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If you want a fantastic and credible source of news for the current conflict try a guy called 'Michael Kofman'. He's a Ukrainian born US analyst who specialises in the Russian military, and was calling the conflict months ago.

He has a twitter, and has also done a recent podcast on waronthewocks (another great site), and Disinformation Wars, plus he's done some youtube presentations / interviews in the last few days.

He has a very interesting analysis. He thinks the war will go on for maybe another 2 to 3 weeks then they'll be a pause/ cessation while Russia rearms itself and remanouvers.

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Pleased you'll still be writing somewhere. Yours is the only voice I actually WANT to hear. Thanks.

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Twitter can be made more useful & significantly more user friendly than just Tweetdeck. Use an aggregator like Mailbrew to summarise a list at regular intervals and email it to you.

I work in markets so I have 8 monitors running and even then Tweetdeck is hard work because of it's design for immediacy and constant viewing. Using an aggregator tips the balance of power back towards the user, removes the addictive/immediacy element of it, thus allowing greater quality of thought / more headspace. Because determining at what interval you want a summary (six times a day, or once a week etc) it comes on your terms, not Twitter's.

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Mar 7, 2022·edited Mar 7, 2022

There is irony in the way that much of the mainstream media has been describing Putin as "unhinged," "mad" or "lunatic," while at the same time expecting him to act as they would expect to act ("they" being Western liberal intellectuals).

My reading of the situation is that Putin is far from mad and that his actions can be considered entirely rational in the context of what he hopes to achieve (namely, an expanded Russia and a neutral Ukraine, as well as leverage over the weak West on other issues through having shown willingness to use force).

None of this takes away the risk of accidental escalation and the potential catastrophic consequences thereof, but right now I'm more worried about this being initiated from "our" side than from Putin's.

The people calling for a no fly zone are some of the most dangerous and deranged people in the world at the moment.

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Mar 7, 2022·edited Mar 7, 2022

You seem to subscribe (to some extent at least) to the Mearsheimer ‘realist’ view of the world in relation to UKR/RUS that this is all a result of NATO expansion. But if that is the case why was Putin’s stated justification for the invasion that UKR isn’t a real country, ‘denazification’, Russians and Ukrainians are one people etc – rather than talking about ‘legitimate security concerns’, that might at least have got a somewhat favourable hearing? I don’t doubt West has erred along the way in all this but feels like some of the 'realist' school are letting Putin off the hook pretty easily for what is basically an aggressive, nationalistic (thought not 'irrational') invasion that has no real justification. I'd also argue that telling Ukrainians to just accept their fate as a buffer underestimates the extent to which determined local actors (e.g. Vietnam) can affect situations and be live players/agents not just be forced to bend to great powers. Interested in your thoughts...

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Do you think people should consider getting out of big cities or the country altogether?

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Appreciated Dominic, I don’t do Twitter.

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Glad you're off Twitter, but suggest deleting your account entirely. Social media is the prime cause of cognitive rot. Stick to Tolstoy and advanced mathematics if you want to stay smart and train yourself to focus on hard tasks. We need many more people who don't use SM in positions of power. On the other hand, very interested to hear your opinion on Zelensky - is he a "live player" as you like to put it?

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We all owe our current existence to one guy - a Russian submarine commander called Arkhipov. Here's a tribute to him I wrote twenty years ago. And re the last line - yes! He IS dead (1998), though I didn't check it at time I wrote the piece below.

Practice: October 1962

I remember

ducking into our coal shed

with my mother (dead) 


and my father and my little sister - 


oh, and the baby - 


to practise. 



Kruschev (dead) and Kennedy (dead) 


started it.

And pesky Castro. 


He said that Kruschev could put


missiles on his damned island 


pointing into Kennedy's backyard. 



Backyard!

That's where our coal shed was, 


where we practised

under the car tarpaulin.



I wonder what Arkhipov remembers. 


Yesterday's paper said he was an officer 


in a Russki sub, the one that nearly sank 


a Yankee ship with a nuclear-tipped torpedo - 


nuclear-tipped would you believe! 



It's hard making a cup of tea 


under a tarpaulin over a pile of coal.


It gets easier after a bit of practice. 


The baby didn't like it though.

The paper said that Kruschev had said

that if three officers agreed,

they could fire their torpedo

at the Yankee ship depth-charging them.

Two said, "Okay!"

but Arkhipov said "Comrades -

keep your fingers OFF THAT BUTTON!" 



My sister thought practising was fun.

There was a row, the paper said,

and a fisty fight but Arkhipov said,

"OVER MY DEAD BODY!" and by then

Kennedy and Kruschev had sorted it out.

She was disappointed when nothing

happened after all that practice and

the tarpaulin went back on the car.

I wonder if Arkhipov is (dead).

16 October 2002

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I’ve just finished Now it Can be Told,

Particular, lesson I find extremely useful

“As a matter of fact, we never had much trouble with government regulations and so called “red tape”, probably because whenever we encountered potential difficulties, we did not resort to letter-writing through channels. Instead, a competent officer was always sent immediately to the trouble spot with orders and authority to resolve the problem.”

Correct me if I’m wrong but I think this also translates to responsibility with authority. I think the apex of this power however was in groves insistence on MHP attaining AAA priority, which meant he could delegate authority with responsibility.

Does our govt have a priority system similar to this? I.e cost of living crisis from our shithsow sanctions - we need energy - kwarteng get an SMR built in every quartet of the UK within 2 years. Ok bang there’s a AAA priority do what you need to do.

Going off a previous list of yours I’m going to read Thucydides History of Pelopennisian next, as an aspiring PM would you prioritise anything else? Cheerio

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Glad to hear you are coming off Twitter, not enough people on there take you seriously and they don’t deserve to hear your thoughts and opinions. Good luck with your new projects and I look forward to hearing about them, and reading your snippets here.

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Thank you Mr Cummings for your insights, much appreciated

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What do you think is a viable pathway to peace, or at least the end of war from here? And if you were in Government what steps would you be taking from here?

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When you were in no 10 did you ever look at geothermal? Seems like an area we should be at least exploring/ chucking a bit of government cash at?

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The nonchalance of American and British and other leaders and pundits about Russia's nuclear weapons, and the prospects of a catastrophic use of those weapons, is the most horrible thing about this episode. And the danger is only increasing. What if Putin really is, or is in part, an ideological fanatic influenced by, inter alia, Ivan Ilyin? He caused Ilyin's corpse to be brought back to Russia, so there is some influence there. At some level I knew this, but discounted it. I shoe-horned Putin into categories I understood, which is precisely the fallacy of looking for your keys under the streetlight because the light is brighter there. I DID NOT believe Putin would invade. I did not believe that he would look at the risks and costs and pull the trigger. I was wrong. That means my model of how Putin thinks, and even what he actually is, was wrong. Most people who offer opinions for a living are in the same boat, everyone was wrong about Putin, his thinking, his decision-making. We don't understand his decision making process. This is very troubling. Late Soviet leaders were cynics. They no longer believed in revolutionary Marxist-Leninism. They had no faith, so they would not blow up the world, they would just get what they could from the collapse of the USSR. But Putin may not be a cynic. What does Putin believe? Does he believe the Russian people have a unique historical destiny? What if that destiny is thwarted? Is annihilation better than submission, in his mind? Has anyone even started to analyze this possibility? People are floating along as if everything will be as it has always been, and this war will fit into their existing world, not lead to a flaming destruction of that world. The psychology seems very Summer of 1914. Not good. If you are religious. pray for peace.

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