While not completely outside the scope of all things that are possible, the likelihood of a black person lynching another black person is about as remote as a black person lynching themselves. Tasia’s not the only black woman who “hung herself” recently, either. There’s been a spate of lynchings ruled as suicides in the south over the last couple of years. Tonea Nicole Miller was found deceased, hanging from a tree in Miami on June 8th this year. Juliana Umba Nzita was found in Charlotte on May 8th. Also ruled a suicide. Yolna Yubrin was found in Orlando on September 28th, 2023. Gloria Bambo was found in McKinney, TX on July 12, 2020.

I’m sure I’ve missed a bunch of other examples. These are all over the South, so it’s not necessarily a serial killer; could just be widespread, old fashioned racism. Still, lots of young black women found hanging from trees, and all of them initially ruled as suicides.

Yeah, exactly. It takes real courage to do what Mamdani did; despite the fact that he’s the one who pulled back the veil on this thing, he’s going to be remembered as the mayor who cost NYC a shit load of money. It’s very likely that no negative consequences are going to befall anybody who covered this shit up (well, maybe for Giuliani, but it’ll probably be post-mortem, or at least too late to make any difference). But every other mayor and elected official between then and now is going to skate. But Mamdani will be tarnished by it. It’s so fucked up and backwards. All of the previous admin officials will essentially be rewarded for being cowards.

It makes me so incredibly happy that he released this info, but I can totally understand why every single administration before him continued the coverup on this. The legal shitstorm that this will unleash…

Nope - Trump demanded that they take him out there so that he could see the progress in person, but he didn’t want to walk, 'cause that’d be too much effort and poor Natalie Harp’s arms would get tired from carrying all his backup diapers. So they got a motorcade together and drove to the reflecting pool, but he couldn’t get a good enough vantage point from the side, so he had them drive onto the freshly sealed surface.

Yeah - the big problem with Putin being so paranoid and capable is that anybody who could have posed a serious threat to his leadership has already been cut from the herd and rendered harmless. He had a great teacher in Stalin as far as that’s concerned. There are a couple of exceptions I could see taking the reins, however (sorry for the novel).

Andrey Belousov seems like an unlikely candidate, seeing as how he’s an economist and an academic, but it might be precisely because he seems so unthreatening that he’s been given extraordinary power within the federation. He became Putin’s presidential aide for economic affairs in 2013, and was a key figure behind Russia’s decision to annex Crimea in 2014. He was then appointed to be the first deputy prime minister in 2020 (and became acting prime minister while Mikhail Mishustin came down with COVID). Then in 2024, after Shoigu fell out of Putin’s grace following the Prigozhin rebellion, he was appointed to be the minister of defense. He made several hard-line statements since then, including that Russia should prepare for war with NATO, that Russia should resume nuclear testing, and that Russia should conquer Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia as well; so that should endear him to the hawks in the country. Crucially, though, he’s also on record as saying that he’s always been guided by the principle that “you can make mistakes, but you cannot lie”. I think he’s smart enough to read the writing on the wall, and shrewd enough to take power and then pin the entire mess on Putin.

Another option I could see is Alexander Bortnikov. He’s the director of the FSB, and has been since 2008. Before that, he was KGB for 28 years. He, reportedly, was a key figure in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 - apparently, he was the one who convinced Putin that Ukrainians would celebrate the Russians as liberators, and would open the path to Kyiv for them. Like Belousov, he’s made several very hawkish public comments about Russia’s war, but has also somehow generated a reputation for honesty. I have no idea how a man who’s spent half of his adult life in either the KGB or FSB can come across as honest, but that’s how Russians see him. According to Lukashenko, Bortnikov was one of the negotiators who got Prigozhin to stand down after his rebellion. I think that Bortnikov is… not very good at his job, but is shrewd enough to make people think he is. I think he’s also got the chops to appeal to the hawks in the country, and the duplicity to blame it all on Putin when things go sideways. Main issue is that he’s 74. That might actually work in his favor, though, as the other back stabbers around him would see propping up a man who’s probably going to die in a few years as a key career move.

There are a few other people who come to mind as well, like Shoigu and Volodin, but if there’s a coup, I’m betting money on the two people above.

