Apollo69
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- May 21, 2023
Great run down. You inspired me to start reading The Nuremberg Diary as a refresher and then I'll probably read this afterwards.
What are you reading right now?
- Thread starter AtroposHeart
- Start date
- Joined
- May 14, 2019
I finished The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Very good. Runs out of steam around the same time it tries to be most dramatic - the Lunar War of Independence - but it had tons of fascinating concepts, very interesting worldbuilding with the line marriages and the Russian-grammared Lunar dialect.
- Joined
- Sep 30, 2018
- Joined
- May 9, 2020
A 2014 collection of anecdotal stories from Russia, confirming every stereotype there is about Russians. Short and fun, I listened to the whole thing on a single afternoon hike, but there's not much more to it. The first two characters (a gold digger and a gangster) were so cartoonish I almost quit, but there are some interesting parts later, like a chapter about Moscow, its architecture and the unfortunate urban planning style they employ there. Some prophetic opinions about Ukraine, Gerhard Schröder and a bunch of other current issues. A recommendable book to people who don't have a deep knowledge of Russia and want to read something easy about it, but it has a bit of a "this was written as a cash grab" vibe.
Alexander Mozhayev stands at the head of the little crowd, hair pointed in different directions, scarf down to his knees, a vodka bottle and a kefir bottle stuck out of each deep pocket of his sailor’s coat. He is a member of what in another context might be a somewhat marginal profession, an architectural and urban historian, but here he has developed a slightly cult-like following as the guardian spirit of Old Moscow. Mozhayev and his friends have started salvaging buildings from the wrecking ball. They picket in front of wooden houses under threat, try to raise enough fuss that developers back off. But these victories are few and far between. Over several years they have saved three buildings out of three thousand. Mozhayev is young, a thirtysomething, but his voice is full of cracks and sandpaper tones, like the walls of Old Moscow itself. He takes out a bottle and says: “We’re here to say a wake, to this building, to old Moscow, all these buildings are set to be destroyed.”
Mozhayev and his followers put on the Pinocchio-like masks they wear for this lament and begin to howl into the air like professional mourners at a funeral. “Bastards, how long will you keep on destroying our city?” they cry. “Soon there will be nothing, nothing left!” (The little scene will then be posted online.)
He turns, and we follow him under an arch and into the last of the older, tender Moscow: the web of little lanes, courtyards, and alleyways that spread in a horizontal swirl between the great trunks of the gargantuan Stalin-era avenues. We pass through narrow arches and into suddenly spacious courtyards where teens play ice hockey on a skating rink poured between the houses. The light is different here, darker and softer, the fresh snow reflecting back the remains of the day to under-light the crumbling lions and angels stuccoed onto buildings. Everything here is scuffed, textured, tawny, ragged, and lived in. The lights are starting to come on in the houses, and parents call their children to come inside. Even the language here is different, full of sing-song and caressing, affectionate diminutives: “Come here my dovelet,” “my little bluebell.” An almost rural mood of childhood, soft snow, and sleds. Here is the Moscow that existed before the Soviet experiment. Back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries St. Petersburg was the capital, the city of power, regime, order. Moscow was a backwater, the holiday city where you could sleep in late and spend the day in your pajamas.
Here we find places with names like Krivokolennaya, the street of the crooked knee, and Po-ta-poff-sky, a word that falls like snowflakes in the mouth. But my favorite of all is Pyatnitskaya: in English, the Street-of-All-Fridays. There is no pomposity on the Street-of-All-Fridays. It is full of little two-story, nineteenthcentury mini-mansions, leaning higgledy-piggledy on each other like happy drunk friends singing on their way home to a warm bed. In every courtyard there is a bar, some little place with cheap vodka and smoky rooms. There are no office blocks, no narcissistic skyscrapers, no domineering malls. But there is an old metro station, a large, low, yellow, pancake-shaped building in which students share beers and boys chase girls. I love the street for its name. Friday is the best of days, Friday eve especially. When the working week melts into the days of rest. As the day darkens the mood lightens, the frowns turn to smiles, breathing comes better and deeper. Pyatnitskaya is a street dedicated to that moment, the materialization in space of a mood in time. Everything about the street says, “Let’s drink, have a chat, swap stories: I haven’t seen you for so long, I haven’t been myself for so long.” And then, later, I like to wander across town and over toward Pechatnikov, house 3, where you enter an arch near a pale, crooked baroque mansion with outsized angels and a window that leads nowhere, and inside is a long yard with tall houses around it that make you feel you’ve suddenly entered a deep valley; a long, low wooden house wrapped around the yard glowing with an orange light; and a bench collapsing in the middle.
