Hey, wanna see how a 1960 Soviet comic imagined the year 2017?
You are in luck...
Here is a Soviet schoolboy, waking up in the morning thanks to an awesome piece of 2017 technology, a wall clock with a robotic arm that flicks his nose.
It's time for breakfast and Igor (a terrible inaccuracy here, as the writer failed to predict the popularity of archaic Russian names in the XXI c.; the kid should be Kuzma or Frol) uses a "smart kitchen machine" that reads a recipe scribbled on a piece of paper to prepare a meal
Paper, of course, was one thing that Soviet sci-fi writers could never imagine would go obsolete. Same as 1960s fashions. Here you see fedoraed Soviets reading a newspaper "about the newest achievements of Soviet science" (which don't include an iPad, I presume).
Never fear, though. Soviet science is as formidable as ever. Here are photon rockets speeding toward Alpha Centauri. Probably to build socialism.
Of course, a rocket this big requires huge amounts of photons or something. And to produce it, the rocket must carry LOTS of coal.
Yes, coal is another thing that will be going strong in 2017 (fact check: accurate), but so much more of it will be needed.
Which is why the USSR will have built a whole city, Coalgrad, underground in Siberia, where lucky workers will be able to mine it year round.
It goes without saying that the USSR has re-annexed Alaska and built a dam across the Bering Strait in order to, obviously, change climate and improve the weather in the Soviet Far East, presumably to convert Gulags to summer labor.
Soviets are bigly into fucking with weather in 2017. Here is their flying saucer weather control station capable of destroying hurricanes. It's controlled via a radical XXI century communication device, radio.
But its main purpose is to ensure clear skies over Moscow for the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution.
This is celebrated as "a great victory of Soviet science over nature." Because nature is a ruthless enemy that must be destroyed.
But not the only one!
Oh no, the last remaining imperialists on Earth, secluded on a tiny Pacific island (they are quite shitty at imperialism, looks like), have tested a secret weapon and blew themselves the fuck away!
Good riddance, but this may spoil the glorious celebration!
But never fear! Igor's father, The Main Glorious Soviet Weather Changer, has fired up his flying saucer and fucked the imperialist tsunami up.
Here he is breaking the happy news via a televideophone, to his female comrade and their less useful children.
Benevolent Soviet shock workers are back to their usual glorious exploits.
Such as removing "unneeded hills" with targeted atomic explosions.
... or turning huge Siberian rivers the fuck around so they could flow to places more useful to glorious Soviet industry.
Man, 2017 USSR as imagined in 1960 is a wet Republican dream.
And let's not forget creating Supervillainmobiles of Horrors that glorious Soviet shock workers will ride to the center of the earth to tap resources of eternal energy.
Fuck nature, Comrades. Fuck it in every possible opening in the Earth's crust!
All hail glorious Soviet science superheroes, the destroyers of evil nature and the mighty huggers of Young Communist Pioneers.
The year 2017 will be the mightiest and the most glorious since the Red October!
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The reason Hamas is currently celebrating victory (while simultaneously, and absurdly, claiming it has suffered genocide) is simple: the consensus in the Western world that Israel is the evil side and "the people of Palestine" (actually Hamas) are engaged in justified resistance.
The Western world has come to this conclusion based on two, occasionally overlapping preset conditions: 1) Jews are unpleasant race and are generally on the wrong side, 2) Jews are European, and white, and are thus foreign colonizers, while Arabs are brown and indigenous.
It does seem rather incredible that anyone, after seeing what happened on Oct. 7 2023, could dismiss it as an episode of a legitimate struggle, but when you see the world either as a hardened biological antisemite and/or try to shoehorn every conflict into the framework of...
I dislike Netanyahu intensely. I passionately hate the pyromaniac zealots in his cabinet. These folks pervert the original purpose of Israel and make it a nation that will eventually be inhospitable to Jews like me.
I want a two-state solution.
I just wonder who else does.
The two-state solution is the framework within which all potential peacemakers in the Middle East, from Anwar Sadat to Donald Trump have tried to find a way to solve the conflict.
But is this framework still alive? Is it still relevant? I wonder.
The support for it in Israel has dwindled, that's for sure. But the bigger problem is that it never had any significant support among Palestinians to begin with.
Israel dismantled settlements in Gaza and removed all troops from the sector in 2005.
What did Gazans do in response?
I am an atheist Jew. I believe my people deserve a state of their own, not because some infanticidal porkophobic fairy tale villain has promised it to us, but because we have fucking earned it with 2000 years of unimaginable suffering and persecution.
We. Deserve. It.
Don't agree? Suck on our nuclear warhead.
Ethno-states are bad, but our circumstance is special. Don't agree? Think it's hypocritical? Shouldn't have persecuted us for 2000 years, bitch. Suck on the abovementioned warhead and shut up.
So, with these non-negotiables out of the way
Here is my idea outcome: 1) Hamas - dead. To the last pigfuck. Dead and buried and then dug up and killed again and fucking dead. 2) Two states. Palestine gets its own borders and a functioning government, and the whole world helps them with it so it's sustainable and livable.
On the subject of "good Russians", hopefully once and for all...
And, trust me, I am not speaking as a dispassionate outsider. I am married to a Russian citizen, after all.
So, here is my take on what should be the minimally acceptable position taken by anyone with a 🇷🇺 passport
This, of course, isn't for anyone who is actively pro-war and pro-Putin or has taken the cop-out position of "I just want the war to end", "all sides are to blame", "can't we just negotiate" or "this is politics."
These Russians are abhorrent and culpable of abetting war crimes.
However, if you are anti-war and anti-Putin, here is what you should NOT say:
* "This is Putin's war, stop blaming all Russians",
* "Collective responsibility is Nazism",
* "Why are Ukrainians so angry and impolite?"
* "Ukrainian propaganda is no better than Putin's",
A Russian man waiting in line in a health center lost consciousness. Nobody gives a shit. Not a single person.
This is an absolutely normal reaction in Russia, and was so in the Soviet Union when I was growing up. Human life is garbage. One less, one more, who cares.
If you are visiting Russia, the best advice I can give you: never, ever have a heart attack outside. People will just assume you are a drunk and give you a wide berth. You may get picked up by a cop, but more likely, you'll just be left where you are.
Nobody will bat and eye.
In 1991, while waiting for a bus in Izmaylovo, Moscow, I saw a severely drunk man stumbling around on the pedestrian isle in the middle of a busy road. He seemed certain to fall right under the wheels of a passing vehicle. I came over to help him across the street...
In today's issue of Great Russian Culture Discovered, Russia's most popular song of all time.
It's "Rise Up, Holy Russia" by z-singer Yan Osin. In the 🧵 below is my word-for-word translation. I challenge the people I've tagged to find a single flaw in it.
https://t.co/hLlozJ7ZGi
If they do (also attn: @AlexKombarov), I promise to resign my position in NAFO Propaganda Department, of which I am the president and the entire staff.
This schlager (a German word Russians use for their most popular patriotic hymns) has probably topped every single Russian chart
"The war has come, the war is on
Rise up, my holy Rus, come on
It is our fate, from our God
To show Ukies Stalingrad!
We've done this many times before
We come, like Uncle Chernomor
Donbas is ours, so is Warsaw
We'll fight to England's very shore