July 2009
2 posts
“One code of unwritten “etiquette” delivered to me in hushed tones by almost...”
– New Paper Monument pamphlet, I Like Your Work. And they’re throwing a party Aug. 1.
Politkovskaya retrial
Some people have asked me about the Russian Supreme Court’s decision to cancel the verdict in the Politkovskaya murder case. I’ve been surprised by the interest this has generated in the West, as in Russia the Supreme Court decision was entirely—and depressingly—expected. A large proportion of jury acquittals get overturned in higher courts, despite the fact that jury...
June 2009
13 posts
would you rather have a lexus or justice?
For the 12th year out of 20, J. D. Power and Associates have chosen a Lexus. Over justice.
kolkhoznik
A summer Sunday evening around nine is a pretty good time to be on the road—but still there was a bottleneck in front of the Leningrad train station. Is this where Anna Karenina threw herself under a train? No. Not quite. Still, there was a small traffic jam.
“What the fuck?” said Igor. It really was a little puzzling. We crawled along, bit by bit. Finally there was some open...
HFM's dream
HFM: In the US, as much as you hear people complaining about the bankruptcy process, that’s my wet dream, to go through bankruptcy processes in the US. They’re so much more fair and speedy and transparent than ninety-nine percent of the jurisdictions I’m used to. n+1: You’d love to go through bankruptcy in the US? HFM: No, I’d love to put people through one. If I...
weekend traffic
On summer weekends in Moscow, the traffic disappears. Cause for celebration? No. It just means the traffic has moved elsewhere, and you were not invited.
traffic expert?
Some people say, How can you be Moscow’s premier traffic expert when you don’t even have a car there and don’t yourself spend hours and hours sitting in traffic?
The question answers itself: If I were a driver, I’d be sitting in traffic instead of writing this. There are thousands—hundreds of thousands—of traffic experts much more expert than myself, but their...
traffic update
This is from ten minutes ago:
— 19.06.2009 21:26 —
В Москве на Садовом кольце неизвестный обстрелял прохожих
Московские милиционеры ищут машину Lada Priora, из которой неизвестный стрелял из травматического пистолета по прохожим на Садовом кольце в центре столицы, пострадавших в результате инцидента нет, сообщил источник в правоохранительных органах Москвы.
That says: A man sitting in...
traffic blog
Two days ago during rush hour, at the corner of Sretenka and the boulevard, near the Krupskaya monument, the southbound and northbound traffic light turned red and stayed red. The radial traffic up Sretenka—meaning, outbound from the Kremlin—got a permanent green. On the northbound half of the street, a traffic cop waved people through the red. But there was no analogous cop for the...
February 2009
3 posts
the internet
I’ve often said that if the internet were a city, we’d be well within our rights to bomb it.
But reading Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal’s book about the first Chechen war, I see I wasn’t thinking right militarily speaking. Of the debacle of the invasion of Grozny in late 1994, in which the Russians threw a lot of tanks and other armored vehicles into the city only to...
this tumblr
I don’t like to brag about this Tumblr too much but I think we can all agree that one of the good things about it is that, when you come here, the Tumblr doesn’t start showing you hockey highlights in a window in the top right of your screen as if, 1) you could actually derive any enjoyment from watching a hockey player a quarter of an inch tall score a goal and, 2) that your internet...
January 2009
4 posts
more on baraka
A lot of readers have written in, after the long poem by Amiri Baraka, to demand to know who indeed he was talking about. So, let’s go to the tape.
Who own this city Who own the air Who own the water Who own your crib Who rob and steal and cheat and murder and make lies the truth
[[Could be anyone at this point]]
Who call you uncouth Who live in the biggest house Who do the biggest...
"eww, redesign"
I just did a Google search and it turns out the phrase “Eww, redesign” does not appear anywhere on the internet, at least not in English.* And yet who amongst us has not made his way to an old, beloved, possibly very ugly site to find it new, and glossy, and different, and thought—well, those two words, separated by a comma?
The latest victim: The World Socialist Web Site,...
