Will China and India’s refusal to condemn Russia over Ukraine invasion harm their reputations in Asean? How Beijing and Delhi acknowledge the invasion of Ukraine could impact their standing in Asean, and their complex relations with Russia ...... Meanwhile, Indonesia is reliant on Russia for maintenance of its defence equipment and has not described the war in Ukraine as an invasion ........ These comments match what is being said at the highest levels of Chinese diplomacy, with foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin on Thursday repeating Beijing’s accusations that Washington provoked the war by not ruling out Nato membership for Ukraine. But Beijing has also issued disapproval of its close ally Moscow’s actions with Foreign Minister Wang Yi saying on Tuesday that China is deeply grieved to see the outbreak of conflict and is “extremely concerned” over the damage done to civilians. ........Media commentators and analysts say such “doublespeak” reflects Beijing’s increasingly complicated balancing act as fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian troops intensifies. .
Both sides of Taiwan Strait look to Ukraine fight for guerilla warfare lessons Ukraine’s use of Western-supplied weapons and asymmetric warfare has obvious parallels for any possible attack from mainland China ...... Military analysts say the conflict also highlights the dangers of not modernising your military and underestimating your opponent ........
Ukraine has used anti-tank weapons extensively.
......... The fighting between Ukraine and Russia is being closely watched by both the People’s Liberation Army and Taiwanese military as Ukraine’s forces, using anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles provided by the West, inflict heavy losses on their larger Russian opponents. .
Ukraine capital Kyiv a ‘fortress’ as photos appear to show 60km Russian column breaking up Satellite images appear to show Russian military column threatening Kyiv from north has dispersed to new positions ...... Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of attack on humanitarian corridor in the besieged city of Mariupol ....... Hundreds of thousands of civilians remain holed up in Ukrainian cities, including besieged Mariupol, under a Russian bombing campaign ...... Satellite images appeared to show a 60km Russian military column threatening Kyiv from the north had dispersed to new positions ... possibly in preparation for an assault on the capital. ......... The Ukrainian military in a statement warned “the enemy is trying to eliminate the defences of the Ukrainian forces around” regions to the west and northwest of the capital “to block Kyiv”. ........ In the capital, mayor Vitali Klitschko said half the population had fled, adding that the city “has been transformed into a fortress ... Every street, every building, every checkpoint has been fortified.” ....... Russian forces are currently encircling at least four major Ukrainian cities. Suburbs outside Kyiv, including Irpin and Bucha have endured days of heavy bombardment. ......... Ukrainian soldiers there described fierce fighting for control of the main highway leading into the capital ....... “Russian forces are committing an increased number of their deployed forces to encircle key cities”. ......... “This will reduce the number of forces available to continue their advance and will further slow Russian progress” .......... But there has been no let-up in the onslaught on several major cities, with the besieged southern port city of Mariupol suffering relentless bombardment, including on attempted aid deliveries ........... Mariupol mayor Vadym Boichenko said Russian warplanes had targeted residential areas in the city “every 30 minutes” on Thursday, “killing civilians, the elderly, women and children”. ......... The situation in city has been described as “apocalyptic”, with more than 1,200 civilians killed in 10 days of constant attacks ........ Around 100,000 people have been able to leave the northeastern city of Sumy, the eastern city of Izyum, and areas northwest of Kyiv in the last two days ........ more than 2.3 million refugees have left Ukraine since Russia shocked the world by invading its neighbour on February 24, and some 1.9 million Ukrainians have been internally displaced . .......... Lavrov said the two sides would keep talking, but also insisted Russia’s invasion was purely defensive. Asked by a reporter if Moscow was planning to attack other nations, he insisted “we don’t plan to attack other countries” and Russia “did not attack Ukraine”. ......... Russia has also ramped up its claims about alleged biological weapons development in Ukraine, which Western officials have said could be an attempt to lay the ground for their possible use by Moscow’s forces in the country. ........... The conflict has so far caused around US$100 billion in damage to roads, bridges and businesses ......... the US has ruled out enforcing a no-fly zone, and rejected a Polish plan to transfer fighter jets to Ukraine via a US airbase for fear of being drawn directly into the conflict. Western sanctions have targeted Russia’s financial system and its oligarchs, including Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich, who was hit Thursday by a UK assets freeze and travel ban.
