal and the activist sentiment cultivated by the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement spurred a reaction by the bourgeoisie, which resulted in the "Reagan Revolution." Proletarian empowerment was to be checked and dismantled at every opportunity and any impediment to corporate power was to be removed. Unions were dismantled. Public Education was attacked. Trusts were to be facilitated in the name of "efficiency."

Over the course of forty years, the players of the US political and economic system have taken steps favorable to themselves which have made reform impossible. Aberration from the desires of the ruling class is treated with extreme intolerance and the heterodox are expelled from "polite society." Alternative conceptions to the current state of things are portrayed as quixotic at best and foreign or evil at worst.

The result is such that any attempt to reform or ameliorate the social, economic, or political status quo of the United States is virtually impossible.

The US's foreign policy goals since the fall of the Soviet Union has been the dissolution of the Russian Federation and the subjugation of the People's Republic of China, as set out in the policy document "Project for a New American Century." 9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the destruction of Libya, occupation of Syria, etc, etc, have all been stepping stones on the war towards those ultimate goals. Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden have all facilitated those goals.

The problem is that the "United States," by which I mean the bourgeoisie which represent its interested parties, its political facilitators, and its petite-bourgeois factions which occupy its implementation mechanisms, have crafted the internal and external national circumstances so that novel responses to emerging circumstances are impossible.

To give an example, the war in Ukraine proves that its patently impossible for the US to wage war directly against Russia. In terms of production capacity, the United States simply cannot compete. Case in point, the Russian Federation is producing 4.5 million artillery shells per year. The US meanwhile is producing somewhere in the neighborhood of 450,000. The reason this is is because monopolies have hollowed out the US's production capacity. Increasing production would mean decreasing profit, and that would mean bankruptcy, and then no production. So the US government has to guarantee profit in order to guarantee production. Russia and China don't have this defect currently. Part of the reason Russia has been able to out-produce the US is that its production companies and facilities are state owned. The Russian government says "jump" and their MIC says "how high?" Profit isn't the goal, but rather production.

These circumstances aren't entirely alien to the US. During World War 2, the US government intervened heavily in its domestic economy, dictating wages and benefits, ordering production in support of its war effort. Now though the tail is wagging the dog. In the name of the "economy," monopolies dictate economic and state policy. We saw this recently when the CEO of Delta airlines got the isolation period for covid cut from two weeks to five days.

So we have is a situation where the US can't achieve its goals because of its own inadequacies. If the US wanted to achieve parity with its rivals, it would have to at the very least assume the sort of state-directed production that its rivals have. However, currently that isn't possible because the monopolies which control economic production enjoy control over the state which is ostensibly supposed to regulate it. Put another way, in Russia and China, the state dictates economic activity. In the US, the economy dictates political activity. To use an American saying, "the inmates are running the asylum."

These circumstances cannot be reformed as they currently are. We saw in 2016 that attempts to do so were legally thwarted. If the political system cannot be restructured so that the people's will is preeminent before the will of the bourgeoisie, then the will of the bourgeoisie will dominate. That means that economic monopolies will continue their stranglehold over policy, and profit will retain preeminence before any other consideration, including militaristic victory.

The significance of Taiwan currently is that it accounts for at least half of the planet's semiconductor microchip production. This produces a dilemma for the United States. This essential resource is at least de jure in the hands of an ideological enemy and a presumed economic subordinate. Furthermore, it has no way of ameliorating this state of affairs without military intervention. To the first part, this state of affairs would give China de facto control over US economic policy, both foreign and domestic, as it would give Beijing control over how many microprocessors the US has access to to put into its various domestic products as well as the military hardware it requires to enforce its domestic policy. To the second part, in its efforts to crush the working class all those skilled trades necessary to facilitate its own domestic production, along with the educational institutions necessary to impart the knowledge and expertise for their creation, have been systematically gutted by the bourgeoisie.

In short, if the United States started today to try and achieve the productive capacities currently existing in China and Russia, it would be at least ten years before it could accomplish what either of its adversaries are currently capable of. It lacks the skilled personnel. It lacks the machinery necessary. Its institutions lack the candidates or the program to train its citizens at scale. It very simply lacks the capability to produce more than its limited quantities of boutique weaponry, which means it cannot possibly compete with its chosen adversaries.

The rational response to these facts would be to adjust its course in relation to the existing circumstances. The period of American hegemony outlined in the PFANAC is as unrealistic as traveling to the moon on a hot air balloon, so rational course of action would be to adjust policies and expectations accordingly. Unfortunately, these adjustments cannot be made. They would require upsetting the dominance of the monopolies over the American political and economic status quo, and the monopolies are unwilling to let that happen and the US government is incapable of making that happen. For the American economy to continue, the monopolies must continue to exist as monopolies, and also for American politics to continue. It is a reciprocal relationship, where reformers that endanger corporate profits like Sanders are kept out of positions of power, so that those in power can continue to guarantee corporate profits. One hand washes the other, and nothing is allowed to fundamentally change.

The problem, as any Marxist could tell you, is that change is the fundamental state of things. In spite of the war and sanctions, Russia's economy is strengthening while Europe's is weakening. China alone has more than twice the consumers as all of NAFTA combined. The bottom line is that the United States simply cannot compete, and what's more is that it has fashioned itself into such a state so that it can never, ever do so, because the necessary changes are simply impossible to achieve and implement while also keep profits up and proles down. To keep things as they are, change is utterly impermissible, in spite of how devastatingly necessary it might be.

Yet regardless, the status quo is not only viewed by the bourgeoisie as the natural state of things, but totally essential. Unable to escape their own ideology, they are restricted by its prescriptions. The United States must, must, dominate not only Russia, and China, but the entire world. It cannot do so economically, and yet it cannot alter itself so that it may do so. In terms of production the US can never, ever surpass China in its current state, but at the same time it cannot realistically alter itself to do so. The American bourgeoisie has achieved victory over the American working class, but in so doing it has forfeited the struggle to dominate internationally. It has very little to offer in terms of real goods. Its only useful product is its currency and the ascendance of BRICS severely limits that's lifetime. Since 2001 the US has let its diplomatic strength atrophy, and in its hubris reality has increasingly passed it by.

If it has no real goods to offer, no useful currency, and no means of persuasion, then the only thing left that the US has to ensure its necessary, is essential dominance is its military weaponry. While much of it is dated and inherited from the First Cold War, it still has the capacity to wreak fearful destruction, especially its nuclear arsenal.

We see the evidence of this fact even now. The US's puppet Ukraine cannot possibly win against Russia. This was a fact even before the start of the most recent phase of this conflict in 2022. Yet in spite of the unrelenting slaughter of the Ukrainian people the conflict continues because the US as instigator of this war has no other alternative. It cannot allow peace to break out. It cannot pursue an alternative to war. It cannot even fathom a world where it doesn't dictate the state of affairs. So in spite of bleeding itself dry trying to wear down an enemy that surpasses it in virtually every capacity, it insists on continuing, because the alternative cannot possibly be countenanced.

Russia, in spite of its growing strength, is nowhere near the level that China currently enjoys. If the United States cannot even defeat Russia, it would be absurd to court conflict with China, especially considering how much the US relies on Chinese goods for, well, practically everything. The pandemic "shutdown" saw the US practically on the verge of collapse and panic as essential goods grew scarce. Still, the US continues to ratchet up tensions with China, provoking it, while preparing itself for war insofar as its capable. For the United States and its controlling monopolies, there is no other choice. Profit must be assured, which can only come at the expense of its imperial subjects, and without any other alternative those subjects must be maintained at the barrel of a gun—or the tip of a nuclear weapon.

[ladyloveandjustice]

2023 Anime Overview: SHY and Migi & Dali

SHY

Premise: In a world where every country has a superhero, 14 year old Teru is Japan's. Her hero name is Shy, and that's exactly what she is-- she's a bit of shrinking violet at times and deals with social anxiety, which makes the public part of being a hero a struggle for her. But with a mysterious boy going around and turning people's hearts and pain against them to make them into dark, painful threats, she and the other heroes are going to have to step things up.

SHY is very much a magical girl show with am American-style-superhero coat of paint, and that's really what draws me to the series. Powers are based on your heart and emotions, the heroes friends and loved ones have their pain and despair manifest as terrible powers when induced by an outside force and then our heroes having to reach out to these people with love and compassion...it is so magical girl core. There's even a magical battle where mother and daughter must reach out to each other!

Also very distinctly magical girl-esque is how a lot of the series is focused on Teru and her cute girl bff having yuri undertones. Said friend calling out her name even activates Teru's "heart" and her powers truly awaken. IDK Teru that's pretty gay.

It does some things that are cool to see in a superhero show- like centering female characters and featuring a disabled superhero. This Anifem article also has an interesting take on one of the fights.

