[HN Gopher] Hammer and Tickle (2006)
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       Hammer and Tickle (2006)
        
       Author : homarp
       Score  : 39 points
       Date   : 2022-08-28 14:50 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.prospectmagazine.co.uk)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.prospectmagazine.co.uk)
        
       | blobby14 wrote:
       | A Russian and an American get on a plane in Moscow and get to
       | talking. The Russian says he works for the Kremlin and he's on
       | his way to go learn American propaganda techniques.
       | 
       | "What American propaganda techniques?" asks the American.
       | 
       | "Exactly," the Russian replies.
        
       | cainxinth wrote:
       | I collect documentary films. "Hammer & Tickle" (2007) is one of
       | my white whales. Been trying to track it down for years without
       | success. Anyone know where a copy can be bought or downloaded?
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | vgel wrote:
       | An engineer is messaging with his boss on Slack after hours. The
       | boss says "My brother is in the hospital and needs money for his
       | surgery!" The engineer asks "What are you gonna do?" and the boss
       | responds "Well, he is family..." The engineer responds "You're
       | gonna make him come in on weekends??"
        
       | VictorPath wrote:
       | > Why such a long queue?"..."Well," sighs Marx, "Sometimes we're
       | out of oil, sometimes we don't have
       | 
       | I've been immersed in shortages for the past two years (try to go
       | buy a car for MSRP), why some UK paper is writing about some far
       | away, long ago shortage I don't know (well actually I do know).
        
         | sefrost wrote:
         | The article was published in 2006.
        
         | logical_ferry wrote:
         | There are a few differences between you having to wait and a
         | Soviet having to wait for a car multiple years: * You most
         | probably already have a car and just want a newer model. A
         | Soviet citizen just had a bike. * Soviet citizen had one or two
         | models they could choose from. You have a plethora, some of
         | which are probably more readily available than others.
         | 
         | Don't compare UK shortages with what the Eastern Bloc went
         | through. They had people going to surgery without anesthesia.
         | You'll manage with your existing car for a bit more.
        
           | thriftwy wrote:
           | The difference is mostly quantitative. In USSR you could buy
           | a car if you were willing to pay over MSRP (which was
           | mandatory rather than recommended). Simply buy a new car
           | used. Reselling your car immediately after purchase for a
           | profit was a thing.
           | 
           | Some people (occupations such as arctic coal miner) had
           | financial means to do so easily. Other people (notably,
           | engineers on non-management positions like most of HN readers
           | today) would never realistically afford one.
           | 
           | The choice was indeed very limited. But again, it is mostly a
           | quantitative difference.
        
             | dullcrisp wrote:
             | You know they say, quantity has a quality of its own
        
         | davidgerard wrote:
         | The jokes translate just fine.
         | 
         | .
         | 
         | Under Brexit, every family gets what they need. That's why
         | Tesco puts a sign up that says "nobody needs groceries today."
         | 
         | .
         | 
         | What did Great Britain use to light its homes with before using
         | candles?
         | 
         | Electricity.
         | 
         | .
         | 
         | Q: Why is Brexit superior to Europe?
         | 
         | A: Because it heroically overcomes problems that do not exist
         | if we'd stayed in.
         | 
         | .
         | 
         | At a party meeting, a Conservative party officer is drilling a
         | local worker. He asks him: "Fellow Briton, if you had two
         | houses, would you give one to the Conservative Party?"
         | 
         | The worker responds "Yes, definitely, fellow Briton, I would
         | give one of my houses to the party!"
         | 
         | Then he asks "Fellow Briton, if you had two cars, would you
         | give one to the party?"
         | 
         | Again, the worker says, "Yes, I would give one of my cars to
         | the party!"
         | 
         | Finally, the officer asks, "If you had two shirts, would you
         | give one to the party?"
         | 
         | "No!"
         | 
         | The officer asks "But why? Why won't you give one of your
         | shirts to the party?"
         | 
         | The worker says: "Because I HAVE two shirts!"
         | 
         | .
         | 
         | A schoolboy wrote in his weekly essay: "My cat just had seven
         | kittens. They're all Brexiters."
         | 
         | The following week, the boy wrote: "my cat's kittens are all
         | Remainers."
         | 
         | The teacher called him up and asked him to explain the sudden
         | change. "Last week, you said they were all Brexiters!"
         | 
         | The boy nodded. "They were, but this week they all opened their
         | eyes."
         | 
         | .
         | 
         | A man walks into Sainsbury's. He asks the shop assistant, "You
         | don't have any meat?" The assistant says, "No, here we don't
         | have any fish. The counter that doesn't have any meat is across
         | the store."
         | 
         | .
         | 
         | A European fairy tale begins, "Once upon a time, there was...."
         | A Brexit fairy tale begins, "Once we're through all of this,
         | there will be...."
         | 
         | .
         | 
         | Great Britain is the most progressive country in the world.
         | Life was already better yesterday than it's going to be
         | tomorrow.
         | 
         | .
        
