Soviets

Gordo, a squirrel monkey, was catapulted 600 miles high in a Jupiter rocket, also on December 13, 1958, one year after the Soviets launched Laika. Gordo's capsule was never found in the Atlantic Ocean. He died on splashdown when a flotation mechanism failed, but Navy doctors said signals on his respiration and heartbeat proved humans could withstand a similar trip.

Both we and the Soviets face the common threat of nuclear destruction and there is no likelihood that either capitalism or communism will survive a nuclear war.

The CIA fought a covert war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Three years later, overrun by the Soviets, Romania signed an armistice.

The "Soviet Union" was a misnomer, as it actually disempowered the soviets and subjugated them to the Communist Party leadership.

In the era of the Soviets, our sparkling wines were known as Soviet champagne.

It is the 2nd of July of 2015. My friend Yaroslav is from the Ukraine, an ex-Soviet republic, and he grew up in the Soviet Era, when the ruble was money, but communism was the objective. He said that those good ol' childhood years were the best for him, and he feels nostalgic about them. Yaroslav has been a seaman engineer for some years. He has moved to Canada, and he studies English now, Russian being his first language and Ukrainian second. His original hair was near black, but is now whitening. He has blue eyes. He still looks like a big teenager. He is a pizza delivery man now at my local pizzeria, here at Lulu Island. We both discuss many deep, intellectual things at the pizza parlour, whilst he waits to go off for a delivery. He likes reading drama books, like Tolstoy. He likes drama movies, too. Unlike me, whose hobby is speculative fiction and astronomy, Yaroslav talks little of such things. My impression of Soviets were that they were all space-savvy. But he did mention once that within 1000 years, humanity will have to be really serious about space travel and out-of-Earth colonization, because our own Earth may fall into decay. I think that he tried to paraphrase Stephen Hawking the physicist. Yaroslav does not know Star Trek too well. I talked to him about teleportation, which scientists around the world are researching. They think that teleportation is not impossible.

"How many American troops died in World War II?" "A little more than 400,000." "And how many Soviets died in the same war?" "Errr..." "The answer is more than twenty-four million."

Dr. Sarah Hallberg was (in the style of the Soviets or CIA) assassinated with cancer for making the TED Talk, "Reversing Type 2 diabetes starts with ignoring the guidelines" at TEDxPurdueU. She claimed people can save $2000 per year with simple changes to their diet.

People who talk about the "mental health" of trans people while ignoring what mental health experts actually have to say on the matter are akin to the Soviets politicizing psychiatry to abuse it against their political opponents.