Easy E

Gaming, politics, computer science and urbanism.

[Dr. Arthur Brooks @arthurbrooks]

Men tend to get lonelier as they age.

One reason is that many of their friendships are built around shared interests rather than shared inner lives.

There's nothing wrong with golf, fantasy football, or talking about work. But if every conversation stays there, it's possible to spend years surrounded by people and still have nobody you can tell the truth to.

I've met countless successful men who can name dozens of colleagues and acquaintances but struggle to identify a single person they could call in a moment of real pain.

By middle age, many have become fluent in banter and almost illiterate in confession. The friendships that endure are often built through small acts of courage: asking the deeper question, giving the honest answer, and risking being known.

Loneliness rarely arrives all at once. It accumulates quietly, one surface-level conversation at a time.

[OSINTtechnical @Osinttechnical]

Madyar says that traffic along Russia’s critical R-280 supply route has dropped 71% over the past two weeks due to Ukraine’s mid-range drone strike campaign.

[Blake Allen @Blake_Allen13]

Just like I was talking about yesterday: Screwworm has now been detected in the United States and it’s going to be very difficult and very expensive to contain this. It’s going to hurt farmers & ranchers and also drive up the cost of meat

[Judd Legum @JuddLegum]

George Santos:

1. Posted a video the day before Trump's State of the Union saying he was going to be there

2. Bet on Kalshi that he would not attend

3. Did not attend

https://t.co/NWfMlf1Lg2

[OSINTtechnical @Osinttechnical]

Russian authorities have suspended fuel sales in Sevastopol, Crimea, after Ukrainian mid-range strike drones strangled the overland supply route through occupied Ukraine.

The governor of Crimea has announced a province-wide rationing campaign that will begin tomorrow.

[kebab🇹🇷 @kebabthesecond]

Cavalry, trench warfare, shooting other aircraft with shotguns, and now dazzle camo? Welcome back, World War 1

[MAKS 26 🇺🇦👀 @Maks_NAFO_FELLA]

⛽️❌ Russians complain that it is still possible to enter Crimea, but to leave back - except on foot, because there is simply no gasoline at the gas stations.

This is a consequence of cutting off enemy logistics and strikes on refineries.

Russian propaganda is sounding the alarm and calling on Gauleiter Saldo to build fortifications around the main logistics routes, otherwise there will be "catastrophic consequences" by the fall.

Meanwhile, the occupation administration in occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region has called on drivers not to use the key route due to unknown mines.

[Jay in Kyiv @JayinKyiv]

Ukraine absolutely shredding Russian logistics, destroying in the past 24 hours .5% of all the Russian vehicles and fuel tanks of the entire war.

[Amy Siskind 🏳️‍🌈🇺🇸 @Amy_Siskind]

OMG 💔

[David French @DavidAFrench]

Can we be done with the pretense that Republican primary voters vote for MAGA candidates in spite of their apostasy and corruption? The transgression is a feature, not a bug. It tells voters they don't care about law or morality. Only power.

[OSINTtechnical @Osinttechnical]

Footage of a Ukrainian SAM system downing a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile over Kyiv this weekend.

[julie k. brown @jkbjournalist]

This is a great story about how Trump and his family are profiting off the renaming of the Palm Beach International Airport, with the blessing of Fla Gov. Ron DeSantis. I guess everything is up for grabs in America these days, with no input from local taxpayers or voters.

[Rep. Jim McGovern @RepMcGovern]

Remember: it was like pulling teeth to get Republicans to fund the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund.

But it took them no time at all to create a $1.8 billion Insurrection Slush Fund to pay off the legal fees of the January 6th rioters who beat cops.

These are sick, corrupt people.

[Jim Geraghty @jimgeraghty]

“We now have, to some extent, overproduction of drones,” Bodnar said. “For example, Magura drones, which is a sea drone, they practically demolished the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. But we don’t have a target now for them. So, it’s possible to sell them abroad, as well as with the FPV [first person view] drones. So, the production is now more than 4 million per year.” (That’s all kinds of drones, not just sea or FPV ones.) Last month, Ukraine announced that it was on pace to produce 7 million drones this year.

Unexpected Words from Ukraine: We Have an Overproduction of Drones https://t.co/eI98eHzMUh

[Liam Donovan @LPDonovan]

Fitting political epitaph if there ever was one

[Aaron Fritschner @Fritschner]

A mind-blowing-but-true fact about Trump's stock trading.

Trump traded up to ~$700 million in stock in Q1 of 2026.

The 535 Members of Congress made ~$635 million in trades in 2025.

Trump bought and sold more stock in 3 months than all of Congress put together did in a year.

[TimOnPoint @TimOnPoint]

Yes, yes, yes, combined arms and all that...

I read these opinion pieces being published by West Point and I wonder if these well-credentialed authors have really been paying attention. *The article was written by Canadian tankers btw.

Drones are NOT just the "next TOW." Why?

