Putin’s War on Ukraine Explained in 8 Minutes

in History | March 3rd, 2022

A new explain­er from Vox:

On Feb­ru­ary 24th, Rus­sia launched a mil­i­tary inva­sion of Ukraine. Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin called it a “spe­cial mil­i­tary oper­a­tion,” but the scale of the attack shows this is a full-scale war that has already caused more than 100 casu­al­ties and forced more than half a mil­lion Ukraini­ans to flee their homes.

Ukraine and Russia’s con­flict goes back to 2014, when Rus­sia invad­ed and annexed Crimea and Russ­ian-backed sep­a­ratist forces took over parts of south­east­ern Ukraine’s Don­bas region. But to under­stand the full con­text behind the inva­sion, it’s impor­tant to go even far­ther back, to the time when Europe’s cur­rent-day divi­sions began, and see how that shaped Europe’s pow­er bal­ance today.

To under­stand the cur­rent conflict’s his­to­ry in less than 10 min­utes, watch the video above.

Hades, the First Video Game to Win a Hugo, and the Roguelike Genre — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #117

in Podcasts, Video Games | March 3rd, 2022

Super­giant’s Hades is now the first video game ever to have won a Hugo award for sci-fi/­fan­ta­sy fic­tion, and has set a new stan­dard in the Rogue­like genre, which fea­tures rel­a­tive­ly short “runs” through a ran­dom­ly-gen­er­at­ed dun­geon (or some equiv­a­lent) with per­ma-death, i.e. you die, you go back to the begin­ning. Gen­er­al­ly, these games are very hard.

Your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er is joined by three return­ing Pret­ty Much Pop guests: Psy­chol­o­gist of games Jamie Madi­gan, writer Al Bak­er, and musi­cian Tyler His­lop. In addi­tion to Hades, we talk about The Bind­ing of Isaac, FTL, Slay the Spire, Dead Cells, Dark­est Dun­geon, Curse of the Dead Gods, Way­ward, Risk of Rain, and more. What dis­tin­guish­es a Rogue­like from a Rogue-lite, and does it mat­ter? How are they dif­fer­ent than old-style arcade games? What makes Hades unique in the genre?

Read about Rogue­likes on Wikipedia. See IGN’s list of best Rogue­likes and TheGamer’s list of most dif­fi­cult Rogue­likes.

A few oth­er rel­e­vant arti­cles include:

• “One Year Lat­er, What 2020’s Best Game Actu­al­ly Was” by Niki Fakhoori
• “Hades is a near-flaw­less romp through hell after two years of ear­ly access” by Ryan Gilliam
• “‘Hades’ review: supergiant’s lat­est is, quite lit­er­al­ly, a god-tier game” by Dom Pep­pi­att
• “Here’s how ‘Hades’ makes going back to hell feel fresh” by Gene Park
• “How Hades Helped Me Under­stand My Dad” by Gra­ham Day

Fol­low @JamieMadigan, Al @ixisnox,  and Tyler @sacrifice_mc.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion fea­tur­ing all of our guests that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

Russia’s War on Ukraine: A Conversation Hosted by The Atlantic, Featuring Anne Applebaum, Tom Nichols & Jeffrey Goldberg

in Current Affairs, History | March 2nd, 2022

“After years of threats, Vladimir Putin’s Russ­ian forces invad­ed Ukraine—culminating in the largest attack against one Euro­pean state by anoth­er since the Sec­ond World War. What hap­pens now?”

Above, you can watch a wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion host­ed by The Atlantic, fea­tur­ing Anne Apple­baum (Pulitzer-prize win­ning his­to­ri­an), Tom Nichols (U.S. Naval War Col­lege pro­fes­sor), and Jef­frey Gold­berg (edi­tor-in-chief of The Atlantic) as they exam­ine “the glob­al reac­tion, the effec­tive­ness of sanc­tions, and how to address the rise of author­i­tar­i­an­ism and ongo­ing threats to democ­ra­cy.” It’s also worth read­ing Apple­baum’s lat­est piece, “The Impos­si­ble Sud­den­ly Became Pos­si­ble.”

