Ya, and you have a Ruzzian making Tucker's capitalism dream come true making money with all the eyeballs he gets. Not sure which of the two is more useful, but they're definitely a couple of idiots using each other. Sweet.

---

♲ Europe Says - 2024-05-02 01:16:06 GMT

https://www.europesays.com/1188265/ ‘Putin’s Brain’ Declares Victory After Tucker Carlson Interview | Alexander Dugin thinks he has managed to get his fascist ideas across to the “American mainstream.” #ConflictInUkraine #Ukraine #UkraineConflict #Ukrainian #UkrainianConflict

Kim Jong Un would love that to happen, too.

---

♲ Europe Says - 2024-03-26 03:01:05 GMT

https://www.europesays.com/1122252/ South Korea Has 3.4 Million 105mm Artillery Shells, Everyone Would Benefit if Some Went to Ukraine | Defense Express #ConflictInUkraine #Ukraine #UkraineConflict #Ukrainian #UkrainianConflict

Why SECRETLY, though? My best guess is that they're still pussyfooting with Russia like they've been doing all along.

---

♲ Europe Says - 2024-03-20 17:01:05 GMT

https://www.europesays.com/1113358/ Israel secretly supplies Ukraine with advanced weapons – media #ConflictInUkraine #Ukraine #UkraineConflict #Ukrainian #UkrainianConflict

Ruzzia might have raised a flag there, but it clearly isn't over for Avdiivka.

---

♲ Europe Says - 2024-03-14 17:56:05 GMT

https://www.europesays.com/1103526/ Bradley ambushes remaining Russian APC after artillery & AT crews took out the other two Russian APC’s on their way to assault Ukrainian positions near Avdiivka #Ukraine #UkraineConflict #Ukrainian #UkrainianConflict

N. Korea has always salivated over a war with the U.S. and given its size, aka manufacturing capability size, Russia has provided a huge armament sinkhole and I suppose that's one thing we should be grateful to Putin for...however...N. Korea has been shooting rocket wads into the sea and wants to be in orbit. Russian tech is nice for that, but nobody can fly without supply.

---

♲ Europe Says - 2024-03-03 17:50:05 GMT

https://www.europesays.com/1085067/ North Korea Has Not Transferred Weapons to Russia by Sea Since Mid-February 2024 #Ukraine #UkraineConflict #Ukrainian #UkrainianConflict

The owner of Russian search engine Yandex is selling Yandex in $5.2 billion deal. Apparently unbeknownst to me, Yandex was set up as a subsidiary of a Dutch holding company, Yandex NV, and got itself listed on the NASDAQ. The Dutch holding company is now selling all shares for $5.2 billion and Yandex will become fully Russian-owned. Although that $5.2 billion number might lead you to think the money will be paid in dollars, but it will be paid in Chinese Yuan. Yandex NV will stop using the Yandex brand.

Yandex owner to exit Russia in $5.2 billion deal

#solidstatelife #ukraineconflict #yandex

Inside Russia with Ekaterina Schulmann. From Sciences Po in Paris, France, but in English. (Sciences Po is short for Institute of Political Studies in Paris, or more precisely, Institut d'études politiques de Paris.)

She presents survey results from within Russia. There's a long preamble about the difficulty of polling in Russia, and the speaker is opinionated. Anyway, the main take-away from the video is that for Russians, the start of the "special military operation" in February of 2022 was a non-event, but the mobilization on September 21st, 2022 was a major event that got noticed. That's when you notice a sudden change in the mood. That's when Russians realized something out of the ordinary was happening.

The key slide is at 1:08:24 in the video. "What mood, in your opinion, prevails today among your relatives, friends, colleagues, acquaintances -- calm or anxious?"

She points out that one of the clever tricks pollsters have developed is, instead of asking people directly their opinion on something, say asking directly whether they support or oppose the war in Ukraine, you can ask them how they feel. Or better yet, you can ask them how the people around them feel, because people will always say they feel just fine. (Maybe that is the social norm in Russia?)

