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May 9, 2023Liked by Simplicius

And let me add the greatest writer of all time: Fyodor M Dostoevsky.

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You bring up a good point. Over 100 of the world's top authors were asked to rank every writer in history: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/01/the-greatest-books-of-all-time-as-voted-by-125-famous-authors/252209/

The final tally came out as the following. Top 10 authors by most points earned:

Leo Tolstoy — 327

William Shakespeare — 293

James Joyce — 194

Vladimir Nabokov — 190

Fyodor Dostoevsky — 177

William Faulkner — 173

Charles Dickens — 168

Anton Chekhov — 165

Gustave Flaubert — 163

Jane Austen — 161

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Always controversial to try to come up with such lists, but clearly Russian writers are among the very best. I would definitely add, though, a Polish writer, Joseph (Korzeniowski) Conrad to the top-ten list. Conrad wrote in English. Such mastery of a foreign language (Conrad began to study and read English when he was already in his 20s!), is in itself quite remarkable, perhaps unique.

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And there's that Nabokov fellow (whose first language, like other high-up Russians) was French.

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Ah yes. Lord Jim.

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Let me give my opinion on this topic, I'm sorry I can't avoid it ... This list almost seems made by Rolling Stone magazine. Keep the Russian names and eliminate the others, including the overvalued Shakespeare. Now put in those holes names of Spanish writers to choose from a good group starting with Miguel de Cervantes. Then you will have a better adjusted list.

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And music!

And cinema!

And the arts!

The list goes on and on.

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Ah! And metallurgy. One of the foundational necessities for hypersonic flight - the right metal alloys capable of handling heat-produced plasma fields at hypersonic speeds. And who possesses the technical capability today to manage flight navigation of these missiles? No one surpasses Russia in this field.

And what people can move their entire war industry (tens of thousands of factories) hundreds of miles in but a few months as the Soviets did in 1941? An incredible achievement.

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Let's also add ballet, opera, and chess!

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In the great avant-garde push in post-WWI literature, Russian Futurism stands side by side with Italian Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism. Mayakovski, Khlebnikov, Khruchenykh (Kherson native)...

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And Alexander Blok - not a futurist (I don't think) but a brilliant poet. I also greatly admire Anna Akhmatova. And not a poet, but Isaac Babel's "Red Cavalry" stories.

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The only “American” is, of course, a Southerner. It’s personal taste of course but I rate Dostoevsky above Tolstoy. And above everyone else, to be frank. Not only the greatest of novelists, but a accurate prophet of our modern age.

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deletedMay 11, 2023·edited May 12, 2023
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May 12, 2023·edited May 12, 2023

Well, I was talking about the people on the list posted by our host. It's entirely a matter of taste, but I wouldn't include either Melville or Twain on a "GOAT" list. And I'd certainly replace Jane Austen with Thomas Hardy. But again, it's a matter of taste. My GOAT list would include Chekhov and Bulgakov along with Tolkien and Lovecraft, although with Dostoevsky pre-eminent over all.

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deletedMay 12, 2023·edited May 12, 2023
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You're an American, aren't you? At any rate, I'm not going to crap up our host's board with insults, so I'll leave you to stew in your bile.

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Amazing that after all that, the Russians are now brutish creatures that are fighting a last-ditch defense in animal skins using only shovels as primitive axes. (Sarcasm for those that don't know me).

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You are precious, with your astute vernacular 🤓 PS: I do know you, relative❤️🇷🇺💙

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Not to mention without toilets!

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May 10, 2023·edited May 10, 2023

They don't need toilets - they have Ukraine. (*Sorry. A friend asked me to say that - I tried to resist but he insisted*)

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Hello again Simplicius and another fantastic read!

A trend this article shows is a repeated pattern of Russophobia. A century if not more of the erasure of Russian accomplishment, a denigration of the Russian people, and an all-encompassing inferiority complex which drives so much of the west to compensate and claim Russian inventors were either not Russian or weren't first to invent something when they clearly did.

The Russian people have overcome many hardships and difficulties. Resilience and strength is something which is purely engrained at this point in the Russian genome. The people that have defeated Napoleon and Hitler, will do so again. When watching the parade yesterday, Channel 1 showed clips of soldiers in the Donbass talking about their relatives who fought in the war. One of whom described his great-grandfather 80 years prior also fought for Artyomovsk and he now does the same 'to finish what he started'.

I'd like to believe that the Lord above sees all and that in good time, the faithful will be delivered and good will win. Centuries of evil can hopefully be stopped this time.

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And the US is facilitating dysgenic impact.

Controversial but this is what happens when education standards are lacking.

There is a shocking attitude that education like what is practiced in China, Russia and used to be the norm in the US is racist.

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Russophobia goes far back in time - to the great schism between the Roman and Orthodox Church. An excellent book on this history is Creating Russophobia by Guy Mettan.

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One thing my father said that will always stick with me.

"The largest export of USSR/Russia is brains"

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An exported brain is a lost brain: Russia only handicap is not ridiculous "sanctions" but it's inability to loyalize its citizens. Sikorsky Pentiakov, Brin...are NOT russian inventors because they served GAE.

