Stefán Gunnar

Cold War Historian from Reykjavik, Iceland. Journalist at Morgunblaðið. Beatles fan. KR-ingur.

[Steve Popper @StevePopper]

As someone who covered the 1994 NBA Finals, it's a big assignment with a lot of work to do on deadline so I'd like to ask celebrities not to get in any slow car chases with police traliing a white bronco tonight.

[Her Gravce 🇺🇦 @hergravce]

I will never get tired of saying this: the narrative "Russian society is being held hostage by Putin and once he dies, there will be ponies and sunshine" is not just stupid, it is dangerous.

[Kate from Kharkiv @BohuslavskaKate]

This is not a movie about meteor showers before the apocalypse; this is Russia bombing Kyiv last night. A city with several million people in it - children, the elderly, and normal families just like yours.

[Regina Bauer 🇪🇪🇺🇦 @petite_michelle]

Hey, western commie!
Nothing makes me laugh harder than a guy or a girl tweeting about "great communism" from a $1,400 phone, in a 3-bedroom suburban house, with a fridge full of food.
Comrade.
You would not survive week one.
And here is why.
In the USSR you couldn't just quit your job to "find yourself." Not working was a crime. Literally. They called it "social parasitism." They put the future Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky on trial for it. Your podcast about late-stage capitalism would've gotten you five years.
You picture yourself as a commissar. You'd be in a queue. Three hours. For maybe bread. The commissars were a tiny elite with their own shops, their own hospitals, their own everything. You weren't invited. You'd be the guy informing on his neighbor for an extra ration.
That brave political take you posted today? In 1949 USSR deported 20,000+ people to Siberia in three days for a lot less - for just being LOCALS. Whole families. Children. Cattle cars. You'd have lasted until your first "actually Stalin was misunderstood" reply landed in front of the wrong person.
The gulag wasn't an edgy metaphor. Roughly 18 million people passed through it. Unpaid labor, -40°C, digging canals nobody needed. But please, tell me more about how you'd "organize the workers" from the group chat.
Things get bad and you want to leave? You can't. There's a wall. There are dogs. There are guards who shoot. The whole design was that you couldn't go.
The people romanticizing it from a comfortable suburb can always book a flight home. People in the USSR couldn't even move to the neighbouring city without permission.
So wear the Che shirt. Read rge Red Book by Mao. Enjoy the iPhone he'd have confiscated, the internet he'd have banned, and the free speech that lets you praise the exact system that would have shot you for using it.
Some of us actually remember how it went.

[Mark Gadala-Maria @markgadala]

Luke Skywalker on Jerry Springer is peak AI 😂

[Oliver Alexander @OAlexanderDK]

If ever you feel useless, just remember that this is one of Russia’s most heavily defended naval bases.

[Stefán Gunnar @sgs1981]

Vel gert!

[Omid Djalili @omid9]

Comedy palate cleanser. Robert Jenrick about to grandstand but reminded of his defection from one party to another this year is gold. The timing. First line great. Second line superb but crowd not recovered from the first to fully appreciate it 😊

[Nicholas Drummond @nicholadrummond]

The Gepard 35 mm air defence system was developed in the 1960s and fielded in the 1970s. It’s an analog system operating in a digital world. No matter. It is the ideal system for knocking down drones of all sizes. It continues to operate like clockwork. The designers got the calibre right. 35 mm is the perfect balance between lethality, effective range, and cost per kill. Developed by Porsche, the Leopard I chassis on which it sits is robust, dependable, and easy to maintain. In fact, Gepard is an object lesson for the designers of all military hardware: when you get it right, it lasts forever.

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

For four years, Russia has been launching drones at Ukrainian apartment blocks, hospitals, and power stations. Every single day. Grandmothers hunted in the street. Children pulled from rubble. Maternity wards hit on purpose.

You said nothing.

Ukraine hits one building in Russia and suddenly you’ve discovered a conscience.

That’s not a moral position. That’s a tell. You were never outraged about civilians. You were waiting for a civilian you could use.

[vids that go hard @vidsthatgohard]

Never forget when Michael Jordan’s mom did a dunk, happy Mother’s Day😂

[Kate from Kharkiv @BohuslavskaKate]

If you told me four years ago that I’d be watching videos of a shotgun-mounted Ukrainian drone mercilessly shooting down a swarm of russian drones, I would have laughed. Yet, here we are.

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

My monologue from today’s The Times at One with Andrew Neil:

As often happens with President Trump, it’s not long before you end up in fantasyland. 

