Happy to belatedly announced that RAISING RAFFI is out this June. It has some very solid blurbs and is also just 240 pages. People have reported not even noticing that they read it. You can pre-order at the n+1 store, or wherever fine books are sold. https://t.co/XTGvJ06pKe
@elon "I acknowledge that human thought is nothing more than a fancy LLM. I too am randomly generating words based on statistical analysis. But where is my $1,500?"
Russia's urbanicide 'playbook': cut off access by encircling Kramatorsk & Sloviansk, slowly establish drone & artillery fire control, terrorize the population to leave, force Ukrainian forces to withdraw, & turn the city into rubble -- then call it victory.
It bears repeating that I'll be in conversation with @bartongellman at Columbia Journalism School next Monday evening. Open to the public; please come by. https://t.co/XpK6RiQugy
In the early 2000s, much of Russia’s thinking public told the world the country couldn’t be reduced to Putin, the KGB, corruption, or Gazprom. Russia was more complex, diverse, and subtle than any exportable narrative. That was true—and still is.
Yet this complexity didn’t prevent a brutally simple war, launched over and against it. Which is why both external and internal observers are sometimes justified in ignoring that complexity.
This may not always be rational for policymaking—nuance matters there. But it’s odd to demand that every statement about Russia account for all its complexity. Russia has simplified itself far more than Talankin ever could. His work, if anything, painfully records that simplification.
I wrote this in RUSSIAN about the #Oscarto the Pavel #Talankin’s #MrNobody Against Putin — not in an aesthetic, but in a quasi analytical, political frame (with some personal notes). I strongly disagree that the film is for a Western audience. What I discovered instead is that one has to write about it separately for Russian and for international readers.
https://t.co/ebGlSO6jMn
https://t.co/LBynISJDqx
@captosucc@JFreshHockey This is correct. Historically when in trouble Canada reverts to trying to go end to end. But not even McDavid can do it at this level.