After Ukraine's successful counter-offensive near Kharkiv, Putin pretends that nothing serious has happened. A little study in lexical semantics.
Category: Text lab
Putin’s world is not multipolar
Putin has been announcing the new "multipolar" world order again and again. My word2vec analysis of Putin's speeches suggests that he is more interested in restoring the "bipolar" word order of the cold war.
One more reason why Ukraine is NOT Russia
According to distributional semantics, Ukraine is more similar to the West, the USA and Europe than to Russia. The analysis is based on a corpus of Putin's speeches.
Jesus and case marking in languages of the world
A map showing whether a language has different or same Subject and Object forms of Jesus in New Testament translations. Blue: different forms, like in Latin; orange: same forms, like in English. Check the interactive version here: http://rpubs.com/natalevs/Jesus_forms_v1 While the so-called "developed" world is rolling back to Middle Ages, reading the New Testament can be … Continue reading Jesus and case marking in languages of the world
The good, the bad and the dancing king
In my previous post, I looked at the frequencies of different countries and organizations in Putin’s speeches. But we can also check which countries appear more frequently in positive and negative contexts, like I did once. This time I made a list of all countries of the world plus some organizations like NATO and the … Continue reading The good, the bad and the dancing king
NATO’s expansion as a fig leaf for Putin’s true obsession
Our crazy times forge strange alliances. Pope Francis claims that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “provoked”. With this opinion, he joins the company of left-wing intellectuals like Sahra Wagenknecht and right-wing populists like Alice Weidel. Who could only have imagined that these radically different people would join their forces, spreading the idea that NATO and … Continue reading NATO’s expansion as a fig leaf for Putin’s true obsession
“The exercises are going according to plan”, or How Putin exploits the rules of cooperative interaction
I'm not sure if this photo was really taken immediately after Macron's calling Putin, but it is a good illustration. The Élysée Palace published the telephone call between Macron and Putin a few days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine (the French transcript can be found here and an English translation here). This text gives … Continue reading “The exercises are going according to plan”, or How Putin exploits the rules of cooperative interaction
Putin’s Bipolar World and AI’s Empathy
Russian version below. Русская версия внизу. At the International Economic Forum (which was less international than usual), Margarita Simonyan asked if artificial intelligence represents a danger for the humanity. Putin replied that it was too early to speak about that. AI doesn’t have empathy and a soul yet. That’s a dangerous idea, I think. If … Continue reading Putin’s Bipolar World and AI’s Empathy
A Gopnik and a President
Russian version below. Русская версия внизу. The latest version of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum was peculiar not only because it was attended by the Taliban, or because drinks and ice-cream were served by the robot Dunyasha dressed as a Soviet barmaid. Unkind people say that Dunyasha used to be a sex doll in … Continue reading A Gopnik and a President
Russia doesn’t take away, Russia returns!
Russian version below. Русская версия внизу. Putin's story-telling has taken another unexpected turn, this time from the whining "It's all NATO's fault, we are only defending ourselves!" to the audacious "What's ours is ours!". Again, Putin is hiding behind a historical figure, which is literally and figuratively bigger than he is. During his meeting with … Continue reading Russia doesn’t take away, Russia returns!
Text Grinder 