April 20, 2022

Revealing Images


Revealing Images

“Now everyone can see a variety of Russian launchers, intercontinental ballistic missile mines, command posts, and secret landfills with a resolution of about 0.5 meters per pixel.”

– The Ukrainian Armed Forces on Google Maps removing blur for Russian military sites

On April 14, Google Maps removed the customary blur from satellite images of Russian military sites, thus revealing their locations in striking clarity.

The Moscow Times reported that some of the locations revealed include a nuclear weapons store near Murmansk, an aircraft carrier, and a military airbase only 150 km from the Ukrainian-Russian border.

The removal of this blurring is not the only move that Google has taken to show its dissatisfaction with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. After the start of the invasion, Google banned Russian advertisements, inciting accusations from the Russian government of starting an "information war".

 

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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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