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oscarisaacasimov · 2 months

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Oscars 2024 & political issues

I get cheesy about the Oscars.

At its best, this is a celebration of humanity, of people sharing their artistic vision with the world, of creating from the heart of what they care about, of reflecting social and ethical crises through the medium of movies, be they documentary, historical fiction, or fantasy.

--In the monologue, Jimmy Kimmel offered support and solidarity to the members of IATSE, the union representing many crew members, which is currently in contract negotiations that are expected to be difficult. IATSE was a key ally to the writers and actors during their 2023 strikes.

--The In Memoriam segment began with a clip from last year's winning documentary "Nalavny" - "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for the good people to do nothing."

--Osage Nation member & songwriter Scott George says about their performance "We're hoping you see us as a people that have survived and that are able to hold on to what we have."

--Cillian Murphy dedicated his Oppenheimer Oscar to "the peacemakers everywhere."

--Nimona director Troy Quane wore a Protect Trans Kids pin.

--Oscar speeches don't often open with the words, "I wish I'd never made this film." Mstyslav Chrernov accepted Ukraine's first ever Oscar and closed his speech with the words "Slava Ukraini - Glory to Ukraine."

--Zone of Interest filmmaker Jonathan Glazer's speech reflected themes from his movie: "All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present, Not to say 'look what they did then'; rather, 'look what we do now.' Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst.

Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and a Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people, whether the victims of October the seventh in Israel, or the ongoing attack on Gaza. How do we resist?"

--attendees from Mark Ruffalo to Billie Eillish to Ava DuVernay wore a red&black pin to show their support for a ceasefire in Gaza

--protestors calling for an immediate ceasefire closed a major intersection and blocked traffic near the Dolby Theatre, delaying the award show — and forcing an acknowledgment of the issues the protest centered on.

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proustianlesbian · 1 month

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Today is the 59th anniversary of the first ever spacewalk in the history of humanity !! The cosmonaut-painter Alexei Arkhipovitch Leonov (Алексе́й Архи́пович Лео́нов) realised it on this day, the 18th of March, in 1965 !!

🎨🚀🛰️👨🏼‍🚀🌌💙

Here he is with three of my other favorite cosmonauts : Yuri Gagarin, Boris Volynov and Sigmund Jähn !!

Alexei Leonov painted since childhood, and very well, so he obviously portrayed his experience as the first man going outside in the cosmos. Here are some paintings of him that I particulary love. The first one is the one he realised while on board of the Voskhod 2 flight mission, which is the first art made in space, representing the sunrise over the Earth.

I really adore how his art makes space look so silent and almost terrifying because of its endless immensity yet manages to show its beauty because of the stars and planets and nebulas 🌌💙. I absolutely love his work on the colours, he makes the cosmos looks bright and dreamlike and so hopeful !!

Alexei Leonov was also captain during the Apollo-Soyuz mission, ten years later in July 1975.

#sophia talks #personal #alexei leonov #Алексе́й Лео́нов #cosmonauts #cosmonaut #ussr history #cccp #soviet union #space exploration #Алексе́й Архи́пович Лео́нов #soviet history #space history

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agentnico · 1 year

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Tetris (2023) Review

Not going to lie, but using “The Final Countdown” as a song for your movie trailer immediately means the marketing team from Apple TV+ deserve a raise! That song slaps!!

Plot: Henk Rogers discovers Tetris in 1988, and then risks everything by travelling to the Soviet Union, where he joins forces with inventor Alexey Pajitnov to bring the game to the masses.

You hear a movie titled Tetris is coming out and one has to wonder if we have another Emoji Movie on our hands, where we’ll get little tetra shaped characters goofing about in some animated mathematics world trying to force an unfunny joke upon our poor heads. Then we get a random celebrity cameo like Orlando Bloom voicing an L-tetromino and making a joke that his character’s full name is Legolas. Actually, wouldn’t mind seeing that last part, just saying. Regardless, Tetris isn’t actually some ridiculous animated affair based on a pop culture phenomenon, but instead is the backstory for how the game was brought to the world masses. So no talking tetrominos, but instead we have ourselves a legal drama.

Look, before you all shut your eyes away upon the news of another legal drama, this movie is actually surprisingly engaging and the story of the battle for the licence of worldwide distribution of this little game is filled with twists and turns, as well as an element of spy espionage, due to the original game owners being Soviet Russia. That’s right, there’s an element of the Cold War in these proceedings, with Henk Rogers and others trying to persuade the Russians to sell them the rights, however as known the Russians don’t trust anyone. Speaking of the Russians, the communist backdrop is handled really well, with this idea that when in Moscow you’re always being watched, as well as digging into the corruption of the Soviet regime. Even Gorbachev shows up at one point, thought that element I imagine didn’t happen in real life and was more so added to up the ante of this film.