So the question is, "What mood, in your opinion, prevails today among your relatives, friends, colleagues, acquaintances -- calm or anxious?"

On the 18th of September, 2022: 57% calm, 35% anxious.

On the 25th of September, 2022: 26% calm, 69% anxious.

Bam! Huge change. The date of the mobilization was the 21st of September.

Earlier in the video she does present polling data that asks directly whether people support or oppose the "Russian military operation in Ukraine" (they can't call it a "war"). By age, people in the 18-29 age bracket oppose the war, 30+ support, and the older, the more support, with the 60+ age bracket supporting the war the most.

Strongest predictors of support for the war: age 55+, getting information from official sources (TV, radio, newspapers), trusting the official sources, confidence in Russia's victory, expecting war to end soon, increase in income because of the war.

Strongest predictors of opposition to the war: age less than 55, getting information from the internet with VPN, dismissal from work, loss of business, saving food, expected deterioration of well being, decrease in income because of the war.

The biggest complaint that showed up on the surveys is the war has gone on too long. People expected the "special military operation" to be fast and brilliant.

"How do you feel about Russia's military actions in Ukraine?" "Proud" is most popular answer (and safest), but trended downward in 2022.

Asked whether the financial position of one's family is going to get better or worse in the next 6 months, the "better" line actually went up over the course of 2022. She speculates that this is because people felt they had beat the sanctions.

Audience size of the main TV channels in Russia declined over the course of 2022. She speculates that the TV producers were making their content too much for "one person" and allowed the rest of the audience to get bored.

Main sources of information: She shows a graph that starts in 2013 and shows a drop from 2013 to 2021 in TV consumption, but TV is still tops at 64%. Online media increased to 41%, social media to 33%, but then there's an additional line for "Telegram" which spiked upwards to 19% in March of 2022, and has stayed there at 19% ever since.

Near the end she present a poll from before the war, 2014 and 2018. The question was something along the lines of "What values should Russia's future be based upon?" (2014 to 2018) She zips through a series of answers, like "social fairness", "human rights and freedom", "Russia should be great superpower", "stable order", "closer relations with the West", "free markets, private economy", and "Russia for Russians".

She then went on to make the remarkable claim that, if Russia was a society with free elections, the most popular answers on this survey would correspond to the political parties. And they would correspond more or less to political parties we are familiar with in Western countries: A "social democratic" party, a "liberal" party, a "conservative traditionalist" party, a "libertarian" party, and so on.

Now, unlike many of her slides which had English translations along the top or bottom, this one didn't have any English translations, but I was curious enough about it I took the trouble to use Google Translate to translate the whole slide. This is at 1:20:05 in the video.

The question asked, as translated by Google Translate, was: "On such values, according to the Russians, the future of Russia should be built (%):"

There a line of small text under that that says: "Source: survey data of the Research Center of the Institute of Sociology of Wounds." "Sociology of Wounds" is a weird translation. In the video she says the survey was done by the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Sociology. But the slide appears to really have the word for "wounds" on it, so, don't ask me.

Anyway, the options going down the left side are:

"Social justice"

"Human rights, democracy, freedom, personal expression"

"Russia must become a great power"

"Return to national traditions, moral and religious values"

"Strong hard power capable of ensuring order"

"Rapprochement with the West, with modern developed countries"

"Free market, private ownership, minimum government intervention in the economy"

"Russia first of all, for Russians"

"None of these slogans but expresses my personal dream of the future of Russia"

Regarding the first one, "Social justice", she says the word "spravedlivost" is a difficult Russian word. Sometimes it's justice, sometimes it's mercy, sometimes it's equality, sometimes it's keeping to the law, sometimes it's making an exception to the law. "Fairness" might be the best translation. But Russians always know what "spravedlivost" means in any given situation.

Google Translate went with "justice" so I'm going with "justice" but it should be noted that the Russian phrase "sotsialnaya spravedlivost" doesn't mean the same thing as the phrase "social justice" in English.

