41–50 of 183 posts
Especially the line "The final joke of the book is that maybe Satan is not the bad guy after all"
I am adding it to my reading list. Thanks!
Life got you down? Take a piece of advice from another of Bulgakov's (author of Master and Margarita) novels and stop reading the news. There is nothing actionable in the news; next to no utility. News is simply a time sink that depress your spirit. So take the good doctor's words from Heart of a Dog: "If you care about your digestion, my advice is [sic] never read soviet newspapers before dinner" and generalize it t…
There's nothing actionable in the news if you live in Russia. But if you live in a democracy, I hope you'll take your responsibility as a citizen seriously enough to pay attention to what's going on, from time to time, lest your community meet the same fate.
When I was living in the United States and studying Russian, I started to read some Russian literature. After reading some short stories by Chekhov, I decided to delve into something harder: Dostoevsky. I couldn't understand the first page of Crime and Punishment even with a dictionary. Dostoevsky has a very eloquent way of writing with very long sentences and complicated grammar, but it's very hard for a non-native…
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Likewise loved The White Guard - and unlike a sibling reply I agree with you that it reflects helplessness - I certainly didn’t see any of the protagonists “controlling their destiny” - I saw them being washed up on and dashed against the shores of time like so much flotsam and jetsam, making ultimately meaningless decisions against a backdrop of inevitability. Another Bulgakov book I loved was “A Country Doctor’s No…
British mini-TV series is pretty decent as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Young_Doctor%27s_Notebook_(T...
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This is from the amazing book A Dog's Heart (Собачье сердце). There is an equally amazing movie ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whHySar4EoY ), but I am not sure if there is a version with English subtitles. For me it's one of the best Soviet movies. To be fair it was created near the end of the USSR—in 1988. The novel itself was officially published for the first time only in 1987.
Prime Video has it with English subtitles: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071PF4WCM The official Lenfilm YouTube account has it also, but for some reason only with French subtitles. It looks like less of their catalogue there is English subbed, compared to Mosfilm, which has English subs for basically everything.
Life got you down? Take a piece of advice from another of Bulgakov's (author of Master and Margarita) novels and stop reading the news. There is nothing actionable in the news; next to no utility. News is simply a time sink that depress your spirit. So take the good doctor's words from Heart of a Dog: "If you care about your digestion, my advice is [sic] never read soviet newspapers before dinner" and generalize it t…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarch_Ponds
Now years later, I do data analysis to show how media can give us a skewed view of the world — and can be used to manipulate our beliefs:
How Media Fuels our Fear of Western Terrorism https://www.nemil.com/s/part2-terrorism.html
Today’s biggest threat to democracy isn’t fake news—it’s selective facts https://qz.com/1130094/todays-biggest-threat-to-democracy-is...
And write a media literacy guide on Github:
Hack the Media https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-media/blob/master/README....
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There should be a law in Russia that if a novel is considered great enough, it should never be assigned involuntarily to schoolchildren ever again. Making 15-year-olds read a novel is a wonderful way to ensure they will not really appreciate anything in it or related to it until at least age 35, if indeed they still read by then. On a related-unlrelated note, it has been too many years since I was in country. Which i…
I believe many of us will say that such a law should also be passed in our own countries. It's just sad how the school system destroys great works, just by virtue of making them assigned reading.
Life got you down? Take a piece of advice from another of Bulgakov's (author of Master and Margarita) novels and stop reading the news. There is nothing actionable in the news; next to no utility. News is simply a time sink that depress your spirit. So take the good doctor's words from Heart of a Dog: "If you care about your digestion, my advice is [sic] never read soviet newspapers before dinner" and generalize it t…
There's nothing actionable, except for longer term investments like where to live and how to plan your spending vs saving. Brexit is horribly fascinating in this respect, as the outcome controls whether I'll need do leave. Definitely true for tribal politics though.