It's also not overly fanservicey so far either, though Teru mentions once that her leotard is skimpier than she's comfortable with (apparently magic assigns them their clothes) which sucks, (and it highlights her rear more than I'm comfortable at times considering her age). Let her have pants! But hey, after dealing with MHA's bullshit, I'll count my blessings that it's a regular leotard.

SHY is often a little silly-- the fact that apparently every country getting a superhero ended ALL WAR somehow is so ridic it wraps around to being endearing. It's also engages in some national stereotypes --for instance the Russian superhero who is Shy's mentor whole schtick being that she's always drunk (but you see it's okay because her alcoholism is based in her childhood love for her parent and she's fine and). There's a weird moment where an adult acts like she's going to kiss a teenager as a prank, and the pacing is a little uneven.

But when it hits, it really hits, and you really root for Teru. Seeing a superheroic take on struggling with social anxiety is fun, and Teru's passion and strength shines through. I'm excited to see more of her adventures, and fortunately a second season is confirmed!

Migi & Dali

Premise: Orphaned twins Migi and Dali perform an amazing con to get adopted by a couple (who mention preferring to adopt only one child)-- they decide to pretend to be only one person, a boy named Hitori, with one of them always just out of sight as school or at home. They go to absurd levels to keep this up because they have an important goal-- their mother was murdered in this town, and they're going to do all they can to find her killer. But what mysteries does this suburban town hold?

It's hard to put Migi & Dali into words, but I'll do my best. It starts out as an utterly absurd show that plays it's "spookiness" so ridiculously that it becomes comedy (Mother's Basement compared it to the potato chip scene from Death Note, and I think that's apt, though it's very much intentional with this show). Seeing the ridiculous lengths the twins go to in order to keep up their con is amazing. Situations like them assuming their foster mother must be scalping children because they don't understand what a wig is or one twin throwing on a wig on so the other twin (who should know what he looks like because he can LOOK IN THE MIRROR) doesn't recognize him are hilarious.

But then the show also becomes a tightly plotted and genuinely tense murder mystery that is incredibly moving at times? WHAT? All while keeping up it's signature brand of goofiness and absurdity! Side characters I did not expect to care about go through great development, Migi and Dali have some great character arcs, there's some genuine commentary on abuse, the damage you can do to children by forcing perfection on them, the struggle of being a foster kid, grief and recovery and more.

There are some things to warn for--parental abuse, rape through deception (def framed as bad, but yep. that happens), general harm to children, a very uncomfortable strip search of a child that involved ass-grabbing, and the weird bits where teen characters are kidnapped and forced to dress up and act like a baby (which turns out to be very thematically important and follows an interesting arc of being played partly for comedy at first then becoming deadly serious later) and of course the murder and stuff you'd expect from a murder mystery. (There's also some stuff involving infertility I think is fraught, but I can't really get into it without spoiling).

I know that's a huge list, but the show is definitely very rewarding--entertaining and full of more incredible twists and turns that one show has any right to be. Including the greatest housekeeper of all time, i would follow her into hell.

I can't get into more without spoiling, but yes, if you can handle this weird, wild ride, you should absolutely go on it. Sano Nami was a true talent.

[agentnico]

Master and Margarita (2024) review

Oh when in Soviet Russia…

Plot: Based on Mikhail Bulgakov's novel "Master and Margarita". 1930's, Moscow. A famous writer is censored by the Soviet state: his novel is banned, and the theatrical premier of his new play about Pontius Pilate - canceled. In just a few days he becomes an outcast. Inspired by these misfortunes the writer conceives a new novel in which the devil, named Woland, satirically revenges all those responsible for the writer's downfall. He knows this novel can never be published in the USSR, but Margarita - his muse pushes him to write it no matter what.

I truly believe Master and Margarita is one of the most powerful pieces of literature to come out from Russia. Yes I am aware War & Peace is more talked about, but look, I read all of its 1000+ pages and though it is an epic in every sense of the word, it does drag quite about. As for Master and Margarita, Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov created a satirical, quasi-biblical allegory that represents themes that are crucial to the human experience, such as struggle between good and evil, corruption in government and high society, human fragility, religion and prophecy, and the endurance of love over all. It’s a masterfully written piece of work, and one that is truly hard to adapt to screen, due to how much happens through its pages. However I’m all for directors giving it a go, with Michael Lockshin taking the challenge with a motion picture that was originally a co-production between Russian studios and Universal Pictures, though the latter pulled out following the Russo-Ukrainian War, even though most of the filming was already complete. Nevertheless after multiple delays the final product is here, so let’s digest.

