hippylibrarian

I like factories and giant-sized replicas of things.

[Robert (Durden) @realrobdurden]

One of my favorite things to do is get online after an American politician dies and bask in the hilariously joyous collective response from the American people.

[Philip Proudfoot @PhilipProudfoot]

The curse of being English is that our faces only made sense 1000 years ago.

[John Laughland @john_laughland]

Amazing how the word 'oligarch' is always used for Russian businessmen - and never just 'businessman' - while at the same time it is claimed that Russia is a one-man dictatorship. It cannot be both a one-man show and also an oligarchy.

[طراد الأسمري @alasmari]

تُثبت الأبحاث المشتركة بين بلدية إسطنبول الكبرى ومختبرات علم الاجتماع الحضري، أن المدينة نجحت جغرافياً في تحويل كتل الشوارع إلى أكبر محمية حضرية مفتوحة في العالم تضم ما بين 125,000 إلى 300,000 قطة شاردة مستقرة بيئياً؛ حيث يستند هذا الاندماج الاجتماعي الفائق إلى القانون التركي لحماية الحيوان رقم 5199 (بروتوكول ممنوع القتل وممنوع الحجز)، مما خلق قوة تسويقية ناعمة وسياحة تخصصية تضخ ملايين الدولارات سنوياً في الاقتصاد المحلي عبر "البصمة الرقمية" السياحية، لتتحول القطط بذكائها التكيفي من كائنات شاردة إلى مواطنين مشاعين ذوي سيادة (Communally Owned Pets) يديرون المشهد السياحي العالمي للمدينة. 🐾
#باستيت

[Marta Havryshko @HavryshkoMarta]

"Please help me!" a man in Poltava screams as he is forcibly pushed into a police van. This is what conscription in Ukraine looks like today.

[Alan Watson @DietHeartNews]

In 1999, presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan, former Nixon and Reagan speechwriter, warned that every major political faction in Russia considered NATO expansion to be in “bad faith” – exploiting Russia’s weakened position. Buchanan demanded to know, “Why are we doing this?”

Buchanan: “It’s not 1948. Stalin is dead; the Soviet Empire is dead. A friendly Russia is far more critical to US security than an alliance with Warsaw or Prague. If the US has one overriding security interest in the new century, it is to avoid collisions with great nuclear powers like Russia.”

Buchanan: “Offering NATO membership to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania – and as some urge #Ukraine - is rashness bordering on madness. This would put former Soviet Republics with large Russian minorities into the US-led military alliance.”

Buchanan: “Latvia is almost half Russian, eastern Ukraine almost entirely Russian. America could neither defend nor liberate these countries without the risk of nuclear war. By moving #NATO onto Russia’s front porch, we have scheduled a 21st century confrontation with nuclear armed Russia."

[Jason Smith - 上官杰文 @ShangguanJiewen]

When you finally arrive in China for the first time, from the West, you will experience two distinct sets of feelings.

One, you will realize China is astoundingly modern, clean efficient, and infrastructure is beyond compare, alongside the fact that Chinese people are kind.

But also, you will understand how Western legacy media has decieved you, either by design or lack of insight. And you will further lose trust in the ability of Western media to tell you the truth about China, and possibly, the world in general.

[Almut Rochowanski @rochowanski]

One way in which Russia is consistently othered is how it must always be "saved", not just governed like any country; and by an elite princeling or harsh eccentric whom Russians either don't know or care about and certainly wouldn't vote for.

[Marta Havryshko @HavryshkoMarta]

Today in Lviv, an enraged crowd tried to force draft officers to take off the Ukrainian Armed Forces uniforms, which, according to the protesters, they disgrace through their actions and forced mobilization practices.

As a reminder, during the confrontation, people damaged and overturned a vehicle belonging to the TRC.

[Volodymyr Ishchenko @Volod_Ishchenko]

Let's fix, for a moment, a certain moral, intellectual, and political stance that justifies the continuation of our national catastrophe for another year or two by a theory, which is championed by prominent area studies experts and, of course, supported by "empirical studies," holding that Putin's regime is about to collapse due to gasoline shortages, possible electricity and heating cuts in some European parts of Russia this winter, and, at most, a full-blown humanitarian crisis in Crimea.

"Ukraine reduced to a permanently bleeding nation where people merely survive under constant Russian shelling and Kyiv’s increasingly authoritarian rule;

Massive human rights violations, with men hunted on the streets, forcibly conscripted, beaten, tortured, and sometimes killed in recruitment centers;

Rampant corruption — almost every close partner, friend, or high-ranking official around Zelenskyy has faced accusations of money laundering or other graft, while companies run by his inner circle receive billions in Western tax money; Putin started this war, but Zelenskyy figured out how to profit on it greatly;

Crushing poverty, including average pensions of just $180 per month;

A catastrophic demographic crisis — last year, three times more Ukrainians died than were born;

Educational collapse, with at least one-third of Ukrainian children receiving no proper schooling and many fourth-graders unable to read;

Brain drain, mass emigration, societal depression, and generational trauma that will take decades to heal.

