Russia’s Online Campaign to Destroy Yulia Navalnaya | WIRED

Person wearing blue suit standing behind a microphone at a press conference

(Yulia Navalnaya, wife of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, attends the Munich Security Conference on February 16, 2024—the day the prison service of the Yamalo-Nenets region announced Navalny’s death.PHOTOGRAPH: KAI PFAFFENBACH/GETTY IMAGES)

…“The Kremlin is using gendered disinformation campaigns to crush dissent at home and to undermine democracy world over,” Kristina Wilfore, director of innovation and global projects at Reset, tells WIRED. “Rather than stand up to Vladimir Putin, social media platforms continue to provide the means for massive amplification of deeply harmful and defamatory rhetoric that puts women at risk and weaponizes gender.”

The campaign to undermine Navalnaya actually began weeks before her husband died. At the beginning of February, a a German-language website published an article alleging an affair between Navalnaya and Bulgarian journalist Hristo Grozev, based on a video that was supposedly produced by a former employee at Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. The allegations were based on images purportedly from Booking.com that featured Navalnaya’s and Grozev’s names.

The video was posted by an Instagram account that no longer exists, and no users with that username exist on any social media platform, the researchers at Reset concluded. “No public information or any social media profiles appear with the face of the woman from the video, which likely means the video was AI-generated,” the researcher wrote in a report on the campaign. “The video was likely posted on a newly created Instagram account, which was deleted immediately after the video was downloaded, and used only to prove that the account is an actual profile using the interface of the platform.”

Within hours, the same video was being used on an English-language website called Clear Story News, which is part of a pro-Kremlin disinformation network. Meanwhile, the German-language website where the story first appeared lists a Russian publisher with a Moscow address.

At the time, the stories did not reach a large audience and did not attract the attention of fact-checkers. Within hours of Navalny’s death being announced on February 16, links to the articles were spread widely on Russian-language Telegram channels as well as on Telegram accounts and blogs in other languages such as Finnish, Dutch, German, Italian, and English. One of the biggest accounts to spread the disinformation was Russian TV personality turned pro-Kremlin blogger Vladimir Solovyov, who has almost 1.3 million followers on Telegram…

Source: Russia’s Online Campaign to Destroy Yulia Navalnaya | WIRED

अर्धचंद्र / Crescent Moon  – Kaushal Kishore

 

चाहता हूं मैं 

कि हमारी कहानी अधूरी ही रहे, 

पूर्णता में अंत छुपा रहता है, 

मुझे आधा चांद इसलिए, 

ज्यादा खूबसूरत लगता है

अपने आंशिक रूप में भी…

🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙

I want our story 

to remain incomplete, 

as end lies in completeness, 

so I find the crescent moon, 

more beautiful, 

even in its partial manifestation…

🌙

–Kaushal Kishore 

Source: अर्धचंद्र / Crescent Moon  – Kaushal Kishore

The Sun Was Late This Morning – yaskhan

I woke up at dawn and looked for the sun
It seemed like the night was not yet done 
Maybe, I was up before my usual time 
The sun was just not ready to show up and shine. 
Looks like he was running behind schedule 
Or maybe the moon and stars had him in their lure 
I could hear the birds stirring and see the mist swirling 
The shadows of the night in a mood for flirting 
So he was late for his appointment in the sky 
Maybe he was insomniac and needed more shuteye 

Then I found the sun in my cup of coffee 
As I sipped warmth, I found the wait worthy.

Source: The Sun Was Late This Morning – yaskhan

Yay I Finally Tried Rhubarb in Exotic Veg and Star Fruit Month – Tanooki Homemade Cafe

rhubarb

 

It’s funny but when I bought rhubarb, a cashier lady and a lady who was helping me to bag the produce asked me how I’m gonna cook them since they never tried rhubarb either. At that time I was too happy finding them at a reasonable price, so I confessed it’s also my first time trying them and had no idea so I shared what people made and posted on SNS.

Source: Yay I Finally Tried Rhubarb in Exotic Veg and Star Fruit Month – Tanooki Homemade Cafe