I think that if it was simply a question of military resources being applied to the problem, you’d be right. But this entire war is essentially the pet project of one man: Vladimir Putin. If he’s ever ousted from power, or dies (of natural causes or falling out of a window), the war will simply end, with Russia returning Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk back to Ukraine. Whoever takes on a leadership role afterwards will have one hell of a mess on their hands, and wrapping it all up neatly by placing the blame on Putin will be the best way forward. “You lost your brothers, sons, fathers, husbands? It was all Putin’s fault. We tanked our entire economy and global standing and gained absolutely nothing for it? Putin did it.”

This is why Ukraine’s so insistent on sending drones into Moscow, the most heavily guarded place in all of Russia. They want to spur the people into action. Degrade the standard of living for the elite enough, and they’ll take action against the guy who got them into that mess.

To be fair to him, though, I am confident that my dumb ass would do the same exact thing. After very narrowly escaping being cut in half by that machine gun carousel, I think any actual thinking is going straight out the window.

It’s so rare these days to see positive stories in the news.

Doesn’t help matters that Crimea looks like a mini version of Ukraine.

That’s Russian-occupied Crimea you’re looking at. Ukraine’s been engaging in a campaign targeting electrical systems in Crimea for the past few weeks, and yes - this is the result of that. Additionally, there are severe fuel shortages in the territory due to Ukraine striking Russian fuel refinement and storage facilities as well as Russia’s fleet of oil tankers.

Edit: for context, you’re looking at the area I’ve indicated in the red box in this image:

Yeah - just used the google translate app on my phone, used the camera option, and then took a screenshot on the phone. In retrospect, it would have come out cleaner if I’d have just uploaded the screenshot to my phone and then used the translate app on that.

Though it is probably fairly obvious, I used the google translate app to get the English version of this:

God, that’s depressing.

She did. It was, however, mysteriously very shaken up. No idea how that happened.

I was chilling on the couch watching tv when my roommate came home. She left her purse on the kitchen counter, then came to join me on the couch. I realized after she sat down that I was thirsty, and I’d missed my opportunity to ask her to grab something for me when she was in the kitchen. So I sent a text to her phone, which was still in her purse on the kitchen counter.

She groaned, then got up to check her message:

“Hey, since you’re up anyway, can you grab me a soda from the fridge?”

I remember when I was a senior in high school back in the late 90s, my biology teacher mused one day that ours might be the first generation to not die of old age. I don’t know if I’m anywhere near as optimistic now as he was then, but it is incredibly exciting to think about. There have been a slew of discoveries over the past 20 years that have been building towards this, and it’s all been very fascinating. No idea if this is the grail or not, but it certainly seems like an important piece of the puzzle.

Kind of crazy how Ukraine started faring better against Russia after they stopped sharing intel with the US. I’m assuming that’s just pure coincidence.

I really like that poem “Ozymandias”, by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The point of it is: no matter what kind of outsized impact you have on the world when you’re alive, eventually no trace of you will remain, and everything you ever were and everything you’ve ever done will be forgotten.

It’s a heavy, depressing message, but I find it to be oddly freeing. If nothing you do will matter in the very long run, then you’re free to do whatever you want. Maybe you decide that you don’t care about the people 25,000 years from now and focus instead on the people in your life right now. Maybe you make it your goal to make their lives better.

You could succumb to depression and fall into a pit of despair and heavy drug use… but if nothing matters, why not spend your time making other people’s lives better instead? It feels good to make other people feel good.

The PTSD of surviving a battlefield like this will be a unique kind of horrific. Like, don’t get me wrong - all PTSD is bad. But when the war ends and the Ukrainians and Russians have left their trenches, they’re going to take with them the experience of being hunted by machines day and night. Any little sound of an electric motor, like from their kid’s RC toy car, might be the thing that brings back memories of hiding in trenches, fox holes, abandoned & bombed out buildings from somebody hunting them with a drone.

It just feels so personal, in a way. Having someone fly one of these things around, looking for you. Having them hover right over you, trying to figure out if you’re already dead so they don’t have to waste the drone & explosives. Having them taunt you as you scramble for safety.

And yeah - the Russians definitely brought that shit on themselves. But they have drones too, now. And so will every army in the world after this war. It’s just all so “Black Mirror”.

… What?

I’m sorry - are you asking me when I last met Donald Trump because you think that “real life” means only the people I personally come into contact with, and not, you know, things that really happen in the world?