No Bread and Circuses for You – Status Update

You may have noticed that my posting schedule here at No Bread and Circuses for You has become a bit sporadic recently. And there's a good reason for that. I've been spending more time recently doing the same kind of work over at the website Russia Insider. If you have not yet visited Russia Insider, I'd like to recommend it to you and suggest that you stop over there for a visit. Here is their website address:  Russia Insider

I've certainly enjoyed everything that I've done here at No Bread and Circuses for You. So why would I be spending less time doing this? One word... Impact. At this site, I've averaged about 20,000 views a month since I started a bit over a year ago. Russia Insider averages about 3 million views a month. My work over there has a much greater impact than my work over here.

At Russia Insider, I'm part of a team of eight that does nothing but scan the news. And that leaves me more time to do other things. And that's important, because I don't make any money doing this, while at the same time I spend less time doing work that actually pays the bills. And everybody has bills. You have them; and I have them.

So then, what is the future of this site? This site will continue, but with a less frequent posting schedule. Here's what you can expect to see in the future.

1. Any writing that I do, and I hope to do more, will appear here first.
2. Stories that I find that fit the mission of Russia Insider will be submitted there. Stories that I uncover that does not fit their mission but yet is an important story that needs further exposure, will be posted here, as time permits.
3. The live news feeds that I added to this site a couple of months ago will remain active and will continue to be updated on a frequent basis. There will always be new, updated stories there. These news feeds are found in the right column, under News Feeds & Site Info.

If you happen to monitor RSS feeds, I recommend that you subscribe to my feed (that orange circle at the top right hand corner of the page) so you will be notified of any new postings.

So this is not goodbye; this is just an I'll be seeing you on a less frequent basis.

- Aaron Talka

Even More News For You

Not enough news for you yet?  Just click one of the links below...

The new pages each contain a scrolling news widget. The news widgets are Russia News, Ukraine News, Novorossiya News, and Elsewhere in Ukraine News. This news widgets will allow access to a greater number of news stories than I could hope to post myself. Here's some basic information on each widget.

1. Russia News – the latest news concerning events and developments regarding Russia.

2. Ukraine News – the latest news regarding events and developments in Ukraine. This also includes NATO news, since we know that NATO is deeply involved in events in Ukraine.

3. Novorossiya News – news regarding the events Donetsk, Luhansk, and Novorossiya.

4. Elsewhere in Ukraine News – news regarding events elsewhere in Ukraine, with specific emphasis on cities and regions that may not remain in Ukraine for whole lot longer.

•• Even More News for You - All four of the above feeds together on one page.  Note:  This one contains all four scrolling news widgets.  Because of this, it's possible that not all will load correctly the first time.  Doing a reload/refresh should fix the problem.

- Aaron Talka

New Feature: Even More News for You

I'm making available today a new feature on my blog. While there is still a little bit more work that I want to do with it, I'd like to make it available to everyone right now in the hope that you'll find it useful. Click on one of the links below and you'll be taken there.

The new pages each contain a scrolling news widget. The news widgets are Russia News, Ukraine News, Novorossiya News, and Elsewhere in Ukraine News. This news widgets will allow access to a greater number of news stories than I could hope to post myself. Here's some basic information on each widget.

1. Russia News – the latest news concerning events and developments regarding Russia.

2. Ukraine News – the latest news regarding events and developments in Ukraine. This also includes NATO news, since we know that NATO is deeply involved in events in Ukraine.

3. Novorossiya News – news regarding the events Donetsk, Luhansk, and Novorossiya.

4. Elsewhere in Ukraine News – news regarding events elsewhere in Ukraine, with specific emphasis on cities and regions that may not remain in Ukraine for whole lot longer.

• Even More News for You - All four of the above feeds together on one page.


The first two categories have a larger number of news stories than the last two categories. This is not all that surprising. Because frankly, even a lot of alternative news sources are not covering these areas in much depth. Yet.

These news scrolls, while they contain a lot of current, up to the moment, news, are not updated instantaneously as news occurs. There will likely always be a couple hours delay. This is about the best that can be expected from a free solution. Yet, it will allow this website to be updated a lot more frequently than I could ever hope to update it myself.

Some caveats.

On the initial load, sometimes 1 or more news feeds don't load.  Refresh/reload the page and it should all work.  (Fingers crossed)

If you see a story that seems interesting, click it now. Once it disappears from the news scroll, it's gone and it won't come back.

Since the selection of these stories are computerized, there will no doubt be some stories that don't fit in well with the mission of this blog. As I discover these stories, I will go back and tweak the selection process in the hope that you see a more appropriate selection of stories.

If you see anything that appears not to be working too well, or doesn't seem to fit, feel free to leave a comment on the news scrolls page and I will look into it. And the feel free to drop me a comment and let me know how you like this new feature.

- Aaron Talka

And now, the story continues.

by Talka.

I actually did not intend to be quite this quiet the last two weeks, but doing some software upgrades and the problems that invariably come with such upgrades took more time than expected, as they invariably do too.

And then, there's the issue of trying to streamline the process of posting, which invariably seems to take more time than one would like, trying out a few new ideas, and finding that they either don't save the time one would expect them to, or that such streamlining has other costs, and not all of those costs involve money.

