Category Archives: New Utopia

I grew up in Raqqa, a small Syrian city on the banks of the Euphrates. The city of my childhood was little known. They didnt even include Raqqa in the weather forecasts on local news.

In January 2014, Islamic State militants took control of Raqqa and cut it off from the world, submitting its citizens to abuse and horror. The Islamic State claimed Raqqa as the capital of their caliphate and began to publish slick videos calling the city a paradise and seducing new jihadists into joining their cause.

Even though we had no formal training, my friends and I became citizen journalists to expose the atrocities committed by the Islamic State. We called the group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS).

We started inside Raqqa, plastering walls with anti-ISIS graffiti and posters. We even created a local magazine called Dabaq, a name similar to that of the ISIS magazine Dabeeq. We would go out at night and place copies of Dabaq at cafes, shops, and mosques. The cover of our magazine was the same as the Islamic State magazine, but inside we published information to discourage residents from joining the terrorist group.

But we also wanted the rest of the world to know what was happening in our home town, so we snuck covert footage and photos out of the city, publishing them on social media and ultimately sending to various news organizations to show that Raqqa was not the utopia that ISIS claimed. Now, when people search for Raqqa on the Internet, instead of finding ISIS propaganda, they find our website listing the abuses carried out by ISIS.

Last week, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces seized the final road into Raqqa, tightening a siege on the militant de-facto capital. But reclaiming the city will not be enough; we must continue to fight against the ideology of ISIS. Our group works diligently to point out the hypocrisy and the lies of ISIS media campaign an act of resistance that the terror group does not like. They have killed several members of our group and continue to track us down and threaten us online. In the three years since leaving Raqqa, several members of RBSS have come out of the shadows to put a human face to the campaign. We continue our mission in the hope that one day our words and images will defeat their weapons.

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Bombs Will Not Defeat ISIS (but Maybe the Internet Will) - New York Times

MSNBC

Some Republicans give up on the idea of an 'Ayn Rand utopia' MSNBC The New York Times reported over the holiday weekend on conservative lawmakers in Kansas, South Carolina, and Tennessee agreeing to significant tax increases in recent weeks to meet demands for more revenue. This was especially notable in Kansas, ...

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Some Republicans give up on the idea of an 'Ayn Rand utopia' - MSNBC

Last April, Paradox Interactive released the first major expansion to their May 2016 4X real-time strategy game "Stellaris." It was a great game at launch, allowing players to live out their fantasies of galactic conquest through a robust, if somewhat simplistic, system of resource management, political maneuvering, and gratuitous space battles. Copious amounts of well-written science fiction pieces accompanied every major event, making the whole experience feel like a cross between a choose-your-own-adventure novel and a strategy sim on par with Firaxis well-respected Civilization series. In April, Paradox Interactive released two major additions to the game: one, a free patch updating the game to version 1.6 codenamed Banks, and the other a paid expansion adding additional gameplay and narrative content to the game called Stellaris: Utopia. Utopia builds on the changes made in Banks, so Ill talk about both here.

In "Stellaris," your mission is to guide your civilizationeither a predefined race or a self-created oneto galactic greatness. At the outset, youre equipped with only two ships: one for obtaining resources, and one for exploring the vast cosmos. After making progress on the games truly staggering research tree, you will colonize new planets and make contact with alien lifeforms.

Unfortunately, alien contact is perhaps the least satisfying element of "Stellaris" as diplomacy is extremely limited. You can choose to wage war on another race, insult them to worsen relations, trade with them, create or join a Federation, or attempt to Vassalize them (or, if theyre strong enough, ask to become their Vassal).

In theory, these might be all the actions required to simulate a fun, if not true-to-life, version of diplomacy. But the options are often not nuanced enough to be useful in gameplay. For example, although you can offer colonized planets to other nations as part of trade deals, you cannot ask them for the same. If a planet has already been colonized by another empire, the only to attain it is through war. This limitation means that towards the late-game, when most systems are under the control of one empire or another, the only way to expand an empire is war. By this point, diplomacy in Stellaris isnt just lackluster, but actively annoying.

