expect weird photos

Expect weird photos as I try desperately to "see" interesting in a world of brown. 

My friend has now found a home in Mississippi. They are digging a ditch to bring her water and electricity so, thinking of Kwtracey, I advised her to see if they can lay some fiber or a pipe to thread it through NOW, at the same time, so the marginal cost of installing internet will be lower. She'll look into it tomorrow. 

"I Want to Live" is getting up to 100 inquiries a day. 

According to the Institute for the Study of War, Russia is carrying out more prisoner-of-war exchanges in response to Russian critics. 

NATO has pledged more weapons and help fixing critical energy infrastructure. 

Finland has offered to train Ukrainian soldiers in winter warfare. Why is Finland so determined to help Ukraine? In 1939, the Soviet Union invaded. Following a peace treaty in 1940, the countries fought again between 1941 and 1944. When Russia invaded Ukraine this year, Finland ended decades of neutrality to try to join NATO. Even if they don't manage to join NATO, training Ukrainian troops makes it clear that their neutrality is over. Countries near Russia are extremely concerned that Russia be stopped now because if Russia wins, Russia will keep going. The US strategic goal is to debilitate Russia to the point where not only has it lost unequivocally, but it is unable to go to war again for an extended time period. 

Ukraine has been using tricks on Russia. They convinced Russia that they'd blown up 44 HIMARS, even though Ukraine was only given 16 HIMARS, by creating wooden dummies where Russia could find them. Ukrainian forces disguised their airbases by taking pictures of blown-up hangars, printing the pictures on large sheets, and draping them over fighter jets as a form of camouflage.

Tatiana Stanovaya, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Russians are starting to consider that they may lose. 

Historian Timothy Snyder said Russia needs to lose in order to become a ‘normal’ European country. (Me: This makes sense. Imagine what Germany would be like if Hitler had not lost. Think about Russia casually sending every ethnic minority to die, locking people up for a decade for protesting, and going on a homophobic rampage. What will Russia be like if Putin does not lose?) He also points out that if Russia does not lose, unequivocally, we can expect other countries to invade their neighbors, with China and Taiwan being the most immediate example. 

Mr. Snyder decided the best way he can help is by fundraising for anti-drone defense. He's raised one-eighth of the $1.25m to fund a “Shahed hunter," an anti-drone system to detect enemy devices and jam signals and destroy them in the sky. 

“If you want negotiations quicker, then you have to help the Ukrainians win more quickly, by, for example, giving them longer-range weapons.”