Carl Sagan Explains Evolution in an 8‑Minute Animation

in Biology, Science | March 2nd, 2022

Bio­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion: nev­er has a phe­nom­e­non so impor­tant so lent itself to such clear, under­stand­able, ele­gant expla­na­tions. But just as evo­lu­tion itself pro­duces a seem­ing­ly infi­nite vari­ety of life forms, so the human under­stand­ing of evo­lu­tion has pro­duced count­less edu­ca­tion­al and enter­tain­ing kinds of illus­tra­tions by which to explain it. In the video above, astronomer-astro­physi­cist-cos­mol­o­gist Carl Sagan, no stranger to demys­ti­fy­ing the once seem­ing­ly unfath­omable phe­nom­e­na of our uni­verse, shows how evo­lu­tion actu­al­ly works with eight min­utes of crisp ani­ma­tion that take us from mol­e­cules in the pri­mor­dial soup, to bac­te­ria, to plants and polyps, to lam­preys, to tur­tles, to dinosaurs and birds, to wom­bats, to baboons and apes, to us. Then he goes back and does the whole four bil­lion-year evo­lu­tion­ary jour­ney again in forty sec­onds.

This con­cise les­son con­cerns itself not just with how we human beings came about, but how every­thing else came about as well. That wide-angle view of real­i­ty won a great deal of acclaim for Sagan’s Cos­mos: A Per­son­al Voy­age, the 1980 tele­vi­sion series on which the seg­ment orig­i­nal­ly appeared. Though most of its orig­i­nal broad­casts on life, the uni­verse, and every­thing still hold up as well as this clip on evo­lu­tion, a 21st-cen­tu­ry suc­ces­sor has late­ly appeared in the form of Cos­mos: A Space­time Odyssey, host­ed by astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson, doubt­less the most suit­ed heir to Sagan’s tra­di­tion of enthu­si­asm and rig­or in pub­lic sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion. For a more extend­ed treat­ment of evo­lu­tion, see also our post from ear­li­er this week on deGrasse Tyson’s episode on the sub­ject, in which he spends an entire hour on his equal­ly fas­ci­nat­ing expla­na­tion of what, up to and includ­ing you, he, and I, nat­ur­al selec­tion has so far come up with.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Where Did Human Beings Come From? 7 Mil­lion Years of Human Evo­lu­tion Visu­al­ized in Six Min­utes

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

550 Mil­lion Years of Human Evo­lu­tion in an Illus­trat­ed Flip­book

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

How Aladdin Sane Became the Most Expensive Album Cover Ever — and David Bowie’s Defining Image

in Art, History, Music, Photography | March 1st, 2022

If you search for David Bowie on Spo­ti­fy, a famil­iar icon pops up: the man him­self, eyes closed, made up with a death­ly-look­ing pal­lor and a red-and-blue light­ing bolt across his face. This is the pho­to on the front of Bowie’s sixth album, 1973’s Aladdin Sane. “Per­haps more icon­ic than the music inside,” says the nar­ra­tor of the Trash The­o­ry video essay above, “it stands as the Mona Lisa of album cov­ers.” It was also, at the time of pro­duc­tion, the most cost­ly album cov­er of all time: this was at the behest of Bowie’s man­ag­er Tony Defries, who sus­pect­ed that spar­ing no expense on the image would moti­vate RCA, his label, to spare no expense pro­mot­ing the album itself.

One might call this a bold move for an artist like Bowie, who had only just made it big. In the ear­ly years of his career he’d racked up fail­ure after fail­ure: with 1971’s Hunky Dory, a kind of dec­la­ra­tion of com­mit­ment to musi­cal and artis­tic “changes,” he had a suc­cès d’es­time, but not until the fol­low­ing year did he become a bona fide star.

The vehi­cle for that trans­for­ma­tion was the album The Rise and Fall of Zig­gy Star­dust and the Spi­ders from Mars, which intro­duced the lis­ten­ing pub­lic to its title char­ac­ter, an androg­y­nous rock­er from out­er space. Through­out his sub­se­quent year and a half of tour­ing Bowie took the stage in full Zig­gy glam regalia, inhab­it­ing the char­ac­ter so ful­ly that he even­tu­al­ly began to ques­tion his own san­i­ty.

Though young British audi­ences could­n’t get enough of Zig­gy and the Spi­ders, reac­tions across the Unit­ed States were rather less enthu­si­as­tic. There, says the Trash The­o­ry nar­ra­tor, “they were not the type of British rock that rock radio played: hard-hit­ting, riff-heavy behe­moths like Led Zep­pelin or the Rolling Stones. But this indif­fer­ence was shap­ing what Bowie want­ed to do next.” His expe­ri­ence of Amer­i­ca inspired a new, hard­er-edged per­sona, Aladdin Sane. Zig­gy Star­dust “was a vision of the best a rock star could be, an inspi­ra­tional fig­ure, while Aladdin was more about fame’s dark­er under­bel­ly, fil­tered through imag­ined Amer­i­cana and futur­is­tic nos­tal­gia” — and the char­ac­ter need­ed a look to match.

