So there’s a rolling crisis with Russia going on. A few weeks back I responded to this thread from the good doctor Leo Strauss with this tweet. What I think is necessary to understand here is the model of Putin-era Russia Tony Wood asserts in this podcast from 2018: Novara Media · #NovaraFM: Russia Without…
Read More Russia, Ukraine, and HighgateHere’s an interesting story of a Russian military intelligence officer deployed into Ukraine, apparently under plausibly-deniable cover, whose communications were meant to hide in plain sight among the chaotic noise of the Internet. Specifically, he’s a gamer and re-enactor in private life and he tried to use the channels of this subculture. Unfortunately for him,…
Read More The problems of Puffin Party securityThis post by an American sociology prof about going to Soviet summer camp is so sweet it seems harsh and rude to point out that he is completely wrong about this: I would love for the major players in the Crimean conflict to take a short bus trip over to Artek and spend a week…
Read More Awww.I have been reading Orlando Figes’ Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia. Something I didn’t know, which I’m sure Erik Lund will like: Siberia moved. The original minor khanate of that name expanded to include the vast rich fur-bearing forests further east. As colonisation, and most of all, identity-changing, hybridity, and syncretism, proceeded, the…
Read More Where is Siberia? Well, I wouldn’t start from now…Here’s a post, first of a three-part series, from The Monkey Cage about inequality and power. The point Martin Gilens makes is that where a policy has broadly similar support across US income groups, its chance of being put into effect follows a well-behaved response curve with its approval rating. But a policy on which…
Read More The reactionary Internet predates ‘t other unThe Book Red Plenty is a fictionalised history, or possibly a work of hard historical science fiction, which covers what it describes as the “fifties’ Soviet dream” but which might be better termed the Soviet sixties – the period from Khrushchev’s consolidation of power to the first crackdown on the dissidents and the intervention in…
Read More Review: Francis Spufford’s Red PlentyThe Book Red Plenty is a fictionalised history, or possibly a work of hard historical science fiction, which covers what it describes as the “fifties’ Soviet dream” but which might be better termed the Soviet sixties – the period from Khrushchev’s consolidation of power to the first crackdown on the dissidents and the intervention in…
Read More Review: Francis Spufford’s Red PlentyI have some problems with “10:10”, the latest timebound big media campaign. The first one is symbols and aesthetics. They are handing out tags made of aluminium alloy cut out of a retired B737 down at Hurn. This is meant to be recycling, and wonderfully symbolic. No. A superbly engineered artefact has been reduced to…
Read More No Future in the Cath Kidston FavelaRemember this post? Well, Geoff Forden at Arms Control Wonk has a brilliant series on the system that Stanislav Petrov was monitoring, how it worked, what went wrong, and how to draw conclusions from pictures of a missile launch with Google Earth. And why you should worry now.
Read More be your own Stanislas PetrovWhilst I’m on the VBeat, it’s probably about time for an update on the extradition hearings. Here’s the AP wire story on the last court appearance on the 4th of November. Bout’s lawyer is now pursuing a defence based on challenging the legality of extradition, after the main man apparently gave up stalling tactics. The…
Read More doodling wolves on a notepad