Holy Shit Dude

Another version, arranged by Mykola Leontovych. Usually I’m not a big fan of classical arrangements of folk songs but this one’s really pretty:

https://soundcloud.com/vzadorojniy/leontovich_iz-za_gory_snizhok_letit

translated lyrics

(second version mostly, stuff between brackets belongs in the first version)

Snow flies from the mountain

[alt.Fire burns on the mountain]

and in the valley, a cossack lies

{cut and shot,  covered with a red cloth]

with a raven crowing at his head

and his steed pacing at his feet [alt. crying]

Do not pace, my steed, 

do not trample the earth

Run along the road

[alt. Oh my black steed,

my loyal companion

do not cry for me

run along the wide steppe road]

so that the Tatars may not catch you

May not take the saddle off your back

[ when you arrive at my fathers yard

hit the fence

When you arrive at the gates

beat them with your hooves]

My father [alt. My sister] will come out and unsaddle you

My mother will come out and ask you

“Well , black horse, where is my young son?”

[Your son, Mother, served the Khan

the Crimean Tatar

He served so well he got a fine lady for it

A proud and wealthy princess]

Don’t cry mother, don’t be sad

For your son has married

Took a fine young lady for himself

with a pit-house in the open field....

take a handful of sand

[ she rose early with the stars

washed the sand with her tears]

when that sand will sprout

your son will return from the army

the sand doesn’t sprout

the son doesn’t return from the war campaign...

bonus version:

Help me get the speciality glasses I need for my disability

Hi friends here I am doing the thing I hate

I’m a disabled queer enby with Scotopic Sensitivity Disorder, which means that I need speciality lenses.

Unfortunately they’re expensive. They cost £150/$208 just for the tint. I’ve been putting up with my current pair being scratched and the wrong prescription for a while now

But now they’ve broken. The arm snapped off and they are being wonkily glued together.

I lost my job at the start of the pandemic, and my family and I are barely scraping by. It’s impossible for me to afford a new pair of glasses without help.

So if you are able, I would appreciate a donation so much. 

Please reblog this post even if you can’t help. Thank you so much x

Russia is trying to ban legal transition for trans people

Elena Mizulina put forward a bill, that basically bans legal transition. It includes:

Adding the “sex” graph to the birth certificate. That graph cannot be changed in any way, and you also can’t get a new passport because of that.

banning (again) same-sex marriage, but now it is made based on the birth certificate so trans people cannot marry their loved ones.

banning the right to adopt children for the trans people

and WORSE, ALL THE CHANGES MADE IN THE PAST WILL BE DECLINED. People will get their old birth certificates back. the existing marriages will be no longer legal. And I don’t even want to think what will happen to the already adopted children of transgender parents

People are scared as fuck. I see lots of panic in russian social media and also on Twitter. They made a hashtag #ProtectRussianTransLives, so you can check it out for more info. And yeah, people started protesting. 

The protest hasn’t even started properly. The police detained all of them, called them slurs, misgendered them, asked about genitals. Those pigs arrested two women - Mila Zemtsova and Polina Symonenko

Mila is a journalist who came there with a license. The police immediately arrested her for the organization (!) of the protest which is absolute nonsense. They kept her in the police department for more than 48 hours and took away her phone. She got a fine for nothing.

(translation: I want to not be afraid to show my passport)

Polina’s case is worse. She was arrested for repeated violation of the procedure for holding a public action (hope I wrote it right). Polina was also kept in the department for 48+ hours (it is illegal), misgendered and deadnamed. She was beaten in the court for taking a legal break. They gave her 14 days in a men’s prison. 

This is hell. Please spread this post. People must know about this.

If you are from Russia, you can write a letter to the government. Here’s the link for the instruction:

Medium

Обращения в Госдуму по поводу трансфобных законопроектов

Петицию против законопроектов, нарушающих права трансгендерных, гомосексуальных и интерсекс людей за сутки подписали почти 20 тыс. человек…

Sign the petition:

Change.org

Sign the Petition

Отклоните законопроект о запрете трансгендерным людям на брак и усыновление детей!

SHARE!

Alfred Schnittke - Story of an unknown actor, op. 125

And then when you finally get attention it makes you want to crawl under your bed and never come out.

i am the shyest attention whore ever

Keep talking about Belarus!

Belarus has been a dictatorship for many, many years, but it was never this gruesome, this... real. In case you didn't know, Lukashenko has been in office since 1994, he changed the constitution to be able to do it. The elections have been widely known to be falsified for years, getting lukashenko 80% or 90% of votes each and every time, although his real support is estimated to be realistically around 3%, and it could be even lower now, since he still denies the very existence (existence, not seriousness!) of coronavirus.

On the 10th of august, another election took place. To no surprise, 3 of his main opponents have suddenly been arrested and disqualified from the election in the last weeks and, as you could expect, he won again with 80% of votes.

So people have gone to the streets. Lukashenko is apparently hiding in Turkey. It's hard to organize, to communicate or to even document what's happening due to all of the internet being completely down.

Rhe police is shooting people, using tear gas and actual grenades on the masses. A cop van drove into the crowd from the behind running multiple people over. There's a lot of blood, ambulances, and possible dead, (UPDATE: one confirmed dead) though it's really impossible to know, as there are little to no news sources available in Belarus, especially with the wifi being down.

The belarussian police, or militia, is an organization working not only obviously unethically, but illegally too - people are mass-arrested without an open cause, beaten, held in arrest for days, and killed. Just yesterday a man's entire arm was ripped off in some kind of explosion. (This is not confirmed, second-hand relation). Nothing quite of this scale happened since the 90s, or possibly ever in the modern history of Belarus. Belarussians are finally demanding change, and really, what can the police do against a whole nation?

I wish I could reffer everyone to some kind of petition, charity organization, anything, but the events are so current that it's hard for me to say how people from other countries could possibly help. All I can do is raise a little awareness of what's happening, so please, keep reading, keep yourselves updated and informed and don't forget belarus.

Just to be clear:

My advocacy for the preservation of minority languages has nothing to do with the fact that they are interesting/fascinating/any other adjective of that nature

Minority languages deserve protection because they are important, and they are valuable

The worth of a minority language is not determined by the entertainment it can provide to outsiders

While I believe that all languages are beautiful and unique, it shouldn't matter that a language is ugly, or boring or "useless"

Yes, Celtic folk music is beautiful, but that is not the reason for preserving Celtic languages

I’m not from the USA so forgive me my confusion...but why does a school even need cops? I live in Belgium and we had cops over like,once in my entire school career, to teach us to safely drive our bicycles in the traffic of all things.

For more perspective…

1.7 million students are in schools with police but no counselors.

6 million students are in schools with police but no school psychologists.

10 million students are in schools with police but no social workers.