Day 303
c/o abdymok Elaborately hung over from slapstick self-anaesthesia, and reveling somehow in the sheer size of my ear pain, I walked without galoshes in a pair...
Join my chat
Today I’m announcing a brand new addition to my Substack publication: the ukraine@war subscriber chat. This is a conversation space in the Substack app that...
Day 300ish
c/o abdymok One passage of the 15,000-word interactive whatever published by The New York Times last week jumped out at me1: Burns and non-permissive...
Day 298
c/o abdymok We bought a xmas tree from Kolomyya and lugged it to the apartment. c/o abdymok The tree is heavier than it looks. The salesmen said it’s...
Day 297
Illustration by Mikhail Aleksandrov Headlines of reports in foreign media about residents of Ukraine’s capital freezing to death after yesterday’s Russia’s...
Day 296
Illustration by Mikhail Aleksandrov The Economist dug the black hole of Ukraine-related bullshit a little deeper this week. Officials close to Mr Zelensky...
Day 295
Photo by Herbert Villarraga (Reuters) Wash trading is a strategy in which the buyer and the seller are effectively on both sides of the deal, and a person...
Regulated Shamanic Reforms
Time change rationale (c/o abdymok) Not much to report. Deoccupation proceeds, albeit at a slower pace because of the mud. Meanwhile, attacks on Russia’s...
Z & Elon
Andy chats up Z on NYT’s Dealbook on November 30, 2022 Z invites Elon to Kyiv. Ugh. Maybe The Operator can arrange the visit. Sean Penn can accompany. With...
Our Assets of Their Destruction
Photo c/o Embassy of Ukraine to Poland The number of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus experts is growing each day. Russian exiles, expat jornos, many formerly...
Practical Homicide Investigation
Cold smoked Black Sea Mackerel (Photo c/o zakaz.ua) Dialogical hooey — nodal points of history and contrastive explanations — is an annoying feature of...
Barrel-chested Freedom Fighters
Maybe this is a display of agency1. Zelenskyy vows Ukraine will withstand Russian attacks on power networks. FT (November 25, 2022) In other news, I ate...
Zelomania
So, Penguin Random House over the summer proposed itself as the only publisher of the condensed (or large-print) version of the ur-text of approved pep...
The Captive Mind
Marta, Lviv, August 2022.(Photo by Chien-Chi Chang) When someone is honestly 55% right, that's very good and there's no wrangling. And if someone is 60%...
History of Modern Ukraine
Vydubichi. November 19, 2022 The title of lesson 19 of Timothy Snyder’s on-line course, “Oligarchies in Ukraine and Russia,” sounded interesting, so I...
265 - 11 = 254
Photo c/o Mil.in.ua Recall what we concluded on Day 11 of fascistic Russia’s genocidal campaign against Ukraine1. Since then, for at least 254 days, policy...
z1 Slow Movement
Hitler was hesitant to order the execution of Ernst Röhm, perhaps because of loyalty or embarrassment about executing his WWI buddy, but he relented1. On...
Melodrama
c/o abdymok And to all those new Ukraine experts, still blathering on about Putin, you’re doing it wrong. But you knew that. The New York Times: “[…] With...
Autumn ends
Forecast c/o Gismeteo.ua Bicycle season ends when the temperatures dip below zero. I’ve made the 10K commute to/from work in the city for the last five...
Pause Operationnelle
c/o abdymok I wrote and deleted a thousand paragraphs the other day: love letters to impotent rage and monumental sadness. I wanted to get it down, the wet...
Lex and Fiona
Photo by Zhou Li Ning/EyeEm/Getty Images The participants of a popular podcast appear to fart out bricks during a conversation that lasts three hours and...
Shaping Ukraine's Strategic Objectives
Illustration by Nugzar Metreveli... I took a week off from scowling and screaming at Tiger Team’s AGI system that refuses to be born in order to luxuriate in...
Satan's Combat Misquitoes
Early morning ride in Kyiv (October 30, 2022) I took advantage of the end of daylight savings time this morning to check exactly how blacked out Kyiv is....
Day 246
Wandering around St. Petersburg with Kirill (1976) Putin’s four-hour appearance at the Valdai Discussion Club was a nauseating disgrace. He didn’t talk about...
