@rpardee my Yahoo account is old enough to drink; my Google account is old enough to vote 🤪

@Irishroze I'd say "can you believe this crap?" but, it's DeSantis, so yes, I can. 🙄

@FreedomATX this is an article about ANOTHER siege survivor who's protesting, so yeah, maybe it's a false positive.

But there's so much propaganda out there right now, I don't want to spread disinformation. The Russians are doing enough real, bad shit on their own.

https://therussianreader.com/2022/02/28/siege-survivor-antiwar-protester/

#ukraine

Deepfake detector thinks this isn't real, which is one of the reasons I uploaded it instead of linking to it. The thread on Twitter was, of course, certain it was true, and initial examination of the video shows some details like the date she has on the sign she's holding. But I'm guessing there's regions of the video that show evidence of alteration that aren't visible to the human eye, maybe?

Police arrest a well-known survivor of the Siege of Leningrad for protesting the war.

Next: Putin to issue press release calling the T-34 a "piece of shit"

(downloaded from Twitter so you don't have to go there)

#ukraine

@Klaatu_Veratta_Nectarine thank you for this, and the Meduza article. This jives as well with what's been reported about Russian soldiers looting supermarkets and the like.

@corlin Thank you! I'm really proud of this one.

I wasn't old enough for the, uh, "Studio 54" experience, so to speak, so I'll take your word for it 😂 This was all on the radio for me as opposed to the dance floor when it was new.

As it happens, Love's Taboo was only played on one radio station in the USA - Live 105, my radio station growing up in SF. Otherwise it was solely a European chart topper.

We interrupt your doomscrolling for some #cosomusic

I performed this set at a nightclub in San Francisco last Saturday. It's a mix of 80s new wave and italo-disco, centered around Cube's "Love's Taboo".

https://www.mixcloud.com/Formica/one-big-lesson-in-life/

@mcfate @TheAbbotTrithemius @DanKravetsky The ruble is currently worth 13.37 doge 🤣

@mcfate @TheAbbotTrithemius @DanKravetsky given that Russian economic productivity is cratering, their markets are still suspended, and the rouble has plummeted, that GDP number is probably inaccurate at best; a fantasy at worst.

@jaunty @mcfate truth. I've heard so many stories that boil down to "flying Aeroflot into Moscow is a religious experience: you pray you'll live through it" 😜

@gshevlin 100%. Ironic, but the fact is, when you look at how effectively the Trumpists have used, well, small-d democratic means (as well as armed intimidation, to be fair) to take over the party at the local level, it stands in stark contrast to the kind of top-down Party level control the Democrats can exert. Like the DWS situation you cite, or running consummate DNC insider McAuliffe in Virginia, Sherrod Brown taking down Col. Hackett in Ohio in 2006, etc.

@Klaatu_Veratta_Nectarine I didn't see that one in specific; if you have a link please share it (I'll check your timeline as well). But I have been paying close attention to the stories about the experience of the conscripts - the bait-and-switch, the seizure of the phones, etc.

I was skeptical that many of those "180k" were combat-ready soldiers, and what we are witnessing with the conscripts bears that out. Like war isn't sad enough already.

@Klaatu_Veratta_Nectarine yeah. And the further you get from Moscow, the easier it is for new gear to disappear in transit and get sold off, since I'm sure salaries for the actual, professional soldiers haven't increased much, if at all, for a long time.

CW: combat, vulgarity

Purported to be UA vs RU soldiers taunting each other like it's XBox Live.

If this is real, it is more indication that RU soldiers were sent into battle without encrypted comms and are transmitting in the clear.

Note the relatively high morale of the UA soldiers, while the RU soldiers are complaining about not getting reinforcements.

It sounds authentic to me, but everything is suspect right now. Judge for yourself:

@gshevlin Never underestimate the ability of state level Democrats to shoot themselves in the foot, make perfect the enemy of good, form a circular firing squad, and fail to understand local appeal.

@kel Agreed. The cornered animal metaphor is entirely appropriate. Lots of people seem to be forgetting that stated Russian doctrine calls for the use of nuclear weapons if they are losing a conventional conflict that threatens their territory.

But it goes further than that. He might, for example, detonate a tactical device over an unpopulated area - an airburst to minimize fallout - to frighten everyone into giving into his demands.

@Render I remain skeptical - the information battlefield is well-prepared by both sides with propaganda that casts the opponent as weak - but there is mounting evidence (like this thread) that many of those numbers are boys barely old enough to shave that were thrust into a war they didn't know they were going to fight, not even boys who had been in uniform for a year and used to the rhythms of military life.