“I call the courtyard of Pechyatnikov the time machine,” says Mozhayev as we walk. “To anyone familiar with Prague or London or Rome or Edinburgh, these old Moscow courtyards are probably of little architectural significance. I’m not even sure they even qualify as beautiful. But in contrast to the new Moscow with its endless imitations, this world is real.”
Mozhayev and his followers put on the Pinocchio-like masks they wear for this lament and begin to howl into the air like professional mourners at a funeral. “Bastards, how long will you keep on destroying our city?” they cry. “Soon there will be nothing, nothing left!” (The little scene will then be posted online.)
He turns, and we follow him under an arch and into the last of the older, tender Moscow: the web of little lanes, courtyards, and alleyways that spread in a horizontal swirl between the great trunks of the gargantuan Stalin-era avenues. We pass through narrow arches and into suddenly spacious courtyards where teens play ice hockey on a skating rink poured between the houses. The light is different here, darker and softer, the fresh snow reflecting back the remains of the day to under-light the crumbling lions and angels stuccoed onto buildings. Everything here is scuffed, textured, tawny, ragged, and lived in. The lights are starting to come on in the houses, and parents call their children to come inside. Even the language here is different, full of sing-song and caressing, affectionate diminutives: “Come here my dovelet,” “my little bluebell.” An almost rural mood of childhood, soft snow, and sleds. Here is the Moscow that existed before the Soviet experiment. Back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries St. Petersburg was the capital, the city of power, regime, order. Moscow was a backwater, the holiday city where you could sleep in late and spend the day in your pajamas.
Here we find places with names like Krivokolennaya, the street of the crooked knee, and Po-ta-poff-sky, a word that falls like snowflakes in the mouth. But my favorite of all is Pyatnitskaya: in English, the Street-of-All-Fridays. There is no pomposity on the Street-of-All-Fridays. It is full of little two-story, nineteenthcentury mini-mansions, leaning higgledy-piggledy on each other like happy drunk friends singing on their way home to a warm bed. In every courtyard there is a bar, some little place with cheap vodka and smoky rooms. There are no office blocks, no narcissistic skyscrapers, no domineering malls. But there is an old metro station, a large, low, yellow, pancake-shaped building in which students share beers and boys chase girls. I love the street for its name. Friday is the best of days, Friday eve especially. When the working week melts into the days of rest. As the day darkens the mood lightens, the frowns turn to smiles, breathing comes better and deeper. Pyatnitskaya is a street dedicated to that moment, the materialization in space of a mood in time. Everything about the street says, “Let’s drink, have a chat, swap stories: I haven’t seen you for so long, I haven’t been myself for so long.” And then, later, I like to wander across town and over toward Pechatnikov, house 3, where you enter an arch near a pale, crooked baroque mansion with outsized angels and a window that leads nowhere, and inside is a long yard with tall houses around it that make you feel you’ve suddenly entered a deep valley; a long, low wooden house wrapped around the yard glowing with an orange light; and a bench collapsing in the middle.
“I call the courtyard of Pechyatnikov the time machine,” says Mozhayev as we walk. “To anyone familiar with Prague or London or Rome or Edinburgh, these old Moscow courtyards are probably of little architectural significance. I’m not even sure they even qualify as beautiful. But in contrast to the new Moscow with its endless imitations, this world is real.”
