As you can see the site has had a major redesign, and new blog posts will start appearing as of this Monday. Here are the major changes: (1) Back to self-hosted, after a year and a half at WordPress.com. There will be no repeat of the pharma hack that torpedoed the old Sublime Oblivion. My […]
AKarlin 2.0
Da Russophile Is Now Five Years Old
I have recently been cleaning up my old posts. When I moved from Sublime Oblivion to here, the pictures remained hosted at the old site (there were too many of them to auto-import). So I’ve been going through ancient posts, manually reattaching pictures (so that they are now hosted at wordpress.com) and making the categories […]
Five Years Of Blogging
It all began on January 9, 2008. It began, as it is now, as Da Russophile over at blogger. And I was a Russophile then, perhaps unreasonably so. That said I did do some useful work back then. I am most proud of the demographic models by which I predicted: Russia will see positive population growth starting from 2010 […]
Strategic Direction Of Da Russophile
I feel that my blogging in terms of influencing the discourse on Russia has leveled off into something resembling a plateau. I now write the occasional op-ed; appear every so often in magazines, research articles, and even books; and the blog itself attracts about 500 daily visitors. But truth is I am barely making a dint relative to […]
Open Thread #1
This Open Thread is permanently glued to the front page. Anything goes as long as it’s connected in some way to Russia (if not then use the Open Thread at AKarlin). From now on all off-topic comments should be posted here, as I will no longer hesitate about deleting them from other posts.
My Readers Are Indeed Social Contrarians
Though I do wonder about those six people who voted “none of the above” in my poll of attitudes towards the 10 odd theories that figure prominently in the Karlinist Weltanschauung… with all due respect, but what are you guys doing on this blog then? 🙂 The vast majority agree with Peak Oil, Limits to Growth, […]
Are You A Social Contrarian?
I’m curious to hear what my readers think of the various concepts and theories that frequently come up on this blog, and of the key assumptions underlying the Karlinist Weltanschauung. Very quick n’ dirty summaries of terms and their discontents: Peak oil: Oil is limited in quantity, and at some point its production will inevitably decline […]
Who Reads This Blog Anyway? A History Of S/O In Graphs
As you’re all aware, on April 1st 2012, more than 3 years of blogging at http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/ (S/O) came to an end. For the majority of that period – to be precise from May 13th, 2009, to March 31st, 2013 – I had an account with Google Analytics that provided me with very detailed states about the blog: Where […]
The Russia Watchers In Their Own Words…
Over the years, Andy Young of Siberian Light did a series of interviews with top Russian watchers. However, Andy doesn’t have the time for continuing these interviews of late, so we’ve agreed to have me take over for the time being. You can follow these interviews at Watching the Russia Watchers. They will consist of about 15 questions – […]
A Short Guide to the Top 10 Russia Blogs
Labor Day 2010 Special – a list of the most influential, interesting, and readable English-language blogs about Russia. But first, a few caveats. Inclusion does not mean that I agree with everything – or in La Russophobe‘s case, almost anything* – the author says. Second, don’t take any of this personally. Being ranked below La Russophobe […]
What I Believe: 2 Year Update
I’ve remembered about the article What We Believe I wrote two years back, in the early days when I was still writing anonymously (as “stalker”) and was pretending to be a team. Had fun rereading it, almost like a time machine. My views on Russia have remained mostly unchanged. I’ve grown to become somewhat more […]
Da Russophile, a Year On
As of today, it’s been exactly one year since I started the Da Russophile blog. Although I have been aware of hostile or condescending Western attitudes towards Russia for a long time, reflected in its mass media, I was finally provoked into joining battle by a particularly annoying and dishonest ‘editorial’ on the La Russophobe […]