How Significant Is Russia’s Partial Ban from SWIFT? - The move demonstrates the seriousness of the effort to punish Putin’s regime, but the effects may be limited. - link
Turning the Focus on America’s Oligarchs - Could the scrutiny of Putin’s favored billionaires hastened by the war in Ukraine extend to the hidden money that subverts democracy in the United States? - link
“Z” Is the Symbol of the New Russian Politics of Aggression - In the days following the latest Russian invasion of Ukraine, the letter came to stand for devotion to the state, murderous rage, and unchecked power. - link
What Google Search Isn’t Showing You - The search engine has made up so much of our online experience for so long that it can be hard to imagine something better. - link
The West Wages Economic War on Russia - As Ukrainians defend their country from invasion, much of the rest of the world hits Putin with severe sanctions. - link
From Vox
“The alarmists were right all along”: A Moscow journalist on Putin and the new Russian reality -
Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in a meeting of the Russian Emergencies Ministry Board via a video link from Moscow’s Kremlin. on February 16. | Alexei Nikolsky/TASS vis Getty Images
An independent journalist describes what life is like inside Russia’s parallel universe.
Almost everyone outside Russia views Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine the same way: as an obscene and unnecessary atrocity.
But that’s because the outside world can see clearly what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine. For the average Russian, the picture looks very different. Theyknow there’s something happening in Ukraine, but it’s not a “war” — it’s a “special military operation.” And if you watch the news, which is controlled by the state, you’re not seeing images of bombed apartment buildings or dead civilians on the streets, because that’s what a war looks like and there’s definitely not a war in Ukraine.
Indeed, Putin signed a law last weekmandating up to 15 years in prison for spreading “false information” about the conflict, which includes using words like “war” or “invasion.” And while the state has largelycontrolled media in Russia, it has now shut down the last remaining independent channel and is even blocking Facebook in the hope of controlling the internet as well.
So what’s it like to live in this totalizing parallel universe? What are Russians seeing? What are they hearing? Most importantly, what do they believe?
To get some answers, I reached out to Alexey Kovalyov, a former editor for the Moscow Times and now an editor at Meduza, an independent news site formerly headquartered in Russia but now based in Latvia (the site has been blocked by the Russian government). Kovalyov was living in Moscow and escaped to Latvia last week as Putin’s regime imposed even heavier restrictions on press freedom.
We talked about what messages are getting through in Russia, how the media environment has evolved in the past couple of weeks, and if he believes reality might finally crash through the fog of state-sanctioned disinformation.
A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.
Sean Illing
Can you give me a sense of what it’s like on the ground right now in Russia?
Alexey Kovalyov
I’ve been gone for a week now, but there was already a massive bank run when I was still there. Now I hear the currency controls are creating all kinds of chaos and it’s getting harder to buy things, and that’s probably going to open up black markets for all sorts of essential goods. So the reality of what’s happening is already bleeding into everyday life for Russians.
Sean Illing
People can see the consequences of what’s happening, but who do they blame? Why do they think this is happening?
Alexey Kovalyov
People are just now seeing the immediate consequences of something they don’t fully understand yet. There’s an instinct in Russia, when you see a long line anywhere snaking around the corner, you just know you need to be in it, even if you don’t know why. You just know something bad is happening, you need to be in that line. That’s sort of what’s happening now.
But it’s really hard to say what people believe. I mean, I’ve seen polling from a week ago showing that 68 percent of Russians support the war, but that’s a state polling agency. And the polling doesn’t even use the word “war” because that would be unthinkable and the state has banned that language. So who knows what people really believe?
I can tell you what happens when you try to explain to people what’s happening in Ukraine, and remember that lots of people here have relatives in Ukraine. When you try to tell them, “This is your aunt’s apartment building in Kyiv. You see? It’s in ashes. It’s being bombed,” they don’t believe it, even if you show them the pictures. They say — and I know this from personal experience — “No, this couldn’t be happening, because they told us that we’re not harming civilians, that this isn’t a war. And if that is happening, it must be because these Ukrainian nationalists are bombing their own people so as to provoke the Russian army into fighting back and killing civilians.” That’s what we’re talking about here.
Sean Illing
We don’t really have a reliable indicator of public opinion in Russia, right? As you said, the polling is suspect and it’s now a police state, so how do we distinguish between what people say they believe and what they actually believe?
Alexey Kovalyov
We have no idea. What these polls reflect is how many people actually tune in to state media, which tells them what to think and what to say.
