Events

Julia Ioffe, one of the best, most competent reporters covering Russia today, reminds us why Vladimir Putin's death or exile wouldn't change as much as some in the West think: The first time I took a Soviet history class, it was taught by the legendary scholar and Stalin biographer Stephen Kotkin, who asked a question that has since been seared into my memory. During his lecture on Stalin’s terror, Kotkin asked, essentially, how can one man kill millions of people? Sure, Stalin could have said, kill the...

In an authoritarian regime, telling your boss that he did something wrong can have fatal consequences. Therefore people avoid mentioning problems up the chain. Like, for example, that mandating the army use only Russian-made mobile phones, even though Western electronics have progressed years or decades beyond them, might leave the army at a disadvantage in combat. Similarly, as an engineer, you might not tell your superiors that blowing up the enemy's 3G cell towers will render your 3G phones unusable...

In one of those stopped-clock-is-correct-twice-a-day moments, the XPOTUS and I have similar assessments of former US Attorney General Bill Barr: “Bill Barr cares more about being accepted by the corrupt Washington Media and Elite than serving the American people,” Trump wrote. “He was slow, lethargic, and I realized early on that he never had what it takes to make a great Attorney General.” Also Barr “didn’t want to stand up to the Radical Left Democrats because he thought the repercussions to him...

Cassie and I walked all the way to the Horner Park Dog-Friendly Area yesterday, taking advantage of the 19°C weather and forbearance of rain clouds. We went a little out of our way on the first walk, so I could get a look at what was left of Twisted Hippo Brewing: Yikes. Still, only one person was injured in the fire, and he's expected to recover completely. After a 48-minute walk, Cassie ran around like a puppy at the dog park for about 20 minutes: The return walk took another 45 minutes, after which...

Welcome to stop #73 on the Brews and Choos project. Note: this location closed permanently in September 2022 in what I can only assume was Karmic balancing for Urban Brew Labs closing the week before. Brewery: Smylie Bros. Lakeview, 3855 N. Broadway, ChicagoTrain line: CTA Red Line, SheridanTime from Chicago: 20 minutesDistance from station: 500 m I guess it was inevitable that I would visit the newest location of what may be my least-favorite brewery so far. Smylie Bros. (who really seem to be...

No, I don't mean the war in Ukraine. I mean the toy I got Cassie on Wednesday. To refresh your recollection, it looked like this when I handed it to her: As of this morning, it looked like this: I honestly don't know where the rest of it went, though I did find a lot of 2-3 cm leather fragments all over the living room. We're about to take a walk (it's 17.4°C at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters!), so I may, ah, encounter more fragments in the next hour or so.

My friend Тетяна is still posting on social media and texting, and still at her home in central Kyiv. She reports: Kyiv is more or less ok, except a few attacks - 2 residential buildings, Holocaust memorial instead of TV tower, children’s hospital... failing to target lots of things, the other day another Iskander got shot down targeting the famous Motherland statue... those idiots apparently thought that the museum of military vehicles is a military convoy North-west suburbs - pure massacre (((( with...

Last night, I finished the last major feature in the Weather Now upgrade that I started in earnest back in October 2020. That means the development app can do most of what the version 4 can do, except better in most cases. By extension, that means I just have a few things to do in order to replace version 4 in production. But "a few things" includes setting up all the production assets for the new version, including the DevOps pipelines. That's not a small job. That last bit may take a while. I'll have...

Julia Ioffe remains one of the clearest voices about Russia in the Western press, not surprising as she was born in the USSR and lived the first few years of her life in Moscow. Her analysis of the first week of the Ukrainian invasion is a must-read: For America, World War II was Pearl Harbor, island hopping in the Pacific, D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge. As bloody and horrific as those events were, they pale in comparison to what Europe experienced. In six years of war, the continent was leveled. Tens...

Yesterday evening, Cassie and I went to the store to buy dog food, and I got her a toy I thought seemed durable enough even for her: Not so much, as you can see in this photo from 55 minutes later: Yes, that pile of white fluff by her belly came out of the stuffed rabbit. So I have a question for the hive mind: what should I do with all of the toy corpses? Cassie still plays with them, sometimes. I mean, I know the gray one with orange highlights in the center is a duck, but no one else does. And the...