June 20, 2019

Trolls, Moles, Musk Lol's


Trolls, Moles, Musk Lol's
Is the new space race a… drag race? Tosky Project

Rap battles for the cosmos, sweeping up piles of flies. No, we aren’t trolling. 

1. Alphabet (i.e., Google) subsidiary Jigsaw proved you can buy off a Russian troll, and not just for the purpose of crossing a bridge, but to write nasty stuff about your enemies on the internet. And it only cost $250 for two weeks of 730 tweets and 100 blog and forum comments, directed against a Jigsaw-created anti-Stalin website. The Russian “marketing” company, SEO-Tweet, doesn’t even hide in the dark web; anyone can google its website. Some are worried that this will give Russia the opportunity to return-troll Google for interfering in its politics. (Although the directions were to be pro-Stalin, SEO-Tweet decided to interpret that broadly as pro-Putin). However, Jigsaw CEO stands by the research as a low-risk way to inform anti-disinformation campaigns and warn the public about the risk of trolls. 

2. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk threatened to challenge Roscosmos head Dmitry Rozogin to a rap battle. Earlier this month, in a mocking response to Musk sending a red Tesla into space, Roscosmos launched their own red toy car with a paper cutout of Rozogin. Both sides have exchanged pleasantries in the past, but given Russia’s (and the US’s) history of challenges to duels, who knows? Throwing down the rap glove could be a serious affair. That’s not a (w)rap yet; we still think it would be hilarious to see these space men get down.

3. Residents of two villages in the Urals really, really hope that this year summer flies by, if only to stop the biblical swarm of flies that has descended upon them. The accused sinner? A farmer that may have illegally used chicken poop as fertilizer, giving the insects ample breeding grounds. Neither the stool-supplier nor the fertilizing farmer say they are to blame, the former pointing fingers at the weather, and the latter seems to have been bitten by the good old fashioned Russian fatalism bug: “Flies have existed for millions of years, and they are everywhere… But no one can tell me what the acceptable or cut-off number of flies is.”

Flies Russia
We really hope that someone can come up with a solution on the fly
to stop these pests from bugging people. / 1tv.ru / Twitter

 

In odder news

Russian man nail in head
If you are squeamish, don’t click the link,
because there is a video that will make you a little green. / Guberniya Online 
  • A man in the Far East got a nail stuck in his head, and decided to treat it for two years with the Russian cure-all that behaves like green food dye, zelyonka (from the word zelyony, green) rather than get it removed by a doctor.
  • Want to buy a mole house to get out of the summer heat? The late Vladimir Reshin’s underground house, which he built after his former one burned down, is now for sale in a Ural village, on the open – not underground – market. 
  • Even bees now need a visa (of sorts) to cross the Russian-Ukrainian border. Russian authorities caught 800 undocumented bees that a Russian tried to buzz through migration control. 

 

Quote of the week

“Most often people buy ice cream in hot weather outside, wishing to cool off. And, as a rule, they try to eat it quickly, before it melts in the sun – herein lies the risk of catching a cold.” 

– Surprisingly, not your friendly nearby babushka, worried as ever about you catching a cold; actually, a representative of Moscow’s Health Department. 

 

Want more where this comes from? Give your inbox the gift of TWERF, our Thursday newsletter on the quirkiest, obscurest, and Russianest of Russian happenings of the week.

Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

The Moscow Eccentric

The Moscow Eccentric

Advance reviewers are calling this new translation "a coup" and "a remarkable achievement." This rediscovered gem of a novel by one of Russia's finest writers explores some of the thorniest issues of the early twentieth century.
A Taste of Chekhov

A Taste of Chekhov

This compact volume is an introduction to the works of Chekhov the master storyteller, via nine stories spanning the last twenty years of his life.
93 Untranslatable Russian Words

93 Untranslatable Russian Words

Every language has concepts, ideas, words and idioms that are nearly impossible to translate into another language. This book looks at nearly 100 such Russian words and offers paths to their understanding and translation by way of examples from literature and everyday life. Difficult to translate words and concepts are introduced with dictionary definitions, then elucidated with citations from literature, speech and prose, helping the student of Russian comprehend the word/concept in context.
Murder at the Dacha

Murder at the Dacha

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin has a problem. Several, actually. Not the least of them is the fact that a powerful Soviet boss has been murdered, and Matyushkin's surly commander has given him an unreasonably short time frame to close the case.
Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod is a mid-sized provincial city that exists only in Russian metaphorical space. It has its roots in Gogol, and Ilf and Petrov, and is a place far from Moscow, but close to Russian hearts. It is a place of mystery and normality, of provincial innocence and Black Earth wisdom. Strange, inexplicable things happen in Stargorod. So do good things. And bad things. A lot like life everywhere, one might say. Only with a heavy dose of vodka, longing and mystery.
White Magic

White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Bilingual series of short, lesser known, but highly significant works that show the traditional view of Dostoyevsky as a dour, intense, philosophical writer to be unnecessarily one-sided. 
Russian Rules

Russian Rules

From the shores of the White Sea to Moscow and the Northern Caucasus, Russian Rules is a high-speed thriller based on actual events, terrifying possibilities, and some really stupid decisions.
Jews in Service to the Tsar

Jews in Service to the Tsar

Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.
Survival Russian

Survival Russian

Survival Russian is an intensely practical guide to conversational, colloquial and culture-rich Russian. It uses humor, current events and thematically-driven essays to deepen readers’ understanding of Russian language and culture. This enlarged Second Edition of Survival Russian includes over 90 essays and illuminates over 2000 invaluable Russian phrases and words.

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955