The concept of people typing Dadaist humor on Twitter has existed since Twitter got its first big batch of smart-ass users in 2007, at that year's SxSW. Twitter was suddenly the place to get breaking news on inconsequential online-media events. Also, it was full of banter and inside jokes and drunken jabbering. It became fun, because a lot of bored funny people now had a way to narrowcast every oddball thought to people who might appreciate that kind of nonsense.

Only last year did anyone refer to this as a certain thing, Weird Twitter. My own Twitter feed has always been weird, because I follow a lot of [...]

What do you think Rick Ross's favorite Fiona Apple song is? When you picture him in the audience at last week's show at the Hollywood Palladium, where he was filmed pulling up in his Porsche for his new video, what song do you imagine him singing along with, standing on his seat in the front row, clasping his hands in front of his chest, just totally into it? "Criminal" is a good bet. Or "Paper Bag," or "Anything We Want"—that's my favorite one on her new album. But I think "Extraordinary Machine" is actually more his style. That phrasing—I could actually see that being a song title [...]

"Russian businessman Mikhail D. Prokhorov… this winter became the first of the post-Soviet set of ultrawealthy financiers to run for president…. Being a billionaire in itself — Mr. Prokhorov owns 20 Jet Skis, a 200-foot yacht and a mansion outside Moscow — might seem a fatal handicap in an era of anger at the rich that is as prevalent in Russia as anywhere." —"Might." Each something gets the something it deserves.

Today's rather horrific bombing at Domodedovo airport in south Moscow—in the baggage claim, it looks like—is Russia's first act of terrorism in ten months. (Unless you count the Chechen Parliament attack in October. Or the Vladikavkaz bombing in September, or the bombing in Stavropol in May.) There are more! (No really. Anyone remember Dagestan? Ingushetia?)

This is the worst idea since Mr. Carlson's Thanksgiving turkey drop on "WKRP in Cincinnati."

There is controversy about a new station on Moscow's metro line named in tribute to Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. Apparently it is not a particularly upbeat place.

The station, called Dostoyevskaya, is decorated with brooding grey and black mosaics that depict violent scenes from the 19th-century writer's best-known novels. One mural re-enacts the moment when the main character in Crime and Punishment murders an elderly pawnbroker and her sister with an axe.

Another shows a suicide-obsessed character in The Demons holding a pistol to his temple. If that was not enough to darken the mood, shadowlike characters are shown flitting across the cavernous new station's walls and a [...]

"Lyudmila M. Alexeyeva, a prominent Russian human-rights activist who is 82 years old, was punched in the head on Wednesday night while she was visiting a memorial in a subway station that was bombed by terrorists on Monday…. 'Some young man came out who obviously had been waiting for me, and said, Are you still alive? And then he hit me on the head,' she said." Later tonight, Eric Cantor will be upstaging this.

It was probably unrealistic to expect the apocalypse to start right on time at the end of 2012—especially if it starts in Russia, where Christmas is two weeks late. So, here it is, a giant meteor (or meteors?) filling the skies over the Ural Mountains, and injuring nearly a thousand people.

But what do the religious leaders of Russia's Orthodox Church have to say about this terrifying incident? Well, being gloomy Russians, they are just blaming it on the God they worship:

A meteorite which injured hundreds of people in Russia's Chelyabinsk Region on Friday was "the Lord’s message to humanity," a senior local clergyman said. "From the [...]

Russia wants to build a permanent base on the moon, which is mostly indicative of what a terrible hellhole Russia is.

"A Moscow court on Friday ruled that the country’s sole independent election watchdog had broken Russian law by publishing citizens’ complaints about campaign abuses during the run-up to this weekend’s parliamentary elections." —"Most of the reports concern the ruling party, United Russia, which is struggling to preserve its control of parliament at Sunday’s vote."

This is something we all should probably read to be more informed world citizens? It is on the state of Russia's operations against Georgia since 2004. It's remarkable how far everyone in power is willing to go to claim that oh gosh no, Russia has never had anything but super-warm feelings and a total lack of pipeline bombings towards its Georgian friends. Ta da! Wikileaks! Definitely good for something! (Also here is a primer on where and what Abkhazia is, for those of us who can never tell Khujand from Bishkek.)

It's been a billion degrees in Russia since mid-June, and as a consequence, 1200 people have drowned-and"49 people, including two children, had drowned in the last day," is what CNN says. "The majority of those drowned were drunk," said Vadim Seryogin, a department head at Russia's Emergencies Ministry. "The children died because adults simply did not look after them." I don't really have a funny name for Russia to go with this because somehow this seems sadder than English people stabbing each other constantly, though it's probably not.

If there's one thing you should read by Vladimir Arnold-who died last week at the age of 72, and who is memorialized by the Times today as "a founder of singularity theory, or, as it is sometimes more ominously called, catastrophe theory"-it's his January, 1998 article "Innumeracy and the Fires of the Inquisition." While Arnold's work was what we laypeople would regard as a completely incomprehensible math, he was cognizant of the problems of the gulf between the state of written and taught mathematics and the ability of common people to understand it-and also extremely observant regarding politics, particularly sensitive to the presence and history of antisemitism, and [...]