larvatus prodeo
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Below are the 30 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Michael Zeleny" journal:[<< Previous 30 entries]
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12:10 pm
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HIC LOCUS EST UBI MORS GAUDET SUCCURRERE VITAE
Welcome to the online journal of larvatus. Stable texts are open to the general public. Squibs and sallies, schemes and stratagems, jaunts and taunts, are restricted to friends. Please note that locked texts subject to third party copyright are provided to my friends under the doctrine of fair use, which forbids redistribution by my readers. Applications for reciprocal friendship shall be considered on individual basis. The newly gregarious friending policy is to reciprocate liberally for all non-empty personae. Comments and critique are always welcome. Marriage proposals and death threats shall be entertained in the order received.
The House Rules are few and lax. All anonymous comments are initially screened. They shall be revealed or answered at your host’s discretion. All signed comments are initially presumed welcome, until and unless they cause an affront to your host. Thereupon their author shall become banned from further contributions to this journal. Otherwise, anything goes. SAY WHAT?
ÇA ?
Tristan Corbière
A treatise? You don’t say! I haven’t treated squat!
A study? Slothful wretch, my culture fetid rot.
A volume? Random heap, sheets stacked in disarray.
Good copy? Not with me enmired in the fray.
A poem? Not today, my lyre is being cleaned.
A book? Of fusty tomes far better to be weaned.
A song? Would that it were, my ear is made of tin.
Fun pastime? Sordid den, dire boredom dwells within.
A cadence? Rhythmic flow is broken by dull grind.
A product? I divide what others multiplied.
A story? Handicapped, my lame and laggard Muse.
Clear proof? My mind is fraught by grief and lit by booze.
High fashion? Wealth and style inform nowhere my dress.
Grandstanding or grand mal? My spasms fail to impress.
Evicted from the hall, I lurk behind the stage,
In transit, poised to choose: a joy house or a cage.
Too old? But to retire, my tenure won’t suffice.
Too young? My hectic life will rid me of this vice.
A sage, a slob, an ace, a master, and a clown,
A stud without a flock, a king without a crown.
THIS is without pretense, and yet a blatant pose.
It’s life and nothing but, confessed in deathless prose.
A masterpiece? Could be, I never made one yet!
A farce? A waste? A bomb? Decide and place your bet!
I bet… and I shall sign herewith my humble name;
My child shall overcome each tainted libel claim.
Through chance it will prevail, its fate a stroke of luck…
Art knows me not at all — and I don’t give a fuck.
— traduced by MZ, 6 September 2005
Tags: doggerel, vanity
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10:00 am
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for the anonymous troll
Over sixteen years online, I have received a broad spectrum of threats and pitches, and entertained a commensurate range of slurs and plaudits. This experience has crystallized two iron laws of online communications.
The first law is a corollary of Occam’s razor. No matter what you are promised or threatened on the Internet, the most you will get out of it is oral ministrations. In other words, there is no downside in moving virtual bluster to realspace. Yonder puffed-out sock puppet is as unlikely to escalate its verbiage to physical damage, as the heiress of an African potentate, to bestow her commission upon Americans paying their facilitation fees. By contrast, that virtual fellatrix yearning to reward your eloquence with expert suction may well come through as promised, especially if you overlook minor discrepancies ranging from mien to gender.
The second law of Internet intercourse is a corollary of the first. Only a clueless newbie responds personally to an anonymous troll. To illustrate its application, whenever one of the latter kind feels the urge to share its thoughts about anything but one of the former, it should take them instead to someone who can relate to its bogus persona. It makes no difference whether a figment of this sort touts itself as a public intellectual in mufti, or poses as a skank that services barnyard livestock for spare change. In the immortal words of Jack Nicholson, sell crazy someplace else, we’re all stocked up here.
A final notice to the insistent incognito. When you surpass words in punishing my excesses, make sure that your hostile deeds leave me unfit to retaliate. My reckoning will define the remainder of your life. It’s happened to your betters before. Don’t let it happen to you.
Tags: bullshit, stupidity, violence
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06:04 pm
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portraits from memory
My Debt to German Learning
My first serious contact with the German learned world consisted in the reading of Kant, whom, while a student, I viewed with awed respect. ( Read more... )
Portrait from Memory
Presenter: This is the BBC Third Programme. We have in the studio Bertrand Russell, who talks to us in the series, “Sense, Perception, & Nonsense, Number Seven: Is this a dagger I see before me?”
Bertrand Russell: One of the advantages of living in Great Court, Trinity, I seem to recall, was the fact that one could pop across at any time of the day or night and trap the then young G.E. Moore into a logical falsehood by means of a cunning semantic subterfuge. I recall one occasion with particular vividness. I had popped across and had knocked upon his door. “Come in”, he said. I decided to wait awhile in order to test the validity of his proposition. “Come in”, he said once again. “Very well”, I replied, “if that is in fact truly what you wish”.
