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Historical constants: "In 1951, a group of about 30 Japanese soldiers and sailors on Anatahan finally surrendered to the US Navy. The group had been larger but infighting thinned their ranks over the years after they learned how to make coconut wine and began to battle over the island's only woman."
In 1956, as Soviet tanks were rolling into Budapest, the director of the Hungarian news agency filed a dispatch saying "We are going die for Hungary and for Europe." In this fascinating 1984 essay Czech writer Milan Kundera asks what that says about the history and future of Europe, both the eastern nations that in 1984 longed to rejoin it and the westerners who no longer had any sense of what it meant.
Footnote from that Kundera essay: "One of the great European nations (there are nearly 40 million Ukrainians) is slowly disappearing. And this enormous, almost unbelievable event is occuring without the world realizing it."
Wonderful Bronze Age artifacts from Zhaigou, a recently discovered site in northern China.
Silver medusa medal found at Vindolanda along Hadrian's Wall.
Canada's population is booming, up 3.5% last year, entirely due to an aggressive program to recruit immigrants; overall fertility is only 1.4.
A claim that the US healthcare system is spending $250 million to $500 million a year treating pickleball injuries.
Completely bonkers video from the DeSantis campaign attacking Trump for being pro-gay and pro-trans.
From a NY Times story about a Finnish company that had to move its tire factories from Russia back into the EU: "We cannot just think in terms of innovation and efficiency. We have to think about security, too."
US religious conservatives like Josh Hawley keep making stuff up about the religion of the founding fathers, in this case attributing to Patrick Henry a statement about the US as a Christian nation that he never made. The refusal of people like Hawley to understand the eighteenth century is, to me, just part of their complete misunderstanding of what the US is and always has been: a nation with a lot of Christians but not a Christian nation.
Income inequality in Mexico did not start under the Spanish but was already high under the Aztecs. And besides being rich, the Aztec elite might decide at any moment to cut your heart out.
Accused mass shooter says he was only trying to help fight gun violence.
This was written about the ongoing Twitter soap opera, but it reminds me of America after every election: "My Twitter timeline has turned into a bad Chekhov play: full of people constantly going on about how they’ve just got to get out of here and go somewhere else but never doing it."
Bronze Age royal tombs found in Cyprus.
The Crystal Prince, an amazing Copper Age burial excavated a few years ago at Valencina de la Concepción in Spain, may have been a woman. Which would be very cool, especially since all the other high-status burials from that site are also women. However this technique (Amelogenin peptide analysis) is new and many archaeologists don't trust it, so I am waiting for DNA.
Tyler Cowen dismisses Patrick Deneen's Regime Change, a book arguing that America is a disaster zone and blaming everything on the liberal elite: "What would an American passport auction for? . . . I can think of a few historical elites who were slightly worse than those who go to Harvard and Yale."
Ukraine Links
Russian losses seem to be very high in this phase of the war. Mediazona's count of confirmed Russian deaths is up more than 1,200 over the last two weeks, and the Oryx count of vehicles is showing many tanks and artillery pieces destroyed. (In the week of June 24-30, 32 tanks, 48 armored vehicles, 15 artillery pieces, 7 rocket launchers, 7 helicopters and 2 SAM systems; the daily update for July 6 had 14 artillery pieces)
Papal envoy returns from Moscow after finding the same as everyone else: the two sides remain far apart on peace conditions. The Pope referred in his comments to "this war that seems to have no end."
Crazy overhead 30-second video of trench combat at very close quarters.
Remarkable short video of a Ukrainian night attack on Russian ammunition storage in Makeevka, with many Grad rockets. Real fireworks. And on Youtube for those not on Twitter.
Russian civilian makes a video of a train carrying T-55 tanks toward Ukraine, refers to them as "ancient like mammoth crap."
Why are Russian ammo dumps blowing up again, after Russia seemed to have solved the problem by moving them farther back? Brynn Tannehill has a theory, related to Thomas Theiner's theory of the whole offensive that I already wrote about.
Russian security forces leak photos found in Prigozhin's mansion, they show him dressed up in a bizarre variety of wigs and fake beards. And this. Off Twitter here.
Why Ukraine wants cluster munitions.
Completely bonkers video from the DeSantis campaign attacking Trump for being pro-gay and pro-trans.
ReplyDeleteIn the ordinary sense, yes - that's a completely bonkers thing to claim.
But not in the context of the modern Republican party. They've been blatantly detached from reality for a long time now, and in that light, this is completely ordinary and unremarkable stuff.
At this point they've fully embraced the philosophy of the "Große Lüge":
All this was inspired by the principle – which is quite true within itself – that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.
It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X
US religious conservatives like Josh Hawley keep making stuff up about the religion of the founding fathers, in this case attributing to Patrick Henry a statement about the US as a Christian nation that he never made. The refusal of people like Hawley to understand the eighteenth century is, to me, just part of their complete misunderstanding of what the US is and always has been: a nation with a lot of Christians but not a Christian nation.
ReplyDeleteMuch of the time, they're not refusing to understand nor misunderstanding anything - they're just intentionally telling "Big Lies" because it suits their political ambitions. See above.
Accused mass shooter says he was only trying to help fight gun violence.
ReplyDeleteLike the old Anti-Vietnam protest slogan said, "Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity."
That said, I fear I must repeat myself some more. The "accused" (who admits his crime) could be mentally ill - but he is clearly a victim of "Big Lies", with his social media accounts having been riddled with Conservative talking points, including blatant mistruths the Republican party has intentionally spread: things like "Biden is going to repeal the 2nd Amendment!", etc.
And of course, the Republicans responded to all of this with yet another "Big Lie" of their own, tossing out the blatant fabrication that the perpetrator was "trans". They realize that a Bible-verse-spouting, Biden-hating, pro-gun lunatic with an unregulated "ghost gun" AR-15 murdering a half dozen people at random isn't good for them politically, so they just tell an obvious and incredible lie, knowing that it no matter how thoroughly wrong the facts prove it to be, it will still work on a large number of people within their voter base, and they can shift the blame to their opponents, all in one fell swoop.
Why Ukraine wants cluster munitions.
ReplyDeleteI'd say what Ukraine actually wants is air superiority, but since NATO won't supply the planes necessary for that, they're taking cluster munitions as a sort of lesser alternative for dealing with Russian trenches.