@HannahHowe Heard a great podcast recently about the origins of Ode To Joy and the hope it represented, personally for Beethoven, but also Europe then and now. Rhapsody I'm afraid I associate too much with adverts for chocolate or New York or both.
Faves: Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus, Bach's Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring (Organ and Trumpet), Rachmaninoff Prelude in C sharp minor (the really sinister orchestral arrangement: https://youtu.be/kC3HqZDhq-g)
@MAKS23 For goodness sake. Navalny even got one of the KGB poisoners to accidentally confess.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/21/what-does-alexei-navalny-say-the-duped-russian-spy-admitted-about-his-poisoning
@wellingtonrock I'm guessing they got burned by PFI in the 90's. Which was in theory a good idea because you were investing in the future of schools and hospitals. But they were warned at the time that there were insufficient controls. (Eyes passim
https://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/special_reports/pf-eye.pdf)
'Judging by Reeves’s recent performance, they seem to care more about the fiscal hawks in their midst and in the Tory press. So much so that, to prove their mettle as bona fide austerians, they adopt the most pernicious allegory to have disgraced economic thinking.'
Why is Labour still using the self-defeating, discredited ‘maxed out credit card’ analogy? | Yanis Varoufakis | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/15/labour-credit-card-analogy-mendacious-tory
@hgbruenker Die Idee einer "EUArmy" erschien mir immer logisch. Wie haben mehr als 20 Armeen, Marinen und Luftstreitkräfte, die alle gelangweilt herumsitzen und den Steuerzahler belasten. Behalten Sie ein Minimum an nationaler innerer Ordnung und Grenzkontrolle bei, naturlicht, aber schaffen sie auch eine geschlossene EU-Truppe mit den besten Leuten und der besten Ausrüstung. Führen Sie den Einsatz international oder an Orten wie Osteuropa durch, wo eine Bedrohung besteht.
@freemo @lowqualityfacts I guess because VT100 didn't support stereo.
@Benaresh @DrALJONES Aah, I know that term via MalcomX but have never heard of Fanon, will have to read more, he seems to have been hugely influential in such a short space of time.
@lowqualityfacts Before Netflix and fast broadband, the only way you could watch movies online was via Terminal. Someone has recreated that experience for posterity.
https://ascii.theater/
> DR. FRANKENSTEIN: I'm just saying, it's a very misleading flyer
> BODY BUILDING COMPETITION JUDGE: again, we can only apologise
From @openDemocracy, a counter to Khordokovsky's vision, which is only touched on briefly in the above article:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/khodorkovsky-book-kill-dragon-putin-revolution-russia/
"There is literally nothing in the book about the work of opposition politicians with the apolitical majority of Russian citizens." Which is he key problem regardless of who the opposition figure is, or if they're martyred.
Putin's drawn out murder of opposition figure Navalny may be another step towards his end. But as Mikhail Khordokovsky wrote in November 20323, what comes next will depend greatly on how the West reacts.
Collapse of the Empire, resulting dozens of Republics modelled after Kadyrov's Chechnya, is dangerous undesireable. As is a mythical "Good Tsar", who would inevitably continue the corruption, aggression and expansionist tendencies.
https://koerber-stiftung.de/en/projects/the-berlin-pulse/democracy-in-russia-is-possible/
@Norobiik I am still unsure as to how much this will be seen as a rallying point for opposition. Anyone who stands up seems to get unpersoned, jailed and forgotten. E.g. Helga Pirogova:
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/07/26/i-can-t-make-peace-with-leaving
Completely surprising death of Russian opposition leader
@neil Likely a grave miscalculation by Putin, but hard to judge how much influence he had more widely. Also, whilst he was firmly anti-corruption and anti-Putin, he was still a Russian Nationalist at heart.
Putin's chat with Karlsson dissected for its historical weirdness, what his assertions mean for how we view history and how nations and peoples define themselves.
https://snyder.substack.com/p/putins-genocidal-myth
Hmmm.... the #LabourParty has overturned sizeable majorities in tow previously 'safe' #Tory seats in this week's two by-elections (in #Kingswood & in #Wellingborough).
But, while these may be indicative of a swing to Labour, they may also indicate a swing (on the right) towards Reform, which likely compounded a voting 'strike' (staying at home) by previous Tory #voters.
For leftists, the problem will be if #KeirStarmer takes this as vindication of his tack to the right & policy weakening!
@clacke That's a very small category. For PSAs in general, my generation theres nothing like the 1973 "Lonely Water" film narrated by Donald Pleasance. Pure horror film.
https://youtu.be/xZWD2sDRESk?si=Dq3BCr5JjlFx0iuZ
Florida authorities want to make it sound like this particular school just messed up - but they deliberately created the environment in which this is bound to happen.
This is the feature, not the bug of the reactionary assault on multiracial pluralism Florida has spearheaded. 1/
The emphasis on “parents rights” is part of an attempt to make every reactionary white person a deputy of the reactionary state and have them help weed out and oppress dissent and deviance. It’s a fundamentally authoritarian vision of society. /end
Just another worried little citizen of this modern-day Pompeii. Techie at UCL, working on Process Automation with MS Power Platform. Scatterbrain, interested in education, languages, Space and lots of disparate things. sorry.
Keeping my space toots at @astrodad as an experiment in self-moderation :)
*Background banner is a photo Yorkshire flag in blue and white, in front of a classic bell tent, in a field of similar tents at a festival.