picard

picard, 6 months ago

Believe it or not I did contact the Ukrainian embassy here in London to ask if they had any information about them, but unfortunately did not hear back. I’m sure replying to randos on the internet was not their highest priority of course! But still, I wouldn’t mind knowing.

picard, 8 months ago

For some reason I am not seeing initial posts boosted into Mastodon. Only replies. Not sure why. Maybe I made a mistake somewhere in the post and something about it prevents it being boosted into my timeline.

So this is a reply to a post about the Ukrainian Film Festival 2023, this weekend in London.

picard, 8 months ago

There was a Q&A with Mstyslav Chernov, director of 20 Days in Mariupol, after the screening. Available on their Youtube channel:

youtu.be/HbVMxDhjkKw

picard, 8 months ago

You’re welcome! I agree it looks very cool. Can’t wait for it to arrive!

picard, 8 months ago

For some reason I am not seeing initial posts boosted into Mastodon. Only replies. Not sure why. Maybe I made a mistake somewhere in the post and something about it prevents it being boosted into my timeline.

So this is a reply to a post about Embroidered Worlds - a Ukrainian science fiction Kickstarter project that’s currently ongoing.

picard, 8 months ago

Very happy they got it funded - and beyond, a few stretch goals too.

The way some of the goals were phrased makes me think it will be available beyond the Kickstarter, I believe the purpose of the campaign was to fund a print run rather than to buy a copy of the book. Will keep you updated if I learn anything else in the updates (I did back it, so they’ll be sending updates about the printing process and so on).

picard, 7 months ago

Hi Dana. They have a page up on BackerKit now with ebook and print preorders, if you are still interested:

…backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

Preorders will be available until 12 November. $1 for the ebook, $20 for print (plus shipping; for me, to UK for two print copies, shipping - from America - came to another $18).

It says shipping is estimated for December.

picard, 9 months ago

Sorry I’ve not been around much the recent weeks.

Thanks for sharing this, the book looks great, and really good way to support Maksym.

picard, 9 months ago

Agree, the delivery cost from Ukraine is quite expensive for one book. But I noticed you can add multiple books for same delivery (at least I checked up to ten books), so if you know other people who want the book - buying together will reduce the delivery cost per book (if that makes sense?).

Myself, I want to get it in English and Ukrainian (not that I can read well enough yet, but I aspire to so why not). But, it seems the Ukrainian and English version did not share the same cart, so I need to email them to find out how I do it.

picard, 10 months ago

You either have not spent any time reading through the evidence, or are willfully distorting the truth.

Considering their entire argument was to assert with zero evidence it was Ukrainians who did it, then to claim all the evidence showing otherwise is unreliable and we’ll never know the truth, I think we can probably answer with a reasonable degree of confidence they are purposefully seeking to mislead.

picard, 10 months ago

Glad you enjoyed it! They have a bunch of other videos on the channel that sound interesting, just not had the time to watch any of them.

picard, 11 months ago

It’s an interesting article.

I do have some criticisms about how inevitable he portrays this stuff - I’m not sure we can describe any outcome as being ‘factually’ more likely, considering we don’t even know when the war will end nor what shape the peace will take. And the idea that Ukraine will simultaneously be taken over by a clique of oligarchs and western corporations seems a little contradictory - are they oligarchs or not?

(And maybe an interesting observation that he describes the second world war as having one aggressor when it started, when in fact there were two - then as now, far right and far left were closely linked)

But in general he’s right that the peace needs considering carefully, not only the war. In any war there is always a risk of what will come after - but these discussions absolutely need to be carried out by Ukrainians, for Ukrainians.

And he’s also spot on about the need to fight the extremists at both ends of the spectrum - all extremists need opposing. I’ve been so disappointed by so many on the left who claim to fight for the rights of working people, but only when it suits them. Like, really quite disheartened when people I previously respected turned out to be supportive of genocide 🙁

Thanks for sharing it.

picard, 11 months ago

Thanks for sharing. This sounds like a great episode, looking forward to listening to it. There are some really great Ukrainian artists - I know nowhere near as many as I should but I posted on Mastodon about Prymachenko who has some really impressive pieces.

And also Lyubov Panchenko, whose work just spoke to me so strongly - I really don’t understand how she is not considered among the world greats of 20th century art, just absolutely incredible stuff (and from whose work I took my avatar image).

picard, 11 months ago

I hope you value it as much as I did!

Banosh sounds interesting - I think Matios mentions it in the book - I have a recipe with polenta (I think traditionally it might not be polenta exactly but something similar?) that I need to make one day, it looks really easy.

picard, 11 months ago

Hmm. What do you think about it?

On the one hand, I have enjoyed working with you both and doing what little I can to help this group grow.

But in general I’m in favour of not splitting communities - the more people in one place, the more power there is?

picard, 11 months ago

That makes sense. The other group seems quite focused on the war commentary type stuff too - stuff I find interesting and important too, but does mean there’s not a 100% overlap with the intentions here.