Speaking of upping the ante, even though many scenes revolve around characters sitting in rooms discussing legal stuff, the movie also involves car chases. That’s right, the writers definitely added a bit of a fictitious element to this story to make it more exciting for the casual viewer. I enjoyed that. It made this movie stand out more from others of its genre, and of the said car chase as well as other sequences, there are visual moments where the screen turns into this very early shonky computer graphic pixelated look, which I found to be quite the clever little gimmick. This backed up with an 80s techno soundtrack as well as various renditions on the classic Tetris theme made for an overall exciting watch.

Taron Egerton as always is super likeable and charming as Henk Rogers, in some ways channelling a young Gary Oldman, although maybe its just the Jim Gordon stache. The character of Rogers himself is the typical underdog one loves to root for. He’s the reckless entrepreneur who bets his entire house and life on this one game that he believes has the power to become something massive. He’s described by one of the other characters as “stupid but honest”, as Egerton leans into that heavily. His friendship bond he builds with the Tetris game creator Alexey Pajitnov (played by Russian actor Nikita Efremov in a very endearing way) is also really delightful, and a scene where the two of them go to a Soviet nightclub is a highlight. Roger Allam and Igor Grabuzov relish their villainous roles, and Toby Jones pops in doing some kind of European accent, though hard to pinpoint exactly which one.

Overall I really enjoyed Tetris, and was surprised at how the creative team managed to make this story as engaging as it is. Also naturally there is an element of nostalgia, as like many back in the day as a kid I used to enjoy rinsing Tetris. I even had a little handheld console that was designed specifically for Tetris. It wasn’t the branded stuff like the GameBoy (though I had that too for Zelda and such); it was literally this little Tetris console my dad got me in Russia, and that was the beginning of my screen addiction, which later turned into my smartphone....dark times. Regardless, a solid watch and currently my favourite film so far this year, though that’s not a difficult feat seeing as thus far this year’s movie releases have been really average. I look forward to the inevitable Rock, Paper, Scissors movie!

Overall score: 7/10

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ohsalome · 1 year

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#ussr #soviet union #soviet history #michael gorbachev #alexei navalny #lithuania

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mockva · 2 months

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#soviet union #zaz #alexey kirillov

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gregor-samsung · 1 year

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Ледокол [The Icebreaker] (Nikolay Khomeriki - 2016)

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esportschimpnews · 2 years

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Tetris turned 38 years old; check out the details of the success story of the game

Credits: Shutterstock The electronic game tetris turned 38 on the 6th, and I think that this timeless game deserves to be remembered, at least some fragments of its history, after all, it is a title created in 1984 in the most unusual way possible and in the middle of the cold war, but that it remains relevant even today. raised by Alexey Pajitnova software engineer at soviet academy of…

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#Alexey Pajitnov #Andromeda #big n #CNN #electrical engineering #electronics 60 #elorg #family #game boy #henk rogers #Nintendo #personal computer #Robert Stein #Soviet Union #tetris #tetris company #Vadim Gerasimov #Youtube

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doyoulikethissong-poll · 6 months

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Boney M. - Rasputin 1978

"Rasputin" is a song by Germany-based Afro Caribbean pop and Eurodisco group Boney M. It was released as the second single from their third studio album Nightflight to Venus. The core of the song tells of Grigori Rasputin's rise to prominence in the court of Tsar Nicholas II during the early 1900s, referencing the hope held by Tsarina Alexandra Fyodorovna that Rasputin would heal her hemophiliac son, Tsarevich Alexei of Russia, and as such his appointment as Alexei's personal healer. The song claims that Rasputin was Alexandra's paramour, a widespread rumour in Rasputin's time, with which his political enemies intended to discredit him. It accurately states that the conspirators asked him "Come to visit us", and then recounts a widely popular account of the assassination in Yusupov's estate: that Rasputin's assassins fatally shot him after he survived the poisoning of his wine.

"Rasputin" rose to the top of the charts in Germany, Austria, Belgium and Australia, and went to No. 2 in the UK, Argentina, Finland, Spain and Switzerland. It enjoyed great popularity in the Soviet Union, however it was omitted from the Soviet pressing of the album and Boney M. were barred from performing the song during their ten performances in Moscow.

It's pretty safe to say this song put a impressive and unbeatable record in the amounts of votes and reblogs! 💖 This is currently the most liked song on this poll blog with a whooping 94,8% total yes votes.

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#submitted #finished #high votes #high yes #high reblog #low no #boney m #70s

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mylionheart2 · 2 months

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Liz Cheney slams ‘Putin-wing’ Republicans after Navalny’s death.

#navalny #alexei navalny #ripnavalny #liz cheney #state of the union

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purplelalys · 2 months

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a message to the compliant kings and queens of this world no?

Sign this petition!