The original "Stellaris" also suffered from a lack of interesting mid-to-late game content and a user interface that didnt provide enough functionality. Without Utopia or the accompanying Banks update, micromanaging perhaps dozens of units to explore and study the galaxy in the late-game lost the excitement of the early-game. Instead of an exercise in decision-making and the wonder of discovery, the micromanagement of Science Ships to explore the universe, scan solar systems for resources or habitable worlds, and research anomalies becomes an annoying distraction from the more interesting events that occur as your empire becomes more powerful and the galaxy grows older.

Though diplomacy remains for the most part basic, "Stellaris: Utopia and the 1.6 Banks update released alongside it for the base game is a literal game-changer in almost every part of gameplay. Banks provided much-needed polish to the user interface, and indeed changed the structure of the game itself in too many subtle but important ways to count. It also entirely reworked the initially simplistic Government system into one which allowed the player to make more interesting decisions.

The most interesting change in Banks was the introduction of factions, which represent the political reality that not all members of an empire will believe in the same things. Your empire could be materialistic and warmongering, but anywhere from a few to most of your population might instead be collectivist and pacifist. Your responses to the factions and events which occur in your empire will create and influence factions. This makes your empire feel much more alive, and makes you think twice about unilaterally deciding to start wars or engage in gene modification.

The Utopia expansion works to build on these changes and diversify the players control over the narrative of their empire, as well as adding events to the galaxy which contributes to the overall story of the world you inhabit in "Stellaris. Utopia adds a host of late-game upgrades called Ascension Perks which give the player something constructive to work towards after their empire reaches its late-game stage, but before the galactic crisesany one of a number of what are essentially game-ending surprisesstart to emerge. This makes the late-game experience much more consistent, and allows the player to continue to develop the narrative of their species by focusing on, well, ascending, in one of a variety of ways. If you focused on computer technologies and artificial intelligence, you might replace your species with a race of technologically enhanced organics; if you focused on gene modification, your entire race might evolve into a superior form with upgraded statistics and new bonuses.

Utopia also introduces a number of megastructures to the game, which are special stations with incredible build costs but high rewards. You can build habitable planetoids, Dyson Spheres, and other wacky contraptions straight out of science fiction. This helps to address the problem of late-game expansion that I mentioned earlierwhere you lose the ability to expand your population as the number of unclaimed habitable worlds approaches zero, and prohibitively expensive terraforming operations become tediousthough it doesnt quite make up for the inadequacies of the diplomatic system. It comes pretty close, though.

Ive poured many, many hours into "Stellaris, and I can tell you that its worth your time. Performance tends to sharply drop towards the late game, as the engine has to simulate more and more AI movement and the number of calculations it has to make increases, but there are whispers that performance might be improved with later patches. The developers are still very much engaged with the game, and maintain an active Facebook presence, posting Dev Diaries every so often to keep fans apprised of design decisions and to provide teasers of new features. The modding scene, particularly on Steam, is vibrant, with everything from a Rick and Morty empire to a total-conversion Star Trek mod available for download, for free. All in all, its a great game, and with the Steam Summer Sale in full swing theres never been a better time to get it.

Stellaris is normally $39.99 on Steam, but is discounted to $19.99 until July 5th. Stellaris: Utopia is normally $19.99, but until July 5th is discounted to $17.99.

Staff writer Noah F. Houghton can be reached at noah.houghton@thecrimson.com.

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Originally posted here:

War and Peace in Space: 'Stellaris: Utopia' Enhances Galactic Empire Sim - Harvard Crimson

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

By Diana Thorn, Carpinteria

On July 4, we will celebrate the birth and independence of our nation. Many of us will go to parades, barbecue or othercelebrations.

However, will we reflect on the true meaning of the day? Will we remember the founders ideal of limited government based on natural law, and their warnings about the dangers of an overreaching federal government? Will we remember that they gave us a government that combined responsibility and accountability? Is this happeningtoday?

On July 4, it is time to take an honest look at the state of our country. For starters, what has happened to our civil society? Everywhere you look, there is corruption, violence, and lawlessness. And what about the dishonest media, threats against our president, and shutting down freespeech?

Furthermore, what has happened to our representative republic? We see creeping progressivism, socialism, and unrealistic utopian ideas rearing their uglyheads.

America, it is time to wake up. It is time to rediscover what America is all about. A good start would be to read Mark Levins new book, Rediscover Americanism.

Happy 4th ofJuly.

Be succinct, constructive, and relevant to the story. Leaving a comment means you agree to our Discussion Guidelines. We like civilized discourse. We don't like spam, lying, profanity, harassment or personal attacks.

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Ugly Utopia - Santa Barbara Independent

Updated July 05, 2017 17:32:27

Her paintings have been exhibited in Paris, London, New York, Tokyo and Milan. But in her old age, renowned Aboriginal artist Kathleen Ngale lives on a mattress outdoors, unable to walk, kept warm during cold desert winter nights by about a dozen dogs who sleep alongside her.

Ms Ngale, aged about 87, lives at Camel Camp where she was born, an outstation in the remote Utopia region of Central Australia, about 260 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs.

"I sit here hungry sometimes, and we sit here with nothing," she said in Anmatyerre via an interpreter.

"My leg is no good I just wait for little bits of food and I can't go and wash myself when I feel like it."

Her relative Rosalie Kunoth-Monks has deplored her living conditions and is calling for improvements to be made to aged care for the elderly Aboriginal people of the region.

"She is lying with the warmth of the dogs on that mattress," Ms Kunoth-Monks said.

"How she's living now, you would not put your worst enemy through that ... It's a slow death."

She said Ms Ngale was rarely able to shower or have her bed linen changed, and her husband, aged also in his 80s, was her primary carer.

Ms Ngale's granddaughter Denisa said she was occasionally visited by a nurse from the Urpantja Clinic, located about 50 kilometres away, and that there were weekly deliveries of soup.

"If there is aged care, this old lady should be able to have a wheelchair, she should be able to have her clothes washed," Ms Kunoth-Monks said.

"There should be a laundromat here where they can wash, they don't mind putting in two dollars or whatever and doing that.

"But we are at the absolute lowest level of poverty here at communities like this."

The Federal Government funds the Barkly Shire Council, headquartered in Tennant Creek about 400km away, to provide aged care services in Utopia, a region consisting of 16 homelands and outstations spread out over several hundred kilometres.

The service chiefly consists of meal deliveries, which are provided daily in the main homeland in Arlparra, but drops off to once every few days in the remoter areas, as there is only one full-time worker and a few part-time local staff funded to cover the region, acting CEO Chris Wright said.

"Not just aged care, but all the services we're expected to provide in that particular community are just not adequate," he said.

"Our base problem is just simply the nature of the community it's big, it's widespread, there's huge distances to travel, and the conventional funding models don't fit that particular community.

"I guess the opportunity is to figure out, 'okay, how can services be more adequately provided to a community of outstations that are as far as 150 miles apart?'"

There are about 15 aged people effectively sleeping rough in the community, including a 92-year-old woman living in a humpy, said Michael Gravener, CEO of the Urpantja Aboriginal Corporation.

"It's total impoverishment, total disempowerment, and they should be honoured as some of the greats of this country, being the oldest-surviving owners of this amazing country," he said.

"It's just sad that we've neglected those people."

Mr Gravener said entrenched poverty and a lack of funding made it difficult to improve circumstances for Utopia's residents.

"We're dealing with people who are told to get up and work, to get on with their lives, who live in absolute poverty, absolute homelessness, chronic overcrowding, and we're [saying], 'hey, you've got to get your act together and come and live like us'," he said.

"The reality is, if you haven't got the basics to start with, you're not going to get anywhere.

"Things like housing, food security, someone caring decently for them. They'll criticise people like the carers for Kathleen but if you're impoverished yourself, how are you going to do that?"

He said Aboriginal people living on homelands had been found in studies to be in better health than those living in cities or regional hubs, but said they needed more support to continue to do so.

"Homelands have never been given an opportunity to survive or to grow because they're always being given little bits of funds, and you can't do that," he said.

"You can't keep playing catch-up when you want to develop into a productive, sustainable, economically viable, socially viable community."

