Politics as usual

Monday again. Pi Day.

Tom Brady is pulling a Garth Brooks. That was one short retirement.

I used to think Elizabeth Warren had her feet on the ground. This endorsement makes me think otherwise.

Swedes have traditionally been cool to the idea of joining NATO. But now, as Thomas Lassi reports, almost half are warming up to the idea.

Drew Litrell gives us some history on the first computer virus. MIT. Fall of 1988.

And for Nantucket, an island 30 miles off the coast, UPS is critical infrastructure. Too bad they forgot to buy a ticket for the ferry.

Play ball!

Saturday. The word for today is uncouth.

An asteroid hit the earth this morning. Ground zero was somewhere near Greenland.

Marty Walsh’s guide for resolving a union dispute: Stay at the table and keep talking.

Holger Roonemaa and Michael Weiss write about the sorry state of the Russian effort so far. Francis Fukuyama doesn’t think there’s any possibility of a negotiated peace in Ukraine but he does there’s a decent chance that Russia will actually lose the war on the ground. Lucian Kim believes it was a massive intelligence failure that got Russia to this point.

The battle over free/low cost fares on the T drags on. The system General Manager says it could cost $50-$100 million dollars.

And honesty is the best policy in Japan. It’s absolutely un-American.

Fearing fear itself

Friday. Today is World Plumbing Day.

Some members of the People’s Convoy—who’s stated intention was to create traffic jams—are disappointed that motorists in the DC area are not welcoming them, but instead flipping them off. “We go around the Beltway, birds are flying. Birds are flying everywhere. That’s the kind of people that live up there.”

Sure, there’s a lot going on these days. We’ve just come out of a pandemic. War is raging in Ukraine. Russia is blustering over nuclear weapons. Gas is expensive. Inflation is rising. The country is politically polarized. So it’s no wonder that people are stressed, right? But really, back in the sixties… There were lines at the gas pumps. Fuel was so expensive people put locks on their gas caps to prevent it from being siphoned. We had a war going on in Vietnam for which any one of us could be drafted and sent to die in the jungle. There was a cold war. The world was on the brink of nuclear annihilation. The President was killed by a sniper! MKL and RFK were shot. Inflation was rising. There were riots in the streets, bombings, kidnappings and domestic terrorism. A quiet time. Despite all of this I don’t remember people being as stressed then as they are now. But then again, we didn’t have social media or a hyper-speed breaking news cycle reminding us about it all every second of the day. Old guy, just sayin.

Tilting at windmills. Literally.

That big influx of federal assistance cash will only help the MBTA in the short term. Once it’s gone things are going to start breaking down again.

And it’s ‘game on’ for the Mayor’s Cup street hockey tournament, coming in April. It’ll be played at Garvey Playground in Neponset so no one will have to be on the look out for CARS!.

Close to the ground

Thursday. The weekend is in sight.

Tchaikovsky has been cancelled. That should help, right?

Those leased aircraft that Russian airlines were supposed to return by the end of this month? Looks like they’re going to keep them. The leasing companies that own the planes are not happy. There’s a lot of money at stake and the downstream effects on investors, insurance companies and the airline sector as a whole will be enormous. After 9/11 the aviation insurance payout was about $1.8 billion. This war could cost ten times that. Meanwhile, the planes stolen by Russia may end up being grounded anyway since the parts required for day-to-day maintenance are under sanction and it turns out that China won’t help with replacements.

Inflation is up and so are gas prices. Maybe it isn’t such a bad idea to suspend gas taxes for a while. It could be a non-inflationary Biden stimulus initiative and it would make people very happy. Even just in Massachusetts, the state coffers are full, so the timing would be good.

There are some signs that Putin may be softening (or not) which raises the question: Will the West be able to pivot on this huge economic assault before Russia is ruined? Is the damage even repairable at this point? (For one thing, no one will be leasing airplanes to Russian airlines for a long, long time.) Much of the effort to support Ukraine was spontaneous and decentralized. How will we wind it down when the time comes? If we’re wondering about Putin’s end game, we should also be thinking about our own.

And when an 82 year-old gamer had trouble competing with younger players online, she decided that she needed an a new game to level the playing field. So she built one.

Stating the obvious

Today is March 9th. A Wednesday.

There’s nepotism and favoritism in City Hall, according to the Globe.

Today’s headline is that Russia is leaving the Internet. Reports say that they will cut the line at the end of the week. Next month’s headline might be that ransomware attacks in the US seem to have disappeared. So there’s that.

At the United Nations, words and language can be important. But this seems a little nit-picky to me.

If you park at the commuter rail station in Cleary Square you’ll pay $6.50 to get into Boston. Or you could take a short walk over the hill to Fairmount station and pay two bucks less. Both routes take about 20 minutes to get to South Station. Or you could drive a couple of minutes down the street to Readville—and pay even more. Bruce Mohl highlights this weirdly inconsistent fare setting.

And after 106 years, researchers have found Shackleton’s Endurance. Amazing.

Having your cake

Welcome to Tuesday. It’s International Women’s Day.

