I don’t have a lot of time this week, so here’s Redbone performed by Carl Wheezer and Chandelier performed by Toad.

I’m gonna talk about the Russian language again, because none of you speak it and thus none of you can correct me when I’m wrong.

The following post was written before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The material it covers is still relevant. Слава Україні. Russian doesn’t have a letter h. The closest it has is х, which is generally rendered in English as “kh.” This leads to a problem: how do you render English words with the letter h in Russian?

When it comes to studying disability on university campuses, it helps to understand how everything is connected, and how principles of universal design can support students with and without disabilities. It helps to understand how university institutions and infrastructure prop up ableism. It helps to recognize that offices like the Moses Center prevent students from getting consistent help by requiring students to reapply for accommodations every year, accommodations that are often uncertain or ignored by faculty. It helps to know that tenured white male faculty are the least likely to grant accommodations to students with disabilities, while nontenured women of color are the most likely to grant them, so when you’re trying to persuade a white man that you really need help, you’re going to have to work even harder than normal.

Got a weird saga for you today. Please CONSUME THIS SONG MEDIA, preferably without reading the YouTube comments. Interesting song, right? The original is by a Romanian group, the Blaxy Girls. This remixed version of that song opens with a sample of Beijing opera; specifically, this piece. The speed at which it is recited, however, has led many to call it Chinese rap; for whatever reason, it is then often associated with the album cover of MC Jin’s “The Rest Is History.” YouTube’s recommendation algorithm often pairs that with this entirely unrelated song. I’d again recommend avoiding reading the comments, again for no real reason. What was the point of all this? What did we learn? Nothing. Less than nothing. Just the way I like it.

I’ve never met anyone named Bob from my generation. Met a few Roberts, but no Bobs. Bob was once an incredibly popular name, but it has really died out in recent years. In some ways, that’s kind of a tragedy. Here’s part 1 of an excellent 2-part video by Jon Bois about why we should lament the death of Bob, focusing on the contributions of the Bobs to sports. I’m not much of a sports fan, but Jon Bois has a way of making sports interesting even to non-fans like me.

Hate crimes against Asian people in the U.S. have been on the rise for the past year, and while the cause of this surge is hard to determine, I would guess pervasive racism has something to do with it. Maybe. One particularly annoying racist trope applied to people from all across Asia is the idea that Asian people swap their “l” and “r” sounds. For a good explanation of the intricacies of the English “l” and “r,” and the problems with assuming everyone from Asia does this, here’s a video.

Here’s some random stuff, because I’m low on time! Did you know that Gerard de Nerval had a pet lobster he walked, using a silk ribbon on a leash? Did you know that if you earn less than $69,000 per year, you can file your taxes online, for free, using a lot of well-known tax filing websites and applications? Did you also know that tax filing websites, like TurboTax, have deliberately altered their Google search results to hide that fact from you? Did you know that flea circuses are a real thing?

That’s all the procedural stuff out of the way and I’m kind of low on time this week, so here’s some cool science or something, I don’t even know anymore. You like explosions and crap right? Well here are some fun chemistry experiments designed to look cool to science-illiterate luddites like us.

Believe it or not, sometimes libertarians have bad ideas. Shocking, right? One of those bad ideas was the Free State Project. The plan was, tens of thousands of libertarians would move to New Hampshire together and effectively take over the state’s politics. They started small, aiming to transform the town of Grafton. As plans go, it was certainly one of them. Unfortunately for them, and perhaps fortunately for the State of New Hampshire, they were foiled by a rogue bear. Actually, make that several bears.

[Insert segue if you feel like it] anyway, here are some анекдоты, or Soviet jokes. Humor develops in interesting ways under totalitarian regimes; Stalinism in particular led to some excellent gallows humor. An off-color joke could earn a lengthy prison sentence, so that punchline had better be worth it. Some reports state that upwards of 200,000 people were sent to the labor camps for telling jokes during Stalin’s rule (see this dissertation, page 18 of the PDF [page 8 of the actual dissertation]). Some examples:

Seeing things is overrated, I think, given how many things suck to look at. Some people choose not to see things for a short period of time as a challenge. Here are three videos of people doing so, but for video games, because of course that’s what I’m talking about. First, the first ever 100% FC of Through the Fire and Flames played blindfolded; the history of blindfolded Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out for the NES; and finally, completing Super Mario 64 blindfolded in 40 minutes.