He said Ms Ngale's living conditions needed no embellishment: "It's shocking enough as it is, she shouldn't be like that," he said.

"She should be living in the homeland, she should be given the best of care and respected for the person she is. She's a unique Australian."

Mr Wright said the elderly of Utopia were living where they wanted to be, on country.

"I understand [Ms Ngale's] living on the veranda, that's where she wants to be, that's fine. People have their choices and apparently her choice is to live in the way that she lives," he said.

He said there was "definitely" the opportunity for her to be brought to Arlparra to spend time at the aged care centre.

He said that despite its issues, the region was unique, and services should be bolstered for the homelands rather than centralised in hub communities.

"It's a stunning place; I can understand why the elderly want to stay on their homelands, because it is special," he said.

"We're talking about Australia's original people, I think they deserve the respect and the resources to be able to continue to live on what is their customary land."

Topics: aged-care, community-and-society, government-and-politics, indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, alice-springs-0870, darwin-0800

First posted July 05, 2017 06:36:10

Excerpt from:

Utopia: Aboriginal elderly sleeping on ground with dogs amid calls for improved aged care - ABC Online

Renowned Aboriginal artist Kathleen Ngale is living rough in Utopia homelands. CREDIT: ABC

The well-known 87-year-old artist sleeps rough in a pile of blankets surrounded by dogs to keep her warm.

CALLS are growing to help an 87-year-old artist who is sleeping rough with a dozen dogs to keep her warm in a region known as Utopia.

Kathleen Ngale whose work has been exhibited in New York, London and Paris lives in heartbreaking conditions lying on a pile of blankets in Camel Camp, around 260 kilometres northeast of Alice Springs. She cannot walk or wash herself and has to wait for people to bring her small amounts of food.

I sit here hungry sometimes, and we sit here with nothing, she told the ABC in a heartbreaking video. My leg is no good I just wait for little bits of food and I cant go and wash myself when I feel like it.

Kathleen Ngale, a well-known artist, sleeps rough in a pile of blankets surrounded by dogs to keep her warm.Source:ABC

Ms Ngales primary carer is her husband, also in his 80s, and she is occasionally visited by a nurse based around 50km away, and receives weekly deliveries of soup, according to her granddaughter Denisa.

Her relative Rosalie Kunoth-Monks told the broadcaster there needed to be better aged care for Aboriginal people in the region, and that Ms Ngale should have a wheelchair and be able to wash her clothes.

The Federal Government funds the Barkly Shire Council, based in Tennant Creek about 400km away, to provide aged care services in Utopia. Acting CEO Chris Wright told the ABC meals were provided daily in the main homeland in Arlparra but only every few days in the remoter areas, with just one full-time worker and several part-time staff members serving several hundred kilometres.

The frail 87-year-old cannot walk or wash herself and says she sometimes goes hungry.Source:ABC

Ms Kunoth-Monks claimed in April last year that elderly people were starving because of a lack of daily meals, but her allegation was dismissed as mischief-making and political grandstanding by the president of the Barkly Shire Council.

She alleged that the whole community including children and the elderly go without food, often on a daily basis and that one elderly man with end-stage Parkinsons disease had received a package containing two packets of horrible-looking mince meat and white bread which was like eating paper with no nutritional value, while two neighbouring elderly women received nothing.

Ms Kunoth-Monks characterised the packages as the bare minimum to sustain life.

What I saw appalled me, even my dogs are fed a hell of a lot better than old black people are being fed, she told AAP.

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Well-known artist sleeping on ground with a dozen dogs for warmth - NEWS.com.au

Montpelier, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders unleashed a bombshell on constituents yesterday. He stated there is a socialist utopia on the planet Venus. However, no one can effectively travel there due to the Trump travel ban.

Senator Sanders had this to say about the creation of the first city on the second planet from the Sun, New Copenhagen:

I first reached out to the Swedish government back in the 1980s when I was mayor of Burlington. The Cold War rhetoric was high. President Reagan joked about bombing Russia. Sweden and Burlington entered into a secret agreement to save humanity. Our plan was to colonize the planet Venus with the best and the brightest minds. We just assumed socialism will spring up. We were right.