"Social justice" -- increased 12% from 47% to 59% between 2014 and 2018

"Human rights, democracy, freedom, personal expression" -- increased 10% from 27% to 37%

"Russia must become a great power" -- stayed the same at 32%

"Return to national traditions, moral and religious values" -- decreased 8% from 35% to 27%

"Strong hard power capable of ensuring order" -- stayed the same at 26%

"Rapprochement with the West, with modern developed countries" -- increased 3% from 11% to 14%

"Free market, private ownership, minimum government intervention in the economy" -- increased a tad from 13% to 14%

"Russia first of all, for Russians" -- increased a tad from 10% to 12%

"None of these slogans but expresses my personal dream of the future of Russia" -- went down a tad from 9% to 8%

What's notable is that 2014 to 2018 is a short period of time, only 4 years, yet "Social justice" and "Human rights, democracy, freedom, personal expression" saw big increases and "Return to national traditions, moral and religious values" decreased a lot.

One of the entries, interestingly, was "Rapprochement with the West, with modern developed countries". (Google Translate chose the word "rapprochement" -- in the talk she says "closer ties" which is more like how people would say it in real life.) I thought this was interesting because the war definitely reversed course on this one in a major way. But interestingly not many Russian were for it even before the war, in 2014 (11%) or 2018 (14%). So maybe to your average Russian, the severed ties to the West are not a big deal?

Inside Russia with Ekaterina Schulmann - Sciences Po

#geopolitics #russia #ukraineconflict

"Russian assets reportedly banned from export at the Baikonur cosmodrome by Kazakh authorities."

"In March 2023, reports emerged that Kazakh authorities introduced a formal ban on the export of TsENKI assets from Baikonur into Russia and issued orders for the local head of the organization not to leave the country."

"TsENKI is a Russian organization that specializes in the development and operation of launch facilities and ground equipment."

Apparently this jeopardizes the ability of the Russians to operate the Soyuz-5 from the Baikonur spaceport.

If true this will force the Russians to switch to the Vostochny spaceport in the Russian Far East. It's located north of Harbin, China, on the Russian side of the border. I would've thought they would have put it further south (as close to the equator as possible), so it would be near Vladivostok, but in fact it's a bit north of Vladivostok and that piece of Russia that sticks south to the North Korean border.

Russian assets reportedly banned from export at the Baikonur cosmodrome by Kazakh authorities

#space #ukraineconflict #baikonur #vostochny #roscosmos

Robert Sapolsky comments further on the war and human aggression. Topics include: The neurological similarity between human and primate neurons, yet no chimp has ever killed another chimp over ideology, over religion, or over arguments about economic systems. War propaganda and deciding another group is so different from us they don't even count as human. How different ecosystems produce different aggressive behavior: pastoralists vs farmers vs hunter-gatherers. The amygdala, the part of the brain most linked to aggression and it's also the part of the brain that's most linked to fear. Aggression and social hierarchy -- being subordinate and aggression towards subordinates. PTSD in combat veterans, inability to sleep, tendency to see threat everywhere. No single gene for aggression. The frontal cortex regulation of socially appropriate behavior. Death Row inmates commonly have concussive damage to the frontal cortex. Individualistic versus collective culture. Increase in domestic violence after wars. Famous psychology experiments, Stanford's Prison Experiment and the Milgram order-following experiment, and how the behavior of the experimenters (Phil Zimbardo and Stanley Milgram) altered the outcomes of the experiments. Violence in movies, TV shows, and video games. Humans vs neanderthals, and cannibalism, or lack thereof. The Cold War and having somebody else fight your wars (disagreement with Steven Pinker). Cooperation vs aggression: survival of the fittest survived or the friendliest? (Thinking about Darwin).

I don't know who the interviewer is other than that she's a Russian in Israel.

Prof. Robert Sapolsky. Primate and human wars. What's behind our aggression? - A talk?

#primatology #aggression #war #ukraineconflict

An actual mathematician, Max Tegmark, estimates the odds of global nuclear war at one-in-six.

