Pretty cool that the US has constructed a Blue Zone in its own capital. Although the 25,000 National Guardsmen are apparently unarmed, which suggests that the Dems don't actually take MAGA terrorists seriously. But it's good theater. Or, I suppose it could be that THE PLAN is coming to fruition. Any hour now.
Navalny didn't pass through Berlin Airport on his way to Moscow. Sealed train in 1917, sealed airplane in 2021. Plus ça change.
Natasha Bertrand, writing for Politico, says that conspiracy theories promoted by a "former economic policy adviser" to Putin "raise the specter of Russian attempts to sow chaos and doubt in the legitimacy of US elections." Said conspiracy theories refer to a Jan 8, 2021 blog post entitled "Burning of the Reichstag 2021" on his Russian...
Read MoreOne observation I've seen people make is that Elon Musk's industrial empire seems ultra-optimized for the distinctly non-commercial ambition of establishing a Mars colony: SpaceX for providing the reusable rockets to throw large payloads into space at much lower cost. Tesla to provide the batteries for Mars vehicles. Boring Company to dig out the tunnels...
Read MoreLEVIATHAN (2014) Rating: 2/5 Finally watched this major Cannes hit, and understood why it was so popular with the "professional" critics, if not quite as much with normies (Metacritic: 92% vs. 73%; Rotten Tomatoes: 98% vs. 80%). No redeeming characters. Main "hero" is a boorish, highly unlikable, impulsive, and violent alcoholic. His wife is...
Read MoreJan 9, 2020 marks the 12th year since I began blogging about Russia in 2008, before expanding into broader geopolitical topics, HBD, and futurism within that same year. Here is a graph of my pageviews across my websites during this period. (I did not plot visits to my personal webpages akarlin.com and akarlin.ru for 2019-20...
Read MoreCredit where credit is due - Navalny has come out against Trump's deplatforming. (He posted the same thing in Russian). The brighter Blue Checks RT'ed this, saying, OK, good points, though I respectfully disagree. Some of the duller Blue Checks and Russiagaters in the replies attacked Navalny, calling him a Russian nationalist, expressing "disappointment" in...
Read MoreHe monitored the situation. Pretty successful poasting career though.
There are MAGA people claiming this is a deep fake in the replies, LOL. As concerns the ability to generate an undying cult of personality, even past the point of becoming a (political) corpse, I suppose Donald Trump truly is the "God-Emperor of Mankind." Having a non-suspended Twitter account is helpful with that, I imagine.
Approaching $200 billion ($195B according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, vs. Bezos' $185B), he has blown his way past Bezos after Tesla shares surged north of $800 today. Its p/e ratio is now above 1,600 and accounts for more than 40% of the market capitalization of all the world’s automakers combined. Brian Wang of NextBigFuture, who...
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But let's move on to a far more important discussion: Raz of Chaz or MAGA Viking, who did the techno-barbarian warlord aesthetic better during their occupations of Capitol Hill and the Capitol, respectively? Both are very strong competitors to be sure. *** Points in favor of MAGA Viking: (1) Storming one of the key power...
Read MoreIf you gaze long upon the Ukraine... The Ukraine gazes back into you.
I haven't been following them closely (or at all, really). But my throwaway guess is that Republicans lose both. Why would lower income Trump supporters vote for the party that failed to find Trump 11,780 votes and denied them their well-deserved $2,000 worth of gibs? I certainly wouldn't in their place. Polling average ends in...
Read MoreFrom Twitter demographer Cicerone (now @BirthGauge): For some countries, this is the last update (November) for which realized births still reflect fertility decisions taken before the onset of Corona - which, judging from anecdotal reports, will crater them further, but we'll see*. Broadly, this continues a trend I have already observed of most of the...
Read MoreWhy is Israel vaccinating its population so fast relative to everyone else? I am seeing some smol brain takes on this. Sure, Israel might be a "small" country, but so is Belgium. Or US states like Massachusetts. But in the US it is those famous dense metropolitan centers of the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Alaska that...
Read MoreThe GOD DANG CHEETO ORANGE MUSSOLINI will soon be out of the White House. As such, it's now the Chinese taking over from the Russians paying Afghans to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. It's not something freedom loving Afghans would even think of doing if they weren't getting rubles, yuan, or preferably both for it.
I wish my readers the best of spirits and great success in 2021!
In this "summary" post on Corona 2020, I will cover some of the following. Recap what we know about Corona, what we have learned in the past year, and what policies should have been undertaken; The big picture of global excess mortality that is emerging for 2020; Discuss the vaccines, "vaccine geopolitics", and Corona's impact...
Read MoreThis post sums up the coronavirus epidemic in Russia in 2020. There will subsequently be a larger post surveying the world at large and prospects for its containment before the New Year. The observation that Russia is massive understating its COVID-19 mortality rate was first noticed by bloggers around May, when they noticed that...
Read MoreThis the news from the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), covering the years 2019-20. (h/t Cicerone, now Tweeting as @BirthGauge): Previous NFHS surveys at Wikipedia stretching to 1981. India overall is now at TFR = 2.1 children per woman. Kerala, long one of the lowest TFR states (as well as one of the most...
Read MoreThis is how the final UK - EU deal was characterized by Alexander Mercouris in a live stream with Alex Christoforou at The Duran. Main points to take away: The UK stays in the free trade (zero tariff) zone with the EU, but in so doing remains strongly bound by EU regulations (with the latter...
Read MoreMap of POC homelands within Europe. Portland has recognized Slavs, and by extension Russians, as a Community of Color - a long overdue step in the fight for racial justice in America and affirmation that "race" and "color" can only be defined in terms of a system of power relationships. Recognition of Russians as a...
Read MoreMerry Christmas to all my meritorious readers!
AI safety research outfit MIRI say they're thinking of leaving Berkeley on account of: Translated from rationalese to /pol/speak, they're presumably saying they don't want to stay in the new "designated shitting streets" capital of the world and pay high taxes for the privilege. This would be highly symbolic - just as Tesla is perhaps...
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