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(no subject)
Jul. 2nd, 2026 02:51 pmРоссия уже пятый год бомбит украинские города. Вчера Россия бомбила Киев; убила и покалечила больше сотни гражданских, разрушила жилые дома по всем городу.
Культурные русские люди смотрят из России на происходящее привычно засунув язык в жопу. Очевидно, что несправедливо ожидать от них героизма и выступлений против путинского режима, устроившего бессмысленную кровавую бойню. С другой стороны, когда имеешь дело с культурными русскими людьми, надо понимать, что зажмуривание глаз и засовывание языка в жопу стало у них стандартной реакцией на подлость и преступления. Это еще хуже, чем выученная беспомощность.
Культурные русские люди смотрят из России на происходящее привычно засунув язык в жопу. Очевидно, что несправедливо ожидать от них героизма и выступлений против путинского режима, устроившего бессмысленную кровавую бойню. С другой стороны, когда имеешь дело с культурными русскими людьми, надо понимать, что зажмуривание глаз и засовывание языка в жопу стало у них стандартной реакцией на подлость и преступления. Это еще хуже, чем выученная беспомощность.
Fraudster-in-Chief
Jul. 1st, 2026 09:28 pm
It has been clear for some time that President Trump’s forays into the crypto world have been lucrative, but the stunning disclosure that those ventures earned him some $1.4 billion last year underscored the different reality the president is living in from many of the investors who have embraced digital assets alongside him.
The president raked in cash by issuing new assets—World Liberty tokens and memecoins. But those who bought them at high prices had to suffer as their value went belly up, part of a wider crash in crypto. Political followers and crypto true believers who bought into the Trump brand were left holding the bag. A crypto summer for the president was a crypto winter for them.
Roughly two-thirds of investors in Trump’s memecoin are currently in the red, according to crypto data provider Nansen, which tracks 1.48 million crypto wallets that bought the token since its January 2025 launch.
https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/trump-made-1-billion-on-crypto-deals-while-his-fans-lost-a-fortune-408754c9
Trump's core competence is taking advantage of gullible people: investors, customers, voters, you name them. Always been, always will be.
TIL: making money by dying
Jun. 27th, 2026 11:30 amthe average life expectancy of a new recruit—from arrival at a training ground to death in a combat zone—lies somewhere between 10 days and three weeks. Once they are sent onto the battlefield, Russian fighters survive an average of 20 to 35 minutes. Much of the reason for this is the extraordinary shift in battlefield technology and tactics—in particular, the ways that drones have become the primary killing machines in this war, with stark implications for the future of combat in other parts of the world.
the Russian army is struggling to replace them with fresh recruits. It is offering sign-up bonuses as high as $80,000, and up to $140,000 in debt relief to encourage more men to enlist.
https://archive.is/idGqu#selection-3835.166-3849.87
https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/06/25/russia-ukraine-war-putin-escalation-nato-europe/
By dying on the battlefield, Russians earn record-breaking hourly wages.
TIL: Emigration from Israel
Jun. 27th, 2026 11:10 amIn its end-of-year report, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics found that nearly 70,000 Israelis left the country over the course of the year, while only 19,000 returned.
In total, over 150,000 Israelis have left the country in the past two years alone, rising to over 200,000 since the current government took power.
The majority of those leaving are highly skilled professionals in their prime working years (30-49 years old), secular, and from major metropolitan areas such as Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem.
https://www.cbs.gov.il/he/mediarelease/DocLib/2025/422/01_25_422b.pdf
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/emigration-from-israel-reaches-new-heights/
Israel used to be considered the startup nation. No more.
The only trait that consistently predicted objections to remote work was narcissism — the tendency to be self-centered and entitled. The higher the opinions of themselves leaders expressed, the more they coveted power and status — and the more they favored return-to-office mandates.
That pattern held for chief executives of Fortune 500 companies.
...
The connection between narcissistic personality traits and wanting people in the office full time is not coincidental — it’s causal. In one experiment, we got leaders to reflect on the role that a bold, assertive ego played in the success of Steve Jobs as Apple’s chief executive and Larry Ellison as Oracle’s. After participating in that exercise, leaders were more likely to oppose remote work.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/22/opinion/office-work-wfh-bosses.html
(no subject)
Jun. 20th, 2026 08:17 pmWe define the central notion of a domain as a set of integral dimensions that are separable from all other dimensions.
--- Peter Gärdenfors, Matías Osta-Vélez. Reasoning with Concepts: Conceptual Spaces as a Framework, 2026.
https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/6152/Reasoning-with-ConceptsConceptual-Spaces-as-a
Remarkably, business textbooks love two-dimensional diagrams, which allow to define a domain with the minimal number of separable dimensions.
Exercise for the reader: place Putin and Trump on the diagram, wrt the former's war with Ukraine and the latter's war with Iran. Explain.
Conversely, trade-offs allow to collapse a domain into one dimension.
The central notion of conceptual space is defined as a collection of
one or more domains with a distance function (a metric) that represents
properties, concepts, and their similarity relations.
-- ibid.
[Я]Автор «Колымских рассказов» считает лагерь отрицательным опытом для человека – с первого до последнего часа. Человек не должен знать, не должен даже слышать о нем. Ни один человек не становится ни лучше, ни сильнее после лагеря. Лагерь – отрицательный опыт, отрицательная школа, растление для всех: для начальников и заключенных, конвоиров и зрителей, прохожих и читателей беллетристики.
–– Варлам Шаламов.
СССР был лагерем. Шаламов помог мне понять, что уезжать оттуда нужно было, как можно скорее; и уехав, сразу же выбросить на помойку опыт советской жизни.
(no subject)
Jun. 16th, 2026 11:11 amКажется, израильтяне начинают о чем-то догадываться по поводу трамповского The Art of the Deal.
The U.S. will allow Iran to immediately begin selling oil and fuel under the deal to end the war, offering Tehran an early financial incentive to wind down the conflict, people familiar with the agreement said.
The provision for waivers of sanctions on oil sales takes effect immediately upon signing the agreement this week and also covers necessary services including banking, transportation and insurance needed to facilitate the sales, the people said.
Many lawmakers and political officials in the U.S. and Israel are opposed to giving Iran financial relief and easing the pressure of the American blockade before securing major concessions.
Allowing Iran to export its oil concedes a key point of U.S. leverage, but one the White House felt it probably had to give up to open the Strait of Hormuz, said Farzin Nadimi, an Iran-focused senior fellow with the Washington Institute, a U.S.-based think tank.
etc.
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/the-trump-iran-deal-allows-tehran-to-immediately-sell-oil-37a1ebe5
Quote of the Day
Jun. 14th, 2026 09:17 pmIntelligence is not what you know, it's what you do when you don't know.
--- Jean Piaget.
--- Jean Piaget.
(no subject)
Jun. 11th, 2026 10:17 pmMilitary historian Phillips O’Brien: There have been no U.S. peace efforts in Ukraine.
There have been efforts to get Putin a very good deal, forcing Ukrainians to give up more territory and people. That is not peace. That is Washington trying to deliver Putin a success.