Shot by Bri­an Duffy, described in the San Fran­cis­co Art Exchange vide0 above as “a very eccen­tric and incred­i­ble pho­tog­ra­ph­er,” the Aladdin Sane cov­er was print­ed with a sev­en-col­or sys­tem unprece­dent­ed in the medi­um. (Up to that point, four-col­or had been the stan­dard.) Accord­ing to Trash The­o­ry, Bowie described make­up artist Pierre Laroche’s light­ning bolt “as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of schiz­o­phre­nia, and more specif­i­cal­ly, his split feel­ings about his 1972 Amer­i­can tour.” (The shape came from the logo on a Nation­al Pana­son­ic rice cook­er in Duffy’s stu­dio.) Though the result has become, in the words of cura­tor Vic­to­ria Broack­es, “prob­a­bly the most rec­og­niz­able sym­bol in rock and roll,” Bowie nev­er actu­al­ly assumed this look onstage; ahead of him, there still lay four more decades of changes to go through.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

David Bowie Songs Reimag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: “Space Odd­i­ty,” “Heroes,” “Life on Mars” & More

David Bowie Paper Dolls Recre­ate Some of the Style Icon’s Most Famous Looks

50 Years of Chang­ing David Bowie Hair Styles in One Ani­mat­ed GIF

Lego Video Shows How David Bowie Almost Became “Cob­bler Bob,” Not “Aladdin Sane”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Free Coloring Books from 101 World-Class Libraries & Museums: Download and Color Hundreds of Free Images

in Coloring Books | February 28th, 2022

The free, down­load­able adult col­or­ing books that the New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine solic­its from muse­ums and uni­ver­si­ty and state libraries for its #Col­or­Our­Col­lec­tions cel­e­bra­tion each Feb­ru­ary enliv­en our month far more than any Valen­tine or Pres­i­dents Day sale.

They’re not just a great way to while away winter’s last gasp. They’re also a won­der­ful por­tal for dis­cov­er­ing cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions that have thus­far flown beneath our radar, owing to size, geog­ra­phy, and/or field of study.

It’s up to each insti­tu­tion to deter­mine what — and how much — to include.

Some col­or inside the lines by stick­ing to the sub­ject for which they’re best known. Most take more of a mixed bag approach, fling­ing a vari­ety of fas­ci­nat­ing, unre­lat­ed images at the wall and see­ing what sticks.

Some offer­ings are but a sin­gle page. Oth­ers will have you wear­ing your crayons to nubs.

With 101 par­tic­i­pat­ing orga­ni­za­tions, it can be dif­fi­cult to know where to start.

Maybe we can help…

Is med­i­cine your thing?

If so, you’re in luck. By our reck­on­ing, that’s the most pop­u­lar sub­ject, though it spans a broad range, from line draw­ings of flow­er­ing med­i­c­i­nal plants and a repro­duc­tion of a 1998 Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Anes­the­si­ol­o­gists col­or­ing book for pedi­atric patients, to flayed cadav­ers and har­row­ing sur­gi­cal vignettes from cen­turies gone by.

The pages below come com­pli­ments of Stan­ford Med­ical His­to­ry Center’s Lane Library, McGill University’s Osler Library of the His­to­ry of Med­i­cine, and Truhlsen-Mar­mor Muse­um of the Eye, the only free, pub­lic muse­um ded­i­cat­ed to the fas­ci­nat­ing sci­ence of sight.

Is archi­tec­ture more your area of inter­est?

Gless­ner House, West­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Barcelona have plans for you!

Does col­or­ing make your nos­tal­gic for child­hood?

The South Car­oli­na State Library, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­gary, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Mil­wau­kee have you cov­ered with charm­ing illus­tra­tions from Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales and Won­der Sto­ries, Dr. Dolittle’s Cir­cus, and Heroes of the Kale­vala

Do you have only a few min­utes to spare…or a preschool­er in need of sim­pler graph­ics?

We get it, and so do the Uni­ver­sité Toulouse Jean Jau­rès, the Bib­lio­thèque munic­i­pale de Sois­sons, and the Har­vard Art Muse­ums.

It’s always a joy to see who’s behind the year’s freaki­est image.