- Joined
- May 14, 2019
@shameful existence I had to read a book, might be of interest to you and others, called Putin Country. It used a similar approach of stories about individual people to launch into topics. One big takeaway is that Russia, like any post-Communist country (but most of these post-Communist countries were fucked up before Communism too, they wouldn't have become Communist if they weren't), is a dysfunctional hellhole that puts no value on human life or basic decency. They have orphanages where they just leave kids alone in a room all day and they turn feral. They have a veneer of Trad-Orthodoxy but teenage hookers ply the streets spreading AIDS.
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2020
The Wingman series, it's been described as Top Gun meet Mad Max. It's a fun read, very action packed. I've finished the first book so far.
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2020
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2020
Fuckin' what? That's a shame if not unexpected.
Blood Meridian is a goddamn masterpiece on par with Moby Dick (if maybe not quite as autistic or long).
My sister got me reading House of Leaves. The story in itself is about as deep as Amityville Horror, but the way things are presented are the real appeal.
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2020
House of Leaves is so wacky, it's definitely an exercise in creative writing
Day Walker
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2023
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2017
lmao what a lying whore that fucking lib is
Pyatnitskaya street is not "the street of all Fridays", it's named after a Christian saint, the patron saint of trade. There's nothing relaxing about it; Friday meant the bustle of the market, and more importantly Saturday was a work day, too, and only became a day of rest in 1966 (there were no weekdays of rest before the Soviets; instead, imperial Russia had about 30 Christian holidays and 10 dynastic anniversaries in a year). Nothing rural either. The dreamy past he describes is how the center of Moscow was during the "Soviet experiment" -- it was a mercantile street before, and now it's a a trendy hipster place, with beauty salons, seafood restaurants, pizzerias, etc.
(I visit it a lot because The House of the Violet is also there. About 20 years ago they used to rent a tiny basement next to the meat processing plant in my district. I bet they smuggle coke in those flower pots.)
It's not cheap. Smoking indoors is banned. For whatever reason (policing?) there's no real nightlife either, go there early in the morning and you'll see can-collecting hobos who'll try to bum a cig off you, and a rare tipsy couple waiting for a Tochka (formerly
The tiny 19th century houses are not livable. The apartments in residential blocks are absurdly expensive, you can get an actually livable apartment AND two countryhouses on the mains for the price of a two-room on Pyatnitskaya. There are no places for children to play because there are few subterranean garages (due to the historical architecture and underground rivers) and parking spots are also absurdly expensive.
(The buildings which did manage to preserve the nostalgic spirit of old Moscow are Stalin era residential buildings, with apartments inherited and owned by the descendants of the original residents, and spacious courtyards. Property taxes use the registry price, not the market price, so if you happen to own an epic Stalin-era apartment, you can keep it in the family on the cheap.)
There's no Krivokolennaya street in Moscow, it's in Ramenskoye. (Ramenskoye is a beautiful city, you should visit, it looks IRL like Moscow does on a postcard.)
Potapovsky side-street exists and is named after a legendary architect (the name Potap is originally Egyptian; in Russian, it's associated with bears).
Mozhayev is a hipster who lives in Wisconsin. I doubt he is or has even been a drunkard. Also, drinking in public gets you arrested, especially at a protest when the cops are itching for a reason to van you.
Archnadzor (founded in 2009), Mozhayev's organization, do not wear masks. Face coverings are highly inadvisable at protests. They're libs, not antifa. Here are some Archnadzor protests:
Here's a high-attendance protest, they're protesting The Renovation (eminent domaining people's apartments in exchange for new apartments elsewhere) -- The Renovation ended up being shockingly successful and beneficial to the victims and the protests died away.
(I did find one mention of a costumed Archnadzor protest in Moscow, but it concerned a monastery in a village 100 miles from Moscow and was a series of solitary protests organized by another person.)
The pancake-shaped metro station is a rather cramped building. There are no places to sit or to chase girls; there are turnstile guards and a police post between the inner and outer wall (they arrested me once for being sleepy on the subway). Drinking in public is prohibited -- and, again, there are no places to stand and drink: a short and narrow corridor, then the turnstiles, and the center is an open pit with escalators going down to the platform.
Novokuznetskaya (New Smith) station:
mmm, curly armrests
It was opened in 1943.
