Well said!

All $hit highly processed “foods” anyway. Better off without them.

I just finished The Deluge by Stephen Markley (all 900pp!)

It’s basically a US-centric “narrative” of the 2030’s, told from the PoV of about a dozen different characters, with the thread of climate change prominent throughout.

Really it’s hard to describe it as good or bad, an enjoyable read etc. It is certainly well written, and characterisation is exceptionally good and detailed, but for me it was by turns scary, amusing, depressing, profoundly sad and wrenching in its humanity. I have no reason to doubt its accuracy based on the science.

It took me almost a month to read because I had to take breaks to get my “cognitive dissonance” recharged.

I would definitely recommend it.

It would make a good streaming series on Amazon Prime or Apple TV.

Good!

People run around with their hair on fire about the quality of LLMs and fake this and that, and take over the world etc, but IME ChatGPT is actually quite useful if you treat it like a search engine on steroids, and treat the “search” results with the same intelligent filtering.

Fair enough, I couldn’t disagree at all.

Would be wonderful to sneak a peak at a historical analysis from ++50yrs: either it’s Putin’s masterstroke, or he’s struggling to tamp down prima donna Prigohzin with his buddy Lukashenko’s help. Occam’s razor would certainly point to the latter.

That’s exactly right. I imagine Putin & his lackeys are very busy indeed right now. Just I would definitely not count him out like many articles seem to be.

Edit: spelling

Yeah you may be right, I even hope you’re right. But I don’t think Putin cares about saving face in the west.

I would guess his biggest challenge would be keeping the Belorussian people in line. I know little about the country, I should probably read up!

Good point, but Putin plays the long game, I suspect this is strategic manoeuvring for 12-18 months from now.

Ha, I’d rather take odds on Lukashenko “falling from a window” - I seem to remember he was reported as “seriously ill” a few weeks ago, plus if I remember Putin was pressuring him to attack Ukraine, and he refused.

Get rid of L. and Putin can install Prigo. and they will work together on Ukraine. Scary.

To comment on my own link, I still think (per comments elsewhere), that right from the get-go this is a 3-way play orchestrated by Putin to get a strong fight-ready leader on his western flank, and north of Ukraine.

I do not think it has much at all to do with a coup or exile.

I posted this comment in another thread (hope it’s OK to link). TL;DR Putin has a track record of using bizarre public “emergencies”* to progress what he wants, maybe this is another one.

*e.g. Moscow theatre gassing, Beslan school massacre

I do wonder (given the weird and largely bloodless development of the 'march for justice’and it’s current state with Prighozin and some Wagner said to be going to Belorussia) whether that is all a play for public consumption. It wouldn’t be the first time Putin has staged dramatic and public events to achieve his ends.

A worrying evolution consistent with the rumours would be Prighozin as Lukashenko’s head of “Security”, but aligned with Putin, plus a reconstituted Wagner threatening Ukraine’s northern border.

That sounds like a huge win for Putin compared to the current situation.

Maybe that’s crazy, I hope so.