"The shorthand labels I've given these outcomes (grey boxes) should't be taken too literally: 'Kosovo' & 'Vietnam' refer to scenarios where one side wins outright (breakaway succeeds & Goliath is expunged, respectively). 'Libya', 'Korea' & 'Finland' refer to intermediate outcomes involving simmering war, frozen war and full peace, respectively. I'm not showing the 'Cuba' outcome (invasion averted by negotiated agreement) that was on the table in December 2021, since it's now off the table, as are resumed EU-Russia gas exports via the Nordstream pipelines."

"We are currently in a vicious circle in the form of a self-perpetuating escalation spiral: since 'Kosovo' is deemed unacceptable by Ukraine and the West while 'Vietnam' is deemed unacceptable by Russia, both sides double down and escalate further whenever they fear losing. Such escalation has been both quantitative (more weapons, more mobilization) and qualitative (e.g., novel sanctions, heavier weapons, longer-range weapons, attacks inside Russia, scaled-up attacks on civilian infrastructure, shelling of a nuclear power plant, assassinations, sabotage of gas pipelines and Europe's longest bridge, annexations, and escalatory rhetoric about nuclear use). My assessment is that Russia, whose GDP is similar to Italy's, can no longer compete with the West in terms of quantitative escalation, and that Putin understands that his only chance to avoid the 'Vietnam' outcome is to escalate qualitatively, with nuclear weapons use being his last resort. Last spring, I predicted that once loss of occupied territory loomed, he would annex what he controlled and start talking about nuclear defense of Russia's new borders -- and here we are."

He assigns probabilities to various transitions in his diagram. His diagram is basically a Markov process diagram, although he never uses the term. This is interesting because, I thought, mathematically the way people typically analyzed these kinds of situations is with game theory, not Markov processes. Because you're dealing with events that have never happened (or you have exceedingly low sample counts) so it's hard to estimate probabilities, and you are dealing with conscious actors and have to take their intentions into account.

I got one friend who was freaking out because he thinks there's going to be nuclear war. His wife was like, relax, no there isn't. They have this discussion about whether there is or isn't going to be a nuclear war. I thought whether there will or won't be a nuclear war is the wrong way to think about it. The right way to think about it is there is, say, a 5% chance of nuclear war. Actually I hope the odds are a lot lower than 5%. It's like the old saying, would you get on an airplane if there's a 1% chance of it crashing? You only have to think for 2 seconds to realize 1% odds are way too high -- because the negative outcome is so catastrophic. There's something like 30,000 flights every day in the US, so if 1% crashed, that' would be 300 crashes a day. Obviously, the odds of any plane you step on to are way, way lower than 1%. So if the odds of a nuclear war are 5%, we're in trouble. Subjectively, though, it feels to me like the odds are 5% or thereabouts. My subjective feelings have a history of being unreliable at predicting the future.

I've been trying to be explicitly clear, though, that my "estimate" is entirely subjective and I'm using words like "seems" and "feels" deliberately. I haven't tried to work out a Markov process diagram or do any game theoretical calculations.

The post has extensive comment sections where Tegmark's logic is challenged.

"The real issue with backing down from nuclear threats is what happens when you back down."

"Let's say we force Ukraine to allow Putin to keep the annexed territory because of nuclear weapons. This gives him, every Russian and every dictator around the world a clear message: nuclear weapons are the winning strategy."

"It would make Putin and all warmongers like Prigozhin or Kadyrov look like geniuses. They stood against the whole world and won! Everyone inside Russia who was opposing the use of nuclear weapons would have to admit that it worked. So they need to use this trick more!"

"From my perspective if nuclear threat wins Putin anything significant then Poland will need to try to obtain strategic nuclear weapons as soon as possible and at any cost. We lost every fifth person after 1939 because we trusted foreign powers when we should not have. Russian soldiers did not leave Poland until 1993 and we do not want them back."

"The way out of nuclear escalation is convincing Russia that they have nothing to gain and everything to lose after using nuclear weapons."

Why I think there's a one-in-six chance of an imminent global nuclear war

#ukraineconflict

"In 2021, Russia provided US nuclear utilities with 14 percent of their uranium purchases and 28 percent of their enrichment services. For their part, in 2020, EU utilities imported 20 percent of their natural uranium and 26 percent of their enrichment services from Russia."