This year, our vote goes to the Bib­lio­thèque Mazarine, France’s old­est pub­lic library, but feel free to put forth oth­er can­di­dates in the com­ments sec­tion

Begin your explo­rations of 2022’s col­or­ing books here. See how oth­ers have col­ored these pages by explor­ing the hash­tag #Col­or­Our­Col­lec­tions on social media.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Hear the Uncensored Original Version of “Hurricane,” Bob Dylan’s Protest Song About Jailed Boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (1976)

in History, Music | February 28th, 2022

Through­out his six-decade-long career, Bob Dylan has tak­en up quite a few caus­es in his songs. In the 1960s he was espe­cial­ly giv­en to musi­cal accu­sa­tions of mis­car­riages of jus­tice like “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” which he record­ed less than two months after the assas­si­na­tion of Medgar Evers. But he kept it up even in the 70s, as demon­strat­ed by his 1976 album Desire. “Here comes the sto­ry of the Hur­ri­cane,” he sings on its open­ing track, “the man the author­i­ties came to blame for some­thing that he nev­er done: put in a prison cell, but one time he could have been the cham­pi­on of the world.”

This “Hur­ri­cane” is, of course, for­mer star box­er Rubin Carter, who’d been con­vict­ed for a triple mur­der at a Pater­son, New Jer­sey bar a decade ear­li­er. Today, many know the sto­ry of the Hur­ri­cane from the epony­mous Den­zel Wash­ing­ton-star­ring Hol­ly­wood biopic. By the time that film came out in 1999, Carter had long since been exon­er­at­ed and made a free man, but when Dylan sang of his hav­ing been “false­ly tried,” and “obvi­ous­ly framed,” the man was still serv­ing a dou­ble life sen­tence. It was Carter’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy The Six­teenth Round, writ­ten in prison, that inspired the lit­er­ar­i­ly-mind­ed Dylan to cham­pi­on his release.

Writ­ten with song­writer-psy­chol­o­gist Jacques Levy, Dylan’s col­lab­o­ra­tor through­out Desire, “Hur­ri­cane” still today sounds as if it pulls no punch­es, deliv­er­ing a host of can-he-say-that moments in its sev­en min­utes. But in truth, says Far Our Mag­a­zine, “Dylan’s ini­tial vision for the track had been a lit­tle dif­fer­ent before the lawyers at Colum­bia Records began paw­ing over the lyrics. While many of Dylan’s claims of racial injus­tice are there in plain sight, the men in suits were more con­cerned with the lyrics imply­ing that Alfred Bel­lo and Arthur Dex­ter Bradley (the two lead wit­ness­es of the orig­i­nal case) as hav­ing ‘robbed the bod­ies’ ” of Carter and acquain­tance John Artis’ alleged vic­tims. Giv­en that they had­n’t been accused of steal­ing from any corpses, Colum­bia feared that the impli­ca­tion would draw a law­suit.

Dylan had pre­vi­ous­ly exhib­it­ed a dev­il-may-care atti­tude about such mat­ters in his protest songs: “I should have sued him and put him in jail,” grum­bled an aged William Zantzinger, the real-life attack­er in Dylan’s “The Lone­some Death of Hat­tie Car­roll.” But this time Dylan acqui­esced to the lawyers. Return­ing to the stu­dio with mem­bers of his Rolling Thun­der Revue, he laid down a new ver­sion of “Hur­ri­cane,” cen­sored but musi­cal­ly even hard­er-hit­ting (below), that did make it onto Desire. In the video at the top of the post, you can hear the orig­i­nal, which is longer, slow­er, and more raw in every sense. In the event, the expur­gat­ed “Hur­ri­cane” still got Dylan sued, but by a dif­fer­ent wit­ness: Patri­cia Valen­tine, who lived above the bar where the killings occurred and insist­ed that she did not, in fact, see “the bar­tender in a pool of blood.” Even a future Nobel Prize win­ner, it seems, isn’t safe to take a bit of poet­ic license.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Bob Dylan Per­form “Only A Pawn In Their Game,” His Damn­ing Song About the Mur­der of Medgar Evers, at the 1963 March on Wash­ing­ton

“Tan­gled Up in Blue”: Deci­pher­ing a Bob Dylan Mas­ter­piece

Bob Dylan Releas­es a Cryp­tic 17-Minute Song about the JFK Assas­si­na­tion: Hear a “Mur­der Most Foul”