I opened the door accordingly and went in, and there was Moore seated by the fire with a basket upon his knees. “Moore”, I said, “do you have any apples in that basket?” “No”, he replied, and smiled seraphically, as was his wont. I decided to try a different logical tack. “Moore”, I said, “do you then have some apples in that basket?” “No”, he replied, leaving me in a logical cleft stick from which I had but one way out. “Moore”, I said, “do you then have apples in that basket?” “Yes”, he replied. And from that day forth, we remained the very closest of friends.”
— Jonathan Miller, Beyond the Fringe, 1962
Tags: comedy, philosophy, russell
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08:51 pm
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does sex have a purpose?
Some answers are attempted here.
Tags: aristotle, evolution, kant, philosophy, sex
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03:53 pm
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horatian nibbling
And so began the great central struggle of political literature, between the powerful men and women who want their deeds recorded and the literary figures who are able to record them in a memorable way. As long as politics lasts, the politicians will feel that they deserve a better press; and the media will feel honour-bound to tease the politicians, to assert their independence and to rub the noses of the politicians in the eternal fact that it is literary folk, with their superior gifts of composition, who will always end up with the final word.
— Boris Johnson, How to live for ever, The Spectator, Saturday, 10 September 2005
Tags: classics, politics
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07:52 pm
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strategery
Alonzo Harris: “This shit’s chess, it ain’t checkers.”
( Read more... )
Thank God for malfeasants who strategize for Chapayev.
( Read more... )
Tags: game theory, stupidity
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05:38 pm
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you have been reported to the abuse team
To paraphrase George Orwell, I have no particular love for the idealized ‘parent’ as he appears in the bourgeois mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood parent in conflict with his natural enemy, the rat, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.
Tags: jews, russians, stuipdity
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09:29 pm
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vladimir slepian
Please add to and correct this Wikipedia page to the extent of your ability.
Tags: art, jews, persiflage, russians
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11:58 pm
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большая пайка
Давеча замечено в ленте:У поэтов есть такой обычай —
В круг сойдясь, оплёвывать друг друга. На что поступил недвусмысленный ответ:Это гнусный поклеп, квинтэссенция пошлости. Многих поэтов я просто люблю, к подавляющему большинству ныне здравствующих, мне известных, отношусь либо благожелательно и дружески, либо нейтрально. Но для [имярека] делаю исключение. Ответ, увы, несостоятельный. Рассмотрим данное высказывание с логической точки зрения. В нём никак не утверждается распространяемость приписываемого обычая на многих поэтов; тем менее относится он к их подавляющему большинству. Напротив, оно вполне оправдывается привычными примерами обычных поэтов, взаимно оплёвывающих друг друга в порядке личного исключения. Тем более подтверждается предполагаемый обычай, ежели подобные привычки не наблюдаются у представителей иных гильдий. В самом деле, рассмотрим несколько вариантов. В среде юристов или коммерсантов взаимная неприязнь скорее проявится в лжесвидетельстве или мошенничестве, чем в оскорблениях. Ведь намного выгоднее перехитрить конкурента, чем бескорыстно растратить телесную влагу на его заплёвывание. Равным образом, среди солдат враждебность проявляется не в плевках, а в побоях, если только она не доходит до отстрела. Лишь среди учёных должным образом замечено, что в каждом споре интенсивность чувства обратно пропорциональна стоимости ставки — вот почему академическая политика настолько ожесточённа.[1]
Но это ещё не всё. Как заметил Эрик Темпл Белл:[2]
| Rightly or wrongly, Cantor blamed Kronecker for his failure to obtain the coveted position at Berlin. The aggressive clannishness of Jews has often been remarked, sometimes as an argument against employing them in academic work, but it has not been so generally observed that there is no more vicious academic hatred than that of one Jew for another when they disagree on purely scientific matters or when one is jealous or afraid of another. Gentiles either laugh these hatreds off or go at them in an efficient, underhand way which often enables them to accomplish their spiteful ends under the guise of sincere friendship. When two intellectual Jews fall out they disagree all over, throw reserve to the dogs, and do everything in their power to cut one another’s throats or stab one another in the back. Perhaps after all this is a more decent way of fighting — if men must fight — than the sanctimonious hypocrisy of the other. |
Справедливо или по напраслине, Кантор счёл Кронекера ответственным за свою неспособность получить желанную должность в Берлине. Агрессивная обособленность евреев зачастую была отмечена, и неоднократно была использована в качестве довода против их приёма на академическую работу, но мало кто ещё обратил внимание на то, что не существует более злобной академической ненависти, чем ненависть одного еврея к другому, когда у них возникают разногласия в чисто научных вопросах, или когда один из них завидует другому или боится его. Иноплеменники либо отшучиваются от этих ненавистей либо проявляют их в эффективных, скрытных действиях, которые зачастую дают им возможность осуществить свои злоумышления под видом искренней дружбы. Но когда ссорятся два еврейских интеллектуала, у них проявляются полные разногласия, возникает беспредел, и они делают всё от них зависящее, чтобы перерезать друг другу глотку или пырнуть друг друга ножом в спину. Всё же возможно, что это является более достойным способом сражения, если людям приходится сражаться, чем ханжеское лицемерие всех прочих. |
К сему, пожалуй и заявил «последний русский человек» Вячеслав Пьецух, что “каждый третий великий русский поэт — еврей.”