Sex parties and polyamory in Silicon Valley? It’s more common than you might think Laurie Segall’s new book, Special Characters: My Adventures with Tech’s Titans and Misfits, explores the Silicon Valley sex and party culture ...... The reporter interviewed everyone from venture capitalist to sex workers and discovered there was much more to techies than met the eye ....... Segall writes that the man who ran these parties, Ralph, told her there were more than 4,000 tech employees on his mailing list. He invited her to one, at a “nondescript building” in San Francisco. ........ When she arrived, couples were checking in on an iPad; the party also had its own app. Ralph told her that one swinger, an iPhone developer, was working on its interface, and “The guy who created our check-in software basically built [software company] Oracle!” ......... Segall said she made small-talk with a VC and his topless girlfriend, who worked at Google, and that later on in the night, Ralph led them to a separate room upstairs. ......... “A bin of towels sat next to a door that led to a room carpeted in mattresses draped in red sheets and framed with blue pillows,” Segall wrote. “The same VC I had spoken to earlier was on his knees, naked, a giant multi- coloured tattoo on his lower back, thrusting back and forth.” ......... A dominatrix who worked out of Oakland, California, met with Segall at her “secret dungeon”. She said her clients were the ones who helped her create many of her hi-tech accessories – which included gas masks with iPod earbuds attached, a crane that could lift up to 900 pounds (408kg), and a device that gave low-grade electric shocks. ........ “Where do you think all the Apple engineers get their creative inspiration?” she asked Segall. “I lock them up for the weekend.” ........ Techies were already dabbling in LSD and microdosing for productivity, Segall explained; now, they were experimenting with different types of relationships too. ...... Chris Messina, an engineer at Twitter known for inventing the hashtag, told Segall that he was also polygamous. He offered a tech analogy: if a product – monogamy – is “failing 50 per cent of the time, you might want to consider the design and think about ways of improving that”. ....... At an after-party hosted by Foursquare, “Ashton Kutcher stood around nonchalantly while nerds pretended he was one of them”, said Segall. “People later floated in for Kutcher’s invite-only jam sessions, where entrepreneurs stayed up all night drinking whiskey and discussing the future.”
The more things change, the more China’s Xi Jinping focuses on stability China’s president projects stability in a ‘turbulent era’ as he is about to start a third term as the Communist Party’s head ....... Xi signalled assurance to the coal and agricultural sectors and contrasted the ‘orderly governance of China’ with ‘the chaos of the West
Ukraine war: Why has 'Z' become a Russian pro-war symbol? In Russia, the "Z" is fast becoming seen as a staunchly pro-war symbol of President Putin's invasion of Ukraine. It has been sported by politicians, seen on the sides of cars, vans and advertising hoardings - as well as daubed on bus shelters. It has even been used by Serbs at pro-Russian demonstration in Belgrade. Photographs have been widely shared on social media.
How the Putin Shock Might Affect the World Economy . here we are, 13 days in, with Kyiv and Kharkiv still standing and invading forces bogged down by fierce Ukrainian resistance (helped by a rapid influx of Western weapons) and disastrous logistical problems. At the same time, Western sanctions on the Russian economy are clearly already having severe effects and may get even stronger. ........ standing up to aggression doesn’t come free. Events in Ukraine and Russia will, in particular, impose serious costs on the world economy. ........ it will be bad, but not catastrophic. Specifically, the Putin shock seems unlikely to be nearly as bad as the oil shocks that roiled the world economy in the 1970s. ...... As in the 1970s, the blow to the world economy is coming from commodity prices. Russia is a major exporter of oil and natural gas; both Russia and Ukraine are — or were — major exporters of wheat. So the war is having a big impact on both energy and food prices. ........ the real, inflation-adjusted price of oil has shot up almost to the level it hit during the Iranian revolution in 1979 ......... I’m a bit puzzled by the size of this price spike. Yes, Russia is a major oil producer. But it accounts for only about 11 percent of world production ........ Russia will probably find ways to sell a significant fraction of its oil despite Western sanctions. ......... food may actually be a bigger issue than energy. Before Putin’s war, Russia and Ukraine combined accounted for more than a quarter of the world’s wheat exports. Now Russia is sanctioned and Ukraine is a war zone. Not surprisingly, wheat prices have shot up from less than $8 a bushel before Russia began massing its forces around Ukraine to around $13 now......... If Putin imagines that he can hold the world to ransom, well, that’s probably yet another fatal miscalculation.
This Is Why Putin Can’t Back Down . Carl von Clausewitz famously asserted that war is the continuation of politics by other means. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is the continuation of identity politics by other means. ........ I’ve found the writings of conventional international relations experts to be not very helpful in understanding what this whole crisis is about. But I’ve found the writing of experts in social psychology to be enormously helpful. ......... Putin is not a conventional great power politician.
He’s fundamentally an identity entrepreneur.