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“OK” not the point I was making. More the validation of things that Simplicius wrote.

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As regards television, I've always heard it was neither a USian or a Russian but a Scot:

From wiki:

"John Logie Baird FRSE (/ˈloʊɡi bɛərd/;[1] 13 August 1888 – 14 June 1946) was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator who demonstrated the world's first live working television system on 26 January 1926.[2][3][4] He went on to invent the first publicly demonstrated colour television system and the first viable purely electronic colour television picture tube.[5][6]"

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deletedMay 11, 2023·edited May 11, 2023
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Um, the wiki article you link to says the Nipkow disc was an essential component of the first mechanical television.

See text in the advantages section:

"These facts helped immensely in building the first mechanical television accomplished by the Scottish inventor John Logie Baird, as well as the first "TV-Enthusiasts" communities and even experimental image radio broadcasts in the 1920s."

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I believe that Russia, a country with ~40% of the US population is graduating More engineers than the USA. That Russia supplies most of the fuel for the US reactor fleet and that the only US nuclear fuel production is by a foreign corporation. The US is importing technical Brain's and has for many years. The amerikans with Brain's Go to Wall Street and even in Germany the Brain's want to be financial engineering people, not real engineering people. The western world has a perverse incentive system where the greatest rewards go to the parasitic Rentier extraction classes rather than the productive classes. The US GDP is fraudulent. A thousand dollars in legal fees is not the same as a thousand dollars of wheat or steel or infrastructure. The current War in the Ukraine is about the same as WWI; a War between financial capitalism and industrial capitalism. The financial Rentier extraction classes of parasites living off the workers of the world has been going on for ~400 years, perhaps back to the Greek debt based oligarchies but it is going to end and good riddance to it.

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Hear, HEAR. Yup, yup. Stay the course💙🇷🇺❤️

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An outstanding post. Thank you. I will make the most of it in my own posts and publications, giving you, of course, full credit and promoting your site.

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I think that the aliens do NOT wish to make themselves known until we stop the wars on our planet, they think it too dangerous.

Ampex is said to be among the best of tape machines...

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All good stuff. What we need now is for a Russian to invent a speedy end to this conflict. Now that would be really great.

But it seems they cannot even get their internal politics nor military sorted out. There would seem to be a dire need in Russia today for some of their 'great minds' to come to the fore.

https://roloslavskiy.substack.com/p/strelkov-provides-reassuring-analysis?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=795903&post_id=118957958&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

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Arfur, the doomer and FUD spreader continues his 'work'!

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The Wright Brothers managed to muddle through without Zhukovsky's equations.

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Or Ludwig Prandtl's, who invented boundary layer theory for aerodynamics.

That explains why 10 years later in WW1, every single major aircraft was designed by European engineers and scientists, not Ohio bicycle repairmen.

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Spad XII, Sopwith Camel, Fokker Triplane, those are the famous aircraft of WW1.

Curtiss Jenny was a design from a former engineer from Sopwith, Benjamin Douglas Thomas, who no doubt would have been at home with partial differential equations, conservation laws and boundary layers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss_JN_Jenny

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deletedMay 11, 2023·edited May 11, 2023
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I'm giving a "Like" only because you mentioned Trenchard, the true founder of the RAF!

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Excellent article, especially modern times with Russians in Google/ CIA. You didn't get into more modern "plasma energy" theory which Russia also lead in based on their association with Iranian nuclear physicist and technology pioneer Mehran Keshe.

https://kfssi.org/learn-more/

He seems to be the source of Russian and Iranian Electronic Warfare systems and "Tesla Free Energy" which is apparently available now, but blocked by the rules based order. He also offers star ship capabilities, and by saying (and proving) matter is created through the interaction of fields, creates a new model for an ever expanding universe.

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Thank you, this is not, NOT, surprising. Nope. The brilliant bulbs, the light shines bright, over the pond. Neither, then, or NOW, the character, fortitude, intelligence, etc…of the peoples in Russia, feels, seems… beyond the measure. I grant you, my pal, as a neighbor, are one and the same. Little old lady, me❤️🐈‍⬛❤️

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I have to contest the helicopter part.

Already in the 1910s helicopters existed. The first helicopter to ever lift off was the Pescara Nº12.

The first helicopter tittle belongs to the Argentine inventor Raúl Pateras Pescara. Like in the US, many of inventions were done by immigrants. He was a Spanish immigrant, but grew in Argentina.

He left to Europe where he worked to patent his inventions in Spain and France. In Paris, 1924, he established a world record flying over 700 meters.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/19_janvier_1924_R._Pateras-Pescara_pilote_le_2F.JPG

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Let’s break a lance for Ricardo de la Cierva too, though I’m not sure if his invention counts exactly as a helicopter.

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On the note of the American IMO team, here's how they actually beat China for the first time in 15 years: https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.JKGuXzEVDviy5FZLE-BjlQHaKD?pid=ImgDet&rs=1

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Oh it's the same with the International Collegiate Programming Championships: the US team is predominantly ethnic Chinese!

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Don't forget though, that the USSA has an insurmountable lead for instigating the most turmoil worldwide.

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