George Orwell - 1984. 'It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn’t only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms."
Everyone describes their motivation in the same words: “To keep from losing my mind.”
Isn’t it a sign we’ve already lost all our marbles?
I’ve felt a chest pain reading about a lesbian couple mentioned there. One gossip, one report, and their son would become an orphan and both of them would go to prison. So much of these family values talks. I hope they’d fly under the radar until this system dies, or, better, leave that swamp in some way.
@andrew_bidlaw @mozz
Things will get better when the current crop of befuddled geriatric leaders die. That generation needs to go. It’s like the old Soviet Union when it was ruled by political fossils. They don’t have a useful idea in their heads, and want to turn the clock back to their glory days.There sure would be a race of coffins like in late soviet times, but every day it lasts a lot of ukrainians, belarussians, russians suffer for nothing. And these elderly goblins seem like they would live another decade in spite of all reason.
@andrew_bidlaw People in the US also have a low life expectancy and it’s falling. In the US it’s 76 years for whites, and 73 for blacks.
20 years from now the political scene will be different because of that generation dying out. They’re still stuck in 1950’s family values and thinking.What does the USA has to do with it? It smells whataboutism…
@andrew_bidlaw
Men’s average life expectancy in Russia is 69 years and Putin is 71. He’ll probably be around for another ten years. He won’t be deposed or replaced. He’ll die of natural causes, and maybe have his own mausoleum, like Lenin. He’ll be revered as a Hero of Russia. He’s fit and active and gets the best medical care, so he’s got years left in him. I’m sure that Biden will make it to 80 as he’s very frail.Biden is 81 now. I’m sure Putin won’t last this long. Every one of his friends suffered from this campaign, so I think he’d be backstabbed.
@andrew_bidlaw wow. I didn’t know he was that old. I doubt that he’s got much time left.
Yep. And that’s one of the stones to throw at dems - they should’ve nurtured some new faces in these 4 years to replace Biden. I guess the next election would have the maximal sum of ages of primary candidates in the race. I don’t think Biden wouldn’t be able to last another four years, but he’s twice\trice the age of his average voters and he hardly gets them at all. Hard to imagine why first time voters would vote for him if not against Trump, even though his term was pretty okay.
Well that did never fix anything. They were just replaced!
You don’t have to mention people when replying to them.
In the history of Russia, it gets better only for a moment, just to say that freedom is chaotic and justify another dictator at the helm for decades.
Good luck trying to sell the epic Tolstoy novel “And”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
She brought me a shawl – crimson, with asters and morning glory – and then she put on a song for my fiancee that went, “As long as there’s no gays and wars.” She doesn’t want to come and live with me in exile.
New laws forbid the dissemination of any information that contradicts the official line (this carries up to 15 years’ incarceration) and expressing negative feelings about the war (a fine for the first offence, then prison).
Then Russia attacked Ukraine, Novaya had its licence revoked and I quit, but Sveta stayed and is still working as a journalist, without any accreditation or pay, still living in Moscow.
One time, she was simultaneously trying to find a bomb shelter (Ukrainian drones approaching Moscow) and an air conditioning unit (summer was expected to be hot).
My friend Vika and her wife are also parents to a son, but families like theirs have been outlawed by Russia’s supreme court for being part of what it called an extremist “international LGBT public movement”.
The jailers declare that Navalny just dropped dead – “sudden death syndrome” they say, while the TV adds helpfully that it was a blood clot.
The original article contains 1,125 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 82%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I think in this case the bot rather butchered the mood piece.