Even the poll I mentioned, like I said, it doesn’t ask people about a “war,” it asks them if they support a “special military operation” in Ukraine. And then it asks what you think the goals of this special military operation [are] and gives you choices like “The denazification of Ukraine” or “The protection of Russian-speaking peoples in Ukraine.” None of them reflect what’s happening in Ukraine. They’re just letting people choose between the various talking points being pounded by the state.
Sean Illing
What’s it like to be a journalist right now in Russia? And just to be clear, I’m not asking about the hacks and the nihilists shilling for the state. I’m asking about the journalists and the writers who object to this totalitarian nightmare, but they also face enormous risks if they break ranks.
Are they finding ways to tell the truth without telling the truth? Or are they all just getting the hell out of there while they still can?
Alexey Kovalyov
I frankly don’t know many journalists who are still there. I know a few people who still remain in Russia and they made a conscious decision to stay, and I admire their bravery. I wish I was in a position to make that decision, but I didn’t. My family begged me to get out. My own mother cried with joy when I called from across the border to tell her that I was safe.
But it’s not like all this happened overnight. We at Meduza were declared foreign agents last year by the government, and that was the government painting a huge target on our backs, calling us traitors and enemies of the people. So this has been a long time coming. We’ve been preparing for this moment for several years. It’s not unexpected. What is unexpected is how quickly it happened.
Sean Illing
It does seem like there’s been a shift in the regime’s approach to media and propaganda. For a long while, Russia has “flooded the zone” and bombarded the population with so many contradictory accounts of reality that they weren’t sure what to believe, or they were too cynical to believe anything. But now it’s full Orwellian control of reality, and that’s a much heavier lift because it’s not about undermining consensus, which is easy; it’s about enforcing one.
Alexey Kovalyov
Yeah, absolutely. There has definitely been a shift. And I have to be honest, there were a handful of people here who have been warning about this for a long time, who were telling people like me that this was going to be a fascist dictatorship one day, and we’ve been dismissing these people. We were like, “Come on, Putin is a cynic, he’s evil in so many ways, but at least he’s a rational guy. All he wants to do is get himself insanely rich. He’s not going to do anything really drastic.”
But we were all fucking wrong. The alarmists were right all along, and almost every one of them is either dead or in jail or exiled.
Sean Illing
People outside Russia are seeing the videos of people protesting on the streets in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and I think a lot of us want to believe that Putin can’t contain this, that there will be a revolt. But I worry that that’s mostly wishful thinking. Are you convinced that this will put a real dent in Putin’s regime?
Alexey Kovalyov
No, not really. What you’re seeing from these protesters on the streets is possibly the bravest thing I’ve seen, and it’s mostly women who are facing real violence and serious prison time. These people are getting the shit beat out of them by the police. They’re the bravest people in Russia right now because they know what they’re facing.
But we’re talking about a few thousand people in a country of over 140 million people. It’s not nearly enough to even put a dent in Putin’s regime. What it’s really going to take is the silent majority, or Putin’s passive electorate, who for all these years have just been doing what they’re told, they’re going to have to make a stand. But I have no idea what it would take for these people to wake up. I really have no idea.
All I know is that we’re in uncharted waters. All these major foreign media outlets, like the New York Times and the BBC, are fleeing Moscow. That’s never happened. The New York Times has had a bureau in Moscow throughout the entire 20th century, including three revolutions and two world wars and the entire Cold War. But now Moscow isn’t safe for the New York Times. I really don’t have the words to describe how unpredictable this situation is.
Sean Illing
Again, I don’t want to dreamcast here, but is it possible that Putin isn’t as popular as he appears? Is it possible that there’s an undercurrent of discontent waiting to be tapped?
Alexey Kovalyov
Maybe. It’s so hard to know. You can’t trust any of the polling data, especially the polling run by state-owned organizations. The state controls the entire media apparatus in Russia, and that’s incredibly hard to puncture. We just don’t know what people are thinking or what they truly believe or what’s possible. No one knows.
Sean Illing
As the pain of this war becomes more real, as the soldiers start returning home in coffins, as the economy continues to crater, maybe reality will come crashing through the fog of propaganda.
Alexey Kovalyov
I guess we’ll find out, won’t we? We’ve been interviewing parents of Russian soldiers, and not professional volunteer soldiers, but conscripts, people who were drafted into the army. These are 20-year-olds who, after a few months of boot camp, were shipped off to the front line and told this was all a training exercise. Many of these soldiers have been captured by the Ukrainians, and their parents are absolutely crushed because they were told their kids were at training drills. So there’s a lot of confusion.