Once he became a senator, he convinced the state government of Vermont to join in the Northern Alliance to Save Humanity (NASH). Since that time Iceland, Finland, and Denmark entered the partnership to save Homo sapiens from Homo insipidus.

There were many hurdles to overcome. The surface of Venus is extremely hot. The clouds surrounding the planet are partly made up of corrosive sulfuric acid.

Professor Andrew Canard is the lead scientist of NASH. While the clouds and the acid rain they produce were impediments to the mission, they offered protection from prying eyes. Work was carried out without anyone from Texas or Saudi Arabia noticing.

The secret to our success involved using the nigh-indestructible metal adamantium, explained Professor Canard. We coated the outer surfaces of our probes, rovers, and subterranean excavators with it.

New Copenhagen took decades to build. The utopian city below the surface of Venus only became fully functional and inhabited during the first term of the Obama administration.

However, the 2016 elections changed everything.

There is a relationship between how large a conspiracy is and how long its going to be kept. The fact that the first city beyond Earth was unknown to Republicans, Russians, and other hostile forces for so long was a miracle in and of itself.

No one is exactly sure how the Democratic National Committee (DNC) learned about New Copenhagen. What is known is that it only took a short period of time before high-level Democrats were whispering about in emails.

Senator Sanders was aware of this dangerous turn of events and reached out to the DNC:

Any high school student couldve told you email was not a secure way of communicating high level information. My suggestion was that any and all discussion about New Copenhagen should be done on disposable cell phones. You know, burner phones. I wasnt listened to. The Russians and eventually President Trump found out. It wasnt going to be the last time I got screwed by the DNC.

New Copenhagen is safe for the time being. Most state and non-state enemies of reason and single payer health care are busily destroying Earth. Many suspect Trumps travel ban targeting some Muslim countries and New Copenhagen is the worst that will happen.

Thankfully, the scientists and engineers at NASH prepared for this day. The city is completely self-sustaining. New Copenhagenhas its own farmers market as well as an annual independent film festival.

*This Poe was inspired by Alex Jones and InfoWars. As many of you already know, there was a story spread by that august institution that there is a pedophile/vampire colony on Mars.

Andy haz funnyz. You should support him here. Marilyn McFluffypants (my cat)

Andrew Hall is the author of Laughing in Disbelief. Besides writing a blog, co-hosting the Naked Diner, he wrote two books, Vampires, Lovers, and Other Strangers and Gods Diary: January 2017 . Andrew is reading through the Bible and making videos about his journey on YouTube. He is a talented stand-up comedian. You can find him on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

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Bernie Sanders And Sweden Create Socialist Utopia On Venus - Patheos (blog)

In one corner of our fair county lies a lovely little hamlet known as well, lets not mention names.

Oft have I marveled, while passing through that charming village, at its well-shaded streets, neatly manicured medians and pleasant parklands. Ive also noted the size of its police force, relative to population. And Ive wondered:

How do they afford all that?

A few months ago, I learned the answer, which is that those two features the upscale amenities and the number of patrol cars are directly related.

The occasion was a visit to traffic court in one of the towns nice, new, modern buildings, constructed just for that purpose and designed to accommodate more than a hundred people waiting to plead their cases. On that particular day, an otherwise unremarkable Thursday, every seat was filled.

I found myself there because, a couple months earlier, Id been cited for running a red light even though the light was yellow when I entered the intersection, and I was more than halfway through before it turned red.

Of course, if it had been a normal yellow light, I should have been all the way through. Thinking about the timing led me to conclude, as I told the ticketing officer, that it must be the shortest yellow light in history.

He was unmoved. Nevertheless, I believed I had been cited unfairly and decided to fight it.

In preparation for my day in court, I researched the national standard for yellow lights, which turns out to be about five seconds. I also went back to that intersection, parked at a gas station, and timed the yellow for 10 consecutive cycles. It averaged just under three seconds.

Armed with several videos, and now believing myself fully in the right, I took a day off work and showed up at the appointed time only to find myself awash in a sea of humanity. When my name was finally called, my day in court turned out to be more like two minutes with a harried city prosecutor, which went something like this:

Prosecutor: Youre charged with running a red light.

