iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

12 persecuted clergy were interviewed, including seven priests and deacons of the UOC, not only the OCU: Five of the seven were detained and three describe beatings or electric shocks. Some link their detention to Ukrainian-language services and prayers for Ukraine.

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

In the show, Russia is portrayed as a comfortable "adversary" for the US, while Ukraine is an awkward, unreliable, manipulative ally distracting US from engaging its real enemies. Quite a mix of Cold War templates, new multipolar world of the far-right and the tropes straight from the White House.

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Russian intelligence networks in the show seek to harm the US, but ultimataly, the Russian state is a rational peer that honours unwritten rules of engagement. It's neither a 'totalitarian' state nor run by 'criminals' who engage in retribution against US, like Iran. Also, Russia doesn't kidnap.

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Season 3 of Special Ops Lioness is a new Homeland: a show that channels the government's narrative, this one an anti-Ukrainian one Most of the time, Ukraine has no agency, but when it does, it seeks to drag the US deeper into conflict with Russia.

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Tobias Hübinette @tobiashubinette.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Gårdagens val innebar en ”Mamdani:sering” av det urbana Sverige och klyftan mellan stad och land är nu större än någonsin tidigare tobiashubinette.wordpress.com/2026/09/14/g... Även om SD backade så är ”SD-land” geografiskt sett nu större än tidigare medan de rödgröna dominerar helt i storstäderna

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

The reflex is that a side that lost the war and watched its own people ethnically cleansed cannot also be the side that committed atrocities, which makes even raising it feel like betrayal. Full circle: that taboo turned now also into a criminal code made Baramidze safe to go after. Code of silence

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Critics at home read the case as going after an opponent; Abkhaz read it as a warning against speaking openly about Georgian crimes. Maybe both are true and the first conveniently does the second's work? But the second is always ill-timed, secondary, a distraction from "actual story". No matter what

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Georgia has detained opposition leader Gia Baramidze over his own accusations that Georgian forces shot POWs - a claim from the man who led the state commission on prisoner swaps in 1992-93 (A Russian 'court' in Donetsk sentenced him in absentia in February for fighting for Ukraine btw).

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

New BGNES (Bulgarian agency) documentary on the repackaged Greater Serbia, with the Serbian Orthodox Church as its most convenient instrument: it already has structures "everywhere Serbs live," so it does the political work in places where Belgrade cannot and doesn't need to act as a state

youtube.com

The Creeping Frontiers of the Serbian World | Пълзящите граници на Сръбски свят

YouTube video by BGNES Agency

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Tom van der Linden @tomvanderlinden.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

New video! It feels like the "male gaze" has finally reached mainstream recognition as a bad movie trope. Now, women are sharing their own stories, and men are... well, what are we doing? What does male desire look like in this new era? Can we still gaze? youtu.be/An5WXkDqBfU

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

A nuanced look at state-religious minority dynamics: Hui mosques and burial grounds in China persist in a grey zone of missing titles and unenforced planning rules. Tolerance as non-enforcement. Peter Ho on Religion in Praxis: open.spotify.com/episode/4EfhSyLmSSBYBeW4VIukKK

open.spotify.com

The Looking-Away: How Tolerance Really Works

Religion in Praxis Conversation Series · Episode

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The RUTA Association @associationruta.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

In a new OCMediaorg article, RUTA member Tatev Hovhannisyan explores how anti-gender rhetoric, "foreign agent" laws, and Russian imperial influence are reshaping feminist activism in Sakartvelo. Amid growing repression, feminist networks continue to build solidarity. oc-media.org/a-soviet-sty...

oc-media.org

‘A Soviet-style culture of informants’: how Georgia’s feminists learned to live under siege

As pressure on civil society intensifies, feminist activists describe a growing atmosphere of fear and quiet survival.

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

From Tetiana Priadkina's "Can Ukraine Speak?"..., Linköping University, 2026: www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/di...

diva-portal.org

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

"[E]ast of Berlin, this density of cultural symbols abruptly vanishes. The space stretching toward Moscow is filled only with anonymous 'pine trees' and the figure of a skier [...] This is a literal embodiment of Chakrabarty's (2000) 'waiting room of history'"

A busy, brightly colored children's illustrated map of Europe. The western side is crowded with named landmarks: Big Ben and a red-uniformed guard, the Eiffel Tower with fries and a speech bubble reading "MIAM," the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Sagrada Família spires, and a cow. The center fills with generic snow imagery: pine and fir trees, a snowman, skiers, mountains, and children playing in snow. On the far right, the only eastern landmark is a cluster of colorful onion-domed towers in the style of Moscow's Saint Basil's Cathedral, beside stacking dolls and a reindeer. Along the bottom are pyramids, a sphinx, a camel, and palm trees.

