Gennady Rudkevich

Sudanese paramilitary drone attack kills 50, including 33 children, doctor group says Thursday's attack is the latest in the fighting between the paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, also known as the RSF, and the Sudanese military, who have been at war for over two years.

RSF continues with its wave of war crimes in Sudan. www.npr.org/2025/12/06/g...

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that the AI folks making millions aren't spending most of their days posting on social media.

It's amazing how the same people who had "crypto" in their profiles have suddenly transformed into AI experts. Can't wait for their next transformation.

Cretan Revolt (1897–1898) - Wikipedia

I guess they were on the same side of a major military conflict.

Minus the whole Russian occupation of chunks of Moldova and Georgia and the NATO bombing of Republika Srpska and Yugoslavia.

He made his money selling camels and gold. Now this warlord controls half of Sudan Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo will either lead a breakaway state or seek to take control of the whole country, Sudanese say.

A good background on the Butcher of El Fasher. ca.news.yahoo.com/made-money-s...

Reported massacre at hospital in Sudan’s El Fasher leaves 460 dead Horrific stories of mass-atrocities committed by the RSF militia continue to emerge, along with the tens of thousands of civilians who have fled the North Darfur city of El Fasher in Sudan.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg of recent crimes against humanity in Sudan. news.un.org/en/story/202...

The new ruler would be lucky to control the major cities. It's inconceivable they'd control the countryside. Especially when the military is dominated by Maduro loyalists who wouldn't be rushing to follow orders. Meanwhile, the cartels would have the most/biggest guns in much of the country.

If Maduro is overthrown, what stops regime loyalists from teaming up with cartels to seize control over chunks of Venezuela? And what would prevent a very violent civil war between various armed groups for control of the drug routes? No new government could assert control over the entire country.

Madagascar's president has left the country after Gen Z protests, officials say Madagascar's president has fled the African nation, the head of the opposition and other officials said on Monday, the second time that young protesters have toppled a government in weeks of worldwide Gen Z unrest.

Still not a front page story in the biggest Western publications. www.reuters.com/world/africa...

It's telling that this is a third-tier story for BBC and doesn't even show up on the main NY Times website. May we live in interesting times.

And that's how ethnic Russians make up a majority of all but a handful of Russia's Asian regions.

Penguins fan. One gram of hope. Only need a de-aging machine.

By contrast, the correlation between an NHL team's point total in the previous season and its point total in the current season is 0.54.

Since it's that time of the year (when NHL fans have hope for their team based on its preseason performance), I decided to run some correlations between performance in the preseason and the ensuing season. The correlation is 0.08. A perfect correlation is | 1 |.

For the graphically inclined:

Important lesson for ruling party elites who believe there's nothing to fear as long as they remain loyal to those in power.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/w...

This is also what happens when you anger your own constituency while forgetting that opposition supporters live in an entirely different media ecosystem that will never give you credit, no matter how consistent your policies are with their previously stated preferences.

Putin wants legal recognition of Russia's military conquests. But getting that recognition would require Russia to give something in return. Meanwhile, Russia isn't actually offering a single concession. No, promising not to attack (especially given Russia's track record) isn't a serious concession.

The equivalent situation today would be for Russia to push for the annexation of the Crimea, with perhaps some form of an autonomous status (within Ukraine) with a Russian veto for certain decisions in Donetsk and Lugansk. The reason there is no chance for peace is Russia is asking for too much.

Alternatively, countries needed to achieve major military successes to annex a single region. This is because they realized that achieving international legal recognition of an annexation was worth more than military victory. Without such recognition, the value of the land was severely diminished.

Since Putin is basically acting as if we're still in the 19th century in terms of foreign affairs, it's strange that he doesn't apply a 19th century logic to his current war. Back then, if you wanted to achieve maximalist goals, you needed to occupy the enemy capital.

Nominal GDP (in trillion $):

California: 4.10
Texas: 2.71
New York: 2.30
Russia: 2.08

Missouri: 0.45
Moscow: 0.42

Nominal GDP (in trillion $):

Sweden: 0.62
Norway: 0.50
Denmark: 0.45
Finland: 0.30
Iceland: 0.04
Total Nordic: 1.91

Russia: 2.08

Might as well have promised to attack Estonia instead of Ukraine next time.

The other inexplicable part is the public support dispute Putin failing to paint this as an existential war. It's telling that the factor that helped Russia recruit countless soldiers for the war wasn't the claim that NATO was behind the war but a drastic increase in signing bonuses.

That might have some role, but non-ethnic Russians made up a good chunk of the Afghan War casualties, too. Russia has a long history of using ethnic minorities as cannon fodder.

The repression is the highest it's been in post-Soviet times, but still not what it was under the USSR. And the public desire for war was basically nonexistent until the war started. It's entirely a function of highly effective propaganda (and some level of rally around the flag).