P’ansori is a Korean folk music tradition consisting of just a singer and a drummer, performing for up to 8 hours (but usually just 3 to 6 hours). It’s similar to opera in some ways, particularly the focus on storytelling, but with a sharp contrast in terms of the singers’ voices. P’ansori singers are prized for their rough, raspy voices, which they win through incredibly intense training that is said to result in bleeding vocal cords (you can read about that training here, pages 98 to 100; in short, p’ansori singers try to drown out waterfalls). In addition, p’ansori singers improvise based on the text of the story they are singing from the canon of p’ansori songs; as a result, different singers have very different approaches to performing the same story. I should probably stop writing about this and just show you a video of p’ansori.

Did you know LEGO™ is responsible for several bands? The Danish band Cryoshell started off making songs for the LEGO™ Bionicle™ movies, including the fourth Bionicle™ movie, BIONICLE™: The Legend Reborn. The trailer and credits for The Legend Reborn featured Cryoshell’s Bye Bye Babylon, one of the better songs to be included in Bionicle™ movie end credits. Perhaps the best part is that the music video for Bye Bye Babylon contains the actual band, rather than the Bionicles™ the song was made for. Presumably, this sparked so much indignation that it prompted a fan to make their own music video containing both the band and scenes from the trailer featuring Mata Nui, the star of The Legend Reborn. Here it is. If for some reason you feel like reading about the expansive plot of the Bionicle™ universe, 1. you’re a fool, and 2. sadly, the Wikipedia page had the plot section almost entirely removed in early March 2020. Lucky for us, the internet archive preserved it. Fun tangent: I know for a fact that one of the writers for Bionicle™ contributed to the Bionicle™ Wikipedia page. I know this because they left a comment in the talk section saying they should get more credit for their work. I love Wikipedia.

In an interview with John Oliver, Stephen Hawking paraphrased the following story to warn about the dangers of AI:

Today is January 25th, famous as the birthday of that great Russian we all know and love, say it with me: Vladimir Vysotsky. What, who did you think I was gonna say?

Today’s email is about medieval bloodsports (except for bull-baiting, which gets its own email). Let’s take a quick trip down memory lane to look at some of the best bloodsports Europe had to offer. There’s that crowd favorite, fox tossing, in which foxes and other small animals were thrown onto a piece of fabric, which was then stretched taut, launching them high into the air. The sport was enjoyed by Kings and Emperors, as well as every other bored, blood-crazed lunatic.

Hope you’re all finding fun things to do over break. Me, I spent the day watching all of Man Like Mobeen and eating leftovers. I’m really thriving, living my best life. Oh, speaking of thriving, the Cleveland Browns made history by winning a playoff game! It’s the first time they’ve ever done so (since the expansion etc etc). This video will have to be updated, I suppose.

Because it was Christmas when I wrote this part of the email, I am legally obligated by my settlement with the Kingdom of Sweden to mention the Gävle Goat, and to promise not to burn it down again. I promise, but make no allowances for others. Vår dag kommer.

Dear Eligible Voters of the Town of Woodbury, Orange County, NY,

I’m gonna blather on about comics now, because I am my father’s son. Comics are quite good, actually, especially now. There are more talented writers than ever, and we’re starting to see more than just the same boring men writing comics. There are contemporary comics dealing with issues of identity, belonging, loss, hatred, and love, to the point where the medium can deliver stories of real value (and if you want to read some of those comics, consider taking Expressive Cultures: The Graphic Novel).

Hello, <NAME_HERE>! We’re so pleased to invite you to Quiz Bowl Over Break! This month-and-a-half-long event features weekly Quiz Bowl practices, as well as daily performances from Quiz Bowl artist-in-residence Yuri Omeltchenko! Here’s the full itinerary:

LET’S SAY, HYPOTHETICALLY, SOMEONE MURDERS SOMEONE ELSE IN ANTARCTICA’S MCMURDO STATION AT 4:17 PM ON JANUARY 28TH 2021. WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO THAT HYPOTHETICAL MURDERER? IF THAT MURDERER WERE, AGAIN HYPOTHETICALLY, FROM THE U.S., THEY WOULD BE ARRESTED BY A U.S. MARSHAL, AS LAW ENFORCEMENT FROM THE SAME NATION AS THE ACCUSED HYPOTHETICAL MURDERER HAS JURISDICTION OVER THEM. AGAIN, HYPOTHETICALLY. HERE’S A NON-HYPOTHETICAL INCIDENT OF ATTEMPTED MURDER IN ANTARCTICA AND HERE’S THE WIKIPEDIA PAGE FOR CRIME IN ANTARCTICA.