"Russia has the world's largest uranium enrichment complex, accounting for almost half the global capacity, but it is a relatively small uranium producer with only six percent of the global supply in 2020." "Most of the uranium Russia exports is bought from Kazakhstan -- a country that is landlocked and ships its uranium to Europe and the United States through Russia. Kazakhstan is the world's largest uranium producer with 19,500 tonnes in 2020."

US and EU imports of Russian uranium and enrichment services could stop. Here's how.

#energy #nuclear #uranium #ukraineconflict #russia

"In 2021, Russia provided US nuclear utilities with 14 percent of their uranium purchases and 28 percent of their enrichment services. For their part, in 2020, EU utilities imported 20 percent of their natural uranium and 26 percent of their enrichment services from Russia."

"Russia has the world's largest uranium enrichment complex, accounting for almost half the global capacity, but it is a relatively small uranium producer with only six percent of the global supply in 2020." "Most of the uranium Russia exports is bought from Kazakhstan -- a country that is landlocked and ships its uranium to Europe and the United States through Russia. Kazakhstan is the world's largest uranium producer with 19,500 tonnes in 2020."

US and EU imports of Russian uranium and enrichment services could stop. Here's how.

#energy #nuclear #uranium #ukraineconflict #russia

"According to the survey commissioned by Der Spiegel, carried out by the online polling firm Civey, only 22 percent of those surveyed are in favor of shutting down the three nuclear plants that are still in operation in Germany -- Isar 2, Neckarwestheim 2 and Emsland -- as planned at the end of the year."

"Seventy-eight percent of those surveyed are in favor of continuing to operate the plants until the summer of 2023, a variant that is being discussed in the political sphere as a 'stretch operation' -- in other words, continuing to keep them online for a few months, but without the acquisition of new fuel rods."

"Sixty-seven percent are in favor of continuing to operate the nuclear plants for the next five years, with only 27 percent opposed to it."

"On the question of whether Germany should build new nuclear power plants because of the energy crisis, 41 percent of respondents answered 'yes,' meaning they favor an approach that isn't even up for debate in Germany."

Germany sees tidal shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#energy #ukraineconflict #germany #nuclearenergy

"According to the survey commissioned by Der Spiegel, carried out by the online polling firm Civey, only 22 percent of those surveyed are in favor of shutting down the three nuclear plants that are still in operation in Germany -- Isar 2, Neckarwestheim 2 and Emsland -- as planned at the end of the year."

"Seventy-eight percent of those surveyed are in favor of continuing to operate the plants until the summer of 2023, a variant that is being discussed in the political sphere as a 'stretch operation' -- in other words, continuing to keep them online for a few months, but without the acquisition of new fuel rods."

"Sixty-seven percent are in favor of continuing to operate the nuclear plants for the next five years, with only 27 percent opposed to it."

"On the question of whether Germany should build new nuclear power plants because of the energy crisis, 41 percent of respondents answered 'yes,' meaning they favor an approach that isn't even up for debate in Germany."

Germany sees tidal shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#energy #ukraineconflict #germany #nuclearenergy

"Russian forces have situated a long array of pyramidal radar reflectors in the water near the recently cratered Antonivskiy Bridge and an also recently cratered nearby rail bridge, both of which cross over the Dnipro River."

"Days ago, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data revealed what looked like a pontoon bridge being constructed alongside a rail bridge just up the river from Antonivskiy Bridge. But satellite imagery showed there was no pontoon bridge being constructed. Subsequent high-resolution satellite imagery [...] shows a large array of objects dispersed across the channel on the west side of the Antonivskiy Bridge. A smaller number of similar objects can be made out on the west side of the nearby rail bridge."

"Russia has deployed these radar corner reflectors at both locations, making a 'phantom' bridge appear next to the real ones on satellite-based radar."

Hmm, weird.

