Biden administration unveils Russia sanctions in response to annexations (The Hill)

US imposing ‘swift and severe costs’ on Russia following Putin’s Ukraine annexation (CNN)

Zelensky Asks Ben Stiller If He Can Put Him Down As A Reference On His NATO Application (Babylon Bee)

WARPLANES: Ukraine Builds Its Own

Read it.

Companies haven’t yet internationally outsourced many jobs that require higher education, Stansbury tells Fortune, adding that many call center-type jobs, or remote-first jobs like software design or back-end engineering have already been offshored.

But if high-paying white collar jobs can be done remotely, outsourcing them to cheaper areas could “pretty clearly” offer huge savings. The potential for change “would be seismic if all of these well-paid white collar jobs were suddenly outsourced to less rich countries,” she adds.

“If people that code for Google and Facebook were able to live wherever in the U.S. they wanted and [work] for a year and a half without ever going to the office, it seems very, very likely that a lot of companies will be rethinking this longer-term and outsourcing those kinds of jobs that didn’t used to be outsourced,” Stansbury adds.

Read it.

It’s tempting to interpret the Italian electoral results this past Sunday as voters merrily hurling a bowl of lush papardelle with wild boar ragu over the collective bland faces of the toxic unelected Euro-oligarchy sitting in Brussels.

Well, it’s complicated.

Read it.

Republican senators are growing concerned by colleague Mitt Romney’s refusal to help fellow Utah Republican Mike Lee decisively win his re-election campaign — a posture that could potentially keep their party from gaining a majority in the November elections. Unlike every other Republican senator, the 2012 failed Republican presidential candidate is declining to express a preference in Republican Lee’s re-election effort against Democrat-endorsed Evan McMullin.

“I respect [Romney], and I understand that each state has its own dynamics, but I do not understand why he is remaining neutral,” said one Republican senator who asked not to be identified. “Whatever our differences, we all try to support each other around election time.”

…

Even so, the poll suggests the strategy McMullin shared with left-wing allies at The Washington Post and other corporate media — building a coalition of Democrats, independents, and Romney and his supporters — is working at least somewhat according to plan.

Romney needs to be primary’d and replaced with a real Republican.

Read it.

‘Clean’, like ‘smart’, has become the prerequisite for all technology. Both are myths.

Smart technology is surveillance technology. It is not smarter because of its inherent qualities, but because it sends and receives data that allows it to be ‘smarter’ in manipulating users. The smart part of smart technology comes from human beings. So does the stupid part when people sacrifice their privacy and independence for the benefits of technology being shaped to them.

Clean energy is even more of a myth. The Inflation Increase Act doles out another stream of billions toward the inefficient forms of energy generation that the government has been subsidizing for over 50 years because some Madison Avenue ad agency branded them ‘clean’.

Energy is inherently clean and dirty. Making the inherent forces of the universe useful requires mining metal, cutting down trees, and turning fossil fuels into plastic to assemble machines. Once those machines are running, they will shed heat because ‘clean’ or ‘dirty’, that is how the second law of thermodynamics works. Not even Al Gore can evade entropy and not even the shiniest solar panel, sleekest wind turbines or smoothly humming Tesla will prevent energy from being wasted as it is transferred, stored or used to do one thing or another locally or nationally.

Read it.

Despite what you’ve been told, the American left is not composed of people who hate the country and want to see its institutions burned to the ground in an orgy of rage. Oh, sure, those people exist — but they’re not the whole left. Not even most of the left. Nor are they, on their own, all that dangerous, since burn-it-down-style radicalism inevitably runs up against the natural human desire for peace and order. (Even in Seattle, CHAZ could last only so long.) No, the great majority of Americans who identify with the left belong to a different faction: the whigs.