A lot of recent pop songs not only have the same chord progression, but use the same note. A lot. Here’s a video about it.

I recently found out about the McGurk effect, which I had to include here because, I mean, come on, it’s called the McGurk effect.

I have a rather unbelievable story to tell you. I woke up yesterday morning and my nose was gone (not the first time this has happened). I tried to place an ad in the newspaper asking if anyone had seen him, but the clerk thought my story was far too absurd and refused me. On my way out of the office, I spotted him getting into a fine carriage. To my surprise, he was a higher rank than I! I ran over to him and was about to give him a piece of my mind when he said “no BM” and punched me right in the mouth. When I woke, I searched my pockets for my wallet, finding instead a note that read “drink more milk WeirdChamp.” I have no idea what that means.

Sorry this email is so formal; I guess I’m a bit blue. Da ba dee. Da ba daa. Thanks to former NYUQB President Rahul Rao-Pothuraju for showing me this fantastic video explaining the origins of that fantastic song.

I opened up my fridge the other day, and, to my surprise, all my food was gone. Instead, I was confronted by the sight of a hundred bottles of reindeer milk. I didn’t even know you could milk a reindeer. This reminds me of that time they found 300 reindeer dead in a field in Norway with no visible injuries. It turns out that the reindeer had been huddled together when a bolt of lightning struck the wet ground and killed them all. Here’s a national geographic article about it (warning: contains photos of hundreds of dead reindeer).

Henry Kissinger has been in the news lately for giving a quasi-endorsement of Joe Biden’s presidency, noting, “I like him as a person. We often disagreed on foreign policy, but if he becomes president, I’m convinced he will be moderate and thoughtful in his foreign policy.” Mr. Kissinger is, of course, the man who urged the Argentinian Videla dictatorship to disappear (imprison and murder) left-wing activists quickly, before congress was back in session;

Okay, class, today we’re gonna analyze a painting. This particular painting is entitled “Переезд на Новую Квартиру,” or Moving into a New Apartment. It’s a work of socialist realism by Aleksandr Laktionov. Stare at this image for 30 seconds.

Congratulations! You’ve just fulfilled your lifelong dream of becoming a sumo wrestler. Unfortunately, you’re only about 5’ 5” and weigh only 215 pounds, making you far smaller than the average rikishi (sumo wrestler). Your first match of the day will be against an opponent who is 7” taller and 400 pounds heavier than you. Think you can beat them?

Let it not be said that I hate sports, just because I never get quiz bowl questions on sports. One sport I particularly enjoy watching is Australian rules football. As an Aussie rules spectator, there is nothing more impressive than a spectacular mark. In a spectacular mark, a player trying to catch the ball will jump onto an opposing player’s back or shoulders in order to gain extra height. Here’s a compilation of spectacular marks.

The Soviet Union was a nation built on absurdity and contradiction. Towards the end of its life, the absurdity became more pronounced, as the country tried to reckon with its future and, eventually, its impending collapse. My favorite way this manifested was in advertisements. In a nation that was without market competition, one might wonder what the point of advertisements was. An ad for chicken was effectively just an ad for the concept of chicken, not for any particular brand’s chicken. So, why make ads at all? According to Harry Egipt, the Estonian director of many of the most famous Soviet commercials, major industries had to spend 1% of their budget on advertising. So it was that you would have ads for products that faced no competition and were often completely sold out anyway. Here’s Egipt’s most famous (or infamous) commercial, one for chicken. If you don’t like seeing how the sausage gets made, maybe don’t watch it.

Today I’m going to talk at length about bass singers. As most of us know, the bass is by far the best vocal part, and today I will prove it. Specifically, I’m going to talk about my favorite singer of all time, Paul Robeson.

If you’ve been bouncing a basketball on the floor of your room in Weinstein every day without fail, cut that out, it’s irritating.