Bob Dylan Goes Punk on Late Night with David Let­ter­man, Play­ing “Jok­er­man” with the Lati­no Punk Band, the Plugz (1984)

How Bob Dylan Cre­at­ed a Musi­cal & Lit­er­ary World All His Own: Four Video Essays

Pop Songs with Nar­ra­tive: Pret­ty Much Pop (#69) Dis­cuss­es Tunes Rang­ing from Bob Dylan’s “Hur­ri­cane” to “The Pina Cola­da Song” with Songwriter/Author Rod Picott

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Why Russia Invaded Ukraine: A Useful Primer

in Current Affairs, History | February 27th, 2022

Why did Rus­sia launch an unpro­voked war in Ukraine and risk cre­at­ing a wider glob­al con­flict? If you haven’t close­ly tracked the ambi­tions of Vladimir Putin, this primer offers some help­ful con­text. In 30 min­utes, the video cov­ers the geopo­lit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and envi­ron­men­tal back­sto­ry. As you watch the explain­er, it’s worth keep­ing one thing in mind: For years, Euro­pean nations have long resist­ed bring­ing Ukraine into the NATO fold, pre­cise­ly because they knew it would trig­ger a con­flict with Putin. And there had been no recent plan to revis­it the issue. All of this sug­gests that Putin has high­light­ed the NATO threat (amply dis­cussed in the video) because it would pro­vide him a use­ful pre­text for an inva­sion. There was hard­ly an immi­nent threat.

If you’re look­ing for oth­er ratio­nales not cov­ered by this video, you could focus on two rea­sons pro­vid­ed by Hein Goe­mans, a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester: Putin “wants to reestab­lish direct­ly or indi­rect­ly, by annex­a­tion or by pup­pet-regimes, a Russ­ian empire—be it the for­mer USSR or Tsarist Rus­sia. A sec­ond pos­si­ble answer has to do with the role of domes­tic Russ­ian pol­i­tics, which the stan­dard lit­er­a­ture on con­flict takes very seri­ous­ly: Putin has seen what hap­pened in some for­mer Sovi­et suc­ces­sor republics and the for­mer Yugoslavia, sev­er­al of which expe­ri­enced ‘Col­or Rev­o­lu­tions’ and democ­ra­tized. Indeed, it was a Col­or Rev­o­lu­tion in Ukraine in 2014, which Putin mis­char­ac­ter­izes as a mil­i­tary coup. He wants to pre­vent more of these rev­o­lu­tions and pre­vent a demo­c­ra­t­ic encir­clement of coun­tries around him, which could pro­vide a safe haven for Russ­ian dis­si­dents who’d be dan­ger­ous to Putin’s polit­i­cal sur­vival. Both of these goals over­lap in the sense that he is seek­ing regime change, which is a dan­ger­ous game.”

For a deep­er dive into the impe­r­i­al ambi­tions of Putin–his attempt to recon­sti­tute the Russ­ian Empire–read this eye-open­ing inter­view with Fiona Hill.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

West Point Expert Gives Ukraini­ans Advice on Con­duct­ing Effec­tive Urban War­fare Against Russ­ian Troops

Why is Ukraine in Cri­sis?: A Quick Primer For Those Too Embar­rassed to Ask (2014)

Why Putin Wants Alex­ei Naval­ny Dead

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es 

West Point Expert Gives Ukrainians Advice on Conducting Effective Urban Warfare Against Russian Troops

in Current Affairs | February 26th, 2022

John W. Spencer cur­rent­ly serves as the Chair of Urban War­fare Stud­ies at the Mod­ern War Insti­tute at West Point. He’s also Co-Direc­tor of the Urban War­fare Project, and host of the Urban War­fare Project pod­cast. Ergo, he knows some­thing about urban war­fare.

On Twit­ter, he gave advice to civil­ians resis­tors in Ukraine, espe­cial­ly Kyiv, on how to resist the Russ­ian inva­sions. His tweet thread reads as fol­lows:

1. So I’ve been asked what my advice would be to civil­ian resis­tors in Ukri­ane, espe­cial­ly Kyiv. Some­one with no mil­i­tary train­ing but want­i­ng to resist. Here are a few things #Kyiv #Ukraine­Un­der­At­tack :
2. You have the pow­er but you have to fight smart. The urban defense is hell for any sol­dier. It usu­al­ly take 5 attack­ers to 1 defend­er. Rus­sians do not have the num­bers. Turn Kyiv and any urban area lead­ing to Kyiv into a por­cu­pine.
3. Go out and build obsta­cles in the streets! Start with any bridge you can find (they should have been destroyed). Block them with cars, trucks, con­crete, wood, trash, any­thing! Then block any spot in the city where there are tall build­ings on each side. Already tight areas.
4. If it is a street you still need to use. Build a S pat­tern obsta­cle that still slows a vehi­cle down. Think police check point (which you could set up if you want­ed to catch sabo­teurs before mil­i­tary reach your loca­tion)
5. Once you have obsta­cles (nev­er stop build­ing). I real­ly mean thou­sands of barriers/obstacles. You can decid­ed places to fight. Places to shoot from or ambush any sol­dier or vehi­cle that stops or slows down at your obsta­cles.
6. Do NOT stand in the open and shoot or throw any­thing (to include molo­tov cock­tail) at a Russ­ian sol­dier or vehi­cles. Shoot from win­dows, behind cars, around alley­way cor­ners. Build posi­tions (con­crete best) to fire from.
7. You must pre­pare for the Rus­sians to start using artillery to help their troops. Make sure the places you choose to shoot from are strong. If in a build­ing, make holes in the walls so you can shoot from and big­ger ones to move to oth­er rooms or build­ings. You must sur­vive.
8. Yes, use your molo­tov cock­tails. Think about where you will stand to throw (then run). Drop­ping from win­dows above vehi­cles most ide­al. Vehi­cles with­out weapons on top the most vul­ner­a­ble, but if it is armor, choose where to hit.
9. Form into groups. Ide­al­ly 3 to 5 and decid­ed where to shoot at Rus­sians from. You get to decide. Best if coor­di­nat­ed with anoth­er group and using your obsta­cles to slow some­thing and shoot at from con­cealed and pro­tect­ed posi­tions.
10. Again, your sur­vival to fight is impor­tant so think hard about where you will shoot from. Ele­vat­ed posi­tions down long streets. Shoot and run. Ambush­es. Aim for the win­dows and doors of non-armor vehi­cles. Sol­diers in open. One of the great­est fears of a sol­dier is a sniper.
11. You are not a sniper, but you can put fear in their hearts if they think there are snipers every­where. Again take care of your­selves to be able to resist. Drink water. 3 days with­out water and you won’t be able to fight. More lat­er.

Rough Ukrain­ian Trans­la­tion (Cour­tesy of Google Trans­late):

1. Тож мене запитали, що б я порадив цивільним резисторам в Україні, особливо в Києві. Хтось без військової підготовки, але хоче чинити опір. Ось кілька речей #Kyiv #Ukraine­Un­der Attack :
2. У вас є сила, але ви повинні боротися розумно. Міська оборона — це пекло для будь-якого солдата. Зазвичай потрібно 5 нападників на 1 захисника. У росіян немає цифр. Перетворіть Київ і будь-яку міську територію, що веде до Києва, на дикобраза.
3. Виходьте і будуйте перешкоди на вулицях! Почніть з будь-якого мосту, який ви можете знайти (їх слід було знищити). Блокуйте їх автомобілями, вантажівками, бетоном, деревом, сміттям, чим завгодно! Потім заблокуйте будь-яке місце в місті, де з обох боків є високі будівлі. Вже тісні ділянки.
4. Якщо це вулиця, вам все одно потрібно користуватися. Побудуйте перешкоду типу S, яка все ще уповільнює транспортний засіб. Уявіть поліцейський контрольно-пропускний пункт (який ви можете встановити, якщо хочете зловити диверсантів до того, як військові прибудуть до вашого місця)
5. Як тільки у вас є перешкоди (ніколи не припиняйте будувати). Я дійсно маю на увазі тисячі бар’єрів/перешкод. Ви можете визначити місця для боротьби. Місця для стрілянини або засідки будь-якого солдата чи транспортного засобу, які зупиняються або сповільнюються на ваших перешкодах.
6. Do NOT stand in the open and shoot or throw any­thing (to include molo­tov cock­tail) at a Russ­ian sol­dier or vehi­cles. Shoot from win­dows, behind cars, around alley­way cor­ners. Build posi­tions (con­crete best) to fire from.
7. Ви повинні підготуватися до того, що росіяни почнуть використовувати артилерію для допомоги своїм військам. Переконайтеся, що місця, з яких ви обираєте стріляти, є міцними. Якщо в будівлі, зробіть отвори в стінах, щоб ви могли стріляти з більших, щоб переміститися в інші кімнати або будівлі. Ви повинні вижити.
8. Так, використовуйте свої коктейлі Молотова. Подумайте, куди ви будете стояти, щоб кинути (тоді бігти). Найідеальнішим варіантом є падіння з вікон над транспортними засобами. Транспорт без зброї зверху найбільш вразливий, але якщо це броня, вибирайте, куди вдарити.
9. Об’єднайтеся в групи. В ідеалі 3 до 5 і вирішив, звідки стріляти в росіян. Вам вирішувати. Найкраще, якщо координуватись з іншою групою та використовувати свої перешкоди, щоб уповільнити щось і стріляти з прихованих і захищених позицій.
10. Знову ж таки, ваше виживання для боротьби важливе, тому добре подумайте, звідки ви будете стріляти. Піднесені позиції на довгих вулицях. Стріляй і бігай. Засідки. Націлюйтеся на вікна та двері неброньованих транспортних засобів. Солдати відкрито. Один з найбільших страхів солдата — снайпер.
11. Ви не снайпер, але можете вселити в їхні серця страх, якщо вони думають, що снайпери всюди. Знову подбайте про себе, щоб мати можливість протистояти. Пити воду. 3 дні без води і ти не зможеш битися. Ще пізніше.