Finally, here's the view from Pechatnikov side-street, bldg.3
https://yandex.ru/maps/213/moscow/?...]=37.625250,55.767611&whatshere[zoom]=21&z=21
and the courtyard
https://yandex.ru/maps/213/moscow/?ll=37.624550,55.767805&mode=whatshere&panorama[direction]=54.913703,-0.636364&panorama[full]=true&panorama[point]=37.624482,55.767777&panorama[span]=113.555879,60.000000&whatshere[point]=37.625250,55.767611&whatshere[zoom]=21&z=20
and this is the place in 2008 (before Archnadzor was founded)
https://yandex.ru/maps/213/moscow/?ll=37.624550,55.767805&mode=whatshere&panorama[direction]=19.788927,2.218787&panorama[full]=true&panorama[id]=1298182768_673074661_23_1223729526&panorama[point]=37.624845,55.767948&panorama[span]=113.555879,60.000000&whatshere[point]=37.625250,55.767611&whatshere[zoom]=21&z=20
wait what's this
https://yandex.ru/maps/213/moscow/?ll=37.624951,55.767505&mode=whatshere&panorama[direction]=49.566535,2.890122&panorama[full]=true&panorama[id]=1298182433_673079954_23_1223729557&panorama[point]=37.624789,55.767448&panorama[span]=113.555879,60.000000&whatshere[point]=37.625250,55.767611&whatshere[zoom]=21&z=21
PECHATNIKOV BLDG 3 WAS FUCKING KNOCKED DOWN IN 2008 and a new building erected in its place
TL/DR
never trust a lib
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- Joined
- Sep 30, 2019
Finished 2 books on the Iran Iraq war: "The Iran-Iraq War: A Military and Strategic History" by Murray and Woods and "The Iran-Iraq War" by Razoux. Both very solid histories, though the Razoux book does provide a much broader narrative of the war than the Murray and Woods account. The Murray and Woods account, on the other hand, is heavily researched from the Iraqi records captured in 2003, and provides a fascinating look into the innerworkings and utter paranoia of the Saddam regime.
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2020
Re-reading Miyamoto Musashi's Book Of Five Rings
It's more a book of life itself than a book of samurai swordmanship.
It's more a book of life itself than a book of samurai swordmanship.
- The Book of Earth chapter serves as an introduction, and metaphorically discusses martial arts, leadership, and training as building a house.
- The Book of Water chapter describes Musashi's style, Ni-ten ichi-ryu, or "Two Heavens, One Style". It describes some basic technique and fundamental principles.
- The Book of Fire chapter refers to the heat of battle, and discusses matters such as different types of timing.
- The Book of Wind chapter is something of a pun, since the Japanese character for "wind" can also mean "style" (such as, of martial arts). It discusses what Musashi considers to be the failings of various contemporary schools of sword fighting.
- The Book of the Void chapter is a short epilogue, describing, in more esoteric terms, Musashi's (probably) Zen-influenced thoughts on consciousness and the correct mindset.
- Joined
- Sep 9, 2021
That's not a Communist thing. In the days of the Tsars and before, life was fucking rough. Robert K. Massie's 'Peter the Great' outlines how, even in the rural areas, babies were routinely left to die if defective and people would rather drink than starve to death. When alcohol was introduced in the area, a lot of poor people just drank to wipe away their misery. Peter had to institute social reforms and orphanages to protect abandoned kids and tried to get the boyars on his side. Both the Tsars and Communism never got rid of the politicking Russia has had; that's been baked into them and will not be erased, in the similar vein Germans have always been snitches since the days of the Romans and value consensus and authority.
Anyways, I'm almost done with Randy Shilt's 'And the Band Played On'. Two players are mentioned but not really highlighted: Fauci and Robert Redfield, two names you will recognize from the COVID era. Fauci has a brief mention as head of the NIAID and his propagation of a JAMA study showing AIDS could be spread by standing in the same room as an AIDS patient (which was wrong, naturally, but he never lost his job over it). There are a fuckton of parallels between it and COVID, especially the scientific politicking. Montangier, one of the guys who discovered HIV and subsequently thought COVID came from a lab (this dude knew viruses and how they replicate; he isn't exactly a kook), was nearly cheated out of his discovery by Robert Gallo, NCI researcher. All of the major papers backed Gallo, and refused to publish any papers mentioning the French. Back then they didn't have social media or the benefit of scientists simply leaking their data online so anyone can read it. Bunch of fuckery.
