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The weak should fear the strong. Richard Hanania had a podcast with Sean McMeekin about his new book. (I made some comments on that post). Incidentally, I have started reading Stalin’s War. Not far in, but my initial impressions are that McMeekin is weak on military realism – he seems to think that Allied Lend-Lease

I don’t have the reputation of someone who stans for Russia’s record on dealing with Corona. I was writing about how Russian official statistics were massively understating Corona mortality more than a year ago, before Western journalists generally noticed it, and followed that theme up in the subsequent months. Ironically, Russia’s development of one of

Now from the onset, I want to make a few things clear that I made in my last major Ukraine sitrep from 2018: Ukraine hasn’t collapsed (desires of more deluded pro-Russians aside) nor has it come closer to it. While Ukraine’s economy remains in the gutter, ahead only of Moldova in Europe, it is the

This week’s Open Thread. Zach Goldberg, the guy who coined the “Great Awokening”, is now blogging at Substack. You should give him a follow. Alex Tabarrok observed that it is “depressing” that you’d have done better investing in Dogecoin this year than in Pfizer. I think this is a function of (1) vaccines being priced

The YouGov poll on which animal Americans could take in a fight (covered by Sailer) was complemented by another poll asking Brits those same questions. American women sure are confident. The Brits are… realistic? (On the large animals, at any rate). Anyhow, for what little opinion (never having fought any of these animals) is worth:

Transhumanism, at its most basic level, is about extending human capabilities through technology. In a sense, it has always been with us since at least the invention of fire. As David Landes notes, the invention of eyepieces in Renaissance Italy de facto doubled the productive life expectancy of artisans that relied upon fine motor skills

Cargo traffic through Russian ports has almost doubled over the past decade (only Corona, a temporary factor, prevented a full doubling), after increasing by a factor of three during the previous decade. Here is how it looks like per port/region (h/t genby): The blue section corresponds to Arctic traffic and it had a full doubling.

CORE. Richard Hanania – Freedom House, Woke Imperialists. Traditionally, Freedom House just penalized countries for not hewing to American geopolitical interests (e.g. see What I Learned from Freedom House…). Now, it’s transitioned to also penalizing them for opposing liberal/Woke positions, such as Poland’s opposition to “LGBT and gender ideology”, while the “connection between how many genders

The rumors that Roman Protasevich was associated with the Azov Battalion, a Neo-Nazi regiment incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard, came off as too perfect of a “pro-Kremlin” caricature for me to initially put much faith in them. But over the past couple of days it has been more or less confirmed that those initial reports,

The US and EU governments are accusing Belarus of “state terrorism” for forcing a RyanAir flight containing Roman Protasevich, an anti-Lukashenko activist, to make an emergency landing after a bomb hoax. He participated in the Euromaidan, although other reports that he worked as a press secretary for the Azov Battalion in the subsequent Donbass War

There’s a good chance aliens exist, perhaps including in our galaxy. However, there are reasons – the Dark Forest theory, the Katechon Hypothesis – for why we should expect them to be paranoid about being detected. In contrast, MIC shilling can be rather open. It is curious that there’s no media denunciation of this, as

Within countries, anti-vaxxer sentiment tends to fall with rising IQ (e.g. white males with no degree see no difference in risk between contracting COVID-19 and getting vaxxed, barely higher than the numbers for Blacks and Hispanics, while Whites with a degree give the factually correct answer). However, between countries, there seems to be no such correlation. If

It’s a little commented fact, but one that is true nonetheless, that Russian relations with Israel are better than with almost any Western country. Open visa regime. No sanctions over Crimea, an attitude largely of mutual studied indifference as regards Ukraine and Palestine, respectively. Open to Sputnik V vaccine. Criticized Biden’s comments about Putin as

Results of the 2020 Census have been released. Some links: Reuters summary Chinese state statistics service communique (in Chinese) Here’s a table of the regional change: 2020 2010 % Beijing 21893095 19612368 0.12 Tianjin 13866009 12938224 0.07 Hebei 74610235 71854202 0.04 Shanxi 34915616 35712111 -0.02 Inner Mongolia 24049155 24706321 -0.03 Liaoning 42591407 43746323 -0.03 Jilin