But I’m not sure reality will come crashing through, or that it’ll happen soon enough. Sanctions move slow. Even though this military campaign has been such an obvious failure, unless someone in Putin’s close circle convinces him to pull back, which is unlikely, this is going to drag on and more people will die.
Who knows what that will mean? Will it spark a nationwide revolt? I don’t know. Here’s what I know: The Russian government has been preparing for this moment for a long time, and they’ve built up a police state to crush any signs of resistance with extreme violence.
Can Russian oligarchs influence Putin’s war? -
Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on March 2, 2022. | Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images
Their muted reactions to sanctions reveal Putin’s power — and isolation.
Sanctions are one of the key ways the US and Europe are retaliating against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. These sanctions are throttling the Russian economy, and they’re particularly making life and business difficult for Russia’s oligarchs, an elite group of uber-wealthy people who began wielding enormous influence on Russian politics as they got rich during the privatization of the post-Soviet state.
Foreign governments around the world are seizing many oligarchs’ assets and yachts, banning them from travel, and cutting them off from doing most business with the US and Europe. The goal is to squeeze Russia’s wealthiest citizens, to censure and compel them to pressure Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to end his campaign against Ukraine.
“It’s the trillion-dollar question,” said Oliver Bullough, a journalist who writes a newsletter about oligarchy at Coda. “Can these people restrain Putin?”
But it’s important to realize that since Putin was elected in 2000, the oligarchy in Russia doesn’t work the way it used to; its members have a lot less power and influence than they once did. These punishing sanctions have so far prompted only muted comments about Ukraine from a few oligarchs, many of whom are based outside of Russia.
“Putin has brought oligarchy in-house,” Bullough told Recode. “And now we’ve got much more of a system akin to the Tudor court of Henry VIII, with a king and then a number of aristocrats around him who own their property as long as he’s prepared to tolerate them.”
“The word ‘oligarchy’ is a bit out of date, in a weird way, but we don’t have a better one,” Bullough added.
The limited power of Putin’s oligarchs 2.0
Since Russia invaded Ukraine last month, the world has been grappling with questions of how the conflict might end, and whether Putin’s advisers or the country’s class of elites — once so influential within the Kremlin — could play a part.
But the idea that individual oligarchs could sway Putin now is a misunderstanding of modern Russia, said Ben Judah, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin. “That’s how Russia operated 15 or 20 years ago,” Judah said, “not how Russia operates today.”
Reining in Russia’s oligarchs was something Putin promised during his first campaign for president, and he didn’t wait long to start. In 2003, Putin arrested and jailed Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who owned a 78 percent stake in Russia’s massive Yukos oil company and was at the time Russia’s wealthiest man. Khodorkovsky was officially charged with financial crimes, but he was also funding Putin’s opposition parties.
The example Putin set by arresting Khodorkovsky was clear: “The oligarchs essentially realized that they owned their wealth only as long as [Putin] wanted them to own it. That changed their entire approach to politics. It also increased their motivation to get more wealth outside of Russia, to get as much as possible offshore, where it would be safe,” Bullough told Recode.
Meanwhile, a new kind of oligarch gained power: the siloviki, which mainly describes businessmen who have connections to the Federal Security Service, the police, and the military. The siloviki were instrumental in Putin’s consolidation of power, serving as his muscle. They’ve become extremely wealthy thanks to their proximity to the president, creating a class of “silovarchs” who are even more dependent on Putin than oligarchs who accumulated their wealth in the 1990s.
All Russian oligarchs’ power and wealth is tenuous, and they know it. That’s why the limited number who have spoken up so far about the war are ones who hold foreign passports or reside outside of Russia. Some oligarchs, and even their children, have called for peace — but without explicitly condemning Putin.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian industrialist currently worth a little over $2 billion, according to Forbes, called peace “very important.” “The whole world will be different after these events and Russia will be different,” he wrote on Telegram. He was sanctioned by the US government back in 2018 for his ties to Putin in the wake of allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US election.
Mikhail Fridman, founder of Alfa Bank, called the invasion a tragedy during a press conference. But when asked about using his influence to put pressure on the Kremlin, Fridman responded, “You should understand that it’s a very sensitive issue,” and said that he could not put his partners and staff at risk by commenting on Putin. He was sanctioned by the EU on February 28.
