I’ve been looking like an ancient old hag 30 years senior. Finally, today I decided to do something about it. Went to Sephora, got a complicated, expensive makeup done. Neon yellow nails. Let the Jewfro flow freely. Even wore lipstick, which I do about once a decade.
Everybody noticed. “Wow, you look great! So good to see you are doing better!” Two elderly Vietnamese ladies stopped me in the street to touch the Jewfro (“Gold! Pretty gold hair!”).
The only person who didn’t notice is my husband. Because he’d never noticed I looked like crap before all this effort. To him I always look stunning.
This is a great thread describing the position of the army in the Russian society:
Why Russian army is so weak?
When Russia invaded, experts thought it'd win in 24-72 hours. Two weeks later the war's still going. How come? On paper Russian superiority's overwhelming
Although Russia projects warlike image, its military r weak and don't know how to fight wars🧵 pic.twitter.com/oUhfWHxf9e
The author really knows what he’s talking about. It’s all true. Please remember that the army is venerated in a strong nation-state. In the post-nation state model, the object of veneration is the security apparatus. This happens because the narrative that “the army protects our borders” goes out of date together with the idea of the national borders. It becomes much more important to keep people in check than protect them from anything.
The city of Volnovakha in Ukraine no longer exists. The residents are either dead or evacuated. The buildings and infrastructure have been razed to the ground.
My most right-wing, mega MAGA acquaintance and my most left-wing, pro-antifa acquaintance said the exact same thing to me about Ukraine.
“How can the US sanction Russia or say anything against it when we bombed Iraq and Yugoslavia? This is hypocrisy!”
This is a boring Russian propaganda slogan but I’m glad that I no longer have to strategize to make sure these two people in my life (and they are both wonderful, wonderful people) never intersect. Now I can introduce them to each other and let them rehash these antique talking points together.
There’s no more need for “a national divorce.” The breach has been healed. Seriously, if you have friends on both extremes, bring up Ukraine. It’s magical! They start chanting in unison.
“Паляниця” is a Ukrainian word that means a loaf of bread. It’s being used in the war to identify Russian spies, marauders, provocateurs, etc. Russians notoriously can’t pronounce it. There are hilarious videos of Russian soldiers practicing the word and failing to say it correctly. The articulation apparatus forms in early childhood. After that, the accent remains no matter what you do.
I rarely mention Putin in my posts on the war because I think he’s utterly unimportant and quite coincidental to what’s happening. But this is funny, and it’s good to have some comic relief among the barrage of bad news.
Putin spoke on the subject of the Western economic sanctions on Russia. “Well, so what that there are sanctions?” he said. “The USSR was always under sanctions, yet it achieved enormous successes.”
Russian people now have an opportunity to experience some of the most notable of those successes, such as empty shelves and zinc coffins.
This is an asylum for severely mentally disabled people in Kharkiv:
For now, it looks like the heroic doctors and nurses had managed to get all 330 patients into a bomb shelter before the Russians hit the building. From what I’ve been able to find, everybody survived. Which is great.
But imagine what this must feel like for the mentally disabled patients. Where are they going to go now? These are not people who can get transported easily. And wherever they go, who’s to say that place won’t get bombed tomorrow.
To avoid sounding like those annoying food bloggers who make you scroll through thousands of words of text to get to the recipe, I’ll share the recipe first and then talk about the history of the dish.
Actually, there isn’t much of a recipe. You take split peas and boil them into oblivion. That’s it. That’s the famous kissel.
Of course, I like to fuss with mine and add a bunch of stuff to it:
shredded carrots (because I put carrots into everything)
dried mushrooms
a cinnamon stick
a bit of cubed potatoes
lots of cracked black pepper
dill
and one of those Polish mushroom bouillon cubes because I’m addicted to them.
It’s supposed to be boiled down even more but I like some crunch to mine. Make sure there isn’t too much water because this isn’t a soup. Kissel is supposed to go hard overnight in the refrigerator. Then you slice it and heat it up. Or color it with some beet juice and call it “Lenten bologna.”
The pea kissel was very popular before the revolution of 1917. It was the major Lenten dish. But it was considered low-class food. Merchants who struck it rich would hide in their offices, lower the curtains, and indulge in some takeout kissel in secret.
After the revolution, the kissel somehow transformed into a completely different thing. The peas disappeared, and it became a sweet, dessert-type gooey beverage made out of starch, sugar, and some berries.
And here’s a picture of Lenten bologna that I didn’t make but it’s funny and I want to share it:
