The Sideways Press

Independent satire on politics, culture & everyday absurdity.
Real facts.
Sharp humor. No sacred cows.
Pull up a chair.

[The Sideways Press @SidewaysPress]

📰 WELCOME TO THE SIDEWAYS PRESS

An independent weekly magazine about politics, culture, human nature, and the everyday absurdity of being alive.

Real facts. Sharp humor. No sacred cows.

☕ MEET THE KITCHEN CREW

Most evenings, somebody ends up at YU's house.

YU — The host. Dry humor. A professional observer of other people's nonsense.

EN — His wife. Warm, clever, and usually the one who ends an argument.

IG — Their friend. Has an opinion on absolutely everything. Unfortunately, he also has a phone.

MA — IG's wife. Sharp, perceptive, and rarely impressed.

EG — Their 14-year-old son. Endless energy. Questionable timing. Even more questionable jokes.

AN — Their glamorous friend. Great taste. Expensive problems. Money is apparently somebody else's concern.

J — The dog. Sleeps through world crises. Snores through everything else.

Nobody comes over to discuss geopolitics.

They come for coffee, dinner, gossip, bad advice, and the occasional argument about something they bought online.

Somehow, the conversation always ends up explaining the news.

Welcome to the kitchen.

Pull up a chair. ☕

[The Sideways Press @SidewaysPress]

YU: Good news! The U.S. economy grew at a 3.4% annual rate last quarter!

EN: Walks in with one grocery bag.

YU: That's all you bought?

EN: No. That's all we could afford.

IG: But the experts say the economy is doing great!

MA: Wonderful. Can we eat the experts?

EG: So who's getting richer?

EN: Whoever owns the grocery store.

YU: Well, at least GDP is up.

EN: Great. Tell GDP it's paying for dinner.

J: Wakes up, checks his empty bowl, and goes back to sleep.

[The Sideways Press @SidewaysPress]

These children should be growing up, laughing, dreaming, and making plans for tomorrow. Instead, their families are left with empty chairs and a lifetime of grief. Russia's war stole their futures. The world must never reduce them to statistics — or allow their killers to escape justice.

[The Sideways Press @SidewaysPress]

@DefenceU $100 million in bombers, gone.
The bomb battery factory, burning.
An Iskander launcher, scrap metal.
Russia wanted a war of attrition. Enjoy the bill.

[The Sideways Press @SidewaysPress]

☕ OVERHEARD IN THE KITCHEN — Fictional conversation
Operation Pumpkin

The morning after Halloween. EN is staring at three carved pumpkins on the porch.
EN: "What do we do with these now?"
AN: "Darling, Americans throw away over a billion pounds of pumpkins every year. Just toss them."
YU: "Toss them? Where I grew up, that's a five-year plan."
IG: "Send them to Russia."
EN: "Russia?"
IG: "Tradition! In 1990, America sent the Soviet Union chicken. Dark meat nobody here wanted. The Russians called them 'Bush legs.'"
YU: "I was there. Lines from morning till night. You brought them home, put them in the pan, and the whole kitchen smelled like something died. Then you ate it, and it tasted like cotton."
EN: "And people still stood in line?"
YU: "The empire that promised to bury America couldn't feed itself. So yes. We stood in line for American cotton with bones."
EG: "So first Bush legs, now Trump pumpkins?"
MA: "These days the trade goes the other way. Russia sends us diesel."
IG: "Exactly. They send diesel, we send pumpkins. Fair trade."
AN: "With the faces already carved. A personal touch."
EG: "Each one with a scary face. They'll feel right at home in the Kremlin."
YU: "Careful. They'll put a pumpkin in a uniform and send it to the front."
EN: "And when the pumpkins run out?"
YU: "They'll declare them a strategic reserve and say America stole them."
IG: "The biggest country on Earth, and somehow everything is always someone else's fault."
EN: "Thirty-five years later, same menu. American leftovers, served with Russian pride."
J snores. Even the dog has heard this one before.

[The Sideways Press @SidewaysPress]

His father escaped the guillotine. He crossed America and discovered a danger more subtle than tyranny: a government that promises to take care of everything. Nearly 200 years later, his warning still stings. Read the story. https://t.co/4HvH1uOiXK

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@Ukrainene Putin wanted to take Ukraine.
Instead Ukraine is taking apart his economy, one refinery at a time.
Ukraine stands. Russia burns.

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G20 couldn't take a family photo. The Pope voted by mail. Canada started dating Europe. And America's Halloween skeleton got Bluetooth.

Four headlines. One planet in need of adult supervision.

Happy Halloween! 🎃

#TheSidewaysPress #Satire #Halloween https://t.co/bdQM6dLOMf

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@business @kajakallas In the Soviet Union, they removed people from photos after the fact. Trotsky was erased from the famous 1920 Lenin photo.

Now Europeans just refuse to stand next to Lavrov in the first place. Progress.

[The Sideways Press @SidewaysPress]

Andreas, wenn die Ukraine deiner Philosophie der Selbstverteidigung gefolgt wäre und kapituliert hätte, würde Deutschland heute womöglich vor Putin auf den Knien liegen und ihm die Stiefel putzen.