His singular achievement has been to help Russians to recover from a psychic trauma — the aftermath of the Soviet Union — and to give them a collective identity so they can feel that they matter, that their lives have dignity............... Putin invaded so Russians could feel they are a great nation once again and so Putin himself could feel that he’s a world historical figure along the lines of Peter the Great. ....... we should see this invasion as a rabid form of identity politics. Putin spent years stoking Russian resentments toward the West. He falsely claimed Russian-speakers are under widespread attack in Ukraine. He uses the tools of war in an attempt to make Russians take pride in their group identity. ....... Like other identity politicians around the world, he promoted status resentment to soothe the wounds of trauma, the fears of inferiority. ........ Mostly, his vision of Russian identity revolved around himself. By parading as a powerful figure on the world stage, Putin could make Russians feel proud and part of something big. ........ invasion of Crimea. Having reclaimed this land, Russia could strut like a great power once again. More and more, Putin portrayed himself as not just a national leader but a civilizational leader, leading the forces of traditional morality against the moral depravity of the West. ......... Putin’s identity politics are so virulent because they are so narcissistic. Just as individual narcissists appear to be inflated egotists but are really insecure souls trying to cover their fragility, narcissistic nations and groups that parade their power are often actually haunted by fear of their own weakness. Narcissists crave recognition, but they can never get enough. Narcissists crave psychic security but act in self-destructive ways that ensure they are often under assault. ......... There have been hints that Putin might be willing to cut a deal with some sort of compromise and retreat from Ukraine, but that would be a shock. It would destroy the bloated and fragile personal and national identity that he has been building all these years. People tend not to compromise when their very identity is at stake. ......... the politics of humiliation in which he quoted Nelson Mandela: “There is nobody more dangerous than one who has been humiliated.” ......... Putin brought this humiliation on himself and on his country. Speaking as one who deeply admires so much in Russian culture, I think it is a great crime that a nation with so many paths to dignity and greatness chose the path that leads so viciously to degradation. .How Vladimir Putin Lost Interest in the Present . Thanks to Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, Russia is now more isolated than it has ever been. The economy is under sanctions and international businesses are withdrawing. The news media has been even further restricted; what remains spouts paranoia, nationalism and falsehoods. The people will have increasingly less communication with others beyond their borders. And in all of this, I fear, Russia increasingly resembles its president. .............. What I have heard about the president’s behavior over the past two years is alarming. His seclusion and inaccessibility, his deep belief that Russian domination over Ukraine must be restored and his decision to surround himself with ideologues and sycophants have all helped to bring Europe to its most dangerous moment since World War II. ....... Putin spent the spring and summer of 2020 quarantining at his residence in Valdai, approximately halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg. ..... he was accompanied there by Yuri Kovalchuk. Mr. Kovalchuk, who is the largest shareholder in Rossiya Bank and controls several state-approved media outlets, has been Mr. Putin’s close friend and trusted adviser since the 1990s. ....... by 2020 .. he had established himself as the de facto second man in Russia ........ Kovalchuk has a doctorate in physics and was once employed by an institute headed by the Nobel laureate Zhores Alferov. But he isn’t just a man of science. He is also an ideologue, subscribing to a worldview that combines Orthodox Christian mysticism, anti-American conspiracy theories and hedonism. This appears to be Mr. Putin’s worldview, too. Since the summer of 2020, Mr. Putin and Mr. Kovalchuk have been almost inseparable, and the two of them have been making plans together to restore Russia’s greatness. .......... the president has completely lost interest in the present: The economy, social issues, the coronavirus pandemic, these all annoy him. Instead, he and Mr. Kovalchuk obsess over the past. ......... Macron of France was astonished when Mr. Putin gave him a lengthy history lecture during one of their talks last month. ........ In Mr. Putin’s view, the situation today is the opposite: It is the West that’s weak. The only Western leader that Mr. Putin took seriously was Germany’s previous chancellor, Angela Merkel. Now she is gone and it’s time for Russia to avenge the humiliations of the 1990s. ........... It seems that there is no one around to tell him otherwise. Mr. Putin no longer meets with his buddies for drinks and barbecues........... especially since the start of the pandemic — he has cut off most contacts with advisers and friends. While he used to look like an emperor who enjoyed playing on the controversies of his subjects, listening to them denounce one another and pitting them against one another, he is now isolated and distant, even from most of his old entourage. ......... His guards have imposed a strict protocol: No one can see the president without a week’s quarantine — not even Igor Sechin, once his personal secretary, now head of the state-owned oil company Rosneft. Mr. Sechin is said to quarantine for two or three weeks a month, all for the sake of occasional meetings with the president. ............. This ritual session, which was broadcast by all Russian TV channels, was supposed to smear all of the country’s top officials with blood. But it also showed that Mr. Putin is completely fed up with his old guard: His contempt for them was clear. He seemed to relish their sniveling, as when he publicly humiliated Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, who started mumbling and tried to quickly correct himself, agreeing with whatever Mr. Putin was saying. These are nothing but yes men, the president seemed to say. ........ As the casualties mount in Ukraine, the president appears to be digging in his heels; he says that the sanctions on his country are a “declaration of war.” ........ he seems to believe that complete isolation will make a large part of the most unreliable elements leave Russia: During the past two weeks, the protesting intelligentsia — executives, actors, artists, journalists — have hurriedly fled the country; some abandoned their possessions just to get out. I fear that from the point of view of Mr. Putin and Mr. Kovalchuk, this will only make Russia stronger. .
