Author: Joey deVilla

Categories
America The Current Situation

Contrary to what his dumbest son says, Donald Trump is not a strong person

Before you buy into yesterday’s statement by Eric Trump — the dumbest of Donald Trump’s sons (and he’s up against some stiff competition) — that Putin’s KGB training allowed him to see that Trump was a strong person…

…consider for a moment these recent headlines of Trump’s inability to criticize Putin in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine:

Eric Trump is right, but not in the way he thinks. Putin did read Trump correctly, but Putin’s assessment wasn’t that Trump was a string person, but quite manifestly the opposite. Putin knew he was dealing with someone who was half-man, half-marshmallow.

Just look at the differences in their body language at the 2018 summit in Helsinki, where he chose to listen to Putin over the FBI about Russian election interference:

Trump has said far worse things about allies than he has about dictators. He admires dictators, in that way that weak people admire brutality, in the hope that maybe one day, they’ll get to be the oppressor. That’s not strength at all.

Also worth reading: A whole lot of links on Trump, Putin, Russia, and Ukraine

Categories
The Current Situation

Ukrainian pianist plays the piano in her bombed-out home one last time

In the video above, Irina Maniukhina, a professional pianist in Bila Tserkva, a town 80 km (50 miles) south of Kyiv, said goodbye to her home by playing her piano before fleeing from further attacks.

I can’t blame her — if it were me, I’d also play it one last time, too. Her playing is quite good, and she’s not playing easy pieces, either.

A bomb had landed about 10 meters (about 30 feet) from the house, which was still standing but strewn with debris. With the notable exception of one of its “G” keys, the piano seems undamaged and only a little scuffed.

Maniukhina started by playing the first few bars of Schubert’s Impromptu Op. 90 No. 2, followed by Chopin’s Etude Op. 25 No. 1.

(It should be noted that Chopin fled Poland shortly before the November Uprising, a rebellion against the Imperial Russia.)

Her daughter Karina recorded the video and shared it on TikTok, where she captioned it with “Do not judge, my mother is a professional pianist and decided to play to let go of this case.”

As her mother played, Karina walked through the house to record the destruction. Here are some stills from that portion of the video:

Here’s a report that includes quotes from Karina: Ukrainian mum defiantly plays piano to ‘say goodbye’ to bombed home in heartbreaking clip.

An excerpt:

Karina said that her mother wanted to play to help forget about the war.

She said: “It wasn’t a sad moment. My mother just wanted to let go of unnecessary thoughts, and I remembered events in our house with a smile.

“She wanted to forget about the war and her worries for our safety. She’s been playing all her life and she even graduated as a pianist.

“Since there was a lot of ash and dust in the keys and everyone was in a state of shock, she could not play for a long time.”

Categories
The More You Know...

A lesson from pie on Pi Day

Pumpkin pie with two slices taken from it: a proper slice (point at the center) and a “wrong” slice (taken from the middle).

Happy Pi Day!

Today is March 14th, which is referred to in the North American sector of the internet as “Pi Day”, since the date can be expressed as 3/14 in U.S. calendar notation. Since the Greek letter π is pronounced like “pie” in English, it’s become an informal tradition to celebrate the day by eating pie.

Note the terrible slices taken from the pies in this post’s photos. There’s a lesson in them, as shown below:

Pumpkin pie with a slice taken from its middle.

Here’s the text from the second photo:

This should be easy to understand how freedoms work

This person took his part, but it affected others negatively. He exercise his freedom, but with an injustice to others. Freedoms can’t be exercised as every individual wants without looking at injustices to others. Justice disappears when you harm others. An example of bad exercise of individual freedom.

Categories
funny Geek

The “Distracted Boyfriend” meme, wookiee edition

Still not tired of it yet.

Thanks to Alistair Morton for the find!

Categories
funny The Current Situation

Now THAT’s branding!

Categories
funny

Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug

Comic: “I can’t believe I got killed by the most easily avoidable enemy in the entire game.”
Tap to view at full size.
Categories
The Current Situation

Happy Wednesday — I hope yours is going better than Stepan’s!

This is Stepan, a cat with an amusing Instagram account (@loveyoustepan). Under normal circumstances, he lives in Kharkiv, Ukraine.

Here’s Stepan’s most recent post:

Мы живы! 🇺🇦❤️ Люди, остановите войну! Российская армия продолжает бомбить мирное население Украины! #stopwar
#ukraine #uaразом #kharkov мой город😭😭💔

Translation (courtesy of Google Translate):
We are alive! 🇺🇦❤️ People, stop the war! The Russian army continues to bomb the civilian population of Ukraine! #stopwar
#ukraine # uarazom #kharkov my city😭😭💔

I’ll close with a couple more photos. Click them to see the originals: