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When Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2022 I thought about creating a whole bunch of memes. I ended up creating just two so far. One was this meme of Vladimir Putin that I made last year when the Wagner Group started this civil war in Russia that ultimately lasted just a few hours. The other I created just last month.
It turned out that so many other people have created incredibly awesome memes that I just don’t feel the need to create them myself. But then it turned out that there was an incident that led me to create this meme.
Here’s some background. I first heard about Russell “Texas” Bentley when he appeared in this video that went viral just days after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Here was this guy in the Russian-occupied region of Ukraine who was making pro-Russian propaganda speaking English with a Texas accent. He originally recorded his video for his own YouTube channel. Once it went viral YouTube closed down his channel and banned him. However his viral video has been preserved on Reddit and Twitter/X.
I looked this guy up online and found that a few years earlier he did this interview for Texas Monthly where I learned that he was born into a wealthy family. He became interested in communism at 12 when he read a book on Che Guevara, he was a pothead as a teen, he dropped out of high school, worked a variety of jobs, joined the U.S. army for a few years, worked a variety of jobs, moved to Minnesota, ran for the Senate as a third party candidate and lost, sold marijuana, was arrested, was convicted, was sent to jail, broke out of jail, spent the next few years as a fugitive on the lam, was caught and sent back to prison, was released, moved back to Texas, became an arborist, traveled to Cuba where he was impressed by the communism there, and listened to Russian propaganda through RT America (back when it used to broadcast in America–RT America got shut down when several cable providers dropped the channel from their lineups soon after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine). He became convinced that Ukraine was run by Nazis so he decided to travel to the Donbass region to fight for Russia in order to help “denazify” Ukraine. He appeared in this Vice News story about his fight with a Russian unit in Donetsk.
He subsequently settled in Donetsk, and married a local Donetsk woman. He also switched from fighting in a military unit to making English-language propaganda on behalf of Russia, which led to his viral video. That video led to more profiles in Western publications like Newsweek and Rolling Stone. After his video went viral he lost his YouTube channel and a few other Western social media accounts and he seemed to fade from the Western media.
But he kept up with his propaganda work. There’s his Instagram account where he had posted pictures of his life in Donetsk but he hadn’t posted there since 2019. There’s his blog, which he hadn’t updated since 2020, where you get to read about things like his belief that the COVID-19 pandemic was a manufactured crisis. There’s also his Telegram channel, which contains his more recent writings until the day before he disappeared and was announced to be dead eleven days later.
The biggest irony is that he was thrown off of Twitter nine years ago, which was long before Elon Musk purchased that platform and began to reinstate previously banned accounts. For some reason Bentley’s account wasn’t reinstated but he was allowed to create a new account just a few weeks before he was killed.
There’s even a book that Bentley wrote called The Donbass Cowboy, which was based on his own experiences fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
He went on to work for the Russian state media outlet Sputnik. It was through his propaganda work that he became a local celebrity in Donetsk where the locals called him “Texas.” Most of the Russell Bentley videos that are still up on YouTube are ones where he made guest appearances on other people’s channels. One such video was where he gave a guided tour of his new hometown of Donetsk. It was the least political of the videos that he appeared in and it showed the tragedy that such a lovely city had to be caught in such a violent war.
After that video he made went viral I remember the outcry on social media from people—especially Americans—calling him a traitor and demanding that he should be hauled back to the U.S. to be tried for treason. My attitude at the time was that while I probably disagreed with about 80% (and maybe higher) of his political beliefs, I could at least respect him because he actually put his money where his mouth was and moved to Eastern Europe and he even obtained Russian citizenship.
My opinion of Russell “Texas” Bentley grew lower the following year when two Westerners who had been fighting for Ukraine when they were captured and imprisoned by Russia, Shaun Pinner and Cossack Gundi, alleged on Twitter/X that their captors had forced them to participate in propaganda videos that Bentley was making. Which meant that Bentley was a war criminal.
Bentley was last seen in Donetsk on April 8 after an attack on the city by Kyiv forces. Bentley and his wife, Lyudmila, had gone to an office in downtown Donetsk to deal with some administrative documents. At the same time there was a Ukrainian strike in that area. Bentley decided to go in the direction of the smoke looking for anyone who needed help. When Bentley didn’t return, his wife had gone looking for him. She found his car, which had his baseball cap, his glasses, and a broken phone. Lyudmila later posted on her husband’s Telegram channel that her husband had been abducted by the 5th Brigade of the Russian Federation Armed Forces. When people suggested that Bentley was kidnapped because he was filming something that he shouldn’t be filming, Lyudmila clarified that she had experts check his broken phone and there were no photos or videos that were recently shot.
Soon messages began to surface on other Telegram channels about Bentley was taken by this Russian brigade because they thought that he was a NATO spy. Then the story of his demise at the hands of this Russian brigade began to change. At first the reports said that he was beheaded. Then the reports claimed that he had been shot in the head eight times. Then the reports said that the Russians initially gang-raped him before someone discovered that he had a Russian passport and other official documents indicating that he really wasn’t a NATO spy and one of the officers said that it was no longer possible to let Bentley go so they killed him either by being tortured to death or he was shot (depending on which report you read).
The only thing all these reports have in common is that Russell “Texas” Bentley was killed at the hands of the same Russian forces that he had fought with and actively supported with making his pro-Russian propaganda. His body has yet to be found as of this writing. It’s highly unlikely that he’s still alive because he disappeared in an active war zone. He’s been gone since April 8 and this post has gone live on May 16 so he’s been gone for over a month.
Why would the Russians turn on him? I’ve read some posts on Twitter/X claiming that he was too much of an alcoholic to be much use as a propagandist, he’s a scammer, he’s a bullshit artist. It’s possible that he may have somehow pissed the wrong person off and he paid the ultimate price for it. I’ve also read posts saying that the two breakaway republics in the Donbass region have apparently been dominated by gangsters and thugs since Russia encouraged the Donbass region to breakaway from Ukraine. It’s probable that Bentley was murdered by them because they wanted a pack of cigarettes or the cash in his wallet or something else. But right now it’s all rumor and speculation so it’s hard to know what is true and what isn’t.
There’s another possible reason. The Daily Mail has a story about him that mentions one thing about his death that I didn’t know about before. Quoting another story in The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Mail claims that Bentley had been involved with Russian ultranationalist circles and his death has made him the latest in a number of leaders of the annexation of eastern Ukraine to show up dead. The ultranationalists had felt that Russia was not moving aggressively enough in its invasion of Ukraine.
This group also included the late Wagner PMC founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, who had a falling out with Vladimir Putin after he had the Wagner Group organize an attempted coup against Moscow last year that ultimately failed. Prigozhin died in a plane crash one month later. Since then a number of ultranationalists have fallen out of favor with Putin and many of them have turned up dead. Bentley was the latest ultranationalist to meet his demise.
He had indicated in interviews that he intended to spend the rest of his life in Donetsk. It looks like he got his wish.
The moral of the story of Russell “Texas” Bentley is if you’re an American or a Westerner, don’t ever fight on behalf of Russia because the Russians will turn on you for whatever reason and you could end up dead. I’ll end this post with this song that he “wrote” and performed called “Sweet Home Novorossiya,” where he basically ripped off the melody from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.”
UPDATE (May 18, 2024): When I first became aware of Russell “Texas” Bentley after his one video went viral in 2022, I did a Google search on the guy and I found this 2017 interview he did with Texas Monthly. That article was probably the most in-depth story I read about the guy because it went into details about his family background (mainly that his family was wealthy) and his life in the US before he moved to Donetsk. Recently the same writer, Sonia Smith, wrote a sequel that is in the most recent issue of Texas Monthly. The only thing about Bentley that’s really new is the report that in late April a white Niva was found near an abandoned brick factory close to the front line. Inside of the car was a burned body. That body is supposedly undergoing a forensic medical examination but nothing further had been released.
Even if that body belonged to someone else, the chances of Bentley still being alive are practically nil at this point. He disappeared from an active war zone a month-and-a-half ago without a trace. If he was simply being kidnapped and held hostage his captors would’ve released a photo or video of Bentley along with a list of demands a long time ago. The fact that it didn’t happen only further proves that Bentley is dead.
The only other new fact about Bentley that was in that article is that he was the subject of this new documentary that was completed shortly before he died. It will air on Al Jazeera in a few months.
For my latest Deconstructing Kremlin Propaganda Substack I wrote about Jackson Hinkle. That guy has been constantly posting pro-Putin/pro-Hamas propaganda at such a huge rate since the Israel-Hamas war began that the screenshots I took of his posts were starting to clog up the space on my phone. I ended up using just a fraction of the screenshots I took because that post would’ve ended up with somewhere between 100-200 screenshots otherwise. Now that I’m finished with that post, not only was I was able to delete all those screenshots but I was also able to mute and block Jackson Hinkle so I would no longer be subjected to his vile posts. (I have never even followed him to begin with. Elon Musk had been promoting this guy on Twitter/X like crazy so you didn’t have to follow him to get his pro-Putin/pro-Hamas bile delivered directly into your newsfeed.) My mental health has suddenly improved in the days since I took steps to no longer be subjected to his garbage at a constant and frequent rate. I think seeing his crap had done something to my brain and I now feel better.
You can now read what I wrote about Jackson Hinkle right here.
I also made a promo video for this post, which you can view on TikTok, Clapper, Instagram, and YouTube.
A couple of years ago my onetime housemate Phil Shapiro was the one who let me know about the creation of this new blogging platform where writers could actually earn income. It sounded good but, at the time, I was busy enough with this blog and I didn’t see the need to create another one. It was something that I had put in the back of my mind for something I would do if I ever had an idea for a Substack that is completely different from the theme of this blog (which is basically devoted to my more creative efforts in art, photography, and videography).
I finally had an idea and it’s one where I can, at long last, actually use my college background. (I have a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the University of Maryland at College Park with a minor in Government and Politics.)
Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine last year there has been an increase in online propaganda that is being targeted at Western audiences in an effort to convince them that what Russia is currently doing to Ukraine is the right thing to do. I’m seeing more of it on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, especially since Elon Musk has taken control of that platform. Musk claims that he wants to expose people to all viewpoints but, in reality, the vast majority of these viewpoints tend to amplify rhetoric that is pro-Trump, pro-Christian Nationalist, pro-Putin, and pro-Russia.
I found myself spending way too much time on X just witnessing the horror that it has become. It’s like the online equivalent of rubbernecking at a horrible car accident on a major highway. I’m getting way more people whom I don’t even follow in my timeline spewing nasty stuff.
I finally thought that these people need to be exposed to the general public for the pro-Putin shills that they really are, especially those who aren’t even on Twitter/X. Many of these people have appeared on Fox News so they could spread their message to those who aren’t on social media (or rarely use it).
I especially saw a need for this when I checked out blogs relating to the current Russia-Ukraine conflict and saw that many of them were more devoted to military analysis by armchair analysts, many of whom are based nowhere near Ukraine or Russia. There hasn’t been enough information about another front in this war that is being spread to the rest of the world: The information front.
I’ve done some posts in this blog regarding this information warfare, such as my recent ones where I made videos about Roger Waters and Jackson Hinkle. But I feel that a separate blog devoted just to information warfare would be better since this blog is devoted to my more creative side.
So my Substack, Deconstructing Kremlin Propaganda, was born. I’m also hoping to make some side income so I set something up. Basically this blog will be free to read but if you want to post comments, you’ll need to take out a subscription, which only costs $8 a month. (I had originally wanted to go lower to $1 per month so people without much money could participate but Substack requires $8 per month minimum.) I’m hoping to post there at least three times a month and I’m trying to aim for once a week.
What about the future of this blog, Sagittarius Dolly? I still intend to post here as well but the emphasis will be on my creative output in arts, crafts, photography, videography, and maybe even music. (I’m trying to make an effort to pick up my guitar again and just play it.)
You can check out my debut post in Deconstructing Kremlin Propaganda right here.
UPDATE (September 24, 2023): I made a promotional video ad for my new Substack blog that I uploaded on TikTok, Clapper, Instagram, and YouTube.
Roger Waters recently turned 80 years old. It’s a major milestone for him. If I’m ever lucky enough to live that long, I would just take it easy by doing something no more stressful than going to the beach or spend a weekend in a cabin in the mountains. What I wouldn’t do is going out of my way to be a total apologist for a warmongering dictator somewhere in the world who had invaded another country and whose troops has committed mass atrocities. Nor would I want to be one of those hardcore political zealots of any stripe because I’ve met people like that in the past and they tend to be the most serious, most angry, most unpleasant people I’ve dealt with.
But Roger Waters has chosen something different at 80. He been giving concerts at various venues, in North America and Europe, which is an amazing thing for a guy his age to do. But he has also been very vocal about supporting Vladimir Putin and taking the Russian side in its war against Ukraine. Last year I wrote this rant expressing my displeasure over his choice: Fuck You, Roger Waters!
But he’s doing more than just putting on rock concerts. He was invited to speak at this free event on a panel that was held at Adler Hall in New York City on September 12. The topic was called “Climate, Politics, and Corporate Power: A Conversation With Steven Donziger, Michael Imperioli, Ayisha Siddiqa, Marty Garbus, and Roger Waters.” Roger Waters announced it on his Twitter/X account while also providing a link where people can get free tickets to that event.
Someone retweeted Waters’ message while adding this: “Roger Waters has a free event you can register for. Be a shame if people booked tickets and didn’t attend. Real shame…”
This is so reminiscent of 2020 when the young people on organized on TikTok to order free tickets to attend then-President Donald Trump’s rally in Tulsa only to have whole sections of the venue be completely empty. I remember Trump was especially infuriated at this as well.
I decided to carry the message from Twitter/X over to TikTok by creating this short video that I uploaded on that platform. For added measure, I also uploaded that same video on Clapper, Instagram, and YouTube.
It’s been a few days since that event was held and I haven’t heard any more about it. The only indication on how it went was this tweet, which said “Roger Waters free tickets all gone. Oh dear, sounds like it is very popular.”
I haven’t been able to find any information about how that event went. Was the venue was half-empty or was it filled with people? If it were filled with people, how many of them were hostile to Roger Waters and had only attended in the hopes of waving signs or heckle him? I wish I knew how it turned out. If I find any more information, I’ll definitely update this post.
I know I’ve written before about how much of a shitshow X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter) has become since Elon Musk has purchased it. He’s made all kinds of crazy changes that has turned the site into a total shitstorm. One of them is that he has installed a For You page that now becomes the default page when you log on to Twitter (which is an interface that has been blatantly copied from TikTok). Many of the tweets popping up are from accounts that I don’t even follow and whom I would have never followed in the first place had I somehow stumbled upon those accounts.
One of them is a 22-year-old guy from California named Jackson Hinkle. He’s this guy who’s dedicated himself to being a full-time provocative commenter. He’s obviously so desperate to become famous that he’ll post anything for attention and he doesn’t care if he gets tons of hostile responses because, to him, hostile responses are better than no attention at all.
He constantly goes into my For You page a lot. It’s obvious that he doesn’t have much of a life outside of X/Twitter. I don’t even think he has been to college or trade school. He constantly begs for people to support him on Patreon and other fundraising ways.
What’s really wild is that in 2019 as an 18 year old (an age when most young adults are busy preparing to graduate from high school, making decisions on whether to go to college or trade school or even sign up to serve in the military) he ran for San Clemente City Council as a progressive Democrat and lost. The following year he worked with Bernie Sanders campaign during the primaries but Joe Biden ended up winning the Democratic nomination and, ultimately, the presidency.
So he wasn’t successful as a progressive activist so what does he do? He decides to completely change his politics where he now openly supports Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again wing of the Republican Party and he also has portrayed himself as a fanboy of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
You can read more about his background and his political conversion at the following links:
Who the f_ck is Jackson Hinkle?
When Russia began its invasion of Ukraine last year, Jackson Hinkle became Russia’s biggest American cheerleader for Ukraine to be completely conquered and absorbed into Russia. Here’s a sample recent tweet showing how much Hinkle loves Russia and Putin.
He has gotten so enthusiastic about his newfound fascination with Russia that he has become romantically linked with the 2022 Miss Russia, Anna Linnikova. She’s the same Miss Russia who complained about how most of her competitors at this year’s Miss Universe pageant had snubbed and shunned her because she represents a country that has invaded Ukraine.
Meanwhile he has also gotten so enthusiastic about his political conversion that both PayPal and Venmo have decided to cut ties with him. Of course he’s whining about it while begging for people to fork over money for his exclusive X/Twitter Subscription service.
Basically Jackson Hinkle is learning the hard way that being a glorified propagandist for Russia based in the United States is not exactly a well-paying career opportunity. I thought it was so funny that I took a few screenshots and made a slideshow video about it that I uploaded on to TikTok, Clapper, Instagram, and YouTube.
A few days later Jackson Hinkle was tweeting about how it’s unfair that YouTube had decided to demonetized his channel because they were not thrilled with the idea of paying someone ad revenue for making propaganda videos on behalf of Russia. At the same time a few people associated with NAFO had learned something interesting about his supposed girlfriend Anna Linnikova. They found webpages suggesting that she works for an escort service in Dubai.
While I’m not 100% sure if Miss Russia is really an escort, it seems typical that the only way that someone who acts like he’s a Putin fanboy can get a girlfriend is by paying for her services so I wouldn’t be surprised if this is true.
I found the YouTube demonetization and the possibility that his Miss Russia girlfriend might be an escort to be so funny that I made a sequel to the previous video that I uploaded on TikTok, Clapper, Instagram, and YouTube. Enjoy!
Twitter, under the ownership of Elon Musk, is becoming an even bigger dumpster fire as the months go by. His latest antic is to change the name of the platform from Twitter to X. That’s right, he is in the process of jettisoning the name Twitter and replacing it with X. Never mind the fact that Twitter has become a valuable name brand while most people tend to associate X with pornography. Elon Musk has long had this fascination with the 24th letter of the Latin alphabet going as far back as the dotcom boom of the late 1990s-early 2000s. He named his first child, a son, with singer Grimes X AE A-Xii. A year later Elon and Grimes had a daughter named Exa Dark Siderael (but Grimes has since changed it to a single letter: Y).
The sole reason why I still visit Twitter these days is to do some serious rubbernecking as to how bad it has become and also to check up on NAFO taking on the Russian bots who are spreading bizarre rumors like “Ukraine will lose the war soon” and “Zelenskyy is a cocaine addict.” But it has also gotten annoying with getting increased feeds from people whom I don’t even follow at all and whom I would never have followed in the first place. Musk claims that he simply wants people to be exposed to all sides of the political spectrum. I wouldn’t mind if I was seeing newsfeeds from people who are more on the moderate end of conservatism like Mitt Romney. But I’m seeing posts from right wing extremists like Tucker Carlson, Laura Loomer, and Tomi Lahren going into my newsfeed and it definitely annoys the hell out of me because they spew the most extremist stuff imaginable.
Heck, the other day I saw a new post pop up in my timeline from Roseanne Barr, a comedian whom I used to follow on Twitter years ago but unfollowed prior to the 2016 elections because she began to embrace all kinds of bizarre QAnon conspiracy theories. (She really went off the deep end after I stopped following her.) There was a reason why I had unfollowed her in the first place and I hate that Twitter/X is trying to shove her crap down my throat.
Another person whom I don’t even follow but her posts end up in my newsfeed anyway is Juanita Broaddrick, the woman whose biggest claim to fame is that she accused Bill Clinton of raping her back in 1978. She is now a rabid Donald Trump supporter (which is ironic considering the number of women who have accused Trump of rape and sexual assault) who spreads all kinds of right-wing talking points. There was one that really drove me nuts—she shared this meme that claimed that the U.S. government had staged a riot on January 6, 2021 to cover up the fact that it had certified a fraudulent election while adding her own one-word message: “TRUE!!!”
As someone who lives outside of Washington, DC and who became horrified at what happened at the U.S. Capitol building, I was outraged by her spreading lies like that. The bottom line is that had Trump not held a rally nearby on that day, this whole incident would have never happened in the first place. And there are indications that Trump may be indicted for that incident sometime in the near future.
I ended up making a quick video where I took a screenshot of Broaddrick’s tweet (along with that stupid meme that she shared), paired it with the Carter Vail song “Shut the Fuck Up” and I uploaded it on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Enjoy! 🙂
This past weekend was a really bizarre turn in the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. A civil war broke out in Russia and it ended in about 24 hours, which is probably the shortest civil war I’ve ever heard of. (In contrast, the American Civil War lasted four years.) Or maybe it was an attempted coup d’etat. Whatever it was, it came suddenly then ended just as suddenly.
In hindsight, you could say that the foundations were laid just a couple of months ago. Not only is the regular Russian military fighting in Ukraine but there is a special private military organization known as the Wagner Group whose leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was a chef who owned several restaurants and catering companies that provided services to the Kremlin and he was sometimes nicknamed “Putin’s chef.” That’s right, the man had radically changed careers from food to war.
The Wagner Group also has a history of committing atrocities in Ukraine and in other countries like Mali and Syria. Yesterday I actually made a Facebook post pointing out that fact when I saw posts from people who cheered on the Wagner Group challenging Vladimir Putin in that short-lived civil war. Yes, Vladimir Putin is an awful human being but so are Yevgeny Prigozhin and his entire Wagner Group. Just because the Wagner Group had put up a fight against the Kremlin doesn’t mean that they are virtuous heroes or the proverbial knights in shining armor. The people in the Wagner Group are just as awful as Putin so it makes no sense to even take any sides in this dispute.
A couple of months ago Prigozhin made this video calling for an end to the war in Ukraine, which briefly got some mention in the Western media then quickly forgotten.
Then last month Prigozhin made an even more blunt video where he’s standing in a field that’s full of dead Russian soldiers. He angrily challenged Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov for not providing enough ammunition so the soldiers in his group ended up dead. That anger-filled rant went viral for a few days.
But all hell literally broke loose when the Wagner Group decided to take their tanks and start traveling from Ukraine right into Russia where they began to take over a few border towns then decided to head towards Moscow. Social media was totally crazy with all kinds of reports of the tanks moving north to Moscow. There was speculation of whether Putin was going to be overthrown by the Wagner Group. There were even conflicting reports on what was going on. I found this timeline of events on Al Jazeera’s site that attempted to make sense of what was going on.
At one point I saw posts claiming that Vladimir Putin had decided to flee Moscow and head to St. Petersburg. I began to remember last year when Russia initially began its invasion of Ukraine and the US offered to help evacuating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy from Kyiv and he famously turned them down saying “The fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride.” I decided to create this quick meme featuring a picture of Vladimir Putin right on my phone using InShot with the caption “I need a ride, not ammunition!”
I uploaded it on Twitter and Instagram and I got some notice. I decided to make a version for TikTok where I added the song “Na, Na, Na, Na, Na, Na, Na, Na, Hey, Hey, Goodbye!” as the background. I got a lot of views on that video along with a bunch of likes. I cross-posted it to YouTube Shorts where I got far less views.
It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything like a meme but I thought it was cool that I got attention and I hoped that it would go viral. That hope was short-lived because that Russian civil war turned out to last a little over 24 hours.
Basically Prigozhin had decided to call off the Wagner Group’s march into Moscow just as they were within a short distance of that city. In exchange Prigozhin would relocate to Belarus while Putin would remain in control of Russia. The whole thing was just totally bizarre and it had exposed Putin’s weaknesses.
So my own meme had quickly gone from being timely and relevant to not aging very well in less than 24 hours. I’m only glad that I didn’t spend too much time and money in making that meme since it became so quickly outdated.
That whole Russian Civil War (or coup d’etat or whatever) was just bizarre. The weirdest part of the whole thing was this video that was posted on the 1420 YouTube channel where local Moscow residents were interviewed while the Wagner Group tanks were making their way north to that city. (This was before Prigozhin called off the whole tanks moving in formation to Russia and made his decision to accept political asylum in Belarus.) The majority of people interviewed seemed incredibly calm and nonchalant about the fact that tanks were going towards their city while they were talking about why they weren’t worried about those tanks. The most jaw-dropping responses were the ones who said that they didn’t want to talk politics. That’s right, some people actually thought that talking about tanks approaching their city was “too political.”
I live outside of Washington, DC and I was there when one of the planes in the September 11 terrorist attacks hit the Pentagon. I remembered that people were incredibly sad, angry, and totally freaked out about what happened, especially those who lost friends and family members there. No one had any trepidation over discussing the 9/11 terror attacks as being “political.” I’d like to believe that had there been any tanks from a hostile enemy force that were making their way towards DC, the locals would either find a secure location to hide in, flee the area, or even attempt to mount some kind of a resistance. The DC locals definitely would not be totally blasé or nonchalant about enemy tanks trying to make their way to DC. And they would not be worrying about talking about the arriving tanks as “too political” to discuss.
I know the Russians had long been living under some kind of an authoritarian government since the time when the czars were in power. Just providing a very mild critique of the government could risk prison, forced exile, or death. Many of them have been conditioned to not be too outspoken about anything, especially if those views directly contradicted the official views from the government, and, in a lot of ways, having a detached point of view or living in denial is merely a survival mechanism. But I find it shocking that many of these people have taken their detached point of view/living in denial to the point where their potential safety could be endangered because they aren’t willing to directly face the reality of their situation.
UPDATE (July 1, 2023): I came across another video from the Real Ukraine YouTube Channel. Like the earlier 1420 video that I embedded in this blog post, the people behind this channel conducted their own interviews with the locals in Kyiv about the attempted Russian coup d’etat/revolution/whatever.
Compared to the Russians interviewed in the 1420 video, the Ukrainians in this particular video were more relaxed as they freely gave their opinions about that incident in Russia. It is a stark reminder of the vast difference between the people living in Russia and the people living in Ukraine in terms of being able to actually voicing their opinions without fear of being sent to prison.
By the way I created a short video compilation of some of the wackiest videos and photos from that short-lived rebellion/coup/whatever.
I’m sure you’ve heard all about the current artificial intelligence (AI) hype due to the popularity of programs like ChatGPT, which people have been using to churn out anything from articles to resumes. There is a visual graphic component, thanks to the increasingly popularity of programs like Midjourney. Someone had actually taken an English-language recording of the Soviet national anthem (which was sung by Paul Robeson) then fed the lyrics into Midjourney, which churned out a series of AI graphics. The person then used the graphics and Robeson’s recording to create this music video.
I have to admit that Midjourney did a great job of recreating the art style of the Socialist Realism movement, which became the only authorized art style from the time that Josef Stalin came to power until the USSR collapsed. The only things that were really off were the scenes where you would see someone having eight fingers on one hand. (I’ve learned that, at this point, AI has a hard time with accurately rendering fingers and toes.) This kind of AI mimicry is the main reason why so many artists are concerned about AI becoming a threat to their own livelihoods.
For many years it has been very difficult for most artists to actually make a living at creating art. For every successful artist like Andy Warhol or Damien Hirsch, there are literally hundreds of artists who would consider themselves lucky if their art was displayed in a small gallery located in the small town that they lived in. If they were luckier they might be able to go into commercial art where they would create art that promoted a product or service but at least they could still be somewhat creative. (Of course it all depended on what the client wanted.) For most artists art was something that they only created in their spare time in between their day jobs (that were usually unrelated to art) and family obligations. AI is something that could make it even harder for an artist to make art as a full-time career.
On the other hand, I could imagine the one thing that AI could be used as a tool for artists. Let’s say I want to do a surreal art piece featuring a woman dressed as a princess riding a giant bear. An artist with money, a lot of props, and access to a large studio space could hire a model wearing a crown with a princess gown while mounting a dead grizzly bear that had been stuffed by a taxidermist. A cash-strapped artist could make do with a Barbie doll wearing a princess gown being placed on a stuffed teddy bear and use that as a model for the art.
With AI I could enter the prompt “woman dressed as a princess riding a giant bear” and it would churn out at least one graphic to my specifications. Then all I would have to do is use that graphic as a model or inspiration while I create my own original painting or watercolor of a princess riding a giant bear. Of course I would change a lot of the details (such as making the princess gown a different color from what is in the AI generated piece) but the AI graphic would still be very useful as a model for my own original work at a fraction of the cost of hiring models or even buying Barbie dolls to use as models.
I went to a meetup a few days ago about AI programs and I found it informative. I had wanted to try Midjourney for myself since it is the popular AI graphic program at the moment but I was turned off by the subscription fee it was charging. I wanted to try using AI for free first to see if I would even like it before committing to a subscription program. It was during this meetup that I learned about a free open source alternative to Midjourney called Stable Diffusion, which is accessible online through your favorite browser.
Like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion will churn out AI-generated art based on a prompt. I decided to try something silly. Every now and then I see people post memes depicting Vladimir Putin wearing gay outfits complete with a unicorn horn, which is a dig at Putin’s longtime hostility towards the LGBTQ community in his own nation of Russia.
So I had Stable Diffusion churn out four different graphics based on my prompt “Vladimir Putin riding a unicorn.” Here are the results, starting with this one depicting Putin on a giant unicorn with three horns, which totally contradicts the origin of the word “unicorn.” The unicorn also has what either looks like seven legs or six legs and one tail or even five legs and two tails. Putin looks like he’s wearing lipstick in this graphic.
Then there’s the second graphic. The unicorn still has three horns on its head but at least it has four legs and one tail. Putin is sitting there smirking like a young child who is about to create some mischief.
The third graphic has the unicorn looking normal in that it actually has one horn. Vladimir Putin is the one who looks weird. He has the expression on his face that reminds me of the animated gangsters I used to see in various cartoons as a child. It also looks like he’s riding this unicorn in the sidesaddle position and he seems to have three legs. He’s also raising a sharp object but I can’t tell if it’s a sword or a horn that he somehow chopped off of another unicorn. (Or maybe the unicorn he’s riding had two horns and Putin chopped one of them off.)
The last image is the best of the four images. Both Putin and the unicorn look normal. He’s flying the rainbow flag, which is ironic considering his most recent crackdown on the LGBTQ community in Russia just a few months ago.
I even made a short video using the music that’s based on the football/soccer chant “PUTIN KHUYLO!”. I uploaded it on TikTok, Clapper, Instagram, and YouTube.
The bottom line is that while it’s fun to use a graphics AI program to churn out art based on word prompts, right now I don’t see it being much of a threat to working artists. Of course that assessment will probably change in the future as the technology improves but I think that graphics AI is so new that people can generally tell which art was actually created by a human and which was created by a machine. It helps that people are becoming more educated on how to tell the difference between AI art and human-created art thanks to the numerous supporters of Donald Trump who keep on posting on Twitter incredibly ludicrous AI generated art depicting Donald Trump as a very manly man who is the perfect specimen of a human being.
Sagittarius Dolly 
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