Dabei solltet ihr euch endlich wirklich mit uns Ukrainern zusammenschließen. Deutschland ist die größte Volkswirtschaft Europas. Gemeinsam könnten wir diesen Sadisten und seine aggressive Politik stoppen und seine Kriegsmaschinerie zerschlagen.

Dann hätten wir eine echte Chance auf Frieden, und ihr könntet viele eurer eigenen Probleme lösen.

Damit ist diese Diskussion für mich beendet. Entschuldige, aber ich werde dir nicht mehr antworten. Es hat keinen Sinn.

[The Sideways Press @SidewaysPress]

Happy Halloween from a Ukrainian who grew up without it.

We didn't have Halloween in the Soviet Union. We had Viy.

Viy is a 1967 Soviet horror film based on a story by Nikolai Gogol. A young student from Kyiv has to read prayers for three nights over the coffin of a dead girl. In a church. Alone. Inside a chalk circle.

Nobody wanted to watch it before bed. You wouldn't sleep after.

Picture this. The coffin flies through the church with the girl in it. Monsters crawl out of every corner, trying to get into your circle. After one night, the student walks out with gray hair. That's when we got scared to watch it at all.

And then comes Viy himself. A horrible, shaggy creature. He says: "Lift my eyelids." He sees the student. Points a crooked finger at him. And every monster in the church jumps on the poor guy.

The circle doesn't help anymore. Only the rooster's crow in the morning.

Oh, man.

Fun fact: the film was shot in an old wooden church in western Ukraine, in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast.

And if you love classic horror, you may know Mario Bava's Black Sunday (1960). It was loosely based on the same Gogol story.

Your turn: what movie scared you so badly as a kid that you couldn't sleep?

[The Sideways Press @SidewaysPress]

Woke up with a stiff neck? Before blaming your pillow, your age, or your entire existence, try these 7 gentle exercises from a physical therapist. Simple movements, practical advice, and a little humor. Your neck deserves a better morning. https://t.co/1oOX93mEVv

[The Sideways Press @SidewaysPress]

@AndreasBaltes @ZelenskyyUa Da stimme ich dir sogar zu. Aber wenn man sich anschaut, was bei dir zu Hause in Deutschland passiert, wäre ich mit Ratschlägen, wie man Eindringlinge vertreibt, etwas vorsichtiger. 😉

[The Sideways Press @SidewaysPress]

A peace deal can look great on paper. So can a surrender.

The real question isn't whether Ukraine is willing to negotiate.

It's whether Russia is willing to accept a peace that doesn't reward aggression.

What do you think?

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Zelensky is ready to discuss territory. Concession or trap?

IG: "Neither. It's rational."
MICHAEL: "A deal and a durable peace aren't the same thing."

Two friends, one kitchen table, no filter. Opinion, not news. https://t.co/jkuRbP5aY6

[The Sideways Press @SidewaysPress]

Symmetrical or asymmetrical — Ukraine has the right to defend itself.

For Russians, this war can still feel distant. For Ukrainians, it is an empty chair at the dinner table, a child who will never come home, a voice they will never hear again.

Putin has made that loss permanent for countless families.

Ukraine should not be expected to endure attacks in silence. Russia must be held accountable.

[The Sideways Press @SidewaysPress]

@AndreasBaltes @ZelenskyyUa Interessanter Rat. Wenn jemand in Ihr Haus einbricht und Ihre Familie angreift, sagen Sie dann auch: Wehrt euch nicht, sonst tut es mehr weh?

Das ist keine Weisheit. Das ist Kapitulation.

[The Sideways Press @SidewaysPress]

@maryowill @ZelenskyyUa @WhiteHouse @SecRubio Thanks for reading, Mary.

[The Sideways Press @SidewaysPress]

Sources:
Mathias Rust, 1987: https://t.co/ILa9oyDqx3
https://t.co/9UZ8sVkM90
Moscow drone attack (AFP/Reuters): https://t.co/W6l8xAK9Pp
Airports: https://t.co/ldaeUFoFdp
Kremlin: https://t.co/fMcHgYPorV

[The Sideways Press @SidewaysPress]

Mathias Rust and I were born the same year, 1968. In 1987 he flew to Moscow. I stayed in Soviet Ukraine and laughed at the jokes about him.

One went like this. A policeman on Red Square walks up to a man reading a newspaper: "Citizen, fold that newspaper. Planes have nowhere to land!"

It was funny. We laughed at the army. Nobody was scared anymore.

Here is what happened. Rust, 18, with 50 hours of flying experience, took off from Helsinki in a rented Cessna and landed on a bridge right next to Red Square. By St. Basil's.

The Soviet answer was not to fix the air defence. It was to fire people. Defence Minister Marshal Sokolov and Air Defence chief Marshal Koldunov lost their jobs. Hundreds of officers followed.

Fast forward to this week. Moscow's mayor said 613 Ukrainian drones flew toward the Moscow region in one night. Flights were restricted at Vnukovo and Domodedovo.

Then: one Cessna, and the marshals were gone.
Now: hundreds of drones, and the Kremlin says the war "must continue."

Your turn: if one plane cost a marshal his job in 1987, who should be packing boxes in Moscow today?