Murder hornets are so last year. Make way for the giant, palm-sized flying spiders.

Over 70% of Americans support banning Russian oil, so that would be the politically smart thing to do. And yet

I was an early Twitter user. A big early Twitter user. In the week after the Marathon bombing, when people were looking for information about what was going on, I could reach into my pocket, take out my phone, and engage with a half million people around the world in real time, something that had been impossible to do up until that point. That was the potential of social media as a transformative tool. But transformation works both ways and in the following years Twitter became toxic, a victim of its own success as a platform. I had enough. And apparently I’m not alone.

First, the irrepressible fishermen of County Cork took on the Russian navy and now an Irish truck driver has struck a blow against the Russian embassy by knocking down the gate with his truck. “I’ve done my bit, lads,” he said as he was led away by police.

And thanks to ‘Conservapedia’ we can read about the cons and pros of E=mc². And we thought all the relativists were on the left.

Either, or, or neither

It’s a marvelous March Monday.

It’s pothole season—and not just in the city. I’ve been dodging some huge craters while on the bike down in cranberry country.

Lawrence Freedman has another good post, this time on how the war is playing out, both in space and time. At the end of the day no one really knows what’s going to happen next. “The pre-war assumptions of a modernised and efficient Russian army that would soon overwhelm the outgunned Ukrainians have now been jettisoned,” he writes, “but it remains difficult to accept the contrary assumption that this is a war that the Russians might lose.”

Petro-politics is making a comeback. Old enemies are new friends.

It’s pretty crazy that your iPhone can take amazing photos with such a small camera. And it’s not just all that software correction, either. Check out this lens design.

And I’ve certainly benefited from some privileges over the years, but not this one.

A hard landing

Today is Sunday. Is that spring knocking on the door?

From BU, Grace Knoop has some tips for dining out on a college student’s budget. Lots of soup, salad and water. (Tip: the nearest Olive Garden is at South Bay.)

Russian airlines lease more than half of their fleet from foreign companies. Many of those companies are located in the EU. Per sanctions, those leased planes must be returned by the end of March. The remaining Russian commercial aircraft, those owned by the Russian airlines, will have trouble keeping up with regular required servicing. Aeroflot, the largest airline in Russia, has its maintenance hub in Germany, which is now out of reach. Even within Russia parts needed for servicing aircraft will be hard to obtain because of sanctions. A lot of planes will be grounded. As a result, some believe that domestic Russian aviation could pretty much shut down in the coming months. Not good for a country as large as Russia. Mentour Pilot has more here.

Ruby Cramer had to wait on a list to join the newest social media app, Truth Social. Now that she’s in she’s wondering where everyone else is. There are reports that Trump is angry that his platform is failing but why should he be? That was the plan from the outset.

Even though you’re using your bank’s app and communicating with people who appear to be from your bank, you’re not immune from being scammed. I’ve always been skeptical of the whole Zelle thing. Venmo seemed way better.

And if your GE oven needs a wifi connection to unlock some features like, you know, cooking, then you are effectively synergizing backward overflow.

Proxy wars

Today is Saturday, March 5th. The anniversary of Stalin‘s death.

Samsung is cutting off Russia. It’s a pretty big deal.

Glenn Gerstell believes that we need to get our cyber act in gear—especially now. The worse off Russia is economically as a result of sanctions the less they have to lose in launching a full out cyber attack against the west. Bobby DeSimone says the recent White House Zero Trust memo is a good beginning for getting our defenses up.

Ernie Boch Jr. is mourning the loss of his factory-fresh Bentley, sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic along with a bunch of rare 12-cylinder Lamborghinis. It’s a loss that’s “tough for the public,” he told WJAR before noting that he re-ordered another Bentley.

Dave Levitan and Lili Pike dig into the Russian attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and how it could have, and still could, play out.

And the People’s Convoy seems to have lost its focus as it nears Washington. No one seems to have a plan. “We still don’t know where and what the end game is,” one participant told the Post. 10-4 good buddy.

An economic siege

Friday. The word of the day is askew.

The Freedom People’s Convoy is coming. And they’re pissed. (Mostly that they’ve been upstaged by war in Ukraine.)

Dave Lawler reflects on how the war will end for Putin. Sanctions and isolation are taking a toll. And it’s not just yachts being seized, chess masters excluded or cats being kicked out of beauty contests. Russia’s Sberbank has collapsed in the face of sanctions. Shipping lanes are being shut down. Airlines are being deprived of passengers. China is staying out of the picture, holding back assistance to Russia for fear of being caught up in the economic war themselves. Emily Peck looks at potential blow back to economies in the west. Wired has more on this subject. Craig Timberg considers how shutting down access in Russia to popular western technologies will play out in the future. And the Times worries that a trapped Putin might lash out.

Bill Barr writes about how Donald Trump yelled at him and told him he was fired. Hilarity ensues.

A.I. chatbots are becoming pretty advanced. In the near future they’re expected to get even better. Is that a good thing? I’m not sure.

And here’s a roadmap for the Apple event slated for next Tuesday.