When I say “whig,” I’m not talking about powdered faux hair or the Democratic Party’s long-lost rival or British parliamentary politics. I’m talking about those Americans — and there are many of them — who take a whiggish view of the country’s history. Such people consider themselves patriotic. They hang red, white, and blue flags from their porches. They watch fireworks shows and march in July 4 parades. They swoon at the sight of military regalia. They flock to old battlefields and can rattle off facts about Benjamin Franklin and the Constitutional Convention. They also believe that Elizabeth Warren is the fullest expression of the Lincolnian spirit and that gas-powered cars must be abolished, lest life on Earth end.

If the whig left had a creed, it might be this: Social change is America’s genius. Resistance to social change is illegitimate and un-American. The Democratic Party, as the progressive party, is the natural steward for the best parts of American history — a history that consists of a series of virtuous struggles against oppression: the oppression of the British crown, the oppression of slavery, the oppression of the patriarchy, the oppression of unbridled capitalism, the oppression of the Jim Crow regime, the oppression of homophobia, the oppression of immigration restriction, and so on.

Whigs were Progressives before they came up with a cool new name.

Read it.

Not as efficiently as journalists can stiff out white supremacists….

Joel Kotkin.

The conflict between the material economy and the economy based in ephemera – such as the creative industries, tech and financial services – is likely to define the coming political conflicts both within countries and between them. The laptop elites, led by Silicon Valley, the City of London and Wall Street, generally favour constraining producers of fuel, food and manufactured goods. In contrast, the masses, who produce and transport those goods, are now starting to realise that they still have the power to demand better futures for themselves and their families. Like railway workers, they can threaten to shut things down and win much higher pay.

Ukraine Situation Report: Multiple Russian Aircraft Shot Down In A Day

World opinion shifts against Russia as Ukraine worries grow (Associated Press)

China says US sending ‘dangerous signals’ on Taiwan (The Guardian)

Nuclear War Is “Possible” For 1st Time Since Cold War: US Commander

China Using Civilian Ships to Enhance Navy Capability, Reach

Finland Shuts Borders With Russia As Military Age Men Flee  Welcome to the quagmire.

Drowning Of Russian Executive Latest In A String Of Mysterious Deaths  Dunh dunh DUNHHHHH.

Hey, we didn’t say it would be easy.

People often ask me why I never smile. I respond that I do smile but just not when they’re around.

Read it.

Sarah Hoyt.

What I am calling for is a cold, hard look at the utility of mass-industrial, state enforced education as we head out of the mass-production, mass-skills era.

Read it.

Delaware’s Governor has said they are ‘preparing’ for any migrants that may be sent to Biden’s home state by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis – as the plane which was flown into Martha’s Vineyard heads towards Georgetown airport.

Pass the popcorn.

Read it.

What people in the UK may not realise is that there are teams of contractors who start the American harvest in the south, almost on the Mexican border, and as the year progresses, they move steadily north, combining as they go. After all, the further north, the later the harvest. They finish somewhere in Canada playing chicken with winter.

Now some of these chaps work closely with the major machinery manufacturers. After all they might have several big combines and tractors and they will change them every three years. Not surprisingly, because their machinery works hard. They can be combining, 24 hours a day, for days on end when harvest is ready. So, some of these contractors will effectively have new machinery on standing order. It’s metaphorically got their name on it even as it proceeds along the production line.

One of these chaps was approached by a representative of the company he deals with. The company wanted him to go electric.

His response was simple. “How do I charge these combines when they are many miles from an electrical mains supply, in the middle of a cornfield, in the middle of nowhere?” “How do I run them 24 hours a day for 10 or 12 days straight when the harvest is ready, and the bad weather is coming in?” “How do I get a 50,000+ lb. combine that takes up the width of an entire road back to mains electricity 20 miles away when the battery goes dead?”

Apparently, the answer is ‘we’re working on it’.

Uh, yeah….

Russia’s underperforming military capability may be key to its downfall (The Guardian)

Russia is Running Out of Options to Recruit More Soldiers (Newsweek)

Coal stoves and wood thieves: Europe braces for winter without Russian gas (Washington Post) Boy, those sanctions really work, don’t they.