Russia is building 'ghost bridges' with radar reflectors in Ukraine

#satelliteimagery #radar #ukraineconflict

"Russian forces have situated a long array of pyramidal radar reflectors in the water near the recently cratered Antonivskiy Bridge and an also recently cratered nearby rail bridge, both of which cross over the Dnipro River."

"Days ago, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data revealed what looked like a pontoon bridge being constructed alongside a rail bridge just up the river from Antonivskiy Bridge. But satellite imagery showed there was no pontoon bridge being constructed. Subsequent high-resolution satellite imagery [...] shows a large array of objects dispersed across the channel on the west side of the Antonivskiy Bridge. A smaller number of similar objects can be made out on the west side of the nearby rail bridge."

"Russia has deployed these radar corner reflectors at both locations, making a 'phantom' bridge appear next to the real ones on satellite-based radar."

Hmm, weird.

Russia is building 'ghost bridges' with radar reflectors in Ukraine

#satelliteimagery #radar #ukraineconflict

"The Netherlands said it would lift all restrictions on power stations fired by the fossil fuel, which were previously limited to just over a third of output."

"The cabinet has decided to immediately withdraw the restriction on production for coal-fired power stations from 2002 to 2024."

"Germany's decision to power up its coal power plants came after Gazprom cut deliveries to Germany via the Nord Stream gas pipeline last week."

"Austria's government meanwhile announced Sunday that it would reopen a mothballed coal power station because of power shortages arising from reduced deliveries of gas from Russia."

Dutch join Germany, Austria, in reverting to coal

#energy #ukraineconflict

"The Netherlands said it would lift all restrictions on power stations fired by the fossil fuel, which were previously limited to just over a third of output."

"The cabinet has decided to immediately withdraw the restriction on production for coal-fired power stations from 2002 to 2024."

"Germany's decision to power up its coal power plants came after Gazprom cut deliveries to Germany via the Nord Stream gas pipeline last week."

"Austria's government meanwhile announced Sunday that it would reopen a mothballed coal power station because of power shortages arising from reduced deliveries of gas from Russia."

Dutch join Germany, Austria, in reverting to coal

#energy #ukraineconflict

"The Russian invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated the law of unintended consequences in a most unexpected way. By publicly backing the invasion, the heretofore most prolific ransomware group in the world inspired a backlash that appears to have temporarily crippled the group's ability to operate and given unprecedented insight into the world of ransomware operators."

"In short order, someone within the organization, or who obtained access, began unleashing a torrent of jaw dropping leaks giving insight into the internals of the so-called company."

"The sources are posted to VirusTotal in this tweet. BleepingComputer has successfully compiled and run the locker/decryptor package without issue. The leaks also include sources for the notorious TrickBot malware, a kind of all-in-one hacking package."

Also revealed were chat logs with identities and GitHub profiles and ties between Conti and Russia and the FSB." (After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the KGB was renamed the Federal Security Service (FSB).)

Ukraine, Conti, and the law of unintended consequences

#computersecurity #ransomware #ukraineconflict

"How Ukraine Unplugged from Russia and joined Europe's power grid with unprecedented speed." "One of the primary challenges of interconnecting grids is synchronizing them, which is what Ukrenergo, Moldelectrica and ENTSO-E accomplished last week. Synchronization is essential for sharing electricity. The task involves aligning the frequencies of every energy-generation facility in the connecting systems. Frequency is like the heartbeat of the electric grid. Across Europe, energy-generating turbines spin 50 times per second in near-perfect unison. For Ukraine and Moldova to join in, their systems had to be adjusted to match that rhythm. 'We can't stop the power system for an hour and then try to synchronize,' Deane says. 'This has to be done while the system is operating.' It is like jumping onto a moving train or a spinning ride at the playground: the train or ride is not stopping, so you had better time the jump perfectly."

The article doesn't go into detail as to exactly how they do that. It mentions a list of European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity requirements but doesn't go into detail as to what they are or how they were met. I was thinking of not posting this but decided to as its an interesting fact that Ukraine switched power grids.

How Ukraine Unplugged from Russia and joined Europe's power grid with unprecedented speed

#ukraineconflict