#russia #alexey navalny #amnesty international #petition #european union #RIP Alexey Navalny #ukraine #for truth

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juliesandothings · 1 year

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arcade flyer for the Tetris video game - created in the Soviet Union by Alexey Pajitnov in 1984

#alexey pajitnov #tetris #vintage video games #russia #former soviet union

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russianreader · 1 year

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The Yandex Xmas Blues

A Yandex Eats courier schlepping the service’s instantly recognizable backpack The trade union Courier called for Yandex food delivery workers to strike from December 20 to December 25. The workers claim that their situation has deteriorated considerably since Yandex took over Delivery Club and subsequently monopolized the industry. The union said that couriers are constantly discriminated…

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#Alexei Kudrin #couriers #food delivery #Kirill Ukraintsev #Russian trade unions #strike #The Village (online publication)#Yandex #Yandex Eats #Yandex News #Yandex Taxi

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panicinthestudio · 2 years

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Further reading:

HKFP: Hong Kong will not act on ‘unilateral sanctions’ on superyacht linked to Russian billionaire, October 7, 2022

#Agence France Presse #Hong Kong Free Press #news #sanctions #Hong Kong #USA #John Lee #Alexei Mordashov #politics #Russia #Ukraine #Pandora Papers #HK Marine Department #conspicuous consumption #Vladimir Putin #economics #Severstal #European Union #UK

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szepkerekkocka · 2 years

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/stalins-absurd-arrest-and-execution-of-his-devoted-meteorologist/2018/01/12/bac029b8-d606-11e7-a986-d0a9770d9a3e_story.html

#Alexey Feodosievich Wangenheim #olivier rolin #stalin #stalin's meteorologist #ussr #soviet union

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visit-ba-sing-se · 1 year

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misread a prompt about being the last human on earth. still wrote a short story. enjoy.

My name is Sophie Smith. I am the last human on earth, and this is my report for June 28, 2070, day 456 of monitoring. General population: one. Changes since the last report: none. Maintenance work completed.

I save the file for today's report on my memory implant and shift my focus back to the monitor in front of me. A familiar black screen with a familiar white outline of the world map. One small red dot keeps blinking on it, in the middle of a region described as "European Union." If you were to zoom in, you would see that it is located in the middle of a town called Berlin, marked as the capital of a state called Germany.

Not that those things still mean anything anymore.

Zooming out again and seeing the empty map, it seems strange they ever did.

At the beginning back in 2069, there used to be 8.9 Billion red dots. One for every beating heart, monitored from above by space-link satellites. Now only mine remains.

I had singed up to monitor them quite early after the omega variant broke. After wasting years of my life on a - in face of the apocalypse utterly worthless - degree and an even more worthless PhD thesis, it felt like doing something real, and the task was simple: Monitor the development, stay in touch with the other stations all around the world and file a report for each shift.

At first, there were many of us, all in some way believing that we would help save humanity by observing trends and giving out warnings. Instead, we just became the chroniclers of it's decay.

Many didn't even fully witness the first month. The virus was cruel, but at least it took you fast.

You could leave your house feeling great in the morning, only to collapse coughing on the sidewalk before arriving at your bus stop. Or you could get up to make tea in the isolation of your own home, all doors closed and windows shut, and grasp for air on the kitchen floor minutes later. There was no cure, no vaccine, no distancing measure that helped. The virus cut through us like a scythe through a field of weeds, and it soon was more than clear that no amount monitoring would change that. Some volunteers quit. More died. But through a weird twist of fate, I stayed alive.

And I kept going to work, day after day after day, even after the government that had hired me stopped existing, the subway train I used to take became a fighting ground for rats and my shadow was the only one left to walk beside me in the once busy city streets.

And so did the others, who, when I called in "here Berlin, please respond" answered me with "here Warsaw" "here Seoul" "here Mexico-City" "here Tel Aviv". And the less we were, the more we talked. About our lives before. About the people we had loved and lost, about the places we had called home and the dreams we had dreamed, about our favourite books and movies and dishes, about god and fate and about which birds who saw outside their window.

Mostly, I think, it wasn't about what was spoken. It was about hearing another human voice, and the reassurance that you weren't alone that came with it.

And so, we were there to witness as one by one, more of the blinking red dots disappeared. Just like one by one, someone else among us started to cough. It was an unwritten, unspoken and yet unbreakable rule that none of the rest commented when it happened. Some decided to ignore it until their last moments. Most said goodbye. One of us, Alexey, fircely insisted the air in his office was simply too dry when he got the cough. Of course, we all wanted to believe that it was. But only minutes later, the transmission from his channel ended, and one of the at this point 5 remaining red dots in Kyiv vanished.

Like all of theirs did, eventually.

And yet.

"Here Berlin, please respond", I whisper. For the protocol. For the false, poisonous hope that there has been some kind of bug in the system and that someone might still answer. Of course, no one does.