Me: I didnt do it, and I think I can prove it.

Prosecutor: We can knock the charge down to a non-moving violation. Your fine will be $122 instead of $178, with no points against your license.

Me: But I didnt do anything wrong.

Prosecutor: Youre welcome to come back next month and tell that to the judge.

Me: So I have to take another day off work? What if I lose?

Prosecutor: Then youll have to pay the $178, plus youll get the points.

Me: Where do I pay the $122?

As you can see, this is a highly organized, well-thought-out, perfectly legal and extremely lucrative scam. Youre ticketed for some dubious violation and then theyve got you over a barrel.

But, hey, at least its a very nice barrel.

Rob Jenkins is a local freelance writer and the author of four books, including Family Man: The Art of Surviving Domestic Tranquility, available at Books for Less in Buford and on Amazon. E-mail Rob at rjenkinsgdp@yahoo.com.

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JENKINS: Traffic scammed in suburban utopia - Gwinnettdailypost.com

At one point in Kalman Zingmans 1918 Yiddish novella In Edenia, a City of the Future, the protagonist Zalman Kindishman stands admiring a monument on the titular citys Freedom Square:

A young girl with an ardent glance, her hair in loose curls, stepping with her feet on a snake, which is completely wrapped around her. In one hand she holds a blood-red flag and in the other a black one. On the bottom of the red side is a bas-relief depicting high barricades, flattened faces a war is going on. There is also a bas-relief on the other side, under the black flag, of the victims after the war, of those who were shot: a Russian, a Ukrainian, a Pole, a Jew, a Georgian, et cetera all dead. The inscription reads: They fought together, they died together.

Edenia is a utopian future version of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, projected forward from the 1910s into the 40s. Now theres another war going on nearby, this time between Russia and Ukraine; that, and the sickening disjunction between Zingmans Yiddish fantasia and what actually befell the regions Jews in the Second World War, might seem to discredit the authors vision of cooperation and reconciliation.

For Russian-American artist Yevgeniy Fiks and American-Ukrainian curator Larissa Babij, however, the peculiar world of Zingmans Edenia is worth remembering. Together, they have created a new exhibition named after his novella, currently on display in Kharkivs Yermilov Centre. In the novella, Kindishman visits Edenias art museum; Fiks and Babij have invited an international group of artists the participants include Babi Badalov (Azerbaijan), Ruth Jenrbekova and Maria Vilkovisky (Kazakhstan), Aikaterini Gegisian(Greece/Armenia), Haim Sokol (Russia/Israel) and Nikita Kadan (Ukraine) to contribute artworks towards a reconstruction of this imaginary space. In the process, they are posing many of the same questions of multiculturalism and futurism that occupied Zingman almost a century ago. What might a better future for Ukraine look like? And what position might religious and ethnic minorities hold within it?

Utopianor futuristic Yiddish literature is not common, Fiks tells me. Most often Yiddish literature eithertalks about the present or remembers the past. In Zingmans text, Zalman Kindishman comes to Edenia to visit his old friend Yugendboym. Here, there is no money every citizen has their material needs provided for. National communities Jews, Ukrainians and others live in complete harmony and are free to set their own laws. There are flying aerotrains, an artificially regulated climate, abundant gardens with children celebrating Jewish holidays by their thousands. Edenia is not a Jewish-only city, but one where questions of anti-Semitism have been superseded.

Zingmans vision of a peaceful existence for Ukraines Jews clashes horribly with the countrys history. The post-revolutionary, short-lived Ukrainian Peoples Republic (1917-1921) was the first modern state to have a Ministry for Jewish Affairs, and Yiddish was made a state language. But pogroms continued unabated, and between 1918, when Zingmans book was written, and 1920, at least 31,000 Jews were killed in Ukraine the real number may be as high as 100,000. The great majority died at the hands of nationalists and anti-Communists, many of whom saw Bolshevism as a sinister Semitic plot. Even greater horrors were to come in the Second World War, when the country was occupied by the Nazis and Ukrainian collaborators. An estimated one million Jews were murdered in Ukraine during the Holocaust; 70 per cent of the countrys Jewish population was killed or displaced.

