Tag: Russia

Navigating Without GPS: Understanding Cardinal Directions in Moscow | March 13 2026, 18:41

The spokesperson for the Phystech press service explains how to determine cardinal directions in Moscow when navigation systems are down. Find the North Star or use the sun: it rises in the east and sets in the west. Also reminds us how to determine directions using trees. Ziya, do you know how to find cardinal directions using trees? — What’s there to know? Fir tree points north, palm tree points south!

Overall, it seems the Phystech press service is not aware that in Moscow, the annual amplitude of sunrise point movement is almost 90 degrees. That means, it only sometimes (like now, in March) actually coincides with the east. But they do know the word “asterism”. I think most readers will place it somewhere near the word “flatulence”

CIS Headquarters’ Outdated Member List: A Curious Oversight | March 07 2026, 03:22

It’s funny, at the CIS headquarters in Minsk 1) they still think that the CIS is alive (joke) 2) they still think that Ukraine is still there (never was part of the CIS, but officially left the CIS governing bodies in 2018). By the way, Moldova started the withdrawal process this year.

From MS-DOS to Modern CAD: My Journey with Bazis Soft | March 06 2026, 17:43

My first job as a programmer, with an office in Kolomna and for money. It was 1993, or maybe even a year earlier. 10th-11th grade of school. And this company still exists, and the guys I worked with are still there! Natalya Bakulina, Pavel Bunakov, Nikolai Kaskevich. Imagine that. Moreover, they started back in 1986, that is, 40 years ago already! I can hardly remember other commercial companies of such age in Russia. When I came to work there, there was MS DOS, they wrote in Turbo Pascal, but they had started many years before me on the SM-1420 computer, though back then, the company was not entirely commercial. At the time of my arrival, their system was a competitor of AutoCAD in the market, locally also competing with “Kompas”. I made an installer from 5.25″ and 3.5″ disks – to capture the spirit of the era. Later they switched to Delphi and Windows. After that, they narrowed down their focus, transitioning from CAD for engineering to CAD for furniture, where they still hold very strong positions.

The Lost Version of Repin’s “Unexpected”: A Revolutionary Woman’s Tale | March 01 2026, 23:59

It turns out that in the first version of the painting “Unexpected” the main character was a woman, a Narodovoltsy revolutionary! This was a smaller version, later Repin painted a larger one with a man – the one everyone knows.

And the first version is kept in the Tretyakov Gallery but it is not displayed.

Well, as everyone knows. In general, Russian and Ukrainian artists are hardly known outside their countries. There seems to be one painting by Repin in the Metropolitan Museum of NY and a few in the Orsay, but that’s almost nothing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are all in storage.

Here people know Rublev, the Russian avant-garde (Malevich, Kandinsky, Chagall), but nobody (except professionals) knows Shishkin, Levitan, Vasnetsov, Surikov, Savrasov. Despite the fact that many of them studied in Europe and worked from there. Remember Ivanov and his “The Appearance of Christ Before the People”.

Now I’m googling why. They write that the French considered Russian art of that era something akin to journalism in oil. Like, using the canvas as a platform to preach morals, tell stories, expose social injustices. Social drama, suffering peasants, harsh winter landscapes, and execution scenes – all this seemed frightening to Americans. Kind of like Dostoevsky in oil. How can you hang that above a fireplace?

The Sole Excommunication of the 21st Century: The Case of Monk Nikolai Romanov | February 21 2026, 00:10

I wanted to find out who was excommunicated in the 21st century, and it turned out that there was only one person. That was Nikolai Romanov (schema-monk Sergius). He was the founder, builder, and spiritual father of the Sredneuralsk Women’s Monastery.

Do you know why? He asked the nuns and parishioners, “are you ready to die for Russia?” The investigation saw this as incitement to suicide. He also called the COVID-19 pandemic “non-existent,” cursed those who closed churches for quarantine, opposed vaccination and the “digital camp,” and called for civil disobedience to church and secular authorities.

In November 2021, he was sentenced to 3.5 years in a colony. Later, in 2023, his sentence was increased to 7 years on a second charge (of inciting hatred). In April 2021, court bailiffs completely evicted all residents of the monastery (nuns and laypeople) due to violations of fire safety requirements and urban planning regulations.

The Russian Orthodox Church could not say “he was not with us by that time,” so they simply excommunicated him.

Dreams of Power: Cocaine, Rare Earth Metals, and Unexpected Diplomacy | January 03 2026, 13:40

I slept through everything. What are you betting on 1) all the cocaine is ours now? 2) they’ll release them in exchange for a deal on rare earth metals and oil? 3) Maduro turns up in Saratov?