And even though I expected it, the following silence crushes me once again. A lonely tear rolls down my cheek as I rip the headphones off. Just like the voices in them used to be the undeniable proof that I wasn't alone, the static in the channel now is the undeniable proof that I am.

To distract myself, I get up and open the window. It would be easy to jump onto the empty street and make a final exit like that. All things considered, it's a miracle I am still sane enough to not consider this opinion. Even though… probably at this point death would be the sane choice. But something in me still wants to keep going, wants to hold out for as long as I can. It might be irrational, but I feel like this is what I am owe them. All 8.9 Billion.

Unaffected by my dark thoughts and humanities decay, a small sparrow lands on the window stil. It must have flown over from the tree across the street, where a family of them has build their nest.

Diah would have loved to hear that their little ones are now learning to fly.

Diah. She was last one to leave, and the pain of loosing her still feels like a fresh wound. It had only been us for quite some time, and we had stopped logging out or even taking off our headphones. We even, of course disguised as jokes, had started planning how we could meet. We could find a still functional high-speed train and somehow make it work. We could both steal cars. We would just start walking towards each other and meet in the middle between New Delhi and Berlin.

But of course, we wouldn't. And when her time came, the virus didn't even give a warning. One moment, I was listening to her beautiful voice. The next, there was silence. And only one blinking dot left on the monitor. Maybe she didn't even notice that she died. Only I did. Like I noticed so many deaths before. Maybe that is the only advantage of my situation now. The only death I still will have to witness is my own.

Before I can sink deeper into my thoughts, suddenly, I see them. Or to be precise, actually, I hear them first. Voices. Human voices. "I still can't believe it's only been two years since we left," one of them says, "Just look at this mess. Good thing we got out of here early." "Right?!" the other one responds laughing. "And I thought the time on board was stressful, especially towards the end. But it's nothing against whatever the hell happened here."

Humans. Walking, talking, joking humans.

This can't be real. I rush to look at the monitor. Still only one lonely dot. I must have finally gone insane, not being able to stand the thought that I was last anymore. But when I lurk outside again, they are still there, and now close enough for me to recognize more details. Black uniforms with a silver star, black face masks and both carrying a PreciseWeapon. Space-link personal.

Days ago, Diah and I both saw what we had believed to be a small meteor. Instead, it must have been their shuttle entering the atmosphere. I am not insane. This makes sense. This is real. I know that probably should feel relief. Or happiness. Or pride. It surely would make sense to feel that way. After all, I just learned that humanity might still prevail despite everything.

This should be a triumph, or least salvation. And yet, all it feels like is betrayal. "Two years since we left" the man had said. Two years ago, the omega variant hadn't even been discovered. Or at least so I had thought.

'Thank God we got out of here early.'

They knew all along, soon and well enough to "get out early". If the earth had been a house on fire during the last years - as often depicted in political cartoons back when there were still people who drew such things and other who looked at it- they had always known the fire would come. But instead of warning the rest of us, they had snuk out of the house at night, watching it go up in flames from a safe distance. And now, where the dust had settled, they had come back to inspect the ruins and dig through the remains. Only that I was still here. A living dead, covered in ashes with burns on my skin. Still breathing, but surely not nice to look at. So why would they come to pick me up now?

Suddenly, the dominos cascade in line and I sink back into my chair as the realization hits me. They are space-link. The satellites are space-link. They don't show up on the monitor because they are not supposed to. And the PreciseWeapon is meant for me. I shiver. That's why Diah died so sudden and silent.

The virus didn't get her. They did, with one precise shot in the back.

For a moment, I consider running. But just a moment. They could easily track me, and I don't want to spent my last moments being dragged out of a hiding place, nor do I want a bullet in the back.

No.

I want them to look me in the eye. And I want them to know that I know.

I get up from my desk and turn away from the black monitor with the lonely red dot. The door swings open, and the black uniforms enter. They look just like you would think they'd look. Painfully ordinary, with faces reddened by excitement. For just a moment, I see a hint of surprise in their eyes. Then, the uniform on the right nods at the uniform on the left, who reaches for his weapon. If he feels any doubt, he is good at hiding it.

"Go ahead." I say. My voice is calm and firm. I can't say much, not in the short time it takes him to charge, aim and fire. But what I say, I mean. "I already died 8.9 billion times. One more won't matter."

I feel a numb pain as the projectile hits my chest, and then the edge of my table as I stumble backwards against it. And then, just before I hit the ground and my senses fade, I hear it. A cough. A familiar, dry cough. A cough I heard more times than I could count. And that is now coming from the direction of my shooter.

My name is Sophie Smith. I am the last human on earth. And this concludes my final report.

#Writing #writers on tumblr #My writing #Short story #I really want to post this but I am also scared... really hope you like i #Please reblog if you do #Death tw

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