Flailing, Failing Russia. Covid personalities. Tinker, tailor, solder, mother???

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In today’s news, Putin is no longer allowing Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, to recruit prisoners to use as cannon fodder in Ukraine.  Denys Davidov on YouTube opines that Putin is jealous of his (minimal) progress in Soledar and Bakhmut.  With that, Denys changes his opinion, now more confident that Ukraine will hold Bakhmut. 

The Kyiv Post doesn’t use the colorful rope-a-dope phrase I borrow from Muhammid Ali, but they describe the process quite accurately in their assessment of Russia’s vain attempts at even limited gains in their own back yard.  Apparently most convicts have decided that it is better to rot in jail than in a Ukrainian grave. 

On a macabre note, I read that Russian bloggers applauded the cleansing of Russian society by sending its worst elements down here to die.  Chalk it up as another both totally amoral and thankfully failed Russian initiative. 

On a negative note, the husband of one of Oksana’s childhood friends, a father of two, died in Bakhmut.  While she knows several women whose husbands are fighting, this is the first time she has learned that one died.  Considering that Ukraine’s losses probably rival the losses of the 4x larger USA in Vietnam at this point, kind of surprising.

I think we have seen the worst of winter.  The overnight lows have climbed from 14° to 18° to 21° over the past three days. Nothing in the forecast below the mid 20s, and by our reckoning spring is only 2 ½ weeks away. We have survived! To repeat what I said about got Russian futility, they have not targeted our electric grid for the past three weeks or so, having decidedly failed to freeze us out. Their massive use of scarce ammunition killed a few civilians but did not dampen our morale at all. More than that, we got quite a bit better at defending ourselves over the course of the winter.

In particular, we are more skilled at knocking out the low cost Iranian drones. I read that the Iranians may be moving production into Russia itself, perhaps to avoid having factories blow up in Iran. Maybe there will be careless smoking there as well.

A great many commentators write about the war. I like Sam Freed’s occasional but long and thoughtful pieces on Substack.  Peter Zeihan talks in terms of overarching geopolitical themes that would play out over generations. I don’t buy it. In United States we think in election cycles. I think Putin’s attention span is even shorter. How to survive until next month.

There is something to be gained by reading the people with whom you disagree. The world’s second greatest vaccine fan (first being Erik Topol) is Katelyn Jetelina.  Her theme today is “What does ending the emergency mean?”  From it we learn that five different government agencies have each declared a Covid state of emergency. They are overlapping and uncoordinated. Does that surprise you?

Jordon Trishton Walker is the most thoroughly vanished individual in the history of the Internet. Big tech and big media have absolutely forgotten him and buried his name before we even got acquainted. The link above tells you who he is. Or was. He may be sleeping with the fishes or bunking with Jeffrey Epstein by now. I reflect on my recent post entitled Mitteilingsbedürfnis.  This poor fellow’s careless talk did himself in and certainly did not do Pfizer any favors.  Loose lips sink ships.

On the topic of Covid, my friend Mark in Berlin sent me this piece drawing on statistics from a Swiss health insurance company. It is in French with illustrations titled in German. At any rate, from the perspective of this life insurance company, the number of sudden deaths has increased by a factor of 10. Interesting primarily because such skeptical voices are truly worldwide.

As you know, one of my major themes these days is the declining fertility of the human race, and especially our subset thereof. One of the most valorous fighters on our team is Naomi Wolf, whom you may remember from long ago as the author of The Beauty Myth. Her theme is the tragic damage that the Covid injectable products wreak on women’s reproductive health.  The article is well done – her graphs speak for themselves. I include a couple here.

Wolf asks, “Why are they (Pfizer) looking at ovaries versus testes concentration for a drug that's supposed to be treating a respiratory illness?” She adds, “What's so weird, creepy, and disgusting about the Pfizer documents is that their trials were about sex. Their trials were about sex and reproduction: testes, ovaries, placenta, menstruation, lactation, spontaneous abortion — they knew. They were utterly focused on reproduction and knew they were damaging it.”

Another theme that she and Jessica Rose hit on quite frequently is the amount of suppression they have experience in venom that has been directed their direction. I’m lucky that I’m not as visible.

I’ll close with this bit of Schadenfreude.  Wind power firms are losing money hand over fist. Not only do those monstrosities cause pollution and support China with their rare earth metal mining, kill migrating birds and bugs, despoil the landscape and provide power so expensive and intermittent that they are not terribly useful, but they are unreliable and impossible to recycle at the end of their lives. Wind power manufacturers are giving up.

It appears to me that nuclear will finally come into its own, after a long gestation period in which time fossil fuels will enjoy a fairly strong comeback. Nah, that sounds like optimism, and this involves government. How could I be that naïve?

I finished an interesting book, “Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy.” As the title suggests, it is a paean to feminism. However, the author’s credentials in the field of evolution are pretty good. It is almost two books – one on the evolution of sex differences and the second glorifying the emergence of woman power in the West.

It is about the only book I found on Amazon that directly addresses the topics that most interest me. I’ll give it a thorough review. Starting with the fact that it does not address the topic that most interest me. If women are doing all these wonderful things of which they are capable – tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, astronaut, chair of board, Elizabeth Holmes thief – who is going to bear and raise the next generation?

That’s the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the strong man is delighted that Eddie continues to bug him for geography, history and math lessons. What a wonderful predicament – to have a kid who wants to listen to you more than you feel like talking, and on topics dear to your heart. Zoriana, meanwhile, runs hot and cold. She still cries far too much, wets her pants, and throws tantrums quite regularly. On the other hand, this morning on the way to kindergarten she was an absolute angel and a delight. Parenthood is a mixed bag, but it is what I wanted. I have it in spades last couple of days, as Oksana is sick despite those expensive vitamins I wrote about recently.

Graham