Tags: jews, poets, russian, russians
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05:55 pm
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lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate
I canti dell’Inferno della Divina Commedia recitati da Vittorio Gassman: ( Read more... )
Digital Dante has bilingual texts; Danteworlds has lesser multimedia.
Tags: classics, dante, italian, poetry
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11:15 am
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felicitations
С днем рождения, ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) labas!
Tags: birthday
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11:14 am
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off the cyberpig
A criminal trial in Russia has highlighted the intricacies of Internet speech. ( Read more... ) Of Dmitry Medvedev, the incoming Russian president, The New York Times reports: “He made clear that he knew about “Olbanian,” a kind of Russian slang often used on the Internet.”
Crossposted to larvatus and ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) linguaphiles.
Tags: politics, russia, russian, russians, stupidity
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02:11 pm
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the final causes
“But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
— Barack Hussein Obama, 6 April 2008
No elitism here, quite the contrary.
“The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in men’s better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange.”
— Friedrich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, 1880, translated from the French by Edward Aveling
Tags: bigotry, black enough, politics, typical white person
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10:45 am
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old news
In 1994, “gerontotechnical consultant” Hanna Meyer-Hentschel developed a suit that enables the young and fit to see what it’s like to be old and frail. In its second iteration, the 2003 model of the Age Explorer is meant to simulate how the body might behave at the age of 70. The suit’s overalls are weighed down by 13 pounds of ballast sewn into them and stiffened at the joints by pads strapped to the elbows and knees. Walking across a large room wearing the suit becomes a slow, exhausting experience. The Age Explorer gloves have a Velcro-like lining that imitates the effect of arthritis by translating pressure applied to the hand into a multitude of pinpricks. Headphones inhibit the wearer’s hearing, while a yellow face shield blurs his outlook and blocks his peripheral vision. The company expects its next product to mimic confusion and interrupted thought processes common among the elderly.
Tags: dotage, stuipdity
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05:13 pm
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рипс лаовай
Он же гвайлох.
Tags: bigotry, chinese, persiflage, russian, sorokin
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03:15 pm
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disraelia
Walter Laqueur serves up a stunning venture into counterfactual history. Although its premiss stands at odds with the analysis of imperial decay through ethnic strife by the founder of its genre, Laqueur’s narrative supports the underlying program of construing plausibility as the basis for understanding causation in history and political science. Curiously enough, for all current reaction to its conclusions, no one appears to have drawn a parallel with Tony Judt’s muchly maligned advocacy of Israel’s conversion into a binational and secular state. The take-away lesson is that bitter pills are better savored in wistful hindsight than grim foreboding.
Tags: history, jews, politics, violence
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11:15 am
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no typical white person
The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know (pause) there’s a reaction in her that doesn’t go away and it comes out in the wrong way.
—Barack Hussein Obama, call to Philadelphia sports radio 610 WIP, 20 March 2008
( Read more... )
Tags: bigotry, black enough, jews, persiflage, politics, typical white person
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12:18 am
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world’s shortest books
- Let Us Honor Great Italian War Heroes;
- Two Millennia of German Humanism;
- A Manual of French Hygiene;
- Recognizing British Heterosexuality;
- A Field Guide to Great American Lovers;
- Mastering Russian Table Manners;
- A Treasury of Polish Wit and Wisdom;
- The Secrets of Iranian Diplomacy;
- Iron Rules of Chinese Business Ethics;
- Side-Splitting Japanese Jokes;
- Loving Your Neighbors the Greek Way;
- Jewish Ways of Happiness; and
- Negroes I Have Met While Yachting.
Tags: bigotry, persiflage
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02:35 am
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the living brains
Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.
