My thesis is actually devouring my soul. I came here for a break.

Missing Girls of DC: While numbers spread on social media about the number of young black girls women missing from DC in the past week were exaggerated, it has raised very real and overlooked issues: police’s assumption that these missing persons are runaways because of their racial or family backgrounds; and, the media’s preference for covering the disappearance of photogenic white girls and women.

Protests in Russia: In 100 Russian cities on Sunday, perhaps 60,000 people turned out to protest government corruption. Most of the protesters were young people who do not remember a time before Putin, let alone the Soviet period. At least 500 were arrested in Moscow alone.

The protests are the largest since 2011. Russia canceled celebrations of the centenary of the 1917 revolutions, likely to discourage future ones.

“In Soviet Russia, party stop you!”

Image from Wikipedia.

(I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist. My thesis is on Lenin (center) & Trotsky (at right, on stairs) and it’s due to the printer this weekend and I am losing my mind.)

Russian history side note: There’s a long tradition of “the good tsar” who is a father to his people in Russia. Conveniently for the tsar (or anyone who might as well be *cough* Lenin *cough* Stalin), Russians will tend to blame the tsar’s ministers for national problems first. Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev takes the brunt of the blame in an hour-long video by longtime opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Navalny was just sentenced to fifteen days in jail for organizing illegal protests. Navalny claims he had permits for the protests he directly organized. Not that this would matter to the court.

. God help him, considering how active the Kremlin’s assassins seem to have been of late.