In this week's Odder News, Etsy is a threat, a reindeer tries to race a Russian train, and "The Nutcracker" is much harder to see in Russia than in the U.S.

 In which a Siberian Lynx is caught waiting for the bus, just like the rest of us. 

The Moscow Regional Coronavirus Headquarters are using all the available weapons at their disposal to fight the spread of COVID-19, and they've pulled out their biggest gun yet: cat memes. 

Researchers in Novosibirsk are working to develop the world's first Russian Sign Language-to-text translator. 

"Because of e-sports, we are losing future great athletes who could become Olympic champions.”

– Svetlana Zhurova, State Duma Deputy and Olympic Champion, commenting on the recent (sedentary) victory of the Russian cybersports group Team Spirit.

The internet has been talking about Ilya Repin's painting Barge Haulers on the Volga a lot lately but, as usual, it is ignoring history.

In this week's Odder News, don't drink and drive your tractor, ticket-taking grandmothers are surprisingly entertaining, and the Russians win the new space race by a hair.

"The president’s website is working. There are no problems.”

– On October 4 Press Secretary for the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov reassured the public that not even Facebook can take down the President’s site.

Meet Khokhulya: he's a Russian desman, the official eco-hero of the Kaluga Region, and now an internet personality to boot. 

After twenty years outside the public eye, celebrated author Viktor Pelevin comes to Moscow to greet fans and sign books. Or does he?

"The App Store portal: who regulates it? Artificial intelligence, people from Mars?”

– Andrei Klimov, seeking to understand what’s going on behind the scenes with Apple’s App Store on September 17.

Roskomnadzor seems to have a funny bone to pick with the Sverdlovsk government publication Oblastnaya Gazeta, blocking their website in delayed reaction to a questionable text.