Let’s talk through the positives first. It’s nice to see a Russian production of such grand scale, that even gives Hollywood a run for its money. There are some truly spectacular set pieces, and also interesting visuals, especially of a futuristic post-modern take of the Soviet Union, that reminded me a little of the recent Atomic Heart video game. Also the inclusion of August Diehl who plays the central Satanic figure Voland. This casting choice was a truly inspired one, as Diehl both looks and feels as if he came out straight from the pages of Bulgakov’s novel. There’s just this presence to him, as you can tell the power behind his eyes, yet he can also be really charming and witty. Whenever he was on-screen, the movie fully came to life, as he managed to perfectly balance the damning mocking tone with a deep inner understanding of things beyond the human mind. Look, there’s a great reason why they casted an actor outside of Russia for this part, as Diehl honestly was incredible. Funny how this is the same guy who got his testicles shot off in that WW2 Tarantino flick. Evgeniy Tsyganov as the titular Master too felt perfectly apt for the role, in some ways personifying Mikhail Bulgakov himself. The Master is a character that can so easily come off as dull, as he’s generally very stoic and constantly deep in his own thoughts, so it was a nice interpretation with Tsyganov breathing more life into him.

Unfortunately this is where the positives end. Look, I think it is truly impressive for the entire novel to be transferred into a 2hr 30min film, and of course I expected certain parts to be rushed. However the movie shoots itself in the foot by trying to approach the source material in a different way. Messing with various realities and reorganising the events of the novel in a completely different order, the result is messy and all over the place. I can say with full certainty that if I haven’t read the book before that I’d be so confused as to what the hell was going on in this movie. From the way it jumps from one place to the other in non linear fashion made it so difficult to be engaged and feel connected with the characters. There was a lot of extra narrative elements added to an already overstuffed plot (with a lot of creative choices being outright baffling) as such causing the movie to need to rush even more certain other key plot points that again, it was really disorganised and jarring.

Also, I know that ever since Batman it’s now cool to go dark with everything, but The Master and Margarita is a novel that doesn’t shy away from raising a few eyebrows. In fact it goes out of its way to be as weird and ridiculous as possible, with the inherent horror and tragedy that befalls each of its characters being felt only later, after the laughs have died down. The humour in the book, especially the dark stuff - that’s sort of famously the Russian novelists’ coping mechanism against, uh, being a Russian novelist. Yet this new 2024 film hardly allows a single joke, and instead tries to cover everything with a dark dramatic tone, and I feel that really takes away from the charm of Master and Margarita. Heck there are even sequences in the film that are supposed to be played for laughs, like the Behemoth cat’s shootout with the KGB cops that screams for physical comedy potential, yet the movie kind of glosses over it in a very monotonous way.

Aside from August Diehl and Evgeniy Tsyganov, the casting left a lot to be desired. Yulia Snigir made for a really bland Margarita. Voland’s entourage of demons, who in the book are a cause for some truly entertaining if silly shenanigans, here are completely wasted, and in fact are borderline annoying. Yuri Kolokolnikov as Korovev, the main member of his entourage, was actually horrendous. In the source material Korovev is a trickster, yet there was still wiseness within his madness. Here however Kolokolnikov plays him as if he were some kind of deranged clown, screaming every single line and maniacally laughing for absolutely no reason. The talking cat, who is one of the book’s best characters, in here is just a CGI cat who says maybe only two lines of dialogue in the whole film, and even then it’s a lazy mumble courtesy of actor Yura Borisov. Claes Bang as Pontius Pilate looked bored out of his mind. To be fair, the whole biblical side plot of Pilot and Jesus suffers the most here by being downgraded to maybe 5 minutes, which at this rate I feel like they should have cut the whole thing out entirely as the 5 minutes added nothing to the overall film. But yes, Claes Bang was evidently there to collect a pay check, and part of me wishes that instead we just had James McAvoy reprise his comedic take of Pilate from The Book of Clarence that came out earlier in the year.

It was never going to be an easy feat adapting Bulgakov’s epic into a movie. The narrative lends itself so much better to a TV series format, and in fact there is a wonderful 2005 limited series adaptation from Vladimir Bortko, and now that right there is how you make Master and Margarita work! That series featured great music, amazing performances, and plenty of breathing room to give every nook and cranny detail of the book its proper time. 2024’s Master and Margarita doesn’t come anywhere close to it, and though I do admire Lockshin’s ambitions, in the end it all falls flat on its face. August Diehl however is truly phenomenal in this, and honestly I really need to watch more of his acting work. I hear A Hidden Life with him is supposed to be good. Adding that to my watchlist as we speak.