Ederlezi is a beautiful Romani song that gained popularity through its inclusion in the Emir Kusturica film Дом за вешање. The film was scored by Goran Bregović, who also wrote Serbian lyrics for an alternate version of the song. Unfortunately, that Serbian version tied in rather conveniently with Kusturica’s later Serbian nationalism amid the breakup of Yugoslavia. Let’s ignore the sad history of the Yugoslav Wars and look only at the song. Ederlezi is easily my favorite song about being sad that you can’t sacrifice a lamb, though I don’t know which songs can compete in that category. Ederlezi later featured in the Borat soundtrack, Stereophonic Musical Listenings That Have Been Origin in Moving Film “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” which I am still convinced is an excellent collection of folk music. There are some exceptions, of course, including the fake national anthem of Kazakhstan used in Borat, “O Kazakhstan,” which has been played instead of the actual national anthem at multiple awards ceremonies (presumably by mistake). Anyway, here’s Ederlezi, along with footage from the movie in which it originally appeared, which I’ve been told is quite good, despite some dated elements (including the English title).

Look, the polar bear was dead when I got here–oh, it’s you. For a second I thought you were INTERPOL. Anyway, The Boy Bands Have Won, and All the Copyists and the Tribute Bands and the TV Talent Show Producers Have Won, If We Allow Our Culture to Be Shaped by Mimicry, Whether from Lack of Ideas or from Exaggerated Respect. You Should Never Try to Freeze Culture. What You Can Do Is Recycle That Culture. Take Your Older Brother’s Hand-Me-Down Jacket and Re-Style It, Re-Fashion It to the Point Where It Becomes Your Own. But Don’t Just Regurgitate Creative History, or Hold Art and Music and Literature as Fixed, Untouchable and Kept Under Glass. The People Who Try to ‘Guard’ Any Particular Form of Music Are, Like the Copyists and Manufactured Bands, Doing It the Worst Disservice, Because the Only Thing That You Can Do to Music That Will Damage It Is Not Change It, Not Make It Your Own. Because Then It Dies, Then It’s Over, Then It’s Done, and the Boy Bands Have Won is an album by Chumbawamba.

Noooo you can’t just stick a traffic cone in a saxophone! Haha traffic cone go bwooop

I first met him at the bar in Kazakhstan—you know, the one one where they tie the drunks to Bactrian camels and send them roaming through the countryside—while I was in the middle of a manic episode. He sat down on the stool next to me and ordered a glass of milk. Already, I knew there was something wrong with this man; everyone else was drinking қымыз. He turned to me and smiled, and his teeth were rat teeth. “Not ordering milk is a misplay,” he said. I got up out of my chair too quickly and immediately collapsed to the ground. I woke up the next morning tied to a camel. Someone had stolen my wallet and passport. I’ll leave the story of how I got out of Kazakhstan for another day, but for now I will leave you with this warning: never trust a milk-drinker.

When you see someone with red hair in America, there tends to be an assumption that they’re Irish-American. We only have that assumption, though, because of how many people in America have Irish ancestry. It doesn’t hold for all other countries; in Russia (until very recently, and even still today), the assumption was that someone with red hair is Jewish. On that note, here’s a short poem by the Russian absurdist Daniil Kharms entitled “Рыжий человек,” or “Red-headed man.”

Ready for a lot of youtube videos you have to watch? “But Lev I have so much work to do” haha too bad watch them anyway

Ants. Ants. ants. ants. ants ants antsantsantsantsantsantsantsantsantsantsantsants

As part of an archaic ceremony, the city of London pays an annual rent of a knife, an axe, six horseshoes, and 61 nails to a representative of the Queen. The city has been doing this for around 800 years, even though I doubt the Queen wants anything to do with six oversized horseshoes. An actual government official, who normally has other stuff to do, has to spend however much time every year doing this meaningless ceremony. If the ceremony gathered spectators or was a real part of the culture, I’d understand it, but the ceremony generally goes all but unattended. Some poor sap has been handing over exactly 61 nails for 800 years, and will continue doing so until the end of time, all because someone thought it was a cute idea to continue paying rent in knives. Doesn’t that make you want to just ride a horse into the ocean?

As far as I am concerned, the greatest argument against the existence of a loving, benevolent God is what Wikipedia calls “Midwestern cuisine.” I must warn you, what I am about to describe may shock you. Those with delicate stomachs should turn away.

Apologies for the late email; it’s been a difficult day. As per your vote in the discord, this week’s fun thing is some word-salad about video game montages I wrote this summer for no reason. It was too long for this email, so I made a Medium account and posted it here. That’s how much I care.

