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Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
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20 Dec, 4 tweets, 1 min read
The strangest thing is that this is true in France--the misty-eyed business--even though literally *on the same métro ride* you can go from the Bastille to Kléber, Austerlitz, Wagram and right through to Invalides.
One assumes everyone here knows why they're named that way. Even if they were never taught in school, "Invalides" is a a sinister hint. The whole city is an inescapable memorial to French history, yet ... misty-eyed? About a revolution that visibly failed on its own terms? Why?
I just don't get it. Keep me far, far away from any event that might be memorialized one day by a métro station.
One day they'll name one "coronavirus," I guess. Announcer's even voice: "Virus. Avant de descendre, assurez-vous de ne rien oublier à bord."

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More from @ClaireBerlinski

Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
21 Dec
This is the most astonishing story you'll read in the 21st century. Navalny--having been poisoned by the FSB--gets on the phone, calls the FSB--on their landline--and tells them he's "Maxim Ustinov, an aide to [Chairman of Russia’s Security Council, Nikolai] Patrushev.”
There is no such person. Doesn't matter. He gets through to Konstantin Kudryavtsev, an FSB guy who graduated from the Military Biological-Chemical Academy then worked in the biowar Institute of the Ministry of Defense.

He rips Kudryavtsev a new asshole.
"How come Navalny's still ALIVE, you sack of--"

Kudryavtsev stammers something about it maybe not being a good idea to talk about this on an open line ...

(Btw, @bellingcat, this MUST be made into a movie. Write the screenplay tonight. Navalny can play himself.)
Read 8 tweets
Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
20 Dec
I’d like to know why Russia’s so good at hacking. @Kasparov63, I remember what you had to say about the way the USSR cultivated chess champions. The Soviet Union churned out brilliant logicians and mathematicians like Kolmogorov by the metric ton;
and even though Stalin purged them enthusiastically* (and he couldn't possibly have understood or really cared about their work, right?) the nomenklatura did *not* fail to spot useful military applications.
Is there something about the Russian education system--or Russian culture--that cultivates good hackers? (Or perhaps something that dissuades the kind of people who have those talents from using them in other careers where they'd be an advantage?)
Read 4 tweets
Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
20 Dec
I know I speak for everyone in saying how much I hate this pandemic. But I hate this pandemic more than I've ever hated anything.

I've been lucky. Obviously, I haven't died of it. I haven't even had it. Neither have any of my loved ones--
though we've had a few exposures and scares. Nor am I a doctor, or a nurse, who's watched all her beloved elderly patients die, like @ASkarimbas.

But yesterday, a friend mentioned that his mom's in intensive care. Everyone I know's out of work.
I'm not even complaining about being out of work--writers and journalists have been out of work for years anyway--but it doesn't help to be out of all my *other* options for making pocket money, like teaching.
Read 11 tweets
Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
19 Dec
Thank you, @edwardlucas. I'm not sure it's brilliant, per se, but do think the problem I'm describing is important. It's not just a grammarian's lament, though it's that. Within my lifetime, "being educated" meant you could write minimally literate, clear, workmanlike prose--
--not "brilliant" prose, a separate issue altogether. But everyone qualified for a high-level job in government or industry was, until pretty recently, able to write simply and clearly. You'd have the occasional mishap, a dangling participle or something. But nothing like this.
Overall, educated people understood that in business and government, you had to write a certain way: Especially during an emergency, the writing should be clear, and no sentence should have three errors in grammar and six plausible and distinct interpretations.
Read 21 tweets
Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
18 Dec
That's why people faint when they get their blood drawn. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

Primates have a few phobias in common: We're all creeped out by snakes and spiders, to varying degrees.
Most phobias give rise to a fight-or-flight reflex:Elevated heart rate, heightened blood pressure; your body gets ready to *scram* from that snake.
But BII's different: It's the only phobia in which the fight-or-flight chemicals dump only to be *immediately* followed by a massive dip in heart rate and blood pressure--a vasovagal response. Hence the faint.
Read 10 tweets
Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
18 Dec
"officials there have evidence of highly malicious activity, the officials said, but did not elaborate." politico.com/news/2020/12/1… Can anyone translate that? If you're hacking the US nuclear weapons stockpile, it's clearly not a benign pastime. What does "highly malicious" mean?
Would "mildly malicious" have a meaning in this context? Is the maliciousness tied to the effect of the hacking or to its intent?
About a matter of such obvious importance--just once--might a US official--just once!--issue one single comprehensible and grammatical English sentence? Just one?
Read 4 tweets

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