Personally, I feel that the Yiddish question is preciselythe question that should be raised when we talk about the present and future relationship between Ukraine and Russia, Fiks says.Perhaps the silence of Yiddish in the streetsof both Ukraine and Russia, if acknowledgedand contemplated, criesthe need, the hope for a better world, a word of multiculturalism and autonomy. For Babij, this is a question of both national and personal significance. While working on this exhibition I could not help but notice how the site of multi-ethnic or inter-national coexistence has shifted to the scale of the individual, she says. Hence the exhibition acts not only as a reminder of Ukraines rich multicultural landscape of the past, but also as an attempt to present and enact a more complex understanding of cultural identity.

What might a better future for Ukraine look like? And what position might religious and ethnic minorities hold within it?

The question of Ukraines past and its impact on the future is a live one; in Fikss words, the country is reinventing itself withforces of multiculturalism on the one side and extreme nationalism on the other in a state of constant flux. In its attempts to wrench itself free from Russian influence and plant its feet firmly in the western European community, post-Maidan Ukraine has not always trod delicately: from the controversial programme of decommunisation to the nationalist historical retrofitting promoted by Volodymyr Viatrovychs Institute of National Memory and the uncritical public lionisation of wartime figures like nationalist militia leader Stepan Bandera. The reappraisal of Zingmans novella and an attention to Ukraines historical hybridity is timely, even if, as Babij admits, the Kharkiv exhibition represents a relatively small, bounded space.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Zingmans work is its combination of futuristic technologies with a lingering, old world devotion to eastern European Yiddish cultural tradition. Edenia is dotted with memorials exalting Jewish artists and writers: Yitskhok Peretz, Roza Fayngold, Sholem Aleichem, El Lissitsky. Its citizens are avid readers to the extent that the literary scholar Professor Shvartsvald is treated like a rock star, his lectures on Peretz overflowing onto the street.

El Lissitsky

Yitskhok Peretz (second left), a great of early twentieth-century Yiddish literature

A page from El Lissitskys illustrated version of the Yiddish folk tale Had Gadya

A page from El Lissitskys illustrated version of the Yiddish folk tale Had Gadya

For Babij, Zingman maintains a separation between the realms of everyday activity, where technological advancements have increased the comfort and ease of residents lives, and the sphere of culture. Its interesting to contrast this vision with that of the early Soviet avant-garde, which envisioned art and its formal possibilities as a means to transform out-dated ways of living, to shape and prepare society for new forms of organisation, often through a violent break with and obliteration of past cultural traditions.

The exhibition itself jumps across time and space, its contributing artists turning their hands to themes of migration, religion and repression. Curandi Katz embroiders textiles with the borders of territories unrecognised by international law including Russia-annexed Crimea, an open wound in the Ukrainian national psyche. Ruth Jenrbekova and Maria Vilkovisky have created a video guide to their own utopian projection: a world in which the Central Asian states have formed into a federation of autonomous tribes. Perhaps the most pointed commentary on the erasure and resurfacing of history is provided by Nikita Kadans Viewers (2016). The great Constructivist designer Alexander Rodchenko produced a series of portraits of Soviet leaders in Uzbekistan in 1934; when these figures were repressed a few years later, Rodchenko blacked out their faces in his copy of the album. Kadan reproduces these disfigured portraits, labelling them the faces of the spirits of history History (in other words, the accumulation of ruins) happens under their watchful gaze.

Nikita Kadan, Viewers (2016) (left); Repetition of Forgetting (2016) (right). Image: Sergey Solonskij

Photo-collage of exhibition view (with Nikita Kadans Viewers) and Yiddish text from In Edenia, a City of the Future. Image: Sergey Solonskij

Yuri Leiderman, Self-portrait in Ukrainian Costume (2013). Image: Sergey Solonskij

Haim Sokol, Testimony (2015). Image: Sergey Solonskij

Zingmans novella ends abruptly with Zalman Kindishmans mysterious disappearance and death. The Jewish culture Zingman so cherished was brutally cut down a few decades later. Many Ukrainians are now no clearer as to the future they are headed towards than their predecessors of the early twentieth century. What place does utopian thinking occupy in the modern nation state? I think the term utopia, especially after the events of the twentieth century, is loaded and politicised, Fiks concludes. I think hoping and seeking happiness is a very basic, very human thing. But we must be very wary and very conscious about our methods. For Babij, Ukraine today is carried away by visions of a better future, whether in the shape of an idealised image of the European Union or the soothing promises of a strong, authoritarian neighbouring ruler or the hope that current Ukrainian politicians will miraculously change the way this country has been run for the past 25 years. Hence the importance of history: the past is really the only thing we can look at and talk about concretely.