Overall score: 4/10

[cyber-sec]

Nearest Neighbor Attacks: Russian APT Hack The Target By Exploiting Nearby Wi-Fi Networks

Source: https://gbhackers.com/nearest-neighbor-attacks/

More info: https://www.volexity.com/blog/2024/11/22/the-nearest-neighbor-attack-how-a-russian-apt-weaponized-nearby-wi-fi-networks-for-covert-access/

[hometoursandotherstuff]

Giant head of Lenin at the top of the stairs in an old Russian apt. building.

https://klyker.com/46-wtf-russia-photos-pictures

[warningsine]

As Russian artillery rained down on the Ukrainian city of Kherson last year, one girl found a surprising way of processing the horror that was taking place. She passed the time in a bomb shelter playing the stark, many would say depressing, video game This War of Mine.

There is a critical burden for every Ukrainian this winter. For her, it is trying to make sense of a terrible conflict. For Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, it is getting the weapons and international support to fight Russia and keep strategic momentum on his country’s side. For his soldiers, it is trying to keep morale up and stay warm in freezing temperatures. And for the almost 8 million Ukrainian refugees that the war has created, it is trying to rebuild lives in foreign countries.

A disproportionate number are doing so in Poland, which has registered more than 1.4 million of them for temporary protection, the largest number of any EU country, according to ReliefWeb.

The country’s particularly strong solidarity is replicated across Eastern Europe. Warsaw resident Konrad Adamczewski puts it down to proximity: “This was a war that broke out in a neighbouring country. You could immediately see people coming to Poland for shelter.”

The company he works for, 11 bit studios, made the bestselling This War of Mine. The unnamed Ukrainian girl in the basement got in contact at some point last year to thank them for the help the game gave her.

11 bit studios has been showing its solidarity since the beginning of the war in other ways, too. Within hours of Russia’s campaign, the company launched a fundraiser. For a week, all proceeds from sales of This War of Mine would be donated to the Ukrainian Red Cross. Some $850,000 was raised, far exceeding what the company had expected. “The impact was huge. We were very happy we could contribute, but it was also hugely sad that in 2022 the message of the game was once again so vivid,” Mr Adamczewski told me.

It was a remarkable achievement financially. But, as Mr Adamczewski went on to say, it is only when you look at the content of the game itself that you realise quite how apt the campaign was on deeper levels. “We developed this as a game about peace. Immediately we saw people commenting online that the scenes of innocent people suffering unfolding on the news looked like This War of Mine.”

The game is, after all, entirely about war, but barely about soldiers. Instead, civilians are the protagonists in an unnamed conflict, as they try to survive and not lose hope in the process. Winning, if it can even be called that, is not triumph in battle, but just to survive until the end of the siege.

The setting is loosely based of the siege of Sarajevo, one of the longest in modern history, in which non-combatants were often forced into otherwise immoral acts to survive, be it hoarding resources, theft or even violence. But if the game had been released in 2022, Mariupol, Bakhmut or Kherson could well have been the inspiration.

Now the game is helping children outside Ukraine as well. At the end of 2022, it was officially included in Poland’s curriculum. Teacher Ilona Starosta says she uses it in her classes because of its many perspectives. “Students wonder what it means to win a game like this. Does winning mean surviving? Does it make sense to survive at all costs?”

These questions are not delivered in abstract debates. Players might be in the shoes of Adam, who struggles to get medicine for his ill child as he tries to untangle his own mind from severe shell shock. Or they might be journalist Malik, who has to balance the need to broadcast life-saving information with not angering a censorious military.

For Mr Adamczewski, the potential for explaining these dilemmas makes gaming a uniquely powerful tool for learning: “When children study literature, there is often a question of what the author had in mind. But in games, you become the author.”

The depth of the game has caught global attention. In the UK, London’s Imperial War Museum features it as an installation in its War Games exhibition, which opened in September. Curators placed it next to artefacts that captives made during the Second World War to create a sense of normality during extreme hardship; they include a teapot, given to an English prisoner of war by a Polish comrade, and improvised cigarettes. In the US, the game is featured in New York’s Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Video Games and Other Interactive Design, which also opened in September.

