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Response to Boing Boing post on "Police Pad" gadgets in Georgia, from the...
Editor's Note: In response to an anonymously-sourced wisecrack we published about police corruption in former Soviet states, the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs has responded with a statement,...
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One more response to Boing Boing post on "Police Pad" gadgets in Georgia, by...
People walk past graffiti on a street in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, Jan. 13, 2012. (REUTERS) Editor's Note: In response to an anonymously-sourced wisecrack we published about police corruption in...
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The surface of Venus
I love rediscovering cool things. I'm sure I learned, at some point, that the Soviet Union had once sent probes to land on the surface of Venus. But I had completely forgotten this fact until today....
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The most polluted place in the world
At Grist, Jess Zimmerman has an interesting piece about a lake near a notoriously leaky former Soviet nuclear research site, where the radiation level is so high that an hour on the beach can be...
View ArticleSoviet killer dolphins on the loose in the Black Sea
Using old Soviet Union techniques, Ukrainian scientists trained dolphins to attack and kill swimmers using knives and guns strapped to the heads of said dolphins. Like you do. Today, the dolphins...
View ArticleThe tale of a 'disappeared' physicist
Growing up in the United States, I never really heard much about high-stakes, dead-of-night defections to the Soviet Union. But here's an interesting one: Bruno Pontecorvo, an Italian nuclear physicist...
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Wacky dudes in Russia open 1940s war ration can and eat it because Russia
https://youtu.be/8PBsp4jXdyc According to the uploader's description, these jolly Russian gentlemen here are opening what is identified as a 70-year-old package of Soviet fighter pilot war chow. (more…)
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CCCP Cook Book – recipes from the days of Soviet food planners
See sample pages from this book at Wink. Fuel Publishing, based in London, has carved a niche in the book world by creating books that document the small dark corners of Soviet history. You may be...
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Mechanical movements of the Cold War: how the Soviets revolutionized...
Besides white supremacy, one of the key drivers of the last election was trade, with outsourcing being the main scapegoat (even though any economist able to count to 10 will tell you that it was...
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A great look back at Soviet futurism
This summer, the Barbican is mounting Into the Unknown: A Journey through Science Fiction. As part of that, they will be displaying some rare Soviet-era sci-fi collectibles from the seminal Tekhikia –...
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Holidays in Soviet Sanatoriums
Maryam Omidi crowdfunded a photographic tour of Soviet-era sanatoriums, and the resulting book, Holidays in Soviet Sanatoriums is like a weird 1970s sci-fi catalog. (more…)
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Meet the dogs of Chernobyl
In 1986, a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, located near the Ukrainian town of Pripyat, lost its shit. Flaws in the reactor's design caused a steam explosion, resulting in a fire...
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Umbrella-camera and other Soviet spy cams up for auction
Next Thursday, Aston's auctioneers will sell off a private collection of cameras including some fantastic Soviet-era spy cams. According to the auction house's camera specialist, the most curious item...
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Book of brutalist archictecture postcards from the Soviet era
Brutal Block Postcards is a new book that, er, celebrates the concrete landscape of the Soviet era. Over at Collectors Weekly, Lisa Hix flips through the pages: Many of these postcards, published by...
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The time Mikhail Gorbachev starred in a Pizza Hut commercial
In 1997, Mikhail Gorbachev, the final leader of the Soviet Union, needed some cash. So he made a Pizza Hut commercial. Of course there was more to the story than that, but not really so much. He...
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You can now play the unauthorized Indiana Jones video game created by...
Ars Technica has a fascinating new long-form article about The Adventures of Indiana Jones in Wenceslas Square in Prague on January 16, 1989, an unauthorized text adventure created and passed between...
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Waiting for the American Khrushchev: Who will deliver the "Cult of...
In this powerful personal essay, Institute for the Future executive director Marina Gorbis writes about growing up in a Soviet Union brainwashed by Stalin's Big Lie, and what it took to break the lie....
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The great African American escape to Soviet Russia
While the Soviet Union under Stalin did plenty of internal ethnic cleansing, it also attempted to present a carefully curated vision of equality to the West, in contrast to America. It was a land where...
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A too-typical tragedy of science in the Soviet Union
Botanist and geneticist Nikolai Vavilov had a lifelong mission to prevent starvation by improving food production. His native Russia suffered numerous famines under both the tsar and the Soviets. The...
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Soviet Lord of the Rings
Embedded below are parts 1 and 2 of a recently-found TV production of The Lord of the Rings that's doing the rounds. The special attraction: it was made in Russia near the end of the Soviet era and is...
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Watch the Super Mario Bros teach Mikhail Gorbachev how to make pizza
I fell down a bit of a Wikipedia Wormhole after watching the recent fan-edit of the 1993 Super Mario Bros movie (which is even more inexplicable than I remembered). And that's how I learned that...
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Check out this 1931 Soviet guide to turning potatoes into toys
Potato Toys is a super charming, illustrated Soviet guide about how to make toys out of potatoes. I love all of the potato-creatures in the guide. Mr. Potato head has nothing on these little guys. The...
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These weird old Soviet anti-alcohol posters are wild
In Soviet Russia, vodka drinks you. I thought I'd do a thread of soviet anti-alcohol posters because they are often brilliant, ingenious, and… sobering.First, from 1988, this one says "Passage to...
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CIA releases new documents about Russian telepathy experiments in the 60s
Via Vice: The documents detail conversations an agent had with Soviet scientists and a student about the USSR's interest in developing ESP. Guided by these second hand accounts, it sounds like the...
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The Soviet Union's TOPGUN counterpart
Paper Skies delves into the elite 1521st Aviation Base Maryy "aggressor" squadrons located in Turkmenistan, known as the Soviet Union's TOPGUN counterpart; both schools were established around the...
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20th Century Men brilliantly flips the Cold War on its head, with superheroes
20th Century Men is a sprawling new alternate history comic book series from Deniz Camp and S. Morian. The official synopsis gives you a vague idea of what you're in for: At the end of the 20th...
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World's deadliest spot: the horror of Lake Karachay
Standing for just one hour at the shore of Russia's Lake Karachay ("black water") in 1990 would have killed you. Before it was buried beneath concrete and stone, the lake held an apocalyptic secret:...
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RIP Boris Spassky: "one of the greatest chess players of the Soviet era and...
Boris Spassky, the World Chess Champion who faced Bobby Fischer in the legendary "Match of the Century," died Thursday at age 88. Spassky was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), where he became a...
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