Legacy socialist Putin has control over the media and the narrative in Russia. But it seems he has not yet shut down the international phone system; you can still call Russian numbers from outside. So… it seems there are people cold-calling Russians to talk to them about what Russia is doing in Ukraine. It’s an interesting idea, though in order to have much impact they’d probably need to call *millions* of Russians, which would require hundreds of thousands of Russian speakers willing to do this sort of thing. it would be rather soul-crushing to try to talk to a bunch of people who have been to one degree or another brainwashed by the government media. Like trying to talk down an SJW or Antifa. Ugh.

This makes no sense to me:

Ukrainian Snake Island sailors who shouted ‘Go f**k yourself’ at invading Russian forces before being captured are FREED in prisoner exchange with Moscow

Supposedly 19 Ukrainians from Snake island were traded for 11 Russian civilian sailors. Prisoner swaps occur all the time. But *these* prisoners seem like they’d be a propaganda coup for the Ukrainains. Trot these guys out on TV, on the radio, online, and in real life, and they’ll probably boost morale something fierce. Why the Russians would give them up is beyond me. Now if they all starting mysteriously dropping dead from never before seen diseases or Polonium poisoning… *THEN* it’d make sense.

It turns out that Russia is littering the countryside of Ukraine with the bodies of dead Russians. One might think that the Ukrainians would be happy about that, but it turns out that there are *so* many dead Russians lying about that once it warms up and thaws, there could be a bit of a stink and the usual nonsense about diseases and such. And the Russians don’t seem to want them back. If I was a Russian citizen, I think I might find this strategy vaguely disturbing and unsatisfying.

The bodies of Russian soldiers are piling up in Ukraine, as Kremlin conceals true toll of war

I don’t usually go in for religious iconography, but, hey.

St. Javelin / Saint Javelin

St. Javelin or Saint Javelin refers to an image of Madonna Kalashnikov (the Blessed Virgin Mary) holding a javelin missile that became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance during the 2021-2022 Russia-Ukraine conflict. Although the image is an exploited version of a 2012 painting, it was first re-edited and created in early 2018 on the Russian social media site VK where a user replaced the original AK-47 with a javelin missile. The image received an uptick in usage in February 2022 coinciding with the escalation of the conflict and invasion of Ukraine by Russia, effectively becoming a symbol of Ukrainian resistance on social media and resulting in lots of redraws and fan art. St. Javelin was also seen as controversial by some for promoting violence and the war at large.

And because why not, it’s funny:

Hey, Russia, I think there might be something wrong with your boat:

I wonder what something like a Javelin would do to a modest warship… probably not a whole lot, I suppose.

… then deletes it, claiming to have been hacked.

Uh-huh.

Pro-Kremlin Newspaper Posts Russian Death Toll Of Almost 10,000, Then Deletes It

The online report on March 20 cited the Russian Defense Ministry as reporting that 9,861 Russian soldiers had died since the start of the war on February 24.

This number is more or less in line with other estimates.

And not terribly well related, here’s a headline that might not make a whole lot of sense until you actually read the article:

Russia Breaks Off WWII Peace Talks Over Japan’s Stance On Ukraine Invasion

Turns out Russia and Japan are kinda-sorta still at war.

“Cosmic horror” is a genre of horror invented – or at least perfected – by author H.P. Lovecraft. Most forms of horror have the protagonists being menaced with death by knife wielding maniacs, weirdos with chainsaws, werewolves or sharks trying to eat them, vampires looking to drain their blood, aliens looking to wipe them out. Whether good or bad, that type of horror is comprehensible to the protagonist, at least after they’ve had a little while to process what’s going on. But cosmic horror is horror based on the protagonist being wholly *incapable* of understanding the threat, what’s going on, what the future holds. The alien or the maniac can be defeated in the end with a shotgun blast to the face, or a nuke to the homeworld… but the cosmic horror cannot be defeated. It might be avoided, evaded, delayed or bypassed… but the protagonist will never “win,” nor will the protagonist ever really grasp just what the hell is going on.

By definition, this one is tricky to define, trickier to pull off successfully. Fortunately (?), recent event suggested to me an easy to understand analogy for cosmic horror. Take, for example, the story of “Stepan,” a cat made somewhat famous on Instagram. Stepan seems a perfectly normal cat, in perfectly normal surroundings, with perfectly normal humans. The usual sort of photos and videos of Stepan looking cute made the Instagram account famous and popular. But it wasn’t cosmic horror.

Until very recently. Because Stepan is a *Ukrainian* cat.

Stepan the Internet-Famous Cat Escapes Ukraine, Finds Safety

The shelling of Stepan’s town of Kharkiv caused Stepans humans to pack up and unass themselves and their cat to France. Now, a war, even a bad one, is something humans can understand. A human adult can understand it quite clearly. A human child will have difficulty, perhaps, but unless the child is stupid or incapable of communication, the war can be explained to him/her. The idea that “fire bad” and “bombs bad” and “incoming rockets bad” can be impressed upon them, and rockets and bombs can be explained as to what and why they are, how they work. But to an animal? Sorry, no. Explain all you want, a cat is never going to grasp the first damn thing about a war. All the cat knows is that their life was going along pretty well, then their food-monkey-butlers started acting strange. Then they started running around, then there were loud noises and the big warm cave they live in crashed down and burned, one of the monkey-butlers burst open and stopped moving, the other started making really loud noises then ran away, now the world is rain and snow and fire and wind and loud noises and other monkey-butlers running around making loud noises and sometimes falling over and stopping, and sometimes kicking at them and what is the foul smelling black goop that spilled on my fur and why is it suddenly bright red and why does it hurt and why when I run away the red crackling pain stays right on me ow ow ow…

Yeah. To a cat, a dog, a horse, war is *never* going to make the first bit of sense. It will always remain incomprehensible chaos and madness that will pursue them into their dreams, years after normality has returned. War (or an earthquake, or a house fire, or a tornado, or a hurricane, or one of their humans suddenly going insane due to booze or meth or bad news, or…) is simply beyond an animals ability to begin to comprehend. It is the very essence of cosmic horror. The trick for an author who wants to capture cosmic horror is to do for human characters what war would do for an animal character. The idea is straightforward enough, simple to understand, like “add one extra dimension to a line, you get a square; add one extra dimension to a square, you get a cube; add one extra dimension to a cube, you get a tesseract.” But while the concept is straightforward enough, that last step can be a doozy to really pull off.

By the way, here’s Stepan while being evacuated. This is the look of someone who has peered into the abyss and come away uncomprehending, hope and joy drained from them, refilled with a new fear. This cat has seen some ᛋᚻᛁᛏ. If your human protagonist looks like this at the end of the tale, you *may* have successfully introduced them to some form of cosmic horror. On the other hand, if real-life humans or animals end up looking like this due to actions you have taken… please consider that you may be the baddie.

It seems that Russian thermobaric weapons systems make a mighty, mighty fireball if you whack them before launch with anti-tank missiles:

Sanctions on Russia seem to be having an effect:

Looks like sugar is in demand. The way the grocery store staff here deal with it is… well, unwise.

He’s a software engineer with a history of operating anti-tank weapons in the US military. For some reason, his recent videos on how to go about taking out Russian tanks seem to have some sort of relevance. If you know anyone who might be in the market for enlightenment on how to convert a Russian tank into ex-Russian scrap metal, point them this way.