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Slava Malamud Profile picture
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8 Dec, 7 tweets, 3 min read
Literally no other country in the world has developed the concept of leaving your domicile and paying with currency or credit to have a professional establishment provide you with nourishment.
Except for every single one of them, including communist dictatoriships. Image
I mean, yes, Olive Garden's unlimited breadsticks is a great American invention which, for the first time in known history, managed to make Italians furious, but do your Republican eateries make a pledge "To Service Every Customer Culturally"? Image
Does Applebee's advertise with classical poetry?
"Always be mindful of everyday life
For your labor and free time shall be full of joy
Taking food out or consuming it at Socialist Eatery Attached To Local Trade Union By Special Decree of the Party
Shall save Soviet people's time" Image
"Socialist Worker! Your Solemn Duty is to Ferociously Fight for a Clean Soviet Workers' Eatery and Protect the Health Of Their Nutrients With Your Life!"
Going out to eat was a serious business in the USSR. Image
"Typhus? You need quarantine!
Banned from Eatery Thirteen!" Image
Ah! There it is! Not letting people spread infectious diseases is communist indeed!
"We Shall Mercilessly Eradicate All Shortcomings of the Communal Food Consumption Industry!"
Take that, Fox News! Image

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More from @SlavaMalamud

Slava Malamud Profile picture
10 Dec
It is so fitting that Rush Limbaugh is proclaiming there can't be peaceful coexistence between conservative and liberal America. Because he is 100% right. He knows it because it's the state of affairs he has labored hard to create for 30+ years. He has finally succeeded...
When I was young and stupid and fresh "off the boat" and utterly susceptible to the prevailing Russian emigre philosophy ("GOP is against Communists, Democrats are against GOP, ergo Democrats = Communists, and also black people will get our money"), I listened to Rush. A lot...
I didn't find him tremendously exciting, because my conservative passions didn't that deep after all. I cared about sports more. But I could see how effective he can be in exciting people committed to his ideology. He was extremely combative, adverse to the notion of compromise..
Read 12 tweets
Slava Malamud Profile picture
4 Dec
More on "The Queen's Gambit."
Besides the fact that it is:
1) a typical American sports movie,
2) a visual joy,
3) a caricaturistic but true at heart portrayal of the USSR (our aesthetics were indeed drab, even if Ep. 8 seemed a bit Rocky IVesque),
there is one other thing...
Namely, the mixing of sports and politics, which is a minor, but important, theme in the episode.
Earlier in the series, there is a glimpse of two KGB officers following Soviet chess players around, something that was indeed normal and expected (no doubt, Kasparov's suggestion)..
However, TQG did something other films didn't: turned the situation around and showed that the US during the Cold War could be just as bad in this regard, if not worse.
Indeed, the Soviets always treated sports (and chess WERE considered a major sport in the country)...
Read 13 tweets
Slava Malamud Profile picture
3 Dec
Back to "The Queen's Gambit", which is still great. I am on the last episode, and I am still not sure I have learned how the horse, the officer or the lady move, but... WOW, this is a hard no!!!!
OK, I get the ominous darkness and the soldiers. If it weren't dark and there weren't any figures in peaked hats, how would American audiences know it's set in Russia?!
But "introduces excitedly"? Slava's Collective Farm Bull Shit Detector is going off!..
No, no, no, no, no! While Soviet TV announcers could occasionally be either excited or exciting, venue announcers had to maintain Sphynxian utmost dignity. None of your pro boxing theatrics, no long vowels or rolling consonants, all of this was waaaay beneath their dignity...
Read 20 tweets
Slava Malamud Profile picture
2 Dec
Here is the thing. Sidney Powell is evil. The GOP is evil. Everyone supporting and enabling Trump is evil.
But the reason they exist and exert power is because they know what a HUGE number of people in America wants to hear. This is why they win elections. It's simple... (thread)
Folks say that Dems should stop saying things like "Defund the police", "Black lives matter" and "Green New Deal", because they scare away the "real America." Folks say that Dems should talk about issues that make "real America" listen. You know, pocket-book issues. Jobs and shit
But Dems ARE talking about this stuff. They talk about the things that rural and suburban America needs in the XXI century. Which party is talking about broadband internet in the rural areas? Which party is talking about job retraining? Which party is talking about NEW jobs?..
Read 9 tweets
Slava Malamud Profile picture
1 Dec
Back to watching "The Queen's Gambit." I am still loving it, because the female lead is absolutely amazing, and the chess nerds are ador... WAIT??? Are you actually pronouncing him "ah-leh-KINE"????
ARE YOU NUTS????
Listen, I get it, Russian names are hard. I mean, we are already dealing with the world where someone named Borgov exists. And, I will let you on on a little secret: Russians pronounce the name wrong, too. They call him "ah-LYO-heen."
The right way is, of course, "ah-LYEH-een"
The "e" in the end is the result of his taking the French citizenship. The French stick the "e" at the end of all Russian names that end with an "in" (see, Poutine, for instance), just to make sure they pronounce it properly ("een" and not "en"). English grammar doesn't apply!
Read 4 tweets
Slava Malamud Profile picture
1 Dec
After two presidents who had to pretend to be Christian for political purposes, we are about to have one who actually believes in a magical, blindness-curing Jew, and we have no choice but to regard this as a positive development, so what the hell does this say about the world?
And don't give me the crap about Obama being an actual Christian! The guy was brought up to be secular and trust in science. You telling me that, upon becoming older and smarter, he went: "Hey, now I do believe there was once a dude who could turn water into alcoholic beverages!"
Like, "Yeah, it's time for me to cast aside all the childhood stories about history and science and embrace the cold, hard truth that a Middle Eastern woman who never had sex gave birth to a blue-eyed Viking 2000 years ago, and he walked on water and wrote books!"
Yeah. Please.
Read 4 tweets

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