However much renewed attention the game is getting globally, it remains a success firmly rooted in Poland. Like many other places in Eastern Europe, the country has a remarkably creative independent gaming sector.

As a developer, Mr Adamczewski says that the arrival of personal computers in the 1980s was a radical opportunity to learn more about life outside the communist bloc. More simply, people also wanted to use them to play games. With no access to ones developed in the West, people started developing their own. This wider wave of tech curiosity and the chance to start afresh after the fall of the Soviet Union are reasons that Eastern Europe has much better internet connectivity than richer western European countries.

But more than just a leading economic asset, the region’s gaming sector is becoming a cultural one, too. In the case of This War of Mine, to remind people that war has a terrible, complex impact on civilians. It is far too soon to say if a video game will ever reach the renown of All Quiet on the Western Front or Dulce et Decorum Est, classics that will explain history's worst moments for generations. But if one ever does, it could well come from Eastern Europe.

[pb-dot]

Film Friday: Bullet Train

I've been missing a few Film Fridays lately, partially because mental health has just kinda been like that and partially because I've been struggling with a slightly more meaty analysis that my brain just won't let me figure out properly. As such, I'm going to get into the swing of things again with a movie that is pretty stupid, and I say that with all possible love and admiration.

Ladybug isn't really comfortable with the title of hitman anymore, he's trying out a more harmonic life, but even so he does find it in himself to undertake what should by all accounts be a simple last-minute job. Board the eponymous train, grab a suitcase, and get off at the next station. Oh, were it only so easy. Turns out said bullet train is flush with kooky assassins and hitmen who are either out for the suitcase, the lives of one or more of each other, or have larger and more ominous designs.

There's Ladybug, of course, the quirky pair of British wetworks men Lemon and Tangerine out to escort a drugged-out VIP and a suitcase full of money, notorious and sneaky The Hornet who's skulking about somewhere, the megalomaniacal but brilliant Prince playing a larger game with the life of desperate father Kimura's child as ante, as well as the hot-headed Wolf who is out for vengeance and a paycheck, but mostly the vengeance thing. It's quite the web of coincidences, interferences, and merry chaos as these murderers navigate the crowded train.

It's chaotic, but one throughline that honestly makes the constant shifting priorities and allegiances of Ladybug and the other hitmen work is that it's all a job to them, a very messy job that may or may not be arranged by a Russian usurper of the Yakuza crime syndicate known as White Death, but still a job. Whenever it's expedient for our heroes and antiheroes to not kill each other, they'll show professional courtesy to each other, bantering in that "a little bit too cool" stylized way that's second nature to Hollywood assassins.

What sets the banter apart, though, is a distinct sense of humor. Lemon, much to Tangerine's annoyance, has a theory of human personalities and moral character based on Thomas The Tank Engine. Ladybug has luck that fluctuates wildly between being impossibly good and impossibly bad, and he has a problem with remembering faces which makes some of the networking with his fellow killers challenging. Wolf's role in the movie is short in a way that feels darkly comedic yet apt, and I was surprised to learn this was, in fact, a cameo from musician Bad Bunny (listen, I'm old, ok?)

It's all breezy fun. The movie takes itself about as seriously as any movie that features a Japanese-language cover of "Holding Out For A Hero" in a moment of high drama, but that's fine, the movie expects you to chuckle along, knowing full well it has your heart in a vise by the third cover of "I'm forever blowing bubbles." Not a joke by the way, the few moments that Bullet Train allows itself to express emotion more complex than "holy shit" and/or laughter, it's acted well enough and with enough genuine skill that it actually gets to me a fair bit.

It'd be an act of overstatement to call Bullet Train all that deep, but it adds up to more than the sum of its parts. It ends up saying some fun things about fate. I wouldn't exactly cite it in a philosophy paper or anything of the sort, it is fun to sit at the end of the "Michael Shannon plays Russian roulette in an oni mask to look badass" movie and go "You're right movie, maybe human misery DOES come from the hubris of believing ourselves to be masters over fate." I don't know, it's just nice for a crowd-pleasing action movie to go out on a note of what seems like a genuinely held belief and not "welp that happened" glibness. It reminds me a bit of Mr. and Mrs. Smith like that, a movie I'll probably end up talking about here one of these days.

[mariacallous]

The Biden administration sometimes refers to the need to build a “bridge” to NATO membership for Ukraine. It’s an apt metaphor—just not in the way its proponents might think.