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

A memorable day in June at the Trakai Orthodox Church of the Nativity and the Karaim kenesa. I hope to be back soon in Lithuania

Front page of the newspaper "Pravoslavnaya Litva" (Orthodox Lithuania), the paper of the Lithuanian Orthodox Church, Summer 2026 issue. The lead story, with a large colour photo of a crowd at an outdoor family festival in front of a church, announces an All Saints' Day event, "Hello, Summer!". A sidebar runs thumbnail links to inside pages.

View through a doorway into the interior of the Trakai Karaim kenesa. A carved and gilded wooden ark stands against the far wall beneath a teal ceiling dotted with gold stars, flanked by arched stained-glass windows. A crystal chandelier hangs above a cloth-draped table in the centre.

An open book held in one hand, showing pages 124 and 125 of a Karaim-language prayer book printed in Latin script with diacritics. Headings in capitals mark sections of the liturgy; an Italic cue in brackets recurs down the text.

Inside a bell tower, a bearded Orthodox monk in black at left holds a cord attached to the clapper of a large dark bronze bell, demonstrating how it is rung. Three visitors stand behind a metal safety railing watching. A small icon rests on the windowsill behind them.

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Sweden, where I stay now, is different: a name change is a transparent civil application, not a maze of feudal restrictions, and now that I've done the research, I get to file for the real thing. Soon, I hope. A "nobody cares" post, but on record in case anyone suspects I have a surname disorder.

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

So why Kincha these past years? Partly a rushed call made while the research was still a side project, but making it official in Georgia was a dead end: I had to go down a rabbit hole I was unofficially warned would waste time and money with the same result. So a spaceholder stuck.

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Some personal news: my name, Shota Kincha, is becoming Shota Hintsagta. The story is a bit complicated. My legal surname is Khinchagashvili - a Georgianised version, just like Khinchagov - a Russified one. Underneath is the Ossetian root Хинцаг and clan surname Khintsagtæ. Hence Hintsagta.

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Tornike Metreveli @metreveli.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

I talked with Dr. Dan DeHanas to examine the spiritual architecture of contemporary populism. Dan argues that what we are witnessing in 2024 and 2025 is not simply politics dressed up in religious language - it is something qualitatively different open.spotify.com/episode/2GZc...

open.spotify.com

When Politics Becomes Prophecy: Daniel DeHanas on Trump, Faith, and the New Apocalyptic

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Disaffiliation isn't just secularisation, it's also people walking away from a brand they don't want to be associated with? From 42-3 min

youtube.com

Understanding the Spiritual-But-Not-Religious | Learning from Prof. Nancy Ammerman

YouTube video by Sacred Design Lab

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

Came across this in a Warsaw doorway: a plaque with the visual grammar of fiscal transparency, minus the recipient :) The actual transparency on Fundacja Inicjatyw Młodzieżowych, a PiS-aligned, typical patronage NGO, came from Onet, OKO.press, and Frontstory, not by the state that funded it.

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Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

It's not just that Orbán losing inspires hope in other competitive-autocratic countries ruled by right-wing nationalist authoritarians. It's that his loss materially changes things in those other countries, because he's been operating as a headquarters and funding source...

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Eric Nilsson @taggaintemig.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Kanske symptomatiskt för den bredare amerikaniseringen men hur många svenska queers känner till kulmen av den amerikanska frigörelsens startsalva Stonewall utan att känna till *Europas* första s.k. homopolitiska demonstration med Gay Power Club 1 den 15e maj 1971 i Örebro

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Daniel R. Jarosak @drjarosak.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

Talk Eastern Europe, the Podcast of @neweasterneurope.eu, recently lost a major funding source. If you can, I highly suggest taking out a subscription. With it, you can listen to in depth interviews with experts on the post-Soviet sphere! www.patreon.com/talkeasterne...

patreon.com

Bringing voices of Central and Eastern Europe to you each week

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J. Lester Feder @jlfeder.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

DC Friends! Please join me to launch my new book, The Queer Face of War: Portraits and Stories from Ukraine at Politics and Prose's Wharf location. I'll be in conversation with the extraordinary @chrisgeidner.bsky.social discussing homophobia and the global assault on democracy.

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Tomás Ojeda G. @tiojeda.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

CitizenGO has caused significant harm. In addition to this valuable Good Law Project piece on the organisation’s UK connections, our co-authored report on the subject shows its damaging transnational impact in Latin America and Kenya. Both are well worth reading! lassociacio.org/wp-content/u...

lassociacio.org

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Kristian Kiehling @kristiankiehling.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

In Sweden, nuns from the St Elisabeth Convent, which was originally based in Belarus, were found to be working for Russian intelligence. Active in 20 churches across the country, they raised funds for the Russian army while posing as a charity. united24media.com/latest-news/...

united24media.com

Russian “Z-Nuns” Busted for Running Spy Network Through Swedish Churches

Swedish authorities investigate Orthodox nuns allegedly linked to Russian military actions and using church sales for pro-Kremlin activities.

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Thank you for the interesting read!

