my family loves that album. i remember all the other verses, but somehow i missed the first verse “playing with bombs like kids play with toys.” ooph...

Ugh, this is depressing but not surprising. The music world is notoriously sexist, ESPECIALLY the critics. I can’t count the number of reviews I’ve read that featured female musicians that compare them to the same tired list of “female rockers” and no one else. It’s insulting. Like male indie bands aren’t…

I started studying Russian for funsies over a decade ago, got kinda obsessed with it and after a couple of years in Siberia and the Urals I’m pretty much near-native proficiency. But dang this whole election season has thrown me for a loop. Russian departments have been worried about getting dropped from…

Wow. You know it’s gotten bad when people who were once considered super conservative make sense (and we have several now—McCain, Graham, GLENN BECK). Goes to show that though their policies were, to me, completely counterproductive and problematic, these people at least had some consistency and belief in democracy.…

I actually thought she got more relaxed and better at being herself by time the convention happened. maybe I’m projecting too much of my own stuff, but i saw her need to be likeable to the people asin some ways a product of sexism. Of course men do this too, but look at the gendered criticism. I saw an op Ed in a…

It still shocks me that he managed to do this. Like how is a literal billionaire with his own ‘big business’ somehow more in touch with the people than a woman who devoted her life to public service, especially lower income families. Oh right, because she is a nerd and has a vagina. How dare women try to be…

Yeah I wondered about that immediately after the election. Although, do you think he is too closely associated with Obama? Because we know how Obama is literally the devil in some conservative circles. (although of course Clinton is too...)

Arab Jew who believes in helping the poor and marginalized and living a humble lifestyle? Radical preaching against the hegemony? Not a chance in hell!

Oh man, I would have killed for a publication like this when I was a teenager. I aged out of American Girl (which at least in the 90s was a great publication for the 7-12 crowd) and was left with nothing intelligent for girls my age. at the time the only teen magazine I touched was 17, and that was only to laugh at…

Nah, now we can have Russian souls! You know, like the one Dubya saw when he looked into Putin’s eyes!

I respectfully disagree. I don’t think the reward was ridiculous at all and as a folklorist/literary scholar in training I was thrilled when I heard he won. Smith’s choice to play “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” is illustrative of why I very much consider Dylan to be an inheritor of the literary tradition and also an…

I’m a grad student at Cal and Griffin was an undergraduate major in our department. I never had the honor of knowing him, but several of my friends either studied with him or taught him. They have all said he was incredibly brilliant and kind. It’s such a tragic loss. Oakland is reeling, especially my generation. It…

It’s finals week in grad school and I’m having the worst time focusing on my esoteric research papers. I have never felt like a patriot, but I speak very fluent Russian and find myself wanting to say “fuck it all” and join the CIA so i can work against this bullshit. I feel personally violated. Of course the GOP…

Yeah at this point I’m just sort of hoping trump will have a stroke or get shot by someone and we can grin and bear a Pence presidency. It would severely suck, and I would protest the shit out of the republican fuckery. but I wouldn’t worry we would be nuked. Like he at least is reading the briefings. I sincerely…

I second this. My male friend came to me fretting the other day about whether he had done the right thing by confronting a cat caller. Apparently he witnessed a guy catcalling and politely told him “I don’t think women like it when you talk to them that way.” And then he and the guy had a conversation. I told him,…

Yeah those friends of mine who voted for her would have otherwise left it blank. They hated Clinton that much. I don’t get it and I tried to talk to them and change their minds, but 30 years of GOP smearing certainly poisoned the water.

yes. let’s send them to the motherfuckers who drafted and passed this stupid law.

This. I am studying Soviet culture for my PhD and while we know the dissidents who got sent to the camps or emigrated (Solzhenitsyn being the most famous example), many, many more people found subtle ways to stick it to those in power and subvert the system within. The Baltics are a more organized example because the…

Yeah I kind of like her. Mind you, I don’t agree with her political views most of the time, but this election has shown her to be an intelligent and responsible journalist, which I appreciate and respect. If the right wing had more of those and less of the cuckoos, maybe Fox wouldn’t be such a joke of a channel. Also…

The main question is how did they get them to look so small?