One might think of a bridge as a mere symbol of hope. But, invoked in a military context, a bridge is best understood in its role as wartime infrastructure. And that metaphor works precisely because building a bridge in wartime is an incredibly difficult and complex operation—one that military planners call a “wet gap crossing.” Conducting a contested wet gap crossing is perilous—see Ukraine’s evisceration of a Russian battalion attempting to cross the Siverskyi Donets River in May 2022—but the possible strategic rewards are high. In 1944, George S. Patton’s Third Army crossed the Moselle River at Nancy, turning the German defensive line and opening a strategic position for the Battle of the Bulge.

Much like a wet gap crossing, bringing Ukraine into NATO would be risky and costly, but it could lead to strategic success. If NATO nations are truly serious about bringing Ukraine into NATO, then creating a bridge to NATO cannot just be a clever diplomatic metaphor, and it should not be attempted merely in order to get to the other side, like the Russians at Siverskyi Donets. It has to be approached like the difficult, sophisticated, multifaceted operation that it is, and it must be part of a broader strategy for postwar Euro-Atlantic security, as was the Moselle crossing in World War II.

Diplomats and politicians planning for Ukraine’s future role in NATO at July’s NATO summit in Washington would do well to understand the U.S. military’s own approach to wet gap crossings. The lessons are instructive—and sobering.

Step 1: Try to go around

Because wet gap crossings are so difficult, the preferred option, if possible, is to avoid them altogether. Some would say we should not bring Ukraine into NATO because it is too risky. But that ignores the fact that there are no good options short of NATO membership for Ukraine, and the risks of not bringing Ukraine into NATO are greater in the long run. As in military operations, crossing a river often is the fastest, most effective way to an objective.

Despite the known risks and difficulties inherent in combat bridging, militaries still maintain this capability because they know that sometimes the strategic opportunity afforded by a successful wet gap crossing is worth the risks and difficulties. They also know that sometimes, going around is not an option. Russia has invaded its neighbors and rattled its nuclear saber, but one thing it has not done is attack NATO directly. That is because NATO’s Article 5 remains an effective deterrent. Nothing else has worked.

Those arguing against Ukrainian membership in NATO assert that perhaps we should choose an “Israel model” of continued materiel support to Ukraine or that a combination of countries, such as the G-7 nations, providing long-term economic support to Ukraine, would convince Russia that it cannot win. The Israel model will not work because Israel has nuclear weapons and Ukraine does not. In fact, that’s the whole point. Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994 when Russia, among other nations, agreed to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Similarly, Sweden’s and Finland’s decisions to join NATO despite already being members of the European Union demonstrate that bringing Ukraine into the EU and affording it the EU’s Article 42.7 mutual assistance clause would be insufficient to deter Russian aggression.

Step 2: Plan and rehearse

Once a decision has been made to conduct a deliberate wet gap crossing, planning is crucial. Simply moving your forces up to the edge of the water and trying to figure out a way across when you reach it would guarantee disaster. You must reconnoiter potential crossing sites, assess which will likely be successful given the terrain as well as your and your enemy’s strengths and weaknesses, and prepare multiple crossing sites.

There are several options for bridging Ukraine into NATO, all of which should be considered but not all of which seem promising. The first—declaring Ukraine a NATO member while hostilities are ongoing—is theoretically possible but likely politically untenable given the need for unanimity among the 32 allies to bring in a new member. The fact that it took a year to bring the geographically blessed and militarily advanced Sweden into the alliance belies this harsh fact. If, somehow, this became politically tenable, then NATO would have to quickly deploy forces into Ukraine to make the Article 5 guarantee more than just lip service.

The second option would be to bring Ukraine into NATO as part of a guarantee during negotiations over a cease-fire or cessation of hostilities—i.e., as soon as a cessation is in place, Ukraine will accede to NATO. This likely would not work because Russia would continue fighting rather than agree to a cessation of hostilities that triggered Ukrainian membership in NATO.

The third option would be for a critical mass of NATO nations to guarantee Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity following a cease-fire by deploying forces on Ukrainian territory. This has the benefit of offering concrete security guarantees to Ukraine while allowing time to bring onside skeptical NATO nations.

While the future shape of Ukraine is unknowable, and the timeline for Ukrainian admission to NATO is unknown, the alliance should start working now to achieve unanimity of political support among NATO nations for Ukrainian accession and also to determine how, where, and when forces from NATO nations will be used to guarantee the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. Both measures will be unavoidable, regardless of which option is deemed most credible.

