January 26, 2021

Buffalo is the New Bovine


Buffalo is the New Bovine
Buffaloes in Moscow?  Wolfgang Hasselmann, unsplash.com

Have you had a hankering for fresh buffalo milk lately? Do you happen to live in the Moscow region? Well, you’re in luck! Plans are being made for a large-scale buffalo milk production complex in the Moscow region municipality of Naro-Fominsk

The 23,278,960 square meter facility will hold 900 dairy buffalos, capable of producing 2,000 tons of “premium” buffalo milk, says the Moscow Region Minister of Agriculture and Food. The project itself will cost 3.1 billion rubles and will create 120 new jobs in the region. Could be a fun career change, no?

The animals themselves will be purchased from Bulgaria and Italy (but we really hope someone has thought of a way to help them adjust to the colder climate). The facility will also be housing some 2,400 dairy cows, presumably to satisfy the less lactose-adventurous consumer. 

All we want to know now is, can you still make kefir out of it? 

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Woe From Wit (bilingual)

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Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 

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The Life Stories collection is a nice introduction to contemporary Russian fiction: many of the 19 authors featured here have won major Russian literary prizes and/or become bestsellers. These are life-affirming stories of love, family, hope, rebirth, mystery and imagination, masterfully translated by some of the best Russian-English translators working today. The selections reassert the power of Russian literature to affect readers of all cultures in profound and lasting ways. Best of all, 100% of the profits from the sale of this book are going to benefit Russian hospice—not-for-profit care for fellow human beings who are nearing the end of their own life stories.

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93 Untranslatable Russian Words

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