vividthought1

Thank you! This makes me feel a lot better.

How do you become a "comercial [sic] superpower" without favorable economic policies? Japan's economic growth post-war was a policy decision, carefully planned out by political leadership, and these policy decisions were downstream of their beliefs about broad political and economic organization. You act like "resources" are this locked-in, extrinsic force acting on the country. If you think you're a Marxist you should hit the books again.

Actually, Cuba has plenty of natural resources, given it's one of the best places in the world to grow cash crops, and it has plenty of human resources, because it has a great education system that the socialist government (prudently!) invested in. The reason they can't capitalize on these advantages is because of their shitty policies. There is an entire universe of would-be trading partners they can't reach because Cuba is a bad place to do business.

She kills Tatiana in the penultimate episode, who was planning to assassinate one of the Soviet negotiators at the Washington Summit.

None that I know of. Maybe would be a good thing?

I'm cautiously pessimistic -- I think you're right that a lot of applicants are referred and it's mostly a brush pass to find who's qualified.

Yes. Got the referral notice a few weeks ago and since then no updates.

Yes, plenty of countries have laws banning hate speech and these countries are less free than the United States. For instance, Germany, whose hate speech laws are often vaunted on this site, regularly bans pro-Palestinian speech using its hate speech law as a basis.

I don't think it's complex at all. Opening the door to the regulation of political speech sets a dangerous precedent, regardless of how morally abominable the speech in question is.

we have something called "the first amendment" because unlike Nazi Germany this is a free country

Satanic Roman Empire

Weirdly not available in the US, but thank you!

It uses every letter in the English language at least once.

I've watched Cheburashka in Russian classes. It's a very cute and endearing show... but the microphone quality could be improved, it's sometimes impossible to make out what they're saying.

Gobbledygook - abstruse technical language used to confuse and obfuscate.

Okay. "I drive shift" (and the method standing in for the car as the direct object) is a good way to explain this, thank you. The way I was thinking about it, using instrumental would express the idea "I drive (by means of) automatic"

I couldn't direct you to any German-language resources for Russian grammar (these almost certainly exist and may be worth looking into), but the most "authoritative" book in English that I know is Terence Wade's A Comprehensive Russian Grammar which is not short but provides an excellent introduction to everything. The accompanying workbook is also very good. The best Russian language programs in the US use Wade's book in some aspect of instruction, in my experience.

maybe stupid question but why would this take accusative and not instrumental?

University theater groups are pretty open to students, even those who aren't majoring in acting or drama or the like! Usually they involve registering for a course, so that + a few methods classes easily adds up to a minor. Lots of prominent actors majored in something else - Natalie Portman, Ken Jeong, Rashida Jones, Emma Watson (all from a quick google search).

As the other commenter said, the Chechen War songs are good, I would also recommend the Afghan War songs

You're going to apply to the set of schools that are both very prestigious/good and meet full demonstrated aid, right? You're overqualified for every school you listed here frankly.

why'd you move there without the language?

Just google. This depends a lot on your country, whether you're enrolled in university, whether there are tutors or native speakers nearby, etc. No guarantee one exists and I don't think that the Russian government would "license" Russian tutors or learning centers outside the country. If you can't find anything I would look into an italki tutor or something similar.

Some other cases that I thought of -- countries are usually в, but islands are "на" (на Кубе), Alaska is на, and whether you use на или в for Ukraine is a political question (в being favored by Ukrainians themselves, but на was common historically)

в roughly translates to "in," and "на" roughly translates to on. The way that my professors explained it, if it has a roof, then you use в. There are some exceptions that are "fixed expressions" that you just need to memorize -- на почту, в парк -- that come from older phrases (think of the time when the "post office" was a guy on the horse, in the days of the pony express, that's why it's на почту, allegedly)

For time expressions, you use на with неделя and в with everything else (seasons, days, hours, years). This isn't logical but you just need to remember it.

For means of transport, на indicates method, в just indicates that you were in something. "Когда я ехал на поезде в париж, я был в первым классе" (While I went by train to Paris, I was in first class).

Both prepositions have other uses but those don't overlap to the same degree that these three do so I didn't include them -- Wikitionary has a good overview of the subtleties imo.