Putin Has No Good Way Out, and That Really Scares Me . Wait until Putin fully grasps that his only choices left in Ukraine are how to lose — early and small and a little humiliated or late and big and deeply humiliated. ........ “the Russian national tradition is unforgiving of military setbacks” ....... “Virtually every major defeat has resulted in radical change,” added Aron, writing in The Washington Post. “The Crimean War (1853-1856) precipitated Emperor Alexander II’s liberal revolution from above. The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) brought about the First Russian Revolution. The catastrophe of World War I resulted in Emperor Nicholas II’s abdication and the Bolshevik Revolution. And the war in Afghanistan became a key factor in Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms.” Also, retreating from Cuba contributed significantly to Nikita Khrushchev’s removal two years later. ......... our biggest problem with Putin in Ukraine is that he will refuse to lose early and small, and the only other outcome is that he will lose big and late. But because this is solely his war and he cannot admit defeat, he could keep doubling down in Ukraine until … until he contemplates using a nuclear weapon........... the easy, low-cost invasion he envisioned and the welcome party from Ukrainians he imagined were total fantasies — and everything flows from that. ........ the most effective U.S. coalition-building effort since George H.W. Bush made Saddam Hussein pay for his folly of seizing Kuwait. And he completely underestimated the ability of companies and individuals all over the world to participate in, and amplify, economic sanctions on Russia — far beyond anything governments initiated or mandated. ......... the way things are going on the ground in Ukraine right now, it is not out of the realm of possibility that Putin could actually lose early and big. ........... who knows what happens to the fighting spirit of the conscripts in the Russian Army being asked to fight a deadly urban war against fellow Slavs for a cause that was never really explained to them. ......... Given the resistance of Ukrainians everywhere to the Russian occupation, for Putin to “win” militarily on the ground his army will need to subdue every major city in Ukraine. That includes the capital, Kyiv — after probably weeks of urban warfare and massive civilian casualties. In short, it can be done only by Putin and his generals perpetrating war crimes not seen in Europe since Hitler. It will make Putin’s Russia a permanent international pariah. ............ how would Putin maintain control of another country — Ukraine — that has roughly one-third the population of Russia, with many residents hostile to Moscow? ........ a forever war against Ukraine and much of the world, which will slowly sap Russia’s strength and collapse its infrastructure. ........ there is only one thing worse than a strong Russia under Putin — and that’s a weak, humiliated, disorderly Russia that could fracture or be in a prolonged internal leadership turmoil, with different factions wrestling for power and with all of those nuclear warheads, cybercriminals and oil and gas wells lying around. .......... Putin’s Russia is not too big to fail. It is, however, too big to fail in a way that won’t shake the whole rest of the world. .
We Are All Living in Vladimir Putin’s World Now . What we called the 30-year peace that followed the Cold War (tending to forget, consciously or unconsciously, the wars in the former Yugoslavia) has now ended. Future historians will look at these last decades, by and large, much as they look at the interwar period: as an opportunity squandered. ........... The sooner we all admit it, the better we can prepare for what comes next. Unfortunately, a kind of self-serving denialism pervades Western capitals and prevents us from seeing the obvious. Passionate pleas to defend the post-Cold War European order have no meaning because this era is over. ......... 2014, Angela Merkel, then the chancellor of Germany, talked to President Vladimir Putin of Russia and reported to President Barack Obama that, in her view, Mr. Putin had lost touch with reality. He was, she said, living in “another world.” ......... “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” ......... How did we get here? First, we must understand that this is not Russia’s war. It is Mr. Putin’s. He comes from a particular generation of Russian security officials who never managed to reconcile themselves with Moscow’s Cold War defeat.
In front of their eyes, the Soviet Union vanished from the map without military loss or foreign invasion.
... These people are not interested in writing the future; they want to rewrite the past. ....... While watching Russian missiles attacking Kyiv, in a mood of powerless outrage, I suddenly realized that many Russians must have felt the same way when NATO was bombing Belgrade two decades ago. Mr. Putin’s invasion may be more about revenge than grand strategy. .............. Revisionists wish to build an international order of their liking. Revanchists are driven by the idea of payback. They dream not of changing the world but of changing places with the victors of the last war. ........... While Western public opinion was hypnotizing itself with the idea that Russia is in steep decline — a gas station with nukes, some liked to call it — the Russian president began to realize his strategy. ........... For years, Mr. Putin has been consolidating his sphere of influence over the former Soviet Union, starting with his war on Georgia in 2008 and through his annexation of Crimea in 2014. More recently, he has tightened his grip on Belarus and Central Asia. Now he has undertaken the next, dramatic step. ............ There is a real danger that instead it’s the West that could find itself more isolated......... Over the past two months, the Moscow-Beijing alliance has moved from hypothesis to reality, thanks to the shared goal of challenging American dominance. While Chinese elites are hardly excited about Russia’s reckless invasion of Ukraine (the Chinese hold dear their commitment to nonviolation of state sovereignty), there is no doubt they will stay on Moscow’s side. Look at how Beijing refused to officially describe Mr. Putin’s war as an invasion. President Xi Jinping may be the biggest beneficiary of the current crisis: America not only looks weak; it also now finds itself bogged down in Europe and unable to focus on Asia. .............. Many countries see the conflict between Russia and the West as one between old imperialists that hardly affects them. Of greater and more immediate concern is the way that sanctions imposed by the West will drive up energy and food prices. ............... “The situation echoes our history. Kenya and almost every African country was birthed by the ending of the empire.” ......... War in Ukraine has the frightening potential to heat up frozen conflicts on the continent’s periphery, including elsewhere in the post-Soviet space and the western Balkans. The leaders of the Republika Srpska may read a victory by Mr. Putin in Ukraine as a signal to dismantle Bosnia. .......... Spending on defense fell. What mattered, the received wisdom intoned, was economic power and soft power. ........ Now we know that sanctions can’t stop tanks. ....... Capitalism is not enough to temper authoritarianism. Trade with dictators does not make your country more secure, and keeping the money of corrupt leaders in your banks does not civilize them; it corrupts you. ......... The fact that a majority of South Koreans now favor their country obtaining nuclear weapons suggests that Mr. Putin’s moves in Ukraine put at risk the world’s nuclear nonproliferation regime. .How will Russia’s war with Ukraine end? Here are 5 possible outcomes . In this scenario, “the conflict drains Moscow’s coffers and resolve, ultimately forcing a withdrawal after much violence and death,” an outcome that has echoes of Russia’s ill-fated, unpopular and costly invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, a conflict that lasted 10 years and led to the deaths of 15,000 Russian soldiers.......... “Anything short of that is fair game: you can send fighter jets and other advanced weapons systems to the Ukrainians, provide Ukraine with real time intelligence on the disposition of Russian forces, and take economic measures without limitation to destroy the Russian economy” ........ Strategists based in Eastern Europe are under no illusion as to whether NATO could get dragged into the conflict. ....... in their “rosiest” possible scenario for how the Ukraine conflict could end, Ukraine could see its own defensive capabilities bolstered by NATO, allowing its military and civilian resistance to “overcome the odds and grind Moscow’s advance to a halt.” ......... In this hypothetical scenario, Putin would be prevented from toppling Kyiv’s government and establishing a puppet regime, while “the determination and skill of the Ukrainian resistance forces a stalemate on the battlefield that favors the defenders” ........ Kremlin realizes that Russia “will pay an exorbitant price” for its invasion of Ukraine and, facing the prospect of a long and costly slog in Ukraine, coupled with economic collapse and diplomatic isolation, Putin would order a withdrawal of his troops. .
