A rare bit of positive news, very nice initiative. x.com/kos_data/statu…

UK official defence estimates of Russian losses in Ukraine. 450k killed and wounded troops. 10k plus deserters. More than 10k armoured vehicles lost of which 3k plus are tanks. Staggering.

“Escalation management”

More horrible news. A stringer for Reuters in Moscow has been arrested (for some alleged other/prior work) according to the court.

Konstantin Gabov, a journalist and video producer, will now face trial and jail in Russia. Local staff always at highest risk

I know it’s a Saturday night but a Russian court has just arrested our Reuters colleague.
Journalism is not a crime.
Konstantin is a TV producer, not an “extremist”.
He ought to be released immediately.

'I impulsively hit him on the head very lightly to get his attention.'

These are the post-arrest statements that haunt defense attorneys' nightmares.

can it get any more crass?

My daybook pages - portrait of the American literary critic David Mikics- lamplight in Houston ….

I love it here. The site’s proprietor posts something that sounds vaguely Nietzschean; within seconds, the usual reply guys are there with their own Parkinson’s grasp of political theory; the rest of the day is filled with confused and confusing references to Nietzsche.

Notable that Ukraine keeps hitting refineries in Russia despite the U.S. asking it not to. Kyiv’s sense is that it can stop Russian missile barrages only through establishing tit for tat deterrence — especially as the U.S., despite the unblocking of congressional funding, is not…

the West’s refusal to allow Ukraine to hit targets in russia is a tacit acceptance that Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, can be razed to the ground and Ukraine can do nothing about it and I don’t understand how the people who make these decisions sleep at night

I hope they sleep at least as well as the people of Kharkiv. I lost count of the number of explosions last night and apparently slept through several more.

This is a major European city. And it feels like nobody is really that bothered it is under constant bombardment.

“We estimate that approximately 450,000 Russian military personnel have been killed or wounded, and tens of thousands more have already deserted since the start of the conflict.” ukdefencejournal.org.uk/britain-estima…

Not all lessons from Ukraine will apply to NATO militaries, but this is one that will. Russian Orlan ISR UAVs are not very sophisticated but they are cheap and easy to produce. That means Russia produces them in large numbers and they are expendable. But many of the current…

Those who mouth off like this have rarely read, say, Dialectic of Enlightenment. Or Lacan’s Écrits. Or Andrea Dworkin’s Intercourse. Or any Marx beyond the Manifesto.

You can reject these traditions in whole or part but still recognize they have important things to teach.

Abrams tanks, like any other tanks, didn’t fare well against drones in a real battlefield and have been pulled back from Ukrainian frontlines. A lesson for U.S. military planners, too. apnews.com/article/ukrain…

This poison dart of a piece by Naomi Klein is pure Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda of the old school. All the disinformatziya tropes are there, from “ethnic cleansing” to “colonial land theft”. Cold War Kremlin lies, brought to you by the progressive left theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

John Logan has now been hired to write the screenplay for John Hillcoat's adaptation of Blood Meridian:
hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-n…

Here’s the billboard Razom for Ukraine 🇺🇦 ran in Shreveport, New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

Crying of Lot 49 - short and good and entry