Astronaut Food, Monsieur Tussauds, and a Four-Day Workweek

In this week's Odder News, Russian social media needs to wash its mouth out with soap, especially after eating cosmonaut food, and go visit one of Russia's oddest museums in Zadonsk.

• April 12 was the Day of Cosmonautics, and Komsomolskaya Pravda asked everyone to spend the day "cosmically." It is the day that Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, in 1961. Astronaut-themed food was served all over Moscow (Yum! Food-paste from a tube!). Exhibits, films, and other forms of entertainment devoted to Gagarin and space were on offer across the country. Even preschool children learning to read learned about Gagarin this week. We hope Ga-ga-rin is not too many syllables at once.
• Mezzanine, a bizarre museum in Zadonsk, near Voronezh, depicts the stories of average city residents and famous people in the form of amateur life-sized dolls. There is even a Khrushchev doll banging his shoe on a podium. The museum owner, self-styled as "Papa Carlo" for being a sculptor like the Italian greats, makes the dummies himself. Over the years, "Mr. Tussaud" has collected numerous items of historical value but, unsurprisingly, he has no cataloging system for any of them.
• Russia has opened its first "underwater ecotrail," a safe environment for scuba divers to train. It is in Lake Teletskoye in the Altai Biosphere Reserve. Objects have been sunk for exploration at labeled depths for novices with their instructors. Future plans include illuminating the entire "trail" year-round.
• Bad language was banned on Russian social media beginning on February 1. So far, the law has been wildly... unsuccessful. An April 4 study shows that the quantity of "mat" (cursing) on social media has increased a lot since February 1.
• The State Duma is not against a four-day workweek, even calling it "inevitable." In a recent study, about 60% of Russians reported working on the weekend, suggesting that the typical workweek is already more than five days per week.