A proper return to form by Tears for Fears. Their new album, The Tipping Point, is great, but it won’t necessarily lighten your mood.
Stream
This is where your find short posts, like quick updates, interesting links or photos.
The sad thing is that if we hadn’t expanded NATO, Putin would have tirelessly devoted himself to world peace and the brotherhood of man.
The decision to embark on this war rests on the shoulders of one man. As we saw earlier this week Putin has become obsessed with Ukraine, and prone to outrageous theories which appear as pretexts for war but which may also reflect his views. So many lives have already been lost because of the peculiar circumstances and character of this solitary individual, fearful of Covid and a Ukraine of his imagination.
Lawrence Freedman
The origins of the crisis lie not in Ukraine but in Moscow. This war is all about keeping Vladimir Putin in power. He fears an invasion of democracy – coming over the border from Ukraine – which could threaten his position.
No-one on the western side made any written or formal guarantees about NATO expansion in 1991. But the debate about whether the Soviet Union could reasonably have inferred from what was said a promise not to expand is a red herring. The Russian leadership of 2022 has built its own version of history, including a perceived threat from NATO, to justify its actions.
Leigh Turner, Russia-Ukraine war explainer
Summer Brennan Revisits the Genius of “I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”:
The fascination with sex and monsters comes, I think, from this borderland, which we all inhabited at one time, when the disgust mechanisms ingrained in our childhood selves served to protect us from sexuality and its destructive forces. Then the walls are breached, and eroticism seeps in. […] Meat Loaf seeps in too. Or rather, he bursts through the walls on a motorcycle like a sexy, leather-clad Kool-Aid man.
[T]his is the issue when your brand is equanimity and a willingness to listen to anyone: if you both have on many more guests associated with one side of the cultural divide than the other, and you are selectively harsh as an interviewer depending on your whims, it’s hard not to conclude that the openness is a pose designed to camouflage a specific political project.
Joe Rogan, Parody of the Open Mind, Freddie deBoer
Uplifting stuff from Maria Konnikova in Wired:
[W]e are seeing the nascent roots of what 2022 will look like—in the coalescing and increasingly radical voices of the anti-vaccine community, in the anti-mask protests we are seeing across the world, and in labeling governments like Australia’s “fascist” for subjecting their citizens to continued lockdowns. These are the seeds for an extremism that will be sticky, lasting, and difficult to uproot—tied, as it has become, to core personal identity.
I’ve never felt quite this pessimistic about the future before, but it’s all the more reason not to get complacent.
In the past 4 weeks, Facebook has decided to show me a bunch of new groups for me to join. The groups are, to a fault, all right-wing, from Ben Shapiro to The Atlas Society to pro-confederacy groups (but I repeat myself). Reviewing my likes and shares, there’s nothing to suggest I would be interested in this stuff. There’s a reason the far right is ascendant, and I keep thinking Facebook most assuredly is a big part of that.
Middle age is waking up with a hangover after drinking a non-alcoholic beer.