Are You a Fascist?: Take Theodor Adorno’s Authoritarian Personality Test Created to Combat Fascism (1947)

in History, Politics | February 25th, 2022

A man of var­i­ous accom­plish­ments, Theodor Adorno is per­haps most wide­ly known as the very image of the mid­cen­tu­ry Euro­pean intel­lec­tu­al in exile. After his Jew­ish back­ground got him forced out of Nazi Ger­many, he spent fif­teen years in Eng­land and the Unit­ed States. Despite his geo­graph­i­cal dis­tance from the trou­bles of the Con­ti­nent — and even after the end of the Sec­ond World War — he under­stand­ably remained very much con­cerned with the nature of not just Hitler him­self but all those who sup­port­ed him. This led to such stud­ies as his 1947 essay “Wag­n­er, Niet­zsche and Hitler” as well as (in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Berke­ley researchers Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levin­son, and Nevitt San­ford) the 1950 book The Author­i­tar­i­an Per­son­al­i­ty.

The Author­i­tar­i­an Per­son­al­i­ty’s best-known tool to diag­nose the tit­u­lar per­son­al and social con­di­tion is a quan­ti­ta­tive sys­tem called the “Cal­i­for­nia F‑scale” — the F stands for fas­cism — which pro­duces a score based on a sub­jec­t’s response to a set of propo­si­tions. “To cre­ate a per­son­al­i­ty test that actu­al­ly revealed latent author­i­tar­i­an­ism, the researchers had to give up on the idea that there’s a strong link between anti-Semi­tism and author­i­tar­i­an­ism,” writes Ars Tech­ni­ca’s Annalee Newitz. “Though their expe­ri­ences with the Holo­caust sug­gest­ed a causal con­nec­tion between hatred of Jews and the rise of fas­cism, it turned out that peo­ple with author­i­tar­i­an ten­den­cies were more accu­rate­ly described as eth­no­cen­tric.”

These would-be author­i­tar­i­ans also, as Adorno and his col­lab­o­ra­tors’ research found, “tend­ed to dis­trust sci­ence and strong­ly dis­liked the idea of using imag­i­na­tion to solve prob­lems. They pre­ferred to stick to tried-and-true tra­di­tion­al meth­ods of orga­niz­ing soci­ety.” Oth­er ten­den­cies includ­ed “super­sti­tion, aggres­sion, cyn­i­cism, con­ser­vatism, and an inor­di­nate inter­est in the pri­vate sex lives of oth­ers.” All these find­ings informed an F‑scale test which con­sist­ed of the state­ments below. For each state­ment, par­tic­i­pants had to select one of the fol­low­ing options : “Dis­agree Strong­ly,” “Dis­agree Most­ly,” “Dis­agree Some­what,” “Agree Some­what,” “Agree,” or “MostlyA­gree.”