Step 3: Prepare the battlespace

In combat bridging, you don’t just line up all your vehicles in a convoy and drive directly to the location where you want to build your bridge and then start putting things in the water. That would be suicide. You plan, rehearse, prepare your forces, and conduct a preparatory campaign to establish favorable conditions. Similarly, simply declaring a Ukrainian bridge to NATO without doing any planning or preparation would just leave Ukraine in the same strategic limbo it faced following the 2008 Bucharest declaration and similarly would motivate Moscow to redouble its efforts to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty before it is able to join NATO.

For NATO, this means that members need to begin whipping together votes in favor of Ukrainian NATO accession now. Diplomats need to understand who in the alliance already is on board with bringing Ukraine into NATO and under what conditions. For those whose position is “never” or “not until the war is over,” more creative solutions must be proposed, discussed, and solidified—in private. This cannot be a one-off discussion; it must be a constant campaign to prepare the battlespace for eventual Ukrainian accession.

Regardless of whether the war ends with Ukraine in control of its 1991 borders or Kyiv settles for something short of that, troops from NATO nations will need to be stationed on Ukrainian soil to provide the time, space, and security necessary to complete the bridge into NATO. These forces should include a coalition of key allies—ideally including NATO’s three nuclear states (Britain, France, and the United States) to signal that despite a lack of Article 5 security guarantees, NATO’s nuclear nations are committed to upholding the agreed-on borders—just as NATO troops were stationed in West Germany to deter Soviet forces in East Germany in the years between the end of World War II and West Germany’s accession to NATO.

Moving these forces into Ukraine in a short timeframe following an armistice or cease-fire would be extremely difficult both logistically and politically. Therefore, NATO nations should begin to set the theater now for those moves by declaring that NATO’s air defenses surrounding Ukraine will begin to shoot down Russian missiles and one-way attack drones that are on a trajectory to hit NATO territory; sending small numbers of NATO military personnel into Ukraine to provide training to Ukrainians; and negotiating with Turkey on allowing NATO naval capabilities into the Black Sea to protect civilian shipping.

Step 4: Commit

A wet gap crossing is a massive operation. It is viewed as a corps-level effort in the U.S. Army and is assumed that the Air Force, Space Force, and cyber assets also will provide critical support. It is difficult, risky, and costly, but if done properly, it can lead to strategic breakthrough.

Precisely because it is so risky, the commander of the operation must assess the risks involved, mitigate as much risk as possible without jeopardizing the mission, and accept that it is impossible to mitigate every risk. This is a critical step because once a combat wet gap crossing has begun, a commander must fully commit to the plan and leverage all forces available to make it a success. Half-measures in this type of operation lead to failure.

If NATO is serious about bringing Ukraine in as a member—and it should be—then it must be clear-eyed about the risks. It must develop a concrete plan, not just a political laundry list. This plan must be in support of a broader strategy. And most importantly, it must commit itself to success. Anything less is likely to lead to failure.

[thezeinterviews]

Financial Times: The FT’s 25 most influential women of 2023

Women were at the helm and in the trenches of the world’s most profound transformations

Influence — the power to persuade, advocate for change and imagine better ways of doing things — takes many forms. Nowhere is this more clear than in the magazine’s annual Women of the Year issue, a list of the world’s most influential women written about by other powerful women on the international stage.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie describes Lola Shoneyin’s work as a labour of love, noting that she “tirelessly splices present and future, nurturing what is, while making room for what will be”. It’s an apt description for the contributions made by all the exceptional women featured in this issue.

Roula Khalaf, editor of the Financial Times

Olena Zelenska

First lady

by Kaja Kallas

What I admire most about Olena Zelenska is her honesty. A screenwriter by profession, she knows how not to mince her words while remaining disarmingly human. Four months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Zelenska told a journalist: “None of us are OK.” She knows what it is like to wake up to see your homeland invaded by an imperialist neighbour; not to know when, or if, you will next see your loved ones; how to find the strength to fight for freedom, despite it all. Like her husband, Zelenska has become a global symbol of resilience. Her leadership in addressing mental health for Ukrainians during war is vital. Her work shining a light on the suffering and deportations of Ukrainian children by Russia brings back memories of my own family history; Russians deported my mother to Siberia when she was a baby. Estonia has partnered with Zelenska’s foundation to build family homes for children whom Russian bombs have turned into orphans. She is remarkable in her attention to detail and her ability to listen. The world should now listen to Zelenska and give Ukraine what it needs to defeat Russia and end the suffering.

Kaja Kallas is the prime minister of Estonia

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