Ukraine, it was said yesterday, is not allowing men ages 18 to 60 to leave Ukraine. They are being pressed into service. Is the world going to watch while Russia invades and kills until it’s funds run out? What should the next country do differently in advance?
This is how we defeat Putin and other petrostate autocrats [Click] “After Hitler invaded the Sudetenland, America turned its industrial prowess to building tanks, bombers and destroyers. Now, we must respond with renewables.” Should? Certainly. Must? I don’t know.
There are some people who simply cannot believe that car culture as we know it is not a dying deal. We have some here in Georgia where the Governor is proposing to take parts of two counties by eminent domaine for a truck company (Rivian) that cannot get batteries. Meanwhile, Rivian is proposing to build a mini entertainment venue as a hedge in case the truck thing does not work out. But, the truth is that the commrcial/industrial sector has never operated without public subsidies.
Beautiful warm afternoon here, but we will wait another day before taking our epiphytic cacti out of their winter quarters, because we had frost this morning and tomorrow is supposed to be slightly colder (31F). And the new to me grafting method I tried for a peach tree is working! Drill a hole into the limb you want to use, take a piece of scion wood slightly bigger than the hole with 3-4 buds, trim back the bark on the bottom end to where you can see green, then pound it into the hole. Apply wax around the place the graft is hammered in and on its tip to help prevent drying, and cover it with light plastic (a bit of light plastic bag) to help insulate it and also keep it from drying. At the appointed time the buds will begin to grow. Grafting wax is expensive, but a toilet wax seal is cheap and works.
I have never had luck with conventional grafting methods; I think I tried seven grafts this time, and although I can't yet see how many took, most of them seem to have done so. The plan is that when the grafts have grown enough, I will cut away the limbs they are growing on a little above the grafts. I remember from biology class that the growing tip of a branch releases a hormone that suppresses the growth of lower shoots.
Volodymyr Zelensky By Josh Marshall| February 25, 2022 11:58 a.m.
There must have been many moments over recent days when President Zelensky said to himself, “How the fuck did I get here?” As most of you know, Zelensky was a comedian and an actor. His presidency was kind of a lark. My memory my fail me here but I believe his big claim to fame was a show in which he played a fictional President of Ukraine. So his whole candidacy had a meta/absurdist tinge to it and likely was only possible in a country in which much of the population regards the political class as hopelessly corrupt. And yet Zelensky now finds himself in a position in which he will either preside over the dissolution of the independent Ukrainian state or, if things go very differently, probably be regarded as something like a founding father of it. Over the last few weeks I’ve heard a lot of public commentary and had several private conversations with region experts saying the guy is just hopelessly in over his head. I don’t know enough about the diplomacy or internal state decisions to know whether that’s true or not. But history often lives or dies in key, clutch moments. And I can’t think how much better he could have presented his country and himself in the series of speeches he gave over the last week as the country was barreling toward war. They’ve shown a level of moral courage that is very hard to second guess. Perhaps we got a prelude of it in the ways he parried President Trump’s absurd and thuggish demands over the course of 2019. Let’s be frank: there’s something between a non-trivial and a very good likelihood Zelensky will not physically survive this conflict. And yet, there he is. He’s not running. It’s hard not to compare him — though the acts are vastly different — to Ashraf Ghani, the last President of Afghanistan, who got the hell outta do Dodge at the first hint things were going South. Very, very few of us will ever face a situation with such a combination of historic consequence and physical danger. But many of us face moments in which we must choose to face fear and live out our promises or run. Zelensky is passing that test. The resistance we’re seeing across Ukraine involves millions or tens of millions of people. That’s about far more than just one man. Indeed, if there’s some miscalculation on Vladimir Putin’s part this is likely the heart of it: I don’t think he anticipated that the last three decades and particularly the last seven years had developed in Ukraine the degree of national identity and/or latent unity to hold up against a concerted barrage of violence and terror. But it seems almost certain that a rapid collapse of the state apparatus or evacuation of its leaders — while understandable at various levels — would have been a gut punch to the morale we’re seeing standing in defiance of the Russian armies’ onslaught across the country. ============================
I shouldn’t be surprised if Zelensky dies with an automatic rifle in his hands. He dies a hero, and Putin dies a coward.
Snow today. After a few days of partially bare ground, we’re expecting 8-12” of new snow.
ReplyDeleteUkraine, it was said yesterday, is not allowing men ages 18 to 60 to leave Ukraine. They are being pressed into service.
ReplyDeleteIs the world going to watch while Russia invades and kills until it’s funds run out? What should the next country do differently in advance?
This is how we defeat Putin and other petrostate autocrats [Click] “After Hitler invaded the Sudetenland, America turned its industrial prowess to building tanks, bombers and destroyers. Now, we must respond with renewables.”
