I think this is my favorite picture of all time. A Victorian couple trying not to laugh during a slow exposure photograph:

I'm a software technologist with a political bent. My views tend toward the contrarian and slightly curmudgeonly end of the spectrum.
I think this is my favorite picture of all time. A Victorian couple trying not to laugh during a slow exposure photograph:
Source is apparently a GCP Grey video, but I can’t seem to find it.
Because yesterday, San Francisco voters decided to turn their district attorney, Chesa Boudin, out of office. They did it because he didn’t seem to care that he was making the citizens of our city miserable in service of an ideology [to allow homeless people everywhere] that made sense everywhere but in reality. It’s not just about Boudin, though. There is a sense that, on everything from housing to schools, San Francisco has lost the plot—that progressive leaders here have been LARPing left-wing values instead of working to create a livable city. And many San Franciscans have had enough.
walking these streets awakens me to how bad San Francisco had gotten even before the coronavirus hit—to how much suffering and squalor I’d come to think was normal.
Stepping over [homeless] people’s bodies, blurring my eyes to not see a dull needle jabbing and jabbing again between toes—it coarsened me. I’d gotten used to the idea that some people just want to live like that.
I’d gotten used to the crime, rarely violent but often brazen; to leaving the car empty and the doors unlocked so thieves would at least quit breaking my windows
people addicted to drugs come from all over the country in part for the services San Francisco provides.
Under Boudin, prosecutors in the city could no longer use the fact that someone had been convicted of a crime in the past to ask for a longer sentence, except in “extraordinary circumstances.” Boudin ended cash bail and limited the use of gang enhancements, which allow harsher sentences for gang-related felonies. In most cases he prohibited prosecutors from seeking charges when drugs and guns were found during minor traffic stops. “We will not charge cases determined to be a racist pretextual stop that leads to recovery of contraband,” Rachel Marshall, the district attorney’s director of communications, told me.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/how-san-francisco-became-failed-city/661199/
It was under Clinton that the Harvard Institute for International Development let professor Jeffrey Sachs propose the economic “shock therapy” for Russia. This directly lead to hyperinflation and the give away of major industries to the lucky few who became Russia’s oligarchs. This was a f**k up on a historical scale
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/harvard-boys-do-russia/
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-russia-needs-to-be-humiliated-in-ukraine
in 1991 there was a sense among many Russians that the USSR was not so much defeated as it folded under its own weight. Too many refused to accept that the Soviet collapse was the outcome of years of economic mismanagement and imperial hubris – and so they looked for traitors instead
Ukraine has punctured a big, gaping hole in the narrative of Russia’s ‘greatness’. Russia is poor, corrupt and authoritarian, and now we also know that it is weak and pathetic. Russia’s ‘greatness’ has crumbled in an orgy of murder and rape inflicted by brutal occupiers in Ukraine. Tainted by the blood of the innocents, and beaten in honest combat, the bully has been reduced to size. It’s about time. Thank you, Ukraine, for serving this bitter medicine. Russia needed it badly.Russia needs proper humiliation. It needs a humble recognition of its diminished status, an acceptance of guilt, and a slow, painstaking effort to rebuild the trust of those it has wronged. Russia did not learn this lesson in the 1990s. It must learn it now.
Sergey Radchenko
Putin’s weird concept of Ukraine being an essential part of the ancient greatness that is Russia was his motivation for invading Ukraine. Here are the words from Putin’s own mouth:
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
The funny thing is, Putin is completely wrong on the facts. Ukraine was around for 1000 year before they allied with “Muscovy” (the nation that became Russia). For details, read:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-war-in-ukraine-is-a-colonial-war (paywall if you read too many articles in newyorker.com for free)
Can we just skip to the part where Putin kills himself in a bunker?
This is a long, poetic, and powerful speech comparing the evil and aggression of the Nazis with that of the Russians. The speech was posted on May 8th, the UN declared day of Remembrance and Reconciliation for Those Who Lost Their Lives during the Second World War. Warning, it’s not an easy speech to listen to:
Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute gives a painfully detailed analysis concluding with the observation that it’s hard to see how Russia can keep up the pace militarily for more than a few weeks. The video below shows the conclusion of the discussion. Rewind to 45:24 to see the start of the discussion:
Later edit: Well as of July 2022, Russia’s still going. So this prediction was off by at least an order of magnitude.