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

Sharing from the part that speaks to one of the aspects of violent right-wing extremism I find most interesting: its normalisation youtu.be/7GSWsVdoh2M?...

youtu.be

On the Fringe: Terrorism, Extremism & Radicalization in America | Chris Verga | Episode 148

YouTube video by The TLB Podcast

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POLITICO Europe @politico.eu · 05/01/2026

As nationalism grows ever more central to international politics, the Vienna-based Central European University department that studies it is on the verge of extinction. So what would be lost if this small but scrappy program disappears?

politico.eu

The rise and fall of nationalism studies

What the demise of a small department in an embattled university says about the future of Europe and the world. 

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

'[G]ender- and sexuality-related articles were almost absent on RT Deutsch before 2018, but increased sharply in 2018, and have been constantly present since' www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

I've learned a strange new word today: wokehöger

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 27/12/2025

Academia misdelivering for political and market demand

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Young Critic Movies @youngcritic.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

New Review: Nuremberg (2025) A compelling yet cautious portrait of the men behind recent history’s atrocities. Vanderbilt’s psychological angle is moving but often too restrained. Full review: www.youngcriticmovies.com/post/nuremberg #YoungCritic #FilmReview #Nuremberg

youngcriticmovies.com

Nuremberg

A compelling yet cautious portrait of the men behind recent history’s atrocitiesThe Nuremberg trials of Nazis were a monumental moment in the collective digestion of the horrors perpetrated in World W...

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

'В поэтической тусовке, где Владислав периодически выступает [...], есть посетитель, которого не получилось идентифицировать. Поэтому поэты читают стихи, делают вид, что мероприятие закончилось. Когда этот посетитель уходит, авторы читают неподцензурные тексты' semnasem.org/articles/202...

semnasem.org

Подпольный квир. Кто и как в российских регионах создает ЛГБТ-искусство, несмотря на гомофобные законы

В материале упоминается «движение ЛГБТ», деятельность которого запрещена в РФ

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

Pope: 'Unfortunately, it has become increasingly common to drag the language of faith into political battles, to bless nationalism, and to justify violence and armed struggle in the name of religion. Believers must actively refute (...) these forms of blasphemy that profane the holy name of God'

vatican.va

Message of the Holy Father for the 59th World Day of Peace 2026: “Peace be with you all: Towards an “unarmed and disarming” peace

MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE LEO XIV FOR THE LIX WORLD DAY OF PEACE 1 st JANUARY 2026 _______________________________

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Lisa Röstlund @lisarostlund.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

Vi låtsades vara en ung kille - och fick prata med ledaren för Aktivklubb. Och höra hur det går till när nazisterna vill rekrytera. ”Vissa får utegångsförbud för sina mammor”. www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/L4...

aftonbladet.se

Här vill naziledaren rekrytera oss – ”Vissa får utegångsförbud av sina mammor”

De ingår i en nazistisk rörelse. Och de är unga – vissa av dem barn. Aftonbladet har träffat ledaren för Aktivklubb Sverige. – Ibland får folk utegångsförbud av

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

'the symbolic conflation of marriage with coupledom and monogamy renders ‘marriage reform’ an unlikely candidate for providing meaningful answers to the need to legally protect diverse intimacies and familiar arrangements'

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

I suppose these findings have already caused some discussions (I'm still digesting)

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GSS 2027 @gendercongress.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Join us for the 10th Edition: Global Congress on Gender & Sexuality Studies 2026 (GSS 2026)! May 18–19, 2026 Amsterdam, Netherlands Theme: Beyond Binaries: Reimagining Gender and Sexuality in the 21st Century Register now! #GenderStudies #SexualityStudies #Feminism #LGBTQ #QueerStudies

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

South Ossetia, by the way, has a universal ban on them 😀 but almost nobody has ever written about it. I think many would genuinely be curious to read an explanation of how, and why on earth, that happened

euractiv.com

Like 35 espressos - MEPs weigh regulating energy drinks for minors | Euractiv

“The absence of restriction in many member states means that children are freely exposed to these products”, said MEP Tilly Metz

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RNS @rns.org · 22/11/2025

A delegation of Orthodox Christian clergy met with Trump administration officials and members of Congress this week, igniting feuds among both U.S. Orthodox Christian and Republican groups amid accusations that the visitors were agents of Russian influence. religionnews.com/2025/11/21/o...

religionnews.com

Orthodox Christian clergy call on US officials, drawing accusations of Russian influence

(RNS) — The visits have caused feuds among both US Orthodox Christian groups and Republicans.

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Shota Hintsagty @hintsagty.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

Matthew D. Taylor on why many Evangelical Christians were not and won't be conflicted about supporting Donald Trump despite Trump always being Trump. Taylor also outlines what is needed to save American democracy (a generally good approach to resisting authoritarianism elsewhere too)

youtube.com

The Christian Extremism Crisis Is Worse Than You Think...And What to Do About It

YouTube video by HumanistsMN

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