Author: tkcollier

The Brutal Unspoken Mafia Prison Rules that Russia Lives By

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/05/16/russia-prisons-wagner-group-ukraine-crime-culture/

The criminals that ran the black market during the Communist days, came to power during the chaos of the 1900s, during the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

In November 1996, to consolidate his power, Putin and his friends founded the Ozero Cooperative, which bonded together oligarchs and the  mafia families. Over the many years of the state within the state that was the gulag system, a bizarre caste system arose in the prisons. At the bottom of the cast where the so-called Roosters. Recruiting these Untouchables into the Ukraine “Special Operation” has upset this brutal hierarchy and troop morale.

The lowest caste, and the one that every prisoner fears degradation to, are the roosters, also known as the “offended,” the “pederasts,” or the “downcast.” That is a position to which it is extremely easy to fall down to, but one that you can never climb up from. They’re forced to do all the worst jobs—such as cleaning the cell’s latrine, washing everyone’s underwear—because no, your average Russian prison does not have any washing machines—and often serving as sexual slaves. They also get the worst sleeping spots in the cell, usually next to the latrine.

A rooster  is untouchable outside of sex. One is not allowed to share anything with a rooster except as a payment for services—not only is it taboo to touch them, but also anything that they have touched, as that instantly moves one to their caste. Their kitchenware is explicitly marked as such, for one, and whenever transferring cells, they’re supposed to publicly announce their suit status and move in with “their own” accordingly.

. Gay and transgender prisoners are automatically placed among the roosters, but so are those who foolishly admit to having given oral sex to a woman—an act that, as among the ancient Romans or the modern Italian mafia, is seen as fundamentally impure.

A rooster’s status is truly miserable. It’s driven many people to suicide and made people so miserable that they used to rebel and intentionally touch blatniye inmates as a last attempt of revenge—sure, they would be instantly killed by other inmates, but the prisoner who previously belonged to the higher caste would instantly be a rooster inside the prison system and out, and would never be able to move upwards in the hierarchy

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Diet Soda is killing you and not helping you lose weight

Just in case you were planning on shedding a few pounds before the Summer, the World Health Organization has informed us that diet sodas aren’t a fast track to success. According to a recent write-up in Science Alert, artificial sweeteners have no added health benefits when compared to traditional sugar and should not be utilized as a means of achieving weight loss. This news is devastating to many, as poor weight management can be a leading cause of deadly diseases such as diabetes and certain forms of cancer, which are leading causes of death all over the world.

Knowingly eating artificially sweetened foods might contribute to the “idea of ‘it’s better for me so I can eat as much as I want,'” registered dietitian Alissa Rumsey told Axios.


Sugar substitutes aren’t as satisfying as the real thing, so “for some people, this leads to them continuing to eat and graze on foods to try to find that feeling of satisfaction

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Russia’s Nukes Probably Don’t Work — Here’s Why

https://wesodonnell.medium.com/russias-nukes-probably-don-t-work-here-s-why-bd686dec8b6

Lack of Maintenance Like the Rest of their Equipment

6 min read

An unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile launches during an operational test at 1:13 a.m. Pacific Time, Oct. 2, 2019, at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The test demonstrates the United States’ nuclear deterrent is robust, flexible, ready, and approximately tailored to deter twenty-first century threats and reassure our allies. (U.S. Air Force Photo by Staff Sgt. J.T. Armstrong) Public domain

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, a curious thing happened: Putin’s modern, lethal fighting force turned out to be a broken-down, two-bit shadow of its former self.

There are many reasons for this, but the biggest seems to be unbridled corruption at a level that shook even the most hardened analysts in Western defense intelligence.

Particularly egregious was the poor maintenance on display with most, if not all, of Russia’s war machines.

Looking back now, with the benefit of time (and watching Russia flounder around in Eastern Ukraine for over a year), it’s easy to see how funds intended for operations and maintenance might have been diverted.

Hell, this story of a Russian army commander stealing engines from Putin’s prized T-90 tanks is a perfect example.

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How The West Industrialized Russia

Russia is often portrayed as the invincible military power. And
yet, this reputation is based on two wars – Napoleonic and
WWII. In both cases Russia won only thanks to the alliance
allied with the leading economic powerhouse of that era.

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What you didn’t know about Noah’s Ark

Ancient Babylonian Flood Myth That Inspired Biblical Tale Had A Dark Twist

Noah’s Ark (1846), by the American folk painter Edward Hicks.

The Babylonian flood myth that inspired the story of Noah’s Ark may also include the world’s oldest fake news.

https://www.iflscience.com/ancient-babylonian-flood-myth-that-inspired-biblical-tale-had-a-dark-twist-69014

The Origin of Shrek

The creator of the popular cartoon Shrek, William Steig, drew his character from the professional wrestler Maurice Tiye.
The real prototype knew 14 languages, played chess brilliantly, and despite his frightening face and great strength at first glance, he was a very modest and friendly man.
He was born in 1903 in Russia, in the Urals, into a French family, which in 1917 returned to France in connection with the revolution.

If You Like Steely Dan…

It seems the younger generation has rediscovered Steely Dan.

Just in time for my good friend, Jon Zeeman, to release an original song in their style, with his Steely Dan Tribute band – The Expanding Man.

Now there is a whole book about Steely Dan’s rediscovery by a new generation that is covered in this Atlantic review.

In hindsight, Steely Dan’s Zelig-like presence in sample-based hip-hop looks like a harbinger of the band’s current renaissance: A duo that was one of the most polarizing acts in rock even at its peak, in the 1970s, has lately acquired an army of new fans, many of them remarkably young.

Pappademas tries out several theories to explain the Danaissance’s timing. The most compelling of them is the idea that their songs, full of gallows humor and wry disillusionment, resonate with a generation raised on crashing economies and a climate crisis. “Donald and Walter’s songs of monied decadence, druggy disconnection, slow-motion apocalypse, and self-destructive escapism seemed satirically extreme way back when; now they seem prophetic,” he writes. “We are all Steely Dan characters now.”

For those weary of the “rockism”-versus-“poptimism” debates of the past couple of decades—and who isn’t?—Steely Dan offers a welcome escape from the reductive opposition between rock as Promethean self-expression and pop as a big-tent pleasure center. The band didn’t mind being dismissed by the most doctrinaire rock partisans: “soulless, and by its calculated nature antithetical to what rock should be,” as a Rolling Stone review of Aja summed up the brief against them. At the same time, Steely Dan’s music is unapologetically snobbish, flouting the “everything is great” ethos of extreme poptimism.

A band that charts an idiosyncratic path ends up acquiring an eclectic audience, this one united by a tenacious devotion to the work of a pair of artists who were themselves nothing if not devoted. 

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