The fog of war. Book reviews. Back to school

20220901

Today this article shows up in my inbox claiming that Russia was ready to make peace on April 9 but Boris Johnson scotched it. It makes no sense to me. If Russia seriously wanted peace they would’ve done a better job of letting us know.

It’s hard to remember exactly what was going on, but that’s the virtue of my blog. Here is the entry from that date.  I think if Russia had really wanted this to end, they would’ve found better ways to signal that desire.

The conservative sources with which I agree on most things are pretty much uniformly wrong on Ukraine. The thinking seems to be, if Biden is for it they are against it. Liberals are of course prone to the same bias. When Trump liked hydroxychloroquine, they all of a sudden hated it. They hated Warp Speed when Trump ran it, but loved the vaccines when Biden assume the presidency. These times do indeed call for independent thought.

My bet would be that the Exposé article I led with is mostly disinformation, meant to discourage support for Ukraine. The Exposé, like a lot of alt-right publications, is always hard-up for money. They may find it expedient to print articles that call into question the wisdom of this war. I suppose we can tolerate it. Their tinfoil-hat reporting on Covid and the vaccines has turned up a vast amount that turns out to have been true. If you have not looked recently, I’d recommend taking a peek.

Now that Ukraine has begun its counteroffensive in the South there should be some war news. However, Bob Homans doesn’t offer very much. Neither do the video bloggers that he often cites such as Denys.  To me this is perfectly understandable. Ukraine should be controlling information as well as it can, keeping it out of Russian hands so they cannot use it to develop effective defense strategies.

In a pleasant surprise, Amazon has approved my review of Turtles All the Way Down. They say it will be a couple of days until it is posted. I don’t know why would take so long – computers are supposed to be able to do things in real time – but I’ll accept it. Prior to being buoyed by this success, I recorded this five minute review of Ed Dutton’s “Spiteful Mutants.” It does not say nearly as much as I did in my video review. However, brevity has its merits. Let’s see if this one sees the light of day.

I have started a Rumble account. Search on grahamseib. It is supposed to copy over videos from YouTube, but I haven’t seen it happen yet. I’ve loaded a few that I consider of most interest. I’m adding channels and leaving behind the clutter in my Amazon account.

Today is back to school day for Eddie and his friends. I have concluded that homeschooling also requires classroom work. I’ll spend several hours a week in conversation with him in addition to giving reading assignments. I’m happy that he is enjoying reading the piece of Ukrainian fiction appropriate to the kid his age with Oksana. He’s reading, and she is involved.

We are doing the easy stuff first. Eddie’s assignment for the moment is the first chapter of the math book and the associated homework. It should be pretty much review, something that goes quickly and gives him some confidence. We are not making a great deal of progress on writing, but I bring the topic up all the time. We will get there.

That’s the brief news from Lake WeBeGone, where Marianna is sitting on my office floor cooing and playing with dolls and toys spiders. The strong man is waiting for news on his second endoscopy, and the good-looking woman is running all over town on Charlie Spells’ wonderful bike.

Graham