Anarchist historian with a weakness for Latvia, good music and things that go bump in the night. Anarhistu vēsturnieks.
London & Riga
Joined August 2011
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A Towering Flame: The Life & Times of the Elusive Latvian Anarchist Peter the Painter.
"Ruff avoids the traps of simplistic celebration or condemnation - a marvellous work of historical rediscovery" - John Patten, KSL
Order from @BreviaryStuff breviarystuff.org.uk/philip-…
Philip Ruff retweeted
#OtD 27 Oct 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis, 2nd-in-command Vasili Arkhipov of the Soviet submarine B-59 refused his captain's order to launch nuclear torpedos against US warships. This avoided setting off a likely superpower nuclear war stories.workingclasshistory.…
Just a quick question, excuse my ignorance. But as an institution brought to Latvia by the Red Army, how is the Soviet "Latvian Academy of Sciences" even still in existence?
Scientist at centre of Latvian citizenship scandal complains to police: eng.lsm.lv/article/society/s…
The Conviction of Estonia’s ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ Links Russian Intelligence to Moscow’s Interference on Brexit – Byline Times bylinetimes.com/2026/10/26/t…
Philip Ruff retweeted
At the end of the harvest Lithuanians invited their dead to the bathhouse.
They called their relatives out of the graves. For every one invited there was a chair, a towel and a shirt, and a table loaded with food and drink.
Then the living went home and drank for three days. When it was over, they waved goodbye to the souls of their dead.
This was Ilgės. Jan Łasicki wrote it down around 1580, Samogitians were still keeping the custom in the nineteenth century. Later Christianity turned it into Vėlinės, which falls on Monday 2 November this year
Latvian bottle deposit donations pay for Ukrainian medical ground drones: eng.lsm.lv/article/society/d… #Latvia #Ukraine #MutualAid
"The leading men of Old Hollywood drank heavily, smoked like chimneys and most of them never saw the inside of a gym" - Ah, those were the days! 🧐
The leading men of the 1930s and '40s look so much more mature and "lived in" than today's crop of younger stars… It was 99% the result of their lifestyle.
Humphrey Bogart famously never worked out, and he hated it — he felt it was unmasculine to go to the gym. He consumed each day only the following: French toast, several Scotch and sodas, an omelette, milk, coffee, countless cigarettes and cigars and a glass of brandy before bed.
Despite Bogart’s not very healthy lifestyle, he weighed no more than 150 pounds for most of his adult life, which is a decent weight for a man who stood 5′8″. The “macho image”, in Bogart’s mind, was primarily the result of a man’s aura, a man’s vibe, a man’s posture and body language. You had to carry yourself a certain way, talk a certain way, address the world and all that’s in it as a real man, and you’d be perceived as such. Rippling muscles and chiseled abs weren’t necessary, you just needed to be a man’s man and live life accordingly.
The leading men of Old Hollywood drank heavily, smoked like chimneys and most of them never saw the inside of a gym — it was the stuntmen who worked out and had the type of muscles today’s Marvel superheroes carry. The average leading man was a man selected primarily for his persona and the way he carried himself. He had to say the lines well and make you believe he was the hero, the tough guy. They aged prematurely, and often died young.
Large number of Latvian websites taken offline over security alert: eng.lsm.lv/article/features/… #Latvia #Baltics
