Q: What is the main difference between succession under the tsarist regime and under socialism?
A: Under the tsarist regime, power was transferred from father to son, and under socialism – from grandfather to grandfather.
Also on point:
A man walks into a shop and asks, "You wouldn't happen to have any fish, would you?" The shop assistant replies, "You've got it wrong – ours is a dairy shop. We don't have any milk. You're looking for the fish shop across the road. There they don't have any fish!"
During the tsardom, tsars passed power like kings do.
Soviet union, the party chose its leader. There was a period in the Soviet times where each succeeding leader was pretty much as old as the outgoing one so they didn't last very long. It was called the gerontocracy.
I’m not sure why but Kissinger hated everyone. He hated the Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians and was even quoted saying Arabs are savages (or perhaps barbarians). How does someone who escaped a Holocaust carry so much hate against other disadvantaged groups?
The Holocaust broke a lot of people's faith in humanity. When that hope is lost it is less a feeling of hate and more one so dispassionate and disconnected that they simply do not care about humanity.
Something that has always bothered me about this joke: Don’t news stands generally have the front page visible, to entice people? So like, you’d know well before you bought one.
Edit: I’m illiterate. I’ve heard this joke before as “guy buys a paper, looks at the front page, throws it away”. But this version actually makes sense.
'scans the front page, doesn't buy the paper'. right. that's the joke. that it's for someone important enough for their death to make the front page, which is visible without buying the paper.
The person looking for an obituary is hoping for the expiration of a public figure prominent enough that their death would be front page news. Likely a politician.
There used to be sidewalk kiosks called “newsstands” where people could buy the “newspaper,” a daily publication with news about recent events. Bigger news was put on the front page, and at a newsstand you could see the front page for free.
Because this is talking about the Soviet Union, the man is almost certainly looking for a headline announcing that Josef Stalin has died.