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I’ve studied the possible trajectories of the Russia-Ukraine war. None are good There are two likely paths: continued escalation, potentially across the nuclear threshold, or a bitter peace imposed on a defeated Ukraine ...... Russia’s invasion has not gone entirely to plan, looking disorganized, uncoordinated and sluggish to observers. ...... Russia had made key strategic errors in its first week of combat, particularly in its failure to establish air superiority and thus provide air support to its ground forces. ........ “During the first week of the war, Russian ground forces have become bogged down outside of the northern Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and Kyiv due to their failure to establish air superiority (which has resulted in significant aircraft and helicopter losses), too few troops to execute three simultaneous thrusts (toward Kyiv and Kharkiv, and north from Crimea), poor coordination of fires and maneuver, significant logistical issues, and stronger than expected Ukrainian resistance” ...... Russia is moving to encircle Kyiv and Kharkiv and appears to have switched to indiscriminate long-range fires — resulting in significant collateral damage in residential areas— and is making significant progress in the south.” ............ “at the strategic level, he has essentially united most of the rest of the world. ... And then on the battlefield, it’s going terribly.” ........ Russia was “stretched beyond its logistical and mechanical capabilities,” its troops (some of whom are less-experienced conscripts) are likely to be extremely tired and inexperienced in the face of a determined opponent, as Ukraine is proving to be. ....... “It’s going to be worse than what the Russians had in Afghanistan, that’s what the Ukrainians are going to do” ........ ultimately he’s going to have to leave whether it’s in one year, or five years or 10 years ........ Ukraine claimed on Wednesday that more than 5,000 Russian personnel had died in the conflict while Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Wednesday that 498 Russian soldiers had died and another 1,597 had been wounded. ....... Russia had underestimated the tenacity of ordinary Ukrainian people. ....... Despite a resistance that has won hearts and minds around the world, the bigger picture does not look good for Ukraine, one analyst noted, and Ukraine needs more Western help if it is to stop Russia’s slow but destructive and demoralizing advance. ............. “Won’t military victory be the start, not the end, of Putin’s problems?” .
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I’ve studied the possible trajectories of the Russia-Ukraine war. None are good Wars sometimes start easily, but it is a tenet of strategy that they are always unpredictable and extremely hard to end. Putin’s war of choice in Ukraine is already escalating faster than most experts would have imagined just a week ago. He has now encircled major Ukrainian cities with his army and threatens to flatten them with thermobaric weapons, cluster munitions and guided missiles. This will terrorize the civilian population and could demoralize the budding Ukrainian resistance. He could escalate the conflict to another region, such as the Balkans, where longstanding conflicts fester and Russia has an extensive network of intelligence and security services. He may turn the lights off in a major US city with a cyber-attack. Most frighteningly, he has raised the alert level of Russian nuclear forces and may be considering introducing martial law. ...... Meanwhile, Nato, the G7 and a host of other countries have turned the dial of economic punishment up to unprecedented levels. ....... A growing number of voices in Washington are clamoring for a more aggressive approach from the United States and Nato, pressuring the White House to support a Ukrainian insurgency with a broad menu of weaponry ........ there are really only two paths toward ending the war: one, continued escalation, potentially across the nuclear threshold; the other, a bitter peace imposed on a defeated Ukraine that will be extremely hard for the United States and many European allies to swallow............ nothing more than a war of brute imperialism. ........ If the current uneven pace of Russian military progress doesn’t accomplish the job, the most likely strategy for doing this is to make an example of a city like Kharkiv, leveling it as if it were Grozny or Aleppo, both cities that Russia has brutally destroyed in the recent past, and then threatening to burn Kyiv to the ground. ....... the strategy that the United States used to assist French resistance against Nazi Germany. ........ the infamous Wagner Group, a private organization that operates globally as a quasi-special force of the Kremlin ........ Ukrainian forces would have major incentives to take their fight inside Russian territory, attacking Russia’s rearguard in Belarus and Russia itself. ......... Scores of war games carried out by the United States and its allies in the wake of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine make it clear that Putin would probably use a nuclear weapon if he concludes that his regime is threatened. It is hard to know exactly what turn of events would scare him enough to cross the nuclear threshold. ........ what if events in Ukraine loosened his grip on power at home? Indeed, achieving regime change in Russia indirectly by making Putin lose in Ukraine seems to be the logic behind some of those who are pushing for escalation today. ........ The nuclear option that has been most frequently discussed in the past few days involves Russia using a small nuclear weapon (a “non-strategic nuclear weapon”) against a specific military target in Ukraine. Such a strike might have a military purpose, such as destroying an airfield or other military target, but it would mainly be aimed at demonstrating the will to use nuclear weapons, or “escalating to de-escalate”, and scaring the west into backing down. ........ a more likely option would be a sudden nuclear test or a high-altitude nuclear detonation that damages the electrical grid over a major Ukrainian or even Nato city. Think of an explosion that makes the lights go out over Oslo. ........... Those war games indicated that the best US response to this kind of attack would be first to demonstrate US resolve with a response in kind, aimed at a target of similar value, followed by restraint and diplomatic efforts to de-escalate. In most games, Russia still responds with a second nuclear attack, but in the games that go “well”, the United States and Russia manage to de-escalate after that, although only in circumstances where both sides have clear political off-ramps and lines of communication between Moscow and Washington have remained open. In all the other games, the world is basically destroyed. .......... Even in the better case where both sides take their fingers off the triggers, the nuclear taboo has been broken, and we are in an entirely new era: two nuclear superpowers have used their nuclear weapons in a war. ......... Wars can start quickly or slowly, but it is a dictum of strategy that once started, they take on a logic of their own. It is not too soon to think about how to bring this war to a close. The chances that Putin emerges strategically weak are real. But that does not mean the US can win. It will have to settle for a picture that is much uglier than it was before the war, and the sooner Washington accepts that, the better.
. Al Pacino on ‘The Godfather’: ‘It’s Taken Me a Lifetime to Accept It and Move On’ Fifty years later, the actor looks back on his breakthrough role: how he was cast, why he skipped the Oscars and what it all means to him now. ....... But there would be no Al Pacino without “The Godfather,” either. The actor was a rising star of New York theater with just one movie role, in the 1971 drug drama “The Panic in Needle Park,” when Francis Ford Coppola fought for him, against the wishes of Paramount Pictures, to play the ruminative prince of his Mafia epic. ........ how this one performance, from the outset of his movie career, still dominates his résumé, or perhaps he has said all there is to say about it. ....... he is still awe-struck about how it single-handedly gave him his career. ...... “I’m here because I did ‘The Godfather,’” Pacino said, speaking from his home in Los Angeles. “For an actor, that’s like winning the lottery. When it comes right down to it, I had nothing to do with the film but play the part.” ....... “When I actually read the ‘Godfather’ book, I kept imagining him,” Coppola said in a separate interview. “And I didn’t have a second choice. It was, for me, always Al Pacino. That’s the reason why I was so tenacious about getting him to play Michael. That was my problem.” ...... But for the actor, delivering the performance of a lifetime brought its own burdens, as he would learn in the years that followed. ....... “It’s hard to explain in today’s world — to explain who I was at that time and the bolt of lightning that it was,” Pacino said. “I felt like, all of a sudden, some veil was lifted and all eyes were on me. Of course, they were on others in the film. But ‘The Godfather’ gave me a new identity that was hard for me to cope with.” ...... At that time in my life, I didn’t have a choice. Francis wanted me. I had made the one film. And I wasn’t as interested in film to the extent that I became interested. My head was in another space. I felt out of place in the early films that I made. ......... He saw me onstage [in the 1969 Broadway run of “Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?”] but I never met him. ......... He wanted to see me. That meant I had to get on a plane and go to San Francisco, which is something I was not used to. I thought, is there any other way to go? ........ But we were rejected, of course. I was an unknown actor ....... So I went back home and never heard from him again. .......... And I got a call from Francis Coppola — a name from the past. First, he says he’s going to be directing “The Godfather.” I thought, well, he might be going through a mini-breakdown or something. How did they give him “The Godfather”? ............ I’ve got to tell you, it was a big deal already. It was a big book. When you’re an actor, you don’t even put your eyes on those things. They don’t exist for you. You’re in a certain place in your life where you’re not going to be accepted in those big films — not yet, at least. And he said, not only was he directing it, [breaking into laughter] but he wanted me to do it. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to laugh here. It just seemed so outrageous. Here I am, talking to somebody who I think is flipped out. I said, what train am I on? OK. Humor the guy. And he wanted me to do Michael. I thought, OK, I’ll go along with this. I said, yes, Francis, good. You know how they talk to you when you’re slipping? They say, “Yes! Of course! Yes!” But he wasn’t. It was the truth. And then I was given the part. ............. Well, they rejected his entire cast! [Laughs] They rejected Brando. They rejected Jimmy Caan and Bob Duvall. ......... Oh, on the island of Manhattan, things were happening for me. I had done “The Indian Wants the Bronx.” I was young. I got the Obie Award and then I won a Tony. Then I got fired from a play. [Laughs] ......... And I felt it was mapped out for me when I read the script. .......... And there, sitting on a tombstone, is Francis Ford Coppola, weeping like a baby. Profusely crying. And I went up to him and I said, Francis, what’s wrong? What happened? He says, “They won’t give me another shot.” Meaning, they wouldn’t allow him to film another setup. And I thought: OK. I guess I’m in a good film here. Because he had this kind of passion and there it is. ............. But you’re surprised when you realize how many people never saw it. ........ It’s like when I once lost my wallet in my early 20s. I had no money, but what I had, I had in my wallet and I lost it. I said, Al, you simply have to forget this. Put it out of your mind, OK? You know what will happen to you if you keep thinking about it. So, what I do is, I don’t think about it. ........ John Cazale, in general, was one of the great actors of our time — that time, any time. ............. He was in five films, all Oscar-nominated films, and he was great in all of them. ........ Well, that character, Tony Montana, was written by Oliver Stone and directed by Brian De Palma, who wanted the heightened reality. Brian wanted to do an opera. All I wanted to do was imitate Paul Muni. .......... Marlon didn’t go. Look, Marlon gave back the Oscar. How about that? They were rebelling from the Hollywood thing. That kind of thing was in the air. ........ I was also working onstage in Boston at that time [in “Richard III”]. But that was an excuse. I just was afraid to go. I was young, younger than even my years. I was young in terms of the newness of all this. It was the old shot-out-of-a-cannon syndrome. And it’s connected to drugs and those kinds of things, which I was engaged in back there, and I think that had a lot to do with it. I was just unaware of things back then. ......... It’s not like I played Superman. ....... Someone called me, he says, You must be alone. I said, no, I’m here with my ego. [Laughs]
. Trevor Noah rips Biden over Saudi, UAE phone-snub report: ‘Would have never happened to Donald Trump’ The 'Daily Show' host suggested Biden should hire Trump to be 'President Wild Card,' for foreign affairs, just to 'keep everyone on their toes'
. This Texas Town Was Deep In Debt From A Devastating Winter Storm. Then A Crypto Miner Came Knocking. A 2021 winter storm overwhelmed Denton's power grid, pushing the city into crushing debt. Then a faceless company arrived with a promise to refill its coffers — and double its energy use. ...... and suddenly we’re renting out space near the power plant that’s gonna use as much energy as the whole city consumes, ....... Companies with valuations 100 times greater than the revenue of local cities are funding schools, sustainability projects, and discretionary spending coffers. And at the smallest levels of government, crypto operations are somehow charming communities who don’t really seem to want them there. ....... Denton’s story is a tale of how a small town government embraced something to which it first seemed ideologically opposed. It’s a schematic for how the burgeoning crypto industry — which promises to solve climate change, repair crumbling infrastructure, and fix all manner of societal issues by putting them on the blockchain — is literally remaking communities, hedging their futures on its own unforeseeable success. ........ the city is “honored to have been selected as the site of Core Scientific’s first blockchain data center in Texas.” ....... Crypto is a polarizing subject, either the genesis of “world peace” or the thing that’s going to ruin the world, depending on who’s talking. But those prevailing narratives ultimately fell flat in Denton, where crypto is a means to various ends. Like the industries of yore that shaped countless small towns across the nation, crypto companies are hoping to secure their futures by fulfilling the needs of the communities they invade. What happened in Denton, a smallish city of nearly 140,000 people, remains one of the clearest examples of how those communities are sometimes compelled to answer when crypto comes knocking at their door. .......... Core Scientific pledged a capital investment of $200 million to the project, according to recordings of city council meetings. Dozens of modular mining containers, roughly the shape and size of a semitrailer truck, would connect to the gas plant’s existing power infrastructure, a driving factor in why the company chose Denton. ....... Denton is a microcosm of global changes that are transforming the US into Eden for crypto miners. Miners infamously crept into states like Washington and New York as early as 2017, but it wasn’t until China declared a sweeping ban on bitcoin mining last year that America became a crypto superpower. The US now hosts 35% of bitcoin’s hashrate, more than any other country in the world, and half of the largest crypto companies. ........ Miners in Texas will require twice the power of Austin, a city of 1 million people. To a cluster of conservative lawmakers including Sen. Ted Cruz, crypto has become a convenient vector for US nationalism. ........ One, that crypto’s energy requirements will stimulate new clean energy production. And two, that miners will respond to the grid’s larger needs, powering down when energy demands are at their highest. ........ endorsed by people like Square CEO Jack Dorsey. Last year, Square commissioned a whitepaper titled “Bitcoin Is Key to an Abundant, Clean Energy Future.” True believers in bitcoin’s utility have even adopted the phrase “bitcoin as a battery.” ........ miners believe they stand alone in being able to power down within seconds without harming their operations. ....... Denton has become a petri dish for this new era of cryptocurrency — not because its leaders believe in the transformational potential of the blockchain, but because it offered a service when the city needed it most. ...... If these deals materialize, Denton’s energy needs would practically disappear beneath the hulking appetites of its new, power-hungry residents. “Even though they’re our customer,” Meltzer said, “I do hope their industry goes under.”
