I’ll be in Warsaw Monday-Wednesday and within an hour of the city for the rest of the week. If you would like to meet up, send a DM and we’ll see if we can work something out.
Let’s get to the links.
1. NYT gets draft treaties from the Ukraine-Russia talks in early 2022. What's notable is that we can identify the exact point on which the talks broke down, which was the Russian insistence that it have veto power over the security guarantees provided to Ukraine by other countries. Moreover, it seems that it was Putin himself who insisted on this. The implication here is that Putin will accept nothing less than the complete subjugation of Ukraine. And since there is no domestic threat to his power and he has the resources to continue the war, what might change his mind? At this point the West might be intent on supporting Ukraine indefinitely and just waiting until he is overthrown or dies. The difficulty with Putin isn't just ideology, but that he is personally identified with starting the war.
2. Article about elderly MAGAs in a rural Nevada county, population less than a thousand, who tried to recall the pro-Trump election commissioner because Trump only won 82% of the vote and they think it should've been higher. An idea struck me from this article that basically the right and the left are driven by people with too much time on their hands thanks to being welfare cases. Young people on the left because we subsidize education, and old people because we give them Social Security and Medicare.
3. Loved Living with Leopards on Netflix. I learned they sometimes hunt by going up in trees and just jumping on impalas! They also have a fascinating family structure where there will only be one male in the territory, who fathers the kids, and the moms will each take care of their own offspring. The dad sits around and fights off other males. When the kids are old enough, the mom seeks to banish them from the territory and mate again. One of the young males in the program has a kind of ADHD and keeps failing in his hunts, doing stuff like touching a porcupine, and you have to watch to see if he makes it.
My son is old enough now that nature documentaries are like the first kind of TV we can enjoy together, so I’m going to be watching and recommending many from now on.
4. The government of Tokyo to launch a dating app, of course doing so in the most Asian way possible, requiring verification of salary and single status. Everything we know about government versus markets suggests this won’t work, but Asians love listening to authority so who knows.
5. On the fight within the Colorado Republican Party over Dave Williams, the party chair and House candidate obsessed with gays. There’s a very noticeable mentally ill type attracted to the MAGA style. They talk in general terms about enemy forces like LGBT, believe elections are stolen, and are corrupt or indulgent of corruption. Words like “demonic” and “unholy” are dead giveaways. They’re not always even that distinguishable from the mainstream GOP on most issues, but they have a tone and style that repulses smart people, or even moral and less mentally unstable people, and is bad for the country and the party. (UPDATE: Williams lost his primary race)
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