So who’s with me on watching the third season of House of Cards?

The season is great and the efforts to portray the insanity of Russians are almost kind of decent. The character playing Putin (Petrov in the series) is way too refined and intellectual to be a good portrayal of the original. But it’s a decent effort. I wish Russians didn’t have to mar the experience of watching the series but it’s no escaping them.

The character I’m identifying the most with is the hacker because of how desperately he’s trying to emigrate.

We’re on episode six of the new season, so if you’re done already, please no spoilers.

So I decided to support not only the families of Ukrainian POWs but also Ukrainian artists. It is very hard for an artist to survive in times of war and in a crumbling economy. Of course, I don’t try to exploit the difficult situation and would never haggle for a piece that I like. 

Today, a really beautiful oil painting of the 2014 Revolution of Dignity arrived. I will post the picture of it after I have it framed but for now I want to share what I found on the back of the painting.

The artist had attached a post-it note that said, in broken English, “UKRAINE NOT WANT WWIII!” This is simply heart-breaking.

Are things so bad in Spain that Spanish men have to whore themselves out like this?

Police have arrested eight Spaniards accused of fighting alongside pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.

The suspects were detained in raids in six regions across Spain, the interior ministry said, describing the operation as the first of its kind in Europe.

They face charges of complicity in murder, possession of weapons and violating Spain’s neutrality in the conflict.

This is from the BBC, and please note the completely insane attachment of this channel to the crazy “pro-Russian rebels” verbiage. They are such freaks.

Yesterday, by the way, a leader of the “pro-Russian rebels and separatists”, a citizen of Russia who had fought in Chechnya and bears a proud nickname of Motorolla, issued yet another passionate statement berating the people of the occupied territories for not joining him and other “separatists” with Russian passports in fighting against Ukraine. The Russian leaders of the “separatists” have been ranting and raving on social media and in the press against the vile Ukrainians of the occupied Donbass Region for showing so little interest in the efforts of these Russian citizens to liberate them. 

Yet the BBC still refers to these people as “Ukrainian separatists” and “Russian rebels.” 

Please, please just remember this the next time you trust the BBC reporting on anything.

When I told N about the murder of the dissident in Russia, his first response was, “Are they blaming Muslims yet?”

It took a few hours, but N knows his former compatriots well and now they are blaming Muslims. Nemtsov was Jewish, so it will not be hard to create some weird narrative around this.

Another official version is that Nemtsov was killed because of an abortion he forced someone to have.

I’m still waiting for Jen Psaki, the object of absolutely irrational hatred in Russia, to get worked into the story of Muslims and abortions conspiring to kill Nemtsov.