ReplyDeleteShould? Certainly. Must? I don’t know.
‘A really bad deal’: Michigan awards GM $1bn in incentives for new electric cars [Click] “Automakers’ history of taking fat subsidies and overpromising job growth make some analysts skeptical of the deal.” You don’t say. . .
ReplyDeleteThere are some people who simply cannot believe that car culture as we know it is not a dying deal. We have some here in Georgia where the Governor is proposing to take parts of two counties by eminent domaine for a truck company (Rivian) that cannot get batteries. Meanwhile, Rivian is proposing to build a mini entertainment venue as a hedge in case the truck thing does not work out.
DeleteBut, the truth is that the commrcial/industrial sector has never operated without public subsidies.
UK Armor Entering Estonia From Latvia [Click]
ReplyDeleteNATO Response Force activated for first time [Click]
ReplyDeleteBeautiful warm afternoon here, but we will wait another day before taking our epiphytic cacti out of their winter quarters, because we had frost this morning and tomorrow is supposed to be slightly colder (31F). And the new to me grafting method I tried for a peach tree is working! Drill a hole into the limb you want to use, take a piece of scion wood slightly bigger than the hole with 3-4 buds, trim back the bark on the bottom end to where you can see green, then pound it into the hole. Apply wax around the place the graft is hammered in and on its tip to help prevent drying, and cover it with light plastic (a bit of light plastic bag) to help insulate it and also keep it from drying. At the appointed time the buds will begin to grow. Grafting wax is expensive, but a toilet wax seal is cheap and works.
ReplyDeleteI have never had luck with conventional grafting methods; I think I tried seven grafts this time, and although I can't yet see how many took, most of them seem to have done so. The plan is that when the grafts have grown enough, I will cut away the limbs they are growing on a little above the grafts. I remember from biology class that the growing tip of a branch releases a hormone that suppresses the growth of lower shoots.
DeleteForget ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ [Click] Save the planet by electrifying the bejesus out of everything. Sounds good to me.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, the article doesn’t talk about thorium-cycle nuclear reactors. Also interstingly, the Wikipedia article on thorium reactors [Click] seems considerably out of date.
Here is some more up to date information from China by way of France. [Click] And here is more from Nature [Click]
Volodymyr Zelensky
ReplyDeleteBy Josh Marshall|
February 25, 2022 11:58 a.m.
There must have been many moments over recent days when President Zelensky said to himself, “How the fuck did I get here?” As most of you know, Zelensky was a comedian and an actor. His presidency was kind of a lark. My memory my fail me here but I believe his big claim to fame was a show in which he played a fictional President of Ukraine. So his whole candidacy had a meta/absurdist tinge to it and likely was only possible in a country in which much of the population regards the political class as hopelessly corrupt. And yet Zelensky now finds himself in a position in which he will either preside over the dissolution of the independent Ukrainian state or, if things go very differently, probably be regarded as something like a founding father of it.
Over the last few weeks I’ve heard a lot of public commentary and had several private conversations with region experts saying the guy is just hopelessly in over his head. I don’t know enough about the diplomacy or internal state decisions to know whether that’s true or not. But history often lives or dies in key, clutch moments. And I can’t think how much better he could have presented his country and himself in the series of speeches he gave over the last week as the country was barreling toward war. They’ve shown a level of moral courage that is very hard to second guess. Perhaps we got a prelude of it in the ways he parried President Trump’s absurd and thuggish demands over the course of 2019.
Let’s be frank: there’s something between a non-trivial and a very good likelihood Zelensky will not physically survive this conflict. And yet, there he is. He’s not running. It’s hard not to compare him — though the acts are vastly different — to Ashraf Ghani, the last President of Afghanistan, who got the hell outta do Dodge at the first hint things were going South. Very, very few of us will ever face a situation with such a combination of historic consequence and physical danger. But many of us face moments in which we must choose to face fear and live out our promises or run. Zelensky is passing that test.
The resistance we’re seeing across Ukraine involves millions or tens of millions of people. That’s about far more than just one man. Indeed, if there’s some miscalculation on Vladimir Putin’s part this is likely the heart of it: I don’t think he anticipated that the last three decades and particularly the last seven years had developed in Ukraine the degree of national identity and/or latent unity to hold up against a concerted barrage of violence and terror. But it seems almost certain that a rapid collapse of the state apparatus or evacuation of its leaders — while understandable at various levels — would have been a gut punch to the morale we’re seeing standing in defiance of the Russian armies’ onslaught across the country.
============================
I shouldn’t be surprised if Zelensky dies with an automatic rifle in his hands. He dies a hero, and Putin dies a coward.