Day 245
Memorize this slide One could conclude from the vigorous workout Ukraine experts are getting from Monday to Friday each week (lineage drops off during...
Day 243
If I may distract you from Pramila Jayapal, Elon Musk, George Beebe1 and The Manhattan Pops Orchestra. Last December we rolled out the You can’t spit out...
231 - 74 = 157
We’re 157 daze into Phase 3 and de-occupation is proceeding apace. Militarily, the Russian invaders are being rubbed out methodically. Politically, The New...
Day 230
How fast can you move? It’s 2.47 kilometers from the Metro Bridge to the Parkovy Bridge, or about 1.5 miles. You should be able to run from one bridge to the...
Day 227
It was early in the afternoon yesterday, when, slowly at first, Mykhailo began to complain. He moped about, walking slowly, but didn’t seem to have pain or...
Day 224
Illustration c/o @Naviali2022 National Bank of Ukraine head Kyrylo Shevchenko has resigned because of health-related issues, according to his Facebook page....
Day 219
Photo c/o Труха The eighth month of Putin’s nine-year war has been one of the bloodiest. Just this morning Russian soldiers shelled a humanitarian convoy...
Vicky & Ammo Inc.
David at Newsweek cites anonymous “Ukrainian sources” saying they suspect U.S. Congresswoman Victoria Spartz was lobbying for an American arms supplier at...
Day 212
c/o US Department of Defense I watched General Pat’s 38-minute briefing at the Pentagon, so you don’t have to. The first five minutes are about what the US...
Day 211
Illustration c/o Petro Shturyn Russia’s latest special operation in Ukraine, part of its decades-long war against the West and liberalism, in the broadest...
Day 204
Somewhere muddy in Kharkiv region. (Photo c/o Третя Сила c/o Kostiantyn Liberov/AP) Unable to defeat Ukraine on the battlefield, Russia has declared war on...
Fake Flowers
Watermelon from Mykolaiv (September 13, 2022) I take lots of risks. Many I probably can’t justify, like riding a bicycle in Kyiv, where the benefit of...
2023 Military Campaign Propects
РСЗВ М142 HIMARS and ATACMS rockets. Photo c/o Mariusz Burcz (This article appeared on September 7 on Ukraine’s state-run news agency Ukrinform) How long the...
Day 201
Ralph Hemlich’s sculpture at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, Cambridge, MA In early 2014 a bunch of things happened at once: the end of a...
Sovereign State (The Operator)
The coup de grace of Franklin’s lunatic hagiography, titled “The Man Who Chased History,” appearing in the October issue of The Atlantic is that he makes Z’s...
Alright.
Kyiv at dawn (September 7, 2022) Back to square one, then. It’s been almost a week since I’ve thought about writing again. No time like the present, as they...
Day 190
We’re are stuck in Stage 3 of the bloody mess. The 1,300-kilometer long contact line is static, but surprises galore are in store. Since June 3, Day 1001,...
OBE Report
Blinky bright pieces of shit During the second 100 days of the war we focused on pushing neuro-scientific buttons by controlling the virtual self from a...
Ukraine's International Legion
My eyes glazed over reading the Kyiv Independent’s investigation of alleged shenanigans in Ukraine’s International Legion. I stopped after the part about...
Day 175ish
Photo c/o Z It’s depressing. One by one, members of Ukraine’s government are admitting they were told for months, repeatedly, Russia would invade in late...
On Bullshit
A lot these days rides on Z’s ability to think straight and communicate clearly. This is why we should pay special attention to the exceptionally stupid idea...
We Are All Anandamide Factories
The neuromodulatory system plays important roles in central nervous system development, synaptic plasticity, and the response to endogenous and environmental...
Gigantic Strategic Failure
Russian soldier fertilizes a Ukrainian field in Donetsk region (Photo c/o Tретя Сила) It becomes painfully more obvious that fascist Russia’s genocidal...
Status Not Available
What does the comprehensive failure of western media to report about what is obviously the deadliest war crime committed by Russia against Ukraine tell us?...
Masterclass in Messaging
Photo c/o Z As a writer, I also immediately post corrections or retractions if someone points out a mistake or misstatement. I don’t think it’s about...
Darkness in Sight
Life under Russian occupation has been hell. Kherson region in southern Ukraine, roughly the size of the state of Maryland, reminds me of a gigantic...