         | gtsop wrote:
         | Why the downvotes I wonder? Ok let me try using something the
         | soviets didn't have: gpu shortages!
        
         | thriftwy wrote:
         | Car market just shows you how quickly the consumer experience
         | degrades in light of shortages.
         | 
         | Where you were previously offered bonuses and free stuff, now
         | they would be insincere about what's in stock, how many does is
         | actually cost, distribute the best stuff cost-wise among inner
         | circle, try to shave a random extra amount of money from you.
         | 
         | As you can see you don't need any kind of especially corrupt
         | souls once incentives are wrong.
        
       | homarp wrote:
       | >[article author] also came across a wonderfully overwritten PhD
       | thesis by the Stanford anthropologist Seth Benedict Graham: A
       | Cultural Analysis of the Russo-Soviet Anekdot (anekdot is the
       | Russian word for a political joke).
       | 
       | https://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/9560/1/grahamsethb_etd2003.pd...
        
         | gukov wrote:
         | An anekdot doesn't have to be political. Actually, most of the
         | time it isn't.
        
       | dvh wrote:
       | Russian and Ukrainian are walking on the street and they both
       | spot $100 bill on the sidewalk. Russian grabs it and says "Let's
       | split like brothers!". And Ukrainian says: "No! Let's split
       | 50:50"
        
         | thriftwy wrote:
         | That probably refers to the fact that poopulation-wise,
         | Belarussians, Ukrainians and Russians are split like Vanyar-
         | Noldor-Teleri (and have physical appearance differencies not
         | unlike those three)
        
       | thriftwy wrote:
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_jokes has lots of
       | examples.
        
       | computator wrote:
       | One more classic story in the same category of humour:
       | 
       | Some poor downtrodden men in Leningrad during the height of the
       | Cold War have been hearing about all the wonderful jobs, weather,
       | and food in Siberia. They are eager to move there but they are
       | wary that it might be a trick, and that once there they won't be
       | allowed to leave. They agree that one of them should go first and
       | write a letter concealing a secret message back to his comrades
       | in Leningrad. If the letter is written in black ink, then life in
       | Siberia is excellent and the others should come. But if it's
       | written in red ink, then what they've been told is all lies.
       | 
       | Soon they get a letter from the comrade who volunteered to be the
       | first to go to Siberia. It's in black ink. They eagerly read his
       | glowing report about life in Siberia, the good jobs, comfortable
       | weather, and bountiful food. Their friend finishes his letter by
       | mentioning that there's just one thing he hasn't been able to
       | find: red ink.
        
       | carapace wrote:
       | I heard one that was circulating _after_ the fall,  "Everything
       | they told us about Communism was a lie, but everything they told
       | us about Capitalism was true."
       | 
       | (Ouch!)
        
         | nopenopenopeno wrote:
         | It cannot be overstated how valuable it is to read Karl Marx's
         | later work. Among so many other things, he condemned
         | revolutionary efforts in Russia because he viewed capitalism as
         | a necessary stage of progression.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | gtsop wrote:
           | Wow that is some great resource you have read there. Since
           | Marx died in 1883 and the Russian revolution was around 1917,
           | this post-death condemnation is a must read. What other
           | things he wrote after dying?
        
             | wging wrote:
             | I believe "revolutionary efforts in Russia" above means
             | attempts to bring about a revolution; these spanned a
             | period of many decades before 1917.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | motohagiography wrote:
       | Some of these are very funny, but they also actively murdered
       | tens of millions of civilians and we act like it was some kind of
       | forgivable quirky accident from well intentioned incompetence. I
       | like dark humour as much as anyone, but if these jokes become
       | relevant again, it's worth noting they were from a culture of
       | demoralized and broken people. Not to be a buzzkill, but never
       | forget that these people are always with us, making their way
       | through institutions, and waiting for their chance to do it
       | again. When this stuff becomes funny because it's close to home,
       | I'd say it's time to seriously consider what is important and
       | necessary to prevent it from happening again.
        
         | thriftwy wrote:
         | > they also actively murdered tens of millions of civilians
         | 
         | Let's punish the communism survivors for all the bad things
         | that happened to them.
         | 
         | That's what got us all into the current rabbit hole.
        
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       (page generated 2022-08-28 23:01 UTC)