The escapist urge to build cities from scratch is nothing new. At the turn of the 19th century, the Garden City movement saw a generation of bucolic communities planned in reaction to the grime and overcrowding of rapidly industrialising cities, driven by a powerful campaign for social reform. Half a century later, the New Town movement developed these ideas, promising a brave new world of modern, self-sufficient municipalities rising from the ruins of the second world war, and focused on building an inclusive, democratic society.

Now, in the first decades of a new millennium, a surge in global population growth and a sense of impending environmental armageddon have spurred an epidemic of planned cities of a very different kind. This time they are being conceived by private multinational corporations as gilt-edged gated communities and tax-exempt free-trade hubs, each branded as the ultimate techno-eco-utopia.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jul/08/the-next-era-of-human-progress-what-lies-behind-the-global-new-cities-epidemic

A Russian teacher allegedly killed a friend in a drunken argument over literary genres, investigators have said.

The pair engaged in an animated discussion on the merits of poetry over prose during a drinking session, which soon escalated into a lethal brawl, after the suspect stabbed his friend insisting that poetry was superior.

In a statement, federal police in the Russian region of Sverdlovsk said: "The host insisted that real literature is prose, while his guest, a former teacher, argued for poetry.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russian-teacher-kills-friend-in-heated-poetry-versus-prose-argument-9095784.html

Popular wisdom tells us that all illicit drug users teeter on the brink of collapse. The media depicts them as scavengers in a desperate, perpetual search for the next fix — liars and thieves who are incapable of maintaining steady work and families. Drugs are just too addictive, people say. No matter how strong you think you are, they will get you in the end. But the evidence tells a very different story.

https://filtermag.org/2018/09/25/the-invisible-majority-people-whose-drug-use-is-not-problematic/amp/

It took 400,000 Nasa employees and contractors to put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon in 1969 – but only one man to spread the idea that it was all a hoax. His name was Bill Kaysing.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jul/10/one-giant-lie-why-so-many-people-still-think-the-moon-landings-were-faked

General Alexandre de Beauharnais decided to put Tarrare's abilities to military use, and he was employed as a courier by the French army, with the intention that he would swallow documents, pass through enemy lines, and recover them from his stool once safely at his destination.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarrare

Name: Begpackers.

Age: Young.

Appearance: Grubby, down on their luck, not from round here.

Do you mean backpackers? They’re often rather grubby. 

Not quite. Begpackers are western backpackers, most often travelling in south-east Asia, who beg for charity from the locals.

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/shortcuts/2019/jul/22/young-entitled-and-over-there-the-rise-of-the-begpacker

In the cultural realm, such nostalgia often fastens onto Soviet architecture: the Brutalist-style concrete housing blocks, the grandly ostentatious government buildings, the vast public spaces festooned with heroic statuary. Although widely mocked, this triumphalist architecture does have its defenders. 

https://www.wired.com/story/soviet-architecture-photo-gallery/

“Hiroshima,” John Hersey’s landmark 1946 report on the bombing and its aftermath:

A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb, and these six were among the survivors. They still wonder why they lived when so many others died. Each of them counts many small items of chance or volition—a step taken in time, a decision to go indoors, catching one streetcar instead of the next—that spared him. And now each knows that in the act of survival he lived a dozen lives and saw more death than he ever thought he would see. At the time, none of them knew anything.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima

https://www.noviplamen.net/prevodi/africke-drzave-i-placanje-kolonijalne-takse-francuskoj/

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/hes-still-neutral/ 

jedan dobar podcast 

Lepše je kad uz link stavimo par rečenica teksta, da bude jasnije o čemu se radi  

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/08/ends-visa-free-entry-visitors-north-korea-190806055941943.html

The US allows citizens of 38 countries - including South Korea, Japan and France - to enter for up to 90 days without a visa under a waiver programme.

But visitors who have travelled to eight countries, including North Korea, since March 1, 2011, are "no longer eligible", as details posted on the US Customs and Border Protection website showed on Monday.

3 hours ago, Lazar said:

Lepše je kad uz link stavimo par rečenica teksta, da bude jasnije o čemu se radi  

Znam i slažem se, bila sam lenja da kuckam na telefonu, a htela sam da podelim da ne zaboravim posle  

Radi se o čoveku iz Oklanda koga je nerviralo što ljudi ostavljaju smeće u neposrednoj blizini njegove kuće, na mestu koje nije predviđeno za to, pa je odlučio da na tom mestu postavi statuu Bude. Nije mogao ni da nasluti šta će ovaj potez izazvati. 

