| April 2012 |
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Twitter is too easy to make fun of. It’s full of spam, memes that get old in roughly half an hour, and celebrities having spectacular meltdowns.
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I got one of those cultural stories today that reminded me of my childhood and brought back memories of building sandcastles on the beach in the United States.
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Last week, Muscovites got treated to a peculiar sight: a huge green cloud over the city. Because I grew up in North Carolina, my immediate thought upon seeing it (I was jogging to the House of Journalists at the time, running late for a film screening) was “tornado.”
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Most Internet users are familiar with Godwin’s law - an observation, made all the way back in 1990 by author and lawyer Mike Godwin, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches.”
I climbed on the podium for journalists and looked around. In the beautiful spring weather, the broad street in front of the Christ the Savior Cathedral was filled with people as far as one could see. There were thousands, tens of thousands, many more than the expected 25,000.
In my news story on the Dzhigurda debacle (to re-cap: in a new viral video, a Russian singer clashed with a guy who was trying to skip in line at the notoriously slow and inefficient Federal Migration Service. What the singer failed to realize that for people who register online, using a government portal called Gosuslugi means not having to wait in line. Hilarity ensued. “Chewbacca” was used as an insult.), I focused on the fact that it’s ignorance of what e-government is and how it works that drives such incidents.
I just read an “analysis” of what Russia and Russians are like by an unnamed Canadian here in Moscow. He made a list of 25 “facts” for everyone so they “understand” Russia…It should be entitled: “How Stereotypes are Created”…
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Yes, it’s Friday the 13th and that brings up thoughts of all those awful horror movies with the same name…but I could really use a good snooze even if it entails a nightmare or two…
Technology has a way of exposing social problems - and the social problem I want to talk about today is abandoned, mentally ill elderly people.
Late in the evening, as I was busy trying to keep a cranky baby happy while simultaneously catching up on the last season of “The Walking Dead” (what do babies have to do with zombies? Well, both are relentless, for a start), the long-awaited e-mail announcement from Instagram arrived.
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RIA Novosti would like to introduce to its readers its group of bloggers who will be writing on topical events in Russia and beyond. Feel free to join in their discussions and share your views on the topics they will be covering, from IT and religion to everyday life and entertainment. The number of bloggers, a mix of ex-pats and Russians alike, will be increasing with time as interests grow in finding out more in-depth information on specific topics.
Again, let’s welcome them and hope that you will also become actively involved by sending in your comments, questions and suggestions.