Edenia is governed by two sects. The Heavenly Ones renounce all earthly pleasures, all the enjoyments that life can bring. They maintain that there is an even higher world, a more beautiful one. The second sect are the Earthly Ones, who say: enrich and improve life, so that heaven can be on earth. This practical, materialist message is what is picked up and translated for modern Ukraine in Fikss and Babijs exhibition. Our best bet might be to follow the advice given by Yitskhok Peretz, one of the Yiddish writers celebrated in Edenia, in one of his poems: Dont think the world is a wasteland created/For wolves and for foxes, for spoils and for booty Oh, dont think the world is a wasteland.

In Edenia, a City of the Future is on display at the Yermilov Centre in Kharkiv until 9 July.

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Edenia: a lost Yiddish utopia for Ukraine and its afterlife in modern-day Kharkiv - The Calvert Journal

SENNETT, N.Y. For a farm established only five years ago, Utopia Farm LLC has done pretty well for itself.

Amanda and Lee Pratt own the farm. The Pratts grew up on dairies and met at State University of New York Cobleskill while studying agriculture.

After graduation, they got married and worked on farms in the area for a few years.

The Pratts milk 55 cows and are raising 60 heifers. They want to have them calving around 24 months and start breeding at 13 to 14 months. Their desired pregnancy rate is 30 percent or more.

We cant compete on milk production, so we strive to do well on reproduction, Amanda Pratt said. Anyone who doesnt breed after three to four services usually leaves the herd.

Some animals are sold to supplement their milk income.

Milking is done in a tie-stall layout with pipelines. Heifers are kept in a freestall barn, and heifers and dry cows are pastured.

The Pratts keep the somatic cell count around 100,000. They employ a part-timer but do most of the work themselves.

They maintain 25 acres of pasture, which includes alfalfa, clover, orchardgrass and timothy. They buy all their hay and a pellet ration.

The Pratts bed their herd with mulch hay or straw.

Gabriel Carpenter with Keystone Mills of Romulus is the farms nutritionist.

Their efforts to enhance cow comfort include adding new mattresses a couple years ago and improving cooling in the barn during summer.

With production rates ranging from 70 to 75 pounds per cow daily, it appears their work is paying off.

But to protect their farm, they have a liability policy insuring the farm animals and equipment. Since they rent the property, they dont insure the buildings.

To help make ends meet, Lee Pratt works for Finger Lakes Dairy Service. They hope to eventually own their own farm, a goal hampered by a slow dairy market.

Amanda Pratt said their backgrounds in farming she is from western New York and Lee Pratt is from Vermont have helped as well as their degrees in agriculture.

Lees degree in business management was something helpful in having the ability to run the numbers and pay attention to budgeting and financial management, she said. That was very important.

Amanda Pratt helps with farm work while rearing their children: a son, 3, and a daughter, 7 months.

Utopia was one of two Cayuga County businesses acknowledged at the recent U.S. Small Business Administrations 19th annual Central New York Regional Small Business Excellence Awards luncheon in Syracuse.

The SBA selected businesses based on longevity, innovation, sales growth, increased employment, ability to overcome adversity or community contributions, according to an SBA press release.

Five Point Bank nominated Utopia Farm.

It was incredible to be up there honored for our hard work, Amanda Pratt said. The cows never say thank you, so that was pretty nice. Its still hard to believe wed qualify with some of the other businesses that were there.

Deborah Jeanne Sergeant is a freelance writer in central New York. Connect with her online at http://www.skilledquill.net.

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Central NY Dairy Proves That Staying Small Can Be Good - Lancaster Farming