“Mass Graves” Allegation Becomes Focus Of Calls For Putin To Face War Crimes Tribunal

Senate Bill On Taiwan Will “Make War Much More Likely”

Putin’s Energy War with Europe Seems to Falter  Seems pretty on-track to me….

Europe, More Than Putin, Must Shoulder The Blame For The Energy Crisis

Ban On All Russian Tourists In Baltic States & Poland Takes Effect  Putin cooties are almost as bad as Trump cooties.

Kremlin Rejects Mass Grave “Lie” & “Provocation” As Bodies Exhumed

The Full $16Bn List Of What Biden Has Sent Ukraine

Read it.

Concerned about privacy? Got ya covered.

Read it.

One London evening in 1914, just after Great Britain had declared war on Germany, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey was in his parliamentary office talking to a journalist. This is not always advisable for today’s politicians, but in those days statesmen from Westminster and hacks from Fleet Street took dinner at the same club, or at least within the same social set, and his confidant was John Alfred Spender, editor of the influential Westminster Gazette. “The lamps are going out all over Europe,” said Sir Edward mournfully. “We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.” A quotable quote, certainly, as long as we bear one thing in mind: Sir Edward was speaking figuratively.

Almost a quarter of a century later, Winston Churchill updated the phrase during a speech broadcast in America just before World War II, saying that “the lights are going out” across Europe, and referring of course to the rise of Hitler. Once again, he spoke figuratively. Eighty years after that, a man who has been called “literally Hitler” made a speech to the United Nations. In that speech, Donald Trump was not being figurative when he informed delegates that following the German energy model of almost complete reliance on power supplied by Vladimir Putin’s Russia would be ruinous. The German delegation openly mocked him. This has turned out to be unwise, particularly when you are from the country that invented the word schadenfreude.

Sister of oligarch Alisher Usmanov removed from EU sanctions list (The Guardian) Not enough Putin Cooties, I guess.

As India Joins China in Distancing From Russia, Putin Warns of Escalation (N.Y. Times)

UK Defense: Russia at Risk of Losing Luhansk

EU Calls for War Crime Tribunal Over Mass Graves in Ukraine

China Enjoys Energy Bonanza As NATO Sanctions Against Russia Fail

PEACE TIME: Another Putin Political Punishment Plot

Ukraine’s ambassador describes ‘war crimes of massive proportions’ (Politico)

Russia Widens Strikes on Ukrainian Civilian Targets After Frontline Setbacks

Read it.

Industrial heat consumes a huge proportion of global energy. Rondo Energy says its brick-toasting heat storage device is so cheap and efficient that it makes decarbonization an instant no-brainer across a huge range of industries. Bill Gates agrees.

Oh,  well, if Bill Gates agrees, that settles it.

Scott Johnson at Power Line.

The Martha’s Vineyard’s meltdown illustrates the efficacy of a few of Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals. Governors Abbott and DeSantis have put several of Alinsky’s rules in play Among them:

• Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.

• Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.

• A good tactic is one your people enjoy.

• Keep the pressure on.

• The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.

• Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

These rules were formulated for the use of the left. When employed to mount opposition to the left, the axis of American life and politics tilts. The end of the world is nigh.

I call it ‘retired’.

Read it.

I love books. If I go to the bookstore to check a price, I walk out with three books I probably didn’t know existed beforehand. I buy second-hand books by the bagful at the Friends of the Library sale, while explaining to my wife that it’s for a good cause. Even the smell of books grips me, that faint aroma of earthy vanilla that wafts up at you when you flip a page.

The problem is that my book-buying habit outpaces my ability to read them. This leads to FOMO and occasional pangs of guilt over the unread volumes spilling across my shelves. Sound familiar?

But it’s possible this guilt is entirely misplaced. According to statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb, these unread volumes represent what he calls an “antilibrary,” and he believes our antilibraries aren’t signs of intellectual failings. Quite the opposite.

Better too many books than too few.

Read it.