Evgeny Lebedev, who owns British newspapers the Independent and the Evening Standard, wrote an op-ed in the Standard imploring Putin to stop the war. Lebedev holds dual Russian and British citizenship; he’s also a member of the British peerage. He has not been sanctioned.
Again, these measured reactions from oligarchs shouldn’t come as a surprise. Stanislav Markus, a University of South Carolina professor who has extensively researched Russia’s oligarchs, told Recode that direct criticism of Putin would be “a pretty dangerous position to hold.”
“When it came to this decision to go all-in in Ukraine, Putin took the decision essentially alone,” said Judah, the Atlantic Council senior fellow. “Over the last few years, Putin has become increasingly distant from the old so-called inner circle and the Russian elite in general.”
Judah cited a scene from the security council meeting Putin called on February 21, shortly before invading Ukraine. Sergey Naryshkin, director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, stammered when Putin asked if he supported recognizing the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, two Ukrainian territories that have been controlled by pro-Russia rebels for almost a decade.
“The way Putin spoke to him made him so scared that he forgot what topic was being discussed,” Judah said. “So if Sergey Naryshkin is that frightened of Putin, seemingly that distanced from him, there’s very little chance for those businessmen to simply walk in and stop him.”
The narrative that Putin’s siloviki — or other oligarchs — could meaningfully dissent is “wishful thinking,” Judah said.
“[The sanctions] may indeed cause grumbling and dissatisfaction and fear in the political system,” he continued. But when it comes to what might happen with Putin, he said we should think about “what happens to dictators, not what happens to strongmen with governments.”
How Putin’s war could influence power in the long run
If this war truly was Putin’s decision alone, then he’s both in control and in isolation.
Squeezing Russia’s oligarchs may not lead to Putin doing an about-face in a war that he’s already indicated he’s willing to sacrifice so much for. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t have an impact later. These sanctions will have aftershocks; if anything, they reveal to the Russian oligarchy the limits of their power and how their fortunes are tied up with an authoritarian who’s begun closing them off from almost the rest of the world in pursuit of war.
How they’ll react is an open question.
Markus, whose research investigates what Russia’s oligarchs want and how they try to influence the government, told Recode that part of the reason they haven’t pushed back often against their government is that the existing global financial playground lets them keep so much capital offshore. With so much of their wealth stashed outside of the Kremlin’s grip, there’s less of a pressing need to demand that the Kremlin reform.
Prolonged sanctions could increase desire among Russia’s elite for institutional change, even as achieving it remains difficult. Over the years, Putin has shown them how easy it is to fall out of his favor, and the dire consequences of that.
“If before, they thought, ‘Whatever the Kremlin does, I still have my profitable trade with the United States or Europe or whomever, I don’t need to get political in Russia,’ now, more and more, they’re being pushed against the wall,” Markus said.
“My children love being Texans”: A father of a trans teen weighs whether his family can stay -
LGBTQ rights supporters gather at the Texas State Capitol to protest state Republican-led efforts to restrict the participation of transgender student athletes on September 20, 2021, in Austin. | Tamir Kalifa/Getty Images
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wants parents investigated for child abuse over seeking gender-affirming care for their children.
Investigations of parents of children who have received gender-affirming care are already underway in Texas, just weeks after Gov. Greg Abbott ordered child protective services to look into “any reported instances of these abusive procedures.” Other families are left wondering if they are the next targets.
“It’s just who they are, so we support them,” said Claudio, the father of a trans teen in Houston, who is being referred to by a pseudonym to protect his family’s privacy. “Getting tarred with the label of ‘child abuser’ for doing that is demoralizing and obviously pretty horrible.”
Abbott’s February directive was based on a non-binding opinion from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, targets the parents of trans minors who have received treatments including gender reassignment surgery, hormone therapy, and puberty blockers. They could face criminal charges or have their children taken away by state authorities as a result. The move came after GOP lawmakers in the Republican-controlled state legislature tried to ban gender-affirming care for trans minors last year. The bill passed the Texas Senate, but failed in the House.
There’s already a court fight, and a hearing set Friday that could decide whether to block enforcement of Abbot’s directive statewide. (A judge ruled in favor of the family of a trans teen on Wednesday, halting the state’s investigation into that family.)
But even if the policy is ultimately thrown out in court, it has made the parents of trans children, including Claudio, wary of staying in Texas for fear of further anti-trans acts. We spoke after Wednesday’s ruling; our conversation is below, lightly edited for length and clarity.
Could you tell me a little about your family and how you have been affected by this directive?
My son came out to us several years ago. He’s been on hormone replacement therapy. He’s had top surgery, so I suspect that he would be of interest to the government goons.
