https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/russia-ukraine-war-one-year-national-identity/673192/?utm_content=edit-promo&utm_source=twitter&utm_term=2023-02-24T10%3A30%3A56&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social

So, this is a nice feel-good article, but here’s my take: China is moving to make Russia a client state. Russian gas and oil (and maybe resources from the Donbas) will flow to China. Big geopolitical move for China. Ukraine will wind up as yet another frozen conflict. The US will lose interest. (France is talking surrender, of course.) The “non-aligned” world will just sit this out.

I’d love to see Ukraine recover everything (they could long-term-lease Sevastopol to Russia, maybe), but once China starts supplying weapons to Russia, Ukraine will make no more progress unless the West really steps up, and I just don’t see that happening.

This would have gone better if we’d put heavy weapons in the pipeline sooner, but of course we didn’t.

It might even be too late for Taiwan, unless they get serious really fast about becoming a porcupine.

If the West wakes up (and maybe we are; the peace dividend is over), we’ll be entering another cold war, which is sad because war is wasteful, but the alternative is the spread of corrupt, authoritarian governments that abuse humans.

I know it’s popular to say that the US is that now, but: no. (Not yet, anyway.)

https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-rails-un-move-ukraine-china-readies-position-paper-2023-02-22/

Well… Russia had “little green men” in the Donbas. Maybe we should, too. As Ukraine runs low on sheer personnel, maybe the West should start creating laws that shelter “little blue men” (you heard it here first) and their families.

https://www.mediaite.com/print/i-was-so-fcking-freaked-out-ex-nyt-staffer-describes-crying-and-bloodthirsty-colleagues-seeking-vengeance-for-cotton-op-ed/

«Last October, Bennet told Semafor‘s Ben Smith he was treated like an “incompetent fascist” for publishing Cotton’s perspective.»

So… blogs were a thing back then, right? Like… Cotton could have found a web site (say, https://www.cotton.senate.gov/) on which to publish his thing back then, right? Without relying on The New York Times to publish his thing, right?

https://www.businessinsider.com/former-amazon-corporate-manager-fought-performance-management-stack-ranking-2023-2

«I’ve asked HR and I’ve asked other managers: What is the business benefit to burning people?»

Ah, here’s a different take. Iran, huh?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/20/putin-czar-with-no-empire-needs-military-victory-his-own-survival/

«The Russian president’s squadrons of cheerleaders swear he “simply cannot lose” in Ukraine, thanks to Russia’s vast energy wealth, nuclear weapons, and the sheer number of soldiers it can throw onto the battlefield. These supporters see Putin rising supreme from Ukraine’s ashes to lead a swaggering nation defined by its repudiation of the West — a bigger, powerful version of Iran.»

This is cool:

«Public bias bounties could be a standard part of algorithmic risk-assessment programs in companies. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, the U.S.-government entity that develops algorithmic-risk standards, has included validation exercises, such as bounties, as a part of its recommended algorithmic-ethics program in its latest AI Risk Management Framework. Bounty programs can be an informative way to incorporate structured public feedback into real-time algorithmic monitoring.»

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/02/elon-musk-twitter-ethics-algorithm-biases/673110/

Although I guess we’d have to take into account the cost of verifying every claim of a bounty.

(NIST is involved? Neet!)