1. Remote UAS controller not at risk: A TOW or Javelin team is right there in the line of fire (or at least line-of-sight vulnerable). An FPV pilot can be kilometers back, often in a dugout or even further with fiber-optic relays. This removes the “suicide mission” calculus that limited massed ATGM use. Ukrainian operators routinely cycle through dozens of sorties per day from relative safety.

2. Cost differential & scalability: A heavy FPV runs ~$500–1,200. A T-90M is ~$3.8–4.5 million. Russian analysts themselves ran the numbers in early 2026: one T-90M = ~3,200 heavy FPVs; one BMP-3 = ~870. Ukrainian FPVs have accounted for an estimated 50–65% of Russian tank losses as of early 2025 (Forbes/OSINT tracking), with some T-90M batches showing ~50% of kills as final FPV strikes. Even at a pessimistic 20–43% hit rate per sortie (per Ukrainian veteran accounts), you’re still talking single-digit thousands of dollars to mission-kill a multimillion-dollar vehicle. TOWs/Javelins never offered that exchange ratio at scale.

3. Drones can (in fact) hold ground: We’re just entering the nightmare phase now. Right now drones excel at denial (exactly what the article says—they restrict mobility without controlling terrain). But with fiber-optic, AI/autonomous navigation, and loitering munitions, we’re already seeing the shift to persistent presence. Autonomous “last-mile” navigation has pushed success rates from ~10–30% to 70–80% by cutting out constant radio links and operator skill ceilings. Swarms + AI target recognition + reusable platforms (some Ukrainian systems now resupply themselves) start looking like cheap, attritable area-denial forces that don’t need 24/7 human babysitting. We’re not there for true “holding” yet, but the trajectory is clear and the article underplays it.

4. Automation - human-in-the-loop obsolescence: Already happening faster than most Western armies admit. Fiber-optic drones are unjammable; AI-enabled ones handle navigation and terminal guidance independently. Ukrainian sources in 2025–2026 report this is slashing both drone losses and required operator skill. The article’s “evolutionary” framing treats this as just better guidance systems. It’s not—it’s the removal of the vulnerable link that made past guided weapons (TOW, Hellfire, etc.) manpower-intensive and detectable.

5. Area denial is insanely economical in manpower & cost: One well-trained FPV section (a handful of operators + production teams) can paralyze a mechanized battalion’s movement. Compare that to the crew, logistics, and fuel for equivalent ATGM teams or attack helicopters. Russian analysts themselves are now questioning whether tanks remain cost-effective precisely because of this.

6. Skill curve: Training a competent FPV pilot takes weeks. A tank crew or even a Javelin gunner takes months/years plus expensive platforms for live-fire practice. Ukraine has flooded the battlespace with operators from a civilian gamer/drone-racing pool. The article notes that poorly trained crews suffer more, but the flip side is that anyone can become a lethal drone operator extremely quickly. That’s not true for traditional mechanized warfare.

7. Dev cycle speed: Attritable = sprint. Bespoke = crawl. FPV airframes, warheads, EW countermeasures, and AI modules are iterating in weeks/months because losing a $700 drone is trivial. Tank armor packages, APS, or new IFV designs take years and billions. Ukraine’s drone ecosystem (modular 7–10 inch FPVs that can swap ISR/strike/relay roles on the fly) proves this. The article acknowledges rapid advance but treats it as historically normal. It isn’t—not at this price point and iteration speed.

*The authors correctly note that drones have helped create a static, attritional battlefield reminiscent of 1916. Where they err is in presenting this as a failure of drone warfare or proof that "combined arms" simply needs better integration. For the defender—Ukraine, outgunned in traditional metrics—this stasis is the win. Drones didn't just deny maneuver to the attacker; they made large-scale Russian armored advances prohibitively expensive in blood and treasure, freezing the front and preserving Ukrainian sovereignty. A static line where your country still exists is not "limited strategic effect." It is survival against long odds. History's tank-killers (Saggers, TOWs, Javelins) never achieved this scale of denial at this cost ratio. Drones did.

The Cold War and GWOT are gone people. Adjust your thinking.

[Vatnik Soup @P_Kallioniemi]

All logistics routes to Crimea are essentially blocked by Ukrainian drones, reports Defense Matters. This has also been confirmed by many Russian milbloggers.

Ukraine has destroyed much of Russia’s air defense in the region, and Russia is now using regular trucks to deliver goods to Ukrainian Crimea.

The Crimean Bridge is so heavily damaged that it can no longer be used to transport heavy equipment.

[ChrisO_wiki @ChrisO_wiki]

1/ If yesterday's Victory Day parade had been a true reflection of Russia's frontline army as it is now, it would have been a chaotic display of battered vehicles, motorbikes, exhausted soldiers on crutches, and donkeys. A Russian warblogger imagines how it could have been. ⬇️

[Easy E @c_oredump]

Despedir has multiple meanings. One is "to fire someone". Then there is a reflexive one that means to "say goodbye". I didn't know about the former, so it confused me why it was a reflexive verb. Spanish considers "I am going to say goodbye" as "I am going to fire myself"