Afterwards I'm probably going to read Mary Ziegler's stuff on abortion, before moving to 'A Madness of Sunshine', before re-reading Becoming Madame Mao.
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- Joined
- Feb 5, 2019
why did you copy/paste from wikipedia?
have you no opinions of your own?
did you even read it yourself? or just skim the wiki article?
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2015
@Just A Butt
Start a halal thread or something, I don't care, just stop shitting up everywhere else. You are even more autistic than he is.
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2019
Going between two books now one is about the halifax explosion, "A Blinding Light" and the other is about paul alexander the oldest living person in an iron lung, "Three Minutes For A Dog".
- Joined
- Sep 10, 2013
I'm reading the original Star Wars novelizations right now, the novel of a New Hope actually came out a bit before the movie did and had been adapted based on an earlier script (I think?) , so there's some deviations with the film and some character descriptions that are pretty different than the movie. Jabba the Hutt in particular was way different in the early concept art and the New Hope novelization follows that description.
It's all the more interesting especially since it's been a while since I've watched the movies, so things are appearing a lot differently in my head.
It's all the more interesting especially since it's been a while since I've watched the movies, so things are appearing a lot differently in my head.
Commander X
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2018
Strange Company by Nick Cole, the first in a military sci-fi series from the co-creator of the "Galaxy's Edge" mil-SF series and it's spin-offs.
On a distant planet some time in the future, the operational-for-six-centuries mercenary outfit known as Strange Company is again fighting someone else's war for pay. Narrated by the Company's official Log Keeper Sgt. Orion (the eighteenth man to have served in that role), he details how this hard-luck outfit is doing in it's current campaign, as well as collecting the life stories of his comrades in arms, those who choose to want it on the record.
Tthe Company is broken up into Dog Platoon (heavy infantry), Reaper (shock troops, light infantry) where they dump the newbs under Sgt. Orion's supervision and...Voodoo (Psyops and dirty tricks) run by Psyops expert cook, and containing the "freaks" Stinkeye, Nether, and Little Girl. Fugitives who were made into something not-quite human as test subjects of the covert, mad-science Dark Labs. Stinkeye, a raving old man that is constantly giving everyone around him his namesake, with an ever present whiskey flask filled with something foul, who can project "feelings" onto mass groups of people like enemy soldiers. Nether, who can barely be seen now with the naked eye and can fiddle with reality, like producing a "nothingness" that the human eye translates as an impenetrable fog. Then there's Little Girl, a skinny girl who behaves most unlike a little girl and has a "friend", "Wild Thing", that pops up in their reality now and then for a few minutes at a time to wreak havoc, and Strange Company had better clear out before it gets there or there might be some friendly casualties.
The Dark Labs, those covert installations on locations erased from the star charts, are run by the Monarchs, the smug and oblivious transhuman overlords of humanity who rule from old Earth and over the Bright Worlds. The world, "Crash", they're fighting on is divided between Strange Company's clients, The Resistance, who want to carve themselves from the fringes of Monarch controlled space, and the Loyalists, who think that when the Monarchs do show up they'll be looked upon favorably.
As they men of Strange fight their way through, the day the Monarchs are supposed to show up comes quicker than anyone expected. The Monarchs prepare to "pacify" the planet with their usual indiscriminate slaughter, spearheaded by their elite Ultra Marines, a death-cult devoted to their masters, given the latest wonderous high-tech equipment and weaponry. "No One Gets Out Alive" is their moto, and how. It's a mad scramble as Strange Company's platoon desperately seek exfiltration from a job gone badder than they thought, a surprise new client and hope they can somehow get to their beat-up old ship, but things keep getting stranger for Strange Company as Orion discovers some hideous new truths, and what exactly is it about this supposed world on the fringe of human-occupied space that has attracted so much attention.