Some people are so eager to see Russia burn and so enchanted by Zelenskyy’s primitive role-playing that they choose to remain blind to the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Ukraine. To me, that makes you anti-Ukrainian."

[Ian Proud @proud_diplomat]

#NATO has suffered a catastrophic defeat in #Ukraine. They bet the country's and Europe's future on a single gamble: that #Russia would eventually back down. Yet that shows a complete misunderstanding of Russia's history, worldview and doctrine. 1/

[RT @RT_com]

Aerial footage shows MASSIVE CROWDS assemble in and around Grand Mosalla, ACROSS ALL of Tehran, to MOURN late SUPREME LEADER Khamenei

[Volodymyr Ishchenko @Volod_Ishchenko]

All of the thread

[Pastor Ben @BenjaminPDixon]

are white people not tired of Elon Musk being your archetype representative?

at the height of success for whiteness, is it as lonely, emotionally stunted, logically inverted, and pretentiously-bigoted-1-dimensional thinking as demonstrated by Elon?

Surely the Enlightenment deserves a better progeny?

[EL TIEMPO @ELTIEMPO]

😺🙏🏽"Es lo único que me queda de mi casa": joven rescata a su gata en Venezuela

👉🏾Martina, acaba de ser rescatada por su dueño, José Rodríguez y otros voluntarios, quienes la sacaron en medio de toneladas de escombros. José perdió a sus dos hermanas, a su madre, a un perrito y su apartamento quedó en ruinas.

Su gata, de un año, es lo único que le quedó a este joven de La Guaira en este terremoto que afectó a miles de venezolanos.

🐾Los animales también son valiosos y muchos rescatistas trabajan para rescatarlos y brindarles atención oportuna.

📹: @juanfotosadn

#TiempoDeAyudarAVenezuela

[Seyed Mohammad Marandi @s_m_marandi]

In other words, Trump has requested a meeting.

[Iuliia Mendel @IuliiaMendel]

This is heartbreaking. In Druzhkivka, even after endless Russian attacks and total destruction of the infrastructure, 5,888 people are still living there — ordinary men, women, and families refusing to abandon their homes. How many more have to suffer and die in this endless slaughter?

[Rémi Philiponet 🇨🇵 @remi_philiponet]

L’ancien conseiller du Département d’État américain 🇺🇸 James Carden remet les pendules à l'heure :

“Les Tomahawks ne changeront rien.
Pas plus que les HIMARS, Patriot ou F16.
La guerre est perdue.
Et c’est l’Ukraine, et non pas la Russie qui se trouve au bord du gouffre.”

Et de rajouter :
“L’Ukraine attaque ces territoires du Donbass depuis 2014. Les Ukrainiens ne sont pas entièrement sincères. Ils disent vouloir les terres de l'est et le Donbass, mais sans les Russes ethniques qui y vivent. Au cours des 30 dernières années, ils ont tout fait pour priver ces personnes de leurs droits.”

L’aveu qui détruit trois ans de propagande occidentale.
L'aveu du nettoyage ethnique des ukrainiens russophones par les Nazis hitlériens ukrainiens.

[Tarik Cyril Amar @TarikCyrilAmar]

PSA: In a direct war against EU-Europe, Moscow would not accept defeat. If it felt such an outcome was imminent it would seek to wage a 'limited' nuclear war, betting that EU-Europe can't absorb even a handful of strikes whereas Russia can.
That is the likely scenario. For the idiots who believe they can defeat Russia in a conventional war because of French and British nukes closing off the nuclear escalation option.

[Pascal Lottaz @PLottaz]

Something is cooking. Something bad. For the past week or so I‘m reading all over western media this garbage that „Russia is losing“ and that Putin has his back against the wall. Some of these articles are even discussing the post-war order after Russia has lost… utter nonsense.

Anyone following the actual battlefield, even just in passing would know that Russia is advancing and that the Donbas is nearly consolidated. From there, even Odessa might be next. Anyone‘s guess. But what‘s sure is that there is no battlefield collapse to be expected and the Russian army is anything but eroded.

One thing that is also clear is that the Russian‘s are pissed but not at Putin. They are pissed at the West for all the strikes and the belligerency. I‘ve met several Russians who criticized the government for not being forceful enough against the irredeemable Europeans.

So what is this nonsense about „Putin drowning“ and Russia losing? Are they preparing some very large thing that is supposed to push them over the edge to counter strike at NATO and then they‘ll blame it on a losing leader who had his back against the wall?

I‘m seriously worried we might be seeing the narrative preparations for something bad. Something very bad.