Edited August 9, 20195 yr by golosina

https://www.whatsonweibo.com/how-the-hong-kong-protests-are-discussed-on-chinese-social-media/

Although discussions on the Hong Kong protests were initially silenced on Chinese social media, the demonstrations are now trending all over Weibo, with state media propagating hashtags and illustrations in favor of Hong Kong government and in support of the Hong Kong Police Force.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/russia-facebook-race/542796/

According to a spate of recent reports, accounts tied to the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency—a Russian “troll factory”— used social media and Google during the 2016 electoral campaign to deepen political and racial tensions in the United States. The trolls, according to an interviewwith the Russian TV network TV Rain, were directed to focus their tweets and comments on socially divisive issues, like guns. But another consistent theme has been Russian trolls focusing on issues of race. Some of the Russian ads placed on Facebook apparently targeted Ferguson and Baltimore, which were rocked by protests after police killings of unarmed black men; another showed a black woman firing a rifle. Other ads played on fears of illegal immigrants and Muslims, and groups like Black Lives Matter.

Govor Fidela Kastra na konferenciji Ujedinjenih Nacija 1992:

 

Guru Hargobind built the Akal Takhat (supreme seat) facing the Harmandir Sahib, and thus began a new era in Sikhism. The takhat became a converging point for people from all walks of life—from the common man to elite, from a banker to a lender, from a farmer to a trader, from a scholar to an illiterate—who came to seek advice, share their grievances, and get clarifications about their faith. What may have appeared to have been a simple brick-laid platform became the seat of the temporal authority for the Sikhs.

https://qz.com/india/1700621/the-akal-takht-and-the-history-of-sikhism-in-india/

In a desert in eastern Sudan, along the banks of the Nile River, lies a collection of nearly 200 ancient pyramids—many of them tombs of the kings and queens of the Meroitic Kingdom which ruled the area for more than 900 years. The Meroë pyramids, smaller than their Egyptian cousins, are considered Nubian pyramids, with narrow bases and steep angles on the sides, built between 2,700 and 2,300 years ago, with decorative elements from the cultures of Pharaonic Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Though the pyramids are one of the main attractions for Sudan's tourists, the local tourism industry has been devastated by a series of economic sanctions imposed by various Western nations throughout the course of the country's civil war and the conflict in Darfur. According to reports, Sudan now receives fewer than 15,000 tourists per year, compared to past estimates of as many as 150,000.

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2015/05/the-forgotten-pyramids-of-meroe/392312/

In 1994, Cesare Marchetti, an Italian physicist, described an idea that has come to be known as the Marchetti Constant. In general, he declared, people have always been willing to commute for about a half-hour, one way, from their homes each day.

This principle has profound implications for urban life. The value of land is governed by its accessibility—which is to say, by the reasonable speed of transport to reach it.

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/08/commute-time-city-size-transportation-urban-planning-history/597055/

Staro tri godine ali dobra priča

https://www.index.hr/vijesti/clanak/indexov-reporter-prognan-iz-rusije-molio-sam-da-me-osude/938141.aspx

REPORTAŽA IZ RUSIJE Indexovog novinara uhapsili pa prognali

Pročitah još onomad, a sad ponovo. Slatko sam se nasmejao  

"Gdje je načelnik?", pita Aleksej.
"Nemam pojma. Ne pratim svaki njegov korak", odgovara nam i zalupi vrata. 

Ovakvi komentari su mi uvek bili najzabavnija stvar u Rusiji. Uvek sam se pitao odakle im ta potreba da budu toliko neprijatni. Sećam se kad sam prelazio vozom iz Rusije u Kazahstan, bila je noć, svi putnici su spavali, kazahstanski policajac je ušao u voz i pitao provodnicu zašto svi spavaju, a ona je odgovorila: "Zato što je noć." Onda ju je pitao "Pa dobro, zašto ih niste probudili na granici?" A ona je odgovorila: "Zato što nisam budilnik."

 zapravo ta druga anegdota je super stav u zivotu. a nisu svi putnici spavali ocigledno☺️

Једино што ми пада на памет је, ако је неко гледао прастари филм "Сервисна станица" (или беше серија), кад руководилац угоститељског објекта тера раднике да буду љубазни према гостима а они полуде на саму идеју, "где је наше радничко достојанство"... бити љубазан је изгледа испод части

Код нас, а изгледа и у Русији, људи имају неку чудну велику потребу да потврде своју вредност тако што ће бити дрски, груби, безобразни... занимљива појава... не замерите ако лупам... 

Edited September 18, 20195 yr by Relja

Kod nas su bezobrazni uglavnom ako rade u državnoj službi  Inače su relativno ljubazni, iako ne preterano zainteresovani.

‘They are barbaric’: Turkey prepares to flood 12,000-year-old city to build dam

The ancient settlement of Hasankeyf will soon be submerged as part of a controversial dam project – despite residents’ protests

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/sep/12/they-are-barbaric-turkey-prepares-to-flood-12000-year-old-city-to-build-dam