It’s been pretty scary. It’s been the cause of some internal family division. My wife and my kid are more defiant. “We should fight this. This is where we live and this is the time to take a stand.” I’m a lot more of a scaredy cat and just want to move to a different state where my children’s future is not in doubt.
Do you fear being the target of an investigation as a result of the directive?
My wife immediately caught on to the fact that this was a non-binding opinion from the AG that basically cascaded through the governor to child protective services. She thought at the beginning that nothing would actually happen and that it was political posturing more than anything that would have consequences while I was pretty scared. There was a lot of anger and dispute about it. We had our differences there.
I think to some extent we’ve both been validated. The ACLU and Lambda Legal strongly state that it is in fact a non- binding opinion and has no real weight and they’re contesting in court. We’re watching the court cases hanging off the edge of our seat, of course. But at the same time, child protective services has started investigations, famously this one of their own employee, which has super ugly overtones.
There is part of me that is just scared that the gender police is going to come knocking on my door. We’re scared, and we’re frustrated and we’re very sad that this is happening in our home.
At least one of the hospitals in the Houston area has stopped offering gender-affirming care as a result of the directive. What do you think about that?
Texas Children’s is trying to prevent its physicians from [facing potential criminal penalties] because they are supposed to be mandatory reporters for this so-called “child abuse.”
But gender-affirming care — especially the varieties that are usually used in children, such as puberty blockers — are validated and accepted by pretty much every child medical society in the US and the world. Lots of scientific studies have validated the value of gender-affirming care for children and, of course, adults.
It’s disappointing to see a hospital buckle under the pressure, especially one as prestigious as Texas Children’s. Fortunately, it doesn’t affect us personally, but it’s demoralizing to see them do that.
How seriously are you considering leaving Texas?
We’ve lived in Texas about two decades and when I got here, one of the things that really impressed me about the place was that it had a very live-and-let-live kind of vibe. It was an impression, but the people were all super friendly. The general Texas attitude was “We don’t get in each other’s business.” That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.
I’m not speaking for the rest of my family here, but I’ve personally been wanting to leave for a while ever since we’ve been having to watch the legislature closely and watch the blow by blow every session for the last couple of sessions, trying to see if they are going to pass anti-trans bills. We’ve been lucky so far. They seem to be filed for political posturing more than with the intent of actually getting passed.
The governor’s order kind of caught us off guard. If this continues and this gets enforced more broadly, I think we are going to have to leave, and that sucks because we’ve lived here for almost two decades. We love living in Houston. We’ve been pretty happy here. But we are going to do what’s right for our family and obviously we cannot stay here with the state threatening to take away our children, who we love very much and we’re just trying to support their gender identity. It’s a shitshow, what can I say?
How does it feel for some people in this state to think that what your family has collectively gone through is child abuse?
Words would only fail me. None of us are perfect parents. I don’t know if you have children, but it’s always a struggle to try to do the right thing for your kids and no one that I know is wishing their kids to be transgender. It’s something that happens. It’s something that you end up having to deal with.
It’s difficult to wrap your mind around it. That’s one of the reasons I ended up being a part of a [support group for families of trans kids]. It was hard for me to accept it. It was hard for me to wrap my head around it. It’s always been a struggle. But we’ve tried to do what’s right for our children. We’ve consulted an incredible number of specialists, psychiatrists, pediatricians, psychologists and we try to do what’s right for our kids and what’s right by our kids.
My child was suicidal. My child was hospitalized in a mental hospital because of suicidal ideation. And the moment they told us that they were transgender was the moment that they started getting better. A lot of the time, you don’t get to choose. Your kids are who they are. And a lot of times, your choice is between having a transgender kid or having a dead kid. And I very much know that I’d rather have an alive kid who is getting better and thriving.
Those of us that get to live with transgender children, we know that it’s no picnic, that it’s not something that they seek out. But it’s a profound realization that they come to. Some people come to that realization when they’re 40, and some people come to that realization when they’re 14. It’s just who they are, so we support them. Getting tarred with the label of “child abuser” for doing that is demoralizing and obviously pretty horrible. It’s been rough.
I’m so sorry that your family has gone through that.
So am I. We can fight, and we hope it doesn’t come to that, but if we have to fight in court, we’re going to fight in court. If things get really bad, I guess we’re going to leave. There are 49 other states and there are a few of them that don’t do this kind of nonsense. My children love being Texans and they love living in Houston. The reason we did not leave when the legislature was considering some horrible anti-trans bills was because the kids did not want to leave, and they’re the ones that are most likely to be affected by all of this.