Today’s fun random information, as voted on by the discord server: Kidz Bop has done some really weird covers throughout its wretched, tortured existence. One of the strangest is probably a cover of Trapt’s Headstrong. For those not familiar with Trapt, they made that one song and now all they do is get into weird conservative twitter beef. Here’s the Kidz Bop cover, for your displeasure; oddly for a Kidz Bop song, while a chorus of kids shouts the chorus over and over, an adult sings the verses. Here it is.

Today’s fun information, as voted on by the discord server, concerns Irish Collar and Elbow wrestling. Collar and Elbow is a more than 300-year-old form of jacket wrestling in which the goal is to pin the opponent’s shoulderblades to the ground for 3 seconds. While you and your opponent are standing, you are not allowed to let go of each other’s collar and elbow, as the name suggests. Here’s a video about leglocks used in collar-and-elbow and another about going for pins. Of course, what you’re really here for is video of people doing the actual wrestling. I would be more than happy to oblige.

Sadly, I fear my time with you will be short; I received what I think was a warning, and now I fear for my life. I was making my morning sacrifice to Marduk when I noticed something odd in the entrails of my augury pig. “I don’t think the Clash’s London Calling is a punk album,” the viscera spelled out in perfect clarity. Confused, I retreated to my study to ponder this mysterious turn of events and look up this “London Calling,” but my arcane library and all its contents had vanished. I suspect there to be a malevolent presence manipulating events from behind the scene. Beware! Beware! If you have any idea what my pig’s entrails were trying to tell me, please tell me at practice.

Comrades of the 22nd Presidium of Quiz Bowl at NYU! The Central Committee has determined that practice will be held in the discord this Friday at 4 PM Eastern. Failure to attend will result in your expulsion from the Party and a trial by a Special Session of the Supreme Court, with a guilty verdict all but certain. By order of Comrade First Secretary Theresa Ieronimovna, all Party Members must also fill out this form in order to participate in ACF Fall, and this other form in order to participate in LIT (this second form is due before practice on Friday). Anyway, now that the official business is out of the way, let’s talk about how a new language forms.

For your entertainment, here’s a video about biblical literalism. And Sonic the Hedgehog.

I hope everyone’s first day of classes went well. To help everyone get back in the swing of things, we’re going to analyze a song together very quickly. This is a very old Irish song (originally in Gaelic) called The Brown and the Yellow Ale. Here are the lyrics; unfortunately, my favorite recording of this song (by The Voice Squad) is not available in the U.S. on youtube or spotify, though it is on itunes. We’ll just have to settle for this version instead. So, just reading through the lyrics, you can probably pick up on some things very quickly.

This week’s secret code word is Brazil. Anyway, here is some bloodsport for your amusement (the first of many emails about various bloodsports). First, some background info: what you’re about to see is a Russian show run by a bunch of Russian youtubers called Каменные Лица, or Stone Faces, in which the competitors just slap the hell out of each other. It’s based on a sport found at the Siberian Power Show that looks very similar; here’s an article about it. The champion, Василий Камоцкий, is nicknamed Пельмень, or Dumpling. In his normal life he’s a farmer from Krasnoyarsk. He’s used his winnings from slap fighting to fulfill his dream of buying a combine harvester. His opponent here is Zuluzinho, a Brazilian Vale Tudo fighter whom the Russians refer to as Чёрный Папа, or “Black Papa.” I recommend turning subtitles on. Here’s the title bout.

Here’s some history for you: the time the U.S. almost destroyed the Eastern half of North Carolina. Oh, and the fissile material from one of the bombs was never recovered. It’s still in the ground. That’s just one of many times we narrowly avoided nuclear disaster. If you want to read more, here’s the full list of American nuclear incidents.

As per my campaign promise, I’ll be including something interesting in every email I send you. I have a grand narrative I’d like to play out over the emails, but that won’t begin until the year starts in earnest. Anyway, here’s today’s interesting thing. The Shepard Tone is a kind of illusion in which a sound appears to be increasing or decreasing in pitch constantly, though it is actually looping back to its start. Here’s an example. After you listen to that, here’s a video explaining how it works and showing some more examples. Finally, here’s a song I like that uses the Shepard Tone. I’d recommend listening to the whole song, but if you don’t want to, use of the Shepard Tone in it starts at 7:17.