Yesterday, in a long and at times incoherent social media post, he suddenly announced the US would start ‘guiding’ — his word —  commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz, where they have been stranded by his War on Iran. 

On the face of it — at last an effort to unblock this vital supply route for the global economy. 

Of course, it turned out to be no such thing. There will be no US Navy escort for stranded ships to go through the Strait in convoy. Or the navies of any other countries for that matter. 

Just a so-called ‘co-ordination cell’ involving countries, insurance companies and shipping lines sharing data. Trump has dubbed it ‘Project Freedom’. But there will be precious few ships freed by this latest wheeze. 

The UK’s Maritime Trade Operations agency, which works in tandem with the Royal Navy, said this morning the security threat level in the Strait remained ‘critical’. As long as that’s the case ships won’t risk the passage without Iran’s approval. 

And that was before we had Iran claiming this morning to have hit a US frigate. America is categorical that none of its ships has been hit. 

At first Tehran didn’t deign to respond to Trump’s latest initiative. But this morning Iran warned it would attack any commercial ships or US warships that tried to transit the Strait without its permission, reminding everyone it was in control of the Strait, which, of course, it wasn’t before Trump began his attacks on Iran. 

Over 1,600 ships are now trapped on either side of the Strait. Only those of whom Iran approves and prepared to stump up $2m per ship to Tehran are allowed through.

The truth is Trump has no idea how to reopen the Strait — or how to bring his war to an acceptable end. 

He’s just rejected Iran’s latest peace proposals, which were full of unacceptable nonsense — suggesting the tyrants of Tehran are still in no rush for peace. But what happens next is anybody’s guess. 

Mine is that Trump will simply play for time, as he has in Gaza. Last year, to much fanfare, he announced peace had broken out in the strip and reconstruction would begin. 

Since when, there’s been very little peace and no reconstruction. But our attention has moved on. Gaza makes few headlines these days, even though it’s still grim on the ground. 

Trump will be hoping for the same attention deficit towards Iran. Both sides have stopped raining down missiles, bombs and drones on each other. Not much else is happening. Nothing to see here. Let’s move along. 

However, there is one mighty difference with Gaza: the Strait of Hormuz. The longer that stays closed the more the global economy is likely to be crippled. That’s already happening in Asia, where shortages are spreading and economies grinding to a halt. 

The same fate is heading our way, slowly but surely. We are heading for shortages and massive price rises in all manner of materials — not just oil and gas — but jet fuel, helium, naphtha, fertilisers  — about which we know little but which are, in fact, vital to normal life. 

No jet fuel, no flying. 
No helium, no microchips, no microchips, no cars or household appliances, never mind the AI developments currently keeping the US stock market afloat. 
No fertilisers, no food. 
No naphtha, no building blocks for everything from textiles to rubber to car parts. 

If, come June, the Strait is still closed then we will be entering a summer of misery thanks to Trump’s War. The chances grow by the day. 

It has dawned on Tehran that controlling the Strait is a far more powerful weapon than a nuclear bomb. Though it’s not giving up on that either. 

As the rest of us suffer, Trump will be declaring a fantasy victory. Which makes you wonder: if this is victory, what would defeat look like?

[Jay in Kyiv @JayinKyiv]

Q: How many Ukrainians does it take to change a light bulb?

A: None.

[NO CONTEXT HUMANS @HumansNoContext]

The most wholesome thing you’ll see today 🥹

[Presidential Wisdom @PrezWisdom]

Young Abraham Lincoln 🇺🇸 looks like he routinely bursts into Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment and takes his food and uses his television

#POTUS 😂

[Phil Hoyeck @PAHoyeck]

Reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and shaking my head the whole time so the people on the bus know I'm not happy about the rise, but I'm a little concerned they might think I'm not happy about the fall.

[Vatnik Soup @P_Kallioniemi]

Finnish pro-Kremlin accounts are now openly urging reservists to collect and publish details about military refresher exercises.

It’s an attempt to expose sensitive defence information and undermine national security.

This is exactly what hostile influence operations look like.

[Churchill MGᵀᴹ 🇺🇦🇨🇦🇬🇧🇪🇺🇺🇸 @ChurchillFella]

This old Russian "lady" says that Finland belongs to Russia, Sweden, too.
She wants Poland and the Baltic states to be erased from the map, and that they [people of Russia] should help Putin to achieve his goals.
I don't know how to comment on this...

[Kardashian de Software @oprimodev]

“Como as pistas de fórmula 1 são desenhadas”