«Samir Saran, the head of the Indian thinktank the Observer Research Foundation, who described himself as an atheist in a room full of believers, nevertheless agreed that something bigger than Europe was at stake as he almost mocked the inability of the west’s $40tn economy to organise a battlefield defeat of Russia’s $2tn economy.

He argued: “There is one actor that has reorganised its strategic engagement to fight a war and the other has not. One side is not participating in the battle. You have hosted conferences supporting Ukraine and then do nothing more. But when it comes to action, Russia 2.0 is grinding forward.

“It tells countries like us that if something like this were to happen in the Indo-Pacific, you have no chance against China. If you cannot defeat a $2tn nation, don’t think you are deterring China. China is taking hope from your abysmal and dismal performance against a much smaller adversary.”»

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/08/putin-war-ukraine-forgotten-lessons-of-history-europe

«Flowers, not tomatoes, greeted the French prime minister Édouard Daladier, to his surprise, when he returned from Munich in 1938. Knowing full well the threat posed by Hitler, and that he and Chamberlain had betrayed Czechoslovakia, the only democratic country in central eastern Europe, he turned to his counsellor and said of the cheering crowds: “Bunch of fools.”»

https://www.axios.com/2024/06/12/microsoft-brad-smith-china-hack-congress

Commencez le damage control.

https://www.newsweek.com/truth-social-stock-price-donald-trump-1911635

«”Maybe instead of asking whether Truth Social’s stock deserves to fall below $40 a share, we should be asking whether it deserves to be above zero.”»

Ha.

I almost didn’t read this because of The Guardian‘s sensational-sounding headline.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/jun/12/the-grab-documentary-review

«“The 20th century had Opec,” says Halverson in the film. “In the future, we’re going to have Food Pec.”

That trend is already under way, from Mexico’s avocado militias to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which the film argues was motivated, in part, by Putin’s desire to control a bread basket.»

Emphasis mine.

«“If you use the words ‘climate change’, in a lot of these films, 50% of the country turns off,” she said. “The people that need to be hearing this are not just in blue states and not in this sort of environmentalist echo chamber, but just people, farmers who are walking out and seeing their wells dry.”»

Gotta end on a positive note:

«The Grab suggests doom, and the climate emergency is here, formidable and devastating. But the question of producing enough food to feed the planet is “totally solvable”, said Halverson. “There’s enough water to grow enough food, to make enough calories to feed everybody on the planet today.” The question, instead, is whether people can see the problems and overcome self-interest or profit motives to solve them. “The hope with the film is that we’ve connected together the pieces so that people can see the problem,” said Halverson, “and with good information now in hand, we can all begin to work and put together a world that we all want to live in.”»

https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-solarwinds-golden-saml-data-breach-russian-hackers

Part of the problem is Microsoft (and, yes, unregulated capitalism), but the other part is magical thinking among customers who just don’t want to be bothered and will accept the vendors’ promises.

Feel like I need to bookmark this.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/10/us/us-violent-crime-rates-statistics/index.html

They want to repeal the 20th century.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-fall-of-roe-you-thought-dobbs-was-bad-theyre-coming-for-brown-v-board

Oh, right, it’s D-Day, and everybody’s all “these are the top ten movies about World War II” blah blah blah.

My dad was an infantryman in Europe (wounded in combat, even). This was one of his favorite movies, and it’s a good one. Lots of nice little notes, like when a civilian and a veteran meet another veteran who’s lost both his hands and offers one of his stumps for a handshake. The civilian shies away, and the veteran simply grabs the stump and shakes it. A wordless moment that speaks volumes (to me, at least).

Even the title is an interesting little comment.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/best_years_of_our_lives

https://futurism.com/the-byte/plastic-eating-fungus-pacific-garbage-patch

«”Marine fungi can break down complex materials made of carbon,” added Vaksmaa, adding that it’s “likely that in addition to the four species identified so far, other species also contribute to plastic degradation.”»

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/arrogance-anthropocene/595795/?gift=ly-h2TZGdDJyaoFv6n-KaakSD_GMlq3pkgUzgZCdXek&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share (gift)

«Perhaps, someday, our signal in the rocks will be found, but only if eagle-eyed stratigraphers, from God knows where on the tree of life, crisscross their own rearranged Earth, assiduously trying to find us. But they would be unlikely to be rewarded for their effort. At the end of all their travels—after cataloging all the bedrock of the entire planet—they might finally be led to an odd, razor-thin stratum hiding halfway up some eroding, far-flung desert canyon.»

We will be gone, probably having destroyed ourselves, leaving less trace than we think.

https://apnews.com/article/menendez-new-jersey-independent-bribery-trial-e216825389acdb2c55b634e196f0f083

Well, this’ll be, uh, interesting, I guess.