A busy weekend in the past and a packed day ahead of me, so we’ll get caught up tomorrow. For now, some links I’ve collected in recent weeks.
First, a rather chilling account by a Ukrainian from the front lines of the war with Russia.
I haven’t had a chance to personally kill any Russians. They say it’s good luck to kill someone in front of you. But in this war you rarely see the enemy. If you’re stationed in a trench for a long time, you’ll probably see Russians. But mostly it’s bombs and shelling and drones. I was involved in one operation to catch a Russian, and he was alive and uninjured so I had a conversation with him. I gave him tea and treated him as a human being. I saw in front of me not an enemy, just a poor guy. We are all humans. We’re not fighting against orcs. We’re fighting people who look like us, who mostly speak the same language, who were our friends or even family before. They have their own truth and we have our truth.
The Diary of a Ukrainian Filmmaker-Turned-Soldier
Somewhat in the same vein is this piece, which examines declassified documents from the Soviet archives regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis. As the authors point out, in the lead-up to the Ukrainian war, Vladimir Putin made similar errors to those Nikita Khrushchev made in 1962. Fortunately, as the quote below shoes, Khrushchev eventually regained his sanity. I’m not sure we can be as hopeful about Russia’s current leadership.
“History tells us that in order to stop a conflict, one should begin not by exploring the reasons why it happened but by pursuing a cease-fire,” he explained to that Indian visitor on October 26. He added, “What’s important is not to cry for the dead or to avenge them, but to save those who might die if the conflict continues.”
Continuing with our Russian theme…A few times each year I think about going back and re-watching the entire run of The Americans. I always end up looking at my list of all the other crap I need to watch and tell myself to revisit the idea in a few months.
The fifth anniversary of the show’s wonderful finale just passed. The Ringer brought together its show runners, director, and actors to discuss one of the best finales ever filmed.
Keri Russell (Elizabeth Jennings):So emotionally devastating. It really shocked me.
Matthew Rhys (Philip Jennings):She was texting me, going, “Text me when you read it. Text me!”
Noah Emmerich (Stan Beeman):I just read it, and I didn’t skip ahead to see my stuff. I wanted to really experience the story in real time, and it just swept me up.
Holly Taylor (Paige Jennings):I was blown away. I loved it.
Keidrich Sellati (Henry Jennings):I couldn’t even comprehend it. I read it, and I sat there staring at it for 15 minutes, and then I reread it because I was like, “No way. What?” I guess I’m a crier. I started bawling.
With or Without You: The Oral History of the ‘Americans’ Finale
As has happened way too often lately, The Onion responds to the events of the day best.
“I don’t even want to be a woman—I just want to win at swimming. Imagine how I’ll laugh with glee up there on the winners’ podium, knowing that all I had to do was lie about my gender identity issues through months or years of psychiatry sessions, take a shitload of androgen blockers, go to speech therapy, and recover from multiple invasive surgeries!
This lady is a badass.
Competitors sail small boats, navigate with paper charts and sextant, catch rain for water, hand-write their logs, communicate by radio, and cannot accept outside assistance.
Kirsten Neuschäfer Wins the Golden Globe Sailing Race, Dubbed a Voyage for Mad Men
Why am I not surprised that people have been upset for 12 years about a CARTOON CHARACTER not being the white guy they were used to? People know Spider-Man isn’t real, right?
Across the Spider-Verse’s greatest feat is the way it takes Spider-Man’s fandom to task
Finally, a fantastic profile of Bryan Cranston. This anecdote cracked me up. This would have been in the late ‘70s, which seems about right.
In his early 20s, Cranston took a two-year motorcycle trip with his brother, during which he had the epiphany that he wanted to be an actor and not a law enforcement official, the career that he’d been studying for. While planning their itineraries, Cranston triangulated the locations of women he and his brother had already hooked up with to create routes where they’d most likely encounter someone who’d give them a free place to stay.