I’m just a middle-aged dad. Of course, I have skin in the game, but it doesn’t affect me to the same level that it affects them personally. And my son wants to stay here, so here we are. We’re following his lead. He’s brave and young and we want to support him, even though it puts us at risk.
But I don’t know how much risk we’re going to be willing to take, so at some point, we might decide to cut our losses and pick up and leave. We don’t want to, but my family left Europe after World War II, after they were [targeted] by the Nazis, and that’s a lesson that gets etched in your brain pretty strongly even through generations. Persecution scares you extra.
If you, your child, or anyone you know is anxious, depressed, or needs to talk, there are people who want to help.
Malinga joins Rajasthan Royals as fast-bowling coach; Upton returns -
Eng vs WI Test Day 3 | Bonner century anchors West Indies to 62-run lead - Home side batted all day to overturn a 109-run deficit
Peluche is expected to score -
Priceless Beauty may make amends -
Sreeshankar gets his rhythm back, ready to soar - Long jumper looks to better his National record at the indoor Worlds
From The Hindu: National News
Govt. appoints ex-financial services secretary Debasish Panda as IRDAI chief - The appointment of IRDAI chairman comes nearly 9 months after the vacancy was created
Mann to take oath as Punjab CM on March 16; AAP's victory roadshow in Amritsar on Sunday - The oath-taking ceremony will be held at Khatkar Kalan.
Kerala Budget: Taking forward gains in local governance - LDF project to eradicate extreme poverty gets special attention
Kerala Budget: Rural development sector gets ₹6,096 crore - ₹260 crore for Kudumbashree activities
Mobile ration shops planned -
From BBC: Europe
Ukraine war: Large Russian convoy redeploys near Kyiv - satellite images - Images of the convoy’s redeployment appear to signal a renewed push towards the Ukrainian capital.
Watch: Our correspondent on the front line, with Ukraine’s troops - The BBC spent a week with Ukrainian forces in Kharkiv as they fight to stop a further Russian advance.
Ukraine war: ‘I have 20 children here, please send help’ - Tens of thousands of children in Ukrainian state care are in desperate need to get out of the country.
War in Ukraine: US condemns reports Russia may seize firms’ assets - On Thursday, the US Congress passed a bill which includes almost $14bn in emergency aid for Ukraine.
War in Ukraine: Facebook to allow calls for violence against Putin - In response, Russia has called on the US to stop the “extremist activities” of parent company Meta.
From Ars Technica
Rocket Report: Ariane 6 workers are “hyperstressed,” SpaceX retort to Rogozin - “The project adds another dimension to the representation of humanity in space.” - link
DeepMind’s new AI tool helps resolve debate over ancient Athenian decrees - Ithaca system restores text, can also ID location and date of damaged inscriptions - link
Feds extradite ransomware suspects from 2 prolific gangs in a single week - Man arriving from Ukraine accused of causing Kaseya supply chain attack. - link
Router and modem rental fees still a major annoyance despite new US law - ISPs dissuade customers from using their own routers, Consumer Reports tells FCC. - link
A transistor made using two atomically thin materials sets size record - A key transistor component is made from the edge of a sheet of graphene. - link
From Jokes Subreddit
Having too much sex can cause memory loss. -
I read it on page 14 in a medical journal on the 14th November 2019 at 3.19pm
A vacuum cleaner salesman came to my door, poured a bag of dog shit on my carpet and said, “Sir, if this vacuum can’t clean it completely, I’ll eat whatever’s left.” -
I said, “I hope you’re hungry ’cause they cut off the electricity this morning.”
Sara goes to the gynecologist for an examination. -
She gets up on the examining table with her feet in the stirrups, and the doctor, with his head now between her legs, whispers to himself “My, what a large vagina. My, what a large vagina. My, what a large vagina. My, what a large vagina.”
“I heard you the first time! How many times must you say that?”
Karen goes to the doctor not feeling well. Karen: Doctor, I’ve not been feeling well lately.. -
Doctor: I’ve looked at your lab reports and I’m afraid I have some bad news.
Karen: Don’t give me this lab nonsense. I believe in homeopathic medicine, faith-based approaches and healing crystals. All my life, they have never failed me. Now will you do things my way or do I need to see the manager?!?
Doctor: Sure, we’ll do things your way. No need to raise your temper. Why don’t we try an astrology based approach?