On a distant planet some time in the future, the operational-for-six-centuries mercenary outfit known as Strange Company is again fighting someone else's war for pay. Narrated by the Company's official Log Keeper Sgt. Orion (the eighteenth man to have served in that role), he details how this hard-luck outfit is doing in it's current campaign, as well as collecting the life stories of his comrades in arms, those who choose to want it on the record.
Tthe Company is broken up into Dog Platoon (heavy infantry), Reaper (shock troops, light infantry) where they dump the newbs under Sgt. Orion's supervision and...Voodoo (Psyops and dirty tricks) run by Psyops expert cook, and containing the "freaks" Stinkeye, Nether, and Little Girl. Fugitives who were made into something not-quite human as test subjects of the covert, mad-science Dark Labs. Stinkeye, a raving old man that is constantly giving everyone around him his namesake, with an ever present whiskey flask filled with something foul, who can project "feelings" onto mass groups of people like enemy soldiers. Nether, who can barely be seen now with the naked eye and can fiddle with reality, like producing a "nothingness" that the human eye translates as an impenetrable fog. Then there's Little Girl, a skinny girl who behaves most unlike a little girl and has a "friend", "Wild Thing", that pops up in their reality now and then for a few minutes at a time to wreak havoc, and Strange Company had better clear out before it gets there or there might be some friendly casualties.
The Dark Labs, those covert installations on locations erased from the star charts, are run by the Monarchs, the smug and oblivious transhuman overlords of humanity who rule from old Earth and over the Bright Worlds. The world, "Crash", they're fighting on is divided between Strange Company's clients, The Resistance, who want to carve themselves from the fringes of Monarch controlled space, and the Loyalists, who think that when the Monarchs do show up they'll be looked upon favorably.
As they men of Strange fight their way through, the day the Monarchs are supposed to show up comes quicker than anyone expected. The Monarchs prepare to "pacify" the planet with their usual indiscriminate slaughter, spearheaded by their elite Ultra Marines, a death-cult devoted to their masters, given the latest wonderous high-tech equipment and weaponry. "No One Gets Out Alive" is their moto, and how. It's a mad scramble as Strange Company's platoon desperately seek exfiltration from a job gone badder than they thought, a surprise new client and hope they can somehow get to their beat-up old ship, but things keep getting stranger for Strange Company as Orion discovers some hideous new truths, and what exactly is it about this supposed world on the fringe of human-occupied space that has attracted so much attention.
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2022
Leave it to the resident Russian to shatter my image of Russia as anything other than a bland state with a different name.
This sounds like Black Company but in space. Not that is a bad thing.
Tax:
Just finished the Prince by Jerry Pournelle and S. M. Sterling. The prince is an omnibus of four novels. The first two detailing the exploits of Falkenberg's Legion - a band of marines turned mercenaries - and the last two covering the Sparta civil war - which part of the Legion plays a significant role in. The over arching backdrop of novels is the last years of the CoDominium. An unholy alliance between the US and a 2000s reformed Soviet Union which unite to dominate the rest of humanity and export their undesirable populations off world. These novels take place in the same universe as the The Mote in God's Eye (written with Larry Niven) and the War World Anthologies of various authors about the wars on the world of Haven. The novels are wonderful in the way they depict a "clown world" timeline. Despite the existence of interplanetary travel or other advanced technology, everything is just as gay and dystopian. Cities called welfare islands where the masses of earth live in drugged out squalor are the norm - whose residents are called citizens, while their free counterparts are called taxpayers for paying taxes. A government organization that deports people to other worlds regardless if the deportees want to go (literally rounding up whosoever on the street at the time) or if their destination worlds want them or can even provide for them (a source of the many conflicts the Legion takes part in). A Grand Senate made up of your typical self serving politicians willing to plunge distant worlds into outright civil war if it means settling an old grudge. A stagnant scientific community where "scientists" and "engineers" make slight modifications to decades old designs. An odd mix of technology were mules and horses are a common form of transport for soldiers armed with gatling guns. Overall a good prediction of the future of humanity with a dash of science fantasy thrown in.