A cat and mouse game

Tuesday. Pushing through the week.

You can’t get there from here. Adam Gaffin provides directions on the T.

It’s always been a little fuzzy to me how the coronavirus can persist and adapt in the face of antibodies and widespread vaccination. This article was helpful. Apparently the virus mutates in two dimensions, transmissibility and immunity evasion. The former can reach an equilibrium but the latter goes on and on, as it does with the flu. So we should get used to the idea of ongoing, updated inoculations.

A seven hour gap? Seems weird. A mere eighteen and a half minute gap brought down a president once, a long time ago.

The power of the Internet in the Ukraine war has been pretty apparent. The fact that it’s still up and running in that country is both a surprise and a testament to telecom workers in the war zone.

And now you, too, can slap the shit out of Chris Rock. (Note: no actors were harmed in the development of this simulation.)

No comment

Monday. It’s a birthday for Maxim Gorky, Dan Dennett and Lady Gaga.

The big news at the Oscars was a slap.

Coleman Herman reports on a story about local scientists who felt they were misled by the Globe on their participation in a sponsored story paid for by tobacco company Phillip Morris. Sophisticated readers can easily spot these ads masquerading as legitimate reporting but you would have to assume that people fall for the trap, otherwise why are companies paying for them. Herman adds that the Globe did not respond to requests for comments.

More peace talks are scheduled for this week. There’s already an argument about what day they will start. Next they’ll have to agree to the shape of the table.

President Biden wants to distance himself from those who want to defund the police. His 2023 budget plan is a good start in that direction.

And Ted Widmer profiles Stu Sutcliffe, the Beatle that never got to Get Back.

Undone on a coin-flip

Today is Sunday, World Paella Day!

Here’s a primer on the Oscars (something I would need) from Australia.

The Times has a long but insightful story on the evolution of Putin. Worth the read. Also, David Remnick dissects Putin’s obsession with Russian national identity.

The Globe’s Danny McDonald talks to City Council President Ed Flynn. Flynn is a genuinely nice guy and more importantly for the city, a heads-down, low key, hard working, dedicated public servant with a humility rare in public figures.

Farah Stockman looks at the human side of the war, with a connection to Massachusetts. The Grid provides some recent photos from Ukraine.

And how deep is the ocean… how high is the sky?

Franchised fiasco

Saturday. It was worth the wait for the weekend.

In today’s Boston ‘Metro’ news, a musician from Los Angles died— in South America. I don’t know why the Globe even bothers to organize their news by sections.

The Washington Post covers the de-globalization of Russia as Western brands flee the country. There’s a new codicil to the Thomas Friedman rule that countries with McDonalds don’t attack each other: When they do, the McDonalds’ have to close. As far as coffee goes, Starbucks has suspended all operations in Russia. But as of today, Dunkin’s is still serving up Moscow mocha-chinos.

Mike Evans writes about the appeal of the Leica M9, one of my all time favorite cameras.

During the Iraq war priceless antiquities were lost. In Ukraine a different set of cultural artifacts were destroyed. A smaller tragedy maybe, but still a tragedy.

And here’s William Shatner‘s all time favorite album playlist. It’s a trip down memory lane.

The biggest loser

Friday. This is good.

The Massachusetts Senate has rejected suspending the gas tax. Neighboring Connecticut, on the other hand, suspended its gas tax from April 1st to June 30, as well as fares on public buses statewide.

Boston is shrinking or, more accurately, Suffolk County is getting smaller. People are moving out of the city to places like the Cape, although Massachusetts as a whole lost population. Counties in New York and Los Angles also shrank during the pandemic. Where did everybody go? Looks like they’ve all gone to The Villages. Here’s a map.

Here’s how to outsmart your smartphone’s smart camera.

People think Biden isn’t being tough enough on Russia. For what it’s worth, I think he’s doing exactly the right things given the circumstances. As Lawrence Freedman writes, “students of international relations, especially those who adopt a ‘realist’ approach, warn that the understandable desire to see Ukraine win, and moral outrage over Putin’s actions, might interfere with the cool judgements necessary when faced with such a deadly conflict, one with potential repercussions that go well beyond the belligerents.”

And this kid can spell better than you (or me.) Voilià.

Law and order

Wednesday, the peak of the week.

War is over, if you want it, circa 2022. Imagine that.

Spring is here. And you know what that means? Shootings. Lots of shootings. And they’re not happening where you might think they’re happening.

In another hit to the Russian economy, Maersk is shutting down its shipping operations. And here’s another take on the potential nationalization of foreign-owned commercial airliners and how that may play out in the future for the Russian aviation sector.

Can a guy from Boston fix the New York City transit system? I guess we’re going to find out.

And the relationship between NATO and the US was pretty low at points in the recent past, and for good reason. But it’s getting better. They seem to really love us in Albania.

Escalate to deescalate

Merry Tuesday. I think.

Here we go again with Parcel P3. Someday. Someday.

After Hiroshima, nuclear weapons became bigger and much more destructive. Then they started getting smaller and more tactical. Will Russia consider using a small tactical nuke in the Ukraine standoff? Ulrich Kühn is a nuclear expert at the University of Hamburg. “It feels horrible to talk about these things,” he told the Times. “But we have to consider that this is becoming a possibility.”

There’s an interesting back story to the two-hour warning we had of that small asteroid strike off Greenland earlier this month—with implications for detecting future ones.

Reports are that Russia is preparing a wider cyber attack. US companies have been put on alert.

And if you were in DC yesterday, you got to see peak cherry blossoms. If you had planned to go next week when they were supposed to be at their height, sorry, you missed the boat.

One hand washes the other

It’s Monday, Bach’s birthday. Also time for some St. Matthew’s Passion.

After almost four decades someone found a new Easter egg in Windows 1.0. (The fact that someone was still using Windows 1.0 might be the bigger story.)

Apparently the Trump administration practice of putting politics over expertise also applies to Massachusetts Democrats. This is why people are cynical about politics.

The Odessa Journal celebrates 4 Ukrainian woman photographers.

Ukraine is facing a brutal onslaught as a frustrated Putin switches to Plan B. But Tom Friedman is even more worried about Plan C—and especially Plan D.

And in the exciting area of monetary policy, the New Yorker’s John Cassidy writes about Jerome Powell’s needle-threading on inflation and jobs.

From comedy to tragedy

Sunday, Sunday. Let’s have a parade.

The St. Patrick’s Day breakfast can be streamed here this morning.

In the TV show Servant of the People, a hapless history teacher stumbles into the presidency of Ukraine. The teacher is played by none other than Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who himself later in real life stumbled into the presidency of the Ukraine. It’s available on Netflix with subtitles and it’s worth watching if only to see how beautiful and vibrant Ukrainian society was before the war. The whole thing is really very weird but it puts images and stories like this and this into perspective, making them much more relatable and tragic.

Conti, Cozy Bear and the FSB, a nest of vipers.

Today’s assessment from the Institute for the Study of War is kind of a stunner: “Ukrainian forces have defeated the initial Russian campaign of this war. That campaign aimed to conduct airborne and mechanized operations to seize Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and other major Ukrainian cities to force a change of government in Ukraine. That campaign has culminated. Russian forces continue to make limited advances in some parts of the theater but are very unlikely to be able to seize their objectives in this way.” … They go on to say that Russia will need to pause and regroup with new forces and supplies to win this war, but they don’t seem to be doing that.

And the reviews are in for Apple’s Universal Control. I’ve tried it with two Macs and it does ‘just work.’