1. Obe­di­ence and respect for author­i­ty are the most impor­tant virtues chil­dren should learn.
2. A per­son who has bad man­ners, habits, and breed­ing can hard­ly expect to get along with decent peo­ple.
3. If peo­ple would talk less and work more, every­body would be bet­ter off.
4. The busi­ness man and the man­u­fac­tur­er are much more impor­tant to soci­ety than the artist and the pro­fes­sor.
5. Sci­ence has its place, but there are many impor­tant things that can nev­er be under­stood by the human mind.
6. Every per­son should have com­plete faith in some super­nat­ur­al pow­er whose deci­sions he obeys with­out ques­tion.
7. Young peo­ple some­times get rebel­lious ideas, but as they grow up they ought to get over them and set­tle down.
8. What this coun­try needs most, more than laws and polit­i­cal pro­grams, is a few coura­geous, tire­less, devot­ed lead­ers in whom the peo­ple can put their faith.
9. No sane, nor­mal, decent per­son could ever think of hurt­ing a close friend or rel­a­tive.
10. Nobody ever learned any­thing real­ly impor­tant except through suf­fer­ing.
11. What the youth needs most is strict dis­ci­pline, rugged deter­mi­na­tion, and the will to work and fight for fam­i­ly and coun­try.
12. An insult to our hon­or should always be pun­ished.
13. Sex crimes, such as rape and attacks on chil­dren, deserve more than mere impris­on­ment; such crim­i­nals ought to be pub­licly whipped, or worse.
14. There is hard­ly any­thing low­er than a per­son who does not feel a great love, grat­i­tude, and respect for his par­ents.
15. Most of our social prob­lems would be solved if we could some­how get rid of the immoral, crooked, and fee­ble­mind­ed peo­ple.
16. Homo­sex­u­als are hard­ly bet­ter than crim­i­nals and ought to be severe­ly pun­ished.
17. When a per­son has a prob­lem or wor­ry, it is best for him not to think about it, but to keep busy with more cheer­ful things.
18. Nowa­days more and more peo­ple are pry­ing into mat­ters that should remain per­son­al and pri­vate.
19. Some peo­ple are born with an urge to jump from high places.
20. Peo­ple can be divid­ed into two dis­tinct class­es: the weak and the strong.
21. Some day it will prob­a­bly be shown that astrol­o­gy can explain a lot of things.
22. Wars and social trou­bles may some­day be end­ed by an earth­quake or flood that will destroy the whole world.
23. No weak­ness or dif­fi­cul­ty can hold us back if we have enough will pow­er.
24. It is best to use some pre­war author­i­ties in Ger­many to keep order and pre­vent chaos.
25. Most peo­ple don’t real­ize how much our lives are con­trolled by plots hatched in secret places.
26. Human nature being what it is, there will always be war and con­flict.
27. Famil­iar­i­ty breeds con­tempt.
28. Nowa­days when so many dif­fer­ent kinds of peo­ple move around and mix togeth­er so much, a per­son has to pro­tect him­self espe­cial­ly care­ful­ly against catch­ing an infec­tion or dis­ease from them.
29. The wild sex life of the old Greeks and Romans was tame com­pared to some of the goings-on in this coun­try, even in places where peo­ple might least expect it.
30. The true Amer­i­can way of life is dis­ap­pear­ing so fast that force may be nec­es­sary to pre­serve it.

You can take the test your­self here. But don’t take it too seri­ous­ly: the F‑scale “has been heav­i­ly crit­i­cized by many psy­chol­o­gists because it is a bet­ter indi­ca­tor of con­ser­vatism, an old-fash­ioned out­look, and a ten­den­cy to say ‘yes’ to any­thing rather than as a mea­sure of author­i­tar­i­an­ism,” write Fer­di­nand A. Gul and John J. Ray in their 1989 paper “Pit­falls in Using the F Scale to Mea­sure Author­i­tar­i­an­ism in Account­ing Research.” That aside, any rea­son­ably intel­li­gent sub­ject can eas­i­ly fig­ure out the motives of the test itself. Nev­er­the­less, as Giz­mod­o’s Esther Inglis-Arkell writes, it offers an occa­sion to con­sid­er whether “you’re super­sti­tious, con­formist, or any oth­er awful thing that will cause you to go out one morn­ing and annex some­thing” — no less a con­cern now, it seems, than it was in Adorno’s day.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Theodor Adorno & His Cri­tique of Mod­ern Cap­i­tal­ism

Theodor Adorno’s Rad­i­cal Cri­tique of Joan Baez and the Music of the Viet­nam War Protest Move­ment

Hear Theodor Adorno’s Avant-Garde Musi­cal Com­po­si­tions

Theodor Adorno’s Phi­los­o­phy of Punc­tu­a­tion

Toni Mor­ri­son Lists the 10 Steps That Lead Coun­tries to Fas­cism (1995)

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.