Anyway, I'll be easing back into posting over the next few days.

OK, so now where were we? Oh yeah. Way too much has occurred over the previous year to summarize it, so it's futile to try. But we can certainly expect more of the same; much more in fact, along with any number of new surprises, some that will be anticipated by a few forward thinkers, and some that come totally out of nowhere. I believe that 2015 will be an extremely influential year, more influential than any year in quite a few decades. I hope to be able to keep up with these events and to help bring some understanding, either large or small, to those who stop by and spend some time here.

So what the hell is this Talka anyway... A Pseudonym.

Whenever I've posted my own writing here, I've posted it under the byline "NoBC4U". While original, I guess, it's certainly not all that great and it certainly doesn't convey any type of unique identity. But living here in Ukraine, I really don't have any great desire to post under my own name either. So, I'm going with a pseudonym. Talka. That's it. Just plain Talka. Pronounced Tal-ka. One word pseudonyms are quite popular among singers and songwriters especially, but certainly not so among writers of the written word. So is Talka a great idea? Who knows, but it's certainly better than NoBC4U.

Besides, Benjamin Franklin, the Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens, Stephen King, JK Rowling, and Theodore Geisel all wrote under assumed names. If they can, why shouldn't I?

A brief note to my loyal readers.

I'm going to be taking a break from this blog for a couple of days. Since the beginning, this blog's been a one-man operation. And the beginning was eight months ago. During that time, I've spent way too much time researching, reading, and posting stories that I felt were relevant to the quickly evolving political situations of 2014. It's time for a break.

That does not mean there will be no stories for the next few days. I always seem to have more stories to post than I have time to post them. I'm going to go through some of this backlog and schedule some of these stories for the next few days. Hopefully you'll see something of interest to you. And if there are any very important breaking stories, I'll likely take a break from my break to do some updates.

See you in a couple of days.

A Thank You to All My Visitors

Dear friends,

I would like to take a moment to thank everybody who has stopped by to visit my site both in the past, the present, and hopefully in the future.  In eight short months, I've already had over 130,000 visits.  This was certainly a big surprise for me!  I hope that you have found the stories that I've posted useful and informative.  But a strange thing has happened in the time since I started posting the stories. It was never my intention to have this blog be primarily about Russia and Ukraine. But it seems to have turned out that way, hasn't it?

What this means of course is that there are lots of other important stories that just don't get posted here.  I would love to have many more hours each day just to read and post.  But that's not really possible, is it?  So, I'd like to ask each of you for a little help.  Are there important stories I'm missing?  (Of course there are).  Please let me know about them!  They most certainly do not have to be about Ukraine or Russia; underreported stories, both political and economic and beyond, are welcome for submission. It can be about any part of the world. The BRICS nations, Europe, Asia, the Americas.

How to submit? Over in the sidebar, you see a link "submit a story". Just click there and leave your link in the comment section. Please note that the comments are moderated, so the link you submit will not be visible. But rest assured that this has been submitted and that I will look at it. I cannot promise that I will use each and every link submitted, but if I feel it's a good fit for the blog, I will most certainly post it.

Thanks for stopping by, and with your help I hope you'll find this site even more useful and informative in the future!

A Short Message from NoBC4U

Just a quick note that for the next few weeks, there will be few or no new posts on Sunday. Every once in a while, it's necessary to step back and recharge your batteries a bit and remind yourself that there is a world beyond the computer and beyond the news. Sundays in August seem like the perfect opportunity to do that.

But if there is any breaking news happening, Sunday posting will be just like any other day.

A Message from No Bread and Circuses for You

Hi from NoBC4U,

I very much appreciate all of your visits to my blog. I started no Bread and Circuses for You only about four months ago, and it's already getting, on numerous days, over 800 visits. This is phenomenal! Thank you!

Although it may seem like it most days, I never intended this blog to be mostly about Ukraine and Russia. My goal was to cover all sorts of underreported news. And I certainly hope to be doing more of that in the future. Though I certainly believe that what is currently playing out between Russia, Ukraine, the EU, and the USA is the story with potentially the most wide-ranging impact.

But I do find that I need to be doing a few things a little bit differently than I have been doing the last couple of months. It seems that on a lot of days, four or six or eight hours go by trying to keep ahead of and understanding the events of the day, whether in East Europe, in the Middle East, and the USA, or elsewhere. And that takes away from other things that I really must be paying attention to. So some changes will occur, not because I want them to, but because they have to. Some of these are:

Fewer stories on a daily basis. (But not everyday). Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing. I have been finding myself posting stories that seem to be quite similar to things that I had posted before. This of course works very well for new readers to my blog. But for those who have been visiting for a few weeks, it might seem a bit repetitious. For newcomers to my blog, there is a search function to search through articles posted in the prior weeks and months.

Less pictures. Pictures often have a central role in getting the news out, especially on social media like Facebook and Twitter, but that often seems to take up more time than anything else.

And an occasional day off or two every once in a while.

Of course, you're welcome at any time to submit to me links to stories that may be of interest. You can do this by either posting a comment in the comment section, or submit it directly to me via email. The address is... nobreadcircus4u (at) gmail.com