—David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’, The Village Voice, March 11th, 2008 12:00 AM
Tags: politics
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01:37 am
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Academic Expulsion Rules and Practices Query
On 29 February of this year, two days before the election of pint-sized Dmitry Medvedev to the post of the President of Russian Federation, performance art group Vojna (War), formerly best known for its eccentric commemoration of conceptual poet Dmitry Prigov in a moving train of the Moscow Metro, mounted another exhibition in the Biological Museum. This time, they performed in support of the survival of the bear as the totem animal of ancient Slavs. Notably, the run-up to the election prominently featured a spontaneous youth movement of “bear cubs” rallying in support of Vladimir Putin and his designated successor, whose last name fortuitously echoes notional kinship with Ursus arctos. Thus the most recent Vojna performance featured allegedly authentic sexual intercourse under the banner captioned FUCK FOR BEAR CUB’S HEIR.
In the wake of this affair, some of its participants were identified as students of the Philosophy Department of the Moscow State University, from which they were expelled after the mandatory hand-wringing faculty sessions. Their expulsion was allegedly motivated by considerations of philosophical decorum. Coincidentally, political technology is the most lucrative specialty taught by the MSU Philosophy Department at present.
In the ensuing discussion, several parties have posed the question of whether or not students engaging in similar behavior would have been expelled from Oxford or Harvard. I therefore ask all interested and informed parties to weigh in on this issue with considerations of rules and precedents.
Crossposted to larvatus and elitistasshat; banned from philosophy.
Tags: bullshit, philosophy, sex
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08:47 am
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страх и трепет в интернетах
Страшнее лишь мышиный метеоризм.
Tags: guns, persiflage, vanity
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05:33 am
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the duck of death, or ten years later
D.I.L.L.I.G.A.F.
Tags: birthday, persiflage, vanity
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01:15 am
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pwned
Вследствие принципа Коперника, рядовое положение человека во Вселенной не может быть уникальным. Соответственно, во Вселенной должно иметься множество разумов с аналогичными возможностями, и ничто не могло препятствовать зарождению и развитию сверхчеловеческого разума в других местах Вселенной. Согласимся условно отождествить носителя наиболее продвинутого разума с Богом, не пренебрегая возможностью существования множества равно развитых божественных сверхразумов. Иными словами, по принципу усреднения, человеческий разум наивероятнее всего занимает статистически посредственное место в интеллектуальном диапазоне, простирающемся от прионов до богов. Переформулировав рассуждения Ника Бострома, мы приходим к следующим вариантам, из которых по крайней мере один осуществляется в действительности:- Весьма вероятно, что вселенское развитие разума прекратится, не достигнув божественной стадии.
- Очень маловероятно, что какая-либо божественная цивилизация займётся самовластной симуляцией её собственной эволюционной истории или её возможных но неосуществившихся вариантов.
- Человеческий разум почти наверняка внедрён в божественное провидение и находится в полной зависимости от его самовластия.
Первый вариант исключается принципом изобилия, в то время, как второй вариант противоречит вездесущей назойливости, особенно наблюдаемой среди прожжённых умников. Остаётся лишь вариант окказионализма, предполагающего непрерывное сверхъестественное вмешательство во все человеческие действия.
Помещается в журналы larvatus и ru_philosophy.
Tags: god, philosophy, russian
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09:34 pm
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on y va
African stories follow a standard pattern which dictates that the attention of the listeners must be held. At no time must boredom set in. One must play with the listeners’ emotions as one does with a toy doll. Make them laugh, make them cry, make them angry, thwart their expectations, puzzle them one moment, delight them, or repel them, the next. And always leave them with wide open mouths, begging for more.
—Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa, Indaba, My Children: African Folktales, Grove Press, 1999, p. 529
You’re violating the first rule of being Steve. — Who? — Learn to eliminate your desire. […]
This takes us to the second rule of being Steve. You have to do something excellent in her presence, thus demonstrating your sexual worthiness. […]
That takes us to part three of the Tao of Steve. After you’ve eliminated your desire, and after you’ve been excellent in her presence, then you must retreat, okay? […]
I made a cheat sheet so I wouldn’t forget. “Be desireless, be excellent, and be gone.”
—The Tao of Steve
Edmond Haraucourt : « Partir, c’est mourir un peu. »
Louis Tiercelin : « Mourir, c’est partir un peu. »
Alphonse Allais : « Mourir, c’est partir beaucoup. »
Jacques Prévert : « Martyr, c’est pourrir un peu. »
Tags: french, persiflage, sex
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10:24 am
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get your licks in
Clean your desktop here.
Tags: animals, computers
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12:20 pm
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what is wrong with the 1911 design?
Two or three things. The P210 design is much better.
Tags: guns
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09:57 pm
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анизономия
Как Геродот и Аристотель могли бы понять Сталина.
Tags: history, law, philosophy, russian
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12:53 am
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felicitations
С днем рождения, aptsvet!
Tags: birthday, poetry, russian
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04:45 pm
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тварь ты дрожащая, или право имеешь?
Казуистика для чайников.
Tags: ethics, politics, russian
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02:44 pm
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world’s largest mini-elephant found
You-know-who should click here.
Tags: animals, family
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