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#bitcoin incentivizes renewable energy https://t.co/KCe5bwdVs4
— jack⚡️ (@jack) April 21, 2021
True
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 22, 2021
Bitcoin as Battery . Bitcoin at first was “weird internet money” and then it was “a protocol” and then it was “digital gold”. Ethereum is “ICOs”, or maybe “DeFi”, or maybe “Web3”, or maybe all three, or maybe something else. Crypto wallets are a place to hold money, or maybe they’re also your digital identity. Crypto protocols like Maker, Compound, Helium, Arweave and Uniswap are marketplaces, or maybe APIs, or maybe inverted companies, or maybe ecosystems, or all of the above. The IRS sees crypto as property, the SEC as securities, the CFTC as commodities, FinCEN as currencies. And on and on. ......... The narrative today is, overwhelmingly: crypto mining (specifically: Proof-of-Work mining for Bitcoin and Ethereum) is a dangerously large consumer of energy. Where I expect the narrative to move to over time is: crypto mining is driving the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables. ........ live electricity (whether produced by coal, gas, wind or solar) must be used right then and there, electricity converted to aluminum can be used anywhere, anytime. ......... Dams are batteries; gasoline is a battery. And in a way, aluminum is a battery. ...... Crypto mining converts electricity into value, in the form of crypto assets (BTC, ETH, etc). Those assets, like the aluminum produced in Iceland, can then be moved, transferred and transformed. But unlike aluminum, which must be physically shipped to its final destination, crypto assets are programmable, and can move there instantly via an internet connection. ......... The key properties of Bitcoin’s battery are: 1) always on and permissionless (no need to find customers, just plug and go) and 2) naturally seeking low-cost electricity: it will always buy when the price is right. ....... Texas alone has over 100 GW of renewables in its queue. ........ Bitcoin’s battery is always ready to be the first customer. ....... Sometimes the sunniest, windiest places are not the ones with the most customers, so it’s hard to justify the development of new renewables. Bitcoin’s battery solves this, becoming a “virtual transmission line” of sorts. ....... Bitcoin’s battery is ready to buy 24/7/365 when the price is right, and turning up and down as needed, and participating via direct power purchase agreements as well as via demand response programs. ......... Bitcoin’s battery is ready to buy if no one else will. ....... Bitcoin as an “economic battery”
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Powerful metaphor --- only it is all too real.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) March 13, 2022
. China battles worst Covid outbreak for two years as cases double in 24 hours
Covid deaths probably three times higher than records say . More than 18 million people - three times higher than official records suggest - have probably died because of Covid, say researchers.
Surge of Omicron Infections Prompts Lockdowns in China After two years of largely containing coronavirus outbreaks, China’s “Covid zero” policies are being tested by the highly transmissible variant.
Moore’s Law: Scientists Just Made a Graphene Transistor Gate the Width of an Atom
The Original Climate Crisis: How the Little Ice Age Devastated Early Modern Europe By the 16th and 17th centuries, northern Europe had left its medieval warm period and was languishing in what is sometimes called the little ice age....... Starting in the early 14th century, average temperatures in the British Isles cooled by 2°C, with similar anomalies recorded across Europe. Much colder winters ensued. Rivers and coastal seas froze, grinding trade and communications to a halt. Crops and livestock withered while downpours spoiled harvests, unleashing widespread hunger and hardship. ....... There were rebellions, revolutions, wars, and plague, as well as the scapegoating of supposed witches suspected of causing the foul weather. ...... Researchers have offered a range of explanations for the Little Ice Age, from volcanic eruptions to the European destruction of indigenous societies in the Americas, which caused forests to regrow on abandoned farmland. Others have suggested the Maunder minimum, a period between 1650 and 1715 when observed sunspots were suddenly scarce. ...... In London, the River Thames froze many times between 1400 and 1815, with freezes increasing in frequency and severity from the early 17th to the early 18th centuries. People seized the opportunity to hold fairs on the river’s icy surface. The earliest was in 1608, with further notable frost fairs in 1621, 1677, and 1684. .......... Between January and mid-February 1684, thousands of people from King Charles II and the royal family to the lowliest pauper ventured out to “Freezeland,” as one pamphleteer had christened it. At its height, the fair extended about three miles from London Bridge to Vauxhall. Eyeing a chance to make money and with no ground rent to pay, a number of market stalls sprang up. ....... the terrible winter of 1684 claimed many lives. Burials were suspended as the ground was too hard to dig ........... women of low social status who were accused of witchcraft in farming communities ruined by crop failures. ......... the little ice age was experienced as “a sharp deterioration in the overall quality of life.” History shows that climate change can last centuries and have profound consequences for civilization. Then, as now, solidarity is the best defense against the unknown.
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It’s Not Too Late to Replace Toxic Tech With Humane Technology . political polarization, the spread of misinformation, and upticks in anxiety and depression across multiple demographics ....... We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous .......... technology is advancing far too fast for our brains to keep up and know how to healthily interact with it, or for our institutions to understand it and wisely regulate it
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