Alexander Kalantirksy speaks halting Hebrew with a heavy Russian accent. He was seated in a straight-backed chair in his small, dark apartment in Bat Yam, a suburb of Tel Aviv. “Nu, I am not a hero,” he said matter-of-factly, and a bit impatiently. “I am an engineer. I knew what it meant. It had to…
My aunt recently reminded me that everything changed on April 26, 1986. I knew this, of course, but it wasn’t often that my family talked about the accident or the evacuation. When I was growing up in Brooklyn, my grandfather Mikhail spoke proudly of his work at a nuclear power plant, as well as of…
Sometimes, it’s good to be reminded of the destructive power of the selfie. A new Tumblr called “Selfies At Serious Places” does just that. It’s exactly how it sounds: people taking close up pictures of their faces with an incredibly inappropriate backdrop. Seriously though: what goes through your mind when you tweet a picture of…
Planning a trip to China? Make it quick. The world’s most populous nation is about to disappear. That’s just one of the “wild” New Year’s predictions that Israeli news website Ynetnews.com reported from Israeli mystics on September 17. “God will cleanse the world and erase China from the world this year, and there will be…
100% of profits support our journalism
