The core of Putin’s weakness

The core of Putin’s weakness

John Sipher writes: In a recent discussion with New Yorker editor David Remnick, Princeton historian Stephen Kotkin put the recent invasion in historical context. According to Kotkin, “What we have today in Russia is not some kind of surprise. It’s not some kind of deviation from a historical pattern. Way before NATO existed—in the nineteenth century—Russia looked like this: it had an autocrat. It had repression. It had militarism. It had suspicion of foreigners and the West. This is a…

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Oil middlemen fueled Putin’s war machine, but now they’re getting out

Oil middlemen fueled Putin’s war machine, but now they’re getting out

The Wall Street Journal reports: Russia built a self-proclaimed fortress around its economy in the run-up to war—but there was a crack. Moscow depended on foreign middlemen to ferry its most strategic and lucrative export around the world: oil. Now the most-important middleman, Trafigura Group, is joining several competitors in cutting off Russian giant Rosneft Oil Co. from global oil markets. In a high-stakes move that goes farther than official Western sanctions, the Swiss commodities trader plans to stop exporting…

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Getting real on climate means facing necessity

Getting real on climate means facing necessity

Bill McKibben writes: “Realism” is the high ground in politics—a high ground from which to rain down artillery fire on new ideas. To wit, this week the New York Times profiled Canadian energy analyst Vaclav Smil, who—alongside others like Daniel Yergin—has long insisted that the transformation from fossil fuels to hydrocarbons must take a long time. Smil is a good writer and a smart historian; he’s documented the many-decades-long transitions from, say, wood to coal, and coal to oil as…

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FBI conducted potentially millions of searches of Americans’ data last year, report says

FBI conducted potentially millions of searches of Americans’ data last year, report says

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Federal Bureau of Investigation performed potentially millions of searches of American electronic data last year without a warrant, U.S. intelligence officials said Friday, a revelation likely to stoke longstanding concerns in Congress about government surveillance and privacy. An annual report published Friday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence disclosed that the FBI conducted as many as 3.4 million searches of U.S. data that had been previously collected by the National Security…

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Seven hours of sleep is optimal in middle and old age, say researchers

Seven hours of sleep is optimal in middle and old age, say researchers

University of Cambridge and Fudan University: Sleep plays an important role in enabling cognitive function and maintaining good psychological health. It also helps keep the brain healthy by removing waste products. As we get older, we often see alterations in our sleep patterns, including difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep, and decreased quantity and quality of sleep. It is thought that these sleep disturbances may contribute to cognitive decline and psychiatric disorders in the aging population. In research published today…

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Why Russia bungled its invasion of Ukraine

Why Russia bungled its invasion of Ukraine

Jeffrey Edmonds writes: Many of us who analyze the Russian military for a living have been shocked to see Russian forces fumble the way they have in Ukraine. There are already some heated calls for analytical accountability, most prominently from Eliot Cohen and Phillips Payson O’Brien, into how the body of Russian military analysts could have gotten the Russian military so wrong. There is no doubt that the Russian military has performed much more poorly than most anticipated and it…

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‘Russia is fighting — but Ukraine is winning’

‘Russia is fighting — but Ukraine is winning’

William M Arkin reports: Russia has stumbled again. Its southern offensive, the second phase of the Ukraine war, has failed to be the “biggest tank war since World War II,” as some analysts were predicting. Instead, Russia’s ground forces have shown the same lackluster performance on the ground, unable to break through anywhere. The towns and villages of the south, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday, “are the places where the fate of this war and the future of our…

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Roots of the resistance: Understanding national identity in Ukraine

Roots of the resistance: Understanding national identity in Ukraine

Aaron Erlich writes: Were Ukrainians sending signals to the world prior to Russia’s 2022 invasion that they believed, as Putin does, that they and Russians were part of “one people?” In the aftermath of the first stage of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, reporting has emerged that Russia expected to quickly win the war and consolidate its military victory by coopting local elected officials and citizens, who were expected to rejoice in or at least countenance Russian occupation. Social science…

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Biden welcomes Ukrainian refugees but neglects Afghans, critics say

Biden welcomes Ukrainian refugees but neglects Afghans, critics say

The Washington Post reports: President Biden’s aggressive push to admit up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees has generated resentment among those clamoring for his administration to help extract the tens of thousands of Afghan citizens desperate to escape Taliban rule now eight months after the calamitous end of America’s war there. The Department of Homeland Security this week unveiled its program to accelerate the admissions process for Ukrainians, allowing U.S.-based family members, organizations and other groups to apply, using a dedicated…

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How climate change impacts pandemics

How climate change impacts pandemics

Ed Yong writes: For the world’s viruses, this is a time of unprecedented opportunity. An estimated 40,000 viruses lurk in the bodies of mammals, of which a quarter could conceivably infect humans. Most do not, because they have few chances to leap into our bodies. But those chances are growing. Earth’s changing climate is forcing animals to relocate to new habitats, in a bid to track their preferred environmental conditions. Species that have never coexisted will become neighbors, creating thousands…

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Social media companies need to release their data to independent researchers

Social media companies need to release their data to independent researchers

Renée DiResta, Laura Edelson, Brendan Nyhan, Ethan Zuckerman write: Social media platforms are where billions of people around the world go to connect with others, get information and make sense of the world. These companies, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok and Reddit, collect vast amounts of data based on every interaction that takes place on their platforms. And despite the fact that social media has become one of our most important public forums for speech, several of the most important…

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Looking directly towards the edge of time

Looking directly towards the edge of time

Dr Katie Mack writes: “From a tropical rainforest to the edge of time itself, James Webb begins a voyage back to the birth of the Universe” – so went the launch narration when astronomy’s latest superpowered space explorer, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), lifted off from French Guiana on Christmas Day. Like most launch announcements, it employed a bit of poetic license to add to the drama. But now that JWST is settled into its orbit and sending back…

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Russia doubles fossil fuel revenues since invasion of Ukraine began

Russia doubles fossil fuel revenues since invasion of Ukraine began

The Guardian reports: Russia has nearly doubled its revenues from selling fossil fuels to the EU during the two months of war in Ukraine, benefiting from soaring prices even as volumes have been reduced. Russia has received about €62bn from exports of oil, gas and coal in the two months since the invasion began, according to an analysis of shipping movements and cargos by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. For the EU, imports were about €44bn…

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