Cheese, curry, beer: We can thank our ancestors who put food scraps to creative use. What we’re leaving our children is garbage

To be fair: We’d love it if a restaurant or grocery store would sell us only as much food as we wanted. But they don’t. You get a choice of what they consider an economic quantity of food for them to sell, and if it’s more than you need (or want), tough shit.

Read it.

The underground excavation industry is exploring mini robots, plasma torches, and superheated gas to replace the massive boring machines now in use.

Read it.

A woman whose DNA from a rape kit was used by cops to arrest her for an unrelated burglary filed a federal lawsuit against San Francisco on Monday, alleging the police invaded her privacy.

The DNA of the woman, known as Jane Doe, was stored by the SFPD as part of a domestic violence and sexual assault case in 2016. According to her lawyer, Adanté Pointer, the same sample was used to charge her with retail theft five years later.

The lawsuit claims that the victim’s DNA was entered without her knowledge or consent into a database used to identify perpetrators in other crimes.

In pari delicto.

Read it.

Watching BBC and Sky News coverage of the death of Queen Elizabeth II, one is struck by the adjectives used by reporters, commentators, and people interviewed outside Balmoral Castle and Buckingham Palace: sense of duty, virtue, integrity, service.

What astounds is that these and other character traits the late queen exhibited were once considered normal and worthy of being taught to children, but today stand in sharp contrast to what is modeled and accepted.

One commentator said the queen’s death is the symbolic end of the greatest generation. We pay lip service to the virtues that made the greatest generation great, but no longer promote them, whether it is in public schools, social media, or the wider culture.

UPDATE: ‘That Wretched Woman’

Ukraine’s gains expose thinly spread Russian invaders. More could follow (The Guardian)

White House alarm rises over Europe as Putin threatens energy supply (Washington Post)

It’s Time to Prepare for a Ukrainian Victory (The Atlantic)

Could Russia’s Sudden Ukraine Retreat Mean A Tactical Nuclear Weapons Strike Is Coming?

EU Ministers Call For 10% Cut In Energy Consumption

A Desperate Erdogan Cozies Up to Iran and Russia

Germany’s Arms Pipeline To Ukraine Has ‘Crossed Red Line’, Kremlin Says

Last Operating Reactor At Ukraine’s Largest Nuclear Plant Shut Down

Read it.

I have never seen, or heard tell of, blue honey.

Not sure I’d want any … unless it came with super powers.

Read it.

Pass a Tesla on the street or pick up an Apple Magic Mouse and you encounter the sleek simplified aesthetics that underlie the mindset of the new technocracy. Apple used Picasso’s Bull, a set of drawings that reduce the animal to a stylized cubist abstraction, as the basis for its own minimalist aesthetic reductionism. It’s an aesthetic that meshes with Big Tech’s love of frictionless experiences that make complex processes appear deceptively simple.

Eliminating the extrusions on a car or a computer peripheral doesn’t actually make them any simpler to construct or to operate. It’s a marketing strategy that also shapes how people think of technology. Early computer kits were messy assemblies of wire and circuit boards. The early internet was a sprawling assortment of unregulated content. That was around the time that science fiction author William Gibson, a foremost promoter of Cyberpunk, coined the term “cyberspace”. A generation later, Gibson even more radically envisioned the internet disappearing and being reduced to a few apps on the phone. And that is what happened.

…

Free speech was the first casualty of the simplified internet. Most people give it away for convenience. And they never missed it until suddenly they realized that they wanted to say or hear things that the new platforms no longer allowed. Big Tech wanted people to keep on clicking, but not in a way that disrupted their business model, their politics or culture.

I’m a prepper, you’re a prepper, he’s a prepper, she’s a prepper, wouldn’t you like to be a prepper too?

Read it.

It’s tricker than you might suppose.

John Hinderaker at Power Line.

On Meet the Press this morning, Kamala Harris said that if the Democrats pick up two Senate seats in the midterms, they will abolish the filibuster, at least selectively. The two additional seats, plus Harris’s own tie-breaker, will be needed to offset the votes of Senators Manchin and Sinema so as to create a majority in favor of altering Senate rules.